Текст книги "The Stone-­Cold Dead in the Market Affair"

Автор книги: John Oram

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The Stone-Cold Dead in the Market Affair

By John Oram

A fortune for world conquest

It began when a man walked into a bar and ordered a beer that he was never to drink—for moments later he saw two other men enter, and he panicked and ran headlong out the door, across the street...and under the wheels of a truck.

When he was hit, hundreds of bank notes flew all over the street, a small fortune in currency. And all of it was counterfeit.

But when U.N.C.L.E. investigated the case they found much more than just counterfeiters at work. Instead, it was a THRUSH plan to destroy the economic and political foundations of Europe—and it look as though it was going to succeed....

THE STONE-COLD DEAD IN THE MARKET AFFAIR

FROM BLODWEN

NEWPORT MON

SOUTH WALES

TO W

SECTION I (P)

UNCLE NEW YORK

SECRETEST: STREET FATALITY HERE TODAY PRODUCED BUMPER BUNDLE MINTWISE STOP SUSPECT BROWN BIRD SINGING STOP SUGGEST RELATIVES ATTEND URGENTEST STOP

TO BLODWEN

NEWPORT MON

SOUTH WALES

FROM W

SECTION I (P)

UNCLE NEW YORK

SECRETEST: DISPATCH SPECIMEN REQUEST IMMEDIATE STOP RUSSIAN COUSIN TRANSITING STOP TRY LOCATE NEST STOP

FROM BLODWEN

NEWPORT MON

SOUTH WALES

TO W

SECTION I (P)

UNCLE NEW YORK

SECRETEST: WILCO BUT NAME BLODWEN NOT CASSANDRA STOP CASE OF NEEDLE HAYSTACKWISE TOP AND NO THREADS STOP

Chapter One

Market Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, bears no resemblance to its namesake in San Francisco. It is around three hundred yards long, narrow, shabby, with an atmosphere redolent of gasoline, printer's ink, fish, vegetables and good Welsh beer.

It is bounded on one side by the gray stone outer wall of the old municipal covered market, and on the other by a conglomeration of premises which include a branch of a multiple tailoring firm, the truck bay and editorial entrance of the South Wales Argus, wholesale fruit, vegetable and fish merchants, and a store specializing in workmen's clothing.

There are two taverns in the street's three-hundred-yard length. The man in the shabby fawn trenchcoat visited each in turn.

He was a small, slim man about thirty years of age. His face was pasty, with high cheekbones accentuated by the sunken flesh below. His hair was a thick thatch that looked like bleached hay. His curiously pale green eyes, set close to a button nose, held an expression of abject fright.

He went into the cream-painted bar of the Black Swan and bought a glass of beer and a sandwich. The chicken sandwiches at the Black Swan are worth traveling a long way to sample, but the man in the trenchcoat gulped his down as if it were tasteless. His little green eyes roved over the back of the bar, resting briefly on the miner's lamp on the top shelf and the ship's bell over the door in to the landlord's private quarters. Then he drank his beer quickly and left without a word.

He hurried along the street and pushed open the door of the bar of the Cross Keys. Except for a pretty girl sitting alone by the counter, the big room was empty. Again the man's eyes searched the bottle-filled shelves. Perched perkily between two-thirds of Long John whiskey there was a little doll in Welsh national costume. Some of the tension went out of the man's face. He rapped on the counter for service.

The barmaid came from the table area in the back, where a juke box was playing an Andy Williams number. A big, handsome, black-haired woman in a black, close-fitting dress, she could have stepped straight out of a Manet painting. She smiled and said good morning as if she really meant it.

The man said, "A pint of bitter." Then, nodding toward the doll: "You don't get many of those around here, I suppose?"

"No. A friend of the lady who owns the place brought it from Cardiff for a present. Pretty, isn't it?"

"Yes." The man seemed satisfied. He took the beer and went to sit at the far end of the room. He was careful to choose a seat from which he could watch both the door and the big window that looked out on to the street. After a token sip he did not touch the beer on the table in front of him.

The girl at the bar said quietly, "A sociable type."

"You get all kinds," the barmaid said. "I never saw him in here before."

"Oh, well!" She pushed her empty glass across the counter. "Fill it up again."

Mixing the gin and vermouth, the barmaid asked, "You staying long in Newport, love?" Her husky voice with its attractive Welsh lilt contrasted strongly with the girl's clipped London accent.

"A few days, maybe. It depends."

"Just on vacation, like?"

"You could call it that." The girl lifted her glass. "Cheers! You sure you won't have one?"

"No, thank you, love. Too early for me."

The bar door opened and two men walked in. Both were six-footers, dressed in discreet business suits. One wore a navy blue raincoat.

Their effect on the man in the trenchcoat was electrical. He jumped to his feet, overturning the table, and charged between them, his eyes wild and staring.

As the door swung behind him, one of the men asked, astonished, "What the hell was that all about?"

"Must of thought you were coppers," the barmaid said.

There came an agonized screech of brakes from the street outside. Women screamed. There was a confused babel of voices.

"My God! An accident." The barmaid whipped up the counter flap and ran across the room with the girl beside her. The two big men were already on the sidewalk.

A truck loaded with heavy crates was blocking the narrow street. Under its front wheels was all that remained of the man in the shabby trenchcoat. The driver, a gray-faced kid in patched blue overalls, was vomiting uncontrollably against the truck's fender. His partner, dazed but articulate, was protesting: "We 'adn't got no chance. 'E dashed right out of the pub straight under our wheels."

But few of the crowd were listening. They were to busy picking up the hundreds of brand-new currency notes which littered the street.

A boy in a white coat was incredulously counting a handful of fivers. The girl put her hand on his arm. "Where did all the money come from?"

"Gawd knows," he said. "Out of 'is pickets, I suppose. 'E must've been a walking Bank of England. You seen a copper, miss? I got to 'and this over quick or I'll be tempted."

The girl waited until the police, ambulance and tow-truck had arrived. She watched the broken body taken from beneath the wheels and put on a stretcher. Then she made her way up Market Street and across High Street to the General Post Office.

She went into a public telephone booth and dialed a number.

"From Blodwen, Newport, Mon, South Wales," she dictated. "To W., Section I (P)....

Chapter Two

When the telephone bell cut harshly into the Shostakovitch symphony, Illya Kuryakin was less than delighted. He had just showered and shaved after a profitless twelve-hour stake-out of a house in a crummier section of the Bronx, and he had been looking forward to a lazy morning in the small, untidy apartment he called home.

He switched off the heat under the coffee percolator, muted the volume of the record player and picked up the receiver. "Kuryakin."

The girl at the other end of the wire said brightly, "Good morning. I hope I didn't disturb anything."

"Only my dreams. In another ten minutes I would have been in bed."

"Too bad," she sympathized. "No beddy-byes for you, I'm afraid. The big white chief is waiting."

"That man!" he said bitterly. "He knows I've been up all night."

"So sue him," she advised. "In ten minutes, okay?"

"I'll be there."

He replaced the receiver, set the coffeepot boiling again, and began to dress.

Exactly ten minutes later he paid off his cab in front of Del Floria's tailoring shop in the middle of a brownstone block near the United Nations headquarters. He ran down the three steps into the shop, took off his jacket and handed it to the little gray-haired Italian. He said, "The usual."

Del nodded and pushed the button by the side of his pressing machine. Illya walked into the third "try-on" cubicle at the back of the shop, drew the curtain and turned a clothes-hook on the rear wall. The wall swung away silently and he walked through to the admissions desk.

The girl at the desk had watched his entry on her closed-circuit TV screen and was ready with the white badge which would admit him to the third floor – the domain of U.N.C.L.E.'s Policy and Operations Department. She pinned the badge to his lapel almost caressingly. The sober-faced little Russian had that effect on most women.

Illya stepped into the elevator and rode up to the third floor. He went to the armory, drew his favorite P38 automatic pistol, checked the mechanism and tucked it into the shoulder holster under his left arm. Then he walked along the corridor to Mr. Alexander Waverly's private office.

There were two men in the room. Mr. Waverly, the lean, dry chief of Section 1 (Policy and Operations), was standing by the big window which looked out on the East River and the United Nations building. Napoleon Solo, chief enforcement agent for U.N.C.L.E., sat at the huge O-shaped table which dominated the room. Before him were stacked neat piles of currency – kroner, Reichmarks, dollars and pounds.

Illya said, "Good morning. Going into Wall Street?"

Mr. Waverly turned. "Ah! Mr. Kuryakin. Thank you for coming so promptly. You will be flying to Britain in an hour. So sit down, please, and read these."

Illya took the three sheets and scanned them, lingering over the third.

"Blodwen appears to have a sense of humor," he said.

"I am glad you think so," Mr. Waverly said coldly.

"'Brown bird singing,'" Illya read aloud. "That's obviously our old friend Thrush. But 'bumper bundle mintwise'?"

Mr. Waverly gestured toward the stacks of notes on the O-shaped table. "Those are specimens. What do you make of them?"

Illya picked up a five-hundred-kroner note, an American ten-dollar bill and an English five-pound note. He took them across to the window and examined them carefully. "They look all right to me," he said at last.

"You would be prepared to spend them?"

His eyes lit up hopefully. "Can I?"

"If you did, you would inevitable end in jail," Mr. Waverly said. "They are all forgeries."

"But they're perfect!"

"Almost perfect," Napoleon Solo corrected. "In every case the paper is slightly wrong. Take the Bank of England notes: they look right and they feel right – but the metal thread running through the paper is fractionally too thick. There's a similar infinitesimal flaw in all the others. But the printing is fantastically good. The forgers have either got access to the original plates – which on the face of it is impossible – or else they've succeeded in making exact copies."

"That's been done before," Illya said. "Some kind of photographic process."

Mr. Waverly shook his head. "No. With a photographic reproduction, the same number appears on every note. On those, you will observe, the numbers are random."

"Then how is it done?"

"That," said Mr. Waverly, "is what you are flying to Britain to find out. We know neither how nor where the notes are made. But we must find the answer quickly. You are intelligent enough to realize the disaster which would follow if Thrush were allowed to flood the world's markets with these almost undetectable forgeries. There would be financial panic. The economy of every country would collapse like the proverbial house of cards."

Illya nodded. "I see that. But what's the background? Blodwen's 'street fatality' doesn't tell me much."

Mr. Waverly sat down at the table, took a brier pipe from the pocket of his shabby tweed jacket and began to turn it between his hands. He said, "I can give you only the facts as Blodwen has reported them. An unidentified man arrives in the important Welsh seaport of Newport, Monmouthshire, and visits two inns in Market Street. For all we know, he may already have visited other establishments in the town. He is obviously a stranger to the district. He speaks with an uneducated English accent, nothing like the local intonation, and he has to find a Welsh doll to know that he has come to the right place."

"Couldn't he have been told the name of the inn?" Solo objected. "Wouldn't that be above the door?"

"It was painted along the entire length of the front wall above the window," Mr. Waverly said. "That might argue, of course, that our man was illiterate."

"Or the doll could have been a signal?"

"No. We checked that. The doll had stood on the shelf for many months. But let me continue–

"The man orders a pint of bitter, which he does not drink. He sits at a table, plainly waiting for someone. Two men come through the door. Our man panics. He dashes out into the street, straight under the wheels of a truck. Immediately, bank notes worth a small fortune are scattered all over the road. When his body is taken to the morgue, more bundles of notes are found stitched inside his trenchcoat and suit linings. As nearly as we can estimate he was carrying on his person assorted forged currency to the face value of one hundred thousand dollars."

Illya whistled soundlessly. He said, "And no clue to where he came from?"

"None. His description was circulated to police stations, published in the evening newspapers and broadcast over radio and television. Nobody has come forward to identify him. Inquiries are proceeding, but you must remember that Newport is a town of more than one hundred and five thousand inhabitants, with a large floating population of seamen – to say nothing of the people who come in and out from the mining valleys and from the Welsh capital, Cardiff, only a few miles away."

Solo asked, "What about the two men who frightened him?"

Mr. Waverly said, "We have checked them. They were tunnelers working on one of the big Monmouthshire motorway projects. They were on vacation in Newport and just happened to stop at the inn for a drink. Probably, as the barmaid suggested, our man took them for detectives."

Illya picked up the third telegram. "'Needle haystackwise,'" he quoted. "Lady, you ain't kidding."

Mr. Waverly put the unlighted pipe back in his pocket and stood up with an air of finality.

"You have not much time to catch your plane, Mr. Kuryakin," he said. "You will fly direct to Rhoose, the Cardiff airport, and a car will take you on to Newport. Contact Blodwen as soon as you arrive. Is there anything else you wish to know?"

"Just one thing," Illya said gloomily. "Where do I pick up my crystal ball?"

Chapter Three

The girl sitting on a stool at the bar was in her late twenties. Her close-cut, shining black hair framed an oval face of almost gypsy swarthiness. Her big eyes were deep hazel, fringed with long curling lashes. The hands that cradled a glass of gin and vermouth were brown and well-shaped, with slender, sensitive fingers. She wore a fluffy white nylon coat over a black cashmere sweater and tight white sharkskin pants. Her shoes, narrow-pointed, high-topped, like those of a medieval pageboy, were in scarlet suede. A tiny gray poodle, no bigger than a kitten, was sleeping placidly in her lap. She looked as out of place in a Welsh seaport pub as a rabbit at a christening.

She looked up when Illya came in, eyed him disinterestedly, then returned to her desultory conversation with an elderly man who looked like a traveling salesman.

The barmaid appeared, smiling, from the back room where the jukebox was blaring lustily. Illya ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and she said, "I don't often get asked for that. Are you an American?"

"Does it show?"

"Not to much, love. I shouldn't worry about it." She laughed throatily.

The salesman had gone and the girl was sitting alone. Illya gestured with his glass toward the poodle and asked, "Did it take you long to knit that?"

She said unoffended, "Don't bother, chum. We've heard them all." She scratched the dog's head. It blinked black shoebutton eyes and yawned widely, showing teeth like tiny ivory needles.

Illya said, "Will you join me? I hate drinking alone."

"If you twist my arm." She slid the glass to the barmaid. "Same again, dear." Then to Illya: "Slightly off your course, aren't you, sailor?"

"Not really. I'm traveling for my uncle."

"Yes," she said. "I thought you might be." She raised her refilled glass. "Here's to him, bless his cotton socks."

They finished their drinks to companionable silence, and then the girl got down from her stool.

"Sorry," she said, "but I must leave you. Got to take the dog for an airing." She smiled at the barmaid. "Same old routine every day. Twice around Belle Vue Park, and then home for tea."

"It's nice up by there," the barmaid agreed, "especially now, with all the dahlias out. See you tomorrow?"

"Maybe." The girl attached a thin scarlet leash to the poodle's jeweled collar. The little dog pattered out beside her, looking like a bug on a string.

Illya bought another whiskey and drank it slowly. Then he walked out into Market Street, made his way to the Dock Street terminus and after some inquiries boarded a bus for Stow Hill.

The conductor put him off at Stow Park Avenue and he walked down the hill, past tall houses that seemed to be occupied almost entirely by doctors and surgeons, to the wrought-iron gates of Belle Vue Park.

The girl was sitting on a yellow bench by a ring of trees that enclosed a Druid's circle. Beyond the trees grassland swept down to the Cardiff road and the ultramarine-painted buildings of the giant Whitehead steelworks. Behind was the vast panorama of the docks, with Bristol Channel a shining silver ribbon on the far horizon.

"Nice spot," Illya said.

"Peaceful," the girl agreed. "At least, it is now. I'm not so sure about the past." She pointed to the ring of rough-hewn stones. "That flat one in the middle was the sacrificial altar. You can see the little step where the Imperial Wizard, or whatever they called him, got to work with the cleaver. I suppose the other boys stood around and cheered."

"Cozy!"

"Yes. I can never figure out whether it's a genuine relic or just something dumped down to amuse the kids.... So you're my Russian cousin?"

He made a formal bow. "Illya Kuryakin. And you are Blodwen – or should I say Cassandra?"

She grinned. "I thought that would get under the old buzzard's skin. Not that it isn't true. This business is a stinker. That's why I yelled for help."

"I'm glad you did," he said with a warmth which would have annoyed the girl on U.N.C.L.E.'s admissions desk. "Have there been any developments?"

"A few. The police have identified the departed. He was a small-time crook from the Birmingham area. Nothing on his sheet but petty larcenies. God knows how he got involved in this set-up. It seems he came into Newport by long-distance bus from Corwen, a little market town in Merionethshire, North Wales. What he had been doing there is anybody's guess. He had been released from Walton Prison, Liverpool, about a mouth ago."

She put the poodle on the ground and stood up. "Let's walk a little. The park is worth seeing. For my money, it's one of the most beautiful in Britain."

Released from its leash, the poodle bounded over the grass, yapping joyously in a high-pitched key, its big ears flapping like wings.

"One of these days," Blodwen said, as they followed, "she's going to take off and fly. The first jet-propelled dog in history."

Illya said, "So he could have picked up the money either in Liverpool or somewhere in North Wales. The question is where he was taking it."

She shrugged. "Obviously, he was just a courier. My bet is that whoever met him in the pub would have taken the cash down to the docks. There's a big trade between Newport, Russia and the Scandinavian ports, and it would be no trick to smuggle the stuff aboard a ship. I think the idea was to start distribution in Europe, not in Britain. That would be logical."

"Have any of the notes shown up here?"

"A few. One or two fivers in Newport and a couple in Cardiff. But the police traced them back to the big scramble in Market Street. They didn't come from the main stream – wherever that is."

They strolled past the children's playground, where West Indians, Arabs, Sikhs, Chinese and whites from the mean streets of dockland crowded the swings and slides in noisy amity. The bright print dresses of the little girls made the place look like an animated flower garden.

They stopped to watch, and Illya said, "Integration at last. It seems a pity they have to grow up."

"Oh, I don't know. There's no color problem in Newport or Cardiff. The races have been living together for years. They've learned to get along with each other." She smiled suddenly. "Maybe it's because we're a minority nation ourselves."

He said, surprised, "But you're not Welsh?"

"Back to the sixteenth century, both sides of the family," she said. "Don't let the voice fool you. My grandmother was one of the last of the great Welsh witches."

"That figures," he admitted. "The spell lingers."

They walked on toward the red-brick bulk of the Royal Gwent Hospital, which overshadows the eastern end of the park.

Illya said quietly, "Don't look now, but we're being followed."

"You're joking, of course."

"No. He's a medium-sized character with gray hair and a cavalry moustache, and he's wearing a sheep-skin jacket. I noticed him dodging around the mulberry bush as I came into the park. And he's still tailing."

She laughed. "It's your suspicious nature. He's probably just an innocent bystander."

"I don't think so. But we can soon find out. Let's get off the main path."

"All right, Sherlock." She turned to the right and headed across the grass toward a circle of eight weather-gnarled may trees.

"You know," she said, "this park is a kind of living history book. These trees were planted to commemorate the last-ditch stand of the First Monmouthshire Regiment between Wieltze and Verlorenhoek in 1915. Somewhere around a thousand men went into the line. Only a handful came out alive. But they did what they had to do. They stopped the German advance. Now, every spring, these trees are a cloud of blossom. I guess you couldn't find a lovelier memorial anywhere.

"That's how people are around here. When something big happens, they plant trees. Over there" – she pointed to the left – "another ring marks the arrival of the first U.S. naval contingent in World War II." Her voice changed. "And you're dead right, brother. We've got company."

The man in the sheepskin coat was bending down, ostentatiously studying the metal plaque that told of the coming of the American forces.

Beyond the may trees Illya saw a terrace thickly bordered by trees and bushes. He said, "Make for the steps. Move fast. When you get to the top, duck into the shrubbery."

Blodwen picked up the poodle and ran, with Illya close on her heels.

The shadower was taken by surprise. He straightened, and after a momentary hesitation pounded up the steps in pursuit. As he reached the top Illya stepped from behind the bushes and chopped down with an expert karate blow. The man crumpled. His head hit the pavement with a hollow sound, and he lay still.

Illya said, "Now, my friend, we'll see who you are."

He yanked open the sheepskin jacket and searched swiftly. The inside breast pocket of the man's hairy tweed sportcoat yielded a leather wallet and two envelopes. The wallet contained a driver's license in the name of John Carney, a few receipted bills and ten one-pound notes. The envelopes bore the inscription: John Carney, Esq., The Paddocks, Llandrillo, Merioneth. One contained a final demand for payment of water bills; the other, a bookmaker's account.

Illya memorized the name and address, then replaced the wallet and envelopes where he had found them. He put his hands under the man's armpits and dragged him to a bench. Then, with an effort, he hoisted him into a sitting position.

Blodwen, cuddling the poodle, emerged from the shelter of the trees. "Is he... ?" She let the sentence tail off apprehensively.

"Certainly not," Illya said indignantly. "I detest violence. He'll have a headache when he wakes, but that won't be for an hour or so. Meanwhile, I suggest we get out of here."

They made their way to the gates leading into Friars Road, climbed the hill and emerged by St. Wollo's Cathedra. Illya pointed to the bus stop. "Back to town?"

"No. We'd better go to my place. I have a feeling we'll be safer under cover for a while."

Blodwen's apartment was on the top floor of a stone-built Victorian house overlooking the Civic Center. The windows gave a view of distant green mountains marred by sprawling new suburbs. The living-room furniture was a comfortable mixture of good pieces and auction-mart bargains. There was a big stereo set in a teak cabinet and a television set with a twenty-three-inch screen. The wall-to-wall gray carpet gave evidence that the poodle had been hard to train.

Blodwen took off her coat and flung it on a Danish-type settee upholstered in royal blue fabric. In the tight black sweater and narrow-hipped pants she looked like a ballet dancer. Only, Illya amended with satisfaction, better built. She put a Mancini album on the turntable, flicked the switch, and opened a wall-cabinet. "Scotch, gin, vodka or rye?"

Illya settled himself in an elderly, chintz-covered armchair. "Scotch will be fine."

She went into the pint-size kitchen and returned with a bowl of ice cubes from the refrigerator. As she poured the drinks, she asked, "So what did you learn about our woolly chum?"

"I got his name and address. Wait. I'll have to write them down. The place reads like a new kind of instant cake mix."

He picked up a newspaper, scribbled in the margin and passed it to her.

She read aloud: "Llandrillo, Merioneth...That's interesting. Corwen's in Merioneth, too. It can't be coincidence."

She took an A.A. guide from a row of books on the mantel and thumbed the pages. "Here we are. Merioneth. Corwen is on the branch railway line from Ruabon to Barmouth. (That'll be closed down now, of course. Dear old Dr. Beeching, though you wouldn't know about him.) And – well, well! Would you believe it? Llandrillo just happens to be the next village along the line – only five miles away."

Illya took a thoughtful pull at his drink. "I think," he said slowly, "I had better take a look at your North Welsh countryside. It gets more interesting by the minute."

"Want me to come, too?"

He sighed. "You'll never know how much," he said. "But just for the moment you had better stay here and hold the fort. Meanwhile, I think we'll call for reinforcements."

"The legendary Mr. Solo?"

"Who else?"

She crossed the room and turned the volume control at the side of the television set. The screen swung away, revealing a black, military-type radio transmitter.

"Be my guest," she said.