Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­09] - The Brainwash Affair"

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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THE BRAINWASH AFFAIR

Deadly, hidden, THRUSH'S master plot could topple the nations of the free world. And somewhere, Napoleon and Illya must track it down, destroy it—before it was too late!

THE NEW COMPLETE "U.N.C.L.E." NOVEL

by ROBERT HART DAVIS

PART ONE—INCIDENT OF THE FRIGHTENED MAN

NAPOLEON SOLO swung down from the Orient Express, strolled across the station concourse to the street exit, and exposed himself to incredible perils by entering a Parisian taxi.

"Orly Airport," Solo said and sank back in the cab as it hacked and barked its way through the traffic.

Returning alone to Manhattan from a Middle East assignment, he was tired and still shaken from a close brush with death.

Trying to escape disturbing thoughts, he watched early evening strollers, diners at street cafes, the maniacal charges of other cabs. It wasn't that easy. He thought about his apartment, the luxuries he was infrequently at home to enjoy, but mostly his mind darted back to his fellow agent who'd been killed three days ago in the street at Istanbul.

Death had struck only inches from him; it could have as easily been he and not his partner. Battered by this sudden impact of his own expendability, he wondered how long before death closed in those few inches?

He glimpsed in a window the reflected faint tightening about his lips. Fatigue, that was all. A plan trip west across the Atlantic, a hot-cold shower, a Scotch on the rocks, twelve hours unbroken sack time and he'd recover.

In the babbling confusion at Orly Airport, his sense of isolation increased. Then abruptly he caught sight of a familiar lace and he shoved through a knot of chattering tourists, smiling warmly and expectantly.

"Lester!" Solo called. "Lester Caillou!"

Hurrying toward a door marked Sortie, Caillou broke stride. His shoulders hunched as if against a blow. He glanced tensely over his shoulder.

Solo paused a few feet from Caillou. People brushed past them on both sides. When Caillou turned, Solo saw panic graying the slender man's dark face. Solo had seen the same look in eyes of trapped animals.

Caillou's gaze raked across Solo, paused the fraction of a second that betrayed that Caillou had recognized him. Solo was alerted by training and experience to instant reactions to facial expressions, even to lack of expression.

Caillou winced and jerked his head around. His knuckles whitened on his attaché case. He hurried toward the exit.

They were old friends. Solo angled across the distance between them, intercepting Caillou at the glass doors. In-drafts struck them as the doors parted.

"Pardon, Monsieur, what hour is it?" Solo spoke in French, extending his wrist watch, a Swiss calendar-clock which Caillou had presented, as identical gifts of gratitude, to him and to Illya Kuryakin.

An affair of Arabian oil and reconstruction money from Caillou's Paris-based bank, a misunderstanding, got Caillou before a Turk firing squad. Solo and Kuryakin had pulled him out of it. Swearing eternal allegiance, Caillou wanted them to remember him as warmly and had believed the thousand dollar watches would keep him in their memories.

"No. No." Caillou shook his head now, refusing even to glance toward the golden watch on Solo's wrist.

Caillou's stricken gaze leaped past Solo, scurrying across faces and forms as if he found this brilliantly illumined lobby a pit of unspeakable terrors.

Solo had seen frightened men before, but never one who wore his terror as openly as did Caillou. He was pushed beyond hiding it.

"Lester, don't you remember me?" Solo persisted, because this didn't make sense.

An ordinary man might be frightened, hurrying toward the haven of a plane, but Caillou was not ordinary. Solo remembered Caillou had faced Turk marksmen without flinching, and two hours later drank raki with him and Illya, laughing, glowing with the exultation of being alive.

"No. No. There is some mistake. If you please." Caillou shook his head again. Pallor underscored the rigidity of his high cheekbones.

Before Solo could speak or lose the warmth of his smiling and the far-out memories of that drinking session, Caillou pushed around him and thrust through the exit doors.

Involuntarily, Solo followed him through the electronically operated doorway.

In the chilled wind off the field, Solo stared after Caillou.

On the concrete runway, Caillou paused for one final surreptitious glance over his shoulder, then ran toward a waiting charter plane.

Solo exhaled heavily, considering wryly the expendability of life-long gratitudes, then discarding the thought. He knew he'd just witnessed a desperate man being towed into a vortex of agony beyond his depth.

Sighing, Solo turned back, then paused, hardly knowing why he did.

Something caught his eye. From the underbelly of a plane near the one toward which Caillou ran in the darkness, a freight elevator lowered, containing only a small single-seat car.

The car was bright red, smaller than any compact Solo had seen before. Oddly formed, it was round in front, tapered in the rear.

Solo saw no driver until the elevator touched the concrete. At this moment the car's engine flared to life.

Solo then saw a man crouched behind the wheel. Surprisingly brilliant headlamps burst yellowly to life. The little car roared off the lift, racing toward Lester Caillou.

Solo yelled involuntarily.

Instinctively his hand thrust under his jacket, drawing the U.N. C.L.E. .38 caliber Special. He went running forward, seeing he was too far away to aid Caillou.

Caillou stopped running and turned in the glare of the head lights, his face wild with horror.

He was illumined there a moment as if pinned against an insurmountable wall of night.

Hood-mounted guns fired suddenly. Screaming, Caillou threw himself face down on the concrete, as if trying to dig himself a fox hole.

Solo ran out on the concrete. He fired twice as the small deadly car bore down on Caillou. Caillou was like a frantic insect scrambling on hands and knees toward the plane ladder.

Solo's bullets slapped across the gleaming metal, inches from the driver's head. He swerved a moment; then a plastic bubble bloomed, covering him effectively.

But in that brief instant, Caillou was able to squeeze his way in behind the metal ladder. He hugged himself against it.

Seeing he could not hope to penetrate the plastic cowl covering the driver, Solo fired toward its oversized tires, seeing for the first time that it moved on a tricycle set.

The car roared past the ladder, going under the spreading wings of the 727.

Solo ran forward, firing. As the car raced, a pole of light-weight metal sprang upward from the plastic cowling. It gleamed a moment like a wavering antenna in the night, then separated, spinning as its blades locked into place.

Police cars screamed in pursuit along the runway. But long before they reached the small red machine, its helicopter-type rotary blades lifted it upward in darkness and it swung away into the night sky at incredible speed.

Stunned, Solo stopped running, stood with his gun at his side, watching the small apparition dissolve into the haze above the emblazoned runway.

Remembering Caillou, Solo swung around toward the banker and his private jet.

Turning, Solo reacted to a sharp twinge in his side, pain akin to muscular spasms—or a knife biting at him:

It was a knife.

Solo cut-short his turning. A knife blade making itself felt through top coat, jacket and shirt could inflict irreparable damage if one swung around into it.

"Ah, this is wise."

"The wish to stay alive makes wise men of us all," Solo quoted.

He stared into the face of a man hewn from Moorish stone. Flat eyes shallowly reflected light, the way a dog's might. Several inches taller than Solo, broader, in London-tailored fabric tortured into the latest Mod fashion, his goatee was trimmed to a black point and his hair fitted like a cap close upon his scalp.

Solo glanced down at the razor-honed blade nibbling at his side. The big man held it in oddly bulky kid-skin gloves.

Solo said, "To what do I owe the pleasure of this encounter?"

"We wish to talk quietly with you, Monsieur," the Moor said in French.

"Moi non parle Francais," Solo said. He shifted his gaze to the Arab woman close against his other side.

About her sharp-featured face there was an extreme of loveliness and a worldly arrogance, as if she were not only a girl that knew the score, but had invented the game. Her beauty was eye-arresting, but its packaging was tarnished by her long-brushes with sin.

"He says he does not speak French," she told the knife-wielding Moor in disgust

"He'd better learn, if he means to keep butting in like this," the Moor said in English.

He prodded the knife less than a sixteenth of an inch, yet Solo had to bite his lip to suppress an agonized yell.

"Come," the Moor said. "We will talk in my office."

They marched him toward the terminal building, walking close beside him.

Solo scowled. Unless these two were connected with Caillou's attacker, their accosting him didn't make pretty good sense.

The Moor jerked his head to ward an alleyway.

"My office," he said with a cold grin.

Solo shrugged. "Where else?'

The Arab woman led the way Into the darkness. They marched Solo to a partitioned maintenance area.

Solo put his back to a wall. He said, "Well, what shall we talk about? Lovely weather, isn't it?"

The Moor stared at him unblinkingly. In a deft movement he transferred the switch-blade to the woman.

"I don't have a lot to say, ma chere ami." The Moor worked the bulky gloves off his fingers. "But what I do tell you, you will recall for a long time."

He smiled ruefully. He shook the gloves, lowering them in one hand toward his side.

Watching the big man closely, Solo reacted too slowly.

The Moor brought the gloves up, backhanded. They caught Solo in the temple.

Solo's legs melted to oleo. Before the Moor struck him in the other temple, Solo was already crumbling to his knees on the ground.

He felt the battering of those lead-lined gloves. His last conscious thought was that he understood why the Moor had removed them. If he'd hit him with those gloves on, he might have bruised his hands, or even fractured a metacarpus bone.

TWO

SOLO SAGGED into the window seat of the Trans-World jet, cruising at thirty-five thousand feet above the Atlantic.

He felt uncomfortably warm in the pressurized cabin.

A compassionate stewardess leaned toward him.

She was built cafeteria style: you wanted to help yourself. Even from the depths of his pain, Solo saw she'd be habit forming.

She winced at his facial abrasions and contusions. She said, "You poor man. You must be in total pain."

Solo attempted to smile.

"No. My left eyeball hurts hardly at all."

She extended an international copy of the New York Times. "Do you feel like reading?"

Solo did not answer.

His gaze froze on the headline:

WORLD BANK DEVALUES DOLLAR AND POUND IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE.

He stared at the newspaper. What he had witnessed tonight tied in with that headline, even if he didn't know how.

He saw Lester Caillou, a World Bank director, running frightened toward a plane, attacked from the darkness.

Many hours later, Solo carried that disturbing mental image as he left a taxi at Third Avenue and walked in the east Forties toward the United Nations Complex.

He walked down a flight of steps, entered Del Floria's Cleaning and Tailoring shop, in the basement of an inconspicuous whitestone building.

The tailor gave him a glance, but registered no reaction to Solo's battered face. It had been weeks since Solo had entered the place, but to Del Floria it might have been last night.

At the rear of the shop, Solo stepped between curtains into a dressing booth. He pressed a wall button.

There was a pause of three breaths, but in this time much happened in the complex sensory nerves of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement beyond an unmarked door in the wall.

Unseen eyes scanned him; complex memory tapes in computers whirred, finding him acceptable; inner mechanisms flicked into action and he was admitted into the chrome and steel interior of the home base of the world's most far-flung crime-fighting organization.

Despite its unpretentious appearance, the whitestone building housed cells of bustling activity– from its roof where a huge, innocent-appearing sign concealed antennae and sending apparatus to a maze of water-ways connecting it with the East River and the furthest cranny of the earth, to its main offices where everything and every one worked ceaselessly to contain, control, eradicate crime on an international scale.

The receptionist pinned an identification tag to Solo's lapel. She smelled of violets, but her curves pressured against the primness of her uniform, and her smile promised that she played to win. She smiled at his bruises.

"Someday you're going to learn to take no for an answer, Mr. Solo."

His grin matched hers. "That'll be the day."

Illya Kuryakin fell into step be side him inside the brightly lit corridors. A persistent muffled hum emanating even from the walls showed that all systems throbbed steadily from the foundation itself and out across the universe, wherever man carried evil.

Illya was slenderly made, but his leanness was deceptive. Solo had been trained to kill by every known method devised in the mind of man. Yet he was continually thankful that Illya was on his side.

Illya's smile was hesitant, crooked. His eyes were blue, and a lock of pale blond hair toppled over his forehead, and it grew shabbily on his collar. He didn't look like what he was, a Russian-born agent, incredibly trained in every aspect of global espionage.

Illya spoke casually. "Sorry to hear about Mace's death. Hope it was quick."

"And from the back," Solo said in remembered rage.

Illya ignored the contusions swelling Solo's cheeks, discoloring his eyes. "What sort of trip home?"

Solo shook his head, spoke casually. "The in-flight movie was lousy. All about spies and people getting slugged. Completely unbelievable."

ALEXANDER WAVERLY peered at Illya and Solo across his desk in the Command Room. Cited by almost every nation for bravery and distinguished service, Waverly might well have been past the age of enforced retirement, but if he were, it was a fact that not even U.N.C.L.E.'s computer dared bring before him.

Heavy set, his face a map of old campaigns, victories, losses and pain, Waverly was one of five men at the top of the United Command. These executives came from five different nations, two from behind the iron curtain.

Now he was saying, "We're convinced THRUSH is behind this scheme to control the World Bank. If they are allowed to continue even for a week, they could throw the world into financial chaos."

"How would they hope to control the world through the World Bank?" Illya said.

"I'll tell you what I've learned in recent briefings," Waverly said. "I was briefed by three of the most influential figures in international finance. They were in panic. It's possible, even easy, with the world divided as it is, to cause depression, ruin, even to the three or four greatest powers, by manipulating the value of their currency—forcing down the value of say the pound, the dollar, the franc, the ruble, while force-lifting the value of some other currency to please those behind the conspiracy."

"Why hasn't it been done be fore?" Solo asked.

"It has," Waverly said. "Currency of countries has been devalued, a country has been forced to back its paper currency with gold reserves beyond its means–but never on such a vast, cruel and inhuman scale as this present conspiracy can be."

"Why would they want to do it?" Illya said.

"In the minds of international renegades who care only to rule the world, the economy of great powers can be destroyed without a qualm. What would THRUSH care what happened to the dollar? We believe THRUSH is behind this. Our computers have selected THRUSH as the only alliance so callously heartless as to spread world-wide ruin, depression. THRUSH could then hope to take over international banking and thus control all nations."

Solo found himself remembering the stark fear in Lester Caillou's face.

"How could it happen?"

"There are many ways that one man, or several key men in the World Bank could make sudden and drastic changes in monetary policies that would create international fiscal crises.

"First, by buying, demanding gold in payment, collecting all gold, until one nation, or one group controls gold, an imbalance of fearful proportions would be created.

"Next, causing business and export-importers to lose faith in any country's currency, so they'd refuse to accept anything except gold as a medium of exchange, is another way to create panic.

"If, in panic, several countries refused to accept a country's currency in exchange for materials or services, disaster for the country affected, follows.

"Another way would be to flood a country with counterfeit money, causing panic among banks and people.

"This devaluation of the money of the great nations of the free world looks like THRUSH's first calculated step toward the control of world finances.

"One of its biggest threats is to peaceful trade between East and West. It's taken a long time to stabilize it. Commerce between West and East countries has made a one hundred percent increase in the last seven years. This will be wiped out by THRUSH manipulation of the dollar."

Waverly gazed at his operatives. "In THRUSH's hands, this is money gone berserk, leading to panic, mistrust between nations, especially the Iron Curtain and the free world."

Illya shook his head. "How could THRUSH control the World Bank directors?"

"Very likely they couldn't," Waverly said. "In order to cause disaster, they'd need to control no more than two or three, perhaps only one. They count on shock and reaction to help after the value of free world currency is forced down."

Illya persisted. "How could they control even one director who must be known down to his smallest vice by the World Bank and by his own people?"

"We have that answer, too," Waverly said. "THRUSH owns the Ultimate Computer, as you men well know. All known facts about World Bank directors are programmed into their ultimate computer. From these known facts, the Computer gives them the unknown facts, the weaknesses, strengths, perhaps even the most carefully guarded secrets in the pasts of these men. THRUSH would then find the weakest link and—" Waverly spread his hands, letting them complete the thought in their own minds.

After some moments Waverly said, "Our task is clear. Simple. We must uncover the plot and expose it. One factor THRUSH cannot overcome in an operation like this is publicity. Once their victim of blackmail pressure extortion is located, once that black secret is exposed, this particular gimmick will no longer work for them."

Illya spoke slowly. "But we must have proof, eh? To air suspicions, without proof, would only increase the panic—"

"Right. And play THRUSH's game for them," Waverly agreed. "I see I've chosen the right two men for this vital mission."

Solo spoke without much hope., "Our computers weren't able to supply the name of the man or men that THRUSH has gotten under its control?"

Waverly smiled sourly. "Our computer is not the Ultimate Computer, Napoleon. Using it against THRUSH's ultimate machine is a sad battle of unequals."

"We know nothing more than whet you've told us, then?" Napoleon Solo asked.

"We know only that THRUSH, through its Ultimate Computer, can learn men's weaknesses, can control them, and through this man or men, can control and wreck the world financially."

"Their man might be anyone in the World Bank," Illya Kuryakin said.

Waverly nodded. "And he will defy exposure, because he will have even more to lose, from his own view, than THRUSH. Exposure will mean disgrace and death to him. This is how THRUSH was able to get him under control in the first place."

"Where do we start?" Illya asked.

Solo yawned helplessly. "I could start with a shower and a beauty-rest."

Waverly said, "Hope you liked Paris, Napoleon."

"It wasn't dull." Solo touched gingerly at his face.

"We're sending you back there on the next jet."

"I wasn't that enthused about it—"

"Directors of the World Bank are meeting in Paris with the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and De Gaulle's finance men. This seems an ideal moment to test THRUSH's strength and power."

"Should be easy, Illya," Solo said in a low ironic tone. "All THRUSH has is the Ultimate Computer—and after all, we have each other."

"Precisely my view," said Alexander Waverly.

THREE

THE AIRFRANCE jet screamed homing in on the black fabric of its runway laced across the Orly airfield. The lights of Paris shone distantly an hour before dawn. Even at this hour the City of Light glowed, sparkling like thrown gems.

Solo and Kuryakin left Customs, crossed the lobby to pick up the Citroen which had been reserved in their names. The vivacious French girl at the rental desk handed over the keys and bade them in French to have a good time.

Two menacing forms materialized from the fading night shadows as Solo and Illya approached theft car.

Solo hesitated a few feet from the Citroen, touching Illya's arm warningly.

The Arab girl and the huge Moor lounged against the hood of the Citroen.

"So you came back," the Moor said to Solo in pity and contempt.

"Do you have the fright concession at this airport?" Solo asked.

"Only when we need it," the Moor said. "Only when men like you refuse to learn."

"Friends of yours, Napoleon?" Illya inquired.

Solo spoke from the side of his mouth. "Watch his gloves. Metal lined."

"Come quietly," the Moor said, standing erect. "No one need get hurt."

"Oh, I think it's time someone got hurt," Solo said urbanely.

Solo lunged suddenly toward the Moor.

"Look out, Albert!" the Arab woman screamed.

The Moor laughed, setting himself. "I'm always careful, Gizelle."

Coming in close to Albert, Solo feinted with his left. Laughing, the Moor swung upward.

Solo danced lightly beyond the reach of the wildly swinging arm. He clasped Albert's wrist as the big Moor drove forward.

Grabbing the arm in both hands, Solo moved with him, smashing the gloved fist into the fender of the nearest car.

Albert sobbed in agony. Solo did not even hesitate. He chopped Albert across the neck with the side of his hand. Albert toppled, his face striking the car fender. The sound was like a boulder pounding metal.

Gizelle watched for one horrified moment. She sprang at Illya, fighting a switchblade from her pocket.

"Don't forget you're a lady, Gizelle," Illya warned, "Or I'll have to."

Gizelle sprang the blade free, flicking it open. At this moment she walked into Illya's fingers, driven short and hard into her throat.

"You left me no alternative, ma'am," Illya apologized.

Gizelle retched, dropped her knife. She sank to the pavement on her knees, hands pressed to her throat, face livid.

Illya jerked his head toward the Citroen, opening the door as he did.

Solo however, tossed him the keys. "I want Albert to recall this evening for a long time," he said curtly.

Illya scowled. "It's not like you to let rage suspend reason, Solo."

"I've never been quite this angry."

"You're making a mistake, So lo. Let's get out of here."

Fatigue and outrage made Solo hoarse. "I think it would be a mistake to let them off so lightly."

Illya slid across the seat under the wheel. He inserted the key in to the ignition switch, watching Solo through the windshield.

Solo lifted the car hood. On the pavement the Arab Gizelle remained crouched, watching in anguish. Solo hefted the Moor, draped him across the fender, both his gloved hands extended over the engine block.

Solo thrust the lead-lined gloves over the spark-plugs, lowered the hood across Albert's back.

"Start the car," he ordered.

Illya turned the key. The car motor sprang to life. Albert screamed; the hood was thrown upward. Albert lunged away, falling across the walk. He trembled all over. People turned, staring.

Calmly Solo lowered the hood, secured it.

He got into the ear beside Illya.

"Now let's go," he said.

Illya laughed. "Vengeance is a great thing with you, isn't it, Napoleon?"

Solo shrugged and laid his head on the seat rest. He stared at the ceiling of the compact. "My grandmother told me that if I always vented my rage on the objects of my rage, I wouldn't build up frustrations and end with a tic."

Illya reversed the car, turned it toward the Paris exit. "She must have been a great old lady. Wonder what she'd say we should do about a car that is following us?"

Solo sat up, checked through the rear window.

"Lose it," he advised.

"Your grandmother was a crunchy old girl, wasn't she?" Illya said, flooring the accelerator.

"She was all we could afford at the time," Solo replied. "And we wouldn't have been here without her."

The car behind them made no pretense it was not trailing the Citroen.

When Illya touched the brake at the highway entrance, the convertible slapped against the rear bumper.

Illya raced forward, turning in to the sparse truck traffic of early morning.

The convertible swung out behind them. Solo twisted on the bucket seat, watching it. He touched at the U.N.C.L.E. Special in its Berns-Martin shoulder holster.

"How many in the car?" Illya inquired, gripping the wheel with both hands.

"The top is up," Solo said. "Too dark to see. We know at least there's a maniac at the wheel."

"Got a bit of sticky news for you," Illya said after a moment. "Sixty seems to be our top speed."

The convertible pounced forward alongside them. Illya jerked the wheel, taking the Citroen to the edge of the road, slamming on brakes and then gunning it as the convertible whipped toward them.

"Couple of vegetable trucks," Solo said. "There's room for us between them. We won't make any time, but it's the safest spot I can think of at the moment."

"That convertible won't let us pass that rear truck." Illya protested.

"Perhaps not on the left," Solo agreed calmly.

Illya's blue eyes widened. "Pass on—the right?"

"My grandmother's watchword was resourcefulness, Illya."

"I wish she were driving."

"So do I, but we can't have everything."

There was the scream of metal as the convertible nudged at the Citroen's rear fender.

Illya swerved the car hard to the right, kept going. The Citroen struck the road shoulder, bouncing and chattering.

The trucker ahead, catching a glimpse of the compact in his off-mirror, struck his horn violently. His Gallic curses turned the dawn a savage blue.

Illya swung in ahead of the truck, missing its huge right front wheel by inches.

Both Illya and Solo grabbed leather, because at this same instant, the convertible whipped from the left into the narrow space between the two trucks.

Horns blared, brakes squealed. Only the swearing, weeping driver in the truck behind averted a collision by stomping on his brakes, fading behind them as if carried away on the wind.

Illya muttered something in a language that Solo didn't understand, and that perhaps Kuryakin didn't understand, either, words invented for this fearful moment.

The convertible bore in upon them, forcing them off the pavement.

"One small last trick remaining in my bag," Illya said half to himself.

He jerked hard right on the wheel and floored the gas pedal, whipping the Citroen to the inside of the lead truck, as he had done the first one.

They saw the convertible, still pulling into them, try to straighten. At this moment, the truck driver, alerted by horns and brakes behind him earlier, now slammed on his brakes instinctively.

The convertible in that brief instant raced toward the rear of the slowing truck on collision course.

At the last moment it was wheeled hard right, turning at a forty-five degree angle, going off the pavement, across the shoulders, down a ditch between stately chestnut trees, smashing hard into a five-foot hedgerow.

Illya battled the Citroen back into the inside lane of the highway. His knuckles showed gray on the steering wheel. His mouth was a taut line and he breathed heavily through flared nostrils.

He kept his stricken gaze on the highway ahead.

Solo turned on the seat, watching the convertible disappear in the distance behind them. "I was just wondering—"

"Yes, Napoleon?"

"Where could we get breakfast at this hour? You and my grandmother have worked me up one ring-a-ding of an appetite."

FOUR

SOLO AND ILLYA walked into the offices of Lester Caillou in the Paris banking district at ten that morning.

The reception room, done in contemporary French styling, was vacant when they entered. A chair was pushed back from the receptionist's desk. The typewriter was uncovered. A telephone lay off its cradle.

Subdued voices washed in from the connecting office.

Illya wandered about the room, gazed through a window at the view of the gardens and the river beyond. Solo rapped at the inner door.

Instantly, the voices ceased. Presently, a tall young woman in tight skirt, white blouse, hair piled dark and high in a lacquered roll, came through the door and closed it carefully behind her.

"What do you wish?" she asked in French. Her face was pale.

"We wish to see Monsieur Lester Caillou," Solo said.

She tossed a troubled gaze across her shoulder, attempted a smile that made her wan cheeks more bleak. "M'sieur Caillou arrives at eleven o'clock."

Solo nodded. "Then we'll wait."

"Could I be of some service?" the girl asked, perspiring.

"But certainly," Illya said. "Tell M'sieur Caillou we are here."

"He arrives at eleven," the girl repeated, in French.

"She's lying," Illya said to Solo in English. "She's really lovely, though."

"Yes." Solo gazed admiringly at the secretary. "I'd say about forty-five—"

"Forty-five?" Illya looked astounded. "Twenty, perhaps."

"Forty-five-twenty-four-thirty-six," Solo said smiling. The girl smiled too, unwillingly. "That's better, Mam'selle. I wondered when you'd admit to speaking English."

"M'sieur Caillou still doesn't arrive until eleven," she said.

"We are old friends," Solo said. "Would he mind our waiting in his office?"