The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗

Then flame stabbed the dark as the gun leaped in his hands. A moment later, the searchlight on the tractor went out suddenly.

Kuryakin was back at the girl's side, materializing from the dark. "Come on," he whispered. "We'll get out. If they rim true to form, it'll be grenades after this. Then dogs... I know when I'm beaten - temporarily. We'll have to retire to lick our wounds and rethink."

There was a dull plop from behind them as they threaded their way through the undergrowth as quietly as they could. It was followed by a second, a third, a fourth. Among the tatters of mist that the approaching dawn limned white against the trees, another and more pungent vapor eddied and swirled.

"Tear gas!" Illya cried hoarsely, suppressing a cough and trying not to dab his streaming eyes. "Good thing we left in time to miss the full effect."

For a fraction of a second, the wood sprang lividly to life in the green glare of an explosion. Simultaneously, they heard the flat crump of the detonation. Metal rasped, glass tinkled and things tore through the leaves.

"Mortar," the agent said curtly, hauling himself up onto an overhanging branch and hanging motionless beside the wire fence which showed dimly in the watery lights seeping into the sky from the east. "Here - put your arms around my legs and swing yourself across. It sounds as though they've disposed of the old VW for us. Next they'll start quartering the thicket before they send in the dogs."

He shifted along the branch hand over hand and dropped silently to the road.

"Lucky for us," he said, taking the girl's hand and setting off at a run, "that we thought of bringing the other VW and leaving it a hundred yards further down the road..."

---

In San Felipe do Caiapo, one of the ill-lit houses fronted by the boardwalk boasted a larger opening linking interior and exterior than did its neighbors. This was the nearest thing the village could produce to a coffee shop, and here Illya and Coralie repaired to soothe the feelings of humiliation and defeat engendered by their dawn patrol.

"They teach us never to underestimate an enemy," Illya said ruefully as he called for the bill, "and yet we appear to do it all the time; we just never learn, it seems!" There was a bandage across his cheek and he needed a shave. The girl - despite the dry heat of what promised to be a blazing day - looked as cool and self-possessed as ever.

A waitress whose flesh cascaded in increasing convexities from chin to thigh wobbled over and handed Illya a grubby piece of paper with figures scrawled on it. Behind it was another. On this was written, in English: Thirty-one miles ENE on the road to Brasilia is a fork with a church between the roads. Be there for midday lunch. It was signed Waverly.

"Waverly!" the Russian cried. "But that's ridiculous! How could he possibly be there?... How could he possibly know that we're here?"

"Who is Waverly?" Coralie asked.

"The head of my department at the Command."

"Do you think it's some kind of trap?"

"Oh, no. If it were a fake message, it would be bound to be too clever - you know, too good, too cautious and so on. The fact that it's sent openly in English, in clear, with that laconic phrasing and superb unconcern for security - that's the genuine Waverly, all right. No, what astonished me isn't to hear from him, but to hear he's there!"

"But perhaps he isn't," the girl objected. "The message tells us to be there for lunch. It doesn't say he'll be there too."

Illya looked at the paper again. "So it doesn't," he said. "Let's see… Here! Senhora! Who gave you this paper? Where did you get it?"

But the slatternly waitress, suddenly unable to understand their Portuguese, merely shrugged her vast shoulders, spread her pudgy fingers and vanished into the interior of the house muttering something or other about a boy on a bicycle.

"Never mind," Kuryakin said. "We have the perfect way of finding out." He gestured to the Volkswagen parked across the square. "By the time we've got out of here and found a stream to clean up in, there there'll be just about enough time left to make it...."

---

It was in fact nine minutes after twelve when Illya checked the figures showing on the car's odometer and said, "Here's the thirty-first mile coming up now. But I can see ahead for two or three wiles and there's no sign of a fork."

"Yes," Coralie cried, "the side road we just passed coming in... Stop!... Look, it would be a fork if you were coming the other way, wouldn't it? And there's the church between the two roads, see!"

Illya braked and looked in the rear-view mirror. "Yes, you're right, of course," he said, turning the car on a piece of rough ground. "Thinking of the place as you come from Brasilia, it would never strike you that the fork wasn't one from the other direction!... Why, I believe it's the same junction that boy at the car rental company gave me for -"

"It is, it is," the girl interrupted. "He told me too. The signs tell you to take the right-hand road for Getuliana, but the boy said to take the left-hand one through San Felipe. Do you suppose the coffee shop there is run by his brother or something?"

"There are some misplaced hormones in the family if it is," Illya said. "No, I don't mean the enormous lady, you idiot - Oh! What's that just to the right of the church?"

Beyond the derelict church separating the roads was a dense thicket of tall trees. A short way down the right hand fork something white and metallic glittered in a shaft of sunlight piercing the shadows.

Kuryakin drove slowly down. A huge Cadillac convertible, blinding white from stem to stern, was parked beside the road.

He coasted fifty yards past the empty car and pulled off the road. "Most of my armory went up with the other VW," he said quietly. "But I still have this Walther PPK. It's a big gun, too clumsy for whipping in and out of waistbands and pockets... Do you still have your Beretta?"

The girl nodded.

"Good. You take the Walther and stay in the car to give me covering fire if necessary, and give me the Beretta to take with me, okay?... I'm sure it's all right, but it's better to be certain."

Coralie Simone dropped her chin to the back of the seat and watched him tread warily away among the trees, the big Walther with its brown cross-hatched butt held firmly in her small hand. The agent was grasping the Italian automatic inside the patch pocket of his lightweight jacket.

She watched him circle the Cadillac, glance at the registration number, peer inside the car, and scrutinize the trees surrounding it. Apart from the disused chapel, there wasn't another building in sight. A flock of green parakeets dipped and swooped from one side of the road to the other, and another bird, off in the thicket to her right, reiterated a harsh cry that she couldn't identify. There was a high, thin humming from the countless insects winging beneath the great leaves far above her head. Abruptly she saw Kuryakin stiffen. She brought up the gun and rested it on the seat back as he stared across the road.

The outlines of his sparse body sprang into diamond-hard relief as he stepped from the shadow to the brilliant sunlight barring the dusty surface.

"Sure 'tis over here, we are at-all, Mr. Kuryakin," the voice called from the far side of the highway. "Them blasted insects are a wee bit less attentive here for some reason - besides which we can use the extra few seconds to scrutinize the callers, eh?"