[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael (книга жизни TXT) 📗

They went back to the living room, toward the coffee table, with Joanna Paula Jones still yammering about how her father felt about the Navy. She stopped only because April Dancer had suddenly halted in midstride, the coffee pot clenched in her right hand. Joanna Paula Jones came around her side, took one look and tried to scream. She couldn't. The sound froze in her throat, ending in a gurgle of disbelief and fear.

There was a man seated in the cushiony chair facing the kitchen. The Frankenstein mask concealing his face was just a little more demoralizing than the long, snout-nosed pistol pointing out of a gloved right hand. The nose of the weapon was mounted with a conical perforated drum of some kind.

"Good evening, ladies," Mr. Riddle said in the curiously flat but muffled voice. "One scream, one outcry and you will both be very dead. Is it necessary for me to tell a pair of trained lady agents that there is a silencer on this gun? I think not."

"Welcome home, Mr. Riddle," April said calmly, still clutching the coffee pot. The spoons and china were rattling uncontrollably in Joanna Paula Jones' trembling hands. "I thought it was too early in the year for Halloween. I see I was mistaken."

A dry hollow laugh came from behind the mask.

"You are correct. I haven't come for games. Just information. And perhaps, conclusions. Don't waste my time or the little time you both have left. I want to know all that has happened at Uncle Headquarters. I seem to have misplaced Mr. Zorki and his dear brother. They didn't keep an appointment with me. I don't like that. Perhaps you can ease my mind for me."

"Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it."

Mr. Riddle elevated the nose of the gun. The Frankenstein mask leered. The gun made a low, coughing sound. No more audible than a low sneeze in a movie house.

The gloved right hand hardly recoiled from the force of the shot.

Joanna Paula Jones tried to cry out. She couldn't. The china and the silverware never left her fingers as she slumped to her knees, mouth open as if she were trying to say something. She pitched forward on her face like a crumpled rag doll, contorted into a travesty of the bubbling energy that had dominated all her actions heretofore.

Mercifully, April could not see the small, round hole in the very middle of her forehead. The cold, cruel inhumanity of the murder might have sent her flying at Mr. Riddle, clawing and screaming hysterically. Now, she could only stare mutely at Joanna Paula Jones' huddled figure on the floor, praying it had only been a combination of flesh wound and utter fear that had caused the collapse.

"One down," Mr. Riddle said coldly. "Talk now, Miss Dancer."

Send One More Coffin

"Are you Egret, Mr. Riddle?"

"Why do you care about that?"

"Because it will clear up a lot of loose ends, you dirty bird." April held herself in check, hand tightening on the raised coffeepot which was beginning to get heavy.

The Frankenstein mask seemed to consider her suggestion. The concealing suit of man's clothes which gave Mr. Riddle the appearance of a very thin person stiffened slightly.

"Yes, I am Egret. I let Arnolda appear to be the head of an enterprise to free Zorki so that I wouldn't have to deal with her hirelings too closely. After all, my identity is important. But that is all ancient history." The gun rose higher, centering on April's heart. "Tell me now about Uncle."

"It's all over, Mr. Riddle. Or Dr. Egret. Zorki and his stooge were shot down over the East River. I suppose you arranged the helicopter routine. Well, it's just something for the junkyard, now. As is the Great Zorki's claim for life everlasting. I guess he didn't figure on what flames and smashing up his bones could do to his little formula. You can't breathe life back into wrecked merchandise, can you?"

"So. It is done, then." The Frankenstein mask twitched, for all its rubbery solidity. "Wilder is dead then, too. I'm sorry about that. Most convenient man to have in your Headquarters."

"I don't wonder." April readjusted her hold on the coffeepot. "The great Egret. If you're going to kill me, do me a favor."

"A favor? To you? You are a ridiculous woman. For all your bright eyes and ingenuity, I always thought so."

April shot a glance at Joanna Paula Jones. A chill ran over her. She didn't like the complete and utter lack of movement of the girl. For a moment, she was about to blurt her fear, but she bit her lips and stared back at the mockery sitting in the plushy chair of the living room in her own home.

"Don't you want to trade, Egret? I want to live too. I'm still young. Still interested in life, men. You hold life cheap. I know that. Well, I have news for you. I'll sing my head off if you'll give me that chance to live."

"You're stalling. Buying time. But I don't see why. Even if a miracle occurred for you now, it would do no good. One flick of the trigger and you're dead."

"Okay. So you won't deal. Shoot and be damned. Stop making me crawl. I won't crawl."

"I know you won't, Miss Dancer. I am not toying with you, I assure you. I am considering that you're either a fool for certain or you are in earnest. You could be valuable. If you sincerely meant your proposition."

"Try me." The coffeepot was getting heavier and heavier.

"Tell me," the Frankenstein face leered, "where Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin are as of this moment."

"Rangoon. We heard you people were thinking in terms of some kind of infernal ray. A death-machine that could throw a beam some thousands of miles away and melt stone and steel structures. Dr. Kim O Tang is in Rangoon. Solo and Kuryakin were sent there two weeks ago to see if they could protect him or destroy the machine."

"That information is correct," Mr. Riddle, or Dr. Egret, agreed. "One thing more. You will explain to me the entire setup of the Uncle operation in Europe. For that, I could spare your life."

"All right. I'd have to draw it up, though. It would take a lot of time—"

"We have all night, Miss Dancer." The silenced-gun leveled on her face.

"Okay. May I put this coffeepot down please? It's a ton, now."

"Set it on the table there. No tricks, I beg of you. One false gesture, even if I misinterpret it, and you are a dead woman. Remember that."

April nodded, too happy with her reprieve to do more than comply. In situations like these, time was the most important consideration in the whole wide world. Time in which things could happen, somebody could come, the doorbell could buzz, the phone could ring. The building could catch fire. Oh, yeah. Oh, maybe.

Mr. Riddle's gun followed her toward the coffee table, a few feet away. It was a large circular table, inlaid with a mosaic of tiles representing a clown's face. April had picked it up in Greenwich Village on one of her bargain-hunting shopping trips.

She set the coffeepot down. Her fingers were numbed from holding the hot thing aloft for so long. Riddle-Egret mumbled in the mask. "Sit down in that other chair, across from me. Slowly and with great care."

April sank into the plushy partner of the chair in which her captor sat. The nose of the gun still bored in on her. Mr. Riddle would have to be the world's worst shot to miss her at this range.

"You didn't kill her, did you?" She nodded toward the crumpled figure on the floor.

"Forget her. She's of no use to anyone, anymore."

"So she's dead. That poor kid—"

"We were talking about you cooperating. Not about the pitiful twists and turns of a spy's life. Now, as to pencil and paper. Where are they?"