The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter (читать онлайн полную книгу txt) 📗

"What will happen when that... when she comes back?"

"She has only one aim now. THRUSH was interested in taking over Bartoluzzi's network, but only if he was there to operate it. He was the only one with the knowledge of all the details. Now that he's dead, I'm afraid her sole course is to eliminate the witnesses and go. They'll just write the project off as a deal that didn't materialize."

Five minutes later, the helicopter skimmed over the trees from the north and sailed across the valley, circling the pillar. They watched the black figure of the girl pull back the Plexiglas door, level a submachine gun with one hand, and coax the machine lower and nearer with the other.

Kuryakin pushed the girl to the ground beside Solo and flung himself across them as the stutter of the gun drowned out the noise of the helicopter's rotors. Fragments of rock spurted up from the road and drew blood from his cheek as the line of slugs ripped past only inches from his head.

The helicopter was turning, preparing for another run… and all at once he was aware of a third sound, louder than either of the other two. He twisted his head and looked up. Incredibly, a second helicopter, much larger than the girl's, was slanting over the valley toward it, spitting flame from the open door in its nose.

Marinka turned her machine swiftly. It rose in the air like an elevator and made off rapidly toward the west. Evidently she preferred to live to fight another day... and anyway there wasn't much the witnesses could say against her!

The bigger machine hovered over the stricken viaduct. A rope ladder snaked down to the top of the pillar. And over a bullhorn a voice exclaimed in the fruitiest accents of County Cork: "Going up now, ladies and gentlemen! Going up! Networks. Settlement of Accounts. Rescue Service. Information. Going up now please…"

It was Habib Tufik, alias Hendrik van der Lee.

Smiling genially, he surveyed them from his wheelchair as one of the two bland Dutchmen crewing the plane helped them to get Solo up the ladder.

They had barely closed the transparent hatch in the blister when the solitary pillar from which they had been rescued collapsed into the valley in a great fountain of dust that rose hundreds of feet into the air.

"But how did you get here? How did you know?" Napoleon Solo asked a little later as they applied a dressing to the wound in his temple.

"I'm afraid that was me," Annike said. "You had lent me that nice little radio. I know a little about them... and I couldn't resist calling up my employer and telling him why I was late for work!"

"A good thing you did," Illya smiled. "Also that you hid in the back of that truck instead of waiting for Napoleon along the road as you arranged."

"You know how it is with Napoleons," the girl said. "They're always retreating! A girl has to make all the advances herself, these days!"

"As soon as I'm upright again I shall be honored to prove the converse of that remark!" U.N.C.L.E.'s Chief Enforcement Officer riposted.

"Sure, 'tis a fine, enterprisin' spirit you have there, the two of you!" the fat man said enthusiastically. "And it's similar to the one I've employed here meself at all. But seein' as how it's still well short of six o'clock, you can profit, from the cheap-rate day tariff, you."

"Day tariff?" Solo echoed. "Cheap rate?"

"To be sure. For the Van der Lee emergency escape service. I was thinkin' of starting a network, a European network, just to be used for getting the boyos out of scrapes. Do you not think that would be a good idea now?"

"You're incorrigible! Send in a bill," Solo said. "What I'd be much more interested in would be a service for writing reports! How I hate doing it... and I've just remembered—we shall have to do just that for Waverly."

"You're worrying for nothing, Napoleon," Kuryakin soothed. "It's all been attended to. It's done already.

"But... how can it be? We've just…"

"I did it myself. Tufik... er, our friend here, that is to say... kindly coded it for me and dispatched it via the plane's transmitter. It was quite short."

"Illya—what did you say, for heaven's sake?"

"I said we had investigated the existence of the reported criminals' escape organization in Europe... and that there was no foundation for the reports…"

[1] See The Man From U.N.C.L.E. #16 The Splintered Sunglasses Affair

[2] See The Man From U.N.C.L.E #7 The Radioactive Camel Affair

[3] See The Man From U.N.C.L.E #9 The Diving Dames Affair