[Magazine 1966-­08] - The Cat and Mouse Affair - Davis Robert Hart (версия книг .txt) 📗

And it was not Inspector Tembo.

The chair behind the desk was empty.

The window was open.

And behind the desk, studying papers on the desk, stood a tall, slender woman wearing a black uniform!

The woman heard him the instant he saw her. She looked up. Solo saw that she wore a black hood as a mask, only her sharp eyes visible through the eye-holes. Green eyes. Solo reached for his Special. The woman did not wait. Her hand snaked into her pocket and came out with a round, black object.

Solo threw himself backwards, his Special out.

There was no chance to fire.

The woman dropped the black object and a thick cloud of dark smoke filled the small office.

Choking, Solo backed out of the office and dug in his pocket. He brought out his miniature gas mask, opened it, and placed it over his nose and mouth. He ran back into the office and through the thick smoke.

The office was empty.

Solo went through the window in a single leap. Ahead up the hill the woman ran. She turned at the crest and fired. Solo dived for the dirt. The bullet whistled past his ear. He was up and running. At the crest of the hill he looked down. The woman was vanishing into a slump of trees. Solo raced down after her.

They came out of the trees.

Four of them—men wearing black uniforms, their ugly Soviet submachine guns in their hands and pointing up the hill at Solo.

The U.N.C.L.E. agent skidded to a halt on the steep downslope.

The four men began to move toward him up the hill.

* * *

Illya Kuryakin awoke and they were there again. The small, wiry man with the wisp of beard. The grey-haired man called Mr. Smith. The silent guards in the black uniforms. Illya struggled up to a sitting position on the cold floor of the cave.

They had been questioning him for hours. He had no idea what time it was, whether it was night or day, whether days had passed or only hours. As soon as he slept, they awakened him and it began again. The questions.

"Tell us who you are and who you work for," the small man with the thin wisp of beard asked quietly.

"No," Illya said, his voice a croak now, his throat dry for lack of water.

"Why are you in Zambala? Who sent you?" the man named Mr. Smith asked.

Illya said nothing. They were the same questions. Behind the two men who asked the same questions over and over, Illya saw the guards as silent and motionless as ever. There was nothing else, only the blank stone walls of the cave, the steel door behind the guard, and beyond the door, what?

"You were following the beggar? Why?" the man with the wisp or beard asked.

"You were watching the prison. Why?" the man named Mr. Smith asked.

Illya's weary mind came alert. These were new questions! There had been a sudden change, a shift in questions, as if the men in front of him thought that it was time to change, that his resistance was ebbing and a sudden shift would confuse him.

Illya fought to keep his mind steady, because they were almost right. The hours were beginning to work on him. He battled within his mind to keep control.

"Tell us why you were there at the prison," the man with the thin beard said. "What did you suspect?"

"What made you interested?" Mr. Smith said.

"What do you know about Premier Roy?"

"What was Pandit Tavvi doing in that room?"

"Why was Tavvi killed?"

"Who sent the premier to that room?"

"Who do you work for"

"Who are you?"

Illya's mind reeled. No sleep for—how long? Was it day or night? Where was this cave? Where was Napoleon? Illya felt his mind slipping—slipping -slipping—With a powerful effort, unseen by the pounding questioners, he moved his free forearm across one of the rings on his right hand. With his thumb, the thumb of his right hand, he pressed hard against the ring on the inside. He felt the tiny prick.

The needle, which came a hair out from the ring when he pressed against the inside of the ring, pricked his forearm. He hung on, forcing his brain to remain alert. Ten seconds—twenty seconds.

Almost a minute, and the questions continued to reel against his brain. Then he felt it, the powerful drug coursing through his body, the emergency drug intended for just such a situation, to be used only in extremity because of its side-effects.

The drug entered his brain and, suddenly, he felt no more fatigue, no weariness, no slipping of his senses. He felt strong, alert, in complete control. He showed none of this to his interrogators. Instead he continued to pretend that he was on the edge of breaking.

"What really happened at The Morgan House?" the man with the wisp of beard said.

"Why was Tavvi there?" Mr. Smith said.

Illya listened now, his brain clear, more than clear. Alert, he heard the questions. They were asking him what they should have known! Pandit Tavvi was one of the Stengali, and these men had to be the Stengali—or did they? He had been sure that these were the Stengali, but now—if they were the Stengali, why were they asking what had happened I that room of The Morgan House? And if they were not the Stengali, who were they?

* * *

Napoleon Solo laid down a withering fire from his U.N.C.L.E. Special on automatic. The four men in black went to ground. Instantly, Solo crawled back over the crest of the hill and ran down the hill, back toward the prison. The four men came to the crest of the hill, stood there against the lighter dark of the sky for a moment, and then vanished.

Solo stopped running. He stared back up the hill. There was no doubt; they had stopped their pursuit. He turned and went back to the window, climbed through into the office of Inspector Tembo. His foot struck a soft object behind the desk.

He looked down and saw the body.

The body of a gaunt-faced man of medium height. It had been behind the desk, between the desk and the window, and Solo had not seen it when he pursued the woman. Now he saw it, and he guessed at once who it was. To be sure, he bent down and took out the man's wallet. The identity card left no doubt: Inspector James Tembo!

Solo stood up and rubbed his chin. He would not have the chance to question Inspector James Tembo. The man had been stabbed once, expertly and finally. Why? Without a doubt so that someone like Solo could not question the inspector.

Which meant that someone knew, or thought, that the inspector had known something important.

What? Solo looked down at the littered desk of the dead man. The woman had been searching the desk when he surprised her. He studied the papers on the desk and found that the folder on top was the folder of the killing of Pandit Tavvi and Mura Khan. A notation was written across the page in a neat, precise hand:

"Why would Tavvi go to the room alone? Why would Roy go alone? Check movements of P. Tavvi."

Solo's eyes glistened as he read the notations—Inspector Tembo had not been satisfied with the explanations of the events in The Morgan House.

But that was all. The rest was the routine report Solo already knew in detail. The agent turned his attention to the office itself. Everything seemed in order. Then his eyes fell on the small object beside the body of Tembo.

Solo bent and picked it up.

It was a matchbook with the name "Jezzi Mahal, The Silver Dunes." Solo grinned. It looked very much like his masked lady had left her calling card. Solo decided he would pay a call on Miss Jezzi Mahal.

But before that, he would pay a visit to The Harbor Inn. If Illya had not reported in. Solo took out his pencil-radio and pressed the send button.

"Code four. Napoleon Solo to Zambala Control. Come in, Zambala Control."