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"I am most surprised to find you abusing our hospitality, Mr. Solo," the Negro said. "And disappointed. I had thought you were one of our more cooperative guests." The voice, Solo realized as soon as the man spoke, was the one he had been talking to over the intercom in his cell.
"Unfortunately," Wasserma
"Most interesting," the Negro said. "I'd be fascinated to learn the details of the treatment to which you were subjected. A system which permits deliberate lies to be told, mixed in with a judicious amount of truth, even under the deepest hypnosis and the most powerful drugs - that is something I really admire! Regrettably, though, I have to deny myself the pleasure of forcing you to tell me: our operation is ready to start. You have transgressed the laws of hospitality and now you have be come merely an embarrassment. You must be disposed of."
"Didn't they teach you not to end sentences with a preposition in the mail-order English course you took?" Solo said blandly.
The Negro smiled. "I am immune to insults, my friend," he said. "As I was saying, you must now die. You have until darkness tomorrow night… tonight, I should say, for it must be almost dawn now."
"Isn't that – ah - untraditional?" Solo said. "It's usually dawn."
"It is a question of method, Mr. Solo," Wasserma
"What about the girls in the car?"
"One of the troubles about employing members of the underworld is that they will not obey rules," Wasserma
"And how do you propose to stage it?"
"We don't really have to bother. The submarine pen attached to this building has double doors - so that the craft can enter underwater, wait until the water has been extracted, and then disgorge its crew in safety. With you, the process will be the reverse: you will be. left in the pen when it is air-filled, the i
"Bodies - not body," the Negro put in. "We ca
"All right, Hernando, that's enough," Wasserma
"Okay," the man called Greerson said. He handed his gun to Wasserma
Solo automatically raised his arms to defend himself as Greerson came near. But the thin man took him by surprise. Moving like lightning, his left hand reached out and grasped Solo's shoulder, spi
The agent's fingers scrabbled at the concrete wall as he sank to the ground, a strangled cry forcing itself from his lips. Dimly through waves of nausea he heard the girl cry out - though whether in pain or in horror at what was happening to him he did not know.
Behind him, Greerson measured his distance carefully, then drew back his foot...
Chapter 10
"Don't Call Us - We'll Call You!..."
AS GREERSON RAISED his foot in the fortress below the artificial lake, Illya Kuryakin turned the key to cut the motor of the Volkswagen fourteen hundred yards away on the other side of the rocky spur separating the reservoir from the adjoining valley.
Mist clung to the lower branches of the trees like streamers of chiffon, blanketed the hollows in the ground, and wreathed in frightening shapes across the road. The estancia was invisible in the before-dawn darkness as he coasted the car in under some overhanging evergreens opposite the gates. Beside him, the greyhound profile of Coralie Simone was pale and tense in the dim illumination of the single dashboard light.
"Somewhere in that mountain," Illya said, "there is a kind of fortress where all those trucks full of material go. It must lie at the end of the tu
"So far as this phase of the operation is concerned," the girl said, "you are the boss. If you say go, we go."
"Fine. Well, the first thing to do is to spy out the land. Just hold on a moment while I fix the equipment, will you?"
Kuryakin hauled an attaché case over from the car's back seat and took out what looked like a heavy flashlight with a hooded lens. He held the device out of the VW's window and pressed the switch. There was no result at all - until he and the girl looked through a pair of viewfinders resembling truncated field glasses. Then the darkened and misty topography sprang to life in a ma
"Oh, it's beautiful," the girl cried. "It looks just like full moon - only much brighter!"
Illya's face remained impassive. "Seems quiet enough,' he said. "I guess we'd better get moving while it's still dark Out there. Unless we can penetrate the tu
While the girl held the infrared lamp out of the passenger window, Kuryakin strapped the lenses over his eyes and got out of the car. He crossed the road and busied himself with the latch of the wire gates blocking the entry to the estancia. In the unearthly light visible to him through his glasses, it took him less than thirty seconds to pick the lock. There seemed to be no alarm system co