The Finger in the Sky Affair - Leslie Peter (читать книги без TXT) 📗

Solo breathed out. He relaxed his fingers and dropped to the ground, brushing his suit with automatic hand as the lunchtime strollers reemerged to exclaim and complain.

"... kind of a madman was that, for God's sake?"..."missed this guy here by inches—inches, I tell you!—Sure you're okay, bud?"..."and I always said there should be a special license for guys with..." "... I mean! Cars roaring down the pavement on Fifth Avenue..." "If you hadn't done a Tarzan up there, boy..."

The man from U.N.C.L.E. brushed aside the kindly-intentioned inquiries and rushed to the curb to flag down a cab. The Mustang had jumped the lights at the next intersection and gone. It was a black car with, he thought, a Philadelphia registration—but what the hell! The plates would have been switched within a half hour. And there were plenty of Mustangs in New York. He had not seen the driver's face, but he had the impression that there were at least two men in the front seat. So...

The cab driver was amused by the long and penetrating scrutiny Solo gave him.

"You lookin' for a long-lost brother, bud?" he asked. "You give me one good reason to do it—like a legacy from a distant aunt or sump'n—and I'll be your brother all day long."

"My cousin drives a cab," Solo told him with a grin. "We quarrel. He's a Republican, you see. So I prefer to—er—avoid..."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Jump in, mister. Where you wanna go?"

"Just take me somewhere near the U.N. building, will you?"

"As near as you like, bub. Watch out, though. Everybody's your cousin there! Brothers they got for all the world at that place..."

"I'll bear it in mind."

"You do that," the cabby said, slamming the door. "Too many brothers—that can be a suffocatin' thing..."

Chapter 7 — The ray on the hill-top

"It may not be significant, Napoleon," Illya was saying, "but Sherry and I have been checking various things in the T.C.A. records here—and one thing emerges right away: all three of the crashes took place when the planes approached from the southwest; when the runway was being used in the direction from Cannes towards Nice."

"How many runways are there?"

"Only the one—that's the point, you see. Most of the airport is on reclaimed land, and the main runway runs parallel with the coast and the motor road...They keep on extending it every year—to take bigger and faster planes, I suppose—but it just spreads further along the coast, never further out to sea. And it can still only be used from southwest to northeast, or from northeast to southwest."

"And you say all three crashes took place when it was being used from southwest to northeast?"

"Yes. It could be only coincidence: they use the runway much more in that direction than in the other. But they do use it the other way sometimes—especially when there's a mistral blowing."

"Why's that?"

"The mistral comes from the west," Sheridan Rogers answered. "It's very gusty here when it blows—and it blows like the devil, too! Any plane landing from the southwest would have the mistral as a tail wind, so naturally they bring them in the other way. The same goes for take-off."

"Do they use the same runway for landing and take-off?"

"Yes, they do."

"What do you deduce from these facts, then?" Solo asked, turning towards Illya with a smile. "Mr. Kuryakin, you have the floor..."

"Since there is no record of any mishaps when planes land from northeast to southwest, but there were three bad crashes when T.C.A. aircraft came in from the other direction, I go out on a limb and say..." Illya paused. "I say that, since the Murchison-Spears gear proved to be in A-one condition afterwards, then THRUSH—or someone—must be using some kind of device to mess it up only temporarily—and I say further, Napoleon, that this can only be used successfully if the plane approaches from the west."

Solo nodded. "As far as the temporary bit is concerned, that's very much what old man Plant thought," he said. "Any further comments?"

"Yes. Since the device, whatever it is, appears to be in a sense dependent on direction, one is forced to consider the possibility of some sort of beam or ray."

"Yeah. That's what I figured...You mean something actually sited on the west side of the airport, so it can only be used if the ships come in from that side?"

"Exactly—and this implies it must be fairly short-range, too. I should be inclined to suggest something aimed or beamed straight at the plane as it glides in towards the runway over the sea...probably one of the many hilltop villages just behind the coastal strip."

"Or from a boat, maybe?"

Kuryakin shook his head. "We checked that. It would have to be moored or anchored, and there's no record of any such ship—besides, the fisherman from Cagnes, the water-ski schools, the speedboat owners would all notice it: it's a very busy piece of ocean, just there!"

"Okay, no boat. So what about your hilltop villages...?"

"Well, there's Mougins, Biot, Vallauris, La Colle, St.-Paul-de-Vence, Gatti?res, Haut-de-Cagnes—all of them look down on the flight path from the hills dotting the country between the mountains and the sea. You can stand on the ramparts and look down and see the planes silver against the blue sea as they glide in."

"Very poetic...but where do we start looking?"

The Russian smiled, spreading his arms in a gesture of indecision. "It seems to me," he said, pushing the tow-colored hair out of his eyes, "that there's only one possible lead for us to take."

"And that is?"

"To follow up every conceivable angle on the social life of T.C.A. staff based here in Nice. Watch and listen; get to know them; find out how they—how do you say?—tick...Because members of THRUSH must have infiltrated the organization somewhere, and if we can get on to them —"

"You mean once we locate which of the personnel belong to THRUSH, we can tail them and at least get a start geographically?"

"Exactly. It would provide a starting point. After all, we cannot very well knock on every door between here and Cannes and ask: 'Excuse me, do you happen to have a secret ray in the parlor?', can we!"

They were sitting over coffee and brandy on the terrace of a waterfront restaurant at Villefranche. Helga Grossbreitner still kept an apartment somewhere near Nice and she had gone to check that everything was in order there. The other three had decided to hold their council of war in as agreeable a locale as possible. Violet sea water lapped at the piles of the balcony on which they sat and fragmented the reflections from the windows of the customs house on the far side of the harbor. Out in the bay, someone was having a party on one of the big steam yachts. The sound of laughter and music drifted across to mingle with the footsteps and voices of the holidaymakers thronging around them. Farther out, two American cruisers dressed overall added their complement of light to the garland of lamos outlining the whole inlet from Villefranche to Cap Ferrat. Above, the headlights of cars traversing the Basse Corniche, the Moyenne Corniche and the Grande Corniche threaded their way between the brightly illuminated villas rising tier upon tier into the velvet sky. A breath of warm air stirred the purple bougainvillea draping the balustrade by their table.

"I entirely agree with your suggestion, Illya," Solo said as he called for the bill. "As it happens it works in well with an arrangement I've already made. I thought we ought to have a look at the murdered stewardess' apartment—not the one she was sharing with you, my dear; her own place by the Avenue Malaussena—just in case. Miss Grossbreitner has arranged to get the key from T.C.A. and she's meeting me there tomorrow morning. I'd be most grateful if you could join us, Miss Rogers."