[Magazine 1966-­03] - The Beauty and Beast Affair - Davis Robert Hart (прочитать книгу TXT) 📗

"Do that, infidel," Solo said.

"I don't think Ann Nelson Wheat was spying on you people any more than I was. I think you arrested her along with me so you could make it look good to the world—and you want to know what else I think?"

"Yes, if you dare speak!"

"What have I got to lose?" Illya said, shrugging. "I think this whole bit, arresting the evangelist and me, was just to cover up a game of footsie you people are playing with THRUSH."

"That's enough out of you!" Solo shouted.

"Sure." Illya sank back into the pillows. He picked up a roasted chicken breast, took a deep bite, chewing pleasurably. "Just one thing I ask of you. If I'm dreaming, don't wake me up."

"I want information about Ann Nelson Wheat!" Solo raged.

Illya gestured upward toward him. "Then I suggest you talk to Sheik Zud."

Piebr sprang across the room, brandishing a pistol toward Illya.

Illya said, "If you shoot me, friend, be sure you hit me and not this chicken. It's too good to waste."

Piebr snarled at him. But Solo waved the detective back to the door. "It's all right, Piebr. I can handle the infidel."

"He has no right to speak to you in such a tone, Master."

Illya took another bite of chick en. "I was only being friendly. After all, it's a good suggestion. You want to know what happened to Ann Nelson Wheat, Kiell, ask your king. After all, we're his prisoners here; you're not. The head of his security police ought to be able to arrange a private audience with the sultan, it seems to me."

* * *

WHEN THE servants parted the silk curtains at the innermost chambers of the sheik, Solo walked in and bowed low, going down to his knee, hoping this was the correct genuflection expected of a minister-level subject of Zud.

He saw there were two women with Zud. One sat on a recently installed throne that was slightly higher than Zud's. The other woman sat at the ruler's massive feet.

Zud spoke at Solo sharply. "Off your knee. I warned you about this false show of humility. You want me to start mistrusting you? I should never have permitted your going to Harvard for your education. You came back thinking you were just slightly better than any one except Allah himself. I should have sent you to West Point—there they would have taught you to respect your superiors. Off your knee, unless you make obeisance to our most exalted lady, Queen Soraya Haidar of Xanra."

"I pledge my life to both of you," Solo said hesitantly.

Zud threw his head back laughing. "You'd have a difficult time fulfilling such obligation, eh, Soraya? Eh? If he tried to give his life for both of us—since we are in enemy camps, eh?"

"We do not need to be, Zud," Soraya said. Solo saw she was of a loveliness that was breathtaking, a dark and splendid beauty. "We could do much together, you and I."

Zud raged. "Only I am too ugly for you, eh?"

"Only you have ever suggested such a false thing, Your Highness," Soraya said.

"Oh, I know!" Zud shouted. "You're too polite to laugh in my face as my mother did. How do you hold your laughter until you get back among your own ladies-in-waiting?"

"There is no laughter in my heart, except that I would share with you, O Mighty King, if you would let me."

Solo saw the pain in Soraya's black eyes, the love that shone there for the huge king. He decided that if the King of Lions couldn't see it, the beast was as blind as a bat.

"So you taunt me in a different way than my mother did;" Zud said. He leaped up, raging. "But in the end it is the same. I don't blame you, Queen of Xanra. I know that if I want your hand, I'd have to overthrow your country and enslave you, wouldn't I?"

"I am ready to join my country, and my heart with yours, when I hear it asked of me," the lovely queen answered.

Zud put back his head, laughing. "Well, it's good to have you visit me! It reminds me of the ugly brute I am. I had to enslave the women I made marry me. Perhaps in the end I shall force you to marry me, Soraya, unless your larger army is finally victorious over mine."

Xanra's Queen stood up. Her face was bleak. "I shall leave you now, Great Zud. I come to you no more to ask for peace. I am sorry. Good-by."

The great man sank to his knees and kissed the hem of her skirt. He looked up at her. "Despite my devotion, I pray you will marry a man good enough, handsome enough, great enough for you, O Queen."

"I hope I shall, too," Soraya answered, and Solo knew what she meant, even if the king were too blind to see.

Solo sighed. He reflected that if he'd grown up on his mother's taunts, instead of the love he'd longed for, he, too, might have grown to doubt that any woman could care for him.

He scowled. He had to quit finding excuses for the things Zud did. The sheik had already revealed that he was planning an alliance with THRUSH, that international conspiracy against which U.N.C.L.E. waged constant battle. He and Zud were deadly enemies. He had to remember that, every minute.

He stood, waiting, until Queen Soraya had walked out of the splendid chamber. For some moments after Xanra's ruler was gone, Zud stood immobile staring impatiently after her.

Finally, he turned. He glared at Kiell. "We must redouble our efforts, Kiell! I want to marry her. Whatever else I have on earth is as nothing unless she is mine."

"If you married her," Solo said, "you need not wage war against Xanra."

Zud oaths turned the air in the room a hazy blue. He looked as if he'd attack his security minister.

"So you think to taunt me, too, eh, my Harvard delinquent? Just because I let Soraya tease me about my ugliness, you think you can get away with it?"

"No one thinks you're ugly, Zud," said the woman on the floor.

She was in her late twenties, lovely, in spite of a certain prudishness about her that Solo associated with women who turn to religion to the exclusion of everything earthly. He caught his breath, knowing he was seeing Ann Nelson Wheat, the evangelist from Los Angeles.

"Except you yourself," she went on. "You torment yourself and hurt others, because you're still trying to get even with your foolish mother."

"Listen to the evangelist, Kiell! Oh, in America, they allow their women to speak right up, eh? Listen to me, Ann Wheat! Nobody thinks me ugly in this country because they don't dare to! They think I'm ugly. And my mirror swears to it that I resemble a great beast!"

"It's all in your own mind," Ann Wheat said. "Like many other of your wrong ideas."

"Listen to her!" Zud shouted. "Do you know what she has told me? That it is wrong to have more than one wife? What can be wrong? What would a man do with just one wife? Eh, Kiell?"

Solo shrugged, smiling behind his plastic mask.

Zud said, "Enough of this talk. You teach my wives any more of this equality of women, Ann Wheat, and I'll have you beheaded. This time for sure. Meantime, get out of here so I can talk to my minister of security—as though I had any security."

When the woman evangelist was gone, Solo said, "What do you plan to do with her?"

"When our war with Xanra is won, I'll let her go home, if she still wants to. She came here to convert us—perhaps she'll learn much here. But do not presume to ask explanations of your ruler, Zud. I have been too long patient with you."

"Too long, Zud." Solo bowed low.

"Now, we have promised to deliver Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo to THRUSH. What they do with them is THRUSH'S concern, not ours. We want only the aid THRUSH has promised in our battle with Xanra. I want you to deliver Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo and the young Chinese doll as a bonus to THRUSH. Tonight."