[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael (читаем бесплатно книги полностью txt) 📗
On the way up in the steel elevator, she wondered who was left in the Enforcements pool that she could use. There was James Wilder, of "course. Pete Barnes, Walter Fleming. Perhaps even Randy Kovac. No, Randy was still a trainee. Eighteen years old, smart as a whip, and almost fey, he was so Irish. No, no—this was no operation for a trainee. U.N.C.L.E.? Randy was still a Nephew.
She had reached the door of the Weapons Room when the truth descended upon her like a ton of bricks. Good Lord, what an idiot she had been! And all the time she had lost, just because she had been a half-drowned kitten lost somewhere in the Bronx. It had been staring her in the face all the time and it had just this moment come to her. The one possible way she could trace the whereabouts of Mark Slate and his brutal captors. Her eyes blazed with anger as she realized her stupidity.
If anything happened to Slate now and they were too late, it would be her own fault. Nobody else's. She had goofed mightily—a luxury no agent could afford. Least of all, Mark Slate.
She raced for the communication set on the desk in the Weapons Room, nearly tripping in her haste. She batted the lever on.
"Section Four," a man's voice said.
This was the Intelligence and Communications Section. A most valuable arm of the organization.
"April Dancer here," she said crisply into the transmitter, all of her mental capacities focused on the very important information she was about to deliver. There must be no slipups, no forgetting of a single detail, if she were ever to see Mark alive again.
"Yes, Miss Dancer?"
"I have an All Points. We must locate, as soon as possible, a blue panel truck. The occupants are a Chinaman, a Hindu and a French Apache type. They are advertising a three-ring circus of some kind called 'Romeo's League of Nations Exhibit.' Repeat—" She went through the whole spiel again, itemizing every detail of description she could remember. The Hindu's beard, the Errol Flynn moustache on the Frenchman and the Chinaman's purple mandarin robes. She included a vivid description of Arnolda Van Atta, hoping that such a weird menage of people must certainly have been seen by somebody during the last few hours. They would have no reason to discard their disguises because they must have been pretty sure they had wiped out April in the factory explosion. She had never seen Mr. Riddle, of course, so she left him out of her message.
The man in Section Four barked a Roger at her and April clicked the set up, taking a deep breath.
There. At least, she had done that much.
The rest was up to efficiency and luck.
Luck always played a large part in any operation. It was the one intangible, imponderable aspect of every single moment of an agent's life.
With her report out of the way, she busied herself with the special equipment and protective devices of offense and defense that occupied the shelves of the Weapons Room. Mr. Waverly was going to have a fit when she presented her expense account at the end of the month. She had lost an entire set of personal tools. Something she had rarely ever done. Mr. Waverly had always commended her on her frugality and thrift, often chiding Slate, Solo and Kuryakin for their constant loss of equipment and very high lists of expenditures.
Still, that wasn't what was really bothering her.
Not even her New England background could make her forget for a moment that Mark was in the hands of the opposition.
If anything happened to that dear fool, she'd never forgive herself.
Suddenly she also realized with a start that she hadn't had a thing to eat all day. Not since breakfast. Her stomach was beginning to rebel.
She called the commissary, hoping to sneak in a sandwich and a cup of hot tea before the conference with Enforcement.
She also remembered to jot a memo down on a scrap pad. A reminder to herself to take care of the unwilling Samaritan of a cab driver.
Number seven-one-three-five-nine.
Around-the-Clock-Terror
The whipsaw wore a long green velvet dress. The click-click of the jade pendant he could not see had forced Mark Slate to open his weary eyes. The long, enforced strain of remaining perfectly still on the table that faced the .30 caliber Browning machine gun had taken its toll on his mind. He hadn't been able to afford the healing luxury of sleep or rest. He might wake up with a start and trip the wire that connected to the trigger of the gun. So he had remained in a state of rigid, controlled watchfulness. Because of it, he was utterly weary in mind and muscle.
Now, he could see Arnolda Van Atta's tigerish green hips. The velvet dress glittered as she brushed against his face. He did not miss the cruel riding crop, the hard, twisted, interlaced leather of the object. He smiled tightly.
"Ah, Miss Whipsaw," he murmured almost dreamily.
The green velvet dress paused, the riding crop stiffened. Arnolda Van Atta's subtle voice spoke coolly from somewhere above him.
"Whipsaw, Mr. Slate? I don't understand—isn't that a saw in a frame of some kind?"
"Oh, very," he agreed mildly. "But it is also a person who somehow always gets the better of another person. I should say that description fit you very well, Miss Van Atta."
A low, silvery laugh came.
"It is good that you recognize superior intellect when you meet it."
"I didn't say that, old girl. The Nazis were whipsaws for the Jews and you know what happened to the Nazis."
The riding crop came down hard on the table, inches from Slate's face. It made a dull, heavy thudding sound.
"I'm glad you are what you are, Mr. Slate," the redhead said in even, icy tones. "You are the perfect subject for torture. A strong will who will resist until every last shred of flesh is ripped from your body." He heard the riding crop slash experimentally through the atmosphere in the room. It made swishing, vicious noises. Slate hung onto his nerve.
"Pity, old girl."
"What's a pity?"
"That you can't find better uses for such a splendid physical specimen such as myself. I've made many women happy in my time, you know. Don't want to boast and all that but it is a waste of manpower. I imagine you look quite smashing in that fine green dress. Hair all up in a splendid coiffure, I suppose? Slim white throat, that imperial look of yours. Do you know the poem 'Richard Cory' by Robinson? That line where it says '...and he glittered when he walked....' I fancy you must look like that right now. Why not be a sport and untie me from this infernal table so I can get a look at you?"
There was a long moment of silence in which she didn't answer him. Slate stiffened, waiting. Knowing that the next moment must bring one or two things. Either the first downward slash of the riding crop across his defenseless back. Or a withering scorn for the suggestion that a woman like Arnolda Van Atta was interested in anything so commonplace and vulgar as sex. Or both.
She surprised him.
She chuckled, in that low voice, the one that told him volumes regarding the amount of weird pleasure she was reaping from the entire situation.
"Really, Mr. Slate. Do you think to delude me?"
"Fat chance of that, isn't there?"
"Yes, you are a superb physical specimen—" She cooed now. He shuddered as he felt her long cool fingers roll up the Basque shirt. She did that slowly, gingerly, knotting the tail of the shirt under his armpits. His midriff was bared now. He felt his mouth go dry. He could take a whipping all right. That part was all right. He wouldn't even mind the scars. It wasn't that. He remembered all too clearly a man whom he had known in London. The fellow had been an RAF flier in War Two, shot down over Germany and been interned in one of their bloody camps where some pig of a Nazi had whipped him like a dog. The fellow, Jenkins was his name, had smashed kidneys and a spinal column with several misplaced discs for life. That would not be pleasant. All from one ten-minute session with the lash in the hands of a brutal bastard who knew how to use it.
