The Splintered Sunglasses Affair - Leslie Peter (электронные книги без регистрации txt) 📗

"Angelo's?"

"That's it. He ordered an aperitif and read the paper for a while. Then, around one fifteen, he chose his lunch and began to eat. At... let me see... yes, at one forty, he was joined by—you'll never guess who."

"The man we saw going away from the lifts in Leonardo's apartment block."

Kuryakin looked quite put out. "However did you guess?" he complained.

"It was a reasonable deduction. We thought it was the man we'd seen leaving Angelo's from the next booth to ours when the lift incident happened. Now here you are at the restaurant again. And anyway, there's nobody else in the cast it could be, Illya!"

"I suppose not. Anyway, he came in and sat down at Carlsen's table and began to have his lunch too. They seemed quite intimate, on quite good terms."

"You weren't able by any chance, I suppose, to—"

"To hear what they were saying? No, I'm afraid not. I said he was smart. He had chosen a table... You know they have that piped music relayed by speakers here and there about the room at Angelo's?... Well, he had chosen a table right under one of the blasted things and I couldn't make out a word!"

Solo grinned. "Okay. One to him. What happened then?"

"I managed to grab a taxi when they left, and I followed them from the restaurant to a car park, and from there to a huge new block of luxury flats out on the southwest side of town, near the Fiat factory. Carlsen parked his Cadillac out front and they rode up to the seventeenth floor."

"And you rode with them?"

"No. There was an indicator. There are only two apartments to a floor when you go above, the twelfth—it's one of those multi-tower places after that. I found out easily enough which apartment they were in and I listened—"

"Hey, hey, hey! Just a minute there! You blithely say you listened... but how did you get there to listen? Ring at the bell and say you were the gas man?"

"Er ... no. The painter."

"The...?"

"The painter. There was a cradle, you see, hanging down the side of the tower from the top. And in Italy workmen don't return from their siesta until around four. And so I—er—borrowed it."

"And you hung in mid-air just outside their window, which they had obligingly opened," Solo said affectionately, "and listened to everything they said?"

"No, no. Not exactly. I maneuvered the cradle one apartment to the side and one floor down, so if they did look out to check it wasn't too near."

"But you wouldn't hear anything there, man!"

"Not directly, no. But I had had an ER/2 with me and somehow—er—it seemed to have found its way into Carlsen's jacket pocket at lunchtime... "

Solo laughed. "Well, you really take the cake, Illya, for sheer effrontery!" he said. "It worked all right? You were not out of range down there?" The tiny transistorized bugs would normally pick up a conversation within ten to twelve feet of where they were lodged and, provided the listener had the right equipment to receive it, would broadcast this a distance of a further thirty to forty feet, according to conditions.

"It received very well, thank you. Carlsen seemed to be in the middle of a kind of briefing when I first tuned in. He said..." The Russian turned back to his notes once more "... that the other man, the blue-chinned one we saw at the lifts, must lay off the murder attempts for the time being. All plans for assassinating the men from U.N.C.L.E. were to be held in abeyance. That meant us, Napoleon. It felt awfully funny hearing it, you know."

"It must have done, yes. I'm falling about."

"He said that now they had confirmed that a hologram had been made and was in New York, but that we hadn't yet found out how it had been shot and had so far not succeeded in tracing the medium, then it was more to their advantage to lie low and wait. They could allow us, this way, to do all the work and actually locate the medium—and then they could destroy it, and us, at their leisure."

"Charming! And what happened then?"

"The grey man—I'm sure he's local talent, you know: a small time chiseller cashing in on the big time—he said okay, Carlsen was the one who was hiring his services; if that was the way he wanted it, then he'd pull out his men and wait until he was asked for. And Carlsen said, great! That was what he did want: it would be much better that way, letting us do all the work; and anyway, since he had now got us so well-covered, the killing bit wasn't so important."

"That's a bit ominous, that one about having us so well covered. What do you make of that, Mr. Eavesdropper? Did they say anything more on that kick?"

"Er... well, you see, there was a bit of a fracas just then. One of the painters came back from his lunch and there was some dispute as to who had the right to occupy the cradle. And then he called a few of his mates and... well, since I didn't want to attract the attention of the people in the apartment, I thought it best to—er—leave."

"I have a suspicion that I've just heard the understatement of the decade, but let it pass! I'm glad to hear that the heat's off, though—for I, too, have news."

"You've seen something important?"

"Not seen. Heard. And it wasn't from this little love nest: it was on the telephone, while Giovanna was relieving me at lunch time."

"On the phone? Not from Waverly?"

Solo nodded. "Just a message. The Commendatore told me that New York had left word that your friend Trevitt has definitely tied the kidnap car in with a known Thrush member."

"So that means we are dealing with one adversary... not two?"

"Exactly. And it also means that Carlsen and Lala Eriksson are Thrush since they were behind the snatch. And it means, for good measure, that Carlsen must moreover be the Supreme Council Member for Southern Europe—and of course that it was from the house where I was kept that Leonardo stole the list."

Kuryakin gave a low whistle. "It certainly simplifies the scene; but I can't say it makes me wild with joy, all the same!"

"No. They're playing for the highest stakes, so they'll be bound to play it rough. But we have something to go on at last. I told you I was glad the heat was off because I wanted to act. I haven't yet told you why ... for there was one thing more I learned from the Commendatore."

"And that was?"

"I asked him a question. His answer was... that the body of Leonardo, when it was brought to the morgue, was without glasses."

"But... but. Napoleon..."

Solo inclined his head. He picked up the S.I.D. dossier and leafed through it again. "I know... 'He was clean-shaven and his eyes were open'—that's the porter... 'He was on his back, sort of staring at the sky'—that's the beauty from the tie shop... and yet Signora Rastoldi speaks of a 'tall man in dark glasses' lurching about on the steps, and the woman who saw the smoke from the gun also mentions 'a tall man in sunglasses' coming towards her. What do you make of that?"

"If he was wearing glasses, especially sunglasses, the witnesses would hardly have noticed whether his eyes were open, or whether he was staring at the sky."

"Exactly. And the statements which mention the glasses are those from people who were in at the kill, as it were. Whereas those which seem to imply no glasses are from witnesses who arrived after Leonardo had already fallen."

"There are only two possibilities, then, Napoleon. Either the dark glasses were knocked off when he fell—"