[Whitman] - The Affair of the Gentle Saboteur - Keith Brandon (мир книг .txt) 📗

"Out for a bit of exercise?" she asked.

"Not really. I'm going down to Abercrombie and Fitch."

"Rather a long walk," she said, and the tinkling laughter came again.

"I was going to take a taxi after a while."

"Oh? So?"

"You can drop me out if it's out of your way."

"Quite the contrary. I'm to pick up Mother outside of Bergdorf's. She'll be positively delighted to see you. Steve Winfield. New York—every thing happens. We've only been here a few weeks. Visiting. Shopping. Mother'll be ecstatic. Old friends. How's your father?"

"Fine."

"Your mother?"

"Fine, thank you."

She tapped out a cigarette and held the package back toward him.

"Cigarette?"

"I don't smoke, thank you."

She took out a gold lighter. "A gift from my mother. Isn't it exquisite?"

He leaned forward. The car stopped for a red light. She turned and showed him the lighter. She extended it close, right under his nose. He heard the click, heard a hiss, heard nothing more.

The gray Rolls parked on East 68th Street. The girl got out, propped up the sleeping boy in a corner of the car, slammed the door, and went to the tall, dark man lounging at a side of the many-windowed, modern apartment house. The tall man needed a shave and his eyes were red rimmed. His smile was brief and somewhat sullen. "All right?" he asked.

"I have him," the girl said. "Now what about the other one?"

"He'll come out."

"Are you sure?"

"Look, I've been loitering here since yesterday. I saw him go in, and he hasn't come out. He'll come out."

"And if anything goes wrong?"

"Then we'll use the other plan. As long as we've got the boy."

"Oh, we've got him."

"Nothing'll go wrong. He'll come out. He's due. Now you take over. You know what to do."

"Yes, Mr. Burrows."

"Good girl."

The tall man went to the car. He opened the rear door and looked at the boy. He put a cigarette between the boy's lips, and there it dangled. He closed the rear door, got in behind the wheel in front, and sat waiting. The girl would know whom to approach. She had seen his picture many times, studied the picture. She would know what to do. She was bright, intelligent, devoted to the cause, an idealist. He made a grunt in his throat, his mouth closed. Idealist. He did not trust idealists; he preferred mercenaries. Not his business. He was not the boss. Leslie Tudor was the boss. Tudor trusted the girl. No question the girl was perfectly suited to her role. But an idealist. A devotee of the cause. People like her were good workers, even great workers, fanatical but unpredictable. He sighed. He was—how did they put it in Americanese?—the second banana. Leslie Tudor was Number One. What suited Tudor had to suit, perforce, him. He grunted again, lit a cigarette, and sat watching, waiting.

In time, Illya Kuryakin came out. Quickly the girl approached him. "Mr. Kuryakin?"

"Hello?" A fellow tenant whom he had missed? Possible, not probable. A bachelor, somehow he did not miss the pretty ones. Maybe she had recently moved in. She was certainly pretty, blond and shapely in a yellow sleeveless summer dress.

"I was about to go in and ring," she said. "You are Mr. Kuryakin?"

"Yes, but how would you know?"

"I've seen pictures of you."

"Who showed you?"

"Sir William Winfield."

"Well! The good lord of the manor!" Sir William was a friend. A year ago there had been a private time of stress, and he had been assigned as a private bodyguard for the Winfield family and had so served for a period of three months.

"I'm a messenger from Sir William."

"He certainly picks them beautiful."

"Well, thank you, sir. It's his birthday today. I imagine you know."

"No, I don't know."

"It is."

"Good enough. So take a message, lovely messenger. My hearty congratulations to Sir William."

"No. There's to be a party for him tonight." She smiled at the good-looking, blond, young man, thinking to herself that if this emergency had fallen on another day Leslie Tudor would have coached her to mouth another reason as adequately appropriate. Aloud, she said, "A surprise party. Mrs. Winfield has not sent out invitations. We're personally inviting the guests."

"We?"

"Steven Winfield and myself. I'm Sir William's new secretary. Pamela Hunter."

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Where's Steve?"

"He's right there in the car."

She pointed and Illya looked. A new Rolls. He shook his head and grinned. What else for Sir William Winfield but a sleek, long Rolls?

"Please, Steve would like to talk to you," Pamela Hunter said.

"Sure."

He went with her to the car. The chauffeur smiled, nodded. The girl opened the door, and Illya bent over the seat toward Steve. A cigarette? He did not remember that the boy smoked.

"Steve," he said. "Hi."

The boy seemed to be dozing. The chauffeur leaned back, reached back with a hand holding a gold lighter, clicked it, and moved it swiftly to ward Illya. He heard the hiss, tried to fight away from it, and lost.

The girl settled herself between the two sleeping men, propping Illya's limp form up in the corner opposite the Winfield boy.

The chauffeur turned the ignition key and drove off with his new passengers.

4. The Gentle Saboteur

ALEXANDER WAVERLY entered his office at twenty minutes past twelve. His buzzer sounded and his secretary said, "Napoleon Solo."

The Old Man took up the phone. There was no sound. He said into the intercom, "I thought you said Solo."

"Yes, sir."

"Phone's dead."

"Not on the phone, sir. He's here."

"Here?" The Old Man frowned. "All right. Send him in. Thank you."

Almost at once Solo knocked. He came through the door smiling, obviously rested, natty in a freshly pressed mohair suit. "Good afternoon, Mr. Waverly."

The Old Man nodded, cocked his head, and grunted. "You look like the cat that swallowed the canary."

"In a manner of speaking, I am."

The Old Man leaned an elbow on the arm of his swivel chair. The seams on his face deepened as he squinted inquiringly.

"We took him," Solo said. "Albert Stanley. Yesterday."

The Old Man sat up. "Tell me."

Solo told him. The Old Man's face remained an inscrutable mask.

"Good work. Where's Mr. Kuryakin?"

"Sleeping, probably."

The squint was back on Waverly's face.

"We've had a rough vigil since Tuesday," Solo said. "And you weren't due back today until one. He'll be here by then, I assure you."

"Um, yes, of course, of course. Where's Stanley now?"

"Downstairs in Section Five. Detention. They've fed him, shaved him, bathed him, given him fresh linens. A gentle little man. Monsters come in all guises."

"Who talked to him?"

"Nobody. He's being saved for you, as you instructed."

"And that portable radio? That infernal machine?"

"Upstairs in the lab. The technicians are having a ball with it."

"And that report?"

"Being held for you, as you instructed."

"Um, yes." Waverly dialed the telephone.