Joseph Ngara went down, riddled and dead.
The waiter choked on his own blood in his torn throat.
The girl singer sprawled in the shelter of two heavy garbage cans. She crouched, her dress torn open, legs and breast brown in the dim light—and she never stopped firing.
Her small pistol empty, she grabbed and reached Ngara's U.N.C.L.E. Special, set it on automatic, fired a withering fire toward the killers coming fast down the alley.
Illya clicked his Special to bullets and poured fire into the six strangers.
Six who were only three now, the others dead or dying.
No one had spoken a word. They were all trained, and words did not help. Cries of pain or anger only wasted time, spoiled the deadly aim.
Illya smiled like a wolf in battle. Three to two, but he and the girl had cover; the three THRUSH men did not.
Azid Ben Rillah lay silent between the two battling sides.
Illya aimed carefully this time. It would soon be over.
And the three remaining THRUSH agents suddenly vanished in great sheets of flame. Flame licked high in the alley. Flame that rushed across the ground toward the girl and Illya as if pushed on a strong wind. But there was no wind.
Illya felt cold.
They had thrown flame bombs, deadly flames that fed on their own creeping fuel and moved toward Illya to consume him.
THREE
Napoleon Solo talked, his voice filling the dark, cornerless room where Maxine Trent stood above him and the two hidden men stood behind in the shadows. Maxine still held the needle. An instant in his arm and Solo began to talk at once.
"Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everwhere that Mary went. The lamb was sure to go."
"Tell us!" Maxine Trent cried. "What did Waverly tell you?"
"Baa baa Black sheep, have you any wool?" Solo said, his voice crisp and precise. "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!"
The reedy, inhuman voice hissed from the dark. "Slap him, you fool! He has to tell us. The serum cannot be evaded. He has to tell us what he knows!"
Maxine Trent slapped Solo hard. Blood trickled lightly from the corner of his mouth.
"The nineteen forty-two St. Louis Cardinals were one of the great teams of all time. Ray Sanders played first base, Marty Marion was at shortstop, Stan Musical was in right field, Enos Slaughter."
Now the deep voice cursed from the dark room. Maxine Trent stared at Solo, turned to look helplessly, with fear in her eyes toward the hidden men. The deep-voiced man spoke.
"It is no use; he has been conditioned. He can tell us nothing this way."
"Conditioned?" the thin, hissing voice said.
"U.N.C.L.E. has its methods, too," the deep-voiced man said.
"Conditioning so that under any form of truth serum a man will only tell what he has been conditioned to tell. It is a long process, much too long for general use. I know they had conditioned the five Section-I members to give us false data; we had Waverly once, and everything he told us was false. But I did not know they had extended it down to Section-II. You will get nothing but nonsense from Solo this way."
There was silence. Maxine Trent stared down at the babbling Solo as he reeled off the personnel and exploits of the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. The needle in her hand seemed ludicrous now. She wanted to stop Solo, shut him up, turn off the endless stream of ridiculous information.
She slapped him, but he neither blinked nor stopped, rendered helpless by the truth drug.
"Stop him," the reedy voice hissed.
A hand holding another needle appeared from the dark. Maxine Trent took it again plunged it into Solo's arm. Solo stopped babbling at once. His eyes came unglazed. He blinked, grinned up at Maxine Trent.
"I trust you enjoyed all my information, Maxine," Solo said.
The deep voice cursed again in the dark behind Maxine Trent.
"Prepare him. We will have to use older methods," the deep voice said.
"Anything," the hissing voice cried from the dark. "I must know what Waverly knows! The smallest error must be corrected! You understand?"
"Yes," Maxine Trent said. She looked down at Solo. "I'm sorry, Napoleon, but you won't cooperate. You can't be conditioned against simple torture."
"Try me," Solo said.
The deep voice whispered somewhere off in the darkness. Then a hand appeared again from the dark. It held another hypodermic needle.
"Release him from the hypnotic drug, make him comfortable," the deep voice said.
Maxine did as she was instructed. Almost at once Solo felt as if the ropes were gone, the soft material holding his feet was taken away. He moved, stretching the cramps from his muscles. A hand came out of the dark, holding a glass with amber fluid in it.
"Give him a drink," the deep voice said. "The best Scotch whiskey, Mr. Solo."
Solo drank and the warmth coursed through his body.
"Perhaps a sandwich, some hot coffee?" the deep voice said.
Solo nodded and his mind came alive. Inside, there was sudden flicker, a plan. He was aware of what the deep-voiced chief agent of THRUSH was doing—the hot and cold treatment. A variant. In torture it is the sudden changes that break a man. The coming and going and coming again of pain.
They were awakening his nerves, his responses. Almost any man can face danger once; it is the second time, the third time that are hard. Likewise in torture. Once the pain began a man could slowly learn to stand it, to self-condition his body to take the increasing degrees of pain.
It was the swing from pain to peace, to pain again that was hard. First agony, then relief, then agony, and again relief, until what finally broke a man was fear of the next agony.
They knew this, and they were relaxing his defenses. How far would they go? A faint hope flickered. A double hope, and a plan. He had his cigarette lighter camera in his pocket. He could feel it. An he still had the small but powerful gas bomb that was his innocent-seeming pearl stickpin. He did not think that the deep-voiced man or the hissing-voiced Council Member N would apply the torture.
Another aspect of good torture was to leave the victim alone with some mindless torturer, someone who could not be talked to. The true interrogator went away, and the victim in his agony almost prayed for the return of one who would listen. It was a chance. Solo nodded, breathed.
"First, if I could, a cigarette?" Solo said quietly.
"Of course," the deep-voiced man said from the dark. "Maxine, give him a cigarette."
Maxine handed Solo a cigarette. He reached quickly into his pocket for his lighter. He flicked it once, twice, three times before the flame burst out and he lighted his cigarette. The reedy voice hissed.
"The lighter, you fools! It is a camera!"
Maxine grabbed at the lighter. But Solo had anticipated her. The instant he had taken his three pictures of the dark ahead of him through the infra-red lens, he had pressed the tiny button that dropped the miniature film cartridge into his hand.
As Maxine grabbed the camera, he palmed the tiny cartridge and let it vanish up his sleeve.
"Open it!" the reedy voice hissed.
Maxine opened it and removed the film cartridge she found there. Solo tried to look beaten. They did not know that the camera had a special optical arrangement that took pictures on both cartridges through a single lens. The camera was made for just such an eventuality. There would be a cartridge in the camera—and it would be exposed in case they checked to be sure.