The third man appeared almost directly in Illya's path around the left side of the thinning smoke. This man also wore a gas mask and carried the ugly Thrush rifle.
The two men Napoleon Solo had seen, and a driver.
Illya and the Thrush killer saw each other at the same instant. Illya was quicker. He fired a single shot. The Thrush agent sprawled backwards in the mud and lay still. Behind Illya, the other two Thrush men began to run toward him. They fired as they came.
Illya raced away across the marsh, his feet sinking to the ankles, his face slashed by the tall reeds. He found a narrow ditch, half-filled with water, and jumped into it. Behind him the two Thrush men closed in. He raised his U.N.C.L.E. special and laid down a withering fire.
The two Thrush agents vanished.
Illya crouched low in the ditch and waited again. His keen eyes glanced carefully around. The ditch stretched straight in both directions and he was surrounded by the tall, dry reeds. They could not come on him by surprise through the ditch, and if they came through the reeds he would hear.
But they had no intention of moving in.
First he heard the crackling, like the snapping of many small sticks.
Then he smelled the smoke. The flames licked upward in the night. They had set the reeds afire. Instantly, with some chemical—a favorite weapon of Thrush.
Illya tested the wind. It blew not strong but directly toward him. He stood. The now high wall of flame, roaring toward him with incredible speed as the dry reeds burned, hid him from the two killers. He looked all around.
They had set the fire well, probably with bombs. There was no escape right or left.
Behind him was the deep black water of the channel from the sea.
He could swim it with ease, but he would be a perfect target when the fire burned out, and that would be within minutes. He had no time to think of any plan but one.
He bent to his small suitcase, jerked it open, and pulled out a small, flat package.
The flames rose higher in the night. The heat was intense, growing hotter.
He tore open the small package and unfolded a long thin sheetlike cloth cover. He crouched down in the water at the bottom of the ditch, and covered himself with the thin, shining cloth. The ends of the cloth dipped into the water. Under it, his head above the surface of water in the small space beneath the cloth where there was air, he waited.
The sound of the fire roared in his ears. The thin cover blew in the wind made by the intense heat. He held it down and crouched, the heat stifling, like an oven. He could see the shadows of the flames above through the thin cloth—sheets of flame that leaped across the narrow ditch, roasting, charring everything in their path.
But the special fire-proof and heat-proof cloth did not fail. Slowly, above him, the flames vanished, passed on. Wind died, the crackling stopped.
Quickly he threw off the cloth and flattened up against the wall of the small ditch. They would not be far behind their fire. Already the flames were almost gone, burned out at the edge of the black channel of water.
Footsteps coming steadily.
They reached the ditch and looked down, looked for his dead and charred body.
Illya shot them both before they could speak a single word.
They tumbled into the ditch.
In the distance he heard the sirens approaching. Someone had reported the fire. He jumped from the ditch and ran back to the road. The Mercedes stood abandoned on the road. He ran to it. The keys were still there. He jumped in and drove off toward Idlewild.
The fire engines and police cars were in sight, but he had no time to waste. Thrush was very anxious that no one reach New Mexico or Elk River.
* * *
IN FRONT of the shabby tavern on the avenue near U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, Maxine Trent studied the entrance. Her men at the side and rear reported that no one had left the tavern. And yet she knew Solo would not have waited this long. Her beautiful face was thoughtful. She reached into her handbag and took out a compact. She pressed a button on the compact.
"Trent ordering. Make your attack."
She clicked off her transmitter and slid back into the shadows of the avenue. She waited. A minute passed, two minutes. Then there were four shots. And silence. The shots had come from the alley behind the tavern. She clocked on her transmitter compact.
"Trent ordering. Report!"
She waited. There was no response. Inside the shabby tavern all was quiet, normal. She began to smile. A trap, of course. One of good old U.N.C.L.E.'s Plan 9 fronts. She turned quickly and walked away down the avenue. She glanced behind her and saw the bartender of the seedy tavern standing out in front.
She smiled again, laughed a harsh, cold laugh. Well, two men lost, but you had to break eggs to make an omelet. They had been lousy men anyway. And she had located an U.N.C.L.E. front, not that it would still be there tomorrow. But it caused U.N.C.L.E. trouble, and that was both her job and a pleasure.
Solo would not trap her so easily any more. She had many a score to settle with the handsome U.N.C.L.E. agent. It was unfortunate that he was what he was; she rather liked him, he was so very handsome and virile.
Maxine sighed. It would have been so good to have him make love to her. It was really too bad he would have to die sooner or later.
She continued to walk, smiling at the way she had guessed the trap. She had missed Solo again, but one had to lose some battles. It was the war that counted, and she would win the war. She was quite sure of that. She, and Thrush, would win because U.N.C.L.E., for all its skill and power, still worked with principles of right and wrong, and for Thrush only victory was right. Right and wrong did not exist, only winners and losers, and Maxine was going to be a winner.
She found a drugstore open and stepped into the telephone booth.
"Yes?" a deep, cold voice said.
"Number four, Row sixteen, Circle three and come in on forty-two," Maxine said crisply.
"Your report, Agent four sixteen dash three forty-two. Name?" the deep voice said from the other end of the line.
"Trent, Maxine."
"Proceed, Agent Trent," the deep voice said.
SIX
THE ROOM did not exist. The building was on Park Avenue in the upper Sixties, a modern office complex of steel and glass where giants of industry sat in their suites and conducted the business of the nation. In this suite, there were six rooms, only five visible, only five listed on the floor plan. The sixth room did not exist.
Windowless, without doors, soundproof, and ventilated only by a secret, totally impregnable, air-conditioning system, the room was the silent home of a machine. A complex of metal and wheels and flashing lights—The Ultimate
Computer, the heart of Thrush. One of the homes of the machine, it remained in no single place for long.
Now, in the room with the machine, in a silence of a tomb, three men sat waiting. Soon a fourth man appeared as if by magic through the wall. This fourth man walked to an empty seat.
"Trent reports Napoleon Solo escaped her," the man said. "Our men sent after Illya Kuryakin have also failed. Both Solo and Kuryakin were seen meeting at the BOAC booth at Idlewild."
"They are not going overseas," the man at the head of the table said. This man was a well-known businessman, and the suite of offices nestled around the hidden room was his. He was also "C" of the Council of Thrush.
"No," a tall, gaunt man said. "They are not going overseas. What does the computer say?"
The fourth man, the one who had entered last, and who was Council Member C's assistant, spoke deferentially to the tall, gaunt man.