He scooped up a gun from the fallen sentry nearest him. The tattoo of gunfire from the yard and from positions above him, sent him scrambling through a smashed window.
With a savage laugh, he looked about, almost as if surprised to find himself back in the house.
The intercom crackled. "Kuryakin! He's in the east wing sun room! Converge there at once!" Maunchaun's voice lashed at Illya in triumph.
Illya jerked the gun up. He shot the eye of the watching camera and then put a round into the intercom. It was almost––but not quite–– as satisfactory as blasting the doctor himself.
He heard steps racing toward him along the corridors. He ran across the room, stepped through the draperies.
He shoved open one half of the casement window, let himself through.
The room was loud with people. Illya pressed through the window, but a burst of gunfire from the yard drove him back. From within the room, guns crackled. Glass smashed around him and the draperies shivered under the impact of bullets.
Illya sprang out to the soft ground outside the window. He lost his balance for a moment and lost time setting himself. They continued firing down at him, keeping him in close to the projecting stones of the walls.
As he turned, he saw Albert leaning out of the window, rifle upraised like a club. For one second, Illya stared up at him. He thought in agony, "Oh, no, not my head!"
As Albert brought the gun-butt down, Illya fired upward. The bullet slashed across Albert's cheek, driving him back a little.
Illya dropped his gun, caught at the rifle in Albert's hands. Putting his feet against the stone foundation, he lunged backward, drawing Albert through the window upon him.
This effectively stopped the gun fire.
Illya wrenched the gun from Albert's hands. He tossed it over his head. Albert's fist sank into Illya's stomach, the breath driven from him.
For a moment, Illya simply hung on while earth, sky, chateau and lawn switched places. He felt the battering of Albert's fists. He gripped Albert's belt in both hands and levered him upward. Then he shoved forward, driving Albert against the huge stones of the chateau.
Albert cried out, going limp. When Illya released him, the big Moor slid limply down the stones, crumpling to the ground.
Illya looked about wildly for one of the guns, but when his head came up, he saw Marie a few feet from him. She stood in the window, something—a dart gun—in her mouth! He shook his head at her, tried to fall away.
But then something stung him in the neck, with the savagery of a wasp, but he knew it was not a wasp. Instinctively, his hand clapped at his neck. But it never rose that high. He felt as if his legs melted off at the knees below him. He was conscious of being nauseated, sick at his stomach, and then he was diving from an incredible distance down toward where Albert lay crumpled on the ground beside the house. He did not re member making it.
FIVE
AT ELEVEN that morning, Napoleon Solo, shaven, refreshed, wearing a faultless gray suit, rearmed, entered the Paris banking district.
Helie strolled into the Rothschild Building, went up in one of the elevators to the Caillou Interests suite.
He entered the reception room of the Caillou offices, and stopped, eyes widening, stunned.
Yvonne sat at her desk, as if this day were like any other day at Caillou, International.
He was staggered to see her here. He had last seen her when she was taken away, crying last night from the dungeon. Looking at her, in a smart dress, an immaculate coiffure, you could not believe that last night had happened to her, outside a nightmare.
She looked up at him as if she had never seen him before.
"Yes, sir? May I serve you?" she said to him in French.
Solo approached her desk, studying her. "Yvonne, are you all right?"
"Of course, M'sieur. Why should I not be all right?"
He flinched, seeing that she was all right only in her brain-washed mind. She was moving in a drug-induced state of euphoria.
Her pupils were like pin-points. Her smile was too loose, and her eyes barely focused.
"What did you wish, sir?" she asked again.
"I want to see Monsieur Caillou," Solo said.
"Have you an appointment? What is your name? I'll announce you."
"I'd rather you didn't do that," he said. He caught her hand as she reached toward the intercom switch. "Why don't we just walk in on him, Yvonne?"
"We couldn't do that, sir." Her tone remained bright and warm—and mindless.
She was like a robot.
He lifted her from the chair, hand clasping her wrist.
"You're hurting me, sir," she said in that smiling, empty voice.
He saw there was no sense trying to reason with her. She had no memory of him, none of having been prisoner in the dungeon.
He simply smiled back at her, marched her across the inner office to the door marked M. Caillou, Private.
He did not knock. The false Caillou swung around as Solo closed the door behind him and Yvonne.
Caillou leaped toward the phone. But Solo said, "Don't do it, fellow." He showed him the U.N.C.L.E. .38 Special.
Caillou winced, straightened. "What do you want?"
"We'll start with the easy questions," Solo said. "Who are you?"
"Why, he's Monsieur Lester Caillou," Yvonne said, as if a tape had been activated inside her by the question.
He sighed, seeing that Yvonne had been programmed by Dr. Maunchaun to recognize this man as the real Caillou under every condition. He ignored her.
He tilted the gun. "I'm waiting, fellow. I tell you this. If I kill you now, Maunchaun's little plan will fall apart. I can end it at any moment, simply by removing you. You better think about that. No matter what they promised you, you won't collect it with bullets in you."
The false Caillou sank into a chair behind his desk. "My name is Jacques DuMont. I am nobody. I was a race-track gambler from Marseilles. I was forced into this. It is not from choice I do it. You will gain nothing by killing me."
"Unfortunately, you're wrong. Still, I hope I don't have to."
DuMont shivered. His face revealed his sickness. "What do you want of me?"
"Quite a bit, I'm afraid. We'll begin by having you call for your car. You are to tell your chauffeur to meet you at the building entrance. But if you say one word more than this, it will be your last."
He held the gun near DuMont's face while the impostor made the call to the building garage. He re placed the phone, his hand shaking.
"Let's go."
DuMont got his hat.
Solo said, "I warn you. I have filed the firing mechanism of my gun so that even anything that disturbs me will cause it to fire. Even if I am killed, you also are dead. You'd better concentrate on keeping me alive."
They went through the outer offices. DuMont spoke to no one, looked neither left nor right. Yvonne accompanied them.
They entered one of the elevators, descended to the street. At the door, Solo checked, seeing the Rolls Royce in the loading area. He also saw the men lounging along the building, aware that they were THRUSH gunmen.
"You will cross the walk, get in the car," Solo told DuMont and Yvonne. "Walk naturally. Remember that my gun is fixed on you. You lose, no matter what happens."