"Venez avec moi, monsieur. I will discover if M. Lafarge is free to receive you. One moment."
She went before him to a desk, touched an intercom button and spoke in a rapid undertone. Beyond the wall, in his luxurious paneled office, Managing-Director Louis Lafarge hushed his very important guest with an apologetic palm and attended to the call. Nodding, he made a quick decision, then turned again to his guest.
"A thousand pardons, monsieur, but you will realize that business is business. If you will please retreat into the next room I will dispose of this matter very quickly and then we can talk more." The covering door had barely closed when a discreet tap at the outer door announced the receptionist.
She entered one pace, stood aside, and announced, "Mr. Boris Krasnin, from Tashkent, M. Lafarge."
"Bonjour, monsieur!" Kuryakin inclined his head, managed to convey the impression of a heel click without actually doing it, and advanced over the carpet. "I believe you are expecting me?"
"Of course!" Lafarge beamed and made gestures, but his alert attention missed nothing of his visitor's appearance, or his faultless accent. "I have your dossier right here. Yvette! You will request Gerda to come to me, at once, please! Now, M. Krasnin. A seat? You would care for a cigarette, no? An aperitif, then? It is good!" He produced a bottle and poured busily while making conversation. "You will pardon if I seem naive, but it is a strange thing to me that your people should be interested in our kind of work. After all, the Soviet Union has a great name for medicine and surgery, and the many inventions of all kinds. Yet you wish to do business with us?"
"It is not so strange. Tashkent may be just a name to you, monsieur, but think. That area is now Uzbekistan, a preferred name in the new regime, but it was once Bokhara, famous for arts, beauty, the bourgeois things. The spirit is still there, but driven underground. It is not healthy, nowadays, to want to be beautiful, or different. Yet people want it, and where there is a demand, there will be a supply."
"Quite so!" Lafarge nodded agreement. "That is one rule which does not change." He looked up as a tap on the door heralded an interruption. With a scowl he called out, "Entrez!"
The door opened to admit a lean, dark-haired woman whose face was set in a severe and suspicious expression. With no more than a glance at Lafarge, she advanced to where Kuryakin sat, brought her left hand from behind her back to thrust it in front of him, fist clenched.
"Kak eto nazivayetsya po rooski?" she demanded, and opened her hand to reveal a small gilt and red enameled tube.
"Pomada dlya goob," he sneered. "Are you trying to trick me, madam? Or you, monsieur?" He turned to spear Lafarge with an icy blue gaze. "This was so obviously prepared, to have this stupid woman brought here, and for her to ask me to give the Russian name for a lipstick. What are you trying to prove?"
Lafarge spread his hands and shoulders in an eloquent shrug. "It was no more than a precaution, M. Krasnin. I have to be sure. Identities and names are so easy to fake. The name Krasnin means nothing to me."
"Names seldom mean anything to anyone. In England, once, I knew a girl called Cecilia Duff, if you can believe that. It was her real name. So what have you proved?"
"Enough." Lafarge was humble. "You must realize that in this business one has to be careful. There are secret formulae and techniques. And spies. And you do not look like a surgeon, or a technician."
"What do I look like, a Cossack?" Kuryakin did not say Cossack, but used an idiomatic equivalent that had such shocking associations that Gerda, who knew it, sucked in her breath in outrage. He swung his sword-like stare on her again.
"Does that shock you, polyak?"
Gerda cringed. In addition to her outrage, to be called Polish was too much, especially as she was and had worked hard to conceal the fact.
"I am not a Pole!" she denied shrilly.
"Then you must learn not to neigh like one. Have you any more little tricks to perform?"
She glared at him, compressed her thin lips, ducked her head at Lafarge, then scuttled out, shutting the door after her. The managing-director of St. Denis Surgery-Cosmetique made haste to repair the damage in relations.
"Please banish the whole unfortunate incident from your mind, my dear M. Krasnin. It was terribly gauche. I apologize. Now, which particular field of cosmetic surgery are you interested in?"
They talked generalities for a time, but Kuryakin was still on his guard. Lafarge was no fool. It was instructive to see how his expression tightened at the mention of skull and head surgery.
"I cannot speak on that section, M. Krasnin. Madame la Comtesse is the expert on that. No doubt you will have the opportunity to speak to her in person sometime soon. Now, perhaps you would like to see round the laboratories and surgeries? Good!" He touched an intercom and spoke briefly, then rose. "Yvette will show you the way. Our chief surgeon awaits you. I think you will be impressed, M. Krasnin."
With the visitor departed, Lafarge settled back in his seat to think. Illegal surgery is not the most active market in the world. A pipeline from Russia could easily bring in a flow of patients. Profits. Madame la Comtesse would be pleased! M. Lafarge was beginning to smile to himself as his banished guest came from the far room and stood staring down at him.
"You know who that character was you just entertained?"
"Of course. M. Boris Krasnin, of Tashkent—" Lafarge let the words die into uneasy silence at his very important visitor's headshake. "No?"
"Definitely not, my friend. That repulsive and scruffy character was none other than Illya Kuryakin. An U.N.C.L.E. agent. One of their best."
"You are sure of this?"
"Absolutely positive."
Lafarge seemed to shrink. "An U.N.C.L.E. agent, here? What could he want? What can they suspect? There will be a raid!"
"Take it easy, now, Louis. He's on his own, a loner. I know his ways very well. When you're working a charade like that you have to do it alone, to cut down the chances of a slipup. As for what he's after, that doesn't matter much, not now."
"But it does! It matters a great deal!" Lafarge grew excited. "We do not want trouble, not that kind. We avoid publicity, always. He must be stopped. Eliminated!" A he reached for his intercom once more.
"Hold it right there! You say you don't want publicity, and I can understand that, but if you send some of your boys to tangle with him you'll get publicity that will turn your hair white overnight. He doesn't stop easy. I know him that well. He is very good—or very bad—depending on your point of view."
"Then what shall I do? I do not want U.N.C.L.E. agents here!"
"Don't worry about a thing. You have the address of his hotel? All right, just treat him nice and let him go back there. I'll take charge from that point. You just leave it all to me. I can handle him!" And Napoleon Solo grinned evilly down at Lafarge. "Oh yes." he said confidently, "I know his ways. I can handle him!"