Wishing he hadn’t cut the Great White Hunter off quite so quickly, Napoleon smiled up at Gambol. “Do you treat all of your clients this way? Or is this a special, today only?” One of Gambol’s burly assistants stepped forward. The pistol in his hand slammed down. Napoleon managed to roll with the blow. Faking unconsciousness, he slumped forward. The second blow knocked him into darkness. He didn’t even feel the third.
“One of you get his communicator and gun, and help me get him into the car. Porpoise wants to ask him a few questions.” Gambol tied Napoleon’s wrists with some shipping twine. Another of his assistants picked Solo up and carried him like a sleeping baby.
“You two check out front-Solo doesn’t travel alone. Kuryakin is probably out there waiting for him. Get him-dead will do; Porpoise doesn’t need to question them both.”
Napoleon’s inert form was bundled into a service elevator. He was half dragged into the alley behind Gambol’s and dumped into the rear of the car. Gambol tossed a trench coat over the body and prepared to drive away.
“Help Karl and Frank with Kuryakin, then the three of you report in to Arnold.” He put the car into drive and headed toward the Battery Tunnel and Coney Island.
Illya looked up from the puzzle in time to see the two heavies come out of the brokerage towards the alley. He rolled into the driver’s seat, thumbing his communicator alive.
“Open Channel D, please. This is Kuryakin, and nothing pleasant is coming across the street.”
The two thugs ran at him, and one swung the hot dog stand around, blocking the exit. Illya gunned the engine and slammed into reverse. The car screamed as Illya, foot to the floor, backed down the one-way alley. He sent a row of trash cans careening and slewed dangerously close to a solid brick wall. Three stars blossomed on the windshield as shots echoed down the alley.
Still backing, Illya spun the wheel and backed into the cross traffic in the next street. Cars screeched to a halt and climbed the sidewalks to get out of his way. The communicator at his side spoke.
“Channel D is open. Come in, please.”
Illya swung the car into the curb facing into the oncoming cars. Traffic doubtfully started to pass him. The two Thrushes
running blindly, erupted from the-alley mouth. Illya put the car into low and floored it again, scattering the thugs before him.
He snapped the wheel over, skipped the curb and roared down the sidewalk. Spotting an opening, he cut across the oncoming lanes, bouncing high off the curb, and joined the traffic flow in his own direction.
“Channel D is open; come in, please!”
“Kuryakin reporting. I’ve just had a brush with Thrush. I suspect that Napoleon has been taken. Hopefully the tracer is still active. What now?”
“Mr. Kuryakin,” the dry voice of his section chief answered. “Communications reports that the two tracers are separating rapidly. There is no doubt that Thrush has Mr. Solo. But just on the off chance that he and his tracer have been separated I suggest that you visit Mr. Gambol and his Associates yourself. After that, if you haven’t found Mr. Solo, you can follow up the tracer.”
Illya turned off the communicator and settled down to drive. What with one-way streets, stalled vegetable trucks, and pedestrians who never noticed automobiles, he’d be lucky to get back to Gambols before Napoleon died of old age.
Chapter 4
“Somebody up there likes spies.”
Napoleon woke in darkness. I’ve got a thirst that’s intense, he thought, and the general sense that I haven t been sleeping in clover. Engine noise and the smell of rubber and burning oil told him he was in a car. A sudden acceleration rocked him back. He tried to raise up from the floor, but the trenchcoat, bunched at his shoulder, held him down.
The vagaries of traffic and Gambol’s nervous driving bounced him against the driver’s seat and back onto the driveshaft. His hands, bound behind him, were numb, and his shoulders ached. He finally managed to wrench himself around, throwing the stifling coat from his face.
Lights from outside flashed across him. His head hurt, and he still could have used a full night’s sleep. The motion of the car forced him back down, and raised a tide of nausea in his middle.
I wonder how the Great White Hunter is doing, now that Big Tyge has caught the stalking goat. He worked his legs free of the coat, leaving it over them, and kept his eyes shut .while he forced air deep into his lungs. Slowly his head cleared and the world stopped tasting bad; he began to feel a bit more human.
The car slowed to a stop, the wheels sounding as if they were eating into sand. Napoleon opened his eyes, noting that the most serious discomfort he felt was the itching of dried blood on his cheek. The front door of the car slammed and the back door at his feet yawned open. Gambol stooped to pull his prisoner from the car, and Napoleon went into action.
He twisted, whipping his knees up to his chest and then straight out again, springing from his shoulderblades up into where he knew Gambol would be. One foot caught the little Thrush in the glasses, the other in his sternum, and he sprawled back on the beach. Lungs empty of air and face bloodied, he sat down hard and then collapsed completely.
Napoleon let the kick flow into a gymnast’s roll that flung him out of the car and across the moaning broker. He came up awkwardly, spitting sand and trying to balance himself with both hands behind him. Three men in Thrush uniforms were racing up the beach from an amusement pier, the lights from the car silhouetting him neatly for them.
He darted into the shadows under the boardwalk, and took a cement stairwell in a bound. His feet drummed loudly on asphalt as he tried desperately for speed, but the three Thrushes gained. Gasping and weaving, he looked for any haven.
An arcade, closed and bolted, offered a jumble of aisles and shadows. Well into darkness he stopped, pulled up tight. Pursuit came charging, but he forced himself to breathe slowly, silently, knowing he couldn’t keep running without air. Oxygen starvation played mod light patterns on his eyes, but he swallowed every urge to gasp.
One Thrush thundered past the arcade, the other two came on more Slowly. Since his footsteps no longer echoed down the deserted boardwalk, they knew he had to be hidden, and it was only a matter of time before they flushed him. His breathing became even and his vision cleared, making him ready for the next effort. A possibility of escape still existed.
He edged cagily out of the aisle, and spotted a big thug who had gone on ahead. Keeping hidden as much as possible, he waited until the other two could be pegged, and he patiently selected the instant when none of the three was looking directly at him. He darted across the boardwalk and rolled over the railing, taking it on his belly and hoping the landing would be at least a little bit easy. The drop knocked the wind out of him, but he managed to scramble back under the pilings before his hunters raced to the edge.
The pilings were crossed and recrossed with a random collection of planks and boards, nailed up in an idiot’s design. He wedged himself between them, trying to get as far under their cover as possible.
“He’s down on the beach again. Go on down. We’ll cut back. He can’t get far past us if we’re careful.” They were almost over his head when they separated, their footfalls echoing loudly. The big man sounded twice as heavy as the other two together.
Napoleon worked back past the pilings. He gasped what little air he could get into his lungs, fighting down a reaction to the fetid smell of oil and old fish. Slime and splinters from the posts and boards worked their way through his clothing and into his skin. The itching on his face became unbearable, only because he couldn’t scratch with his hands tied.