"Bodies - not body," the Negro put in. "We cannot tolerate disloyalty." He walked across the room to the girl. "You could have seriously jeopardized our plans by helping this man," he said with cold malice. "Now you will have to pay for your foolishness with your life." He raised his arm and slapped her repeatedly, forehanded and backhanded, across the face. The marks of his fingers stood out lividly against the girl's pallor as a thread of blood crawled slowly down her chin from one corner of her mouth.
"All right, Hernando, that's enough," Wassermann said. "No, Mr. Solo - I wouldn't. I really wouldn't... Greerson, you'd better calm Mr. Solo down before we take him back to his cell with his fellow conspirator to await, the night, eh?"
"Okay," the man called Greerson said. He handed his gun to Wassermann and shambled forwards across the room, his baggy suit flapping on his bony frame. "Only thing is," he said as he approached the agent, "my hands, are kinda delicate and I hate to bruise them. You know?"
Solo automatically raised his arms to defend himself as Greerson came near. But the thin man took him by surprise. Moving like lightning, his left hand reached out and grasped Solo's shoulder, spinning him deftly around so that he was facing the wall. Then, almost in the same movement, the gunman's other fist looped in and buried itself in Solo's kidney.
The agent's fingers scrabbled at the concrete wall as he sank to the ground, a strangled cry forcing itself from his lips. Dimly through waves of nausea he heard the girl cry out - though whether in pain or in horror at what was happening to him he did not know.
Behind him, Greerson measured his distance carefully, then drew back his foot...
Chapter 10
"Don't Call Us - We'll Call You!..."
AS GREERSON RAISED his foot in the fortress below the artificial lake, Illya Kuryakin turned the key to cut the motor of the Volkswagen fourteen hundred yards away on the other side of the rocky spur separating the reservoir from the adjoining valley.
Mist clung to the lower branches of the trees like streamers of chiffon, blanketed the hollows in the ground, and wreathed in frightening shapes across the road. The estancia was invisible in the before-dawn darkness as he coasted the car in under some overhanging evergreens opposite the gates. Beside him, the greyhound profile of Coralie Simone was pale and tense in the dim illumination of the single dashboard light.
"Somewhere in that mountain," Illya said, "there is a kind of fortress where all those trucks full of material go. It must lie at the end of the tunnel - though whether it is on this side of the lake or beyond it we can't tell. Since we couldn't possibly identify the place from above - even if the guards allowed us enough time on the shores of the lake to try - we'll just have to force our way in through the tunnel. Because somewhere in there, dead or alive, is Napoleon Solo... It'll be dawn in about a half hour: it seems to me that now is as good a time as any to try. Are you game?"
"So far as this phase of the operation is concerned," the girl said, "you are the boss. If you say go, we go."
"Fine. Well, the first thing to do is to spy out the land. Just hold on a moment while I fix the equipment, will you?"
Kuryakin hauled an attaché case over from the car's back seat and took out what looked like a heavy flashlight with a hooded lens. He held the device out of the VW's window and pressed the switch. There was no result at all - until he and the girl looked through a pair of viewfinders resembling truncated field glasses. Then the darkened and misty topography sprang to life in a manner as quick as it was impressive. In the powerful infrared beam cast by the flashlight, the special lenses showed up trees, grasses, fences, gateposts and buildings as vividly and dramatically as though they had been the snow scene they resembled.
"Oh, it's beautiful," the girl cried. "It looks just like full moon - only much brighter!"
Illya's face remained impassive. "Seems quiet enough,' he said. "I guess we'd better get moving while it's still dark Out there. Unless we can penetrate the tunnel mouth before dawn, we might as well go home."
While the girl held the infrared lamp out of the passenger window, Kuryakin strapped the lenses over his eyes and got out of the car. He crossed the road and busied himself with the latch of the wire gates blocking the entry to the estancia. In the unearthly light visible to him through his glasses, it took him less than thirty seconds to pick the lock. There seemed to be no alarm system connected with it. The gate was used so much that they probably considered the alarms were best left further inside the Thrush enclave.
When he had swung the gates open, he ran lightly back across the road and released the handbrake of the car.
"Here, take one of these guns," he said crisply to the girl, rummaging again in the attaché case. "Basically, as you see, they're long-barreled .32 automatics - too big for the pocket but splendid for using in a car. The great thing about them, however, is the accessory department: look, you can screw on, separately or together, a shoulder stock, a barrel extension with silencer that gives them greater accuracy, a butt extension that means you can use them two-handed from the hip, and an infrared viewfinder. That means you can see the light thrown by this flashlight for aiming - but you don't have to bother about wearing special glasses."
"I can't wait!" Coralie exclaimed, taking the spidery-looking weapon gingerly and examining it carefully.
"I'm serious," Kuryakin said. "You may have to use it if you're with me... In the meantime: let's go!"
Standing outside the open driver's door with one hand on the wheel, he began to push. Slowly the car began to move, gathering momentum as it left the grassy shoulder and rolled across the highway, moving still faster as the tires crunched on gravel and it passed the gateposts, accelerating at last as the wheels ran down the gentle I slope leading towards the screen of bushes and the tunnel mouth. As soon as the vehicle had enough momentum, Illya swung into the seat and steered from the inside, his eyes probing the space behind every bush in the weird illumination provided by the infrared lamp and the glasses.
The Volkswagen, without a light showing and with a dead motor, sped down the incline in the darkness, twisting past bushes and obstructions with unerring aim.
The dregs of the night hung heaviest in the wooded hollow just before the entrance to the tunnel. Taking her eye away for a moment from the infrared light, the girl was astonished to see how stygian the blackness was. Very dimly, now, she could make out the darker blur that was the cliff face, the indistinct opening of the tunnel mouth. From here, too, she could faintly make out the double row of low-power ceiling bulbs that marked the course of the subterranean passage curving away into the heart of the hill.
Kuryakin's plan was to switch on the ignition, put the car in gear and then let in the clutch to start the engine once they were inside the tunnel. He only needed the surprise brought by silence to get past any guards and keep the car rolling. From there on, he intended to roar through the tunnel as fast as he could, trusting again to that element of surprise to enable him to get through and establish a position on the far side before any of the defenders had realized what was happening.