“Come, come, Miss Uh—” Waverly said impatiently. “Get on with it. Believe me, we know what Thrush is.”
“Yes, Mr. Waverly.” The voice continued, unruffled, as unperturbed as a delayed recording. “Agent Kuryakin managed, by appearing to drug his own drink, to induce subject to intake ten milligrams of neuroquixonal. Neuroquixonal is a drug which causes a sweat-gland and epidermal reaction which—”
“All right! All right!” Waverly said. “You may have time for all of the basics, but we do not. If that’s all, thank you — and out.”
The briefing screen darkened and for a moment the two men sat, mulling over what they had seen and heard.
Solo said, “Acapulco for me?”
Waverly’s head came up. “I thought your report stated you were returning here for additional information on the slain Miss — what’s her name, the Thrush spy.”
“Yes. That’s right. Illya and I found only a meaningless letter — and our code people confirm that it is no known code — and a silver whip. I recalled that Ursula had been part of a night club act with another young woman in which the silver whip was a part of the important props—”
“I saw the act,” Waverly said with a faint smile. “Well. Quite educational. Krafft-Ebbing and the Marquis de Sade could have learned.”
“I wanted to see those briefing pictures again,” Solo said. “Until Illya turned up this bit on Samuel Su Yan, the whip and the former partner seemed my only link with Ursula and what she became — as a spy for Thrush.”
Waverly pressed a button, gave an order, and in less than a minute, a picture obviously some years old was flashed on the screen. The woman’s voice said, “This is the last night-club act of Ursula Baynes and her partner Candy Kane — whose real name was Esther Kappmyer. Our notes show that Miss Baynes stated she hoped to refine this act, find a new partner and return to show business.”
A small muscle worked in Solo’s tautened jaw. He thought: this was Ursula’s dream, her hope for a future that was now forever denied to her. She’d brought along that whip, hoping that Solo and the United Network could somehow protect her from her former bosses at Thrush. She had been alive and lovely and filled with plans for a new beginning.
Solo said, “What I need, Miss McNab, is the name and present whereabouts of Ursula Baynes’ former partner Candy Kane, nee Esther Kappmyer. Do you have that?”
The unseen voice from the stereo speakers said, softly, “Of course we do, Mr. Solo.”
II
Illya Kuryakin lounged in the back seat of an Acapulco taxi, a vintage Dodge that limped asthmatically through the sun-struck streets, dodging the bicycles that were everywhere like fleas in the hairs of a dog. The driver batted continually at the horn, never paused at an intersection, and miraculously pulled into the curb before the Acapulco International Hotel.
He reached back and swung the door open. “We are arrive, señor.”
Illya smiled at him. “Remind me, next time, to walk.”
“A long walk, señor. Muy caliente. In the sun — very hot.”
The resort town lay prostrate in the sun before Illya, a matter of deep browns and Mexican reds, of stout Gringos in shorts and potbellied shirts and grass sandals. The American females on the prowl and the young Mexicans stalking the streets like unsubtle beasts of prey: they’d get together, and they would deserve each other.
Illya glanced toward the blue waters below him, fair and unreal, the palms rustling like whispering castanets. Except for the people, it was a lovely place, Illya decided as he entered the hotel lobby.
The clerk told him his room was waiting for him, reserved, and surely to his liking. “Overlooking the beach.” Illya could display no enthusiasm — he was becoming disenchanted with vacation places where death lurked on expense accounts submitted to Thrush, and yet paid in the end by the unsuspecting and the unwary.
He drew a three-by-five enlargement of the close-up he had made of Sam Su Yan in Honolulu. “I’m looking for this man — a friend of mine,” he told the clerk. “I was told he was registered here.”
“Ah, si, señor.” The clerk smiled. “Señor Samuel Causey—”
“If you say so.”
“—in room 421. Would you like me to ring him and announce you?”‘
“I’d like to astonish him,” Illya said, purposely using the imprecise word.
“Of course.”
Illya turned and walked toward the barred cage of the bronzed elevator. Some transient flicker in the clerk’s face suggested that he would call and announce him anyway. Obviously Sam paid well to avoid astonishments.
Sam awaited him at Room 421, standing in the doorway, a drink in his hand.
Sam gave him a brief nod and a false suggestion of a smile. “I could have killed you as you stepped off the elevator. I’d like you to remember this.”
“You would have killed me in Oahu, if your assassins could have worked it,” Illya replied with a matching tug of smile muscles about his mouth.
“One should never assign tasks,” Sam said with a slight shrug of knobby shoulders. He wore gray slacks, a checked shirt, hand-tooled boots, looking more like a Texan than ever — one with a sense of humor that dictated a Eurasian mask. “No matter how well-trained his minions.”
“If you want a thing done well; do it yourself,” Illya quoted. “That’s why I’m here. Would you care to compliment me on my tracking you across almost three thousand miles of ocean?”
Sam bowed, motioning Illya past him into the room, which was furnished in the Gringo decorator’s notion of authentic Aztec-Mexican. Sam closed the door and turned. “I find in you a certain native cleverness — as opposed to true intellect, of course.”
“Still, I am here, and so are you.”
“True. But I wanted you here.”
“You made this decision after your men failed to deter me in Honolulu?”
Sam nodded. “At that moment. I was defaming you at the time for the stupid trick you engineered with the Scotch.”
Illya almost smiled. “The neuroquixonal. Interesting, isn’t it? The way it works on the sweat glands and the epidermis so the subject leaves a clear trail of yellow stains behind him wherever he goes, whatever he touches with any part of his skin. It was developed by our chemists, and its lasting power remains up to a week — and, you’ll be pleased to hear, there are almost no side effects.”
“I was pleased to leave you a trail visible to your infrared lamps. I wanted you led to me when our hirelings were unable to stop you. I dislike having to say this so bluntly, but I mean to have you stopped. Permanently.”
“I’ve never suspected your intentions were any less from the moment we met.” Illya shrugged. “I only fail to see why you consider me worthy of so much of your attention.”
Sam nodded toward the portable bar. “Pour yourself a drink. From any bottle. I assure you, my plans for you do not include the use of some chemist’s trick with no side effects.”
Illya poured himself a drink. Sam strolled across the room, stood near the balcony watching him.
He said, “In my life there have been many things I have done that I viewed myself with displeasure. I have not always approved of every action circumstances have forced upon me. Oh, but this is not true here and now with you. I tell you. I feel invigorated and renewed at having you here like this. Your Russian smugness. Your smirk of triumph. You have outwitted three of my agents and the Honolulu police—”
“You’ll surely grant me that it was a bit more than child’s play — pinched between the forces of an ambitious police lieutenant and three assassins trained to kill on signal like canines? A helicopter picking me off the beach at Waikiki? Why shouldn’t I be permitted some faint satisfaction of accomplishment? What does it take to impress you, Sam?”