“What?” Kuryakin spun on his heel.
“She was pulling it over her head. Some kind of mechanism. It blew to bits, along with everything else. It was like a Chinese firecracker, then there was this blast of air — the vacuum. It was all over before I could move.”
Illya straightened. “Who sold her the lei?”
Solo frowned, remembering. “No one sold it to her. It was thrown over her head. A lot of laughter from a well-wisher. I heard that much.”
“Who put it over her head?”
Solo removed a cigarette lighter from his pocket, flicked it so the fire flared.
He extended the lighter to Illya. “She’s on here, whoever it was. The moment I heard that well-wishing, no-charge bit, I lit a cigarette and snapped her picture. You might want to print them; you’re on the roll, in all your bellhop glory.”
Illya nodded, took three small black plastic cups from Solo’s attaché bag. He tore open foil sacks of powder developer and setting chemical, added water from the bathroom tap in the three cups.
He broke open the cigarette-lighter camera and inserted the protected film roll into the first cup. The protective skin over the film dissolved on contact with the liquid.
Working, Illya spoke over his shoulder, “What did you learn from her?”
Solo shook his head. “Nothing. She was scared.”
“We already knew that.”
“I tried to get her to relax.”
“Three months,” Illya said. “Shot.”
“Never mind beating me over the head with it.”
“I’m not blaming you.”
“Maybe I’m blaming myself.”
“She was a spy. She was trying to quit Thrush. She must have known better. Why should she think she could make it?”
“I promised her.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“Whoever planned to kill her had it arranged well in advance—”
“That’s for sure. No one knew she was meeting you here except the two of us, Waverly, and the man from the President’s staff.”
“Somebody knew it.”
Solo prowled the room, turning this over in his mind. Kuryakin continued working and none of what he must have been thinking showed in his flat, impassive face.
“Somebody knew where Ursula was going to be, and where, when and how to bypass her fears, her instinct for preservation, her caution — and mine!” Solo spread his hands. “It takes its own kind of intellect to come up with a scheme so simple, and so foolproof.”
Abruptly Solo stopped talking and strode across the room to the baggage rack where the single beige Samsonite weekender bag had rested since the bellhop placed it there when he came into this room with Ursula. The clatter of their relaxed voices still clamored in his brain.
He reached for the bag and withdrew his hands at the precise instant Illya spoke warningly from the bathroom door: “Watch it!”
They stared at each other and Solo gave Illya a somber caricature of a smile.
“You’re all systems go again,” Kuryakin assured him with a faint grin.
Solo strode to his attaché case, returned with a handheld explosive detector. He ran it across the case, along its sides. Gently he turned the weekender over and repeated the process without getting a reaction from the minute needle.
He tossed the detector to Illya, who returned it casually to the attaché case.
Solo released the catches and opened the case. He stared into it, not speaking. After a moment he was aware of Illya beside him, as speechless.
Inside the suitcase were two objects; otherwise it was bare. There was a letter addressed to Ursula Neefirth, King’s Hotel, Nassau, Bahamas. There was no return address, but the cancellation showed San Francisco, 2 P.M., July 12. Beside the letter, carefully coiled, was a silver whip that glittered when it caught the errant rays of the sun.
Solo opened the envelope, removed the single sheet of cheap typing paper. He unfolded it and held it so that both he and Illya could scan it.
“Meaningless,” Illya said.
“If it’s a code, it’s their own private make,” Solo said.
“The whip?” Illya said. “Does this register?”
Solo frowned, aware of the tail-end of a thought flashing through the deep crannies of his mind, darting, but landing nowhere. There was a meaning to the whip, something that had been revealed to them in the briefing on Ursula Baynes-Neefirth at the New York headquarters of U.N.C.L.E.
“It’ll come to me,” he said coldly. “It’s got to.”
Illya glanced at his watch. “Meantime, it’s been thirty minutes up here.”
“All right.”
Solo loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt and, in the same downward movement, unbuckled his belt, unzippered his trousers and stepped out of them.
At the same time, Illya was removing his bellhop’s uniform. They exchanged clothing with maximum speed and efficiency.
Illya checked his watch again. “When you’ve been out of here for five minutes, I’ll call the police and notify the desk — before I walk out…And don’t forget to use the service elevator, will you?”
Solo donned the bellhop uniform. With the trousers on, he crossed the room, returning from the bathroom with the strip of developed film. Drying it beneath the light for a moment, he held the strip under a magnifying glass, scanning along it.
“There she is,” he said. “Looks like a Chinese doll, doesn’t she? A real little death doll.”
II
Even in the flesh, the flower girl looked like a doll.
Solo found her in the terminal building at the Honolulu Airport.
He moved through the crowds, thinking how easy it had been. The only delay had been in changing from the bellhop uniform into jacket and slacks in the men’s room at Kapiolani Park. Carrying his attaché case, he had returned to his rented Chevy and crossed town, going directly out to the airfield.
The look of her was the sharpest image in his mind.
And suddenly he had seen her, exactly as if she had stepped from the snapshot.
He paused a moment, and then strode toward her. There were other girls around her, all colorfully dressed in muumuus or draped in holukus, brightly printed with flowers. But the Chinese girl stood out from them as if she were alone.
She wasn’t quite five feet tall but her figure and everything else about her was perfect: the delicate China skin, the black hair worn straight, starched and ironed almost to her shoulders. She looked as though if you turned a key in her back she’d say, “mama” or “daddy”.
He sidled through laughing groups, delightfully working his eyes back and forth over her, finding her more elegant than the gay strings of leis on her arm.
And then he remembered the lei she’d thrown over Ursula’s head, and some of the beauty of her faded.
The impact of his unwavering gaze somehow communicated itself to the Chinese doll.
Solo saw her head jerk up, her almond eyes, black and frightened suddenly, recognizing him. Fear seeped down from her eyes and her lips parted.
She shook her head.
Solo walked faster.
She turned, looking around like a small, trapped animal. Then she brought her gaze back to Solo’s face.
She looked ill. She reached out futilely toward the girl nearest her, then changed her mind and did not speak to her after all. Instead, she dropped the leis from her arm, pushed between the girls in front of her and ran toward the exits.
The girls turned, chattering like mynah birds, calling after her, some of them laughing.
Solo changed his course, tacking hard right toward the doors and the street.
“Look where you’re going, young man!”
A stout woman had caught his arm and was shaking it with vigorous disapproval.