There in the doorway, staring uncertainly around him, was the man they were supposed to meet – inconspicuously.
"Let's go get him," said Illya. "Everything is waiting for the key word locked up in that scrambled head."
"Just walk right out there and get him? I thought you didn't want to be noticed?"
"We'll stay close to the wall. In the middle of World War Three, who's going to notice?" The Russian started towards the low railing along the forestage, but even before he could vault that barrier, Harry's presence registered on the fringes of the main riot, and their mission became one of rescue.
The night club was a shambles. Only one table was still upright and unbroken, and it had been swept clear when the tablecloth had been ripped off to serve as a makeshift sling for hurling ashtrays at the overhead lights.
Hewett had sprung into the fray armed as before, and nearly a dozen floored figures lay as testimony to his speed and dexterity; fists and chains and bottles, furniture and bodies flew about him but he dodged among them unscathed as though possessed of some extra-sensory radar. He didn't seem to notice Napoleon and Illya making their ways around the edges of the fray.
It took most of a minute to traverse the margins of the dance floor, and Harry had scarcely been standing in the doorway ten seconds before the struggling mass threw out a pseudopod and dragged him in. The two men from U.N.C.L.E. were still forty feet away when the entrance improbably opened again and a pair of familiar faces stared in: one was that of the Falstaffian individual with bushy red hair who had followed Harry to the Blue Angel and had noticed neither Solo nor Kuryakin; the other belonged to Bruno, Ward Baldwin's chauffeur. Napoleon joined his partner on the floor behind a table.
"They didn't see us – I think the fight may hold their attention."
Illya nodded. "They're looking for Harry."
"So are we. But -"
Harry, his shirt torn and his nose bleeding, staggered out of the mob and fell over a chair to land across the upper edge of the toppled table which concealed them; he hit hard and slid to the floor. Still conscious but obviously dazed he opened his eyes and stared directly into the face of Napoleon Solo a foot from his own.
Slowly his expression changed and he started to shake his head. "No," he said under his breath. "Solo. No. I'm…" He shook his head harder and managed to get his palms against the floor and brace himself. "No!" he said vehemently. "No! No! No!"
Napoleon grabbed for him a moment too late. Harry was on his feet, unsteadily, and heading for the kitchen exit with the beginnings of hysteria in the incoherent cry which trailed raggedly behind him.
Illya's eyes were elsewhere, peeking around the other corner of the table towards the center of action. At. the. moment the two Thrush seemed to care little for anything but their own immediate survival; Bruno had been foolish enough to pull a gun and had had it taken away from him unceremoniously by a shirtless and tattooed weapons collector who then proceeded to teach him a few things.
The red-headed Falstaff was equally involved, but doing better. Neither seemed to be concentrating on the kitchen exit or to be at all aware of Harry's precipitous departure.
Fortunately someone else was.
"We've gotta get Harry!" said Napoleon, grabbing Illya's arm. "I think his head glue is softening."
"Huh?" asked Illya perceptively.
"Harry! I think he recognised me, and he didn't look at all well, even apart from all the blood."
"Where'd he go?"
"Kitchen." Napoleon took off, running in a crouch for several feet,. hugging the sparse concealment of scattered furniture until he picked up his stride into a sprint for the back door. Illya was close behind him.
"Hoy, Thing!" somebody yelled. "There go the two guys from the stage!"
Illya ducked through the door last. Steel tables and racks gleamed in the steamy deserted kitchen, and Napoleon was already out into the alley.
The swinging door slammed open behind him and a voice roared, "Hey, Blondie – I wanna talk to you!"
An instant later something bit into his ankles and tangled them, and he stumbled, catching himself on the edge of a counter – a bike chain had tripped him, slung along the floor like a bola. He clawed it free and flung it back at the grinning unshaven face of its owner.
Thing caught it across a raised forearm, though the sharp links drew blood where they slashed the hairy muscle. He staggered back a step to an aluminum sink bolted to the wall behind him, as Illya gathered himself for a rush. Feeling cold metal under his hands, the biker turned and gripped the. rolled metal edges. He flexed his knees and tendons stood out like granite ridges until a terrible creak and tearing sound gave Illya a momentary impression his bones were snapping under the strain – then there was a roar and a white fountain of water from the ruptured plumbing in the wall as snapped pipes belched hot and cold. Swinging the metal sink like a hollow boulder, he pivoted and flung it at Illya.
The Russian watched his timing and leaped out of its path an instant before it struck a steel table, with a noise like all the garbage cans in the world being emptied at dawn. A two-foot frying pan hung polished on a hook close to the business end of Illya's arm; it described a short arc terminating in a musical but unresonant sound before the sink had stopped rolling, and Thing starred at him until Illya began to wonder if he was going to have to hit him again before he would fall. Then the stare began to go out of focus, and he gave an oddly gentle sigh as he teetered and went down like a felled tree.
Outside, Solo braced Harry up against a brick wall and waved the silver communicator before his face. "Basingstoke, Harry. Basingstoke! Come on, Basingstoke!"
It seemed to be helping- he'd stopped struggling so hard, but he was half-sobbing incoherently as he stared at the communicator. "Harry, don't worry. You'll, be okay with us," Solo said soothingly as he relaxed his grip a bit at a time. "Harry, we're going to take you out of here and home again. You've got something you were going to leave inside there, and you know I'm supposed to get it. You can give it to me now – it'll be okay." Harry wasn't sure. He looked at Napoleon, and shook his head slowly – not refusing the request so much as willing himself to reject Solo's presence entirely. "It's… it's… my pocket…" He gestured weakly and leaned against the wall.
A flock of sirens faded up in the near distance, heading for the front door of Casa del Gato as Illya pushed the back door closed and propped a garbage can against it. "Let's get him to the car. Harry, you're going to be all right."
For some reason Harry started to giggle hysterically at this. He laughed and sobbed quietly halfway back to the office, then went to sleep before they arrived. Dr. Grayson was waiting for them, and she took him away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"0."
"T, after."
"H, after that."
Downstairs intellectual excitement raged in a quiet room as twenty expert cyberneticists and qualified kibitzers stood around their very own almost-working Thrush satellite terminal; up on the sunroof Napoleon and Illya, who had been ordered to go somewhere else and relax, reclined, tense, on deck chairs and played endless games of SuperGhosts, having found themselves unable to muster the concentration required to sustain play in Botticelli – in the first half-hour each of them in turn had forgotten the character he'd picked.
"N on the front, just to be different."
Illya tapped his fingers lightly on the arm of his chair. "That gives me N-O-T-H, which looks like nothing, if you'll pardon my saying so. Put a P in front."
Napoleon opened his eyes. "Pnoth?" he said. "Wasn't he the ancient Egyptian god of hubcaps or something like that?"
"That would be a proper name. P-N-O-T-H to you. "