"I don't know. Depending..."
"You'll be confined, together with Kuryakin and the boy, for one hour. But only for an hour. That will be sufficient time for our group to be safely out of your country. We shall then be in radio communication with the American authorities, and you three will be released. A precaution, but the kind of precaution you yourself would take, would you not?"
"I suppose..."
"That's it, Mr. Solo. Any more questions?"
"No more questions."
"Don't try tricks, I beseech you. We'll be watching, and we can meet your tricks with tricks of our own, but in this particular game, this time, we hold the trumps. Two trumps. Illya Kuryakin and Steven Winfield. No trick can be successful. If you win, you lose, because what you will win will be two corpses. Do you read me, Mr. Solo?"
"I read you clear."
"Good-bye. See you later."
7. Game Without Rules
ERIC BURROWS cradled the receiver and smiled toward Pamela Hunter. "There! Did I omit any thing?"
"Nothing. You were precise and specific."
"Well, thank you, my dear."
"Now if he'll only comply—no tricks, no complications—then all of this will be over with and finished."
"He has to comply. No alternative."
"I'll be happy when it's over."
"Are you frightened, Miss Hunter?"
She shook her head. "No, it's not that. Just—I don't like it—any of it."
"Who are you to like—or not like?" Burrows' eyes narrowed.
"I'm nobody."
"If you'll just keep repeating that to yourself, over and over, you'll have mastered the first lesson. That's who and what you are exactly—nobody. You're a tiny unimportant cog in a vast machinery. You have nothing to do with decisions. You are part of the machine that grinds out the work and, may I add, a dispensable part. What I mean is, if we lost you, it would be no loss to the machine. You'd be replaced cheaply and quickly. The Americans have a phrase for it—you're a dime a dozen, my dear."
"Not very flattering."
"The truth rarely is." His dark eyebrows contracted. "I'm curious. You don't—didn't—like any of it. You're pleased by our failure. Why?"
She went near a window of the large drawing room and looked out. The window was closed, the room air-conditioned. Outside, even so early in the morning, it looked hot. The sky was clear. The sun gleamed on the long lawns. "Because," she said, "to destroy shrines, to kill people..."
"But it had a purpose."
"I know. But innocent people..."
"Incidental. The shrines were the purpose—the effect of the destruction of the shrines." He laughed briefly. "Any killings would have been incidental. We failed. Now we must kill—not incidentally. By the way, has Leslie had breakfast?"
"Yes."
"Is there still coffee?"
"Yes."
"Would you bring me a cup, please?"
"Certainly, Mr. Burrows."
In the kitchen she poured hot coffee into a mug and set it on a tray. She added a small pitcher of cream, a spoon, a container of sugar, and a napkin and carried the tray into the drawing room. She was troubled, hesitating to open the subject again, watching as he stirred cream and sugar in the cup. He sipped, then lit a cigarette. He sat at a table drinking the coffee, smoking. She remained standing.
"I don't quite understand, Mr. Burrows."
"What?" he said pleasantly, exhaling a cone of smoke.
"What you said before."
"Said before?"
"Now we must kill—not incidentally."
The dark eyes looked up at her. She felt dizzy, weak, pulled as though drowning in a sea of dark eyes. "You've a right to be informed, Miss Hunter. After all, all of us are cogs in the machinery. There must now be killings with a purpose. The boy, Kuryakin, and Solo."
"Oh, no!"
"Yes."
"But why? What possible purpose?"
The dark eyes remained fixed on her. "Stanley will be delivered, and Solo taken. You heard me on the telephone. Solo will be locked in with the other two."
"You told him it would be for an hour."
He sipped, smoked, looked back to her. "He will be placed in the room with the other two. The ventilation vents will be closed off. A cyanide pellet will be exploded in the room, injected through the slide-slot, the slot then instantly shut. Death will be quick, merciful, no suffering. Then we'll immediately take off—we four—in the helicopter."
The huge helicopter was there now, waiting, fueled and already packed with their things, on the wide private beach at the rear of the house. The house was a half-mile in from the road. The back had the beach and the ocean; the other three sides had paths, lawns, trees, sculptured gardens. The entire estate was surrounded by a high, iron, picket fence which, in an emergency, could be electrified.
"But why?" she asked again.
"Why what?" Angrily he pushed away the coffee mug; it tilted, then turned over, and the dregs of the coffee spilled. She brought a towel from the kitchen, wiped the table, and took the things away. When she came back he was standing, smiling, leaning against a baby grand piano, smoking a new cigarette. "I'm sorry," he said. His voice was back under control. The dark eyes were now narrow, wrinkled, amused. Softly he said, "What was it we were discussing, my dear?"
"Murder. Senseless murder."
"Murder must never be senseless. That, too, I'd advise you to repeat over and over again. Your second lesson for today."
"But to kill them?"
"Not senseless."
"Why not as you told him? An exchange. Stanley for them. Mr. Solo to be locked in with the other two for an hour. An hour. Two hours. Whatever. Wouldn't that provide our margin for safety?"
"One hour would be enough."
"Then why?"
"We all learn. Even I. We're never too old to learn, not one of us. Just as you're learning today from me, so have I learned from Leslie Tudor. Passion for anonymity. That's not just some stock remark. That's not a bright saying made for the purpose of sounding clever. It has depth, meaning, merit. Anonymity—that's why Albert Stanley was chosen for this job. It has made him unique—his great capacity to blend, to be another blade of grass in an orchard, another tree in a forest, another grain of sand in a desert, to be anonymous, unknown, an unrecognizable part of the whole. Somehow his anonymity failed him; somehow he was recognized; and that made the rest of it easy for them. We don't have to be geniuses to know that. He was recognized, followed, caught in the act doing his work, apprehended. The point is, he was recognized! That resulted in our failure and Leslie's bitter disappointment."
"What's that to do with this?"
"What?" There was annoyance again in Burrows' voice.
"With murder, cold-blooded murder?"
"Anonymity. Not to be recognized. It is a form of self-preservation––even for you, my dear. You are a part of a secret organization, but always remember: Secret is the key word for your very own protection and self-preservation." He moved away from the piano and crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray. "Kuryakin and young Winfield have seen you and have seen me; alive, they can recognize us in the future. No good. Solo has seen Stanley, and he will see me; alive, he can recognize us in the future. No good. The fewer from their side that see and know and can recognize, the safer it is for those of us on our side. Not senseless murder, my dear, not at all."