16 - The Splintered Sunglasses Affair Read online

  A little later, the road curved around a small wood and he came to a T-junction. It was quite light now. And against the far hedgerow—at last—there was a signpost.

  Solo stopped. He was panting a little and he was very thirsty. For a moment he stared at the two fingerboards of the sign.

  The directions were in an unfamiliar white lettering on an enamelled blue ground. And then he fell back a pace and his mouth dropped open in total astonishment....

  The right-hand board said Buronzo 6. That on the left announced Novara 27. And below it was a separate sign, a green one, on which white characters spelled out the legend Autostrada Milano-Torino 3.

  No wonder there had been "foreign" cars in the garage!

  No wonder the license plates had been unfamiliar! No wonder he couldn't place the landscape!

  His kidnappers, far from spiriting him to an adjoining State, had flown him clean across the Atlantic and he was now in Italy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Solo Steals A Ride

  It was two minutes short of ten o'clock, and the sun was high in the cloudless sky, before conditions in the layby were right for Napoleon Solo to act.

  He had walked for several kilometers along the foot of the embankment which carried the motor road before he caught sight of the white "P" on a blue square which denoted a parking area above him. Then, after he had scrambled up and concealed himself in a clump of bushes to one side of the neat macadam lot, events had seemed to conspire to thwart his intentions.

  For more than two hours, nobody pulled into the layby at all. The early drivers were all long-distance commuters with no time to spare, while the truck-drivers had too recently stopped for coffee, or were too eager to reach the city before the morning rush-hour fouled up the streets, to need a rest just here. After that, a steady procession of cars, long-distance lorries and trailers drew up, waited, and pulled away again. But either more than one stopped at a time, or the cars carried several people, or they were not powerful enough, or the driver didn't get out. There was always something wrong!

  Solo lay sweating in the long grass and cursed them all. His jacket had been left transfixed on the wall of Carlson's house and at first, in the chill air of dawn, he had missed it. Now, however, the heat from the mid-morning sun was beating down upon his back and he wished he had left the shirt as well.

  Almost mesmerized by the continuous roar of traffic, he squinted his eyes against the glare and gazed over the twin ribbons of the autostrada at the lush silver-grey meadows of the Lombardy plain beyond.

  Alone in a foreign country with no papers, no money, no weapons, no clothes except those he was wearing, Solo needed to get in touch with Waverly fast! And the only way he could do that was by radio... and to reach a radio he must get to a city. Which in turn meant that he would have to steal a car.

  It was not all that easy to do, though. To begin with, he had no possessions at all: there was not one single item in the pockets of his suit. Secondly, this meant in practice that he had to choose a vehicle with a driver but no passenger, and one whose driver actually vacated the car when it stopped. And thirdly, he had to wait until such a car drew up when the layby was empty. In addition, the car itself must be powerful enough to cover the 45-odd kilometers to the end of the autostrada before its driver could telephone through and give the alarm—yet there were emergency phones every kilometer. Once, Solo thought his luck was in when a Mercedes 230SL carrying only the driver pulled in just after a whole string of trucks had left. But the young man at the wheel never left the car. He smoked a cigarette without moving from the driving seat and then moved off.

  Another time, a middle-aged woman left a Fiat 2300 with its engine running while she poked about in a copse on the far side of the layby picking wild flowers. The agent had actually been on his feet when two Dutch oil tankers with trailers lumbered up and parked just beyond the car.

  But at last it happened. The layby was empty. A Lancia Flaminia hurtled into the lot and pulled up with a squeal of brakes. The driver got out, looked around him, and then plunged into the bushes about fifty yards away from Solo. And Solo himself, rising like a phoenix from his grassy bed, sprinted across the macadam, jerked open the door and slid into the driving seat. An instant later he had twisted the starter key, slammed the big car into first, and swung the wheel hard over to steer back towards the road.

  He had a momentary impression in the rear-view mirror, of a shouting figure waving its arms, and then he was away, treading the accelerator flat against the boards as the Lancia howled down the concrete strip towards Turin.

  If the enraged owner relied on the phone, he would probably be all right, Solo thought. But if the law happened to pass the layby before he got through, things might get a little difficult! As he flashed past the mid-moming traffic on the heat-shimmered roadway, he kept one eye warily on the mirror, on the lookout for a black-and-white patrol car, the sound of a siren, the sight of a pair of dark-uniformed polizia stradale on Gilera motorcycles.

  It was nevertheless through the windscreen that he received a shock. Slantwise across the hard shoulder, he read the huge notice; Pedaggio 5000m. Of course... there was a toll at the end of the road and he hadn't a penny on him!

  He glanced at the speedometer. The Lancia was hitting 185 kph. He had rather less than two minutes to think of a way out....

  Desperately, he searched through the glove compartment. He found spare headlamp bulbs, a sparking plug, a dirty handkerchief, a pile of crumpled sweet papers—but not the handful of forgotten coins he had hoped for.

  Another sign loomed up, whistled past, and sank from sight behind. Pedaggio 3000m.

  Solo darted a glance over his shoulder at the back seat. No briefcase; no wallet; no holdall. He felt in the deep pocket at the side of his door. Nothing. In the pocket on the passenger side... Nothing but maps.

  Pedaggio 1000m... and just down the road he could see the modernistic flat roofs, the stalks of electric standards, the colored traffic lights of the pay station. On an impulse, he lifted the leather holder for the car's parking disc from the padded shelf above the dashboard. It was stamped in gold with the number of a Milan garage.

  And under it was a pink card half full of punched holes that looked as though it might be some kind of season ticket for the autostrada

  Braking, Solo heaved a deep sigh of relief. He had noticed that the Lancia was registered in Milan. Obviously the owner was a regular traveller between the two cities. And thank goodness for that! He changed down to third, to second, and rolled down his window to hold out the card as the Flaminia slid to a halt opposite the uniformed attendant.

  The man took the card, swung round into his glassed-in booth, struck a punch with the flat of his hand, and handed the card back to Solo all in a single motion. He gestured the car on and pressed a switch to change the light in front of it to green.

  Solo was through. But he hadn't a moment to waste... one of the men at the pay station had been gesticulating at a telephone. They could be after him at any time.

  The drowsing fields tufted with poplars, the long lines of farm buildings in mellow brick, had given way to the graceless clutter which despoils the outskirts of so many modern cities. As the Lancia was sucked into the vortex of traffic swirling towards the centre. Solo saw thin chimneys belching flame at the sky, vacant lots pockmarked with shanties of corrugated iron, scrap yards high with wrecked and rusty cars, and everywhere behind hoardings was the stuttering of excavators and bulldozers. Across the flat horizon, the city was battlemented with the great slabs of modern apartment blocks.

  The traffic stream was moving too fast—and the road system was too complicated—for him to choose a special route. For a while, he stuck with the main flow, following the small signs pointing either to Centra or to Francia.

  But then he found himself in the wrong lane at a big police-controlled junction. And while the great bulk of the traffic swung away unexpectedly to the left, he was forced to go straight ahead into a maze of
narrow streets leading uphill towards the old town. To have attempted to cut across the line would have invited attention from the men on point duty, which was the last thing he wanted. Mentally, Solo shrugged and pressed on.

  As he drove, he looked constantly for some sign that would bring him back to a through route. But all the likely streets seemed to be one-way... the wrong way! Willy-nilly, he was boring deeper and deeper into the warren of thoroughfares surrounding the cathedral.

  He threaded the Lancia past a street market bright with fruit and vegetables, inadvertently drove through a procession of small boys in white surplices, and eventually found himself in a street so full of pedestrians that he had to stop. There were no sidewalks. Square, smooth setts of granite joined one tall, grey, shuttered row of houses to the other.

  And outside every door big-bosomed women in black sat chattering to their neighbors while children gambolled from one side of the roadway to the other. In ten minutes, he had made no more than thirty yards through the throng.

  He began to worry. The car was attracting attention. And yet he could scarcely leave it in the middle of the street. With no curbs, there was no logical place to park; and the few side-streets he passed were choked with vehicles blocking every single space.

  At last in desperation he edged the Lancia towards an entry and turned into a courtyard at the far end of which was a palazzo in crumbling yellow stucco. He braked it to a stop beside a colonnade of Roman arches supported on slender pillars and got out. From the far side of the court a voice called out: "Hey! You! What do you think you're doing ... ?"

  Solo turned round. A policeman in a flat cap with a white cover was striding towards him, scowling. The agent whirled around and fled.

  He ran back into the street with no sidewalks, darted across, and sped down a long cloister piercing a huge stone building on a corner. Behind him, footsteps clattered on the smooth-worn stones, voices were raised in protest, in interrogation, in laughter. A whistle shrilled over the babble of the crowd.

  At the far end of the cloister, he found himself in a kind of paved foyer full of quiet elderly men in flowing black gowns. On the far side, glass doors led to a flight of steps above a street bright with sunlight.

  Solo dashed past the academics, burst out of the doors and scrambled down the steps. A moment later, he was dodging through a press of students thronging a pavement cafe. Two more turns brought him to a wide main street just as the last of a long convoy of army trucks rumbled past the intersection. Without a second thought, he stepped into the roadway, swung himself up over the tailboard, and dropped into the dark space under the canvas canopy.

  He could have gone to the American consul in Turin. But, even if his story had been believed, he was unwilling to involve his country in a personal dilemma which revolved entirely around his employment by a supra-national agency. And in any case, the convoy had given him an idea. It was a long shot, but if it came off it might mean a short-cut to Waverly in New York!

  Forty minutes after he had swung aboard, he peered out of the back of the truck. The convoy had stopped in a compound to one side of a military encampment. And, judging from the conversation he had heard, the crews had marched off to the canteen for lunch.

  Solo hitched the camouflaged overalls he had found among the stores in the truck higher on his shoulders and dropped to the ground.

  From what he had been able to see as they lurched out of the city, the convoy had stopped about 35 kilometers north of Turin, somewhere between Cuorgne and Ivrea. And it looked very much as though it was part of a supply train for the big NATO exercise that Solo knew was taking place that week south of the Val d'Aosta. If he was right, his problems might be at an end....

  Plucking a steel helmet covered in netting from the cab of the truck and putting it on his head, he walked nonchalantly along the back of the convoy, studying the vehicles comprising it.

  There were twenty two covered three-tonners similar to the one in which he had travelled; a dozen half-tracks; two high, square ambulances with huge red crosses painted on their steel sides. And a command truck.

  This was outwardly like the ambulances. But there was a complex of antennae on top of its squat roof. And in the boxlike tonneau, Solo knew, there would be a highly sophisticated and extremely powerful short-wave radio installation. Pretending to an air of casualness that he was far from feeling, he climbed up into the cab. Behind him, the sliding door blanking off the mass of switches and tuners and transistors and rheostats of the installation was half open. He stared out through the windscreen. There were soldiers busy about a khaki marquee tent about a hundred yards away, but nobody was looking in his direction.

  Taking a deep breath, he pressed the starter button and, for the second time that day, steered a stolen vehicle out of a parking space towards the road....

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Waverly Reasons Why !

  The head of U.N.C.L.E.'s Policy and Operations Department, Section One, laughed aloud. It was not a noise customarily heard in the Command's headquarters and Illya Kuryakin treated it with respect. He waited. He listened. And by and by it was repeated. Waverly laughed again.

  "Spectacular!" he barked. "And efficacious, I suppose, since it did get him in touch with me! But Heaven knows what I'm going to say to the Pentagon. Ha!"

  The Russian frowned in puzzlement. "I'm sorry, Mr. Waverly... I'm afraid I do not quite..."

  "Solo, Mr. Kuryakin! You knew he'd been taken to Italy by his captors and that he had escaped and contacted me. But you are probably ignorant of the precise methods he used to effect this."

  "Er... yes."

  "He climbed down a drainpipe, floored a gunman, leaped an electrified fence, drugged two killer dogs and escaped a third, before scaling a wall and stealing a car. Then he found himself in Turin and stowed away aboard a convoy of army lorries bound for maneuvers in the Val d'Aosta."

  The Russian smiled affectionately. "That sounds like Napoleon!"

  "Yes, but the serious thing is that he made off with a command post truck and used it to communicate with me on the radio."

  "Surely, in the circumstances..."

  "And as a uniform he happened to have found and put on was a spare one intended for the Umpires in the exercise, he got away with it!"

  "Even so," Kuryakin began, "I still do not see how you—"

  "The annoying thing, though," Waverly said, not looking in the least annoyed, "was that through a misinterpretation of something Solo said while he was dressed as an Umpire, the Italian army thought they had lost an entire armored division in a surprise attack! And by the time the mistake was discovered, it was too late... "

  "And that has upset the course of the—er—exercise?"

  Waverly nodded. "That's the understatement of the year! But never mind. Here's the transcript of Solo's radio conversation with me. Read it, please, and then we can talk." He handed Kuryakin a sheaf of typescript, settled back in his chair, and pulled a cherrywood and a tobacco jar towards him across the huge desk.

  By the time Illya had finished reading, he was actually smoking, puffing out dense clouds of smoke with what appeared to be genuine enjoyment. "Well?" he asked, "Does anything strike you?"

  "Yes, of course. Turin."

  Waverly nodded again. "Exactly. Turin. And Leonardo..."

  The Russian's face was suddenly grave. "Poor Leonardo!"

  "Your man in Turin. Leonardo was shot down yesterday in the street just outside a branch post office on the outskirts of Turin. Two days previously we receive here a mysterious photographic plate, apparently meaningless, in a package bearing a Turin postmark. And now there is Solo."

  "Who is kidnapped in New York and flown secretly to a country house near... Turin."

  "And what does that imply to you, Mr. Kuryakin?"

  "Well, obviously, that the assignment on which Leonardo is... was... working, and the kidnapping of Napoleon, are connected."

  "Just so. And if we bear in mind that Leonardo had obtained a pricele
ss list of intended Thrush agents in Europe from the headquarters of their Supreme Council Member for the South... ?"

  "It suggests that the house where Solo was imprisoned, the man called Carlsen... "

  "Is either that Supreme Council Member himself, and the house is where Leonardo found the list, or else he is the head of a rival organisation who wants the list as badly as we do. And in either case, Solo was kidnapped because they wanted to pick his brains about communications. They chose him rather than anyone else simply because he was between assignments and was therefore, being unconditioned, an easier subject for interrogation."

  "It certainly seems from what Solo reports," Kuryakin said, picking up the typescript again, "as though they were heading that way in the odd questions he was asked while he was there, doesn't it?"

  "It does. The questions could have been directed, very cleverly, at finding out how our agents reported, what systems they used, and in particular had we received any special ones from Turin recently. The similar enquiries about Thrush could have been a blind... or, if they are not Thrush, they may not have known whether Leonardo was working for us or for Thrush."

  "You are thinking of the photographic plate which arrived...?"

  "Presumably from Leonardo, yes. And presumably containing in some concealed form the famous list. As Leonardo was murdered outside a post office, it seems reasonable to assume that he was about to send us the key to our mysterious photo."

  "Or had just sent it?"

  "That too, is possible. An ordinary airmail letter wouldn't have got here until today, anyway. But I suspect he was killed before he could let us know. In either case, it would be absolutely vital—either to Thrush or to a possible rival—to know whether we knew the contents of the list or not."

  "What do the lab boys say about the photographic plate?"

  Waverly looked at his watch. "I'm expecting their report at any minute. In the meantime, we can plan on general lines. Since it was your case, I want you to go to Turin tonight and start backtracking on Leonardo right away. Mr. Solo can help. And between you, I hope you will turn up something, some clue—"