[Magazine 1966-­12] - The Goliath Affair - Jakes John - Страница 12

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"You miserable wretch!" she cried in a temper. "We've been driving all night!"

She snatched the Luger from the hand of the girl beside her in the front seat and promptly fired a bullet into the guard's left thigh. The man fell, writhing and shrieking.

"There's the countersign," the girl declared airily, passing the gun back.

The other guard rushed into a control booth. Instantly, black iron gates swung open.

They were somewhere deep in the Black Forest, Solo knew. But he could tell little else, except that the stone wall was very high and thick.

The girl hummed as the Rolls eased forward.

A rustling of Helene Bauer's skirt as she shifted position caused Solo to glance around.

He'd been watching the tableau outside: one THRUSH guard kneeling beside his wounded comrade and directing ugly glances at the car's occupants as the Rolls picked up speed. Mentally Solo tabulated the information. So there was no great amount of love lost between the ex-Nazis and certain of the THRUSH personnel, eh? Perhaps that situation might somehow prove valuable.

Solo's nerves were wire-taut. His belly had a chill, empty feeling. But some of his nonchalance was returning.

He especially wanted to find out the exact nature of the union between these two fanatical power groups and, if possible, live long enough to at least communicate the facts to Illya—

That memory of Illya made him wonder about the tiny transmitter hidden in his jacket. Was it functioning? Certainly he couldn't rely on that -

Helene's skirt rustled. She had leaned forward to tap the Amazon driver on the shoulder.

"Inge," Helene said, "that shooting was unnecessary."

Inge half-turned. Her beautiful, stony profile was limned by the pale glow of the dash instruments.

"I am sorry," she said, so flatly it was clear that she meant just the opposite.

"You and your THRUSH pals certainly have a nice relationship," Solo smiled.

Helene spun around. "Be quiet! We work together very smoothly."

"At what? Demolishing each other? Well, I suppose you can't expect anything else when you make one bunch of paranoid killers the bedfellows of another. But then the problem becomes, which bunch is worse?"

Helene's lip quivered. For one moment Solo was not positive whether the girl intended to curse him or break into tears. He had probed and found a weakness. Helene's face froze into determined lines, but not before Solo saw a doubtful, hesitant look in her pretty eyes.

Was she as callous and as convinced of the rightness of her cause as she pretended to be? Or was there self-doubt, a deeply repressed feeling that she was in league with monsters?

Perhaps he was over-reacting to that fleeting, uncertain expression. But Helene would bear watching.

In a moment Helene had recovered and was as calm as ever:

"I don't care for your remarks, Solo. I would gladly turn you over to Inge for a bit of discipline if my father did not have another important use for your carcass."

The word carcass made Solo's spinal column crawl.

Inge laughed contemptuously:

"He wouldn't last five minutes with me, Fraulein Helene. He's obviously a weak, decadent type, unused to the outdoors and the joy of physical exercise. I would make liver sausage paste of his bones before he could scream twice. Of course I would be pleased to try—"

"I'll bet you would," Solo said.

Helene was sitting far forward on the seat, staring down the tunnel of the headlights. The Rolls was driving up a recently blacktopped drive. On either side of it Solo could see neatly cut and luxuriant turf.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Solo," Helene said. "My father really is in need of your body."

"What has your father got to do with this?"

Helene's smile was rather ghoulish. "In good time, Solo. In good time."

The Rolls slowed down, curving around a U-shaped drive past some formally clipped boxwood hedges. Then the headlamps swept past the corner of a great stone house. The vehicle braked.

Inge and her companion leaped out. Lugers glittered in their big fists.

A door slammed at the front of the house. No lights showed yet. The area around the car filled quickly with more THRUSH soldiers, all bearing sidearms at ready.

An officer touched his cap and held the door open for Helene. Solo got out after her.

"This way, please," Helene said, mounting a series of stone steps.

Solo followed. He was able to estimate the size of the house whose front staircase they were climbing—it was immense, towering up at least three floors and spreading out laterally in a series of equally large wings to his right and left. A spacious lawn of at least two acres spread out back there toward the gate. A spot of light in the guard booth indicated the great distance they had driven.

Helene had moved in beside him as they ascended the stairs, saying:

"This place is eight centuries old. It was an ancient baronial estate before it was acquired and refurbished for our needs. You shall see."

With this grotesquely cheerful warning, she led the way through huge bronze doors bearing rampant lions in bas relief. Inside Solo found himself in total darkness.

There was a motorized whirr. The giant doors shut with a ponderous chunk. Dazzling lights from a crystal chandelier sprung on.

Solo had thought quickly about making a play in the darkness. Things happened too fast. He had a vivid if fleeting impression of being in a spacious, marble-floored foyer with colorful tapestries on the walls. The foyer was tight as a box. All other doors leading out of it were shut. Solo and Helene were alone in the center of the floor, and before Solo half grasped all the details of the surroundings, the floor began to sink beneath them.

The walls remained where they were.

The tapestries and the chandelier rose away. When the marble floor had dropped perhaps twelve feet—down here the walls were cinder block, and set with recessed white lights behind frosted glass—two steel panels shot out from the baseboards of the foyer above. The panels met in the center with a clang, immediately providing a new floor for the foyer and a ceiling for the shaft through which they were descending.

Helene fluffed her stole around her shoulders and continued to smile in icy satisfaction.

"I ought to go for your throat," he smiled back.

"Why don't you try, Herr Solo?"

"Because I'm curious about the rest of this rat's nest."

"Perfectly understandable. Although when you're shrieking in the final extremities of death I'm sure you'll rue your curiosity."

Solo waited with cold palms while the marble floor continued to descend past the recessed white lights. The air had an underground feel and smell, cool and redolent of earth. With a grind of gears the marble floor stopped. Double stainless steel pneumatic doors hissed back, revealing a corridor with similar metal walls.

A brunette girl in the black jacket and boot uniform was cleaning a murderous throwing knife with a soft cloth. She sat inside a booth with a wire front. Seeing Helene, she sprang up and raised her right hand in the old Nazi salute. The prettiness of her face was marred by the fanatic luster of her eyes as she cried:

"Heil THRUSH!"

The girl's boot heels clicked loudly. Helene lifted her right hand, though with somewhat less spirit. "Heil."

The girl in the booth eyed Solo like a slab of meat as she ran the ball of her thumb up and down the sharp edge of her knife. Like the others he'd seen, the girl stood well over six feet, and had unnaturally wide shoulders and long arms.

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