“…There are one or two cutthroat bands of renegade blacks…We Muslims of the north are continually being misrepresented by the backward Negroes of the south…go tonight to the police station at this address…the necessary documents will be waiting for you…There are various charges payable to the departments…

Illya switched the machine off. “It could be faked, of course,” he said. “And so could the photos. But, taking it together with the strange confusion that appears to exist about some document signed by Hamid, I think you must agree that my warning should at least be carefully considered.”

Mazzari was still sitting thunderstruck at his desk when the door burst open and Ononu returned with Hassan Hamid. The Arab’s face was dark with anger, and Ononu looked perplexed. “The man’s gone—he has apparently escaped!” he exclaimed, snatching off his beret and slashing his thigh with it. “I don’t understand how it can have happened.”

A telephone was ringing on the desk. Mazzari picked it up and listened for a moment. “All right,” he said. “We are all here.”

He looked up as he replaced the receiver. “The Council member is on his way in,” he announced. “Perhaps he will be able to answer a few questions that badly need a reply.”

The door opened again and the three of them stood stiffly and bowed to the young man who came in.

It was Rodney Marshel.

Chapter 14

A Lady to the Rescue!

“Marshel!” Illya was on his feet, his mouth open in astonishment. “But it can’t be…surely you are not…”

“Yes, Kuryakin—I am a member of the Council of Thrush,” the young man snapped, very different now from the languid, diffident person they had seen in Khartoum. “Waverly and your poor organization don’t have a chance: we have agents everywhere; we were on to you from the moment you landed in Casablanca.”

“It seems to have taken you quite a time to catch up with us, in that case,” Illya said mildly. “Now I understand why there was no helicopter when I arrived in Stanleyville. You didn’t pass on any of the messages.”

“Of course not,” Marshel said contemptuously. “Neither yours nor any of the ones Solo so laboriously transmitted from the caravan. So far as Waverly is concerned, the last he heard from you was in Alexandria.”

“And of course you knew we were coming because Waverly had tipped you off?”

“Quite. The only remotely clever thing you did, actually, was to conceal from me the fact that you were seeing this fool Hamid when you went out from the hotel. And when I had found out, the fact that you had switched roles, as it were, caused us a certain amount of trouble…As for you, you bungling oaf,” he continued, turning to glare coldly at Hamid himself, “your duplicity might have imperiled the whole operation.”

The man had gone a sickly gray color. “I…I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered. “My instructions were that there would be a spy traveling with the caravan…that I was to try and identify him, but that he was to be permitted to find and follow the decoy canister. I carried them out. It was not my fault that—”

“I’m not talking about the caravan. Was it part of your instructions to receive the spy in your own house and issue him with a laissez-passer so that you could line your own dirty pocket?”

“But I didn’t!” Hamid cried. “I keep telling everybody—this is the man who came to see me. He is a Russian government mineralogist. I saw no connection with the caravan; it was part of my normal cover activity—”

“You saw,” Marshel grated. “You saw only the chance to feather your own nest—and you took it without any heed of the consequences!”

“I swear, I—”

“How many times do I have to say it? Thrush requires absolute and complete loyalty from its members at all times. At all times. The interests of Thrush must come before everything else, always. You have transgressed against this law; now you will have to pay.”

Hassan Hamid was on his knees, the fine bones of his swarthy face outlined in a dew of sweat. “No!” he cried. “No, no. I beg of you…”

Marshel had drawn a small Beretta automatic from his pocket. Coolly, he sighted the barrel at the pleading figure and squeezed the trigger. As the little gun spat flame, Hassan Hamid jerked back onto his heels, staring in disbelief at the blood spurting between fingers which had flown instinctively to cover his chest. Marshel fired again and Hamid crashed over onto his back. He tried to sit up, groaned and sank to the floor again.

The man from Thrush pumped six more shots into the body twitching under the scarlet-stained robes. When at last the convulsive movements had stopped, he drew another clip of ammunition from his pocket and calmly reloaded the gun. “Now—are there any questions?” he asked.

Mazzari, Ononu and Illya were still staring at the murdered man.

“All right,” Marshel continued. “Now you, Kuryakin. Although I naturally know a lot about U.N.C.L.E., there must be a lot more that such highly placed Enforcement Agents as Solo and yourself can tell me. Before you die, you will tell me these things—that is why you have been encouraged to find your way here, where we can question you at leisure. The deaths will be slow, too, for you have caused us much trouble.”

“Just a minute, old. chap.” Mazzari was on his feet, a frown creasing his brow. “Am I to understand then, that this man”—he gestured at the body on the floor—“was really a Khartoum official after all?”

“Of course he was. How do you think caravans composed mainly of Arab mercenaries were able time and time again to pass through the country unquestioned? And who do you imagine provided the escorts which brought them as far as the edge of the forest?”

“But in view of the Plan, old chap, surely it would have been—”

“The Plan! Are you really naive enough to imagine that an organization such as ours would really go to all this trouble just to help a handful of self-seeking guerrillas? Be your age, General. Your use is at an end now that our own plans are virtually completed…And don’t call me Old Chap.”

Faced with the ruin of his hopes in a single sentence, Mazzari behaved with grave dignity. Compressing his lips, he exchanged a glance with Ononu and sat quietly down again.

“I do not see how the information you say we can give you will help,” Illya said, playing for time.

“As I was saying before this jumped-up boy interrupted me,” Marshel replied, “the info I want from you—”

“I say! Hardly the way for a jolly old Englishman to talk, what!”

Astoundingly, the voice—with its exaggerated mimicry of Marshel’s accent—was Solo’s. It seemed to come from the air. The four men in the room swung around in astonishment. No other person had come in. For once, Marshel was at a loss.

“What—what—? Solo! What’s that? Where are you?” he babbled.

“I said that’s hardly the way for an Englishman to talk” Solo’s normal voice repeated.

Marshel’s eyes glinted. “I’m not an Englishman,” he snapped in spite of himself. “I was born and raised right here in Africa.”

“Ah, that accounts for it, then. I thought all that frightfully frightful and doocidly top-hole stuff was laid on a bit too thick.”

“The grating!” Ononu cried suddenly in a reflex, realizing where the voice came from. In the same instant Marshel, his face black with fury, loosed off a burst of fire at the grille set high in the wall.

Simultaneously, they all realized the danger. As the bullets spanged off the metal cover and ricocheted with shrill screams around the room, they hurled themselves to the floor.

Illya was the first to recover. His cameras and field glasses were on Mazzari’s desk, where the general had put them when they had come in, and he had been waiting for just such an opportunity. Snatching up the binoculars by the strap, he scythed the heavy case across the desk top and swept the Walther to the ground as he retrieved the gun-camera in his other hand. Marshel was already aiming the Beretta at him as he pressed the release, still holding the device at his waist.