"Here!" Solo breathed. "Then if he came here to borrow your laser, he probably made the hologram here. Right in this lab!"
"Undoubtedly."
"But then you'd know... you might have seen ... Were you there while he worked the thing? In the room with him?"
The Italian shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. I have work elsewhere. I leave him in the lab and when I come back, he is gone. But at least you will know what wavelength is the light you must use—when you find your glass."
Solo sighed. "Yes... if we find the glass. Or whatever else he used."
Rinaldi clapped him on the shoulder. "It is a small problem compared with some of those we deal with here."
The agent remembered his manners. "Of course, it must be, Colonel. Are you allowed to talk about your work. It must be absorbing!"
"To you, yes. In principle at least. We are working on a system of holography which would 'translate' human books, papers, articles or instructions extremely fast into computer 'language'; and save all that terrible business of coding everything on to punched cards when it was necessary to reprogram."
"So that's what Carlsen and the girl were on about!" Solo murmured.
"There are also implications in molecular biology," Rinaldi continued; "and we think we have found a method of using it to follow in three dimensions the movements of particles in a vapor. Calabri, over at Milano, is working for the aviation ministry, studying the shock waves surrounding missiles or aircraft shapes by this means."
"Colonel Rinaldi," Solo said, shaking hands, "you have been more than kind. Thank you very much for your invaluable help—now, if you will forgive me, I must hurry, because I have to meet a colleague who is arriving by plane this afternoon."
"It is nothing," the Italian said, looking at his watch. "It was a pleasure, Signor Solo. From here to Caselle, the airport for Torino, should take you not more than... let me see... yes, about one hour and a half. Not more."
Solo thanked him again and left.
He threaded the little Giulietta lent to him by the S.I.D. through the succession of guarded arches which pierced the walls of the 14th-century fortress concealing the research centre, showed his papers to the sentry at the outer gate, and began winding down the mountainside towards the main road linking Sestriere and Susa.
He was approaching a hairpin about a mile below the lab when the brakes failed.
He had already changed down from top to fourth and was intending a quick double tab at the pedal before dropping down one further to third. But although he pumped madly at the pedal, the Alfa Romeo continued at the same 70 kph. He hauled on the lever between the front seats Again, nothing!
And that meant that it was the operating mechanism rather than the hydraulic system that was at fault. Which in practice meant sabotage.
Solo blipped twice, three times on the throttle pedal, double declutched, and slammed the short lever into third. The engine screamed in protest as the needle on the rev-counter spun round into the red quadrant. But the braking effect of the engine slowed the little sports car enough for him to wrestle it around the first hairpin, the open body canting over sickeningly, the tires screeching.
Beyond, the roadway dropped like a lift: a short, tremendously steep section ending in another hairpin so acute, and with so extreme an inverse camber, that even with brakes most drivers would have needed two bites at it.
Despite the engine compression, the weight of the car pushed the speed up to 65 kph again. Double declutching, Solo attempted to force the lever across and down into second. There was a hideous noise. He blipped and tried again. It still refused to go in. And the hairpin was almost on him. With a curse, he banged it back into third and hauled on the wheel as hard as he could.
Lurching, the Giulietta ran out of the road. The tail swung out and slammed into the bank: the tires howled broadside across the carriageway; the car burst through the stone parapet backwards, rose into the air, and somersaulted down the slope in a shower of stones. It hit the bare earth of the mountainside, bounced on to another loop of road below, crashed through a second stone wall and finally crunched to a halt upside down among the rocks.
Solo had been thrown clear with the first impact. Bruised, shaken, but otherwise unhurt, he crouched behind a boulder, gripping the Berretta which had been given to him by the man in S.I.D. There was nobody to be seen. Above and behind him, the scorched slopes rose up to the fortress on its crag. In the valley far below, the milky green waters of the Dora Riparia frothed and tumbled on their way to the Po. And through a great fault gashing the mountain opposite he could see, blue with distance, the plain surrounding Turin.
Ten kilometers away, a car winked in the sunlight as it rounded a spur above the river. Across the valley, tumbled roofs of undressed slate showed among the branches of conifers encircling a hill farm. But in all that expanse, there was no other sign of human activity.
This was no cleverly timed ambush. Whoever it was that had sabotaged the car had been equally content whether Solo was killed, injured or merely delayed.
And unless he could beg, borrow, hire or conjure up from the mountain air another car very soon, lllya Kuryakin was going to have a long wait at the airport....
* See The Finger in the Sky Affair.
CHAPTER NINE
Two Friends And An Enemy
Caselle Airport at Turin is what the French call mignon. If it was not so functional, it would run the risk of being termed cute. It lies a few miles to the northeast of the city on the right of a fast, curving blacktop heading for Ivrea. There is a large, empty car park surrounded by palms and oleanders and divided by beautifully painted white lines. Beyond this, at the side of the white concrete terminal building, there is a gravelled terrace set with tables and umbrellas from which travellers' friends and members of the public can gaze through a high wire fence at the apron and at the aircraft. The terminal itself houses a freight department, a square section combining customs hall, passport control and weighing-in desks for various airlines, and a lofty cafe-bar full of airport personnel and smelling of espresso coffee. Above its flat roof, the duty controller stares through the green glass windows of the tower at the planes which infrequently sink into view over the Alpine foothills which form its western horizon.
Whether there are clouds or not, it always seems to be hot at Caselle. When Ilya Kuryakin arrived on the afternoon Alitalia flight from Paris, the tar on the roadway by the taxi stand was melting and the flowers banked behind the car park trembled in the heat rising from the parked vehicles. Above the mountains, the sky had dissolved in a sulphurous haze.
Finding no Solo among the small crowd of bronzed men and women waiting at the customs exit, Kuryakin made his way to the bar.
It was cooler in there, and the shutters and blinds which denied entry to the sun formed a kind of artificial dusk which gave the illusion of freshness. There were red-faced tourists from the coast, laden with striped beach balls and straw hats, waiting for the BEA flight to London; there were blue-overalled workmen and taxi drivers in shirtsleeves; there were several groups of businessmen drinking Campari-sodas and two patrician families lost in admiration of each other's children. But there was nobody there remotely resembling Napoleon Solo.
The Russian went to the airline desks one after the other to see if there had been a message left for him. There had not. Puzzled, he picked up his overnight case, slung his unwanted raincoat over one shoulder, and left the terminal building for the sun. It was like a furnace outside. The red, white and green flag hung limply from the mast. The crimson oleander flowers drooped. The weight of the raincoat immediately stuck Kuryakin's shirt to his shoulder.
