Ordinarily Illya didn't indulge in cigars. But the large, executive- type Corona-Corona Special Deluxe clenched between his teeth at a jaunty angle lent him, he felt, a debonair appearance which be rather fancied. He stepped closer to the mirror to pull up the knot in his rep tie a bit more neatly.
The mirror opened outward from the vending machine and smashed him across the face.
Illya reeled back. He was more outraged than hurt. Grinning at him from inside the vending machine was a pock-faced man with a pistol.
"Be so kind as to stand in that place, Mr. Kuryakin. The others will be along momentarily."
Illya had no desire to wait and make their acquaintance. As the lower half of the vending machine began to open also, like the bottom of a Dutch door, Illya lashed out with a savage kick. The kick smashed the door, and the gunman, back inside the vending machine. The gunman cursed, flailed. He extended his pistol hand out of the machine for a better aim at the U.N.C.L.E. agent. Illya slammed the upper door hard.
The man squealed.
"Sing, my little THRUSH," IIlya said with cheerful nastiness as the man's fingers flew open and the pistol dropped.
"Kuryakin!"
The command spun him around. Two more well-dressed men in bowlers and overcoats with velvet lapels had entered from the alley. Both carried guns. The spokesman rushed forward. There was a groan and a creak of metal from inside the vending machine. The ugly-faced Thrushmen both glanced in that direction. Illya used the interval to dive his hand under his coat for his pistol.
He might have made it if the secret agent in the vending machine, apparently unconscious from having his gun hand nearly snapped off, hadn't slumped forward. The man's dead weight pushed both of the machine doors outward fast. Illya got another very un-funny bash in the nose. By the time he'd wrestled his pistol out of its shoulder rig the two assailants were on him.
They chopped the back of his neck with gun butts. Illya dropped to his knees, fighting the pain. He started to yell. One of the THRUSH uglies yanked his head back by the hair. The other jammed an unsavory-tasting leather glove between his jaws.
Then they flicked his face brutally a couple of more times with their pistol muzzles. They kept him from falling by dragging him under the arms.
Everything revolved in Illya's field of vision. Everything had the same quality of fuzziness he'd encountered after his first youthful bout with a flask of vodka.
"Quietly, quietly," snarled one of the THRUSH kidnappers as they dragged Illya through the door and up into the alley. His knees bumped painfully over the cobbles. Strength was returning. He mentally vetoed fighting any further for the moment. It might be more profitable to discover where he was being taken and, more importantly, to whom.
The answer to this last question came quickly. A squat, powerful Daimler auto, its blue fog lamps shining eerily through the murk, was parked around a bend in the alleyway. Illya was dumped on all fours in the tonneau. The THRUSH agents leaped into the front.
"Good evening, Kuryakin," said a voice which seemed to echo out of a funeral vault six miles away.
Illya turned his head. Lying on the floorboard, he was staring at the toe of a brightly polished boot. He twisted his head further. Above him floated an immense black mountain-shape, topped by a white blob. Gradually his eyes adjusted.
"Allow me, my dear fellow," said the rear seat's occupant, helping him up to a sitting position. As he collapsed against the leather, Illya felt something hard in his suit pocket strike against his hipbone. He remembered his communicator. He had to find an opportunity to set the homing signal for Napoleon.
He wondered why the car didn't start.
"We have been following you and your associate Solo all evening," commented his host, a big heap of a man bundled within a vicuna overcoat with a flamboyant fur collar. "I am glad my men were able to spare you excessive violence to your person. We have a very important task for you to perform. I'm sure you'll be delighted to cooperate."
The man had a strong, square, face, deeply tanned and seamed as though by exposure to rough weather. His nose was faintly hooked, perhaps denoting origins in the Levant. But his English was of Oxford. He had a neatly-trimmed black spade beard and wore a fur diplomat's cap and kid-skin gloves.
He peeled off the right glove and extended his hand. "It would be courteous if I introduced myself. Commander Victor Ahab, sir."
Illya's eyes narrowed. "No, thank you," he said to the hand.
Ahab's cheeks puffed out. He blasted Illya Kuryakin across the face with the back of his bare hand, a slamming blow. Illya swallowed, lifted his right fist. The guns aimed at him by the agents in the front seat deterred him.
Victor Ahab, THRUSH naval strategist, was quivering. "You—you filthy, degenerate, arrogant little U.N.C.L.E. upstart!"
Ahab carefully pulled his glove on again. He cleared his throat. "I am grateful I don't have to do much business with you, Kuryakin. I would very likely break your neck with my own hands." He smiled. "As you have just discovered, I am rather easily provoked to anger. It is perhaps my one failing."
Illya wondered how he could find an opportunity to turn on the homing transmitter. "You are supposed to be dead."
"The world is full of little surprises. It was expedient that I disappear for a time. I have emerged to what will surely be my finest hour. And THRUSH's."
One of the operatives in front said, "Beg pardon, Commander."
"What is it?"
"Miss Cleo's turn is over. She's coming now, sir."
"Get the engine going. We have pressing work for Mr. Kuryakin in Golder's Green." High heels ticked outside the car. A young woman's form took shape in the mist. Victor Ahab folded down the jump seat for her, then bent across toward the door handle. His formidable paunch prevented him from reaching it.
"Come, Kuryakin! Don't be a boor."
This was the opportunity. Illya hunched around to the right, using his left hand to depress the handle. The girl, trailing perfume, jumped inside with a jingly little laugh of satisfaction. She smoothed down her bolero jacket of gleaming silver fox, and all these bits of business gave Illya the moment he needed to slip his right hand into his pocket, activate the proper stud, and send a signal silently into the night.
It was the signal to his friend Napoleon Solo.
The Daimler's engine whispered. The car glided out into gaudy neon traffic at a cautious speed. Commander Ahab gestured to the prisoner.
"Cleo my sweet, allow me to present your next subject. Mr. Kuryakin of U.N.C.L.E. This is Miss Cleo St. Cloud, a most experienced young woman."
"Well, not really," the girl laughed. She eyed Illya like a lawyer.
"Ah, now, don't be modest," said Commander Ahab, tweaking her knee. Miss St. Cloud shuddered.
"I didn't mean that I wasn't experienced, Victor."
"And naturally I referred to your experience in the area of hypnosis, my dear."
Illya decided that she was quite stunning. But her smile was brittle. And her green eyes, like the eyes of all the followers of the supra-government that was THRUSH, were holes into a secret world where lived an unholy lust to conquer at any cost. She spoke:
"What I meant to say, Mr. Kuryakin, was that my name really isn't Cleo St. Cloud. I'm wanted in a few too many countries for me to tell you what my name really is. Cleo will do. Victor, give me a cigarette."
Ahab wheezed, tugging out a silver case in a way which Illya found nauseating. Cleo lit up, drew in a couple of hot blue drags, then smiled at him. "We doped the real Miss St. Cloud, Mr. Kuryakin. I took her place on stage tonight, once we were sure you were in the club with your friend. I haven't done one of those stage routines in years. Fortunately I got through it. My real subject is you."