"Exactly. It would provide a starting point. After all, we cannot very well knock on every door between here and Cannes and ask: 'Excuse me, do you happen to have a secret ray in the parlor?', can we!"
They were sitting over coffee and brandy on the terrace of a waterfront restaurant at Villefranche. Helga Grossbreitner still kept an apartment somewhere near Nice and she had gone to check that everything was in order there. The other three had decided to hold their council of war in as agreeable a locale as possible. Violet sea water lapped at the piles of the balcony on which they sat and fragmented the reflections from the windows of the customs house on the far side of the harbor. Out in the bay, someone was having a party on one of the big steam yachts. The sound of laughter and music drifted across to mingle with the footsteps and voices of the holidaymakers thronging around them. Farther out, two American cruisers dressed overall added their complement of light to the garland of lamos outlining the whole inlet from Villefranche to Cap Ferrat. Above, the headlights of cars traversing the Basse Corniche, the Moyenne Corniche and the Grande Corniche threaded their way between the brightly illuminated villas rising tier upon tier into the velvet sky. A breath of warm air stirred the purple bougainvillea draping the balustrade by their table.
"I entirely agree with your suggestion, Illya," Solo said as he called for the bill. "As it happens it works in well with an arrangement I've already made. I thought we ought to have a look at the murdered stewardess' apartment—not the one she was sharing with you, my dear; her own place by the Avenue Malausséna—just in case. Miss Grossbreitner has arranged to get the key from T.C.A. and she's meeting me there tomorrow morning. I'd be most grateful if you could join us, Miss Rogers."
Still profoundly shocked by the killing of her friend, Sherry nodded a pale face. "Naturally, if there's anything I can do..."
"Bless you. I don't for a moment imagine we'll find anything significant. But your help will be invaluable in case we do."
A few minutes later Solo said good night and took a cab back to the airport, where he had a rendezvous with T.C.A.'s Technical Director for France. They were to go over the mechanics of the Murchison-Spears equipment—with which Illya was already familiar—and the various safety devices incorporated in the airline's Tridents. Kuryakin and the girl wandered for a few minutes among the steep stone staircases which served as streets between the old houses perched 1,300 feet above the sea, and drove back to Nice along the Moyenne Corniche.
For a long time the girl was silent. Then at last she turned in her seat. "Illya," she said, "do you honestly think you and your friend will be able to clear up all this...this mess?"
"What—the way the crashes were engineered, you mean?"
"Everything...Deliberate sabotage, murders, innocent people dying because a plane crash is to some stock-manipulator's advantage...it's horrible. And then those poor people slaughtered in America...and someone trying to run your friend down in a car...It makes me feel sick."
"It is not a pretty business, I am afraid."
"And what's your business, Illya? I know you and your friend are some kind of investigators—are you G-men or members of the—what is it?—the C.I.A.?"
"Those are United States bodies, Sherry. We work for something like that—but it is an international organization."
"You mean the U.N.?"
"Well—something like that. Let's leave it there...As to whether we can succeed in clearing up the problem, in stopping the crashes and the other deaths: I think we can. Provided T.C.A. itself has not become a THRUSH Satrap, that is..."
"Illya—you have mentioned that word several times: THRUSH. Just what or who is THRUSH?...And what, for pete's sake, is a Satrap?"
The Russian pulled the Peugeot into the side of the wide road. They had just turned a corner and now the lights of Nice lay spread out before them—a measureless tide of bright pinpoints surging against the dark bulk of the hills, heaving itself into groups and clusters and twinkling constellations, spreading almost as far as the eye could see in a corruscating flood.
"Oh," the girl breathed, "isn't it beautiful? I never tire of seeing Nice from this viewpoint."
"It is one of the classic sights," Illya agreed. He turned and took the girl's two hands in his own. "You ask me what is THRUSH," he said. "It is difficult to answer you truthfully—for who knows what THRUSH is? It is an organization, a way of existence, a dedication to evil...it is almost a nation, although you will not find its name on any maps. And yet, again, if you looked at a globe, there would hardly be a country you could touch which was not in some way or another under its influence."
"But who runs this...organization?" Sherry asked practically.
"It is directed by a Council—a collection of industrialists, scientists and intellectuals who see themselves as superbeings whose mission is to rule over others. Each of them is a tremendously powerful individual in his own right in the ordinary world; each has an important cover position—but all of them owe their allegiance only to THRUSH."
"It sounds tremendously sinister. What does THRUSH do, though?"
"Under the direction of the Council it infiltrates, seduces, corrupts, perverts, dominates and finally takes over...anything. An industrial organization, a chain of stores, a college, a manufacturing complex, a radio station, an army even. And, once taken over, the system dominated continues to all intents and purposes to function as before—outwardly. Only now its whole purpose is to serve the aims of THRUSH...And these concealed outposts, as it were, of the supranation called THRUSH are termed Satraps."
"But how does the organization take over these...things, places, people?"
"As I said—infiltration of key personnel, bribery, blackmail, murder, maneuvering the markets (that's what they are trying to do with T.C.A., you see). You name it, they'll do it. Nothing is too rough for them."
"You said the—Satraps?—the Satraps outwardly carried on 'business as usual', but that really they only served the aims of THRUSH?"
"I did."
"Well—what are the aims of THRUSH, Illya?"
"THRUSH has a single purpose, Sherry. It's not for hire. It may appear at times to favor one nation as against another—but strictly for its own reasons. However limited a THRUSH objective may appear to be, however much it may seem to be an operation for financial reward, say—you may depend on it that in some way that operation advances the Cause."
"And that is?"
Kuryakin sighed. "THRUSH's purpose," he said, "is to dominate the earth..."
"And you and your friend—your organization, that is—try to stop them? You ferret out the Satraps, wherever you find them and...destroy them?"
The Russian turned the ignition key and started the motor. He gestured at the panorama beyond the windshield. Below the road the glittering sea-front instigated a chain reaction of street lighting that stretched in a brilliant and dwindling necklace the whole twelve miles around the bay to Cap d'Antibes. "Look at the lights," he said soberly. "Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people are taking their pleasure, innocent and not so innocent, behind those lights...and behind other lamps just like them all over the world?"
"There are people—let us say—who are trying to put those lights out. We are trying our best to keep them blazing..."