The party from T.C.A.—there were really three separate parties—was easy enough to identify. The alert young men and women in their crisp uniforms had taken over the three outside tables on one of the café terraces.
Helga, Illya and Solo took a table nearby and watched them curiously for a while. But the stereotyped banter, the stereotyped horseplay and the expected ploys soon palled and they began to look around at the other tourists there. Next door to their restaurant was another, and those sitting outside under the floodlit vine pergolas were separated from them only by a row of white fencing running from the junction of the two buildings. It was very warm in the soft summer darkness—a little humid, perhaps—and the shrill banalities of the holidaymakers sounded loud in the night air. On the far side of the square, beyond the massed lights of the parked cars, away from the milling convolutions of the café patrons, blue-clad men with lined faces the color of walnuts played a quiet game of pétanque.
After a while, someone came out onto the terrace with an accordion and sang. They drank a bottle of cold, aromatic Alsatian white wine and ordered another. A second cabaret performer drifted among the closely packed tables playing a guitar and singing American folk songs. In the distance, they could hear the first singer and her accordion entertaining customers in the basement of the next-door café.
Automobile engines started up, revved and whined away in low gear. New arrivals labored up the hill seeking a place to park. Every now and then a burst of applause or a concerted shout of laughter testified to the success of the evening.
After the second cabaret act, waiters at the place beyond the white fence pushed together three tables and started laying out glasses and napkins. Several parties had left. Obviously a larger one was expected. Soon a dozen or more people were threading their way among the other patrons to reach the long table. All of them, Solo saw when they were installed, were women—and the majority of them were in trousers. Several were very heavy around the haunches, with severe, mannish shirts and lined faces wearing a determined look. Others were willowy and slim, with voluptuous bodies below cropped hair. One red-haired girl with shining eyes wore a low-cut bronze cocktail dress. She was very beautiful.
Some of them drank pastis but the majority nursed wide, heavy glasses carrying whisky and ice. They were very gay and giggled a lot, the small conversational clumps every now and then coalescing into one big group when someone related an item sufficiently salacious, funny or astonishing to engage their attention.
The red-haired girl appeared to be the enfant terrible of the party and at the same time a kind of butt. Almost everything she said was greeted with whoops of laughter or exclamations of feigned outrage. After one low-voiced confidence entrusted to her immediate neighbors had resulted in a shriek of mock dismay, a broad-beamed woman at the far end of the table called out: "If Macnamara's going to drag us all down to her level again, at least let her for God's sake speak up so we can all hear!"
"Oh, but she isn't," the redhead's neighbor assured the woman, forcibly preventing the girl from rising to her feet and declaiming, "We're having no more of Macnamara!"
"Darling, but I insist..."
"No, Kay. No," they chorused, laughing. "Macnamara's banned!"
And they they all started to sing at once: "Tara ra-raaa, Ta-rat-taraaaa Raaa..."
They had been there about twenty minutes when Solo suddenly realized that Sheridan Rogers was among them. She had her back to them and he hoped that Illya would not notice her—for in fact she looked rather drunk, with smudged make-up, a blotchy face and hair over one eye. But unfortunately the Russian chanced to look up then, saw the intensity of his regard, and—following his eye—also noticed the girl.
"Sherry!" he exclaimed with a great deal of warmth. "What happened to you? We've been wondering all day. How nice to see you..." He rose to his feet and crossed to the fencing, leaning over to address the missing date from behind her shoulder. The girl called Macnamara bent her head and whispered something, causing Sherry Rogers to giggle and glance shyly over her shoulder at the Russian. "Hi, comrade!" she said thickly. "How goes the investi—investiga—How goes the spy hunt, eh? Found any more enemy agents under your bed?" She rose clumsily to her feet and faced him.
One of the girls in trousers murmured something behind her hand and the whole table burst out laughing again.
"That's ri'," Sherry giggled. "I don't 'spect he has!...But what are you doin' here, lover-boy? Have you come to have yourself a bit of 'xperience? Or are you still after the bold, bad villains for Uncle Sam?"
Illya had fallen back in bewilderment. "Sherry!" he began; "what happened? I thought we had a date...?"
The girl laughed raucously. "That's a good one," she cried. "A date with a dream! My li'l Russian Lull'by....What makes you think I stick aroun' for spy-catchers, comrade?"
"But, Sherry —"
"Oh, wrap it up...You make me tired. You think I've nothing better to do —" The girl's voice died away. Swaying slightly, she stared across the low fence at him for a moment, then lurched a step to one side and sat down abruptly in her chair. "I want a drink," she complained.
In the silence which had fallen over the long table the voice of one of the beefy, butch girls rang out, finishing a sentence: "... at his hair, darling! It could be one of us in drag..." A dozen pairs of eyes, bright with maliciousness and amusement, stared at the Russian as he stood dumbfounded among the red linen tablecloths. Then Helga left her seat and walked over to him. "Let's go, Illya," she said softly, touching his arm. "I'm afraid you'll do no good staying here. I'm terribly sorry but there's no doubt about it...the girl's plastered!"
Kuryakin was very quiet as Solo drove them back towards Nice. Once or twice he shook his head as though in disbelief. At length Solo glanced into the rear-view mirror, raised his eyebrows at the reflection of the Russian's glum expression which he saw there, and said seriously:
"Look, Illya—I was as astonished as you were. The girl's behavior doesn't seem to add up. But we all saw it; we all heard. And I'm sorry—believe me, I real sorry...But I guess anyone can make a mistake over somebody. In the meantime, I don't want to come on as the heavy, but we do have a job to do. We went out to keep an eye on the social life of T.C.A.'s people out here. The ones we went to watch seemed innocent enough—but don't forget Sheridan Rogers is a T.C.A. employee too."
The Russian sighed heavily. "Thank you, Napoleon," he said. "You are quite right, of course. And anyway I have long ago trained myself never to be surprised by what human beings do...at least not after the first shock. It was the...implications that were bothering me here."
Solo nodded. "I know," he said, pulling the car into the side of the road to allow an ambulance to hiss past, the blue light on its roof winking and the urgent two-tone siren blaring. "It does rather suggest a new dimension, doesn't it?"