"... and tell your Navigator for God's sake to get a fix on the position where the readings began to differ—the sixth, I think it was," Solo was calling as the Trident banked seawards in a steep climbing turn and headed back for its second approach.
A few minutes later they made a perfect touchdown under manual control and taxied slowly back to the apron.
Matheson and the airport director met them in a jeep. "I thought we'd be going back with two empty seats for a moment," Matheson said as they climbed down the portable companionway to the ground. "You were flying straight into the deck like the one last night. Still—Warwick caught her just in time and all's well that ends well, eh? I expect you could do with a drink..."
Solo mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "I guess it was a pretty close shave at that," he admitted. "As for the drink—the answer's yes, please!...Illya's just superintending the unshipping of both sets of Murchison-Spears equipment so that your boys can get to work right away on comparison tests. Now perhaps we'll be able to say just how the deed is done..."
But at midnight, Matheson came up to them in the airport restaurant, where they were sitting over coffee and cognac, and dropped into a vacant chair at their table with an expression of astonishment on his face. "It beats me," he said blankly. "We've really done the most exhaustive tests on both sets of equipment—even had them taken up in a helicopter to check them under operating conditions—and what do you think we found?"
"That both sets were working perfectly—and giving precisely the same readings all along the line," Solo said with a grin.
The Technical Director started, absently catching his empty pipe as it fell from his mouth. "But that's just it!" he exclaimed. "How on earth did you know? What have you chaps found out?"
"We don't know," Illya said. "It was a reasonable deduction; it fits the pattern, that's all."
"Well, I'm blessed! You mean something or somebody distorts the altitude stage of the gear as the plane lands—but that it's returned to normal a short while afterwards?"
"Yes."
"And that whatever it is has such a fine adjustment that it'll bitch up equipment in the nose of the plane—but leave similar gear in the tail unaffected?"
"That's what we think."
"Well, I'm blessed," Matheson said again. "All the same, it doesn't really get us much further, does it? I mean we're confirmed in our ides of what happened roughly—but we're no nearer to finding out who did it. Or how."
"I think you mistake our aims, Mr. Matheson," Solo said. "The point of the operation was, of course, to confirm this—but the main idea was to find out where it's done from. And that in turn will give us a lead to who."
"Can you find out where it's done from, then?"
"If your Navigator has been able to fix the position of the place where the readings began to differ—yes, we should be able to. Has he managed, do you know?"
"Yes, he has, as a matter of fact. He asked me to tell you. All the stuff is up in the tower, if you'd care to come along."
Illya went to see if he could find any news of Sheridan Rogers while Solo and Matheson made their way to the chart room of the control tower. He joined them a few minutes later with a long face. "I'm very much afraid, Napoleon," he said shaking his head sadly, "that things look very black for that girl. She hasn't been seen since the night she came out to dinner with us at Villefranche—apart from that disagreeable incident at Haut-des-Cagnes, that is. She didn't show up for her shift yesterday morning—and there's still no reply from her apartment."
"Relax, Illya," Solo said soberly. "Whatever's happened to her, she's not the bird we're looking for: the thrush flies in quite a different direction."
"Why do you say that?"
"Take a look at this." The Chief Enforcement Officer of U.N.C.L.E. was sitting with Matheson at a huge table strewn with papers. In the center was a large-scale map of the coast from Fréjus to the Italian border.
"We've charted the Trident's flight path here," Solo continued, pointing with a pencil at a dotted red line running approximately southwest to northeast a few hundred meters off the coastline. "And the Navigator has given us a fix on the position where the two sets of gear began to register differently—that is, the place where whatever it is began to affect the box in the cockpit. We were exactly here"—He leaned over and made a mark across the dotted line—"when the Third Pilot was reading out the details of the sixth check. Right?"
Kuryakin nodded, looking intently at the chart.
"Right. Well, here's the touchdown point." He made another mark a short distance from the end of the runway indicated on the map. "And we have already agreed that whatever device is beamed at the planes must be pretty short-range."
"Yes—otherwise it could presumably reach them when they were flying in from the other side of the airport...landing from northeast to southwest."
"Sure. So looking at these two points and the distance between them—and bearing in mind the distance between each of them and the far end of the runway—would you agree that ten kilometers would seem a fair estimate to allow for the range?"
Illya studied the chart for a few minutes in silence. "Ye-e-es," he said slowly at last. "Yes, I guess so, Napoleon."
"Okay. And we have further agreed that the device is probably operated from one of the hill villages just inland from the coast, right?"
"Right."
"Swell. That's all we need then." Solo picked up set square, protactor and scale, and set to work on the map. "Here's the position of the sixth reading...here. And here's the touchdown point...here. Now if we mark off the ten kilometer range and triangle inland...like this...we should be able to narrow down the number of hill villages we have to consider." He ruled a final line and stood back from the table.
Kuryakin stepped forward and gazed at the wedge of country thus marked off. "There's only one village eligible, then," he said slowly, " Vence is too far inland; Gatti�res and La Colle are just outside the triangle."
"Exactly. There's only one hill village in the triangle—and that's St. Paul-de-Vence."
"But Napoleon..."
Solo sighed. He looked past Matheson and out of the window at the darkened airfield. The lights of a liner moved slowly across the sea beyond. From the floor above the voice of the controller in the green-windowed operations room could be heard faintly as he talked down a private plane that was landing.
"I know," he said at last. "I know. Helga has an apartment in St. Paul-de-Vence. And apart from Matheson here and the crew of the plane, Helga was the only person we told of our plan. The only one..."
Chapter 12 — An interrupted journey
The small, dark man with the bad-tempered expression dropped the spool of tape back into its box, shut the lid of the portable recorder, and got out of the car. He walked across the parking lot and pushed open the swinging doors leading to the foyer of the airport building. Inside there was a babble of transatlantic voices: the Air France flight from New York had just arrived and the place was a seething mass of tourists, porters and taxi drivers. In the alcove behind the semicircular inquiry desk where the post office and bureau de change were housed, there was a line of passengers waiting to change money and send telegrams announcing their safe arrival. It was some minutes before the trim brunette dealing with the post office section was able to connect him with the telephone number he asked for.