After a second, he peered cautiously around the brickwork. Helga was just disappearing over the edge of the roof onto a fire escape.
He set off again at a run, taking the space over the alleyway in his stride, almost losing his balance as he landed, and then, righting himself, dashing on to the far end of the roof and the fire escape. As he looked over, there was a flash and a crack from below. A bullet spanged off the iron staircase just below the level of the roof.
Having waited a moment, he raised his head and gazed over the parapet again. The sky over the rooftops was a deep crimson now; a menacing glare reflected fitfully from the dense clouds of smoke billowing from the ramparts. In the blood-red light he located Helga standing at the foot of the fire escape—and once more flames blossomed twice from the gun in her hand. He drew back, looked over again, and for the third time a bullet sent him scurrying back into cover like a tortoise into its shell. Obviously the girl was prepared to keep him tied down there.
His own gun, loaded with sleep darts, was useless at this range. He would have to try and outflank the girl. Worming his way back, he inched down to the guttering at the side of the house. The wall was covered with the branches of an ancient vine.
Groping about in the leaves until he found the main stem, he seized hold of the gnarled wood, swung his legs over the gutter, and began to lower himself, hand over hand, slowly to the ground four stories below. Dust, insects and small twigs showered upon his head and threatened to choke him as he descended, but at last his exploring toe discovered firm ground and he found himself in a small walled garden.
Skirting an ornamental pond, he pushed through a row of dwarf cypresses, stepped up onto a garden roller and straddled the six-foot wall. On the far side was a small cobbled square. The tight, shining hemispheres of Helga Grossbreitner's leather-clad rump were just disappearing through an archway opposite.
Illya looked back and up along the roofline of the houses he had just left. From the upper windows of the THRUSH headquarters, flames and smoke were streaming. As he watched, a shower of sparks burst through the skylight, and a moment later a column of fire exploded into the night and licked hungrily at the sky. He wondered if Solo had managed to get the women safely out of the burning building, shrugged, and dropped quietly to the ground.
Through the archway, a flight of stone stairs led down between tall, narrow buildings to a street.
In the nightmare light he hurried down, flattening himself against a wall, and peered around the corner of the building. The street was obviously one of the village's main thoroughfares, for although it was only about eight feet wide, he could see in the reflected red glow of the floodlights a succession of antique shops, boutiques, souvenir stands and galleries crammed with chocolate-box paintings. As far as he could see, it was empty—but from the far side of a rise in the roadway came the clatter of running feet.
Illya dashed up the slope and paused at the top. From here, the street dipped down again between rows of gimmicky 'restored' houses and then forked—one leg curving away to the right to join the ramparts, the other plunging down to a tunnel-like medieval gateway leading to the outside world. For the first time, too, there were people: several residents were climbing the hill towards him on the way back to their houses, and there was quite a crowd among the café tables on the battlement above the gate. Helga was running. A strand of her golden hair had worked loose from the chignon and streamed over her shoulder as she pelted down the incline and vanished through the arched gateway.
As Kuryakin set off after her, he realized that the display must now be over. The red floodlights were out, the smoke was blowing away, and from outside the walls of the town a swelling murmur of applause from thousands of sightseers posted along the terraced vineyards and orange groves grew and grew. There was another sound, too, he realized as he ran down the slope towards the gate—nearer and more urgent: the sound of many voices calling, laughing, shouting in a confused babble just beyond the ancient walls.
A moment later, he burst out from the vaulted tunnel into a scene of extraordinary gaiety. A Proven�al fair filled the small place outside the gate usually reserved for the parking of cars and games of pétanque. Booths, kiosks and sideshows jammed the spaces between the buttresses of the old rampart, sprawled across the open space under the plane trees and spilled over into the narrow roadway between La Résidence and La Colombe d'Or, St. Paul's world famous hotels. Around and between them seethed a vast throng of people hurling coconuts, buying tickets, pitching quoits, munching cotton candy and ice cream, and packing the counters of shooting galleries in flickering torchlight.
But of Helga Grossbreitner there was no sign.
Illya clattered to a halt at the edge of the crowd, scanning the myriad faces with an exasperated frown. Trying to locate a blonde in black trousers and a white shirt among such a press of holidaymakers was hopeless.
He was about to plunge into the maelstrom when there was a shout above and behind him. Solo and Sherry Rogers were climbing down a stone stairway from the top of the rampart. They presented an arresting sight: the Chief Enforcement Officer of U.N.C.L.E. was soot-streaked and dishevelled, his collar torn and his jacket split; and the girl looked almost comically ill-dressed in a skirt and blouse several sizes too large for her.
"Where is she?" Solo panted as they came up to Kuryakin. "Not among that bunch, I hope."
The Russian nodded unhappily. "She kept me at bay with an automatic," he said. "And by the time I'd made a detour to outflank her, she was just that little bit too far ahead...You made out all right at the house?"
"Yes. It was a bit of a struggle, but we made it. I got Sherry and Celeste out first and then went back for the doorkeeper you slugged. The two plug-uglies we put to sleep had already come to and escaped."
"And Larsen?"
Solo looked at the ground. "Pity about him," he said soberly. "But he was at least a quadruple murderer. By the time I'd tied up Celeste and the doorkeeper, called up Station M to ask for the S�reté boys to come and pick them up, and borrowed some of Celeste's clothes for Sherry, the top two stories were a wall of fire..."
He looked back at the battlements. Above the irregular line of roofs, the sky flickered orange in imitation of the display which had so recently finished. Faintly above the hubbub of the crowd, they heard from the far side of the village the hee-haw bray of a fire engine.
"Never mind," Illya said. "I suppose we had better plunge in among all this and try to find her. We'd better split up..."
Slowly, they forged in among the chattering, laughing crowd, swollen to saturation point now by an ever-growing stream of sightseers flooding down the narrow approach road from the terraces surrounding the town. They were jostled, pushed, shouldered aside, jammed inextricably in phalanxes of people between the booths as the strident cries of barkers and the good-natured banter of tourists in a dozen languages swelled and crashed around them. At one point, when Illya had stopped by a sideshow where people bought a handful of numbered tickets rolled into tubes in the hope of winning a raffle prize, Sheridan Rogers approached him and plucked at his sleeve.