Sam shook his head and padded about the room in his Texan boots.
He seemed to forget that Illya was in the room. He went over to the baggage rack and rummaged for a moment inside it. But when he straightened, his hands were empty.
None of the three guards moved. They continued to poise, like a kill-trained canine corps, their soulless eyes fixed on Kuryakin as if waiting for the one-word signal that meant attack and slaughter.
Suddenly Sam Su Yan gave the command. He jerked his head toward Kuryakin. “Prepare him.”
Kuryakin spun on his heel, thrusting his hand under his jacket, snagging at the butt of his U.N.C.L.E. Special. But he could not reach it in time.
Sam’s assassins sprang upon him without speaking. A hand chopped him across the neck, a hand struck him at the base of his spine, a hand caught him in the groin. Expert hands caught his arms, tore away his jacket and shirt, tossed gun and holster upon the bed.
A straight chair was pushed in behind Illya. One of the thugs said, “Sit,” and Illya was thrust down upon the chair.
Illya struggled, and ended with his wrists and ankles secured. They worked smoothly, efficiently, deftly, and then stepped back, standing unmoving, waiting for the next command.
Illya glanced at Sam. “Surely you have sense enough left to know you can’t get away with killing me—not here in this hotel.”
Sam walked toward him, his face an ugly mask, expressionless.
“I don’t need you to remind me that your agents have harried me constantly since I arrived here, that they are aware you are in this hotel, in this hotel room. But I prefer that you permit me to make whatever decisions are necessary concerning you—because I assure you they were laid out great detail long before you arrived here.”
“You’ll commit a serious blunder by not releasing me at once.”
“Please!” Sam spoke sharply. “If your men call your room in this hotel, be assured that your voice will answer the telephone. Your voice will assure them that all is proceeding smoothly.”
He walked back to the bag on the rack, drew from it a syringe and needle. He held it up to the light, forced a drop through the needle and then returned to where Illya sat watching him. “Will you sit quietly, or must you be held? This won’t hurt you as I inject it. It is in fact a discovery of our chemists, and I wish I could assure you it had no side effects. But”—his mouth pulled into a faint smile of pride—“I can’t do that. I must tell you, as a matter of fact, that it is a matter of quite unpleasant side-effects.”
“Drugged,” Illya said in contempt. “Carried out in the dark. What high-quality intellect devised this hoary scheme, Sam?”
“Unfortunately for you, I’m afraid you’ll discover nothing hoary or old-hat in this. It’s never been done quite this way—in fact this particular nerve stimulant has never been tested on human beings, my young guinea pig. In the lab it has created some exciting results. I suggest you not be contemptuous until we learn who wins the war. Eh?” He lifted his eyes, spoke to the guards. “Subdue him.”
Sam held the hypodermic needle in his hand, but he could not resist a final boast as the men held Illya’s inner arm open to the injection.
“We are not unsubtle enough to kill you and leave your body here to draw local and international police, my friend. What we are accomplishing is much too important, and much too secret for such resulting publicity. I assure you, we have better and more long-range plans for you than this.”
As he spoke, he injected the point of the needle into the collateral radial artery from the parent trunk of the profunda brachii, inside the elbow joint. “Slowly,” Sam said. “This is accomplished slowly, Mr. Kuryakin. No thrust of needle and spurt of solution. This takes a little time. You will be patient, won’t you, Mr. Kuryakin?”
III
THE DC-7 DRONED soothingly at thirty-seven thousand feet, with churning thunderheads like a broken wall between plane and the California mountains where bandits and tireless padres had marched, above the dark and choppy bay where sea wolves once hoved in from plundering to shanghai a fresh crew from the hills of the town between the bay and the ocean.
Solo smiled wryly at the thought that San Francisco hadn’t changed much; the violence and the excitement was still down there in the gaudy lights and the impenetrable dark. He even remembered that during the war when his outfit had been awaiting transport to Korea, the men had been futilely warned against the gin mills of Mason Street, the friendly natives who’d insist on buying drinks. “Don’t drink with your own brother if he’s been in San Francisco longer than three years—and you haven’t seen him in that time.” And there was the theme song of embittered sailors: I left my wallet in San Francisco, high upon some dark and windy alley…
Solo put the thoughts of his past out of his mind. He knew San Francisco as an exciting town where pulses quickened and life took a new edge. Paris of the new world. An old cliché, but with all the truth of the tritest platitude.
He buckled his seat belt as the plane put down through the thick smoking of the clouds, gliding upon the runway.
He came off the plane with the forty other travel-mussed passengers, trying to blend in with the crowd despite his purpled eye and the strong premonition of deadly danger ahead for him in this spirited town he loved.
He returned the stewardess’ warm smile, and recalled his promise to call that number she’d printed for him on the inside of a match folder if he got five free minutes in town during the next three days.
There was a scented perfection to her specifications, and he experienced a moment of regret because he knew in advance that he would not have five minutes he could call his own for a long time.
Solo glanced over his shoulder and she waved to him from the plane exit way, and he knew with a faint sadness that he’d never see her again.
He paused at the car-rental desk and collected the keys for the Chevrolet convertible that had been reserved in his name. He saw a slender man in a gray suit lower a newspaper when he spoke his name at the desk, and straighten as the girl repeated it. The man folded his newspaper deliberately and with an unhurried stride went to the row of public phone booths and entered one, closing it behind him. He watched Solo narrowly across the administration building to the parking area.
Solo drove at fifty miles an hour in the suburban traffic on roads that sang wetly from the recent rain. The air was bracing, the flow of traffic was a challenge that alerted tired senses, and the memory of the sudden rains that struck the Bay Area stirred more old memories.
He left his keys with the doorman at the St. Francis hotel, stood a moment listening to the luring call of the evening traffic, seeing the lights and the elegantly dressed women. He checked into the room that had been reserved for him. He prowled it a moment, anxious to be out of it and on his way as if he were a hunter with the scent of prey nagging at him.
In the street again, he rejected the idea of getting out the car. A man stalked these hills, hearing the rattle of the cable cars, seeing the streets forking out like spokes from a hub, drinking in the excitement of the strange race of inhabitants of this place. Night in San Francisco! Solo heaved a deep sigh and strode faster, going down Market Street toward the Embarcadero.
He paused on the walk, aware of people passing him on both sides, the clatter of sounds, the winking of the lights on the purple and orange neon: THE HUNGRY PUSSYCAT. Up Three Flights.
He walked up those three flights and entered the padded doors. The hysterical clatter of sound washed out around him.
He saw the bored faces of male and female lined like crows along the padded bar, the disenchanted bartenders moving behind it, the dark mirrors, the damp smell of liquor. Music was loud, with that muffled tone of poor acoustics. The small dance space was crowded, and here and there were military uniforms to remind one that the cold war was with him, and that this frantic city was still the port of the Pacific.