Pulp Fiction | The Finger in the Sky Affair by Peter Leslie (6 page)

"But the controls were in fact being worked by the Murchison-Spears equipment in each case?"

"That's it. Therefore the fault lay with the gear—but as you know, the gear was working perfectly, too.
After
the smash."

"So what we're looking for is someone or something that puts the equipment all haywire—yet leaves it okay after a crash?"

"That's what they tell me."

"Sounds crazy to me. The gear works on signals received from the ground, doesn't it—like a sort of radar? Then it adjusts the plane's controls in accordance with this information?...Right. Well, how in hell could anybody tamper with the machine so that it falsified signals from the ground—and yet, when it was tested after the crash, gave perfectly correct readings?"

"That," Maximilian Plant said with a broad smile, "is what I figured
you
were going to find out for us, Mr. Solo!"

Solo grinned back at him. He ran four fingers down one side of his jaw. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head; "I could understand it if the gear was just screwed up to give wrong readings and therefore fly the plane into the ground—but not when it works okay again
after
the crash!"

"Yes. It looks as though we're looking for something that causes some kind of
temporary
maladjustment, doesn't it?"

"Do you know of any technique that could do this? Does your staff? Can you think of any line of scientific inquiry that would help track down such a device—if one exists?"

Plant smiled again. "No," he said frankly. "None whatever."

"Then it looks," Solo said, "as though I'll have to take a plane to Nice to join my colleague there—the kind of sabotage your two American planes suffered can be done at any time; but the three jobs at Nice seem dependent on it
being
Nice. So my guess is that if we dig deep enough there, we may just come up with something."

"I hope so, young man. This government—and the British government, for that matter—would hate for there to be any more crashes like the others. And we, of course, wish our company to stay solvent!"

"Naturally, Mr. Plant. Could you give me the names of a few of your key personnel at Nice? I'll want to investigate everything concerning T.C.A. that goes on there, and of course I'll need help to steer me through the technical details when we try to work out what could have happened to these planes."

"I can do better than that. I was planning to send my confidential secretary, Miss Grossbreitner, over to Nice to see what went on there. A unit that suffers accidents is usually a unit that has something wrong with it, and I like to keep a finger on the pulse—even if it's only a distant one. Why don't you team up with her and she can show you around? She used to be with our maintenance section at Nice—that's why I'm sending her, because she knows the place so well."

"It would be a pleasure," Solo said—with feeling.

And later, in the cloistered calm of the outer office, he stopped by Helga Grossbreitner's desk and said: "Seems I'm going to have my opportunity to buy you that lunch after all! How about tomorrow at the Ciel d'Azur—on the second floor of the terminal building at Nice airport? It's got four crossed knives and forks in the
Guide Michelin
, so it should be good."

The girl lifted a hand to tuck a few stray hairs in place beneath the golden curve of her chignon. "It's kind of you, Mr. Solo," she said huskily, "but I'm afraid it would be impossible."

Solo tried hard to keep his eyes off the taut hemisphere profiled so agreeably by the raised arm. "I don't see why," he said.

She looked him full in the eye and smiled slowly. "Our own flight arriving at midday is booked solid," she said. "I've had to take seats on Air France Flight A.F./022—and it doesn't arrive there until ten to seven in the evening."

"Dinner then? We'll be just in time."

Helga Grossbreitner dropped her arm. She shifted slightly on her haunches. "Yes," she said. "I think I should like that..."

The agent was still grinning to himself out on Fifth Avenue. The Mustang had jolted up onto the wide sidewalk, lined itself up and begun to roar towards him before the scattering of passersby; the expressions of frozen astonishment and a single girl's scream percolated through into his conscious mind. He looked up to see the high-fronted, wide sports car bearing down upon him at what seemed a fantastic speed. His mind, suddenly in top gear, worked like lightning: there was ten yards or more to each side before he could reach the shelter of shop front, parked car, newsstand or tree. A flick of the wrist, a swerve from that high-geared steering, and he wouldn't have a chance.

He took three tremendously quick steps towards the roadway and sprang desperately upwards, his out-stretched hands reaching for an ornamental arm projecting from a light standard. As his fingers closed over the green-painted ironwork, he let the impetus of his jump carry his legs on and up, drawing his knees towards his chin like a trapezist.

Missing him by fractions of inches, the Mustang snarled past below with a scream from its highly tuned engine. Fifty yards down the sidewalk, its brake lights blazed momentarily red as it spewed, rocked into a left turn with a screech of tires, and shot through the line of parked cars by a fire-plug. It slewed sideways as it hit the main road, was expertly corrected, and accelerated away towards the river with a bellow of its twin exhausts.

Solo breathed out. He relaxed his fingers and dropped to the ground, brushing his suit with automatic hand as the lunchtime strollers reemerged to exclaim and complain.

"... kind of a madman was that, for God's sake?"..."missed this guy here by inches—
inches
, I tell you!—Sure you're okay, bud?"..."and I always said there should be a special license for guys with..." "... I mean! Cars roaring down the pavement on Fifth
Avenue
..." "If you hadn't done a Tarzan up there, boy..."

The man from U.N.C.L.E. brushed aside the kindly-intentioned inquiries and rushed to the curb to flag down a cab. The Mustang had jumped the lights at the next intersection and gone. It was a black car with, he thought, a Philadelphia registration—but what the hell! The plates would have been switched within a half hour. And there were plenty of Mustangs in New York. He had not seen the driver's face, but he had the impression that there were at least two men in the front seat. So...

The cab driver was amused by the long and penetrating scrutiny Solo gave him.

"You lookin' for a long-lost brother, bud?" he asked. "You give me one good reason to do it—like a legacy from a distant aunt or sump'n—and I'll be your brother all day long."

"My cousin drives a cab," Solo told him with a grin. "We quarrel. He's a Republican, you see. So I prefer to—er—avoid..."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Jump in, mister. Where you wanna go?"

"Just take me somewhere near the U.N. building, will you?"

"As near as you like, bub. Watch out, though.
Everybody's
your cousin there! Brothers they got for all the world at that place..."

"I'll bear it in mind."

"You do that," the cabby said, slamming the door. "Too many brothers—that can be a suffocatin' thing..."

"It may not be significant, Napoleon," Illya was saying, "but Sherry and I have been checking various things in the T.C.A. records here—and one thing emerges right away: all three of the crashes took place when the planes approached from the southwest; when the runway was being used in the direction from Cannes towards Nice."

"How many runways are there?"

"Only the one—that's the point, you see. Most of the airport is on reclaimed land, and the main runway runs parallel with the coast and the motor road...They keep on extending it every year—to take bigger and faster planes, I suppose—but it just spreads further along the coast, never further out to sea. And it can still only be used from southwest to northeast, or from northeast to southwest."

"And you say all three crashes took place when it was being used from southwest to northeast?"

"Yes. It could be only coincidence: they use the runway much more in that direction than in the other. But they do use it the other way sometimes—especially when there's a
mistral
blowing."

"Why's that?"

"The
mistral
comes from the west," Sheridan Rogers answered. "It's very gusty here when it blows—and it blows like the devil, too! Any plane landing from the southwest would have the
mistral
as a tail wind, so naturally they bring them in the other way. The same goes for take-off."

"Do they use the same runway for landing and take-off?"

"Yes, they do."

"What do you deduce from these facts, then?" Solo asked, turning towards Illya with a smile. "Mr. Kuryakin, you have the floor..."

"Since there is no record of any mishaps when planes land from northeast to southwest, but there were three bad crashes when T.C.A. aircraft came in from the other direction, I go out on a limb and say..." Illya paused. "I say that, since the Murchison-Spears gear proved to be in A-one condition afterwards, then THRUSH—or someone—must be using some kind of device to mess it up only temporarily—and I say further, Napoleon, that this can only be used successfully
if the plane approaches from the west.
"

Solo nodded. "As far as the temporary bit is concerned, that's very much what old man Plant thought," he said. "Any further comments?"

"Yes. Since the device, whatever it is, appears to be in a sense dependent on direction, one is forced to consider the possibility of some sort of beam or ray."

"Yeah. That's what I figured...You mean something actually
sited
on the west side of the airport, so it can only be used if the ships come in from that side?"

"Exactly—and this implies it must be fairly short-range, too. I should be inclined to suggest something aimed or beamed straight at the plane as it glides in towards the runway over the sea...probably one of the many hilltop villages just behind the coastal strip."

"Or from a boat, maybe?"

Kuryakin shook his head. "We checked that. It would have to be moored or anchored, and there's no record of any such ship—besides, the fisherman from Cagnes, the water-ski schools, the speedboat owners would all notice it: it's a very busy piece of ocean, just there!"

"Okay, no boat. So what about your hilltop villages...?"

"Well, there's Mougins, Biot, Vallauris, La Colle, St.-Paul-de-Vence, Gatti�res, Haut-de-Cagnes—all of them look down on the flight path from the hills dotting the country between the mountains and the sea. You can stand on the ramparts and look down and see the planes silver against the blue sea as they glide in."

"Very poetic...but where do we start looking?"

The Russian smiled, spreading his arms in a gesture of indecision. "It seems to me," he said, pushing the tow-colored hair out of his eyes, "that there's only one possible lead for us to take."

"And that is?"

"To follow up every conceivable angle on the
social
life of T.C.A. staff based here in Nice. Watch and listen; get to know them; find out how they—how do you say?—tick...Because members of THRUSH must have infiltrated the organization somewhere, and if we can get on to them —"

"You mean once we locate which of the personnel belong to THRUSH, we can tail them and at least get a start geographically?"

"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
?"