Pulp Fiction | The Finger in the Sky Affair by Peter Leslie (7 page)

"What—the way the crashes were engineered, you mean?"

"Everything...Deliberate sabotage, murders, innocent people dying because a plane crash is to some stock-manipulator's advantage...it's horrible. And then those poor people slaughtered in America...and someone trying to run your friend down in a car...It makes me feel sick."

"It is not a pretty business, I am afraid."

"And what's
your
business, Illya? I know you and your friend are some kind of investigators—are you G-men or members of the—what is it?—the C.I.A.?"

"Those are United States bodies, Sherry. We work for something like that—but it is an
inter
national organization."

"You mean the U.N.?"

"Well—something like that. Let's leave it there...As to whether we can succeed in clearing up the problem, in stopping the crashes and the other deaths: I think we can. Provided T.C.A. itself has not become a THRUSH Satrap, that is..."

"Illya—you have mentioned that word several times: THRUSH. Just what or who is THRUSH?...And what, for pete's sake, is a Satrap?"

The Russian pulled the Peugeot into the side of the wide road. They had just turned a corner and now the lights of Nice lay spread out before them—a measureless tide of bright pinpoints surging against the dark bulk of the hills, heaving itself into groups and clusters and twinkling constellations, spreading almost as far as the eye could see in a corruscating flood.

"Oh," the girl breathed, "isn't it
beautiful
? I never tire of seeing Nice from this viewpoint."

"It
is
one of the classic sights," Illya agreed. He turned and took the girl's two hands in his own. "You ask me what is THRUSH," he said. "It is difficult to answer you truthfully—for who knows what THRUSH is? It is an organization, a way of existence, a dedication to evil...it is almost a nation, although you will not find its name on any maps. And yet, again, if you looked at a globe, there would hardly be a country you could touch which was not in some way or another under its influence."

"But who runs this...organization?" Sherry asked practically.

"It is directed by a Council—a collection of industrialists, scientists and intellectuals who see themselves as superbeings whose mission is to rule over others. Each of them is a tremendously powerful individual in his own right in the ordinary world; each has an important cover position—but all of them owe their allegiance only to THRUSH."

"It sounds tremendously sinister. What does THRUSH
do
, though?"

"Under the direction of the Council it infiltrates, seduces, corrupts, perverts, dominates and finally takes over...anything. An industrial organization, a chain of stores, a college, a manufacturing complex, a radio station, an army even. And, once taken over, the system dominated continues to all intents and purposes to function as before—outwardly. Only now its whole purpose is to serve the aims of THRUSH...And these concealed outposts, as it were, of the supranation called THRUSH are termed Satraps."

"But how does the organization take over these...things, places, people?"

"As I said—infiltration of key personnel, bribery, blackmail, murder, maneuvering the markets (that's what they are trying to do with T.C.A., you see). You name it, they'll do it. Nothing is too rough for them."

"You said the—Satraps?—the Satraps outwardly carried on 'business as usual', but that really they only served the aims of THRUSH?"

"I did."

"Well—what
are
the aims of THRUSH, Illya?"

"THRUSH has a single purpose, Sherry. It's not for hire. It may appear at times to favor one nation as against another—but strictly for its own reasons. However limited a THRUSH objective may appear to be, however much it may seem to be an operation for financial reward, say—you may depend on it that in some way that operation advances the Cause."

"And that is?"

Kuryakin sighed. "THRUSH's purpose," he said, "is to dominate the earth..."

"And you and your friend—your organization, that is—try to stop them? You ferret out the Satraps, wherever you find them and...destroy them?"

The Russian turned the ignition key and started the motor. He gestured at the panorama beyond the windshield. Below the road the glittering sea-front instigated a chain reaction of street lighting that stretched in a brilliant and dwindling necklace the whole twelve miles around the bay to Cap d'Antibes. "Look at the lights," he said soberly. "Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people are taking their pleasure, innocent and not so innocent, behind those lights...and behind other lamps just like them all over the world?"

"There are people—let us say—who are trying to put those lights out. We are trying our best to keep them blazing..."

Andrea Bergen's apartment was in a small new block not far from the main railway station in Nice. Illya parked the rented 404 on the pavement between two of the plane trees which shaded the quiet avenue and went upstairs with Solo. The place was on the third floor—a large studio room with kitchen and bathroom. It was at the back of the building, the least expensive position, they guessed, facing the rear of a supermarket across a marshaling yard full of trucks carrying imported Italian cars. The police had been quite cooperative about letting them have the keys—though dubious about the chances of their finding anything.

"I must emphasize," Solo had said to the superintendent, "that we are not in any way attempting to go over your ground a second time; nor, indeed, to cast any reflections on the efficient work of your department—professionally speaking, we are not interested in the murder."

"Thank you, Monsieur Solo. It is a crime we appear far short of solving, however. Nobody has come forward—and nobody recollects seeing the short, dark man you described as being near the murdered lady."

"I didn't think they would. It was only a longshot—and anyway the man may be perfectly innocent: my colleague seeing him twice that afternoon may be entirely a coincidence."

"I should doubt that, Monsieur. To professionals such as yourself, the man intent upon doing wrong appears almost to cast an aura, so that his presence and intentions virtually declare themselves. I have every faith in your—what do you say?—eighth sense."

"You flatter us, Monsieur: it is only the sixth sense!"

"Ah. Perhaps justly, my countrymen are celebrated for their courtesy, Monsieur Solo...However, to return to our muttons, as you Americans say—you will hope, then, to discover some things bearing on the airplane crash in which Mademoiselle Bergen was injured?"

"I very much doubt it—but I feel we have to try."

"You will find, I am afraid, no diaries with carefully reasoned
résumés
of Mademoiselle Bergen's recollections of the incident—for she came here only for a half hour, having been discharged from the hospital, before leaving to share an apartment with a friend."

"Miss Rogers. Yes, we do know that. In fact, Miss Rogers is to meet us at Miss Bergen's apartment to see if she can remember anything the murdered girl said in that half hour—or whether the place reminds her of anything that may be of interest or of use in our inquiry."

"So. Well, I wish you luck, gentlemen, in your quest with the charming Mademoiselle Rogers..."

But the charming Mademoiselle Rogers seemed singularly reluctant to keep her appointment. "
What
time did Sherry tell you she'd be here?" Solo asked Illya when they had been examining the place for twenty-five minutes—and had found nothing.

"Ten o'clock. The time we arranged to get here."

"Well, that's very odd. We weren't late, so she couldn't have come and gone. When did you last see her, Illya?"

"Last night, of course. We went for a little drive after you left. We had a look at Eze village. And then I drove her home."

"Where did you leave her?"

"Outside her flat, of course," the Russian said, coloring slightly. "In the Rue Masséna."

"All right, all right," Solo said, smiling. "Don't get all Slavic on me. I just thought if you
had
happened to stay for breakfast, it would —"

"There was nothing like that at all," Illya said stiffly—adding, with a (for him) rare flash of sarcasm: "You forget, Napoleon; I am not the
chief
enforcement officer!"

"
Touché
!" The woman's voice drawled sleepily from the door as Solo burst into laughter. Helga Grossbreitner was standing there, leaning against the doorpost. She was wearing a white linen suit with a huge-brimmed hat in lacy black straw—and she looked cool, and infinitely attractive. "Sorry I'm a few minutes late," she added, "but I came on in as the door was open...to hear my virtue—at least by implication—being impugned!"

"Come on in," Solo grinned. "Don't mind my friend: he's just a little jealous."

"Good morning, Helga," Illya said. "Do forgive me. Really, I did not in any way mean —"

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" the girl interrupted. "Don't give it a thought; we're all grown up here. If I don't mind the night porter at a man's hotel seeing me come in without luggage at one A.M., why should I object to good-humored remarks from his friend?" She paused and looked across at Solo speculatively, adding in her throatiest voice: "When are you going to ask me to dinner again, Solo?"

"Tonight," the agent replied promptly. "We're agreed that we should follow up the social life of your employees, and there's a party of them going up to Haut-des-Cagnes. I think we could do worse than tag along. We'll make up a foursome...you do know Sherry Rogers?"

"But of course. Very well. She was already on the staff at the airport when I was working here."

"Good. Which brings me to another point—the one we had been discussing when you came in: Sherry was due here at ten o'clock and now it's twenty-five to eleven. You haven't seen her?"

"I'm afraid not. I shouldn't worry though. She works in Liaison now, doesn't she? There may easily have been some panic at the
aéroport
."

"I suppose so. There must be plenty of alarms and excursions in your game, apart from crashes—late arrivals, reroutings, diversions and so on..."

"You're telling me!" the girl said. "Can I help in any way?"

"You can try, if you would. All we wanted to ask Sherry was to keep an eye open for anything in this apartment that she thought might throw a light—however faint—on the crash Andrea Bergen was injured in."

"But of course. Have you found anything at all yet?"

Solo and Illya admitted that they hadn't. Nor, despite the able and willing assistance of Helga, were they able to discover a single thing out of the ordinary in the apartment. Clothes, cosmetics and shoes were all neatly in place; the small kitchen held a collection of canned goods in a refrigerator, as befitted the home of a girl whose business took her away several days a week; household bills and bank statements were neatly docketed in a bureau; a bundle of unexceptional letters from a Second Officer in Swissair lived under the sachets in a handkerchief drawer. By twelve thirty, they had to confess that the apartment would yield nothing.

"I shall leave you, then," Helga said, approaching close to Solo and picking a small piece of thread from his lapel with a gloved hand. "Tonight we meet at what time?"

"Let's say seven thirty, okay?"

"Fine," Illya said. "Unless something's happened that makes it too early for Sherry. I'll have to check her apartment and the T.C.A. office to find out what's happened. I can't think what's become of her..."

But the apartment on the Rue Masséna was empty and the T.C.A. bureau at the airport had heard nothing from Sherry Rogers since she went off duty at six thirty P.M. the previous day.

"She's not due on again till tomorrow morning at eight," the pretty, plump girl Illya had spoken too when first he came to the airport volunteered. " I shouldn't worry if I were you. She may have gone off for the day, you know."

"She
may
, certainly," Illya said to Solo afterwards. "And admittedly I don't know her well—but such behaviour would seem unlike what I have come to expect from her, you know. She definitely said she would see me at Bergen's place today."

"Well, we'll see what happens when it's time for her to show for her next duty," Solo said reasonably. "If she's not here then, you can really start to worry...in the meantime, let's just go over what we know about these automatic landing systems, okay?"

T.C.A.'s Technical Director for France saw them in his office—a small room overlooking the apron from one of the long, low buildings enclosing the company's maintenance unit at Nice. He was a slight man, with smooth dark hair and a clipped moustache, beneath which a long-stemmed pipe with a silver mouthpiece projected. For the whole time they were there, the pipe never left his mouth: it seemed jammed between his teeth, hardly moving except to wag up and down when the exigencies of the language required these to shift their position. Unlike Waverly, however, the owner of this pipe was an active smoker—obscured for much of the time that he spoke by dense clouds of tobacco fumes and surrounded by small ashtrays on which the piles of burned matches gradually mounted.

"Well, chaps," he began, "you both know the general drift now. What's the program for today? Want me to fill you in on the M-S gear?"

"Yes—if you
could
recap briefly, that would be a help," Solo said. "Then perhaps a few words on the implications
vis-à-vis
the crashes."

"Wilco," the Technical Director said. He knocked out the pipe, refilled it, sucked noisily on the mouthpiece and applied a match to the bowl. "Well, I daresay you know the R.A.E. at Bedford—the Royal Aircraft Establishment, you know—began experimenting with automatic landings soon after the war," he continued. "In 'fifty-five, the Blind Landing Unit had worked out a system for the V-bombers of the R.A.F...that's —"

"Okay, okay, the Royal Air Force," Solo interrupted with a smile. "We do know that one."

"Roger and out!...Sorry, chaps. As I say, they worked out a system for the V-bombers, which of course had to be able to fly in any weather. And the bombers duly used it. But unfortunately it wasn't good enough for the civil airlines."