grinning like a skull a few feet away and realised exactly who his opponent was: Kiazim Refet, Thrush's number one assassin. Illya had met him in Australia and escaped with his life'- with a little help. Now it was Napoleon's turn.
Refet crouched, shifting gently from side to side, the blade floating above his right hand. Napoleon felt instinctively into his defensive stance as adrenalin blazed into his system and focussed his clearing mind on the man facing him. He knew that at that moment, wielding twelve inches of steel, Kiazim Refet was the most dangerous man in the world. And he knew that unless he made the first move he would be dead in moments.
Napoleon feinted, kicking sharply out with his right foot and switching it aside as Kiazim slashed down with the vicious blade. As it flicked through the space beside his leg, he lashed up with a full kick, catching the Turk under his chin and driving him back against the wall.
Refet rebounded like a rubber tire and lurched towards him, knife flailing as he recovered his balance. Solo stepped back, and his heel turned behind him on the stock of his fallen U.N.C.L.E. Special – his only possible defense. Swiftly he shrugged off his shoulder rig, catching the leather loop in his right hand and whipped the empty holster forward as Kiazim lunged, slashing it across his face. Blood spurted just above the Turk's left eye and he ducked back a step, half-blinded.
Napoleon dived to grab the Special lying at his feet as Kiazim leaped towards him again, his face a gory mask of hate. Evidently the Turk's depth perception was impaired, for he struck two inches short as Napoleon snatched the Special from the floor to catch the blade between the 'scope and barrel of his gun and twisted, the knife forward and down, out of Kiazim's grasp.
Uncoiling like a spring, Napoleon drove forward from his crouch with every ounce of effort in his body behind the stiff-armed U.N.C.L.E. Special, slamming it up into the bridge of the Turk's nose. Cartilage crunched as it burst like a pomegranate and blood gouted over the pistol.
With a hoarse groan, Kiazim staggered back, clutching his mutilated face with his left hand, snatching Solo's flimsy turtleneck with his right. – Unable to swing his long barrel around to fire at this close range, Napoleon brought the gun down across the hairy arm with a dull slap. Kiazim shrieked as his hand was torn free of Napoleon's shirt and flopped limply at the end of a splintered wrist.
Napoleon reversed his swing and launched the gun upwards again with a force born of sheer terror; Kiazim, in a last desperate move, lashed out with a vicious, shattering kick across Napoleon's right knee just as the heavy butt of the U.N.C.L.E. Special smashed into his nose again, driving the broken splinters of bone up into his brain. Both men hit the floor – Napoleon face down, his right leg twisted at an impossible angle under him, and Kiazim Refet on his back a few feet away dead.
Through a gathering haze of shock and dull agony, Napoleon saw Joan stumbling through the dimness toward him. He tried to move and something grated in his leg.
Then Joan was beside him, dragging an overstuffed chair as a shield behind her. 'Okay,' she said, 'you picked it. This is where we make our last stand. Can you see to shoot?'
He tried to twist to a sitting position, but part of his leg wouldn't work at all. It hadn't started to hurt yet but there was that aching numbness of shock…
'Where were you when I needed you?'
'Twenty feet away, and I never got a shot. It was all over in ten seconds.
He's dead, you know.'
'I hope so. Help me up. Mind the leg -'
Eight rifles tracked them, and only two pistols could reply. Slugs smashed into the wall above them and plunked cotton batting from the chair, but Napoleon managed to get off a few shots before his eyes began to mist over.
'Joan he said. 'I don't think I can hold this thing steady anymore. There's five rounds in my left pocket…'
Four Guards charged the hasty barricade as running footsteps and a blast of gunfire outside preceded, the slam of a grenade at the front door.
Joan stood, her own unadorned Special in her left hand and Napoleon's fully assembled one in her right, shooting from the hip, alternately one and then the other, firing into the shadows where other Guards crouched, spraying lead at the outer door where dozens of running black-clad figures were bursting in amid smoke and thunder. The four Guards crumpled before Joan's deadly fire, and she shouted over the confusion, 'U.N.C.L.E.! This way! This way!'
Three men ran out of the smoke, guns pointed at Joan, who was waving the assembled Special over her head like a flag. 'Solo's here,' she said. urgently. 'He's wounded. Kuryakin's in the basement, safe but also wounded. How's the battle going?'
'I think we're getting it together,' said Mr. Mills.
'What's going on up there?' said Napoleon, dragging himself up on the arm of the chair to hang half over it. 'Did we win?'
'There's a lot of underground area to be cleaned out, sir, but this Big House was the last major organised resistance. There's a whole lot of underground shops, by the way.
A grenade went off down the hall and Mr. Short looked around. 'There's a few things to take care of here yet, too,' he observed.
'And d'you remember the nerve gas that was dumped in the Atlantic about a week ago? It's here. They were unloading it from a submarine down in one of the pens. They've got facilities for a dozen full-sized subs down there!'
'We also caught two sub-loads of technical personnel just outside the lagoon- they've surrendered. Apparently nobody got away.'
'You mean we've won.'
'I'd say so. We'll get a field surgeon to you right away. Jackson, go for a medic, would you?'
'What's that light out there beyond the lagoon?'
'It's dawn, sir.'
'Already? How time flies when you're having fun!'
'One other thing, Mr. Solo,' said Short. 'You'll want to report back to headquarters as soon as possible. We'll give you a full report on the situation, but there are a lot of things they want to know and you are the man to tell them what to do.'
'Me?,'
'Mr. Solo – you are now active Section One, Number One. Mr. Waverly's command sub was blown to pieces by a counter-attack from the island about half an hour ago. There could not have been any survivors – one of the support subs a quarter-mile away was damaged by the blast. I'm sorry, sir…'
Napoleon's face was deathly grey in the eerie half-light, and he turned blindly to Joan before sagging forward over the chair and slipping limply to the floor, unconscious.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On an afternoon late in the year, Ward Baldwin sat in the study of the tall old house on Alamo Square, and contemplated a high-sided wooden tray. It was divided into dozens of compartments, each as wide and half as high as the packs of tall cards which stood in them. Four knitting needles rested in a groove along one side of the box, and a representation of a card was painted on the front surrounded by arrows and numbers.
Each of the fifteen hundred or so cards represented a professional criminal who had worked in London just before the turn of the century. It showed his name, his contact, his specialty and his price, along with his police record, physical measurements and notes on his talents, training and limitations. All key information was repeated in the coded notches along the top and both sides of each card. A regular pattern of holes edged every card – holes large enough to pass a knitting needle. If a card represented a safe cracker, the first, third and fourth holes on the right side were clipped out to leave open notches. Passing three needles through the appropriate aligned holes in the full pack would lift out every card except those of all safe crackers, whatever else they might be. A murderer
