The Fuzzy Little Friends Affair
By
Loretta Ross
Shelly Farquar was obese the way sumo wrestlers are obese. The way, in fact, that sumo wrestlers with poor personal hygiene are obese. She considered herself a sex goddess. She stuffed herself into leather mini-skirts three sizes too small, twisted her hair into the latest fad styles, painted her face and strutted about in a miasma of dead flesh and unsanitary latrines. People tended to spray air freshener in her wake. Being a woman of easy virtue – or rather none at all – she had managed to sleep her way into the Thrush hierarchy.
It is a well-known fact that many Thrush officials have perverted tastes.
An intelligent woman, though probably not so intelligent as she thought, she did have a number of useful traits. (Useful within Thrush, that is.) She was an accomplished liar, for one thing, and practiced at the art of backstabbing. She was also a skilled seductress, provided her target was dead drunk or nearsighted and had a bad head cold. She was the sort of woman to keep a tally of her conquests and there were, on that list, the names of many influential men who would do a great deal to keep it from being known that they had ever been in the same room with her naked.
Two names, however, that were NOT on that list were Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. This was not for lack of trying on her part. It irked her greatly that neither of U.N.C.L.E.’s two top enforcement agents had even once succumbed to her questionable charms. Even her offer to betray Thrush in exchange for a threesome had garnered no results. Finally she had determined to make one last effort to draw one or both of them into her web. If this didn’t work, Shelly decided, nothing would and she might as well go ahead and kill them both and be done with it.
With an irksome little giggle that she liked to imagine was coquettish, she breezed into the laboratory like an ill wind off a backed up waste treatment plant and sidled up to Guy Samuels, the grungy scientist who occupied it. This was a man, as evidenced by his facial hair. The tattered housedress, worn over battered army boots, was just an anarchist affectation. He saw it as defying convention and was unconcerned that the rest of the world saw it as an ugly guy in a dress. He was building a complicated house of cards on the lab bench – or at least it would be a complicated house of cards if he could just get the first three he needed for the base to stand up.
Shelly came over and rubbed herself against him familiarly, jogging his elbow and toppling his cards yet again. He recoiled and rubbed acid-stained hands on a ratty bodice.
“Yuk! Get away from me. You’re disgusting!”
Characteristically, she chose to take it as a compliment and emitted ‘patented cute giggle number seven’. “Come on up to my place and I’ll show you how disgusting I am! So, do you have something for me?”
“Yeah, if they don’t die of shock when they see you.”
Shelly smirked and preened; fondly believing his insults were a sign of affection. Samuels rose and crossed to a door, about three feet square that was set into one wall near the floor. He pushed a button on the wall and the door panel slid aside. It opened into a large cell. Loud, arrhythmic clicking preceded the cell’s occupants into the lab.
Shelley squealed with delight and went over to cautiously pat them and run her fingers through the fine hairs on their backs.
“Oh, Guy! They’re perfect!” She snorted inelegantly. “I can’t wait until Solo and Kuryakin get a load of my fuzzy little friends!”
* * * * *
“Aieeeeeee!”
The Wicked Witch of the West was screaming.
The handsome man who had just entered the small used bookstore spun towards her, reflexively reaching under his coat. He froze, on the brink of action, to appraise the situation. A tall, slender woman stood behind the counter. She was rigid with fear, the back of her left hand pressed to her mouth while she pointed into thin air before her with her right index finger.
The man approached cautiously. He was almost on top of the source of her terror before he saw it.
“Now, now,” he said reassuringly. “It’s all right. It’s only a little spider.”
She screamed again.
Laughing softly, he broke the thread of webbing that the spider was dangling from, dropped the spider to the floor and stepped on it. “There. It’s all gone,” he read the name tag pinned to her cape, “Betsy. Gee,” he grinned, “I never thought I’d be on a first name basis with the wicked witch!”
Betsy blushed beneath the force of his charm. “We’re promoting Children’s Book Week,” she explained.
“Ah,” he nodded. “Perhaps you should have come as Little Miss Muffett.”
Betsy shuddered. “That costume had a plastic spider with it. I can’t STAND spiders! Thank you so much for your help, Mr. . . .?”
“Solo. Napoleon Solo. Happy to be of service. Perhaps, Betsy, you would be kind enough to help me with something?”
She blushed again. “Oh, certainly, Mr. Solo! Anything. Anything at all!”
A small grin lit his warm brown eyes. “I was looking, actually, for a book.”
“A book?”
“Yes.” He glanced around at the interior of the store, a light, easy humor in his manner. “I thought this might be a good place for that sort of thing.”
“Oh, right! A book! Yes, we have books!” Not that she was flustered or anything.
“Actually, I was looking for a specific book. I’m trying to find a copy of the first Russian edition of Principles of Quantum Theory Re-Examined by Dr. Hengfried Kest. It’s a gift for a friend, you see. Do you think you might have one?”
Betsy was staring at him, slightly cross-eyed. “Huh?” She shook herself. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure we do.” She came out from behind her counter and showed him to a shelf full of books with Cyrillic titles. She reached up and pulled down a ponderous tome. “Here it is. This is it.”
Napoleon Solo glanced at the cover and his mouth tightened in amusement, but he kept his voice light. “No, um, actually, that’s War and Peace.”
“It is?” Betsy glanced at it in befuddlement. “Oh, yes. Of course. I knew that. I got the wrong book. It’s this one, here.”
She handed him another and again he shook his head. “No, this is Uncle Vanya, which is not inappropriate but, um, I’m sure that Illya already has that. It’s all right. I can look myself.”
“Oh, no. Please! I want to help you. Here you are. It’s this book here, I think.”
He took the third book she offered him and his eyes danced. It took him a moment to regain his composure before he spoke and when he did his mouth formed the word no before he actually spoke it. “No, this isn’t it either, although,” he leafed carefully through the old book, “I do think perhaps I’ll take this for my own library. I do need to, ah, brush up on my Russian.”
He ran an expert eye over the bookshelf, then reached up and pulled down a heavy, blue-bound book. “You do have it, though.”
Napoleon carried his purchases up to the register and read the receipt upside down as she filled it in. He was amused to see, under title for each book, “God only knows!”
Betsy took his money, slid his books into a sturdy paper sack, and handed it to him along with the receipt. She gave him a dazzling smile, but the shop bell jangled and her gaze drifted over his shoulder. Her face paled and her smile turned sickly.
“Mr. Solo, would you do me a favor before you leave?”
He was watching her, puzzled. “Certainly. Anything for a beautiful woman. What is it?”
She had gone rigid again and now she pointed one shaking finger behind his back. Her voice was at least an octave higher.
“Will you step on those, too?”
The agent gave her an easy grin. “Of course.” He turned around and his smile melted slowly into dismay.
Coming in at the bookshop door was a pair of wolf spiders the size of Doberman Pinschers.
* * * * *
Napoleon’s gun was loaded with sleep darts and he emptied it, putting three in each spider. They never even faltered. Switching clips with the easy grace of long practice, he fired bullets at them instead, but with no greater success. The huge beasts were advancing purposely towards him and he could see, now that they were close, tiny metal antennae protruding from their heads. In the back of the bookstore a staircase rose to a gallery tucked under the eaves. Napoleon pulled Betsy across the desk. She was frozen with terror and he had to shake her to get her to run. Hand in hand they retreated towards the stairs.
One of the spiders stopped to spin a web across the door. The other came on.
Napoleon paused at the foot of the stairs to kick a heavy bookcase down across the spider’s path. It simply climbed over it. The agent retreated, backing up the stairs with his gun before him, pushing Betsy up the stairs at his back. The spider followed, not swiftly but with purpose.
They reached the balcony and Napoleon saw that they were cornered. He had been hoping for back stairs or a convenient window, but the walls were lined with floor to ceiling book cases and the only windows were at the front of the store, with nothing beneath them but the second spider, waiting patiently in the center of its web.
His cunning far from exhausted, the agent swiftly scanned the room. The first floor was lined with rows of double-sided bookcases. Choosing one that aligned with a window, Napoleon climbed the balustrade and lowered himself to the top of it. The bookcase wobbled uncertainly beneath him as he reached back up for Betsy.
Carefully, he turned. This was a balancing act now. He was still carrying the two books he had bought and he took them out of the sack, took one in each hand and extended his arms. The weight of the books steadied him, much as a bar steadies a tightrope walker. Betsy clutched his shoulders, her fingers digging into the muscle, as she followed him down the wobbly shelf.
The shelf came all the way to the window. Squatting carefully, he turned the catch and pulled up the sash. He set his books down on the sill and was turning to help his companion over when the spider on the stairway jumped for the shelf. The impact as it hit rocked the bookshelf and Betsy lost her balance and fell with a piercing shriek directly towards the massive web below them.
Napoleon caught her wrist and braced himself against the shock of taking her weight. He had his back against the wall and shifted his feet to compensate as the shelf tilted precariously. For a long minute they balanced there, Napoleon crouched on the top of the shelf, holding onto Betsy’s left wrist with both hands while she dangled in mid-air, her toes just inches from the spider web. The spider in the middle of it rubbed its external mandibles together like a chef sharpening his knives. The other spider was climbing the shelf. One long, slender stick-like leg appeared over the edge. It was the size of a fire iron, but limber and hairy, and there were seven more like it just behind.
Keeping his cool, the agent pulled the woman up until she was able to clasp her free hand around his leg. Then he let go with one hand, ignoring her shriek of terror, took hold of the belt of her dress and raised her until she was safe in his arms. Her witch’s hat was a casualty of the tumble. It had landed in the spider web and the spider moved with an unexpected suddenness, darting over to it and winding it in webbing like an unfortunate fly.
Napoleon set Betsy on the windowsill, picking up his books and handing them to her. “Carry these for me, won’t you? I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them.”
“We’re being chased by giant spiders and you’re worrying about books?” she demanded, incredulous.
“You have no idea how hard it is to find Hengfried Kest in Russian,” he told her.
Napoleon squeezed into the window beside her, acutely conscious of the spider coming up at their backs. He could almost feel its legs brushing feather-light and menacing up his spine. Betsy looked down at the sheer side of the building in dismay.
“We can’t get down! What shall we do now?”
Napoleon Solo reached down to his waist and manipulated a hidden spring. His belt buckle came away in his hand, still attached to his belt by a thin, strong cord. He opened out a prong on the back of the buckle, transforming it into a miniature grappling hook, and set it into the wood of the windowsill. Then he took a glove from an inside coat pocket and pulled it onto his right hand. Wrapping his left arm around Betsy, he pushed them both off. The line paid out slowly, lowering them both gently to the ground.
“When in Rome . . .” Napoleon said.
* * * * *
Their feet touched the ground and Napoleon undid a hidden fastening and pulled his belt off, leaving it dangling from the building. His normally immaculate clothes were rumpled. His suit coat was hanging open and slightly askew, leaving his shoulder holster visible, and a stray lock of hair had fallen over his forehead.
He took Betsy’s hand and together they ran down the sidewalk and around the corner. The spy came to a faltering stop, his look of shocked dismay giving way to a smoldering fury that settled into his deep brown eyes.
A little red convertible sat on the street. It was completely buried under a massive spider web.
Napoleon growled, a low sound, so deep in his throat it was almost inaudible. Before he could give vent to his rage, Betsy screamed again. She was doing a little tap dance on the sidewalk, flapping the long skirts of her witch’s costume and shrieking in terror. Napoleon looked down and found the sidewalk crawling with thousands of tiny spiders. The little arachnids were swarming around them, starting to crawl onto their shoes and up their legs.
Thrusting aside his anger, Napoleon picked Betsy up and slung her over his shoulder, then sprinted away from his violated convertible. By the time he reached the next corner the sidewalk was clear of spiders. He set Betsy down and stooped to one knee to brush off her feet and lower legs, then he brushed the spiders off of himself, shaking each pant leg to dislodge any hangers on.
“It’s okay,” he told her, standing again. “It’s okay, they aren’t poisonous.”
Betsy seemed less than convinced. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, shaking and half sobbing. He put a comforting arm around her shoulders, then carefully backed her into a nearby phone booth. When they were inside and he had gotten the door shut – not an easy feat – he managed to reach around her and retrieve his silver pen communicator from an inside pocket. Without dislodging the woman in his arms, he called into headquarters and reported what had happened. They agreed to send a cleanup team to the bookstore and to have someone look after his precious car. He was just closing down the channel when Betsy stirred.
“What?”
“Mmm? Oh, I was just calling an exterminator.”
“What do we do now?” she asked. “I can’t go home. My purse is back at the bookstore with my keys inside.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m just going to visit a sick friend. Why don’t you come along with me and afterwards I’ll see you home? By that time they should have gotten rid of the problem at the bookstore. I’ll have someone bring your purse along to your apartment. Okay?”
Betsy agreed and a short time later they stopped in the hall outside an apartment door. Before they entered Napoleon turned to Betsy.
“My friend is a little, um, under the weather,” he said. “I’d just as soon not disturb him with wild stories.”
“Oh, I won’t say anything about spiders,” Betsy agreed fervently. “I don’t even want to think about spiders!”
Napoleon took a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the complicated lock. His body blocked his hands, keeping Betsy from seeing exactly what he was doing without him seeming in any way rude about it. The door swung open and Napoleon frowned in disapproval as an arrhythmic thumping sound approached them.
“What are you doing out of bed?”
Betsy swallowed hard as a small blond demigod on crutches hobbled into view, his left arm supported by a sling and that hand curled carefully into a fist. He had corn silk hair and baby blue eyes and he looked very pale and angelic in white pajamas. Still, there was something almost unbearably masculine in the muscles visible on his strong right arm and the glimpse of chest hair that she could just see under the open neck of his pajama top.
“You mean besides finding out who’s breaking into my apartment?” he asked, giving Betsy a shy, crooked smile. “I got up because I saw a spider.”
Betsy gasped and Napoleon gave the man a piercing look. “A spider?”
The man glanced from one to the other, puzzled by their reaction.
“Mmm. See.” He glanced down at his left hand and their gazes followed his eyes. He uncurled his fist to reveal an ordinary wood spider perched on his palm.
Betsy shrieked.
“Oh, it’s perfectly harmless,” he said. Balancing on his crutch, he reached over to a dresser with his right hand and took down a pair of heavy-rimmed black glasses, which he put on. Then he held the spider up and examined it more closely. “They eat bugs, you know and it has a very interesting pattern on its back.” He offered it to Betsy and she backed away, whimpering.
Napoleon stepped between them, amused and exasperated. “The lady is not fond of spiders,” he said firmly.
The blond man shrugged and hobbled over to the nearest window, raising the sash just enough to release the little creature.
“Betsy,” Napoleon said, “this is my friend, Mr. Illya Kuryakin. Illya, Betsy.”
Betsy, uncertain how to react to such a handsome and yet unsettling man, gave a small nervous bob that might have passed for a curtsey. He smiled his sweet, crooked smile again.
“Illya?” she said. “Oh, you must be who the book is for!” She looked uncertainly at the two books that she was still carrying.
“Yes,” Napoleon said quickly, coming over to take the blue book from her. He offered it to his friend. “I thought you might like a little light reading while you’re cooped up.”
Illya took it and read the title. “Kest. And in Russian. Thank you!” He had seen the other book, though, and he reached out to take it with an amused light in his eye. “And what’s this?”
“Oh,” Betsy said innocently, “that’s one Mr. Solo wanted for his own library.”
“Indeed?” Illya’s eyes danced as he translated the title. “Seventeenth Century Erotic Wood Cuts.”
Napoleon cleared his throat and avoided his partner’s eye. “I have always had an interest in art, you know.”
“Mmm hmm.” The Russian handed the book to Napoleon without bothering to open it. “I think you’ll find illustration number eighty-seven to be physically impossible,” he said.
Napoleon’s eyes widened slightly and for once he was momentarily at a loss for words. “Really?” he managed finally.
Illya shrugged. He was wearing mischief like a cologne. “Well, I found it so. Of course,” he regarded Betsy speculatively, “your research assistant may be more limber than was my own.”
Betsy was looking from one to the other innocently, not following the conversation. Napoleon swallowed a laugh and changed the subject.
“Perhaps. However, that’s neither here nor there. You’ll be happy to know we found the driver who hit you.”
“Really?” Illya looked up with quick interest. He was standing with his back to the window and the sun streaming across his hair painted him a golden halo. “Whom was he working for? Thrush? The mob?”
“Triple-A Taxi. His name is Habib Mufasa Ali Walla Mubangbwa, aka George Smith.”
Illya’s eyes narrowed. “Where is he from?”
“Brooklyn.”
“No,” the Russian sighed, “originally!”
“Ah. Newark. He claims you were standing in the middle of the road.”
“Nonsense!” Illya glowered. “I was on the sidewalk, standing in line at a hot dog vendor’s”
Napoleon shrugged philosophically. “To a taxi driver, that IS the middle of the road. And everyone knows that hot dog vendors are fair game. I keep telling you your appetite will be the death of you some day.”
Before the discussion could go any further a shadow fell across the Russian, blocking the gleam reflected off his fair head. Betsy looked beyond him at the window and her face paled. She plucked at Napoleon’s sleeve with her right hand while her left finger poked at the air and she screamed a wavering, almost silent scream.
The view outside the window was blocked by the underbelly of a massive spider. Its legs disappeared out of sight in all directions. It’s elongated body filled the window and it was tapping on the glass with its external mandibles, the pincers on the ends the size of hatchets.
Napoleon swallowed with dismay. Illya turned to see what they were looking at, then turned back with his blue eyes wide and surprised.
“Friend of yours?”
* * * * *
Betsy trilled a cry of distress and covered her eyes as Illya hobbled over to the window and peered closely at the spider.
“Illya? Don’t get too close!”
“Oh, it’s quite all right, Napoleon. The window, you know, is shatterproof glass.”
The spider tapped again and the window broke cleanly into three neat pieces and fell out of the frame.
Napoleon’s mouth twisted. “Well, it didn’t shatter.” He darted forward and grabbed Illya’s arm, dragging him out of range just as a pair of long, spindly black legs came reaching in the window towards him. Outside, the spider shifted, realigning itself so that it could slide through the window. Pushing Betsy and half dragging his partner – who seemed to half want a closer look at the big arachnid – Napoleon retreated towards the apartment door. He was already on his communicator, calling for backup.
They ducked into the hall and slammed the door behind them. Halfway to the elevator Napoleon stopped suddenly and sniffed.
“Illya, is your building’s sewage backed up?”
“No.” Illya sniffed. “At least if wasn’t.”
Betsy sniffed. “It smells like a dead rat to me.”
The elevator door slid open and three hundred and fifty pounds of greasy blubber in a leather mini-skirt oozed out. Shelly Farquar gave the agents her most gloating smile – the one that involved all four chins – and tugged on a leash, pulling the second giant spider out after her.
“Hi there, Sugar Buns!” she said to the agents. “How do you like my fuzzy little friends?”
“Well,” Illya observed, “they do say that people and their pets grow to resemble one another.”
“Illya!” Napoleon reproved, “don’t be absurd. You said yourself that spiders can be quite lovely in the right light.”
Shelly laughed, deliberately leaning forward to expose as much cleavage as possible. She was under the impression that this would drive them mad with desire and she was right in a way, but it was only with the desire to keep as far away from her as humanly possible. The doors to the fire stairs at either end of the hall opened and armed Thrush minions emerged.
“Oh, my!” the woman exclaimed with mock innocence, “it seems I’ve caught you in my web!”
She cackled delightedly at her own feeble humor. Illya looked to Napoleon.
“I did always think that ‘Shelly’ must be short for ‘Shelob’,” he said.
* * * * *
Shelly left Betsy in the lab with Guy Samuels, chained to a wall. Thrush laboratories, of course, routinely come equipped with chains on the walls, as well as with human-sized cages and miniature refrigerators. After all, even a mad scientist likes a cold soda now and again.
“Here you are, Honeydew,” she told him. “I’ve brought you a present.”
Shelly always called men “Honeydew”, as in, “Honey do this! Honey, do that!” It was her little joke. SHE thought it was funny.
“I’m sure you can think of something interesting to do with her. Turn her into a human spider, maybe? Or put her in a tank with a lot of black widows and see how many have to bite her before she dies? Or maybe just have a couple of thousand spiders wrap her up in their webs and wait for her to suffocate.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll think of something.” Samuels waved one hand absently and Shelly smirked and went away. The scientist was highly distracted. He had finally finished the first floor of his house of cards, having resorted to duct tape, and now he was having trouble with the mezzanine.
Betsy wasn’t screaming, but she was making some interesting attempts at it from behind her gag.
The odd noises finally attracted Samuels’ attention. He looked up and blinked at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“Hey,” he said, in a friendly tone. “When did you come in?”
Being gagged, the best response she could give him was a whimper.
“What?”
She whimpered again and he finally caught on and came over to take the gag out of her mouth.
Betsy shrieked.
“Ooh, Ugh!” Samuels exclaimed, stuffing the gag back in. “That wasn’t good.”
Betsy mumbled pathetically, her face wet with tears.
“If I take it out again,” the scientist said, “do you promise not to make that ‘skreeeeeee’ noise?”
She nodded and he pulled the gag out once more. “So, why all the crying and the ‘skreeeeeeee’ and stuff?”
Betsy goggled at him. “Well,” she mumbled, “I’m all chained up ‘n I had a gag in my mouth ‘n the big smelly ugly woman took my pretty guys away ‘n there’ve been all these spiders all day ‘n I hate spiders . . .”
“Oh, spiders aren’t that bad!” Samuels exclaimed. “Actually, they’re pretty neat. They serve a lot of useful purposes and they’re really pretty if you look at them up close.” He went and got a large tarantula from a cage on one of the benches, carried it over and held it up in front of her face. “There. What do you think of that?”
Betsy whimpered. “If I scream you’re going to put the gag back in my mouth, aren’t you?”
Samuels shrugged. “Well . . . yeah. I mean . . . wouldn’t you?” He took the spider back to its cage and then turned to his prisoner. “Hey, you want a cold soda?”
* * * * *
Napoleon and Illya sat back to back on a double bed. They were in a big, fancy room with velvet curtains on the windows and satin sheets on the bed. Still, it was an unpleasant place, not least because it was permeated with the scent of its owner. She was wandering around the room in a pleasant state of partial undress – pleasant, that is, compared to a full state of undress – talking on the telephone. She had been mercifully distracted at the last minute by a phone call and she was apparently one of those women who can talk for hours on the telephone.
The agents had both been stripped to their tee shirts and boxer shorts. Their ankles were chained to the bed rails and Napoleon’s hands had been handcuffed together behind his back. Illya, of course, had one arm in a cast, but his other had been pulled back and handcuffed to his partner’s right wrist.
While Shelly was distracted by her phone call, Napoleon leaned back so he could mutter into Illya’s ear.
“I don’t suppose you have a gun in your sling?”
“Of course,” Illya said. “I almost always carry a gun in my sling. When I have a sling.”
“Which is almost always,” Napoleon finished. “Good, now we’ve just got to get to it. I don’t suppose you could just pull it out and shoot her with it?”
“Sorry. Right now, making a fist is about the limit of my dexterity with my left hand. And that only if I close the fingers with my right hand.”
Shelly cursed suddenly and slammed the phone down, making them both jump. “Damn! I’ve got to go take care of something! Don’t go anywhere.” She stomped across the room, various bits of her joggling along in her wake, and pulled open the door. She turned back with an evil leer. “Don’t start without me!” The door slammed behind her and the agents both relaxed unconsciously, then jumped as she pulled the door open once more and stuck her head and her aroma back in.
“Unless you really want to,” she giggled. “Tee hee!”
They waited this time until they were sure she had slithered away, then they went to work. By each sliding to their left as much as possible, they were able to maneuver to a position where Illya was free to lay back on the bed. This allowed him to get his right arm almost into a position where he could reach into his sling. By rolling slightly onto his right shoulder, he managed to dislodge the weapon and it slid free and fell into his hand. He sat back up, head spinning, and they quickly slid over so they were back to back once more.
“You’d better take the gun, Napoleon,” Illya said. “I think I’m about to pass out.”
“From the exertion?” Napoleon asked in concern.
“And the smell of those sheets!”
“Ah.” Napoleon took the gun and racked the slide, preparing it to fire.
“Do you think you can take her down firing behind your back like that?”
“Gee,” his partner said, insulted, “I don’t know. A sharpshooter like me hit a tiny little target like that?”
“Well,” Illya countered, “it’s just a pistol, not an elephant gun. If you want those sleep darts to do any good you’re going to have to put one into muscle or a vein.”
Napoleon’s brow furrowed. “You’re right, I hadn’t thought of that. That’s all right. I’ll just aim for her, uh, that is, for her, um . . .”
“Exactly.”
“I suppose my best bet is to shoot her in the throat,” he decided.
“How are you going to find it under all those chins?”
“Point taken. Where do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. I just hope you have some of that famous Solo luck left. Because if you don’t get lucky . . .”
The agents’ eyes met in a mirror on the opposite wall. “She’s going to!” they chorused.
They sat back to back and waited quietly for several minutes. Napoleon studied his partner in the mirror.
“Illya,” he said finally, “tell me something. Did you really try illustration number eighty-seven?”
His partner smiled his tiny smile and shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Well, I was younger then. And more . . . optimistic. Number seventy-four is quite nice,” he ventured.
“Really?” Napoleon bit back a smile. “I’ll remember that. And whatever happened to your research assistant?”
Illya blinked in surprise. “Happened to her? Nothing happened to her. I still see her, in fact, from time to time. Between bullets.”
“Indeed? You’ll have to introduce me.”
Illya met his eye in the mirror and grinned. “Not a chance.”
* * * * *
“ . . . and then I’m going to put a turret on this side. But every time I try to tape the cards together they come unbent and just go flat.”
“Well,” Betsy said, “I think you need something in the middle to form them around.” She was leaning one elbow on the lab bench. Her chin was cupped in her hand and she was trying desperately to think of some way to get away from Samuels and go find Napoleon and Illya. “Here, why not use this soda can?”
The scientist took her empty pop can and taped one playing card to it and then another. “Hey, cool! That’s going to work! Thanks!”
“Don’t mention it. Glad I could help.”
She watched for a moment as he became absorbed in his project, then turned and tiptoed for the door. Just as she reached for it he spoke behind her.
“You can’t get out that way.”
Betsy froze. “Why not?”
“They keep the door locked. There’s another way out, but I don’t think you want to take it.”
“Why?”
“Because it goes through the spiders’ cage.”
The woman gulped and turned around. Samuels was still intent on his house of cards, only paying her the slightest bit of attention.
“Through the spiders’ cage?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Mmm hmm.”
“The big spiders’ cage?”
“Yup.”
“Oh.” She considered. “And I can get out that way?”
“Uh huh. There’s a door that leads to Shelly Farquar’s bedroom.”
“Oh. Why does she have a door to the spider cage in her bedroom?”
Samuels shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I was afraid someone would tell me.”
“Oh.” Betsy considered. She turned to the door to the spider cage. “Well,” she said, in a high, thin voice, “goodbye then.”
“Okay, bye.”
She opened the door and started through, but at the last moment she turned back. She had to ask.
“Guy?”
“Hmm?”
“Why are you wearing a dress?”
He blinked and looked up at her. He shrugged. “Well,” he said, “women wear pants. It seems fair.”
Betsy thought about this and blinked once. “Oh. Okay.” Then she took a deep breath and steeled herself. Fighting her arachnophobia, she ducked down and crawled into the cage with the giant spiders. There were big egg sacs in two of the corners.
* * * * *
Shelly oozed back into the room in a cloud of heavy perfume and unwashed underthings and gave them an evil and supposedly seductive leer.
“Hi, boys! Did you miss me?”
As she came towards them Illya noticed that she kept her hands up under her chin, with her arms bent and pressed tightly to her chest. The object, of course, was to emphasize her breasts. Instead, it gave her the distinct look of a tyrannosaurus rex –or perhaps a tyrannosaurus regina. He could feel Napoleon shifting at his back, aiming the gun. They would have to both lean forward just before he fired, so the dart would fly straight and not be deflected into one or the other of them. What they needed was a distraction and, if possible, a way to make Shelly tip her head back and bare her throat.
She came around the end of the bed and Illya looked up suddenly.
“Look at that spider!”
Without even thinking about it Shelly followed his gaze. He and his partner leaned away from one another and Napoleon pulled the trigger. The sleep dart buried itself between the folds of Shelly’s second and third chins and the woman fell without a sound except for the massive squishy thud of a malodorous three-hundred-and-fifty pound woman hitting the floor.
The two U.N.C.L.E. agents sighed with relief.
“Now,” Napoleon said, “if we can just convince someone to release us, preferably before our reinforcements arrive.”
* * * * *
Betsy took a deep breath and walked past the giant spiders. She was pretending that they were dogs. Their size helped but the extra legs tended to spoil the illusion. She made it by them and found the second door that Samuels had told her about.
Voices reached her from the other side, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She opened the sliding panel just a crack, trying not to think about the spiders at her back. She peeked through just as Napoleon shot Shelly with the tranquilizer dart.
Relieved, Betsy scrambled out of the spider cage and opened her mouth to volunteer to release them. Then she saw them and had second thoughts.
“Oh, my!”
Illya looked even more adorable in white underwear than he did in white pajamas. And she had thought Napoleon was handsome in a suit?! Betsy blushed and swallowed hard.
The agents had both turned to look at her and Napoleon gave her his most charming smile. “Ah, my not-so-Wicked Witch! Just the woman we wanted to see. Do you suppose you could cast a spell and get us out of these handcuffs?”
“Do I have to?” she breathed, staring at him. He caught the naked lust in her eyes and his faint grin turned meaningful.
He looked in her eyes. “We’ll keep the handcuffs,” he promised.
Illya snorted inelegantly. “Illustration number forty-three,” he said.