Solo said, “What I need, Miss McNab, is the name and present whereabouts of Ursula Baynes’ former partner Candy Kane, nee Esther Kappmyer. Do you have that?”

The unseen voice from the stereo speakers said, softly, “Of course we do, Mr. Solo.”

II

ILLYA KURYAKIN LOUNGED in the back seat of an Acapulco taxi, a vintage Dodge that limped asthmatically through the sun-struck streets, dodging the bicycles that were everywhere like fleas in the hairs of a dog. The driver batted continually at the horn, never paused at an intersection, and miraculously pulled into the curb before the Acapulco International Hotel.

He reached back and swung the door open. “We are arrive, señor.”

Illya smiled at him. “Remind me, next time, to walk.”

“A long walk, señor. Muy caliente. In the sun—very hot.”

The resort town lay prostrate in the sun before Illya, a matter of deep browns and Mexican reds, of stout Gringos in shorts and potbellied shirts and grass sandals. The American females on the prowl and the young Mexicans stalking the streets like unsubtle beasts of prey: they’d get together, and they would deserve each other.

Illya glanced toward the blue waters below him, fair and unreal, the palms rustling like whispering castanets. Except for the people, it was a lovely place, Illya decided as he entered the hotel lobby.

The clerk told him his room was waiting for him, reserved, and surely to his liking. “Overlooking the beach.” Illya could display no enthusiasm—he was becoming disenchanted with vacation places where death lurked on expense accounts submitted to Thrush, and yet paid in the end by the unsuspecting and the unwary.

He drew a three-by-five enlargement of the close-up he had made of Sam Su Yan in Honolulu. “I’m looking for this man—a friend of mine,” he told the clerk. “I was told he was registered here.”

“Ah, si, señor.” The clerk smiled. “Señor Samuel Causey—”

“If you say so.”

“—in room 421. Would you like me to ring him and announce you?”‘

“I’d like to astonish him,” Illya said, purposely using the imprecise word.

“Of course.”

Illya turned and walked toward the barred cage of the bronzed elevator. Some transient flicker in the clerk’s face suggested that he would call and announce him anyway. Obviously Sam paid well to avoid astonishments.

Sam awaited him at Room 421, standing in the doorway, a drink in his hand.

Sam gave him a brief nod and a false suggestion of a smile. “I could have killed you as you stepped off the elevator. I’d like you to remember this.”

“You would have killed me in Oahu, if your assassins could have worked it,” Illya replied with a matching tug of smile muscles about his mouth.

“One should never assign tasks,” Sam said with a slight shrug of knobby shoulders. He wore gray slacks, a checked shirt, hand-tooled boots, looking more like a Texan than ever—one with a sense of humor that dictated a Eurasian mask. “No matter how well-trained his minions.”

“If you want a thing done well; do it yourself,” Illya quoted. “That’s why I’m here. Would you care to compliment me on my tracking you across almost three thousand miles of ocean?”

Sam bowed, motioning Illya past him into the room, which was furnished in the Gringo decorator’s notion of authentic Aztec-Mexican. Sam closed the door and turned. “I find in you a certain native cleverness—as opposed to true intellect, of course.”

“Still, I am here, and so are you.”

“True. But I wanted you here.”

“You made this decision after your men failed to deter me in Honolulu?”

Sam nodded. “At that moment. I was defaming you at the time for the stupid trick you engineered with the Scotch.”

Illya almost smiled. “The neuroquixonal. Interesting, isn’t it? The way it works on the sweat glands and the epidermis so the subject leaves a clear trail of yellow stains behind him wherever he goes, whatever he touches with any part of his skin. It was developed by our chemists, and its lasting power remains up to a week—and, you’ll be pleased to hear, there are almost no side effects.”

“I was pleased to leave you a trail visible to your infrared lamps. I wanted you led to me when our hirelings were unable to stop you. I dislike having to say this so bluntly, but I mean to have you stopped. Permanently.”

“I’ve never suspected your intentions were any less from the moment we met.” Illya shrugged. “I only fail to see why you consider me worthy of so much of your attention.”

Sam nodded toward the portable bar. “Pour yourself a drink. From any bottle. I assure you, my plans for you do not include the use of some chemist’s trick with no side effects.”

Illya poured himself a drink. Sam strolled across the room, stood near the balcony watching him.

He said, “In my life there have been many things I have done that I viewed myself with displeasure. I have not always approved of every action circumstances have forced upon me. Oh, but this is not true here and now with you. I tell you. I feel invigorated and renewed at having you here like this. Your Russian smugness. Your smirk of triumph. You have outwitted three of my agents and the Honolulu police—”

“You’ll surely grant me that it was a bit more than child’s play—pinched between the forces of an ambitious police lieutenant and three assassins trained to kill on signal like canines? A helicopter picking me off the beach at Waikiki? Why shouldn’t I be permitted some faint satisfaction of accomplishment? What does it take to impress you, Sam?”

“My father’s people are old,” Sam Su Yan said. “They lived in starvation, in oppression, in famine, flood, in every disaster known to nature and man. They learned a great patience—quite alien to your Russian stolidity. We don’t look to the battles that are won, my young friend, but to the outcome of the war. Does this answer your question?”

Illya finished off his drink, replaced the glass. “May I present my proposition to you, Sam? It may prove to be worth your while. We are quite aware of your background—even to your effects being found in a plane crash fatal to forty passengers and crew. We did not know that you had gone underground to work for Thrush. We know all this now.”

Sam met his gaze levelly. “For all you know, I may be Thrush.”

“You may be. Or you may be an underling with delusions of grandeur—some more of your ancestor-oriented viewing the end results? We are prepared to offer you our protection in exchange for certain cooperation from you.”

Sam Su Yan laughed.

His mismated oriental-Texan face worked uncertainly, pulling muscles into play that had almost atrophied from disuse. The sound burst out of him almost like a strange, off-key sob. But it was laughter.

“May Buddha look out from his celestial home to see the incredible arrogance of this puppy!” Sam laughed again, that tormented, unaccustomed sound. “Do you truly delude yourself that I permitted you to walk into this room so that you might offer me some ridiculous cops-and-robbers trade for turning stool pigeon?”

Illya shrugged. “I’ve found worse crimes in your dossier.”

“You’ve found nothing in my record to match what you have permitted yourself to walk into.”

Sam Su Yan’s face was chilled, the unreconciled parts going hard and waxen. He dropped his glass on the carpeting and slapped his hands together.

The three men seemed to appear from the woodwork, as silent and as quick as termites.

Illya recognized one of them as the man who had attacked him with the acid-loaded fountain pen in the Honolulu jail. He supposed the other two were his fellow assassins.

He shrugged his jacket up on his slender shoulders, but made no other move.

Sam said, “You’ll forgive me if I’ve grown bored with this depressing exchange. When I heard you had escaped from the island, I entertained the notion that your wits might be stimulating in exchange and conflict. I know better now. You looked better from afar.”