Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­06] - The Vanishing Act Affair"

Автор книги: Dennis Lynds

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The second was a thin, hunchbacked figure that shuffled behind the first, its face also invisible under the shaggy hair. This second figure carried a long club. Both morlocks moved to stand over Illya. The agent tensed to attack. There were only two. But he never moved.

Even as he prepared, the hunchback raised his club and smashed it down on the head of his companion.

* * *

NAPOLEON SOLO heard the water and felt the motion of the barge under him. He was pinioned securely to the chair. The two Thrush agents were preparing their instruments. Maxine grinned at Solo

"Come now, Napoleon dear. Don't make me resort to such old fashioned methods."

"Believe me, all I want to know what you in U.N.C.L.E. have learned about Morlock The Great, the Cult, and how they make people fight when there is nothing to fight."

"I'll bet you would," Solo said.

"I have orders to let you go if you co-operate. You know how unprecedented that would be. Really, Napoleon, all we want this time is some information."

"That's all? You ask so little, Maxine," Solo said.

"Please, Napoleon, I have a few scores to settle, but I'm willing to forget if you would just—"

Maxine stopped. Solo, tied securely, could not see what she was looking at, but she was looking at something o someone over his shoulder. She nodded quickly, and stepped past Solo out of his sight. The agent was not worried about Maxine; he was still watching the two Thrush men preparing their tortures for him.

He saw that they had their backs to him. He listened. He could hear no one behind him. He began to work on his bonds. They were secure. And the thorough Thrush people had taken all the secret weapons they could find. But they had not taken everything.

At that moment Maxine Trent returned. The beautiful Thrush agent smiled down at him.

"I have to go, Napoleon. I will leave you in the capable hands of Walter and Bruno there. Remember, they have instructions to let you go once you have talked fully."

With that, Maxine turned on her heel, spoke low and sharp to the two torturers, Walter and Bruno, and walked quickly from the cabin of the barge. Moments later, Solo heard a motor boat roar away.

Silence descended on the barge. He listened, but he could hear no other sound of life but the lapping water. He heard the water and the metallic sounds of Walter and Bruno preparing for his torture. Then all sound stopped but the water.

Walter and Bruno turned to look at him. Both of them smiled. Solo did not have to ask. He could see that Walter and Bruno were going to enjoy their work on him.

FOUR

ILLYA FOLLOWED the limping hunchback down dark corridors and through many narrow stone rooms. His keen eyes studied the walls and corridors. The corridors were no longer of damp stone, they were concrete—thick new concrete. He saw air vents high in the walls.

At last they reached a small room far from the stone prison he had been kept in. This room had no entrance and was piled to the ceiling with cans of food. Or, to be exact, the room had an entrance, a door, but that was not the way the hunchback led Illya into the room. They entered through a large hole left when the hunchback removed a loose stone in the corridor.

The hunchback replaced the stone and turned to smile at Illya.

"We will be safe here for a time. That door is locked on the outside. Only the inner council members have keys."

"That loose stone?" Illya said.

"Only I know about that. I had repaired it for myself in case I was discovered."

Illya looked at the crippled man. Now, smiling, and with the thick hair pulled back from his face, Illya could see that the hunchback was relatively young, not at all bad looking.

Under the hair was a gentle, intelligent face.

"You wrote that note to Interpol?" Illya said. "About the firing at shadows?"

The morlock nodded."Yes, I wrote it. My name is Paul, Paul Dabori. I joined them when I felt I must have some friends, but now I know there is something wrong. They must be stopped. You are from Interpol?"

"No, from U.N.C.L.E.," Illya said.

"Ah, I have heard of U.N.C.L.E.," Dabori said. "That is better."

Far off, suddenly, there was a sound of gongs. Loud, frantic ringing of gongs. Illya stood alert in the dark of the hidden storeroom. Paul Dabori nodded. The hunchback seemed disturbed.

"They have discovered your escape. I killed the other guard, but they are not all fools. They will guess that I have helped you. We will not be safe here much longer."

"Why must they be stopped?" Illya said.

"I will tell you, but first we must escape." Dabori said.

"How?"

"I have a way. This was an ancient cellar. It connects to the sewers. That is our only way out, the sewers down to the river."

"All right. Let's go now," Illya said.

Dabori shook his head. "No, I know how they will search. We must wait until they are almost here; then we can pass them and reach the sewers. You see, we must go through some of the new corridors to reach the old sewers."

In the dark Illya sat with the hunchback. The two men listened to the incessant clangor of the gongs, the distant sounds of voices and running feet. Illya stood up to inspect the room. He saw that the cans were filled with basic foods: meats, vegetables, butter, sugar. All in cans.

And there were large cans of plain water. Puzzled, Illya continued his search.

There was medicine, and surgical supplies, and some large cylindrical objects that Illya recognized as air filters. Then he touched the walls. The walls were not stone on the inside.

The walls were lead!

"Yes," Dabori said behind him. "The walls are lead-lined. The new concrete is twelve feet thick. There is food and water for a hundred men for six months. The new parts are all sealed into a unit; the air is filtered through many filters. There is even oxygen in case the vents must be closed for a time."

Illya touched the lead walls again. Then he slowly turned to look at Dabori.

The hunchback, even in the dim interior of the hidden storeroom, was grim.

"An atom bomb shelter," Illya said. "A secret, and very bell built atom bomb shelter!"

"Yes," Dabori said. It is part of the plan. There are many such shelters in the world now, all the plan of Morlock The Great. That is why I had to tell—"

Dabori stopped, held up his small hand. Illya froze. Just outside the room he heard voices and footsteps. Someone tried the door. Outside men stood around the door. Illya took hold of his small, cuff-link gas bombs, and waited.

* * *

WALTER and Bruno bent to take off Solo's shoes. They both bent down, eager to get to work. Solo waited until their faces were both close to him near his feet. Then, with a powerful effort, he lifted his entire body, and the chair itself, a few inches off the floor in a jump, and came down on the heel of his left shoe.

The two Thrush men, intent on the anticipation of torturing Solo, failed to react for a split second. It was enough. As Solo made is jump and came down, they reacted and hurled themselves backwards. They were too late.

A spurt of reddish gas burst from the capsule hidden in Solo's heel. The gas quickly expanded flush into their faces. They gasped once each.

Solo hurled himself over backward and as far as he could go. Even then he got a faint whiff of the gas before it dispersed in the air of the barge cabin.

The whiff made his head reel, made him fight for consciousness. Everything went black and green and red and he felt himself slipping away; then it was gone. He lay in a sharp draft of wind from under the door.

Quickly he crawled himself around on the floor, the chair still firmly tied to him. Walter and Bruno had taken the full dose straight into their faces before they had time to jump away. They both lay flat, eyes staring at nothing, barely breathing.

Solo had two hours.

In two hours they would revive—with headaches, but otherwise as good as ever. Before then, Solo had to be free. Where he lay, his eyes searched the barge cabin. What he wanted was on the leg of that very table where Walter and Bruno had prepared their instruments of torture—a small blowtorch with a thin jet of blue flame.

Painfully, Solo gathered his muscles and heaved himself to his knees. He swayed to his feet with another lunge upward, staggered, crouched over with the chair against his back and legs, knees bent where they were tied to the chair. But he did not fall, the training and balance of the trained athlete coming to his aid now.

Earlier, while they were overpowering him, he had cursed as his hand, rasping against a corner of the table, had grated on a rough, abrasive edge of the wood, which had in fact tore some skin from his hand. Solo stared down at the ragged fused bit of wood and metal. Solo grinned, the sweat running into his eyes. Then he lay down and went to work.

They had made one mistake in binding him. After looping the rope firmly around his legs, they had tied it off to the rear rung of the chair—as far from his hands and feet as they could get. Now that was going to free him. He extended his legs until the chair, where he lay on his side, rubbed against the roughened table leg, just under where it joined the upper surface of the table itself.

It was hard, back-breaking work, scraping the rope against the table. He was lying at an awkwardly cramped angle, so that the labor of rubbing his legs against the abrasive spot put a terrific strain on his lumbar muscles. Every ten minutes he had to rest, panting. After what seemed like an eternity, he strained, almost without hope, and felt the torn rope part.

For a precious moment he fell back on the floor, hoarding and restoring his strength which had been so sorely spent. Then, not daring to rest longer, he went to work again.

Quickly now, his legs free, he stood up straight, the chair still tied only to his arms behind him. They had not been stupid enough to use only one rope. He looked at Walter and Bruno. The two Thrush men had not moved. Grinning to himself again, Solo repeated the operation, but much more easily this time.

With his legs free, he was able to maneuver his body to where the ropes on his hands and arms crossed the upper part of the table leg.

Three minutes later he was free, with nothing worse than two ugly scrapes on his hand.

He threw the chair away, and quickly felt the lining of his jacket. He found, and drew out, a tiny flat needlelike object. Then he found a flat, capsule-like object inside the thick cuff of his trousers. The capsule-like, flat cylinder was wrapped in a tiny net of cotton. He fitted the capsule into the miniature syringe, bent over Walter, and inserted the needle into the Thrush man's arm.

He squeezed the fat capsule.

Walter jerked, shuddered, his limbs moving in spasms. Then the Thrush man's eyes began to flutter. Suddenly they came open. But Walter was not awake, not really.

Solo bent close to the ear of the Thrush man. "Where did Maxine go? Agent Trent, where did she go and why? Answer!"

Walter's eyes blinked, his body jerked, his lips began to move. "Uh—No—I will not—" The Thrush man shuddered convulsively. "I—she went to—Morlock. The country house; Salisbury—you must capture him and make him—tell—"

Solo let the man fall back and threw away his now useless miniature syringe of powerful truthserum and stimulant. Moments later he was swimming in the icy water of the Thames. He reached the shore, a wide flat of mud at low tide, and climbed up the embankment. It took him five minutes to locate a telephone, and five more minutes to get the exact location of Morlock The Great's house near Salisbury.

"Can I help now, Solo?" Inspector Taylor asked from the far end of the line.

"Stay where you are," Solo said. "If Illya can't get to me, he'll probably contact you. Tell him where I've gone!"

Ten minutes after that a black car, delivered to the bank of the Thames by a silent man in a business suit, raced away toward the south and west toward Salisbury.

The silent man was an U.N.C.L.E. agent in London. Section I (Communications and Security). The man driving the car was Napoleon Solo—re-armed and anxious to find Maxine Trent and her men.

FIVE

FIVE MILES from the ancient cathedral town of Salisbury, the magnificent spire of the cathedral itself out of sight to the north, the black car slowed to ha halt five hundred yards down a country lane from a big, gothic house. Behind the wheel, Solo looked at the silent house through his infra-red binoculars.

What he saw made him slide silently from his car and fade quickly into the thick hedgerow that bordered the country land. They were there. Two black cars and at least seven Thrush men, wearing their black uniforms and carrying ugly rifles with heavy, round infrared night scopes.

Cautiously Solo moved closer. They, the Thrush men, were deployed around the old house. The house itself was dark and silent. Solo looked for Maxine Trent. He finally located her standing with two Thrush chief guards near one of the two cars. They appeared to be planning their attack.

Solo edged closer, his U.N.C.L.E. Special ready, but cautious because there were too many of them. They seemed ready to move. One of the two chief guards of Thrush stepped forward from the shelter of the car toward where his men waited. He took two steps—and stopped.

High on the third floor of the gothic house, on a small balcony, there was sudden flash and a great red glow seemed to bathe the facade of the house in eerie red light. The Thrush attackers stared upward.

The night was as bright as day with the red glow.

On the small balcony there was a puff of blue smoke.

A man stood on the balcony.

Solo recognized the satanic face of Morlock The Great.

The midget-like figure with the oversized head stood high on the balcony and laughed down at the gaping Thrush men.

The Thrush leader stared upward.

For a long minute nothing moved, nothing happened but the weird laughter of the midget bathed in the red glow. Then Maxine Trent shouted.

"There he is! Take him alive!"

As if galvanized by an electric shock, the Thrush men leaped up and ran toward the house. They did not hesitate a second the command of their superior far more powerful to them than any fear. They ran up the steps of the old house—and fell in a hail of withering fire.

The Thrush men screamed. The red glow went out on the balcony above. In the dark the Thrush men stumbled across the porch and into the house. Inside there was more fire and more screaming in pain.

Solo watched as a Thrush man ran back out onto the steps of the old house.

"Empty! The place is empty!"

"Someone fired at us!" a Thrush leader cried.

"No one! Automatic fire. Booby trap!"

Solo saw the flash of blue light to the left. The light flashed at a spot fifty yards from the house. A blue light bright on a small hillock. Another puff of smoke, white this time, and Morlock The Great stood on the hillock, laughing Maxine Trent cursed and shouted to her surviving men.

The Thrush soldiers ran toward the small hillock.

Solo watched. He was impressed by what he knew had to be tricks. He had seen great magicians work before. But they were impressive tricks. Even though he knew that this was Morlock's house and would have been prepared, the trick of the smoke and lights was enough to almost frighten him.

On the hillock, Morlock laughed. His tiny, devilish figure mocked the running Thrush men.

As the Thrush soldiers reached the foot of the hill they vanished in a series of explosions. Solo nodded. Mines. Morlock had taunted the Thrush men into a small, private minefield.

The Thrush soldiers groaned, screamed.

Morlock The Great vanished from the hillock.

Once more the tiny magician appeared, this time on a tall stone two hundred yards from the house. A puff of red smoke and the midget magician stood there.

No one pursued him.

Only Maxine Trent, safe behind the car, was left to stand and stare at the distant figure. Morlock laughed once more, and was gone.

Solo stepped out of the bushes and stood behind Maxine Trent.

"You're having a hard night, Maxine," Solo said.

The woman agent whirled, her violet eyes flashing in the dark. She reached down, lifted her skirt to show her long, magnificent leg. Solo saw the holster strapped to the shapely thigh.

"Ah, ah, Maxine!" Solo said, his Special trained on her. "You're all alone now."

Maxine hesitated, smiled, straightened up and looked around her hat the bodies of her men.

"So I am, Napoleon. But not really, darling. I have you," Maxine said.

Solo grinned. "Correction. I have you. Shall we go?"

Maxine shrugged. Solo motioned her into the silent house. He stepped warily, watching for more of Morlock The Great's little traps, and for the very possible return of the wily little magician himself.

But inside the house all was silent. There were no more traps, no sign of Morlock The Great. In fact, there was nothing inside the house at all. Solo stared around slowly at the vast emptiness. Even Maxine Trent blinked her violet eyes in a puzzled surprise.

Why would Morlock The Great come to an empty house? And why have an empty house so well booby-trapped with automatic weapons and mine fields?

* * *

THE GENTLE-FACED hunchback, Paul Dabori, sat against the wall of the lead-lined storeroom deep under the great city of London. The voice and footsteps outside had gone away without searching the storeroom, and Illya listened as Dabori told his story.

"I was lonely, I suppose, Mr. Kuryakin," Dabori said. "We are all lonely, we human beings, one way or the other. But for a man like me—"

"You seem like a very good man," Illya said quietly.

Dabori shrugged. "I was, I suppose, feeling sorry for myself. I joined them. They said that since we who were crippled, deformed, were shut out from the rest of the world, we had to make our own world. I was full of self-pity then. I listened. It was, they told me, a brotherhood and a literary society."

"And then you found that they were building the atomic bomb shelters?" Illya said.

Dabori nodded. "Here, and under Morlock The Great's house at Salisbury. I helped work on that shelter. They have built them all over the world."

"Why?" Illya said grimly. "Why are they building them? Just in case? To be sure to survive? That is possible, but you don't think so, do you, Paul?"

"No. Morlock has a plan of some kind, a plan that will be put into effect soon. Somehow it involves all those robberies and the attacks where no one attacked."

"Soon?" Illya said.

"Very soon, I think."

Illya stood up in the hidden, lead-lined storeroom. "Then we must get out of here. Tell me, have you seen another prisoner?" And Illya described Solo.

Dabori shook his head. "No, no one like that. But perhaps Morlock took him to the Salisbury house. Morlock is there now himself."

"You know how to get there?" Illya asked the hunchback.

"Yes," Dabori said. "But we cannot go yet. They are still searching for you. We must wait."

"But not long," Illya said. "Soon we'll have to take some action, Paul."

Dabori nodded. "I know. I am ready."

In the dim light of the lead-lined room Illya Kuryakin and the gentle hunchback listened and waited.

* * *

SOLO and Maxine Trent completed their search of the house. In the front hall, with the bodies of two of her men, they stood and considered what they had found.

"Nothing," Maxine said, undisturbed by the bodies of her men. "Absolutely nothing."

"But wired for defense. Why?" Solo said. "It's your turn to tell me what I want to know, Maxine. For instance, there should be a cellar under this house, but there seems to be no entrance into a cellar."

"I noticed the same thing. You think the real part of this place is down below?"

"Why don't you tell me, Maxine?" Solo said.

"Oh for God's sake, Napoleon, don't you realize yet that we're not working with Morlock The Great! He just killed eight of my men!"

Solo grinned, his Special still warily trained on the beautiful Thrush agent. "With Thrush that could be a lover's quarrel."

"For the last time, you fool, Thrush is just as anxious to stop Morlock The Great as U.N.C.L.E is! Do you think we want some other organization getting in our way?"

"Not enough spoils to go around, eh?" Solo said.

Maxine shrugged. "If you like, yes. We in Thrush have no love for competitors. We have enough trouble with do-good outfits like U.N.C.L.E. without having to worry about amateur competitors."

Solo smiled. "Just what are you suggesting?"

"That we pool forces! There, I said it! Think of it, Napoleon—for once we can work together. You want to stop the Cult, whatever it's up to, and so do we. You saw how much Morlock loves us! I say we work together."

"Why should we? You want to know what we know. What do you have to offer?" Solo said.

"Illya Kuryakin and how to save him," Maxine said.

Solo watched the beautiful Thrush agent. He did not rust her as far a s he could have thrown all of England. But if she knew where Illya was! After all, it was obvious that she, and Thrush, were not working with Morlock and his Cult this time.

"You know where Illya is?"

"I saw them take him, Napoleon, and I know how to get into their London headquarters," Maxine said.

Solo grinned. "Then welcome, partner."

Maxine laughed. "It has a nice sound. And may I have my gun back?"

"On one condition," Solo said.

"Condition, Napoleon dear?"

"That I can put it back into its holster."

"Napoleon, you do care!"

Smiling, Solo returned her small pistol to its holster on her long, beautiful leg. Maxine laughed as Solo kissed her lightly. He, too, laughed—he had taken the precaution of palming the bullets from the clip before he returned the pistol.

"Shall we go to London?" Solo said.

"Lead on, partner," Maxine said.