Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­02] - The Howling Teenagers Affair "

Автор книги: Dennis Lynds

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The girl singer sprawled in the shelter of two heavy garbage cans. She crouched, her dress torn open, legs and breast brown in the dim light—and she never stopped firing.

Her small pistol empty, she grabbed and reached Ngara's U.N.C.L.E. Special, set it on automatic, fired a withering fire toward the killers coming fast down the alley.

Illya clicked his Special to bullets and poured fire into the six strangers.

Six who were only three now, the others dead or dying.

No one had spoken a word. They were all trained, and words did not help. Cries of pain or anger only wasted time, spoiled the deadly aim.

Illya smiled like a wolf in battle. Three to two, but he and the girl had cover; the three THRUSH men did not.

Azid Ben Rillah lay silent between the two battling sides.

Illya aimed carefully this time. It would soon be over.

And the three remaining THRUSH agents suddenly vanished in great sheets of flame. Flame licked high in the alley. Flame that rushed across the ground toward the girl and Illya as if pushed on a strong wind. But there was no wind.

Illya felt cold.

They had thrown flame bombs, deadly flames that fed on their own creeping fuel and moved toward Illya to consume him.

THREE

Napoleon Solo talked, his voice filling the dark, cornerless room where Maxine Trent stood above him and the two hidden men stood behind in the shadows. Maxine still held the needle. An instant in his arm and Solo began to talk at once.

"Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everwhere that Mary went. The lamb was sure to go."

"Tell us!" Maxine Trent cried. "What did Waverly tell you?"

"Baa baa Black sheep, have you any wool?" Solo said, his voice crisp and precise. "Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full!"

The reedy, inhuman voice hissed from the dark. "Slap him, you fool! He has to tell us. The serum cannot be evaded. He has to tell us what he knows!"

Maxine Trent slapped Solo hard. Blood trickled lightly from the corner of his mouth.

"The nineteen forty-two St. Louis Cardinals were one of the great teams of all time. Ray Sanders played first base, Marty Marion was at shortstop, Stan Musical was in right field, Enos Slaughter."

Now the deep voice cursed from the dark room. Maxine Trent stared at Solo, turned to look helplessly, with fear in her eyes toward the hidden men. The deep-voiced man spoke.

"It is no use; he has been conditioned. He can tell us nothing this way."

"Conditioned?" the thin, hissing voice said.

"U.N.C.L.E. has its methods, too," the deep-voiced man said.

"Conditioning so that under any form of truth serum a man will only tell what he has been conditioned to tell. It is a long process, much too long for general use. I know they had conditioned the five Section-I members to give us false data; we had Waverly once, and everything he told us was false. But I did not know they had extended it down to Section-II. You will get nothing but nonsense from Solo this way."

There was silence. Maxine Trent stared down at the babbling Solo as he reeled off the personnel and exploits of the 1942 St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. The needle in her hand seemed ludicrous now. She wanted to stop Solo, shut him up, turn off the endless stream of ridiculous information.

She slapped him, but he neither blinked nor stopped, rendered helpless by the truth drug.

"Stop him," the reedy voice hissed.

A hand holding another needle appeared from the dark. Maxine Trent took it again plunged it into Solo's arm. Solo stopped babbling at once. His eyes came unglazed. He blinked, grinned up at Maxine Trent.

"I trust you enjoyed all my information, Maxine," Solo said.

The deep voice cursed again in the dark behind Maxine Trent.

"Prepare him. We will have to use older methods," the deep voice said.

"Anything," the hissing voice cried from the dark. "I must know what Waverly knows! The smallest error must be corrected! You understand?"

"Yes," Maxine Trent said. She looked down at Solo. "I'm sorry, Napoleon, but you won't cooperate. You can't be conditioned against simple torture."

"Try me," Solo said.

The deep voice whispered somewhere off in the darkness. Then a hand appeared again from the dark. It held another hypodermic needle.

"Release him from the hypnotic drug, make him comfortable," the deep voice said.

Maxine did as she was instructed. Almost at once Solo felt as if the ropes were gone, the soft material holding his feet was taken away. He moved, stretching the cramps from his muscles. A hand came out of the dark, holding a glass with amber fluid in it.

"Give him a drink," the deep voice said. "The best Scotch whiskey, Mr. Solo."

Solo drank and the warmth coursed through his body.

"Perhaps a sandwich, some hot coffee?" the deep voice said.

Solo nodded and his mind came alive. Inside, there was sudden flicker, a plan. He was aware of what the deep-voiced chief agent of THRUSH was doing—the hot and cold treatment. A variant. In torture it is the sudden changes that break a man. The coming and going and coming again of pain.

They were awakening his nerves, his responses. Almost any man can face danger once; it is the second time, the third time that are hard. Likewise in torture. Once the pain began a man could slowly learn to stand it, to self-condition his body to take the increasing degrees of pain.

It was the swing from pain to peace, to pain again that was hard. First agony, then relief, then agony, and again relief, until what finally broke a man was fear of the next agony.

They knew this, and they were relaxing his defenses. How far would they go? A faint hope flickered. A double hope, and a plan. He had his cigarette lighter camera in his pocket. He could feel it. An he still had the small but powerful gas bomb that was his innocent-seeming pearl stickpin. He did not think that the deep-voiced man or the hissing-voiced Council Member N would apply the torture.

Another aspect of good torture was to leave the victim alone with some mindless torturer, someone who could not be talked to. The true interrogator went away, and the victim in his agony almost prayed for the return of one who would listen. It was a chance. Solo nodded, breathed.

"First, if I could, a cigarette?" Solo said quietly.

"Of course," the deep-voiced man said from the dark. "Maxine, give him a cigarette."

Maxine handed Solo a cigarette. He reached quickly into his pocket for his lighter. He flicked it once, twice, three times before the flame burst out and he lighted his cigarette. The reedy voice hissed.

"The lighter, you fools! It is a camera!"

Maxine grabbed at the lighter. But Solo had anticipated her. The instant he had taken his three pictures of the dark ahead of him through the infra-red lens, he had pressed the tiny button that dropped the miniature film cartridge into his hand.

As Maxine grabbed the camera, he palmed the tiny cartridge and let it vanish up his sleeve.

"Open it!" the reedy voice hissed.

Maxine opened it and removed the film cartridge she found there. Solo tried to look beaten. They did not know that the camera had a special optical arrangement that took pictures on both cartridges through a single lens. The camera was made for just such an eventuality. There would be a cartridge in the camera—and it would be exposed in case they checked to be sure.

The deep-voiced man checked.

"Not bad shots, Mr. Solo. I admire you. Infra-red. I never underestimate U.N.C.L.E. Too bad you underestimate me."

"Why bother?" Maxine Trent said. "He won't leave here alive."

The hiss of the inhuman voice was almost like a laugh this time as it burst low and horrible from the darkness.

"You see too many spy movies, Agent Trent. No, we will not tell him what he wants to know because he will die. This is not a movie. Prepare him now; we can waste no more time. We will send in Gotz."

The deep-voiced man laughed. "We will leave you now, Mr. Solo. Miss Trent and Gotz will take good care of you. If you find you would like to talk, just send for us. We will not be far."

Suppressing the smile he felt at their predictable actions, Solo flexed his arms as if preparing his body to resist the tortures of the unknown Gotz. One of the weaknesses of power was the tendency to always use the same methods to enforce its strength.

Solo had often seen this peculiarity of power-mad nations. It had been one of the weaknesses of Hitler's Germany, and it was a common, fundamental weakness of THRUSH.

But it was the time to act. Solo did not know how many men would be with the unknown Gotz.

Maxine stood watching him, her pistol in her hand, now that he was free. She was the proper distance away, and the rest of the room was still lost in darkness. Solo would need time to find a door, and exit. He stretched.

"Careful, Napoleon," Maxine said. "I would hate to shoot you now. Too bad you have to be U.N.C.L.E. They'll never let me keep you now."

"I'm sorry, really, Maxine," Solo said, continuing to flex his arms and legs, but carefully.

"You'd make a lovely pet. I could tranquilize you every day," the tall beautiful agent purred. "My little kitten. But you have to be U.N.C.L.E. Why couldn't you have been just C.I.A., or British MI-five? They'd have let me play with you then."

"I'll try to do better next time," Solo said.

"Poor Napoleon. Always trying," Maxine said. "It wasn't nice of you to trap me earlier, was it? How did you guess? The record player I imagine. I told `N' that you would guess when it shut off and the tape recorder came on."

"It was a trifle too convenient, Maxine," Solo said. And he distracted her for an instant. "So `N' isn't that smart?"

"Not as smart as he thinks," Maxine said smugly, her guard down the fraction of a second as a result of her anger at her leader. "They think they can't make errors on the Council. They."

Solo moved. His hand flicked up and across his tie, tore the pearl stick-pin out and hurled it at Maxine's feet, all in a single motion.

The force of pulling it out set off the fuse. A cloud of gas exploded and engulfed Maxine Trent. Still the beautiful agent managed to fire a single shot. The bullet tore a furrow, skin deep in the side of Napoleon Solo's head. He went down, but came back up almost at once. His head ached, but there was not much time, not after the shot.

Maxine Trent lay crumpled on the floor of the room. She would be unconscious for hours. Solo stepped quickly through the light into the dark corners. He found, once his eyes were accustomed to the dark, that the room was large and empty. Only the inlaid table and the lamp were in the completely silent room.

And there were no doors.

Solo blinked, looked.

There was nothing but smooth walls without doors or windows. He walked quickly around the entire perimeter of the room. There was no way out. And then he saw that the room was soundproof. This, at least, gave him a little time to locate some exit. There had to be a way. But he could not find it. Nothing but bare smooth walls.

Routine—and a little luck—came to his aid. Solo had been an agent for a long time, he knew no one survived long without a little luck, accident or pure chance, all helped by the mistakes of the enemy. THRUSH had a prescribed routine of operation, and it helped Solo now.

A tiny red light winked on, winked three times, and stopped. But it was enough. It had to be a signal that someone was about to enter the room. A precaution, of course, since all agents who used this room undoubtedly had standing orders to shoot anyone who entered without the signal. A precaution that would save him.

Solo waited.

The wall opened silently, without even a hiss, directly beneath the winking red light. A man stepped through. Two men.

The second man was a tall, slender Chinese carrying a machine pistol. Solo chopped him down with a single blow to the neck under the ear.

The first man turned slowly.

He was the biggest man Solo had ever seen. A giant well over seven feet tall, weighing over three hundred fifty pounds without an ounce of fat anywhere. There was no doubt that this was Gotz, the torturer.

Gotz turned ponderously, his tiny pig eyes seeing the Chinese lying on the ground, Maxine lying unconscious. He moved toward Solo.

There was not an instant to wait. Once in those giant hands Solo would have no hope. The giant could not be fought. One chance was all Solo would have, and he took it.

His feet braced against the wall, Solo pushed off as hard as he could and hurled himself toward the giant. His open hand thrust straight up and forward. The heel of his hand caught the giant flush on the point of the chin, snapping the giant's neck back with enough force to break a roof beam.

Surprised, ponderous, the giant could not evade the single blow. His head snapped back on his bull neck. He staggered, grunted once with pain and collapsed in a quivering mass of bone and muscle. It was a blow that would have instantly killed almost any man on earth, but Solo did not think the giant was dead.

He turned and dashed through the opening without waiting a second. He ran down a narrow steel corridor. At the far end there was a door. At the door Solo stopped, took off his shoe, removed the heel and took out the thin strip of thermite foil. He stuck the foil to the lock area, pulled the magnesium fuse and jumped back.

A large hole melted in the door. Solo pushed and the door opened. Alarms went off, loud, clanging. But he was in a bright hallway. There was light. He reached a window. Outside he saw the city and below him the river. He was still in New York, in some riverfront warehouse building.

The alarm clanged on; feet pounded.

The river was three stories below. The window was locked and could not be opened. Solo backed up, wrapped his suit coat around his head and dived through the glass. He fell, jack-knifed in the air, and hit the water in a clean dive.

Under water he let his coat go and swam for the dark shadow. He came up underneath the building. The film cartridge was still safe inside his shirt. A tug passed close on the river. He swam for it.

FOUR

In the Kandaville alley, Illya Kuryakin watched the flames flow toward him. The girl singer was still firing.

"Back!" Illya shouted. "Get Rillah!"

The flames that roared around them, slowly engulfing the alley had one advantage. They hid them from the THRUSH agents. Crouched low, Illya and the girl, Mahyana, dragged the paralyzed Rillah back away from the flames.

The flames blocked them from the door of The Yellow Zebra. The other wall had no openings of any kind. The wall of the club had a window, but it was high up, too high. Illya and the girl looked around. There was no way out. The flames flowed inexorably closer. Illya looked at the pretty, dark girl.

"There is only one way," he said. "We will have to go out through the fire."

"They're waiting," Mahyana said.

"There is no other way," Illya cried, raising his voice now as the flames licked at the buildings, crackling in the night.

"All right," Mahyana said. "I'm ready. But we will have to leave Rillah. We."

The sound came from above. Illya whirled; his Special aimed, ready. But he did not fire. Above them the window had opened high up. A face leaned out. A face with a black beard.

"Here, Dad—grab on!"

It was the bearded man calling down from the window. A rope came out, dropped. Illya looked at the flames. He pushed Mahyana and she climbed up the dangling rope like a panther up a tree. Bending, Illya quickly tied the rope beneath the inert arms of Azid Ben Rillah. Then he swarmed up the rope himself.

Inside the window he hauled the unconscious Rillah up and into the room, where they all stood. Flames licked at the walls of the room. Fire engine sirens were wailing closer.

"You could of got singed, man," the bearded man said.

"Yes, we could have been burned a little," Illya said.

The bearded man looked out the window once more.

"Say, that's some fire. I mean, how come it burns so good on stone like that, Dad?"

"It would take too long to explain," Illya said, "but we thank you. Now I suggest we leave. The fire seems to be burning the building.

"I hear you, Dad. We abandon the scene," the bearded man said.

Illya and the bearded man carried the inert form of Rillah out and down a flight of dark back stairs. Mahyana led the way, the U.N.C.L.E. Special she had taken from the dead Ngara ready in her hand.

"A cool chick, man," the bearded man said.

Illya studied his new helper. A boy, really, not a man. But a boy who had had the right strength at the right time.

The bearded kid saw Illya watching him.

"I play banjo, man," the bearded boy said. "Joe Hooker."

"Fighting Joe?" Illya said.

"You beat me, man? Just Joe Hooker from Hoboken. I play banjo with The Beavers, take a chorus sometimes. We come out here for the loot. Out here it's still beards. The long hair ain't made it yet."

"Well, Mr. Joe Hooker, I thank you."

"Say no more, man," the bearded boy said.

They carried Rillah to the cellar of the club and out a side entrance Mahyana knew.

The dark girl surveyed the street carefully.

"Come," she waved with her pistol.

They carried Rillah to her waiting car. Joe Hooker went back to his banjo. Illya drove fast away from The Yellow Zebra toward a safe room where Mahyana directed him.

* * *

Napoleon Solo, a bandage on his head, and wearing a fresh suit, watched Alexander Waverly study the photographs he had taken in the THRUSH room.

"They will have abandoned that place by now, of course," Waverly remarked. "You say the voice sounded mechanical?'

"Like wind through metal and plastic," Solo said.

"Yes," Waverly said as if thinking about it. "You have given our chemical people all you can about the drugs they used on you? Well, what do you make of the pictures?"

Solo looked at his copies of the blowups. "The one you can see I recognize. He was the baggage handler at Idlewild. Hardly a council member."

"No, I think not. A chief agent, though, and we know him. Good work, that," Waverly said. "Which voice do you think he was?"

"The deep voice. He had to be, sir."

Waverly nodded, looked for his pipe. "Unfortunate that the other is turned away. We can hardly see his face at all in any picture. Still, we know he is small, rather thin, and has an odd voice. From what you say, he may also be a chemist himself. Council members are often scientists in their own right, you know."

Solo studied the pictures. "Research says that from the cut and the cloth of his suit he could be British, or from any of the Commonwealth nations."

Waverly found his pipe. "A rather large Commonwealth, I should say."

"What puzzles me, " Solo said, "is that voice. I'm sure it was his real voice, and how could he hide it? Why don't we have anything in our files? It stands to reason he's an important man—all THRUSH Council members are. We should have the voice on file."

Waverly searched for his tobacco. "They ran it through. The result was negative. Possibly the man never speaks in public. Have you seen my tobacco?"

"It's in the second drawer. You put it there," Solo said. Waverly opened the second drawer. "Ah, yes, thank you. I suggest we wait for a report from Mr.—ah—Kuryakin. It seems he has good prospect in Kandaville."

* * *

Azid Ben Rillah came awake in the hidden room of U.N.C.L.E.'s Section-II in Kandaville.

Illya sat in a straight-backed chair, the chair turned so that he could rest his chin on the back, and watched the Somali come awake. The room was as secure as human brains could make it. It was high, with a wide view of the great river that skirted the city.

Azid Ben Rillah touched is face and looked at Illya. The small, blond U.N.C.L.E. agent smiled.

"It won't come off, the skin coloring," Illya said. "But I removed the contact lenses. Your eyes are blue again."

Rillah nodded. "I thought you spotted me." The fake Somali lapsed into his native language—Russian. "How have you been, Illya?"

"Quite well, thank you, Alexy. Interesting that you kept the initials," Illya said, also in his native tongue. "Alexy Borayavitch Razov and Azid Ben Rillah. You were reported dead."

"Our homeland dislikes defectors," Alexy Razov said. "I felt safer to vanish after I turned my coat, shall we say. And you? Since you were looking for me, I gather you still work for our friends the secret police? Am I to expect a quick and secret trip home? After ten years it will be strange. All that snow. Hard on a poor Somali."

"No, Alexy, home is not where you are going. Exactly where you go will be up to you."

Razov sat up on the bed. He looked down at the chains on his hands and feet. Then the dark-skinned man with the strange blue eyes looked at Illya.

"How is it up to me?"

"If you like, you can be safely in New York tomorrow. In London. Anywhere you choose. And with a new face, a new identity."

"New face? You can do that?"

The turncoat Russian was studying Illya very carefully. Razov seemed to be suddenly afraid, very afraid.

"You could protect me? Hide me?" Razov said.

"Yes," Illya said. The ex-Soviet agent was trembling. "In exchange for what?"

"For the meaning of PowerTen. For where it is being made, and for what exactly it does."

Razov seemed to collapse on the bed. The dark-skinned, blue-eyed turncoat lay on the bed shivering, his lips trembling. Razov's whole body shook as if in the grip of some terrible fever. His Russian was broken, shaking.

"You know! You know what I am. Then." Razov turned his face to stare at Illya, "then—you must be with—U.N.C.L.E.! Yes I see it now, U.N.C.L.E.! I wondered about that girl, the singer. Damn you to hell, you're with U.N.C.L.E. and I'm done, finished."

"We can hide you from THRUSH," Illya said.

"Oh, damn you! Why? Why?" Razov cried. "We were friends!"

"It seems that we took different paths, Alexy," Illya said.

"Very different paths."

Razov sat up, his fear gone for a moment. "U.N.C.L.E.! A pack of milk-sops, do-gooders, bleeding hearts! What counts in this world but power, money, victory? THRUSH will be everything soon! Everything!"

"No, " Illya said. "THRUSH will be nothing. They are nothing now and they will always be nothing but an evil force doomed to failure."

Razov turned white under his dark tint. "Failure! You know who I am. I'm dead. I'm through. They will kill me now."

"We can protect you, Alexy!" Illya said. Alexy laughed. A hollow, hopeless laugh. A laugh of the dead and the damned.

"No one can protect me, Illya," the turncoat Russian said. "I can't even make a deal. They will kill me now."

"Don't be an utter fool! They can't reach you here," Illya said testily. Razov began to laugh.

"They can't get to you. They can't even know what room you're in!" Illya cried. Razov laughed harder, a wild, hysterical laugh made up partly of fear, partly of sardonic amusement.

"They don't have to reach me, you fool. They don't have to know what room you have me in. They only have to know what building it is and they know that. Look!" The former Russian agent pointed a long finger toward the window of the room. Illya whirled. At first he saw nothing. Only a window nine stories above the street. The he saw it.

Outside the window, over a hundred yards away, he saw a kite flying. A large, flying toy. But it was no toy. Illya took his binoculars and went to the window. The kite was not a kite. It was a type of balloon; it had a small motor that could maneuver it. And its long, stiff string that was not string but thin cable went down to where two men stood on the roof of a building. The men were wearing earphones.

"That microphone can pick up within six hundred feet," Razov said. "They hear all I say."

"But they still can't reach you, and we'll soon stop their eavedropping," Illya said calmly.

He took out his U.N.C.L.E. Special, fitted the tubular metal stock, the telescopic sight,a nd placed the weapon against his shoulder. He fired twice. One shot cut the thin cable. The second shot punctured the balloon device and the kite fell. On the roof below, the two men vanished.

"Now that they can't hear you or get to you," Illya said. "Now you can tell me what PowerTen is."

"You fool," Razov said.

And laughed.

It was the last sound Alexy Borayavitch Razov, alias Azid Ben Rillah, ever made.

There was a small explosion, a puff of white smoke from Razov's cnest, and the laugh died in a strangled scream. Razov fell over backwards and lay with his dead eyes staring up at nothing.

Later, in New York, Waverly and Napoleon Solo listened to the report of Illya Kuryakin by overseas relay on the miniature radio set.

"It was sewn under his skin. It must have been there for years. A very powerful explosive pellet, too thin to be seen. There was only the smallest scar, and no metal to be detected."

Illya's voice, from distant Kandaville, continued. "I would imagine all THRUSH agents must have such a device inserted in their bodies. When they are caught, it is detonated remotely to silence them—in most cases probably at once. This time they tried their listening device first. They know we are on to PowerTen."

Waverly was solemn. "Very well, Mr. Kuryakin. It can't be helped. Did you find any leads at all?"

"One," the far-off voice of the small Russian said. "It was in his shoe, under the inner sole. A ticket, I think, admitting two to a performance of The Bedlam Trio in a Sydney night club."

Solo leaned across the table in the New York office. "Sydney? Our unknown council member "N" could have come from Australia, sir."

"So I recall," Waverly said dryly. "Yes, I think Australia would be likely place to look next. Do you hear me, Mr. Kuryakin?"

There was a chuckle from distant Africa.

"Then I will meet Napoleon in Bedlam."

Waverly winced noticeably. "Please keep your humor in some kind of check, Mr. Kuryakin. But, yes, by all means, join Mr. Solo in Bedlam at once. Before Illya had apologized for his bad joke, Napoleon Solo was on his way out the door to pick up his tickets for Sydney, Australia.