Текст книги "The Man From Uncle 02 - The Doomsday Affair"

Автор книги: Harry Whittington

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VI

Solo straightened up in the littered alley and put his back against the wall. Around him, the refuse barrels were overturned, a stocky beach boy folded neatly over one of them, the other three lying face down in the scattered garbage.

Solo felt a stab of pain going through him and he touched gingerly at the fire in his side. He tried to keep his face expressionless, disliking the thought of giving in to the sharp burn of abrasion and contusion marring his face. His eye was swelling, purpling, and he tasted blood in the corner of his mouth.

He experienced some small satisfaction when he looked at the four young thugs sprawled unconscious around him. The hell with them. He had not bowed to them, though his jacket was knife-ripped and stained with rancid refuse. His shirt was torn.

But he had another lead—the silver whip—despite the deaths of Ursula and the flower girl and her beach boy. He tried to smile. He had walked into a wall—and he looked it. Solo raised the back of his hand and drew it across his mouth.

After a long time, when he was sure his legs would support him, he straightened from the wall and gave his opponents a sardonic bow, but carefully and not very deeply. Even so, the sky and the littered pavement changed places for a second.

He turned to walk away, but a movement caught his attention and he stopped.

The stocky boy folded across the barrel was coming around. Solo turned to him, almost sadly, caught him by the collar and forcibly lifted him to his feet, bracing him against the wall.

Solo shook him, both hands holding his bright shirt.

"Who hired you to do this?" He kept asking the question until he saw those dark eyes focus, and comprehension return to them.

The boy shook his head. Solo saw fear and admiration in the youth's face where there had once been only cold contempt. "No. No, sir. Nobody. You see, Kaina was our friend…"

"Who did he work for?"

"With us, sir. At the beach."

"Who else? Answer me! Who else?"

The boy shook his head, frightened. "No. No, sir. No one."

Solo stared at him, seeing that the boy was not lying. He was too frightened to dissemble.

Solo was calm. He held the youth's shirt, forcing him to meet his gaze.

"And this girl? Polly Jade Ing? What about her? What do you know of her?"

"I have known her many years. She and Kaina. They were to marry."

"Did you know who she worked for?"

"Only with the Chamber—that's all. I swear it, sir! Are you a cop? Some kind of a cop?"

Solo sighed, deciding that the attack on him was a matter of vengeance, the need to cleanse Kama's honor, and nothing more—unless you counted the need for violence that had spurred them.

He tightened his grip on the boy's shirt. "I'm going to give you a chance to get out of here, away from these others. If not, I'll put you right back to sleep with them—"

"Oh, no, sir. No. That won't be needed. I should be at work already. I am much late already. There's no need."

"Then get out of here. Move and keep moving."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

When the boy was gone, running through the littered alley, Solo remained where he was for another moment.

From the pocket of his jacket, he removed the sender-receiver he had used in the hotel room to summon Kury-akin. Now, after checking the alley and finding it empty and silent, he pulled out the antennae and said into the speaker:

"Bubba. Acknowledge. Acknowledge."

He frowned, waiting. The call should have carried at least five miles. He glanced around him, thinking he wanted to clear out of here. A man could get hurt in this island paradise. Further, he wanted to communicate to Illya his need to pursue the clues offered by that silver whip.

"Bubba. Acknowledge, please."

He spoke calmly and clearly, but without emotion. He touched at the darkening spot beside his mouth.

He pressed the button, listening.

He made one last effort. "Bubba. Come in please. Acknowledge."

There was no answer and he stopped listening. He reset the antennae, replaced the set in his jacket pocket and walked toward the train station in the distance, carrying the soiled, slashed coat across his shoulder.

He decided that Illya had gone off alert, because it was basic computing inside the machinery of Kurya-ldn's unemotional mind that if he did not hear from Solo, it was no signal to hit the panic switch. If anything he became calmer than ever, certain he was on a DC-7 winging stateside.

VII

Sprawled on the cot in his darkening cell at the Honolulu jail, Illya looked through the bars at the lighted corridor, at the guards and trustys moving around out there in the onion yellow light.

He struggled violently, in a way he had never struggled before. It had nothing to do with actual movement, action of any kind. His body was stilled as if in a catatonic trance. His eyes were still tear-clouded, burning from the fluid sprayed into them. The struggling was all inside his mind.

He began to be filled with a distracting terror that this paralysis might be permanent. Suddenly this cell was like a tiny box, a cheap coffin. He wondered if this were what it all finally added up to: lying helpless in an alien cell, among strangers. It had never occurred to him that he would not have to pay for having served U.N.C. L.E., the things he had done for the united command, and the misdoings in the years before he had joined them. He had not looked for a reward—no more than a few hours off once in a while to enjoy his collection of jazz. But it was bad to know one was so alone, and helpless.

Lying there, he watched the cell-block door open and then close. Trustys were carrying tin plates of food to the inmates. He wondered how long it would be before they came and found him like this. He struggled again, ordering his hands to move. He didn't want to be found here like this.

He heard the distant ring of a telephone. It was silenced and he sweated, concentrating on moving his hands.

Inside his skull he laughed when his fingers twitched, and then bent, and then straightened. Now he concen-trated fiercely upon his feet and his legs, forcing his conscious mind to ignore the bite of acid in his eyes and nostrils.

His feet moved. His legs moved. He did not know how long it was but finally he was able to sit up on the edge of the cot. His clothing was sweat damp, and he was wide-eyed and tense.

He reached out his arms, found support and pulled himself to his feet. He attempted to take a forward step, but lost his balance and sprawled outward. He caught himself on the lavatory, and then dragged his legs after him, straightening.

He turned the tap water on full. Slowly he lowered his face into the rush of water. He let it run for a long time.

The burn lessened in his eyes, and the sting ceased in his nostrils. He kept bathing his face with the water. He realized that feeling had returned to his legs, and his hands and forearms ached with the returning strength. He bent slowly forward and immersed his face in the water.

He stayed as long as he could hold his breath like that. He heard the trusty shout at him from the bars, telling him his food was there. He managed to turn his head and nod.

He straightened up at last, massaging his face with his hands, and rubbing them briskly along his arms, trying to escape the last traces of the drug as quickly as he could.

He walked to the bars, took up the tin tray of food. He ate slowly, holding the tray, then he replaced it on the floor where it could be collected.

He went back to his bunk then and sat down on the side of it. He glanced through the bars at the corridor, then bent over and removed his right shoe.

Holding the shoe, he turned the heel and shook out a heat-bomb pellet, thinking about the force concentrated inside it. From his tray he got a spoon and scooped out a small hole under the bars. He set the pellet inside it, checking the corridor across his shoulder. He pushed a half-dozen cigarettes around the pellet, securing it. He flicked light from his cigarette lighter, setting fire to the paper.

He stepped down from the bunk then, and walked leisurely across the cell. He dropped the spoon back on the tray and leaned against the bars, trying not to watch the fire flickering in the paper around the heat-bomb pellet.

He made a mental countdown, watching the corridor. The sound the pellet would make would not be huge, but it would be enough to be heard all over the cell block.

As he waited, he tried to compute the time he would have, running across the cell, lunging upward against those bars that would be ripped free along the bottom, but perhaps only loosened on the sides. He would have to go out that window in whatever space was blown loose by the heat-bomb. He knew it was going to be small.

At the instant the heat bomb exploded, the wall quivering with the mild concussion, Illya heard the shouts along the cell block, the pound of shoes as men ran in the corridors.

He did not waste time to look over his shoulder. He sprang up on the bunk, shoving with his hands, finding the bars still friction-heated. He thrust outward with all his strength, twisting as he pushed.

He breathed a small prayer of thanksgiving because three courses of bricks beneath the window had been blown loose and his weight against them sent them falling outside the jail. Holding his breath, he pushed upward on the bars, worming his head into the opening.

Illya's head and shoulders were outside the window. Behind him he heard the shouting of men, the ring of keys, the clang of metal. It occurred to him that surely Lieutenant Guerrero would have a special torture and inquisition set-up for captured escapees. Guerrero would never stop tormenting him if he were caught and returned now. What better admission of guilt than an escape attempt?

Illya pressed downward on the bricks of the outside of the jail, thinking that he was like a woman trying to get into her girdle, only what he hoped to accomplish was to work his body through an opening too small to accommodate it.

He turned and twisted, feeling his hips sliding through, feeling the cut of the bars, the scraping of the broken wall, and feeling the pain, too. The worst pain was the fear of being caught by the legs from behind, of being dragged back into that jail, squirming like a fish.

He pushed harder, feeling more bricks give, feeling his hips twist through the hole. A hard hand clutched at his ankle. Panic gave him forward thrust. He lunged outward, his hips freed. He lost his balance and went tumbling down toward the paved alleyway.

He struggled, trying to turn his body, attempting to land on his feet like a cat. He didn't make it. He struck hard, and flat, the breath blasted out of him.

Breathing painfully, Illya sat up and looked around. From above him, he heard the warning shouts of the jailers, the crack of a gun. He scrambled on all fours to the shelter of the wall, trying to buy enough time to recover his breath.

He stared down at his feet, realizing for the first time that whoever had caught at his ankle had jerked off one of his shoes.

For a moment he slumped, feeling the chill of defeat. How far could he get in one shoe? He couldn't lose himself in a crowd; he'd have eye witnesses to every move he made.

A gun fired above him and the bullet splatted in the pavement near him, galvanizing him into action, and shifting a.gear in his brain. This was a vacation spot, wasn't it, a land of gaudy shirts, shorts, bikinis—and bare feet?

Trying to control his desire for frantic haste, Illya pulled off his remaining shoe and his socks and tossed them away. He rolled up his slacks above his ankles, leaped to his feet and ran along the street.

Behind him sirens whistled and alarms flared. Armed men ran from the police station into the street.

Illya pulled his shirt from his trousers, and forced himself to saunter through the gathering crowd gaping at the curbs.

A taxi driver stood beside his hack, watching the uniformed men spilling from the police headquarters.

"Cab," Illya said, opening the rear door and stepping inside the taxi.

The driver pulled himself reluctantly from the excitement. Behind the wheel, he grinned over his shoulder. "Where to? And you ain't the guy they're looking for, are you?"

Illya shrugged. "What do you think?"

The driver started the car, flipped down the meter flag and pulled away from the curb. He made it only to the center of the street when he was halted by two patrolmen armed with rifles. "Where you headed?" one of them wanted to know.

The driver shrugged, jerking his head toward the rear. "I don't know. Got a fare here."

Illya was lying back casually, his bare feet up on the seat. He grinned vacantly at the cops, hoping they had not seen him inside the jail. "Waikiki, driver. Let's get away from here; I can't stand violence."

The cops pulled their heads back from the car and waved the cab on. Illya sat up, turning, giving them a wide grin and a bye-bye wave. At the same time he was saying to the driver, "Is this as fast as you can go?"

The driver, suddenly alerted, stiffened and stepped on the gas. He said, "You armed, mister?"

Illya turned, his face blank. "They so seldom arm the inmates, Charley. Just drive."

He watched the driver's knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. When the cabbie made a sudden move to turn a corner, it was as though Illya could read the slow process of his thoughts—around the corner and back to the police.

Illya leaned forward and laid the side of his hand against the cabbie's Adam's apple with only the slightest pressure. "I think this is far enough. You stop when you make this corner."

"Okay. Okay. I got nothing against you, buddy. I just want to keep my license."

"I have my little ambitions, too," Illya told him.

He stepped out of the cab while it was still rolling, and strolled through the crowd. A bus was pulling in to the curb at the far corner. He ran across the street and boarded it.

When he heard police sirens behind the bus, he touched the cord, alighted and walked swiftly down the side street. He had gone less than half a block when a Volkswagen swung around a corner ahead of him and cruised toward him. He paused, watching it, vaguely troubled without knowing why he should be. There were three men crowded into the small car—and then he recognized the driver. It was the man with the lethal fountain pen.

There was an arcade at his left; Illya stepped into it and strode along it, going past the shops that lined it toward a walled court lighted with afternoon sun. He winced, seeing the cul-de-sac, and knowing there was no chance his friends in the Volkswagen hadn't spotted him, just as they must have been watching the jail. Sam and company meant to see that he was framed for Ursula's murder, and kept incarcerated.

Near the rear of the arcade Illya paused and looked over his shoulder. The Volkswagen pulled into the curb and the three men unwound themselves from it, spreading out to search for him.

He stepped into the alcove of a curio shop. From this shadowed concealment he watched his friend of the deadly fountain pen stride toward him, his dark eyes searching the stores, watchful and alert.

Illya waited until the man passed, then he stepped from the alcove. "Were you looking for me, friend?"

He heard the man gasp, turning. He didn't let him get all the way around because he was too immersed in the memory and rage of what had happened to him in that jail cell. The man threw up his arm to shield himself and Illya drove his extended fingers into the unprotected armpit, and then clipped him across the neck with the side of his hand.

He didn't wait to see him fall. He moved through the astonished bystanders, ran across the curb and leaped into the unattended Volkswagen.

He burned away from the curb with the accelerator pressed to the floor. The two men ran after him, shouting, guns drawn. Over and above the wail of horns and the shouting, he heard the scream of approaching police sirens.

He roared out on King Street and kept the small car on the upper level of the speed limit, heading toward Diamond Head. When he reached Waikiki, he swung into the drive outside the pink hotel where he had posed as bellhop, where Ursula had been slain.

A beach boy sunned himself, waiting for a bus. Illya called him over. "I promised to send this car into Vic's Garage over near Aala Street. You know the place? If you'll drive it there, you got yourself a free ride downtown."

The boy grinned, his teeth gleaming. "Mister, you got yourself a deal."

Illya did not even wait to see the Volkswagen driven out of the hotel parking area. He tried to move nonchalantly around to the service entrance, but inwardly he admitted he was running, even if he did manage to keep his pace to a sedate-looking stroll.

Five minutes later he came out of his room in the service quarters of the hotel wearing fresh slacks and jacket. He glanced longingly toward the cabs that would get him away from here before the police or the men from Sam overtook the Volkswagen and learned from the beach-boy where he had gotten the little car.

Telling himself that nothing was ever easy, Illya went up in the service elevator to the eighth floor, where he found Ursula's room sealed by the law, with appropriate notice on the door.

He entered with a pass-key, and once inside he relaxed slightly. He laid out the developers and the small plastic cups, his receiver-sender, a binocular-loupe, a small infrared light, and the film he'd developed earlier for Solo.

Placing the binocular loupe in his left eye, he scanned the strip of developed film while the film from his own lighter-camera was being developed.

He paused, staring at the film Solo had taken of Ursula's receiving the welcoming lei from the China Doll flower girl at the airport.

He caught his breath, pleased. He could never have seen it without the jeweler's magnifying loupe, but with it he could distinguish the features of the man standing beyond the flower girl, intently watching the small ceremony.

He was not too surprised to see that it was the Eurasian who called himself Sam.

His next triumph was the excellent close-up likeness he had been able to get of Sam himself with his own lighter-camera.

Smiling, pleased with himself, he did not hurry even when he heard the scream of police sirens approaching from downtown. He sighed. If Guerrero's police were on his trail, could Sam's commandos be far behind?

He placed the pictures and the materials in his jacket pocket and crossed the room carrying the infrared flashlight

On the balcony, he played the light along the railing top. His impassive face lighted faintly at the clear yellow stains he found there—finger marks. He knew who had left those prints. Sam had been leaving yellow-stain hand and finger marks ever since he had drunk down the Scotch and the neuroquixonal tablet, and he would continue to put them down wherever he went for some time to come.

Illya stood there smiling, and he did not even stop smiling when he counted the four police cars racing into the drive eight floors below. He returned calmly inside the room and took up the receiver-sender, pressing its button and speaking into it, slowly, clearly, repeating himself to be certain he was understood.

PART TWO—Incident at the Hungry Pussy Cat

I

Napoleon Solo stepped from the taxi at the corner of Third Avenue in New York City's East Forties.

He paused a moment on the curb, glancing at the large public parking garage, the row of aging brown-stones siding a modern three-storied whitestone. Beyond them he could see the glass and glitter of the Umted Nations Building near the river. He exhaled heavily, saying to himself inwardly, "Welcome Home, Solo." He was thinking there were moments when he hadn't been sure he would make it. But he did not smile in his small triumph because he still nursed a purpled eye and a welted, tender jaw, souvenirs from Oahu.

The street was quiet in the afternoon and Solo went along its walk, going down the steps from the street level and entering Del Floria's cleaning and tailoring shop in the whitestone building.

The tailor, a mild, balding man in his fifties, glanced up from his work and returned Solo's faint smile of greeting.

Entering a small cubicle at the rear of the tailoring shop, Solo found himself wondering about this agent of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. The tailor operated certainly in a minor capacity, one of those who served mostly by only standing and waiting. He was a good tailor. Perhaps he'd once been a good field agent. Perhaps he knew nothing more than that behind his modest shop was a complex of steel, stone and bullet-proof glass housing one of the strangest and most far-flung law agencies in existence. It was unlikely that the tailor knew all the workings of U.N.C.L.E. even if he'd once been a field agent, because only a few at the top knew all its bewildering secrets of communication, eradication and prevention.

Behind the eager young faces of the men and women who entered here were the alert minds of carefully selected and wholly dedicated people of almost every race, color and national origin.

A wall parted and Solo stepped through as it closed again silently behind him. He was in the first, outer cell of the complex; the receptionist behind the desk smiled at him as if she'd seen him only moments earlier, and placed his identification tag upon his lapel.

Solo winked at her and strode through the metallically lighted corridor, able to see his reflection in the deep-polished surface of the flooring.

Other agents, some in shirt sleeves, all intent, as if their minds were computers, passed him with brief glances or silent greetings. The silent corridors hummed with ceaseless activity.

Though one could not see them or hear them through the sound-proofed flooring, a set of underground channels churned with the speeding launches plying in secret from moorings to the East River.

On the roofing, what appeared to be a large neon-lighted advertising billboard concealed a high-powered short-wave antenna, elaborate receiving and sending gear, pulsing constantly, attuned to every change in the world around it, reaching out like prying eyes and searching feelers into every dark cranny of the world. The battle which U.N.C.L.E. fought wasn't new; it was as old as man's conscience. Only the weapons were different now—incorporating computers, spy planes, atomic weaponry and the finest brains money could hire.

Solo wasn't a simple man, nor a naive one. He prided himself upon his urbanity, sophistication and clear-eyed recognition of the truth about worldly matters, rather than the hypocritical things one was expected to believe and swallow. But here in this air-conditioned maze of steel corridors and sound-proofed suites, one felt the strength and the moral principles that guided it.

A door slid into the wall as Solo approached it and he entered the private sanctum of Alexander Waverly. There had been no delay and Solo knew why—every movement in these corridors was continuously monitored on closed-circuit television, and electric brains scanned, rejected, or admitted one at all the knobless doors in this place.

Waverly looked up from behind his desk. The top of it was cluttered at the moment with small, luminous maps, code messages and directives. Waverly's hair was toppled over his rutted forehead. His hair was black, and Solo suspected that Waverly's barber dyed it with each trimming, because if Waverly had a vanity, it was the matter of his age. He admitted, like an aging prizefighter, to an obviously curtailed age—in his case he would tell you he was in his late fifties. No one ever disputed him, but he had a brilliant record in army intelligence that dated back almost that far. Solo supposed his superior was actually in his late sixties, but Alexander W^raverly was walking proof that age was all a matter of the mind.

"Hello—uh, Solo," Waverly said without smiling. He kept a hundred matters of utmost urgency in the forepart of his mind, but he had the poorest kind of memory for names or other trivia, even in the cases of his most highly-rated operatives.

Waverly's rhesus-monkey eyes under bushy brows seemed more vacant than ever, but Solo had long ago learned this meant the deepest sort of concentration. He respected Waverly as he did few men. It was easy to have ideals when these human heroes were at a distance, but when you worked closely with any man you got to know him well, in all his weaknesses and strengths.

"One must conclude from your report, Mr. Solo, that your triumph in Oahu was less than breathtaking," Waverly said.

Solo smiled. As Waverly understated his agency's dangers and accomplishments, so he minimized its failures. But Solo knew how they hurt—the pain clawed at him.

"I fell flat on my face, all right. And before we go any further, I want to make a statement that I hope you won't construe as an alibi. It may well be the pattern in this case—if it turns out that there is a pattern, or even a case left after the recent setback."

Waverly pressed a button. A wall panel slid back, revealing a small screen which instantly glowed with gray light.

"I assure you we do have a case left," Waverly said. "A strong case. Perhaps we are in a better position than we have been at any time previously. We must negate any past failure by concentrating on the future. Learning the identity and the goal of our friend Tixe Ylno would have been easy if we could have kept the young woman alive. But perhaps that would have been too easy. I'm sure Thrush would feel this, and this must be our attitude. Now—what is your idea of a possible pattern in this affair?"

"Simplicity," Solo said. "Utter simplicity. Everything so obvious that you overlook it because it's so simple."

Waverly nodded, smiling faintly, but impressed, Solo could see that. "Yes. Extremely clever—and sophisticated. Using simple attack in a world that has grown to look only for danger in the complex—yes. Very ingenious."

Solo saw Waverly digesting this thought, putting it through the computer of his brain. He did not underestimate this power of his immediate superior, because Waverly was one of the five men at the peak of U.N.C. L.E.'s organizational structure. On Madison Avenue in the advertising world, it was a matter of having a key to one's private bathroom. Here it was a little more than that—Waverly was one of the few men who knew every one of the secret entrances into this building.

And it was more than status with Waverly. One reached his place of trust and responsibility only through awesome sacrifice and dedication. If any men knew every detail of the U.N.C.L.E. operations, it would be Waverly and the four other men—each of a different nationality and background—at the pinnacle of the organizational structure. The organizational chart of U.N. C.L.E. broke down the personnel into six sections, each subdivided into two departments, one of which overlapped the functions of the department below it.

Waverly, with his four associates, headed up the Policy and Operations Department. In descending order of rank, the other departments were: Operations and Enforcement—and it was in Enforcement where Solo was listed as Chief Agent—Enforcement and Intelligence, Intelligence and Communications, Communications and Security, and Security and Personnel.

It was Intelligence and Communications whom Waverly alerted now with the buzzer that prepared the screen for briefing.

A woman's soft voice rose from the waiting screen: "Yes, Mr. Waverly."

"The pictures transmitted here by, uh, Kuryakin, Miss, uh—" He let that part go.

"Yes, Mr. Waverly."

"Where is Illya?" Solo asked as they awaited the first briefing pictures.

"He had a bit of a sticky problem getting out of Hawaii. A matter of a murder charge."

"Good lord."

"Yes. You might say that."

Solo sank into the leather covered chair, glaring at the white screen. He bit his lip as the first picture was flashed upon it. It was the picture he had taken of the little flower girl at the moment she had tossed the lei over Ursula's head at the Honolulu International airport. It was magnified many times and showed people in the immediate background.

"This is the young woman Polly Jade Ing," said the voice from the speakers. "Of Chinese ancestry, she is believed to have become involved with an agent for Thrush through a dealing in uncut heroin."

Solo sighed. One got so near, and yet fell so far short.

The picture changed and Solo sat forward. "This man in the background is a Chinese-American named Samuel Su Yan. He was born in Dallas, Texas, attended public and private schools in Texas. He was rejected by the U. S. Army for moral reasons. He attended a university in Shanghai. For some years he worked with the Peking government as an agent in Japan, Viet Nam and in South Korea. He was deported from the Phillipine Islands. He was reported killed in a plane crash two years ago."

"Obviously he has been very much alive, working underground so cleverly that no agent of ours spotted him in all these months," Waverly said as the picture flashed off the screen, followed by a second, a close-up of Sam Su Yan in a pink hotel suite. "Illya Kuryakin took this picture," Waverly said.

The woman's voice said, "This is a closer picture of the subject, now definitely identified as Samuel Su Yan.

At this moment he has been located by agents as a guest at the Acapulco-International Hotel in Mexico.

"According to Agent Kuryakin, this man accosted Kuryakin as he left the suite of the slain Thrush agent, Ursula Baynes-Neefirth, forcing him to return to the room and to await the arrival of the police. Kuryakin reports that to his belief, Samuel Su Yan is a paid agent for'Thrush. Thrush is a supra-nation, without boundaries, and an international conspiracy—"

"Come, come, Miss Uh—" Waverly said impatiently. "Get on with it. Believe me, we know what Thrush is."

"Yes, Mr. Waverly." The voice continued, unruffled, as unperturbed as a delayed recording. "Agent Kuryakin managed, by appearing to drug his own drink, to induce subject to intake ten milligrams of neuroquixonal. Neuroquixonal is a drug which causes a sweat-gland and epidermal reaction which—"