Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­12] - The Goliath Affair"

Автор книги: John Jakes

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Startled, the bear automatically chomped its jaws shut. Solo dragged his left arm out of the path of those murderous teeth and ripped himself to the right, out from under. The bear snapped blindly at him, tearing his shirt and leaving painful teeth marks that oozed blood on his left forearm. From the loudspeaker came a mocking patter of applause.

The bear gathered itself on all fours, shook its immense shoulders as Solo carefully backed away from it. There was, unfortunately, no place to run. Next time, Solo knew, he might not be so lucky.

With another mighty growl the bear leaped. Napoleon Solo dodged to one side. His left foot skidded in the dirt. He went down to one knee. The bear charged straight at his head, slavering jaws opening wide and wet and red.

Chommmp! The jaws shut, snatching something out of mid-air, a scarlet something which, incredibly, had sailed out of the mouth of the tunnel.

Now the bear tore at this, worrying it back and forth. Another, similar item sailed into the pit. Then two more.

Solo watched the bear go wild and attempt to ingest all four huge, succulent raw slabs of meat into its maw at once. There was a hiss from the tunnel.

Overhead, Vanessa Robin and Klaanger and the others shouted and cursed. Content with a less-than-human meal, bruin was sitting on his haunches, masticating bone, gristle and meat with loud crunching sounds. And on hands and knees inside the tunnel, her cheeks and knuckles smeared with meat juice, was the person who had called to them and tossed the meat in to save them.

"I stabbed the guard and—unlocked the bars," Helene Bauer panted. "I didn't know whether I could get here in time with the meat. I stole it from the kitchens. Hurry, the bear is nearly finished—" And she backed hastily down the tunnel.

Illya's face lit with hope. "Don't stand on ceremony, for heaven's sake!" He dove into the tunnel on all fours.

Solo followed immediately. Over the loudspeaker, Vanessa Robin shrieked in rage. An alarm klaxon began to scream; alerting the entire garrison to the atttempted escape.

THREE

Napoleon Solo banged his skull, shins and elbows as he crawled along the gamy-smelling tunnel with all possible speed. Illya reached the tunnel's end and tumbled out on to a ramp which ran down from the tunnel to the floor of a small cement-block room. Half of one of the other walls was the entrance to the bear's cage. A large section of bars had been slid aside, and a musky effluvium of straw and droppings floated from the dark place beyond.

On the floor of the small chamber sprawled the THRUSH animal handler, an electric prod in his lifeless fingers and a short kitchen knife projecting from his throat.

"Not very neat," Illya commented. "But let's not quibble."

Helene was trembling, obviously struggling to keep her fear under control. "I—I've never killed anyone before—"

"What happened? I thought you were one of the chief lady storm troopers of the Fourth Reich," Solo grunted as he unbent himself on the ramp outside the tunnel. He reached up and slammed a switch which lowered the bars into place. Behind, in the pit, the klaxon still howled.

Helene gave a quick, uncertain nod. "I thought I believed it. I pretended to be as tough as the next. But I've never killed. Not until now." Her head lifted. All the explanation the two U.N.C.L.E. agents needed was contained in the furious blaze of her eyes and the bitter way she said, "When that woman shot Papa, as if he were nothing, nothing but a lump of mud—everything changed. I had to strike back at them."

"We'd better get moving," Illya warned. "How do we get out of here?"

"The main gate of the estate is heavily guarded," the girl said.

Solo's eyes crinkled down to worried slits. "And the troops will be out in force."

Illya said, "I left two THRUSH fellows sleeping at another gate on the far side of the parade ground."

"Then let's try that," Solo said. "Helene, lead on."

The girl's wide black leather belt caught dull reflections from the ceiling lights as she spun around and unbolted an iron door. "This stairway leads up to a delivery passageway."

In the distance boots slammed. Other klaxons picked up the bleating ooogah-ooogah of the first. With Helene racing beside them, the two U.N.C.L.E. agents took the steps upward two at a time.

Solo was strangely conscious of the jaws of a trap closing unseen somewhere around them. His palms ran with cold sweat. Like a warning, the outraged bellow of the frustrated bear drifted after them.

They reached a feebly-lit landing.

"Here is the entrance to the delivery passageway," Helene whispered. She pressed her hands against a steel door patterned with rivets. Illya put his shoulder against it to help her roll it aside. Solo peered out.

To the left, a high, wide concrete passage ran back to double doors with round glass portholes blacked out with paint. To the right the passage opened on to what appeared to be a loading dock. A small, nondescript van was backed up to the dock. Beyond this vehicle Solo glimpsed the flood-lit parade ground, curiously green, empty, silent. In the far distance the wall reared up again.

"Decidedly peculiar," Illya whispered.

Even pitched low, his voice bounced eerily from the walls of the delivery passage. A field mouse nibbling at a wilted brown lettuce leaf inside a produce crate was the only living thing visible anywhere in the passage. The mouse raised its head, wiggled its nose, blinked its small ruby-colored eyes at them and bounded away into the thick-clustered shadows.

"Peculiar," Illya repeated. "No noise now. The klaxons have stopped. I should think Miss Robin and her cohorts would be boxing us in by remote control, locking every single door in the place until we were trapped."

"Maybe they're watching us on scanners," Solo suggested.

Illya chewed his lip. There were large circles of fatigue under his eyes. "Shall we see? They took my weapons away when they caught me, but evidently they thought they were leaving me my cigarettes."

From his pants pocket Illya pulled a gaudily-printed cigarette package. He flicked his thumbnail against the top. The lid popped open on a spring; the communicator was meticulously disguised with foil paper and cellophane.

"Napoleon," Illya said as he set a recessed control stud, "in the event that we don't get out alive, we should make certain that this little corner of the THRUSH empire ceases to function."

Solo nodded.

He gave a bleak nod. Illya breathed, "Open Channel D, please. Extreme priority, class triple-A red."

In a moment there came a measured voice:

"Alexander Waverly here."

"Kuryakin, sir."

"Mr. Kuryakin! Good heavens, I've been worrying about you for hours!"

"We've managed to stay alive so far, sir. How much longer we can do so is problematical."

Mr. Waverly went hmmm. "That serious, eh? Where are you?"

"Somewhere in the Schwarzwald, sir. I can't give you the exact coordinates. We're trapped inside the research station where THRUSH is manufacturing its Goliaths. We may or may not be able to get all the way out."

"Mr. Solo is there with you?"

"Yes, sir."

Static crackled for a few seconds as Mr. Waverly digested the news. In a more somber tone he said, "Please put Solo on."

Illya passed the small unit to his friend. When Solo had acknowledged, Waverly asked, "Mr. Solo, as senior Operations and Enforcement officer on this mission, what is your assessment of the threat posed by the THRUSH operation you have penetrated?"

Solo licked his lips. The words were difficult to say:

"Grave, sir. Just as we feared, these agents they're turning out—both men and women—are incredible." Solo avoided Illya's eyes. "We called in to recommend action, sir. A bomber strike. As quickly as it can be arranged. I can switch this unit to a homing frequency to guide them in."

Mr. Waverly coughed. "What is your personal situation as of this moment, Mr. Solo?"

In a few words Solo explained their predicament. Waverly was silent a second. Then:

"You may not be able to escape by the time the planes arrive. I have just consulted our system maps. According to my rough calculation, as soon as I flash the request overseas through London, a fighter-bomber squadron already airborne will be on its way. Perhaps a matter of ten minutes at supersonic speeds until they arrive."

Solo's temples hurt. Helene watched him with round, horrified eyes. Solo tried to keep his emotions out of play. He tried to remember that all of his professional traning had pointed to this moment—the moment when an U.N.C.L.E. agent had to make the last, hardest decision and place his own life and the life of others secondary to the preservation of the United Network Command.

It still wasn't an easy decision to make. Solo thought of the pleasures he enjoyed. Good wine. The aroma of freshly-broiled lobster. The raspberry tang of a girl's lips—

"Send in the strike, sir," he said.

Mr. Waverly said, "Good luck and God speed, Mr. Solo. Over and out."

The communicator went silent. And the clock began to run out for the three of them.

FOUR

Solo had switched to the proper channel. The communicator was now sending its homing signal into the sky, where it would be picked up at a range of fifty miles by the squadron of fighter-bombers that would soon be flashing in.

"All right," he said in a strained voice. "Let's make the most of the time we've got."

The three of them broke for the mouth of the tunnel. Their heels clacked loudly. Still the entire THRUSH estate was shrouded in a weird stillness. Solo emerged onto the loading dock. He cut to the left. Illya and Helene crowded up behind. Ahead, the green grass of the parade ground moved gently under a night breeze.

The tall floodlight stanchions shed a sharp radiance onto the empty expanse of turf. Solo dropped to the asphalt below the dock, helped Helene down.

Illya's eyes flicked from left to right and back again, hunting for signs of the trap which surely existed.

Solo edged his way around a parked lorry. He wished that he had a pistol, any kind of weapon.

The parade ground was wide, green, empty. And it looked like a journey of a thousand miles to that small booth which Illya pointed out on the far wall.

"Ready?" Solo asked.

Illya nodded, wiped a trickle of sweat from his chin.

Solo half-turned. "Helene?"

"I can make it."

With a quick bob of his head, Solo started running. The other two came right behind.

Their feet thudded softly on the turf as they charged toward the far wall. At any moment Solo expected to hear the stutter of machineguns from the high cornices of the great house. The wind keened eerily in his ears as he ran. Breath pumped in and out of his lungs.

He flashed a look back over his shoulder. Lights blazed in the curtained windows of the upper floors of the great house, but nowhere was there another human being moving.

They had safely crossed about a quarter of the distance to the booth in the wall.

Abruptly the trap sprang open behind them—literally out of the ground.

Whole sections of the parade ground flipped upward. The turf was imitation, laid down atop hinged steel plates like square manhole covers. The night was suddenly filled with an incredible wordless shrieking as up from the underground warrens surged the black-uniformed THRUSH girls, tall, hate-faced, their hair streaming.

Their voices were raised in that chilling unison shriek of hate. Gun barrels winked. Boots shone. A dozen of them had come up through the sprung-back ports in the grass now.

Two dozen.

Three.

They fanned out and formed a long line, a human chain of women. From the parapets of the baronial hall, searchlights blinked on. Solo and his friends, running wildly, were pinned inside great white circles of brilliant light.

An automatic pistol stuttered. Illya gave a sharp cry and went down, blood blackening the left leg of his trousers.

Helene doubled back to help him. Solo had the feeling he'd take a bullet any second too. Through the stillness the unison chant of hate was dying out. The echo of the pistol burst was spun away on the breeze.

Like a sharp knife slicing through cheese, Vanessa Robin boomed over a bullhorn:

"No firing! No firing! Hold your fire until further signals are given!"

Solo twisted around, bent to pull Illya to his feet. Illya had gone pale. His eyes were glazing. Vanessa Robin, bullhorn in her left hand and a long-snouted pistol in her right, had emerged from the sprung-back trapdoor which was furthest on Solo's left. Climbing up the ladder after her came Felix Klaanger.

Klaanger's eyes glared like brown lanterns. His bulbous, lemon-shaped head waggled with delight.

"It will do you no good to run, Solo," Vanessa boomed over the horn.

"They've caught us," Helene sobbed. "I knew they would." She was on the edge of hysteria. Her whole body trembled as she tried to help Solo support Illya. "I—I have never seen these hellish traps before—"

Solo whispered, "THRUSH, doesn't tell all, eh? Doesn't matter. Keep moving. Back toward the wall."

"Stand where you are, Solo!"

"Come on, Illya, we can make it," Solo breathed, ignoring Vanessa's orders. "The closer we are to that wall, the better chance we have."

It was false encouragement; Solo knew they had no chance at all. But he would not stand and surrender.

Illya's wounded leg left a smear of bright blood on the grass as Solo dragged him along. They must have made a sorry sight, Solo thought, the three of them huddling and limping backwards, confronted by three dozen armed amazons with pistols and rifles.

The THRUSH women seemed to strain forward, eager for blood. Vanessa Robin knocked the bullhorn against her leg in a gesture of anger.

"Very well, Solo," she thundered, horn at her lips again. "Since you wish to continue the charade, we'll finish you in style. My girls are eager to get at the three of you. But you have no weapons. And you are burdened by poor Mr. Kuryakin hanging in your arms like a potato sack. So perhaps we should let you feel the real strength of THRUSH before you die."

Vanessa Robin turned and executed a kind of mocking little bow of invitation to Klaanger standing beside her.

The misshapen hulk straightened up. A slack grin of delight crawled across his liverish lips. His huge hands twitched at the ends of his incredibly long arms.

"General Klaanger and I will do the honors, Solo." Vanessa waved her left hand at him, the fingers fluttering in a dainty, lady-like way that was somehow horrible. "With our hands."

Flinging aside the horn for the last time, she began to walk forward. She unfastened a golden clip which held her hair in place. She shook her head. Her hair fell loose, trailing blonde and glittering to her waist.

As she walked she smoothed her tunic. Klaanger shambled forward beside her, cracking his knuckles.

Solo and Helene, meantime, had continued to back up steadily. Helene whispered, "The wall—"

Simultaneously, Solo's shoes caught in something which nearly caused him to stumble. He glanced down.

They had reached the patch of stones just under the wall and to one side of the booth which sheltered a door that led through the wall. Solo gauged the distances.

No go.

Vanessa and Klaanger were running now, running with their faces full of malicious triumph, two immensely tall, immensely powerful creatures. If Solo tried to get Illya through the gate, Vanessa and Klaanger would be on them first.

Solo suddenly felt small, weak, powerless to cope with the two monster-people charging toward him. They would finish him no matter how hard he fought.

"Helene!" he whispered. "Drag Illya into the booth. I'll hold them back."

"But you cannot stand against them!"

"Do as I tell you!"

Thud-thud-thud-thud. In the silence of the windy parade ground, the boot-soles of Vanessa Robin and Felix Klaanger thudded on the turf. Another five or ten seconds and they would be on top of him.

Klaanger's fingers flexed as he ran; flexed in anticipation of getting hold of Solo's arms and legs and ripping them out of their sockets; flexed in anticipation of tearing his body apart like a hunk of meat from the butcher's counter.

Alone, weaponless, cold in his belly and slightly dizzy, Solo stood his ground. He'd stand them off as long as he could.

Helene had responded to his order. She was dragging Illya's unconscious form toward the booth.

Thud-thud-thud-thud.

Vanessa's hair streamed out behind. Her slanting green eyes were infinitely cruel. Klaanger laughed from deep in his gigantic chest, the laugh of a beast. Far back at the edge of the sky, Solo though he heard a thin, whistling whine. It was probably only his imagination.

His eyes were blurred. The monstrously tall, monstrously strong pair came charging steadily on while he braced himself there on the patch of stones, hoping to fight as long as possible with his bare hands before they tore him apart—

Thud-thud-thud-thud.

Almost three-quarters of the distance was gone. They raced with incredible speed, like a pair of—what had Illya said?

Yes. Like the Biblical giant.

Like Goliaths—

Suddenly Solo's mind clicked over.

He shot out his right hand, gesturing.

"Helene. Helene! Give me your belt."

Confused, fumbling, she unfastened the brass buckle and threw the belt. Solo caught it in the air. Almost growling like an animal, he chewed at the leather, ripped at it till he had bitten a small hole through the belt.

He dropped to one knee. He grabbed a medium-sized stone from the path, wedged it into the makeshift hole and, gripping both ends of the belt so that it formed a long loop with the stone at the bottom, he whipped the belt around and around over his head and let one end go -

There was a quick, whizzing sound.

Vanessa Robin screamed and fell.

The stone was imbedded in the center of her forehead and her smashed frontal skull oozed blood.

Klaanger howled with maniacal rage. He shot his hands out in front of him, mindless, maddened, wanting only to kill the little man dancing back and forth in front of him, the wiry little man from U.N.C.L.E. who had knelt down again, fitted a stone into the belt and was whirling the belt around and around above his head -

"Filthy, filthy!" Klaanger shrieked, charging on, "Filthy, I kill you!"

Solo let go of one end of the long belt.

The stone sped with a deadly buzz.

And missed.

"Filthy, filthy U.N.C.L.E. man!" Klaanger howled with glee, zigzagging now to present a more difficult target.

Solo fumbled with another stone. He got it wedged into the hole in the belt.

Klaanger was no more than fifteen yards away. His great brown eyes shone like mad lanterns.

Around and around Solo whipped the belt in the air over his head. His arm-muscles were tormented with the pain of the effort—

"Filthy, filthy, I kill—" Klaanger screamed, hands questing out in front of him.

The stone flew from the improvised sling.

Klaanger choked, rocked back in his tracks. He clawed at his throat where the stone had struck.

From his neck a red spout of blood shot forth, splattering the grass.

With a gurgling, witless yell of frustration, the last of the two Goliaths fell.

On the parade ground a frenzied yell of hate went up from the throats of the THRUSH girls. They pulled their rifles and pistols into firing position, just as the low whistling whine Solo had heard a few moments before became a metallic banshee wail. The first of the silver-pale fighter bombers came in over the Schwarzwald and the parade ground, laying down a stick of bombs that Solo saw tumble in lazy, slow-motion fashion in those surrealistic moments when he turned and plunged for the booth.

He snatched Illya's body up over his shoulder and literally kicked Helene ahead of him into the booth and out through the door in the wall.

He didn't have to urge Helene to run after that. Panic got hold of her, real panic. She sped along beside him as they plunged into the forest and pelted ahead in the dark, banging against trees, bashing their heads against limbs -

The night opened up behind them into a bloom of fire and smoke and blasting thunderclaps.

The shock wave blasted Napoleon Solo and Helene to the ground. His forehead smacked the earth heavily.

Fireworks and fury lit up in his mind.

He fainted.

Fingers stroked his cheeks. Solo groaned, he opened his eyes.

At once his skull began to vibrate like the head of a snare drum. He kept his eyes closed a moment in the cool darkness, inhaling the fragrance of pine and fir.

Gradually the throbbing ceased. He opened his eyes again and got his bearings.

He was lying on his back with his head in Helene Bauer's lap. She was either laughing or crying. He couldn't quite tell which until he felt the warm tears dropping gently onto his dirty, sweat-streaked face.

Above him he saw gently soughing treetops. A scarlet glow washed the undersides of their leaves. He tried to struggle up: "Illya—"

From the near dark a familiar voice said weakly, "Here. I'm awake. I think I'll make it, although this wretched leg certainly hurts."

"The bombers—" Solo asked.

Helene was sobbing softly: "Gone, all gone. The headquarters is gone too. There were awful screams in the smoke. Now there's nothing but the fire—"

Suddenly she bent and pressed her cheek against Solo's.

"What will they do to me? What will they do to me for working with THRUSH?"

He wanted to tell her that because she'd helped them escape the authorities might mitigate her punishment. He couldn't find the words. He was bone-tired. The night swam around him, a confusing of swaying boughs and flickering red lights and, somewhere, a last piercing moan of agony as the last of the super-creatures of THRUSH perished in the bombed-out ruins.

Illya Kuryakin said:

"Why is it, Napoleon, why is it that, no matter what happens, no matter what horrors we pass through, no matter what nightmares fall upon us, you always manage to emerge as the one to have your head cradled in the girl's lap?"

Napoleon Solo felt Helene's soft, soothing fingers.

He croaked, "Takes talent," and promptly fainted once again.

THE END

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posted 7.13.2002, transcribed by Graculus