Текст книги "The Thousand Coffin Affair "

Автор книги: Michael Avallone

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 9 страниц)

NAPOLEON NO LONGER SOLO

“MORE RAPID than eagles his coursers they came,” Solo said quietly. He was smiling slightly, but still on his guard. This could easily be more Denise Fairmount hanky-panky and he hadn’t quite reconciled himself to that one yet.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Solo?” Jerry Terry asked sweetly.

“I was just thinking about the night before Christmas when all sorts of surprises fill my stocking. May I ask why you were so determined to join me on this trip?”

Jerry Terry’s smile vanished. It made a startling transformation in her face. The fresh beauty seemed to give way to a Joan of Arc severity.

“That makes sense, Mr. Solo. I am willing to talk. We have a similar interest in this enterprise.”

“Go on. I am listening, Miss Terry.”

“May I have a cigarette?”

He placed a cigarette between her lips and held his lighter for her, admiring her features as he did. He decided that the assignment was becoming more interesting all the time.

“All right,” he said. “You have your cigarette, we have been informally introduced and you know where I’m going. The question is—who are you and why are you going with me?”

“Solo,” she said softly. “I’m not always funny and bright. I’m as responsible as I can be. Stewart Fromes means as much to my organization as it does to yours. Fortunately, both of us are playing on the same side.”

“And what is my organization?”

“You’re the man from U.N.C.L.E.”

“And what is your organization?”

“I’m the girl from U.S. Army Intelligence.”

Solo frowned. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure, if I find that hard to believe. I never heard of lady intelligence officers.”

“They made an exception in my case.”

“Why? Are you the G-2’s daughter?”

She laughed. “No. But I am young, I am attractive, and I possess the one thing that makes me unique for my job.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Hit me. It must be something.”

“A photographic memory. A foolproof one, I might add. It has been tested and not been found wanting.”

Solo pondered. Yes, that would make her a vital asset to any organization. If she could once look at something—even a maze of blueprint and detail—and record it in her mind as though it were an actual photograph…yes, such an agent would be worth her weight in Fort Knox gold.

“All right, Jerry Terry. I’ll buy your fish for now. At least, until we land. But please tell me where this concerns you directly.”

She sighed. “‘Play it cautious. I’ll respect you more for it. Very well. We’re three thousand feet above the ground and this plane is not bugged or wired for sound. I checked it out while I sat and waited for you. We know about Fromes. We knew he was in Oberteisendorf as a field chemist for U.N.C.L.E. Your people had to let us know about it at the command decision level. It’s that big, I understand. We got the report about Fromes’ sudden death almost as soon as it happened. The news went through the American Consul to our private line, as it did to yours. Army Intelligence sent me out right away. There may be something vital to memorize in Fromes’ laboratory—if they haven’t cleaned it out yet.”

Solo nodded. “And who do your people think ‘they’ are?”

Jerry Terry clamped her teeth. “The communists, of course. Who else is so interested in world conquest?”

Solo decided to change the subject. “What was Fromes working on?”

She shivered. “I don’t really know. But, God, it must be big to send all the troops in like this. Don’t you know?”

Solo turned a rueful smile on his new-found ally.

“I work for a man who sends me on errands and then explains to me exactly what I went for after I get back. But I have some ideas. Fromes was a friend of mine and I know what interested him more than anything else on earth. Chemical warfare.”

She shuddered again. He idly wondered what kind of figure the leather jacket and whipcord breeches contained. It was hard to tell in the gloom of the cabin.

“Now, the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” he prodded.

“All right.”

“You have pinpointed me exactly—to the dot and stroke of the clock. How did you know I was coming to Rouen to rent this plane?”

She showed him the white teeth again. “We have our own methods, Watson.”

“You’ll have to do better than quoting Sherlock Holmes. I need some proof you are who you say you are—besides your dazzling smile. Give.”

“What will you do if I don’t?” she challenged.

“I can kill you without leaving a trace.”

Her eyes met his and something stirred, on the female side, in their dark brown depths.

“I’ll just bet you could. Fair enough. We knew you were at the Internationale, you were followed to Le Bourget when you left. And a certain Mr. X is a fairly close friend of your Overseas Club contact. Get the picture? One top echelon man tells another top echelon man and the agents fend for themselves.”

He nodded. “I’m convinced.”

“Thank you.”

“What are your plans for Oberteisendorf? I don’t intend to saw Stewart Fromes’ body in half just to make friends with Army Intelligence.”

It was a grim joke to get a laugh out of her and he respected her for not even smiling.

“No. I simply wish to be with you when you claim the body. And to look around. Then we part company. We want U.N.C.L.E. to have the body.”

“That’s white of you.”

She sensed the bitterness in his voice. “Was he a very good friend of yours?”

“The best kind. Never changed colors or patterns on you.”

“I’m very sorry, then.”

“Don’t be.” He was abrupt and curt. He saw the sudden flush in her cheeks and immediately felt sorry. He changed the subject again as a sudden thought came to him.

“Can we land anywhere near Oberteisendorf?”

She nodded. ‘We checked out the terrain. There’s a five hundred acre meadow to the south of the town. One problem though—how did you intend to get Fromes’ body out of there?”

He frowned slightly. “That’s what bothers me the most. Train is my only bet until I can find a plane. My plans haven’t covered that yet. I expect to get some instructions tomorrow.”

The Debonair droned on, a tiny dot in the dark seas of the French skies.

“Well, Kuryakin?”

Waverly stared glumly at Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin, marveling for the nth time at what fortune had guided U.N.C.L.E. to draw this man from behind the Iron Curtain. It was necessary at times to operate in that part of the world and Kuryakin had proven his merits more than once. For all of his Russian origin, the man was an excellent U.N.C.L.E. agent. Clever, resourceful, physically adept—and an excellent man in the laboratories too. Even now he was justifying Waverly’s firm belief in his ability.

Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin, his thatch of straw-colored hair awry, held up the test tube which had prompted Waverly’s attention.

“Yes, Mr. Waverly. A positive, I’m afraid.”

“Hmm.” Waverly turned to hide his chagrin, fumbling for one of his pipes. “No mistake?”

“None. This sample matches the one we examined. Therefore, both corpses were suffering from the same disease.”

“Well, that’s a nice kettle of fish, I must say.” He flung a reproachful glance at Kuryakin, as if he were evidencing his usual disapproval of the Russian’s rumpled suit and sloppy tie. Kuryakin shrugged.

“When Solo returns with his body, we can run another test. If it turns out the same way, there can be no mistake.”

“Yes, yes. That’s true.”

Waverly worried his corncob pipe. It was a damnable business all around. If Thrush had succeeded with the nasty business as he well suspected, there would indeed be hell to pay. But he had to respect Kuryakin’s results. If the blood specimens of the corpses from Utangaville, Africa and Spayerwood, Scotland, showed the same X factor, why then, the proof was there. Of what, he did not know—save that his research laboratory experts had found one exact, unknown similarity between both blood specimens. Something they vouched could not happen in one hundred million attempts.

“Have you heard from Solo yet, Mr. Waverly?”

“No. But I intend to phone him transatlantic, twelve o’clock Germany time. Tomorrow. He should be where he’s supposed to be by then.”

“If anyone can make an appointment at the right time, he can.”

“Hmm. Indeed. Well, Kuryakin. We’ll discuss this at another time.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Back at his quiet desk, with the row of enamel buttons, the head of Section I, U.N.C.L.E. found a neatly stacked mass of reports awaiting him. The teletype and recorder machines had issued forth a harvest of data. It was Waverly’s daily duty to keep abreast of all that happened in the world as it affected the organization.

Waverly put away his corncob and attacked the pile. Yet even as his mind flew over the data, absorbing the material therein, he couldn’t shake a gloomy feeling of impending doom in the pit of his ancient stomach.

The reports on the Le Bourget fire and the hullabaloo at the Hotel Internationale had had a demoralizing effect on him.

He seemed to have sent Napoleon Solo on an assignment which did nothing but raise a swarm of hornets.

Damnation, he thought.

It only went to prove that Stewart Fromes’ corpse was of the utmost importance to someone. Yet, why consent to turn a man’s body over to his friends if you meant to do nothing but keep the friends from obtaining that body?

A puzzler, indeed. And for a man whose lifelong passion was a good game of chess, a dazzling problem. Waverly’s eyes suddenly glowed and the reports fell away beneath him. His dour face almost broke into a full smile.

Of course. The very thing! The only reason, the single possible motive for such a play. Why hadn’t he thought of it sooner?

Swiftly, his thumb reached for the row of buttons. He poked the yellow buzzer this time.

The metallic voice clicked on: “Yes, Mr. Waverly?”

“Get me the War Room in the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. I wish to talk to the head of the Army Air Force.”

“Hold on, sir.”

Waverly, in his eagerness to explore his new-found theory and impatient to put his plan into operation, explored the center drawer of his desk until he produced a regulation briar pipe. He sucked on it briefly, tapped the bowl with a stiff finger and waited.

His eyes still held the look of a man who had stumbled on a great truth.

When the call went through and the voice of the head of the Army Air Force came over the wire, Waverly plunged into his request.

U.N.C.L.E., it seemed, had immediate top priority use for a jet bomber flight to Paris, without payload, to connect Waverly with an Air-Sea Rescue helicopter for a pickup in Oberteisendorf, Germany.

Meanwhile, over four thousand miles away, Napoleon Solo’s Beechcraft Debonair was setting down in the very early morning darkness that closed like a shroud over the sleeping town of Oberteisendorf, Germany.

A COFFIN FOR U.N.C.L.E.

THE FUNERAL parlor which contained Stewart Fromes body was a living mockery. It was hard to believe that Oberteisendorf was even a town of any size. In the darkness of landing at night, which Solo had done expertly and with fine command of the patch of ground left for the job, the town had seemed little more than several rows of houses divided by a running stream of water which flowed steadily under a joke of a bridge. Once they had quit the vicinity of the plane, Napoleon Solo had known where to go.

Every German town or village has a Burgomeister, or Mayor. They found Herr Burgomeister’s dwelling on the main street of the town, with a hanging oaken sign suspended from cast-iron moorings which proclaimed the information: BURGOMEISTER.

Napoleon Solo had roused that irate individual from a sound sleep, banging loudly on the front door. A frightened hausfrau had peeked down owlishly from a shuttered window, then hurried to fetch her husband. While they waited on the rutted road below, Solo had taken stock of a few things. He was worn to the bone, and starved—and Geraldine Terry had a splendid figure. She was nearly as tall as he but her chest measurements were far more satisfactory and in shapelier evidence. The leather flying jacket now could not conceal the surge of a ripe, womanly body.

The Burgomeister, thin and scrawny and old, gawked in relief when Solo flashed his impressive U.N.C.L.E. credentials, which to the world at large was some kind of charitable organization for the needy and underprivileged. It was so easy for the casual observer to assume from Solo’s outer appearance that he was some wealthy young man who had decided to be a philanthropist as his life’s work.

Herr Muller was impressed, too.

“Ja. I glad you come. ’Bout time you take your friend.”

“I’ve made good time, all things considered.”

“Ja, ja. Is true. But one day too long and we have to bury your friend.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Do not misunderstand. He was fine man. But law here, body must be claimed by two days or we must bury body. You understand—he rot and smell if we don’t. No how do you call it—facilities for refrigeration.”

“Please take us to him now, Herr Muller.”

The undertaker’s parlor was no more than a squat, ugly brown building of stone and wood. Inside, a dim bulb burned feebly. Solo reflected bitterly that the undertaker’s calling was the same the world over. Keep a light burning in the window all day long to remind the living that someday they must die so now was the time to make plans—

Stewart Fromes’ corpse lay on a flat wooden table, a long sheet of gray muslin draped over his entire length. There was a faint yet already palpable odor of decay in the room. Solo frowned, motioning Jerry Terry to stay back as he came forward. He moved toward the sheet. Upstairs, he could hear the mortician, who had remained out of sight, exchanging guttural German insults with the Burgomeister.

Solo, face expressionless, removed the sheet from Stewart Fromes’ body.

It was not easy to look at. Stewart Fromes’ corpse was a scene from Hell.

His exposed face had already begun to rot, the first signs of visible decay baring the cartilage of his nose and laying back the gums of his mouth. Flesh lay thin and decomposing on the lean face that Solo had known so well. Solo’s insides revolted; his logic reeled.

Stewart Fromes looked like he had been dead for a month. There was no denying the utter gauntness and yellowing, rotting dead tissues of his face. The features had all withdrawn to resemble the wrinkled, leathery-dry rot of decay.

Yet, with all the horror of the situation and the revelation, there was one more staggering blow to sanity.

Stewart Fromes’ clothes were all reversed.

It was as unmistakable as the condition of the dead man’s face.

His jacket was on backwards, straitjacket style. His shirt was the same peculiar way, showing the rear of the collar as if he were a minister. There was no tie, naturally. Solo, still revolted, bent to examine the corpse. Stewart Fromes’ trousers were on backwards too.

The only place where the motif had been ignored was the feet. Stewart Fromes’ ten stiff naked toes wore no shoes.

Napoleon Solo stepped back, completely baffled. This was like some double blasphemy of the dead. Like some filthy joke that had no point other than shame and unholy mortification. He felt anger begin to cloud his reason. He shook it off. There was overtly something devilishly remarkable about the whole thing.

Stewart Fromes looked as though there would not be a single mark on his body to indicate what had killed him. Yet his body was rotting away before Solo’s very eyes and all of his apparel had been reversed. Why, in God’s name?

“Napoleon,” Jerry Terry shuddered. “What does it mean?’

“I don’t know. Let’s just wait until our German friends are done with their bickering. I’ve never run up against anything like this before.”

Herr Burgomeister bobbed into view, his scrawny figure agitated. “That fool Klingeheim. He lost a little sleep—” He paused, bewildered. He had seen the look in Napoleon Solo’s eye.

“Bitte, is something wrong?”

“Yes, Herr Muller. I find my friend’s body badly taken care of. And his clothes most unusually arranged.”

“Please,” the Burgomeister begged. we have no facilities! I am sorry, you must know that. As for his clothes—we find him like this. In the kitchen of his house. I swear. We touch nothing.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ja, ja. I swear.”

“Where is his laboratory, please?”

“Two squares over. Come. You are done here?”

“No, I will come back to guard the body. And I’ll need ice. Lots of ice. You understand? The body must be kept from decomposing further before I can return it to America. Tell your Mr. Klingenheim I want a coffin. I’ll pay him well. Can you do these things for me?”

“Ye-e-es—”

“Good. I want nothing touched. I will crate the body myself. Is that understood now, Herr Muller?”

The commands were so evenly stated, so unequivocally pronounced that even if Herr Muller knew little of this Napoleon Solo, he knew him well enough now to be afraid.

“Do you take me for a dumbkopf, Herr Solo? I do. I do.”

“Fine. Now show me where my friend stayed in Oberteisendorf.”

The Burgomeister led the way, clucking fearfully, guiding them with a swinging hurricane lamp which splattered yellowish rays over the sickly landscape. Jerry Terry clung to Solo’s right arm and huddled close to him as they walked.

It was a small, cottage-like place set further back than the homes flanking its low sides. The paint was peeling and ugly black patches shone through the cornices of the structure. Herr Muller ushered them to the front door, and shrugged his shoulders in resignation, before he turned away to do Solo’s bidding in the matter of the corpse.

“Oh, Herr Muller,” Solo called before he had darted from view.

“Bitte?”

“Where is Frau Morgernstern? The lady who was his housekeeper:

“Gone. Run away. Have not seen her since the terrible thing. No one see her.”

With that, he was gone.

Jerry Terry shivered. “This is an ugly little town. I feel it in my bones.”

“I agree wholeheartedly with your bones. Come on in. And watch out for low-flying bats.”

There was a light switch close to the front door. Oberteisendorf had electricity, at least—it wasn’t as backwards as all that. Perhaps it might even seem liveably decent in the daylight.

Stewart Frames’ home away from home was a modest two-room affair with loft above. This he had converted into his laboratory. Solo lit a cigarette and loosened his tie. The plain, simple furniture mocked him.

“Okay, Memory Girl. Let’s go over the complete setup. Top to bottom. If there’s anything at all here we should know about, let’s find it. Stewart Fromes is not going to go to waste. Not if we can help it. Right?”

“Right.”

Side by side, they worked through the two rooms, emptying everything, overturning all in sight. Solo even drained a sugar bowl and coffee pot, sifting the dead grounds for clues. Nothing. The place was as devoid of personal belongings as a hotel room can be.

“See anything, Jerry?”

“Nothing. Shall we try the loft?”

“Yes. That was his real home. He would have left his imprint there more than anywhere.”

Yet, twenty minutes later, Napoleon Solo admitted to defeat. He felt completely stymied. Beyond finding the same old Bunsen burners, slides and scientific apparatus, a research chemist might need, he was absolutely in the dark. What was worse, they had not even stumbled upon a book of notes or records or some such daily log in which to record data.

“Blind alley, Solo?”

“Maybe, Terry. But I don’t think so. He had notes all right—lots of them. In his head and on paper. Trouble is, whoever killed him forgot nothing. They got the notes too.”

“That would make sense—if he found something.” He must have,” Solo said, “or he wouldn’t have been killed.”

She sighed. “We don’t know for a fact that he was killed.”

He stared at her. “The high altitude must have scrambled your brains, Miss Terry. Agents like Stewart Fromes just don’t keel over in mid-day because they have high blood pressure.”

“Probably not. But I wish we knew for sure.”

Solo cast a last long mournful look about the house. He shook his head, fatigue making his voice as raspy as a file.

“He found out something all right. Right here and right in this room. And they found out about him, so killed him—in a way that’s caused his body to start decomposing immediately.” Solo paused frowning. “I wish we knew what we were looking for so we’d know what it was when we found it.”

She smiled wanly. “I’ll bet you can’t say that all over again, Mr. Solo, and get it perfectly straight.”

“I’ll tell you something. I’m not even going to try.” He took her arm. “Come on, lady, tough work ahead yet. You have to help me pack a coffin.”

He felt her body stiffen beside him. Their eyes locked.

“Do I have to—Napoleon?”

“No, of course you don’t. But it will be easier if you help.”

“Then I’ll help,” she said.

He kissed her quickly, full on the mouth, and drew back before she could either slap him or respond. Her eyes had widened in surprise.

He laughed. “You thought I was going to make love to you right here and now?”

“Something like that,” she confessed.

“Something like that,” Solo smiled, “will come later. I promise you.”

They marched, hand in hand, back to the mortician’s parlor, with sleeping Oberteisendorf closing them in on all sides and the dark sky above. Jerry Terry yawned sleepily. Napoleon Solo fought to keep his eyes open. It had been a very long night.

It wasn’t over yet, either.

At the far end of the village, just where the last house disappeared under a shelving of trees, Herr Muller rapped at a wooden door. He was admitted quickly by a tall, lanky man nearly a head higher. The Burgomeister held his hat fearfully between his thin fingers, alternately crumbling and pulling it apart.

It was a small, bare room. Only an upended barrel with a single wax candle set on it provided illumination. The tall man stood behind the light, his face in the shadows, his figure looming large on the ceiling. His body was encased in something that was more than cape and less than cloak.

“Report,” the tall man said in a low voice. It was hollow and somehow unreal, like something heard in a vault.

“A man come. For the body.”

“What man?”

“Solo. Mr. Solo. A real Herr.”

“Alone?”

“No. Woman with him. Lovely maedchen.”

The tall man heaved a curse across the room. The candle flickered as if it might expire. Thin Herr Muller nearly jumped in his fright.

“What does Herr Solo demand of you?’

“Coffin. Ice. Much ice. He wants to prevent body from more decomposing.”

“So.” The tall man laughed, briefly and chillingly. “Anything else?”

“Nein. Bitte, that was all he ask.”

The tall man laughed.

“Good. Give him his coffin. Give him his ice. Obey all he tells you.”

“Bitte—”

“Go now. That will be all.”

Herr Muller nodded, his throat working nervously. Turning, he fairly crawled out of sight. The door closed softly behind him. The tall man moved to the candle, bent over it to extinguish the flame.

Briefly, the light illuminated a face from hell.

Then the flame puffed out and the room was once more in darkness.