Текст книги "The Diving Dames Affair "

Автор книги: Peter Leslie

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Puzzled, he squinted into the crack by the lock... Of course! This was the Mark III. He had moved back the retaining bars, but the tongues were still groove into their steel nests in the jamb. It needed a gentle pressure to push them aside – and that, naturally, was what the spatula was for!

He cased the flat blade into the crack and worked at it with his wrist. One after the other, the greased metal bars slid silently back into the body of the lock. The door swung slowly open.

Outside, a dimly lit passage stretched away in each direction. There were closed doors like the one he had just opened on either side, and flush fitting lamps in the ceiling every few yards. From somewhere beyond the right-hand branch of the corridor, machinery hummed quietly. Feeling faintly ridiculous in singlet and under pants, Solo tiptoed on stockinged feet towards the sound.

Around the bend in the passage the girl was waiting. His breath hissed in with surprise as he saw her – but then he realized she had a welcoming smile on her face and he breathed out in a long, slow sigh of relief. She had taken off the white nurse's uniform and now she was dressed in the D.A.M.E.S. green. Her lips were parted in a smile but her eyes, shadowed by a bang of blonde hair, were troubled.

"I thought you were never coming," she whispered. "What happened? I thought you were supposed to be a top agent!"

"I had to wait to make sure the TV was off before I started on the lock," Solo whispered back. "But I don't get it. What gives? Why would you help me escape?"

"I hated my foster parents," the girl murmured. "They used to keep birds in cages. When I was eight I set most of them free. The old man half killed me – and ever since then I've always hated to see anything in captivity. Setting things free is my way of getting even, I guess. I suppose that's why I married Danny."

"Danny?"

"Danny Lerina. Greatest safe man on the Coast. There wasn't a lock made that he couldn't master."

"Wasn't?"

"He was killed on some government job in Korea – but not before he'd taught me most of what he knew. Come to think of it, you're a little like him, you know. Maybe that's why I kind of took a shine to you when I saw you in there."

"Well, thanks," Solo said softly. "But tell me – just what's going on in here? Where is this place? What's happening?... Forgive my interrupting – we can continue the mutual admiration society afterwards, and I think you're pretty, too – but first I'd like to know where I am!"

"Gee, I'm sorry. Of course. Here, put these on." She produced a rolled up dungaree suit from under her arm. "It's not much but it was all I could get in the time. I'll talk while you dress."

"Shouldn't we go somewhere – ah – quieter?"

"What for? We're on C Level down here – just the cells, the stores, some of the minor offices, and the reactor."

"Did you say reactor?"

"Sure. It's only a little one, of course – but since the power station outside the dam's a blind, we have to get power from somewhere, don't we?"

"I – ah – I guess so, yes. What about the offices, though – isn't somebody likely to be in and out of them?"

"At three-thirty in the morning?"

"Oh... I'm sorry. I'd no idea. I thought it was just after lunch time!"

The girl laughed. "No, I suppose you could hardly know, down here," she said. Not that it's much different on B and A, for that matter."

"And what does one find on B and A?"

"Well, living quarters on B, of course. And catering. And the important offices and the Council Chamber. And the radio room and the armory. The barracks and so on. A Level is mainly the pen, of course -"

"The pen?"

"Yes, the pen. For the ship. It has to go somewhere, doesn't it?"

"There's a ship connected with this place – and the ship docks on the top story? Presumably A Level is the upper one?"

"Yes, yes. For the depth. They can't risk her grounding, you know."

"I don't know!" Solo burst out. "Look, just to please me, tell me what's going on here. I assume we're still somewhere near the dam... right? Well, I know about the dam itself, I know about the power station that doesn't work, I know there's about twenty miles of filled up by an artificial lake. I know Getuliana's as much a blind as the hydroelectric scheme and the made-up road that leads from one to the other. But that's all I' know. I don't know what's going on."

"'Well the pen's on the top floor because the whole place is under water and -"

"Under water!"

"Of course. Didn't you know that?... Well, obviously you didn't or you wouldn't look so surprised. Yes, while, they were building the dam they also built this place on the floor of the valley, completely covered in and watertight – and then when it was finished and the water rose it was eventually covered over."

"How do you get in and out?"

"There's a tunnel that leads to it through the mountain. It comes out in the next valley at the estancia. And of course you can get in and out through the pen – though that doesn't do you much good, since the ship only comes back to the same place; there's no other dock in the lake."

"And where do you girls come in? Why the D.A.M.E.S.?"

"We helped resettle the natives from the valley, and -"

"I know that, but why not real D.A.M.E.S. for that matter?"

"I suppose because we had to become members of Thrush – for the secrecy, you know – and they felt we'd be more likely to agree if we had police records. All of us have, you know. I guess they pretended we belonged to this organization just in case any Brazilian officials asked about us – just to keep the thing looking above board. And then again, they preferred West Coast girls because of the swimming."

"The swimming?"

"We all had to be good swimmers and divers – divers especially. To help with the ship in the pen."

"Do you mean to say," Solo asked, the light finally bursting, "that the pen is under water too? It's an underwater dock... the ship is a submarine?"

"But of course, I thought you realized."

"They go to all this trouble to find spurious reasons to construct an artificial lake – just so they can build an underwater dock and play submarines with it? Why?"

The girl told him.

Solo gave a long, low whistle of astonishment. "Look," he said, "I don't know how you think we can get out of this watery fortress -"

"I don't think we can. It's just that I don't like to see people in cells. I told you."

"Sure. Well, never mind that. The point is – in or out, I have to make contact with my boss. You don't have any objection?... I mean, you don't appear to have any particularly strong allegiance to Thrush."

"I couldn't care less. Not if they keep people in cells."

"Sure, sure. It's a thing you have. I know... Now, did I hear you say there was a radio room here? If so, it, seems my best plan would be to try and crash that first and send a message from here, rather than try to escape from the place altogether – which is probably impossible – and make contact from outside. Do you agree?'

"Yes. I think there's only one man left on duty at night. And I don't suppose he'll be too alert at the time – but you watch out. You don't have too much reserve of strength, you know: you've been under heavy sedation for days."

"Just show me where the radio room is," Solo said, "and I'll worry about my strength when we get there. I promise not to kill more than a hundred of them..."

The girl took his arm and led him through a maze of passages, past louvered doors shaking with the vibrations of unseen machinery, past notice boards winking with red pilot lights and green and blue, and up a flight of concrete stairs winding around a shaft housing three elevators. On the level above, the humming of the plant was less obtrusive – though he still found the windowless subterranean atmosphere, with its dry and hygienic air, oppressive in the extreme. Somewhere below them, beneath the massive foundations of the fortress, lay the drenched earth which had until so recently supported the footsteps of simple farmers; somewhere around and above, millions of tons of water pressed remorselessly in upon the walls.

And somewhere not far away must be the heads within whose crania lay the warped brains which had conceived the evil plan which Napoleon Solo alone could thwart.

If he was lucky!

The doors on the higher level were mostly glass-paned and Solo saw as they passed offices with desks, a library with rows of filing cabinets, a computer room bright with levers and dials and lights, a miniature lecture theater where the semicircle of seats surrounded a vast wall map whose rash of bulbs and flags concentrated around the newly filled-in shape of the lake.

Finally the girl drew him against the wall and put her lips to his ear. "The first door around the corner of the passage is the radio room," she whispered. "There's probably only one man there at this time, as I say – but the Council Chamber is immediately beyond, and the main control room lies between the two, only further in, as it were... So there may be lots of other people within call."

"I don't know why you should do all this for me, Mrs. Lerina -"

"You can call me Alice."

"Alice, then – thank you. I don't know why you should risk your life like this for me – but I'll try to make it up to you if ever we get out of here... Are you actually on duty tonight? Could you have some reason for walking past the radio room door?"

"Sure I could. You want me to find out who's there, is that it?"

"It would help, Alice."

"Okay," the blonde said. "You want I should try and get the guy to come outside?"

"I don't think so. There may be other people who can overhear. If you could go past and signal to me afterwards..."

"Will do," the girl said. She walked on around the corner of the passage, with Solo sidling after her like a disembodied shadow. Beyond the right-angle, the corridor was wider, with rubber floor tiles in marbled gray. Halfway along, a shaft of bright light barred the gloom by an open door. Alice Lerina walked up and paused, looking into the room.

"Hi, there!" she said. "You all on your lonesome?"

"Like usual on this trick," a mans voice replied over the faint burble of automatic morse. "I'm waiting for a call to come through from some guy he has a report to make from Zurich, Switzerland. You wanna come on in and share the solitude?"

"I don't mind. Watcha got there, anyway?" The girl stepped across the threshold, trailing behind her one arm with which she gave Solo first the thumbs-up sign, then a single finger pointing upwards.

Taking this to mean that the man was alone and that it would be safe to approach, the agent tiptoed up and peered cautiously around the door. The room was small, but it was packed with chassis after chassis, console upon console of the most advanced electronic equipment Solo, had ever seen. On the far side, bent over the dials of a short-wave receiver, the blonde and the operator had their backs to him. "Now this filter slope here, see," the man was saying; "with this you can tune out..."

There was a small monitor speaker above the set from which bursts of static occasionally sputtered. Under cover of this, Solo flitted across the room until he was immediately behind the man.

He didn't know whether it was the small current of movement he made in the dry air, or whether the girl inadvertently made some telltale sign – but a sixth-sense warning jerked up the man's head before he was within striking distance. He was a big fellow, a brawny; blue-jowled man in a singlet and uniform trousers, but he moved fast. He was on his feet facing the agent, having intercepted a glance between Solo and the girl, before Solo could raise an arm.

"Why, you dirty little..." he began, glowering at the blonde.

Solo's fist caught him in the solar plexus. It was essential that the man should not shout or cry out, that any struggle should be as silent as possible. Once anyone else's attention was attracted, Solo's plan would be ruined.

The operator doubled forwards with a grunt of astonishment and pain. His lips drew back from his teeth as he straightened, tugging at a blackjack in his waist band. Before he could draw enough breath back into his savaged lungs to yell, Solo had to disarm and then silence him.

Wheezing, with his eyes streaming, the man lurched forwards. Solo chopped viciously down, flat-handed, at his wrist and the blackjack clattered to the floor. At the same time, the agent raked a stinging blow across the bridge of the man's nose with the back of his other hand and thudded one stockinged heel to his kneecap. In his weakened state, Solo's only card was surprise – and he had to play it for all he was worth before the big operator could recover his equilibrium and get to close quarters.

The agent dodged back from a roundhouse left but was unable to avoid the followup – a short, pounding right that carried all the man's weight and slammed into his body just below the heart.

Solo heard his own choked grunt of pain as his legs abruptly turned to rubber and he collapsed backwards onto a wooden chair. Still groaning for breath, the operator pounced: grabbing a handful of dungarees, knuckling himself a firm hold and hauling Solo to his feet, he smashed his other fist to the agent's jaw.

Through the roaring blackness that threatened to engulf him, Solo saw dimly the huge fist drawn back again, the great face poised menacingly behind. With his remaining strength, he reached desperately up and grasped the man's ears. Then he went suddenly limp and dragged his adversary's head down after him. The man, caught momentarily off balance, pitched forwards, his hands flew instinctively out to break his fall, and his forehead crashed into a bank of equipment behind the chair.

Using the seat for leverage, Solo executed a kind of half back somersault and brought his knee jarringly up to connect with the underneath of the operator's chin as he hauled down on the ears. There was a sudden cessation of movement and then he was smothered in the dead weight of the man's unconscious body.

Panting, Solo laboriously hauled himself out from underneath with the help of the girl. Brief though it had been, the fight had totally exhausted him. Alice Lerina had been right – it would be some time before he regained his strength.

There would be no question of his attempting any further trials of strength, he realized bitterly as he dragged himself across the room to a transmitter. He must do what he had to do and worry about any subsequent action when the need for it arose. Slumping into a chair, he began methodically testing switches and revolving dials. Behind him, the girl watched wide eye.

–

It must have been almost twenty minutes later, and the agent's labored breathing had settled down to a steadier and quieter rhythm as he concentrated on his work, when a section of wall behind them swung silently aside to reveal three men standing there.

"All right, you – away from that transmitter. Move!" The words cracked out from the thin mouth of the man in the middle.

Solo whirled away from the radio. The man had slender, almost feminine hands with dirty nails and cigarette-stained fingers. A half-smoked cigarette drooped soggily from one corner of his mouth. And a short-barreled P.38 hung negligently from his right hand.

Behind him were a tall, white-haired Negro with a lined face, and a well-dressed man whom Solo recognized as Wassermann, the holder of the concession to build Getuliana and the dam, whom he had met in Brasilia.

"Don't do anything foolish, Mr. – er – Williams... or should I say Solo?" Wassermann drawled. "Greerson may look a little lackadaisical, but it's deceptive, I assure you."

Solo stood perfectly still, his hands at his sides. A few feet away, the girl crouched above the unconscious body of the radio engineer in a pose that was almost a caricature of guilty surprise. Apart from a sharp intake of breath when Greerson had first spoken, she had remained completely silent.

"I am most surprised to find you abusing our hospitality, Mr. Solo," the Negro said. "And disappointed. I had thought you were one of our more cooperative guests." The voice, Solo realized as soon as the man spoke, was the one he had been talking to over the intercom in his cell.

"Unfortunately," Wassermann said, "we were not attending to our monitor speakers in the control room, otherwise we'd have noticed earlier that clandestine messages were being transmitted. We have, however, heard enough to tell us that you were speaking in code – and that this story of you investigating some drug racket is false."

"Most interesting," the Negro said. "I'd be fascinated to learn the details of the treatment to which you were subjected. A system which permits deliberate lies to be told, mixed in with a judicious amount of truth, even under the deepest hypnosis and the most powerful drugs – that is something I really admire! Regrettably, though, I have to deny myself the pleasure of forcing you to tell me: our operation is ready to start. You have transgressed the laws of hospitality and now you have be come merely an embarrassment. You must be disposed of."

"Didn't they teach you not to end sentences with a preposition in the mail-order English course you took?" Solo said blandly.

The Negro smiled. "I am immune to insults, my friend," he said. "As I was saying, you must now die. You have until darkness tomorrow night… tonight, I should say, for it must be almost dawn now."

"Isn't that – ah – untraditional?" Solo said. "It's usually dawn."

"It is a question of method, Mr. Solo," Wassermann said. "We like to be tidy; we do not like to arouse the curiosity of our Brazilian hosts. So any deaths that are necessary are customarily arranged to look like accidents – a hit-and-run road accident, a heart attack, that sort of thing."

"What about the girls in the car?"

"One of the troubles about employing members of the underworld is that they will not obey rules," Wassermann said. "Despite our orders, individual members of our team persisted in driving all the way down to Rio to amuse themselves in their spare time. This particular pair drove carelessly, that is all. Then they had to be silenced to ward off your prying questions... In the case of your own death, as I was saying, this will be arranged to look like an accidental drowning. And it is better to stage that in darkness, simply to avoid possible witnesses."

"And how do you propose to stage it?"

"We don't really have to bother. The submarine pen attached to this building has double doors – so that the craft can enter underwater, wait until the water has been extracted, and then disgorge its crew in safety. With you, the process will be the reverse: you will be. left in the pen when it is air-filled, the inner doors will close, the outer doors will open and the water will come in. And then, sometime later, your body will float to the surface in the normal way and will no doubt be discovered at some time in the future by a worthy peasant. This way, too, we avoid any marks of violence on the body."

"Bodies – not body," the Negro put in. "We cannot tolerate disloyalty." He walked across the room to the girl. "You could have seriously jeopardized our plans by helping this man," he said with cold malice. "Now you will have to pay for your foolishness with your life." He raised his arm and slapped her repeatedly, forehanded and backhanded, across the face. The marks of his fingers stood out lividly against the girl's pallor as a thread of blood crawled slowly down her chin from one corner of her mouth.

"All right, Hernando, that's enough," Wassermann said. "No, Mr. Solo – I wouldn't. I really wouldn't... Greerson, you'd better calm Mr. Solo down before we take him back to his cell with his fellow conspirator to await, the night, eh?"

"Okay," the man called Greerson said. He handed his gun to Wassermann and shambled forwards across the room, his baggy suit flapping on his bony frame. "Only thing is," he said as he approached the agent, "my hands, are kinda delicate and I hate to bruise them. You know?"

Solo automatically raised his arms to defend himself as Greerson came near. But the thin man took him by surprise. Moving like lightning, his left hand reached out and grasped Solo's shoulder, spinning him deftly around so that he was facing the wall. Then, almost in the same movement, the gunman's other fist looped in and buried itself in Solo's kidney.

The agent's fingers scrabbled at the concrete wall as he sank to the ground, a strangled cry forcing itself from his lips. Dimly through waves of nausea he heard the girl cry out – though whether in pain or in horror at what was happening to him he did not know.

Behind him, Greerson measured his distance carefully, then drew back his foot...

Chapter 10

"Don't Call Us – We'll Call You!..."

AS GREERSON RAISED his foot in the fortress below the artificial lake, Illya Kuryakin turned the key to cut the motor of the Volkswagen fourteen hundred yards away on the other side of the rocky spur separating the reservoir from the adjoining valley.

Mist clung to the lower branches of the trees like streamers of chiffon, blanketed the hollows in the ground, and wreathed in frightening shapes across the road. The estancia was invisible in the before-dawn darkness as he coasted the car in under some overhanging evergreens opposite the gates. Beside him, the greyhound profile of Coralie Simone was pale and tense in the dim illumination of the single dashboard light.

"Somewhere in that mountain," Illya said, "there is a kind of fortress where all those trucks full of material go. It must lie at the end of the tunnel – though whether it is on this side of the lake or beyond it we can't tell. Since we couldn't possibly identify the place from above – even if the guards allowed us enough time on the shores of the lake to try – we'll just have to force our way in through the tunnel. Because somewhere in there, dead or alive, is Napoleon Solo... It'll be dawn in about a half hour: it seems to me that now is as good a time as any to try. Are you game?"

"So far as this phase of the operation is concerned," the girl said, "you are the boss. If you say go, we go."

"Fine. Well, the first thing to do is to spy out the land. Just hold on a moment while I fix the equipment, will you?"

Kuryakin hauled an attaché case over from the car's back seat and took out what looked like a heavy flashlight with a hooded lens. He held the device out of the VW's window and pressed the switch. There was no result at all – until he and the girl looked through a pair of viewfinders resembling truncated field glasses. Then the darkened and misty topography sprang to life in a manner as quick as it was impressive. In the powerful infrared beam cast by the flashlight, the special lenses showed up trees, grasses, fences, gateposts and buildings as vividly and dramatically as though they had been the snow scene they resembled.

"Oh, it's beautiful," the girl cried. "It looks just like full moon – only much brighter!"

Illya's face remained impassive. "Seems quiet enough,' he said. "I guess we'd better get moving while it's still dark Out there. Unless we can penetrate the tunnel mouth before dawn, we might as well go home."

While the girl held the infrared lamp out of the passenger window, Kuryakin strapped the lenses over his eyes and got out of the car. He crossed the road and busied himself with the latch of the wire gates blocking the entry to the estancia. In the unearthly light visible to him through his glasses, it took him less than thirty seconds to pick the lock. There seemed to be no alarm system connected with it. The gate was used so much that they probably considered the alarms were best left further inside the Thrush enclave.

When he had swung the gates open, he ran lightly back across the road and released the handbrake of the car.

"Here, take one of these guns," he said crisply to the girl, rummaging again in the attaché case. "Basically, as you see, they're long-barreled .32 automatics – too big for the pocket but splendid for using in a car. The great thing about them, however, is the accessory department: look, you can screw on, separately or together, a shoulder stock, a barrel extension with silencer that gives them greater accuracy, a butt extension that means you can use them two-handed from the hip, and an infrared viewfinder. That means you can see the light thrown by this flashlight for aiming – but you don't have to bother about wearing special glasses."

"I can't wait!" Coralie exclaimed, taking the spidery-looking weapon gingerly and examining it carefully.

"I'm serious," Kuryakin said. "You may have to use it if you're with me... In the meantime: let's go!"

Standing outside the open driver's door with one hand on the wheel, he began to push. Slowly the car began to move, gathering momentum as it left the grassy shoulder and rolled across the highway, moving still faster as the tires crunched on gravel and it passed the gateposts, accelerating at last as the wheels ran down the gentle I slope leading towards the screen of bushes and the tunnel mouth. As soon as the vehicle had enough momentum, Illya swung into the seat and steered from the inside, his eyes probing the space behind every bush in the weird illumination provided by the infrared lamp and the glasses.

The Volkswagen, without a light showing and with a dead motor, sped down the incline in the darkness, twisting past bushes and obstructions with unerring aim.

The dregs of the night hung heaviest in the wooded hollow just before the entrance to the tunnel. Taking her eye away for a moment from the infrared light, the girl was astonished to see how stygian the blackness was. Very dimly, now, she could make out the darker blur that was the cliff face, the indistinct opening of the tunnel mouth. From here, too, she could faintly make out the double row of low-power ceiling bulbs that marked the course of the subterranean passage curving away into the heart of the hill.

Kuryakin's plan was to switch on the ignition, put the car in gear and then let in the clutch to start the engine once they were inside the tunnel. He only needed the surprise brought by silence to get past any guards and keep the car rolling. From there on, he intended to roar through the tunnel as fast as he could, trusting again to that element of surprise to enable him to get through and establish a position on the far side before any of the defenders had realized what was happening.

After that, he would have to play it by ear. He only hoped that fate would allow him to consolidate a position strong enough at least to bargain from. If not, his own position – and the girl's – would be as bad, if not worse, than Solo's.

Still – he had to try. There was nothing else he could do.

Coralie was looking through the gunsight again now, squinting along the barrel at the strange lunar landscape thrown into relief by the magic beam of the flashlight in her other hand. She idly scrutinized the shadowed interstices of the cliff face, glanced at the trees standing proud like cardboard cutouts against the rock, looked past the closed door to the guardhouse, and up at the arched tunnel mouth –

"Illya!" she screamed. "Look out! The tunnel… Stop!"

Tires screeched as he stamped on the pedal to lock the car's back wheels. The great steel shutter that she had glimpsed rumbling down to seal off the entrance slammed home in its metal guides. The VW, slowing but not able to stop entirely in the time, slid straight into it with a noise like a hundred thunderclaps.

"We must have crossed a photo-electric cell guard," Kuryakin shouted as he started the engine, crashed the gearshift into reverse and backed the buckled car away from the blanked off tunnel mouth. "That thing was automatically operated or I'm -"

A burst of shooting drowned his words. Bullet thumped into the bodywork and spanged off metal projections as he screamed around in a half circle, thumped a tree bole, coaxed the car back into first and shot back the way they had come. The VW's gas tank was in the front of the car and if there was to be shooting it was better to keep it at the far end! "The light! Put the light on again!" he yelled to the girl as he wrestled with the wheel. "Nobody can see it but us!"

Coralie had, almost as a reflex, switched the flashlight off as soon as she'd seen the steel shutter crashing down. Now she thumbed the lever again and stared anxiously through the screen as Illya rocketed them up towards the house. There was nobody to be seen, although the gunfire was as intense as ever. Above the explosions, an insistent, thin shrilling, an alarm bell could be heard ringing and ringing.

"Get down below the seat back!" the agent shouted.

"They're firing at us from in front too, now." He zigzagged the car wildly from side to side. The windshield starred and a side window shattered. Shards of glass fell noisily to the floor.

"As I thought," be continued. "Those guns must be computer-aimed – they could never fire so accurately in the dark otherwise. Look! In the infrared! You can see a bank of them."

The girl peered over the edge of the door and saw in the beam from the flashlight a group of muzzles belching flame and smoke from a steel screen behind a clump of bushes.

"Hold tight!" Kuryakin called. "I'll go in here: maybe the trees will slow down their radar responses." The car careened off the roadway and bumped on flat tires among the great trunks studding the woods between the tunnel and the estancia. Abruptly there was a stinging sensation in Coralie's hand and the light from the lamp dwindled and vanished. A stray slug had killed the flash light. At the same time the motor spluttered and died; it was all very well to turn your back to preserve the tank, but that put your carburetor in a very vulnerable position.

Now that the car was silent, they could hear above the shrilling of the bell the distant shouts of orders, the trampling of feet, a door opening and slamming as men filed through. Somewhere through the trees, a searchlight dazzled on and outlined the leaves in golden light.