Текст книги "The Splintered Sunglasses Affair"

Автор книги: Peter Leslie

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"Yes, but you talk of law and order and of evil," the girl interrupted, "as though they were finite qualities and not just subjective labels that people tie on as it suits them  "

"I know what you're going to say, Lala," Carlsen in his turn cut in. "And it's perfectly true what Orwell said in that Horizon piece all those years ago  Did you ever see it, Mr. Solo? It was called Raffles and Miss Blandish and Orwell pointed out that a thriller in which all the characters were evil was pointless: it lost its punch unless there were also good characters. To be used, you see, as a yardstick against which the bad were measured. Devil worshippers are religious men; they cannot be atheists—because to acknowledge the existence of the Devil automatically implies the existence of a God against whom he works  "

And the question of Solo's métier was not raised again until the following day. They had coffee and brandy and talked about the harnessing of the tides for the provision of electricity. Then they went to bed and in the morning Solo and the girl went twice around an 18-hole pitch-and-putt course laid out in the grounds. Carlsen did not appear until lunchtime, but they were never out of sight of one or more of the armed guards, Solo noticed.

During the meal—pesto followed by a chicken soufflé—they talked of automation and the need to educate people to use the extra leisure it would bring. Carlsen had sent away the light Chianti with which they had washed down the pasta and its fragrant green sauce, and was busy opening a bottle of Corton Charlemagne. "Oddly enough," he said with a sidelong glance at Solo, "that brings me back to Thrush. My agents tell me that they work from what they call the Ultimate Computer. Have you ever heard of that?"

"I have heard the phrase used," Solo said guardedly. "Apparently it's the computer to end all computers.... One hears that it directs every major operation they handle. They feed in all the relevant data, and the computer comes up with the required plan of action."

"Really?"

"Right down to the smallest detail, they say—including the particular operatives to be briefed and the exact course of action each must follow!"

"In view of their record of successes over the past few years, one can only suggest that such a computer, if it existed, should be re-programmed," Solo said drily.

Lala Eriksson laughed. "You can hardly expect a computer—even if it's ultimate!—to take into account the vagaries of people like you!" she said.

And later, after Carlsen had excused himself on the plea that he had work to do in his study, and they were sitting on chintz-covered chairs over coffee in the drawing room, she came back to the subject. "Leaving aside the efficiency of the plans it makes," she said, "don't you think the use of a highly sophisticated computer like that would in fact delay an operation, once you had operatives in the field reporting in?"

"I don't quite see why," Solo said.

"Well, because any reasonable plan would have to be constantly amended—every report from the field would materially alter the overall situation, and would have to be taken into account before the next stage of the plan was evolved."

"So?"

"So although a computer decides quickly, in a fraction of a second, I imagine the time taken to prepare it for that decision—making ready the data cards, programming, feeding in, and so on—could easily negate the advantage given by its operating time. After all, top men can decide quickly, too. That's why they are top men. And all they have to deal with is a telephone call, or a written message, or something equally immediate."

"Possibly."

"In other words," the girl said, "I'm not at all sure that they wouldn't be better off using the old fashioned human-error methods—at least as far as the time element goes."

Solo decided to hold out a carrot. "You're leaving out the quality of the relative plans, the computer and the human," he said. "But in any case, we live in a technical age, don't forget. It's not always simply a case of an agent telephoning in, is it?"

She took him up on it immediately. "You mean the more sophisticated methods of communication—microdot pictures, codes, scrambled radio messages, holograms, unusual frequencies used on broadcasts to activate the keys of telex machines—all these would take just as much time as programming a computer?"

"Exactly."

"Yes... I suppose a big organization like these Thrush people would simply have to keep abreast of the latest developments to stay in business, wouldn't they?"

"Would they?"

"Of course they would! But you know—what do they use in the way of communication? Clandestine communication, I mean. What do you use, Mr. Solo?"

"I send my headquarters a postcard," Solo said.

Lala Eriksson laughed. "You probably do, at that!" she said. "Will you have another cup of coffee?"

And later in his own room, after they had walked around the flower gardens and he had pretended he had a headache as a means of gaining solitude, Solo went over the conversation—and the others they had had—very carefully in his own mind. It was puzzling enough to have been kidnapped between assignments and taken to some country retreat apparently far from New York; it was doubly surprising, after this coup, to find himself a very free prisoner being wined and dined and indulged in intellectual conversation. But the most astonishing thing of all was the reaction of his hosts at his response, or lack of it, to the occasional loaded question they carefully introduced into all this good living! They had said they wanted to talk to him... that was all. And indeed this seemed up to a point to be true. And the subject, disguise it as they would, was obviously enough something to do with communications, either Thrush's or those of U.N.C.L.E. And yet each time Solo blocked or ignored the question—as he invariably did—they dropped the subject with perfect good humor and never returned to it! This seemed to him an odd reaction for people who had gone to such immense pains to abduct him....

In fact, so far as he could see, there was only one explanation which fitted all the disparate aspects of the case. And if he was right... then he was in big trouble! First, though, he would have to check; he would float out a decoy during dinner, and see if it was taken.

His opportunity came half way through the meal. Faute de Grives, Quenelles de Brocket and roast duck had all gone their splendid way, and Carlsen had adroitly—oh, very adroitly!—led the conversation from the population explosion, through the coming world food shortage and modern dietetics, to famine and natural catastrophe generally. And from there it was an easy step to measures designed to combat such things... and thus again to communications.

Solo smiled inwardly. "In such universal cases," he said, "I mean where there's no question of wrongdoing or people on the run, I see nothing wrong with the good old systems of telephone, cable or radio."

"Oh, but my dear fellow, just think!" Carlsen said. "What about an outbreak of bubonic plague, lethal fallout, the news that a country's water supply had become contaminated, anything that could cause panic? Surely news of such things must be transmitted in some form which hides its meaning from the casual eye? Otherwise a single unauthorized look could lead to riots!"

"As you were saying yesterday, there are codes, photographic—"

"No," Carlsen interrupted, "but suppose you had discovered that, for the sake of example, an unknown virus was threatening the year's rice crop in India, and that a neighboring country was going to exploit this. You'd want to give all the details to UNRWA or some other United Nations agency... you'd have to let them have all the data and decide for themselves if your theory was correct. And yet nobody must see your dispatches in case you were wrong—or in case it caused panic."

"Yes, well—the first thing to do would be—"

"You'd have to send graphs, tables, photographs of the affected plants, all sorts of things in addition to your written report. How would you do it?"

"I see what you mean," Lala Eriksson said. "Pictures by radio or by wire can be intercepted; photographs, even microdot ones, can be developed; documents can be photostated. If there were other people equally interested in seeing your report—and you wished to prevent them—what would you do?" She looked at Solo.

"Yes," Carlsen echoed. "What would you do, Mr. Solo? Use one of the satellites, make a hologram, scramble them with lasers? Do tell us."

Solo decided to push out his decoy. "If there were other people after the information—who knew I had it—I'd be much more worried about them finding it out from me than from any messages I sent," he said. "After all, the advances made in stupefiants, subliminal narcotics and so-called truth drugs have been considerable, even in the past five years  "

Carlsen killed the subject stone dead. Interrupting Solo with a brusque apology, he summoned the manservant and kicked up a terrible fuss about a strawberry shortcake that was entirely blameless. And then, as soon as the man had removed it and gone to fetch something else, he plunged straight into an analysis of the servant problem before Solo could pick up the threads of his argument. But the agent didn't mind: the volte face had told him exactly what he wanted to know. By inference at least, his own deductions were confirmed.

He knew, now, why he had been kidnapped between missions—and why his captors didn't mind whether he answered their questions or not. For all U.N.C.L.E. agents are subliminally conditioned if they are on assignment to resist brainwashing and vouchsafe certain prepared replies under hypnosis, truth drugs or even torture. The treatment, which involves deep hypnosis itself and is still very secret, is given immediately after the operative has been briefed. Broadly speaking, it implants into the subconscious a succession of conditioned reflexes to any questions concerning the mission which are posed when the conscious mind is withdrawn. Like all good lies, it keeps as near to the truth as possible—for it can never be calculated how much a hostile questioner already knows, and if he finds the subject confirms facts already in his possession, he will be all the more ready to believe the fantasy that follows! And it provides a reason for all an agent's actions that, despite the fact that it fits the facts, is very far from the true one! It is almost impossible adequately to pump an operative who has been treated in this way; even if, in the extremities of torture, the man wishes to talk, the conditioning will impose upon him the false rather than the true line. Solo had good cause to underwrite the system from his own experience. For it had once* been the means of saving his life.

The only thing was... agents between missions were naturally enough not subjected to this treatment. And he was between missions.

Or, to put it another way, he was independently of his own wishes wide open to any system of drugs—whether secretly administered in the excellent food and drink or openly and forcibly—that his captors cared to use!

Now he realized why it didn't matter if he answered the questions or not; now he saw why Carlsen and the girl could be so casual about his replies: the repetitious queries about Thrush and U.N.C.L.E., the insistence on methods of communication, were simply to prepare the ground; to put these subjects in the forefront of his mind. The real questions would come later, when they had drugged him or hypnotized him at their leisure and his subconscious mind, unconditioned to resist, would be completely at their mercy...

Whoever they were—and it was not beyond the bounds of possibility, despite their apparent interest from the outside, that they themselves belonged to Thrush—Carlsen and Lala Eriksson badly wanted some of the mass of secret information that was locked in Solo's mind. And they could not afford to allow the subject of drugs to raise itself, in case it should tip the agent off.

Now that he had found out, he had to discover some way of foiling the guards, the electric fence and the dogs, so that he could escape before it was too late!

*See The Diving Dames Affair

CHAPTER FIVE

Exit By Moonlight!

So far as Napoleon Solo could see, the only possible time to try and escape from the house run by Carlsen and Lala Eriksson was at night. Certainly it was after dark that the guards would be at their most alert, but it was equally true that nighttime gave him the only opportunity to approach unseen the boundary of the property. And in any case, time was precious: he had already been allowed nearly forty-eight hours of good living in which to become "acclimatized", softened up for the drug or hypnosis interrogation which must have been planned. Yet although his captors would freely accept this unproductive period in the interests of long-term success, their need for whatever information they wanted from him must be urgent. The organization of the kidnap showed that. So they would proceed to Stage Two at the earliest possible moment.

In addition to which, people of their sophistication would not make the mistake of underrating Solo's intelligence. They would know quite well that his mind would be racing, racing all the time he was in captivity. He could only hope that they would assume he would want to stay as long as he could in order to find out as much as possible about them. But in any case their fear of what he might deduce would lend an added impetus to their desire to get on with their plan!

Which was why he decided to make his attempt as soon as he had realized what he was up against—the very same night. There were very few preparations he could make. What there were, he went over again and again in his mind before he acted. The exit from the house he had decided to make via the roof: the doors and windows were certain to be guarded by some kind of electronic burglar alarm which would sound whether the person crossing the threshold were coming or going. And he had already marked down a likely trapdoor at the head of the stairs. For a successful essay at crossing the electrified fence, he would need a length of rope, and this he hoped to find in the garages. And finally, to keep the dogs quiet, he was relying—extraordinary though this seemed!—upon his own teeth! There was a shell cap crowning one of his molars, and this could be unscrewed to reveal a tiny cavity in which Solo carried two minute pellets of a quick-acting knockout drug.

He had managed to convey two slices of duck and half a quenelle to his pocket during dinner. And, after he had returned to his room at eleven thirty, the first thing he did was to shake these from his handkerchief and treat them with the tablets.

He unscrewed the crown, shook out the miniature pills and, having ground them to a fine powder with the shaft of his razor, smeared the white dust liberally over the surface of the food. Then, dressing himself in the travel-creased clothes in which he had been kidnapped, he settled down to wait.

Carlsen and Lala Eriksson slept at opposite ends of the big landing. The manservant had a small suite of rooms off the kitchens. It was after twelve before the sounds of activity ceased from these three points, but Solo waited another full hour before he even got up off his bed.

At two-fifteen, water ran for half a minute or so somewhere downstairs. At two-fifty, one of the dogs in the grounds barked and then was silent. Solo eased open his door as three o'clock struck from the clock tower above the stables. When he heard the single note of the half hour, he began tiptoeing silently along the passage towards the landing.

It was a clear, moonlit night and the staircase and most of the space beyond it was barred with pale swathes of light falling in through the deep windows above the front door.

The trapdoor was clearly visible in the gloom. But first the agent had to make a trip downstairs. Placing his weight with infinite care on the extreme outside of the treads, he stole down to the hallway and trod softly through the drawing room and on into the gunroom. He had memorized the position of the furniture but the curtains were still drawn and the journey was difficult. Once he came within an inch of stumbling over a coffee table laden with cups and saucers that must have been moved after he had gone to bed. But at last he was standing in pitch darkness by the billiard table in the gunroom, listening to the silence. He removed the long-handled cue-rest, with its x-shaped brass end, from the rack and began the return journey.

He had just left the coffee-and-cigar-smelling closeness of the drawing room when he froze back into the shadows beneath the stairs. Through the French windows leading to the terrace, he saw the shadow of a man fall across the flagstones as one of the guards crossed the corner of the moonlit lawn. In a way it was nice to have his suspicions confirmed—but it gave him quite a shock and made him realize afresh the difficulty of his task.

Upstairs again he picked up his shoes from the landing and slung them around his neck by the laces. Outside Carlsen's door he could hear a steady and even snoring. The girl's was ajar, and it was more than ten minutes before he was satisfied that the faint sounds of breathing were deep and regular enough to mean that she slept. But at last he was ready. It was time to act. Climbing on to the newel post at the head of the stairs, he supported himself against the wall with one hand and pushed at the trapdoor with the brass head of the cue-rest.

He had seen that the door was of the counterbalanced kind that would stay open as soon as it had been pushed past the vertical instead of falling over with a slam on to the floor of the loft. But it remained to be seen in practice whether the mechanism was working properly! He pushed a little harder. With the tiniest of creaks, the trapdoor freed itself from its frame and swung upwards into darkness.

Straining, Solo fed up the long wooden handle of the cue-rest. The opening yawned wider and wider still; the door rose higher and higher. When it was almost vertical, presenting the minimum face to his thrust, the metal "x" of the rest slipped on the painted wood with a slight scraping sound. Solo froze; Carlsen gave an extra loud snore and turned over in his sleep; and a moment later the door fell away from the cue-rest and homed in the open position against the pressure of its spring-loading.

The agent realized that he had been holding his breath, and released a lungful of air in a long sigh. He lowered the cue-rest carefully to the floor and leaned it against the wall. And then he prepared to jump....

Balanced awkwardly on the newel post with one stockinged foot on either side of the wooden ball decorating it, he was in a poor position for a spring. But it had to be done. The trapdoor was about two feet above the tips of his fingers as he stood there with outstretched arms. Tensing the muscles of his toes, he flexed his knees, drew a deep breath... and leaped upwards!

The sole of one foot slipped slightly on the polished wood as he took off, so that it was the fingers of his left hand only which hit the frame of the trapdoor, clenched, and frenziedly hung on.

For a timeless moment, he swung over the stairwell, his whole weight on the fingers of his left hand. If the shrieking muscles and sinews and bones of his five fingers couldn't hold him, he would drop to the hall below, and such a fall—even if it didn't break his back—would bring the household around him before he could drag enough breath into his lungs to cry out!

With the sweat pouring down his temples into his eyes, he scrabbled for a hold with his right hand, found it, and then began the nerve-wracking task of hauling his body up on to a level with his hands.

By the time he had managed to drag himself up out of the moonlit dusk of the landing and flop down in the musty darkness of the loft, the muscles of his forearms and biceps were trembling uncontrollably. For two minutes he lay there panting. Then he rose cautiously to his knees and lowered the trapdoor into place again.

Twenty minutes later, after what had seemed an eternity of groping and fumbling in the dark, always fearing that he would step on a joist that creaked or put a foot through the plaster of a ceiling, he was letting himself out on to a slope of tiled roof through a tiny attic dormer.

The moon, riding high in a gap between banks of cloud, was two or three days past the full, its milky light streaming down to throw stables and wall and garage and trees into sharp relief, like the cardboard cutouts of a toy farm. Between them, the ground was dense with shadow.

And somewhere in that shadow, probably, at least one of the torpedoes patrolled with his machine pistol....

Up on his roof, Napoleon Solo shrugged. Guards or no guards, he had to move fast. If they had been going to drug him, whatever it was might have been in the dinner he had eaten some hours ago. What was more likely—if in fact his guess that tonight was the night was correct—was that they would surprise him while he was asleep... at the traditional hour when resistance was at its lowest ebb. Which could mean any-time after the next half hour. Carlsen could have an alarm set to waken him at four. He could be awake already. And in either case Solo had to get clear before he was found missing—just in case!

Edging his way to the shadowed side of the roof, he found a stackpipe, tested it, and lowered himself silently over the guttering.

The descent was surprisingly easy. The pipe was of some rough composition, quite thick, and firmly anchored to the wall. Taking advantage of the excellent grip it offered. Solo swarmed down and rounded the corner of the terrace on stockinged feet. Beyond a shallow flight of steps bordered by classical urns, a stretch of moonlit lawn separated him from the shadowed side of the garage.

He had no time to reconnoiter. The shadow he had seen from the hallway had been moving in the same direction as himself. He must just hope that the man's tour of duty was hourly or half-hourly, in which case he would still have a couple of minutes before the guard was due again. He would have to risk it.

Taking a deep breath, he sprang down the steps and padded across the lawn. The brightness of the moonlight was like a blow in the face. He felt as spotlit and as vulnerable as a high-wire walker until he had gained the comparative safety of the trough of shadow which lay along the side of the old brick building. But none of the blank windows of the house was raised in protest; no call to halt split the silence; no flame from a revolver seared the dark. Releasing his breath in a long sigh, Solo slid around the corner and tried the garage doors.

As he had hoped, they were not locked. Let into the big outer doors was a small inner one that swung noiselessly open as he turned the handle. He slipped through and pulled it close after him.

He could make out the dim shapes of four cars in the reflected light filtering through the windows—a station wagon, a Cadillac, and two small foreign vehicles, one a sedan and the other a convertible. Although the Caddy's vast trunk yawned obediently open as soon as he touched the button, he drew blank when he rummaged around in its interior. It was completely empty. With the station wagon, however, he had more luck. Lifting the wide back door, he found in the space behind the third row of seats exactly what he was looking for; a coil of towing rope, about twelve feet long, with a small iron grappling hook spliced into one end.

With an exclamation of satisfaction, Solo eased the rope out from underneath a heavy tower jack and a roll of tools, and coiled it around his own waist beneath his jacket. Then, having untied the shoes from their position round his neck and slipped them on, he was ready to go.

For a moment he toyed with the idea of trying to find out what State he was in from the license plates of the cars. But it wasn't light enough to read them and he was by no means sure he could decipher them adequately by touch. Besides which, it was late... the stable clock had chimed four times several minutes ago.

Tiptoeing back to the garage door, he pried it open. And froze.

A man was standing four yards away, his back to the garage, staring up at the roof of the house. Holding his breath, Solo followed his gaze. All along the mellow facade, dark windows shinily reflected the light of the moon. All except one.

Of the four attic dormers piercing the tiled roof, one—the left-hand one—gaped open upon a black interior. In the silver light which poured down from the sky and etched in sharp relief every imperfection in the bricks, the window which Solo in his haste had left open stood wide to the night.

For a moment longer, the guard stood there. And then, dropping his machine pistol to the full extent of his arm, he turned slowly around to scrutinize the moonlit garden.

Luckily for Solo, the moon had shifted enough since he had entered the garage for the shadow of the gable to fall across the partly opened door. He would have to trust to the contrast between light and shade to hide this fact, for he dare not try to close it now.

The guard's eyes swept past the garage and on towards the corner of the house. And then, apparently making up his mind, the man strode off towards the front of the house.

As soon as he was out of sight, Solo was through the door and away in the opposite direction as hard as he could go. Treading silently on rubber soles, he flitted past the stables and skirted the wall enclosing the kitchen garden. A sweep of gravel drive separated him from the lawns. Pausing impatiently until the moon had sailed behind one of the banks of cloud that had been spreading across the sky from the east, he sped over it.

Twice, the fine stones crunched loudly under his feet; but he was past caring now whether people heard him. Cursing the carelessness which had led him to leave the dormer window open, he reached the grass... and began running like the wind towards the boundary of the estate.

He had decided to make his attempt at the spot where the electrified wire came nearest to the house, reasoning that most of the guards would probably be on the far side, where it was farthest away.

Once, on his way, he had to drop to the ground when he saw a guard crossing an open patch on the far side of a shrubbery. Otherwise he encountered nobody, and soon he was standing, a little out of breath, under a tall cedar tree just inside the wire fence. He withdrew the pieces of doctored food from inside his pocket.

Behind him, across a dark reach of lawn, lights had come on behind the front door of the house.

Solo uncoiled the rope from around his waist. Freeing about six feet of the end with the hook on it, he looped the rest over his left wrist and began to whirl the hook around his head. He was staring up at the tree as he tried to choose a suitable branch at which to aim, when a slight noise to his left drew his attention.

One of the guards was standing among the bushes with his FN raised to fire.

The agent acted almost by reflex. Like lightning, he fed more rope to his right hand, increased the thrust of his arm, and dropped his wrist a shade. The heavy iron hook altered its trajectory, whistling through the air in a flat arc, to thud wickedly into the side of the gunman's head. The man stiffened, dropped his weapon, and then crashed backwards among the branches, pole-axed.

Solo stole a glance over his shoulder. Windows blazed with light all along the upper floor of the house. At any moment, they would discover that his room was empty.

He whirled the rope again and cast upwards for a tangle of boughs about sixteen feet from the ground. At the third try, the hook caught firmly enough for the rope to take his weight. Then he turned to the fence and lobbed the pieces of drugged food over into the space between the wire and the outer wall.

He didn't see the dogs come, neither had he seen or heard them before—but they were on the stuff in an instant, a blur of heavy bodies snarling and snuffing in the dark as they wrestled for the tasty morsels.

Solo was half way up the rope, swinging like a pendulum, before the great beasts had swallowed the food. As they staggered and sank to the ground, he rocked the rope, Tarzan-like, to its zenith and released his grasp as he rose towards the electrified fence.

There was a rush of air against his face, a confused impression of lights, and a jarring impact that shook every bone in his body.

But he was over! He had fallen half way across the bare strip which lay between the wall and the fence, not far from the supine bodies of the drugged hounds. As he rose groggily to his feet, the moon swam out from behind the cloudbank, flooding the area with light.

Into the high, thin, singing silence, a clamor of voices burst distantly from the house. They must have discovered that he was missing....

He glanced desperately around. An alarm bell was ringing in the gatehouse fifty yards to his left, where the wire fence crossed the main drive by means of a steel grid gate. The outer gates themselves were housed in an arch piercing the building. So there would be no hope of escape that way.

He turned to his right just as a low and menacing growl throbbed into the air. A third Doberman was regarding him balefully from above the fallen bodies of its mates.

Solo took one look at the murderous blaze of its eyes and whirled into action.

Tearing off his jacket he advanced towards the dog with a suppressed snarl of rage. For an instant the beast, taken by surprise, backed away, its hackles raised. And in that moment the agent swerved aside and hared for the wall.

Pelting up, he swung the jacket round his head and dashed it at the top of the brickwork, where a flinty sierra of broken glass glittered in the moonlight.