Текст книги "[Magazine 1967-­01] - The Light-­Kill Affair"

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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THE LIGHT-KILL AFFAIR

by ROBERT HART DAVIS

Deep in an uncharted jungle, Solo and Illya come to death grips with THRUSH's new, most lethal weapon, a madness-spawned, all powerful cannibal plant which feeds only on one kind of food—human flesh!

ACT I—INCIDENT OF THE PETRIFIED JUNGLE

THE TWO MEN crept through the jungle quiet, slowing involuntarily, puzzled and infected by the poison of unexplained dread.

Actually, silence is even stranger in a Central American jungle than in noonday Manhattan. The deeper they penetrated this unearthly stillness the more they suffered from the unrelenting intense humidity.

"Something's fouled up, Diego," Don Sayres whispered, feeling as if his voice carried like the crack of a rifle.

"I'm afraid we're lost, Senor Sayres," Diego said.

"Something more significant than that. Where are the monkeys? Where are the birds? This place is deadly quiet."

Sayres stopped walking, held up his hand. A blue-green haze hung over the rotted swamp growth. Distantly above them through a tight-woven vine canopy the sun glittered.

"What sort of compass reading you get, Diego? I have no idea where we are."

"The needle whirls," Diego said. "Only this has not changed in the last hour."

"Okay. Forget the compass." Sayres' handsome young face was masked with sweat and anxiety narrowed his eyes. He turned all the way around, not afraid, but deeply concerned. No matter where he looked, there was only matted swamp life, and his own breathing was the loudest sound.

"Look for some kind of high ground. We'll setup."

Diego nodded and hacked his way through ferns, vines and wild lilies with his machete. Finding even a knoll open to the sky was a matter of an hour's search. Diego shinnied up a cabbage palm, searched with his hand shielding his eyes. He found something to his liking and leaped to the muck, nodding.

On a grassy island in the tangled swamp Sayres opened the small kit he'd carried strapped to his back.

Diego Viero watched, awed, as the kit offered up electronic gear like a conjurer's bag.

"It's been a long time I've been away from headquarters," he said. "U.N.C.L.E. had no such gear the last time I was there."

Sayres was too intent upon his work to reply. What unfolded to look like a small radar skeletal proved to be a long range viewer with a breathtaking difference. Sayres adjusted it and when he and Diego studied it the small dial was homed in on a distant area as clearly as across an open plain.

Sayres explained quickly the operation of this viewer to Diego.

"What I want you to do," he said, "is to turn this knob, which moves the scanner on a three-hundred-sixty-degree area. At each turn, fine-tune with this knob, which will home in on given distances as if there were no trees or jungle in the way. Move it s1owly. Check it from zero to its ultimate reach; then move on to the next setting."

Diego nodded. "You mind saying what I'm looking for, Senor Sayres?"

Sayres was already setting up a two-way radio transmitter in a pack no larger than the palm of his hand.

"I wish I could tell you," he said. "I think you'll recognize it as quickly as I would. We want to pick up anything that doesn't belong in this jungle, man, woman, building or child. If Dr. Ivey Nesbitt is down here—and I no longer think he is—we'll find him out here, or we won't find him at all. And my bet is we won't find him at all."

"Why have you come so deep in this place if you feel our search is doomed to fail?"

Sayres gave the Spanish-born agent a faint grin. "You have been a long time away from headquarters, Diego. Ours is not to question why. Waverly says a man named Ivey Nesbitt has disappeared. The U.N.C.L.E. computers churn, the facts are sifted, and Waverly tells Solo to assign a man to find Nesbitt and bring him back home. So here we are."

Diego started to speak, but Sayres lifted his hand, silencing him.

He spoke into the miniature microphone. "Open channel six, please. This is Equator calling Chancy, please."

After a moment, Alexander Waverly's crisp accents crackled on a speaker even smaller than the microphone. "Chancy here, Equator. Recording systems set. Go ahead with your report, please. Over."

Sayres gave his precise latitude, longitude bearings. "We are now set up for long-view scanning. We will now take a three-hundred-sixty degree reading. If you will hold this channel open, we'll make our report."

He handed the small set to Diego, who held the microphone close to Sayres' lips.

Sayres took over working the long-view scanner. He set for distance, for range, direction, then worked the fine tuner. He worked casually, expecting nothing, making his report lethargically.

Suddenly Sayres swore in startled surprise.

Diego forgot the open channel. He gripped Sayres' arm. "Senor! What is it?"

Sayres shook his head, waving the other agent away. He stared at the small scanner, speaking into the mike, his voice flat with disbelief. "It's a laboratory, sir. At first it looked like a large green house." He gave the reading on the range and distance finder as from his bearing. "This makes even less sense. But here goes. The lab is glass walled. Makes it easy to see inside. In there, the place is equipped like General Electric.

"I don't believe it. There are at least half a dozen people working down there, although there are no other buildings around, and absolutely no roads leading in or out of the clearing… Oh, there's the answer to that, sir. A helicopter. That's how they come and go, all right. And in the lab is plant life, exactly like that growing outside, which makes no sense at all, except that some of the plants are in smallest pots and others are giant-sized. And now everybody down there is running around wildly, like ants in a stirred hill, and—"

Sayres stopped talking when Diego cried out.

Sayres dropped to his knees, turning, radio and scanner forgotten.

Death flew in on a silence even more intense than the eerie quiet they'd plodded through all morning.

Sayres stared at Diego. It was as if he were suddenly illumined by a million-watt intensification of sunlight. He straightened convulsively and then crumpled dead to the ground.

Sayres plunged forward, scrambling away from the dead agent and his gear.

It was then he realized that something had broken the silence, a sharp hissing sound.

Sayres threw himself into the concealment of a tree, gazing across the knoll and the jungle beyond. The tops of the trees, the high vines, everything had been crisped, burned gray and dead.

Then Sayres saw the beam of light swing across the tops of the trees, leaving petrified ash in its wake.

The beam returned, lower this time.

Sayres held his breath, crouching behind the tree. He no longer deceived himself; this tree was no more protection against that beam of light than a leaf.

He heeled around, crouched low and plunged into the swampy undergrowth. Behind him he heard the hiss as the light burned trees, leaves, vines, searching for him.

He did not stop to look back. He didn't have to, because the light beam reached beyond him. The range was being steadily increased and he saw that they were going to let him run into it.

He flung himself face down into the mud. He thrust his hand into his jacket and brought out a small vial with spray attachment.

Holding the nozzle toward him, Sayres closed his eyes and turned, sitting up. His thumb came down on the sprayer, but it was too late. The light beam struck him, seeming to glance across him.

He stayed a moment in that rigid position as if instantly petrified by that incredible heat. He tottered slightly, and then did not move again. He was dead.

TWO

NAPOLEON SOLO faced the four people about the conference table.

"And that's it," Solo said, scowling. "Sayres' report ends there, abruptly."

Solo was medium tall, slender, with dark brown hair, now mussed. He could have been, at first glance, a doctor, lawyer, advertising man. Despite the conservative cut of his business suit, he didn't belong to the ordinary career world. He was skilled in the strange art of super-spying.

"I believe the outcry came from the young Spanish agent," Alexander Waverly said.

Of an age known only to himself and U.N.C.L.E. computers, neither of which were at all communicative on the subject, Waverly was the veteran of two world wars, several police engagements, and a dedicated referee in a continuing cold war.

"He must have died first," Waverly said. "What was his name? Oh, yes. Diego. A good man. He'd been down in Central America for some years. Due a transfer. It was his report that first confirmed my suspicions that perhaps Dr. Ivey Nesbitt was down there."

"Sayres must be presumed dead, too," Solo said. Death was a part of his daily life in the United Net work Command for Law and Enforcement, but each loss of one of his men diminished him by that much, struck him with an anguish he carefully concealed.

"Then the next move is up to us," Illya Kuryakin said. "Some body killed Don."

Illya stood up. Slender, youthful appearing, with a Slavic face testifying to his ancestry and unruly blond hair showing him too concerned with the business of life and death to care much for grooming. "Don was a personal friend of mine. I'd like the assignment."

"I should have the assignment," April Dancer protested. She had the kind of loveliness that in a less taut moment made business difficult of transacting. You never observed her once without looking back again in pleasure and disbelief. Admiring April was like taking one of those quickie European tours; there wasn't time to appreciate the view.

"If you'll remember, Napoleon," she said, "it was my assignment in the first place. At the last minute Don replaced me."

"There must have been a good reason why you were replaced, April," Mark Slate said in his perfect English diction. He pushed his hand through his matted light-brown hair. "The jungle is no place for a woman, especially when we don't even know what killed those two men. I think I—"

"And I think I've heard enough!" Waverly stood up suddenly. The command room rang with the sound of his voice. "Is this a quiet Monday in some small town fire station? I understand that each of you feels deeply the loss of a man like Sayres. I am not unmindful of the sadness of this situation for all of you. But you are all professional people. You've been here long enough to know assignments are never made on basis of personal involvement."

April, Mark and Illya glanced ruefully at each other.

Waverly said, "Now, if we may get on with the pertinent aspects of this case. Our report pins down the precise location where Sayres set up the scanner and met his death. He reports a large laboratory and gives us its exact location in relation to his position. This is our last contact with Sayres.

"But it gives us a great deal to work on, more than we have bad. And the fact that a jungle laboratory has been so handsomely equipped convinces me that Dr. Ivey Nesbitt is down there. Is that you conclusion, Mr. Solo?"

Solo nodded. "It's worth further investigation. I believe this lab is part of some plan of THRUSH, and I believe that if Dr. Nesbitt is down there that he has gone over to THRUSH."

"We don't know how Diego and Sayres met their death," Waverly mused. "But it is clear that they were being as closely watched as possible. Even when Sayres set up the scanner, the people must have known it through some detection system unknown to us yet."

"I can't understand why Sayres failed to activate his plastic shield," Illya said. He placed a small vial on the table before him. This matched the sprayer Sayres had brought from his pocket in the jungle at the instant be was killed.

Illya touched the nozzle. A faint mist appeared and hardened instantly into an almost invisible shield of plastic.

"Looks like death was instantaneous," Mark Slate said. "We know he had the warning of Diego's outcry. That's there clearly on the tape."

"Exactly," Waverly agreed. "For that reason, Mr. Solo, I suggest you follow up this investigation personally. However, I suggest you make no contacts, even with our own people, except to hire a guide when you reach San Miguel. And I'm sure I hardly need urge you to travel incognito."

THREE

THE SLIGHTLY stooped man who disembarked from the banana boat in the port city of San Miguel bore no resemblance to Napoleon Solo.

He wore a shapeless panama hat, wrinkled white coat and creased white pants. His string tie was awry at the collar of his sweated shirt. He stared at the world over the tops of rimless glasses.

He carried a small pack, a straw suitcase and an oversized butterfly net. He drank anejo on the rocks in a waterfront bodega and asked for a guide who might lead him far into the jungles.

The bartender smiled at his other patrons. "And what would a man like you be looking for in that jungle—armed with just a net?"

"I am a hunter of rare species of butterflies and other lepidopterous specimen," Solo said. "I believe the rarest species of all are to be found in your inner jungle regions."

"That's a big net for butterflies," the bartender said.

"I don't want to hurt them."

The bartender grinned slyly. "It's beeg enough to catch girls, Professor."

"I don't want to hurt them, either," Solo said.

The, bartender laughed. "You're all right, old fellow. But I don't think you'll find a guide to take you into the jungle. Only recently two men went from this town into the jungle and have not returned. The guides don't even like to go in there now with game hunters. I know they won't want to go with nothing more to protect them than a butterfly net."

"I'm sure that's all the protection we'll need."

"One goes into the jungle, he finds trouble," the bartender said, shaking his head.

Solo shook his grey head and gave him a bland smile. "Perhaps this is true for those who seek trouble, sir. But trouble is the last thing I am looking for."

The bartender's words followed him into the dusty street. "Just pray that trouble isn't the first thing you find, senor, no matter what you are looking for."

Solo walked down the dirt road and stopped before the man sitting in front of the adobe house. The man's name was Carrero and he lived in the house with ball a dozen small children and a slovenly half– breed wife underfoot. He shook his head. "I no go in jungle. Something very bad happen."

"I am sure this is just superstition," Solo said.

"Death comes quiet. Silent. Quicker than the strike of a snake. The jungle is burned dry by the touch of this death."

"Butterflies," Solo persisted with that bland smile.

He kept smiling and placing money in a small green stack before the widening eyes of Carrero and family until the anguished man could no longer resist what looked to him like a fortune.

Senora Carrero wept and the children ran out in the potted road, clinging to Carrero's tattered pant legs.

Solo gave the children candy and placed ten dollars in Senora Carrero's trembling hand. "Buy yourself a hat, Senora, and I vow to bring your husband back safely—and with a huge butterfly to wear on your bonnet."

But before they were ten miles into the swamplands, Solo found the shuffling gait of the lepidopterist too slow, and the large net, which caught on every obstruction, a burden and he discarded both.

Carrero regarded him with sick eyes, seeing they were not on the trail of insects after all.

That night the drizzling mists in the rain forests washed out the last traces of dye from Solo's dark brown hair. When he wakened the next morning from his sleeping hammock, he tossed aside the rimless glasses.

Carrero stared at him in sick horror.

Solo winced, knowing the man was seeing a bearded young man in place of a kindly gray elder.

Carrero looked about as if seeking an escape.

"Don't run," Solo warned him.

"You are no butterfly hunter. You are here to seek trouble. Bad trouble. I owe you nothing. I do not have to stay."

Solo gazed at him levelly. "If you stay with me, I'll make every effort to protect you. I vowed to your wife I'd return you safely, even if I begin to wonder what it is she prizes about you. If you run, I promise you, you'll never make it back—except in pieces."

Carrero stared at him a moment defiantly, and then lost all defiance. "Senor, I am a simple man. I want no trouble. Please. A simple man."

"Then, let's leave it that way. You take me where I want to go and I'll bring you back."

Carrero rolled his black eyes, and crossed himself three times.

On the third morning Solo stared at the small round object Carrero had puzzedly watched him study often since they entered the jungle.

"We've reached the place I was looking for," Solo said. "Relax."

"How do you know the place if you have never been here?" Carrero asked, shaking his head.

"By this gadget. It was set be fore I left New York. Not even disturbances that throw off a compass will alter it. The horizontal and the vertical red lines are exactly one on the other. Do you see that?"

Carrero nodded, but he hardly dared look at the small object—undoubtedly witchcraft. He glanced about, seeing nothing except the grassy knoll, like an island in the sea of jungle pressing in upon them.

But Solo had forgotten the frightened guide. He opened his kit and set up a long-view scanner exactly like the one Sayres had used in this place except that it was set as to range and distance to the markings given in Sayres' report.

Solo tuned in the gear. The small viewer showed him nothing but a rectangular area of marshy under growth. Every test proved that the settings were right.

Solo swore.

Carrero ventured forward timidly. "What is wrong, Senor?"

"Everything," Solo spoke mostly to himself. "There's no building down there. Nothing."

"Building, Senor? Naturally not. Not here in this jungle."

"Well, there's supposed to be! There's got to be!" Solo spoke vehemently and the guide retreated a step.

He reset the dials, glanced at Carrero. "You want to go with me?"

The guide nodded, eyes wide. "I wish only not to be left alone in this place, even for a minute."

"Then stay close behind me."

"Senor need not worry about this, either. As his shadow is there, so will I be."

They plodded through under growth until the red lines of the dial matched again. Solo spent an hour chopping away the high swamp growth.

He felt the emptiness of defeat. According to Sayres' final report, a glass-walled lab had stood only days ago in this place, a cleared area with space for landing a helicopter.

He shook his head. There was no trace of building and it seemed incredible that vines and trees could grow so lush in such a short time.

"No!" He spoke aloud. "There's got to be an answer." He stared at Carrero without really seeing him. "We've got to find it, that's all."

Solo prowled the underbrush a moment. Then he said, "Carrero, you're a jungle man. You could find out where you were by the growth, feed yourself, if you were lost, eh?"

"You think us hopelessly lost, Senor?" Carrero's face twisted.

"No. But I think if these plants are younger, newer, it should show. Do you understand?"

"Young plants, no matter how tall, are more tender than the older. Young plants seldom have the berries that sustain life."

"Now you're thinking, Carrero. That's what I want. You find where these young plants meet older growth. We should be surrounded by it. Mark it all out, and we'll narrow down the area that much."

In less than an hour, Carrero had hacked out a rectangle that could have been the base for a glass-walled laboratory. Inside this area, Solo hacked with machete until he found what he had been sure must remain, the foundation for those walls.

He shouted in his pleasure. Carrero came running. Solo was smiling through his three days beard, sweat and mud.

"Here it is! Here it stood. Look, traces of garbage, food tins, broken glass, inside this foundation footing. We've found our butterflies, Carrero!"

"Si! Si!" Carrero looked around timidly. "We can now go home, no?"

Solo nodded, hardly hearing what the guide said.

He returned to the long-range scanner on the knoll. It was as if he had found the key piece of a jig saw puzzle. Everything else fell into place.

He found bits of electronic gear to show where Sayres' scanner had been destroyed. He found bones and teeth that must once have been Diego Viero and after a long search he found shoes with the x-marked identification tags.

He gazed at the tags before he dropped them into his pocket. His face was bleak. Not only had Diego and Sayres been slain, but their bodies and their equipment had been destroyed.

"All right, Carrero," Solo said at last. "Let's go home."

FOUR

THE NIGHT BEFORE they reached the village where Carrero lived, Napoleon Solo stepped back into his stooped, gray-haired person as the naturalist. Carrero watched in disbelief as he dyed his hair, donned rimless glasses.

Carrero spoke hesitantly. "You are a man for whom I have learned great respect, Mr. Solo. You are a very smart man, but more, you are a brave one. I am glad, now that I reach safety, that I accompanied you on this strange trip, even if I went reluctantly."

Solo nodded absently. "Thanks, Carrero. You're a brave man, too."

"No. I am a man who thinks of his wife—fat as she is—and his children. I worry if I do not return alive to them."

"It won't be long now."

"I know. This troubles me. You return now to your disguise. This means that though trouble has ended for Carrero, it is not over for you."

"I'm afraid it hasn't really begun yet," Solo said in that bland tone, peering over his glasses.

At ten the next morning, Solo tottered into the shipping office at the San Miguel docks.

A young man stared at him across the desk. "May I help you, sir?"

"Yes. You can." Solo's voice was testy. "Indeed, you'd better. I have been expecting a shipment of scientific equipment. I can't even preserve my priceless specimens without it. It should have been delivered to me days ago."

"I'm sorry, sir," the young man said in a voice that couldn't have cared less. "If your materials had arrived, they would have been delivered to your hotel."

Solo pounded on the desk. "They arrived on the same boat with me, young man! Don't take that tone to me! Ill report you to the head of this company."

The young man shrugged. "You do that, sir."

Solo practically danced in impatience. "See, sir, I was an instructor of the man who owns this company. A word from me and you'll be reprimanded for your incompetence. Now I shall go back and inspect the shipping in your warehouse. I have no doubt I'll find my materials rotting back there!"

Solo strode toward the rear of the huge warehouse. The young clerk ran around the desk. He shouted, "You can't go back there, sir!"

But Solo was already through the doors into the dark cavernous storage rooms. The young clerk stopped at the door. Perhaps the old fellow's goods had been misplaced by some of the native handlers. Maybe he did know the company president. And besides it was too hot to run in this weather

Solo wasted no time in pretending to look for a non-existent shipment of scientific materials. He knew what he was looking for and he searched, swiftly, diligently, and successfully.

He straightened from the feigned stoop of the naturalist and gazed at the huge crates. He walked in triumph among them. He was incredulous at the variety of articles being transferred, lab euipment, materials, and crate after crate of plants, all seemingly alike, and all of different stages of growth.

Pleased, he ran his hand across the address label. All were addressed the same: Via Air Freight from Mexico City to Helena, Montana, and reshipment by freight to Big Belt, Montana.

He heard the whisper of sound behind him. It was like the skittering of mice, and yet he went tense, instantly alert to danger.

The three men were young. They were Latin, dressed sharply. They walked shoulder to shoulder in their dark shirts and ice-cream suits and sleek new panama straw hats.

Solo was not fooled. The dark outline of shoulder holsters showed at their armpits.

They approached him steadily, their smiles fixed and unwavering. There was evil in their smiling, older than any of them.

Solo felt the hackles rising along the nape of his neck and he grinned blandly at them, retreating.

"Stand still, old fellow," one of them invited.

"What's the matter, young gentlemen?" Solo asked in the quavering voice of a teacher.

"We're going to take you apart, Uncle, and find out what's the matter," one of them said.

"There's some mistake, Solo said, retreating.

They came toward him steadily.

"We'll know after we take you apart, Uncle," one of the attackers said.

"If we are wrong, we'll apologize–"

"Yeah. To each separate part of you," the third said, laughing as if drunk.

Suddenly Solo grabbed a case and jerked it between himself and the three men. The crate landed with a crash.

Solo didn't wait to see what happened. Bent over in the manner of an old man, he raced toward the rear exit of the warehouse. He saw the sunlight out there, the open docks, the waiting ships at anchor. They looked incredibly far.

He thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, drew out a friction bomb. It was no larger than a capsule.

Still running, he turned and threw the capsule with all his strength toward the packing cases.

The explosion and fire were brief but intense. Concussion drove the men back. Solo ran.

He ran out on the docks without looking back. In the brilliant sunlight, he paused. The piers stretched endlessly in the silence and the heat. Lethargic quiet lay across the waterfront and the town.

He turned toward town and the main street. He had not run more than a dozen steps when one of the attackers appeared from a wall door.

He was no longer immaculate. His ice cream suit was smudged, black and torn. His hat was gone, but he was driven now by rage.

He had drawn his gun and when he saw Napoleon Solo he fired.

Tuh. Tuh.

Solo threw himself behind a small stack of cotton. The silenced gun chattered again. Bullets splintered the dock.

Solo hung close to the cotton bale. His sweated fingers closed on his last friction bomb.

He pressed there, counting, his arm poised to throw. He heard the pound of steps as the gunman ran toward him.

Now! he thought.

He tossed the friction bomb upward, arching it over the cotton bale. The explosion was sharp, the screams of the young hoodlum wild, and at that precise instant, Solo heard the tuh, tuh of a second silenced gun behind him.

He didn't bother looking over his shoulder. He burrowed there in between the cotton and the wall of the building.

"Ho, Pedro!" The call came from farther down the wharf.

Nearer, the first gunman still yelled in agony.

The second had slowed now, made wary by what he saw happening to his partner.

They approached the cotton warily, waiting until the three of them were regrouped. They spread out slightly now and crept forward in tile sunlight, guns drawn.

From where he crouched, panting, Solo watched their shortened shadows creep toward him. The biggest part of the shadows it seemed to him were the guns in those outstretched hands.

"Ho," one of them said. "Why should we walk in on him and his friction bombs? Fire from where we are into the cotton. We drive him out, or we kill him. It's all one."

"I've a better idea," said the man who'd been blasted a second time. "Burn him out. I want to burn him out."

Crouched under the bales of tinder-dry cotton, Solo watched the wounded man, crazed with rage and pain, set flame to waste from a cigarette lighter.

Solo held his breath. It was time to move. Gripping his fist closed as if holding a friction bomb poised to hurl, he lunged out from beneath the cotton bale, directly in the path of the pain-crazed hoodlum.

The man toppled back and screamed like a woman. He had learned twice, the hard way, about friction bombs.

His terrorized screams halted his pals for a split second. The frightened man forgot to hurl the fiery waste. The flames seared his hands. He cried out again.

He released the waste and the flames flickered, falling along his arms and inside his coat.

Solo kept moving. He struck the man hard, carrying him down and along the heated planks.

He rolled over quickly, putting the yelling man between him and the other two gunmen.

Before the frightened man could recover his wits in any part, Solo drove his extended fingers into his Adam's apple. Solo's other hand was ripping the gun from the hood's relaxing grasp.

Solo fired upward, with the dead weight of the hoodlum as his shield.

A shoe caught his wrist and the gun flew from his hand. He heard it rattling along the planks. At the same instant he heard, rather than felt, a shoe driven into his face.

They were on him then. The burned man was jerked away from him, and they worked him over smoothly and professionally. They ripped away his glasses, tore off his jacket. They pulled off his shoes and dragged him across the wharf to the water.

Distantly, Solo heard a man's shouting. It was unreal. It was as if someone called his name from some remote place—

His head bumped across the planks, but there was no place for new pain in his body; all agony trunk lines were overloaded; new messages had to wait.

He heard the shouting growing closer. He heard the two men swearing. One of them said savagely, "Let's get out of here!"

Solo's head banged the thick planking at the edge of the wharf and for a moment he hung over the side. The water glittered impossibly far, brighter than the sun and as distant.

Then he was being pulled back to the dock, and he recognized the voice of Carrero, his guide.

Solo stretched his eyes wide, trying to see Carrero's face, but all he could see was the blinding red ball of the sun.

Carrero's voice was quavering with concern. "I came looking for you, Senor. I worried. I thought you would not look right without your butterfly net. I went out and found it for you."

Solo grinned, whispering it. "What you did, was, you saved my life, old friend."

He tried to smile, but knew his face was a bloodied, hideous caricature of smiling.

FIVE

IN THE pressurized Pan-American jet cabin at thirty thousand feet, Napoleon Solo sweated.