Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­09] - The Brainwash Affair"

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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"I don't know. To his chateau, I suppose."

"Do you know where it is'?"

"Yes, of course."

Solo sighed heavily. "Suppose we were some way able to get out of this room, Yvonne. Would you take us to Caillou's chateau?"

"But of course."

Solo grinned. "Well, that part was easy." He stared at Yvonne a moment, and then at Illya. "Suppose you start, Yvonne, by giving Illya your dress."

"What?" Yvonne stared at him.

"I echo that," Illya said. "I don't even want her dress. It'll never fit me."

But Yvonne was already loosening zippers, pulling the dress up over her head.

Her hair mussed, her face flushed, Yvonne handed her dress to Solo. He gazed a moment, admiring her in a black lace slip, then tossed the dress to Illya.

"Put it on," he told Kuryakin. "Give Yvonne your clothes."

"I'll just go in the bathroom to change," Illya said. "After all, I'm not wearing a black lace slip." He took a step toward the bath, paused. "You mind saying why I'm doing this?"

"That dress is your color," Solo told him. "It will do magic things for your eyes. Besides, if you can get out in the hall, make the guards out there think you're Yvonne until they get close enough, you can explode a gas pill. That'll give us time to clear out of here."

Illya shook his head. "With me looking like a female impersonator."

"This is Paris," Solo told him. "Don't fight. Switch."

As Illya turned toward the bath room again, there was a knock on the door. He hesitated, tautly, glanced across his shoulder. "I had no idea we were so popular."

Solo crossed the room. He stood

"Bellboy, M'sieur. I have a message."

"Push it under the door."

There was a pause. Then, "I'm afraid I can't do that, sir."

Solo and Illya exchanged knowing glances.

"Here we go again," Solo said. He spoke toward the door again. "Just a moment."

Illya tossed the dress to Yvonne. "Put it back on. We've just abandoned Plan One. Alternate Plan Ten."

"Plan Ten?" Yvonne stared at him, puzzled. "What on earth is Plan Ten?"

"Pray a little," Illya told her.

They waited for Yvonne to pull on her dress, straighten it. She was still yanking at zippers, patting at her hair, when Solo caught her arm and pulled her close against the wall behind him at the doorway.

"Monsieur?" the bellboy said in his calmest, most polite tone.

Yvonne was trembling, her teeth chattering.

Solo gave her a pen-sized aluminum vial with a plastic cone at its top.

"Oxygen," he told her. "What ever you do, don't take that nose cone from your face until we're out of here."

The bellboy called again, impatiently. "M'sieur, the message is most urgent."

"I'm anxious to get it," Solo called pleasantly. "I'm just not quite ready for guests."

He stared at Illya, pressed against the wall, across the door from him. Illya nodded.

They timed their movements precisely.

As Solo unlocked and opened the door, thrusting it wide, Illya smashed a gas-pill upon the floor.

Instantly, grey clouds of smoke erupted from the carpeting. The room turned white with smoke.

In that same moment, the bell boy was thrust into the room ahead of two armed men.

They were carried forward into the room under their own impetus.

"This is the message—" The man stopped talking, his nostrils attacked by the acrid gray gas.

The three of them heeled around, trying to retreat.

Illya slammed the door and stepped out in front of it.

The bellhop fell to the carpeting, gagging.

One of the men turned all the way around, swinging his gun, blinded by the gas. Illya waited until he was faced away from him, then clipped him across the neck.

Solo struck the other in the belly, and when he folded forward, he chopped him across the back of his neck. The two men hit the carpeting at almost the same time as their guns did.

Yvonne stood rigid against the wall. Above the plastic nose cone, her eyes were wide.

Illya scooped up one of the guns, Solo the other. Leading Yvonne by the elbow, Solo opened the door and thrust her into the corridor. He and Illya moved beside her, fingers on the triggers of the guns.

The corridor appeared empty.

Wild-eyed, Yvonne kept the cone covering her face, though Illya and Solo had removed theirs.

With Solo leading the way and Illya guarding their rear, they ran along the hall to the elevator bank. Solo pressed a button.

The elevator appeared almost at once. The doors slid open. Solo, Illya and Yvonne retreated as if executing a ballet step. Two armed thugs moved forward from the elevator.

"Sorry," Illya said, "we've changed our mind."

He tossed a gas pellet into the cage as Solo slapped at the down button.

A thug raised his gun to fire as the doors slid closed on him. Down the elevator glided. For a moment they could hear the thugs coughing and yelling for help.

They turned, running again.

Solo pushed open the stairway door. They went through it.

They paused beside the up-and-down flights.

"You go up," Solo said. "We'll go down. That way, part of us have a chance of getting out of here."

Illya gave them a jaunty salute and bounded up the stairs.

Holding Yvonne's elbow tightly, Solo moved them toward the down stairwell.

Yvonne cried out and staggered against him.

Solo got no more than a glimpse of the two men at the landing below them. He swung around, dragging Yvonne after him. They ran up the stairs.

Illya paused, waiting, staring down at them. "What's wrong?"

"We decided to go with you," Solo said.

"That's too bad, because I'd just decided to go with you," Illya said. He jerked his head upward. "Gun boys—two flights up."

Solo nodded toward the exit; "Go out on this floor."

Illya nodded. He held the door open. They heard men running down the stairs and up them. They ran out into the corridor. They turned toward the elevators, but at this moment one of them opened and two men ran out, guns drawn.

Illya fired instinctively. The two men ducked back into the elevator cage.

Solo dragged Yvonne after him. They ran toward the end of the corridor.

"It's six floors straight down that way," Illya warned.

"You got any better ideas?" Solo panted across his shoulder.

"I'm with you," Illya said. He turned, firing again to discourage the gunmen from leaving the elevator.

The stairway door opened, then closed.

Doors along the corridor were thrown open. Women screamed and men yelled, demanding to know what was going on.

Illya laughed, pleased. The more crowded the corridor, the safer they were.

Solo thrust up the window, swung his legs through. Illya opened his mouth to yell until he saw the metal rails of a fire-escape.

He followed Yvonne through the window to the fire-escape landing. He slammed the window closed. Solo took a step downward, but bullets struck the metal railings near him, singing.

"High-powered rifle!" Illya gasped.

Solo turned, pushing Yvonne ahead of him.

"Where to?" Illya said.

"Up," Solo said, as bullets whistled past them. "Where else?"

They clambered up the old iron fire-escape to the seventh floor.

Illya reached for the window to open it when he saw two men running along the seventh floor corridor with guns drawn.

Illya, spent, sagged back against Yvonne.

"Up again," he said.

They climbed swiftly. Below, they heard screaming. The streets teemed with people, stirring like ants in a broken nest.

Illya paused, gazing down. "They watching us get knocked off?"

Solo shook his head, still climbing. "No. It' a run on the banks. rioting against the government. THRUSH has got the world in a panic."

"It's doing a fair job on me," Illya said.

Bullets whistled past them, the sound of gunfire nearer.

Yvonne whimpered, pointing to the floors below, where armed men clambered through windows. They paused only to fire.

Illya spoke gently to Yvonne. "Don't be scared. Bullets lose their thrust fired up at this angle. At least that's what they told me in ballistics. Hope they knew what they were talking about. Is that really true, Napoleon?"

Solo did not answer. He was already over the wall on the hotel roof. Yvonne struggled. Illya helped her over the parapet before he saw what had struck Solo dumb.

Illya stared. Parked on the roof were two of the smallest, reddest helicopters he had ever seen, their blades churning as if they were idling, waiting.

He glanced below. The armed men poured upward on the metal ladders. Shrugging, Illya climbed the wall and stood beside Solo.

Two men in brown zippered flight suits stood near the small helicopters, holding their high-powered rifles negligently.

Illya stared at the impassive faces. There was no doubting they were THRUSH hirelings, as were the gunmen still racing up the fire-escape ladder.

"This is where they were chasing us the whole time," Illya said in disgust.

Solo nodded. He glanced at Yvonne. "You can take that nose-cone away from your face now, Yvonne."

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm not breathing anyway."

THREE

THE FLIGHT-SUITED men motioned them politely into the small helicopters. They were most gentlemanly, except that they gestured with guns.

When Solo and Yvonne were in one helicopter, the pilot pressed a button. The small seats compressed tighter, locking them in and metal bands clicked together securely across their chests and legs. Neither of them could move.

Led toward the other helicopter, Illya suddenly swung around, lunging at the pilot.

The man side-stepped almost boredly, and clubbed Illya with the butt of his rifle. Then he lifted Illya as if he were a sack of potatoes and slung him into the rear of the copter.

The helicopters winged upward from the hotel roof like frightened pigeons.

Solo fought at the metal bands, but he was bound helplessly. He found Yvonne in tears when he glanced at her. He tried to think of some comforting words, but there were none.

The city, the fabled river, the dust-glinting trees whipped past be low them. The helicopter circled on the outskirts of Paris, hovered above a chateau, hundreds of years old, majestic and isolated within its own park.

Yvonne stared numbly down ward through the plastic bubble. She gazed blankly at Solo.

Solo glanced down. The turrets and roof of the chateau gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Bright cars by the dozens were sunning quietly in the drive.

The helicopter dipped downward, angling in toward the lawn.

Yvonne shook her head. "Why, that's M'sieur Caillou's own chateau!"

The pilot spoke coldly. "That's right."

Yvonne's voice was puzzled. "They're having a reception for the men and women of the emergency international monetary meeting!"

"If I'd known it was a party," Solo said, "I'd have worn a tux."

The pilot said, "You two were not invited—to the party."

Solo stared at the pilot incredulously. "Those are brilliant world leaders down there."

"So?"

"You think you can put us down there and not attract their attention?"

"Their minds are on more important matters," the pilot said calmly. "Banks are closing all over the world." He shrugged. "Anyhow, we've been delivering guests, just like this, all afternoon."

Solo did not speak. The helicopter put down on its tricycle under carriage on the spacious lawn. The second small chopper followed within seconds.

No one came out of the house. Through French windows Solo saw formally attired people gathered in worried knots, lost on the distressed tension in the afternoon.

The pilot pressed a button and the seat and metal bands relaxed their tenacious grip on Solo and Yvonne. The pilot left his rifle inside the chopper, but kept his hand on a clearly outlined automatic in his flight-suit pocket.

"Get out, nice and easy," he ordered.

Solo followed Yvonne, jumping out to the ground. Across a short space the other pilot knelt over Illya, passing an ammonia vial back and forth under his nose.

Illya resisted for a moment, then revived suddenly and violently. He sprang upward as if catapulted, carrying the pilot with him. The man yelled, going over on his back.

Illya closed his hands on the pilot's throat and they toppled out of the copter hatch. They struck the ground hard.

Illya did not surrender his advantage. He chopped the pilot across the Adam's apple, drove his extended hand into his solar plexus, and leaped up—in the face of the drawn gun of the other pilot.

"Hold it," the pilot said, fixing his gun on Illya, but ready to wheel around on Solo.

Solo stood unmoving. "Vengeance is a big thing with you, isn't it, Kuryakin?"

Illya stared at him groggily. "Where were you?"

The pilot said, "All right, you two. Grab that pilot. Help him up."

Solo shrugged. He and Illya hefted the gagging pilot to his feet and they crossed the lawn toward the side of the stone chateau. Frivolous music blared out from the windows, somehow like a desecration.

"Hold it," the pilot with the gun said when they reached what appeared to be a solid wall in the base of a high-rising turret.

Holding the automatic on them, the pilot edged warily to the wall, shoved a lever concealed in the stone. A door-sized opening was made as the stones slid into themselves silently.

The pilot jerked his head, ordering them inside.

When they were on the landing at the head of wide stone steps leading to the depth of a silent dungeon, the pilot pressed an inside lever and the wall closed.

"Down the steps," he said.

They came off the stairs into a vaguely lighted foyer, devoid of furniture. A man armed with a rifle stood at each of the four walls. A door opened and Marie, Albert and Gizelle emerged, none looking too healthy.

"Here they are, Marie," the pilot

Marie reached out and grasped a gun from the nearest guard.

"I'll kill them now!" she said.

Solo and Illya released the pilot and he struck the floor hard. Marie jerked the rifle up to her shoulder.

A voice crackled from a concealed speaker. It was Oriental in its inflections and quality, cultured in tone: "Until I order it, Marie, you will kill no one."

Marie lowered the rifle, but her face was livid.

"I want them!" she answered defiantly. "Especially this Solo. I will deliver his skin to you—in strips!"

The Oriental voice remained at a conversational pitch, but chilled with its authority. "Perhaps you will. In good time. Don't let hatred suspend your reason. We do not need the notoriety of murder just now, my girl. Why else do you think we brought them here, in stead of leaving their corpses at the hotel? In order to indulge your violent whims? I need not remind you—I had better not have to remind you again—that we walk on eggs until our plan is in operation. I'll tell you when, my dear. Until then– remember—I see everything that goes on."

Marie exhaled heavily, and thrust the gun out to the guard, who retrieved it silently.

The three prisoners were prodded across the empty foyer to an empty dungeon.

A door creaked open.

"Inside," the guards said.

Yvonne pressed close to Solo.

"What kind of a place is this?" she whispered in terror.

"I know what it looks like," Illya said. "It looks like something from an old Errol Flynn movie."

PART THREE:

INTERLUDE AT A FRENCH CHATEAU

SILENCE DRIPPED oppressively in the thick-walled dungeon. There were no chairs, stools, cots—not even straw upon the stone flooring.

A deeply inset window, eight feet above the floor, shone with remote light. Making a stirrup of his clasped hands. Illya boosted Solo, who then chinned himself up to the sill and hung there, staring through the bars at a limited square of lawn and drive.

Illya sank against a wall, crossed his legs and closed his eyes.

Yvonne prowled the room. She shook the door, struck the rough walls with her small fists.

She stared down at Illya. Her voice quivered with outrage. "Why would M'sieur Caillou treat me in this brutal manner? Why would he do this to you, his friends?"

Illya spoke gently. "Don't fret about him."

"I've always revered him. Now I hate him."

"Don't hate M'sieur Caillou."

"Don't you?"

Illya gazed up at her. "I think, Yvonne, no matter where Lester Caillou is right now, it's a worse spot than we're in."

Solo spoke from the window, where he had supported himself on his elbows. His voice was strained with effort. "The party's over—the guests are leaving."

Yvonne said worriedly, "Is that good?"

Solo glanced down at her. "It means that the Caillou on duty up there got away with it. It means the good doctor, whoever he is, will have time for us now."

Sudden screaming of sirens replaced the wail of inane music. Solo pulled himself closer to the bars, clinging to them.

"Les flics!" Yvonne cried. "The police! It is the police, isn't it?"

Solo stared through the bars a moment, then let himself drop within the dungeon.

"Something's fouled them up!" he said in triumph.

"Maybe it was this," Illya said in mock casualness. He touched at an inch-long cylinder pinned at his lapel.

Solo put his head back, laughing in pleasure.

"You've been broadcasting distress bleeps!"

Illya nodded. "As fast as my little transistors would work." He smiled faintly. "I don't like to sit around idle."

The thick dungeon door was hurled open. Its brass knob gouged into the stone wall.

Albert, Marie and three guards charged into the room like a task force.

Albert carried a small machine pistol.

"All right," Albert snapped the order. "You two. Solo, Kuryakin. Let's go!"

Yvonne cried out. "Don't leave me alone down here!"

Illya bounced to his feet without touching his hands to the floor. Gently, he touched at her cheek with the backs of his fingers. He smiled at her. "Don't worry. I've a feeling we'll be back. Soon."

Albert laughed. "Don't count on it."

Marie smiled, too. "This time your cleverness has carried you too far."

TWO

A GUARD OPENED the double doors of a room on the third floor of the chateau.

Solo and Illya stepped into a room of incredible elegance. It left them for the moment speechless.

The large, high-ceilinged room was part of a suite done in an early Eastern dynasty decor, featuring blood reds and ebony blacks.

In the center of this luxury reclined a man of Siamese ancestry. Before him was a low, bone white table.

He sat with his long legs crossed. He wore a silk suit of deep black, a white shirt and white cravat. His face was like ancient writing paper made of rice. It looked as if it would tear or crack if touched. His cheek bones stood prominently and his nose, hooked above a taut, small mouth. From deep sockets burned eyes black and fiery. He was almost bald, his forehead high and protruding.

Across from him a far wall was banked with large closed circuit television screens monitoring the chateau. Upon one tube Yvonne huddled against the dungeon wall, shoulders sagging, face pressed into her hands. Lights flickered gray when there was movement in any area.

The Siamese slapped his fragile hands. Albert and Marie withdrew reluctantly, but not daring to protest aloud. They were followed by the guards.

The man waved his slender fingers. Solo and Illya followed the direction of his gesture. They saw the dark mouths of guns trained on them from every wall.

They returned their gazes to the smile of the man at the bone-white table.

Illya glanced at Solo, found his fellow agent peering incredulously at the seated man.

For one long moment Solo's hazel eyes struck against the ebony black ones of the man before him. The room was charged with the static tension generated between them in the silence.

"Dr. Lee Maunchaun," Solo whispered at last.

"Ah, yes. I am the doctor you were anxious to meet."

"But—"

"I'm dead?" Dr. Maunchaun inquired, smiling enigmatically. "A violent death, wasn't it? The last time we met—"

"An atomic misfire," Solo whispered.

"Obviously I survived," Dr. Maunchaun said. "Without nurturing any deeper affection for your people and their goals."

"You always hated on a fantastic scale," Solo said, remembering.

"Perhaps you thought you knew me when I hated. But I had barely learned its nuances at that time, my old enemy." He stared through them at something in the middle distance. "I was born to hatred. I saw my sisters slain because there was not food for female children in my land. I saw starvation.

"I was the youngest of ten surviving children, subsisting on a plot of ground barely thirty square yards. People of my kind learn to live with hatred, or to die of despair. I lived. I persisted. I bought myself—at prices you would never understand—the wisdom of the ages, all the knowledge I would need to buy myself away from the land I hated."

"Only to find yourself meeting people you hated," Solo said it for him.

Dr. Maunchaun gazed at him unblinking. "Ah, yes, we've met before, Mr. Solo. But your partner, we've not met."

"Only in my nightmares," Illya said mildly.

"I'm sure you learned to hate Mr. Kuryakin without needing to know him," Solo said in irony.

Dr. Maunchaun waved his reed-like hand imperiously, dispensing with the preliminaries. He said, abruptly. "Which of you is doing it?"

They gazed at him blankly, as if they did not know he meant the bleep-broadcast signals.

The doctor's voice tautened. "I've been occupied this past hour or I would know unerringly which of you is the culprit. It does not matter. You will suffer equally for this crime."

They remained silent, watching

Dr. Maunchaun gazed at them a moment almost pityingly. Then he pressed a button on the table edge. A scientist in white smock appeared from a side room almost immediately. He carried an oblong sound-detector.

He walked close to where Illya and Solo stood. He passed the oblong before them, its thin antennae trembling.

He reached out, removed the cylinder from Illya's lapel. The expression on his face did not alter. He placed the small object on the table before the doctor.

Maunchaun looked at it but did not touch it. "No doubt made in Japan," he said in contempt.

"It upset your laundry cart," Illya said.

Maunchaun met his gaze for a moment, then shrugged his thin shoulders in his immaculate silk jacket. He pressed another button. "I remind you, there are guns trained on you from the walls."

Illya shrugged.

Maunchaun paused, then as if making a decision, he nodded toward the white-smocked scientist.

The man set the detector down.

From an inside pocket he with drew two small vials. Then he placed goggles and an oxygen mask over his face. He came slowly to Illya and Solo.

He broke the vials with the pres sure of his thumb and extended them toward the faces, of the two young agents.

There was no smoke, nothing they could see, a faint acrid odor, this was all. The scientist retreated. He removed his mask. He glanced toward Dr. Maunchaun and when he nodded, the scientist withdrew from the room.

Illya and Solo could not move, found they could not speak, though they remained conscious, aware of everything around them.

"No sense gambling with your foolhardy notions of courage," Dr. Maunchaun said.

He pressed another button be fore him. Almost at once, the corridor opened and Lester Caillou entered. Except that Illya saw this was not the real Caillou. This man, the ringer they'd substituted for the internationally known banker, paused, wincing slightly when he saw Illya.

"It's all right," Maunchaun said to the ringer. "Everything is all right. These are the agents who saved your life, some years ago in the Middle East. I'm sure you won't forget them again."

"No," said the false Caillou.

A knock at the door. Maunchaun pressed a button, the doors parted. A servant entered.

"Lieutenant David of the Paris Police, Doctor," he said.

The police lieutenant entered, paused, momentarily stunned at the opulence of the suite.

Maunchaun nodded almost imperceptibly at the false Caillou, and he spoke as if obeying a signal. "Come in, Lieutenant." His voice was gracious, perfect in its imitation of the real Caillou. "This is my house guest, Dr. Lee Maunchaun, a psychiatrist, and a leading financial expert."

The police officer bowed, awed. Dr. Maunchaun merely inclined his head, without speaking.

The lieutenant, a slender, dark man, nervous and out of his depth, said, "We've been picking up these signals. We traced them here to your chateau, M'sieur Caillou."

The false Caillou nodded graciously and smiled. "It was only a short in our closed-circuit television." He waved his hand with studied negligence toward the bank of screens on the wall.

The police officer stared in awe. "How ingenious."

"Yes," the false Caillou said. "Protection against intrusion. As a matter of fact, these two prowlers—" he inclined his head toward Solo and Illya—"caused the short in the television sender."

"Prowlers?" The lieutenant straightened. This he understood. "Shall I arrest them, M'sieur Caillou?"

Caillou shook his head. "We have our own secret police to handle these matters, Lieutenant. A matter of security, you understand? We'll deal with them quietly. We have so much panic just now because of these money matters all over the world—we want no notoriety. You understand?"

Dr. Maunchaun insisted upon presenting the lieutenant with a rare Oriental box, filled with gold pieces, and then the police officer was gone. The police cars roared out of the drive.

Maunchaun gazed up at Illya and Solo in chilled triumph. Then he reached out, snapped the small signal cylinder between his fingers.

He pressed a button. When two guards entered, he ordered them to search the prisoners. The agents watched all their identification removed.

The effects of the colorless gas dissipated. Solo gazed at the false Caillou. "So you passed another test, eh? You fooled all Caillou's friends and associates this afternoon?"

Caillou merely straightened, did not reply.

Dr. Maunchaun could not resist boasting. He said, "Ah, no. Our friend here stayed discreetly out of sighs. The real Lester Caillou himself entertained his friends, said what we wished him to say, did what we wished him to do."

He smiled. "After being so pleasantly and temporarily paralyzed as you were, surely you find it easy to believe I can control the mind of a man like your old friend Caillou? Ah, he was present—the precious, perfect host—present in body at least. Only his mind has been kidnapped, Mr. Solo."

Solo stared silently at the parchment face, the sharp-honed features, black eyes, not daring to doubt any boast the doctor made.

Maunchaun smiled faintly. "Perhaps it is vanity, Solo, the need to demonstrate that I, the son of lowest peasants, have accomplished almost everything I set out to do. Or maybe it is because you defeated me once, when we met earlier, thinking even you left me for dead in an atomic misfire. I want you to see you have no hope of stopping me this time. I shall control international finance—"

"You and THRUSH," Illya said.

The enigmatic smile widened slightly. It was almost as if the doctor said it aloud. He would cross the THRUSH bridge when he reached it.

Maunchaun pressed a button. He sank back then, sitting almost as if he were asleep, his eyes hooded like a cobra's.

Presently the corridor door opened. Marie entered, carrying a machine pistol. The real Lester Caillou walked past her.

Solo stiffened, watching him. It was Lester, all right, except that he moved in the strange manner of a sleepwalker. He was correctly attired, his head tilted in that old way he had, but his eyes were disturbingly empty.

Until this moment, Solo had not seen how completely it was as Dr. Maunchaun said: Only Lester Caillou's mind had been kidnapped.

"Stand there, Lester," Maunchaun said. He inclined his narrow head toward where the fake Caillou stood, identically dressed as the banker was.

Caillou smiled faintly, nodded. He walked to where the ringer stood, paused beside him, watching Maunchaun with a dog-like obedience in his face.

Solo shivered.

"Some of your detractors feel you have made a gross error in forcing gold payments from free world nations, Lester," Dr. Maunchaun said in that level tone which seemed attuned especially for Caillou's hearing.

Caillou gave them a faint superior smile and engaged in an obscure soliloquy on the reasons why only gold could be accepted at the present, despite growing panic in the free world countries. It was his first duty to protect the interests of the international trade organizations against the spiraling inflation, the worth of paper currency– Solo didn't even bother to listen.

He was certain that leading financial experts had little argument that was persuasive against Caillou. Maunchaun was not only a brilliant psychiatrist, he was the outstanding financial expert of the far east.

He knew how to make even outrageous falsity sound logical.

He was speaking now through Caillou's brainwashed mind.

Solo said with a certainty he did not feel, "The least whisper of what you have done to this man—"

"Yes. The least whisper," Maunchaun agreed. "But who is to broadcast that whisper? You, Mr. Solo? Your accomplice in international capitalist crimes Kuryakin there? Perhaps our old friend Lester Caillou?"

Solo flinched, did not attempt to answer.

Maunchaun indulged a small smile. "Caillou will continue to speak and perform in rote, what ever I tell him to do, as long as I will it. This is deeper than hypnosis, Solo. Deeper than any waking-sleep you can understand. A drug-induced hypnosis. There are secrets of my poor land, Solo, older than your crude civilization—"

Maunchaun stopped speaking, as if bored with the mentalities of his auditors. He clapped his thin hands and the real Lester Caillou was led away.

Maunchaun watched his odd, somnambulistic gait until the door closed. Then he brought his chilled smile back to Solo and Illya.

"And now what shall we do about you gentlemen?"

"I don't know," Solo said. "But I suggest you do it quickly."

Maunchaun waved his hand. "Don't make threats, Solo. Do you mean that if United Network Command doesn't hear regularly from you and Kuryakin, other agents will doom us?"

Solo shrugged. "That's part of

"I assure you I've handled this contingency. Your reports are regularly going into your headquarters in New York–glowing lies about your progress, which I can assure you our old friend Alexander Waverly receives with relish."

Maunchaun pressed another button. Albert and three armed guards entered. "Since we cannot afford to kill them at the moment, I believe an hour in the sound chamber will teach them the error of attempting to cross me with such childish toys as bleep-signals."