Текст книги "[Magazine 1966-­04] - The Unspeakable Affair"

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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THE UNSPEAKABLE AFFAIR

by ROBERT HART DAVIS

Mute, powerless to speak or write, they gasped and were no more—the gallant men who had unmasked Thrush's most diabolical plot—and who now must carry their incredibly grim secret to the grave!

ACT 1

IN THE BEGINNING WAS SILENCE

THE MAN was tall and slender. He staggered as he walked, half ran, down the East Side street toward the river. His head turned every few yards to look behind him.

There was no fear in his eyes, only concern, worry, an anxiety that made him break into a full run as he neared the first street corner.

The street he ran on was in the East Fifties of New York. A dark night, with a wind; the street lamps cast only feeble circles of light.

For all his haste and anxiety, the man was clearly trained to danger. When he looked behind, it was not under the street lights but between them, in the darker areas, where he could have seen anyone following him as the follower was revealed by the light.

There was no one behind the running man, and he turned into a street of small brownstones that stood silent and innocent between a three-story whitestone building and a public garage. He passed the three-story white building, a faint smile on his face. His goal in sight, his guard down for an instant, he did not glance at the three men in full evening dress who came out of the whitestone building as he ran past.

The three men swayed as if drunk, laughing, their voices slurred in the night. The running man barely glanced at them, and ran on. The instant he was past them, the three men in full dress ceased to sway. Their laughter vanished; their voices spoke to each other sharp and crisp.

"Now!" the tallest one cried.

The sharp hiss of his voice was matched the next instant by three piercing spitting sounds. Three, and no more. One short, harsh puh-puh-puh from each gun that had appeared in the hand of each dress-suited man.

Puh-puh-puh!

The running man seemed to leap forward, his feet off the ground, hurtling. His head jerked back, his arms flung out, and he sailed through the air of the dark street like some horrible, grotesque bird.

He seemed to hang there in the cold air for a long minute, flung up and forward, suspended on air. Then he sprawled face down on the hard concrete.

He did not move for a moment. Then, slowly, impossibly, he began to crawl. Three holes in his back, blood drenching the silent street, the man crawled. Slowly, painfully, like some crushed insect that still weakly moved its legs.

The three men in dress suits watched. Their pistols were still in their hands, the long, ugly silencers pointed at the crawling man. One spoke.

"Stubborn, these U.N.C.L.E. fools," the tallest man said. "They can't even die simply. Dimitri!"

The heaviest of the three nodded, stepped forward to where the man was still trying to crawl toward the steps down to a small shop with the sign, Del Floria's Cleaners & Tailors. He walked slowly, letting the wounded man crawl. He raised his pistol again.

The shot never came.

From a doorway at the top of the brownstone stoop above Del Floria's another man materialized. This man, too, held a pistol, a strange-looking weapon.

He was a slender man of medium height with neat, dark brown hair. He looked like a young executive, a rising young doctor, perhaps an athletic playboy still young enough to be in good condition. He wore a conservative business suit, and looked like a thousand bright young men of business in the great city. He was none of these things.

His name was Napoleon Solo, and he shot the heavy man in the dress suit.

Puh!

A single spitting sound even fainter than the three shots earlier from the silenced pistols.

The heavy man was not knocked down; there was no blood. The dress-suited killer merely looked once at Solo, tried to raise his gun, and slid to the concrete.

Solo moved down the steps and out into the street with catlike speed. Incongruously, an easy smile played across his almost handsome face.

"Your guns, gentlemen, if you please," Solo said, smiling at the two remaining men in dress suits.

The two men raised their guns, fired wildly. Solo dove for cover. His pistol was up and aimed. The two men turned to run.

Directly in front of them, in the middle of the dark city street, there was now still another man. This man was small, slender, his Slavic face crowned by an unruly thatch of blond hair cut like the round-bowl haircut of some ancient knight-errant. His bright eyes were shrewd beneath a habitually lowered brow as he watched the three men in the dress suits.

He seemed to have risen from the concrete itself, come up out of the earth. He watched the surprised killers with a quizzical expression.

"I think you should do as the man said," Illya Kuryakin said. "It's polite, you know."

The two men recovered from their shock, raised their pistols, and the blond man, Illya, shot them both.

Puh. . . puh!

They slid to the ground.

Illya did not look at them again. The small blond agent of U.N.C.L.E. walked quickly over them to where Napoleon Solo was already bending over the man they had shot. This man had stopped crawling. Solo had turned him over, and he lay now on his back with his eyes closed. Illya looked down at the shot man.

"He's alive," Solo said. "But he won't be."

"Diaz," Illya said, speaking down to the man. "Diaz, can you talk? Why—"

The wounded man, Fernando Diaz, agent for U.N.C.L.E. Section II, New York, opened his eyes. He stared up, dying, at the face of his Chief Enforcement Agent, Napoleon Solo. His lips moved, his tongue moved.

But no sound came.

"Diaz?" Solo said softly. "Speak slowly."

The man opened his mouth again. Strained, eyes bulging, the cords on his neck thick with effort.

There was no sound from his open mouth.

Not a groan, not a word, not a whisper...

Diaz fell back, breathed irregularly. Then his hand began to move. Illya reached into his pocket. The blond agent took out a small notebook and a pencil. He handed them to Diaz. The fallen agent barely nodded, took the pencil and notebook.

The pencil drew lines on the paper, circles. Diaz blinked, looked up. Solo showed him the paper with the meaningless scrawls. Diaz tried again. On the paper there was nothing but lines and small circles.

Diaz dropped the pencil, dropped the notebook. He choked, blood welling up in his throat. His eyes dilated, showed for one instant a small fear. Then he raised his hand. Finger extended, he pointed at the sky. His hand moved in the dark air, fluttered like a bird. He smiled and died.

Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin stood there for some minutes, looking down at the dead man. Then they holstered their guns and bent to pick him up. They carried him into Del Floria's cleaning shop, into a rear dressing room, and through the wall into the clean, hospital-like corridors of the headquarters of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

Behind them other men had appeared to carry in the three fallen killers.

TWO

THE ALARMS had stopped now in the bright, windowless corridors of U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, Chief and Number 2 man in U.N.C.L.E. Section II—Operations and Enforcement in New York, hurried in grim silence along the vaultlike corridors, past the closed and silent doors.

In its silence and anonymous efficiency, the complex of U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, as impregnable as a fortress, could have been anywhere on earth or a thousand miles underground. Here there was no evidence of the city outside, or of the innocent seeming brownstones on the street. There was no evidence from inside of the four known entrances, nor of the tunnels out to the East River, one of which Illya Kuryakin had used to make his seemingly miraculous appearance in the street through an ordinary manhole.

There is a fifth entrance to U.N.C.L.E. in New York, but that is known only to the man Illya and Solo were hurrying to meet now. The last door in the corridor opened automatically, the two agents having been thoroughly scanned and identified electronically, and they passed through into the office of Alexander Waverly, the only Western Hemisphere member of Section-I, Policy and Operations, and their chief.

Waverly, one of only five Section-I members in the world-wide operations of U.N.C.L.E., was not a man who stood on formality. An aristocratic, tweedy, unsmiling and slow-speaking man with iron-grey hair, Waverly was matter-of-fact and given to absent-mindedness on small matters.

"Mr.—uh—Solo, Kuryakin,"

Waverly said, blinking as he remembered the names of his two best agents. "Sit down. I trust you have examined Diaz?"

Solo and Illya sat down at the circular revolving table and faced their superior. Waverly began to look for a match to light the pipe in his mouth. As the bushy-browed chief searched his pockets for the matches, he continued to speak in his unruffled manner.

"The three men you quieted with your sleep darts have revealed nothing, I fear. Typical Thrush agents, of course—no fingerprints, no identification."

"How about using our super-pentathol on them," Solo said.

Waverly nodded, finding his matches. "We'll try it, of course, but I think with little result. They appear to be the usual Thrush assassins. No knowledge of any operations, and with no reasons given to them for their particular job. These three are so low they did not even have the remote-destruct charge under their skins."

"But they killed Diaz," Illya said grimly.

"Yes," Waverly said, "they killed Diaz. Most unfortunate. Did you find anything on his body that would help us learn why?" Waverly was not callous or inhuman. Diaz had been a good agent and a good man, but the work of U.N.C.L.E. in battling the cruelty and evil of the world did not allow its leaders the luxury of sentiment or even compassion. All U.N.C.L.E. agents knew the risk, and took that risk in full knowledge. They did not expect tears, only the continuance of the work they died for.

"Nothing," Solo said. "And they had no time to search him, so he had to be bringing a verbal message."

Waverly nodded, lighted his pipe now, and puffed slowly. Illya and Solo looked at each other. They had come to the important point. Waverly opened the subject that was now on all of their minds.

"He could neither speak nor write?" Waverly said.

"Not a sound, and not a letter on paper," Illya said. "He tried. It was almost frightening to watch him."

"He couldn't make a sound with his voice, but he could hold the pencil," Solo said. "He just couldn't write words."

"I simply don't understand it," Illya said. "He seemed to be in perfect possession of all his other faculties. There must be an explanation."

Waverly said, "What does the laboratory show?"

Solo shrugged. "A blank. No discoverable reason for it at all. The bullets were perfectly normal. No trace of a drug."

Illya leaned forward across the circular table. "There was no reason they could find, not in a complete autopsy. But Diaz could neither speak nor write."

Waverly nodded. A thoughtful expression crossed his craggy, bloodhoundlike face. The Section-I leader puffed on his pipe, allowing the smoke to rise slowly to the ceiling of the sunny room that could have been the office of any slightly over-age college professor, except for the banks of electronic equipment that kept Waverly in instant touch with his own headquarters, and with the world.

"Therefore, we must look elsewhere, I should say," Waverly

said simply. "I expect we will find our reason for this, shall we say, 'unspeakable' affair, when we learn what Diaz knew."

"And just how do we do that?" Solo asked.

Waverly looked unsmiling at his chief agent. "That I believe will be up to you, Mr.—Solo. Yes, I think this is a task for your particular talents. You will take over Diaz's work immediately."

"Someday I'll learn not to ask questions," Solo said.

"Perhaps there will be a beautiful lady to compensate for the apparently short life span, Napoleon," Illya said, and smiled.

"One lives in hope, my fine Russian friend," Solo retorted.

Waverly coughed. "I don't imagine there will be much opportunity for your well-known hobby, Mr. Solo. Beautiful women are notoriously scarce on rocket bases, I hear. Especially on secret bases."

"Montana?" Solo and Illya said together.

"Yes, Montana. The Elk River Project. Diaz was going there from New Mexico ten days ago. We had a report to that effect from him. Apparently he arrived, checked into the nearest motel, and then vanished. His appearance on our street was a complete surprise to me."

"Why did he go to Elk River?" Solo asked.

Waverly puffed on his pipe. "It seems there are two rocket pilots here, test pilots for United States experimental rocket aircraft, who have fallen ill of a strange malady. A secret report went to Washington, and Washington saw fit to call in. Wisely, I think."

"A malady?" Solo said.

"Apparently," Waverly said.

Illya leaned forward. The Slavic face of the small Russian was intense with excitement.

"They can neither speak nor write," Illya said. "Is that the malady?"

Waverly sighed. "I'm afraid it is. Diaz is the third case of unspeaking, not the first."

THREE

NAPOLEON SOLO whistled soundlessly, his boyish face showing neither fear nor caution, but only a certain surprise. Illya hunched forward and watched Waverly.

"Washington was disturbed, naturally," Waverly said. "They will be a bit more disturbed when they learn that their malady appears to involve our old adversary Thrush."

"And Diaz was working on the malady of unspeaking?" Illya said.

"No, not precisely," Waverly said..

"But you said—" Solo began to protest.

Waverly blew smoke. "I said, Mr. Solo, that Diaz had gone to

Elk River from New Mexico. His actual assignment was something quite different. You have heard of UFOs, of course? Unidentified flying objects?"

"Who hasn't?" Solo said. "Half the crackpots in the world have seen them, and the other half have ridden in them to Venus."

"Only a very small percentage are actually unidentified after investigation," Illya said.

"Approximately one percent, to be precise," Waverly said.

"Small enough to be explained by simple chance, lack of accurate information," Illya said.

Waverly nodded. "I quite agree. But what would you say to ten percent?"

"Ten percent?" Illya said, his eyes narrowing.

"Exactly," Waverly said. "The percentage has suddenly risen in the last six months. Of all reported sightings, some ten percent have not yet been explained."

"That's statistically impossible," Illya cried, "unless—"

"Yes, Mr. Kuryakin?" Waverly said, unsmiling.

"Unless we are being invaded from outer space," Illya said.

Waverly rubbed his chin. "We can't rule that out. It could very well be such an invasion, I'm afraid."

There was a long silence in the sunny office. Illya and Solo looked at each other. Both their faces registered sheer disbelief. Waverly seemed to have forgotten them for the moment. The U.N.C.L.E. leader was lost in thought. It was Napoleon Solo who spoke first.

"You really can't be serious, Chief?"

Waverly blinked. "What? Oh, yes, Mr. Solo, I fear I am. We are dealing with true unidentified objects, which means they could be from anywhere."

"Just how many is ten percent?" Solo asked.

"Four, Mr. Solo," Waverly said. "There have been forty reported sightings all over the world in the last six months."

"Do we know what they were like, the four unidentified objects flying around?" Illya said.

"As it happens, we do," Waverly said. "Long and quite thin. They appeared to be painted black, unlike most such sightings, which are invariably silver colored. They also glowed, as if red– hot, and moved with incredible speed. Fast enough so that no one could get a really good look at them."

Illya was puzzled. "You make it sound as if all four were identical."

"They were," Waverly said. "Absolutely identical. And at least two were seen by extremely reliable people." Waverly looked at his two agents. "You can see why we are rather concerned. They seem a trifle too real."

"Is there any pattern, any correlation about where they were seen?" Solo said.

"Yes, a very simple pattern—all four were seen over New Mexico, near Santa Maestre, a small town at the edge of the Navaho Reservation."

Both Illya and Napoleon Solo studied Mr. Waverly as if certain that their chief was playing some kind of joke on them. When Waverly did not blink or change his serious expression, the two agents looked at each other again.

"I see you've grasped the significance," Waverly said dryly. "That was why we sent Diaz to New Mexico to investigate. He had little luck. That he reported. But when we called him about the two rocket pilots who were unable to speak, he seemed really excited."

"He thought there was a connection?" Solo said.

"He did, and so do I," Waverly said. "Both of the sick men are rocket pilots. The connection would appear obvious. I think Diaz believed they were faking the inability to speak, but he had no chance to report, obviously. So I am afraid it is now up to you gentlemen."

Solo grinned. "It's my job to go to Elk River, find out what Diaz learned and how he lost his speech, and try not to lose mine."

"I should say that would be approximately correct," Waverly said dryly.

You don't want me to accompany Napoleon?" Illya said.

"No, Mr. Kuryakin."

Illya sighed. "Which means that it is New Mexico for me, and l hate the heat."

Waverly was unsympathetic. "We all must make our sacrifices, Mr. Kuryakin. I suggest you both arm yourselves well, seeing what happened to Mr. Diaz, and we'll set up a relay so that you can keep in touch with each other. And one more thing, Mr. Kuryakin.

"I suggest you begin your search it a village called Noche Triste, on the Navaho Reservation. It seems hey had a mysterious explosion a mile from the village. Large hole in the ground, considerable noise, and a very high radiation count."

"Nuclear radiation?" Solo said.

"Very," Waverly said. "The Navaho medicine man attributed it to the indigestion of some god. But I think that an unlikely explanation."

"I tend to agree with you, sir," Illya said.

The two agents left their chief staring into space, already concerned with some other problem that had been placed in the hands of U.N.C.L.E.

They dressed and armed themselves. Solo dressed in a well-cut suit; he would go to Elk River as Mr. Roger Raille of the United States State Department, a cover already prepared by Washington.

Illya wore old clothes. Black, fit for hot work in the deserts of New Mexico. Both carried small briefcases, Illya's containing a specially sensitive miniature Geiger counter, which fitted his role as a uranium prospector.

Their jets left at the same time from Idlewild, but they slipped out of U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters separately. It was a sensible precaution.

FOUR

NAPOLEON SOLO saw the two men run for a car that pulled out into the night traffic and followed Illya's taxi down the East Side street. He ducked into a doorway and took out the thin ballpoint pen that was not a pen at all but a miniature radio sender-receiver. The latest U.N.C.L.E. communications improvement, he held it to his lips and whispered.

"Bubba! This is Sonny. Mayday. Over. Repeat, Mayday."

The new instrument, developed by Section-IV, had an increased range of ten miles over the old sets. Almost instantly, the voice of Illya answered.

"Sonny, Bubba here."

Solo leaned over the tiny instrument. His eyes watched the dark street as he talked.

"Bandits on your trail. Two bandits in a black Mercedes. License begins with XB 12, three other digits I missed."

There was a silence. Solo listened intently in his hidden doorway. Then Illya's cool voice came over the radio again.

"I have them, just behind me, three cars back. Thanks, Napoleon."

"Be careful," Solo said into the tiny pencil set.

"Have no fear, and be careful yourself. I rather doubt our friends came alone."

"Roger," Solo said. "Meet at the BOAC information booth. They'll think we're going abroad."

"Right and out. I see my friends gaining on me."

In his dark doorway, Napoleon Solo replaced his radio-pen in his suit pocket. His keen eyes scanned the empty street. Illya was undoubtedly correct. If they had two men waiting to trail Illya, they had probably not neglected him. The difference was that he was warned.

He studied the dark street intently, noting every detail. He knew every car, every face, every shadow that moved or lurked on the street. One car, an old Cadillac, caught his eye. He did not remember seeing the Cadillac before on the street. It appeared empty and innocent. But Solo saw something else that made him smile to himself.

On the steps of the brownstone near the old Cadillac he saw a man and a woman. They appeared to be lovers dallying innocently with each other on the steps, with eyes and thoughts only for each other. Even as he watched they embraced, and he realized that they could see him clearly in his doorway.

They were putting on an act because they saw him watching them—and there was only one way they could have seen him where he was hidden in the dark shadows of the doorway. Infra-red glasses, or the infra-red scope-sights of a Thrush rifle! He flattened back against the wall.

But no shot came. Either he was wanted alive, or else they were not ready to shoot.

Solo smiled. He would have to see that they did not get another chance. And if they wanted him alive, then he wanted them alive. He peered out, carefully. They were still playing the lovers, the man and woman across the street on the steps.

He stepped out of his shelter and hurried away down the dark street.

At the corner he glanced back, so quickly no one could have seen him.

The Cadillac was moving along behind him.

Still smiling, he sprinted along the wide avenue he had turned into. The Cadillac came around the corner behind him, speeded up. He ran across another cross street until he reached a shabby tavern on the avenue. The Cadillac was close now.

Solo let it come very close, watching it out of the corner of his eye. Then, as if seeing the Cadillac and panicking, he looked wildly around, and dashed into the seedy tavern.

Inside the tavern the six or seven dilapidated customers at the long bar did not even look up. They held their drinks in both hands, stared into the depths of the whisky or at their own faces in the mirror behind the bar. They were long past caring about anything that moved, cared only for the small glasses of golden liquid in front of them.

Solo dashed through the long, dirty room with its gaudy signs that advertised the various beers and whiskies, and no one noticed—except the bartender and two drunks sitting in a booth near the door.

The bartender turned and touched a key on the cash register. Then the bartender reached under the bar and his hidden hand held a strange-looking pistol that was a twin of the pistol in Solo's Berns-Martin shoulder holster.

The two drunks in the booth near the door did not change noticeably, but one of them staggered to his feet and lurched across to the bar. He leaned there, asking drunkenly for a drink. The eyes of both drunks seemed lost in some bleary dream world. They were not. They were alert, watchful, and now there was one flanking each side of the door.

Solo went through the room without a glance at anyone, turned once to look back as if in fear. Then he vanished into the men's room. In the men's room he stepped to a section of wall and pulled a hook that was fixed on the wall for hanging clothes.

The wall opened, the mechanism activated by the bartender touching the cash register key out front. Solo stepped through. The door closed automatically, locked.

Solo stood in a small room that contained a table and two chairs, a rack of weapons for emergencies, and a small television set. Solo switched on the television. Instantly he saw a view of the street in front of the shabby-looking tavern. The Cadillac was nowhere in sight, but a shadowy figure stood only a few feet from the door.

Solo smiled. The missing Cadillac was what he had expected. He pressed a button on the television set and another picture appeared. Now it was the side street, where the alley behind the bar came out.

Another shadowy figure stood there, watching the mouth of the alley.

He switched to the third camera. The Cadillac was parked in the dark of the next avenue behind the tavern. Somewhere they had picked up a third or even fourth man, probably hidden on the floor of the Cadillac all the time.

They had covered all exits.

Solo grinned to himself in the hidden room. That anyone trailing an agent would have the sense to cover all exits was precisely what U.N.C.L E. expected and planned for. This room, one of the many escape routes involved in perpetual Plan 9, was designed to enable an agent to evade any shadower.

The routes, the locations, were changed every few days, of course. Tomorrow this would be only a tavern again.

Solo switched back to the camera that covered the front entrance. The shadowy figure out there suddenly moved, came into the light from the tavern windows. A woman who held a small, deadly pistol—a woman Solo knew only too well. Maxine Trent!

A Maxine Trent returned from the dead—but Solo had never believed that the high-ranking Thrush agent was dead. Maxine was too deadly to die easily. Maxine was no low-rated assassin. U.N.C.L.E. could use her alive, and now she was walking into the trap. He quickly switched to the other cameras—they were all closing in on the tavern.

He pressed a tiny button on the table. The warning light would flash out front where the bartender could see it. The rest was in the hands of Section-V, Security and Personnel. His own orders were standard and strict—the job came first; he had to make his escape.

In the hidden room he stepped to a closet, opened it, went in, closed the door and pressed the switch. The closet began to move downward, a small elevator that stopped at the sub-basement level. The door opened and Solo stood in a narrow tunnel.

Minutes later he was four blocks away, out in the night, hailing a taxi.

FIVE

ILLYA KURYAKIN leaned forward in his taxi and spoke softly to the driver.

"I think we are being followed, driver. I suggest you attempt to lose them. It is me they want, but they would be reluctant to leave a witness alive, I'm afraid."

The driver, a small man, cast a frightened glance behind him at Illya. The small Russian smiled his most reassuring smile. The driver saw the pistol in the agent's hand and his eyes bulged. Then the driver faced front, watched his mirror, and began to weave in and out of the airport-bound traffic.

After ten minutes, Illya saw that it was no use. The taxi driver was not trained in evading pursuit. He, Illya, would have to resort to more direct methods. And he would have to pick his own ground, not their ground. He leaned forward again.

"At the next street make a left, driver. Drive as fast as you can. We will be on a side street and they will close in."

The driver nodded, made the sharp left, barely missing an oncoming car, and drove fast down the darker side street. Illya looked behind. The black Mercedes was already behind them and gaining.

Illya narrowed his eyes and made a rapid mental estimate. He nodded; they would reach the area of open swamps that bordered Jamaica Bay before the Mercedes could catch them.

It would be close, but that was just what the blond agent wanted. Close, but not too close. He clicked his pistol on to bullets, and bent to his small suitcase. He came up with two tiny round pellets. Then he waited.

The taxi reached the deserted area of marsh and reeds and dark black water. The road had become a dirt road. The Mercedes raced closer behind.

"When I give the signal, slow down. When I'm out, drive away as fast as you can. Go to this address, and you will be well paid. Report what happened."

The driver nodded and took the piece of paper Illya gave him with the address of Del Floria's cleaning shop on it. The taxi drove on into the depths of the marshy shore. The houses were far behind now; to the left and right deep, wide channels of black water led in from the open bay.

The Mercedes was less than fifty yards behind and coming fast.

Illya leaned out the window and tossed both small round pellets onto the road behind the taxi. Two dense clouds of white smoke erupted in the night. In an instant the Mercedes vanished from sight behind the clouds of smoke that merged and covered the road.

"Now!" Illya hissed.

The driver braked, skidded, slowed. Illya opened the door and jumped out. He hit, fell, rolled, and came up on his feet with his U.N.C.L.E. special in one hand and the small suitcase in the other. The taxi roared off into the night.

Illya crouched at the side of the road, his U.N.C.L.E. special ready and pointed at the cloud of smoke. The Mercedes should come through any second, burst out of the smoke, eager, unaware, and partly blinded.

The Mercedes did not come.

Illya waited, watched.

The Mercedes did not come. There was no more sound of its powerful engine.

Illya waited no longer. The trick had not worked. He did not hesitate another second. He turned and ran away from the road toward the marshes and the black channel of foul water that led in from the bay.

He moved not a second too soon.

As he ran, a man came through the smoke, his strange rifle held ready, its infra-red scope bulky above the barrel. A second man came from around the right side of the dissipating smoke cloud.

Both men wore grotesque gas masks, the large round eyepieces making them look like monsters risen from the swampy land itself.

The third man appeared almost directly in Illya's path around the left side of the thinning smoke. This man also wore a gas mask and carried the ugly Thrush rifle.

The two men Napoleon Solo had seen, and a driver.

Illya and the Thrush killer saw each other at the same instant. Illya was quicker. He fired a single shot. The Thrush agent sprawled backwards in the mud and lay still. Behind Illya, the other two Thrush men began to run toward him. They fired as they came.