08-The Monster Wheel Affair

by David McDaniel

  He repeated aloud, for her benefit: "Archie Gunderson signed on the Miyako Maru, bound for Hong Kong. We can meet him there. Alexei Kropotkin shipped out two days later for Rio de Janeiro on the Duke of York. Waleed al-Fadly..." His face fell slightly, but he continued: "... is beyond our reach. He was found knifed in an alley by the waterfront just last night. We'll have to move quickly to get to Gunderson and Kropotkin before the other side does." He addressed the telephone again. "Keep trying to trace Schneider. He's apparently the only one who can give us that location now.

  "By the way, what about our guest downstairs? Have you found out his home port?" He listened, and nodded slowly. "Local boy, hired through channels for a routine kill. Not a chance of back-tracking him, either, I suppose. Okay—call me if anything comes up." He replaced the handset.

  "My partner will be here in a few days," he said. "Then we will go off to Rio and Hong Kong, and see if Kurt may have told his erstwhile shipmates anything that could lead to his being found." He shook his head. "It's going to be quite a search if he didn't. The world is an awfully big haystack to lose one needle in."

  Chapter 3: "What Did You Expect—Big Ben?"

  The jet thundered down out of the deep blue South African sky. Below, Napoleon Solo and Suzie Danz stood in air-conditioned coolness listening to the muted sounds of airplanes outside the double glass windows and the metallic voice of a loudspeaker announcing the arrival of the flight from London. Illya was on that flight, and tucked in his bags were enlargements in full glorious color of a mysterious ICBM that had been launched a few weeks before.

  Wheels smoked as braked tires vaporized against rubber-scarred concrete, and thrust-reversers drove the engines to an anguished scream. The BOAC jet rolled into the taxiway, slowing gently now, and crept at last into its berth. With a final sigh, the engines whined down to a stop.

  Napoleon and Suze met Illya at the gate as he checked through customs. The sight of the diplomatic passport he wielded won instant cooperation from the guards, and a small trolly with a rather remarkable assortment of bags wheeled past them unchallenged.

  Solo looked from the cart and the sweating redcap who propelled it to his partner. "What did you do," he asked under his breath, "bring all of Section Three with you?"

  "Just a few necessities," said Illya casually, directing his native bearer towards the line of taxis with a wave of his hand. "In this uncertain world, you never know what you might need."

  It took two taxis to get them back to the hotel. Determined not to involve local U.N.C.L.E. operations any more than necessary, and certain that the center of the enemy's interest had left Capetown with the departure of Kurt Schneider, they had assumed the roles of normal tourists. Almost normal—Suzie was under armed guard at all times, courtesy of the Solo Personal Protection Bureau.

  The three of them huddled over Illya's briefcase, which he had hand-carried rather than leave with the rest of the luggage. Unstrapping the trick fasteners, he gently raised the lid and withdrew a large manila envelope.

  "Here are your prints," he said, handing it to Suzie. "Sorry I couldn't bring back the original slides, but they're in a safe place. Perhaps sometime we can get them back to you."

  She carefully undid the meal clasp and slipped out a thin stack of glossy color prints, eight by ten. In the center of each frame was a long thin white object which grew shorter, print by print, as well as less distinct. She examined them, one at a time. Then her face lightened. "Oh, of course. Foreshortening as it went higher. And that's why it gets grainier. Bigger enlargements."

  Illya nodded. "These are blown up as much as possible without an inordinate loss of detail." He turned to Napoleon. "Section Three was most interested in the design of this missile. They say it's roughly two hundred feet long, diameter in proportion. If the frames were shot about a second apart, it was accelerating at some 300 feet per second, or a bit less than ten gees. But what really aroused comment were the differences here"—he pointed to the main stage of the rocket, clearly visible in the third picture—"and here." He pointed to the second stage and slid his finger up to the nose.

  Napoleon looked at them closely, and knitted a thoughtful pair of eyebrows. "That's odd," he said finally, and Illya nodded.

  "That's what they said, too."

  Suzie put down the pile of prints she held, and looked over their shoulders. "What's odd?" she asked. "It looks like a common, ordinary ICBM to me."

  "How many ICBM's have you known personally?"

  "Not that many. But I've watched them on TV, and I've seen pictures of them. What makes this one so unusual, outside of being where it shouldn't be?"

  "Can you tell the difference between, say, an Atlas-Agena and a Saturn Five?"

  "Not unless I can see their license plates."

  "Okay. These upper two stages are very much like the Agena—not exactly, but very much. Close enough that it's probably a patent infringement, if it matters. But this bottom stage is, as near as anyone can tell without poking around in the plumbing, the main stage from a Russian T 3-A, which is, frankly, more powerful than anything but our Saturn-V."

  Illya nodded agreement. "Somebody has taken the best of both cultures and combined them. This may have been only a test, or it may have put something into orbit. Whichever it was, this combination is most practical, and potentially dangerous as a weapon."

  The doorbell rang across the moment of silence that followed this statement. On the other side of the door, a winded team of bellhops was discovered standing beside a pile of luggage. Illya beckoned them in, watched while they bore their burdens into the room and set them about on the floor, on chairs and on the bed, and finally rewarded each of them with a crisp note of unseen but generous denomination.

  Napoleon looked around at the stuff as the door closed again. "Well," he asked, "do we start to unpack, or do we divvy up the gear into portable lots before we take off for the far corners of the earth? Or do we just leave it here to startle the maid?"

  "Golly," said Suzie, counting. "Ten, eleven, twelve bags. What all is in them, anyway?"

  Illya's eyebrows raised slightly, and his gaze traveled smoothly around the room, checking the count. "I can tell you what is in eleven of them," he said. "Because that is how many I left New York with."

  "Somebody else's bag must have gotten mixed in with yours by accident."

  He shook his head. "In this business there are no accidents." He walked slowly among the luggage, looking at each item closely. He stopped by a small blue canvas bag, and put his ear up to it. A slight smile teased the corner of his mouth. "Marvellous," he said. "It's ticking."

  Suzie gasped slightly, and cowered back against the nearest wall. "What are you going to do?"

  "Disarm it, of course."

  "Don't worry," said Napoleon reassuringly. "He's quite competent at this sort of thing. He's only had one bomb go off while he was working on it."

  It took a moment for her to consider this, and then she looked hard at him. "And what happened? I suppose you'll tell me he was blown to bits?"

  "Oh no—nothing happened. The bomb turned out to be a dud."

  "It's quite true," said the soft voice from across the room. "But I can assure you I had a very bad fraction of a second there watching the detonator spark."

  Suzie waited what seemed like a decent interval and then asked, "What are you going to do with this one—dunk it in water?"

  "That went out several years ago. All the better time bombs these days are made with sodium metal in the detonator. Water will set them off before it renders the explosive harmless."

  "In fact," said Napoleon, "it is quite possible to make a bomb so constructed that whatever you do to it in attempting to disarm it will set it off. Fortunately we haven't run into one yet."

  Illya was feeling the bag very gently, and examining the zipper with a small magnifying lens. He shook his head slowly. "Quite true," he said. "For instance, I am fairly sure an attempt to open this zipper would result in detonation of the d
evice."

  Suzie looked at all the other bags and suitcases. "Haven't you got something here that will take care of it?"

  Napoleon shrugged. "We might be able to X-ray it to find out where everything is inside it—but we couldn't be sure that it might not be wired with a small fluorescent screen so the X-rays would trigger it."

  "Oh," she said in a small voice, and looked doubtfully across the room at Illya. "Well, what are you going to do?"

  "Probe," said the Russian succinctly, producing a long thin knife from somewhere.

  He drew the tip of the knife over a short distance on the side of the bag, and continued to stroke the area like a surgeon making a life-and-death incision. Gradually the scratch deepened. In a few seconds, a half-inch gash appeared in the canvas, and he stopped. "Excellent," he said softly, and folded the knife.

  He turned, looking over the other bags scattered around the room, spotted one and nodded. From it he withdrew a flat metal box some twelve inches long. He crouched beside the ticking bag and opened the box.

  The first thing he withdrew was a long thin tube perhaps ten inches long, with a small cup at one end and an elastic band which Illya slipped over his head, adjusting the cup to one eye. He touched something beside the eyepiece, and the other end of the tube glowed softly. He slipped that end in through the incision.

  "All right," Suzie whispered to Napoleon. "What's he doing now?"

  "That's a proctoscope—a fiber-optic illuminator. Basically it's a light-pipe with a wide-angle lens and a tiny light on one end, and his eye on the other end. He can look all over the inside now."

  Illya's visible eye, which had been closed, opened now and rolled over in the direction of the kit. His free hand slipped out something else long and thin.

  "The rest of the kit," Napoleon continued, "is a surgical kit, essentially. Each gadget in there has something different on the end. A gripper, a knife blade, a shear...Surgeons use them for what they call 'keyhole' operations. They can work inside you through little holes; less tissue damage, less of a scar."

  Suzie nodded. "When I had my appendix out a few years ago the scar was only about an inch long."

  "What do you see in there?" Napoleon asked his partner.

  "Wires—a couple of batteries—a large block of something—a timing mechanism..."

  "Then it really is a bomb!" Suzie said.

  "What did you expect—Big Ben?"

  She paused, considering that, and decided to let it pass. "What are you doing now?"

  "Clipping wires."

  "Oh."

  Illya worked in silence for a minute, then said, "This is a fairly sloppy job of bomb-making. The zipper was wired, as I thought, but it wouldn't have gone off if I'd opened it—one of the connections had broken loose. An amateurish job of soldering, too." He paused, manipulating his instruments through the tiny hole. "I think I want a closer look at those batteries. And that detonator mechanism..." He pulled out one tool, picked up another, and continued working. After a few seconds, he let out a long breath, and said, "That's it."

  Napoleon took a step forward as Illya stood up slowly and slipped the eyepiece of the proctoscope off his head. "Let's see."

  The Russian agent was replacing his tools in their case, fitting each slender, delicate instrument back in the proper clips, and finally closing the lid and fastening the catches. Only then did he slide the zipper back.

  The top of the bag opened neatly, and the two U.N.C.L.E. agents bent over it together.

  "Look at the wiring. Shoddy," said Illya. "Simply shoddy."

  Napoleon reached in and lifted out a block of something brownish. "Here's the charge. Looks like plastique of some kind." He reached in with his other hand and produced a small complex device. "And here's the detonator. Let's save them. They might come in handy."

  "If they'd work when we needed them," said Illya. "The explosive looks all right, but the detonator mechanism seems to have some loose parts."

  Napoleon shrugged. "We can always rig up a detonator of our own," he said. "And you never know when you may need a few pounds of high explosive." He tossed it idly from hand to hand while Illya continued to rummage about in the bag, muttering to himself.

  Finally, with a soft grunt of surprise, he brought out a set of batteries and held them out for Napoleon to see. They were standard squarish 9-volt cells, but they were yellow, and the inscription on both sides was in Arabic.

  Napoleon looked down at them, quite puzzled, and finally took them from his partner's hand. He held them up and examined them closely. Then he looked at Illya. "Egyptian?" he said, doubtfully.

  Illya nodded. "Apparently. And that plastique is the type the French were using in Algeria just a few years ago. I would call it fairly likely that this bomb was sent by someone with a base in Egypt. I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be an official operation of Egyptian Intelligence, in fact."

  This time Suzie looked puzzled too. "Egyptian? But that couldn't have been their rocket, could it?"

  "Not likely," said Illya.

  "Especially," added Napoleon, "if this is a sample of their technology. I've seen more care go into the construction of a Molotov cocktail than this shows. I wouldn't trust whoever built this to fire a skyrocket."

  Illya glanced sideways at him. "Don't belittle our opponents just because they failed once, Napoleon. There is more than enough high explosive there to damage this corner of the hotel severely, not to mention its inhabitants, and it could have gone off. Remember, contempt breeds carelessness."

  "But Egyptian?" Suzie asked again. "How? And why? And for that matter..."

  "I'm sure we will find out eventually, Miss Danz," said Illya. "Our assignment, in fact, insists upon it. But first we must find Kurt Schneider."

  "And to do that," said Napoleon, "we will have to start by finding Alexei Kropotkin and Archie Gunderson. Suzie, you have all those pictures you took during your adventure in the lifeboat—let's get some enlargements made of the shots you consider to be most recognizable of both of them. And we may as well get one of Kurt while we're about it."

  "The slides should be back tomorrow," she said. "I sent them to the Kodak lab in Johannesburg."

  "Okay. We can save you some money and have the local U.N.C.L.E. darkroom run up enlargements for us. If would have been safer, by the way, if you'd given us the film to process. An accident in the lab could have been arranged."

  "If the situation ever arises again, I'll be sure to remember," she said with a trace of irony in her voice.

  "You do that," said Napoleon.

  "Not to change the subject," said Illya, "but when we get the pictures, what do we do?"

  "Time, as they so often say, is of the essence. You will head for the gay night life and sinful waterfront of Rio de Janeiro and look for your compatriot, Kropotkin. I will brave the teeming streets of Victoria in a search for a Swedish seaman named Gunderson. Suzie will wait here where it is safe, and..."

  "I shall do no such thing," said Suzie stubbornly. "The last thing Mac told me was to stay with you and help you. Archie is smart, and suspicious. He knows he's being looked for by people interested in killing him, and he wouldn't talk to you. But he'll remember me, and if I say you're all right, he'll cooperate."

  She turned to Illya. "Alexei will probably be easier to approach. In the boat he kept talking about how lonely he was for Russia—all you'll have to do is speak to him and he'll be so happy he'll talk all night."

  "But first I have to find him."

  Napoleon shrugged. "That shouldn't be difficult. After all, how many Russian sailors can there be in a port the size of Rio de Janeiro?"

  "You would be surprised."

  "Well, I'll bet there are a lot more Swedish ones in Hong Kong."

  "But you'll have me helping you look," said Suzie.

  Napoleon stopped and looked her over consideringly. "You know," he said, "that will just about make up for it."

  She smiled.

  Chapter 4: "You Know A Party
Named Kropotkin?"

  The waterfront area of Rio de Janeiro is not the sort of place chosen for portrayal in travel folders. For one thing, it smells. A tourist guide could conceivably describe the concatenation of odors encountered there as "exotic," but the tourist would do well to remember that this word is also applied to inedible foods and loathsome jungle diseases. To Illya, whose nose was fairly cosmopolitan, the place simply stank.

  A few blocks away, black oily water lapped at corroding pilings and tenders bobbed quietly under night-shrouded piers. Here, a few figures moved in the streets, reeling between islands of noise and light. Illya reeled among them, the better to avoid attention.

  But a man alone always gets some attention. A soft voice came from a shattered doorway: "Hey, sailor."

  He turned and saw a figure in black. She stepped out, and a street-light half a block away shone off her leather vest and tight pants. She held an unlit cigarette. "Got a match?"

  The flames lit her face dramatically. Her hair was long and as black as the rest of her costume; her eyes were bright and sensuous. She let the smoke trickle from between her lips in irregular puffs as she spoke. "My name is Yanara. You are looking for a girl, maybe?"

  "Not right now," said Illya. "I've got to find a man first. I owe him some money. He's a Russian sailor, off the Duke of York. If I can find him, maybe I'll have time for you."

  "Duke of York? Came in just today. Hey, sailor, I'll wait for you. All men from Duke of York go to A Fonte Sujo. Captain is friend of owner, all crew go for drinking. You find your friend there, I bet. Then you come back?"

  Illya nodded, but privately he doubted whether U.N.C.L.E. would authorize this item on his expense account. "Where is it?" he asked her.

  A Fonte Sujo was readily identifiable by one of the few real illuminated signs in the area. A pattern of green lights, rather patchily outlining something like a fountain, flashed on and off in front of it, and the sounds of music and celebration made their way past the swinging doors.