08-The Monster Wheel Affair

by David McDaniel

  Inside, the atmosphere was compounded of smoke, sweat and profanity. Illya stood with his back to the door, squinting through the gray-blue haze, until he saw a sailor not too drunk to walk approaching the bar. He moved forward and arrived alongside him.

  "Hello, mate," he said. "You off the Duke of York?"

  The other's eyes tracked, centered, and focused. "Yeah—why not?"

  "Lemme buy you a drink."

  The slack mouth curled up at the corners. "Sure—why not?"

  Raw liquor splashed into dirty glasses, and a wordless toast was raised and drunk. Without wasting time, Illya got to business.

  "You know a party named Kropotkin? He was on your ship this run."

  "Kropotkin? I wouldn't call'm a party—'s more like a street fight. Friend of yours?"

  "I owe him some money, and I'd better pay him before I spend it all."

  The sailor laughed, choked, and needed another glass of whiskey. "He was around here just a while ago—I saw him in the head. If he ain't shill here...still here...he's prob'bly gone back to the Duke."

  "Thanks, mate. I'll look around here."

  "Hey, how 'bout another drink with your pal before you go?"

  "Sure," said Illya. "Why not?"

  The photographs of the Russian sailor firmly in his mind, Illya wondered among the tables, staggering slightly, following an apparently random pattern which nevertheless took him near every man in the place. He wound up at the back, where a small partition separated a few tables from the rest of the floor. Alone at one of them, his back to the wall, his eyes roving suspiciously about him, sat his quarry.

  Illya approached him slowly, and waited for the eyes to focus on him. The man was not drunk; he was alert, and obviously on the edge of nervousness. Illya held out a hand to him. "Zdrastvoutye, tovarich Kropotkin."

  "Who are you?" came the answer, also in Russian.

  "Illya Nickovitch Kuryakin. MacKendricks sent me."

  "MacKendricks is dead. Somebody killed him for what he saw. But I saw nothing. Go away."

  "Waleed al-Fadly saw nothing also, but he was killed even before MacKendricks."

  "What do you want with me? I know nothing. Go away."

  "I want to talk to you about Kurt Schneider. The people who killed Mac are after him, and we have to find him before they do."

  "Who are you?"

  "Have you ever heard of the U.N.C.L.E.?"

  "Nyet."

  One of the problems of being a secret organization, thought Illya, and said, "Then it would take too long to explain. But we can protect Kurt, and we must get some information from him."

  "What kind of information? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know anything. Go away."

  Illya shrugged and rose. Either a less direct or a more direct approach to interrogation was called for, and the bar was no place for either. Under the circumstances, he decided to wait and see which opportunity fate offered first.

  He faded into the haze, and took a table where he could watch the door.

  It was almost an hour later when Alexei Kropotkin stumbled through the crowd towards the exit. Two other men were reeling along with him, a total of six legs seeming scarcely enough to support and balance them all. Illya felt a twinge of frustration. Kropotkin backed up by two shipmates would be even less likely to feel coöperative, even if he was still sober enough to talk straight—which seemed doubtful.

  Then Illya wondered carefully. Kropotkin had been rather pointedly alone before, and he didn't look like the type to become suddenly sociable. And he had been nursing a solitary beer. All things considered...

  Illya stood up with studied unsteadiness, dropped some coins on the table and wandered towards the door.

  Outside, fog was coming up from the harbor, and the air was warm and sticky. Illya hurried into direction the three men had turned, trotting on silent rubber-soled feet. Ahead he could hear the clatter of incautious footsteps on the pavement.

  It was late, and the streets were almost deserted. Here and there couples hurried to their various destinations, and occasional solitary figures reeled from doorway to doorway or strode purposefully on unguessable errands. But somewhere ahead, seen dimly through the floating veils of white, two men supporting a third hurried more than drunks would have been expected to. And Illya came behind them, but faster.

  Then the street was empty, and the trio stopped. Illya faded into a shadow just as one of them turned around for a check of the vicinity. A light from somewhere caught an unexpected glitter in the other's hand. Illya propelled himself from hiding, feet pounding across the twenty-odd feet that separated him from the group.

  His sudden appearance caught the two men by surprise, and they dropped their burden. One flashing hand struck the wrist of the knife-wielder, and the blade spun away into the dark. The other was reaching for his own weapon, but a soft shoe caught him in the pit of the stomach and he did a passable imitation of the knife.

  The first man fell back a few steps, tugging at his pocket. Illya stepped forward and took his wrist in a bone-aching grip. "Don't you know it's dangerous to play with knives?" he inquired politely. "Sometimes they slip, and you get cut yourself."

  He twisted at the wrist he held, pulling it out of the pocket, and another knife clattered to the stones. An application of pressure and a foot behind the other's ankles brought him to his knees with a gasp. "Quem mandou você?" he asked. "Who sent you?"

  Shifting his grip to his left hand, he fumbled briefly for the dropped knife. He brought it up slowly, level with the other's eyes. "Somebody paid you to get this particular sailor," he said softly. "Who was it?"

  His subject's mouth remained stubbornly closed, but his eyes were very wide and focused on the point of the knife as it moved slowly back and forth like the swaying head of a coiled cobra.

  "Would you have trouble breathing with your nose split?" asked Illya gently. "Or I could put your eyes out—very slowly. But I wouldn't do that until last." He touched the tip of the blade very lightly to the man's cheek and began to press. "It will be harder to talk when both your cheeks have been opened."

  "No—no! I don't know who he was. A man with dark skin—like an Indio he was. But a strange accent. He paid us good money, and gave us a picture of the man, and his name—a funny name. He just said to take him out and kill him, and make it look like an ordinary street killing. There are many of them."

  Illya considered this. "Where did he find you?"

  "We met in Tiradentes Square. He told some people he needed a job done, and we were the cheapest who applied. It was all cash in advance."

  "And you went ahead with the job after having been paid?"

  "But of course, senhor," said the man, with a trace of injured pride in his voice. "Raul and I are honest men."

  Slowly Illya let the knife down. The story was simple enough to be true, and nothing could be done about it. Tiradentes Square was the most likely spot in Brazil to find bargain-priced murderers, and every agent in the western hemisphere knew it. These scum probably deserved to die the same kind of death they had intended for Kropotkin, but in their world it would come for them soon enough, and unnecessary death was neither his specialty nor part of his assignment. He released the man's wrists and stepped back.

  "All right. You've earned your money. Now get out of here and take your brother with you. He'll feel better in a couple of days."

  The man got slowly to his feet, and spoke hesitantly. "Uh, senhor...My knife?"

  "What?"

  "You have my knife."

  Illya looked at him, wondering if he understood the implication. "That's right."

  "Uh, I would like to have it back. It cost much money. It is a good knife." He gathered a little courage, and held out a hand. "Senhor, my wife would be very angry if I came home without it. She would think I sold it for wine. And I need it—to earn my living with."

  Illya stared at the unsuccessful assassin, and shook his head slowly. "You'd better get started before I give you back your
knife point first. I don't like you."

  "But senhor—you don't know my wife..."

  Illya took a menacing step towards him, and he fell back a pace. "Can you leave it in the alley after we go? I could come back for it later."

  "Go!" shouted Illya angrily, as he felt the beginnings of sympathy rising for this amazingly inept little man, and unwilling to show him any more mercy that absolutely necessary.

  Raul was still moving, down on the pavement some distance away, clutching spasmodically and gasping painfully. The knife-owner helped him to his feet and supported him as they started away. After a few steps he turned once more to say, "You could just toss it back in the alley..."

  Illya cocked his arm to a throwing position, and the two scuttled away into the darkness.

  Bright Brazilian sunlight poured golden across the sofa in the suite at the Leme Palace Hotel, where Illya had brought Alexei Kropotkin the night before. The sailor, with administrations of coffee and thiamine pills, had recovered nicely from the aftereffects of the chloral hydrate he had ingested along with his last beer.

  His two would-be killers had also been impatient to get the job over with, and had taken him along while he was still conscious, but unable to control his movements.

  He nodded in agreement with Illya's comment on his luck. "With two balvani like that, they could as easily have given me too much rather than too little. And then they wouldn't have needed the knives."

  "Did you understand what they were saying?"

  "I could hear them, but I don't know the language. This Portuguese is beyond me except for a few necessary words like cerveja and puta, and they didn't get mentioned."

  Illya had spent most of an hour convincing Alexei of the facts as far as they were known. He even went so far as to tell him about the bomb in his baggage in Capetown, though not so far as to tell him where Napoleon and Suzie had gone. He started to explain about the rocket, but Kropotkin stopped him again. "Nyet. I do not understand, so do not tell me. The less I know of it the happier I shall be."

  "But you do know something," said Illya. "Kurt Schneider talked to you before you all split up in Capetown. Mac had implied there might be trouble about what you had seen..."

  "I saw nothing! Nitchevo!"

  "You saw the Paxton Merchant being blown up by a guided missile, and that is enough. But we must find Kurt Schneider. With MacKendricks dead, he is the only man left who knows where that island is. He must have told you something."

  Kropotkin lay back on the couch, his forearms over his eyes. "We were talking about going our various ways, that last night. We had dinner, all six of us, and after Mac took Suzie back to the hotel, the rest of us went to...well, someplace else for a celebration. We'd been at sea a long time," he said in faint apology, and continued. "There was some trouble at first—they wouldn't let Waleed in on account of his skin, but Kurt and Archie and I told them he was as white a man as ever walked through their dirty doors, and offered to take the whole place apart for them if they tried to keep him out, and they talked it over for a minute and sort of saw it our way." He smiled in memory, and then his face clouded over suddenly. "And then somebody killed him, just like they tried to kill me last night!" He pounded a great fist on the upholstered arm of the sofa, and swore bitterly in Russian. "Svolochi! He was a nice little guy. They didn't have no call to kill him."

  "What did Kurt say about hiding?" Illya asked, after several seconds of silence.

  "Nothing. Archie wanted to know, so we could sort of keep in touch. But Kurt just said he was going down in something. He and Archie spoke German between themselves, mostly, but English with me. He and Archie got to be good friends. Kurt missed Germany as much as I miss Byelorussia, and Archie knew his country well. They would talk for hours about it—I had no one to talk to about my homeland. Then they would remember me, and apologize. But all Kurt ever told me was that he would be hiding under something. I think, maybe like digging a hole down under a rock. That was what he said—he'd be going down under something."

  "Was that all?"

  "I'm afraid so. I owe you a great debt, Illya, and I cannot pay it properly without information—but I have given you all I have."

  Illya shrugged and rose to his feet. "You'd better stay hidden for a while," he said. "Whoever is behind this is not likely to stop until he's sure you're safely out of the way. Do you have someplace to go?"

  Kropotkin nodded. "There is a place on the Santa Rosalia, sailing from Buenos Aires in five days. I can get my gear from the Duke today; these mysterious people will think I am dead for a while anyway when I am not on the ship. And then I shall go under another name. I can get across the border—I have friends in Uruguay—and then I shall disappear. But where can I see you again, my friend? After all, for saving my life I should at least buy you a drink."

  "Look me up if you ever dock in New York," said Illya.

  "New York?" Kropotkin smiled widely. "And are there good Russian restaurants there? I miss the food of my home very much."

  Illya nodded. "Very good ones. But you may be in danger there for some time. I suggest you stay in hiding for several months, and enjoy the foreign food. You would not enjoy the finest piroshki if you swallowed them with a cut throat."

  Kropotkin slapped himself on the chest. "I can take care of myself."

  "Perhaps. But stay out of dark alleys, and don't drink with strangers—even Russians."

  Section II: "They Built Themselves A Monster Wheel..."

  Chapter 5: "Neu-Schloss? Where's That?"

  Two days before Illya Kuryakin fought in a hot, fog-filled alley in Rio de Janeiro, a quarter of the way around the world a young man in a white coat had looked up from a tracking telescope and called to an older man. The strange tone in his voice brought his superior at once.

  "Doctor—here's the source of those signals. It matches the radar trace."

  "Well, what is it?"

  "Uh...I'd rather you looked yourself, sir, before I describe what it looks like to me."

  The old man bent to the eyepiece and touched the focusing control. He stayed there for several seconds, then finally spoke without removing his eye from the telescope. "It looks like a wheel—a monstrous wheel. Turning slowly without a central hub. I can see a pair of opposed spokes. Hmm. It could well be two hundred feet across, as the radar scan indicated."

  "But, Doctor—what is doing there?"

  After several seconds the answer came, distant and distracted. "A good question. A very good question. And one which, in a few days, the world may well be asking. What is it doing there?"

  It was actually four days before photographs and official statements were released to the press of the world—or as much of the world as had a press that could demand such things. The photographs were blurred and grainy, demonstrating the scientific fact of atmospheric interference with serious attempts at astronomical photography, but revealing very little about the thing they called the "Monster Wheel." The statements varied between "No Comment" and "Steps Are Being Taken," neither of which were any more satisfying than the photographs. Flying saucer societies hailed the impending arrival of delegations from their favorite planets. Military men in all parts of the world chewed their nails, and talked to themselves late into the night. "It's got to be Theirs, but why haven't They announced it? And if it's ours, why haven't we announced it, and why haven't they told me? I'm important—I have a right to know these things." The public glanced over their shoulders shortly after sunset, saw a bright fast-moving star, and said, if they noticed it, "Huh! Another satellite. Big one, looks like." And the Monster Wheel said nothing, but twittered and hummed and buzzed on a couple of very high radio frequencies. Nothing could be made of the telemetered signals.

  And in the city of Kowloon, across Victoria Harbour from Hong Kong, Napoleon Solo and Suzie Danz were occupied with the search for a missing sailor.

  They had arrived at Kai Tak airport the same day the Miyako Maru tied up at the Whampoa docks, and had been there to meet h
er. The crew would be given no shore liberty until the task of unloading had been completed, but patience was a virtue Napoleon was cultivating. Unobtrusively, he and Suzie had taken a place near the forward gangplank to scan the faces of the workers on the deck, and to watch them as they left the ship as evening drew on.

  At length the line of men checked out with the first mate at the head of the gangway and the last of them hurried to solid land in search of whatever shore leave held for them. Suzie turned to Napoleon, with a puzzled expression. "Are you sure this was the right ship?"

  Napoleon looked up at the nearest life preserver and read off the characters on it. "Miyako Maru. That's what U.N.C.L.E. intelligence told us. Let's make polite inquiries aboard."

  He swung up the ramp and greeted the mate with the clipboard politely. "We're looking for a friend of mine named Archie Gunderson. Has he gone ashore yet?"

  The mate looked at him suspiciously, and then at his list. "Yah. He go ashore mebbe ten, fifteen minutes ago."

  Napoleon registered disappointment. "I don't suppose he mentioned where he'd be going?"

  "Nah. Dey get der pay, dey go ashore. Mebbe dey come back, mebbe dey don't. How come you want him?"

  "Well, like I said—I'm an old friend of his. We were on the...ah...the Nancy Brig together ten years ago."

  "You don' look like you ever work freight."

  "Well, it's been a long time. Look here," he went on, producing a thousand-yen note, "I'd sure appreciate it if you could find out where he went, or when he'd be back."

  The mate looked at the money without a change of his sour expression. "I tell you he gone—he gone. You want a lie for your money?"

  Napoleon considered this, then reluctantly folded the note back into its hiding place. "Ah...no. But if you see him..."

  "I tell him you look for him."

  "No, don't do that either. I want to surprise him. After all, he hasn't seen me for quite a while." He added a laugh that sounded foolish even to himself, and started down the ramp again. The mate looked after him, then shook his head slightly and returned to the manifests.