The Doomsday Affair

by Harry Whittington

  “I was pleased to leave you a trail visible to your infrared lamps. I wanted you led to me when our hirelings were unable to stop you. I dislike having to say this so bluntly, but I mean to have you stopped. Permanently.”

  “I’ve never suspected your intentions were any less from the moment we met.” Illya shrugged. “I only fail to see why you consider me worthy of so much of your attention.”

  Sam nodded toward the portable bar. “Pour yourself a drink. From any bottle. I assure you, my plans for you do not include the use of some chemist’s trick with no side effects.”

  Illya poured himself a drink. Sam strolled across the room, stood near the balcony watching him.

  He said, “In my life there have been many things I have done that I viewed myself with displeasure. I have not always approved of every action circumstances have forced upon me. Oh, but this is not true here and now with you. I tell you. I feel invigorated and renewed at having you here like this. Your Russian smugness. Your smirk of triumph. You have outwitted three of my agents and the Honolulu police—”

  “You’ll surely grant me that it was a bit more than child’s play—pinched between the forces of an ambitious police lieutenant and three assassins trained to kill on signal like canines? A helicopter picking me off the beach at Waikiki? Why shouldn’t I be permitted some faint satisfaction of accomplishment? What does it take to impress you, Sam?”

  “My father’s people are old,” Sam Su Yan said. “They lived in starvation, in oppression, in famine, flood, in every disaster known to nature and man. They learned a great patience—quite alien to your Russian stolidity. We don’t look to the battles that are won, my young friend, but to the outcome of the war. Does this answer your question?”

  Illya finished off his drink, replaced the glass. “May I present my proposition to you, Sam? It may prove to be worth your while. We are quite aware of your background—even to your effects being found in a plane crash fatal to forty passengers and crew. We did not know that you had gone underground to work for Thrush. We know all this now.”

  Sam met his gaze levelly. “For all you know, I may be Thrush.”

  “You may be. Or you may be an underling with delusions of grandeur—some more of your ancestor-oriented viewing the end results? We are prepared to offer you our protection in exchange for certain cooperation from you.”

  Sam Su Yan laughed.

  His mismated oriental-Texan face worked uncertainly, pulling muscles into play that had almost atrophied from disuse. The sound burst out of him almost like a strange, off-key sob. But it was laughter.

  “May Buddha look out from his celestial home to see the incredible arrogance of this puppy!” Sam laughed again, that tormented, unaccustomed sound. “Do you truly delude yourself that I permitted you to walk into this room so that you might offer me some ridiculous cops-and-robbers trade for turning stool pigeon?”

  Illya shrugged. “I’ve found worse crimes in your dossier.”

  “You’ve found nothing in my record to match what you have permitted yourself to walk into.”

  Sam Su Yan’s face was chilled, the unreconciled parts going hard and waxen. He dropped his glass on the carpeting and slapped his hands together.

  The three men seemed to appear from the woodwork, as silent and as quick as termites.

  Illya recognized one of them as the man who had attacked him with the acid-loaded fountain pen in the Honolulu jail. He supposed the other two were his fellow assassins.

  He shrugged his jacket up on his slender shoulders, but made no other move.

  Sam said, “You’ll forgive me if I’ve grown bored with this depressing exchange. When I heard you had escaped from the island, I entertained the notion that your wits might be stimulating in exchange and conflict. I know better now. You looked better from afar.”

  Sam shook his head and padded about the room in his Texan boots.

  He seemed to forget that Illya was in the room. He went over to the baggage rack and rummaged for a moment inside it. But when he straightened, his hands were empty.

  None of the three guards moved. They continued to poise, like a kill-trained canine corps, their soulless eyes fixed on Kuryakin as if waiting for the one-word signal that meant attack and slaughter.

  Suddenly Sam Su Yan gave the command. He jerked his head toward Kuryakin. “Prepare him.”

  Kuryakin spun on his heel, thrusting his hand under his jacket, snagging at the butt of his U.N.C.L.E. Special. But he could not reach it in time.

  Sam’s assassins sprang upon him without speaking. A hand chopped him across the neck, a hand struck him at the base of his spine, a hand caught him in the groin. Expert hands caught his arms, tore away his jacket and shirt, tossed gun and holster upon the bed.

  A straight chair was pushed in behind Illya. One of the thugs said, “Sit,” and Illya was thrust down upon the chair.

  Illya struggled, and ended with his wrists and ankles secured. They worked smoothly, efficiently, deftly, and then stepped back, standing unmoving, waiting for the next command.

  Illya glanced at Sam. “Surely you have sense enough left to know you can’t get away with killing me—not here in this hotel.”

  Sam walked toward him, his face an ugly mask, expressionless.

  “I don’t need you to remind me that your agents have harried me constantly since I arrived here, that they are aware you are in this hotel, in this hotel room. But I prefer that you permit me to make whatever decisions are necessary concerning you—because I assure you they were laid out great detail long before you arrived here.”

  “You’ll commit a serious blunder by not releasing me at once.”

  “Please!” Sam spoke sharply. “If your men call your room in this hotel, be assured that your voice will answer the telephone. Your voice will assure them that all is proceeding smoothly.”

  He walked back to the bag on the rack, drew from it a syringe and needle. He held it up to the light, forced a drop through the needle and then returned to where Illya sat watching him. “Will you sit quietly, or must you be held? This won’t hurt you as I inject it. It is in fact a discovery of our chemists, and I wish I could assure you it had no side effects. But”—his mouth pulled into a faint smile of pride—“I can’t do that. I must tell you, as a matter of fact, that it is a matter of quite unpleasant side-effects.”

  “Drugged,” Illya said in contempt. “Carried out in the dark. What high-quality intellect devised this hoary scheme, Sam?”

  “Unfortunately for you, I’m afraid you’ll discover nothing hoary or old-hat in this. It’s never been done quite this way—in fact this particular nerve stimulant has never been tested on human beings, my young guinea pig. In the lab it has created some exciting results. I suggest you not be contemptuous until we learn who wins the war. Eh?” He lifted his eyes, spoke to the guards. “Subdue him.”

  Sam held the hypodermic needle in his hand, but he could not resist a final boast as the men held Illya’s inner arm open to the injection.

  “We are not unsubtle enough to kill you and leave your body here to draw local and international police, my friend. What we are accomplishing is much too important, and much too secret for such resulting publicity. I assure you, we have better and more long-range plans for you than this.”

  As he spoke, he injected the point of the needle into the collateral radial artery from the parent trunk of the profunda brachii, inside the elbow joint. “Slowly,” Sam said. “This is accomplished slowly, Mr. Kuryakin. No thrust of needle and spurt of solution. This takes a little time. You will be patient, won’t you, Mr. Kuryakin?”

  III

  THE DC-7 DRONED soothingly at thirty-seven thousand feet, with churning thunderheads like a broken wall between plane and the California mountains where bandits and tireless padres had marched, above the dark and choppy bay where sea wolves once hoved in from plundering to shanghai a fresh crew from the hills of the town between the bay and the ocean.

  Solo smiled wryly at the thou
ght that San Francisco hadn’t changed much; the violence and the excitement was still down there in the gaudy lights and the impenetrable dark. He even remembered that during the war when his outfit had been awaiting transport to Korea, the men had been futilely warned against the gin mills of Mason Street, the friendly natives who’d insist on buying drinks. “Don’t drink with your own brother if he’s been in San Francisco longer than three years—and you haven’t seen him in that time.” And there was the theme song of embittered sailors: I left my wallet in San Francisco, high upon some dark and windy alley…

  Solo put the thoughts of his past out of his mind. He knew San Francisco as an exciting town where pulses quickened and life took a new edge. Paris of the new world. An old cliché, but with all the truth of the tritest platitude.

  He buckled his seat belt as the plane put down through the thick smoking of the clouds, gliding upon the runway.

  He came off the plane with the forty other travel-mussed passengers, trying to blend in with the crowd despite his purpled eye and the strong premonition of deadly danger ahead for him in this spirited town he loved.

  He returned the stewardess’ warm smile, and recalled his promise to call that number she’d printed for him on the inside of a match folder if he got five free minutes in town during the next three days.

  There was a scented perfection to her specifications, and he experienced a moment of regret because he knew in advance that he would not have five minutes he could call his own for a long time.

  Solo glanced over his shoulder and she waved to him from the plane exit way, and he knew with a faint sadness that he’d never see her again.

  He paused at the car-rental desk and collected the keys for the Chevrolet convertible that had been reserved in his name. He saw a slender man in a gray suit lower a newspaper when he spoke his name at the desk, and straighten as the girl repeated it. The man folded his newspaper deliberately and with an unhurried stride went to the row of public phone booths and entered one, closing it behind him. He watched Solo narrowly across the administration building to the parking area.

  Solo drove at fifty miles an hour in the suburban traffic on roads that sang wetly from the recent rain. The air was bracing, the flow of traffic was a challenge that alerted tired senses, and the memory of the sudden rains that struck the Bay Area stirred more old memories.

  He left his keys with the doorman at the St. Francis hotel, stood a moment listening to the luring call of the evening traffic, seeing the lights and the elegantly dressed women. He checked into the room that had been reserved for him. He prowled it a moment, anxious to be out of it and on his way as if he were a hunter with the scent of prey nagging at him.

  In the street again, he rejected the idea of getting out the car. A man stalked these hills, hearing the rattle of the cable cars, seeing the streets forking out like spokes from a hub, drinking in the excitement of the strange race of inhabitants of this place. Night in San Francisco! Solo heaved a deep sigh and strode faster, going down Market Street toward the Embarcadero.

  He paused on the walk, aware of people passing him on both sides, the clatter of sounds, the winking of the lights on the purple and orange neon: THE HUNGRY PUSSYCAT. Up Three Flights.

  He walked up those three flights and entered the padded doors. The hysterical clatter of sound washed out around him.

  He saw the bored faces of male and female lined like crows along the padded bar, the disenchanted bartenders moving behind it, the dark mirrors, the damp smell of liquor. Music was loud, with that muffled tone of poor acoustics. The small dance space was crowded, and here and there were military uniforms to remind one that the cold war was with him, and that this frantic city was still the port of the Pacific.

  He ordered a Cutty Sark Scotch and ice at the bar and then turned with it in his hand toward the place where the largest crowd was knotted. He would have been more than mildly astonished to see that this was a goldfish pool if Heather McNab had not briefed him so thoroughly at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters less than nine hours ago…

  “There she is, swimming down there. Looks like one of the goldfish, doesn’t she?”

  “Except the goldfish are up here and she’s in a tank in the basement.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “You don’t really think she’s swimming around naked in there with those goldfish, do you?”

  “So what’s with being naked? She’s no bigger than one of the goldfish,” a woman said.

  “Honey, she looks better like that than a lot of us do!”

  “How do they do that? Make it look like she’s swimming around with the goldfish?”

  “Honey, it’s all done with mirrors.”

  “You know that’s what’s wrong with life? Everything. Everything is done with mirrors.”

  “Barbry Coast. That’s what she calls herself. Look at her! I wonder what her real name is?”

  Solo turned away from the fish pond, wondering if there would be any glamor left if they knew as he did that the nude swimmer’s real name was Esther Kappmyer.

  “Esther Kappmyer? Sure, that’s my name, but what does that prove?” She stared at Solo from the fluffy concealment of a terry-cloth robe.

  “It proves you’re the one I’ve been looking for,” Solo said, leaning back in the only chair in her closet-sized dressing room in the building basement.

  “What do you want with me?” She scrubbed at her dark, wave-rich hair with a bright red towel. He knew from his mirrored view of her that she was a thoughtfully designed young woman, and he saw that nothing improved her looks as much as being near her. And he saw something else. She was a frightened young female. Her dark violet eyes were haunted with something she never talked about, probably tried never to think about—the kind of fear that one never escaped, no matter how fast she ran or how often she changed her name.

  “I never date customers, mister,” she said.

  Solo gave her a smile that he hoped might reassure her. “I’m afraid my business with you is more serious than the pleasant prospect of a date with you. Do you know a girl named Ursula Baynes?”

  Her eyes widened and her body tensed beneath the robe. She swallowed hard, tilted her chin. “What about her?”

  “Ursula Baynes and Candy Kane. A dance act employing a silver whip. It played a lot of the larger clubs, and before it broke up it seemed to concentrate on the areas near sensitive military or missile centers.”

  “We used to have an act together; what about it? And we used to use silver whips. It’s not what we want, mister, it’s what the public will buy.”

  “I’m not here to censure you. I thought maybe you might be willing to talk to me about Ursula.”

  She batted at her head with the heel of her hand, saying, “I’m water-logged.” She appeared to be busy getting her body dried and warm. But Solo had seen these signs before—she was attempting to cover up how upset she was, how nervous she had become since he’d mentioned Ursula.

  He said, “She’s dead. You know that, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “What do you want me to tell you, Mister—what’s your name? Solo? That’s about as believable as mine—Barbry Coast. That has a certain nothing, don’t you think?”

  “How well did you know her?”

  Barbry Coast tossed her head. “Look. I don’t want to talk about her. She’s dead. What can it help to talk about her now?”

  “You’re not afraid that what happened to her—might happen to you?”

  He saw her wince. He saw the way she shivered beneath that robe, but she forced a laugh. “Why should it?”

  “I don’t know. Why should it have happened to her?”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe Ursula got mixed up in something that was bad news. In her way she was a kook. I don’t know what it is you want to hear from me. I don’t even want to know, because what happened to Ursula could happen to me.”

  “Is that what you’re afraid of, Barbry?”

  She tri
ed to laugh. “Who’s afraid? I always shake like this. That water’s cold.”

  “If you’ll trust me—if you’ll answer some questions the best you know, I’ll protect you.”

  She shivered, her violet eyes fixed on his. Her chin tilted slightly. “You know what? Those are probably the exact words you said to Ursula.”

  Solo didn’t speak. After a moment, Barbry said, “I’ll tell you this much. If the man who ordered Ursula’s death decided to kill me, no one could protect me.”

  Solo stood up. He crossed the narrow space to where the girl stood, looking small and helpless wrapped in the thick robe.

  “You do know the man, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Is that why you’re scared to breathe?”

  “It’s nothing to you.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Barbry. This is a serious business. Deadly. We don’t even know yet how bad it is, only that the plot is urgent enough to have involved a personal adviser to the president of this country.”

  “What’s that got to do with me? I’m just trying to make a buck—and stay alive.”

  “A lot of other people want to stay alive, too, Barbry. Their lives may depend on what you can tell me—if you will.”

  “Why do you think I know anything at all?” Her voice rose and she shook her head wildly. He saw the shadows of hysteria swirling in the depths of her violet eyes. “You know the man who killed Ursula—who ordered her death.”

  “No! I don’t!”

  “You know him. And you know why he wanted Ursula killed. And you’ve lived in terror since the moment you heard she was dead—”

  “Let me alone!” Her voice lifted, shaking.

  Solo caught her arms, gripping her gently and yet firmly. Her lips quivering, the hysteria building in her, she tried to break free. She could not.