DeVry strode out of the perimeter of Solo’s vision, and then after a moment walked restlessly back.
“I was rated a security risk! Do you hear that? I was rated a security risk. The very fact that I was a security risk triggered a witch-hunt in Washington that dug down to the levels of generals, colonels, and majors in all the branches of the military! Me. Every day, half my life devoted, sacrificed, spent in behalf of the president, and through him this stupid, senseless, ungrateful country. Make a profit. Make a profit. Use all influential power—and discard those who don’t have it.
“Sure, the president kept me on. Politics demanded it. Security demanded it. And I was his friend. But I was now classified as a security risk, and doors that had always been open to me were suddenly closed. Now, after twenty-five years of sacrifice, I was nothing more than a flunkey fetching coffee and bringing in non-classified notes.
“I was a risk—and I could not have the job I wanted more than anything on earth, the job that the president himself had promised me. I had made one mistake—one bad judgment, years before—and it doomed me, no matter how loyal I’d been in all the years since then, no matter how hard I had worked!
“Well, I am a man of pride, and I cannot live with that wrong. It will be avenged!”
“Thank God you didn’t get the post as head of the C.I.A.,” Solo said fervently.
DeVry strode toward him. Solo saw the rage swirl in his eyes, saw the terrible self-control the man exercised to keep from kicking him in the face. His foot lifted, trembled, and his mouth worked.
After a moment DeVry spoke calmly. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The C.I.A. won’t mean much after today, Mr. Solo.”
IV
SOLO WATCHED DeVry turn as a door whispered open across the room.
Barbry entered first. Solo could see her face. She looked ill with fright. Her cheeks were pallid, and her eyes were wild, like some frantic animal’s.
Illya stepped in next. His gaze flew about the room, sizing it up, and then he saw Solo. He forgot Su Yan, DeVry, the guards. He crossed the room swiftly, kneeling beside Solo.
“You’re alive.” Illya’s voice conveyed his relief.
“Just about,” Solo said.
“A temporary condition for the three of you,” Su Yan said.
A guard caught Illya by the collar and jerked him around. Illya came upward on his toes, and kept turning, bringing his extended hand upward into the guard’s stomach. The man gave a little sob of agony and bent double, dropping his gun.
Illya lunged for it, and Su Yan permitted him to get his hands on it before he karate-chopped him across the neck. Illya plunged straight down, landing hard on his face, his arms thrust out before him.
“Heroics,” Su Yan said in contempt. “A kind of illness with these people.”
“If you’ve killed him before he makes that call to his superior,” Osgood DeVry said, “you may live to regret your own heroics.”
Su Yan frowned slightly, then shook his head. “No. I’ll call Dr. Calyort in and have him happy to talk in minutes.”
But as Su Yan turned toward the telephone on the conference table, lights flashed and then dimmed. Su Yan and DeVry straightened, glancing at each other.
“The device is being removed to the lift,” Su Yan said.
“We have flight time to make the call.”
The two guards left the room ahead of DeVry. The man whom Illya had attacked still walked slightly doubled over, but carried his weapon again.
Su Yan lifted Illya, placed him in a chair, secured his hands behind him and left him there, unconscious.
“I’m afraid we have bad news for you, Solo,” Su Yan said. “We have reached the decision that you are expendable—ahead of the operation. We need only the voice of one of you, and we have determined that Kuryakin, despite his tendency to reckless acts, will be the easiest to control. I hope you will believe me when I tell you how sorry I am that I won’t be seeing you again.”
Solo did not speak, watching him.
Su Yan caught Barbry by the arm, leading her toward one of the cylinders lined on the far wall. Watching them, Solo saw how the nerve gas had been pumped to him through a small rubber tubing that ran along the baseboard to the fireplace.
“A nerve gas here that should interest you, Solo,” Su Yan said. He paused when the lights dimmed again. “Developed by our own scientists and chemists. The effect is much like that of hypnosis. The subject remains in a waking-sleep state, as in hypnosis. As in hypnosis she is not aware of what she is doing while she is under its effects. And unlike hypnosis, the so-called moral censor is not at work. The subject follows only those orders given her while she is going under—and there is not the danger of morals or conscience as a deterrent. She is literally unable to do anything except follow those orders. I’m sure this is going to prove most interesting to you.”
The lights dimmed again and Su Yan hurried himself slightly. When Barbry opposed him, trying to break free, he drew his arm back and almost struck her. At the last moment he controlled his rage. Instead of hitting her, he simply stared down at her and spoke no more than three or four whispered words. Barbry no longer offered any resistance.
He sat her down in a chair beside one of the cylinders. He placed a rubber cup firmly over her mouth and nose, holding it in place. He turned the valve on the cylinder. There was a whisper of sound, the sibilant hiss of gas.
Solo strained to move his body, but found himself still in that state of physical paralysis. He saw that Su Yan was not using this same gas on Barbry.
His low voice struck at Barbry. “I am going to leave a knife with you, Barbry. Do you understand?”
Solo saw that the girl’s eyes were open. There was no longer any terror in them. Her blinking seemed to indicate to Su Yan that she still heard him, still understood him. He glanced at the needle on the cylinder gauge.
Satisfied that the flow of gas was slow, steady, adequate, Su Yan spoke again: “When I am out of the room, Barbry, you will kill Napoleon Solo there on the floor. You will strike between the shoulder blades. Once. Twice. Three times. You will make certain he is dead before you use the knife on yourself. You will drive the knife upward through your solar plexus into your heart.” Solo, in horror, heard Su Yan calmly repeat these instructions in that same unemotional tone. He could see Barbry’s face, and he saw there was no recoiling, no revulsion in her eyes. He could not tell if she understood Su Yan, but the thin, tall man appeared satisfied. He reached over and turned off the valve; the whispering hiss of gas ceased.
He stood another moment with the rubber cup in place over Barbry’s nose and mouth. Then he set the cup in its holder. He drew a glitteringly sharp knife from his inner jacket pocket He placed it firmly in Barbry’s grasp, folding her fingers over the handle, pressing them closed, watching her narrowly as he worked.
Su Yan stepped back and Barbry sat there, staring straight ahead, the knife clasped firmly in her fist.
Su Yan watched her a moment and then nodded, apparently satisfied. The building lights dimmed again.
He turned, moving toward the door, paused, glancing at Solo on the floor.
“Goodbye, Mr. Solo.” Su Yan stared at him. If it will comfort you, I can assure you that you and Esther Kappmyer will be found dead in your room at the St. Francis Hotel.”
“Somehow there’s no comforting thought there,” Solo said.
“When it happens,” Su Yan said, “Washington, D.C. will be only atomic rubble, and World War III will be under way.”
“Too bad you haven’t reason enough left to see what will happen when hydrogen bombs are used.”
Su Yan had turned toward the door; now he heeled around angrily.
“We can build well on the ruin of this world—and small loss. Other civilizations have grown out of the rubble of those before them.”
“If you say so.”
“Don’t fight it so,” Su Yan said with a chilled smile. “You have the comforting thought that you gave your lif
e in an heroic effort to avert what you see as a catastrophe.’
Now Solo laughed. “I wonder what comforting thought you will find, Su Yan, when you finally realize that the catastrophe is more immense than your imagination can contain—when there is nothing left for you to rule? I’ve always wondered what thoughts are comforting to an international fink.”
Su Yan gripped the door until his knuckles whitened. Obviously he fought a battle against his fiery desire to stride back across the room and finish off Solo.
Whatever he might have done, the thought was wiped away as the lights dimmed one more time. He glanced, as if for the final check, at Solo helpless on the floor, at Illya bound and unconscious in a straight chair, and Barbry seated with that gleaming six-inch knife gripped tightly in her fist.
This still-life pleased him entirely, and he gave a small nod of satisfaction before he stepped through the door and closed it behind him.
The thundering of noises rumbled through the air ducts under the ceiling of the room: Forcing himself to keep his gaze away from Barbry and the knife in her hand, Solo concentrated on the cabinets along the far walls, seeing weaponry, masks and ammunition as well as cylinders of several types of gasses. Every attack weapon he would need to stop DeVry and Su Yan—only feet away from him, and yet they might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
Barbry stirred, and Solo jerked his eyes back to her. The chair scraped as she stood up.
He said, keeping his voice level, unemotional, “Don’t move, Barbry. Stay where you are.”
She stood up slowly, her gaze fixed on his vulnerable back. She stared at him, but he knew that she had not heard a word he had said. She was conditioned against any thought except that of murder and suicide implanted in her mind by Samuel Su Yan.
V
FOLLOWED BY two guards, Su Yan strode along the corridor to the elevator marked Private. He stepped into it and, with his guards, slipped quickly down into the white-walled laboratory where the atomic device had been assembled and was now being loaded for the upward ride to the field where it would be placed in the bomb-bay of the sleek silver fan-jet.
As Su Yan left the elevator, he saw only one man in the metallically lighted area who seemed relaxed. This was Colonel Baker, the renegade pilot who had hired out to make delivery, as specified, of one atomic device. Su Yan stared at the man; he lounged, drinking a beer, while his payload was being painstakingly carted via narrow rail over the seventy or eighty feet of floor space to the specially rigged open elevator.
Su Yan wondered if the arrogant adventurer had looked beyond that moment when he would dump his atomic payload as contracted.
Su Yan’s mouth twisted. There was not the least doubt in his mind that Colonel Baker would make the delivery. It was more than the flat fee of one million dollars that was to be paid before the plane took off this morning. It was the challenge that would carry Baker through that strike. The tougher the going got for him at the zero-hour, the greater would be the flier’s determination and pleasure in making the strike.
Still, Su Yan wondered what sort of irresponsible man the colonel had to be to miss the most important aspect of the whole matter. He was going to have a million dollars—but where was he going to spend it? Perhaps he had thought of that, and maybe the promise of one more war fought in the air had outweighed all other considerations for him. No one would ever know what he was thinking as he stood, richly tailored, immaculate, and still slightly hung over, awaiting the fateful loading of his biggest payload.
Su Yan walked to the place where Osgood DeVry stood with several other men—scientists, engineers, technicians, guards, all inspecting the manually operated series of winches, cables and chains that would operate the open lift.
Su Yan told himself that DeVry was going to find fault, and he was not disappointed.
“What’s wrong with electric power to operate the lift?” he asked. “They run all the other elevators.”
Su Yan pointed, with infinite Oriental patience, at the small ratchet turning with each click of the smallest wheel in the series. “The lift can be operated from here with the touch of a finger. Another flick of the smallest finger drops this ratchet into the cog wheels, instantly stopping the lift. We can know what’s happening down here, but not above. We had to prepare for every contingency—including attack, power failure, accident. The engineers must have warned you that this atomic device is jerry-built to say the least. We have tried to measure to the least decibel the amount of sound or movement that might activate it, but it is only an educated guess. We are handling it with every care until we get it loaded on your pilot’s plane. After that,” Su Yan shrugged. “Delivery is his problem.”
Colonel Baker laughed. “Load it up, Ace. I’ve delivered eggs through hurricanes without breaking a one of them.”
VI
SOLO’S FRANTIC mind ordered every muscle in his body to move—any movement at all. Watching Barbry rise from her chair with the knife gleaming in her taut fist, he felt his senses boil as adrenalin coursed into his bloodstream.
His order was not a complete failure. But the response he did elicit was worse than failing, more demoralizing. Wasn’t there faint movement, return of life to his toes? He stared at his fingers, seeing them flex, but nothing more than a tremor. It was slow, too slow, like the movement of that part of an iceberg below the surface of some frozen sea.
Operation Doomsday continued unchecked. The noises from below came like taunting sounds from the channels of the air ducts: the pulse of engines, the distant turn of metal wheels on iron tracks, the whirring rasps of winches and cables.
Across the room Illya stirred, straightening his head from his shoulder. He came awake painfully slowly. At first when Solo cried out his name, Illya didn’t respond, still too drugged with pain and dulled with his forced sleep.
“Illya! Listen to me!”
Across the room, Illya sat straighter, a flicker of light showing in his eyes. Solo called out again, urgently.
“Illya. Wake up, Illya!”
Illya stirred, his head came up and his eyes focused.
He saw Barbry, the gleaming knife, the direction of her intent gaze, and read in that instant the grave danger to Solo.
He tried to come up off the chair, but the bonds stopped him, yanking him back down. The chair scraped on the tile flooring, but not even this sudden sound penetrated Barbry’s consciousness. She did not even hear it.
“Barbry!” Illya called. “Barbry. Over here!”
It was no good. She did not hear his voice any more than she had heard the abrupt scraping of his chair. As far as Barbry knew in that moment, only she, Solo, the knife and her orders to kill existed.
Barbry walked toward Solo slowly, with the careful, wooden manner of a sleepwalker.
She raised the knife to shoulder-level and she kept it there as she walked.
She was looking fixedly at Solo. Solo told himself there was infinite sadness in those deep violet eyes. But common sense warned him this was illusion. Her gaze was intent upon him, but there was no emotion in it—the intense concentration was upon that vulnerable place where she’d strike with that knife between his shoulder blades.
“She can’t kill like this—even in hypnosis!” Illya said, working with the bonds securing his wrists.
“She’s not in hypnosis,” Solo said, wriggling his fingers, squirming his toes within his shoes, sweating because the return of his senses was slow, too slow. “It’s a nerve gas. She’s like a robot, programmed to kill, and that’s all she knows.”
“They haven’t missed a trick,” Illya said, struggling.
Solo stared at Illya on that chair. Like the weaponry in the cabinets, Illya was so near, yet impossibly far away.
He saw Illya interpret the question in his eyes. Could he break out of those fetters in time?
Illya made no effort to deceive him. He shook his head. Though his wrists bled, he could not work his hands free, not in time.
Time. Solo
saw the next fateful step made by the feet shod in patent-leather pumps, high heels, the trim ankles.
He did not look higher; he was staring at Illya, at the cabinets of weaponry. Illya was not going to work free in time to stop Barbry. But perhaps this wasn’t as important as what he might accomplish when he was free.
Illya at least had a chance to alert U.N.C.L.E. in time to avert an international catastrophe. Even if he, Solo, died here, Illya still could make it.
Solo pitched his voice at an unemotional level, staring at Illya. “No matter what happens, to me and to Barbry, don’t let it slow you down. Right now, below us, they’re loading an atomic device that will be dropped on Washington, D.C. The destruction there will be tremendous—but it will only be the beginning, if it starts an atomic war.
“There are some things you must do, Illya. In order to accomplish them, find the camera eye of the closed-circuit television in this room. Smash it. Then arm yourself from that row of cabinets. Somehow you’ve got to get out of here, and somehow you’ve got to get word to Waverly. Time has run out, Illya. They’re loading the device right now.”
“I’ll do it,” Illya said. His voice shook with the savagery of his working to free himself.
Solo felt the toe of a sleek slipper strike his face. He stared at the shoe, and with the inconsistency occurs in moments of extreme danger, he realized that he could see his reflection in the slick surface of those slippers—his helpless body mirrored there.
It occurred to him that he could watch himself being killed.
He felt his pulses quicken, the increased beat of his heart, the adrenalin fed uselessly into his system. All his senses were keenly alert to this final danger. But he was unable to move.
She stood above him a moment, not moving because she had walked as far as she could.
The lights in the room dimmed, flickered. A new sound raged up through the air ducts. Solo recognized it because he had been listening for it. The large elevator, especially constructed for this one mission, was slowly grinding into motion, lifting the atomic device to ground level.
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