His companion walked, or rather appeared to ooze, forward. He was Chinese, with a bald, shining pate. He weighed close to four hundred pounds. The white planter's suit which he wore resembled a tent. His four yellow chins all but hid his necktie.
The jolly fat man's look was deceptive. Solo knew it the moment his gaze met the Oriental's blubber- socketed eyes boring into his.
"It will not be long before your services are required, Major," the huge man said. He spoke in an asthmatic wheeze, resting the palms of his hands on his immense paunch. "You are Solo and you are Kuryakin, eh? Well, I have heard of you both. Perhaps you have heard of me also. General Weng, at your service. Forgive me for appearing in mufti.
"I am about to depart from Hong Kong to conduct a major test of this apparatus you see before you. I will be taking off from the airstrip within the hour. But I did not want you to arrive without being properly greeted."
General Weng moved round the table. His right hand closed over Solo's forearm. Through the wool of the holy robe, the fingers cut viciously into Solo's flesh. He had to fight to keep his face from cracking with pain. General Weng increased the pressure.
"After all, Mr. Solo, it was you and your associate who disrupted our first full-scale test of the storm machine."
"Well, I'm sorry about that," Solo said. The pain from the pressure of the fat fingers brought dizziness. With a gasp Solo added, "It's just that I've always had this silly thing about thunder and lightning -"
Illya recognized Solo's plight. He raised a diversion: "How does it happen, General Weng, that an officer so highly placed in the Red Chinese regime becomes a tool of THRUSH?"
The general released Solo, who rocked back on the balls of his feet, pale. The general held his paunch once more.
"Long ago, Kuryakin, I realized that the so-called plans of the Chinese leaders for world conquest were ill conceived. Mao is an addlepated poet surrounded by weaklings and sycophants. They will destroy themselves. They are not to be taken seriously. THRUSH, on the other hand, will achieve its goal of total domination."
"If you don't think the Chinese are serious," Solo said, "I'd hate to hear what you're cooking up."
Dr. Dargon sucked noisily on one of his pointed front teeth. "By all means tell him, General."
The general laid his hand on top of the generator box. He stroked it with an almost sensual pleasure. "I am sure the significance of our current plan will be lost on these two peasants who have been duped into aiding you, Mr. Solo. But perhaps you and Kuryakin can appreciate it. Two important nations in the Asian bloc have recently found their relations menaced by rising tensions. A number of border incidents have resulted. Skirmish fire between their troops. A few deaths on each side. The tensions have increased to the point where war threatens. Such a war could plunge Asia, and the entire globe, by escalation, into a holocaust."
Illya's expression was unpleasant. "Horror makes you THRUSH people so cheerful."
General Weng chuckled and held his paunch. "Naturally. THRUSH is holding the high
cards."
Solo noticed that Mei had regained her composure. With her father's arm around her waist, she digested Weng's remarks. Solo was in the dark about everything except the need to escape. He got busy checking the layout of the large chamber.
A railed concrete ramp led upward from the floor along the one wall. Two THRUSH guards with full battle dress manned this exit, over which a red bulb flashed intermittently. The prisoners had been brought down a similar ramp on the room's opposite side. As far as Solo could tell, the command center had no other exits.
Weng peeled back his white suit cuff. He consulted a highly capitalistic platinum wristwatch. "Time is short. You will understand," he said, "that I cannot participate in the amenities this occasion demands, much as I would wish." Weng's small eyes shone with amusement. "Major Otako is competent to handle them, however."
"And I will assist," Dr. Dargon added with a somewhat maniacal cackle. "My work is complete. Oh, yes, finished. My precious -" A pat of the black generator box "- is now in the hands of my co-officer in THRUSH. We have a delightfully effective test planned for this unit. The unit, incidentally, is of triple capacity, considering the one aboard the jet plane as our basis for rating. How fortunate, don't you agree, that we have an opportunity to conduct a large-scale experiment and reap practical rewards at the same time?"
"What are you talking about?" Solo asked.
General Weng feigned bewilderment. "Why, Mr. Solo, don't you know? As students of - not to say meddlers in - world affairs, are you not aware that the two nations I alluded to a moment ago are even now convening secretly in Hong Kong to try to settle their differences around the conference table before Asia is plunged into war? The conferees arrived yesterday in the Crown Colony via ordinary commercial aircraft. They will be meeting in the Hotel Hong Kong International, ostensibly as delegates to the Seminar on Asian Cultural Resources. That is merely a blind, to allow them to hold the conference on neutral territory. We have ways of knowing these things."
General Weng turned to study one of the huge television monitors on the wall. Its camera sent back a sharp picture of the black building above ground, which the U.N.C.L.E. agents had guessed to be a hangar. The hangar door was shut tight. But the screen showed a uniformed figure operating some sort of switch box alongside the great door.
A technician from the monitor board strode up and saluted. "General, your aircraft will be on the ready line in five minutes."
Weng nodded. He snapped his fingers. Two THRUSH men rushed to the table. One was wheeling a steamer trunk equipped with casters. The other carried a bulging suitcase.
The technicians loaded the generator into the trunk. Then they packed the switch belt in among the several folded suits of tent-like size. These disappeared as the technician shut and latched the grip. Weng beamed at his luggage, which was colorfully decorated with travel decals.
"Just a happy-go-lucky tourist on a holiday." Weng wheezed with delight and massaged his paunch. "I shall set up our perfected storm generator and produce the most violent weather Hong Kong has ever experienced. Total devastation. The hotel and those at the conference will be destroyed. Then I shall remove certain secret, key parts from the equipment and let the shells be found. They will bear unmistakable markings. When found, the equipment will be immediately identified as the property of the secret service of one of the nations attending the conference. Immediately –" Weng gestured flamboyantly "- total war."
"And THRUSH will be left to pick up the pieces?" Solo grated.
"Yes, isn't that splendid?" Dr. Dargon made unpleasant juicy noises as he sucked his front tooth. His eyes moved like darting fish behind his lenses. "The test will place THRUSH in the position of being able to successfully submit its demands to every government on the globe. Those demands will call for total surrender. And when nations face devastation by hurricanes, floods, blizzards, parching droughts - surrender will be both total and prompt."
The technician said, "General? The aircraft -"
"Yes, I'll be on my way. Good day to all of you. Dr. Dargon, Major Otako, I leave our guests to your tender ministrations."
And, with a potentate's magnificence, General Weng lifted his chin and marched toward the ramp.
Solo sidled near Illya. He hoped to whisper a code word. He had to alert Illya to what he was planning. A desperate course, naturally.
General Weng had already reached the base of the ramp. THRUSH functionaries followed him, one carrying the decal-decorated suitcase, the other pushing the trunk. Each wore a holstered pistol.
The light above the ramp doors changed from red to amber. Then it showed green and stopped blinking. Solo inched closer to Illya.
Major Otako whacked Illya viciously on the right wrist with his swagger stick. "Keep a suitable distance between you!"
Solo would never have a chance to communicate with Illya now. From the corner of an eye he observed the TV monitor scanning the hangar. The screen s
howed a sleek, unmarked four-engine THRUSH turbo-jet taxiing forward. Solo took the action the moment required.
He spun on the ball of his foot, catching a last glimpse of the monitor camera as it panned to follow the turbo-jet out to the loading ramp.
"Stand still!" Major Otako shouted as Solo moved.
The U.N.C.L.E. agent spun, yanked the swagger stick from the hand of the astonished officer, and bashed him over the nose. Blood spurted. Otako howled and reeled backwards. Solo shoved his hand into the voluminous folds of his holy robe.
The THRUSH searchers had not been quite thorough enough. A couple of items had gone undetected. Solo pulled out one of those now, thumbing the clip on the combination ball point pen and anti-personnel weapon.
A deadly lime-colored cloud of 14-4 tranquilizer gas sprayed over the THRUSH soldiers and technicians who were charging him from the left.
"Down, Illya!" Solo shouted. The younger agent flattened, dragging Ah Lan and Mei with him. Solo kept spinning like a top. The swath of greenish gas trailed around him in a circle.
One THRUSH minion leveled his machine pistol at Solo's neck. He caught a whiff of the gas. He grinned foolishly and fainted away.
Alarm sirens warbled. Scarlet lights danced on the console boards. The huge iron doors to the ramp where the prisoners had entered clanged open. Fresh THRUSH reinforcements charged in, bumbling against one another in their eagerness to be the first to shoot. But the greenish gas had made vision difficult. Solo seized Illya's shoulder.
"We've got to stop that plane! Follow me!"
Quickly Illya helped Mei and a struggling Ah Lan to their feet. He threw his woolly-robed arm across his mouth and nose by way of demonstration. "Cover your faces when we go out through the ring of gas. Now run!" And he followed Solo, who was already charging toward the ramp.
The guards at the head of the ramp sighted their rifles at him. Solo wrestled with the folds of his robe. He had to hold his skirts up with one hand and hunt for what he wanted with the other.
He found it. The rifles of the guards crashed. A bullet whizzed past his head, tugging at the earflap of his hat. Solo flung the globular pellet he had taken from a concealed pocket in his robe.
The pellet went pong on the iron doors. Then the ramp heated up to an unbearable temperature. Solo ran straight ahead into the billowing, steamy clouds. Sweat popped out on his face. His cheeks felt parboiled. But in seconds the effect diminished.
Solo pulled up short in front of the doors. They had melted in their frames and now resembled puddles of metal margarine. Both THRUSH guards were dead, boiled alive by the thermal device. One had stood a bit too close. The white bone of his skull leered.
Beyond the doors the corridor ran on to an elevator. General Weng was struggling with his wheeled steamer trunk and his valise. Finally he crammed them inside. A moment later the doors snapped shut.
Nearer to Solo, the two THRUSH functionaries who had been assisting Weng had turned back. They each went to one knee, sighting their pistols. Solo tossed his second and last thermal pill. Heat and steam vapor and shrieks of agony filled the corridor.
About to jump over the superheated metal of the melted doors, Solo jerked up short. He whirled.
"Illya?" The shout of alarm was out before he saw what had happened.
On this side of the chamber, the only threats had been the door guards. On the other side, the THRUSH reinforcements were advancing warily toward the greenish fumes which hung like a mammoth smoke ring in the air. Charging through that smoke, Ah Lan had evidently been overcome despite the precaution of holding his arm across his face. He had fallen. In the thick of the smoke Illya and Mei were bending over the prostrate old man.
They were inhaling too much of the gas. Illya staggered. He wigwagged his arm vaguely in Solo's direction.
"Go - on, Napoleon. Can't make it. The old man is -" Illya corkscrewed to the floor, his humanitarian efforts having undone him. Mei collapsed on top of him. The THRUSH soldiers across the room let out a bay of triumph.
Solo remained at the top of the ramp for one tortured moment. In that moment his emotions rebelled against his training. Of necessity, training won. With a choked curse he turned his back on the control chamber and ran.
He tried to wipe the sight of Illya's stricken face from his mind as he pounded up the corridor to the elevator. The sirens wailed insanely.
How much time had passed? Was the plane already taking off? Solo hit the elevator's call switch, waited, prayed.
The THRUSH officers yelled as they charged through the tranquilizing gas, uniform sleeves covering their mouths and eyes. Solo wanted to go back to the chamber, fight and die in the attempt to rescue Illya. Yet he knew that he had no choice but to go the other way. Should General Weng reach Hong Kong with the storm generator, war would be unleashed. Solo had a higher allegiance than that which he owed to Illya. The name of it was U.N.C.L.E.
Machine pistols began to stutter. Solo ducked, dived, dodged. The elevator doors opened. He leaped inside. Bullets stitched a pattern up and down the rear wall of the cage as the doors banged shut.
Panting, Solo leaned against the side of the elevator. His heart thudded hard in his chest. The elevator rose steadily, humming. Solo worried that THRUSH would cut off the power and trap him inside. But evidently his break had thrown the base into confusion. Sirens still wailed tinnily through speakers in the elevator's ceiling. But the sensation of upward movement did not stop.
Solo tried to organize his thoughts. He had no weapons left. He had to find one, so that he would be armed when he got aboard the plane - if he got aboard.
The elevator stopped. The doors rolled back and sinister sundown light flooded in. Dead ahead Solo saw the turbo-jet on the concrete ready line.
A controller stood on the tarmac near the black-painted nose, wigwagging with lighted batons. The main door of the fuselage was open. The elephantine General Weng was struggling up a baggage ramp with his suitcase and steamer trunk. The turbo-jet's engines screamed at full rev. Weng's suit flapped like laundry in the prop wash.
All this registered on Solo in an instant. So did the two THRUSH soldiers turning to charge him, bayonets fixed.
Solo sidestepped at the last second. He kicked the soldier nearest him in the backside. The man hit his head on the black concrete wall of the building. Solo seized the man's rifle, spun around and thought of Illya and rammed the bayonet to its hilt in the stomach of the THRUSH soldier still on his feet.
The man wasn't on his feet for long. Solo wrenched the bayonet free. He knocked it off its mount and left it behind, checking the rifle mechanism as he ran toward the aircraft.
The controller with the lighted batons threw them aside. He jerked out a pistol. He began firing as Solo's weird, flapping figure came charging out of the weird reddish gloom.
Up the baggage ramp Solo went, two steps at a time. Just before he jumped inside he heard the controller shout something to the plane's pilot.
The fuselage door closed and locked automatically. Solo blinked in the gloom of the lavishly appointed cabin. The cockpit door remained closed. There was an odd aroma in the air, coming through tiny ceiling ventilators as the plane began to roll.
On the carpeted floor General Weng lay spread-eagled, unconscious. Solo took a step toward the obese man. The smell from the ceiling ventilators increased. Solo recognized it.
He raised the rifle to try one shot at the steamer trunk. His hands were putty. He could not hold the rifle.
He cursed the THRUSH pilot who had decided on his own authority to incapacitate General Weng in order to incapacitate Solo also. He cursed the THRUSH technologists who had dreamed up the idea of pumping ether through the air system into the plane's cabin. He cursed most of all his own miserable failure, as everything around him took on the blurred motion of a camera in the flash pan.
Slowly Solo spiraled to the floor. With a scream of turbo-jets, the THRUSH aircraft lifted in the red sunset toward the high Himalayan peaks.
Two
You are a very brave girl," said Illya Kuryakin to the pale-cheeked Mei.
"The worst shock has passed," she replied. "My honorable father was advanced in years. His ancestors will make him welcome. And the blow which the THRUSH soldier gave him with the butt of his rifle –"
Mei's lovely face wrenched. "The blow was quick. I pray he felt little pain."
Illya's wrists were already tingling. "How about you? Does it hurt?"
"Not too much."
"Good. Because I am afraid it will get worse."
"You are a very brave person yourself, Mr. Kuryakin."
Manacles had been placed around his wrists. These had been hooked to a chain which hung from the center of the ceiling of a large room. The room was shaped like the interior of a chicken's egg, point downward. Its walls were gray. The lighting was medicinally bright, but diffuse.
The World's End Affair Page 6