“Five hundred---“ Solo exploded.
“Certainly. We have at least eighty under---ah---treatment already. That is, they have received, quite unknown to themselves, of course, the first inoculations which produce initial symptoms of lassitude. Their slumber becomes so deep at night, it is quite easy for our people to gain entrance to their homes and begin the transference operations while the victims snore on blissfully. They never feel a thing, and never waken.”
Solo’s mind boggled. “You break in and operate on U.N.C.L.E. agents?”
“But of course. The first treatment is usually applied with a needle accidentally scraped or scratched against the victim’s hand or cheek in the guise of some simple accident. It renders the victim into a state of virtual hypnosis for precisely six nights. Sometime during that period, one of our surgical teams breaks in and effects the first transfer.”
“Of blood.” Solo’s face was stark in the flash’s glare. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“How brilliant of you. I assume you learned this when you got hold of the corpse of Ffolkes-Pryce?” the count said.
“You’re nothing but a damn bloody bunch of vampires---“
“Let’s not become hysterical, Mr. Solo. Vampires we decidedly are not. Our procedure is highly scientific. The THRUSH Central research laboratories have spent years developing the serum with which we replace the normal blood of our---ah---takeovers, as we call them.”
Remembering, Solo saw thin, pinkish, transparent fluid. “Three compounds of the hydrobrionic alkaline class. Drugs that make a person lose his will---“
“Four compounds,” corrected Beladrac, “But yes, the effect is as you describe.”
“When does it happen?”
“It happens gradually. We are able to assume a certain degree of psychological control from the very first transference, or operation, or transfusion, if you prefer that word. The takeover becomes more suggestible due to extreme fatigue. You saw how your little girl friend was behaving? She has received the third transfer. Only the fourth remains, which I had intended to see to this weekend. We have a complete operating theater here in the villa, you know.”
Solo said nothing, but he remembered the surgical lights, consoles, the operating table he’d seen while crawling through the grille.
The count went on: “Elisabeth, the poor pathetic little mouse, has had seventy-five per cent of her blood replaced with our special serum. I drugged her at dinner just before you were discovered because I thought our technicians here would want to perform the operation. Now it turns out, it’s their opinion that she is already almost totally under our control. The last transfer in unnecessary before I return her to Rome.”
Beladrac’s bushy brows quirked as he nodded. “Elisabeth is one of our most important takeovers, due to the delicate and highly important role she will play at the Mid-Eastern Peace Conference. Indeed, THRUSH Central felt so strongly about the importance of this phase of the plan that I was instructed to break my cover and personally supervise her activities. Thus our little charade, including the meeting at the sports car rally in America. Really, she’s a frightfully drab little creature. Nothing like the splendid wenches with whom I usually consort.
So choked with rage and frustration was Napoleon Solo, he couldn’t even speak.
“Ah! Delighted to see I penetrated under your skin at last!” Beladrac called breezily. “I did want to step down here and reinforce the point, Solo. You have failed miserably.”
Solo already had unpleasant suspicions to that effect. Stalling for time, he said: “Tell me about this serum you exchange with human blood. How can a human being live on it?”
Beladrac waved with the torch. Its beam jittered crazily over the damp bricks of the oubliette, making ghostly shadows.
“Oh, naturally, one can’t for very long. Our laboratories place the maximum survival time for one hundred per cent takeovers at nine to twelve months following the last transfer. Nothing is left in the bloodstream to fight bodily infection. The victim simply succumbs.
“We knew that when we started, of course, which explains why we are on such a precise timetable. We must have all our takeovers inoculated within five months. That will give us another four months, approximately, to destroy U.N.C.L.E. from within.”
Seeing the hellish sincerity of the man, Solo had no choice but to believe him. Mr. Waverly’s reports of defections already confirmed that the TRUSH plan was working. What would happen when the supra-nation had a bigger cadre of agents in its power, a cadre five hundred strong?
Such a force could wreck U.N.C.L.E.’s entire operation, disclose its secrets and bring the whole edifice tumbling down in a confusion of fear and betrayal.
Something else sprang into Solo’s mind. He said two words: “The war---“
“The war I mentioned? In the Middle East? It will serve as the backdrop for our grand plan. Serve to keep U.N.C.L.E. busy, for one thing, while we bore from within.
“Signorina d’Angelo will see that war breaks out, right enough. She won’t present her evidence of THRUSH activity to the peace conference on Monday. By the way, I already know about the contents of her little travel case in which I’ve pretended total disinterest. To continue---on Monday she will accuse one of the two nations involved in the dispute. She will in effect place the entire weight and prestige of U.N.C.L.E. behind her accusation. You can imagine what will happen.”
Indeed Solo could. The conference would break up completely. War would burst and bloom south of the Mediterranean. And with U.N.C.L.E. thus occupied, THRUSH could maneuver the agents it had taken over. THRUSH would probably begin with sabotage of the U.N.C.L.E. communications network, and advance to assassination of all the executives in Section I. Solo turned absolutely cold at the thought. And somehow he was certain that Count Lugo Beladrac was not making any of it up. “Where’s Elisabeth right now?” Solo asked.
“Preparing to leave for Rome. We’re motoring there. Since the technicians assured me she does not really need the final transfer of serum, we shall go tonight.”
“But she was awake when you stabbed that needle into her! She saw you!”
Count Beladrac stood up, towering against the dim ceiling light far above. “Indeed she did. We gave her a booster injection before she regained consciousness, however. The booster exercises a synergistic effect upon the serum. It added just enough of an extra touch of dullness to her mind so that she was unable to recall exactly what happened at the dinner table.”
Beladrac smiled his white, arrogant smile. “I’m sure that I shall be able to talk my way around it. I have never met a woman I could nor persuade. And, as you know, Elisabeth is very fond of me.”
He leered down a moment, obscenely pleased with himself. Then he shrugged again. “The girl may have one or two unpleasant memories which she won’t be able to explain away. But she will do what we want.”
The count passed his big flash to one of the guards hovering behind him. Then he dusted his hands together elaborately.
“I did want you to have a little information on which to speculate before you died, Solo. It should hearten you, knowing that you are unable to stop THRUSH this time. Do you have any further questions?”
“No,” said Napoleon Solo. “But I’m going to kill you, ugly man.”
“Oh? When do you propose to do that?”
“There’ll come a time. I’ll do it for what you’ve done to her.”
Wrinkling his nose, Beladrac said, “Your taste is abominable. She’s pretty, but cheap.”
Solo leaped at the brick wall. His nails dug into the mortar grooves. One thumbnail split down the middle, bringing excruciating pain. For a moment he hung on the bricks, poised like a monkey, as though he might race straight up the wall. Then he lost momentum. Gravity clutched him. He fell down to the brick floor.
“You Americans are so nauseatingly physical about everything,” Beladrac sighed. “Well, I must leave you. As soon as the stone is rolled over, one of my lads wi
ll fill the oubliette with water. In that water will be a particularly fast-acting virus. It has a most unpleasant effect upon the mucous membranes of the body. You won’t be able to keep from swallowing some of the water eventually. The moment you do, a swift cycle will begin---a complete disease cycle, from infection to death, in less than ten minutes.
Count Beladrac raised his right hand in jaunty salute. “And might I remind you that men and women in this world tend to overlook a man’s ugliness so long as that man wins. THRUSH will win and so will I. Au revoir.” Another wave, and he vanished.
The black disc of the stone cover thrust out over the opening at the top. Like an eclipse, it slowly pushed away all of the light from the dim ceiling bulb. Last the stone chunked into place.
Solo pricked his ears. He heard a gurgling, a bubbling. Then, with a faint hum of high-speed pumps for counterpoint, there was a wet rushing. The water swirled up from the small floor gratings he hadn’t spotted before. Wild thoughts flashed in his mind. He saw images of Beladrac’s hideous face; Elisabeth nodding and drowsing.
He imagined her denouncing one of the parties at the conference table in the name of U.N.C.L.E. He saw tanks rumbling; cannons belching; jet fighters diving over the desert near Suez. He saw the war headlines; the spreading international chaos.
And he had a frighteningly grim mental picture, at the last, of some trusted U.N.C.L.E. operative coming in to confer with Mr. Alexander Waverly.
As Waverly talked about the growing defections in U.N.C.L.E.’s ranks, this nameless, faceless man, taken over bodily by THRUSH, drew a gun, aimed it at Waverly’s head, pulled the trigger. A splatter of blood, spreading, spreading---
No panic! Solo thought. It’s bad but it’s not that bad.
Though indeed it was. The water was already up to his ankles. It wasn’t chilly. Rather it was lukewarm, and tinged with a peculiar moldy smell. Infected? Yes. He dared not take any of it in, not a drop.
It took all of Napoleon Solo’s carefully developed will power to stand perfectly still until the water reached the level of his neck. Then, holding his mouth shut tight, he began to tread water. The buffeting of the water within the oubliette was gentle at the surface, even though the water churned violently where it was being pumped in at the floor.
At the end of fifteen minutes Solo had floated far enough up in the brick cylinder so that he could reach over his head and shove at the stone cap. He pushed with all his strength while his legs kept threshing to keep him afloat.
The stone gave a fraction. A hairline of light showed, perhaps an inch wide. But try as he might, Solo couldn’t move the stone any further. The water bore him higher. He kept his mouth closed. He was being slowly jammed up against the under-surface of the stone. He’d be swallowing water soon.
Somewhere far away, gunshots rang out. Wildly, desperately, Solo began to yell. He called for help as the germ-laden water lapped and splashed over his chin, dribbled off his cheeks. He yelled and yelled, lungs hurting, legs aching, wondering whether help was out there---and if they’d hear him in time.
Three
From a boulder to one side of the dark road, Illya Kuryakin surveyed the villa.
About a hundred yards ahead down the road’s shoulder, a driveway branched off to the right. Beyond it Illya saw a high tile-roofed house in the starlight. Not many windows were lighted at this hour of the evening. The place had a deserted look. But it was the house he wanted, right enough.
When he wakened back up in the hills after the harrowing ride on the robot-controlled sports car, he’d started trudging down the road in the general direction of Nice. He’d planned to go all the way down into town, phone the nearest U.N.C.L.E. station and ask directions. Before he had gone very far a vegetable farmer on his way home late from market stopped his truck on the road in response to Illya’s wave.
Yes, the driver knew the location of Count Beladrac’s villa. All in the district knew its whereabouts. Wasn’t the count a renowned ladies man, not to mention a sportsman? Illya was instructed to take a certain turn of the road, then after another kilometer, look for the two towering pine trees which flanked the driveway’s entrance. These Illya saw now, dark silver cones against the sky.
He felt wretched. He looked equally bad. Fortunately the darkness had hidden much of the damage---facial bruises, gashes crusted over, blood dried, and the awful burns on his hands---from the trucker. Illya was certain that if the man had seen him full face, he would have driven off with a shudder after crossing himself.
Illya had torn strips of his jacket lining to bind around his wrists where the exhaust pipes had seared. The cloth chafed, itched, caused excruciating pain each time a fold of the silk rubbed a raw spot. He couldn’t think about that now, though. His responsibility was to get inside that villa, discover what happened to the count and Elisabeth.
To his right across the road, Illya noticed a shoulder of land which led down toward the count’s property. Some thin weeds filled it. Illya crept from cover, crossed the road and slipped among the trees.
He worked his way straight ahead. The path he was blazing would bring him out right onto a little bluff which dropped down onto the count’s property, well back of the road and pine trees. As he moved along he had occasional flashes of dizziness. Once he had to stop and lean against a beech tree until things stopped spinning.
In a few more minutes he navigated his way to the trees nearest the little bluff. From this vantage point he could see the side of the villa, including a tradesman’s entrance with a single light burning above it. Further back was a triple garage. All three overhead doors were raised. No autos stood in the dark bays.
A sense of dismay struck him. The Rolls-Royce gone? Had Beladrac left? If so, where was he going? Then Illya wondered about the advisability of trying to penetrate the villa at all. He might be asking for more trouble if the mechanics were still on the premises.
He thought of Elisabeth d’Angelo. She was his responsibility. The absence of the Rolls didn’t guarantee that she had left too. It was his duty to make certain one way or another. He only wished that he had a weapon. He slid from behind the tree trunk, approached the sloping little bluff and jumped. Trouble came while he was still in the air.
From his left a man shouted, “Hold!” in French. A machine pistol rattled. Illya felt something whistle by, unpleasantly close. He struck the ground and rolled. He let out a cry and flopped over onto his face. He lay unmoving.
The two men emerged from their hiding places behind the large pine trees near the road. As they advanced, their machine pistols glittered in the faint glow of the stars. They talked to one another in muffled French. They halted about six feet from where Illya lay.
Neither said a word for the better part of a minute. Then one spoke to the other: “All right. He must be down. Let us see who he is.”
Illya closed both hands like claws on the wrist of the one who reached down and grabbed his shoulder. The man swore. Illya twisted on to his shoulder blades and drove his right leg up into the man’s midsection. The moment Illya’s feet hit, he wrenched at the man’s machine pistol and jerked it loose. Startled, the other guard recovered quickly. He twisted around to his right to get a clear shot. Illya pushed the first guard out of the way, decided to worry about the pistol’s noise later, squeezed the trigger.
A stutter of sound ripped toward the second guard, caught him in the belly just as his own hand was constricting to fire. The man went “gaugh” deep in his throat and keeled over backwards.
Illya immediately turned his attention to the other guard. The man was floundering on all fours. Bullets weren’t necessary on him. Illya merely reversed his weapon and rapped the guard twice on the bulge at the back of the skull.
The man relaxed peacefully into the mixture of pine needles and dried grass that covered the ground. He snored. Illya turned the man’s head so that the sound was muffled. He clambered to his feet---
Just as the click of a latch sounded behind him.
; Spinning, Illya saw a third guard open the tradesman’s door and peer out, a swarthy man in a turtleneck sweater. The man spotted Illya and whipped up his snub-nosed automatic. Illya’s eyes were blurred. He still hadn’t recovered from the awful physical and emotional shock of the ride on the Shelley-Python. He fired. The shots missed, chipping wood from the door-frame. The guard fired back. He missed because Illya went stumbling away to the right. Illya shot again.
The guard did a peculiar kind of shuffle with his feet and swayed forward through the opening. He dropped his automatic as he fell. Blood ran in a black line down his right temple.
The man’s blind, dying hands grabbed wildly at space, caught the bell-twist on the outside of the door, gave it a savage turn as he fell---
Deep inside the villa, the bell rang loudly.
FOUR
Caught there in the open with the light from the tradesman’s entrance flooding over him, Illya had a wild impulse to run. He was exhausted. His whole body ached. He fought to keep from fainting. The guard in the turtle-neck was sprawled out on the doorsill, stone-stiff. The echoes of the bell reverberated---
Panting, Illya ran back to the little buff. He scrambled up into the trees and flopped down. The side door of the villa remained open. No one else appeared.
A night bird chirruped back in the woods. High in the sky an airliner with red and green lights flashing rumbled west along the Riviera. Illya realized finally that the command post had been abandoned. And just within the last few hours, at that.
Where had Beladrac gone? Illya wondered. Had he surrendered Elisabeth and then returned to Rome? No, that hardly made sense. Illya was so fatigued, so dazed, that the thought of searching the villa room by room exhausted him. Was there really any need to go inside? He didn’t see why. The evidence was clear. The place had been abandoned.
The Ugly Man Affair Page 8