The Deadly Dark Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  With shaky fingers Solo took the rod-like device from his pocket. Gave a twist to align the calibrations, said in a voice beginning to hoarsen with strain; “This is Solo.”

  A female voice said crisply, “Mr. Waverly is standing by on Channel D.”

  The priority channel. The backs of Solo’s hands began to itch. Waverly came on: “Mr. Solo? Ah, good. I’ve caught you. Please take a taxi and get here as soon as possible. We have a telephone call for you. I prefer not to transfer it through these lines. We wish to monitor it very carefully, though I am quite certain the call and the caller are authentic. The lady is phoning long distance for you from Spoon Forks, Arkansas.”

  A crackle of silence. Waverly harrumphed. “You haven’t fainted, have you, Mr. Solo?”

  “No, sir. I’m here. It’s a lady---“

  “That is correct, Mr. Solo. Miss Beth Andrews. Apparently she just talked to Martin Bell.”

  THREE

  The Conference room at headquarters swarmed with technicians. Lights and dials glowed on special monitoring equipment which had been wheeled in hastily. Mr. Waverly stalked up and down, up and down. Napoleon Solo sat beside a phone on the round table. His coat lay on the floor. He had torn off his tie and thrown it away.

  “Miss Andrews---Beth?” he said. “Can you still hear me?”

  Needles shot up, peaked and trembled high on the calibrated scales as the amplified voice of Beth Andrews filled the room, each syllable coming through with auditorium-like fidelity.

  “Yes, Mr. Solo. I can hear you perfectly.”

  “I’m sorry for the delay. We wanted to put you on a kind of a bull horn set-up so everyone can hear. We’re recording the conversation. Is that all right with you? We don’t want to miss a detail.”

  Beth Andrews hesitated. “Yes, I have no objection. Oh, Mr. Solo. Martin sounded so terrible. I only talked to him for about ten or twenty seconds. He was crying---crying like a child. He’s collapsed, Mr. Solo. He’s collapsed!”

  Solo wiped his face. The overhead lights cast harsh shadows alongside his nose. “Beth, I know this is a strain on you. But please try to tell us everything that happened. When did the call come through?”

  “Around six this evening. I was home fixing dinner for myself. The phone rang. I picked it up. This voice---a man’s voice, flat and cruel, as though he were laughing at me---asked if this was Beth Andrews. I said yes. He said Martin wanted to speak with me. I was almost out of my mind with happiness, Mr. Solo---“

  “I understand, Beth,” Solo murmured. “Go on.”

  “Martin came on the line. The connection was very bad. Crackly. Martin sounded hollow sometimes, as though he were calling from far away.”

  At the window Mr. Waverly turned suddenly. He silently formed the word, “Canada?”

  “No, Martin started crying. Oh, Mr. Solo, they’ve hurt him! He’s not a man to cry ordinarily. He said something about being forced to operate his machine for them. That’s when he broke down completely. I didn’t get the rest.”

  Beth Andrews sounded as though she were controlling herself only through force of will. “Then the original man, the ugly, cruel one, came back on the wire. He told me Martin was being held prisoner by THRUSH. The same organization you mentioned. Oh, Mr. Solo---“

  Swallowing hard, Solo said, “Beth, just try to relax.”

  “I can’t! It’s those blackouts, isn’t it? I’ve watched TV. That’s Martin’s machine, isn’t it, Mr. Solo? They’re making him do it.”

  With a grim glance at Waverly, Solo agreed, “That is very probably so.”

  “But there were no blackouts tonight.”

  Solo cocked his head at Waverly. He hadn’t been tuned in on the news for the past hour. Waverly said softly, “That is right. Nothing has happened this evening, anywhere.”

  Solo told Beth Andrews that she was correct, that THRUSH had evidently not run any tests of the anti-power device since the preceding night. Before he could ask her why this was so important, Beth blurted, “Then they do have him! It’s really true. They said he collapsed Mr. Solo. They said so far, Martin had only operated his machine at less than full power. Tonight was to be a full-power test. This afternoon Martin told them he wouldn’t do it. The man from THRUSH said Martin refused to be a party to---to panic that could lead to butchery in the streets.”

  “Beth, listen!”

  Solo urged. “If all this is true, then we’ve finally got the lever we need!”

  Beth controlled her crying. “The what?”

  “The lever. An advantage. They need Martin. He’s had a nervous breakdown or something like it because he isn’t accustomed to pressures like this. That gives us a few high cards for a change.”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Solo.”

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “The reason THRUSH called me.”

  “To reassure you that Martin was alive?”

  Mr. Waverly made a slight face. Solo realized the poor logic of his own question. Quickly Beth went on:

  “These dreadful people want me to come to Martin. They want me to bring his parents along. They said Martin needed to see faces he could trust. They’re worried, Mr. Solo! You’re right about that. There is nothing they can do without Martin. They think that maybe I can help him down. And seeing his parents will help him too. They warned me not to tell anyone about this. They warned me!”

  Solo scowled. “What will they do to Martin if you don’t follow instructions?”

  Now Beth’s voice really broke, raw and agony-ridden. The reverberations of it in the silent U.N.C.L.E. chamber made even the hardened Waverly cover his eyes.

  “They said they’d kill him. They---they meant it!”

  “Kill him? But then he’d be of no use to them!”

  “I know. But that awful man with a strange name---“

  “Volta” Was it Volta?”

  “I think so. He said that if I didn’t come to where they’re keeping Martin prisoner and bring the Bells along, Martin would be no good to them anyway, so they would have no choice but to kill him. Mr. Solo, I was so frightened. After they hung up I wanted to call the number you left with me. But I didn’t. I waited. I waited and waited, trying to think, about what was right. I don’t want Martin to die. But those people---they mean it. I’m afraid they’ll kill us too.”

  “Beth,” Solo said slowly, “that is very likely just what they would do. You made the right decision. And a courageous one. Have you told the Bells about this?”

  “No”

  “Well, you must. Do you actually know where Martin is being held?”

  “They never said. There is supposed to be a dark blue sedan in a parking lot in Little Rock tomorrow at three in the afternoon. They gave me the license number. I’m to pick it up. There will be an envelope sewn into one of the rear seats. Instructions---a map or something. I gather it’s a long way, and we’re supposed to drive.”

  Silently Napoleon Solo marveled at the cruel audacity of the THRUSH plan. With Martin in breakdown, Dr. Leonidas Volte had moved on a spectacular scale.

  Volta and his aides had planned their psychological gamble correctly. Beth would rather go to Martin Bell’s assistance at her own peril than do nothing and risk his death. Beth’s one concession to her own safety and Martin’s had been the agonizing decision to phone U.N.C.L.E.

  Briskly Solo said,” You must go, Beth. You’ll pick up the Bells and get that car tomorrow.”

  Suddenly there was blind terror booming into the conference room as she spoke, “I knew I had to go, I guess. But Mr. Solo, I’m afraid!”

  Solo said quietly, “Don’t worry. We’ll be behind you every step of the way.”

  And finally, for the first time in long, nerve-twisting hours, Alexander Waverly smiled.

  FOUR

  Staying right behind Beth Andrews and Harold and Maude Bell every mile of the way along the route marked out by THRUSH was one of those terrible, dull, time-consuming jobs which Napoleon Solo and all U.N.C.L
.E. professionals now and again encountered.

  Actually he was not right behind the late-model dark blue sedan at all. He was well out of sight of it, remaining at all times a minimum of three miles to the rear.

  Solo drove a light gray two-passenger American production auto designed along sports car lines. The chassis and body shell, steering wheel, floor stick and bucket seats were about all that remained of the original factory equipment. U.N.C.L.E. laboratory technicians had ripped out the entire motor and drive train, installing a much hotter mill under the bonnet. They had also provided the driver with a new fifth gear, a sort of super-overdrive which could achieve tremendous forward speeds in emergencies.

  An ordinary motorist would have been baffled by the array of dials and gauges now showing on the re-designed instrument panel. Chief among them, just over the center of the board, was a round glass tracking display board. In the center, a greenish blip remained in a more or less constant position at the intersection of several grid lines. This blip showed Solo that the dark blue THRUSH sedan was still on the road ahead.

  Solo had picked up Beth Andrews and the Bells, who looked exhausted but managed to behave with quiet, unassuming bravery, in Little Rock. The trio located the dark blue sedan in the designated lot, while Solo watched from the roof of an adjoining warehouse. Solo made no direct contact with the three until they arrived at a pre-arranged meeting place, a motel on the outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee.

  By that time Solo was reasonably certain that THRUSH trusted the power of fear sufficiently to let Martin’s parents and girl drive north unpursued. He had spotted some THRUSH bird-dogs clumsily pretending to be sewer repairmen on the street next to the parking lot in Little Rock when the pickup was made. But apparently after making sure the trio was on its way, THRUSH preferred to retire its observers and let Beth and the Bells follow orders.

  These orders, typed and in a sealed envelope, had been found by Beth in the blue car’s upholstery. Solo pored over them late at night in the Memphis motel. Harold Bell watched from an armchair, a tumbler of bourbon in his hand.

  The strain was showing. Bell’s face was pale, the jowls blued by a day’s growth of beard. Maude Bell had already taken a sleeping powder and retired to bed in the next room, mentally and physically exhausted.

  “Not much information there,” Bell said gloomily.

  Solo scratched his chin. “Just the numbers of highways. I’ll have to check a map. The last line of instruction gives the final highway you’re to take in Canada---into a public parking lot in some place called Doomsday Creek. Have you looked that up?”

  Beth Andrews had been pacing. In the dimly lighted motel sitting room she heard the name of the destination, bit her lip, turned away. Harold Bell sipped bourbon, said, “Yes, you’ll find it on the map. It doesn’t appear to be a large town.”

  “I know something about Canada,” Napoleon Solo replied. “Doomsday Creek escapes me. Ontario?”

  “Yes, in the wilderness northwest of Ottawa. Ski country. Do you think it’s where we’ll find Martin and the THRUSH station?” As an ex-U.N.C.L.E. professional, Harold Bell knew the power and threat, knew the cruel capability of THRUSH. His voice wavered a little as he pronounced the name. He went on, “I would imagine that Doomsday Creek is a pickup point. The THRUSH station won’t be there, but we won’t know where it is until we’re led to it.”

  Stretching, Solo stood. “Quite right. Which makes it very important that I get that homing device planted on the underside of your back bumper. As well as go over the car for any little presents or booby-traps THRUSH might have installed.”

  Of the latter, Solo found none, though he worked through most of the night under the lonely parking lot lights of the motel. He went over and over the blue sedan. At the end of this period of effort, he was reasonably convinced the blue car was clean.

  This was not to say, of course, that THRUSH had not installed some late piece of hardware of a design U.N.C.L.E. had not yet caught up with. That was a risk he had to take.

  Solo put in the homing device. It would allow him to stay three miles behind the blue sedan, out of sight, and still keep track of it on the display glass. He turned in for a quick hour of sleep while the sun rose. He tossed in fretful dreams in which he saw his friend Illya being tortured by various devilish, painful instruments employed by THRUSH.

  At dawn there began three days of grueling driving.

  Solo had to bear the brunt of the trip himself. Harold and Maude Bell and Beth spelled one another. The blue car, followed by Solo’s gray one three miles back, cut northward through Tennessee and Kentucky. They bisected Ohio from southwest to northeast. They pushed on through Pennsylvania to the New York Thruway, and by eleven the second night they had stopped outside Syracuse, New York, ready to turn north in the morning to the St. Lawrence and the crossing into Canada.

  Feeling drugged, drained, Solo ate by himself. After Memphis he had no personal contact with Beth Andrews and the Bells. Next he made his nightly report to Mr. Waverly. He went to sleep feeling uneasy.

  Perhaps, he told himself as he drifted off, perhaps it was the thumb-screw tension that got tighter and tighter, the closer they came to their destination. For Solo did not honestly know whether he would find Illya Kuryakin alive.

  He suspected Martin Bell was alive, even though there had been no more blackouts. THRUSH seemed to be playing that part of the game according to the rules.

  Thus far Solo had only a broad plan concerning what he would do if and when he located the research station above Doomsday Creek. Mr. Waverly was already assembling a shock force of picked agents. They could board an U.N.C.L.E. jet and be in Canada within an hour, armed and ready to parachute in if necessary. But keeping out of THRUSH’s sight in Doomsday Creek and then following the quarry the rest of the way to the headquarters would be tricky.

  Never before had Napoleon Solo felt quite so uncertain about an affair. The wormwood taste of failure still lingered from Spoon Forks.

  Morning brought crisp, cool sunshine and a lift of spirits. Unfortunately the lift didn’t last long.

  An hour after leaving Syracuse, Solo passed Watertown, New York. The blip of the blue car was still steady in the special dash display glass. His car was approaching the massive glittering suspension bridge to Canada.

  Solo pulled in at the toll gate on the American side. He answered the necessary custom questions, then drove on up the long, angled approach leading to the impressive main span. He touched a stud. The dummy dash panel with inoperative instruments slid up out of place into the extra deep dashboard cowl. Solo’s regular instruments were back on view.

  Everything seemed perfect. The blue sedan had reached the Canadian side, was already turning onto the Queen’s Highway. A U.S. station wagon containing a mother and dad and several junior tourists passed Solo in the opposite lane, coming down off the bridge and heading back into America.

  Napoleon Solo tapped his left shoe on the floorboard in a nervous rhythm.

  The sun shone in dazzling splendor from the waters of the St. Lawrence far below. The gray sedan reached the top of the approach and rolled out onto the long main span. It stretched empty ahead. Down below to the left and right spread the panorama of island after small green island.

  Eastward Solo could just make out the blur of a Great Lakes ore freighter crawling out to sea.

  He rubbed his knuckles into one eyesocket, then the other. His mouth tasted flat from too much greasy food eaten on the run. He found himself humming more loudly than his custom.

  The back of his neck began to crawl. That old, professional instinct for danger---

  He could see nothing that could possibly cause the reaction, yet he trusted it implicitly. He began turning his head in small arcs, first to the left, then the right, scrutinizing his surroundings more closely than he normally would. Somewhere, somewhere at the edge of his mind, something was threateningly wrong.

  The river was quiet. The islands gleamed. Still no traffic on the brid
ge. He listened, really hearing for the first time in hours the hum of his high-speed, special-tread tires with the built-in polysteel cleats. That humming was off, somehow. Minor-key. Discordant.

  Then Napoleon Solo realized that he was hearing the sound of the treads on the bridge concrete plus another blending in. A faint, eerie, banshee sound rose and wailed at him somewhere in the bright morning blaze of the northern sky.

  He peered through the windshield. His palms went cold and slick on the molded plastic of the steering wheel.

  Two blackish dots were shooting straight at the bridge at incredible speed. The banshee scream grew louder and louder.

  It was the wail of the jet engines of two aircraft.

  The planes, needle-tipped and of fighter configuration, were approaching the great bridge in a wing-to-wing formation. They banked steeply over the river, leveled out so that they were following the river’s course and flying toward the bridge at frightening speed, dead level with it.

  Something had gone wrong. Something had slipped somewhere along the line. THRUSH knew.

  The dull gray jet fighters bore no markings. Solo hit the gas pedal. The extra gear kicked in, rocketing him to a speed of ninety within seconds. The phantom planes sprouted fire-blooms on the leading edges of their wings.

  Solo drove like a madman, straight down the center of the span. He wasn’t going fast enough---

  Trapped on the bridge, the gray sedan took the first hail of bullets broadside. Something under the dash exploded. Sparks hissed. The display glass went dark. Solo swore and kept the pedal floored.

  With a shattering burst of sound the THRUSH jets screamed into a climb, skimming the top of the bridge and racing on down the sunlit river.

  Solo fought for control of the racing gray car. All his instruments were dead out. In seconds he’d lost his vital link to Martin Bell and Illya Kuryakin, lost the blue sedan which was speeding on into Canada. And its passengers would not know that somehow THRUSH had discovered that Solo was trailing them to Doomsday Creek.

  That wasn’t the worst. The worst was the immediate moment. Not yet to the halfway point across the bridge, even though his car was careening along at frightening speed, and billowing smoke from its blasted cowl, Solo heard the jets scream in the sky, banking, turning. They were faster than this car would ever be.