With a whine and a roar the THRUSH jets leveled out again and came flashing back at the bridge from the west, wing to wing, making the run that would make the kill.
ACT III
COLOR THE CANADIAN SUNSET BLOODY
For long, numberless hours, Illya Kuryakin’s world had consisted of six concrete surfaces and intermittent nightmares. The six concrete surfaces were the walls, floor and ceiling of the concrete-block cell in which he’d awakened following the unpleasant events at Spoon Forks. One of the last things he remembered was Felix Corrigan lumbering at him as he crouched in the shadow of a trailer. Corrigan had brained him.
Illya vaguely recalled being lifted, carried over Corrigan’s shoulder, dumped down dizzily onto some small, tight space. He had a grotesque memory of Corrigan’s fat-necked head gliding down close, distorted as though photographed through a fish-eye lens. Bent double, aching in a cramped area behind a single seat of some type, Illya fitfully tried to bash Corrigan in the head. A needle scraped along Illya’s wrist. The visual distortion worsened.
He remembered nothing else until he awakened in the cell.
The floor was roughly six feet square. The ceiling was barely higher. Two dim ceiling lights behind thick wire mesh grilles provided the feeble illumination. A small port, one of the cinder blocks on a hinge, opened presently down near the floor. A pan of indigestible-looking stew was shoved in by a hairy hand. Illya saw nothing of his benefactor except the cuff of a khaki THRUSH uniform.
Fearing the introduction of drugs into the food, Illya did not eat it. Within an hour---he guessed it was an hour; his watch had been taken---the food began to discolor and emit a nauseatingly rancid aroma. Illya squatted on his haunches in a corner of the cell, trying not to grow ill. Shortly the block swung open again. The cuffed hand snatched the poisoned plate away.
The cell provided no creature comforts, save for a primitive water closet which shot out of another wall at infrequent intervals. Illya had no bed. The lights were never dimmed. No one spoke to him over a microphone, though he grew to have the uncanny feeling that he was being carefully watched. There was not a single, solitary bit of furniture except that incredible motorized water closet which rode on a wheeled track.
Time blurred. Unusual things began to happen. Illya began to see colored dots in front of his eyes. The temperature in the cell would rise until he was bathed in perspiration. Them it would plummet until he crouched in a corner, shivering. Time became even more distorted.
How long had he been a prisoner? A day? A week? Ten minutes? Sometimes it seemed that time was speeding incredibly swiftly. At other times he would kneel panting in a corner, waiting laboriously through eternity for the next sluggish beat of his own heart.
Illya had the good sense to remember that he had seen before first hand what THRUSH could do to weaken a man. He was being brainwashed so that he would be suitably pliant when THRUSH got around to dealing with him.
Illya had been trained rigorously by U.N.C.L.E. in the proper mental attitudes to adopt in such a situation. He tried. The odd hours at which the lights in the cell were turned on and off did not really fray his nerves for a while. Nor did the rapid changes in temperature. But eventually he began to feel himself wearing down. He fought the weariness, the sudden debilitating feeling of who cares? He managed to stave it off. But he didn’t escape its grip completely.
His face felt grimy. His beard had sprouted. The last few times when he huddled down in a corner to sleep---times when the lights had been doused---he was wakened suddenly by the lights flashing in erratic rhythm, accompanied by the amplified ding-dong of some kind of bell. Eventually the subtle techniques undermined his wiry strength and his morale to the point where he now and then had to take a fierce bite of his own hand to keep from screaming with frustration. But still he managed to maintain a little reserve of courage, managed to keep a small part of his mind guarded, safe.
In this silent place, a voice constantly reminded him that he was probably being surveyed through hidden optical devices. He took some pains to rant and run around the cell. He even did a fairly good imitation of a frightened dog’s howl. That ought to convince his guards that he was crumbling.
Toward the end, as he alternately froze and sweltered, dozed and wakened to flashing lights and ringing bells, less and less acting was required. If this went on much longer, he knew, he’d be a mumbling jelly.
Where was he being held?
Where was Dr. Volta, if indeed he were here in Dr. Volta’s clutches?
Where was Martin Bell?
Where was Napoleon Solo?
“Where? Where? Where?”
TWO
Hands gripped his shoulders, shook him.
“Kuryakin! Stop that sniveling!”
Horrified, Illya realized that he had lost control for an unknown period of time. He knew this because he returned to consciousness as though he were swimming up through a sea of thick turtle soup.
He was on his feet, weaving back and forth. There was something familiar about the big, bulky man who was shaking him. The man had a chunky face, lumpy nose, downturned mouth. His neck fat hung in a fold over the collar of his THRUSH officer’s uniform.
The man shook Illya once again, gave him a smart slap across the cheeks.
“Kuryakin! Straighten up or we’ll have to beat you.”
All at once Illya recognized his tormenter. It was Felix Corrigan, more trimly attired now that he had discarded his cheap suit for the uniform of an officer of U.N.C.L.E.’s arch-enemy. When recognition came on inside Illya’s head, his grimy fists balled to strike. Training, conditioning, intelligence all acted instinctively to damp the hostile impulses. He relaxed.
He had to gain the lay of the land before he struck. All he could see now was Corrigan, and behind him a large opening in the cell wall where a large door had opened. Beyond that lay a corridor. Fresh cold air flowed in from that corridor where two lesser THRUSH soldiers waited with stubby automatic rifles at the ready position.
Gingerly Felix Corrigan released Illya’s shoulders.
“Well. We’ve conditioned you nicely. Meek as a lamb.” Corrigan smile and gave Illya’s sleeve a tug. “Come along now, Kuryakin, that’s a good fellow.” Turning smartly on the heel of a polished boot, Corrigan strutted outside.
Illya blinked and shuffled forward. His mind was alert but he was badly worried. His arms and legs felt perilously weak. When it came making a run for it, he wondered whether he would have the strength.
Continuing to fake a totally enfeebled mental state, Illya lurched down the corridor after Corrigan. The big man’s boots clacked with a loud, unpleasant sound. The guards brought up the rear. Ahead Illya saw a slot window about shoulder height in the right-hand wall. Deep red sunlight flooded in to stain the floor and opposite wall.
When Illya drew abreast of the window, he stopped and peered. Corrigan didn’t seem to mind. He looked rather amused.
What Illya saw was literally and figuratively chilling. Below the window a snowy valley dropped away, bathed in cold evening sunlight. On the far side of the valley loomed ferocious-looking mountain peaks with jagged summits. Snow lay over everything. On one of the valley’s slopes Illya saw a party of people, tiny stick-figures at this distance. The party wound its way upward around the drifts. And a ski patrol, armed THRUSH soldiers who poled expertly and carried weapons slung over the backs of their parkas, was slaloming down to meet the arrivals.
Corrigan snapped his fingers. “Come along, Kuryakin. No more time for scenery.”
Illya licked his lips. “Where are we?”
“Just a little place up in Canada.”
Illya did not need a geography lesson to know that the kind of scenery he had just viewed meant that they were so far up in Canada as to be virtually in a wilderness. That isolation, the separation of miles between this THRUSH outpost and other human habitation, instantly doubled the difficulties Illya would face if he tried to escape.
A pneumatically cont
rolled chrome steel door at the corridor’s end slid aside. Illya staggered forward into another hall. This one was more brightly lighted. Doors opened on either side. In the rooms beyond these doors white-coated THRUSH technicians worked feverishly at high-banked machines that whined, clucked, ticked, beeped, made racketing noises and flashed with lights. Corrigan led the way to the last door on the right, a door padded in black leather. Illya was thrust through. He found himself in a small, carpeted observation booth furnished with comfortable armchairs.
Illya started to sag into one of the chairs. Corrigan made a gently chiding sound. He dragged Illya back up by the scruff of his neck. On entire wall of the booth was glass. Beyond, Illya saw another sight which jolted him.
He was looking down into a THRUSH technical center at least the size of a small city block on each side. More fantastic machinery, including digital computers and dynamo-like installations of incredible proportions, filled the hall. Scientists swarmed everywhere. Whole rows of lights lit up at once. And directing all this demonic organized confusion was a hauntingly familiar, a slight, capering, white-coated little man with a disorderly shock of reddish hair.
Fully a dozen and a half scientists swarmed around this personage, who was in turn fussing over a harmless-looking black box. The box measured about a foot square. It rested on an otherwise cleared marble-topped table.
Felix Corrigan pressed a small stud in the wall, said loudly, “I have him, Doctor.”
Illya’s spine crawled as the capering little figure froze down there on the floor. The little man turned, raised his head. His pale blue eyes were huge and cruel.
The little man thrust his way out through the crush of his co-workers. Scuttling past a booth where an armed THRUSH guard sat stolidly on a stool---there were half a dozen such booths around the floor of the research hall---the Doctor came bounding up a staircase and slammed into the booth.
“How is he, Corrigan?”
The new arrival’s glee was all the more horrific because Illya Kuryakin knew full well that THRUSH did not tolerate mental deficients within its ranks. The little man with the hair like a ridiculous burlesque house fright wig was typically THRUSH---a completely insane man who was, by virtue of his alliance with the power-hungry supra-nation, of necessity also pragmatically sane. A comic grotesque on the surface, this little creature was not to be underestimated. If anything, the man’s irrepressible glee represented unspeakable cruelty.
How is he, Doctor?” Corrigan repeated. “Why, excellent, thanks to your recommendations on pre-conditioning. He’s placid as an egg.”
Illya grunted, doing his best to reinforce that conviction. In truth his mind was sharp enough. It was the rest of him. He felt abysmally weak, light-headed.
The little man rubbed his hands together. “That’s splendid, Corrigan. Good work! Of course U.N.C.L.E. is not known for the stamina of its agents. Lily-spined weaklings, every one of them. Eh, Kuryakin?”
The little man gave Illya’s chin a vicious tweak. “You’ll soon rue the day you decided to oppose THRUSH. By that I mean you will rue it personally. Ah, but I’ll explain when our visitors arrive.”
“The ski patrol is on its way to meet them now, Doctor,” Corrigan said.
“Doctor?” Illya said in a sepulchral voice which required very little faking.
“Dr. A. C. Currant of the carnival---“
“Yes, yes, quite right. I supervised the---ah---spiriting away of young Bell. I hate that filthy boy. Too many brains. He developed an anti-electricity generator which I was unable to perfect in a lifetime of research. Under threat, he showed me where my equations were wrong and enabled me to construct the unit---“
The little man’s liver-spotted hand indicated the innocuous looking black-box apparatus on the table down the hall.
“Then I put it together in less than twenty-four hours! Maddening, maddening. On the other hand, since the device is working now and belongs to THRUSH, I suppose it makes no difference.”
Illya licked his lips, still acting half awake. “Where is Martin Bell, Dr.---Currant?”
The little man frowned. “Corrigan, we may have addled his brains a mite too much. It’s Volta, you U.N.C.L.E. dolt. Dr. Leonidas Volta!”
All Illya said was, “Oh.” His acting seemed to convince them. “Oh, I see.”
“Corrigan, you oaf, if you’ve over-stimulated him---I wanted him precisely prepared to enjoy the little reunion we’re about to stage. Docile enough to cause us no trouble, but with enough awareness to appreciate what he will see. You may have blundered.”
Corrigan blanched. To save the situation, Illya perked up by jiggling his head a few times. “I’m all right,” he croaked. “I know who you are Volta. So you’ve got Martin Bell’s device working?”
“Yes, yes. But we haven’t got Martin Bell himself working. At least not yet. We need him to complete the final step, the modification of the apparatus so that it will operate at full capacity. This he refused to assist us with last week. When my aides grew insistent and applied some rather amusing physical torture, the insufferably brilliant boy collapsed.”
This, of course, was all news to Illya. He tried not to show his startlement as Dr. Volta continued, “And just at the time when we had concluded our first tests! Omaha, Chicago, New York, Washington---beautiful! We got no panic in San Francisco, but we certainly began to get it in those other cities. And Toronto---that will be the spark which ignites world hysteria! I don’t think we shall have to darken many cities, Kuryakin, to bring one government after another to its knees. On the other hand, if we do have to go worldwide and a few million lives are lost---“ Dr. Volta shrugged and grinned merrily. Illya’s mind worked hard trying to absorb all he had learned. He mumbled, “Toronto will be the next experiment?”
Volta’s fright-wig of red hair bobbed. “As you are probably aware, several of the key international powers have pooled funds to build a new transport aircraft. With typical democratic sentimentality it has been christened Plowshare. The correct nomenclature is MST-1, standing for the first Modified Supersonic Transport. This rather sickly cooperative project is designed to provide a super-liner to carry food and farm implements to new nations. It---am I boring you, Kuryakin? You are staring at me in a rather peculiar way.”
“I’m listening,” Illya breathed. He was, for the pattern of terror shaping up behind the words of the curious little maniac had jolted Illya back to full, desperate awareness. He remembered to sound thick-witted: “Go---go on, please.”
“The Plowshare tests are complete. Her maiden demonstration flight is scheduled to depart from Toronto within the next ninety-six hours. Many international dignitaries will be flying on that short trip. As supervisor for THRUSH, I intend to take the anti-power unit to Toronto, knock Plowshare from the air and, incidentally, devastate the city with a blackout of phenomenal proportions.
“Our operatives will arrange to add spice by spreading a spirit of riot, rapine and ruin in Toronto while the lights are out. THRUSH will exploit the international incident, the death of the dignitaries in the Plowshare crash, for all it is worth.
“Believe me, Kuryakin, we shall very effectively sow the seeds of doubt. By use of carefully pre-planted evidence to be discovered by so-called loyal nationals in various capitals---actually they’ll all be THRUSH operatives---we shall turn nation against nation with conclusive proof that another nation is attempting to tip the balance of power by creating this anti-electricity super-weapon. Then, when the major free nations are in a state of disarray and disunion, we shall black out their cities one nation at a time. No allies will rise to defend them.”
Dr. Volta tilted his hand sharply.
“Countries will fall. One by one they will have to submit to secret THRUSH ultimatums for surrender.”
Horrified, realizing that such a scheme could work, Illya croaked out, “But it all depends on Toronto. And that depends on Martin Bell.”
On the floor of the research hall there was a sudden flurry of activ
ity. Emerging from the shadows at the hall’s far side and being led in between two giant, hulking computers was a slender, dark-haired young man in filthy slacks and a grimy shirt. The young man wore no shoes. His hair was unkempt. He had to be supported by two THRUSH soldiers. Illya recognized Martin Bell from identification photos.
“See, Doctor?” said Corrigan cheerfully. “He’s better already, just knowing his parents are on the way along with that snippy little twist he fancies.”
Once more Illya goggled. “Do you mean to say the Bell family is here? And the Andrews girl?”
“Very nearly!” Dr. Volta replied. “They comprise the party which is just now being met outside our station by our ski patrol.”
With sadistic delight Dr. Volta rapidly detailed how THRUSH had contacted the Bells through Beth Andrews and threatened Martin’s death until she agreed to bring the Bells north to join him for whatever therapeutic effect it might have. Seeing Martin Bell being led into the hall, Illya knew the plot had worked at least in part.
“It was a gamble,” Dr. Volta said. “We had no choice. It has turned out splendidly.”
He described how the Bells with Beth had motored to Canada and been picked up by THRUSH agents at the tiny town of Doomsday Creek. Illya gathered this town was some one hundred or so miles distant from the research station. Dr. Volta nodded.
“Of course we assumed that U.N.C.L.E. might be keeping the Bells under observation. We discovered it was even worse than we had thought. Miss Andrews contacted your decadent organization, arranged to have U.N.C.L.E. follow the car in which she was driving to Canada.”
Illya’s face was ugly. “And then she turned around and told you? I don’t believe it.”
“You water-brained idiot,” Dr. Volta chortled, “naturally she didn’t. She is thoroughly, stupidly in love with Martin Bell. She is on the side of the angels---while they last.
The Deadly Dark Affair Page 7