04-The Dagger Affair

by David McDaniel

  At the last moment Napoleon tapped the brakes and the shots tore into the highway only a few feet ahead of them. Then the front of the car made a sound like a garbage can hit with a baseball bat, and swerved wildly.

  Illya was thrown off balance as the car slewed off the highway. The gun went out the window as the top of the frame swung over and violently down.

  Napoleon wrestled with the wheel in an effort to keep the car upright — it is no joke to have a front tire practically disintegrated at ninety miles an hour, just as you apply the brakes.

  Garnet hugged her knees to her chest and braced her feet against the front seat, but even so was bounced about like a marble in a bottle.

  The car had cleared the ditch in a fraction of a second, and now was tearing a swath through sagebrush and mesquite — still more or less frontwards, but sometimes almost sideways as Napoleon fiercely fought the skidding and tried to brake. There was no traction on the loose sand for brakes or accelerator. The steering was doubtful at best. Nevertheless, Napoleon somehow managed to keep some amount of control over the car by sheer effort of will, and after an indefinite length of time leaping about the sand dunes it lurched sideways and came to rest against a large bush. With one wheel flat and another in a sandhole it leaned against the brush like a winded horse, its engine gasping.

  The Thrush plane circled a thousand feet above, a vulture over the carcass of the car. Something small and black detached itself from the side of the plane and seemed to hang in mid-air, growing slightly larger. Then it split into two pieces which continued to grow.

  No one below saw it. Illya was dazed from the blow on his head, Napoleon was recovering from his fight with a ton of careening steel, and Garnet was struggling to get out from under the seat.

  Neither did anyone in the car see the two black shapes suddenly sprout great white canopies.

  The two Thrush agents landed within fifty feet of the car. One was carrying the Thompson in ready position all the way down, watching for signs of resistance. There were none.

  Chapter 7: "Call It Egotism, But I Think We're Worth More Alive."

  The first thing Garnet saw when she got her head above the level of the dash made her wish she hadn't. Two men in brown business suits were walking toward them across the sand. And the sub-machine gun one was carrying showed they meant business.

  "Napoleon. . ." she said.

  He didn't answer, but she saw his eyes flick toward the advancing figures and then back to her. His hand on her shoulder ordered her back to the floor. She sighed and curled up again, favoring a bruise on her side.

  Illya sat up and looked. "Maybe if we act friendly..."

  Napoleon opened the door on his side and climbed slowly out, hands extended. Illya got out the back door at the same time. The Thrush with teeth stood back some thirty feet while the other approached Napoleon.

  He looked at the car, bent over to examine the front wheel, then straightened. "Nice piece of driving, Mr. Solo — we appreciate it. Our little prize should not have been damaged at all."

  "Now, just what is it you're..."

  "Can it, Solo!" the Thrush snapped. "We want that brown camera bag you have in the back seat. We don't want to have to hurt you or Kuryakin or the girl. So just get us that bag."

  "I don't really..."

  "You have no choice. Get it!"

  Illya reached slowly back into the car. He dragged the case out by its strap and held it at arm's length. "Call it egotism," he said, "but I think we're worth more alive. What shall I do with it?"

  "Call it good sense. Walk to a place about halfway between me and my friend and place it gently on the ground. Then walk back to the car."

  Illya did. Napoleon made no move. In a movie, he thought, Garnet would have crept out the door on the far side of the car, and would come up behind the Thrush with the machine gun and clip him over the head with a large rock, whereupon Napoleon and Illya would attack the other one. But this was not a movie. Unfortunately, Garnet was probably hiding under the dashboard, waiting for the sound of machine gun fire.

  The talkative Thrush stepped carefully over to the leather bag and looked at it without touching it for a moment. Then he looked around and said, "Mr. Solo — take your gun out very slowly with your left hand thumb and forefinger and toss it away."

  Napoleon did. "Now that you have us completely disarmed," he said, "will you fly over and drop a bomb on us?"

  "There are times when the idea of shooting a helpless man seems very attractive. Keep your mouth shut and we can resist the temptation. Now turn around and lie down on your face."

  Napoleon was still secretly expecting Garnet to do something — but in the meantime he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest. He lay down.

  "Now stay there until you hear us take off."

  The small plane had landed on the highway a couple hundred feet away, and the two Thrushes picked up the brown bag between them and started for it. The motor was still turning over as they hopped into the open door. The propeller spun into a blur and the little craft shot off down the deserted highway and into the air with a roar.

  Napoleon lifted his head and saw the plane climbing into the blue dome of the sky. It rose higher and higher, turning toward the northwest. Before it was out of sight, he was in radio contact with the U.N.C.L.E. branch office in Las Vegas.

  Sure enough, Garnet was still under the dash.

  "Oh, there you are," said Napoleon brightly.

  She looked up at him doubtfully. "Where should I have been?"

  He sighed. "Never mind. There'll be a truck from town here in half an hour or so." He looked at Illya, who was coming back from a walk across the desert gathering up guns — both his and Napoleon's would need a good cleaning before they'd be safe to use again.

  "All right," he said. "You wouldn't be smiling that inscrutable smile if you hadn't just done something very dirty to someone. Let us in on the secret. I thought you were pretty agreeable to our feathered friends. I suppose the bag is full of rocks and the E/D is under the back seat?"

  "Napoleon!" said Illya, shocked at the very idea. "I'm shocked at the very idea. That would have been misrepresentation. And besides, they would have looked in the bag as soon as they could and then come back. I just gave them what they wanted."

  Napoleon didn't say anything. When Illya was like this it meant he was terribly pleased with himself, and would eventually tell the whole story without prompting. He just enjoyed being prompted.

  After a while Illya gave up waiting and went on. "In fact, I gave them a little extra. Down in the crack where the strap joins the body of the case there is a little bonus. I suggest as soon as we get back to Las Vegas we take advantage of their sensitive receivers to check on the signal from our tracer — which Thrush is presently carrying directly to their nearest headquarters, where we can reclaim the merchandise at our leisure."

  Napoleon nodded. "That's very good, Illya. You'll win your stripes yet, at this rate. I'm proud of you."

  Illya made a face at him, and the two of them settled down in the car to clean their guns.

  * * *

  An unsteady tone came whispering out of the large speaker above a rack of electronic equipment. There was a roaring and hiss of highly amplified random noise surrounding it, and the muted thunder of electrons boiling off cathodes and spattering through grids rose and fell around the tone like surf around a seagull's cry.

  On the huge map table a straight line of grease pencil lay across a plastic overlay which projected a map of Nevada, Arizona and California. A second line was being laid in along a straightedge.

  The man plotting it extended the line until it intersected the first, then straightened up.

  "Still going," he said. "Same speed, same course. I wonder if San Francisco has picked them up yet." He stepped back and motioned to Illya and Napoleon. "We'll be losing the signal in a few minutes. They're over Kings Canyon now." He checked the wall clock and wrote a time beside the intersection point. "They must have chang
ed planes in Death Valley. This one's got about 35,000 feet, and the one you described probably wouldn't be able to handle that."

  A phone buzzed, and he answered. "Foss.... Yeah? What?...Oh well, not surprising. Thanks." He hung up. "Air Defense reports they have a routine flight plan filed for the bird we're tracking — it's a private plane and it's bound for Vallejo. Everything perfectly regular."

  "That's Thrush," said Napoleon, philosophically.

  The tone was fainter, but still definite. A teletype clicked in the corner, and Illya looked at it. "San Francisco has them, faint but clear."

  "Course, speed, location?"

  Illya read off a string of numbers, and the plotter nodded. "Good. Will you want to fly to San Francisco tonight? If so, you'd better arrange for tickets as soon as — "

  The signal stopped.

  "— you can."

  "I guess so," said Napoleon. "We just lost the signal."

  The plotter was looking at a couple of meters and frowning. "Yeah...they probably went behind a mountain."

  The teletype rang a little bell and began to natter to itself. Illya looked, and raised an eyebrow. "They want to know if the subject has turned back. They lost the signal suddenly a few seconds ago." He smiled a secret smile.

  Napoleon looked at him oddly for a moment, then broke into a grin. The plotter looked puzzled, and spoke, "Uh...they were right about here when it cut off," he said, circling an area on the map in blue. "Somewhere south of Shaver Lake. Do you think..."

  "We're sure of it," said Napoleon Solo.

  About ten o'clock the next morning an unmarked helicopter took off from Fresno and clattered northeast into the mountains. At the controls sat Illya Kuryakin. Operating a small directional receiver in the seat next to him was Napoleon Solo. And straight ahead of them some thirty miles was Shaver Lake.

  The receiver in Solo's lap was already starting to pick up the signal from the tracer Illya had planted in the camera case the previous afternoon, but the battery was beginning to weaken. It took a lot of power to broadcast a signal readable for 500 miles.

  Conversation was difficult over the noise of their flight. Napoleon tapped Illya on the shoulder, gave him a thumbs-up signal, and pointed ahead and down.

  The blue waters of the mountain lake appeared ahead of them as the little community of Pineridge slipped beneath. Napoleon waved the directional antenna in his hand over the horizon, and tapped Illya again. Under his control, the 'copter swerved a few degrees toward the east and began to descend. They passed over the lake and over a craggy hill.

  The signal grew stronger. Napoleon felt a bit of relief — there had been a chance that the signal source might be under water, and it would cost them some time to retrieve it. Apparently it was back in the woods, and their luck was holding.

  Some distance ahead the pines were interrupted by blazes of white — freshly broken treetops, shattered as if by some huge scythe. Illya shouted over the roar of the motor. "There it is!"

  Napoleon nodded.

  The helicopter racketed over the spot and went into a tight circle. Below was the crumpled wreckage of a light plane — not the one that had attacked them the day before, but a sleeker, faster model. Both wings had been sheered off by trees — probably the same ones that now stood shattered to mark the last meteoric moments of the airplane.

  Illya gunned the engine and began to climb. At five thousand feet they could see no convenient clear space for a landing. Napoleon got the rope ladder out while Illya brought their craft down to treetop height and adjusted it to hover.

  The ladder uncoiled its length through the door and fell, jerking and twisting in the downblast from the whirling blades, to the ground. As it came to rest, Napoleon backed out the door and started down some fifty feet.

  The rope ladder swayed and swung him about like an ornament on a light cord, and the wind whipped at his clothing as he clambered down the wooden rungs. The helicopter hung above him, bouncing and slipping to either side in the wind as Illya fought to keep the machine steady.

  Coat flapping, Napoleon leaped the last few feet to the ground, about twenty yards from the wreckage of the plane. He knew about what he expected to find as he looked through the shattered glass of the door — there were three bodies, and not neat ones. The crash had been bad. He looked away and took a couple of deep breaths, then planted a foot on the side of the fuselage and jerked at the door with both hands.

  It gave a little, but not enough. He kicked hard at the frame around the latch, jarring it loose, and tried again. He gripped the latch handle and strained back against it; it gave a little, then with an ear-aching screech of strained metal the whole door came away in his hands and he fell backwards across the carpet of dirt and pine needles that made the forest floor. The door landed on top of him, with a painful crack across the forehead. Napoleon considered the situation, and decided that anyone with less patience would probably swear.

  He got to his feet again, tossing the door aside, and glanced up. Illya was directly above him, so the body of the helicopter would have concealed the embarrassing incident. Napoleon decided to say nothing about it.

  He took a few more deep breaths, and looked inside the cabin of the plane.

  In the co-pilot's seat was a man in a brown suit. He had the remains of a Thompson sub-machine gun in a badly shattered case near his feet. He too was badly shattered.

  So was the other brown suit in the back seat. He was not easily recognizable, but was probably the spokesman of the team. Thrush had lost a couple of good agents and a pilot.

  In the fourth seat, firmly strapped in, lay the tan camera case.

  Napoleon smiled a grim smile as he reached across the ruin of the second Thrush agent and unfastened the strap around the bag. The zipper was still closed.

  He pulled the bag out. Thrush had really let themselves in for it this time — as expected, the E/D apparently had had a timer built in. It had gone off in the plane in mid-fight.

  The engine had been killed, as had the signal from the tracer. The Thrush pilot, unable to restart the engine, had probably been trying to either glide to Shaver Lake for a water landing, or perhaps even into Fresno. But in the dusk, unable to see the ground clearly, none of his instruments functioning, the mountains had come up to meet him. There was a fair probability that they had never known what hit them.

  Then luck had stepped in on U.N.C.L.E.'s side — the impact had damaged the Energy Damper, and the signal from the practically indestructable tracer had started again. The power for the long-range transmitter was beginning to fade after about seventeen hours, but there had been enough to guide them directly to the spot. Score one for our side, Napoleon thought, as he slung the camera case over his shoulder and started back up the ladder to the helicopter.

  An U.N.C.L.E. T-33 jet was waiting for them at Fresno Airport, and less than an hour later they were in Los Angeles. Napoleon had radioed Feldman the situation, and waiting at this airport were a long-range jet, tanks full and engine warm; Garnet Keldur, just off the plane from Las Vegas; and Ralph Feldman, who greeted them as they stepped out of the T-33.

  "Glad you made it back. Your fresh horse and one passenger are all ready to take off, as per your request, as they say. Both are fully fueled and good for the full distance to New York. I relayed the story to Waverly; he said if the gadget was damaged he'd have your heads. By the way — before you take off, could I possibly see the thing that's caused all this fuss?"

  "It's inside here," said Illya, holding up the bag. "It may be wired to explode, so we'd rather not open it."

  "Oh, I don't need to see the works. I just wanted to be a little impressed that something that small could do everything this is supposed to be able to do — and inspire all this chasing around. What's it weigh?"

  Illya hefted it experimentally. "About ten pounds."

  Feldman shook his head in amazement, and said nothing for a moment. Then he collected himself and said, "Well, give my regards to Broadway — and Waverly, too
. You'll have to justify the expense for this private jet to him."

  "Absolute necessity," said Napoleon. "The thing is quiet now, but if it should act up on an airliner and cause a crash, we'd all be terribly embarrassed. As well as dead. And there'd be a lot of innocent bystanders dead with us. This way, we'll have a parachute hooked to the thing from the minute we take off. We'll put Garnet beside it next to the hatch, and if it goes off and kills the engine, I yell to her, and she kicks it out. Then we can start up again, and go back and rescue it later with a horse, or a dog team, or something it won't put out of action."

  Feldman nodded. "A good plan," he said. "Simple, practical, and effective."

  "And mine," said Illya.

  "Of course," said Napoleon, honestly.

  Chapter 8: "Looks As If They've Got It Working."

  It was early evening in New York. Waverly had not been at the airport to greet Napoleon, Illya and Garnet, but he had sent a car with orders to bring them directly to his office.

  Outside what appeared to be a window, the United Nations building was a sparkling column against the darkening sky, and the lights on the river were brighter than the few stars that had begun to appear.

  Waverly turned away from the view as his door opened, and two agents and a friend entered.

  They carried a light brown camera bag directly to the swivel-mounted table and set it down, then took seats as Waverly ambled over, tamping his pipe.

  "So this is your infernal machine, eh?" He looked it over carefully. "Not especially impressive. Had a look inside?"

  "Not yet, sir. In case it might be booby-trapped, we thought we'd leave the surprises to the lab crew."

  Waverly nodded absently and fumbled for a match. "Mr. Kuryakin, would you ring for a messenger to take this thing to the laboratory? They're expecting it."

  To Waverly, lighting his pipe was a five-minute vacation from his job. He expected to spare no concentration from it, and took pains to be sure everything else was taken care of before he started. His staff was aware of this, and took equal caution not to interrupt him in the midst of this ritual.