by Unknown
The plane whined, screamed, lifted silver against the flaming circle of the sun. Gradually the noise of the engines diminished. Solo and Illya watched the craft become a speck vanishing far off over the desert. Defeat showed in the slope of their shoulders as they stumbled forward along the blood-spotted runway.
"God in heaven!" Solo breathed.
Peterson's body lay sprawled on the concrete, dead and incomplete. Instead of a head, there was nothing but a grisly gray and red welter, sickening to look upon.
Illya's eyes were soot-stained, haunted. "What sort of a monster was that man, Napoleon? To do that with a tap, a little tap—" Wonderingly, Illya raised his own rather fragile-looking right hand and stared at it. "Just a tap of one hand."
Behind them silence enfolded the destroyed pillbox. Here and there hot metal creaked. Solo's voice sounded harshly:
"I've seen that man somewhere, Illya. Somewhere a long time ago I saw him. I remember something else. He wasn't tall. He was scrawny. Small and scrawny. But it was the same face. I know it was the same face. Or—almost."
Slowly Napoleon Solo turned and stared into the sun-blasted sky. The plane had gone. What lingered was the dawning significance of the horror which the two U.N.C.L.E. agents had discovered at what they had thought was the end, not the beginning, of a mission.
Raspy-voiced, Illya put it into words:
"What is THRUSH breeding, Napoleon? Supermen?"
ACT ONE — Death to All 97-pound Weaklings!
ONE
Had it not been for one relatively small piece of evidence, Mr. Alexander Waverly would have been unconvinced.
The evidence lay in the center of the motorized revolving conference table in the center of the chamber which served as the planning room for U.N.C.L.E.'s Operations and Enforcement Section.
This chamber was located high up in the unbelievably modern and complex offices and research facilities located behind a front of decaying brownstones on a certain street in the East Fifties.
Arms folded across his immaculate tweed jacket and perpetually unlit pipe clenched between his teeth, Mr. Waverly slowly circled the conference table. He stared down at the item of evidence with an I really wish you hadn't brought this up expression on his lined face. At last he halted and uttered a short, emotion-charged word.
Napoleon Solo was lounging in one of the deep leather armchairs near the table. His right eyebrow hooked up in surprise. Mr. Waverly's resorting to purple language was highly unusual, to say the least.
Mr. Waverly waved his pipe stem at a small, curled, three-by-five inch photo print lying on the table. "We have quite enough bonfires burning at this very moment. We are stretched thin in terms of personnel. Now you bring this back. I don't know where I'm going to find agents available to handle it."
Napoleon Solo reached inside his faultlessly tailored dark blue blazer and extracted a thin two-dollar cigar. He lit it and inhaled the pungent tobacco with relish. He wasn't much of a smoker. It hampered his physical conditioning. But this cigar symbolized his return to civilization.
He and Illya had been back in the U.S. less than thirty-six hours. He had finally succeeded in scrubing and scouring all the Saudi Arabian sand out of his pores. Liberal doses of antibiotic lotion had somewhat mitigated the blistering sunburn pain which had set his skin on fire just as he and Illya had regained the 'copter after the attack on the THRUSH station.
On the long flight back to America via a commercial jet—poor Peterson's remains were flying specially crated in the cargo hold—Solo sat miserably in his seat by the window. The brace of charming young things in trim uniforms who serviced the plane's first-class compartment hovered over him, solicitous and eager to minister to his comfort with pillows or cocktails.
The sunburn unmanned him, made him feel awkward and adolescent. How in heaven's name could you carry on amusing, provocative conversation with a pretty girl when every other minute you were scratching your ribs through your shirt?
Besides, there was the evidence: the evidence carried in a flat black leather card case in Solo's inside jacket pocket. It served to depress him thoroughly as he thought about its significance for the entire flight.
Just before departing from the annihilated THRUSH station in the desert with Peterson's remains wrapped up in a canvas, Illya had popped open the crystal and face of his oversized watch and aimed the revealed inner workings at the sorry bundle of flesh slowly gathering flies on the blood-spattered airstrip.
Illya Kuryakin snapped the picture. The technical office in Port Said processed the film for them. Thus they were able to show Mr. Waverly a photo of Peterson's body moments after the head had literally been knocked off by the man Klaanger.
Now, while Solo puffed on his cigar, Mr. Waverly examined the photo again. Then he tossed it back onto the table.
"Incredible," was Mr. Waverly's comment.
"I'd say impossible," Solo spoke, "except that Illya and I saw it happen."
"I cannot believe that a human fist could do such damage, Mr. Solo."
"No, sir, not my fist, or yours. But Klaanger's did."
"Such a thing is simply not to be countenanced!" Mr. Waverly gestured rather melodramatically, as if trying to convince himself.
There was no escaping the depressing possibility that the dreaded organization against which U.N.C.L.E. had fought had once again discovered a way to twist and warp the laws of nature to serve its own malevolent ends.
Mr. Waverly walked to the window. He ticked his pipe stem against the sill and gazed out at the light-spangled panorama of New York by night. Softly he said, "My first inclination is to dismiss the man who did this thing as some kind of freak. A throwback, a biological monster of the sort which the world unfortunately does produce from time to time. But then, Mr. Solo—" Waverly turned to confront his agent with a piercing, skeptical gaze. "—then you inform me that you recognized his face."
Solo nodded. "I did. Unless the sun drove me completely loony twice in a row, I'd swear that the man I recognized was—well, wasn't so big the time I saw him in Germany. That's why I thought it was important to bring it to your attention."
On a table under the now-blank closed circuit television screen, a blue stud on a white phone lit up suddenly. Mr. Waverly picked up the receiver.
He muttered a monosyllable, hung up.
"That was Mr. Kuryakin. He's waiting for us in the audio-visual conference room."
Alexander Waverly started toward the door. Solo jumped up to follow. Pneumatic devices hissed the steel panels aside. They moved along briskly down a hall walled in stainless steel. Recessed ceiling lights blinked blue, amber, red, in signal patterns.
An operative in shirt-sleeves and a pistol in a shoulder holster emerged from an open doorway carrying a number of coded flimsy reports. He passed one to Mr. Waverly, who scanned it, initialled it and passed it back.
"Tell the Honolulu station that Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin will fly out to interrogate the prisoners tonight."
The agent vanished back into the room, while Napoleon Solo did his best to control an expression of surprise.
Briskly Waverly started on, his heels clicking on the highly polished floor. They entered an elevator. In seconds they arrived on another floor. Visions of a chic little vocalist named Mitzi—she was currently appearing at an intimate supper club downtown—fleeted poignantly through Solo's mind as he said:
"Sir, I believe you mentioned Honolulu?"
"That's correct, Mr. Solo. I told you we were spread thin. A three-man THRUSH oceanographic craft was captured by a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Pacific yesterday. The craft's atomic batteries malfunctioned. We have three extremely valuable prisoners in irons in Hawaii at this moment. Unfortunately our best people from that area are on Taiwan, attending to another serious matter.
"Therefore I'm sending you and Mr. Kuryakin out to Honolulu to pry as much as you can from our three hooked fish. Perhaps you understand now, Mr. Solo, why this matter of the man with the heavy fist has come
at the wrong time. Naturally we must attend to it, explore its possible implications. But it is not making our task any easier, I'll tell you that."
Waverly paused at the entrance to the audio-visual conference room. "Mr. Solo, may I ask why you are suddenly looking like a distempered codfish?"
"Oh, sorry," Solo said. "It's just that I haven't had a night off in two months -"
"Yes, well, ahem. THRUSH waits for no man, Mr. Solo."
"Neither does my thrush, I'm afraid," Solo muttered darkly, waving a sentimental farewell to the shapely young chanteuse with whom he'd planned to enjoy a few of the pleasures of civilized life this evening.
Illya waited for them inside the conference room. He was walking up and down impatiently beside a highly polished board room table. He looked a bit gritty around the eyes, and his putty-colored suit contrasted with the unusual lobster hue of his sunburned face. From his expression, it was clear that he did not have pleasant news for them:
"It took the computers all of three minutes to locate our man, Mr. Waverly. His name is Klaanger. General Felix Klaanger. Look here, sir—"
Illya turned to a console, depressed one of many colored studs. The light level faded as a rheostat took over. Soundlessly an ultra-wide screen descended from the ceiling on the far wall.
The slim agent touched another stud. A harsh black and white image flashed onto the screen. The slide showed two views of a man's head and torso, one full front, the other profile.
In the darkness Solo felt his palms prickle. Even in monochrome, the face on the screen had that same circular, fanatical luminence which Solo recalled from the dreadful moment in the desert when Klaanger had turned back at them just before making his getaway in the THRUSH aircraft. But there were subtle differences.
Solo said, "That certainly looks like the same man—"
"Not quite, Napoleon," Illya said. "This picture is one of several thousand confiscated from the files of the Nazi High Command at the end of World War II. It's over twenty years old. Klaanger of course would be much younger here."
"It's the same man and it isn't," Solo went on, musing aloud. "He's changed. And it's more than just the age. The man I remember was smaller. But the changes are more than a matter of size." Solo crossed through the beam of the projector. His shadow momentarily obliterated the cruel, arrogant, slender face staring out at them. Pausing at Mr. Waverly's elbow, Solo continued, "The man we saw in the desert was—how can I describe it?—kind of a grotesque oversized caricature of that man up there."
"He was none too gentle looking, even twenty years ago." Illya was looking at the thin-lipped, high-cheekboned image spread across the glowing screen.
"But he looks worse now," Solo replied. "His head, for one thing. It's changed. It's huge, almost as though someone had converted it to putty and pushed it and thumbed it until it became two or three times bigger than its original size. I don't know whether I can properly communicate the difference to you, Mr. Waverly."
"I read about Klaanger in connection with the Nuremburg trials. He was on trial with the rest of those high ranking Nazis. One morning I remember reading in the newspaper that they'd found a body in his cell. It wasn't his body. The face had been destroyed with acid. The dental records showed there had been a switch. Klaanger was one of the very few who was caught and got away. I remember the picture of him. He wore his general's hat with the SS markings."
Mr. Waverly coughed. "All right, Mr. Kuryakin. That's enough of the picture."
"Thank you, sir." Illya touched a stud. The image faded. The screen rolled up again and the light level increased. "I was looking at him for ten minutes before you came in. It's not any particular treat. If you look quite hard you can very nearly see some of those three million persons he sent to the gas ovens with his signature."
A peculiar tension was in the room. Mr. Waverly peered at the fingernails on his right hand in the slightly cross-eyed way that was typical of his deep concentration. Illya removed a folded blue sheet from his pocket. In the act of unfolding it, he rattled it. Mr. Waverly glanced up, spoke:
"Thus far, gentlemen, all we have in the way of solid evidence is a single photograph of Peterson with his head gone. Then there's Mr. Solo's conviction that a curiously misshapen giant in Saudi Arabia bears a resemblance—a resemblance only—to a Nazi officer named Felix Klaanger. Is there anything more substantial? After all, Mr. Solo, you had one bout with the sun out there."
"I just have a feeling about it, sir," Solo said. "I'm certain it's the same man."
Alexander Waverly allowed his voice to become somewhat more soothing. "Very well, Mr. Solo. Your judgment has proved excellent on other occasions. And I trust you gentlemen will forgive my seeming reluctance to become interested in this matter. I must be interested, of course. But we are going through a rather difficult period in the organization. Several assassinations of operatives have thinned our ranks. If THRUSH attempts to attack on still one more front, we may be in grave difficulty. I wish we had some additional evidence so that we might assign a priority to this problem—"
Illya rattled the blue sheet of paper again. "This won't convince you, sir, in the sense that it's inconclusive regarding what THRUSH might be up to. But I believe it's interesting in the light of Napoleon's recollections—"
"What is that, Mr. Kuryakin?" Waverly asked.
"Some dossier data excerpts from the material the computers fed out concerning Felix Klaanger. If you'll permit me—"
Illya began to read, skimming over details of Felix Klaanger's birth in a suburb of Berlin, his rise to eminence within the Nazi party, and his sordid history as a mass executioner during World War II.
"That is by way of background, sir." Illya went on. "Here are the significant points. General Klaanger did manage to escape from Nuremburg at war's end. As of this writing he is still at large. He was seen as recently as three years ago in both Portugal and Argentina. Most interesting of all are these items from the section of the dossier marked Description." Illya read out in a flat voice, " Hair, brown. Eyes, brown. Distinguishing marks, none. Height, five feet three and one half inches. Weight, one hundred and eleven pounds."
Solo burst up from the chair where he'd sprawled a moment ago. "Five feet three?"
"I'm sure this record is correct, Napoleon," Illya said. "Of course the details were compiled twenty years ago."
"Mr. Waverly, the man we saw in the desert stood nearly seven feet tall. He weighed well over two hundred pounds."
Into the quietness of the conference room where filtered air whispered through wall ducts crept a new atmosphere of tension and menace.
Mr. Waverly rose. He began to pace, fingers laced behind his back.
"Let us assume that Mr. Solo's memory is not faulty and that the Klaanger of Nuremburg and the Klaanger of the desert are one and the same man. In destroying the desert headquarters of the THRUSH cell, you gentlemen successfully closed off one source of harassment.
"On the other hand, the presence of this man Klaanger as an aide to the THRUSH station chief—oh, by the way the station chief was picked up in Vienna at six last night. Picked up in a garment cleaning van and taken—well, no need to give you the grisly details. Only Klaanger slipped through the net. His presence in the desert is disturbing.
"Mr. Kuryakin, you alluded to Klaanger having been seen in certain countries known to harbor ex-Nazis. Does the report contain anything to indicate that Klaanger has been engaged in activities designed to bring the Nazi party to life again?"
Illya ticked his index finger against the blue sheet. "Some suggestions of that only, sir. He is rumored to be a motive power behind the Fourth Reich. But you know how such things go. The iceberg theory. One-tenth is visible, nine-tenths are hidden from sight. I think we can assume that if Klaanger still has Nazi sympathies, he will be actively at work preserving the party for a return bout, as the American fight announcers put it."
Under his breath Mr. Waverly murmured a single strained syllable of anguish. Then he strai
ghtened, becoming more his old, business-like self.
"Assume then also, gentlemen, that some sort of working coalition has been formed between the remnants of the Nazi party and THRUSH. Assume that somehow, by means of its devious and sophisticated technological resources, THRUSH has found a means to increase the size and muscular capability of a human being. We have evidence to suggest that a man who once stood five feet three and weighed one hundred and eleven pounds has somehow been changed, mutated, so that his height has increased by nearly two feet, and he has gained weight and become a creature of nearly superhuman strength.
"If this is so, U.N.C.L.E. faces an extreme crisis. What if THRUSH has discovered a means to manufacture creatures as powerful as Klaanger? What if this is nor merely an isolated, freakish phenomenon but the beginning of a planned program to put scores of these extremely powerful operatives into the field? With such a force THRUSH could in a very short time decimate our own forces and bring us to our knees. And the world as well."
Mr. Waverly paused. His tone hardened. "We are stretched thin. But we cannot afford to overlook the possibility that a new and massive THRUSH menace confronts us. You gentlemen have convinced me of that."
Napoleon Solo uttered a long, relieved sigh. "For a couple of minutes I was afraid you were going to retire us to the funny farm."
"I did not say I was convinced that Klaanger is the first of a new breed of incredibly strong THRUSH agents, Mr. Solo," Waverly corrected.
"You didn't?" Solo said, distressed.
"No. But I am convinced we must find out whether it's so."
"Napoleon and I can take over the job," Illya put in.
Waverly shook his head. "I cannot spare you immediately. We will issue a world-wide Phase B alert, with detailed information on Felix Klaanger. As soon as he is spotted somewhere, I will try to release you to follow up. Until then—Mr. Solo, what are you doing?"
"I was just practising my ukulele fingering." Solo glanced at Illya. "We have at least one more assignment coming up before we can tackle Herr Klaanger."