by Unknown
"The other way? That can't be right," Illya complained, trying to sound elderly and irritable. "I saw no village—"
"Then your eyes are blind, old one." The farmer grabbed Illya's right shoulder. His fingers were thick. He applied far too much pressure for one casually interested in Illya's behaviour.
The beeves in the rear of the truck were responding to the man's angry voice. They began to stamp and swivel their heads so that their horns caught the light. They mooed loudly. All except one, which seemed to be standing stock-still and glass-eyed in the center.
Glass-eyed? Illya looked again.
The farmer spun him around bodily. Whirled in a complete circle, Illya had a flash-pan view of the hide of that stoical bovine that did not move. He would have sworn he detected something which distinctly resembled a moth-hole in its side—
"Verdammt old fool, be on your way!" The dairyman gave Illya a pop in the back of the spine that nearly knocked him off his feet. The man tried to sound hearty as he added, "It's for your own good. You'll merely become lost in the forest and die of hunger. I won't have your death on my hands."
Tottering and capering and wondering how much longer he should maintain this feeble fiction of being old, Illya plucked two handfuls of figurines from his sack and waved them at the dairyman.
"I don't know what a rude person like you is doing on this road," Illya piped. "But I have figurines to sell in the village. Clever little figurines, see? I intend to pass and go on my way—" Illya continued his tottering progress until he was back to within a yard of the dairyman.
The dairyman's cheeks grew plum-colored. He whipped a snub-barrel automatic from his side pocket.
"Your persistence is admirable," he barked. "But it is also your downfall—Herr Illya Kuryakin."
And with his free hand the dairyman knocked the hat off Illya's head, revealing the U.N.C.L.E. agent's youthful bowlcut locks.
Cold in his belly, Illya stood at bay, hands full of figurines, eyes watching the gun muzzle most carefully for the jerk which would signal a shot that could very well end his life. Behind him Illya heard the chatter-and-buzz growing louder in the sky. Without looking around, he knew a helicopter was skimming the tops of the trees.
"We suspected you would be coming, Kuryakin," the dairyman said. "Ever since we took your friend Herr Solo last night, we have been looking—"
"Is Napoleon alive?" Illya interrupted.
Like all Thrush men, this one relished cruelty. He shrugged. "I can't say."
"Where is he?"
"Where you almost got to, before I chopped you down to size."
The dairyman jerked his head to indicate the green-dappled forest depths behind him, to the west.
With surprising agility for a man of his stature, the THRUSH operative jumped up onto the rear fender of the truck and balanced himself, the gun muzzle never wavering from Illya's chest.
The agent reached with his free hand and caught hold of the left horn of the bovine which was standing statue-still in the center of the other animals. It was standing statue-still because it was dead and stuffed, as was revealed when the agent snapped off its left horn and pulled it toward him.
A cable ran from the center of the horn back into the animal's head. The agent said, "I would have taken you when I passed you earlier on the highway, but we preferred to lay the trap this side of Ommenschnee. It's quieter. Sometimes that highway is heavily trafficked before dawn."
The agent thumbed a yellow spot on the horn and the eyes of the phony beef began to blink brightly, first one, then another.
This electrical display somewhat upset the other animals. They began to moo plaintively once more. Into the point of the horn the agent said cheerfully, "Achtung, sky one. Achtung! Gerhard speaking. No need for you to land with our little friends. I have Kuryakin prisoner.
"The plan is working perfectly, isn't it? They've gotten Solo and now his chum has come running right after him. I shall drive him on in. He's showing no fight. Gerhard signing off—"
Illya flung both handfuls of figurines at the THRUSH agent and dove for the dirt.
The figurines smacked Gerhard in the face sufficiently hard to cause him to lose his balance. He fell from the fender, cursing. As he fell he managed to twist and fire. Illya rolled desperately through the grass as the bullet whizzed by.
Gerhard hit the ground and shot twice more. Illya kept rolling, fighting to drag out his long-muzzled pistol as he rolled. Gerhard lumbered to his feet. He was standing now, had the right angle, could shoot downward at Illya, who was still scrabbling on the ground.
At the first shot, the animals in the truck had begun to moo more loudly, frightened. The electrified eyes of the false beef changed from white to red and flashed with a panicky speeded-up rhythm. The microphone on its cord had fallen over the side of the truck and had fallen down. From it crackled an anxious voice shooting questions in German.
On the ground Illya desperately tried to bring his right arm up in time to shoot. Gerhard had him centered in his sight.
The agent's cheeks worked puffily with hatred. Gerhard's index finger whitened on the trigger. Illya said a quick prayer—
From behind, Gerhard was stabbed in the neck by the tossing horns of a frantic steer lunging against the truck's staked side. Gerhard yowled. He stumbled off balance just as the gun exploded.
The shot winged past Illya's head by a fractional margin. His lips went white and he thumbed his weapon onto rapid-fire.
The gun's stuttering filled the sun-dappled roadside with thunder. Gerhard howled in rage, catapulting backward with holes in his belly.
He died as he hit the ground.
Panting, Illya whirled around. A shadow flickered over the roadway. The THRUSH helicopter was dropping fast, its rotors churning the air just above the treetops and lashing the leaves to a fury. Gerhard's sudden break in communication had alarmed the skyborne members of the trapping team. Sunlight flared on the 'copter's cockpit glass and on two brighter circles within—the lenses of field glasses watching him.
Sprinting, Illya reached the truck and leaped inside. He flicked over the key, hit the accelerator and slammed the shift rod practically simultaneously. The truck leaped ahead.
He fought to control it. The cattle, maddened, were lurching back and forth like juggernauts in the rear. In the side mirror Illya glimpsed the helicopter setting down in the center of the dirt track. Men leaped out, armed with machine pistols.
A metallic chatter racketed up behind him. Then came a soft, plopping explosion. Another.
The slugs fired by the THRUSH agents had blown the rear tires.
The truck veered wildly, seesawing from side to side along the track. The machine pistols continued to burp and chatter. Bullets pinged and whanged into the truck body. Ahead, a large and adamant oak tree loomed. The truck raced straight into it, out of control.
Illya levered open the left hand door and leaped out. The dairy truck slammed into the tree with a huge crash. The cattle battered against the slatted sides of the truck, smashing through them at last. All the beeves leaped down, tumbling over themselves and stampeded away into the forest.
All, that is, except the electronic marvel. It remained steadfastly behind, missing one horn and its light-bulb eyes now blinking green with alarmed rapidity.
The gasoline tank of the truck let loose. The whole vehicle went up in a boom and blast of fire.
Heat seared Illya's cheeks where he lay on the ground, his right leg bent under him. Instinctively he averted his face, came up coughing in a cloud of nauseous black smoke. The smoke screened his movements temporarily, allowed him to totter to his feet.
Abruptly his right leg went bad, jelly-like. He nearly fell.
He stumbled across a massive tree trunk, grimacing in pain. In the jump from the truck, he'd bunged up the leg. He started to hobble.
A new, terrifying sound split the morning air. Back along the road rose the frenzied yelping of dogs.
Illya lurched into a
relatively shadowed area to one side of the dirt track. He risked a glance backward. What he saw chilled him clean through.
Down from the helicopter leaped three uniformed THRUSH officers in boots and gauntlets. Each man held a trio of leather leashes in his right hand. At the end of those leashes strained and slavered nine of the most murderous mastiffs Illya Kuryakin had ever seen.
The dogs yipped and bayed, eyes rolling, tongues lolling, vicious fangs dripping. The first officer released his leashes. The mastiffs shot ahead. The other six came right behind, a line of red maws and relentless teeth coming at Illya with rocket speed.
He lifted his long-muzzled pistol and squeezed off a shot. His vision was blurred from shock. He missed.
The dogs were halfway to the truck. Over the crackling of flames from the wrecked vehicle came the hoarse scream of the senior THRUSH officer:
"Kill!" he howled at his animals. "Kill, kill, kill!"
Sweat poured down Illya Kuryakin's forehead. He could never shoot all the dogs in time. He swung around and began to hobble through the forest. Pain beat unmercifully through his right leg.
Snap-and-yap, snarl-and-yelp, the dogs came on behind him. In seconds the chase assumed an eerie dream-like aura as Illya limped and dodged through sunshine and shadow-patches. He had no time to look around. The savage snapping of the killer jaws came closer. Closer—
A certain cold, emotionless professionalism swept over Illya then. Despite the pain and horror of the chase, he managed to pull out a small compass and hold it up in front of his eyes. The needle jiggled wildly, but its direction was still positive enough to show him that he was going the right way.
Well, he thought as he pelted ahead, this was the ultimate purpose for which he had been trained—to perish like a professional, not a dithering amateur.
Somewhere in the Black Forest to the west, Napoleon Solo was being held a prisoner.
At least, Illya said to himself, when the dogs drag me down, I'll be right on course.
TWO
The blip which indicated Napoleon Solo's position to Illya Kuryakin had disappeared in the darkest, bitterest hour of the night—three in the morning. At that hour, though Solo wasn't aware of it, his pocket transmitter had gone dead and caused the blip to vanish.
The reason was that Solo, riding in the Rolls with Helene Bauer at his side, had passed through a stone wall, as well as through a wall of electronic impulses which immediately nullified the effect of any spy or homing devices an interloper might be carrying.
The wall was high, its stone blocks huge and gray. As the Rolls swept up to it and braked, Solo saw two huge men in THRUSH uniforms step into the headlamp glare. Both had misshapen faces and the oversized shoulders and arms reminiscent of a Klaanger. They peered into the headlights in a dull-witted way.
"Get those gates open, you incompetents!" snarled the amazon at the wheel. "The Herr Doktor's daughter is here."
The guard offered feeble apologies: "I'm new. You didn't give the countersign—"
"You miserable wretch!" she cried in a temper. "We've been driving all night!"
She snatched the Luger from the hand of the girl beside her in the front seat and promptly fired a bullet into the guard's left thigh. The man fell, writhing and shrieking.
"There's the countersign," the girl declared airily, passing the gun back.
The other guard rushed into a control booth. Instantly, black iron gates swung open.
They were somewhere deep in the Black Forest, Solo knew. But he could tell little else, except that the stone wall was very high and thick.
The girl hummed as the Rolls eased forward.
A rustling of Helene Bauer's skirt as she shifted position caused Solo to glance around.
He'd been watching the tableau outside: one THRUSH guard kneeling beside his wounded comrade and directing ugly glances at the car's occupants as the Rolls picked up speed. Mentally Solo tabulated the information. So there was no great amount of love lost between the ex-Nazis and certain of the THRUSH personnel, eh? Perhaps that situation might somehow prove valuable.
Solo's nerves were wire-taut. His belly had a chill, empty feeling. But some of his nonchalance was returning.
He especially wanted to find out the exact nature of the union between these two fanatical power groups and, if possible, live long enough to at least communicate the facts to Illya—
That memory of Illya made him wonder about the tiny transmitter hidden in his jacket. Was it functioning? Certainly he couldn't rely on that -
Helene's skirt rustled. She had leaned forward to tap the Amazon driver on the shoulder.
"Inge," Helene said, "that shooting was unnecessary."
Inge half-turned. Her beautiful, stony profile was limned by the pale glow of the dash instruments.
"I am sorry," she said, so flatly it was clear that she meant just the opposite.
"You and your THRUSH pals certainly have a nice relationship," Solo smiled.
Helene spun around. "Be quiet! We work together very smoothly."
"At what? Demolishing each other? Well, I suppose you can't expect anything else when you make one bunch of paranoid killers the bedfellows of another. But then the problem becomes, which bunch is worse?"
Helene's lip quivered. For one moment Solo was not positive whether the girl intended to curse him or break into tears. He had probed and found a weakness. Helene's face froze into determined lines, but not before Solo saw a doubtful, hesitant look in her pretty eyes.
Was she as callous and as convinced of the rightness of her cause as she pretended to be? Or was there self-doubt, a deeply repressed feeling that she was in league with monsters?
Perhaps he was over-reacting to that fleeting, uncertain expression. But Helene would bear watching.
In a moment Helene had recovered and was as calm as ever:
"I don't care for your remarks, Solo. I would gladly turn you over to Inge for a bit of discipline if my father did not have another important use for your carcass."
The word carcass made Solo's spinal column crawl.
Inge laughed contemptuously:
"He wouldn't last five minutes with me, Fraulein Helene. He's obviously a weak, decadent type, unused to the outdoors and the joy of physical exercise. I would make liver sausage paste of his bones before he could scream twice. Of course I would be pleased to try—"
"I'll bet you would," Solo said.
Helene was sitting far forward on the seat, staring down the tunnel of the headlights. The Rolls was driving up a recently blacktopped drive. On either side of it Solo could see neatly cut and luxuriant turf.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Solo," Helene said. "My father really is in need of your body."
"What has your father got to do with this?"
Helene's smile was rather ghoulish. "In good time, Solo. In good time."
The Rolls slowed down, curving around a U-shaped drive past some formally clipped boxwood hedges. Then the headlamps swept past the corner of a great stone house. The vehicle braked.
Inge and her companion leaped out. Lugers glittered in their big fists.
A door slammed at the front of the house. No lights showed yet. The area around the car filled quickly with more THRUSH soldiers, all bearing sidearms at ready.
An officer touched his cap and held the door open for Helene. Solo got out after her.
"This way, please," Helene said, mounting a series of stone steps.
Solo followed. He was able to estimate the size of the house whose front staircase they were climbing—it was immense, towering up at least three floors and spreading out laterally in a series of equally large wings to his right and left. A spacious lawn of at least two acres spread out back there toward the gate. A spot of light in the guard booth indicated the great distance they had driven.
Helene had moved in beside him as they ascended the stairs, saying:
"This place is eight centuries old. It was an ancient baronial estate before it was acquired and refurbished
for our needs. You shall see."
With this grotesquely cheerful warning, she led the way through huge bronze doors bearing rampant lions in bas relief. Inside Solo found himself in total darkness.
There was a motorized whirr. The giant doors shut with a ponderous chunk. Dazzling lights from a crystal chandelier sprung on.
Solo had thought quickly about making a play in the darkness. Things happened too fast. He had a vivid if fleeting impression of being in a spacious, marble-floored foyer with colorful tapestries on the walls. The foyer was tight as a box. All other doors leading out of it were shut. Solo and Helene were alone in the center of the floor, and before Solo half grasped all the details of the surroundings, the floor began to sink beneath them.
The walls remained where they were.
The tapestries and the chandelier rose away. When the marble floor had dropped perhaps twelve feet—down here the walls were cinder block, and set with recessed white lights behind frosted glass—two steel panels shot out from the baseboards of the foyer above. The panels met in the center with a clang, immediately providing a new floor for the foyer and a ceiling for the shaft through which they were descending.
Helene fluffed her stole around her shoulders and continued to smile in icy satisfaction.
"I ought to go for your throat," he smiled back.
"Why don't you try, Herr Solo?"
"Because I'm curious about the rest of this rat's nest."
"Perfectly understandable. Although when you're shrieking in the final extremities of death I'm sure you'll rue your curiosity."
Solo waited with cold palms while the marble floor continued to descend past the recessed white lights. The air had an underground feel and smell, cool and redolent of earth. With a grind of gears the marble floor stopped. Double stainless steel pneumatic doors hissed back, revealing a corridor with similar metal walls.
A brunette girl in the black jacket and boot uniform was cleaning a murderous throwing knife with a soft cloth. She sat inside a booth with a wire front. Seeing Helene, she sprang up and raised her right hand in the old Nazi salute. The prettiness of her face was marred by the fanatic luster of her eyes as she cried: