The Dolls of Death Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  THE DOLLS OF DEATH AFFAIR

  By ROBERT HART DAVIS

  They were twenty-four in number. Beautiful, horrible things that could bring the world to its knees in awful tribute to THRUSH. Solo and Illya knew they must destroy the dolls of death---or die!

  PROLOGUE

  SEVEN INTO THE SKY

  From below where he clung to the ice-rimmed rope, Illya Kuryakin shouted, “My feet are growing numb inside these infernal boots. How much further, Napoleon? Can you see?”

  Topmost man on the ropes they were using to scale the frozen cliff face, Napoleon Solo leaned backward just a bit. He had to balance himself carefully.

  In his fur-lined climbing gear, Solo resembled an overweight bear. Very little of his face could be seen. That portion which was visible had turned purple from the cold.

  The wind tugged and howled around them. An unexpected snow squall had come up just moments ago. It blasted frosty crystals of white stuff against Solo’s eyes, making vision doubly hard. He clutched the rope and craned backwards another fraction of an inch, trying to peer up the rocky perpendicular of the mountain to their goal.

  That goal had been clearly visible from the little ledge two hundred feet below where they had launched this last climb upward. The sudden squall was all around now. Napoleon Solo could no longer make out the small observation platform, iron-railed around its edge. The snow whirled, danced, pelted his cheeks and nose, blinding him.

  Solo held to the rope with one hand, cupped his mitten around his mouth and yelled to Illya, six feet below, “We can’t be far. Ten or twelve feet. But I can’t see it clearly any more.”

  “This storm will complicate matters,” Illya cried back. Hanging on the ropes and banging bodily against the mountain wall, Kuryakin too resembled a furry ball rather than a human being. “The helicopters from Basel and Bern will have difficulty landing on the upper platform. Their timing is critical, too. Should you attempt to signal them that we’ll wait?”

  “I can’t signal because I haven’t got three hands,” Solo bawled back. “We can’t turn back. The ‘copters come in and we have to be there. Let’s just keep climbing.”

  So saying, Solo lifted his massive snow-flecked boot to the next highest piton driven into the rock.

  He hoisted his weight up gingerly. Suddenly the right sole of his boot slipped off the iron pin. He gave a yell, tensed the muscles of his arms for the jolt. It came, hurting, jerking him up short.

  The icy rope burned so fiercely against his mittens that he could feel the heat. He kicked against the rock wall, trying to find purchase for his boots. His heart knocked hard inside his chest as the rope began to slip through his hands.

  If he fell and crashed down on top of Illya---

  There was nothing but about eight thousand feet of mountain air between these snow-whipped heights and the distant little Swiss Alpine valley glimmering paradoxically in the sunshine down there.

  Illya had given a cry of alarm when Solo slipped. Now he remained silent, recognizing that Solo must regain his footing himself, that the slightest distraction might prove fatal. Solo dangled in space, his feet hanging free. He tried to keep himself from sliding further down the rope. His arm sockets burned with the pain of supporting his weight as he gently, very gently, bent his right leg at the knee and tried to move his right boot, which seemed to weigh a ton, to a piton just a few inches to the right.

  The toe of his boot brushed against the iron pin. Solo transferred his weight to his right leg---and slipped again.

  Ice on the boot-tip had betrayed him. He flopped into space, dropped another three feet with elevator swiftness. He clamped both hands around the rope and kicked his lower body savagely to the left. His frozen cheeks crinkled as his lips peeled back over his teeth. He got his left boot squarely onto another piton and, with one quick jerk, managed to straighten himself up.

  Panting, he closed his eyes and rested.

  “Are you all right, Napoleon?” Illya called.

  “Yes. But what idiot said you climbed a mountain for the sport of it?”

  “Can you resume the climb?” Illya sounded anxious. “We are three minutes behind schedule.”

  Bundled in his mountaineer’s coat, Solo gave a jerky nod, reached over his head and grasped the next piton. The air darkened around him as he climbed. The fury of the snow increased until the last colorful patchwork glimpse of the valley below was lost.

  Solo climbed in a white nightmare of aching muscles and tension. Illya’s grunts of effort sounded softly below, overlaid with sudden whining bursts of wind. Gradually the shock of what happened was wiped away in Solo’s mind by the urgency of the mission and the nearness of the goal. Glancing upward, he saw an iron railing shining gray-dull for a moment through a rift in the blowing snow.

  That, anyway, was a break. The platform was empty.

  Normally the inmates of this THRUSH station would have an aircraft spotter posted on that rock platform. The abrupt squall had apparently driven the guard back inside. Solo and Illya wouldn’t have an immediate fight on their hands. Solo kept climbing.

  When his strength began to flag the last few feet, Napoleon Solo, United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, reminded himself of the stakes here. For nearly a year the European wing of the supra-nation that was THRUSH had befuddled U.N.C.L.E. by switching their communications and identification codes with incredible speed.

  The swiftness with which THRUSH could alter its codes proved not only baffling, but frustrating. Sometimes the elaborate ciphers were altered in a matter of hours. U.N.C.L.E. cryptographers would barely get the current code cracked, using a scrap of written message or a snip of intercepted radio transmission, before a new code was in the hands of THRUSH operatives all over the continent. And on more than one occasion, U.N.C.L.E.’s decoding has actually been rendered obsolete before it was completed.

  U.N.C.L.E. strategic planners, including Mr. Waverly and his global counterparts, knew that this code-switching was probably the result of a highly centralized and automated cryptography unit.

  Doubtless this THRUSH unit was using both computers and the most modern instantaneous data transmission equipment available to spread the new code throughout Europe in a matter of a half hour or less.

  U.N.C.L.E. believed this new centralized cryptography operation was only in the pilot stage, since similar difficulties were not as yet being encountered in other parts of the world. A maximum effort was mounted to locate the unit’s headquarters.

  After several months of field work, including the crossing of the palms of the proper number of informers, Solo and Illya had turned up the location, a secret stronghold constructed inside the very stone of one of the high peaks in the Swiss Alps.

  THRUSH had built its befouled eagle’s nest exclusively with the use of airlifted supplies and machinery, and had gone into business less than eleven months ago. So their informer said, anyway. Because Solo and Illya had won the prize, found the location, Waverly assigned them the rather hazardous honor of leading the attack team.

  Napoleon Solo could have thought of other, somewhat more glamorous spots to be in just now. He caught hold of the lower rung of the iron railing running round the observation platform. With a grunt and a heave he lifted himself over the rail. Then he reached down to give Illya a hand up. The nerve-wracking climb, which had taken the better part of two hours, was over.

  From this bitterly cold perch Solo and Illya could glimpse the nearby peaks when the snow parted. One of the peaks, white-topped, blazed with reflected sunlight. The snowstorm was highly localized. Still, it presented grave problems, which Illya commented on again:

  “The helicopters won’t be able to land on the platform in this sto
rm, Napoleon.”

  Solo nodded. Illya referred to a flat, open area carved from this mountain near its summit. The upper platform was presumably used for a helicopter pad, though U.N.C.L.E. spy-spotter planes had thus far photographed no craft coming or going.

  Solo pushed back the ice-stiffened sleeve of his coat to consult his watch.

  “We’re already a minute past the rendezvous time. I don’t know whether we should try to get inside or wait until the ‘copters show.”

  The plan had originally called for Solo and Illya to create a diversion on the lower levels of the THRUSH station while the U.N.C.L.E. agents landing in the ‘copters caught the station’s personnel off guard, from above.

  “You might try communicating with the lead chopper.” Illya stamped and slapped his arms against his sides.

  The small platform carved from the mountain’s face measured about four feet on a side. At the rear, leading inside, a steel door flecked with snow looked implacably solid. Solo agreed with Illya’s idea. He fumbled for his pocket communicator, twisted the calibrations into position. A meaningless static greeted him

  “Blasted storm,” Solo said, thinking of how nice the sun would be on the Riviera. “Well, if we stand out here we’ll freeze. And the ‘copters may be delayed indefinitely.”

  “Then I suppose it is rather up to us by ourselves,” said Illya.

  Kuryakin’s eyes looked out from the frosted mask of his face. He and Solo exchanged a quick glance which indicated that they both knew, and accepted, the extreme risks of their new plan of action.

  Solo gave a tight nod. He dug under his coat. In a moment he was tamping a small, gray wad of plastic material against the center of the steel entrance door.

  “Back”

  Solo gave Illya a shove. Both men spun around and covered their heads with their arms. The abyss yawned below through a rift in the snow. There was a single, thudding explosion.

  Scarlet sparks shot all around them. The agents spun around again and dove for the blasted-open door, dragging their long-muzzled pistols from beneath their mountaineer’s coats.

  They had taken no more than half a dozen running steps down a dim, concrete-walled corridor when an amplified alarm klaxon went off. Solo swept his parka hood back. The klaxon-noise blasted his ears, raaOOGAH, raaOOGAH, raaOOGAH.

  Like snow-covered wolves the men moved, cutting to the left and up an iron-railed stair. Illya peeled of his gloves. Solo did likewise, reaching the landing and starting up the next flight. In a cross-corridor at the top two men in long laboratory coats peered down at them.

  One of the THRUSH technologists let out a yelp. Both disappeared. Solo and Illya reached the top of the stairs, skidded to a halt in the middle of a brightly-illuminated hall. Its walls were the solid rock of the mountain.

  The scientists were disappearing through a double swinging doorway. From the opposite direction, three THRUSH soldiers with machine pistols charged.

  “Here’s the chamber of commerce with the keys to the city,” remarked Solo, crouching to fire his pistol.

  One of the Thrushmen seized his belly and bounced against a cushion. Blood welled up over the collar of his uniform blouse. Solo backed against the wall behind him, firing fast as Illya leaped for the wall opposite and flattened himself there. They presented narrow targets.

  Illya Kuryakin shot the second Thrushman in the thigh. The third Thrushman fell over the other two and Solo’s bullet caught him in the left hand. The man’s fingers disappeared in a shower of blood. Shrieking, he pitched on to his face.

  Out of the double swing doors on the left bolted a portly, pink-pated man wearing a lab coat and pince-nez. He held the door for someone behind him, crying orders in shrill French. In a moment two other technologists leaped out of the doorway, their arms laden with large black-covered ring binders which could be nothing less than master code files.

  Then came the two scientists Solo and Illya had discovered at the top of the stairs, and then two more. Each man had his own burden of microfilm reels, notebooks or computer print-out paper.

  The scientists ran across the hall, disappearing, as far as Napoleon could tell, into the solid wall on his side.

  Across the way, Illya Kuryakin gestured with his pistol muzzle.

  “An elevator. The door has already closed.”

  It happened so swiftly that Solo realized the THRUSH cryptographers must be following a pre-rehearsed escape plan formulated in the event of an emergency like this. He raced forward along the hall. The double doors slapped open. Three more burly THRUSH guards loomed, all with automatic weapons poised.

  “All the way down!” Solo cried, throwing himself out prone on his face. Bullets ripped through the air where his midsection had been a moment ago.

  Lying belly down, Illya remained cool enough to trigger a shot that spilled the first of the Thrushmen over backwards. His mates went down under him. One of the guards thus caught discharged his gun into his companion’s elbow. The victim squealed.

  Solo darted up to the tangle of arms and legs, rapped the butt of his pistol over all visible heads, then took a plunging step through the swing doors.

  A high-ceilinged chamber, rock-walled like the rest of the fortress, housed a number of massive computers whose green and purple and amber lights flashed. Three programmer’s stations were deserted, the comfortable chairs overturned. A bank of data transmission units along one wall hummed. The THRUSH cryptography center was deserted.

  Illya Kuryakin stuck his head in from the hallway. Now that the odds were a little more in their favor, his blue eyes sparkled.

  “Our informer told us there’s no way out of here but the landing platform up above,” Solo said.

  “They must be huddling up there now!” Illya grinned. “Clutching all their valuable documents and tapes. Evidently THRUSH felt this station was so secure that only a minimum armed force was assigned. And we seem to have disposed of it. Shall we continue up the stairway and offer our scientific friends the opportunity to surrender themselves and their data?” Illya Kuryakin’s bowl bangs haircut and his thin, rather ascetic face heightened his air of macabre glee as he bowed in the direction of the stairs.

  Napoleon Solo shrugged. He could breath evenly again. His dark hair was damp with snow, and his rugged, good-looking face was red from the wind. He glanced at the computers. “They’re nice looking machines. Busily doing their jobs with no idea that their masters have left them. Shame we have to blow them up.”

  “We can do it later, Napoleon. Let’s net the wiggling fish first.”

  As they started up the stairway, Solo grinned. “We didn’t even need the ‘copters.”

  “Perhaps now Mr. Waverly will consider the adjustment in our wages.”

  “I’ll settle for a week in Nice. There’s a certain French airline stewardess who does a very mean tango, and I promised---“

  Solo stopped. Words clogged in his throat. They had been climbing the stairway laughing, almost intoxicated by the sudden victory following the period of intense danger. They had reached the next highest level where a corridor branched off to the left, and it was down this corridor that Solo stared in disbelief.

  Snow ghosted and whirled around the tips of his boots. Wind blasted him in the face from a doorway which stood open at the corridor’s end.

  “Where are they?” Solo breathed. “Illya---where are they?”

  The THRUSH technologists had vanished. Beyond the doorway, a bleak, snow-swept stone platform ran outward to end in a lip of rock. Illya searched the short cross-corridor here at the top of the stairs. A single door stood open. He ran to it, ducked inside, threw on a light switch, rushed back out.

  “That’s a barracks. It’s empty.”

  “Then they have to be out there,” Solo whispered, edging into the corridor leading to the outside.

  Illya’s mouth whitened at the corners. “Perhaps there are hiding places---“

  “Yes, that’s it. Got to be.”

  Back flat against
the wall again, Napoleon Solo inched along. His pistol glinted in dull sunlight. The snow squall was breaking outside. A nearby peak shone golden-white. Fat clouds drifted past it.

  The nearer Solo and Illya crept to the door leading outside, the more of the rough-hewn helicopter pad came into their line of vision.

  It was empty.

  Finally, after hesitating to draw a breath and take a firmer grip on their gun butts, the pair of U.N.C.L.E. agents tensed. Solo whispered, “Now!” They charged outside together.

  Solo spun to the left. He dropped into a crouch again to fire if necessary. Moving right, Illya Kuryakin did the same. Their pistol muzzles pointed at the rocky face of the mountain rising above them.

  The THRUSH helicopter platform was completely empty. Not a person was in sight.

  Veils of snow whipped over it, stinging Solo’s eyes. “Where in the name of all that’s holy did they go?”

  “There must have been a helicopter waiting for them,” Illya suggested.

  Suddenly, over the sunlit peak on the far side of the chasm, a chattering metal monster appeared. Then another, a third. The rotor noise fought against the wind, growing louder. Solo let out a shout, assuming Illya’s reasoning had been vindicated.

  But the ‘copters were not heading away. Bobbing erratically in the battering wind, they were landing.

  The two agents hugged the platform’s near wall as the unmarked choppers came down one by one. The rotors spun snowflakes into the sunlit air. The last of the squall had cleared. Solo ran forward, bending over to fight the blast of air from the blades as the pilot of the lead ‘copter, a gum-chewing Englishman, slid back the port on his side.

  “Napoleon Solo?” he shouted down. “Farmingham’s my name. Sorry we’re late. Ran into a bit of weather. You chaps seem in one piece. We assumed there’d be a battle royal in progress.”

  Inside the other ‘copters settling to the platform, lean, professional U.N.C.L.E. operatives with impassive faces could be seen. Their weapons glinted.

  Napoleon Solo shouted up to the pilot: “The seven-man staff of cryptographers got away. Took off in a helicopter just before you got here.”