The Electronic Frankenstein Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  THE ELECTRONIC FRANKENSTEIN AFFAIR

  by ROBERT HART DAVIS

  Silent, malevolent, the Gobi guarded its grim secret, as Solo and Illya fought against time and THRUSH to find the demon which could read men's very thoughts—and kill without a trace!

  PROLOGUE—THE EXECUTIONERS

  THE TWO U.N.C.L.E. agents were wearing fleece-lined greatcoats, fur mittens and heavy leather boots. But only bulky spacesuits could have insulated them against the icy wind that was blowing cold upon them from a cold winter sea, chilling them to the bone.

  It came sweeping up out of the gray Atlantic in gusts of almost hurricane force, raising flurries of snow and making the bleak inhospitality of the Newfoundland Banks in midwinter very hard to endure.

  They were large, sturdily built men. But the gigantic rock structures which ran parallel with the headland on its landward side made them seem grotesquely out of proportion in this terrain so rugged it would have dwarfed a twelve-foot giant. They both wore upon their left wrists THRUSH cell identification bracelets bearing initials which their real names—Bruce Huntley and Walter Rivers—completely belied. And they both knew that if a whisper of that deception came to the ears of THRUSH they would be in the deadliest kind of danger.

  A few feet from where they were standing, a narrow path descended the cliff wall to a mile wide stretch of beach, strewn with the wreckage of an Atlantic gale that had reached its peak two days earlier and hadn't quite blown itself out.

  Several large brown rats with wetly glistening coats had made their home amidst the wreckage carried shoreward by an earlier storm and were running back and forth across the sand, exploring the new wreckage with starved eagerness.

  Huntley was the first to break the silence. They were miles from the nearest human habitation. But two weeks of constant undercover vigilance inside the stone walls of a THRUSH project had made him super-cautious and he kept his voice lowered from force of habit, speaking just loud enough to make himself heard above the crash of the waves.

  "We should be seeing the submarine any minute now," he said. "It would be a mistake to start worrying before the commander comes ashore. What makes you think they've even begun to suspect us?"

  Rivers lowered the powerful binocular telescope he had been keeping steadily trained on the sea, and stared at his companion for an instant before replying.

  "I don't know, exactly," he said. "It would be misleading to call it a hunch; it's far too nebulous. It's just that—well, when everything goes too well it's hard to shake off the feeling that you may be walking into a trap."

  "I've had that feeling myself at times," Huntley confessed. "But you can't say we haven't taken every precaution. No messages exchanged, even in code. No attempt to communicate with New York. We've never allowed ourselves to forget there could be— and probably are—electronic eavesdropping devices behind every wall and corridor turn throughout the entire project."

  The gusts of wind that were sweeping the headland seemed suddenly to increase in violence. Only a thin coating of snow covered the frozen soil at the cliff's edge, and no more snow was descending. But there were thin splinters of sleet in the air, as cheek-stinging as chilblains.

  Huntley raised his voice as he went on, no longer giving a thought to the caution which their distance from the THRUSH project had made wholly unnecessary.

  "We breathe and our every bronchial murmur becomes a matter of record. We scrawl a few words on a slip of paper—which we've been careful not to do, of course—and an invisible photo cell scanning device reproduces the message, along with our palm prints."

  "You don't have to blueprint it for me," Rivers said. "The reports we've been getting concerning THRUSH'S progress in protective bugging equipment in recent months has given Waverley some bad moments. They've matched us device for device, probably because we've been pressing them so hard we've given them no choice. But granting all that, what does just recognizing the danger prove? We've stayed alert to it, sure. But one small slip—"

  "I can't believe we've made any," Huntley said with conviction. "We've followed instructions too scrupulously. Touch nothing, investigate nothing beyond what we came here to find out. They would never have entrusted us with a mission as important as this if they had the remotest suspicion we're U.N.C.L.E. undercover operatives."

  The waves had been making a hollow, drumming sound as they crashed against the cliff wall. The two herring gulls had seemed completely unaffected by the sound. But suddenly a kind of panic came upon them, and they went flapping seaward, as if a different kind of sound, inaudible to human ears, had alerted them to danger and made the shoreline seem unsafe.

  Huntley stared at them in puzzlement as their mad, erratic flight carried them a mile from shore, then continued with his attempt to diminish his companion's entirely human forebodings.

  "If they suspected us I'm quite sure we'd know by now," he said, as if he felt the point needed to be stressed. "You can usually tell when you're under surveillance."

  "But not always," Rivers said.

  Huntley tightened his lips, and looked at the other sharply. "Something is bugging you," he said. "Why don't you get it off your chest?"

  "All right, I will," Rivers said. "Consider first what we've found out. In two or three more days, at most, THRUSH will have ready a twenty-pound detonating device that can destroy all underwater life within a radius of fifty or sixty miles. It's the deadliest midget torpedo-like weapon ever developed."

  He paused an instant to stare down at the rats on the beach far below. "They think we're just bench-level technicians," he went on, staring seaward again. "Doesn't it seem strange to you that we should have been given the assignment of contacting the submarine that's to give the detonator a test run? It's more of a job for a top echelon operative."

  Huntley shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "You're forgetting that THRUSH trusts no one. Not even a sub-commander is exempt. And they want a simple, honest, first-hand report, precisely the kind of report two bench-level technicians would be most likely to return with. It's a kind of security check. It would take an hour to transmit what we're delivering into his hands on microfilm, and they know exactly how proficient U.N.C.L.E. is in cracking messages in code."

  "I hope you're right," Rivers said. "For all we know the commander may have been warned to watch us like a hawk. That could be the key as to why we're here. They may be hoping we'll do or say something that will confirm what they've begun to suspect."

  "If they were even slightly suspicious they'd be making plans for our burial," Huntley said. "You don't send a man on an eight-mile journey to blow him apart when you can dispose of him much more efficiently on a twenty-foot target range."

  "But suppose they're not quite sure. Suppose—"

  "There would be simpler ways of making sure than sending us on a mission this vital," Huntley said. "They'd never choose such a complicated, round-about way of handling it on the off-chance we may make some slip—"

  Suddenly Rivers stiffened. He lowered his binoculars for an instant, inspected the twin lenses quickly to make sure they were not misted over, and returned the instrument to his eyes. For a full minute he continued to stare seaward, his face set in harsh lines. Then his hand went out and fastened on Huntley's arm.

  "Follow that deep-channel gray streak to where it turns almost black," he said. "The periscope's just a little to the left of a patch of choppy waves, it's moving fast."

  Huntley nodded and realigned his binoculars without saying a word. His features remained impassive. But his posture matched that of Rivers in its stock-still alertness.

  No further word was spoken until Rivers, as if irked by the other's
silence, asked abruptly: "Don't you see it? It should be easy enough to make out. It's almost stationary now and the sea around it is breaking into foam."

  "Yes, I see it," Huntley said. "But I thought for a minute it might be a shark. A fin cutting through the water would have pretty much the same look—"

  "That wouldn't be so wide of the mark," Rivers said. "In about three more minutes we'll be seeing the gray dorsal fins of an all-metal killer shark that's probably more native to these waters than THRUSH would like anyone—least of all, U.NC.L.E.—to suspect."

  "How many men do you suppose they'll put ashore?" the other asked. "Two—a half-dozen? There's very little likelihood that the commander will arrive on the beach alone."

  He stopped speaking abruptly, the rigidity of his posture becoming more pronounced again. The submarine was emerging into view amidst a white swirl of foam. Not even the dull overcast could dim the gleam of a conning tower awash with spray as it continued to surface, swaying and rocking a little.

  In utter silence the two men on the headland watched the hatch arise and several crew members leap out. They watched a hurrying to and fro, and the putting off from the long gray undersea craft of a small boat which contained four men, wearing what looked like THRUSH uniforms of officer rank.

  FIVE MINUTES later the boat was drawing up at the beach and in all that time neither Huntley nor Rivers had exchanged a word, so intent had they been on watching a possible threat to their very survival materializing out of the sea.

  "Well, this is it," Huntley said, his voice so sharply decisive it seemed to shatter the stillness like a pistol shot. "We may as well meet them on the beach."

  Descending the narrow cliffside path against the fierce gusts of wind took them a full minute. The four officers had just finished beaching the boat when they reached the frozen sand, and only one of them had started to move cliffward.

  He was a tall, gaunt man with a heavily lined face and he walked with a slight stoop and a faint suggestion of weariness. But there was something authoritative in his darkly gleaming eyes and the stern set of his features that left Huntley and Rivers in little doubt as to his command status.

  The instant he saw Huntley and Rivers he raised his right arm in a gesture of recognition. It was not a greeting. There was no change of expression on his face, nothing to suggest that he was pleased to see them, or even that their appearance on the beach had lifted a small burden from his shoulders by making a search for them unnecessary.

  He turned and gestured toward the other three officers and stood waiting for them to join him with out advancing further.

  Then, walking four abreast, the men from the sea approached Huntley and Rivers and halted directly in front of them.

  The commander was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and there was a hard glint in his pupils which the thick lenses seemed to magnify. Even at a distance of seven feet the coldness of his gaze was unmistakable.

  "I am Commander Ulrich," he said. "And these gentlemen are my senior and junior officers. You are Thomas Drake and Melvin Kendall?"

  The use of their THRUSH cell names, which corresponded with the initials on their identity bracelet, would not have remotely suggested that their disguise had been penetrated if Commander Ulrich's voice had not been tinged with mockery. The mockery was as pronounced as the coldness of his gaze, and it caused Huntley to hesitate a moment before replying.

  Rivers had been content simply to nod, but a look of relief came into his eyes when Huntley answered the question with surprising firmness.

  "Yes," he said. "We have some microfilm instructions to turn over to you. We were told—"

  "What were you told, precisely?" Ulrich asked, a deceptive mildness coming into his voice.

  "That the submarine would surface and you would come ashore between two and two-thirty. We were instructed to return to the project if you did not arrive by three, at the latest."

  "Excellent," Commander Ulrich said. "You are very good at obeying orders—up to a point. But then you committed an unforgivable blunder. You talked about the precautions you'd taken to avoid exposure. I can quote your exact words, spoken less than twenty minutes ago: 'We've taken every precaution. No messages exchanged, even in code. No attempt to communicate with New York.'

  "A great deal more, of course. But need I repeat everything you said? It would only delay your execution by a few minutes and for a condemned man a few minutes can mean an eternity of torment. I'm sure you would not wish to delay what has become inevitable."

  Huntley and Rivers had both taken a quick step backwards, pallor overspreading their features. It was as if so strong a feeling of unreality had come upon them that speech bad become impossible, for when their lips opened and closed the silence which had followed the commander's accusation remained unbroken.

  "I know," Ulrich said, his voice once more tinged with derision. "It seems unbelievable, doesn't it? We were under the sea and you were standing on the cliff overheard, seven miles from the project. No possibility of being overheard, eh? Well—you were. And not by human ears until we picked up the warning."

  His voice thickened, became choked with sudden rage. "To think that THRUSH had not the faintest suspicion that you might be U.N.C.L.E. agents! The unit's surveillance was just a precaution. If you had remained silent—"

  Commander Ulrich turned abruptly and made a quick gesture with his right hand. The three other officers drew their weapons so swiftly that the long-muzzled pistols in their hands were leveled and aimed before the two U.N. C.L.E. agents could take another step backwards.

  Leaping backwards or aside could not have saved them and Huntley seemed to realize that an instant before the first blast came, for there swept into his eyes a look of resignation terrible in its bleak hopelessness.

  He straightened nevertheless, facing death with his shoulders squared, and although the two bullets that tore through his chest sent him spinning back toward the cliff wall, he did not slump until be struck a jagged edge of rock with his arms outflung.

  Why the three officers did not fire simultaneously, blasting away at both men until they both dropped remained their own secret. But it was not too difficult to fathom. Efficiency in an execution could be impaired that way. Bullet riddled bodies had a way of recoiling and rebounding and random firing, even at almost pointblank range, could leave an uncertainty in the mind until the smoke cleared.

  That unconscious preference for accuracy and neatness in killing gave Rivers a few more minutes of life. Before the gun in the hand of the officer on Commander Ulrich's right came level with his head he flung himself face downward in the sand, jerking himself backwards just as quickly without raising his head.

  The gun that had been aimed at his head wavered a little as the officer lowered it and before he could bring it into alignment again with so flattened a target River's hand had whipped under his greatcoat and emerged with a tiny explosive pellet the size of a fountain pen.

  He hurled it straight at the four men from the sea and the target he might have made was obliterated by the smoke from a blast that lighted up the entire beach, completely dispelling the gray over cast.

  When the smoke cleared Commander Ulrich was lying stretched out at full length on a patch of blood-reddened sand, his head blown off. The officer who hadn't succeeded in exploding his gun at all was swaying back and forth on his knees, his hands clutching his stomach as if the flood of red that was oozing between his fingers was running a race with the glaze that was creeping across his eyes, and winning at a terrible cost in pain.

  The third officer had turned and was hobbling toward the surfline and the beached boat, the entire back of his head so charred by the blast that it seemed incredible that he could hobble at all.

  But the fourth officer had been injured only slightly, and his freakish luck in having escaped the full force of the blast had brought a look of grim exultation into his eyes. He stood very still, taking careful aim at Rivers as he arose to his full height and Rivers was too sha
ken by the concussion which had followed the blast to realize how great was his peril until the gun went off.

  The bullet ripped the flesh of his right shoulder, leaving a jagged gash. The pain was agonizing for an instant. But it did not prevent him from swinging about and running with his shoulders lowered toward the cliff wall, zigzagging a little to make it less likely that the bullets he knew would follow quickly to find lodgment in his brain or heart.

  He was a third of the way up the cliff wall when the narrow path in front of him erupted in a cloud of dust and the roar of the pursuing officer's fun made his ears ring. But the second shot was a clean miss, and he was at the top of the cliff before the third blast came.

  He looked down and saw the long-muzzled pistol flame an instant before something that felt like a solid wall of metal struck him full in the chest.

  He took a tottering step forward, bent double and went spinning over the edge of the cliff, his body turning over and over in the air until it landed with a crash on below.

  The THRUSH officer whose role of executioner had been successfully completed stood for an instant twenty feet from the summit of the cliff, and returned his still smoking pistol to its holster beneath his right shoulder, a cold smile playing over his distorted features.

  Then he descended the path to the beach, stood for a moment staring down at the crumpled body of Huntley and lingered for a moment longer on the crushed and battered remains of the U.N.C.L.E. agent his own accuracy of aim had brought low.

  The officer who had gone hobbling toward the boat had some how managed to draw it out into the surf and was standing knee deep in swirling foam, holding fast to the rail and swaying like a drunken man.

  The face of the successful executioner convulsed with what could only have been rage. "Coward, simpleton, fool," he muttered, between clenched teeth. "He leaves it all to me and getting what's left of the commander into that boat is not going to be easy. If he lets go of the rail—"

  There were two dead THRUSH officers on the beach now. But the one who had tried in vain to stem the flow of blood that had widened about him like a rock pool fringed with scarlet sea anemones he ignored, as if for a responsible THRUSH officer to get himself killed, however unavoidably, made him contemptible in a successful executioner's eyes.