The Diving Dames Affair

by Peter Leslie

  "Yes, yes. For the depth. They can't risk her grounding, you know."

  "I don't know!" Solo burst out. "Look, just to please me, tell me what's going on here. I assume we're still somewhere near the dam... right? Well, I know about the dam itself, I know about the power station that doesn't work, I know there's about twenty miles of filled up by an artificial lake. I know Getuliana's as much a blind as the hydroelectric scheme and the made-up road that leads from one to the other. But that's all I' know. I don't know what's going on."

  "'Well the pen's on the top floor because the whole place is under water and -"

  "Under water!"

  "Of course. Didn't you know that?... Well, obviously you didn't or you wouldn't look so surprised. Yes, while, they were building the dam they also built this place on the floor of the valley, completely covered in and watertight - and then when it was finished and the water rose it was eventually covered over."

  "How do you get in and out?"

  "There's a tunnel that leads to it through the mountain. It comes out in the next valley at the estancia. And of course you can get in and out through the pen - though that doesn't do you much good, since the ship only comes back to the same place; there's no other dock in the lake."

  "And where do you girls come in? Why the D.A.M.E.S.?"

  "We helped resettle the natives from the valley, and -"

  "I know that, but why not real D.A.M.E.S. for that matter?"

  "I suppose because we had to become members of Thrush - for the secrecy, you know - and they felt we'd be more likely to agree if we had police records. All of us have, you know. I guess they pretended we belonged to this organization just in case any Brazilian officials asked about us - just to keep the thing looking above board. And then again, they preferred West Coast girls because of the swimming."

  "The swimming?"

  "We all had to be good swimmers and divers - divers especially. To help with the ship in the pen."

  "Do you mean to say," Solo asked, the light finally bursting, "that the pen is under water too? It's an underwater dock... the ship is a submarine?"

  "But of course, I thought you realized."

  "They go to all this trouble to find spurious reasons to construct an artificial lake - just so they can build an underwater dock and play submarines with it? Why?"

  The girl told him.

  Solo gave a long, low whistle of astonishment. "Look," he said, "I don't know how you think we can get out of this watery fortress -"

  "I don't think we can. It's just that I don't like to see people in cells. I told you."

  "Sure. Well, never mind that. The point is - in or out, I have to make contact with my boss. You don't have any objection?... I mean, you don't appear to have any particularly strong allegiance to Thrush."

  "I couldn't care less. Not if they keep people in cells."

  "Sure, sure. It's a thing you have. I know... Now, did I hear you say there was a radio room here? If so, it, seems my best plan would be to try and crash that first and send a message from here, rather than try to escape from the place altogether - which is probably impossible - and make contact from outside. Do you agree?'

  "Yes. I think there's only one man left on duty at night. And I don't suppose he'll be too alert at the time - but you watch out. You don't have too much reserve of strength, you know: you've been under heavy sedation for days."

  "Just show me where the radio room is," Solo said, "and I'll worry about my strength when we get there. I promise not to kill more than a hundred of them..."

  The girl took his arm and led him through a maze of passages, past louvered doors shaking with the vibrations of unseen machinery, past notice boards winking with red pilot lights and green and blue, and up a flight of concrete stairs winding around a shaft housing three elevators. On the level above, the humming of the plant was less obtrusive - though he still found the windowless subterranean atmosphere, with its dry and hygienic air, oppressive in the extreme. Somewhere below them, beneath the massive foundations of the fortress, lay the drenched earth which had until so recently supported the footsteps of simple farmers; somewhere around and above, millions of tons of water pressed remorselessly in upon the walls.

  And somewhere not far away must be the heads within whose crania lay the warped brains which had conceived the evil plan which Napoleon Solo alone could thwart.

  If he was lucky!

  The doors on the higher level were mostly glass-paned and Solo saw as they passed offices with desks, a library with rows of filing cabinets, a computer room bright with levers and dials and lights, a miniature lecture theater where the semicircle of seats surrounded a vast wall map whose rash of bulbs and flags concentrated around the newly filled-in shape of the lake.

  Finally the girl drew him against the wall and put her lips to his ear. "The first door around the corner of the passage is the radio room," she whispered. "There's probably only one man there at this time, as I say - but the Council Chamber is immediately beyond, and the main control room lies between the two, only further in, as it were... So there may be lots of other people within call."

  "I don't know why you should do all this for me, Mrs. Lerina -"

  "You can call me Alice."

  "Alice, then - thank you. I don't know why you should risk your life like this for me - but I'll try to make it up to you if ever we get out of here... Are you actually on duty tonight? Could you have some reason for walking past the radio room door?"

  "Sure I could. You want me to find out who's there, is that it?"

  "It would help, Alice."

  "Okay," the blonde said. "You want I should try and get the guy to come outside?"

  "I don't think so. There may be other people who can overhear. If you could go past and signal to me afterwards..."

  "Will do," the girl said. She walked on around the corner of the passage, with Solo sidling after her like a disembodied shadow. Beyond the right-angle, the corridor was wider, with rubber floor tiles in marbled gray. Halfway along, a shaft of bright light barred the gloom by an open door. Alice Lerina walked up and paused, looking into the room.

  "Hi, there!" she said. "You all on your lonesome?"

  "Like usual on this trick," a mans voice replied over the faint burble of automatic morse. "I'm waiting for a call to come through from some guy he has a report to make from Zurich, Switzerland. You wanna come on in and share the solitude?"

  "I don't mind. Watcha got there, anyway?" The girl stepped across the threshold, trailing behind her one arm with which she gave Solo first the thumbs-up sign, then a single finger pointing upwards.

  Taking this to mean that the man was alone and that it would be safe to approach, the agent tiptoed up and peered cautiously around the door. The room was small, but it was packed with chassis after chassis, console upon console of the most advanced electronic equipment Solo, had ever seen. On the far side, bent over the dials of a short-wave receiver, the blonde and the operator had their backs to him. "Now this filter slope here, see," the man was saying; "with this you can tune out..."

  There was a small monitor speaker above the set from which bursts of static occasionally sputtered. Under cover of this, Solo flitted across the room until he was immediately behind the man.

  He didn't know whether it was the small current of movement he made in the dry air, or whether the girl inadvertently made some telltale sign - but a sixth-sense warning jerked up the man's head before he was within striking distance. He was a big fellow, a brawny; blue-jowled man in a singlet and uniform trousers, but he moved fast. He was on his feet facing the agent, having intercepted a glance between Solo and the girl, before Solo could raise an arm.

  "Why, you dirty little..." he began, glowering at the blonde.

  Solo's fist caught him in the solar plexus. It was essential that the man should not shout or cry out, that any struggle should be as silent as possible. Once anyone else's attention was attracted, Solo's plan would be ruined.

  The operator doubled
forwards with a grunt of astonishment and pain. His lips drew back from his teeth as he straightened, tugging at a blackjack in his waist band. Before he could draw enough breath back into his savaged lungs to yell, Solo had to disarm and then silence him.

  Wheezing, with his eyes streaming, the man lurched forwards. Solo chopped viciously down, flat-handed, at his wrist and the blackjack clattered to the floor. At the same time, the agent raked a stinging blow across the bridge of the man's nose with the back of his other hand and thudded one stockinged heel to his kneecap. In his weakened state, Solo's only card was surprise - and he had to play it for all he was worth before the big operator could recover his equilibrium and get to close quarters.

  The agent dodged back from a roundhouse left but was unable to avoid the followup - a short, pounding right that carried all the man's weight and slammed into his body just below the heart.

  Solo heard his own choked grunt of pain as his legs abruptly turned to rubber and he collapsed backwards onto a wooden chair. Still groaning for breath, the operator pounced: grabbing a handful of dungarees, knuckling himself a firm hold and hauling Solo to his feet, he smashed his other fist to the agent's jaw.

  Through the roaring blackness that threatened to engulf him, Solo saw dimly the huge fist drawn back again, the great face poised menacingly behind. With his remaining strength, he reached desperately up and grasped the man's ears. Then he went suddenly limp and dragged his adversary's head down after him. The man, caught momentarily off balance, pitched forwards, his hands flew instinctively out to break his fall, and his forehead crashed into a bank of equipment behind the chair.

  Using the seat for leverage, Solo executed a kind of half back somersault and brought his knee jarringly up to connect with the underneath of the operator's chin as he hauled down on the ears. There was a sudden cessation of movement and then he was smothered in the dead weight of the man's unconscious body.

  Panting, Solo laboriously hauled himself out from underneath with the help of the girl. Brief though it had been, the fight had totally exhausted him. Alice Lerina had been right - it would be some time before he regained his strength.

  There would be no question of his attempting any further trials of strength, he realized bitterly as he dragged himself across the room to a transmitter. He must do what he had to do and worry about any subsequent action when the need for it arose. Slumping into a chair, he began methodically testing switches and revolving dials. Behind him, the girl watched wide eye.

  ---

  It must have been almost twenty minutes later, and the agent's labored breathing had settled down to a steadier and quieter rhythm as he concentrated on his work, when a section of wall behind them swung silently aside to reveal three men standing there.

  "All right, you - away from that transmitter. Move!" The words cracked out from the thin mouth of the man in the middle.

  Solo whirled away from the radio. The man had slender, almost feminine hands with dirty nails and cigarette-stained fingers. A half-smoked cigarette drooped soggily from one corner of his mouth. And a short-barreled P.38 hung negligently from his right hand.

  Behind him were a tall, white-haired Negro with a lined face, and a well-dressed man whom Solo recognized as Wassermann, the holder of the concession to build Getuliana and the dam, whom he had met in Brasilia.

  "Don't do anything foolish, Mr. – er – Williams... or should I say Solo?" Wassermann drawled. "Greerson may look a little lackadaisical, but it's deceptive, I assure you."

  Solo stood perfectly still, his hands at his sides. A few feet away, the girl crouched above the unconscious body of the radio engineer in a pose that was almost a caricature of guilty surprise. Apart from a sharp intake of breath when Greerson had first spoken, she had remained completely silent.

  "I am most surprised to find you abusing our hospitality, Mr. Solo," the Negro said. "And disappointed. I had thought you were one of our more cooperative guests." The voice, Solo realized as soon as the man spoke, was the one he had been talking to over the intercom in his cell.

  "Unfortunately," Wassermann said, "we were not attending to our monitor speakers in the control room, otherwise we'd have noticed earlier that clandestine messages were being transmitted. We have, however, heard enough to tell us that you were speaking in code - and that this story of you investigating some drug racket is false."

  "Most interesting," the Negro said. "I'd be fascinated to learn the details of the treatment to which you were subjected. A system which permits deliberate lies to be told, mixed in with a judicious amount of truth, even under the deepest hypnosis and the most powerful drugs - that is something I really admire! Regrettably, though, I have to deny myself the pleasure of forcing you to tell me: our operation is ready to start. You have transgressed the laws of hospitality and now you have be come merely an embarrassment. You must be disposed of."

  "Didn't they teach you not to end sentences with a preposition in the mail-order English course you took?" Solo said blandly.

  The Negro smiled. "I am immune to insults, my friend," he said. "As I was saying, you must now die. You have until darkness tomorrow night… tonight, I should say, for it must be almost dawn now."

  "Isn't that – ah - untraditional?" Solo said. "It's usually dawn."

  "It is a question of method, Mr. Solo," Wassermann said. "We like to be tidy; we do not like to arouse the curiosity of our Brazilian hosts. So any deaths that are necessary are customarily arranged to look like accidents - a hit-and-run road accident, a heart attack, that sort of thing."

  "What about the girls in the car?"

  "One of the troubles about employing members of the underworld is that they will not obey rules," Wassermann said. "Despite our orders, individual members of our team persisted in driving all the way down to Rio to amuse themselves in their spare time. This particular pair drove carelessly, that is all. Then they had to be silenced to ward off your prying questions... In the case of your own death, as I was saying, this will be arranged to look like an accidental drowning. And it is better to stage that in darkness, simply to avoid possible witnesses."

  "And how do you propose to stage it?"

  "We don't really have to bother. The submarine pen attached to this building has double doors - so that the craft can enter underwater, wait until the water has been extracted, and then disgorge its crew in safety. With you, the process will be the reverse: you will be. left in the pen when it is air-filled, the inner doors will close, the outer doors will open and the water will come in. And then, sometime later, your body will float to the surface in the normal way and will no doubt be discovered at some time in the future by a worthy peasant. This way, too, we avoid any marks of violence on the body."

  "Bodies - not body," the Negro put in. "We cannot tolerate disloyalty." He walked across the room to the girl. "You could have seriously jeopardized our plans by helping this man," he said with cold malice. "Now you will have to pay for your foolishness with your life." He raised his arm and slapped her repeatedly, forehanded and backhanded, across the face. The marks of his fingers stood out lividly against the girl's pallor as a thread of blood crawled slowly down her chin from one corner of her mouth.

  "All right, Hernando, that's enough," Wassermann said. "No, Mr. Solo - I wouldn't. I really wouldn't... Greerson, you'd better calm Mr. Solo down before we take him back to his cell with his fellow conspirator to await, the night, eh?"

  "Okay," the man called Greerson said. He handed his gun to Wassermann and shambled forwards across the room, his baggy suit flapping on his bony frame. "Only thing is," he said as he approached the agent, "my hands, are kinda delicate and I hate to bruise them. You know?"

  Solo automatically raised his arms to defend himself as Greerson came near. But the thin man took him by surprise. Moving like lightning, his left hand reached out and grasped Solo's shoulder, spinning him deftly around so that he was facing the wall. Then, almost in the same movement, the gunman's other fist looped in and buried itself in Solo
's kidney.

  The agent's fingers scrabbled at the concrete wall as he sank to the ground, a strangled cry forcing itself from his lips. Dimly through waves of nausea he heard the girl cry out - though whether in pain or in horror at what was happening to him he did not know.

  Behind him, Greerson measured his distance carefully, then drew back his foot...

  Chapter 10

  "Don't Call Us - We'll Call You!..."

  AS GREERSON RAISED his foot in the fortress below the artificial lake, Illya Kuryakin turned the key to cut the motor of the Volkswagen fourteen hundred yards away on the other side of the rocky spur separating the reservoir from the adjoining valley.

  Mist clung to the lower branches of the trees like streamers of chiffon, blanketed the hollows in the ground, and wreathed in frightening shapes across the road. The estancia was invisible in the before-dawn darkness as he coasted the car in under some overhanging evergreens opposite the gates. Beside him, the greyhound profile of Coralie Simone was pale and tense in the dim illumination of the single dashboard light.

  "Somewhere in that mountain," Illya said, "there is a kind of fortress where all those trucks full of material go. It must lie at the end of the tunnel - though whether it is on this side of the lake or beyond it we can't tell. Since we couldn't possibly identify the place from above - even if the guards allowed us enough time on the shores of the lake to try - we'll just have to force our way in through the tunnel. Because somewhere in there, dead or alive, is Napoleon Solo... It'll be dawn in about a half hour: it seems to me that now is as good a time as any to try. Are you game?"

  "So far as this phase of the operation is concerned," the girl said, "you are the boss. If you say go, we go."

  "Fine. Well, the first thing to do is to spy out the land. Just hold on a moment while I fix the equipment, will you?"

  Kuryakin hauled an attaché case over from the car's back seat and took out what looked like a heavy flashlight with a hooded lens. He held the device out of the VW's window and pressed the switch. There was no result at all - until he and the girl looked through a pair of viewfinders resembling truncated field glasses. Then the darkened and misty topography sprang to life in a manner as quick as it was impressive. In the powerful infrared beam cast by the flashlight, the special lenses showed up trees, grasses, fences, gateposts and buildings as vividly and dramatically as though they had been the snow scene they resembled.