by Peter Leslie
"Then we'd be lost," the agent said shortly. "Are you getting anything interesting yet?"
"It's a bit difficult at first - especially since I'm not really a trained operator. And there are still so many objects on the valley floor - houses, I suppose, and trees and walls and so on - that it's really impossible to sort out... Wait a minute! Here's something... It's something big, very big!"
She began reading off figures and Kuryakin concentrated on his dials and controls. "It will be the nuclear submarine, will it, if it proves to be moving?" she asked.
"Bound to be. According to Napoleon, they only test at night - to avoid any possible witnesses, no doubt. What do you see?"
"It is moving. - And my goodness, Illya, it must be enormous!"
Kuryakin switched on his monitors. "Yes, you're right," he said, "It is pretty generously built. Seems to be on a cross-course some way above us."
"How deep are we?" the girl asked.
"About ten fathoms. From the disturbance, I should judge that the sub's actually on the surface - or at the most only half submerged. We'll go on up and see bow near we can get."
Now gaining, now falling behind, the midget sub marine stalked the nuclear vessel in the black waters of the lake. The skipper of the Thrush craft was adopting an erratic course, zigzagging from side to side of the reservoir, accelerating and slowing every few minutes.
"He's testing the surface maneuverability," Illya said. "Must be. I only wish we could surface too. It would be so much easier to keep track of him. But we don't dare - there might be a phosphorescent wake, a too-smart look out, anything. Well just have to hope he goes in soon."
Once, concentrating too closely on the livid radiance of the radar screens, they almost rammed the tiny craft straight into a massive wall of rock that rose straight from the valley floor. Another time, the nuclear sub marine took them by surprise making a tight U-turn and passing almost directly overhead in the opposite direction.
Looking up through their perspex domes at the faint hint of light drifting down from the surface, they watched the great hull - only inches above their eyes, it seemed - draw smoothly past. A shark shape, sinister and efficient, blotting out the light.
Shortly afterwards, there was a commotion in the water around them and the midget rocked violently. The big submarine was submerging.
"It crash-dived fifty fathoms," Illya exclaimed - it had taken them some time to locate it again on their screens - "and now it's scooting along the floor of the old valley for all it's worth!"
They followed the nuclear craft up to the far end of the dam and then back to the barrage again, where they "froze" near the rock face to minimize the risk of detection as the bigger vessel turned. "And off she goes again," Kuryakin said in exasperation. "But the power of that thing! Do you realize the speed she's doing on those straight runs? Why, on that last one, she was hitting -"
"Illya!" Coralie's voice was urgent over the intercom. "Be quiet a moment, will you? She's altered course through ninety degrees; she's turned off to port, towards the side of the dam. I think she may be going in."
"Okay. I'll try to catch up and tail her. At the last stage, I'll have to follow her by eye - for the only thing we can do is to follow her into this pen if possible - and hope that nobody spots us before they pump out the water!"
It was a strange journey, the last part of that under water voyage. Deeper and deeper they plunged, the black water streaming past the two inclined screens, the fragile craft vibrating with the thrust of its screws as the man and the girl bent over their screens concentrating on the luminous blob that represented the quarry they hunted. "We're at forty-three fathoms, Illya," Coralie warned anxiously. "The man said -"
"I can see her!" the Russian exclaimed suddenly. "Look!"
Ahead and below, the faintest hint of luminescence marbled the black. The radiance became discernible, stained the dark depths, wavered and spread, and finally revealed the cigar-shaped nose of their own craft, on which it then cast a discreet highlight. And in front of them, silhouetted against the underwater beam, the huge bulk of the submarine hung like a resting fish.
Put on your lung and harness" - Illya's voice was low - "and be ready to bale out at any time. No more talking after this."
As she shrugged into the shoulder straps and snapped the clasps about her hips, a series of rectangular planes assembled themselves in the faint illumination into the outline of some building. Monolithic and immense, it jutted from the drowned rock face like a legendary keep seen through a dream, its functional lines distorted and imprecise through the movement of the water. Some where near the top a great opening yawned - and it was from this gap in the façade that the light came streaming.
The submarine was moving again, the huge hull sliding quietly into the opening, the green light washing outwards contouring the sophisticated curves of its steel sides.
Kuryakin maneuvered the midget adroitly so that it was placed just behind and to one side of one of the vessel's rear quarters. Together the two ships, like a whale with an enemy pilot fish, sank into the gigantic underwater pen through the opening in the fortress wall. A moment later, colossal double doors rolled across and sealed off the entry. And then slowly, as air was pumped in at the top, the water level began to sink in the chamber.
Ten minutes later the nuclear submarine was resting against a dock on the left-hand side of the pen. The midget was submerged on its offside in the small amount of water that had been left in the chamber. And Illya and Coralie, breathing from the aqualungs on their backs, were just below the surface astern of the Thrush vessel, hoping that nobody would take it into his head to walk to the after rail and look directly down into the water.
Kuryakin raised a cautious head. Grotesquely distorted by the acoustics of the chamber, he heard the sound of feet and voices as the crew trooped ashore and waited their turn to go through the hydraulically controlled double doors leading to the interior of the fortress. There seemed to be no personnel on duty in the pen itself - and indeed why should there be, he thought, since it was really no more than an air-lock between the subterranean fortress and the lake?
When the last footstep had died away, he led the girl on a submerged exploration of the pen. There was about fifteen feet of water left in the chamber and the nuclear submarine was still just afloat. The place must be built, he guessed, directly onto some rocky prominence projecting through the lower parts of the fortress: with such a huge area, it would have been impossible to design a structure robust enough to tolerate all that weight of water if there had been other stories immediately below. Basically, the pen itself was just an enormous box, one end of which was formed by the watertight gates. Ceiling, floor, and wall and one side wall were unbroken by any projection or recess - and the remaining side wall, on the left as you entered through the gates, carried along its whole length the platform against which the vessel was moored. The surface of this quay was a couple of feet above the level of the water slapping and sucking at the submarine's sides. Above it, armored glass slits let in the green light which flooded the chamber.
Before they had quit the pen through the double doors at the far end of the quay, some of the crew had rolled ashore a quantity of steel drums which now lay neatly stacked near the craft's massive stern. Behind the shelter of these, Kuryakin reached up and gripped the edge of the platform to haul himself laboriously from the water. Flopping face down across the wet concrete, gasping, for a moment, he rose gingerly to his feet and held out his hands to Coralie.
They unhitched their aqualungs and propped them up against the drums, turning to survey the great pen now from above water level. The submarine filled exactly half the space available. Everywhere around them, above and on all sides, reminders of how recently the place had been simply an oversize tank obtruded on eye and ear. Moisture streamed down the blank walls, dropped hollowly to the curved decks of the ship from the roof, trickled into the water, and dripped from every ledge and cranny and beam and angle to be seen.
The Russian had pulled off his helmet and was halfway out of his frogman suit when Coralie laid a hand on his arm.
"It's going to take an age to get back into these if they're still wet," she whispered. "Don't you think perhaps we should keep them on, just in case we have to leave this way in a hurry?"
Illya shook his head. "What you say is quite true," he said. "But look…" He pointed to the girl's legs.
From her hips down to her ankles, the black rubber suit was beaded with drops of water which slid further down with every muscle she moved. "For ten minutes at least," Kuryakin said, "we'd be leaving wet footprints everywhere. And since our only card to play is surprise, I think we'd better not take the chance."
Coralie nodded, frowning slightly. They stripped off the underwater suits and dropped them in two damply quivering heaps beside the aqualungs. Kuryakin was wearing his favorite jeans with a black turtleneck sweater; the girl, also in black, was in a stretch-nylon cat suit.
"I guess we'd just better leave everything here," Illya said. "They're hidden from all but the closest inspection by these drums - and the midget's out of sight around the stern of this nuclear monster."
From a waterproof satchel attached to his aqualung, the agent produced his Walther, the girl's Berretta, and one or two specialist devices which he stowed in his jeans. Then, moving swiftly but on tiptoe, they strode towards the double doors at the far end of the quay. "This is the part, most of all, where you need to keep your fingers crossed," Illya said. "If there's no way of opening these except by some master switch inside, we're –" He paused in mid-sentence. As they passed into the embrasure housing the exit from the chamber, the first pair of doors swung open before them with a muffled hiss of compressed air.
"Magic-eye beam," he commented. "They must have an automatic cut-out overriding it once the control to flood the chamber has been actuated - otherwise the lake water would break the beam and the doors would open to let it in and inundate the whole place!"
They walked into the air-lock, waited until the padded doors had swung closed, obeyed the illuminated notice saying in five languages: IMPORTANT! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPERATE HANDLE OPENING SECOND PAIR OF DOORS UNTIL RED BULB HAS STOPPED FLASHING! - and then operated the handle.
Beyond the inner doors as they swept apart a short length of empty passage stretched. It terminated in a T-junction with a wall plaque direction indicator.
Kuryakin and the girl flitted soundlessly up. Flattening himself against the wall, the agent listened. On the threshold of hearing, machinery hummed somewhere; louder - although still not very near - a confused murmur of voices surged. In the immediate neighborhood, all seemed silent.
He peered cautiously around the corner.
The two arms of the passage curved symmetrically away from him - as though they were circling some central feature, perhaps a giant shaft - each one boasting a collection of doors on its outer wall which began about forty feet beyond the corner. To the left, the indicators read: BRIEFING… OPERATIONS CONTROL… COMMUNICATIONS… WELFARE… LIBRARY. Those pointing to the right were labeled: MAINTENANCE… ARMORY… CATERING… PERSONNEL… ELEVATORS TO B, C, ADMINISTRATION AND REACTOR. There was nobody in sight along either arm.
"Right looks more interesting," Illya murmured, "but it's where those voices are coming from - and there's about a hundred and twenty crew members of that sub to account for, besides Heaven knows how many members of their private army. We'll play it safe and take the left!"
With their guns ready, they stole noiselessly into the fortress.
Chapter 12
Hearse Under Water
THE SECOND DOOR on the left of the curving passage stood ajar. Through it, Illya and Coralie Simone could see a fair-sized room equipped with a blackboard and benches rather like a school classroom. In the corner nearest the corridor a large desk littered with papers stood by a green baize board carrying charts and graphs and schedules. The door of the room, which was empty, bore a small plaque on which was engraved the word BRIEFING.
"This must be where the leaders come to get their orders before they set out on their various missions…" Kuryakin began. He stopped. Approaching around the curve of the passage, voices distantly echoed.
Seizing the girl's arm, he thrust her through the half-open doorway. "Let's hope whoever it is isn't on his way to a briefing, anyway!" he whispered as he thumbed back the safety catch on his gun. He pushed the door almost shut, and peered through the crack as two officers in khaki and black uniforms passed down the passage and continued on around the bend conversing animatedly in a language Coralie could not place. "Serbo Croatian," the Russian murmured with a jerk of his head in the direction they had taken. "They were on their way to the canteen. Let's hope the majority of Thrush's personnel are there… it's at least the right time for dinner, so maybe we'll be in luck."
Coralie had found among the wall charts behind the desk what appeared to be an exploded diagram of the fortress, showing the relationship of the levels one above the other. "We'll try and memorize it," Illya murmured. "It might save us a lot of time… or possibly even our lives."
The basic design of the place could have been represented by three oval pans one above the other, the topmost pan having a short handle - which represented the submarine pen. There seemed, as Illya had surmised, to be a column of rock standing away from the valley wall on which this projection was supported, the remainder of the fortress fitting in between wall and column.
The circular passageway to which the corridor from the pen led was repeated on all three floors of the fortress. On its outer periphery it admitted, on the floor they were on, to a communications complex, to welfare and library sections, to the canteen and to the personnel branch; on the middle floor to living quarters, offices, an armory, the radio room and more catering facilities; and on the lowest level to stores, a cell block and more offices. Within the area circumscribed by the passageway, the bottom floor housed the reactor and the next a circular council chamber which was two stories high and rose to the top floor. From here - on the opposite side of the passage they were traversing - a door appeared to lead to a gallery circling the chamber and some kind of control center at one end of it.
"What I didn't realize," Illya said, "was that they have, of course, this great maintenance unit. Look, we'd have passed it if we had chosen the other branch of the passage. It seems to connect with the pen - I guess there must be sliding doors we didn't notice on the side opposite the quay. After all, even if they didn't actually make the sub here and shipped the bits in by air and truck, it had to be assembled here and that needs quite an advanced shop."
"Yes," the girl said. "And here's where it came in - look, at one side of the reactor on the lowest floor: it's marked Truck park, and there's an arrow pointing to where it says Double steel doors. What d'you bet those doors blank off the tunnel leading to the estancia?"
"No takers," the agent grinned. "What I want to find out is how they operate! First of all, though, let's see if we can locate Napoleon… If there's a cell block, he's probably in it."
At the opposite side of the fortress from the corridor leading to the pen, there was apparently a bank of elevators and some stairs. "We'll go down those," he said. "They're probably only used for emergency... and this is an emergency, anyway!"
Cautiously, they eased open the door and crept out into the passageway. There wasn't a soul in sight. Nor did they see anybody as they sped past the closed doors and gained the open space where the elevators were. Voices were approaching, however, from the direction of the canteen down the other arm of the corridor. Swiftly, the agent pulled the girl after him down the concrete stairway which twisted away around the shaft housing the three elevators.
The rough, curving walls were glistening with moisture, though the air current surging up from the depths at the command of some extractor plant behind them was dry and arid. Increasingly, the two of them were aware of the relentless cold pressure of those countless tons of water leaning, day in and da
y out, on the roof of the fortress. And as though to underline the point, the string of low power naked bulbs set in the slanting ceiling of the stairway dimmed abruptly and then slowly flared again - though not quite to their former brightness, the girl thought with a shiver. Still, it was probably just some fluctuation in the output of the reactor below them... The sound of voices above swelled; the echoes expanded, then dwindled as the people talking passed the entrance to the shaft and continued on around the passageway.
They crept into the reflected light from the landing on B Level. Footsteps and voices echoed here too, advancing and receding in some numbers. Elevator doors opened and shut and they heard the cages whining away upwards beyond the wall of their stairway. It was some minutes before Kuryakin was satisfied that it was safe to peer around the last corner and prospect the landing. He drew back suddenly. A solitary man was waiting for an elevator to return.
Two minutes later, after the doors had hissed shut and the lift had ascended again, be ventured to peer once more. The landing was empty.
Beckoning to the girl to follow him, he raced across and plunged down the further flight of stairs towards the bottom level. Here it was quieter, the lights were even dimmer, and there was no sign of any of the fortress's inhabitants.
There was no sign, either, of Napoleon Solo. There were six featureless cells in the cul-de-sac leading off the circular passage. And all of them were empty.
"What now?" Coralie asked, seeing the momentary flicker of despair on Illya's face. "Is there anywhere else we can look for your friend?"
He shook his head slowly, his eyes somber. "Anywhere," he said. "He could be anywhere… alive or dead. We shall simply have to proceed with the action as though -"
"But I thought your friend -"
"The mission," Illya said almost savagely. "The mission comes first. I told you what Waverly said. We'll try to get back to the control room on the top floor and see what we can do there."