Clinging to Theodosius, Doulou took a smashing blow in the mouth, another on the forehead. He was blacking out, sagging, falling away from Theodosius.
The assistant swung a roundhouse right at Doulou. At the same instant, Doulou’s knees crumpled. The wild blow missed its target entirely. The aftermath was inevitable. Without an object to intercept his expenditure of force, Theodosius stumbled. Off-balance, he thrust out his hand at the nearest support, which was one of the THRUSH men wearing hot togs.
Before the THRUSH agent had a chance to move, Theodosius touched the silvery knit suit.
Instantly, his fingers were welded to the material. A blue glow encompassed his body. A single nightmarish scream was wrenched from him. He jerked in a wild spasm to his tiptoes, back arched, eyes jutting, lips peeled far back from his clenched teeth. He did a weird, convulsive caricature of a dance on his toes as the voltage poured through him.
Safe in the encasement of the insulated interlining of the suit, the THRUSH man reached to his shoulder and pressed the tab. Theodosius crumpled at his feet, a limp mass of blue-tinged flesh.
The stench of scorched human blood and meat was already pervading the room. Dion Gould, resembling Kuryakin now in only a few superficial physical details, was stuffing the sheaf of papers bearing the formula for the Doulou Particle under his turtleneck.
He nudged the remains of Theodosius with his toe in passing.
“Stupid pig!”
Doulou heard their footsteps gliding away. He pushed himself up, braced with his hands. Theodosius lay a few feet away before his eyes. Doulou gagged, jerked his eyes away, and willed himself to get to his feet.
He didn’t understand fully the purpose of the men who’d been here and taken the formula, but he knew it was evil.
THRUSH…
They were connected with the organization, and they considered the formula worth a daring and bold gamble.
Doulou felt fresh air on his face and realized he had made it to the broad, iron-railed terrace of the villa.
“Stop!” he yelled feebly.
On the driveway below the three THRUSH men who’d invaded the villa were getting into a heavy black limousine which a fourth agent kept running. Reaching out a hand as if in that manner he could grasp and drag them back, Dr. Doulou stumbled spread-legged down the broad terrace steps. The car was in motion, rocketing out of sight where the shrub-bordered driveway formed a curve.
Doulou pitched to his knees, sagging in the driveway. Then his ears caught the intermittent whistle of a helicopter’s rotating blades. The slashing shadow cut the corner of his vision.
He jerked his head up, looked skyward. A silver ‘copter was settling on the broad expanse of lawn a hundred yards away.
Doulou pushed to his feet. His smock had been ripped off of him in his fray with Theodosius. It streamed about him as he pumped his pudgy legs toward the ‘copter.
The vehicle, bumped, settled, as Doulou stumbled forward beneath the slip-stream of the slowing rotor blades. He saw the side hatch in the crystal bubble open.
A man was springing out. A young, compact, wiry man with fair hair, square jaw and slightly cleft chin.
Illya Kuryakin, Dr. Doulou thought.
This time for real. But too late.
ACT ONE
THE WAY TO A MAN’S SOUL
Illya Kuryakin instantly assessed DR. Doulou’s disheveled condition. As Doulou stumbled, Illya sprang forward and caught him under the armpits.
“I take it that THRUSH has already paid a visit,” Illya said. “Did they get what they came after?”
“Yes. My assistant, they got to him, made a traitor of him.”
“They’re always in the lookout for an Achilles heel. Or any kind of heel they can turn to their purposes,” Illya said grimly. “But the details can hold. Right now we’ve got to get that formula back, and quickly.”
Doulou pulled himself together. His feet firmed and steadied beneath him. “The formula was my creation, my responsibility. In the wrong hands it could be used to plunge the world into acute starvation. So if that windmill will carry double, let’s quit wasting time! They left in a black limousine, the kind that doesn’t travel the mountain road every day, or even every month.”
Doulou clambered into the ‘copter as Illya Kuryakin slid beneath the controls. Kuryakin applied power and the idling rotors became a blur in the sunlight.
As the ‘copter swooped into the sky, the ageless beauty of the Grecian countryside unfolded. Stone-and-thatch farmer’s huts nestled against green hillsides. Flocks of grazing sheep were like puffs of cotton in the distant meadows. Awesome cliffs of sheer stone cleaved the landscape with blue shadows lying over the valleys far below.
Illya heeled the ‘copter in the direction of the narrow, twisting road that joined the main highway just outside Athens. Hawk-eyed for any telltale trace of a speeding black limousine, he listened to Doulou recount the harrowing scene in the library.
While overshadowed by the theft of the formula, two other details hit Illya with shock force.
Grudgingly, he had to admit the evil efficiency of THRUSH in the development of the hot togs. Obviously, the lethal garments could be worn beneath street clothing, concealed. Which meant that merely to touch a THRUSH agent might mean certain death.
The second detail was the physical resemblance of the commanding agent to Kuryakin himself.
“Simplified his problem,” Illya said.
“To use the vernacular of the Americans,” Doulou nodded, “it made it duck soup for the spider to walk into the parlor of the hapless fly. I knew you by sight---“
“Which makes it slightly personal,” Illya said through his teeth. “I can’t appreciate such people doing impressions of me.”
“What will be their next move, Mr. Kuryakin?”
“We haven’t the whole picture yet. A Thrush agent pulled a bit of a goof in an assignment, realized it would mark him for extermination. He made tracks while he still had time, knowing we were his only hope. He offered us information as to THRUSH’s next move in exchange for asylum.”
“And that move was to the formula for the Doulou Particle.”
“Bingo, Doctor. The formula was triple-A priority. I was the U.N.C.L.E. agent nearest you, just across the Dardanelles in Turkey. The information was relayed to me. I jetted from Ankara to Athens, where the ‘copter had been reserved via cablegram.”
With a sudden motion, Doulou latched his fingers on Illya’s right forearm.
“Mr. Kuryakin!”
“Yes, Doctor. I see the car.”
As the ‘copter had crested a jagged upthrust of ageless volcanic stone, the black car had flashed into view. It was almost directly below, a shiny ebon bug slithering around the curves at suicidal speed.
Doulou gulped as Kuryakin heeled the ‘copter and let the bottom fall out of the sky.
The vehicle inched lower, pacing the car, the rotor blades almost snipping the towering rise of sheer rock that the road hugged.
From the abyss that skirted the outer edge of the road thermals toyed with the ‘copter, bouncing it up and down like the flicking of invisible giant fingers.
Doulou simply had to close his eyes for a moment to shut out the dizzying sight of the cliff and road twitching and flicking at them.
When he ventured a fresh look, Doulou saw that Kuryakin was still sticking close to the car like a flipping kite on the end of an invisible string.
“Mr. Kuryakin…”
“Yes?” Illya didn’t look at him. Every nerve and muscle of the U.N.C.L.E. agent was devoted to the tricky job.
Doulou studied the nerveless determination of the young face beside him. Then the doctor hardened his shoulders, forced a breath into his lungs. “Nothing, Mr. Kuryakin. Except to say that I’m delighted to ride shotgun, even if I lose my stomach!”
“Quite,” Illya said. The ‘copter was an annoying giant hornet. It forced the car to swerve, slither. A curve loomed ahead. The limousine, refusing to slow down
, skidded through the bend almost broadside.
The copter had dipped briefly into the abyss. But it returned as the car rocketed down a short straight stretch.
Kuryakin jockeyed the craft in front of the car, letting the skids drop toward the glowering chrome grillwork. An arm suddenly thrust from the car. An arm clad in silvery knitting. Almost instantly, a heavy caliber slug jolted from an extended weapon.
The projectile grazed the crystal bubble just above Dr. Doulou’s head. The impact was slight, but enough to trigger the explosive. A shower of crystal needles hurled into the cockpit. Doulou’s hoarse cry mingled with the roaring rush of wind.
Illya Kuryakin shot the ‘copter up like an express elevator. He looked quickly at the scientist. Doulou had thrown his hands against his face. A smear of blood was seeping from a cut on his pate.
“Dr. Doulou!”
Dolou cracked his fingers, peeped out, patted his cheeks, temples, the top of his head. He looked at the red stickiness on his fingertips.
His face was gray, but he smiled.
“A sliver merely caught me in an invulnerable spot, Mr. Kuryakin.” He patted the abrasion on his scalp with a handkerchief.
Illya’s shoulders relaxed. “We have proven our point.”
“Point?”
“It’s the limousine we’re after. We’ve ruled out the remote chance of innocent people being in the car.”
“And now?”
“Now we turn on the traffic light, Doctor.”
Under Illya’s touch, the ‘copter had swooped beyond the brow of a stony ridge, taking cover. Keeping the road out of sight for the moment, he reached into the small leather kit wedged beside his seat. He took out a lump of puttylike material a little larger than a golf ball.
“Plastique, Doctor.”
“Explosive. I see.”
“How’s your throwing arm?” Illya asked.
“I’m not exactly a Boog Powell.”
“He’s a first baseman, Doctor, not a pitcher. But you don’t have to approximate a Drysdale for this job. Just pitch on signal. Can you do that?”
The rotund little man’s eyes glinted as if he’d just realized how drab his years shut up in a lab had been. “The pleasure will be mine, Mr. Kuryakin!”
Illya passed the explosive to Doulou, and mosquitoed the ‘copter back over a route that overlooked the road.
Below and ahead, the limousine was roaring across a long, level plateau. Beyond, almost in sight of the men in the car, the road entered the last series of sweeping turns that would take it to the Athens highway and safety.
Above the howl of wind through the shattered cockpit bubble, Illya said, “It’s now or never, Doctor. But I won’t ask you to risk your life against those explosive bullets, if you care to decline.”
“It’s your life too, Mr. Kuryakin. As for me, I’m ready.”
The shadow of the ‘copter raced across the speeding car. Doulou was twisted in his seat, arm upraised.
“Now, Doctor!”
A split second after he had spoken, Illya was wheeling the ‘copter up and away.
He poised on a needlepoint in the sky and watched gravel and macadam mushroom before the nose of the limousine. The car seemed to rear on its rear wheels for the barest moment. Then it was dropping its nose into the smoking crater. The rear end came up and over.
The smashed top emitted a streamer of sparks as it slithered at an angle on the macadam.
Striking the shoulder, the car flipped and came to rest, miraculously, right side up. Illya was already dropping the ‘copter. The skids struck a sandy, graveled area near the road with a jar. He and Doulou got out and started racing toward the shattered, smoking limousine. The quiet of the day was broken by the hiss of water from broken radiator connections and the final creaks of tortured, twisted metal.
Pistol in hand as he leaped the ditch near the car, Illya said, “Watch it, Doctor. One of them seems to be alive.”
His assessment was correct. When the car had upended, the driver’s neck had been broken. He lay in a heap behind the wheel. A THRUSH man in back was a sickening sight with a shattered skull.
Mashed against the rear floor of the car, his broken legs at odd angles beneath him, a third silver-clothed agent was groaning to blurred consciousness.
Peering into the wreckage of the car, Illya said, “Three of them, Doctor! All wearing hot togs. Where is the fourth man? My double? Where is the man who got the formula?”
A croaking laugh came from the car. The THRUSH agent was dying, easing his final moments with the savor of evil victory.
“Beyond your reach, U.N.C.L.E.! We knew defector would talk…Planned accordingly. Our leader left the car two miles from villa. We continued on…Decoy…By now small jet ‘copter has picked him up. You swine will never---“
He died with his mouth open, forming a word.
With a gesture of savage disappointment, Illya whirled from the car. His burning eyes searched the sky. Far to the north, beyond Doulou’s villa, he thought he detected a pinpoint of silver against the blue firmament. It might have been a distant jet ‘copter.
But even as Illya’s sharp vision caught it, it vanished. Of course, it might have been a trick of his eyes.
TWO
U.N.C.L.E.’s never-sleeping New York complex functioned in an atmosphere as quietly genteel as that of a very posh but sedate alumni club.
At the moment, in fact, Mr. Alexander Waverly might have been mistaken by a casual observer as the member of such a club, refreshing his executive brains in quietude.
Mr. Waverly was the lone occupant of a severely sumptuous reading room whose walls and ceiling were done in panels of bleached, hand-tooled morocco. He was reclining in a massive leather chair with attached foot rest. Silent, oiled machinery within the chair applied an invigorating massage to the length of Mr. Waverly’s body.
But he was hard at work, even while his physical being replenished itself. On a frosted glass pane in the ceiling, microfilm copies of the world’s most important newspapers were being projected, page by page.
Waverly’s quick mind correlated the stream of information, often ferreting out tidbits and spotting meanings in details that would have escaped less experienced eyes. Now and then he murmured aloud, making verbal notes, suggestions; he gave instructions, predicted possibilities, uttered warnings. A sensitive microphone picked his words for taping and a quick relay to U.N.C.L.E. agents scattered around the globe.
Waverly touched a button in the arm of his chair, and the final page of the Cairo paper shone overhead. He scanned it with his photographic memory and turned the projector off. He’s detected that a faint shift would be forthcoming in Egyptian foreign policy. Today they had given six paragraphs to the remarks of an American Consul. A month ago, a single graph would have sufficed.
Waverly depressed a second button and the chair folded itself to a sitting position. Waverly pinched the bridge of his nose. The sessions with the variegated languages of the world press were always tiring, even with the soothing effects of the chair.
A section of the wall slid open and a young, svelte female U.N.C.L.E. technician stepped into the room. “We have the telly-conference ready, Mr. Waverly.”
“Excellent. Immediately.”
The slight hunch of his neck and the sag of flesh under his eyes attested to the load of work and responsibility that Waverly carried as a section chief in U.N.C.L.E.’s top echelon division of Policy and Operations. But he rose from his chair with dignified alacrity and departed the reading room as if he were going to join old friends at a bridge table.
He followed the girl down a short corridor. A door slid open and they stepped into a plushly-carpeted room with cathedral windows and metallic drapes that swept to the floor.
The center of the room was occupied by a conference table that looked as if it weighed half a ton.
But there was only a single chair at the table, a Gothic backed armchair, slightly smaller than a throne, placed at the table’s
nearest end. Ranged at the table, facing the executive chair, were three twenty-five-inch television screens.
Mr. Waverly seated himself, taking out his briar as if he were nonchalantly preparing to discuss plans for an office party. Trim in her uniform, her sunny hair like cake frosting, the young technician crossed to a console where winking lights chased each other. The console was linked to others like it in the major capitals of the world. The system was made possible by U.N.C.L.E.’s own communications satellites, broadcasting on ultra high frequency and scrambling words and pictures in the process.
The girl spun a dial. A voice filtered into the room: “Mexico City is ready.”
“Come in, Mexico City,” the technician replied.
The lean visage of Napoleon Solo flashed on one of the screens before Mr. Waverly.
“I trust you are in good health, Mr. Waverly,” Solo said, looking at Waverly as if both were actually present at the same conference table.
“Quite, Mr. Solo. Let me commend you for the dispatch with which you cleared up that smuggling matter for our Mexican friends.”
“Thank you, sir. Now with a weekend in the sun in Acapulco to take the kinks out of my muscles---“
“I’m afraid the bikinied young ladies of Acapulco will have to manage without you this weekend, Mr. Solo.”
“They’ll die of disappointment,” Napoleon Solo assured his chief.
“But the survivors will look forward to you so much more intensely. Meanwhile, Mr. Kuryakin has arrived in Rome from Athens with Dr. Marko Doulou. Shall we have a chat with them?”
Waverly inclined his head toward the technician. “Bring in Rome, please.”
The circuits were at ready. All the girl had to do was punch a button. The images of Illya Kuryakin and Dr. Doulou appeared at the conference table.
Solo and Illya looked at each other in their respective screens in Mexico City and Rome, and exchanged casual greetings. Dr. Doulou was introduced to Napoleon Solo by Mr. Waverly.
The Hungry World Affair Page 2