The Hungry World Affair

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The Hungry World Affair Page 6

by Robert Hart Davis


  Marlene staggered back from the console with a shaky gasp. No more of that! She enjoyed excitement, but not this kind of tension.

  Yet it had turned out more than beautifully. In addition to Princess Andra, they had Napoleon Solo as well. Quite a delightful day’s work.

  ACT THREE

  MOTHER HUBBARD KNEW THE SCORE

  In a third floor waiting room of the International Hospital in Lima, Illya Kuryakin paced restlessly.

  He dropped into a chair, picked up a magazine, read a few of the Spanish captions, let the periodical fall back to the low, bleached-wood table.

  He closed his eyes, dropping his head back. His mouth was a gash drawn across his lean face.

  Had it been a mere eight hours since he arrived at the scene of carnage at The Castle in Chambasa? It seemed a century had passed, each moment filled with anxiety and frustration.

  Outside, a nurse in starched white rustled past in the glistening corridor. A chime gave two soft bongs, summoning a doctor. Then footsteps squeaked softly from the corridor’s rubber tile to the carpeting of the waiting room. Illya’s head jerked up.

  Alexander Waverly made a motion with his hand as Illya started to rise. “As you are, Mr. Kuryakin. You look as if you need something even more restful than a chair.”

  “I didn’t expect you personally.”

  “Your preliminary report was most distressing,” Waverly said. “I boarded one of the new long-range supersonic U.N.C.L.E. jets a soon as I could detail lesser matters to other hands. Tamping his briar with a forefinger, Waverly strolled to the window. He was treated to a vista of the narrow streets of Lima. The mixture of ancient and modern buildings. The thought of the slum area down there, where squatters in tin and cardboard houses were already on the verge of starvation.

  “THRUSH has never before scored such a beat on us,” he remarked. “They have the Doulou Particle. They have Princess Andra, and I’m quite sure they have the means of extracting her secrets from her.” A long breath sighed from him. “They have the world within their grasp, Mr. Kuryakin.”

  “And they have Napoleon Solo,” Illya said bitterly.

  Waverly half turned from the window. “A quite painful fact to face,” he admitted. “But Solo, you, I---in this matter we are all expendable, so long as THRUSH is stopped. And each tick of time is a death knell, Mr. Kuryakin. The instant THRUSH learns how to harvest plankton and process it for palatable human consumption, you may rest assured that the Doulou Particle will be distributed wholesale over the earth. Then we---and all mankind---are done. All but THRUSH.”

  “Must you remind me?” Illya said, passing his hand wearily over his face.

  “Of course, of course,” Waverly cleared his throat. “First things first. Would you care to fill me in on that sketchy preliminary report?”

  “I arrived at The Castle too late,” the words twisted Illya’s mouth. “That’s the gist of it. The element of time favored THRUSH too one-sidedly, that’s all. Princess Andra’s personal bodyguard, Pico lay dead in the inner gardens.

  “A rapid fire weapon had cut him in two. I’d learned in the village that he and Solo had raced off to The Castle together in a jeep. The jeep was there. Several dead bodies littered the outer courtyard. But Solo was missing. So was the princess.”

  “Have you determined how THRUSH got in The Castle?”

  Illya Kuryakin nodded. “Records in the gate tower showed that a tutor and small group of students from a girl’s school in New England had been admitted. THRUSH used some of its brood of chicks for this one”

  “Deucedly clever,” Waverly admitted. “The educational process of young girls---an appeal Princess Andra would find overwhelming. Blastedly cunning, the way THRUSH even perverts laudable character traits in the opposition. Once inside, the devilish little THRUSHETTES were in position to overpower Andra and open the gate.”

  “I’d wager last month’s expense check you’ve pegged it accurately.”

  Waverly flicked his hand. “It could have happened no other way, from the evidence. When you have but one clear assumption before you, deduction is no great trick. Now, in your UHF contact with New York while you were at The Castle you mentioned a surviving THRUSH man.”

  “Which brings us here to the hospital,” Illya said. “The fellow was lying in the outer courtyard. I thought at first that he was dead. A missile from an U.N.C.L.E. special---Solo’s no doubt---had struck him in the mid-section.

  “I removed him here immediately. Two of the best surgeons in Peru have now been working---“ Illya consulted the chronometer on his wrist---“Four hours and thirteen minutes to bring him around.”

  “We shall both talk to him,” Waverly said.

  “If he lives. If he will talk. If he knows anything to talk about.”

  “We shall not presume negative answers to questions we have not yet asked, Mr. Kuryakin!”

  Illya straightened his body in the chair. Hi eyes looked a little less tired. A brief smile touched his mouth. “Thanks for the picker-upper.”

  “Part of my job,” Waverly mumbled. He drew a chair close to Illya’s. “I have several reasons for coming in person. These are a few of them.”

  He fished a small, Florentine silver pillbox from his pocket.

  “One might carry aspirin or glycerin in this contraption,” he remarked as he opened the box. “In this instance we have a defensive mechanism I know you’ll be glad to have.”

  Waverly proffered the small container. Illya took it and looked inside. A single neat row of gelatinous capsules slightly smaller than his little finger were packed inside. He lifted one out, held it to the light. It felt sticky.

  Inside the amber jell were several thin filaments that looked like dirty hairs.

  Illya Kuryakin raised his brows at Waverly. “Compliments of a team of the most brilliant young scientists in U.N.C.L.E.’s laboratories,” Waverly explained. “Defensive device against those hot togs that have become fashionable among THRUSH men. Just toss one of these against the next hot-togged fellow you meet. The power in the suit will dissolve the jell, and stick these transistors, which you see as lumpy filaments, to the suit.

  “The sudden overload will short out the suit. The amplification and consequent short-circuiting should be highly unpleasant for the suit’s wearer, who has counted on the normal quantity of insulation built into the suit.”

  “Should be?” Illya gave Waverly a sidelong look.

  Waverly cleared his throat. “The device works perfectly under laboratory conditions. Of course, if you’d care to wait until it’s tested further---“

  Illya snapped the silver case shut and jammed it in his pocket. “No, thanks. I’d rather depend on laboratory conditions, while you keep on trying to improve the model.”

  Waverly’s rapid-fire mind had already leaped to the next matter at hand. He pulled a rattling sheaf on onionskin from the inner pocket of his tweed jacket. “We have run down the identity of the THRUSH brain who is your double, Mr. Kuryakin.”

  Illya began to strain forward in his chair. Waverly looked over the top of the glasses with a ghost of a smile at Illya. “We don’t have to go into detail as to his physical appearance, do we, Mr. Kuryakin? All you have to do is look in the mirror.”

  Illya’s eyes expressed no appreciation for the remark.

  “Yes, well…” Waverly cleared his throat. “Let’s see…his name is Dion Gould. Fantastically brilliant young man. A Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the age of twenty three. He worked in private industry for a short period before he dropped from sight, seeing greener grass in the fields of THRUSH. From his professors, college friends, and early employers we’ve learned that he was a young man dazzled by his own genius.

  “An egomaniac, I think we might safely say. Considers himself destined for great things. Feels that power should be his because he is the most remarkable of nature’s creations, Dion Gould.”

  “Natural that he’d gravitate to THRUSH, consider the organization his eventual tool, his short
-cut to his goals,” Illya decided.

  “Quite right, Mr. Kuryakin. And he is not alone, having both a playmate and adviser in one Marlene Reine. From what we have been able to gather in the limited time, she hasn’t the formal knowledge that crams Gould’s skull, but she is perhaps even more cunning, devious. She and Gould have figured in three or four THRUSH affairs of which we have record, always in increasingly important roles. Now they are playing for the ultimate stakes.”

  Illya snapped his fingers.

  “Marlene Reine! Smart young tutor bringing her girls to tour The Castle.”

  “It’s more than a possibility, Mr. Kuryakin. A very distinct probability. She and Gould displaying their smooth teamwork---she gained entry to The Castle while Gould arranges his pawns for the carrying off of Princess Andra.”

  “And Solo.”

  “Precisely.” Waverly removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The carrying off to---where, Mr. Kuryakin?”

  Illya couldn’t sit any longer. He jerked himself out of the chair to pace stiffly. “Yes, that does seem to pose the sort of question that one wouldn’t find an answer to in fortune cookies. The THRUSH crowd, with Solo and the princess captive, simply didn’t leave Chambasa by land. As soon as I had the THRUSH agent on the way to the hospital here, I enlisted the aid of the police captain in Chambasa.

  “He told me of an earlier skirmish Pico and Napoleon had with some men who’d sneaked in, concealed in a hay cart. He’d also, just before I arrived, investigated the report of two abandoned cars on the beach.”

  “So Gould had a sub standing by in Chambasa harbor,” Waverly said. “And all the occupants of the two cars went to sea.”

  “But we’re the people all a-sea,” Illya remarked bitterly. “How do we pick a THRUSH sub out of the Pacific Ocean? Worse than the proverbial needle in the haystack!”

  “Yes, quite,” Waverly said. “To locate the needle all one would need would be a sufficiently strong magnet. And we haven’t anything---except you and me.”

  TWO

  The THRUSH man who’d taken Napoleon Solo’s slug during the skirmish in The Castle courtyard lay like a spider at the center of a web. The skeins were the lines, tubes, and wires connecting various parts of his body to bottles of dextrose, plasma, oxygenator, humming and clocking machines that prodded his lagging life processes.

  In surgical gown, cap, and mask, Dr. Ramon de Luz raised his eyes from the stricken man and glanced about at members of the medical team surrounding the operating table. In each pair of eyes he read corroboration of his own opinion. The prognosis was entirely negative.

  A lean, dark, almost saturnine looking man with the first brush of gray in the coal black hair on his temples, de Luz lifted a rubber-gloved hand, yanked his mask below his chin, and told a nurse,

  “The men from U.N.C.L.E. will have to see him here, if at all. Please have them put in sterile gowns and brought in---quickly!”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  The nurse’s movements were a vanishing whisper. De Luz turned in the brilliant glare of the overhead light, knuckled his kidneys, and arched his back in a stretch against its tiredness. His assistants could do all that remained to be done at the operating table. With artificial means, just keep the flicker of life in its home of bone, blood, and tissue as long as possible.

  Working the kinks out of his lean, sloping shoulders, de Luz murmured compliments to each member of the team. They had performed magnificently. Indeed, they had done the impossible, keeping the man on the table alive this long.

  De Luz went forward to meet the U.N.C.L.E. men as the nurse ushered them in. They were garbed in green, sterile smocks and caps.

  “Gentlemen,” de Luz nodded at Waverly and Kuryakin in turn. “I can sum up the situation in a single sentence. The patient is dying.”

  Members of the medical team shifted to make room for Waverly and Kuryakin as they rushed to the THRUSH agent’s side.

  Waverly looked at the gray, hawkish face. In hollow sockets, the eyes already appeared as unseeing as glass marbles.

  A flick of Waverly’s finger was a signal to Kuryakin.

  Illya bent over the dying man, his face directly above the glassy eyes. “Can you hear me?”

  A faint tremor in the THRUSH man’s lips indicated that he could.

  “Do you see me?” Kuryakin asked.

  The glassy eyes made faint movement, trying to focus. Illya decided the man was seeing blurred, swirling outlines.

  “Make an effort!” Illya commanded. “You know my face quite well. Surely, you recognize your own commander!”

  The eyelids flickered.

  “Yes,” Illya Kuryakin grated in a voice that lacked his usual mellow tones, “that’s right. Dion Gould. Your commander!”

  “Yes…” the agent whispered dimly.

  “Excellent. I’m glad you’re not beyond understanding. The raid on The Castle is over. We were successful. You did excellent work. I commend you.”

  “The Castle…Operation---Boy Scout---“

  “Precisely,” Illya said. “And the U.N.C.L.E. who fired on you, who wounded you, has been caught. Quick execution is too good for the swine.”

  “Yes…” the gray lips formed almost silent words. “Swine---shot me---“

  “As your commander, I deem it fitting for you to determine his fate. The privilege of revenge is yours, my brave comrade!”

  A final glint of life flared in the marble eyes. The gray lips twisted. Inspired by the thought of revenge, the THRUSH man’s brain battled for a few more seconds of life.

  Bending over the table, Illya’s body was so tense that a cramp dug into his belly. The nails of his clenched hands almost brought blood from his palms.

  “We shall make him pay dearly for what he has done to you,” Illya said. “We shall kill him as slowly as you wish.”

  “Yes! Swine. Kill slowly---“

  “Shall we take him to the base?”

  “Yes. Base---on board. Tell the swine for me---“ A rattle deep in the throat cut off the venomous words.

  Illya Kuryakin flicked a desperate question with his eyes at Dr. de Luz. De Luz made an answer with a single slow shake of his head. No mechanical device, no additional drugs could any longer forestall what was happening on the table.

  Illya’s face was inches from the dying man’s. “Speak up!” Kuryakin commanded. “THRUSH wants to carry out your every wish in this matter. But you’ll have to speak up. Where is it you want the U.N.C.L.E. swine taken?”

  “Base. Benevolence. Please tell him---“

  “Yes? Quickly! Explain it to me!”

  The glassy eyes stared straight into Kuryakin’s. The muscles in his squarish jaws bunched. A shiver shot across his shoulders. He straightened slowly, one by one his muscles twitching to normal looseness. “Sorry,” said de Luz, “we did everything we could.”

  “We are grateful, doctor,” Waverly said. “And perhaps your best was good enough.”

  Illya shot his chief a look.

  Waverly gave one of his rare, dry, humorless smiles. “No, Mr. Kuryakin, my mind has not suddenly snapped under the pressure of our work. You wormed two quite significant bits of information out of deceased friend.”

  “I caught nothing in what he said,” de Luz said with a frown.

  “Nevertheless, Mr. Kuryakin handled the interrogation perfectly. I am sure he roused the deceased to a final lucid moment with the hunger for revenge. The first revelation consisted of two words he used. Quote…on board…end quote. What does that indicate to you, Mr. Kuryakin?”

  “A ship,” Illya said. “What else? Where does one go on board, except a ship?”

  “Exactly. And what could be more convenient for a strike at The Castle than a floating base?” Waverly strolled to the table and looked at the hawkish face now frozen in death. “The second clue was a single word. Benevolence.”

  “Sounds like he went delirious during his last gasp of life,” Illya said. “It’s impossible that a THRUSH agent,
brain-washed and psychologically conditioned as they are, would request benevolence for an enemy.”

  “Out of the realm of possibility,” Waverly agreed. “but neither was the fellow delirious.”

  Dr. de Luz suddenly snapped his fingers. “Benevolence…Of course! Right in my own field of medicine!”

  “Yes, doctor,” Waverly said drily, “it’s nice to have you close the gap between us.”

  Illya Kuryakin himself was putting the equation together, the word association triggering the recall of a news story several months old.

  “You’re speaking of one of those hospital ships that makes port and dispenses free medical aid in the backward areas of the world,” he decided.

  “Ah, you are also with us, Mr. Kuryakin,” Waverly said. “You are correct, of course. The Benevolence was outfitted, dedicated with a flourishing ceremony, and sent on her way as a supposed vessel of mercy and good will from San Francisco. Right, doctor?”

  De Luz nodded. “About six months ago. Since the Benevolence left a western port for a reported Pacific voyage, I did in fact cable an offer to be of any possible auxiliary assistance if the ship came into this area. Several doctors of my acquaintance did likewise. These hospital ships count on the aid of local people, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Benevolence is in this general area right now,” Waverly said, “but I doubt that you or any other outsider would be permitted aboard.”

  “Who sponsored the Benevolence , footed the bills?” Illya asked.

  “A group of private philanthropists,” Dr. de Luz said.

  “Which we may safely assume,” Waverly added, “was nothing more than a very clever THRUSH front organization. Think of the laboratory that could be set up in the vastness of a vessel only slightly smaller than the Queen Mary. What an advantage to have such a base freely roaming the ocean’s wastes!”

  “And think of the perversion.” De Luz said tightly. Think of the disease-ridden children for whom a mercy ship will never pay a call.”

  “A grim prospect, doctor,” Waverly agreed,” but nothing in comparison to the prospect that faces all the children of the world unless we locate that ship---locate it in time. Locate it and put the proper price tag on the job ahead.”

 

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