The World's End Affair Read online

  The World's End Affair

  By Robert Hart Davis

  May 1966

  Volume 1, Number 4

  Prologue: "Who Turned Off the Sky?"

  Act I: Green Is the Color of a Deadly Place

  Act II: World's End This Way, Two Miles

  Act III: So Sorry, Mark Twain

  Act IV: "It Never Rains But It Pours…"

  Prologue: "Who Turned Off the Sky?"

  IT WAS A splendid way to end a dangerous mission. Splendid, at least, until the jarring moment when some madman or other repealed the laws of nature. But until that moment, it was a splendid way:

  First-class compartment seating. The porcelain-smile attentions of three fetching stewardesses. Iced champagne at 35,000 feet. The day was clear. The sun had a sharp crystalline brightness. It blazed in a serene, cloudless sky, and glared blindingly from the silver hide of the great jet engines of the commercial airliner.

  Far below, the South China Sea glowed like a fine old painting. Mr. Napoleon Solo studied it, trying to recall what the pilot had just said over the speaker system about their ETA Hong Kong.

  Solo was dressed in his usual dapper style. Except for the pieces of sticking plaster on his chin and neck, there was no evidence that he had been down on all fours the night before, fighting for his life against a pack of THRUSH uglies in a foul Bangkok slum.

  One of the girls hovered, for a second time in sixty seconds. "More champagne, yes?"

  "Yes," said Illya Kuryakin from the aisle seat next to Solo. He held up his glass, smiling.

  "No," Solo said. His face was serious, but not his eyes.

  "Come now, Napoleon. We're entitled to a bit of celebration. With that Bangkok cell -" Illya made an expressive gesture, which effectively transmitted the idea: dead and buried.

  Solo smiled at the stewardess. "I just don't want to cost these sweet young ladies their jobs. I don't know what it is about you, Illya, but you do draw them."

  The stewardess stared straight into Solo's eyes, rapt. "Yes. Oh, yes."

  "I happen to be very thirsty," said Illya.

  "All right," said Solo. "Fill us up, dear. But fast, before the other passengers notice."

  He passed his glass. Immediately, several people who had been craning around to see who was getting all the attention buzzed their service buzzers. The stewardess fled as the great Air Pan-Asia jet hummed down the sky toward Hong Kong.

  Solo sighed, content. "You know, Illya, l was just thinking. This is a splendid way to end an exciting -"

  Up at the front of the compartment a lady screamed. The cockpit door thudded open.

  Simultaneously there was an explosion, like a muffled gunshot. A man cried out.

  The entrance to the sacrosanct cockpit was a confusion of blue-uniformed arms and legs. Solo's midsection chilled. He slipped his right hand beneath his faultlessly cut jacket. THRUSH had attacked in stranger places.

  But even as Solo tried to untangle the visual pretzel-puzzle of struggling men in the cockpit entrance, he was bothered by the realization that THRUSH would hardly launch an attack with this sort of fanfare –

  Abruptly a man came hurtling out of the tangle at the cockpit entrance. His mouth hung open. His eyes were large, round, brown. His black hair and his airline uniform were mussed. He was an Indian or a Thai, Solo judged.

  Illya tensed forward on his seat, his hand now buried in his coat too. The flight officer stared, baffled, blank-faced, out over the passengers. Then his left hand flew out. He caught the curtain which screened off one of the lavatory doors.

  It was not enough support. Down he went, twisting slowly. A dreadful silence had fallen over the compartment.

  As the flight officer twisted around, the back of his shirt became visible. A wet, spreading color swatch stained it.

  "Shot in the back," Illya breathed. The cockpit door slammed and latched loudly.

  For a moment more the stunning effect of what had happened gripped the compartment. A stewardess from the rear economy compartment came running up. Two of the forward compartment girls were on their knees in the aisle beside the gunshot man.

  The new stewardess ran halfway to them, saw what had happened, and fainted on top of a passenger.

  "That helps a ton," Solo said grimly. "Illya?"

  The slightly-built, pensive-faced UNCLE agent needed no further suggestion. Illya moved from his seat and started down the aisle. Napoleon Solo came right behind him. All at once the starboard wing of the giant jet dipped toward the South China Sea.

  The Air Pan-Asia plane went into a sharp banking turn. Solo and Illya steadied themselves on the headrests of two seats.

  "Changing course," Solo said. "Very fast – probably without authorization."

  "An air kidnapping," Illya whispered. "It has happened before."

  One of the girls kneeling beside the wounded man was going into hysterics. "Help me get her out of the way," Solo said over his shoulder to Illya. The younger agent picked up the girl bodily, deposited her on the lap of a stout, middle-aged Japanese woman who was blinking rapidly as tears of terror streamed down her cheeks.

  "Help her," Illya said to the Japanese woman. "Keep busy. You won't worry so much."

  Napoleon Solo was already kneeling next to the semi-conscious flight officer. The man lay on his side in the plushly carpeted aisle. He gripped the leg of the passenger seat nearest him. Solo glanced over at the other stewardess.

  She was the one who had intended to serve them the fresh champagne. Thank God she was able to control herself. Her pretty Eurasian face had whitened and her hands shook, but she had a grip on herself.

  "Who is this?" Solo asked. "The pilot?"

  "No. Mr. Han, the co-pilot," the stewardess said.

  Solo gently probed the man's shoulder. "Mr. Han? We'll try to get this plane back on course and get you medical attention." Han signified that he heard.

  Illya crouched down. "Judging from the location of the bloodstain, the bullet might not necessarily be fatal. Loss of blood, however - that is another matter."

  What happened up front?" Solo asked. "Han? Can you answer?"

  "They - without warning - turned on me," Mr. Han breathed. "Men I have known for several years. They had - guns. Without any warning. I asked Captain Loo what was the curious - money belt affair which I saw beneath his flight jacket when - he opened the jacket. They stared at me. I knew something was peculiar - asked again. I reached for the belt, only - only curious - and they had guns -" The co-pilot's shoulders jerked as a spasm wrenched him.

  "Both of them with guns?" Solo said. Co-pilot Han barely nodded. Napoleon Solo glanced once at Illya. The young agent with the mild face and bowl-like haircut pulled his flat black and deadly looking U.N.C.L.E. pistol from the concealed holster under his jacket. Solo did likewise.

  "It's probably locked," Solo said, rising slowly. All at once he was moving, stepping across the wounded man. He jammed his shoulder against the cockpit door and

  wrenched the handle with his free hand.

  From inside the cockpit came a low, nasty crack. Solo threw himself back flat against the lavatory wall. Directly next to where he had been standing, the cockpit door showed a small round bullet hole.

  Solo whipped his head around. The passengers were crying out, weeping, hugging one another. Solo saw nobody with a wound. Had the bullet damaged the pressurization system? What were the damned fools in the cockpit up to?

  "Well," he said to Illya. "We know one thing."

  "Yes?"

  Solo grimaced. "The door's locked."

  At precisely that second, the new madness began.

  The interior of the aircraft grew gloomy, as though a curtain had descended. The transformation was instantane
ous, from the sun-sparkling brightness of day to murk.

  The giant jet gave a lurch, another. The windows streamed with rain.

  A bluish flare lit the interior. This was followed by the most shattering drum-roll of thunder Napoleon Solo had ever heard. The plane seemed to rocket upward, then drop sickeningly. Passengers rolled in their seats, side to side.

  "Where did that come from?" Illya said. "Didn't" the pilot announce -?"

  Solo barked. "Yes. Just before this all started, he announced perfect weather in every quarter of the sky. Not a cloud. Perfect weather." The faces of both men were drawn. Solo expressed it for both of them: "I've never known a pilot to fly into a storm deliberately."

  "Unless he wanted to destroy an aircraft," said Illya.

  "Maybe. But I've never seen a storm like this, either."

  Solo stared past the terrified passengers. There was little to be seen. Great dark clouds boiled past. Another lighting bolt flared. The entire starboard wing seemed to glitter and dance with eerie radiance. The big aircraft shuddered. Thunder pealed.

  The stewardess who had been kneeling beside the wounded co-pilot had enough presence of mind to find an emergency control of the compartment lights. She turned it on. The lights flickered briefly. There was a whine, a smell of ozone. Another loud thunderclap

  rocked the aircraft. The lights went out.

  Even the relatively calm stewardess began to show signs of breaking. She gripped Solo's arm.

  "I don't know who you are, carrying those –" The girl's trembling hand indicated the long-barreled weapons the U.N.C.L.E. agents were holding close to their bodies. "- but if you can use them. Do something about those insane men in the cockpit. I tried to call the cockpit from the galley intercom. They have cut off communication."

  "And they're apparently set on sending this plane down," Solo said.

  "It can't take much more of this," Illya said.

  Napoleon Solo sensed this was true, felt it with each great heaving of the great jet. The wings groaned. The compartment ceiling creaked. The ozone smell was increasing as the ventilation system failed. A seam slowly widened in the compartment ceiling, suddenly buckled open for a good eight inches of its length. Up above the paneling there was a display of blue, shooting sparks.

  "Are we in a typhoon?" Solo asked the stewardess.

  "Wrong season. And such violence at this height? I've never known it -"

  "There's something diabolical about it."

  Solo's head banged against the lavatory wall as the plane gave another sickening buck-and-drop. "The storm came up too fast, all too fast. Almost as though somebody threw a switch -"

  The moment the words were out of his mouth he felt foolish. It was impossible to control weather that way.

  An ill-defined, crawling sensation gripped him. Illya's fingers on his arm pulled him back to reality. Already the jet engines had acquired an odd, low-pitched sound, full of ominous groanings.

  "Napoleon," Illya said, "we hardly have time to stand around beating our gums. There are two men in that cockpit intent on destroying this plane in this storm, whatever the motive. I suggest we suspend meteorological discussion and do something."

  Solo said, "Right." He bent down, tapped the heel of his left shoe.

  Its surface slid partially aside. He palmed a small, dough-gray pellet. He kicked his heel on the rug to re-seal the closure. Then, ducking low, he headed into the narrow aisle leading to the cockpit door.

  He could hear nothing from the other side of the door. The roar of the storm, the sound of the aircraft shaking itself apart were too deafening. He jammed the doughy pellet against the cockpit door and leaped back, shoving the stewardess to one side.

  Illya had already jumped the other way, gun up, ready. He and Solo had worked together long enough to need next to no communication in times like this.

  With a boom louder than the thunderclaps the door blasted off its hinges. Acrid smoke billowed into the compartment. Solo barked, "Now!" He and Illya jammed into the narrow aisle and went through the smoke into the cockpit.

  Act I: Green Is The Color Of A Deadly Place

  The Cockpit of the Air Pan-Asia jet afforded little room for maneuvering. Napoleon Solo lunged through the smoke and found himself practically up against the pilot's chair.

  Illya came crowding in behind him. The two men at the controls turned, rising up. Their faces were distorted out of the bland patterns of composure which Solo typically associated with flight crews on Oriental air lines.

  The pilot was the more squat of the two, a heavy-framed, short man whose brush-cut black hair sparkled with sweat-drops in the dim green gloom of the instrument-lined chamber.

  The pilot's lips peeled back. His pudgy right hand had a pistol in it. He aimed at Solo's stomach. The airliner bucked and plunged upward. Solo's squeeze of the trigger seemed to take an eternity.

  Outside the front cockpit glass, oily black clouds boiled toward the aircraft and went whipping away past the radar nose. Time seemed to slip into slow motion. The trigger finger of the pilot went white, whiter –

  A double crack as the pilot fired and Solo did too. Something ripped the shoulder of Solo's jacket. Behind him, metal clanged. From the lavatory, there was a splintering of glass. The pilot crumpled.

  The flight engineer had swiveled round in his chair and now had a snub-nose small-caliber gun pointed at Illya's head. As soon as Solo fired, he whipped his right hand over. The muzzle of his pistol came chopping hard onto the flight engineer's wrist.

  The snub-nose gun made a noise. Illya jerked to one side. He aimed at the flight engineer's left shoulder and shot once.

  In seconds the duel had begun and ended. Solo's chest ached from the smoke, his stomach from the nauseating tossing of the cockpit floor under him.

  The storm burst around the great jet in eruptions of lightning. Some of the explosive smoke had cleared away.

  "Drag them out of their seats!" Solo shouted. It was necessary to shout. The storm noise was a continuous tympani roll from the sky. Passengers screamed. The engines whined; sparks from short-circuited wiring back in the passenger compartment crackled a sinister warning.

  The flight engineer lay on the cockpit flour. Blood from his shoulder seeped into the ridged channels of the flooring.

  Illya pointed his gun muzzle at the plane's control panel. "What do we do about those?"

  Approximately seven thousand lighted dials with eccentrically jerking needles seemed to confront Napoleon Solo. One glance told him that he would never be able to fly the aircraft. A two-engine executive jet which U.N.C.L.E maintained on Long Island was his limit, and he had only piloted that a few times in emergency situations.

  "I might be able to take it over," Illya yelled above the roar. "But only if the weather weren't so bad, and we could contact a control tower to talk me through the procedures -"

  The pilot and the flight engineer out of action made the situation look hopeless. Solo wished he had not been so prompt to shoot. But would either of the renegade officers volunteer their services if they could, even at gunpoint? He doubted it.

  Solo peered back through the murk into the passenger compartment. "Stewardess! Is the co-pilot awake?"

  "Barely, sir. You had better come find a life belt, because we we will surely go down in another moment."

  "The devil we will," Solo replied. "I've got an insurance payment to make next Tuesday. Get a bottle of your champagne and pour it down Mr. Han's throat. Tell him that Blue

  Cross will take care of him in Hong Kong, but right now he's got to fly this plane."

  "Napoleon," Illya said, "you are impossible. Perhaps that is why you so often accomplish it."

  Solo's mouth whitened at the edges. "Do you think I think this is hilarious? I'm trying to keep the few people who are still sane on this plane from tearing each other's throats. Unless we can get out of this storm -"

  Like punctuation, another crackle of lightning burst outside the rain-flooded windows. The immense j
et tilted downward, with the tip of its port wing pointing toward the South China Sea. The stewardess had gone stumbling back along the aisle to the galley. Solo met her over the prostrate form of the co-pilot.

  Mr. Han's eyelids flickered open and shut. He seemed to realize that he was needed. He tried to lift himself on his right elbow.

  Kneeling, Solo propped him up. He tossed the champagne bottle to Illya, who thumbed the cork. A white foamy squirt sprayed across a couple who were silently praying.

  Solo tried to keep everything else out of his mind except the necessity to prop up Mr. Han and get the bottle to his lips. He could feel the accelerating downward plunge of the plane in his viscera.

  Han swallowed the champagne in great gulps. "Instant courage," Solo said. With his help Mr. Han lurched to his feet. The back of his uniform was bloody from shoulder to belt. Solo and Illya helped him forward to the cockpit.