The Electronic Frankenstein Affair Read online

  That the commander was equally an object of contempt was evident in the rough way he was lifted up, dragged across the beach and tumbled, minus his head, into the swaying boat's stern.

  A moment later the boat was moving out across the sea toward the waiting THRUSH submarine.

  ONE

  NEW YORK BRIEFING

  NAPOLEON SOLO and Illya Kuryakin were frowning heavily when they walked into the big, brightly lighted room crowded with electronic equipment where the New York Control Unit of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement conducted its operations.

  The quiet brownstone on the East Side of New York, a short distance from the East River, possessed an invaluable defensive protection in just the constant ebb and flow of Manhattan's daily life in eddies around it.

  Passing cars, a little old lady stopping to chat with a neighbor, a diplomat with a brief case hurrying in the direction of the United Nations Building a few blocks away were all assets. Who would suspect that behind so unpretentious a false front one of the most powerful crime-fighting organizations on earth functioned around the clock, receiving communications and issuing orders global in scope?

  Sometimes it worried Solo just a little, if only because so vast a complex of assembled technology, and the activities of so many men of exceptional brilliance might lead to over-confidence and a prematurely-timed confrontation with THRUSH in a gigantic struggle that could have world-destroying consequences.

  Someday such a risk might have to be taken, the fateful pawn tossed down in bold challenge, for THRUSH could not be allowed to wreck civilization by abandoning all concern for its own survival in its mad grasp for power.

  So far THRUSH had come close to waging such a struggle, for many of the battles it had lost to U.N.C.L.E. in the past had been potentially world-destructive. But a ways that final stage of suicidal madness had been averted, and THRUSH had drawn back from a gamble with destiny in which there could be no victor. Like some great beast, snarling and grievously wounded, it had retreated into jungle shadows to recoup its strength for another try.

  Napoleon Solo had supreme confidence in the sobriety and good sense of the organization he served as Chief Enforcement Officer, Section II. He had supreme confidence as well in the decisions of Alexander Waverly, the director of U.N.C.L.E.'S New York headquarters.

  But now, as he strode into the presence of that bushy-browed, tweedily attired and remarkably self-possessed man of just past middle-age, he was sharing Illya Kuryakin's vexation concerning something that had happened to them the night before.

  It was a minor vexation and they did not think it would interest Waverly. But somehow they found that shrugging it off in completely casual fashion was proving difficult. It concerned a dinner date with a blonde and a brunette who had behaved outrageously.

  First the blonde had seemed more drawn to Solo and had then decided that she liked Kuryakin better, and the brunette had abandoned Illya in favor of Solo. That would have been all right, because the two young ladies had been almost equally attractive. But later, on leaving the restaurant, they had both changed their minds again.

  "There's something I guess we just have to accept," Solo was saying. "It's hard for a woman to stay attached to just one man when an evening is long and complicated and there are unusual men on hand to make a choice difficult."

  "You're probably right. We really ought to forget it." Illya was attempting to smile, but he looked the opposite of happy.

  Before they could carry the conversation further they had passed through the door of the brightly lighted research facility and electronic communications room and Waverly was coming forward to greet them.

  There were those who thought of Waverly as sedate and scholarly and others who saw him as "a tough old bird" with a wrinkle-seamed face who could probably hold his own with a much younger man in hand-to-hand combat. Few men, indeed, saw precisely the same Waverly, for his expression alone could change with great rapidity, particularly when he was under the stress of strong emotion.

  That he was under such stress now was instantly apparent to both Napoleon Solo and Kuryakin. But though his eyes glittered with excitement nothing could completely shatter the control which he had over his emotions.

  "There's something I want you to see," he said. "We can talk afterwards. Sit down over there and make yourselves comfortable. You won't stay relaxed for long, I can promise you."

  He gestured toward a row of five metal-backed chairs facing a large unlighted screen, a few feet in front of a massive projection instrument, which was connected with a wall socket by ten feet of cable-like wiring as thick as a man's wrist.

  Solo walked to the five chairs and sat down on the one nearest the door. Illya hesitated an instant, as if were about to ask Mr. Waverly a question.

  "Just be seated please, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly said, putting an end to Illya's indecision. He chose the chair next to Solo, crossed his legs and waited, a puzzled frown on his face.

  Waverly was seldom quite so abrupt, and it suggested to both men that the strain under which he appeared to be laboring was indeed unusual.

  He dug a pipe with a bulldog bowl from his pocket, and took his time in filling it with tobacco and lighting it. Then he strode to the projector and fussed with the instrument for a moment, as if just turning it on was proving more of an ordeal than he had anticipated and he wished to postpone it as long as possible.

  "The light switch, Mr. Solo," he said. "Take care of it, please. The room must be in darkness."

  Solo nodded and without getting up he leaned sideways and pressed a button that plunged the room in total darkness. There was a faint click, and the screen lighted up be fore the darkness could become oppressive.

  "What you are about to see," Waverly said, "is a re-run of an audio-visual telecast picked up from God knows what freakish source by one of our range-finding transmission circuits. A code-breaking circuit, although this particular telecast is not in code, visually or otherwise. Apparently THRUSH did not think it could be picked up. If they had, you can be sure it would have come through scrambled."

  "But why should THRUSH think that?" Solo asked. "Was it different from an ordinary telecast?"

  "In some respects it was," Waverly said. "The frequencies are unusual, although not beyond the range of our highly specialized pickup circuit. Also—and this is most important—we've determined, from painstaking angle-analysis, that it could not have been made by a recording instrument in the immediate vicinity of what you are about to see taking place on the screen. It could only have been made from a very great distance."

  "You mean—by a telescopic lens and sound apparatus?"

  "Perhaps. But even that seems to be ruled out, in a way, by other peculiarities revealed by the analysis. It is a most baffling telecast. It may not have even been transmitted by THRUSH from the site of the recording to the Newfoundland project for purposes of documentation. It's as if some invisible recording source, such as a photo-sensitized cloud high in the sky had audio-visually picked up and transmitted what was taking place on the beach far below."

  "The Newfoundland Project!"

  Solo said. "I might have guessed it. The long silence of Huntley and Rivers—"

  "Huntley's body was found by a trawler two days ago, floating in the sea some thirty miles south of the headland which is the nearest point of land on the map which I've been consulting," said Waverly. "The headland is about eight miles east of the THRUSH project. You ate now going to see exactly what took place on that headland. It is a scene of absolute horror."

  TWO

  THE EAVESDROPPER

  The click which ensued––it was followed by a low humming––seemed to convey more to the two seated U.N.C.L.E. operatives than the fact that Waverly had turned on the projector, for they stiffened to instant alertness. It was as if that small, sharp sound possessed the miraculous power of bringing the gulf between the New York brownstone and the Newfoundland Banks.

  There was no flickering, no s
lightest trace of distortion. The headland and the beach at its base stood out with a startling clarity and seemed to come right into the room, wrapped in what was unmistakably a gray overcast, but an overcast that wasn't pronounced enough to diminish visibility.

  Standing rigid by the projector, Waverly paused for an instant to brush lint from his immaculate tweed jacket. His voice, when it came again, was raised half an octave higher.

  "As you can see, it's a close view of about eighty feet of beach, with a towering cliff wall in the back ground. You can see the boulders fringing the shoreline so distinctly you can trace the veins where erosion has produced a kind of splitting. You can also see that Huntley and Rivers are aware of their peril, because the veins on their forehead stand out just as distinctly.

  "One of the THRUSH officers will speak in a moment. Listen carefully to what he is saying."

  Napoleon Solo leaned more sharply forward in his chair, but Kuryakin remained absolutely motionless, his posture as rigid as that of Waverly.

  The officer had seemingly been speaking previously, for his face had the harsh, accusing look of a man who had been working himself into a rage.

  His voice rang out in sudden sharpness, rising above the other sounds from the screen. "You committed a serious blunder. You talked about the precautions you'd taken to avoid exposure. I can quote your exact words, spoken less than twenty minutes ago."

  For a full minute the voice droned on, accusation following accusation and making Solo and Illya exchange incredulous glances in stunned, tight-lipped silence. Waverly said not a word.

  "I know," the THRUSH officer was saying. "It seems unbelievable, doesn't it? We were under the sea and you were standing on the cliff overhead, seven miles from the Project. No possibility of being overheard, eh? But—you were. And not by human ears—until we picked up the warning."

  The THRUSH officer's voice became choked with rage and he spoke a few more words, even more startling in what they seemed to imply. Then he made an abrupt gesture and the three other officers drew long-barreled pistols. One of the pistols roared.

  Huntley went spinning backwards to collide with the cliff wall and collapse in a heap at its base.

  Rivers threw himself flat, recoiled backwards and whipped a tiny, gleaming object from under his greatcoat. Neither Solo or Illya had any doubt as to what the object was.

  Rivers hurled the midget grenade at the four THRUSH officers and the screen became a roaring inferno of smoke and flame. When the smoke cleared the accusing officer was lying on the sand with his head blown off, the rest of him a gleaming, scarlet horror. And Rivers had regained his feet and was racing for the cliff wall, with an officer who had survived the blast in furious pursuit.

  What followed brought a groan of anguish from a man who had seen more than one U.N.C.L.E. agent fall to his death.

  The screen went blank and he said, "Something seems to have interrupted the telecast at this point. There's just one more brief pickup, lasting for less than thirty seconds. Watch not only the boat putting out to sea, but the left hand corner of the screen."

  Again the screen filled with light and sound and color. A small boat was moving slowly away from the beach, with one officer at the oars, another lying slumped across the rail. And in the left hand corner of the screen a long gray undersea craft was riding the choppy waves, its decks agleam with spray.

  "A THRUSH submarine, beyond any possibility of doubt," Illya said. "I can just make out the insignia on the conning tower."

  All three men remained silent for a full minute after the screen went blank.

  Then Waverly said: "There's another telecast I want you to look at, picked up in just as mysterious a way. It's quite brief, as you will see."

  Almost instantly the screen grew very bright again, and a completely different kind of landscape came into view. Instead of towering cliffs walls swept by winter gales and a gray expanse of sea there stretched in all directions a level waste of sand, sun-drenched and almost featureless. Far in the distance a few dunes were faintly visible, obscured by a pale violet haze which seemed to hang suspended between the desert and the sky.

  In the foreground a tall man wearing tropical shorts and a sun helmet sat on a tripod-shaped metal stool making a sketch with swift strokes on a sheet of paper pinned to a drawing board. He was darkly bearded and sun-bronzed, with hawklike features.

  Suddenly he looked up and jumped to his feet with a wild cry, dropping the drawing board and backing away in terror from some thing which the three men in the darkened room could not see at all.

  The something wasn't visible on the screen, and could have been a considerable distance from where the abruptly recoiling man had been sitting.

  Just as abruptly the telecast flickered out.

  "Watch," Waverly said, sharply. "Another picture is coming. It establishes something of great importance—that what you have just seen is a fragment from some kind of documentary record. It must have been intended to be just that, a televised documentary which THRUSH could hardly fail to find of interest."

  When the screen lighted up again the drawing board appeared against a featureless gray background, so greatly enlarged that it almost filled the screen. The sketch which the artist had been making when the board had dropped to the sand was unfinished and extremely crude.

  It depicted what looked like a dancing giant in a posture of ceremonial rigidity, as if its movements had become so formalized as that of a Balinese temple dancer. In a vague way it did seem either Balinese or Chinese, for the artist had placed upon its head a kind of tower-shaped turban tapering to a point.

  An instant before the screen went dark again a cold, metallic voice spoke a few words: "Gobi—7Y887. Object pickup. Object pickup. Object pickup. Transmission channel T 56 H."

  In tight-lipped silence Waverly left the projector, walked across the room and clicked on the overhead lights. His voice was emotion charged when he said: "Well, now you've seen both telecasts. John Blakeley has been missing for three weeks. No word from him at all. You recognized him, I'm sure, despite a three weeks' growth of beard."

  "Yes, of course," Solo said. "Instantly. He went unshaven close to a month two years ago in the Sahara, when we—"

  "He's working alone this time," Waverly said, cutting him short. "And there are parts of the Gobi which are quite different from the Sahara, apparently. That's why we sent him there. Strange lights in the sky, terrified natives and THRUSH in big, capital letters written right across the sky. Invisible to governmental intelligence agencies from here to Singapore perhaps, but not to U.N.C.L.E. We've had too much experience in making that kind of writing visible."

  "You filled us in pretty thoroughly about all of that last month," Solo said.

  "What I didn't fill you in about, naturally," Waverly said, "was what you've just seen. A clearly established linkage between what happened in Newfoundland and whatever it was that made Blakeley draw that sketch and let it drop to the sand. Both of the telecasts were picked up in the same mysterious way and both apparently are directly related to a kind of eavesdropping that is without precedent in human experience. It is a kind of eavesdropping which could—"

  Waverly stopped, rumbled in his pocket for his pipe and got it lighted again before going on. There was a grimly speculative look in his eyes.

  "Perhaps we'd better discuss the whole eavesdropping problem for a moment," he said. "Suppose we try to put it into perspective, to relate it to the major problems which U.N.C.L.E. may find itself more and more involved with.

  "There are four technological developments which threaten human survival on a worldwide scale. One, the population explosion, depends less on technology in a strict sense than on what medical science has accomplished in overcoming diseases that take a high toll of human life. But we may as well include it.

  "Then there's the always present danger of thermonuclear destruction on a global scale and the equally serious threat of chemical and biological warfare on the same scale.

&nbs
p; "But the greatest threat of all, perhaps the one most to be feared, is eavesdropping on a global scale. Do you realize what it could mean if there was no privacy left on earth, if everyone was under continuous observation night and day? Civilization would almost certainly come to a complete standstill. No one could even breathe without the certain knowledge that they were being spied upon. Every conversation would be picked up and processed and filed away for future reference. Would anyone care to talk or carry on under such circumstances? The demoralization would be absolute. People would simply give up. Not at first. There would be ruthless tyrants still in the saddle. But eventually the blight would extend even to them."

  Waverly puffed slowly on his pipe for a moment, staring at the projector as if he wished, despite what he had just said, that it were an all-seeing eye that could penetrate the walls of every THRUSH cell.

  "If THRUSH possessed such a eavesdropping weapon," he went on, "they would not worry too much about how destructive it would ultimately prove. They would think only of how useful it would be to them in achieving world dominance. U.N.C.L.E. would be first in the line of attack. You can be sure of that."

  He took another slow puff on his pipe. "That is why I wanted you to look at those telecasts," he said. "The plane will leave tomorrow afternoon at five o'clock. Your first stop will be Tokyo, where you will be briefed as to your exact itinerary. You will be flown to Inner Mongolia and then to the Gobi. The details have not yet been completely worked out. But everything will have been taken care of before you arrive at the Tokyo airport, where you will be met by a most genial gentleman. A pipe smoker, like myself."

  THREE

  THE WOMAN WHO WAS DRESSED KILL