The Moby Dick Affair Read online

  The answer to this last question came quickly. A squat, powerful Daimler auto, its blue fog lamps shining eerily through the murk, was parked around a bend in the alleyway. Illya was dumped on all fours in the tonneau. The THRUSH agents leaped into the front.

  "Good evening, Kuryakin," said a voice which seemed to echo out of a funeral vault six miles away.

  Illya turned his head. Lying on the floorboard, he was staring at the toe of a brightly polished boot. He twisted his head further. Above him floated an immense black mountain-shape, topped by a white blob. Gradually his eyes adjusted.

  "Allow me, my dear fellow," said the rear seat's occupant, helping him up to a sitting position. As he collapsed against the leather, Illya felt something hard in his suit pocket strike against his hipbone. He remembered his communicator. He had to find an opportunity to set the homing signal for Napoleon.

  He wondered why the car didn't start.

  "We have been following you and your associate Solo all evening," commented his host, a big heap of a man bundled within a vicuna overcoat with a flamboyant fur collar. "I am glad my men were able to spare you excessive violence to your person. We have a very important task for you to perform. I'm sure you'll be delighted to cooperate."

  The man had a strong, square, face, deeply tanned and seamed as though by exposure to rough weather. His nose was faintly hooked, perhaps denoting origins in the Levant. But his English was of Oxford. He had a neatly-trimmed black spade beard and wore a fur diplomat's cap and kid-skin gloves.

  He peeled off the right glove and extended his hand. "It would be courteous if I introduced myself. Commander Victor Ahab, sir."

  Illya's eyes narrowed. "No, thank you," he said to the hand.

  Ahab's cheeks puffed out. He blasted Illya Kuryakin across the face with the back of his bare hand, a slamming blow. Illya swallowed, lifted his right fist. The guns aimed at him by the agents in the front seat deterred him.

  Victor Ahab, THRUSH naval strategist, was quivering. "You—you filthy, degenerate, arrogant little U.N.C.L.E. upstart!"

  Ahab carefully pulled his glove on again. He cleared his throat. "I am grateful I don't have to do much business with you, Kuryakin. I would very likely break your neck with my own hands." He smiled. "As you have just discovered, I am rather easily provoked to anger. It is perhaps my one failing."

  Illya wondered how he could find an opportunity to turn on the homing transmitter. "You are supposed to be dead."

  "The world is full of little surprises. It was expedient that I disappear for a time. I have emerged to what will surely be my finest hour. And THRUSH's."

  One of the operatives in front said, "Beg pardon, Commander."

  "What is it?"

  "Miss Cleo's turn is over. She's coming now, sir."

  "Get the engine going. We have pressing work for Mr. Kuryakin in Golder's Green." High heels ticked outside the car. A young woman's form took shape in the mist. Victor Ahab folded down the jump seat for her, then bent across toward the door handle. His formidable paunch prevented him from reaching it.

  "Come, Kuryakin! Don't be a boor."

  This was the opportunity. Illya hunched around to the right, using his left hand to depress the handle. The girl, trailing perfume, jumped inside with a jingly little laugh of satisfaction. She smoothed down her bolero jacket of gleaming silver fox, and all these bits of business gave Illya the moment he needed to slip his right hand into his pocket, activate the proper stud, and send a signal silently into the night.

  It was the signal to his friend Napoleon Solo.

  The Daimler's engine whispered. The car glided out into gaudy neon traffic at a cautious speed. Commander Ahab gestured to the prisoner.

  "Cleo my sweet, allow me to present your next subject. Mr. Kuryakin of U.N.C.L.E. This is Miss Cleo St. Cloud, a most experienced young woman."

  "Well, not really," the girl laughed. She eyed Illya like a lawyer.

  "Ah, now, don't be modest," said Commander Ahab, tweaking her knee. Miss St. Cloud shuddered.

  "I didn't mean that I wasn't experienced, Victor."

  "And naturally I referred to your experience in the area of hypnosis, my dear."

  Illya decided that she was quite stunning. But her smile was brittle. And her green eyes, like the eyes of all the followers of the supra-government that was THRUSH, were holes into a secret world where lived an unholy lust to conquer at any cost. She spoke:

  "What I meant to say, Mr. Kuryakin, was that my name really isn't Cleo St. Cloud. I'm wanted in a few too many countries for me to tell you what my name really is. Cleo will do. Victor, give me a cigarette."

  Ahab wheezed, tugging out a silver case in a way which Illya found nauseating. Cleo lit up, drew in a couple of hot blue drags, then smiled at him. "We doped the real Miss St. Cloud, Mr. Kuryakin. I took her place on stage tonight, once we were sure you were in the club with your friend. I haven't done one of those stage routines in years. Fortunately I got through it. My real subject is you."

  Illya tried to look bored. "Hypnotism is nothing but cheap theatrics.,,"

  "Oh no, sweets, on the contrary," said Cleo. "It's a widely used medical tool."

  "Better hurry, my dear," Ahab said. "It won't take us long to reach Golder's Green. You see, Mr. Kuryakin, what we plan is simplicity itself. In order to complete the THRUSH project of which I am the supervisor—project, incidentally, which will finally and for all time result in the total domination of all nations by THRUSH—require exclusive use of certain research data which is the property of Dr. Artemus Shelley."

  "By exclusive use," Illya said, "you mean you take or destroy the data so that no one else can use it? And then you insure its exclusively by making sure Dr. Shelley is either in your hands or dead?"

  Commander Ahab's black beard gleamed as he nodded. "Unfortunately, you and your friend Solo balked our attempt to kidnap Shelley and get him out of the country. You also foiled certain associates of mine, who are going to wish they'd succeeded, when they tried to eliminate Dr. Shelley at the hospital.

  "Now, however, while other phases of the plan go forward, we must get Shelley's secret data from his files. His laboratory is under heavy guard. Only one sort of person could manage to get in. A recognized, trusted agent of U.N.C.L.E."

  Lights glided past the car in the fog. Illya had a feeling of isolation, of being hopelessly trapped. Only the knowledge that the homing signal was being beamed to Solo's pocket communicator buoyed him up.

  "You want me to go into the lab and find his papers?" Illya said. "What makes you possibly think I would?"

  Commander Ahab chuckled as the car took a corner. "We know you wouldn't. Voluntarily."

  Cleo St. Cloud had opened the front of her silver fox jacket. She unfastened a gold chain around her neck. A large stone which appeared to be glass, hung from the chain on her bosom. When she pulled the chain free the stone's retaining ring allowed the stone to slide down to one end, where it dangled.

  Next she flicked the cheap-looking glassy bauble with her finger.

  Immediately it began to glow a deep red.

  The reddish light pulsed stronger and weaker. It cast a weird ruby glow over the interior of the racing car.

  "Here, Victor, you do the honors," Cleo said. "Swing it gently back and forth. Gently! Now, Mr. Kuryakin, I am going to place you into the deepest state of hypnosis. That business of subjects being unable to be hypnotized against their will, and of refusing to do anything against their morals—both those notions are simply more of the tommyrot which surrounds the science of hypnotism. If they weren't sheer myths, I wouldn't dare tell you what I'm telling you, would I?"

  She smiled with sweet venom. Illya had difficulty keeping his eyes off the bauble at the end of the chain. Ahab swung it back and forth, back and forth, while the reddish light from its interior, a small, burning spot of brightness, alternately brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed.

  Illya began to feel dizzy.

  "I intend to give you two s
imple post-hypnotic suggestions, Mr. Kuryakin. One will be an order to go into Dr. Shelley's laboratory and search it, tear it apart, until you locate a file folder which bears the code letters CR dash ninety-nine dash two. You will destroy it. The second suggestion will be an order to instantly shoot and kill anyone who disturbs you. How are you feeling, Mr. Kuryakin? Eyelids heavy?"

  Illya shook his head. "No-no, I'm wide awake. It won't work."

  "Watch the light, Mr. Kuryakin." Her voice was soft, insinuating. "Watch the ruby light. You are tired, Mr. Kuryakin. You are tired in every muscle, every fiber of your body. Weary to death. You have one consuming desire. The desire for sleep—"

  Cold horror welled up in Illya's mind. What if the plot worked?

  What if by some mad chance he did fall under their command? What if he were instructed to shoot and kill anyone who attempted to stop him from searching Shelley's quarters? The homing transmitter was silently signaling from his pocket, the signal searching the night, hunting for Solo, bringing Solo in pursuit.

  He had to turn off the transmitter.

  His hands, like fifty-pound bags of cement, remained in his lap. He could not move them.

  Back, forth, back, forth went the ruby light on the chain. Brighter, dimmer, brighter— "Sleep, Mr. Kuryakin. You are sleepy, totally tired, ready to obey me—"

  Fight it, fight it, fight it, he thought. The ruby light swelled and filled the world. Then every thing went black.

  The Daimler let him out on a damp, foggy corner, then sped off into the dark. Illya Kuryakin stood shivering under a lonely streetlamp.

  His mouth was slack. His eyes were empty of emotion. He began to walk along the pavement under the looming cement wall of a building whose large signboard read FLETCHAM AND STROOL, WOOLEN GOODS.

  Two U.N.C.L.E. security men with triangular badges challenged him at the gate in the wire fence round the next corner. Illya identified himself and was admitted. His right hand curled around the butt of a pistol which had somehow gotten into his pocket.

  He had almost pulled it out and shot the two guards to death for presuming to question him.

  And nothing remained in his mind to tell him that Napoleon Solo was on the way.

  ACT II

  "NOBODY HERE BUT US TOURISTS"

  THE TAXICAB deposited Napoleon Solo in front of the innocuous and deserted facade of Fletcham & Strool, Woolen Goods. The driver, an U.N.C.L.E. man, said, "Want a bit of help, sir?"

  Climbing out, Solo shook his head. "Let me look the situation over first. You cruise around a little. If you spot anything, suspicious cars or whatnot, go right on. Circle back, park here and wait. Got your receiver on the right band?"

  The driver tapped his knuckles against a dashboard unit. "Channel F, lined up on yours."

  "The homing signal is still going strong. Illya must be inside."

  Solo turned up the amplification on his communicator, let the signal beep-beep loudly a second, then damped it down. He slammed the taxicab door. The vehicle rattled off.

  Solo walked along under the gloomy wall. At the gate in the wire fence around the corner, he discovered two agents with riot pistols. He flashed his identification.

  "Solo, Operations and Enforcement out of New York."

  The taller guard hooked an eye brow up. "One of your mates is already 'ere, sir. Mr. Kurry-what's-'is-name."

  Solo's backbone crawled again. "Kuryakin. How long has he been inside?"

  "Five, ten minutes, I'd say."

  "Alone?"

  "Right."

  "How did he look? Banged up? Like he'd been beaten? Or drugged?"

  "Seemed all right to us, sir. Spoke a little slowly. Yawned once. It's late, though."

  "I hope it's not later than we think," Solo said, slipping past them.

  One of the guards threw an electric switch on the gate post. The lock in the steel outer door whirred. Solo stepped through into the hollow emptiness of a warehouse full of bales on wooden pallets.

  Far down an aisle a light gleamed. Carefully Solo drew out his pistol and began walking.

  He was drenched with cold sweat and sure something was diabolically wrong.

  If Illya had escaped his captors, he would have turned off the homing signal and called via Channel D. Yet THRUSH was not so lunatic as to send a captive Illya off on his own. Solo didn't understand it. But his lonely passage through the eerie, towering avenues of stacked bales wrenched his nerves another notch tighter.

  The bale storage area came to an end. Ahead brighter lights gleamed in a short corridor. There was a gray-painted door at the end. Beyond that door should lie Dr. Shelley's outer workrooms.

  Warily, Solo ran forward.

  Half way down the corridor, Solo dug in his heels and skidded up short. From beyond the gray-painted door he heard bangs and crashings, as though of office furniture being overturned. He sniffed. The source of the acrid odor became clear in a moment. From under the gray-painted door, wisps of smoke were curling.

  He jumped to the heavy door, pulled it open quickly. "Illya?"

  Solo could see little of the area beyond the first workroom, which boiled with smoke. The smoke issued from another doorway in the far side of the room, which was full of filing cabinets. Holding a hand to his mouth, Solo advanced. Beyond the next doorway, bright spurts of flame flickered through the roiling grayness.

  He called Illya's name again. The answer came back, curiously fiat, nasal:

  "Who is that?"

  "Napoleon." Now Solo was near the inner door. "Did THRUSH fire the place? Where are you—" Just at the moment he reached the door the smoke thinned momentarily. He was on the verge of entering Dr. Shelley's inner laboratory when something in his unconscious checked him. Illya's voice sounded too strange.

  Solo strained to see through the smoke billowing from the contents of a number of filing cabinets. The files smoldered on the tile floor between two long laboratory benches laden with glassware. A shape whirled the smoke.

  Illya's head emerged from the smoke first. Then his torso, arms and hands. In his left hand Illya gripped a fat file folder with a gray cover. In his right was a gun, aimed directly at Solo in the doorway.

  A relieved grin spread over Solo face. "You're alone. I thought for a minute—"

  Solo stopped. Illya's face was immobile as marble. His eyes had a strange, empty look in them. Suddenly Illya's right hand twitched. It was all the warning Solo had.

  He rolled like a tumbler, wildly, as Illya began pumping bullets at the door.

  The shots crashed in the smoky tab. Solo somersaulted up and threw his whole weight at Illya, grappling for his gun hand. The moment Solo's hand closed on his wrist, Illya began to snarl and fight. He dropped the file folder accidentally and this seemed to panic him. He kicked at it, trying to shove it toward the smoldering pile of manuscripts.

  Solo struggled to wrestle the gun away. Illya's face was ugly.

  "You mustn't stop me. You musn't stop me." He repeated it in a kind of mechanical desperation. Whatever drug had been given him, Solo decided, had also given a tremendous boost to his strength. Despite the fact that Solo had hold of Illya's gun wrist with both hands, Illya was still managing to turn that gun so it pointed right at Solo's belt buckle.

  Solo felt Illya's arm writhe.

  That warning he felt through his fingers saved his life. The pistol whammed an instant after Solo released his grip and jackknifed back wards.

  The bullet blasted lab glassware on the nearby bench. A shard hit Solo's cheek, slashed it open. Illya seemed to have forgotten the file folder. It lay on the floor, its upper right corner smoldering.

  Illya lurched through the smoke, coughing. His gun muzzle quested for Solo, who was floundering in the middle of a mess of broken glass. Suddenly Illya gave a savage wince. He shuddered.

  "You—shouldn't have come here." He whimpered it, almost as though he recognized his friend. "I don't want—to kill you. I haven't any choice, Na—" He stumbled over the name, pronounced it haltingly.
"Napoleon."

  Then, as though wracked by awful internal pressures, he threw his head back and howled, "I haven't any choice!"

  Illya's face glazed over again. He wrapped both hands around the pistol to steady it. He took one step and pointed at his friend's forehead.

  Through all this, Solo had been crouched against one of the lab bench fronts. Illya was three feet away, aiming. Solo whipped his hand over his head. He grabbed the first thing his fingers touched, yanked. A Bunsen burner and its tubing—Illya Kuryakin shuddered and fired once, twice. Solo was rolling again, his other cheek cut by broken glass as he skidded across the floor. He jumped up. Using the base ring of the burner as his weapon, he lunged in from the side.

  Illya tried to turn. He seemed dazed, slow-moving. Solo crashed the burner ring down on his friend's skull with all his might.

  Illya groaned. Solo gave him a hand-chop to the back of the neck. Illya dropped to his knees.

  Napoleon Solo snatched his gun as it fell. Illya blinked, shook his head. Then he caught sight of the gray folder with the code letters CR-99-2 embossed on the cover. His hand twitched feebly toward it.

  "Got to burn that," he said. Then louder, anguished: "Got to burn that, got to burn it—"

  Part of the cover was alight, sending up sparks. Solo snatched the folder from the blazing pile of reference papers. Illya let out a moan of frustration. He covered his face and sobbed.

  What was wrong with him? Solo wondered as he slapped the file cover against his trousers to douse the sparks. He caught his friend by the scruff of his coat collar and dragged him away from the flames. Illya continued to burble and moan, eyes closed, as though tortured by his failure. Solo hauled him all the way into the outer workroom.

  Using the butt of Illya's gun, Solo smashed the glass in a wall fire alarm box. Immediately, sprinklers recessed in the ceiling began a hissing deluge. A siren warbled. Solo sheltered the charred file against his jacket and staggered through the smoke to find a telephone and call for an U.N.C.L.E. ambulance.