The Unspeakable Affair Page 6

  The two guards were having an argument about the comparative merits of American and South American women. It was a heated discussion, and they did not hear the faint noise made by Solo and Illya as the two agents prepared the tiny buttons in their hands.

  "Now," Illya hissed softly.

  Both agents pinched the inch of thread that protruded from the buttons, and tossed the tiny pellets out into the room. The guards heard them, turned, their Thrush rifles raised and pointed. That was the last thing they ever did.

  Illya and Solo dashed back into the corridor and fell flat.

  Two shattering explosions ripped the steel room.

  The guards screamed once and were hurled against the steel walls. The table in the room smashed into pieces. The chairs hurled into the air.

  Illya and Solo leaped up and ran back into the room. They looked at the dead guards and at their weapons. Both rifles were twisted shards of metal.

  There were no other guns in the room. The outside door, blown open by the explosions, hung crazily from shattered hinges.

  "No time!" Illya cried. "We'll have to run for it! No weapons!"

  Already voices were shouting somewhere.

  "Let's go! " Solo cried.

  The two agents ran out of the steel room and into the open area beneath the high camouflage. Alarm bells had begun to ring. Far off, near the building where they had been caught, they saw the tiny, fat figure of the cherubic Doctor Guerre. The little round man was bawling orders.

  Black-suited guards ran all across the area beneath the camouflage.

  In the distance there was a whine, incredibly high, and then the roaring of a motor. The roaring came closer. Illya pointed far down the runway.

  A black craft, long, tubular and with stubby black wings, hurtled down the runway, a long tail of vapor jetting out behind.

  At this instant, the agents were seen.

  "Get them!"

  From all sides the black-garbed guards converged toward Illya and Solo—from all sides but one.

  No guards came at them across the runway where the nuclear-powered aircraft was hurtling forward.

  "Quick!" Illya cried.

  The small Russian led Napoleon Solo across the runway directly into the path of the onrushing nuclear craft. They crossed in front and fell to the ground.

  The plane hurled past them.

  The force of its passage picked them up and threw them across the runway like tumbleweed blown on a high desert wind. They held their heads in their arms, taking the bruising buffeting until they at last lay still.

  Solo was up first, a deep gash on his face where a rock had cut.

  "Let's move!" Solo cried.

  Illya Kuryakin staggered up. The small Russian's ear was torn, his face bruised, but there was no time to assess damage. Black-suited guards were running across the runway through the cloud of dense vapor left by the nuclear craft that was now airborne.

  "I'm right with you," Illya shouted.

  The passage of the nuclear craft, and the dense cloud of vapor, had given them a head start and a clear field ahead. They ran.

  When they reached the edge of the high camouflage, they ran on out into the sunlight and up the arroyo they had crept down earlier that morning. They did not move carefully now to avoid the electronic sensors.

  Behind them more alarm bells began to ring as they kicked the sensors.

  "The car is on the other side!" Solo shouted. "If we can reach it."

  "If they've left it!" Illya shouted back. "I suggest we try to lose our friends first!"

  The blazing earth burned their bare feet cruelly. Behind them the guards were still coming, threading their way up the arroyo.

  Solo and Illya reached the crest and looked down. Solo's rented car was gone. The two agents crouched low and looked back. The guards were scrambling up behind them.

  Solo went to work removing four more buttons from his suit coat. He tied them together with the last explosive threads from his trousers. The four buttons were the last tiny bombs.

  He handed one small bomb to Illya.

  They waited.

  The black-suited guards came closer. They were bunched up, the guards, like amateurs. Far down at the foot of the arroyo, the fat figure of Dr. Guerre still shouted orders. The guards reached no more than forty feet from Illya and Solo.

  "Now," Solo said once more.

  The two agents stood, lobbed the tiny bombs stiff-armed, like hurling grenades. The two tiny pellets arched through the hot sunlight and fell into the bunched crowd of pursuing guards.

  The explosions shook the arroyo.

  Rocks hurled, and arms and legs fell mangled across the hot land. There was a silence. Then the groans began.

  They lay all across the arid and sun-baked dirt. They groaned and screamed in their agony. None had been left untouched in the first bunched group, and farther down the arroyo the rest of the guards huddled out of range and stared up at the crest.

  Behind them Dr. Guerre was swearing, urging them on. But the guards were wary now. Two men they had thought unarmed had proved to have sharp teeth after all.

  It was then that the helicopter appeared.

  Over the desert from the west, flying low and rising up over the crest of the hill. A hand waved down at Solo and Illya, then the helicopter roared on over and down the hill toward the packed guards.

  A sub-machine gun began to chatter from the helicopter.

  The guards stared. Two of them fell. The rest broke and ran. They ran down the hill, all the fight gone out of them by the unexpected danger they had found in two defenseless enemies.

  At the foot of the arroyo Dr. Guerre rallied his men. Some of them began to take cover and fire at the helicopter. The helicopter came down on the fiat top on the crest of the hill. A man leaned out.

  "Hurry!" the man called. "They'll get their guts back soon."

  Illya and Solo needed no urging. They sprinted for the helicopter. Already Guerre had rallied his men down at the bottom of the arroyo. In a moment, they would be starting up again.

  The two agents scrambled into the helicopter. At the bottom of the arroyo Dr. Guerre stood and watched it lift off. Inside, Solo armed himself and handed an U.N.C.L.E. special to Illya.

  "How did you find us?" Solo said to the pilot.

  "Waverly," the pilot said. "He had your radio transmissions monitored. When you didn't report in all day, he alerted us and sent us here."

  "It's good to have a smart chief," Solo said.

  "Where to? Santa Fe?" the pilot said.

  "No, not Santa Fe," Illya said. "Back to the Thrush project after dark. As soon as it's dark, we have to go back. There's a girl there we have to help."

  "Back?" the pilot said.

  "Back," Solo said.

  "Back," the pilot said. "After dark. Where now?"

  "Just set it down near my car," Illya said.

  They waited the few hours before the sun would set again over the baked land of the Navaho Reservation. Just before the sun was at the crest of the hills on its way down, as Illya and Solo checked their weapons, the roaring began.

  An endless roaring sound like a thousand engines warming up.

  Illya and Solo looked at each other.

  The roaring seemed to shake the land. It came from behind the line of low hills, down where the camouflaged valley was.

  "I think," Illya said, "we will be saved the trouble of going back."

  The first black nuclear craft suddenly appeared in the sky, roared over, glowing red from the heat of its incredible speed, and was gone.

  Six in all screamed over and vanished into the darkening sky.

  The pilot looked toward the hills through his binoculars.

  "Look!" he cried.

  All across the hills tiny figures were fanning out. Through the binoculars they were seen to be unarmed and wearing, now, ordinary clothes. They moved quickly down the hills and out across the desert, going in all directions.

  "I have a hunch," Illya said.
"Let's get away from here."

  The pilot started his motors and the helicopter took off into the purple and orange sunset sky. It turned toward Santa Fe.

  Behind the helicopter the sky suddenly turned a glaring white, and the line of low hills exploded with one gigantic roar. The helicopter was buffeted by the force of the wind from the explosion.

  "They blew it up," Solo said.

  "Yes," Illya said. "And Penny with it."

  "Unless they took her in one of the aircraft," Solo said.

  "Let's hope they took her," Illya said.

  Behind them as they flew on toward Santa Fe, the sky glowed a dull red as the hidden valley burned in the now dark night.

  THREE

  ALEXANDER WAVERLY filled his pipe and looked for a match. His bony fingers searched in the pockets of his tweed suit. Patched up and with a day of sleep behind them, Illya and Solo sat at the revolving table. Waverly found his matches.

  "Ah, there," Waverly said. "Well, the Army reports your camouflaged valley is totally destroyed. No bodies were found, and the radiation count was high. I think it is clear that our friends have shifted operations."

  "They knew we would bring help," Illya said.

  "Quite," Waverly said. "They realized their game was up in New Mexico, and shifted."

  "Which leaves us on a limb," Solo said. "They could have gone anywhere."

  "Er, not quite, Mr. Solo," Waverly said.

  "You have a lead," Illya said quickly.

  Solo leaned. "If Penny is still alive we owe her—"

  "Indeed we do," Waverly interrupted. "But let us start with Dr. Ernesto Guerre. We know a great deal of him, although little about his early life. He was born in Costa Rica, we know, but little else until he appeared in Nazi Germany during the war."

  Waverly pressed a buzzer on his desk. The wall behind the desk opened, revealing a screen. A picture appeared on the screen. Dr. Ernesto Guerre smiled out at them from a group of men. All the men wore the field grey of the German Army. The cherubic little fat man seemed ridiculous in the military uniform.

  "Colonel Ernest Guerre," the voice of May Heatherly intoned. Solo pictured the beautiful redheaded chief of Communications-Research, Section-IV, and sighed. May was so efficient.

  "Guerre headed a secret project on nuclear development, but the Germans were too far behind at the time," the pretty girl's voice went on.

  Waverly broke in. "Guerre was considered unstable even by the Nazis—a monomaniac, given to daring mental leaps but with a tendency to sloppy groundwork. The Soviet government found the same problems."

  The next picture flashed on. It showed the tiny little fat man wearing a typical ill-fitting Russian suit and standing before a rocket on a launching pad.

  "Dr. Guerre appeared in the Soviet Union after the war. He again headed up a secret project on nuclear propulsion. This time he supposedly got some results, but two engines exploded and killed many technicians and some high-ranking officials. The project was shelved and Guerre vanished," May Heatherly went on.

  "But not quite," Waverly said.

  Now a series of pictures flashed on and off the screen. They showed a man, in various disguises and places, who could have been the cherubic little Doctor. None of them was very clear.

  "These were all taken in various South American cities over the past few years. None of them prove that Guerre is there, but taken with the rumors, I would say our man had been working somewhere in South America recently," Waverly said.

  "Those guards!" Solo said. "They were talking about South American women."

  Waverly tapped his pipe and nodded. "Precisely. That is another clue. But we can do better than that." '

  Another picture flashed onto the screen. It was hazy and dark, but it showed what both Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo knew was one of the black nuclear- powered aircraft.

  "This was just radioed to us from Venezuela," Waverly said. "It was taken last night near the coast. As you can see, the craft is moving more slowly than you reported, and its wheels are down, hence a landing. It was radioed directly to us by our Section-II Chief in Caracas. It is top secret."

  Solo was studying the picture. "Most of the background detail is indistinct."

  "Yes, the exact location cannot be guessed," Waverly agreed.

  "But surely the man who took the picture can tell us where he took it," Illya said.

  "I'm sure he can," Waverly said. "But that we will have to learn in Venezuela. Or, rather, you two will have to learn it. You see, General Hoyos, the defense minister, insists that he will give the exact location to no one but our agents. He fears internal troubles if the news leaked out. He has instructed us not to tell even Washington."

  Illya narrowed his eyes beneath his lowered brow. "Isn't that a bit unusual?"

  "It is, but General Hoyos was adamant. As a matter of fact, he does not wish the Venezuelan government to officially appear in this at all. You will deal with his assistant. Major General Valera."

  "I can understand that," Solo said. "It could hurt him at home if it got out that his office had allowed a foreign power to build nuclear-powered aircraft on Venezuelan soil."

  "Precisely, Mr. Solo," Waverly said. "At least, that appears to be the general's thinking on the matter. I'm not sure I agree, but he is insistent that we try to handle this as quietly as possible."

  "What more does the general know?" Illya asked.

  Waverly puffed on his pipe. "Should he know more?"

  "I do not think that Project Condor, as Guerre called it, consists only of the nuclear-powered aircraft. That would not be like Thrush. When they develop a weapon, it is for a definite purpose. Nuclear-propulsion alone would not give Thrush world power, as Guerre implied Project Condor would," Illya said.

  "Yes, I tend to agree with you," Waverly said. "But General Hoyos has told us nothing more if there is more to tell. If there is more, it seems that you and Mr. Solo will have to find it."

  Solo nodded. "Anything else?"

  "Yes, you are aware that the Thrush chief for the area is Council Member L. We know that much, although we have never managed to penetrate his cover. He is a clever man, as we have had reason to learn. Our organization in the country has never been strong, largely due to his efforts and constant harassment."

  "Do we know anything about him?" Illya asked.

  "Only that he is a very ambitious man with strong insistence on running his own show," Waverly said. "We have long suspected that he has hopes of moving to the top in Thrush, and this affair could be his stepping stone."

  "And that's it?" Solo said.

  "Except that his hobby is growing roses," Waverly said.

  "I doubt that he will invite us to his gardens," Illya said.

  "You never can tell," Waverly said. "I suggest that you be very careful, gentlemen."

  * * *

  AT A WINDOW high above the city of Caracas, a tall, gaunt man stood looking out over the city. Behind him men in army uniforms hurried about the room. This man, too, was thinking about the care of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. A small smile played across his emaciated face.

  Even as he smiled, his office door opened and a powerful, swarthy man entered. This newcomer wore the uniform of a full general of the Venezuelan army. The gaunt man turned smartly from the window and bowed deferentially to the general.

  "You have news, General Hoyos?" the gaunt man asked.

  "I do. They are on their way, two of them. They assure me that no one else knows about our problem," General Hoyos said. The defense minister showed more worry on his face than his voice would have indicated.

  "I wonder if we are being wise," General Hoyos went on. "To keep it so secret. This U.N.C.L.E. organization, can they handle it all alone?"

  "With our help, sir, they can." The tall man smiled. "After all, Rudolfo, they will not be alone. I will personally lead the Sixteenth Regiment to help them."

  "A good regiment, the Sixteenth," the defense minister agreed.

  "You train
ed them yourself, Rudolfo," the gaunt man said.

  "With your aid, Miguel," General Hoyos said.

  "We make a good team, General," the gaunt man said.

  Hoyos looked at him shrewdly. "I wonder why you have been content to remain behind me all these years, Miguel?"

  "Because I am a soldier to serve," the gaunt man said with a smile.

  General Hoyos nodded. Then he turned and strode to the first telephone. He barked an order. "Colonel Montoya? This is General Hoyos, yes. You will prepare the Sixteenth Regiment for immediate duty, yes. Immediate. You will report at once to General Valera in his office."

  The defense minister hung up. "The rest is up to you, Miguel. I know you will not fail."

  And the defense minister was gone. The tall man walked slowly out into the full light. He wore the uniform of a major general. He smiled his thin smile.

  "Yes, the rest is up to me, Rudolfo Hoyos," he said in a soft voice. "And the time has come. I will not be behind you much longer, dear Rudolfo. I will certainly not fail."

  And Major General Miguel Valera began to laugh a soundless laugh as he turned and walked into a private office. He locked the door behind him and picked up a telephone.

  "Bring Dr. Guerre to the telephone," he barked.

  FOUR

  THE RAVEN-HAIRED young girl looked up from her desk at the Defense Ministry. She saw a small, slender, blond young man smiling down at her. She touched her hand to her black hair, and her full red lips were moist. She wondered if this young man was married. His clothes looked American—a fine suit and white shirt, and the thick horn-rimmed glasses suited his lean face.

  "Yes, Senor?" she said.

  His clothes were indeed American, and the girl liked Americans. They were rich and very important, at least under the present regime. She believed in the present regime, whatever regime it happened to be at any moment.

  "Max Derwent to see General Valera," the young man said in perfect Spanish.

  The young girl frowned for an instant. Then she brightened again. He spoke fine Spanish, true, but there was an accent. He was not of her country, and that pleased her. She had plans to see the world, become rich. Yet she was puzzled. The young man wore American clothes, was clearly of the North with his fine blond hair, and yet his accent in his perfect Spanish was not quite American. Perhaps an Englishman? That was not so good, but not too bad.