The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter. Страница 39

Twelve minutes later; as the Russian played desultorily with the levers on the cabinet devoted to Section E, the rectangle glowed blue all over.

Shortly after that, the TV screen suddenly came to life again. The picture was grainy and blurred, but the sound was fine. Wassermann appeared to be in some small room busy with pipes and dials. "Just to thank. you, Mr. Kuryakin, for filling the chamber and allowing us to make our escape in the submarine," he said suavely. "You have blocked off five missiles in the maintenance unit - but there is one aboard the ship. I am speaking from the conning tower, and we are on our way to the far end of the lake to prepare for firing... Buenos Aires, I think... It's not the full-scale effect we planned, but it'll be better than nothing. And just in case your friends outside should be stronger than we are, it's just as well,.. rather than risk failure, to get the Thrush mission least partly -"

The screen blacked out, losing both sound and vision in mid-sentence. Fragments of glass lying shattered on the floor jingled as the control room trembled beneath their feet. The lights dimmed and then brightened as a long rumbling roar, felt rather than actually heard, shivered and reverberated around the fortress.

"Illya!" the girl was saying despite herself. "Look!" She pointed at the ground-glass screen in the lid of the Section E cabinet.

Some of the controls he had idly operated had worked: for across the entrance to the diagram tunnel what had formerly been a red bar now showed bright green.

Kuryakin slumped into a chair. He pulled out his transceiver and held it to his mouth.

"Hello, Mr. Waverly," he said wearily, thumbing the button. "You may find one or two sentries outside, but as far as the tunnel's concerned, you can come in right now…"

Chapter 13

Illya Changes His Mind

"THAT WAS thoughtful of you to leave those aqualungs and diving suits behind the drums," Napoleon Solo said. "Without them we'd both have been in Davy Jones' locker for keeps! But when I heard the water come bubbling in from the vent beneath the submarine, we climbed onto the drums and saw those things down below."

"I can't understand why nobody saw you when they came in in their own diving gear to board the sub," Illya said.

"That was the drums again! They didn't float, you see: they had been used as ballast to simulate the missile payload - and, being filled with concrete, they just sat on the quay and we sat behind them."

"And you saw our midget submarine…?"

"As soon as the Thrush craft pulled out, there she was waiting for us on the other side. I guessed she would have the usual small, single HE torpedo underslung, so we hopped aboard and set sail after the target bird. Then it was simply a matter of waiting until she was far enough away not to damage the fortress when she went up."

"But the nuclear missile itself didn't actually explode?" Coralie Simone asked.

"Oh, no. It takes a small atom bomb to trigger off a thermonuclear device; ordinary high explosive isn't hot enough to start the reaction. But we made quite a big bang with our little tin-fish because she was carrying quite a lot of conventional armament and I was lucky enough to hit it..."

They were sitting in the Departure Lounge at Brasilia airport, waiting for the flight to be called which was to take Solo, Waverly and Alice Lerina back to Rio and thence to New York. To one side, the vast bulk of Manuel O'Rourke reared from his wheelchair, with the boy Rafael, in attendance. Since the Irishman had sent his Cadillac careening through the tunnel at the head of column of state troopers, scattering two separate nests of machine-gunners and personally helping the authorities to round up the troops within the fortress from that chair, the young car-dispenser, with the light of hero-worship in his eyes, had never left his side.

"One thing I can't understand at all," Illya said. He turned to Waverly, who was stuffing half an ounce of tobacco into the bowl of an enormous briar. "I got a message at San Felipe telling me to go to a certain rendezvous – and there I met O'Rourke, who put me in radio touch with you."

"Yes, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly said. "Well?"

"Well, how did that come about?"

"I thought Mr. O'Rourke explained. He could get there quicker by car than if he had waited for me to arrive from New York and we had come on together by plane. That way , he could contact you in advance and talk to me by radio as soon as –"

"Yes, yes, yes," Kuryakin said with what was for him a near-miss at exasperation. "What I mean is – one, how did you know O'Rourke could contact me; two, how did you know he'd be equipped with all that special radio stuff; and three, how did you know about him at all? How did you know to contact him? How did you know he could be trusted? I'd never mentioned him in my reports on this affair."

Waverly coughed. "Both you and Mr. Solo mentioned him in your reports after the – ah - I believe we code-named it the Radioactive Camel Affair," he said. "I considered that a man with his capacity for gathering information should be persuaded to put that facility to work for the common good."

"But we thought he had been killed in Casablanca! I didn't know he was still alive until I saw him by chance in Rio."

"Our people made certain inquiries," Waverly said vaguely.

"Do you mean to say," Solo put in, amazed, "that Mr. O'Rourke is one of us? D'you mean he's on the payroll and we didn't know?"

"Doesn't always do to let the right hand know what the left hand is doing," the head o U.N.C.L.E.'s Policy and Operations Section said gruffly, stowing his unlit pipe in one pocket and searching in the other for matches.

"Ah... yes, sir," Solo said diplomatically, exchanging a wry glance with Illya.

"Sure it sometimes gets an idea into a fella's skull more easily if you let him discover it himself," O'Rourke said with an easy smile. "Isn't that so, Rafael?"

"It does so," the boy said. "And it's a queer ould life we'd be having if there was no place left for the adventurers at all."

Waverly had lit a match and appeared to be surprised that there was no pipe in his mouth for it to ignite. A time stewardess in a dark blue uniform passed them as an incomprehensible gargle of Portuguese poured from the PA speakers. It is forbidden to smoke," she said severely, "while proceeding to the aircraft. That is your flight being called."

Napoleon Solo rose to his feet. His face was still swo1- len and bruised from the beating he had taken from Greerson, but there was the old light in his eye as he placed one palm under Alice Lerina's elbow and guided her toward the door. "Okay," he said. "We're on our way. In view of various favors past received, Mrs. Lerina and I have a date with a parole officer somewhere on the West Coast, so that her life can be put in order again. After that, I hope we may have a date with each other."

"It depends," the girl said, "on the way you behave during that long plane journey!"

Waverly was already halfway to the aircraft, deep in conversation with O'Rourke and Rafael.

Coralie Simone and Illya watched them go with indulgent smiles. There was a genuine detachment of D.A.M.E.S. on their way to help with the local population while the Brazilian authorities decided what was to be done with the dam and the empty power house attached to it. Coralie was to wait and take charge of the women when they arrived - and the Russian had decided to spend the week's leave due to him in her company.