[Magazine 1966-­02] - The Howling Teenagers Affair - Lynds Dennis. Страница 15

When he reached the street of Max Booth's shop he stopped. The street was deserted. That was strange at this hour. Then he saw the policeman directing traffic away from the street. What had happened? Had something happened to Napoleon? He was about to approach the policeman when he saw the long black car drive up.

The policeman waved this one through!

Illya flattened back against the wall in the shadow, where he could see the street.

The black car glided to a halt in front of a shop. It was Max Booth's tailor shop! Illya watched. Moments later, two men—a giant and a big, dark-haired man—came out of the tailor shop. Napoleon Solo walked between them.

Except that Napoleon was not walking. He was being carried by the two men—carried upright, rigid, like a statue carved out of stone.

Behind the two men, and the grotesque Solo, Illya saw a third man. This man was small, thin. The small man turned to look up and down the street. Illya shuddered. The man's face was only half a face—the left half was a mass of scars.

The three men pushed Solo into the black car, climbed in after him. The car turned and came back the way it had come. As it paused at the corner near Illya, the policeman who had been directing traffic, suddenly jumped into the car.

The car roared away.

But in the instant of pause to pick up the policeman, Illya had run quickly to a parked car. It was only a matter of seconds for the blond U.N.C.L.E. agent to press his small, round electronic circuit activator to the ignition. The car started with a roar.

Illya drove off in pursuit of the black car.

THREE

Solo was aware of all that was happening. He could see the giant shape of Gotz in the front seat, the man in police uniform driving. He could see the big, deep-voiced chief agent of THRUSH on his right, and the small, thin, horribly disfigured man on his left. The small man had not yet spoken, but solo knew that this was Council Member N—Marcus Fitzhugh, famous and respected scientist and industrialist.

He was aware of the barren land. It stretched all around the speeding car as far as the eye could see. Bleak, hot and dey, with twisted trees. Low sand hills, patches of tough grass, rocks and glaring clay. Here and there tall structures stood above the parched earth. They were, Solo guessed, the heads of mine shafts. This was Central Australia.

It looked more like the surface of Mars—deserted, barren, malignant.

He was aware of it, as he had been aware of the whole trip the thousand miles or more from Sydney. First the black car to a small airport, then the cargo aircraft with the car loaded right in it, then the hours of driving since they landed here in the center of nowhere—a nowhere that looked like the borders of hell. A dry, empty land like the white and glaring land around Green River, Wyoming.

He was aware of all of this, and of the fact that he was alone.

But he could neither speak nor move.

Rigid, propped upright in the seat, even the muscles of his eyes were frozen; he could see only what was directly in front of him. But his brain was as clear and active as ever, and he could hear.

Marcus Fitzhugh talked in that horrible hissing voice. "You see, Solo, your escape was only temporary. You have caused us far too much trouble. Because of you we have lost men, have had to close down two of our operational centers, and been put to all the inconvenience of chasing you. Such foolishness slows down my work."

"It won't slow us down long," the deep-voiced chief agent said.

"Gotz has a score to settle with you, Mr. Solo."

"First we learn what he knows," Marcus Fitzhugh said. "And this time, Herarra, we must not fail. This time we have tall the time we need."

"He won't get out The Belly," Herarra said. "Gotz will make him talk."

"Just keep your monster in hand, Herarra. We want answers, not smashed bones—not at first," Marcus Fitzhugh said.

Solo tried to move. He forced the orders from his clear brain to his muscles. He did not move a hair. His brain reeled with the effort. It was no use. The drug they had used rendered him totally rigid. He heard Marcus Fitzhugh laugh—a terrible sibilant sound like escaping air.

"I believe an eyelid actually twitched that time, Mr. Solo," Fitzhugh said. "You are a remarkable man. I can't remember when anyone managed even a hair twitch under that particular little drug of mine. Yes, a remarkable man. It is too bad. Our poor stupid Maxine was right. It is too bad you are U.N.C.L.E."

The disfigured industrialist laughed his reedy hiss again. "But, I too am a remarkable man. The world failed to see that. Because I am disfigured, my larynx and vocal chords destroyed, they think I am only a freak. The fools!"

"The fools, they believe the accident in my laboratory not only made me a horror to look at, but a deaf-mute. And I wa mute. This voice you hear, terrible though it is, is a voice I created for myself. Yes, I build a new power of speech with plastic and metal. I can do as much for others, and I will when we of THRUSH rule this stupid world."

"We must rule because we can rule. Have you read Plato? Of course you have. He was a genius. Only those who can rule should rule. The herd cannot rule. Look at what they have done? Stupid children are allowed to run free, to do as they want. What idiocy! Children, teenagers, must be shaped, told, commanded."

Solo tried again. His brain commanded, cajoled, begged his muscles to move. It was no use. He could do nothing but listen to this madman, stare at the back of Gotz's bull neck. The sight of the giant made him as afraid as he could be. He had seen the look in the pig eyes of the giant. Gotz would not forgive him for knocking him out. That blow would have killed anyone on earth except the giant.

Solo felt the car turn off the dirt road onto a smaller one. Clouds of dust rose in the hot Australian air. The car bucked and slewed, but Solo felt nothing. It was his hope. They would have to free him from this paralyzing drug to torture him. His only hope was that they would torture him, not kill him at once.

He strained again. Useless. Marcus Fitzhugh laughed his hissing laugh. Solo stared ahead beyond the bull neck of the giant to where the desolate countryside was visible as the car climbed a small hill. Sky and sand hills and glaring sun—a vast, empty desert. Not a stick of cover anywhere, only the tall mine shafts standing up against the blue sky.

This time they had searched him completely, removed everything except his clothes. If he ever got free, that would be their mistake. The thin thread of silicon carbide woven carefully into his trousers, saw edged and hard enough to cut all but a diamond. The loop of the same material, thin as hair, that was, in the hands of an expert, a deadly weapon, and that was sewn, woven into his jacket.

"Well, my dear Solo, here we are. There you see my true home. The Belly, they called it when there were people here. There are no people within two hundred miles, I saw to that. They called it The Belly, because that is what it is—a great belly inside the earth. NO hill, just flat earth, unseeable from the air or anywhere."

Solo saw it ahead. A shabby mine-shaft exactly like all the others they had passed. Yet there was a difference. To his trained

eye, the shabby shaft was not wood at all but metal. The dilapidated two by four hanging at the top was a radio antennae. The circular shaped bucket lift was a radar pickup.

There was nothing else as far as he could see except flat land—treeless, coverless, empty.

And he could guess that beneath the disguised mine shaft was the stronghold of Marcus Fitzhugh. Hidden in the bowels of a flat earth, with no clues as to its location from the land or sky—The Belly.