[Magazine 1967-­12] - The Pillars of Salt Affair - Пронзини Билл. Страница 3

But the man ducked into thickly grown fir trees, and his shot missed. Two more shots sounded, from a revolver, and Solo knew that Illya was firing at the man as well. He saw a flash of color to his right and a blonde head emerged into view, giving chase after the fleeing man.

Solo stood. He knew he had no opportunity to catch the man himself. He walked to the body of the one Illya had shot.

He knelt down beside the man, examining him. He was short, with a balding head and sparse, pink eyebrows. Illya's bullet had taken him neatly through the side of the head, and he was quite dead. Solo had never seen him before.

The U.N.C.L.E. agent rummaged through the man's pockets. He found no identification, not even a wallet. But in the breast pocket of the lumber jacket the man wore, Napoleon Solo found a folded slip of paper.

He straightened, unfolding the paper. Printed on it were two lines of strange markings. They seemed to Napoleon Solo like an odd mixture of Morse code and Egyptian hieroglyphics. He heard footfalls and looked up. Illya was moving down towards him. He stopped next to Solo, panting a little.

"Lost him," Illya said. "Disappeared into the trees."

"What do you make of this?" Solo asked, handing him the paper.

Illya looked at it. "Code," he said.

"Yes," Solo said. "THRUSH code, unless I miss my guess."

"I rather thought I detected the cry of a small bird in the area," Illya said blandly.

Solo nodded. "What do you suppose this is all about?"

"I don't know," Illya said. "But if THRUSH is back of it, you know the rest Napoleon."

"I imagine Mr. Waverly will be interested in what's happened here today," Solo said. "We'd better get this code and the salt sample off to him right away."

"What about our friend there?"

"We'll send somebody back for him. He won't be going anywhere."

A hoarse shout sounded from their right. They turned. Barney Dillon came hoddling towards them, using his Winchester for a crutch. He was waving his free arm frantically.

They waited for him.

"You two all right?" he said when he reached them.

"Considering," Illya said.

"Well come on then," Dillon said. "You're not going to believe this."

"Believe what?" Solo asked.

But Dillon had already started down the slope. Solo looked at Illya, who shrugged. They followed him. They wound their way down through the trees, nearing the shoreline. The woods thinned out. The three men stopped abruptly, and Dillon pointed out towards the reservoir.

"Well?" he said. "What do you think of that?"

Solo and Illya stared.

"I think," Illya said with a resigned sigh after a moment, "that U.N.C.L.E. is in for another nasty battle, and that Napoleon and I are going to be right in the middle of it."

The surface of the reservoir before them was a deep blue-green color now, catching the sunlight from above in silver, dancing sparkles, and gentle, tiny waves of fresh, clear water lapped at the shoreline.

As if by some weird magic, the crystallized salt they had stood upon only a few minutes before had been transformed, and the water of the reservoir returned miraculously to its original state.

ACT I: MISSION SALT WATER

U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in Manhattan is an innocuous and unpretentious complex outwardly, including a tailor shop, an elaborate but artificial international aid organization, and The Mask club, a restaurant patterned after the many key clubs throughout the United States.

But beneath this facade is a fortress of concrete and steel. There are only four entrances, one of which is through secret tunnels from the river, and each of these is guarded by armed men and the ultimate in protective and alarm devices.

Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin stood on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters—Del Floria's tailor shop. They had just departed a taxi from Kennedy International Airport following their return flight from Oregon.

Both men were tired, having had little sleep the night before. After they had gotten Barney Dillon back to Kamewa the previous afternoon and, with some argument, to a doctor to have his leg checked, they had reported to Mr. Waverly in New York and had been instructed to make a thorough search of the area surrounding the reservoir.

One of the townspeople had volunteered to take the coded message and the salt sample to the nearest city for immediate transport to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. Solo and Illya, accompanied by a group of armed loggers from the Kamewa Lumber Company, had then spent the intervening hours until nightfall in making a complete canvass of the timberland. They had found nothing—no camp sites, no evidence of hurried departure, no signs at all that anyone had even been in the area. The second man who had fired on them, and whoever else had been with him, had vanished, leaving no traces.

Now, the two agents crossed the sidewalk and entered the tailor shop. Since their efforts had been fruitless, they were hopeful that something of help had been unearthed by U.N.C.L.E. operations at this end.

Del Floria greeted them. As unpretentious as the facade, he was a tall, spare man in his early fifties, beginning to bald at the crown of his head. His manner was mild, almost meek, but hidden behind his light gray eyes was a photographic memory and a cat-like alertness that missed very little.

Del Floria knew every U.N.C.L.E. agent by sight. Should anyone not known to him attempt to gain entrance to the inner complex, he would have been immediately prevented and seized. For matters of his own safety and his invaluability to U.N.C.L.E., Del Floria knew nothing of what went on within the steel walls.

After exchanging amenities, Solo and Illya stepped into one of the small fitting rooms on one side of the room and drew the curtain closed behind them. When Del Floria had made sure no one was in sight, he activated one of the hidden levers know only to him.

The rear wall of the fitting room opened and Solo and Illya stepped through into the reception room on U.N.C.L.E. Square windowless, without doors of any kind, the room was furnished with a single desk, behind which a young blonde girl sat. In front of her was a panel of controls, none of which were labeled or otherwise identified and only she knew which button performed which purpose. As a measure of the rigid security of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, the controls were changed periodically.

The girl smiled in greeting as Solo and Illya entered. The smile widened when Solo winked at her. She gave them their triangular identity badges.

Badges affixed to their suits, they walked through the maze-like innards of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, their footsteps ringing on the steel floors. The badges they wore performed a definite purpose, for without them there would have been a triggering of the intricate U.N.C.L.E. alarm system and walls and doors would have closed, trapping them instantly. Twenty armed men would have surrounded them in a matter of seconds.

A swift and silent elevator took them up two floors. They turned left there, along another of the steel hallways. Doors opened as they approached, allowing them unhampered passage. When they reached the end of the hallway, they stood before an unmarked steel door, seemingly no different than any of the other doors through which they had just passed.

But this particular door held a most special significance. Behind it was the office of the chief of U.N.C.L.E. operations in New York, the office from which policy was dictated, from which decisions effecting the nations of the world were reached, from which the wheels of the entire U.N.C.L.E. organization were set into motion.