The World's End Affair (12 page)

Illya showed Dargon the small box-like affair. "It's power is startling, Doctor. And its anti-interference properties are excellent. Let's see what we can do with your tidbits via our headquarters. Watch him carefully, Mei." Then, into the communicator: "Open Channel D, please. Extreme urgent priority."

Following several wheeps and crackles, a familiar voice said, "Waverly here."

"This is Kuryakin, sir."

For once, Waverly did not sound phlegmatic. "Mr. Kuryakin! This is incredible."

"At forty thousand feet above Red China in a THRUSH aircraft, I am inclined to agree."

"I thought you were dead, Mr. Kuryakin."

Illya's Words raced ahead of his thoughts: "It's Napoleon, sir. He's the one who didn't make it. General Weng of THRUSH captured him and I'm afraid he - I'm dead?"

"Mr. Kuryakin, evidently there has been a breakdown of communications between you and your cohort." Waverly cleared his throat, "Only moments ago I spoke with Mr. Solo in Hong Kong. He informed me THRUSH had liquidated you. Mr. Solo is attempting to find and destroy the THRUSH Weather generator, which is already causing a storm of catastrophic proportions. A difficult task, since we don't know where it is."

Illya allowed himself a grin. "Sir, I know the whereabouts of the generator. I can't raise Hong Kong on the plane's radio but I should be able to contact Napoleon on the communicator. I thought that he had been -"

"Brevity is the soul of survival for Hong Kong, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly interrupted. "We shall open and clear all channels at once. I suggest that you get busy relaying your information to Mr. Solo."

"At once," Illya said, thumbing off the D band. Simultaneously, Dr. Dargon began to burble and bleat:

"Gulled! Gulled and deceived! You'll pay for tricking me -!"

Before Illya could whip round to fend him off, Dargon fastened his hands on Illya's throat and at the same time thrust forward with all his strength.

Illya tore at the fingers biting the flesh of his neck. Dargon slammed Illya's head against the instrument panel. Various switches and controls were knocked out of adjustment. Warning lights blazed and blinked. The fighter-bomber began to veer and tilt downward toward the cloud bank.

Illya struggled. Dargon was panting like an enraged bull. He pounded Illya's head against the console with a thud, and another, and another.

The edges of Illya's mind grew stained with darkness. The fighter-bomber was into a dive, its altitude dropping alarmingly. Once more Illya tried to rip the murdering fingers from his neck but couldn't get a grip on them. His mind was getting fuzzier by the second…

Two

Another power line came whipping down like an electrified snake, directly in Napoleon Solo's path.

Blue fire danced and hissed over huge puddles of water. Solo jerked back from the puddle into which he had almost skidded.

Two ambulances passed at the next intersection, sirens going at full. One raced on out of sight. A mammoth gust of wind picked up the other and drove it into the wall of a building where it crashed and burst into flames.

Solo staggered into the cover of a shop front, which was already beginning to totter. He pulled the frantically beeping pocket communicator from his sodden shirt.

"Mr. Waverly?" he shouted into the box, "I haven't had time to find it yet -"

"If you would kindly stop bellowing, Napoleon," said a tinny voice, "I know where you can locate the generator."

"Illya! Where are you?"

"Sitting with a headache in a THRUSH airplane. Never mind that. I thought you were dead."

"I thought you were dead."

"The reports of our deaths have been greatly exaggerated. Dr. Dargon told me the location of the generator because he thought it was impossible for me to communicate with Hong Kong. I called Waverly on the communicator. He said that you had escaped Weng's tender mercies. I was in the process of calling you when Dargon tried to throttle me. I apologize for the delay, but it took Mei a minute or so to work up enough nerve to put a bullet into Dargon's stomach. He has designed his last unpleasant device for THRUSH."

More citizens went streaming by in the torrential rain. Their screams of fear trailed behind them. Solo said, "The city can't last much longer in this storm. Where's the generator?"

In thirty seconds Solo had left the shop front a block behind. It promptly collapsed.

A bolt of lightning lit the rain-swept foot of Smiling Fish Quay. The air smelled of ozone and decayed fish. Solo went sliding and skidding along the drenched cobbles to the quay's edge.

The only human being in sight was a fisherman kneeling in a cul-de-sac a few yards away. He was praying to be spared from the impromptu typhoon. Solo bent over. His back kept the rain off Miss Fong's pistol, which he pulled from his belt and checked.

The lightning fizzled into darkness. Thunder pealed so loudly it hurt his ears. Visually Solo tried to sort out the hundreds of wildly pitching junks and sampans moored in this part of the harbor. No lights showed anywhere, except on the distant mainland where they gleamed dimly through the driving rain.

Solo jumped aboard the nearest sampan, which was damaged, but still afloat.

It lurched terrifically under him. A monster wave washed over the deck and nearly pitched him into the water. The rain was coming at him almost horizontally because of the wind's force.

Lightning flared. Solo spotted a whopping sail on a half-broken mast. The sail displayed a large, crudely painted storm cloud. The craft was the third vessel beyond the one on which he was fighting for balance.

With big leaps Solo crossed the nautical stepping stones. He had to grab ropes or a mast as he landed on each boat, because the decks were tilting back and forth through an arc of almost ninety degrees.

The distance between the sampan and the junk with the torn storm-cloud sail was a good seven to eight feet. Besides, the sampan was tilting violently. So was the junk. Solo waited until he thought his timing was right. Then, gun in his right hand, he jumped.

He missed. A wave rolled the junk back out of the way.

Solo hit the water and went down, thrashing and flailing, into the customary waterside Hong Kong garbage.

The moored junk tossed back toward him and the hull smacked him in the head. Dazed, Solo grabbed the rail.

He tossed his right leg up and pulled himself aboard. Bits of refuse clung to him. A stream of water ran out of the barrel of his now useless pistol.

Two-thirds of the junk's deck was covered with a bamboo framework over which a tarpaulin had been draped. Inside the improvised deckhouse a spot of amber light glowed and wavered. Solo crept forward.

The deck pitched again. Solo fought for balance. He fell, making a loud, hollow thud during a lull in the thunder.

Part of the tarpaulin whipped aside. An ugly Oriental in a mud-spotted white suit thrust the muzzle of a big pistol into the dark. Beyond the man, Solo glimpsed General Weng's heaving bulk and the black generator box. Its sides glowed with red highlights from a

small charcoal brazier.

"I do not see anyone -" the gunman began. Solo's shoulder hit him in the belly.

Solo and the gunman careened inside the tarp shelter. General Weng leaped up from a packing box. He wore the sinister switch-belt around his waist. A faint hum rose from the generator box. Solo saw all this in a wild blur as he went crashing to the slick deck.

The gunman leaped and landed, knocking the wind out of him. The gunman fastened one hand on Solo's throat and, gun in the other, took aim.

Solo brought his own gun hand lashing up behind the THRUSH agent's head. He cracked the man over his left ear. The agent made a loud, gulping sound. His grip loosened momentarily. Solo rammed his knee into the THRUSH agent's groin and lifted him off.

As Solo lurched to his feet, General Weng struggled to pull out a pistol. The gunman was up again too, aiming at Solo from behind. Solo spun and flung his useless gun.

It smacked the agent's nose. Solo had a split second to find another weapon.

He saw one, its point embedded in the top of a crude fisherman's bench. Solo's water-slicked hand closed around the haft of the scaling knife. He jerked it loose. The agent fired.

Solo tried to dodge. The bullet slammed into his left shoulder. But his right hand was already swinging in a killing aim. The serrated edge of the knife grazed the agent's throat like a caress. The man shrieked as blood flowed down over his lapels from the fatal slash in his neck.

Solo caught the gunman's pistol as it fell from slack fingers. General Weng was breathing in asthmatic panic. His cheeks gleamed with sweat and his eyes with murder. He had gotten his gun out. He chattered lurid obscenities as he fired.

His bullet took Solo hard in the left thigh. Blood soaked Solo's trousers instantly. His leg throbbed and weakened to the point where he could not stand. He felt the leg collapsing under him as he triggered the shot that caught Weng in the breastbone.

With an elephantine bay Weng fell over backwards, his shirt red. Solo lay on the slick deck, panting. His whole left pants leg was soggy with blood.

Weng propped himself on hands and knees. He aimed his pistol at Solo while his eyes wedged down into tiny pain-wracked slits. Solo flopped over on his belly. He braced his right forearm with his left hand to steady his aim. He centered the muzzle on the middle of Weng's forehead.

Thunder crashed in the sky. Another wave hit the junk's hull and sloshed under the edge of the tarpaulin. Most of the coals in the charcoal brazier were extinguished by the spray. A few still flickered but the interior of the tarpaulin shelter was dim. Random spots of light illuminated Weng's pained face. The adversaries held each other at gunpoint.

"Standoff, Mr. Solo," Weng wheezed. "Though perhaps I will get the better of it yet."

Muzzle to muzzle, the men lay on the deck as the storm roared. Solo's lips peeled back from his teeth. "Turn off the switch, General. Turn it off unless you want one more bullet in your fat hide."

Weng gasped for air. A spasm, of pain shuddered his blubber. "I can kill you while you kill me, Mr. Solo."

"Very true," Solo panted. The pain in his left leg was maddening. He felt dizzy. "But you aren't really sure whether that bullet in your chest has already put a period after everything, are you? Maybe you want to take a chance. Maybe - you want to find out whether a police surgeon can patch you up. You kill me and I kill you and neither of us finds out. That's the way the hand looks to me, General." Solo bit his lower lip as his leg flamed with heat and hurt. "I said turn off the switch, General."

At last Weng coughed, "Yes. Yes. The will to live remains. You win."

With one hand he threw his gun across the shelter. It fell sloshing in water. With his other hand he flicked the switch on the belt. Solo let the muzzle of his own gun drop. He pushed himself up to his feet.

General Weng struggled and heaved, managing to sit up with his back resting against one of the tarpaulin supports. He lifted the blood-soaked lapel of his suit, felt gingerly beneath it. His paunch heaved slowly. Weng's face became crafty.

"I still maintain, Mr. Solo, that U.N.C.L.E. personnel are naive. Step around here on my side of the generator box, please. Fine. I trust that you can see the stenciling on the box? Can you also recognize the language?"

Beneath his feet, Solo could feel the deck heaving less violently. The thunder was less ear-splitting than before. He bent to examine the white stenciling. He stood up again, one hand braced on the generator so that he wouldn't fall.

"The stencil identifies the generator as the property of one of the governments meeting at the Hotel International. That's exactly according to your plan. But when U.N.C.L.E. turns the generator over to the proper authorities, your little flim-flam will be exposed. I'm afraid all that blood you've lost has weakened your logic, General."

"Not at all, not - at all." Weng coughed. "You see, Mr. Solo, we return to the subject of naiveté. You believe you have convinced me that I have a remote chance to survive the impact of your bullet. I am more realistic. I am dying. However -"

With incredible speed Weng's fat yellow hand jerked out from beneath his black-bloody lapel. He cracked a football-shaped plastic capsule with his thumbnail. Sparks and smoke boiled. Weng tossed the capsule onto the deck. Blinding white tongues of flame leaped from it.

"That thermal device, Mr. Solo, will destroy the junk, water-soaked as she is. It will destroy my corpse along with yours. But the metallurgical materials incorporated into this belt and the generating unit, the tremendous heat will not harm them. The components will be found, their stencils intact. THRUSH will achieve its goal of touching off an armed conflict, even though you and I are not present to witness it."

Weng cocked his sweat-shining head. "Listen, Mr. Solo. The rain has diminished. It will soon stop altogether. But the storm has just begun."

Solo snatched up a bucket lying beside the fisherman's bench, filled it with some of the water sloshing over the deck, flung the water on the fire. The white, sparking mass was barely affected. The soaked tarpaulin caught. White fire-tendrils raced upward. Solo dove to fill another bucket.