The World's End Affair (4 page)

"Here - here, sir; Chee woke up. The search units missed one thing. He had a high-intensity explosive cap on one of his teeth. He used it to blow half this floor to pieces the minute we left him alone. We thought he was still sleeping it off."

"Are you all right, Doctor?" Waverly said.

"Yes. Two of my interns got it, though. Killed by the blast. There's fire everywhere, but the sprinklers are on. We'll make it. The prisoner's loose."

"In which direction?"

"The express elevators leading to the basement level."

Illya snapped the slide on his pistol. "Let's go, Napoleon. If Chee discovers the underground channel leading to the motor launch dock at the East River, we've lost him."

Both men charged out of the room.

"Waverly!" came Dr. Bailey's voice. "I heard that. Tell Solo and Kuryakin to be careful. I'm willing to bet that if the prisoner had onetooth with an explosive cap, he had at least one more. Two is usually standard for THRUSH agents."

Under the blinking blood-colored lights, Mr. Waverly looked wan.

"It's too late, Doctor. They have already gone."

Four

Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin raced through the corridors, pistols drawn. Other

U.N.C.L.E. agents, responding to the red alert, crisscrossed the halls, then disappeared behind stainless steel doors which shut and sealed themselves and would not open again until a specified signal removed the alert.

Out of breath, the two agents reached the express elevator bank. Two sets of doors were recessed in the wall. Solo pointed to the indicator board above the closed doors.

"That one's in the basement already. If the alert signal had come a second or so sooner, we could have caught him between floors. Use your keys on the over-ride board, Illya."

Illya was already at work. He inserted one key and then another into the silvery-dull cover of a metal box set in the wall between the elevators.

Tumblers rattled faintly. The cover sprang open. Illya threw a toggle within the box.

At once the indicator lights above the right-hand elevator began to wink. The over-ride system had restored power. Within a few more seconds the men were riding downward again.

Neither spoke.

Finally the elevator stopped. Solo and Illya flattened against the side walls of the car, pistols ready. The doors opened.

Illya slid forward to the front of the car. He shifted his long-snouted pistol to his left hand. He used his right to press a button which locked the car doors to full open. Solo peered around the edge of the opening into the hallway.

In most respects the corridor resembled the one they had just quitted, stories above. The walls shimmered and reflected each other like dull steel mirrors. Recessed light banks, but fewer of them, blinked every dozen yards in the ceiling. Not so many doors opened off this corridor. And there was a faint but pervasive scent of salty, open water.

The corridor was empty.

"He must be down here," Illya said. "Each floor is sealed during an alert."

"He's here," Solo whispered back. "I'm getting the message from my spine. Let's go."

Solo's neck prickled as he and Illya stepped into the tomb-like hall. Like perfectly oiled machines, one of them whipped around to the left, one to the right. They swept the gloom with the muzzles of their pistols.

The doors of the other elevator stood open. Bright fluorescent light washed out over the concrete floor. But the car in which Chee had ridden down was also empty.

They began to walk. Their footfalls clicked and echoed, eerily. The ceiling lights flashed blue, amber, vermilion, coloring their faces with harlequin patterns. Solo licked his lips. A feeling that they were being watched increased.

His scalp tingled. His belly felt tight. Somewhere, in this corridor their quarry waited, hidden. The ceiling angled downward as they rleached the halfway point between the elevators and the massive steel doors which led to the underground quay and the private channel.

Illya's eyes ranged the corridor. "This is impossible, Napoleon. All the doors are sealed, the elevator is empty, and no one has gotten through those steel lovelies blocking the exit to the river." He craned his head back to stare at the ceiling. At this point it was barely three feet above their heads. "I don't see where our elusive friend could have got to, unless he ascended to heaven as a cloud of ectoplasm. I would have sworn -"

Barely whispering, Solo said, "Quiet. He's watching us. From that vantage point you mentioned. Don't turn! Keep staring at the river doors. Something just registered. At the place back there where the ceiling began to slope, I noticed a patch of shadow on the floor. One of those light bays in the ceiling is out of commission."

Illya's eyebrows quirked up, understanding. Each of the bays consisted of three large, square panels set in a line across the ceiling from wall to wall. Still playing the game of pretending that his interest was centered up ahead, Solo went on, "The only trouble is, we told him which way is out."

"But he has no over-ride keys," Illya said. "And he can't possibly be armed."

Sweat trickled down the back of Solo's neck to his collar. "You're right. We'll take him on the count."

Slowly Solo whispered out the numbers. On the spat-out three, both agents turned. Instantly Solo spotted the dark ceiling square which his subconscious had only noted before. Repair crews had apparently pulled all the wiring guts from the center light box a few yards back. The translucent cover which fitted into the frame flush with the ceiling was gone. Up in the barely man-sized space recessed into the ceiling, a shadow stirred –

"Chee?" Solo called. "Chee, you haven't got one chance. Get down, or –"

A shrill, ear-hurting shriek made Solo start. The THRUSH agent had been wedged up into the recess, using the pressure of his backbone and his heels to hold himself in concealment. Now he let out another wild scream as he dropped. He tumbled on the concrete, sprang up. Solo knocked Illya's rising arm aside:

"Don't kill him! His hands are empty -"

Strictly true. But in spite of this, Chee was not behaving like a trapped man. He had his fingers in his mouth, pulling and yanking at his teeth as though one ached. Then his spittle-shining hand whipped out from between his lips. There was a wild, crooked grin on his face as he threw hard.

The two U.N.C.L.E agents dodged instinctively. Something small and white whizzed past them, and pinged against the great steel doors. Instantly, deafening sound, raw heat, gouts of fire and billows of smoke swirled around them.

The explosion's force hurled Solo against the corridor wall. Chee stumbled, off balance, keeping up that maniacal, demoralizing shrieking. Chee pelted past them through the smoke, which was already beginning to leap and swirl as fresh currents of air struck it.

The salty aroma of the East River washed over Solo as he jerked Illya along in pursuit.

Alfred Chee had already leaped over the wrecked remains of the great doors. His shoes clicked rapidly out in the darkness.

Solo and Illya could see little. The underground channel which led in from the East River under an arched concrete tunnel opened into a far larger, tear-drop shaped basin at this end. Three to four powerful motor launches were customarily anchored there. Only one at a time could pass from the tear-drop through the narrower channel. And the channel's river end was being blocked now. The explosion had activated other alarms.

As a metallic squawk came raucously from a speaker overhead, a grille of thick iron bars descended at the channel's far end. It was visible to Solo because its pattern stood out against the city lights on the river's opposite shore.

Somewhere in the dark down by the tear-drop marina there was a clunk of feet hitting decking. Then a heavier slosh of water as one of the fast launches' took the sudden weight of Alfred Chee jumping aboard.

Solo ran to the left, out of the jagged frame of light created by the ruined doors. Illya followed. They flattened against the concrete wall, listened.

Water lapped out by the launches. Chee laughed. It was a low, unpleasant sound, smacking of lost sanity.

"We have to rush him," Solo whispered.

"I can't see a thing except those lights on the river," Illya said.

"Hang on for a second. Your eyes'll adjust."

"I hope he doesn't have another of those exploding molars conveniently fastened in his head. If he threw one right now, we'd be two very -"

A white spot of light bloomed out by the marina. It widened, blasted Solo's eyes with its glare. Suddenly Illya and Solo were circled in brilliance. Chee had found the spotlight on the launch.

Solo leaped out of the light, zigzagging wildly as he ran. Illya went the other way. The spotlight whipped back and forth wildly, searching for them. Finally it hit Illya, and stayed on him.

Then the thing which Solo feared happened. The THRUSH agent discovered the swivel-mounted machine-gun mounted near the spot.

A stuttering roar filled the dark. Tracers left orange trails as the bullets ripped the wall in the center of the spot-lighted circle. Illya had thrown himself face forward just in time. Now he leaped up, started to run. The spotlight swiveled. The machine-gun stuttered evilly. Illya wrenched out of the way again, wincing as cement dust driven up by the bullets stung his eyes.

Chee was operating the searchlight with one hand and the machine-gun with the other, Solo guessed. He started a reckless run forward. Illya was jumping back and forth like a madman. The light followed him.

Solo poured on the speed, heedless of how much noise he was making. Shielding his eyes at the quay's edge, he made out the shape of another launch moored between the quay and the launch from which Chee was firing. He tensed, jumped, landed on the nearer deck

with a thud. Chee heard the noise.

Around came the searchlight and the machine-gun muzzle. The searchlight blinded Solo. He used his thumb to set the pistol on automatic fire. The gun bucked and barked in his hand as he fired into the heart of the light and kept firing, moving his aim slightly to the right.

Glass broke. The searchlight element sizzled and sparked and went dark. Alfred Chee screamed.

In the echoing confines of the secret marina, the machine-gun noise lingered long after the gun itself had stopped. The weapon swung gently on its upright mount, creaking.

Solo and Illya jumped aboard the second launch a moment later. Illya produced a pocket torch. He shined it down on Chee's blood-flecked shirt, then up to his lifeless face. Chee's mouth was open. Two of his teeth were noticeably shorter than those alongside.

"Mr. Waverly won't be happy about this," Solo said.

"Mr. Waverly was not down here the last few minutes."

"Well," said Solo, though he sounded rather dubious, "I guess you have a point. But I wouldn't bet on it"

The interior of the U.N.C.L.E morgue was chill, blue-lit, uncomfortable. Solo shivered. Mr. Waverly dropped the white sheet over the corpse of Alfred C. Chee.

An attendant rolled the slab back into place and latched the locker door. Mr. Waverly's breath clouded as he said, "His death is regrettable, though I suppose you had no alternative. But now it is impossible to execute our plan to have you follow his contact route from Hong Kong. Therefore -"

Mr. Waverly sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid you'l1 have to take the more dangerous route into Tibet. By parachute."

"Tibet!" said Solo. "By parachute?"

"Why, Tibet's practically the end of the world!" Illya exclaimed.

"It may well be just that for all of us, if you fail," Mr. Waverly said soberly.

Act II: World's End This Way, Two Miles

Dawn arrived with chill magnificence.

In the east the snowy crests of the Himalayan peaks slowly glowed golden. The light rose behind the peaks and spilled down the western slopes, but it did little to relieve the stark, basalt severity of the landscape. Napoleon Solo groaned and thrashed in his bedroll.

His bones ached with cold. The rarified air stung his lungs. But he was getting used to it.

Five hours had passed since he and Illya jumped from the hatchway of the disguised cargo plane into abysmal blackness and the howling slipstream…

At the top of his lungs, Solo had raised the same question he had been raising ever since he discovered, back at the secret U.N.C.L.E. airstrip outside Macao, that it was to be a night drop:

"I hope you people know what you're doing." The wind tore his words away as he hung in the cargo plane door, fat in his para-suit which contained appropriate disguises and weapons. "I don't see anything down there but a big black nothing."

"We would regret landing atop Mount Everest by accident," Illya shouted.

The U.N.C.L.E. jump-master was a swarthy, jolly Portuguese from Macao. He showed his gold teeth. "Be assured, gentlemen, this aircraft has been equipped with the finest of computerized sensors. You will be dropping on to an open plateau between major peaks. The plateau is at least three miles across. Perfectly safe. You will land but a few miles from your target areas. Everything is in order."