The World's End Affair (5 page)

"And U.N.C.L.E. always sends flowers if it isn't. Very comforting," Solo said, and jumped.

The ache in Solo's right ankle had not lessened very much. He stuck his right arm down into his bedroll and rubbed. They hadn't landed on one of the peaks, true enough. But Solo had conked against the side of a sizeable boulder, and twisted his right leg as he

slid down the boulder's side.

They had made their camp inside a ring of boulders, on a slope which was the beginning of a majestic peak. Illya was already working a short distance up the slope, burying his parachute and jumpsuit in the shale with a trenching tool. Solo enjoyed the comparative warmth of the bedroll a moment longer. Then, with a nothing-for-it groan, he tumbled out.

Soon he was working alongside Illya, burying his own gear.

The younger agent finished. He tossed the trenching tool into the shallow depression remaining and covered the tool by pushing more shale on top of it with his hands. When Illya stood up, Solo was grinning.

"'What's so comical, may I ask?" Illya's breath shot out in a cloud as he spoke.

"You. If you wore a get-up like that in New York, you'd get arrested."

Illya glanced down. He was clad in crude goatskin shoes, which were simply bags pulled up around his ankles and tied with cord, and an ankle-length garment, much like a brown maternity costume, made of yards and yards of coarse wool. A rope cinched it in at his middle.

On his head he wore one of those curious ear-flapped pieces of headgear peculiar to Tibet. His face, hands, and in fact every inch of him, were dyed to a walnut color. The U.N.C.L.E. plastic surgeons had even managed to slant his eyes a bit, and wrinkle his skin so that it had a rough, wind-roughened texture.

"May I remind you, holy father," Illya replied, sarcastically, "that I am not the only one in the crowd in this outlandish get-up. I have played many strange parts in my time. But never one like this. If we can actually pass as Tibetan holy men, I'll be surprised. Probably the first Red Chinese soldier, peasant or THRUSH agent who sees us will call for our arrest while laughing himself into hysterics."

"Well, that's the way the prayer wheel revolves." Solo finished burying his gear. "Shall we dine and be off down the Yellow Brick Road?"

"I'm glad someone's cheerful," Illya said. They sat munching their field biscuits. These dry, flaky, utterly tasteless items were concealed, along with an assortment of weapons and other necessary gear, inside special pockets sewn into the voluminous material of their robes. Solo felt as if he was weighed down with lead. It didn't help his throbbing ankle.

Illya crunched the last of his biscuits. He stood up and brushed crumbs off his hands.

"I always thought Tibet was exotic. Chiming temple bells. Ronald Colman in brocade discovering the secret of eternal youth. Lowell Thomas riding into the sunset on a yak. This is a wasteland."

So it was. The plateau across which they now began to tramp showed no sign of human habitation. Vegetation was sparse and gray. They moved down from the slope and reached a faint symbol of civilization, a rutted road winding across the plateau. It came from behind them and stretched ahead, most of its course invisible because frequently twisted out of sight behind big rocks.

The sun climbed higher. The wind whistled incessantly in their ears. Even with the sunlight, they were cold.

"Are you sure we're going in the right direction?" Illya asked after twenty minutes.

Solo pulled a compass from his robe. The needle danced and steadied.

He nodded.

"The bearing checks. Besides, there isn't any other road. The instructions said go south. We're supposed to come to a crossroads, and meet our contact there. Let's keep walking and see if we can't get into the spirit of the part. Practice internal tranquility. Think uplifting thoughts."

"In the middle of several hundred thousand Red Chinese soldiers and sympathizer?" Illya asked. "Very funny."

Solo's teeth chattered. The landscape was savage, so empty and ringed around by those incredible peaks with cruel snow-spear tops, that he wanted to keep talking to keep their spirits up.

"It should be much further to -" Solo was saying, when he saw Illya freeze.

"Napoleon, listen!"

Illya whipped around, stared back up the road.

Scowling, Solo lifted one of the earflaps of his hat. He heard it. A motorized growl.

With the skirts of their lama robes flapping wildly, they dived toward the side of the road. The rumbling and growling grew. Illya tripped on the hem of his robe. He fell, letting out an explosive, "Damn!"

The gray-painted hood of a heavy truck appeared around a bend in the road.

Solo grabbed Illya's shoulder and dragged him bodily over the shale, into cover. And with hardly a moment to spare.

A second truck appeared behind the first. Then a third. The trucks were massive, gray, at least ten years old. They clunked and lumbered at a slow speed. Each had a big open bed to the rear of the cab. Solo peered cautiously from behind a rock as the lead truck drew abreast of their hiding place.

The driver of the truck had a flat, yellow face. He wore an olive uniform cap. The bed of the truck was jammed with Chinese soldiers. Rifles and pistols bristled. A tall officer stood spraddle-legged just behind the cab. He was scanning the landscape through field glasses which hung from a cord around his neck.

As the truck rumbled by, the officer let the field glasses fall.

Solo sucked in a breath. A slender white scar made an S-curve down the left side of the officer's face, from hairline to jaw. Altogether it was one of the cruelest faces Napoleon Solo had ever seen.

Barely even whispering, Solo said to Illya over his shoulder, "If we're lucky, they'll go on without –"

Suddenly a soldier in the first truck pointed and tugged the officer's sleeve. The officer raised his right hand. He barked a command in Chinese. The brakes of the truck squealed.

Solo's eyes grew grim. The truck had stopped not ten yards away, just a little way past their place of concealment. The officer was leaning over the side slats of the truck bed. He was staring at the shale where Illya had stumbled and fallen.

The officer's face animated with a sudden, cruel pleasure. He pointed to the all too visible marks in the loose earth. The soldier who had called attention to them nodded.

The officer began chattering more commands.

The soldiers in the truck unshipped the tailgate. Two soldiers jumped down, then two more. The officer scanned the boulders to the left and right of the hiding place of the U.N.C.L.E. agents.

"Well, it was a short trip," Solo said. He snaked out his pistol. So did Illya.

Cautiously the soldiers advanced to the place where Illya's fall had left traces in the shale. There they halted, rifles at the ready.

The officer still stood gripping the top slat the side of the truck. His expression was one of delight, anticipation. Then he appeared to grow annoyed at the timidity of his men. Shouting in Chinese, he waved them forward.

Straight toward Solo and Illya, the soldiers shuffled slowly.

Hot breath hit Solo in the back of the neck. Something wet and cold nuzzled him. He jerked his head around, as did Illya. The younger agent's eyes popped. He opened his mouth to let out an involuntary yell of surprise. Solo clapped his free hand over Illya's face and stifled the cry just in time.

Somewhere on the other side of the huge rock the boots of the soldiers crunched, coming closer.

And closer.

A huge, horned hairy yak, the Tibetan wild ox, had wandered out of the rocks behind the U.N.C.L.E agents and now stood with its forepaws planted beside Solo. The yak's large moist eyes regarded the interlopers with curiosity. The animal nuzzled Solo's face again with its damp, chilly snout.

"I think it liked you," Illya breathed.

At the back of his mind Solo was listening to the tramp of the boots of the soldiers. Surely they had reached the boulder by now. In another second they would round the rock and find their quarry.

What would happen when the shooting started? Could he get a shot past the yak's head? Doubtful. The damned thing kept sniffling and snuffling at him as though he were a long-lost relative. Solo also expected that the first shots would startle or anger the yak. Probably it would pick him up on its sharp, glittering horns and that would be that.

On the other side of the rock, the soldiers were whispering to one another. The yak's huge, sandpapery tongue licked Solo's cheek affectionately. Solo glanced desperately at Illya, who reached up and slapped the yak lightly on its hairy flank.

The yak reared back and trumpeted. The soldiers beyond the rock let out startled cries. The yak kicked up its rear hoofs, snorted, put its horned head down and went charging out toward the road.

Solo and Illya peered out again. The yak was lumbering toward the truck, driving the Chinese soldiers before it. As the animal ran, it kicked and scattered the shale. Just this side of the truck the yak stopped. It swung its head from side to side as if assessing the odds. Then it uttered one more low-register complaint, and clattered off among the rocks.

The scar-faced officer looked unhappy. The mystery of the disturbed shale had been explained to his satisfaction - and regret. He jabbered irritably in Chinese, ordering the soldiers back into the truck. As soon as the tailgate was in position, the officer banged his fist four times on the cab roof. The truck rolled forward. The angry officer began to scan the landscape again with his field glasses.

The other two trucks followed. When the last vehicle had vanished, Solo stood up and dried his damp cheeks with his sleeve. He was, he discovered, shaking.

They waited ten minutes, inserted their hands in their sleeves, bowed their heads and began to trudge along the road once more.

Two

Fifteen minutes later they followed the road around a singularly large rock. The plateau beyond was relatively level. Just ahead, a second rutted road intersected the one no which they were walking. This other road ran at right angles to the first. On a slight slope near the crossroad stood a collection of small sod huts. Their roofs were thatched with long, dried yellow strands of coarse grass or weed.

Several long-haired goats wandered near one of the building, which had a large open doorway.

Near the buildings, a person in black pantaloons, fur-lined boots and coat and a conical basket-weaving hat was working a particularly unproductive-looking patch of ground with a primitive hoe.

Solo's right hand gripped his pistol, out of sight inside the left sleeve of his robe. He and Illya advanced cautiously. At the edge of the patch of ground they halted, faces impassive under the deep coatings of dye.

The person with the hoe stopped working and turned. Napoleon Solo did a mental double take. The person was a girl, with a wide, appealing mouth and charmingly Oriental dark eyes. In spite of the woolly fatness of the coat she wore, it was possible to see the distinct and charming outline of a well-shaped bosom beneath. Solo bowed ceremoniously.

"May the god shine his face upon you," he said, though not in the local tongue. Solo spoke Interlingua, the international scientific language.

"He has done so already," the girl replied, also in Interlingua. "And he has caused a double blessing to rain in white billows from the heavens –"

"- on to the place where the earth blooms despite a wintry blast," Solo completed the code.

"Father? Father!" The girl ran toward the hut nearest the crossroads. Abruptly she wheeled around. "Oh, I'm sorry. Please come in." She hurried inside, calling, "Father, they've come."

Solo and Illya entered the rude-walled home. A fire burned brightly on a crude hearth. An elderly Tibetan with a seamed yellow face rose from a table and bowed. Like the girl, he wore heavy dark pantaloons, a fur-lined coat and boots. Although his hair and small beard were pure white, his cheeks glowed with vigorous color and his eyes were alert.

"Welcome, welcome to both of you," he said. He extended his hand, American-style.

"I'm Napoleon Solo. This is Illya Kuryakin."

"I am Ah Lan," said the old farmer in fairly good English. "This my daughter Mei."

The beautiful Tibetan girl bowed.

Ah Lan indicated several crude benches.

"While we warm ourselves at my humble fire of yak dung chips," he said, "my daughter will provide us with some kumis, made of fermented mare's milk. You will find it most palatable."

Mei brought the men earthenware cups containing a hideous-looking liquid. Solo glanced at the stuff and his stomach turned over.

Solo took a sip and fought a wince. "Delicious, delicious." He drank no more.

But Illya tossed off the whole mugful in a series of gargantuan gulps, smacked his lips loudly and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Ah Lan looked delighted. Mei began to direct her admiring glances Illya's way.

Ah Lan immediately called for a refill for Illya, who was valiantly repressing a belch. Mei poured more of the drink from a goatskin with a spout. Solo smirked in delight as Illya forced himself to drink heartily again.