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

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"But we're still right where we started," Illya said. "We may know who he is, but we don't know where he is, and we don't know what THRUSH is planning to do with his discovery. We don't know what the chemical is and we don't know how to counteract it."

"We are faced with an extremely difficult situation," Waverly agreed. "Extremely difficult. But I am afraid the only position we can adopt at present is one of patient watchfulness."

"All we need is one little clue, something to go on," Illya said. He slammed his fist on the table in a rare display of anger and frustration.

"We have every department, every man, in constant vigil," Alexander Waverly said. "We shall uncover some pertinent development, Mr. Kuryakin. You may rest assured of that."

Illya's face was tightly set. "It had better be soon," he said, and added cryptically, "Before it's too late."

FOUR

The break they needed came much sooner than they had anticipated. And it came, not from the combined forces of U.N.C.L.E., but strangely enough from the Managing editor of Travelogue Magazine.

Two hours after Illya Kuryakin had been briefed on Dr. Sagine, a call came through the switchboard at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters for him. He had remained in Waverly's office, sitting silently in one of the chairs, the tenseness in his body mounting with each passing minute. The jangling of the telephone on Waverly's desk jerked him upright on the chair, and he leaned forward as his superior answered it.

When Waverly told him the call was for him, Illya jumped from the chair, grabbing the receiver to his ear.

The man on the other end of the wire introduced himself as Robert Pausen, managing editor of Travelogue Magazine. He told Illya that he had just received a telephone call, asking for one of his photographers. The photographer's name, the caller had said, was Illya Kuryakin.

Illya frowned, not fully understanding at first. Then he remembered that, to insure their cover in Mexico, Travelogue Magazine had been informed of the guise and had agreed to cooperate fully if any queries were received by them. Now, Illya asked the managing editor who the caller had been.

"A woman," Pausen said. "A Miss Estrellita Valdone."

Estrellita Valdone? The woman they had met at the hotel in Teclaxican. Illya scowled. What reason could she possibly have for contacting him? Unless- He asked, "Did she say why she had called?"

"No," Pausen said. "Just that it was urgent she speak with you."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I would try to locate you."

"Did she leave a number?"

"Yes," the managing editor said. He gave it.

Illya wrote it down on a scratch pad, thanked Pausen, and hung up. He stood tugging at his ear thoughtfully, aware that Waverly was looking at him. He explained the nature of the call quickly.

Waverly tapped the dottle from his pipe. "You should call the woman immediately," he said. "It may be that she has something to tell us about the events in Teclaxican."

Illya Kuryakin nodded. He picked up the phone, contacted one of the U.N.C.L.E. operators, and gave her the number. He waited, drumming his fingers on the desk top.

When the phone was answered on the other end, Illya recognized the voice as that of Estrellita Valdone. He explained that his editor had contacted him, and that he was returning her call.

Illya stood listening, nodding silently as Estrellita spoke. He scribbled on the scratch pad. A moment later, he hung up the phone and turned to Waverly,

"Well, Mr. Kuryakin?" Waverly said.

"Just what we've been waiting for," Illya said, excitement in his voice. "She wants me to meet her at nine o'clock tonight."

"Yes!" Waverly said. "And why does she want to meet with you?"

"She says she knows where Napoleon is."

FIVE

Napoleon Solo did not know where he was. When he regained consciousness, he was lying on a cot in a small room with no doors and no windows. The walls of the room were painted green, a pale pastel shade of green. There was nothing in the room except the cot.

At first his mind refused to function. Thoughts became separate entities, apart from each other. A single thought would touch his mind, and then fade, to be replaced by another. He tried to concentrate on each thought, fuse it with a second, achieve some continuity. But it was as if he were dreaming, a deep, troubled dream, from which he sought desperately hard to escape, to wake from, and could not.

He was aware, separately, of his surroundings. First the walls. And then the color of the walls. The ceiling. The cot on which he was lying. The fact that the room had no doors or windows. Each of these facts touched his mind, fled, returned again, one by one, intermingling with other facts, other thoughts, but never two in the same sequence.

He fought the silent battle within his mind for an interminable period. There was no time for him; there was only the mental conflict, the intense pressure exerted on every cell in his brain that stretched dangerously taut the fine line between rationality and insanity.

His body was rigid, immobile, on the cot, and he stared at the ceiling above and knew nothing of the silent, waiting eyes hidden behind one-way view-plates in the walls, watching the struggle that went on within him.

Reason returned to his mind with infinite, but inexorable, slowness. Finally he was able to grasp one of the ephemeral thoughts, hold it, and it remained, stark and vivid. The walls were green. It was very odd, the thought said, that the walls should be green. Four green walls.

Where was the door? There should be a door in one of the four green walls.

He felt the fusion of those two images, and then, slowly, there was the related knowledge of the cot on which he lay, and of the fact that his entire body was soaked in hot, flowing perspiration. He was aware, in that moment, of the lessening of pressure on his brain, and he felt his body relax, lose its rigidity. A sense of great relief, like a purge flooded through him, to be followed almost immediately by a heavy drowsiness that seized the lids of his eyes and pulled them closed.

He had won the battle, and now he slept. When he awoke again, there was full clarity.

He was instantly aware of his surroundings, and even though his head pounded with an intenseness he had seldom experienced, he was able to recall everything that had happened before he had been exposed to the nerve gas. He had only vague recollection of its effects on his mind; it was as if he had just wakened from a nightmare.

He lay looking around him. A cell, he thought. That would explain the absence of a door and of windows. Entrance was probably gained through an electronically operated panel in one of the walls. Yes, a cell. But where? Mexico? Or where else?

That didn't seem likely. THRUSH had been there merely for the purpose of conducting tests. Then—THRUSH'S base of operations. Of course. They had to have a secret, well-hidden complex, one unknown and unsuspected by U.N.C.L.E. a place where the salt chemical could be developed.

But where?

Solo lay motionless on the cot. Why had he been brought here, wherever he was? A wedge, he thought. Yes, that must be it. An added bit of precaution by THRUSH, in case they needed bargaining power for negotiations with U.N.C.L.E. And such negotiations, Solo knew, would only come about if THRUSH gained the upper hand in the battle between the two powerful forces. Consequently, the obvious assumption was that THRUSH was on the verge of launching whatever insidious plot its council had devised.

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