[Magazine 1966-­10] - The Moby Dick Affair - Davis Robert Hart - Страница 18

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Solo did.

"Now feel its left end until you have located the stud which activates the trigger-release weight." Again Solo obeyed. Mixed with his swirly-headed feeling of impending death was the knowledge that he'd foxed Commander Ahab at last, and that THRUSH's careful calculations would be thrown awry. Perhaps the tidal wave would simply spend itself in the Channel now. Solo had no way of knowing. Nor did he care. He had done all he could.

Ahab again: "Mr. Solo, on my command and not before, you will press the stud and immediately let go of the explosive packet, allowing it to sink straight down. However, before we begin that very critical operation—"

Another jagged ripping sound inside the suit. Solo barked, "Something else just gave, Ahab."

"Why, Mr. Solo, you sound concerned. Trust me. I want you to speak to a friend of yours. Mr. Kuryakin is standing at my elbow. Mr. Kuryakin, kindly describe your position to Mr. Solo."

Over the crackling connection came Illya's gloomy voice: "I'm afraid Miss St. Cloud is holding a revolver against the back of my head, Napoleon."

Deep in Solo's belly fear tightened its hold. Ahab returned:

"I cannot describe what exquisite chastisement poor Cleo will receive for bungling your hypnosis, Mr. Solo. But frankly, I am surprised at you. Did you think we would send you down there without tracking you? We have been watching you on scan scopes all the way."

His voice harshened: "I congratulate you on a most excellent job of dissembling. You fooled me, and Miss St. Cloud is going to suffer for it, I don't mind telling you. Unless you instantly turn around one hundred eighty degrees, a full turn, walk twenty-eight paces back and signal that you are in the correct position—we are watching you, remember—I am going to have Mr. Kuryakin shot."

Numbed with a sense of failure, Solo hesitated. Blue dots danced furiously on his retinas.

Suddenly Illya shouted, "Napoleon, drop the cursed thing right there! Don't listen to—"

A thudding sound, another groan as Illya was forcibly removed from the microphone. For one moment Solo's torment was complete. Loyalty to U.N.C.L.E. fought with loyalty to his friend.

And friendship won, because there still danced in Solo's mind the crazy will-of-the-wisp hope that there might be another way. There had to be another way. He couldn't let Illya be killed.

Napoleon Solo turned and paced off the twenty-eight steps.

"That's a little more like it," Ahab rumbled. "The scope shows you precisely in position. Touch the stud and release the package."

With a feeling of horror Solo carried out the act. Weight was gone from his hand.

The air inside the suit was becoming unbearably foul. He was going to pass out. He took an involuntary step and nearly tumbled off the rock shelf into an abyss of water. The lurching movement produced another ripping noise, louder than the first two. Then came a loud hiss.

"By all rights," Ahab's voice boomed into his ears, "I should let you remain down there to die, Mr. Solo. But you have aroused my anger, and that is not done with impunity, I assure you.

"I think it would be more suitable if you came back aboard the Moby Dick and we took you to London, to be an eyewitness to your own handiwork. But that doesn't mean we can't give you a sharp lesson on your return trip. You men on the power winches! Bring him up at twice the safe speed."

Without warning Solo was jerked from overhead. He went sailing up through the dark water. He yelled a curse over the headset, but it came out a scrambled gurgle. His tongue bulged in his throat. His eyes hurt as though needles pierced them. His guts churned as the pressure decreased, decreased, too fast—

Five minutes later Solo lay on the carpet in Commander Ahab's private quarters. He writhed, arching his back and gasping for air like a beached fish. He could barely see as Ahab towered over him and delivered a vicious kick to his ribs, rolling him over and forcing a wild yell of pain out between his teeth.

Into the distorted crazy-mirror of Solo's vision Commander Ahab dragged someone else. It was Cleo St. Cloud, sobbing and mopping at her bloodied nose with a handkerchief. One eye was already darkening.

Commander Ahab knotted his fist in her hair, and shook her back and forth like a doll. He alternated this sport with a few more crashes of his boot-tip against Solo's midsection. Ahab choked: "There is only—one master aboard—the Moby Dick. Perhaps you have learned that—by——now—"

A thin line of blood dribbled out of Solo's mouth, down his chin. He felt as though his body would explode.

He'd failed.

Napoleon Solo spun off toward darkness. Before he went the whole distance, he heard a sound.

The Moby Dick's atomic engines were thrumming. The sub was on its way back to England.

Solo was slipping down a long slide into the biggest dark that had ever swallowed him. In his pain-ridden mind he heard a tune, crazy, as though played on a flute.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down—drowned in ten mil lion tons of water.

Solo saw the wave rise up. It smashed against him, driving him all the way down the slide, to nothing.

Two

MISS CLEO ST. CLOUD looked bad. Displaying her black eye, plus a sticking plaster over the bridge of her nose, she sat up front beside the chauffeur in Ahab's big Daimler as it sped into London. A soupy gray dawn was breaking over the city.

The Moby Dick had surfaced off the coast during the night. It was met by two rubber raft-loads of THRUSH agents. Ahab's car waited on the lonely little coast road where they had landed. The Moby Dick slipped out to sea again, a gray-white phantom whose dim blue running lights sank under the roiled water of the Channel.

They had taken back roads to the city, Solo and Illya in the spacious tonneau with Commander Ahab beside them. Two THRUSH agents in bowlers sat on the jump seats facing them. Each held a pistol pointed at one of the U.N.C.L.E. agents.

The Daimler nosed through the thick fog, narrowly missing an on coming taxicab. The cab driver leaned on his horn. It blatted as he skidded on past them, then faded in the murk. Commander Ahab, who had been complaining of a sore throat, sprayed his palate noisily with a golden atomizer. He put the atomizer away and slapped his knee, again the soul of cheerfulness.

"Well, Mr. Solo, it won't be long now. You have quite a treat in store. The spectacle of London inundated should be thrilling, especially since we shall be observing it from an altitude of better than ten thousand feet."

Illya cocked an eyebrow. He looked paler than usual. His face was badly bruised. His thin fingers drummed against his trousers. "We're going up to watch in an airplane, are we?"

"Precisely," Ahab returned. "We'll take my private turbojet. We should arrive at the field in another twenty minutes. Allow me to bring you up to date, Mr. Solo, since you didn't regain consciousness until we were halfway to London."

Solo said nothing. His eyes were flicking right and left out the bullet proof windows. The car seemed to be rolling through some kind of district of small shops. In the fog it was hard to tell exactly. A few electric lamps burned behind smudged plate glass windows.

Solo's belly growled emptily. He ached from end to end. Now and again he experienced double vision. One rib might or might not be cracked. Ahab was leaning forward on the seat.

For no reason, he jabbed Solo in the ribs. Solo groaned, restrained an impulse to start swinging. Time was running out. Heroics would gain them nothing. One or the other of them had to escape from the car before it reached the private THRUSH airfield.

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