Pulp Fiction | The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel (3 page)

"The headache's worse," said Napoleon, catching his breath.

"My teeth itch," said Illya critically. "It's not a gas, it's not radiation...wait a minute. It's not
electromagnetic
radiation, but look!" He pointed at the inner side of the metal door panel, where cracks were beginning to appear in the painted surface. As they stared, a piece of paint about the size and shape of a postage stamp broke free and fluttered to the floor. Other areas showed signs of letting go their bond to the metal and joining it.

"It's not an earthquake," said Napoleon doubtfully, "but it has many of the same symptoms. What do you think of infrasonics?"

"Personally I dislike them. Intellectually, there's something in what you say. It's not like that thirteen-cycle 'fear' tone you ran across in Rumania, though."

"No, this one is almost audible. I'll bet it's tuned to the width of the corridors here!—they're all the same width and mostly bare-walled. They'd make perfect whaddyacallem."

"Resonant cavities," said Illya. "That would also create a standing wave in the halls." He looked around the room distractedly. "Let's see if there is one."

His eye lit on an ashtray, heaped with the fallout of the morning's briefing. Unsteadily he stood up, gripped the dish, and wobbled towards the door, which obediently zipped open before him and stuck halfway. Illya braced himself against the doorframe and pitched the handful of gray powder into the empty hallway. The stuff separated into a cloud of smoke and began to settle out towards the floor. As it settled it drew into two vertical bands of light and gray, dividing the hall into ghostly thirds.

Illya nodded. "There you are. It's—oh—sixteen or seventeen cycles per second, and I'd hate to guess the amplitude." He coughed and gripped the doorframe tighter as he turned back into the room. "Feel up to a sprint?"

Napoleon rose painfully to his feet, his joints complaining incoherently at the demand. "Just point me and say
go
. The elevator?"

"The elevator. I think I'll know what to look for out in the street, and Del has enough front-line defenses we should be able to handle it. Tell Mr. Waverly what it is, and tell him to stay in his office. It's big enough and well enough damped, he'll be safe enough to coordinate things."

"Check." Napoleon keyed his pocket transceiver and heard a keen shrilling. "Forget it. They're transmitting a jamming frequency now."

"Okay. Let's go."

They charged out the door, aiming bravely for the elevator seventy feet down the hall. Neither of them fell down more than once, but they took two fifteen-second rest stops in open offices. The smaller size of the elevator car lessened the resonant effect, though the main wave was still there.

Halfway up Napoleon had a thought. "Illya," he said, "what if the unit is underground—in a subway branch tunnel, or the dock area?"

Illya considered, breathing hard, and then said, "Three to one they're upstairs. Not worth splitting up to cover. A truck is easier to move in and out, and Thrush's key word is mobility. I just hope it's out here on Fifty-Fourth, and not all the way around the block. I don't think I could make it."

The door slid open and they stepped into Inner Reception Station Three. The clerk was standing, gun in hand, but her head was down and her arm hung limply at her side. She leaned heavily on the desk.

Napoleon grabbed her as they went by, took the gun from her and pushed her carefully into a chair, where she slumped and gasped. The steel door swung wide and they went through the cloth curtain into the back of Del Floria's. The door was closed but the blinds were up, and Del stood behind an armored partition at the back, watching the shop and the street outside through a one-way mirror with a small control panel at his elbow. He looked up, startled, as they entered.

"You tell me," he said. "All I get from downstairs is questions."

"We're checking out Big Bertha," said Napoleon, "and we may have the answer to all our troubles. Tell Mr. Waverly it's a seventeen-cycle infrasonic tuned to the corridors, and get a full-power defense squad up here on the double. If they duck into offices every thirty feet and breathe deeply, most of them can make it. Get it?"

"Got it."

"Good," said Illya, removing a nasty-looking piece of ordnance from a place of concealment and busily engaging in fitting different parts of it into place. "Don't pop out there too suddenly—they may have old fashioned things such as rifles, too."

Del pointed to a cupboard. "Body armor," he said, and turned to the comm channel. "Gimme the boss. Batman and Robin are here, and they say they know where it's at..."

"I wish he'd save the code for the public," Illya muttered, slipping a bulky jacket and hood over his suit. A nylon fabric of complex weave, it was capable of stopping .30 machine gun slugs at ten yards.

They paused at the doorway and edged it open. There was a snap near the top of the door and a few splinters fell. "So they do," said Solo. "Let's see how high their angle of fire is."

Crouching, he grabbed a coat on a hangar and stuck out one shoulder about level with the knob. The door shook and the sound of two bullets impacting made his head ache more. He heard Del behind him saying something about a customer's coat, then Illya was pulling him to his knees. Painfully he forced his vision back into focus.

"They can't hit the steps or the bottom two feet of the door. Let's go." The two of them dragged the gun like a piece of pipe across the floor and slid it out onto the concrete stoop before crawling after it.

Illya crept up the six steps towards the sidewalk. "What would they do with innocent by-standers?" he wondered aloud as he peered cautiously down the street.

"They probably wandered off about the time the infrasonic started," Napoleon said, crouching beside the anti-tank rifle and fitting a massive magazine into place. "I know I would if I had a choice."

"There we go," the Russian said, changing the subject. "Just up the street. About under where Mr. Waverly's windows would be if they were real windows. And I'm afraid we'll need the armor-piercing. That always hurts my ears."

"Okay," said Solo. "This time you get to cover your ears while I pull the string. I'm checked out on Bouncing Betty here. What do they look like?"

"It's the big blue van on the north side of the street with TIDY DIDY on the back in faded pink."

"You're kidding."

"No; there are two rifles sticking out of the rear end, and I saw a muzzle flash from one about the time we lost a corner of the railing."

Napoleon Solo shook his head. "They have absolutely no sense of decency," he said. "Gimme a hand with this."

A slug plucked at Illya's hood once when he moved incautiously, but in thirty seconds the gun was set up, shielded by the heavy concrete of the steps leading up to the first floor. Illya covered his ears and squinted as Napoleon popped his head up once quickly to check his aim, and then let off a ranging round. A fan of fire washed lightly over the brick wall next to the door and concussion pummelled his chest. A section of pavement eight feet short of the truck burst into a shower of gravel and smoke, and Illya said, "Elevation five degrees and right just a notch."

"Not bad for an instinctive point-and-shoot gunner," said Napoleon, cranking in the corrections. "Cover your ears."

Illya did, and squinted through a crack that had appeared in the cement. The truck rocked visibly as he felt the heat from the backlash, and a black furrow ploughed along the near side of the body, tearing into the cab, which faced away from them.

"Left just a hair," said Illya coolly as a white scar appeared on the sidewalk six inches from his nose and white powder spurted into the air.

"Roger Wilcox," said Napoleon. "Hold your ears."

The gun thundered and leaped on its mount, and Napoleon peered through the shaken air, heedless of cover. Before his flash-dazzled eyes recovered, he heard Illya's voice faintly yelling, "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again!"

Taking him at his word, Napoleon steadied the steaming weapon and fired two more rounds, two seconds apart, before a flare of ghastly yellow light filled the entire street. His stunned ears were totally numb, but as his vision cleared of dancing green flecks he saw Illya waving his arm horizontally, palm open and down. He leaned back against the side of the stairwell and waited for his head to return to its normal size.

He opened his eyes to see twelve men in dark suits pouring out of the entrance to the tailor shop and hurrying past Illya, who pointed them off down the street. He sat up. His ears weren't quite ready to resume operations yet, but his chest felt better.

He got to his feet and walked carefully over to Illya, who was also showing signs of recovery. Napoleon looked down the street to where the shell of a blue van was charring in the swiftly-dying flame of the explosion. He stared at it, stunned anew, until he gradually became aware of someone saying something behind him. He turned and said, "What?"

"You forgot to say
hold your ears
that last time," Illya said. "If I lose my perfect pitch you'll be responsible."

"Sorry about that," said Napoleon sincerely. "But I thought you'd expect me to act on your directions at once."

"We'll let it go. I think both rounds made it into the fuel supply. I just hope there's enough of that damned thing left to analyze."

Sirens were wailing in the distance, drawing nearer, as they turned back into the tailor's shop, dragging the still-smoking anti-tank gun. "The fuzz are coming, Del," said Napoleon. "We can leave the explanations up to you—dealing with curious people is your specialty."

"Thanks loads," said Del Floria, as the two top agents disappeared into the second fitting booth, leaving the 75-mm recoilless in the middle of his floor. This would have to be a good one.

* * *

Inner Reception Station Three, back on post, ordered them to detour by way of Emergency Medical before they went in to see Alexander Waverly. Both were pronounced fit, given two salt tablets for shock and a small tranquilizer on general principles, and sent on their way.

Waverly was on the telephone as they entered.

"Of course, John. I quite understand your objection to the anti-tank shells. But we have good reason to believe several square blocks were saved from destruction or severe damage, and a few shattered windows seems a small price to pay...Yes, certainly we'll accept financial responsibility but I must request that City lawyers be found to represent our defense...Please accept my most sincere apologies for the incident, but you must understand that circumstances dictated our action. Certainly. Very well. Thank you." He replaced the handset and glared at Napoleon as if he were personally responsible.

"I request your help, Mr. Solo," he said, "in deciding what to tell the police to tell the press to tell several thousand individuals who were direct or indirect witnesses to your recent military action on East Fifty-Fourth Street."

Napoleon Solo cleared his throat and shifted his weight. "Ah, well, sir, it—ah—seemed like a good idea at the time, sir..."

Illya explained in a few thousand well-chosen words the way they had analyzed the situation and elected to take action. He claimed shared responsibility with Napoleon and described in grisly detail the probable results of continued bombardment with properly attuned infrasonics. When he paused, Waverly said, "Well, Mr. Solo?"

"Ah, right, sir," said Napoleon. "What he just said."

"Hm. Very well. I'll have that paraphrased into an acceptable statement and slip it into channels. By the time it gets out no one will be able to recognize it anyhow. One other item which will brighten your day," he added after a pause. "The pulse transmitter embedded in Baldwin's stick has failed to send its last two scheduled signals."

"But it was guaranteed for six months," said Illya.

"It was also guaranteed undetectable," said Waverly. "I fear we have underestimated Ward Baldwin."

Napoleon nodded. "I thought it'd be good for a week at least. Where was it last heard from?"

Waverly sighed. "The Oyster Bar—in Grand Central Station." His fingertips drummed for a moment on the arm of his black leather chair. "I think we can take this for tentative validation of part of Baldwin's story, at any rate. Uncommonly overt action is being taken against us." He picked up a film cartridge and inserted it into a slot on the side of the desk. The room lights dimmed and a slightly fuzzy picture sprang up in blues and grays, bearing a title and code number.

"Right," said Napoleon. "That was just before we got the color VTR."

They watched after that in silence for three or four minutes while distorted radio voices exchanged pre-firing data and orders and the countdown marched away to nothing. At zero the screen flared suddenly white for a long moment before the seared vidicon tube and spasmed circuitry began to recover. Out of the blind gray of stunned photoconductors a picture formed again—the figure of a man sprawled across the breech of the monstrous, coiled gun which now burned with a flickering dull flame and black smoke. As horns and buzzers sounded on the audio, Waverly reached over and stopped the film, shifting it to rewind.

Only when the lights were all up did he speak, and his voice was bitter. "There it was. Simplest thing in the world, of course. Give us something sudden we don't understand—the flare of light—and follow it immediately with something we do. We forgot the first incident completely." He sucked on his pipe and made a face.

Neither Napoleon nor Illya said a word for four minutes while Alexander Waverly cleaned his pipe in a total concentration that even forbade the telephone to ring.

At last he finished and stuffed it about half full of the mixture from the humidor at the back of his desk. When he had it glowing to his satisfaction, he allowed a faint cloud of blue smoke to rise as he spoke slowly.

"Let us suppose," he said, "that some time in 1964 Joseph King found or was supplied with an individual of little value to him save that his general physical condition, scars, build and dimensions were nearly identical to his own. Almost certainly with the help of Thrush, who were known to be experimenting with cryogenic methods of preservation even then, he killed this man with a precisely measured and directed burst of radio energy, and took steps to freeze the body moments after this had been done. He then carefully arranged his own apparent demise and during the moment of our blindness he switched the prepared and frozen body into his own place and departed by some prearranged route. A jeep could have removed him from the site, given King's knowledge of our security system, if it were waiting just outside the danger area. King had portable shielding there; he could have ducked behind it and gotten out the door without coming into range of the camera again."