Pulp Fiction | The Invisibility Affair by Thomas Stratton (16 page)

Illya stepped into the room behind Hunter. It was a small spartanly furnished cubicle with a pair of double bunks along the outer wall and a single chair and table in the middle of the floor. The section of wall beyond the head of the bunks was clear glass. Illya noted that the partitions dividing this room from the next didn't match the rest of the construction, as if they had been added later.

"I understand a Mr. McNulty is in charge of the operation," Illya said. "I would like to see him, please..."

Hunter's rumbling chuckle sounded. "McNulty likes to think he's in charge. Ivan Forbes, head of the Milwaukee Satrapy is in charge of the operation, but he's gone on ahead. Right McNulty is down in the sub overseeing the transfer of the sonar equipment, so you take orders from me."

Illya kept an indifferent expression on his face and nodded. Apparently Rudolph was expected to know about the sonar.

"Now then, unless you'd prefer to rest for a bit, we'll take a look at the control room."

"Ja," Illya replied. "I'm quite anxious to become familiar with the operation. I understand we do not have much time...?"

Hunter took the bait. "Very little. If we can get the sonar installed today, we'll start moving this evening. You'll be expected to give us some instructions on handling the dirigible; we've been having a few problems. That ass McNulty—" He broke off abruptly.

"Good, good," Illya said. "It sounds like an efficient operation. Shall we go forward?"

"Follow me," Hunter said as he went out into the hallway, through another small compartmented section, slid back a door that blocked the end of the hallway, and went down a short flight of steps. "The control gondola," he announced as Illya followed him down the steps and let the door slide shut behind him.

The area, about twenty feet long by ten feet wide, was bare of any decoration. The front third seemed to contain all the controls, although from Illya's position at the rear he could see only a few items, including a pair of wheels that looked as if they belonged on a small sailing ship. The entire curving front of the gondola was glass, whit the roof supported by braces that seemed to have been built from a giant's erector set.

One of the crew was inspecting something near one of the control wheels. The back two thirds of the gondola was completely bare except for a huge box-like metal affair, a good six feet square and three feet deep, with dials and controls clustered on the front of it. A wispy, white-haired man stood in front of the machine, watching the dials.

Luck, Illya realized, seemed to be running his way for a change. Dr. Morthley was already located and the only Thrush who could identify him was on the submarine. "Ach, this must be the invisibility device," he said heartily, moving forward. "Fascinating, utterly fascinating! How does it work?"

He reached Morthley's side and clapped him solidly on the back. Morthley looked up annoyed. "I'm an inventor, not a lecturer," he snapped. "Get McNulty to explain it to you; he likes to talk."

The door at the rear of the gondola opened. Illya turned, noted that the man standing in the entrance was the elderly caretaker of the dirigible hangar. He hastily turned back and peered at the OTSMID with feigned eagerness.

"McNulty says he's got to see you right away," Sanders said to Hunter.

"Now what?" muttered Hunter in annoyance. He turned to Illya. "Take your time and familiarize yourself with the invisibility device," he instructed. "I'll be back as soon as possible." He and Sanders vanished up the stairway.

Illya whispered urgently to Dr. Morthley, "Come with me, please," and led the scientist toward the rear, away from the man who was still puttering around the controls. "I'm Illya Kuryakin," he began, "and—"

Dr. Morthley's face lightened in recognition. "Ah, the U.N.C.L.E. agent, he whispered. "I thought you looked familiar, but I saw you so briefly in that hotel room..."

"Is there any way out of here besides those hangar doors?" Illya asked.

Dr. Morthley nodded to a dimly-lit spot in the shadow of the OTSMID. "There's a door, right there, but we must be a hundred yards in the air."

"We have ways," Illya said, and nodded at the man at the front of the gondola. "What's he doing?"

"I think he's the sonar man. He's either looking for a good place to install it or he's trying to look so busy that he won't be called on to help McNulty move the thing."

Illya nodded thoughtfully. So far the man had not looked up from his work since Illya had entered. After a second, Illya tiptoed up the steps to the rear door, opened it a crack and peered through. Seeing no one, he let it slide noisily shut, then strode to the front of the gondola. "They're bringing the sonar aboard," he said crisply. "McNulty wants you back in the hangar."

Sighing, the man put down a wrench and headed for the stairs. As he passed Illya, the latter chopped him neatly at the base of the neck, caught him as he doubled up, and eased him to the floor. Wasting no time, Illya ran to the door Dr. Morthley had indicated and twisted it open. From inside his shirt pocket he pulled a duplicate of the miniature wire and grapnel that he and Napoleon had used to cross the fence surrounding the dirigible hangar. He fastened the grapnel firmly to a girder, let the wire dangle outside the door, and produced two pairs of leather gloves. He handed one pair to Dr. Morthley.

"Put these on, then grab that wire, and slide," Illya told him. "You may have to drop a few feet into the water, but not far. Can you swim?"

Morthley nodded.

"Fine. Get your shoes off." Illya had kicked off his own oxfords. "When you hit the water, head for shore. Napoleon Solo and your niece will be there to give you a hand."

"How very interesting," came a voice from behind them. Illya whirled, to confront McNulty, Hunter and Sanders. Hunter and McNulty held automatic pistols, but it was the old Ithaca double-barreled pistol, held lovingly by Sander that made Illya hesitate to do anything rash.

McNulty was smiling broadly. "Well, if it isn't Mr. Kuryakin again. Do close the door like a good fellow and step over this way."

* * *

Napoleon looked irritably at his watch. Brattner should have been here by now. One U.N.C.L.E. Special, even with shoulder stock, wasn't going to provide much covering fire against a dirigible and a submarine. He wished he'd brought his Gyrojet rocket pistol along. Even if it wasn't very accurate, a dirigible was a pretty big target.

He looked at his watch again. I had been over an hour since Illya had disappeared into the sky on that hook. The submarine had appeared again, transferred cargo to the dirigible, and resubmerged, but there was no sound from Illya's communicator.

Suddenly the communicator beeped and simultaneously Kerry was pounding him on the shoulder and shouting, "They're coming!" Napoleon looked up in time to see a man appear in midair, apparently sliding down some invisible support. A second figure was already in the water. Shots sounded from somewhere overhead.

"It's Uncle Willard!" Kerry shouted. "I saw his white hair!"

"Napoleon!" Illya's voice, sounding slightly muffled, came from the communicator. "We'll head for the pier. They're going to be after us; get out there to pull us out."

Napoleon leaped from the thicket, followed by Kerry. He motioned her back, but didn't have time to argue when she failed to obey. A third figure had appeared, lowered from thin air by the giant hook. He was holding on to the cable with one hand and firing at the fugitives with the other. He didn't appear to be a very good shot. The water began to roil, marking the emergence of the submarine.

Napoleon reached the end of the pier before the two in the water did, and was waiting to pull them out. He wondered for a moment how Illya had managed to keep Rudolph's little cap tightly on his head throughout the affair, as he knelt down to haul up the first swimmer. The man grasped his hand and then suddenly swung his feet up against the pier. Napoleon had a split second to realize that the suddenly upturned face was not that of Illya; then he was flying through the air. He managed to retain control of his gun as he floundered in the water, but when he managed to come upright and facing the pier he was also facing Ezra Sanders and the twin muzzles of the old Ithaca. McNulty, cap discarded, was holding Kerry.

"Mr. Solo and Miss Griffin," McNulty said. "I think this more than makes up for my unimaginative method of capturing you and Mr. Kuryakin the other day. And to think my parents always told me that my ability as a mimic had no practical value!"

* * *

Sometime later, McNulty finished fastening the handcuffs to the frame of the bunk and stepped back to admire his handiwork. From the lower bunk, Illya watched interestedly. "I hope you don't mind taking the upper bunk," he remarked, "but after all, I was here first." McNulty chuckled appreciatively and left. Sanders spat a stream of tobacco juice on the deck and followed.

Illya raised up as much as his handcuffs would allow and asked, "Did Kerry get away?"

"No, she's in another room. Also, they found the real Rudolph and brought him on board. What are they up to, anyway?"

"I don't know, but they're planning a long trip. They're taking sonar equipment from the submarine and installing it in the dirigible." Napoleon looked surprised, and Illya explained. "It won't work very well in the air; response will be very slow, and the range will be limited. I wouldn't have thought it could be adapted at all, but they seem quite confident about it. Of course, they won't be moving very fast, and there really isn't very much up here that they can run into, as long as they stay out of mountains. They can shut off the invisibility occasionally, in order to see where they are, since they can't navigate by sonar."

"But where are they going?"

"I wish I know. McNulty was crowing about pulling off the coup of the century, and Hunter was making snide comments; I gathered that dropping the sandbag on Lavell was due to one of McNulty's errors, and Hunter isn't about to let him forget it. They were using the sandbags as dummy bombs, but I gather that with no bombsight and with McNulty tripping over things, the practice bomb run was a complete fiasco, so McNulty came up with this other idea. But they didn't say what it was or where they were going."

"Is Forbes around? McNulty seems to be bossing the show."

"They said Forbes had gone on ahead, wherever that is. Apparently he trusts McNulty to move the dirigible."

Napoleon signed and lay back on his bunk. "You don't happen to have a file or a tiny hacksaw in your shoe, do you?"

"I don't even have a shoe." Illya wiggled his toes in proof. "McNulty may drop an occasional sandbag, but he is extremely efficient when it comes to searching people."

"Yes, I found that out, Too. I suppose our best bet is to catch up on our rest. We'll want to be at our best when we reach our destination."

* * *

They reached their destination after dark on the fourth day of travel. The dirigible, with invisibility field off and engines silent, drifted slowly downward into a clearing on a tropical plateau near a range of mountains. In the light from a few electric bulbs and dozens of torches scattered around the clearing. Napoleon and Illya could see one large building and several smaller structures. Men on the ground grabbed for lines dangling from the dirigible's descent, but their tugging was enough to maneuver the aerial giant so that it settled with its nose and control gondola near the large building and its length stretched along an open area which appeared to have been recently hacked out of the tropical forest.

"San Sebastian!" Napoleon exclaimed, recognizing the large building below them as the fortress-like three-story structure which was Thrush headquarters in that country. The smaller buildings had been used as barracks for the Thrush mercenaries fighting in the Army of Liberation of Ferdinand Pessina.

There was a light tremor as the bumping bag under the control gondola came to rest on the roof of one of the barracks. The soldiers scurried about with the lines, looking for convenient hitching posts. With no mooring mast available, the ropes were fastened to whatever buildings and trees they would reach. Seconds later, the door to Napoleon's and Illya's room opened and McNulty, Hunter, and a crew member entered. At a gesture from McNulty, the crewman stepped forward and released them from their bunks, while Hunter stood watchfully, gun in hand. Using one of the pairs of handcuffs, he fastened Napoleons right wrist to Illya's left.

"I suppose you've recognized our destination," McNulty said. "I understand you two were here once before and escaped. You may find it harder to do, this time."

Napoleon shrugged. "We do our best."

"I don't think your best will be good enough. Now that I'm here with the dirigible, San Sebastian will belong to Thrush in a matter of hours, with a minimum of blood, sweat and tears—I don't mind the blood but I object to work through that ridiculous idealist, Pessina."

"McNulty, you talk too much," said Hunter.

"That's all right." McNulty smiled at the two U.N.C.L.E. agents. "You wouldn't repeat anything I've said, would you? Now then, you should know the way to the cells in the headquarters building; they'll constitute your home away from home until Forbes gets a chance to question you. Walk slowly and try not to think too much about escape. I hate to see people disappeared."

Napoleon and Illya sat gloomily in their cell. They had occupied the same cell less than two weeks before, but then they had been equipped with a coil of thin, tough wire with which to saw through the bars, shirt buttons which were in reality tiny gas grenades, and other well-tested U.N.C.L.E. equipment. Now they had nothing but their hands and wits.

"I wonder what the San Sebastian contingent has been up to since we left." Napoleon asked.

"Dirigible watching, I hope," Illya replied.

"I'm amazed Thrush didn't move their headquarters after we escaped. It seems careless of them to remain after their security had been breached. For that matter, I'm surprised that El Presidente hasn't flattened the place; he does have an air force."