“I’d rather have their scorn than a couple of barrels of buckshot,” she said practically. She peered intently at the staring lights, which were now very close. “It’s them all right. That looks like our local delivery lorry.” The headlights began to weave in zig-zag fashion across the road so that there could be no doubt they wanted the pickup to halt. Just to make certain of it there came a double spurt of yellow-red flame, the whispering scream of shot ricocheting from the road and then the blam-blam of the explosions. Solo left the gas and trod on the brake, hoping that Illya was clear.
The enemy truck halted some three yards clear on the opposite side of the road, and two large men leaped from the back, each clutching a gun. Lights winked out, the engine died and two more large men scrambled from the cab, also armed. As if they’d rehearsed it, one man marched ahead of the rest, came across and jammed the twin barrels of his shotgun through the side window to within an inch of Solo’s nose.
“Hold everything right there!” he commanded. “I want to have a bit of a talk with you, about some beer consignments.” Then, all at once, his bull-necked superconfidence shivered and broke and his dark-jowled face came close, to peer into the cab over his weapon.
“Holy Mother of Michael!” he breathed. “It’s Miss Sarah, isn’t it? What the devil are you doing here?”
“There now, Dan Finnegan!” she complained. “You’ve spoiled it, after all the trouble we’ve taken to be secret about it.”
“About what?”
“Why, Mr. Solo and me. We went the long way round especially so everyone would think we’d gone off to Tipperary or some such place, so that we—could sneak back into Limerick and get married. And now you’ve spoiled it. You’ll tell Uncle Mike, won’t you?”
“Hold it!” Finnegan protested, furrowing his face. “What’s all this about getting married? It’s the first I’ve heard of it!”
“Me too!” Solo put in, picking up his wits and determined to confuse the issue still further. “It’s all a pack of lies. She was running away from home, and I’m bringing her back. As a matter of fact I’m glad to see you. She’s a bit too much for me, on my own. I could use some—”
“Shut up!” Finnegan emphasized his remark with a jerk of the gun, and then scowled at Sarah. “If you’re getting married”—he struggled to grasp the sense of the tale—”then why did you come belting into the plant this evening and take something away out of the laboratory?—tell me that! O’Connor saw you, with his own eyes. And what did ye do to them beer trucks?” He got to the main point at last, with a bellow. Sarah manufactured a hysterical giggle, and Solo’s hand began to itch for his gun. The charade couldn’t hold up much longer. The other three stalwarts were spread in a ring, all aimed at the truck. Where was Illya?
All at once the night stillness was shattered by a frantic fusillade of shots, as if half a dozen men had opened up from at least three different spots a few yards to the rear. Solo felt the hair crawl on the back of his neck. This was a good place to be away from, fast. The three sentinels obviously felt the same way. With a silent celerity that spoke of training they melted briskly into the hedgerows on either side.
The shots kept coming, in ragged profusion. Finnegan cast a worried glance back and around. Solo wanted no more than that. He grabbed the door handle, slammed it down and kicked the door open, all in one savage movement. The shotgun barrel, trapped in the swinging door, exerted a sudden and painful leverage on Finnegan, jerking him off balance and against the hood of the truck. Solo squirmed out, grabbed at the barrel and rammed the butt into Finnegan’s stomach. The big man, breath gasping from him, folded forward, getting his face square in the way of the butt once more as Solo jerked it up. He went back and down into the road and rolled over.
Solo threw the shotgun away with one hand, drew his pistol with the other, and peered around in the gloom. The gun must have been cocked, because both barrels let go with a double blast as it struck the ground. The distant shots broke out again, furiously, and Solo felt the air around him thicken with flying lead. Then he heard a shrill and raucous yell that seemed to come from somewhere just ahead. He remembered Illya’s warning, scrambled up into the truck again, gunned the engine and got the truck rolling. Within yards a dark figure rose out of the night and flung itself at the off-side door.
“Take off!” Kuryakin panted. “I have no idea what the effective range of a shotgun is, and I’d rather not find out.”
Solo put his foot to the floor and the truck leaped away. Diminishing in the distance he could still hear the running battle of the mysterious armed men from nowhere. He scowled to himself.
“Where did the army come from?” he demanded. “What did we run into, a private war?”
“Fireworks,” Kuryakin explained laconically. “Just a lot of big firecrackers—I scattered a few handfuls here and there.”
Solo grinned. “That’s fine, but they won’t be fooled for long. They’ll be after us.”
“If they do, it will be on foot.” Kuryakin twisted his wrist to study his watch. He seemed to be counting to himself. Then he nodded, and the dark night at their back gave forth a brilliant red-white flare and then a sullen echoing boom. “A limpet bomb,” he said. “I stuck it under their hood while they were listening to the fireworks.”
Solo grinned and eased his foot from the gas pedal. Sarah stirred.
“I’ve really torn it up this time.”
“What did you do?” Kuryakin asked curiously.
“Oh, nothing much,” she said, with studied casualness. “I’ve only said out loud in the presence of a witness that I intend to marry Mr. Solo here.”
“So?” Solo demanded, feeling uneasy.
“We’re very old-fashioned about such things in this country. I’m as good as compromised now, unless we go through with it.”
“Getting married, you mean? Now wait! Whoa! Hold on there!” Solo made instant protest. “You can’t do that to me!”
“I’m not so sure,” Kuryakin murmured contemplatively. “You could be in bad trouble here. I’m not absolutely certain about the law, but I have heard rumors about it. But I don’t see what you have to worry about. I’m sure you will both be very happy.”
“This is crazy!” Solo said. “One witness, and that was a man with a shotgun pointed at me! They can’t make that stick. I’ll claim it was under duress. In any case, I denied it. I said it was all a pack of lies. Didn’t I?” He appealed to Sarah, who returned him a hurt blue-eyed stare.
“Don’t you want to marry me, Napoleon?”
Silence grew and thickened in the crowded cab as he reconsidered his position. Then she could hold her composure no longer and exploded into helpless giggles. He stared, then glared, then looked across her shaking head to where Illya was grinning broadly.
“Two of a kind,” he growled. “I ought to toss the pair of you out and let you walk!”
They weren’t a bit impressed. “Speaking of electronics,” Illya murmured, “what do you think of this?” He produced his miniature transceiver to show her. She handled it with professional admiration and was about to comment when the instrument let out a two-tone bleat that was echoed from Solos pocket. Kuryakin grabbed it back, but Solo had his out and was thumbing the button.
“Solo here. What?”
“Shamrock to Volga. How are the drains now?”
Solo stared at the thing, but Kuryakin grinned and said, “Volga to Shamrock. Drains now clear. Some slight obstructions removed, a few interesting developments to follow up.” Solo nodded, catching on. This was the Limerick office.
The small voice came back promptly. “Cancel developments; stand by for relay from Greatuncle!” The two men tensed, waiting, guessing what was to come. A click, and then Waverly himself.
“Mr. Solo, can you hear me? And Mr. Kuryakin, are you there?”
“Both here, sir, loud and clear. Co ahead.” Solo frowned across at his tow-headed colleague. This had to be something big, to bring the old man out of his lair.
“Good. I am speaking to you from a private charter aircraft; we will land at Shannon within the half-hour. It is first-priority urgent that you meet me there. Well?”
“We’ll be there!” Solo said crisply, and heard the click of the channel closure. He put his foot down hard on the gas, and exchanged grim glances with Kuryakin as the pickup howled into furious speed. “The old man sounds worried, and all on account of O’Brien’s Beautiful Beer!”
“I think not,” Kuryakin said quietly. “This will be the second molecule. Meanwhile, what are we to do with you? This party looks as if it is going to get rough.”
“I’m coming!” Sarah declared, very firmly. “I’m not frightened any more. And if it’s something to do with Uncle Mike, then I’m involved. What did you mean about the second molecule? The ferment?”
“Yes. How much of it has been made, do you know?”
“About a hundredweight, I think. It’s a fine white powder—looks like starch. The last I saw, it was being put away into plastic canisters, big ones, bright yellow and with an insert in one end. Three of them.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.” Kuryakin shook his head sadly, and Solo scowled at him.
“What’s on your mind, Illya?”
“Better wait and see what Mr. Waverly has to say.” They raced on through the quiet night, speeding against the ticking hand of time while all around them Ireland slept peacefully in an old-world loveliness of fuchsia hedges and green rolling grasslands, blissfully unaware of the dark seethings of dread that were threatening to plague it.
FOUR
“I’m Afraid the Birds Have Flown.”
ALEXANDER WAVERLY held court in a small office the airport officials had set aside for his use. His craggy face more worried than usual, an unlit pipe clutched uneasily in his hand, he surveyed the intent faces that waited on his words. The small room was crowded. As the weary three entered, Solo saw and exchanged nods of recognition with several familiar faces. Enforcement men, and good ones, too. U.N.C.L.E. was showing its muscles. He introduced Sarah, and prepared to listen.
“I’ll give you the heart of the matter in very simple words, gentlemen,” Waverly said. “Dr. Michael O’Rourke has got to be stopped, no matter what the cost. I’d prefer that we get him alive, of course, but if that’s not possible—” He let the sentence hang, leaving them to draw the implications. His eyes sought out Sarah, peering at her from under shaggy brows. “This could be unpleasant for you, my dear. If you’d rather not listen—?”
“I want to hear it all,” she declared. “I’ve nothing to thank Uncle Mike for now. Didn’t he try to put me away, and would have killed me as well, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin here? Speak up—say what you have to!”
“Very well. Our technicians have worked out most of the implications of the O’Rourke synthetics. In one form it is a drug which enhances indiscretion and recklessness, depresses caution, and would be exceedingly dangerous if let loose on an unsuspecting population.”
“We’ve gathered that much,” Solo offered. “We’ve had some.” He went on to tell, briefly, what they had done and experienced. “So we were able to stop the shipment,” he concluded. “Now we have time to alert the authorities and have 3-B cans condemned outright. That’s a job for the revenue men.”
Waverly nodded. “Yes. Well done. That will be taken care of. But our present and highly urgent business is to deal with the second form of the synthetic, before it is too late.”
“I don’t quite see the danger, sir,” Kuryakin interrupted gently. “I’ve seen the formula and read an account of its properties. It’s a ferment, a very fast one, increasing in volume extremely rapidly. And it’s hydrophilous—that is to say, it absorbs water at a furious rate. But—”
“Salt water, Mr. Kuryakin. Sea water!” Waverly’s quiet correction was like a series of ice-pellets into the thick silence. Kuryakin sighed, and then nodded in sudden understanding. For the rest, Waverly went on to explain.
“We tried a few milligrams in a large tank of salt water. Within minutes the whole was a fermenting mass, which stopped only because it had used up all the water. And the reaction ends by transforming into a thick jelly-like stuff that is rigid enough to be cut with a knife. The volumetric increase is simply enormous. The simple facts are these. Anyone sufficiently familiar with the prevailing tides in this geographical area would have no difficulty whatever in scattering quantities of this stuff—it wouldn’t take very much—and thereby blanketing the entire Irish sea, the west coast of England, the English Channel, large reaches of the French coast, and subsequently the North Sea, with this terrible ferment. I don’t think I need to spell it out beyond that, do I? Think of the paralysis to shipping, the choked rivers. Power stations would be put out of action, water supplies fouled and cut off. Fish would die by the million from lack of oxygen. And it wouldn’t take much of the stuff.” He paused to study the strained faces watching him, then added, “We did some rough calculations. All that I have described, and more, could be done with no more than a hundred pounds of the synthetic!”
Sarah caught a hand to her mouth in dismay. “We have a hundredweight of it already made up!” she cried, and Waverly pulled down his shaggy brows grimly.
“A hundredweight would be more than enough to paralyze Great Britain and a considerable stretch of the French coast. The same quantity again would be enough to eliminate the Balkan peninsula. One ton of it, strategically scattered, would blanket the entire North American continent in strangling jelly-sludge, and I need not spell out for you just what that would do. But it goes even further. Four fifths of the surface of this Earth of ours is ocean, gentlemen. We all of us depend on it, ultimately, for our very lives. And Dr. Michael O’Rourke has the power to foul the seas of the world, at will!”
The little room was silent as the people assembled there drew their own conclusions and built horrifying mental pictures of what could happen. Mr. Waverly waited long enough for it to sink in, then he sighed and spoke again:
“There it is, gentlemen. Dr. O’Rourke must be stopped, and quickly.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Solo mused aloud. “That’s quite a castle—and pretty well staffed. Unless we try to undermine it. Illya?”
“It would take too long, and would be too chancy anyway, just to get one man. We’ll have to siege it frontally. We might be able to dicker, though.”
“Talk ’em into handing King Mike over, you mean? Sarah, how about that?”
“I doubt if it will do any good,” she confessed. “The Irish are great ones for sticking to a desperate cause. They’d all die rather than give in. At any rate, I know Uncle Mike would. And he’s the key one.”
“Are we sure of that?” Waverly demanded, and Kuryakin nodded.
“I heard him tell Trilli as much, myself. Bits and pieces of his discoveries are written down. I have a notebook of his that I took from a safe, and Sarah knows a little. But the basic tricks of the process are known only to him, and committed to memory. He said so. We’ve got to get him—before he can spill it to anybody else.”
“We’ll make that final, then.” Waverly sighed. “We’ve brought some heavy equipment. Mr. Solo, you’re in charge of the direct operation. Take whatever you think you’ll need. Stevens, you and Haycraft will go along with Mr. Solo. Patterson, I’d like you to hold back for a while.”
“What are you cooking for him?” Solo demanded.
“I’m trying to arrange for a helicopter; it will take a short while. Patterson can take that, along with whatever persuasion he thinks is advisable, and then he can come in and support your ground attack. You’re going to need everything we have. A castle! And it will be dawn in an hour.”
“I think we’ve thought of everything.” Solo scratched his chin. “The big thing is to get there fast, before he has time to suspect anything wrong. Where will you be, sir?” he asked Waverly as the crowd began to filter through the door.
“I shall be at our Limer
ick office, to pull all the strings I can to get that beer blacklisted. The authorities should be with us that far. I’ll take your reports there.”
Less than fifteen minutes later the little pickup was roaring off on its furious way once more. The generator and ultrasonic unit had been cleared from the back to give room for several much more lethal pieces of hardware. Solo drove intently, thinking ahead, trying to plan a strategy. Kuryakin was quietly busy checking his various pieces of gadgetry. There was just the chance he might have to make another foray up that drain-pipe. He hoped not, since it would be a bad place to be trapped, but he intended to be as ready as possible.
Sarah sat between them and tried not to shiver. She knew there was a big black car roaring at their heels, and in it two very competent-looking agents, plus some deadly armament. She had no idea what lay ahead, but guessed it was going to be unpleasant. This nightmare went on for a long time, she thought.
“Watch it now, Steve.” Solo spoke warningly into his transceiver. “We should be in sight of the pile in a minute or two, and they’ll see us just as fast as we see them.”
The acknowledgment came promptly. He slid the unit away and squinted ahead in the gloom. This road ran steadily uphill, the only approach, and Cooraclare commanded the crest. The original builders had chosen well. It was going to be a tough nut to crack. He saw the gray-black bulk of it now against the skyline, and could reconstruct the details from memory. A massive keep-wall ten feet high and three feet thick. One great gateway in easy view of all the windows. A wide courtyard to cross, under the muzzles of shotguns, and possibly other things as well.
The gate came near now: a hundred yards…less…It stood invitingly open. It seemed a bit too inviting. He saw a sudden spit of fire from up there on the crenelated wall of the roof, and then another. A wailstorm of shot screamed off the hood of the truck and hammered on the windshield, followed by a double bang in the distance.
Man From U.N.C.L.E. 05 - The Mad Scientist Affair Page 9
