The Man from Yesterday Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  Glass crashed, and reviving fresh air swirled in.

  Napoleon Solo’s lungs burned as he leaned against the sill of the window. He sucked in deep draughts of air.

  In a few seconds his legs lost their wobbly feeling. He felt secure enough to turn and start for the corridor, his long-muzzled pistol clutched in his right hand. As he careened back into the hallway, Illya climbed to his feet. He was pale. He swallowed once and nodded to indicate that he was all right.

  Side by side, the agents plunged down the hall in a run that grew faster with each stride. The knockout gas had been diluted by the fresh air pouring in from the suite. Only traces of it curled along the baseboards now. Fear and anger boiled together in Solo’s racing mind as he skidded around the L-bend. Ahead, the doors of a hotel elevator were just closing in on the Thrushmen and Sir Blightstone’s limp body. He and Illya charged forward again, bowling past a matronly woman in a night dress and pin curls standing in the door to a room. She screamed hysterically and beat her thighs while her eyes remained tightly closed. From other rooms other voices rose, some inquiring, some alarmed, some just plain mad.

  “Couple of crazy holdup men, that’s what they are,” a man in pajamas yelled as he lunged out a doorway near the elevators. The man called back into his room, “Call the desk, Hilda. Tell them a---hold on you two!”

  The would-be hero caught Solo’s lapel. That was definitely the wrong thing to do. Solo pivoted neatly, and put a lot of his anger and frustration into his punch. The man dropped, gasping.

  Illya jabbed the man in the ribs. The solid citizen tumbled backwards into his room. His wife began shrieking, adding a soprano note to the contralto of the woman in pin-curlers. Illya’s snarl of rage at being delayed was audible and not very nice.

  Solo stabbed the air with his gun muzzle. “They’re heading up to the roof.”

  “Helicopter waiting, perhaps?’ Illya panted as he followed Solo to the fire stairs on the run.

  Solo hit the steel door with his shoulder. They started the swift climb up the remaining two flights. Solo skidded around a stair two at a time. Because of the clatter of their feet, he was unable to hear the noise of a helicopter, if one were indeed on the roof.

  Finally they reached the top of the last flight. In the dimness of the stairwell Solo hesitated only an instant. Illya crowded up close. Solo rolled his shoulder, hit the door’s panic bar and burst out onto the sunlit roof.

  Twenty-four floors above the street, the roof of the Hotel Transamerica stretched away on either hand like a vast plain. The black composition surface of the roof had begun to give off a faintly tarry smell in the glare of the morning sun. Solo went into a protective crouch as the two agents moved down along one side of the little structure which housed the stairwell. Their shadows flickered out long and thin before them. Traffic honked and clattered far below. Cautiously Solo crept toward the corner of the stairwell house, peered around---

  His mouth filled suddenly with the bitter taste of panic. Sir Blightstone Jurrgens let out an agonized scream.

  “No!” The word ripped from Solo’s throat as he charged forward. But his intuition told him it was already too late.

  Directly ahead rose the mammoth superstructure of the gigantic electric sign which, night or noon, blazed the words Hotel Transamerica at the sky in dazzling white letters twenty feet high. The agents were dashing toward the sign from the rear.

  They had a clear view of the steel criss-crossing which supported the huge electrified letters.

  Up on that jungle-gym of steel were the Thrushmen. They struggled to get back away from the thing which hung, smoking and blackening, by its wrists.

  Coldly, furiously, Solo fired twice. One of the THRUSH agents pitched off the steel and dropped to the roof, the whole left half of his face running blood. In the stiff wind, Sir Blightstone twitched and shrieked low. His hair was smoldering. The Thrushmen had fastened steel cuffs to his wrists, connected the cuffs to the upright of the gigantic electrified letter T in the word Transamerica and let an incredible concentration of electrical voltage rage through the body of the U.N.C.L.E. executive.

  The remaining Thrushmen dropped to the roof. Solo saw that they wore special thick soled boots and heavy insulated gloves.

  Like a man crucified, Sir Blightstone jerked back and forth. The metal cuffs held him fast to the metal of the upright T.

  “The animals,” Illya snarled. “The filthy---“

  The rest was unprintable.

  Illya had just noticed the chain links which had been crudely wrapped around Sir Blightstone’s left leg and then lashed around one of the struts of the sign’s superstructure. Electricity was pouring into Sir Blightstone’s jiggling body through the cuffs and grounding through the chain into the steel.

  “Got to get him down from there!” Solo howled like a man berserk.

  “It’s too late,” Illya shouted back.

  The left foot of the U.N.C.L.E. executive slipped from the steel cross-member on which he had been standing. Sir Blightstone’s other foot followed. The leg-chain yanked him up short, wrenching him grotesquely. His head hung down in an odd way. His eyes were closed. Smoke curled from the point where the metal cuffs were lashed to the upright T, and white sparks like miniature Fourth of July starbursts shot in all directions.

  “He’s dead!” Illya cried into the wind, still struggling to restrain Solo.

  “Get him down. Got to get him down from there---“

  “The THRUSH birds are the ones we want now, Napoleon. Come to your senses!” And with the back of his free hand, he slapped Solo hard in the face.

  Dazed, Napoleon Solo came out of his stupor. He recognized his surroundings. His nose twisted as he inhaled the stench of burning clothing and insulation and human flesh. A cloud flitted past the sun, making a shadow skate on the roof.

  Slowly Solo turned. Here and there across the roof, large aluminum ventilators revolved. Listening, he could catch the muted roar of the cooling plant blowing its exhaust of the hotel’s powerful heating and air at the sky.

  Over his shoulder he saw the doorway to the stairwell still standing open. “They must still be up there,” he whispered.

  Illya Kuryakin jerked his head at the little house-like structure. “You take that side. I’ll come around from the left.”

  Carefully, silently, they stalked toward the stairhouse. Solo felt bitterly ashamed and shaken by his loss of control. But it wasn’t often in an agent’s career that he was personally responsible for the death of a fellow member of U.N.C.L.E.

  If anything, the horrible sight of Sir Blightstone hanging from the upright T, clothing charred and smoldering, sparks shooting around his head like a ghastly halo in the morning sunlight, strengthened Solo’s resolve to catch the men who had killed him. The old, cold professional instinct was sharp in his mind as he crept up on the little stairhouse. Illya disappeared around the other side.

  Sliding along the wall, Solo thought he detected a shadow moving ahead. He watched and was sure. A man moved out from cover of one of the ventilators.

  Because the corner of the stairhouse cut off Solo’s line of vision, he could not see the man. But he saw the man’s shadow jump ahead, slipping toward the edge of the roof.

  Not waiting for Illya, Solo took a wide step to his left. He brought his pistol up. His muscles tensed reflexively. He expected the three remaining Thrushmen to stand their ground, fire back. Solo’s trigger finger whitened.

  Illya burst from cover on the other side of the small structure. He let out a cry of astonishment as Solo’s pistol exploded.

  His aim was good. He caught one of the three running Thrushmen in the left thigh and dropped him. The other two who had been charging toward the low stone balustrade checked, crouched and reached for their fallen comrade. He fired again, missed. Then, Napoleon Solo ran forward, his face a mask of wrath.

  Like trained gymnasts, the two THRUSH agents picked up the third and threw him over the balustrade. Then the Thrushmen clamber
ed up on the balustrade themselves. One half-turned. Solo had a nightmare glimpse of the man’s face---sweat-slicked, hair blowing, a crazed, almost beatific expression on the face. The man’s eyes seemed to stand out like huge dark lanterns. The pupils of those eyes were enlarged gigantically.

  “It’s one of their drugged assault teams!” Illya cried, just as the first Thrushman stepped into space, smiling as he fell.

  The second followed. A thin scream drifted up.

  Napoleon Solo had seen THRUSH suicide agents before. But he’s never gotten accustomed to them. The sight shook him even now. He stumbled to the balustrade and looked down.

  The height was stupefying. The wind whipped at his face. Far below, traffic was disrupted on the street and sidewalks in front of the hotel. On the cement near the main entrance was a huge, reddish smear, like spilled paint.

  Shaking his head, Napoleon Solo turned away. A moment later he looked across the roof to the electric sign.

  A once-human thing hung on the T, blackened now except for a few patches of clothing yet unburned. Supported by the metal wrist cuffs and the leg chain, Sir Blightstone Jurrgens turned slowly as the breeze buffeted him. His face was a parboiled wound. His eyesockets were gelatinous black pits.

  And Napoleon Solo said an angry word, one he seldom used. He then flung his pistol across the roof in a rage.

  Illya put his hand on his friend’s right shoulder. Solo stiffened. His face was ugly with self-loathing. He shook Illya’s hand off and walked away. Down in the street sirens began to caterwaul.

  FOUR

  Alexander Waverly said, in a rather sharp tone, “Mr. Solo, we cannot continue this maudlin exercise in self-pity.”

  Solo didn’t know what to say. He was empty. He’d lost something… Self-respect?... Confidence?

  His clothes were rumpled. His hair hung askew. His eyes were red with fatigue. Horror seemed to crawl across his face like something living.

  “I was assigned to protect him.” Napoleon Solo crashed his fist on the circular conference table. “How do you expect me to feel? Like dancing in the streets?”

  It was very late at night. All day had been spent trying to obtain some lead to the THRUSH attack team, some clue as to where they’d come from and how they’d gotten inside the hotel. As usual, THRUSH had covered its tracks excellently, this time by assigning some of its operatives from the special cadre of fanatic volunteers who received post-hypnotic suggestions instead of verbal orders.

  The U.N.C.L.E. agents had encountered such drug attack teams before. After hypnosis the suicide squad members were injected with a chemical which overrode their wills at critical points. If they ran into danger, for example, the kind from which a normal agent would turn aside, these THRUSH teams did not. By the same token, if they were pursued after a top-priority assignment was completed, they killed themselves. By stalking the killers across the roof of the Hotel Transamerica, Solo and Illya had triggered the suicide impulse.

  The conference room was eerily quiet. Computers whirred softly. The flow of colored light patterns across their faces had diminished. Mr. Waverly confronted Solo sternly. “Yes, Mr. Solo, you were indeed assigned to protect Sir Blightstone. And in that assignment you failed. But---“

  Illya interrupted: I’m as much to blame, sir. Like Napoleon, I noticed the eyes of those men when we passed them in the hotel hallway. The enlarged pupils. It should have occurred to me that---“

  “Will you both stop?”

  Waverly spoke with a loudness unusual for him. His gaze was intense, riveting itself on Solo particularly.

  “This is not the first time an operative of this organization has failed. We will miss Sir Blightstone. I regret his death with a degree of personal emotion neither of you could possibly feel. He was my friend. Nevertheless---“

  Waverly squared his shoulders. “U.N.C.L.E. is an organization of human beings. Perhaps a robot never makes a mistake. A man can. I do thank God, gentlemen, that those of us on this side are men, susceptible to error, and nor drug-ridden morons without emotion. What’s done is done. We can’t bring Jurrgens back. But I repeat what I said to you several times---you did not kill him. THRUSH killed him. You must not blame yourself. What matters now is---“

  A message board on one of the computers flashed with a yellow warning sequence. Mr. Waverly strode toward the board. He picked up a combination mike-headphone set and replied in a low voice.

  Abruptly Waverly stiffened. He continued to talk for a moment longer. Napoleon Solo silently drummed his fingers against the conference table.

  Waverly was right. He shouldn’t let Blightstone’s death hit him that hard. U.N.C.L.E. had recovered from similar disasters before. If you made a mistake, you learned from it and didn’t make it again.

  Why, then, had he taken this so personally? It puzzled him. Because of his intense weariness, he couldn’t think through to the reason why.

  Mr. Waverly turned back from the message board. He was white. His hand shook for the barest part of a moment.

  Illya stepped forward. “What is it, sir?”

  “I was listening to a message picked up in Communications and recorded a moment ago. It came in one of our infrequently used short-wave bands .I---I’ll have the tape played.”

  Illya and Solo exchanged alarmed looks. Alexander Waverly was positively ashen. He snapped over a toggle, spoke into the headset mike, “Mr. Jacques, will you please play the tape for Solo and Kuryakin?”

  There was a tiny scratching in the concealed loudspeakers. Then came a thin, rather raspy voice, an irritating, almost effeminate voice which nevertheless held a raw note of hate.

  “Good evening, Alexander. I trust you know who is speaking. I am recording this so it can be transmitted later tonight from a THRUSH Base. Actually I will be many thousands of miles away from the base when you hear me greet you, so it’s no use putting your tracers to work. I told you that I was dedicated to one thing---death for the three of you who imprisoned me.”

  There was a pause on the tape. Solo could hear the sound of lips being licked, of spittle hissing through teeth as breath was sucked in.

  “This morning Blightstone Jurrgens was the first. Neatly done, wasn’t it? One by one. That was my promise. And one by one it’s going to be. It’s nicely started, Alexander. Perhaps you’ll be next. For the moment, I wish you a pleasant evening.”

  And the obscenely moist voice died in a titter. Silence.

  Illya Kuryakin spoke one word. “Edmonds.”

  “Yes.” Waverly was still white. “Dantez Edmonds. Heaven help us, it has begun.”

  Then Solo knew what had caused his emotional reaction to the death of Sir Blightstone.

  The life of his own chief, Waverly, would be a target soon.

  And Napoleon Solo was desperately afraid that this time, again, he might fail.

  ACT II

  A PLAGUE ON U.N.C.L.E.’s HOUSE

  Fire stained the darkness far below. “There’s another village burning,” said Illya Kuryakin.

  Wearing impeccable tropical whites, Illya sat next to the window of the chartered prop-jet which had whisked them out of Calcutta at sunset, heading north. Solo sat across the aisle, peering out past the port engine. They were the only passengers.

  Solo brooded on the orange smears dropping behind into the jungle’s black. It was seventeen days since the death of Sir Blightstone Jurrgens and in that interval, their job had been routine, uneventful.

  They had guarded Mr. Waverly night and day, in shifts. Nothing had happened. But in that time Solo had lost fourteen pounds, his appetite and his cheerful disposition.

  As he watched the last orange gleams disappear behind the speeding aircraft he said: “According to the cable from old Bal’s niece---what’s her name again?”

  “Indra,” answered Illya. “Indra Bal. Very attractive, I’m told.”

  “She said the plague was spreading. Whole villages being infected, and having to be burned like that one. I was on Channel D at the Calcut
ta airport, and I heard there’s already a threat of rioting in Purjipur’s main cities. Plus that trouble with her neighbor---“

  Solo was referring to a tense international situation which had developed between the Asian state of Purjipur and a neighboring republic. A border dispute, simmering for years, had now flamed into highly vocal threats and counter-threats. The possibility of armed conflict was not out of the question. From this troubled spot---it was Purjipur shooting by under the wings of the plane, black, heavily forested---had come the news only forty-eight hours ago of an outbreak of the type of plague which had killed Plympton.

  The first reports told of bands of monkeys of a type entirely foreign to this part of the world appearing in the huts of sleeping villagers at night. The monkeys bit and clawed. In the hours following, scores of people had begun to die, their faces purple-moist, distorted. Others did not die, but sunk into a coma. Apparently physical stamina determined whether the plague-like disease was instantly fatal.

  Then, less than twelve hours earlier, Indra Bal had cabled that her uncle, Mohandus, had fallen ill at his summer residence and headquarters. Bal had succumbed to a tropical fever not of the same origin as the plague-disease but dangerous none the less. Local doctors seemed to feel that Bal’s illness was natural. He was getting on in years, and drove himself too hard. His illness had come at a bad time for the whole India Purjipur area, and of course Mr. Waverly sensed the possibility of the hand of Dantez Edmonds at work somewhere. Solo and Illya were dispatched at once.

  Now, as the prop-jet dropped through the night toward the landing strip at Bal’s summer residence, Napoleon Solo felt again the mounting sense of fear.

  Was Bal to be Edmonds’ second victim?

  TWO

  The tall, amber skinned man in a long silk coat and turban drove the jeep expertly. He shot it down the concrete runway away from the prop-jet toward a collection of lights just ahead and to the left.

  Solo had piled into the jeep’s front seat. Illya was in the rear with their few pieces of luggage. Moist, warm jungle air streamed over their faces. It was a heavy, unpleasant sort of air that rose steamily from the tropical forest.