The Man from Yesterday Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  Solo remembered the scene vividly. Lying there in the hospital room in New York, cheeks white as the tile of the walls, Mr. Waverly seemed at rest. But the poisons were coursing through his body. His skin was blotching over wider and wider areas. His stamina was tremendous for a man his age, but Solo doubted that he could hang on much longer.

  P.C. Pfolkerstone broke into the silence. “Mr. Solo? Your friend’s coming round. Let me feel his forehead.”

  A lengthy pause.

  “Splendid! The antibiotic’s taking effect. His fever’s down.” Another pause, and a confusion of voices over scratchy interference. Then the garrulous voiced trader again: “He’s up. He shouldn’t be, but he wants to talk with you---“

  “Napoleon?” That was Illya, hollow-sounding over the distance.

  Alone in the jet’s cabin, Napoleon Solo had the eerie feeling that he was lost in some limbo, conversing with a dead soul. He shook his head. The pressure at his temples continued without letup.

  He reminded himself that he was on the last leg now. He was headed into Purjipur’s capital in a desperate final attempt to locate and stop Dantez Edmonds.

  He already knew the perilous situation in the country over which the jet was ghosting like a moon-washed metal bird. Armies poised at the borders. Plague in the villages and towns. Civil strife spreading. And worse to come, if Edmonds couldn’t be caught, and unmasked, and the hand of Thrush checked.

  Solo dragged himself out of his fatigued lethargy to answer Illya: “I’m here. You were the one I wasn’t sure about.”

  “I feel quite a bit better now, thanks. Mr. Bal’s niece isn’t awake, though. I’m afraid we’ll have to get her to a hospital quickly. Mr. Pfolkerstone and I are trying to work something out. He’s a nice old chap. We got acquainted while I was raving out of my head and trying to radio you the first time---“ Illya still sounded a bit dazed. Solo cut in on him sharply:

  “Illya, Mr. Waverly’s dying.’

  A sharp intake of breath, barely audible over the static. “No change then?”

  “I was in contact with New York just before Pfolkerstone’s radio came back on. No change. The entire organization’s on a twenty-four hour crash alert. The tech people at the Isle de Mal think they can isolate the plague antidote. But whether they can do it in time, that’s the question. They didn’t do any developmental work on the remedy because they had no intention of turning the strain over to U.N.C.L.E. Operations for use.”

  “What do you plan, Napoleon?”

  “We’ll land at the airfield in the capital. It’s in the middle of the riot district but the local station has managed to wheedle a company of militia so we’ll get down okay. The men I’ve got waiting will have trucks. We’ll head into the jungle more or less along the lines you laid down earlier. Try to locate Edmonds’ jungle headquarters and surround---“

  Just then, Napoleon Solo’s neck crawled.

  For the past several moments the door to the flight deck had been open, leaking a thin pencil of light onto the wine colored carpet of the cabin. A strange citrus-like aroma drifted out of the crack in the doorway. With a start Solo realized that someone had come into the cabin and was standing just a few feet away near the bulkhead, listening intently.

  Solo glanced up, trying not to show how startled he was. The man in the shadows spoke: “there won’t be any trouble finding Mr. Edmonds’ headquarters, Solo. None at all.”

  The man’s voice had a flat, impersonal quality. Solo forced a laugh. He shifted in his seat ever so slightly moving his right hand near the pocket where he kept his long-muzzle pistol. He let his pocket communicator fall.

  The cabin air ventilators whistled. The jets echoed their keening. The moon flashed and flared off the oval windows.

  “Time for a stretch, Rickley?” Solo wanted to know.

  “Time for a little more than that. Solo.”

  Solo clicked his tongue. “Um. Is your co-pilot handling the aircraft now?”

  “The automatic pilot is handling the aircraft, Solo,” said the pilot. He was a tall, rangy individual with a saturnine face. Suddenly the man’s right hand shifted forward. “That lemon tang you smell is a little gas capsule.”

  Rickley’s right hand came all the way out into a beam of moonlight. The massive .45 automatic shone deadly-blue and heavy in it.

  Solo shifted again, his right hand dropping closer to his pocket. His communicator hit the carpet and rolled. Like a midget voice muffled inside a box, Illya’s voice grew faint: “Napoleon? Napoleon! Mr. Pfolkerstone, I’m afraid there’s something wrong with---“

  Rickley slid his left foot forward and stamped down on the communicator, smashing it.

  Solo’s face was angry. “You’ve been an U.N.C.L.E. pilot for years.’

  “Seven years to be exact. I was trained and dropped into position by THRUSH a good deal before that.” Rickley smiled. He had rather large, yellowed teeth. “There’s always a time for the double to surface, Solo. That’s why we go to ground in the first place. Mr. Edmonds got a cable from THRUSH Central. They monitored your traffic with Kuryakin in Manhattan before we took off. I was given the order to surface and stop you. I didn’t draw this flight. The regular pilot---

  “Rickley shrugged. “They’ll find him knifed in the hangar, I suppose. No harm done. He was a bachelor.”

  Rickley’s horse teeth shone moist and hideous as he added, “I gave the co-pilot a lethal dose of gas. You won’t get quite that much. We’re diverting to a field in the jungle. Mr. Edmonds will be there to welcome you.”

  Unwinding, Napoleon Solo was out of the aisle seat and charging. His free fist blurred for Rickley’s belly while his other hand fumbled to bring the pistol into position. Rickley took a chance and fired in the pressurized cabin.

  The bullet slammed Solo’s wrist. He let out a cry. The slug went cha-chunk as it plowed into the thick upholstery of one of the nearby seats.

  Blood sprayed from Solo’s wrist, slicking his gun butt. He accidentally dropped the pistol when he was still a foot or so from Rickley. The pilot’s protruding teeth glared in the moonlight filtering through the window as Solo hit out at him.

  The man backed away suddenly, absorbing only a fraction of the power of Solo’s punch. Solo lunged on by, spinning in the aisle. His wrist hurt hellishly where the bullet had nicked bone.

  From behind, Rickley chopped down. The .45 barrel hit like a streak of fire across Solo’s neck. He plowed the carpet on his face.

  He tried to roll over on his back. From high above, grinning, Rickley shoved the .45 into the belt of his flight suit. He pulled a pale gray football-shaped capsule from his pocket, cracked it with his thumb.

  “This’ll keep you from waking up and causing trouble every half hour.”

  Little gray-yellow whorls of gas leaked from cracks in the capsule. Rickley dropped it straight at Solo’s face.

  Rickley covered his mouth with one whipping motion of his hand. He jumped over Solo and backed toward the rear of the compartment. Solo struggled, cursed, tried to sit up. His arms and legs were already soggy. The citrus smell gagged him as the capsule plopped onto his chest and fumed.

  He tried to roll away from it, growing more feeble every second. The odor of lemon grove rose up around him, and drowned him in darkness.

  THREE

  The wrist which had been shot was bandaged. Napoleon Solo could smell the unguent, feel the chafe of the tightly-taped gauze around flesh and bone. He was dizzy. He tried to open his eyes, managed after a moment. His face wrenched into a pattern of horror and disbelief.

  They’d hung him up. By iron manacles whose other ends were fastened to one of the crossbars at the top of this medium-size cage of bamboo in which he was imprisoned. They’d ripped off his shirt and coat, shoes and socks, leaving him only his trousers. Sweat and grime smeared together on his chest.

  The air was humid, stifling. He heard rather than saw the breathing and rustling of the rainforest. He knew he was up-country, in the Purjipur jungle.
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  It was difficult to see much of anything. A powerful spotlight angling in from outside the cage blinded him. He did hear a gnashing of truck gears, the crunch of booted feet on earth, sounds of effort---grunts, curses and a soft undercurrent of commotion, as of vast stirrings out there beyond the glaring periphery of the spotlight.

  “Good evening, Solo. How do you like our little arrangement?”

  Solo’s tongue felt thick. The tips of his toes barely touched the bottom of the cage. Already his shoulder sockets were fiery with pain.

  The voice blurred on, men laughing coarsely somewhere behind it: “This is our Purjipur station. We use this outdoor cage for testing our little beasts. We also incarcerate an occasional reluctant lower-echelon member of THRUSH. Or perhaps you aren’t aware you have companions in there. You do seem a little dazed.”

  Like a white sword dazzling before his eyes, the searchlight was swung so that it shone into the section of the cage directly ahead of him. Solo saw that the cage was divided in half by a vertical steel mesh. On the other side, gibbous shadow-shapes capered and extended their clawed fur hands toward him.

  Monkeys! A pair of black silhouettes. Plague monkeys, there on the other side of the mesh.

  Solo noticed something else. The monkeys were bloated, almost lethargic, except for the questing movements of their forepaws. They scraped their paws against the mesh again and again, trying to reach him.

  One of the creatures turned its head into the spotlight glare. Where its eyes should have been, there were only slime-covered purplish patches of scabrous tissue.

  Solo’s voice came out as dry croaking; “Edmonds?”

  “Of course, my friend. Who else?”

  And with a whip of the spotlight mounted on a three-foot stanchion outside the cage, Edmonds turned the beam around 180 degrees until it pointed at his own face.

  The truck roar continued. Men passed by carrying crates and bales. Most of them snickered or laughed outright at Solo’s predicament. And like an actor, resplendent in his white suit and unblemished white shoes, Dantez Edmonds postured in the circle of light, his little wisp of goatee blowing in the fetid night wind.

  “Rickley nearly botched the job, the dolt,” Edmonds said with a grin. “But we did get you here after all, didn’t we?

  “The monkeys in there with you are some poor devils who now and then succumb completely to the plague-strain. No resistance. We let them die naturally. Or we use them to discipline---but no matter. I suspect everything is clear to you. You U.N.C.L.E. chaps are bright. Have you discovered a way to save Alexander Waverly?” Edmonds threw back his head and guffawed. “I think not.”

  “Is this routine with the cage supposed to make me crawl, Edmonds?”

  “Not at all. It’s a little exhibition for the benefit of my men. As you may be able to see and hear, they are working hard. Our time in Purjipur is finished. The Parliamentary Congress issued a declaration of war against the neighboring state at six this evening. We’re striking the camp and moving on. East Africa next.”

  Edmonds stepped nearer the bars, almost mincing. He mopped his upper lip with the handkerchief from his breast pocket.

  “I told you I’d kill them one by one. I have. But I have done more than that. I have shown THRUSH Central that under my leadership, we can make our final thrust for victory.”

  Dantez Edmonds’ pale white hand gripped the bamboo bar near Napoleon Solo, constricting there. “The plague will be rampant over three quarters of the globe in half a year. Then how will U.N.C.L.E. contain the panic? Answer that!”

  Head bursting with pain, Napoleon Solo couldn’t. The night was turning into a chaos of sounds: men calling to other men to get aboard. Somewhere high up against the misted stars, Solo thought he heard the whistling scream of a squadron of jet fighter planes. The Purjipur air force flashing toward the border to join the war?

  “There’ll be others on the way here,” Solo said. His wounded wrist burned.

  “Of course,” Edmonds answered. “I was not naïve enough to believe that you were the exclusive owner of the information which Mr. Kuryakin provided you over the short wave. But you were the one assigned to lead the attack, Mr. Solo. Your agents are probably still waiting for you in the capitol. Before other groups of U.N.C.L.E. operatives can get here, we’ll be away. We really need only a few hours and your capture has given us that. Transport planes are coming in across Nepal this moment.

  “They’ll land on the strip where Rickley put his stolen plane down. By the time anyone shows up to find your carcass, I’ll be flying over the Red Sea to the next country my little darlings are going to infest for THRUSH.”

  Edmonds tittered, saliva on his lips glaring in the spotlight. Solo didn’t know what to say. Pain tormented him. What was the use of retorting anyway? He knew he was going to die. The best he could do now was to die with some semblance of honor and professional calm.

  A squad of THRUSH guards marched past. Each carried two of the monkey cages.

  “There go the last, I believe,” Edmonds said, inclining his head. A call out of the dark indicated that the last truck was loading. Edmonds sidled near the bamboo again. He reached up toward a handle which connected with a steel rod. The rod ran across the top of the cage. The mesh was held in place by this horizontal rod plus two other vertical ones at either side of the cage.

  “I won’t need to remove more than the top rod, Solo. The mesh will drop sufficiently. The poor infected creatures are mad for food, and they’ll climb across. They’ll bite you where you hang. Stiff upper lip and all that, eh?” Edmonds’ face wrenched. “What sloppy bosh!”

  Very slowly, Napoleon Solo said, “You can go---“

  The final words were drowned out. Edmonds let out a high-pitched, insane squeal of rage. With a jerk he pulled the horizontal rod out of the top of the cage. The upper part of the mesh sagged. The first of the diseased monkeys scrambled up over it, dropped gibbering and chittering at Solo’s feet.

  Off in the darkness Edmond’s screamed with laughter. The infected monkey bared its teeth, the monkey came scrabbling forward, now a foot from Solo’s bare toes.

  Now eight inches.

  Now six.

  With all the strength left in him, Solo constricted his arm muscles and jerked his legs up into a hip position, hard against his chest.

  The monkey’s forepaw batted empty air. The swollen little beast yipped with rage. Its companion came clambering over the mesh. The first monkey batted at Solo’s dangling body again. Tight, tight against his chest, Solo’s leg muscles began to ache.

  In just a matter of seconds the strain on his wrists, particularly the wounded one, became nearly unbearable. The two monkeys kept batting the air, trying to jump up toward him. Only their infected heaviness made it difficult for them, and kept Solo alive.

  Far off in the darkness, a voice cried out in sudden alarm. It sounded like Mr. Chandra. The strain on Solo’s wrists was too great. A foot below, the monkeys swiped at him more and more frantically.

  Boots pounded on the path near the cage. Hanging onto life with what little strength was left to him, Solo realized that some new element had been injected into the hurly-burly of the retreat from the station. Men were running, cursing. Through the steamy dark came a sudden rip of a light machine-gun.

  Over it all, like a knife, was Edmonds’ sudden howl of anger: “It’s that filthy Kuryakin! Over there, behind that tree! Kill him, you mush-gutted imbeciles. Kill him!”

  “He’s not alone,” Mr. Chandra bawled. “There are some men all around---“

  Then pandemonium, as more gunshots burst and the confusion of voices increased. Solo’s heart was thudding with wild, crazy relief.

  He didn’t know how Illya could be here, except under the guidance of the old trader. Pfolkerstone. He only knew he heard the name, and he yelled it with the last burst of power left in his lungs: “Illya? Illya Kuryakin! Somebody! This is Solo. In the cage with the spotlight!”

  Hearing him cry out, th
e monkeys below grew even more angered. Solo’s body was unbending at the waist despite his best efforts. He let out a guttural cry of agony, trying to pull his legs back up once again. But he was too bone weary.

  Slowly, slowly, his knees dropped level with his bare stomach. His feet were actually shaking from the strain. He felt the furry paw of one of the monkeys scrape across the sole of his foot as it lowered toward their white-slavering jaws. There was nothing he could do. His muscles had given out---

  Stuttering, a machine pistol exploded out past the spotlight. There was a dull platt below, then another. Bullets beat into the bodies of the monkeys. They flopped over like grotesque little stuffed toys, dead.

  A scarecrow shadow leaped toward the cage. The man who had done the shooting raced in front of the spotlight. “Napoleon? Napoleon. Is that you?”

  Gingerly Solo unbent, uttering a long sigh as the weight of his body came down ay last on the tips of his toes. A bone creaked and popped at the sudden unbending. He was back in the hanging position, arms still locked in the manacles over his head.

  “It isn’t the daring young man on the you-know-what, Illya. Get me out of here.”

  Illya turned the spotlight so it shone on Solo’s face and upper arms. “Manacles. I don’t see any way to unlock---wait.”

  He ran forward, his weapon cradled in the crook of his arm. Keys jangled. “These must do it.”

  Illya pulled the ring off a small nail driven into the outside of one of the uprights. Quickly he stepped through the bamboo door hinged with rope. His face was pale, unhealthy, the eyes circled with deep purplish rings of fatigue. Solo sucked in deep draughts of air as Illya reached up to fit the key in the left manacle.

  In a moment the steel circlet snapped open. Solo let out a gasp. He rocked all the way down onto the soles of his feet.

  “Blessed relief, as they say in the headache commercials. How the devil did you get here?”

  “With the assistance of my friend the trader, naturally.”