by Simon Latter
CHAPTER ONE: TIME WAS AND IS
MANUEL PALAGA was a pirate. Ruthless, efficiently calculating all odds against him, hedging his risks, never overreaching himself, trusting no one person though appearing to trust all. He worked the cargo runs around the islands, extended to the African coast, created a network of spies and sources of information as detailed as those of a modern tax collector.
When Palaga ordered his ships out from their hidden coves and bays, he knew to the last golden piece exactly the value of his intended victims. Few failures are recorded, but he was the only pirate captain ever to give his cutthroat crews as high a reward for failure as for success. But if one ship of his fleet of pirateers seemed to be too often unlucky in its efforts, its captain and officers disappeared, the crew being dispersed to other ships.
Those were not the glamorous days so many writers of history have claimed them to be. Most pirates ended their careers by being hanged and quartered, murdered by their own crews or in drunken orgies ashore. But not Manuel Palaga. Murderer and ruffian he undoubtedly was, and no chivalrous upholder of the rights of women. He is believed to have been married and is on record as admitting paternity of at least twenty-four children between 1790 and 1820, though his legal wife died childless.
For the latter twenty of those thirty years, Palaga was shore-based, which accounts not only for certain obvious sexual activities but also for his good health during a period when other pirate captains were suffering from stretched necks and similar hazards of their then overcrowded profession.
Manuel Palaga did in fact become a pirate of the pirates, but not upon the high seas. He had based himself on the shores of a white-sand bay which had a natural harbour of flame-pink coral. The land was lush in its semi-tropical climate, having abundant fresh fruit, root crops and water. It also had periodic hurricanes, but none worse than the storms Palaga and his ship had survived at sea.
He had been resting his crew, replenishing his ship's stores and counting his own piracy spoils when another pirate ship sailed into the bay. Palaga promptly invited the captain and officers ashore, gave them to understand he had been granted governing rights of this island with its pleasant bays and coves, and charged them harbour dues. When they refused to pay, he accused them of piracy, held a mock court and hanged them all.
His men emptied their ship of its pirated cargo, bound its crew to their own masts and set the ship on fire. But Palaga's men had overlooked a number of kegs of gun powder. When the flames reached below-decks the vessel went up in a million flaring pieces. It also raised a huge curving wall of coral in great chunks, and in so doing cleared a deep channel through which even large ships could enter the bay in safety. Skilled engineers could not have made a more perfect deep-water harbour.
Palaga built wharfs, erected storage sheds, and from 1810 to 1820 created a township, its staple industry based upon trade with all seagoing craft. He sold fresh water, fruit, vegetables and other supplies. He bought pirated goods at his own prices from pirates already harried by a growing number of British, American, French and Spanish patrol ships and obtained contracts to service and supply the patrol ships, selling to them — at high prices — many of the goods stolen from cargo ships they had failed to protect on the high seas. From this trade grew the more solid import-export business which, for fifty years, made the island, for its size, one of the richest in the world.
After a lifetime of pillaging, murder, extortion, rape, arson, blackmail, forgery and the building of a city, Manuel Palaga was peacefully paddling with some of his favourite children when he stepped on a stone fish and died in agony half an hour later.
There was no lack of heirs to his fortune, nor to his leadership, the island being known as "the island of a thousand bastards".
The island is, for that matter, still known by this description, though its people long ago corrected Manuel's oversight and brought in a few priests to restore some until then unobserved moral values. Among the islands, indeed, the name of Palaga is synonymous with bastard, but on the island itself it now represents the creme-de-la-creme of society, with Palaga City the core, the hub, the crown, the whatever-it-is-we've-got-the-most of its own special self.
Palaga is a name on the airline maps, the lush venue of the luxury liners, the homing place for ships sailing under its high-priced flag of convenience, the clearing house for drugs, the exchange mart for diamond and gold smugglers, a free port — and the island claims to possess the most beautiful shoreline in the world. It is, in fact, back in the piracy business, the sole difference being that the victims come to the pirates with a gleam in their eyes, a smile on their lips and cash in their pockets.
Some visitors are sunk without trace. Palaga has a fine hospital service, abounds with luxury clinics specializing in high-cost illnesses whose doctors all cooperate with the police department.
The Palaga police are unique. Other police forces in the world have their quota of regrettable corruption. In Palaga, all the police are corrupt. As most of their customers are also this way inclined, this makes for an amicable understanding between them. The set-up enables inquests to function smoothly and swiftly, and suitable death certificates are issued without messy details.
In the old days, pirates seldom took prisoners unless they could be made to work. Nor does modern Palaga. The "plank" is still walked — back on to a ship or on to an aircraft — quick, slick and no argument. Drunks are sobered at a clinic, the fees being extracted from their wallets or belongings. There are no beggars or shanty hovels housing an illiterate poor, because there are no poor. Visitors must show an exceptionally large sum of cash or deposited credits. This tends to keep down the harpies, prostitutes and husband-hunters because the Palaganians practise full equality of the sexes — money-wise. They have a swelegant sufficiency of their own beautiful women, and visas to lone women are granted only after substantial cash deposits have been made in the Palaga City Bank.
The police in many large cities often allow certain clubs to remain open because they know the underworld makes use of them. It is easier to sweep a net through "usual haunts" and this saves time and manpower in searching a thousand odd hidey-holes. In relation to International Law Enforcement working through its many organizations, Palaga is in the same category. A couple of bombs would blow it off the map; a combined boycott or world-enforced sanctions might kill it; an outlawing of its currency would strangle most of its activities. But it is an island of beauty in the sun. Many a jaded police chief has enjoyed its hospitality while connecting up the activities of a crime syndicate. Politicians use it as neutral territory for close-huddled conferences. Spy-catchers and spy-matchers follow tracks through Palaga with the regularity of commuters. It is the sun and fun run, the seek and hide glide, the X-marks-the spot lot, the sublime clime for the climb sublime.
Flows the aquamarine sea calm-rippled between the flaming coral arms, shave-foam breakers on the silver sands, back-dropped by endless-varied colour, stepping over sculptured, awning-eyed hotels, emerald lawns fronting apartment houses with flower-rich fountain-played sun terraces. Houses of all styles, chateau, hacienda, ranch, baroque and arabesque, mosque and minaret — you name it, we've got it — dapple the olive hills, flared windows vying with the brilliant stars, throwing a rainbow halo up to the feet of Climb Sublime.
Here are the feet also of Manuel Palaga, the pirate founder of Palaga, whose steel and stone figure rises two hundred feet from the top of Climb Sublime. By taxi it costs two hundred dollars to reach the observation gardens around these precious feet. Another two hundred dollars to travel in the lift to the terraces upon his shoulders. All the taxis are owned by families bearing the
Palaga name. No private cars are allowed.
It is more expensive by hearse. The heels of Manuel Palaga house the crematorium. The cheapest ride costs five thousand dollars. But the send-off is terrific. They say there are things in the head of Manuel Palaga. Things that whirr and whine and click, and at night the eyes glow and tiny sparks of blue lightning dance a halo around the pirate's head.
Across the plinth of this massive monument to piracy, a plinth the size of a city square, in great gold letters is the motto of the House of Palaga — a free translation of which is: "Time was and is."
Many have conjectured as to its true meaning, for the words themselves do not make much sense unless put into some related context. But the present heads of the Palaga family — quiet-living, enormously rich, and as poker-faced as any of their croupiers in the island's many gambling casinos — merely smile, shrug their elegantly garbed shoulders and build another vault in the bowels of the mountain behind the city to hold the millions of currency pouring into their coffers from visitors from the outside world.
There is no income tax on Palaga — nor does their language contain the word tax — no civil servants. All public utilities are owned by a branch of the Palaga family. It seems they have evolved the ideal way of governing without government, so platoons of non-productive, graft-ridden compilers of forms, licenses, permits and other bunff which choke the arteries of other nations do not exist on Palaga.
The children are educated primarily in small classes, and all those bearing the name Palaga are sent to leading schools in America, Europe, Russia, China and India. Families of non-Palaga names and descent are subjected to birth control of an unusual nature. If they produce more than two children, the whole family is immediately "exported" to any country they may choose and given sufficient capital to make them welcome there. Likewise, any non-Palaganian over the age of sixty is "exported" as a pensioner to the West Indies or the Bahamas or even to Florida, indeed, to any place they like, and their generous pension makes them welcome anywhere.
Thus there is no over-population, and any under-population threat is swiftly dealt with by the virile Palagas whose otherwise illegitimate children are given their name, the mother given the choice of being sterilized and having a good life on the island or becoming an "export".
There are many other facets of Palaganian society which may seem strange — even barbarous — to the outsider. But all of these, if assessed calmly, can be seen to be very similar to the type of society originally maintained by the pirate Manuel Palaga.
All who enter the several harbours of Palaga have had to pay a fee before setting sail from their home port. Chance callers are stopped by gunboats which constantly patrol Palaga waters. Not only a pirate policy but also a highwayman policy of "Stand and deliver" is strictly enforced.
There are many other islands within a few days' sailing. Most of these do not have airports, and the helicopter is not encouraged on Palaga which, due to its strategic position, is a main supplier to all the other islands up to two hundred miles distant. Some small cargo-passenger boats are allowed to use the trade harbours — on the other side of the island from the glorious flame-coral harbour and bay below Palaga City — for reasons which suit the Palagas as a family but which are not disclosed to outsiders. Ships carrying the Palaganian flag of convenience are not encouraged to clutter up the Palaganian ports.
The pleasure-seeking visitor to Palaga, once issued with a visa based upon a cash deposit or the purchase of Palaganian currency, is assured of the best of luxury, attention, courtesy and facility, plus the beauty of a climate unequalled anywhere in the world. Palaga also guarantees the safety of their person and property. No doors need be locked. Purses can be left around on beaches, in bars, clubs and hotels.
Every Palaganian is a self-appointed policeman.
Some international crooks, drooling over thoughts of lush pickings, got themselves a cash stake enabling them to get on the island, and then went to work. All died from various legitimate causes, which were made clear on a Palaganian doctor's certificate, finishing up in the heels of Manuel Palaga. Their bone meal now enriches the fields and vineyards beyond the mountain.
Business visitors have to be sponsored by at least two of the senior family of Palaga, themselves great travellers who go in the guise of trade commissions to arrange imports and other Palaga business. But those who are approved, such as architects, engineers and others of that kind, do their business in such luxury and with such lavish facilities that life back home leaves them dissatisfied for months after their return.
This detailed preamble on Palaga is very necessary because unless one understands at least these facts, one cannot appreciate the island's importance to certain world undercover organizations. Palaga attends to minute detail yet does not concern itself with small matters, small people or small causes. It doesn't want boatloads of retired teachers "doing" the islands on economy cruises, nor itinerate artists seeking local colour or students hiking their way around the world. If any do slip through, they run out of money fast and are thereupon whisked over the mountain and dumped on a cargo boat before they can even send a postcard home. In fact, mail is vetted meticulously by the most modern methods, and as all languages can be understood, owing to the international schooling system, Palaga sees all and knows about what is written in letters to and from the island.
U.N.C.L.E. had to learn all these details, and many more besides, and then relay them to April Dancer, Mark Slate and others, before they dared risk sending these agents to Palaga to probe rumours and disturbing yet apparently unconnected facts which had filtered through to New York headquarters from this part of the world.
It had been tough for April Dancer to reach her present status as an U.N.C.L.E. agent. A long time learning and a time testing and being tested. And, after all that, the realization that each assignment brought its own high-pressure spate of learning. The lessons were endless, the knowledge never really sufficient in a world where knowledge and preparedness ran a perpetual race — each destroying the other so that every new case was a starter on a fresh track.
Only the hidden adversary remained the same — the vast, wealthy and powerful THRUSH organization. Yet its agents were constantly changing, as were its areas of endeavour. Only its aim could be accepted always as unchanged — the aim of world domination by any means whatsoever. So in each case the objective was known. It was the means which had to be discovered, then remorselessly destroyed.
"Palaga, Miss Dancer — you know it?" Mr. Waverly had said.
"I know of it, sir. A lush playground for the wealthy. I've heard it called a paradise — an Eden."
"Quite so. And you, if I may say so, would make an excellent Eve within its exotic boundaries. It is, however, very much more than just a paradise." Mr. Waverly had passed her a thick file. "Read, mark, learn, inwardly digest, then read again and yet again. The file covers not only Palaga but also the islands up to two hundred miles south and east of it. You have twenty hours to become word perfect and to pull in fittings with our costume department, for you will require an extensive wardrobe. Also more money than you have ever before been allocated on one case. A fact that is driving the accounts department into a state of mild apoplexy. Let us reassure them by the brilliance of your assimilated knowledge."
"Why can't I be lush and lovely?" Mark Slate had exclaimed.
"Oh, but you are — in your own horrible way," April had said.
"Jealousy, Mr. Slate, will get you no place," Mr. Waverly had reproved.
"Except on some stinking cargo boat. Oh well — what's money and beauty and lush living compared with virility and superb intelligence?" Mark had grinned at April. "Wanna swop?"
"No swops." Mr. Waverly had dismissed them both. "Go, you, too — and learn likewise."
So they had studied their required knowledge, separately, then had joined to merge knowledge with intent, and intent with procedure, and procedure with objective. All of which brought April Dancer — lushly l
ovely, exquisitely apparelled, with a visitor's deposit of cash money large enough to choke two donkeys — to a sun bed beneath a flared umbrella on the whiter-than-white sands of Palaga Bay.
Complete, of course, with escort. One Orlando Four Palaga. You judged the society rating of any Palaga family by their middle name, which always was a number. When you got down to the twenties you were nearing the menial grades of the Palagas. But even these were important people, and all genuine visitors could trust them. Give an Orlando Twenty-six Palaga your wallet and say: "Hold this while I have a swim," and he would be holding it when you returned. He also would be holding a long, cool drink for which he had paid. And not a postage stamp would be missing from your wallet. Put a hair between the folds, and you would find it intact, the wallet unopened even to satisfy human curiosity.
The Palagas didn't need to use such fiddling tricks. And anyway, the maids, porters, waiters, interpreters, escorts or receptionists in your hotel or apartment house already had, in their own way, searched, recorded and photographed everything you possessed. Such work was all kept in the family, anyway. Why make it more obvious and spoil your holiday?
Which made it difficult if the normal contents of your purse and vanity case included U.N.C.L.E. communicator, special radios and miniature TV contacts built into powder compacts, or an eyelash container, or tooth-paste tubes; and lipsticks that served as knock-out injectors, nail files that could open locks or double as safe combination calculators; not forgetting the most effective U.N.C.L.E. sleep-gun, the golden charm bangle full of spare bugging devices, a comb that could be turned into a stiletto, and sundry buttons and brooches to fit on suits or gowns that recorded or relayed voices to a companion up to a mile away.
Packets of chewing gum, too, were innocent enough unless the searchers knew that by chewing them for a certain time they became a saliva-activated explosive of sufficient power to wreck a room or vehicle. There were also diamond earrings that could cut plate-glass, a cigarette lighter that could double as a steel-cutting torch, and other items not normally included in the holiday gear of wealthy lush-lovely young ladies.
