The Genghis Khan Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  “You can prepare the intermediate missiles for immediate operational installation, Dr. Li?” Madame Chu said quietly.

  “Yes,” Dr. Li said simply.

  “Good,” Madame Chu said. “We are very fortunate to have you with us, Dr. Li.”

  “I belong where my country’s destiny lies, Madame,” Dr. Li said. “It is now clear to me where that is.”

  The other two silent men in the room seemed to watch Dr. Li with more than a little suspicion. Illya Kuryakin, rigid and remote as he was supposed to be, a creature without eyes or ears, studied the two other men.

  They were a puzzle. One was General Teng Tu’Sian, a known proponent of Mao and properly here. But the other was General Po Soong Teh, a strong opponent of Mao. What were the two generals doing together here? Watching each other? Unsure of just where Dr. Li would stand, and so each group wanting a man with the Nationalist defector?

  And where did THRUSH fit in? Did anyone in this room know that Dr. Li was not Dr. Li but a THRUSH impostor? Illya did not have time to get an answer.

  “It is always good to have one’s destiny clear,” General Po said drily. “But I suggest we begin. Speed is essential in this matter.”

  “For once we agree,” General Teng said. The Mao-man nodded to the anti-Mao General Po. “Time is our most important factor now. We must impress the Americans with our atomic delivery potential.”

  “And our Russian comrades General?” General Po said.

  “The revisionist Russians need impressing, General,” Teng answered.

  The two generals stared at each other for a moment. Then Po, of the anti-Mao party shrugged. “At least, this is only a matter for experts. I think we can leave it to Dr. Li.”

  “We agree,” Madame Chu snapped.

  With that the conference broke up. Illya followed Dr. Li out of the Spartan office, but his mind was busy. So far it all appeared normal. Dr. Li was the expert, the presence of the two generals seemed to indicate that the matter of the missiles was not open to debate. Yet, where was THRUSH’s interest, and why were the Chinese so concerned with Soviet Missiles to be used in Hanoi?

  Illya was puzzled, but he had little time to think as Dr. Li immediately entered his car and the guards had to enter their truck with the others. The two-car motorcade wound through the dark Peking streets. Illya now began to wonder what had become of the third car, the one with the four unidentified Europeans in it. He had a strong suspicion that the four had some connection with THRUSH.

  Soon, Illya sensed that the car of Dr. Li was returning to the general area of the warehouse where the missiles had been. But they did not stop at the warehouse. Instead the car and truck drove on some two miles farther and pulled up at the edge of the railroad line.

  The two flatcars sat on a siding, the missiles heavily covered and disguised. There were no lights on in the now dark night. The car of Dr. Li stopped, and the truck stopped behind it. The officer ordered all the soldiers off, and stationed them all around the perimeter of the area.

  Suddenly two large flat-car trailer trucks appeared---each with a double trailer and the special cradles and slings Illya Kuryakin recognized at once were for transporting missiles!

  Men appeared from nowhere, and a large crane began to move up the tracks toward the missiles. It was obvious that they were about to transfer the missiles from the railroad cars to the trucks!

  Which could only mean one thing---the Soviet missiles, intended for Hanoi, were not going to Hanoi! The missiles were being diverted.

  Why and where?

  Was this the move THRUSH had been planning?

  Yet the move could not be hidden; the Chinese must be aware of it, a part of it. They were stealing the Soviet missiles!

  At that instant Illya felt the sudden heat in the breast pocket of his uniform jacket. A quick burning sensation.

  He looked around. No one was watching him. A few feet away there was a small railroad storage shack. Illya moved to the shack and crouched behind it.

  He reached into his breast pocket and brought out his pencil. The pencil clip was glowing red with its visual alarm. Illya pressed the clip and whispered into the pencil-radio.

  “Bubba here. Come in Control. Bubba here. Over.”

  A clipped female voice spoke quietly in the Peking night.

  “Hong Kong Control to Bubba. Mayday. Your cover exposed. Repeat, mayday: your cover exposed. Implement alternative cover immediately! Acknowledge.”

  “Bubba affirmative. Cover exposed, implementing alternative cover at once. Report Soviet Missiles being diverted from Hanoi destination and purpose unknown.”

  “Roger, Bubba. Over and out.”

  Illya Kuryakin stared for a moment at the small, silent pencil. How had his cover been blown? Only Waverly, Kalil Singh, and Solo knew. Solo? The small Russian shivered. If they had made Napoleon talk, what had happened to him?

  Thinking of his friend, Illya was almost too late.

  As he stepped out of the cover of the railroad shack, he saw an American-made jeep suddenly come tearing up the road toward the group around Dr. Li. A sixth sense told him that this was danger. The jeep skidded to a halt, and two men in civilian clothes ran up to the small Nationalist defector. Illya Kuryakin knew secret police when he saw them.

  He turned on his heel and began to walk slowly off into the night. He did not run; that would have caught the eyes of the other guards instantly. He walked, and directly ahead, some fifty yards away, a factory complex began.

  Illya studied it as he continued to walk slowly, calmly.

  There were four buildings, mounds of slag, a great litter of steel shapes. It was a steel plant, a place easy to become lost in. All he had to do was reach it and---

  “There! That one!”

  The shout came in harsh, quick Manchu dialect.

  “Halt!’

  Illya continued to walk at a steady pace.

  He did not turn his head or run or unsling his rifle.

  “You! Soldier! Halt, I say!”

  Illya began to slowly trot. Then at a count of one, two, three, he dove to his left, rolled, and came up running an erratic zig-zag pattern.

  The first shots whined over his head as he had fallen.

  The second volley whistled to his right as he zigged left.

  He ran faster, then slower and dropped.

  The third volley kicked dirt behind him, and whined over his head again.

  He heard feet pounding closer behind him. He looked and saw that he had some fifteen yards still to go to reach the first cover of the steel plant.

  He rolled onto his back, unslung his rifle, and fired four quick shots at the running guards. They went down, two hit. In the distance behind them Illya saw Dr. Li staring off toward him. Then he saw the four Europeans---they were running to the left to cut him off, and they no longer seemed like simple observers.

  Illya fired another burst, then leaped up and dashed straight and fast for the first cover.

  He sprawled behind a rustled steel shape just as the next volley slammed into the steel. He rolled, crawled, and then came up running again.

  But now he had cover, and he ran fast from cover to cover in the dark night. He could hear the shouted Chinese of the guards at various points behind him. And he heard the softer, more clever footsteps of the four anonymous Europeans off to the right.

  He stopped and took stock. The night was dark, the factory silent. They would fan out eventually and cover the area. They would call for reinforcements. But that would take time. Illya smiled to himself.

  In the cover of a grotesque rusted steel shape he began to strip. Moments later he stood in the night in complete black. They were coming closer, but they were not yet too close. Illya Kuryakin slipped out, all but invisible in the night now, and moved like a wraith into the nearest building.

  Inside, he moved across the building until he reached the far side. He leaned against the steel wall and listened. He heard nothing.

  Then he heard the step b
ehind him.

  “Ah, Mr. Kuryakin, I believe. I rather expected you would double back this way.”

  The voice spoke in precise English. Illya turned to see the small figure of Dr. Li Po Shue smiling at him with a pistol in his hand. Or whoever was this man in the face of Dr. Li.

  FOUR

  Maxine Trent smiled down at Napoleon Solo. In the grey room the tape recorder still hummed as the tape reels slowly revolved. Maxine Trent gave an abrupt signal by a curt nod of her head.

  “Enough for now. We can get all we want later. The information on Kuryakin must be transferred to Peking at once.”

  “At once,” one of the three men said.

  The man at the recorder stopped the machine and removed the reel. He handed it to the man who had spoken.

  “Take the serum back to the lab,” Maxine ordered.

  Solo sat silently on the metal chair and watched. He felt in perfect shape, not a single ill effect that he could tell. He looked at the reel of tape and realized that he had told a great deal. In his mind he fixed every impression he could remember of how he had felt to inform the laboratory when he returned---if he ever did.

  He watched the two men leave through the section of wall that opened automatically. Maxine saw him watching them.

  “You talked wonderfully, Napoleon,” the beautiful THRUSH leader said. “My! I never really knew that you knew so much. We’ll have some more sessions, of course. I think I’ll send you to the main stronghold. The Ultimate Computer will be very useful in getting everything out of you.”

  “I’ll bet,” Solo said. “Of course, you know that none of it will be of any use to you.”

  “Because they know you’ve talked? Oh no, Napoleon, poor dear. You’ll never escape the main stronghold, and you won’t be missed for a few days. I know how you operate.”

  Solo smiled, but his eyes missed nothing as he watched for a chance, and his mind thought about the main stronghold. No U.N.C.L.E. agent had ever learned where the THRUSH secret main fortress was and lived to tell.

  Maxine Trent laughed. “You and your information are going to be my appointment the council, Napoleon. Think of that. You’re going to help me get ahead.

  “Very comforting,” Solo said.

  Maxine grinned and was about to speak again, when a voice suddenly boomed into the room.

  “Intruders entering the building! Already inside! Our outer alarm belt inoperative!”

  Maxine Trent whirled and stared at a section of the wall. The beautiful woman’s face was contorted with sudden rage.

  “Already in? How? Who is---“

  “U.N.C.L.E. agents,” the voice boomed. “Waverly is with them, leader Trent. They have used some instrument to affect entry and render our outer detection inoperable!”

  Maxine snarled at Solo. “How? How did they find us? You left no trail! We made sure!”

  “We’ve got our little secrets too, Maxine,” Solo said with a grin, but the agent was tensed, ready.

  The voice boomed. “There are too many!”

  “Disengage,” Maxine ordered. “Use emergency plan X!”

  The beautiful THRUSH leader turned to Solo. She nodded to the remaining man in the room. “Kill him.”

  Without another word Maxine walked to the wall and went through. The remaining man drew his pistol and approached Solo. When the man was a few feet away, Solo lunged. The agonizing pain struck his legs and thighs, he fell to the floor.

  But he did not fall alone.

  He had timed his lunge so that the force of the shock from the chair threw him forward against the legs of the man with the gun. The two men went down in a heap. The gun slithered away across the metal floor.

  Solo held on against the pain that surged though his body. His teeth ground and a low moan escaped his lips. But he forced his mind against the pain.

  The man crawled and scrambled for his gun.

  Solo moaned aloud to make the man think that he, Solo, could not move.

  The man reached the pistol and grabbed for it. Napoleon Solo brought his clasped hands down full on the neck of the man.

  The man dropped with one choked cry as his neck broke.

  Solo sat on the floor, gasping against the pain.

  Then, slowly, the pain ebbed and Solo looked around. No one else had come into the room. With Waverly’s attack, they had all run, leaving the observation room behind the grey walls un-manned.

  Solo picked up the pistol and bent down to touch the metal chair by its legs. He touched carefully, but noticed that the bottom of each leg seemed to be insulated with wood. He picked up the metal torture-chair by its leg, and turned to study the grey wall.

  He had noted the exact spot Maxine Trent had inadvertently looked at when she spoke to the unseen man in the observation room. He picked up the chair and hurled it against the wall at that spot.

  There was a shattering of glass and the wall seemed to fall away, leaving a gaping hole that was actually a room.

  Solo vaulted into the room, which was some three feet above the floor of the grey room. Pistol ready, he looked around. The small room, obviously a central communications room, was empty. The various instruments had been smashed. Solo crossed the room to the door and opened it.

  He stood in a corridor with the same grey walls and no doors. This was, then, one of THRUSH’s sub-stations. Solo listened. He heard doors breaking to his left and he heard faint footfalls to his right. He turned right and ran along the empty corridor.

  Soon he heard the sound of water ahead: splashing and the lap-lap-lap of water against a dock. He ran on but more carefully. He rounded a turn in the corridor and saw them.

  There were only five of them, and they were waiting anxiously for a small launch that was just coming to the dock. Solo looked for the two who had left with the tape. Maxine Trent saw him.

  “It’s Napoleon Solo! Get him!”

  Solo fell flat to the floor, half covered by the wall of the corridor. He opened fire, the THRUSH pistol in both hands. Two of the THRUSH men went down at his first volley.

  Their answering fire sang and buzzed along the metal walls of the corridor.

  Solo caught Maxine in his sights. He squeezed the trigger. But an instant before the shot squeezed off, Maxine was gone. Solo blinked. The launch roared into high and heeled far over as it cleared the dock and sped out into the open water of Victoria Harbor.

  Solo jumped up and ran to the end of the dock. Far out he saw the launch. Something was being dragged behind it. Solo looked, peered.

  Maxine!

  The resourceful woman was hanging onto a rope; even as Solo watched, the launch slowed, and Maxine was pulled aboard. Solo grinned. She had seen that he had her dead to rights, and had reacted instantly by dropping into the water and not taking the split second to jump for the launch as he was about to fire!

  Solo looked down at the two men he had shot. They were the two who had been in the grey room with him---he had made sure he got them. He found the roll of tape in the pocket of the first one. As he straightened, he heard the matter-of-fact voice behind him.

  “Well, Mr. Solo, I see you didn’t need our help.”

  Solo grinned at Mr. Waverly. “I needed it. I’m afraid I told them a great deal. The sensor alerted you?”

  “It did. But we’ve taken steps to invalidate anything you revealed,” Waverly said. “I see you recovered the tape. That will make it simpler. Our only problem is Mr. Kuryakin. I’m not sure we reached him in time.”

  “You think they got him?” Solo asked.

  “I don’t know. We reached him,” Waverly said, “but Communications reports he did not call in that he had assumed his second cover role.”

  “He should have,” Solo said frowning.

  “I know,” Waverly said grimly. “I fear, Mr. Solo, that you will have to immediately resume your trip. But a faster method will be needed now. Riskier, but we dare not wait.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “Good,” Waverly said. “I sup
pose they have stripped this place, naturally. But you must now tell me about the drug they used.”

  “And a chair. I liked the chair especially,” Solo said.

  “Everything, Mr. Solo. Now, however, a car is waiting to take you to our special airstrip. Your full instructions will be given in the car. You can dictate your report in the car as you go.”

  “Yes sir,” Solo said.

  Two minutes later Napoleon Solo was in the car and speeding toward the airstrip.

  FIVE

  The converted U-2 aircraft droned through the dark night high above China. In the rear cockpit Solo peered below but he could barely see any lights on the ground. With his high-altitude suit and oxygen mask the cockpit was crowded, and Solo gave up trying to see the ground so far below. He checked his weapons.

  They were above radar, so high it was a hundred to one against the plane being spotted. The rest would be up to Solo. He rehearsed his cover story---a hasty one, but it would have to do.

  He was a Soviet agricultural expert on a brief tour of duty in Hopeh Province. At the moment he was on a short vacation in Peking. He had the papers to prove it, and they would pass a cursory examination. Beyond that he would have to count on the fact that all Russians look alike to the Chinese, and that the present situation in Peking was confused. There had been no time to make a more solid and safe entry.

  “Peking in two minutes. You ready, Solo?”

  The voice of the pilot came over the intercom from the front cockpit of the high-altitude craft.

  “I’m ready,” Solo said.

  “I’ll signal as close as possible to the north suburb, but I’ve got to be sure you’re far enough out to miss the city. It wouldn’t do to float down right in the Forbidden City.”

  “No, it wouldn’t do at all,’ Solo said.

  “After you eject, you have to free fall down to at least twenty-thousand. The lower you can get, the safer you’ll be. If you can hold out until five-thousand you should make it down just about unseen.”

  “Right,” Solo said.

  “Good,” the pilot said. “Ready now, and good luck.”

  Solo checked all gear. He grasped the handles of the ejection seat. He concentrated and forced all considerations from his mind except the jump and free fall to come.