The Vanishing Act Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  "There?" Illya said.

  His hand pointed to one of the ruins still left from the second world war. It had been a church, and was now only rubble and jagged walls against the night sky. Solo nodded.

  "By distance from the river, and general location, that should be right above the Cult shelter," Solo agreed.

  "It would be just the place they would pick," Illya said. "I don't imagine anyone in the whole city knows what is down there. And we don't have any time to waste, do we? Napoleon, you better get us a helicopter, and quite fast. I'm getting a signal!"

  In the hands of Illya Kuryakin a miniature gauge had appeared. Paul Dabori looked at the gauge, and at Illya. The gauge had a white dial with black numbers and a black pointer. Closed, it seemed no more than a cigarette lighter, and there was a small receptacle attached that was empty now.

  Illya smiled. "When I tackled Morlock, I managed to plant the sensor on his trouser leg. A radioactive sensor. This gauge picks it up as far away as fifteen miles. You see, we don't know where he is going, so I thought we would probably have to follow him."

  "The gauge is moving!" Dabori said.

  "Yes," Illya said. "Morlock is coming out."

  Bent over his ring transmitter-receiver, Solo called for help. "London Control, this is Sonny. Come in, London Control. Sonny and Bubba, Mayday. Come in, London Control!"

  The ring seemed to speak. "London Control. Go ahead, Sonny."

  "Request helicopter. Repeat. Request helicopter immediately," and Solo gave the location.

  "Helicopter at the river near The End Of The World. Roger, Sonny. Helicopter already in area; will be there in two minutes!"

  "Over and out," Solo said.

  Illya watched his gauge. "He's out!"

  The three men ducked down in the shelter of a doorway. From the ruins of the church across the street four men appeared as if by magic. Three were morlocks, armed and wary, and the fourth was Morlock The Great himself. The four walked quickly to a long black car that suddenly glided down the street.

  Solo pointed upward. "There!"

  The helicopter circled the area, keeping well away until the black car had pulled away and vanished toward the west. Then the helicopter swooped down toward the river. Illya, Solo and Dabori hurried down the dark city street to the river. The helicopter floated on the river.

  "Paul," Illya said to Dabori, "this time you must stay here. Watch the old church until we get back."

  Dabori nodded. The hunchback stepped back and smiled at Illya and Solo as the two agents waded through the mud and swam to the helicopter. Aboard, the helicopter lifted off at once.

  "Where to?" the pilot said.

  Illya looked at his gauge. "West, about fifty miles an hour, make a zigzag and stay ten miles back. I'll guide you."

  "Roger," the pilot said.

  The helicopter swung off to the west across the great city. Illya and Solo bent close over the gauge that tracked Morlock The Great.

  ACT IV: NOT WITH A BANG BUT A SCREAM

  THROUGH THE dark English night the chase continued. Hours had passed and still the dial of Illya's gauge showed Morlock and his men driving west. The car, some ten miles ahead, was driving fast. In the helicopter, by the light of the instrument panel, Solo and Illya bent over a map.

  "He's heading in the general direction of his Salisbury house," Solo said.

  "Where he most surely has another atom bomb shelter," Illya pointed out.

  "But how does he plan to start a war out here?" Solo said.

  "The naval base at Portsmouth?" Illya said.

  "Not near enough."

  "Some installation at Southampton?"

  "Possibly, but—" Solo began.

  "He's turning off!" Illya said, his eyes on his gauge.

  The dial on the gauge indicated that Morlock The Great had turned his car and was not heading sharply north. The pilot swung the helicopter in pursuit.

  The first faint grey of dawn was just tinging the eastern sky when the pilot suddenly spoke.

  "You say he's out to start a war?" the pilot said.

  "We think so," Illya said.

  "Then I think I know where he's going," the pilot said. "on your map. You see the town of Colingbrane?"

  "Yes," Illya said.

  "Well, it won't show on your map, but there's an IRBM missile base at Colingbrane. According to our information, the missiles are hot, are aimed at major Soviet cities!"

  "Then that's it!" Solo said. "How close is Morlock?"

  "A few miles from the town," Illya said, looking at both his gauge and the map.

  "But how does he figure on starting anything?" the pilot said. "Those missiles don't go without a call on the hot line from the top. The base has world-wide communications and missile tracking. They can't be surprised, and they can't fire without clearance from the top. Only the general has control of the firing button."

  "Foolproof?" Illya said, his voice a question.

  "I'd say so," the pilot said.

  "No," Illya said. "Nothing is foolproof, because there are always fools. In everything there must be a human element, no matter how small, and what one human can make almost perfect, another can always destroy by locating the tiniest flaw."

  "Well—" the pilot began.

  "Illya!" Solo warned, pointed down to the gauge in the blond Russian's hand.

  The gauge showed that Morlock had stopped. The helicopter was closing in rapidly.

  "Set down right on top of them!" Illya snapped.

  The two agents prepared their weapons, leaned out the windows of the lowering helicopter. A very faint grey light revealed the black car parked below at the edge of a high fence. Beyond the fence there was nothing but houses and trees and small hills.

  But the trained eyes of Solo and Illya saw that the houses inside the high fences were not houses. The trees were newly planted. The small hills were not hills but mounds covered with sod.

  That was all they had time to see. As the helicopter swooped down, hovered over the car, morlocks came out into the open. Exposed, in the open, and stupidly fearless, they raised their weapons to fire.

  They never fired.

  Illya leaned out of the copter, dropped a small cylinder that exploded with a silent puff. The gas spread incredibly fast, and the morlocks slumped to the earth, asleep.

  "Set us down," Illya said to the pilot.

  The helicopter touched down just outside the fence. The fence, the two agents knew, would be electrified. They took their tools and weapons and turned to run toward the fence.

  Solo instructed the pilot. "They'll have picked you up on their radar. Take off, but stay around. Let them catch you a mile or so away. Don't talk for a half an hour; that should give us time. If it doesn't, it won't matter by then."

  "You are so encouraging, Napoleon," Illya said.

  "A realist, my Russian friend. Come on."

  The helicopter took off. Already they could see two jet fighters approaching high in the dawn sky. Solo and Illya, hidden in the grass, watched as the jets swooped in and forced the copter to land again a mile away.

  Then they moved off along the fence.

  The base was a friendly base, and the soldiers on guard would be their soldiers, but the soldiers would not know this, and the two U.N.C.L.E. agents did not have time to convince them. At the fence they went to work.

  The fence was electrified and wired for alarm. Swiftly they attached special circuit loops to the wires they planned to cut so that no circuit would be broken. Then they shunted off the wires they would cut. Using insulated cutters and gloves, the cut just two wires, and squeezed through without touching the fence again.

  Inside, they moved at a trot through the dawn light. The gauge in Illya's hand led them unerringly across the missile base, among the camouflaged silos, toward wherever Morlock The Great was working his deadly plan.

  Twice they had to shoot guards with their sleep darts. The soldiers fell without a sound and the two agents moved on. The gauge led them di
rectly to what looked like a simple English country house. There were two guards at the door. Illya and Solo crept closer.

  The two guards did not move. They were dead.

  "Morlock," Illya said.

  "Yes, and that means he's inside," Solo said.

  Without saying any more to show their thoughts that even now they could be too late, Illya and Solo entered the building and moved along the dim dawn hallways. They found deserted offices, empty halls, silent rooms.

  "Even at dawn the base should be active," Illya said.

  "Below?" Solo said. "That's where the control would be."

  "And where Morlock is," Illya said, pointing to his gauge.

  They followed the gauge until they located the heavy door that led down into the bowels of the earth where the heart of the missile base would be. The door was locked. It was an extra-heavy door, made of some strong metal. Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo looked at each other.

  "Alloy steel, from the look of it," Solo said.

  "Will our thermite melt it?" Illya said.

  "I don't know. We may have to blow it."

  "Try the thermite. We can't warn Morlock," Illya said.

  Solo pressed the foil to the door over the lock, pulled the metal fuse. The white-hot glow filled the dawn hallway.

  When the foil burned out there was s hole, but the door was still locked.

  "Again," Illya said.

  The second foil glowed in the dim dawn light of the silent corridor. The hole in the alloy steel door grew deeper, wider, and, then, was through. The door swung silently open.

  Illya and solo faced a small antechamber—and a second door!

  "Elevator," Illya said.

  "But there has to be a stair also," Solo said. "They wouldn't have only one way down. Electrical systems can fail."

  "There," Illya pointed to a flat panel that had a button beside it, an emergency stairway.

  This door was much thinner and the thermite bit through with dispatch. The door opened and Illya and Solo plunged quickly down a narrow, winding staircase. At the bottom there was another steel door—but this door was open!

  They went through and found themselves on a kind of balcony—a circular gallery that ran around the walls above a large room. They looked over the edge at the room below.

  The sight that met their eyes made them stare in horror.

  TWO

  MASKS!" ILLYA barked.

  The two agents quickly put on the small gas masks they carried for just such an emergency. Wearing the masks, they peered down at the scene on the floor below.

  The room was the central control of the IRBM missile base. A giant illuminated plastic map covered the far end of the room. The most sophisticated tracking instruments lined the left wall—radar, DEW Line relays, telemetric relays from all across the world. A long table filled the center of the room. A row of telephones was at the right—the red telephone standing out like some malignant monster.

  But it was not the room itself that chilled the U.N.C.L.E. agents. It was the men in the room—the frantic men.

  At the giant map enlisted men with long pointers were tracking the moving lights that indicated the incoming enemy missiles detected by the tracking instruments. The men at the map were wild with excitement, shouting, screaming out the progress of the enemy. A mad, wild excitement mixed with a thick odor of fear.

  At the tracking instruments the operators were equally excited, calling out the blips on the radar, relaying the messages of the reports from across the world. The enemy missiles were pouring in all over the world, were being tracked by the radar in the room, by the radar at other installations, by the Distant Early Warning line far up in Canada. The operators on the machines shouted their progress in mounting panic.

  "A thousand miles!"

  "Nine hundred!"

  "Closing in on England now—five hundred miles!"

  "Closing on Washington!"

  "Four hundred miles!"

  At the long table officers, pale and anxious, sat with their portfolios open, staring at the map and at the radar alternately like the audience at a tennis match.

  There was fear on their faces, but there was also determination. Clear on the faces of all the officers was the absolute determination that, destroyed though they would be, they would do their final duty and take the enemy to destruction with them.

  And at the red telephone there was one man. A man with a greater look of determination on his face than any one else in the madhouse of the room. A man wearing the uniform of a general. A man with his hand on the red telephone.

  A man who, as Illya and Solo watched, heard the telephone ring.

  There was a silence, sudden as death, in the control room.

  The general picked up the red telephone.

  "Yes sir. I know, sir. In five minutes they'll know what they started."

  The general lowered the red telephone and turned to face the room, where the men at the map still followed the progress of the incoming missiles, where the radar men tracked the enemy, where the communications men received the reports from the rest of the world, where officers waited for the command to fire their own missiles.

  Only—

  There were no lights moving on the giant map.

  There were no blips on the radar screens.

  There were no messages on the instruments relaying form other bases.

  The red telephone had not rung.

  In the room, Illya and Solo saw, only the men were active, were moving—the instruments and the map were dark and silent.

  And, unseen in a distant corner, was the small black-cloaked, satanic figure of Morlock The Great!

  In the air was the diabolical powder thrown by the insane magician.

  In the silent room nothing happened, but the men in the room, frantic, saw it all happening in some giant hallucination.

  The general walked to the red button that would fire all his missiles into the heart of the Soviet Union.

  The general took his key from his pocket to unlock the red fire button.

  Illya and Solo saw that there was no time to bring the frantic soldiers from the nightmare. Taking careful aim, they both fired at once.

  The sleep darts struck the general, who gasped once and collapsed on the floor.

  An officer, seeing the general fall, ran forward and reached for the key.

  Solo shot him in the neck. He collapsed, asleep.

  In the room pandemonium broke loose.

  Morlock The Great, crouched in his corner, was cursing, firing at the two agents now. Illya tossed a sleep-gas cylinder, and another. The gas filled the room.

  Men fell all across the room.

  One more officer made a frantic last attempt to unlock the red fire button—and fell to the floor before he could.

  In the room there was now complete silence.

  The men all slept.

  The machines that had been silent were still silent.

  The red fire button was still locked, and the red telephone stood silent.

  Illya and Solo stood up on the balcony. It was over. There would be no atomic war today. But tomorrow?

  "Where is he?" Solo said.

  They both looked to where Morlock The Great had been firing at them. The spot was empty now. Behind the place, in the steel walls, a door stood open, a door into a black hole.

  "The elevator!" Illya cried. "He was standing at the elevator. He got away!"

  "Then we better get him!" Solo said.

  Illya pulled out his tracking gauge. The dial showed that Morlock The Great was above them somewhere, above and moving away.

  The two agents did not wait to explain to the general or his men. That could wait. When the general and his men woke up, the effects of the diabolical powder would have worn off. Then there would be time for explanations.

  Now Illya and Solo had a man to catch. They raced back up the stairs and out into the bright sun of morning.

  THREE

  THE MISSILE base was sti
ll quiet and undisturbed. All the action below had not ruffled the surface. But already men were moving, the day shift getting ready to take over the endless job of doing nothing but wait for a disaster that, if it happened, none would be likely to survive. An endless, terrible job, where a man could not even hope for action since, when action came, it would be the end.

  Illya and Solo moved as swiftly as they could and still remain unseen. They checked the dial on their tracking gauge and saw that Morlock was apparently heading straight back to his car. The magician seemed to need no help, could move unseen wherever he wished. Illya and Solo trotted toward the same spot.

  Then they were seen!

  But the soldiers who converged on them did not fire. It was clear at once that the soldiers knew who they were, and that they were friends.

  A jeep raced up. In it was the helicopter pilot and four officers.

  "The jet guys forced me down. I got a going over, but I finally convinced these boys to call 'Washington direct and we're all cleared. What happened."

  Illya and Solo explained. Two of the officers ran off toward the control center. The other two waited. Illya checked his gauge.

  "He's in his car, moving away fast. Come on; we'll have to borrow the jeep."

  The two officers, armed, the pilot, and Illya and Solo, roared off in the jeep. The gauge of the tracking instrument showed Morlock moving fast, about four miles ahead. They passed where the black car had been. The four morlocks still lay asleep.

  "He's heading for his house," solo said as he looked at the tracking gauge.

  "Then we had better get there with him," Illya said.

  But they did not make it. At the old gothic house five miles from Salisbury the car was parked, but there was no sign of Morlock The Great. Solo looked at Illya.

  "Below? In the shelter?"

  Illya shook his head, studied his dial. "No. The gauge shows that he is over there, to the left about a mile."

  They all turned to look. The land was flat in that direction, and there was nothing in sight. Not a house, not a trace of a human being.

  "The gauge is working. He has to be out there."

  "Let's find out, then," Solo said.

  The five men moved at a fast walk out toward where the gauge said they would find Morlock The Great. When they were still a half a mile from the spot, a small aircraft appeared on the flat land. Its motor was running. Before the five men could run to the spot, the small plane raced down its runway and rose into the air. Illya looked at his gauge. It showed that Morlock was in the plane.