The Mind-Sweeper Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  One of the men turned and started for the door. Solo leaped back just in time and slid again into the closet. The man came past the closet—and his footsteps stopped. Solo looked around the closet. There was a large laundry hamper filled with soiled towels and white uniforms. He climbed inside quickly and covered himself.

  He heard the door to the closet open. He held a deep breath so that he would make no sound and the towels would not move to his breathing. He heard someone poking around in the closet. Then the man went away and the closet door closed.

  There was a sharp click.

  Solo raised his head from among the towels. The closet was pitch dark now. He climbed out of the towels and went to the door. It was locked and there was no lock inside. The man who had come in had sprung the lock and closed the door, and it operated only from outside. Solo listened at the door.

  He heard low voices and movement. He could not break out while anyone was there. He would be a sitting duck—naked as a baby and without weapons. All he had was his ring. He bent close over the ring and touched a tiny button.

  "Bubba, this is Sonny. Mayday. Come in Bubba. Mayday, Code Two, come in Bubba. Sonny calling Bubba."

  Silence.

  Solo stared at his ring in the dark. He tried again. "Bubba come in. Sonny to Bubba. Mayday."

  Silence that seemed to hang in the dark air of the closet. Solo rubbed his chin. He could use the audible signal—but what if Illya were hiding? He tried once more.

  There was no answer. Solo touched the ring again.

  "Control Central, Sonny reporting. Come in Control Central."

  It was the voice of Waverly himself that answered.

  "Where are you, Mr. Solo? Your signal indicates you are very close to Headquarters."

  "Close, but too far," Solo said dryly. "I'm about five blocks away, locked in a closet."

  "Really, Mr. Solo, this is no time for childishness," Waverly's slow, clipped voice said.

  Solo smiled. The calm, matter-of-fact voice of Waverly had saved many an agent from panic and death. The voice was only a cover. Waverly was serious and concerned about all his agents.

  "Sorry, sir," Solo whispered. "But I can't raise Illya, and I am locked in a closet, and I think I have something."

  "We will try to contact Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly's voice said. "What do you have?"

  "A machine. It's in the health club," and Napoleon Solo described what he had seen. "It looks like this machine somehow gets the data from Forsyte, or anyone else."

  There was a silence. Then Waverly's voice came again almost as calm as ever—but not quite.

  "Mr. Solo, you must get closer to that machine. If possible get it, if not destroy it. We—we have heard vague rumors of such a machine for many years. It was reported during the Korean conflict as something being worked on by a mysterious ex-Nazi scientist. Until now, it was only an impossible rumor. If—"

  Waverly left the sentence hanging. In the closet Solo nodded as if Waverly could see him. Perhaps Waverly could.

  "It is vital, Mr. Solo, you understand? Such a machine in the wrong hands?"

  "I understand, sir. But I can't get out of this closet until the place is deserted. I'd be caught in seconds. Meanwhile, Forsyte and the people here can walk away. If Illya is outside, he should watch."

  There was another tense silence. Then—

  "We cannot raise Mr. Kuryakin either. I am sending men to look for him and watch your building. They will await your signal before they enter the building."

  Solo felt cold. Where was Illya?

  "Illya was right behind me, sir. What does his brain sensor report as his location."

  "It reports nothing, Mr. Solo. His sensor has faded out."

  In the closet Solo did not move. All U.N.C.L.E. agents of first rank now carried tiny sensors implanted. The sensor located them when all other means failed. The sensors would not function from only three causes: over one hundred miles; some device that could block their signal—and death.

  In the closet Napoleon Solo felt alone and suddenly frightened.

  ACT II

  HAWK IN A SPARROW SUIT

  ILLYA KURYAKIN had a dream. He was a child again in his far-off home, riding wildly on a Mongol pony over the great vast spaces of the Steppes. The great forests, and the deserts, and the towering mountains of all of Siberia seemed to flash past under the flying hooves of his horse. He shouted to faceless companions, the abandoned comrades of his Russian youth. He shouted in happy Russian.

  And woke up shouting the Russian words to cold, blank walls.

  For a moment he lay still, not quite out of the dream, and feeling sad. Whenever he dreamed of his youth, his friends were always faceless, as if he carried a guilt for abandoning his homeland and his people.

  Then he was out of the dream and coldly awake. He did not move at once, but looked around him without moving. He was in a small, dark room. Four walls without windows. Stone walls and a dirt floor and a wooden door studded with iron. A stone ceiling very high. The room was like a deep well and he was in the bottom.

  Illya sat up. He could sit up. Neither his hands nor his feet were tied. But he had been stripped, literally, and dressed in some neutral grey trousers and a grey sweater. They had done a good job on him. All he had was the long, thin steel needle under the fake scar on his leg. Even his ring was gone.

  He stood up and began to study the room. The first step was to see if he was being observed. He checked every inch of the walls and ceilings but could locate no hidden cameras, and he was sure that everything was real stone with no one-way mirror for observation. He also found no evidence of a microphone, but that was almost impossible to be sure about.

  Next he studied the floor and walls for any possible secret doors. As far as he could tell the floor was solid earth, and the walls solid stone. The door was heavy oak, iron banded, and apparently locked by a bar on the outside. Illya saw no evidence of any other kind of lock.

  He stood at the door and leaned his ear against it. He could hear nothing. There seemed to be no guard, and no sounds of anyone else. Not even distant sounds. Wherever he was, Illya was buried deep. He turned and once more surveyed the room in which he stood.

  He assumed that by now he would have been missed, but with his radios gone, and buried in this room, they would have a hard time finding him. Unless he could get out somehow and give them some help. They would have traced his sensor, unless he had been taken too far. He had no way of knowing just what time it was, or how long he had been unconscious.

  His bright, deep-set eyes continued to survey the room. He was looking for a flaw, any flaw. He thought of a conversation he had once had with Napoleon. He had insisted that there was no such thing as a prison cell from which a man could not escape without outside help, and without bringing any tools in with him. Solo had not been sure.

  "What a man can build, Napoleon, a man can break out of," Illya had insisted.

  "You mean there has to be a flaw?"

  "There is always a flaw, my playboy buddy," Illya had said.

  "If you can find it, my Russian jailbreaker," Solo had said.

  If you can find it. Yes, that was the problem. And Illya recalled wryly that he had not said how long it might take. It had taken old Monte Cristo a devil of a long time. But Monte Cristo, too, had made it in the end.

  All the while Illya had been thinking; his quick eyes had been searching the walls, the floor, the distant ceiling high above. It was sometimes best to let your eyes look while your brain thought of something else. The eyes, trained, could often see what the confused brain could not.

  And he saw the drain.

  It was set low in the floor far at the rear of the stone prison. Illya crossed to it and got down on his hands and knees. It was a small round drain in a low part of the floor. About four inches in diameter, and held in place by two screws. With the screws out it was a three-inch pipe. It seemed to lead straight down. Yet it had to connect to a main drain somewhere, or turn and run outside
.

  Illya considered the pipe. It was much too narrow for him to crawl down. He could dig, and probably find an eventual escape, but that would be a long job without tools.

  He stood and again toured the room. This time he saw a faint glint. It was in another corner of the floor. He got down and looked closely. Then he began to dig in the dirt. He came up with a steel soup spoon. He looked at it. Probably left by some former prisoner. It reminded him that he was hungry, and that they who had captured him would probably come to feed him at some time.

  Which made the prospect of digging out around the drain pipe just about impossible. It would take so long they would be sure to catch him. With the spoon in his hand he again went slowly around the room. He found nothing. He sat down in the center and felt discouraged. Maybe he had been wrong. Or maybe he simply didn't have enough time.

  Then Mr. Kuryakin found himself staring at the door.

  The heavy wooden door with its iron bands. His dark eyes blinked. He ran his hand through his shock of blond hair. He blinked, and looked hard at the door. There was something about it. He stood up quickly and walked to the door. With the spoon he pried at the wood in the center where four round iron studs protruded.

  The wood was rotten!

  With the spoon he could dig a small hole with little pressure. Around the four iron studs. The wood, just at those points, had rotted from years of moisture and contact with the rusted iron. It would be slow work, but he was sure he could dig around all four studs.

  And he was sure that the studs were the anchors that held the lock-bar on the outside!

  In which case two should be enough. If he could dig out just two of the iron studs. If—

  His gaze fell on the bottom of the door. The wood had rotted at the bottom also. And the cross bracing of iron was held on this side by a heavy spike. He bent. The spike moved in his fingers. It was loose. It would dig through the door much faster than the spoon.

  On his knees Kuryakin dug at the loose spike with his spoon. It was not easy. He dug, pried, used the spoon as a lever. He began to sweat. Every few minutes he stopped to listen. There was no sound outside the door. Not even a distant sound. He dug on.

  Until with a pull that took all his strength and gashed his fingers, the spike came out. He stood up with the spike. It had a sharp point.

  He began to dig the wood out from around the studs at the side of the door farthest from the door jamb.

  He stopped every few minutes to listen.

  TWO

  SOLO LISTENED inside the dark closet. It had been at least fifteen minutes since he had heard a sound. Nothing seemed to move beyond the locked door. He turned and began to move every large object in the closet. He piled the clothes hamper, an old desk, and two metal filing cabinets in a line from the rear wall to the door.

  Braced with his back against the line of furniture, he placed his feet against the door and pushed with all his strength, slowly building up pressure. The door creaked, but did not give. Solo relaxed, breathed deeply, and once more used his whole body like a jack against the door. It creaked again, gave with a faint tearing of wood.

  The third time he braced, and forced his feet against the door, he felt it slip and almost open as the wood tore with a low rasping sound. He stepped to the door and listened. There was no sound. He turned and went to the hamper and found a white health club suit that fitted him. He dressed in it, and went back to the door.

  He listened again. No sound. Not even the humming noise or the noises from the health club below.

  He leaned his full weight against the door, braced his feet on the floor, and pressed steadily and slowly. The door sprung open with a last ripping sound. It swung away. Solo caught it with a quick motion before it banged against the wall, and stood in the dark corridor listening.

  Nothing seemed to move.

  The door to the room above the hot room was still open. He looked in cautiously. The strange machine was still there, but silent and motionless now. Before he went to examine the machine, Solo stepped carefully along the hall to the door he had come up through earlier. He listened at the door. He heard slow noises below, as if the health dub staff were going about the normal business of closing for the night.

  He went back along the corridor to the far end, where a cross corridor intersected. He searched down both wings of the cross corridor and saw nothing. He went back along the dark hallway to the room of the machine.

  In the bare room he looked around. There was nothing in the room but the strange machine with its black tube aimed down into the floor. The machine was still, and the large tape spool was gone.

  Solo studied the machine for a time in the dark, but he could make nothing out of it. It seemed like a combination of tape recorder and computer, with a sealed section in the center with dials and buttons that he did not recognize.

  He got down and examined the long black tube that went down into the floor. It resembled an advanced and complicated X-ray machine. It was slightly warm to his touch, as if shut down only recently, and as if it generated heat, which probably was why it was being used in a hot room.

  The ceiling of the hot room was exposed through the hole in the floor of the room. A perforated ceiling, and Napoleon Solo could just make out parts of the hot room below. There was no doubt that the long black tube was aimed exactly at the deck chair in which Forsyte had been sitting. Which meant that Forsyte had been the target, since it was now certain that he had been purposely maneuvered into that specific chair.

  Solo stood up. Whatever the strange machine was, he was sure that it was how Forsyte transmitted the data—and probably not voluntarily. Solo raised his ring to call help. It was time U.N.C.L.E. moved it.

  "Control—"

  He stopped and froze. He had heard a noise. A soft, sliding noise. It seemed to come from a door to the right in the room. Solo stepped to the door and listened. The sound did not come again. He looked around for a weapon. There was nothing. The sound came again, like a man crawling slowly across the floor.

  Solo opened the door quickly, alert and ready to use his karate-trained hands.

  It was another dark room, but Solo saw what caused the weird noise. The wide, muscular man who had been following Forsyte was crawling weakly across the floor. He looked up and saw Solo. There was blood on his face. Solo stepped to him and bent.

  He heard the step too late. Half turned, Napoleon Solo was hit solid on the head and fell on his face.

  THREE

  ILLYA KURYAKIN listened. There was still no sound of anyone outside the heavy wooden door.

  Illya carefully removed the last iron stud. There was a sliding sound, metal sliding against metal, and then a heavy thud as the crossbar hit the floor outside. A solid thud, but not loud. The floor out side must be dirt, too.

  Illya opened the heavy door and stepped out. The corridor was low and dark and the floor was dirt. There was no one in sight. The iron bar that had locked the door lay on the floor with the iron loop released by the studs still around it. Illya picked it up as a weapon, and started to the left where he saw a faint rectangle of light.

  The rectangle was much closer than he had expected. The light was dimmer. Illya peered out of the open end of the corridor. He saw a large and high room, a cellar. He was in the cellar of some kind of large house. Old garden furniture was piled everywhere. The debris of many years of a large house. He guessed that the room he had been had perhaps been a wine room at one time, which would partly account for the drain.

  The garden furniture, and the nature of the cellar, pointed to a country house somewhere. From the size of the cellar, Illya guessed that the house was some old mansion up in the Hudson Valley probably not too far from the city. Which also meant that this was probably the sub-basement.

  He listened again, heard nothing, and moved out into the open cellar, gripping the iron bar. He crossed quickly with his cat-like silence toward a low stone archway. He went through the archway and saw, as he had expected, a flight of
stone steps leading upward.

  He went up the stairs swiftly and silently. There was a heavy wooden door at the top. It was open. Illya scowled. The security seemed very lax. He pushed open the door slowly, and then flattened back. A man in a black suit sat on a chair a few feet from the door.

  The man was tilted back against the wall, his right side facing Illya, and a gun in his lap. The man was not asleep, but he was not alert. He had not heard Illya open the door.

  Illya peered out and saw that where the man sat was in another corridor that had once been a cellar—the first basement. But it had been converted, and now had darkly paneled walls. An ornate door was at the far end. Illya saw no other guard, and watched the man in the chair yawn and stretch.

  Illya leaped out in the middle of the guard's stretch. The guard heard him, tried to break his stretch and go down for his gun. Illya's iron bar caught him on the side of the head and the man went over, chair and all. Illya took the gun and jumped over him and ran down the corridor to the ornate door.

  This door, too, was not locked. Illya opened it cautiously. There was no guard and a wooden stair case leading up. Illya went up these stairs slowly and carefully. There was no door at the top, but the stairs made a sharp left and emerged into a large, vaulted baronial-style hallway. Or they opened into a smaller and lower passage that led from the baronial hall.

  Now there were sounds and people.

  Illya Kuryakin heard voices, and men walked back and forth across the great hall. Through high windows Illya saw the fading sun of evening. From the position of the sun it was clear that the house faced west. The men who paraded through the vaulted entry hall all carried guns.

  Illya looked straight across from where he stood to the opposite wall of the smaller passage. There was a door that, if he knew the usual layout of mansions such as this, should lead into a back hall. Unseen, he moved silently across the narrow passage and went through the door. It was a back hall.