The Mind-Sweeper Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

It was Danton's voice, his courage back now that he was out of range. He was in the doorway behind them. Black-uniformed THRUSH guards poured across the driveway and the grounds.

  Solo and Illya crashed through the thick bushes, ran across the parklike grounds under the tall oaks in the night. There was a glint of water to the left.

  "The river!" Solo hissed.

  "If we can," Illya panted.

  They ran, and behind them the THRUSH agents pounded in mad pursuit. The night was dark and the THRUSH men were getting in each other's way. Danton's voice could be heard roaring his orders.

  Illya Kuryakin stopped. "Not the river yet. They'll block us. Let's cut down the odds."

  "Take two of them?"

  . "Right."

  The two agents circled back and dropped into the cover of a small ravine. Soon the THRUSH search moved close to them. Two THRUSH men passed above the low ravine. Solo and Illya rose up behind them like wraiths in the night. Both men fell without a sound under the single chops of the U.N.C.L.E. agents.

  Moments later Solo and Illya were moving in the line of search toward the river. Danton was at the other end of the line. The search fanned out until Danton ordered a halt.

  "They've gone to cover. Turn back and don't miss anywhere, you understand!" Danton shouted.

  His men all nodded. Danton's voice was no longer smooth and urbane. The penalty for failure was high in THRUSH.

  The search turned back inland.

  Illya and Solo slid silently into the river and began to swim south.

  ACT III

  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE LATELY?

  THEY EMERGED dripping from the river, a mile and a half south of the massive old mansion on the Hudson shore. They moved warily. Illya Kuryakin motioned Napoleon Solo to silence and crept up from the bank to a paved road that ran near the shore.

  "All clear?" Solo whispered.

  "All clear at the moment," Illya said. "Danton isn't a fool, Napoleon. He'll have figured it out by now, and then he'll fan out along the river."

  "At least we know that THRUSH doesn't know anything about how Forsyte passed the information," Solo said.

  "Do we?"

  "We do," Solo said, and explained the macabre machine that he had seen in the room above the hot room of the Health Club.

  "A machine?" Illya said. "No wonder THRUSH is so interested. They must have an idea, and in their hands such a machine would be murderous."

  Solo was about to answer when both men heard the sound. Cars approached along the river road. They had no headlights. Illya and Solo went across the road quickly and burrowed into the deep bushes.

  Two dark jeeps went past slowly. They were filled with THRUSH men, and in each jeep a sub-leader scanned the river and the shore through infra-red glasses.

  The jeeps passed and vanished. But Illya and Solo did not move. They waited where they were hidden in the bushes. Moments later another car came by, its motor almost soundless in the night. In this car a man scanned the inland side of the road through infra-red binoculars.

  The third car passed on and disappeared into the night.

  "Let's move," Solo said.

  With Illya Kuryakin following, Napoleon Solo walked away from the road toward the lights of a town some distance inland from the river. They avoided the roads, and crossed dark fields in the night. When they were near the town, and were sure that they were clear of THRUSH, Solo bent over his ring.

  "Control Central this is Sonny. Come in Control Central. Sonny and Bubba calling."

  Waverly's voice came calm in the night. "You have located Mr. uh, Kuryakin, I see, Mr. Solo. Good. Where are you?"

  "About thirty miles up the Hudson Valley from New York. We've run into THRUSH."

  "THRUSH, eh?" Waverly's voice said quietly. "I can't say that I'm surprised. The affair in Anagua had their fine touch about it. I gather that you have eluded them?"

  "We were both caught, but we escaped. Danton is running the operation," Solo said.

  "Emil himself? They must place considerable value on the affair," Waverly's imperturbable voice said. "Which I do myself, as I told you, Mr. Solo."

  "Do you want us to go back and tackle THRUSH again?"

  "That can wait, Mr. Solo," Waverly's voice said, and for the first time there was an edge to the voice of the Section-I Chief. "It seems that you may be safe, but I'm afraid no one else is. In addition to Forsyte, another man visited that health club today, gentlemen. He went there early this morning. Unlike all the others, who appear to have noticed nothing amiss, this man reported to his superiors that he was strangely 'groggy,' as he put it, when he left the health club."

  "They must have used the machine, maybe too long," Solo said. "I heard their boss say it could have bad effects."

  "Very probably, Mr. Solo," Waverly said. "But that is not my concern just now. What concerns me is the nature of the man in question. You see, he had the full details of the United States' nuclear detection program for outer space in his head."

  Solo whistled. "The whole detection system?"

  "Precisely," Waverly's voice sail. "You understand that in the wrong hands this top secret system information could mean the control of space. I do not want this data to be passed on—to anyone, especially not to THRUSH. The job has been put into our hands."

  Solo and Illya looked at each other. The outer space nuclear detection program was so secret its very existence was not known out side the immediate military, the White House, and U.N.C.L.E. In the wrong hands—?

  "We don't know where the machine or the men who use it have gone," Solo said. "THRUSH doesn't seem to know either."

  "Mr. Solo," Waverly's dry voice said from the distant room of U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, "never underestimate THRUSH or me. Or yourself, for that matter. You may recall that you reported the machine. Our men were outside the health club. Fortunately, one of our teams noticed some men carrying a bulky object out of the next building and followed them."

  "They must have had a secret passage between the buildings," Solo said.

  "Apparently," Waverly said. "Be that as it may, our team followed them to an electronics plant near Princeton, New Jersey. The plant is named Rand Electronics, Inc. A Mr. Edgar Rand is listed as president. We do not know if Rand is involved, or if his plant is simply being used. But I suggest you find out."

  "Yes sir," Solo said.

  "The team on watch there is Peters and Jenkins. I want you to contact them and assume command of the operation—at once."

  "Yes sir."

  "And Mr. Solo, get that machine."

  "Yes sir."

  The night became silent. Where they crouched on the edge of the village they could hear the sounds of revelry and whisky from a roadhouse in the center of the town. The people of the small town were at their pleasure, their momentary joys, while around them in the dark night a deadly game was being played by men they had never heard of, a game that could mean the end of their lives or their pleasures if it ended the wrong way. And one way or the other they would probably never know that the game had even been played.

  "Well?" Illya said.

  "I guess we go to Princeton."

  "Perhaps we better stop and pick up our equipment first, Napoleon."

  "Peters and Jenkins can supply us," Solo said. "The Rand plant may be only a short stop. From what I heard, they sounded like they were ready for a big move."

  "Then we better move," Illya said.

  The two agents searched the night carefully. THRUSH would not give up easily. It was certain that the black-garbed soldiers were still scouring the countryside for them. Solo and Illya entered the small village silently, like shadows in the night that flitted in and out of the light from the windows of the houses. They moved within the desperately happy noises from the tavern.

  Outside the tavern there was a row of cars. One, parked farther away from the door than most of the cars, still had its keys in the ignition. Illya climbed in behind the wheel. Solo sat beside him. They started the engine and drove
off. Illya turned into a side road that wound through the hills of Palisades Interstate Park. They did not see THRUSH.

  An hour later, as the moon rose high, they crossed the border into New Jersey and headed south and east.

  TWO

  THE PLANT OF Rand Electronics was a long, low, two-story building of yellow brick set in the rich park-like countryside of the Princeton area. Once mainly farmland, and then big estates, the rich area had been caught up with by industry, and now many light, smokeless industries such as Rand Electronics were settling all across the landscape.

  Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo parked their stolen car off the road a quarter of a mile from the plant. They walked cautiously closer. The low building of the plant was bright with lights behind its high cyclone fence and a long row of thick bushes that edged a fine green lawn. Shadows moved inside the main factory wing of the plant.

  "Night shift," Solo said.

  "It doesn't look much like they're carrying on clandestine production of secret machines," Illya said.

  "That's probably what they want us to think."

  "And it could be a trick. The health club people could have been throwing us off by coming here," Illya said.

  "We better find out," Solo said.

  "Peters and Jenkins should be able to tell us," Illya said.

  They moved on with their eyes alert in the night for their fellow agents. They spotted the dark shape of the U.N.C.L.E. car back off the road just outside the drive up to the plant. At the gate of the plant there was an open gate in the fence and a lighted sentry house. All was quiet at the gate, and Solo and Illya approached the car of their fellow agents.

  "All clear, Peters?" Solo said as they neared the dark car.

  "All clear," a muffled voice said.

  Illya, behind Solo, went for the THRUSH machine-gun he still carried. Napoleon Solo dove for the cover of dark bushes.

  The "All clear" of the muffled voice was the wrong signal. All U.N.C.L.E. agents used a recognition signal in answer to the questions of "All clear?" The muffled voice had given the wrong signal.

  The two agents reacted instantly—but too late. Before Illya Kuryakin could bring his gun up, two men sprang from the bushes beside him, their guns already aimed at him.

  Solo, flat in the bushes, looked up at feet and faces that stood over him. The dapper agent got to his feet with his hands up. Illya already stood beside the car, disarmed and watched by the other two men. A fifth man got out of the car. There was no sign of Peters or Jenkins.

  "Sit," one of the five men ordered.

  They sat.

  "Keep your hands in front of you and in sight."

  They placed their hands in their laps in full sight.

  "Report to the Boss," the leader of the men said to one of the other men. "Tell him we have two more U.N.C.L.E. agents. These two we got alive."

  The man went off to report. Illya and Solo glanced at each other. Solo looked up at the leader above him.

  "You killed Peters and Jenkins?" Solo said.

  The man shrugged. "They resisted. You two were smarter."

  Solo and Illya said nothing. They sat with their backs, against the U.N.C.L.E. car, and their hands in sight. The five captors ringed them but did nothing else. The five were clearly waiting.

  What they were waiting for became clear an hour later.

  Nothing had happened at the plant of Rand Electronics. No one went in or out as they all waited in the night. Then the sound of a helicopter filled the night some distance away. The copter seemed to come low, and then there was silence.

  The five captors waited with expectant looks on their grim faces.

  There was noise in the bushes, and three men suddenly seemed to loom up in the night. One man walked ahead of the other two. He came and stood over Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo.

  "Well, gentlemen, that didn't take long."

  Emil Danton smiled down at the two agents, his immaculate grey hair unruffled.

  "You two simply don't seem to be able to keep away from me, now do you?" Danton went on.

  "We enjoy good company," Illya said.

  "But different circumstances," Solo added

  Danton laughed. "Well put. I really can't take any credit for recapturing you, can I? Isn't it lucky that I had a team of my men watching all U.N.C.L.E. agents involved in this affair? They not only led us to Rand Electronics, but to you two. Some days everything just works out nicely."

  "You must live right, Danton," Solo said.

  "I must, at that," the elegant THRUSH leader said. "And much as I'd like to remain and talk with you gentlemen, business calls. I think it's time I had a look inside that plant."

  Danton motioned abruptly to his men. They jumped at his command. One of them, the leader of the five who had captured Illya and Solo, nodded to the two prisoners.

  "Shall we kill them, Boss?"

  Danton rubbed his chin. "Kill them? Not immediately. No, they are safe here, and after we conclude this little episode, they'll make a fine bonus to hand to Council. We can kill them later."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Leave three men to guard them. I suggest that you bind them or handcuff them. They are clever fellows," Danton added.

  Illya and Solo were roughly handcuffed with their hands behind them, and sat back against the car on the ground. Danton took his four men and conferred briefly. Then he turned to Illya and Solo. The THRUSH leader smiled.

  "This should not take long, gentlemen. Then I'll be back, eh?"

  "Don't hurry," Solo said. "We'll wait."

  "Yes, you certainly will," Danton said.

  The immaculately dressed member of THRUSH Council made a sharp gesture to his men, and the five of them moved off in the night, crossed the road, and began to walk toward the gate of Rand Electronics.

  The night became silent.

  Illya and Solo sat on the ground with their hands cuffed behind them. For a time the three guards watched them. Then, as time passed, the guards became bored. They whispered among themselves, and two of them went and sat down and lighted cigarettes. The third continued to watch the handcuffed agents.

  Illya sat against the right front wheel of the U.N.C.L.E. car. Solo was against the front right door. After a time even the guard who was watching them began to pace, turning his back on them from time to time. During one of the periods when his back was turned, Solo touched Illya's foot with his foot.

  Illya nodded. His handcuffed hands began to feel along the rim of the hubcap of the U.N.C.L.E. car. Solo, against the, door, worked his cuffed hands beneath the car just under the door. The guard turned back. Illya and Solo grinned at him. He scowled and looked away. It was bad form for a THRUSH guard to let U.N.C.L.E. agents smile at him.

  The guard turned abruptly and walked away from them, looking at his watch. He continued toward where his two fellow guards were relaxing. Illya Kuryakin gave a quick tug and the hubcap came off behind him. There was a faint metallic sound. Both men froze and watched the guards. The guards did not seem to have heard.

  Illya's deft fingers located the thin strip of foil attached to the wheel inside the hubcap. The handcuffs were just loose enough for him to wrap the foil around the chain in the center. Solo had found the tiny pistol under the car, where it was attached for just such an emergency.

  The three guards were having a laughing argument about who was to watch them.

  In a moment they would be back.

  Illya turned his back toward Solo. Solo turned his back to Illya. The small blond Russian raised his arms away from his body behind him. Solo reached back until their hands touched. Solo's fingers found the thin thread on the foil around Illya's handcuffs and pulled.

  One of the other guards was getting up, ready to come and watch the prisoners.

  The sudden head of the thermite foil seared Illya's wrists. The Russian gritted his teeth. Two seconds later the thermite had melted the chain and his hands were free. He quickly picked up the pistol Napoleon Solo had taken from bene
ath the car, and both men resumed their positions against the car.

  The guard approached. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. He looked at them. It was clear on his face that he detected something wrong, but he was not sure. His gun ready, he came to them.

  "Turn around," the guard commanded.

  Illya pretended to try to turn. Impatiently the guard reached down to turn Illya. The small Russian's hand shot up and grasped the man's neck. With a faint gurgle, the guard collapsed.

  Solo and Illya were up and running in an instant, straight at where the other two guards relaxed under a dark tree. The guards heard them. One of them got his gun up. Illya shot him between the eyes with a single shot. The third guard tried to stand. Solo hammered him with a single blow of his manacled hands. The man dropped without a sound.

  The two agents quickly picked up all weapons. Illya went to the trunk of the car and took out a long length of rope. They bound the two surviving THRUSH men. The one Solo had hit was still unconscious. This done, Illya retrieved another thermite foil from the hub of the wheel. It was a matter of seconds to release Solo. They then took a small picklock from under the rear seat of the U.N.C.L.E. car and removed the cuffs.

  Illya looked at his watch. "Over an hour, Napoleon. Danton's been in there too long."

  "With no sound of a fight," Solo said.

  "Something's wrong," Illya said.

  "Well, let's find out."

  "Not in these clothes," Illya said. "Strip our friends; their suits might just fit. Lucky they're in civilian clothes."

  The two agents changed clothes with the two guards. The suits were good enough. Each took an other pistol from hiding places on the U.N.C.L.E. car—the machine-guns would have been too conspicuous.

  "Let's go," Solo said. "We don't have time to hide."

  The two agents began to walk across the road and up to the gate of the plant.

  THREE

  FIVE MINUTES later Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo walked in the front entrance to Rand Electronics. Just inside the double outer doors they stopped and blinked.

  The entrance lobby of the electronics plant was bright and busy. Corridors led off three sides, and employees seemed to be walking along the corridors as if nothing at all had happened or could happen. Everything looked like business as usual—yet an hour earlier five armed THRUSH men had entered this plant.