Pulp Fiction | The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel

by Unknown

  Illya said, "Hm. I'd gotten the impression he'd been running things there since just after the Earthquake."

  "Well, he was born there long enough ago to remember it."

  A buzzer sounded softly at Waverly's desk and a light flashed. Napoleon rose to fetch the bundle which had just arrived, and placed it before his chief. "It took them long enough to retrieve King's information packet from the dead files—that request went in over eight minutes ago. Here's all King left behind him when he changed sides."

  "You accept Baldwin's story, then?"

  Napoleon shrugged. "Politically or metaphysically, he changed sides. Here's the identification pairs of the corpse clipped in..." He studied the sheets side by side for a moment, and nodded. "They matched three years ago—they still match. No reason to think it could have been a ringer. Dental chart, retinal pattern, fingerprints, as much of the Bertillion code as was left to measure.... Anyway, here's his top sheet." He read aloud.

  KING, JOSEPH: born 27 May 1929, Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Family name Koenig, anglicized when emigrated in 1935. Education: Stuyvesant H.S., 1947; B.S. Mass. Inst. Tech., 1950; M.S. 1952. Employed by UNCLE as Lab Tech 1952, Research Asst. 1952 in Electronics, Chem. Engineering, Nuclear Sections; Subhead Physics 1954; Physics Chief 1957; Lab Chief 1961. Deceased—Line of Duty, 12 January 1965.

  "He took over as Lab Chief just about the time you got here, Illya, and you worked with him on and off as I recall. How would you describe him? Not physically—mentally. Compare him to Mr. Simpson, for instance, in the same job."

  "Nothing at all alike," said Illya slowly. "King was dedicated, dogged, a methodical worker; he knew practically everything and didn't care about any of it. Simpson is an inspired tinkerer, is aware of everything and fascinated by all of it."

  Waverly nodded. "I've often felt instinct should be allowed to play a larger role in both hiring and advancement. Still, King did some fine work for us. He developed the modulation system for your communicators in 1953, and their powerpacks are derived from his original work in 1960."

  "And then there was the PAR," Illya said. "We never did anything with that after it cooked him."

  "That was the Scrooch Gun—the thing that blew things apart, wasn't it," said Napoleon untechnically.

  "Essentially, yes," said Illya. "The Particle Accelerator Rifle used a series of charged coils to accelerate a mass two or three mil in diameter to a small but significant fraction of the speed of light. Because of the muzzle velocity the effect was about equal to an anti-tank shell at any range you cared to try and the trajectory was the line of sight for all practical purposes. King's only problems were the power supply and reducing the control circuitry to practical dimensions."

  "And a tendency to backfire."

  "Well, there was that. But a specific amount of energy takes a definite amount of shielding that could not be miniaturized without violating some very basic laws of physics. Apparently a stray radio frequency set off a backlash which developed positive feedback in a few dozen cycles and boiled his blood and fused the power coils solid before a safety cutoff could function."

  Napoleon made a face.

  "Well, you were there. It was at Site Delta, during his third run of field tests."

  "I was there," Solo admitted reluctantly. "I'd just put it out of my mind. But since you'd brought it back, I've started wondering. All three of us were watching the whole thing on television monitors. How in the name of John Dickson Carr could King have gotten out of there?"

  "He has a point, sir," said Illya. "Not only was the firing area under constant observation throughout the time, but we were there with the first investigating party no more than three minutes later, and he was still warm. Though under the circumstances..." He paused, and thought better of continuing.

  "That was the subject of some conjecture on my part," said Waverly, "and I have reserved judgment during the search for evidence. The identification pairs are perfect—much of his face had been sloughed but his eyes were undamaged, as were the fingerprints of his left hand. And the identification is more than positive; it is perfect."

  "How much of the Bertillion was checked?"

  "Nearly everything but the face and ears. It didn't check out one hundred percent, but ninety-four is passing when the measurements are four years old."

  "Uh-huh." Napoleon nodded. "I think I'd like to take a look at that test again. We made a film off the videotape, didn't we?"

  Waverly looked at Illya, who shook his head. "Frankly, sir, I haven't the least idea. The project was dropped after the accident, so there was no reason to save much pertaining to it. King never kept more than the most skeletal notes on paper and carried all the essentials in his head. When that got scrambled, there was no way of going into what he might have done wrong."

  "It might still be worth checking. Since we computerized Section Four they save everything but string. I'll put a tracer on it and see what they find."

  He took the gray handset from under the edge of the table and tapped a code number on the keys, then spoke in a clear, precise tone, spacing his words carefully. "Search—Particle, Accelerator, Rifle—cross-index King, Joseph. January, 1965." He raised his glance to Napoleon and Illya, shielded the mouthpiece and explained, "Records Retention is experimenting with a voice-programmed retrieval system. Sometimes it works."

  He dropped his eyes and raised his voice. "Film," he said, and looked up again. "There is only one entry."

  "We'll have to go in there," murmured Solo, and shrugged at Illya's puzzled glance while Waverly addressed the voice-programmed retrieval system as he would a retarded child. "Film. Of final test on P, A, R." He listened a moment and nodded. "Very good. Delivery."

  A few seconds later he said, "Waverly here. Your automated filing cabinet has a film clip which I would like sent to my office. Thank you."

  He replaced the handset and said, "Something which may or may not fit any of the categories I requested is on its way up. A possibility has just come to mind..."

  "A theory?"

  "It is a capital mistake to theorize with insufficient data," Waverly quoted. "The evidence pending should, however, prove sufficient."

  "And if it proves he could not have gotten out alive?"

  Waverly cleared his throat and reached for his pipe. "In that case, Mr. Kuryakin, we reserve judgment. King was—or is—a remarkably clever man, and I do not flatter myself there is no possible trick I could fail to see through."

  An alarm bell shattered the momentary silence of the office, and the three looked at each other with wild surmise until Napoleon said, "It's an alarm bell."

  By that time Waverly had switched the television monitor to the corridor where the signal had originated. An agent was doubled over in the middle of the hall, near a manual alarm box; as they watched he fell to the floor and tried to crawl towards an open door.

  "He's been poisoned," Illya said.

  Before the last word left his lips three more alarms sounded, followed in moments by a clamor of others. The telescreen flashed from one hall to another, to women and men stumbling dizzily, clutching at doorhandles, staggering and falling, gasping with pain.

  "It's in the air!"

  Neck muscles tensed and diaphragms contracted even as their minds realized the symptoms would have already manifested themselves and ordered breathing resumed—though carefully at first.

  "No it's not," said Napoleon. "Look. Nobody in the offices is affected." And indeed figures were visible standing just inside open doorways, though some held their heads and leaned heavily or sat down.

  "Nobody?" said Illya. "I don't know about you, but my head suddenly feels stuffed up—and I had my annual cold in March."

  Napoleon registered sudden concern. "It's my stomach," he said, matter-of-factly. "No, my chest. But it's not getting any worse."

  "It may," said Illya. "At any moment."

  Chapter 2: "My Teeth Itch."

  Napoleon was already on his feet and heading for the door. It zipp
ed open before him, but he paused before venturing past the portal. Then, with Illya just behind him, he stepped cautiously into the deserted hall, filled with the clangor of the alarms. Waverly was at his desk, communication circuits abuzz with questions and generally negative answers.

  "It's not radiation anywhere in the electromagnetic spectrum as far as we can tell," was one hedging answer. "At least nothing we can detect."

  "The air is still testing pure," came another answer, "at least as pure as it ever does considering where we get it."

  "Even if there was somebody invisible running up and down the halls knocking people out, we'd detect him by mass, by body heat, by smell..." said a disconcerted security officer. "There's nobody there—I guarantee that personally!"

  As Napoleon stuck his neck out a wave of nausea swept over him. He clenched his teeth, fixed his eyes on a closed door twenty feet away, and put as much effort as he could summon into a dash for it. The panel zipped open a fraction of a second slow and his right shoulder banged painfully into it as he reeled into the conference room and collapsed into a chair, gasping. Illya followed a second later, twisting his body sideways to miss the returning door and letting it close behind him.

  "The headache's worse," said Napoleon, catching his breath.

  "My teeth itch," said Illya critically. "It's not a gas, it's not radiation...wait a minute. It's not electromagnetic radiation, but look!" He pointed at the inner side of the metal door panel, where cracks were beginning to appear in the painted surface. As they stared, a piece of paint about the size and shape of a postage stamp broke free and fluttered to the floor. Other areas showed signs of letting go their bond to the metal and joining it.

  "It's not an earthquake," said Napoleon doubtfully, "but it has many of the same symptoms. What do you think of infrasonics?"

  "Personally I dislike them. Intellectually, there's something in what you say. It's not like that thirteen-cycle 'fear' tone you ran across in Rumania, though."

  "No, this one is almost audible. I'll bet it's tuned to the width of the corridors here!—they're all the same width and mostly bare-walled. They'd make perfect whaddyacallem."

  "Resonant cavities," said Illya. "That would also create a standing wave in the halls." He looked around the room distractedly. "Let's see if there is one."

  His eye lit on an ashtray, heaped with the fallout of the morning's briefing. Unsteadily he stood up, gripped the dish, and wobbled towards the door, which obediently zipped open before him and stuck halfway. Illya braced himself against the doorframe and pitched the handful of gray powder into the empty hallway. The stuff separated into a cloud of smoke and began to settle out towards the floor. As it settled it drew into two vertical bands of light and gray, dividing the hall into ghostly thirds.

  Illya nodded. "There you are. It's—oh—sixteen or seventeen cycles per second, and I'd hate to guess the amplitude." He coughed and gripped the doorframe tighter as he turned back into the room. "Feel up to a sprint?"

  Napoleon rose painfully to his feet, his joints complaining incoherently at the demand. "Just point me and say go. The elevator?"

  "The elevator. I think I'll know what to look for out in the street, and Del has enough front-line defenses we should be able to handle it. Tell Mr. Waverly what it is, and tell him to stay in his office. It's big enough and well enough damped, he'll be safe enough to coordinate things."

  "Check." Napoleon keyed his pocket transceiver and heard a keen shrilling. "Forget it. They're transmitting a jamming frequency now."

  "Okay. Let's go."

  They charged out the door, aiming bravely for the elevator seventy feet down the hall. Neither of them fell down more than once, but they took two fifteen-second rest stops in open offices. The smaller size of the elevator car lessened the resonant effect, though the main wave was still there.

  Halfway up Napoleon had a thought. "Illya," he said, "what if the unit is underground—in a subway branch tunnel, or the dock area?"

  Illya considered, breathing hard, and then said, "Three to one they're upstairs. Not worth splitting up to cover. A truck is easier to move in and out, and Thrush's key word is mobility. I just hope it's out here on Fifty-Fourth, and not all the way around the block. I don't think I could make it."

  The door slid open and they stepped into Inner Reception Station Three. The clerk was standing, gun in hand, but her head was down and her arm hung limply at her side. She leaned heavily on the desk.

  Napoleon grabbed her as they went by, took the gun from her and pushed her carefully into a chair, where she slumped and gasped. The steel door swung wide and they went through the cloth curtain into the back of Del Floria's. The door was closed but the blinds were up, and Del stood behind an armored partition at the back, watching the shop and the street outside through a one-way mirror with a small control panel at his elbow. He looked up, startled, as they entered.

  "You tell me," he said. "All I get from downstairs is questions."

  "We're checking out Big Bertha," said Napoleon, "and we may have the answer to all our troubles. Tell Mr. Waverly it's a seventeen-cycle infrasonic tuned to the corridors, and get a full-power defense squad up here on the double. If they duck into offices every thirty feet and breathe deeply, most of them can make it. Get it?"

  "Got it."

  "Good," said Illya, removing a nasty-looking piece of ordnance from a place of concealment and busily engaging in fitting different parts of it into place. "Don't pop out there too suddenly—they may have old fashioned things such as rifles, too."

  Del pointed to a cupboard. "Body armor," he said, and turned to the comm channel. "Gimme the boss. Batman and Robin are here, and they say they know where it's at..."

  "I wish he'd save the code for the public," Illya muttered, slipping a bulky jacket and hood over his suit. A nylon fabric of complex weave, it was capable of stopping .30 machine gun slugs at ten yards.

  They paused at the doorway and edged it open. There was a snap near the top of the door and a few splinters fell. "So they do," said Solo. "Let's see how high their angle of fire is."

  Crouching, he grabbed a coat on a hangar and stuck out one shoulder about level with the knob. The door shook and the sound of two bullets impacting made his head ache more. He heard Del behind him saying something about a customer's coat, then Illya was pulling him to his knees. Painfully he forced his vision back into focus.

  "They can't hit the steps or the bottom two feet of the door. Let's go." The two of them dragged the gun like a piece of pipe across the floor and slid it out onto the concrete stoop before crawling after it.

  Illya crept up the six steps towards the sidewalk. "What would they do with innocent by-standers?" he wondered aloud as he peered cautiously down the street.

  "They probably wandered off about the time the infrasonic started," Napoleon said, crouching beside the anti-tank rifle and fitting a massive magazine into place. "I know I would if I had a choice."

  "There we go," the Russian said, changing the subject. "Just up the street. About under where Mr. Waverly's windows would be if they were real windows. And I'm afraid we'll need the armor-piercing. That always hurts my ears."

  "Okay," said Solo. "This time you get to cover your ears while I pull the string. I'm checked out on Bouncing Betty here. What do they look like?"

  "It's the big blue van on the north side of the street with TIDY DIDY on the back in faded pink."

  "You're kidding."

  "No; there are two rifles sticking out of the rear end, and I saw a muzzle flash from one about the time we lost a corner of the railing."

  Napoleon Solo shook his head. "They have absolutely no sense of decency," he said. "Gimme a hand with this."

  A slug plucked at Illya's hood once when he moved incautiously, but in thirty seconds the gun was set up, shielded by the heavy concrete of the steps leading up to the first floor. Illya covered his ears and squinted as Napoleon popped his head up once quickly to check his aim, and then let off a ranging round. A
fan of fire washed lightly over the brick wall next to the door and concussion pummelled his chest. A section of pavement eight feet short of the truck burst into a shower of gravel and smoke, and Illya said, "Elevation five degrees and right just a notch."

  "Not bad for an instinctive point-and-shoot gunner," said Napoleon, cranking in the corrections. "Cover your ears."

  Illya did, and squinted through a crack that had appeared in the cement. The truck rocked visibly as he felt the heat from the backlash, and a black furrow ploughed along the near side of the body, tearing into the cab, which faced away from them.

  "Left just a hair," said Illya coolly as a white scar appeared on the sidewalk six inches from his nose and white powder spurted into the air.

  "Roger Wilcox," said Napoleon. "Hold your ears."

  The gun thundered and leaped on its mount, and Napoleon peered through the shaken air, heedless of cover. Before his flash-dazzled eyes recovered, he heard Illya's voice faintly yelling, "Hit 'em again! Hit 'em again!"

  Taking him at his word, Napoleon steadied the steaming weapon and fired two more rounds, two seconds apart, before a flare of ghastly yellow light filled the entire street. His stunned ears were totally numb, but as his vision cleared of dancing green flecks he saw Illya waving his arm horizontally, palm open and down. He leaned back against the side of the stairwell and waited for his head to return to its normal size.

  He opened his eyes to see twelve men in dark suits pouring out of the entrance to the tailor shop and hurrying past Illya, who pointed them off down the street. He sat up. His ears weren't quite ready to resume operations yet, but his chest felt better.

  He got to his feet and walked carefully over to Illya, who was also showing signs of recovery. Napoleon looked down the street to where the shell of a blue van was charring in the swiftly-dying flame of the explosion. He stared at it, stunned anew, until he gradually became aware of someone saying something behind him. He turned and said, "What?"