The Pillars of Salt Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  The opening was gone. But on the floor where it had been was a small bowl, wooden, containing some kind of greenish liquid.

  Solo went there and bent, looking at the bowl. He was ravenously hungry. He did not know how long he had been without food. He wet his lips and lifted the bowl to his mouth.

  Warning lights touched his brain. Drugs, he thought. It might be loaded with drugs. Maybe they think I know something, and they put some kind of narcotic in here, like a truth serum.

  Solo flung the bowl from him, across the room, and it hit the concrete floor with a dull thud, spattering the greenish liquid on the green walls.

  * * *

  Solo had lost all track of time. At first, he refused to sleep. He paced the room continually, stopping only to rest for short periods. His nerves had begun to function normally, as had the remainder of his body. But he was afraid to close his eyes, afraid enough of the gas remained in his system to have harmful effects while he slept.

  Finally, the fatigue became too great, and he knew it was impossible for him to remain awake. He lay down on the cot, and sleep covered him like a blanket the instant he shut his eyes. When he awoke, the surging pain in his head was gone. He felt stiff, but otherwise the adverse bodily conditions had disappeared completely. He was greatly relieved. The danger point had been passed, now.

  There was another bowl of the greenish liquid on the floor, but he ignored it, feeling the pangs of hunger in his stomach. He lay on the cot for a while, thinking about Illya and, bitterly, about the girl named Estrellita Valdone. Then he stood and began pacing. There was still the possibility, he knew, of claustrophobia setting in, and of morose melancholia. He had to keep busy, keep doing something, keep his mind from dwelling on his imprisonment.

  He walked. He thought, though for short periods. He exercised his body. He slept, fitfully, for an hour or two. And he fought the growing hunger in his stomach each time a fresh bowl of the greenish liquid came up through the opening in the floor.

  He had been in that single room for three days, though he had no idea it had been that long, when the two men came for him. He was sitting on the cot, resting his legs after walking, when a loud whirring sound came from one of the walls on his right. The sound did not frighten him, as had the one that first day. He looked up.

  The wall had slid open. Outside was a hallway. Two men stood there, each armed with a sub-machine gun and an Army-type automatic at their belts. They were dressed in brown khaki uniforms and black-billed caps. Solo recognized their attire as that worn by THRUSH guards.

  One of the men made a motion with the gun he held in his hands. Solo stood, wetting his lips. They were taking him out of here. Now, he thought, maybe I'll find out where I am. Maybe I'll find out what T.H.R.U.S.H....

  A sudden thought struck him, What if it were too late? What if THRUSH had already launched their offensive? And what if it had succeeded? What if... He forced the questions out of his mind. He couldn't afford to think like that. It wasn't too late. It couldn't be. There was still time. There had to be.

  Solo went out into the hallway. One of the guards prodded him to the left, and they walked in that direction. The guards flanked him. At the end of the hallway was a blank wall that opened to reveal an elevator as they neared.

  They moved inside. Machinery buzzed, and the panel slid shut. They began to rise. Napoleon Solo had the odd feeling that he was in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, ascending to see Mr. Waverly; the electronic panels, the concrete and steel construction, was very similar. There was no doubt about it, Solo thought. This was a major THRUSH fortress.

  The elevator stopped abruptly. The panel slid back, and they stepped out. Solo was not prepared for what he saw. It was a laboratory.

  Not a laboratory by any normal standards, however, it was huge, the size of an auditorium, high-ceilinged. Banks of equipment, huge caldrons, like wine vats, long rows of benches laden with jars, bottles, test tubes and other chemical paraphernalia covered every available inch of space. Overhead, a maze of intricately spiraling glass tubing linked the vats with each other and with various oddly-shaped machines...each with a series of dials, gauges, and round glass bowls at the base...scattered throughout the room. A colorless liquid bubbled, apparently under great heat, inside the tubing and the glass bowls under the machines. To his right, Napoleon Solo saw a large, straight piece of tubing, much larger than the ones overhead, that led from the largest of the vats to a conveyor belt of sorts. It was circular, revolving slowly.

  Three men stood grouped around it, and Solo could see that they were filling five gallon jars through a tap in the tubing. One man operated the tap, and when each jar had been filled with the colorless liquid one of the other men would take it from the revolving belt and put it onto another, short conveyor that disappeared through an opening behind him. The third man replaced the full jars with empty ones.

  This was not only a laboratory, Solo realized; it was a manufacturing plant. The colorless liquid, he guessed. was the chemical which was capable of converting fresh water into crystallized salt. But why were they producing such great quantities of it?

  One of the guards prodded Solo again, and they began to walk across the room, threading their way through the equipment. They passed men in white laboratory smocks, hunched over the benches, checking gauges, scurrying about in an appearance of general disorder. Like they were pressed for time, Solo thought. Like they were trying to meet a deadline. A chill touched his neck. There was only one reason why they would be moving at such pace.

  The room was alive in a cacophony of sound...the liquid bubbling overhead and in the vats, the whirring of machinery, voices raised in an effort to be heard. Solo's head began to ache again; after the time he had spent in the total silence of the single room, the sudden exposure to such din was almost deafening.

  They reached the far end of the room. There was a wide, Plexiglas window there, affording a view into another, much smaller laboratory. It was almost a miniature, scale model of the one in which they stood, replete with everything except the vats, the conveyor belts, and the oddly shaped machines.

  Private lab, Solo thought. And inside there had to be the man who was behind all this, the head of the THRUSH project, the developer of the salt chemical. One of the guards opened a door set beside the Plexiglas window, and they stepped inside.

  The private lab was soundproofed. As soon as the door was shut, the outside noises ceased. There was only the gentle bubbling of liquid in the spiraling tubing that connected two small glass jars at one end.

  A man sat on a high stool before a group of test tubes on the long, single bench that covered the length of the room. He was writing furiously on a piece of yellow paper. He seemed not to have heard them enter. "Dr. Sagine?" one of the guards said.

  The man made no response.

  "Dr. Sagine?" the guard said, louder this time.

  The man looked up irritably. "Yes, yes, what is it? Can't you see I'm busy?"

  "You asked us to bring him down," the guard said, pushing Napoleon Solo forward with his free hand.

  "Well, all right. You've brought him," the man said. "Wait outside."

  "Hadn't we better..."

  "Wait outside, I told you!"

  "Yes, sir."

  The two guards left the room.

  Solo stood looking at the man on the high stool. He felt a faint revulsion.

  The man was the ugliest individual he had ever seen. He was chinless, with a wetly protruding lower lip. He was very short, almost gnome-like, with a huge head and a bushy mop of shoulder length, jaundice-colored hair. His skin was pale, an unhealthy white color, and bushy yellow brows topped bright, gray eyes that reminded Solo of rodent's.

  Sagine was bent over the yellow piece of paper once again. Solo waited. The man finished his writing, swiveled on the stool, and broke the pencil he had been using in half. He threw the two pieces over his shoulder, staring at Solo.

  "MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent, is it?" the man said. "Got you, didn't we? N
erve gas. Breaks most men down. You're a strong one, you are, but we'll break you. Watched you in the cell, you know. Watched you the whole time in there. View plates in the walls. Thought you were going to drink the soup. Did you guess it was drugged? Of course you did. You're a smart man, MR: U.N.C.L.E. agent, but we'll break you. Oh yes, we'll break you."

  Solo stared at the man. He was obviously quite mad. The short staccato speech had been clipped off in a reedy, high-pitched voice. If the man spoke that way, then he must think in the same manner, a thousand confused, whirling thoughts spinning in his mind. Solo shuddered involuntarily, remembering how his own thoughts had spun, how close he had come to madness himself.

  Yes, this man was mad, all right. But he was also very dangerous. Solo would not make the mistake of underrating him.

  He said, "Just who are you?"

  "Who am I? Who am I? Dr. Sagine, that's who. Dr. Mordecai Sagine. The finest chemist in the world. They laughed at me; did you know that? I showed them. Oh, yes, I showed them. They won't laugh now, you know. I developed the Sagine formula. I did it. Took me ten years."

  Solo tried to extract some logical sense from the man's diatribe. He had never heard of Dr. Mordecai Sagine, but the man doubtless was the inventor of the chemical. And as such, he would know what THRUSH was planning to do with it. All else was unimportant now.

  Solo said, "I must admit, it took a brilliant mind to perfect such a process as you have here."

  "You agree, do you?" Dr. Sagine said. "You're intelligent, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent. The rest of them weren't. Fools, all of them."

  "There must be a great number of uses you can put your discovery to," Solo said.

  "Uses, eh? Only one use, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent. The ultimate use. My name will be legend, did you know that? I will be immortalized. THRUSH has promised me. Oh, yes. Dr. Mordecai Sagine."

  "What use will your chemical be put to, Dr. Sagine?" Solo asked softly. A crafty look crept into Dr. Sagine's fevered eyes. "Trying to get information out of me, are you? Well, no matter. Nothing you can do about it. We'll break you like a stick, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. agent."

  Dr. Sagine hopped down off the stool and walked in a shuffling, crab-like step to where a door stood at the far end of the private lab. Solo followed him. Dr. Sagine opened the door, stepped through, turned to see if Napoleon Solo was behind him, and then went to a desk in the middle of the adjoining room and sat down in a chair behind it, folding his arms across his chest.

  "Well?" he said. Solo frowned. "Your office."

  "Look there," Dr. Sagine said, pointing to what appeared to be a blank wall. Then he pressed a button somewhere beneath the desk. The wall slid back, revealing a Plexiglas window much like the one in the laboratory.

  The first thing Solo saw was blue sky. Blue sky, dotted with gently rolling clouds. In the distance, he could see snow-capped mountain peaks. He went to the window quickly, looking out.

  Below him, and to the side, he saw sheer walls of granite. This fortress is hollowed out of solid rock, he thought. Near the top of a mountain. Below him was a precipitous drop of what he guessed must be in excess of a thousand feet. A canyon lay down there, and there was the tiny, winding line of a river that flowed through it. To his left, where the walls of granite curved, receding, he could see the edges of a road that had been carved in the mountainside.

  "Well?" Dr. Sagine said. "What do you see, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent?

  Solo said nothing. The snow-capped mountains in the distance reminded him of something. He had seen them before. Where...

  "Do you see the river down there?" Dr. Sagine said. "Do you?"

  "I see it," Solo said. He was trying to remember.

  "Do you know what river that is?" Dr. Sagine asked him.

  Solo got it then. Pike's Peak. He and Illya had been to Denver once on an assignment, and they had... The river! Of course, there was only one it could be.

  "The Colorado River!" Napoleon Solo said.

  "Yes, yes, the Colorado," Dr. Sagine said. "Quite correct." He laughed maniacally. "Four hours to go. Exactly four hours. Going to put the Sagine formula in that Colorado River down there, you know. Going to turn that river into a frozen bed of rock salt. What do you think of that, MR. U.N.C.L.E. agent?"

  Solo spun it round. The Colorado River, the most important river in the Western United States. If it were crystallized, thousands of fertile acres of agricultural land in Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California that depended on water from the Colorado for irrigation would be reduced to barren wasteland. Electrical power derived from the huge dynamos at Hoover Dam would cease. Hundreds of thousands of people would be without drinking water.

  "Only the first step, you know," Dr. Sagine said. "THRUSH wants a major test. After that, the formula goes into every main body of fresh water in the world. Simultaneously. Oh, yes, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the Nile, The Amazon, the Congo, the Huang. All of them. In the mountains, too. Melting snow. All the fresh water reduced to rock salt. Millions of people at my mercy. I'm the only one who knows the antidote. The only one."

  Spittle flecked Dr. Sagine's deformed lower lip. Solo stared at him, speechless. "Two days," Dr. Sagine said, his mad eyes alive with the fever of his affliction. "Two days to immortality! I'll have my revenge then. Oh. yes, they'll be sorry they laughed at me. THRUSH will see to that. Going to force the world powers to surrender under their terms. Extinction by thirst and famine if they don't. Tidal floods, too. I can do that. Just put in too much of the antidote. Food everything. Two days, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. agent. Two days, and THRUSH and I will rule the world!"

  ACT IV: NO ESCAPE

  The address Estrellita Valdone had given Illya Kuryakin was a rundown warehouse along the East River.

  At nine o'clock, he stood on the deserted street in front of the warehouse. An ice-like, numbing wind blew in across the river, touching his face with chill fingers. It was very dark...there were no street lights...and the silence was deep except for the mournful howl of the wind.

  An alleyway ran alongside of the warehouse to the left, a pit of blackness. The rear entrance, Estrellita had told him. Down the alleyway, up on to the pier.

  She had sounded frightened on the phone. She had information about Napoleon Solo, and had come to New York to find Illya. But there had been two men on the plane, and they had followed her. A cousin of hers owned the warehouse, she said, and she was staying in a small room he had there. She had eluded the two men, but she was afraid to leave the warehouse for fear they would find her. He must come alone, she had said; he must trust no one. And he must make sure he was not followed.

  A nice story, Illya Kuryakin thought as he stood on the dark street. He had passed over it at first, elated over the news that he might soon find out what had happened to Solo and where his friend was. But in the taxi ride over, he had begun to dwell on Estrellita's story, and had found holes in it you could drive the proverbial truck through.

  Why had she come to New York at all? Why hadn't she simply gone to authorities in Mexico? And if there were some other reason then why hadn't she gone to the authorities here?-Why call him? He was supposed to be a mere photographer. What could she expect him to do that the police could not?

  He had a strong feeling of uneasiness. There were things that disturbed him about Estrellita Valdone. She hadn't put in an appearance in Teclaxican the morning after their accident. She and Solo had had a dinner engagement; yet, when Solo had not shown up for it, she had not asked any questions of the hotel clerk as to his whereabouts. Illya had questioned the clerk and knew this for a fact.

  Of course, it was possible that she had seen something that afternoon, after the accident, that had sent her into hiding. It could have been then she learned whatever it was she had to tell Illya. But he had thought of arguments against this; if she knew of Solo's whereabouts, then she must have seen him being taken somewhere. And if she had learned this the afternoon of the accident, then that would logically mean that Solo were still somewhere in Mexico. That being the
case, Illya was right back to his original query. Why had she come to New York?

  He was beginning, as they say, to smell a rat. Or, more correctly, a—THRUSH.

  He debated his next move. He could go back to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, report his suspicions, and lead a raiding party back to the warehouse. But if he did that, there was the possibility that Estrellita would be gone when he returned. And that would leave them where they had started. In a blind alley.

  Too, there was the chance that they had seen him arrive. They might be watching him now, hidden in the shadows. If he tried to leave they could stop him without any trouble. A well-placed bullet in the darkness, and you could scratch one U.N.C.L.E. operative.

  He knew he had to go through with the meeting. He had to take the risk. U.N.C.L.E. was powerless now; they knew nothing of THRUSH's cabal. Inside that warehouse, one way or another, lay the answers to a lot of questions.

  Illya Kuryakin entered the mouth of the alley. The blackness was absolute. He walked carefully, feeling his way along the side of the warehouse. He had gone no more than a few steps when he heard something. He stopped, listening. Quiet, and the howl of the wind. He took another step, his hand on the U.N.C.L.E. special at his side.

  There was a scurrying sound directly in front of him, and a shapeless black form darted past him, brushing his leg. He eased the pressure of his hand on the gun. Cat, he thought. But his body did not relax.

  He reached the end of the alley and stepped up onto a catwalk at the edge of the pier. Below, the black waters of the river churned at the pilings. The sting of the wind was more pronounced here, tugging at his clothing, chilling him. He walked carefully. One good, strong gust of that wind could send him plunging into the icy river. He would not last five minutes in the subzero waters.

  He stepped up on to the pier itself, and went along it to where he found the door Estrellita had said would be there. He lifted his U.N.C.L.E. special from its holster, flicked off the safety, and thrust his right hand and the gun into the pocket of his overcoat. He rapped loudly on the door.