The Dolls of Death Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  The ambulance had brought him to Manhattan headquarters less than two hours ago. It was beginning to feel like two years. The THRUSH leader on the table obviously had a whole battery of built-in psychic blocks, carefully implanted by his superiors. Under a normal dosage of the drug running in the tubes, he had struggled against the straps binding him. Though totally unconscious and therefore theoretically receptive to the drug, he had not spoken a syllable.

  Bending near the man’s ear, Illya said, “What is your name? You will answer me. Your name.”

  Tense silence. The man rolled his head from side to side again. He clenched his teeth, sweating.

  “Are you sure he is completely unconscious, doctor?” Illya asked in an aside.

  “He’s at the fourth level at least,” came the reply. “They’ve blocked him well.”

  Illya Kuryakin leaned near the ear. “Give us your name.”

  The man’s lips twitched. He made a guttural sound. Suddenly he slammed his head from side to side, crying out in agony. Illya waited.

  At last the man’s chest stopped heaving. A waxy tranquility settled over his face. The man gave a long sigh. The words were whispered.

  “William---Constantine.”

  “Your assignment, please, Constantine.” Illya mopped his face. “Your assignment.”

  “Greater---Philadelphia.”

  Out of the darkness the doctor spoke, sounding relieved: “The blocks are down.”

  Illya asked several routine questions to make certain. Everything checked out. The man’s answers seemed coherent and correct.

  Finally Illya asked: “Was the toy factory a THRUSH station?”

  “Y---yes.”

  “Was an U.N.C.L.E. agent brought there today as a prisoner?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I---can’t remember.”

  “Was his name Napoleon Solo?”

  “I think so.”

  “What happened to him? Did you kill him before you burned the factory?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was taken.”

  “Taken where?”

  “To headquarters, aboard---the SLAV.”

  “What is the Slav?”

  “Strategic logistics and attack vehicle.”

  To Mr. Waverly Illya whispered. “That could be their name for the saucer.” To the man on the table: “Does the SLAV fly very fast?”

  “Yes. Very fast.”

  “And it looks like what people think of as a flying saucer?”

  The sweating mask of a face hardly stirred now. “That’s right.”

  “Where was this aircraft going? Where is it headquartered?”

  Again the man’s mouth wrenched. He arched his back and shrieked once from the depths of his unconsciousness. Mr. Waverly advanced a step, harsh-eyed with concern.

  The Thrushman named Constantine fell back on the table, panting. His eyes were still closed. Illya clenched his fist.

  If this agent had not been high enough in the echelons of THRUSH to be privy to the information, they had no hope.

  Illya Kuryakin repeated the question: “You will tell me, Constantine. Where is the aircraft headquartered?”

  Like a rattle of death the words came out: “Island. Pacific. Lobba-Lobba. Lobba-Lobba.”

  Mr. Alexander Waverly snapped his fingers. Someone ran for maps.

  Minutes later, Mr. Waverly rolled up the map of Polynesia which he and Illya had been examining. In a low, strained voice he said: “Bon voyage, Mr. Kuryakin.”

  Four

  “Get off my boat, you bloody rotten mucker! I’ll have no drunken beachcombers stowing away with me!”

  And with considerable thespic fervor, Captain Rollo Whitewoole, master of the rusty old island freighter Melbourne Maid, delivered a kick to Illya Kuryakin’s backside.

  Howling like an inebriate just awakened from a rough night, Illya sailed over the side. He plummeted straight down, the tails of his dirty white jacket flapping. His beat-up straw hat flew away a second before he hit the blue-green water.

  He wondered whether the drowsy, crescent-shaped harbor of Lobba-Lobba harbored any famished sharks.

  Fortunately the water was tropically warm, and not deep. Illya Kuryakin kicked and splashed to the surface. He shook his fist at the cargo ship. Captain Whitewoole’s red beard shone in the Polynesian morning.

  He bellowed basso profundo curses as members of his crew fetched up a couple of garbage cans from the galley and emptied the contents overside. Lemon peels pattered down on Illya’s soggy hair as he paddled toward the rickety quay.

  An assortment of Occidental loungers, most of them looking like unkempt beach bums, had drifted down to the pier when the Melbourne Maid stood in from the channel. An outrigger full of fat Polynesians with black hair and brown cheeks sailed past Illya, putting out toward a distant green island shimmering in the sun haze. Illya’s feet crunched gravel.

  He floundered up out of the water, seized a ramshackle ladder and dragged himself up onto the pier. He wrung water out of his coat tails. Then he turned back toward the harbor, where the old rust-sided freighter with Australian colors bobbed on the morning swell.

  “Bunch of dirty, heartless sods, that’s what you are!” Illya shook his fist again. “Just because a fellow’s a bit down on his luck and wants to see his sweetheart in Pango-Pango---“

  “Threw you off, did they matey?” rumbled a voice behind him.

  Illya turned round. He hoped he looked suitably unpresentable. His cheeks were dirty. His white suit was yellowed and much stained. His nylon shirt hung damply and his floral tie was covered with grease spots.

  The specimen confronting him was a burly, bloodthirsty-looking man in a filthy striped jersey, black sailor’s trousers and crumpled peaked cap. A vicious scar traced its way from the man’s right cheek across the bridge of his nose to the inner corner of his left eye. This damage tended to make him squint somewhat hideously.

  With his swag belly and powerful arms, he was a formidable specimen, looking Illya up and down as the latter replied: “That’s right, matey. I was down in the hold with the coconuts. If there hadn’t of been so many of ‘em, I’d of had my knife out. I’d of opened that high-and-mighty captain’s throat, you can bet.”

  The man chuckled. “Old Ten Commandments Whitewoole. He don’t put in here often. We ain’t the moral tone to suit him. You can call me Sailor.”

  But the man didn’t offer to shake. In his glittering eyes Illya detected if not suspicion, at least a trained wariness.

  Illya Kuryakin ran a finger around his damp collar.

  “Basil Jones,” he replied.

  “Basil Jones?” Sailor scowled, then grinned. “Sure, matey. One of the Jones boys. We seem to get a lot of ‘em down here, we do. How come you stowed away with his nibs?”

  “Couldn’t be choosy,” Illya answered. “Had to take the first boat out of port. I was in a hurry.”

  Sailor scratched his weathered chin. “On the dodge, huh? The forces of law and order panting after you and all that? Yes, I’d say you look the type.”

  Squinting into the hot butter-colored sunlight, Illya lowered his voice. “Look, matey. I don’t see that my business is your affair. I don’t think I have to answer any of your questions at all. That is, unless you’re the chief of police or something.”

  Sailor held up both hands, palms outward. “Easy, now. Our chief of police here is an old native. He sits around in his lava-lava drinking grog all day. You’ve got no call to be sore.”

  Illya put a waspish, ugly note into his voice: “Nobody bothers Basil Jones with questions.” He dropped his left hand into his sodden coat pocket. “Not unless they want to go a few rounds with the six inches of Birmingham steel I keep handy.”

  Reflectively the burly beachcomber scratched his chin. “Bit of a tough nut, are you?”

  “Basil Jones can handle his own.”

  During the next few seconds Illya
’s nerves wound up tight. Sailor continued to scrutinize him. A few other loungers, including three overweight Polynesians with wide grins, watched the little scene because there was nothing else to do.

  The island’s only port village was named the same as the island itself.

  The village of Lobba-Lobba was a ragtag collection of thatch huts and rotting pine-board shanties built along a muddy street at the water’s edge. A parrot yammered somewhere. Behind the scrap of a town, luxuriant green jungle rose away inland, tier on palm-fronted tier. At the very summit, a slate-blue mountain peak rose up, emitting a single white curlicue of smoke.

  Altogether it was the most impossible place Illya had ever seen. It looked as though a cheap B-grade film director had called for a small Polynesian port, down at the heels, where desperate men congregated. A designer had then trotted out every human and architectural cliché, including the natives grinning in their lava-lavas, to fill the bill.

  At length Sailor snorted. He nodded once, laughed.

  “All right, Jones, if that’s your name. Guess we can stand one more guest in our charming little island community. At least for a night of two, till you see what your plans are. There’s a packet Saturday for Pango-Pango. You might be able to flim flam the captain into giving you passage. He’s nuts about a stupid game called Chinese checkers. Odd, him bein’ a Jap. But if you offered to play him, he might carry you for nothing. Otherwise---“

  “I’ll sweat in the stokehold if I have to. This little baby on Pango-Pango---“

  Illya Kuryakin leered. He drew a girl’s silhouette in the air.

  This finally seemed to convince Sailor that Illya was all right.

  “Come on, we’ll go up the road to the Episcopalian Hotel.” He indicated the dilapidated two-story building. “We had a minister out here once. He went native and jumped into the volcano up there, one time when it was kicking up a storm. All because of a cute little native minx. Shame, ain’t it? There’s so many little broads in the world. Anyhow, they named the hotel after him kind of as a joke. We don’t go in much for church stuff on Lobba-Lobba,” Sailor finished with a rather macabre scowl.

  Illya still had the feeling that he was being monumentally put on. “Will it cost much to get a room at the Episcopalian?” he inquired.

  “That depends whether you got any money, matey.”

  “A couple of quid. None for Captain Blood-sucker back there, though. I’d have died before I let the sanctimonious old toad take it.”

  Again Sailor clapped Illya on the shoulder, nearly knocking him on his face. “That’s the spirit, Jones! You haven’t got much flesh on those pipestems you call arms and legs. But I can tell you’ve got a lot of what it takes. That’s the kind we like on Lobba-Lobba. Come on. I’ll buy the first gin.”

  They walked up the street. Here and there luscious Polynesian girls wearing sarongs and brilliant flowers in their hair walked along barefoot. One, carrying some kind of basket balanced n her luscious hair, gave Illya a steamy glance of invitation. He winked.

  Sailor went, “Eh-heh-heh!” and nudged him in the ribs.

  In other circumstances Illya would have been quite interested in the fetching wench. At the moment, however, his attention was perfunctory. He faced front again.

  In the bar of the Episcopalian Hotel, a motorized palm-leaf fan revolved on the ceiling with agonizing slowness. It barely stirred the humid air. Sailor introduced Illya to as scrofulous-looking band on international cutthroats as he had ever encountered. There were three Poles, a German, a Greek, two Arabs, a Senegalese, two Chinese, an American and several less distinguishable types.

  They all had eyes that were cold, unfriendly, mercilessly professional. Their belts and holsters bristled with pistols, knives, short clubs, razors, and even one set of brass knuckles.

  Illya downed one glass of tepid gin and answered a few questions from the assorted cutthroats. He took pains to act surly and go for his knife once or twice. They seemed impressed. Then he pleaded fatigue. The one-eyed native who presided over the bar handed him a room key and pointed toward a sagging staircase.

  Illya Kuryakin ascended to a gloomy second floor corridor. Behind one door, a girl giggled. A large, brilliantly-patterned snake was crawling down the center of the hall. Illya flattened against the wall until it passed on, hissing. Number 6 was the room assigned to him.

  Inside, Illya fastened the flimsy night-chain in place, peeled off his coat, tie, shirt, and undershirt. He slopped water from a cracked washstand bowl onto his face. Various unappetizing insects swam lazily in the bowl. Illya dried with a dirty towel and tried to ignore them.

  He flopped down on the squealing bed. The heat was stifling. A gorgeous cobalt butterfly flew in through a hole in the window screen. Illya got up, peered cautiously out the window. The Episcopalian Hotel abutted the jungle, a thick tangle of green growth where brilliant flowers bloomed among the palm tree trunks. Illya thought he detected a faint trail angling off through the jungle. He marked it visually by means of two palms, then lay back down on the bed to sleep.

  Although he was exhausted, tension so gripped him that he couldn’t close an eye.

  The trip into the Pacific had all the aspects of a constantly-changing nightmare. Mr. Waverly had arranged for the U.N.C.L.E. jet to carry him west, with refueling stops in San Francisco and Hawaii. While Illya was airborne, Mr. Waverly had contacted the Melbourne Maid to lay out the plan.

  The jet put down at an airstrip carved out of the coral of a nameless atoll. Illya was airlifted by helicopter out over the gleaming green ocean of Polynesia. The Maid appeared on the horizon. Illya went aboard. The Maid steamed all night toward Lobba-Lobba, just so Illya and Captain Whitewoole and his crew could stage their elaborate little charade---the drama of a steamy stowaway being discovered and tossed off.

  Illya intended to waste no time now that he was here. Somewhere up in the jungles was the THRUSH research facility where the saucer-craft was headquartered. There Illya must search for Napoleon Solo. And for Sabrina Slayton and the cabbie, Jackie-what-was-his-name.

  Illya Kuryakin held out little help for any of them.

  Consequently his principal task was to destroy the THRUSH installation, and gain a second-best revenge in the process.

  The hours until nightfall seemed endless. Occasional singing and other sportive sounds drifted up from the bar. But no one disturbed him. Finally a thick tropical darkness fell. The night was soon lit by a fat quarter moon that threw glamorous Technicolor highlights on the dark foliage below Illya’s window.

  It was all a little too good to be true, he thought as he sliced through the screen, dropped over the sill and quietly lowered himself to the damp, fragrant earth.

  A gramophone ground out Lili Marlene from inside the building. Illya oriented himself with the pair of trees he had seen earlier, took one cautious sniff of the humid night wind and started off.

  Distantly surf lapped the harbor. High above the treetops, a faint glow colored the sky scarlet. The volcano? How active was it?

  Illya dismissed the question as his feet hit the dirt trail. He started through the foliage, careful to make as little noise as possible. He didn’t know exactly where he was going. But if he could reach high ground and have an unobstructed view, he should be able to locate the THRUSH headquarters swiftly. He could then---

  Illya blundered into the cruel-sharp strands of barb wire strung across the trail at one-foot intervals up to a height of six feet.

  He drew back. His sleeve ripped loose. The fence ran right and left into the semi-darkness of the jungle where birds chattered and unspeakable things slithered. The fence wasn’t electrified, else he’d have been crisped by now. He sucked in his breath.

  The fence proved that Lobba-Lobba was a stage-setting after all. He’d reached a carefully-marked perimeter past which the curious were urged not to stray. The barbed wire assured him that he’d come to the right island.

  Carefully taped to his legs Illya Kuryakin carried a collection
of small pieces of equipment which made walking uncomfortable. Now he was glad he had them. He pulled the two parts of his long-muzzled pistol from their waterproof carriers, fitted the parts into a lethal whole, tossed the carriers aside and thrust the pistol into his belt. He ripped an additional tape free, flexed the handles of the all-purpose tool, and carefully cut the top strand of barbed wire.

  It flew apart with a spaaang. He cut the other strands, finally snipping the last one. From directly ahead, three huge searchlights flashed on, blinding him. Illya hurled himself forward across the cut wire---

  And Kuryakin very nearly fell into a square pit in the center of the trail.

  From the pit’s bottom, rose all sorts of serpentine hissings and rattlings. Illya hung over the pit’s edge, digging in his toes to pull himself backwards. Bathed in the whiteness of the lights and sweating hard, he managed to pull back far enough to gain his balance and stand up.

  Lobba-Lobba was nothing but an immense booby-trap.

  Holding this grim thought upper-most, he twisted the muzzle of his pistol until the silencer baffle was in position. He took aim. He fired into the center of the trio of spotlights illuminating the trail.

  He’d begun to expect the worst. It happened. All the lights went out when the lens of the light he hit exploded. The moment darkness descended, a huge amplified siren began to hoot, oooWAH, oooWAH, loud enough to wake half the South Pacific.

  Moments later Illya was plunging up the trail into the jungle with the inhabitants of the village baying at his heels.

  Portable torches flashed among the palm trees behind him. Illya Kuryakin left the trail. Staying off it, he might avoid further booby-traps.

  But the going was difficult. Creepers lashed his face. Thorny shrubs dug his hands and legs. Insects bedeviled his skin.

  Yelling ferociously, their electric torches glimmering, the THRUSHES he’d flushed crashed up the jungle slopes in pursuit. During an interval between the oooWAH wails of the siren, Illya heard the man called Sailor cry, “I told headquarters he was a ringer!”

  Panting, Illya raced higher on the jungle slopes, trying to outrun his pursuers. But they knew the island of Lobba-Lobba better than he.