by Peter Leslie
"Do not worry," Illya said. "I dislike violence and I never kill unnecessarily. It was just what we call a sleep dart; he will be hors de combat for an hour, that's all. So far as thanks go, I think I deserve them.. considering that I still have a headache from our last meeting."
Coralie Simone blushed. "I'm sorry about that," she said, "but I wanted to make sure you didn't follow me here."
"You could have saved yourself the trouble, as you see. Why not?"
"Because I have an investigation to carry out and don't like snoopers. You wouldn't say who you were."
"So have I and neither would you. But before we start quarreling again let us deal with this man - otherwise both our investigations will fail." He rose to his feet, made his way to the tree with the overhanging brand and worked his way along it until he could drop safely to the ground on the far side of the fence.
"The sleep dart will take care of this specimen for an hour," he said as he came up to the girl and the recumbent guard. "But I need him to be out of the way for at least two - so that he cannot possibly raise an alarm until I'm well away. If only I knew how often he is supposed -"
"He patrols a five hundred yard sector of the fence," the girl said crisply. "I've been checking. He doesn't have to make contact - or not necessarily - with the men on either side. There is no overlapping. And he isn't due for relief for another three hours."
"So he's just possibly not going to be missed?"
"Exactly. We are more than a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest adjoining sector."
The agent was rolling the unconscious guard over onto his face. "Okay," he said. "So if we take off his belt… so… and strap his arms to his sides… like this... and lash his wrists together with his tie… we should be able to prolong his period of forced inactivity beyond the hour given to us by the dart. Now what about his knees, his ankles, and some sort of gag?"
"You could use this," the girl said doubtfully. "It's of no further use to me now." She was holding up the two torn halves of her jacket.
Kuryakin took the green tatters from her. He ripped a back panel into three sections, binding the guard's ankles with one, his knees with another, and using the third to tie into place a wadded handkerchief which he rammed into the man's open mouth. "That should keep him out of the way until they start to look for him when he doesn't report at the end of his shift," he murmured as they dragged the bound and gagged man into the shelter of a thorn bush. "Now what about you, young. Aha!"
"What is it, Sherlock Holmes?"
The agent was looking at the remaining half of the D.A.M.E.S. jacket which he held in his hands. Below the torn collar a name tape, shiny with continued use, slightly soiled from contact with other clothes, was neatly sewn. On the pale ribbon, red letters spelled out C. SIMONE.
"Unless your principals specialize in detail work more perfect than any used by the world's intelligence services," Illya said slowly, "this is an old jacket that's been worn a lot. It really is your own garment - not a cover disguise. You really do work for the D.A.M.E.S."
"Of course I do," the girl said impatiently. "I work for the Special Investigation section. Lots of our girls come from very particular families and we have to take special care about conditions and so on when we send teams abroad. We're always having to make inquiries about one thing or another - and of course when we find people pretending to be D.A.M.E.S. when they're not, then naturally the Committee wants to find out why."
"But why didn't you say so? It would have saved so much -"
"How like a man! Why should I tell you? Who are you, anyway?"
"I work for the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. The man who is missing is a colleague of mine from the same Section."
"So you're from U.N.C.L.E.! Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I didn't…" Illya sighed in exasperation. "Because nobody told me you would have a representative down here. I imagine they didn't know."
"No, they wouldn't," Coralie Simone said. "We didn't tell you."
"Why on Earth not?"
"Mrs. Stretford - the Commandant - said that since your Mr. Waverly couldn't be bothered to be cooperative, she didn't see why she should."
"So you wasted all that time checking on me, and I - Never mind! Since we are both trying to find out what's going on here, suppose we join forces for the time being, okay?" Illya smiled his rare and charming smile.
The girl hesitated. Then the smooth skin around her eyes crinkled delightfully, the wide mouth stretched in the lean face. There was a flash of teeth. "Agreed," she cried with a laugh. "It's a deal - for the time being!"
"Splendid. What now, then? I'm trying to find out what goes on in the grounds of that estancia back there."
"So am I. All the trucks seem to go there and not along the made-up road leading to the power station. I want to have a closer look. Do you think... if we kept on this side of the fence and circled the place from above..."
Kuryakin was shaking his head. "Not a chance," he said. Even if we could make it past the guards and the dogs, there's not a shadow of cover. Look!" His gesture encompassed the sweep of bare hillside above the trees masking the estancia, the slant of rocky slope beyond it, and the barren wall of cliff rising behind that. "Do you have a change of clothing in the car?"
"Yes," Coralie said. "Why?'
"Because I'm going to make a frontal foray. As long as you are not dressed like one of their spurious D.A.M.E.S, you can be my assistant when I ask for information about the Candomblé."
'Candomblé. I keep hearing that word. I've spoken to a lot of the local Negroes, and some Indians too. All of them seem afraid to talk about the dam - even if they've been forced to leave their homes by the scheme - because of the Candomblé. What is it, a secret society?"
"Not exactly. More like a religion. There are a number of different cults here in Brazil - all of them a mixture of African and Indian worship with Christianity and Spiritualism. The two most affecting simple Negro and Indian people are Candomblé and Umbanda. In both cases, their gods are a mixture of Christian and pagan ones; both believe that you can communicate with those gods or their representatives by means of mediums. But the initiates of Candomblé - so it is believed - can be visited by, or get in touch with, their gods personally, whereas the umbandistas' mediums have to have the gods' wishes interpreted through a guide, rather in the manner of a western séance."
"How fascinating," the girl said. "But why the difference?"
"I don't know too much about it," Kuryakin replied. "But the main reasons go back to the days of slavery. The most intelligent African slaves brought over to Brazil were the Yoruba. They had the most complex religions and gods - and the mixture of these with Catholicism produced Candomblé... the cult with the strongest African influence, radiating outwards from Bahia. The less developed Bantu from Angola, centered more on Rio, were that much more swayed by the great Spiritualist movement which swept Brazil in the last century, and their cult is the one called Umbanda today."
"But why should a religious cult bar local people from -"
"We'll ask," Illya said, interrupting, "when we get there."
---
But the tall, white haired Negro with the Harvard accent and the lined face who met them in the Candomblé tenda - a wooden building like a mission hut which stood among trees to one side of the estancia - was uncooperative. They had not been challenged at the gate and they had followed the drive, which skirted the building and then sloped downhill towards a thicket, until a signpost had directed them towards the hut. A Negro woman in a white robe had left them in a waiting room while she'd gone to call Pai Hernando.
"If - as you claim - you are an anthropology graduate from the University of Southern California," the priest said in his well-modulated voice, "I cannot understand why you and your assistant should have chosen to come all the way here to this very modest, uninspiring tenda when there are so many others more interesting else where." He sat at a simple desk. Through the uncurta
ined window behind him, they could see groups of men in the now familiar khaki and black uniforms moving in among the trees.
"But that's just it," Illya said. "All the way here. Since Candomblé is centered on Bahia state and the areas to the north and east of it, we find it intensely interesting, demographically, to find a tenda as far west as this. We had no idea the Yoruba had ever been transported this far."
"They probably migrated after abolition. And in any case the boundary between former slave peoples and the Indian aboriginals is hopelessly blurred now," Hernando said. He flicked a speck of dust from his pale gray suit and drummed his fingers on the top of the desk.
"As the priest in charge of this place," Coralie asked suddenly, "can you explain why the spirits should frown on the local people talking about this dam? We wondered how the forced moves had affected them, sociologically, but we couldn't get a soul to talk about it at all. They say the gods forbid."
"I am only Pai Hernando, the horse on which the spirits ride," the Negro said. "It is not for me to question the wisdom of the Orixás, the great ones. Indeed, I had no idea such messages had been transmitted through me. And now," he added pointedly, "if you could tell me how I can help you…"
"We should very much like to see some ceremonies - perhaps an ôrunkó - to compare with those performed in the Candomblés further east."
"I am afraid that is quite impossible. This is a simple country place. No such rituals take place here."
"But I thought…"
"Definitely not, sir. Apart from which, the local folk are - as you have seen - superstitious and suspicious. They would resent any outside participation, any hint of an audience, at their devotions."
Illya rose from his chair and paced up and down. "But surely," he cried agitatedly, running his hand through his pale hair, "there must be something in a cult which can impose so strong a taboo on the discussion -"
"I regret extremely," Pai Hernando said, rising to his feet also, "that I cannot help you at all. It is a pity that you should have traveled so far and so fruitlessly. Had you inquired first…"
"Are those soldiers out there?" Coralie asked innocently as he showed them to the door.
"Certainly not," the Negro said. "They are members of the construction company's security guard. There is valuable property in here."
"Your tenda is financed by the company, then?"
"By no means. They have been very generous, allowing us to operate on their land, granting us certain facilities."
"That aspect of paternalism in a foreign concern is interesting," Illya said. "Perhaps we could ask you a new -"
"Good day to you," Pai Hernando said firmly. He closed the door.
"Well, I've heard of visitors being discouraged," Coralie exclaimed as they walked out of the gates, "but this is ridiculous. Did you see those - security guards, did he say? I'm sure they'd have fired on us if we had turned right instead of left when we left that hut!"
"They probably would," the agent said soberly. "Obviously the entire Candomblé thing is a cheap device to blackmail the locals into silence about the whole project. The thing's a fake from beginning to end,"
"Why are you so sure?"
"Several reasons. In the first place Pai Hernando, Father Hernando, is a form of address used in Umbanda associations, not in Candomblé. If there is a priest at a Candomblé tenda - and it's usually a priestess, as it happens - he would be called a Babalorixá, a Father-of Saint. Caboclo, the term for an Indian guide, is from the Umbanda vocabulary too... Second, to say they hold no ceremonies such as an ôrunkó is absurd: the ôrunkó is the be-all and end-all of Candomblé - the ceremony at which the initiates are 'visited' by their particular deities. And finally, if it was a genuine tenda it would have been surrounded by miniature huts - the dwelling places for particular gods, which have to be sited at particular spots. Did you see any shrines, any offerings, any despachos there?"
"No," the girl said. "I didn't see those twelve trucks anywhere either. Did you?"
The Russian smiled. "There were no trucks to be seen," he said. "But when I started my pacing-up-and- down routine, I was able to catch sight of a space behind those trees at the bottom of the slope. There's a cliff which comes right down to ground level there - a fault or something in the rock, so that there's no gradual slope there. But there is something else; I could see it quite clearly. The drive runs right up to the cliff - an then straight into it."
"Do you mean there's a tunnel?" Coralie gasped.
"A tunnel leading into the mountain, or through it. With a double row of lights in the roof and a concrete blockhouse at the entrance. So the mystery of the appearing convoys is a mystery no more. They go on and through - and as soon as we have an opportunity to take them by surprise, that's what we have to do too."
"Yes, I see," the girl said thoughtfully. "That's what the guard meant, of course. 'Either you go through the mountain or you stay in the estancia' - that's what he said, isn't it?"
Kuiyakin nodded. "They seem especially determine that nobody shall so much as glimpse the surface of this marvelous lake," he mused. "It seems to me, therefore, that before we try the tunnel I really ought to have a look for myself..."
---
There was a moist breeze laden with hints of thyme, rosemary and wet earth as Illya Kuryakin stood on the broad shelf of concrete lipping the dam later that evening. In the darkness to one side, he could hear the rustling of dry grasses where the barrage met the hill side. Behind him, the wind which plucked at his shirt and trouser legs stirred the water into small waves which slapped at the dam. And in front the blackness trembled as the outlets from the invisible sluices roared down the sloping face of the barrage in their gigantic pipes.
He was surprised to find that there appeared to be no patrolling guards on the wall of the dam itself. It had taken him three hours to work his way through whole squadrons of them deployed between the boundary fence and the shore of the lake. The hillside slopes, the ridge, the steep faces dropping to the surface of the water on the far side - all of these were stiff with armed men on the lookout. Yet here, where one might expect the concentration to be strongest, there was nobody. Nor could he hear any evidence of activity around their power station far below. It followed, therefore, that the guardians of the mysterious lake were more concerned to keep people away from the reservoir itself than from the dam forming it.
With a puzzled frown, the agent lowered himself from the lip to a small observation platform, swung from the guard rail of this to a buttress, slid down fifteen feet of rough concrete in the dark, and finally found with his feet the curved surface of the huge-bore pipe down which he intended to work his way to the power station hundreds of feet below.
Forty-five minutes later, half deafened by the tumult of falling water which had battered his ears from the other side of the conduit, he thankfully unstraddled the great iron tube, wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans, and stepped onto the balcony which circled the modernistic cube of the power station building.
There appeared to be no personnel guarding it. No lights gleamed through the slits of the shuttered windows or pierced the louvers on the doors. There was no watchman's cubicle beside the main entrance. The place seemed as deserted as the blank surface of the lake above which he had scanned so fruitlessly for so long. The nearest sign of life was the floodlight above the guardhouse, shining palely through the complexities of transformer and pylon from the main gates a quarter of a mile down the valley.
He edged his way around the balcony and found a door on the far side of the building from the gates. Crouching down, he drew from his hip pocket a square metal device about five inches square. He moistened the four rubber suction cups attached to its corners and clamped it firmly to the door above the lock. Then, straining every nerve in concentration, he placed one ear to the box and began with infinite care to oscillate a flat knob set flush with its surface. Presently he gave a satisfied grunt and rose to his feet. The door swung silently inwards at his
touch and he vanished into the dark interior.
Something was wrong inside. At first he couldn't place it - then, over the muted, more muffled roar of the water, his trained senses gave him the answer. It was nothing positive; it was an absence that he noticed. There should have been a humming of generators, a whine from the giant turbines, a whiff of ozone in the air. But there wasn't.
Believing now firmly that the power station was totally uninhabited, Illya risked switching on a miniature but powerful flashlight. As soon as the thin beam lanced the dark, he saw why.
For whatever purpose the dam had been constructed, it wasn't that of supplying electricity to Getuliana. For apart from ducts leading the seething water direct from the pipes out to the river which wound down to the gates and the bridge, the vast building was completely empty. There were no turbines, no generators, no insulators, no railed catwalks or gauge-and-dial consoles. Like the metalled but trafficless road leading to it, the place was nothing but a blind, a colossal sham...
Chapter 9
The Message That Had To Get Through
ALTHOUGH THE WALLS were damp to the touch, there seemed to be a current of dry air blowing through the cell.
Napoleon Solo had no idea how long he had been there. There was always a bright light burning and the only means he had of marking the passage of time was the doctor's visit - if indeed he was a doctor. At least he wore a white coat and he was always attended by two women in nurse's uniform. On the other hand, the visits might be sporadic and not regular at all. Certainly it seemed to Solo that there was more time now between the hypodermic injections than there had been before when he had still be strapped to the bed.
The bed was made of iron and enameled black. It was high and narrow, with a thin, hard mattress and no bedclothes, and its legs were cemented into the floor of the cell.
For a long time it had been Solo's world. Although he was not particularly uncomfortable with his wrists and ankles buckled into the leather bracelets at the four corners of the bed and his middle restrained by a broad strap passing under its frame, it nevertheless afforded him only a limited horizon. The walls of the cell were of smooth green cement; the ceiling, with its four powerful bulbs behind armored glass, was stone colored; and what little he could see of the floor looked like slate. The door was a single slab of steel without even a judas-window. And that was all - there was no furniture of any kind, no decoration to break the monotony, only a single small grille through which he imagined the warm, dry air was extracted.
