07-The Radioactive Camel Affair Page 11

  There had indeed been two different vehicles—and the visual illusion had been possible because there were also two different roads!

  Behind the trees, the road he was following dipped suddenly and ran into a tunnel leading underground. And, just beyond, there was the exit from a second tunnel, slightly to one side, carrying another highway on into the distance. The arrangement was similar to the underpasses carrying ring roads around modem cities—and it had just happened that, while he watched, a car had emerged from the exit tunnel coincidentally with another, traveling at the same speed, plunging into the entrance…

  Dropping to the ground, he wormed his way through the undergrowth until he could train the glasses uninterruptedly on the tunnel mouth.

  It was arched, tall enough to take the largest army truck, and well engineered in limestone blocks. The stonework continued out along the sides of the sunken road until it had risen to ground level. Inside the entrance, a row of electric bulbs in the tunnel roof paralleled sweep of the roadway as it turned steeply aside and spiraled underground. The other tunnel, from which the red car had emerged, no doubt performed the same maneuver in the opposite direction—and the two roads would presumably meet at some common point below. But what kind of subterranean enclave was served by these routes?

  Illya crawled further along, so that he could see a greater distance inside the curving tunnel. Just around the first bend, the sandbags and slits of a redoubt broke the even surface of the wall. So the direct entry, as he had imagined, was out of the question…

  Although the sun was nearing its zenith and the heat was becoming unbearable, he decided that he must prospect further without delay. In the absence of radio contact with Solo, the only thing he could do was push on on his own. He began to work his way back to the landing strip through the woods on the far side of the road. When he was perhaps halfway there, he pushed through a tangle of bushes and froze suddenly into silence. The ground opened beneath his feet—hidden in the undergrowth, the mouth of a concrete-walled shaft yawned before him.

  He peered over the lip. In the shadowed depths of the shaft, the slim, tapering nose of a missile gleamed wickedly.

  Kuryakin gave a low whistle of astonishment. It looked as though the confidence of the Nya Nyerere was well founded—and it looked, also, as if the destination of the stolen Uranium isotopes was inextricably bound up with the puzzling alliance of Thrush and a band of nationalist guerrillas…

  During the next half hour, he found three more underground silos of the same pattern, each with its missile in place. Heaven knew what ramifications were to be found somewhere below his feet!

  Before he got to the airstrip, his attention was diverted by a persistent, low roaring noise which had for some time been forcing its way into his consciousness. He glanced up. Over the trees away to his left a haze hung in the air, halfway between a mist and a thin smoke. It was too hot now, anyway, to venture out into the full glare of the sun by the runway. He decided to investigate.

  The noise increased in volume as he approached. The undergrowth became denser and more luxuriant. The mist resolved itself into a cloud of fine spray hanging over a waterfall.

  But the breadth and scale of the thing surprised Illya yet again. The river was wider than he would have expected, shallow and fast-moving. It flowed across a plain whose existence he had not suspected, divided around a number of small islands on the lip of the falls, and then twisted away down a narrow gorge—presumably to vanish underground and reappear in the valley in which Gabotomi was situated. The falls themselves were staggering: a semi-circle of separate cascades which poured over a fifty foot drop from between the islands, coalesced in a turbulent pool, and then leaped in a single dizzy drop over a sheer cliff fully a hundred and fifty feet high.

  For some minutes Kuryakin remained fascinated by the grandeur of the scene, his senses battered into quiescence by the volume of sound. Then, as his mind automatically began accepting and rejecting, sifting the evidence offered to his eyes and ears, he noticed a discrepancy: the flow of water running away from the foot of the waterfall was appreciably—most markedly—less than that arriving at the top.

  The more he looked, the more obvious it became. Perhaps this was one of the places mentioned by Rosa Harsch, where the greater part of the river vanished underground, to continue by a subterranean channel in the limestone. He scanned the falls, searching for some trace of the sink-hole. It must be somewhere in the seething pool between the cascades and the final, single fall over the cliff…Yes: there were signs of dark openings in the hollowed-out rock behind several of the initial falls. And there was something else, too: unmistakably, he could see patches of concrete among the glistening rock. Somewhere behind those deafening cascades, man had been improving on the works of nature.

  Concealing the Hasselblad and his field glasses in a clump of bushes, he slung the waterproof gun-camera around his neck and scrambled down a narrow path zigzagging the steep bank towards the pool.

  In two minutes he was drenched to the skin. But after the heat of the day, the dank, ferny atmosphere of the ravine and the moisture of the spray were as refreshing as a cool drink. Slipping and sliding on the wet moss covering the rocks, he reached the level of the basin. The water was boiling—shading from an absinthe green near the foaming impact of the falls to a deep violet in the center of the pool. And once he approached, he could see at once that his reasoning was correct. The water spilling over the lip and falling a hundred and fifty feet to the gorge below was nothing more than an overflow; by far the greater part swirled back from the bottom of the pool to go roaring down a series of conduits slanting into the rock behind the cascades.

  As he had expected, the falls had hollowed out an overhang in the cliff and it was possible to walk along a rock shelf behind the curtain of falling water and the face. Treading with infinite care, he edged along the slimy rock behind the first cascade, slithered across an open space, and went in behind the second.

  Here were two of the conduits—giant ferroconcrete tubes ducting the water into the bowels of the earth at an angle of sixty degrees. Crossing the deep channels leading the torrents from pool to conduit were small arched bridges with single guard rails.

  Behind the third waterfall, Illya found three conduits, similarly linked by concrete bridges—only here the center one was larger: a vaulted tunnel with the water thundering down a course laid in its floor. At the far end of the passage, perhaps seventy feet below, he could see light, the curved corners of huge turbines, the bases of generators. He had obviously stumbled on a vast underground power station—the source, no doubt, of the electricity lighting the road tunnels he had seen.

  Soaked as he was, he shivered in the chill, moist semidarkness behind the cascade. He never knew what it was that made him look up at that moment—certainly no sound could have penetrated his mind over the roar of the falls. But he did look up…up and out over the stretch of rock separating the third and fourth cascades.

  They were further apart then the others, these two, and a guard rail snaked across the undulations of wet rock between them. Leaning nonchalantly against it, a soldier was in the act of raising his rifle to fire at the Russian from a distance of about thirty feet.

  Almost in a reflex action, Kuryakin whipped the guncamera to his eye and pressed the release. The man’s dark face split open in an O of astonishment. The rifle dropped from his hands and slithered down the rock into the water. For a moment, he teetered against the rail…and then slowly slumped back over it and fell into the pool. His body sank at once, to reappear bobbing like a cork far out in the middle of the maelstrom. The agent expected it to be sucked towards the conduits, but after a while some undercurrent tugged it towards the side of the pool, where it caught momentarily on a branch, freed itself, spun slowly in an eddy, and then began to move—remorselessly and with increasing speed—towards the lip and the hundred and fifty foot drop beyond. For ten seconds, he lost sight of it again…but the dead man made a final horri
fying appearance, rearing grotesquely up from the water on the very brink of the chasm before he plunged from sight.

  It would be a long time before his body was discovered, but his absence could be noticed at any moment. Illya decided that it was time he went.

  After he had recovered his camera and glasses, he resumed his route through the forest to the airstrip. It presented a different aspect now, he saw when he gained the fringe of the trees. While he had been out of earshot at the falls, a plane had landed: a twin-fuselage transport whose cargo a squad of soldiers were unloading into a convoy of trucks drawn up on the concrete.

  With his wet clothes steaming in the sun, Illya lay beneath a bush and watched through his glasses. Most of the cargo was crated—and judging from the way in which it was handled, the machinery inside was delicate.

  Half an hour later, the transshipment was completed and the aircraft trundled to the far end of the runway, turned, and took off. The convoy had formed up and was heading back towards the road and the tunnel before the drone of its twin engines had died away over the forest.

  The trucks passed quite close to Illya’s hiding place. There were eight of them, but so far as he could see only the first three carried guards standing on the footboards at each side of the driver’s cabin. On an impulse, he rose to his feet and ran through the long grass to intercept them. He reached the road just as the last truck slowed to make the turn from the landing strip, paused until it was past him, and then emerged on to the macadam. In three quick strides he was level with the tailgate. As the truck accelerated away, he grasped the hinged panel, pushed aside the canvas flap and hauled himself up and over into the interior.

  Two big crates filled most of the space inside—stoutly built containers of one-inch planking with reinforcing battens on all sides. There were no contents specifications or delivery instructions stenciled on the wood.

  He was relieved to see that, apart from the crates, the back of the truck was empty—nor was there any window between it and the driver’s cabin. Panting a little after his exertion, he settled down to wait. He had no fixed idea of what he was going to do when the truck stopped, but he was tired of inactivity and it seemed one way of getting past the guards at the tunnel mouth. It was unlikely that they would search their own vehicles after so short a journey; he would just have to hope that he would have an opportunity to slip out unnoticed before the cargo was unloaded.

  They had been going for perhaps a minute and a half when he heard voices shouting on the road outside. Cautiously, he peered through the crack between the flap and the body of the truck. They were passing a file of soldiers marching in the same direction, and the driver and his truckmate were exchanging pleasantries with the men on foot.

  In the middle of the file, Illya saw, two soldiers marched about ten feet apart carrying between them a long pole which was balanced on their shoulders.

  And slung under it like a sloth, with the pole passing between his bound wrists and ankles, was the unconscious figure of Napoleon Solo…

  A moment later the truck began to sink below ground level as the road dipped between the stone walls leading to the tunnel mouth. Kuryakin drew back behind one of the crates. There was nothing he could do for Napoleon at this moment. He could not see whether the marching men were following the convoy into the tunnel or going on somewhere else—perhaps to Gabotomi. In any event, he could best help by getting inside the Thrush fortress undetected and working from there.

  They appeared to have driven straight past the guards. For some minutes the truck continued to descend in a series of tight curves, then the road flattened out and they went straight ahead for what seemed about a quarter of a mile. Finally, the vehicle made a tight right turn, stopped, reversed, came forward on right-hand lock and stopped again.

  The first impression Illya had when the engine was switched off was of echo: the boots of the soldiers as they climbed down from the trucks, a distant hammering, the pervasive hum of machinery, a confusion of voices calling—all these blurred and repeated themselves in a great swell of noise. He inched forward and put his eye to the crack between tailboard and flap again. They were drawn up with the other seven trucks in a bay off an immense cavern in the rock. Both the roof and the further reaches of the huge chamber were lost in shadows. Nearer at hand, arc lights blazed on an army of workmen erecting some complicated apparatus from a scaffold. Beyond a stack of crates similar to those in the truck, an arch in the natural limestone led to another cavern even bigger. In the brief light shining through, he could see dreamlike figures in asbestos suits and protective helmets with perspex eyepieces busy about the spirals of great cooling tubes. To one side, a section of a gigantic silver sphere that could only be an atomic reactor bulged into view. He need look no further for the destination of the stolen Uranium 235…

  The convoy drivers, their truckmates and the escorting guards were all grouped around an officer issuing instructions some way off, with their backs towards the bay. Now was his chance. Lifting the flap as little as possible, he dropped to the ground and slid around to the front of the truck. Crouched between the radiator and the rock wall, out of sight of the soldiers, he looked around him for a place to hide.

  A little way to his left, hidden from the men in the cavern by another truck, a doorway opened into the wall. He edged along to it, listened, turned the handle, and slipped through.

  He found himself in a long passage with closed doors on either side. Electric bulbs glowed in the roof. At the far end, an opening led to the dark reaches of another cave. The humming noise was louder now: he must be approaching the generating station he had seen from behind the cascades.

  Kuryakin flitted silently along the corridor and into the cave. It was empty and unlit—but through it was yet another chamber, in whose dim lighting he could make out the squat shapes of transformers.

  He hesitated. Should he conceal himself in this empty cavern, or should he return to the scene of activity and try to hide somewhere there? Perhaps the latter—then he could emerge and investigate further when work had stopped for the day.

  He turned. In the lighted entrance to the passage, General Mazzari was standing, a heavy Walther automatic in his hand.

  “Not many white rhino down here,” he said mildly. “I think you and I had better have a little talk, old chap…”

  Chapter 13

  Inside the Underground Fortress

  >GANGS OF MEN armed with pneumatic picks were trying to drill off the top of Napoleon Solo’s head before it exploded. They were too late: the world spun away in fragments, leaving a swirling red haze through which the face of the foreman peered at him apologetically.

  “… necessary to hit you quite so hard,” the foreman was saying, “but in any case the journey here would probably have caused you more hardship than the blow and its after-effects.”

  Solo’s eyes were half open. The foreman’s face sharpened in focus and a room gradually assembled itself behind him. Surely the face was very dark? And for some reason he appeared to be wearing an army uniform of sorts. The room, too, was…unexpected: it seemed to be upside down.

  “Who are you?” Napoleon croaked.

  “Colonel Ononu, Area Commandant of the Nya Nyerere,” the foreman said. “More to the point, my friend: who are you? And why? And from where? And sent by whom, man?”

  Of course, Solo thought. The room wasn’t upside-down at all; he was lying on his back. And yet there was no sense of anything hard, no sign of any floor beneath him. His wrists and ankles hurt like hell. And as the thought formed in his mind, he was astonished to see them in front of him, apparently sticking straight up in the air. He tried to bring them down, failed, saw the pole running between the thongs binding them—and all at once remembered: the deserted glade, the officer with the revolver, the empty Uranium 235 canister, the homing device that had been discovered and used to decoy him into an ambush…

  “I said who are you?” the chunky officer repeated.

  “I might fe
el more inclined to reply in a less disadvantageous position,” Solo suggested.

  “You are in as happy a position as spies ever are,” the colonel said. “Who are you?”

  “I am not a spy. My name is Napoleon Solo. I am engaged on mineralogical research for…a certain government.”

  “You are an Arab spy,” the officer said levelly.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. How can I be an Arab?”

  Ononu slapped his face dispassionately. Pain flamed through the agent’s body as the blow jarred his head.

  “How can you not be an Arab?” the soldier sneered.

  “I tell you I am a European—”

  “Ridiculous. With those hands and fingers? With those teeth?”

  “It was a disguise. They can be brought back to normal—”

  “And you have even shaved off your beard—see, there’s the outline where the skin is paler.”

  Solo was silent. He must have acquired a deeper tan while he was with the caravan, and the removal of the false beard had showed it up. His disguise had been too clever—now it was backfiring on him. “Who…what is the Nya Nyerere?” he asked at last.

  “The liberation army of southwest Sudan.”

  “Well, it’ll hardly recommend itself to you for its original purpose, but at least it will serve to identify me: there is a laissez-passer in the breast pocket of my shirt, vouching for my bona fides and signed by a high government official.”

  Fingers snatched the document from Solo’s pocket.