07-The Radioactive Camel Affair Page 13

  “Yes, Yemanja—but how do you know all about them?”

  “I was born in Gabotomi,” the girl said. “My father was Assyrian, but my mother was Gabotomi woman. I lived here as a child—before it stopped being town and became military camp—and we had to come into the mountain sometimes to escape the Arabs.”

  “What are you doing here now?”

  “Ahmed bring me to entertain troops and workers with some other girls. But I know more than others. See—I show you all the factory parts…”

  She took Solo by the hand and led him along one of the passages leading off the cave. As they went further down the tunnel, the light grew brighter and a confusion of noises manifested itself. Solo could distinguish the humming of generators, voices, a truck engine revving, and a whole series of tappings and hammerings. Soon they were passing a row of grilles set low down in the rock, from which the light was coming. Through the metal gratings, he caught glimpses of offices, lecture rooms and stores with men in uniform busied about their tasks below.

  “But surely Thrush—the Europeans—must know about the grilles! Don’t they know how the air comes to their offices?” Solo asked.

  “Of course. They know about the tunnels. But they do not know they are big enough for people to walk in. Many of our own people, even, do not know this.”

  “Can all the gratings be moved like the one we escaped from?”

  “No. Only that one. The others are cemented in place—but we left that one in case any of our own men were tortured and we wished to escape them…Look! Now you can see…”

  They had come to a wider embrasure, set chest high in the limestone wall. The girl pushed Solo towards it and he peered down through the iron bars. The noise was deafening now, and as he saw the sources of the sounds, he uttered a low whistle of astonishment. Fifty feet below him was the floor of the huge cavern Illya Kuryakin had seen. Solo’s trained eye took in at a glance the cyclotron, the hundred-foot steel sphere of the atom furnace with the swarm of men still working on it, the partially completed cooling tubes, the banks of dials with their winking red lights, and, far above, the movable cranes running on rails set in the roof of the cave. Fork-lift trucks were whining here and there among the army of workmen, and in the background he could see the sinister, fish-like shape of a rocket on a low loader. Behind it, double doors admitted to a further chamber each one carrying in red lettering the legend in Arabic, French and English:

  DANGER! RADIATION HAZARD BEYOND THIS POINT!

  ENTRY FORBIDDEN TO PERSONNEL

  NOT WEARING PROTECTIVE CLOTHING.

  Yemanja was pulling at his arm. “Come,” she whispered. “There is more to see.”

  She led the way through a maze of passages which continually branched and divided again, rising and falling in the rock. After about a quarter of a mile, Solo noticed that the limestone showing through the gloom was glistening with moisture and the air was appreciably colder. A faint roaring noise vibrated all around them. A few minutes later they were looking over the edge of a gallery in the rock at the giant turbines and generators of the power station.

  “Yemanja,” Solo called over the thunder of the conduits, “why do you think these people are offering to help the Nya Nyerere? What is all this great factory for?”

  “They say it is to vanquish the Arab government in Khartoum,” the girl replied, her lips close to the agent’s ear. “But they speak with lying voices, I think.”

  “You are right. These are evil men. Your people are being made the dupes for a much larger conspiracy. As soon as the work is finished, the Europeans will have no further use for them. They will all be killed. The secret work of which I spoke is to try and foil this plan. Will you help me, Yemanja?”

  “Am I not helping you already?” the girl said simply. “You are no longer in the interrogation room. That is why I show you all this.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m very grateful: I owe you much…But tell me one thing more. Will Ahmed and the other not guess that we escaped through the hinged grating and follow us? If they locked the door when they went out, there is no other way we could have gone.”

  The girl shrugged. “Perhaps. You were securely tied and they probably left the door unlocked. Even if not, if they did open the grating they could never find their way through the passages, for Ahmed is not of our people and the other is a nothing. Now I will show you the rooms where the important ones, the chiefs of the organization, talk.”

  And once again she led Solo down a narrow tunnel in the rock.

  Some time after Illya Kuryakin had been left alone in Mazzari’s office, the general returned with two men: a short, squat army officer in uniform and a tall man in dark robes. The former was Colonel Ononu; the latter, the Russian saw to his intense surprise, was Hassan Hamid.

  “Ah, Mr. Kuryakin!” the soldier said. “I did warn you of the consequences of a too inquisitive lens, did I not?”

  “The Council member will be with us in a few minutes,” Mazzari said. “Until then the precise consequences of Mr. Kuryakin’s transgression cannot be arrived at.”

  “What name did you say?” Hassan Hamid exclaimed. “But this is Solo—the man to whom those documents rightfully belong!”

  “I have never seen this man before in my life,” Kuryakin said, looking him straight in the eye.

  “What kind of joke is this? Why, you came to see me in my villa at Khartoum. I gave you the authorization myself…”

  Illya shook his head slowly, his eyes wide with innocence.

  “I hardly think, Excellence,” Ononu said awkwardly, “that it can be the same man. I myself saw this one, almost three days ago, in the desert of thorns—heading north in a Landrover.”

  “And I had seen him cross the southern border a day before that,” Mazzari put in with a puzzled frown.

  “But that is impossible. Absolutely impossible. He traveled here from Khartoum in the caravan with the decoy canister…or at least almost here. Colonel—you were with the caravan for the first two or three days: was there or was there not this spy among its members?”

  “There was a spy—or so you told me,” Ononu said slowly. “But the only evidence I saw was of the radio transmissions. By the time he was caught, I had already left the caravan two days. Whereas I do know that this man was three hundred and fifty miles to the southwest when the spy tried to rejoin the train after Wadi Elmira. Also, I myself caught the man following the homing device; you yourself saw him earlier today.”

  “But the papers that man had were given—”

  “The photograph on them was of the other man.”

  “I told you they must have been altered, forged, you fool,” Hamid said furiously. “Where is the man, the other one, now?”

  “He is being interrogated, as you know.”

  “Come, then—we will soon get to the bottom of this foolishness.” Hassan Hamid grasped Ononu roughly by the arm and stormed him from the room.

  Illya smiled deprecatingly at Mazzari. “I was attempting to tell you, General,” he said quietly, “that I fear you and your well-trained little army are being made into dupes. The organization Thrush is making use of you to help build this arsenal—and when it is finished, you will be dispensed with. I assure you they have no intention of using these weapons to help you take Khartoum or any other city in the Sudan.”

  “That is ridiculous, old chap.”

  “Are you a missile expert, General?”

  “No. But…”

  “Then how can you explain the fact that the weapons are not short range missiles such as would be suitable for such a task, but intermediate range rockets capable of delivering atomic warheads all over Europe?”

  “How can you know that? You are a photographer—”

  “I must plead guilty to a little deception there, General. I am not at liberty to tell you for whom I work, but I am a missile expert—and what I tell you is the truth.” The Russian’s even voice carried conviction, and for the first time Mazzari hesitated. “Moreover,”
the quiet voice continued, “if they were really going to help you conquer the Arabs of the north, would there really be such a highly placed Khartoum official working for them?”

  “A Khartoum official?”

  “Hassan Hamid. Do you mean you didn’t know? He’s the head of—”

  “I don’t believe it,” Mazzari said blankly. “It cannot be true.

  “I can prove it to you. Now.”

  “I challenge you to do so, old chap.”

  Kuryakin unbuttoned his shirt and reached for the money belt around his waist. From one of the pouches at the back he produced the miniature tape recorder and a pack of photographs. “These pictures show him in his official reception office in Khartoum; he said. “You can see the arms, the crest, the flag flanking the wall map…”

  While Mazzari stared in disbelief at the prints, the Russian started the tiny recorder. Faintly but distinctly Hamid’s voice spoke:

  “…There are one or two cutthroat bands of renegade blacks…We Muslims of the north are continually being misrepresented by the backward Negroes of the south…go tonight to the police station at this address…the necessary documents will be waiting for you…There are various charges payable to the departments…

  Illya switched the machine off. “It could be faked, of course,” he said. “And so could the photos. But, taking it together with the strange confusion that appears to exist about some document signed by Hamid, I think you must agree that my warning should at least be carefully considered.”

  Mazzari was still sitting thunderstruck at his desk when the door burst open and Ononu returned with Hassan Hamid. The Arab’s face was dark with anger, and Ononu looked perplexed. “The man’s gone—he has apparently escaped!” he exclaimed, snatching off his beret and slashing his thigh with it. “I don’t understand how it can have happened.”

  A telephone was ringing on the desk. Mazzari picked it up and listened for a moment. “All right,” he said. “We are all here.”

  He looked up as he replaced the receiver. “The Council member is on his way in,” he announced. “Perhaps he will be able to answer a few questions that badly need a reply.”

  The door opened again and the three of them stood stiffly and bowed to the young man who came in.

  It was Rodney Marshel.

  Chapter 14

  A Lady to the Rescue!

  “Marshel!” Illya was on his feet, his mouth open in astonishment. “But it can’t be…surely you are not…”

  “Yes, Kuryakin—I am a member of the Council of Thrush,” the young man snapped, very different now from the languid, diffident person they had seen in Khartoum. “Waverly and your poor organization don’t have a chance: we have agents everywhere; we were on to you from the moment you landed in Casablanca.”

  “It seems to have taken you quite a time to catch up with us, in that case,” Illya said mildly. “Now I understand why there was no helicopter when I arrived in Stanleyville. You didn’t pass on any of the messages.”

  “Of course not,” Marshel said contemptuously. “Neither yours nor any of the ones Solo so laboriously transmitted from the caravan. So far as Waverly is concerned, the last he heard from you was in Alexandria.”

  “And of course you knew we were coming because Waverly had tipped you off?”

  “Quite. The only remotely clever thing you did, actually, was to conceal from me the fact that you were seeing this fool Hamid when you went out from the hotel. And when I had found out, the fact that you had switched roles, as it were, caused us a certain amount of trouble…As for you, you bungling oaf,” he continued, turning to glare coldly at Hamid himself, “your duplicity might have imperiled the whole operation.”

  The man had gone a sickly gray color. “I…I don’t know what you mean,” he stammered. “My instructions were that there would be a spy traveling with the caravan…that I was to try and identify him, but that he was to be permitted to find and follow the decoy canister. I carried them out. It was not my fault that—”

  “I’m not talking about the caravan. Was it part of your instructions to receive the spy in your own house and issue him with a laissez-passer so that you could line your own dirty pocket?”

  “But I didn’t!” Hamid cried. “I keep telling everybody—this is the man who came to see me. He is a Russian government mineralogist. I saw no connection with the caravan; it was part of my normal cover activity—”

  “You saw,” Marshel grated. “You saw only the chance to feather your own nest—and you took it without any heed of the consequences!”

  “I swear, I—”

  “How many times do I have to say it? Thrush requires absolute and complete loyalty from its members at all times. At all times. The interests of Thrush must come before everything else, always. You have transgressed against this law; now you will have to pay.”

  Hassan Hamid was on his knees, the fine bones of his swarthy face outlined in a dew of sweat. “No!” he cried. “No, no. I beg of you…”

  Marshel had drawn a small Beretta automatic from his pocket. Coolly, he sighted the barrel at the pleading figure and squeezed the trigger. As the little gun spat flame, Hassan Hamid jerked back onto his heels, staring in disbelief at the blood spurting between fingers which had flown instinctively to cover his chest. Marshel fired again and Hamid crashed over onto his back. He tried to sit up, groaned and sank to the floor again.

  The man from Thrush pumped six more shots into the body twitching under the scarlet-stained robes. When at last the convulsive movements had stopped, he drew another clip of ammunition from his pocket and calmly reloaded the gun. “Now—are there any questions?” he asked.

  Mazzari, Ononu and Illya were still staring at the murdered man.

  “All right,” Marshel continued. “Now you, Kuryakin. Although I naturally know a lot about U.N.C.L.E., there must be a lot more that such highly placed Enforcement Agents as Solo and yourself can tell me. Before you die, you will tell me these things—that is why you have been encouraged to find your way here, where we can question you at leisure. The deaths will be slow, too, for you have caused us much trouble.”

  “Just a minute, old. chap.” Mazzari was on his feet, a frown creasing his brow. “Am I to understand then, that this man”—he gestured at the body on the floor—“was really a Khartoum official after all?”

  “Of course he was. How do you think caravans composed mainly of Arab mercenaries were able time and time again to pass through the country unquestioned? And who do you imagine provided the escorts which brought them as far as the edge of the forest?”

  “But in view of the Plan, old chap, surely it would have been—”

  “The Plan! Are you really naive enough to imagine that an organization such as ours would really go to all this trouble just to help a handful of self-seeking guerrillas? Be your age, General. Your use is at an end now that our own plans are virtually completed…And don’t call me Old Chap.”

  Faced with the ruin of his hopes in a single sentence, Mazzari behaved with grave dignity. Compressing his lips, he exchanged a glance with Ononu and sat quietly down again.

  “I do not see how the information you say we can give you will help,” Illya said, playing for time.

  “As I was saying before this jumped-up boy interrupted me,” Marshel replied, “the info I want from you—”

  “I say! Hardly the way for a jolly old Englishman to talk, what!”

  Astoundingly, the voice—with its exaggerated mimicry of Marshel’s accent—was Solo’s. It seemed to come from the air. The four men in the room swung around in astonishment. No other person had come in. For once, Marshel was at a loss.

  “What—what—? Solo! What’s that? Where are you?” he babbled.

  “I said that’s hardly the way for an Englishman to talk” Solo’s normal voice repeated.

  Marshel’s eyes glinted. “I’m not an Englishman,” he snapped in spite of himself. “I was born and raised right here in Africa.”

  “Ah, that acco
unts for it, then. I thought all that frightfully frightful and doocidly top-hole stuff was laid on a bit too thick.”

  “The grating!” Ononu cried suddenly in a reflex, realizing where the voice came from. In the same instant Marshel, his face black with fury, loosed off a burst of fire at the grille set high in the wall.

  Simultaneously, they all realized the danger. As the bullets spanged off the metal cover and ricocheted with shrill screams around the room, they hurled themselves to the floor.

  Illya was the first to recover. His cameras and field glasses were on Mazzari’s desk, where the general had put them when they had come in, and he had been waiting for just such an opportunity. Snatching up the binoculars by the strap, he scythed the heavy case across the desk top and swept the Walther to the ground as he retrieved the gun-camera in his other hand. Marshel was already aiming the Beretta at him as he pressed the release, still holding the device at his waist.

  It was a lucky shot. Before Marshel could fire, the tiny nickel-jacketed bullet struck the automatic half-way along the barrel and spun it from his hand. Marshel snatched his hand back as though it had been scalded, shaking the fingers to ease the pain. Mazzari, in the meantime, had placidly regained his seat. He made no move to pick up the Walther…nor to aid Ononu, who had apparently been hit by a ricochet and was now sitting on the floor clutching one shoulder.

  But the Thrush man could move fast too. Before Illya had recovered from the success of his snap shot, he was through the door and pounding away down the corridor towards the caverns.

  “General,” the Russian said urgently, “are you on our side?”

  “I am afraid I seem to have no side left to be on, old chap,” Mazzari said sadly. ‘From now on you had better regard us as neutral…”

  “All right, then,” Kuryakin said. “Napoleon? Can you find your way to the big cave where the reactor is?”