[Magazine 1967-­10] - The Mind-­Sweeper Affair - Davis Robert Hart - Страница 16

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"He's dead!"

"One of his buttons! Who searched him?"

"Rand'll be mad as hell."

"Open his collar!"

"Get a doc—"

The last speaker never finished. One of the guards bending over Illya laid down his pistol. Solo was now behind all four, for a split second forgotten.

With a motion so fast no one saw it, Illya Kuryakin raised up. In the same motion he stabbed the guard with a long, thin steel needle—the needle from beneath the fake scar on his leg.

The man, stabbed to the heart, dropped with a low scream. Illya grabbed the gun of the second guard.

Solo jumped on to the backs of the other two. One of them went down. The other turned to shoot Napoleon Solo. Illya clubbed this one with the butt of the gun he had picked up.

An instant later the two agents stood with guns leveled on the other two guards. Both guards raised their hands in fear as they looked down at their fallen comrades.

"Not a sound!" Illya hissed.

The two terrified guards nodded. Quickly the two agents stripped clothes and belts from all four men and bound and gagged them tightly. Then they put them inside the door and locked it with keys they had found on the leader's belt.

"They'll keep," Solo said.

They listened in the dark corridor. But any sounds that might have been heard had been covered by the noise of machinery in the underground factory. No one had heard anything.

"All right. Now let's see what Rand and Danton are talking about," Solo said. "Put on a white smock. It might help."

"And this time let's try to stay free," Illya said.

"I'm not worried about us," Solo said, "I'm worried about that machine. In THRUSH'S hands?"

"It won't be," Illya said.

Solo nodded and led the silent way back along the underground passages. They reached the area of the large factory room and peered in through the open doors. The men at work were all busy with their tasks. One or two looked up to see the white-smocked men pass by, and returned to their work unconcerned. Laboratory workers were always passing.

They moved faster through the section where the doors stood open into laboratories. Once a man called to them, but they mumbled the name of Rand and passed on. The man, probably some supervisor, did not come after them.

At last they reached the ramp upward. They held their heads down and went up toward the warehouse level. Twice men passed them, but did not stop. They reached the door through which they had been taken, and Illya listened with his ear against the door.

"What do you hear?" Solo said.

"Rand and Danton, quite a way off. I don't hear anything else," Illya said.

"We could walk right into a hornet's nest," Solo said. "This time we've got to get that machine first."

"More than that, Napoleon. We can't just destroy the machine; we've got to find out who has the outer-space defense system data, too."

"That means we've got to get Rand alive," Solo agreed.

Illya suddenly looked along the corridor.

"Someone's coming, Napoleon!"

The two agents looked around for cover. There was no cover. Not even a door or a closet. At the far end of the corridor, in the opposite direction from the ramp that led down to the hidden under ground factory, two men suddenly appeared. They were both wearing the same white laboratory smocks—and each carried a tray.

"Quick, Illya!" Solo whispered, and began to walk openly straight toward the two men with the trays.

Illya followed Solo. They walked boldly along straight toward the approaching men. As they got closer they saw that there were sandwiches on one tray and a bottle of whisky, water, soda and glasses on the other tray. When they were only a few feet in front of the two men, one of the men suddenly spoke.

"You got Rand's pickle? He got to have a pickle."

"I got it."

The other one nodded, and they brushed past Illya and Solo without looking at them. Solo nodded to Illya; the two men were bringing food and drink to Rand and Danton inside the large ware house room.

As they passed, Illya and Solo wheeled, struck each man on the back of the neck with single karate chops and caught the trays before they could fall, all in a single deft motion.

They placed the trays down and dragged the two men along the silent corridor until at last they found a closet. They bound and gagged these two also, in their own clothes, and ran back to the trays. Trays in hand, they approached the door to the warehouse room.

They tried the door. It was open. They went in, carrying their trays.

TWO

AT A DESK in front of the Mind-Sweeper machine, Kevin Rand and Emil Danton sat and talked. Only three armed men were still in the room with them. The warehouse was very quiet, and the banks of lights had been turned off until the only light was where Danton and Rand were conferring.

"I've told you my offer," Danton said. "Ten million dollars, in American dollars and all cash, for the machine, the factory and Heimat. You can throw in Solo and Kuryakin, too. You don't need them."

Rand smoked a cigar and considered. The slender grey-haired business man's eyes were bright and wary as he watched Danton. He waved his cigar, smoke eddying around his head.

"It is attractive. But far too little. Consider how much I could get by leasing the equipment once I have enough units, which will be soon. Why, I'd get ten million a year per machine."

Danton shook his head. "Nowhere near. After all, the machine is only a help, a convenience. I admit it could be a big help, but there are other ways of getting the data."

"Not so safely—and not without anyone ever knowing," Rand said. "That is my major selling point, Danton: the machine takes the information without essentially harming the subject, and without him being aware of a thing. You know yourself that one of the major problems of espionage is that information ceases to be of great value the instant someone knows you have stolen it."

"Granted, of course," Danton said, and frowned. "All right, I think we'll go fifty million for the whole shooting match. Cash."

"Hardly a scratch, Mr. Danton. What do you say to, say, five billion? American dollars, cash."

"Ridiculous!"

Rand shrugged. "I'm sure I could net that in a few years by a lease arrangement."

Danton bit his lip and glanced at the silent machine that stood like some malignant god in the room. "Think of the overhead, Rand. You might gross a billion over a number of years, but you won't come near netting it. You'd have to have a large, very strong, organization. You'd be a marked group. U.N.C.L.E., Interpol, half the police of the world would be after you. You'd need not only an enormous sales and contact staff, but heavy security as well. Then think of the risk? They'd be out to smash you from the start. Now we already have the organization, and the manpower, and we know how to handle the risks."

"I don't know," Rand said with a smile. "Ten million a year per machine will pay for a lot of protection."

"And cost most of the ten million per machine. Besides, you don't have the know-how to be sure everyone will pay. THRUSH has the know-how. They fear us, and fear is all that keeps governments in line, believe me. All right, one billion cold cash—tomorrow."

Rand made a tent of his fingers, contemplated. "One billion, eh? That's quite a jump. I wonder how high you fellows at THRUSH will really go?"

"One billion. That's it," Danton snapped.

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