[Magazine 1967-­12] - The Pillars of Salt Affair - Пронзини Билл (электронные книги без регистрации TXT) 📗

"There is nothing we can do tonight, senor," the subjefe told him. "In the morning, we will send out a search party to look for your friend."

Illya gritted his teeth and kept quiet. It wasn't doing him any good, arguing.

The doctor finished his examination, announced that Illya had three cracked ribs and a mild concussion, and proceeded to tape him tightly. Illya thanked the old man and the girl for their help, and then he, the subjefe and the doctor got into the ancient station wagon for the ride back to Teclaxican.

After some argument, Illya Kuryakin convinced the doctor that he was well enough to spend the night unattended at the hotel, promising to stop for further examination in the morning. Alone in his room at last, Illya took the spare U.N.C.L.E. communicator from its hiding place in the false compartment under one of the suitcases and put through a Channel D call to Alexander Waverly in New York.

He was not surprised to find his superior still at headquarters. He explained what had happened in Teclaxican that day, and that he was worried about Solo's safety. Waverly told him that he would dispatch a team of agents to Teclaxican, and that Illya was to wait until they arrived before returning to the mountain lake. The chief of U.N.C.L.E. operations seemed greatly disturbed, and Illya sensed that not all of that perplexity stemmed from his report. But Waverly did not elaborate, and Illya knew better than to question him.

Late the following morning a distraught Subjefe Hernandez, his authority challenged by the arrival of the team of U.N.C.L.E. agents, led them up the winding road toward the lake. Illya, stiff, his side aching, his vision blurred from lack of sleep, sat grimly beside the subjefe in the lead jeep.

An irate and hungover Diego Santiago y Vasquez was there as well, having insisted that he be allowed to accompany them when he was told what had happened to his battered sedan.

They went first to the lake, along the path near the slide. Illya had wanted to search for Solo...he had not shown up in Teclaxican that night, and no one had seen nor heard from him-but he knew that if THRUSH were still in the area they had to be dealt with first.

But they found nothing at the lake. Illya had half-expected to see a gleaming crystallized floor of salt when they reached it, but there was only blue water, shining under the sun. It seemed THRUSH had pulled out its forces sometime during the night, either because they had finished their testing there or because they had somehow learned or were fearful of U.N.C.L.E.'s impending arrival. At any rate they were gone, and as had been the case at the other test sites, they had left no traces.

The men set about searching the slope where the sedan had hurtled downward the day before. Illya, tramping along the rocky, brush-covered ground, steeled himself for the discovery of Solo's body.

But they did not find his body. They found nothing, except for a small, bent object one of the men discovered near a group of rocks. Illya knew immediately that it was Solo's communicator.

He did not know what to think. Was Solo dead? If so, where was his body? Had THRUSH captured him? If so, where had they taken him? And what were they planning to do with him? Illya knew none of the answers. He knew only one thing for certain.

Napoleon Solo had vanished.

THREE

Alexander Waverly said, "I can readily understand your concern, Mr. Kuryakin. I must confess I am concerned as well. But THRUSH security is the tightest we have ever encountered. There simply is nothing we have been able to learn about Mr. Solo's whereabouts."

Illya said nothing. It had been three days since his return from Mexico, and in those three days every U.N.C.L.E. office, every agent, had been placed on standby alert, every informant and source of information available to U.N.C.L.E. had been exhausted. No one, it seemed, knew or had found out anything concerning Napoleon Solo.

But there was another, even more important, reason for U.N.C.L.E. forces having been alerted and mobilized into readiness. There had been no more THRUSH tests.

Waverly and the other members of Section I knew that this could only mean one thing: THRUSH, apparently satisfied by their experimentation with the salt chemical, were on the verge of whatever major offensive their Council had set forth. And there was nothing U.N.C.L.E. could do except wait.

Their scientists, working feverishly, had learned nothing more from the sample of rock salt. The only new development had come from Section II, and that was the reason Waverly had called Illya to his office.

U.N.C.L.E. was now certain that they knew the name of the man who had developed the salt chemical.

Illya Kuryakin and Mr. Waverly were seated at the circular briefing table now. Illya, his injured side still bandaged heavily, sat uncomfortably on his chair, fidgeting. He had slept very little in the past three days, plagued with worry over Solo's safety. He had voiced those worries to Mr. Waverly just a moment ago. The waiting had begun to tell on his nerves; he wanted to do something, anything.

The screen on the wall before the briefing table flashed on to reveal a newspaper photograph, taken at a large gathering of some type. In the foreground were a group of three men, one of which had been looking toward the camera when the picture was snapped.

May Heatherly's voice came to them from Section III, somewhere inside the steel complex of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. "This picture was taken at the National Scientific Convention in Zurich seven years ago. The man looking at the camera is Dr. Mordecai Sagine."

Illya studied the man. He was short, squat, with a head that appeared much too large for his body, although that impression was not entirely an accurate one since he had a thick, leonine mane of light-colored hair that grew almost to his shoulders.

He looked, Illya thought, like an anachronistic rock-and-roll singer. The eyes, covered with heavy brows, were stark and penetrating, and his lower lip protruded a good inch below his upper lip. If he had a chin, it was not visible in the photograph. All in all, Illya decided, he had that type of face that frightened little children.

May Heatherly's voice said, "During the late nineteen fifties, Dr. Sagine received national prominence for his work in chemical analysis, most particularly in the early efforts to convert sea water into drinking water. He had been engaged in private research, with a government grant-in-aid. But in the early sixties he startled the scientific world with his announcement that he had discovered a reverse process, that is to say he had learned the secret of converting fresh water into salt water through the use of a catalytic chemical element.

"Even though he conducted several public experiments to prove his discovery, his colleagues ridiculed it as impractical and valueless. Some even went so far as to term the entire process an elaborate hoax.

"Dr. Sagine disappeared shortly thereafter, and since that time no one has seen nor heard from him. There was some speculation that, angered over the treatment he had received, he had defected, but this was never borne out. The photograph you see here is the only one U.N.C.L.E. has been able to obtain, and as far as we know the only one of Dr. Sagine in existence."

The photograph disappeared from the screen, and it went dark again. Illya looked at Mr. Waverly. "Sounds like just the type of disillusioned individual THRUSH would entice into its fold."

"Exactly, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly said. "Even though Dr. Sagine's original chemical process did nothing more than change fresh water to salt water, there has been an interim period of seven years to allow him to finalize it, hence producing crystallized salt from fresh water, and to develop an antidote."