[Magazine 1967-­11] - The Volacano Box Affair - Davis Robert Hart (читать лучшие читаемые книги .txt) 📗

They signed off, and the second Reid's voice was cleared from his communicator Waverly was alerting the division heads of a dozen different agency sub-sections, barking instructions at them like a drill sergeant. Every local U.N.C.L.E. operative in the United States was to be contacted right away with the instructions to follow up on any THRUSH agent or criminal element involved in the erection of oil drilling equipment.

A description of the volcano box was to be sent to them, and they were to search for it and report upon detecting it. Similar instructions were issued throughout U.N.C.L.E.'s international network, for it was obvious that THRUSH'S objective was not necessarily America. The agent in Singapore was ordered to check into the individual or individuals using the cable ad dress SINGOIL.

Finally, Waverly decided to get in touch with Napoleon to report on these developments and find out just what his other chief agent had ascertained.

Waverly knew himself to be an impatient man, but with this much at stake, the errors that might arise out of impatience were far less serious than those that might derive from sloth.

FOUR

NAPOLEON SOLO had flown by conventional means to Hong Kong and thence to Singapore. In Singapore he conferred with Joe Kingsley, U.N.C.L.E.'s temporary director; then transportation was arranged to Borua.

Since that island, and all of the islands in its federation, were hostile to peaceful interests, Napoleon would have to be smuggled in.

After resting for six hours, he made his way to a small airport outside the city, where an American jet fighter carried him to a carrier in the Banda Sea. From there he was put on a launch which conveyed him to the waters off Borua. He was greeted by a longboat and rowed to a beach on the south side of the island at a speed he wouldn't have thought possible.

The night was overcast and his arrival on this deserted spot was uneventful. A guide led him to an outpost on the side of a hillock, and as the curtain was drawn aside to admit him into the camouflaged hut, he was given a warm, comradely welcome by his fellow agent, April Dancer. The beautiful young girl wore a khaki shirt and Bermuda-length fatigue shorts and dirty sneakers, but nothing could alter the fact that U.N.C.L.E.'s contact in the Boruvian federation was as lovely as a calendar pinup. Her large, expressive eyes shimmered in the flicker of gas lamps. They appraised Napoleon with a mixture of trust and affection.

"Mr. Solo, I presume."

"April, I'm glad to work with you." He quickly described his trip, then said, "Do you have some liquid refreshment for a weary traveler? I've changed modes of transportation so often today I feel like a pinball."

"I have some warm gin and tonic," April said. And she added "but perhaps a Coke would suit you better." This told Napoleon Solo they were free to speak.

He accepted the Coke and, after excusing the guide, they sat down to talk. As background to their conversation, a short-wave apparatus hummed on a table behind April, and all around the hut there were hoots and cackles of tropical birds.

"Nice place you have here," he said smiling.

"The maid hasn't dusted this week, so you'll have to forgive the untidiness, the snakes and the scorpions."

Napoleon shifted in his seat. "I've briefed myself to a great extent on the situation here, but I'd still like you to go over it again with me. I assume that Mr. Waverly has informed you of the urgency of our situation."

"Oh yes." Her voice was throaty and mellow, and Napoleon knew how effective April was in applying her abundant female attributes on an antagonist to make him speak freely. On the other hand, as a trained agent she was perfectly adept in the arts of self-defense, and what her muscles could not effect, her pocket arsenal could.

"Tell me all you've learned, and I'll decide what's useful and what's not."

"Fine," April said. "Well, about five years ago a native named Emilio Sarabando caught the nationalistic fever and formed a federation of the islands in this area, called the Boruvian Federation after this its principal island. The Federation doesn't seem very important when you look at it casually, but actually it has strategic importance for two reasons: it's a source of certain rare-earth minerals, and it commands certain trade routes in the Indo-Chinese territory. Submarines or missiles based hereabouts could disrupt shipping in this neighborhood quite severely.

"Anyway," April Dancer continued, tugging on a Coke herself, "about a year ago Sarabando grew discontent with his political status and began making noises like a dictator. Our top brass decided that Sarabando, who is not the tyrant type, though he is a strong politician, was stepping out of character. We smelled control over him by another power. It didn't take me long to trace the strings to THRUSH. Sarabando is their puppet and has been for a year."

Napoleon Solo absorbed this information and sat thoughtfully for a moment. Then he asked, "What happened with Tapwana?"

"Tapwana is the outermost island in the crescent. It's a key one because it controls the channel between the Federation and the Luciparas. Some people think the inhabitants of Tapwana are not of the same racial stock as those of the rest of the Boruvian group, but in any event they have resisted incorporation into the group from the beginning, and when THRUSH began putting pressure on them to come in, they rebelled quite belligerently.

"So, about a week before the horrible volcano eruption, Sarabando warned the governor of Tapwana that grave consequences would ensue if the island didn't fall in line with the political structure of the Federation. The governor in effect spit in Sarabando's eye, and you know what happened then. Come."

April Dancer rose and took Napoleon by the hand. She led him out of the hut and up a rough path towards the top of the hill. When they reached the summit they plopped down on an outcropping of rock, and gazed west in the direction of Tapwana. For several minutes, in the blackness of the night and the roiling of black clouds overhead, Napoleon could distinguish nothing on the horizon where her finger pointed.

But after a while he realized that one spot seemed to glow, and as his eyes adjusted he could make out an eerie reddish-orange flickering. She pressed a pair of binoculars into his hands, and through them he could see a horrible yet fascinatingly beautiful turmoil of red molten metal churning far out to sea. His ears became aware of a rumbling, which he realized was not thunder but the sound of the earth throwing up its vitals in long, rhythmically timed spasms.

Focusing more precisely, he could make out the outline of a small cone out of which the lava spewed. With the passage of time that cone would grow to mountainous proportions, continuing to emit the seething magma until the formation of a crust, and cooling rains, capped it and made it dormant.

But that could take years, decades, even eons, and meanwhile life on that island, and on those islands nearby that directly received the pumice and cinders and soot ejaculated from Tapwana, could not exist.

"They say that the stuff that comes out of volcanoes makes great soil after a few million years," he said humorlessly. "Meanwhile, though, humanity has to have some place to rest its feet without getting them burned off. I don't think I like the idea of volcanic eruptions on the main streets of my favorite cities." He put the binoculars to his eyes once again, gazed at Tapwana in awe, then gave them back to April.

They looked out to sea, watching the ebb and flow of the reddish light on the horizon, and letting the cool night breeze play on their cheeks.