The Thousand Coffins Affair

THE MAN WITH THE SKULL

All hell broke loose.

Even as Solo saw his three shots hit home, picking up the man in the entranceway and smashing him back, the entire passageway suddenly came alive with the ringing of bells. It was a shocking assault on the eardrums. The air of the tunnel seemed to be alive with the high, almost screaming sound.

Fortunately, he had hurtled forward, following up the death blasts of his pistol, and Jerry Terry had followed. They reached the fallen sentinel even as they saw what was happening. A rumbling sound came from overhead, cutting through the pealing of the bells. Solo shot a look skyward. A gigantic slab of concrete was coming down, a secret door to seal the passageway to the outside world. Frantically, he seized Jerry by the wrist and pulled her through — just before the massive concrete door thudded shut between them and freedom, sending mounds of dirt and mud flying upwards. Behind the stone door, the bells continued their mad cacophony. A simple device. It took only the firing of a gun to set up a walled blockade in the subterranean fortress.

Jerry Terry was sobbing softly, her nerves coming undone at last. He let her cry in peace and stared at their surroundings. They were in the open, the side of some mountainous shelf of rock. Ahead was brown country ground and a thin smattering of gnarled trees. A crow was cawing from one of the branches. Overhead, foggy sunlight washed down over them. It was so still out here, compared to the madhouse inside.

“Come on,” he urged. “We still have to make a run for it.”

She nodded, her eyes showing she was still game. She was a peculiar vision stumbling along in Golgotha’s cape, her long, copper-colored hair catching random rays of sunlight.

They began to run in earnest, following a broken trail of stone and sand which seemed to wind downwards to lower levels. Solo kept his eyes open, the automatic pistol ready. It was such a peculiar setup there was no way of knowing what they could run into.

The road ended, spewing them into a flat table of land which showed a vast unbroken meadow stretching almost as far as the eye could see, only to end before the towering majesty of the Bavarian Alps. Solo cursed. Damn the terrain. It was all of a piece; one place looked exactly like another.

“Solo,” Jerry said softly. “Look.”

He didn’t see what she meant at first because of the camouflaging gnarled trees. Then his eyes cleared, making out the dark outlines of the MIG fighter. It sat, silent and ready, directly under a canopy of branches, its nose pointed toward the wide meadow before it. Only three hundred yards away.

There was no one in sight. But the bells were still sounding faintly somewhere and there was no time to lose. It was now or never for both of them.

“Jerry, listen.”

“I’m way ahead of you. Let’s move out.”

He was glad she understood. “Okay. We’ll be clay pigeons if anybody is watching. On the other hand, we’re dead anyway. May I say it’s been nice knowing you?”

“Forget it. We’re going to get out, Napoleon, and we can take up the subject there.”

He kissed her briefly, nodding half to himself, and then sprinted for the plane, knowing she would follow as best she could. He ran with his head low, his legs churning, putting forth everything he had for the run. There was no sense in looking back, no point in trying to pick out targets for the automatic. Either way, they had nothing but time on their side. Time, surprise and the fact that they were fast-moving targets.

Once, Solo had completed in the hundred-yard dash at college. He had come in first, a stride ahead of the number two man, but he had never forgotten the fever of the lungs from such a run, the flying spurt of the body as it strained for the tape. Even as he had plunged across the finish line to the cheers of the stadium, he had never forgotten the almost drunken exaltation of success.

It was something like that now.

The meadow grass disappearing beneath his heels, the plane looming closer, the expectation of a burst of gunfire, the fierce straining of his muscles. He was only dimly aware of Jerry Terry’s figure somewhere behind him. He could only keep his eyes to the left and right, a periphery of perhaps ninety degrees. There was nothing to alarm him from the front. The ship was unprotected. It was only the area behind them that disturbed him.

The first shot came, a singing, whining crack of sound across the flatlands. Dirt geysered somewhere near his heel. Another crack, two more.

He reached the ship and turned, just in time to catch Jerry Terry stumbling before him, falling to the earth. He stilled the alarm in his chest and picked up his targets.

Two uniformed men, rifles leveled, were stationed in the rocky recesses of the lowlands before the mountain. Too far away for his pistol to be of much use. Yet he blasted away all the same and had the extreme satisfaction of seeing them both duck back frantically.

Quickly, he helped Jerry up the wing, practically hurling her into the cockpit. It was only designed to accommodate one person but they were not about to concern themselves over such trifling matters just now. She fell in. The cloak caught on a rivet screw but she was all right as far as he could tell.

“I don’t know if I can fly one of these—” she panted.

“You won’t have to,” he said. “I’ll do it. Scrunch down and away we go.”

He found the controls, emptying the pistol as he clambered in. But the men were up and running now, coming on fast as they realized how close the quarry was to getting away. Solo had a bad few seconds trying to decipher the Russian words on the instrument panel but a plane was a plane be it a Flying Jenny or MIG. The rocket starters were going to be the big question mark, never mind the basic principles of aerodynamics. Solo found the release buttons, blessing Korea, where he had acquired skimpy knowledge of the MIG fighter plane, from one that had come down on the banks of the Yalu River ten minutes away from Solo’s reconnaissance patrol.

Crack!

Crack!

Two rifle shots were lost in the budding blast of the takeoff. The rockets whooshed with noise. He dug out the Luger, sighted quickly and got a shot off. One of the running soldiers suddenly dropped his rifle and rolled crazily on the turf. The other kept on coming.

From that moment on, getting off the ground was his only consideration. With Jerry Terry cramped into the narrow space between him and the floor of the ship, Solo eased back on the controls. With a powerful rush of speed, the MIG nosed forward, sending leaves flying before the tremendous backwash. The thunder of the engines drowned out all else.

The ship shot forward, thrusting like a rocket. The wheels lifted, the sun flooded Solo’s face, and the wide, clear sky stretched before them.

Below, the soldier aimed a final futile shot that died on the wind.

“Jerry, see if you can work that radio. We’ll contact NATO radar before they send some flyboys up to shoot us down. Not too sure about the border flyers around here. Jerry—”

It was only then that he saw the girl was bleeding. A streak of scarlet was painting her right hand. “Hey,” he began. “What gives?”

“Oh, that smarts,” she murmured drowsily, closing her eyes in pain, exhaustion and shock.

The thundering blast of the MIG drowned out Napoleon Solo’s fluent curses.

Golgotha sat before a short-wave radio set, complete with amplifiers and headphones. He had found another cloak. Such expression as his face could show registered extreme hatred. In his fantastically unreal voice he spoke of his displeasure.

It was exactly one hour since he had recovered in the dungeon room to find himself shamed and disgraced. By the reckoning of the account from the guards, the man Solo and his lady confederate had escaped in the MIG, sometime in that elapsed period of sixty minutes. Even the intricate network of alarm bells had been fruitless. Obviously, this Solo was a resourceful man. There was some vindication at that. Golgotha had warned the Council repeatedly that U.N.C.L.E. was not to be dismissed so lightly.

“I repeat, most strongly, we must continue with Plan M. I see no reason to delay. It is imperative that we move now if we are to convince the democracies that we have a weapon which will make them heed our demands. U and S should have sufficed — but they were so small scale, they served only our test purposes. Now, we must move ahead to the larger considerations. Therefore I respectfully advise that Plan M go into effect immediately.”

A voice spoke up from the amplifier.

“The corpse of Stewart Fromes?”

“They will gain nothing from it,” Golgotha chuckled with deep satisfaction. “A skeleton will reveal little, I see no reason to worry on that score.”

“You are certain he had none of the element secured anywhere on his person?”

“None whatsoever. In dying, he had only had time to dress himself. A small curiosity there — and one our research department might well explore. The element had confused him so thoroughly and upset his mental processes, that he attired himself in reverse.”

“Repeat that. I do not understand.’

Golgotha clarified the subject of how Stewart Fromes’ corpse had been attired when claimed by Napoleon Solo.

“Excellent, Golgotha. Excellent! Council will be pleased. Another successful residue of your element. Perhaps you are right.”

Golgotha’s cavernous eyes gleamed. “You will recommend Plan M, then?”

“Yes, I think I will. We are ready to make our move now, I should say.”

“You make my day,” Golgotha crowed. “Never fear about Napoleon Solo — I will exterminate him as soon as it is feasible. At best, he is no more than an efficient enemy agent.”

The voice on the amplifier didn’t care one way or the other.

“Do as you see fit. I will contact you at the same time tomorrow.”

“Farewell.”

“Farewell, Golgotha.”

The man with the skull removed the headset from his twisted stumps of ears. His mouth parted, uttering a noise of inner ecstasy. The moment would come when all the world would know of his genius. And Thrush itself must elevate him to the Council.

Plan U had been Utangaville.

Plan S had been Spayerwood.

Plan M would be Munich.

Napoleon Solo eased the MIG down in a short approach, mindful of the twin patrol planes hugging his tail. As he had expected, they had been intercepted barely twenty minutes out of Orangeberg. There was no use arguing. The MIG could have easily outdistanced the two patrol planes — they were no competition in the speed department, being mere monoplanes of the Cessna design. But there were two considerations. First, they could call out the whole air force, and second, Jerry Terry was unconscious. She needed doctoring fast. Therefore when the harsh, guttural voice broke in on his radio set, which he had left open intentionally, he saw no other course but swift cooperation.

The landing strip was a long, concrete runway set down somewhere in German territory. Solo lowered his landing gear, cut his flying speed and waited grimly. Landings were far trickier than takeoffs. Coming in at better than a hundred and twenty miles an hour would be no picnic.

It wasn’t.

The MIG bounced like a rubber ball, tires screaming and burning. But Solo had the satisfaction of bringing it down in one piece. After that, the rest would be gravy. Once he had explained his position to the NATO officials it ought to be fairly simple. He climbed stiffly from the cockpit, easing Jerry Terry to a standing position. He kept his eyes open, anxious to evaluate the amount of interest his strange appearance had fostered. A MIG had to be trouble in this day and age.

There was a stone Administration Building of sorts and a long, low hangar not too large in size. Possibly a remote outpost, strategically situated. France was still to the west. He checked the range of mountains showing behind him. And then there was no more time to look for outstanding landmarks. The small airfield was in an uproar.

Uniformed men were rushing from the Administration Building, rifles at high port. The patrol planes had taxied into view behind him, turning sharply to face his own plane, like matching bookends. Solo didn’t wait for any further activity. He jumped to the ground, feeling the concrete jar his feet. Jerry Terry, as compactly as she was built, felt very heavy.

He heard footsteps behind him and a click of rifle bolts driving home. And then a maddeningly familiar voice said:

“We meet again, Mr. Solo. And as you see, I am not as expendable as all that.”

He froze, a sudden recognition dawning with the subtlety of a thunderclap. He turned, forcing himself to smile.

“Well, well. Heard any loud humming sounds lately?” Standing before him, dressed in an official-looking gray uniform, was Denise Fairmount. Even boots, jodhpurs, visored cap and the German Luger jutting from her smooth fingers could not hide the beauty of her face and figure.

“Yes, Mr. Solo. And now it will be my turn to hand out the punishment. Take him. See that the girl isn’t shamming. And then bring Mr. Solo to my office. There are a few questions he must answer.”

Napoleon Solo shrugged.

Thrush again. And he had flown right into their waiting arms.