The Thousand Coffins Affair

ORANGEBERG, UNLIMITED

The trail ended.

Even in the darkness, he had been able to keep Golgotha’s shadow in sight. And then, as he stumbled across a sudden dip in the terrain and came up panting, Golgotha was gone. It was as if the mists and the fog had swallowed him alive. Bitterly, Solo searched the grounds. But it was hopeless. Endless rows of tombstones mocked him. Helplessly, he scanned the earth for some clue to the passage of the ghoul. Yet the earth had swallowed him up. Solo knew full well where Golgotha had gone. Underground, to that damn tunnel with the sliding slab doors. But finding it in this darkness without knowing the way would be impossible.

The sighing wind seemed to mock his thoughts. Defeated, he made his weary way back through the maze of grave markers. There was no time to dally. Golgotha could have gone for reinforcements.

He might be back, loaded for bear.

Overhead, the blast of the bomber echoed across the skies. He hurried back to where he had left Kuryakin. That was the main concern now — that and wiring this deceptive hellspot with the explosives. Golgotha’s stockpile had to go.

There was a bitter, acrid odor in the air when he reached the spot where Kuryakin lay. The Russian’s pallor was evident, as was the first aid swab planted squarely to his left shoulder. Solo paid a quick visit to the dead minions to make sure no one was stirring. Satisfied, he got back to Kuryakin.

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Sulpha and morphine. I’ll hold out.”

“Good. I lost the Halloween man back there somewhere. Chances are one of the graves is a dummy passageway leading underground, but it would take the night and the day to find it and I wasn’t about to play eeny meeny miny mo. Can you navigate?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Did you call the girl friend?”

Kuryakin nodded. “They’ll circle for another twenty minutes and pick us up at 2100 precisely. We’ve got just about time to do what we came to do. I suggest a five minute fuse, just in case.”

“Sounds splendid. Come on.”

Kuryakin swayed to his feet. “They missed a bet not mining this place.”

“Not really. Too risky. Plenty of German boys would find this a nice place to picnic. Besides, Thrush had nothing to worry about. They never could have guessed that Stewart Fromes would pinpoint the spot for us the way he did.”

“That’s true. Napoleon, let’s hurry — before I pass out from loss of blood.”

They worked in quick, expert silence for a full fifteen minutes. The nitro jelly, each pound affixed with a blasting cap, was advantageously placed in the northern, southern, eastern and western extremities of the cemetery. These in turn were cross-wired to the main course of the explosion. Solo strung the wires into a clock device squarely placed in the heart of the cemetery. The jelly by itself would never do the job, but along with it they planted precisely calculated quantities of the U.N.C.L.E. fire-explosive X-757. Six ounces of it were sufficient to raze a four-story building; a pound of it should raise merry old hell with Orangeberg.

Solo set the clock device, and filled his pockets with samples of the pellets from Wilhelm Vanmeyer’s coffin. “The Old Man would have my hide if I didn’t bring him back some souvenirs.”

Kuryakin consulted his watch, shaking his head. “God knows how much of the stuff is here. They may have filled a thousand coffins. And then—” He winced, holding his shoulder.

Solo eyed him.

“You think five minutes is enough time for you, Illya?”

“Try me, Napoleon.”

“Five it is, then. Time.”

They didn’t wait. They fled back to the low wall in the darkness, clambered over and headed for the rendezvous point with the bomber. Even now they could hear the steady symphony of its flight somewhere in the darkness overhead. Solo steadied Kuryakin at one point and led him quickly across the hard ground.

Their boots touched the meadows again. The gloom had dissipated somewhat here in the flatlands. Still, the mists and clouds did not vanish entirely. Both men were concentrating on the cemetery behind them. Suppose something went wrong with the timing device? It had happened before. It could happen again. Nothing, nobody was infallible. And there was always the unpleasant possibility that the mysterious Golgotha had returned to spot their handiwork and had only waited for them to leave to destroy the mechanism.

They stumbled on over the hard ground. Time was passing quickly. Surely the five minutes time allowed for the fuse had passed—

“Napoleon—”

“Don’t talk. Walk.”

“The plane. There it is—”

Ahead, looming on the lighter patch of ground, was the mammoth bird which had dropped them into Golgotha’s graveyard.

The savage backwash of propellers had flattened the blades of grass like a field of rice to be reaped. Solo helped Kuryakin toward the ship, waiting for the sound that did not come.

Would it?

The air door was flung backwards, spilling light onto the darkened field. A helmeted officer stood framed in the entrance, beckoning. Solo saw Jerry Terry poised at his shoulder, peering anxiously into the darkness.

He began to run, pulling Kuryakin with him. The shadow of the ship loomed in his eyes, bigger than his fondest hopes, larger than the wildest dreams of a monster named Golgotha.

“Solo!” Jerry Terry called. “Is that you—“

“Napoleon,” Illya Kuryakin’s voice came bitterly, close to his ear. “I make out six minutes. Something has gone wrong. We—”

Solo laughed. “I made it seven minutes. I didn’t know how much you would slow us up, you lame wolfhound.”

“Seven minutes,” Kuryakin echoed. “Why you doublecrossing—”

The rest of the diatribe was lost in the distant thunderclap of the violent explosion rocking the flatlands behind them. The ground heaved, the earth trembled, the wind increased in fury and velocity. A high keening of destruction filled the shadows of the night.

Orangeberg lit up the sky.

And Jerry Terry fell laughing and sobbing right into Napoleon Solo’s outstretched arms.

The bomber crew helping them on board exchanged impressed looks.

“That’s it, huh?” a freckle-faced Sergeant asked, poking a thumb in the direction of the blast.

‘Yes, that’s it,” Illya Kuryakin said flatly. But his eyes were shining.

“That’s it, all right,” Solo agreed, surrounding Jerry Terry’s lithe body with his arms. “But it’s also the sound of something else.”

“What’s that?” Sergeant Freckles wanted to know. Solo stared at him, no longer smiling.

“It’s the sound of a man named Stewart Fromes having the very last laugh there is.”

Freckles grinned. “That’s the best kind of laugh there is.”

“Sometimes, fellow. Sometimes.”

The air door closed and the bomber rumbled forward, aiming its streamlined nose toward the east. Motors thundered, propellers churned, temporarily drowning out the reverberating destruction behind them. The Orangeberg cemetery was dying noisily.

“Napoleon,” Jerry Terry said seriously, “I want to apologize.”

“What for?” he asked, still studying the night sky over Orangeberg from the port window.

“I behaved like a kid back there. That Fairmount woman. I’m sorry I acted like a schoolgirl. You did what you had to do.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “But you’re not a Girl Scout. People die in our business. They have to. Being a woman doesn’t change things one way or the other.”

“Am I forgiven?”

“Completely,” he said, still looking toward Orangeberg. A bright orange flash burst skyward, lighting up the darkness.

“Burn in hell, Golgotha,” Napoleon Solo whispered fervently.