Magazine 1967-07] - The Electronic Frankenstein Affair, стр. 1
THE ELECTRONIC FRANKENSTEIN AFFAIR
by ROBERT HART DAVIS
Silent, malevolent, the Gobi guarded its grim secret, as Solo and Illya fought against time and THRUSH to find the demon which could read men's very thoughts—and kill without a trace!
PROLOGUE—THE EXECUTIONERS
THE TWO U.N.C.L.E. agents were wearing fleece-lined greatcoats, fur mittens and heavy leather boots. But only bulky spacesuits could have insulated them against the icy wind that was blowing cold upon them from a cold winter sea, chilling them to the bone.
It came sweeping up out of the gray Atlantic in gusts of almost hurricane force, raising flurries of snow and making the bleak inhospitality of the Newfoundland Banks in midwinter very hard to endure.
They were large, sturdily built men. But the gigantic rock structures which ran parallel with the headland on its landward side made them seem grotesquely out of proportion in this terrain so rugged it would have dwarfed a twelve-foot giant. They both wore upon their left wrists THRUSH cell identification bracelets bearing initials which their real names—Bruce Huntley and Walter Rivers—completely belied. And they both knew that if a whisper of that deception came to the ears of THRUSH they would be in the deadliest kind of danger.
A few feet from where they were standing, a narrow path descended the cliff wall to a mile wide stretch of beach, strewn with the wreckage of an Atlantic gale that had reached its peak two days earlier and hadn't quite blown itself out.
Several large brown rats with wetly glistening coats had made their home amidst the wreckage carried shoreward by an earlier storm and were running back and forth across the sand, exploring the new wreckage with starved eagerness.
Huntley was the first to break the silence. They were miles from the nearest human habitation. But two weeks of constant undercover vigilance inside the stone walls of a THRUSH project had made him super-cautious and he kept his voice lowered from force of habit, speaking just loud enough to make himself heard above the crash of the waves.
"We should be seeing the submarine any minute now," he said. "It would be a mistake to start worrying before the commander comes ashore. What makes you think they've even begun to suspect us?"
Rivers lowered the powerful binocular telescope he had been keeping steadily trained on the sea, and stared at his companion for an instant before replying.
"I don't know, exactly," he said. "It would be misleading to call it a hunch; it's far too nebulous. It's just that—well, when everything goes too well it's hard to shake off the feeling that you may be walking into a trap."
"I've had that feeling myself at times," Huntley confessed. "But you can't say we haven't taken every precaution. No messages exchanged, even in code. No attempt to communicate with New York. We've never allowed ourselves to forget there could be— and probably are—electronic eavesdropping devices behind every wall and corridor turn throughout the entire project."
The gusts of wind that were sweeping the headland seemed suddenly to increase in violence. Only a thin coating of snow covered the frozen soil at the cliff's edge, and no more snow was descending. But there were thin splinters of sleet in the air, as cheek-stinging as chilblains.
Huntley raised his voice as he went on, no longer giving a thought to the caution which their distance from the THRUSH project had made wholly unnecessary.
"We breathe and our every bronchial murmur becomes a matter of record. We scrawl a few words on a slip of paper—which we've been careful not to do, of course—and an invisible photo cell scanning device reproduces the message, along with our palm prints."
"You don't have to blueprint it for me," Rivers said. "The reports we've been getting concerning THRUSH'S progress in protective bugging equipment in recent months has given Waverley some bad moments. They've matched us device for device, probably because we've been pressing them so hard we've given them no choice. But granting all that, what does just recognizing the danger prove? We've stayed alert to it, sure. But one small slip—"
"I can't believe we've made any," Huntley said with conviction. "We've followed instructions too scrupulously. Touch nothing, investigate nothing beyond what we came here to find out. They would never have entrusted us with a mission as important as this if they had the remotest suspicion we're U.N.C.L.E. undercover operatives."
The waves had been making a hollow, drumming sound as they crashed against the cliff wall. The two herring gulls had seemed completely unaffected by the sound. But suddenly a kind of panic came upon them, and they went flapping seaward, as if a different kind of sound, inaudible to human ears, had alerted them to danger and made the shoreline seem unsafe.
Huntley stared at them in puzzlement as their mad, erratic flight carried them a mile from shore, then continued with his attempt to diminish his companion's entirely human forebodings.
"If they suspected us I'm quite sure we'd know by now," he said, as if he felt the point needed to be stressed. "You can usually tell when you're under surveillance."
"But not always," Rivers said.
Huntley tightened his lips, and looked at the other sharply. "Something is bugging you," he said. "Why don't you get it off your chest?"
"All right, I will," Rivers said. "Consider first what we've found out. In two or three more days, at most, THRUSH will have ready a twenty-pound detonating device that can destroy all underwater life within a radius of fifty or sixty miles. It's the deadliest midget torpedo-like weapon ever developed."
He paused an instant to stare down at the rats on the beach far below. "They think we're just bench-level technicians," he went on, staring seaward again. "Doesn't it seem strange to you that we should have been given the assignment of contacting the submarine that's to give the detonator a test run? It's more of a job for a top echelon operative."
Huntley shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "You're forgetting that THRUSH trusts no one. Not even a sub-commander is exempt. And they want a simple, honest, first-hand report, precisely the kind of report two bench-level technicians would be most likely to return with. It's a kind of security check. It would take an hour to transmit what we're delivering into his hands on microfilm, and they know exactly how proficient U.N.C.L.E. is in cracking messages in code."
"I hope you're right," Rivers said. "For all we know the commander may have been warned to watch us like a hawk. That could be the key as to why we're here. They may be hoping we'll do or say something that will confirm what they've begun to suspect."
"If they were even slightly suspicious they'd be making plans for our burial," Huntley said. "You don't send a man on an eight-mile journey to blow him apart when you can dispose of him much more efficiently on a twenty-foot target range."
"But suppose they're not quite sure. Suppose—"
"There would be simpler ways of making sure than sending us on a mission this vital," Huntley said. "They'd never choose such a complicated, round-about way of handling it on the off-chance we may make some slip—"
Suddenly Rivers stiffened. He lowered his binoculars for an instant, inspected the twin lenses quickly to make sure they were not misted over, and returned the instrument to his eyes. For a full minute he continued to stare seaward, his face set in harsh lines. Then his hand went out and fastened on Huntley's arm.