The Thousand Coffin Affair - Avallone Michael - Страница 26

There seemed to be no caretaker’s house or night watchman to contend with. Yet it was impossible to tell. They would have to operate as though discovery were imminent and they might have to shoot their way out any second.

Solo reached the headstone that was closest, a square slab of marble, barely knee-high. It was placed directly between two oblong arches of granite.

“Here,” he whispered, unfastening his shovel from the pack on his back. “This one will do. The smaller the better.”

Kuryakin nodded and moved abreast of him.

Solo bent down, cupping his pencil Hash and beaming it directly on the slab. The engraved Old English lettering on the stone was bold and final in its epitaph:

WILHELM VANMEYER

1919—1959

Requiescat en Pace

Solo and Kuryakin exchanged dour glances.

“Latin and German don’t exactly go together,” Kuryakin muttered.

“No,” Solo agreed. “But these are a collection of books we can’t afford to judge by their covers. Dig.”

Grimly, they set to, easing their spades into the ground. It was tougher going than they might have expected. Here, on the outer perimeter of the cemetery, the earth was considerably harder. Ruefully, Solo now remembered a peculiarity of burying grounds: the borders of most of them tended to be the less ideal ground for interment. Which was why most vaults and crypts turned up at the entranceways and gateways of cemeteries. Not because the richest corpses wanted to be showed up front. Still, it should be only a matter of moments—if there were no interruptions.

They dug quickly, making a dark mound of uncovered earth to one side of the slab. It didn’t take too long. Solo’s spade thucked hollowly on a box of some kind. The sound spurred them on. Soon they had cleared a sufficient amount of space about the top of a simple pine coffin.

The box had not been six feet down. Three was much nearer the mark.

“If there’s a skeleton in there, I promise to defect to the Russians,” said Kuryakin.

“Fair enough. And I’ll do the Watusi in Macy’s window on Christmas Day. Ready?”

“Ready.”

The lid came off, pried loose by their straining fingertips, after Solo had raced a claw hammer about the edges to speed things along. There was a creak of wood and suddenly the lid was free, pulling back in Kuryakin’s startled hands. Overhead, the wind sighed across the graveyard, as Solo thumbed his pencil flash on once again and played its beam over the contents of the coffin.

A twinkling galaxy of clustered stars lay revealed in the dime-sized circle of light.

Round silver balls, identical with the one placed between the toes of Stewart Fromes’ corpse, lay boxed by the thousands in the coffin before their eyes. The coffin. was filled almost to lid level with them. They were like some mammoth collection of ball-bearings saved by a fanatic collector of the things. But Solo knew they were nothing so harmless as all that.

“Bingo,” said Solo, “and end of the search.”

“Napoleon,” Kuryakin said in an odd, tight voice. “Don’t move too fast. We’re being infiltrated upon and though I hate to say so—we’re surrounded.”

Solo cursed and turned the pocket flash off, rolling to the ground. Yet even as he did so, the dark cemetery lit up with the brightness of full daylight as powerful searchlights trained their traveling beams on the headstones that marked the bogus resting place of Wilhelm Vanmeyer.

“You will stand as you are and do nothing,” the funereal voice of the man called Golgotha yelled hollowly across the open ground, “or you will most certainly die before we have a chance to talk again.”

GOLGOTHA AGAIN

THE SEARCHLIGHTS were blinding. Caught in the merciless exposure, Solo and Kuryakin were like two shafts sticking in a mammoth circular dartboard. Beyond the dazzling glow of the beams, once their eyes had become adjusted to the light, they could barely make out the tall shadows of the men behind the glare.

Solo raised his arms, blinking his eyes to clear them, saying out of the side of his mouth to Kuryakin:

“Let me do the talking.”

Kuryakin, grotesquely unreal in his flying suit, loaded down with equipment, the walkie-talkie hung from his throat like a lantern, nodded slightly.

“Golgotha!” Solo called. “Can you hear me? It is important that you do!”

There was a murmuring rumble of voices from the direction of the glare. Then came a fierce German guttural for “Silence!” and the metallic, almost lazy voice of Golgotha floated on the night air.

“Yes, Mr. Solo, I hear you. What do you propose to say?”

Solo blinked in the lights.

“Tell your army not to fire at us. We are wired with explosives. Enough to blow this cemetery and all of us to Berlin and back. Let me make that very clear—shoot us and you destroy yourself! Shall I repeat the message?”

A hard, mocking laugh rode the wind.

“Really, my dear Solo. Such melodramatics. You would die so readily for U.N.C.L.E.?”

Napoleon Solo shrugged and stared back into the lights. A tight smile held his mouth rigid.

“Suit yourself. Take the long shot—tell them to shoot. We knew the risk we took coming in here. But remember—when we die, so dies your glorious plan for the element which you so cleverly stockpiled in this cemetery. Throw away your years of planning. It will be worth it.”

Several of the bright, dazzling beams cut off with the suddenness of a thrown switch. The newer darkness was as pleasant and gratifying as fresh air after a long submersion in the water. Dimly, Solo could now make out the tall figure of Golgotha behind the remaining lights, his cloaked figure rising from the graveyard like some ghostly specter of the imagination. More importantly, there were four more uniformed figures flanking him at intervals of five yards, sub-machine guns at the ready.

Kuryakin rumbled in his throat like a trapped lion. Solo hoped his impetuous partner would sit on his impatience to move into action.

“Solo,” Golgotha said. “I believe you. Now, may I ask what sort of bargain you ask me to make for your lives? You are not suggesting I turn you loose?”

Napoleon Solo laughed.

“You heard the bomber upstairs a while ago? It dropped us off. If they don’t hear from us in ten minutes, they will know that we were captured or killed and they will go ahead with the target for tonight. I leave you to guess what that is.”

There was a harsh intake of air. He saw the figure of Golgotha raise its skeletal arms and bring them down together in crackling anger. He had pegged the man correctly. To see the bubble burst after so many years of careful building must have been a crushing blow. Solo was banking on Golgotha’s mammoth ego to assist their escape from this deep, deep hole.

“Tell me, Solo. What excuse would the U.S. have for bombing a peaceful German cemetery in the middle of nowhere?”

Solo threw his head back and laughed.

“Be yourself, Golgotha. We have a sample pellet of the contents of your coffin stockpile. No matter what wreckage the bomber makes here, investigators will find enough of the pellets to justify the obliteration of a menace to world peace. Then the evidence of Utangaville and Spayerwood will speak out loud and clear. Well, hurry up—time is very literally on the wing.”

Kuryakin, without a signal from Solo, unhooked his walkie-talkie and reached for the antennae.

“Wait!” the voice of Golgotha screamed. But Solo repressed a smile of triumph. The man’s voice was hesitant now. Was the bluff working?

There was nothing to be done yet, not with that ring of sub-machine guns trained on them. It all depended on the weird brain of the devil who commanded them.