The Doomsday Affair - Whittington Harry (книги бесплатно txt) 📗

He stepped through the door, almost afraid to glance over his shoulder. Never look back. Keep your eye on the future.

The door sighed closed behind him, making a flat brick wall of the rear of the huge chalet. He found himself in a grease-tanned cement courtyard with dozens of metal refuse containers lined like soldiers at attention. The morning was far from silent out here. There was a discordant symphony of sounds: the disturbed barking of police dogs beyond the fifteen-car stone garage, the pulsing of generators, the keening wind out of the high mountains rustling the eucalyptus trees.

He walked toward the front of the courtyard, off the cement and onto the firm, well-tended grounds surrounding Broadmoor Rest. There were guards stationed in strategic places all over the grounds; several of them glanced up as he stepped out into the open. But their glances bounced off his uniform and back to the silent boredom of their sentry duty.

The morning was still only dimly lit by the sun peeping over the mountains in the east. Wind flung the manes of the trees wildly. And the dogs kept barking. Did they always bark? Solo wondered as he kept going purposefully across the grounds, neither too fast nor too slow.

Suddenly the barking of the dogs became a roaring cacophony.

As if that were an electronic impulse setting them off, white lights abruptly hissed on all over the grounds, turning the lawn into a brilliantly illumined cage set down in the dark morning. A rifle fired, the bullet humming only feet above Solo. The barking dogs raced from the kennels. Men came running from all directions.

Solo whirled, looking for cover. But there was none out here; he was all alone on the flat expanse of the grounds, without even a bush to duck behind.

And then he was not alone at all. The guards surrounded him, guns held at ready. Canine-trainers fought the huge dogs slathering at their leashes.

And something crashed into the back of his head, sending him sprawling to his knees. He saw the grass fresh and dew-covered before him, then another blow drove everything into blackness.

V

THE HEAD SECURITY guard’s voice snapped out. The two men who had clubbed Solo into the ground now stepped back reluctantly and stood at attention. The security officer spoke in denunciatory tone:

“The orders were to stop him, not to kill him or to beat him. Which one of you wants to be responsible for a dead body on your hands now when the leader gets here? Would you like to explain it, Warner? You, Merric?”

One of the guards found the temerity to speak in reply: “We only wanted to be sure he would know what to expect if he tried it again, sir.’“

While they spoke above him, Solo lay flat, staring in a puzzled way at the lighted field.

The lights were set in banks on a space three to five times the length of a football field. The grass was close clipped, the ground hard-packed. Enough for what? Nobody needed this kind of light to illumine a park in order to run down inmates on the loose.

Four guards carried Solo slowly back into the building and down the elevator, returning him to his room. He read the time on the wrist watch of one of them. It was after six in the morning. His smile was wry. He had no idea what day. Doomsday, perhaps?

They tossed him into the suite like a sack of cheap coffee, and walked out. The door slid closed without a whisper.

Solo lay on the floor for a moment, unable to get two thoughts out of his mind. The first was the size and shape of that lighted area out there. The answer struck him suddenly with the fierce impact of a thunderclap. An air strip. It was a long plateau, flat and level on the hip of a mountain larger than Rhode Island. An air strip where even a fan jet could set down.

He sat up suddenly, thinking about that lighted air strip and what the security officer had shouted at his men: Which one of you wants to be responsible for a dead body on your hands now when the leader gets here?

Solo got to his feet, the pain of the battering he’d taken on the field forgotten, his mind racing. The leader arriving? This had to be Tixe Ylno. And this meant his hunch had been right—Su Yan was a big wheel, but he wasn’t Tixe Ylno. He hadn’t dared to kill him and Barbry and leave their bodies in San Francisco. Su Yan was acting on orders, too.

Su Yan had boasted in that hotel room that everything was in readiness. The dying spy in Tokyo had revealed an awesome plot involving an atomic device.

Solo breathed out heavily. Perhaps it was doomsday, after all. Six A.M. the morning of doomsday.

He prowled the room, listening for the sound of an arriving plane, but knowing he could not hear it. These underground walls were soundproofed.

He stared helplessly at Illya. When he spoke to him, it seemed to him once that Kuryakin shook his head, but he could not get him to repeat it. There was a razor-sharp mind behind those eyes, but it was trapped, held incommunicado in a useless body.

Solo went to the table where the countless component parts of his attack gadgetry were sorted out. He glanced across his shoulder at Illya, then back at the wires, the batteries.

He sat down, gathering the batteries, wires, building a simple ground and a metal contact. He set the contraption up on a sideboard. Getting a damp cloth from the bathroom, he soaked Illya’s hands and arms and then led him to the sideboard.

He placed Illya’s hands on the metal contact pieces, made the connection between the positive and negative wires. Illya flinched, leaping back. He made a small whimpering sound, but then merely stood, staring, eyes empty.

“Come on, Illya,” Solo said. “It’s got to work.”

He pushed Kuryakin’s hands against the contacts a second time. Illya cried out, and his limbs jerked spasmodically for long seconds. Then he lay still, staring hopelessly at Solo. It was no use; whatever Su Yan had done to Illya could not be broken through by electric shock. Solo sighed, and returned Illya to the bed.

He shook Barbry. She opened her eyes, followed him blankly to the setup on the sideboard.

He closed her dampened hands on the contacts, crossed the wires and Barbry cried out, lunging away from it.

He caught her in his arms, watching her face. He saw the slow return of color, the way her eyes focused as though she were awakening from a deep sleep.

She straightened, looking about the beige-toned suite. She did not appear particularly astonished to be in this place.

“I was in your room—at the hotel,” she said. “And Sam Su Yan came to the door.” When Solo nodded, she continued matter-of-factly: “I know this place. Broadmoor Rest. I was—here once before.”

Solo didn’t speak, watching her. Barbry drew a deep breath. “I had a nervous breakdown—they sent me here. I saw Su Yan here for the first time…I didn’t want to tell you before, but that was the real reason why Su Yan refused to hire me to spy for Thrush when he hired Ursula. He knew I’d had a breakdown; he was afraid I’d break under tension. That’s why they tried to watch me—they were afraid to trust me with the little I knew.

“What do you know about this place? Is it really a private sanitarium, or something else?”

She frowned. “It was a sanitarium once, yes. But then Su Yan got control of it, and it’s changed. I’m not sure…”

“What was this threat Su Yan held over you?”

She sighed. “I knew that Ursula worked for him—for Thrush. He told me if I ever breathed a word about it to anyone, he’d see that I was committed to this place for life. It looks like he’s done it.”

Solo did not say anything, because he saw no reason for holding out empty hopes for her. Her nerves were fragile enough without being strained with the awesome facts of life in this place.

He was pleased when, frightened, she succumbed to a natural fatigue and sank down on the bed, soon deeply asleep.