The Diving Dames Affair - Leslie Peter (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗

"Yes, sir."

"I'll give it to you straight, a run-down from the top. Anything you've already found out, so much the better. Afterwards you can fill me in on anything I don't know. Understood?"

"Certainly, sir. Go ahead."

"I intend to, Mr. Kuryakin… First, Mr. Solo is still alive - or at least he was early this morning when he managed to reach me with a radio message. The message was interrupted, so presumably he was caught and will now be in great danger. Here's what he has discovered: Thrush used the ostensible building of a new city and a spurious hydroelectric station as a blind to get a large force of contractors into the area of San Felipe.

"Secondly, this force built a sophisticated fortress powered with atomic fuel on the floor of the valley behind the dam. When the valley was flooded to make the artificial lake supposed to supply the hydroelectric station with power, the fortress was submerged. It can now be entered only through a tunnel bored under the mountain separating the dam from the adjoining valley, or via a special underwater entrance.

"Thirdly, the false D.A.M.E.S. are a collection of women with criminal records recruited from the West Coast to help resettle and pacify those Negro and Indian peasants dispossessed through the scheme; their subsidiary tasks are to assist with certain underwater aspect of the plan.

"Fourthly, the dispossessed natives and others likely to spread gossip about the rather unorthodox procedure at San Felipe have been actively discouraged by the head of a spurious Candomble terreiro, a man called Hernando, who plays upon their superstitions and invokes their gods to obtain their silence - which is why no stories of these activities seem to have reached Brasilia or Rio or Salvador.

"Fifthly, and most important, the purpose of all this: The lake has been built as a safe base for tests involving a new atomic-powered submarine, something between Polaris and Nautilus, which has been developed by Thrush scientists at the fortress."

"What!"

"In a landlocked lake far from civilization in the Matto Grosso, they can experiment on a scale impossible in the crowded seas of the world. The underwater vessel is at the moment engaged in a series of proving runs in the depths of the reservoir, but in a day or so the plan moves into its next phase - which brings me to point five. Mr. Solo tells me they plan to fire a series of intermediate range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads."

"What?"

"This whole operation is only a pilot scheme to give them information to be used later for plans under the oceans of the world. Even so, it involves warheads of several megatons each being launched at six cities in Argentina and Chile - Buenos Aires, Bahia Blanca, Cordoba, Santiago, Valparaiso and Concepcion, we understand. With the Pan-American conference coming up, you can readily imagine what such an attack would do to the O.A.S."

"But that's fantastic!" Illya exclaimed. "What can we do about it?"

"The briefing is simple," the voice in his ear said crisply. "I want you to go in there tonight and get Solo out. And at the same time I want you to put that submarine and its armaments out of action. Permanently."

"You're joking, of course," Illya said.

"Mr. Kuryakin!"

"Oh, sorry. Silly of me. You never do, do you?"

"Do you have anything constructive to say?" The voice was icy.

"Yes, sir. You cannot get in, for a start... The reservoir fills a valley which is one of several running parallel - and the hills buttressing it on either side are too bare and too steep for wheeled vehicles. Nor can they be overlooked from anywhere: what goes on in the lake remains completely without witnesses. It's all very well chosen as a site. The only way in, as you said, is through the tunnel connecting the adjoining valley directly with the underwater fortress. But we already tried to rush that, at dawn today. And it's impossible."

"Impossible?"

"Virtually impossible. Impossible with the means I have here. You'd need a battalion of troops with medium artillery, bazookas, flame throwers and all to bust in there. The tunnel is radar-guarded with electronica1ly operated steel shutters, computerized small arms, mortars, and so on."

"What do you suggest then?"

"As I see it, there's s only one possible plan that could work in the time. But it would need an awful lot of cooperation from the Command headquarters, from the U. S. or Brazilian navies, and from you, sir!"

"You can have all you want, Mr. Kuryakin. Tell me about it."

Illya spoke persuasively for three and a half minutes, put down the receiver, closed the Cadillac's trunk, and walked back across the road to the picnic. The Irish man was sipping his inevitable liqueur, telling the others an improbable story about his exploits in the Easter Rising of 1916.

"I may be calling on your services, later tonight," the. Russian said when he had finished. "And anybody else who's available. Mr. Waverly has told me that you" - he turned and smiled at Coralie - "are officially in the 'to be trusted' category. And I imagine that Raoul can come wherever Senhor O'Rourke directs. But what about Rafael, here?... Is the car rental company yet another of your sidelines, O'Rourke?"

"Ah, now look," the fat man protested, scandalized. "Would I be likely to run a hire company? Sure I'm no businessman and you know it. Rafael earns a little money on the side by supplying me with information about clients every now and then - but he's only here with us today because it's his day off, you know. There's no professional connection!"

"Absolutely not, old boy," the boy said with his wide smile. "Simply couldn't have the staff with divided allegiances, now could we? Be a terribly bad show, too, to go for a picnic on a working day, don't you know. Must keep in with the jolly old providers, what!"

"Where in Heaven's name do you get that comic-opera English from?" Illya asked, grinning.

"But its the latest, the very latest," Rafael protested. "Very in indeed. Mr. Williams told me."

"Mr. Williams is too busy to go to the movies often," Illya said gravely. "It is true that the English style is in - but the play-it-cool, stiff-upper-lip, drawing room manner's not the proper style. Its the so-called kitchen sink bit that's in today. The poor-but-honest, working class meritocrat - he's the man that gets the votes now."

The boy received this information with a blink of surprise, but he recovered quickly. "Whyn't you keep your flamin' lip buttoned, mate?" he said. "Straight up, you perishin' know-alls fair turn me stomach, you do!"

Chapter 11

In At The Back Door....

THE SUN HAD sunk beneath the bleached rim of rock formed by the higher sierras a quarter of an hour before the giant helicopter whirred in from the east. It had been touch-and-go whether or not they got a troop-carrier but Waverly had been pulling strings in Rio and Washington all afternoon and eventually he had made it. The nearest chopper with a bomb bay had been aboard a ship somewhere off Central America, even then, and they had spent an anxious hour and a half wondering whether the pilot was going to get there in time. Eventually he had sunk onto the runway at Brasilia and explained that he had thought it best to bring the ship with him rather than trust to another plane. Waverly - who had been sitting up front with the pilot - had nodded exasperatingly his agreement.