The angular man wet his lips. "Are you offering me a deal?" He said. "I tell you what you want to know, and you forget about what happened in the warehouse, is that it?"
"We are not in a position to offer a 'deal', as you put it," Waverly said. "However, if you were to volunteer assistance of your own accord, I expect a court would be inclined to lenient action. We would be willing to testify in your behalf, naturally."
"What about THRUSH?" Benson said. "They would kill me if they knew I gave out information.''
"We can offer you every possible protection," Waverly told him. "THRUSH need never know what you tell us here tonight."
Again, Benson wet his lips. He seemed to be weighing in his mind the possibilities. His fear of imprisonment, even greater than his fear of T H RUSH, won out finally. He said, "All right. I'll tell you what I know."
Illya had been holding his breath. He let it out slowly. "Where were you taking me tonight?"
"I don't know," Benson said.
"I thought you agreed to cooperate," Illya Kuryakin said, anger necking his voice.
"I don't know where they were taking you," Benson said. "That's the truth. I swear it. The woman, Estrellita, was the only one who knew."
"All right," Illya said. "Tell us about the salt chemical."
"It's being developed at a secret hideaway," Benson said. "I don't know where."
"What's the name of the man behind the project?"
"I don't know that either," Benson said.
"Just what do you know?"
"Yesterday, I received a coded message," Benson said. He passed a hand nervously across his face. "I'd gotten them before. I was part of the team that conducted tests on the salt chemical. We never knew where the tests were taking place until we received the message."
Illya Kuryakin nodded, looking at Waverly. Now they were getting somewhere.
"This message you received yesterday," he said. "What did it say?"
"It gave a time and a date. Seven o'clock, the twenty-third."
"That's today!"
Benson nodded. "And it gave the name of a town. Pardee."
"You were supposed to go there?"
"Yes. Go there and wait for instructions."
"Pardee," Waverly said, trying to place the name. "Pardee."
Benson took a long, sighing breath. "It's on the Colorado River," he said.
"Of course!" Waverly said. "The Colorado—River! Come long, Mr. Kuryakin. We have work to do."
They left Benson in the care of the two interrogators waiting outside and returned to Waverly's office
Waverly said, "Seven o'clock; Mountain time, most likely. Even so, that would have been, ah, three hours ago."
"Three hours," Illya said, nodding. "That salt chemical has already been introduced into the Colorado."
"Yes," Waverly said. "And from the town of Pardee, I should think. Pardee. Where is that town?"
He went to the huge full-scale world map located on one wall of his office, switched on the light above it, and peered at the section depicting the midwestern United States. "Here it is," he said, his finger touching a tiny dot in Eastern Utah. "The Wasatch Mountain."
"What good does our knowing exactly where the chemical was put into the Colorado River do us?" Illya asked. "We can't stop the crystallization process without the antidote."
"Perhaps not," Waverly said. "But if the original process is as slow as we suspect it to be from our discoveries at THRUSH test sites, there is the possibility we can prevent the entire Colorado River from crystallizing, thereby saving the fertile crop lands in Arizona and Southern California."
Illya realized then what Waverly meant. "Hoover Dam!"
"Precisely." Waverly said. "I'm going to put through a call immediately to the Secretary of the Interior at Washington and have his office instruct the personnel at Hoover Dam to close the locks. If that chemical hasn't reached the dam as yet, we can stop it before millions of dollars in damage can be wreaked."
"Do you want me to go to Pardee?" Illya asked. "THRUSH might still be in the area."
"I think not," Waverly said. "We'll let our people in Salt Lake City handle that. You'll fly directly to Hoover Dam."
Illya Kuryakin, with long pent-up emotions, was more than anxious to start. He was already on his way out the door.
FOUR
As he stood with his back braced against the wooden wall of the snow shed, looking down through the hole in the trestle floor at the hovering helicopter and the upraised machine gun, Napoleon Solo was struck with an intense, panic-tinged desire for self-preservation.
He knew he could not simply stand there like an immobile target in a shooting gallery. If nothing else, he had to male an effort, make a run for it, no matter how vain it may be. Solo moved just as the grinning THRUSH agent below him squeezed the trigger on the machine gun.
He leapt forward, across the crumbling ties, to the shed wall on the opposite side. He heard the chatter of the Thompson gun and saw a criss-cross of holes appear in the wall where he had been standing, showering splinters. Solo looked down through the hole. The front half of the propeller blades showed there; he was partially hidden from their view for the moment.
He looked through the length of the trestle. Not enough time there. There was only one way for him to go, and that was back the way he had come, back up the open trackbed. He tensed his body, staring down through the hole again. They were coming directly beneath him now. He could feel the wind from the spinning rotors. The noise of the helicopter filled the trestle, pounding against his ears.
Wait, he told himself. Wait until they're—
He saw it then. He saw it fully, for the first time, and his heart skipped a single beat. Hope all but dead inside him until then, surged, began to grow, replacing the resignation inside him, as an idea formed in his mind.
What Solo had seen was the long, steel section of rail that hung loosely on the side he was now standing on. The ties beneath it had been the ones that had given way, forming the hole in the bed, and the rail tilted downward slightly, touching empty space. It was still welded to the length of rail nearest him, but the welding was rusted and cracked nearly through.
He dropped to one knee, feeling the rotting ties beneath his feet give with a sharp creak. He reached out his right hand, grasping the rail lightly a few inches above the weld, and pressed downward, using the entire weight of his arm.
He heard the rusted metal rend, the sound loud, louder in his ears than the whirring helicopter below. The heavy rail dipped forward sharply. For a wild instant, Solo thought that it had snapped free completely. Not yet! his mind screamed. He threw himself prone, grabbing onto the rail with both hands, cupping them underneath.
The rail wobbled in his hands, still attached to the other by the thin piece of weld. Solo felt the pressure that the weight of the solid piece of steel exerted on his forearms, the tautness of the tendons and muscles there, and he knew he could not hold it for long. When that last connecting piece of weld snapped
Sweat rolled from his forehead into his eyes. His vision blurred. He leaned his head against one straining shoulder and rubbed the wetness away on the rough cloth of his shirt.
The helicopter was still maneuvring beneath him. He could see half of it now, the whirling, singing blades, part of the glass dome covering the cockpit, the huge, brown cargo body beneath it.