The man standing over him was Osgood DeVry, the president’s adviser and confidant.
DeVry stared down at him a moment, his face without any expression. Then he spoke across his shoulder. “Get Kuryakin and the girl in here. There’s no more time for delay.”
“I’ll bring them myself,” Sam Su Yan said from across the room. “We’ll want Dr. Calyort to give him an injection before we get him in here.”
DeVry waved his hand impatiently.
The corridor door whispered open, sighed closed, and Solo was alone with DeVry.
DeVry’s face twisted into a contemptuous smile, staring down at Solo. “You can stop looking at me with such astonishment and revulsion, Solo. It won’t help you to know my true identity. Believe me, you’d never have been permitted to see me, or even hear my voice, except that you’re slated for immediate oblivion.”
He prowled away, then returned. He said, “I cannot tell you how much I’ve enjoyed all these months reading the classified and confidential reports your agency has been making on me under my code name of Tixe Ylno. The very name itself amused every time I saw it — because I do plan exit only for the two great powers of this earth.”
DeVry glanced at his watch, shooting his cuff, and then shaking it down over his wrist.
“The president trusted you — almost more than any other man on earth,” Solo said, somewhat astonished that he could speak coherently, though his body remained in a state of paralysis.
“I’m not interested in sentimentality, or the mistakes other men make simply because they see in you some quality they possess in themselves.”
“You’re one of the most influential men in this country. What is it going to buy you to destroy it?”
DeVry smiled at him coldly. “Its going to buy me what I need.”
“Do you need a world destroyed by an atomic war?”
“At the moment, I do. For many reasons. Most of them you wouldn’t even understand. You say I’m influential as a presidential flunkey? I shall be a great deal more influential in the world that remains — I shall dictate all its terms.”
“You may be talking to yourself.”
DeVry appeared unmoved by this possibility.
“If I am,” he replied, “I shall tell myself that I have what a man of pride must have. Vindication. Revenge for the wrongs compounded upon me, and which I’ve had to take until I simply cannot take them any more.” Solo stared at the man, wondering what had happened to him to cause his mind to break like this — because he saw that DeVry was insane, no longer able to conceive the horror of a world blasted by atomic radiation. What had happened to this man so long trusted and respected by his close friend, the president?
DeVry answered this for him, too. “I tried to warn him. The president — I tried to warn him. He just laughed, and slapped me on the back and wouldn’t listen. Well, he’ll listen now. I told them I wanted a position worthy of my talents, the sort of post I had earned all these years in military and political life. They pick my brains. Then let them put me in a position where I’d be respected for the decisions I either make or influence. Years ago, I was promised the job that I would have taken, would have executed better than it has ever been handled, and would have been contented with. They promised me that I would head Central Intelligence. I even spoke about it to my close friends, relatives. I was filled with pride and satisfaction. It was what I wanted.”
DeVry strode out of the perimeter of Solo’s vision, and then after a moment walked restlessly back.
“I was rated a security risk! Do you hear that? I was rated a security risk. The very fact that I was a security risk triggered a witch-hunt in Washington that dug down to the levels of generals, colonels, and majors in all the branches of the military! Me. Every day, half my life devoted, sacrificed, spent in behalf of the president, and through him this stupid, senseless, ungrateful country. Make a profit. Make a profit. Use all influential power — and discard those who don’t have it.
“Sure, the president kept me on. Politics demanded it. Security demanded it. And I was his friend. But I was now classified as a security risk, and doors that had always been open to me were suddenly closed. Now, after twenty-five years of sacrifice, I was nothing more than a flunkey fetching coffee and bringing in non-classified notes.
“I was a risk — and I could not have the job I wanted more than anything on earth, the job that the president himself had promised me. I had made one mistake — one bad judgment, years before — and it doomed me, no matter how loyal I’d been in all the years since then, no matter how hard I had worked!
“Well, I am a man of pride, and I cannot live with that wrong. It will be avenged!”
“Thank God you didn’t get the post as head of the C.I.A.,” Solo said fervently.
DeVry strode toward him. Solo saw the rage swirl in his eyes, saw the terrible self-control the man exercised to keep from kicking him in the face. His foot lifted, trembled, and his mouth worked.
After a moment DeVry spoke calmly. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The C.I.A. won’t mean much after today, Mr. Solo.”
IV
Solo watched DeVry turn as a door whispered open across the room.
Barbry entered first. Solo could see her face. She looked ill with fright. Her cheeks were pallid, and her eyes were wild, like some frantic animal’s.
Illya stepped in next. His gaze flew about the room, sizing it up, and then he saw Solo. He forgot Su Yan, DeVry, the guards. He crossed the room swiftly, kneeling beside Solo.
“You’re alive.” Illya’s voice conveyed his relief.
“Just about,” Solo said.
“A temporary condition for the three of you,” Su Yan said.
A guard caught Illya by the collar and jerked him around. Illya came upward on his toes, and kept turning, bringing his extended hand upward into the guard’s stomach. The man gave a little sob of agony and bent double, dropping his gun.
Illya lunged for it, and Su Yan permitted him to get his hands on it before he karate-chopped him across the neck. Illya plunged straight down, landing hard on his face, his arms thrust out before him.
“Heroics,” Su Yan said in contempt. “A kind of illness with these people.”
“If you’ve killed him before he makes that call to his superior,” Osgood DeVry said, “you may live to regret your own heroics.”
Su Yan frowned slightly, then shook his head. “No. I’ll call Dr. Calyort in and have him happy to talk in minutes.”
But as Su Yan turned toward the telephone on the conference table, lights flashed and then dimmed. Su Yan and DeVry straightened, glancing at each other.
“The device is being removed to the lift,” Su Yan said.
“We have flight time to make the call.”
The two guards left the room ahead of DeVry. The man whom Illya had attacked still walked slightly doubled over, but carried his weapon again.
Su Yan lifted Illya, placed him in a chair, secured his hands behind him and left him there, unconscious.
“I’m afraid we have bad news for you, Solo,” Su Yan said. “We have reached the decision that you are expendable — ahead of the operation. We need only the voice of one of you, and we have determined that Kuryakin, despite his tendency to reckless acts, will be the easiest to control. I hope you will believe me when I tell you how sorry I am that I won’t be seeing you again.”
Solo did not speak, watching him.
Su Yan caught Barbry by the arm, leading her toward one of the cylinders lined on the far wall. Watching them, Solo saw how the nerve gas had been pumped to him through a small rubber tubing that ran along the baseboard to the fireplace.
“A nerve gas here that should interest you, Solo,” Su Yan said. He paused when the lights dimmed again. “Developed by our own scientists and chemists. The effect is much like that of hypnosis. The subject remains in a waking-sleep state, as in hypnosis. As in hypnosis she is not aware of what she is doing while she is under its effects. And unlike hypnosis, the so-called moral censor is not at work. The subject follows only those orders given her while she is going under — and there is not the danger of morals or conscience as a deterrent. She is literally unable to do anything except follow those orders. I’m sure this is going to prove most interesting to you.”
The lights dimmed again and Su Yan hurried himself slightly. When Barbry opposed him, trying to break free, he drew his arm back and almost struck her. At the last moment he controlled his rage. Instead of hitting her, he simply stared down at her and spoke no more than three or four whispered words. Barbry no longer offered any resistance.
He sat her down in a chair beside one of the cylinders. He placed a rubber cup firmly over her mouth and nose, holding it in place. He turned the valve on the cylinder. There was a whisper of sound, the sibilant hiss of gas.
Solo strained to move his body, but found himself still in that state of physical paralysis. He saw that Su Yan was not using this same gas on Barbry.
His low voice struck at Barbry. “I am going to leave a knife with you, Barbry. Do you understand?”
Solo saw that the girl’s eyes were open. There was no longer any terror in them. Her blinking seemed to indicate to Su Yan that she still heard him, still understood him. He glanced at the needle on the cylinder gauge.
Satisfied that the flow of gas was slow, steady, adequate, Su Yan spoke again: “When I am out of the room, Barbry, you will kill Napoleon Solo there on the floor. You will strike between the shoulder blades. Once. Twice. Three times. You will make certain he is dead before you use the knife on yourself. You will drive the knife upward through your solar plexus into your heart.” Solo, in horror, heard Su Yan calmly repeat these instructions in that same unemotional tone. He could see Barbry’s face, and he saw there was no recoiling, no revulsion in her eyes. He could not tell if she understood Su Yan, but the thin, tall man appeared satisfied. He reached over and turned off the valve; the whispering hiss of gas ceased.
He stood another moment with the rubber cup in place over Barbry’s nose and mouth. Then he set the cup in its holder. He drew a glitteringly sharp knife from his inner jacket pocket He placed it firmly in Barbry’s grasp, folding her fingers over the handle, pressing them closed, watching her narrowly as he worked.
Su Yan stepped back and Barbry sat there, staring straight ahead, the knife clasped firmly in her fist.
Su Yan watched her a moment and then nodded, apparently satisfied. The building lights dimmed again.
He turned, moving toward the door, paused, glancing at Solo on the floor.
“Goodbye, Mr. Solo.” Su Yan stared at him. If it will comfort you, I can assure you that you and Esther Kappmyer will be found dead in your room at the St. Francis Hotel.”
“Somehow there’s no comforting thought there,” Solo said.
“When it happens,” Su Yan said, “Washington, D.C. will be only atomic rubble, and World War III will be under way.”
“Too bad you haven’t reason enough left to see what will happen when hydrogen bombs are used.”
Su Yan had turned toward the door; now he heeled around angrily.
“We can build well on the ruin of this world — and small loss. Other civilizations have grown out of the rubble of those before them.”
“If you say so.”
“Don’t fight it so,” Su Yan said with a chilled smile. “You have the comforting thought that you gave your life in an heroic effort to avert what you see as a catastrophe.’
Now Solo laughed. “I wonder what comforting thought you will find, Su Yan, when you finally realize that the catastrophe is more immense than your imagination can contain — when there is nothing left for you to rule? I’ve always wondered what thoughts are comforting to an international fink.”
Su Yan gripped the door until his knuckles whitened. Obviously he fought a battle against his fiery desire to stride back across the room and finish off Solo.
Whatever he might have done, the thought was wiped away as the lights dimmed one more time. He glanced, as if for the final check, at Solo helpless on the floor, at Illya bound and unconscious in a straight chair, and Barbry seated with that gleaming six-inch knife gripped tightly in her fist.
This still-life pleased him entirely, and he gave a small nod of satisfaction before he stepped through the door and closed it behind him.
The thundering of noises rumbled through the air ducts under the ceiling of the room: Forcing himself to keep his gaze away from Barbry and the knife in her hand, Solo concentrated on the cabinets along the far walls, seeing weaponry, masks and ammunition as well as cylinders of several types of gasses. Every attack weapon he would need to stop DeVry and Su Yan — only feet away from him, and yet they might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
Barbry stirred, and Solo jerked his eyes back to her. The chair scraped as she stood up.
He said, keeping his voice level, unemotional, “Don’t move, Barbry. Stay where you are.”
She stood up slowly, her gaze fixed on his vulnerable back. She stared at him, but he knew that she had not heard a word he had said. She was conditioned against any thought except that of murder and suicide implanted in her mind by Samuel Su Yan.