He hurled it straight at the four men from the sea and the target he might have made was obliterated by the smoke from a blast that lighted up the entire beach, completely dispelling the gray over cast.
When the smoke cleared Commander Ulrich was lying stretched out at full length on a patch of blood-reddened sand, his head blown off. The officer who hadn't succeeded in exploding his gun at all was swaying back and forth on his knees, his hands clutching his stomach as if the flood of red that was oozing between his fingers was running a race with the glaze that was creeping across his eyes, and winning at a terrible cost in pain.
The third officer had turned and was hobbling toward the surfline and the beached boat, the entire back of his head so charred by the blast that it seemed incredible that he could hobble at all.
But the fourth officer had been injured only slightly, and his freakish luck in having escaped the full force of the blast had brought a look of grim exultation into his eyes. He stood very still, taking careful aim at Rivers as he arose to his full height and Rivers was too shaken by the concussion which had followed the blast to realize how great was his peril until the gun went off.
The bullet ripped the flesh of his right shoulder, leaving a jagged gash. The pain was agonizing for an instant. But it did not prevent him from swinging about and running with his shoulders lowered toward the cliff wall, zigzagging a little to make it less likely that the bullets he knew would follow quickly to find lodgment in his brain or heart.
He was a third of the way up the cliff wall when the narrow path in front of him erupted in a cloud of dust and the roar of the pursuing officer's fun made his ears ring. But the second shot was a clean miss, and he was at the top of the cliff before the third blast came.
He looked down and saw the long-muzzled pistol flame an instant before something that felt like a solid wall of metal struck him full in the chest.
He took a tottering step forward, bent double and went spinning over the edge of the cliff, his body turning over and over in the air until it landed with a crash on below.
The THRUSH officer whose role of executioner had been successfully completed stood for an instant twenty feet from the summit of the cliff, and returned his still smoking pistol to its holster beneath his right shoulder, a cold smile playing over his distorted features.
Then he descended the path to the beach, stood for a moment staring down at the crumpled body of Huntley and lingered for a moment longer on the crushed and battered remains of the U.N.C.L.E. agent his own accuracy of aim had brought low.
The officer who had gone hobbling toward the boat had some how managed to draw it out into the surf and was standing knee deep in swirling foam, holding fast to the rail and swaying like a drunken man.
The face of the successful executioner convulsed with what could only have been rage. "Coward, simpleton, fool," he muttered, between clenched teeth. "He leaves it all to me and getting what's left of the commander into that boat is not going to be easy. If he lets go of the rail—"
There were two dead THRUSH officers on the beach now. But the one who had tried in vain to stem the flow of blood that had widened about him like a rock pool fringed with scarlet sea anemones he ignored, as if for a responsible THRUSH officer to get himself killed, however unavoidably, made him contemptible in a successful executioner's eyes.
That the commander was equally an object of contempt was evident in the rough way he was lifted up, dragged across the beach and tumbled, minus his head, into the swaying boat's stern.
A moment later the boat was moving out across the sea toward the waiting THRUSH submarine.
ONE
NEW YORK BRIEFING
NAPOLEON SOLO and Illya Kuryakin were frowning heavily when they walked into the big, brightly lighted room crowded with electronic equipment where the New York Control Unit of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement conducted its operations.
The quiet brownstone on the East Side of New York, a short distance from the East River, possessed an invaluable defensive protection in just the constant ebb and flow of Manhattan's daily life in eddies around it.
Passing cars, a little old lady stopping to chat with a neighbor, a diplomat with a brief case hurrying in the direction of the United Nations Building a few blocks away were all assets. Who would suspect that behind so unpretentious a false front one of the most powerful crime-fighting organizations on earth functioned around the clock, receiving communications and issuing orders global in scope?
Sometimes it worried Solo just a little, if only because so vast a complex of assembled technology, and the activities of so many men of exceptional brilliance might lead to over-confidence and a prematurely-timed confrontation with THRUSH in a gigantic struggle that could have world-destroying consequences.
Someday such a risk might have to be taken, the fateful pawn tossed down in bold challenge, for THRUSH could not be allowed to wreck civilization by abandoning all concern for its own survival in its mad grasp for power.
So far THRUSH had come close to waging such a struggle, for many of the battles it had lost to U.N.C.L.E. in the past had been potentially world-destructive. But a ways that final stage of suicidal madness had been averted, and THRUSH had drawn back from a gamble with destiny in which there could be no victor. Like some great beast, snarling and grievously wounded, it had retreated into jungle shadows to recoup its strength for another try.
Napoleon Solo had supreme confidence in the sobriety and good sense of the organization he served as Chief Enforcement Officer, Section II. He had supreme confidence as well in the decisions of Alexander Waverly, the director of U.N.C.L.E.'S New York headquarters.
But now, as he strode into the presence of that bushy-browed, tweedily attired and remarkably self-possessed man of just past middle-age, he was sharing Illya Kuryakin's vexation concerning something that had happened to them the night before.
It was a minor vexation and they did not think it would interest Waverly. But somehow they found that shrugging it off in completely casual fashion was proving difficult. It concerned a dinner date with a blonde and a brunette who had behaved outrageously.
First the blonde had seemed more drawn to Solo and had then decided that she liked Kuryakin better, and the brunette had abandoned Illya in favor of Solo. That would have been all right, because the two young ladies had been almost equally attractive. But later, on leaving the restaurant, they had both changed their minds again.
"There's something I guess we just have to accept," Solo was saying. "It's hard for a woman to stay attached to just one man when an evening is long and complicated and there are unusual men on hand to make a choice difficult."
"You're probably right. We really ought to forget it." Illya was attempting to smile, but he looked the opposite of happy.
Before they could carry the conversation further they had passed through the door of the brightly lighted research facility and electronic communications room and Waverly was coming forward to greet them.
There were those who thought of Waverly as sedate and scholarly and others who saw him as "a tough old bird" with a wrinkle-seamed face who could probably hold his own with a much younger man in hand-to-hand combat. Few men, indeed, saw precisely the same Waverly, for his expression alone could change with great rapidity, particularly when he was under the stress of strong emotion.