He peered cautiously around the corner.
The two arms of the passage curved symmetrically away from him - as though they were circling some central feature, perhaps a giant shaft - each one boasting a collection of doors on its outer wall which began about forty feet beyond the corner. To the left, the indicators read: BRIEFING… OPERATIONS CONTROL… COMMUNICATIONS… WELFARE… LIBRARY. Those pointing to the right were labeled: MAINTENANCE… ARMORY… CATERING… PERSONNEL… ELEVATORS TO B, C, ADMINISTRATION AND REACTOR. There was nobody in sight along either arm.
"Right looks more interesting," Illya murmured, "but it's where those voices are coming from - and there's about a hundred and twenty crew members of that sub to account for, besides Heaven knows how many members of their private army. We'll play it safe and take the left!"
With their guns ready, they stole noiselessly into the fortress.
Chapter 12
Hearse Under Water
THE SECOND DOOR on the left of the curving passage stood ajar. Through it, Illya and Coralie Simone could see a fair-sized room equipped with a blackboard and benches rather like a school classroom. In the corner nearest the corridor a large desk littered with papers stood by a green baize board carrying charts and graphs and schedules. The door of the room, which was empty, bore a small plaque on which was engraved the word BRIEFING.
"This must be where the leaders come to get their orders before they set out on their various missions…" Kuryakin began. He stopped. Approaching around the curve of the passage, voices distantly echoed.
Seizing the girl's arm, he thrust her through the half-open doorway. "Let's hope whoever it is isn't on his way to a briefing, anyway!" he whispered as he thumbed back the safety catch on his gun. He pushed the door almost shut, and peered through the crack as two officers in khaki and black uniforms passed down the passage and continued on around the bend conversing animatedly in a language Coralie could not place. "Serbo Croatian," the Russian murmured with a jerk of his head in the direction they had taken. "They were on their way to the canteen. Let's hope the majority of Thrush's personnel are there… it's at least the right time for dinner, so maybe we'll be in luck."
Coralie had found among the wall charts behind the desk what appeared to be an exploded diagram of the fortress, showing the relationship of the levels one above the other. "We'll try and memorize it," Illya murmured. "It might save us a lot of time… or possibly even our lives."
The basic design of the place could have been represented by three oval pans one above the other, the topmost pan having a short handle - which represented the submarine pen. There seemed, as Illya had surmised, to be a column of rock standing away from the valley wall on which this projection was supported, the remainder of the fortress fitting in between wall and column.
The circular passageway to which the corridor from the pen led was repeated on all three floors of the fortress. On its outer periphery it admitted, on the floor they were on, to a communications complex, to welfare and library sections, to the canteen and to the personnel branch; on the middle floor to living quarters, offices, an armory, the radio room and more catering facilities; and on the lowest level to stores, a cell block and more offices. Within the area circumscribed by the passageway, the bottom floor housed the reactor and the next a circular council chamber which was two stories high and rose to the top floor. From here - on the opposite side of the passage they were traversing - a door appeared to lead to a gallery circling the chamber and some kind of control center at one end of it.
"What I didn't realize," Illya said, "was that they have, of course, this great maintenance unit. Look, we'd have passed it if we had chosen the other branch of the passage. It seems to connect with the pen - I guess there must be sliding doors we didn't notice on the side opposite the quay. After all, even if they didn't actually make the sub here and shipped the bits in by air and truck, it had to be assembled here and that needs quite an advanced shop."
"Yes," the girl said. "And here's where it came in - look, at one side of the reactor on the lowest floor: it's marked Truck park, and there's an arrow pointing to where it says Double steel doors. What d'you bet those doors blank off the tunnel leading to the estancia?"
"No takers," the agent grinned. "What I want to find out is how they operate! First of all, though, let's see if we can locate Napoleon… If there's a cell block, he's probably in it."
At the opposite side of the fortress from the corridor leading to the pen, there was apparently a bank of elevators and some stairs. "We'll go down those," he said. "They're probably only used for emergency... and this is an emergency, anyway!"
Cautiously, they eased open the door and crept out into the passageway. There wasn't a soul in sight. Nor did they see anybody as they sped past the closed doors and gained the open space where the elevators were. Voices were approaching, however, from the direction of the canteen down the other arm of the corridor. Swiftly, the agent pulled the girl after him down the concrete stairway which twisted away around the shaft housing the three elevators.
The rough, curving walls were glistening with moisture, though the air current surging up from the depths at the command of some extractor plant behind them was dry and arid. Increasingly, the two of them were aware of the relentless cold pressure of those countless tons of water leaning, day in and day out, on the roof of the fortress. And as though to underline the point, the string of low power naked bulbs set in the slanting ceiling of the stairway dimmed abruptly and then slowly flared again - though not quite to their former brightness, the girl thought with a shiver. Still, it was probably just some fluctuation in the output of the reactor below them... The sound of voices above swelled; the echoes expanded, then dwindled as the people talking passed the entrance to the shaft and continued on around the passageway.
They crept into the reflected light from the landing on B Level. Footsteps and voices echoed here too, advancing and receding in some numbers. Elevator doors opened and shut and they heard the cages whining away upwards beyond the wall of their stairway. It was some minutes before Kuryakin was satisfied that it was safe to peer around the last corner and prospect the landing. He drew back suddenly. A solitary man was waiting for an elevator to return.
Two minutes later, after the doors had hissed shut and the lift had ascended again, be ventured to peer once more. The landing was empty.
Beckoning to the girl to follow him, he raced across and plunged down the further flight of stairs towards the bottom level. Here it was quieter, the lights were even dimmer, and there was no sign of any of the fortress's inhabitants.
There was no sign, either, of Napoleon Solo. There were six featureless cells in the cul-de-sac leading off the circular passage. And all of them were empty.
"What now?" Coralie asked, seeing the momentary flicker of despair on Illya's face. "Is there anywhere else we can look for your friend?"
He shook his head slowly, his eyes somber. "Anywhere," he said. "He could be anywhere… alive or dead. We shall simply have to proceed with the action as though -"