Verdammt! What in God’s name were they burying in that lovely cemetery just beyond the rimrock?
Herr Muller did not know. He was only certain of one thing. The coffins he had delivered for the Herr had never contained dead bodies. He did not care what the Death Certificate claimed nor how many headstones they put up with all the lying inscriptions.
Orangeberg was not a place where dead men slept.
A NICE LITTLE PLACE TO BOMB
THE PLAN WAS daring. It had to be. Events had worked to that point where no other plan of action was feasible. Waverly had consulted with whomever he had to consult and the answer had come down from on high: Find out about Orangeberg. When you are certain, blast it off the face of the earth. We’ll take the consequences, whatever they may be.
So it was that on a foggy night later that week, a United States Air Force C-47 roared through the heavens over Europe, bound for Oberteisendorf.
Napoleon Solo sat in the passenger compartment. He was no longer sartorially elegant or well-groomed. Indeed, he was completely outfitted for a drop behind enemy lines. His flying suit was complete: helmet, goggles, fur-lined parka. His most vital possession, however, was X-757, the specially devised U.N.C.L.E. fire-explosive which produced so much heat that it could fuse an area to a depth of ten feet. Judiciously placed at Orangeberg, X-757 would reduce the cemetery to a pit of molten lava in which rock, earth, wood coffins and those hellish little capsules and their contents would lose their identities as separate substances.
Solo’s entire wardrobe was built for combat operation; map, pistol and complete detonation kit. This included five pounds of nitro jelly spread harmlessly about his person. It was only when the mass was put together like butter for a cake and frosted with blasting caps that it would take on a different, far more deadly character.
Seated across the aisle from him, beside a very worried looking Jerry Terry, was Illya Kuryakin, attired in exactly the same costume. The Russian’s face wore a blissful smile. Inactivity dulled him. This investigation of a cemetery in Orangeberg was more to his liking. He patted the entrenching tools fastened to his pack. Jerry Terry was busy making adjustments on a two-way radio before her. Each man had a walkie-talkie hand set which could make instant contact if they remained within a five mile radius of the plane.
“Ten minutes,” the intercom from the forward cabin crackled.
Jerry flung a worried look at Napoleon Solo. He smiled at her, trying to make her feel better. He knew he was wasting his time. She was too intelligent not to know how ridiculously short the odds were. It all boiled down to suicide, even on U.N.C.L.E.’s humanitarian terms.
Waverly had remained in London long enough to prepare the details of the plan. “Remember,” he had cautioned in his usual fatherly way, “You paradrop in as close as possible to your target, dig up one coffin. If it contains anything other than a corpse, radio the plane to make a fast pick-up and get out of there. You know what you have to do. Failing that, the bomber will carry a pay load. That could help.”
Yes, it would be easy, Solo reflected. Like dropping in to tea with the Grand Duchess.
“Radio’s working fine,” Jerry Terry said flatly. The roar of the bomber engines was like far-off thunder.
“Good,” Kuryakin said. “Communications mean a lot this trip.”
“Kuryakin,” she whispered suddenly. “Make yourself scarce, will you?”
He grinned, not offended. “I’ll see if there’s any coffee left in the commissary.” He shouldered down the aisle, going forward, his pack and parachute making him seem pounds heavier.
Jerry Terry slid into the seat alongside Solo. He turned from contemplation of the dark sky beyond the wings.
“Stinker,” she hissed.
“Who, me?” he said banteringly.
“Keep it up. Smile. Big hero. You could get killed on this stunt, you know that? Two to one old Skull Face is sitting down there just waiting for you to come back. You’re so irresistible in your own unforgettable way.”
“Am I?” he said, keeping a smile from creeping across his face.
“Oh, Napoleon.” She crumpled against him, all the anger gone out of her. “Why do you have to be so irresistible? I was doing fine until you showed up, you know that? Men don’t mean that much to me.”
“And they do now?” he asked softly, brushing her forehead with his lips.
“Yes, no. Oh, you know what I mean.”
“Jerry, listen to me.”
“Tell me to be brave and I’ll spit right in your eye.”
“No,” he agreed. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
She pushed away from him, searching his eyes. “No, you wouldn’t. What were you going to say, Napoleon?” He stared at her soberly.
“I owe this one to Stewart Fromes and a lot of other people. You understand?”
“Yes—I think I do.”
“Plus which I have no intention of dying. Believe it. I like life, cigarettes and coffee. And girls.”
She recognized what he was trying to say despite the mockery of his curved smile.
“You’re still a stinker, Solo.”
“Of course I am.”
The intercom came alive again. “Five minutes.”
They kissed. A quick warm kiss. Jerry Terry sighed and brushed a bright strand of hair from her face.
And then Kuryakin had come back, almost apologetically, checking his equipment and gear one final time. “I am sorry,” he said, “but it is just about that time.
“One minute to zero,” the intercom said.
They stood in line beside the bail-out door, their drop lines secured to the long bar parallel to the cabin. The voice on the intercom began a countdown. Solo did not look back at the girl. He stared into the darkness yawning beyond the fringe of the air door.
Kuryakin was right behind him, the dour face happy. He was idly humming something that sounded vaguely Russian. A gloomy, low refrain.
The slipstream made Solo’s flying suit billow. He concentrated on the voice of the intercom:
“…nine, eight, seven, six…”
Six seconds to eternity. And the solution of Stewart Fromes’ problem.
And then five. Had he really been right or was it all a game?
And then four. Three. Three to success or death.
“…two…one!”
He stepped through the air door and was caught by the wind, his line releasing him. Darkness sprang up to meet him. The engine’s roar moved on. And he was falling, falling…
The dark world over Orangeberg waited to meet his hurtling body.
Solo came down with a lurch on a rising hillock of ground. Luckily, he had missed the trees. His body rolled, the shrouds of his chute picking up the worst of a brisk wind which billowed the silken folds back to umbrella shape. He scrambled erect, fighting the breeze, pulling the shroud lines to him, shortening the bursting strength of the wind. Soon he had collapsed the chute and unbuckled the harness, standing on the thing before it could sail away into the darkness of the night.
He searched the sky for Kuryakin, happy to see the white mushroom of his chute making contact with the ground less than three hundred yards away. Elatedly, he balled up his pack and hurried toward his fellow agent. You could never be sure about a drop. The unexpected was always likely to happen when you least expected it.
Kuryakin had mastered his own difficulties by the time he reached him. They shook hands warmly, glad to be alive, and set about burying their silken passports to Germany.