THE VOLCANO BOX AFFAIR

THE NEW COMPLETE "U.N.C.L.E." NOVEL

Deep inside the earth THRUSH had found a molten weapon to enslave mankind, as Solo and Illya, alone and marked for extermination, seek the one man who had discovered how to turn any city in the world into a red death trap.

by ROBERT HART DAVIS

ACT I—ISLAND OF THE LOST

THEY LOOKED LIKE a pair of prehistoric animals as they emerged from the testing room, but the weird beaklike noses and bug eyes were actually the components of ordinary gas masks.

They removed these and set them down on a table.

The darker and heftier of the two shook his head in wonder. "I don't see how such a tiny amount of liquid could create so much smoke. You'd think a city block were on fire."

Illya Kuryakin grinned pontifically. He said: "It's not the liquid so much as the gas it liberates, which reacts with the metals it touches and creates more gas and smoke, which in turn react with the metals they touch and create—"

"Okay. I get the picture," Napoleon Solo said, gesturing with his thumb and index finger as if to turn off a broken record. "Well, this little capsule ought to come in handy if it doesn't get us arrested for air pollution violations. In fact, I'd say it's a real gasser." He looked at Illya for approval.

"Is that really what you'd say?" the blond young man said, putting his jacket on over his snug black vest.

Napoleon's reply was interrupted by the sound of the public address system crackling: there was about to be an announcement. It turned out to be Alexander Waverly's secretary, paging Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin.

They proceeded through a labyrinth of corridors, up a silent elevator, and through another maze of passages, at each checkpoint flashing their identification, though they were well known by face to the guards. Such was the scope of security precautions in this most important law enforcement agency in the free world.

Waverly's back was turned on them when they entered his office. His suit fitted somewhat loosely on his broad shoulders. But that hunch of his back was deceptive, for he was an extremely powerful man and as quick on his feet as a man in his business had to be to survive as long as Waverly had survived.

The head of North American Operations for U.N.C.L.E. was looking at a map of the world which had pins of numerous colors jutting out of a great diversity of locations. The pins were of course coded, each color corresponding to some discernible pattern of crime or trouble around the world—light blue for smuggling, dark blue for white slavery, red for suspected sabotage, and so forth.

In his left hand he held a sheaf of bulletins, releases, newspaper and magazine clippings and data sheets, and they were color-coded dark green.

Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin glanced at the map but could not at first see any pinheads corresponding to the color of Waverly's papers. Then they both noticed a lonely pair of green dots thrust into the Indonesian area, almost imperceptible, due to the company they kept—a riot of pins indicating smuggling, dope traffic, murder, espionage, sabotage, political chicanery, kidnapping, and syndicated crime corresponding to every hue in the rainbow.

Southeast Asia was about the hottest spot on the globe when it came to evil-doing, but the two green pins in the midst of all the others suggested that whatever this new form of evil was, it was only in its incipient stage.

Waverly was tapping the map with his pipe, unaware that flakes of tobacco were falling out of it and covering his arm and shoulder. Napoleon cleared his throat and Waverly dropped his arm, sending a shower of tobacco down to the carpet. He wrinkled his nose. "What is that smell?"

"Smoke, sir," Napoleon said, looking a bit sheepish. "We've been experimenting with bithane gas. Most potent teargas I've ever seen."

"I wish you'd have your clothing deodorized before coming into this office," Waverly said, grinning. "People will think I've been smoking some rotten weed." He dipped an almost black briar pipe into his humidor, and as he tamped tobacco into the bowl he gestured with the pipe in the direction of the map. "I expected you gentlemen know something about geology."

The agents nodded cautiously.

"You'll observe two green pins located in the Banda Sea area, southeast of the main Indonesian group. These represent the two volcanoes that have erupted there recently. Both have received ample publicity, so I don't have to fill you in on their havoc. In case you haven't followed the press releases carefully, you'll find complete descriptions in the information I'll provide you with at the end of our briefing."

He dropped a green manila folder marked Newspaper Clippings on his desk.

"A volcano can occur anywhere on earth. It is the result of molten lava, which presumably occupies the core of our planet, rushing to fill faults in the earth and, if that fault extends to the surface as frequently happens during an earthquake, overflowing. Because such faults exist in greater concentrations in some places on the globe than in others, we can expect more activity in those places.

"The islands around the Pacific Ocean are the most vulnerable earthquake and volcano zones, and from Hawaii to Japan such subsurface disturbances are common. Therefore it should ordinarily be of no concern to a law agency that a volcano or two erupt somewhere on earth, as obviously the only laws we cannot try to enforce are those of nature."

He patted his pockets as if looking for a match, then rummaged around the notes and papers on his desk while his pipe hung unfit from his mouth. Apparently he forgot what he was looking for a moment later, and removed the pipe from his mouth to use it simply as a visual aid in emphasizing his lecture.

"However," Waverly went on, "U.N.C.L.E. has some grounds to suspect that the two recent volcanoes, the first on an uninhabited island numbered L four hundred and six on navigation charts, the second, quite tragically, on a fairly well-populated island called Tapwana, are not acts of God, but rather acts of man. Let me modify that. The first of the two eruptions could have been natural, but the second is most suspect."

Napoleon Solo had begun frowning and looking off to an indeterminate spot in mid-air as if his mind was groping for an idea. Then his eyes seemed to catch fire, and he said "Tapwana. Isn't that the island that was making all that trouble for the Boruvian Federation?" He turned to Illya for support.

Illya Kuryakin picked up the thread immediately. "Right. That dictator of Borua––what's his name?—Sarabando––lined up all the islands in his area into a federation, but this Tapwana refused to join. A month later it was immaterial, because Tapwana was melted down into volcano-fodder. But sir, you don't think that a volcano—"

Waverly cleared his throat, as if reprimanding his agent for drawing hasty conclusions. "Sarabando, the dictator of the Boruvian Federation, is a known puppet of THRUSH, Mr. Solo. And although that still leaves considerable room for coincidence, there is one more circumstance which pushes this matter very solidly into U.N.C.L.E.'S sphere of influence."

Alexander Waverly, enjoying his moment, lingered over it by fiddling with the mouthpiece of his pipe.

"Who is Edward Dacian?" he asked, like a teacher trying to catch his pupils unprepared with a surprise test.

TWO

NAPOLEON AND ILLYA pursed their lips and for a second or two appeared to be stumped. But they were only vacating the room mentally, as it were, and sending their minds into a vast filing system of data in order to retrieve a full dossier on the man their commanding officer had mentioned.