There was a short pause, and then, “It will be a pleasure,” two voices said simultaneously, one in French and one in Arabic. Two large men moved across and took up the ends of the pole under which Solo was slung. One was Ahmed; the other was the half-caste with the broken nose whom the agent had beaten in the fight in the alleyway at Casablanca.

“It would be much easier for everybody, old chap, if you’d just tell me all about it,” General Mazzari said to Illya. They were sitting in a small office off the corridor leading to the cavern where the reactor was. Between them, a flat-topped desk was covered in papers. The walls were hung with what looked like production charts and graphs, and there was a plaster relief map of the Sudan and surrounding countries to one side of the door. Mazzari’s Walther PPK, with its dull black barrel and brown grips, lay heavily among the papers by his hand.

“There’s not much to tell, really,” Kuryakin said. “I am afraid I must plead guilty to being inquisitive. I was trying to find my colleague Waverly—I told one of your colonels who stopped me about him—and I came across an airstrip and then a road…Well, you can imagine how curious I was, finding a road and a runway in the middle of an unexplored forest.”

“Go on.”

“Yes. Well, the next thing I discovered was a silo with a missile in it. Not that I was prying, but I almost fell into it. It seems to me quite reasonable for anyone finding things like this to look around a bit.”

“But I found you in here, old chap. In here. The place is closely guarded, you know. Very closely guarded.”

“That was unintentional. I did not mean to come in here. Indeed, I did not know of the existence of the place.”

“Unintentional?”

“I was tired. A convoy of trucks passed me and I—well, I stole a lift; I swung aboard the back when the last one passed me.”

“As it passed you. I see. But you had a vehicle of your own.”

“I had to leave it. There was a bridge down and I came on on foot.”

“And what did you find inside this truck?”

“An unmarked crate—two crates, rather.”

“Yes?”

“When the truck stopped, I waited for a minute and then I got out. I could see at once that I was in some place I had no business to be—so I thought I had better go. I was trying to find a way out when you…captured me.”

Mazzari picked up the gun and examined it. “You have indeed stumbled upon something that does not concern you,” he said at last. “But we are ready to strike within the next few days; in a week we shall be masters of the whole Sudan. Probably of the whole of Africa, old chap. Perhaps your unwelcome arrival does not matter so much—but I have a feeling…There is a highly placed official of the organization helping us who is due to arrive shortly. The decision must be his. I fear he may think you have learned more than is good for you. And even if your life should be spared, you will have to stay here as our…guest, shall we say?…until after we have acted.”

“It sounds very intriguing.”

“Intriguing! If only you knew, old chap! Do you realize how much work, how much planning has gone into this scheme?”

“To build a redoubt like this must in itself have presented enormous difficulties,” Illya encouraged.

“But of course. There were the natural caverns to start with—we had the advantage of knowing about these. But our friends had to fly in vast quantities of materials undetected, instruct the labor force we provided and supervise the construction…it was a fantastic task. For three years we have been slaving underground here. Three years. Because the place had to be invisible from the air, you see. The Arabs have reconnaissance planes which frequently pass over Halakaz.”

“There is certainly no sign of construction work on the surface—but what about the airstrip?”

“You would think it could be seen for miles, wouldn’t you?” Mazzari was as boastful as a child with a new toy. “Undetectable. Not a sign. From the ground it looks like any runway, but we had the greatest camouflage expert in Europe…Because there are no buildings, you see, skillful variations of tone and texture in the asphalt can blend it in perfectly with the surroundings.”

“You have been very clever, General.”

“Clever? That is only the beginning! We have a cyclotron—you probably saw the spiral tubes—and we are building a synchrotron which will have an energy level of ten thousand million electron volts! That has to wait until we can enlarge the caverns still further, because the ring of tubing must be a hundred meters in diameter. In a year, we shall have completed a Fast Reactor using tamed Plutonium and liquid Sodium—and then we shall be able to dispense with the old-fashioned hydroelectric plant, which always runs the risk of being detected by people exploring the falls. Then too, we shall be our own masters at every stage of our weapons program: at the moment, we have to rely on—er—outside sources for certain isotopes.”

“You mentioned a strike in the near future. If all this is to help you vanquish your enemies in Khartoum, the organization helping you must be altruistic. What can it profit them?”

“The organization—it is called Thrush—is an international body of scientists and economists. It is not composed of altruists, but it is always prepared to consider helping the underdog—if he has a good cause. Our cause is good, so they helped us. And of course, as you say, it is a two-way deal. In return we provide the labor and the place—the one place in the world where Thrush scientists can continue with their valuable research undisturbed by the prying eyes of jealous rivals and unknown to the world’s espionage corps.”

Kuryakin began to say something, thought better of it, and sighed. If this somehow likable patriot had not yet realized that his poor little six-thousand strong army, and his labor force of refugees from the destroyed villages, were merely dupes in Thrush’s insatiable plan for world domination, his awakening would come soon enough. For the missiles whose sleek shapes he had seen in their silos were no local pieces of atomic artillery designed to obliterate Khartoum: they were IRBM’s—intermediate range ballistic missiles, capable of destroying Rome, Paris, London, Berlin and Vienna!

“Your own men are in charge of the dispatch of the missiles I saw?” he asked.

“Well, no, old chap. At the moment Thrush technicians look after them. We haven’t yet acquired the know-how to man the computer room and the control dugouts. But we are training, we are training. A branch of my forces is on a special course at Gabotomi, on the further side of this plateau. And there are supplementary courses at various places round about, you know. An elementary course had a narrow escape yesterday when the accursed Arabs sacked a village not far from here—purely by coincidence, I hope.”

“General,” Illya began, “there is something I ought to tell you…”

A telephone on Mazzari’s desk shrilled him into silence. “Forgive me,” the soldier said when he had listened for a few moments, made a comment in his native language, and replaced the instrument. “The Council member of whom I spoke has arrived. I must leave you for a while. There are, as you see, no windows, no other doors, no means of exit from this room. The door through which I leave is solid and will be double-locked. Also, there will be two armed men on duty outside it. My advice to you, old chap, is to make yourself comfortable and sit tight until I return.”

He went out and Illya heard the solid clunk of metal as the tumblers of the lock fell home. A moment later, boots scraped on the floor of the corridor as the guards took up position outside.

Napoleon Solo was strapped to a ten-foot plank. His ankles were bound and attached to a ring at one end, and his arms, stretched above his head, were tied at the wrist and fastened to the other. The ends of the plank rested on a table top and a chair, so that his head was lower than his feet.