Pulp Fiction | The Vanishing Act Affair (June 1966)

  The Vanishing Act Affair

  By Dennis Lynds

  June 1966

  Volume 1, Issue 5

  Misshapen, monster-like, they crouched deep under London and listened to their demoniac leader: "You will take over the Earth after tonight—after the whole men die. For nothing—not even the creatures from U.N.C.L.E.—can stop me from decreeing the end of the world!"

  Somewhere deep under London, a misshapen monster had decreed the end of the world. Only two men, Illya and Solo, might stop him—and time was running out too fast!

  Act I: To See Or Not To See

  Act II: Come Kill With Me

  Act III: The Last Shall Be First

  Act IV: Not With A Bang But A Scream

  ACT I—TO SEE OR NOT TO SEE

  THE MAN limped across the open space between the wooded hills and the armored truck.

  A grotesque figure in the twilight—short, heavy, with a twisted leg and thick, shaggy hair that hung down almost to his eyes in front, below his neck in back.

  The armored truck, closed and buttoned up, its last pick-up of the day made, started its engine. The loading dock was now deserted, the floodlights out, all personnel of the factory inside.

  There was only the armored truck, locked and sealed, and the man limping toward it.

  There [was] no one else in sight as the truck began to move slowly out of the narrow driveway of the factory, only the truck and the grotesque figure, limping more rapidly now toward a spot where the truck had to pass.

  Nothing else moved. But the truck and the hurrying figure were not alone.

  High on the side of the wooded hill that overlooked the factory on the highway between Santa Carla and Coopersfield in Southern California, two men crouched and watched the scene below through infra-red binoculars.

  They studied the short, shaggy-haired figure limping, and the truck moving slowly down the narrow driveway—the limping man and the truck converging on a point just before the driveway reached the highway.

  One of the two men was slender, dressed in a light black sweater and slim black trousers that contrasted sharply with his shock of blond hair that looked as if it had been cut below the edge of a soup bowl. This man's glasses were trained on the slow-moving armored truck.

  "They either don't see him, or they don't think he can be of any danger to them," Illya Kuryakin said.

  The second man nodded, his glasses trained on the limping figure, which looked even more weird through the infra-red lenses. This man was taller and heavier than his blond companion. A well-built man of average height, with a youthful, half-amused expression on his face.

  "They could be right," Napoleon Solo said. "What can he do? The truck is buttoned up like a tank."

  "Tanks are hardly invulnerable, Napoleon," Illya pointed out drily.

  Napoleon Solo appeared to be thinking this over. His open, handsome face showed little of the sharp and shrewd mind that made him the efficient chief enforcement officer, Section II, United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, better known simply as U.N.C.L.E.

  "We know he's not even armed," Solo said.

  "Do we, Napoleon?" Illya said.

  The Number 2 man of Section II (Operations and Enforcement) of U.N.C.L.E. watched the strange scene below and frowned. A loner in a world of organization, Illya's quizzical eyes were often amused; they were not amused now.

  Solo, his sharp mind so well-concealed behind the facade of a flippant young executive type, saw his partner's concern.

  "We know he left the meeting of the Cult unarmed. Our detectors showed nothing metal, wood or plastic. We've never let him out of our sight since," Solo said.

  Illya nodded. "Of course you're right. My gloomy Slavic mind is working overtime. But—"

  "But?" Solo echoed quietly in the deepening darkness.

  Illya's eyes were glued to the eye-pieces of his infra-red binoculars. "But why has he come forty miles from the Cult meeting to walk unarmed up to an armored truck?" he said softly.

  Then, as if the grotesque figure below had heard the question of the small Russian U.N.C.L.E. agent, the two agents had their answer.

  "Look!" Solo cried.

  Both men had their glasses trained on the events below.

  As the truck reached the point of leaving the driveway, the strange, hairy figure below suddenly rose up from a clump of bushes. The man limped two quick steps to the armored truck, thrust out his hand toward the narrow slit of an air vent, and leaped back.

  "Air vent!" Solo breathed.

  "Gas?" Illya hissed.

  "How would you open the truck?" Solo whispered.

  But, below, the limping man seemed to have no intention of opening the truck. The instant the truck had passed him, he turned and limped away into the bushes and across the open area toward the wooded hills. He went as rapidly as he could, without a backward glance.

  Then, the man did glance backwards, and fell on his face.

  The armored truck had not slowed, even after the man had made the motion with his hand toward the air vent. It went on down the driveway, reached the highway, turned—and stopped dead in the center of the highway.

  As the two agents watched from the wooded hills in the Southern California twilight, the doors of the truck opened and the guards jumped out. Four guards, all those in the truck, leaped out, guns ready. They fired as they came out, the long tongues of flames spitting out into the now dark night.

  The men form the armored truck fired a withering hail of bullets. They ran and darted all across the road, firing all the time, running for cover. It was a scene of complete battle.

  Except that there was no enemy.

  The armored guards were firing a deadly hail of bullets at absolutely nothing!

  Illya and Solo stared through their infra-red binoculars, and then slowly lowered the glasses and looked at each other.

  "Nothing?" Solo said.

  "Nothing at all," Illya said. "They are firing as if an army were attacking them, and there isn't anyone."

  "Where is our limping friend?"

  Illya looked. "Still lying flat. Which means he knew this was going to happen. He wanted no part of a stray bullet."

  Solo was again studying the armored car and its wildly-firing guards. Now the suave chief agent of U.N.C.L.E. strained to see more clearly through the infra-red lenses.

  "Illya!" Sola said suddenly.

  Both agents stared again at the guards, who were still engaged in their bloody battle with an enemy who was not there. The guards were down, flat on the highway and motionless. Even as Illya and Solo watches, the driver, crumpled to the macadam and lay still.

  The weird figure with the long, shaggy hair got up and began to limp rapidly away toward the woods and the small car that had brought him to the factory and the armored truck.

  The two agents moved. Each picked up a small, thin attache case.

  "You take the truck," Solo said. "I'll follow our limping friend."

  "Check. And Napoleon, be careful. There is something very odd happening here."

  Solo nodded. The two men vanished like wraiths into the trees on their way down the wooded hillside.

  TWO

  THE ARMORED truck guards lay on the highway. No traffic passed in the evening on the back road. Illya, cautious, approached the silent men and the empty truck. The guards did not move.

  His quick eyes searched the empty road and the dark bushes that bordered it. He saw and heard nothing. No one was near now, and n o one had been near when the guards fired their weapons into the twilight, shattering the bushes and trees with bullets.

  In the factory building there was light no
w, faces at the windows, but no one came out. Illya saw, through the distant windows of the factory, a man on the telephone. The police would be here soon, but no one would come from the factory until the police arrived.

  He had perhaps fifteen minutes.

  Quickly he bent over the fallen guards. They were not dead; there was no mark of any kind on them. They seemed to be in some kind of drugged sleep, and Illya remembered the way the limping man had motioned toward the air vent of the locked armored truck.

  He slapped the faces of two guards. Nothing happened. The men neither moved nor groaned. They did not come awake. Illya turned his attention to the armored truck itself.

  The doors of the truck were open, and Illya circled it cautiously. There was nothing unusual, no signs of battle. Inside the truck, through the open rear door, Illya could see the cargo—bags of money.

  Nothing seemed to have been taken or even disturbed. How could it have been, since Illya and Solo had seen nothing and no one approach the truck? And yet? The guards had fired at something, for some reason.

  Illya did not believe in magic, but something which defied logic had happened here. Carefully, he climbed into the truck to check the bags. Five minutes later he squatted in the truck and rubbed his chin. The bags were all full. They had not been opened. Nothing at all seemed to be missing.

  Why attack an armored truck of money and take nothing? Why drug the guards, force them out into the open to fire at nothing, and take no money? It made n o sense at all. But Illya had long ago learned that everything made sense if you knew the key, the—

  And then it made sense.

  Illya saw them through the open rear door of the truck. Crouched there inside with the bags of money, he looked out through the rear door and saw them coming from the bushes, out of the shadows, pouring into the road.

  Thrush!

  Of course, Thrush! Always Thrush!

  There were six of them. They had been lying in wait. But they had moved too slowly. Illya crouched among the money bags, fitted the stock on his U.N.C.L.E. special, and opened fire.

  There were ten of them now. They fell screaming all across the road as he fired. But others came on, firing as they came.

  * * *

  NAPOLEON followed the limping man across the wooded country toward the small car Solo and Illya had trailed from the meeting of the Things To Come Brotherhood. The leader of the only branch of the strange cult in America, the limping man looked like some shaggy mutation of a human being.

  But crippled and grotesque as the man was, he moved with amazing agility. Solo scrambled to keep up. The man reached his small car, and glanced quickly behind. He had heard Solo, and now he had seen the youthful agent. Solo abandoned his cover and sprinted for his own car.

  The small car roared away down the dirt road. In his own car Solo raced after the small car. The cultist drove like a madman, the small car careening down the dangerous dirt road. Solo clung grimly to the wheel of his own car as he followed as closely as he could.

  The small car was quicker on the narrow turns, but Solo's car was heavier and held the road better. What he lost in speed on the curves, he gained back by holding the road better in and out of the turns.

  But the small car pulled slowly away. And then the dirt road reached the highway—not the highway that went past the factory, but the coast highway. The mountains came down close to the sea, and beyond the road the cliffs dropped to the ocean.

  The small car screeched into a turn and vanished down the highway and around a curve. Solo, forced to slow down, made the turn and gunned his heavier car after the vanished small car of his quarry. He rounded two sharp curves without sighting the car of the limping man.

  Ahead there was a sickening screech of rubber, a loud, rending crash, and silence.

  Solo came around the last curve into a long straightaway—and saw, just where the curve entered the straightaway, the broken guardrail above the sea. He jammed on his brakes. The highway ahead was completely empty. Solo jumped out of his stopped car and ran to the broken guardrail. The jagged pieces of wood and metal were still quivering.

  He looked down over the edge of the sea cliff. Spreading ripples and white foam showed where something had struck. In the center of the circle of white, a black object bobbed on the surface, and, even as he watched, slowly sank.

  It was the small black car.

  Solo stared down. He saw no sign of life, no one swimming or struggling in the water. Then he looked carefully around him where he stood just off the highway.

  Perhaps the limping man had gone over with his car, and perhaps he hadn't. Solo could not be sure either way. And it did not really matter. Either way, he was not going to catch the limping man this night.

  Either the cultist was dead with the car, or he was snugly hidden somewhere in the bushes of the mountains across the highway. And if he were alive he was well aware of Solo on his trail. No, Solo would not catch up with his quarry now.

  The chief agent of U.N.C.L.E. returned to his car, and turned back. He drove more slowly, but without wasting any time. On the dirt road he wondered if Illya had found anything at the armored truck.

  He heard the wild firing as he neared the spot where the small car had been parked. The heavy firing of what his trained ears told him was an U.N.C.L.E. Special firing on automatic.

  Silently swearing at himself for splitting up forces, Solo leaped from his car, readied his own Special, and ran through the woods and across the open country toward where he had last seen the armored truck.

  Again he swore at himself. Illya had fallen into a trap. Grimly he ran on, hoping he was not too late. But while he was still a hundred yards away, the firing stopped. Solo paused, listened.

  There was no sound at all in the dark night.

  THREE

  SOLO CREPT quickly but silently through the bushes. Moving with the catlike speed of a trained athlete, he reached the edge of the road and looked out. What he saw made him stare in bewilderment.

  The road, the guards, and the armored car were exactly the same as they had been when he last saw them.

  Nothing had changed.

  Illya was not in sight. These were no new bodies. There were no enemies, no one of any kind. Only a distant police siren, wailing faintly and moving closer.

  Solo moved out from the bushes, standing openly now, and looked for any signs of the gun battle he had heard as he ran up. The only sign was a smell of burned powder in the night air.

  He bent to check the unconscious guards. They were all alive, unharmed, and unmarked. The only injuries visible in the night were the torn and shattered bushes and trees.

  And still he had not found Illya. He knew he had not been mistaken about the sound of the heavy firing he had heard—it had been an U.N.C.L.E. Special. Then Illya had to be here, unless they, some enemy, had taken their dead and wounded, and Illya, with them!

  Solo was feeling far from happy with this thought; then he looked inside the armored truck. Illya lay face down on the bags of money, his U.N.C.L.E. Special still gripped in his hand.

  With a sinking in his stomach, Solo leaped into the truck and bent over his friend. The small Russian did not move. Solo felt his friend's body. Illya was very much alive. Solo could see no signs of a wound or an injury of any kind. Like the guards outside, Illya appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

  But Solo checked the Special in the blond Russian's hand. The clip was empty, the barrel still hot to the touch. Solo squatted on his heels in the silent truck and rubbed his jaw. What the devil had Illya been firing at?

  In the silence of the dark night Solo felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. There was something very strange, even weird, here on a deserted California back highway. Something connected to a Cult of strange, crippled, shaggy-haired men who worshiped some distant future.

  Closer, but still far away, the approaching siren wailed like some disembodied banshee in the night. Solo opened his small attache case and took out a hypodermic needle.
<
br />   His eyes studied the silent form of his friend. Then he selected a tiny ampoule from the case, snapped it into the case of the syringe, worked the plunger once, and injected the solution into the arm of the unconscious Illya.

  Illya groaned, moved. Solo replaced the hypodermic in his case and waited. Illya groaned again, and suddenly came awake. The blond agent leaped up, crouched, his Special aimed and ready. He saw Solo.

  "Quick, Napoleon! They're all around us! Cover the left!" Illya cried.

  Solo watched the excited Slavic face of his partner.

  "It's Thrush! We should have known! They—." Illya said quickly and then stopped suddenly.

  Illya blinked his eyes and looked out through the rear door of the truck at the deserted highway in the dark night. Then he turned to Solo.

  "Did I kill them all?" Illya said.

  "All who?" Solo said slowly.

  "There's nothing out there except the guards, Illya"

  "Don't be stupid! I saw at least six go down. I— What happened to me? I wasn't hit? I—"

  "You just passed out. Your clip was empty, but there are no bodies out there, not even any blood. ÄAs far as I can tell, Illya, there never were any enemies out there."

  "But I saw them, Napoleon! At least ten Thrush agents. I saw their guns, their black uniforms, I even think I recognized two of them! I tell you I saw Thrush men attacking me!"

  Solo nodded. "I'm sure you did, but they just weren't there, Illya. You were firing at nothing!"

  Illya's bright eyes looked at Solo from beneath his lowered brows, from under the haystack of blond hair. Then the agent nodded slowly.

  "Like the guards," Illya said.

  "Like the guards," Solo said.

  "Some kind of hallucination. Something still inside the truck," Illya said.

  Solo nodded grimly. "I'd say that was it. Something our shaggy, limping friend tossed in through the air vent."

  "It was still inside the truck, and when I came in it got to me, too," Illya said. "I thought I saw Thrush attacking. At least we know why the guards came out firing at nothing. They had some kind of hallucination. Probably that they were being held up."

  "That has to be it," Solo agreed. "The question is, why, and how, and just what kind of hallucination?"