The Dire Dimension ... CONTINUED

 “Damn it Lisa, how many times do I have to tell you not to come out uncovered!”

 The old woman let out a sigh and backtracked into the pottery shop. As always, she was clad in her baggy khaki work shirt and WWII surplus fatigue pants. But that was considered just one step up from naked. With a sour expression she reached for the long hooded robe that hung on a wall bracket. Once back in her disguise she exited the shop a second time.

 “Where’s my regular driver?”

 “By now---probably on some side street getting the crap beat out of him,” responded her State Department contact.

 Carl Schmidt was a most unremarkable looking fellow with a receding hairline, weak chin and a suit that was uncomfortable, but worn because it augmented his narrow shoulders. He had become friends with Lisa because they both grew up with a German speaking elder. In Lisa’s case, her father’s best friend had been a German Jew as well as an archeologist. 

 “Why---what’s happened?”

 “It’s finally begun. Salah Jadid is making his move. The Ba’ath Socialist Party is taking over everything.”

 “Oh bloody shit. Six more months and we would have had enough trained people to keep the airwaves non political. But now, complete censorship is a distinct possibility.”

 “Yea, but the worst part is that Jadid can’t micro manage what will happen over the next few  weeks. Some of his people will act sensibly, some won’t.”

 “Getting back to my driver----“

 “Don’t worry about him, he’s got relatives who will come to his rescue. Same goes for your students. But you are a foreigner who needs relocating.”

 “Very well. I suggest we contact Professor Almaz and---“

 “I don’t mean across town. I’m taking you to the airport.”

 “Bloody hell---and I’m supposed to trust that you packed me a proper bag? I shall inspect the contents before I board the aircraft.”

 Carl glanced over at his companion while navigating the dark streets of Damascus. The elderly woman was the very picture of austerity. Thin, wrinkles competing with one another for space on a face that was well endowed with nose, chin and very high cheek bones. She had been wearing dentures since the age of thirty-four, and that was the same year she got her first pair of earrings. Raised by an archaeologist father, she had grown up amongst the shifting sands of North Africa and the Middle East, and only began to frequent flush toilets when her dad sent her off to get her academic credentials in England.

 “I brought you your drinking mug and a box of tea bags.”

 “You mean you left---“

 With the speed of a striking cobra Carl whipped out a compass attached to a long strap.

 The woman visibly relaxed at the sight of her lucky heirloom.

 “Where precisely are we flying to?”

“We’ll drop you off in Adana, Turkey.”

“Light aircraft then. Love a chance to practice a landing or three.”

 “You’ll have to discuss that with the pilot. I’ll be in the back seat with Frank, pretending that I barely know you.”

 “All this fuss over a voluntary position with a handful of young men. What a pity we’re not discussing sex.”

 “You trying to tell me that all that feminism stuff about sexual harassment is unwarranted?” teased a man who was trying to look calmer than he felt.

 The old woman’s face turned deadpan. What the world was in dire need of was more common sense. In any case, Lisa wasn’t losing any sleep over the plight of young women in mini skirts.

 “Dreadful bother, this. When I am invited back by the new management, I shall return; confident that my father’s reputation has preceded me.”

 The American snorted.

 “Thirty years ago maybe.”

 “An Anglo Saxon who speaks fluent Arabic has little to fear in these parts.”

 “And how many times so far has your character been besmirched because you forget to cover your hair?”

 “They’re just looking after the disposition of my soul,” answered the woman.

 Suddenly the stone buildings they were passing reflected bright flashing red light.

 Carl glanced in his rear view mirror and said, “I don’t think they’re here for that tonight.”

 The American pulled over and the police cruiser parked close behind. Two uniformed men got out and approached the French auto from both sides. When the officer next to Carl asked for identification, Lisa was quick to offer her own documents, and Carl followed suit while glancing momentarily at the police officer’s feet.

 “Miss Sherman, we have orders to bring you in for questioning. You are not being charged with a crime, but it is possible that you will need to submit to an evaluation.”

 “My Arabic is not perfect. I do not understand what you mean by evaluation,” the woman responded.

 “All will be made clear to you at headquarters,” promised the officer as he activated the door latch.

 Carl understood that if the man in uniform wanted to shoot him full of holes, the little French engine would not carry him away fast enough to avoid that fate. But if they were needed for something, hopefully that would keep them free of fast moving lead. That thought was more after the fact as the American popped the clutch and sped out as fast as the economy car would permit. Explicative after explicative followed until the men in uniform lost the foot race with the little auto. Then it was time for Lisa to convey her thoughts on this latest development.

 “Are you out of your bloody Yank mind!?” the woman bellowed.

 “The cops in these parts wear military Oxford shoes. That guy was wearing slip ons.”

 “Brilliant. So good to be in the company of a footwear critic and fugitive!”

 “He’s not a cop. The chief of D.P.D. was paid off to give us an escape window if we should need such a thing. Like you, I didn’t think we’d have to leave town, but my boss thought otherwise; and now I’m thinking that he was right.”

 The car turned right and headed for a dead end----in a manner of speaking. At the end of the street there was a gap between two buildings. Wide enough for pedestrians, but not meant for any vehicle larger than a motor scooter. Carl headed for it with all the steam he could muster in less than a block.

 “It’s too narrow!” declared Lisa.

 “Negative. I’ve spent a lot of time haunting alleys and this one is---“

 “A virgin alley,” muttered Lisa as the door handles sprayed sparks along limestone walls.

 As the car exited the other end of the stone cleavage, a larger police cruiser halted at the entrance end and then proceeded to back up with wheels squealing.

 “They’ll still catch us. They’re just a couple of minutes away.”

 Carl spotted a construction site ahead and to the left. He raced up to a large cement mixer that was turned over and opened his ruined door.

 “Will you build us a traffic barrier in the next two minutes?” Lisa asked with heavy sarcasm.

 The American ran around to the other side and pulled the woman out of the car so roughly, for an instant she thought she was about to be beaten. Instead the man picked the woman up with a surprising amount of strength and dumped her unceremoniously into the mixing chamber.

 “Use that compass to move northeast until you reach the airport. Don’t know what your chances are but they gotta be better than staying with me,” said the American as he jumped back into his heap and threw the car back into gear.

 Lisa was sorely tempted to climb back out of the filthy enclosure, since she didn’t believe for an instant that either one was them was in danger of being murdered. But for some reason she played along with all the melodrama and remained hidden when the police cruiser arrived and roared past her in hot pursuit. For twenty minutes thereafter Carl became something of a public menace. He sideswiped a newspaper truck, a bread truck, a mini-van and a very long melon stand. His destination was the U.S. Embassy, which he was able to reach, but only because fraudulent police officers cannot radio real police officers for help.

 Bruised egos aside, it didn’t really matter all that much to the pursuers. They just didn’t want the American to leave the country, and he wasn’t doing that. In days to come he wouldn’t even consider it. Lisa Sherman got picked up three blocks northeast of the cement mixer. She was treated with the utmost courtesy, and looked forward to teasing her State Department friend for the theatrics he had put her through. But then she was taken to the basement of the Nazim Pasha Palace. There things changed. In that place, Lisa would learn about men who are Muslims in name only. Where such men came from was a question men of the west would ponder for many years to come.

 They would speak English and be well acquainted with the ways of the modern world; a world that they loathed as unjust and sinful. Their numbers would steadily grow over the decades and western military interventions would bring collateral damage, which in turn would help create a terrible weapon; the suicide bomber. Most important of all they would be devotees of the axiom: The end justifies the means.

 The world was paying more attention to Southeast Asia, but the truly wise of the world understood that in the future communism would take a back seat to radical Islam. It was especially difficult for Lisa Sherman to understand this. She knew the heart of the average Muslim. She spoke their tongue and didn’t see them as fanatics. But now she was in a place devoid of sunlight, kindred spirits or reason. For her, the world had taken a turn for the surreal.

“This can’t be about amateur radio,” she thought after being shoved into a storage closet with no light.

 Before long she would wish she could have stayed in that closet. That peaceful, painless, sweet little closet.

Chapter Two

 Thirty-two hectic hours after parting company with Lisa, the State Department field worker was once again on the streets of Damascus. His superior had been furious with him after receiving an initial verbal report on the botched assignment. But when it was learned that Lisa Sherman was now in the hands of a radical splinter group, Carl was told to go get some sleep and leave the matter to a higher echelon of problem solvers.

 Carl didn’t go along with that.

 He got on a private phone line and began making calls to people who knew Lisa. It didn’t take a genius to conclude that Lisa Sherman had been targeted as a subversive. Today, teaching young men how to communicate with foreigners. Tomorrow, teaching women how to do even worse. It was vital that her captors see her rather as a minion, simply carrying out directives that had nothing to do with social engineering. So Carl begged as many Syrians as he could to get the word out that Lisa Sherman was nothing more than the daughter of a deceased archeologist.

 Amidst the chaos of a revolution, such an effort might take many months to bear fruit, but Carl got lucky. (Sort of.) The same idiots who concluded that Lisa was a threat to their way of life, also concluded that Carl Schmidt was more than what he appeared to be. After all, only a high ranking operative would dare run away from the police.(Albeit fraudulent ones.) In any case, Lisa wasn’t standing up to physical abuse like a Mata Hari, so when the involvement of Carl Schmitt came to their attention they let it be known that they would consider a prisoner exchange. Of course they fully expected the answer to be no. But this way they could take the position that they were not at war with innocents---only with cowardly infidels that liked to meddle in their country.

 Carl really surprised them by calling their bluff. He also surprised his own people by leaving the U.S. Embassy after making unauthorized deals with revolutionaries. Such cowboy diplomacy was possible only because in twelve years of service, Carl Schmitt never so much as padded his expense account. Now he was doing considerably more than that. He was pulling into the parking area of a certain coffee shop that had been deprived of its customers less than an hour ago. The American entered the establishment feeling much like Daniel entering the lion’s den.

 There were three men waiting for him, but only one spoke English. He was in his mid twenties and was wearing the traditional one piece robe called a didashah. Carl didn’t like dealing with young men in authority. There was just something unnatural about the whole thing.

 “I am Khaled al-Ayoubi. Am I addressing Mr. Carl Schmidt?”

 “Yes sir. Am I addressing a representative of the Ba’ath Military Committee?”

“Not precisely speaking,” the young man admitted. “You see, the Ba’ath party does not belong to any one man. Each prospective leader must insure his position within the party before he can take effective steps to protect the sovereignty of his government. I believe you Americans refer to that as in fighting. In any case, this will go on here at the capital for weeks to come.”

 “Yea, that’s a bitch alright, but what I need to know is, are you one of the guys holding Lisa Sherman?”

 “Obviously,” the young man responded with a hint of amusement. “My friends and I are not fettered by political necessities. We are---technical people. When our party leaders are all through putting together a chain of command, we will offer up our humble contribution to the cause of Islamic Socialism.”

 “Me.”

 “If you can convince me that you are a bigger fish than the old woman.”

 “That should be obvious enough,” mutter the American.

 “Not really. The woman speaks Arabic and has a great many social contacts in this country. She could qualify as a great many things---both good and bad.”

 “Got your heart set on a position with internal security?” Carl asked half jokingly.

 “Only if it is God’s will, Mr. Schmidt. I do not---“

 Suddenly the exits to the coffee shop exploded with men in combat fatigues.

 “La tata harruk!!” (Don’t move.)

 The command was not in the Syrian dialect but the locals got the message and all made like statues. A Marine Corps captain advanced on the table of men and leveled his .45 at the man who had been speaking.

 “Mr. Schmitt, you are the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve known in years. Because this worked out so well, they probably won’t fire you for going cowboy. But more than likely you’ll end up in a sandier place than this. Mongolia maybe.”

 Carl flashed an embarrassed smile and said, “I suppose guarding an embassy is pretty dull work for a Marine. Ordinarily I would be very happy for you, but you’re in the process of screwing up a rescue.”

 The officer’s name was Jesse Larca, a man of Italian descent who was built like a refrigerator. (But Schmidt had yet to learn whether or not the light stayed on when the door was closed.)

 “Ah Jeez, you really believe that? Well, we’re here to save you anyway.”

 “Taking us into custody is a mistake,” warned the Syrian.

 “We’re not,” responded the marine officer. “We’re only here for our own.”

 “May we renew negotiations at a later time?” Carl asked Khaled.

 The Syrian’s eyebrows nearly came together in suspicion.

 “You---do not have authority to deal with me?”

 “He does not,” Larca answered flatly.

 “Then why did he make the attempt?”

 “Because he turned cowboy.”

 “Cow-boy. Yes, I have heard this term before, but I do not fully understand it.”

 “Forget it. I shouldn’t have brought it up. C’mon Schmidt, we need to get out of the neighborhood.”

 “I would advise against it. It would be wiser for us to renew our negotiations as you put it---here and now.”

 “You just stay where you’re sitting and don’t give me anymore trouble,” growled the captain.

 Larca then lead the escort detail out of the coffee shop with two of his men covering their departure. Outside two vans and a vigilant guard were waiting. Everyone piled in and head back towards the Embassy. Khaled  rose from his table and casually walked to the shop’s front window. There he waved to someone across the street, who quickly raised a war surplus walkie talkie to his lips.

 The American hand held devices were smaller and considerably more powerful, but they only communicating a few yards between vehicles when a truck loaded with bricks blocked the street ahead of the two vans.

  “Get up on our ass and stay there.” Larca ordered the vehicle that was following him.

 Cutting hard to the left, the lead van was then compelled to shove against an old pickup that likewise sought to block them. Back wheels spun and kicked up a cloud of dust as the pickup slowly slid sideways. Then the back van pressed it’s front bumper against the lead van and added its traction to the contest. When the pickup driver realized that his roadblock was faltering he jumped out of the cab and swung a lead pipe against the van’s driver window. Glass exploded but the marine behind the wheel kept his vehicle moving.

 The second van didn’t fare as well. The man with the pipe really laid into it and the second driver caught a glancing blow to the side of the head. Larca bailed out of his seat with a growl and ran back to where the Syrian was still smacking away. The Marine next to the injured driver had his pistol out and was yelling bloody murder for the assailant to back off. That would have had the desired effect on any normal person, so the marines being showered with glass had to assume that the Syrian was not a normal person.

 Larca was past caring. The Syrian turned to face his approaching adversary, but all he expected was more threatening gestures. The Colt .45 service automatic didn’t zero in on the Syrian’s face like the last weapon. It was held low, and the only thing that seemed to threaten was the Marine officer’s tense jaw and dark glaring eyes. But before the lead club could rise and fall again, the .45 roared in Larca’s hand, and the Syrian felt as though an anvil had been dropped on his foot.

 Larca pointed at the injured van driver while his victim lay clutching a blood soaked shoe.

 “Get Kelsi into the back and monitor his life signs. George, take the wheel.”

 The officer just made it back to his seat when dozens of locals began to fill the street some one-hundred yards ahead of them. Some were armed with clubs, others with rocks; but a couple were holding Molotov Cocktails.

 “Those guys don’t look like revolutionaries,” said Larca.

 “These people are highly social,” explained Schmidt. “One guy with a phone gets the word that a bunch of foreign soldiers are on their turf. In just a few minutes you get a very big reaction.”

 “In other words, ‘Yankee Go Home,”  put in Larca.

 “All they see is your uniforms and your guns.”

 “Well we’re not going to roll down the windows and show them pictures of our families,” the captain retorted.

 Schmidt watched the men up ahead ready themselves in the street.

 “It’s your call, Larca, but I don’t think you’ll get past them without lethal force.”

 The man with the hole in his foot suddenly screamed out a long diatribe in his native tongue. That prompted the men in the street to slowly advance.

 “Captain, eight men with AK’s are walking up from the cement truck,” warned a lance corporal from the rear.

 “They push us into the rock throwers where we furnish provocation for what comes next,” muttered Larca.

 “We could try using the guy on the ground as a hostage,” suggested Master Gunnery Sergeant James Purdue.

 Larca was the only officer in the small force of Marines. He didn’t see any point in getting his exec in trouble should his diplomatic venture go awry.

  “No---with our luck, one of the guys with the Ak’s probably owes him a lot of money.”

 Larca then glanced at the rug shop they were standing in front of.

 “We’ll fort up in there. Leave the vans right here in the street.”

 Carrying their wounded, the Americans entered the rug shop as the first projectiles smashed into the van’s windshields. Three women and an old man were found inside. They were a bit startled by the invasion, but the most surprising part of the experience was that the warriors weren’t Syrian troops.

 “Nelson, advise Lt. Baxter of our situation. Tell him to fire up that A.P.C. I want it to arrive at precisely sundown. Tell him to bring every tear gas canister we have.”

 Then the captain noticed that the civilians were still just standing awe struck in the middle of the shop.

 “Purdue, get those people out the back door. Johnson, give each of them a stick of gum.”

 “Casting bread upon the water?” inquired Schmidt.

 “I’m getting more and more pissed with you,” warned Larca as he advanced to where the injured van driver had been laid out.

 Carl went to the front window and grimly watched as their vans were tipped over and then set on fire.

 “Get away from that window, Schmidt!” the captain bellowed.

 “Captain, they’re not going to destroy the property of their own neighbors as long as—“

 A brick cut the sentence short and Carl was more embarrassed than hurt when he realized that his cheek was bleeding. Larca came over and fairly shoved the S.D. worker into the nearest corner. Then he noticed the man with the white flag. It was the same joker he had met in the coffee shop.

 “Oh shit, I got a pretty good idea what he wants.”

 “Carl snuck a quick peek and said, “Your man on the floor there is the game changer. You need to let me go with al-Ayoubi. For the sakes of two people now.”

 “We are gunna wait for our ride out of here, and you are gunna do it with your mouth shut,” said the captain before giving Carl another shove.

 “The guy with the flag is coming in,” warned Purdue.

 “Be sure and search his sorry ass when he comes in,” instructed Larca who then turned to the man who was monitoring the injured driver.

 “Stay on top of those vital signs, Monnens.”

 The young Marine didn’t need to be told that, but he nodded sharply all the same.

 A minute later the Syrian almost comically knocked on the front door, despite the threat of an exploding gas tank so very close behind him. He was quickly ushered in and searched.

 “Well Captain---here we are again.”

 “You can’t have him,” responded Larca.

 “May I at least address the man who is the subject of this negotiation?”

 Since the armored personnel carrier wouldn’t arrive for another hour and ten minutes, Larca pretended to be respectful of the Syrian’s position. Larca took a step back and Carl took a few steps forward.

 “Is your man badly injured?”

 “Only a doctor can make that determination,” said Larca.

 “Yes, I fear your Miss Sherman also requires a medical examination. I was just informed by radio that she is spitting up some blood. But apparently she is still able to breath well enough.”

 “You asshole. You go fucking nuts when someone a thousand miles away says something bad about your prophet. But you think its ok to beat on a woman,” groused the captain.

 “Most Muslims do not think that it is alright to harm an innocent person,” the Syrian stated with a hint of annoyance. “But I do not get to pick and choose who would join our cause. I was not there to supervise the woman’s treatment in part because I could not immediately return with Mr. Schmidt.”

 “Bottom line; the fist belonged to a Muslim,” responded Larca.

 “I’m willing to do the prisoner exchange,” said Carl.

 “You don’t listen very well,” Larca interrupted.

 Schmidt held up his hand and said, “I’m willing but in truth I would be of no value to your superiors. I possess not knowledge that would aid your military or your future leaders.”

 “There has been much gossip to the contrary,” said the Syrian.

 “The hook has been set. Now let’s see if I can reel this fish in,” thought Carl.

  “My humble job is to operate as a low level information conduit between the State Department and various people who want what’s best for Syria, but would prefer to live a life free of political conflict. Intellectuals and old women really don’t need any aggravation. Such things should be left to people who feel they have a ladder to climb.”

 “Intellectuals create their own aggravation, by dreaming up perfect worlds for people to live in,” said the Syrian.

 “I thought socialists did that,” quipped Larca. “Of course it also happens a lot in your average American bar. But that’s because men get drunk and forget that life isn’t anywhere near perfect.”

 “That is why Islam will embrace the entire world in the end,” the Syrian said without malice. “A Muslim places God first, and you cannot do that and wallow in decadence at the same time.”

 Larca rolled his eyes slightly, but Carl wore a more thoughtful expression. It was the look of a man filled with grim resolve.

 “If you want me to leave here with you, Mister al-Ayoubi, we’ll have to go before dusk. That’s when the armored personnel carrier will arrive for us.”

 “God damn you Schmidt, if we get through this I’ll have your hide hanging on a barn door,” rumbled Larca.

 “Captain, may we speak alone?”

 Larca brought his anger under control and marched into the shop’s back room. Schmidt followed and closed the door behind them.

 “You’ll be damn lucky if you walk out of this room without any broken bones,” hissed the captain.

 The smaller man gazed fearlessly at the Marine and said, “A funny thing happened to me today. A choice was dropped in my lap; a choice I wouldn’t wish on anyone I know.”

 “Crap!” retorted the captain. “You don’t have any choice to make. You don’t have the power. You’re a stupid little man who I’ve got to slap down or you’ll get some of my men killed.”

 “You’re wrong on one count,” Carl responded evenly. “I’ve got a choice. It’s a rotten choice but it was put in front of me and I’ve made it. As you have already gathered Captain, I’m not on your side. I’m on Lisa Sherman’s side----and I’m going to stay there.”

 “You’ve seen too many John Wayne movies,” said Larca.

 “Good point, Captain. Americans go to the theatre and watch some hero---and dream that they are that guy. Of course now I know that being that guy really sucks. It’s a God awful experience. But it is my opinion that it’s preferable to running away.”

 “My men are not going to die because I’m in a building with Don Quixote,”  vowed Larca.

 “Get them back home, and I’ll try to do the same for Lisa.”

 “I would bet my pension that they will keep you both.”

 “A distinct possibility, that would be reduced if our guest remained with you,” Carl theorized.

 “More dumb shit thinking. Everyone and his dog knows that radical Muslims make bad hostages. They can hardly wait to get their hands on them seventy virgins in heaven.”

 “This one wants to be part of the new management.”

 That information was quickly assimilated.

 “Modern thinker huh?----Ok, we’ll see if we can do a deal.”

 Larca paused with his hand on the old fashioned door knob.

 “I hope you end up sharing a crap bucket with thirty fat bugger jockeys.”

 “Just so the answer is ‘yes,”  Carl thought with a tightness in his stomach.

Chapter Three

The man poised at the top of the elevator shaft didn’t look like someone who belonged in coveralls. His custom fitted tuxedo, or one of his many Fifth Avenue suits best reflected his uncommon good looks, not to mention his appreciation for the finer things in life. But there was something that went well enough with the coveralls and the special climbing harness; namely the look of absolute fearlessness that was as much a part of the man as his fingerprints.

 Napoleon Solo took hold of his rappelling line and launched himself into a manmade abyss. Seven floors down he stopped his descent, knowing that he didn’t have nearly enough line to reach the bottom of the skyscraper that he had infiltrated. Not three seconds after reaching the elevator door, his line went slack as the elevator car high above him began to descend down after him. Pulling out a portable pry bar he managed to open the safety door and step into a corridor of artificial marble.

 He then slipped out of his climbing harness and drew out the weapon that showed him for what he was. The pistol had been built on an earlier Walther P-38 design. But every component was original and improved to be more reliable and resilient. It was affectionately known as an U.N.C.L.E. Special, and in order to qualify with the weapon, you had to be able to hit a man sized target at thirty feet while snap shooting from the hip. It most certainly was not a beginners pistol. In fact it didn’t even have a front sight, but rather a locking receiver that enabled the shooter to add a barrel extension. When combined with the telescopic sight attachment, shoulder stock and extra long magazine, the snub nosed pistol would become a remarkable long gun. But in his present environment the urban warrior felt secure enough with the pistol in his hand. 

 His boots were designed to make no noise on the clean tile floor, and when the ceiling lights suddenly went out, he merely reached into his coveralls and pulled out a pair of infra red goggles that also contained a homing scanner. The man’s heart beat slowed perceptively, as did  his respiration. He was on the home stretch now and he was ahead of schedule. That power failure was meant to catch him in the elevator shaft. Then a quick cut of the rope and a most unfortunate fall to the ground floor. So much easier to explain than a bullet in the head.

 With the utmost confidence the intruder shoved a wad of putty over a remaining door lock and when it was detonated the hallway was illuminated by a shower of white sparks. Then the man threw himself against the door, and on the other side he found a man with unruly blonde hair eating a pizza that had been placed on a folding card table. Illya Kuryakin glanced at his watch and nodded in satisfaction. His reputation for austerity was confirmed as he immediately abandoned the food. Not surprisingly the man was slight of build but an accomplished gymnast, dining on pizza only because he had been stuck in the building for the last twelve hours.

 “Not a bad entrance,” the blonde said with the slightest hint of a Russian accent.

 The intruder holstered his pistol and scanned the confines of the deserted office.

 “How is it that the hallway is dark but we’ve got light in here?”

 “That’s what I’ve been doing all day, arranging so that you could experience your little black out without it affecting the front section of the building. The last time we conducted an infiltration exercise, the city maintenance people arrived and wanted to know why a man was climbing down an elevator shaft.”

 “Isn’t it someone’s job to make phone calls and make sure that the fire department doesn’t arrive if we get a little carried away with our training programs?”

 “Anonymity is an on going challenge in the heart of Manhattan,” said the blonde. “In any case you shaved twenty-three seconds off your old time. Unfortunately Henderson is still the reigning champion.”

 “I’m going to recommend that we come up with a new exercise. Maybe something involving a hang glider,” said the dark haired man.

 “If it means less preparation I’m all for it. Now help yourself to some food and let’s be off.”

 “I’m hardly dressed for dinner.”

 “Well, at least you won’t get any tomato sauce on your tie,” the blonde pointed out.

 Twenty minutes later the two men entered a tailor shop and proceeded directly to a dressing room that included the shop’s west wall. The dark haired man (now shed of his coveralls) pulled on a coat hook and quite nonchalantly passed through a secret door that lead from the tailor shop to a foyer that didn’t exist on the floor plans of the neighboring building. The receptionist on duty appeared to have the most boring job in the world. All she did was pin a numbered badge on any visitor that entered. That badge was chemically coated and designed to activate an alarm system should the wearer stray off into a restricted area. Not that Solo or Kuryakin needed to worry about that.

 They were the two highest ranking field agents employed by the United Network Command (for) Law Enforcement. U.N.C.L.E. was technically a branch of the United Nations Security Council, but in fact no one there had any notion of the organization’s operational status. It’s founding fathers for the most part were veterans of such outfits as MI6, G2, and the O.S.S. But the organization also employed the talents of Russian and Chinese operatives. Kuryakin was a splendid example of that. Whereas his partner Napoleon Solo was ex-Air Force and as American as they come, Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin was ex Soviet Navy, but was also qualified to fly an assortment of military aircraft.

 Were such foreign operatives defectors then? Interestingly enough---no. Their talents were contributed willingly by the communist governments, because of a global peril that disturbed them almost as much as the ever increasing arms race. From the ashes of the Second World War arose a band of highly resourceful criminals who understood the limitations of nationalism. Their tentacles had names such as The Russian Mafia, and the Chinese Triads, but the head of the monster was as intangible as the fabled Atlantis.

Eventually it gave itself a name; Thrush. The organization developed a genius for sponsoring scientific projects that could be perverted for criminal use. The leaders of the world never spoke of it openly, but while they played their Cold War games, they also sent gifted young people to what was an ongoing experiment. U.N.C.L.E. was the world’s best answer to international despotism. It was non-political to the point of being miraculous. Even the senior members had to marvel at their own existence, but only on a coffee break.

 U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters possessed a highly sterile work atmosphere. A bit of a cross between a hospital and a submarine. It was a model of high tech efficiency, but for some it took a little getting used to. Solo was grateful for the presence of the women. They provided a much needed human element to the place. But they wore white over black office attire and each carried an U.N.C.L.E. Special tucked neatly away in the small of their backs. The receptionist could also discharge an anesthesia gas that would engulf the foyer in an instant. But her main tool was a friendly smile.

 “Mr. Kuryakin, Professor Lin would like to confer with you on B Level of the Super Computer. He believes that the communicator pens will now be able to interphase with the Information Conduit. Since you helped to modify the pens, he thought you might want to be in on the first trial signal.”

 The Russian displayed a smile that was brief, modest and silent. He wasn’t afraid of women, but like so many intellectually endowed men, he was a bit lacking in charm. It would certainly benefit the Russian to know that the receptionist on duty was an ex beauty queen who was tired of the likes of Napoleon Solo. Illya on the other hand was not only above board, he was also a challenge to a girl’s femininity. Solo realized this and did not begrudge his partner this small victory. The lady’s man flashed a whimsical smile and marched briskly to catch up with the Russian.

 “Say why don’t you ask Debbie out sometime?” Solo inquired as soon as he got close enough to speak softly.

 The Russian shrugged slightly.

 “My reasoning is that if she won’t go out with you, she’s probably one of those sensible women who never dates men from work.”

 “Logical as always, but did it occur to you that a receptionist wouldn’t have to know anything except that Professor Lin wanted to see you? I think she’s trying to get close to you.”

 “Probably to avenge herself for some past misdeed that you perpetrated.”

 “With Judy or Susan, yes, but in this instance—“

 “Napoleon, did you break Henderson’s record?”

 Solo turned to face another attractive lady. Albeit this one was middle aged and served as the boss’ secretary.

 “Missed by a hair,” lied the agent. “Can’t deny that climbing really isn’t my thing. Anyway, I serious doubt that rappelling down elevator shafts will ever get a place in the Olympic Games. A sad thought for Henderson perhaps.”

 “He just left Waverly’s office. Don’t be surprised if you get called in next.”

 “I’ll mosey on down then,” said Solo, who knew better than to ask the secretary for what might be classified information.

 The top ranking field agent proceeded to the opposite end of the corridor and then took a left. Each door on that level resembled an elevator entrance in that the doors slid open on tracks that were air tight and sensitive to the chemicals on each person’s badge. It was just one of many security precautions to get periodic upgrades. The survivors of the long lamented Thrush attack on their headquarters would not fail to remind the junior people how important those precautions were. Solo utilized one of the latest by placing his thumb on a press pad to the right of the door. His thumb print was then read, identified and brought to the attention of the man on the other side of the wall.

 That man was Alexander Waverly; Chief of Operations for the Western Hemisphere. An Englishman and veteran of MI6, Waverly was a retired spy, not a professional administrator. For that reason he was highly opinionated and not easy to work for. In fact he was impossible for some people, and the gruff old man wouldn’t have it any other way. As a former deep cover operative who had worked in Nazi Germany, he appreciated the absolute need for competency. If he sensed that a field worker didn’t have it, he would hammer away at that person’s armor until the chink became plain to see. Napoleon Solo was one of the few men who could stand before such a boss without trepidation.

 “Excuse me sir, your secretary implied that you might want to see me.”

 The old man nodded slightly and finished loading his pipe. It was often said that nobody could look more British than Waverly. The bushy eye brows, the bloodhound like jowls, and of course the daily propensity for wearing tweed. The stuff that office people had to talk about. Solo stood in front of an old fashioned oak desk and waited to learn what vaccinations he would likely need.

 “How’s your stomach, Mr. Solo?”

 “Sir?”

 “Do you ever suffer from motion sickness?”

 “Well sir, as you know I am an ex Air Force fighter pilot. I um, don’t believe I ever experience trouble in that area.”

 “I was thinking of sending Henderson to Syria. Tough nut to crack. I’d rather have you there but this calls for a cast iron stomach.”

 “I’m sure I can handle it sir.”

 “You’re not saying that because there’s a flu epidemic and we’re short handed in the records section?”

 “Uh, no sir. I didn’t even know there was a bug—“

 “Very well then. Radio our man in Incirlik. He’ll get you your preliminary data.”

 “Yes sir.”

 With that the field agent left the office and headed back toward the central corridor.

 A curious secretary just happened to meet up with him and ask, “Did he pick you over Henderson?”

 “Yes. What’s it about anyway?”

 “Uh---well---it’s an extraction. Not for the faint of heart.”

 The agent’s grin was a tad on the smug side.

 “I’m sure Henderson won’t be too offended. Waverly’s judgment is pretty much flawless.”

 “Yes---flawless,” responded the woman, who could only hope that Solo would still feel that way when it was all over.

Chapter Four.

 The prisoner was curled in a semi-fetal position on the stone floor. He envisioned half a dozen jagged bones threatening to puncture his lungs, heart and a few other organs that were essential to his continued existence. Actually the ribs were only cracked, it was the nose that was broken. Still, they hadn’t burned him or snipped off anything that he’d hate to do without. With that in mind he forced himself to his feet so he could void himself in the bucket that was at his disposal.

  “Well, at least I have this all to myself,”  he thought with forced optimism. “And there’s no blood in the urine, hoorah.”

 He was indeed alone in his improvised cell; incarcerated in what used to be a smoke house. The interior was solid and tomb like, but he had been given a kerosene lantern and there was a ceiling vent that enabled the fumes from the lantern to rise up out of his prison. He liked to think that a condemned man would have been given less luxurious accommodations, but maybe the owner of the smoke house contributed the bucket for his own sake. In any case, he had been given his beating without a word spoken by any of the three participants. That seemed weird, and it left him with no sense of accomplishment. Maybe Lisa was free---maybe not.

 After a bit he got up the nerve to pound on the door but there was no response. For a while he took heart in the fact that no one had hooked him up to a car battery. But then came the memory of a prisoner that had been rescued from Palestine. He had been treated very well for several months. Then suddenly there was a change in supervisory personnel and the poor guy got a drill bit driven through his hand.

 Carl ran out of kerosene long before he ran out of solitude and imagination. Every now and then he would hear what seemed like a volley of gunshots; like the sort that could make up a firing squad detail. They were very far off, but not far enough to suit him. He had been brought to an abandoned farm some ten miles outside the capital. The house had been gutted by fire and the out buildings were all riddled by bullet holes. Sadly, the holes his prison had been patched. It took a while, but eventually Carl came to appreciate why the holes had been closed, and also the psychology of being alone while at the mercy of others. It was an education for him.

 Then a constructive thought almost made him smile. One of the holes in the wall had been caused by a 20mm. It was facing the house and had been patched with simple clay. The latrine bucket had a metal handle that had come loose once before. With a couple of hours of steady effort he was able to remove it and shaped it into a crude auger. Now Carl had something better to do than just sit and think. It took him half the night to bore the hole back out, but he was rewarded with something more glorious than what he had spied in the girl’s shower at summer camp many years ago.

 The windows and doors of the house were gone, but a guard within preferred the structure to the open air so there he sat. He had just lit up a cigarette, creating a vague outline that was of interest to the information starved prisoner. But the real treat was still minutes ahead. It came when a phantom entered Carl’s field of vision and aimed a pistol through the portal that had been a window. The prisoner expected to hear a loud report, but there was none. He expected the see a muzzle flash, but was disappointed there as well. But the intruder was able to enter the ruined domicile and come back out with an Ak-47 and a hand held radio.

 “Hey, I’m in here!” the prisoner shouted at the wall.

 Carl’s liberator was dressed in a black jump suit and a strange harness of some sort. He was a handsome gent, but under the circumstances, he would have been a sight for sore eyes even if covered with warts.

 “Keep your voice down, Mr. Schmidt. The neighbors are not the sort that mind their own business.”

 “Sorry. Where’s the car?”

 “We’ll be flying out.”

 Carl’s stomach tightened slightly. He had noted on his arrival that the old farm consisted of maybe thirty acres. Almost a hobby farm by American standards. The neighboring properties were roughly the same. As it stood, the surrounding homes were about four-hundred yards off in different directions. They could easily draw rifle fire while taking off in a chopper. The full moon didn’t help, but Carl was none the less happy to be in the hands of a fellow American.

 His deliverer ushered him to a spot behind a bullet ridden tool shed. On the ground lay a duffle bag containing a number of items that were hard to identify in the poor light.

 “Put this on.”

 Carl was handed a harness similar to the one worn by other man.

 “Aw nuts, the chopper isn’t going to land. They’re gunna winch us up to save time,” Carl deduced.

 Then a few more items were removed from the bad and Carl’s stomach dropped down into his nether regions. A tank of compressed hellium, a balloon, and a long length of nylon rope. The balloon was inflated with a loud bang and sent aloft into the inky sky. The special agent hooked the other end of the line to Carl’s harness and then pulled out something that looked like a pen.

 A moment later he said, “Illya, we’re ready on this end.”

 “I’ll get it as close to stalling speed as I can,” a voice responded.

 “I’m sure we’ll both appreciate that.”

 “Sky Hook,” Carl half croaked.

 “That which is preferable to certain death,” the agent stated with gallows humor.

 “But it’s really not all that dangerous---right?”

 “Well, compared to slipping in the bath tub—“

 Suddenly the man wheeled about and drew a pistol that looked different from the one he had been holding before. It had a shorter barrel and reminded Carl of an old WWII German model he had seen once or twice. The man peered around the corner of the building and spotted a pickup truck with a heavy machine gun mounted in the back. Two men were in the box with only the driver in the cab. One of the men in back jumped out and quickly ran into the house to discover that a comrade was asleep with a hypo dark protruding from his neck. He then advanced on the smoke house.

 The agent did likewise, only now he had his dart pistol in his left hand while also holding on to the more formidable eight shot automatic. He crept forward, he listened, and he reached out with his instincts. Among other things he was a modern day gunfighter, and his reflexes were in perfect sync with a calm and well trained eye. So when the Syrian leaned his upper torso out from the northeast corner he caught a dart before he could level his heavy rifle. The assault rifle almost went off, but not quite. The men back at the truck were alert, but not yet aware that a fight was in progress.

 The Syrians waited tensely for a rifle shot or a call for help, but all they heard was the sound of an aircraft approaching. The balloon was invisible floating so high in the night sky, but even without running lights the large aircraft coming towards them would stand out under a full moon. The gunner pulled back the bolt on his .50 Browning. He had been given no instructions pertaining to aircraft, but he knew well enough that his comrades had none, and his enemies had plenty. The truck crept along in the drive path to alter their view of the farm buildings, but they were not anxious to get their vehicle shot full of holes

 The man with the two pistols was running out of time, but he needed to complicate things for the Syrians, or he might be hitching his wagon to a falling star. (Quite literally.) So he picked up the assault rifle and moved forward to where the pickup was about to roll into view. There was no time for plinking. The weapon was set on full auto and the trigger held for a count of six. Then the weapon was dropped and the man in black sprinted back to where a very unhappy fellow American was waiting.

 The driver panicked and bailed out of the car. The Syrian gunner did exactly what he was supposed to do, namely give the smoke house a new vent work of bullet holes. The tool shed beyond caught a few of those rounds as well but they were easy to ignore. At that point the only thing that mattered was the ground shaking roar of the CV-2 Caribou. The man in black hooked his harness to the line and got Schmitt in a bear hug. Worst part of the ascent was the ear aching explicative that Schmitt yelled until he realized that he wasn’t going to die. Three minutes after being winched into the cargo section of the big aircraft, the man in black placed a friendly hand on a trembling shoulder.

 “You came through it just fine. Congratulations.”

 Carl lay curled up on the deck. His eyes fluttering slightly and his breath uneven.

 “Haven’t eaten in a while. Ribs cracked. But I’m grateful to you sir.”

 “Napoleon Solo.”

 Carl forced himself into a sitting position and then extended his hand in friendship.

 “Did they---did they let Lisa Sherman go free?”

 “Yes sir, they did.”

 The older man fought back the tears and said, “My name is Carl.”

 The agent smiled and nodded with a mixture of amusement and respect.

 “You just relax. We’ll be on the ground in about an hour.”

 Solo then went forward to where a single man was piloting.

 “Who’s turn is it to buy the drinks?”

 “Yours, but since you had to do your flying outside the aircraft, I suppose I can spring for it on this occasion,” said Illya Kuryakin.

 “You’re a credit to the Soviet Navy,”  Solo shouted over the noise of the aircraft engines.

  “Shows how little you know about my past,” retorted the Russian. “My commanding officer didn’t care how many sailors got drunk and fell overboard, but a fighter pilot was not allowed to take chances with a Mig 17. We took turns buying soft drinks and the occasional sausage.”

 “Then I would say that you were in the wrong military,” responded the American. “In my old outfit that wouldn’t happen even if the commander was a Methodist.”

Chapter Five.

 Both Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin noticed that their driver was a bit old to be chauffeuring people around Tel Aviv. Carl was the only one who felt that all was as it should be. He was accustomed to seeing men working right up until the time of their deaths. Retirement was pretty much a western thing, or for the genetically disadvantaged. In most parts of the world a man was considered really alive only so long as he was productive. If he could work with a stooped back and thick glasses, he would do so. But when the cab stopped at an intersection and then remained there after the light turned color, all three passengers began to wonder if perhaps their ancient driver was suffering a stroke.

 Solo shifted forward in his seat and when he did he was able to spot the strange device that was on the front seat next to the old man. It was about the size of a transistor radio and featured a horizontal bar that reminded Solo of a thermometer. There was a button underneath the bar, and the old man’s finger was hovering over it. The U.N.C.L.E. drew out his pistol, sensing that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

 “You needn’t be concerned Gentlemen. This device is not a weapon of any kind, and I am not your enemy.”

 “But you’re not a cabbie either---and you’re blocking traffic,” Solo pointed out.

 That actually pleased the driver. He needed men of insight, and that’s exactly what he had.

 “A subterfuge was required only up to this point, Mr. Solo. From here, the great adventure begins.”

 Suddenly there was a swirling kaleidoscope of bending light, and the U.N.C.L.E. field agents concluded that they were being gassed, stunned, or perhaps just plain killed in their seats. But an instant later Solo judged that they were not at The Pearly Gates, because he still had his pistol in his hand, and Illya was now drawing his.

“As I said, I am not your enemy Gentlemen. Please be careful with your firearms. My machinery is not bullet proof.”

 The three men were seated on a bench that was the same dimensions as the back seat of the cab. The significance of that was lost on the newcomers. They were entirely focused on the fact that they were no longer in a cab. They were seated in what appeared to be a huge horizontal ventilator shaft. There was nothing but pitch blackness some twenty feet behind them, but the length of shaft ahead of them featured a dim red glow. The tunnel measured a good twelve feet across and was radiating a fair amount of heat.

  “Don’t touch the tunnel with anything but your shoes,” warned the old man, “and when we reach the maw be careful how you step. There are several dozen power cables laid out just beyond the threshold.”

 “If I’m dreaming, I sure hope I don’t wake up back in that smoke house,” grumbled Carl.

 “None of this is an illusion, Gentlemen, but it is only logical to consider the possibility that it is.” said the old man as he lead the others to the front of the tunnel.

 Solo and Illya sensed no danger, but their pistols remained in their hands. They cautiously walked one-hundred and twenty feet from where their seats had been abandoned in order to stay with the old man. He lead them into an excavated cavern that measured twenty feet high by sixty feet by two-hundred feet. But what truly fascinated them was the fact that every square foot of wall space in that chamber was occupied by computers. The vast majority of the stone floor space was covered with heavy gauge cables that often crisscrossed one another to converge on a floor section in front of the immense metallic conduit they had just emerged from.

 There were only two flood lights illuminating the cavern. One was aimed at the cables closest to the tunnel entrance and the other was focused on the center portion of the great ceiling. The combination of natural stone and electronics reminded the agents of other places they had visited in the past. It put them even more on their guard, despite an apparent lack of doors in all four directions.

 “Your machinery is under the conduit. The conduit itself serves no purpose I can fathom,” said Kuryakin. “Surely you don’t need it to dissipate heat.” 

 “It is true that the flux field generator is under the tunnel,” responded the old man. “But the conduit is equally important as it operates like an antenna. The primary power source feeds in from above the back section of the tunnel. There is a nuclear reactor up above us. Of course it is a tinker toy compared to what is below.”

 Solo took out his communicator pen and prepared it for use.

 “I’m afraid that won’t work. The tunnel emits a form of radiation that permits only hard wire communication within five-hundred yards.”

 “I can believe that. Damn creepy thing to wake up in. Now do you need a drum roll to tell us what the hell it’s for?” asked Carl.

 “It is not my intention to be mysterious Gentlemen, but there is the not so small matter of credibility. When I tell you what you are looking at, you most certainly will not believe me.”

 “Hey, we’re one step away from putting a man on the moon. Just tell us what you have here,” advised the State Department worker.

 “A time machine, Mr. Schmidt,” the old man said with a deadpan expression.

 While Carl silently rolled his eyes toward the high ceiling, Illya stepped over a power cable and said, “As interesting as that answer is, I would prefer to know where we are, and who you are.”

 “My name is Professor Joshua Adams---and we are inside Mount Hermon, in northwest Syria.”

 “Impossible, even if we were unconscious for half a day,” muttered Carl half to himself.

 “Actually you have been fully conscious for twenty-three years in a manner of speaking.”

 “Do you know what we do for a living, Professor?” Solo asked while continuing to scan his surroundings.

 “Yes indeed. You work for the United Network Command for Law Enforcement. That is one of the reasons I selected you.”

 “A more precise answer would be that we kill people and blow things up. Secret installations for instance. That is the reason why you do not want to play games with us. That is the reason why you need to convince us very quickly that we can be pleasant with each other.”

 “Which brings us back to the matter of credibility, Mr. Solo. Did I not just warn you that I would have to prove myself to you?”

 “How precisely will you do that?” asked the Russian.

 “Mr. Schmidt, would you please remain standing right where you are? Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin, please follow me.”

The two U.N.C.L.E. exchanged unhappy looks and then followed as Adams proceeded to a spot on the floor that was forty feet from where Carl had been left standing. The old man looked up at the ceiling and said, “Computer, activate lift.”

 Suddenly a gleaming steel pillar slowly descended from a portal in the ceiling. It touched down on the floor and connected with a circular platform that had been set flush with the floor’s surface.

 Adams stood with his back to the pole and said, “This way Gentlemen.”

 When all three men were on the disk, Adams gave the command to lift and the platform rose slowly towards the ceiling. At the halfway point the ceiling opened around the telescoping pole sleeve and the three men found themselves on an entirely separate level. This one was small; a mere eight by twelve by twelve. There was a control console that protruded out from one of the four walls, and above that space age looking counter top was a wall monitor that displayed long strings of symbols that came and went. On the other walls were running movies of waterfalls, ocean surf and underwater marine life.

 “I’ve never seen any of these symbols,” Illya commented.

 “That is because they make up a computer language that only I understand. In a manner of speaking, Mr. Kuryakin, the computer is talking to me.”

 “But how will this diorama convince us that you actually have a time machine?” asked Solo.

 “Select a time period and a geographic location,” instructed the host. “I will send Mr. Schmidt back to that place and have him pick you up a souvenir.”

 “Why him?” inquired Solo with a hint of suspicion.

 “Credibility, Mr. Solo. You make the choice, but a man who has no such thought on his mind will go forth. Otherwise you might entertain the notion that you were hypnotized or some such thing.”

 “Alright, we’ll play this game,” Solo responded with a nod. “I choose to have Carl visit the Island of Manhattan in the early 19^th Century.”

 Adams frowned at that. A most logical choice for you, Mr. Solo. But I would recommend a larger target. You see, a time continuum is like a river; it can split into a fork or twist around a promontory and land you short of your mark. It would be prudent of you to select an area approximately one-hundred square miles in size, and away from any large body of water.”

 “I’m sure Mr. Schmidt won’t mind risking a near miss,” Solo responded with an unyielding expression.

 Adams let out a sigh and activated a television camera and intercom.

 “Mr. Schmidt, would you be so kind as to return to the bench you were sitting on and take a little trip for us. I’d like you to bring back some evidence that you actually went some place outside this complex. Oh and don’t forget where you left the bench because I’m going to return it to this complex in exactly five minutes. If you’re not on it, you might be stranded in that location for the rest of your life.”

 “More likely this thing turns into a giant toaster,” Carl prophesized.

 “Mr. Solo, will you please assist me here? I cannot show you people anything if you’re not willing to contribute even a minimum of cooperation.”

 Napoleon let out a sigh and approached the intercom speaker.

 “Carl, please, just go back in and sit down for a few minutes. That’s all we ask.”

 “Said the man to the piece of bread,” muttered the S.D. worker.

 “Mr. Schmidt, you can swim, can’t you?” inquired the scientist.

 “This thing could flood???”

 “It’ll be ok, Carl,” Solo assured him.

 Then the agent’s expression grew harder.

 “The information we desire is coming to us far too slowly, Professor. I want to know why you’re in this place all alone. Who built this complex? What happens after Carl has taken his alleged trip.”

 The old man showed just a hint of discomfort. He had a lot on his mind and he was beginning to feel his age.

“Mr. Solo I am not mad, nor am I stupid. You do no not believe a word I have spoken thus far. The proof will be in the pudding, so to speak. Things must unfold in the proper order. Patience is more than a virtue, Mr. Solo. It is an absolute necessity.”

 “Apparently. Well---I hope my host will not be too offended by me saying that if man could find a way to travel through time, he’d be a fool to do it. Better to pretend you have found a cure for cancer.”

 The old man nodded and said, “precisely the sort of attitude I want you to have, sir.”

 “How long have you been working on this---- project?” asked Kuryakin.

 “Fifty-seven years, not counting the time I spent being mentored by Professor Vasiliy Kuzmin.”

 “I’ve heard of him. One of the most gifted scientists killed by the Nazis.”

 “The most gifted,” corrected the old man. “He was a miracle of sorts. I doubt that his I.Q. could have been measured. I suppose I’ve made a few contributions of my own over the years. But without him, we’d be no closer to breaking the time barrier than we were when we were riding horses.”

 “Who is we, Professor?” asked Solo. “You have yet to give us that very important piece of information.”

 The old man ignored him and leaned over the intercom.

 “Mr. Schmidt, are you seated?”

 “Yes!” shouted a voice from the tunnel like structure.

 “Remember, you will have five minutes,” warned the master of the complex.

 Then he pushed on a huge green button and turned to face Solo.

 “In truth the complex was built by Thrush, but I am not a loyal member of that organization. I understand fully how those people function, and I will not give them power over the time barrier. But I needed their help. This complex cost half a billion dollars, and that is not including the expense of the nuclear power facility that is shielded from aerial reconnaissance and half a dozen middle eastern governments no less.”

 Solo’s weapon returned to his hand.

 “My associate needs to go back downstairs. Now.”

 Adams waited until the blonde agent was on the platform and then willingly lowered it so that Illya could inspect the tunnel.

 A moment later the Russian said, “He’s gone, and so is the bench!”

 “For another one minute and ten seconds,” said Adams.

 “Is that how long it will take for your troops to arrive?” asked Solo.

 “I wouldn’t want that any more than you would,” the old man assured him.

 “I’m going to take a closer look at the tunnel,” said Illya.

 “No! You must not be in it when Schmidt returns,” insisted the old man. “Surely you understand that if Thrush wanted to capture a pair of U.N.C.L.E. agents, they wouldn’t need to create such a large domicile in which to hold them.”

 “But if they wanted to gaslight a pair of agents; and convince them that there is such a thing as time travel, they would need something like this to begin with,” Solo reasoned.

 “Er—yes, but now let us see what Mr. Schmidt has to report. Shall we?”

 Exactly on cue, the tunnel emitted a flash of light and a wave of heat that took much of the humor out of Carl’s toaster joke. Illya approached the threshold and strained to make out any movement at the other end. When he spotted something he ventured inward, feeling the residual heat through the soles of his shoes. A moment later both he and Carl emerged from the tunnel. The older man was carrying some sea weed, and a soggy piece of newspaper. The only thing that really mattered to Schmidt was the part of the paper that featured a clear date.

 “This guy should work for Disneyland,”  said Carl as he neared the top of the lift. “I just happened upon an issue of the New York Daily Tribune on what sure as hell seemed like a beach. Paper is dated, June 12^th, 1852.  Beautiful set up. Kind of an insult to my intelligence considering what I’m expected to believe, but just the same, a lot of nice work went into it.”

 Solo ignored the paper and asked, “Talk to me about the surroundings.”

 “Well for starters, now I know why he wanted to know if I could swim. I found myself right on a shore line. Pretty much at the bottom of a sea wall. It wasn’t sheer so I was able to climb it, but I lost precious time in the process. What I found when I got to the top was a replication of a mid 19^th Century neighborhood. Saw some people about a block away, dressed in costumes of the period. I suppose I should have kept going, but I was more interested in how the hell this guy would put me back under in order to have me carried back into the tunnel. Very interesting trick. Maybe there’s something in the bench.”

Napoleon let out a deep sigh.

 “Alright, maybe the best way to get to the bottom of all this is to ask what I hope is a logical question. Professor Adams, how may we be of service to you in your efforts as a time travelling pioneer?”

 “Very Good, Mr. Solo. That question implies that you are now ready for the most pertinent data. Professor Vasiliy Kuzmin would have dwarfed Einstein if he had lived long enough. Tragically, he died of typhus a mere six weeks before Bergen-Belsen was liberated. I would have three men go back in time and cheat that fate. Three men who speak German fluently and are skilled in the ways of espionage.”

 “Jesus H. Christ, you mean you have a fake Nazi prison camp set up someplace and that’s my next stop? Napoleon, I think this guy wants us to be prisoners in some kind of fantasy land.”

 “The truth cannot be accepted here and now,” put in the old man, “but when you finally come to it, you must be equipped with the knowledge that there is a way back. You must know that I am waiting for you on this end.”

 “Are we to believe that you are making unauthorized use of Thrush property?” asked Kuryakin who as always, did more listening than talking.

 “Yes. I have been deceiving them since the beginning of the project. They think a functional prototype is months away. When that hypothetical day draws near, they will increase their security and I will no longer be able to toy with it.”

 “So you are recruiting us to go back in time and liberate a scientist from a Nazi camp. Then we’ll return to this time period where you will be operating a time travel program that will not involve Thrush,”  speculated the dark haired U.N.C.L.E. man.

 “Exactly. I couldn’t get the U.S. government to back my work. Naturally they questioned my level of mental health. I don’t know how Thrush found out about me, or why they chose to believe in me, but I suppose that is irrelevant at this time. Suffice it to say if Professor Kuzmin had survived the war, the two of us could have convinced the U.S. government---“

 “I need to ask another question,” Solo broke in with just a bit of a headache.

 “Yes of course,” responded Adams.

  “Why do we need to go back to the year 1945? Wouldn’t it be easier to approach the target  ten or more years earlier?”

 “No, because of gravimetric stresses that do not diminish until 1945. Sorry but I can’t do anything about that.”

 “I trust we will not suddenly find ourselves in a prison camp. We must begin our adventure somewhere in eastern Europe and approach Kuzmin when we have a plan in place,” said Solo.

 “Yes. I can get you within one-hundred miles but then you’ll be on your own. By the way, I have suitable clothing for you all. Unfortunately you’ll have to come up with your own specific identity papers. Being highly trained agents, I am hoping that you will be able to surmount that obstacle at the proper time.”

 “We’ll give it a try,” promised Solo, who still held the look of a man who was being lied to.

 “I hate to admit this,” broke in Carl, “but I’m not in their league. My German would pass, but I don’t know much about being a spy.”

 “We’ll do our best to mentor you,” Solo half joked.

 “Don’t underestimate yourself, Mr. Schmidt. You were not brought here by happenstance. You will be very useful in this operation, despite your lack of experience as a covert operative.”

 Kuryakin remained inscrutable as always, but he kept staring at the computer readouts, and he had watched every move the old man had made before that.  His mind was focused on that until the old man opened a hidden closet and displayed the wardrobe within.

 “Brought it in just this morning. Hope it all fits. If not, perhaps Mr. Kuryakin can do a bit of last second altering. He’ll be doing quite a bit of that after he retires from U.N.C.L.E.”

Napoleon’s eyes darted to his partner who showed no hint of contradiction.

 “We’re to put these on now?” asked Schmidt.

 “I strongly recommend it. You wouldn’t want to be seen changing clothes on the side of a road. I am no expert on spying but I imagine that would look very suspicious.”

 Solo ignored the last statement and pressed Kuryakin for more input.

 “What do you say---do we shoot him or continue to play?”

 “I prefer to avoid gunplay,” responded the Russian. “Even in the Soviet Union such a course of action would result in a mountain of paperwork.

 “Then we play,” Solo concluded while guessing which uniform was meant for him.

 It was an SS captain’s uniform. Illya was given the uniform of a an engineering captain belonging to the Wehrmacht, and Carl would be dressed as a Colonel in the same branch of the service.

 “Why does he outrank us?” asked Solo, who wasn’t offended, merely suspicious.

 “In the world you are about to enter, uniforms alone will get you nowhere. You will need papers and that is where Mr. Schmidt comes in. The nearby town of Celle has an army records facility. Once in it he should be able to forge identity papers to get both you and Mr. Kuryakin into Bergen-Belsen.”

 “And then?” prodded Solo.

 “I have no idea. My reasoning is that as an engineering officer, Mr. Kuryakin should be able to bring about power failures, tamper with the fencing, make off with tools; whatever would aid him in his escape plan.”

 “I’ve changed my mind. Shoot him,” said the Russian.

 “If you do, Thrush will---in perhaps ten years or so, learn how to operate this facility. They will assume that U.N.C.L.E. has found them out and they will move the facility and pour even more money into the project. They are not entirely convinced that I am sane either. If I am killed by U.N.C.L.E….”

 “We get the picture, Professor, and we’re already decided to play along with this for a time,” said Napoleon with his pants off. “But if you ruin our day, we’ll get back here somehow and do considerably more to you.”

 “Yes, we all feel as though we are teetering on the edge,” the old man assured his guests. “But we move forward; or perhaps I should say backward.”

 Carl shook his head and almost wished he was still in the smoke house.

Chapter Six.

 Solo felt ridiculous. He was now seated on that silly bench with Illya and Schmidt while two squirrels chased each other around a fallen tree some ten paces in front of them. Illya scanned the thinly wooded countryside and wondered if there had been any risk of them landing in or on top of a tree.

 “I hear diesels,” said Carl after doing a quick scan of his own.

 The three men rose from their supposed transport bench and moved around the fallen tree and then up to the top of small rise. There they surveyed a rural roadway presently being used by a military truck convoy. The two U.N.C.L.E. agents dropped almost to their knees; mindful not to get their uniform pants soiled in the damp earth that was only partially covered by tall weeds. Carl followed suit with a confused look.

 “Trucks are the right vintage; late thirties or early forties,” observed Illya. “But what is truly fascinating is the possibility that we are sharing all this. Otherwise I must assume that I am actually conversing with a blank wall in some laboratory somewhere.”

 Solo took in the landscape and nodded slightly.

 “Yes, this is gas lighting at it’s finest.”

 “Then why are we stooped over?” inquired Schmidt. “Why don’t we pretend that we’re walking to the nearest town, where we can pretend to have a few beers in a make believe bar?”

 “I’m not sure I can answer that,” Solo confessed. “It’s logical to assume that Thrush wants something from us. I’d like to know what it is---before we take Carl up on his suggestion.”

 “So what would we do if we were actually trying to break a man out of a concentration camp?” asked Carl.

 “Hitch a ride to the town of Celle. Our mad scientist friend was correct when he pointed out that we need papers. We’ll fall flat on our faces if our good Colonel here fails to get us useful documents,” answered Solo.

 “Perhaps I should do that,” said Illya after noting the look of discomfort on Carl’s face.

 “No, our Sponsor gave the job to Carl, so he’ll be the one to tackle it. But we’ll be close by in case he runs into a snag.”

 Carl could only follow along impassively; reminding himself that it was all an illusion. But when Colonel Schmidt climbed into the cab of a transport truck that Illya flagged down, he was very impressed with the sights, sounds and even smells of this fantasy mission he was supposed to be a part of. The driver was an old man who had probably been in the trenches during the first war. He was talkative, sensing he was in the presence of a book keeper in uniform. The more the man talked, the more Carl picked up on the Schnapps and sausage the driver must have indulged in before getting behind the wheel. Slowly, ever so slowly Carl became susceptive the the idea that it was all real. But the old man’s shtick was as hard to swallow as the idea that they were all dead and in the afterlife.

 It only got worse for Carl when they arrived at the headquarters building for the 17^th and 73^rd Infantry Regiments. The formally spacious interior of the old building had become a bee hive of activity. Everything in the area changing under new commands and new circumstances. Everything needing to be documented and given official clearance. Fifty bureaucrats crammed into what once was a reception room, operating out of file cabinets, portable desks and phone extensions. Actually it gave Carl a sense of security. No one so much as glanced at him as he slowly made his way along spaces between office furniture.

 He used up twenty minutes just locating the forms and stamps he would need to steal. Then more time to actually slip the necessary materials into his waist band when the closest heads were turned. He wondered briefly if thieves ever succumbed to nervous breakdowns. It certainly seemed to him to be a nerve wracking way to earn a living. Then just when he was about to make off with his ill-gotten gain, the State Department worker ran out of luck.

 “Excuse me Herr Colonel, but I am curious why you would want to make off with an outdated stamp.”

 Carl tensed inside. Not only had he gotten himself caught, he got caught stealing something useless.

 “Last month’s stamp?”

 “That is correct sir. May I ask why you are taking it?”

 Under those circumstances Napoleon Solo would have been in trouble. Even the brainy Illya Kuryakin would have been found lacking. But Carl Schmidt was destined to gather many facts and figures while serving with a U.S. Army occupational force. He would stumble onto a grim but obscure reference to something called The Celle Hare Hunt. The nearby prison camp had taken a few stray bombs from an air raid. Some prisoners took advantage of the damage and confusion to escape into the forest that stood between the camp and the town of Celle. A number of the town’s citizens took up rifles and aided the SS by hunting down and shooting the fugitives. The memory flashed before him in the nick of time.

 “The hare hunt; one of my relatives participated. I wish to have his name stricken from a document I have in my office.”

 The woman took a step closer. She was perhaps forty, somewhat plump, and there was the look of the opportunist in her eyes.

 “Unusual.”

 “The war is almost over, why should anyone around here take the risk of hanging alongside the SS?”

 “You speak treason, Herr Colonel.”

 “Then perhaps you should have me arrested after dinner this evening.”

 “A real hare? I haven’t seen a slice of beef in ages.”

 “Actually I have recently acquired a few tins of caviar which was liberated from the Russians. What time do you get off work?”

 “Three hours from now,” the woman answered with a slight smile.

 “If the caviar were to come with a decent bottle of wine, could I possibly borrow a current stamp to go with the old one?”

 The American was pushing his luck----and he found it strangely exhilarating.

 “Are you married, Herr Colonel?”

 “Difficult question, my wife was in Paris when it became liberated by the Americans. I suspect she will choose to remain there.”

 The woman strolled over to another desk area and returned with a stamp.

 “A full bottle?”

 “But of course, Fraulein—“

 “Frau,” the woman cut in, “but my husband is not likely to come back from the Eastern Front with caviar.”

 “Well, at least it’s not as far to travel these days,” the American responded awkwardly.

     

Chapter Seven

 In another building Illya stole a typewriter and in no time the three men were in business.

 “You know, back there in Syria I got in touch with some pretty strange feelings when I thought I was going to die. But this is just plain nuts,” said Carl.

 “Actually it makes a great deal of sense when you think about it,” countered Solo while the two men watched Illya type in a wood shed they were occupying. “You can train a man to withstand torture. You can convince him that he should die for a cause. But when you control his sense of reality, you become his true master.”

 “Fine, so this Thrush outfit fools one of you guys into divulging some piece of info, but I’m living this too, and I don’t have anything that a brainwasher could want.”

 “Thrush can be very thorough,” commented Illya. “You were with us during the capture, which might make you important enough to work with. Not to mention that fact that we are apparently interacting with one another, despite the logical assumption that none of this is real. That skill becomes more useful as you increase the number of participants.”

 “I’m getting a headache,” grumbled Carl.

 “You said that woman back in the records building could be bought with food and drink. I suppose that’s for our benefit. Illya will get you your victuals so you won’t have to disappoint the lady,” said Solo.

 “Aw come on guys, if this is all a set up you’ll be able to flash these bogus papers, stroll across the camp and have this Russian genius talking to you without further need of poor little Carl Schmidt,” theorized the cloak and dagger neophyte.

 Once again Solo didn’t have a proper response. Logic suggested that if their captors wanted the men from U.N.C.L.E. to have a fantasy conference with someone, the fates would somehow oblige. But Solo couldn’t operate on any such assumption. Something compelled him to do things by the numbers; the way he would if he truly was operating in Nazi Germany.

 “Carl, I didn’t want to bring this up, but the fact is our captors could have a squad of soldiers show up at any moment and beat us all to a pulp. The means are beyond our comprehension, but in truth we’ll be in for a very painful reality if we mess this up. So let’s just play along as we all agreed to do.”

 “Toward that end, the lady could assist us with some sort of motor pool pass,” said the ever pragmatic Illya. “We would look rather odd approaching the camp on foot.”

 “I got a feeling that will cost me more than wine and fish eggs,” Carl said half to himself.

Chapter Eight.

Solo and Illya had mixed feelings as they rolled into the Bergen-Belsen prison camp. They knew from their studies of recent history that the place was a house of cards just waiting for a breeze to knock it down. Guard desertions had already begun, and the men at the gates were more afraid of the approaching Allies than any SS officer who might spot check the condition of their uniforms. The gate officer barely glanced at their papers which was a very encouraging thing. But the bad news was carried on the wind. The stench of disease and overcrowding was apparent even to men who had never witnessed such things. Sixty-thousand prisoners crammed into a camp designed to handle one-tenth that number.

 Napoleon had seen a prison camp in Korea, and Illya had visited a prison facility in the Soviet Union. But those were health resorts compared to what they were entering now. Solo scanned his surroundings in wonder as they proceeded on to the main administration building.

 “Funny; I don’t just see a camp that on its last leg---I can actually feel it.”

 “That is because you know the future. The guards fear what is coming, but they cling to the irrational hope that reinforcements will come from the west,” said Illya. “They know they are criminals in uniform. They fear they will be shot down by the liberators, or be handed over to the prisoners on the spot.”

 “I don’t know about the later,” Solo muttered as he gazed at the distant walking skeletons. “The poor devils that I can make out look like zombies.”

 The Russian nodded.

 “I’ve heard many stories about this sort of thing. The minds of the prisoners turn inward, like a form of dementia. In part because of malnutrition and in part because the brain can no longer process so much despair. It is not as bad in communist gulags. Those prisoners are constantly scheming to better their conditions. They never stop fighting to survive---“

 “Illya---let’s just focus on the job, alright?” Solo cut in with a low voice.

 The two men entered the main building and requested permission to meet with the commandant. Ten minutes later they were ushered into the office of Hauptsturmfuhrer Josef Kramer. The U.N.C.L.E. men were unaware of the fact that Kramer had been assigned to Auschwitz for seven months before being given his current command. No bespectacled Himmler type this one. Kramer looked like he could throw both agents out the window mussing his hair.

 “SS Captain Nicholas Sommer and Captain Borris Kunze of the 17^th Regimental Engineering Unit,” announced the secretary before turning smartly and returning to his desk.

“I had all but given up hope,” said the commandant while rising from his chair. “How many machines are we getting?”

 “Sir?” queried the dark haired visitor.

 “Bulldozers Captain. How many?”

 “Er, excuse me, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer, but we are not here for that reason. We are here to begin a prisoner training program. We are going to teach them how to build larger sanitation facilities. If the program is a success here, it will be implemented—“

 “This is just the sort of outdated foolishness I have been enduring since I took charge of the camp,” Kramer interrupted. “We have so much typhoid my gutless medical staff doesn’t even want to go to work anymore.”

 “Precisely why the sanitation facilities are so vital, sir,” pressed Solo in his best German.

 “Your reasoning is six months late sir,” retorted the commandant. “We have dead and dying to attend to now. We have to dispose of the corpses and thin out the prisoner population right now, or we’ll be joining them in hell.”

 Solo pretended to look confused.

 “Sir, we shall of course assist you anyway we can, but the fact is our plans only pertain to the large scale elimination of human waste matter. After all, you cannot have sixty-thousand people defecating improperly in a confinement area seven-hundred meters square.”

 “Half that number will be rotting corpses before the British arrive. They cannot be disposed of by slave labor. I need bulldozers, Captain. Is there any chance you can get me any?”

 “I can try sir, but if I don’t report back to headquarters with an up to date assessment of the—uh—conditions, my superiors will not be very receptive to any requests made through me.”

 The commandant let out a sigh.

 “I’ll have a current body count ready for you before you leave; which I hope will be soon. I need you pleading my cause Captain, not bothering with volunteer shovel work.”

 “Yes sir. Captain Kunze and I will be out before nightfall.”

 “If that is the best you can do,” grumbled Kramer. “I’ll have Lieutenant Forstmann report to you outside. I am confident that the number of bodies out there will convince you that your superiors are placing the cart before the horse.”

 Late that evening Solo and Kuryakin allowed themselves the luxury of a beer joint meeting.

 “Two-hundred marks per man. I think that’s more money than U.N.C.L.E. would be paying us if it existed in this time period,” joked Napoleon.

 His partner didn’t smile, but merely stared at his glass of beer.

 “You think it’s all real, don’t you?” queried Solo after a long pause.

 The blonde agent ran his fingers through the altered hair style that was the result of Solo’s amateur barber work.

 “You saw everything I saw Napoleon. So much abomination, and yet---it suggested to me like nothing else could that it’s all real.”

 “But time travel is impossible, and brainwashing is not,” Solo pointed out.

 “And how many times has Thrush come close to conquering the world because they invested in some crackpot scientific concept,” Illya countered. “Ever super weapon they ever came up with was a lunatic dream until we saw it and destroyed it.”

 “This is different Illya.”
 “Is it? Let’s give the Devil his due Napoleon. Thrush does a magnificent job of locating and sponsoring scientific genius. They have always understood that the only real power in this world is technology.”

 “Alright, in either case, we need to contact Professor Vasiliy Kuzmin. While we were pretending to measure the camp for bigger washrooms, did you come up with a plan to get the professor out?”

 “Three, actually.”

 “Good man. Can any of them be executed in the time remaining to us?”

 “No, not unless we could bribe a senior prison official, and I would not advise trying.”

 Napoleon pondered that in silence, then said, “A Thrush fantasy would include a method of escape if it was required. Therefore, it is not required. Apparently all we need to do is talk to this Russian scientist.”

 To what end?” Kuryakin asked with a hint of frustration. “How could such a dialogue possibly benefit Thrush?”

 “The fact that I have no answer does not mean that there are none,” reasoned Solo.

 “There is another way to look at this,” said the blonde Russian. “Our mission is to keep Kuzmin from dying. We don’t necessarily have to extract him from prison to do that. All we have to do is keep him from dying of typhus.”

 “With German antibiotics? Carl is going to love that.”

 “It is preferable to a tunnel project that would take too long, or a Trojan Horse lumber truck that couldn’t possibly be kept a secret.”

 “I see the logic in that, but if I’m right about Thrush I don’t think they’ll want us going in that direction. My gut tells me that they want Kuzmin moved.”

 “And my instincts tell me that all this is real, and we will become irreversibly dead if we try to extract Kuzmin without a detailed and well staffed operation,” said Illya.

 Napoleon let out a sigh.

 “Alright, you steal the drugs and I’ll check on Carl.”

 “Do you think that’s wise?”

 “The woman is useful but not trustworthy. I just want to make sure she hasn’t turned Carl over to the Gestapo.”

The blonde agent almost smirked at that.

 “You wouldn’t be worried about that if you truly believed that Thrush was guiding us along through a carefully orchestrated delusion.”

 “As I said before my friend, we must operate under the assumption that all this is real, even though can’t be.”

 Kuryakin let go of his end of the argument. He didn’t need to convince his friend of anything at the moment.

 “Perhaps I should be the one to check on Carl. If you find it necessary to make the woman’s acquaintance, she just might fall victim to that thing of yours.”

 Solo suppressed a grin.

 “What thing of mine?”

 “That borderline unnatural ability you have to turn an otherwise intelligent woman into a drooling, blithering idiot.”

 “Are we talking about love?”

 “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” warned the Russian.

 “Your point being…?”

 “She will drop Carl like the proverbial hot rock and—“

 “A hot rock is not proverbial.”

 As the blonde rose from their table he half grumbled, “I speak seven languages fluently, and I feel that I’m entitled to make an occasional mistake where it will not get us killed.”

Chapter Nine

 Carl woke up with an arm that had lost its circulation. Frau Gertrude Hoffman could sleep on a rock, or under one if she had enough of the bubbly in her.

 “Two years of celibacy made it possible,” the American thought with mixed emotions.

 The woman wasn’t exactly homely, but Carl couldn’t help but recall the comical explanation for the term Badger Ugly. A badger will gnaw his own leg off if caught in a trap. Such misfortunes are rare in the world of humans, but should you wake up some morning and find yourself in bed with an ugly woman, you might want to leave quietly without waking her up. Now, if she is resting on your arm, and you are willing to chew your own arm off in order to make your silent get-a-way, THAT is Badger Ugly.

 Briefly musing over the fact that some enemy could be responsible for such an illusion, Carl pulled his arm free and began to restore circulation to the limb. The woman woke up slowly, exposing flesh that might be best appreciated by vengeful Russian soldiers.

 “Oh---guten morgen, Herr Colonel. I half expected you to be gone by now; since you military men are so accustomed to rising early.”

“Well, it has been awhile since I----had a good night’s sleep so I suppose the wine sedated me a bit more than usual.”

 Gertrude liked to think that she had something to do with that but now it was time to get down to business.

 “Perhaps the Sandman is your guardian angel. It is to your advantage that you did not run off. I am now able to warn you that if you go to the camp today, you will be questioned by their security staff. Two officers visited the other day and after they left it was discovered that they were misrepresenting neighboring units. That of course does not happen very often.”

 “Why do you feel that this should concern me?” asked the make believe colonel.

 “Two men nose around a concentration camp and then disappear. A third man wants to falsify some records at the same time, and all three men materialize out of thin air.”

 “You did a background check on me?”

 “Stand operating procedure if you are thinking of black mailing someone. Very soon I will be out of a job, and perhaps a grieving widow as well.”

 “I don’t have a great deal of money.”

 “You have something better than money. You have the ability to get me through the British lines before a certain SS officer manages it.”

 “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

 “I admit that I was originally after money, but when a friend of mine couldn’t come up with the colonel I was interested in, I concluded that I had stumbled onto a spy. How very fortuitous for us both.”

 “Don’t accuse me of that---even when naked.”

 “Your German is good, but your acting is bad. At this point, I’m not even going to ask you why you and your associates would want to sneak into Bergen-Belsen. I will just tell you that I have something far more interesting for you to concern yourself with.”

 “Which would be…?”

 “A fortune in Jewish diamonds, hidden in Bremerhaven.”

 “But there is an SS officer who also knows where they are hidden and if he gets to them first, you will be just another German woman with an empty stomach.”

 “Now you are looking focused. I can see you’re not acting anymore. Yes, soon there will be a race, and with your help I shall win it.”

 “You mentioned the British Army. They haven’t taken that port city yet. Why aren’t you running up there now?”

 “Its complicated. Suffice it to say I must wait until the British are there.”

 Carl thought about that for a moment and asked, “Would the prospect of two fortunes please you, or would the added responsibility prove too nerve wracking?”

 The woman’s face went blank for an instant, then it lit up with both comprehension, and insatiable greed.

 “You’re in the same game. You know of a camp inmate who has jewels hidden away and you need to make a deal before the whole country falls apart.”

 “Not jewels, technology that could make millions after the war,” Carl decided to admit.

 “That sounds very time consuming, and it probably hinges on some Jew staying alive and cooperative.”

 Carl shrugged slightly and said, “Yes, but my associates are strongly committed to the program. In fact, I think they would kill me if I told them that I wanted out.”

 “Not the sort of people I need in my life,” grumbled the woman as she started getting dressed. “I suppose you want me involved because you need more help than I would give while sober.”

 “Or perhaps even while drunk, but you needn’t meet with any new people or do anything out of the ordinary while waiting for the Allies to advance. Just a few more pieces of paper, properly stamped will get you a piece of the action, as the Americans might say.”

 “At the proper time I will measure your worth to me and do what seems logical. I never make life and death decisions before my morning coffee,” explained the woman.

 “Very sensible, I—“

 Suddenly there was a knock at the apartment door.

 “Damn,” muttered the woman as she threw on her house coat and marched into the living room.

 A moment later she was facing a handsome SS officer with the most disarming smile she had ever seen.

 “Frau Hoffman? I am Captain Nicholas Sommer. I am an acquaintance of Colonel Schmidt’s and I am searching for him. Should you see him today, would you please—“

Carl stepped into view and almost got in front of the woman.

 “I’ll be out in two minutes. Sorry for the late start; too much wine last night.”

 As a senior officer Schmidt was entitled to limit the exchange. This he did, closing the door with mild embarrassment.

 “He is one of your associates?” queried the woman.

 “Yes, he was one of the men who went to the camp.”

 “You should quickly inform him that he is not a person of interest to the authorities.”

 “Don’t worry, I’m certain he didn’t let anyone get a good look at him coming over here, and he won’t be returning,” Carl assured her.

 “Not in the daytime,”  the woman thought to herself, “and not with anyone tagging along.”

Chapter Ten

 Carl approved of the plan to inoculate Kuzmin rather than extract him. He sang the praises of the plan right up until the moment he was told that he would be the next man to venture forth into a man-made hell. It wasn’t an easy decision but Napoleon and Illya concluded that it would be too risky having Colonel Schmidt report to the camp commandant for proper sanctioning. Better to bribe a kapo (prison trustee) and go directly to the inmate who had so much to offer a future scientific community.

 Of course this would only be possible because most of the guards were afraid of disease. The unburied dead and dying were feared even more than the insane officers who acted as though the Allied armies were still thousands of miles away. Carl steeled himself for what he knew would be an ugly fantasy. The camp was made up of over sixty buildings; filled to overflowing with human skeletons. He would have to keep reminding himself that none of it was real; that it was an elaborate nightmare designed to trip him up for some reason. Nothing more. But the brain is dependent on the senses in so many complex ways. Short term virtual reality movies could make a man lose his balance or even faint. Carl was experiencing something infinitely more elaborate. His sense of logic told him one thing, but his five senses had been immersed in this artificial reality for some time now.

 When he met the kapo who had been recruited earlier by Illya, he didn’t want to speak to him. He just wanted to follow the man-weasel in the filthy improvised suit and be rid of him as soon as possible. The trustee had other ideas. He wanted to stay with the colonel and find out what he was up to. Information was everything to a kapo, like blood to a vampire. Carl noted approximately forty inmates walking between barracks in a trance like state. They were the crazy ones. The sane prisoners remained lying or sitting to conserve energy. When he entered the eleventh barracks building from the camp entrance, half the residents stared at his with curiosity and half did not.

 The kapo pointed to a man who was playing chess with a homemade board and pebbles that represented the different playing pieces. The man weighed perhaps one-hundred and ten pounds and was covered with sores that could not heal. He looked to be about seventy, but then, so did most of the men in the barracks. One lens was missing from his wire spectacles but he didn’t seem to have any trouble reading the lopsided board.

 “He’s the one. He was a bit uppity when he first arrived but I showed him who’s boss around here and he’s  behaved since,” the trustee said with a smirk.

 “Alright, wait outside,” said Carl.

 “Er, begging your pardon, sir, but there are a lot of rumors going around that the British are going to be marching up the road any day now. So some of these mangy curs are close to finding the spines they lost some months back. I don’t its safe for you to—“

  “My assignment is of a highly confidential nature. So much so that if anyone were to witness any facet of it, that witness might find himself full of bullet holes even in his bed. Very soon you will be burying corpses while looking over your shoulder. Unless you are wise enough to get out of this camp before that happens. In any case, you are dismissed,” said Carl who had never sounded more authoritarian.

 The American waited until the two legged rat was gone before approaching the chess player.

 “I see no opponent,” Carl stated in the way of a greeting.

 “I am not playing anyone, Herr Colonel, I am merely reviewing the particulars of a game I played some three years ago.”

 “Do you remember all the games you play?”

 “Yes, but that is probably because few people bother to play with me. My reputation precedes me I’m afraid.”

 “You mean you rarely lose?”

 “Still waiting for the first time. Someday there will be machines that will play the game. What a pity I won’t live long enough to see that.”

 “As a matter of fact, that is the very reason I am here. My name is Colonel Schmidt, and presuming that you are Vasiliy Kuzmin, I am here to give you a bit of help.”

 “I am Kuzmin, and I can assure you that I have nothing to exchange for your bit of help.”

 “I didn’t come here to barter. May we go someplace private?”

 The prisoner issued a weak smile and replied, “We’re five people to a bunk in this building. I would suggest hanging a blanket but we don’t have any of those anymore.”

 Carl nodded with embarrassment.

 “Well, I’m not about to do this outside where more kapos could be watching,” the colonel said in a low voice. “I suppose it will have to be here. You see, I have two hypodermic syringes with me. One contains a powerful anti-biotic and the other contains a sort of nutritional concentrate that might help for a while. You see, this camp will be liberated in less than a month, but I don’t think you will survive that long without this bit of help I’m talking about.”

 The old man’s eyes suddenly seemed to go blank. It was as though all that genius within him had been short circuited by a hope he had long abandoned. Carl perceived as much and slowly brought out a small packet which he shielded with his body.

 “You just sit quietly, Professor. This will only take a second….”

 “What? No---wait. You need to be told something. I have a friend,” the old man muttered awkwardly. “I owe him everything. He was what you call a scrounger. His older brother was a student of mine in the good old days. I never would have lasted this long if not for him.”

 Carl shrugged internally. He supposed that the people who were washing his brain would want him to see this Kuzmin fellow as a noble sort. At the very least grateful to anyone who might have shown him kindness.

 “Yea, well, I can pass that on to my contact. Anyway, I think these injections would work best in your rear end. Your arm doesn’t have---“

“No, I want you to give them to Danya. He is lying in the nearest corner over yonder. He is only twenty-three years old. He will have his whole life ahead of him if he can survive these next few weeks.”

 Carl let out a sigh. Was he supposed to explain to this phantom scientist that his genius was more important than the life on one prisoner? Why did he have to say it? Why couldn’t he just follow Solo’s instructions and get the hell out of there?

 “Sir---I’m not a real German officer, but I am  a man who has to follow orders. My orders are to give you a couple of shots and then get out of here before I am discovered.”

 “Are you doing it for money?”

 “No.”

 “Then you are risking your life because you are an idealist. The Allies are about to win the war. No one is asking you to shoot a family man or drop on bomb on city with civilians in order to contribute to the victory. My jailors will be tried and convicted by men in clean shirts and all that matters now is that a friend needs my help.”

 Carl grew even more irritable.

 “Ok, you want to wax philosophic? Fine. We all grow old and die. What we leave behind is important. I was told that you are a genius who could usher in a new civilization that could eradicate all the shitholes that spawn people like the Nazis. I’ll bet any noble friend would vote for that. Shall we ask your buddy?”

 “Yes by all means,” agreed Kuzmin, who then forced himself to move faster than was his habit.

 Carl was already regretting his last few words as he followed the old man past a dozen sitting or lying lethargic onlookers.

 “Danya wake up. There is a man who can give you some medicine. He came to give it to me but I have explained to him that you need it more than I.”

 A pair of oversized gray eyes opened slowly to focus on a familiar face, then on a uniform that fanned a low burning hatred.

 “What does he want?”

 “He has medicine,” Kuzmin repeated. “Antibiotics. He’ll give them to you on the condition that I work for someone after the war is over and I said yes.”

 “Tell this man the truth or I’ll pin you to the floor and inoculate you right here and now,” Carl warned the old man.

 “You tell me, Fascist Pig, it will save time,” growled the sick young man.

 “I’m a member of the Underground,” Carl half lied. “I’m here to help your professor friend. It’s his idea that the drugs should go to you.”

 The prisoner’s eyes were as empty as his stomach.

 “I must be dreaming. There is no underground here. No gun smugglers. No short wave radios. Just delusions.”

 The young man smiled slightly and said, “Have this fellow sit someplace else, Professor. At least until his uniform turns back into stripes. Not long ago I would have preferred the illusion of a naked woman. But now, it would please me to have my toy terrier  pay me a visit. Hopefully I would not suffer the sight of him being eaten.”

 With that Danya allowed himself to slip back into a dream world where bread and butter could be taken for granted.

 “He was---more lucid, this morning,” Kuzmin muttered half to himself.

 “Then I’m glad I showed up late. I don’t need to be mistaken for a naked woman,” Carl responded.

 “If you give him the shots, I will give you information that could make you a rich man someday,” said the old man.

 Carl tensed slightly and then asked, “does it have anything to do with breaking the time barrier?”

Kuzmin blinked several times and then pressed his face close to Carl’s.

 “How in God’s name could you know about that?”

 “I will only tell you if you first take the shots,” Carl responded while thinking himself quite clever.

 “Then keep your secrets, as well as your offer of help. The science that you speak of may very well be a blasphemy in any case.”

 “Faith and intelligence are compatible, Professor, but intelligence and short sightedness are not,” grumbled the American. “Did it occur to you that a time traveler could go back to when Hitler was first getting started and make sure that he never amounts to anything?”

 “And who would be the custodian of such power---the British perhaps?”

 “Would you have a problem with that?”

 “I would sir. I would tell them to get out of India first.”

 “India doesn’t have any gas chambers,” retorted Carl. “You are just stalling because you don’t want to admit that you are more important than that man lying there, or any of these other poor devils.”

 “I think that uniform suits you. I give the Allies just ten years to play with the toys that the Nazis have and they will blow the world to bits.”

 “That is another thing a time traveler might change. Maybe all it would take is one ethical man.”

 “Whoever sponsors the research will also select the man who plays God. That man would be erasing the fates as though they were chalk marks on a black board.”

 Carl took another cautious look around. Most of the inhabitants were napping, with only a handful staring blankly at the sight of a German colonel amongst them. They were probably questioning their own sense of reality, just as he continued to do.

 “Ok, I can understand your misgivings concerning government. Believe me, I’ve been there. But that just means that you’ll have to be strong and maintain control over your intellectual property. It won’t be easy, but that will be your challenge.”

 “My challenge is to put honor above all else,” responded the genius.

 “If you were an ordinary man, I would appreciate your point of view,” conceded the American, “but as we have just discussed, you could bring about a much greater good in time, by surviving this place.”

 “Until mankind is no longer capable of creating nightmares like the one I am in, I choose personal honor over the wishes of any existing government. I choose loyalty to a friend over technological advancement,” Kuzmin stated as if to the whole wide world.

 “Wait a minute---you did offer to make me rich if I gave the drugs to your friend. Are you rescinding that proposition?”

 “I wasn’t talking about building a time machine,” the old man clarified. “I was thinking about a device that would enable you to turn on the lights with your voice.”

 Heaving a sigh of resignation, the American brought out the syringes and prepared to apply brute force to achieve his objective. But at the last moment his thoughts went to an old woman who had been judged expendable by everyone except a minor official named Schmidt.

 “Oh hell and bother,” Carl hissed out loud. “None of this is real so I might as well give you what you want and be done with it all.”

 Carl then promptly administered the two hypos to the young man and rose to his feet.

 “I hope God pays attention to dreams. I got a feeling that when we report back to Adams, the game playing will end and so will my stay on a real, non-imitation Earth.”

 “Adams?” queried the professor. “I worked with a student from America before the war. He was a protégé of a sort. His first name was Joshua.”

 “That’s right,” Carl responded with a snide expression. “Professor Joshua Adams, brain washer extraordinaire.”

 “Why do you say that?” Kuzmin asked with increasing interest.

 “Because he’s been trying his damnedest to convince me that I’m a time traveler, and I ain’t buying it or any bridge neither.”

 “You mean---he is an old man---and he sent you back to help me?”

 Kuzmin nearly had a heart attack right on the spot. Carl’s expression softened just a tad, but he was still of the opinion that he was talking to a blank wall somewhere.

 “He said he had worked on his time travel project for half a century. I’m supposed to be part of a three man team to get you out of here so that you could help him after the war. That was a pretty stupid idea---for a genius to act on.”

 “Why didn’t he send you back to the time I was offered an opportunity to leave the continent? It doesn’t make any sense that he would have a time traveler meddle with this ghastly period in time.”

 “You mean you don’t know anything about gravimetric stresses?” asked Carl with suspicion.

 Kuzmin paused for a moment, then breathed out the word, “fascinating---oh, and quite believable I assure you.”

 “Uh huh. Well, I’m going to head back to a better neighborhood now. Sorry I have to leave you but one of my associates warned me that if I defy the bad guys, I’ll get the crap beat out of me and it’ll hurt just like the real thing so I guess I’ll pass on that.”

 “No wait,” pleaded Kuzmin. “I need to know: is there a younger man prepared to carry on after Adams? How close is he to solving the problem of the gravimetric black out?”

 “He claims that he’s being sponsored by organized crime. I don’t know anything besides that,” Carl responded with a dour expression.

 Kuzmin did some fast thinking. (Which he was good at even in his malnourished state.)

  “Could you pass on some information without the criminals seeing you?” asked Kuzmin.

  “I could do that,” answered Carl, who was mindful of what Solo had stated earlier.

 “Do you have anything I can write on?”

 “Yea, I’ve got a note book and pencil…”

 The old man took them and began to scribble with the urgency of a man trying to save the world. He nearly filled half the book and pushed Carl’s patience to the limit.

 “With these computations Adams should be able to reduce the flux derributor to a much narrower beam. One that will carry a subject at least one-hundred years back in time. Most certainly back to the 1930s.”

 “Ok,” the American responded awkwardly while stuffing the book back into his pocket.

 “I will say God speed  to the angel that may erase this foul page in human history.”

 “I’ll deliver the notebook,” Carl promised, “but I have no idea what will happen after that.”

 The American nodded good bye to the man in striped rags, then headed out to where the kapo was waiting for him. Heading back across the compound was unnerving, but Carl was pretty sure he would make it out; and he was also sure that Napoleon Solo would find the contents of the notebook very interesting. Hopefully the notebook would give the three men a way out of their dilemma. In any case, Carl was more uncomfortable than ever, and he wasn’t entirely certain why.

Chapter Eleven

 Carl was very unhappy when he took a peek at the notebook and discovered that Kuzmin had written his notes in Greek. Solo and Illya were even more vexed when Carl insisted on taking the notebook to the University of Hamburg to have it looked at. But Illya could only decipher some twenty percent of the writing and they dared not enlist the aid of the local community.  So with great trepidation, the State Department worker was allowed to venture forth on his own with notes that could make Einstein’s Theory of Relativity look like something the Greek playwrights dreamed up.

 All the while Solo and Kuryakin kept relocating. From a church to a grave digger’s cottage to the Mayor’s basement. Scrounging for food along with a few thousand other people, and all the while wondering how they could possibly experience so many sensations that could not be real. At least that was Solo’s wonder. Illya had become a convert to the idea of time travel. For that reason he was especially concerned for Carl since there would be no waking up from a rifle or machine gun bullet.

 On the third day Napoleon checked the downspout in back of the local bakery. It had finally been shifted ninety degrees to the left. With a smile he took out a piece of paper and shoved it into the spout. On that parchment Solo had written his most current address. Three hours later Carl Schmidt quickly entered the back of a vacant butcher’s shop.

 Looking fearfully about he asked, “What if someone wonders in?”

 “The few people who have meat are not getting it from any public establishment,” explained Kuryakin. “We should be safe for the night if we don’t light any fires, and if you haven’t been followed all the way from Hamburg.”

 “Well sir, I did everything short of changing my gender to keep from being tailed. One guy was definitely following me after I left the college, but I gave him the slip by pretending to board a train and then jumping off just as it was gathering speed. I sure am glad that little trick worked, cause I needed to get back to you gents real bad.”

 “I know, the cat and mouse game can be very unnerving even when you’re not new at it,” consoled Solo.

 “It certainly is that, confirmed the older American. “But I needed to get back to you boys to let you know that we are really truly in Nazi Germany. The toughest part of that assignment was sneaking away from the egg heads in that school after they got a look at this notebook. I mean I had to climb out a bathroom window.”

 Napoleon smiled and shook his head.

 “Carl, I don’t pretend to know how they can work on three subjects at the same time, but if we are going to further explore the possibility that you are right, then I need to ask you something. If a huge and very powerful organization had possession of a time machine, would they allow one old man to tamper—all alone mind you---with the machinery?”

 The bureaucrat shrugged and said, “I suppose it would be less difficult to pull off than time travel, but I need to make a point here. You believe that we are fed our reality, the way a cook decides what to place in a meal. The idea is that they can get something out of one of us by convincing us we are living in the year 1945.” 

 “Yes---what of it?”

 “So, they are giving us what they have knowledge of---not what we have knowledge of.”

 Solo took a deep breath and replied, “Yes, they need to trick us out of the knowledge that we alone possess. What is your point?”

 “I have been to Hamburg before. En route to the college campus I saw a graffiti on the side of a building that was put there in the 1920s. I only found it because I got lost while walking through the area on my first visit.”

 Solo glanced over at Kuryakin’s intent stare and said, “Well, maybe they can mix their spoon fed images with some of our memories. I did state a moment ago that we don’t know how this dream world functions exactly. But the brain is less of a miracle than time travel. When you forget that, you are playing right into their hands.”

 Kuryakin smiled at Carl’s frustrated expression and said, “I’m on your side, Carl, but it is only logical to guard against the possibility that we are being manipulated as Napoleon believes.”

 “Yea yea yea,” Schmidt acknowledged irritably, “I’m all for expecting the unexpected, but no one has asked us any questions  confidential or otherwise. Bottom line Mr. Solo, if we get all the way back to that weird bench we flew in on, without anyone pumping us for info, I think that will be the end of your theory.”

 Illya’s head slightly to one side, and his hand dropped to the flap of his military holster. But it remained immobile at that point as a dozen black clad men burst into the empty store with machine pistols at the ready.

 The only officer stepped forward when he was certain that no panic shooting was about to take place. He had a Walther PP automatic in one hand and with the other he reached into Kuryakin’s holster and removed a bigger Walther P-38.

 “My name is Sturmhauptfuhrer Luca Becker, and I have a great many question that need to be answered.”

 Solo looked up into the predatory eyes of the SS officer and asked, “Are you down from Hamburg by chance?”

 “Ya, this fool showed some very interesting papers to a rocket scientist who was visiting the university at the time. We were notified immediately.”

  “Oh yea, the short guy who went to find a slide rule,” Carl muttered half to himself.

  “We came so close to being rich,” Napoleon said with a cavalier smile, “and now all we can hope for is to survive the war.”

  “All you can hope for,” corrected the Nazi, “is a relatively painless death. Men who steal state secrets are interviewed with extreme prejudice.”

 “By your superiors back in Hamburg?” asked Solo.

 “Not immediately. First we will take you to the Bergen camp to see if you are the same officers that visited that facility earlier.”

 “I suppose we could own up to that, if you ask us nicely,” said Solo.

 “Ya, it would please me if I could avoid the stench of the place. But the commandant of the camp was able to ascertain what business you have with his camp and it would be discourteous to take you into custody in his backyard and not give him an opportunity to view the catch.”

 The three men were manacled with their hands in front and loaded into the back of a truck that contained a guard for each prisoner. Twenty minutes later the prisoners were standing a few meters in front of the commandant’s headquarters building in a chilly rain that would accelerate the death toll among the sick.

 “I just received word that the road to Hamburg is being strafed by fighters. Perhaps you would prefer to remain here for a time and interrogate the prisoners in one of the medical examination rooms,” suggested Kramer.

 The sturmhauptfuhrer understood full well that Kramer didn’t want any bloodstains in his office, but fully supported the idea of body fluids spilling out someplace else.

 “A most gracious offer, Herr Commandant.”

 “Not at all. These men have shown a very mysterious interest in my camp. It goes without saying that I would like to know why. I have already learned that it has something to do with a prisoner named Kuzmin. I fear that if these men were to proceed immediately to Hamburg, I might find myself outside of the loop as the Americans say.”

 “Then of course we shall have your most trusted subordinate witness the interrogation,” said Becker.

 “Very good. That would be my camp physician Dr. Fritz Klein. He has been complaining of stomach ailments lately, but he should be up to something as effortless as being a witness. Sergeant Luger will escort you and your group to the medical complex and I will have Klein meet you there.”

 The officers exchanged salutes and the prisoners were then marched to the far end of the third building to the west of the headquarters complex.  After passing through a vacant reception area they entered a barn sized work place that was part hospital and part slaughter house. A long row of porcelain examination tables were on the right side of the room. They were designed so that no matter how much blood a patient might lose, it could hosed down and drained like a wash tub.

 Along the opposite wall were open shower stalls and oversized sinks. Despite all the efforts at maintaining a clean work environment, there were blood stains everywhere and the place reeked of fermented bodily fluids. But the most notable point of interest lay on the far table. Nude, better fleshed than the walking skeletons in the neighboring buildings, and immediately recognized by a now queasy Carl Schmidt. It was the kapo who had guided Carl to Kuzmin earlier. Five bullet holes formed extended in a diagonal line across the heart. Solo and Kuryakin saw it as a well placed machine pistol burst meant to kill quickly at close range.

 “Judging by the fleshy limbs, I would guess that he was a recent arrival,” Solo said in a cool, conversational tone.

 “He was a kapo,” said Dr. Klein as he arrived on the heels of the others.

 “Ah, well then I don’t suppose there were many tears shed.”

 “About as many as you would find at the execution of a spy,” quipped the doctor.

 “Actually we’re not spies,” contradicted Solo, “we are delivery boys that fell in with the wrong crowd.”

 “You are a talkative sort. That is good. The silent ones are always so very-----time consuming,” said Becker.

 “Oh I’m a regular chatter box,” said Solo, “ready willing and able to answer all questions.”

 “You will get your chance,” promised the SS man, “but to start out, I would like to hear a few words from the gentleman who’s lack of skill made this meeting possible. What would you like to contribute to this interview, Colonel Schmidt?”

Carl stole another glance at the bullet ridden kapo. Maybe he was real, maybe not, but he was a disquieting sight to behold in any case. The American cleared his throat and was careful not to make eye contact with his fellows.

 “Uh---our plans pretty much hinged on not getting caught, but now that we’re prisoners, I suppose there is no harm in asking you gentlemen what you intend to do when the war is over. I don’t mean to anger anyone, but the truth is, pretty soon you’ll be hanging up your uniforms and starting a new life in a country that’s in bad shape. I was thinking that perhaps we can accomplish something together, if you’re not intending to shoot it out with the British or maybe even the Russians out east.”

 “We are still listening,” Becker prodded after a moment of silence.

 “Jewels or bank accounts might escape the scrutiny of captors until a prisoner becomes convinced that he’s going to die in captivity. But there is another form of wealth that might present itself to an enterprising German officer. Namely scientific wealth.”

 Becker made no attempt to hide his disappointment. It was the distant lightning flash of an approaching storm.

 “We know that Kuzmin is a mathematical genius. I do not doubt that he would have been given a prestigious position with a well funded research group somewhere. But do you actually believe that we could gain some favor from our victors by keeping highly intelligent prisoners alive? Really Schmidt, you are as dull witted as you look; and that is a greater misfortune than near starvation.”

 “His equations will bring about a technology worth many billions of dollars,” Carl retorted. “What was given to me could just as easily be given to you; data that would be useful to competing scientific minds. But the first step is to get some food into Kuzmin’s stomach so you will have something to work with in the next few weeks. Unless of course you only care about killing and imprisoning, in which case you have very little time left in which to enjoy yourself. Hitler will be blowing his own brains out before the flowers bloom.”

Becker took a step towards the American prisoner but then restrained himself. Klein was like the sphinx, and Carl’s companions were both hoping that Carl would quit while he was ahead.

 Suddenly the dangerous look in Becker’s eyes vanished and he shrugged inside his black uniform.

 “Very well, I shall ask the commandant for permission to take this Kuzmin fellow with us; in the interest of thoroughness.”

 “Then---may I conclude that this interview is at an end?” the camp doctor asked with some awkwardness.

 “Yes, Doctor. Kindly have Kuzmin cleaned up a bit, and let us hope that he does not foul the interior of our staff car on the way up north. Bloodstains are bad enough.”

Chapter Twelve

 He might have been guilty of aiding a hostile power, but Solo recommended that Becker promise the commandant a bulldozer in exchange for permission to move Kuzmin. Every man has his price, and when Kramer got his the front prison gate swung open easily enough. The extra prisoner required an improvised diaper and two army blankets, but when Kuzmin realized that he wasn’t imagining things, his spirits rallied and he walked with only a minimum of assistance.

 Curiously enough, the SS officer had Kuzmin ride with him in the backseat of the staff car. The transport truck followed with the healthy prisoners, three guards and the driver. The men from U.N.C.L.E. did not require a meeting of the minds to conclude that they needed to escape before reaching Hamburg. No doubt Becker realized this as well, but was confident that adequate security was in place. All three men were handcuffed and each man’s guard had a Schmeisser MP-40 machine pistol pointed at them.

 While still south of Bockel  the two vehicles were forced to straddle the shoulder of the road in order to get around less fortunate vehicles that had been rendered immobile by fighter strafing. In the process of skirting the hulks the passengers were bounced around, and Solo had already perceived that his guard kept his finger inside the trigger guard. Napoleon Solo was an intelligent man, but that was not the reason he had been recruited for U.N.C.L.E. In the blink of an eye he grabbed the barrel of the Schmeisser with a pair of manacled hands and pulled on the weapon while pointing it at Carl’s guard. Solo’s opponent involuntarily brought his finger to the surface of the trigger and activated the killing machine.

 Because of its high rate of fire, half the magazine was emptied into a uniformed chest. The bullet ridden guard also fired his weapon, but Carl had the luck of the Irish at that moment. The muzzle had strayed just far enough so that the stream of bullets passed him and entered the truck cab. Carl was still marveling at it all while Solo struggled to turn a weapon against its owner. Kuryakin had grabbed the barrel that had been threatening him, while Carl’s guard was in the process of being perforated. The blonde Russian fought for his life, shoving against his guard with such force as to cause the German to topple over the raised tail gate. But the guard got hold of the Russian’s handcuff chain just as he was losing his match with gravity.

 Both captor and captive hit the road hard as the truck veered off the road entirely and crashed into a nearby tree. That helped Solo out tremendously since his manacles placed him at a martial disadvantage. The collision brought Solo’s body mass forward with additional force and when the muzzle of the weapon came to press against a German cheek, Solo’s finger pressed down on top of the German’s causing the remainder of the magazine to empty. The guard screamed as a trench was dug across his cheek bone. By then Carl had gotten hold of the dead man’s weapon and used it like a club to hammer down on the German’s left wrist.

 With a second weapon empty, Solo was free to double hammer fist at his opponent’s throat while Carl angrily pounded away at the soldier’s helmet. In the meantime Becker and his driver had bailed out of their staff car and were sprinting back to the truck with pistols in their hands. They rounded the back of the transport just as Solo was about to put a fresh magazine in the weapon that was now his.

 “You are most formidable opponents,” growled Becker. “I will take great delight in conducting an in depth interrogation that will leave you wishing that your misbegotten mothers never met your misbegotten fathers!”

 Becker’s angry expression took on a hint of confusion as Solo gestured to the Germans to lower their weapons. The officer was about to respond with a snide remark when suddenly his feet were swept out from under him. Both he and his driver were now withering in agony as blood seeped from numerous bullet holes in their legs.

 “I was gesturing to my partner,” explained Solo. “I didn’t want him to shoot too high. Now kindly leave your pistols where they’re lying. You can still die a warrior’s death if you want to, but in a few weeks your superior won’t remember you, much less what happened this day.”

 Illya closed in on the wounded men holding the heavy machine pistol with two hands on the grip. When he was close enough to kick the discarded handguns away, he ordered the men to give up the handcuff key.

 “Holy nuts, the driver is dead!” exclaimed Carl with trembling hands.

  “If any of this is real,”  Solo silently reminded himself before looking at the Russian.

 “Mine has a caved in throat. He’ll be dead in minutes,” Kuryakin assured his partner.

  “You won’t get----to the nearest town,” declared a pain racked Becker.

 “You mean we won’t,” corrected the Russian who then quickly brought the staff car back for easy loading. Then he hastily placed improvised tourniquets on uniformed legs.

 “Lucky for us the air raids have minimized the flow of traffic,” muttered Carl as he helped Kuryakin load the wounded Germans into the trunk.

“Yes, the Allied pilots will get the blame for all this, for a little while at least. But do we chance another encounter with Frau Hoffman, or do we proceed directly to the rabbit hole and lay low until the magic bench takes off again?”

 “I vote for the latter,” said Carl.

 “Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Solo while opening a back door.

 Solo quickly assessed the gaunt, shivering man wrapped in blankets and said, “Our situation has improved somewhat Professor. Can you bear up for a few more hours?”

 “Yes of course,” responded the scientist, “but to what end may I ask?”

 “We’re going to take you to a church in Bispingen. When we were hiding in Celle, a church caretaker informed us that we might be safe there; meaning you might be safe there. Only catch is, the place doesn’t seem to have a name. Supposedly the residences just call it Old Church for some reason.”

 “But---I am in poor health. My bowels are giving me terrible trouble,” the scientist confessed unnecessarily. “I require more than just a place to hide. How much can I ask of a strange priest who sees so much turmoil around him?”

 “I don’t know,” responded Solo. “We were given a place to take you so we’ll head for it.”

 “What of the men in the trunk? They will bleed to death if you leave them that way.”

 “First we get away from here. Then we make the next decision,” Solo explained as Kuryakin took the wheel and started them north.

 Fort twenty minutes Solo felt Kuzmin’s eyes on him. It was unsettling, and the highly trained agent was unhappy with himself for being so vulnerable.

 “They are the enemy. We should have put a bullet in each of their heads,” Napoleon stated after he had enough.

 “Somewhere in both chest cavities,” corrected the Russian. “Otherwise someone might have suspected an execution.”

 “I sense you are trapped in a gray area of morality,” said Kuzmin.

 “I have no idea what that means,” responded Solo.

 “Finishing them off would have been the proper thing to do. Instead you let them die very slowly, just as hundreds of people are doing back in the camps. It is a game that men sometimes choose to play. Don’t kill people outright, just make it impossible for them to survive the existing conflict. They become casualties of war, not the victim of a bullet fired by a murderer.”

 “I’m sure that is true in many cases,” said Solo, “but it hardly concerns Mr. Kuryakin and myself. We have two live prisoners in the trunk because they could be of use as hostages or decoys.”

 “Until they bleed to death,” pressed Kuzmin.

 “The femoral arteries  were not hit. Yes, they are in bad shape but they should last a few hours at the very least. Hopefully we’ll be in easy reach of that church before they become so much dead weight.”

 Carl sat up front beside Illya and silently contemplated the last conversation while the staff car rolled along through the heart of Germany. But he just had to throw in his two cents worth before they could reach their destination.

 “Professor, after what you’ve been through, I’m surprised you didn’t ask for a gun so you could shoot them yourself.”

 The man wrapped in blankets let out a long and meaningful sigh.

 “When you visited me in the camp, what did you see?”

 “People starving to death by the hundreds. I was so pissed, if the Germans would have discovered me, I would have pulled my piece and gone down fighting,” answered Carl.

 “Meaning you would have crossed over with hatred in your heart, instead of peace. That would have been unfortunate. I am glad it did not happen.”

 “Yea, me too,” said the American who’s eyes rolled slightly upward.

 “My life has always been filled with numbers, and theories pertaining to the great externals,” Kuzmin continued. “When I was brought to that dying ground, I was introduced to what I call The Dire Dimension. It is the threshold between this dimension and the next. It awaits both the dynamic and the tranquil, but tranquility is the great teacher. The fury of conflict teaches us nothing. That my friends is why war is such a terrible misfortune. But in that dying ground, I became receptive to a great truth that shows hatred for what it is.”

 “Yea, we pretty much know where you’re going with this,” said Carl. “The Budda and Jesus were what you might call advanced enough to remain free of worldly concerns. But we gotta settle for less. Take me for instance: I turned rogue against the government agency I was working for because I felt honor bound to save a helpless woman. Sure, I could have told myself that she is a good person and will go to some wonderful afterlife---but I couldn’t let it go at that. Yea, those people I saw back in the camp weren’t clawing at the walls of a gas chamber, but I still think that their deaths are wrong, wrong, wrong.”

 “But surely your superiors must have known that you would act as you did. I suspect that you were manipulated, sir. Meaning no dis-respect; would your immediate supervisor have gone with you to free the woman if that would have been necessary?”

 “Alright, we should be on the outskirts of the Bispingen area,” Solo interrupted. “Illya, park us behind that grove of trees and stay behind the wheel. Carl and I will look for a discreet route to that church we’re looking for. Still wish we had a name to go on.”

 Carl though it strange that Solo would choose the more able Kuryakin to remain behind, but then, if Kuzmin needed protection, the blonde haired Russian would certainly handle that duty better than Carl could. When they were one-hundred yards from the car, Solo brought them to a halt and scanned a cemetery that was located dead ahead, some eight-hundred yards from where they were standing.

 “Quiet---sparsely populated area,” observed Solo. “In a way that’s good, but we might have to do quite a bit of hiking to find that church.”

 “Yea, when I first came to Germany, I was kind of amazed at all the undeveloped countryside. I just figured that any country that is both old and industrialized would be covered with cities,” Carl mused.

 Solo ignored the casual observation and said, “I think our phantom professor was about to probe you for information. I think you’re the reason we’re being gaslighted. Some facet of your little adventure has become very important to Thrush.”

 “That doesn’t make sense. The U.S. State Department is an open book compared to U.N.C.L.E. What I phoned in to my bureau chief was kind of sketchy, but if they were listening in, they couldn’t have heard anything that would cause them to smell money.”

 “Thrush isn’t about money, it’s about power,”  Solo quickly explained. “Their leaders knew from the very beginning that racketeering isn’t as lucrative as pulling the strings on a less than perfect statesman. Maybe they’re looking at some part of the State Department, or maybe they’re interested in a person you came in contact with in the field. Either way, it’s my hunch that we’re in Wonderland because of you.”

 Carl grinned at that and said, “You hold on like a bulldog, Solo. Your partner thinks we’ve gone back in time, and I’m ninety-nine percent convinced myself. Sure, the idea is fantastic, but a man can only doubt his senses for so long.”

Solo didn’t bother to respond as they approached the back of the cemetery. His eyes scanned the twenty acre collection of tombstones with no thought of what was underneath them. Solo never worried about death. He focused rather on the route that lay before him, always presuming that he’d live long enough to take another step. Enough steps would make up a day, and those would come and go without reflection.

 “Of course if we’re right and you’re wrong,” Carl continued, “we’ll have to decide what to do with that time tunnel, and the fellow who claims to be its creator.”

 Carl waited for a response, but Solo’s gaze was no longer sweeping the width of the burial ground. It was now focused on a bit of movement to the side of a tombstone some thirty yards ahead and to the left. Solo marched briskly in that direction until he could make out the features of a girl who was perhaps eight, digging on hands and knees with a small hand spade. Beside her was a box perhaps two feet in length. The girl’s eyes widened and she sucked in her breath at the sight of the two uniformed men.

 “Don’t be frightened,” Carl stated quickly. “We’re just looking for a place called Old Church. Can you help us with that?”

 The little girl tilted her head in thought and said, “Last year I was hiking with my aunt and we passed a very old building made of huge stones. People were getting married inside. I think that could be the place.”

 “What’s your name?” asked Solo.

 “Greta.”

 “Well Greta, I don’t think your mother would approve of you getting your dress dirty in a cemetery. What are you doing, burying a pet?” asked Solo.

 The girl nodded solemnly.

 “My older sister was killed by airplanes. Last night a car ran over her cat. I just wanted them to be together.”

 “That’s very thoughtful Greta. But you need to understand that your sister isn’t in the ground. She’s in heaven, and if she wants her cat there, it will be with her regardless of where you bury the cat’s body,” explained Carl.

 “But I already dug the hole,” the girl pointed out.

 “Yes, go ahead and put the box in the ground,” instructed Solo, “but can you tell us where this old church is?”

“You need to find a place to eat called the Konig Stuben. My aunt and I ate there after passing the church. I can’t say how to get there, but it is far away in that direction,” the girl said while pointing vaguely to the northwest.

 Solo noted that there was a small service road circumnavigating the cemetery grounds, so getting their car to the starting point wouldn’t be a problem.

 “Bury the box quickly Greta. This is no place for you,” Solo said in the way of a farewell.

 When the two Americans were halfway back to the car Schmidt asked, “If you still think all this is an illusion, why did you bother to advise the girl to hurry up and get out of there?”

 “Have you forgotten? We agreed to treat this adventure as if it’s the real thing. Besides, when Illya says something I keep it in mind, even if I’m not betting on it. Now let’s double time it back to the car. We’re running out of daylight.”

Chapter Thirteen.

The Church had been constructed nearly six-hundred years ago, and it looked the part. Actual boulders had been used to construct it’s base walls, and the roof looked as if it had recently been replaced. (Certainly not for the first time.) This was a concern to the new arrivals because the modest little structure didn’t look as though it received visitors more than once a month. It stood on it’s own acreage, ignored by the distant neighbors which was good, but not entirely so.

 “Well, I suppose one of us will have to run over to the neighboring restaurant and ask who is the officiator of this domain,” said Solo.

 “I’ll do it,” said Carl, “and I’ll get us some take out food while I’m at it.”

 “Soup for the professor,” cautioned Solo.

 “I would think a make believe scientist could swallow a steak whole and wash it down with whiskey,” joked the other American.

 “You’ve been doing just fine with all this, Carl. Don’t trip up on the last lap by becoming an irritant.”

 “Is that any way to speak to a superior officer?” responded Carl as he turned towards the distant eatery.

 The counterfeit colonel only got fifty feet when Kuryakin’s voice floated up to them from somewhere behind the little stone church.

 “I’ve found someone back here!”

 The two Americans headed around the church and then towards a pile of firewood where Illya was facing a man with an ax.

 “My word, I have not seen so many officers since the time I went to the big city to get a tooth pulled,” quipped the ax holder.

 “May I present Father Sebastian Renke,” said Illya.

 “You will not introduce your associates?” the priest asked after a brief silence.

 “They would be false, as is mine,” said Kuryakin.

 Solo drew closer to the puzzled clergyman and asked, “Do you know the caretaker at St. Ludwig?”

 “Max? Yes indeed. I got him his job. Is he in trouble?”

  “We can only hope not,” said Carl

 “Father, we’ll get right to the point,” Solo cut in. “We have an escapee from the Bergen-Belsen camp. His name is Vasiliy Kuzmin. Perhaps Max shouldn’t have done it, but he suggested we bring Kuzmin here for hiding.”

 “What did Father Schumacher have to say about that?” inquired the priest.

 “Max didn’t say why, but he chose to keep Schumacher out of this.”

 “Ah, that is good. Max has proven to be wiser than I would have supposed. Yes, this place is farther way from that great evil, and I am farther along in years, so if I am caught it will not be as great a blow to the church.”

 “Father, we must rely on your confidence that you are capable of hiding a man for at least a month or so. Also, you need to understand that this Kuzmin in is poor health. He will need a certain degree of nursing I’m afraid.”

 “Then he will have to stay in my cottage,” said the priest. “I am semi-retired and I officiate over this old church only on a part time basis. It is a quaint place to wed or bury someone when the weather is bad, but it would serve poorly as a hospital.”

 The four men then proceeded to the front of the building where the staff car awaited. Solo had a bad feeling as he opened the right rear door and gazed at the still figure within. Moving aside the blanket, he checked for a pulse and then paused with a thoughtful expression.

 “Is he alright?” asked Carl with a concerned look.

 “We’ve lost him,” Solo reported.

 “We still have his notes,” Illya pointed out.

 “It will be interesting to see if we still have them when we get back,” muttered Solo.

 “I can arrange for a discreet burial. Do you know what his denomination was?”

 “I think he sort of created his own,” said Carl.

 “In times like these, I think many people do,” added the cleric.

 “Well, Kuzmin will need fewer casket bearers if we stay here until it’s time to catch our flight out of here,” Carl half joked.

 Solo nodded slightly and said, “We’ll give it try. But Carl, If you should find yourself conversing with any of the natives, keep it simple, like perhaps the weather.”

 “Yea sure. Mums the word,”  Carl responded while getting into the car.

Chapter Fourteen.

Solo took another glance at this watch; something that had become a habit in the last few hours. If old man Adams could be trusted, then departure time would be one hour and six minutes from now. All very well and good, but now the road below them was choked with military vehicles, and hundreds of foot soldiers were trudging along the sides of the road in response to increased action up north. Every now and then a soldier would leave the road and select a patch of brush that would afford him necessary privacy, then jog back to his comrades who would crack a joke about one biological thing or another.

Every few minutes Kuryakin would glance apprehensively over his shoulder, then return to the view that the three men were sharing. His fellow U.N.C.L.E. agent looked thoughtful but remained silent.

 “I’m telling you it’s just an echo off the woods behind us,” said Carl, who was now acquainted with the blonde man’s growing hunch.

 “No, conditions aren’t adequate for that,” muttered the Russian.

 “But you went back and looked twice,” Carl pointed out.

 “Not far enough perhaps. These woods are patchy. Likely there is open ground just a few hundred meters back.”

 “But the brush in our perimeter hasn’t been disturbed since the last growing season. Surely we’ll be safe for another hour,” reasoned Carl.

 “The air strikes were part of something. All this mobilization is part of a reaction to that air raid,” Illya reasoned. “Something fairly large. Something going on all around us; not just in front of us.”

 “Yes, right. But like I said, we only need another hour,” Carl declared in a highly opinionated tone.

 “Then let us take steps to secure that hour,” said Kuryakin.

 “Alright, but open you com channel and keep it open. We’re so close to zero hour we don’t need to conserve on batteries,” said the other U.N.C.L.E. man.

 “Your presuming that our work will be all but done when we return to the time tunnel,” said Illya. “I rather doubt that.”

 “I didn’t say that,” Napoleon replied softly to his partner’s shrinking back.

 “One lousy stinking hour,” Carl echoed stubbornly.

 Illya heard Carl on the communicator and sighed as he weaved between the young trees. When he reached the last turn around point he dropped to his belly and began to crawl with the radio pen still in hand. He covered another sixty yards that way before stopping and focusing on a metallic sound. There was no mistaking what it was: tank tracks rolling at a leisurely pace. That meant that there was a road at the back of the woods that paralleled the one they had been monitoring. Well, at least now he knew. There was nothing Kuryakin hated more than being in the dark about something. Discovering the second road and noting that the traffic was steady and northward bound placed him somewhat at ease.

 He began his crawl back to the other side of the woods and got about half way there when a flight of P-47 Thunderbolts  supported Kuryakin’s long standing theory that Murphy’s Law was written by a Russian. He didn’t need to see the column of military vehicles scatter to know that in fact, that was what was happening. Illya didn’t know if there was any woods on the other side of that road, but he certainly knew what was on his side. Five trucks and three command cars pulled off the road and stabbed into the formation of trees in order to become invisible to the fighters that were now coming around for another strafing run.

 Illya was tense but not overly concerned. The Germans would return to the road as soon as the planes were gone, and they most certainly wouldn’t penetrate the woods more than a few yards, since they didn’t want to get stuck in the soft moist earth. But just as Illya was about to buy into the idea, a young tree was pushed over and it’s uppermost branches fell no more than twenty feet from the Russian’s head. The sounds of aerial assault gave way to a clanking sound that was a bit louder than it had been before.

 The Russian crawled forward and to his left until he could match a sound with an unpleasant image. He found it, and it was unpleasant. In fact it caused him to breath a Russian explicative that caused Solo to frown on the other end.

 “Any trouble back there? Our road just got strafed.”

 “There’s another road some one-hundred and fifty meters from yours, and it was attacked as well,” reported Kuryakin. “A tank is seeking cover in the trees. I’m not entirely convinced it is necessary but then I’m not the commander.”

 “How far away is he?”

 “Keep your voice down.” Illya muttered back.

 “Well, get back here then,” responded Solo. “Carl misses you terribly.”

 Kuryakin would have liked nothing  better, but he remained where he was until the steel monster finally came to a complete stop. Then the turret hatch popped open and the vehicle commander got out to inspect his surroundings. Illya didn’t even bother to draw his pistol. The German was standing on top of a Henschel built Panzerkampfwagon VI. Affectionately known throughout the military as a Tiger. Forty-five tons of killing machine with an 88 millimeter turret gun that was as much a visual deterrent as it was an actual killer of Allied machines. Kuryakin vaguely surmised that the machine probably had to be taken from a railroad car because of the bombing, and then needed to relocate under it’s own power. Most unfortunate from the standpoint of the Germans, since a Tiger tended to wear out its transmission very quickly.

 The only thing that mattered to Kuryakin was the two 7.92 machine guns that could complicate things for the men from the future, even if the tank itself couldn’t reach them because of the larger trees. Illya was extremely mindful of this as the tank commander dropped off the deck of his machine and began to stroll forward like some uniformed birdwatcher. The German strolled almost straight to the blonde fugitive. Then, not surprisingly, unbuttoned his pants and watered the ferns. Kuryakin eyed the stream of urine warily, until a most unfortunate thing occurred.

 The U.N.C.L.E. communicator pen had been designed to emit a single, relatively quiet beep when the tiny battery’s power level reached ten percent. No one in the tank could have heard it, but the man with the handful of membrum virile heard it and looked down and to his right. Kuryakin actually felt sorry for the unfortunate soldier, but not enough to cause any hesitation. The Russian sprang to his feet and threw a straight punch that came up under the taller man’s jaw. The German went down semi conscious but that didn’t mean much. Kuryakin was on him in an instant and punched downward into the throat four times in rapid succession.

 The agent from the future then dropped down next to his victim and eyed the tank with renewed apprehension. Tense moments followed and Illya wrestled with the temptation to call for Solo.

 Needless to say the other Germans didn’t remain silent forever.

 “Sarge, can we stretch our legs too or are we going to move out?” queried a muffled voice from within the monster.

The Russian let out a sigh and spoke into his tiny radio.

 “I’m going to need a little help here. Better bring Carl with you---but quietly.”

 “On the tail end of that entreaty another head popped out of the rolling fortress.

 “Sarge?”

 Kuryakin’s eyes turned hard. He was now convinced that the entire tank crew would have to die. If they could use their pistols it would be easy, but there was an entire column of troops within shouting distance, and after that fighter sweep, the birds and squirrels could be looking at more humans than they’ve ever seen before. To his credit, Solo was able to find his partner without calling for help. The Russian had always marveled at that. Napoleon Solo was an urbanite through and through, but you could drop him into any environment and somehow he would find his way around.

 Carl wasn’t quite up to that, but he was smart enough to follow Solo’s lead and keep quiet when it really mattered. The two U.N.C.L.E. agents used sigh language to communicate for a time, while the German on the tank gazed on with eyes that were not accustomed to wooded surroundings.

 Solo then rolled closer to Carl and whispered in his ear, “Wait here until I’m on the tank, then hook to the left and stand guard between the tank and the back road. Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to.”

 Carl felt ice barbs in his gut, but he nodded with a grim resolve. Illya was already crawling towards the right side of the tank. The Germans had no reason to suspect an enemy lurking in the woods, so it was assumed that their commander just wanted a bit of privacy while performing his necessaries. Such naiveté was becoming increasingly rare in the German military. As always, Kuryakin thanked his lucky stars that his victims lacked imagination. Expecting the unexpected can keep a soldier alive, but admittedly, it is a hard frame of mind to maintain day after day.

 The corporal finally made his fatal mistake and jumped down onto the soft earth. With eyes scanning ineffectively he blundered forward. Illya had farther to go this time and when he came in contact with his next opponent, he needed to grab the wrist of a man now holding a pistol. Fortunately for Illya, the German forgot that his pistol safety was on. He was able to take it off safe  with minimum effort, but that made a life or death difference in the Russian’s advance.

 The tank soldier struggled to bring the muzzle of his little Walther PP inward, but the more experienced Kuryakin brought his knee into the soldier’s testicles and then released on wrist in order to go for his favorite target. But the German swung a feeble hook that got by sheer chance deflected a blow. Fear of the unknown gave the young tanker an extra helping of adrenaline and his pistol managed to get lined up with the cold eyed assailant. Illya was about to go for the pistol with two hands when a pistol butt crashed down on the tanker’s skull.

 No hint of gratitude could be seen in Kuryakin’s eyes as Napoleon Solo turned his back on the ended conflict and moved swiftly to the tank turret hatch. The remaining men inside the tank were astonished to see an officer lower himself down amongst them. They were even more astonished when he coldly brought his P-38 back out and shot each of them in turn. The reports of the pistol had a strange hollow sound outside of the tank, and all three men hoped that no one nearby would be able to identify the sound and raise a hue and cry.

 Getting the driver and gunner out was the most physical labor Solo had indulged in that year. (No pun intended since it was 1945.) He and his companions had assumed that they could get the bodies out through the tank’s belly escape hatch, but they discovered to their dismay that the Tiger didn’t have a belly hatch. The ponderous suspension system coupled with a larger drive system had required additional space where the hatch would go. So the men had to be pulled up out of their hatches, but it would have been grunt work either way.

  “Was all this really necessary?” asked Carl while covering a body with brush. “I’m thinking the tank could probably reach our spot if it hooked over there to the left and took down a few of those younger trees. But hypothetically speaking, Kuryakin could have just gotten to his feet and confessed that he was banging a farm girl and she ran off when she saw the tank.”

 “Bit of a walk to the nearest farm, and presuming that my partner would not want to lead the sergeant to our brush covered staff car, he would have to fabricate a story that would have a great many holes in it,” said Solo.

 “Maybe so, but a tank commander isn’t likely to be as inquisitive as the Gestapo,”  argued Carl.

 “We have twelve minutes to go, and we cannot afford even the risk of being detained by someone in a uniform,” said Solo.

 As usual, the senior field agent from U.N.C.L.E. was right. But being right isn’t always a prelude to a positive experience.

 “Schneider you idiot, get that machine of yours back on the road!” shouted a man who could barely be seen in the distance.”

 “We gunna shoot him too?” Carl asked in English.

 “Carl, you’ve got the most rank. Run over and tell him you found the tank deserted. Tell him to go find a Ordnungspolizei or something,” ordered Solo has he quickly climbed up to the turret hatch.

 Illya took the driver’s compartment.

 The State Department worker couldn’t believe his ears, but to his credit, he got his legs moving in the direction of the nearest standing German.

 “Oh, excuse me Colonel,” the major said in a now respectful tone. “I mistook you for the commander of the tank.”

 “Obviously,” Carl responded with what he hoped would be a mildly amused look.

 “I am Major Hartman and I am directing this section of the north bound convoy. The tank carrier for this box of bolts broke down and it became necessary for the tank to progress under its own power to a spot where it could be reloaded onto another truck. Unfortunately the Americans chose that moment to strafe us and Sergeant Schneider foolishly thought he needed to hide in these  trees to save the tank. Ha, as if a 12.7 millimeter round could hurt that monster.”

 “You mean the .50 caliber?” asked the fake colonel. “That is what the Allies designate the projectile. Yes, very foolish, but let us focus on the mystery at hand. The crew is missing. I came out here to give them a good chewing out and I was amazed to discover that the vehicle had been abandoned. Very suspicious. I want you to go back to town and find out who is responsible for the transporting of this piece of hardware. You need to get to the bottom of this.”

 “Bottom of this?” queried the major.

 “Yes. Er---I grabbed a couple of men who had been set afoot to figure out how to move the tank back onto the road. But you need to find out who is responsible for this tank immediately.”

 “But Herr Colonel, I am responsible; for all the vehicles in this section of the convoy. We have but one Tiger tank, which constantly threatens to become a road block. That is why I am somewhat acquainted with that dummkopf Schneider. It is hard to believe that he and his crew deserted though. I will have searchers brought in.”

 “But of course, Major. Have one team begin to work their way north from that point over there, and the other team begin their search to the south from over where that small gully cuts through.”

 “But we need to search to the east as well, Colonel.”

 “You mean the other highway that parallels the one your convoy is using. I have already dispatched my driver to that artery. I will remain with the tiger until we can get this steel beast to it’s hauling vehicle. I must confess I find it somewhat entertaining. Pity we only have a few of them in these dark days.”

 “Yes sir, but I have a Captain Kline who will take charge of the tank as soon as he is appraised of the situation. He is manning a check point only a few hundred meters from here.”

 “To the north?”

 “Jawohl, Herr Colonel.”

 “Very good. We will simply try to back this beast out of the trees then.”

 “But Colonel, my man has experience, and he can be here in three minutes---“

 “Well then go and get him, Major. I will go disappoint my volunteers, who are probably very excited at the prospect of driving a Tiger tank.”

 The Major saluted quickly and began jogging back the way he came.

 Carl glanced at his watch. Seven minutes remaining. He ran back to the tank and became a bit unnerved when he saw the tank turret slowly turning in his direction.

 “This is your colonel coming towards you!” he shouted in German.

 “Don’t be frightened, we’re just setting up Contingency Plan A,” Solo responded, also in German.

 “But we’re almost home,” argued Carl as he climbed onto the metal monster.

 “What if our mad scientist is delayed? What if he experiences a technical difficulty?” asked Kuryakin as he studied the driving controls.

 “And what if the whole idea is to have us captured after fighting in German uniforms,” added a cynical Napoleon Solo. “Just another load of stress placed on minds that are being conditioned for something.”

 “Man, if the average marriage could work as well as your partnership….You guys agree to disagree better than anyone I’ve ever seen. But putting that aside, we got less than six minutes to get back to the magic launch point. So don’t you think your preoccupation with this tank is a bit counter productive?”

 “We’re going to ride it back. Illya, you may now indulge yourself.”

 “But the trees…” Carl protested.

 “We’ll be very respectful to the older ones,” pledged Solo. “Now you better get down and man the other machine gun because it will be hazardous staying topside.”

 Carl did as he was told but he paid little heed to his battle station. All he could think about was the silly little bench that they needed to be seated on in another five minutes. He watched through his view port as the mobile fort roared forward, snapping trees as though they were pencils and finally bringing their precious piece of furniture into view.

 “Jez, don’t run over the thing!” Carl exclaimed in a state of near panic.

 Illya applied the brakes when the metal beast was five feet from the bench.

 “Don’t trip at the finish line, Carl,” Kuryakin advised with a deadpan expression.

 “Well, it’s hard to judge distance from this angle,” grumbled the State Department worker, who didn’t want to admit even to himself that he was beginning to lose his nerve.

 “We’re good,” Napoleon said with a look of confidence.

 “Hierher kommen!” someone shouted on the tail end of Solo’s appraisal.

 “What?!” demanded Carl.

 “That major you were talking to must have sent a few minions into the woods to keep us company. Sadly, one of them stumbled onto a body. Thank goodness I’m not in a casino today. Lady Luck doesn’t seem to be smiling.”

 “Illya, turn us around.”

 “But we need to get out of the tank,” complained Carl.

  “Not too soon, and not too late,” muttered Solo as he peered through his tactical periscope.

  Illya’s job would have been easier if not for the closeness of the bench. (Especially with Carl fretting over it to the point of whimpering.) All weapons finally came to bear with two minutes and forty seconds remaining on the clock.

 “Are they still keeping their distance?” Carl asked at that point.

 “Yes, and that is the only reason we haven’t opened fire on them yet.”

 “You mean with the machine gun?”

 “Both of them, Carl. Is yours ready?”

 “Uh, wait a second….”

 Solo never took his eyes off the soldiers as they set about the task of finding additional victims of foul play. There were five searchers that he could see now and thankfully they were fanning out in every direction except toward the tank.

 “Funny they don’t suspect us,” muttered Carl.

 “Maybe they do, but they don’t want to be the first brave souls to venture our way,” put in Solo. “Probably waiting for the major to return. Bless them for knowing their place.”

 As if on cue the officer in charge of traffic control suddenly reappeared with two other men and they jogged towards the corpse as soon as the discovery was shouted to them.

 “We’ll be the next stop,” warned Carl.

 “Hopefully after a degree of pause and reflection,” responded Solo as he then lowered the huge eighty-eight millimeter turret gun.

 The Germans, (every mother’s son of them) fled back far enough to be totally cloistered by the young trees.

 “They’ll call in reinforcements and perform a flanking maneuver on both sides,” Solo predicted. “Let’s make sure they use lots of trees. Open fire at ten o’clock and rake towards the center.”

 Carl did as he was told and Solo sprayed in from the right. Then Illya wordlessly handed Solo a small explosive that was normally used to blow off door locks. Solo attached the small device to the war head of an artillery round.

 “Is that a detonator?!” Carl asked incredulously. “We’re too close to the bench for God’s sake!”

 Illya threw the tank into gear and plowed ahead. Solo calmly exited his hatch and Carl did the same.

 “What about Illya?!” Carl shouted as he and Napoleon jumped off the back end of the tank.

 “He’ll be along.”

 “We’ve only got forty-five seconds!” wailed Carl.

 Both men halted just short of the bench and turned to search for the third member of their team. Kuryakin jumped off to one side of the forest juggernaut and began his short sprint for life and home. But a third of the way back he was swept off his feet by a soldier’s lucky shot. Solo bolted forward without hesitation while the other American scowled at his time piece and then summoned the last of his courage.

 “I’m alright,” stated the Russian as he struggled to his feet.

 “Yes, I can see that,” responded Solo, who noted the trough that had been cut across the outer right thigh.

 “Would you guys like to know what time it is?” asked Carl as he grabbed Kuryakin’s other arm and swung it around the back of his neck.

 “NO!” declared both U.N.C.L.E. agents in unison.

 Suddenly a chunk of wood was blown out of the bench as they neared it. Then a bullet took Carl’s hat off.

 “Holy shit! When is that tank going to blow up?”

Solo and Schmidt informally dumped their comrade over the back rest of the bench and then helped the Russian get upright after they were both seated. Bullets were now droning all around them and now they could catch glimpses of advancing soldiers. Carl raised his arms over his head and began to shout, “We surrender!” in German while kneeling on the bench.

 “I think you should scrunch down now Carl,” advised Napoleon.

 Carl didn’t seem to hear and focused on the ass end of the slowly rolling tiger. At that terrible instant, he couldn’t make up his mind which frightened him more; the advancing riflemen, or the explosion that couldn’t wait another thirty-five seconds. More soldiers appeared from behind trees and two of the bravest ignored the strange trio seated on a forest bench and nimbly mounted the tank from the harmless rear. They needlessly fired their machine pistols into the hatches until they realized that the machine had been set to run on its own. Then one of the men lowered himself through the driver’s hatch to stop the tank before it could reach the nearby road.

 Solo grabbed Carl by the coat lapel and almost forced him into Kuryakin’s lap. Then a shockwave ripped through the woods smearing the trees nearest to the tank with crimson gore and causing thousands of nearby Germans to think that another air raid was in progress. The major and all those assigned to the area were now either dead or dying. A larger force of men would pour into the smoldering woods with no clue as to what had happened. The men from U.N.C.L.E. had covered their tracks in superb fashion; blowing the top off the tank, eradicating the police force that was closing in, and creating a thick blanket of oily smoke that screened them, albeit to the point of smothering them.

 Incident reports would vary slightly in content, but the general consensus was that the tank crew abandoned their tank under duress. The tiger was then rigged to explode in such a way as to inflict maximum damage to forces of the Third Reich. This conclusion was reached when they found the staff car that had been hidden not far away. As for the enemy agents; the search for them would continue until the German authorities reached the end of their road. It was just as well. They could have searched for a year and it wouldn’t have done them any good.

 (Of course twenty years would have worked for them…..)  

Chapter Fifteen.

Carl was allowed to roll away from Illya and finally onto the dust free floor. Eight shrapnel wounds were now denying him the joy he would have felt getting back to his own time period. In fact it was a painful homecoming for all around. Solo had also caught a piece of hot steel in the left shoulder, but fortunately none of the men had been hit in a vital organ. Small comfort to Carl though, who thrashed about on the floor while little demons continued to poke him with their red hot pitch forks.

 The more experienced U.N.C.L.E. agents were focused on the here and now with their weapons back in their hands.

 “I’ll be right back,” Solo promised his partner unnecessarily.

 The Russian nodded slightly and tried to assess Carl’s condition, but that was a difficult thing to do in the time tunnel. Illya waited patiently, bleeding as quietly as he could on that silly bench that would require a bit of repair. Then over a period of thirty seconds or so, the Russian slipped into the arms of Morpheus. So did Carl, and when they finally returned to the miracle in the mountain, they found themselves in a small improvised medical ward made up of four standard issue M.A.S.H. cots, a large folding table with a pile of emergency triage equipment and very little else.

 Each man noted almost immediately upon wakening that he was handcuffed to his cot. Each man also noted that there was a fourth patient occupying the remaining cot, and his identity caused everyone a great deal of concern.

 “Professor. Professor Adams,” Solo hailed in a strong voice.

 The old man’s chest slowly rose and fell, but he remained unresponsive; and interestingly enough, he was also handcuffed to his cot. Adams was wearing an oxygen mask and an I.V. fed into one arm. Solo stared at the pile of medical equipment, searching for any tidbit of data that might be useful. His shoulder hurt like hell but obviously someone had worked on them all and that was encouraging if somewhat puzzling.

 “A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Solo,” said Carl in a low voice.

 “I think we should remain quiet, and patient,” muttered Solo.

 So they did, and this wise course of action was soon rewarded by a very faint tapping sound that came from somewhere close by. Solo immediately recognized it as Morse code.

W-e-a-r-e-m-o-n-i-t-o-r-e-d, was tapped out over and over. Solo was close enough to Illya and Carl to conclude that neither of them was doing the sending. Could it be the old man? Quite possibly.

 “Hey guys, do you---“

 “Remain quiet, Carl,” Solo ordered with an edge to his voice.

 After one more send, the tapping ended.

 “I need some painkiller,” Carl put in a moment later. “I don’t want to sound like a crybaby, but I’m really hurting.”

 “We all are,” responded Solo, who was relieved that Carl wasn’t about to mention the tapping.

 “Yes, our physician was probably a veterinarian,” Kuryakin joked for the benefit of whoever was listening to them.

 An hour dragged by and there was no more tapping.

 “Sorry we got you dragged in to this, Carl. I thought we could take better care of you than this,” said Solo.

 Carl laughed nervously while struggling with the pain.

 “Oh hell---I would’ve died in that smoke house if not for you. You know, I joined the Army thinking that I’d be doing all kinds of interesting intelligence work with my knowledge of German. But that damn Patton just had to go and win the war before I could even get past Paris. I hate to admit this to you guys, but I even ended up doing some work as a V.D. control officer.”

 The U.N.C.L.E. agents didn’t laugh, but Solo smiled while staring at the floor and Illya needed every ounce of self discipline to maintain a bland expression.

 “Damn State Department promised me adventure,” Carl droned on, “but I spend all my time worrying about political correctness in a country where everyone is convinced that I’m the spawn of Satan. Anyway, when Lisa got into trouble back there---I guess I got what I always secretly wanted: a chance to be a real honest to God hero. Man---those John Wayne movies sure did a number on me….”

 Suddenly the room’s solitary door opened and a middle aged man entered with an escort of two security soldiers. Napoleon and Illya recognized the escort uniforms instantly. They belonged to Thrush.

 The man in charge was wearing a light colored suit without a tie. He was bald and pot bellied and was sweating because he had just gotten off the phone with a superior who was more than a little intimidating. Of course that’s the way the chain of command worked in the criminal organization, and you had to be very greedy or ambitious to put up with the pressures that went with rank.

 “Mr. Napoleon Solo and Mr. Illya Kuryakin, what a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance.

I am Jonathan Barkley, and I will remain your host for another few hours until the helicopter arrives. I um---- was wondering if perhaps we could make a deal. An exchange of information. Nothing that would make or break your organization you understand; just a few harmless facts that won’t make any difference in the long run.”

 “I would call that a very bizarre proposition,” commented Solo.

 “Oh I don’t know,” Barkley responded with a shrug. “As I understand it, U.N.C.L.E. agents are among the most inquisitive beings on this Earth, and any information that I could obtain might take some of the sting out of your---unauthorized entry into this facility.”

 “My mother taught me never to talk to strangers on the subway or strike bargains with Thrush,” Solo responded.

 “Ah yes, there is that credibility problem. Alright, I’ll give you something on faith, just to show you that you are dealing with a better man than you think. That old man over there is genius of the first magnitude. He builds a time machine that won’t be ready for several more years, which turns out to be a lie. Then he invents a super computer, which is probably better than your U.N.C.L.E. model no offense, then he uses it against us. Oh yes, we insisted on writing the programs for the computer and do you know what, he hacked them anyway. He convinces us that there can be no motion within this gravimetric field he kept talking about. All part of the building process you see. We figure that’s alright because the inside of the complex is guarded by an alarm system.”

 “But the alarm system is controlled by the computer,” put in Kuryakin.

 “Oh yes,” lamented Barkley. “We had guards monitoring the cameras and sensors, but the computer had the ability to present us with false images and sensor data. Fortunately for us, it became necessary to wake him in the middle of his sleep period or we might not have caught him with equipment that he claimed was not yet operational. Regrettably the strain of getting caught was a bit much for him and he suffered a heart attack. The chopper is bringing in a heart specialist, as well as someone to interrogate the three of you. He might or might not have a cattle prod in his travel bag.”

 “So we should wisely decide to deal with a prince of a fellow like yourself instead of the ogre that is flying in,” speculated Solo.

 “Well you have to admit that I did bother to get a doctor to patch the three of you up.”

 “You brought in the doctor to see to Adams,” Solo corrected, and I’m amazed that your all important patient is being left unattended.”

 The doctor informed me that nothing more can be done for the man short of surgery. The heart specialist will evaluate the patient and then he will be flown to a hospital that has suitable facilities. Besides, it is quite possible that we don’t need him anymore.”

 “Why do you say that?” inquired Schmidt.

 “Because now we have this,” said Barkley, who then pulled out the notes that had been written by a genius in a Nazi concentration camp.

 “Ha! That won’t help you if Adams dies, he’s the only one who can read it,” declared Carl from his pain racked cot.

 Napoleon and Illya rolled their eyes in unison.

 “That is bad news,” conceded the host, “but then, we thought our time machine was non-functional until just a few hours ago. Now we know it is anything but. That is how Adams recruited the three of you, and got you into this complex. My superiors will be elated.”

 “With the machine, yes, with your handling of security, no,” put in Solo.

 Barkley turned grim.

 “We are talking about a genius who has had many years to outwit Thrush. I have been overseeing this project only a few months. Besides, I needed to give the old man enough rope so that he could hang himself as the saying goes. He just---fell into my trap.”

 “Got any subordinates that might not want to back you up with that?” Carl asked with a smirk.

 Barkley’s confidence returned, albeit not in full measure.

 “Obviously you are not an U.N.C.L.E. agent. If you were you would know that all Thrush supervisors keep their underlings at a distance. Loyalty, as you inferred, is not something we bet our careers on. No, I do not require any verification from anyone---and that includes the prisoners I am holding.”

 “But you did come here hoping to make a deal,” pressed Solo, “and I never said that we are all ready to die for king and country.”

 “Finally,” Barkley responded with mock impatience. “Intelligent men do not die for a cause. Intelligent men risk their necks to a reasonable degree and then negotiate for their continued existence. What are your terms, Mr. Solo?”

 “We learned something when we went back in time. Something that could put you on the Thrush High Council even if those notes you are holding never get decoded. But if the man with the thumbscrews works us over, then takes us to a Thrush holding facility, you’ll be left here and you’ll have to explain why the old man was treated so roughly.”

 “He wasn’t treated roughly,” countered Barkley. “It was the simple shock of being caught that brought him down. He may have an I.Q. that’s off the scale but he’s no U.N.C.L.E. agent. All that emotional stress was too much for him, but the doctor was very optimistic about the old man’s chances. More optimistic than I am about your chances, unless you get around to saying something truly useful.”

 “Adams is a genius alright, but he was mentored in his youth.”

 “Well of course he was,” interrupted Barkley. “I read his dossier. Every university dean in the civilized world wanted Adams to attend their school. He met the finest minds while being shared on three continents.”

 “But the one that had ideas about time travel was not interested in academic publicity. He’s in your records, but he doesn’t stand out. You might figure out who he is in a year or two, but I think you’ll need to improve your standing with Thrush long before then.”

 “I take it he is deceased and for some reason you could not alter his fate. All you could do is bring back those notes that I suspect belonged to him.”

 “We were thrown a few curves,” Solo could honestly say. “But there is no reason you can’t travel back again and avoid the first round of mistakes. Mr. Kuryakin watched the machine being demonstrated earlier. He can send you to the same time and place in history.”

 “And how pray tell shall I succeed where you gentlemen failed?” asked a cynical captor.

 “We went in posing as German officers,” explained Solo. “It was the professor’s idea but I can’t say that it was all together foolish. We might have succeeded if not for a few random elements that no one could control. But what you need to do is calculate the distance and compass heading from the landing zone to the prison barracks where Adam’s mentor is being held.”

 “Landing zone?” Barkley asked with a puzzled look.

 “I don’t know what else to call it,” confessed Solo. “It’s the place where the bench will materialize, hopefully in the year 1945.”

 “So---we make our calculations within an agreed time span. Then we’re brought back. Then we go in again with a different destination plotted, and pick up the mentor,” guessed Barkley.

 “That’s it. A bit risky, but if you succeed you’ll be out of trouble and in line for a very substantial reward I would think.”

 “And how many guards can I take with me?”

 “Well, the bench is built for three people. I don’t know how much extra weight can be transported.”

 Solo looked over at Illya.

 The Russian shrugged and said, “I only know how to duplicate what the professor had set up. If we change the perimeters of the launch stats, I don’t know what will happen.”

 “How do we measure this all important distance you speak of?”

 “With aerial reconnaissance. There are light aircraft between the L.Z. and the concentration camp. I’ll steal one, and you provide a camera, smoke flares for the guard and communicators.”

 “I said the guard will be dedicated to security.”

 “We need someone to mark the location of the L.Z. when we fly over it.”

 “Alright, but that brings us to a very interesting point in the negotiations. What must I do for you in exchange for your services? Obviously you want to escape this place, but I need to agree on the specifics.”

 We get to pick up three automatic rifles at random while heading back to the tunnel. Illya will keep mine for me. You and your guard disarm just seconds before we are transported back. Then you will be our hostage escort as we take our leave.”

 “I was afraid of this,” put in Barkley. “The last part of your proposition is unworkable. I cannot trust you because you cannot trust me. Surely you realize that you cannot leave this mountain region with me as a prisoner; and without me as a hostage you would die even sooner. But you have given me the information that I needed. If Mr. Kuryakin could work the control panel, that means that our tech people will be able to figure it out in much less time than we imagined just one day ago. I conclude that this interview has had positive results.”

 “No,” responded Adams in a weak voice. “Kuryakin managed to memorize steps that you will not replicate by accident. Give these men what they want, or you will not gain what you want.”

 “But even if this all works out as planned, how do I get the name of your mentor?”

 “He is a celebrity in his barracks building. I swear it,” put in Carl.

 Adams lapsed back into unconsciousness and Barkley could only sigh.

 “Alright, I know you’ve got something up your sleeves but I need to get the key to this time machine riddle before the ax men arrive. Let’s get a move on.”

  

Chapter Sixteen.

 The men from U.N.C.L.E. (and Carl) looked on in interest as Barkley and his chosen guard donned special body armor and holsters containing extra ammunition magazines. Then they both hefted their Thrush rifles.

 “You don’t believe the L.Z. is what we claim it is?” queried Solo.

 “All I know is that you all came back with holes in you,” grumbled the captor.

 “Good point.”

 The three men entered the tunnel and sat themselves in the slightly damaged woodwork.

 “I can’t believe we’re actually going to travel back through time,” said Barkley.

 “Those were my thoughts exactly,” muttered Solo.

 “And you’re sure you can steal us a light aircraft in the time allotted?”

 “Yes. I hope that camera is a good one. Also, we need to have at least half a dozen colored smoke flares; and of course the communicators.”

 “All set to go,” Barkley assured him with a pat on the bag he had placed between himself and the guard.

 “Well, then I guess we’re ready to go back to Germany.”

 “You have my permission to pull the switch, Mr. Kuryakin, but remember, whatever happens to me will also happen to your associate.”

 “Not exactly,” muttered the Russian in response to what he heard over the intercom.

 Solo took a deep breath and steeled himself for what was coming. The water was cold and approximately twenty feet deep. Barkley and his guard dropped into the depths like a pair of stones. Solo floated on his back for as long as he needed to, then suddenly he found himself sprawled out on the tunnel floor. The tunnel surface began to burn Solo’s hands despite the sea water so he quickly got to his feet even though his shoulder was aching.

 “We lost the bench,” Solo called into the intercom.

 “Hopefully it won’t matter---much,” responded Illya’s voice.

 “Hopefully I won’t have to attend your college graduation,” said Solo.

 “Or Lisa’s abduction,” Carl said hopefully.

 “Anywhere but here. Even if it has to be the delightful day we met,” put in Kuryakin.

Solo smiled and crouched down slightly.

 “Just nudge her back a smidgeon,” he advised his friend.

 “May the luck of a ladies man be with you,” said Kuryakin before tapping slightly on a pressure bar.

 An instant later Solo was on a street corner in Manhattan. Quickly he sought out a newspaper stand to check on the date. He almost did a cart wheel at the sight of a front page. He was nine days from Lisa Sherman’s abduction. His communicator had been destroyed by sea water so he had to hike to the nearest police station. There he acquired transportation back to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. Two hours later he was in fresh clothes and seated in front of Alexander Waverly’s desk

 “Mr. Solo I think it would be better if our friends in Israel sent someone to Mount Hermon to investigate this Thrush satrap of yours.”

 Solo immediately became concerned. Waverly was suggesting that he was not buying into Solo’s story about an informer. That was bad, because Solo didn’t dare give his superior the truth.

 “Sir, I know it goes against policy to implement a taskforce on hearsay data, but I am being completely factual when I say that my informer is as trustworthy as any person in this building.”

“Present company excluded I presume.”

“No sir, I am including you.”

 Waverly puffed thoughtfully on his pipe.

 “I must say, Mr. Solo, you have brought with you a most intriguing mystery. But perhaps you are unaware of the fact that Syria could be on the brink of civil war. The sort of aircraft needed to fly one-hundred men and equipment into a remote area, would most certainly stimulate their already active imaginations.”

 “I don’t need that many men, sir. A platoon of Marines should suffice. We could rappel from choppers.”

 “You surprise me for the second time, Mr. Solo. You are well aware of the security precautions that Thrush takes in the guarding of a typical satrap. You might take your objective with the element of surprise, but your losses would be unacceptable. Why do you suggest such a thing?”

 “Because sir the satrap is not operational yet, and has only a skeleton crew.”

 “And you have no idea what the proposed function of the satrap will be?”

 “They’re sporting a miniature nuclear reactor. Perhaps the size of what you would find on a modern submarine. The facility needs power but it also needs to remain invisible. A complex of that sort depends on the ability to remain hidden. I believe the informant when he says that the security force will be small.”

 “Small and dug into a mountain,” countered Waverly. “You will take two platoons and you will have pathfinders in place before the rappelling commences.”

 “Sir, pathfinders might give us away. The area is bound to be equipped with alarms.”

 “Agreed. That is why you and Mr. Kuryakin will handle that facet of the offensive.”

 At that point in time Illya Kuryakin was working on the U.N.C.L.E. super computer with a lovely Nicaraguan woman who Solo couldn’t even get to first base with. Solo didn’t care a whole lot about that. After all, his love life had always dwarfed that of the brainy Russian. Still, he couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit insulted by the fact that the woman regarded him as somewhat shallow, while Illya was considered the better man because of he was more reserved. Solo would have preferred to lose out simply because the brainy couple was brainy.

 “Sir, would you mind sending word to Kuryakin? I don’t think he will take this as good news, and I don’t like to climb mountains with a sore head.”

 “Kuryakin is a professional,” Waverly responded.

 “Sir, have you seen who he’s working with?”

 The Englishman puffed thoughtfully on his pipe for a moment and then said, “Very well. I shall distance you from Mr. Kuryakin’s impending disappointment. In the future I trust, you will distance yourself from this sort of thing. It is a bit childish don’t you think?”

 “I consider it the result of an unbalanced lifestyle, sir. Illya is a workaholic. That makes him a bit vulnerable where women are concerned.”

 “Hmm, I shall bring the matter to the attention of our local expert.”

 “Our P.H.D. in psychology?”

 “Baxter? No, I would judge him to be less conventional than Kuryakin. Actually I was referring to my wife.”

   

Chapter Seventeen.

 Mt. Hermon is actually three peaks, all of them too easy for climbers yet inhospitable to those who have something else in mind. Thrush needed a rock formation with a blind side, sparsely populated, and the local inhabitants had to be the sort that could be easily manipulated. But there was one other essential element: the magnetic fields had to be perfect for the project in mind. That was determined by only one man, and Solo’s chief objective was to keep that man alive no matter what. Toward that end, he and his partner made their way on hands and feet towards a wide barren pinnacle.

 Every few feet Solo would push a button on a small box that was clipped to his utility harness. The tiny scanner would search for photo electric light beams while the U.N.C.L.E. agent kept an eye out for old fashioned trip wires. Kuryakin was doing the same thing approximately one-hundred feet to Solo’s right. Behind and below them, U.S. Marines cradled their M-14 rifles and belly crawled up the frozen slope that could easily spill a man if he failed to hug mother earth with all of his body parts.

 The men from U.N.C.L.E. proceeded upward one slow foot at a time until Kuryakin got a reading. The Russian quickly took out his already assembled communicator and gently blew into the microphone. That was the unspoken signal that he had found one of the light beams they were searching for. Now Kuryakin gestured for the platoon leader to close the distance between them so that he could whisper instructions as to how to step over the beam. The Marines would have to do this one at a time---but not yet. They needed to remain on their bellies for the time being while Kuryakin proceeded the rest of the way up the slope.

 Solo found his end of the beam fence and briefed his group leader as well. By the time he reached the same level as the Russian, the blonde agent was squatting in front of a ventilation grill that was painted the same color as the mountain landscape. It was just a tad over two feet square; inviting if you don’t have claustrophobia. The grill work was understandably heavy and was welded into place on an even heavier steel framework. But Kuryakin had come to break into something and he was equipped with a chemical that was the pride of his old chemistry professor. He sprayed the foul smelling stuff on four bar ends and waited but a minute. Then he took out his silencer equipped pistol and fired at the treated spots. The steel fractured as if made out of slag.

 Solo found a huge artificial stone that was covering a hatch set into the mountain surface. It radiated heat and was in fact a service crawlway that ran along the back side of the small nuclear reactor shielding. More than likely it would be locked, but that was no concern Solo’s. He took out what looked like a tube of toothpaste and squeezed the contents out onto the surface of the hatch in the shape of a large circle. The group leader had already been taught how to ignite the substance, then kick hard on the center of the hatch after the burning process was completed. Then they’d have to pass through A.S.A.P., because they’d be in a bottle neck until they reached the cavern portion of the complex. At that point there would be no thought of withdrawing. They would either win, or go down fighting.

 They would never know it but the Marines were lucky from the very start. The metal door was alarmed but not yet armed with the poison gas jets that had been installed in the three main entrances down at the base of the mountain. Solo and Kuryakin didn’t know anything about that, they chose to attack from the top simply because they desired the element of surprise. Toward that end they would have the Marines remain on the frozen ground for a full hour while the U.N.C.L.E. agents set themselves to strike from within.

 The first step was easy to the point of being fun. The vent shaft was angled forty-five degrees and their only fear was that there would be an equally heavy grill at the other end of the shaft. Luckily, at the end of their little slide the shaft straightened out and offered some light about forty feet ahead. The Russian silently held to the belief that he should have gone first. He had the cutting tools and was a bit more experienced with this sort of thing. But Solo led the way because he judged it to be the more dangerous position. Solo and Kuryakin had this understanding you see: Illya was more intelligent, and stronger. But Solo got recruited into U.N.C.L.E. first. That made him senior agent, which annoyed Kuryakin only every now and then.

 Belly sliding silently inside a ventilation shaft required patience, nerve and the ability to stifle a sneeze or two. Experience had taught them both that extracting themselves from the shaft was always the hard part. Vent grills were placed where inhabitants could appreciate the warm or cool air being pumped to them. Worse yet, many were situated high above the floor where you could break a leg vacating the shaft. But as Solo already knew, the complex was not manned by a skeleton staff, partially because of a aged genius who claimed that his miracle machine would never get calibrated without a partial quarantine.

 The director of the complex had initially been both cynical and suspicious, but after many months of watching the boring old geezer, everyone in the mountain came to the conclusion  that they would all retire before anything interesting would happen in their out of the way local. That was the reason why Solo was willing to return with a minimum fighting force. Thrush didn’t know it was about to lose the most important invention in the history of man, and Solo couldn’t begin to guess what the free world would do with it.

 “Three minutes left. If we’re going to create a diversion, we’ll need to get out of this tube right now,” advised Kuryakin who spoke just above a whisper.

 Solo nodded, while craning his neck to peer through the grill. Then he threw caution to the wind and shoved hard against the light duty metal. The sheet metal squeaked slightly as it gave way, but at least it didn’t have to fall anywhere because that section of the vent shaft was at floor level. Everything seemed to be going wonderfully and Solo poked his head out of the vent opening with just a minimum of apprehension. Then a uniformed man with a Thrush rifle appeared out of nowhere and Solo froze.

 “I want to see both hands,” growled the rifleman.

 “I never realized that chimney sweeping could be this dangerous,” joked Solo as he extended both arms out into plain site.

 “Keep coming,” ordered the guard.

 “I’ve a got a pistol. I’ll take it out with two fingers and put it down with the butt towards you,” said the semi helpless intruder.

 “No tricks,” warned the sentry.

 “Not with me stuck in this vent,” Solo responded with a slightly embarrassed smile.

 True to his word, the prisoner slowly took out his handgun with thumb and forefinger and carefully laid it on the floor with the barrel pointing at himself.

 “Slide it closer to me,” demanded the rifleman.

 Solo complied with enough force so that the pistol sideswiped the section of the vent where Illya was hiding. The guard carefully lowered himself so that he could get hold of the pistol, and Solo kept his hands immobile so as to not ruin what had thus far been a very fine day. It was a tense moment, made ever so loud when Illya fired six rounds through the sheet metal that separated him from his target. Two of the rounds found their mark and knocked the guard off his feet, but they had gone into the hip and upper thigh so the sentry only lost control of his weapon for a moment.

 “Illya, a bit lower please,” muttered Solo while staring into the eyes of a man who was determined to bring the heavy Thrush rifle back up.

 The U.N.C.L.E. Special normally used an eight round magazine, but when the Russian heard an unfamiliar voice, he quickly loaded the fifteen round magazine that is normally kept with the rifle conversion kit. Both Solo and Kuryakin were excellent pistol marksmen, and would not need a telescopic sight for indoor use, but the extra long clip might save prove useful. Shooting blind was a fine example of this. The wounded sentry was now in extreme pain, but not so much that he couldn’t kill a man stuck in a vent opening. Solo hadn’t gone for his own gun reasoning that such an action would galvanize his opponent into quicker action. It was one of those split second decisions that you make when you’re standing on the edge of a razor.

 More holes appeared in the length of sheet metal and this time the guard took a round through the heart. Solo began his frantic crawl as the guard dropped onto his side for the second and final time. They were in a kind of improvised machine shop where prefabricated parts could be altered or assembled for use in this secret domain. U.N.C.L.E. was the antithesis of Thrush in many ways, but they did have one thing in common: they both kept their facilities hidden from the local population. Solo never ceased to marvel at how men could sneak highly elaborate equipment into places that a goat or bird would seldom find. Then Solo would get his marching orders and go blow the place up. Well, here he was again, only this time he was looking for a man who had to be kept alive at all costs. A stranger, but only from his point of view.

 Solo reached the door with pistol in hand and could hear the sound of men running on limestone that had been cleared of dust several years ago. Two of them; he was almost positive. A quick glance over his shoulder showed Illya worming his way through the vent opening. Solo knew the reinforcements would stop running before Illya could join him and a running man is a poor marksman. Once again the man from U.N.C.L.E. deliberated for only a moment, then popped through the doorway with his pistol leading the way. Sure enough, there was two of them, with the heavy rifles that were a bit awkward when not standing still.

 Solo dropped one with a snap shot from chest level. The other guard got off a shot but as predicted, it went wild. Solo’s second shot was easier because his target had almost come to a halt. A moment later Illya was beside him with the first guard’s rifle.

 “You sure you want that thing? It didn’t do its owner much good.”

 Kuryakin didn’t answer, and the two men then walked briskly with weapons pointed down a corridor that contained only half a dozen doorways. That wing of the complex contained the workshop they had just vacated. Door 2: a huge storage room. Door 3: a chiller room for the computer’s main frame. Door 4: a room filled with a mile of intricate copper piping that had to do with a nuclear cooling system. Door 5: similar to the copper piping room except it was filled with a jungle of electrical conduits and thick cables. Most of it rose up to pass through the ceiling and Solo suspected that it all connected to the cables he saw in the time tunnel room which would have to be above them somewhere. Door 6: was a staircase that could take them down to the receiving level or up to the cavern where the time tunnel where the professor would likely be.

 The doors were far apart, indicating that each room was very spacious. Perhaps the complex had been built here because someone had found a series of caverns to exploit. The doorways were prefab, built into polished limestone walls. Ceiling and floor likewise. It was almost always like this. Interiors that reflected a combination of the caveman and the M.I.T. graduate. Hopefully the whole thing would cave in nicely. A Thrush lair was a difficult thing to burn.

 They had no way of knowing it, but there was a staircase on the other side of the receiving level that lead up to the living quarters. That was a separate cavern free of the noises and odors that would prevail in the maintenance wing when the facility became fully operational. Solo and Illya were just happy that they hadn’t bungled into the guard’s movie theatre. But even though they had happened upon the best place to create a diversion, they now realized that the Marines would have to descend a very long stairway in order to link up with them.

 “We can’t hold our own at the entrance to the wing. We need to get within firing range of that staircase the Marines will be using,” said Napoleon.

 “I was tempted to argue your decision to forbid the use of hand grenades,” replied Kuryakin.

 “They have to make due with smoke at the entrance. We don’t know where the old man will be so we need to take the heart of the complex the hard way. He must not be part of the collateral damage.”

  “Better dead than spirited away to another satrap that we don’t know about,” argued the Russian.

 Solo didn’t respond to Kuryakin’s logic. It wasn’t an easy thing to do even in a nice safe place. The two agents went into combat mode. Solo taking the right half of the corridor and the Russian taking the left. Advancing forward, the men bet their lives on their ability to cover one another. The guards were responding from different sections of the complex. The happy result was that they were trickling in, rather than advancing in a overwhelming force. That was one of the things that had kept the men from U.N.C.L.E. alive in the past. Guards could be given orders in advance, but when U.N.C.L.E. came calling, defenders would revert back to the second rate thugs that they had been before putting on their pretty uniforms.

 Solo’s gun would fire, then the Russian’s. The wing of the complex was being conquered one yard at a time. Alarms could now be heard, and that seemed a bit comical. The Thrush rifles made almost as much noise and they left no doubt that the emergency was not the result of a false alarm. The agents advanced on their objective; the end of the limestone corridor. But they they would not give in to the temptation to break into a jog. Runners couldn’t shoot very well and they needed to be in top form under the circumstances. For over a solid minute their position was precarious in the extreme; staying alive only because the opposition kept blundering around the far corners only to face superior marksmanship. But the closer the range, the less need for the kind of skill that had worked for them thus far.

 Yet another uniformed target swung his bulky rifle around that far corner to engage the intruders. He was on Illya’s side and again the Russian scored a hit to the center of a chest cavity. The brainy Kuryakin had once predicted that someday there would be video games that would simulate indoor combat. Solo had laughed it off, theorizing that nothing could replace sports. For an U.N.C.L.E. agent, there could be no substitute for living on the edge. Case in point: two Thrush guards tried something cute. At the very end of the corridor of death, a guard brought his weapon around while down on one knee. His buddy stood over him and poked his upper body around at the same time.

 Solo naturally took the target that was in a normal stance. He saw the man closer to floor, but like in a bad dream was powerless to send two bullets out at different angles. But both men did in fact shudder under the impact of bullets and fall to add more blood to the limestone floor. Illya had broken the rule and come over to the other side.

 When outnumbered---attack. Solo couldn’t remember who had dreamed up that tactic, but it was often forced upon him and it sometimes caused him to doubt his own sanity. In any case, the luck of the valiant seemed to be with them. That, and the fact that an additional outside alarm had betrayed the Marines just two minutes ago. They finally reached the end of the corridor and were relieved to discover that they had expended all of the security that had been sent to deal with the crisis on that side of the complex. The Marines would have whatever was left in the labyrinth.

 Kuryakin started to head down. Solo was tempted to go up, just long enough to see if the professor was in his control room above the time tunnel cavern. But he dared not leave his partner alone for an instant, and the Marines needed the other half of their pincer tactic executed a.s.a.p. The two agents descended the stairwell at the risk of broken ankles because experience had taught them that there no worse place to have a shoot out. The Marines would testify to that. The survivors that is.

 Exiting the stairwell was more startling than dangerous. A few of the higher placed Thrush bureaucrats were opting to move their confidential records to the emergency escape tunnel. Using his silencered weapon Solo shot the first one he saw, but spared the next two because they were unarmed and he wanted to save ammo.  Every Thrush rifleman assigned to the opposite wing was already in defensive positions, firing at any Marine who dared to show himself at the halfway point of the maintenance stairway. The Marines were lucky in a way. Their attack route had a ninety degree turn in it at the N.W. corner of the nuclear shielding framework. That meant that the Marines could get within eighteen steps of the bottom of the stairs before drawing fire from the defenders. But eighteen steps was a lot when fifteen riflemen were all shooting at the same descending framework.

 The leader of the strike force ordered grenades made ready, even though Solo had expressly forbidden them. He would give the U.N.C.L.E. agents just three more minutes to create a diversion before lobbing his pineapples. He didn’t much care if it got him court-martialed. He wasn’t going to order men into a hail of lead when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. When Solo and Kuryakin got a good look at things (from the back) he regretted his order concerning the use of grenades. But it didn’t matter. The agents rounded one last corner and came upon the pleasant sight of Thrush men with their backs turned to them.

 Solo started pumping rounds into backs as fast as he could. Kuryakin had changed the setting on his borrowed rifle to full auto and mowed down four men as they all attempted to pivot in their kneeling positions. Other men moved off to their right side, realizing that they had been sandwiched. The two agents split up and took cover inside office doorways while slapping fresh magazines into their weapons. The Marines threw caution to the wind in the meantime and bounded down the stairs with fatalistic yells. The first two were cut down but the rest overwhelmed the hallway intersection after a brief and bloody encounter.

 “Lead on!” shouted the senior Marine, but only because he was now half deaf.

 “Split into four groups and scout out the rest of this level,” ordered Solo. “When it’s all secured you can meet with us upstairs.”

 “If the objective is up a different stairwell, then that’s where we should all go together,” argued the team leader who’s name was Hendricks.

 “You have been given your orders,” Solo responded in his old Air Force tone.

 He briefly wondered what the Jar Heads would think if they knew they were being ordered around by an ex-pilot and a man who once served in the Russian military. The Marines certainly didn’t have any reason to feel contempt. Fifteen riflemen were on the floor bleeding their lives out and the invading force only lost two. It was far better than what was expected, and there was no doubt as to who deserved most of the credit.

 “Very well, sir, I will regard the two of you as a scouting party,” said Hendricks. “But if I hears weapons fire, I’m coming after you.”

 The two U.N.C.L.E. agents returned to their previously used stairwell and started their climb.

 “IF he hears gun fire,” said Solo.

 Kuryakin got the message and dropped the Thrush rifle. He pulled out his own weapon and quickly attached the silencer that came with it. When they reached the top of the stairs they discovered that it actually ran all the way to the top level where the control room was. It was unattended but that did not mean that there was nothing to look at. Through the observation window Solo could see Barkley, Adams and what was probably the last remaining Thrush soldier in the complex. A secret entrance was standing open halfway down the length of the north wall of the cavern, and it looked like Barkley was ordering Adams at pistol point to move towards it.

 Solo picked up a chair and said, “When I open the window, you take out the man with the pistol first.”

 “The soldier is the greater danger,” pointed out the Russian.

 “To us, yes. But Barkley is likely to terminate the professor.”

 Illya nodded unhappily. Solo knew things that he did not. That was a rare thing and not at all to his liking. But the three men below were now heading for the exit, so Kuryakin shouldered his weapon and waited for his chance. Solo shattered the glass patrician and then went for his own weapon. Illya drilled Barkley cleanly through the forehead, causing the head to snap back with unnatural speed. The Thrush rifleman was the best of his ilk, which is why he had been assigned to assist Barkley with his prize. The soldier and the U.N.C.L.E. agent exchanged shots simultaneously and both scored hits. Kuryakin caught a round in the shoulder that slammed him down onto the floor. The soldier took a hit in the right lung and would die en route to the nearest hospital.

 “Are you alright?” inquired Solo with a frown.

 “That would pass as a rhetorical question,” muttered the Russian.

 “You gentlemen have my thanks,” called Adams as he stood over his two former captives.

 “Professor Adams, you are now in the protective custody of a United Nations peace keeping organization,” declared Solo.

 “You mean U.N.C.L.E.?” inquired the old man.

 “Yes sir. I have a wounded comrade here but a force of Marines should be joining you in seconds.”

 “I’m afraid not sir,” responded the old man. “What I possess is too dangerous to trust to anyone in this day and age.”

 “If you feel that way, why did you invent the machine in the first place?” inquired a slightly irritated Solo.

 “For the same reason we’ll go to the moon someday,” responded the old man. “We need to prove that it can be done.”

 “Two men on our side died today because of that.”

 “Three, in a manner of speaking,” replied Adams. “But none of us were dragged into danger against our will. Be you a soldier or a scientist---you move forward. Of course, that makes this machine a bit of a cheat---I suppose. Ah well, it is time to do something about that.”

 Suddenly Hendricks appeared with a squad in tow. The old man took a small black box out of his pocket and casually strolled to the entrance of the time tunnel. He was deep within before the Marines could get halfway across the cavern.

 “Don’t go in there!” Solo shouted to the Marines as the instrument board came alive in the control room.

 “What’s happening?” Kuryakin demanded to know.

 “He had that little box with him. The one he had in the cab. I think its some sort of remote control device.”

 “What are you talking about?”

 To his chagrin, Solo had forgotten that his partner would have no memory of their first encounter with Adams because from the Russian’s point of view, it never happened.

 “I’ll explain later. Then hopefully I’ll still have a job. Bottom line is that I’m pretty sure the good professor is making a getaway, and there isn’t much we can do about it.”

  Solo was quite correct in his assumption. When the instrument panel finally returned to sleep mode, the Marines cautiously entered the tunnel and found nothing. Illya and the fallen Marines became the most important concern after that. Scientists would stare thoughtfully at what had been left behind by Adams, but without his genius to point the way, all future evaluations would be fruitless.

 But not forever.

 Adams would spend his remaining months in quiet contemplation somewhere in the Bahamas under the watchful eye of a nephew who thought his uncle was a plain ordinary retired marine biologist. But in a safety deposit box back on the mainland there was an envelope containing micro film. That film was actually an instruction manual on how to build a time machine. It would be opened by a lawyer in fifty years, when hopefully mankind would no longer be pointing nuclear weapons in every direction.

 Illya Kuryakin and the rest of U.N.C.L.E. had no choice but to believe Solo’s claim that he had traveled through time twice, the last time with Illya at the control panel. It was certainly a flattering tale from the Russian’s point of view. To think that he successfully operated a device that kept scientists scratching their heads experiment after experiment.

 While the Russian agent mended in a hospital, Solo studied up on the Ba’ath Socialist Party.

 His part of this whole episode was not quite over with yet. 

 No, not yet.

Chapter Eighteen.

Captain Jesse Larca sat in the lead van with Napoleon Solo and watched attentively as a car pulled up in front of a store that had gone out of business. The street lighting was poor but that was of no consequence. The Marine Corps officer picked up his night vision binoculars and focused them on the man who was now speaking to someone who had just vacated the building.

 “Yup, that’s Schmidt alright. Now I think it’s time you explained what my mission is. Are we going to arrest those two?”

 “Nothing of the sort. We are here to provide escort to Mr. Schmidt’s destination,” responded Solo.

 “Then why didn’t we link up with him back at the embassy?” asked the captain.

 “Because I would have to explain myself to your superior, and my superior wouldn’t allow that.”

 The officer let out a sigh. It was always like that. Somebody thousands of miles away was hung up on anonymity. Well, it might keep someone alive someplace so he wasn’t about to complain.

 “Whatever you say sir. Just so my boss is pacified by the time we roll back into the embassy.”

 “Guaranteed. This time around everyone will be happy and safe and eager to embrace the next chapter in their lives.”

 “Suffer a mishap a while back sir?” inquired Larca as the four van motorcade proceeded to follow Carl Schmidt’s smaller vehicle.

 “Actually a very brave friend of mine. His life turned sour for a while, but at least he got a chance to find out what he’s made of. So for him, it worked out alright.”

 When the police cruiser finally pulled the little French auto over, Solo judged that it was time for them to move.  The two fraudulent police officers were up to their necks in American made guns before they could even get their doors opened.

 “Thank you locating Miss Sherman for us, Gentlemen. We’ll take it from here.” announced the Marine captain in a tone that softened the martial atmosphere.

 Then the captain stepped up to where Schmidt was parked and said, “Mr. Schmidt, Miss Sherman, would you please gather your belongings and be seated in my van. One of my men will drive the car back for you.”

 Carl was surprised by this development but at least it was a pleasant surprise. He and Sherman were introduced to Solo who grinned knowingly at the low level bureaucrat.

 “My compliments Mr. Solo. I have a feeling that those cops were up to no good.”

 “Very perceptive of you, Mr. Schmidt. In fact you are part of the reason I’m here. My organization could use a man who speaks fluent German. I was wondering if you would be interested in a type of law enforcement position.”

 Carl blinked a couple of times and said, “Well, I was very fond of Germany. Am I to understand that I would be relocating there?”

 “Yes, for the most part. Mind you, your duties could get a bit stressful from time to time. You would be required to carry a firearm…”

 “It does sound interesting,” put forth Schmidt.

 “Perhaps we could meet in my hotel room tomorrow morning to discuss the details. I haven’t checked in anywhere yet but I have your office number.”

 “Fine,” Carl responded with a heavy nod.

 “You’ll be getting a good man,” piped in Lisa Sherman. “Also his common looks will help him blend in with his surroundings. You wouldn’t want him standing out the way you would, Mr. Solo.”

 Napoleon returned the old woman’s telling smile, and Carl did his best not to seem ungrateful for the woman’s left handed endorsement.

 After the motorcade returned to the embassy the Marine Captain lagged behind a bit so he could have a chance to speak privately with Solo.

 “Excuse me sir, but I’m not certain you’ll be doing Mr. Schmidt a service by taking him away from his present responsibilities.”

 “How is that Captain?”

 “Well sir, I’ve read the files on everyone who works at the embassy. The most interesting thing Schmidt did in the military was function as a V.D. Control Officer. I don’t mean to be disrespectful of the man, but he’s kind of a Walter Mitty  type of guy if you understand me.”

 “Oh, you mean the kind of fellow who dreams about doing brave things but if a crisis ever arose he’d pretty much cave?”

 “Well sir, I guess it would depend of the severity of the crisis.”

 “Alright---do you think he could stand up to you, if his principles were on the line?”

 “Hardly, sir.”

 The man from U.N.C.L.E. smiled and said, “Well, at least he won’t be giving you any headaches where he’s going.”

 The Marine frowned at that, while Solo headed for the embassy’s visitor entrance.

Epilogue

 Solo was happy to find his partner on the parallel bars back at U.N.C.L.E. H.Q. Solo used to think that Illya’s preoccupation with gymnastics was related to his rather limited love life, but since then he had come to realize that physical fitness is more than just lifting weights and running. Besides, there were a lot of women who used the bars to stretch their legs.

 Kuryakin didn’t bother say hello, he just waited until Solo was closer to the bars and then he launched himself up and over to land with a thump in front of his friend.

 “Is the shoulder as good as new?”

 “I suspect it will depend on the weather. But if Waverly refuses to complain, I don’t see any reason why I should.”

 “Stout fellow. Now you better take a shower. We’re due in the main conference room in twenty minutes.”

 Solo turned and headed for the door but the Russian had been waiting to ask him a question.

 “Napoleon---you were extremely vague when you reported that I operated the time machine. I would appreciate it if you could be more specific.”

 Solo let out both a sigh and a shrug and said, “The symbols on the control screen were totally unique. It was a language all its own. You couldn’t read what it was saying, but you remembered which symbols were in the screen’s launch box when the professor used the controls the other time. As for setting a date. You just scrolled the content list back until a little voice in you said far enough. It was a gamble to be sure. But it worked out wonderfully.”

 Kuryakin shrugged.

 “They placed me under hypnosis, hoping I would remember everything, but it’s not working.”

 “Maybe that’s because you don’t really think we’re ready for that kind of power just yet.”

 “It is not for me to decide,” the Russian answered stonily.

 “Looks to me like it is.”

 “Napoleon, you are the last person who should try and get psychoanalytical with me. I am not repressing anything. I would be the happiest man in the world if I could go back to the controls of that time machine and send you---back to Waverly when he was our age. That would be interesting.”

 “I suppose it would be,” Napoleon responded with a shrug. “Say did you know that psychology is largely made up of sexual content?”

 “I’ve got to take that shower,” grumbled Kuryakin as he turned his back on his friend.

 Solo waited until his co-worker was far enough away and then muttered, “I’m going to guess another cold one.”