18
Illya carefully set the tiny teacup down on its miniature saucer and regarded his small hostess gravely.
He sat at a child-sized table in a room that could have been no more than 8 x 10. The walls were paneling that had been painted white, brightening what would have otherwise seemed a claustrophobic space. The lower parts of the walls showed evidence of crayon marks that had been scrubbed but not removed completely. A single window opposite him looked out, from this low angle, on the upper branches of an elm, the leaves sun-dappled against a clear blue sky. There was a toy box in one corner and a shelf of picture books. A doorway in the wall behind him led to an even smaller room, painted pink, that held a dresser and a little canopied bed.
The table was a cheap one from a department store, a metal frame with a pressboard top. Like so many things that serve children, it had seen hard wear. A stuffed rabbit sat to Illya’s left. It was stained in spite of being oft laundered and one ear was torn half off. Obviously it was well-loved. To the agent’s left was a black-haired baby doll with a wrinkled dress and ink marks on its face and hands.
The little girl was busy with the doll, talking to it softly and patting its tangled hair as she lifted her cup to its molded lips and poured Kool Aid down its face. She was a tiny thing, with Kool Aid spilled down the front of her shirt and cookie crumbs clinging to the pink stain around her mouth. Her hair was dishwater blonde, long and limp with a barrette slipping down beside her face.
Annie Ryan was four years old. She lived in a suburb of Kansas City with her parents. Her father was a lineman with Kansas City Power and Light and her mother was a homemaker. Annie was an only child, bedraggled as active children become, but, like the rabbit, much loved. Her family were solid middle-class Suburbia with a white picket fence and a washer and dryer and a barbecue pit on the terrace behind their house. Her mother belonged to the garden club and her father bowled on Thursdays. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that she was in any way different from the twenty or thirty other four-year-old girls in this suburb.
In the past two days there had been three attempts on her life.
The first time it looked like an accident. Annie had been playing on the sidewalk in front of her house when a passing car left the street and barreled towards her. A neighborhood teenager, working on his own car in his driveway, saw the impending tragedy and made an heroic leap for the child, scooping her up and carrying her over the fence to safety. The papers made a play over the boy’s courage and the police started searching for a drunk driver or a joy rider.
That same afternoon a sniper took three shots at her as she played in her backyard. Fortunately, the shooter missed all three times, the bullets ringing off the brick barbecue pit to bury themselves in the side of the house. The next morning her mother found a box on the doorstep addressed to “my frined Annee” in a crayon scrawl. Suspicious by now, she called the police and they, in turn, called Animal Control to deal with the very poisonous timber rattler inside.
It was at this point that UNCLE became involved. While the case did not actually fall within their mandate, Illya Kuryakin and his partner, Napoleon Solo, who happened to be in Kansas City between assignments, had volunteered. Napoleon was out in the neighborhood now, seeing what, if anything, he could uncover, while Illya attended Annie’s tea party and tried to fathom why anyone would wish harm to this child.
Annie’s mother came in with more cookies on a platter. She carried a wet washcloth in one hand and leaned down to wash her daughter’s face. Annie tipped her head up, welcoming the attention, and her mother wiped away the crumbs and the Kool Aid and fixed the barrette that was trying to escape. Annie’s mother’s name was Helena. She was a small, soft woman wearing a plain, clean, flower-spattered cotton housedress. Her own hair, once the same color as Annie’s but darkened now to a medium brown, was covered with a triangle of scarf. Her eyes, like the girl’s, were green. Her face was haggard with worry.
She gathered Annie into her arms and hugged her with a gentle fierceness. Her haunted eyes fixed on Illya.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t take her back to her grandparents’?”
Annie looked up, suddenly alert. “Paw Paw?”
“Yes, Sweetheart! Would you like to go see Paw Paw again?”
“They live on a farm, don’t they?”
“Yes. Annie spent last weekend with them.” Helena shook her head. “It seems like a lifetime ago. She loves the farm, you know. Room to run and play. And my folks have lots of animals. Annie adores their big dogs.”
Illya envisioned a farm, seeing it from an enforcement agent’s perspective. He saw wide open spaces, impossible to cover adequately; trees and brush to hide an assassin; long grass to release poisonous snakes in and to hide traps. He shook his head firmly.
“It really is best you keep her here. I know this is very frightening for you, but we’re doing everything that can be done.” The attempts on Annie’s life had brought out a strong protective streak in the community. In addition to Napoleon and Illya, there were nearly a score of police officers, many of them off-duty, standing guard in this neighborhood. They came from all the surrounding municipal police forces, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, and both the Missouri and Kansas State Highway Patrols. In spite of the fact that they worked for different organizations, Annie’s guardian angels all knew one another on sight. The UNCLE agents had insisted on this, concerned that the assassin would be able to sneak in close by posing as one of the child’s protectors. For this same reason, and also because they didn’t want to encourage a vigilante mindset, Napoleon had politely but firmly declined the offer of dozens of military men from nearby Whiteman Air Force Base.
“Tell me about your Paw Paw’s farm, Annie,” Illya said.
The little girl ducked her head shyly, snatched the bunny up and hugged it in front of her. She stole a slantwise peek up at Illya and the Russian gave her a kind smile. “Does your Paw Paw have cows? Horses?”
Annie stuck her forefinger in her mouth and talked hesitantly around it. “Cows.”
“He has cows? And horses?”
She nodded.
“What did you do at Paw Paw’s house? Did you ride the horses? Did you pet the dogs?”
Annie nodded again, then, growing bolder, took her finger out of her mouth and slapped her bunny down against the table. “An’ I seed the diggie man!”
“The diggie man?”
Helena claimed the rabbit’s abandoned chair, pulling it over by Annie and perching on it gingerly. “I think she means the boogie man. My father’s always telling her wild stories.”
“Oh,” Illya returned his gaze to Annie. “What was the diggie man doing?”
Annie put her finger back in her mouth and leaned against her mother, sucking on her hand and looking at him uncertainly. Before she could answer, the sound of his communicator split the silence. He took out his silver ink pen and opened it, pulling up the antenna and exposing the microphone. Before he could speak Napoleon’s voice came out of the miniature transceiver.
“Big Bad Wolf to Mary. Is your little lamb secure?”
The Russian made a face at the radio. “Kuryakin here. Did you need something, Napoleon?”
“Mmm. Mary had a little temper. No, I, ah, just wanted to let you know that I’ve completed a circuit of the neighborhood and everything seems quiet for the time being. Of course, there’s a cop behind every rhododendron, so our target would have to be crazy to try anything else.”
Illya stood up and paced away from Annie and Helena, looking out the window and lowering his voice. “Napoleon, the man is trying to murder a four-year-old. Crazy is a pretty safe bet.”
Napoleon sighed unhappily. “I know.”
Illya glanced back over his shoulder and found Annie watching him wide-eyed. Smiling slightly he went back over and sat gingerly in the child-sized chair. “Annie, this is my friend Mr. Solo talking. Would you like to say hello to Mr. Solo?” He held the instrument out to her.
Napoleon, listening from his end of the conversation, played along. “Hello, Annie!”
The little girl’s eyes grew. She leaned back against her mother and stared at the pen in amazement.
“She’s suspicious,” Illya said, the communicator picking up his voice even at a distance.
“Well, you do have that effect on people.”
Annie leaned forward finally and blew on the microphone, then jumped as Napoleon blew on his. Laughing, Illya reclaimed the communicator. “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”
“Will do, IK. Happy shepherding!”
The seventeen-year-old boy sanding down a vintage hot rod in the driveway across the street from Annie’s house was wearing a tie-dyed tee shirt and a pair of sloppy jeans. He sported a light, fuzzy, ginger-colored beard and a mop of loose red curls that made even Illya look neatly trimmed. He looked up suspiciously as Napoleon approached.
“Nice car,” Napoleon said. “Ford coupe, isn’t it? Thirty-one?”
The boy thawed a little. “Thirty-two.”
“Ah.”
“Can I help you with something Mr. . .?”
“Solo. Napoleon Solo.” The agent produced his credentials. “I’m with the U.N.C.L.E.” He put away his ID and offered his hand. “That was very brave of you to rescue that little girl yesterday.”
The kid blushed and shrugged bashfully. “Heck, she’s just a little kid, you know? Who would want to hurt a little kid?”
“Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out. Timothy, isn’t it?
“Yes, sir. Timothy Maguire.”
“I know you’ve already talked to the police, Timothy, but I’d like to hear what happened again, from you. If you don’t mind?”
Timothy shrugged. “I was just out here in the driveway yesterday morning working on my car. I’ve just got one or two more coats of paint to go and then I’ll be ready to lay out the flames across the front and down the sides, you know? Anyway, Annie had been over here watching me and then I kept an eye on her while she crossed the street. She was playing with a doll on the sidewalk, right there, when this big black car comes barreling down the street. It was swerving all over the road, like the guy was drunk or high or something and the first thing I thought was that he was going to come over and hit my rod. Then, about in front of the Madisons’ house, he went off the road and drove up on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. I just saw that he was headed for Annie so I ran over and grabbed her up and jumped over the fence.”
“You make it sound very casual, but it was very brave nonetheless.”
Timothy shrugged and blushed and became very busy buffing an invisible flaw from his paint job.
“You told the police you thought the car was a Cadillac?” Napoleon continued.
“Yes, sir. A ’59 Caddie. I’m sure of it.”
“That doesn’t sound like a car that a teenager would have.”
“No, no kid had that car! A rich kid who could afford a newer car would have something cool like a mustang. That’s why the cops were looking for a joy rider. They thought some kid stole it.”
“But there were no reports of a stolen car to match that, which suggests that that was the killer’s own car. And you didn’t see the driver at all?”
“Not real clear. It was a man, though, not a woman, I’m sure of that. And it wasn’t a kid. He had short hair.”
“Anything else? Anything at all? Decals on the car? Parking permits? Bumper stickers?”
Timothy shrugged again, then put down his sandpaper and leaned back against a tree. “It was all dusty. Layers of dust, like somebody drove it on a dirt road a lot. That doesn’t really help any, does it?”
Napoleon gave the boy a lopsided, reassuring smile. “Every little bit helps. Don’t worry, we won’t stop looking until we find this guy. In the meantime it was nice to meet you. If you think of anything else, anything at all, don’t hesitate to contact me. Any of the guys lurking in the shrubbery can get you in touch.”
Napoleon and Timothy grinned at the image of the police hiding behind every bush and tree. Napoleon shook the young man’s hand again and turned to cross the street and join his partner at the eye of this storm.
Napoleon knocked and Annie’s father opened the door to let him in. His name was Michael and he was a tall man, with the deep, burned-in tan and heavy muscles that come from working outdoors in all weather. He closed the door behind Napoleon and returned to pacing furiously from window to window, smacking one fist into the other hand repeatedly. Napoleon spared him a sympathetic glance and started for the next room, where he could hear Illya talking softly. He was halfway there when the phone rang.
Everyone in the house froze and looked at the phone. The family’s name had been suppressed in the media and friends, relatives and reporters had been instructed not to call. Together Napoleon and Michael converged on the telephone. Napoleon switched on a tape recorder that was attached to the instrument, then picked it up and held it so that he and Michael both could hear. He nodded to Michael and Michael said, “hello?”
“There’s a bomb in your house.” The line went dead.
Napoleon dropped the phone. “Everybody outside! Now!”
Illya came out of the playroom carrying Annie, Helena following anxiously in his wake. Napoleon was already on his communicator, alerting the law enforcement officers in the neighborhood and calling for a bomb squad. Helena was on the verge of hysteria.
“Why is somebody doing this to us?”
They left the house in a group. There was already a crowd of police waiting on the sidewalk.
Annie was carrying her stuffed rabbit and sucking on her finger again. She took the digit out of her mouth and used the toy to point over Illya’s left shoulder.
“Diggie Man!”
Illya turned to follow her gaze across the street and up in a tree house in a neighboring yard. He found himself looking into the barrel of a high-powered rifle.
“”Everybody down!” He dropped himself, cushioning the little girl with his hands and covering her with his body as the first bullet snatched the rabbit from her hands and burned a painful furrow across his back. Annie was screaming in his ears and he could hear Helena screaming behind him. He was conscious of Napoleon standing on the porch, taking aim while bullets tore chunks from the porch rail and thudded into the house behind.
Napoleon fired once and there was a howl from across the street. A figure dropped from the tree and disappeared behind the fence and shrubs in the yard. The police on the sidewalk had taken shelter behind the cars parked on the street. They emerged cautiously now and converged on the yard where the sniper had fallen.
“Be careful!” Napoleon called, remaining vigilant on the porch. “I just winged him! He could still be armed!”
Napoleon holstered his gun, adrenaline still coursing through his system, and looked down at his partner, covering a screaming, struggling child with his own body. The first thing he saw was the rip in Illya’s suit coat and the blood on Illya’s back. Illya raised his blond head.
“Clear?”
“Clear.”
The Russian rose up and turned to sit with his back against the porch rail, ignoring his injury as he cradled Annie in a protective hug. The little girl was sobbing hysterically and crying for her stuffed animal, lying torn and pathetic against the house. Helena, hysterical herself, crawled over to them on her hands and knees and took her daughter.
“It’s okay, honey! It’s okay! We’ll get you a new bunny!”
“Nooo! I wan’ ma bunny!!!”
Michael was pacing furiously again, his gaze darting back and forth between his family and the neighboring yard. Obviously he was torn between staying close to protect his wife and daughter and going out to hunt down their attacker. Napoleon, still mindful of the bomb threat, pushed him towards Helena and Annie.
“Bring them. We’ve got to move.”
He turned for his partner, but Illya pulled himself to his feet.
“It’s just a scratch,” he said, answering Napoleon’s unspoken question.
A young police sergeant came running up to the porch.
“He got away! We’re searching the neighborhood. He could be anywhere!”
It was not news. Napoleon had already deduced the situation. The posse had gone over and around the fence in a rush, coming at the place from all sides, but the yard was empty. A trail of blood disappeared into the bushes but when they searched the dark recess between the shrubbery and the fence they found nothing. The conclusion they finally came to was that the sniper hid behind the bushes, then slipped out behind the law officers as they rushed in, using the cover of neighboring yards to evade capture by the men who were watching the exits.
Side by side, guns drawn, Napoleon and Illya came down the steps ahead of the little family they were protecting. At the bottom they split slightly, turning to cover their flanks. Michael and Helena brought their daughter down between the agents and they rushed in a tight knot to the closest police car. As soon as they were clear of the house the bomb squad moved in, clad in protective gear and carrying a container designed to transport an explosive if one were found.
Annie and her parents climbed into the back of the car and the sergeant and another officer got in the front.
“Do you have a safe house set up?” Napoleon asked.
“Not yet. We’ll take them down to headquarters for a little while and get one ready. That’s what we should have done yesterday!”
The UNCLE agents remained behind as the car drove away down the pleasant, tree-lined street.
“He has an accomplice,” Illya said.
He sat on a table in an empty office at the Grandview Police Station, stripped to the waist and stoic as Napoleon painted his bullet crease with iodine and taped a gauze pad over it. His jacket, shirt and bloody undershirt lay puddled on the floor.
“Yes, that fact had not escaped me. Hold still. There was a trace on the call. The local force is checking it out now. You know, I ought to get a medical license solely on the number of times I’ve patched you up.”
“Mmm. What should I get?”
“What do you want, a lollipop?”
“Yes.”
Napoleon chuckled and kicked Illya’s ripped and stained clothing aside. “You’re a sartorial disgrace, as usual.”
“Possibly.” The Russian hopped down and bent stiffly to retrieve his shirt and jacket. He shrugged gingerly into them, leaving the undershirt where it lay. “Disgraceful clothing is better than no clothing at all.”
A shapely policewoman came in with a clipboard and Napoleon eyed her appreciatively. “That depends on who’s wearing it,” he said, sotto voce.
The woman came over. Her nametag said Cpl. Tanner. “Annie and her family have been moved to a safe house. The call traced to a pay phone in front of a small market, right there in the neighborhood. We’ve gotten reports of a young teenager using the phone at about the right time. Officers are checking that now. There was no bomb, by the way.”
“No, I didn’t think there would be,” Napoleon said. “That was just a ruse to get us out in the open. Or rather, to get Annie out in the open.”
“What do we know about her grandparents?” Illya asked.
Tanner consulted her clipboard. “Paternal grandfather deceased, paternal grandmother lives in North Kansas City . . .”
“No, I mean her maternal grandparents. They have a farm, I believe?”
“Yes, William and Edith Holt. They have eighty acres in Johnson County. It isn’t really a working farm, more a hobby. Bill Holt retired from the railroad and they moved out there about eight years ago.”
“Can you give us directions?”
The woman bent over the table to copy down directions to the Holts’ farm and Napoleon fixed his partner with a questioning gaze.
“Are you onto something or do you just feel pastoral?”
Illya shrugged without thinking, then winced as the movement pulled at his sore back. “Possibly. Annie spent last weekend at her grandparents. She told me that while she was there she saw ‘The Diggie Man’. Her mother thinks she means ‘The Bogey Man’.”
“The Diggie Man? Isn’t that what she called the shooter?”
“Yes.”
“Well, well!” Napoleon took the paper that Officer Tanner held out to him. “I’d say it’s time for us to take a drive in the country.”
The two UNCLE agents drove east on Route 40, the smooth, level road spinning away beneath their wheels while the city disappeared in the rear view mirror. At first the road was lined with restaurants and gas stations, but soon these gave way to dense groves of oak and elm and broad stretches of green and brown farmland. It was early summer. The leaves on the trees were full, rich green. Corn and soybean stood knee-high and half-grown calves and foals romped in the fields.
Napoleon was driving.
“It fits,” he said. “Timothy McGuire, the boy who rescued Annie from the first attempt, said the car that nearly ran her down was dusty, like someone drove it a lot on a dirt road.”
Illya nodded thoughtfully. “His escape from that yard, when he was surrounded, suggests someone who’s used to moving quietly through the woods and underbrush. A hunter, stalking prey, if you will. And the gun he’s using is a hunting rifle, though that’s hardly conclusive.”
“Mmm,” Napoleon mused. “An experienced woodsman, but a lousy shot. I wonder why?”
State highway 13, narrow and hilly, took them south into Johnson County by the middle of the afternoon. They followed Tanner’s directions through a maze of narrow county blacktops until they found themselves driving down a dusty dirt road with a creek on one side and a pasture on the other. Half a dozen milk cows crowded together at the edge of the field, leaning over the fence to nip at bachelor buttons and Queen Anne’s lace and rolling their eyes at the car as it went past. The sun was dipping towards the line of trees to the west when they pulled into the yard of the Holt farm.
The green and growing things around them were fragrant with the summer heat and the air smelled of chiggerweed and roses, of dust and faintly of manure. The sky was clear overhead but there was a line of puffy clouds on the horizon and the scent of rain somewhere in the distance.
The Holts lived on a hill, in an old, white, two-story farmhouse. The agents left their car in the driveway and crossed the thick grass to climb three steps to the wide verandah. The wooden porch floor groaned under their feet and a porch swing creaked as it moved gently in the breeze.
Edith Holt met them at the door. She was in her early sixties, with a puff of white hair, a small, big-bosomed, matronly woman dressed in a flowered cotton housedress. A flour-dusted apron covered her dress and she was wiping her hands on a dishcloth as she came out to talk to them.
“If you’re selling encyclopedias . . .” she began.
Napoleon offered his identification card.
“Napoleon Solo. This is my friend, Mr. Illya Kuryakin. We’re with the U.N.C.L.E. We’d like to speak with you about your granddaughter.”
She froze for a moment, her knuckles whitening on the dishtowel. “You’d better come in,” she said, stepping back to make room for them. They filed past her into a spacious living room with a hard wood floor. The furniture was dark oak and flower print and gray-green wallpaper sprigged with bunches of pink and white rosebuds gave the room an old-fashioned feel. Mrs. Holt closed the door and led them into a short hall, through a big hot kitchen where bread was rising on the windowsill, and out onto a shady back porch. A big, gray-haired man in pinstriped overalls and an engineer’s cap was sitting on a padded bench, whittling. Two enormous dogs lay at his feet and a fluffy orange tabby cat perched contentedly on the porch rail.
“This is my husband, Bill. Bill, these are the men from UNCLE.”
He rose stiffly and shook their hands, then sat back down with some difficulty. Napoleon noticed he didn’t bend his left leg, but kept it straight. He waved the agents to sit down and they each chose a seat among the scattering of patio furniture. Illya reached over to scratch the cat’s ears, but kept a wary eye on the dogs. The biggest of the two, a monstrous black furry creature, stretched and yawned hugely, then scooted over without rising, lay its head on his foot and went back to sleep.
“Fellas,” Bill Holt said gravely, “I’d be very alarmed to see you if I hadn’t just spoken to my daughter on the phone. I appreciate what you’re doing for my family, but I can’t help wondering what brings you down here.”
Napoleon answered him. “We’re trying to track down an odd remark that Annie made. She told us that while she was visiting you last weekend she saw ‘the diggie man’.”
Holt was nodding in recognition before the agent finished speaking.
“The digging man,” he said. “She was all excited. That’s only an old story, though. It can’t possibly mean anything now.”
“Could you tell us anyway?” Illya requested. “Since we’ve come so far?”
Annie’s grandfather shrugged and waved one hand to take in the broad view of trees and pasture that fell gently away beyond his yard. “Back during the Civil War,” he said, “this was all wild country. It was nominally under control of Union forces, but a lot of the settlers had come here from the South, Kentucky mostly, and there were a lot of rebel sympathizers tucked away in the hills and hollows. Guerrillas, like Cantrell, traveled through on a regular basis. There were also units of both armies in the area at times, paramilitary raiders from Kansas who rode on the coattails of the Union army, abolitionists and just plain, old-fashioned marauders. As you might expect, there was a fair amount of fighting and killing going on.
“Now, at that time there was a log cabin across the creek from here, on the other side of the road.” Bill Holt stabbed one thumb back over his shoulder, towards the house and the creek and the woods beyond. “There lived there a fellow named Artemis Taylor, who was as mean and loathsome a scoundrel as ever you could be sorry you met. Artemis loved money, and he wasn’t above using any means to get it.
“He was known to rob the bodies on battlefields. This was his undoing, actually, because in one instance he was seen and recognized by a wounded soldier who was hiding behind a tree waiting for help. There are other stories, though so far as I know they’re unsubstantiated, that he kidnapped freed slaves and sold them back into slavery. It’s also been whispered that he ambushed lone travelers, robbed them of their goods and buried them in shallow graves.”
Holt paused as his wife came out with a pitcher of lemonade and four glasses. She set the tray on a small table and poured for everyone, then pulled up another chair. Her husband took a long drink of lemonade and then continued his story.
“By and by folks caught on to Artemis’ tricks. Back in those days, on the frontier, they weren’t too picky about how they handled ruffians. A vigilance committee – what you may call a lynch mob – came for Taylor in the middle of the night. As it just so happened, though, they came when he was in his outhouse, back in the trees, and he saw them and managed to slip away. The mob searched for him, beating the bushes, and when they couldn’t find him they torched his house and that was that as far as they were concerned.
“Where Artemis went, no one ever knew, but years and years later he came back. He was sly and secretive, only seen from a distance, but always digging holes. That’s why folks called him the digging man. It seems that before he was driven out by the vigilantes he had buried all his ill-gotten gains. By the time he dared to come back for them, though, the landscape had all changed too much and he couldn’t find where he’d hidden them. Maybe he didn’t remember anymore.
“Anyway, he was finally picked up by the sheriff around the turn of the century and committed to the old insane asylum. They said he spent all his time there wandering around the yard, digging holes, always looking over his shoulder.
“He died in the asylum in 1903, and no sooner was he laid in a hole of his own than folks started saying they saw him again. Mostly in the vicinity of his old cabin, but all around the area and always at twilight, the ghost of the digging man would appear, destined to spend eternity looking for his robber’s gold.”
There was a brief silence as Holt finished his story.
“And Annie told you she saw the digging man?” Illya asked. “When? Where was she and what was she doing?”
Holt pursed his lips in thought. “She was playing with my old binoculars up in the hay mow while I curried the ponies. Must have been . . . Saturday? Yeah, Saturday, just about dusk. She climbed down the ladder all excited and told me she saw the digging man.”
Napoleon considered. “What do you think she saw? Or do you think she only imagined it?”
Her grandfather shrugged. “I figured she was just playing make-believe, or that maybe she saw somebody digging for fishing worms.”
The agent drained his glass and stood up. “Thank you for the lemonade, Mrs. Holt. With your permission, sir, I’d like to see where Annie was when she told you she saw the digging man.”
The old man regarded Napoleon in silence for a long moment, then nodded and rose without comment. Illya stood as well, carefully pulling his foot from beneath the big dog’s head. The dog’s chin thumped gently on the porch and he stretched and yawned, rolled over onto his side and wagged his tail a couple of times before going back to sleep.
Wide wooden steps led down into the yard. Together the three men crossed the grass and passed through a white metal gate. A neatly graveled drive led around the house and opened into a small lot in front of a huge old barn. The UNCLE agents slowed their steps to accommodate Bill Holt, but in spite of his limp he rolled along at a fast pace.
The barn on the Holt farm was a piece of Missouri history. It was built on a foundation of quarried stone, the massive timbers that supported it hand-hewn by German settlers in the early nineteenth century. To reach it they had to pass through another gate, this one sturdier and less ornamental, into a pasture full of Shetland ponies. The animals came over, interested, and greeted Holt with gentle whickers. He stopped to scratch their ears and talk baby talk to them while the two agents passed into the old structure.
Inside the barn it was dark and cool in the late afternoon. Shafts of golden light found their way through cracks in the boards, illuminating the dust motes. The first room was a large box stall converted into a tool room. It smelled of hay and animals and time. Bridles and halters hung from nails on the wall, a curry comb and hoof pick were lying at hand on a small shelf, and bins built into the old manger held an assortment of feeds. Beside the manger a doorway opened into a long hallway that divided the building in half and here they found a sturdy ladder nailed to the wall and disappearing through a hole in the ceiling.
Illya went first, the timeworn rungs smooth beneath his hands. He followed the ladder all the way up until he was standing level with the floor of the hayloft and could just step off. He moved away to make room for Napoleon, climbing behind him, and looked around. The loft was a vast and airy room, fifteen feet tall in the middle where the roof peaked. He could see the undersides of rusted sheets of tin beyond the framework of rafters. Loose hay lay strewn about the floor, half hiding thick oak planks worn smooth through more than a century of use. A small stack of hay bales took up one corner.
“I’m surprised he doesn’t have more hay with all those animals,” Napoleon commented.
Illya shrugged carelessly. “That’s just what’s left of last winter’s supply, I expect. In the summer they’ll have plenty of grazing. He’ll have a new supply by autumn.”
In the center of the front wall a double window allowed the hay to be hoisted up. This consisted of two openings, each about three feet tall by three and a half feet wide, one atop the other with a sturdy beam between them. Each window had a heavy shutter to cover it. The bottom shutter was securely closed but the top stood open.
“If she was looking through binoculars,” Napoleon observed, “she’d have had to look out this way.” The hay window was the only large opening, though some of the boards that made up the walls had cracks between them.”
They went over to the window and looked out. Bill Holt was still in the barnyard below them, fussing over a pair of Shetland ponies.
“Was this bottom window closed while Annie was up here, do you know?” Illya asked.
Holt nodded. “I keep it closed. Too much chance she’d fall out if it was open.”
“That narrows it down,” Illya said, none too optimistically. From the upper window the countryside stretched away before them in a broad panorama of green and brown. Beyond the barnyard they could see the back of the Holts’ house, the big, two-story building looking smaller from this high vantage. Past the house the dusty gravel road ran past. On the other side of the road an old wire fence, rusted and in poor repair, closed off what had once been a field or pasture, a large rectangle devoid of mature trees but overgrown, now, with closely-spaced pin oaks and sumac. A large stream, almost a small river, had worn a deep hollow across the near side of the pasture. To the left it looped around, disappearing behind a stand of old trees.
The pasture was surrounded on three sides by stands of trees, a thousand shades of green and brown blended into a painting of summer by the greatest impressionist of them all. The only obvious work of man was a house, well hidden off to the right, its presence betrayed only by a handful of rusty red shingles visible through the foliage.
“Who lives there, across the road?” Napoleon called down.
“Fellow named Larson. Hal or Cal or something. Don’t really know him.”
“Annie couldn’t see out this window unless she stood on something,” Napoleon pointed out. The two agents looked around. A galvanized metal bucket lay on its side nearby. Illya picked it up and turned it upside down. They examined the floor beside the window carefully. It was Napoleon who spotted the section of curved line in the dust that corresponded with the rim of the bucket. Illya sat the bucket down carefully on the mark. Moving unconsciously in unison, the two men took small but powerful binoculars from their inner coat pockets, knelt on either side of the bucket, and began scanning the countryside.
“If she called him ‘the diggie man’, then she probably actually saw him digging,” Illya reasoned. “That means he was somewhere where she could see the ground, or at least see him clearly enough to realize he was wielding a shovel. On the other hand, if he was doing something nefarious, he wouldn’t be apt to do it out in the open.”
Ignoring the distant trees and the relatively exposed pasture, he concentrated his attention on the stream. The water itself was out of sight, and so was much of the bank. Greenery, thriving on the moisture, had flourished along both sides of the creek. Illya followed the course of the water with his binoculars, going slowly and looking for anything out of the ordinary. Napoleon, meanwhile, was doing the same thing in the area around the house.
“Got it!”
Napoleon turned to follow Illya’s pointing finger.
“Through the trees there, just where the stream starts to loop back around. There’s a little clearing. It’s well hidden, from the road, but you can see it perfectly from here. See the big tree that’s starting to die? Look to the left of that.”
Napoleon followed his partner’s directions and located a hole in the wall of foliage. The high resolution of his powerful binoculars disclosed an area of disturbed earth.
“IK,” he said, “if you were a retired engineer named Bill Holt and a little girl told you she saw ‘the diggie man’, what would you think?”
“I’d think she imagined it, or saw someone digging for fishing worms,” Illya responded.
“Mmm. What if you were a spy and your name was Illya Kuryakin?”
“I’d think I’d like to know what the diggie man was digging.”
The sun was just touching the line of trees in the west, staining the clouds crimson and scarlet, when the two men from UNCLE crossed the road. Illya was carrying a short shovel he had borrowed from Annie’s grandfather. Together they waded knee deep into a sea of Queen Anne’s Lace and chigger weed, prickly lettuce and polk salad. The fence was hip-high, a web of rusty metal topped by a double line of shiny new barbed wire. Ever cautious, Illya used the blade of his shovel to push the barbed wire down onto the metal fence. There were no sparks – it was not electrified – so he held it down while his partner climbed over, then followed as Napoleon returned the favor.
They stood for a moment getting their bearings. They were standing in a patch of sumac, the thin, willowy plants higher than their heads with rusty stems and leaves that were, this early in the year, still green. Scraggly grass and weeds grew in among the sumac, knee-high and varying in density. Here and there a meandering path followed the course taken by some animal in its wanderings. Illya pointed off to the left with the shovel.
“It’s that way.”
Napoleon tilted his head a fraction in the other direction. “You go on ahead. I want to have a look at the house.”
“Mmm. Watch out for snakes.”
“You too,” Napoleon told his partner, “especially the two-legged variety.”
The agents parted and Napoleon turned towards the house. At the edge of the field the ground rose slightly and the sumac gave way to tall grass bordering a line of old trees, some of them dead and dropping their limbs across his path. There was another fence here, but no barbed wire this time. It was simply a remnant of sagging, rusted metal; a reminder of another time when this fallow field had been in use.
Napoleon stepped over the fence and edged between two trees. The large trees shadowed the house, so that he walked into an early twilight. Overhead the sky was still blue and when he looked back out between the trees he could see sunlight resting on the surface of the vegetation in the field and gilding the other stand of trees that marked where his partner had gone to dig.
It was damp here. His feet sank into the loamy earth and little pools of water collected in his wake. The yard was completely overgrown and the house looked to be deserted. Rotting siding had long ago been painted an unattractive, dead brown color. Ripped screens over the windows were rusted even darker than the paint and the porch sagged dangerously at one corner, threatening to collapse if he came too close. Napoleon approached cautiously, startling a dark brown lizard that scuttled away to hide in a crevasse in the foundation. Avoiding the porch, the agent peered through one of the front windows off to the side, but it was dark inside and that, combined with the rusty screen, obscured his vision.
He circled the building. A sagging wooden gate closed off the driveway where it met the small dirt road, a dead-end spur of the gravel that ran past the Holts’ place. The drive itself was rutted from use; tire tracks hardened in the mud showing that the house was not as abandoned as it appeared.
An old barn stood behind the house at the end of the drive. Napoleon went there first. Unlike the larger barn at the Holts’, this was just a single room, open to the rafters. It took him only a moment to see that it was unoccupied. Loud buzzing drew him to a pile of straw and old clothes in the far corner. In the dim recesses of the building he had to use his penlight to see what was before him.
What he had taken for simply a pile of straw, he now saw, was actually a crude scarecrow. It was dressed in a stained rag that might once have been a dress and a horde of flies swarmed around it.
Moving cautiously, Napoleon left the barn and made his way to the house.
Illya was dressed in a suit, though he had abandoned his tie when he abandoned his bloody undershirt. He was wearing hard-soled oxfords and carrying his borrowed shovel across his still-sore shoulder. In spite of these encumbrances he slipped through the early twilight like another shadow.
The stream, deep and swift here, cut across his path. Cautiously he made his way down the steep side of the gully and onto the bank proper. He followed the stream for several dozen yards, looking for a place to cross without wading. At length he came to a fallen tree spanning the creek.
It was an old tree, long dead, and the bark had fallen away leaving a smooth dark surface dampened by the humidity over the stream. Illya climbed up on the thickest part of the trunk where it was still over the bank and bounced gingerly, testing the weight. He decided that it would hold him, but the smooth wood and his slick-soled shoes didn’t bode well for a safe passage. Opting for pragmatism over dignity the Russian pitched his shovel across, then climbed along the tree trunk on all fours until he could step off in the sand on the other side.
Reclaiming his shovel, he stuck to the creek bank, letting the walls of the gully and the trees growing along them shield him from view. Where the creek swooped in a broad curve the gully opened out. The bank here was nearly at water level, dotted with trees and nearly free of undergrowth. Here it was that Illya found what he was seeking – an irregular area of disturbed earth. It was a rough rectangle, five and a half feet long at the longest and nearly three feet wide.
Illya Kuryakin set the blade of his borrowed shovel to the loose soil and ever so carefully he began to dig.
A bare path worn through the weeds led to the back door. The sagging screen door shrieked when Napoleon pulled it open. It led to a screened back porch with a rusty washtub at one end and a stack of empty soda bottles piled haphazardly in the corner. A windowless wooden door led into the house proper.
Napoleon entered cautiously, gun in hand. There was something overwhelmingly wrong about this place. The agent was not given to fits of imagination, but he trusted his instincts and every instinct he possessed screamed that he was walking into an evil place.
The kitchen was dark and nearly empty. Black and white linoleum, cracked and stained, covered the floor. The kitchen table was an old wooden one that rocked when he brushed against it. A tin dishpan sat beside the sink.
He opened the single cupboard over the sink and found only ordinary groceries – flour and sugar, a can of Folger’s coffee and a supply of Spaghettios. In this sinister place their very normalcy was jarring.
The next room was the living room. From here he could see the front yard and the fading sunlight still shining through the trees. There was a ratty sofa he would hesitate to sit on and a low, scarred coffee table. The table was scattered with archery magazines and used paper targets, each with a neat cluster of holes obliterating the bull’s eye. There was a quiver of arrows beside the sofa and a stray arm guard lay on the floor.
Two doors led from the living room. One led into a bathroom with rust-stained fixtures and the same cracked and tatty black and white linoleum as the kitchen. Napoleon gave it a cursory once over and turned to the bedroom.
This room was on the west side of the house and should have been the brightest this late in the afternoon. Woolen army surplus blankets, though, covered the windows. The bed was rumpled and the whole room had a stale, dingy air about it.
Napoleon’s sense of evil solidified, here, into a definite odor. It was the smell of death, faint but tenacious. He wondered if perhaps a mouse had died in the walls but he didn’t really believe that.
Crossing to the nearest window he pulled the blanket back, allowing a shaft of pure golden light into the dark room. The window was open. Blinking against the sudden brightness he turned away and froze.
On the wall opposite the windows twenty or thirty nails had been pounded into the plaster in a circular pattern as precise as an archery target. Each nail held a piece of jewelry.
Napoleon went over and looked more closely, careful not to touch anything. He saw a small gold locket, an opal ring, the gem partly obscured by a dark stain, a charm bracelet and a strand of imitation pearls.
A faint noise outside the window caught his attention and he turned just in time to duck aside as an arrow blurred past him and buried itself in the wall at his shoulder. The projectile missed him by hair’s breadth but caught his shirt and jacket, pinning him to the wall.
He found that he couldn’t pull free. The arrowhead was firmly lodged in the plaster and lathe wall. Ruthless, lest he be a captive target, he threw himself to the side, forcing the fabric to rip. The arrow slid out through the larger hole, the feathers soft against bare skin as they ruffled through. He ducked behind the cover of the bed and waited tensely, gun in hand, but there were no more arrows.
Quickly but warily he went back through the house and out the back door. At the end of the driveway, in front of the barn, there sat a dusty black ’59 Cadillac.
Keeping close beside the house Napoleon scanned the woods, gun at the ready. He felt for his communicator and cursed under his breath. It was gone, fallen out probably when he ripped his jacket free of the arrow. Loath to spend time retrieving it, he set out across the field towards Illya.
He had gotten as far as the bank of the stream when an itching sensation in the small of his back warned him to turn. He spun around and saw a shadowy figure rising up out of the underbrush, aiming a crossbow at him.
He ducked away from the onrushing bolt, lost his footing and toppled over backwards into the deep, swift water.
The shadowy archer loaded another bolt into his weapon and cranked it back, readying it to fire. Cautiously, stalking the agent like one would stalk a deer, the bowman crept forward. When he could see the surface of the stream he relaxed and stood up straight.
A dark figure floated face down, the shaft of an arrow rising above his body.
The soil was loose and digging was easy. The sun had dipped below the horizon now. In the east the sky had darkened to deep blue. Overhead it was white and empty but to the west bands of curdled clouds still glowed brilliantly in shades of apricot and orange and gold. Tall trees stood stark against the banded sky when the Russian agent tossed aside a careful shovelful of loose earth and revealed a flat, not quite circular red disk.
Tossing aside his shovel, Illya knelt and began scooping more dirt away with his hands, revealing another smaller disk beside the first and another, smaller still, beside that. He knew very well what he had found long before he finished uncovering the fourth and fifth.
Engrossed in his task, he was still the consummate professional. Whether it was a snapping twig, the brush of fabric or an unguarded breath, something warned him that he was not alone. Standing and spinning suddenly he found himself facing the business end of a loaded crossbow.
Instinctively he raised his hands, sizing up his opponent even as he stood at bay. The man was small and wiry, dark, dissipated and ragged looking. He was dressed in filthy camouflage, one shoulder stained dark where Napoleon’s bullet had found its mark. His eyes held an empty malevolence, as though there were nothing in his soul but hatred. His short dark hair was sprinkled with gray and he carried a four-day growth of stubble on his face.
He held his left arm doubled tightly against his body; even so, his wound did not seem to impair his use of a weapon. He cradled the crossbow in his right arm with the ease of long practice.
“Turn around,” he said.
When he could no longer hold his breath, Napoleon cautiously surfaced. He tossed aside the arrow he had retrieved and tucked under his arm and scanned the lip of the gully for any sign of his assailant. The man was gone, and Napoleon knew very well where he was going. Choosing the least expected route, Napoleon stayed in the stream, letting the water carry him down to where he needed to go.
“Turn around,” the man said again.
Illya regarded him steadily. “No.”
With the soft padding tread of a predator the bowman began to circle the agent. Illya, loath to let the man get behind him, turned as well. He was at a disadvantage, standing in a hole looking up at his adversary. The archer paced and Illya turned and it seemed they were on a disk, Illya at the center and the stranger on the edge, standing still while all the world revolved around them. Over their heads the treetops wheeled by, standing out against an ever-changing sky. Deep blue spun past, and white and rose and orange and aqua. Illya caught a glimpse of the evening star through the branches. Still they turned, prey and predator caught in a deadly dance.
The Russian knew that if he let the other man get behind him he was dead. The man was a killer and would not hesitate to shoot. At the same time he lacked whatever quality is necessary to kill a man while you look him in the eye.
A sudden noise caught their attention. Napoleon Solo came up out of the stream like a fury, gun in hand, aimed at the bowman and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. The wet gun had jammed.
The archer made half a feint at Napoleon with his crossbow, then realized too late that the danger lay elsewhere.
That tiny little moment of inattention was all Illya Kuryakin needed.
Even as his opponent turned on Napoleon, Illya reached inside his jacket. His hand closed over the familiar contours of his gun butt, safe in his shoulder holster. He pulled it out, feeling the weight transfer from the holster to his hand.
In one smooth movement he drew and aimed, extending his right arm in front of him and nesting the butt of the gun in his left hand, taking his time, choosing his shot.
The man turned, confused between two opponents and undecided whom to shoot. His dark eyes met Illya’s blue ones.
Illya pulled the trigger.
He felt the gun kick slightly as the bullet left the barrel. He was not packing sleeping darts and he was shooting to kill.
The shot took the archer in the chest, square in the heart. The bullet severed his aorta and a spout of blood shot across the meadow, disappearing into the rich dark earth. His finger tightened reflexively on the trigger of the crossbow as he fell and his very last arrow ever went wild, flying up above the trees where it was caught by the wind and dragged backwards. It disappeared with a splash into the stream.
He was dead long before it fell.
There was a long moment of silence when neither agent moved or spoke or seemed to breathe. Finally Napoleon, still dripping, crossed to stand beside his partner, looking down into the pit he had dug. Illya looked down as well and for a time they simply stood and stared at what Illya had uncovered.
In the gathering gloom the pale object almost shone. It was a woman’s naked foot, the toenails painted with chipped red polish.
After a time Napoleon looked away, regarding the body of their late assailant. Illya followed his gaze.
“The Diggie Man,” Napoleon said simply.
“The Diggie Man,” Illya agreed.
Another perfect Missouri twilight was settling over the Holts’ farm when the men from UNCLE drove into the yard once more. Across the road the Diggie Man’s land was swarming with officials. A local TV affiliate was filming a segment while a small crowd looked on, kept back by yellow police tape. The investigation, they knew, would go on for months, but their part in it was over. In the morning they were returning to New York and assignments more in keeping with their profession.
“It’ll never be the same,” Napoleon said.
“Nothing is ever the same,” Illya replied complacently. “It will be all right.”
Napoleon sniffed. “I think you’re just cheap.”
“I think you’re just easy.”
“I may be easy,” the dark-haired agent allowed, “but I’m not cheap!”
They parked in the graveled drive and walked around back this time. Napoleon was carrying a big fuzzy pink teddy bear with a bow around its neck. Illya was carrying a plain brown paper bag with the top rolled down.
They found the Holts, as expected, on the back porch. Annie and her mother were there as well and her father came running up behind the agents. He’d been across the road talking to the police and watching the proceedings.
Napoleon and Illya sat down in the proffered chairs and accepted the lemonade that Edith Holt offered them. Napoleon turned his attention at once to the little girl.
“Annie, there’s someone here who’d like to meet you. Will you come over and say hi?”
She looked at him dubiously, then glanced at her mother, who shooed her over. He presented her with the teddy bear.
“You see, Annie, this fellow here, he doesn’t have a home. He needs a pretty little girl to take him in and keep him. Would you like to give him a home at your house?”
She took the bear hesitantly and buried her face shyly in its fur.
“Isn’t that pretty!” her mother exclaimed. “What do you say, honey?”
The child mumbled thank you into the toy’s neck and backed away.
Illya unrolled his paper bag and took out a stained and bedraggled object recently patched front and back with bright squares of bandana material. He held it up.
“Annie.”
Annie looked over and her face lit up. She flung the new bear aside without a second glance and launched herself delightedly at Illya.
“MA BUNNY!!!!!!!!”
The Russian handed it over and she hugged it fiercely and then clambered up in his lap to give him a kiss. Beside herself with joy, she ran around to each person and showed them the rabbit.
She shoved it into Napoleon’s face and he gave her a tight smile. A glance to the side showed him that Illya was carefully not looking at him, a faint satisfied grin playing about his mouth.
Annie ran off to show the rabbit to the dogs and Napoleon snarled sotto voce at his partner. “I hate it when you’re smug!”
“Hmph! You hate it when I’m right.”
“Good thing, then, that that’s such a rare occurrence.”
Michael’s voice interrupted their sparring as soon as Annie was out of earshot.
“They just found another body. That makes seventeen. God only knows how many they’ll find before they’re done. The one you found is the most recent, of course. They said some of them have been there for years. And once they find them they have to identify them still.”
“And tell their parents,” Helena added with a catch in her voice. Instinctively she looked around for her daughter. “Stay where Mommy can see you honey.”
Napoleon regarded her with grave sympathy.
“Evil exists in the world,” he said simply. He spoke in a light tone of voice that somehow underscored the solemnity of his words. “It’s important to remember that and to guard against it, but you can’t let that knowledge rule your life.”
The woman nodded reluctantly, acknowledging the wisdom of his words and yet uncertain that she could follow his advice.
“Oh,” Illya added as the thought occurred to him. “The police in Grandview caught the caller who made the bomb threat. It was a twelve-year-old boy. Larson convinced him it was a practical joke. The police scared him half to death and sent him home. He’s going to identify Larson’s picture at the inquest as the man who asked him to call the house.”
They finished their lemonade and rose to take their leave.
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” Napoleon said, “even under such difficult circumstances. Now, though, if you’ll excuse us, my partner and I need to get back to New York. Unfortunately, like the Diggie Man, too many monsters are all too real.”
The End
