15 - The Utopia Affair (16 page)

And finally Waverly came out, his tall, dark and devious friend beside him.

They parted where the paths did, bidding each other a friendly good evening as though their Game were only a game. And Illya rose and passed like a shadow among the trees, paralleling Waverly's walk home. They could be anywhere along here, attacking from either side.

He had a full clip of sleep darts and the night-vision scope, and his knife was ready to hand. Every sense was alert, straining forward to penetrate the gloom. Stars appeared and vanished among the leaves over head.

The miniaturized light-amplifier in his gunscope, held to his eye, showed him the trees and bushes in shadowgraph with adequate detail—and he froze silently as he saw two crouching figures only fifteen feet away. He faded back behind a tree and heard Waverly's regular pace approaching on the gravel path.

He stole forward with the greatest care, raising his automatic again. He adjusted the little shield around the muzzle which would so break up the slight sound of the silenced shot as to make its location unidentifiable, and leveled it.

They were gone! They had moved out more silently than the wind. He followed them, night-scope to his eye, feeling his way over the leaves and twigs of the garden. Once the figures ahead stopped and started to turn, and Illya melted into the shape of a bush without a sound. After a second they looked in the other direction.

Footsteps were approaching on the gravel path. There was no time for finesse. He saw the Turk's arm draw back and knew the five-second delay of the drug would mean Waverly's life. His wrist flicked and his perfectly balanced knife dropped into his palm. He might not be as good as the Turk, but he didn't have to play fair if they didn't. His arm snapped over and down, wrist locked straight, and a shining silver sliver in the faint light of the stars stood out from the wrist of the up raised arm. The murderous boomerang fell from flaccid fingers to the soft earth and the Turk stifled a cry of pain. Quickly both assassins ducked down as Waverly stopped on the path.

"Who's there?" he demanded. Only silence answered him.

Illya padded forward, a hope growing in his mind. He could see the Japanese, dressed more or less like himself, kneeling beside his partner attending his arm. They looked around cautiously at first, but the pain of the wound drew their attention and Illya dropped to his belly. Still not daring to relax, he was about to withdraw when suddenly both men stood up. Kiazim muttered something unspeakably filthy in Turkish—Illya himself had only heard the term once before. With his friend's help he made it to the path, and the two of them started away, footsteps crunching quickly on the gravel.

Illya lay on his stomach and breathed deeply. Now, at last, his shoulder started to hurt again. He lay still for several seconds, then very slowly rose to his knees and backed away until he was well within the cover of the woods. Then at last he stood erect, stretched, and made his way home by a roundabout route for a well-earned rest. He might just possibly pull this one out of the fire after all.

Chapter 14

"Stop Them."

NAPOLEON SOLO'S expression was habitually grim as he came into the office shortly after dawn. He nodded curtly to Miss Williamson as she entered just behind him, and said, "Is the preliminary analysis on the Anchorage situation ready?"

"Right here." She handed him a file folder from the top drawer of the desk, and dropped her hat and gloves into the lower drawer.

"Have Section Eight call me as soon as he comes in." He carried the folder into his office and spread it on the desk, scanning through it from a standing position as he removed his coat and hung it in the concealed closet. There was one possibility for recovery of the situation.

He scribbled a memo to himself to call Gavin at the hospital in Anchorage when it was a reasonable hour there. And for the moment...

He initiated a Channel D signal and shuffled the report together as the connection was made. During the conversation be made notes on various cards in the priority file and sifted a few forward.

"Harbeson here," said a breezy voice. "Your man on the spot with the Akhoond of Swat!"

"
You're
cheerful," said Napoleon. "I take it everything is proceeding satisfactorily?"

"It's falling into place, chief. The Number Four Wife was behind the whole thing. Her second cousin ran the kennels. There was a nice little palace revolution brewing. A few things turned up on the Number One, however, and now she's teetering between a headsman's axe and permanent exile. His Royal Incredibility took a good look at Number Four and she talked things around so she had saved him from the recently divorced. Now she's in the top spot after all. Chief, what does all this fuss really accomplish, anyway?"

"When you can answer that one," said Solo, "you'll be sitting here."

"I suppose you've got another seemingly pointless assignment for me. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to stick around here a while. The, uh, scenery is beautiful."

Napoleon, who had been in Swat more than once, recalled its sandy wasteland, and nodded. "And you want a few weeks to appreciate her." He was torn remembering himself on the other end of the stick hoping for a chance to make friends with a charming stranger, thinking
Do unto others
; while clearly aware that Waverly never did leave him on post without a job to do. His eye touched on the freshly-lettered sign taped to the upper panel of the communications console. It read: WHAT WOULD
HE
HAVE DONE?

Solo cleared his throat. "Mr. Harbeson, your leave period is not due until March. You may forfeit it if you continue leaving assignments unfinished. How thoroughly have you checked into the background on that second cousin? He could easily have been under someone else's orders. I doubt the Number Four Wife could be entirely responsible for the complex plot you have outlined to me."

"Oh, chief, you haven't seen her! She's about five-four, with golden eyes—."

"You're kidding!" said Solo, breaking character.

"I'll swear it. She's a belly dancer."

"Oh." He cleared his throat again. "Mr. Harbeson, you have your assignment. I'll expect a preliminary report on her family's connections by the end of the week. If anything more important comes up, we'll let you know."

"Right-ho, Chief. Don't call me—I'll call you. Harbeson out."

The intercom signaled. "Mr. Simpson, Section Eight, on your line, sir."

"Mr. Simpson, I'd like to talk to you about the Flin Flon Monster. Would you pull together the material you have on it and drop up here for a cup of coffee."

"Tea?"

"Ten minutes."

He looked over a lighted display on the map and tried to guess how the situation would develop in however long it would take to get ready whatever he was going to use. He ordered a requisition drawn up for a C-141; on second thought, he made that three C-141s. "And bring in some coffee with plenty of sugar and a vitamin pill. And start Simpson's tea."

He pulled out a new pipe delivered from the best New York tobacconist and dipped again into Waverly's humidor before starting down the stack of daily summaries from the other four Continental Headquarters until interrupted by the sound of the door.

They sipped and chatted about the Monster for a few minutes, while Napoleon learned just how much Simpson actually had figured out about the thing. As it turned out, it was very little.

"The crux of the matter is," Napoleon finally stud, "could you build one?"

"Well...not a real one. But I was thinking about a counterfeit."

"A counterfeit?"

"It wouldn't do everything the real one does. It wouldn't do much of anything. But it might fool somebody who'd never seen the real one."

"It would look like it, you mean."

"Well... maybe from a distance and with your eyes half-closed..."

"That's all we'll need. Now, if you can make one, can you make three?"

"I suppose so. I think we have the materials lying around the lab."

"How soon?"

"Mmmm... Tomorrow morning?"

"All three?"

"Oh, making three monsters isn't really that much more trouble than making one."

"Somehow I thought you'd say that. What'll it consist of?"

"About twenty-five cubic feet of tactical smudge. That's essentially a sort of highly compressed smoke. We could let that go, under a parachute or a radar-equipped steerable balloon. It would tend to drift with the wind, and it wouldn't be much for tearing up buildings, but as I said, from a distance and with your eyes half closed…"

"Very well. Make me three of them, and they ought to be a good half mile high. Oh, and can you turn them off or do they have to run down?"

"I could add a precipitant which would clear the air in two or three minutes."

Channel D signaled. "That'll be fine. Solo here."

"Navarre in Tierra Caliente. Maria and I are free of surveillance for the moment, and I just saw fifteen divisions of the rebel army crossing the plaza heading for the Presidential Palace. What should we do?"

Napoleon closed his eyes. He didn't know where they were in the city, how the troops were armed, whether the trolleys were still running, or any of hundreds of other factors that could be important. How could he tell them what to do when they knew the situation better than he? His eyes opened and focused on the sign on the upper panel. What would he have said?

"What should you do?" he said aloud. "Stop them."

There was a pause from the other end, and the agent said, "No holds barred?"

"Mr. Navarre, there are fifteen divisions between you and your goal. Under the circumstances, sportsmanship would seem a minor consideration."

"And I was hoping, sir, that you would put in a word for us with the Mexico City office—we may need to draw reinforcements from there again."

"Very well. I'm sure they can be spared. Signal them in ten minutes with a list of everything you will need. The situation there deserves all the attention we can afford."

"I'm glad you appreciate that, sir," said the agent, and rang off.

"Monitor," said Solo as the Priority signal flashed, "come down on Mexico City in my name if I can't get to it within two minutes. That team needs help."

Then, while he fielded some angry questions from the Continental Office in Brasilia regarding several destroyed buildings in the better part of Sao Paulo and several important governmental agencies who Had Not Been Properly Informed, he made notes on air speeds and juggled time zones in his head. If Simpson's Monster was ready to go, a single C-141 could do the job, and would have to. Even the Head of the United Network Command had limitations, and there simply were not three to be had. One only could be diverted from ferry duty between Washington and Vietnam for forty-eight hours, complete with flight crew, but also with the explicit understanding that their
per diem
plus flight pay, all fuel, and a blood-chilling rate for hours aloft would be covered by the less-than-infinite treasury of the U.N.C.L.E.

The outfit that had been preparing a full-scale attack on the French gold reserves had been traced to Brittany, where they were nearly ready for a return engagement—precisely timed riots were keeping the Sub-Continental HQ in Hong Kong pinned down while covering another heavy attack on them personally—where in between could he use the Monsters? He had one to spare.

"I quite understand, Mr. da Silva. The agents responsible will report to me personally. Now if..."

It wouldn't do much good around Denver and the air space was far too crowded. The smoke was radar-opaque, so the plane itself would be reasonably safe from ground fire in sensitive areas... The monster wouldn't matter much to the rebels in Tierra Caliente; though ignited from outside, they had the pains of their own world to fight and were not concerned with unexplainable threats. Thrush had certainly been behind the Clipperton Island operation, but that had been blown and was now under cover somewhere in the world—like the real Flin Flon Monster.

He only hoped that Thrush's secrecy about the unholy thing extended to their own field troops; they would only have heard about it and know vaguely that it was important. If it suddenly showed up in the middle of their operation, they'd think Central was taking a hand without telling them and confusion would result. In Hong Kong it would also serve to disconcert the rioters, most of whom probably hadn't the least idea what was really going on. Now where else could he use one?

He scanned the continents, reading the coded symbols projected on the big map, and stopped in eastern Africa. Tanzania. Almost south of Brittany, with Addis Ababa nearly between them, and with unrest brewing among the tribes in the north. A perfect spot for the third one. He started jotting notes.

Flying with the sun would lengthen the day; could he hit all three spots between one dawn and the next? But it was twelve hours to Hong Kong and only seven to France. Sunset tomorrow for take-off time... He spun an overlay on the map and projected an air route marked off in hours. They could hit Brittany at dawn, with an hour's margin; they'd have the day to fly south, stopping at Addis Ababa to refuel at... 3:00 P.M. local time; then play an evening performance in Tanzania about sundown. He could coordinate the appearance with Shomambe for locally publicity. Then a straight night run across the Indian Ocean would… Not quite. Hong Kong was a long way from anywhere. Dawn would get there before they could. Well, it would be the farewell performance of the counterfeit Flin Flon Monster—why not make it a memorable one? High noon over Victoria Harbour should be a properly prominent position. And just to confuse everything, Simpson could make it a bright Chinese red. When it dissipated at last before the sea breeze, street-cornet orators would really have something to argue about.

On a fresh sheet of paper he neatly noted the schedule and fed it into a scanner slot for transmission. He wondered idly what it would do to his day tomorrow.

… They'd hit Brittany at two o'clock in the morning, his time; Addis at seven, Tanzania about noon Friday, and they could make it to Hong Kong just before midnight the same day—New York time. They might just as well land in Hawaii... no, it would be better, for the sake of the arms he had twisted to get the plane at all, to have it report directly to Saigon for assignment. The technician who went along to handle the Monsters would then catch the next military shuttle flight home.