15 - The Utopia Affair (8 page)

He had gone no more than fifty feet when a man in canvas work clothes stepped from a clump of bushes ahead of him and said, "Sorry, sir, this area is temporarily closed to guests because of ragweed infestation."

"I was just interested in what was going on," Silverthorne said, continuing to approach. "What are you using to clear it out?"

He was fifteen feet away when his expression began to change. "Refet?" he said uncertainly.

The workman paused and said, "Yes, sir."

"Kiazim Refet? You worked for me in Noumea about a year and a half ago?"

"That is right, sir."

Silverthorne frowned and looked about him. They were alone. "You had a partner."

"Sakuda Matsujiro. He is here. We are on assignment, sir, and under Total Security." Refet saw Silverthorne's face beginning to register a not unfamiliar combination of unease and suspicion. "Our assignment has no relation to you, sir," he added with a slight smile.

"Certainly not," said Silverthorne, almost concealing his doubt. "But if you will report to me in Bungalow Twelve this evening, we may discuss the amazing mechanics of coincidence."

"We may discuss them only in the abstract, sir. I fear our orders were specific on that point. After all, you are on vacation."

"We shall see what fruit our discussion bears. Come at ten o'clock."

"If practical, sir."

Silverthorne started to correct him, then reconsidered. If they failed to appear, they could be found again. "Very well," he said. "You may return to your work."

He coolly turned his back on the Turkish assassin and strode back up the trail to the blockaded intersection. If his spine was tense, he gave no indication.

Refet did not wait for him to disappear, but melted silently back into the woods and was gone.

"Unless there is someone on the staff important enough to demand your attention, your assignment must be one of the guests. It would be interesting to try to find which one."

"We can only ask that you do not, sir," said Matsujiro. "Our job is not an easy one, with Park Security to watch out for, and with all respect you could best assist us by forgetting our presence here."

Silverthorne scowled. "You realize that I am several levels of rank above you," he said. "I could order you to give me all the details of your assignment."

Refet's lips parted slightly in a wolfish smile. "You could sir, but we would not answer you. Our orders came directly from Central—White priority. You should be aware that Central is not lightly disobeyed."

"Or interfered with," added his partner. "You have the power to command us in many things, but our first duty is to Central. We should not have been seen by you; in this we have failed. With this already against us, surely we could not willfully continue to disobey."

Silverthorne regarded the broad innocent face of the elderly Japanese with unallayed suspicion. "I have seen few guests here who are important enough to warrant your employment. You are valuable men."

"We are but humble workers; mere arms of Thrush Central and the Ultimate Computer."

"No compliment intended," Silverthorne said. "A statement of fact. You may be mere arms, but you are without exaggeration the finest assassins in the world."

"My friend Kiazim is indeed dexterous with weapons," said Matsujiro with a nod, "but I fear my poor talents are comparatively few. I was adjudged slow and clumsy by my masters in the Imperial Guard."

Refet's eyes crinkled at the corners. "You have snatched a flying arrow from its path before my very eyes," he said. "You have shattered stones with your bare hand and scaled walls a fly could not climb."

"Children's tricks," said Matsujiro flatly. "Truly I can accomplish things few men are capable of, but I have seen the true masters of my art and I know that I am indeed less than they."

"Very well, very well," said Silverthorne. "If you will not tell me what I wish to know, you need not attempt to impress me with either your skill or your modesty. I am quite aware of both. If I have any use for you, I shall contact you." He rose, and they followed.

Matsujiro bowed. "And if we are able to help you without lessening our chances of success in our assignment," he said, "we shall be only too happy. Good night, sir.

It was four days before Silverthorne had a reservation for the outside telephone line, and when his call was placed his first question concerned the two assassins.

"They're absolutely right, sir," said the Sydney satrap. "All we've seen here was the part of their orders saying Total Security and the UCR heading on the message. But we have Central's word that you are not their target.

"Thank you for your concern," he said with a trace of sarcasm. "Now what have you done about the business in Port Moresby?"

He was willing to accept the situation as it stood—he had no choice. But he would sleep easier with his windows wired and a chair propped under the doorknob, though he didn't mention that to Sydney.

Chapter 7

"Always The Easiest."

ILLYA LEANED BACK from his little playback unit and allowed himself the luxury of a deeply regretful sigh. His six-week vacation was scarcely half over, and it looked as if he would have to get back to work already. His almost instinctively planted bug in Silverthorne's cottage had caught a bigger fish than he'd had any reason to suspect, and his job was cut out for him until Waverly was safely away from Utopia.

So Silverthorne was a top executive for Thrush. Obviously, someone somewhere had recognized his description of the putative Mr. Dodgson, and a team of assassins had been neatly delivered accordingly. He remembered scanning Refet's file a couple of years before; though the face eluded his memory, the reputation had stayed with him. Matsujiro was a stranger, but his reputation was guaranteed by the company he kept.

He would save this tape cartridge for U.N.C.L.E.'s files; voice prints on all three men could prove valuable. Tomorrow he would find a way of picking up and replanting one of his bugs—probably the one from the table in the main dining room; Waverly used it only irregularly, usually being invited to join other groups at meals. The bug in the Security Office brought him nothing but two hours a night of worthless trivia played at double speed, but he'd put a lot of effort into planting it and hated to undo it all. Besides, it still might prove useful.

Now another of his carefully forged keys would be needed. The room the two men shared would probably work from the same master that would open his own—were it not for a slight individual change he had made in the lock the night he moved in.

He definitely did not look forward to meeting either of the gentlemen in person. Illya was well aware of his considerable abilities in the arts of self-defense, but he was equally aware of his limitations. He could break a pine board, but not a brick; his hands were too valuable for other purposes. Taking on either the Turk or the Japanese alone would have been a very chancy business—attempting to confront both simultaneously would only end in a badly shattered Russian and an unprotected Waverly.

He knew he'd have to find them. But this meant they might find him first. And if Waverly were left unprotected the entire assignment would have failed. In his small neat handwriting, he penned a brief memo addressed to Waverly, outlining the situation and describing the two assassins. He sealed the memo in an opaque envelope which he directed to
Leon Dodgson—#35
. This he sealed within a larger opaque envelope, and printed
Curley Burke
on the front. The old mechanic could be trusted to hold it without explanation, and would know enough to deliver the contents to Dodgson if anything happened to Illya.

To make sure it didn't would be nearly half his job. His policy must be one of covert interference unless something otherwise unblockable made the sacrifice necessary, and in that case he could at least reveal the assassins as he did so. He'd been told emphatically in New York, "Don't Make Waves." Which prevented him from killing them at once, and made his own secrecy even more important.

Illya opened his eyes after this moment of thought and saw that twenty minutes had passed by the desk clock since he had closed them. His legs were slightly stiff and his clothes clung to him uncomfortably. He rose, yawned widely, and put his electronic devices neatly in their nests. His alarm would go off in five hours, and today had been a long day. Bed waited, and his raveled sleeve of care badly needed knitting.

The next day was Wednesday, and Illya's duties for the day included the main dining hall. Switching the light bulbs was refreshingly easy, and the bug dropped into a safe pocket in his apron. It went from there to his locker half an hour later, and he picked it up there at the end of the afternoon shift before returning to his quarters.

He spent some time patrolling the corridor near the assassins' room until he had assured himself that both were out and likely to be gone for a while. When the hall was empty, he tested his master key and found it to work perfectly. In a moment he stood inside the darkened apartment, listening intently for any sound indicating discovery.

After a slow count of twenty, he extended his left arm far out to his side and flicked on the pencil flashlight he held. It drew no attack, and he swiveled the ghostly beam around the room. The double was a mirror reversal of his own single, with almost twice as wide a main room and a sofabed where one of them would sleep. The wall bracket fixture between the door to the bed room and the door to the bathroom seemed the best; centrally located, turned on by the switch at the door, it would probably be connected most of the time the room's occupants were present and awake.

Working quickly, the flash gripped in his teeth, Illya tilted the shade back and extracted the bulb it concealed. His other hand brought up the substitute and screwed it into place with brisk movements of his wrist. The shade was carefully replaced, with an exact eye matching the angle at which it had been found. He stepped back, checking his work critically, and decided it was acceptable. He turned and took two steps towards the door.

The sound of a key in the lock froze him where he stood for an instant, then sped his movements. An attack would tell them their cover had been blown, even if he could escape unrecognized himself. There was no other door in the apartment, and no windows. The air vents would scarcely admit his head. He knew of a certainty there was no other way out than the way in. He also knew that he could hide in the shower stall in the bathroom or the closet in the bedroom; whoever was returning would be slightly more likely to go first to the former. Also the latter would muffle any sound he made rather than amplifying it, and be a less exposed position, though farther away from the door.

This data had been correlated in one professional corner of his mind during the minutes since he had entered the room; now the decision went directly to his muscles almost as a reflex. He spun silently and sprinted for the bedroom door. He pushed aside the alternate uniforms and leisure clothes as he heard the outer door open and saw by reflection the front room lights go on. Listening intently as he crouched in the dimness of the closet, a slight smile crossed Illya's face—he would probably have a chance to hear in person the same sounds his newly placed unit would be playing back to him later this evening.

Now he heard soft footsteps whispering on the thin rug, coming into the bedroom. A series of rustling sounds brought to his mind the picture of a man undressing, and he dared to part the garments slightly for a quick look. He caught a glimpse of a wiry brown chest, crisscrossed with old scars, and the top of a shaggy black beard struggling through the neck of a shirt. A coat was already draped across the bed.

Illya ducked back and hoped the man was not compulsively neat about hanging up his clothes. Seconds later a slight jingling told him of trousers tossed to join the coat, and twin thumps of discarded shoes. Silence followed, and Illya's sharply focused hearing detected no sound until the sudden roar of waterpipes beside his head told him the Turk had turned on the shower. Now if he hadn't left a robe behind, or decided to come back for a fresh towel... Illya decided to count to fifty, slowly.

He was to thirty-five when a not-unpleasant baritone came softly through the wall over the thunder of the pipes, singing in very bad French a ballad which had recently been popular in Tokyo. Illya parted the clothes again and looked out. The bedroom was empty, and the lights were on. He made a lightning mental review of his actions since entering the room, and, sure he had left no trace behind, started for the door.

The singing continued, not loudly, as he entered the main room, paused directly beneath his bug, and daringly rapped it twice, lightly, with his fingernail, before venturing past the half-open bathroom door. Steam wreathed out to vanish in the cooler air of the room and, focusing all his attention on the distance to the door knob, Illya slipped across the space in a few light steps. The knob turned silently in his grip, the door opened a crack and he ducked through into the corridor with only a quick prayer that it would be deserted. It was as he came through, but his hand was still on the knob behind him as a girl in a crisp blue uniform came around the corner.

Without a flicker of reaction Illya completed the motion smoothly, looking straight past the girl as the latch closed softly. She gave him an incurious glance and passed by without breaking step. He scarcely bothered to test the knob as he turned in the direction from which she had come and walked off at his own pace.

He didn't check the bug again until long after dinner. He keyed it and caught the beginning of the Turk's solo, following several seconds later by a loud TAP TAP. Illya nodded slightly and shifted to fast forward, scanning for conversation as the sound of the shower kept the mike functioning. Some seconds whirred by, and then a twitter of speech stopped him. He wound back and heard:

"What did you find out?"

"Beyond a doubt it is Waverly. Ninety-eight percent, certainly.