Pulp Fiction | The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel (2 page)

"At your leisure, Mr. Solo, I should like to see the personal dossier I hear you have been compiling on Ward Baldwin."

The door hissed quietly closed behind him as he crossed to the bearing-mounted round table that dominated the large room. Napoleon Solo gave it a lazy turn, carrying a slim manila folder around to meet him as he approached. There was a red tab on the corner with no other markings.

"I took the liberty of bringing it with me. I don't have much of any real value, I'm afraid, but there are a few items towards the back you might not have seen."

Waverly sank into a black leather chair and opened the folder before him, glancing at the top sheet and sorting down through perhaps a bare score of pages, stopping to scan one from time to time.

Illya rose from the couch and sauntered towards the table. "Napoleon has been rather cagey with that. If I'm going to be involved in something with Baldwin again, I'd like to know a little more about him."

Solo suppressed a grin. "When I said that last year, you laughed."

Illya shrugged. "Nobody's perfect. May I?"

"The top sheet is a fax from the 1964 edition of
Who's Who in the Physical Sciences
, and it took a fair amount of finding all by itself. The blank spaces are sketched in with the rest of the folder," Napoleon said, and Waverly nodded.

"Have a seat, Mr. Kuryakin, and read this."

Illya accepted the slick fax page and studied it as he lowered his hundred and fifty pounds into a convenient chair.

BALDWIN, WARD FRASER: b. January 17, 1895, San Francisco, Calif. Son of Fraser Elliot and Vera Ward (Russell). Educ. Lowell H.S., 1910; B.S. Univ. of Calif., 1914 (Feb.); Rhodes Scholar, 1914;...

Illya subtracted, and canted his eyebrows as he looked up. "A Rhodes scholar at nineteen. Impressive."

M.S. Oxon. (Lincoln Coll.) 1918; D.Sc. Trinity College (Dublin Univ.), Hon, 1935, Acad. 1936.

"And twice a Doctor of Science," said Napoleon. "In Chemistry, by the way."

Mil. Serv.: Inns of Court Volunteers 1914-15; seconded to Chem. Warf. Dept., R.A.O. Depot Woolwich, 1916; Disch. (Brev. Maj.), 1919. Instructor in Chemistry, Trinity College, Dublin, 1920-21. Research Consultant...

Waverly cleared his throat. "Baldwin left Trinity involuntarily in 1921 when he was deported for his activities with the Irish Republican Army, which would probably make an interesting chapter in their own right. Both his American and his British Military passports were endorsed against entry into Ulster. In fact, he did not return to Ireland until 1935 to receive that honorary D.Sc.; once there he applied for residency and academically validated the degree in one year."

Illya nodded and glanced down the long list of firms which had availed themselves of Baldwin's services. Mr. Waverly's dry voice sped his eye past the list, saying, "Very few American or European chemical firms are
not
listed here. Baldwin's knowledge certainly is of recognized commercial value."

"Among my collection of trivia," Napoleon added, "you may also find that in the I.R.A. his code name was Asmodeus."

Illya paused, then smiled. "The limping devil. Appropriate." He returned to the brief biographical note.

Fellow Royal Chemical Society, Fellow American Society of Chemical Engineers, Member President's Council on Chemical Pollutants. Civilian Advisor, U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Dept. 1940-45. Author: 'The Future of Chemical Warfare' (1918); 'Comparative Morphogenetic Effects of Multivariable Halide Receptivity' (Doc. Th.) (1936);...

"I know what 'comparative' means, at least," Napoleon said wryly.

"I know what all of it means," said Illya. "I wish I didn't."

'Internal Combustion or Urban Habitability: A Choice (1960); others. Holder of 157 current Royalty Patents, U.S., Brit. and Intl. Married Irene Sarah Wrayne Sept. 1943. No offspring. Clubs: University (San Francisco), Commonwealth, Bohemian. Residence: Alamo Square, San Francisco.

Illya finished and raised his eyes from the paper. "I don't think Thrush is supporting him at all. I wouldn't be surprised to find him tithing to them and supporting all his own operations as well. What did he do in the I.R.A.?"

"Practical research in explosives, I believe," said Waverly. "The latter part of his military career took him under cover for the first time, and he seems to have developed a taste for it."

"Nice to see a man happy in his work," said Napoleon. "He joined Thrush about 1921, then, almost as soon as he came to this country. Whether his contacts in the Irish Rifleman's Association placed him or whether he wandered into it on his won I haven't really established; they may just have felt themselves drawn together. There's a page or two on operations we can definitely link with him—bits and pieces here and there about the world. He took over complete command of Thrush operations in San Francisco in 1954."

Illya said, "Hm. I'd gotten the impression he'd been running things there since just after the Earthquake."

"Well, he was born there long enough ago to remember it."

A buzzer sounded softly at Waverly's desk and a light flashed. Napoleon rose to fetch the bundle which had just arrived, and placed it before his chief. "It took them long enough to retrieve King's information packet from the dead files—that request went in over eight minutes ago. Here's all King left behind him when he changed sides."

"You accept Baldwin's story, then?"

Napoleon shrugged. "Politically or metaphysically, he changed sides. Here's the identification pairs of the corpse clipped in..." He studied the sheets side by side for a moment, and nodded. "They matched three years ago—they still match. No reason to think it could have been a ringer. Dental chart, retinal pattern, fingerprints, as much of the Bertillion code as was left to measure.... Anyway, here's his top sheet." He read aloud.

KING, JOSEPH: born 27 May 1929, Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Family name Koenig, anglicized when emigrated in 1935. Education: Stuyvesant H.S., 1947; B.S. Mass. Inst. Tech., 1950; M.S. 1952. Employed by UNCLE as Lab Tech 1952, Research Asst. 1952 in Electronics, Chem. Engineering, Nuclear Sections; Subhead Physics 1954; Physics Chief 1957; Lab Chief 1961. Deceased—Line of Duty, 12 January 1965.

"He took over as Lab Chief just about the time you got here, Illya, and you worked with him on and off as I recall. How would you describe him? Not physically—mentally. Compare him to Mr. Simpson, for instance, in the same job."

"Nothing at all alike," said Illya slowly. "King was dedicated, dogged, a methodical worker; he knew practically everything and didn't care about any of it. Simpson is an inspired tinkerer, is aware of
everything
and fascinated by all of it."

Waverly nodded. "I've often felt instinct should be allowed to play a larger role in both hiring and advancement. Still, King did some fine work for us. He developed the modulation system for your communicators in 1953, and their powerpacks are derived from his original work in 1960."

"And then there was the PAR," Illya said. "We never did anything with that after it cooked him."

"That was the Scrooch Gun—the thing that blew things apart, wasn't it," said Napoleon untechnically.

"Essentially, yes," said Illya. "The Particle Accelerator Rifle used a series of charged coils to accelerate a mass two or three mil in diameter to a small but significant fraction of the speed of light. Because of the muzzle velocity the effect was about equal to an anti-tank shell at any range you cared to try and the trajectory was the line of sight for all practical purposes. King's only problems were the power supply and reducing the control circuitry to practical dimensions."

"And a tendency to backfire."

"Well, there was that. But a specific amount of energy takes a definite amount of shielding that could not be miniaturized without violating some very basic laws of physics. Apparently a stray radio frequency set off a backlash which developed positive feedback in a few dozen cycles and boiled his blood and fused the power coils solid before a safety cutoff could function."

Napoleon made a face.

"Well, you were there. It was at Site Delta, during his third run of field tests."

"I was there," Solo admitted reluctantly. "I'd just put it out of my mind. But since you'd brought it back, I've started wondering. All three of us were watching the whole thing on television monitors. How in the name of John Dickson Carr could King have gotten out of there?"

"He has a point, sir," said Illya. "Not only was the firing area under constant observation throughout the time, but we were there with the first investigating party no more than three minutes later, and he was still warm. Though under the circumstances..." He paused, and thought better of continuing.

"That was the subject of some conjecture on my part," said Waverly, "and I have reserved judgment during the search for evidence. The identification pairs are perfect—much of his face had been sloughed but his eyes were undamaged, as were the fingerprints of his left hand. And the identification is more than positive; it is perfect."

"How much of the Bertillion was checked?"

"Nearly everything but the face and ears. It didn't check out one hundred percent, but ninety-four is passing when the measurements are four years old."

"Uh-huh." Napoleon nodded. "I think I'd like to take a look at that test again. We made a film off the videotape, didn't we?"

Waverly looked at Illya, who shook his head. "Frankly, sir, I haven't the least idea. The project was dropped after the accident, so there was no reason to save much pertaining to it. King never kept more than the most skeletal notes on paper and carried all the essentials in his head. When that got scrambled, there was no way of going into what he might have done wrong."

"It might still be worth checking. Since we computerized Section Four they save everything but string. I'll put a tracer on it and see what they find."

He took the gray handset from under the edge of the table and tapped a code number on the keys, then spoke in a clear, precise tone, spacing his words carefully. "Search—Particle, Accelerator, Rifle—cross-index King, Joseph. January, 1965." He raised his glance to Napoleon and Illya, shielded the mouthpiece and explained, "Records Retention is experimenting with a voice-programmed retrieval system. Sometimes it works."

He dropped his eyes and raised his voice. "Film," he said, and looked up again. "There is only one entry."

"We'll have to go in there," murmured Solo, and shrugged at Illya's puzzled glance while Waverly addressed the voice-programmed retrieval system as he would a retarded child. "Film. Of final test on P, A, R." He listened a moment and nodded. "Very good. Delivery."

A few seconds later he said, "Waverly here. Your automated filing cabinet has a film clip which I would like sent to my office. Thank you."

He replaced the handset and said, "Something which may or may not fit any of the categories I requested is on its way up. A possibility has just come to mind..."

"A theory?"

"It is a capital mistake to theorize with insufficient data," Waverly quoted. "The evidence pending should, however, prove sufficient."

"And if it proves he could not have gotten out alive?"

Waverly cleared his throat and reached for his pipe. "In that case, Mr. Kuryakin, we reserve judgment. King was—or is—a remarkably clever man, and I do not flatter myself there is no possible trick I could fail to see through."

An alarm bell shattered the momentary silence of the office, and the three looked at each other with wild surmise until Napoleon said, "It's an alarm bell."

By that time Waverly had switched the television monitor to the corridor where the signal had originated. An agent was doubled over in the middle of the hall, near a manual alarm box; as they watched he fell to the floor and tried to crawl towards an open door.

"He's been poisoned," Illya said.

Before the last word left his lips three more alarms sounded, followed in moments by a clamor of others. The telescreen flashed from one hall to another, to women and men stumbling dizzily, clutching at doorhandles, staggering and falling, gasping with pain.

"It's in the air!"

Neck muscles tensed and diaphragms contracted even as their minds realized the symptoms would have already manifested themselves and ordered breathing resumed—though carefully at first.

"No it's not," said Napoleon. "Look. Nobody in the offices is affected." And indeed figures were visible standing just inside open doorways, though some held their heads and leaned heavily or sat down.

"Nobody?" said Illya. "I don't know about you, but my head suddenly feels stuffed up—and I had my annual cold in March."

Napoleon registered sudden concern. "It's my stomach," he said, matter-of-factly. "No, my chest. But it's not getting any worse."

"It may," said Illya. "At any moment."

Chapter 2: "My Teeth Itch."

Napoleon was already on his feet and heading for the door. It zipped open before him, but he paused before venturing past the portal. Then, with Illya just behind him, he stepped cautiously into the deserted hall, filled with the clangor of the alarms. Waverly was at his desk, communication circuits abuzz with questions and generally negative answers.

"It's not radiation anywhere in the electromagnetic spectrum as far as we can tell," was one hedging answer. "At least nothing we can detect."

"The air is still testing pure," came another answer, "at least as pure as it ever does considering where we get it."

"Even if there was somebody invisible running up and down the halls knocking people out, we'd detect him by mass, by body heat, by smell..." said a disconcerted security officer. "There's nobody there—I guarantee that personally!"

As Napoleon stuck his neck out a wave of nausea swept over him. He clenched his teeth, fixed his eyes on a closed door twenty feet away, and put as much effort as he could summon into a dash for it. The panel zipped open a fraction of a second slow and his right shoulder banged painfully into it as he reeled into the conference room and collapsed into a chair, gasping. Illya followed a second later, twisting his body sideways to miss the returning door and letting it close behind him.