Pulp Fiction | The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel (7 page)

At last the stately procession wound out and the audience rose to follow in ragged lines, clotting in murmuring groups in the foyer of the gymnasium. The UNCLE party, led by Solo, was passing unnoticed among them when a bright voice rang out above the babble.

"Oh, Napoleon! Hi there!"

It was Chandra again, her pale face framed in dark hair and a large circular hat. Deftly she floated towards them, saying, "I thought I'd run into you here. Doesn't Ward look fine in his robes?"

Mr. Waverly squinted up at Napoleon, who shifted his weight as he absorbed the last rhetorical question. He fell back on the proprieties. "Mr. Waverly, I'd like to introduce Chandra Reynolds. Chandra, this is my, ah, boss. And this is my partner, Illya Kuryakin."

Her eyes fastened on Alexander Waverly and shone with innocent delight. "So
you're
the person who keeps Mr. Solo so busy all the time! He's really a very good agent, honestly."

Napoleon choked on his tongue and got an unreadable look from Illya. Recovering, he said, "Ah, Chandra's
husband
, Ed, is with the Archaeology Department here. I ran into them in Cape May. In New Jersey. Last month when I was down there. You remember..."

"I take it you know Ward Baldwin," said Waverly, with an odd smile.

"
Know
him? Why, I love him! Even though I do know him better than anyone but Irene, I still love him." Her voice dropped just a bit. "They sort of adopted me, a long time ago. They taught me nearly everything I know. Irene is closer to me than my own mother." Like Baldwin, she gave the name its British pronunciation, with all three vowels long.

"You knew Ward Baldwin last month in Cape May, then."

"Oh, Napoleon, I
am
sorry, but Ward made us both promise not to tell you he was there until he'd taken one more chance to talk directly to the Council. You didn't even get there until six days after he'd left, and I thought he'd be back any minute. Irene had told me what was happening, and we agreed he ought to see you as soon as possible. She said I should keep you around until Ward got back, but then you took off."

Napoleon glanced embarrassedly at Illya and Waverly and said, "Well, I thought he'd be back and would have stayed, but I was ordered to Philadelphia."

Chandra shook her head. "Irene told me all about it before Ward did. He was awfully upset with you—he insists the Council was on the verge of finding in his favor, even though the Computer was against him—honestly, sometimes he thinks the thing has a personal grudge—and you charged in waving your guns and yelling."

Illya stared. "I never yelled," he said. "Did you?"

"Illya, you should know me better than that. What's more, my gun never even left my holster."

"Neither did mine. In the excitement I forgot to draw."

Chandra laughed, a bright tinkle. "I told Ward I didn't believe him about that—I told him what I thought of you, Mr. Solo, and told him just why you couldn't have done anything that simply."

Illya asked, as if he were changing the subject, "I don't suppose Ward told you what happened then?"

"Well, he escaped."

"Did he tell you how?"

"Yes—but I don't believe that either."

There was a pause. "So then he just came up here a little earlier to get ready for classes," she concluded.

"I'll bet you found him the job."

"Not exactly—Ed talked the Science Department into inviting him to come for a semester three years ago; he's just been too busy until this nonsense with King came up. He really likes it here—he's made progress on lots of things he's been putting aside for years, and the weather seems to agree with him."

"It wouldn't dare disagree," muttered Napoleon.

Chandra laughed again. "That's just what Irene said two weeks ago."

"Is she here?" Illya asked, glancing around.

"No, she's hiding somewhere. She and Ward nearly had words about his refusing to get in touch with you, and they compromised on that hint she left. But she's still worried that King may find him and she wants to keep an escape route open. Even Ward doesn't know where she is. But they keep in touch."

Napoleon realized something else and gave voice to a grievance. "You even knew about Baldwin night before last. You let me tramp half the streets of Burlington talking to people who probably thought I was some kind of nut. You probably would have let me go on for a week."

"No I wouldn't, silly," she said affectionately. "Ward made me promise not to give you any more hints after you got here. But I'd promised myself if you hadn't found him in five days I would have given you a little clue. That was why Ed invited you to come to the campus—you had a better chance of running into him accidentally. And he wasn't really mad at you any more, he was just used to the idea that he was. See? If you'd spent more time relaxing and less time working, you would have found him a lot sooner."

There was another pause—a longer one, broken at last by Waverly. "Would you care to come with us to his office, Mrs. Reynolds?"

"Oh, he's not at his office—he's out at the Bomb Shop. He asked me last night to meet you here and direct you to it."

"Hm. He seems to know my plans before I do." Waverly released a rare chuckle. "Let's go see him and find out when I am expected."

* * *

"Actually, Mr. Solo, I had expected you two days earlier. Irene told me she saw Mr. Kuryakin on Monday, and I gave you Tuesday to interpret her communication."

"I arrived Tuesday, sir, but out cryptanalysis section wouldn't get more specific than Vermont."

"You needn't have searched the entire state. This is the University, after all—you would hardly have expected to find me grubbing about back in the woods."

"Well, since your life was in danger, we weren't sure..."

"Nonsense. My life has been in danger ever since it began. I have simply learned to take reasonable precautions."

"I'd be interested to know what you consider 'reasonable precautions'," Illya said.

Baldwin pointed at the open door of the Bomb Shop, where a signboard the height of the doorway and eighteen inches wide hung. In red on white, it was headed ATTENTA! PERICOLO! Beneath this, the English read DANGER—KEEP OUT. In only slightly smaller letters, the rest of the sign started with
Peligro, Gefahr, Fare, Perigo, Veszely
and
Primejdie
; worked its way through Cyrillic and Green characters, ran down past
Opasnost, Niebezpieczenstwo, Bahaja
and
Tehlike
; included samples of the more popular Oriental scripts and trailed off into three alphabets even Illya didn't recognize.

The five of them sat around a small but comfortably furnished room which filled the front quarter of the converted Quonset hut that housed one of the best-planned chemical research labs of its size the UNCLE visitors had seen; they'd spent the better part of an hour being shown around by its proprietor, designer and chief occupant before he would consent to talk business. It had been Chandra, finally, who had insisted on a cup of tea and refused to drink it standing up.

With the tea had come the long-awaited conversation. The clear Vermont sun streamed in the door to ease the slight chill, and eventually Illya brought up Topic A. "Well," he said casually, "how are things with Thrush?"

"Not well, I fear," said Baldwin. "There are twelve other candidates besides myself and King. Since your ill-timed intrusion in Philadelphia, attempts have been made on the lives of eight. For valid reasons every attack has failed, but each has left some indication that either your forces were or I personally was responsible." He paused. "I'm also stung by the assumption that I would repeatedly fail in such a simple task as an assassination."

"King wouldn't be likely to fail if he didn't want to," Chandra observed. "I think you ought to get right to work with whatever Mr. Waverly can tell you about what they've been doing and figure out what they're likely to do if they find you. After all, if UNCLE knows, the rest of the world soon will."

Baldwin nodded. "I'd planned to, Chandra." He levered himself up from his chair. "Would you be a good girl and clean up the tea things? We must get over to my office for the case. Perhaps we could make a test run this afternoon. I take it, Mr. Waverly, that you could spare us a few hours—I may be able to offer you some detailed advice later." He took his mortarboard from the end table, balancing himself on an ebony-and-staghorn cane Napoleon thought he recognized. "For that matter, if you could spare us the evening, there will be a dance in connection with the opening of the football season."

Chandra sparkled at Napoleon and Illya. "Oh,
do
come! We just got a new shipment from Cape May, and Ed will be cataloguing it until midnight. And I'm just
no
help at something like that. I'll need someone to be with until he gets there. Napoleon, you
will
escort me, won't you?"

Illya gave him a look. "How about me?" he said.

"Oh, Mr. Kuryakin, I'm sure we'll be able to find someone for you. So many young men are away in the war."

Illya looked her right in the eye. "Some of us are at war right here," he said.

Napoleon caught the edge in his tone and said, "As a matter of fact, Dr. Fraser's secretary is cute. Dark hair, good figure..."

"Miss Stier? You may see her at my office. Good afternoon, Chandra—and thank you."

Baldwin led the way from the Bomb Shop across stubbly grass to the street. There was a light breeze, and the air was clean enough to flush the last city air from their lungs. Baldwin's black overcoat with the Astrakhan collar stumped along in contrast to Waverly's slightly shorter camelshair as Napoleon and Illya took up a fifty-yard lead after a moment spent saying goodbye to Chandra.

"What precisely do you have to show us?" Alexander Waverly asked.

Baldwin's voice was made harsher and less even by the strain of walking, but he answered. "When I left San Francisco, Waverly, I was fleeing for my life. I was able to bring very little with me, so I chose the most valuable items I could lay my hands on at once. They are valueless to you and could never be sold, but they may yet defeat King, even with Central and the Ultimate Computer itself behind him."

Waverly nodded and pondered Baldwin's words like a riddle. "You carried these with you, I assume."

"In an attache case. Program tapes copied from limited access areas through my Satrap Satellite, containing data on Strategic Programming, Operational Coding, Basic Field Directives and other topics of practical interest. With the help of the campus computer facility..."

"... You have a good probability of predicting what direction their future actions will take. Unless they are aware of your possession of the copies."

"They aren't," said Baldwin simply.

Napoleon and Illya hurried up beside them, and Napoleon said, "Chandra asked if you'll want your electric cart driven over to Williams or if you'll walk back here. She said if you want it, call her—she's going to stay there and tidy up for a while."

"Thank you, Mr. Solo. I shall probably want it sent over. The width of the campus is quite a fair walk in one direction."

"It's nice to see you well, sir," said Illya.

"I'm feeling refreshed by my return to the academic world, Mr. Kuryakin—and the climate here seems to agree with me."

Napoleon started to say something almost involuntarily, but caught a fierce look from Illya and bit his tongue.

They wound along concrete walks past the gray-stone fortress of Converse Hall and came into a newer, larger Quad. Williams Hall, along with its neighbors, backed on its west side facing the older square where stately old trees shed their motley leaves on the deep green grass. Here, in contrast, patches of earth were still bare. The young saplings were scarcely free of their supports, and seemed hardly to know what to do with their foliage now that the weather was turning chill.

It was Illya, ever alert, who first observed the man in the dark suit following them.
Sotto voce
, he informed the other members of his party.

"The one in the ill-fitting brown suit?" asked Baldwin without turning round. "Is he wearing a blue-and-gray striped tie?"

"I can't tell at this distance," said Illya. "Friend of yours?"

"Hardly. My friends have better taste, as a rule. No, I suspected him of more than scholarly interest in my activities yesterday."

"I could let the rest of you go on ahead while I go back to talk to him," the Russian agent offered.

"That shouldn't be necessary, Mr. Kuryakin. Among my reasonable precautions I have established defensive systems about the campus." He scanned the horizon figuratively, then started off towards Williams Hall again. "Since the curious gentleman is still following us, I shall act on my suspicions." He raised his stick and hailed a hulking young man in a bright green-and-gold windbreaker.

They passed the time of day and exchanged opinions on the football team's chances for success in the impending season, while Illya and Napoleon shifted their weight from one foot to the other and exchanged murmurs with Waverly. Then Baldwin said, "By the way, Mr. Whalen, I have been hearing rumors about football spies from Crawford Academy. Have any of your friends mentioned this possibility?"

"Well, I did hear something about that..."

"I would discount those rumors, myself, but for the fact that the gentleman over there was standing near the practice field yesterday afternoon with binoculars and a notepad. I observed at the time that his tie bore Crawford's colors."

"You mean the guy in the brown?" Whalen glanced suspiciously over Baldwin's shoulder. "He doesn't look like he belongs around here. Wonder what he's looking for. Maybe I ought to go ask him. Thanks, Dr. Fraser."

Whalen nodded to the three UNCLE representatives and wandered off at a right angle to their path. Illya glanced at Baldwin. "You just launched a self-directing guided muscle from one of your defense systems, didn't you."

Baldwin looked pained. "Has it occurred to you, Mr. Kuraykin, that the longer Thrush believes we are ignorant of their surveillance, the better? I understand your thirst for physical action, but I beg you do not indulge it at the expense of my security."