The Final Affair - McDaniel David - Страница 21

Napoleon took over the narration. ?I was in the middle of Kanghwa when I got the message. It was supposed to have stopped at the anmor~ base but I got it about fifteen minutes before the attack. I didn’t really think about it much —and I don’t remember any of the battle very clearly. but that was when r won my silver star. Anyway. she was buried a month before I came home.

And a few weeks later, Captain Kowalski got in touch with me —he’d been my superior in Korea —and talked for about two hours about what I wanted to do with my life. At that point, I didn’t know. I’d known pretty well what I’d wanted to do, but it all included Joan. And then she wasn’t there anymore.

Captain Kowalski told me a little bit about U.N.C.L.E. and said they’d asked him to come to me as a friend, and present their offer. They gave a wide choice of college curricula for which they would pay and offered me, in addition to a full scholarship with a little spare cash on the side, a guarantee of at least a year’s trial employment at a good Starting salary when I graduated. And an opportunity to do something really constructive with my life, which somehow seemed to matter a lot to me right then.

“Was thert’any roore?” Mr. Waverly asked Joan.

“Not really. I spent about six weeks being debriefed of everything I knew about Napoleon, and then they gave me a three month vacation all over 5outh America. It didn’t really help much. They didn’t let me keep anything that would remind me of you, naturally. But they didn’t have the memory blocks then, and I never let anyone know that I remembered everything about you ?- that I could never forget you.?

“I didn’t exactly pine away. I stayed busy one place and another.” She hesitated. “I married another Thrush in 1957 ?- he was a chemical engineer.

We were reasonably happy together, though of course there’s no such thing as a quiet home life when you work for Thrush. We weren’t in one place more than two years the whole time. He died almost three years ago —in an industrial accident. About six months ago, I was starting to go out of my mind in a routine job as a lab secretary in the psychogenic section, so I reapplied for active field status. My record looked good, I passed the physical, and training was a snap. I always kept in shape.” She flexed herself and Napoleon grinned.

‘I’ve been in San Francisco for more than a year. Baldwin knows all about my connection with you, and he knows you were supposed to mean nothing to me.

But he told me when I started to work there that if you ever came west of the Rocky Mountains again he would ship me to Madagascar until you were gone.

He’s suspicious of the Computer, but he trusts its accuracy. And sometimes I think he can read minds. Because I’ve known for —well, at l~t two years that if I had the chance I’d come over to your side to be with you —if you!d have me.”

“Ah —I —well, I can’t tell yet. I mean, we’ve both changed a lot in eighteen years. I’ve been through a lot. and I don’t know how much I’ll be like what you remember.”

“Are you willing to try for a few weeks and see? After all. we’re like old friends reunited. We’ll have to find out if the old spark is still there.”

“It may be awhile before anything can be done about that,” Napoleon said.

We’re sort of in the middle of something very important, and I don’t know whether you can do much more than sit in a room and occasionally be guided to the commissary for meals. You’ll have a TV and books and whatever else you want, but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to move around much.”

“If you’ll come and see me once a day, 1‘11 be happy.”

-Illya stared at his oblivious partner. Alexander Waverly drummed his knobbly finger$ restlessly on the black leather tabletop.

Ward Baldwin sat at a rolltop desk and scowled at the autopsy report on the two corpses found downstairs this morning. Stevens had been shot full of their finest Mickey Finn and the post-mortem had shown a sufficient amount .

still in his bloodstream to have kept him in solid slumber for another five hours. Yet by all the evidence dutifully recorded on the scene and reported to him, this man had somehow jimmied his door —which was not impossible to a sober, alert man with sufficient ability —gotten out and down the corridor during an unexplained malfunction which had blanked that particular camera at that particular moment. and had the strength and stamina to overcome and disarm a guard after having been shot in the back. Or perhaps the guard. with two bullets in him. had finally gotten his rifle aimed. and released the fatal shot.

But Stevens should have been incapable of consciousness. let alone coherent thought. let alone this intense and coordinated display of physical activity. Even granting his miraculous immunity to whatever was used on him.

the coincidence of the television monitor malfunction was just too much to take.

He flipped a toggle beside his speaking horn. “Robin’. would you order printouts of Harry Steven’s medical reports from last night? And find out who followed him down when they put him to sleep. Then request a polygraph operator to my office for two this afternoon. I will have a team of medical technicians to interview.”

“Certainly. sir. Will you want me to postpone Mr. Shimbu’s appointment?

He can be very unpleasant about waiting.”

“Ask him to come at one. The support of the Black Panthers in this city is invaluable. though they are sometimes less than cooperative. If it weren’t for the progress of construction on the TransAmerica Building. I’d wait and do it myself.”

“You have a Pascual Lopez Sanchez scheduled for two-thirty…”

“Put him off until tomorrow. I loath the thought of him. but he won1t 90 back to Barcelona without seeing me. Why they sent this butcher to pollute my satrapy…”

“Two o’clock Friday?”

“1 suppose. Full security. of course. He’s a treacherous dog.”

“Mr. Steven’s final pre-narcosis interview was conducted by Joan Perry; she reported r.:J understandable verbalizations.”

“Is there a tape of the noises made?”

“No.”

“Call Miss Perry, Perhaps she can reproduce some of his mumbles. I’d like to know as much as possible about Mr. Steven’s last few hours on earth.”

“She checked out. Emergency leave. Her mother broke her hip. She had nine days coming. Should I still call her?”

“Local?”

“Iowa City.”

“Never mind. She’s competent: if she said he was unintelligible. then he was. A pity he wasn’t a higher priority case. I may call her later. We’ll see what ballistics says. after all. before I leap to the unwarranted conclusion that U.N.C.L.E. has been sneaking into my top secret areas in the small hours —a disquieting thought. to say the least.”

Baldwin’s disquietude faded as he passed on to other reports. but concern over the grotesque charade in his basement occupied half his mind.

CHAPTER TEN

“You’d Better Humor Him.”

Illya was left to his own devices for the next few days. Mr. Waverly had politely declined Joan’s offer of information, rather to her surprise, but she and Napoleon found many things to talk about privately. The sunroof of the U.N.C.L.E. office was now barred to them because its view of the hills .

and the bay worked both ways, and anyone with a good telescope could have identified them from any of a dozen public prominences; nevertheless, while the electronic synapses of the Ultimate Computer were being quietly unraveled and copied, they were all three under effective house arrest. Joan’s green triangle badge allowed her escorted access to lower security areas, and Napoleon spent a lot of time being her escort.

The flow of data from U1Comp’s vast storage was increasing as more paths were opened, and the Terminal Gang unofficially expected they would soon find some indication of the geographic positions of all three Central Units; when these were located, specific action could be taken to strike at all three ganglia simultaneously. Napoleon and Illya had been promised an active part in this final resolution of Thrush, but until that promise flowered. they had only rooms and corridors to pace and walls to stare at.