The Utopia Affair - McDaniel David - Страница 23

"As a matter of fact, yes. There's apparently a conspiracy of some kind among the lower-ranking wives. I traced that greyhound back to a very large kennel where they breed racing dogs, and I'm sure there's a tie-in to the #4 wife in the Akhoond's harem."

"I see. And you're interviewing her now?"

"Good gosh, no. For one thing, it's too hard to get in to see her. For another, she's a little bit sharper than I feel up to handling. But her handmaiden, ah, has none of these drawbacks."

Napoleon bit his lip but kept his voice as even as Waverly's always was. "Very well, Mr. Harbeson. Report in when you're sure, and in the meantime try to carry yourself as a representative of the U.N.C.L.E."

"Don't worry, sir. I've always tried to pattern my behavior after the top field agents."

Solo sighed. "That will be all, Mr. Harbeson. Back to work."

"Good night, sir."

All he needed now was a few wiseacre agents. He answered the intercom.

"Mr. Whicker is here with the budget summary, and would like to discuss a few points with you."

"Fine. Send him in, but tell him he'd better be willing to be interrupted. This looks like one of those days."

As the door slid open another signal chirruped and Napoleon turned to answer it.

"Askandi here," the voice said over the background roar of what sounded like a helicopter engine. "On the Clipperton assignment. I'm onto something hot, but I need some items checked out. First: is there a factory ship named Deseado, home port Champerico, licensed to work this area? Secondly, even if it is licensed, who is it registered to? And thirdly, what are they doing looking for whales in these latitudes anyway?"

"All right, Mr. Askandi. We'll have the information for you in a few minutes." He flicked a tab. "Monitor?"

"Section Four has the questions, sir," said the cool female voice.

A blue light flashed to his left and he activated the vision screen. The round worried face of Carlo Amalfi faded in, and Napoleon greeted him. Without preamble the head of U.N.C.L.E. Europe began. "Mr. Solo, the Paris office has uncovered plans for an attack on the National Bank where most of France's gold stock is stored. The robbers are aware of our surveillance, and are probably working out ways of defeating us, but while they do we can strike at their roots. The support for the operation is American, the plan is apparently British. The London office is already working on it from that end; we'd like you to see what you can do towards giving us a third leg to stand on, so to speak."

"Certainly. What do you have?"

"The full report from Paris is coming through your duplicator at this moment. I can add only that the individual named as the source of financial support has been identified as a registered foreign representative for Rodney Turner Incorporated, which consists of one American with multifarious interests and little sign of any conscience. We suspect he may he investing in this."

Napoleon sorted through his memory and tagged a name. "We've had some interest in him since the Dallas office picked one of his branded matchbooks out of a trashbin behind the local Thrush nest. This may just give us a start towards nailing his hide to our wall."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sorry. An idiom from his culture. It means…"

"It is self-explanatory, in context. Is there anything we can help you with from here?"

Channel D signaled. "Not at the moment—unless you happen to have some forty-hour days I could borrow."

Carlo shrugged understandingly as the circuit was broken and the audio switched over.

"Buck DeWeese, Flin Flon. Mr. Solo?"

"Right here."

"Can you spare me a minute? Gene Coulson—the kid you sent up—is working out fine. We've got the corner of something very big here, I think. Have you seen the film we sent down?"

Film? He remembered the spool on his desk and glanced over to it, untouched. "Ah, not yet. But it is here." He wheeled his chair over to where he could reach it, and stretched to drop it into a slot in the side of the desk.

"Take a look at it and call me back. We've got a lot of stuff for your technical boys to chew on—footage of claw marks in the steel plates at the radar station, a duplicate of the film of the radar scope that tracked the thing, and a little bit of very shaky and underexposed Super-8 a woman shot of it. Now, I don't claim to know what it is yet—but I've lived around here for quite a while and I know a lot of things it isn't. It isn't a shadow, and it isn't a cloud, and it isn't dust and it isn't a lens reflection, a large bear or swamp gas. As for what it is, it's big, it's fast, it's mean and it kills people and tears buildings to pieces without working up a sweat. And it's real."

About halfway through this speech the rear-projection screen in his desktop flickered and an unsteady image appeared. The automatic circuitry functioned and the picture steadied. By the time DeWeese paused, Napoleon could see the marks that had been described. They were great vaguely triangular gouges in the heavy metal which gaped shattered and torn as though a berserker had gone over them with a huge, hooked, pointed sledgehammer.

"I, ah, have your film up at the moment," he said slowly. "I see what you mean about the claw marks."

"The substance is half-inch armor plate; I don't think we remembered to include a scale—the first big gash is nineteen inches long by three inches wide at the widest."

Solo didn't say anything. For the moment there didn't seem to be any appropriate comment.

The picture jumped slightly and became a fuzzy gray pattern which drifted from side to side almost imperceptibly. "Mr. DeWeese—the second part is the radar display?"

"Right. It's a real-time record; the thing appears about ten seconds in—that'll give you a chance to see a normal readout. It runs about eight minutes. Shall I hang on?"

"You may as well." The fuzzy gray pattern oscillated slowly from right to left, and a blob of light began to form at about seven o'clock, moving horizontally. And a chime sounded three times behind him.

Quickly he muted DeWeese's audio and, keeping one eye on the screen, answered the call. The voice was tense and urgent.

"Come in, New York—New York Headquarters come in please!"

"Solo here."

"Hong Kong. There's another riot, and this place is under heavy attack. I think there's a couple mortars out there—can you hear 'em?"

"We'll get you support inside four hours, Hong Kong. Nobody's available in force nearer than Osaka. Hold on!" He tapped a quick code and an illuminated map faded in on the wall. "I can authorize our team in Taiwan to help you out. They'll be there inside two hours." With one corner of his mind he observed that the blob of light had begun to move upward on the screen and seemed to be growing a little larger.

"We can hold out in here as long as the walls hold, sir," Hong Kong was saying. "Tell your Formosan boys to drop us a few hundred sandbags when they come over."

"Right. And two field arsenals are hereby authorized too."

"Thanks loads. I'll do something for you sometime." Napoleon let the map fade and said, "Monitor?" "Trust me, sir," said the familiar cool voice. He made a note to find out who it belonged to and seduce her when all this was over.

He opened the voice circuit on Channel D again and sank back to watch the radar trace and catch his breath. Suddenly he wondered if the embattled Hong Kong office had remembered to secure the sewer entrances. They would have, since he'd used them himself two or three times for business purposes.