[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Global Globules Affair - Latter Simon - Страница 24

As they joined him, Mr. Waverly said: "Sit down, Mr. Kovac, sit down."

Randy trod air, savoring this delicious moment of dream-come-true—lovely dreams of Mr. Waverly sending for Mr. Kovac's brilliant self, saying: "Sit down." Juniors didn't sit down. Top agents did—in fact, all top people—but not juniors. Randy eased gently down as if testing a hot bath.

Mr. Waverly was on the direct Washington line. They couldn't hear what he was saying because he spoke through the cowl sound diffuser attached to his earphones. As he waited for replies to his long conversation, he glanced at Randy.

"That was the sum-total of your follow-through, Mr. Kovac?"

"Yes, sir—er—except..."

"Cough it up, laddie," said Mark. "You're in to your ears already. We can only shoot you once."

Randy gulped. "Well, sir—I didn't have authority to phone Paris."

"I bet you tried!" April chuckled.

"The operator wouldn't put me through. I had to work through our foreign department. I wanted to find out what other business the French company owned. We could only find one."

"A couturiere?" said April.

Randy beamed at her. "That's right—only I couldn't pronounce it properly. The Healthfare Company own 'Dores'—a fashion shop on the Rue Rivoli. How did you guess that?"

"You'll learn in this fascinating game of ours that one little 'click' sets off lots of other 'clicks'," she assured him. "They build up to a big bang if you keep clicking on the right lines. Like your lines clicking to a center. See what kept clicking after it? So it clicks with me that some expert dressmaker, tailor or, as in France, a couturiere establishment must make up that metal-dress gear. Someone they had control of—not a contract job."

Mr. Waverly held up his hand for silence. They waited. At last he removed the head stall and swung around to face them.

"The password is PHAGOCYTE."

April tapped her forehead with a knuckle and frowned.

"Something meaning ... guarding the system against infection by absorbing microbes." She laughed. "Very neat."

Mr. Waverly inched a smile at her.

"Are we not? So now—let us to work." He looked at Randy Kovac. "You will remember we are a team, Mr. Kovac. No one person is greater, or lesser, than that team. The discovery of one part is the discovery of all parts leading to a conclusion of the whole by the whole. In this context we each have one moment of glory. Let us assume you have had yours. All responsibility for it is now lifted from you. But we shall not forget that moment. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right," said Mr. Waverly. "We will pass to the action briefing room. Operation Phagocyte has already commenced."

CHAPTER TEN: KEEP FINGER OFF BUTTON!

WHAT began as a hunch became an open bluff which led to an assignment, which in turn erupted into an international project. From such small beginnings do world wars escalate. All who worked for and with the U.N.C.L.E. organization never lost sight of this possibility. Its agents were, of course, constantly at war. They lived with its menace, saw the dangers in many seemingly ordinary incidents in all parts of the world which could, if linked together, form a pattern of destruction on an international scale.

As highly trained, skilled and experienced agents they were trusted and given wide latitude. At their back stood the vast defense machine of their country and the world network of associates and similar organizations with whom it worked. But at all times they were individuals. They did not march in formations. They did not wear uniforms. They did not salute superior ranks. They combined the freedoms of the buccaneering adventurer with the calculating brain of the modern espionage agent and the discipline of the finest service personnel.

To an outsider they might appear casual, or even irresponsible. They were disrespectful in many attitudes towards their respective establishments. They suffered the small irritations of administration departments, such as querying footling items on expense sheets, with tolerant good humor, but fools who sabotaged their sometimes desperate efforts in the field were blatantly derided or ignored, no matter what their Civil Service rank. All top agents possessed an intuitive sense sharpened by often bitter experience, so in many instances could not file in triplicate a report that would satisfy a chair-borne general.

They tried not to break civil laws, but of necessity had to "bend" many in the interests of that greater and over riding "law of national preservation". Thus all their efforts were sublimated to defense of country, which itself was a defense of world peace. And at times, the only form of defense is attack.

General assignment agents tried always to work from within the enemy areas, to infiltrate, to sabotage local activities, to link the improbable with the possible and break the power of an encircling movement. Divide and rule is an old maxim. U.N.C.L.E. agents often divided local power groups, splitting them so that they could more easily be destroyed, so weakening and finally snapping the power of their leaders.

Action begets action. What was seen in a London street moved through personal contacts to violent destruction on an English moorland, thence to a French forest. Escalation of action was a natural result, always so for agents such as April Dancer, Mark Slate, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. Enforcement officers might be their official title, back here at Del Floria's tailor shop in the brownstone house under the shadow of the United Nations building. But from a London street to a New York street—the hunch had come home, to where the ultimate danger lay somewhere in an Arizona desert.

With all forces alerted it was inevitable that the administration should conform to "procedure" that almost biblical word voiced unctuously along with the well-beloved phrase "usual channels". Insert a two-letter word—by—and you have the awe-filling phrase—"procedure by usual channels". Lengthily translated this means: "There are one helluva lot of us guys being paid one helluva lot of money and we are all going to put our itchy noses into this affair and shall require one helluva lot of memos duly signed, counter-signed, classified and passed to you for urgent attention, before we can move one goddamn man, tank, plane, troop carrier, gun, gas bomb, radio, scout car or portable latrine."

Which was one reason why April Dancer and Mark Slate sat on an olive-sage hill in the hot, dry olive-sage area of Little Basin, Arizona.

"Mr. Alexander Waverly is a one-man bomb on his own," said April Dancer. "He doesn't explode for little men—only for the biggest—but even he is going to be taxed severely before Operation Phagocyte comes to life in terms of men, men, men."

"Same the world over, old girl." Mark Slate stretched in the sun. "Once the admin and service wallahs are called in, all the little men become pompous big men. Don't see how you can ever avoid it. The machine runs the men who are employed to run it. Once they get moving, all hell won't stop it. That's how they lose thousands of men in an attack. I've seen it happen. Nice words they give the poor dead devils too—expendable, they say: strategy, they say: the escalation of the overall plan, they say. What they mean is that some theory-ridden old red-tab back at his comfy H.Q. forgot he had those units stuck over there by the green pin on the map board. Wars have got too big, me old darling. Was a time when the general was way out in front—leading 'em. Now, there are nearly as many generals and admirals at the back of the poor expendable so-and-sos." He sat up suddenly. "Which same is us, right now."