The Final Affair

by David McDaniel

  "Thanks awfully, but it would never work. We come from two —"

  "Cut It out."

  "Sorry. Actually I hadn't thought about it. I wouldn't say it couldn't happen, but don't count on it." He fitted his Special back into its low slung shoulder rig and worked it in and out a couple of times. "I'd demand a lot in a girl. I don't really think I'd care to try it again. But look, are you really that interested in the $30-a day bonus for the 24-hour alert scene?"

  "You seem to know my financial situation better than I do."

  Solo stood and stretched. "Same to you, fella. You spend 60¢ a day on transportation."

  "The subway's convenient and it gives me something to do for twenty minutes while I'm waking up."

  "Yeah. The spy who came in from Brooklyn — on the IRT."

  Both communicators chirped in chorus, and Illya barely had time to react before Napoleon flipped out his silver pen, drew down the short antenna and removed and reversed the upper point to expose the cylindrical speaker and mike. "Solo here."

  The familiar gravelly voice of their commander filled the quiet room. "We have just twenty-four hours to prepare the strike. Baldwin's terminal is being moved between two and three tomorrow morning. We expect to have detailed plans for the operation by noon today."

  "Ah — tomorrow, you mean," said Napoleon. "It's only 11:18."

  "It is? My word, I'm still on New York time. Thank you, Mr. Solo. I've had other things on my mind. Apparently even Baldwin didn't know until early today; their internal security is quite respectable. Stevens reported, by the way, that Baldwin is rather upset by this replacement. His old terminal is done in walnut panelling to fit the general decor of his office, and he's seen a picture of the new design. He seems to have ordered a closet built to hold it and a secretary to operate it for him, and there's a rumor that he may refuse to use it himself even if Central' orders him to."

  "He could come up with a convincing reason if he wanted," Napoleon said confidently.

  "What do we know about the method of transportation?" Illya asked. "Can they fold it up in a briefcase and silently steal away?"

  "It's about the size of a steamer trunk — or a small refrigerator. Similar in design to a unit you two blew up at that prison camp in South America a few years ago, if you'll remember."

  "I remember that very well," said Illya.

  "You aren't likely to forget Salty O'Rourke, either," said Napoleon.

  "This one," said Mr. Waverly, "will be leaving Alamo Square in a panel truck, possibly for the waterfront, possibly for a helipad. Mr. Stevens is remembering at the moment."

  "I think Plan A is the obvious and appropriate thing for the situation," said Illya. "We'll check their procedure if Harry can remember enough, look over their route for the best spots, and intercept them."

  "Plan A takes about ten men, sir," said Napoleon. "And it will involve a lot of noise and some — special equipment."

  "Do you know how many guards will be on the truck?" Illya asked. "We'll need the appropriate number of bodies to leave behind in the wreck so Thrush will be less suspicious of this admittedly unlikely 'accident.' Mr. Simpson has already prepared a dummy terminal to leave in the truck."

  "It'll be split-second timing," said Napoleon, "but we have all day tomorrow to rehearse. I think we should stay up late tonight going over whatever Harry tells us, sleep until noon tomorrow and we'll be ready to fight Thrush from midnight to dawn."

  "Admirable, Mr. Solo. We aren't likely to hear anything before two, when Dr. Grayson will return with the tape of Stevens' report. I shall call you again when she arrives. Your strike team will be called from this office on a Y3K7 priority and ordered to you at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. You will be sleeping in the quarters provided, I presume?"

  "Yes, sir. And we'll be in the building waiting for your call."

  "Very good. Waverly out."

  Solo replaced his communicator. "Which leaves us two and a half hours to kill. I think the commissary still has coffee — or could we telephone for a - pizza?"

  "Mushroom and sausage. Would you care for a fast round of Botticelli1 while we're waiting?"

  "There's no such thing. Since I'm paying for the pizza, I'll start with an H."

  "Did you ever go bowling in the rain?"

  "That's an obscure way of identifying him, but no, I am not Heinrich

  Hudson."

  "Did you write a famous essay titled Notes On The Next War, and a play... No, that'd tell you too much."

  "Notes On The Next War? Ah..." They walked down the corridor to the security guard, at Outer Reception Station One, who would be receiving a pizza in forty-five minutes, and gave him the extension of the lounge where they would be waiting at the end of the hall next to the elevators, along with a five-dollar bill.

  "Give up?" said Illya, as- they started back up the hall. "Ernest Hemingway. Are you-historical as opposed to fictional?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay. Were you... hmm... Were you the subject of Shakespeare's only three-part play?"

  "Come on — you can do better than that. No, I am not Henry VI."

  Fog sifted through the dark and silent streets as a small force of men crouched motionless in the shadows beneath the concrete bulk of the Central Freeway where it crosses Hayes. They were prepared to go into action on three minutes notice anytime before dawn — or something might miss connections and they could never be called at all. Two miles away to the south an expendable tank truck waited in concealment, its diesel engine warm, its body filled with 2500 gallons of rocket fuel officially bound for a missile site in Marin County: and its cab empty but for a radio receiver and a few cables.

  Behind the supporting pier immediately south of Hayes, two more vehicles waited — a panel truck, identical in most details to the Thrush transfer van, and an ambulance which held half a dozen corpses legally requisitioned from the Unclaimed section of the City Morgue. There would be little left of the panel truck when Thrush or the San Francisco Fire Department found it, but every effort was being made to insure that subsequent investigation would show everything that should have been there. Mr. Simpson had sacrificed a malfunctioning PDP-8 calculator unit, a CRT with a burned-phosphor, a misaligned photo-printer and a captured Thrush terminal housing shell, all of which would leave convincing remains after a brief but intense cremation. The same could be said for the corpses, since the Thrush guards in the truck would be taken in peacefully and held incommunicado until the entire affair was resolved. "Sometimes," Illya had remarked at one point, "it's inconvenient to be the good guys."

  Now both agents crouched in the rear of their panel truck, an open communicator lying on the carpet between them. Three-quarters of a mile away an observer stationed at a third-floor window was watching a pair of heavy doors which concealed the basement garage through which deliveries were made to the subterranean Thrush complex. His eyes rested in the rubber cups of a tripod-mounted pair of 10x80 binoculars focussed by the blue light of a solitary streetlamp-on the enigmatic steel of the unmoving doors. A cigarette stump lay cooling in the ashtray by his elbow; a can of soda sparkled faintly in the silence.

  The watcher blinked into the darkness. A Vine of deeper black had appeared between the slabs of dull metal, and as he stared it widened. He reached for his communicator, which lay open on the table,, and spoke without removing his eyes from the lenses. "Open Channel R."

  Solo's communicator chirped for attention and got it instantly as the distant watcher's voice reported. "Biederman here. The-door's opening. I think somebody's looking out. Be ready ... There's a car — the car. A blue Fiat with three men in it. They haven't turned their lights on yet. They're turning east — there go the lights. Stand by for the truck... I think — there it is. They're waiting for the lead car to get to the corner. I can't make out what color it is yet ...

  "There they. go. And there go the doors. It's a drab grey — pretty close to the ringer. Okay, go to it, you guys. I wish I was down there."

  "If I'd k
nown, I would've been happy to trade," said Illya. His own silver transceiver was assembled as he listened, and now he said, "Open Channel L. Stand by all points. Drivers, start your engines."

  For all its flexibility, Thrush had fallen into a habit pattern and Harry had known the regular route followed by such vital caravans; he'd picked up an occasional hundred-dollar bonus for riding in the lead car on previous occasions when visiting dignitaries or top technicians were being transported in secrecy. The armoured Fiat preceded the plain van by two or three blocks, and total radio silence was maintained between the two vehicles since even a scrambled signal can be triangulated.

  The Thrush would drive down Hayes from Alamo Square towards the center of town, and turn right on Gough, which rhymed with cough, when Hayes became one-way the wrong way immediately after passing under the freeway. They would jog right crossing Market and continue south on Valencia for two miles, then turn east again on Army, towards the Army Street Terminal. At each corner the Fiat would be out of sight of the truck for about fifteen seconds. This could be stretched to twenty without arousing suspicion, but no longer. And the U.N.C.L.E. ambuscade had a three-minute alert — of which barely two minutes remained.

  Solo and Kuryakin, black-clad, stood in shadow against the soaring concrete piling, their three aides behind them. Beneath the next intersection, Hayes and Octavia, a two-man team was poised with tank and nozzles and respirators, ready to cloud the space immediately above them with rapid-dispersal gas. The duplicate panel truck waited behind the freeway pier, lights out and engine idling. Silence and wisps of drifting fog filled the street, but tension crouched in the shadows as the endless seconds passed.

  Then the muffled stammer of the Fiat could be heard approaching and Solo murmured into his microphone, "Check Point One, are you there?"

  "Here. They haven't — There's the Fiat. License JGB 817. Now crossing Laguna... Mark. And... there's the truck. A-OK on identification."

  "Thank you. All points: This is target. Repeat, this is target. Ready to do it —" He drew back to invisibility as the Fiat cruised by, echoing between parallel concrete walls, its two passengers looking in both directions. As it turned the corner and passed from sight, he said, "Do it!" and slipped a re-breather unit over his face.

  As the Thrush panel truck crossed Octovia, half a block away, colorless gas hissed out to fill the cubic yards between building fronts. The truck swayed unsteadily as its driver felt an overwhelming urge to sleep. A nylon landing net dropped into his path from above, anchored to the elevated structure which concealed the main U.N.C.L.E. force — the truck shouldered heavily into it and bumped to a stop as cables creaked and held.

  Simultaneously the duplicate let in his clutch behind Solo and swung out into the street and around the corner, docily following an unsuspecting Fiat south towards Market.

  The ambulance backed smoothly out of the shadows as the net was lifted from the nose of the truck. Napoleon and Illya were the first ones to reach the cab, dragging the drowsy Thrush out. The key to the rear door was in his pocket; as Solo fished it out and ran around to unlock the van two rehearsed agents loaded a corpse into the opposite side of the front seat. Four sleepers were dumped out of the back of the truck and the prize was exposed, a desk-size unit four by three by two feet. Its screen and keyboard were tastefully hidden by a sliding walnut panel. Positive identification took only a few seconds in back while Illya replaced the driver in front; a couple boxes of carefully chosen junk were lifted into the rear as the terminal was hoisted smoothly out between two men, then the other grisly replacements took place and Napoleon slapped the side of the truck as his last scan over the interior showed everything his mental checklist called for.

  "Key," said Illya, grimly ignoring his cold passenger, and Napoleon slammed the back door, locked it for the last time and tossed the key to his partner. If the impending holocaust lived up to its billing, no trace would ever be found of the key amid the remains of the truck, but both men were trained to situations where such details were the pivots of life or death, and the Thrush van was as perfectly prepared as forty-five seconds of professional care could manage before the Russian engaged its clutch and started off to catch up with where he was supposed to be.

  Illya swerved past the Do Not Enter sign at the entrance to the next block of Hayes and raced two illegal wrong-way blocks before cutting right on Van Ness, straight across Market and south, parallel the route of their ringer and four blocks farther east, heading the van towards its rendezvous six minutes away.

  On Valencia, the Thrush Fiat led the U.N.C.L.E. van south at the sober speed of thirty miles an hour while Illya raced down deserted Van Ness at seventy. The ringer would be out of their sight for another space of fifteen to twenty seconds at the corner of Valencia and Army. Up an alley nearby waited the tank truck, its diesel turning over. A Section Three technician on a. nearby rooftop held the remote control which would send the rolling bomb out to meet the truck which Illya drove, while the U.N.C.L.E. duplicate would vanish quietly.

  His synchronized Accutron, matched to every other man's on the team, brought him to the shadowed side of the selected intersection with twenty seconds to spare. He took a few deep breaths while waiting for the Fiat to appear and pass, its passengers still alert for any threat to their convoy.

  The car made its left turn onto Army, and Illya swung the Thrush truck out of the alley before his counterpart swung in.

  Five seconds later he braked to a stop on his marks in front of a parking lot two buildings from-the corner. Ten seconds, he'd dragged a lump of discarded meat behind the steering wheel. Fifteen seconds, and he was sprinting for the shelter of the alley with the sound of a diesel gathering speed pounding at his heels. Twenty seconds, and a fist of concussion slapped his back as building fronts lit up before an impossibly huge yellow flare.

  He almost stumbled: as the shock wave punched past him, then recovered his long stride. His new shadow danced, black and elongated along the street before him as he staggered up to the U.N.C.L.E. van and was helped in as their engine revved up and they shot away up the side street while leaping flames licked against the sky behind them.

  Illya found a communicator in his hand. "Kuryakin here," he said. "Detonation successful. Do we have the merchandise we came for?"

  "Indeed we do," said Mr. Simpson's voice unexpectedly. "As well as I can tell in five minutes' examination, we have accomplished all we could have hoped for this evening."

  "Okay, that's it then," came Napoleon's voice. "Teams One and Two are relieved as soon as they have their areas secured. Illya, I'll see you back at the office. Everybody else — thank you. It's been a pleasure working with you. This operation is officially completed."

  And in U.N.C.L.E's San Francisco communications room, Alexander Waverly leaned back from his console and smiled. The first knot in a fatal skein had been tied, and the web which might ensnare Thrush was strengthened. A chance encounter and an unlikely friendship had spun the first strands, three years ago, and now for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century he could almost foresee the beginning of the end to which his life had been devoted.

  He smiled the smile of patience rewarded, the smile of the hunter who has finally cornered the old grizzly, and began to. pack his pipe.

  1 In answer to numerous questions: the rules for Botticelli, also known as Culture, may be found in most large books on games. The cycle of play is simple, as sketchily outlined above: data is gathered through yes/no questions whenever the subject fails to correctly identify a reference, until the assumed identity of the subject is guessed, in the same form. Unlike most Q&A games, both sides must work continually. SuperGhosts is an evolution from the well-known game of Ghosts, and was discovered to me by James Thurber. It is illustrated elsewhere. Admittedly, both play better with more than two. —D.McD.

  Table of Contents

  THE FINAL AFFAIR

  CONTENTS

  SECTION I "Now Do I Prophesy A Curse..."

 
; CHAPTER ONE "I Assume It Is More Complicated Than That."

  CHAPTER TWO "Little Sirrocco, How Do You Do?"

  CHAPTER THREE "Hold My Hand."

  CHAPTER FOUR "Ready To Do It —"

  SECTION II "Now Let It Work..."

  CHAPTER FIVE "Great Balls of Fire."

  CHAPTER SIX "It's Clobberin' Time!"

  CHAPTER SEVEN "SYNLOC / TESTOK"

  CHAPTER EIGHT "Oh, We Had To Carry Harry..."

  SECTION III "Cry 'Havoc!', And Let Slip The Dogs Of War."

  CHAPTER NINE "Where Have You Been All My Life?"

  CHAPTER TEN "You'd Better Humor Him."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN "Absolutely Fascinating!"

  CHAPTER TWELVE "It's A Nice Little Plan"

  SECTION IV "Oh, What A Fall Was There!"