The Burning Air Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  Mark ducked and shot back blindly in the direction of the shot. Then he turned as quickly as his rapidly deteriorating senses would permit and aimed at the looming hulk of a big man to the right of him.

  But before he could shoot, the man let out a choked cry and plunged forward. For a moment Mark Slate stared stupidly at the fallen body. Then he realized to his astonishment that a man was crouched beside one of the marble lobby pillars, firing into the THRUSH group. Mark Slate forced his sagging arms to lift the now cannon-heavy gun. His last two shots accounted for a man each.

  He was dimly conscious that their rescuer was running toward him. He couldn't see distinctly anymore, but the man's general body outline reminded him of Napoleon Solo, one of the most outstanding of the agents from U.N.C.L.E.

  The first reaction in his disturbed mind was surprise that Napoleon Solo could have gotten here from Europe so fast.

  Mark tried to get up, but his feet slipped in the blood that streaked the lobby floor.

  He was dimly conscious of the man bending over him. As if from miles away he heard: “Where is she? Quick! Where is the girl?”

  “In the---the---elevator,” he managed to gasp out.

  Then his head fell forward. That was all he knew until he regained consciousness in a corner of the lobby where the police had laid him with two wounded THRUSH men pending arrival of the police ambulance.

  Mark Slate tried to sit up, but a uniformed policeman warned him not to move. He let his head drop---not because he was ordered to, but because he couldn't hold it up.

  Mark lay there for perhaps three minutes before he regained sufficient control of his senses to recall the nightmare in the elevator cage. He struggled into a sitting position.

  “I told you---” the angry policeman began, waving his service revolver in Mark's face.

  Mark swallowed hard. The room still wasn't distinct to his unfocused eyes. Mark swallowed again, having difficulty getting words out of his tight, dry throat. Finally he managed to get out three words that produced a I80 degree turn in the policeman's manner. It was a secret code distributed to all metropolitan police to permit identification of U.N.C.L.E. agents when they were caught in a position where the usual identification was not available.

  The policeman stooped and helped Mark lean against the wall so he could sit up without so much effort. Then he called the sergeant in charge of the squad which was trying to seal off the entire building. He knelt down beside Mark Slate.

  “What's all this about?” he asked.

  “THRUSH!” Mark said unsteadily. “I'll give you a report later. Where is the girl? Where is April Dancer?”

  “Girl?” the sergeant said blankly. “There was no girl.”

  “In the elevator,” Mark said, a touch of fear for April gripping him. “She was unconscious on the floor.”

  “There was no girl in the elevator when we got here,” the policeman said positively.

  “Then where---” Mark began. “If THRUSH got her back in the building---”

  “Just a minute,” the sergeant said. “We have some witnesses off the street. I'll ask if any of them saw a girl. I'll be right back.”

  Mark got up gingerly. His legs were still shaky, but he found he could stand. While the policeman was making his inquiries, Mark walked unsteadily across the lobby to a phone booth.

  He dialed a number that would connect him to a blind where his message would be relayed into U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

  “I have a message for Mr. Watson,” he said, using the code for Waverly when they had to communicate over regular lines where there was some possibility of wiretaps.

  “One moment please,” a girl's voice replied. “Mr. Watson will speak to you direct.”

  Mark was surprised. Then he heard Waverly's voice, “I have been waiting to hear from you. We received the news report of a gun battle downtown and I assumed that you might be involved. I kept Mr. Kovac late tonight in case of an emergency. He has already been dispatched. You may report to me more fully after he arrives with the proper equipment.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark said and hung up.

  When he came out of the booth, the police sergeant returned.

  “You were right, Mr. Slate,” he said. “There was a girl.”

  “Where is she?” Mark asked, still breathing heavily.

  “She was apparently unconscious. Some man was carrying her. He put her in a car and drove away.”

  Mark breathed a little easier. “Shall I put out an all-points bulletin asking for a pickup on the car?” the policeman asked.

  “Not yet,” Mark said. “She could have been taken to the hospital by one of our men. Someone helped us. I couldn't get a good look at his face, but his help definitely showed he was not a THRUSH agent.”

  “Well, if you need anything just yell. I got to get busy.”

  “Thanks, officer. You've been a tremendous help.”

  His legs were so shaky that Mark went over and sat down until Randy Kovac arrived, breathless from his headlong chase from U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

  “What happened, Mr. Slate?” the boy asked eagerly. “I'm so glad to see you.”

  “We had to parry a thrust from THRUSH, Randy,” Mark said. “Did you bring me a pen-communicator?”

  “Yes, sir. Here it is. What about Miss Dancer?”

  “She's all right, Randy,” he said.

  Then after extending the antenna he said into the communicator, “Slate calling Mr. Waverly.”

  “Waverly here. Go ahead Mr. Slate. Is Miss Dancer with you?”

  “No, somebody---I think Napoleon Solo---took her to a hospital.”

  There was a heartbeat silence and then Mr. Waverly said, “Mr. Solo is in Europe, Mr. Slate.”

  “Then who took April? Who was it who helped us?”

  “It was no one from U.N.C.L.E.,” Waverly said positively. “You had best tell me what the situation is, Mr. Slate.”

  “I wish I knew!” Mark said, fear for April gripping him.

  TEN

  “FIND APRIL DANCER”

  As quickly as he could, Mark Slate sketched for his chief what had happened to them in the THRUSH-controlled building.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I just didn't have enough on the ball to stop them.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Slate,” Waverly said, “you did a most remarkable job. I wish you would come here to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters for a special conference. I will have our entire resources thrown into this problem. What you have told me about this trigger bomb has convinced me that the world is facing what is perhaps the gravest crisis in its history. We must act fast.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark Slate said. “I'll come right now.”

  He closed the antenna and slipped the pen-communicator into his pocket. He stood thinking, a worried look creasing his face.

  “I wonder---” he said, almost to himself.

  “Yes, sir?” Randy asked eagerly.

  “I was just thinking aloud, Randy,” Mark said slowly. “I was thinking about April.”

  In the excitement young Kovac had forgotten that April was missing. He sobered.

  “I want to do something to help,” he said earnestly. “I---I want to do something myself to help her.”

  “You know how Mr. Waverly is,” Mark replied. “He's a stickler for discipline. But this is something of an unusual situation. There's quite a crowd out here watching the police mop up. Circulate around and see if you can find anyone who got a good look at the man who carried April into the car. We need a good description to send out on the police bulletin.”

  “I'll get it!” the boy said.

  “Okay then. Go at it,” Mark said.

  As for himself, he caught a taxi which deposited him on the little street about two blocks from the Del Floria's Tailor Shop. After paying off the cab, Mark Slate paused to light a cigarette, which gave him an opportunity to search for any sign of a tail.

  Satisfied that he had not been followed, Mark walked down to the shop. There was a clos
ed sign in the door, but beyond the glass he could see a little man in a tailor's apron still puttering around inside.

  Mark rapped on the pane. The little tailor let him in and after a friendly nod padded back into the shop. As Mark entered one of the dressing cubicles in the back, Signor Del Floria touched a hidden button on the pressing machine. In exactly forty-nine seconds, Mark entered Alexander Waverly's private office high in the modem building housing the New York headquarters of U.N.C.L.E.

  Waverly was listening to a report coming over the recessed speaker set in the communications console on his desk. He nodded to Mark and waved his agent into a chair opposite him.

  The U.N.C.L.E. chief finished his call and leaned back in his chair. He thoughtfully surveyed the lean, muscular ex-RAF pilot, ex-Cambridge student, and ex-member of the British Olympic team.

  “I trust you are all right, Mr. Slate?” he said.

  “Yes, sir. I did lose my jacket and waistcoat, Mark said quietly. “I suppose, sir, I can put them on my expense account?” he added hopefully.

  “I wish you would take a tip from Miss Dancer about filing those things,” Waverly said. “Even on jobs where you are together, her expenses are much less than yours.”

  “Well,” Mark said lamely, “she's smaller than I. She doesn't eat as much.”

  “The real problem now,” Mr. Waverly said, leaning back and picking up one of his pipes from the desk, “is where is she eating right now.”

  “I don't know,” Mark said.

  “When I first came here from the London office and was assigned to work with April, I confess that I often worried about her and the scrapes she got herself into. Now I am almost inclined to worry about her adversary instead of her.”

  Waverly rubbed his pipe bowl thoughtfully. “There is more than a little truth in your statement. Miss Dancer is certainly a most capable and resourceful young woman.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark replied. “You know, there were a couple of times tonight when we were in a rather more than tight spot. Yet when I would look around at her, I'd see that she just thrives on that sort of thing. She actually enjoys danger. It is hard to feel that all is lost when you are with someone who is so obviously getting such a kick out of things.”

  “That is true,” the U.N.C.L.E. Chief said. “Miss Dancer wins because she is utterly incapable of thinking she could lose. Nevertheless, all of us reach the limit of our capacities. While the computers have not given us a definite probability, I cannot but feel that Miss Dancer has been taken by Franklyn Royce.”

  “It is possible, sir.”

  “But we have no definite evidence at all. Computers must have human supplied data on which to work. We don't have and consequently these mechanical wonders are useless.”

  “I'm willing to stake my life on your hunches, sir,” Mark said. “I haven't seen one of them yet that wasn't right.”

  “Well, I have,” Mr. Waverly said gloomily. “I think my lifetime average must be about fifty per cent right and the same number wrong.”

  “That isn't bad.”

  “It is when I must consider that April Dancer's life may depend on the decision I must make on a basis of such incomplete information.”

  “You forget that we won't be doing it all. There's April on the other end, and you admitted yourself that she---”

  “I know what I admitted,” something of an edge coming into Waverly's usually matter-of-fact voice. “But there is something else here, Mr. Slate. April Dancer is so successful in getting out of tight spots because she has an uncanny and perhaps instinctive ability to judge exactly what her opponents will do.”

  “Yes, sir, I've noticed that myself,” Mark said.

  “But we are not dealing with a normal logical person in Franklyn Royce,” Mr. Waverly said.

  The U.N.C.L.E. chief picked up a small punched card from the desk. He slipped it into the slot of a reader hidden in the recesses under the desk top. The hidden speaker started to talk:

  Franklyn Royce-Criminal record: Defected from USA to USSR to THRUSH. Three times arrested for assault. Four arrests for writing threatening letters to fancied enemies. Is not a criminal in the normal sense of the word. Is activated by grievances, fancied and real. Personality: Highly unstable.

  Twice faced lunacy court after berserk attacks on colleagues, but judged legally sane each time. Broods constantly on failure of world to appreciate his undoubted genius. Has hair-trigger resentment against society which flares on the slightest provocation. This resentment, rooted in childhood and early youth resentments and frustrations, has increased markedly in recent years. Must be considered an extremely erratic personality. He---

  “That is sufficient to give you an idea of the type of man we are involved with,” Waverly said, shutting off the card reader. “It is impossible to predict what such a man will do. If April Dancer is in his hands, she is facing the gravest danger of her life.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark said soberly. He swallowed hard.

  Mr. Waverly leaned back in his chair. He often wondered what his two brilliant agents thought of each other personally. April herself had always been too involved with her U.N.C.L.E. career to give much attention to men. And Mark Slate's outward attitude toward his pretty partner had always been big brotherish.

  But these were surface indications, however. He often suspected that under that surface each had a higher regard for the other than just professional respect. He also suspected that neither of them was conscious of just how much they did think of each other.

  Right or wrong as the assumption might be, Waverly could see that, for all his easy outward manner, Mark Slate kept betraying his concern for April's predicament in many little ways.

  Waverly kept the impatient young man tied to his chair while reports kept filtering in. The car in which April was carried away proved to be a rented vehicle and had been left at the company's drop at the airport. The description gained by U.N.C.L.E. investigators tallied with that of Franklyn Royce. The report claimed Royce had a young woman with him and that she behaved as if either drugged or sodden drunk.

  “Then that cinches it,” Mark said. “Royce does have her. It is logical enough. He knew the inner workings of the THRUSH laboratory from his own service there. And he had to get April in an attempt to regain the weapon. He followed her here from Los Angeles.”

  “It would seem so, Mr. Slate,” Waverly said.

  “Then I should see what I can do about finding Royce.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Slate. Royce drove this car with April to the airport. There are no planes leaving at this hour that he could have boarded. Our people have checked each passenger list. They also checked on any private planes taking off. There has been none.”

  “I see. That would indicate he is still at the airport somewhere,” Mark said.”

  “Perhaps,” Waverly replied.

  “But everything possible is being done. There is nothing else you could contribute. I prefer you here for the time being.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mark said. “I---”

  “One moment please,” Mr. Waverly said. “We have something on the pen-communicator circuit---”

  “Mr. Waverly, sir. This is Randy Kovac!”

  Mr. Waverly looked around at the big clock which told the time around the world. He said somewhat severely, “Mr. Kovac, I believe your hours with us are from four to six-in the afternoon, not six o'clock in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir, but because everything was like it was I thought---” “I guess I can take the blame for that, sir,” Mark broke in. “He seemed so eager to do something I told him to ask around in the crowd for anyone who saw April or her abductor.”

  Waverly ignored Mark's interruption. “And how did you come in possession of a pen-communicator?” he asked, his voice stern.

  “I took two like you ordered, sir,” the boy said quickly. “One I gave to Mr. Slate, but I couldn't deliver the one to Miss Dancer.”

  “I see,” Waverly said, still displeased at Randy's involveme
nt at this time of the morning. “Why did you call?”

  “I found something, sir. You know I used to have an early morning paper route before you took me on as an U.N.C.L.E. trainee. I thought maybe some of the route boys might have seen the car. There isn't much traffic when we start throwing papers in the morning.”

  “That seems an interesting approach,” Waverly said, his interest growing. “What happened?”

  “I called the circulation manager. He called each district distributor to report to him when each boy came in. There was one who saw them, Mr. Waverly.”

  “Where?” the U.N.C.L.E. chief asked.

  “It was coming out of the airport. He was driving a sports car with the top down. He had a girl with him who looked like she was asleep. The paperboy noticed them because he loves sports cars.”

  “Very good, Mr. Kovac,” Waverly said. “Can you give us a description of the car?”

  Randy rattled off a complete description, including the license plate number.

  Waverly's bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. “You have it down rather well,” he said.

  “Yes sir, I called the police to see if any sports cars had been reported stolen from the airport. I thought he wouldn't dare expose himself by renting another car, since he turned the other one in there to make everyone think he was taking a plane.”

  “I am surprised that the police gave you the information,” Mr. Waverly said.

  “Oh, I told them I was a copy boy for the News and that the editor asked me to call,” Randy said.

  “Oh!” Mr. Waverly said somewhat weakly.

  “I figured he must be trying to get away. So I called all the private airports. I finally found one over in Jersey where a man left a private, plane last night. He was just taking off. The airport attendant said he had a woman with him.”

  “I suppose you got the flight plan ---say, by representing yourself as the nephew of the director of the Federal Aviation Authority?”

  “No, sir, I said---”

  “Perhaps it is better if I do not know,” Mr. Waverly broke in. “Mr. Kovac, you have been up all night. This will have a distinct effect on your school studies. I wish you to get the proper school necessary for the foundation to enter the U.N.C.L.E. Academy. Do you understand?”