23-The Finger in the Sky Affair

by Peter Leslie

  "Yes, I do."

  "Well, excuse my ignorance, but I can't see how such an eventuality would help them. THRUSH's aim is world domination, right? Well, how does gaining control of an airline and a company which manufactures a sophisticated automatic pilot advance this aim?"

  Solo's chief put down his pipe and rose to his feet. He began to pace up and down the long room. "You're too inclined to view things in blacks and whites, Mr. Solo," he said. "The international power game is infinitely complex and—to use your own word—infinitely sophisticated. Those of us who have anything to do with its policies are like the players in a monster game of chess, always trying to think nine moves ahead. And the real reason for any move is never what it appears to be on the surface. Why—you must have asked yourself -do the governments, for instance, not buy up the remaining shares themselves?"

  "The thought had occurred to me," Solo admitted.

  "Because such a move could not be kept secret—and the repercussions, on other shares, on the market, on the economies of the two countries, would be incalculable. The effect of an apparent move to gloss over a para-military failure is far-reaching...apart from which it might not succeed!"

  "I see."

  "So far as THRUSH is concerned, this conspiracy—if such it is—would not be designed to advance their plans directly; it would be more in the nature of a fund-raising operation. They do need funds, you know! Despite the financial power of some of their Council members, their schemes have to be financed."

  "So I would imagine, sir."

  "And gaining control of Murchison-Spears at a comparatively low outlay would help in this direction. More importantly, they would have a foot—owning T.C.A.—firmly in the enemy camp. And worst of all, a single small canister of that nuclear material—if 'accidentally' misrouted to certain Eastern countries, for example—could bring them enormous revenue. Even if they did not intend to make use of its secrets themselves."

  "So in fact it's up to us to stop them?"

  "It's up to you, Mr. Solo," Waverly corrected with a dry smile. "You and any other Enforcement Agents you may wish to assign..."

  Chapter 3 — A question of asking questions

  Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin was young, tow-haired, blue eyed and of a solemn expression. He was five feet ten inches tall. He was born in Russia. And next to Napoleon Solo he was the most valued and trusted of all the Enforcement Agents in Section Two of U.N.C.L.E.

  Illya was straightening a dark crimson knitted silk tie in the cheval glass of his wardrobe when the buzzer of his pocket transmitter sounded its urgent summons from the top of his bureau. He reached the tiny device in two strides, picked it up, thumbed the button and spoke.

  "Channel open," he said.

  The voice of the girl in the Communications Section at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters came flatly from the receiver. "As soon as possible, please. Priority One. Head of Section One."

  "Right. Subject?"

  "Something new, I believe. May I please have your E.T.A.?"

  "Twenty minutes from now," the Russian said crisply. He snapped off the radio, put it in the breast pocket of his light gray suit, and shut the doors of the wardrobe on the meticulously arranged rows of jackets, trousers, shirts, shoes and ties inside. Hesitating, he looked around the rest of the one-room apartment. Unlike the wardrobe, it was in chaos. The divan bed was unmade, papers strewed the bedside table, the chairs and part of the floor. There were books, opened and unopened, everywhere. Maps and sheets of graph paper were spread over the hi-fi and the television set. On a low coffee table, a paper sack of groceries spilled its contents among the used crockery of Illya's breakfast.

  The agent took a half step towards the table, looked at his watch, shrugged, and then—with a resigned gesture—turned his back on the room and went out the front door.

  It was windy for August and the bright sunshine was not too warm. He walked the half block to his car with the breeze whipping his pale, forward-brushed hair off his forehead, collected his ticket from under the windshield wiper, and drove away from the fire hydrant where he had parked earlier in the morning. It took him twelve minutes to get to the shabby block hiding the headquarters of U.N.C.L.E.

  He swung the car into the garage at the end of the row of brownstones, left it with the attendant, and walked out into the street again. Like every building on the block, including the seedy shops and the apartments above them, the garage was a front. U.N.C.L.E.'s basic personnel gained admission to the steel-shelled headquarters through the men's and women's locker rooms in the garage itself; such few official visitors as the organization had were show to a door above the club in the whitestone at the far end of the block. But the Enforcement Agents on their rare visits to base used the third entrance inside Del Floria's tailor shop.

  There were two other entrances: an underwater channel leading from the basement to the East River; and a fifth way in that was only known to Mr. Waverly and his four colleagues of Section One.

  Illya walked halfway down the brownstone frontage and went in Del Floria's door. The dimly lit front room was damp with steam from the pressing machine and at first the old man did not see him. Then he looked up and caught sight of the Russian standing over against the rail of suits basted ready for fittings. He opened the two white, padded halves of the big machine and hurried over with a smile, the orange tape measure draped around his neck swinging as he went.

  "Mr. Kuryakin!" he beamed. "Some days it is since I see you. I am hoping you do well. Everything, she is fine, yes?"

  "Hello, Del," Illya said easily. "Yes, I'm fine, thanks. How are you?...There is some kind of a panic on up there, so I am afraid that I have to hurry. See you later, maybe?"

  He took off his jacket and handed it to the tailor as though he wanted it to be pressed, passing through to the fitting booths in the back of the shop. Del Floria slung the garment over one arm and pressed a button set into the side of the pressing machine. In the third cubicle, Illya drew across the curtain and twisted an ordinary-looking brass hook on the back wall.

  The wall swung silently inwards, and he walked through into the Admissions foyer of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

  The girl at the reception desk was a redhead. She had watched the agent's approach through the tailor's shop on her T.V. monitor screen and now she looked up with a five-star smile shining through her freckles. "Morning, Illya," she said cheerfully. "You're a minute early, you know: the old man'll be pleased!"

  Kuryakin nodded seriously. The fact that he found his job of more importance than human relationships did not make his boyish charm any the less compelling on the personable young women with whom U.N.C.L.E. was liberally staffed.

  "Good morning, Miss Merrell," he said. "I was fortunate with the lights today in the crosstown traffic. Do you have a badge for me?"

  "Do I!" the girl said. "I have a whole chestful, if you must know. But I'd be out on my ear if I mentioned it!" She reached into a drawer of her desk and brought out a small white badge which she pinned carefully to his shirtfront, just below the shoulder. "Usually it's lapels, of course," she told him. "I wonder if you'd even notice if I'd stuck you with it?"

  Illya smiled, an exercise that lit up his entire face. "Probably not," he said politely. "I should most likely have been too busy admiring the contours of the scenery to notice such pinpricks..."

  "Gee," the red-headed girl breathed as she watched him cross the foyer to the elevators, "maybe one day he'll get around to call me Barbara..."

  But the agent, absent-mindedly fingering the white badge in the elevator taking him to the third floor, was wondering what could have been the reason for the unexpected call on what should have been a free day. His taste, as it happened, inclined more towards brunettes.

  (The white badge was more important than it looked. Each individual entering the headquarters—staff, out-posted personnel or visitor—was equipped with a badge every time he or she came in. And badges of different colors admitted to different levels of the organization. Thus
a red badge restricted its wearer to the entrance floor, where only routine operations were carried out; a yellow badge permitted entry to this floor and also the communications and electronics centers on the floor above; and the Policy and Operations Sections on the top floor were reserved for white badges. The small shields themselves were activated by a chemical on the tips of the receptionist's fingers—and any badge thus treated which strayed into the wrong part of the building would immediately trip an alarm setting off winking red danger lights on every desk in the headquarters, while steel doors slid shut to divide the place into compartments in which capture of the interloper would be that much easier. Napoleon Solo had been there once when a too-curious columnist had strayed from the course marked out for him and caused the whole system to swing into operation. "It was hell," he told Illya afterwards. "Just like being in a torpedoed ship, with the watertight doors closing and bells ringing their heads off all over...")

  The blonde in the black skirt took Kuryakin into Waverly's office at once. Solo was still there, and the blonde appeared to have some difficulty in deciding which man to look at as she returned to the outer office.

  "What we're faced with here, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly said, after Solo had put Illya in the picture, "is, as usual, a matter of time—time in which to discover how these air crashes occurred; time to see all the persons involved; time to work out some way of preventing a repetition of the disasters. And of course time is what we do not have. If it is indeed THRUSH behind the whole thing, then it must be effectively countered at once. At once—before public confidence drops further."

  "It seems to me," Solo said, "assuming the planes are being sabotaged, that is—it seems to me we have to find out first of all how this is being done."

  "I agree, Napoleon," Illya said. "From what Mr. Waverly has told us, I assume there is no evidence of any tampering with the planes. Is there likely to be any in the near future?"

  "I wouldn't count on it," Waverly said morosely. "I've told you the results of the preliminary inquiry. The full investigation—where they gather together every fragment of the wrecked plane and marry it up with its neighbor to try to see what went wrong where—that'll take weeks. And it's not a job that you can rush, by its very nature. If you lean too heavily on the man doing the reconstruction, he may in his haste destroy the very fragment holding the clue to the whole thing!"

  "I see. Then it seems our only lead is the survivors. Are there many?"

  Waverly sighed. His lined face looked suddenly tired and old in the harsh light streaming through the window from Queens. "From the five crashes," he said, abstracting a sheet of paper from the folder which still lay on his desk, "there are precisely five survivors."

  "How do they relate?" Solo asked.

  "A stewardess from the second Nice disaster—there were no survivors from the first. This burned fellow from the third crash there. And a steward and two passengers from one of the American crashes."

  "Which one, sir?"

  "The aircraft that stalled on take-off. A DC-6, it was. At Chicago."

  "No survivors from the other?"

  "None at all. It was a pressurized 707 that blew up in mid-air, somewhere over California, I believe."

  "Do we have any technical data, Mr. Waverly, on the supposed causes of these two American crashes?" Illya asked. "I mean, were they as incomprehensible as the three at Nice?"

  "There was no provable hypothesis—nothing in the nature of evidence that would convince an inquiry tribunal. But I understand Maximilian Plant—he's the head of T.C.A., as I expect you know—I understand he has a few ideas on what may have happened. I said we'd send somebody over to see him at their H.Q. on Fifth Avenue, right?"

  "Right, sir," Solo said. "I'll go over myself. Now, if you can let us have the names and addresses of these survivors, we'll get onto them right away."

  Waverly adjusted his spectacles and read from the paper:

  "James Lester, steward, suffered from severe burns; now back at his home; 1362 Venice Avenue, Cicero, Illinois. Olive McTaggart, passenger, multiple injuries and severe burns; still in St. Mary's Hospital, Chicago. Enrico Spaggia, passenger, two broken legs and second degree burns; back at home in Worsthorne Course, State Street, Wilmington, Delaware....That's the three in this country. In France, you have the stewardess, Andrea Bergen, and the poor fellow who ran out of the fire the other day—he hasn't recovered consciousness yet."

  Solo had been taking notes. He looked up. "Where can we find these two?" he inquired.

  "The girl's just come out of the hospital—she was very badly knocked about. You can find out her address in Nice from the T.C.A. bureau at the airport there. The man, Foster Andersen, he's in the Anglo-American hospital between Nice and Villefranche."

  "Okay," Solo said. "Illya—will you handle the two at Nice? I'll look after Maximilian Plant and the three here..."

  Waverly stared at the row of five enamel buttons inset into the top of his desk. After a moment he jabbed a finger at the yellow one in the middle. There was an amplified click and then the blonde's disembodied voice:

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Get me General Hartz at the Pentagon," Waverly barked at the invisible microphones. He scowled at the pipe rack while he was waiting for the connection and then, rejecting its entire contents with a shake of his head, hauled an old Meerschaum from the pocket of his baggy tweed jacket and placed it unlit between his teeth. A red indicator light was flashing on the wall.

  "Yes?" the Head of Section One said into the air.

  "General Hartz on the line, Mr. Waverly."

  "Put him on."

  Another click; a faint, high, singing noise. And then:

  "Alex? How's tricks, you old rascal! What can I do for you?"

  "I want an army jet, Number One Priority, to ferry an operative to Nice, France, as soon as possible, David."

  "Can do, as it's for you. How soon is 'as soon as possible'?"

  "Leaving here as of now."

  "Okay. Where are we gonna pick him up?"

  "I'll fly him to you by helicopter from the roof of this building. Can you have the plane ready by the time he gets to you?"

  "Sure thing, Alex. He'll carry the usual identification?"

  "Naturally. His name is Kuryakin—and thanks, David."

  "Be my guest...Oh, and Alex—golf on Sunday?"

  "Golf on Sunday," Waverly said. "As usual."

  Illya was on his feet, ready to go. "I'll draw some equipment from the armory, arrange a cover with Personnel, and indent fo some funds at the cashier's office," he said.

  Waverly nodded. "I'll have the aircraft on the roof in ten minutes," he said. "You'll keep in touch with Mr. Solo through Station M?"

  "Yes, sir. Shall I ask them to try to get me a wavelength?"

  "No. Not at first, anyway. Not worth it. Let them transmit."

  It was the agent's turn to nod. "There is just one other thing," he added diffidently. "Forgive me for mentioning the obvious, but —"

  "What is it, Illya?" Solo asked, sensing the Russian's reluctance.

  "Well, it's just—I'm sure it has been checked—but...I suppose we do know the enemy here is THRUSH?...I mean, there isn't a chance that the sabotage was personally directed? There weren't passengers on those planes whose deaths would benefit people? There have been men mad enough to destroy a whole plane-load of innocent people to get one individual before now."

  "I'm glad you asked that question, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly said without in any way revealing that he knew the remark was a cliché. "In truth, I should have remembered to tell you: both the F.B.I., in the case of the two domestic crashes, and the C.I.A., in the case of the others, have made the most exhaustive inquiries along the lines you mention. And in every case they have drawn a blank. I think you can rule the idea out for all practical purposes..."

  "Thank you, sir. It was just that I wished to make sure —"

  "Quite, quite, quite. You did quite right to ask...And now off you go, the two of you. I suggest t
hat you leave Plant to the last, Mr. Solo; I should like to have some facts about that Chicago crash on my desk as soon as possible...Mr. Kuryakin—question these two people in Nice as closely as you can about every recollection of the crashes they have. No matter how insignificant it may seem —"

  He broke off as the blonde entered with a word of apology and laid on his desk an envelope with the Urgent—Top Secret seal in red. He slit the flp with a paper knife and drew out the single sheet of paper it contained.

  "Correction, please, gentlemen," he said in an expressionless voice a moment later. "For 'question these two people' read 'question that person'. I have just heard that Foster Andersen has died without regaining consciousness."

  Chapter 4 — The girl on the Promenade des Anglais

  "This is the last call for passengers on Air France Flight A.F./951—the Caravelle departing at 1410 hours for London. Passengers who have checked in with their baggage please assemble at Exit No. 3 in the Departure Lounge...This is the last call for passengers..."

  The boxy, amplified voice echoed around the concourse of the modernistic Aéroport Nice-Côte d'Azur. Illya Kuryakin stood beside a huge concrete circle ablaze with begonias, zinnias and salvia, looking at the row of airline offices, flower shops and confectionery kiosks which lined the vast hall. Around him, shrill with anxiety or indecision, the high-season holiday crowd milled. Transcontinental Airways housed their bureau between B.E.A. and the stairway to the cloakrooms—under a gallery leading past counters of cashmere cardigans and bottles of scent to the restaurant. The agent strolled across to quiz the girl behind the guichet.

  "Andrea Bergen?" she repeated. "Yes, of course I can give you her address. It's in an apartment block just off the Avenue Malausséna—but I'm afraid you won't find her there."

  "Oh. Why not? I thought she had come out of the hospital."

  "She has, poor dear. But she's still in a wheelchair—completely crippled. She can't do a thing for herself, so she's being looked after by a friend."

  "Do you know how I can get in touch with the friend? It's rather important."