The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Birds-Of-A-Feather Affair

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The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Birds-Of-A-Feather Affair Page 8

by Michael Avallone


  There were only two things on her mind, really. And both of those were human beings. One male, one female.

  Mark Slate. And Joanna Paula Jones.

  The carpeted corridor was long and deserted. A trail of red plush headed toward the twin elevator cages. There was one lone closed door at the far end of the hall. This led to a fire stairway.

  One of the elevator cages whirred open. Arnolda Van Atta stepped out. She wore a long green velvet dress that clung to her statuesque body in enticing curves. A pendant of jade stones hung about her slim throat, falling across the swell of her abundant bosom. The flaming red hair was wound into a sophisticated bun atop her classic head. She was radiantly, exquisitely beautiful. Looking at her one would find it hard to believe she was capable of the very most inhuman, cold-blooded acts.

  Her green eyes glinted in the subdued lighting of the corridor. A cold smile etched her regular features into a mold of sheer iciness. The oddest of her accouterments was the black leather riding crop she held lightly between her slim, tapering fingers.

  It was now eight o'clock in the evening.

  She stalked down the hallway imperiously, halting only when she reached the smooth-paneled brown door to the left of the twin elevator cages. The smile on her face evaporated as she turned the knob and stepped inside.

  Mr. Riddle, Fried Rice and Pig Alley looked up quickly, stopping in the midst of a busy game of gin rummy. Mr. Riddle still wore the Frankenstein mask. His lanky, cadaverous figure seemed more ludicrous than ever. But an aura of terror clung visibly to the man. Fried Rice and Pig Alley were unnerved sitting with such a parody of a human being.

  But they feared Arnolda Van Atta more. They all did. It was apparent in the almost subservient way they lapsed into silence at her appearance. She drifted to the table, eyes gleaming, the riding crop waggling impatiently in her slender fingers.

  "Yes, Arnolda?" Mr. Riddle asked.

  "Our man at Uncle has contacted Zorki. It seems Mr. Waverly intends to play games with us. Substituting a look-alike for our dear Alek Yakov." Her words were suffused with anger. "So we know where we stand. Waiting until midnight would be a farce now."

  "What do you intend to do, then?"

  "First I will deal with Mr. Slate. Then we will leave this place and station ourselves at a point I designated to the man at U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters. We'll get Zorki without making deals."

  Pig Alley stared up at her now, wonderingly. "Sacre, but you are gorgeous, ma chère. What a charming dress!"

  She ignored him and tightened her hands on the riding crop. She only had words for Mr. Riddle.

  "Wait for me here. I shall be no longer than an hour. You understand?"

  "Of course," Mr. Riddle's flat voice echoed hollowly in the mask. "We can play cards all night, if we must."

  She laughed. A sarcastic, pealing laugh that had no humor in it. With that, she turned on her high heels and left the room. Mr. Riddle's Frankenstein head stared after her.

  Pig Alley's Errol Flynn moustache twitched. He was not too young a man but he obviously found Arnolda Van Atta astounding in more ways than one.

  "Did you see her? Dressed like a queen! To what end—and that whip in her hands—" He broke off, confused, staring at Mr. Riddle and Fried Rice.

  "She always dresses that way," Mr. Riddle remarked, picking up his hand once more and riffling the cards. "Usually just before she is about to do something extremely vicious. What a woman."

  "Yes," Fried Rice agreed, his purple mandarin's sleeves flung back to allow him to handle his cards. "I do not envy Mr. Slate the hour Miss Van Atta will spend with him."

  Pig Alley swallowed nervously, dark eyes afraid.

  "You mean she—"

  "Sadism," Fried Rice said calmly enough. "She is a ruthless sadist. Thoroughly versed in the De Sade lores and customs. Come, cards please."

  Mr. Riddle, Pig Alley and Fried Rice went back to their game. Each of them tried to concentrate on what they were doing. But it was far too interesting to dwell on what the redhead would do to the man from U.N.C.L.E.

  Had they taken an informal poll among themselves, they would have found themselves in unanimous agreement on one major point.

  Whatever Arnolda Van Atta was going to do, it would not be nice.

  April Dancer reached Del Floria's Tailor Shop just as the bells in the church steeple five blocks away tolled the hour of eight. The taxicab driver's gift of a dime had accomplished a host of miracles. An excellent sedan, a Dodge with a motor that could achieve the speed of a Ferrari, had picked her up almost thirty minutes after her call. The driver was a tall, blank-faced U.N.C.L.E. chauffeur who made no comment about her odd appearance or battered condition. He merely drove cars and was prepared for instant duty and emergencies, as might be any one who drove an ambulance for a hospital.

  Meanwhile, on the long drive into Manhattan, April had mended herself as best she could. There was a specially equipped cabinet in the rear of the sedan that came down off the wall like a dressing table. With this before her, she redid her face—washing, and applying restoring lotions and healing creams to her bruises. A complete wardrobe trunk, artfully concealed in the cushioned seat afforded her a smart, simple blue wool dress and regular pumps. By the time the sedan had reached the ramp at Pershing Square, she was, at the very least, extremely presentable once again. The only things that didn't show were the great aches and enormous fatigue that made her body scream for sleep. To combat this depressing feeling of lassitude, she sniffed freely for a full minute from a curious brown capsule. The immediate effect was one of head-clearing and complete recovery. It wasn't just spirits of ammonia or Benzedrine; it was something far more efficacious than that. Instant Wake-up, the Lab boys had labeled their discovery.

  The tattered remnants of the dead man's clothes she consigned to a disposal unit on the floor of the sedan.

  Darkness, pierced by neon, filled Manhattan as the sedan wheeled up to Del Floria's, literally the front door to the vast complex that made up Headquarters, U.N.C.L.E., New York.

  There was a not unattractive blonde in a print dress operating the steam presser as April came in. The shop was small, neat and extremely orderly, but nothing to write home about. The blonde eyed April obliquely.

  "Is my red dress ready do you know?" April inquired sweetly.

  "Oh, yes. Right in there." The blonde gestured toward a dressing cubicle. April nodded to her and stepped behind the curtain that closed off a view of the shop's interior. The steam presser hissed as the blonde clamped it down again.

  April waited in the cubicle, facing the rear wall. A steel panel slid to the left and she hurried through. The steel panel, actually one wall of the dressing room, closed again.

  April heaved a sigh. Home again. U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters.

  Before her lay the outer offices of the amazing complex. Steel files, a reception desk at which sat another woman. This one was a brunette with sharp features and steady eyes. She smiled at April as she handed her a peculiarly shaped card badge which April pinned to the bosom of her dress.

  Beyond this anteroom lay the elevators and then the honeycomb of rooms and offices which comprised the inner workings of the organization. April, still occupied with her fears for Mark Slate, now had only him on her mind.

  "Will you buzz Mr. Waverly for me, please?"

  The brunette apologized. "Sorry. He left for Washington. Won't be back until ten or eleven, I expect."

  April tried not to bite her lip. With the old man gone, she would have to take the assignment by the horns. God knew there was little time to lose.

  "Then would you alert Section Two, for me? I'll be in the Weapons Room for twenty minutes and I'll be ready for a conference at eight thirty."

  "Yes, Miss Dancer."

  She paused a second longer before going on up to Weapons to rearm herself with the matériel and equipment that her capture by THRUSH had destroyed.

  "Any word from Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin?"

  The brunette's
face warmed a trifle.

  "They contacted us that they were leaving Rangoon tomorrow. That should put them back here by Wednesday at the earliest."

  "Thanks."

  April took an elevator that whisked her up to the Weapons Room. With Mark Slate hors de combat and Lord knew what else, it would have been a comfort to have had Solo and his Russian colleague on deck to call some of the shots.

  This way, it all fell on her shoulders. Not that she lacked self-confidence. Far from it. It was just that she was willing to take all the help she could get.

  On the way up in the steel elevator, she wondered who was left in the Enforcements pool that she could use. There was James Wilder, of "course. Pete Barnes, Walter Fleming. Perhaps even Randy Kovac. No, Randy was still a trainee. Eighteen years old, smart as a whip, and almost fey, he was so Irish. No, no—this was no operation for a trainee. U.N.C.L.E.? Randy was still a Nephew.

  She had reached the door of the Weapons Room when the truth descended upon her like a ton of bricks. Good Lord, what an idiot she had been! And all the time she had lost, just because she had been a half-drowned kitten lost somewhere in the Bronx. It had been staring her in the face all the time and it had just this moment come to her. The one possible way she could trace the whereabouts of Mark Slate and his brutal captors. Her eyes blazed with anger as she realized her stupidity.

  If anything happened to Slate now and they were too late, it would be her own fault. Nobody else's. She had goofed mightily—a luxury no agent could afford. Least of all, Mark Slate.

  She raced for the communication set on the desk in the Weapons Room, nearly tripping in her haste. She batted the lever on.

  "Section Four," a man's voice said.

  This was the Intelligence and Communications Section. A most valuable arm of the organization.

  "April Dancer here," she said crisply into the transmitter, all of her mental capacities focused on the very important information she was about to deliver. There must be no slipups, no forgetting of a single detail, if she were ever to see Mark alive again.

  "Yes, Miss Dancer?"

  "I have an All Points. We must locate, as soon as possible, a blue panel truck. The occupants are a Chinaman, a Hindu and a French Apache type. They are advertising a three-ring circus of some kind called 'Romeo's League of Nations Exhibit.' Repeat—" She went through the whole spiel again, itemizing every detail of description she could remember. The Hindu's beard, the Errol Flynn moustache on the Frenchman and the Chinaman's purple mandarin robes. She included a vivid description of Arnolda Van Atta, hoping that such a weird menage of people must certainly have been seen by somebody during the last few hours. They would have no reason to discard their disguises because they must have been pretty sure they had wiped out April in the factory explosion. She had never seen Mr. Riddle, of course, so she left him out of her message.

  The man in Section Four barked a Roger at her and April clicked the set up, taking a deep breath.

  There. At least, she had done that much.

  The rest was up to efficiency and luck.

  Luck always played a large part in any operation. It was the one intangible, imponderable aspect of every single moment of an agent's life.

  With her report out of the way, she busied herself with the special equipment and protective devices of offense and defense that occupied the shelves of the Weapons Room. Mr. Waverly was going to have a fit when she presented her expense account at the end of the month. She had lost an entire set of personal tools. Something she had rarely ever done. Mr. Waverly had always commended her on her frugality and thrift, often chiding Slate, Solo and Kuryakin for their constant loss of equipment and very high lists of expenditures.

  Still, that wasn't what was really bothering her.

  Not even her New England background could make her forget for a moment that Mark was in the hands of the opposition.

  If anything happened to that dear fool, she'd never forgive herself.

  Suddenly she also realized with a start that she hadn't had a thing to eat all day. Not since breakfast. Her stomach was beginning to rebel.

  She called the commissary, hoping to sneak in a sandwich and a cup of hot tea before the conference with Enforcement.

  She also remembered to jot a memo down on a scrap pad. A reminder to herself to take care of the unwilling Samaritan of a cab driver.

  Number seven-one-three-five-nine.

  Around-the-Clock-Terror

  The whipsaw wore a long green velvet dress. The click-click of the jade pendant he could not see had forced Mark Slate to open his weary eyes. The long, enforced strain of remaining perfectly still on the table that faced the .30 caliber Browning machine gun had taken its toll on his mind. He hadn't been able to afford the healing luxury of sleep or rest. He might wake up with a start and trip the wire that connected to the trigger of the gun. So he had remained in a state of rigid, controlled watchfulness. Because of it, he was utterly weary in mind and muscle.

  Now, he could see Arnolda Van Atta's tigerish green hips. The velvet dress glittered as she brushed against his face. He did not miss the cruel riding crop, the hard, twisted, interlaced leather of the object. He smiled tightly.

  "Ah, Miss Whipsaw," he murmured almost dreamily.

  The green velvet dress paused, the riding crop stiffened. Arnolda Van Atta's subtle voice spoke coolly from somewhere above him.

  "Whipsaw, Mr. Slate? I don't understand—isn't that a saw in a frame of some kind?"

  "Oh, very," he agreed mildly. "But it is also a person who somehow always gets the better of another person. I should say that description fit you very well, Miss Van Atta."

  A low, silvery laugh came.

  "It is good that you recognize superior intellect when you meet it."

  "I didn't say that, old girl. The Nazis were whipsaws for the Jews and you know what happened to the Nazis."

  The riding crop came down hard on the table, inches from Slate's face. It made a dull, heavy thudding sound.

  "I'm glad you are what you are, Mr. Slate," the redhead said in even, icy tones. "You are the perfect subject for torture. A strong will who will resist until every last shred of flesh is ripped from your body." He heard the riding crop slash experimentally through the atmosphere in the room. It made swishing, vicious noises. Slate hung onto his nerve.

  "Pity, old girl."

  "What's a pity?"

  "That you can't find better uses for such a splendid physical specimen such as myself. I've made many women happy in my time, you know. Don't want to boast and all that but it is a waste of manpower. I imagine you look quite smashing in that fine green dress. Hair all up in a splendid coiffure, I suppose? Slim white throat, that imperial look of yours. Do you know the poem 'Richard Cory' by Robinson? That line where it says '...and he glittered when he walked....' I fancy you must look like that right now. Why not be a sport and untie me from this infernal table so I can get a look at you?"

  There was a long moment of silence in which she didn't answer him. Slate stiffened, waiting. Knowing that the next moment must bring one or two things. Either the first downward slash of the riding crop across his defenseless back. Or a withering scorn for the suggestion that a woman like Arnolda Van Atta was interested in anything so commonplace and vulgar as sex. Or both.

  She surprised him.

  She chuckled, in that low voice, the one that told him volumes regarding the amount of weird pleasure she was reaping from the entire situation.

  "Really, Mr. Slate. Do you think to delude me?"

  "Fat chance of that, isn't there?"

  "Yes, you are a superb physical specimen—" She cooed now. He shuddered as he felt her long cool fingers roll up the Basque shirt. She did that slowly, gingerly, knotting the tail of the shirt under his armpits. His midriff was bared now. He felt his mouth go dry. He could take a whipping all right. That part was all right. He wouldn't even mind the scars. It wasn't that. He remembered all too clearly a man whom he had known in London. The fellow had
been an RAF flier in War Two, shot down over Germany and been interned in one of their bloody camps where some pig of a Nazi had whipped him like a dog. The fellow, Jenkins was his name, had smashed kidneys and a spinal column with several misplaced discs for life. That would not be pleasant. All from one ten-minute session with the lash in the hands of a brutal bastard who knew how to use it.

  "Your skin is so smooth and soft," Arnolda Van Atta purred. "A man's back. Strong, well-muscled and admirable. It is too bad for you that sex holds no appeal for me. We could have spent this hour otherwise."

  No appeal. That was a horselaugh. She was a pervert. A sadist. For whom cruelty and pain were pleasure. The Krafft-Ebing boys would have loved this redheaded bitch. Mark Slate could only fight for time.

  "I see you've lost all interest in any usefulness I might have as an informant, is that it?"

  She paused, her cool fingers freezing on his back.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I would speak up now to save my skin. You think me a bloody fool? Get me off this table and I'll tell you all you want to know."

  "You fool," she laughed. "I'll learn what I must my way. You'll talk even more freely under the lash. I wouldn't for a moment consider untieing you."

  "I scream rather loudly," he pointed out.

  "Go ahead. No one will hear you. This is a soundproofed room. Why do you think we brought you here in the first place?"

  "You think of everything, don't you?"

  "Of course."

  "Then you'd better unhook that machine gun contraption of yours unless you want to redesign the walls of this room in bullet holes. I tend to jump high in the air when I am struck across the back with a whip."

  Now, she truly laughed. A good-humored laugh. Her silvery tones rose and pealed like bells.

  "My compliments," she trailed off, still chuckling. "You are quite a man, Mark Slate. Always the cool head even in the most extreme circumstances."

  He closed his eyes and set his teeth together.

  "Get on with it and be damned," he said. He opened his eyes again.

 

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