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

by Michael Avallone

  "Right, Mr. Waverly."

  "Meanwhile I suggest—"

  He paused as a beeping sound filled the office. A blue light glowed on the panel before him. Mr. Waverly depressed a buzzer, his face suddenly alert.

  "Yes?"

  A crisp man's voice filled the room.

  "Prisoner, Mr. Waverly. Loitering in the doorway of Del Fiona's. She tried to pick the lock and set off the alarm. We have her now in the Restraint Room."

  "Hmm. The shop was closed, of course. Anything else?"

  "Young, very attractive, butch haircut. Pug nose. Says her name is Joanna Paula Jones and she's from U.S. Naval Intelligence."

  April was out of her chair in a flash. Excitement and pleasure flooded her. Mr. Waverly spoke quietly into the transmitter, looking steadily at his agent.

  "Send Miss Jones up."

  "Yes, sir."

  "That's her," April crowed. "Not bad for a youngster. Finding us like this. Getting out of that building alive. She must know something—"

  "Let us hope so," Mr. Waverly said calmly and quietly. "We are in the need of knowledge. And miracles, I might add."

  At second sight, Joanna Paula Jones seemed even younger and more adolescent than ever. Her boyishly bobbed hair, creamy white skin and tilted nose belonged on a pixie, not an agent of the armed services. Somewhere, she too had found time and wherewithal to change her attire and repair the damage of the wettest escape since the Deluge. When she saw April, her face lit up.

  "Hi, there. Am I glad to see you!" She paused in embarrassment, hesitant before the solemnity of Mr. Waverly's presence. He bowed slightly, waving her to a chair.

  "Ditto," April said. "But first tell me how you got out of that fix we were in. I floated downriver until I snagged the shoreline in Bronx Park."

  "Miss Jones," Mr. Waverly said. "Feel free to answer Miss Dancer, I shall ask you some questions directly."

  "That's very nice of you, Mr.—"

  "Waverly."

  "—Waverly." Joanna Paula Jones sighed, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't know. Miracle, I guess. I was washed away too. But I woke up a long way off from that building, I can tell you. Since then I've been busier than a beaver."

  "I can imagine," April said. "Go on."

  "I contacted my people and they told me to find you people. That was a chore. Took me all night. But I managed. You see, Naval Intelligence wants us to pool our efforts, in a sort of unofficial way, of course, depending on how things work out with Mr. Zorki." She turned to Mr. Waverly, eagerly. "You still have him as prisoner?"

  Waverly nodded, not wanting to interrupt the girlish flow of her story. April hid a smile, for Joanna made her think back to her own first days as an U.N.C.L.E. agent. Possibly she had come on just as feminine and gushy as Joanna Paula Jones did now. A girl learned only with time.

  "That's fine. He belongs locked up. A terrible man. Well, here I am and I want to help. I thought letting you people catch me was the simplest way. It worked too, didn't it?"

  "It certainly did," April laughed. "How did you know about Del Floria's?"

  Joanna Paula Jones looked surprised. "Oh, I've known that a long time. Doesn't everyone?"

  Mr. Waverly now interrupted. Almost coldly.

  "Everyone does not. Answer the question, please."

  "When they caught me—that bunch of fanatics—and put me in that locker. Well, they asked me a lot of questions and I overheard them discussing Uncle. All about the place. The tailor shop entrance. All of it."

  "Who spoke of it, Miss Jones? Try to remember."

  "It was the woman." Joanna Paula Jones screwed up her piquant face thoughtfully. "Yes, that redhead. All about how they had a man planted here. Someone who had a fine Uncle record and would never be suspected. I thought you'd want to know that."

  April leaned forward. "Please, Joanna. Think hard. Was the man's name ever mentioned?" Waverly tensed.

  "No—I don't—wait a minute. You see, I got on to them because I met a man from Uncle a month ago. Just about the time Zorki was captured. He sort of let me in on things. Well, it was he who suggested I follow that blue truck. You know the League of Nations thing. It was a great tip. Only thing was I got caught. Almost got killed too. I would have if it hadn't been for you, Miss Dancer."

  Mr. Waverly and April Dancer couldn't believe their ears. The glances they exchanged could have been emblazoned in Macy's front window for all the world to see. Was it possible that this incredibly naive young woman held the key to all their difficulties? Held the key and was unaware of it?

  "Oh—" Joanna Paula Jones clapped a hand to her mouth. Her eyes popped. "How stupid I've been! You both mean that the man who talked to me is the man who's responsible for all this trouble with Mr. Zorki?"

  Mr. Alexander Waverly leaned across the round table. His brown eyes targeted in on Joanna Paula Jones. There was electricity in every line of his lean body.

  "Miss Jones," he said slowly, kindly, very very carefully. "Who was that man from Uncle?"

  "Wilder," she said promptly, smiling to cover her error in logic. "James Wilder. He was ever so cooperative."

  She repressed a shriek of dismay at the amount of activity her innocuous statement triggered. Mr. Waverly sprang back to his panel board, thumbing buzzers. April shot over to the place where her own chair was and unhooked the intercom that loomed up like a cobra head before her. She started rattling instructions into the mouthpiece, urgently calling Mark Slate's name. No static came or sounded.

  Mr. Waverly thumbed on the buttons that governed the televisor screens lining the wall. Nothing happened. They remained dark and inactive. The head of U.N.C.L.E. abandoned the set, his craggy features set in hard lines. He marched rapidly toward the office door.

  "Come along, Miss Dancer. You too, Miss Jones. It is no less than I expect. I only hope we aren't too late."

  April nodded, following him, jerking Joanna Paula Jones out of her chair. The traitor had already made his next move. Not one of the systems in the office was functioning properly. Whatever he had decided to do was already underway. Operation Free Zorki was on the march.

  All systems for that one were Go, Go. Go!

  Far over the East River, fairly invisible in the dark of night, a giant helicopter chopped briskly through the skies. The riding lights were minimal, tiny stars lost in a vast arena of heaven. The full-throated roar of the motor and the mammoth circular rotation of the powerful rotary propellors were almost lost in the multiplicity of noises filling the New York night. Tugs and seagoing freighters mooed like enormous cows in the harbor. Jets zoomed across the skies. The clamor and violence of a great city still awake, still alive, still operating.

  The helicopter, traveling at six thousand feet, banked sharply where the 59th Street Bridge below lay like a child's discarded toy against the silver-spotted expanse of the river. It kept on banking, spiraling downward until the altitude loss was phenomenal. Some four hundred feet above the river line, the whirlybird ploughed south, tracing the course of the water.

  Within seconds, the machine had reached 42nd Street. It banked once more, circling. Far down below somewhere, from the mass of darkened rooftops, a light blinked. Once, twice, three times. The light followed that pattern for a full minute. The helicopter seemed to stand still in mid-air hovering like an enormous flying bug.

  Now, the streams of lights from vehicles racing back and forth, in both directions, along the East River Drive, were ribbons of continuous illumination in the night.

  But the steady winking light blinked intermittently. Once, twice, three times. On and off. Off and on.

  The helicopter moved again.

  Dropping almost vertically. Hundreds of feet fell away until the last hundred between ground and sky was left. The chopper pulled up sharply, hovering again. From the street it would have been impossible to detect. The humming and throbbing of the engines and rotary blades was an enormous drone of sound that could have been attributed to the subways or the noises of a trip-hammer.


  Directly below, the winking light went off for the last time. It did not go on again.

  The helicopter waited, hovering. A midnight figment of a dreamer's imagination.

  Down below, in the packed mass of darkness, among the huddled rooftops, directly under the chopper, stood the building that housed the organization known as U.N.C.L.E.

  Headquarters.

  The Two Mad Bombers

  U.N.C.L.E. Enforcement Agent Walter Fleming was on duty on the third floor of the complex. The corridor was a long, gray steel file, bisected with sliding doors that bridged the gap between the walls. Fleming was busy checking his weapon for possible malfunctions. This was the machine pistol which had sent a "mercy" bullet into Fried Rice at the apartment building. The thing had been acting up lately and Fleming planned to turn it over to the armorer the very next day. It was close to midnight and Walter Fleming stifled a yawn. He would be relieved soon and it was time enough. Sometimes, in spite of the excitement earlier that night, things did get a bit quiet around Headquarters. Why even now, the whole damn building was as silent as a tomb—

  Walter Fleming frowned.

  That wasn't right. He suddenly realized that he had not heard an elevator hum or so much as a signal beep that he could remember these past few minutes. That shouldn't be. Not with the midnight shift arriving and setting up, taking over for the personnel they would be relieving. There was always some sort of sound. Fleming climbed out of his chair at the corridor's very end, where it forked in both directions toward the elevators and scanned the foyer briefly. For a moment, he was on his guard, all of his senses alert. Then he heard the elevator and the sound of footsteps walking casually, unconcernedly somewhere behind him. He turned.

  Down the corridor, stepping through sliding doors just hissing shut, came a big, bear-shouldered man in gray turtleneck sweater and taut trousers. Walter Fleming started. Zorki! But no, it had to be James Wilder in the special trick makeup and costume that Mr. Waverly had prescribed for the assignment. Fleming knew about that. He did relax when he saw the U.N.C.L.E. odd-shaped badge card pinned to the breast of the sweater.

  Still—

  Walter Fleming trained the machine pistol on the bull-necked man marching toward him. This Zorki waved, smiling, showing small white teeth.

  "Wouldn't shoot a pal, would you, Walter?"

  Fleming chuckled, shaking his head. "Damme, Jimmy, but that's some disguise. Never realized you looked so much like Zorki. Even with the extra touches. Sure he isn't your brother?"

  "My Big Brother," gloated James Wilder, for it was indeed he and not Alek Yakov Zorki. However, it did not make much difference, which was something Walter Fleming did not know.

  "What's up, Jimmy?"

  "Have to see Mr. Waverly. The Russky wants to talk to him about something. I don't know but what it might be important."

  "Never hurts to try," Fleming assented.

  As the dual Zorki brushed by him, Walter Fleming felt a sharp sting on the bare skin of his right hand. He emitted a sudden bleat of surprise and stepped back. When he saw the puncture mark on the hairy surface of his hand, he looked up quickly. When he saw the look in James Wilder's eyes, he tried to bring up his machine pistol. The bogus Zorki didn't make a move. It was not necessary.

  Walter Fleming's eyeballs rolled and he collapsed in half, sliding to the smooth floor. He was dead before he could watch his murderer return by the way he had come to the sliding panels that bisected the corridor.

  The panels hissed apart.

  Alek Yakov Zorki barreled through, his big figure animated and agitated. Pinned to his facsimile sweater was another of the odd-shaped badge cards. His small eyes gleamed at the sight of the fallen agent.

  James Wilder motioned to him, as he reset the hypodermic needle in the stem of his watch. THRUSH poisons worked with the speed of light.

  "Come on," James Wilder whispered. "We've got just five minutes to make the roof. And that's all the time that those systems will stay out of order. I had to work fast."

  "Da," Alek Yakov Zorki rumbled, sweat standing out on his bull face. "Kolya, it cannot be soon enough for me."

  "Let's save the reunion for later."

  "As you say."

  They whipped around the fork in the corridor and headed for the stairway, James Wilder leading the way. Zorki lunged behind him. Two large men in a great hurry.

  They were reflections of each other. Veritable twins. Two peas in a pod.

  Only their mother could have told them apart.

  And she had always had quite a time of it, in the very beginning, when they were two little boys growing up in Tatarstan, Russia.

  Alek and Nicolai Zorki.

  Alek had always called Nicolai "Kolya."

  April Dancer, Mr. Waverly, Mark Slate and Joanna Paula Jones didn't need a diagram. The two cells that had held Alek Yakov Zorki and his impersonator, James Wilder, separated by some five feet of concrete bunker, were empty.

  Slate, hastily summoned by a vocal chain of commands to the other agents scampering all over the complex and trying to locate the source of the malfunctioning systems, was properly attired now. His loud weskit, flaming red beneath a blue blazer, set him off like a playboy at a funeral parlor.

  "Our birds have flown," Mr. Waverly said. "The question is where?"

  "They can't get out of Headquarters without being seen," Slate said. "That's one sure thing."

  "Not at all, Mr. Slate," Waverly demurred. "If we have a traitor in our midst, there is no guaranteeing anything, is there? He certainly is familiar with all our security measures and must have prepared himself in advance."

  April bit her lip, breaking her long-standing resolution not to do so in company.

  "It doesn't make sense, does it? Unless—"

  She halted. Thinking out loud was a bad habit, too. Especially with Mr. Waverly in charge.

  Slate frowned at her. "You were about to say?"

  "It's probably a wild guess, Mark."

  "The wilder the better," he laughed. "And that is a deliberate pun."

  April stared at Mr. Waverly.

  The head of U.N.C.L.E. smiled tolerantly. His cragged face was lined with apprehension. He nodded toward April, waiting for her to think her thought out. Slate made an impatient noise in his throat. But his superior, harried, perplexed and bewildered in the extreme, was in a mood to clutch at straws.

  "Go on, Dancer. Say it outright. If you've thought of something, let's have it."

  "Well, look," April continued. "Our man knows this building. All of it. He's fouled all the systems for a reason."

  "To help Zorki escape, of course," Waverly murmured.

  "That's just it. So what does he have? He's not going to walk out our front door. The alarm setups are out of commission but he'd run into fifty of our people going that way. He knows that, same as he knows it's midnight. And the new shift is coming in. True, this building is pretty soundproof, but I know what I'd do if I was a fink like James Wilder freeing a Russian bear."

  Joanna Paula Jones was breathless with excitement. Her eyes swept from Mr. Waverly to April Dancer to Mark Slate, whom her girlish heart found thoroughly groovy.

  "Come on, April," Mark snapped, his amused eyes suddenly very serious. "Out with it. The hunch, girl!"

  "The roof," April said. "I'd head for the roof. We've only the radar screens and the burglar setups there. Nothing else. No sentries, no agents—no people with eyes to see."

  Mr. Waverly paused, thinking about that. He pursed his lips.

  "True enough but the roof would present a bigger problem. How could they hope to get off the roof? Unless—by the eternal! Of course!"

  "Yes," April nodded. "The roof is the only place where they could be picked up."

  Slate unlimbered his service pistol. It had an extra-large drum attachment, to the right of the firing chamber. His eyes twinkled. He'd been the deadest shot in the RAF and his firing range exploits were the talk of Headquarters.

  "Charge, sir?"<
br />
  "Charge," Waverly agreed, "sooner the better. We'll stop by the armorer's on our way up. This may be a bigger emergency than even I supposed."

  "Come on, Joanna," April urged. "Or Paula, or whatever you like to be called. You stay behind me. And keep an eye open for low-flying airplanes."

  Mr. Waverly flung her an astonished look before he set off toward the elevators once more. Amazing how Miss Dancer could always go to the heart of a matter in a flash. Woman's intuition, he supposed. Something intangible, that even technology couldn't ever cope with. After all, how did she deduce that THRUSH might be sending a plane to pick up their runaway agents? He'd only just thought of it himself, remembering the occasion when a similar stunt had been performed. The Arctic Affair, wasn't it? He was sure that was before Miss Dancer's time but he didn't pause to certify the thought.

  Zorki must be stopped at all costs.

  And James Wilder, too, who now represented an even greater threat to U.N.C.L.E. than the great Zorki. Wilder was that very uncommon denominator—a homegrown traitor.

  If he ever got back to THRUSH alive, with what he knew about the inner workings of Headquarters, then indeed, Judgment Day would follow. And Armageddon. And Finality.

  The devil take the life everlasting formula. If there was such a heinous, ungodly concoction.

  Joanna Paula Jones, thrilled at being in the midst of such an important mission, was bubbling with vivacity and excitement. April recognized the symptoms. As for Mark Slate, he was very studiously and thoroughly checking his weapon as the soundproof elevator rose swiftly.

  "Mr. Slate," Waverly said.

  "Sir?"

  "No fireworks unless absolutely unavoidable."

  Slate nodded but his eyes were still twinkling with that infernal delight that could only spring from the heart and soul of an agent who truly loves his work.

  Mr. Waverly knew the breed.

  Men like Slate and his two top agents in Rangoon kept U.N.C.L.E. at its high level of performance in resisting world domination by subversive forces. Until now U.N.C.L.E. had been able to stay ahead.