by Unknown
Now it was Illya's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Assignment? I thought we were dining downtown tonight. With that little singer friend of yours. What's her name? Trixie?"
"Mitzi," said Solo with a sigh.
"You told me she had a friend," Illya said.
"I regret that must wait," announced Mr. Waverly. "You two are going to Hawaii while I put the complete U.N.C.L.E. network on Phase B alert."
In Napoleon Solo's mind, visions of marching men, ominous shadows against a darkened sky, bedeviled him. They were all identical—huge slab shoulders; arms that hung nearly to their knees; heads that were bulbous and lemon-shaped. An army of Felix Klaangers marching on U.N.C.L.E.. On the world.
No ordinary U.N.C.L.E. operative, no matter how fine or rigorous their training, could stand against men of Felix Klaanger's strength. And it was the thin line of U.N.C.L.E. operatives, in the last analysis, which maintained the delicate balance between peace and anarchy, and staved off time and time again the drive of THRUSH for world domination.
This time THRUSH might succeed if Klaanger was not located. And soon. Things were very bad. Solo and Illya were needed in Hawaii. Precious days would slip by—
"I don't understand this Hawaii business," said Illya.
"Mr. Solo will explain it to you," Mr. Waverly said.
"Aloha, Mitzi," Solo said. Thinking of what THRUSH might be up to while they raced around on other, equally pressing assignments he wondered whether it would be aloha, world before very much longer.
TWO
Three weeks, two days, six interrogations, four hand-to-hand combats and one extended visit to Greenland later—after the Hawaiian affair was handled, Illya and Solo had to extinguish a bonfire of THRUSH sabotage directed at the free world's missile defense system—Felix Klaanger was sighted on a street in Munich, Germany by an U.N.C.L.E. man on station there.
Cables flew back and forth from Europe and America. Solo and Illya were jetted to Manhattan on the first available U.N.C.L.E. craft out of Greenland. By the time they arrived and received their orders from Mr. Waverly, another cable had come in from the European branch of Policy and Operations, informing the entire network that the agent who had spotted Klaanger after identifying him from his picture had turned up dead in a sewage ditch.
That is, portions of him had turned up.
A torso.
A leg.
Enough of his lower skull and jawbone for dental identification.
And nothing else.
It was as though incredibly strong hands had simply torn the man's body apart and scattered the pieces.
Beyond the ceiling-high plate glass of the airport waiting room, drizzling rain fell.
The morning was heavily overcast. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin waited in line with the ninety or so passengers who were preparing to board the immense, four-engined jet with Air Deutschland markings. The jet sat out there on the ready line like a dull silver bird. A passenger agent had just announced over the loudspeaker that despite the bad weather, Flight 414 for London and Munich was expected to depart on schedule.
Solo had been feeling unaccounttably tense ever since their taxicab deposited them at the Air Deutschland terminal at Kennedy International. He felt eyes crawling over him. Illya appeared unconcerned. He was studiously lost in a pamphlet on isometrics.
"After all, Napoleon," he had remarked while making the purchase at the newsstand, "if I am to go up against Herr Klaanger and his fellows in physical combat, I am approximately two hundred pounds behind. Perhaps I can add a couple of inches to my biceps just on the trip across. You're never good company. All you do is ogle the stewardess."
More accurate words had never been spoken, especially in reference to this particular trip. Solo was distracted from his visual search of the waiting room by the sight of the Air Deutschland flight crew. The crew had appeared outside the waiting room window.
As the crew members hurried toward the plane, one of the young ladies assigned to make the passengers more comfortable developed some difficulty with her nylons. She paused outside the waiting room window to examine the back of her trimly Teutonic left calf.
Despite the rather unexciting cut of her blue and white-piped airline uniform, she was a shapely pasty, Solo could see. A big, healthy-looking German girl with sparkling blue eyes, yellow hair and pretty, generous lips. Solo admired her tantalizing hip action as she darted on through the drizzle and ran up the stairs into the plane. He hoped she was assigned to first class.
Abruptly, then, Solo had something else to worry about. He finally localized the source of the uneasy, they're-watching-us feeling. Carefully he unfolded a copy of the Times and appeared to scan it. Over the top of the sheet he peered obliquely at a man lounging near the water cooler.
The man was portly, wore an eggshell-colored raincoat and a green Tyrolean hat with a gaudy feather in the band. Despite the day's somberness, the man also wore immense sun glasses. Their lenses reflected the fluorescent lights in the ceiling in blue-white star bursts.
Gently Solo nudged his companions. Still pretending to read, he whispered, "Notice the job by the cooler."
Illya feigned total absorption in isometrics, but his eyes moved quickly over and back.
"The one with the oversized shades," he said. "He jostled me at the magazine stand."
"I don't think he's boarding," Solo said.
"No, and he doesn't appear to be saying good-by to his frau, either. He's just watching us."
Solo's mind clicked and whirred ahead. Since the U.N.C.L.E. operative who had sighted Klaanger in Munich had been killed, chances were good that U.N.C.L.E.'s interest in Klaanger's whereabouts was already known.
Thus THRUSH could quickly have spread an observation net aimed at pegging down known U.N.C.L.E. agents traveling in the direction of Germany. What distressed Napoleon Solo was the open nature of the manoeuver. He had seldom known THRUSH to employ operatives who would make themselves so obvious. Those sunglasses stood out too sorely in the terminal.
Of course every organization had its incompetents. Perhaps this agent was one of them.
Perhaps there was a perfectly logical reason for the man standing next to the cooler, a reason which had nothing to do with THRUSH at all. Still, the pattern would bear watching. If a tail turned up at the Munich end also, Solo and Illya would be operating under a new handicap. They would know they were tagged before they even began the investigation.
"Here we go," Illya said loudly. The line began to move past the booth where an Air Deutschland passenger agent with a pasteboard smile examined the tickets of boarders.
Moments later Solo and Illya were hustling through the rain towards the first-class boarding stairs.
"Ooops," Solo exclaimed, faking the accidental dropping of his attache case. Bending to retrieve it, he peered back past his right knee.
Herr Sun-glasses was standing next to the waiting room window, still watching. His hands were deep in the pockets of his eggshell-colored raincoat.
Solo scooped up his case and ran after Illya.
At the head of the stairs the pleasantly-proportioned German pastry Solo had noticed before was waiting to greet passengers:
"Guten morgen, gentlemen. May I see your tickets?"
The stewardess gave Napoleon Solo a sizzling smile. He returned it in kind. Although the point of her jaw was a trifle strong, almost blunt, her features were otherwise nearly perfect and quite lovely. He continued to grin winningly while Illya went to his seat.
Solo juggled his attache case awkwardly from hand to hand.
"I wonder whether you could get rid of this for me, fraulein—"
The girl quickly filled in the verbal blank which Solo had created:
"Fraulein Bauer. Of course. May I have it, please?"
Solo transferred the case to the girl's hand, experiencing in the process a not unpleasant contact with her soft fingertips. This reassured him that the flight might be diverting after all.
Fraulein Bauer was abo
ut to stow the bag in a compartment just behind her when she noticed the white embossed plastic tag hanging from the handle.
The tag bore Solo's full name and the address of a bogus Manhattan flat.
"What an interesting first name," said the Fraulein. "Are you French?"
"Well, temperamentally I guess," Solo replied with a good-natured leer.
The girl laughed. A passenger waiting outside in the damp at the top of the ramp complained about the delay.
"See you later," Napoleon Solo said by way of invitation, and marched down the aisle to his seat beside Illya.
"You think of romance at the most unlikely times," Illya grumbled as Solo sat down.
"Can you think of a better time? Our U.N.C.L.E. in Munich, U.N.C.L.E. Doremus—" That was the code for the station chief. "—won't be back until tomorrow morning. We'll have a free evening. So will all the young ladies on the flight, I assume. Munich is the end of the run."
Illya looked miffed. "I intend to devote myself to isometric exercises. I consider that somewhat more practical."
"But dull."
Solo really didn't feel all that jolly.
He could still glimpse the watcher in sun glasses through the oval window at Illya's left.
Fraulein Bauer was busily hanging up coats, soothing an elderly lady who had never flown before, offering a pillow to a young mother who spoke only French and carried a squalling baby. Even though these duties kept her occupied, she still had enough time to glance Solo's way once or twice and smile.
Illya was above it all. He laced his fingers together and pulled hard until his cheeks began to redden from the tension.
Then he relaxed and repeated the exercise.
Solo kept studying the delightful way Fraulein Bauer's trim legs were attached to the remainder of her equally delightful form. He concluded that as a companion for a lonely secret agent at liberty in a strange city, she would be ideal. He'd have to get busy—
Ten minutes after the flight was airborne, Solo had arranged the date.
THREE
At the Munich airport, another of those oddly obvious watchers picked them up and followed them at a distance from the baggage reclamation area. This man was a slight, rat-faced individual in a cheap suit of somber hue. He walked with a decided limp in his right leg. He smoked a cigarette by holding it from beneath, with thumb and right index finger.
In the taxicab which carried them away from the airport toward the Hotel de Luxe, Solo and Illya decided that this was a cross they would have to bear, at least until they met with their contact the section chief tomorrow morning.
The rodent-featured individual hopped into a Volkswagen just to the rear of the taxi rank and drove behind them by about six car lengths all the way to the hotel.
They registered as Herr Solo and Herr Kuryakin, sales representatives for International Elementary Education Materials, Inc., of New York City. Rat-face was still lingering in the plush, chandeliered lobby as the bellboy bore their bags into the elevator. As the elevator doors closed, Solo and Illya saw their shadow break into a quick stride and head for the bank of phones at the back of the lobby.
In front of the bathroom mirror in their suite, Napoleon Solo adjusted his tie. Illya Kuryakin lounged in the doorway. "I hope you and the Fraulein have a pleasant evening."
"Your sincerity overwhelms me. And you heard her say she had a friend."
Illya shrugged. "Mitzi, Betsy, Trixie—They always have friends. I was not cut out to be the excess baggage in your romantic life. I prefer to go my own way, thank you."
"With isometric tension to keep you company. Well, have a ball."
Solo slipped into his well-cut dinner jacket and sauntered to the phone. He rang up the service desk and ascertained that his rented Mercedes was ready at the main entrance. Noting the way Illya paced back and forth, Solo frowned.
"Look, you've never raised a rumpus when I've had a date before."
"Fiddlesticks, Napoleon," Illya snapped. "It has nothing to do with your date."
"Then what's wrong?"
"All the Thrushes are twittering right out in the open where we can't miss them. The fellow with the sun glasses in New York. Rat-cheeks the moment we arrive here. That."
Irritably Illya gestured toward the baseboard. The remains of a pulverized electronic device measuring half an inch on a side glittered dully. A quick search of the room upon arrival had turned up the device at once. It was crudely affixed to the rear side of a chair leg with electrical tape. One fast stamp of Napoleon Solo's right heel had rendered it useless.
"It's almost as though they're begging us to notice them, Napoleon. That's not like them. What does it mean?"
"I don't know," Solo admitted. "Unless it's all one huge red herring."
Illya's brow puckered. "Possible. But then where's the authentic fish?"
Solo shook his head. He reached into the side pocket of his jacket and brought out the short rod-like pocket communicator.
Twisting it, he aligned the notches to the correct position. A similar device which belonged to Illya and was currently resting on an expensive coffee table began to emit a low, not displeasing, warble.
Quickly Solo unscrewed the upper part of his communicator. Now he had a cylinder in his palm only half an inch in diameter and perhaps two inches long.
He manipulated a trick fold in the lining of his dinner jacket, slipped the small part of the communicator out of sight and re-buttoned the jacket. The communicator on the coffee table continued to warble, though at a lower pitch.
"There," Solo grinned. "You can keep track of me all night."
"Don't hang your jacket in some soundproofed closet," Illya said. "If the signal weakens the slightest bit, I'll be after you. You wouldn't want to be rudely interrupted, but I'll do just that unless you stay in range."
"Thanks. I'll remember." Solo walked toward the door. "Still time to change your mind and come along."
Illya flopped into a chair and picked up his isometrics pamphlet.
"No, I'll stick at this. With Herr Klaanger and his muscles lurking somewhere backstage, I feel like the typical ninety-seven pound weakling always facing the rotten end of things in those body-builder advertisements."
Remembering Peterson's ghastly corpse, Solo said, "Don't we all?" and bowed out.
FOUR
The motor of the Mercedes purred. Behind, the light-spangled area of ultra-modern apartments slid away into the Munich dusk. Solo said, "Where?"
"A left turn at the next corner," Helene Bauer said. "That is, if you favor good dark beer and quite elegant wienerschnitzel."
"I've always been a veal man. Lead me to it, charming Fraulein Bauer. I was lucky to discover you."
"Ordinarily, Herr Solo," she said in a bantering voice, "I would not have accepted your invitation on such brief acquaintance—"
"I'll bet you say that to all the passengers."
"Herr Solo—Napoleon—I do not!" Her blue eyes blazed prettily. Then she snuggled against his side and linked her arm in his. "With you—well, you have der teufel's sparkle in your eye, that's all. And I had a free evening. Do we need further explanations?"
"Not a one," he said. His eyes ranged up to the rear-vision mirror. Clipping along behind them through the pools of light thrown by street lamps was a Volkswagen which Solo was sure had been parked near Helene Bauer's apartment. Unless he was mistaken, the driver of that automobile was rat-faced.
Fortunately Helene Bauer was pretty enough in her swirling dress of bluish lacy stuff and her white knit stole to take his mind off mundane concerns, such as the possibility of a THRUSH agent on their tail. She nestled against his side, smelling delightfully of soap and a light, pleasing perfume. Altogether a charming companion for an evening of fun.
Shortly they reached the narrow, dim-lit street where, Helene promised, they would find a restaurant of excellent reputation. This turned out to be Der Goldenne Schwann, or so a lemon-colored neon sign above a shabby-looking cellar entrance announce
d. The other buildings in the area were blacked-out commercial establishments.
Expensive American and European vehicles were parked bumper to bumper on both sides of the street near the restaurant. As they tooled past, Solo heard the raucous noise of a concertina.
"I thought we only had parking problems in America," he grumbled.
"There is a parking area to the rear, I think," Helene answered. "Turn in here."
Solo swung the wheel. The Mercedes bumped along a short alley. At the end lay a small asphalt lot with room to accommodate a dozen cars. Half the slots were already taken. One of the parked cars was a silver-gray Rolls Royce that brought a whistle of admiration to Solo's lips as he parked.
The lot was illuminated by one dim spotlight high up on a steel pole. Long shadows of the parked cars spread out over the ground. Solo hopped out and ran around to the left side to assist Helene. He felt somewhat more relaxed. He felt somewhat more relaxed. Just as he turned into the alley, he'd checked the street behind them. There was no sign of the pursuing Volkswagen at all.
"Well," he said in a chipper voice as he reached a hand inside and clasped Helene's warm fingers, to help her out, "here we are, all set for an evening of—"
His right hand began to burn with agonizing pain.
Helene Bauer's face had lost its placid prettiness. Her lips were compressed tightly. Her blue eyes glittered in the reflected glow of the high spotlight. She had closed her fingers around Solo's hand and was squeezing with such fierce power that he groaned in pain and surprise.
"What the devil kind of parlor game is—" he began, trying to jerk his hand away. He couldn't.
Helene squeezed harder, a thoroughly unpleasant smile on her face. Without any appearance of effort, she applied tremendous pressure.
Solo's whole arm heated up with agony. He let out an ungentlemanly yell and went to his knees.
Daintily raising her right leg, Helene Bauer slammed the sole of her pump into the middle of his face.
It was as though he had been hit by an iron sledge. He was driven backward onto the asphalt while Helene Bauer kept hold of his right hand.
She released it just before his arm threatened to tear loose from his shoulder socket.