Текст книги "The Final Affair"

Автор книги: David McDaniel

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“Have I changed So much?” she ask~d. “After eighteen years – don’t you recognize me?”

It was Joan.

His wife.

Section III : “Cry ‘Havoc!’, And Let Slip The Dogs Of War.”

CHAPTER NINE

“Where Have You Been All My Life?”

The room spun about Napoleon. and a wave of dizziness blurred his vision for a moment. He leaned on the desk and tried to think. The question of a hoax never entered his mind.

JOa71.

The only photograph he had of her was a yellowed snapshot in the bottom of a box somewhere —he hadn’t seen it in years. But her image was still clear in that part of his mind where he lived alone; cool. intelligent eyes with a directness of gaze which had annoyed some of his classmates but had drawn him magnetically; a certain indefinable grace of posture and movement which even now identified her more surely to him even than her soft and husky voice.

He stared at her. unable to voice the questions bursting unformed within him. She looked down at the floor. “Good.” she said. “1 thought you’d think of that.” She knelt smoothly to inspect Harry’s body. then rose again as effortlessly as a dancer. “Would you have noticed the guard’s pistol hasn’t been fired? Baldwin would.”

Napoleon became aware that his mouth was open. and closed it. Then he realized he’d been asked a question. and opened it again to answer. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. “Joan?” he finally said tentatively.

“1 thought you might be a little surprised.” she said. “1111 explain it all to you, but not right now. You want to get out of here, don’t you?”

“Uh —yes…Oh! The Luger!” He stood up and studied the scene again. And Harry. And Joan, who had been killed in a horrible accident back home while he was carrying an M-l through enemy snow with death crouched behind every hill. He’d hardly known her, his bride of a year. with whom held lived less than a month —and nearly twenty years later, half his lifetime removed. he scarcely thought about her except as a private dream that had no relation to the real world…

While that part of his mind reeled in gibbering confusion, his trained intelligence took on the problem at hand. He worked the toggle and ejected one cartridge from the guard’s Luger; Joan caught it and dropped it into her pocket. Then he fired one muffled round into the guard’s body, directing the slug parallel to the angle of the first and fatal wound. This done, he fitted the Luger back into Harry’s limp and coo1ing hand.

He straightened from his task, and Joan handed him the gleaming coppery cartridge. “At least it’s the right caliber.” she pointed out.

Napoleon scowled “But it’s a wadcutter,” he pointed out. “Mine are full-jacketed hollowpoints. Tough. We can’t do an autopsy to find the other slug and replace it without more trouble than we can spare at the moment. We have a chance it won’t be found, at least for a couple of days, and it may be bashed up beyond ballistic reconstruction. Or they may not care to work on it. It looks like an open and shut case from here.”

“Let’s hope it does from upstairs. We’d better get out now. I think.”

The plural registered belatedly, and Napoleon reacted.

Joan noticed. and looked at him. “Do you want me to come with you?”

He stated at her. and suddenly whole areas of memories untapped for years flashed before him. Joan?? Finally he said. “I’ve changed.”

She smiled. “So have I. Napoleon. Possibly more than you —or perhaps not. But I think you’re the same in the important ways.”

“Do —you want to come? You know who I am and what I do…”

“Of course. Everyone in Thrush does.”

“Thrush?”

“Of course Thrush. you ninny! Where do you think you are? I was working for Thrush before you even heard of U.N.C.L.E. —from about the time they first heard of you.”

“Oh! Uh. maybe you!d better explain after we get outside. Yes. If you come with me, I —I’d be honored. But…”

“Napoleon. before we go on I want to tell you one thing. I never pretended or lied about the way I felt about you. Everything else —”

“Not now. I’m not really sure you’re real. but I don’t want anything to happen to you before I find out. It’s– it’s been a long eighteen years. And a lot has happened.”

Her smile wanned him again. “Yes. quite a lot. Where’s your partner.

Illya? I’ve wanted to meet him for years.”

“He’s right upstairs… Oh ye gods! Illya!” He looked at his watch. It was nine minutes past four. “He’s sitting in the middle of an ultrasonic field upstairs. and I’m ten minutes late to get him out. Come on!”

With a last quick. look around. they checked all the elements of their tableau, switched off the light. and departed. In silence, Napoleon led the way back to the proper stairwell and up two flights. There was his sonic shield, just as he’d left it. He cracked the door. and extended the baton.

In seconds, the circuitry was functioning, though only one pink light was on. Together within the invisible umbrella they moved slowly into the protected area. Napoleon was very aware of her presence, though she scarcely touched him.

The green warning signal. which had stayed dark through his inbound journey, came to life shortly after they entered the sonic field: Joan followed his lead instantly and froze until his hand cued her to move again.

The light gleamed once more just before they reached the corner. and he drew her closer to him with his free arm until the warning light went out. Her arm came around his waist. and thus embracing. they rounded the corner.

And thus Illya first saw them. An expression compounded of relief.

irritation. surprise and concern chased itself around his broad Slavic features as they approached.

“Napoleon,” he said softly, “that isn’t Harry.”

“Joan. this is my partner. Illya Nicolaivitch Kuryakin. He sometimes overstates the obvious. Illya. I would like you to meet Joan.n1y wife. She’s defecting from Thrush. Would you care to come along. now that you’ve been properly introduced?M

It is to Illya’s eternal credit that he remembered to lock the access panel.

“50 Mr. Stevens is no longer with us.” said Alexander Waverly when Napoleon had finished his report.

“Neither is he with Thrush. sir.” Illya pointed out.

MHn1. Yes. And neither are you,young lady. Which brings to the question of how you fit into this. I was aware of you only as I brief entry in Mr. Solo’s personal history file. closed before our first contact with him. You were dead. you know,N he added chidingly. “How do you happen to spring up in such an unlikely place?”

MI was interviewing Harry last night just before the sedative took. him off. He wasn’t very happy. His section super sent him in because he’d had an attack of the shakes and started to cry a little in the office… Nobody could figure out why. and they were sort of worried.”

“1 can understand that.”

“He was going to get a good long sleep and a nourishing breakfast and go in for a hypnoprobe at 11:00. I was sent in to talk to him as he was drifting off to see if I could pick up some idea as to where his problem lay.”

“And did you?”

“Not exactly. But he was moaning a little before he went deep’ asleep, and he mentioned U.N.C.L.E. twice. And he mentioned Solo. Was Harry connected with you?”

“You must have expected him to be rescued; did you know Mr. Solo would be doing the rescuing?” .

“I thought it likely.”

“Why?”

“Why did you send him?”

Waverly coughed and fumbled for his pipe. “Mr.. Solo —with the best of intentions, you could be forgiven a less than objective viewpoint —but are you satisfied as to her authenticity and sincerity? Her fingerprints are being compared at the moment. but they are not likely to match anythin9 on record.”

Napoleon looked at her and held her eyes while a thousand thoughts flowed between them in a few seconds. “Yes sir,” he said “I am.. And I’d stake my life on her sincerity.”

“You already did,” Illya pointed out.

“I did not report what I heard from Harry,” Joan said. “I filed only that he moaned and muttered before he went to sleep but that no recognizable words were formed. He didn’t respond to me at all; he was already half under when I came into his room. Whatever they gave him hit faster than usual.”

Mr. Waverly tamped his pipe reflectively with a nicotine-stained thumb and fumbled for a large wooden match. He waited for the sulfurous flare to die down before drawing clean flame into the tobacco-packed bowl. At length it was properly ignited and he dropped the remaining quarter-inch of white wood into a convenient ashtray.

He exhaled a cloud of fragrant blue smoke that rose about his head and drifted toward the air-conditioner vent. “Mrs. 5010,” he said as if considering the name,“Vou understand that your appearance here at this time is, frankly, unexpected. We have no pressing business for the next few hours —would you care to tell us the story of your life?”

“Well, the first sixteen years were ordinary enough. But then I was contacted by Thrush, and they offered me a lot of things I really wanted. I volunteered for something exciting. and they gave me a full battery of tests.

Now I guess this was about the time you were starting to be interested in Napoleon. As I recall, you picked him out of the personality profiles sent to you for consideration by that student testing organization —what’s their ”

name…

“I didn’t know anything about U.N.C.L.E. before I got out of the service,”

said Napoleon.

“But they knew about you. Didn’t they. Mr. Waverly?”

Waverly cleared his throat. “Ah —please continue.”

“Certainly. That was in 1949. The following year —”

“I was a senior in high school in 1950.” said Napoleon.

“You were still a junior in the spring semester. Thrush noticed you too about that time. and it didn’t take them long to learn that U.N.C.L.E. was already interested in you. They ran your profile through the Ultimate Computer and it matched mine to you.”

“And that fall you came to Hudson High as a senior. even though you were a year younger.”

“And it took you three months to notice me.”

They laughed together. then stopped and studied each other searchingly.

as though neither one was sure what they were looking for.

“And just a few months after that we graduated. I was just starting to find out what kind of man you really were when you went into the army.”

MI think I still have your letters —and that picture of you I…~

his voice caught slightly. ” …I took on our honeymoon..”

“I never even had that much.” She took his hand, and they stared at each other wordlessly for several seconds. Mr. Waverly and Illya stared at each other too. with rather different expressions.

“Twitterpated,” said the U.N.C.L.E. chief. and cleared his throat. “I believe Mr. Solo had just left for military service. H

“We wrote a lot back and forth, sir.” Napoleon explained.

“I proposed to her when I finished my basic, conditional on my survival. and she accepted.”

“Now you were working for Thrush all this time?”

“Yes. My original assignment was to assess Napoleon for subversion to Thrush before U.N.C.L.E. actually got around to making their first contact with him.”

“Did your assignment include marrying him?” Illya asked.

“No. But —well, I had to talk my nest leader into vouching for my report that convinced them to allow me to marry him. I wanted to marry him.”

She smiled. “The Ultimate Computer did a good job of match making.”

“Then what happened?” .

“We were married. I was home on leave for a few weeks in the summer of ‘52, and we were married on August third.”

“And you shipped out again on the eighteenth, and I never saw you again until tonight. Or is it this morning?”

“I’m afraid the sun’s up already. Mr. Waverly, we can quarter here.

under the circumstances, I should think.”

MI would like to hear the rest of her story. if she feels up to it?”

“Of course. That’s really most of it. Central wasn’t very happy about my marrying my subject, and they were, well, very difficult during those few months. And I finally had to tell them that you were very stubborn and singleminded. and would never work out as a double agent. They had already pretty well decided that from studying your charts. so they declared my assignment canceled and pulled me out.”

“They staged the accident?”

She nodded. “I don’t know where they got the body, but I’m told there wasn’t much left of it. I was in Patterson, New Jersey at the time, and I’ve never been closer than that since. Except for once about six years ago when I flew past a hundred miles away. It was too overcast to see anything, but I thought about you for the next week.”

Napoleon took over the narration. “I was in the middle of Kanghwa when I got the message. It was supposed to have stopped at the anmor~ base but I got it about fifteen minutes before the attack. I didn’t really think about it much —and I don’t remember any of the battle very clearly. but that was when r won my silver star. Anyway. she was buried a month before I came home.

And a few weeks later, Captain Kowalski got in touch with me —he’d been my superior in Korea —and talked for about two hours about what I wanted to do with my life. At that point, I didn’t know. I’d known pretty well what I’d wanted to do, but it all included Joan. And then she wasn’t there anymore.

Captain Kowalski told me a little bit about U.N.C.L.E. and said they’d asked him to come to me as a friend, and present their offer. They gave a wide choice of college curricula for which they would pay and offered me, in addition to a full scholarship with a little spare cash on the side, a guarantee of at least a year’s trial employment at a good Starting salary when I graduated. And an opportunity to do something really constructive with my life, which somehow seemed to matter a lot to me right then.

“Was thert’any roore?” Mr. Waverly asked Joan.

“Not really. I spent about six weeks being debriefed of everything I knew about Napoleon, and then they gave me a three month vacation all over 5outh America. It didn’t really help much. They didn’t let me keep anything that would remind me of you, naturally. But they didn’t have the memory blocks then, and I never let anyone know that I remembered everything about you –– that I could never forget you.”

“I didn’t exactly pine away. I stayed busy one place and another.” She hesitated. “I married another Thrush in 1957 –– he was a chemical engineer.

We were reasonably happy together, though of course there’s no such thing as a quiet home life when you work for Thrush. We weren’t in one place more than two years the whole time. He died almost three years ago —in an industrial accident. About six months ago, I was starting to go out of my mind in a routine job as a lab secretary in the psychogenic section, so I reapplied for active field status. My record looked good, I passed the physical, and training was a snap. I always kept in shape.” She flexed herself and Napoleon grinned.

‘I’ve been in San Francisco for more than a year. Baldwin knows all about my connection with you, and he knows you were supposed to mean nothing to me.

But he told me when I started to work there that if you ever came west of the Rocky Mountains again he would ship me to Madagascar until you were gone.

He’s suspicious of the Computer, but he trusts its accuracy. And sometimes I think he can read minds. Because I’ve known for —well, at l~t two years that if I had the chance I’d come over to your side to be with you —if you!d have me.”

“Ah —I —well, I can’t tell yet. I mean, we’ve both changed a lot in eighteen years. I’ve been through a lot. and I don’t know how much I’ll be like what you remember.”

“Are you willing to try for a few weeks and see? After all. we’re like old friends reunited. We’ll have to find out if the old spark is still there.”

“It may be awhile before anything can be done about that,” Napoleon said.

We’re sort of in the middle of something very important, and I don’t know whether you can do much more than sit in a room and occasionally be guided to the commissary for meals. You’ll have a TV and books and whatever else you want, but I don’t think you’ll be allowed to move around much.”

“If you’ll come and see me once a day, 1‘11 be happy.”

–Illya stared at his oblivious partner. Alexander Waverly drummed his knobbly finger$ restlessly on the black leather tabletop.

Ward Baldwin sat at a rolltop desk and scowled at the autopsy report on the two corpses found downstairs this morning. Stevens had been shot full of their finest Mickey Finn and the post-mortem had shown a sufficient amount .

still in his bloodstream to have kept him in solid slumber for another five hours. Yet by all the evidence dutifully recorded on the scene and reported to him, this man had somehow jimmied his door —which was not impossible to a sober, alert man with sufficient ability —gotten out and down the corridor during an unexplained malfunction which had blanked that particular camera at that particular moment. and had the strength and stamina to overcome and disarm a guard after having been shot in the back. Or perhaps the guard. with two bullets in him. had finally gotten his rifle aimed. and released the fatal shot.

But Stevens should have been incapable of consciousness. let alone coherent thought. let alone this intense and coordinated display of physical activity. Even granting his miraculous immunity to whatever was used on him.

the coincidence of the television monitor malfunction was just too much to take.

He flipped a toggle beside his speaking horn. “Robin’. would you order printouts of Harry Steven’s medical reports from last night? And find out who followed him down when they put him to sleep. Then request a polygraph operator to my office for two this afternoon. I will have a team of medical technicians to interview.”

“Certainly. sir. Will you want me to postpone Mr. Shimbu’s appointment?

He can be very unpleasant about waiting.”

“Ask him to come at one. The support of the Black Panthers in this city is invaluable. though they are sometimes less than cooperative. If it weren’t for the progress of construction on the TransAmerica Building. I’d wait and do it myself.”

“You have a Pascual Lopez Sanchez scheduled for two-thirty…”

“Put him off until tomorrow. I loath the thought of him. but he won1t 90 back to Barcelona without seeing me. Why they sent this butcher to pollute my satrapy…”

“Two o’clock Friday?”

“1 suppose. Full security. of course. He’s a treacherous dog.”

“Mr. Steven’s final pre-narcosis interview was conducted by Joan Perry; she reported r.:J understandable verbalizations.”

“Is there a tape of the noises made?”

“No.”

“Call Miss Perry, Perhaps she can reproduce some of his mumbles. I’d like to know as much as possible about Mr. Steven’s last few hours on earth.”

“She checked out. Emergency leave. Her mother broke her hip. She had nine days coming. Should I still call her?”

“Local?”

“Iowa City.”

“Never mind. She’s competent: if she said he was unintelligible. then he was. A pity he wasn’t a higher priority case. I may call her later. We’ll see what ballistics says. after all. before I leap to the unwarranted conclusion that U.N.C.L.E. has been sneaking into my top secret areas in the small hours —a disquieting thought. to say the least.”

Baldwin’s disquietude faded as he passed on to other reports. but concern over the grotesque charade in his basement occupied half his mind.

CHAPTER TEN

“You’d Better Humor Him.”

Illya was left to his own devices for the next few days. Mr. Waverly had politely declined Joan’s offer of information, rather to her surprise, but she and Napoleon found many things to talk about privately. The sunroof of the U.N.C.L.E. office was now barred to them because its view of the hills .

and the bay worked both ways, and anyone with a good telescope could have identified them from any of a dozen public prominences; nevertheless, while the electronic synapses of the Ultimate Computer were being quietly unraveled and copied, they were all three under effective house arrest. Joan’s green triangle badge allowed her escorted access to lower security areas, and Napoleon spent a lot of time being her escort.

The flow of data from U1Comp’s vast storage was increasing as more paths were opened, and the Terminal Gang unofficially expected they would soon find some indication of the geographic positions of all three Central Units; when these were located, specific action could be taken to strike at all three ganglia simultaneously. Napoleon and Illya had been promised an active part in this final resolution of Thrush, but until that promise flowered. they had only rooms and corridors to pace and walls to stare at.

At least, Illya had. Napoleon and Joan stared at each other far more than seemed necessary —in the commissary. in the entertainment room. in the gym, in the target range, in the library. Illya spent a lot of time downstairs watching people sorting reports, typing precis, reading gibberish off small CRT screens and typing gibberish back to them. After two days he was starting to talk to himself. so he began picking up reports and contributing his own analyzes, which were filed and mostly ignored.

His personal clearance allowed him to scan anything that looked interesting, and he satisfied much curiosity. Only the highest-priority programs. the decision-making, planning and strategic programs which gave the whole system a sort of meta-intelligence of”;ts own. were kept in areas simply not available to any remote terminal. These key programs could be accessed only through Central’s own home console. The system had been inaugurated less than two years ago. apparently after one particularly brilliant Satrap had used his terminal to copy many top secret programs. having solved the access procedure as an intellectual exercise, and made off with the copies temporarily during a power struggle which had shaken the whole Hierarchy. Now satrap terminals simply would not access that part of the bank.

The day-to-day business of Thrush was laid out before them in vast and intricate variety almost beyond comprehension, from the private telephone number of the London Satrap and biographical data on his staff of 470 to the accounts of a two-man bicycle shop in Hobart, Tasmania. which had been continually subsidized for 19 years with only one call to duty.

Mysteries were being solved daily.

The Russian heavy cargo plane (AN-22-09303) which disappeared last month off southern Greenland while carrying earthquake disaster relief to Peru was hijacked by Thrush. The AN-22 was the largest (100-ton) cargo plane until superseded by the American C-5A; the Russian fleet now consists of nineteen.

#09303 was believed to be carrying an eleven-ton helicopter and 40 prefab houses, plus several tons of medical equipment and supplies.

…Infrasonic z.weapon in 7 Hz range mounted in heavy truck, powered by jet turbine. Lavavasour insulation far operators; possible one-man version.

Fatal to all life over radius of one-half to one mile, moderate structural damage within 75 to 100 yards. Construction cost: $150,000. Cost per use:

$200 – $300. Minimal technology level three, given power source. code name: Earthquake Whistle. Design specifications classified White-Plus.

At the lunch break Illya asked Hr. Gold, “Have you gotten into the whiteclassified material yet?”

“Hm? Oh, yes. Yesterday —no, t~ days ago. It hasn’t been too hard to break their internal security systemsi UlComp designed them, and now it’s solving them for me. All I have to do is ask it properly.”

“ you know anything about what they called ‘The Earthquake Whistle’?”

Mr. Gold shuddered. “Thrush hasn’t built one yet, but you ran into a pilot model a couple of years ago in New York. It was a low-power job, on a higher frequency with a shorter wavelength tuned to resonate your building.

I heard it did pretty well.”

.It was most impressive. Napoleon blew it up with a 75mm armor-piercing shell.”

“Well, the 7-cycle note over fifty or a hundred decibels starts to break down living tissues. Human, animal, insect, plant. It’ll kill a tree in ten minutes at sufficient intensity, and a man in seconds. And it doesn’t give any sign or warning, unless you have something handy that will detect a 7 Hz tone. You just feel dizzy and fall over. The French were doing some scary things with infrasonics a few years ago, apparently Thrush has picked up on it. Mr. Simpson has a ten-minute lecture on the subject which would make it all clear to you —how the thing that generates it works, and what it can and can’t do. All the Earthquake Whistle is, structurally, is a big whistle mounted on a truck. The inside of the truck is shielded —the French researchers also developed an insulation against subsonics, light and .simple, which was a good trick since ten feet of concrete is transparent and a forty-foot sandback negligible —and the whistle is blown by a jet turbine, which burns cheap kerosene.”

“And ‘technology level three’?”

“I’m told it means more or less that it would help if you could weld the metal, but it isn’t absolutely necessary. It could be built in a backyard by a couple of guys who were handy with tools. More than 90% of the estimated cost is a medium-big truck-and-trailer rig about the size of a small moving van, and the jet turbine which goes inside it. The rest of it would go for sheet metal and tubing. I think Thrush had a price tag on it —”

“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” said Illya.

-Uh-huh. That included labor.”

“Considering it would kill as many people as a small atomic bomb, without destroying valuable real estate, and could be used over and over for two or three hundred dollars a shot, I’m surprised it hasn’t been developed already.”

“Well, there’s always the problem with infrasonics that you cannot try something out on a small scale. Sound waves have to be a certain size, and whatever generates them has to be big enough. Why 00 you think you get such lousy sound out of a transistor radio? Transistors are clean and give fantastic response, but besides the cheap circuits you have a two-inch speaker -you can’t expect it to generate a twenty-foot wavelength. And a 7 Hz wave is about 155 feet long. So nobody has quite had the nerve to build the Earthquake Whistle. I don’t know whether they’re afraid it won’t work and they’ll be laughed at, or afraid it will work and they’ll be assassinated.-So what else is new? Anything outstanding in the last six hours?”

-I think we’re getting close to the Central locations and scheduling records. I can smell ‘em. But nothing specific yet. I think. it’s in the section we’re starting into —maybe the next couple of days. let’s see, what else? Did you hear there is probably a major hard base somewhere? Some evidence it’s used for top secret research and training —thinqs like ‘that.

Don’t know how big it is, or whether it’s tied directly into the communications net or where it stands in the Hierarchy.”

Illya prodded his sauerkraut with a reluctant fork. “Any mention in the local bank of Joan’s disappearance?”

“She’s listed on ,leave, with a request for her to see Baldwin as soon as she checks in. Nothing suspicious at all. Except that two’ agents have been sent here from Central On some top secret mission and report only to Baldwin.

I’m surprised Mr. Waverly hasn’t contacted you about that yet.”

“He wouldn’t if that was all he knew. Any idea what they’re here for?”

“Not a thought. Baldwin didn’t send for them, and nothing has been mentioned to or through UlComp about them. Maybe it1s something personal.”

“Two agents from Central? Who?”

“I don’t remember. You can see the report copy if you’d like.”

“I would. Who ever it is, I don’t think they can be up to any good. We may be able to get some idea of what they’re here for from who they are.

Remember, this is the age of specialization.”

About the same time, less than two miles away, Ward Baldwin sat in a worn leather swivel chair and looked at a few typed sheets and several large photographs as though he found them personally repugnant.

The photographs were clinically sharp and gruesomely detai1ed, but received less attention than the underscored sentences which had brought the report to him.

“Second wound made no sooner than five minutes after death. First wound burst heart, instant1y fatal. Slug split against posterior rib, recovered. , (See still 16.) Second slug trajectory closely parallel first, but fired after , blood had pooled and tonus lost. Indications body was reclining on right side be+ore second wound inflicted. Second slug recovered, undamaged. (See still #7.)”

Ballistics: “S1ug B matches test s1ug from Guard E1lernfs sideann. (See Comparison Frame #1.) Slug A damaged beyond comparison, but not standard Thrush sidearm issue; reconstruction yields a full-jacketed s1ug, exact original configuration undetennined. (See Frame #2.)”

Baldwin knew perfectly well what the report did not feel was fluite proven.

The microphotograph of the second slug told his practiced eye the unidentified slug had come from an U.N.C.L.E. Special; its base bore the distinctive scratches left by the threading inside the muzzle.

His musings were interrupted at this point by the gentle chime of his intercom and Robin’s voice announcing visitors. “The two men from Central are here,” she said. “Were you expecting them?”

“Wasn’t that some obscure communications prob1em?” he asked.

There was a pause, followed by a strong, friendly voice Working a 1ittle too close to the mike. “Ah, Dr. Baldwin. you were told to expect us. It’s simply a matter of exp1aining a technical problem and getting your official permission to work on it. Surely you can spare us eight minutes.”

“Young man, would you return the intercom to my secretary? I will take great relish in underwriting your report, should you survive to complete one.”

A distant shriek came through the intercom, and the voice spoke sharply, off-mike. “Fang, put her down! Fang!”

Something between a snarl and a grunt answered him, followed by Robin’s voice, breathless but nearly composed. “I’m all right, sir. Really. Shall I send —”