Текст книги "[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair"

SIGNET BOOKS are published by

The New American Library, Inc.,

1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019

printed in the united states of america

This one is for my sister Grace,

who taught me my first steps

Table Of Operations

1. WHAT THE GIRL IS

2. SISTER AGENT

3. DEATH IN THREE LANGUAGES

4. OH, U.N.C.L.E., WHERE ART THOU?

5. THE GREAT ZORKI

6. DONT BLOW YOUR TOP

7. DANCER WITH COLD FEET

8. CLEAN SLATE

9. AWAY ALL GIRLS

10. AROUND-THE-CLOCK TERROR

11. MR. WAVERLY CALLS THE TUNE

12. I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO SPY

13. THE TWO MAD BOMBERS

14. MR. RIDDLE

15. SEND ONE MORE COFFIN

16. BYE, BYE, EGRET

For The Uninitiated

The letters U.N.C.L.E. stand for United Network Command of Law Enforcement. This is an organization of unusual quality and outstanding ability; its main function is to defeat the forces of global operations that seek to subjugate civilization as we know it beneath the hell and totalitarianism of tyranny.

To combat all the deadly isms, there is U.N.C.L.E. No other arm of counter-intelligence and espionage exists in which the range of counter—ism endeavor is so nonparochial and far-flung. The personnel of U.N.C.L.E. is intentionally multinational and multilingual. All races, colors and creeds combine their efforts to block any world power or underground organization that attempts to unbalance the scheme of things by force.

U.N.C.L.E. is subdivided into six sections:

SECTION I: Policy and Operations

SECTION II: Operations and Enforcement

SECTION III: Enforcement and Intelligence

SECTION IV: Intelligence and Communications

SECTION V: Communications and Security

SECTION VI: Security and Personnel

There is a profitable overlap of one Section into another. Section II is perhaps the most vital of all the departments in that it is there that the all-important job of execution of the work of the other five sections truly solidifies into reality.

For there is one country, one force, one power, whose entire raison d'être is world domination. Out of this country has come an organization of supra-people who seek to rule the universe and are known by the code name of THRUSH.

U.N.C.L.E. is the only answer for THRUSH.

No one has ever learned what the lettered name of a bird symbolizes.

But it is not the dove of peace. It is the bird of war. All-out, deadly, no-holds-barred war.

U.N.C.L.E. has the men to stop them.

And the women.

What the Girl Is

She pinned herself against the stone wall of the building, her spiked heels anchored to the thin strip of ledge which ran like an ornamental belt about the nineteenth floor of the Hotel Taft. She waited for her reflexes to return, for the dull fear to leave the pit of her stomach. A swarm of monumental doubts, concerning the wisdom of fleeing out here to the ledge to run away from death, tormented her. But soon, all the bees died. Her rigid training took command.

Briefly, keeping her mind clear, she surveyed her position. It was acutely disagreeable.

Far below the tips of her I. Miller pumps, like harbor lights in the night, Manhattan traffic moved quickly, smoothly. The circus lighting of Times Square became a blinding glare of nudity against the massed blackness of the buildings—canyon walls rising starkly high. A star-bright night shone overhead.

Enough light to die by.

She was nineteen floors above the street, her lithe figure straining against the dizzy environs of space. The silver lamé of her gown, clinging to every feminine line of her body, was now a laughable luxury. She was like some displaced Cinderella lost in transit. The danger was all too apparent. The next window was a good twenty feet away.

The black attaché briefcase, which she could afford to lose as little as life, totally hampered her slow and torturously hazardous progress. The spiked heels didn't help at all. She might have been walking on stilts.

She held the briefcase behind her curved back, one slender arm extended for balance, flattening herself against the cold stone sides of the building. Her ivory cheek was pressed to the facade.

She took a deep breath. Her body trembled.

At least, she was away from the killing ground. They had sought to bottle her up in the corridor. Now, there was only the proposition of getting off the ledge without breaking her neck—and getting the briefcase and its valuable contents back to Headquarters. The odds weren't too good.

Slowly, she edged along the narrow concrete strip, inch by inch, supremely conscious of the shaky purchase of the spiked heels. There had been no time to remove her shoes and now it was too late. Life was sweet but she would not endanger the casual passersby below with the outlandish hazard of falling spiked pumps. That too was laughable, somehow.

The night wind built up a soft yet disturbing breeze. The billowing of her dark hair, worn long for this assignment, unsettled her. She pushed it out of her mind and concentrated on her feathery ballet across eternity.

The assignment was ending badly; she had had success in her hand, the briefcase, and now, it might cost her her neck. They had got on to her somehow.

Ten feet of the tricky passage lay behind her, now. The safety of the next window drew comfortably nearer. She had to fight against a tendency to speed her steps. She kept her eyes glued on her goal. The briefcase snagged once on a jagged scale of stone and she paused, heart beating. She teetered precariously for an instant. Then she righted herself and moved on.

The briefcase seemed to weigh a ton though it contained only thirty five pages of highly specific top secret data. And clothes.

Nine feet, eight feet, seven, six, five, four, three–

She heard the window ride upward before she saw the man. A fast, rising, grating sound of doom.

She froze on the ledge, trapped like a bug on a specimen board.

Just before her, a gargoyle face, jutted into view, poised against the glare of neon from below. The head was fixed on awesome shoulders. Now giant hands reached for her. The face was a grinning mask of intermingled rage and amusement.

"So!" The man snarled in the same thickly accented voice she had heard in the cocktail lounge (he had sought then to make a continental pickup). "You will not escape, as you think. My friends are down below to claim the briefcase from your corpse if—"

The hands shot toward her. To push, to jar, to kill. To seize the briefcase.

She bent backwards, hugging the wall. Her right hand moved with the blur of a comet, unhooking a cameo brooch fastened to the throat of her gown. An oblong of brilliant onyx and jade twinkled. She flung her hand toward the man. With the gesture, a thick spray of inky fluid, released with the pressure of a forefinger on a concealed lever, saturated the assassin's eyes. [His face darkened rapidly.]

He roared in surprise and pain. The viscous, irritating concoction, product of the highly advanced Headquarters Research Laboratory, had never worked more devastatingly.

The man forgot where he was, nineteen floors above the sidewalk. He threshed forward in dark agony, clawing vigorously at his eyes. He lowered his bull's head, moaning, as he doubled over the sill. The back of his neck lay exposed. She helped him the rest of the way.

She chopped down savagely with her right hand, clubbing the man over the parapet of the window. The stiffened palm of a Karate blow fell like the stroke of an ax. The assassin's weight, coupled with his own sudden unconsciousness, sagged over the sill. His body, topheavy with torso, sprawled outward. Gravity did the rest.

She did not watch.

Mercifully, the senseless carcass plummeted into the lights below. It was as if some some dark mass of masonry had broken loose from the hotel itself. The hollow, breaking sound came up from the ground below as faintly as the distant thump of a toppled garbage can. The noise was lost in the tootling of traffic sounds, the clamor of New York after dark.

And then a woman screamed. A thin, piercing wail of terror and disbelief. Talk about flying spiked pumps.

She stepped quickly into the black refuge of the hotel room. She was too grateful to pause for investigation. Her left hand was sticky with the pressure of her palm on the laminated handle of the attaché case. A fine sheen of moisture dampened her body. The silver lamé dress clung to her like a shroud.

The room was empty.

With nothing else to deter her, she found the back stairway of the hotel. As she walked slowly down the dimly lit staircase, she swiftly and smoothly divested herself of the lamé gown. Before she had descended five flights, her appearance had changed radically. The briefcase, apart from its valuable papers, had yielded a tweed, two-piece outfit, sensible flats and a pair of rimless glasses. Her long dark hair had disappeared beneath the cramped brim of a soft, velour man's fedora.

It was midnight, and Cinderella was leaving the ball, after all. No fairy godmother had arranged the miracle.

She managed to leave the hotel, skirting the official uproar of the strange accident in front of the Hotel Taft. Wherever the assassin's friends were, they did not spot her. She walked quickly toward Fifth Avenue, ignoring all cabs and passersby. A friendly drunk giggled at her wolfishly as she came by, but she dodged him nimbly. Within minutes, she had found the subway she wanted. She took a ride of three stops to her East Side hotel.

Once she was safely esconced in her third-floor room, she opened the briefcase, removing a small, square metal case that for all the world resembled a cigarette case. She thumbed it and a low, beeping sound was audible. She held the square case several inches from her mouth. She had a lovely mouth. One would have been hard put to believe she had just killed a man.

An electronically relayed voice bridged the tiny space between her lips and the case.

"Yes, Miss Dancer?"

"Mission completed," she replied, in a voice that might have sent thrills of anticipation down the spine of the most jaded male. "The briefcase will be turned over to the UN in the morning."

"Good." The voice was dry, patient and eminently English. "Any complications?"

"Yes."

"Go on."

"I had to scratch one Comrade X. Just as well. He was the only one who could have identified me, Mr. Waverly."

"Then you had no other alternative. Anything else?"

"Yes. Please tell the Lab to work on something for high heels. They should be made detachable so they can be jettisoned easily. They could trip a girl up sometimes."

"I see. Yes, you have a point. Not very desirable for walking along ledges, are they?"

She restrained a smile. She might have known. The Taft business was old news already at Headquarters. It figured that Mr. Waverly, head of Section II, Operations And Enforcements, would have had her covered somehow.

"Report here tomorrow at ten o'clock," Mr. Waverly said. "A good night's work, Miss Dancer. Get some sleep."

"Yes, sir."

The beeping sound vanished. She closed her eyes for a long, delicious moment of relaxation. So the UN would get their precious papers back—all the notes and recorded data on the Space Program which the enemy had wanted so badly. But it would all have come to nothing if Comrade X had shoved her into eternity.

She thought of the cold and hard concrete sidewalk in front of the Taft and shivered.

Nerves were an occupational hazard. Though it was best to have them when all the shooting and the tumult was over. But, after all, she was a woman.

In the morning, she'd check out of the hotel, having no further need of her cover as Agnes Malloy, dress buyer from Chicago, Illinois, in town for the Annual Dressmaker's Convention which had gathered at the Hotel Taft. By morning, she could return to her own little apartment downtown and resume her identity as Miss April Dancer. The UN Papers Affair was over.

April Dancer.

The girl from U.N.C.L.E.

The United Network Command of Law and Enforcement needed women agents, too. After all, for all of the superb abilities of agents like Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, there was one specialty of April Dancer's that they didn't and couldn't perform.

If a female enemy agent walked into the powder room, April Dancer could follow her.

Not even her working partner Mark Slate could do that.

Sister Agent

Mr. Alexander Waverly was worried.

As executive head of all the sections that comprised the unique organization known as U.N.C.L.E., one through six inclusive, he was not a scared white rabbit. In the extraordinary complex of steel walls, corridors, elevators and offices, there were thousands of buttons at his disposal. Any one of them could institute all sorts of activity, research, security measures—and attacks. Including panic.

An orderly row of ten enamel buzzers were immediately available in Waverly's private office. Every color of the spectrum, every purpose in the universe. At his very fingertips lay the power to send an agent winging to far-off Ghana, or to order a cup of iced tea from the commissary. Only Waverly himself could tell which color button could perform which magic.

Mr. Waverly felt like pushing a button now. He clucked aloud to himself, as though chiding his judgment. When he was alone in his Headquarters office, he often did. Now, behind his contour chair, Manhattan, sunlit and golden on this Fall day, glistened, together with the Queens shoreline. In the foreground, the tall monolithic glass structure of the United Nations Building towered above the East River.

With sudden impatience, Waverly revolved forward in his leather swivel chair and thumbed one of the ten buttons on his desk. The blue one.

A smooth, unhurried female voice sounded from no apparent position in the vicinity of his desk.

"Section Two. Yes, Mr. Waverly?"

"Has Miss Dancer reported in yet?"

"No, Mr. Waverly. She is expected here at ten o'clock. Word has come from the UN, however, that she has completed her drop."

"Hmm." Waverly pyramided his fingers thoughtfully. "I take it we have had no further word of Mr. Slate."

"No, sir. He is now an hour and a half overdue."

Waverly's frown deepened. "Can you contact Miss Dancer?"

"Yes. She is equipped with homing range finder and we have her triangulated."

"Good. Instruct her to stop by Mr. Slate's flat to pick him up. Our flamboyant colleague was to be here for his briefing session on the Zorki Affair. All attempts to reach him have failed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Waverly. That all?"

"Yes, thank you."

Waverly thumbed the blue button again and relaxed. His lined face lost some of its concern. He had released himself from the one anxiety of his profession. He could never eradicate a certain sense of guilt if ever he failed to deliver the maximum security of his high office to any agent or officer of U.N.C.L.E. Plus which, he had an inescapable father hen (or bear) emotion for his agents. Napoleon Solo was off in Rangoon seeing to that rumor of some devilish ray weapon that had drawn the interest of THRUSH. Mr. Kuryakin was with him, since they teamed so well on these endeavors. And now, Mark Slate and April Dancer were a bit closer to home.

The fact that Mr. Slate had not put in his scheduled appearance at Headquarters was disturbing. He had proven his worth many times in the past, and though he was not the predictable sort of operative one might hope for, he had never been tardy for his assignments. It was most disturbing.

Waverly was a lean, weather-beaten apparition who constantly wore baggy tweeds, his color preferences definitely leaning to brown and amber hues. He handled pipes incessantly, working his spatulate fingers over their varied bowls, but never smoking them. He seemed, for all the world, like a man from a past age—a gentle yet reproving headmaster of ancient history who tended toward absent-mindedness. Yet the cragged, leathery face was the facade for one of the finest minds in U.N.C.L.E. Five titled men, of varying nationalities, guided the organizational operations of U.N.C.L.E. And Mr. Waverly was one of the very select five.

Now, he chose a chestnut brown briar from the center drawer of his desk and sucked on the stem experimentally. His brows were knit in a scowl. It wasn't like Mr. Slate to be late for any Headquarters matter.

Not like him at all.

Mark Slate's apartment was in a brownstone tenement on the East Side below Fourteenth Street. April Dancer had never exactly liked the neighborhood, even allowing for Mark Slate's individual brand of rugged personality. Like Garbo, he always wanted to be alone.

But there was more cause for unhappiness than Slate's casual environs. April had piled out of her cab, paying the dissatisfied driver a small tip that netted her a snarl and entered the shabby old brownstone, and climbed to the second floor, where she found the door to his apartment unlocked. She knocked softly in the shave-and-haircut rhythm followed by Churchill's Beethoven V For Victory code—da da dahhhh dahhhhhhh—which Slate would recognize. But there was no response from within.

Ringing the black porcelain buzzer to the left of the door, which chimed like a Bach fugue, only elicited more silence.

April's face became a blank mask.

For her UN drop of the briefcase, she had attired herself in a sensible dark skirt and jacket, brightened with a red roll-necked sweater. On her head she wore a tam curved to the tilt of her head. Her patent leather handbag was small and functional. She wore simple yet fashionable flats today. Any observer would have envied the man she was calling on.

She toed the door inward gently, body to one side of the barrier. Light spilled out from the flat but there was no burst of gunfire or welcome of any kind. She eased herself inside, with a deft plunge to the floor, her hand leveling the black patent leather bag. A pressure on the metal clasp and the bag could fire a .32 caliber bullet.

Rising, she felt a trifle foolish.

Slate's modest little flat was as familiar as ever. The same old green butterfly chairs, the 1919 secretary by the window that faced the street and the convertible couch. There was nothing else to the apartment except for a lean-to kitchen—and numerous closets. Slate had an enormous appetite for everything but food. The confirmed bachelor bought all his clothes on Carnaby Street and one of the closets was a veritable warehouse of tweeds and loud weskits. Another contained a guitar, and stacks of rock-and-roll records. In line with an inverse snobbery, belied by his indolent manner of speech and languorous movement, a third closet secreted almost everything that an RAF veteran might find worth keeping. Ever since Slate had transferred from London Headquarters to New York, he had tried to keep England with him wherever he went. But his love of women, his passion for sports cars, his Cambridge attainments and his Olympic ski skills, marked him for the international man of the world that he was. April had always been fond of him.

The bed had not been made.

Mark Slate was nowhere to be seen.

But there was a woman sitting in the green butterfly chair facing the front door from the far side of the room. A woman staring at the floor as if her life depended on the fixity of her gaze.

April froze where she was, the handbag still pointed like a gun.

There was no time to wonder about the woman. About her flaming red hair, her wide shelf of breasts or her long white legs thrusting from a beige sheath skirt. The rising and falling of that bosom, straining against a cashmere sweater, said it all.

The striking redhead was a complete stranger, whom April had never seen before. She did not stir, but her eyes were popping with fright, her complexion was paler than a sheet and she was strained back in the chair, unable to take her eyes off the floor. Rigid in the grip of some all-enveloping terror, April thought, for she had seen that look before. Her eyes followed the line of the redhead's vision until it reached the point where there was no need for questions. She now knew why the woman was incapable of uttering a sound. Or a whisper.

The worn crimson carpet of Mark Slate's floor had taken on a new design. Coiled like a length of artistic rope, blending with the pattern of the linoleum, lay a reptile. It had such magical contour and color that one might have paused to admire rather than fear.

Somehow, inexplicably, impossibly, a fer de lance was snaking along the floor toward the redhead's exposed legs. There was barely another yard and a half to cover. The triangular head was poised, the forked tongue flicking. The ropelike body danced and weaved. The woman's eyes bulged. Corded muscles stood out in her slim throat.

April raised the handbag and sighted carefully.

The target was small, no larger than an egg, and more than ten feet away, but there was no time left. The girl from U.N.C.L.E. moved fast.

As the fer de lance streaked across the carpet, its snaky body uncoiled and raised high now, and the forked tongue lancing out of the venomous, fanged mouth, the handbag in April's fingers exploded with a coughing splat of sound. The woman in the chair collapsed.

Noise echoed around the room, gobbling up echoes.

The fer de lance's ugly head vanished in a blaze of gunfire. The shapely balance of the lovely rope twisted on the worn carpet and was still. April dropped the scorched handbag and stepped over the snake to examine the woman.

She had fainted. April left her momentarily and hurriedly closed the door of the flat, locking it this time on the bolt-latch. Where in thunder was Mark Slate and what did this all mean? April felt her New England gorge rising. If Slate had merely been daisy-plucking and somehow the snake was part of some prank that had gone amiss—

No answers were forthcoming. A quick search of the room and the kitchen revealed nothing awry. It simply looked as if Slate had left the apartment without converting the bed back into a couch and locking the front door. April studied the windows. Nothing but the normal flow of bustling traffic stirred below. Gunfire could have been lost amidst all the hubbub but she couldn't be sure.

She realized bitterly that her English colleague had always been an enigma. U.N.C.L.E. often found it expedient to draw agents from other countries. April had known Slate only as a dedicated, conscientious agent, and there was no question of his loyalty. To April he had always been a big brother, preferring to get his kicks with other girls. That was all well and good but—

The redhead was stirring.

April walked over to her chair.

She was sobbing now, head back, breathing fiercely. Her gorgeous figure was slowly being released from the grip of terror. April gave her time to unwind, as she examined the high-cheeked, full-lipped, sensual face. Was this Mark Slate's kind of woman? April admitted that she really didn't know that either. April was a 34x22x34 brunette, but Mark had never laid a hand on her. Or was this one of Them—caught in a web of her own making?

The woman's eyes met hers suddenly. April gauged her age as somewhat short of the Thirty league.

"If you hadn't come when you did—" The woman shuddered, her voice, in which April detected a continental accent, fading.

"Dead lady spy?" April finished the sentence for her.

The woman shook her head violently, the mass of red hair tumbling down her shoulders. "I don't know what you mean—who are you, anyway?"

April's smile was friendly but her eyes were cold.

"Oh, no, Sweetie. My turn to curtsy, your turn to bow. Who are you?"

The redhead licked her lips, seeing for the first time the dead carcass of the fer de lance only two yards from where she sat.

"Arnolda Van Atta. I'm a translator at the UN. Oh, my God—" She put red-painted fingers to her eyes and shuddered again. "I never dreamed that Mark was mixed up in things like this!"

"Mark?" April said lightly. "Who's Mark?"

"Mark Slate," the woman said from her muffled mouth. "He lives here. We're friends. I stopped by to see him. The door was open. Then as I was in here, deciding to wait for him—you see, I was certain he may have just gone for cigarettes in the candy store downstairs—that, that—thing—"

"I get the picture. You were a lady-in-waiting and the snake walked in. Look at me when I'm talking to you, Miss Van Atta. I must talk to you. I want to watch your eyes as you answer."

That seemed to register like a slap in the face. Arnolda Van Atta's face flamed angrily. She glared up at April.

"Who are you to ask so many questions? You're acting like a policeman." Her eyes were bold and challenging but April stared her down. Decoys were nothing new in the espionage game. And a pretty face was always to be suspected. But a fer de lance as a death weapon was indeed an innovation. Especially in twentieth-century Manhattan. And this classy chick would have been right up Mark Slate's street.

"I am Mark Slate's dearest friend," she said evenly. "His not being here bothers me. I wish you could make my mind happy about his well-being. I just love the way he plays the guitar."

"I can't—I don't know about his comings and goings."

"You'll forgive my bad manners, I know, but I don't believe you."

"I don't care what you believe! I am going—"

Arnolda Van Atta was starting to rise, but April placed her right hand on the cashmere shoulder and quietly slammed her back into a sitting position. The redhead gasped.

"Who are you—really?"

"The Avon Lady. And I'm giving away free samples if you answer all questions correctly without me having to twist your arm off."

Before the redhead could answer, the phone shrilled into life. April recovered her scorched handbag, leveled it at Arnolda Van Atta and juggled the receiver to her ear, expertly. She didn't take her eyes off the redhead.

"Mr. Slate?" a voice asked.

"Mark zero, Mr. Waverly."

"Oh—Miss Dancer. I take it you have not found Mr. Slate?"

"No, sir. Only a dead snake and a live lady."

Mr. Waverly's voice was very tired. "Look no further for information about Mr. Slate. We have word of his whereabouts. It's not good. Check back here immediately."

April held her breath. "How bad?"

Waverly sighed. "He's not dead, if that's what you mean."

"See you shortly," April said, and hung up. An almost dizzying sense of relief charged through her. At least, Slate was alive.

Arnolda Van Atta was showing signs of hysteria, now. April recognized the symptoms because she had seen them so many times. A delayed reaction to the threat of the snake, enhanced perhaps by the aiming of the handbag at her ripe figure.

"Hang onto yourself, Sweetie. Rise and shine. We are getting out of here before some neighbors or police inquire, however belatedly, about the latest thing in handbags."

"I can't," Arnolda Van Atta protested. "I'm due at the UN at one. There's to be a special session on the Vietnamese situation—"

"We have our own situation to translate into common sense. And your help is needed. March."

"But—" The redhead began to splutter.

"I'm getting tired of repeating myself, Miss Van Atta."

The redhead rose to her feet, her skirt wrinkled, the cashmere sweater riding high. A gleaming patch of naked midriff showed charmingly. April sighed. Why were THRUSH lady agents always so damned lovely? She didn't for a moment believe the fairy tale about the UN. For all his secrecy, Mark Slate would have mentioned a dish like this one some time or other in the past.