Текст книги "[Magazine 1967-­10] - The Mind-­Sweeper Affair"

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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THE MIND-SWEEPER AFFAIR

THE NEW COMPLETE "U.N.C.LE." NOVEL

It was a house of madness, peopled by men who knew Evil not wisely but too well. Somewhere inside there Solo and Illya must find and destroy a devil's monster that lay bare men's very souls—before it destroyed them!

by ROBERT HART DAVIS

ACT I—TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM

ANAGUA is the capital of Caragua. The war department building is in the center of the city. On a night in May, at about eight o'clock in the evening, a sergeant of the national army walked quietly along the corridors until he came to an office marked: Major General L. G. Dachado.

The sergeant stopped for a moment in front of the door, looked up and down the corridor, then leaned his ear against the closed door. Satisfied, he walked on to the next door, which was plain and unmarked. Again checking to see if he was alone, he produced a key, opened the unmarked door, and stepped inside, shutting the door quickly behind him.

The room the sergeant stood in was dark. Windowless, it had no lights on. The sergeant waited for a moment until his eyes were accustomed to the .dark. Then he stepped quickly across the room to a wall of shelves that held office supplies.

The sergeant removed a stack of paper, took a small contact microphone out of his pocket, and pressed it against the wall behind shelves.

The sergeant remained in that listening position for an hour. The telephone rang several times in the office of General Dachado. The sergeant listened, but showed no interest. As the first hour passed, he shifted his position a couple of times, lit another cigarette, and went on listening.

Ten more minutes passed, and the telephone rang again in the other office. The sergeant came alert, dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. The ringing of the telephone this time had a different sound, as if muffled. A drawer opened, and then the sergeant began to listen intently.

A moment later the sergeant put his microphone into his pocket, stepped away from the shelves, and moved silently to the door between the storeroom and the office of General Dachado. He took a strange looking pistol from his pocket, changed the clip in its hand grip for another clip he took from his pocket, and opened the door soundlessly. He peered through the opening.

A tall, skinny man with a long drooping mustache and a dark complexion was at the desk with his back to the storeroom door. The sergeant saw General Dachado talking on a telephone he had taken from the bottom drawer of his desk. Obviously a special telephone, since two other instruments stood on the top of the desk. And the general was not talking—he was listening.

As he listened, Dachado wrote on a pad of paper in front of him. The hidden sergeant watched the whole scene. There was no one else in the office. At last Dachado stopped writing, nodded to the telephone as if whoever he was talking to could see him, muttered something that was more than a grunt than a word, and hung up. The general looked at what he had written for a moment, then replaced the private telephone in the desk drawer, locked it, and stood up.

The sergeant opened the door of the storeroom, raised his odd pistol, and something seemed to spit in the room. The general clutched at his neck, half-turned, and collapsed to the floor.

The sergeant stepped quickly into the room. He bent over and took the piece of paper from the general's hand. It was the message Dachado had written down while listening to the telephone. The sergeant stood above the fallen man and read the paper. The only sound in the room was Dachado's labored and shallow breathing under the influence of the drugged pellet the sergeant had shot him with.

Nothing moved as the sergeant read the paper carefully. Then the outer door of Dachado's office burst open.

A masked man in civilian clothes jumped into the room. There was a pistol in his hand. The attacker shot the sergeant. There was no sound, just a short, guttural bark like a sharp cough.

The sergeant was knocked backwards.

The attacker jumped in toward the piece of paper that the sergeant had dropped. For an instant his silenced pistol was aimed away from the crumpled man.

With a burst of strength, the wounded sergeant threw himself on his attacker. The sergeant knocked his attacker down and staggered out the open door into the corridor.

On the floor of the office the attacker lay stunned for a moment. Then he jumped up and was about to go after the sergeant when he stopped, turned, and picked up the paper again. He read it quickly but carefully, dropped it again, and went out the open door.

The sergeant staggered on along the dim corridors of the silent building. Once he stopped, leaned against the wall, and looked back at the trail of blood. He shook his head. Then he took off his jacket and pressed it against the ugly wound in his chest. He held the jacket tight against the wound and staggered on.

He grew weaker as he went, but he no longer left a trail of blood. He reached, at last, a cross corridor at the far end of the building. He turned left and came to another unmarked door. He opened it. A small closet was behind the door. He went in, closed the door, and sat among brooms and mops in the dark.

The sergeant took a pencil from his pocket. His movements were slow, painful. At last he had the pencil in his hand, a tiny thread sticking up from the top of the pencil like the antenna of some insect. The sergeant bent his face close to the pencil.

"Control… local. Control... local... come in. This is Agent Forty-Four, come in... Agent Forty-Four…"

Another voice, soft and faint, was in the closet.

"Control local. Report Agent Forty-Four. This is control local."

"Agent... Forty-Four," the sergeant said, his breath coming in gasps. "June seventeenth. Repeat, June seventeenth. Dachado had a call... private telephone… full details of time and place… June seventeenth was the date of..."

The door of the closet burst open. The sergeant made a feeble effort to raise his pistol.

Framed in the open door the masked attacker shot twice.

The sergeant lay dead among the brooms and mops.

The masked attacker ground the pencil-radio beneath his foot and turned away without a glance at his victim.

The building became silent again.

TWO

IN THE COMPLEX of closely guarded rooms and corridors behind and above Del Floria's Tailoring Shop on the East Side of New York near the United Nations that was the headquarters of The United Network for Law and Enforcement, the female assistant to the Chief of Communications Section listened to the message coming in from far to the south.

She spun dials and the message, picked up by the concealed antenna in the billboard on top of the building, came quick and urgent.

When her radio finally went silent, she touched a button on the console. Moments later a door opened by itself and a pair of young men stepped into the room. They looked like college boys. They were neat, well-groomed and young. But the pistols in their hands indicated that they were not college boys.

"Urgent. To Mr. Waverly direct," the communications girl said.

The two men nodded. One took the message. The other stood to one side with his pistol ready. The message was in a sealed envelope. Neither of the young men even glanced at the envelope. They acted as if they were aware of being watched constantly. They were being watched—this was how young men who wanted to be U.N.C.L.E. agents started: carrying important data between departments inside U.N.C.L.E. head quarters. Messengers and the lowest level of internal security.

The two young men walked from the communications room and along a bright grey corridor that had no visible lights, no windows, and rows of doors without locks or knobs. They walked single file, even inside their own security, alert, pistols ready. It was this unceasing vigilance that, in the last analysis, accounted for the efficiency of U.N.CL.E. Never relax your guard or your brain, not even in your own headquarters. Anyone could be a spy, and the enemy was resourceful.

The two young men waited before an unmarked door at the extreme end of a corridor. Unseen cameras scanned them in a matter of seconds. Electronic sensors analyzed them, smelled them, and approved them. The door slid open and the two men entered a small and simple office. An alert young woman looked at them.

"Priority One, Top Security message for Section I," one of the young men said.

"I'll take it for Mr. Waverly. He—" the young woman began.

"No," the young man said. "The message must be delivered into the hands of Section I members only."

The woman smiled, pressed a button, waited. Another door opened behind her. A man stepped through. A man who looked like nothing but an aristocratic bloodhound wearing sloppy tweeds, smoking an unlighted pipe, and who had flat, innocent eyes and shaggy but neat hair. Unsmiling, the man raised a bushy grey eyebrow and spoke quietly in a clipped, slow, almost bumbling voice.

"Yes, gentlemen?"

The young man with the message handed it to the man. Alexander Waverly, Section-I member of U.N.C.L.E. and Chief of all operations in the Western Hemisphere, took the message. The two young men left without a word. Waverly opened the envelope. Then his heavy eyebrows frowned, and he turned and walked back into his inner office.

The door slid shut behind him. He stood for a moment in the spartan office with its windows overlooking the city, and its com pact electronic complex that kept him in touch with each part of his headquarters and most of the world operations. Then he sighed heavily and went to his desk. He shook his grey head, and looked at the two men who sat at a round table watching him.

"Colonel Forsyte," Waverly said.

"There's no doubt?" the smaller of the two men said. His shock of blond hair rested like a halo above quick, bright eyes and a Slavic face. His sensitive mouth framed his words in a clipped British accent. "The colonel is a man with almost a perfect record."

"An absolutely perfect record," the taller of the two who sat at the table said. A slender man of medium height, he looked like a successful junior executive who had had a slightly too easy youth. Which was a complete fraud. Behind the faintly callow exterior was the mind of a trained agent and the skill and muscles of a commando.

"I've checked him out," the taller man, Napoleon Solo, went on. "Not a hint of treason. Not even the chance, really."

"A sleeper, perhaps, Napoleon?" the smaller man, Illya Kuryakin, said.

"How?" Solo said. The Chief Enforcement Agent of U.N.C.L.E.'S Section-II narrowed his usually humorous eyes. "His background is absolutely known all the way back, and he's no fake."

"Private troubles?" Illya said.

"The man's almost a monk, my suspicious Russian," Solo said.

Waverly watched his two best agents. He said nothing, but let them talk. At last he coughed, began to search in his pockets for a match with which to light his pipe.

"Mr. Solo is quite correct. There is no hint that Colonel Forsyte is a spy or traitor," Waverly said quietly, his fingers still searching for a match. "Nevertheless, Colonel Forsyte is the man. As we all know, gentlemen, the test was fool-proof. Of the five men, only Forsyte was given the date of June seventeenth, and that is the date our man in Anagua has just reported."

Waverly found a match and lit his pipe. Solo and Illya were silent. At last Illya Kuryakin spoke.

"So far data on five secret documents have somehow leaked from the defense department," the small Russian said slowly. "In London and Ottawa, similar secrets have been leaked. In all cases the data was known only to the most trusted personnel. Not a hint of treason or espionage has been found against any of the men involved in any case. No single man was in possession of all the secrets. Counter-espionage has found no suspicious actions. Yet the data is leaking."

"Yes," Waverly said, sucking on his pipe. Smoke curled to the ceiling. "Which is why we set up this test, as we all know. The date of the Organization of American States meeting to consider Communist infiltration of the Caraguan army was something we knew General Dachado would want to know. That fact would be known to anyone stealing defense department secrets.

"Each of the five men was given a different date. As you know, each of the five had been present at at least two other meetings where information leaked. All are career men with perfect records. We hoped that Dachado would not get the data. But he has, gentlemen, and the date was June seventeenth—the date we gave Colonel Forsyte."

Illya's deep eyes frowned. "I followed Forsyte myself. He did nothing in any way suspicious. His normal routine. He did not talk to a single stranger. In fact, he talked to no one unusual in the day since he had the data."

"Did you ever lose him?" Solo said.

"I never lose a man I'm following, Napoleon," Illya said.

"Then we missed something," Solo said. "Or you did. He must have passed the data to someone else. You can't leak data into thin air and have it get to Anagua."

Illya nodded. "I agree. He must have some transfer set-up so good I failed to see it."

Waverly blew smoke. "Perhaps, Mr. Kuryakin. That is a definite possibility. However, there is something about all this I find disturbing. Something decidedly odd, and that makes me definitely uneasy. Colonel Forsyte is not a spy. I stake my career on that."

"One can't always know what pressures will change a man," Illya said quietly.

"Of course not; I quite agree," Waverly said. "Still, I do not like it. Forsyte has far more important data in his possession. Really vital data that has not been leaked. He has had such data for many, many years and it has never leaked. Now, suddenly, the secrets are slipping out as if on wings."

"And not just here," Solo pointed out.

"No, not just here," Waverly said. The Section-I Chief frowned under his bushy brows. "Have you noticed one strange aspect, though? The data that has leaked has no pattern. It is rather random information. That is true in the reports from London and Ottawa. Some is important, some trivial, relative1y speaking."

"And it leaked consecutively, not at the same time," Solo pointed out. "First London, then Ottawa, now here."

"Precisely," Waverly agreed. "Once the leaking began in Ottawa, it ceased in London. Once it started here, it ceased in Ottawa."

"As if whoever is getting the data is working alone, and moved from London to Ottawa to New York," Illya said. "Some big and clever free-lance spy?"

"It has the pattern," Waverly agreed. "Gentlemen, what do we do?"

"Increase our observation of Forsyte," Solo said. "One thing I'm sure of is that you can't transmit data without a contact with someone else. And whoever it is, he's probably still in New York."

"I'm not so sure, Mr. Solo," Waverly said. "I'm afraid our report from Anagua had some bad news. Agent Forty-Four was killed while he was transmitting his message. His body was found in the war department building. Dachado is keeping it quiet, but our information says that he was not killed by Dachado or his men. Our people think there is clear evidence of some third force being involved."

"The spies?" Solo said.

"It seems the logical conclusion. Except for the fact that Dachado took the information on the telephone. Agent Forty-Four reported that much. It seems odd that the spies would make the report by telephone, and then appear moments later to kill Agent Forty– Four."

There was a silence.

"Someone else trying to move in?" Solo said.

"Again, it has the sound," Waverly said. "But we can't be sure. We must be sure. We must know who is getting and transmitting the data—and how."

"Before a third party finds out," Illya said.

"Yes, that particularly," Waverly said. "I think you both had better start watching Colonel Walter Forsyte very closely. Find out how a man can transmit secret data through thin air."

The two agents looked at each other.

THREE

COLONEL WALTER FORSYTE left his house in suburban Manhasset just before eight o'clock the next morning. He stepped into his car, and drove alone directly to the city. He did not notice the blue Mercedes sports car that followed him. Nor did he notice the small man in black on a motorcycle who rode most of the way just in front of him.

Illya Kuryakin, on the motorcycle, and Napoleon Solo, in the Mercedes, worked as the well-oiled team they were, keeping in constant verbal contact with their small radios no one could tell they were using. Illya, on the motorcycle, never took his eyes off the road ahead, or the mirror that showed Forsyte's car behind, as he talked.

"He hasn't even noticed us, Napoleon."

In the Mercedes, Solo had the best view of the colonel up ahead in his car.

"No. He acts like a man who never heard of being followed," Solo said.

Illya evaded a bump in the parkway. "Perhaps he hasn't ever thought about it, Napoleon. Or he's a fine actor."

Solo speeded up to pass a truck and keep Forsyte within his sight. "Or he's so confident of his methods he doesn't care if anyone watches him."

"No method of passing information can be that good," Illya said with Forsyte clear in his rear mirror. The colonel was driving easily, smiling and apparently whistling to himself.

"Hypnosis?" Solo said from the Mercedes.

"How?" Illya said from the motorcycle. "We've been watching him since he had the information. Or you have. Was he ever out of your sight long enough to be hypnotized?"

"No," Solo said flatly, as he watched the back of Forsyte's head in the car in front of him.

The traffic became thick as they approached the city, and the two men stopped talking to concentrate on following their man. Forsyte did not seem in any way suspicious. They plunged into the white echoing void of the Midtown Tunnel and emerged into Manhattan.

Forsyte turned north to his office in the building of the United States Mission to The United Nations. There the colonel worked as second-in-command of a special global psychological warfare team assigned to close cooperation with the State Department. Forsyte parked and entered the building and rode up in the elevator without noticing the lieutenant who was behind him and rode up in the elevator with him.

Solo, disguised as the lieutenant, faced front and gave no indication that he was interested in Forsyte. But he followed the colonel out of the elevator, to his office, and took up a previously prepared position at a desk in Forsyte's outer office where he could watch everyone who came or went.

By the rear entrance, unseen by anyone, Illya made his way up to the floor of Forsyte's office, and into a prepared closet from the hallway where a small peephole, disguised on the other side, made it possible for him to observe the man. A planted mike made the colonel's words part of the closet.

Nothing happened.

The colonel spoke to no one suspicious. No one unknown came to his office. Nothing was passed in silence or by word. No meaningful looks were exchanged in front of the eyes of Illya hidden in the closet. No letters were mailed. No signals were given either in the office or out the windows, by Forsyte or anyone else.

The colonel did not leave his office for lunch.

The afternoon was no more eventful, but it was short. Colonel Forsyte left his office for the day at three o'clock. Illya ran down from the closet to the parking area. Solo casually left the office just behind the colonel. He followed the colonel to the parking lot and saw Illya working over his motorcycle.

Solo saw something else.

Not far from Illya, to the left of the colonel's car, a tail man in a grey suit, his face turned away, was working to pile boxes into the front seat of his car—or pretending to. Because the man was actually watching the side mirror of the car. And the angle of the mirror seemed aimed at Forsyte's car!

To the right of the colonel's car a smaller man, wide and powerful, was seated on the hood of his car reading a newspaper. From time to time this man looked at his watch, and then away toward the entrance, as if he were waiting for his wife. But Solo did not think the man was waiting for anything, or anyone, except Colonel Walter Forsyte.

The colonel walked to his car. No one made a move.

The entire parking area seemed momentarily frozen into a silent paralysis.

Then Forsyte took a bundle of clothes from the rear seat of his car and turned to walk away. The colonel walked casually and easily, carrying the clothes and whistling softly to himself like a man without a care in the world and the prospect of a pleasant afternoon in front of him. He reached the halfway point to the exit before anyone moved.

Then the short, wide man jumped easily down from his car and sauntered off in the same direction as the colonel. There were many people in the parking area, but Solo had little doubt that the wide man was following the colonel. Solo glanced briefly in the general direction of Illya. The small, blond Russian touched his left ear and rubbed his hands together.

Plan One. Solo would continue with the original job, and Illya would assume the new job. In this situation that meant that Solo would follow Forsyte and Illya would follow the new men who seemed so interested in Forsyte. Solo walked out of the parking area without another glance at Illya.

Illya continued to work on his motorcycle. The tall man in the grey suit suddenly finished piling the boxes into his car, got into the car and drove out. Illya mounted the motorcycle and went off after the tall man.

Solo picked up the colonel and the muscular man a block from the colonel's office building. They were both walking west, Forsyte a half a block in front, carrying his clothes. Solo did not like how far behind he was, and he didn't want the wide man to know that he was following, so he speeded up and passed the wide man as if he had no interest in him.

The colonel turned into a dry cleaner's shop. Solo followed him in without a pause.

In the parking area Illya followed the tall man in the car out of the area and left toward Third Avenue. The man drove slowly, obviously working as a team with the wide man on foot. On Third Avenue the tall man's car turned north and double parked. The wide man was standing in front of a cleaner's shop. Illya drove on past and pulled into the curb a block ahead where he could keep his eye on the car of the tall man in front of him.

Inside the dry cleaner's, Solo got into a mild argument about his clothes—he claimed that he had forgotten his ticket and gave a phony name. While the counter man was swearing and looking through racks of clothes in the rear, Solo watched Forsyte and listened. As far as he could tell Forsyte passed no messages, and received none. The colonel was concerned only with the correct way to press his uniform

An instant before it was obvious that the colonel was about to leave, Solo told the counterman to forget his cleaning; he'd find his ticket and be back. He walked out just in front of the colonel, hesitating on the sidewalk a split second while he sensed which way the colonel would turn. He turned first and walked north.

The colonel came along behind him, and the wide man came after the colonel. The procession went on for a block. Then Solo went into a stationery store and bought a bar of candy. He came out and was now last in line. The parade continued until Solo suddenly knew where the colonel was going.

He had followed the colonel the day before, and at this exact hour he had been in the exact spot. The colonel was going to his health club. The club was one block away, to the right down a cross street, on the second floor of an old building that backed on an alley. Solo passed both the wide man and the colonel and was the first one up the stairs to the health club.

Illya, on his motorcycle, observed the parade up Third Avenue. He saw the car of the tall man take up its position following the three walking men. Illya frowned. On his motorcycle he was too conspicuous. Yet he had to keep watch on the two men, who were now definitely tailing Forsyte. He had no choice.

On the motorcycle he moved along behind the slow moving car of the tall man. His brain was working hard. Who were they, the two men following Forsyte? If they were spies who got the secret data from Forsyte, why were they following the colonel? It made no sense.

Then Illya had no more time for thinking. The car ahead turned into a cross street. Illya followed. Solo, Forsyte, and the wide man had vanished. He saw the sign of the health club. He remembered Solo's report of the colonel's activities, and guessed that the three men had gone into the health club.

The car ahead passed the entrance to the club and turned into an alley that ran beside the building. Illya followed to the alley, dismounted, parked his motorcycle, and entered the alley warily.

At the rear door of the building two men stepped out to meet the tall man who had been driving the car. Illya Kuryakin crept closer to hear them.

FOUR

NAKED, NAPOLEON SOLO wrapped a towel around his hips in the locker room of the health club, and walked toward the showers. Forsyte was already in the shower. The wide man, a mass of muscles in his towel, was under a sunlamp from where he had a clear view of the showers.

Solo had watched Forsyte register and get his basket of athletic and swim clothes. The colonel had spoken to no one, except to say hello, and had passed nothing. In the locker room Forsyte nodded to various men, but said nothing, and hummed happily as if the health club was a part of his life he specially enjoyed. Now the colonel sang in the shower and Solo joined him.

Forsyte looked at him for the first time as if he recognized him. Solo smiled, and Forsyte smiled back. The colonel returned to his shower, singing. He clearly had decided that Solo was just some member he knew on sight, or some junior from his office on the staff of some other colonel. Forsyte was not a suspicious man.

Solo watched the colonel closely. But no one approached him; he did nothing that looked like he was transmitting any information in the shower, and he had nothing on him to pass. When Forsyte finished his shower, he toweled and went toward the steam and hot rooms. Solo followed, suddenly alert—the steam room was a mass of swirling vapor. An easy place to sit almost completely hidden and pass information.

But Forsyte did not go into the steam room. He entered the hot room instead. Solo followed, and so did the wide, muscular man. In the hot room the light was bright, the air was dry and oven hot, and naked men lay all around on deck chairs. From time to time an attendant brought glasses of water. The men on the chairs sweated in rivers.

Forsyte took the only empty chair in the hot room. Solo and the muscular man looked around. As if on a signal, three of the men stood up and walked out, leaving chairs for Solo and the wide man. Solo kept one eye on Forsyte, and one on the muscular man. So far, the unknown man who was also interested in Forsyte had shown no interest in Solo.

Solo lay in the deck chair and pretended to sleep. But he watched Forsyte like a hawk from behind his half-closed eyes. The muscular man was also apparently asleep. But Forsyte wasn't asleep. The colonel read a newspaper and drank water and the sweat poured off him. Forsyte seemed to be enjoying the sweating. Every now and then he rubbed himself vigorously with a towel and continued his reading.

No one talked to Forsyte.

Nothing seemed to happen. Solo was beginning to think that whatever method Forsyte used it was very good.

Then he heard the faint sound.

It was almost imperceptible. One sound among many that came from all parts of the health club. No one else seemed to notice. A faint hum, low and outside the hot room. Solo listened to it, tried to locate its location. After a time he decided that it was coming from above—from the ceiling of the hot room, or from the floor above the health club. Probably nothing…

He stopped in mid-thought. His half-hidden eyes stared at Forsyte.

The colonel was suddenly acting strangely.

Solo watched. Forsyte had not rubbed himself in some time. The towel lay neglected on the floor. The colonel's right arm hung down, almost limp. He still held the paper, but his eyes seemed to be having trouble reading the words. Forsyte blinked a few times, shook his head as if to clear it.

Solo stared from the slits of his eyes. Forsyte rubbed his eyes, and then rubbed his forehead. The newspaper fell from his left hand and lay forgotten on his lap. Forsyte shook his head again, like a man fighting sleep. Then the colonel suddenly reached up, slowly, with both hands and pressed his temples as if in pain.

The hands, the arms, of the colonel moved like a man whose muscles had just failed. Slowly, without strength. Forsyte pressed his temples, shook his head like a sleepwalker, and then his arms dropped and his eyes closed. He lay in the chair like a man asleep.

But it was like a drugged sleep, uneasy, almost painful and too deep. His arms hung down at his sides; his breathing became heavy, labored. Solo watched him, and then heard, again, the faint humming sound that seemed to come from the ceiling of the room.

He suddenly remembered the way Forsyte had been forced to take the deck chair—it had been the only chair vacant when the colonel entered. No one else in the hot room was reacting in the manner of the colonel.

Solo looked up at the ceiling. The humming sound continued.

Solo stood up and left the hot room.

He wrapped the towel around his waist and looked back once. Forsyte still lay there like a drugged man. The muscular man was staring at Forsyte, but the man had not moved.

Solo looked around and saw a door marked for a fire exit. He opened the door when he was unobserved. Stairs led upward.

FIVE

IN THE ALLEY Illya Kuryakin crouched in the shadowed afternoon behind a rank of garbage cans. At this hour of the afternoon no sun came into the alley, and the area was in dark shadow. The three men still talked near the rear door to the building.