The Final Affair

by David McDaniel

"Capable of running things-," said Mr. Simpson. "Or possibly with only a few transmission channels, so it couldn't really handle the whole huge network all at once."

  "If they have copies of the operating executive programs and data banks, which they should," Waverly mused, "and adequate hardware, which they must, they might be able to recover their losses yet. Is there any way of telling how long it will take to find Thrush Island?"

  "The data files we're sorting now will take at least another week to reduce and cross-check. We'll analyse the flight programs, all of which are coded, and find how far it is from two or three different airports."

  "No, you can't," said Joan unexpectedly. "It's only served from Tokyo. I don't know where it is, but I was told that by everybody there."

  "You were there?"

  "I spent about eight months on what must have been Thrush Island, from what you've said about it, though I don't think it was ever referred to as anything but 'here.' "

  "How recently?"

  "About four years ago."

  "Where?"

  "I don*t know. We left Tokyo in a sealed private jet and went back the same way."

  Mr. Waverly tapped his knobbly fingers on the black leather desktop and studied Joan from under-bushy white eyebrows. "Mrs. —ah— Solo," he cleared his throat. "What else can you tell us about this place? How long did it take you from Tokyo?"

  "Quite a while. It was about two in the morning when we took off, and there was quite a liquor stock on board. The crew never came out of the cabin, and it was daylight when we were escorted from the plane to our quarters. And I remember I looked at my watch and said something properly horrified about it being eight o'clock already. And the maid said no, it was only seven, and I should reset my watch and go to bed' because Orientation Tea was at four o'clock that afternoon." .

  "Very good," said Waverly. "Do you remember what kind of jet?"

  "A twin — custom interior like a club car. Oh, one of the other men on board was trying to impress everybody, said his Satrapy had one just like it; cruised at 500 miles per hour."

  "Capital," said Mr. Waverly. "Three thousand miles from Japan, and fifteen degrees west," said Illya, who'd worked it out by eye on the. huge polar projection wall map. "Was it warm or cold?"

  "Oh, warm! I went swimming almost every day while I was there. I got the most beautiful tan — you should have seen me;"

  Joan and Napoleon exchanged sappy looks as Illya continued. "Three thousand miles south puts it within five or ten degrees of the equator around 120 East Longitude."

  "I don't suppose you noticed the sun's elevation much while you were there," said Mr. Simpson's voice unexpectedly.

  "I'm afraid not. It did get pretty much directly overhead at noon. And it got pretty hot. I burned badly my first week there, but after that I was all right. I remember the lagoon side faced east, if that's any help."

  "It could be." Mr. Waverly addressed the intercom. "Mr. Simpson, contact NASA for a full set of mapping photographs, maximum size, covering the area from 5° South latitude, between 110° and 125° East longitude, omitting major land areas like Borneo, of course."

  Mr. Simpson recited the figures back and rang off as Waverly said, "Mrs. —ah— Solo, you may have been of immense help to us. Every speck of land in that area has been photographed from space in recent years, and one of those pictures may strike you as familiar."

  He touched another intercom button. "Miss Hoffman, would you ask the correlation section downstairs to abandon analysis of flight-plan data in favor of a scan for anything we may know about small islands around the Equator near 120° East." He turned in his chair and squinted up at the wall map. "It would appear to be somewhere in Central Indonesia: the Molacca Sea, the Celebes, the Banda Sea, the Ceram Sea — we have observers in that area. Check with the Djakarta office. See if they've heard anything unusual about an island."

  "First Kashmair, now Indonesia..." Illya mused. "Thrush seems to like the security afforded them with an insecure and touchy host."

  "Nevertheless, even if it means massive paramilitary action against a fortified base, they must be found and rooted out before we can count this Hydra-headed bird moribund."

  "Unless we could convince them logically to surrender," Napoleon said. "Or asked them politely."

  "We'll have to start with some sort of infiltration to hit power and communications," said Illya, "as soon as we know where we're going."

  "Napoleon," Joan asked, "are you likely to lead the infiltration force?"

  "I'd expect to," said Solo, glancing at his chief.

  "I don't know anything about offshore contours or outer defenses, but I can tell you a lot about the island you can't get from satellite photos, like what's in which building, and what goes on where. They might have moved one or two of the test shacks, or put up a new quonset in the last couple of years, but the main buildings looked as if they'd been there quite a while. I could probably draw you a rough map — not really detailed, but I think I remember the layout pretty well."

  Illya pushed a blank manila folder with a nylon-tipped pen clipped to it across the table towards her, and she began.

  First she sketched an emaciated crescent moon, remarking, "It's about two hundred miles from end to end around the lagoon beach and maybe two hundred yards across at the widest. Maybe less."

  She placed a hundred-yard square, according to her scale, on the inner side of the island, about the middle. "That's the Big House. Maybe not that big," she added, and corrected the sketch messily. "But pretty big. There's a dock right in front of it, and I believe a submarine pen opens into the lagoon. Then along here are three narrow buildings side by side.— they're big enough to fly a small plane into. I don't know what's in them, probably shops; nothing to do with my job. On this side is the staff housing — it's as old as the Big House, at least a hundred years, and so are the long buildings. And one other: it looks like a big stone and mortar barn. It's back behind and to the side from the Big House, almost touching at this corner. I think that's where the generators are." She added the described structures to her map as she spoke.

  "Guard housing is here and here, sort of bracketing the center of the island. I think there's a Guard staff at the Big House, too — there's a total garrison of at least three or four hundred. Then this big open space is the combat test area, launch site, landing strip, parade ground and soccer field; past it is a big blockhouse and a couple of test shacks way out on that point. I know this end better because I always went out there to go swimming. There's a nasty undertow along the southern tip, and no sand at all. I usually had to wear sneakers when I went in because of the coral, but the water was about eighty degrees the whole time we were there. I didn't have much to do — mostly some psych testing, and one or two routine jobs assisting at a drug-therapy interview — so I had lots of. time to myself.

  "Anyway, in the other direction, past Staff Housing, there's ten or twelve — probably fifteen by now — lab huts. They're all painted different colors. Light green was Psych, yellow was Chem, blue was Human Factors. I think red was High Energy Physics, and I remember black was something terrible. Nobody told me, and questions are rude, when everybody is under some kind of security restrictions. If you need to know, you'll be told — that sort of thing. I don't remember what the rest of them were. Beyond them was another test area — I think it was material and equipment exposure tests. Some of the larger lab animals were penned out there, too; they needed room to run around in and stay healthy. The big transmitter was past the zoo, and there's a test shack with a big dish antenna on top right at the tip. I think it's focussed on a synchronous satellite. How's that?"

  "Satisfactory," said Mr. Waverly, studying her work carefully.

  "Good. I want to go along."

  "I'm afraid —"

  "That's my price for all this information. I spent two years as a field Thrush; I've stayed in training. I also know your target better than anyone else available."

  "You must understand your
recent — ah — change of heart seems comparatively sudden..."

  "It wasn't so much a change of heart," she said, exchanging another sappy smile with Napoleon. "Thrush just prevented me from finding where it really was all those years."

  "How fortunate," said Illya, "that you found out just before Thrush was effectively annihilated."

  Napoleon nodded. "Luck," he said, "runs in our family."

  The requested satellite photographs arrived Tuesday morning and went with xeroxes of a cleaned-up version of Joan's sketch map to teams of photointerpretation experts. By lunchtime Wednesday nothing had turned up.

  After lunch a pair of pages arrived on Mr. Waverly's desk, a staple through their corner. A complex file code filled the top line and was translated by the second, third, fourth and fifth lines which identified the paper as selections from the monthly summary filed 23 July, through Djakarta — specifically the text of a report from an U.N.C.L.E. supported marine research station in Makasar. Mr. Waverly scanned the next twenty lines and his hand reached out to the call button before he turned the page.

  Illya, Napoleon and Joan assembled within two and a half minutes to be met with a precis of the report. One of several dolphins who came in regularly for conversational practice and a game of checkers had mentioned passing an atoll far to the south (location uncertain but apparently within a hundred kilometers of the Lesser Sunda Archipelago) which was ringed with small floating things, made of metal and plastic, spaced every kilometer or so around the atoll at about a sixty kilometer radius. They were apparently connected by wire to the island, and made no sound at all according to the dolphin, who had been asked to go back and find out more. He seemed curious about it; he'd mentioned the subject hoping Dr. Kaja, the marine biologist who operated the research station and who had filed the report, could tell him what they were.

  He'd asked a couple other dolphins he'd met on the way back; they'd noticed the things and supposed they were listening devices, but they didn't particularly care.

  "The island would have to be between seven and eight degrees south," said Illya, studying the wall map and tilting his head to read- the angled lettering.

  "Listening devices?" said Joan.

  "Sonar and radar and other detection systems mostly emit loud signals which tell the whole world somebody's there," Napoleon explained. "The same reason to use photomultipliers to see in the dark instead of an infrared searchlight."

  "And floating like that they can listen in the air and underwater," Illya added. "They will be very difficult to sneak up on."

  "While you're on your way up here," Mr. Waverly said, "I filed a revised request with NASA specifying high-resolution mapping shots of the appropriate quadrangle. This request is being processed at the moment. Apparently, Mrs. — ah — Solo, that twin-jet had a somewhat higher cruising speed than your travelling companion knew."

  "Oh, I learned long ago never to trust anything a Thrush tells me. Told me," she corrected herself.

  The deskside telephone chimed and Waverly answered it. "Yes? Ah. Very good... Oh. Oh? Have you compared —" His eyebrows knitted as he bent full attention on the telephone and his audience sat silent and staring. "I see. Yes, that is in itself informative. Can we arrange to have that particular set of co-ordinates photographed again as soon as possible? I see. Yes, by all means use my name if necessary to get it done. Thank you."

  He hung up and drummed his fingers for a moment. "One frame is missing from the series, replaced by a re-coded duplicate of another frame of vacant sea. Apparently that one negative has been tampered with in the master files."

  He cleared his throat and looked sharply at Joan, "Are you still as anxious to rush into the jaws of death?"

  "Absolutely," said Joan, gripping Napoleon's hand and smiling up at him. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

  "You think the missing negative is proof enough, then?" said Illya.

  "I believe its absence is most eloquent, Mr. Kuryakin. We will not rush into action before spying out the terrain, but we might do well to transfer our central operation, quietly, to Makasar pending an interview with Dr. Kaja and his trained fish. Mr. Solo, what do you feel about taking your wife on such a business trip?"

  "Frankly, sir, I wouldn't want to leave her behind. I think I'd be afraid something would happen to her before I got back. Even under the circumstances, I'd feel better if she was with me."

  Waverly nodded. "Very well. Her knowledge of the terrain will be useful, especially if we are unable to get that satellite picture. It will require repositioning one over the Gulf of Tonkin, and may take some time." He. fumbled his pipe and rolled leather pouch out of a side pocket and dipped a pungent bowlful which he tamped with stained thumb and forefinger. "I presume you can be ready to leave for Indonesia tomorrow evening. The sooner we get there, the sooner we will be acclimatized. This week we can spare three days — next week we will need all our faculties at optimum pitch."

  "Next week?"

  "Thrush Island knows we've been tapping the Ultimate Computer — the remote destruct command directed at our illicit terminal demonstrates that. Beyond a doubt they are racing to replace their lost hardware and renew the offensive.

  If I knew absolutely that this unnamed island was the Thrush base we seek, I would order an attack on it at once. But pending verification by a NASA photograph — or positive identification by a qualified dolphin — I plan to be ready to move against them."

  "Next week?"

  "I confidently expect so."

  "Then," said Illya, "Southward, Ho!"

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "Who's Fluent In Dolphin?"

  An U.N.C.L.E. jet carried them from Djakarta to the small field at Makasar in just under two hours. From 40,000 feet the ocean was a featureless cloud - streaked sheet in shades of greens and blues varying with the depth except where odd-shaped lumps of greenish-black broke the surface, jungle-tipped peaks rising from the vast sunken plain beneath the shallow Java Sea. At last they saw ahead a jagged spine of mountains jutting from the sea, mist-shrouded and kar; a bony peninsula springing from a body of land which was only a shadow on the edge of the world to their left and fading towards the horizon to their right. Before the sea on the far side had vanished behind the mountains, they started their long descent towards a city which lay at the foot of a lush valley on the near coast.

  Fifteen minutes later the door swung down and became a short set of steps leading to a red-cinder paved airstrip and stifling heat. Napoleon's light summer suit, comparatively comfortable in a New York heat wave, seemed suddenly bulkier and oppressive as he ducked slightly through the hatch and the interior air-conditioning vanished behind him.

  A two-storey tower and a row of white buildings made up the airport facility. In the main waiting room, next to customs, they were greeted tentatively by a young woman in pink.

  "U.N.C.L.E.?" she said as they entered.

  "Yes," said Mr. Waverly.

  "My name is Merah Diambu — I'm Dr. Kaja'sassistant. Ladju came in this morning and they've been working over charts all day. He's just full of information. He's been back to the island, and he's checked with several locals apparently."

  "Fascinating. Does he talk to strangers?"

  "He's never had the opportunity, but I shouldn't doubt it. Come on, I have a car outside. Unless you're waiting for luggage?"

  "No," said Napoleon. "That's coming separately, since we don't know how long we'll be staying. Do you really talk to fish?"

  "Of course not. No cold-blooded animal has intelligence capable of speech. Dolphins are as mammalian as people — and possibly more intelligent. We couldn't learn to talk to them, but some of them are learning to talk to us. You must be Napoleon Solo."

  They exchanged information on the short drive south to a small group of buildings around the foot of a short low pier facing the declining sun, and Merah recited the names correctly to Dr. Larry Kaja, who squatted beside a wide shallow pool in which eight lazily moving feet of sleek power recl
ined on a bed of dark sand near a two-way hydrophone. Dr. Kaja was young, squarefaced, bearded and tanned. "Can he hear us?" asked Joan.

  "Probably. Can you hear them?" Dr. Kaja addressed his microphone.

  "C'ear azz a behl, Larry," said a speaker on the ground beside him, and the dolphin rolled lazily on his side and raised a casual flipper in greeting.

  Ow'zzzat?"

  "You've got the initial L pretty good, but you lost the first one right after the plosive."

  "Yah, I know. "

  With a quick twist he lifted half his gleaming length out of the pool along with a cascade of water and leaned over the edge peering near-sightedly up at his visitors, swinging his head to scan them intently.

  Napoleon gaped in amazement and turned to Illya. "That's really him?"

  "Uhhuh," said Illya. "How about that?"

  "Can he hear us?"

  "Not well out of the water," said Dr. Kaja.

  Ladju opened his glistening snout like a duck's beak and emitted a staccato series of high-pitched quacks before writhing back into the pool, displacing another slosh of warm seawater.