The Burning Air Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  THE BURNING AIR AFFAIR

  By Robert Hart Davis

  Shackled, powerless, April heard a madman boast of his plan to rule the world. And suddenly she knew---this man could sentence the entire universe to flaming death---and only she stood in his path!

  ONE

  THE MISSING AGENT

  Alexander Waverly, Section I member and chief of the United Network for Law and Enforcement, rubbed his hands wearily across his eyes.

  For twenty-four hours he had not left his office in the headquarters of the great global crime-fighting organization known from its initials as U.N.C.L.E. The long hours had deepened the lines in Waverly's rugged face. It was a strong face, capable of sympathy, yet possessing the strength of Gibraltar.

  Teenage Randy Kovac stood beside the desk console with a sheaf of reports for the chief. But Mr. Waverly kept him waiting for nearly fifteen minutes while his strong fingers played on the multi-colored buttons on the console.

  At his touch communications opened up in a dozen hot spots around the world as the chief contacted his agents.

  Finally he cut the last channel and leaned back. Wordlessly he took the reports Randy handed him. He did not look at them. His mind was turning over an entirely different problem.

  “There is something decidedly wrong,” he said slowly. “Most decidedly.”

  “Yes, sir?” Randy said eagerly.

  “If there is something I can do, Mr. Waverly”

  A suggestion of a smile crossed the chief's face.

  “You might tell me where April Dancer and Mark Slate are right now,” he said.

  Randy's face fell. He had had visions of being sent off on a dangerous mission.

  “They are more than an hour late in reporting,” he said.

  “Incorrect!” Mr. Waverly said in a clipped, reproving voice. “They are one hour, three minutes and twelve seconds late. In our business it is important to be precise.”

  “Yes, sir,” Randy said, abashed. “Maybe I could go look for them, sir.”

  “Maybe you could, but you can't,” Mr. Waverly said. “I need---”

  A purple light glowed suddenly on the communications control console. The U.N.C.L.E. chief bent forward. At the same time he pressed a button that activated a recessed speaker.

  “This is Number Four at the airport,” a voice said. “I have checked on Miss Dancer and Mr. Slate. They came in on separate planes according to schedule and left in a cab. The cab number was checked out with the company. The driver is overdue checking in.”

  “Thank you,” Waverly said.

  “Keep me informed of all developments. This is our top priority project.”

  He cut the connection and looked across at the boy. For all the stone exterior he found necessary to present to U.N.C.L.E. agents, he was at heart a kindly man. He understood the boy's curiosity.

  “It seems we have something of a problem, young man,” he said.

  “Because Miss Dancer and Mr. Slate are lost?” Randy asked.

  “Not because they are lost, no,” Mr. Waverly said. He picked up an unlighted pipe. “Our problem is why they are lost.”

  “You see,” he went on, “I have been picking up reports from our operatives all over the world. They all agree on one thing: there has suddenly developed a very disturbing agitation throughout the entire THRUSH network of criminal activity. Their reports indicate that this could be the greatest threat to the world that this monstrous criminal organization has ever posed.”

  “Then it must be a whopper!”

  Randy said. “What are they up to now?” “I do not know,” Waverly said.

  “We have not been able to get a single lead. We only know that there is unprecedented activity in THRUSH right now. You can see why I am worried.”

  “I wish I could do something about it besides just carry messages,” the boy said wistfully.

  Waverly smiled. “Don't discount the importance of your work here,” he said. “After all, you are still an on-the-job trainee, our first. Usually we do not accept any except college graduates who have then attended our U.N.C.L.E. academy.”

  “I know, sir,” Randy said quickly. “I realize how fortunate I am.”

  “And we are fortunate to have someone with your interest,” Mr. Waverly said. “There is so much for you to learn. Just bear with us for a few more years. I promise that if you continue as you have, you will one day take your place in the field, along with Mr. Kuryakin and Mr. Solo.”

  Before Randy could reply the purple light glowed again. Mr. Waverly cut in the voice communications. The same voice Randy heard before resumed its report.

  “The missing cab was found two minutes ago by police. It was found on a side street near the East River. The driver and his passengers have disappeared. There is some blood on the back seat of the cab. That is all anyone knows at this moment.”

  “Are they---” Randy asked, his face turning pale.

  “Be quiet!” Alexander Waverly snapped. “There is something else coming in.”

  A different light gleamed on the console. Waverly cut in the sound. Randy leaned forward expectantly. He looked disappointed when the only sound that came out was the purr of a running car engine.

  Waverly said, “Evidently April or Mark have succeeded in getting a pen communicator working. We are probably hearing their kidnapper's car motor.”

  Randy understood. He knew that U.N.C.L.E. operatives carry tiny voice transmitter sets so minute they were concealed in the case of a fountain pen, requiring only the extension of a chromium antenna to put the agent in direct communications with U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

  Minutes piled on minutes and they heard nothing but the rising and falling of the engine noise. Randy looked across at Mr. Waverly. The U.N.C.L.E. chief leaned back in his chair, listening with his eyes closed. He seemed completely relaxed. Then Randy noticed one tightly clinched fist and realized how much the wait and suspense were affecting the older man.

  Randy glanced up at the wall clock above Waverly's head. Its ring of numbers told the time around the world. In his anxiety he had some difficulty picking out New York time. It gave him a jolt of surprise to note that it had only been fifteen minutes since they picked up the secret broadcast. To him it seemed like hours.

  Then suddenly the engine noise was broken by a man's voice. It said, “What about that girl?”

  “It was your fault that she got away!” another voice said savagely.

  “Don't try to shove the blame on me!” the first voice snapped. “If you could have held him, then I wouldn't have---”

  “Forget it! Forget it!” his companion replied. “What's done is done. I don't think she'll be able to identify us, even if the police get a lineup on us. We'll be heading for Los Angeles in an hour anyway.”

  “I don't know,” the other voice said. Randy could easily detect the growing uneasiness in the man's tones. “This thing scares me. Of all the messes we've gotten into, this is the worst.”

  “Don't worry. This is top priority. THRUSH headquarters is putting everybody on this thing.”

  “I don't know,” his companion said. “It doesn't look good, especially now that U.N.C.L.E. is getting into the act. That could delay us. And if it does and we don't find that woman in time there won't be enough of this world left to---.”

  “Break it off!” his partner rasped. His own agitation showing in his voice. “We'll get her. We know this punk from U.N.C.L.E. met the woman in Los Angeles. We'll make him talk. After that, it will be easy.”

  “If he's the right man!”

  “Stop worrying, I tell you! He's the right one. Mark Slate. I got his name off the plane manifest.”

  “That girl with him. I'm sure she was an U.N.C.L.E. age
nt too.”

  “So what? All we need is an hour with this jerk on the machine and we'll have all the information we need. After that U.N.C.L.E. can run around in circles chasing its own tail.”

  “Well, I hope we can- Oh! Look out, Fleming! It's-it's him!”

  “Quick! Shoot the prisoner! Shoot Mark Slate! Don't let him get away!”

  There was a crushing sound like metal twisting in a savage wreck. Then the communicator went dead.

  “Oh!” Randy gasped. “Oh!”

  He looked sick. Ever since he had joined U.N.C.L.E. as its first on-the-job trainee Mark Slate had been his personal hero and he had developed a schoolboy crush on lovely April Dancer. Their danger left him shaken.

  “Both April Dancer and Mark Slate have been in tough spots before,” Waverly said in a quiet voice that masked his own deep concern. “I am sure we can keep our confidence in them.”

  “If they could only have kept the pen communicator going a little longer,” Randy said miserably. “We might have learned something.”

  “I think we learned a good deal anyway,” Mr. Waverly said. “We learned that April Dancer escaped. We also learned that there is another woman involved---a woman these men seek desperately. We also learned that she has had some kind of contact with Mark Slate. And we learned that THRUSH is definitely involved.”

  “I wonder who the woman is?” Randy asked.

  “Mr. Slate is the type of man who meets many women,” Waverly said. “It will be extremely difficult to backtrack on ladies with whom he has been in contact.”

  “But the THRUSH man said this woman was the key to something that meant great danger to the world,” Randy said. “We must find her.”

  “That is very true,” Waverly said. “Now just one moment and we will get a report on the voice-prints.”

  “Voice-prints?” Randy asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” Mr. Waverly said.

  “When a person's voice is converted to electronic lines on an oscillograph, the lines make a characteristic pattern. Like fingerprints, the tones and nuances and timbres of our voices all have minute differences. No two are alike. I had this communicator report taped as it came in. The automatic computers are already searching our memory bank for comparisons with THRUSH agents. We will know who these men are in just a moment.”

  By the time he finished speaking, verification came that the men overheard were from THRUSH. Their names were recorded and a neatly printed dossier of each accompanied the report.

  Waverly read it quickly and a flick of his fingers on his bank of communication buttons and a few quiet words started the vast crime-fighting organization's machinery to an intensive search for the two men.

  Then he leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully caressed the bowl of his briar pipe.

  “Odd,” he said.

  “Yes, sir?” Randy said hopefully. He realized, however, that the chief was speaking only to himself.

  “Yes, very odd,” Waverly repeated. “The hints those two dropped about a world danger indicated that this is something THRUSH fears.”

  “Do you think, maybe,” Randy said uneasily, “that they got Mr. Slate's pen communicator when they captured him and are tricking us?”

  “In this business anything is possible,” Mr. Waverly said gloomily. “Anything.”

  His seamed face took on a more gloomy aspect. “Remember this, young man---when you are fighting criminals of the caliber THRUSH employs, it is fatal to take anything for granted. We must always seek the hidden meaning behind every action, every word, and if possible, every thought of our enemy.

  “THRUSH intends to dominate the world. That much we know. We know the country which is supporting these arch-criminals, but that is about all.

  “We have never been able to run down the real director of this infamous group. We don't even know what the letters in THRUSH stand for. But we do know that it is so powerful that only an international organization like U.N.C.L.E. can hope to combat its evil.”

  “And now something has happened that has made THRUSH afraid,” Randy said. “Could there be a new organization so terrible that it even makes THRUSH tremble?”

  “It must be something like that,” Waverly said reluctantly. “But if so, why hasn't our operatives gotten wind of it?”

  A flash of light on the U.N.C.L.E. chief's console caused Randy to hesitate. Waverly touched a switch and said, “Yes?”

  “Carlson on number five, sir. We have a fix on April Dancer.”

  “Excellent!” Mr. Waverly said. “She is walking, just entering the Fifties,” the report went on. “She is dazed. She has some of her faculties, but doesn't recognize anyone. She failed to acknowledge any of our identification signals. When we tried to approach her, she used karate on Stevens. He has a broken leg. She almost shot Franklyn, and Singh is recovering from a blast of tear gas in his face.”

  “That is quite understandable,” Mr. Waverly said quietly with only the slightest edge of sarcasm cutting through his English-sounding voice. “After all, this Amazon we've employed is all of five-feet-five and must weigh within an ounce of one hundred and ten pounds. We can hardly expect three mere men to handle her!”

  “Well now---” the reporting agent began and then recognized the futility of trying to make excuses to the soft-speaking, but rock-hard director of U.N.C.L.E. activities.

  “Yes, sir,” he ended lamely. “It will be necessary for us to render her unconscious. I’ll---”

  “Never mind,” Waverly said. “If she is now walking in the Fifties, it means she is coming here.”

  “Probably, sir.”

  “I think she's like a boxer we often see in the prize ring. A stunned fighter keeps slugging just from pure fighting instinct after a blow numbs his conscious senses.”

  “Then we'll keep in the background and give her protection in case she should be followed,” the agent said.

  “Excellent,” Waverly said and added, “Perhaps we had better send out a squad to protect you should she get angry again!”

  “Now that's unfair! We could have used knockout gas on her but---”

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry, sir. No excuses.”

  “Very well. Carry on, but put as many people along her way as is needed to keep her under surveillance every second. She may be our only lead now to the most difficult job we have ever faced.”

  TWO

  “FIND MARK SLATE”

  Despite her disheveled hair, bruises on her face and her dirty torn dress, the girl who paused on a street corner in the lower Fifties was extraordinarily attractive.

  She ignored the stares of passing men and watched the light with impatience until it turned green. A young man leered at the tear in her short skirt. He turned to follow when she hurried across the street. Another man, tall and grim of face, stepped from a drug store entrance full in the young man's way. One look at his silent, warning face and the would-be masher went back the way he came.

  Another light stopped the girl. She paused and leaned wearily against the corner of a building.

  A police patrol car, cruising on the opposite side of the street, saw her.

  The driver went down half a block until he could find a place to make a U-turn and started back. A man stepped off the curb. The patrolman had to brake sharply.

  The pedestrian walked swiftly back to the car. A whispered word and a flash of an identification caused the police to drop interest in the girl.

  Finally she turned into a small tailor shop on a certain street shadowed by the glass and steel bulk of the United Nations building.

  A wrinkled gnome of a man looked up. When another customer came in right behind the girl, he said quickly, “Yes, Miss Dancer, your alterations are ready. If you will step back to the room, I'll make any additional adjustments.”

  The customer looked curiously at the girl. She only nodded and walked past a pressing machine. The young girl at the machine pressed a hidden button as April Dancer went by. This activated a switch which
would permit a lock to open.

  The girl from U.N.C.L.E. went into the small booth that served the shop for a changing room. She dropped the heavy curtain behind her and turned a clothes hook on the wall.

  She waited for ten heartbeats and then the wall swung in, disclosing a short, dark corridor. She stepped inside. The panel closed behind her. For a brief moment she was in total darkness while electronic surveillance devices checked her identity.

  Finally the end of the short corridor opened and April Dancer stepped into a modern office reception room.

  The pretty girl at the desk nodded pleasantly to April. She did not appear surprised at the girl from U.N.C.L.E.'s disheveled appearance. After working for the great crime-fighting organization for nearly two years, the receptionist had long since forgotten how to be surprised at anything or anybody who came through the secret entrance to the New York headquarters of the international organization.

  There was, however, more than a touch of envy in her eyes. For a second before she went back to sorting file cards, she envisioned herself on dangerous assignments instead of just sitting at a desk.

  Behind the receptionist's desk were six small elevators, each marked with the name of one of the six subdivisions of U.N.C.L.E.

  There were:

  SECTION I: Policy and Operations

  SECTION ll: Operations and Enforcement

  SECTION Ill: Enforcement and Intelligence

  SECTION IV: Intelligence and Communications

  SECTION V: Communications and Security

  SECTION VI: Security and Personnel

  The Girl took the one marked Section II-Operations and Enforcement. It deposited her on one of the top floors. She went straight across to the office with a plain nameplate on the door: MR. WAVERLY. She swayed slightly and paused for a moment to regain her composure before pushing the bell.

  On the opposite side of the door, Mr. Waverly and Randy Kovac were watching her on a closed circuit TV screen recessed in the communications console on Waverly's desk.

  “Maybe I should go help her,” the youth said.

  “You forget that the last men who tried to do just that ended with broken legs, scalps creased by bullets and weeping from the effects of tear gas,” Waverly said dryly. “Miss Dancer is obviously able to take care of herself.”