Pulp Fiction | The Dagger Affair by David McDaniel

by Unknown

  Waverly nodded absently and fumbled for a match. "Mr. Kuryakin, would you ring for a messenger to take this thing to the laboratory? They're expecting it."

  To Waverly, lighting his pipe was a five-minute vacation from his job. He expected to spare no concentration from it, and took pains to be sure everything else was taken care of before he started. His staff was aware of this, and took equal caution not to interrupt him in the midst of this ritual.

  Before the ancient briar was smoldering to his satisfaction, the messenger had come, been given the case, and departed without a word. At last an even glow came from the bowl of the pipe, and an unsteady streamer of aromatic smoke rose toward the air-conditioner. Waverly extinguished his fourth match and leaned up to the table.

  "The laboratory has been given all the data in your rather spotty reports," he said. "I would like a complete coverage on everything that has happened since you left Las Vegas, and then we will go over your reports for detail. Incidentally, Miss Keldur, allow me to offer the thanks of this organization for your courageous cooperation. Anything you can add to these reports will be most welcome."

  "Well, while Napoleon and Illya were off recovering the Energy Damper, I flew straight to Los Angeles. I met Mr. Feldman there, and told him all that had happened — as Illya had explained it to me. I was a little confused at the time — I'm still not quite sure what this 'Thrush' is — but I just waited there. And about one o'clock they came flying in with the camera bag, and we took off for New York. That's all I can add right now. Oh — the E/D was perfectly quiet through the whole trip."

  "I think," said Illya, "it must have been damaged in the crash. The field seems to have been cut off about that time, judging from the tracer signal."

  "Well, I suppose something would have had to have been disconnected to make it safe to transport. I only hope it was not damaged beyond all repair. Mr. Solo, describe the site of the crash, and everything you can remember about the crash and your recovery of the — ah — Energy Damper."

  Napoleon leaned back and closed his eyes. He began with the first pickup of the signal from the tracer, described the terrain as they had approached, covered the brief search for a landing place, and gave a moment-by-moment account of his time on the ground. When he came to a description of the bodies, he opened his eyes for a glance at Garnet, and said, "I saw no evidence they had died any other way than the obvious. They were in rather unpleasant condition. Do you need details?"

  Waverly puffed his pipe a moment, and said, "Not now. Leave them in the final report, though."

  Napoleon closed his eyes again and finished. He did not omit anything, including his struggles with the door. He heard a muffled giggle from Garnet, and a snort from Waverly, but did not pause.

  At length he finished the report, sat up and opened his eyes. "All right?"

  Waverly nodded. "Mr. Kuryakin — any additions, corrections or comments?"

  Illya thought. "None, sir."

  "Now," said Waverly, producing a manila folder from somewhere, "here are copies of your preliminary reports. I'm not fully satisfied with the material contained in them. For instance, what was done in the way of surveillance on the electronics shop in Van Nuys where you were captured the, ah, second time?"

  "All the public records on the property have been checked out," Illya said immediately. "Feldman should be forwarding a complete report to you. He had also posted a guard on the building, although it was nearly cleaned out by the time we accomplished this."

  Waverly nodded. "Have you checked for any witness to your...arrival in that park?"

  The interrogation continued for some time, as Waverly acquainted himself with every detail of the situation and his agents' actions. He made no comments beyond an occasional nod of acknowledgment, and he took no notes. When he had every detail from Napoleon and Illya, he turned to Garnet.

  "Now, Miss Keldur, I must confess to some mystification as to the exact nature of this...Energy Damper. I am told you know more about it than anyone except the inventor and the builders."

  Garnet repeated her description of the demonstration Kim had given her, and Napoleon recalled as well as he could his own feelings within the maximum Theta field — though the memory gave him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. He could face death in a fight, with excitement and adrenaline surging through his bloodstream, or the quick death of assassination or explosion, or any of the other deaths he faced regularly in line of duty. But that draining away of existence was a feeling he had no desire to repeat, and a death he would greatly prefer to avoid.

  Waverly inquired again into details of the financing of the DAGGER project, interested in how a small group of fanatics could raise cash to the extent this would obviously require.

  Garnet was vague. "I have no idea what approaches he used. I know he and Holt would laugh sometimes about the gullibility of people. He was able to convince them it had to be kept very secret, though. So they gave Kim their money through a system of covers I never found out anything about.

  "Of course, I guess Kim — and Chernik and Holt, and a couple of others — were the only ones who really planned to get rid of civilization entirely. And I think a lot of them were thinking along the lines of preventing all kinds of chemical explosions — from gunpowder to gasoline engines — and sending the whole world back to the steam age. Or maybe even making fire impossible, so everything would go to a really primitive level — I know one fellow, not by name though, who was sure this would force everyone to go back to nature and be I think his words were 'closer to God.' But Kim, and Chernik and Holt, are going to "

  Suddenly the room went dark.

  The air-conditioner's hum fell to a mutter and went silent. The only illumination in the room was a faint glow from Waverly's pipe and the light of the city reflected back from the sky and through the window.

  Garnet broke off with a gasp of surprise. Waverly fumbled for a moment; then a match flared, throwing his face into sharp, ruddy relief. At the same time, Napoleon flipped his cigarette lighter and looked down.

  "My watch has stopped," he said matter-of-factly.

  Illya said, "Looks as if they've got it working."

  Waverly poked absent-mindedly at his intercom and called his secretary's name twice before he realized, and broke off with an embarrassed snort. Napoleon was checking the door, which would not open automatically. He found the manual emergency latch, and the door ground reluctantly open.

  Out in the corridor there was confusion. Somebody was saying, "The emergency generators, dammit, where are the emergency generators? They held up for twelve hours in the blackout last week — where are they now?"

  The secretary was tapping at the buttons on her telephone by the light of the desk-type cigarette lighter which threw a butane flame four inches high — and was the only light in thirty feet. People were starting to cluster around the desk like moths, asking questions of each other.

  "Are all the lights out?" "I think everything's out!" "My flashlight doesn't work." "Hey, Helen, where's the fuse box?" "All right, Manny, what did you do this time?" "I didn't do it — I was in Kansas City at the time and I've got twelve witnesses to prove it."

  Waverly cleared his throat loudly and with authority. "Attention, please — attention. This is the result of a highly classified experiment in our technical section. The condition was not wholly unexpected, and should end in a few minutes. Return to your sections, please, and occupy yourselves there with whatever questions most concern you."

  By the uncertain light of matches and cigarette lighters, the personnel made their ways back to their various offices while Waverly muttered to himself about the remarkable dependence everything showed on electricity. He told his secretary to lay in a stock of candles on each floor, and was starting to talk about putting voice tubes like those on a ship between key points for emergency communication, when the lights came back on again.

  "Very good," said Illya, consulting his spring-wound watch. "Eleven and one half minutes.
" He looked at Napoleon and added, "If you wish to re-set your watch, the time is exactly 9:35 and...forty seconds. Mark."

  "Oh, ye gods," said the secretary suddenly. "We'll have to get every clock in the building re-set. And the time-clocks....And what about the radio reports we've missed? Station Jay's weekly..."

  The complaints and worries faded off as Waverly led his small party to the elevator. The four of them stepped in, and he touched the bottom button.

  Thirty seconds later the doors slid back and they stepped into the midst of a babble of confusion.

  "Shot!" one man was exclaiming. "Seventy-two hours of careful examination shot! What a rotten, rotten time to blow the power!"

  "Yeah? Well, this condenser has been annealing for a day and a half, and now I'll have to go back and recast the whole thing. Pete, why didn't you give us a day's warning?"

  "Doggone it, I didn't know it was going to work. And besides, the old man gave this thing abso-top priority. Look, you just be glad we were able to figure out how to kill the field! Whatever..." He glanced over his shoulder as he became aware of a figure behind him, and started when he saw "the old man" standing there.

  "Mr. Waverly — what is this? I've read the reports on it, and the fairy stories those field agents sent in, but it's just not possible! Look here," he added, beckoning them over to a workbench. "This thing looks like it was put together by random numbers — or a chimpanzee with a soldering iron."

  The brown case lay open and empty at the side of the bench. Sitting front and center was an unlikely-looking agglomeration of wires and transistors, capacitors and coils, and a few other things Napoleon could not immediately identify.

  "We traced some of the circuitry on this gadget," he said, "but it gives me the fidgets. It's got open ends and dead shorts all through it — and some of the components I can't even analyze, let alone figure out what they are or what they are supposed to do."

  "Can you figure anything out of it?" asked Waverly.

  Pete laughed bitterly. "Look. This is like showing a transistor radio to Edison. Worse. Edison knew what radio waves were — and was a heck of a lot smarter than I am. He could tell you what it did, even if he couldn't tell you how. Getting this thing started was a piece of luck — getting it stopped again was just as lucky. We connected a broken wire to start it, but disconnecting the wire again didn't stop it. Besides, the soldering guns got cold and we were working by match-light. I cut a wire — a different one — and it stopped. And that was about the third wire I cut. I know which ones I cut, and I think I could put it back together again. It might start if I did, or it might not. I think I could get it going again, and I'm pretty sure I could stop it if I did. Outside of that, I don't know anything."

  "You read the reports on this — do you remember the description of a variable factor called 'Theta'? Do you think you could control it?"

  The lab technician gave a snort of laughter. "If there was a knob marked 'Theta' I could twiddle it and see what happened. But all there is that I can understand is a timer. And it's gone off a long time ago."

  "What are the chances of building another one?"

  "For the guy that built this one, pretty good. For me? Ask a bushman to build a laser!" His voice dropped conspiratorially. "Look, I've got a top clearance — tell me the truth. Did you really get this off a flying saucer?"

  Waverly harrumphed, and his face seamed into a smile. "No. I wish we had — the Martians would probably be more willing to cooperate than the individuals who actually did built this." He sighed. "Keep working on it, and find out what you can. Obviously some of the circuitry is dummy to confuse investigation. If you need to start it up again, let me know beforehand, and I'll authorize transportation to Site Delta, so you won't upset things here again. Do everything you can to it — short of destroying it. And if you absolutely have to destroy it, check with me before you do."

  The technician shook his head sadly. "I'll do what I can, but I don't know how much that'll be."

  Waverly clapped him lightly on the shoulder. "It will be as much as any man in our organization could do — that's why you're here. Now do it."

  Pete lit up with encouragement. Compliments from Waverly were rare. Of course, they almost inevitably accompanied his request for the impossible, as in this case. Perhaps this was one reason his workers so often accomplished the impossible.

  * * *

  Back upstairs, Napoleon gave voice to a speculation.

  "Thrush seems to know quite a bit about what DAGGER is doing. What do you think of the idea that DAGGER might be just another front for a Thrush operation?"

  Waverly exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and shook his head thoughtfully. "Seems unlikely. They lost three operatives and an aircraft trying to capture the Energy Damper. And they would be aware it is beyond our ability to duplicate — or even understand. It could do more harm here in this building than anywhere else." He steepled his fingers and stared at them as if he were trying to remember how many he had. "Besides, Thrush seems quite as concerned about DAGGER as we are. An interesting point for speculation. Thrush has definite reasons for not wanting to see the world destroyed. I wonder..."

  In the following seconds Waverly did not seem inclined to say just what it was he wondered about. None of his listeners intended to speak first, though, and after a while he nodded slowly and thoughtfully to himself, and the corners of his mouth twitched a little.

  At last he looked up. "It's getting late. There will be quite a bit to do tomorrow, I'm afraid. Miss Keldur, have you residential arrangements? If not, we can put you up in one of our apartments for the time being."

  "Thank you," she said. "I'd appreciate that."

  Napoleon rose, saying, "It's been quite a while since lunch. If you're as hungry as I am, I know a little Italian restaurant, and since it's Saturday night..." His voice faded as he accompanied her to the door.

  Illya paused a moment, and looked carefully at Waverly. "If you will pardon my asking, sir, do you expect something to happen tomorrow?"

  Waverly leaned as far back as his chair would allow. "Yes, Mr. Kuryakin, I do expect something tomorrow or Monday — something totally unexpected." He frowned. "I only wish I had some idea of the form in which to expect it."

  Illya pondered this for a few seconds, and then said, "Thank you, sir. Good night." He allowed the door to slide softly closed behind him.

  Section III: "Though It Rain DAGGERS With Their Points Downward."

  Chapter 9: "Take Us To Your Leader."

  The unexpected happened right on schedule just after lunch on Monday. Napoleon and Illya were, surprisingly enough, at their desks, taking care of paperwork that had piled up while they been away. Garnet was shopping. No one knew where Waverly was — as usual. At about fifteen minutes after one the usual quiet of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters was shattered. A cascade of flashing lights, bells, horns and sirens sounded as every alarm in the building went off at once.

  Television monitors at strategic points sprang to life, showing the scene in the entrance area just behind Del Floria's shop. The receptionist had hit every button on the board, and was now standing behind the desk, her back to the camera, gun in hand. Running footsteps converged on the area as shirt-sleeved agents, bristling with armament, rushed to her aid.

  Standing just inside the secret door, looking about them with mild interest and complete calm, stood four individuals — three men and a woman. All were formally, neatly dressed in black suits, and were reasonably pleasant-looking. One had just set a large briefcase gently on the floor by his feet, and all were standing patiently, hands at their sides, as the protective mechanism of U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters closed around them.

  All four were wearing Thrush badges. The men wore them like blazer badges on their coat pockets; the woman wore one quite a bit smaller and higher on her jacket.

  They said nothing, but watched the tumult about them and waited for the alarms to run their course and eventually to be silenced.

  Napoleon Solo and Ill
ya Kuryakin were not the first to arrive, and found themselves blocked by the backs of a half-circle of U.N.C.L.E. agents with automatics and sub-machine guns. The alarm bells were being stifled throughout the building as they hurried into the entrance area, and the last one stopped as they shouldered their way to the front of the crowd.

  In the silence, the tallest of the men said, "If you're quite finished..." A buzzer went off suddenly over the door leading into the tailor shop, and the receptionist did something with the intercom. A moment later it stopped.

  The Thrush agents looked around carefully, and spoke again. "If you're quite finished, we would like to speak with Mr. Waverly. We are unarmed — we are not dangerous, and we are willing to submit to any examinations. The briefcase is not a weapon." He picked it up, placed it on the desk, and slowly and gently opened it.

  The circle of guns bristled as their holders moved a half-step back, and the briefcase came fully open. It appeared to contain only some papers and two small reels of what looked like videotape.

  The receptionist looked at them, eyes wide; looked into the briefcase, and looked back at them. Her mouth was open a few seconds before anything came out. "Do you have an appointment?"

  "I'm afraid not. But under the circumstances..."

  The intercom came to life, with Waverly's voice. "Mr. Erwin — Mr. Alshire — conduct our guests to Room Twelve, under maximum security. Mr. Solo — Mr. Kuryakin — report to my office at once. Everyone else, please return to your jobs. The emergency is officially ended."

  "Thank you, sir," the Thrush spokesman said, looking directly into the concealed television camera. As the crowd disbursed, two U.N.C.L.E. agents came forward, sidearms at the ready, and said, "This way, please."

  * * *

  Napoleon and Illya slid into their seats just as the large television screen on the wall came to life. The four visitors from Thrush were sitting around half of a circle facing their screen, above which was their camera. Waverly touched a control on his desk, and the visitors looked up as he spoke.