18 - The Unfair Fare Affair

by Peter Leslie

  The man with the gray crewcut was not, however, an Enforcement Officer. He had in fact never been on the street before. Or in New York. Or, for that matter, in the United States of America. He was just very well briefed.

  He strode to the back of the shop, nodded genially to Del Florio, who was occupied with his pants pressing machine, and went into a fitting cubicle. The old man was in his shirtsleeves, tape around his neck. Mechanically, he returned the greeting and pressed the hidden lever at the side of the presser that released the controls operating the secret door inside the cubicle. And then, phoenixlike, he straightened up among the clouds of steam, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. The gray man had carried such conviction in his manner that Del Florio had assumed he was a new enforcement Officer, one he had not seen before. They came in all the time.

  But there was an established routine for new operatives the first time they used the entrance. And the gray man had not followed it. Del Florio pressed another button, which had been installed for just this purpose. If it had been labeled, the label would have read PRVISIONAL ALERT.

  Inside the cubicle, the small man hauled down on a certain coat hook projecting from the back wall, waited for the concealed door to swing aside, and walked through into the passage leading to the Command's reception foyer.

  The Nigerian girl seated at Reception had already seen him coming on the closed-circuit TV screens suspended above her desk that monitored all entrances. Even without the winking orange indicator that Del Florio had put into action, the defenses of the place would have been ready to meet the intruder. Passages leading to the three other entrances had been automatically blocked off by steel bulk heads. The corridor to the secretariat and the stairs leading to the other floors would have been similarly cut. The power supply to the elevators would have been cut, and there would be an orange light winking on every desk in the building while the provisional alert lasted.

  Little of this showed, however. The man with the gray crewcut saw, as he walked up to the desk, only the dark figure of the girl and a pair of uniformed guards with machine pistols standing one on each side. It might have been—in fact, it was—what any normal visitor would see when he approached Reception. And if the splendid figure of the Nigerian girl was a little more tense than usual, it didn't show from the far side of the desk.

  But the intruder was not bent on mischief. He walked quietly across, clicked his heels, and said in clipped, formal English: "Good day. I should like to speak with Alexander Waverly, if you please."

  The girl was trained to deal with unexpected situations, but this one threw her a little. People did not customarily walk calmly in through the Command's most secret entrance and expect to see the boss! "I... er... I'm afraid it's not… well, it's usual to make an appointment," she stammered finally.

  "I have not the time to waste on formalities, protocol, what you call the pink tapes."

  "Red tape, sir. Yes... But I'm afraid... Can I have your name, please?" the girl said hurriedly, clutching at a straw of routine.

  "I am Colonel Ladislav Hradec, of a branch of the Czechoslovak military intelligence with which you would not, I imagine, be familiar."

  Back on home ground, the girl became crisp and efficient again. "Just a moment, Colonel," she said. "If you would kindly take a seat, I'll call somebody who can deal with your case."

  "I am not a case. I wish to see Waverly."

  "Yes, Colonel. If you would just take a seat, sir…"

  A minute later Jim McGrath, the forty-year-old ex-FBI man responsible for the internal security of the building, was standing beside the visitor. He explained in some detail why it was impossible for casual passersby—however eminent—to see Waverly, especially if they had illegally entered by a secret route. The Nigerian girl watched them—McGrath with his toothbrush moustache bristling, his eyes wary behind the rimless glasses; the Czech standing stiff and correct, talking with the minimum of gesture, his attitude inflexible. She'd put her money on the foreigner, she thought privately; there was a certain assurance about him that simply would not admit the possibility of defeat.

  And it said much for the colonel's air of authority that she proved to be right. Within ten minutes McGrath, all smiles, was personally conducting him to Waverly's office.

  "But of course, Colonel Hradec," Waverly said, glancing at the small visiting card in his hand. "You are well known to me by reputation. But why did you not telephone to make an appointment? We would have sent a car for you and you would have been properly received. I must apologize for the embarrassment to which you have been put. But you must appreciate that we have to take certain precautions."

  "Understood. I did not telephone because you might have been officially 'out' and I have little time to spare. Western officials are not always too keen to meet people from what they call the Eastern bloc."

  Waverly had been filling an ancient briar from a pouch he had fished from one of the baggy pockets of his jacket. Now he laid these down and held up an admonitory finger. "Really, Colonel," he said, reprovingly, "I'm afraid I simply must take you up on that remark. The Command is in no way affiliated with the Western powers. As I am sure you must know very well, we are a strictly supranational organization. We go wherever we are needed, when we are called. We have on numerous occasions answered calls in the Soviet Union, in Poland, in Yugoslavia, in Eastern Germany. It is not our fault if those countries call us in less frequently than the others. We are always ready to come."

  "Perhaps it is that the societies of those countries are ordered in such a way that there is less need for you there…"

  Waverly inclined his head in polite acceptance.

  "But you have to admit that U.N.C.L.E. appears to be, shall we say, an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, at least superficially," Hradec continued. "Its headquarters are near the United Nations"—he gestured toward the room's one window, in which the U.N. building was precisely framed— "many of its staff are American, and much of its operational potential is American-financed."

  "We can hardly be blamed," Waverly commented, "if certain states have not fulfilled their obligations with regard to the appropriation that was voted to us."

  "Agreed," the colonel said. "But whatever the cause, the effects are unfortunate. Nevertheless, I was interested today to make my way into your—er—fortress by unorthodox means, because it was an instructive exercise and it afforded me the opportunity to test the efficacy of our own intelligence services, who had supplied the necessary information."

  "One trusts that you found the experience... rewarding," Waverly said dryly.

  "Most, I thank you. A few of the interior details were missing—I did not know about the steel doors, for instance. But the briefing on the approach and entrance itself was admirable. I found my way to the correct shop, and through into the Reception area, with no difficulty at all."

  "Splendid! I imagine, however, that this was not your sole reason for visiting New York?"

  "By no means." Colonel Hradec cleared his throat. For the first time he appeared almost at a loss. "What I have to say may appear odd to you," he ventured at last. "You will agree that, in whatever equivocations we choose to clothe it, there is a difference—between East and West, I mean!"

  Waverly nodded. "Of course. Difficult to define, but it's there."

  "Exactly. And because of it, we are committed, those of us in my trade, to an endless chess game, an elaborate ritual of denial and counter denial, of claim and rejection, which makes nonsense of truth and actuality as we know it to be. It is a convention, absurd perhaps to an extreme, but one that is imposed upon us by our masters and one we must follow."

  Waverly nodded again.

  "If an espionage agent defects from country A to country B—probably because he has a girl there or because the money is better—country A will deny that he has defected, they will deny that he was a spy, and they will deny that, if he was a spy, they knew anything about him. Country B, on the other hand, will in turn deny that it offered the man mone
y and try to make out that he came because he had become convinced of the rightness of that country's way of life over the other's."

  For the third time, Waverly's gray head bobbed up and down. He stuck the pipe between his teeth and reached for the pouch again.

  "Within the framework of these non-real conventions," Hradec continued, "any attempt at genuine cooperation is impossible. But when we come to the question of malefactors, of lawbreakers, of wrongdoers, and crooks, as you call them—as distinct from ideological agents, that is—then quite another set of conditions obtains, does it not?"

  The colonel walked to the window and stared out at the storm clouds massing over the tangled roofs of Queens. "In the case of vulgar felons," he said bitterly, "since they cannot in any way advance the cause of our respective dialectics, then we can afford to cooperate. Is not that so?"

  "I'm afraid you're right," Waverly said quietly.

  "Very well. I am here, then, to offer cooperation—or, rather, to make a suggestion which you are of course free to accept or reject as you wish."

  Waverly looked at the trim little man expectantly, his hand arrested in the act of reaching for a box of matches.

  "We are as anxious as you are to inhibit the activities of the conspiracy calling itself THRUSH, for example. And that anxiety extends to any other organization which might be a potential help to THRUSH," Hradec said, adding astonishingly, "there exists an escape organization in Europe which comes under that heading and which it would be to everybody's advantage to destroy. I assume you have heard of it?"

  Waverly was caught with his mouth open, a lighted match halfway to the pipe he held in his other hand. Yet again he nodded.

  "Right. Well, we believe we have the means of getting in touch with this network, of putting a man, a particular man, in contact with them—a task which has so far baffled every police chief in Europe, as you no doubt know."

  "I'm listening," Waverly said.

  "Let me give you three facts. One, there is in my country a convicted bank robber and murderer who has just escaped from a prison near Praha. He made for the capital, where he will be waiting with a large sum of ready money, wondering what to do—a natural client, don't you think, for our network?"

  He paused for a moment. Waverly had uttered a sharp oath, dropping the match, which had singed his fingers, into an ashtray.

  "Two," Hradec resumed, "this man is known to have gone to ground in the old city and to have laid his hands on the money he had cached away. He is also known to be seeking a way out of the country, for obvious reasons. And the third point is that he is dead..."

  He paused for effect. Waverly was staring uncomprehendingly at him.

  "We had in fact discovered his hideout," Hradec explained.

  "As we moved in to flush him out, he broke cover and fled… and he was knocked down and killed instantly as he ran across a road in the early morning. The important thing about this is that nobody outside the secret police, not a soul, knows that he is dead. There were no witnesses to the accident, and as far as the underworld is concerned, he is still lying low in his hideaway."

  "I'm afraid I cannot quite see—"

  "There is one further fact you should know," the colonel went on, brushing aside Waverly's interruption. "It is a visual one, so I shall content myself with showing to you a photograph."

  He took a pigskin wallet from his breast pocket, opened it, separated an envelope from a neat bundle of passport, papers and airline tickets, and took out a postcard-size portrait, which he handed to Waverly.

  "That is Kurim Cernic—the murderer who is no longer amongst us," he said.

  Waverly looked at the photograph and gasped.

  For the features staring out at him from the glossy print could have been those of Illya Kuryakin!

  Chapter 8

  Illya Sweats It Out!

  "YES, IT REALLY is quite remarkable!" Colonel Hradec said a few minutes later, looking from the photograph in his hands to the live face of Illya Kuryakin. "The features are the same and that is a help—but what is even more astonishing is that the hair grows the same way, and the height and build are identical. That is almost as important!"

  Kuryakin himself, Russian-born, American naturalized, and as respected east of the Oder as he was west of it, had been hastily summoned to Waverly's office. Next to Solo, he was Section One's most trusted operative.

  "I won't waste words, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly had said after he had introduced the two men. "You probably know something of the case Mr. Solo is working on. In any case you can take away the file when we have finished speaking. For the moment I just want you to concentrate on this picture and on what Colonel Hradec tells you."

  "This man was a robber and a murderer," the Czech said. "He had escaped from prison and was in hiding in the old part of Praha when he was killed. Nobody knows he was killed except the SNB—the state security police—and my own department. We also know the place he was using as a hide out, the places he got his food—everything. We even know where he keeps the proceeds of his robberies hidden, for we had been watching him for some time."

  "And you want me to take his place?" Kuryakin said.

  "Exactly. We could introduce you into the quarter secretly, at night; you could go up to the attic in which he was staying—and nobody would know he had ever been away from it. All you would have to do is darken your hair slightly and remember to limp on the left foot a little. That way even his closest colleagues would never know the difference."

  "The suggestion is," Waverly put in, "that if you hide out where this character was and let it be known quietly that you want an—er—assisted passage out of town and that you have the loot to pay for it, then this escape gang is bound to contact you."

  "After which?"

  "After which you agree to pay them whatever they ask, let them take you along the route—and keep in touch with Mr. Solo on your transceiver, so that the two of you together can wind the whole thing up."

  Beneath the tow-colored hair and the bulging brow, Kuryakin's pale eyes were amused. "And we also keep in touch with the SNB and the military intelligence gentlemen?" he asked. "Or do we deal it off the sleeve?"

  "Play it off the cuff," Waverly corrected automatically. "If it's a question of dealing, it would be from the sleeve. But in any case that's what you do; Colonel Hradec feels that there would be too much risk attached to any system of liaison with him."

  "Definitely," the colonel affirmed. "You're on your own as soon as we have given you Cernic's clothes. Just find out who works the system and how and then report back, eh?"

  And so, a few hours later, his hair darkened with a chestnut rinse, his left shoe fitted with a protuberance inside that made it impossible not to limp, the Russian sat next to Hradec in an Illyushin jetliner, fastening his belt as they circled to land at a military airfield near the Czech capital. They were met far out on the perimeter track by an ancient Tatra staff car, which drove them recklessly through the rain to a command-post caravan parked in woods between the airfield and the city. Here Kuryakin was given local shoes, socks, and underwear, with a gray turtle-neck sweater and exceedingly wide flannel trousers with deep cuffs. Then they set off for Prague.

  They crossed the Vltava by the Smetanov bridge, dodged a late tram at the Prikopy junction, and swung into the Vaclavske Namesti. The street glittered with light from the junction to the statue of Wenceslas on his iron horse, but there were very few people about. Soon the car turned and threaded its way back toward the river among the narrow, cobbled streets of the old town.

  They stopped halfway down a twisting thoroughfare leading into a small square. Around them, the tall, narrow houses were shuttered and silent, but light from a single street lamp splashed lozenges of silver onto the ancient stones through the branches of a linden tree in the center of the square. There was more light streaming onto the cobbles from the open door of a kavarna on the far side of the open space. Over a chatter of voices, the sound of an accordion brayed softly.
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  Colonel Hradec leaned forward and opened the door of the Tatra. "Very well, my friend," he said quietly, "now it is up to you. You know where to go; you know what to do. Just remember that our murderer is known since he came to this quarter simply as 'Milo'—and that the real Cernic was very roughly spoken, bad-tempered, a surly fellow!... Good luck now!..."

  As Kuryakin melted into the shadows, the door clicked shut, the staff car turned and whined away down an even narrower street, and the Russian was alone with his new identity.

  Much of the flight from New York had been spent, with Hradec's help, in memorizing a detailed street map of the area and learning the position of the few stores Cernic patronized and the kind of things he bought there. There was therefore no difficulty in finding the right route, and Kuryakin—having waited a few minutes to let the car get away—emerged from the darkness and slouched down toward the square.

  Managing the limp was no trouble—the lump inserted in his shoe by the experts of U.N.C.L.E.'s Wardrobe Department made every step excruciating. What concerned him more than his actual appearance was his voice. He had no means of knowing how the late Kurim Cernic had articulated—Hradec had merely said his voice had been a little deeper than Illya's. Fortunately, the escaped convict had come from the region of Kosice, in eastern Slovakia, which meant that any trace of Russian accent in the agent's speech could easily be accounted for, this being the part of the country nearest to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, he looked forward with some misgivings to his first attempt at passing himself off as the man whose clothes he now wore. And the test was to come sooner than he had expected.