The Final Affair: A Man From U.N.C.L.E Novel

by David McDaniel

  The familiar gravelly voice of their commander filled the quiet room. -We have just twenty-four hours to prepare the strike. Baldwin’s terminal is being moved between two and three tomorrow morning. We expect to have detailed plans for the operation by noon today.”

  “Ah —tomorrow, you mean,” said Napoleon. “It’s only 11:18.”

  “It is? My word, I’m still on New York time. Thank you, Mr. Solo. I’ve had other things on my mind. Apparently even Baldwin didn’t know until early today; their internal security is quit respectable. Stevens reported, by the way, that Baldwin is rather upset by this replacement. His old terminal is done in walnut panelling to fit the general decor of his office, and he’s seen a picture of the new design; He seems to have ordered a closet built to hold it and a secretary to operate it for him, and there’s a rumor that he may refuse to use it himself even if Central orders him to.”

  “He could come up with a convincing reason if he wanted,” Napoleon said confidently.

  “What do we know about the method of transportation?” Illya asked. “Can they fold it up in a briefcase and silently steal away?”

  “It’s about the size of a steamer trunk —or a small refrigerator.

  Similar in design to a unit you two blew up at t;hat prison camp in South America a few years ago, if you’ll remember.“I remember that very well,M said Illya.

  “you aren’t likely to forget Salty O’Rourke, either,” said Napoleon.

  “This one,” said Mr. Waverly. “will be leaving Alamo Square in a panel truck, possibly for the waterfront, possibly for a helipad. Mr. Stevens is remembering at the moment.”

  “I think Plan A is the obvious and appropriate thing for the situation,”

  said Illya. “We’ll check their procedure if Harry can remember enough, look over their route for the best spots, and intercept them.”

  “Plan A takes about ten men, sir,” said Napoleon. “And it will involve a lot of noise and some —special equipment.”

  “Do you know how many guards will be on the truck?” I11ya asked. “We’ll need the appropriate number of bodies to leave behind in the wreck so Thrush will be less suspicious of this admittedly unlikely ‘accident.’ Mr. Simpson has already prepared a dummy terminal to leave in the truck.”

  “It’ll be split-second timing,” said Napoleon, “but we have all day tomorrow to rehearse. I think we should stay up late tonight going over whatever Harry tells us. sleep until ‘noon tomorrow and we’ll be ready to fight Thrush from midnight to dawn.”

  “Admirable. Mr. Solo. We aren’t likely to hear anything before two, when Dr. Grayson will return with the tape of Stevens’ report. I sh~ll call you again when she arrives. Your strike team will be called from this office on a Y3K7 priority and ordered to you at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. You will be sleeping in the quarters provided. I presume?”

  “Yes, sir. And we’ll be in the building waiting for your call.”

  “Very good. Waverly out.”

  Solo replaced his communicator. “Which leaves us two and a half hours to kill. I think the commissary still has coffee —or could we telephone for a pizza?”

  “Mushroom and sausage. Would you care for a fast round of Botticelli while we’re waiting?”

  “There’s no such thing. Since I’m paying for the pizza, I’ll start with an H.”

  “Did you ever go bowling in the rain?”

  “That’s an obscure way of identifying him. but no, I am not Heinrich Hudson.”

  “Did you write a famous essay titled ‘Notes On The Next War’, and a play…

  No, that’d tell you too much.”

  “‘Notes On The Next War’? Ah…” They walked down the corridor to the security guard at Outer Reception Station One. who would be receiving a pizza in forty-five minutes, and gave him the extension of the lounge where they would be waiting at the end of the hall next to the elevators, along with a five-dollar bill.

  “Give up?” said Illya. as they started back up the hall. “Ernest Hemingway. Are you historical as opposed to fictional?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Were you…hrm1… Were you the subject of Shakespeare’s only three-part play?”

  “Come on —you can do better than that. No, I am not Henry VI.” (*) ––––––––—(*) In answer to numerous questions: the rules for Botticelli. also known as ‘Culture’, may be found in most large books on games. The cycle of play is simple, as sketchily outlined above: data is gathered through yes/no questions whenever the subject fails to correctly identify a reference. until the assumed identity of the subject is guessed, in the same form. Unlike most Q&A games, both sides must work continually. SuperGhosts is an evolution from the well known game of Ghosts. and was discovered to me by James Thurber. It is illustrated elsewhere. Admittedly, both play better with more than two. —D.McD.

  ––––––––—Fog sifted through the dark and silent streets as a small force of men crouched motionless in the shadows beneath the concrete bulk of the Central Freeway where it crosses Hayes. They were prepared to go into action on three minutes notice anytime before dawn — or something might miss connections and they could never be called at all. Two miles away to the south an expendable tank truck waited in c~concealment. its diesel engine warm. its body filled with 2500 gallons of rocket fuel officially bound for a missile site in Marin County: and its cab empty but for a radio receiver and a few cables.

  Behind the supporting pier immediately south of Hayes two more vehicles waited — a panel truck, identical in most details to the Thrush transfer van, and an ambulance which held half a dozen corpses legally requisitioned from the Unclaimed section of the City Morgue. There would be little left of the panel truck when Thrush or the San Francisco Fire Department found it, but every effort was being made to insure that subsequent investigation would show everything that should have been there. Mr. Simpson had sacrificed a malfunctioning PDP-8 calculator unit, a CRT with a burned phosphor, a misaligned photo-printer and a captured Thrush terminal housing shell, all of which would leave convincing remains after a brief but intense cremation. The same could be said for the corpses. since the Thrush guards in the truck would be taken in peacefully and held incommunicado until the entire affair was resolved. “Sometimes,” Illya had remarked at one point. “it’s inconvenient to be the good guys.”

  Now both agents crouched in the rear of their panel truck. an open communicator lying on the carpet between them. Three-quarters of a mile away an observer stationed at a third-floor window was watching a pair of heavy doors which concealed the basement garage through which deliveries were made to the subterranean Thrush complex. His eyes rested in the rubber cups of a tripod-mounted pair of 10x80 binoculars focused by the blue light of a solitary streetlamp on the enigmatic steel of the unmoving doors. A cigarette stump lay cooling in the ashtray by his elbow; a can of soda sparkled faintly in the silence.

  The watcher blinked into the darkness. A line of deeper black had appeared between the slabs of dull metal, and as he stared it widened. He reached for his communicator, which lay open on the table, and spoke without removing his eyes from the lenses. “Open Channel R.M”

  Solo’s communicator chirped for attention and got it instantly as the distant watcher’s voice reported. “Biederman here. The door’s opening. I think somebody’s looking out. Be ready …There’s a car — the car. A blue Fiat with three men in it. They haven’t turned their lights on yet. They’re turning east — there go the lights. Stand by for the truck… I think -there it is. They’re waiting for the lead car to get to the corner. I can’t make out what color it is yet …

  “There they go. And there go the doors. It’s a drab gray — pretty close to the ringer. Okay, go to it, you guys. I wish I was down there.”

  “If I’d known, I would’ve been happy to trade,” said Illya. His own silver transceiver was assembled as he listened. and now he said. “Open Channel L. Stand by all points. Drivers. start your engines.”

  For all
its flexibility, Thrush had fallen into a habit pattern and Harry had known the regular route followed by such vital caravans; held picked up an occasional hundred-dollar bonus for riding in the lead car on previous occasions when visiting dignitaries or top technicians were being transported in secrecy. The armored Fiat preceded the plain van by two or three blocks.

  and total radio silence was maintained between the two vehicles since even a scrambled signal can be triangulated.

  The Thrush would drive down Hayes from Alamo Square towards the center of town, and turn right on Gough, which rhymed with Tough, when Hayes became one-way the wrong way immediately after passing under the freeway. They would jog right crossing Market and continue south on Valencia for two miles, then turn east again on Army, towards the Army Street Terminal. At each corner the Fiat wou1d be out of sight of the truck for about fifteen seconds. This could be stretched to twenty, without arousing suspicion, but no longer. And the U.N.C.L.E. ambuscade had a three-minute alert —of which barely two minutes remained.

  Solo and Kuryakin, black-clad, stood in shadow against the soaring concrete piling, their three aides behind them. Beneath the next intersection, Hayes and Octavia, a two-man team was poised with tank and nozzles and respirators, ready to cloud the space immediately above them with rapid-dispersal gas. The duplicate panel truck waited behind the freeway pier, lights out and engine idling. Silence and wisps of drifting fog filled the street, but tension crouched in the shadows as the endless seconds passed.

  Then the muffled stammer of the Fiat could be heard approaching and Solo murmured into his microphone, “Check Point One, are you there?”

  .“Here. They haven’t —There’s the Fiat. license JGB 817. Now crossing laguna… Mark. And …there’s the truck. A-OK on identification.a “Thank you. All points: This is target. Repeat, this is target. Ready to do it —” He drew back to invisibility as the Fiat cruised by, echoing between parallel concrete walls, its two passengers looking in both directions.

  As it turned the corner and passed from sight, he said, “Do it!” and slipped a re-breather unit over his face.

  As the Thrush panel truck crossed Octovia, half a block away, colorless gas hissed out to fill the cubic yards between building fronts. The truck swayed unsteadily as its driver felt an overwhelming urge to sleep. A nylon landing net dropped into his path from above, anchored to the elevated structure which concealed the main U.N.C.l.E. Force – the truck shouldered heavily into it and bumped to a stop as cables creaked and held.

  Simultaneously the duplicate let in his clutch behind Solo and swung out into the street and around the corner, docily following an unsuspecting Fiat south towards Market.

  The ambulance backed smoothly out of the shadows as the net was lifted from the nose of the truck. Napoleon and Illya were the first ones to reach the cab, dragging the drowsy Thrush out. The key to the rear door was in his pocket; as Solo fished it out and ran around to unlock the van two rehearsed agents loaded a corpse into the opposite side of the front seat. Four sleepers were dumped out of the back of the truck and the prize was exposed, a desk-size unit four by three by two feet. Its screen and keyboard were tastefully hidden by a sliding walnut panel. Positive identification took only a few seconds in back while Illya replaced the driver in front; a couple boxes of carefully chosen junk were lifted into the rear “as the terminal was hoisted smoothly out between two men, then the other grisly replacements took place and Napoleon slapped the side of the truck as his last scan over the interior showed everything his mental checklist called for.

  “Key,” said Illya, grimly ignoring his cold passenger, and Napoleon slammed the back door, locked it for the last time and tossed the key to his partner. If the impending holocaust lived up to its billing, no trace would ever be found of the Key amid the remains of the truck, but both men were trained to situations where such details were the pivots of life or death, and the Thrush van was as perfectly prepared as forty-five seconds of professional care could manage before the Russian engaged its clutch and started off to catch up with where he was supposed to be.

  Illya swerved past the Do Not Enter sign at the entrance to the next block of Hayes and raced two illegal wrong-way blocks before cutting right on Van Ness, straight across Market and south, parallel the route of their ringer and four blocks farther east, heading the van towards its rendezvous six minutes away.

  On Valencia, the Thrush Fiat led the U.N.C.L.E. van south at the sober speed of thirty miles an hour while Illya raced down deserted Van Ness at seventy. The ringer would be out of their sight for another space of fifteen to twenty seconds at the corner of Valencia and Army. Up an alley nearby waited the tanktruck, its diesel turning over. A Section Three technician on nearby rooftop held the remote control which would send the rolling bomb out to meet the truck which Illya drove, while the U.N.C.L.E. duplicate would vanish quietly.

  His synchronized Accutron, matched to every other man’s on the team, brought him to the shadowed side of the selected intersection with twenty seconds to spare. He took a few deep breaths while waiting for the Fiat to appear and pass, its passengers still alert for any threat to their convoy.

  The car made its left turn onto Army. and Illya swung the Thrush truck out of the alley before his counterpart swung in.

  Five seconds later he braked to a stop on his marks in front of a parking lot two buildings from the corner. Ten seconds, he’d dragged a lump of discarded meat behind the steering wheel. Fifteen seconds, and he was sprinting for the shelter of the alley with the sound of a diesel gathering speed pounding at his heels. Twenty seconds, and a fist of concussion slapped his back as building fronts lit up before an impossibly huge yellow flare.

  He almost stumbled as the shock wave punched past him, then recovered his long stride. His new shadow danced, black and elongated along the street before him as he staggered up to the U.N.C.L.E. van and was helped in as their engine revved up and they shot away up the side street while leaping flames licked against the sky behind them.

  Illya found a communicator in his hand. “Kuryakin here.” he said.

  “Detonation successful. Do we have the merchandise we came for?”

  “Indeed we do.” said Mr. Simpson’s voice unexpectedly. “As.. well as I can tell in five minutes’ examination, .e have accomplished all we could have hoped for this evening.”

  “Okay. that’s it then,” came Napoleon’s voice. “Teams One and Two are relieved as soon as they have their areas secured. Illya, I’ll see you back at the office. Everybody else — thank you. It’s been a pleasure working with you. This operation is officially completed.”

  And in U.N.C.L.E.‘s San Francisco communications room. Alexander Waverly leaned back from his console and smiled. The first knot in a fatal skein had been tied, and the web which might ensnare Thrush was strengthened. A chance encounter and an unlikely friendship had spun the first strands three years ago, and now for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century he could Almost foresee the beginning of the end to which his life had been devoted.

  He smiled the smile of patience rewarded, the smile of the hunter who has finally cornered the old grizzly, and began to pack his pipe.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Great Balls of Fire.”

  Illya got to see it the following afternoon. In twelve hours a mixed bag of technicians from Sections Four. Five and Eight had disarmed the autodestruct mechanisms in the Thrush terminal. and now it rested on a table in the basement laboratory of U.N.C.L.E.‘s San Francisco office. No complex of cables sprouted from its comfortably paneled sides — only a single well-shielded AC cord which terminated in a standard two-prong locking plug.

  Instead of the wall socket, this was plugged into the front of a tall wheeled rack which displayed eleven panels including three quite different oscilloscope traces. This rack was plugged into the wall.

  Napoleon stood behind a white-coated technician, watching as she expanded a small portion of the complex waveform on the second ‘scope into close
focus and made some notes. Illya stared over his shoulder for several seconds before he spoke.

  “Is that signal going in or coming out?”

  “It IS coming in,” said Mr. Simpson. who had appeared quietly. HIt’s part of a multiplexed carrier-current signal which can be received at least in the central San Francisco area — we haven’t started carrying the terminal around to find just how far the signal extends.”

  “It looks like white noise.” said Napoleon critically.

  “Well, it is, pretty much,” said Mr. Simpson. “Except mathematically.

  There are about fifty channels, I’d guess, and they’re all scrambled.”

  “But the system has a key which our computer can work out?”

  “Oh, no. That would be simple. This unit has broken synchronization with the Ultimate Computer; effectively, it has been disowned. Any direct attempt to signal into the operational banks would result in the erasure of the terminal IS own working core, as well as triggering its autodestruct circuits.”

  “That IS what we need the maintenance access code for.” said Napoleon accurately, if ungrammatically. “Well, Harry’s on the job. Are you ready to start work as soon as you get it?”

  “Well. I won’t be doing that part. Once we have communication established a Mr. Gold will be taking over. My expertise gives way to his once you get away from how the machines think into what they think about.”

  “Communication? Two-way?”

  “Of course. We have to be able to tell it what we want. Otherwise all we could do with this would be tap Ward Baldwin’s private line to Central.”

  “I can remember when that alone would have been worth all we’ve gone through,” said Napoleon, impressed.

  “Then they left the unit fully functional,” said Illya. “They didn’t disable it.”

  “It wasn’t destined for the scrap heap; Thrush is never wasteful.

  According to Mr. Stevens’ last report. it was to have been overhauled.

  reconditioned, modified in a few modules and sent to one of the emerging African Satraps.”