The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.: The Birds-Of-A-Feather Affair

by Michael Avallone

  He heard the jade pendant again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the green velvet dress move. Twitching, as though she had to bend over. He was instantly on the alert, ready. He could sense her breathing close; she had had to bend down to unhook the long wire that ran like a lanyard to the trigger of the Browning gun. When he was sure she had disconnected the wire, saw it dangle to the floor loosely, like a discarded piece of string, so that now the Browning had been rendered a harmless ornament of the room's furnishings, he took his last desperate gamble.

  He heaved violently on the table. As shackled as he was, ankles and wrists, his body dominated the entire top of the table. He weighed one hundred and seventy-five pounds and every one of those pounds was the finely conditioned, coordinated pound of an athlete. The table canted sharply, left the floor on one side and swung over. Mark rolled his body as far to the right as he could overbalancing the whole. Arnolda Van Atta cried out angrily. The riding crop sang in the air of the room. It bit into Slate's back, sending a long trail of fiery agony across his flesh. But the table crashed to the floor, taking Slate with it.

  He was far more successful than he could have hoped. He had only wanted to buy time, to upset her schedule, to harry her into some other course of action. But miraculously, the narrow size of the room had come to his aid. The table, Mark Slate and all, came down on Arnolda Van Atta's left ankle as she tried to skip back. Her scream of bone-breaking torment rose like a banshee's shriek in the confining space of the room.

  For a frenzied moment, the room was a madhouse.

  Slate, pinned face down to the table, could not see a thing. He could only feel his own weight, dragging against the bonds, pushing down on Arnolda Van Atta. Feebly, she was crying and flailing out at him with the riding crop, her curses and gurgles of pain sounding like those of a madwoman. The end of the leather crop fell short, missing him by inches. Finally, she gave up all together and sprawled out on the floor, her face buried in her arms, crying piteously. The table, laden with Slate's weight, had crushed her ankle.

  The soundproof room was a mockery, now.

  Arnolda Van Atta could not cry out for help.

  And Mark Slate could do nothing for her.

  Unless she cooperated.

  "Pussycat," he said quickly, breathing hard. "There's nothing for it, unless you do your damndest to untie my hands. Then I can get this bloody table off your leg. You hear me! Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Your leg will only get worse if you don't do what I tell you—"

  "The pain—" she moaned. "I can't—think straight—" A moan of agony was torn from her again.

  "Think," he commanded. "Twist yourself around. Can't you reach my right hand? Just my right hand? That's all you need to do."

  "I'll kill you for this," she gasped. "I'll have you—" She stopped talking as another fierce whimper escaped her. But he could feel her moving, wrenching herself, trying to curve her body around so she could reach the hand closest to her.

  She was THRUSH, all right. But she was still a woman in agony.

  Mark Slate waited, hoping she could make it before the others came around looking for her.

  You always had a chance when the big shots gave in to one of their weird tendencies. Like a private torture chamber and all that Sax Rohmer nonsense.

  "Come on, Miss Van Atta," he whispered. "Keep on coming."

  The room echoed with the fierce order.

  Mr. Riddle and Fried Rice and Pig Alley were restless. The tinny clock on the wooden bureau beyond the table where their gin rummy game was in progress now said eight thirty-five.

  Pig Alley was sweating visibly. Tiny globules of perspiration stood forth on his Gallic face. His dark eyes kept looking toward the door.

  "Sacre," he muttered under his breath.

  "Patience," Fried Rice said, "and shuffle the cards. That is an estimable quote from Cervantes."

  Pig Alley stuck out his tongue in disgust and glanced angrily at Mr. Riddle. Frankenstein's leer was intact, as it always would be. But the thin, lanky figure was ill at ease. It was apparent in the tilt of the head toward the door and the drumming of the fingers of both hands on the table top.

  "Yes," Mr. Riddle said. "It is a nuisance, gentlemen. But we must wait on the lady and her whims. She is directing this operation."

  Pig Alley snorted. "And why you, dear Riddle? With that mask and all this Halloween business. I thought you were in charge—"

  "So I am," he agreed coldly. "But I still answer to Miss Van Atta. If you knew her true identity, you wouldn't dare question her for a moment."

  "And that is—"

  Fried Rice looked up sharply at Mr. Riddle as Pig Alley flung the question. But the Frankenstein head nodded.

  "How long do you want to live, Pig Alley?"

  "In other words, it is not my affair. Mind my own business."

  "Exactly."

  "Very well, but in God's name what more can she want to do to that poor Uncle agent?"

  Mr. Riddle sighed funereally.

  "I agree with you on that. Zorki is far more important than this diversion. But there is time, she said. And what she says, I am afraid, is what we will do when the time comes."

  Fried Rice flicked a voluminous sleeve and drew a card from the much-used deck. He turned up an ace of spades. He chuckled in his dry, thin voice.

  "The Death Card," he said. "I should say Mr. Slate is very close to death by this time."

  Mr. Riddle pushed back his chair and stood up. Hidden when he sat was the almost spectral quality of his body. It was as thin as a skeleton, sharply contrasting with the fullsome Frankenstein mask.

  "Perhaps I should go see, anyway. Play without me. I should be back soon."

  He left the room without waiting for comments from his subordinates. Fried Rice and Pig Alley merely exchanged glances and returned to the game.

  Fried Rice was winning, handily.

  The corridor was illuminated by three globes of light placed at even distances along the ceiling. As Mr. Riddle had inspected, Arnolda Van Atta had restricted this phase of the operation to the entire floor. There was no danger of running into strangers. Still, one couldn't be too careful. Once out of the room, he paused to tug the Frankenstein mask free of his face.

  Had anyone been watching they would have been amazed to see atop the thin body in ill-fitting suit the face of a beautiful woman. The hair had been cut so close to the scalp as to be no more than a peachlike fuzz of pelt. The face of the woman who had introduced herself as Mr. Riddle belonged on a statue in a museum. Her mouth, eyes, nose, ears and chin were so regular and even as to constitute nearly chiseled perfection.

  The bogus Mr. Riddle started down the long corridor toward the room that held Mark Slate.

  Suddenly, he-she paused, senses sharpened, faculties alerted. The tiniest click of sound had come from somewhere. The first indication that something was wrong was the sudden one-by-one extinction of the three lights overhead. It was magical. Like a winking eye. But long before the third bulb had died, Mr. Riddle had reversed the field, and sped backward toward the fire door at the other end of the corridor.

  Mr. Riddle vanished through it in an instant, tugging the Frankenstein mask back into place.

  The hotel's back staircase formed a central shaft in the very heart of the building.

  April Dancer loomed in the darkness of the corridor. She held in her right hand a peculiarly box-shaped object from which no apparent light came. Yet, in actuality, it threw a ray of "black light" which lit up the hallway before her as well as daylight. She advanced down the corridor, the infrared rays of the box fluorescing the carpet before her. In her left hand, she held her specially designed service pistol. A compact weapon no larger than the palm of her hand.

  The twin elevator cages whirred open. From each of them stepped a man. They too held the boxlike devices. They were also armed and on the ready. Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes now saw April Dancer and they all converged together in the center of the corridor.

 
There were only two doors on the floor.

  One to the left of the elevators, one to the right

  It had taken but a half hour to locate the blue-paneled truck. Parked outside in plain view on the sidewalk before one of the many apartment houses on the West Side in the mid-Fifties. April had lost no time commandeering a detail to hurry to the scene.

  But not one of them, April or the two U.N.C.L.E. agents, had spied Mr. Riddle quitting the scene.

  April motioned toward one of the doors, silently. Fleming and Barnes, moving like a trained unit, fanned out and made their approach. April selected the other door for herself.

  There had been no trick deciding that this had to be the trouble floor. Every other floor in the building was deserted. The apartment house was one of those that was going down in the summer, to make way for a new, larger, co-op apartment building.

  Another THRUSH blind.

  April moved to the strange door and set the box-lamp down on the floor. She transferred her weapon to her right hand and placed her ear to the panel. No sound came from within.

  She took the knob in her left hand and kicked the door in, gun held high. Light flooded from the room, filling the corridor. In the split second that the insane tableau presented itself to her, Mark Slate's cheery voice piped up from somewhere near the floor.

  "April Dancer, upon my soul. What kept you?"

  Mr. Waverly Calls the Tune

  Fried Rice and Pig Alley went for their weapons as soon as Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes crashed into their room. For a moment, the light caught the flashing reflection of a long stiletto jumping into Pig Alley's right hand. Fried Rice produced a wicked looking .38 caliber pistol from one sleeve of the purple mandarin robes.

  Fleming and Barnes hardly paused for a moment. From either side of the doorway, they opened up. The odd-appearing weapons in their hands made coughing noises of sound. Splat! Splat! Splat!

  Fried Rice and Pig Alley were halted. Their eyeballs rolled, their hands stopped moving. The stiletto and the pistol clattered to the floor of the room. Both of Mr. Riddle's subordinates sprawled forward in their chairs, faces falling down to the card table.

  The U.N.C.L.E. agents holstered their weapons and quickly checked the room closets and doors for hidden threats. There were none. They hardly spoke or favored the unconscious men with a second glance. For that was all that Fried Rice and Pig Alley were. Unconscious; rendered so by the special "mercy" bullets in the U.N.C.L.E. guns. Harmless pellets of a drug which acted instantly upon contact with the skin. Murder was never committed if it could be avoided. And the two THRUSH underlings were more valuable delivered alive than dead. These would be, at any rate.

  They hurried down the corridor to the other room to see if April Dancer needed a hand.

  She had untied Mark Slate, righted the table, and was covering Arnolda Van Atta with her palm gun. The injured redhead was alternately moaning in agony and hurling murderous glances at Mark Slate. The velvet dress had run up, exposing half her thighs.

  Slate, that cool-headed character, was flexing and working his arms and legs to get the kinks out. Fleming and Barnes restrained grins and comments. Slate was a dandy when it came to clothes as it was and now the blue jeans and Basque shirt made him look more like a male model than ever.

  "Nice going, chappies," Slate smiled. "You and April arrived like the U.S. Cavalry in a John Wayne movie."

  April shook her head. "We'd better get the lady to a doctor. That ankle is swelling like a balloon." She eyed Fleming and Barnes. "Any luck in the other room?"

  "One Chinaman and one Frenchman," Barnes said.

  "That would be the Messrs. Fried Rice and Pig Alley," Slate said. "You didn't find a Mr. Riddle by any chance?"

  "Negative," Fleming said.

  Arnolda Van Atta, her classic features contorted with agony, shrilled: "Get me a doctor, for God's sakes—"

  "Shut up," April said coldly. "We ought to get you a firing squad. But let's move out, boys. No sense hanging around here." She checked her watch. "Nine thirty eight. The Old Man ought to be home by now."

  "Check," Slate said.

  Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes, without being asked, fashioned a sling of their arms, and hoisted Arnolda Van Atta's shapely figure between them. April undid the brooch that pinned the collar of her dress. A beeping sound filled the room.

  "Dancer here," she spoke into the brooch. A crisp voice answered and she quickly reported the news. Mark hurried down the hall to see about taking charge of Fried Rice and Pig Alley. They would have to be transferred to Headquarters. It was a big catch for one day's work. And U.N.C.L.E. still had Zorki. The Great Zorki—even if the mysterious Mr. Riddle had flown the coop.

  When they had the whole menagerie rounded up, April closed out her report and repinned the brooch to her throat collar. Her brown eyes and long dark hair were, as usual, eminently out of place, in the wake of the murderous hullabaloo.

  In the crowded elevator, Slate smiled at her warmly, shaking his handsome head.

  "Thanks for the nick-of-time routine, April."

  "Sure, sure."

  "She was ready to skin me alive." He indicated the glowering Arnolda Van Atta, suspended painfully between Fleming and Barnes.

  "Losing your touch, Mark?" April laughed. "I should have thought she would have wanted to neck with you."

  He winced in memory of the whip and how close he had come to matching Jenkins, the man in London.

  " 'Fraid not. You see our lady here is a confirmed sadist. Worth knowing, April, should you ever desire to show her one jot of human kindness. A snake, this one."

  "I'll keep it in mind."

  She eyed Mark Slate affectionately, ignoring the venomous glares of the redhead. "Besides, I can't lose sight of you just yet, you refugee from an English fox hunt."

  He raised his eyebrows superciliously. "Why not, pray tell?"

  "You still haven't taught me the complete lyrics of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand.' "

  Walter Fleming and Pete Barnes tried not to laugh but their sober faces relaxed in quiet smiles. Mark Slate said nothing.

  April Dancer stared at the handcuffed pair known as Fried Rice and Pig Alley. It was too bad they had missed Mr. Riddle. But Slate was alive and that was all that mattered.

  And Mr. Waverly was coming back; he could take over the whole operation again.

  The Zorki Affair was coming to a head and it was high time things were finally resolved.

  Still, she couldn't get out of her mind the plaintive young girl called Joanna Paula Jones and the whole business of U.S. Naval Intelligence being involved. Had the girl gotten out of that flood and fire alive?

  April Dancer had her own ideas about a woman's role in life and there was nothing for herself but U.N.C.L.E. She didn't want anything else; she didn't care about anything else.

  But she would have placed Joanna Paula Jones at the kitchen stove, cooking meals for a man and taking care of a houseful of kids. It just didn't add up. Not in the least.

  There was something so damned strange, peculiar really, about that young lady. What was it; what could it be that was kicking around in her head dying for an answer?

  She didn't know.

  She still didn't know as they all piled into the two sedans that would take them back to Headquarters. Barnes drove the blue panel truck.

  New York shone in the night. Neon gleamed. Cars squealed and roared. A horn tootled. Somewhere, a church bell ding-donged the hour.

  Ten o'clock.

  Two hours to midnight.

  Midnight, when THRUSH wanted Zorki. But they had no bargaining power now. Mark Slate was out of their hands. So was she. What would THRUSH ask for now? April had a hunch that Mr. Waverly knew. Else why the sudden trip to Washington, D.C.?

  Well, they'd know soon enough.

  "You know," Mark Slate said suddenly, his wry voice alive with his own devilish sense of humor. "There's a jolly good movie playing Radio City. It's about spies and foreign intrigue and all. Stars S
ophia Loren. Imagine that Italian pizza playing a spy. Quite ridiculous on the face of it. But what say we drop everything and go see it?"

  "Sure," April said, "and why don't I run for Congress or grow wings and fly over London and drop leaflets inviting everybody to the wedding of George Hamilton and Luci Baines Johnson, or is it Lynda Bird he's marrying?"

  "Lynda Bird," said Mark Slate and lapsed into silence again.

  The round, magnificent table-desk in Mr. Waverly office was one of those ornate yet supremely technological masterpieces that defies description. The table revolved at a finger's touch and whoever was sitting at a place there could command the use of a telephone, radio set, transmitter or a host of filing treats that made an agent's work much easier.

  Mark Slate, in jocular moods, would spin the table like a roulette wheel and call out numbers. But only when he and April were awaiting Mr. Waverly's presence.

  On this particular occasion, the head of U.N.C.L.E. was waiting for them when they entered the office. After brief greetings, Mr. Waverly asked them for detailed reports of the day's activities.

  Slate began the narration, leaving off where April had entered the picture. From that point on, she added all that she knew and had accomplished. She spoke lightly in an even, melodious voice, whose tonal quality Mr. Waverly had always found soothing. And rather astounding too. When one looked at Miss Dancer, for all her vital good looks and obvious intelligence, one hardly expected a combination of Mata Hari and a female Tarzan. Mr. Waverly had always thoroughly approved of April Dancer. She was a credit to her U.N.C.L.E. Academy training. A living refutation of the claim that women could not be made to serve in the capacity of Enforcement agents.

  "Good work. Miss Dancer," he murmured, when she had concluded. "You too, Mr. Slate. Glad to have you both back in one piece, as it were." He steepled his fingers, regarding them in his headmaster way. "This certainly has the thoroughness of a Thrush project. I'd rather hoped that I was in error about our Mr. Zorki."

  April moved around in her chair. The bruised leg and shoulder were still bothering her, having stiffened somewhat. But her mind was on something else.