Pulp Fiction | The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel

by Unknown

The music stopped and they joined the patter of applause as the floor cleared and the tempo changed. Irene stepped back hesitantly. "I probably shouldn't have been seen with you, Mr. Kuryakin. Thank you." And she was gone.

  Chandra had kept Lyn occupied just long enough. The two girls emerged from an anonymous doorway seconds after Illya rejoined Napoleon and Waverly. Lyn fastened herself to Illya and drew him back to the dance floor as the combo performed a vicious molto accellerando. Chandra sat next to Napoleon, who greeted her with a look of curiosity. "I don't suppose you're acquainted with Lyn."

  "Only a nodding acquaintance—she's Ward's secretary. Where is Ward, anyway?"

  "Still working over his computer outputs. But he called for his electric cart so he should be here shortly."

  "Oh, look!" said Chandra suddenly. "There's Irene!"

  Napoleon nodded. "Illya took a turn around the floor with her while you were out. She told him she'd just as soon not be noticed at all."

  "I think you can understand her reasoning," said Baldwin softly behind them. "Her life as well as mine may be in danger. Waverly, I have prepared a set of notes which you will want to study. I need badly to sit down—if you will pardon me..."

  He eased himself into a chair and straightened his leg. Chandra greeted him brightly, then seized Solo's arm. "Napoleon, let's dance."

  As they stepped onto the floor, Chandra said, "Ward wants to talk to Mr. Waverly, and he really has walked quite enough for the day."

  Napoleon started to object, but she said, "Oh, come on. If Mr. Waverly wants you to know something, he'll tell you. And remember what I told you about relaxing and enjoying yourself."

  * * *

  Sometime later there was an intermission. Under cover of the general clamor, Waverly told his two agents, "I shall fly back to New York tomorrow morning. There are a number of suggestions based on these results which warrant application at once. I would like the two of you to remain here." His gaze shifted. "You are extremely valuable to us, Dr. Fraser, and we would hate to have anything happen to you."

  "So would I," said Lyn sincerely. "I think he's just fine."

  Illya was paying only partial attention to the conversation. He was keeping at least one eye on Irene Baldwin most of the time, waiting for her to make some attempt to communicate with her husband. If they could get some idea of what the limping devil had in mind...

  But Irene sat peacefully on the other side of the dance floor and never even made an attempt to catch Ward's eye. She watched the students milling about the floor and fiddled with her fan, opening and closing it, fluttering it up and down, occasionally touching her cheek or her lips with it, passing it idly from hand to hand.

  From time to time Illya recognized one or two letters of the International Semaphore Code, but they seemed random and disconnected, and he berated himself mentally for seeing meaning where there was none.

  Then the band struck up another number and both couples took to the floor. Baldwin and Waverly looked after them for some time before the Thrush said, over the racket, "My leg seems to be cooperating again, but the noise here is really more than I prefer to endure." Leaning heavily on his stick, he levered himself erect. "I shan't expect to see you for some time, but you might give additional thought to the other matter we were discussing. Tell Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin my residence at the Bomb Shop is quite adequately protected, but too small to accommodate anyone else. They had best stay at their hotel. I can call them if anything comes up." He bowed, turned, and stumped off to his electric cart.

  Waverly checked across the room. Between the leaping forms of the dancers he could still identify Irene Baldwin, and when at last the music stopped and the rest of his party returned, he beckoned Napoleon and Illya to him.

  "Baldwin has gone home to the Bomb Shop," he said. "He would prefer to have you on call—I would prefer to have you living in his hip pocket. Be outside his door at ten forty-five tomorrow morning—eight forty-five starting Monday—and stay with him. Mr. Kuryakin, were you able to interpret Irene's message to him?"

  "Uh, message, sir?"

  "Her signals with the fan. Surely you observed them."

  "Well, I caught what looked like a few letters in International Semaphore, but nothing made any sense."

  "International Semaphore is useful for filling vocabulary gaps, but the body of her communication was in the traditional flirting gestures with her fan. I recognize the maneuvers, but could not recall their meaning. The semaphore letters were initials, I believe; the flirting gestures were passing out of use when I was a lad, but I may be able to find something on them in our research files."

  "Trust Baldwin to find something so old nobody else would know it," muttered Solo. "What else have you found out from him?"

  "Several things," said Waverly musingly. "And not all of them have to do with the case in hand. Some of his implications will deserve intensive study at a later date. Until then, you will follow orders and keep your eyes and ears open." He dismissed them with a glance, and Solo looked around.

  "Chandra and Lyn have disappeared again," he said, and Illya nodded.

  "So has Irene," he said. "It's a disconcerting habit shared by Baldwin's friends."

  Napoleon nodded. "Makes a fellow glad he's not a friend."

  Chapter 8: "White Clover And Monkshood."

  Monday they rose at the crack of dawn, and were on station when Baldwin stepped out of the Bomb Shop into the clear crisp morning. He greeted them without visible surprise and asked if they had had breakfast. They had, and in turn asked politely for permission to sit in on his lectures for the day.

  Thus they began the academic round. Dr. Fraser handled only two lectures, Intermediate Organic and Advanced Inorganic. Within a few days, Napoleon somehow gravitated to the former and Illya to the latter—and both found themselves taking notes and discussing the lectures with Baldwin while they helped him around the lab.

  The following Friday they were unconsciously beginning to relax after an uneventful week. Nobody had been following them, no attempts had been made on any of their lives, nothing suspicious had happened. And as far as the UNCLE agents could tell, Irene made no attempt to communicate with Ward Baldwin.

  They followed him into his office precisely on the stroke of nine as they always did, and found Lyn already there as she usually was. The heat was on, the mail was stacked and ready, and a pot of water was balanced on the radiator. Not as usual, there was a bunch of flowers standing in a wide-mouthed 500-ml. erlenmeyer flask on her desk. Two tall blue flowers stood handsomely among a cluster of short white puffy blossoms.

  Lyn looked up as they entered. "Oh, Illya!" she said. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome," said Illya. "What for?"

  "Why, the flowers, of course. They're lovely!"

  "I'm glad you like them," said Illya, "but I didn't send them."

  She looked surprised. "But—who else?"

  He shrugged. "You must have a secret admirer."

  Baldwin had taken his seat at the desk by this time, and said, "Miss Stier, have you run off the test for the Organic class?"

  "A test?" said Napoleon. "When?"

  Baldwin stared at him. "Mr. Solo, you are not enrolled in my class- you are merely auditing."

  "Well, I know, sir—but could I take a look at it?"

  Baldwin snorted and returned to his mail as Lyn placed a stack of dittoed and stapled sheets beside him. He studied each item carefully and sorted them into three piles and the wastebasket. One colorful piece of heavy folded paper was bound for the trash when he caught himself and looked consideringly at Napoleon Solo. He glanced down and tapped the thing in his palm, then spoke with sarcastic enthusiasm.

  "Well! A weekend at a ski lodge! This is the nicest thing that's happened to me in the fifteen years I've been confined to this wheelchair! Mr. Solo..."

  Napoleon looked up and reached forward as Baldwin extended what proved to be a gaudy brochure and a robotyped note, offering Dr. Fraser a free weekend at the Redwing L
odge. It included a veiled admission that there was no snow as yet, but emphasized the natural beauty and their own comforts and distractions.

  "I can think," said Baldwin, "of a few things for which I have less desire or need than a weekend on a granite crag in the midst of the wilderness. However you, or Mr. Kuryakin, might want to take advantage of the offer; their unawareness of the most important fact about me would indicate that any reasonably competent-appearing male could stride up to their desk with this, identify himself confidently as Dr. Fraser, and move in. They will doubtless have a sleeping bag reserved in my name."

  Napoleon leafed through the brochure, bearing in mind the axiom that an artistic rendering of a swimming pool meant they hoped to build one in the next few years. It looked like a nice enough place..."Illya?"

  The Russian shrugged. "Why don't you take the weekend off—I'll plan to take next weekend."

  Never one to haggle over a favor, Napoleon said, "Now, where is this place?"

  * * *

  They were alone briefly over lunch, and Illya took the opportunity to ask Napoleon if he'd noticed anything odd in Baldwin's reaction to Lyn's bouquet.

  "Anything odd?" said Solo. "I don't think he reacted at all."

  "When his secretary receives a bouquet centered around a couple of the most poisonous flowers in the pharmacopea? He's a chemist, and knows poisons—he would have made some remark."

  "Those blue ones?"

  "They're monkshood—chock full of aconite, which is a very neat, reasonably powerful and untraceable poison."

  "What were the white ones? Poison ivy?"

  "I think they were clover. But I think, all in all, it warrants being mentioned to Mr. Waverly. We're supposed to be taking note of everything around Baldwin, and anything odd is worth noticing."

  Napoleon drew out his silver pen, opened it and extended the antenna. "Open Channel D," he said.

  In a matter of seconds Alexander Waverly's gruff, familiar voice answered. Somewhat diffidently Solo described the bouquet and Illya's reason for noticing it, and found Waverly's reaction surprising.

  "Excellent," he said. "I had been expecting something similar. I don't suppose you noticed any letters arriving with the postage stamp placed inconveniently? Or any re-mailed magazines or newspapers?"

  "There have been several magazines, sir," said Solo, "but they were all in the wrappings of the publishers. Bearing in mind Baldwin's taste for traditional methods of covert communication, I was quite prepared to hold them up to the light and look for pinholes marking letters."

  "Don't be so smug, Napoleon," muttered Illya. "I thought of that too."

  "Very good, Mr. Solo," said Waverly. "Section Four has had no results from their search for data on the fan gestures, and I'm no longer confident of remembering them all in sequence."

  "Sir," said Illya, "you think the monkshood and clover may mean something?"

  "I am sure of it. I know the flower symbolism is in the file; we should have it shortly."

  "While they're looking," Napoleon said, "sir, I'd like permission to take the weekend off. Illya is agreeable if he can have next weekend."

  Waverly mumbled the question around for a moment before answering, "Baldwin doesn't seem to expect any overt action for at least six days—you may go, with the understanding that you will be on call constantly."

  "Of course, sir. I'll only be an hour or two away."

  Illya elbowed him. "Here comes Baldwin," he muttered. "Wrap it up."

  "Baldwin's coming," Napoleon said. "Call us about the flowers." And with a flick of his fingers the slim silver pen was back in his pocket, his body turned to conceal the action.

  * * *

  Napoleon Solo had based his estimate of two hours on the map distance of fifty miles, and left Burlington after an early dinner with Illya and Lyn. He had not allowed for a sudden severe rainstorm and stone roadbeds. At two-thirty in the morning, eyes and arms aching from squinting through his rain-blinded windshield and fighting the steering wheel over progressively deteriorating roads, he turned the car into a parking lot with a few feeble lights, and dragged his suitcase out of the rear. He staggered exhausted and bleary-eyed into a lobby, roused a clerk by banging on a bell, dropped Dr. Fraser's invitation on the desk, scrawled something in a register, stumbled up one flight of stairs, thanked somebody, drank a glass of water, stripped and collapsed.

  And awakened at ten o'clock, flexed the kinks out of his muscles, and bounded from bed to face the glad day. He flung wide his window—the sky was incredibly clear and he could smell the woods.

  After a shave and other social necessities were taken care of, the first item on the day's agenda must certainly be breakfast. Casually but impeccably outfitted, he descended the main stairs into the lounge at ten forty-five. It looked like a set for a ski lodge but that there were neither skis nor crutches in evidence this early in the season. Heavy beamed ceilings and tall windows surrounded half a dozen bright-looking young people displayed against a background of fur-and-leather furniture. One wall was fieldstone, and from it bulged a vast smouldering fireplace.

  Above the fireplace, perhaps five feet by four, was a flattened, rounded, inverted triangle containing the stylized silhouette of a fierce bird in fighting posture, black on white, with the lifted wings in red.

  Napoleon Solo closed his eyes and thought about what he'd seen for several seconds. But for the red wings it was a Thrush. When he opened his eyes again it was still there.

  He sighed as breakfast vanished from the imminent present and receded to an indefinite future, turned neatly around at the foot of the stairs as if he'd just remembered something, and went quietly back up to his room. There he collected his thoughts and pulled out his transceiver. His voice was not quite one of desperation as he called, "Open Channel D!"

  * * *

  Downstairs the night clerk said, "That was him—that guy that came down the stairs, flashed on the bird and split back to his room."

  "You're crazy! That was whatshisname from New York—we saw him in the last briefing. Remember? Besides, I heard Fraser was an old goat with a beard."

  "Yeah? Well, he signed Fraser in the book. See?"

  "Jeez, what a scrawl...Ha! I'll say he signed! Look at that. What does it say?"

  "Uh...Napoleon Fraser..."

  "You goop! That's Napoleon Solo—the name just clicked in. He's only about the biggest gun in UNCLE."

  "Oh, UNCLE! That briefing. Yeah, I remember. Look, you better call Boston. All they've been saying has been 'Get Fraser'. If this isn't Fraser, I don't think we ought to do anything without checking. You're pretty sure about that identification?"

  "Sure enough to call for an Emergency Override. Keep an eye on things while I get the satellite warmed up."

  Three minutes passed, and the day manager came out of his office.

  "What did they say?"

  "They yelled a little bit about autonomy and taking responsibility for decisions—my father-in-law probably told them to tighten up on the operation here."

  "And then they told you what to do?"

  "Yeah. They said, 'Get Solo'."

  "Y'wanna put the Twins on him?"

  "Why not? If he doesn't let the sign spook him, he'll go out this afternoon. He's probably checking through Diners Club and everybody now, and when we test clean he'll believe it."

  "Yeah..."

  Section III: "Let's Choose Executors..."

  Chapter 9: "What's A Bozo Bill?"

  Two hours before Napoleon Solo made his startling discovery, a pigeon fluttered through a small hatchway into a cage some fifty miles south-southwest. Her passage tripped a microswitch, causing a bell to chime and a flag to drop in the next room where Ward Baldwin, concealed from the world, sat most informally clad in a blue wool dressing gown and worn slippers over a bowl of steaming oatmeal, studying a chemical journal.

  He looked up as the bell sounded in the back of the most private apartments behind the Bomb Shop, then rose painfully and reached for his
stick. With its help he made his way back to the small corner where three pigeons were stalking about and murmuring to each other. One was pecking up grain in the end of a wire runway. Baldwin dropped a gate behind her, opened another gate and reached through.

  Taking the bird gently between his hands he brought it out and held its plump underside to the light. There, fastened high up her leg, close under the body and safe from the airstream, was a small aluminum capsule. Carefully he unclipped it, cooing soothingly to the bird, and palmed it as he replaced the winged messenger in her cage.

  Under better illumination in the next room he opened the capsule, and placed it in a tiny rack with four others after picking out the scrap of folded tissue paper it contained. Spread carefully on a worktable the neatly printed message was clearly legible. MEET ME BOZO BILL 2PM SAT. There was no signature and no need for one. Pigeon Post was still one of the most secure systems of communication in the world—all the more so for being out of style.

  * * *

  Illya met him at the door at precisely ten forty-five and accompanied him on his walk across campus. On the way they conversed casually on unimportant things, and at one point Baldwin asked the Russian agent if he were at all familiar with New England.

  "Only Boston and points south. I've never had occasion to spend much time up here."

  "It's lovely country," said the Thrush idly, and shifted into a local anecdote dating from the Revolutionary War. It lasted until they arrived at the office.

  Lyn was just turning on the radiator when they came in. Baldwin greeted her cheerfully and said, "Could you find those notes I made last fortnight for tomorrow's address?"

  "The seminar on Urban Pollution? Yes sir, I brought them out last week so they'd be ready when you wanted them. They're here someplace..." She sorted through piles of papers.

  "Mr. Kuryakin," said Baldwin offhandedly, "would you be so good as to run down to the fountain and fill the teakettle? Thank you."

  As Illya picked up the kettle and swung out the door, Baldwin turned to his desk. And as the door closed, he picked up the telephone.