Chapter 11 - "This Looks Like One Of Those Days."
THINGS WERE fairly peaceful around U.N.C.L.E. headquarters for a few days following the 'Thrush attack. After his first uninterrupted night's sleep in ten days, Napoleon Solo took the following night off to go home and sleep in his own bed. Only one Priority call awakened him, and his slumber was deep and dreamless.
The daily reports were already on his desk when he strolled in at seven-thirty, half an hour before his usual time; he browsed through them, handling three Channel D signals from field agents without losing his place. His nerves, tautened by the week and more of unrelenting pressure, had found release in the familiar action Wednesday, and he faced his lessened though still strenuous task with renewed vigor and zeal.
That the job was lighter, he found an additional relief. Thrush had apparently tried to soften him up, climaxing eight days of full-bore razzle-dazzle all over the country with the sneak attack through that forgotten sewer line. But he'd stood them off, with the help of Simpson and his semi-portable Cloak of Invisibility, and now they were pausing to catch their breath. Fine-so would he.
In Bogotá the late morning sun spilled across the whitewashed balcony of an expensive hotel, and Helena Thomas dozed in a recliner facing it. Behind her Dr. Pike and Roger sat just within the room, on either side of a small tape deck. From its speaker issued a harsh, hesitant voice.
"I then observed that Guard Horvath and Senior Gattlers were casualties, and, uh, signaled the two men behind to stay alert. Captain Van Stoller observed the smoke grenade just as it struck the floor about three feet from him, and drew his sidearm. I then observed that Captain Van Stoller, Guard Tshombulo and Guard Walters were casualties. And then, uh, Second Watanabe ordered a strategic withdrawal and, uh, we did."
"Did you observe the next occurrence?"
"Uh, no, not right when it happened. But I heard somebody yell and turned to look. The individual identified as Napoleon Solo was standing in the middle of the corridor, uh, twenty feet or so away from us, with something on his face. He pulled it off-it was like a mask, sir-and dropped it. One of the group fired a round at him and he started for the wall and threw two more grenades at us. As he did so I observed a thick cable which came around the corner of the hall and ended at a mechanism on his back."
"Dear God, Roger," said Helena without opening her eyes, "how many survivors of that raid were there? I'm beginning to wish there'd been fewer. Must we hear every word of de-briefing?"
Dr. Pike leaned forward and pressed a lever. The hoarse voice died in mid-pause. "There is only one other after this, my dear. But I will admit there seems to be nothing more to be learned from these men. Your first analysis would appear to be essentially correct; Solo was only playing with a new toy."
They couldn't have seen a smug smile with her back to them; Helena snorted smugly instead.
Roger laughed. "Well, I'd like to hear the last one. I still don't know whether they fired one shot or two at Solo before he hit the floor. I've been keeping track and it's now six to five that there were two shots. The last tape could settle it or tie it."
"The Ultimate Computer is chewing over the composite report on the OTSMID, if that's what it is," Dr. Pike said, ignoring him. "But my original proposal stands-that if Solo is deprived of action and subjected to a continuous pressure he will seize any opportunity to desert his post and seek physical release." He leaned back thoughtfully. The lean fingers of his left hand stroked idly over the arm of his chair while his right rubbed his chin. "And yet," he said, "there is the added factor of that gadget. It was an unexpected motivating factor and could conceivably have supplied the necessary boost. Teufelsdreck," he muttered. "There is still the possibility that I could have underestimated and it might not have worked. All that preparation and I still don't have an exact index."
His fingers interlaced in his lap and rose to form swift invisible cat's-cradles in the air as he spoke. "This will have to halve our chances for success in Phase Two. I'll work the estimates over this afternoon and see if I can increase the pressure by as much as twenty percent for a safety factor. It will probably take at least a week longer, though."
Roger yawned and plugged an earphone into the tape deck as he hit the rewind and reached for the last of the twelve small reels of tape. And out beyond the balcony the equatorial sun of mid-November soaked the city.
Late Sunday afternoon, when things were quietest, the Continental Priority signal buzzed and a rugged dark face appeared on the monitor screen above the communications console. "Shomambe, Head of U.N.C.L.E. Africa."
Napoleon activated his own vision facility and greeted his pro-tem equal. "A pleasure to see you. What's up?"
"The tempers of several tribal groups across northern Tanzania, among other things. Mr. Solo, if it would be possible for you to loan us some technicians with portable radio transmitting equipment we could get a pacifying message to the tribes fairly quickly. We've been spreading the basic sturdy transistor radios all over the area, of course, and we have a set of programs prepared for broadcast as pirate popular music stations, but we lack the actual transmitting gear and the technicians to keep the necessary number of transmitters functioning.
Napoleon nodded. "We have a kilowatt medium wave transmitter a man can carry on his back, and a five- kilowatt you can carry in a Land Rover and power from the motor. What do you need?"
"Ideally, four or five. The receivers we distribute are tuned to receive four specific frequencies about two and a half times as well as the rest of the Medium Wave band; we can transmit on those wavelengths and have most of the available audience within two hours."
"The programs are on tape?"
"Ten-inch reels, each holding three hours."
"That's long enough to sleep in-can you afford one man to put on each? I'll send a technician with the gear to give your people a quick checkout. It's simple enough to operate; our man will tune it. Five transmitters and matching tape decks as per specifications. I'll have them in the air to you within the hour." He had a vague feeling that Thrush was by no means through with him, and they might have everything around him tied up long before they were.
"That will do nicely, Mr. Solo. We have only three Land Rovers at the Dar es Salaam office, but I recall a modified bus that should do as well for a fourth. The fifth will serve as a fixed base in a safe area. Let me know when the shipment will arrive at Tabora; I will have a small detachment there to meet it."
Napoleon calculated rapidly, with a glance at the world map to his right. About seven thousand miles to Tabora as the jet flies. Ten to twelve hours, depending on weather. Time zones... "About noon tomorrow, your time. Give or take an hour. The plane will get in touch with you."
"Excellent. Thank you." The image faded, and Napoleon tapped a key. "Monitor, take care of this. There's a good girl."
"Always a pleasure, Mr. Solo," purred the invisible voice.
Twenty minutes later Miss Williamson strode crisply into the room with a precis of the situation in Tanzania which she added to his file.
"Ah, Miss Williamson..."
She paused on her way to the door, and glanced around. "Yes sir?"
"I appreciate all you did for me during that siege last week, and I'd like to pay a little of it back. Do you like Italian food?"
She smiled sweetly. "Thank you, Mr. Solo. But I'm afraid it's a matter of personal policy that I never go out with my immediate superior."
"I hope Mr. Waverly lives forever," said Napoleon fervently. "I'll bring the subject up again in a few weeks when he gets back-if Thrush let's me live that long."
She batted an eye at him. "We'll see, Mr. Solo." And the door hissed and she was gone.
Monday things began to pick up. Napoleon started by picking up the stack of weekly reports that waited on the corner of his desk when he came in. Fourth was from the Saudi Arabian office in Riyadh; it reported nothing new on the investigation proceeding in Swat. This omission caught Solo's eye to the extent that he glanced at the world clock above the map, observed that it was just about sunset in Swat, and initiated a call to the field agent there. It took him well over a minute to answer, and his voice was low when he did.
"Harbeson here."
"Good evening, Mr. Harbeson. Am I disturbing some thing?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. There's apparently a conspiracy of some kind among the lower-ranking wives. I traced that greyhound back to a very large kennel where they breed racing dogs, and I'm sure there's a tie-in to the #4 wife in the Akhoond's harem."
"I see. And you're interviewing her now?"
"Good gosh, no. For one thing, it's too hard to get in to see her. For another, she's a little bit sharper than I feel up to handling. But her handmaiden, ah, has none of these drawbacks."
Napoleon bit his lip but kept his voice as even as Waverly's always was. "Very well, Mr. Harbeson. Report in when you're sure, and in the meantime try to carry yourself as a representative of the U.N.C.L.E."
"Don't worry, sir. I've always tried to pattern my behavior after the top field agents."
Solo sighed. "That will be all, Mr. Harbeson. Back to work."
"Good night, sir."
All he needed now was a few wiseacre agents. He answered the intercom.
"Mr. Whicker is here with the budget summary, and would like to discuss a few points with you."
"Fine. Send him in, but tell him he'd better be willing to be interrupted. This looks like one of those days."
As the door slid open another signal chirruped and Napoleon turned to answer it.
"Askandi here," the voice said over the background roar of what sounded like a helicopter engine. "On the Clipperton assignment. I'm onto something hot, but I need some items checked out. First: is there a factory ship named Deseado, home port Champerico, licensed to work this area? Secondly, even if it is licensed, who is it registered to? And thirdly, what are they doing looking for whales in these latitudes anyway?"
"All right, Mr. Askandi. We'll have the information for you in a few minutes." He flicked a tab. "Monitor?"
"Section Four has the questions, sir," said the cool female voice.
A blue light flashed to his left and he activated the vision screen. The round worried face of Carlo Amalfi faded in, and Napoleon greeted him. Without preamble the head of U.N.C.L.E. Europe began. "Mr. Solo, the Paris office has uncovered plans for an attack on the National Bank where most of France's gold stock is stored. The robbers are aware of our surveillance, and are probably working out ways of defeating us, but while they do we can strike at their roots. The support for the operation is American, the plan is apparently British. The London office is already working on it from that end; we'd like you to see what you can do towards giving us a third leg to stand on, so to speak."
"Certainly. What do you have?"
"The full report from Paris is coming through your duplicator at this moment. I can add only that the individual named as the source of financial support has been identified as a registered foreign representative for Rodney Turner Incorporated, which consists of one American with multifarious interests and little sign of any conscience. We suspect he may he investing in this."
Napoleon sorted through his memory and tagged a name. "We've had some interest in him since the Dallas office picked one of his branded matchbooks out of a trashbin behind the local Thrush nest. This may just give us a start towards nailing his hide to our wall."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Sorry. An idiom from his culture. It means…"
"It is self-explanatory, in context. Is there anything we can help you with from here?"
Channel D signaled. "Not at the moment-unless you happen to have some forty-hour days I could borrow."
Carlo shrugged understandingly as the circuit was broken and the audio switched over.
"Buck DeWeese, Flin Flon. Mr. Solo?"
"Right here."
"Can you spare me a minute? Gene Coulson-the kid you sent up-is working out fine. We've got the corner of something very big here, I think. Have you seen the film we sent down?"
Film? He remembered the spool on his desk and glanced over to it, untouched. "Ah, not yet. But it is here." He wheeled his chair over to where he could reach it, and stretched to drop it into a slot in the side of the desk.
"Take a look at it and call me back. We've got a lot of stuff for your technical boys to chew on-footage of claw marks in the steel plates at the radar station, a duplicate of the film of the radar scope that tracked the thing, and a little bit of very shaky and underexposed Super-8 a woman shot of it. Now, I don't claim to know what it is yet-but I've lived around here for quite a while and I know a lot of things it isn't. It isn't a shadow, and it isn't a cloud, and it isn't dust and it isn't a lens reflection, a large bear or swamp gas. As for what it is, it's big, it's fast, it's mean and it kills people and tears buildings to pieces without working up a sweat. And it's real."
About halfway through this speech the rear-projection screen in his desktop flickered and an unsteady image appeared. The automatic circuitry functioned and the picture steadied. By the time DeWeese paused, Napoleon could see the marks that had been described. They were great vaguely triangular gouges in the heavy metal which gaped shattered and torn as though a berserker had gone over them with a huge, hooked, pointed sledgehammer.
"I, ah, have your film up at the moment," he said slowly. "I see what you mean about the claw marks."
"The substance is half-inch armor plate; I don't think we remembered to include a scale-the first big gash is nineteen inches long by three inches wide at the widest."
Solo didn't say anything. For the moment there didn't seem to be any appropriate comment.
The picture jumped slightly and became a fuzzy gray pattern which drifted from side to side almost imperceptibly. "Mr. DeWeese-the second part is the radar display?"
"Right. It's a real-time record; the thing appears about ten seconds in-that'll give you a chance to see a normal readout. It runs about eight minutes. Shall I hang on?"
"You may as well." The fuzzy gray pattern oscillated slowly from right to left, and a blob of light began to form at about seven o'clock, moving horizontally. And a chime sounded three times behind him.
Quickly he muted DeWeese's audio and, keeping one eye on the screen, answered the call. The voice was tense and urgent.
"Come in, New York-New York Headquarters come in please!"
"Solo here."
"Hong Kong. There's another riot, and this place is under heavy attack. I think there's a couple mortars out there-can you hear 'em?"
"We'll get you support inside four hours, Hong Kong. Nobody's available in force nearer than Osaka. Hold on!" He tapped a quick code and an illuminated map faded in on the wall. "I can authorize our team in Taiwan to help you out. They'll be there inside two hours." With one corner of his mind he observed that the blob of light had begun to move upward on the screen and seemed to be growing a little larger.
"We can hold out in here as long as the walls hold, sir," Hong Kong was saying. "Tell your Formosan boys to drop us a few hundred sandbags when they come over."
"Right. And two field arsenals are hereby authorized too."
"Thanks loads. I'll do something for you sometime." Napoleon let the map fade and said, "Monitor?" "Trust me, sir," said the familiar cool voice. He made a note to find out who it belonged to and seduce her when all this was over.
He opened the voice circuit on Channel D again and sank back to watch the radar trace and catch his breath. Suddenly he wondered if the embattled Hong Kong office had remembered to secure the sewer entrances. They would have, since he'd used them himself two or three times for business purposes.
The glow had stopped a little way below the center. "What scale is the radar trace on?" he asked aloud.
"One hundred," said DeWeese without a pause. "Each bend is twenty miles."
"Then the thing stopped about twenty-five miles south by slightly east of the station."
"That's right."
(And what in the name of Melville was a whaling factory ship doing in Equatorial Pacific waters in the middle of November? And what was going on in the harem in Swat?)
On the screen the image moved slightly downward again, going back towards the direction from which it had appeared, and then, somehow, began to fade. It shrank slightly, began to dissipate around the edges, and then brightened to a sharp intense point of light which flared and vanished.
Napoleon must have made some sound of reaction, because Buck commented, "Personally, I felt the last little bit was the most interesting."
"Mmmm. Next is the home-movie film?"
"Yes. I clipped in some leader. There's a scratch mark to warn you where it starts because the thing's only on about the first fifty frames or so, and it's clearest on the first."
The scratch flickered and Napoleon squinted. Every thing was a greenish-black with lighter areas in it, the corner of a house in the foreground-and a rearing hump of a figure dark against the stripes of reddish orange that must mark a sunset. The image tilted and blurred, then recomposed as the thing moved ponderously behind the edge of the stand of trees near the house. But it was already clearly beyond the end of a farther line of trees, at least two miles away. And it rose up above the sunset at that distance. He tapped the reverse button and brightened the light. A little more detail showed.
He stopped it on the first frame.
"I'll pass this on to our technical division," he said. "Do you have anything beyond the odd manner of its disappearance on radar to make you think it's not a real monster or other natural phenomenon?"
"Oh it's real, all right-but there's something else behind it. I don't want to go into the reasons I think so, but I'm betting on it."
"Very well, Mr. DeWeese. And we're betting on you."
He tapped another key and called Simpson in Section Eight. "We have something for you to study and try to explain concerning that strange thing in Manitoba."
"Oh yes-the Flin Flon Monster."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You should follow the popular press. One of the wire services picked up the story and fastened on the name of the town. It's now a minor national catch-phrase, more or less illustrating my old maxim: When you want to test a new monster, do it near a place with a funny name and no one will dare to take the stories seriously."
"I see. No wonder Mr. DeWeese was so defensive." Channel D chirruped again. "Anyway, I have some film for you. I'll send it down with a note of explanation." He shifted his weight in the chair, touched a switch and continued, "Solo here."
"Good morning, Mr. Solo," said a cheery voice. "Tuber, in Denver."
"Ah, yes. Have you succeeded in keeping the Brass polished and happy?"
"More than that-we're after one who is probably a plant. What I need you to find out for me..."
Napoleon closed his eyes for a moment and massaged them with thumb and forefinger. No wonder Waverly looked so old. Suddenly he wondered if the detachments from Formosa and Osaka had taken off yet-they should have the pacifying gas as part of the standard kit, but it hadn't gotten to all the offices yet. Was the plan to steal the gold from France's reserve only a robbery or something political as well? And did he sense the hand of the British ex-officer and gentleman, Johnnie Rainbow, behind it? And what did it have to do with gold smuggling in Alaska? And what was Askandi doing in a helicopter when he'd been sent a jet and couldn't fly a copter? Then he remembered Mr. Whicker and the budget summary and looked around. There was no sign of him in the office; he must have left again. Oh well, maybe tomorrow. And oh Lord, he thought as he passed Jack Tuber's call through to the top security files and disconnected, when will I have a minute for lunch?