[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael. Страница 26

The helicopter, traveling at six thousand feet, banked sharply where the 59th Street Bridge below lay like a child's discarded toy against the silver-spotted expanse of the river. It kept on banking, spiraling downward until the altitude loss was phenomenal. Some four hundred feet above the river line, the whirlybird ploughed south, tracing the course of the water.

Within seconds, the machine had reached 42nd Street. It banked once more, circling. Far down below somewhere, from the mass of darkened rooftops, a light blinked. Once, twice, three times. The light followed that pattern for a full minute. The helicopter seemed to stand still in mid-air hovering like an enormous flying bug.

Now, the streams of lights from vehicles racing back and forth, in both directions, along the East River Drive, were ribbons of continuous illumination in the night.

But the steady winking light blinked intermittently. Once, twice, three times. On and off. Off and on.

The helicopter moved again.

Dropping almost vertically. Hundreds of feet fell away until the last hundred between ground and sky was left. The chopper pulled up sharply, hovering again. From the street it would have been impossible to detect. The humming and throbbing of the engines and rotary blades was an enormous drone of sound that could have been attributed to the subways or the noises of a trip-hammer.

Directly below, the winking light went off for the last time. It did not go on again.

The helicopter waited, hovering. A midnight figment of a dreamer's imagination.

Down below, in the packed mass of darkness, among the huddled rooftops, directly under the chopper, stood the building that housed the organization known as U.N.C.L.E.

Headquarters.

The Two Mad Bombers

U.N.C.L.E. Enforcement Agent Walter Fleming was on duty on the third floor of the complex. The corridor was a long, gray steel file, bisected with sliding doors that bridged the gap between the walls. Fleming was busy checking his weapon for possible malfunctions. This was the machine pistol which had sent a "mercy" bullet into Fried Rice at the apartment building. The thing had been acting up lately and Fleming planned to turn it over to the armorer the very next day. It was close to midnight and Walter Fleming stifled a yawn. He would be relieved soon and it was time enough. Sometimes, in spite of the excitement earlier that night, things did get a bit quiet around Headquarters. Why even now, the whole damn building was as silent as a tomb—

Walter Fleming frowned.

That wasn't right. He suddenly realized that he had not heard an elevator hum or so much as a signal beep that he could remember these past few minutes. That shouldn't be. Not with the midnight shift arriving and setting up, taking over for the personnel they would be relieving. There was always some sort of sound. Fleming climbed out of his chair at the corridor's very end, where it forked in both directions toward the elevators and scanned the foyer briefly. For a moment, he was on his guard, all of his senses alert. Then he heard the elevator and the sound of footsteps walking casually, unconcernedly somewhere behind him. He turned.

Down the corridor, stepping through sliding doors just hissing shut, came a big, bear-shouldered man in gray turtleneck sweater and taut trousers. Walter Fleming started. Zorki! But no, it had to be James Wilder in the special trick makeup and costume that Mr. Waverly had prescribed for the assignment. Fleming knew about that. He did relax when he saw the U.N.C.L.E. odd-shaped badge card pinned to the breast of the sweater.

Still—

Walter Fleming trained the machine pistol on the bull-necked man marching toward him. This Zorki waved, smiling, showing small white teeth.

"Wouldn't shoot a pal, would you, Walter?"

Fleming chuckled, shaking his head. "Damme, Jimmy, but that's some disguise. Never realized you looked so much like Zorki. Even with the extra touches. Sure he isn't your brother?"

"My Big Brother," gloated James Wilder, for it was indeed he and not Alek Yakov Zorki. However, it did not make much difference, which was something Walter Fleming did not know.

"What's up, Jimmy?"

"Have to see Mr. Waverly. The Russky wants to talk to him about something. I don't know but what it might be important."

"Never hurts to try," Fleming assented.

As the dual Zorki brushed by him, Walter Fleming felt a sharp sting on the bare skin of his right hand. He emitted a sudden bleat of surprise and stepped back. When he saw the puncture mark on the hairy surface of his hand, he looked up quickly. When he saw the look in James Wilder's eyes, he tried to bring up his machine pistol. The bogus Zorki didn't make a move. It was not necessary.

Walter Fleming's eyeballs rolled and he collapsed in half, sliding to the smooth floor. He was dead before he could watch his murderer return by the way he had come to the sliding panels that bisected the corridor.

The panels hissed apart.

Alek Yakov Zorki barreled through, his big figure animated and agitated. Pinned to his facsimile sweater was another of the odd-shaped badge cards. His small eyes gleamed at the sight of the fallen agent.

James Wilder motioned to him, as he reset the hypodermic needle in the stem of his watch. THRUSH poisons worked with the speed of light.

"Come on," James Wilder whispered. "We've got just five minutes to make the roof. And that's all the time that those systems will stay out of order. I had to work fast."

"Da," Alek Yakov Zorki rumbled, sweat standing out on his bull face. "Kolya, it cannot be soon enough for me."

"Let's save the reunion for later."

"As you say."

They whipped around the fork in the corridor and headed for the stairway, James Wilder leading the way. Zorki lunged behind him. Two large men in a great hurry.

They were reflections of each other. Veritable twins. Two peas in a pod.

Only their mother could have told them apart.

And she had always had quite a time of it, in the very beginning, when they were two little boys growing up in Tatarstan, Russia.

Alek and Nicolai Zorki.

Alek had always called Nicolai "Kolya."

April Dancer, Mr. Waverly, Mark Slate and Joanna Paula Jones didn't need a diagram. The two cells that had held Alek Yakov Zorki and his impersonator, James Wilder, separated by some five feet of concrete bunker, were empty.

Slate, hastily summoned by a vocal chain of commands to the other agents scampering all over the complex and trying to locate the source of the malfunctioning systems, was properly attired now. His loud weskit, flaming red beneath a blue blazer, set him off like a playboy at a funeral parlor.

"Our birds have flown," Mr. Waverly said. "The question is where?"

"They can't get out of Headquarters without being seen," Slate said. "That's one sure thing."

"Not at all, Mr. Slate," Waverly demurred. "If we have a traitor in our midst, there is no guaranteeing anything, is there? He certainly is familiar with all our security measures and must have prepared himself in advance."

April bit her lip, breaking her long-standing resolution not to do so in company.

"It doesn't make sense, does it? Unless—"

She halted. Thinking out loud was a bad habit, too. Especially with Mr. Waverly in charge.

Slate frowned at her. "You were about to say?"

"It's probably a wild guess, Mark."

"The wilder the better," he laughed. "And that is a deliberate pun."

April stared at Mr. Waverly.