[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael. Страница 3

"Good." The voice was dry, patient and eminently English. "Any complications?"

"Yes."

"Go on."

"I had to scratch one Comrade X. Just as well. He was the only one who could have identified me, Mr. Waverly."

"Then you had no other alternative. Anything else?"

"Yes. Please tell the Lab to work on something for high heels. They should be made detachable so they can be jettisoned easily. They could trip a girl up sometimes."

"I see. Yes, you have a point. Not very desirable for walking along ledges, are they?"

She restrained a smile. She might have known. The Taft business was old news already at Headquarters. It figured that Mr. Waverly, head of Section II, Operations And Enforcements, would have had her covered somehow.

"Report here tomorrow at ten o'clock," Mr. Waverly said. "A good night's work, Miss Dancer. Get some sleep."

"Yes, sir."

The beeping sound vanished. She closed her eyes for a long, delicious moment of relaxation. So the UN would get their precious papers back—all the notes and recorded data on the Space Program which the enemy had wanted so badly. But it would all have come to nothing if Comrade X had shoved her into eternity.

She thought of the cold and hard concrete sidewalk in front of the Taft and shivered.

Nerves were an occupational hazard. Though it was best to have them when all the shooting and the tumult was over. But, after all, she was a woman.

In the morning, she'd check out of the hotel, having no further need of her cover as Agnes Malloy, dress buyer from Chicago, Illinois, in town for the Annual Dressmaker's Convention which had gathered at the Hotel Taft. By morning, she could return to her own little apartment downtown and resume her identity as Miss April Dancer. The UN Papers Affair was over.

April Dancer.

The girl from U.N.C.L.E.

The United Network Command of Law and Enforcement needed women agents, too. After all, for all of the superb abilities of agents like Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, there was one specialty of April Dancer's that they didn't and couldn't perform.

If a female enemy agent walked into the powder room, April Dancer could follow her.

Not even her working partner Mark Slate could do that.

Sister Agent

Mr. Alexander Waverly was worried.

As executive head of all the sections that comprised the unique organization known as U.N.C.L.E., one through six inclusive, he was not a scared white rabbit. In the extraordinary complex of steel walls, corridors, elevators and offices, there were thousands of buttons at his disposal. Any one of them could institute all sorts of activity, research, security measures—and attacks. Including panic.

An orderly row of ten enamel buzzers were immediately available in Waverly's private office. Every color of the spectrum, every purpose in the universe. At his very fingertips lay the power to send an agent winging to far-off Ghana, or to order a cup of iced tea from the commissary. Only Waverly himself could tell which color button could perform which magic.

Mr. Waverly felt like pushing a button now. He clucked aloud to himself, as though chiding his judgment. When he was alone in his Headquarters office, he often did. Now, behind his contour chair, Manhattan, sunlit and golden on this Fall day, glistened, together with the Queens shoreline. In the foreground, the tall monolithic glass structure of the United Nations Building towered above the East River.

With sudden impatience, Waverly revolved forward in his leather swivel chair and thumbed one of the ten buttons on his desk. The blue one.

A smooth, unhurried female voice sounded from no apparent position in the vicinity of his desk.

"Section Two. Yes, Mr. Waverly?"

"Has Miss Dancer reported in yet?"

"No, Mr. Waverly. She is expected here at ten o'clock. Word has come from the UN, however, that she has completed her drop."

"Hmm." Waverly pyramided his fingers thoughtfully. "I take it we have had no further word of Mr. Slate."

"No, sir. He is now an hour and a half overdue."

Waverly's frown deepened. "Can you contact Miss Dancer?"

"Yes. She is equipped with homing range finder and we have her triangulated."

"Good. Instruct her to stop by Mr. Slate's flat to pick him up. Our flamboyant colleague was to be here for his briefing session on the Zorki Affair. All attempts to reach him have failed. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Waverly. That all?"

"Yes, thank you."

Waverly thumbed the blue button again and relaxed. His lined face lost some of its concern. He had released himself from the one anxiety of his profession. He could never eradicate a certain sense of guilt if ever he failed to deliver the maximum security of his high office to any agent or officer of U.N.C.L.E. Plus which, he had an inescapable father hen (or bear) emotion for his agents. Napoleon Solo was off in Rangoon seeing to that rumor of some devilish ray weapon that had drawn the interest of THRUSH. Mr. Kuryakin was with him, since they teamed so well on these endeavors. And now, Mark Slate and April Dancer were a bit closer to home.

The fact that Mr. Slate had not put in his scheduled appearance at Headquarters was disturbing. He had proven his worth many times in the past, and though he was not the predictable sort of operative one might hope for, he had never been tardy for his assignments. It was most disturbing.

Waverly was a lean, weather-beaten apparition who constantly wore baggy tweeds, his color preferences definitely leaning to brown and amber hues. He handled pipes incessantly, working his spatulate fingers over their varied bowls, but never smoking them. He seemed, for all the world, like a man from a past age—a gentle yet reproving headmaster of ancient history who tended toward absent-mindedness. Yet the cragged, leathery face was the facade for one of the finest minds in U.N.C.L.E. Five titled men, of varying nationalities, guided the organizational operations of U.N.C.L.E. And Mr. Waverly was one of the very select five.

Now, he chose a chestnut brown briar from the center drawer of his desk and sucked on the stem experimentally. His brows were knit in a scowl. It wasn't like Mr. Slate to be late for any Headquarters matter.

Not like him at all.

Mark Slate's apartment was in a brownstone tenement on the East Side below Fourteenth Street. April Dancer had never exactly liked the neighborhood, even allowing for Mark Slate's individual brand of rugged personality. Like Garbo, he always wanted to be alone.

But there was more cause for unhappiness than Slate's casual environs. April had piled out of her cab, paying the dissatisfied driver a small tip that netted her a snarl and entered the shabby old brownstone, and climbed to the second floor, where she found the door to his apartment unlocked. She knocked softly in the shave-and-haircut rhythm followed by Churchill's Beethoven V For Victory code—da da dahhhh dahhhhhhh—which Slate would recognize. But there was no response from within.

Ringing the black porcelain buzzer to the left of the door, which chimed like a Bach fugue, only elicited more silence.

April's face became a blank mask.

For her UN drop of the briefcase, she had attired herself in a sensible dark skirt and jacket, brightened with a red roll-necked sweater. On her head she wore a tam curved to the tilt of her head. Her patent leather handbag was small and functional. She wore simple yet fashionable flats today. Any observer would have envied the man she was calling on.