Badges in place, they stepped toward a wall that opened miraculously. Without the badges there would now be a hundred alarms clanging, doors closing and sealing, armed men facing them from every angle. With the badges they walked straight ahead through doors that opened untouched, past doors that never would open without the proper signal. They walked on floors of steel, between walls of steel, and there were no windows anywhere.
They rode up two floors in a silent elevator. They emerged into another steel corridor. Again doors opened and they reached the end door of the corridor. This door was unmarked, exactly as all the other doors. A plain steel door with no way to tell that it was in any way different. But it was. This was the heart of U.N.C.L.E. operations in New York. The office of the chief, the office of one of only five men who formed Section-I—Policy and Operations.
The door opened. Solo and Illya stepped inside. Alexander Waverly stood at an open window, absently tapping his empty pipe in his hand. Solo and Illya stood behind him. The chief, the member of Section-I, seemed to be trying to think of something he wanted to say.
"He—uh, seemed to know nothing," Waverly said, without turning around. "The one who was following Mr. Kuryakin. They brought him around in Section-V but he could tell us nothing."
"THRUSH?" Napoleon Solo said.
"Yes, of course, Mr.—uh—Solo. Of course," Waverly said.
The head of U.N.C.L.E. in New York turned now. Alexander Waverly looked, Illya Kuryakin had once said, like an aristocratic bloodhound. Beneath a broad forehead and thinning but neat gray hair, bushy eyebrows stood out from a heavy brow. The eyes were sunken in deep sockets, heavily wrinkled at the corners, as if the man had spent many years squinting into the sun and wind of the world. Below the eyes, Waverly's face drooped into a permanently serious expression. A face that never smiled, never frowned, never showed any expression but thought.
"And mine?" Solo said. "Maxine Trent?"
"She talked her way out of the hands of the law. She then eluded the Section-V man who followed her," Waverly said. "An entirely different cup of tea, the Trent woman."
Waverly seemed to be thinking of something a long time ago. It would have been hard for Solo or Illya to guess what it was. The background of Alexander Waverly was shrouded in an obscure mist. Beyond a rumor of fifty years service in British and American Intelligence, the manner of a man who had been born an aristocrat, the speech of an Englishman who had lived in many lands other than England, there was nothing known.
Just a man over sixty who wore tweeds and liked pipes, who could barely recall the names of his own agents, and who seemed always in a vaguely bumbling haze. A minor official who should have retired years ago. A man who, when it counted, had a memory like an elephant, a brain as quick as a scorpion and equally dangerous, a composure that never ruffled, and the ability to command men. A man who was very alone.
"Well," Waverly said. "I expect I sent for you gentlemen."
"Something THRUSH apparently knows about already," Illya said.
"We weren't followed for nothing."
"Yes," Waverly said. "I dare say they know what I have to tell you. Not surprising. THRUSH Council members are well placed, as you know."
"How would they know it would be Illya and myself you would use this time?" Solo said.
"I believe they would assume we would use our best men on something of this importance," Waverly said. And Waverly nodded to himself, as if seeing the THRUSH council, his opponents in the perpetual chess game he played for the future of the world. "Yes, they would have learned we have been called in. They would properly try to stop us befor we started."
"They appear to know more than we do," Illya said dryly.
"Eh? Oh, yes, I imagine they do. We shall have to correct that now. You see, it appears that THRUSH has found a way to use, and perhaps destroy, the young people of the world."
FOUR
They were seated around the circular briefing table with the moving top. Waverly had pressed the button on his desk; a panel had slid back on the wall, revealing the screen. Now Illya, Solo and Waverly were watching the gray screen. Somewhere far off inside the complex of steel rooms the head of Communications and Research in Section-III, the pretty and redheaded May Heatherly, operated the screen and the running commentary.
"This is the airfield at Kandaville, photographed a few minutes after the mob had gone. You will note the knife in the back of the president," the crisp, yet very female voice of May Heatherly said.
Solo noted the knife in the back of the dead president of the new country. But a corner of his mind thought of the very alive, very pretty, May Heatherly. He sighed aloud. And smiled when he noted Waverly looking at him. His chief missed little-worse, understood him. Waverly knew precisely what Solo's sigh meant, and disapproved, and yet—
Sometimes Napoleon Solo was sure that Alexander Waverly still appreciated the young ladies.
"This is the body of the boy in London, taken just after the Palladium was cleared," the voice of May Heatherly went on.
Illya looked at the crushed head of the boy. His mind observed every detail. He frowned. There was nothing at all unusual, nothing he could see to go on. Just a dead boy of seventeen.
"This is the basement room in Sydney taken by the police when they arrived. There was no doubt of the verdict, mass suicide," May Heatherly's voice continued.
Solo and Illya looked at the twenty-two sprawled bodies, all smiling in death.
"Note the smiles," Waverly said. "Quite unusual."
In rapid succession the screen showed the burning laboratory in Chicago, the armored car and its dead guards in Soho, the beach near Santa Barbara, the dead deputy chief of security in Red Square. And there was more, much more. Waverly laid a report, tow copies on the table and swung the top until the copies were before Illya and Solo.
"The report is quite complete," Waverly said. "At least forty-seven other comparable incidents within the last three months."
Solo flipped through the report, scanning the acts and places.
"Teenagers are always rioting," Solo said.
"Quite true," Waverly said. "But there are some peculiarities. Miss—uh—Heatherly, will you run them again?"
The pictures flashed on the screen again one by one. Solo and Illya studied them intently in the silence of the office. They were horrible, sad. They were angering, wasteful.
"Note all the expressions of the teenagers, gentlemen, those who are in the pictures. You will notice the smiles, even on the dead. And observe the eyes-positively exhilarated, I should say."
"Manic," Illya said. "Almost insane."
"No, I think not insane. Look carefully. They are happy,"
Waverly pointed out. "It has been my experience that teenagers who have committed some act of violence or vandalism are characteristically frightened or at least subdued afterwards. Their natural insecurity returns after the impetus if gone. But these young people are still happy."
"Drugged?" Solo said.
"Not in the usual sense, I should say," Waverly said. "But I suspect some form of artificial stimulant—a most peculiar kind."
Illya leaned forward. "In what way, sir?"
Waverly did not answer at once. The older man patted at his tweed pockets as if searching for something. At last he pulled out a pipe. Then he began to look for his tobacco. He continued his search as he talked.