"All right!" she declared. "I'll tell you!"
"Hmm?" Resounded indifferent. "Why?"
"Jerry Cronshaw made me promise not to, because it's still in the uncertain stage, but he thinks he is getting close to a way of jamming the output of those modules with a directional beam."
"Hah?" Kuryakin sat forward at once. "That's more like it. If we can catch him, and jam the signal effectively until we can get him operated on—the operation is straightforward enough, isn't it?"
"Nothing to it," she declared. "I can do it myself."
"That's great!" The change in him was startling. She felt a twinge of sharp envy that he could care so much more about his friend than he did for a woman—meaning herself.
"He really means a lot to you, doesn't he?"
"It's not that, exactly." His grin was instantly wry. "It's just that he's not safe, running around on his own, and with that radio voice inside his head there's no telling what he might get up to."
"Oh well." She took courage from his flippancy. "If you're feeling that much better, how about going out somewhere this evening, to celebrate?"
"Celebrate what?" he asked pointedly. "The redundancy of female attire? You can't surely be serious about going out in that?"
"Why not?" she demanded, tugging ineffectively at an almost nonexistent hem. "What's wrong with it?"
"There isn't enough of it to be wrong. You'd be arrested!"
"All right!" she shrugged. "We'll stay in and celebrate, then..." Her suggestions trailed off as the telephone shrilled for attention. Waverly's voice came.
"Mr. Kuryakin? Is Dr. Harvey with you? Good. I want both of you in my office, a once, please."
"Is it Napoleon?"
"I think so."
"We're on our way!"
Waverly's outer office was full of silent grave-faced attentive men. Number One, Section One, waiting until the new arrivals were settled, swept them with a steady gaze.
"The wheels are beginning to turn," he announced. "Last night another military center was raided and another consignment of the radio-modules was taken. This time we have had instant cooperation from the military as to critical wavelengths, and those modules will be useless to whoever has them. That is by the way. We know where they are. At this moment they are being held within Thrush-Miami head quarters. Our man on the inside informs us that the Thrush station is standing by for an important courier from Paris, who is to collect the modules and carry them to Corfu. We believe we know who that courier will be."
He swiveled to snap his fingers and the display screen lit up to show detail of a rambling old house in Coral Gables, standing in semitropical grounds.
"If it's Solo, we are going to have one hell of a job snatching him out of that rat's nest," a deep voice declared.
"That is not the intention, here. If, as I think, it will be Mr. Solo, our strategy will be to let him enter, make his pick up, and leave again. We will take him later. A point to stress. This operation must be done with great care. For one thing, we must operate completely outside our customary style, in a completely unorthodox manner, because we are dealing with a man who knows all our routines. For that same reason we cannot afford to use anyone who is known to him by sight."
"That won't work!" Kuryakin objected instantly. "Napoleon knows just about every enforcement agent on the staff. All the top rank men, anyway. If we pull out all of them we might as well quit right now. We'll be so crippled, we won't stand a chance!"
Waverly half closed his eyes, stroked his jaw with his pipe stem as he weighed the objection, then shrugged in resignation.
"Very well, we will have to make do with very careful and elaborate disguises. Now for the essential strategy. I'll sketch it, and if anyone can suggest improvements, please interrupt as we go. We have very little time to waste."
Napoleon Solo sat back in the taxi, apparently quite at ease, but in fact very much on the alert. The pick up operation had gone very smoothly, just a trifle too smoothly for his peace of mind. Surely there should have been some sign of opposition? The cab crossed the Tamiami Canal, and once again he could see the airport lights.
"I'm certainly sorry I couldn't stay awhile and visit with you boys," he said. "You seem to have a nice place here. In the daylight, they tell me, the scenery is pretty good too!"
"The way I heard it," one of his escort chuckled, "the scenery is kind of outstanding where you're going, too. They say the Countess is a real dish! What's your word?"
"I'll tell you." Solo grinned. "You take Helen of Troy and the Queen of Sheba. Then you add in those two Italian lulus, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia. Then Brigitte Bardot, the best parts of Jane Mansfield and Liz Taylor. Stir and save the cream, and you aren't even close!"
"I don't wonder you're in a hurry to get back. How's about asking us all out there for a vacation, sometime?"
"The expenses come high, but I'll give it a mention."
The cab swayed, slowed and halted. The small group climbed cautiously out and looked around.
"This is too easy," one of them muttered, as they formed an apparently casual but efficient surrounding escort for Solo. "I was half hoping some of your U.N.C.L.E. buddies would want to horn in. They must be slipping!"
"Just goes to show!" Solo made a throwaway gesture. "Without me—nothing! I bet they don't even know I'm here."
No one offered to call him on the wager. The little party halted at the edge of the landing field.
"This is it," said the man in charge. "Our job is to see you on the plane, that's all. And there it is!"
"Right!" Solo kept his grin, squeezed down on the sudden tension that gripped him, and made a goodbye gesture. "See you again, sometime."
He set away to walk across the open space. His eyes were constantly moving. He saw nothing suspicious. Neither did his sharp-eyed escort. They were not meant to. But he had instincts, and they were tickling him now. Nor were they false. Ever since landing he had been carrying, unwittingly, three unobtrusive electronic bugs, planted on him by disguised agents. From that moment, attentive monitors had listened in on his every word and, by cross-reference, had been able to pinpoint his location at all times.
Those three "fingers" pointed unerringly at him now as he dawdled across the open, so as to be the last passenger aboard. In this moment the haunting, echoing, nightmare "voice" in his head was mercifully silent. He knew "she" was there, though. He had never been able to forget it, right from the moment the needle had first entered his skull. Silent, painless, yet in some uncanny fashion always there, like a never-ending tension in his head.