“When we lost his signal, you and Mr. Solo were so widely separated that we had reduced the scale a very great deal,” she said. “He was apparently doing quite a bit of moving around, because the map was shifting back and forth, and going up and down rapidly.
“Up and down?” Illya looked at his communicator quizzically.
“Yes, sir. The altitude of his blip went from sea-level to the height you are at presently-we have determined that that is the boardwalk. Then it went up quickly, and down like a shot, with considerable lateral movement. Just as it quieted down and we started to triangulate, his signal stopped and yours became the primary.” She sounded miserable about that part of it. “The display jumped to you, and we weren’t ready for it. Four of us were sitting in front of the display console watching it and taking readings off known landmarks. But before we could get anything or even record the picture, all we had was your blip in Manhattan. All w know is that Mr. Solo was on the waterfront, right at sea level, and the picture sort of looked like it does now. Where are you.”
“Sort of,” he said scathingly. There was no answer.
He walked down a short flight of stairs from the promenade to the beach and began a reconnaissance in approved manner. The Atlantic looked forbidding under the stars, flat and entirely unappealing. As far as he could see along the beach, there was nowhere to hide Napoleon. He supposed he might look for a submarine conning-tower poking through the surface of Lower Bay, or search the sand for a Thrush picnic outing. Anything, never mind how ridiculous, would scratch the itch he was building up to have some kind of tangle with the black-hats. At least it would help warm him up.
Over his communicator, the girl back at U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters tried to apologize to him and cheer him up. “You know were all heartsick about not being able to help you and Mr. Solo. It’s an experimental linkage of the computer to a map-display, and we feel horrible about letting it snap out of our control like that. All of us are going to stay right on it until we can identify the last picture he sent against your whereabouts.”
“All well and good,” grumbled Illya, “but you don’t have to work this end of it.” He knew right away he shouldn’t have said that.
“Oh, Mr. Kuryakin, I wish I had the opportunity to get a beach excursion as part of my job. We’re shut up here in a room full of wires and transistors, while you’re out in all that fresh air, away from the grit of midtown air. You Enforcement people just don’t know how lucky you are.”
I could shut her off, he thought. One finger could snap the communicator to off, and leave him out on the beach without even a smart-aleck girl to talk to. He kept trudging along, and decided to give as good as he got.
“Personally, I would love to be trapped in that warm, homey Comm laboratory, surrounded by coffee smells and stagnant old air conditioning air.” He stopped walking and stood on one leg to empty wet sand from his shoe. “You have my personal recommendation to the Enforcement Section, Miss. If you’re eligible for transfer, just trip right on over there. Tell them you want a job patrolling a frozen stretch of waterfront in November without even knowing what to look for.”
Suddenly the boardwalk curved away to give Illya a longer view down the beach, and he stopped. Ahead he saw an amusement pier with all lights blazing. He moved into the shadows under the boardwalk and spoke urgently into the communicator.
“This is where it’s at,” he said. Before he was finished with that much the girl who’d been bantering with him reacted to the change in his voice. His communicator clicked twice, and he was linked through the monitor on Waverly’s desk. “Ahead of me is a so-called fun center, lights on on all sides without a soul around. There’s a car pulled up near it with its rear doors open. Do you think somebody was in that much of a hurry to visit Coney?”
“No, Mr. Kuryakin, I don’t. Generally there is no activity on the beach at this time of year. A brightly illuminated public building at night is highly suspect.”
Illya moved in closer, trying to keep his attention on the fun house and his communicator, while at the same time not walking into the pillars he was using for cover. Waverly spoke again.
“Identify your position, please, Mr. Kuryakin, so that our people in Communications can use local maps to orient themselves. Can you tell us which amusement pier this is?”
“Yes, sir,” he said, crouching behind a dune. “I’m under the boardwalk, so I can’t see which street runs to the beach here, but it seems the building has enough identification on it to satisfy everyone. If you can believe this, it is labeled on the side toward me, ‘The Hilarious, Rollicking, Unparalleled Space House.’ ” He had to repeat that for his chief before he was allowed to continue.
“That name figures in bright red and yellow lettering, in a typeface made famous by the late Phineas T. Barnum. If the smallest punctuation mark in it is less than a foot across, your humble and obedient servant will willingly eat his sweatshirt. The initial letters are a gaudy, ten-foot-high spellout just waiting for someone to link them up with our feathered friends .” He crept forward, keeping well down behind what little cover he could find.
“Please don’t become hasty regarding your sweatshirt, Mr. Kuryakin,” said Waverly. “We may assume Thrush is aware that advertising benefits everyone. Besides, if the temperature and weather reports on that beach may be believed you will have good use for that sweatshirt tonight. Our Meteorology Department tells me that the hurricane Quiggy, although not another disaster like 1965’s Betsy, has turned a cold front toward you, and the temperature where you’re standing is already down to thirty-one. I trust you will not have to endure that sort of weather for long.”
“Yes, sir. I can’t exactly knock on Thrust’s front door and ask shelter from inclement weather, though.” He tried beating himself with one arm to keep warm while holding the communicator, and found it as unsatisfactory as clapping with one hand.
“Well, I’m certainly pleased we turned up something,” said Waverly, “even if it is so impertinently scrawled across the beach for everyone to see.”
The Communications Department Head interrupted just then. “Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Kuryakin has now oriented himself very nearly where Mr. Solo was earlier this evening. All of us who were watching the map then agree that this is where we were looking when the other blip went out.”
“Very good,” said Waverly. “This establishes a definite link between that technicolor Thrush building and our friend Mr. Gambol. Now if we can only use his records to generate some evidence against the investors who worked with him, we just may have a case.”
“Why do we need more of a case than we have?” asked Illya. “This is where Thrush is, we know Gambol came here, and they probably have Napoleon inside. With the puzzles split wide open, haven’t we wrapped the whole thing up?”
Waverly sighed into the communicator. “I’m very much afraid our Finance and Legal sections are recommending we remain silent, based on information we now have. At present we have five thousand investors who can be categorized by the threefold code system Porpoise used to direct his operations, but we have no proof that they really were using this extraordinary procedure. If we have the S.E.G. step in, we’ll stop things but lose everyone. If we take them to court the best we can hope for is years of litigation and counter-suits. What would a judge say if we told him your amusement-park people were spreading stock-market information through a newspaper crossword? How many times has the gold market been cornered that way in the past?”
“We’d be a laughing-stock.” Illya looked glumly at the communicator and at the ridiculous building lighting up the beach in front of him.