“We’re not here to fail, Osgood,” Waverly said.
Osgood DeVry laughed, almost a desperate sound. “No. We certainly are not. Briefly, Mr. Solo, we have come across some information that perhaps should be turned over to the joint Chiefs, Central Intelligence, the Pentagon—but it is of such a nature that even if only a whisper leaked, the entire country might panic. My decision is to deal quietly with the matter as long as we can. My decision is to let you people at U.N.C.L.E. handle it—as long as you can. Now, it’s my decision, and the president concurs—as long as he can, and off the record. Failure will mean that my head will roll, that I will have failed the president, who’s been a close friend of mine for many years—but more than that, I will have failed the people I’ve tried to serve all my life, whether they always appreciated it or not.”
“Failure could well mean the destruction of the civilized world,” Waverly said.
Solo straightened, staring at his chief incredulously. Waverly smiled. “Don’t be upset, Solo. No one can hear us. This is a sound-proofed room. We could fire a cannon in here and we’d never be heard. That’s why we chose this place.”
Solo sighed and relaxed. “Then an atomic bomb is involved?”
DeVry said, “At least, an atomic device is rumored to be entangled in the affair. Yes. Here’s what happened. One of your people, in Tokyo on a tangential matter, came across a spy for Thrush. The man was badly wounded, his stomach laid open with knife wounds. He would have no reason to lie, and your man says he was conscious and not delirious, which is what I suspected when I first heard what he’d revealed. The plan is to attack a city inside the continental United States with an atomic device—and, according to the spy, that device and the operation is almost ready. Time is running out.”
“All of this certainly reconciles with every bit of the information we gathered which put us onto this Tixe Ylno matter in the first place,” Waverly said.
“I may as well tell you, I remain somewhat skeptical,” DeVry said. “I cannot help but doubt the plausibility of this information, even though we naturally must run it down. We can’t ignore it.”
“Not in the light of all our other facts about the activities of this Tixe Ylno,” Waverly said.
“The point that makes me most doubtful,” DeVry said, “is the matter of an outsider striking at the United States with an atomic device. Not with our early warning system. It just isn’t practical.”
“It’s just nightmarish enough to be possible,” Solo said
Waverly nodded. “The one important matter that evolves from what we have to this moment—whether such a plot actually is in the works or not, and whether a strike could be successfully delivered against us from without or not, whether it is fact or hoax—is that we must get to this person Tixe Ylno. Whoever he is, whatever he is, he must be quickly captured, exposed, disarmed.”
DeVry exhaled. “For all the reasons I’ve given you, I’ve reached my decision to let you people handle this quietly, and, I pray, quickly.”
“I believe you have made a wise decision,” Waverly said. “We have reports in our office of Thrush agents, and of apparent outsiders, inquiring of the governments of Red China, Russia, France—even the United States—for atomic components. There is afoot this secret plot to hatch some kind of atomic device that is functional. Beyond that, we have the young woman Baynes-Neefuth, who arranged through you, Osgood, for our protection. Obviously, you know that she had been in the employ of Thrush for almost a year, gathering classified information from men in sensitive roles at missile sites. Don’t doubt that there is such a plot. Thrush allowed that young woman to stay alive only long enough to get to us.”
“I failed you then, Mr. DeVry,” Solo said quietly. “I’ll try not to fail you again.”
“You didn’t fail, Mr. Solo.” DeVry smiled. “Thrush had decreed that girl’s death long before she came to me. Her death was one factor that convinced me there might be something to this plot of attack with an atomic device. If these people can build one, then perhaps they have the capability for a strike.”
“I don’t know yet where it will lead me,” Solo said. “But I was able to contact the young woman who was a close confidante of Ursula Baynes.”
“Good. Good,” DeVry said.
“She’s been in hiding from Thrush,” Solo said. “We were able to get to her first this time, I believe.”
“Yes. Miss Baynes told me that the young woman had completely disappeared. I was of the mind that Thrush had found her and destroyed her. I didn’t say any of this to Miss Baynes, of course. I’m glad to hear the other young woman is alive and safe.”
“She’s alive,” Solo said. “Whether she’s safe or not is something else.”
DeVry smiled. “Your record is satisfactory for me, Mr. Solo. I assure you that the president himself will be most pleased when I report to him that you people are at last in contact with someone who might lead us to Tixe Ylno. Just to learn whether Tixe Ylno is male or female will be a giant step forward, eh, gentlemen?”
VII
“Just don’t be impatient, my dear little Illya,” Violet Wild said in a crooning voice. She stood above him where he sprawled with the sheet of garbled writing before him. “Were you writing Violet a love letter, you dear helpless little bug? Don’t you worry. Violet will see you safely put away.”
She laughed down at him, her beauty making her heartless laughter more than cruel.
Illya raged at her, but the sounds he made were the mindless cries of a mewling child.
Violet jerked her head and a man stepped from the shadows. Illya recognized him as the man who’d first attacked him with that fluid-filled fountain pen in Honolulu.
“All right, Edgar,” Violet said. “It is now 2 A.M. It is time our little Illya and I started our journey.”
Edgar nodded, but did not speak. Illya struggled against them, but his agitated movements only amused them, and they lifted him easily. Another of the team brought the suitcases. They went out into the corridor, along it to the bronzed cage of the elevator.
The lobby was almost deserted. Laughter drifted in from the cocktail lounge. A night clerk watched them disinterestedly as they half carried Illya toward the front exit. Illya cried out, but his cawing sounds only frustrated him and got no reaction from the bystanders except a glance of amused pity. They thought he was drunk, a mental defective, or both.
Violet spoke soothingly to him as they walked—not for his sake, he was aware, but for any interested onlooker.
But Illya saw that there was none.
Even the doorman held open the Kharmann Ghia door while they half lifted Illya into the split seat of the convertible. “Has he been like this long?” he asked Violet in heavily accented English.
“All his life,” Violet replied offhandedly. It was the sort of answer one would give who has lived with a tragic affliction so long that it has lost its pain.
She went around and got in under the wheel while their bags were stacked into the small car behind them. She tipped the doorman handsomely and smiled at him. She was calm, unhurried. She tied a pale green wisp of scarf about her bright red-gold hair, knotted it under her chin. She checked her classic loveliness in the rearview mirror and only finally got around to starting the car, putting it in gear and pulling out of the hotel entrance.
Illya glared at the speedometer. She rolled through the sleeping town at less than twenty miles an hour. He heard her humming to herself as she drove.
He saw the flicker of headlights in the windshield, reflected from behind them.
He realized that Violet saw them, too. She glanced into her rear-view mirror, increasing her speed only slightly as they went north out of the town limits.