Whatever Arnolda Van Atta was going to do, it would not be nice.
April Dancer reached Del Floria's Tailor Shop just as the bells in the church steeple five blocks away tolled the hour of eight. The taxicab driver's gift of a dime had accomplished a host of miracles. An excellent sedan, a Dodge with a motor that could achieve the speed of a Ferrari, had picked her up almost thirty minutes after her call. The driver was a tall, blank-faced U.N.C.L.E. chauffeur who made no comment about her odd appearance or battered condition. He merely drove cars and was prepared for instant duty and emergencies, as might be any one who drove an ambulance for a hospital.
Meanwhile, on the long drive into Manhattan, April had mended herself as best she could. There was a specially equipped cabinet in the rear of the sedan that came down off the wall like a dressing table. With this before her, she redid her face—washing, and applying restoring lotions and healing creams to her bruises. A complete wardrobe trunk, artfully concealed in the cushioned seat afforded her a smart, simple blue wool dress and regular pumps. By the time the sedan had reached the ramp at Pershing Square, she was, at the very least, extremely presentable once again. The only things that didn't show were the great aches and enormous fatigue that made her body scream for sleep. To combat this depressing feeling of lassitude, she sniffed freely for a full minute from a curious brown capsule. The immediate effect was one of head-clearing and complete recovery. It wasn't just spirits of ammonia or Benzedrine; it was something far more efficacious than that. Instant Wake-up, the Lab boys had labeled their discovery.
The tattered remnants of the dead man's clothes she consigned to a disposal unit on the floor of the sedan.
Darkness, pierced by neon, filled Manhattan as the sedan wheeled up to Del Floria's, literally the front door to the vast complex that made up Headquarters, U.N.C.L.E., New York.
There was a not unattractive blonde in a print dress operating the steam presser as April came in. The shop was small, neat and extremely orderly, but nothing to write home about. The blonde eyed April obliquely.
"Is my red dress ready do you know?" April inquired sweetly.
"Oh, yes. Right in there." The blonde gestured toward a dressing cubicle. April nodded to her and stepped behind the curtain that closed off a view of the shop's interior. The steam presser hissed as the blonde clamped it down again.
April waited in the cubicle, facing the rear wall. A steel panel slid to the left and she hurried through. The steel panel, actually one wall of the dressing room, closed again.
April heaved a sigh. Home again. U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters.
Before her lay the outer offices of the amazing complex. Steel files, a reception desk at which sat another woman. This one was a brunette with sharp features and steady eyes. She smiled at April as she handed her a peculiarly shaped card badge which April pinned to the bosom of her dress.
Beyond this anteroom lay the elevators and then the honeycomb of rooms and offices which comprised the inner workings of the organization. April, still occupied with her fears for Mark Slate, now had only him on her mind.
"Will you buzz Mr. Waverly for me, please?"
The brunette apologized. "Sorry. He left for Washington. Won't be back until ten or eleven, I expect."
April tried not to bite her lip. With the old man gone, she would have to take the assignment by the horns. God knew there was little time to lose.
"Then would you alert Section Two, for me? I'll be in the Weapons Room for twenty minutes and I'll be ready for a conference at eight thirty."
"Yes, Miss Dancer."
She paused a second longer before going on up to Weapons to rearm herself with the matériel and equipment that her capture by THRUSH had destroyed.
"Any word from Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin?"
The brunette's face warmed a trifle.
"They contacted us that they were leaving Rangoon tomorrow. That should put them back here by Wednesday at the earliest."
"Thanks."
April took an elevator that whisked her up to the Weapons Room. With Mark Slate hors de combat and Lord knew what else, it would have been a comfort to have had Solo and his Russian colleague on deck to call some of the shots.
This way, it all fell on her shoulders. Not that she lacked self-confidence. Far from it. It was just that she was willing to take all the help she could get.
On the way up in the steel elevator, she wondered who was left in the Enforcements pool that she could use. There was James Wilder, of "course. Pete Barnes, Walter Fleming. Perhaps even Randy Kovac. No, Randy was still a trainee. Eighteen years old, smart as a whip, and almost fey, he was so Irish. No, no—this was no operation for a trainee. U.N.C.L.E.? Randy was still a Nephew.
She had reached the door of the Weapons Room when the truth descended upon her like a ton of bricks. Good Lord, what an idiot she had been! And all the time she had lost, just because she had been a half-drowned kitten lost somewhere in the Bronx. It had been staring her in the face all the time and it had just this moment come to her. The one possible way she could trace the whereabouts of Mark Slate and his brutal captors. Her eyes blazed with anger as she realized her stupidity.
If anything happened to Slate now and they were too late, it would be her own fault. Nobody else's. She had goofed mightily—a luxury no agent could afford. Least of all, Mark Slate.
She raced for the communication set on the desk in the Weapons Room, nearly tripping in her haste. She batted the lever on.
"Section Four," a man's voice said.
This was the Intelligence and Communications Section. A most valuable arm of the organization.
"April Dancer here," she said crisply into the transmitter, all of her mental capacities focused on the very important information she was about to deliver. There must be no slipups, no forgetting of a single detail, if she were ever to see Mark alive again.
"Yes, Miss Dancer?"
"I have an All Points. We must locate, as soon as possible, a blue panel truck. The occupants are a Chinaman, a Hindu and a French Apache type. They are advertising a three-ring circus of some kind called 'Romeo's League of Nations Exhibit.' Repeat—" She went through the whole spiel again, itemizing every detail of description she could remember. The Hindu's beard, the Errol Flynn moustache on the Frenchman and the Chinaman's purple mandarin robes. She included a vivid description of Arnolda Van Atta, hoping that such a weird menage of people must certainly have been seen by somebody during the last few hours. They would have no reason to discard their disguises because they must have been pretty sure they had wiped out April in the factory explosion. She had never seen Mr. Riddle, of course, so she left him out of her message.
The man in Section Four barked a Roger at her and April clicked the set up, taking a deep breath.
There. At least, she had done that much.
The rest was up to efficiency and luck.
Luck always played a large part in any operation. It was the one intangible, imponderable aspect of every single moment of an agent's life.
With her report out of the way, she busied herself with the special equipment and protective devices of offense and defense that occupied the shelves of the Weapons Room. Mr. Waverly was going to have a fit when she presented her expense account at the end of the month. She had lost an entire set of personal tools. Something she had rarely ever done. Mr. Waverly had always commended her on her frugality and thrift, often chiding Slate, Solo and Kuryakin for their constant loss of equipment and very high lists of expenditures.