Mr. Waverly was not happy to know that an assassin was loose in Headquarters. Once April had sounded the alarm, setting in motion Maximum Security Regulations all over the complex, Waverly had hurried to the cell block, accompanied by a team of Lab technicians and experts.
There was nothing that could be done for Arnolda Van Atta. Death had been instantaneous.
The assassin had struck her as she lay on her cot, face to the wall apparently. She had been dead barely an hour. Mr. Waverly was extremely worried.
Someone had had the key to open Miss Van Atta's cell door. Someone knew the location of all the alarm systems. Someone was wearing an U.N.C.L.E. badge card who should not be wearing that card. Someone, perhaps one of these very men who were with him, examining Miss Van Atta's corpse, was a THRUSH agent. The idea was chilling.
"No fingerprints on the handle, Mr. Waverly," one of the technicians said brusquely.
"I thought not."
"Chances are good she didn't even see her murderer. She must have been lying there, when he opened the cell door and tiptoed in."
"Yes, I suppose so. Still, he must have been known to her. If he is one of Thrush's agents."
"Floor's empty too," another U.N.C.L.E. man said. He was holding a curious black box whose filtered bottom threw a luminous light that would have shown any form of disturbance on the stone floor. Not so much as a molecule of dust had been disturbed.
"Yes," Waverly murmured. "One who knows all our tricks. Only one of our own kind could have foreseen our using this sort of equipment to detect clues. Still, he has to be someone working against time and there is very little left."
The U.N.C.L.E. agents had nothing to say to that.
The furrows in Mr. Waverly's face deepened as he left the experts to finish their messy work. He asked April to accompany him back to his office.
"Coming, Miss Dancer?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where is Mr. Slate?"
"'Still pounding his ear. Shall I buzz him?"
"Not just yet. We may need him at the top of his form very shortly."
In the office, Mr. Waverly indicated a yellow streamer of teletype lying on the marvelous, circular table. "Read that if you will, Miss Dancer."
April scooped up the streamer. The typed words were short, to the point and not very sweet:
THRUSH FLIES HIGH. FORGET GRAND
CENTRAL. RELEASE ZORKI AT ONCE OR THE
BUILD WILL BLOW SKY-HIGH BEFORE
TOMORROW MORNING. THIS IS A LAST WARNING.
EGRET
"Do you think it's a bluff, Mr. Waverly?"
For once, the old man spread his hands helplessly. His brown eyes were bleak.
"A bluff? What more proof do we need? This woman murdered in our very midst." He eyed April sourly. "Dancer, I hadn't wished to mention this before but this makes it imperative." April felt a cold wave travel down her spine. When Mr. Waverly called her Dancer, she knew how serious things were. In times of great stress, the old man was apt to cut corners and forget the niceties of talking to a woman, even if he was her superior. "There's been a security leak at Headquarters for quite some time. A good deal of our messages have been intercepted across the Atlantic. Papers and files have disappeared at times. Nothing real serious until this. Now I can no longer chalk it up to faulty wireless or careless clerks or a breakdown in our technological equipment. I should have known it would assume these proportions. Thrush has been able to plant these messages in Del Fiona's—the first one was dropped there—and now this comes to me over our own private teletype system. It's baffling. I want Zorki, we must keep him, but if Headquarters is in danger—" He paused, as if hoping that the mere act of talking would bring the solution. April restrained a strong urge to reach her hand out to comfort him, but she couldn't do that. Must never do it. "Look how they were able to single out Mark Slate for apprehension. No, there is someone here at Headquarters responsible for the whole affair."
"If there is a bomb, Mr. Waverly, we can find it. The message doesn't give us a deadline on time."
"That is precisely what troubles me the most. It's so cocksure, so dead certain. Oh, we can screen everyone in the building now. I can have our Lab men and demolitions experts cover the maze from top to bottom. But that will take hours. Hours we may not have to spare. So I must use the ace in the hole that I have saved for this moment. I will set Wilder loose. Let them see that Zorki is walking away from this building, a free man."
April shuddered. "But where's our guarantee? Who will disarm the bomb—if there is a bomb? If they get Zorki, won't they just go ahead and put us out of business?"
"Hmmm. Perhaps. But what else do you suggest?"
"I guess I'm just thinking out loud, sir. All we can do is what you say and hunt high and low for our traitor and his—bomb."
Mr. Waverly nodded, as if that were all he wanted to hear. He moved to his chair, arranging the battery of panels and communication buttons before him. His scholar's face was pensive. April was keenly appreciative of the enormous load of responsibility resting on her superior's shoulders. The midnight shift of personnel would be arriving shortly and a normal complement of U.N.C.L.E. people could total as many as fifty. Then there was the amazing million-dollar complex itself—the tons of equipment, devices, weapons and warehouses of filing data that had taken years and the blood of dozens of good agents to accumulate. The history of U.N.C.L.E., its many successes and its few failures, had always had that costly price placed on it. All agents faced death.
"Give Mr. Slate another half hour's rest, Dancer. Then call him. I'll busy myself with the details of our manhunt."
"Right, Mr. Waverly."
"Meanwhile I suggest—"
He paused as a beeping sound filled the office. A blue light glowed on the panel before him. Mr. Waverly depressed a buzzer, his face suddenly alert.
"Yes?"
A crisp man's voice filled the room.
"Prisoner, Mr. Waverly. Loitering in the doorway of Del Fiona's. She tried to pick the lock and set off the alarm. We have her now in the Restraint Room."
"Hmm. The shop was closed, of course. Anything else?"
"Young, very attractive, butch haircut. Pug nose. Says her name is Joanna Paula Jones and she's from U.S. Naval Intelligence."
April was out of her chair in a flash. Excitement and pleasure flooded her. Mr. Waverly spoke quietly into the transmitter, looking steadily at his agent.
"Send Miss Jones up."
"Yes, sir."
"That's her," April crowed. "Not bad for a youngster. Finding us like this. Getting out of that building alive. She must know something—"
"Let us hope so," Mr. Waverly said calmly and quietly. "We are in the need of knowledge. And miracles, I might add."
At second sight, Joanna Paula Jones seemed even younger and more adolescent than ever. Her boyishly bobbed hair, creamy white skin and tilted nose belonged on a pixie, not an agent of the armed services. Somewhere, she too had found time and wherewithal to change her attire and repair the damage of the wettest escape since the Deluge. When she saw April, her face lit up.
"Hi, there. Am I glad to see you!" She paused in embarrassment, hesitant before the solemnity of Mr. Waverly's presence. He bowed slightly, waving her to a chair.
"Ditto," April said. "But first tell me how you got out of that fix we were in. I floated downriver until I snagged the shoreline in Bronx Park."