"Right," said Mr. Waverly. "We will pass to the action briefing room. Operation Phagocyte has already commenced."
CHAPTER TEN: KEEP FINGER OFF BUTTON!
WHAT began as a hunch became an open bluff which led to an assignment, which in turn erupted into an international project. From such small beginnings do world wars escalate. All who worked for and with the U.N.C.L.E. organization never lost sight of this possibility. Its agents were, of course, constantly at war. They lived with its menace, saw the dangers in many seemingly ordinary incidents in all parts of the world which could, if linked together, form a pattern of destruction on an international scale.
As highly trained, skilled and experienced agents they were trusted and given wide latitude. At their back stood the vast defense machine of their country and the world network of associates and similar organizations with whom it worked. But at all times they were individuals. They did not march in formations. They did not wear uniforms. They did not salute superior ranks. They combined the freedoms of the buccaneering adventurer with the calculating brain of the modern espionage agent and the discipline of the finest service personnel.
To an outsider they might appear casual, or even irresponsible. They were disrespectful in many attitudes towards their respective establishments. They suffered the small irritations of administration departments, such as querying footling items on expense sheets, with tolerant good humor, but fools who sabotaged their sometimes desperate efforts in the field were blatantly derided or ignored, no matter what their Civil Service rank. All top agents possessed an intuitive sense sharpened by often bitter experience, so in many instances could not file in triplicate a report that would satisfy a chair-borne general.
They tried not to break civil laws, but of necessity had to "bend" many in the interests of that greater and over riding "law of national preservation". Thus all their efforts were sublimated to defense of country, which itself was a defense of world peace. And at times, the only form of defense is attack.
General assignment agents tried always to work from within the enemy areas, to infiltrate, to sabotage local activities, to link the improbable with the possible and break the power of an encircling movement. Divide and rule is an old maxim. U.N.C.L.E. agents often divided local power groups, splitting them so that they could more easily be destroyed, so weakening and finally snapping the power of their leaders.
Action begets action. What was seen in a London street moved through personal contacts to violent destruction on an English moorland, thence to a French forest. Escalation of action was a natural result, always so for agents such as April Dancer, Mark Slate, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. Enforcement officers might be their official title, back here at Del Floria's tailor shop in the brownstone house under the shadow of the United Nations building. But from a London street to a New York street—the hunch had come home, to where the ultimate danger lay somewhere in an Arizona desert.
With all forces alerted it was inevitable that the administration should conform to "procedure" that almost biblical word voiced unctuously along with the well-beloved phrase "usual channels". Insert a two-letter word—by—and you have the awe-filling phrase—"procedure by usual channels". Lengthily translated this means: "There are one helluva lot of us guys being paid one helluva lot of money and we are all going to put our itchy noses into this affair and shall require one helluva lot of memos duly signed, counter-signed, classified and passed to you for urgent attention, before we can move one goddamn man, tank, plane, troop carrier, gun, gas bomb, radio, scout car or portable latrine."
Which was one reason why April Dancer and Mark Slate sat on an olive-sage hill in the hot, dry olive-sage area of Little Basin, Arizona.
"Mr. Alexander Waverly is a one-man bomb on his own," said April Dancer. "He doesn't explode for little men—only for the biggest—but even he is going to be taxed severely before Operation Phagocyte comes to life in terms of men, men, men."
"Same the world over, old girl." Mark Slate stretched in the sun. "Once the admin and service wallahs are called in, all the little men become pompous big men. Don't see how you can ever avoid it. The machine runs the men who are employed to run it. Once they get moving, all hell won't stop it. That's how they lose thousands of men in an attack. I've seen it happen. Nice words they give the poor dead devils too—expendable, they say: strategy, they say: the escalation of the overall plan, they say. What they mean is that some theory-ridden old red-tab back at his comfy H.Q. forgot he had those units stuck over there by the green pin on the map board. Wars have got too big, me old darling. Was a time when the general was way out in front—leading 'em. Now, there are nearly as many generals and admirals at the back of the poor expendable so-and-sos." He sat up suddenly. "Which same is us, right now."
April grinned. "I wondered when you were going to wake up to that fact. Well, at least the F.B.I. should be in a position by now. Drat this radio silence."
"How else can we get close? They've no phone down there in the nut hatch. Must be well linked with radio—maybe radar too." Mark glanced at his watch. "Better start preparing for the Stutter Beam relay, That was cool thinking on your part." He chuckled. "Space Research didn't like it one little bit when they learned you knew all about their precious Stutter Beam. By the way—how did you know?"
She made no reply until they had taken out the collapsible equipment from their shoulder packs and begun to open it up in the shade of a rock overhang.
"People call it stutter because it does—in laser light beams. But it's the invention of a man named Gabriel Stuttar—who, by merest chance, is my godfather. He's an old sweetie. It was he who encouraged me to keep on with my career." She gazed at Mark as she squatted back on her haunches. "We hear so much about our brilliant young men—and we have them, sure we do. It'd be a poor old world without them. But we have the others, too."
"What others?"
"Gabby Stuttar, for one. When he was a young man—one of the brilliant young men, I suppose he'd be called—his ideas of using laser light and a translation receiver were laughed at. Now it's top secret—one of the marvels of the age—yuck! yuck! He began it thirty years ago—now it's so secret he doesn't even rate his picture in the papers."
"Money?" said Mark.
She shrugged. "All he wants—now he doesn't really need it. Pride, he's got. Oh yes, human vanity too. One good headline, one TV interview, one award as the scientist of the year—maybe a Nobel. Won't get 'em though. Top secret—poor old duck!" She patted the small, camera-like object fixed on its swivel-topped tripod. "Thirty years, and here's us—taking for granted it'll work."
"Well, we know it will, old girl. The space boffins have proved it down to the nth. Can't be tapped, bugged or otherwise tampered with."
"Yes, but don't you see? Oh! Skip it! The sun must be softening me." She grinned. "And there's Carl Karadin too. A bit ironic, don't you think? Right now we're gearing up to smash him. And we'll do it because we have to. Twenty years ago he was branded a nutcase. A world currency was his bug and it bit him deep, deep. So deep that he worked for twenty years to perfect a way of destroying all paper currency and replacing it with a world currency. Yet even now, the finance wizards of the world are trying to work out ways of doing that very thing—a transfer to a world currency."