The Thinking Machine Affair - Bernard Joel - Страница 6

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His companions agreed, and these new questions were fed into the Computer, which in due course gave out the required information.

"That's it, then!" the Chief Organizing Officer exclaimed. "We can proceed with immediate preparation of 'Operation U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters'." He turned to the Head of the Technical Department and enquired:

"How long will it take you to have sufficient electronic beam receivers ready?"

"Give me twenty-four hours and we'll have more than we need."

"And how much time will you need for training a man to fix your gadgets to an electronic communications circuit?"

"Inside an hour."

"Well, under the circumstances pick your best man and explain the task to him."

In this manner, the scene was set at last for "Operation U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters".

CHAPTER THREE

THE VISITOR WITHOUT A CALLING CARD

ALEXANDER WAVERLY, a lean, dry, somewhat pedantic man in his early fifties, was sitting in his third floor office at U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, studying a lengthy report from one of his Enforcement Agents in South America. As he sat there, engrossed in the report, he looked like a professor who might specialize in Renaissance history.

He glanced up from the dossier, selected a bulky briar pipe from a rack on his desk and with his fore finger began to fill tobacco into it from a round container. Pressing the tobacco down into the bowl of his pipe with his thumb, he rose and crossed to the window. He stared out at the panoramic view of New York's East River where, from the middle of the tangle of roofs and walls, the United Nations building soared upwards like a huge glass replica of an oblong box.

Waverly was about to put his hand in his coat pocket to fish out a matchbox to light his pipe, when the alarm system went into action, announcing that an intruder had somehow slipped through the safety barriers into U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters. He returned to his chair, placed the unlit pipe on his desk, and switched on the closed circuit communications system to find out what was happening.

"Has the intruder been located?" he enquired calmly.

"Not yet, sir," the information clerk replied. "But he will be, any minute now. Our control room confirms that he was detected by our security devices as he approached the area near the booster-boxes of the electronic communications system and that the protective steel doors slid shut immediately and trapped him in one of the sections."

"Let me know as soon as he's located, will you?" Waverly requested. "I want all details as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir," the clerk replied.

Waverly connected with the office of U.N.C.L.E.'S Chief Enforcement Agent, Napoleon Solo. "Mr. Solo, I'd like to see you in my office," he said when Solo appeared on the screen.

"I'll be over right away, sir," Solo answered.

Waverly leaned back in his chair, wondering how the intruder had managed to bypass alarm and security devices and penetrate almost to the heart of the electronic communications system. This was a serious matter, and indicated that there was room for improvement in U.N.C.L.E.'s safety system.

Napoleon Solo knocked before entering Waverly's office.

"Mr. Solo, I want you to be present at the examination of the intruder as soon as he is located," Waverly said. "I want to know everything about the man and his motives…"

He was interrupted by someone at the door. An attractive brunette entered, and as she handed Waverly a buff foolscap folder, Solo gazed approvingly at her shapely outline. The girl wore a short navy blue skirt and dark nylons, and her silk blouse was creased in the right places. Solo smiled and unconsciously raised his hand to smooth his dark hair as her blue eyes caught his.

Another interruption followed. It was the information clerk, to inform Waverly over the closed circuit communications system that the intruder had been located.

"Bring him to the interrogation room," ordered Waverly.

"Very well, sir," the clerk said, and switched off.

Napoleon Solo headed for the interrogation room. Waverly remained seated, to open the buff foolscap folder the brunette had brought in a little earlier.

Not long afterwards, Solo reappeared in Waverly's office. The frown on his face betrayed that the result of his talk with the intruder had been far from satisfactory.

"Well?" asked Waverly.

"I'm afraid, sir, the intruder collapsed and died before I had the chance to learn anything from him," Solo reported.

Waverly picked up the briar pipe from his desk and held it in his right hand, as if considering whether to light it or not.

"I searched him and found several of these tiny gadgets in his hollowed-out heels," Solo continued. He placed a small metallic object on the desk. "I have sent a sample to the Technical Investigation Department for analysis. The body is also being examined to establish the cause of death and to see whether anything can be found that might provide a clue of any kind."

Waverly picked up the gadget and examined it. "It looks like some electronic bugging device or something of the sort; but we should have the answer soon," he said confidently.

The U.N.C.L.E. medical section went to work to establish what fast-acting poison had killed the intruder, a muscular six-foot man in his early thirties, whose body had already confirmed that he had been in excellent health until the moment of his death. Assisted by highly-skilled biochemists, the medical team examined blood and saliva samples.

"The man isn't dead," Dr. Griffith Evans, the chief biochemist, eventually pronounced. "It's an identical case to the one we had some time ago."

Dr. Frank Morris, who headed U.N.C.L.E.'S medical team, understood what the biochemist meant. He well remembered the incident some time back when another man had collapsed and died in the interrogation room. The result of the blood and saliva examination were identical with those taken now. Before the corpse could be buried it was claimed by "relatives" and transported to THRUSH Headquarters, where Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin later discovered that the "dead" man had been brought back to life and his full health restored by an antidote then unknown to the U.N.C.L.E. experts. But now U.N.C.L.E. had in fact obtained this antidote that it was possible to restore the life of the intruder.

Dr. Morris gave Waverly his findings.

"How long do you think it will take until the man is back to normal?" Waverly asked.

"I've no knowledge of how fast the antidote works," the doctor replied, "but taking into consideration the unique physique of the man, and also the fact that the poison could not yet have taken a very firm grip on the blood and vital organs, I should think he might be revived within a few hours."

"Go ahead then, and let me know when he's ready for questioning, will you?" Waverly terminated the conference with these words. Then, looking at his Chief Enforcement Agent, he added: "From the start, the whole business smelled of THRUSH. No one else could have bypassed our outside detection devices. Now we'll discover what they're up to and hit back at them—and mighty hard, Mr. Solo."

"Isn't there a danger, sir, that by reviving and interrogating the THRUSH Agent we might alert THRUSH and do more harm than good?" Solo observed. "Wouldn't it be better to let them think we don't know anything and let them have their corpse when some fictitious relative comes to claim him?"

"Mr. Solo, you seem to have acquired the art of thought reading," Waverly said dryly. "I was just going to propose the same thing. As and when the 'dead' man starts to regain consciousness we'll put him into deep hypnosis so that he is unaware of having been interrogated etcetera..."

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