He heard the door to the closet open. He held a deep breath so that he would make no sound and the towels would not move to his breathing. He heard someone poking around in the closet. Then the man went away and the closet door closed.
There was a sharp click.
Solo raised his head from among the towels. The closet was pitch dark now. He climbed out of the towels and went to the door. It was locked and there was no lock inside. The man who had come in had sprung the lock and closed the door, and it operated only from outside. Solo listened at the door.
He heard low voices and movement. He could not break out while anyone was there. He would be a sitting duck—naked as a baby and without weapons. All he had was his ring. He bent close over the ring and touched a tiny button.
"Bubba, this is Sonny. Mayday. Come in Bubba. Mayday, Code Two, come in Bubba. Sonny calling Bubba."
Silence.
Solo stared at his ring in the dark. He tried again. "Bubba come in. Sonny to Bubba. Mayday."
Silence that seemed to hang in the dark air of the closet. Solo rubbed his chin. He could use the audible signal—but what if Illya were hiding? He tried once more.
There was no answer. Solo touched the ring again.
"Control Central, Sonny reporting. Come in Control Central."
It was the voice of Waverly himself that answered.
"Where are you, Mr. Solo? Your signal indicates you are very close to Headquarters."
"Close, but too far," Solo said dryly. "I'm about five blocks away, locked in a closet."
"Really, Mr. Solo, this is no time for childishness," Waverly's slow, clipped voice said.
Solo smiled. The calm, matter-of-fact voice of Waverly had saved many an agent from panic and death. The voice was only a cover. Waverly was serious and concerned about all his agents.
"Sorry, sir," Solo whispered. "But I can't raise Illya, and I am locked in a closet, and I think I have something."
"We will try to contact Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly's voice said. "What do you have?"
"A machine. It's in the health club," and Napoleon Solo described what he had seen. "It looks like this machine somehow gets the data from Forsyte, or anyone else."
There was a silence. Then Waverly's voice came again almost as calm as ever—but not quite.
"Mr. Solo, you must get closer to that machine. If possible get it, if not destroy it. We—we have heard vague rumors of such a machine for many years. It was reported during the Korean conflict as something being worked on by a mysterious ex-Nazi scientist. Until now, it was only an impossible rumor. If—"
Waverly left the sentence hanging. In the closet Solo nodded as if Waverly could see him. Perhaps Waverly could.
"It is vital, Mr. Solo, you understand? Such a machine in the wrong hands?"
"I understand, sir. But I can't get out of this closet until the place is deserted. I'd be caught in seconds. Meanwhile, Forsyte and the people here can walk away. If Illya is outside, he should watch."
There was another tense silence. Then—
"We cannot raise Mr. Kuryakin either. I am sending men to look for him and watch your building. They will await your signal before they enter the building."
Solo felt cold. Where was Illya?
"Illya was right behind me, sir. What does his brain sensor report as his location."
"It reports nothing, Mr. Solo. His sensor has faded out."
In the closet Solo did not move. All U.N.C.L.E. agents of first rank now carried tiny sensors implanted. The sensor located them when all other means failed. The sensors would not function from only three causes: over one hundred miles; some device that could block their signal—and death.
In the closet Napoleon Solo felt alone and suddenly frightened.
ACT II
HAWK IN A SPARROW SUIT
ILLYA KURYAKIN had a dream. He was a child again in his far-off home, riding wildly on a Mongol pony over the great vast spaces of the Steppes. The great forests, and the deserts, and the towering mountains of all of Siberia seemed to flash past under the flying hooves of his horse. He shouted to faceless companions, the abandoned comrades of his Russian youth. He shouted in happy Russian.
And woke up shouting the Russian words to cold, blank walls.
For a moment he lay still, not quite out of the dream, and feeling sad. Whenever he dreamed of his youth, his friends were always faceless, as if he carried a guilt for abandoning his homeland and his people.
Then he was out of the dream and coldly awake. He did not move at once, but looked around him without moving. He was in a small, dark room. Four walls without windows. Stone walls and a dirt floor and a wooden door studded with iron. A stone ceiling very high. The room was like a deep well and he was in the bottom.
Illya sat up. He could sit up. Neither his hands nor his feet were tied. But he had been stripped, literally, and dressed in some neutral grey trousers and a grey sweater. They had done a good job on him. All he had was the long, thin steel needle under the fake scar on his leg. Even his ring was gone.
He stood up and began to study the room. The first step was to see if he was being observed. He checked every inch of the walls and ceilings but could locate no hidden cameras, and he was sure that everything was real stone with no one-way mirror for observation. He also found no evidence of a microphone, but that was almost impossible to be sure about.
Next he studied the floor and walls for any possible secret doors. As far as he could tell the floor was solid earth, and the walls solid stone. The door was heavy oak, iron banded, and apparently locked by a bar on the outside. Illya saw no evidence of any other kind of lock.
He stood at the door and leaned his ear against it. He could hear nothing. There seemed to be no guard, and no sounds of anyone else. Not even distant sounds. Wherever he was, Illya was buried deep. He turned and once more surveyed the room in which he stood.
He assumed that by now he would have been missed, but with his radios gone, and buried in this room, they would have a hard time finding him. Unless he could get out somehow and give them some help. They would have traced his sensor, unless he had been taken too far. He had no way of knowing just what time it was, or how long he had been unconscious.
His bright, deep-set eyes continued to survey the room. He was looking for a flaw, any flaw. He thought of a conversation he had once had with Napoleon. He had insisted that there was no such thing as a prison cell from which a man could not escape without outside help, and without bringing any tools in with him. Solo had not been sure.
"What a man can build, Napoleon, a man can break out of," Illya had insisted.
"You mean there has to be a flaw?"
"There is always a flaw, my playboy buddy," Illya had said.
"If you can find it, my Russian jailbreaker," Solo had said.
If you can find it. Yes, that was the problem. And Illya recalled wryly that he had not said how long it might take. It had taken old Monte Cristo a devil of a long time. But Monte Cristo, too, had made it in the end.
All the while Illya had been thinking; his quick eyes had been searching the walls, the floor, the distant ceiling high above. It was sometimes best to let your eyes look while your brain thought of something else. The eyes, trained, could often see what the confused brain could not.