"For breakfast?"
"Let's call it dinner. How about it? Will you come and eat with me?"
Illya shook his head in serious-faced amazement. "Napoleon's safe, anyway, Lainy. If he gets fresh, just squeeze any of his arms or legs and he'll back off."
She melted into a blue-eyed pool of sympathy, reaching over to pat Solo's hand. "I'll come with you gladly, but on one condition. That the steak is cooked and eaten at my apartment and that we share it with my cat. She must feel deserted."
"Call her and tell her we'll be there in a half hour." Solo put his arm around Lainy and pulled her up. He shot one last look at Mr. Waverly. "It is all right if I leave now?"
"By all means. And" - Waverly cleared his throat – "all the alarm systems in your apartment have been reactivated. I think you understand my point."
Solo grinned. "Yes, sir."
"Report back the day after tomorrow, please. We'll have finished with Adams' interrogation by then and there may be something doing. Also - I have you scheduled to undergo a few tests."
Solo walked out with Lainy. Not even Waverly's mention of tests, which he knew would be psychiatric, could keep him from being warmed by the fact that U.N.C.L.E.'s list of agents was still a secret because of him. Lainy fell into step with his limping gait and he let her keep the illusion that she was supporting him. It seemed to mean so much to her.
Chapter 8
"Shotguns, You Know"
FIVE DAYS LATER, Solo and Illya sat side by side in a rented car, Illya driving, doing seventy miles an hour down a modern expressway in Michigan. Chicago and the jet flight were only hours behind.
It had broken quickly. Adams' interrogation had unearthed very little. Adams had merely been a research lackey working for Thrush now and then. He knew Dundee and that something big was up with Thrush - something to do with vegetation - but beyond that the drugs had proved he knew nothing more. His assassination scheme had been born out of Dundee's derisive joke that if he really wanted to help Thrush he should find a way to keep Solo and Kuryakin in New York for a few weeks. Adams had found the way, going Dundee one better with his idea to destroy U.N.C.L.E. single-handed.
As the days had passed and Solo's and Illya's wounds healed, Mr. Waverly kept digging - for Dundee, for anything. It broke in one meager roll of film containing two pictures of a farm in Michigan that had been taken by an agent named Taylor. Taylor sent the film to Chicago headquarters and had then been murdered. Two bullets through the head. That made two agents down in this Dundee case already.
Solo recalled the sober-faced Mr. Waverly as he had shown the pictures Taylor had taken. The first one was of a cornfield at the end of July, the corn hip high and green, waving in military rows. The second, taken only three days later, was of the same corn field. But the military rows were gone. The cornstalks were brown and wrinkled and lying on the ground as though dehydrated and stamped upon.
Along with the film, Taylor had sent a brief message:
"First indications of Dundee Project shown in film. Tests of topsoil show total destruction of life-giving elements. No more crops for minimum of ten years. Brief investigation indicates possibility of chemical to restore earth. Will contact when more information is available."
Whether or not he had ever gathered more information was unknown. Taylor was dead. And Waverly was up in arms. The implications behind such a Thrush plot were disastrous. If Thrush could treat the soil of the world and kill the vegetation, it could starve the earth into submission, promising the antidote only if the governments knuckled under. And they had an ace. By keeping certain lands clean and productive for them selves, Thrush could wait until starvation and riots set in, turning the knife for them in the stomachs of the world's hungry.
The order for the mission had been simple. Get the formula for, or a sample of, the counter-chemical. Then destroy the operation. The counter-chemical was top priority because once it was in the hands of the U.N. C.L.E. lab Thrush could sprinkle poison anywhere they wanted and it would do them no good. Finding chemicals meant finding the laboratory where they were produced, and no one believed that would be in Michigan. Michigan was simply the first lead.
Looking out of the car at the green that stretched for miles, Solo couldn't quite believe any of it. He saw the backs of farms that had been cut through for the roadway and everything was lush in the late July sun, soaking up light and water.
"That sign said, RIVERVIEW, NEXT EXIT," Illya said. "We're nearly there."
"The scene of Taylor's murder," Solo muttered.
"So? We'll be careful."
"Here, now," Solo chided his friend. "Quit reading something deep, and brooding into everything I say."
Illya wouldn't be riled. "Only checking. The psychological effects of what you went through might pop up at any time. The staff psychiatrist warned me."
"Is that so?" Solo was angry, in spite of himself. "And who gave you permission to talk to the psychiatrist about me?"
"The psychiatrist, of course." Illya smiled at Solo's consternation. "Seriously, Napoleon, it had to be done. I had to be briefed on you. But I don't want to keep the fact secret from you, either."
"And the psychiatrist told you?"
"What he told you, I presume. He said Adams ganged up on you psychologically, playing hard on every human fear in the book - fear of falling, fear of total darkness, of helplessness, of abandonment, of having the body punctured - plus an overwhelming certainty that you were going to die."
"He pronounced me capable of staying active," Solo challenged.
"Yes. With the foreknowledge that odd symptom might pop up here and there, and to expect them.'
"And not freeze up over them. I know," Solo sighed. "The battery of subjective tests I took showed the possibility. But it won't happen, Illya, so don't worry."
"I believe it, I believe it!" Illya said. "Just remember, if you ever need an extra ear -"
"Illya's here. Thanks. Now, don't miss the turn-off."
Illya swung off the highway at the exit and curved up the ramp. As the car came onto a narrow highway, a sign loomed up pointing out Riverview as five miles to the right.
Solo braced against the turn and changed the subject. Illya had guessed and had brought him nicely out of what might have become one of the moods he'd been having. Gloom and doom, Solo called them. "I thought Michigan Julys were hot," he complained. "I brought lightweight suits."
"Maybe we're lucky," Illya said. "I've never cared for heat, raised as I was in -"
Illya broke off as they rounded a curve on the narrow road. Solo leaned forward, an exclamation coming through his lips. Because the greenery stopped. Just stopped. Fifty feet ahead, the fields turned to brown desolation. The breeze stirred no crops and the fields looked as though a plague had descended upon them. It was a shocking sight. The only break in the brown sameness was an occasional tree.
"Why the trees?" Solo asked aloud.
"They send their roots deeper, I guess, so they aren't damaged - yet."
Solo bobbed his head to his partner's strange bit of knowledge and continued to stare at the farms. The houses were neat and carefully kept; the buildings were painted in the traditional barn-red, the houses white, and the machinery stashed about was shiny and clean. But the grass was brown and wilted. The flower beds were tangled masses of dead stems and withered blossoms.