"Miss Jones," Mr. Waverly said. "Feel free to answer Miss Dancer, I shall ask you some questions directly."
"That's very nice of you, Mr.—"
"Waverly."
"—Waverly." Joanna Paula Jones sighed, shrugging her shoulders. "I don't know. Miracle, I guess. I was washed away too. But I woke up a long way off from that building, I can tell you. Since then I've been busier than a beaver."
"I can imagine," April said. "Go on."
"I contacted my people and they told me to find you people. That was a chore. Took me all night. But I managed. You see, Naval Intelligence wants us to pool our efforts, in a sort of unofficial way, of course, depending on how things work out with Mr. Zorki." She turned to Mr. Waverly, eagerly. "You still have him as prisoner?"
Waverly nodded, not wanting to interrupt the girlish flow of her story. April hid a smile, for Joanna made her think back to her own first days as an U.N.C.L.E. agent. Possibly she had come on just as feminine and gushy as Joanna Paula Jones did now. A girl learned only with time.
"That's fine. He belongs locked up. A terrible man. Well, here I am and I want to help. I thought letting you people catch me was the simplest way. It worked too, didn't it?"
"It certainly did," April laughed. "How did you know about Del Floria's?"
Joanna Paula Jones looked surprised. "Oh, I've known that a long time. Doesn't everyone?"
Mr. Waverly now interrupted. Almost coldly.
"Everyone does not. Answer the question, please."
"When they caught me—that bunch of fanatics—and put me in that locker. Well, they asked me a lot of questions and I overheard them discussing Uncle. All about the place. The tailor shop entrance. All of it."
"Who spoke of it, Miss Jones? Try to remember."
"It was the woman." Joanna Paula Jones screwed up her piquant face thoughtfully. "Yes, that redhead. All about how they had a man planted here. Someone who had a fine Uncle record and would never be suspected. I thought you'd want to know that."
April leaned forward. "Please, Joanna. Think hard. Was the man's name ever mentioned?" Waverly tensed.
"No—I don't—wait a minute. You see, I got on to them because I met a man from Uncle a month ago. Just about the time Zorki was captured. He sort of let me in on things. Well, it was he who suggested I follow that blue truck. You know the League of Nations thing. It was a great tip. Only thing was I got caught. Almost got killed too. I would have if it hadn't been for you, Miss Dancer."
Mr. Waverly and April Dancer couldn't believe their ears. The glances they exchanged could have been emblazoned in Macy's front window for all the world to see. Was it possible that this incredibly naive young woman held the key to all their difficulties? Held the key and was unaware of it?
"Oh—" Joanna Paula Jones clapped a hand to her mouth. Her eyes popped. "How stupid I've been! You both mean that the man who talked to me is the man who's responsible for all this trouble with Mr. Zorki?"
Mr. Alexander Waverly leaned across the round table. His brown eyes targeted in on Joanna Paula Jones. There was electricity in every line of his lean body.
"Miss Jones," he said slowly, kindly, very very carefully. "Who was that man from Uncle?"
"Wilder," she said promptly, smiling to cover her error in logic. "James Wilder. He was ever so cooperative."
She repressed a shriek of dismay at the amount of activity her innocuous statement triggered. Mr. Waverly sprang back to his panel board, thumbing buzzers. April shot over to the place where her own chair was and unhooked the intercom that loomed up like a cobra head before her. She started rattling instructions into the mouthpiece, urgently calling Mark Slate's name. No static came or sounded.
Mr. Waverly thumbed on the buttons that governed the televisor screens lining the wall. Nothing happened. They remained dark and inactive. The head of U.N.C.L.E. abandoned the set, his craggy features set in hard lines. He marched rapidly toward the office door.
"Come along, Miss Dancer. You too, Miss Jones. It is no less than I expect. I only hope we aren't too late."
April nodded, following him, jerking Joanna Paula Jones out of her chair. The traitor had already made his next move. Not one of the systems in the office was functioning properly. Whatever he had decided to do was already underway. Operation Free Zorki was on the march.
All systems for that one were Go, Go. Go!
Far over the East River, fairly invisible in the dark of night, a giant helicopter chopped briskly through the skies. The riding lights were minimal, tiny stars lost in a vast arena of heaven. The full-throated roar of the motor and the mammoth circular rotation of the powerful rotary propellors were almost lost in the multiplicity of noises filling the New York night. Tugs and seagoing freighters mooed like enormous cows in the harbor. Jets zoomed across the skies. The clamor and violence of a great city still awake, still alive, still operating.
The helicopter, traveling at six thousand feet, banked sharply where the 59th Street Bridge below lay like a child's discarded toy against the silver-spotted expanse of the river. It kept on banking, spiraling downward until the altitude loss was phenomenal. Some four hundred feet above the river line, the whirlybird ploughed south, tracing the course of the water.
Within seconds, the machine had reached 42nd Street. It banked once more, circling. Far down below somewhere, from the mass of darkened rooftops, a light blinked. Once, twice, three times. The light followed that pattern for a full minute. The helicopter seemed to stand still in mid-air hovering like an enormous flying bug.
Now, the streams of lights from vehicles racing back and forth, in both directions, along the East River Drive, were ribbons of continuous illumination in the night.
But the steady winking light blinked intermittently. Once, twice, three times. On and off. Off and on.
The helicopter moved again.
Dropping almost vertically. Hundreds of feet fell away until the last hundred between ground and sky was left. The chopper pulled up sharply, hovering again. From the street it would have been impossible to detect. The humming and throbbing of the engines and rotary blades was an enormous drone of sound that could have been attributed to the subways or the noises of a trip-hammer.
Directly below, the winking light went off for the last time. It did not go on again.
The helicopter waited, hovering. A midnight figment of a dreamer's imagination.
Down below, in the packed mass of darkness, among the huddled rooftops, directly under the chopper, stood the building that housed the organization known as U.N.C.L.E.
Headquarters.
The Two Mad Bombers
U.N.C.L.E. Enforcement Agent Walter Fleming was on duty on the third floor of the complex. The corridor was a long, gray steel file, bisected with sliding doors that bridged the gap between the walls. Fleming was busy checking his weapon for possible malfunctions. This was the machine pistol which had sent a "mercy" bullet into Fried Rice at the apartment building. The thing had been acting up lately and Fleming planned to turn it over to the armorer the very next day. It was close to midnight and Walter Fleming stifled a yawn. He would be relieved soon and it was time enough. Sometimes, in spite of the excitement earlier that night, things did get a bit quiet around Headquarters. Why even now, the whole damn building was as silent as a tomb—