It was like a magic act.
Suddenly the door was shaking and the panels warping before his very eyes. And then there was a mammoth thunderclap of sound, and the barrier had surged outward, crumpling like so much cheap tin and discarded metal. The door flew back, ripping off its hinges, shattering into splinters against the sheet of metal which was disintegrating before it.
Groping almost blindly, Solo found the frequency button and turned the short-wave radio set off. The influx of air from the corridor was a buffeting wind which threw over the candles from the table and flattened the drapes against the far wall. He didn’t waste any time looking for the maser device in the wreckage of the doorway. Chances were pretty good that it had shattered into bits once its maximum peak of effect had been reached. As for the woman—
She was gone.
In the decreasing flurry of noises from the blasted threshold of the room, he could hear her high heels running down the corridor. For a fleeting second he considered giving chase, but then he shook the notion off. There was only one thing for him to do now — get out of this damn hotel alive before Thrush came back to try again.
Shaking his head to clear it, breathing in long gasps of fresh air, he retrieved his traveling bag and stepped quickly from the room. The aftermath of the explosion was reaching that point when rudely disturbed guests would be ringing the desk to see what the hell was going on.
Solo took the back stairway out.
Twenty minutes later, he had compartmentalized the anger in his mind and found a late-cruising taxicab on short notice. The tinseled lights of the Eiffel Tower burst like a Fourth of July sparkler on the horizon. Solo had brushed his hair back, straightened his tie and assumed the demeanor of pure tourist. The French cabbie was a gray little man with a wise face and a gold tooth.
“Monsieur?”
“Le Bourget. Tout de suite.”
The cabbie looked dismayed.
“You are meeting a plane? None at this time.”
“I am taking a plane, my friend.”
The cabbie smiled triumphantly. “Mais non, Monsieur. There will be none at this hour.”
Solo frowned. He knew the Paris airport as well as he knew La Guardia. Flights nearly every hour. He plucked a crisp five hundred franc note from his billfold.
“Look, garçon. Just drive, will you?”
The driver turned around to show appreciation of the bill; yet there was a touch of sadness in his eyes.
“Possibly Monsieur has not heard.”
“Let me hear it.”
“Le Bourget had the big explosion a few hours ago. Five runways were destroyed. Such a fire! All flights have been canceled. You understand?”
“Yeah. Pay now. Fly later.”
“Comment?”
Solo nodded, keeping his face blank. “Yes, I understand, friend. But don’t you recognize a newspaperman when you see one? I’ll have you know I’m the Paris correspondent to The New York Times.”
“The New York Times?” The cabbie’s eyes rolled in appreciation of such lofty environs. “Forgive me, Monsieur. But of course. Immediatement!”
The cab leaped into gear, found the main artery of traffic and zoomed toward Le Bourget. Napoleon Solo drummed his fingers reflectively on the sky-blue Tourister sitting across his lap.
Now here was calamity piled atop coincidence.
A cablegram from Mr. Waverly and a concerted effort on his life.
Now, he needed an airplane and Le Bourget was incapacitated. Of course, there might be other, smaller fields in Paris, yet that was unlikely.
What had happened to Stewart Fromes out there in Oberteisendorf?
The telegram in his coat pocket was beginning to burn a hole there. Hot stuff, maybe. Real hot stuff. Hotter than even Mr. Waverly had let on, despite the William Daprato warning.
Beyond the cab’s window, the Paris night twinkled with warm, friendly stars.
At U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, Alexander Waverly had a visitor. A distinguished visitor whose presence would normally have occasioned the unified popping of assorted flashbulbs and trained questions by batteries of metropolitan reporters. No one in the building was even aware of the identity of this particular individual. He had entered U.N.C.L.E. in Waverly’s private elevator from the entranceway which no other man in the organization knew. Only Waverly could ever reveal the fifth unknown ingress of U.N.C.L.E.
Had Napoleon Solo been on hand, he would have been surprised at the difference in Waverly’s attitude. It was marked by a definite concern, a worried crease of the gray brows above the strong nose.
Waverly’s visitor was at the window, seemingly lost in contemplation of the United Nations Building shining in the night. The long, erratic conga of lights lighting up the Queens skyline hung like fireflies in the far off darkness.
The eternal pipe, in this instance a meerschaum, worked back and forth in Waverly’s fingers, revealing his agitation.
The man at the window, tall and statuesque, said without turning, “Well, Waverly. Is there one chance in ten million?”
Waverly did not turn around either.
“There’s always that chance, of course,” he said, regretfully.
“If even that chance is there, then we indeed have something to worry about.”
“I would say so, sir. Fromes was not explicit, of course. He couldn’t afford to be, under the circumstances. Security has its drawbacks. But—”
“Go on, Waverly. Say it. Say it all. This is no damn time for the niceties of protocol and diplomatic bushwah.”
Waverly swiveled in his armchair and pointed the meerschaum for emphasis. “Fromes gave me enough data to suspect the worst. If Thrush has come up with such a weapon — and there is evidence to support their participation in this business — then we have something far worse to worry about than missiles and nuclear war.” The man at the window faced Waverly. His face was hidden in the half-light of the room.
“You mean that obscure African village — Utangaville, was it? And Spayetville in the highlands of Scotland.”
“Yes, yes,” Waverly said, almost impatiently. “If they can destroy towns like that with a mere thimbleful of the stuff, there’s no estimating the consequences. Test towns, pure and simple. Places that would not attract the notice of the world. What else? Typical Thrush tactics, sir. We have to be prepared for the worst.”
The visitor shook himself. His voice rose, almost sadly.
“I have a large illumined globe of the world in my office. A gift of the people who pay the taxes. Now, there is a nation named Thrush in the world. You know it and I know it. Yet if we were to examine that globe as carefully as possible, we wouldn’t find the name engraved anywhere. And time and again, I’ve passed my fingers over that globe, on country after country, never really knowing which one has become a territory under the domination of Thrush. Satraps, my political advisors call them — satraps for the supra-nation we call Thrush. And they intend to dominate the earth. By degrees, they can turn a country into a satrap — or do the same with a school or a hospital. Or an industrial plant. Who knows? And all we can do is sit, wonder and play international chess while they work underground. Waverly, Waverly — what can we do this time?”
Waverly rubbed his pipe.
“The recovery of Fromes’ body is all we can do at this point, sir.”
“No ideas at all what killed him?”
“The laboratory will have to answer that. The acquisition of his body is our first and only step.”
The distinguished visitor shook his head. “I wish I could share your enthusiasm, Waverly. Were the corpse that important, they wouldn’t have been so cooperative about returning it, don’t you think?”