16 - The Splintered Sunglasses Affair

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE: A SOLO SNATCH

  CHAPTER TWO: A WELL-PLANNED AFFAIR

  CHAPTER THREE: BACK TO SQUARE ONE

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE VELVET GLOVE APPROACH

  CHAPTER FIVE: EXIT BY MOONLIGHT

  CHAPTER SIX: SOLO STEALS A RIDE

  CHAPTER SEVEN: WAVERLY REASONS WHY!

  CHAPTER EIGHT: HOW TO READ A HOLOGRAM

  CHAPTER NINE: TWO FRIENDS AND AN ENEMY

  CHAPTER TEN: FINDING OUT THE FACTS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: A RARE STAKE!

  CHAPTER TWELVE: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE TABLES ARE TURNED

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SOLO AND ILLYA TAKE TO THE AIR

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: GLASS-HANDLE WITH CARE

  THE SPLINTERED SUNGLASSES AFFAIR

  CHAPTER ONE

  A Solo Snatch

  It was the slickest kidnapping they had seen in New York for ten years. At eleven twenty five, Napoleon Solo, Chief Enforcement Officer of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, turned a handle and walked through a doorway leading to his own headquarters. At eleven twenty six, he was lying unconscious on the floor of a car heading upstate for Johnstown.

  The morning was sunny, with high white clouds moving lazily across a clear sky. Earlier, it had been raining. But by the time Solo paid off his cab at the corner and walked the length of the seedy brownstone block which masked the Command's nerve center, the sidewalks had steamed themselves dry and the tires of the traffic in the street no longer hissed greasily over the patched macadam. For the middle of April, it was really quite warm.

  The agent had been on a routine visit to Geneva. An all-nations conference on the drug menace had been held in one of the white hotels above the lake, and Interpol had asked U.N.C.L.E. to send a top operative who could act as observer and at the same time answer questions on some of the more advanced techniques the Command had evolved to deal with international trafficking. Alexander Waverly, the grey and lined Policy and Operations chief to whom Solo and his colleagues were responsible, had decided as a compliment to the Europeans to send his No. 1 operative. The conference being over, Solo was on his way back to base to report. Essentially a man of action, he loathed paperwork—and it was with some distaste that he rehearsed in his mind the opening paragraphs of the statement that he would shortly begin dictating to one of the personable secretaries available to his Section.

  A nondescript Plymouth was maneuvering into a gap in the line of parked vehicles at the side of the roadway as he drew abreast of the misted windows of Del Florio's tailor shop.

  The old man must be doing a lot of pressing this morning, Solo thought, turning towards the doorway. For a moment, as his fingers touched the smooth, worn wood of the latch, he caught sight of his own reflection—crisp, dark hair, humorous eyes below level brows, a cleft chin, the whole face still frowning a little at the thought of the report he had to make.

  Then the image, and with it the section of sunny street over his shoulder, with the moving car, a wedge of blue sky above the opposite roofs, the kaleidoscope of magazines outside Sol Zimmermann's newsstand across the street, all slanted away and swung inwards as the door opened at the touch of his hand. Behind him, an unkempt man with a butt drooping from his unshaven lip put a hand on the arm of a passing businessman in an unspoken request for a light. The miniature electric bulbs of the ribbon clock above the newsstand flashed off from 11:24 and came on again to read 11:25.

  Napoleon Solo walked into the shop.

  The two padded halves of the pressing machine were open, although there were no garments actually on it. Behind it was a girl Solo hadn't seen before, fussing with the controls. There was a lot of steam in the air.

  The old man himself was in his shirtsleeves, the inevitable tape measure around his neck, crouched down over a desk at the back of the shop.

  "What's this, Del?" Solo called, grinning at the girl. "Been injecting a bit of new blood into the business while I've been away, have you?"

  Above the starched white collar of her overall, the girl gave a lopsided smile and put up a hand to touch the roll of blonde hair at her neck. The old man grunted something unintelligible and hunched himself still further down over his papers. Thinking he was in one of his irascible moods, Solo shrugged affectionately, cocked an approving eye at the curves beneath the girl's overall, and walked into a fitting booth at the back of the shop. He shut the flimsy door and turned to face the wall.

  Like everything else about the brownstone block of which it was the centre, the tailor shop was both more and less than what it seemed.

  Behind the shabby fronts, buttressed by the public garage which completed one end of the block and the key club which was at the other, was hidden the ultra-modern complex of steel and glass and concrete housing the headquarters of U.N.C.L.E. Below the concealed masts on its roof, the world's most sophisticated communications centre kept in constant touch with a network of agents all over the earth. And through its four entrances, day and night, streamed the cosmopolitan crowd of men and women who made up its supra-national staff. Streamed, that is, in a somewhat devious manner—for the centre is highly secret and part of the job of the run-down tenants of the brownstones (who, like the garage and club staffs, are themselves on the U.N.C.L.E. payroll) is to see that it remains so. Thus, while communications and office personnel make their way in through the washrooms of the garage, visitors enter via the key club. Certain extra-secret arrivals and departures are made by means of an underground channel leading to the East River. And Solo's men, the elite of the organization who carry out its dangerous and exacting field work, come and go through Del Florio's shop.

  The middle coat hook on the back wall of the fitting booth which Napoleon Solo had entered was in fact the handle of a secret door. When it was pulled down in a certain way the wall swung inwards to reveal a short passage leading to the Command's central reception area, where a girl sat behind a desk watching miniature closed circuit TV screens which monitored the four entrances.

  Solo reached up now and hauled down on the hook.

  Ordinarily, conditioned by his long training and experience, his catlike alertness never relaxed. Even at home. Even when he was not on assignment.

  Today, however, a little bored perhaps after a week of routine, he was a little ragged after the long transatlantic flight, and preoccupied with the problem of his report. His concentration must therefore have been slightly lower than usual. Though even the most experienced operative can be pardoned for letting up, just a little, in the entrance to his own headquarters...

  Which is why between one and a half and two seconds elapsed before Solo realized that—for this one time—the hook-handle was not operating the secret door. And that a persistent hissing above his head was connected with a curious smell in the air.

  Abruptly, the agent's reflexes snapped back into top gear. In a flash, he took in the narrow, deep cuts in the woodwork which must have severed the actuating mechanism of the door; he remembered that he had not seen Del Florio operate the overriding safety catch which controlled it and saw the tiny cylinder of gas hidden in the dead area just below the lens of the closed circuit TV camera. At the same time he saw the neat arrangement of wires through which, by pulling down on the hook, he had himself triggered off the release of the cylinder's contents.

  Desperately, he stretched out towards the container and its deadly gas. But his arms seemed abnormally heavy, his fingers thick and soft. There was a loud noise in his ears and his chest was on fire. Whirling round, he yanked furiously at the door through which he had entered.

  At least, that is what his brain commanded his muscles t
o do, but all he achieved was a kind of shambling half turn as he lurched against the wall

  It seemed quite a long time later before he identified the strange gritty feeling against his right cheek as being caused by the carpet of the booth. He must have fallen over, he thought. How odd... And how did those two pairs of shoes creep up so close to his eyes without his having noticed them? There was a high-heeled pair with pointed toes. Brown. And a bigger, black pair with blunt toecaps pricked out in a pattern of perforations.

  The nearest toecap had a highlight on it. Presently the bright spot on the leather expanded. It grew bigger and bigger, swelling until it had filled the whole booth. And finally it slid in beneath Solo's eyelids and spread out inside his head, brighter and brighter, whiter and whiter, wider and wider...

  The man who had been at Del Florio's desk nodded to the girl in the overall. Together they dragged Solo back into the shop, hauling him by the legs as though these were the handles of a barrow. Before they reached the street door, it opened and two men came in, moving fast and silently—a businessman in a dark suit and a Homburg hat and a rough-looking fellow with an unshaven chin. The four picked up the unconscious agent and stood just inside the open door in a compact group, holding his body between them, gazing across the sidewalk.

  The Plymouth had stopped maneuvering and from the front seat somebody signalled. The nearside rear door opened.

  Rapidly, the quartet carried their burden across the pavement and fed it in through the open door feet first. The girl leaned into the tonneau and pulled. The seat back hinged forward to reveal a dark cavity behind.

  There was a concerted heave, and Solo disappeared from view. As the seat swung up into position again, the girl and the man from the shop climbed into the car and closed the door. The businessman and the roughneck unhurriedly crossed the road and mingled with the few pedestrians on the other side.

  Equally unhurriedly, the Plymouth nosed out into the traffic stream and drew away.

  The clock above Zimmermann's stand moved on to 11:26. From the moment when Napoleon Solo twisted the handle of the street door and entered Del Florio's shop to the time when the driver of the car pulled away from the curb, the snatch had taken exactly forty seven seconds.

  The few passers-by who had noticed three men and a girl carrying an unconscious man across the sidewalk to a car were still staring as the Plymouth reached the intersection and caught the lights on the green. The cop coming forward to hand the driver a ticket for parking by a fire plug was still half a block away.

  And by the time the girl watching the monitors in Reception had come to her senses and plunged her finger down on the alarm button, the getaway car had disappeared in the swirl of mid-morning traffic.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A Well-planned Affair

  Irritably, Alexander Waverly tossed his pipe on to the pile of reports in the middle of his huge desk. "Why?" he exploded, spreading his arms wide in exasperation. "Why? Why? And again... why? What good is it going to do anyone in this day and age to kidnap Napoleon Solo? What's the point?"

  The briar teetered on the edge of a thick folder, overbalanced, and clattered to the surface of the desk. A twist of tobacco spilled out on to the polished wood and came to rest precisely opposite its reflection.

  By the only window in the big room, Illya Kuryakin, Russian-born, naturalized American, respected equally in Moscow and Washington, stood gazing out across the river at the glittering glass column of the United Nations building. Below his high brow, the blue eyes were troubled.

  "You say he was not on assignment?" he queried, swinging round to stare across the desk at his chief.

  "Absolutely not. He'd been in Geneva for a week, acting as observer at a routine conference called by Interpol. I sent him there as the next best thing to a vacation." He stared bleakly at the Russian. Waverly's ideas on the uses of leisure were not always shared by his staff.

  "You don't think he could have... stumbled... something else while he was there?" Kuryakin asked hesitantly.

  "I'm certain he didn't. Damn it, he called me from the airport this morning"—Waverly dragged a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted the ornate dial—"less than two hours ago."

  "Then all we can do is collect every conceivable fact we have on the kidnapping itself, and work, as it were, outwards from there."

  "Yes, I suppose it is," Waverly growled. "Would you like to get on with it, Mr. Kuryakin? You can have as many men as you want. Number One priority, of course, and any help you need from the FBI, the CIA, Interpol, or the New York police department." Fumbling in the pocket of his shapeless jacket, he produced another pipe and began absentmindedly to fill it from a stone jar which was resting on a shelf beside the door. A green light set high in the panelling above began to flash on and off.

  Waverly pressed one of a row of buttons set in a platen on the desk. "Yes, Miss Riefenstahl?" he called. "What is it, please?"

  The girl's voice was deep and musical, with just a trace of accent. It came from a concealed speaker behind a bookcase. "Excuse me to interrupt, but you did say to tell you... Lieutenant Trevitt of the local precinct house is here."

  "Have him come in, please."

  "Right away, sir."

  U.N.C.L.E.'s Head of Policy and Operations looked up and caught Illya Kuryakin's eye. "It's ridiculous!" he burst out, stabbing the stem of the half-filled pipe forward like an accusing finger. "Our own Chief Enforcement Officer, our star operative, snatched from under our very noses, practically inside our own HQ. It's... it's... almost indecent. I cannot think how Mr. Solo could have fallen for such a... It's most embarrassing. Most."

  "You haven't actually given me the details of the kidnapping" the Russian reminded him gently.

  "Eh? What's that? Oh... well, it was simple enough, in all conscience. Somebody tricked Del Florio's assistant into going to an uptown apartment block to collect some stuff for pressing. Of course it was a decoy call: there was nobody there to collect from. While he was away, they came to the shop, knocked out the old man and stowed him below the counter, and then put in a ringer."

  "A... ringer?"

  "Somebody to impersonate him. Someone sufficiently like him to pass muster in the shadows at the far end of the shop, with his back to the door. There was a girl, too. A blonde in a white overall."

  "Is Mr. Del Florio all right?"

  "Yes—apart from a sore head. But he can't help us much. Apparently he was at the back of the shop, and they slugged him from behind. Can't remember a thing after his assistant left on that phony call."

  "None of our people coming in and out noticed anything of all this?"

  "According to the reports, it was exceedingly well timed." Waverly picked out a paper from the top folder. "Let's see ... Goldstein went out at 11:03. Del Florio and his assistant were both there then, definitely. He talked with them. Pasquali came in at 11:19—and he's fairly sure the old man was there, though he didn't notice the assistant. But in any case the door from the booth to Reception must have been working properly, because he used it. Yet by the time Solo arrived six minutes later, at 11:25, the substitution had taken place and the trap had been set. They must have moved in the moment Pasquali was through."

  "What did they actually do, sir?"

  "Fixed up a neat little device. There was a small canister of gas lodged underneath, but out of range of, the lens of the monitor camera. The door controls were cut—and when Solo, suspecting nothing, pulled on the hanger, he actuated a plunger which pierced the nozzle of the gas cylinder and released the stuff. Finish."

  "Finish? You don't mean it was...?"

  "No, no. According to our lab boys it was only one of the instantaneous nerve gases—something similar to the stuff we use on our sleep darts. It would knock him out for an hour or so, that's all."

  "Thank goodness far that!" Kuryakin looked relieved. "There's something I can't understand though: even if the canister was out of TV range, why didn't the girl in Reception see them fixi
ng it? They must have been in shot the whole time, surely?"

  "That's something we are looking into right now," Waverly said grimly.

  There was a knock on the door. A soft-bodied blonde with her hair gathered on the nape of her neck by a large black bow undulated into the room. She was followed by a stockily built man with a crew cut and large shoes. "Lieutenant Trevitt," she announced. She smiled once and left.

  Waverly shook hands and introduced the plainclothes man to Kuryakin. "Tell us what you've found out, Lieutenant," he said. "This is a blow to us—almost as much to our pride as to our affections. The sooner we have Mr. Solo back with us the better."

  The policeman looked at the floor. "Tell you the truth, sir," he said, "not very much really. Your security chief seems to have it doped out right. Decoy call. Attack on the old man. Substitution of two members of the gang. Then they rush your man to the getaway car after he has himself pulled the handle to release the gas that knocked him out. Very smart."

  "Quite. Any leads, Lieutenant?"

  "Not too many. Four people carried your man to the car, according to an eyewitness. Must have been another couple of them hanging around outside the shop, I guess."

  "Eyewitnesses? How many of them?"

  "Just the one, I'm afraid—so far as the actual snatch is concerned. Middle-aged woman bringing a suit of her husband's to be altered. At least, she's the only one who's come forward. Must have been others, a sunny day near lunch time, but we haven't located them yet."

  "She got a good view of them?—the kidnappers?"

  "Yes, but the descriptions aren't worth a dime. Blonde girl in a white overall. Silver-haired guy in his shirtsleeves. City gentleman dressed to kill. And a bum. Could be thousands answering those descriptions in this precinct alone."

  Waverly sighed. The lines on his grey face seemed to have etched themselves in more deeply still. "I suppose you're right. What about the car? Did she notice that?"

  "Not to say notice. She thought there were two men—two other men, that is—in the front seat. But that's all she could say. We do have another witness to the auto itself, though—from the other side of the street."