18 - The Unfair Fare Affair Read online

  A spokesman from the quai des Orfèvres told me tonight that although they had thrown a ring around Paris immediately, Mathieu—against whom further charges involving extortion and drugs may soon be lodged—seemed to have escaped the net.

  "We have every hope," the spokesman said, "that the malefactor will nevertheless be safely under lock and key within forty-eight hours." Underworld sources close to Mathieu were openly scornful of this claim this evening. I was told definitely that the wanted man had already left metropolitan France. Further rumors current in Montmartre hint that "The Man They Can't Convict" may be back among his own people in Corsica—and officials at Nice Airport confirmed that an unidentified private aircraft flying very high crossed the Côte d'Azur in a south easterly direction late this afternoon.

  If Mathieu has in fact gone to ground in Corsica, informed opinion is that he will never be found by the mainland police. Born forty-eight years ago in Bastia, he is known—despite his record—to have become something of a hero to the people of the island.

  Solo handed the clipping back without comment. He looked at his chief with raised brows.

  Waverly was smiling, a benevolent owl behind his glasses. "Four movements," he said. "One south and east—from Denmark through Holland to Germany. One eastward, conveying someone behind the so-called Iron Curtain. Another west and then southeast, bringing someone from behind the Curtain. And finally one supposedly south, from Paris to Corsica. A swindler, a deserter, a bankrobber, and a gang boss. What have they all in common, Mr. Solo?"

  "That they're all on the run, I suppose—three of them from the law and the defector from the U. S. army authorities."

  "Nothing more?"

  Solo thought for a moment. "I guess not," he said at last.

  "Mr. Solo, you disappoint me. This suggests to me—taken in conjunction with my own experience—that there exists a highly organized and efficient escape network spreading all over Europe, that it is nonpolitical in conception (witness the two-way traffic vis-à-vis the Eastern bloc), and that persons availing themselves of the service can be transported in speed and apparent comfort from any European country to any other."

  Solo looked dubious. Beneath brown eyes, the set of his cleft chin was stubborn. "If you don't mind my saying so, sir, I think you're deducing a lot from a very few facts," he said. "And even assuming you're correct, I still don't see…"

  "That we have any right to investigate such a network?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Waverly joined together the tips of his fingers and sup ported the soft underside of his jaw on the steeple so formed. "By the book, of course, you are right," he said. "But I have a hunch; I'm certain I'm right—facts or no facts. And that being so—"

  "Oh, look, Mr. Waverly," Solo broke in agitatedly, "we can't... we simply cannot go in there and stir things up! It's none of our business."

  "Agreed, agreed. But consider one thing, Mr. Solo. Suppose for the sake of argument that such a network does exist and suppose, further, that its organization is highly efficient—would not such an apparatus be a natural target for a takeover bid, as it were, from THRUSH?"

  "You mean THRUSH could infiltrate it, make a satrap of it?"

  "Exactly. And if THRUSH did find such a ready-made form of assistance at hand and did take it over, would that not be our business?"

  Solo sighed. "I guess it would," he said reluctantly. "But..."

  "Yes, Mr. Solo?" Waverly was grinning impishly.

  "But we'd have to be very sure before we took any action."

  "And that," Waverly cried triumphantly, "is all I'm asking you to do—go to Europe to make sure!"

  His Chief Enforcement Officer sighed again. "Yes, but it isn't as simple as that, is it, sir?"

  "What do you mean? Surely it's better to prevent something bad happening than to wait for it to happen and then act afterward? And don't forget THRUSH could not only take the network over: they could also use it as a kind of recruiting channel––diverting the more clever and less scrupulous of the crooks using it toward their own ranks!"

  "Look," Solo said quietly, "it's all very well for us to talk of prevention—but how? What machinery are we going to use? There's a certain protocol in these matters. Since I'm going to have to work undercover, without the knowledge of the authorities, how do I tell them about the organization, if I find it does exist, without revealing that U.N.C.L.E. has been poaching on their private property?"

  Waverly blew bubbles through the damp tobacco in his pipe. "I admit that if I'm proved right, it will lead to certain––ah—problems of etiquette," he said carefully. "We should have to evolve some formula whereby we appear to have— er—come by the information honestly. And then give them the chance of clearing it up themselves, handing it over to Interpol, or asking us to do it for them. Obviously, as you say, we couldn't just barge in and mop it up. But let's leave that until later; we can deal with it if and when the problem arises.

  For the moment, the important thing is to find out if there is such an organization, how it works, and whether any approach, overt or covert, has been made to it by THRUSH."

  "All the same," Napoleon Solo began, shaking his head, I'm not at all happy about our position with regard to—"

  Waverly held up his hand. "My suggestion has now become an order, Mr. Solo," he said firmly.

  Chapter 4

  "Don't Call Us...!"

  YELLOW LEAVES veneered the sidewalk and lay thickly on the surface of the canal running beside it. From a second floor window of the red brick police headquarters on the other side of the road, Napoleon Solo stared through the bare branches of the trees at a row of old houses across the water. Farther along, by a bridge carrying a main road over the canal, the trees had been cut down and there was a line of cars parked with their fenders projecting over the unprotected bank. The sky was gray and a thin, persistent rain was falling.

  Behind the agent, a paneled door opened, and a thickset man in a brown suit bustled into the room. "Very sorry to have you wait, Mynheer Solo," he said, laying down a pile of folders on the carved desk, "but it is well to have all the facts checked, and so I thought it best to verify that my colleagues in other departments have no more information than we have here."

  "That's quite all right," Solo smiled. "It's very good of you to go to all this trouble on our account anyway."

  Before coming to Amsterdam, he had won his chief's reluctant permission to seek the help of the authorities. If they ignored Waverly's own personal experience and concentrated on the international aspect of the supposed escape network, Solo had argued, they could legitimately ask police in the various countries if they had heard of such an organization and, if so, what evidence there was for presuming it did exist. Then, if the consensus was positive—but not unless— they could consider the second stage of Waverly's plan: finding out secretly how it ticked. He had come to Holland first simply because that was where the trail had started. But the results so far were neutral to negative.

  In the somber room papers rustled. Outside, waves from an empty sightseeing launch agitated the leaves floating on the canal. There was a stream of cyclists pouring across the bridge now. It must be nearly lunchtime.

  The Dutchman cleared his throat. "Yes," he said, "well it seems to be that we have very little here what you call the hard facts. Certain informers have reported to us that there does exist such an organization. But we have not in this country suffered any escapes recently of a nature that could have used it. Moreover, when our officers pressed the informers to give details, none could supply any. It does appear that the organization is either very secret indeed... or that it is an imagination altogether."

  Solo had turned his back to the window and was sitting on the broad radiator below the sill. "Nothing came to light— nothing of a positive nature, that is—after the—er—contretemps that befell my colleague, Mr. Waverly?" he asked. They had agreed to suppress the fact that this had been their point of departure, although obviously they could not pla
y it down too much, since Waverly himself had put the Dutch police and Interpol on the trail the day after it had happened.

  "Nothing definite," the Dutchman agreed. "We have still not found traces of the Minerva taxi, the boatman called Jaap, the man Willem, or three supposed Germans in green leather coats. But as this country may have been only an interim stage in the process, perhaps this does not surprise."

  "Do you know if Mr. Waverly's deductions were correct? Have you found out anything more about the collision at sea?"

  "Oh, yes"—the police chief opened more files, rustled more paper—"the boat was salvaged. It was an old German naval craft converted. They found one body on it: it was Fleischmann, all right. But there was no sign of the mysterious Willem or any third man."

  "Still, it looks as though it was to have been a link in the chain that Waverly inadvertently joined, don't you think?"

  "Perhaps, perhaps."

  "Apart from the details that Waverly happened across, your informants can't offer any concrete leads at all, then?"

  The Dutchman sighed heavily. "I am afraid not. It is difficult, you see. Since there have not been any spectacular escapes from here, we have really no reason to investigate such an organization or to verify if it exists. This was just by a chance of cross-referencing that we turned up these few points I have quoted to you. There may be more allusions to it buried in transcripts of evidence or examination of witnesses... but under what subject do we look for it in the files?"

  "I do see your problem," Solo said. "To sum up, then—we can say that it is rumored among police informers that an escape organization exists but that none of them can supply positive facts to support the rumor?"

  "Precisely, Mynheer Solo."

  "And nothing has occurred within police jurisdiction in this country from which the existence of such a network could be deduced?"

  "Nothing." The policeman was ferreting about in one of the folders. He gave a grunt of satisfaction and held up a piece of paper covered in typed notes. "There is just a small thing," he said. "It may not be important. But it says here that the informer who was most positive about the thing had just returned from Vienna."

  "A tale from the Vienna woods. It's not much of a lead," Solo said ruefully. "But it's better than no lead, I guess. Go east, young man!"

  The rented car emerged from the leafless forest and swooped downhill to the capital after dark. Solo's first impression of Vienna was that there were more lights there than he had ever seen in a city before.

  Their brilliance mapped the city against the night, glittering along the main streets, garlanding squares and parks and promenades. Shops, theaters, hotels, and public buildings were ablaze with light—and what made the spectacle more interesting still was that it was all of the same kind. Instead of the usual jungle of red, blue and green neon, flashing advertisements, yellow sodium lamps, and floods, the place seemed to be lit with ordinary white bulbs everywhere—a firmament of silver stars coruscating against the sky in the cold, crisp air.

  Solo left the car at a multistory automat garage in the old Markplatz, where it was whisked aloft and stacked in a numbered niche somewhere far above. He crossed the square and booked in at the Hotel Ambassador.

  There was a full restaurant service on each floor, and a train of white-jacketed waiters with trolleys flung open the tall, narrow double doors of his room and served him dinner at an eighteenth-century marquetry table. There were two wash-basins and two tubs in the bathroom, the wallpaper was in gold and white stripes, and the drapes were in gold velour. Solo slept between apricot-colored merino blankets and drank hot chocolate for breakfast, feeling absurdly like the romantic lead in an outdated Hollywood movie.

  Later, in a glass and steel office overlooking the Karntnerstrasse near the old cathedral, he was brought face to face with the present day.

  The small, secret, and highly efficient research unit—which dated from four-power occupation days and was attached to central police headquarters—was run by a statistician, a one time market research genius who had held a chair in psephology and had been seconded to this post at the insistence of the Ministry of the Interior.

  Watching his lined, intent face as his eyes flicked among the cards of a rotary index, admiring the deft shuffling of his fingers as he sorted those he had selected into categories, the agent was imbued with confidence. If there was anything to be found out about Waverly's escape network, he felt, this was the place in which he would find it. This quick thinking little man with the goatee would come up with the answers—if there were indeed any answers to find.

  "I must compliment you, Herr Doktor, on the efficacy of your system," Solo' said. "I almost pity the criminals who have such an organization to beat!"

  The little man smiled absently. "You are too kind," he said in faultless English. "I am afraid we are not as rapid as we would like. Now that I have the cards, I must ask you to wait four minutes while we program the computer. After that, we shall see…"

  And in precisely four minutes, with a soft thud and a discreet hiss of compressed air, a container dropped into a basket by his desk from the tube leading to the computer room somewhere far below.

  He unscrewed the top and removed the cylinder of paper inside. "Ah, yes, of course," he said. "Typical of the computer! These machines will compartmentalize! One can perhaps have too much of categorization, of placing things each under its proper heading. Still...

  "The computer lists five different species of escape network existing in this country... Assisted Movement Operations, as it quaintly calls them…"

  "Five!" Solo exclaimed in astonishment.

  "Oh, yes. Five. Section One, (a), positive, is an organization for taking willing undercover agents east of the so called Iron Curtain. It operates rather clumsily, beneath the umbrella of one of these student cultural exchange groups. And it is of course financed by the CIA. Section One, (b), positive, is a similar network for infiltrating East European operatives into countries on this side of the Curtain."

  "Run, I suppose, by the KGB?"

  The little man nodded. He ticked off two paragraphs at the top of the paper with a gold ballpoint carrying a black tassel and continued, "Section Two (a), negative, is run by a different branch of the KGB. It occupies itself with the ferrying of unwilling persons from West to East—and it is, not to put too fine a point upon it, an agency for the kidnapping and drugging of scientists, military defectors or other personnel whom they would like to see back, for one reason or another, at secret police headquarters over there.

  "Section Two, (b), also negative, attempts with less success to do the same thing in reverse. Except that instead of running it themselves, the CIA employs a group of barbouzes—unemployed ex-paras from Algeria.

  "I need not tell you the kind of customers these networks have—Burgess, Philby, Blake, the East German security chief who defected and was kidnapped and taken back again, the Israeli spy who was found drugged in a trunk in Rome airport, that French colonel who was abducted in Munich and delivered, bound and gagged, in a van in Paris, the Chinese legation people from the Netherlands—all of these, even if they didn't necessarily pass through Austria, used one of the networks which exist here."

  "You don't mean they are exclusively Austrian organizations?"

  "No, no. Just that because they have branches here, as it were, they thus appear on our computer programs."

  "I see," Solo said. "And what about the fifth category, Herr Doktor?"

  The man with the goatee looked again at his paper. "Ah, yes. Now this... this appears to he rather a different matter. Let me see...Section Three, (a), positive... It just says, and I quote, 'a nameless, noncommitted and nonaligned commercial organization set up to convey malefactors illegally and secretly across frontiers; an escape chain similar to those underground networks passing along allied escapees during the war; an organization for removing wrongdoers from the jurisdiction of those who condemn them.'"

  "Does it say anything about how it wo
rks or who runs it?"

  The Austrian looked at the paper again, frowned, pushed his glasses up on to his high forehead, and frowned again. He turned the paper over, as though he might find on its blank back an answer to the problem puzzling him. And finally, shaking his head, he said unbelievingly, "But no. Nothing at all. It is amazing, but we seem to have no information whatever on this network!"

  "But it does exist?" Solo pursued.

  "Exist? Oh, yes—it exists well enough. It spirited Hans Preisser and Otto Erlich away to Madrid only last week, despite the fact that the entire police force was looking for them after they had absconded with the funds of an insurance company."

  "Exist?" the police captain in Madrid repeated. "Certainly not. There is no such organization, and I am in a position to explain to you that if it did exist, we should assuredly have laid its working bare and apprehended the miscreants operating it. They would be safely incarcerated in our jails! Yet there are no such persons imprisoned in Spain––you may visit the cells and see for yourself. It follows, therefore, that there can be no such organization."

  "One has heard, nevertheless, of a certain senor Preisser and another––a senor Erlich–– who are rumored to have arrived last week from Austria…"

  "There are always rumors in a capital city," the officer said.

  "Clearly. Yet these particular rumors would appear to be well founded, inasmuch as the immigration authorities revealed to a foreign journalist––"

  "Foreign newspaper reports frequently malign this country when the facts show the true picture to be far from dark. It is doubtless a matter of the language difference."

  "The language difference?"

  "Things become distorted in translation," the Spaniard said blandly. He flicked a speck of dust from the polished belt whose shoulder straps crossed his spotless olive-green uniform. "If it should happen," he added carefully, "that this man—Preisser, did you say his name was?—and his companion should chance to be in this country, then it must be assumed that they entered legally, by one of the routes. Had they not done so, as I have already pointed out, they would have been discovered and the clandestine agents who brought them arrested."