[The Girl From UNCLE 01] - The Birds of a Feather Affair - Avallone Michael (книга жизни TXT) 📗

Take away the comforts, the luxuries and the command, and sometimes these cold, calculating types did a faster fold-up than their less complex counterparts.

It worked that way sometimes.

The peculiar gray light that dominated the corridors and halls of U.N.C.L.E, Headquarters cast a steady glow over the interior of the building. April passed through many steel doors and electric-eye protective devices that would have set off a whole battery of alarm systems were it not for the chemically treated badge card pinned to her dress. It was an easy building to get lost in. A far easier building for the wrong person to get in trouble in. Just no place for anyone who had no business there.

She found the cell. It was set in the middle of a long passageway, where a host of other cells loomed emptily. Fried Rice and Pig Alley, being male, would be in another section of the building.

Arnolda Van Atta was lying on her bunk, face turned toward the gray wall. The gleam of white bandages and plaster of paris cast on her damaged leg stood out almost like an electric light in the dim shadows of the cubicle. April reached the grilled bars and looked in. The woman couldn't be sleeping. Not now. Not with the pain of that ankle. Even if they had given her sedatives—

Once again, woman though she was, April could appreciate and even envy the long, shapely, statuesque figure of Arnolda Van Atta. The splendid hips and slender legs and flaming red hair were stunning physical assets in a female.

April placed her hands on the bars.

"Miss Van Atta," she said cheerily. "I know you're not sleeping. I want to talk to you."

The redhead did not stir.

"Now, look, Miss Van Atta. There's no use—"

She stopped, unable to fully absorb the reality of the incredible truth.

Arnolda Van Atta was not sleeping. Nor would she be able to talk to April Dancer or anyone else in this lifetime. Whatever conversation they could have had would have to be resumed in that mysterious place where all spies must go when they die. The good ones and the bad ones. There but for you, spy I.

For even standing where she was, April could now see the bone handle of the knife jutting from between the redhead's shoulder blades. It had gone all the way in, up to the hilt, plunged inward with great force and power. The velvet green dress now bore a wide area of reddish brown where the hilt poked outwards.

But for April, the chilling thought was not that of death. That was something, of course, but not really the shocker. Agents have to get used to the idea of death. Sudden or otherwise. It was a twenty-four hour, around-the-clock possibility and it was always there.

No, that wasn't it at all.

The real killer was that somewhere, right here in U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, no-man's-land for the enemy, there walked a traitor. A live, moving, thinking, deadly adversary whom no one suspected.

I Have Not Yet Begun to Spy

Mr. Waverly was not happy to know that an assassin was loose in Headquarters. Once April had sounded the alarm, setting in motion Maximum Security Regulations all over the complex, Waverly had hurried to the cell block, accompanied by a team of Lab technicians and experts.

There was nothing that could be done for Arnolda Van Atta. Death had been instantaneous.

The assassin had struck her as she lay on her cot, face to the wall apparently. She had been dead barely an hour. Mr. Waverly was extremely worried.

Someone had had the key to open Miss Van Atta's cell door. Someone knew the location of all the alarm systems. Someone was wearing an U.N.C.L.E. badge card who should not be wearing that card. Someone, perhaps one of these very men who were with him, examining Miss Van Atta's corpse, was a THRUSH agent. The idea was chilling.

"No fingerprints on the handle, Mr. Waverly," one of the technicians said brusquely.

"I thought not."

"Chances are good she didn't even see her murderer. She must have been lying there, when he opened the cell door and tiptoed in."

"Yes, I suppose so. Still, he must have been known to her. If he is one of Thrush's agents."

"Floor's empty too," another U.N.C.L.E. man said. He was holding a curious black box whose filtered bottom threw a luminous light that would have shown any form of disturbance on the stone floor. Not so much as a molecule of dust had been disturbed.

"Yes," Waverly murmured. "One who knows all our tricks. Only one of our own kind could have foreseen our using this sort of equipment to detect clues. Still, he has to be someone working against time and there is very little left."

The U.N.C.L.E. agents had nothing to say to that.

The furrows in Mr. Waverly's face deepened as he left the experts to finish their messy work. He asked April to accompany him back to his office.

"Coming, Miss Dancer?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where is Mr. Slate?"

"'Still pounding his ear. Shall I buzz him?"

"Not just yet. We may need him at the top of his form very shortly."

In the office, Mr. Waverly indicated a yellow streamer of teletype lying on the marvelous, circular table. "Read that if you will, Miss Dancer."

April scooped up the streamer. The typed words were short, to the point and not very sweet:

THRUSH FLIES HIGH. FORGET GRAND

CENTRAL. RELEASE ZORKI AT ONCE OR THE

BUILD WILL BLOW SKY-HIGH BEFORE

TOMORROW MORNING. THIS IS A LAST WARNING.

EGRET

"Do you think it's a bluff, Mr. Waverly?"

For once, the old man spread his hands helplessly. His brown eyes were bleak.

"A bluff? What more proof do we need? This woman murdered in our very midst." He eyed April sourly. "Dancer, I hadn't wished to mention this before but this makes it imperative." April felt a cold wave travel down her spine. When Mr. Waverly called her Dancer, she knew how serious things were. In times of great stress, the old man was apt to cut corners and forget the niceties of talking to a woman, even if he was her superior. "There's been a security leak at Headquarters for quite some time. A good deal of our messages have been intercepted across the Atlantic. Papers and files have disappeared at times. Nothing real serious until this. Now I can no longer chalk it up to faulty wireless or careless clerks or a breakdown in our technological equipment. I should have known it would assume these proportions. Thrush has been able to plant these messages in Del Fiona's—the first one was dropped there—and now this comes to me over our own private teletype system. It's baffling. I want Zorki, we must keep him, but if Headquarters is in danger—" He paused, as if hoping that the mere act of talking would bring the solution. April restrained a strong urge to reach her hand out to comfort him, but she couldn't do that. Must never do it. "Look how they were able to single out Mark Slate for apprehension. No, there is someone here at Headquarters responsible for the whole affair."

"If there is a bomb, Mr. Waverly, we can find it. The message doesn't give us a deadline on time."

"That is precisely what troubles me the most. It's so cocksure, so dead certain. Oh, we can screen everyone in the building now. I can have our Lab men and demolitions experts cover the maze from top to bottom. But that will take hours. Hours we may not have to spare. So I must use the ace in the hole that I have saved for this moment. I will set Wilder loose. Let them see that Zorki is walking away from this building, a free man."

April shuddered. "But where's our guarantee? Who will disarm the bomb—if there is a bomb? If they get Zorki, won't they just go ahead and put us out of business?"