[Magazine 1967-­05] - The Synthetic Storm Affair - Edmonds I. G. - Страница 14

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"Very well, sir," Solo said, getting up.

"The Waterloo last made port in Honolulu," Waverly said. "I suggest your start there. See if you can pick up any information that might have been inadvertently dropped by any member of its crew."

"With his luck," Illya said with a grimace, "he'll run into a grass-skirted hula girl who has all the information. While I'll be tangling with a girl who goes around hitting me on the head with a gun—when she isn't trying to shoot me!"

A red light flashed on the emergency circuit on Alexander Waverly's desk.

"Yes? Waverly here."

The two men saw their chief's face grow bleak. Waverly hunched forward in his chair. His hands clinched momentarily into white-knuckled fists before he got command of himself. Then he leaned back in his chair, once more the human machine who directed the world's greatest crime fighting organization.

Solo and Kuryakin waited tensely. On emergency calls the first call came on a secret earphone monitor so that no one could hear expect the chief himself.

Waverly, after his first review, touched a switch which opened the circuit to a loud speaker so his two top men could hear.

"How could something like that possibly happen?" Waverly said.

"She just outsmarted us, is all I can say, sir," the unhappy reporting voice said. "We followed her to Manhattan. She registered at the hotel and then went to a late movie. We followed her inside. She went to the ladies room on the mezzanine floor and did not come out."

"So?" Waverly said.

"We got the janitoress to investigate for us. Apparently Miss de Rosa climbed out the window which the theater staff uses to change the billing."

"At this time of night there are not many people on the streets," Waverly said. "A pretty girl like her would certainly attract attention walking alone. Call in all the assistance you need. We must find her!"

"Well, she didn't go on the street," the agent said, his voice sounding even more unhappy. "She came back into the theater and went into the ladies room on the ground floor. There we found her dress and the broken tooth of a comb. From this we surmise that she changed clothes and altered her hairdo. It is quite possible she walked right past us without any of us being aware of it."

Waverly leaned back and sighed.

"There goes our best lead!" he said bitterly. "If the Waterloo lead frizzles out, we really are in a fix!"

ACT VII: GIRL IN THE DARK

For the next five minutes, Alexander Waverly sat hunched over his control panel, issuing a string of orders that diverted the world-wide facilities of U.N.C.L.E. to cope with this new emergency.

Every international airline office was covered, both in the United States and abroad. A complete physical description of the girl was transmitted. Each operative had orders to get a voice sample of any woman who outwardly resembled the fugitive in the slightest manner. This was to be transmitted immediately to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, where it would be transcribed into a voiceprint for comparison with the master prints of Lupe de Rosa's voice.

In the meantime teams of investigators tried to track down any person who may have seen a woman leaving the Broadway theater at about one in the morning.

Dozens of leads turned up and were proven false. Hundreds of voice prints poured into U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. In no case did the jagged oscillograph lines match those on file of Lupe de Rosa.

Both Solo and Illya were anxious to join the search, but Waverly insisted on keeping them with him. Than after an hour he sent them down to the headquarters dormitory to get some rest. Because of the excitement and urgency, both had difficulty getting asleep. They had just managed to drop off when Waverly summoned them again.

They found the U.N.C.L.E. chief standing at the window looking out over the dawning skyline of the city. He turned when they entered.

"We have not been successful," Waverly said, coming back and seating himself at the console desk. "That leaves us only one alternative. We must proceed according to the law of probabilities."

Illya grimaced. To him this reliance on mechanical computers to analyze a situation and give a probable answer based on the evidence was little better than a hunch. Although he had seen it work many times, he was never fully convinced that they would not sooner or later come to disaster by relying on what he called "the might-to-be."

Waverly caught the twist of the little man's face.

"Do you have a better suggestion, Mr. Kuryakin?" he asked.

"No, sir, not at the moment," Illya said.

"Then proceeding on the probabilities is better than not proceeding, isn't it?" Waverly asked.

"Yes, sir," Illya said, but his voice still held an element of doubt.

"Well, I have had all the known facts about this synthetic storm affair fed into the computers. This includes all the data we have on what appears to have been THRUSH's tests, all the information and rumors we have picked up from our spy sources within THRUSH, and all known information on Miss de Rosa. We also fed in what little we know about the Waterloo."

"And the answer, sir?" Napoleon asked. He had much more faith in the law of probabilities than his friend.

"The computer indicates that there has been more activity in the Atlantic than in the Pacific. This indicates that THRUSH has not been as successful in breeding typhoons as they have in originating hurricanes. They are the same, of course, except one originates in a different section of the globe. This trouble may arise from some climatic condition in the Pacific which is giving THRUSH trouble.

"The computer then gives us the probability that THRUSH will shift its full operations to the Pacific to solve this problem. It is essential to any storm-weapon plan that THRUSH be able to strike simultaneously all over the world. The probability also is that Miss de Rosa will go immediately to join the Waterloo."

"Is there any indication what this girl's role is exactly?" Solo asked.

"None," Waverly said. "As Santos-Lopez's assistant, she presumably knows a lot about his work in destroying storms."

He got up and faced his two top agents. "Gentlemen, you will leave for Honolulu immediately. I'll expect a report from you from there at three this afternoon."

"Three!" Illya said. "That's impossible. The—"

"Mr. Kuryakin!" Waverly said severely, "Impossible is a perfectly good word for anyone except an employee of U.N.C.L.E.!"

"Yes, sir!" Illya said.

Waverly extended his hand, first to one of the men and then to the other.

"Good-by—and good luck!"

In the hall Illya said to Solo, "You're the brains of this team. How do we get to Honolulu by three? By taking a helicopter to Kennedy International Airport we can just make connections on a jet to San Francisco. But what do we do there? I'm familiar with the schedules on Honolulu flights. We'll have a two hour layover in Frisco."

"Don't hand me your problems!" Napoleon retorted. "You are supposed to make the 'difference,' aren't you?"

"It's your problem as well as mine!"

"Is it?" Napoleon said with a smile. "It seems to me that Mr. Waverly told you to report at three. He said nothing about me."

In San Francisco the two men from U.N.C.L.E. went directly to the airline ticket counter to check their reservations for the first flight out to Hawaii.

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