The Unfair Fare Affair - Leslie Peter (книги онлайн полностью бесплатно .txt) 📗

But the intruder was not bent on mischief. He walked quietly across, clicked his heels, and said in clipped, formal English: "Good day. I should like to speak with Alexander Waverly, if you please."

The girl was trained to deal with unexpected situations, but this one threw her a little. People did not customarily walk calmly in through the Command's most secret entrance and expect to see the boss! "I... er... I'm afraid it's not… well, it's usual to make an appointment," she stammered finally.

"I have not the time to waste on formalities, protocol, what you call the pink tapes."

"Red tape, sir. Yes... But I'm afraid... Can I have your name, please?" the girl said hurriedly, clutching at a straw of routine.

"I am Colonel Ladislav Hradec, of a branch of the Czechoslovak military intelligence with which you would not, I imagine, be familiar."

Back on home ground, the girl became crisp and efficient again. "Just a moment, Colonel," she said. "If you would kindly take a seat, I'll call somebody who can deal with your case."

"I am not a case. I wish to see Waverly."

"Yes, Colonel. If you would just take a seat, sir…"

A minute later Jim McGrath, the forty-year-old ex-FBI man responsible for the internal security of the building, was standing beside the visitor. He explained in some detail why it was impossible for casual passersby—however eminent—to see Waverly, especially if they had illegally entered by a secret route. The Nigerian girl watched them—McGrath with his toothbrush moustache bristling, his eyes wary behind the rimless glasses; the Czech standing stiff and correct, talking with the minimum of gesture, his attitude inflexible. She'd put her money on the foreigner, she thought privately; there was a certain assurance about him that simply would not admit the possibility of defeat.

And it said much for the colonel's air of authority that she proved to be right. Within ten minutes McGrath, all smiles, was personally conducting him to Waverly's office.

"But of course, Colonel Hradec," Waverly said, glancing at the small visiting card in his hand. "You are well known to me by reputation. But why did you not telephone to make an appointment? We would have sent a car for you and you would have been properly received. I must apologize for the embarrassment to which you have been put. But you must appreciate that we have to take certain precautions."

"Understood. I did not telephone because you might have been officially 'out' and I have little time to spare. Western officials are not always too keen to meet people from what they call the Eastern bloc."

Waverly had been filling an ancient briar from a pouch he had fished from one of the baggy pockets of his jacket. Now he laid these down and held up an admonitory finger. "Really, Colonel," he said, reprovingly, "I'm afraid I simply must take you up on that remark. The Command is in no way affiliated with the Western powers. As I am sure you must know very well, we are a strictly supranational organization. We go wherever we are needed, when we are called. We have on numerous occasions answered calls in the Soviet Union, in Poland, in Yugoslavia, in Eastern Germany. It is not our fault if those countries call us in less frequently than the others. We are always ready to come."

"Perhaps it is that the societies of those countries are ordered in such a way that there is less need for you there…"

Waverly inclined his head in polite acceptance.

"But you have to admit that U.N.C.L.E. appears to be, shall we say, an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, at least superficially," Hradec continued. "Its headquarters are near the United Nations"—he gestured toward the room's one window, in which the U.N. building was precisely framed— "many of its staff are American, and much of its operational potential is American-financed."

"We can hardly be blamed," Waverly commented, "if certain states have not fulfilled their obligations with regard to the appropriation that was voted to us."

"Agreed," the colonel said. "But whatever the cause, the effects are unfortunate. Nevertheless, I was interested today to make my way into your—er—fortress by unorthodox means, because it was an instructive exercise and it afforded me the opportunity to test the efficacy of our own intelligence services, who had supplied the necessary information."

"One trusts that you found the experience... rewarding," Waverly said dryly.

"Most, I thank you. A few of the interior details were missing—I did not know about the steel doors, for instance. But the briefing on the approach and entrance itself was admirable. I found my way to the correct shop, and through into the Reception area, with no difficulty at all."

"Splendid! I imagine, however, that this was not your sole reason for visiting New York?"

"By no means." Colonel Hradec cleared his throat. For the first time he appeared almost at a loss. "What I have to say may appear odd to you," he ventured at last. "You will agree that, in whatever equivocations we choose to clothe it, there is a difference—between East and West, I mean!"

Waverly nodded. "Of course. Difficult to define, but it's there."

"Exactly. And because of it, we are committed, those of us in my trade, to an endless chess game, an elaborate ritual of denial and counter denial, of claim and rejection, which makes nonsense of truth and actuality as we know it to be. It is a convention, absurd perhaps to an extreme, but one that is imposed upon us by our masters and one we must follow."

Waverly nodded again.

"If an espionage agent defects from country A to country B—probably because he has a girl there or because the money is better—country A will deny that he has defected, they will deny that he was a spy, and they will deny that, if he was a spy, they knew anything about him. Country B, on the other hand, will in turn deny that it offered the man money and try to make out that he came because he had become convinced of the rightness of that country's way of life over the other's."

For the third time, Waverly's gray head bobbed up and down. He stuck the pipe between his teeth and reached for the pouch again.

"Within the framework of these non-real conventions," Hradec continued, "any attempt at genuine cooperation is impossible. But when we come to the question of malefactors, of lawbreakers, of wrongdoers, and crooks, as you call them—as distinct from ideological agents, that is—then quite another set of conditions obtains, does it not?"

The colonel walked to the window and stared out at the storm clouds massing over the tangled roofs of Queens. "In the case of vulgar felons," he said bitterly, "since they cannot in any way advance the cause of our respective dialectics, then we can afford to cooperate. Is not that so?"

"I'm afraid you're right," Waverly said quietly.

"Very well. I am here, then, to offer cooperation—or, rather, to make a suggestion which you are of course free to accept or reject as you wish."

Waverly looked at the trim little man expectantly, his hand arrested in the act of reaching for a box of matches.

"We are as anxious as you are to inhibit the activities of the conspiracy calling itself THRUSH, for example. And that anxiety extends to any other organization which might be a potential help to THRUSH," Hradec said, adding astonishingly, "there exists an escape organization in Europe which comes under that heading and which it would be to everybody's advantage to destroy. I assume you have heard of it?"