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

"Of course I'm serious," Waverly said testily. "And for whom else would it be an assignment, if not for the Command?"

Solo gulped. Perhaps the old man was going out of his mind. Maybe the blow on his head had been harder than anybody realized. He would have to play it very cool if he was to prevent the head of Section One from making a fool of himself.

"Mr. Waverly," he said seriously, "we go into action if there's a possibility that the balance of world power may be threatened. We can operate secretly within the boundaries of member states if there's a chance their stability is endangered—in a currency coup, for example. We can work supranationally, when an international conspiracy such as THRUSH poisons or weakens the relationship between states."

"Well?"

"Well... well, surely... I mean... Well, we couldn't go into Holland to investigate this little nest of smugglers or whatever it is. We wouldn't have the right to."

"Why not?"

"Why, because... look—I understand you're sore at being roughed up by these characters. It's natural to want to hit back. And our conversation of a few minutes ago was an interesting exercise in deduction. But Mr. Waverly, that's a very different thing from ordering an official investigation by the whole U.N.C.L.E. apparatus! Surely a setup such as we envisaged—even if we were right about it—would be entirely an affair for the Dutch and German police departments working in liaison? Perhaps for their counterintelligence or special services. At the very most for Interpol."

"But not for us, you think?"

"Well, good heavens no!" Solo burst out desperately. "We have no mandate for that sort of thing. We'd be interfering in the internal affairs of a member country. If we did it with out their knowing and got found out, there'd be hell to pay! And I could never justify asking for their help, on the other hand, if they themselves hadn't called us in. You must know that, sir."

Waverly was chuckling. "And you are quite right, of course, my dear Mr. Solo," he said urbanely. "There are, however, some facts you do not yet know."

Solo subsided into a chair. What was coming next?

"You're thinking too much about me—the man who was taken by mistake—and not enough about the man who should have been there," Waverly said.

"Fleischmann

"Yes, Mr. Solo. Fleischmann. I've checked up, and I think I know who he is—and if I'm right, then you are wrong in thinking the good Willem seeks his clients on the east of Amsterdam docks! For Fleischmann would have come from the north."

"The north!" Solo echoed in astonishment.

Waverly nodded. "From Denmark. Outside the North Friesian islands, and then inside the East and West Friesians and through one of the giant sluice bridges beneath that extraordinary road causeway that blanks off the mouth of the old Zuider Zee. Once through there, it's only a matter of forty-five kilometers or so before you hit Oost Flevoland."

"What makes you so sure?"

Waverly lifted his pipe from the folders on his desk and stuck it once again between his teeth. He raised the top folder, opened it, and took out a sheet of onionskin.

"Fleischmann, Ralph," he read. "German national sentenced to six years' imprisonment for his part in a huge company swindle in Copenhagen. He was being transferred to a maximum-security prison last week when the van in which he was traveling was ambushed near Kolding, in Jutland. He hasn't been seen since."

Solo whistled. "And you think...?"

"The team who got him out are tough boys," Waverly continued. "A guard was killed when the van was rammed, and another—the man to whom Fleischmann was hand cuffed—was seriously injured. They couldn't unlock the cuffs, so they amputated the man's hand—just hacked it off while he was still conscious, so that they could get Fleischmann away."

"But that's barbarous! And this was Willem's client?"

"I think it was. Obviously there'd be a close watch on places like Esbjerg, Malmo, Kiel, Cuxhaven, Lubeck, and even Oslo after a deal like that. But who'd think of looking for him on the Ijsselmeer?"

"I see what you mean. But what would have happened when he did arrive and found out that you'd inadvertently taken his place beforehand?"

"I don't think he ever did find out," Waverly said. "I think the reason for his lateness, and for Willem's apparent inefficiency, lies in this..." He picked another piece of paper from the file and read:

"'A converted torpedo-recovery boat, 82 feet long and equipped with sleeping accommodations for six, broke in half and sank instantly when it was rammed by a tanker in ballast between the island of Terschelling and the Dutch coast last night. There was light fog at the time of the collision, but the forward lookout aboard the tanker stated that the smaller craft was carrying no navigation lights. It is thought that there were at least three people on the TRB, though neither survivors nor bodies have yet been found. Dutch marine authorities said they had no knowledge of such a craft operating in the area of the Friesian Islands.'"

Waverly laid the paper down and closed the file. "That news report was dated the day of my—er—abduction," he said. "That is, the collision would have occurred on the previous night—though none of the men who passed me along the escape chain in the afternoon would have heard of it."

He opened another folder and spread several sheets of onion skin on the polished surface of the desk before him.

"I'll draw your attention to three more apparently unrelated items," he said. "First, one of the courtesy carbons we get every day from the CIA. This one is dated three weeks ago and it says, quote: 'We have now received confirmation that Colonel Stulkas, the U. S. army flyer-turned-pacifist who vanished from his mess near Stuttgart a week ago, is in a Russian-staffed officers' club on the outskirts of Dresden.' Unquote.

"Second, an Interpol memorandum stating that a certain Ferenc Sujic, who robbed a bank at Plzen, in Czechoslovakia, of close to half a million dollars last month, was thought to be on one of the Peloponnesian Islands in the Aegean. It adds," Waverly commented dryly, "that he was believed to have spent several days in Liechtenstein on the way! No doubt to bank some of the money and form a tax-free company or two!

"And the final exhibit is a newspaper cutting. This is a story that has, as it were, a beginning but no end—yet— whereas both the others were complete, inasmuch as you knew where the subject came from and where he went. Here, though—read it for yourself."

The agent took the slip of newsprint and read,

PARIS, Tuesday—Gerard Mathieu, "The Man They Can't Convict," has got away with it again! The stocky nightclub owner, summoned to appear before an examining magistrate today on charges concerning a gang shooting in Montmartre last month, had fled just before detectives from the Police Judiciare arrived at his plush avenue Marceau apartment.

A spokesman from the quai des Orfevres 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 Cote d'Azur in a south easterly direction late this afternoon.