[Whitman] - The Affair of the Gentle Saboteur - Keith Brandon (мир книг .txt) 📗

"McNabb?... Waverly here. You can go into that room now... Stanley's. But be careful. Keep Johnson in the corridor as the lookout. I don't want you seen going in or coming out. What's that?... Yes, that's right. I want you to bring out whatever's important. I want all that stuff down here. Use the freight elevator… Yes... Yes, that's right. Then I want Johnson, O'Keefe, and Gaines staked out inside the room. Any visitors are to be taken in... Yes. Very good. See you soon. 'Bye." He hung up.

Solo said, "May I?" and sat down in a deep leather chair.

The Old Man pressed a button on the console

The overhead loudspeaker said, "Laboratory. Phil Bankhead."

"Waverly."

"Yes, Chief?"

"On that Stanley business. I want the report."

"Written or verbal?"

"Both."

"Yes, Chief."

"Now."

"At once, Mr. Waverly."

Phil Bankhead was fat, bald, and brilliant, a scientist of the highest rank. Solo winked at him when he came in, but Bankhead did not return the wink. That put Solo forward on the edge of his seat. Bankhead was usually a jovial soul. Today he appeared anything but that. He was pale, his jowls hung loose, and his dark, bulging eyes smoldered. He acknowledged Solo with a curt nod, went to Waverly, laid a sheaf of papers on the desk. Bankhead's controlled consternation was not lost upon the Old Man. Quite mildly, obviously in an effort to calm Bankhead, he said lightly, smiling, "And what earthshaking information do you bring us, Mr. Bankhead?"

"In one word," Bankhead said, "exitron."

"Exitron," the Old Man said. He clung to his smile but now, as Solo could plainly see, with effort. It hung on his face grotesquely, like a badly adjusted mask, but he kept smiling. He was, after all, the Old Man. "Do tell us about exitron," he said calmly and turned on the tape recorder.

"We thought it was all ours," Bankhead said. "Top-level, top-secret. We thought we were at least six or seven years ahead of them. Seems we're not."

"Tell us about exitron," the Old Man repeated.

"A nuclear explosive, small but clean, no fallout. Small. What is small? A comparative term. This particular atomic concentration hasn't yet been developed for massive warheads, for city-leveling bombs, for the rockets that overnight would change the power structures of the world. Small, the exitron concentrate, but indescribably destructive, and Stanley's device was powered with exitron. The tiny bomb contained in that confounded radio had the explosive equivalent of five thousand tons of TNT."

"And if exploded? What effect on Liberty Island, the Statue, the soldiers of Fort Wood, the civilian personnel, the many sightseers?"

Bankhead's expression said more than a thousand words.

"First things first," the Old Man said. "Please sit down, Mr. Bankhead."

Bankhead sat limply in a chair near Solo. Waverly put through a call to the Pentagon and transmitted his information. It took time. When he hung up he said, "We've exploded our own little bomb in their laps. And now, if you please..."

The buzzer rasped. Waverly flicked a key.

"Mr. McNabb," his secretary said through the intercom.

McNabb carried in two large valises. One contained, carefully wrapped in heavy cloth, four portable radios similar to the one confiscated at Liberty Island. Bankhead examined them. "Exitron—all of them," he said.

"Dangerous, Mr. Bankhead?" the Old Man asked.

Bankhead pointed. "Not unless this switch key is on. Then this timing device is adjusted. Then the electric current from the batteries triggers the detonator. Beautiful job, really. Most ingenious."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd get those deadly little things out of here," the Old Man said.

"Yes, sir." Bankhead repacked them in the suitcase. "One was good. Four more are better. My people will enjoy working them over."

"Enjoy away," the Old Man said.

The other suitcase contained maps, photographs, and booklets of minute detail relevant to five famous sites on the eastern seaboard—including the Statue of Liberty.

"Time we brought in the star of the show," Waverly said.

McNabb packed the suitcase and put it in a closet.

Waverly looked at his watch, then looked at Solo. "And where's our Mr. Kuryakin?"

"I hope not still asleep."

"Perhaps you ought to call him."

Solo called. There was no answer.

"Probably on his way."

"We won't wait." The Old Man punched a button on the console.

The loudspeaker announced, "Detention. Tom Dailey."

"Waverly. Bring up Albert Stanley."

Stanley was small between two burly, armed guards. He nodded to Solo, smiled toward Waverly. His face was composed. His brown eyes were round, innocent, gentle.

"Here, please," Waverly said, indicating a chair by the desk.

The guards let him go forward. He sat in the chair facing Waverly. Primly he crossed his legs. He flicked lint from a knee with slender, graceful fingers.

Waverly glanced at the tape recorder. It churned silently.

"You know where you are, Mr. Stanley?"

"I assume at a depot of UNCLE. United Network Command for Law Enforcement." The voice was soft, smooth, unexcited, the diction clear and precise.

"And you know who I am?"

"A man I greatly admire. Alexander Waverly."

"And I know who you are."

"Thus we start even," Stanley said.

Waverly filled his pipe, lit it.

"You've been treated fairly?"

"Perfectly so."

"And so it shall continue—if you cooperate."

"I believe in cooperation, Mr. Waverly. He who cooperates today lives to cooperate another day."

"Quite the philosopher, aren't you?"

"I pride myself that I am, Mr. Waverly."

The Old Man puffed on his pipe. "All right, let's have it. What the devil are you doing here?"

"Here?"

"In this country. In the United States."

Stanley smiled. He had little yellow teeth. He lifted a hand and wriggled a finger at Solo. "This young man can tell you. If I may so presume, he has told you."

"I'm not asking him. I'm asking you."

"Quite. Well, to begin with, the Statue of Liberty..."

"And Grant's Tomb, the Verrazano Bridge, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial."

"Ah, I see you've studied my maps. Yes. They would have followed one another in quick succession, perhaps several in one day, had I not been—er, apprehended."

"But why? In heaven's name! Why?"

"They are great works, world famous shrines in this country, national monuments—even the bridge, the longest and heaviest in existence."

"To what purpose their destruction?"

The little man patted his pockets. "May I have a cigarette, please?"

McNabb brought him a cigarette and held the match for him.

"Thank you."

McNabb made no reply, but moved off to the side of the room.

"Mr. Waverly," Albert Stanley said. "The Cold War. Propaganda, influence, spheres of influence, world opinion. There are many uncommitted nations Asia, Africa, South America. The two great powers hold off from each other in hot war—there is a stalemate, a balance of weaponry, a balance of terror. But each seeks to win the uncommitted nations, to tilt the delicate balance of the Cold War, to loosen allies, and to defeat treaties by the use of different kinds of weapons—ideas, propaganda, subtle acts, even sensational acts. Our purpose at this time is to make the United States a laughingstock."