15 - The Utopia Affair (7 page)

"What's to miss? The girls here are cute and there's no regulation against interdepartmental fraternization—we'd probably all go stir crazy if there was." He laughed roundly and upended a brown bottle over his foam-flecked glass. "There's plenty of society, all the television shows a week late, and no news from the outside to worry you."

He gestured around, indicating the unseen guests up in the Lodge or retiring to their cottages. "These rich guys have to pay through the nose for this place; I live here and they pay me! And they're always in such a hurry to leave. Never figure 'em out. Got the best of everything here." He shook his head.

Privately, Illya could understand both points of view. Publicly, Klaus had to establish in advance a valid reason for leaving Utopia after having been at the Park only a month and a half; his cover identity was too valuable to be broken easily. This nonexistent waiter had gotten some of their best agents into some of the best hotels in the world at times when security was getting very tight indeed.

It lacked twenty-five minutes of midnight when Illya returned to his room, tired and a little slowed down by a few sociable mugs of beer, but he had his other job to attend to. He plugged a complex unit about the size of a quart bottle into the wall socket above his writing table and keyed a set of frequencies. The small pilot light on top of the unit flickered yellow as the signal was sent, then shone red for two seconds as the high-speed squirt transmission was received, then green. Illya slipped the featherweight earphones behind his head, allowing the rubber tips to slide into his ears, and touched another button which allowed him to scan rapidly through the tape. Two seconds was short, even for the transmission speed the device used; Waverly didn't talk to himself and no guests had come to #35. Occasionally a clearing throat would activate the recording mechanism for a few seconds, or a door closing in the next room, but there was nothing worth listening to on the tape. Illya pushed a button for recycle, and then triggered the bug in Silverthorne's residence.

This transmission took ten seconds, and the tape took twenty minutes to scan for voices. Nearly to the end, but unspecified as to time, he heard one end of a conversation which brought him back to wakefulness.

It started with the telephone chime and Silverthorne's voice saying, "Yes, thank you... Hello, Sydney. I've got fifteen minutes. Using scrambler pattern three." There followed a few seconds of silence and sounds of plastic things clicking together, then, "Hello test, hello test... hello test, hello test... Ah. There you are. Now, what's the situation in Upolu?"

For a few minutes the tape contained only questions and commentary, most of it impossible to follow, with the long pauses clipped out by the voice-activating switch. Then Silverthorne went directly from a final comment into another subject.

"By the way, I hope you have a tape on this because I'm nearly out of time and won't be able to repeat. There's another guest here named Dodgson. Leon Dodgson." He spelled it. "I don't know what his line is, but he's got a tremendous capability for leadership, is quite widely educated and experienced in a number of fields. I think we could use a man like that, and I want a team of recruiters to meet him when he comes out. Here's his description..."

Illya's eyebrows rose slightly as he reached for the control that would allow him to replay that portion of the recording. He did so, and a wry smile crept across his face. Not likely that any other firm could woo Alexander Waverly from U.N.C.L.E., whatever they were willing to offer. But it would be interesting to see what happened when he was contacted, supposing that they could even find him.

There was no real evidence as to what Silverthorne's firm did—apparently they were large and wide-spread, occupied with import and export, sensitive to political situations all over the South Pacific area, and involved to some extent with scientific research of some kind touching on oceanography. It might be rewarding to look up Silverthorne when he got back to New York and see just what he did. Whatever it might be, the thought of Waverly being approached by representatives of a top executive search outfit was more than moderately amusing.

He filed that tape cartridge and plugged in another one, tapping his third bug in the Security Office. Nothing of interest there—he dozed off twice while routine matters flowed by, and as he disconnected the bug at last and fell into bed, he debated sleepily about removing the trick light bulb from Security. It might come in handy eventually, but there was conversation of some kind going on there every minute, and the time it took to audit the tape was worth more in sleep than anything he had learned from it. As he slipped down into slumber, his last thought was of Silverthorne.

"I think we could use a man like that," Illya quoted mentally, and smiled in the darkness.

Chapter 6

"Q ASSASSINATION."

THE MESSAGE was low priority and had been filed Saturday night, so it was Monday afternoon when the Sydney operator came to it in her stack of routine communications to Central. She signaled for access to Ident and tapped out the request.

1311670233 Z DE: SYDNEY TO: ULCOMP IDEREQ LEON DODGSON RESIDENT UTOPIA SOUTH AUSTRALIA. DESCOD 702-BBG-08-33692.

Five seconds later the message faded from her screen and she was preparing to code the next when the borders of the screen flashed red.

1311670234 Z UCR Q: VERIFY DESCOD LASCOM SYDNEY.

The red flicker meant top priority, and the UCR prefix meant the question was a direct readout from the Ultimate Computer itself, which rarely responded to routine messages with more than a curt acknowledgment. She searched for the tape of Silverthorne's last conversation, checked his description, re-coded it, and verified it. The red flicker cut off and the terse request was replaced by a line of neat block letters: THANK YOU.

She'd probably never know what was special about Dodgson; she didn't care. She touched the Clear button and punched in the next report.

In Freetown, Sierra Leone, a pretty colored girl in a neat gray uniform answered a flashing red light and saw a line of green type march across her viewscreen.

1311670235 Z UCR WAVERLY UNCLE 1/1 LOCATED PROBAB 74%. INFORM COUREP. Q: ACTION ADVISORY.

The operator was there for one reason: to introduce a flexible human element into what might otherwise become a mindless juggernaut of relentlessly irrational logic, basing everything on some piece of false or inaccurate data such as would inevitably pass into the vast memory banks. Her job was to fill gaps purposefully left in the chain of communication; in the present instance the Ultimate Computer had no way of knowing if the Council Representative was asleep, in conference, or didn't care, and her job was to decide whether he should be awakened at half past one in the morning.

She was aware of the Waverly situation; she tightened her lips and reached for a red telephone handset.

1311670241 Z UCR WAVERLY UNCLE 1/1 AT UTOPIA SOUTH AUSTRALIA NAME OF LEON DODGSON PROBAB 78%. Q: ASSASSINATION.

A short elderly man in flowered pajamas sat at a desk in a bare office. The walls were stained concrete, and looked as if they sweated. Acoustical panels stood on painted lines here and there about the room, cables snaked through covered troughs in the concrete floor, and the wide steel desk bore no telephone, no pen and pencil set, no blotter. A screen rose up from its center, a typewriter keyboard extended to the old man's elbow, and a single fat loose-leaf notebook, heavily tabbed, lay open just to his right. To his left stood a beaker of coffee and a half-filled cup.

The message stood on his screen in block letters, awaiting an answer with the patience of the machine. He studied it for several seconds, then turned to the typewriter keyboard. The screen faded as he touched a switch, and as he typed other letters appeared.

DE: COUREP LIST METHODS AND PROBAB SUCCESS.

1311670243 Z UCR Q: DATA UTOPIA. SCANNING FILES.

He had hardly time to read the answer before it vanished and was replaced by five lines.

LOW-YIELD THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON: 97%

HIGH-SPEED SATURATION SHELLING: 91%

INFECTION OF AREA: 42% - 90%

POISON WATER SUPPLY: 82% - 89%

ATTACK DEPARTING AIRPLANE: 62%

The Council Representative stared at the screen and shook his head. Sometimes the Ultimate Computer seemed frighteningly ignorant of the real world. That was his job. He rejected the list and tapped at his key board for a second.

COUREP PROBAB SUCCESS COVERT METH ODS.

1311670245 Z UCR COVERT METHODS PROBAB

SUCCESS 28% - 51%. SAKUDA MATSUJIRO AND

KIAZIM REFET AVAILABLE THRUSH EASTERN.

Q: PULL FILES.

Their files were projected on command from micro film chips, complete with photographs of the gentlemen concerned. The Japanese was just past fifty years old, and the Turk was scarcely five years younger, but the two of them had a record for dealing silent death unmatched and unapproached within Thrush. Refet was better than expert with every weapon known to man; he could hurl a bola, shoot pips out of playing cards, trim moustaches with a bullwhip, juggle a broad axe, spin a quarterstaff and throw tomahawks. His favorite personal weapon was a perfect reconstruction of the original Bowie knife, designed by Rezin and made famous by Jim. He had been seen to nail a flying beetle to a ceiling with it. He was second in rating to his partner.

Matsujiro had been with Thrush only three years. He had brought with him twenty years of training in the secret practices of Shin-Jitsu, and was the only Ninja ever to have deserted the Emperor's bodyguard and sold his traditions for gain. It was said that he could hide from an army in an acre of woods without even climbing a tree; he could kill a man with a blow from a single finger, and could so gauge the blow that his victim would remain unaware of serious injury for several days before the weakened wall of the heart gave way. There was no question in anyone's mind which of the team was the deadlier.

It would be almost noon in Japan. The Council Representative flipped through the tabbed notebook and punched up the satellite code for the Thrush Eastern office in Kiru.

1311670400 Z DE: CENTRAL TO: THRUSH EASTERN PRIORITY WHITE SAKUDA MATSUJIRO AND KIAZIM REFET ASSIGNED UTOPIA SOUTH AUS TRALIA. WAVERLY UNCLE 1/1 UNDER NAME OF LEON DODGSON PROBAB 81%. VERIFY IDENT AND KILL. MAINTAIN COMPLETE SECURITY. EASTERN ARRANGE COVERS ETC. DATA UTOPIA FOLLOWS ON TELEPRINTER. END.

Saturday, five days later, two new gardeners arrived at Utopia. They had been cleared through Park Security rapidly because of a sudden growth of ragweed and a need for moderately skilled help in the wilder sections of the Park. They rushed through Personnel the same afternoon, sat through Orientation Sunday, and were at work in the woods Monday morning.

The fact that they were there and unchallenged was a tribute to their own abilities and the efficiency of their organization. The Ultimate Computer was not quite literally able to move heaven and earth, but it could influence a goodly portion of the latter and occasionally did. Aware of the scheduled Sunday briefing and not wanting the available time before Waverly's departure reduced by a third, it had utilized deep-trance hypnosis to brief the two assassins, staggering numbers of bribes to establish their work record and qualifications, and a high-flying jet with its own legitimate job to drop specific growth-stimulating hormone concentrates over the Park's woodland. Sakuda and Kiazim had arrived in Sydney just as the call went out for experienced and certified help, and went on to answer it almost without stopping for lunch.

They were aware of Silverthorne's presence as a guest at the Park, and they had been told that the Total Security ordered by the Ultimate Computer specifically included him. At the moment, their work kept them away from areas he was likely to frequent, but eventually he might spot them and ask what they were doing here. It would not be unlike Thrush to send an important executive marked for execution to a plush resort for his last few weeks of life, and Silverthorne might understandably be uneasy.

For the moment they studied the situation and waited for a chance to check Mr. Dodgson's exact description against Waverly's. They also studied methods whereby a man might be killed neatly and safely, for they were not men to put such things off until the last moment. They had seen the UCR printout which estimated their maximum probability of success, once inside the Park, at 59%, and they had a personal interest in raising that figure to 100%.

Silverthorne was deeply involved in his War. Dodgson had initially played a cautious, defensive game, sending scouts into enemy territory while guarding his own. Silverthorne had made several successful thrusts already and was picking up a fair amount of strategic territory. One of Dodgson's better tricks had been removing forces from non-strategic areas as an invitation to attack; it hadn't worked.

Then in the second week of the war Dodgson had rallied and counter-attacked, gaining ground with such clear foreknowledge of his opponent's methods of combat that Silverthorne was driven to devise a wholly new style. He held most of his cavalry back from an encounter until the battle was well joined instead of using them in the massed charge. Dodgson halted his advance, pausing to study the change in tactics, and Silverthorne changed his artillery deployment and counter-attacked.

Now the third week had begun and they were temporarily stalemated. Silverthorne had ascertained that the Gamesmaster was unbribable, the Battle Results Computer untippable, and the soldiers themselves unapproachable. So much for the covert transactions of the game. Very well; he was willing to fight on whatever levels were open.

This was the state of his mind as he wandered, late of a Tuesday afternoon, through some of the wilder reaches of the Park towards the north along a network of color-coded trails. He was pacing himself to reach the Lodge with time for a drink before dinner when he came around a small grove of trees and found a sawhorse and notice saying DETOUR—MEN WORKING in several languages, including International Road Sign. With a moment's hesitation he turned to follow the blockaded trail.