The World's End Affair Read Free Page B

nails. Mr. Waverly, we can't waste days and days exchanging pleasantries. This man and his machine almost killed a planeload of people."
     
    The man in the chair was the flight engineer of the Air Pan-Asia jet. He had been given a clean pair of trousers, shirt and other clothing. U.N.C.L.E. physicians had dressed his shoulder wound with fresh bandages. He looked ungrateful and slightly truculent over the whole business. He was a slender, sallow-skinned Oriental in his middle thirties. His lips were compressed primly. His black eyes shone with that fleck of fanatic resistance Solo had learned to recognize as the hallmark of the captured operative of THRUSH.
     
    "Talk," Solo said.
     
    "My name," the man said, "is Flight Officer Hiram Wei. I am so listed on the personnel roster of Air Pan-Asia Incorporated. My flight officer's certificate shows that I was born in Canton in 1929, of an English mother named -"
     
    "Stow it," Solo interrupted. His face was red with fury. He'd had more than enough.
     
    Mr. Waverly gave his pipe a final knock against the marble sill. A pastel phone rang. Mr. Waverly walked past the giant, light-flecked face of the huge computer and answered.
     
    "Um. Oh. Ummm." He took an experimental chew at the stem of his pipe "Very good, Rolfe. Expect you in an hour. What? That big, eh? Remarkable, remarkable. Yes, I saw that particular newscast. I gather the Mayor was rather upset about the unexplained weather phenomena you fellows caused in the neighborhood. Can't be helped, can't be helped. Thanks, Rolfe. Appreciate the extra hours and all."
     
    Mr. Waverly hung up, swung round.
     
    "That was the laboratory," he said, primarily for the benefit of the THRUSH agent. "We have concluded our initial tests of the components of the device discovered aboard your plane. While we waited for our laboratories to finish the preliminary phase we had a certain latitude in this interrogation. Now I'm afraid we must begin to put the parts together, and rather quickly. Will you talk?"
     
    With composure the flight engineer regarded his hands folded in his lap.
     
    "My name is Flight Officer Hiram Wei," he said. "I am so listed on the -"
     
    Mr. Waverly sighed, a sigh befitting the heavy decisions which fell to a man so highly placed in U.N.C.L.E's policy and operations section.
     
    "Obviously drastic measures are required."
     
    Illya said, "I have a nice set of brass knuckles which I confiscated in Athens"
     
    Solo grinned. "The knuckles, Mr. Waverly?"
     
    "The drugs, Mr. Solo."
     
     
    Three
     
     
    Three hours later, Solo, Illya and Waverly waited in a short, aseptic corridor.
     
    The corridor was situated one flight below the planning room. Dim, hooded little bulbs burned along the baseboards in either direction. At either end the corridor ended in double swing doors. It resembled a wing of a private hospital which, in fact, it was.
     
    Solo pinched the bridge of his nose. He glanced at his watch. Illya stood across the hallway. In his right hand he held a drum of magnetic recording tape. Abruptly the swing doors to the right opened.
     
    A long grotesque reflection was cast out ahead of a rubber-wheeled hospital cart. The attendants in white pushing the cart seemed to take forever to wheel it down to the door where Solo impatiently was jigging from one foot to the other.
     
    "Are you having some sort of internal upset, Mr. Solo?" Waverly asked. He appeared exhausted. Pouches showed under his eyes.
     
    "Well, sir," Solo said, "it is getting late. And there's this girl, sir. Her name is Bernice. A charming thing. She'll only be in Manhattan one more night. Since we've already heard the tape of what Chee said while he was under the drugs, I thought maybe we could wait until tomorrow to pursue this matter."
     
    Mr. Waverly knocked his pipe against the wall. "No, Mr. Solo. We are going to proceed from here to the audio-visual conference room."
     
    "Oh." Solo sighed as the cart squeaked up on its big wheels.