The Thinking Machine Affair (3 page)

"Have you any constructive idea on the subject?" the Chairman enquired.

"I have, but this entails overcoming enormous difficulties."

"We are used to overcoming such difficulties," the Chief Organizing Officer remarked smugly.

"Let's hear your idea and decide whether it is acceptable," said the Chairman.

"My idea," the Head of the Technical Department announced, "is to strike first at U..N.C.L.E. because I believe that U.N.C.L.E. is our principal antagonist and must be wiped out before they can interfere with us."

"What has U.N.C.L.E. to do with Professor Novak solving the problem of long-range thought transference?" the Chief Organizing Officer demanded.

"My idea is to overcome Professor Novak's stalemate by linking his apparatus to an electronic beam transmitter and thus attacking the target," the technical expert explained. "But this is where the enormous difficulty comes in. My idea can only work if we can install special electronic beam receivers in the electronic communications circuits inside U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters. To do this, one of our people must penetrate U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, and that, you will agree, is certainly a great task."

"If this is all that's worrying you, put your mind at rest, for it can be done!" the Chief of the Special Tasks Department exclaimed. "The only difficulty would be the actual installation of your special electronic beam receivers within the electronic communications circuits at U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters."

"The installation of such gadgets shouldn't be difficult, for they are so tiny that they can be fixed anywhere along the circuits. As they are equipped with magnetic claws, no complicated fixing is required," the technical expert elucidated. "The man who has to install the beam receivers must of course know where to find the electronic communications circuits at U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, but once he knows the layout and penetrates U.N.C.L.E.'S stronghold, everything else will be simple."

"Under the circumstances," said the Chairman, "I invite the Executive Council to move that 'Operation U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters', as we may as well call it, commences immediately, to make ready for thought transference to U.N.C.L.E. as soon as Professor Novak and his apparatus arrive here."

This motion was approved, then before adjourning, the meeting proposed that the three chiefs involved should meet to finalize the details of 'Operation U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters'.

Ten minutes later the Head of the Technical Department and the Chief of the Special Tasks Department met the Chief Organizing Officer and were discussing the problems before them.

"To eliminate all possibility of failure, it is imperative to know every detail of the U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters," said the Chief Organizing Officer. "If you agree, I propose to feed all the relevant questions into the Ultimate Computer to obtain the necessary data."

Following this, questions were fed into the Ultimate Computer, and soon this information began to stream out.

The U.N.C.L.E. Organization (United Network Command of Law and Enforcement) is centered in a row of buildings in New York City, a few blocks from the United Nations Building. Starting from the south end, this row consists of a three-storied whitestone which appears fairly new in comparison to the brown stone buildings which make up the rest of the street. At the north end is a public garage an active, bustling place in parking-space-starved New York. The brownstones are occupied by a few lower-income families living above the decrepit shops and businesses which rent the space on the street level. Del Floria's tailor shop occupies the street level space in a brownstone near the middle of the block. The first and second floors of the whitestone are taken up by an exclusive "key-club" restaurant named "The Mask Club" which features fine food served by waitresses wearing masks (and little else) to patrons who don masks (covering nostrils to brow) as they enter.

On the third floor of the whitestone is a sedate suite of offices, the entrance to which bears the engraved letters U.N.C.L.E. And in this suite of offices a rather ordinary group of people handle mail, meet, and do business with visitors, in general giving the appearance of some normal organization engaged in a special charity project, or perhaps a Fund Foundation Headquarters.

If one were to investigate (but thoroughly), he might learn that all these buildings are owned by U.N.C.L.E. It is doubtful that he would ever discover that all the personnel involved in the activities of the garage and the key-club are also in the employ of U.N.C.L.E., that many of "The Mask Club" are affiliated with U.N.C.L.E. that even the frowsy tenants of the brownstone, including old Del Floria, the tailor, are actually members of the organization.

If it were possible to peel away the outer, decaying, brownstone skin of the four old buildings in the middle of the sandwich (as it were), a surprising edifice would be revealed. For behind the walls is one large building consisting of three floors of a modern, complex office building—a steel maze of corridors and suites containing brisk, alert young personnel of many races, creeds, colors and national origins—as well as a complex mass of modern machinery for business and communications. There are no staircases in the building. Four elevators handle vertical traffic. Below the basement level an underground channel has been cut through from the East River, and several cruisers (the largest being a sixty-footer) are bobbing at the underground wharf beneath the brownstone complex. If one could ascend to the roof and examine the large neon-lighted advertising billboard rearing up there, a trained eye might ascertain that its supporting pillars conceal a high powered shortwave antenna, as well as elaborate electronic receiving and transmitting gear.

This is the heart, brain and body of the organization named U.N.C.L.E. The personnel of the organization is peculiarly multi-national, its line of work so tending to cross national boundaries, and with such nonchalance, that a daily shortwave message from the remote Himalayas fails to flutter any eyebrows, even though there is no recorded wireless in this Himalayan area according to the printed international codebooks.

On making one's way through the building, one would find it highly discomforting to stray from within certain prescribed boundaries, which are measured by the color of the badge the "Admissions" clerk has pinned upon one's lapel. A chemical on the tips of the receptionist's fingers would have set up a reaction on each badge as she pinned it in place. Any persons passing through certain areas of the building will trip up an alarm unless they are wearing a badge which has been properly activated. On every desk in the building a small red light would begin to flash and a signal is heard beating in a repeating tempo of alarm. Steel doors would then start to slide shut all over the building, forming cabinet-like pockets in which to trap any unwanted intruders.

The Red Badges will admit you to the ground floor which contains personnel and equipment for day in, day out routine operations. Should a Red Badge manage to rise above this floor, the entire unpleasant sequence of events described earlier would occur.

The Yellow Badge will carry one anywhere on the ground and second floors. The second floor contains communications equipment of all sorts as well as various electronic code devices and, in general, any machine equipment necessary for the organization. By now you understand what occurs should a Yellow Badge venture onto the floor above.

The third floor is White Badge territory, with the Policy and Operations offices, the interrogation rooms, the armory, and the various cubicles occupied by the elite of this organization, the Enforcement Agents, during their infrequent visits to this, their home base.

If such a thing as an Organization Chart of U.N.C.L.E. were to exist, it might be found to break down the personnel into five Sections—each Section subdivided into two Departments, with one Department overlapping the Department below it. Thus:

SECTION I: Policy and Operations

SECTION II: Operations and Enforcement

SECTION III: Enforcement and Communications

SECTION IV: Communications and Security

SECTION V: Security and Personnel

There are four entrances to the Headquarters Area. The basic personnel enter through the public garage they drive their cars into the garage, along with the general public, and park them. At this point the paths of these (for the most part, attractive) men and women diverge from that of the "ordinary" patrons. The men make their way into the "Men's Locker" room, the women into the "Women's Locker" room. Behind a wall there is an elevator which descends to a subterranean passage leading to the brownstone area. Here an "Admissions" clerk sits at a desk scanning her closed circuit television receivers, which beam in the findings of hidden cameras in each locker room. "Admissions" will fix the Red or the Yellow Badges and the Admittee moves on to his (or her) respective work area.

The Enforcement Agents will enter through the second entrance, which is located in Del Floria's tailoring shop. Each Enforcement Agent will enter the shop and usually hand Del Floria his jacket for pressing. The tailor will then push a small button on the side of his pressing machine. This releases the "lock", and the Agent will enter the third "try-on" cubicle and draw the curtain. He will turn the hook on the wall (really nothing but a door knob), swing open the back wall and walk through to the "Admissions" desk. "Admissions" would by now have seen his entrance on her closed circuit television viewer. She will fix the White Badge and the Agent is then free to move to an elevator and rise to his floor.

The third entrance is to be found in the general offices above the restaurant in the whitestone building. Here is where the non-U.N.C.L.E. members may be brought in the brownstone area. At the rear of the suite of offices is an elevator. If you are permitted to, you may enter the elevator, which will take you back down to the first floor. A door at the rear of this elevator will open there, admitting you directly into the brownstone building. "Admissions" would, of course, have been watching you in her closed circuit television viewer as the elevator was traveling down and she will fix the proper colored badge to your visitor's lapel.

There is a fourth entrance through the underwater channel in the basement of the building. Of course this entrance can only be used either by boat or a scuba suit—both methods inadvisable unless you are expected. "Admissions" waits for you here, too, with her badges. This entrance (and exit) is generally only used for extremely top-secret movement of the personnel.

The top man at the U.N.C.L.E. organization is Mr. Alexander Waverly of SECTION I. The Policy Department of this section consists of five men of various nationalities, Mr. Waverly being one of them. His office is on the third floor of the brownstone enclave. The only window in this entire fortress is in this office. It lends itself to a panoramic view of the East River with the United Nations Building centered in the middle of the frame...

At this point the Ultimate Computer stopped pouring out the information, and its signals indicated that the "machine with a brain" was ready to be fed with additional questions.

"Having now all the necessary details on U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters," said the Chief of the Special Tasks Department with satisfaction, "we need to know ways and means to penetrate the fortress, where exactly the live nerves of U.N.C.L.E.'S electronic communications systems are situated, and how and where U.N.C.L.E.'S closed circuit and other alarm systems can be put out of action."

His companions agreed, and these new questions were fed into the Computer, which in due course gave out the required information.

"That's it, then!" the Chief Organizing Officer exclaimed. "We can proceed with immediate preparation of 'Operation U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters'." He turned to the Head of the Technical Department and enquired:

"How long will it take you to have sufficient electronic beam receivers ready?"

"Give me twenty-four hours and we'll have more than we need."

"And how much time will you need for training a man to fix your gadgets to an electronic communications circuit?"

"Inside an hour."

"Well, under the circumstances pick your best man and explain the task to him."

In this manner, the scene was set at last for "Operation U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters".

CHAPTER THREE

THE VISITOR WITHOUT A CALLING CARD

ALEXANDER WAVERLY, a lean, dry, somewhat pedantic man in his early fifties, was sitting in his third floor office at U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters, studying a lengthy report from one of his Enforcement Agents in South America. As he sat there, engrossed in the report, he looked like a professor who might specialize in Renaissance history.

He glanced up from the dossier, selected a bulky briar pipe from a rack on his desk and with his fore finger began to fill tobacco into it from a round container. Pressing the tobacco down into the bowl of his pipe with his thumb, he rose and crossed to the window. He stared out at the panoramic view of New York's East River where, from the middle of the tangle of roofs and walls, the United Nations building soared upwards like a huge glass replica of an oblong box.

Waverly was about to put his hand in his coat pocket to fish out a matchbox to light his pipe, when the alarm system went into action, announcing that an intruder had somehow slipped through the safety barriers into U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters. He returned to his chair, placed the unlit pipe on his desk, and switched on the closed circuit communications system to find out what was happening.

"Has the intruder been located?" he enquired calmly.

"Not yet, sir," the information clerk replied. "But he will be, any minute now. Our control room confirms that he was detected by our security devices as he approached the area near the booster-boxes of the electronic communications system and that the protective steel doors slid shut immediately and trapped him in one of the sections."

"Let me know as soon as he's located, will you?" Waverly requested. "I want all details as soon as possible."