The Mind-Sweeper Affair Read online

  THE MIND-SWEEPER AFFAIR

  THE NEW COMPLETE "U.N.C.LE." NOVEL

  It was a house of madness, peopled by men who knew Evil not wisely but too well. Somewhere inside there Solo and Illya must find and destroy a devil's monster that lay bare men's very souls—before it destroyed them!

  by ROBERT HART DAVIS

  ACT I—TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO DREAM

  ANAGUA is the capital of Caragua. The war department building is in the center of the city. On a night in May, at about eight o'clock in the evening, a sergeant of the national army walked quietly along the corridors until he came to an office marked: Major General L. G. Dachado.

  The sergeant stopped for a moment in front of the door, looked up and down the corridor, then leaned his ear against the closed door. Satisfied, he walked on to the next door, which was plain and unmarked. Again checking to see if he was alone, he produced a key, opened the unmarked door, and stepped inside, shutting the door quickly behind him.

  The room the sergeant stood in was dark. Windowless, it had no lights on. The sergeant waited for a moment until his eyes were accustomed to the .dark. Then he stepped quickly across the room to a wall of shelves that held office supplies.

  The sergeant removed a stack of paper, took a small contact microphone out of his pocket, and pressed it against the wall behind shelves.

  The sergeant remained in that listening position for an hour. The telephone rang several times in the office of General Dachado. The sergeant listened, but showed no interest. As the first hour passed, he shifted his position a couple of times, lit another cigarette, and went on listening.

  Ten more minutes passed, and the telephone rang again in the other office. The sergeant came alert, dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. The ringing of the telephone this time had a different sound, as if muffled. A drawer opened, and then the sergeant began to listen intently.

  A moment later the sergeant put his microphone into his pocket, stepped away from the shelves, and moved silently to the door between the storeroom and the office of General Dachado. He took a strange looking pistol from his pocket, changed the clip in its hand grip for another clip he took from his pocket, and opened the door soundlessly. He peered through the opening.

  A tall, skinny man with a long drooping mustache and a dark complexion was at the desk with his back to the storeroom door. The sergeant saw General Dachado talking on a telephone he had taken from the bottom drawer of his desk. Obviously a special telephone, since two other instruments stood on the top of the desk. And the general was not talking—he was listening.

  As he listened, Dachado wrote on a pad of paper in front of him. The hidden sergeant watched the whole scene. There was no one else in the office. At last Dachado stopped writing, nodded to the telephone as if whoever he was talking to could see him, muttered something that was more than a grunt than a word, and hung up. The general looked at what he had written for a moment, then replaced the private telephone in the desk drawer, locked it, and stood up.

  The sergeant opened the door of the storeroom, raised his odd pistol, and something seemed to spit in the room. The general clutched at his neck, half-turned, and collapsed to the floor.

  The sergeant stepped quickly into the room. He bent over and took the piece of paper from the general's hand. It was the message Dachado had written down while listening to the telephone. The sergeant stood above the fallen man and read the paper. The only sound in the room was Dachado's labored and shallow breathing under the influence of the drugged pellet the sergeant had shot him with.

  Nothing moved as the sergeant read the paper carefully. Then the outer door of Dachado's office burst open.

  A masked man in civilian clothes jumped into the room. There was a pistol in his hand. The attacker shot the sergeant. There was no sound, just a short, guttural bark like a sharp cough.

  The sergeant was knocked backwards.

  The attacker jumped in toward the piece of paper that the sergeant had dropped. For an instant his silenced pistol was aimed away from the crumpled man.

  With a burst of strength, the wounded sergeant threw himself on his attacker. The sergeant knocked his attacker down and staggered out the open door into the corridor.

  On the floor of the office the attacker lay stunned for a moment. Then he jumped up and was about to go after the sergeant when he stopped, turned, and picked up the paper again. He read it quickly but carefully, dropped it again, and went out the open door.

  The sergeant staggered on along the dim corridors of the silent building. Once he stopped, leaned against the wall, and looked back at the trail of blood. He shook his head. Then he took off his jacket and pressed it against the ugly wound in his chest. He held the jacket tight against the wound and staggered on.

  He grew weaker as he went, but he no longer left a trail of blood. He reached, at last, a cross corridor at the far end of the building. He turned left and came to another unmarked door. He opened it. A small closet was behind the door. He went in, closed the door, and sat among brooms and mops in the dark.

  The sergeant took a pencil from his pocket. His movements were slow, painful. At last he had the pencil in his hand, a tiny thread sticking up from the top of the pencil like the antenna of some insect. The sergeant bent his face close to the pencil.

  "Control… local. Control... local... come in. This is Agent Forty-Four, come in... Agent Forty-Four…"

  Another voice, soft and faint, was in the closet.

  "Control local. Report Agent Forty-Four. This is control local."

  "Agent... Forty-Four," the sergeant said, his breath coming in gasps. "June seventeenth. Repeat, June seventeenth. Dachado had a call... private telephone… full details of time and place… June seventeenth was the date of..."

  The door of the closet burst open. The sergeant made a feeble effort to raise his pistol.

  Framed in the open door the masked attacker shot twice.

  The sergeant lay dead among the brooms and mops.

  The masked attacker ground the pencil-radio beneath his foot and turned away without a glance at his victim.

  The building became silent again.

  TWO

  IN THE COMPLEX of closely guarded rooms and corridors behind and above Del Floria's Tailoring Shop on the East Side of New York near the United Nations that was the headquarters of The United Network for Law and Enforcement, the female assistant to the Chief of Communications Section listened to the message coming in from far to the south.

  She spun dials and the message, picked up by the concealed antenna in the billboard on top of the building, came quick and urgent.

  When her radio finally went silent, she touched a button on the console. Moments later a door opened by itself and a pair of young men stepped into the room. They looked like college boys. They were neat, well-groomed and young. But the pistols in their hands indicated that they were not college boys.

  "Urgent. To Mr. Waverly direct," the communications girl said.

  The two men nodded. One took the message. The other stood to one side with his pistol ready. The message was in a sealed envelope. Neither of the young men even glanced at the envelope. They acted as if they were aware of being watched constantly. They were being watched—this was how young men who wanted to be U.N.C.L.E. agents started: carrying important data between departments inside U.N.C.L.E. head quarters. Messengers and the lowest level of internal security.

  The two young men walked from the communications room and along a bright grey corridor that had no visible lights, no windows, and rows of doors without locks or knobs. They walked single file, even inside their own security, alert, pistols ready. It was this unceasing vigilance that, in the last analysis, accounted for the e
fficiency of U.N.CL.E. Never relax your guard or your brain, not even in your own headquarters. Anyone could be a spy, and the enemy was resourceful.

  The two young men waited before an unmarked door at the extreme end of a corridor. Unseen cameras scanned them in a matter of seconds. Electronic sensors analyzed them, smelled them, and approved them. The door slid open and the two men entered a small and simple office. An alert young woman looked at them.

  "Priority One, Top Security message for Section I," one of the young men said.

  "I'll take it for Mr. Waverly. He—" the young woman began.

  "No," the young man said. "The message must be delivered into the hands of Section I members only."

  The woman smiled, pressed a button, waited. Another door opened behind her. A man stepped through. A man who looked like nothing but an aristocratic bloodhound wearing sloppy tweeds, smoking an unlighted pipe, and who had flat, innocent eyes and shaggy but neat hair. Unsmiling, the man raised a bushy grey eyebrow and spoke quietly in a clipped, slow, almost bumbling voice.

  "Yes, gentlemen?"

  The young man with the message handed it to the man. Alexander Waverly, Section-I member of U.N.C.L.E. and Chief of all operations in the Western Hemisphere, took the message. The two young men left without a word. Waverly opened the envelope. Then his heavy eyebrows frowned, and he turned and walked back into his inner office.

  The door slid shut behind him. He stood for a moment in the spartan office with its windows overlooking the city, and its com pact electronic complex that kept him in touch with each part of his headquarters and most of the world operations. Then he sighed heavily and went to his desk. He shook his grey head, and looked at the two men who sat at a round table watching him.

  "Colonel Forsyte," Waverly said.

  "There's no doubt?" the smaller of the two men said. His shock of blond hair rested like a halo above quick, bright eyes and a Slavic face. His sensitive mouth framed his words in a clipped British accent. "The colonel is a man with almost a perfect record."

  "An absolutely perfect record," the taller of the two who sat at the table said. A slender man of medium height, he looked like a successful junior executive who had had a slightly too easy youth. Which was a complete fraud. Behind the faintly callow exterior was the mind of a trained agent and the skill and muscles of a commando.

  "I've checked him out," the taller man, Napoleon Solo, went on. "Not a hint of treason. Not even the chance, really."

  "A sleeper, perhaps, Napoleon?" the smaller man, Illya Kuryakin, said.

  "How?" Solo said. The Chief Enforcement Agent of U.N.C.L.E.'S Section-II narrowed his usually humorous eyes. "His background is absolutely known all the way back, and he's no fake."

  "Private troubles?" Illya said.

  "The man's almost a monk, my suspicious Russian," Solo said.

  Waverly watched his two best agents. He said nothing, but let them talk. At last he coughed, began to search in his pockets for a match with which to light his pipe.

  "Mr. Solo is quite correct. There is no hint that Colonel Forsyte is a spy or traitor," Waverly said quietly, his fingers still searching for a match. "Nevertheless, Colonel Forsyte is the man. As we all know, gentlemen, the test was fool-proof. Of the five men, only Forsyte was given the date of June seventeenth, and that is the date our man in Anagua has just reported."

  Waverly found a match and lit his pipe. Solo and Illya were silent. At last Illya Kuryakin spoke.

  "So far data on five secret documents have somehow leaked from the defense department," the small Russian said slowly. "In London and Ottawa, similar secrets have been leaked. In all cases the data was known only to the most trusted personnel. Not a hint of treason or espionage has been found against any of the men involved in any case. No single man was in possession of all the secrets. Counter-espionage has found no suspicious actions. Yet the data is leaking."

  "Yes," Waverly said, sucking on his pipe. Smoke curled to the ceiling. "Which is why we set up this test, as we all know. The date of the Organization of American States meeting to consider Communist infiltration of the Caraguan army was something we knew General Dachado would want to know. That fact would be known to anyone stealing defense department secrets.

  "Each of the five men was given a different date. As you know, each of the five had been present at at least two other meetings where information leaked. All are career men with perfect records. We hoped that Dachado would not get the data. But he has, gentlemen, and the date was June seventeenth—the date we gave Colonel Forsyte."

  Illya's deep eyes frowned. "I followed Forsyte myself. He did nothing in any way suspicious. His normal routine. He did not talk to a single stranger. In fact, he talked to no one unusual in the day since he had the data."

  "Did you ever lose him?" Solo said.

  "I never lose a man I'm following, Napoleon," Illya said.

  "Then we missed something," Solo said. "Or you did. He must have passed the data to someone else. You can't leak data into thin air and have it get to Anagua."

  Illya nodded. "I agree. He must have some transfer set-up so good I failed to see it."

  Waverly blew smoke. "Perhaps, Mr. Kuryakin. That is a definite possibility. However, there is something about all this I find disturbing. Something decidedly odd, and that makes me definitely uneasy. Colonel Forsyte is not a spy. I stake my career on that."

  "One can't always know what pressures will change a man," Illya said quietly.

  "Of course not; I quite agree," Waverly said. "Still, I do not like it. Forsyte has far more important data in his possession. Really vital data that has not been leaked. He has had such data for many, many years and it has never leaked. Now, suddenly, the secrets are slipping out as if on wings."

  "And not just here," Solo pointed out.

  "No, not just here," Waverly said. The Section-I Chief frowned under his bushy brows. "Have you noticed one strange aspect, though? The data that has leaked has no pattern. It is rather random information. That is true in the reports from London and Ottawa. Some is important, some trivial, relative1y speaking."

  "And it leaked consecutively, not at the same time," Solo pointed out. "First London, then Ottawa, now here."

  "Precisely," Waverly agreed. "Once the leaking began in Ottawa, it ceased in London. Once it started here, it ceased in Ottawa."

  "As if whoever is getting the data is working alone, and moved from London to Ottawa to New York," Illya said. "Some big and clever free-lance spy?"

  "It has the pattern," Waverly agreed. "Gentlemen, what do we do?"

  "Increase our observation of Forsyte," Solo said. "One thing I'm sure of is that you can't transmit data without a contact with someone else. And whoever it is, he's probably still in New York."

  "I'm not so sure, Mr. Solo," Waverly said. "I'm afraid our report from Anagua had some bad news. Agent Forty-Four was killed while he was transmitting his message. His body was found in the war department building. Dachado is keeping it quiet, but our information says that he was not killed by Dachado or his men. Our people think there is clear evidence of some third force being involved."

  "The spies?" Solo said.

  "It seems the logical conclusion. Except for the fact that Dachado took the information on the telephone. Agent Forty-Four reported that much. It seems odd that the spies would make the report by telephone, and then appear moments later to kill Agent Forty- Four."

  There was a silence.

  "Someone else trying to move in?" Solo said.

  "Again, it has the sound," Waverly said. "But we can't be sure. We must be sure. We must know who is getting and transmitting the data—and how."

  "Before a third party finds out," Illya said.

  "Yes, that particularly," Waverly said. "I think you both had better start watching Colonel Walter Forsyte very closely. Find out how a man can transmit secret data through thin air."

  The two agents looked at each other.

  THREE

  COLONEL WALTER FORSYTE lef
t his house in suburban Manhasset just before eight o'clock the next morning. He stepped into his car, and drove alone directly to the city. He did not notice the blue Mercedes sports car that followed him. Nor did he notice the small man in black on a motorcycle who rode most of the way just in front of him.

  Illya Kuryakin, on the motorcycle, and Napoleon Solo, in the Mercedes, worked as the well-oiled team they were, keeping in constant verbal contact with their small radios no one could tell they were using. Illya, on the motorcycle, never took his eyes off the road ahead, or the mirror that showed Forsyte's car behind, as he talked.

  "He hasn't even noticed us, Napoleon."

  In the Mercedes, Solo had the best view of the colonel up ahead in his car.

  "No. He acts like a man who never heard of being followed," Solo said.

  Illya evaded a bump in the parkway. "Perhaps he hasn't ever thought about it, Napoleon. Or he's a fine actor."

  Solo speeded up to pass a truck and keep Forsyte within his sight. "Or he's so confident of his methods he doesn't care if anyone watches him."

  "No method of passing information can be that good," Illya said with Forsyte clear in his rear mirror. The colonel was driving easily, smiling and apparently whistling to himself.

  "Hypnosis?" Solo said from the Mercedes.

  "How?" Illya said from the motorcycle. "We've been watching him since he had the information. Or you have. Was he ever out of your sight long enough to be hypnotized?"

  "No," Solo said flatly, as he watched the back of Forsyte's head in the car in front of him.

  The traffic became thick as they approached the city, and the two men stopped talking to concentrate on following their man. Forsyte did not seem in any way suspicious. They plunged into the white echoing void of the Midtown Tunnel and emerged into Manhattan.

  Forsyte turned north to his office in the building of the United States Mission to The United Nations. There the colonel worked as second-in-command of a special global psychological warfare team assigned to close cooperation with the State Department. Forsyte parked and entered the building and rode up in the elevator without noticing the lieutenant who was behind him and rode up in the elevator with him.