III

THE EXCITEMENT WAS quickly quelled, the room cleared for the moment except for Su Yan and the man U.N.C.L.E. had known for so long only as Tixe Ylno. There was no doubt now. This was the biggest wheel of all in Operation Doomsday.

“The pilot was absolutely right, Su Yan” Tixe Ylno was saying. “The difference of a few minutes would spoil the arrival of the device as the test sirens started in our target area. One cannot help admiring Colonel Baker. He has stayed alive to this moment by being sure of everything he does connected with flying.”

Su Yan was not impressed. “He’s not the kind of man I’d care to have in the sort of world I envision after today.”

Tixe Ylno laughed. “It’s highly unlikely that Colonel Baker will survive the holocaust, old friend. Those of us here underground may be the only ones to see the end of this conflict.”

Tixe Ylno paced across the room, stood staring down at Solo sprawled like a rag doll on the chilled flooring.

Solo’s eyes widened. He felt the nausea and sickness spread inside his numbed body. He no longer needed the code name for Tixe Ylno.

The man standing over him was Osgood DeVry, the president’s adviser and confidant.

DeVry stared down at him a moment, his face without any expression. Then he spoke across his shoulder. “Get Kuryakin and the girl in here. There’s no more time for delay.”

“I’ll bring them myself,” Sam Su Yan said from across the room. “We’ll want Dr. Calyort to give him an injection before we get him in here.”

DeVry waved his hand impatiently.

The corridor door whispered open, sighed closed, and Solo was alone with DeVry.

DeVry’s face twisted into a contemptuous smile, staring down at Solo. “You can stop looking at me with such astonishment and revulsion, Solo. It won’t help you to know my true identity. Believe me, you’d never have been permitted to see me, or even hear my voice, except that you’re slated for immediate oblivion.”

He prowled away, then returned. He said, “I cannot tell you how much I’ve enjoyed all these months reading the classified and confidential reports your agency has been making on me under my code name of Tixe Ylno. The very name itself amused every time I saw it—because I do plan exit only for the two great powers of this earth.”

DeVry glanced at his watch, shooting his cuff, and then shaking it down over his wrist.

“The president trusted you—almost more than any other man on earth,” Solo said, somewhat astonished that he could speak coherently, though his body remained in a state of paralysis.

“I’m not interested in sentimentality, or the mistakes other men make simply because they see in you some quality they possess in themselves.”

“You’re one of the most influential men in this country. What is it going to buy you to destroy it?”

DeVry smiled at him coldly. “Its going to buy me what I need.”

“Do you need a world destroyed by an atomic war?”

“At the moment, I do. For many reasons. Most of them you wouldn’t even understand. You say I’m influential as a presidential flunkey? I shall be a great deal more influential in the world that remains—I shall dictate all its terms.”

“You may be talking to yourself.”

DeVry appeared unmoved by this possibility.

“If I am,” he replied, “I shall tell myself that I have what a man of pride must have. Vindication. Revenge for the wrongs compounded upon me, and which I’ve had to take until I simply cannot take them any more.” Solo stared at the man, wondering what had happened to him to cause his mind to break like this—because he saw that DeVry was insane, no longer able to conceive the horror of a world blasted by atomic radiation. What had happened to this man so long trusted and respected by his close friend, the president?

DeVry answered this for him, too. “I tried to warn him. The president—I tried to warn him. He just laughed, and slapped me on the back and wouldn’t listen. Well, he’ll listen now. I told them I wanted a position worthy of my talents, the sort of post I had earned all these years in military and political life. They pick my brains. Then let them put me in a position where I’d be respected for the decisions I either make or influence. Years ago, I was promised the job that I would have taken, would have executed better than it has ever been handled, and would have been contented with. They promised me that I would head Central Intelligence. I even spoke about it to my close friends, relatives. I was filled with pride and satisfaction. It was what I wanted.”

DeVry strode out of the perimeter of Solo’s vision, and then after a moment walked restlessly back.

“I was rated a security risk! Do you hear that? I was rated a security risk. The very fact that I was a security risk triggered a witch-hunt in Washington that dug down to the levels of generals, colonels, and majors in all the branches of the military! Me. Every day, half my life devoted, sacrificed, spent in behalf of the president, and through him this stupid, senseless, ungrateful country. Make a profit. Make a profit. Use all influential power—and discard those who don’t have it.

“Sure, the president kept me on. Politics demanded it. Security demanded it. And I was his friend. But I was now classified as a security risk, and doors that had always been open to me were suddenly closed. Now, after twenty-five years of sacrifice, I was nothing more than a flunkey fetching coffee and bringing in non-classified notes.

“I was a risk—and I could not have the job I wanted more than anything on earth, the job that the president himself had promised me. I had made one mistake—one bad judgment, years before—and it doomed me, no matter how loyal I’d been in all the years since then, no matter how hard I had worked!

“Well, I am a man of pride, and I cannot live with that wrong. It will be avenged!”

“Thank God you didn’t get the post as head of the C.I.A.,” Solo said fervently.

DeVry strode toward him. Solo saw the rage swirl in his eyes, saw the terrible self-control the man exercised to keep from kicking him in the face. His foot lifted, trembled, and his mouth worked.

After a moment DeVry spoke calmly. “Well, it doesn’t matter. The C.I.A. won’t mean much after today, Mr. Solo.”

IV

SOLO WATCHED DeVry turn as a door whispered open across the room.

Barbry entered first. Solo could see her face. She looked ill with fright. Her cheeks were pallid, and her eyes were wild, like some frantic animal’s.

Illya stepped in next. His gaze flew about the room, sizing it up, and then he saw Solo. He forgot Su Yan, DeVry, the guards. He crossed the room swiftly, kneeling beside Solo.

“You’re alive.” Illya’s voice conveyed his relief.

“Just about,” Solo said.

“A temporary condition for the three of you,” Su Yan said.

A guard caught Illya by the collar and jerked him around. Illya came upward on his toes, and kept turning, bringing his extended hand upward into the guard’s stomach. The man gave a little sob of agony and bent double, dropping his gun.

Illya lunged for it, and Su Yan permitted him to get his hands on it before he karate-chopped him across the neck. Illya plunged straight down, landing hard on his face, his arms thrust out before him.

“Heroics,” Su Yan said in contempt. “A kind of illness with these people.”

“If you’ve killed him before he makes that call to his superior,” Osgood DeVry said, “you may live to regret your own heroics.”

Su Yan frowned slightly, then shook his head. “No. I’ll call Dr. Calyort in and have him happy to talk in minutes.”

But as Su Yan turned toward the telephone on the conference table, lights flashed and then dimmed. Su Yan and DeVry straightened, glancing at each other.

“The device is being removed to the lift,” Su Yan said.

“We have flight time to make the call.”

The two guards left the room ahead of DeVry. The man whom Illya had attacked still walked slightly doubled over, but carried his weapon again.