The Utopia Affair

CLICK clunk.

"This is DeWeese again. The preliminary report says the station was completely wrecked—walls shattered, steel plate equipment cases ripped like cardboard. The scope trace film magazine was undamaged; the film should be interesting. They found the operator sort of spread around the room, sir; they said as if he'd been… uh, shredded was the word they used. The team's coming up from Wi

"Anyway, now that the Air Force is in on it, I think I'd be able to use an extra pair of hands. I checked with Wi

Napoleon Solo pounded his fist lightly on the table in silent frustration. Now, of all times, to be pi

"John Tuber, Colorado Springs."

Sabotage in a missile complex, Solo remembered. "Have you seen General Anson?"

"The interview was inconclusive. He's under suspicion himself, as a matter of fact. This is going to be a ticklish one, I'm afraid—you may hear complaints about my being rude, but you'll just have to trust me."

"If I didn't you wouldn't be there. You and Miss Ewert are more than capable of soothing the most ruffled tempers as long as she keeps hers. I'll even let you know who complains."

"Why, thank you, Mr. Solo. Tuber out."

Miss Williamson had a tray of breakfast steaming on his desk as he swung the chair around again. He reached for a piece of toast and turned back to answer another call.

The Akhoond of Swat was shaking in his royal slippers as a result of a sporadic campaign of terrorism, and demanded additional men. The Field Agent there was sure he could handle the job alone, but couldn't convince the Akhoond.

"I'm almost certain it's not a political matter, sir. Things keep indicating that it's more personal—within the household."

"What sort of things?"

"Little things...you could almost call it a strong hunch. But I'm willing to bet it's something inside the harem."

"Sounds as if they're some strong-stomached women, slitting that dog's throat at the foot of the Royal Bed."

"They have more control over the eunuchs than the Akhoond does. And it wasn't the Akhoond's dog after all, by the way. Oops—gotta cut off."

His signal broke, and Napoleon made a face. Shaking down the harem was always a particularly favorite assignment of his. Half the problems that crossed his desk seemed designed to draw his attention. A mountain in Manitoba, a ticklish situation in Denver, a harem in Swat... Cha

"Solo here."

"Pat Gavin, Anchorage. The contact paid off. I'm about to get a chance to sit in on a meeting, and I want a tape put on my signal. I'll leave the transceiver on and you can get down everything that happens."

The dossier on the assignment was at the back, and it took Solo a good ten seconds to have it on the desk. Black market gold, mined deep in the mountains and smuggled out of the country unregistered. Gavin had been on the job nearly six months.

"Good work. Transfer to Cha

"Hope so, sir."

The signal light flickered again as he cut off.

"Solo here."

"Fred Tibbon, Berlin. I've finally gotten in to interrogate Suetterlin. It looks as if there's a third ring, a sub-ring of some kind, that Runge didn't even suspect. Heinz stumbled into it, was working double."

This was the front file in Waverly's system. A lieutenant colonel in the KGB had defected, and was telling his life story in excruciating detail. Already both his West German apparati had been broken, and Tibbon was following up all the official interrogations as closely as possible. Suetterlin, head of one ring, had been taken from Cologne to a top security prison in Berlin, and now new data had come to light.

"Have you checked out his information yet?"

"One hundred percent. It begins to look as if the operation in the Foreign Ministry was just a back-up. For one thing. .

"Stand by," said Napoleon, and reached for a button under a blue light which flashed insistently. "Solo here."

"Bronstein, Site Delta. Can you find us the guy who patched up this Thrush communicator? One whole circuit board is half-fused."

"Stand by…" The telephone handset vibrated against his knee as he spoke, and he picked it up. "Solo here.'

"Simpson, Section Eight. We got the flicker out of the portable visual shield. Care to come down and take a look?"

"Love to, in about half an hour. But the reason I called..."

"Hm?"

"The new variant Thrush communicator we came by last week—who put the pieces back together?"

"Schumacher."

"Did he get the holograms of it in its original condition?"

"Uh, as far as I know."

"Fine. Have him get in touch with Bronstein at Site Delta as soon as he can find them." He dropped the handset back in place and said, "He'll be on the line to you in a minute or so. Look like an autodestruct device?"

"Probably. Right now we're trying to figure out what that part of the circuit was. Everything seems to be taken care of by what we've been able to trace."

"Keep looking, and call me when you find something." He switched back to Cha

"More like before the Foreign Ministry. First.."

A buzzer sounded sharply from across the room, and a desperate electronic clamor. "Better call back," said Napoleon casually. "Headquarters is under attack again."

"Again?" said Fred's voice faintly as Napoleon cut the circuit and switched to the television monitor.

Figures were ru

A red signal flashed on his console and the chime sounded for Cha

"In a moderately low light level, with no high contrast background, it should work well enough for the situation," Simpson said as he lifted the bulky pack from the table. "But I really don't think you should be the first one to try it in the field."

"We have the extra cable ready, sir," said someone in a white coat.

"I'll need at least a hundred feet," said Napoleon.

"Line loss would be too great past one hundred twenty-five," said the anonymous worker, "but you've got that much. As it is you'll fade in and out if we get any induction from the floor alarms."

"You'll have to wear these," said Simpson, holding up a heavy pair of opaque-looking goggles with a cable as thick as his thumb ru