Chapter 23
Who is the traitor?
Headquarters was dark and silent. Only the regular skeleton night crew were on duty, ensuring that if something monumental happened during the wee small hours, there was someone available to respond. Sitting two blocks down the street in a private car park, the trailer of a ten-wheel articulated lorry had been seemingly dumped and abandoned for a few days. Inside though, the trailer was anything but abandoned. Fitted out as an outside headquarters for the U.N.C.L.E, it was rammed with gadgets and monitors. Every cctv camera inside headquarters, and a few new ones that had been secretly installed now fed their footage to these monitors alone. Watching them were Lisa and Heather, Agents Slate and Dancer, Darkly and Fielding, Foster and Sambrook.
"You two put a good document together." Slate commented. "Fielding, you're sure that it will fool anyone from THRUSH?"
Fielding nodded.
"We included enough detail to get them worried, but not so much as to make them panic. Sometimes too much information can be as suspicious as too little. We kept it brief and factual, with an addendum that a full report would follow as soon as the individual concerned had been apprehended."
"Are we tapping the telephones, just in case?" April asked Lisa. The young woman nodded.
"The transponder device they secretly installed in Mister Waverly's office has been altered so that it sends a duplicate signal directly here to us. We will be able to overhear any conversation made through it, and also trace easily the phone making the call. A team out of sight on Long Island is also awaiting our signal to rush the house. We're all set."
The crew sat in silence, listening the to various bugging devices that had been placed around headquarters, and watching carefully all the camera footage that was being fed to their monitors and recorded. It was not until two o'clock in the morning that anyone moved. A car pulled into the UNCLE garage, and parked silently beside the rear entrance into headquarters. The team in the mobile HQ watched as a figure dressed in black got out of the car and entered through the rear door. The next camera showed him at the rear desk receiving a security badge from the night girl on duty. Mark frowned.
"Anyone due to come in at this time of day?"
April shook her head.
"Sometimes the kitchen staff arrive early, but not this early as a rule."
Mark nodded.
"Well kitchen staff have the right to come in early…especially if they intend baking those lovely bread rolls…"
He turned to Sambrook.
"How come the camera was placed at the back down there, Joe? We can't see who the devil it is."
Sambrook sniffed.
"You don't want our traitor to get suspicious of all these new cameras everywhere do you? Can't put all of 'em in his line of sight, Guv…they're meant to be inconspicuous, right? That's what you said."
Mark nodded. Irritating though it was, the man was quite right. If their traitor got wind of the fact that he was being watched, this would all be for nothing. They continued their vigil, watching the camera feeds carefully.
The figure in black was wearing a black ski cap, and crept noiselessly down the corridors. Aware that in Waverly's absence, Mark and April were currently running everything, he made his way first to their office. Picking the locks on their desks was the work of a moment…and pretty soon Mark and April were watching the contents of their desks being emptied and strewn all over the place. Nothing of interest there. Next the filing cabinet…nothing.
Watching, the group waited. The document they had carefully prepared and doctored had been filed in Lisa Rogers' filing cabinet, as a document in the process of being dealt with. Would the intruder think of looking there?
Waverly's office was next, but it seemed that nothing had changed since the last time the intruder had searched it, and nothing was to be found of interest. The intruder stood in the middle of the office, looking round thoughtfully. Perhaps the stories he had heard were just baseless rumours? Occasionally it happened that way. He was certain that this particular rumour must have had more than air behind it, considering who it was that had been whispering about it. Lisa Rogers worked closely with sections one and two all the time…Lisa Rogers, of course! Perhaps it was all still in her possession! Swiftly he crept into her office and opened her desk. Nothing. Still. The filing cabinet perhaps? This would have to be the place if anywhere. This was taking too long and he would soon have to get started on his own work, or he would never be ready in time when everyone started to arrive for the day. He picked the lock on Lisa's filing cabinet and started rifling through the files.
In the trailer, the group watched anxiously. Would he find it? The file, when it appeared, glowed brightly under the ultra violet camera they had installed. They saw the intruder flicking through the contents of the folder, heard a very distinct "Damn!", then the file was hurriedly replaced and the draw closed. The glow that shone so brilliantly from the file now reflected brightly from the intruder's hands, chin, chest…and now the corner of his hat where he had touched it to pull it more securely on his head. Now he was leaving the room and the door handle glowed brightly.
"So where is he going now?" Darkly wondered aloud. "He has his information…or so he thinks. Will he warn anyone?"
They watched as the figure crept from Lisa's office, down the corridor and to their surprise, turned into the section two offices. Which office would he choose? They watched as he turned into the office which had formerly been Solo and Kuryakin's. He picked up the telephone, and dialed a number. Immediately, in the back of the lorry, the equipment buzzed into life, and they heard his every word being recorded onto their tapes.
"Hello? I need to speak to Mister Halloway please…Mister Halloway? It's number 392. You've been rumbled…yeah…UNCLE have rumbled you as the one who set up Solo and Kuryakin…no, they have no idea about me…I took care of the only person who knew anything about me….Moran, remember him? Two of our agents picked him up in Russia the other day and brought him to New York…He knew me. We crossed foils years ago. If he'd talked to anyone here it would have been all up…What?...He's the one who…well I'll tell you about it when we meet. Yeah….No, the stuff I found said that they have suspicions about one or two people at the Embassy, but didn't name Koskov himself fortunately. Looks like he's slipped through the loop; but they'll wait until they have proof before they do anything at all. They have something going down tomorrow morning that will finish things, so you might be wise to make a run for it now while you can…Yeah, normal place. Okay, see you then…no, no trouble. Bye."
The figure replaced the phone and crept from the room. Darkly and Slate stared at one another. Darkly's mouth tweaked.
"Well, he's condemned himself out of his own lips. 392 sounds like a regular THRUSH member. Did you recognize his voice?"
None of them had, although they all agreed that he sounded familiar. Mark opened his communicator.
"Harry? The bomb has been dropped. Jackson can show you the secret ways into the house, and where to put your guards to stop anyone escaping. It's a go. Repeat, it's a GO!"
"Yes, sir. Go!" they heard from Harry Martin before he cut transmission, and they turned their attention back to the cameras. Harry Martin had a large force of twenty agents, plus Jackson who knew the layout of the THRUSH house well. That side of the operation could safely be left to them. Now to complete the trap for their traitor. Who was he?
Darkly frowned as he tried vainly to make out more features of their quarry in the darkness.
"I still can't work out who it is. If only I remembered where I know that voice from. He received a badge easily enough so he must be a regular member of staff…perhaps he will return home until his duty shift is due to begin proper…"
To their surprise though, instead of making for the parking lot, he started to make his way downstairs. Mark and April stared at each other as they watched their traitor enter the commissary, leaving glowing fingerprints all over the door handle and fingerplate; walk through to the kitchen and remove a key from his pocket. A moment later the lights came on in the kitchen. The UNCLE cook was starting to prepare for the day.
The group in the trailer stared at one another. Eventually, Lisa burst out;
"Cookie? He's been here ages! He was here when Napoleon Solo first came as a very young and green sixteen-year-old! Why would he…?"
"What's the first move, Guv?" Darkly asked, looking from Mark to his partner and back again. "Do we confront him straight away?"
Mark shook his head.
"He thinks he's scot free, so he's not panicking. We would be better to wait until the day crew are all here eating breakfast. That way if something erupts, we'll have many strong hands to back us up."
April looked at her partner.
"You realise it means that it was Cookie who was guilty of passing on information to THRUSH about Napoleon and Illya's assignments, that ultimately led to their…"
"How would he find out things though?" Foster asked, shocked. "He works in the kitchens for crying out loud."
April shrugged.
"Not difficult, John. He can overhear normal conversations of all of us while we're waiting to be served; also, what's to stop the man bugging the commissary? He could place micro-bugs beneath every table if he wanted. We would never know because we do tend to trust our own."
John Foster nodded.
"And we've just seen he's not above doing a bit of snooping either."
"So for now guys, we wait." Mark declared with finality. "We leave here and return to headquarters as though it is a normal day. April, do you have the UV scanner?"
April nodded.
"Heather, you and I will start at Waverly's office, and play the scene as though we have just picked up this scanner as a lark. When we find a trail, we are amused and intrigued and we follow the trail until it leads us down to the commissary…we can let the evidence lead us to Cookie. Mark, you and the guys will all be in the commissary already and waiting?"
Mark nodded. "And watching carefully. Foster, I want you to station yourself outside the kitchen door…the door where the supplies are delivered. Wait until you receive the word, and then stand guard and stop anyone from leaving."
"Anyone?"
"Anyone."
John Foster nodded firmly.
"Gotcha, Guv."
April gestured towards the partition wall behind the bank of computers.
"We'd best get ourselves changed. If we all turn up this morning dressed exactly the same as yesterday, it might look rather odd."
Most of those present returned home to make the most out of whatever was left of the night. Mark and April, however, repaired to Waverly's office and snuggled down at each end of the large sofa to nap where they would be available when news from Martin and Jackson came in.
They were awakened by a call on Mark's communicator just under an hour later.
"Mister Slate? Operation completed sir. We rushed the place. They had half a dozen science boffins locked up in the basement at various stages of brain-washing; they are now on their way to our rehabilitation facility. Their labs and equipment all went up in smoke, sir, along with most of the building. It was a young woman who did that, determined that no one would find any evidence to lock her up. We have in custody nine males and two females; one of them rather feeble and elderly whom was just acting as cook and cleaner for the household. We have most of them on their way to our UNCLE prison in Iceland, except for three of them."
"Who are?"
"The young woman Olivia Del Paglio and her father Antonio, and the owner of the building, Sidney Halloway."
"Well done Harry. Take as many section three man as you need and put the two Del Paglios in separate isolated cells. Make sure we cannot get a repeat of what happened to Moran. Have Halloway taken down to interrogation. I want to see his interrogation for myself."
"Yes sir."
Mark glanced at April.
"Fancy taking on his niece? See what you can get from her? Considering she has been seeing a lot of our young friend Emma, you may be able to use that somehow."
April nodded.
"It might be that they are genuine friends."
"Maybe so."
Mark took a look at April's tired face and smiled at her.
"You look beat, partner. Why not go to our office and take a nap in private, then deal with the interrogation once we've dealt with our traitor."
April nodded.
"Thanks, Mark. See you presently."
A few hours later, April arrived in Lisa's office; conscious of the likely presence of illegal bugs, she began her role immediately. Lisa was ready and waiting.
"Hey, Lisa, I picked this thing up for my partner this morning. It's pretty neat."
"What is it? Looks like a Geiger counter if anything."
"It shines ultraviolet light…your white blouse will come out looking very mauve….see? Makes people look pretty weird too."
"What does your partner need it for?"
April shook her head and made her voice sound sad.
"He doesn't now. It was supposed to be a present for Illya. Illya wanted one for some experiment or other he was working on at home, but now…"
"I still can't believe he's gone!" Lisa remarked, genuinely sad. "Or Napoleon." For a moment, she looked like she was about to weep, and she made a concerted effort to smile.
"What was Illya doing that required an ultraviolet light?"
"Come with me and I'll show you."
The two women took off on their pre-arranged tour of headquarters, flashing their light ahead of them. When they spotted a glowing splodge on the wall outside Waverly's office, they laughed delightedly and started to follow the trail of bright spots along the corridors. A doorknob here, a wall there…then suddenly they were outside the commissary door.
"What is causing all these splodges?" Lisa asked for the benefit of any listening device that might have been within earshot.
"Illya was working on some new security device. Perhaps he had some on his hands the last time he came down here…"
"That was a while ago…he's been…he's been dead for a few days…"
"Well, apparently it can last that long. I remember him telling me that it's not easy to get off. We've started painting the stuff on some of the official documentation too, just as a way to test out how good this stuff really is. It's great, because you can't see anything is there without the light. Hey, it's definitely inside the commissary…come on Lisa, let's see where this goes."
They opened the door to the commissary and played the device around the room. April brought it to rest upon the door leading to the kitchens. She and Lisa stared at each other. They went inside. Unnoticed, Mark and Sam got up and followed them, whilst the others positioned themselves strategically around the room. Inside the kitchen, the staff were staring at April in surprise, none of them very happy.
"What's going on? You're not supposed to be in here, especially without the proper protective clothing."
April ignored them and played her ultraviolet lamp around the room. The bright, reflective substance they had painted on the fake file was everywhere. It was also on the taps, where Cookie was standing now, washing his hands with a scrubbing brush.
April walked over to him and played her lamp over his hands. They shone brightly. Everything he had touched was shining brightly. His hat, his overall, his apron, the oven doors…
"Cookie, why are you scrubbing your hands?"
"I work in a kitchen Miss Dancer. That is par for the course. I wash my hands."
"With a scrubbing brush?"
"Cleaner the better." He quipped. Mark took the brush off him and held it up.
"Do you always scrub your hands with the floor brush, Cookie? Because if so I think I have just gone off your rolls."
"Oops!"
April shook her head at him as Sam Darkly came up from behind and grabbed him securely in a neck lock before cuffing him.
"Your days of snooping are over." She told him. "Sambrook?"
The section three man came in and held out his hands. Piled up in both hands were miniature bugs, or listening devices.
"We found one of these under every single table." He said. "Goodness only knows how long they've been there."
Cookie began to bluster.
"Look, what is this all about? I'm just trying to do my job here."
By this time, they had managed to drag him, struggling all the way, to the doorway to the commissary, where UNCLE agents from all departments were busily eating their breakfast. The scene in the kitchens however had started to attract attention, and a crowd was starting to gather. Mark looked Cookie in the eye and spoke in a voice that everyone could hear.
"We have known all along that Agents Solo and Kuryakin were betrayed by someone in this office, but getting proof was the challenge. We laid a trap for you last night."
Cookie caught on straight away and his face dropped.
"So those rumours…"
"Were planted…yes. The file you looked at was indeed painted over by a new substance that Illya was in the middle of testing when he was killed. He had some still left over in his apartment." Mark confirmed. "We have video footage of you sneaking in early this morning and reading it. Your frantically trying to remove the stuff from your hands when you heard about the security paint through your secret bugs was the clincher. You left your incriminating evidence behind you wherever you went." Mark glanced around the room at the myriad faces growing angry and resentful. His eyes rested on Sambrook and his partner, whom had just entered the room from outside standing waiting quietly nearby.
"You can take him down now. Give the details to interrogation and record everything."
Sambrook nodded.
"Yes sir."
He and his partner grabbed Cookie, aka Alan Jakeman and marched off with him. The agents around were muttering angrily.
"Guv, Solo and Kuryakin were murdered? They were set up to be murdered…by him!?" Someone in the crowd piped up. Mark nodded.
"He passed on information…anything he found from his snooping early in the morning, or from the bugs he had hidden everywhere in here and passed it on to someone within or with contacts within THRUSH. Thrush saw to it that…well you can guess the rest. We've captured his THRUSH contact already. We'll get them to talk, never fear."
"Good luck Guv. Anything we can do."
"There is one thing. The kitchen is to be thoroughly searched for the knife that was used on Moran, and for any traces of human blood. Get Doctor Simpson down here to supervise as soon as he is finished with the body. No more meals from the kitchens until the doctor has cleared it."
"Sir." The agents scattered in all directions, getting to work. Mark and April left the room. April glanced at her partner.
"We have Cookie for the murder of Moran too. The evidence of his own mouth" She reminded him. The two left the commissary. They walked up the stairs side by side. April was saying;
"Why did Cookie murder Moran in particular? Cookie said that they had crossed foils in the past. What could that have been about? From the time I spent with Moran, he knew nothing at all. Nothing of the people or workings of THRUSH here, or anything about UNCLE anywhere. What danger could he have been to Cookie?"
"We brought Moran here in the hope that he would help flush out our mole…in the hope that the mole would reason that he must know something or we wouldn't have brought him."
April looked upset.
"It worked but not in the way we expected. The man was killed in our care, Mark. He was kind of sweet. He didn't deserve that to happen to him."
Mark squeezed her arm comfortingly.
"I know how you feel, Partner, I feel the same. Maybe we'll get more information out of Cookie himself."
"Could you slit a man's throat without getting blood on yourself?"
"Only if you took him by surprise I'd have thought, April."
"Moran wouldn't turn his back on a visitor he doesn't know… unless Cookie meant they literally knew one another as THRUSH? Moran couldn't have felt that Cookie was any kind of danger to him, or he would never have turned his back on him would he?"
"Why was Moran a danger?"
Their eyes met.
"If they did know one another as THRUSH, I don't see that Moran would have been in any hurry to give him away. That would hardly be in his best interests…"
"Unless Cookie was worried he would use him as a bargaining chip? Or perhaps he simply had other information he could have given away?" April mused. "He had other information that Cookie didn't want us to know? Perhaps Moran was familiar with the KGB contact?"
Mark sighed.
"Either way, let's hope our interrogation of our former cook will tell us something. Come on, I think we deserve a drink. The commissary is out of the question at the moment. We can snatch a quick cup of tea at that little café down the block."
April raised her eyebrows.
"Tea? No one drinks tea on this continent, Mark, haven't you learnt that yet?"
Mark grinned.
"Have you not heard of the traditional British stiff upper lip? The stereotypical Englishman who can watch the world tumble around his ears and simply raise an eyebrow and say `By Jove!'? Where do you think all of that comes from? A good, strong mug of tea every morning."
"Oh very well, I'll have tea…but I'll take mine with ice."
Mark rolled his eyes.
"You Americans haven't lived until you can learn to appreciate the value of a good mug of hot tea."
April laughed and grabbed Mark's arm.
"Well I'm happy to learn about your tea if you let me teach you later about a decent cup of American Coffee."
"We drink coffee in England too."
"By the way you English swear by your tea, you clearly have never had a proper cup of coffee. Come on partner, we can't be long. We have some interrogations to conduct."
The two hurried away.
Author's note: To science and technology buffs…please be aware that I am neither of those things. It is the privilege of the writer to invent and imagine where necessary in order to fulfill a particular purpose. So in case anyone has at any point thought to himself; "Hey that's impossible!", in the world of our limitless imagination, nothing is impossible!