Ahab hadn't stopped speaking:

"Splendid timing, don't you think? The detonation of the underwater charges is set for 4:30 this after noon, just as the homeward rush begins. Can't you see the good burghers of London wiggling and squiggling in panic, trying to jam the tubes and the trains, when suddenly, splash!" Eyes rolling a trifle maniacally, Ahab closed his fist. "Water, water, water! It's not every day a man destroys a symbol of civilization."

Levelly Napoleon Solo said, "You, Commander, are an unspeakable maniac. Like every member of THRUSH."

The commander's upper lip began to tremble. He was on the point of striking Solo when the driver of the Daimler cursed and hit the horn. The car slewed wildly.

From a narrow, murky cross street, a dairy van had pulled out suddenly. The Daimler's brakes locked as the driver desperately tried to cut around past the van's hood. The rear tires squealed, skidding—

"Too fast!" Ahab burst out, losing control. "Too fast in this fog, you fool!"

The wrath he had been about to vent on Solo become focused on the driver, in the form of a wild, lashing blow of his fist against the back of the man's neck. From that point on the driver never had a chance.

There was a crash, a wrenching of metal, a second, louder crash, the sound of glass smashing. The Daimler's right rear end suddenly elevated. The bowler-hatted THRUSH agent on the right side of the tonneau peered out.

"Gawd 'elp us! Turned over the blinkin' milk wagon. And we're 'ung up on 'is front bumper to boot."

Commander Ahab whipped out a pistol, pressed it against Solo's side.

"Out, both of you. We'll lift the car free. Hadkins, you and Blightsome go first. Get out here on the left. And no funny business, Mr. Solo, or I'll splatter your skull all over the cobbles."

The two THRUSH agents climbed out. Then Ahab unlimbered himself. Solo watched Illya move out next. While the slender agent momentarily cut off Ahab's view, Solo quickly mouthed the single word Go.

Illya's eyebrows quirked as he bent to get out of the car. His expression indicated his reluctance to leave his friend. Solo repeated the single syllable silently, pushing Illya ahead of him.

A couple of curious early risers watched from down the sidewalk. Otherwise the street of shops was quiet. Quiet, that is, save for the outraged screams of the dairy van driver.

His vehicle had been turned over on its right side. Milk and cream flowed through broken glass all over the street. And from the left, upward side of the van rose the driver himself, portly, red-faced, his tweed cap askew and his wattles quivering

"Lousy stinking swells in yer big cars!" he yelled, knocking a big smear of butter off the point of his chin. "Been out all night partyin', 'ave yer? 'oo's goin' to pay for all my goods, answer me that? You are, fuzzy-whiskers, you are!"

Under the goading of the concealed guns of Messrs. Hadkins and Blightsome, Solo and Illya were laboring to lift the right rear fender off its hang-up on the upthrust point of the van's bumper. They grunted, heaved, grunted, heaved. A bobby's whistle sounded in the fog somewhere as Ahab shouted at the truck driver, "Be quiet, you insufferable pig!"

"Pig, am I?" howled the driver. He flung a couple of pound chunks of butter at his tormentor.

At that moment Napoleon Solo lurched against the THRUSH agent named Blightsome, simultaneously heaving with all his might on the fender.

Down came the Daimler's weight, released, onto Blightsome's foot.

The man howled. Solo whirled, gut-chopped the other THRUSH agent, just as Commander Ahab lost his temper completely, pulled his pistol and shot the dairy driver in the shoulder.

Solo shoved Illya hard in the spine, turned to fend off the attack of the first THRUSH man he'd hit. Illya hesitated only an instant. He leaped up on the van, jumped down on the other side and was gone into the murk.

The first THRUSH agent smashed Solo in the nose with his gun barrel, staggering him. On his knees, Solo took another blow in the neck.

"Get after Kuryakin!" Ahab cried, apoplectic. The THRUSH gunmen hesitated. Their reason was evident. From the rear the bobby's footsteps clacked at them in a dead run.

Ahab heard this, hastily ordered them all into the Daimler as the bobby's whistle split the morning air again. Solo tried to pull away. Ahab kicked him in the leg and threw him on his face in the tonneau.

The THRUSH agents dragged Solo's legs into the car as it gathered speed, snaked around past the wrecked van and raced away into the fog. Somewhere Ahab was cursing:

"Kuryakin's loose. Loose! Well, we can't let that stop us. Too much at stake. They'll never believe him anyway. Never in time. We'll go ahead. We must. Ah, you—causing me all this difficulty!"

He jammed his sole against Solo's head. "I should put your light out now, Solo. But you've earned a much more painful death. Besides, no matter what Kuryakin does, it won't help. Why, 4:30 will be here before they know it." Ahab began to titter, somewhat crazily.

Groggy and nauseated, Solo lay on the floorboards of the racing car. He hoped Illya would make it. He hoped something could be done in time. But he was worried that Ahab was right: Then it was already too late.

Commander Ahab settled down and, as if he needed a scapegoat for all of the things that had gone wrong, instructed his two agents to work Solo over thoroughly. They beat him with the indifference of professionals, all the way to the THRUSH airfield.

THREE

THE HANDS on the huge clock high overhead registered two in the afternoon. All around, there was an atmosphere of tension, of men finally engaged in a battle for which they had trained for years.

One entire wall of the immense chamber consisted of frosted Plexiglas panels. They were illuminated from behind. They bore on their surfaces intricate maps of various areas of the greater London area.

Small lights popped and winked over the various portions of the map like a pinball backboard gone mad. Animated arrows pointed down main thoroughfares, pulsing with light to indicate a maximum traffic flow. Underneath the great Plexiglas boards, controllers, all of them officers from the various military services of Her Majesty, sat on stools on ten-foot high motorized platforms. They called signals through headsets and watched the changing light patterns.

This was the highly top secret Program Room from which, if the time ever came, the British could unleash nuclear devastation upon an aggressor who struck first. The room was located six levels underground. Today its occupants were engaged in a strange kind of war: a war against the hands of the master clock high above them.

The clock's hands ticked over to register two minutes past the hour.

Grimly fascinated, Illya Kuryakin watched the movement of the hands. He was seated in a comfortable easy chair, high up behind glass in the master programming booth overlooking the floor. The upholstery on Illya's chair was black, like that of the chair beside him in which Mr. Waverly sat.

Waverly's forehead was puckered. He kept tock-tocking his pipe stem against the lucite counter. To the right of the U.N.C.L.E. operatives, the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the C.I.D. sat in red-upholstered chairs, anxiously watching floor operations.

All available members of the armed forces plus the entire London police department to a man were on the streets, directing what might become the greatest mass exodus ever attempted.

Running away from Commander Ahab's car in the morning fog, an exhausted Illya had fled for several blocks before phoning a coded U.N.C.L.E. number.