Mrs. Stretford rose too - five foot four inches of efficiency tightly swathed in the green tweed of the D.A. M.E.S. military-style uniform. "You can joke as much as you like," she said briskly, settling the hat with its gold-starred cockade and upturned brim more firmly above her clear eyes and ruddy cheeks. "But you know I have a way of getting things done."

Waverly merely smiled. He reached for a pipe, discovered that it was already stuffed with unsmoked tobacco, and groped in his pocket for another. As soon as the creak of Barbara Stretford's sensible brogues had died away across the anteroom, he thumbed the button on his desk and called: "Have Mr. Kuryakin come in now, if you please."

Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin had been born in Russia - a fact that the international organization employing him occasionally found useful, especially when they were working in cooperation with Warsaw Pact powers. Beneath a high forehead fringed with pale hair, his eyes, blue and deep-set, regarded the world of his adoption with a seriousness that was alternately the stimulation and the exasperation of the young women who worked in the U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. He lived in a small bachelor apartment in Brooklyn Heights, he was a good lab man, a mine of information on the latest electronic advances, an expert on firearms and radio. And he was also, with Napoleon Solo, one of the two Enforcement Agents Waverly rated highest on his private list.

"My apologies for keeping you waiting, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly said now as he motioned Illya to a chair on the far side of his desk. "I have been doing battle with Commandant Stretford, the D.A.M.E.S. lady. If only she realized how little - how very little - we know about her precious Brazilian, ah, bombshells!"

"You have heard no more from Napoleon?"

"Nothing. Just the one radio message forwarded by Recife. Not a word since… and that was the morning of the day before yesterday."

"Maybe he found himself on a promising trail and hasn't been able to find time to get through again. Were you definitely expecting him to call back?"

"Yes, we were. On his own instructions, too. He told our man in Recife to listen at the same time the following evening, to be sure he didn't miss out on a transmission he expected to be very important."

Kuryakin's quiet blue-gray eyes rested steadily on Waverly for a long moment before he said softly, "I see what you mean."

"I don't like it. I don't like it at all," Waverly said. "It's not like Mr. Solo to make an arrangement and fail to keep it. Something must have happened to him. The question is - what? If only he had been able to be more explicit in his message…"

"Was it in clear or in code, Mr. Waverly?"

"Oh, didn't I show it to you? Here…" Waverly picked up a piece of paper from his desk and passed it across. "It's kind of half and half, as you see. I told him not to send anything in code or cypher, because we can't run the risk of offending the Brazilians by sending secret messages out of their country without telling them we're operating there. You never know when a regular post might be monitored. On the other hand, he couldn't very well put down chapter and verse in clear. So he's done it in plain English - but we have to interpret the meaning." He smiled frostily as Kuryakin put on a pair of glasses and read the message:

FOLLOWING ARE CERTS AND PROBABLES

FOR BRAZILIAN HIT PARADE STOP CERTS

THE LADY IS A TRAMP STOP REPEAT STOP

REPEAT STOP DAM YANKEES STOP UP THE

LAZY RIVER STOP I'M GONNA GO FISHING

STOP HELP BY THE BEETLES STOP PROBABLES

STARS FELL ON ALABAMA STOP OUT

OF NOWHERE STOP HERNANDO'S HIDEAWAY

STOP UNCLE TOM'S CABIN STOP BIRD BRAIN

STOP SECOND TEN PROWAVERLY TOMORROW

STOP EXOLO.

"Well?" Waverly inquired as Kuryakin looked up.

"Not too easy," the Russian admitted. "I take it the technique of using a popular song Hit Parade is merely a device to provide reason for having a number of unusual images all together, rather than a lead in itself?"

Waverly nodded.

"Then we have ten songs listed - five under certs and five under probables. May we assume these are simply facts and conjectures, respectively?"

Again Waverly inclined his head. "That's the way I see it," he said.

"Good. Now, first of all, why the two repeats in the first entry? I cannot understand that at all."

"Simply, I think, to make the title plural. Several ladies. In other words, he confirms that there are spurious D.A.M.E.S., none of whom are - as my mother used to say - any better than they should be."

"Then obviously he is saying later that he is going to investigate somewhere - going fishing. Though where the lazy river is, I don't know. There are several water images… Oh." He paused and looked at Waverly. "I see the 'Danm' of Damn Yankees is spelled wrong. Would that be deliberate?"

"It would. Recife said he was insistent on triple-checking all the spelling."

"Ah. Could the river perhaps be lazy because of a dam, then?"

"It's a possibility - though what it has to do with Yankees, I cannot see."

"Let's leave that for a moment, then, and pass to the last factual one. He needs help - but why put in the artists, when he hasn't before, and again, why misspell the Beatles?"

"There's a reason," Waverly said. "We'll come to it later. In the meantime, what do you make of the second five?"

"Stars fell on Alabama out of nowhere - that's a frightening image," Illya said thoughtfully. "Especially when you connect it with the last entry."

"The last entry?"

"A minor Charlie Parker piece. Not well know even among his fans - and in quite a different category from the rest, all of which are big, number one best-sellers of one era or another."

"Yes. I thought it odd too. He must have included it because that number, and only that one, perfectly expressed his meaning. What do you make of it?"

"In our business, bird connected with brain can mean only one thing," Kuryakin said soberly.

"Exactly."

"And if he has stumbled on some plot of Thrush's - and they've caught him - his chances must be very slim," the Russian continued. "Mr. Waverly - I'd like you to assign me to go and get him out. I'm used to working with him, I know the methods he uses and therefore I can backtrack on him more easily."

"That is true. Very well - but please disabuse your mind of any romantic ideas of 'going in to get him out.' In the first place, we do not know for sure (a) whether it is in fact Thrush, and (b) whether there may not be some perfectly innocent explanation for his silence. Secondly, we do not in either case know for sure that he's 'in.' And thirdly, the requirements of the assignment - which naturally overrule personal consideration - may call for you to play a waiting game."

"But, Mr. Waverly -"

"The job, Mr. Kuryakin, comes before anything else. Surely you of all my operatives are aware of that?"

"Yes, sir.

"Good. To recap, then: you will go to Rio de Janeiro and pick up Mr. Solo's trail there. We know from his previous messages through Recife that he was using the name of Williams and the cover of a lawyer. We know that he spoke to a police captain named Garcia, and the two women he wished to interview were murdered in their beds, and that after visiting the site of the car crash, he returned to Rio and took the first available plane to Brasilia. The rest, as a great Englishman said, is silence."