THE BRAINWASH AFFAIR

Deadly, hidden, THRUSH'S master plot could topple the nations of the free world. And somewhere, Napoleon and Illya must track it down, destroy it—before it was too late!

THE NEW COMPLETE "U.N.C.L.E." NOVEL

by ROBERT HART DAVIS

PART ONE—INCIDENT OF THE FRIGHTENED MAN

NAPOLEON SOLO swung down from the Orient Express, strolled across the station concourse to the street exit, and exposed himself to incredible perils by entering a Parisian taxi.

"Orly Airport," Solo said and sank back in the cab as it hacked and barked its way through the traffic.

Returning alone to Manhattan from a Middle East assignment, he was tired and still shaken from a close brush with death.

Trying to escape disturbing thoughts, he watched early evening strollers, diners at street cafes, the maniacal charges of other cabs. It wasn't that easy. He thought about his apartment, the luxuries he was infrequently at home to enjoy, but mostly his mind darted back to his fellow agent who'd been killed three days ago in the street at Istanbul.

Death had struck only inches from him; it could have as easily been he and not his partner. Battered by this sudden impact of his own expendability, he wondered how long before death closed in those few inches?

He glimpsed in a window the reflected faint tightening about his lips. Fatigue, that was all. A plan trip west across the Atlantic, a hot-cold shower, a Scotch on the rocks, twelve hours unbroken sack time and he'd recover.

In the babbling confusion at Orly Airport, his sense of isolation increased. Then abruptly he caught sight of a familiar lace and he shoved through a knot of chattering tourists, smiling warmly and expectantly.

"Lester!" Solo called. "Lester Caillou!"

Hurrying toward a door marked Sortie, Caillou broke stride. His shoulders hunched as if against a blow. He glanced tensely over his shoulder.

Solo paused a few feet from Caillou. People brushed past them on both sides. When Caillou turned, Solo saw panic graying the slender man's dark face. Solo had seen the same look in eyes of trapped animals.

Caillou's gaze raked across Solo, paused the fraction of a second that betrayed that Caillou had recognized him. Solo was alerted by training and experience to instant reactions to facial expressions, even to lack of expression.

Caillou winced and jerked his head around. His knuckles whitened on his attaché case. He hurried toward the exit.

They were old friends. Solo angled across the distance between them, intercepting Caillou at the glass doors. In-drafts struck them as the doors parted.

"Pardon, Monsieur, what hour is it?" Solo spoke in French, extending his wrist watch, a Swiss calendar-clock which Caillou had presented, as identical gifts of gratitude, to him and to Illya Kuryakin.

An affair of Arabian oil and reconstruction money from Caillou's Paris-based bank, a misunderstanding, got Caillou before a Turk firing squad. Solo and Kuryakin had pulled him out of it. Swearing eternal allegiance, Caillou wanted them to remember him as warmly and had believed the thousand dollar watches would keep him in their memories.

"No. No." Caillou shook his head now, refusing even to glance toward the golden watch on Solo's wrist.

Caillou's stricken gaze leaped past Solo, scurrying across faces and forms as if he found this brilliantly illumined lobby a pit of unspeakable terrors.

Solo had seen frightened men before, but never one who wore his terror as openly as did Caillou. He was pushed beyond hiding it.

"Lester, don't you remember me?" Solo persisted, because this didn't make sense.

An ordinary man might be frightened, hurrying toward the haven of a plane, but Caillou was not ordinary. Solo remembered Caillou had faced Turk marksmen without flinching, and two hours later drank raki with him and Illya, laughing, glowing with the exultation of being alive.

"No. No. There is some mistake. If you please." Caillou shook his head again. Pallor underscored the rigidity of his high cheekbones.

Before Solo could speak or lose the warmth of his smiling and the far-out memories of that drinking session, Caillou pushed around him and thrust through the exit doors.

Involuntarily, Solo followed him through the electronically operated doorway.

In the chilled wind off the field, Solo stared after Caillou.

On the concrete runway, Caillou paused for one final surreptitious glance over his shoulder, then ran toward a waiting charter plane.

Solo exhaled heavily, considering wryly the expendability of life-long gratitudes, then discarding the thought. He knew he'd just witnessed a desperate man being towed into a vortex of agony beyond his depth.

Sighing, Solo turned back, then paused, hardly knowing why he did.

Something caught his eye. From the underbelly of a plane near the one toward which Caillou ran in the darkness, a freight elevator lowered, containing only a small single-seat car.

The car was bright red, smaller than any compact Solo had seen before. Oddly formed, it was round in front, tapered in the rear.

Solo saw no driver until the elevator touched the concrete. At this moment the car's engine flared to life.

Solo then saw a man crouched behind the wheel. Surprisingly brilliant headlamps burst yellowly to life. The little car roared off the lift, racing toward Lester Caillou.

Solo yelled involuntarily.

Instinctively his hand thrust under his jacket, drawing the U.N. C.L.E. .38 caliber Special. He went running forward, seeing he was too far away to aid Caillou.

Caillou stopped running and turned in the glare of the head lights, his face wild with horror.

He was illumined there a moment as if pinned against an insurmountable wall of night.

Hood-mounted guns fired suddenly. Screaming, Caillou threw himself face down on the concrete, as if trying to dig himself a fox hole.

Solo ran out on the concrete. He fired twice as the small deadly car bore down on Caillou. Caillou was like a frantic insect scrambling on hands and knees toward the plane ladder.

Solo's bullets slapped across the gleaming metal, inches from the driver's head. He swerved a moment; then a plastic bubble bloomed, covering him effectively.

But in that brief instant, Caillou was able to squeeze his way in behind the metal ladder. He hugged himself against it.

Seeing he could not hope to penetrate the plastic cowl covering the driver, Solo fired toward its oversized tires, seeing for the first time that it moved on a tricycle set.

The car roared past the ladder, going under the spreading wings of the 727.

Solo ran forward, firing. As the car raced, a pole of light-weight metal sprang upward from the plastic cowling. It gleamed a moment like a wavering antenna in the night, then separated, spinning as its blades locked into place.

Police cars screamed in pursuit along the runway. But long before they reached the small red machine, its helicopter-type rotary blades lifted it upward in darkness and it swung away into the night sky at incredible speed.

Stunned, Solo stopped running, stood with his gun at his side, watching the small apparition dissolve into the haze above the emblazoned runway.

Remembering Caillou, Solo swung around toward the banker and his private jet.

Turning, Solo reacted to a sharp twinge in his side, pain akin to muscular spasms—or a knife biting at him:

It was a knife.

Solo cut-short his turning. A knife blade making itself felt through top coat, jacket and shirt could inflict irreparable damage if one swung around into it.

"Ah, this is wise."

"The wish to stay alive makes wise men of us all," Solo quoted.