“Hello—uh, Solo,” Waverly said without smiling. He kept a hundred matters of utmost urgency in the forepart of his mind, but he had the poorest kind of memory for names or other trivia, even in the cases of his most highly rated operatives.

Waverly’s rhesus-monkey eyes under bushy brows seemed more vacant than ever, but Solo had long ago learned this meant the deepest sort of concentration. He respected Waverly as he did few men. It was easy to have ideals when these human heroes were at a distance, but when you worked closely with any man you got to know him well, in all his weaknesses and strengths. “One must conclude from your report, Mr. Solo, that your triumph in Oahu was less than breathtaking,” Waverly said.

Solo smiled. As Waverly understated his agency’s dangers and accomplishments, so he minimized its failures. But Solo knew how they hurt—the pain clawed at him. “I fell flat on my face, all right. And before we go any further, I want to make a statement that I hope you won’t construe as an alibi. It may well be the pattern in this case—if it turns out that there is a pattern, or even a case left after the recent setback.”

Waverly pressed a button. A wall panel slid back, revealing a small screen which instantly glowed with gray light.

“I assure you we do have a case left,” Waverly said. “A strong case. Perhaps we are in a better position than we have been at any time previously. We must negate any past failure by concentrating on the future. Learning the identity and the goal of our friend Tixe Ylno would have been easy if we could have kept the young woman alive. But perhaps that would have been too easy. I’m sure Thrush would feel this, and this must be our attitude. Now—what is your idea of a possible pattern in this affair?”

“Simplicity,” Solo said. “Utter simplicity. Everything so obvious that you overlook it because it’s so simple.”

Waverly nodded, smiling faintly, but impressed, Solo could see that. “Yes. Extremely clever—and sophisticated. Using simple attack in a world that has grown to look only for danger in the complex—yes. Very ingenious.”

Solo saw Waverly digesting this thought, putting it through the computer of his brain. He did not underestimate this power of his immediate superior, because Waverly was one of the five men at the peak of U.N.C.L.E.’s organizational structure. On Madison Avenue in the advertising world, it was a matter of having a key to one’s private bathroom. Here it was a little more than that—Waverly was one of the few men who knew every one of the secret entrances into this building.

And it was more than status with Waverly. One reached his place of trust and responsibility only through awesome sacrifice and dedication. If any men knew every detail of the U.N.C.L.E. operations, it would be Waverly and the four other men—each of a different nationality and background—at the pinnacle of the organizational structure. The organizational chart of U.N.C.L.E. broke down the personnel into six sections, each subdivided into two departments, one of which overlapped the functions of the department below it.

Waverly, with his four associates, headed up the Policy and Operations Department. In descending order of rank, the other departments were: Operations and Enforcement—and it was in Enforcement where Solo was listed as Chief Agent—Enforcement and Intelligence, Intelligence and Communications, Communications and Security, and Security and Personnel.

It was Intelligence and Communications whom Waverly alerted now with the buzzer that prepared the screen for briefing.

A woman’s soft voice rose from the waiting screen: “Yes, Mr. Waverly.”

“The pictures transmitted here by, uh, Kuryakin, Miss, uh—” He let that part go.

“Yes, Mr. Waverly.”

“Where is Illya?” Solo asked as they awaited the first briefing pictures.

“He had a bit of a sticky problem getting out of Hawaii. A matter of a murder charge.”

“Good lord.”

“Yes. You might say that.”

Solo sank into the leather covered chair, glaring at the white screen. He bit his lip as the first picture was flashed upon it. It was the picture he had taken of the little flower girl at the moment she had tossed the lei over Ursula’s head at the Honolulu International airport. It was magnified many times and showed people in the immediate background.

“This is the young woman Polly Jade Ing,” said the voice from the speakers. “Of Chinese ancestry, she is believed to have become involved with an agent for Thrush through a dealing in uncut heroin.”

Solo sighed. One got so near, and yet fell so far short. The picture changed and Solo sat forward. “This man in the background is a Chinese-American named Samuel Su Yan. He was born in Dallas, Texas, attended public and private schools in Texas. He was rejected by the U.S. Army for moral reasons. He attended a university in Shanghai. For some years he worked with the Peking government as an agent in Japan, Viet Nam and in South Korea. He was deported from the Philippine Islands. He was reported killed in a plane crash two years ago.”

“Obviously he has been very much alive, working underground so cleverly that no agent of ours spotted him in all these months,” Waverly said as the picture flashed off the screen, followed by a second, a close-up of Sam Su Yan in a pink hotel suite. “Illya Kuryakin took this picture,” Waverly said.

The woman’s voice said, “This is a closer picture of the subject, now definitely identified as Samuel Su Yan. At this moment he has been located by agents as a guest at the Acapulco International Hotel in Mexico.

“According to Agent Kuryakin, this man accosted Kuryakin as he left the suite of the slain Thrush agent, Ursula Baynes-Neefirth, forcing him to return to the room and to await the arrival of the police. Kuryakin reports that to his belief, Samuel Su Yan is a paid agent for Thrush. Thrush is a supra-nation, without boundaries, and an international conspiracy—”

“Come, come, Miss Uh—” Waverly said impatiently. “Get on with it. Believe me, we know what Thrush is.”

“Yes, Mr. Waverly.” The voice continued, unruffled, as unperturbed as a delayed recording. “Agent Kuryakin managed, by appearing to drug his own drink, to induce subject to intake ten milligrams of neuroquixonal. Neuroquixonal is a drug which causes a sweat-gland and epidermal reaction which—”

“All right! All right!” Waverly said. “You may have time for all of the basics, but we do not. If that’s all, thank you—and out.”

The briefing screen darkened and for a moment the two men sat, mulling over what they had seen and heard.

Solo said, “Acapulco for me?”

Waverly’s head came up. “I thought your report stated you were returning here for additional information on the slain Miss—what’s her name, the Thrush spy.”

“Yes. That’s right. Illya and I found only a meaningless letter—and our code people confirm that it is no known code—and a silver whip. I recalled that Ursula had been part of a night club act with another young woman in which the silver whip was a part of the important props—”

“I saw the act,” Waverly said with a faint smile. “Well. Quite educational. Krafft-Ebbing and the Marquis de Sade could have learned.”

“I wanted to see those briefing pictures again,” Solo said. “Until Illya turned up this bit on Samuel Su Yan, the whip and the former partner seemed my only link with Ursula and what she became—as a spy for Thrush.”

Waverly pressed a button, gave an order, and in less than a minute, a picture obviously some years old was flashed on the screen. The woman’s voice said, “This is the last night-club act of Ursula Baynes and her partner Candy Kane—whose real name was Esther Kappmyer. Our notes show that Miss Baynes stated she hoped to refine this act, find a new partner and return to show business.”

A small muscle worked in Solo’s tautened jaw. He thought: this was Ursula’s dream, her hope for a future that was now forever denied to her. She’d brought along that whip, hoping that Solo and the United Network could somehow protect her from her former bosses at Thrush. She had been alive and lovely and filled with plans for a new beginning.