“You know how to break a gal up, don’t you?”

“It’s the truth doing that, Barbry. I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already told yourself these past months.”

After a moment she shook her head. “No. I guess not.”

“And then there’s the matter of this Chinese-American who approached you and Ursula in the first place. For all we know he may be Tixe Ylno. No matter who he is, he’s part of this immediate business they’re enmeshed in—and they don’t want people like you around spoiling it for them. He loves secrecy. He even had himself declared dead in a plane crash two years ago in order to make all this easier for him. You think he’s going to let a doll he was afraid to trust as a spy stay alive long enough to trip him up? I can tell you he won’t. The stakes are too high.”

She shuddered, covering her face with her hands. Her body shook. Solo saw that she was numbed with fear.

“We’ve got to stop him, Barbry. You understand? The only way we can do that is—”

The telephone rang, breaking across his words, stopping him cold. He glanced toward the instrument, frowning.

He reached out, lifted the receiver and placed it against his ear. “Solo speaking.”

The voice was that of a woman: the words were in the code of his department in the United Network Command. There was no doubting their authenticity or their meaning.

“Acknowledge,” he said.

“Do you understand clearly?” the voice inquired. “Yes. Thank you.” The phone went dead in his hand. He turned, finding Barbry Coast crouching on his bed, watching him, her eyes stark, wide.

“I must go out,” he said. “At once. Will you wait here for me?”

Her voice was flat. “You think they won’t find me here?”

“You’ll be safe here, as long as you follow my orders.”

“Safe when used as directed,” she said in a dulled tone that was devoid of hope.

“Just stay in here. Keep the door locked, the latch on. When I come back, I’ll knock three times. Before you unlock the door, ask my name. Don’t unlatch or unlock that door for any reason, unless you hear three knocks first and then hear my voice.”

She nodded and sank down on the bed. He glanced at her, seeing she had no hope. She wanted to trust him, but she knew too much about Thrush, and she no longer trusted anything.

VI

SOLO WALKED into Forbidden City just off Grant Avenue. The shops around it and the cafe itself seemed pervaded with oriental incense. One never escaped the startled little bite of shock at finding a place like this, even in a city like San Francisco. The patrons, the murals, the waitresses, the waiters, the tables and chairs seemed unreal, as if they did not even exist outside this world inside itself.

A man in Mandarin dress came forward and bowed. “Ah, Mr. Solo. Good evening, Mr. Solo.”

Solo bowed, giving him a faint smile because he knew neither of them had ever encountered the other before. “Will you be kind enough to come this way with me, Mr. Solo?”

Solo followed him through the tables toward the rear of the cafe. They went along a short, dimly lit corridor and the Chinaman rapped on the door facing.

Alexander Waverly looked up from the head of the table when Solo was ushered into the red-upholstered room. Waverly seemed entirely at ease, though Solo knew that less than five hours ago he’d been at headquarters on New York’s east side, or at home in bed. Nothing ever appeared to ruffle his exterior calm. Solo supposed a man got like this when he had been down all roads, seen everything at least twice.

“Come in, Mr., uh—”

“You must know who I am,” Solo said, smiling. “You sent for me.”

Waverly chuckled briefly and motioned him to a chair across the red-varnished table from the third man in the room. He said, “Solo, I’m sure you know Osgood—uh, Osgood DeVry. He’s a personal adviser to the president of the United States.”

Solo extended his hand. “I’m glad to know you, Mr. DeVry. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

Osgood DeVry smiled. He was a thickset man of slightly more than medium height. There was the flushed pink, steak-fed look about him of a man who had grown accustomed to unaccustomed success and ease of life. He was in his early fifties, mildly overweight. He wore his graying brown hair parted on the side and brushed back dry from his scalp.

“Everyone who knows Osgood is proud of the work he’s doing down there in Washington,” Waverly said.

“Not everyone,” DeVry said, deprecatingly, though he smiled. “One does the best he can. Sometimes he’s rewarded. Sometimes he’s forced to turn the other cheek until he runs out of cheeks. I try not to think about it. I do what I think I must.”

“Yes.” Waverly cleared his throat. “And this leads us neatly into the reason for our nocturnal call on you, Solo. It’s so urgent that we had to interrupt your present mission, no matter how important, and even if it were blonde.” Waverly smiled, but there was an entire lack of sympathy in his voice.

“Perhaps I’d better fill you in on it,” Osgood DeVry said. He shifted his attaché case on the table before him. “Though it applies to the case, some of it is personal.”

“All of it is of vital concern to the safety of this nation, and perhaps of Russia too,” Waverly said. “And we are now certain that it concerns our friend of the code name, Tixe Ylno.”

DeVry filled a pipe with tobacco and tamped it down. He placed the curved mouthpiece between his teeth, but did not light it. Watching him, Solo saw a strong man who might have somehow weakened from the soft life in Washington. Obviously, he worked hard, but one saw that whatever he did for the president or for his country these days, it was all inestimably easier than the life he’d known in his early years.

DeVry said, “I’m a kid who sold newspapers in Dallas streets, Mr. Solo. My folks deserted me. I grew up in foster homes. I made my own decisions—they weren’t always right, of course, but I learned to stand up whether they were right or wrong. In my present position of course, I can’t do anything that is contrary to the wishes of the president—nor would I want to.”

Waverly said, “We understand.”

Solo nodded, settling back in the red, leather-covered chair. The lights from the red chimneys cast a reflected glow upon the faces of the men across from him. “It’s the matter of the decision that’s important here. When I was younger—younger than you, Mr. Solo—! was a line officer in the army. I made decisions then when I couldn’t get back to headquarters or there wasn’t time. I can tell you, I stood or fell on them, then.” He shook his head as if brushing away a bitterly unpleasant memory. “Well. Now what I am about to tell you, I have discussed with the president—and with Alexander Waverly here—but no one else. The president agrees with me that I must make the decision—and he has tacitly allowed me to understand that he will not be able publicly to defend me or my decision. My public life depends on success or failure—”

“We’re not here to fail, Osgood,” Waverly said.

Osgood DeVry laughed, almost a desperate sound. “No. We certainly are not. Briefly, Mr. Solo, we have come across some information that perhaps should be turned over to the joint Chiefs, Central Intelligence, the Pentagon—but it is of such a nature that even if only a whisper leaked, the entire country might panic. My decision is to deal quietly with the matter as long as we can. My decision is to let you people at U.N.C.L.E. handle it—as long as you can. Now, it’s my decision, and the president concurs—as long as he can, and off the record. Failure will mean that my head will roll, that I will have failed the president, who’s been a close friend of mine for many years—but more than that, I will have failed the people I’ve tried to serve all my life, whether they always appreciated it or not.”

“Failure could well mean the destruction of the civilized world,” Waverly said.