"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 thick-set 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 attache 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—I 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.

Solo straightened, staring at his chief incredulously.

Waverly smiled. "Don't be upset, Solo. No one can hear us. This is a sound-proofed room. We could fire a cannon in here and we'd never be heard. That's why we chose this place."

Solo sighed and relaxed. "Then an atomic bomb is involved?"

DeVry said, "At least, an atomic device is rumored to be entangled in the affair. Yes. Here's what happened. One of your people, in Tokyo on a tangential matter, came across a spy for Thrush. The man was badly wounded, his stomach laid open with knife wounds. He would have no reason to lie, and your man says he was conscious and not delirious, which is what I suspected when I first heard what he'd revealed. The plan is to attack a city inside the continental United States with an atomic device—and, according to the spy, that device and the operation is almost ready. Time is running out."

"All of this certainly reconciles with every bit of the information we gathered which put us onto this Tixe Ylno matter in the first place," Waverly said.

"I may as well tell you, I remain somewhat skeptical," DeVry said. "I cannot help but doubt the plausibility of this information, even though we naturally must run it down. We can't ignore it."

"Not in the light of all our other facts about the activities of this Tixe Ylno," Waverly said.

"The point that makes me most doubtful," DeVry said, "is the matter of an outsider striking at the United States with an atomic device. Not with our early warning system. It just isn't practical."

"It's just nightmarish enough to be possible," Solo said.

Waverly nodded. "The one important matter that evolves from what we have to this moment—whether such a plot actually is in the works or not, and whether a strike could be successfully delivered against us from without or not, whether it is fact or hoax—is that we must get to this person Tixe Ylno. Whoever he is, whatever he is, he must be quickly captured, exposed, disarmed."

DeVry exhaled. "For all the reasons I've given you, I've reached my decision to let you people handle this—quietly, and, I pray, quickly."

"I believe you have made a wise decision," Waverly said. "We have reports in our office of Thrush agents, and of apparent outsiders, inquiring of the governments of Red China, Russia, France—even the United States—for atomic components. There is afoot this secret plot to hatch some kind of atomic device that is functional. Beyond that, we have the young woman Baynes-Nee-firth, who arranged through you, Osgood, for our protection. Obviously, you know that she had been in the employ of Thrush for almost a year, gathering classified information from men in sensitive roles at missile sites. Don't doubt that there is such a plot. Thrush allowed that young woman to stay alive only long enough to get to us."

"I failed you then, Mr. DeVry," Solo said quietly. "I'll try not to fail you again."

"You didn't fail, Mr. Solo." DeVry smiled. "Thrush had decreed that girl's death long before she came to me. Her death was one factor that convinced me there might be something to this plot of attack with an atomic device. If these people can build one, then perhaps they have the capability for a strike."