'I spent about eight months on what must have been Thrush Island, from what you've said about it, though I don't think it was ever referred to as anything but 'here.' '
'How recently?'
'About four years ago.'
'Where?'
'I don*t know. We left Tokyo in a sealed private jet and went back the same way.'
Mr. Waverly tapped his knobbly fingers on the black leather desktop and studied Joan from under-bushy white eyebrows. 'Mrs. -ah- Solo,' he cleared his throat. 'What else can you tell us about this place? How long did it take you from Tokyo?'
'Quite a while. It was about two in the morning when we took off, and there was quite a liquor stock on board. The crew never came out of the cabin, and it was daylight when we were escorted from the plane to our quarters. And I remember I looked at my watch and said something properly horrified about it being eight o'clock already. And the maid said no, it was only seven, and I should reset my watch and go to bed' because Orientation Tea was at four o'clock that afternoon.'.
'Very good,' said Waverly. 'Do you remember what kind of jet?'
'A twin – custom interior like a club car. Oh, one of the other men on board was trying to impress everybody, said his Satrapy had one just like it; cruised at 500 miles per hour.'
'Capital,' said Mr. Waverly. 'Three thousand miles from Japan, and fifteen degrees west,' said Illya, who'd worked it out by eye on the. huge polar projection wall map. 'Was it warm or cold?'
'Oh, warm! I went swimming almost every day while I was there. I got the most beautiful tan – you should have seen me;'
Joan and Napoleon exchanged sappy looks as Illya continued. 'Three thousand miles south puts it within five or ten degrees of the equator around 120 East Longitude.'
'I don't suppose you noticed the sun's elevation much while you were there,' said Mr. Simpson's voice unexpectedly.
'I'm afraid not. It did get pretty much directly overhead at noon. And it got pretty hot. I burned badly my first week there, but after that I was all right. I remember the lagoon side faced east, if that's any help.'
'It could be.' Mr. Waverly addressed the intercom. 'Mr. Simpson, contact NASA for a full set of mapping photographs, maximum size, covering the area from 5° South latitude, between 110° and 125° East longitude, omitting major land areas like Borneo, of course.'
Mr. Simpson recited the figures back and rang off as Waverly said, 'Mrs. -ah- Solo, you may have been of immense help to us. Every speck of land in that area has been photographed from space in recent years, and one of those pictures may strike you as familiar.'
He touched another intercom button. 'Miss Hoffman, would you ask the correlation section downstairs to abandon analysis of flight-plan data in favor of a scan for anything we may know about small islands around the Equator near 120° East.' He turned in his chair and squinted up at the wall map. 'It would appear to be somewhere in Central Indonesia: the Molacca Sea, the Celebes, the Banda Sea, the Ceram Sea – we have observers in that area. Check with the Djakarta office. See if they've heard anything unusual about an island.'
'First Kashmair, now Indonesia…' Illya mused. 'Thrush seems to like the security afforded them with an insecure and touchy host.'
'Nevertheless, even if it means massive paramilitary action against a fortified base, they must be found and rooted out before we can count this Hydra-headed bird moribund.'
'Unless we could convince them logically to surrender,' Napoleon said. 'Or asked them politely.'
'We'll have to start with some sort of infiltration to hit power and communications,' said Illya, 'as soon as we know where we're going.'
'Napoleon,' Joan asked, 'are you likely to lead the infiltration force?'
'I'd expect to,' said Solo, glancing at his chief.
'I don't know anything about offshore contours or outer defenses, but I can tell you a lot about the island you can't get from satellite photos, like what's in which building, and what goes on where. They might have moved one or two of the test shacks, or put up a new quonset in the last couple of years, but the main buildings looked as if they'd been there quite a while. I could probably draw you a rough map – not really detailed, but I think I remember the layout pretty well.'
Illya pushed a blank manila folder with a nylon-tipped pen clipped to it across the table towards her, and she began.
First she sketched an emaciated crescent moon, remarking, 'It's about two hundred miles from end to end around the lagoon beach and maybe two hundred yards across at the widest. Maybe less.'
She placed a hundred-yard square, according to her scale, on the inner side of the island, about the middle. 'That's the Big House. Maybe not that big,' she added, and corrected the sketch messily. 'But pretty big. There's a dock right in front of it, and I believe a submarine pen opens into the lagoon. Then along here are three narrow buildings side by side.- they're big enough to fly a small plane into. I don't know what's in them, probably shops; nothing to do with my job. On this side is the staff housing – it's as old as the Big House, at least a hundred years, and so are the long buildings. And one other: it looks like a big stone and mortar barn. It's back behind and to the side from the Big House, almost touching at this corner. I think that's where the generators are.' She added the described structures to her map as she spoke.
'Guard housing is here and here, sort of bracketing the center of the island. I think there's a Guard staff at the Big House, too – there's a total garrison of at least three or four hundred. Then this big open space is the combat test area, launch site, landing strip, parade ground and soccer field; past it is a big blockhouse and a couple of test shacks way out on that point. I know this end better because I always went out there to go swimming. There's a nasty undertow along the southern tip, and no sand at all. I usually had to wear sneakers when I went in because of the coral, but the water was about eighty degrees the whole time we were there. I didn't have much to do – mostly some psych testing, and one or two routine jobs assisting at a drug-therapy interview – so I had lots of. time to myself.
'Anyway, in the other direction, past Staff Housing, there's ten or twelve – probably fifteen by now – lab huts. They're all painted different colors. Light green was Psych, yellow was Chem, blue was Human Factors. I think red was High Energy Physics, and I remember black was something terrible. Nobody told me, and questions are rude, when everybody is under some kind of security restrictions. If you need to know, you'll be told – that sort of thing. I don't remember what the rest of them were. Beyond them was another test area – I think it was material and equipment exposure tests. Some of the larger lab animals were penned out there, too; they needed room to run around in and stay healthy. The big transmitter was past the zoo, and there's a test shack with a big dish antenna on top right at the tip. I think it's focussed on a synchronous satellite. How's that?'
'Satisfactory,' said Mr. Waverly, studying her work carefully.
'Good. I want to go along.'
'I'm afraid -'
'That's my price for all this information. I spent two years as a field Thrush; I've stayed in training. I also know your target better than anyone else available.'
'You must understand your recent – ah – change of heart seems comparatively sudden…'
'It wasn't so much a change of
'How fortunate,' said Illya, 'that you found out just before Thrush was effectively annihilated.'
Napoleon nodded. 'Luck,' he said, 'runs in our family.'
The requested satellite photographs arrived Tuesday morning and went with xeroxes of a cleaned-up version of Joan's sketch map to teams of photointerpretation experts. By lunchtime Wednesday nothing had turned up.
After lunch a pair of pages arrived on Mr. Waverly's desk, a staple through their corner. A complex file code filled the top line and was translated by the second, third, fourth and fifth lines which identified the paper as selections from the monthly summary filed 23 July, through Djakarta – specifically the text of a report from an U.N.C.L.E. supported marine research station in Makasar. Mr. Waverly scanned the next twenty lines and his hand reached out to the call button before he turned the page.
Illya, Napoleon and Joan assembled within two and a half minutes to be met with a precis of the report. One of
