'The fundamentals. He's running on a constant posthypnotic and you see him once a week.'
'Yeah. And when he reports in we can set him onto a specific track – which can get pretty complicated. You know all about the KBG?'
'As much as anyone outside of Thrush.'
'Somebody named Simpson back in New York was asking about anything that fired along with the fireball, like for sighting or ranging, and Harry found out there was such a thing. It's like a laser, but not in the visible spectrum, and Harry said it ionizes a path in the air and the plasmoid runs down it. This came up day before yesterday when he came over to my place to report. So we set him to get one of those things and bring it to us. You'll pick it up.'
'Pick it up? Why doesn't he bring it to you next week?'
'New York didn't want to wait. Harry can drop it off at a bar in North Beach. It's all been arranged.'
'Just a minute,' said Illya; 'I thought Harry didn't know he was working for anyone but Thrush. You just gave me the impression that Harry was going to steal this – whatever it is – and drop it off at a place in North Beach for us to pick up.'
'That's right. But he won't know you'll be there, and he won't know why he's doing it, and he'll forget he did it afterwards. So it's all okay. Didn't they explain it to you?'
Napoleon stared at her reflection in the mirror, and his eyebrows rose.
'I don't know exactly how it works, myself,' she admitted. 'Dr. Grayson can tell you. But when Harry gets this thing, he'll signal me at my place around six-thirty or seven, before I leave for work. I'll let you know when I hear, and you'll plan to be at this place in North Beach. He'll leave it in his booth and you'll pick it up.'
'How big is it?' asked Illya.
'About three inches long and maybe as big around as a pencil.'
'And what does it do?'
'Well, it's some kind of a laser crystal. But instead of light it lases gamma radiation. Not a whole lot- I think they said it'd just give you a quarter-inch-wide sunburn – but enough to ionize the air it goes through so the plasmoid, being electrically charged, follows the track. That's as close as I remember. Does it seem reasonable?'
'Completely,' said Illya. 'And Mr. Simpson wants the real thing so he can study its atomic crystalline structure, shoot some neutrons through it and see what it's made of. I wonder what they use to drive it.'
'Anyway, after Harry leaves, you go to the booth, pick up the thing and come home. And that's it. Nobody should be tailing him, and you can just stay out of sight if they are.'
'Tailing him? I thought he was above suspicion.'
'In this Satrapy, nobody's above suspicion. I think Baldwin watches himself. Harry's been followed-a couple of times, even though they have absolutely nothing on him. He tests clean. He loves Thrush like a mother.'
'He must, if they let him get at something this important.'
'Well, he doesn't have much rank, but he's in the copying section. He's cleared for just about everything, and his clearance gets him into places. See – there's only one KBG, and that's at their test site down near Gilroy. But there are replacement parts for everything, even parts nothing can go wrong with, like the laser crystal. And Harry can wander into Top Secret Storage and pick one up and it won't be missed for months.'
'And all this time he's loyal to Thrush,' said Napoleon.
'Uh-huh. That's what makes things a little touchy. You don't dare do anything that might disturb him while he's around. See – he doesn't really know what he's doing. But he can do everything right as long as he doesn't stop to think about it, and he won't as long as nobody calls his attention to it.'
'It doesn't sound healthy,' said Napoleon.
'It isn't,' said Illya. 'But you'd be surprised how many people go around like that most of the time.'
'No, I wouldn't. On the other hand, natural conditions are usually stabler than artificial ones.'
'That's right,' said Sirrocco. 'He'd freak out. And we don't want that to happen. Dr. Grayson might be able to put him back together again, but, some cracks might show.
See, all I'm trained to do is cue him into a trance, debrief him into a recorder, play a tape of Dr. Grayson telling him what we want him to notice and reiterating his basic programming, wake him up, pat him on the back and send him home happy. Since I'm the only field contact he has, it's part of my job to keep an eye on his emotional balance. They say he has a chance of coming out of all this with his head in one piece, if nothing jiggers him badly.'
'That's slightly reassuring,' said Solo. 'I hope he doesn't have a family.'
'No,' said Sirrocco. 'Just me. And I'm not supposed to get personally involved. This is purely professional.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Partly for my own curiosity,' said Illya, 'and partly on the grounds that knowledge is more useful than ignorance, what c
'He calls my home phone, and rings once – '
A pair of electronic birdcalls sounded softly, and Napoleon said, 'I'll get it.' He unclipped what looked like a fat silver ballpoint pen from inside his coat, twisted one end to extend a short antenna, and reversed the point to reveal the microphone/speaker. 'Solo and Kuryakin here.'
'As soon as you have finished your briefing, please report back to the local office. This is of overriding priority.'
'I. – ah – think we're just about done here,' said Napoleon reluctantly. 'Is this new development going to supersede our present assignment?'
'We don't know yet. Apparently it's much bigger. Mr. Waverly is on his way from New York right now by courier jet; if you can manage to get here by six you can meet him and get right to business.'
'Good. Should we arrange to have dinner sent in?'
'We'll take care of that. Off the record, I haven't the least idea what this could be – but the tone of his voice sounded as if you could be at this all night once you got started.'
'Thanks. We'll check in by six. Solo out.'
Little Sirrocco finished sorting her hair, mist-green eyes darting back and forth from her own reflection to Solo's and Illya's as she tucked it through a band and. tossed it. over her shoulder.
'I gather they may have to send in the second team,' she said. 'Good luck, fellas, but I guess that's war.'
'We may still be here to handle the pick-up,' said Illya. 'If the drop is on for tonight, you'll still check in and they'll have to send someone. We might be out in time, and I would like very much to observe this programming in operation.'
'Okay,' she said, standing and slinging a rough leather bag over her shoulder. 'If I see you again, that's cool,. and if I don't, hang in there.' She fumbled in the bag until she found a pair of opaque plastic glasses, and gestured with them towards the door. 'I have to head home now to wait for a phone call.'
As she locked the dressing room behind her she called up the corridor, 'Hey, Spiros!'
A faint 'Yeah?' came from beyond the stage wall.
'I'm checking out – see you about eight. These two guys are leaving with me.'
'Okay,' answered the distant voice. 'Why don't you use the call box? All the money I paid to put it in and you gotta yell!'
'I already locked my door. G'bye,' she called, and pushed the panic bar of the fire exit, opening into an airshaft with golden afternoon sunlight spilling in at the top and filtering down over trash cans and sooty brick walls.
'You parked off Grant? Go out that way. I catch a cable at the top of the hill.'
'Can we give you…'
'Thanks, no. You go check in. I get around okay on my own.' And with a swirl of her hair and a flicker of hip, she was gone.
'Miss Sirrocco needn't have heard about this,' said Mr. Waverly, 'but no harm is done. You will not be abandoning your assignment immediately at any rate – for that matter, the entire operation centered around Stevens may shortly become obsolete.'
'You mean he may be relieved – or he may be killed?'
