Read 19 - The Power Cube Affair for Free Online

let us out of here right now."
    "You leave when I say, and not before. And to do what?"
    "To find three men," Solo said promptly. "Possibly a fourth. And we know what to do with them when we find them."
    "You do? You would break the law, Mr. Solo? I doubt the United Network Command would approve of that."
    "You've been doing your homework," Solo approved. "Just by the way, though, we're on vacation. This is a personal chore. The people who rubbed out Mary Chantry also tried to do the same to a friend of ours."
    "I see. The giant killers!"
    "All David had was a sling and a stone," Kuryakin observed.
    "Oh no," the old voice disagreed. "He was young, divinely inspired, and he had an army at his back, never for get that part. Virtue is an admirable thing, but it cannot stand alone."
    "If you insist on quoting Confucius," Kuryakin murmured, "you really must try to get him right." A silence grew, drew out thin, then ended in a dry chuckle. The cigar end brightened a couple of times.
    "Shall we try again?" the old voice suggested. "I'm in sympathy with your aims, but I cannot allow you to jeopardize my operations."
    "I've heard that before." Solo grew impatient. "Your operational style leaves me cold. We'll play this hand our own way. And if you value Captain Barnett at all, you'd better leave him where he is. If he collides with us he is likely to get damaged."
    "As for that overblown trollop you sent out to bring us in," Kuryakin declared, and grinned to himself in the dark as he heard a stifled gasp, "you can leave her at home too."
    "That overblown trollop, as you called her," the old man said, "is sitting not three feet away from you at this moment, Mr. Kuryakin."
    "I know. I can smell her. And hear her. Right now, for instance, she has just taken a weapon into her hand, most probably a gun of some kind, presumably aiming it at where she thinks I am. Would you care to bet I can't take it away from her before she can pull the trigger?"
    This time the silence was so tight it rang. Then the old man sighed.
    "Very well. Put it away, Nan, we'll have to try a different tack with this pair. Let me have a moment to think. Believe me, gentlemen, Mary was a mistake that must not be repeated. And my Operation isn't quite what you seem to think. Perhaps I had better explain that side of it."
    "Is that wise, Charles?" Miss Perrell spoke for the first time.
    "I think so, my dear. I don't think you've realized, yet, just who we are entertaining. You've heard of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement—"
    "Oh my God!" she gasped. "U.N.C.L.E. agents. And I called them well meaning amateurs!"
    "At any rate we can count on their discretion. You won't find us in any index, phone book or list, Mr. Solo. We have no name, no official existence, and, in a way, no authority, hut I'll come to that in a moment. We are outside the law, a position that has as many drawbacks as it has privileges. You see, those who uphold the law are equally tied by it, have to respect it. And that is why something like seventy percent of all crime in this country goes unpunished. Undetected even. Of course, most of it is petty stuff, but not all. I could recite you a list, a long list, of people who are literally above the law, who can buy and sell anyone who works for wages, who can buy justice, even invisibility. Most of them are known to the forces of law, but they can't be touched. And that is the situation my group strives to correct. As I've said, we have no official standing, nor do we have bosses, levels of authority, rules, a code—nor any system of payment, honors, rewards, nothing like that. You might say we are just an extraordinary assembly of highly individual people trying to do good."
    " Noblesse oblige ?" Kuryakin murmured.
    "That's about it. That's what has brought you into it, the belief that you've run into something that ought to be stopped, right? I have that kind of thing reported to me several times a week! My function is to coordinate,