The Thousand Coffins Affair

THE U.N.C.L.E. ORGANIZATION

There is a row of buildings in New York City, a few blocks from the United Nations Building. At the south end of the row is a three-storied whitestone which appears fairly new in comparison to the brownstone buildings which make up the rest of the street. At the north end is a public garage. The brownstones are occupied by a few lower-income families living above the decrepit shops and businesses which rent the space on the street level. Del Floria’s tailor shop occupies the street level space in a brownstone near the middle of the block. The first and second floors of the whitestone are taken up by an exclusive key-club restaurant known as The Masked Club.

On the third floor of the whitestone is a sedate suite of offices the entrance to which bears the engraved letters “U.N.C.L.E.” In this suite of offices, a rather ordinary group of people handle mail, meet and do business with visitors, and in general seem to be a normal organization engaged in some special charity project or a Fund Foundation operation.

All these buildings are owned by the organization known as U.N.C.L.E.

If it were possible to peel away the outer, decaying brownstone skin of the four old buildings, a surprising edifice would be found. For behind the walls is one large building consisting of a complex modern office setup of three floors: a steel maze of corridors and suites containing brisk, alert young personnel of many races, creeds and backgrounds…as well as complex masses of modern machinery and equipment, all of a highly technological nature.

There are no staircases in the building. Four elevators handle vertical traffic.

Below the basement level an underground channel has been cut through from the East River, leading out to sea. On the roof of the building is a large neon-lighted advertising billboard whose supporting pillars contain a high-powered short-wave antenna as well as elaborate receiving and sending gear.

This is the heart, brain and body of the organization named U.N.C.L.E.

The personnel of the organization is peculiarly multinational. And their line of work tends to cross national boundaries with such nonchalance that a daily shortwave message from the remote Himalayas fails to flutter any eyebrows — this even though there is no recorded wireless in this Himalayan area according to the printed international codebooks.

An Organization Chart for U.N.C.L.E. would read as follows:

SECTION I: Policy and Operations

SECTION II: Operations and Enforcement

SECTION III: Enforcement and Communications

SECTION IV: Communications and Security

SECTION V: Security and Personnel

Napoleon Solo is the Chief Enforcement Agent for U.N.C.L.E.