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section7mfuTitle: The Peaceful Meadows Affair, chapter ten
Summary: More investigating brings answers the group really didn't expect or want to find.
By Lucky_Ladybug
Chapter Ten
Napoleon and Illya were in almost as much disbelief as Ecks and Wye over this news.
“Agent Cue?!” Illya cried.
Marietta nodded. “That’s right.” Her expression and voice darkened. “My sister and I . . . didn’t always get along or agree.”
“So she ran off to join an extremist group?” Illya frowned.
“A what?!” Jennifer wailed. “Ecks, Wye, Cue? You were all part of the same thing? I have extremists working for me?!”
“Former extremists, mind,” Wye said hastily. “And we were mostly in on the spyin’ end of things, not the politics.”
Jennifer clenched her fists and huffed. “But still!”
Illya had to admit to a bit of dark amusement at Ecks and Wye’s sudden problem with their client. “She’s not going to accept your excuses,” he said.
“I’m not excusin’ us,” Wye retorted. “I’m explaining a fact!”
Marietta barely seemed to be paying attention to the exchanges. Instead she gave a heavy sigh. “The family didn’t know exactly what it was for the longest time,” she said. “I finally started putting the pieces together from her letters. Sometimes she even mentioned the two of you.” She looked to Ecks and Wye. “She liked you both. She even sent a picture of you with her once.”
“But if this photograph here was the last one taken with her . . .” Wye said in realization.
“It was taken on a trip home,” Marietta explained. “She dropped out of sight when she went back to London. I tried to write, I tried to call . . . nothing.” She clenched her fists. “And that was long before the organization broke up.” She looked to Ecks and Wye with urgency. “Do you know what happened to her?!”
Ecks looked down uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, we don’t,” he said.
“We weren’t around for a lot of the breaking up,” Wye said. “We were . . . ahem . . . out of commission, you might say.”
“Laying low playing dead, and not always just playing,” Ecks grunted.
“But like I said, she stopped talking to us long before the breaking up!” Marietta insisted. “What was the last you knew of her?”
“She was often out of the country on assignments,” Wye said. “So were we. Our paths didn’t really cross a whole lot. The last time I recollect seeing her was after she got back from visiting America on a vacation. She was headin’ off to Paris on a new mission.”
Ecks nodded. “I don’t remember hearing much, if anything, about her after that. They transferred her to Paris permanently.”
Napoleon looked back and forth between them and then to Marietta. “If you saw a picture of them years earlier, you must have recognized them when they came here,” he realized.
“I did,” Marietta admitted. “I’d dug into every bit of information I could find about that organization, which of course wasn’t much, but I finally gleaned enough to know that it was kaput and most of the members were either in prison or dead. I knew Mary wasn’t in prison, so I was terrified that meant . . .” She trailed off. “Then I came here and found that painting and hoped I had a new lead. And then you two came here.” She looked to Ecks and Wye.
“So why didn’t you come to us immediately and tell us what you knew?” Ecks frowned.
“I thought I should observe you for a while first and see what you seemed to be doing here,” Marietta said. “Maybe you were just hiding out, but I wasn’t sure I believed that.
“Soon I knew that you were investigating the disappearances. I was worried that you’d both get bounced out of here before I had a chance to talk to you, so I . . .”
“Sent us that warning note,” Wye finished, folding his arms. “And slipped in that little line about ‘P’s and Q’s’ to hopefully get us thinking.”
“That’s right,” Marietta nodded. “I was hoping you’d come to me. I thought that since Mary showed me your pictures, maybe she’d showed you mine and you’d recognize me.”
“She was quite secretive about her own life, I’m afraid,” Wye said. “She never showed us pictures of her family. Actually, I’m surprised she showed you our pictures.”
Ecks nodded. “She was nice enough, but we never thought she liked us enough to talk about us with her family.”
“Well, she did,” Marietta said. “Honestly, during that last vacation, she acted like she regretted what she’d gotten into. She said she wished she could do it all over and not join, but that wasn’t an option for her and she had no way out. Then she showed me your pictures and said that she felt that someday, both of you might succeed in finding an out where she couldn’t.”
“I’d scarcely say that gettin’ ourselves gutted and shot was ‘finding an out’ the way we would’ve chose,” Wye said awkwardly.
“But in the end, you were free of them,” Marietta said. “And now that they’re all broken up, you can live normally again.”
“Or as normally as two ex-spies can live,” Wye said. “It ain’t easy findin’ work, I’ll tell you that.”
“In any case, intended or not, you’re certainly luckier than most of your fellow agents,” Illya said. “There aren’t even any warrants out on either of you, since you were both thought dead.”
“Much obliged, Mr. Kuryakin,” Wye said with a mock bow. “I trust there won’t be any new warrants put out on us?”
“Not unless you do something newly evil or illegal,” Illya retorted. “Technically, we could report you for operating as private investigators without a license.”
“But will you?” Ecks shot back. “That’s the question.”
“We’ll wait and see how this case plays out before we make a decision,” Illya said coolly.
Napoleon looked to Marietta. “Unfortunately, there is a warrant out on your sister, since she’s only among the missing and not the dead.”
Marietta sighed. “I know. And maybe she’s in hiding because of that. I like to think so. But she’d be better off in prison than dead. I just want to know where she is and if she’s alright.” She clenched her fists. “I really do think she was coming to regret the path she’d chosen.”
“Perhaps if you ever do find her, you could convince her to turn over everything she knows about the organization,” Napoleon suggested. “There’s still a great many secrets we don’t know that she might. Mr. Waverly might be able to pull some strings to get her sentence reduced if she’d talk.”
That brought a smile. “I’ll be sure to tell her that, if I ever find her,” Marietta declared.
“Meanwhile, we really must get back to the mystery here,” Illya said. “We need to find out who here, if anyone, is involved with the disappearances from Peaceful Meadows.”
Marietta nodded. “And I want to help you,” she vowed. “I guess there could be information in Harvey’s house. I can’t help thinking that he must be involved somehow, because I can’t believe it could be going on under his nose without him knowing about it!”
“Is Harvey at home right now?” Napoleon asked.
Marietta glanced at the clock. “No,” she replied. “He’s about to have a secret Council meeting at the school. I’ll need to be there.” She hesitated. “But I can give you my master key to his house. It has his address engraved on it, too.”
“And just what guarantee do we have that we wouldn’t be walkin’ into a trap?” Wye retorted.
“None, really,” Marietta replied. “You’ll just have to trust me if you want to get in.”
“Which we’d have to do either way, even if you came with us,” Napoleon said. “Alright, we’ll take that master key and look around. But do you know what this secret Council meeting is about?”
“It might be about Ms. Jensen here, or about all of you,” Marietta said uneasily. “He said he’d fill everyone in on the details when we got there.” She took the key out of her purse, handing it to Napoleon. “If the meeting breaks up and Harvey heads home, I’ll try to call and warn you. I’ll ring three times as a signal.”
“Thank you,” Napoleon nodded. “Hopefully we’ll find something.”
“And hopefully no one will see us going into his house,” Illya said flatly.
“Well . . .” Marietta hesitated. “All the Council members live on this street and our houses are connected via the secret rooms. There’s underground tunnels branching out to every house on the block. There’s arrows pointing the way to each house.”
“That’s convenient,” Napoleon said.
Marietta nodded. “It would probably be better for you to get to Harvey’s house that way, just to make sure none of the Council members see you as they leave for the meeting.”
“Except for the fact that our motorcars are right there out front, plain as day,” Wye retorted. “If you leave and the other Council members see the cars, they’ll know something’s up.”
“That’s true,” Marietta realized. “Maybe you’d better just leave now, and drive back once the meeting starts in ten minutes. You can use the master key to park in my garage, then take the secret tunnel to Harvey’s house. I’ll give you directions on the codes to open the tunnels once you’re in the secret room.”
“We’ll try it,” Napoleon said. “Thank you again.”
She gave a weak smile. “I just hope it works.”
“So do we,” Napoleon answered.
****
The group was troubled as they left Marietta’s house and started to drive casually around the community. Any people who were home on the other blocks gave them either suspicious or wary looks and did not try to make conversation. By the time they came back around to the Council block and Marietta’s house, Illya was thoroughly unsettled.
“I do not like this, Napoleon,” he said. “Even if Marietta lets us know as soon as the meeting ends, we might not get out of here before some of the other Council members arrive. If anyone sees us leave the garage, we will instantly be in trouble.”
“I know,” Napoleon said as they pulled up to said garage. “But under the circumstances, it’s our best chance of finding out the truth.” He got out of the car, unlocked the garage, and drove inside. Jennifer’s car pulled up alongside.
“I’ve come this far to learn the truth,” she said. “I don’t care what dangers I get into if I can find out once and for all about Martin.”
“You’re probably gettin’ us all into trouble, Lovey,” Wye retorted. “You showin’ up has really made a lot of waves.”
“It also caused you to make a truce,” Jennifer replied, “and it sounds like you weren’t having much luck until you did that.”
Wye shrugged. “Can’t argue with that.”
They entered the house through the garage entrance and made their way to the bedroom. Within minutes, they had accessed the secret room. Marietta’s code, which consisted of rapping in certain places and ways on the wall, worked like a charm and the tunnel, a trapdoor in the floor, soon creaked open.
“I feel as though we are in a B-grade horror film,” Illya grumbled as they headed down the steps and into the tunnels.
“Hopefully we’ll have a better outcome than many of the people in those,” Napoleon said.
Following the arrows led them to Harvey’s house before long. As they came out of the tunnel and used another code to get the wall to open even though the bed wasn’t in the secret room, they found themselves standing in a bedroom that looked identical to all the others they’d seen.
“So even the ringleader doesn’t believe in varying the layout,” Napoleon mused.
“He’d probably keep important information in here instead of in the living room,” Ecks said.
Jennifer was already marching to the bureau and pulling all the drawers out. “There’s just clothes in here,” she said in annoyance.
Napoleon decided to tackle the closet. Illya went to the bookcase, where Ecks swiftly joined him. Wye wandered out of the room in search of the study.
“Nothing,” Illya said after several moments of looking. “We need to branch out and try more places. We surely don’t have much time.”
“Maybe he keeps confidential things through another secret panel,” Ecks said. “He could have built his house different from all the others.”
“I suppose it depends on how fully he believes his own ideology,” Napoleon said.
“But such a secret panel could be anywhere!” Illya said in frustration. He knocked on the walls without success. Then, pausing to think about things, he suddenly stepped back with a new light in his eyes. “I have it!”
Everyone looked to him.
“Eh?” Wye raised an eyebrow as he came back into the room. “Well, where is it then?”
“Let’s suppose he does believe in his own ideology,” Illya said, his enthusiasm mounting as he crossed to the bed. “Then, there would only be two secret places he could hide something—in the secret room behind the wall, or in the bed.” He grabbed the headboard. “Someone hold the panel open!”
Ecks was the closest, and when Illya pulled on the headboard, he grabbed the wall and planted his feet, trying to force it to stay open without swirling the bed away. Napoleon came to help him.
“Wouldn’t he run the risk of letting everyone see the secret files?” Napoleon wondered. “Sometimes they would be pushing down the headboard to enter the room from this side.”
“They would just be pushing down the headboard and hurrying into the darkened secret room,” Illya replied. “And the headboard immediately flips back up; there is no chance to feel beneath it.” He continued to force it to stay down while he groped through the edge of the mattress right beside it. When he pulled out several folders with a triumphant cry, Napoleon and Ecks pushed the wall back into place and the headboard snapped upright.
The group crowded around. “What are those?” Jennifer demanded. “Is there anything about Martin?”
Illya frowned, studying the first sheet of paper inside the first folder. “There’s a list of certain people, I assume the ones that were told to move on,” he said. “Your brother is on the list, and even Everett and Clarice. Their names seem to have been hastily scrawled in.” He squinted at the page. “And there’s this strange code on the side, next to each name. It may take me a while to decipher it.”
“It could be the dates they went missing,” Wye offered.
“Or it could have something to do with where they are now,” Illya replied.
“Or it could be both, or neither.”
Again everyone jumped an alarmed mile. Harvey was strolling into the room, calm, cool, and collected, with what looked like a grenade in his hand.
“Well, it was nice of Marietta to call and warn us,” Napoleon remarked.
“Oh, don’t blame her,” Harvey replied. “The ‘meeting’ was set up as a trap for her, and you. And all of you fell right into it.”
“So now I suppose we will all be told to ‘move on’?” Illya said icily.
“Something like that.” Harvey’s eyes darkened. “There’s returns from the dead all over the place, aren’t there.” He looked right at Ecks and Wye as he spoke.
“What are you talking about?” Ecks retorted defensively, stepping in front of Wye, who laid a hand on his shoulder.
Harvey sneered at them. When he spoke next, his voice had a definite British accent. “I couldn’t have been more surprised when you two showed up wanting to move in,” he said. “I’d got the word you were both dead.”
Wye swore under his breath. “I heard that about you, Mr. Pea, long before I even took Ecks under my wing!”
Illya quietly sidled up to Napoleon. “I have the feeling we’ve wandered right into some sort of extremist in-fighting,” he said low.
“I have that same feeling,” Napoleon nodded.
“Oh, you’re part of this too,” Harvey snapped at them. To Ecks and Wye, he continued, “I wasn’t killed on that mission, but I was badly burned. Had to have a complete face job. Then the organization decided I would go deep undercover and weed out those who weren’t loyal to us. Somehow I missed you two and Zed. When the organization started breaking up, I got away. And now circumstances have brought us back together again. I’m going to see that you two U.N.C.L.E. agents pay for planting your mole to destroy our sacred organization. And I’m going to see that you two wretched traitors pay for trying to take it over.”
“And what about me?” Jennifer shot back.
“You’re just in the way,” Harvey retorted. “You’ll have to go too.”
He threw the grenade and covered his nose and mouth.
Jennifer started to cough. “What is this?” she gasped, her eyes watering.
“Gas,” Illya choked out.
There was no way to avoid the substance filling up the room. As Harvey closed the door to further protect himself, the group slumped to the floor in unconsciousness.
Summary: More investigating brings answers the group really didn't expect or want to find.
Chapter Ten
Napoleon and Illya were in almost as much disbelief as Ecks and Wye over this news.
“Agent Cue?!” Illya cried.
Marietta nodded. “That’s right.” Her expression and voice darkened. “My sister and I . . . didn’t always get along or agree.”
“So she ran off to join an extremist group?” Illya frowned.
“A what?!” Jennifer wailed. “Ecks, Wye, Cue? You were all part of the same thing? I have extremists working for me?!”
“Former extremists, mind,” Wye said hastily. “And we were mostly in on the spyin’ end of things, not the politics.”
Jennifer clenched her fists and huffed. “But still!”
Illya had to admit to a bit of dark amusement at Ecks and Wye’s sudden problem with their client. “She’s not going to accept your excuses,” he said.
“I’m not excusin’ us,” Wye retorted. “I’m explaining a fact!”
Marietta barely seemed to be paying attention to the exchanges. Instead she gave a heavy sigh. “The family didn’t know exactly what it was for the longest time,” she said. “I finally started putting the pieces together from her letters. Sometimes she even mentioned the two of you.” She looked to Ecks and Wye. “She liked you both. She even sent a picture of you with her once.”
“But if this photograph here was the last one taken with her . . .” Wye said in realization.
“It was taken on a trip home,” Marietta explained. “She dropped out of sight when she went back to London. I tried to write, I tried to call . . . nothing.” She clenched her fists. “And that was long before the organization broke up.” She looked to Ecks and Wye with urgency. “Do you know what happened to her?!”
Ecks looked down uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, we don’t,” he said.
“We weren’t around for a lot of the breaking up,” Wye said. “We were . . . ahem . . . out of commission, you might say.”
“Laying low playing dead, and not always just playing,” Ecks grunted.
“But like I said, she stopped talking to us long before the breaking up!” Marietta insisted. “What was the last you knew of her?”
“She was often out of the country on assignments,” Wye said. “So were we. Our paths didn’t really cross a whole lot. The last time I recollect seeing her was after she got back from visiting America on a vacation. She was headin’ off to Paris on a new mission.”
Ecks nodded. “I don’t remember hearing much, if anything, about her after that. They transferred her to Paris permanently.”
Napoleon looked back and forth between them and then to Marietta. “If you saw a picture of them years earlier, you must have recognized them when they came here,” he realized.
“I did,” Marietta admitted. “I’d dug into every bit of information I could find about that organization, which of course wasn’t much, but I finally gleaned enough to know that it was kaput and most of the members were either in prison or dead. I knew Mary wasn’t in prison, so I was terrified that meant . . .” She trailed off. “Then I came here and found that painting and hoped I had a new lead. And then you two came here.” She looked to Ecks and Wye.
“So why didn’t you come to us immediately and tell us what you knew?” Ecks frowned.
“I thought I should observe you for a while first and see what you seemed to be doing here,” Marietta said. “Maybe you were just hiding out, but I wasn’t sure I believed that.
“Soon I knew that you were investigating the disappearances. I was worried that you’d both get bounced out of here before I had a chance to talk to you, so I . . .”
“Sent us that warning note,” Wye finished, folding his arms. “And slipped in that little line about ‘P’s and Q’s’ to hopefully get us thinking.”
“That’s right,” Marietta nodded. “I was hoping you’d come to me. I thought that since Mary showed me your pictures, maybe she’d showed you mine and you’d recognize me.”
“She was quite secretive about her own life, I’m afraid,” Wye said. “She never showed us pictures of her family. Actually, I’m surprised she showed you our pictures.”
Ecks nodded. “She was nice enough, but we never thought she liked us enough to talk about us with her family.”
“Well, she did,” Marietta said. “Honestly, during that last vacation, she acted like she regretted what she’d gotten into. She said she wished she could do it all over and not join, but that wasn’t an option for her and she had no way out. Then she showed me your pictures and said that she felt that someday, both of you might succeed in finding an out where she couldn’t.”
“I’d scarcely say that gettin’ ourselves gutted and shot was ‘finding an out’ the way we would’ve chose,” Wye said awkwardly.
“But in the end, you were free of them,” Marietta said. “And now that they’re all broken up, you can live normally again.”
“Or as normally as two ex-spies can live,” Wye said. “It ain’t easy findin’ work, I’ll tell you that.”
“In any case, intended or not, you’re certainly luckier than most of your fellow agents,” Illya said. “There aren’t even any warrants out on either of you, since you were both thought dead.”
“Much obliged, Mr. Kuryakin,” Wye said with a mock bow. “I trust there won’t be any new warrants put out on us?”
“Not unless you do something newly evil or illegal,” Illya retorted. “Technically, we could report you for operating as private investigators without a license.”
“But will you?” Ecks shot back. “That’s the question.”
“We’ll wait and see how this case plays out before we make a decision,” Illya said coolly.
Napoleon looked to Marietta. “Unfortunately, there is a warrant out on your sister, since she’s only among the missing and not the dead.”
Marietta sighed. “I know. And maybe she’s in hiding because of that. I like to think so. But she’d be better off in prison than dead. I just want to know where she is and if she’s alright.” She clenched her fists. “I really do think she was coming to regret the path she’d chosen.”
“Perhaps if you ever do find her, you could convince her to turn over everything she knows about the organization,” Napoleon suggested. “There’s still a great many secrets we don’t know that she might. Mr. Waverly might be able to pull some strings to get her sentence reduced if she’d talk.”
That brought a smile. “I’ll be sure to tell her that, if I ever find her,” Marietta declared.
“Meanwhile, we really must get back to the mystery here,” Illya said. “We need to find out who here, if anyone, is involved with the disappearances from Peaceful Meadows.”
Marietta nodded. “And I want to help you,” she vowed. “I guess there could be information in Harvey’s house. I can’t help thinking that he must be involved somehow, because I can’t believe it could be going on under his nose without him knowing about it!”
“Is Harvey at home right now?” Napoleon asked.
Marietta glanced at the clock. “No,” she replied. “He’s about to have a secret Council meeting at the school. I’ll need to be there.” She hesitated. “But I can give you my master key to his house. It has his address engraved on it, too.”
“And just what guarantee do we have that we wouldn’t be walkin’ into a trap?” Wye retorted.
“None, really,” Marietta replied. “You’ll just have to trust me if you want to get in.”
“Which we’d have to do either way, even if you came with us,” Napoleon said. “Alright, we’ll take that master key and look around. But do you know what this secret Council meeting is about?”
“It might be about Ms. Jensen here, or about all of you,” Marietta said uneasily. “He said he’d fill everyone in on the details when we got there.” She took the key out of her purse, handing it to Napoleon. “If the meeting breaks up and Harvey heads home, I’ll try to call and warn you. I’ll ring three times as a signal.”
“Thank you,” Napoleon nodded. “Hopefully we’ll find something.”
“And hopefully no one will see us going into his house,” Illya said flatly.
“Well . . .” Marietta hesitated. “All the Council members live on this street and our houses are connected via the secret rooms. There’s underground tunnels branching out to every house on the block. There’s arrows pointing the way to each house.”
“That’s convenient,” Napoleon said.
Marietta nodded. “It would probably be better for you to get to Harvey’s house that way, just to make sure none of the Council members see you as they leave for the meeting.”
“Except for the fact that our motorcars are right there out front, plain as day,” Wye retorted. “If you leave and the other Council members see the cars, they’ll know something’s up.”
“That’s true,” Marietta realized. “Maybe you’d better just leave now, and drive back once the meeting starts in ten minutes. You can use the master key to park in my garage, then take the secret tunnel to Harvey’s house. I’ll give you directions on the codes to open the tunnels once you’re in the secret room.”
“We’ll try it,” Napoleon said. “Thank you again.”
She gave a weak smile. “I just hope it works.”
“So do we,” Napoleon answered.
The group was troubled as they left Marietta’s house and started to drive casually around the community. Any people who were home on the other blocks gave them either suspicious or wary looks and did not try to make conversation. By the time they came back around to the Council block and Marietta’s house, Illya was thoroughly unsettled.
“I do not like this, Napoleon,” he said. “Even if Marietta lets us know as soon as the meeting ends, we might not get out of here before some of the other Council members arrive. If anyone sees us leave the garage, we will instantly be in trouble.”
“I know,” Napoleon said as they pulled up to said garage. “But under the circumstances, it’s our best chance of finding out the truth.” He got out of the car, unlocked the garage, and drove inside. Jennifer’s car pulled up alongside.
“I’ve come this far to learn the truth,” she said. “I don’t care what dangers I get into if I can find out once and for all about Martin.”
“You’re probably gettin’ us all into trouble, Lovey,” Wye retorted. “You showin’ up has really made a lot of waves.”
“It also caused you to make a truce,” Jennifer replied, “and it sounds like you weren’t having much luck until you did that.”
Wye shrugged. “Can’t argue with that.”
They entered the house through the garage entrance and made their way to the bedroom. Within minutes, they had accessed the secret room. Marietta’s code, which consisted of rapping in certain places and ways on the wall, worked like a charm and the tunnel, a trapdoor in the floor, soon creaked open.
“I feel as though we are in a B-grade horror film,” Illya grumbled as they headed down the steps and into the tunnels.
“Hopefully we’ll have a better outcome than many of the people in those,” Napoleon said.
Following the arrows led them to Harvey’s house before long. As they came out of the tunnel and used another code to get the wall to open even though the bed wasn’t in the secret room, they found themselves standing in a bedroom that looked identical to all the others they’d seen.
“So even the ringleader doesn’t believe in varying the layout,” Napoleon mused.
“He’d probably keep important information in here instead of in the living room,” Ecks said.
Jennifer was already marching to the bureau and pulling all the drawers out. “There’s just clothes in here,” she said in annoyance.
Napoleon decided to tackle the closet. Illya went to the bookcase, where Ecks swiftly joined him. Wye wandered out of the room in search of the study.
“Nothing,” Illya said after several moments of looking. “We need to branch out and try more places. We surely don’t have much time.”
“Maybe he keeps confidential things through another secret panel,” Ecks said. “He could have built his house different from all the others.”
“I suppose it depends on how fully he believes his own ideology,” Napoleon said.
“But such a secret panel could be anywhere!” Illya said in frustration. He knocked on the walls without success. Then, pausing to think about things, he suddenly stepped back with a new light in his eyes. “I have it!”
Everyone looked to him.
“Eh?” Wye raised an eyebrow as he came back into the room. “Well, where is it then?”
“Let’s suppose he does believe in his own ideology,” Illya said, his enthusiasm mounting as he crossed to the bed. “Then, there would only be two secret places he could hide something—in the secret room behind the wall, or in the bed.” He grabbed the headboard. “Someone hold the panel open!”
Ecks was the closest, and when Illya pulled on the headboard, he grabbed the wall and planted his feet, trying to force it to stay open without swirling the bed away. Napoleon came to help him.
“Wouldn’t he run the risk of letting everyone see the secret files?” Napoleon wondered. “Sometimes they would be pushing down the headboard to enter the room from this side.”
“They would just be pushing down the headboard and hurrying into the darkened secret room,” Illya replied. “And the headboard immediately flips back up; there is no chance to feel beneath it.” He continued to force it to stay down while he groped through the edge of the mattress right beside it. When he pulled out several folders with a triumphant cry, Napoleon and Ecks pushed the wall back into place and the headboard snapped upright.
The group crowded around. “What are those?” Jennifer demanded. “Is there anything about Martin?”
Illya frowned, studying the first sheet of paper inside the first folder. “There’s a list of certain people, I assume the ones that were told to move on,” he said. “Your brother is on the list, and even Everett and Clarice. Their names seem to have been hastily scrawled in.” He squinted at the page. “And there’s this strange code on the side, next to each name. It may take me a while to decipher it.”
“It could be the dates they went missing,” Wye offered.
“Or it could have something to do with where they are now,” Illya replied.
“Or it could be both, or neither.”
Again everyone jumped an alarmed mile. Harvey was strolling into the room, calm, cool, and collected, with what looked like a grenade in his hand.
“Well, it was nice of Marietta to call and warn us,” Napoleon remarked.
“Oh, don’t blame her,” Harvey replied. “The ‘meeting’ was set up as a trap for her, and you. And all of you fell right into it.”
“So now I suppose we will all be told to ‘move on’?” Illya said icily.
“Something like that.” Harvey’s eyes darkened. “There’s returns from the dead all over the place, aren’t there.” He looked right at Ecks and Wye as he spoke.
“What are you talking about?” Ecks retorted defensively, stepping in front of Wye, who laid a hand on his shoulder.
Harvey sneered at them. When he spoke next, his voice had a definite British accent. “I couldn’t have been more surprised when you two showed up wanting to move in,” he said. “I’d got the word you were both dead.”
Wye swore under his breath. “I heard that about you, Mr. Pea, long before I even took Ecks under my wing!”
Illya quietly sidled up to Napoleon. “I have the feeling we’ve wandered right into some sort of extremist in-fighting,” he said low.
“I have that same feeling,” Napoleon nodded.
“Oh, you’re part of this too,” Harvey snapped at them. To Ecks and Wye, he continued, “I wasn’t killed on that mission, but I was badly burned. Had to have a complete face job. Then the organization decided I would go deep undercover and weed out those who weren’t loyal to us. Somehow I missed you two and Zed. When the organization started breaking up, I got away. And now circumstances have brought us back together again. I’m going to see that you two U.N.C.L.E. agents pay for planting your mole to destroy our sacred organization. And I’m going to see that you two wretched traitors pay for trying to take it over.”
“And what about me?” Jennifer shot back.
“You’re just in the way,” Harvey retorted. “You’ll have to go too.”
He threw the grenade and covered his nose and mouth.
Jennifer started to cough. “What is this?” she gasped, her eyes watering.
“Gas,” Illya choked out.
There was no way to avoid the substance filling up the room. As Harvey closed the door to further protect himself, the group slumped to the floor in unconsciousness.
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