Non Challenge Fic - The Reluctant Traitor Affair Part 5

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Been a while for this one, and I'm sorry about that. I'll try and get back to more regular updates of it.

The Reluctant Traitor Affair Part 5


Napoleon whistled a jaunty tune as he walked towards headquarters. Two weeks of vacation on Tahiti – the first spent with the devastating Carolina and the second spent by turn with the equally beautiful Fiona, Mirabelle and Ashley – and he felt relaxed, refreshed, and ready to get back to saving the world.

And more than likely he'd have to jump straight back into it. He'd got back late last night but not so late that he hadn't given Illya a call, just to check in and to see if there was anything he'd missed while he'd been away. There'd been no answer, which probably meant that Illya was out on assignment somewhere and more than likely Napoleon would be sent straight out to join him. He supposed he could count himself lucky that it apparently hadn't been so serious that his vacation time had been cut short.

As he walked through the tailor shop he could swear that Del was giving him an odd look, but when he turned there was nothing. Immediately he got a flash of deja vu to a previous time he'd been coming back from vacation and Mr Waverly and Illya had contrived to make headquarters disappear on him to ensure he was authentically out of the loop.

But the secret door opened as normal and Suzanne was waiting beyond as usual....with a welcoming smile that was patently fake.

Hmmm. “Good morning,” he said easily, watching her carefully.

“Oh, good morning, Napoleon,” she said, pinning his badge onto his lapel like it was an automatic action. “Did you enjoy your vacation?”

“Yes, thank you, I very much did,” he said. “Is everything alright, Suzanne?”

“Of course,” she said, but even her fake smile flickered, and was that sympathy in her eyes? “I imagine Mr Waverly will want to see you soon.”

“Right,” he said doubtfully, and he walked past her into the building. He'd stop by his office first, drop his things off and check for any urgent memos before he went to see if Mr Waverly was looking for him.

He couldn't help but notice that he was attracting a lot of furtive looks and careful whispers. This wasn't the sort of attention he was normally looking for. Evidently there was something that everyone else knew that he didn't. Of course there was; why could he never return into something normal? He gave a wry smile; at least this time they hadn't made the building disappear.

They hadn't. It was so much worse than that. When he reached his office – when he reached his and Illya's office – he found that his side was exactly as he had left it, but Illya's side had been entirely cleared out. The desk was a blank space, cleared of papers, journals, Illya's typewriter – everything. The filing cabinet stood ajar and empty, the labcoat had vanished from its usual hook behind the door and even that damned fish tank was gone. It was as if his partner had simply been wiped from the face of the earth.

He took a deep breath. Someone would have called him if Illya had been killed. Someone would have called him.

“Napoleon!” April's voice came from behind him.

He whirled around. “Where is he?” he demanded, trying to keep the sharpness from his tone.

“I'm sorry,” she said, eyeing him with nervous sympathy. “I'd meant to catch you when you came in but I got caught up in the archives.” She cast a look down the corridor, obviously aware of the listeners. “Why don't we discuss this in your office?”

Right. He stepped inside, closed the door and waited expectantly.

She cleared her throat. “I'm sorry,” she began bluntly. “Kuryakin is working with the enemy.”

This again. He'd have expected better from April. “You're wrong,” he said in an even tone. “Illya has proved time and again that his first loyalty is to UNCLE, not the Soviet Union. And he would never betray that.”

“No.” She held up her hand and there was a look on her face he'd never seen before. “I didn't mean the Russians. I mean THRUSH. He joined THRUSH.”

That....would be laughable if April weren't so serious. “Not possible,” he said tightly. “Illya would never work with THRUSH, not voluntarily.” But clearly something had made her think so...and everyone else, judging by his earlier reception. “They must have got to him somehow – brainwashed him or something. We've all seen them mess with our people's heads before.” And if Illya had been compromised like that then Napoleon would need to rescue him as soon as possible, not only for his own sake but also because Illya's knowledge and skills would be a formidable weapon in THRUSH hands.

“Please, Napoleon.” Her mouth was twisted with pained sympathy. “I know this isn't easy to hear.”

Alright. He had to listen to her version of the truth so he could start to figure out what had really happened. He nodded appeasingly. “So what happened?”

“Well, the first I heard was a rumour that Illya had been called into the old man's office in the middle of the night and offered brandy.” His eyebrows shot up; to his knowledge, that never happened. “And then the next day he came in late looking...well, looking hung over to be brutally honest with you, darling. Everyone was worried; we thought he must have got some bad news. Mark went to spar with him, hoping to get him to open up a bit.” She paused, biting her lip uncharacteristically.

“What?” he asked, catching her nervousness.

“Illya beat him really badly,” she said soberly. “He broke his nose, dislocated his thumb – he even kicked him once Mark was already down. I didn't see the fight, but I saw Mark afterwards.”

“And that didn't tell you that Illya wasn't himself?” Napoleon demanded incredulously. Exactly how could anyone think that Illya would ever beat up a fellow agent for no reason? It was looking most likely that some kind of THRUSH mind control or drug was the cause of all this.

“No.” She shook her head. “Because when he was called into Mr Waverly's office to explain himself, that was when he said that Mr Waverly couldn't do anything because he was already being sent back to Russia.”

Just for a second Napoleon was every bit as shocked as when he'd walked in to see the empty office. He would have sworn that Mr Waverly would never let that happen, not without a considerable fight anyway. But for Illya to be openly discussing it...it would need to be a done deal. One that had happened behind Napoleon's back. Why wouldn't Illya have called him though? He would have come back in a heartbeat. He would have found a way to do something.

“So anyway, for the next few days Illya was angry and rude with everyone and then Mark and I got called to Mr Waverly's office and sent out to investigate a meeting between THRUSH and a suspected Section II traitor.”

“Illya,” he said dully.

She nodded. “Neither of us were expecting that, in spite of everything. I don't think anyone would have believed Illya would betray us. But he said he would be tortured and killed if he was sent back to the USSR and he wanted to join THRUSH for security. I...you should have heard him, Napoleon. He sounded so lost and angry. He was talking as if we had already betrayed him.”

Exactly the sort of idea that THRUSH could implant and use to manipulate. He wondered if this whole transfer could have been a THRUSH plot to begin with? Maybe they had more of a presence within the Soviet government than they'd previously thought.

April was still talking. “He shot Mark with a sleep dart when we confronted him and then threatened to kill him if I didn't let him go. He was so cold. I mean, I know he always is, but this was different.”

“And so you let THRUSH take him?” he asked harshly.

She looked exasperated, like she thought he didn't understand what she was telling him. And of course he understood, he just knew better than to accept it. “So what's happened since then? Other than our office being torn apart.?”

“There's been no real sign of him,” she said reluctantly. “Mr Waverly has given an order that he's to be captured rather than killed if possible.”

“That's good of him,” Napoleon said ironically. “Has no one been looking?”

“Of course we've been looking,” April told him sharply. “We've been through his apartment and your office looking for clues. There's nothing.”

“Because Illya isn't a traitor,” he insisted.

“Because he's an exceptional agent,” April corrected. “You have to understand, a lot of people are very angry with him right now.”

“He didn't do this,” Napoleon said with absolute and unshakeable certainty. “And I'm going to go straight to Mr Waverly and tell him so.”

She stepped in front of him briefly. “Napoleon....one more thing. He told me to tell you that he was sorry.”

He looked at her blankly. Sorry. Right.

Paying no attention to the furtive looks he was attracting, he strode through headquarters to Mr Waverly's office, barely stopping to knock on the door.

To his relief, his boss looked up when he came in, immediately giving his his full attention. “Ah, Mr Solo. I've been expecting you. Please. Close the door. I assume you have already been informed of our current crisis.”

He did as he was told. “Sir, Illya is no traitor,” he said boldly. “He would never join THRUSH of his own volition.”

With a gesture, Mr Waverly indicated for him to sit down. “Of course he would, Mr Solo. And he has done precisely that. On my orders.”

“Your orders?” he repeated, the wind taken out of his sails.

“Yes.” Mr Waverly looked at him sternly. “Mr Kuryakin did suggest that you wouldn't believe him capable of joining THRUSH. It seems he was correct.”

“As was I,” he pointed out quickly, his mind whirling. “Since he hasn't. Am I to take it then that Illya is undercover? And no one else knows?” His voice was sharp and incredulous.

“No one outside this room,” Mr Waverly agreed. “Perhaps I should begin at the beginning.”

“Please,” Napoleon said, and he listened to the story of kidnapped children and compromised agents with growing concern and horror. He could see why Mr Waverly had thought sending in Illya undercover like this was the best plan, he just hated it. There was far too much that could go wrong. Far too much that Illya could be asked to do that he would never ever do. And without a partner to act as back up, without an exit plan, Illya was completely on his own. For all they knew, Illya could already be dead. “Permission to speak freely sir?” he said when Mr Waverly had finished talking.

“You want to tell me that you don't like this. Well, neither do I,” he said surprisingly. “Neither did Mr Kuryakin. It's an ugly, dirty business, but one that seems most likely to get us the results we need. I would not have sent Mr Kuryakin were I not certain he could handle himself in this.” He snorted. “I hardly need to tell you how capable your partner is.”

No. But that wasn't the point. “I understand, sir,” he said unhappily. “What do you need me to do with regards to this affair?”

“As up until now you were on vacation it wasn't possible for you to be involved,” Mr Waverly began.

He would have come back from vacation had he been informed. And he knew why he hadn't been; his suspicion of Illya would be, in itself, suspicious. “You wanted my authentic reaction to the news to be seen by those compromised within headquarters,” he said, not bothering to mask his disapproval entirely. “And now, I assume, I'm to emerge convinced by the incontrovertible evidence?”

“Exactly, Mr Solo,” he agreed. “And to aid further in the deception, you will assist Mr Slate and Miss Dancer in hunting down Mr Kuryakin – and, by coincidence, the rest of this satrap. You might also look into who else is currently giving information to THRUSH.”

“Yes, sir,” he said grimly. He hated coming in halfway through a mission.

He walked slowly back to April's office, and if previously he hadn't cared who saw his determination, now he was making sure to broadcast tightly controlled anger. If Illya's life depended on everyone thinking Napoleon despised him, so be it. He would play his part.

Mark was in the room as well, along with Marco Cortese. They looked up at him, but for a moment no one said a word. He glanced at the fish tank, taking up a substantial corner of the smaller office. “New addition?” he asked.

“After Section IV had got through checking it for clues, no one was exactly sure what to do with the fish,” April explained. “I had them moved through here for the moment. It's not their fault, after all?”

He caught an odd note in her voice and wondered; was April as sure of Illya's guilt as she made out? Mr Waverly had claimed that no one was to be regarded as above suspicion, and he wasn't going to break orders to let her in on the truth, but she was a good agent, an intelligent woman, and she knew Illya well.

“If you want them back....?” she offered.

“No,” he said woodenly. “That's fine. I think the less I have to remind me of that...person, the better.”

“You're convinced then?” Mark asked with a glance. “April said you weren't before.”

“There's not much doubt is there, in the end,” he said coldly. “The files Mr Waverly showed me made it perfectly plain. That treacherous little bastard.” He slammed his hand against the wall and hoped that the uncharacteristic outburst would seem understandable when he'd been betrayed by the person closest to him.

“Sorry, Napoleon,” Marco said, gazing at him sympathetically. “Guess you got burned worse than any of us, but the commie fooled us all, remember. We'll know better than to trust his kind in the future.”

“Right,” he agreed and it wasn't difficult to twist the spark of annoyance and anger around until it seemed like it was aimed at Illya. “So what have we got?”

“Well, Armdale Secure Transport was broken into three days ago,” Mark said, opening a file and laying it across the desk. “They managed to bypass security which is why we're sure Kuryakin is involved. According to Section VIII the evidence suggests they were using a device Dr Ndebele developed...and remembers discussing extensively with Kuryakin.”

Napoleon nodded slowly. He supposed Illya might have given THRUSH technology to secure his own position, but this particular device sounded rather too useful for that. It could be worth his while investigating who else had access to these plans. “Do we know what they were after?”

“No,” Mark admitted with a grimace. “Nothing was obviously disturbed.”

Of course not. Really, Illya, couldn't you have been a little less competent when working for the enemy? “Well, I guess we're going through all their operations for the next month or so,” he said with a tight smile. “Was that the last sighting?”

“Technically that wasn't even a sighting,” April said carefully. “The only witness – an Armdale security guard – was murdered.”

“Shot in the back at point blank range,” Marco said in hushed tones. “That Kuryakin is one cold-hearted son of a bitch.”

“We don't know that it was him personally,” Mark said, sounding irritated.

“Well, you were the one he was trying to murder with a sleep dart,” Marco pointed out. “And April's report says he's done it before. If that's not cold, what is?”

Fortunately it was a rhetorical question.

“This is the last known sighting, darling,” April said, sliding a photograph across the table. “It was intercepted from the KGB. Apparently they tried and failed to stage a kidnapping. It's from five days ago.”

He didn't like the reminder that Illya was out there on his own against the KGB as well as everyone else. But this was the proof of life he'd been looking for. If nothing else he knew Illya had been alive five days ago.

He studied the photograph carefully. A New York street so he could assume they were still relatively near by. And Illya looked relatively unharmed, although there was a dark shadow visible on his jaw – a bruise, probably. But what really brought him up short was the sight of Illya walking beside this THRUSH agent (“That's the one Kuryakin was meeting in the bar,” April told him) body angled slightly towards him, that crooked half smile on his lips. Try as he might, he couldn't get away from the fact that this was Illya's body language, Illya's expressions. From this photo, there was no mask in sight. There was an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He really hated this.

*

It was late when he got back home. UNCLE never did believe in easing agents back into the swing of things after time away.

Mr Waverly had got three analysts working on the information they knew had been leaked, looking for culprits. Napoleon had spent much of the evening going through it looking for patterns. Removing everything that could have have leaked by Nicola Golding, there was definitely information coming from the lab. Unfortunately narrowing down further than that was proving difficult. He had eight possibilities, but he'd need to look into their personal lives to figure it out. There had also been some disruptions to operations which pointed towards a member of Section II, although he wasn't ruling out that someone in communications could have been involved. Again though, he didn't have enough to give him a single suspect.

Finding traitors in UNCLE wasn't new. But every time he felt that same disappointment. And even though the circumstances were different here, he felt it just the same, as though their people should be better. He wondered what he'd do in the same situation, but that, he supposed, was part of why Mr Waverly hadn't suspected he might be compromised. Immediate family was in short supply. Certainly there were no children or even nieces or nephews to be held over his head. Same for Illya, and he wondered whether that was altogether coincidence.

One thing that had been unfortunately obvious today – there were a lot of people interested in seeing just who might be next in line for Illya's position. A distasteful thought but one he couldn't completely escape if he wanted to keep up this pretence. The trouble was, he was reluctant to offer anyone hope of a promotion that they were absolutely, categorically, not going to get. In a few weeks at the outside, Illya would be walking straight back into his job as though he had never left. Napoleon wouldn't have it any other way. But he'd need to pretend to consider it at least. Perhaps if he let it be known he was in no way looking for another partner, but scheduled some meetings with Mr Waverly to discuss the number two position...

There was a sudden knock at the door. He raised an eyebrow. Odd; he hadn't been expecting anyone. Taking the precaution of drawing his gun and keeping it hidden behind his back, he opened the door and was confronted with the delivery guy from the Jade Palace carrying cartons of Chinese take out.

“For you,” he announced.

Napoleon blinked at him, momentarily nonplussed. “I didn't order anything.”

The guy shrugged. “Your friend ordered. He said it was important.”

His friend....and this was the place that he and Illya normally went to. Ah. How do you go about making contact when you can't make contact? “Of course, I must have forgotten,” he said, quickly digging through his pockets for some change for a tip. “Here.”

He closed the door and hurried inside and laid the food out across the table. Beef in black bean sauce and egg foo yung. Well, that was Illya's normal order – he supposed it was too much to ask that he'd get what Napoleon wanted. There could be a hidden message in there, but more likely it was just perfectly normal aggravation and a way of signing the note he found at the bottom of the bag.

For a long moment he just stared at it. Oh, he recognised Illya's handwriting immediately, but the note itself was written in Chinese.

He sighed. “Really?” he demanded out loud. “You couldn't have decided to order Italian instead?”

*

Naturally his ingenuity was up to the task and even though he was obviously reluctant to use UNCLE translators, he had the note translated within a couple of hours via Meilin Jones, a very nice girl he'd dated before her marriage. Fortunately her husband wasn't the jealous type.

It was brief and to the point, as he'd expect. Evidently Illya didn't have a lot of time away from his new found friends. And it was written in an old CIA code that Illya could have assumed he'd know and, apparently, knew himself. That could be for security or it could just be showing off. But again, it was easy for him to translate.

“Armdale Train 1600 16th. Plutonium. Access Codes in Washington Office. Driver.”

And that was it. Of course, that was enough.

This was going to get worse.



Onto part 6

Comments

[jantojones.livejournal.com]

Poor Napoleon. He's going to have to deal with all the hatred his colleagues will aim at Illya, without being able to say a word. Looking forward to the next part.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yes, exactly. Another kind of betrayal - although you can be sure he's probably making a careful list in his head of acceptable and unacceptable remarks.

[lindafishes8.livejournal.com]

You had me worrying about the goldfish for a minute there. This story just keeps getting better and better! Leave it to Illya to smuggle a message.

My hypothesis about the plot is completely wrong, but I love a good mystery.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Yes, although I really did like your hypothesis - it would have made for a fun plot twist.

Having introduced the fish, I decided I should take care of them. Killing them might have been more angstily satisfying, but actually, I can't imagine them just being left there without someone remembering them.

[irisheitie.livejournal.com]

Wow--glad they made contact. This is really edge-of- your-seat stuff here. What's gonna happen to the dynamic dou next?? Radiation poisoning? Disarming a nuclear device. And I do not like the dude in April's office-- maybe he's the turncoat. I am so looking forward to your next installment.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, glad you're still enjoying it! And mmm, you'll need to wait and see...and hopefully not wait too long.

Ah, Marco. Yes he's not particularly endearing himself, is he? Though remember, if he is the turncoat, he's doing it because a child close to him is being threatened...so either way, him being a possible traitor and him being a jerk are kind of separate things!

[budgieluv.livejournal.com]

So glad to read more of this!

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Glad you're sticking with it, I'll try and get the next chapter written soon.

[glennagirl.livejournal.com]

I forgive you for making us wait for this only because it is totally worth waiting for. The Chinese food and the note are brilliant.

[otherhawk.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :) It seemed like a good way to pass on information. Plus, I think that doing so in a way he knew would aggravate Napoleon would help him feel normal.