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section7mfuBit later on this posting than I wanted, but finally done!
This story definitely has a harder edge that I hope readers will find intriguing.
Posted in two parts due to story length.
Name: SUBROGATION OF THE SOUL
Genre: GEN
Warnings: VIOLENCE; MILD LANGUAGE
Length: approx 18,400 words
Author’s Note: The mission detailed in this story takes place about seven weeks after the MFU series’ episode The Terbuf Affair, that originally aired in late December 1964.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
SUBROGATION OF THE SOUL
by LaH
Late February 1965
Slovak Karst in the Carpathians
“I understand you have indeed managed to capture Napoleon Solo,” Ciriaco Uripides commented in grudging compliment to his first lieutenant within this particular Thrush satrapy.
That lieutenant, Budek Jahoda, smirked in obvious self-satisfaction. “Just as I vouched I would. Currently have him all snugly confined within one of the underground caves.”
“Those caves are riddled with unexplored passages,” Uripides cautioned pedantically. “You sure Waverly’s golden boy won’t simply find a way out?”
The Slav Jahoda bristled at the suggestion by his Greek superior he might be slipshod in his performance of his responsibilities. Truth was Budek had little liking for Uripides, accounting him a priggish elitist. He knew Ciriaco had reportedly earned every iota of his status in the organization through the merits of unique planning with regard to various Thrush ventures. Still, Budek himself was a hands-on, blood-under-the-fingernails type who much preferred to deal with men of his own ilk.
A hulking presence at least six-and-a-half feet tall with a physique literally bulging with muscles, Jahoda would be viewed by any adversary as an immediate bodily threat. As well he had a natural affinity to all modes of physical violence that had garnered him a grisly reputation unique even within the likes of Thrush. Uripides unspokenly considered the other man a tactless thug, someone who had no concept of the finer points of mental manipulation and thus not someone who would ever be of more than peripheral importance in the most sophisticated strategies of the supra-nation. Budek, in contrast, accounted the supra-nation’s ultimate goal of world domination as something that in the end would only be achieved by the likes of men such as himself, men who didn’t shrink from the most gruesome of ruthless physicalities.
“Napoleon Solo will not escape this time,” Jahoda guaranteed.
“Napoleon Solo has made many who said the same eat their words. Those good looks of his are not what led to the achievement of his position as U.N.C.L.E.’s top man in enforcement in North America, you know. He has incalculable wit and guile, as well as skill and dedication well beyond the ordinary. And now that Thrush has solid reason to believe he is being groomed as Waverly’s successor—”
“Waverly will soon need to have his throne-in-waiting fitted for a new backside,” irritably asserted Budek.
“Solo undoubtedly has information the Council will want to extract,” Ciriaco superfluously mused.
“There are many extraction methods with which I have intimate familiarity.”
“All in good time.” The Greek let his dismissive tone purposely rankle the Slav for, while he was aware Thrush had some interim need of men like Jahoda, Ciriaco personally found such brutes unimaginative annoyances. “A more delicate hand will initially be called for in this particular case.”
Budek snorted. “A delicate hand?” Jahoda let his tone be just as dismissive of Uripides’ idea of extraction methods as the other man had been of his. “With an U.N.C.L.E. agent of Solo’s caliber?”
“Exactly so. Solo has been tortured more than once by those of our organization, many of them reputed as extraordinary technicians in such regard. Never has it gained Thrush so much as a single jot of useable information regarding U.N.C.L.E.,” the Greek pointedly reminded his subordinate.
“This time will be different,” stubbornly insisted Budek.
“While it is laudable you have such confidence in your own abilities,” Ciriaco put that trivializing tone in his voice again as he spoke, “it is better I think to attempt something new and perhaps unexpected to get what we want from the man, something to stretch the limits of his psychological boundaries.”
“And that would be?” Jahoda could not keep the derision out of his own voice.
Uripides rubbed his chin in seemingly idle thought for a moment, though idle thought was seldom something that honestly occurred with the man. Yet he could feign such remarkably well. “That girl, the hydrogeologist’s daughter: she is still under house arrest here, yes?” he then asked.
“I know Solo is a noted Casanova, but that girl is just that: a girl, not a woman. I never heard tell of the man being attracted to adolescents.”
Now it was Ciriaco’s turn to project a very self-satisfied smirk. “Perhaps not, but innocents are always in such need of protection, at least according to those with lofty ideals.”
“She’s no innocent,” refuted the Slav, practically spitting out the observation.
“In the eyes of our ever righteous though sometimes sentimental U.N.C.L.E. agent,” proposed the Greek certainly, “we shall see.”
Act I: The devil is in the details
Evening…
“Still nothing substantial to report, Mr. Kuryakin?” questioned Alexander Waverly in a tone that left no doubt he was less than pleased with his operative’s reports thus far.
Illya Kuryakin momentarily bit his bottom lip to keep from making too short a retort in response to the Continental Chief’s accusatory query. He and his makeshift partner had been searching these less-than-hospitable rugged reaches of Czechoslovakia during every hour of available daylight for two long days. Now evening again closed in around them without the setting sun marking any achievement of success in their current quest. He was tired, he was cold, and the tent in which they were encamped offered extremely little in the way of creature comforts. Even the food wasn’t as plentiful as he could have wished.
“Unfortunately not, sir,” Illya answered into the mike of the shortwave radio over which he was currently communicating with his superior. “We still have reason to believe that the Thrush base is hidden somewhere in these mountains. Yet the cave systems are extensive, and—”
“I am aware of that, Mr. Kuryakin,” interrupted Waverly abruptly. “However, I am also aware that time may not be on our side.”
“Sir, I realize there are undoubtedly valid security reasons why you didn’t provide all specifics when you assigned myself and Mr. Steffensen to this task,” Illya adeptly prefaced his next informational request, a request that could perhaps be viewed as bordering on insubordination. “However, I do think it important for us to have a heads-up regarding whatever Thrush may be working on in this satrapy.”
Hell, a heads-up? Illya at this moment would settle for a charades-like hint. All he and Steffensen had been told was: “Locate the local Thrush den in Czechoslovakia, and do it pronto.” Sometimes it did seem to Illya as if Mr. Waverly kept the finer points of U.N.C.L.E.’s undertakings a bit too close to the vest.
“There is no physical project housed within this Thrush unit. Or at least none of which we have current knowledge. There was a proposal of one, but that failed to come to even marginal fruition,” the Old Man finally delivered details to his agents. “Thus the agenda for this particular satrapy during the present timeframe is apparently different.”
“In what way?” Illya found himself bluntly demanding.
There was a silence of long seconds, countable to fully eighteen or twenty, before Waverly next spoke.
“We originally received intelligence that the Czechoslovakian section of Thrush might be testing a means to cause flooding in underground cave systems, enough to destabilize large masses of land. So I dispatched Mr. Solo to investigate that possibility a week ago.”
“While I was still on assignment in Madrid.”
“Indeed. Unfortunate set of coincidences there. Though in the end perhaps not so coincidental.”
“Excuse me, sir? I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Illya openly voiced his confusion.
Again a silence of countable seconds before Waverly spoke again.
“We now have reason to believe our received intelligence was nothing more than a clever ruse propagated by giving purposeful notification of a since outdated and shutdown scientific enterprise.”
“To what purpose?”
“To bring Mr. Solo within ready reach of the operatives of this well-hidden Thrush satrapy.”
Illya glanced over at his partner for this mission, the rather high-strung Tage Steffensen, and noted the other man was nibbling on one of his cuticles as he listened somewhat bug-eyed to Waverly’s words. Though an agent with an above-average record in the field, the big Swede certainly had none of Napoleon’s self-ease and composure.
“Mr. Solo is a feared enemy operative to be sure, sir, one Thrush would dearly love to put permanently out of commission,” admitted Illya. “Yet why go to such particular trouble at this time?”
Waverly harrumphed noisily, the sound rumbling roughly over the airwaves. “It is possible,” he began. “No, it is likely,” he purposely corrected himself, “Thrush intercepted a communiqué that enticed them into this pointed action.”
“What could possibly—” Illya himself began, and then fell silent. He knew, of course he knew. Waverly had sent a message through supposedly secure communication channels to the other Continental Chiefs forwarding Napoleon as his own eventual successor. It was something that had been broached with Solo by the Old Man quite a few months back, but Solo had only recently provided his superior his final agreement to the plan. With that done, it had become imperative the other chiefs be advised as soon as possible and allowed to voice their opinions on the decision. “Oh, I see,” Illya thus commented in complete comprehension.
“What, Illya, what?” anxiously required Tage. “What’s going on?”
“Later, Tage.” Illya cupped his hand over the microphone as he put off the other man’s plea to be brought out of the dark. “I’ll explain what I can later.”
“I’m glad you seem to have gotten the full drift of the issue, Mr. Kuryakin,” Waverly conceded with unmistakable gravity.
“Yes sir.”
“Mr. Solo’s last contact was four days ago,” Waverly provided this necessary fact. “At that time he believed he had located the satrapy and advised that he would be out of transmission range as he ventured into the Carpathians to verify his hunch. We uncovered the unreliability of our initial information but a few hours later, but were unable to regain communication to apprise him to abort the mission.”
“So we now more than suspect that Napoleon is in the hands of Thrush. That is, if they haven’t killed him already.”
“In such a situation—”
Now it was Illya who interrupted. “Indeed sir. Killing him would be the last stroke, not the first.”
“Nor even the second stroke,” furthered Waverly. “Whatever plans Thrush ultimately has for Mr. Solo, they do need to be thwarted, Mr. Kuryakin. Not merely for his sake, but for that of the organization as a whole. Currently we remain in danger simply because we have no consistent handle on their full intent.”
“We’ll find him, sir,” pledged Illya certainly. For he had absolutely no intention of letting Thrush make some foul use of his friend simply because of a position he had been recommended to one day attain.
“Stand back, Solo, well back!” commanded Budek through the iron bars that sectioned off a portion of this underground cave to serve as a cell. Jahoda’s demand of course was punctuated with the business end of a Thrush rifle sited through those bars directly at Napoleon’s midsection.
Having already been thoroughly roughed up before his incarceration in this prison, Solo considered it the better part of valor to heed the Slav’s instructions and stay alert for any opportunity that might come as a result. Raising his shackled hands palms up in a gesture of submission, Napoleon shuffled his equally shackled feet backwards till he stood at the end of the natural stone enclosure furthest from the door. The iron grate then was swung open and two underling guards, also brandishing distinctive Thrush rifles, slammed Napoleon back against the far wall and held him there, the barrel of one’s gun shoved forcefully into his chest and the barrel of the other’s shoved even more forcefully into his stomach.
Budek entered behind them. After seeing that the U.N.C.L.E. agent was for the moment firmly under the control of his subordinates, he nodded his head toward the door. A girl of perhaps fifteen or maybe sixteen but surely no more entered the lockup between two more armed guards. Yet they didn’t hold her and she wasn’t struggling. She simply walked between them resignedly, her face a mask of perfect calm.
“Though I know U.N.C.L.E. likes to claim Thrush has no knowledge of the boundaries of justice, we do indeed conform to a certain organizational code. And we make examples, Solo, of those of our own who pointedly break that code. We thought an U.N.C.L.E. man would enjoy firsthand observation of Thrush’s form of self-administered justice. Something to ease your boredom,” Jahoda spat out contemptuously, “while we wait upon the arrival of those of the Council who would personally chat with you.”
With that, Budek nodded once more toward the door and another man, this one in a white lab coat, made an entrance. He was unarmed… except for a hypodermic needle he held in one hand with a small bottle of some solution in the other.
“We ready then?” the white-coated man questioned Jahoda once he had filled the syringe from the bottle.
“Do it and do it quickly,” advised the Slav. “Keeping Solo contained is a count-your-luck-by-seconds thing.”
The tech nodded shortly, turned and efficiently stabbed the girl in the right arm. She didn’t even flinch.
“Hey, what are you doing?” demanded Napoleon as he recklessly pushed through the guns of the Thrush muscle restraining him and propelled his body, despite his shackled ankles, toward the girl.
Budek brought the butt of his own rifle down sharply across the nape of Solo’s neck, felling him to the ground in a single blow. He then pressed the barrel of his weapon directly against the back of Napoleon’s head. “All in the name of justice, Solo,” he declared with a half-laugh.
Jahoda kept his gun firmly anchored against Napoleon’s skull as he signaled the other men to leave the premises ahead of him. Seeing stars from the heavy bash to his neck, Napoleon was inopportunely in no condition to tackle Budek before the Slav made his own exit from the cell, the heavy iron-barred door being swung firmly shut behind him.
“You all right?”
As she spoke, Napoleon looked up into the face of the girl who was now kneeling beside him. He smiled crookedly. “I’ve survived worst.”
“So I’ve heard tell,” she countered.
“What was all that about?” he then asked her straightforwardly.
The girl shrugged. “Life as it is for me.”
“What kind of life is that? Who are you anyway?”
“My name is Klara: Klara Jablonska.
Napoleon swallowed convulsively. “Clara? Your name is Clara?”
“Yes, but with the Slavic pronunciation. Bit different emphasis on the first syllable. In English you would spell it with a K instead of a C, I believe. I’m Polish, you see.”
“I thought I detected a bit of an Eastern European accent to your otherwise excellent English,” Napoleon commented in an attempt to keep his voice clear of the emotion that had unexpectedly overwhelmed him upon hearing that this girl shared the name of his one-time great love.
“And, in Czechoslovakia, you expected to find North Americans instead of East Europeans?” challenged the girl.
Napoleon gave her an amused smile as he awkwardly pulled himself into a seated position from his previous one flat on his stomach. “I guess I expected to find only Czechs and Slovaks,” he teased.
That elicited a bit of a sheepish grin from the girl. “Touché. Or, as we say in Polish: Dotykać!”
“Łaskawie uznała,” responded Napoleon, his accent far from perfect but not too patently awful.
{Translation: Graciously acknowledged.}
“You speak polski?” inquired Klara in some surprise.
“Unfortunately only a few phrases my partner taught me,” Napoleon conceded. “He’s Russian.”
Klara crinkled her nose in distaste. “Bah! I have no use for Russians.”
“And what about U.N.C.L.E. agents?” Solo asked with a tilt of his head. His curiosity had been piqued by his captor’s comments regarding this girl being dealt a form of Thrush organizational justice with that injection. “You have a use for them?”
“I am completely Thrush in my beliefs, if that is what you are asking.”
“That’s what I was asking. I suppose you were put in this cell with me to some undermining purpose then?”
Once more Klara shrugged. “I am here because I did something of which the Council did not approve.”
“Why don’t you tell me what that was? If the Council didn’t approve, I most likely will.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” Klara pledged with an odd smirk.
“Why don’t you try me?” pressed Napoleon.
Klara looked him straight in the eye as she declared with surprising ease and without an iota of regret, “I killed my father.”
Napoleon cleared his throat a bit uncomfortably. Such a no-frills revelation was certainly not what he had expected. “There was a reason I presume?” he subsequently asked, wanting full facts before he drew any hasty conclusions.
“Of course there was a reason. He had failed Thrush.”
“What?” The stunned Napoleon couldn’t hide his initial shock at such an uncompromising answer.
“He was the aquifer specialist in charge of Thrush’s groundwater incursion project here. His efforts in this regard were rather spectacularly unsuccessful. He had been given years to accomplish what was needed, yet his results were in the main unproductive.”
“And for that I’m sure the Thrush hierarchy tagged him for extermination, perhaps not in a humane manner. So you decided to make less miserable his inevitable end.”
“What a poetic scenario you paint,” Klara mock-complimented him as she sat back on her haunches. “Only someone with U.N.C.L.E.’s ideals seeded deep in the very neuron network of his brain would make of my barefaced assertion such a quixotic possibility.”
Napoleon instinctively hunched and unhunched his shoulders in an attempt to physically relieve the mental and emotional tension that was building in him at this girl’s arbitrarily bizarre admissions and intensely cool attitude in making them.
“Tilting at windmills is my specialty,” he gibed somewhat awkwardly. “So what’s the actual scenario?” Solo then inquired with as much detachment as he could himself muster.
“He failed Thrush; yet the Council was willing to give him a second chance. I knew that was a mistake, knew that he hadn’t the internal discipline to achieve what they wanted. And I knew what was unquestionably required was punishment for his abject failure. So I doctored his food one night with a heavy sleeping potion and subsequently shot him as he lay in drugged unconsciousness.”
Napoleon’s jaw reflexively dropped in a soundless “oh” of stunned amazement. He simply couldn’t find words adequate to express his reaction.
“Yet realize there is still humanity in me,” forwarded the girl. “Thus I ensured it was all quick and clean: one precise bullet to the right temple. I didn’t see any point in making him suffer unnecessarily.”
“Very…” Napoleon stumbled as his mind tried to capture an appropriate word.
“Charitable?” proposed Klara. “Generous? Considerate?”
“I was thinking more unemotional,” responded Napoleon as neutrally as possible.
“Emotion clouds judgment; thus it should have no place in difficult decisions.”
“I disagree, as emotion is what in the end accounts us as fully human.”
Klara shrugged: a seemingly habitual gesture with her. “Then account me as inhuman, if it satisfies some inner moral principle in you to do so. The opinion of one knotted Gordian-like within the apron strings of U.N.C.L.E. matters not to me.”
“What was in that syringe?” Solo avoided further venturing into the previous sensitive subject and instead inquired into a topic more plain fact-driven.
“A slow-acting poison,” stated Klara without a qualm. “Eventually it will kill me, but not at once, and not with that single dose.”
“So Thrush intends to draw out your death? Nothing quick and clean?”
The habitual shrug. “It is justice.”
“I would more readily call it torture,” hedged Napoleon.
“Because you are U.N.C.L.E. and therefore do not understand.”
“I would hope the reason is more that I am human and therefore do not understand.”
“Perceive it as you wish.”
“So they will have to give you more injections? To complete their… justice?” Napoleon again backed away from one confrontational topic, though likely stepping smack-dab into another.
“Yes. Three more. Six hours between each.”
“Twenty-hour hours to live then?”
“Such is the expanse of life planned for me, yes.”
“Yet plans don’t always go to plan, do they?”
Klara shrugged. “There is always an element of unpredictability in life… and death.”
Napoleon found he could not disagree with that sentiment, even when expressed by one of Thrush.
Act II: The devil has a sweet voice
Night…
“Madzeija,” Ciriaco Uripides called out through the open door of his office into the outer perimeter where the desk of his secretary was located.
“Yes sir?” queried Madzeija Jablonska as she quickly made her way into the frame of the doorway.
“Get me Mademoiselle LaChien on the wire,” ordered Madzeija’s boss.
“At once, sir,” Madzeija acknowledged as she entered the premises of Uripides’ office and made her way to the communications console located at the back of the room.
“She is still in Spain, I believe, spearheading salvage of that economic project that U.N.C.L.E. recently sabotaged in the outskirts of Madrid.”
“Yes sir,” confirmed Madzeija. “She communicated with my Daiya from there this morning.”
“Takes a special interest in that younger daughter of yours, doesn’t she?” asked Ciriaco with some curiosity.
“Yes sir,” was all Madzeija provided by way of reply to that question.
Truth was, Madzeija really didn’t know why Angelique LaChien had within the past eighteen months developed a seeming attachment for her currently twelve-year-old child, but she had her suspicions. She suspected, more than suspected, that the Spider Lady – as so many in the organization referred to LaChien because of the multiple webs of intrigue she adeptly spun – was making use of Daiya as a spy. Certainly Daiya would have been more than ripe for recruitment as such by LaChien. The preteen idolized Thrush women who fell into Angelique’s category of spy, aspiring to one day be counted among their number. Daiya’s mother was now absolutely convinced initial details of how badly had been faring the groundwater incursion project once centered in this Thrush unit had come straight from the girl’s lips into the ready ear of LaChien. Yet just as definitively Madzeija was now in no position to call out the Thrush femme fatale on the disturbing possibility of her daughter’s hypothetical “training” in this regard.
Madzeija, you see, was the widow of Hajnrich Jablonski, the hydrogeologist who had once been in charge of the development of Thrush’s groundwater incursion venture, a venture that had come to an abrupt end in abysmal failure approximately eight months ago. Hajnrich had expected to lose his life for that disaster. Indeed he had so lost it, but not as both he and his wife had originally thought he would. After months of tense waiting for some resolution, he had been given a one-time reprieve by the Supreme Council only to be subsequently murdered by his own eldest daughter Klara.
All of this was a mass blur of confusion for Madzeija, who only knew she had to stay neutral to ensure continuance of her own life and that of her younger child. She was an efficient secretary, and a more than efficient communications technician, but nothing more. She had no grand degrees to tempt Thrush. And, though surely an attractive woman, she certainly had none of the seductress qualities the supra-nation so valued in its top female operatives.
There had been so much personal expectation in her and her husband’s enlistment into the ranks of Thrush a dozen years ago. Hajnrich at that time already possessed something of a reputation in his field. He was considered one of those bright young men with impeccable scientific credentials that so intrigued Thrush. With a small child and another expected baby to provide for in the uncomfortably restrictive Communist system in Poland, the couple was lured by the promise of a comfortable life of plenty: prestige, all manner of creature comforts and money to spare. Madzeija even dared hope that they would be stationed in a satrapy somewhere outside the hem of the Iron Curtain. That hope, however, proved an idle one.
Still, the couple brought up their two girls to admire the values of Thrush. There was no compromising in the Jablonski household. The principles by which life was to be lived were dictated by the ideas and goals of the supra-nation. Both Klara and Daiya firmly embraced those principles from toddler-hood, and it was very true to say the Jablonska girls were far more devoted to the conceptual essence of Thrush than either of their parents.
Hajnrich was assigned over the years to various Thrush scientific undertakings in Bulgaria, Romania, and USSR-annexed Belarus. Though his career in this regard was successful, his roles were always subordinate. That is until three years ago when he was put in charge of the massive groundwater incursion project here in Czechoslovakia. He worked hard to make the supra-nation’s plans come to fruition, but from the beginning the objectives were just too ambitious. Perhaps the only outcome ever likely for the project was extreme misfortune. Perhaps even the Council itself secretly acknowledged this reality and such was the reason they ultimately “pardoned” Hajnrich for the unfortunate debacle. Honestly Madzeija didn’t know. She only knew what did happen is that the unerring education in full dedication to the standards of Thrush she and her husband had given their offspring resulted in an unforeseen family tragedy.
Life, Madzeija inwardly granted, was just too hard, but then death had nothing to offer by way of consolation.
“Good evening, Miss LaChien,” Madzeija spoke into the microphone after the communications tech in the Madrid satrapy had connected her to said woman.
“Good evening to you, Madzeija,” responded Angelique. “And how does darling Daiya tonight?”
“She is well, Miss LaChien. I have Mr. Uripides ready to take the line with you,” Madzeija effectively cut short any further chit-chat on the part of the famed Thrush manipulator.
“Then by all means I will take full advantage of his readiness,” Angelique insinuated in a subtle form of double-entendre.
Madzeija nodded to Uripides and rose from the console as he turned his attention to the subsidiary communication unit sitting on his own desk.
“Angelique, my dear, we have him,” Ciriaco all but crowed into the mike of his specialized radio unit as he broke the news to his current lady-lust.
Madzeija made her exit, Uripides appreciatively watching the back-and-forth movement of her admittedly well-formed gams before she finally closed the office door behind herself.
The momentary distraction dispensed with, Ciriaco continued his self-satisfied braggadocio. “We have Napoleon Solo under lock and key, or rather between rocks and iron bars.”
“I congratulate you, darling,” came the perhaps-and-perhaps-not French-accented voice over the wire. “But be vigilant: he can be a slippery one.”
“No moues of distress over your sometime bedmate’s ensuing fate?” teased Uripides.
“Darling, Napoleon Solo is U.N.C.L.E. to his bones and I am Thrush in every drop of my blood,” clarified Angelique coolly. “True, I have enjoyed private encounters with the man now and again,” she downplayed her fascination with Solo. “Yet never once to the true detriment of our mutual organization. I have always known one day Thrush would make good Napoleon’s end, and truth to tell that inevitability has never fazed me in the least.”
“Perhaps that only made your precarious assignations the more sweet,” suggested Ciriaco readily.
Though Uripides was a handsome man with many sexual conquests to his credit (or perhaps discredit), he harbored a secret jealousy toward Napoleon Solo with his renowned lady-charmer reputation. Thus he would like nothing better than to psychologically twist the other man’s mind like a pretzel, and perhaps permanently deflate the confident air that was as much what attracted women to Solo as his looks.
“Perhaps so,” conceded Angelique, though admittedly with indifference. “Adding mental spice to the physical mix can be quite enticing.”
“Well, my plans for Solo include adding emotional salt to idealistic wounds.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, a silence that Ciriaco thought went on much too long. He would remember that.
“You were ever an inventive one, Ciriaco,” Angelique finally purred in praise, “when it comes to non-physical forms of manipulation.”
“And this will be my greatest triumph,” Uripides guaranteed her. “I doubt not it will lead to a seat on the Council itself.”
“An admirable goal.”
“We all in Thrush are goal-oriented, wouldn’t you say?” pressed Ciriaco.
“We all have our desires to be sure,” stated Angelique ambivalently. “But for moment, darling, I must run. I have endeavors of my own to pursue in the name of Thrush, you understand.”
“Oh course, sweetheart. Do the attacking bird proud.”
“You as well, darling. Adieu.” And with that the communication line disconnected with unexpected immediacy.
Uripides muttered to himself as he secretly fumed. Angelique just wasn’t demonstrating the respect his coup deserved.
When he had been assigned to this satrapy a month ago, it had been to cost-and-time effectively close down the operation. He had initiated that shutdown with a knowledgeable hand. Personnel here were now down to a mere two dozen men and women, with most reusable equipment already moved to other locations where such would provide best advantage to Thrush. But then there had been an unlooked-for change in direction in Ciriaco’s mindset when another unit of Thrush had somehow broken into a secure U.N.C.L.E. communication line and retrieved a rather intriguing message.
Oddly, Uripides had gotten wind of the content of that tapped transmission from Angelique herself. The gist of it had resulted in very feminine coos of self-satisfaction from her, coos she had found it too tempting not to share with a man she knew had the same designs for an ascendant position in the Thrush hierarchy as she did herself.
It had taken some days for Thrush’s highest level cryptographers to even partially decode the meaning of the dispatch, and even then the Hierarchy was not completely positive they had everything right. Still, what seemed fairly certain from the communiqué was that Napoleon Solo was being officially forwarded by Alexander Waverly as his future successor. The same Napoleon Solo with whom Angelique so willingly played stimulating cat-and-mouse. Thus in their future assignations she now had an opportunity to gain confidential intelligence that previously may not even have been available to glean. True, Napoleon really never “spilled” while in bed with her any information that could be accounted as vital to the operation of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. He had an exceptionally firm handle on the limits he personally placed on their association. Yet Angelique had supreme confidence in her own abilities to in due course alter that unsatisfactory scenario to something more in her own favor, and she certainly was not shy about suggesting so to various members of the Council.
Being forced to endure all this likely unfounded gloating on Angelique’s part is what had set germinating the seed of Uripides’ brilliant subversion of her smug self-importance. The groundwater incursion project was deader than a doornail. Yet U.N.C.L.E. had never caught wind of it initially and surely had no direct knowledge of its current abandonment by Thrush. So why not use the failed endeavor to some constructive purpose?
If enough communication could be initiated from the Czechoslovakian satrapy to make the undertaking seem very much active and very close to fruition, and that communication could as well be set up to ensure U.N.C.L.E. intercepted it, wouldn’t the Command send a top agent to investigate? Everything could be broached in a manner to make the discovery of the Thrush Czechoslovakian initiative seem absolutely top priority. Thus who would Alexander Waverly – who had a tendency to appropriate the most vital of missions into his own direct sphere of influence – have handle such a critical, onsite investigation other than Napoleon Solo, admittedly his top enforcement agent?
Ciriaco knew from his back-and-forth radio tête-à-têtes with a miffed Angelique at the time that Illya Kuryakin was busy sniffing around the economic scheme Thrush was orchestrating in Madrid. He also knew – as did admittedly most of Thrush since the supra-nation tended to take particular note of such things – that Solo had recently returned from a successful lone mission. A mission where he had suffered no serious injuries and from which he required no recovery time to clear his system of enemy drugs. Thus U.N.C.L.E.’s North American Number 1 in Section II was not only readily available for roping into the baited trap, but as well conveniently partnerless. With meticulous point-by-point delineation of these details, Uripides forwarded his own proposition to the Council.
The elite members of the Thrush hierarchy saw nothing to lose and in fact much to gain in the enterprise. They were risking no current organizational designs and, if the ruse worked, they would have Napoleon Solo in their clutches. Not for the first time to be sure, but then again Ciriaco was a man of vision who saw a more inventive approach to compromising Solo’s iron will when it came to loyalty and dedication to the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. So the Council agreed to Uripides’ intrigue, but specified they would not, in order to consummate that intrigue, authorize any new personnel to bolster the nearly depleted ranks of the Czechoslovakian satrapy. Their one concession on that score was to assign him the services of Budek Jahoda, considered amongst the cream of Thrush’s crop of torturers and musclemen.
Uripides had to admit, despite his dislike of the man, that Jahoda had proven his worth. He managed to swiftly snare Solo once the groundwork had been set to get him within striking range of that target. It was Madzeija who guaranteed the success of much of that groundwork. Her skills with communications were really quite extraordinary. She orchestrated the “leak” of the necessary intelligence to U.N.C.L.E. in a manner that had effectively bypassed all of the Command’s various security verifications. That was something Ciriaco would see stood the woman in good stead. Despite her husband’s colossal botch job in his first position of authority within the Thrush scientific community, and despite her older daughter’s wayward private interpretation of the ethics of the supra-nation, Madzeija had personally demonstrated her own value to the organization.
Now if only the damn woman would get a clue about wearing shorter skirts to show off more of her rather spectacular legs.
Solo sat on the floor of the cave-cum-cell with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head resting on those knees. He was trying in vain to get some rest, but this approach to sleeping was hardly conducive to that. Nearby, lying upon the one poor excuse for a bed within the space, Klara shivered fitfully. That “bed” was nothing more than a niche carved into one of the stone walls with a lumpy straw-stuffed mattress set inside it. There was no blanket, not even a thin sheet, and Napoleon didn’t have so much as a jacket as he had been stripped and given but a lightweight prisoner’s jumpsuit to wear before being locked up.
“Sorry I haven’t any covering to offer you to ward against the cold,” apologized Napoleon as he raised his head and looked toward the uncontrollably shaking girl.
“It was enough that you surrendered the bed to me,” Klara assured him.
That brought a cockeyed grin to Napoleon’s face. “You call that a bed? No springs, no legs, no frame, no—”
“Nothing for a resourceful U.N.C.L.E. agent to fashion into a tool or weapon,” interjected Klara with her own lopsided grin. “Thrush is very aware of your ingenuity you know, Solo.”
“My reputation precedes me,” granted Napoleon with an easygoing chuckle.
“Most definitely,” guaranteed the Thrushie. After a short and somewhat awkward silence ensued between them, Klara told him frankly, “My reaction to the cold is a bit intensified because of the poison. It is not of concern.”
“Maybe it is to me,” refuted Napoleon.
“Why? Why should that be the case, Solo? You and I are sworn enemies.”
“Currently it seems to me we are both prisoners. And won’t you call me Napoleon? Since we are rather stuck with each other’s company, no reason to be so derogatorily formal in addressing one another.”
“I wasn’t being derogatory, formal or otherwise. To me you are simply Solo: the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement’s Number 1 in Section II of North America. You have more than earned the distinction of ready recognition by your surname.”
“Well, I refuse to refer to you as Jablonska.”
“I have no reputation preceding me, Solo. Thus being called by my given name – a name that holds no particular significance in the ears of anyone – is all the distinction I deserve.”
Napoleon didn’t voice his reaction, but in his head the silent declaration buzzed: “It’s a name that has significance in my ears, more than you will ever know.”
“Some given names are badges of distinction,” Napoleon chose to keep their chatter impersonal.
“For Popes and kings, with maybe a handful of ancient philosophers and medieval artists thrown in for good measure,” Klara disputed his logic.
“Well, in your own organization there is Angelique,” he intimated.
Klara smiled mischievously. “Ah yes, Angelique. Someone of Thrush with whom you have an intimate acquaintance.”
“You’ve been listening to idle gossip,” suggested Napoleon dismissively.
“Despite numerous and apparently quite intense bedroom liaisons between the two of you, you’ve never given her any of the information she particularly seeks,” Klara continued. “That’s not idle gossip, is it, Solo?” she badgered.
“My reputation precedes me,” he repeated, this time with a dramatic sigh, causing Klara to break out in a full-bellied laugh.
The girl’s mirth was short-lived, however, as the laugh transformed into a wild cough, her breath audibly catching in her chest. Disturbed by this turn in events, Solo made his way to the niche where she lay, though he was inhibited by the chain connecting his ankle cuffs that provided him not more than eighteen inches of slack to walk.
“Here: you should sit up,” Napoleon advised as he slipped one arm under her back to support her in doing that. Again a chain extended between manacles, these on his wrists, inhibited his movements. Still he managed to get her seated upright to aid her in breathing more easily.
“The poison eventually suffocates,” she finally gasped out in explanation. “It is not of concern.”
Napoleon’s brow furrowed in distress. “It is of concern to me,” he openly challenged her chilly detachment this time.
She turned her countenance toward his and studied him intently for a moment or two, as if he was a particularly intriguing specimen being viewed under a strongly-powered microscope. “The heart of U.N.C.L.E.,” she finally spat out contemptuously.
“Always preferable to the soul of Thrush,” he retorted with impatience.
“I thought U.N.C.L.E. believed those of Thrush had no souls?” she countered pointedly.
“Even dark souls are souls,” gainsaid Napoleon just as pointedly.
Seemingly thoroughly amused by his response, she then guaranteed him, “Thrush will crack you open like an egg.”
“They have tried before, much more than once, to no avail. You see, there are certain areas where I am rather hard-boiled.”
“Well, isn’t this a cozy.” The mocking comment came from the lips of Budek Jahoda who – ubiquitous rifle at the ready – stood in the area just outside the bars.
“Nothing about this place is cozy,” snapped Napoleon as he turned toward the voice.
“We don’t treat captured U.N.C.L.E. agents to the Ritz,” sneered Budek.
“The least you could do is provide a second lumpy mattress.”
“What’s the problem, Solo? Finally found a female you don’t want to sleep with?”
“You truly are a cretin in every sense of the word,” Napoleon condemned the other man in complete disgust.
“And immensely proud of it,” retorted Jahoda without a qualm. “Now stand aside, Solo: the good doctor has another shot to give our wayward little miss.”
“He’s not a doctor,” remarked Klara matter-of-factly. “He’s a second-rate lab tech.”
“Thrush rates him highly enough to administer fatal injections to you,” Jahoda goaded. “So guess you’re pretty low on the totem pole yourself, sweetcakes.”
Klara just gave her habitual shrug in unruffled response to the gibe.
“Still probably tiers higher on the Thrush organizational chart than you are yourself,” Napoleon goaded back on Klara’s behalf.
Budek stared daggers at the imprisoned U.N.C.L.E. agent. “You know, Solo, if I hadn’t been specifically ordered by my superiors not to do it, I would shoot you right here and now. Smack-dab between the eyes,” he intimated as he leveled his rifle to the proper position to do just that to the unflinching Napoleon. Lowering his gun meaningfully, he noted, “Lucky for you I follow the directives of the Council, unlike your current sassy little roommate.”
“More like an unusually big, but still just-as-dumb lemming, huh?” pressed Napoleon with a wicked grin.
“Enough of this senseless male posturing,” interjected Klara with some irritation evident in her voice. “Are you going to continue with the comparative testosterone exhibition, Jahoda? Or oversee the dictate of the Thrush hierarchy with regard to my next injection?”
“Stand aside, Solo,” repeated Budek, his manner back-to-business though still quite evidently annoyed.
“I rather like where I’m currently standing,” countered Napoleon.
Before another verbal back-and-forth could commence, Klara quickly stood up, planting both feet firmly on the length of chain between Solo’s ankle manacles, and shoved him roughly to ground. The captured chain tripped him up and caused him to land abruptly on his backside a short distance from the cot niche.
“I don’t need or want your protection, Solo,” she then stated bluntly.
“How the hell do you know what you need or even what you want?” questioned the exasperated Napoleon. “You’re what? All of fifteen?”
“Sixteen,” Klara corrected him. “And I am quite old enough to know my own mind. So please refrain from your unwelcome grand overtures in my behalf.”
“Fine,” conceded Napoleon through tightened lips.
With a very amused smirk, Budek then nodded to the other guard with him to open the cell door. Stepping inside, the big man pulled the rather less-than-thrilled lab tech in by the arm. The barred portal was again slammed home as Jahoda unceremoniously propelled the tech toward Klara. The white-coated man performed his task quickly, with Klara completely unresisting, and then sought to make a hasty retreat to Budek’s side. Jahoda, however, had his own agenda.
He drew rapidly toward Solo, who had raised himself to his knees in a clumsy attempt to get to his feet while encumbered by the restraining lengths of the interconnected ankle and wrist shackles. Rapidly spearing and wrapping the less-than-foot-long chain between Solo’s wrist cuffs around the body of his rifle, Budek subsequently grabbed the back of the cable encircling Napoleon’s waist that connected the two sets of shackles and twisted Solo’s body at an awkward angle backwards toward himself. He then slammed a heavy boot down on the chain between the fettered man’s ankle manacles, disabling the U.N.C.L.E. agent from rising. Finally he pulled up his chain-wrapped gun, forcing Napoleon’s hands first over his head and then painfully behind his back. Distinctly audible in the echo-chamber-like atmosphere of the stone-walled cave was the loud pop as one of Solo’s shoulders was dislocated by the rapid enforced movement of his arms.
As Napoleon grimaced in silent agony, Budek bent down so his lips were close to Solo’s ear. “I don’t much care for your smart mouth, Solo,” he warned. “So I suggest for your own health you learn to keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Your task is done here, Jahoda,” Klara emphatically reminded him. “So I suggest you get about your other business.”
Jahoda’s eyes shot to hers. “I don’t answer to you, wayward miss.
“At the moment it would seem it is you who is the wayward one. Or have you permission from Mr. Uripides to rough up Solo?”
Jahoda slackened his pull on the chain-wrapped rifle that was currently holding Napoleon’s body in an uncomfortably contorted position. “The Greek with the unorthodox ideas,” bitterly complained Budek. Nonetheless he slipped the coiled metal links off the long barrel of his Thrush weapon, purposely grabbing Solo’s injured shoulder and tossing him sideways to the ground as he did so.
Napoleon landed with a grunt, painfully rolling off the affected shoulder. Jahoda strode to the cell door, shouted at the guard outside to open that door, and then exited the enclosure, again dragging the lab tech by the arm with him. The portal closed behind them with a loud bang followed by the distinctive metallic swooshes and clicks of numerous electronic locks slipping into place.
As the sound of feet tramping away from their cell location reverberated through the stone caves, Klara knelt beside the stricken Napoleon where he currently lay on his back on the ground. “You should not challenge Jahoda,” she cautioned.
“So that is the infamous Budek Jahoda,” Napoleon acknowledged his captor’s standing in Thrush.
“You know of him then.”
“His reputation precedes him too,” conceded Napoleon. “Though, until being captured by your Thrush cohorts this time around, the two of us never had the inopportunity to meet face-to-face.”
“Well now you have,” concluded Klara with one of her characteristic shrugs. “And I’m sure you appreciate that his reputation is indeed well-earned.”
“Oh, he is such a big man,” Napoleon impugned his tormentor as he gingerly raised his upper body to a seated posture, “when wielding that gun of his against someone cripplingly confined in wrist and leg irons.”
That observation brought an amused smile to Klara’s lips. “You truly are incorrigible, Solo. Will you be so glib when the Council decides to have Jahoda work on you in earnest?”
“Indubitably.”
“I must admit,” granted Klara with another small smile, “I find it very gratifying that your reputation is also well-earned. Does anything faze you at all?”
“Watching innocents ritualistically punished kind of gets my goat.”
Klara’s smile faded. “I am not an innocent.”
“When did I ever insinuate you were?” nonchalantly batted back Solo.
Napoleon restively shifted his right shoulder. Damn! It hurt like hell. Yet he knew he had to get his arms back over his head and once again in front of him to have any chance of repositioning the shoulder joint. Biting his lower lip to keep from crying out, Napoleon began to slowly raise his arms above his head. Understanding his intent, Klara supported his right elbow in the palm of her hand and aided him in painstakingly rotating his arms back in front of him.
“Not sure it’s fully repositioned,” Klara candidly mentioned once this task was done.
“But it’s better,” granted Napoleon, unwilling to reveal how much the injured shoulder still hurt.
“It will be better still if the strain on it is eased. Let me make a sling,” she suggested as she tore off a large swatch of fabric from the slip she wore under her long flowing skirt.
“You shouldn’t surrender any of your clothing to such purpose, Klara,” Solo sagely advised. “What with the cold bothering you so much.”
“Well, you’ve certainly nothing I can use for the job,” she pooh-poohed his concern as she folded the material into a general triangular shape, “what with just wearing that jumpsuit. Leastways I still have undergarments.”
That caused Napoleon to laugh out loud. “Guess it’s obvious I don’t.”
“’Fraid so, Solo,” Klara forthrightly confided.
“Do pardon my lack of proper attire then, panienka. That’s certainly no way for a gentleman to make a good first impression on one of the fair sex.”
“Przeprosiny przyjęte, choć nie mam żadnych zastrzeżeń.”
{Translation: Apology accepted, though I do not have any objections.}
“I know you accepted my apology,” allowed Solo with a somewhat sheepish grin, “but beyond that I’m at a loss.”
“That is enough for you to know,” Klara decided as she knotted the silk on the two narrow ends of the triangle and slipped the whole over Napoleon’s head. She balanced the main of it on his good left shoulder; then with remarkable care placed this right arm in the makeshift cloth cradle. “There: that should at least take some of the pressure off that bad shoulder.”
“It does, thank you,” Napoleon expressed his gratitude. It made the throbbing ache at least bearable and under the circumstances that was all the relief he could honestly hope for. “Though I will admit I don’t understand why you are doing this at all. I mean, aren’t we, as you so unequivocally stated, sworn enemies?”
Klara sat back on her haunches and let her eyes hold his as she declared, “Let me explain something to you, Solo. If Jahoda came back in here right now with orders to use every means of force and torture to extract from you specific information Thrush requires, I would stand back and do nothing. Say nothing. In fact I would openly applaud him as he worked.
“Yet what he did just now,” she clarified, “well, it had no meaning, no goal. Things done to no purpose: that is what… gets my goat,” she utilized his own previous terminology to bring home the essence of her attitude.
Napoleon searched her face, unsure what to make of her personal thought processes. “You’re hard to fathom,” he told her.
“I don’t ask to be ‘fathomed’, especially not by one of U.N.C.L.E.,” she resorted to her more brusque method of communication. “Now, I think you should take the bed. You’ll need to relax that shoulder as much as possible.”
“I’m afraid I can’t agree to that,” refuted Solo. “What with the cold affecting you so much, you can’t just lie on the ground to sleep.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You’ll manage on the cot. Lumpy as it may be, at least it’s better than the rimy earthen floor in here.”
She stared at him in defiance for a long moment. “All right then, we’ll share,” she partially relented.
Napoleon blinked for a moment, his astonishment evident. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he opposed her compromise.
“Object to sharing a bed with a woman you don’t intend to screw, Solo?” she mocked in a semi-rebound of Budek’s former question, her unexpected coarse language causing Napoleon to blink in shock yet again.
“You’re hardly a woman,” he responded harshly.
“And I’m hardly inviting you to an Angelique-esque liaison,” she countered just as harshly.
Napoleon set his chin, jutting it upward rebelliously. “You take the bed: I insist on it.”
“And I insist otherwise.” Klara set her back perfectly erect in her own unswerving show of rebelliousness.
After several minutes devoted to this standoff with neither side seemingly willing to give so much as an inch, Klara sighed heavily.
“Oh look,” she forwarded, her frustration with Solo’s continued chivalrous stubbornness palpable, “simply sharing the bed so we both can get some sleep is so much better than wasting time arguing back-and-forth. And the mutual body heat will provide me added warmth.”
Napoleon couldn’t deny the logic of that point. “All right,” he reluctantly yielded. “We’ll do it your way because, as you say, it’s better than arguing.”
“Something that would serve absolutely no purpose,” reiterated Klara as she rose to her feet and dusted off her skirt. Then she extended a hand to the shackled Napoleon to aid him in getting to his feet.
Before accepting that hand, he looked up at her for another long moment.
This blond-haired, gray-eyed adolescent girl didn’t look anything like his Clara, she of the name that started with a C. Yet there was something about this Klara with a K, something on which Napoleon just couldn’t put his finger, something that made his memories of the other Clara itch with a persistent sting he thought had long since receded into a sensation no more concentrated than a pinprick.
“Likely just the fact she can be as pigheaded as Clara was sometimes,” Napoleon dismissed that suddenly penetratingly sharp stab of emotion… or at least he tried.
Continue on to Part 2...
This story definitely has a harder edge that I hope readers will find intriguing.
Posted in two parts due to story length.
Name: SUBROGATION OF THE SOUL
Genre: GEN
Warnings: VIOLENCE; MILD LANGUAGE
Length: approx 18,400 words
Author’s Note: The mission detailed in this story takes place about seven weeks after the MFU series’ episode The Terbuf Affair, that originally aired in late December 1964.
You have enemies? Good.
That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
~~~ Winston Churchill
by LaH
Late February 1965
Slovak Karst in the Carpathians
“I understand you have indeed managed to capture Napoleon Solo,” Ciriaco Uripides commented in grudging compliment to his first lieutenant within this particular Thrush satrapy.
That lieutenant, Budek Jahoda, smirked in obvious self-satisfaction. “Just as I vouched I would. Currently have him all snugly confined within one of the underground caves.”
“Those caves are riddled with unexplored passages,” Uripides cautioned pedantically. “You sure Waverly’s golden boy won’t simply find a way out?”
The Slav Jahoda bristled at the suggestion by his Greek superior he might be slipshod in his performance of his responsibilities. Truth was Budek had little liking for Uripides, accounting him a priggish elitist. He knew Ciriaco had reportedly earned every iota of his status in the organization through the merits of unique planning with regard to various Thrush ventures. Still, Budek himself was a hands-on, blood-under-the-fingernails type who much preferred to deal with men of his own ilk.
A hulking presence at least six-and-a-half feet tall with a physique literally bulging with muscles, Jahoda would be viewed by any adversary as an immediate bodily threat. As well he had a natural affinity to all modes of physical violence that had garnered him a grisly reputation unique even within the likes of Thrush. Uripides unspokenly considered the other man a tactless thug, someone who had no concept of the finer points of mental manipulation and thus not someone who would ever be of more than peripheral importance in the most sophisticated strategies of the supra-nation. Budek, in contrast, accounted the supra-nation’s ultimate goal of world domination as something that in the end would only be achieved by the likes of men such as himself, men who didn’t shrink from the most gruesome of ruthless physicalities.
“Napoleon Solo will not escape this time,” Jahoda guaranteed.
“Napoleon Solo has made many who said the same eat their words. Those good looks of his are not what led to the achievement of his position as U.N.C.L.E.’s top man in enforcement in North America, you know. He has incalculable wit and guile, as well as skill and dedication well beyond the ordinary. And now that Thrush has solid reason to believe he is being groomed as Waverly’s successor—”
“Waverly will soon need to have his throne-in-waiting fitted for a new backside,” irritably asserted Budek.
“Solo undoubtedly has information the Council will want to extract,” Ciriaco superfluously mused.
“There are many extraction methods with which I have intimate familiarity.”
“All in good time.” The Greek let his dismissive tone purposely rankle the Slav for, while he was aware Thrush had some interim need of men like Jahoda, Ciriaco personally found such brutes unimaginative annoyances. “A more delicate hand will initially be called for in this particular case.”
Budek snorted. “A delicate hand?” Jahoda let his tone be just as dismissive of Uripides’ idea of extraction methods as the other man had been of his. “With an U.N.C.L.E. agent of Solo’s caliber?”
“Exactly so. Solo has been tortured more than once by those of our organization, many of them reputed as extraordinary technicians in such regard. Never has it gained Thrush so much as a single jot of useable information regarding U.N.C.L.E.,” the Greek pointedly reminded his subordinate.
“This time will be different,” stubbornly insisted Budek.
“While it is laudable you have such confidence in your own abilities,” Ciriaco put that trivializing tone in his voice again as he spoke, “it is better I think to attempt something new and perhaps unexpected to get what we want from the man, something to stretch the limits of his psychological boundaries.”
“And that would be?” Jahoda could not keep the derision out of his own voice.
Uripides rubbed his chin in seemingly idle thought for a moment, though idle thought was seldom something that honestly occurred with the man. Yet he could feign such remarkably well. “That girl, the hydrogeologist’s daughter: she is still under house arrest here, yes?” he then asked.
“I know Solo is a noted Casanova, but that girl is just that: a girl, not a woman. I never heard tell of the man being attracted to adolescents.”
Now it was Ciriaco’s turn to project a very self-satisfied smirk. “Perhaps not, but innocents are always in such need of protection, at least according to those with lofty ideals.”
“She’s no innocent,” refuted the Slav, practically spitting out the observation.
“In the eyes of our ever righteous though sometimes sentimental U.N.C.L.E. agent,” proposed the Greek certainly, “we shall see.”
Act I: The devil is in the details
“Still nothing substantial to report, Mr. Kuryakin?” questioned Alexander Waverly in a tone that left no doubt he was less than pleased with his operative’s reports thus far.
Illya Kuryakin momentarily bit his bottom lip to keep from making too short a retort in response to the Continental Chief’s accusatory query. He and his makeshift partner had been searching these less-than-hospitable rugged reaches of Czechoslovakia during every hour of available daylight for two long days. Now evening again closed in around them without the setting sun marking any achievement of success in their current quest. He was tired, he was cold, and the tent in which they were encamped offered extremely little in the way of creature comforts. Even the food wasn’t as plentiful as he could have wished.
“Unfortunately not, sir,” Illya answered into the mike of the shortwave radio over which he was currently communicating with his superior. “We still have reason to believe that the Thrush base is hidden somewhere in these mountains. Yet the cave systems are extensive, and—”
“I am aware of that, Mr. Kuryakin,” interrupted Waverly abruptly. “However, I am also aware that time may not be on our side.”
“Sir, I realize there are undoubtedly valid security reasons why you didn’t provide all specifics when you assigned myself and Mr. Steffensen to this task,” Illya adeptly prefaced his next informational request, a request that could perhaps be viewed as bordering on insubordination. “However, I do think it important for us to have a heads-up regarding whatever Thrush may be working on in this satrapy.”
Hell, a heads-up? Illya at this moment would settle for a charades-like hint. All he and Steffensen had been told was: “Locate the local Thrush den in Czechoslovakia, and do it pronto.” Sometimes it did seem to Illya as if Mr. Waverly kept the finer points of U.N.C.L.E.’s undertakings a bit too close to the vest.
“There is no physical project housed within this Thrush unit. Or at least none of which we have current knowledge. There was a proposal of one, but that failed to come to even marginal fruition,” the Old Man finally delivered details to his agents. “Thus the agenda for this particular satrapy during the present timeframe is apparently different.”
“In what way?” Illya found himself bluntly demanding.
There was a silence of long seconds, countable to fully eighteen or twenty, before Waverly next spoke.
“We originally received intelligence that the Czechoslovakian section of Thrush might be testing a means to cause flooding in underground cave systems, enough to destabilize large masses of land. So I dispatched Mr. Solo to investigate that possibility a week ago.”
“While I was still on assignment in Madrid.”
“Indeed. Unfortunate set of coincidences there. Though in the end perhaps not so coincidental.”
“Excuse me, sir? I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Illya openly voiced his confusion.
Again a silence of countable seconds before Waverly spoke again.
“We now have reason to believe our received intelligence was nothing more than a clever ruse propagated by giving purposeful notification of a since outdated and shutdown scientific enterprise.”
“To what purpose?”
“To bring Mr. Solo within ready reach of the operatives of this well-hidden Thrush satrapy.”
Illya glanced over at his partner for this mission, the rather high-strung Tage Steffensen, and noted the other man was nibbling on one of his cuticles as he listened somewhat bug-eyed to Waverly’s words. Though an agent with an above-average record in the field, the big Swede certainly had none of Napoleon’s self-ease and composure.
“Mr. Solo is a feared enemy operative to be sure, sir, one Thrush would dearly love to put permanently out of commission,” admitted Illya. “Yet why go to such particular trouble at this time?”
Waverly harrumphed noisily, the sound rumbling roughly over the airwaves. “It is possible,” he began. “No, it is likely,” he purposely corrected himself, “Thrush intercepted a communiqué that enticed them into this pointed action.”
“What could possibly—” Illya himself began, and then fell silent. He knew, of course he knew. Waverly had sent a message through supposedly secure communication channels to the other Continental Chiefs forwarding Napoleon as his own eventual successor. It was something that had been broached with Solo by the Old Man quite a few months back, but Solo had only recently provided his superior his final agreement to the plan. With that done, it had become imperative the other chiefs be advised as soon as possible and allowed to voice their opinions on the decision. “Oh, I see,” Illya thus commented in complete comprehension.
“What, Illya, what?” anxiously required Tage. “What’s going on?”
“Later, Tage.” Illya cupped his hand over the microphone as he put off the other man’s plea to be brought out of the dark. “I’ll explain what I can later.”
“I’m glad you seem to have gotten the full drift of the issue, Mr. Kuryakin,” Waverly conceded with unmistakable gravity.
“Yes sir.”
“Mr. Solo’s last contact was four days ago,” Waverly provided this necessary fact. “At that time he believed he had located the satrapy and advised that he would be out of transmission range as he ventured into the Carpathians to verify his hunch. We uncovered the unreliability of our initial information but a few hours later, but were unable to regain communication to apprise him to abort the mission.”
“So we now more than suspect that Napoleon is in the hands of Thrush. That is, if they haven’t killed him already.”
“In such a situation—”
Now it was Illya who interrupted. “Indeed sir. Killing him would be the last stroke, not the first.”
“Nor even the second stroke,” furthered Waverly. “Whatever plans Thrush ultimately has for Mr. Solo, they do need to be thwarted, Mr. Kuryakin. Not merely for his sake, but for that of the organization as a whole. Currently we remain in danger simply because we have no consistent handle on their full intent.”
“We’ll find him, sir,” pledged Illya certainly. For he had absolutely no intention of letting Thrush make some foul use of his friend simply because of a position he had been recommended to one day attain.
“Stand back, Solo, well back!” commanded Budek through the iron bars that sectioned off a portion of this underground cave to serve as a cell. Jahoda’s demand of course was punctuated with the business end of a Thrush rifle sited through those bars directly at Napoleon’s midsection.
Having already been thoroughly roughed up before his incarceration in this prison, Solo considered it the better part of valor to heed the Slav’s instructions and stay alert for any opportunity that might come as a result. Raising his shackled hands palms up in a gesture of submission, Napoleon shuffled his equally shackled feet backwards till he stood at the end of the natural stone enclosure furthest from the door. The iron grate then was swung open and two underling guards, also brandishing distinctive Thrush rifles, slammed Napoleon back against the far wall and held him there, the barrel of one’s gun shoved forcefully into his chest and the barrel of the other’s shoved even more forcefully into his stomach.
Budek entered behind them. After seeing that the U.N.C.L.E. agent was for the moment firmly under the control of his subordinates, he nodded his head toward the door. A girl of perhaps fifteen or maybe sixteen but surely no more entered the lockup between two more armed guards. Yet they didn’t hold her and she wasn’t struggling. She simply walked between them resignedly, her face a mask of perfect calm.
“Though I know U.N.C.L.E. likes to claim Thrush has no knowledge of the boundaries of justice, we do indeed conform to a certain organizational code. And we make examples, Solo, of those of our own who pointedly break that code. We thought an U.N.C.L.E. man would enjoy firsthand observation of Thrush’s form of self-administered justice. Something to ease your boredom,” Jahoda spat out contemptuously, “while we wait upon the arrival of those of the Council who would personally chat with you.”
With that, Budek nodded once more toward the door and another man, this one in a white lab coat, made an entrance. He was unarmed… except for a hypodermic needle he held in one hand with a small bottle of some solution in the other.
“We ready then?” the white-coated man questioned Jahoda once he had filled the syringe from the bottle.
“Do it and do it quickly,” advised the Slav. “Keeping Solo contained is a count-your-luck-by-seconds thing.”
The tech nodded shortly, turned and efficiently stabbed the girl in the right arm. She didn’t even flinch.
“Hey, what are you doing?” demanded Napoleon as he recklessly pushed through the guns of the Thrush muscle restraining him and propelled his body, despite his shackled ankles, toward the girl.
Budek brought the butt of his own rifle down sharply across the nape of Solo’s neck, felling him to the ground in a single blow. He then pressed the barrel of his weapon directly against the back of Napoleon’s head. “All in the name of justice, Solo,” he declared with a half-laugh.
Jahoda kept his gun firmly anchored against Napoleon’s skull as he signaled the other men to leave the premises ahead of him. Seeing stars from the heavy bash to his neck, Napoleon was inopportunely in no condition to tackle Budek before the Slav made his own exit from the cell, the heavy iron-barred door being swung firmly shut behind him.
“You all right?”
As she spoke, Napoleon looked up into the face of the girl who was now kneeling beside him. He smiled crookedly. “I’ve survived worst.”
“So I’ve heard tell,” she countered.
“What was all that about?” he then asked her straightforwardly.
The girl shrugged. “Life as it is for me.”
“What kind of life is that? Who are you anyway?”
“My name is Klara: Klara Jablonska.
Napoleon swallowed convulsively. “Clara? Your name is Clara?”
“Yes, but with the Slavic pronunciation. Bit different emphasis on the first syllable. In English you would spell it with a K instead of a C, I believe. I’m Polish, you see.”
“I thought I detected a bit of an Eastern European accent to your otherwise excellent English,” Napoleon commented in an attempt to keep his voice clear of the emotion that had unexpectedly overwhelmed him upon hearing that this girl shared the name of his one-time great love.
“And, in Czechoslovakia, you expected to find North Americans instead of East Europeans?” challenged the girl.
Napoleon gave her an amused smile as he awkwardly pulled himself into a seated position from his previous one flat on his stomach. “I guess I expected to find only Czechs and Slovaks,” he teased.
That elicited a bit of a sheepish grin from the girl. “Touché. Or, as we say in Polish: Dotykać!”
“Łaskawie uznała,” responded Napoleon, his accent far from perfect but not too patently awful.
{Translation: Graciously acknowledged.}
“You speak polski?” inquired Klara in some surprise.
“Unfortunately only a few phrases my partner taught me,” Napoleon conceded. “He’s Russian.”
Klara crinkled her nose in distaste. “Bah! I have no use for Russians.”
“And what about U.N.C.L.E. agents?” Solo asked with a tilt of his head. His curiosity had been piqued by his captor’s comments regarding this girl being dealt a form of Thrush organizational justice with that injection. “You have a use for them?”
“I am completely Thrush in my beliefs, if that is what you are asking.”
“That’s what I was asking. I suppose you were put in this cell with me to some undermining purpose then?”
Once more Klara shrugged. “I am here because I did something of which the Council did not approve.”
“Why don’t you tell me what that was? If the Council didn’t approve, I most likely will.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” Klara pledged with an odd smirk.
“Why don’t you try me?” pressed Napoleon.
Klara looked him straight in the eye as she declared with surprising ease and without an iota of regret, “I killed my father.”
Napoleon cleared his throat a bit uncomfortably. Such a no-frills revelation was certainly not what he had expected. “There was a reason I presume?” he subsequently asked, wanting full facts before he drew any hasty conclusions.
“Of course there was a reason. He had failed Thrush.”
“What?” The stunned Napoleon couldn’t hide his initial shock at such an uncompromising answer.
“He was the aquifer specialist in charge of Thrush’s groundwater incursion project here. His efforts in this regard were rather spectacularly unsuccessful. He had been given years to accomplish what was needed, yet his results were in the main unproductive.”
“And for that I’m sure the Thrush hierarchy tagged him for extermination, perhaps not in a humane manner. So you decided to make less miserable his inevitable end.”
“What a poetic scenario you paint,” Klara mock-complimented him as she sat back on her haunches. “Only someone with U.N.C.L.E.’s ideals seeded deep in the very neuron network of his brain would make of my barefaced assertion such a quixotic possibility.”
Napoleon instinctively hunched and unhunched his shoulders in an attempt to physically relieve the mental and emotional tension that was building in him at this girl’s arbitrarily bizarre admissions and intensely cool attitude in making them.
“Tilting at windmills is my specialty,” he gibed somewhat awkwardly. “So what’s the actual scenario?” Solo then inquired with as much detachment as he could himself muster.
“He failed Thrush; yet the Council was willing to give him a second chance. I knew that was a mistake, knew that he hadn’t the internal discipline to achieve what they wanted. And I knew what was unquestionably required was punishment for his abject failure. So I doctored his food one night with a heavy sleeping potion and subsequently shot him as he lay in drugged unconsciousness.”
Napoleon’s jaw reflexively dropped in a soundless “oh” of stunned amazement. He simply couldn’t find words adequate to express his reaction.
“Yet realize there is still humanity in me,” forwarded the girl. “Thus I ensured it was all quick and clean: one precise bullet to the right temple. I didn’t see any point in making him suffer unnecessarily.”
“Very…” Napoleon stumbled as his mind tried to capture an appropriate word.
“Charitable?” proposed Klara. “Generous? Considerate?”
“I was thinking more unemotional,” responded Napoleon as neutrally as possible.
“Emotion clouds judgment; thus it should have no place in difficult decisions.”
“I disagree, as emotion is what in the end accounts us as fully human.”
Klara shrugged: a seemingly habitual gesture with her. “Then account me as inhuman, if it satisfies some inner moral principle in you to do so. The opinion of one knotted Gordian-like within the apron strings of U.N.C.L.E. matters not to me.”
“What was in that syringe?” Solo avoided further venturing into the previous sensitive subject and instead inquired into a topic more plain fact-driven.
“A slow-acting poison,” stated Klara without a qualm. “Eventually it will kill me, but not at once, and not with that single dose.”
“So Thrush intends to draw out your death? Nothing quick and clean?”
The habitual shrug. “It is justice.”
“I would more readily call it torture,” hedged Napoleon.
“Because you are U.N.C.L.E. and therefore do not understand.”
“I would hope the reason is more that I am human and therefore do not understand.”
“Perceive it as you wish.”
“So they will have to give you more injections? To complete their… justice?” Napoleon again backed away from one confrontational topic, though likely stepping smack-dab into another.
“Yes. Three more. Six hours between each.”
“Twenty-hour hours to live then?”
“Such is the expanse of life planned for me, yes.”
“Yet plans don’t always go to plan, do they?”
Klara shrugged. “There is always an element of unpredictability in life… and death.”
Napoleon found he could not disagree with that sentiment, even when expressed by one of Thrush.
Act II: The devil has a sweet voice
“Madzeija,” Ciriaco Uripides called out through the open door of his office into the outer perimeter where the desk of his secretary was located.
“Yes sir?” queried Madzeija Jablonska as she quickly made her way into the frame of the doorway.
“Get me Mademoiselle LaChien on the wire,” ordered Madzeija’s boss.
“At once, sir,” Madzeija acknowledged as she entered the premises of Uripides’ office and made her way to the communications console located at the back of the room.
“She is still in Spain, I believe, spearheading salvage of that economic project that U.N.C.L.E. recently sabotaged in the outskirts of Madrid.”
“Yes sir,” confirmed Madzeija. “She communicated with my Daiya from there this morning.”
“Takes a special interest in that younger daughter of yours, doesn’t she?” asked Ciriaco with some curiosity.
“Yes sir,” was all Madzeija provided by way of reply to that question.
Truth was, Madzeija really didn’t know why Angelique LaChien had within the past eighteen months developed a seeming attachment for her currently twelve-year-old child, but she had her suspicions. She suspected, more than suspected, that the Spider Lady – as so many in the organization referred to LaChien because of the multiple webs of intrigue she adeptly spun – was making use of Daiya as a spy. Certainly Daiya would have been more than ripe for recruitment as such by LaChien. The preteen idolized Thrush women who fell into Angelique’s category of spy, aspiring to one day be counted among their number. Daiya’s mother was now absolutely convinced initial details of how badly had been faring the groundwater incursion project once centered in this Thrush unit had come straight from the girl’s lips into the ready ear of LaChien. Yet just as definitively Madzeija was now in no position to call out the Thrush femme fatale on the disturbing possibility of her daughter’s hypothetical “training” in this regard.
Madzeija, you see, was the widow of Hajnrich Jablonski, the hydrogeologist who had once been in charge of the development of Thrush’s groundwater incursion venture, a venture that had come to an abrupt end in abysmal failure approximately eight months ago. Hajnrich had expected to lose his life for that disaster. Indeed he had so lost it, but not as both he and his wife had originally thought he would. After months of tense waiting for some resolution, he had been given a one-time reprieve by the Supreme Council only to be subsequently murdered by his own eldest daughter Klara.
All of this was a mass blur of confusion for Madzeija, who only knew she had to stay neutral to ensure continuance of her own life and that of her younger child. She was an efficient secretary, and a more than efficient communications technician, but nothing more. She had no grand degrees to tempt Thrush. And, though surely an attractive woman, she certainly had none of the seductress qualities the supra-nation so valued in its top female operatives.
There had been so much personal expectation in her and her husband’s enlistment into the ranks of Thrush a dozen years ago. Hajnrich at that time already possessed something of a reputation in his field. He was considered one of those bright young men with impeccable scientific credentials that so intrigued Thrush. With a small child and another expected baby to provide for in the uncomfortably restrictive Communist system in Poland, the couple was lured by the promise of a comfortable life of plenty: prestige, all manner of creature comforts and money to spare. Madzeija even dared hope that they would be stationed in a satrapy somewhere outside the hem of the Iron Curtain. That hope, however, proved an idle one.
Still, the couple brought up their two girls to admire the values of Thrush. There was no compromising in the Jablonski household. The principles by which life was to be lived were dictated by the ideas and goals of the supra-nation. Both Klara and Daiya firmly embraced those principles from toddler-hood, and it was very true to say the Jablonska girls were far more devoted to the conceptual essence of Thrush than either of their parents.
Hajnrich was assigned over the years to various Thrush scientific undertakings in Bulgaria, Romania, and USSR-annexed Belarus. Though his career in this regard was successful, his roles were always subordinate. That is until three years ago when he was put in charge of the massive groundwater incursion project here in Czechoslovakia. He worked hard to make the supra-nation’s plans come to fruition, but from the beginning the objectives were just too ambitious. Perhaps the only outcome ever likely for the project was extreme misfortune. Perhaps even the Council itself secretly acknowledged this reality and such was the reason they ultimately “pardoned” Hajnrich for the unfortunate debacle. Honestly Madzeija didn’t know. She only knew what did happen is that the unerring education in full dedication to the standards of Thrush she and her husband had given their offspring resulted in an unforeseen family tragedy.
Life, Madzeija inwardly granted, was just too hard, but then death had nothing to offer by way of consolation.
“Good evening, Miss LaChien,” Madzeija spoke into the microphone after the communications tech in the Madrid satrapy had connected her to said woman.
“Good evening to you, Madzeija,” responded Angelique. “And how does darling Daiya tonight?”
“She is well, Miss LaChien. I have Mr. Uripides ready to take the line with you,” Madzeija effectively cut short any further chit-chat on the part of the famed Thrush manipulator.
“Then by all means I will take full advantage of his readiness,” Angelique insinuated in a subtle form of double-entendre.
Madzeija nodded to Uripides and rose from the console as he turned his attention to the subsidiary communication unit sitting on his own desk.
“Angelique, my dear, we have him,” Ciriaco all but crowed into the mike of his specialized radio unit as he broke the news to his current lady-lust.
Madzeija made her exit, Uripides appreciatively watching the back-and-forth movement of her admittedly well-formed gams before she finally closed the office door behind herself.
The momentary distraction dispensed with, Ciriaco continued his self-satisfied braggadocio. “We have Napoleon Solo under lock and key, or rather between rocks and iron bars.”
“I congratulate you, darling,” came the perhaps-and-perhaps-not French-accented voice over the wire. “But be vigilant: he can be a slippery one.”
“No moues of distress over your sometime bedmate’s ensuing fate?” teased Uripides.
“Darling, Napoleon Solo is U.N.C.L.E. to his bones and I am Thrush in every drop of my blood,” clarified Angelique coolly. “True, I have enjoyed private encounters with the man now and again,” she downplayed her fascination with Solo. “Yet never once to the true detriment of our mutual organization. I have always known one day Thrush would make good Napoleon’s end, and truth to tell that inevitability has never fazed me in the least.”
“Perhaps that only made your precarious assignations the more sweet,” suggested Ciriaco readily.
Though Uripides was a handsome man with many sexual conquests to his credit (or perhaps discredit), he harbored a secret jealousy toward Napoleon Solo with his renowned lady-charmer reputation. Thus he would like nothing better than to psychologically twist the other man’s mind like a pretzel, and perhaps permanently deflate the confident air that was as much what attracted women to Solo as his looks.
“Perhaps so,” conceded Angelique, though admittedly with indifference. “Adding mental spice to the physical mix can be quite enticing.”
“Well, my plans for Solo include adding emotional salt to idealistic wounds.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, a silence that Ciriaco thought went on much too long. He would remember that.
“You were ever an inventive one, Ciriaco,” Angelique finally purred in praise, “when it comes to non-physical forms of manipulation.”
“And this will be my greatest triumph,” Uripides guaranteed her. “I doubt not it will lead to a seat on the Council itself.”
“An admirable goal.”
“We all in Thrush are goal-oriented, wouldn’t you say?” pressed Ciriaco.
“We all have our desires to be sure,” stated Angelique ambivalently. “But for moment, darling, I must run. I have endeavors of my own to pursue in the name of Thrush, you understand.”
“Oh course, sweetheart. Do the attacking bird proud.”
“You as well, darling. Adieu.” And with that the communication line disconnected with unexpected immediacy.
Uripides muttered to himself as he secretly fumed. Angelique just wasn’t demonstrating the respect his coup deserved.
When he had been assigned to this satrapy a month ago, it had been to cost-and-time effectively close down the operation. He had initiated that shutdown with a knowledgeable hand. Personnel here were now down to a mere two dozen men and women, with most reusable equipment already moved to other locations where such would provide best advantage to Thrush. But then there had been an unlooked-for change in direction in Ciriaco’s mindset when another unit of Thrush had somehow broken into a secure U.N.C.L.E. communication line and retrieved a rather intriguing message.
Oddly, Uripides had gotten wind of the content of that tapped transmission from Angelique herself. The gist of it had resulted in very feminine coos of self-satisfaction from her, coos she had found it too tempting not to share with a man she knew had the same designs for an ascendant position in the Thrush hierarchy as she did herself.
It had taken some days for Thrush’s highest level cryptographers to even partially decode the meaning of the dispatch, and even then the Hierarchy was not completely positive they had everything right. Still, what seemed fairly certain from the communiqué was that Napoleon Solo was being officially forwarded by Alexander Waverly as his future successor. The same Napoleon Solo with whom Angelique so willingly played stimulating cat-and-mouse. Thus in their future assignations she now had an opportunity to gain confidential intelligence that previously may not even have been available to glean. True, Napoleon really never “spilled” while in bed with her any information that could be accounted as vital to the operation of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. He had an exceptionally firm handle on the limits he personally placed on their association. Yet Angelique had supreme confidence in her own abilities to in due course alter that unsatisfactory scenario to something more in her own favor, and she certainly was not shy about suggesting so to various members of the Council.
Being forced to endure all this likely unfounded gloating on Angelique’s part is what had set germinating the seed of Uripides’ brilliant subversion of her smug self-importance. The groundwater incursion project was deader than a doornail. Yet U.N.C.L.E. had never caught wind of it initially and surely had no direct knowledge of its current abandonment by Thrush. So why not use the failed endeavor to some constructive purpose?
If enough communication could be initiated from the Czechoslovakian satrapy to make the undertaking seem very much active and very close to fruition, and that communication could as well be set up to ensure U.N.C.L.E. intercepted it, wouldn’t the Command send a top agent to investigate? Everything could be broached in a manner to make the discovery of the Thrush Czechoslovakian initiative seem absolutely top priority. Thus who would Alexander Waverly – who had a tendency to appropriate the most vital of missions into his own direct sphere of influence – have handle such a critical, onsite investigation other than Napoleon Solo, admittedly his top enforcement agent?
Ciriaco knew from his back-and-forth radio tête-à-têtes with a miffed Angelique at the time that Illya Kuryakin was busy sniffing around the economic scheme Thrush was orchestrating in Madrid. He also knew – as did admittedly most of Thrush since the supra-nation tended to take particular note of such things – that Solo had recently returned from a successful lone mission. A mission where he had suffered no serious injuries and from which he required no recovery time to clear his system of enemy drugs. Thus U.N.C.L.E.’s North American Number 1 in Section II was not only readily available for roping into the baited trap, but as well conveniently partnerless. With meticulous point-by-point delineation of these details, Uripides forwarded his own proposition to the Council.
The elite members of the Thrush hierarchy saw nothing to lose and in fact much to gain in the enterprise. They were risking no current organizational designs and, if the ruse worked, they would have Napoleon Solo in their clutches. Not for the first time to be sure, but then again Ciriaco was a man of vision who saw a more inventive approach to compromising Solo’s iron will when it came to loyalty and dedication to the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. So the Council agreed to Uripides’ intrigue, but specified they would not, in order to consummate that intrigue, authorize any new personnel to bolster the nearly depleted ranks of the Czechoslovakian satrapy. Their one concession on that score was to assign him the services of Budek Jahoda, considered amongst the cream of Thrush’s crop of torturers and musclemen.
Uripides had to admit, despite his dislike of the man, that Jahoda had proven his worth. He managed to swiftly snare Solo once the groundwork had been set to get him within striking range of that target. It was Madzeija who guaranteed the success of much of that groundwork. Her skills with communications were really quite extraordinary. She orchestrated the “leak” of the necessary intelligence to U.N.C.L.E. in a manner that had effectively bypassed all of the Command’s various security verifications. That was something Ciriaco would see stood the woman in good stead. Despite her husband’s colossal botch job in his first position of authority within the Thrush scientific community, and despite her older daughter’s wayward private interpretation of the ethics of the supra-nation, Madzeija had personally demonstrated her own value to the organization.
Now if only the damn woman would get a clue about wearing shorter skirts to show off more of her rather spectacular legs.
Solo sat on the floor of the cave-cum-cell with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head resting on those knees. He was trying in vain to get some rest, but this approach to sleeping was hardly conducive to that. Nearby, lying upon the one poor excuse for a bed within the space, Klara shivered fitfully. That “bed” was nothing more than a niche carved into one of the stone walls with a lumpy straw-stuffed mattress set inside it. There was no blanket, not even a thin sheet, and Napoleon didn’t have so much as a jacket as he had been stripped and given but a lightweight prisoner’s jumpsuit to wear before being locked up.
“Sorry I haven’t any covering to offer you to ward against the cold,” apologized Napoleon as he raised his head and looked toward the uncontrollably shaking girl.
“It was enough that you surrendered the bed to me,” Klara assured him.
That brought a cockeyed grin to Napoleon’s face. “You call that a bed? No springs, no legs, no frame, no—”
“Nothing for a resourceful U.N.C.L.E. agent to fashion into a tool or weapon,” interjected Klara with her own lopsided grin. “Thrush is very aware of your ingenuity you know, Solo.”
“My reputation precedes me,” granted Napoleon with an easygoing chuckle.
“Most definitely,” guaranteed the Thrushie. After a short and somewhat awkward silence ensued between them, Klara told him frankly, “My reaction to the cold is a bit intensified because of the poison. It is not of concern.”
“Maybe it is to me,” refuted Napoleon.
“Why? Why should that be the case, Solo? You and I are sworn enemies.”
“Currently it seems to me we are both prisoners. And won’t you call me Napoleon? Since we are rather stuck with each other’s company, no reason to be so derogatorily formal in addressing one another.”
“I wasn’t being derogatory, formal or otherwise. To me you are simply Solo: the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement’s Number 1 in Section II of North America. You have more than earned the distinction of ready recognition by your surname.”
“Well, I refuse to refer to you as Jablonska.”
“I have no reputation preceding me, Solo. Thus being called by my given name – a name that holds no particular significance in the ears of anyone – is all the distinction I deserve.”
Napoleon didn’t voice his reaction, but in his head the silent declaration buzzed: “It’s a name that has significance in my ears, more than you will ever know.”
“Some given names are badges of distinction,” Napoleon chose to keep their chatter impersonal.
“For Popes and kings, with maybe a handful of ancient philosophers and medieval artists thrown in for good measure,” Klara disputed his logic.
“Well, in your own organization there is Angelique,” he intimated.
Klara smiled mischievously. “Ah yes, Angelique. Someone of Thrush with whom you have an intimate acquaintance.”
“You’ve been listening to idle gossip,” suggested Napoleon dismissively.
“Despite numerous and apparently quite intense bedroom liaisons between the two of you, you’ve never given her any of the information she particularly seeks,” Klara continued. “That’s not idle gossip, is it, Solo?” she badgered.
“My reputation precedes me,” he repeated, this time with a dramatic sigh, causing Klara to break out in a full-bellied laugh.
The girl’s mirth was short-lived, however, as the laugh transformed into a wild cough, her breath audibly catching in her chest. Disturbed by this turn in events, Solo made his way to the niche where she lay, though he was inhibited by the chain connecting his ankle cuffs that provided him not more than eighteen inches of slack to walk.
“Here: you should sit up,” Napoleon advised as he slipped one arm under her back to support her in doing that. Again a chain extended between manacles, these on his wrists, inhibited his movements. Still he managed to get her seated upright to aid her in breathing more easily.
“The poison eventually suffocates,” she finally gasped out in explanation. “It is not of concern.”
Napoleon’s brow furrowed in distress. “It is of concern to me,” he openly challenged her chilly detachment this time.
She turned her countenance toward his and studied him intently for a moment or two, as if he was a particularly intriguing specimen being viewed under a strongly-powered microscope. “The heart of U.N.C.L.E.,” she finally spat out contemptuously.
“Always preferable to the soul of Thrush,” he retorted with impatience.
“I thought U.N.C.L.E. believed those of Thrush had no souls?” she countered pointedly.
“Even dark souls are souls,” gainsaid Napoleon just as pointedly.
Seemingly thoroughly amused by his response, she then guaranteed him, “Thrush will crack you open like an egg.”
“They have tried before, much more than once, to no avail. You see, there are certain areas where I am rather hard-boiled.”
“Well, isn’t this a cozy.” The mocking comment came from the lips of Budek Jahoda who – ubiquitous rifle at the ready – stood in the area just outside the bars.
“Nothing about this place is cozy,” snapped Napoleon as he turned toward the voice.
“We don’t treat captured U.N.C.L.E. agents to the Ritz,” sneered Budek.
“The least you could do is provide a second lumpy mattress.”
“What’s the problem, Solo? Finally found a female you don’t want to sleep with?”
“You truly are a cretin in every sense of the word,” Napoleon condemned the other man in complete disgust.
“And immensely proud of it,” retorted Jahoda without a qualm. “Now stand aside, Solo: the good doctor has another shot to give our wayward little miss.”
“He’s not a doctor,” remarked Klara matter-of-factly. “He’s a second-rate lab tech.”
“Thrush rates him highly enough to administer fatal injections to you,” Jahoda goaded. “So guess you’re pretty low on the totem pole yourself, sweetcakes.”
Klara just gave her habitual shrug in unruffled response to the gibe.
“Still probably tiers higher on the Thrush organizational chart than you are yourself,” Napoleon goaded back on Klara’s behalf.
Budek stared daggers at the imprisoned U.N.C.L.E. agent. “You know, Solo, if I hadn’t been specifically ordered by my superiors not to do it, I would shoot you right here and now. Smack-dab between the eyes,” he intimated as he leveled his rifle to the proper position to do just that to the unflinching Napoleon. Lowering his gun meaningfully, he noted, “Lucky for you I follow the directives of the Council, unlike your current sassy little roommate.”
“More like an unusually big, but still just-as-dumb lemming, huh?” pressed Napoleon with a wicked grin.
“Enough of this senseless male posturing,” interjected Klara with some irritation evident in her voice. “Are you going to continue with the comparative testosterone exhibition, Jahoda? Or oversee the dictate of the Thrush hierarchy with regard to my next injection?”
“Stand aside, Solo,” repeated Budek, his manner back-to-business though still quite evidently annoyed.
“I rather like where I’m currently standing,” countered Napoleon.
Before another verbal back-and-forth could commence, Klara quickly stood up, planting both feet firmly on the length of chain between Solo’s ankle manacles, and shoved him roughly to ground. The captured chain tripped him up and caused him to land abruptly on his backside a short distance from the cot niche.
“I don’t need or want your protection, Solo,” she then stated bluntly.
“How the hell do you know what you need or even what you want?” questioned the exasperated Napoleon. “You’re what? All of fifteen?”
“Sixteen,” Klara corrected him. “And I am quite old enough to know my own mind. So please refrain from your unwelcome grand overtures in my behalf.”
“Fine,” conceded Napoleon through tightened lips.
With a very amused smirk, Budek then nodded to the other guard with him to open the cell door. Stepping inside, the big man pulled the rather less-than-thrilled lab tech in by the arm. The barred portal was again slammed home as Jahoda unceremoniously propelled the tech toward Klara. The white-coated man performed his task quickly, with Klara completely unresisting, and then sought to make a hasty retreat to Budek’s side. Jahoda, however, had his own agenda.
He drew rapidly toward Solo, who had raised himself to his knees in a clumsy attempt to get to his feet while encumbered by the restraining lengths of the interconnected ankle and wrist shackles. Rapidly spearing and wrapping the less-than-foot-long chain between Solo’s wrist cuffs around the body of his rifle, Budek subsequently grabbed the back of the cable encircling Napoleon’s waist that connected the two sets of shackles and twisted Solo’s body at an awkward angle backwards toward himself. He then slammed a heavy boot down on the chain between the fettered man’s ankle manacles, disabling the U.N.C.L.E. agent from rising. Finally he pulled up his chain-wrapped gun, forcing Napoleon’s hands first over his head and then painfully behind his back. Distinctly audible in the echo-chamber-like atmosphere of the stone-walled cave was the loud pop as one of Solo’s shoulders was dislocated by the rapid enforced movement of his arms.
As Napoleon grimaced in silent agony, Budek bent down so his lips were close to Solo’s ear. “I don’t much care for your smart mouth, Solo,” he warned. “So I suggest for your own health you learn to keep a civil tongue in your head.”
“Your task is done here, Jahoda,” Klara emphatically reminded him. “So I suggest you get about your other business.”
Jahoda’s eyes shot to hers. “I don’t answer to you, wayward miss.
“At the moment it would seem it is you who is the wayward one. Or have you permission from Mr. Uripides to rough up Solo?”
Jahoda slackened his pull on the chain-wrapped rifle that was currently holding Napoleon’s body in an uncomfortably contorted position. “The Greek with the unorthodox ideas,” bitterly complained Budek. Nonetheless he slipped the coiled metal links off the long barrel of his Thrush weapon, purposely grabbing Solo’s injured shoulder and tossing him sideways to the ground as he did so.
Napoleon landed with a grunt, painfully rolling off the affected shoulder. Jahoda strode to the cell door, shouted at the guard outside to open that door, and then exited the enclosure, again dragging the lab tech by the arm with him. The portal closed behind them with a loud bang followed by the distinctive metallic swooshes and clicks of numerous electronic locks slipping into place.
As the sound of feet tramping away from their cell location reverberated through the stone caves, Klara knelt beside the stricken Napoleon where he currently lay on his back on the ground. “You should not challenge Jahoda,” she cautioned.
“So that is the infamous Budek Jahoda,” Napoleon acknowledged his captor’s standing in Thrush.
“You know of him then.”
“His reputation precedes him too,” conceded Napoleon. “Though, until being captured by your Thrush cohorts this time around, the two of us never had the inopportunity to meet face-to-face.”
“Well now you have,” concluded Klara with one of her characteristic shrugs. “And I’m sure you appreciate that his reputation is indeed well-earned.”
“Oh, he is such a big man,” Napoleon impugned his tormentor as he gingerly raised his upper body to a seated posture, “when wielding that gun of his against someone cripplingly confined in wrist and leg irons.”
That observation brought an amused smile to Klara’s lips. “You truly are incorrigible, Solo. Will you be so glib when the Council decides to have Jahoda work on you in earnest?”
“Indubitably.”
“I must admit,” granted Klara with another small smile, “I find it very gratifying that your reputation is also well-earned. Does anything faze you at all?”
“Watching innocents ritualistically punished kind of gets my goat.”
Klara’s smile faded. “I am not an innocent.”
“When did I ever insinuate you were?” nonchalantly batted back Solo.
Napoleon restively shifted his right shoulder. Damn! It hurt like hell. Yet he knew he had to get his arms back over his head and once again in front of him to have any chance of repositioning the shoulder joint. Biting his lower lip to keep from crying out, Napoleon began to slowly raise his arms above his head. Understanding his intent, Klara supported his right elbow in the palm of her hand and aided him in painstakingly rotating his arms back in front of him.
“Not sure it’s fully repositioned,” Klara candidly mentioned once this task was done.
“But it’s better,” granted Napoleon, unwilling to reveal how much the injured shoulder still hurt.
“It will be better still if the strain on it is eased. Let me make a sling,” she suggested as she tore off a large swatch of fabric from the slip she wore under her long flowing skirt.
“You shouldn’t surrender any of your clothing to such purpose, Klara,” Solo sagely advised. “What with the cold bothering you so much.”
“Well, you’ve certainly nothing I can use for the job,” she pooh-poohed his concern as she folded the material into a general triangular shape, “what with just wearing that jumpsuit. Leastways I still have undergarments.”
That caused Napoleon to laugh out loud. “Guess it’s obvious I don’t.”
“’Fraid so, Solo,” Klara forthrightly confided.
“Do pardon my lack of proper attire then, panienka. That’s certainly no way for a gentleman to make a good first impression on one of the fair sex.”
“Przeprosiny przyjęte, choć nie mam żadnych zastrzeżeń.”
{Translation: Apology accepted, though I do not have any objections.}
“I know you accepted my apology,” allowed Solo with a somewhat sheepish grin, “but beyond that I’m at a loss.”
“That is enough for you to know,” Klara decided as she knotted the silk on the two narrow ends of the triangle and slipped the whole over Napoleon’s head. She balanced the main of it on his good left shoulder; then with remarkable care placed this right arm in the makeshift cloth cradle. “There: that should at least take some of the pressure off that bad shoulder.”
“It does, thank you,” Napoleon expressed his gratitude. It made the throbbing ache at least bearable and under the circumstances that was all the relief he could honestly hope for. “Though I will admit I don’t understand why you are doing this at all. I mean, aren’t we, as you so unequivocally stated, sworn enemies?”
Klara sat back on her haunches and let her eyes hold his as she declared, “Let me explain something to you, Solo. If Jahoda came back in here right now with orders to use every means of force and torture to extract from you specific information Thrush requires, I would stand back and do nothing. Say nothing. In fact I would openly applaud him as he worked.
“Yet what he did just now,” she clarified, “well, it had no meaning, no goal. Things done to no purpose: that is what… gets my goat,” she utilized his own previous terminology to bring home the essence of her attitude.
Napoleon searched her face, unsure what to make of her personal thought processes. “You’re hard to fathom,” he told her.
“I don’t ask to be ‘fathomed’, especially not by one of U.N.C.L.E.,” she resorted to her more brusque method of communication. “Now, I think you should take the bed. You’ll need to relax that shoulder as much as possible.”
“I’m afraid I can’t agree to that,” refuted Solo. “What with the cold affecting you so much, you can’t just lie on the ground to sleep.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You’ll manage on the cot. Lumpy as it may be, at least it’s better than the rimy earthen floor in here.”
She stared at him in defiance for a long moment. “All right then, we’ll share,” she partially relented.
Napoleon blinked for a moment, his astonishment evident. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he opposed her compromise.
“Object to sharing a bed with a woman you don’t intend to screw, Solo?” she mocked in a semi-rebound of Budek’s former question, her unexpected coarse language causing Napoleon to blink in shock yet again.
“You’re hardly a woman,” he responded harshly.
“And I’m hardly inviting you to an Angelique-esque liaison,” she countered just as harshly.
Napoleon set his chin, jutting it upward rebelliously. “You take the bed: I insist on it.”
“And I insist otherwise.” Klara set her back perfectly erect in her own unswerving show of rebelliousness.
After several minutes devoted to this standoff with neither side seemingly willing to give so much as an inch, Klara sighed heavily.
“Oh look,” she forwarded, her frustration with Solo’s continued chivalrous stubbornness palpable, “simply sharing the bed so we both can get some sleep is so much better than wasting time arguing back-and-forth. And the mutual body heat will provide me added warmth.”
Napoleon couldn’t deny the logic of that point. “All right,” he reluctantly yielded. “We’ll do it your way because, as you say, it’s better than arguing.”
“Something that would serve absolutely no purpose,” reiterated Klara as she rose to her feet and dusted off her skirt. Then she extended a hand to the shackled Napoleon to aid him in getting to his feet.
Before accepting that hand, he looked up at her for another long moment.
This blond-haired, gray-eyed adolescent girl didn’t look anything like his Clara, she of the name that started with a C. Yet there was something about this Klara with a K, something on which Napoleon just couldn’t put his finger, something that made his memories of the other Clara itch with a persistent sting he thought had long since receded into a sensation no more concentrated than a pinprick.
“Likely just the fact she can be as pigheaded as Clara was sometimes,” Napoleon dismissed that suddenly penetratingly sharp stab of emotion… or at least he tried.
Continue on to Part 2...
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