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section7mfuAnd here is the second half of the story. (First part here.)
Act III: Dancing with the devil
Morning…
When he first heard it Tage Steffensen was sitting before the shortwave radio console receiving from Section IV in New York HQ standard mapping information on another area of the Carpathian Mountains. However he couldn’t be sure exactly what it was he heard. After all, daybreak was just showing its first flush on the horizon and thus he was still rather sleepy. And what he heard was no more than a quick background hiss that was just as quickly gone. Yet he doubted it was merely standard radio interference.
That hiss lasted no more than a second. So he let the report from Section IV continue. And then there it was again: the same low-frequency hiss.
Tage cut off the mike. “Illya,” he then called to his temporary partner, “come listen to this.”
Obligingly Kuryakin came and stood beside the other man’s chair as they both listened intently. It took a moment or two, but then the hiss came again – barely audible yet distinctive as separate from generic static.
“Our transmissions are being tapped,” Illya confirmed Tage’s suspicion.
Steffensen made to completely cut off contact with HQ when Illya laid a hand over his to halt this standard reaction.
The two agents were about to begin the third day of their search and still they had not located the local Thrush hideout. They suspected the entrance was somewhere in the underground cave systems, but that labyrinth was seemingly endless. Eventually, if they continued their current trial-and-error method of spelunking into every major and minor cavern that presented a reasonable possibility, they would likely locate their target. But, as Waverly had stated, time might not be on their side. What they needed was a bit of guidance to focus their efforts in the right area. And that guidance might just have quite miraculously come their way from an enemy source.
“This is only a routine transmission. Nothing classified,” Kuryakin noted matter-of-factly. “Let the frequency stay unchanged for now, Tage.”
“Let Thrush monitor?” Tage questioned dubiously as he again nibbled at a cuticle.
Illya nodded. “Because if they are monitoring, we can trace the source. And that might give us some coordinates to aid in targeting the satrapy location.”
“The birds will catch on before we can manage that,” protested Steffensen.
“Not necessarily,” insinuated the Russian.
“It’s risky, Illya. We’ve be giving them a handle on our location as well.”
“Of course it is risky,” conceded Illya perhaps a bit impatiently.
“And it could be a trap you know,” Tage ventured. “Like the one they laid for Napoleon.”
“It could,” Kuryakin admitted.
Still it was a risk he was willing to take and on this mission he was, after all, the senior agent. Such decisions were his, and he wasn’t going to ignore a possible chance to rescue Napoleon. He simply couldn’t.
“My orders, Tage: we do this.”
Biting the cuticle on his right index finger for another moment in consternation, Steffensen finally nodded his nervous acceptance of the tactic. He didn’t like it, but Illya did have seniority.
Kuryakin pulled a stool up beside the other man’s chair where it was set before the console. He then nodded for Tage to reactivate the mike and continue requesting general information from Section IV as he himself set about working with specialized dials and switches auxiliary to the radio unit in an attempt to track the trackers.
“It’s U.N.C.L.E., isn’t it?” questioned the intently listening Daiya as she sat beside her mother before the main communications console in the Thrush Czechoslovakian satrapy.
“Very likely,” Madzeija kept her answer ambivalent. She really couldn’t say why she did so. It was perhaps some hazy maternal instinct in her that warned her to be vague. “I can only get frequency, not specific communications. So it’s difficult to confirm that it actually is U.N.C.L.E.”
Fluctuating the radio oscillation of her own transmissions in a way to keep whoever might be monitoring her tracking operation from pinpointing exact coordinates, Madzeija held the trace on the discovered frequency as steady as she could. Daiya, meanwhile, watched her mother’s intricate maneuvers in some frustration.
“I bet you could get specific communications if you stopped altering your own frequency like that, Mama,” suggested the inexperienced twelve-year-old.
Madzeija smiled indulgently at the preteen. “What I am doing is called ghosting, moja droga. It may keep us from overhearing the actual conversations of the target, but it also keeps the target from easily finding us.”
Always meticulous in her work, Madzeija carefully wrote down into a logbook the frequency she was tapping. Daiya diligently paid attention to everything her mother was doing, mentally filing it all away. Angelique might have an interest in this and if so…
“Is it a rescue party for that high-profile U.N.C.L.E. man we have imprisoned here? Napoleon Solo?” the daughter inquired pointedly.
That possibility turned over a gear in Madzeija’s mind. If U.N.C.L.E. came soon enough for Solo, perhaps Klara would be spared her fate. If the Command captured her elder daughter, they would surely do something about the poison in her system. Klara might live…
“Possibly,” Madzeija conceded. “Or perhaps U.N.C.L.E. still believes the groundwater incursion project active and is continuing to look for a means to stop it.”
It would be easy to just misstep a hairsbreadth with the ghosting. Just stay on one wavelength long enough to become more than a phantom presence that could be estimated but not completely placed. No one else now in this satrapy was skilled enough in communications protocol to even guess she might have performed that misstep on purpose. So she wouldn’t be risking herself by doing it. And it could mean Klara might live…
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Klara had cold-bloodedly killed her husband, the girl’s own father. Thus had Klara demonstrated in no uncertain terms that she belonged heart-and-soul to Thrush with no emotional commitment leftover for family. Yet Madzeija’s own body had bred and brought forth the girl into this world. And if that child of her womb could yet live…
Madzeija was noncommittal, conflicted. Her practical soul and her protective heart were at odds. And then she looked over at Daiya seated beside her and she knew she didn’t need make any choice at all. All she had to do was let Daiya report everything to Angelique LaChien, as her younger daughter was more than wont to do.
Madzeija knew Angelique and Solo had something of a past… and a present. She had “accidentally” overheard enough radio conversations between Uripides and LaChien to be more than aware of the truth of that. And of course the salacious details of that “dangerous liaison” were bruited about the various corners of Thrush with the regularity of any such tantalizing gossip. So she could simply let the choice be entirely someone else’s, and she didn’t have to concern herself with the actual "how" of it at all. She didn’t even have to know the whys or wherefores. All she had to do was let happen whatever would happen.
“I always log tracking frequencies, Daiya,” she pointedly reminded the girl as she let the communications register fall back into place on the cord that kept the book readily connected to the side of the console. “It’s a good habit to get into. Such information can prove invaluable.”
As Daiya’s eyes narrowed in speculation regarding the prospect of what invaluable intelligence she would have to provide Angelique this morning, Madzeija let all responsibility for anything that might occur with either Solo or her eldest daughter wash completely clean from her conscience.
He was in a room with many narrow passages, most seemingly much too constricted to accommodate even the sideways width of a normal-sized human being. Standing beside him was his Clara, she with the name starting with C. He knew as one always seems to know such realities in dreams that they had but a limited amount of time to find their way out of this enclosed area before something truly disastrous occurred. Exactly what was that something, he wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, like the sword of Damocles, it hung with the persistence of impending doom within the very air around them.
One passage, the third to the left, seemed slightly wider than the others. It was this passage where Clara wanted to take a chance on finding a way out. Napoleon was on his cigarette-case communicator with Mr. Waverly, however. And the Old Man was advising his operative that, despite how it might appear to the naked eye, Section IV was sure the only way out of that room was through the second passage on the right.
“That opening is much too narrow for us to make it through,” objected Clara.
“On the contrary,” the Continental Chief’s disembodied voice offered ready assurance. “U.N.C.L.E.’s calculations on this are precise. You will indeed make it through, and that is absolutely the only way out.”
“All right, Mr. Waverly, we’ll follow those instructions,” Napoleon verbally articulated his acceptance of U.N.C.L.E.’s directive.
“You can, Napoleon,” Clara stated bluntly, “but I won’t. I don’t have your supreme faith in U.N.C.L.E.,” she further declared, “and therefore would much rather choose based on what I perceive with my own senses.”
Before Napoleon could make any argument, she strode swiftly to the third passage to the left and sidled through. The walls of the channel immediately closed in around her, hiding her completely from Napoleon’s view.
“Clara?” he called desperately. “Clara, are you out?” There was no response. “Clara, are you all right?” he cried out again.
“Take the second passage on the right, Mr. Solo,” Waverly spoke again over the communication line.
“Sir, I need to go after her. I need to know she is okay.”
“She made her choice, Mr. Solo. Having elected to ignore U.N.C.L.E.’s insight into the situation, she is no longer a concern of ours and therefore no longer a concern of yours.” …
Napoleon awoke with a start. Momentarily disoriented by his disquieting nightmare, the pain in his dislocated right shoulder quickly cleared away any lingering mental cobwebs and served as a physical reminder regarding his current situation. He turned his head to see Klara, she with the name starting with K, wide awake and watching him.
“So even righteous men from U.N.C.L.E. suffer from bad dreams,” she taunted. “I didn’t try to wake you because I know how dangerous that can be with a trained enforcement agent.”
“Very prudent of you.”
“And what would have happened if I had woken you? Would you have strangled me with your one good arm?”
“Probably with the chain between my wrist shackles,” supplied Napoleon with annoyed nonchalance.
With abrupt swiftness then, Klara sat up. Yet her action was not quick enough for her to avoid a sudden gasping for breath.
“You’re having even more trouble breathing now, aren’t you?” Solo demanded as he too sat up upon the bed.
“It is not of concern,” readily declared Klara as she swung her legs off the side of the cot in preparation to stand.
“Oh yes,” acknowledged Napoleon with noticeable bitterness. “You have made your choice, so are no longer a concern of mine,” he then paraphrased Waverly’s words from his undeniably disturbing dream.
Somewhat dumbstruck, Klara swiveled her countenance back to his. “I was never, am not now, and will never be your concern,” she reminded him matter-of-factly. “We two, Solo, have always been, are now, and will always be sworn enemies.”
“You are too young to be anybody’s sworn enemy,” batted back Solo in frustration.
“I am not too young,” bristled Klara.
“You are too damn young to even realize you are too young,” countered Napoleon rather heatedly. “You imagine yourself in some way or other spectacularly capable of making your own way even in the most dangerous of circumstances, just like every other innocent.”
“I am not an innocent!” protested Klara even more hotly now.
“Sorry, you just won’t convince me of your complete understanding of everything you say or do, little girl.”
“Why, you arrogant, sanctimonious, pretentious prig!”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” jeered Napoleon, “but words will never hurt me. And kiddo, all you got is words.”
“Leastways I don’t have the presumption to think I need to save every human being from him or herself. The protective, nurturing worldview of U.N.C.L.E.,” she sneered sarcastically.
“Admittedly at odds with the destructive, self-serving worldview of Thrush.”
“The world is not a spiritually generous place, dream-drunk U.N.C.L.E. man.
“It’s not a heartless miserly pit either, delusion-diseased Thrush girl.”
“You can’t win this argument you know, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. Agent,” came another female voice from just beyond the perimeters of the cell.
Both Klara and Solo turned the focus of their attention from each other to the woman who stood beyond the bars carrying a food tray in her hands.
“There may be ways and means to seek goodness in this world,” the woman continued in a resigned voice, “but the paths are all too often self-defeating.”
“Good day, Mama,” Klara greeted the older woman.
“I have food for the two of you,” Madzeija more or less snubbed her daughter’s greeting.
“Reduced to waitressing now?” questioned Klara in a condescending tone.
“I suggest you eat the soup while it is hot,” again Madzeija ignored her daughter’s pointed remark to her. “I shouldn’t count on being given more than this one meal today.”
With that Madzeija electronically opened a small panel at the very bottom of the cell door and slid the tray inside, closing the panel immediately after the tray cleared the access point.
Since Klara made no move to do so, Napoleon shuffled forward, then bent and took the tray awkwardly within his chained hands, further encumbered by his sling-bound right arm. “Thank you,” he, with one of his winning smiles, nonetheless readily expressed his gratitude to the woman.
In a gesture eerily similar to that displayed so habitually by her daughter, Madzeija casually shrugged. “Mr. Uripides said to see you were fed, so I’m seeing that you are.”
“The condemned ate a hearty breakfast,” paraphrased Klara unflappably.
“Not so hearty,” Madzeija amended. “Just soup and bread.”
“Still appreciated,” Solo assured her.
There were no utensils included with the meal. The soup was contained in shallow wooden bowls with two chunks of thick black bread laid out beside them on the tray. Napoleon set the serving platter on the only elevated surface in the cell, the mattress within the cot niche. He then lifted one of the bowls and sipped gingerly at what smelled and looked like some sort of thick mushroom soup.
“Delicious,” he noted after his first mouthful. “My compliments to the chef,” he added particularly as he turned another winning smile Madzeija’s way.
“Zupa pieczarkowa,” stated Madzeija with another casual shrug. “Simple enough to make. Eat quickly. I am to wait and take the dishware away.”
“What’s the problem, Mama?” queried Klara aloofly as she lifted her own vessel of soup off the tray. “Jahoda concerned our shackled and disabled U.N.C.L.E. agent might still be able to fashion some kind of weapon out of a plain wooden bowl?”
“I am not privy to Mr. Jahoda’s concerns,” replied Madzeija with equal aloofness. “I was told to wait and take the dishes away once the food was eaten. So that is what I will do.”
“Klara is your daughter?” Napoleon ventured further dialogue with the older woman.
“The eldest of my two daughters, yes,” answered Madzeija factually.
“So you have not mentally disowned me?” questioned Klara rather flippantly.
Madzeija simply shrugged. “Co to jest, jest.”
{Translation: What is, is.}
“Undoubtedly the essence of your entire philosophy of life, Mama,” mocked the girl.
“I realize you believe there are abstract ideologies worth giving your life for,” Madzeija criticized her child, “but I personally have never found it to be so.”
“So Thrush for you is but a means to an end?” submitted Napoleon, very familiar with this type of self-seeking allegiance amidst the fold of those voluntarily associated with the supra-nation.
“Once upon a time, perhaps,” confessed Madzeija. “Now?” Again the shrug. “Co to jest, jest.”
“You could always change what is,” suggested Napoleon.
“Are you trying to convert my mother to the ideals of U.N.C.L.E.?” demanded Klara in somewhat astonished vexation.
“Why not?” teased Solo. “I certainly couldn’t fare worse than I would in any attempt to so convert you.”
“I don’t believe in conversions in any form, Mr. Solo,” Madzeija spoke her own mind. “Such require a sense of internal conviction I simply do not possess.”
“How sad,” was Napoleon’s only comment. Then he added, “Yet your daughter seems to possess a surplus of such internal conviction, and all of it centered on the skewed global outlook of Thrush.”
“My husband and I brought up both our daughters as we thought reasonable in our current set of circumstances. Little did either of us ever suspect that pragmatic decision would in the end burn our family so badly.”
“I resent the implication that I am the result of some sort of misdirected childrearing,” Klara offered her own take on the situation. “My beliefs are based on my own understanding of the world.”
“An understanding your father and I aggressively encouraged in you,” mother noted plainly to child, “without ever truly allowing you to actively seek another viewpoint. But we have paid for our mistake. So there is no call for needless self-recriminations or penitential breast-beating. The only regret that might be is that you too must now pay for that mistake.”
“I have no qualms regarding my punishment,” Klara herself noted just as plainly, “though I still believe what I did needed to be done.”
“And therein lies the tragedy,” forwarded Madzeija, “because, moja droga, abstract philosophies – no matter how grand – are in the end cold and impersonal, with little room for true humanity in their spheres.”
“That rather depends on the philosophy,” submitted Solo certainly.
Madzeija smiled with benign indulgence at Napoleon. “You would of course think that, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. Agent, but I would submit you think just as wrongly as does my Klara.”
“You won’t convince me of that,” Napoleon informed her with just as benign a sense of indulgence.
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything, Mr. Solo,” Madzeija guaranteed him, “no more than I would try to convince Klara of anything at this stage in her life. Yet I will remind you of one undeniable truth: Life is hard, and death offers nothing by way of consolation, even if you die for a cause.”
“Take the dishware and go, Madzeija,” ordered Uripides as he made his way into the area trailed by a single rifle-toting guard and the browbeaten lab tech. “It is time for Klara’s next injection, and I don’t want to subject you to watching that take place.”
“How considerate of you,” mocked Napoleon.
“I am a considerate man, Mr. Solo,” Ciriaco recommended himself to his prisoner. “As you should appreciate since it is my express instructions that are keeping Jahoda from going to work on you with all his famed methods of intelligence extraction.”
It was Klara who placed the tray containing the empty bowls near the access point of the sliding panel and pushed it back through as that panel was again electronically opened by her mother. Madzeija bent and pulled the tray toward her; closing the panel immediately after doing so. She then lifted the serving platter and walked away from the cell block without another word.
Uripides followed Madzeija’s retreating figure with his eyes. “Damn, but that woman has one fine set of legs,” he seemingly complimented yet at the same time undoubtedly disrespected his secretary.
Klara openly grimaced at Uripides’ off-the-cuff aside. Napoleon merely smirked, realizing here was yet another man who imagined himself some sort of jaunty grand seducer of the female sex, yet who had absolutely no inkling how to actually woo a woman to his side and not just his bed. Why did it so often seem like these types of egotistical Romeo-wannabes found a home amongst the self-deluded megalomaniacs and self-absorbed powerbrokers of Thrush?
“So you are the Thrush in charge,” remarked Solo easily.
“Ciriaco Uripides, Mr. Solo,” Ciriaco introduced himself, “though certainly not at your service.”
“Thrush’s form of service is generally lousy anyway,” quipped back Napoleon without a qualm.
“I can certainly comprehend why you would feel that way, Mr. Solo,” acknowledged Uripides. “I might add, however, that those of Thrush have a similar opinion of U.N.C.L.E.’s form of service.”
“Opposing worldviews and all that,” Napoleon nonchalantly continued the banter.
“Surely so,” agreed Ciriaco, “but at least now you’ve more of an appreciation of our forms of internal justice, no?”
“I think those lousy too.”
“Don’t think murderers should pay the ultimate price?”
“She’s just sixteen years old.”
“So nothing more than an unfortunate, deluded, guileless innocent, heh?”
“There is no need to speak of me as if I am not standing right here listening to it all,” protested Klara irritably.
“Come stand here at the bars, Klara, to get your next injection,” directed Uripides indifferently. And Klara unhesitantly did exactly as she was bid, much to Solo’s obvious chagrin.
“Can’t you even offer token resistance?” queried the aggravated Napoleon as he watched the lab tech insert the needle in Klara’s arm, the white-coated man barely able to properly manipulate the syringe through the close-set bars.
Klara swiveled her countenance toward Solo. “To please you?” she questioned. “Most definitely not.”
“Don’t you even want to live?” Napoleon demanded of the girl.
“Everyone wants to live,” she pronounced dispassionately.
“Done,” the lab tech remarked as he withdrew the hypodermic from Klara’s flesh and made his strategic retreat.
“Not you apparently,” Napoleon acerbically muttered.
The girl ignored him as she went and sat on the ground in one corner of the cell, making a purposeful show of not seating herself beside Solo on the mattress in the cot niche, though it was the only surface raised off the cold earth in the lockup.
“So true, Mr. Solo,” Uripides gleefully forwarded. “All sane people do want to live, don’t they? But perhaps our young Klara is somewhat less than sane.”
“We all know that dedicating yourself to Thrush is indeed a form of madness,” taunted Solo.
That only brought forth a light laugh from Ciriaco. “What if I offered you a chance to save the stubborn little lady from herself?” he then tempted.
Napoleon’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because Klara Jablonski is not very important to us. While you could provide us information that would be.”
“From what she herself told me, one more injection is all that is required to complete your 'ultimate justice'.”
“True enough, and I can’t guarantee her survival. Yet, if she isn’t given that last injection, there is a chance she could survive, with some treatment.”
“Will you provide her that treatment?”
“Will you provide me the information I seek?”
“I don’t even know what that information might be,” hedged Napoleon.
With that, Ciriaco took a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket, knelt, opened the sliding panel at the base of the cell door, and propelled that paper forcefully within. The panel snapped shut with an aggressive click as the paper fluttered forward on the ground a few feet.
Rising from the cot once more, Solo shuffled forward in his shackles until the paper was directly before him. For a moment he hesitated to even lift it, to even look at it. Then, taking a deep breath, he raised the missive, opened it, and scanned it quickly.
“You know what that is?” questioned Uripides.
“As indeed do you,” Napoleon minced no words. “It is a Level 1 Command communiqué.”
“Continental Chief to Continental Chief,” acknowledged Ciriaco with a condescending smile. “It was intercepted over the wire exactly as you see here. Of course it is encrypted.”
“Of course,” agreed Solo.
“Yet you know what it says, don’t you, Mr. Solo?”
“Maybe.”
“And maybe, if you tell me, I’ll see to it that Klara doesn’t get that last injection and instead gets treatment for the adverse respiratory effects of the poison. Do we have a deal?”
“I’ll need time to consider,” Napoleon prevaricated.
“Of course, Mr. Solo. I am myself after all, as I have already made mention, a considerate man. Klara is to receive her next injection in six hours’ time; so that is how long you have to consider.”
With that Uripides turned away from the cell to make his departure, but then pointedly turned back. “Do remember: she is just sixteen years old,” he just as pointedly turned Solo’s own words back upon the emotionally ensnared U.N.C.L.E. agent.
Act IV: Staring the devil in the face
Afternoon…
Ciriaco Uripides sat in his office with his feet comfortably raised on his desk and his manner just as supremely comfortable with the workings of his own current game plan regarding Napoleon Solo. Budek Jahoda stood on the other side of that desk, however, in a far from satisfied mood with the other man’s strategy.
“What the hell does it benefit us,” demanded Jahoda of his current boss, “for Solo to provide information we already have?”
“We don’t actually have all the information to be gleaned from that missive. However, the primary goal here is not the information he will provide,” Ciriaco explained in a condescending tone, “but the feelings of self-doubt and internal moral conflict the simple idea of providing such will engender in him.”
“Psychological bullshit!” Budek offered his opinion of this tactic. “You think U.N.C.L.E. agents aren’t trained to the max to successfully handle such ‘feelings’?”
“Of course they are,” Uripides with some annoyance agreed, “but that training is controlled by U.N.C.L.E. ideals. If Klara Jablonski was someone other than who she is and Solo agreed to my bargain to save her, there would be no internal moral conflict in him about that action. He would be protecting an innocent as both his own conscience and the Command states he should. But to do this for Klara? That is not such an easy decision. No matter how he decides, he will mistrust the wisdom of his choice. Is he saving an innocent? Or betraying U.N.C.L.E.? Or conversely, is he abandoning an innocent and thus his own ethical code, a code reinforced by U.N.C.L.E.?”
“And this mental chess-game garners us exactly what in the end?”
“It garners us a top-level U.N.C.L.E. agent with hairline fractures in his invincible shell of altruistic scruples and organizational dedication. Surely even you understand, Budek, that such a man is much more likely to fully crack when further pressure is applied. And of course you will shortly enough be applying such further pressure via all your most infamous means of intelligence extraction.”
That soon he would be allowed to use more tried-and-true methods to squeeze information out of Napoleon Solo satisfied Jahoda for the moment. Still he found he had to inquire, “And you have faith that the Jablonska girl, young and inexperienced as she is, is the right instrument to set in motion these ethical hairline fractures within his psyche?”
Uripides smiled a very superior smile. “As you yourself noted, rather shrewdly I might add, that girl is no innocent,” he stated by way of candid answer.
Napoleon Solo sat staring sightlessly at the copy of the Level 1 U.N.C.L.E. communiqué he held within his fingers. He had been gazing unseeing at the paper this way for nearly the entire time since Uripides had left after making his unexpected offer. Solo’s brain was bombarded with a repeating meteor shower of colliding thoughts. On the one hand that this dispatch revealed him as the official one-day successor to the post of Continental Chief currently held by Alexander Waverly was really not much of an issue. Napoleon suspected Thrush had already deciphered this part of the message, and in any case this likelihood had been rumored as probability for long enough that confirmation would hardly come as intriguing news to the Hierarchy. As well, if his time on this earth was nearing an end due to Thrush… well, then it really didn’t matter what position Waverly or U.N.C.L.E. might have intended for him in the future, did it?
On the other hand, however, was the fact this particular communiqué was Waverly’s response to the opinions of the other four Continental Chiefs regarding his choice of successor. And therein lay the rub, for each of those initial opinions were specifically addressed within the missive, giving valuable insight into Waverly’s various working relationships with the other men at the helm of U.N.C.L.E. Such information could perhaps be used by Thrush to initiate discord within the ruling body of the Command, or to exploit weak links to try and break through the gates of U.N.C.L.E.’s authority structure. That kind of intelligence Napoleon couldn’t provide to Thrush without considering the possible domino effect of that action on the forces of world order.
Pushing the balancing weight back-and-forth from one hand to the other was the reality of Klara Jablonska, about to be executed by Thrush at just sixteen years of age. Was it wrong to deny one so young a chance at continued life? Or was it just plain foolish to sacrifice so much to give such a chance to a self-confessed coldblooded murderess and fervently avowed devotee of everything Thrush? Was there honestly any hope of reformation in this girl? Or was he just blindly refusing to acknowledge that one’s moral barometer could be set irreparably off in mere adolescence?
Solo’s disquieting contemplation was interrupted by the sound of heavy wheezing coming from Klara where she still sat on the ground in one corner of the cell.
“Do come and sit on the mattress here,” Napoleon bid with authentic compassion as he dropped the paper from his fingers to a spot just behind him on the bed.
Klara glanced over at him. “Why?” she probed bluntly.
“Because the floor is too cold,” expounded Napoleon. “And because I want to ask you a question that is better asked face-to-face. Please,” he then gently entreated.
With a shrug, Klara rose up from the ground and came and sat beside Solo on the cot. “Feel better about asking your question now?” she then inquired with a sardonic edge to her voice.
Taking one of her hands in his unencumbered left one, Napoleon quizzed her quietly, “Klara, do you want me to do this?”
“Do I want you to betray U.N.C.L.E.?” Klara posed his question to her own liking. “Of course I do.”
If Solo had hoped his query would bring forth some heretofore undisplayed softness in her, he was sadly disappointed. “That isn’t exactly what I was asking,” he noted with a small deflated sigh.
“It seems to me it is,” she countered.
“Do you want to live?” he asked more directly.
“I’ve already confirmed to you that everyone wants to live.”
“Can we cease the game of verbal chess?” Solo prompted in exasperation. “Let me ask something less open to interpretation. Uripides said, if you are not given that final injection, you could survive with medical treatment—”
“He also stated straight out,” interposed Klara coolly, “that he could not guarantee my survival.”
“Let me ask my question please,” forwarded the further exasperated Napoleon.
“Go ahead and ask it then.”
“Would you honestly be provided that treatment by Thrush?”
“Would you have me read the minds and deduce the intentions of those around me? How can I know these things? I believe it safe to say I would not receive that final injection. But beyond that?” Klara shook her head slowly before further speculating. “They might put me in one of the organization’s own infirmaries and see any such treatment through to completion. Or they might do no more than whisk me away in an ambulance to a local hospital and wash their hands of me. Or they might do nothing and simply allow me to try and fight for life on my own.”
“And would you? Fight for life?” pressed Napoleon.
“I would take whatever chance was offered me. Does that satisfy you?”
“Not really,” admitted Solo. “My dilemma remains the same.”
“Ah, but you see, that dilemma is indeed your own, not mine. I will not relieve you of it. The lady or the tiger, Solo?” she ventured as she slipped her hand from his. “You must make a choice.”
Napoleon’s eyes held hers. There was undeniable desolation in those hazel eyes of his. Yes, he must make a choice, but what choice? What, in this intolerable scenario, constituted right? His moral confusion on this score was irrefutable.
Resurrected from within his vault of memories rose the image of Clara with a C informing him in no uncertain terms: “I’m saying it has to be me or U.N.C.L.E. You can’t have us both.”
“I do have one boon to ask of you, however.” Klara’s voice startled Napoleon out of his reverie. “You have of course every reason to refuse it; still I trust you will regard it as a dying wish and therefore grant it me.”
“What is it?” required Solo in stunned surprise. She was actually asking a favor of him? A man she repeatedly noted as her sworn enemy? Perhaps she was not as hardened as first appeared.
“If, as it turns out, I do receive that final injection,” she projected unemotionally, “I would have you take my dying breath with a kiss.”
Napoleon blinked, his astonishment all but tangibly palpable in the very air surrounding him.
“Oh do not think I harbor some secret penchant for you, Solo,” she assured him with perhaps insulting candor. “Still, I fit all too well that American description of ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’. Not really kissed anyway. And I’ve heard tell you are a marvelous kisser. So what better way to end life than with a first and a last that is also presumably the best?”
Napoleon was saved the necessity of a verbal response by Klara continuing without pause, “You don’t have to promise me or anything so fixed in stone. I would just like you to remember it as my dying wish if the time comes.”
Something inside Napoleon squeezed and tightened, depriving him of emotional air as surely as that poison was depriving Klara of physical oxygen.
“We were granted the support of a special operations squad of three dozen men from the Soviet airbase in Milovice,” Mr. Waverly explained over the wire to his enforcement agent, Illya Kuryakin. “They are currently in the air on their way to your location and should arrive by helicopter within the hour.”
Though Illya was somewhat surprised by the composition of the infiltration force winging its way to his command, he made no mention of this fact to the Old Man. Instead he noted rather boldly, “Realize, sir, time may not be on our side, and we’ve already lost a good many hours of daylight waiting on the arrival of these additional men.”
If Waverly was somewhat surprised his agent should throw back at him his own former words about time possibly not being on their side, he likewise made no mention of this fact. Instead he expounded a bit didactically, “Mr. Kuryakin, there were delicate political negotiations that needed to take place. As we have no standing Command force of field operatives behind the Iron Curtain, there was no option other than to seek military assistance from the Soviet government in this endeavor.”
“I understand that, sir,” conceded Kuryakin, “but it must also be understood that, while we now have a much pared down area to search, we still don’t have an exact location. So the sooner we can get feet on the ground to explore that area for the Thrush presence—”
“Yes, yes, quite so, Mr. Kuryakin,” interjected Waverly. “Nonetheless my orders remain the same. You and Mr. Steffensen are not to make any possible infiltration attempt on your own. We have no way of knowing the full extent of the personnel strength within this particular satrapy, and having three agents rather than one within the hands of Thrush does not put us at any advantage. It only presents the possibility of the lives of you two men being used as a means of coercion against Mr. Solo.”
It was during this conversation with his superior that Illya heard it quite distinctly: that low frequency background hiss. He said nothing to his chief and instead immediately began tracking the source. Whoever was doing the monitoring from Thrush’s end this time was nowhere near as skilled as previously, and within no more than a minute Kuryakin had the exact coordinates of the enemy transmission.
“As you say, Mr. Waverly,” Illya dutifully acknowledged the directive of the Continental Chief. But then added in a more abstruse manner, “Within the hour then we go in to get Mr. Solo out. Kuryakin signing off.”
As Illya cut the transmission he called out to Steffensen, who was outside the tent bundling together weaponry and other supplies for the infiltration mission. “Tage, we have a direct hit! We move as soon as those helicopters touch earth. Or sooner, if those troops don’t shake their tails and get here within the hour as promised.”
Daiya knew she had made a dire mistake. Angelique had instructed her to monitor the actual content of the transmissions from what they presumed an U.N.C.L.E. field team source nearby. So she had done that, using the logged frequency her mother had noted earlier in the day.
But she wasn’t her mother. She had no talent at ghosting techniques. And in any case ghosting would mean not hearing the actual dialogue of the broadcasts. She thus had stayed on the frequency too long. She knew she had. She knew with a feeling of deep internal dread that she had provided the enemy the actual coordinates of the satrapy.
She had failed in her mission. She was a discredit to the mentorship of Angelique. Soon the satrapy would be overrun with adversarial forces and it would be entirely her fault.
She would be captured and imprisoned by U.N.C.L.E. She would be shunned by those fellow Thrush captured along with her, captured because of her. She would be hated and reviled by all. And worst of all, she would be despised as a pathetic incompetent by Angelique LaChien.
She knew she couldn’t face this future, if one could even label it a future. She knew she was beyond redemption within the eyes of Thrush. There was only one way out for her.
Daiya, like most young Thrush, had been taught how to use a firearm at an early age. To defend herself from U.N.C.L.E., so she was told. Now that skill would defend her from discovery as a failure and a fool. Now that skill would defend her from a prospect that was, in her imagining, more horrible than death.
There was a small semi-automatic pistol in the drawer under the communications console. It was there as a means of offense should the satrapy undergo attack.
Daiya took that gun from the drawer, knowing it was always kept fully loaded. She cocked the hammer, freeing the locking mechanism. Then raising it against her chest, over her heart, she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The report of the lone gunshot caught the ears of Madzeija Jablonska as she passed through a nearby hall. With so few personnel in the satrapy now, no one else was close enough to really register that distinctive sound. Knowing Daiya had been at the auxiliary communications console earlier for her daily chat with Angelique, Madzeija made her way into that now mostly unused room in the stripped-down satrapy. And there she saw Daiya lying on the floor near the console, a pool of blood forming around her torso.
Sprinting toward the girl, she knelt down beside her barely breathing younger daughter. “Daiya!” she cried out.
“I did it wrong, Mama,” the girl sputtered out in a faint whisper as Madzeija bent her head close to her child’s lips to hear. “Angelique said to monitor the transmissions, but I didn’t do it right. They will come here now.”
The last breath passed from Daiya’s body as recognition of what she herself had done washed over Madzeija. She had wanted to get around making any decision regarding saving the life of her elder daughter and, in fulfilling that desire, she had sacrificed that of her younger. Angelique had used her second child for her own purposes, and she had facilitated that callous use of the girl by the other woman. She, Daiya’s mother. Klara’s mother. There was no escaping her guilt in any of this.
Picking the handgun up from the floor where it had dropped from Daiya’s hand, Madzeija placed the muzzle of the weapon in her own mouth.
Life was hard, and death offered nothing by way of consolation. Yet sometimes death was in truth all that remained.
Like her daughter had done before her, she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The fact that the force invading the satrapy consisted of Soviet troops confused the Thrush within into thinking it some kind of raid by the Communist government in Moscow that exercised sovereign power over Czechoslovakia. Since Daiya, before her yet undiscovered suicide, had not reported on the transmissions she had overheard, that assault was not immediately associated with the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Thus Ciriaco Uripides quite readily surrendered himself to one of the Russian special-ops officers, confident that the supra-nation he served would of course facilitate his release from any form of Soviet incarceration within a matter of mere days if not hours. For the most part the scant Thrush personnel within the satrapy did the same, not even firing a weapon against the intruders.
Budek Jahoda, however, did not take to the idea of supposedly making things easy on himself by letting the Reds take him prisoner and waiting on the Thrush Hierarchy negotiating a quick release. His assignment had been to capture Napoleon Solo, maybe initially to facilitate Uripides’ cockeyed scheme, but ultimately to deliver him and any U.N.C.L.E. information inside his head into the hands of the Supreme Council. And Jahoda intended to fulfill that assignment. Let Uripides yield to unexpected adverse circumstances like a weakling; he was going to get out of this satrapy with Solo as his prisoner and his prize.
Accordingly Jahoda quickly decided on the most likely means to achieve his goal. After gathering what was required to enact his plan, he headed to the cell area where Solo and Klara Jablonska were currently being held. The infiltrators had not made it here yet as the cell block was definitely secluded from the main of the compound, and Budek took the precaution of electronically closing off the area via means of a mechanical firewall. Jahoda arrived with both his Thrush rifle and the timid lab tech in tow. The tech had gone AWOL from the Soviet Army and thus was not in any way anxious to take his chances with the Russian forces. Budek only needed to state that he expected to get clear of the premises without being detected by the Soviets to have the fearful man willing to go along with his scheme of escape with Solo in custody.
When Napoleon caught sight of Jahoda and the tech, he inquired uneasily, “It’s surely not yet time for her last injection?”
“You are both coming with me,” Budek informed them.
“Why?” Klara wanted to be told.
“Because I am personally delivering Solo directly into the arms of the Council,” Jahoda forwarded.
“Has Mr. Uripides approved this change in plans?” Klara demanded.
“Mr. Uripides is currently in the hands of the Soviet elite force that has, for some reason, invaded this place. He surrendered willingly, as did most of the Thrush personnel here.”
“I imagine because they understand Thrush will get them released one way or another,” supplied Klara.
“That matters not to me,” Budek declared. “My assignment was to get and keep Solo in the hands of Thrush. I’m not going to risk that mission by playing footsie with the Soviets.”
“This stripped, shackled and shut-in American would prefer to take his chances with the guys waving the ol’ star-and-sickle, thanks,” antagonistically challenged Solo.
“I don’t give a damn what you'd prefer!” spat out Jahoda. “You are Thrush’s prisoner and I am going to see you stay Thrush’s prisoner.”
“So why is he here?” Klara interrupted the confrontation between the two as she pointed at the lab tech.
“Because, if Solo resists, I’m going to have the good doctor here administer that final injection to you right here and now.”
“He’s not a doctor,” corrected Klara somewhat automatically, “but I do commend you, Jahoda, on a well-considered ploy.”
“To which you won’t accede of course,” Solo presumed of Klara.
Klara turned amused eyes to Napoleon. “Why ever not? I’m Thrush first and foremost, Solo. I therefore have absolutely no qualms about being the bait to keep you trapped in Thrush’s snare.”
And with that, Napoleon knew there was no alternative. He had to go with Jahoda because… Well, just because.
Budek unlocked the door and entered the cell. With one arm supporting his gun and one hand keeping a finger ever-ready on the trigger, he with the other hand grabbed Solo by the chain suspended between his wrist manacles forcibly pulling the U.N.C.L.E. agent’s injured arm from its protective sling. The lab tech meanwhile grasped Klara’s elbow in one hand while keeping a firm grip on the filled syringe he held in the other. Napoleon resignedly shuffled forward under Budek’s rough guidance.
Before the four could clear the confines of the lockup, however, an explosion reverberated through the compound, throwing both Klara and her ‘escort’ to the ground and somewhat away from one another. Both Budek and Napoleon were knocked to their knees. In that instant of confusion, Napoleon yanked hard on the chain between his wrists, pulling Jahoda all the way down to land on his back, the Thrush’s gun flying from his grip as a result of the sudden maneuver.
Solo was on top of the big man in an instant, forcing the chain across Jahoda’s windpipe with every bit of strength he possessed. Pain seared through his dislocated shoulder from the strain of the effort as Jahoda, his breath now catching in his throat, desperately tried to pry the metal links upward with his fingers. But Solo kept up the downward pressure, with both hands pushing the chain hard toward the floor and thus tighter across Jahoda’s neck. Those hands of his were visibly shaking as the struggle continued, but a massive rush of adrenaline was giving Solo a surge of surprising power.
Footsteps were heard running toward the cell block. The separating firewall had undoubtedly been explosively breached. No one in the lockup, however, paid those footsteps any attention… except the timid lab tech. Thinking it the Soviets, the white-coated man crawled into one corner of the open-doored cell, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Suddenly Napoleon saw stars. He collapsed sideways to the floor, releasing Jahoda. It took Solo several seconds to register that Klara had hit him across the back of the head with the butt of Budek’s Thrush rifle. She now aimed that weapon at Napoleon to hold him at bay as Jahoda caught his breath. The physically and mentally stunned Napoleon stared up at her in bewilderment.
Then just as quickly the tide turned again as the rifle was pulled from Klara’s hands and she was easily tossed aside to land on her hands and knees nearby. Wheezing heavily, gasping for every breath, shaking violently from the cold, she was in no condition to further resist the interloper in this confrontation, none other than Illya Kuryakin.
“Well, he did say it was the Russians who were invading,” remarked Napoleon with a wry grin.
Meanwhile Tage Steffensen stood over Jahoda with his U.N.C.L.E. Special pointed at the man’s heart. Budek opened his hands in a gesture of capitulation. He then made as if to rise to his feet. Halfway up he attempted to take out the big Swede – a man of much his own height and build – with a heavy body blow. Tage stood steady and responded by cracking Jahoda across the collarbone with his gun and then landing a firm punch to the Thrush’s jaw, a punch so firm it knocked the other man unconscious.
“Impressive, Tage,” Illya complimented his temporary partner, “but you could have simply darted him.”
Tage grinned. “He’s out, isn’t he? With no waste of Command-exclusive ammo.”
Napoleon, who now sat up, couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “I’m sure Mr. Waverly will very much approve of your economy with our assets, Tage. Now though you’ll have to figure out a way to get his unconscious hulk out of here.”
“Not a problem,” submitted Tage. He holstered his weapon, bent and – after only a modicum of grunting – lifted Jahoda’s prone form over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“That too is impressive,” noted Napoleon in sheer astonishment.
“Meet you topside, Illya,” stated Tage as he made his way (staggering a bit now and again, it must be admitted) out of the cell bearing his captive burden.
“Let’s get you out of here too, Napoleon,” Illya suggested to his regular partner as he offered a hand to aid the other man in getting to his feet.
“Ready, willing and mostly able,” Solo declared as he gladly accepted that helping hand. “The girl and the tech shouldn’t give us too much trouble. I really don’t think they’ll need to be cuffed. But we will need to get Klara – the girl,” he clarified who that was, “on supplemental oxygen as soon as—”
And it was then that Napoleon looked over and saw Klara lying on the floor, the now empty syringe protruding from the inner crook of one elbow.
“No!” he cried.
“I didn’t do it!” the lab tech babbled. “I dropped the hypo when I heard the others coming. She did it herself. I swear it!”
Napoleon moved awkwardly toward Klara, his chained ankles still an unwelcome encumbrance. Illya grasped the lab tech by the arm and asked Napoleon before leading the Thrush away, “Med team, Napoleon?”
“I don’t want my last few precious intakes of air compromised by the hovering bodies of useless medics,” spoke out Klara in a hoarse and nearly breathless voice, “especially those scented by the plains of Russia. Within the protective, nurturing worldview of U.N.C.L.E., surely the dying wishes of even sworn enemies deserve respect?”
Napoleon swallowed hard, but then turned toward Illya and shook his head. Kuryakin nodded his understanding. “We’ll wait outside,” he granted the privacy he knew his friend desired in this moment as he led the tech out of the lockup with him.
Kneeling beside Klara’s prone form, the disheartened Solo asked her, “Why?”
“I am Thrush first and foremost,” she gasped out slowly, the words so faint Napoleon had to lean close to hear them. “In the end, like my father, I failed to achieve what was required of me.”
“How? How did you fail?”
“Don’t be naïve, Solo. Did you not yourself initially assume, as you ventured to question me, that I was put in this cell with you to some undermining purpose?”
“I don’t believe that,” countered Napoleon.
“What you believe or don’t believe doesn’t matter to me,” Klara whispered. “And it doesn’t change a thing.”
“Co to jest, jest?” suggested Napoleon as a sudden chill ran unbidden down the entire length of his spine.
“If you would have it so,” agreed Klara with a lopsided little smile.
“Or at least so you would have it,” clarified Napoleon.
“You need feel no betrayal on this score, Solo. I always stated plainly that we were, are and always will be sworn enemies.”
“You did indeed,” conceded Solo sadly.
“So your heart is free to gloat triumphantly over my death,” she submitted between gasps for oxygen to fill her rapidly collapsing lungs.
“No, it is not,” Napoleon disavowed flatly.
“Perhaps then I should pity you, but I don’t. Your life continues while mine ends.”
Napoleon took a deep breath. This turn in events left him emotionally reeling and he didn’t know how to stop the wild spinning of his heart. He looked again upon the so young face of this Klara with a K, knowing he was looking his last.
“You had another dying wish…” he reminded her tentatively.
“Ah yes,” she granted with a small smile. “How like one bound by the ideals of U.N.C.L.E. to remem…”
Her voice caught in her throat and then simply faded away to nothingness. And with that signal of the impending end, Napoleon pressed his lips to hers and took her dying breath with a kiss.
One week later
NY Headquarters of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement
Illya Kuryakin entered Interrogation Room 2 and was surprised to find his partner, Napoleon Solo, seated alone at the table there, his chin resting on his hand and a far-off look in his eyes. But then again perhaps it was not in the least surprising that Napoleon should choose to be here rather than in his office where he would be readily accessible to most in HQ. Solo was still restricted to desk duty while he rehabilitated his relocated right shoulder, and that meant every female hoping for a playful flirtation encounter and every male seeking a hail-fellow-well-met cock-and-bull session was seeking him out. Yet right now Napoleon Solo was not his usual amiable, sociable self. The man was definitely still very much emotionally affected by what had transpired in the Czechoslovakian satrapy. Or more specifically, by what had transpired with the Jablonska girl.
“You can’t continue brooding over what happened to her,” Illya sagely advised his friend.
“Reflecting, Illya,” corrected Napoleon, “not brooding.”
“A matter of semantics,” the more pragmatic man forwarded his opinion on that correction. “You couldn’t save her you know.”
“As things turned out, no,” agreed Napoleon. “But what if—”
“No what-ifs,” interjected Kuryakin strongly. “Things are what they are.”
That brought an odd smile indeed to Napoleon’s lips. “Co to jest, jest,” he asserted in a quiet voice.
“Why are you are speaking to me in Polish?” the Russian inquired brusquely, though he more than suspected the reason.
“That was what she alleged: Klara’s mother,” clarified Solo.
“From what you’ve told me and what I read in your official report, Madzeija Jablonska possessed an extreme defeatist attitude toxic to the healthy existence of any internal code of ethics. Still, that doesn’t mean there is not some truth to the statement.”
Napoleon was silent for a long moment, and then blurted out seemingly completely out-of-context with the current flow of the conversation, “I still don’t know if I would have—”
“You wouldn’t have,” Illya spoke with absolute assurance. “There was too much at stake.”
“Yet to save an innocent surely—” Solo ruminated.
“Napoleon,” Illya interposed with just the tiniest bit of frustration evident in his vocal tone, “are you sure you aren’t seeing Klara Jablonska in your mind’s eye less as how she was and more of how you wanted her to be?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Her name was Klara,” pointed out Illya bluntly.
“Don’t even go there, tovarisch,” cautioned his friend.
The flash in Solo’s dark eyes served as further warning to Kuryakin that he not pursue this particular tack. The emotional wounds Clara Valdar had reopened in his friend’s heart just a few months before were all still too fresh, too raw.
“The Jablonska girl didn’t want saving, not by you or U.N.C.L.E. in any case,” Illya returned to a more straightforward approach. “Weren’t her final acts evidence enough of that for you?”
“She was sixteen, Illya,” Napoleon reminded his partner with a bit of frustration evident in his own voice. “Yes, a murderess, someone mentally twisted by Thrush into a being hard and uncompromising, but still only sixteen years old.”
“The fortunes of war, my friend, are seldom fair or even essentially reasonable.
”No more ‘reflection’,” then prompted Illya. He went to the door, automatically activating the pneumatic lock and thus opening the portal to the corridor beyond. He stood there, not letting the door close again as he spoke on. “Now go; prowl the premises for a date; relish the softness of a willing female body held close to yours; revel in the floral scent of silky hair and feminine skin; savor the sweet taste of a woman’s eager lips pressed against your own.”
“Because that is so what I do best,” Solo cynically denigrated himself.
“No, my friend,” contradicted the other man. “What you do best is risk your life for the principles you believe in. What you do best is dedicate yourself to the welfare of the world at large. What you do best is feel deeply for humanity.
“But all of us in this sometimes soul-trying profession develop our own methods for coping with the madness that so often accompanies what our consciences tell us we must do. Your method is no more worthy of deprecation and no less worthy of acceptance than any other.”
For another moment Napoleon remained seated where he was. Then he rose to his feet and went to the door his partner was continuing to keep open.
“Perhaps I’ll see if that gal in Section VI who just transferred in from Copenhagen has gotten a chance to really explore the town yet,” ‘reflected’ Napoleon as he walked through that door.
Because ultimately he knew Illya was right. There was no other way forward but to accept what was and let go of tormenting yet futile self-recriminations.
—The End—
Act III: Dancing with the devil
When he first heard it Tage Steffensen was sitting before the shortwave radio console receiving from Section IV in New York HQ standard mapping information on another area of the Carpathian Mountains. However he couldn’t be sure exactly what it was he heard. After all, daybreak was just showing its first flush on the horizon and thus he was still rather sleepy. And what he heard was no more than a quick background hiss that was just as quickly gone. Yet he doubted it was merely standard radio interference.
That hiss lasted no more than a second. So he let the report from Section IV continue. And then there it was again: the same low-frequency hiss.
Tage cut off the mike. “Illya,” he then called to his temporary partner, “come listen to this.”
Obligingly Kuryakin came and stood beside the other man’s chair as they both listened intently. It took a moment or two, but then the hiss came again – barely audible yet distinctive as separate from generic static.
“Our transmissions are being tapped,” Illya confirmed Tage’s suspicion.
Steffensen made to completely cut off contact with HQ when Illya laid a hand over his to halt this standard reaction.
The two agents were about to begin the third day of their search and still they had not located the local Thrush hideout. They suspected the entrance was somewhere in the underground cave systems, but that labyrinth was seemingly endless. Eventually, if they continued their current trial-and-error method of spelunking into every major and minor cavern that presented a reasonable possibility, they would likely locate their target. But, as Waverly had stated, time might not be on their side. What they needed was a bit of guidance to focus their efforts in the right area. And that guidance might just have quite miraculously come their way from an enemy source.
“This is only a routine transmission. Nothing classified,” Kuryakin noted matter-of-factly. “Let the frequency stay unchanged for now, Tage.”
“Let Thrush monitor?” Tage questioned dubiously as he again nibbled at a cuticle.
Illya nodded. “Because if they are monitoring, we can trace the source. And that might give us some coordinates to aid in targeting the satrapy location.”
“The birds will catch on before we can manage that,” protested Steffensen.
“Not necessarily,” insinuated the Russian.
“It’s risky, Illya. We’ve be giving them a handle on our location as well.”
“Of course it is risky,” conceded Illya perhaps a bit impatiently.
“And it could be a trap you know,” Tage ventured. “Like the one they laid for Napoleon.”
“It could,” Kuryakin admitted.
Still it was a risk he was willing to take and on this mission he was, after all, the senior agent. Such decisions were his, and he wasn’t going to ignore a possible chance to rescue Napoleon. He simply couldn’t.
“My orders, Tage: we do this.”
Biting the cuticle on his right index finger for another moment in consternation, Steffensen finally nodded his nervous acceptance of the tactic. He didn’t like it, but Illya did have seniority.
Kuryakin pulled a stool up beside the other man’s chair where it was set before the console. He then nodded for Tage to reactivate the mike and continue requesting general information from Section IV as he himself set about working with specialized dials and switches auxiliary to the radio unit in an attempt to track the trackers.
“It’s U.N.C.L.E., isn’t it?” questioned the intently listening Daiya as she sat beside her mother before the main communications console in the Thrush Czechoslovakian satrapy.
“Very likely,” Madzeija kept her answer ambivalent. She really couldn’t say why she did so. It was perhaps some hazy maternal instinct in her that warned her to be vague. “I can only get frequency, not specific communications. So it’s difficult to confirm that it actually is U.N.C.L.E.”
Fluctuating the radio oscillation of her own transmissions in a way to keep whoever might be monitoring her tracking operation from pinpointing exact coordinates, Madzeija held the trace on the discovered frequency as steady as she could. Daiya, meanwhile, watched her mother’s intricate maneuvers in some frustration.
“I bet you could get specific communications if you stopped altering your own frequency like that, Mama,” suggested the inexperienced twelve-year-old.
Madzeija smiled indulgently at the preteen. “What I am doing is called ghosting, moja droga. It may keep us from overhearing the actual conversations of the target, but it also keeps the target from easily finding us.”
Always meticulous in her work, Madzeija carefully wrote down into a logbook the frequency she was tapping. Daiya diligently paid attention to everything her mother was doing, mentally filing it all away. Angelique might have an interest in this and if so…
“Is it a rescue party for that high-profile U.N.C.L.E. man we have imprisoned here? Napoleon Solo?” the daughter inquired pointedly.
That possibility turned over a gear in Madzeija’s mind. If U.N.C.L.E. came soon enough for Solo, perhaps Klara would be spared her fate. If the Command captured her elder daughter, they would surely do something about the poison in her system. Klara might live…
“Possibly,” Madzeija conceded. “Or perhaps U.N.C.L.E. still believes the groundwater incursion project active and is continuing to look for a means to stop it.”
It would be easy to just misstep a hairsbreadth with the ghosting. Just stay on one wavelength long enough to become more than a phantom presence that could be estimated but not completely placed. No one else now in this satrapy was skilled enough in communications protocol to even guess she might have performed that misstep on purpose. So she wouldn’t be risking herself by doing it. And it could mean Klara might live…
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Klara had cold-bloodedly killed her husband, the girl’s own father. Thus had Klara demonstrated in no uncertain terms that she belonged heart-and-soul to Thrush with no emotional commitment leftover for family. Yet Madzeija’s own body had bred and brought forth the girl into this world. And if that child of her womb could yet live…
Madzeija was noncommittal, conflicted. Her practical soul and her protective heart were at odds. And then she looked over at Daiya seated beside her and she knew she didn’t need make any choice at all. All she had to do was let Daiya report everything to Angelique LaChien, as her younger daughter was more than wont to do.
Madzeija knew Angelique and Solo had something of a past… and a present. She had “accidentally” overheard enough radio conversations between Uripides and LaChien to be more than aware of the truth of that. And of course the salacious details of that “dangerous liaison” were bruited about the various corners of Thrush with the regularity of any such tantalizing gossip. So she could simply let the choice be entirely someone else’s, and she didn’t have to concern herself with the actual "how" of it at all. She didn’t even have to know the whys or wherefores. All she had to do was let happen whatever would happen.
“I always log tracking frequencies, Daiya,” she pointedly reminded the girl as she let the communications register fall back into place on the cord that kept the book readily connected to the side of the console. “It’s a good habit to get into. Such information can prove invaluable.”
As Daiya’s eyes narrowed in speculation regarding the prospect of what invaluable intelligence she would have to provide Angelique this morning, Madzeija let all responsibility for anything that might occur with either Solo or her eldest daughter wash completely clean from her conscience.
He was in a room with many narrow passages, most seemingly much too constricted to accommodate even the sideways width of a normal-sized human being. Standing beside him was his Clara, she with the name starting with C. He knew as one always seems to know such realities in dreams that they had but a limited amount of time to find their way out of this enclosed area before something truly disastrous occurred. Exactly what was that something, he wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, like the sword of Damocles, it hung with the persistence of impending doom within the very air around them.
One passage, the third to the left, seemed slightly wider than the others. It was this passage where Clara wanted to take a chance on finding a way out. Napoleon was on his cigarette-case communicator with Mr. Waverly, however. And the Old Man was advising his operative that, despite how it might appear to the naked eye, Section IV was sure the only way out of that room was through the second passage on the right.
“That opening is much too narrow for us to make it through,” objected Clara.
“On the contrary,” the Continental Chief’s disembodied voice offered ready assurance. “U.N.C.L.E.’s calculations on this are precise. You will indeed make it through, and that is absolutely the only way out.”
“All right, Mr. Waverly, we’ll follow those instructions,” Napoleon verbally articulated his acceptance of U.N.C.L.E.’s directive.
“You can, Napoleon,” Clara stated bluntly, “but I won’t. I don’t have your supreme faith in U.N.C.L.E.,” she further declared, “and therefore would much rather choose based on what I perceive with my own senses.”
Before Napoleon could make any argument, she strode swiftly to the third passage to the left and sidled through. The walls of the channel immediately closed in around her, hiding her completely from Napoleon’s view.
“Clara?” he called desperately. “Clara, are you out?” There was no response. “Clara, are you all right?” he cried out again.
“Take the second passage on the right, Mr. Solo,” Waverly spoke again over the communication line.
“Sir, I need to go after her. I need to know she is okay.”
“She made her choice, Mr. Solo. Having elected to ignore U.N.C.L.E.’s insight into the situation, she is no longer a concern of ours and therefore no longer a concern of yours.” …
Napoleon awoke with a start. Momentarily disoriented by his disquieting nightmare, the pain in his dislocated right shoulder quickly cleared away any lingering mental cobwebs and served as a physical reminder regarding his current situation. He turned his head to see Klara, she with the name starting with K, wide awake and watching him.
“So even righteous men from U.N.C.L.E. suffer from bad dreams,” she taunted. “I didn’t try to wake you because I know how dangerous that can be with a trained enforcement agent.”
“Very prudent of you.”
“And what would have happened if I had woken you? Would you have strangled me with your one good arm?”
“Probably with the chain between my wrist shackles,” supplied Napoleon with annoyed nonchalance.
With abrupt swiftness then, Klara sat up. Yet her action was not quick enough for her to avoid a sudden gasping for breath.
“You’re having even more trouble breathing now, aren’t you?” Solo demanded as he too sat up upon the bed.
“It is not of concern,” readily declared Klara as she swung her legs off the side of the cot in preparation to stand.
“Oh yes,” acknowledged Napoleon with noticeable bitterness. “You have made your choice, so are no longer a concern of mine,” he then paraphrased Waverly’s words from his undeniably disturbing dream.
Somewhat dumbstruck, Klara swiveled her countenance back to his. “I was never, am not now, and will never be your concern,” she reminded him matter-of-factly. “We two, Solo, have always been, are now, and will always be sworn enemies.”
“You are too young to be anybody’s sworn enemy,” batted back Solo in frustration.
“I am not too young,” bristled Klara.
“You are too damn young to even realize you are too young,” countered Napoleon rather heatedly. “You imagine yourself in some way or other spectacularly capable of making your own way even in the most dangerous of circumstances, just like every other innocent.”
“I am not an innocent!” protested Klara even more hotly now.
“Sorry, you just won’t convince me of your complete understanding of everything you say or do, little girl.”
“Why, you arrogant, sanctimonious, pretentious prig!”
“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” jeered Napoleon, “but words will never hurt me. And kiddo, all you got is words.”
“Leastways I don’t have the presumption to think I need to save every human being from him or herself. The protective, nurturing worldview of U.N.C.L.E.,” she sneered sarcastically.
“Admittedly at odds with the destructive, self-serving worldview of Thrush.”
“The world is not a spiritually generous place, dream-drunk U.N.C.L.E. man.
“It’s not a heartless miserly pit either, delusion-diseased Thrush girl.”
“You can’t win this argument you know, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. Agent,” came another female voice from just beyond the perimeters of the cell.
Both Klara and Solo turned the focus of their attention from each other to the woman who stood beyond the bars carrying a food tray in her hands.
“There may be ways and means to seek goodness in this world,” the woman continued in a resigned voice, “but the paths are all too often self-defeating.”
“Good day, Mama,” Klara greeted the older woman.
“I have food for the two of you,” Madzeija more or less snubbed her daughter’s greeting.
“Reduced to waitressing now?” questioned Klara in a condescending tone.
“I suggest you eat the soup while it is hot,” again Madzeija ignored her daughter’s pointed remark to her. “I shouldn’t count on being given more than this one meal today.”
With that Madzeija electronically opened a small panel at the very bottom of the cell door and slid the tray inside, closing the panel immediately after the tray cleared the access point.
Since Klara made no move to do so, Napoleon shuffled forward, then bent and took the tray awkwardly within his chained hands, further encumbered by his sling-bound right arm. “Thank you,” he, with one of his winning smiles, nonetheless readily expressed his gratitude to the woman.
In a gesture eerily similar to that displayed so habitually by her daughter, Madzeija casually shrugged. “Mr. Uripides said to see you were fed, so I’m seeing that you are.”
“The condemned ate a hearty breakfast,” paraphrased Klara unflappably.
“Not so hearty,” Madzeija amended. “Just soup and bread.”
“Still appreciated,” Solo assured her.
There were no utensils included with the meal. The soup was contained in shallow wooden bowls with two chunks of thick black bread laid out beside them on the tray. Napoleon set the serving platter on the only elevated surface in the cell, the mattress within the cot niche. He then lifted one of the bowls and sipped gingerly at what smelled and looked like some sort of thick mushroom soup.
“Delicious,” he noted after his first mouthful. “My compliments to the chef,” he added particularly as he turned another winning smile Madzeija’s way.
“Zupa pieczarkowa,” stated Madzeija with another casual shrug. “Simple enough to make. Eat quickly. I am to wait and take the dishware away.”
“What’s the problem, Mama?” queried Klara aloofly as she lifted her own vessel of soup off the tray. “Jahoda concerned our shackled and disabled U.N.C.L.E. agent might still be able to fashion some kind of weapon out of a plain wooden bowl?”
“I am not privy to Mr. Jahoda’s concerns,” replied Madzeija with equal aloofness. “I was told to wait and take the dishes away once the food was eaten. So that is what I will do.”
“Klara is your daughter?” Napoleon ventured further dialogue with the older woman.
“The eldest of my two daughters, yes,” answered Madzeija factually.
“So you have not mentally disowned me?” questioned Klara rather flippantly.
Madzeija simply shrugged. “Co to jest, jest.”
{Translation: What is, is.}
“Undoubtedly the essence of your entire philosophy of life, Mama,” mocked the girl.
“I realize you believe there are abstract ideologies worth giving your life for,” Madzeija criticized her child, “but I personally have never found it to be so.”
“So Thrush for you is but a means to an end?” submitted Napoleon, very familiar with this type of self-seeking allegiance amidst the fold of those voluntarily associated with the supra-nation.
“Once upon a time, perhaps,” confessed Madzeija. “Now?” Again the shrug. “Co to jest, jest.”
“You could always change what is,” suggested Napoleon.
“Are you trying to convert my mother to the ideals of U.N.C.L.E.?” demanded Klara in somewhat astonished vexation.
“Why not?” teased Solo. “I certainly couldn’t fare worse than I would in any attempt to so convert you.”
“I don’t believe in conversions in any form, Mr. Solo,” Madzeija spoke her own mind. “Such require a sense of internal conviction I simply do not possess.”
“How sad,” was Napoleon’s only comment. Then he added, “Yet your daughter seems to possess a surplus of such internal conviction, and all of it centered on the skewed global outlook of Thrush.”
“My husband and I brought up both our daughters as we thought reasonable in our current set of circumstances. Little did either of us ever suspect that pragmatic decision would in the end burn our family so badly.”
“I resent the implication that I am the result of some sort of misdirected childrearing,” Klara offered her own take on the situation. “My beliefs are based on my own understanding of the world.”
“An understanding your father and I aggressively encouraged in you,” mother noted plainly to child, “without ever truly allowing you to actively seek another viewpoint. But we have paid for our mistake. So there is no call for needless self-recriminations or penitential breast-beating. The only regret that might be is that you too must now pay for that mistake.”
“I have no qualms regarding my punishment,” Klara herself noted just as plainly, “though I still believe what I did needed to be done.”
“And therein lies the tragedy,” forwarded Madzeija, “because, moja droga, abstract philosophies – no matter how grand – are in the end cold and impersonal, with little room for true humanity in their spheres.”
“That rather depends on the philosophy,” submitted Solo certainly.
Madzeija smiled with benign indulgence at Napoleon. “You would of course think that, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. Agent, but I would submit you think just as wrongly as does my Klara.”
“You won’t convince me of that,” Napoleon informed her with just as benign a sense of indulgence.
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything, Mr. Solo,” Madzeija guaranteed him, “no more than I would try to convince Klara of anything at this stage in her life. Yet I will remind you of one undeniable truth: Life is hard, and death offers nothing by way of consolation, even if you die for a cause.”
“Take the dishware and go, Madzeija,” ordered Uripides as he made his way into the area trailed by a single rifle-toting guard and the browbeaten lab tech. “It is time for Klara’s next injection, and I don’t want to subject you to watching that take place.”
“How considerate of you,” mocked Napoleon.
“I am a considerate man, Mr. Solo,” Ciriaco recommended himself to his prisoner. “As you should appreciate since it is my express instructions that are keeping Jahoda from going to work on you with all his famed methods of intelligence extraction.”
It was Klara who placed the tray containing the empty bowls near the access point of the sliding panel and pushed it back through as that panel was again electronically opened by her mother. Madzeija bent and pulled the tray toward her; closing the panel immediately after doing so. She then lifted the serving platter and walked away from the cell block without another word.
Uripides followed Madzeija’s retreating figure with his eyes. “Damn, but that woman has one fine set of legs,” he seemingly complimented yet at the same time undoubtedly disrespected his secretary.
Klara openly grimaced at Uripides’ off-the-cuff aside. Napoleon merely smirked, realizing here was yet another man who imagined himself some sort of jaunty grand seducer of the female sex, yet who had absolutely no inkling how to actually woo a woman to his side and not just his bed. Why did it so often seem like these types of egotistical Romeo-wannabes found a home amongst the self-deluded megalomaniacs and self-absorbed powerbrokers of Thrush?
“So you are the Thrush in charge,” remarked Solo easily.
“Ciriaco Uripides, Mr. Solo,” Ciriaco introduced himself, “though certainly not at your service.”
“Thrush’s form of service is generally lousy anyway,” quipped back Napoleon without a qualm.
“I can certainly comprehend why you would feel that way, Mr. Solo,” acknowledged Uripides. “I might add, however, that those of Thrush have a similar opinion of U.N.C.L.E.’s form of service.”
“Opposing worldviews and all that,” Napoleon nonchalantly continued the banter.
“Surely so,” agreed Ciriaco, “but at least now you’ve more of an appreciation of our forms of internal justice, no?”
“I think those lousy too.”
“Don’t think murderers should pay the ultimate price?”
“She’s just sixteen years old.”
“So nothing more than an unfortunate, deluded, guileless innocent, heh?”
“There is no need to speak of me as if I am not standing right here listening to it all,” protested Klara irritably.
“Come stand here at the bars, Klara, to get your next injection,” directed Uripides indifferently. And Klara unhesitantly did exactly as she was bid, much to Solo’s obvious chagrin.
“Can’t you even offer token resistance?” queried the aggravated Napoleon as he watched the lab tech insert the needle in Klara’s arm, the white-coated man barely able to properly manipulate the syringe through the close-set bars.
Klara swiveled her countenance toward Solo. “To please you?” she questioned. “Most definitely not.”
“Don’t you even want to live?” Napoleon demanded of the girl.
“Everyone wants to live,” she pronounced dispassionately.
“Done,” the lab tech remarked as he withdrew the hypodermic from Klara’s flesh and made his strategic retreat.
“Not you apparently,” Napoleon acerbically muttered.
The girl ignored him as she went and sat on the ground in one corner of the cell, making a purposeful show of not seating herself beside Solo on the mattress in the cot niche, though it was the only surface raised off the cold earth in the lockup.
“So true, Mr. Solo,” Uripides gleefully forwarded. “All sane people do want to live, don’t they? But perhaps our young Klara is somewhat less than sane.”
“We all know that dedicating yourself to Thrush is indeed a form of madness,” taunted Solo.
That only brought forth a light laugh from Ciriaco. “What if I offered you a chance to save the stubborn little lady from herself?” he then tempted.
Napoleon’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you do that?”
“Because Klara Jablonski is not very important to us. While you could provide us information that would be.”
“From what she herself told me, one more injection is all that is required to complete your 'ultimate justice'.”
“True enough, and I can’t guarantee her survival. Yet, if she isn’t given that last injection, there is a chance she could survive, with some treatment.”
“Will you provide her that treatment?”
“Will you provide me the information I seek?”
“I don’t even know what that information might be,” hedged Napoleon.
With that, Ciriaco took a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket, knelt, opened the sliding panel at the base of the cell door, and propelled that paper forcefully within. The panel snapped shut with an aggressive click as the paper fluttered forward on the ground a few feet.
Rising from the cot once more, Solo shuffled forward in his shackles until the paper was directly before him. For a moment he hesitated to even lift it, to even look at it. Then, taking a deep breath, he raised the missive, opened it, and scanned it quickly.
“You know what that is?” questioned Uripides.
“As indeed do you,” Napoleon minced no words. “It is a Level 1 Command communiqué.”
“Continental Chief to Continental Chief,” acknowledged Ciriaco with a condescending smile. “It was intercepted over the wire exactly as you see here. Of course it is encrypted.”
“Of course,” agreed Solo.
“Yet you know what it says, don’t you, Mr. Solo?”
“Maybe.”
“And maybe, if you tell me, I’ll see to it that Klara doesn’t get that last injection and instead gets treatment for the adverse respiratory effects of the poison. Do we have a deal?”
“I’ll need time to consider,” Napoleon prevaricated.
“Of course, Mr. Solo. I am myself after all, as I have already made mention, a considerate man. Klara is to receive her next injection in six hours’ time; so that is how long you have to consider.”
With that Uripides turned away from the cell to make his departure, but then pointedly turned back. “Do remember: she is just sixteen years old,” he just as pointedly turned Solo’s own words back upon the emotionally ensnared U.N.C.L.E. agent.
Act IV: Staring the devil in the face
Ciriaco Uripides sat in his office with his feet comfortably raised on his desk and his manner just as supremely comfortable with the workings of his own current game plan regarding Napoleon Solo. Budek Jahoda stood on the other side of that desk, however, in a far from satisfied mood with the other man’s strategy.
“What the hell does it benefit us,” demanded Jahoda of his current boss, “for Solo to provide information we already have?”
“We don’t actually have all the information to be gleaned from that missive. However, the primary goal here is not the information he will provide,” Ciriaco explained in a condescending tone, “but the feelings of self-doubt and internal moral conflict the simple idea of providing such will engender in him.”
“Psychological bullshit!” Budek offered his opinion of this tactic. “You think U.N.C.L.E. agents aren’t trained to the max to successfully handle such ‘feelings’?”
“Of course they are,” Uripides with some annoyance agreed, “but that training is controlled by U.N.C.L.E. ideals. If Klara Jablonski was someone other than who she is and Solo agreed to my bargain to save her, there would be no internal moral conflict in him about that action. He would be protecting an innocent as both his own conscience and the Command states he should. But to do this for Klara? That is not such an easy decision. No matter how he decides, he will mistrust the wisdom of his choice. Is he saving an innocent? Or betraying U.N.C.L.E.? Or conversely, is he abandoning an innocent and thus his own ethical code, a code reinforced by U.N.C.L.E.?”
“And this mental chess-game garners us exactly what in the end?”
“It garners us a top-level U.N.C.L.E. agent with hairline fractures in his invincible shell of altruistic scruples and organizational dedication. Surely even you understand, Budek, that such a man is much more likely to fully crack when further pressure is applied. And of course you will shortly enough be applying such further pressure via all your most infamous means of intelligence extraction.”
That soon he would be allowed to use more tried-and-true methods to squeeze information out of Napoleon Solo satisfied Jahoda for the moment. Still he found he had to inquire, “And you have faith that the Jablonska girl, young and inexperienced as she is, is the right instrument to set in motion these ethical hairline fractures within his psyche?”
Uripides smiled a very superior smile. “As you yourself noted, rather shrewdly I might add, that girl is no innocent,” he stated by way of candid answer.
Napoleon Solo sat staring sightlessly at the copy of the Level 1 U.N.C.L.E. communiqué he held within his fingers. He had been gazing unseeing at the paper this way for nearly the entire time since Uripides had left after making his unexpected offer. Solo’s brain was bombarded with a repeating meteor shower of colliding thoughts. On the one hand that this dispatch revealed him as the official one-day successor to the post of Continental Chief currently held by Alexander Waverly was really not much of an issue. Napoleon suspected Thrush had already deciphered this part of the message, and in any case this likelihood had been rumored as probability for long enough that confirmation would hardly come as intriguing news to the Hierarchy. As well, if his time on this earth was nearing an end due to Thrush… well, then it really didn’t matter what position Waverly or U.N.C.L.E. might have intended for him in the future, did it?
On the other hand, however, was the fact this particular communiqué was Waverly’s response to the opinions of the other four Continental Chiefs regarding his choice of successor. And therein lay the rub, for each of those initial opinions were specifically addressed within the missive, giving valuable insight into Waverly’s various working relationships with the other men at the helm of U.N.C.L.E. Such information could perhaps be used by Thrush to initiate discord within the ruling body of the Command, or to exploit weak links to try and break through the gates of U.N.C.L.E.’s authority structure. That kind of intelligence Napoleon couldn’t provide to Thrush without considering the possible domino effect of that action on the forces of world order.
Pushing the balancing weight back-and-forth from one hand to the other was the reality of Klara Jablonska, about to be executed by Thrush at just sixteen years of age. Was it wrong to deny one so young a chance at continued life? Or was it just plain foolish to sacrifice so much to give such a chance to a self-confessed coldblooded murderess and fervently avowed devotee of everything Thrush? Was there honestly any hope of reformation in this girl? Or was he just blindly refusing to acknowledge that one’s moral barometer could be set irreparably off in mere adolescence?
Solo’s disquieting contemplation was interrupted by the sound of heavy wheezing coming from Klara where she still sat on the ground in one corner of the cell.
“Do come and sit on the mattress here,” Napoleon bid with authentic compassion as he dropped the paper from his fingers to a spot just behind him on the bed.
Klara glanced over at him. “Why?” she probed bluntly.
“Because the floor is too cold,” expounded Napoleon. “And because I want to ask you a question that is better asked face-to-face. Please,” he then gently entreated.
With a shrug, Klara rose up from the ground and came and sat beside Solo on the cot. “Feel better about asking your question now?” she then inquired with a sardonic edge to her voice.
Taking one of her hands in his unencumbered left one, Napoleon quizzed her quietly, “Klara, do you want me to do this?”
“Do I want you to betray U.N.C.L.E.?” Klara posed his question to her own liking. “Of course I do.”
If Solo had hoped his query would bring forth some heretofore undisplayed softness in her, he was sadly disappointed. “That isn’t exactly what I was asking,” he noted with a small deflated sigh.
“It seems to me it is,” she countered.
“Do you want to live?” he asked more directly.
“I’ve already confirmed to you that everyone wants to live.”
“Can we cease the game of verbal chess?” Solo prompted in exasperation. “Let me ask something less open to interpretation. Uripides said, if you are not given that final injection, you could survive with medical treatment—”
“He also stated straight out,” interposed Klara coolly, “that he could not guarantee my survival.”
“Let me ask my question please,” forwarded the further exasperated Napoleon.
“Go ahead and ask it then.”
“Would you honestly be provided that treatment by Thrush?”
“Would you have me read the minds and deduce the intentions of those around me? How can I know these things? I believe it safe to say I would not receive that final injection. But beyond that?” Klara shook her head slowly before further speculating. “They might put me in one of the organization’s own infirmaries and see any such treatment through to completion. Or they might do no more than whisk me away in an ambulance to a local hospital and wash their hands of me. Or they might do nothing and simply allow me to try and fight for life on my own.”
“And would you? Fight for life?” pressed Napoleon.
“I would take whatever chance was offered me. Does that satisfy you?”
“Not really,” admitted Solo. “My dilemma remains the same.”
“Ah, but you see, that dilemma is indeed your own, not mine. I will not relieve you of it. The lady or the tiger, Solo?” she ventured as she slipped her hand from his. “You must make a choice.”
Napoleon’s eyes held hers. There was undeniable desolation in those hazel eyes of his. Yes, he must make a choice, but what choice? What, in this intolerable scenario, constituted right? His moral confusion on this score was irrefutable.
Resurrected from within his vault of memories rose the image of Clara with a C informing him in no uncertain terms: “I’m saying it has to be me or U.N.C.L.E. You can’t have us both.”
“I do have one boon to ask of you, however.” Klara’s voice startled Napoleon out of his reverie. “You have of course every reason to refuse it; still I trust you will regard it as a dying wish and therefore grant it me.”
“What is it?” required Solo in stunned surprise. She was actually asking a favor of him? A man she repeatedly noted as her sworn enemy? Perhaps she was not as hardened as first appeared.
“If, as it turns out, I do receive that final injection,” she projected unemotionally, “I would have you take my dying breath with a kiss.”
Napoleon blinked, his astonishment all but tangibly palpable in the very air surrounding him.
“Oh do not think I harbor some secret penchant for you, Solo,” she assured him with perhaps insulting candor. “Still, I fit all too well that American description of ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’. Not really kissed anyway. And I’ve heard tell you are a marvelous kisser. So what better way to end life than with a first and a last that is also presumably the best?”
Napoleon was saved the necessity of a verbal response by Klara continuing without pause, “You don’t have to promise me or anything so fixed in stone. I would just like you to remember it as my dying wish if the time comes.”
Something inside Napoleon squeezed and tightened, depriving him of emotional air as surely as that poison was depriving Klara of physical oxygen.
“We were granted the support of a special operations squad of three dozen men from the Soviet airbase in Milovice,” Mr. Waverly explained over the wire to his enforcement agent, Illya Kuryakin. “They are currently in the air on their way to your location and should arrive by helicopter within the hour.”
Though Illya was somewhat surprised by the composition of the infiltration force winging its way to his command, he made no mention of this fact to the Old Man. Instead he noted rather boldly, “Realize, sir, time may not be on our side, and we’ve already lost a good many hours of daylight waiting on the arrival of these additional men.”
If Waverly was somewhat surprised his agent should throw back at him his own former words about time possibly not being on their side, he likewise made no mention of this fact. Instead he expounded a bit didactically, “Mr. Kuryakin, there were delicate political negotiations that needed to take place. As we have no standing Command force of field operatives behind the Iron Curtain, there was no option other than to seek military assistance from the Soviet government in this endeavor.”
“I understand that, sir,” conceded Kuryakin, “but it must also be understood that, while we now have a much pared down area to search, we still don’t have an exact location. So the sooner we can get feet on the ground to explore that area for the Thrush presence—”
“Yes, yes, quite so, Mr. Kuryakin,” interjected Waverly. “Nonetheless my orders remain the same. You and Mr. Steffensen are not to make any possible infiltration attempt on your own. We have no way of knowing the full extent of the personnel strength within this particular satrapy, and having three agents rather than one within the hands of Thrush does not put us at any advantage. It only presents the possibility of the lives of you two men being used as a means of coercion against Mr. Solo.”
It was during this conversation with his superior that Illya heard it quite distinctly: that low frequency background hiss. He said nothing to his chief and instead immediately began tracking the source. Whoever was doing the monitoring from Thrush’s end this time was nowhere near as skilled as previously, and within no more than a minute Kuryakin had the exact coordinates of the enemy transmission.
“As you say, Mr. Waverly,” Illya dutifully acknowledged the directive of the Continental Chief. But then added in a more abstruse manner, “Within the hour then we go in to get Mr. Solo out. Kuryakin signing off.”
As Illya cut the transmission he called out to Steffensen, who was outside the tent bundling together weaponry and other supplies for the infiltration mission. “Tage, we have a direct hit! We move as soon as those helicopters touch earth. Or sooner, if those troops don’t shake their tails and get here within the hour as promised.”
Daiya knew she had made a dire mistake. Angelique had instructed her to monitor the actual content of the transmissions from what they presumed an U.N.C.L.E. field team source nearby. So she had done that, using the logged frequency her mother had noted earlier in the day.
But she wasn’t her mother. She had no talent at ghosting techniques. And in any case ghosting would mean not hearing the actual dialogue of the broadcasts. She thus had stayed on the frequency too long. She knew she had. She knew with a feeling of deep internal dread that she had provided the enemy the actual coordinates of the satrapy.
She had failed in her mission. She was a discredit to the mentorship of Angelique. Soon the satrapy would be overrun with adversarial forces and it would be entirely her fault.
She would be captured and imprisoned by U.N.C.L.E. She would be shunned by those fellow Thrush captured along with her, captured because of her. She would be hated and reviled by all. And worst of all, she would be despised as a pathetic incompetent by Angelique LaChien.
She knew she couldn’t face this future, if one could even label it a future. She knew she was beyond redemption within the eyes of Thrush. There was only one way out for her.
Daiya, like most young Thrush, had been taught how to use a firearm at an early age. To defend herself from U.N.C.L.E., so she was told. Now that skill would defend her from discovery as a failure and a fool. Now that skill would defend her from a prospect that was, in her imagining, more horrible than death.
There was a small semi-automatic pistol in the drawer under the communications console. It was there as a means of offense should the satrapy undergo attack.
Daiya took that gun from the drawer, knowing it was always kept fully loaded. She cocked the hammer, freeing the locking mechanism. Then raising it against her chest, over her heart, she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The report of the lone gunshot caught the ears of Madzeija Jablonska as she passed through a nearby hall. With so few personnel in the satrapy now, no one else was close enough to really register that distinctive sound. Knowing Daiya had been at the auxiliary communications console earlier for her daily chat with Angelique, Madzeija made her way into that now mostly unused room in the stripped-down satrapy. And there she saw Daiya lying on the floor near the console, a pool of blood forming around her torso.
Sprinting toward the girl, she knelt down beside her barely breathing younger daughter. “Daiya!” she cried out.
“I did it wrong, Mama,” the girl sputtered out in a faint whisper as Madzeija bent her head close to her child’s lips to hear. “Angelique said to monitor the transmissions, but I didn’t do it right. They will come here now.”
The last breath passed from Daiya’s body as recognition of what she herself had done washed over Madzeija. She had wanted to get around making any decision regarding saving the life of her elder daughter and, in fulfilling that desire, she had sacrificed that of her younger. Angelique had used her second child for her own purposes, and she had facilitated that callous use of the girl by the other woman. She, Daiya’s mother. Klara’s mother. There was no escaping her guilt in any of this.
Picking the handgun up from the floor where it had dropped from Daiya’s hand, Madzeija placed the muzzle of the weapon in her own mouth.
Life was hard, and death offered nothing by way of consolation. Yet sometimes death was in truth all that remained.
Like her daughter had done before her, she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.
The fact that the force invading the satrapy consisted of Soviet troops confused the Thrush within into thinking it some kind of raid by the Communist government in Moscow that exercised sovereign power over Czechoslovakia. Since Daiya, before her yet undiscovered suicide, had not reported on the transmissions she had overheard, that assault was not immediately associated with the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Thus Ciriaco Uripides quite readily surrendered himself to one of the Russian special-ops officers, confident that the supra-nation he served would of course facilitate his release from any form of Soviet incarceration within a matter of mere days if not hours. For the most part the scant Thrush personnel within the satrapy did the same, not even firing a weapon against the intruders.
Budek Jahoda, however, did not take to the idea of supposedly making things easy on himself by letting the Reds take him prisoner and waiting on the Thrush Hierarchy negotiating a quick release. His assignment had been to capture Napoleon Solo, maybe initially to facilitate Uripides’ cockeyed scheme, but ultimately to deliver him and any U.N.C.L.E. information inside his head into the hands of the Supreme Council. And Jahoda intended to fulfill that assignment. Let Uripides yield to unexpected adverse circumstances like a weakling; he was going to get out of this satrapy with Solo as his prisoner and his prize.
Accordingly Jahoda quickly decided on the most likely means to achieve his goal. After gathering what was required to enact his plan, he headed to the cell area where Solo and Klara Jablonska were currently being held. The infiltrators had not made it here yet as the cell block was definitely secluded from the main of the compound, and Budek took the precaution of electronically closing off the area via means of a mechanical firewall. Jahoda arrived with both his Thrush rifle and the timid lab tech in tow. The tech had gone AWOL from the Soviet Army and thus was not in any way anxious to take his chances with the Russian forces. Budek only needed to state that he expected to get clear of the premises without being detected by the Soviets to have the fearful man willing to go along with his scheme of escape with Solo in custody.
When Napoleon caught sight of Jahoda and the tech, he inquired uneasily, “It’s surely not yet time for her last injection?”
“You are both coming with me,” Budek informed them.
“Why?” Klara wanted to be told.
“Because I am personally delivering Solo directly into the arms of the Council,” Jahoda forwarded.
“Has Mr. Uripides approved this change in plans?” Klara demanded.
“Mr. Uripides is currently in the hands of the Soviet elite force that has, for some reason, invaded this place. He surrendered willingly, as did most of the Thrush personnel here.”
“I imagine because they understand Thrush will get them released one way or another,” supplied Klara.
“That matters not to me,” Budek declared. “My assignment was to get and keep Solo in the hands of Thrush. I’m not going to risk that mission by playing footsie with the Soviets.”
“This stripped, shackled and shut-in American would prefer to take his chances with the guys waving the ol’ star-and-sickle, thanks,” antagonistically challenged Solo.
“I don’t give a damn what you'd prefer!” spat out Jahoda. “You are Thrush’s prisoner and I am going to see you stay Thrush’s prisoner.”
“So why is he here?” Klara interrupted the confrontation between the two as she pointed at the lab tech.
“Because, if Solo resists, I’m going to have the good doctor here administer that final injection to you right here and now.”
“He’s not a doctor,” corrected Klara somewhat automatically, “but I do commend you, Jahoda, on a well-considered ploy.”
“To which you won’t accede of course,” Solo presumed of Klara.
Klara turned amused eyes to Napoleon. “Why ever not? I’m Thrush first and foremost, Solo. I therefore have absolutely no qualms about being the bait to keep you trapped in Thrush’s snare.”
And with that, Napoleon knew there was no alternative. He had to go with Jahoda because… Well, just because.
Budek unlocked the door and entered the cell. With one arm supporting his gun and one hand keeping a finger ever-ready on the trigger, he with the other hand grabbed Solo by the chain suspended between his wrist manacles forcibly pulling the U.N.C.L.E. agent’s injured arm from its protective sling. The lab tech meanwhile grasped Klara’s elbow in one hand while keeping a firm grip on the filled syringe he held in the other. Napoleon resignedly shuffled forward under Budek’s rough guidance.
Before the four could clear the confines of the lockup, however, an explosion reverberated through the compound, throwing both Klara and her ‘escort’ to the ground and somewhat away from one another. Both Budek and Napoleon were knocked to their knees. In that instant of confusion, Napoleon yanked hard on the chain between his wrists, pulling Jahoda all the way down to land on his back, the Thrush’s gun flying from his grip as a result of the sudden maneuver.
Solo was on top of the big man in an instant, forcing the chain across Jahoda’s windpipe with every bit of strength he possessed. Pain seared through his dislocated shoulder from the strain of the effort as Jahoda, his breath now catching in his throat, desperately tried to pry the metal links upward with his fingers. But Solo kept up the downward pressure, with both hands pushing the chain hard toward the floor and thus tighter across Jahoda’s neck. Those hands of his were visibly shaking as the struggle continued, but a massive rush of adrenaline was giving Solo a surge of surprising power.
Footsteps were heard running toward the cell block. The separating firewall had undoubtedly been explosively breached. No one in the lockup, however, paid those footsteps any attention… except the timid lab tech. Thinking it the Soviets, the white-coated man crawled into one corner of the open-doored cell, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
Suddenly Napoleon saw stars. He collapsed sideways to the floor, releasing Jahoda. It took Solo several seconds to register that Klara had hit him across the back of the head with the butt of Budek’s Thrush rifle. She now aimed that weapon at Napoleon to hold him at bay as Jahoda caught his breath. The physically and mentally stunned Napoleon stared up at her in bewilderment.
Then just as quickly the tide turned again as the rifle was pulled from Klara’s hands and she was easily tossed aside to land on her hands and knees nearby. Wheezing heavily, gasping for every breath, shaking violently from the cold, she was in no condition to further resist the interloper in this confrontation, none other than Illya Kuryakin.
“Well, he did say it was the Russians who were invading,” remarked Napoleon with a wry grin.
Meanwhile Tage Steffensen stood over Jahoda with his U.N.C.L.E. Special pointed at the man’s heart. Budek opened his hands in a gesture of capitulation. He then made as if to rise to his feet. Halfway up he attempted to take out the big Swede – a man of much his own height and build – with a heavy body blow. Tage stood steady and responded by cracking Jahoda across the collarbone with his gun and then landing a firm punch to the Thrush’s jaw, a punch so firm it knocked the other man unconscious.
“Impressive, Tage,” Illya complimented his temporary partner, “but you could have simply darted him.”
Tage grinned. “He’s out, isn’t he? With no waste of Command-exclusive ammo.”
Napoleon, who now sat up, couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “I’m sure Mr. Waverly will very much approve of your economy with our assets, Tage. Now though you’ll have to figure out a way to get his unconscious hulk out of here.”
“Not a problem,” submitted Tage. He holstered his weapon, bent and – after only a modicum of grunting – lifted Jahoda’s prone form over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“That too is impressive,” noted Napoleon in sheer astonishment.
“Meet you topside, Illya,” stated Tage as he made his way (staggering a bit now and again, it must be admitted) out of the cell bearing his captive burden.
“Let’s get you out of here too, Napoleon,” Illya suggested to his regular partner as he offered a hand to aid the other man in getting to his feet.
“Ready, willing and mostly able,” Solo declared as he gladly accepted that helping hand. “The girl and the tech shouldn’t give us too much trouble. I really don’t think they’ll need to be cuffed. But we will need to get Klara – the girl,” he clarified who that was, “on supplemental oxygen as soon as—”
And it was then that Napoleon looked over and saw Klara lying on the floor, the now empty syringe protruding from the inner crook of one elbow.
“No!” he cried.
“I didn’t do it!” the lab tech babbled. “I dropped the hypo when I heard the others coming. She did it herself. I swear it!”
Napoleon moved awkwardly toward Klara, his chained ankles still an unwelcome encumbrance. Illya grasped the lab tech by the arm and asked Napoleon before leading the Thrush away, “Med team, Napoleon?”
“I don’t want my last few precious intakes of air compromised by the hovering bodies of useless medics,” spoke out Klara in a hoarse and nearly breathless voice, “especially those scented by the plains of Russia. Within the protective, nurturing worldview of U.N.C.L.E., surely the dying wishes of even sworn enemies deserve respect?”
Napoleon swallowed hard, but then turned toward Illya and shook his head. Kuryakin nodded his understanding. “We’ll wait outside,” he granted the privacy he knew his friend desired in this moment as he led the tech out of the lockup with him.
Kneeling beside Klara’s prone form, the disheartened Solo asked her, “Why?”
“I am Thrush first and foremost,” she gasped out slowly, the words so faint Napoleon had to lean close to hear them. “In the end, like my father, I failed to achieve what was required of me.”
“How? How did you fail?”
“Don’t be naïve, Solo. Did you not yourself initially assume, as you ventured to question me, that I was put in this cell with you to some undermining purpose?”
“I don’t believe that,” countered Napoleon.
“What you believe or don’t believe doesn’t matter to me,” Klara whispered. “And it doesn’t change a thing.”
“Co to jest, jest?” suggested Napoleon as a sudden chill ran unbidden down the entire length of his spine.
“If you would have it so,” agreed Klara with a lopsided little smile.
“Or at least so you would have it,” clarified Napoleon.
“You need feel no betrayal on this score, Solo. I always stated plainly that we were, are and always will be sworn enemies.”
“You did indeed,” conceded Solo sadly.
“So your heart is free to gloat triumphantly over my death,” she submitted between gasps for oxygen to fill her rapidly collapsing lungs.
“No, it is not,” Napoleon disavowed flatly.
“Perhaps then I should pity you, but I don’t. Your life continues while mine ends.”
Napoleon took a deep breath. This turn in events left him emotionally reeling and he didn’t know how to stop the wild spinning of his heart. He looked again upon the so young face of this Klara with a K, knowing he was looking his last.
“You had another dying wish…” he reminded her tentatively.
“Ah yes,” she granted with a small smile. “How like one bound by the ideals of U.N.C.L.E. to remem…”
Her voice caught in her throat and then simply faded away to nothingness. And with that signal of the impending end, Napoleon pressed his lips to hers and took her dying breath with a kiss.
One week later
NY Headquarters of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement
Illya Kuryakin entered Interrogation Room 2 and was surprised to find his partner, Napoleon Solo, seated alone at the table there, his chin resting on his hand and a far-off look in his eyes. But then again perhaps it was not in the least surprising that Napoleon should choose to be here rather than in his office where he would be readily accessible to most in HQ. Solo was still restricted to desk duty while he rehabilitated his relocated right shoulder, and that meant every female hoping for a playful flirtation encounter and every male seeking a hail-fellow-well-met cock-and-bull session was seeking him out. Yet right now Napoleon Solo was not his usual amiable, sociable self. The man was definitely still very much emotionally affected by what had transpired in the Czechoslovakian satrapy. Or more specifically, by what had transpired with the Jablonska girl.
“You can’t continue brooding over what happened to her,” Illya sagely advised his friend.
“Reflecting, Illya,” corrected Napoleon, “not brooding.”
“A matter of semantics,” the more pragmatic man forwarded his opinion on that correction. “You couldn’t save her you know.”
“As things turned out, no,” agreed Napoleon. “But what if—”
“No what-ifs,” interjected Kuryakin strongly. “Things are what they are.”
That brought an odd smile indeed to Napoleon’s lips. “Co to jest, jest,” he asserted in a quiet voice.
“Why are you are speaking to me in Polish?” the Russian inquired brusquely, though he more than suspected the reason.
“That was what she alleged: Klara’s mother,” clarified Solo.
“From what you’ve told me and what I read in your official report, Madzeija Jablonska possessed an extreme defeatist attitude toxic to the healthy existence of any internal code of ethics. Still, that doesn’t mean there is not some truth to the statement.”
Napoleon was silent for a long moment, and then blurted out seemingly completely out-of-context with the current flow of the conversation, “I still don’t know if I would have—”
“You wouldn’t have,” Illya spoke with absolute assurance. “There was too much at stake.”
“Yet to save an innocent surely—” Solo ruminated.
“Napoleon,” Illya interposed with just the tiniest bit of frustration evident in his vocal tone, “are you sure you aren’t seeing Klara Jablonska in your mind’s eye less as how she was and more of how you wanted her to be?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Her name was Klara,” pointed out Illya bluntly.
“Don’t even go there, tovarisch,” cautioned his friend.
The flash in Solo’s dark eyes served as further warning to Kuryakin that he not pursue this particular tack. The emotional wounds Clara Valdar had reopened in his friend’s heart just a few months before were all still too fresh, too raw.
“The Jablonska girl didn’t want saving, not by you or U.N.C.L.E. in any case,” Illya returned to a more straightforward approach. “Weren’t her final acts evidence enough of that for you?”
“She was sixteen, Illya,” Napoleon reminded his partner with a bit of frustration evident in his own voice. “Yes, a murderess, someone mentally twisted by Thrush into a being hard and uncompromising, but still only sixteen years old.”
“The fortunes of war, my friend, are seldom fair or even essentially reasonable.
”No more ‘reflection’,” then prompted Illya. He went to the door, automatically activating the pneumatic lock and thus opening the portal to the corridor beyond. He stood there, not letting the door close again as he spoke on. “Now go; prowl the premises for a date; relish the softness of a willing female body held close to yours; revel in the floral scent of silky hair and feminine skin; savor the sweet taste of a woman’s eager lips pressed against your own.”
“Because that is so what I do best,” Solo cynically denigrated himself.
“No, my friend,” contradicted the other man. “What you do best is risk your life for the principles you believe in. What you do best is dedicate yourself to the welfare of the world at large. What you do best is feel deeply for humanity.
“But all of us in this sometimes soul-trying profession develop our own methods for coping with the madness that so often accompanies what our consciences tell us we must do. Your method is no more worthy of deprecation and no less worthy of acceptance than any other.”
For another moment Napoleon remained seated where he was. Then he rose to his feet and went to the door his partner was continuing to keep open.
“Perhaps I’ll see if that gal in Section VI who just transferred in from Copenhagen has gotten a chance to really explore the town yet,” ‘reflected’ Napoleon as he walked through that door.
Because ultimately he knew Illya was right. There was no other way forward but to accept what was and let go of tormenting yet futile self-recriminations.
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Date: 2013-02-21 10:22 pm (UTC)I wanted to show that what the guys faced in Thrush wasn't all black-and-white without introducing any sort of "adversary with a heart of gold" element to these uncompromising realities. The Jablonski family were not people who were candidates for undergoing a "change of heart". They were each in their own way voluntarily trapped by their approach to life, and yet their saga was still -- despite their complicity in it -- incredibly tragic.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting. Know this was a long one. [chuckle]