One Hundred Words for Snow
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section7mfuYes, I know the 12 Days of Christmas are nearly over here, but better late than never. Here's a story I wrote for the Down the Chimney exchange a few years ago. It has the most readers for me on Fanfic.net.
One Hundred Words for Snow
... The story goes that Eskimos have one hundred words for snow. This is most certainly a myth which probably began when an anthropologist’s report was misinterpreted by less informed readers. Actually, there is no such thing as a single Eskimo language, just as there is no such thing as an “Eskimo.” There are actually several major languages employed by the Native populations of the Arctic and they are further subdivided into a number of dialects. These tend to be languages in which aspects of an event or very complex ideas may be contained in a single compound word. That is, there might be one word for ‘my snow’ and another for ‘your snow.’ Hence, the confusion over the hundred words.
Nevertheless, the story illustrates the very real point that language reflects culture and vice versa. One tends to ignore what is not named. Alternatively, how things are named influences and shapes how we think about the world around us. Anyone attempting to switch from one language to another will soon encounter words that are untranslatable. Some concepts that exist in one culture do not necessarily exist in others. Or, if they do, may take on quite a different meaning.
Take the subculture of the intelligence community, for example. Words that are relatively simple in the larger “Innocent” culture, may take on rather more complex meanings with us. If, as in the linguistic myth, snow is a complex, multiple and ever-shifting concept for the Eskimos, for us, it’s words like “trust.” “Loyalty.” “Confidence.”
And most of all, “friend...”
U.N.C.L.E. HQ. December 23, 1960.
“A tie.”
“Doesn’t like them.”
“Cuff links.”
“Doesn’t wear them.”
“Aftershave.”
“Too personal.”
“A pair of gloves.”
“Not personal enough.”
Sarah Johnson sat back in her chair and set her cup of Lipton tea down with an exasperated click. Even during this busy early lunch hour, one could hear that click halfway across the commissary. “Well, honestly Napoleon, you’re not being very helpful about this.”
“And you only have a day or two left to shop,” Heather McNabb chimed in from the seat beside her.
“You have to get him something,” Wanda Mae Kim agreed.
Napoleon Solo shrugged easily. “Why? He’s a Communist. He probably doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway. I mean really, what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is,” Sarah responded sagely, “that Illya is the first field agent from behind the Iron Curtain to be assigned to New York, and if we’re going to make this work, we should do our best to make him feel welcome.”
Solo shrugged again, this time appearing a bit wounded. “I make him feel welcome every day. We share lunches, dinners all the time. I just bought him a cup of coffee this morning.” And I dragged him out of that damn warehouse in October just before it exploded, he wanted to point out but didn’t. Field agents never discussed the particulars of missions with the HQ staff.
“Yeah, but ‘fitting in’ is about more than a couple of cups of coffee. You’ve heard the gossip. People try to be careful, but the ‘Red’ and ‘Commie’ thing slips out now and then.”
“Wes was particularly obnoxious at the debriefing yesterday,” Heather reminded them all. Wes was Wes Lerner, Section Five’s top surveillance man who was not known for skills outside of his area of expertise ... or discretion. And he wasn’t the only one.
“Then maybe Wes should buy him the present,” Solo countered.
Sarah clucked her tongue against her teeth. “Be serious, Napoleon. You know that a lot of folks are still nervous about having Illya around.”
“Well, this isn’t NATO,” Solo observed, unsympathetically. “We’re an international organization. It’s about time we acted like one.” He looked around the circle of secretaries. “Hey, I served in Korea, remember? A lot of guys in my company, guys I counted as friends, didn’t come back. If anyone should hate Communists, it should be me.”
“And do you?” Wanda Mae asked softly.
“Do I what?”
“Hate Communists?”
“No, of course not — ” But the question caught him up short. How did he feel about working with a Soviet Russian? Day to day, he didn’t really think about it at all. Illya was simply Illya, a brother agent who sometimes saw things a bit differently. But working with agents of other nationalities all over the world, Solo was accustomed to that. Of course, he still couldn’t entirely understand the Germans, and with the French, he didn’t even try.
But Wanda’s pointed question made him realize that there was a disconnect between how he felt about Illya in particular and the Soviet Union in general, and he didn’t always associate one with the other. When they worked together, they didn’t talk about politics; they didn’t even joke about it, and Solo now understood that was subconsciously deliberate.
“Some of my best friends are Communists,” he quipped to defuse the tension and the three secretaries responded appropriately with laughter and relief.
But if Solo were being honest, he would have to admit that he didn’t know a hell of a lot about Illya’s private life either. Since the Russian had arrived in New York on that sweltering hot day last June, they’d gotten on surprisingly well around the office and on missions. So much so, that Waverly had been pairing them together more and more frequently. The way they complemented each other was downright eerie, as if, together, their success rate increased exponentially and they became this super-efficient, super-knowledgeable, nearly invincible whole. With Illya beside him, sometimes Solo felt so confident, so absolutely sure they’d get the job done, it was scary.
Scary because, as all field agents knew, that kind of sky-high confidence could get you killed.
“Why don’t you gals get together and buy the gift?” Solo asked reasonably, changing the subject back to where the conversation began in the first place. “I’ll be glad to chip in. Heck, I’ll even reimburse you for the whole thing.”
“Nope,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “It should come from you, Napoleon. You’re the reason he’s here —”
“Nate’s the reason he’s here...”
“Nate Cassidy put the bug in the Old Man’s ear, but you’re the one who said you thought it was a good idea.”
“And I still do. What can I say? We worked well together on that mission in France last year and Illya had skills, knowledge and political connections that this office could really use.”
And that I could really use, Solo thought guiltily. He’d recognized it instinctively, just as he could always improvise a gadget or a strategy in the field to keep himself alive. But this time, in doing so, he’d altered the course of another man’s life, perhaps forever.
And for the better? He didn’t know.
“All right, I’ll find him a gift,” Solo said, giving in. What the hell. Unless some madman threatened to blow up the world in the next day or so, his schedule was free.
“Maybe a big bottle of vodka,” Heather suggested brightly. “Don’t Russians drink a lot of vodka?”
“They drink vodka,” Solo affirmed, trying not to wince at the sting of the stereotype, “but Illya doesn’t like the imports that are available in America.”
Heather frowned, as if her shiny new balloon had just popped. Solo reached out and patted her knuckles. “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.” He checked his watch. “But for now, I’m due in Mr. Waverly’s office in ten minutes.”
“Better make it five,” Sarah said. “He’s in a foul mood today.”
“Great.” Solo sighed and pushed back his chair. “Thanks for the brainstorming, ladies. I’m grateful for the effort.”
“How grateful?” Heather asked playfully.
Solo grinned slyly. “You’ll see.”
“Remember good things come in small packages,” Sarah reminded him. “Especially if they’re blue.” Blue was the color of a box from Tiffany’s.
“You don’t seem to have any trouble picking out presents for women,” Wanda Mae observed slyly.
“That’s because there are so many ...possibilities.” The last word came out as a seductive hiss which left the women twittering appreciatively in Solo’s wake.
He made his way to the elevator bay, steeling himself to endure his superior’s reportedly black mood, which, truth be told, could be truly black, indeed. But as he punched the button for Level Two, Solo’s thoughts wandered back to the problem at hand:
...maybe a bottle of vodka isn’t such a bad idea after all...
***
“Something on your mind, Mr. Solo?”
“Uh, no sir.”
They were sitting at the large circular table discussing U.N.C.L.E.’s supplemental contribution to the security arrangements surrounding the inauguration of an American president that would occur in less than a month’s time. Waverly had just informed Solo that he would be joining the all-important Washington task force at the beginning of January, so it hardly seemed the appropriate moment to discuss what Christmas present to give a fellow agent. In addition to the inauguration, there was trouble in the Congo, South Vietnam and Laos, the president of France had just faced off mobs of protesters in Algiers, and the week before, two airliners had collided over New York City, one of them crashing in Brooklyn, killing 127 passengers and crew members and demolishing a local church. U.N.C.L.E. was still investigating for possible sabotage. Compared to all this, Solo’s little personal problem seemed even more trivial than what the commissary was offering for lunch that day.
But Waverly was staring at him, impatiently puffing on his pipe, the Old Man’s bloodhound countenance boring into the agent, demanding an answer. The protracted silence in the sprawling chief’s office was deafening. Solo fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair, knowing there was no alternative but to give in. He might be a master manipulator elsewhere, but with Waverly, he always gave in. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because with his boss, Solo often felt like a kid who’d just thrown a baseball through the neighbor’s front window.
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I’ve been a little distracted. I’ve been thinking about what to give Illya for Christmas.”
“Oh?”
More staring, more waiting, more silence. Waverly’s bushy eyebrows didn’t even budge.
“Well, it’s just to make Illya feel more—” Solo groped for a word, a phrase, anything, and found himself parroting Sarah “— welcome.”
“Welcome?”
“Yes, to, ah, make him feel comfortable — like he fits in.”
Waverly chewed the stem of his pipe for a moment like a squirrel gnawing a particularly troublesome nut. “Has there been a problem?”
“Oh, no,” Solo volunteered quickly. “No, sir, no problem. Really. It’s just that, well, y’know, Cold War attitudes die hard even around here and with the, ah, culture shock and all...”
“As I recall, bringing Mr. Kuryakin to New York was your idea, Mr. Solo —”
Solo winced. It seemed he was being reminded of that fact hourly.
“—and you and Mr. Cassidy assured me that there would be no difficulty integrating Mr. Kuryakin into our operations here.”
“And there hasn’t been.”
“He’d been working very effectively across the pond, and I needn’t remind you that Mr. Beldon was not very keen on giving him up. We went through considerable negotiations with London to make that transfer possible.”
Solo knew that, too. “It’s been going well,” he assured his superior. “Very well, in fact, and if I might say so, sir, I think the results of our missions speak for themselves.”
There was another long pause as Waverly considered his agent’s words, worrying each one individually as hard and long as he had the stem of that pipe. Finally, he said, “All right then,” signaling that matter was closed — at least for now — and that they should move on. Solo nearly let out an audible sigh of relief. Waverly closed the Washington file, sifted through the pile of dossiers near his elbow, and liberated a new one.
“As you may be aware,” Waverly went on, “our colleagues at the CIA are in the process of vacating their offices at 630 Fifth Avenue.”
“Room 3603,” Solo affirmed with a nod.
“If you prefer the colloquial.”
This was big news in espionage circles. The notorious Room 3603, located right smack dab in the middle of Rockefeller Center, had served as British Intelligence’s headquarters in the U.S. during World War II. It was from here that the Brits, soon joined by the Canadians, did their best to foster pro-Allied propaganda in the American media and not so incidentally, protect British financial interests while keeping an eye out for the enemy. When the war was over, the offices passed to the OSS and then to the newly-formed CIA.
“The CIA has offered the space to us and Section I believes, based on the configuration of the facilities and its central location in the city, that it may prove useful. Before we make the transition however, it seems there is a small matter of a file cabinet ...”
“A file cabinet, sir?”
“Mr. Dulles has informed me that, apparently, there are some files concerning SOE operations that may be of particular interest to us.”
“Do you know what’s in them?”
Waverly frowned sourly in a rare display of frustration. “Unfortunately, Mr. Dulles was rather cryptic on that point.”
Mr. Dulles was, of course, Allen Dulles, the first and, so far, only director of the CIA. Dulles was known for his paranoia and taste for covert actions that often conflicted with U.N.C.L.E.’s own goals. Nevertheless, because of their wartime experience working together, Waverly got on with Dulles much better than he did with the FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover.
“It sounds as if Mr. Dulles is trying to do us a favor,” Solo observed.
“Perhaps,” Waverly conceded. “In any case, I will need you to go over there this afternoon and vet the files. Section Five already has a security detail in place and they can unlock the appropriate room. Please peruse the files and assess their value. Take a security kit with you to seal them afterward. You realize this is strictly FYEO. I’ll expect a verbal report as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir,” Solo said rising. Spending an afternoon at Rockefeller Center was not an unpleasant prospect. He would get a chance to see the tree and perhaps scavenge an hour or two to do some shopping at the stores on Fifth Avenue.
“And take Mr. Kuryakin with you,” Waverly added, seemingly as an afterthought. This made Solo pause. He didn’t have to say it: A Soviet rummaging around in CIA files?
“Mr. Dulles didn’t indicate how many files there were,” Waverly said, ignoring the question clearly discernible in the expression on Solo’s face. “You may need assistance.”
“Mr. Dulles won’t be pleased with the idea.”
Waverly looked up, removing the pipe from between his teeth. “But it isn’t his call any more, is it, Mr. Solo?”
“No, sir,” Solo replied, duly chastised. No matter what history was contained in that file cabinet, the world had certainly shifted since. As Solo headed toward the sliding door, he heard Waverly’s voice behind him: “Wool socks.”
Solo turned. “Ah — beg your pardon, sir?”
“Wool socks,” Waverly repeated almost absent-mindedly, his attention already shifting to the next order of business. “One never has enough wool socks.”
“Yes, sir,” Solo said, unable to suppress a smile.
***
Wool socks.
Four hours later, Solo was still amused by Waverly’s suggestion. It was late afternoon now, sliding quickly toward evening as early winter days were wont to do in New York. The sun had already set below the skyscraper canyons, bathing the streets in a rosy glow.
Solo leaned his shoulder against the wall next to a window and took a drag of his cigarette. They were on the 36th floor of the International Building, and below him stretched a spectacular view of the heart of Rockefeller Center, with the giant twinkling tree standing out in stark relief and gold Prometheus glinting in the fading light. The skaters swirling around the ice rink looked like ants skittering around a white picnic tablecloth.
He and Illya had spent the entire afternoon tearing through the file cabinet’s contents. Browsing through documents peppered with names that were near-legendary had been both an interesting exercise and an education of sorts. Most of the reports were written in crisp, spare, bureaucratic language, but if one had an insider’s knowledge of what it was like to work in the field, one could read between the lines and piece together often startling pictures of risk and courage, triumph and desperation. A few of the agents whose names appeared in faded ink on the yellowed crackling pages were still working in espionage. The rest were retired, dead, or lost, with the latter, perhaps, doing their best not to be found.
Now, the cabinet was empty, its drawers left open like gaping wounds, its contents reduced to ten tall stacks of files piled neatly on the polished cherry wood conference table. Most of the stacks were sealed with fat yellow bands labeled with the words File 40 accompanied by the U.N.C.L.E. organization’s logo. Only a handful remained, awaiting a similar disposition.
“Want to grab some dinner after this?” Solo asked aloud, knowing the answer. The Russian agent was always hungry.
Predictably, from his seat behind the conference table, Kuryakin nodded. “Do you know any good restaurants in this area?” he asked. Like Solo, he knew the answer to his question as well.
“One or two,” Solo replied with a grin. “As soon as we finish here, we can —”
“Huh!” Kuryakin breathed the word out like a scientist making a sudden and profound discovery — like Newton right after he was beaned on the head by an apple.
“What is it?” Solo was genuinely curious. Despite their best efforts and the File 40 seals, they hadn’t really found anything in the files that might warrant such a high security classification.
“Did you know that Victor Marton was a member of the French Resistance during the war?”
“Sure,” Solo said with a shrug. It was pretty much common knowledge. These days, Marton was Thrush’s chief satrap based in Paris and he had an U.N.C.L.E. file as thick as a telephone book. “He did a lot of black marketing smuggling, too. Nate told me a couple of stories.”
“Apparently, he was also the chief liaison between the SOE’s F section and the OCM — the Organisation Civile et Militaire — in the northern part of the country. From what I’m reading here, in the fall of 1941, he rescued an SOE agent who was being held for interrogation at the local Gestapo headquarters.
“So?”
Kuryakin raised his eyes, peering over his reading glasses. “The SOE agent’s name was Alexander Waverly.”
“No kidding?” Solo stubbed his cigarette out in an ancient ashtray of scarred grey glass and slid into a seat at the table. Kuryakin passed him a tattered dossier. “See for yourself.”
The report was written in Waverly’s handwriting; Solo would have recognized that familiar tight scrawl anywhere. He read one page, then another, and another and another. The narrative was concise and matter-of fact. The details were minimal and unembellished, but there was no doubt about what had happened: a mission, like so many, gone horribly wrong followed by capture and a daring rescue with the two men escaping by the proverbial skin of their teeth, thanks to some quick thinking, determination, and more than a dash of plain good luck.
As he reached the end, Solo let out a low whistle. “Wow,” he murmured. “And look how Mr. Waverly refers to Marton: my good friend.”
“Rather hard to believe, isn’t it?” Kuryakin observed. “Did Nate ever mention this to you?”
Solo shook his head. “But I did hear a rumor that Victor Marton was invited to that very first meeting when the organization was being formed. He never showed up.”
“Do you know why?”
“No. I just heard he didn’t.” Leaving his chair behind, Solo wandered back to the window and stared out at the view again. The sun was gone; it was twilight.
Kuryakin replaced the pages in the file, closed the last of the folders, and sealed it with the wide yellow tape. “Well, now at least we know why Mr. Dulles thought Mr. Waverly would find the files ‘interesting.’ The fact that one of the five chiefs of U.N.C.L.E. owes his life to a powerful Thrush satrap is not information that one might wish to spread around.”
“Except if I know Mr. Waverly, he repaid the debt and then some. Maybe he even saved Marton’s life in return.”
“Oh, now there’s a thought,” Kuryakin said with a soft chuckle as he joined Solo at the window. “And lived to regret it?”
“Who knows? If he did, he’s certainly not going to not tell us.”
Following the other agent’s gaze, Kuryakin asked, “What are you looking at?”
Solo pointed downward. “The ice skating rink.”
“Oh. I thought there was a cafe in that plaza.”
“There is, in warm weather. In winter, they fill it with ice.” They stood for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, contemplating the scene. Then, Solo asked, “Do you skate?”
“Of course. I’m Russian. Do you?”
“Grew up in Quebec City, remember?” Solo paused as an idea occurred to him. “So, do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?”
“Skate.”
Kuryakin looked up, surprised. “Now?”
“Sure, why not? It’s dinner time. It’ll be less crowded.”
“But I don’t own a pair of skates.”
“We can rent them.”
“I don’t know...”
“We’re finished here. I’ll call HQ and Section Five will send a courier over in an hour or less. We’ll have the rest of the evening free.”
“I suppose...” Kuryakin said, considering. The suggestion had come out of the blue and he was still getting used to it.
Solo patted his shoulder. “C’mon,” he said, and then with a playful grin, he added, “It’ll be fun...”
***
It was fun, more fun than Kuryakin had experienced in years, and he enthusiastically admitted as much when their allotted hour on the rink was over and they’d retired to a nearby diner for coffee and sandwiches, the desire for a formal meal forgotten. Solo, by contrast, appeared pre-occupied.
“Something wrong?” Kuryakin asked as he watched Solo pour a dollop of cream into his cup. The Russian took his own coffee black, although he was more liberal with the sugar.
“Oh, I was just thinking about Mr. Waverly and Victor Marton: colleagues during the war, enemies afterward.”
“It happens all the time, especially in our business.”
“But don’t you wonder what caused the falling out between them?”
Kuryakin’s shrugged as he prepared to bite into his overstuffed turkey sandwich. “Isn’t it obvious? Marton joined Thrush.”
“It can’t be that simple,” Solo replied skeptically. “I mean, look what Waverly wrote: my good friend... In espionage, no one uses that expression lightly.”
“True, but circumstances do change. People change. People’s politics change.”
“This couldn’t be about politics.”
“Perhaps, in the end, it was. The personal can be political and vice versa. Or maybe it was simple greed. You said Marton was involved in wartime smuggling. Working for Thrush is far more lucrative than working for U.N.C.L.E.”
“Virtue is its own reward,” Solo intoned with mock solemnity.
“Or so they keep telling us.”
Solo responded with appreciative laughter. Illya’s dry wit continued to catch him off-guard. “Such cynicism, Mr. Kuryakin. I’m shocked.”
“A man who suddenly suggests ice skating in the middle of a city should not be shocked by anything. Nevertheless, speaking of small surprises —” Digging deep into the pocket of his coat draped over the back of his chair, Illya retrieved a small box and set it on the table between them. “Merry Christmas.”
The box was black with a hinged lid, the sort that usually contains jewelry. Solo took it, flipped up the lid with his thumb, and found a pair of brushed gold cuff links. “You shouldn’t have,” he said.
“I didn’t. You may express your gratitude to the ingenious staff of Section Eight. But when I saw these prototypes, I thought of you. Be careful; they contain charges.”
“What? No rope ladder?”
“That’s in the tie clasp.” When Solo appeared to believe him, Kuryakin offered a careless wave. “Sorry, just making a joke. But those do contain explosives. I’ll show you how to arm them when we’re safely back at headquarters.”
“I’m touched, Illya,” Solo said, because he was. “I’m afraid I didn’t buy you anything.”
Which only prompted Kuryakin to shake his head. “Sometimes Napoleon, you can be so bourgeois,” he observed, but the chiding was affectionate. “Not everything of value can be purchased from a store — or picked up in the lab. Since I came to New York, you’ve already given me a gift of friendship many times over. I shall not forget what happened in October.”
“Dragging you out of that burning warehouse? That was in the line of duty.”
“Yes, it was. I meant what you told me in the hospital room afterward. You said, “‘If we don’t look after one another, no one else will. The mission will always come first — that’s a given. But if you’re in trouble, my friend, and there’s even the slightest chance that I can help, I’ll come back for you. Always.’ If you’ll forgive me for saying so, no one has actually cared that much about my personal welfare for a very long time.”
Solo glanced away, feeling unexpectedly embarrassed at hearing his words quoted back to him. “I meant it.”
“I know you did, and that was the gift.”
Uncharacteristically, Solo found himself at a loss, so he took a sip of his cup instead, draining the last of his coffee. Recovering, he said, “But don’t you feel uncomfortable living and working here among the — what did you call me? — bourgeois?”
“Not at all. I am very content here.”
“Y’know, we can talk politics. I was a philosophy major. I’ve read Marx.”
“And what did you think of him?”
“Overrated.”
Kuryakin chuckled softly. “Many of my countrymen would agree with you. But I don’t need to talk about politics. I think what I like best is that we don’t talk about politics. I like that ideas occur to you that don’t occur to me.”
“Like today?”
“Yes, exactly, like today.”
“I could say the same thing.”
“Yes, I know. It’s enjoyable, isn’t it?”
“It’s fun,” Solo agreed.
“Yes.”
They looked at each other, joined in a moment of keen and mutual recognition, their smiles coming easily. Finally, Solo checked his watch and reached for his topcoat. “We’d better be getting back to the office. Mr. Waverly wants a verbal report.” But as Kuryakin slipped on his own coat, Solo asked off-handedly, “Do you play billiards?”
“No,” Kuryakin said, the shadow of a smile returning and slowly spreading across his face. “But I’m willing to learn.”
***
... Friendship — true friendship, what the Greeks called Philia — is rare. In espionage, as with honor among thieves, even rarer. As Napoleon once observed, spies do not use the word lightly.
But Aristotle defined it well. He described it as “wanting for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not for one's own, and being inclined, so far as one can, to do such things for him.”
Noble and selfless, friendship brings out the best in us, perhaps even more than Eros, which is prone to feelings of jealousy and possession.
As with Eskimos and snow in the myth, there are many words for friend in every language. English alone has dozens. But at least in my own life, there has really only been one. And, at the risk of flattering myself, I suspect for Napoleon, despite his gregarious nature, that has been true for him, as well.
One Hundred Words for Snow
... The story goes that Eskimos have one hundred words for snow. This is most certainly a myth which probably began when an anthropologist’s report was misinterpreted by less informed readers. Actually, there is no such thing as a single Eskimo language, just as there is no such thing as an “Eskimo.” There are actually several major languages employed by the Native populations of the Arctic and they are further subdivided into a number of dialects. These tend to be languages in which aspects of an event or very complex ideas may be contained in a single compound word. That is, there might be one word for ‘my snow’ and another for ‘your snow.’ Hence, the confusion over the hundred words.
Nevertheless, the story illustrates the very real point that language reflects culture and vice versa. One tends to ignore what is not named. Alternatively, how things are named influences and shapes how we think about the world around us. Anyone attempting to switch from one language to another will soon encounter words that are untranslatable. Some concepts that exist in one culture do not necessarily exist in others. Or, if they do, may take on quite a different meaning.
Take the subculture of the intelligence community, for example. Words that are relatively simple in the larger “Innocent” culture, may take on rather more complex meanings with us. If, as in the linguistic myth, snow is a complex, multiple and ever-shifting concept for the Eskimos, for us, it’s words like “trust.” “Loyalty.” “Confidence.”
And most of all, “friend...”
U.N.C.L.E. HQ. December 23, 1960.
“A tie.”
“Doesn’t like them.”
“Cuff links.”
“Doesn’t wear them.”
“Aftershave.”
“Too personal.”
“A pair of gloves.”
“Not personal enough.”
Sarah Johnson sat back in her chair and set her cup of Lipton tea down with an exasperated click. Even during this busy early lunch hour, one could hear that click halfway across the commissary. “Well, honestly Napoleon, you’re not being very helpful about this.”
“And you only have a day or two left to shop,” Heather McNabb chimed in from the seat beside her.
“You have to get him something,” Wanda Mae Kim agreed.
Napoleon Solo shrugged easily. “Why? He’s a Communist. He probably doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway. I mean really, what’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is,” Sarah responded sagely, “that Illya is the first field agent from behind the Iron Curtain to be assigned to New York, and if we’re going to make this work, we should do our best to make him feel welcome.”
Solo shrugged again, this time appearing a bit wounded. “I make him feel welcome every day. We share lunches, dinners all the time. I just bought him a cup of coffee this morning.” And I dragged him out of that damn warehouse in October just before it exploded, he wanted to point out but didn’t. Field agents never discussed the particulars of missions with the HQ staff.
“Yeah, but ‘fitting in’ is about more than a couple of cups of coffee. You’ve heard the gossip. People try to be careful, but the ‘Red’ and ‘Commie’ thing slips out now and then.”
“Wes was particularly obnoxious at the debriefing yesterday,” Heather reminded them all. Wes was Wes Lerner, Section Five’s top surveillance man who was not known for skills outside of his area of expertise ... or discretion. And he wasn’t the only one.
“Then maybe Wes should buy him the present,” Solo countered.
Sarah clucked her tongue against her teeth. “Be serious, Napoleon. You know that a lot of folks are still nervous about having Illya around.”
“Well, this isn’t NATO,” Solo observed, unsympathetically. “We’re an international organization. It’s about time we acted like one.” He looked around the circle of secretaries. “Hey, I served in Korea, remember? A lot of guys in my company, guys I counted as friends, didn’t come back. If anyone should hate Communists, it should be me.”
“And do you?” Wanda Mae asked softly.
“Do I what?”
“Hate Communists?”
“No, of course not — ” But the question caught him up short. How did he feel about working with a Soviet Russian? Day to day, he didn’t really think about it at all. Illya was simply Illya, a brother agent who sometimes saw things a bit differently. But working with agents of other nationalities all over the world, Solo was accustomed to that. Of course, he still couldn’t entirely understand the Germans, and with the French, he didn’t even try.
But Wanda’s pointed question made him realize that there was a disconnect between how he felt about Illya in particular and the Soviet Union in general, and he didn’t always associate one with the other. When they worked together, they didn’t talk about politics; they didn’t even joke about it, and Solo now understood that was subconsciously deliberate.
“Some of my best friends are Communists,” he quipped to defuse the tension and the three secretaries responded appropriately with laughter and relief.
But if Solo were being honest, he would have to admit that he didn’t know a hell of a lot about Illya’s private life either. Since the Russian had arrived in New York on that sweltering hot day last June, they’d gotten on surprisingly well around the office and on missions. So much so, that Waverly had been pairing them together more and more frequently. The way they complemented each other was downright eerie, as if, together, their success rate increased exponentially and they became this super-efficient, super-knowledgeable, nearly invincible whole. With Illya beside him, sometimes Solo felt so confident, so absolutely sure they’d get the job done, it was scary.
Scary because, as all field agents knew, that kind of sky-high confidence could get you killed.
“Why don’t you gals get together and buy the gift?” Solo asked reasonably, changing the subject back to where the conversation began in the first place. “I’ll be glad to chip in. Heck, I’ll even reimburse you for the whole thing.”
“Nope,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “It should come from you, Napoleon. You’re the reason he’s here —”
“Nate’s the reason he’s here...”
“Nate Cassidy put the bug in the Old Man’s ear, but you’re the one who said you thought it was a good idea.”
“And I still do. What can I say? We worked well together on that mission in France last year and Illya had skills, knowledge and political connections that this office could really use.”
And that I could really use, Solo thought guiltily. He’d recognized it instinctively, just as he could always improvise a gadget or a strategy in the field to keep himself alive. But this time, in doing so, he’d altered the course of another man’s life, perhaps forever.
And for the better? He didn’t know.
“All right, I’ll find him a gift,” Solo said, giving in. What the hell. Unless some madman threatened to blow up the world in the next day or so, his schedule was free.
“Maybe a big bottle of vodka,” Heather suggested brightly. “Don’t Russians drink a lot of vodka?”
“They drink vodka,” Solo affirmed, trying not to wince at the sting of the stereotype, “but Illya doesn’t like the imports that are available in America.”
Heather frowned, as if her shiny new balloon had just popped. Solo reached out and patted her knuckles. “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.” He checked his watch. “But for now, I’m due in Mr. Waverly’s office in ten minutes.”
“Better make it five,” Sarah said. “He’s in a foul mood today.”
“Great.” Solo sighed and pushed back his chair. “Thanks for the brainstorming, ladies. I’m grateful for the effort.”
“How grateful?” Heather asked playfully.
Solo grinned slyly. “You’ll see.”
“Remember good things come in small packages,” Sarah reminded him. “Especially if they’re blue.” Blue was the color of a box from Tiffany’s.
“You don’t seem to have any trouble picking out presents for women,” Wanda Mae observed slyly.
“That’s because there are so many ...possibilities.” The last word came out as a seductive hiss which left the women twittering appreciatively in Solo’s wake.
He made his way to the elevator bay, steeling himself to endure his superior’s reportedly black mood, which, truth be told, could be truly black, indeed. But as he punched the button for Level Two, Solo’s thoughts wandered back to the problem at hand:
...maybe a bottle of vodka isn’t such a bad idea after all...
***
“Something on your mind, Mr. Solo?”
“Uh, no sir.”
They were sitting at the large circular table discussing U.N.C.L.E.’s supplemental contribution to the security arrangements surrounding the inauguration of an American president that would occur in less than a month’s time. Waverly had just informed Solo that he would be joining the all-important Washington task force at the beginning of January, so it hardly seemed the appropriate moment to discuss what Christmas present to give a fellow agent. In addition to the inauguration, there was trouble in the Congo, South Vietnam and Laos, the president of France had just faced off mobs of protesters in Algiers, and the week before, two airliners had collided over New York City, one of them crashing in Brooklyn, killing 127 passengers and crew members and demolishing a local church. U.N.C.L.E. was still investigating for possible sabotage. Compared to all this, Solo’s little personal problem seemed even more trivial than what the commissary was offering for lunch that day.
But Waverly was staring at him, impatiently puffing on his pipe, the Old Man’s bloodhound countenance boring into the agent, demanding an answer. The protracted silence in the sprawling chief’s office was deafening. Solo fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair, knowing there was no alternative but to give in. He might be a master manipulator elsewhere, but with Waverly, he always gave in. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because with his boss, Solo often felt like a kid who’d just thrown a baseball through the neighbor’s front window.
“I’m sorry, sir. I guess I’ve been a little distracted. I’ve been thinking about what to give Illya for Christmas.”
“Oh?”
More staring, more waiting, more silence. Waverly’s bushy eyebrows didn’t even budge.
“Well, it’s just to make Illya feel more—” Solo groped for a word, a phrase, anything, and found himself parroting Sarah “— welcome.”
“Welcome?”
“Yes, to, ah, make him feel comfortable — like he fits in.”
Waverly chewed the stem of his pipe for a moment like a squirrel gnawing a particularly troublesome nut. “Has there been a problem?”
“Oh, no,” Solo volunteered quickly. “No, sir, no problem. Really. It’s just that, well, y’know, Cold War attitudes die hard even around here and with the, ah, culture shock and all...”
“As I recall, bringing Mr. Kuryakin to New York was your idea, Mr. Solo —”
Solo winced. It seemed he was being reminded of that fact hourly.
“—and you and Mr. Cassidy assured me that there would be no difficulty integrating Mr. Kuryakin into our operations here.”
“And there hasn’t been.”
“He’d been working very effectively across the pond, and I needn’t remind you that Mr. Beldon was not very keen on giving him up. We went through considerable negotiations with London to make that transfer possible.”
Solo knew that, too. “It’s been going well,” he assured his superior. “Very well, in fact, and if I might say so, sir, I think the results of our missions speak for themselves.”
There was another long pause as Waverly considered his agent’s words, worrying each one individually as hard and long as he had the stem of that pipe. Finally, he said, “All right then,” signaling that matter was closed — at least for now — and that they should move on. Solo nearly let out an audible sigh of relief. Waverly closed the Washington file, sifted through the pile of dossiers near his elbow, and liberated a new one.
“As you may be aware,” Waverly went on, “our colleagues at the CIA are in the process of vacating their offices at 630 Fifth Avenue.”
“Room 3603,” Solo affirmed with a nod.
“If you prefer the colloquial.”
This was big news in espionage circles. The notorious Room 3603, located right smack dab in the middle of Rockefeller Center, had served as British Intelligence’s headquarters in the U.S. during World War II. It was from here that the Brits, soon joined by the Canadians, did their best to foster pro-Allied propaganda in the American media and not so incidentally, protect British financial interests while keeping an eye out for the enemy. When the war was over, the offices passed to the OSS and then to the newly-formed CIA.
“The CIA has offered the space to us and Section I believes, based on the configuration of the facilities and its central location in the city, that it may prove useful. Before we make the transition however, it seems there is a small matter of a file cabinet ...”
“A file cabinet, sir?”
“Mr. Dulles has informed me that, apparently, there are some files concerning SOE operations that may be of particular interest to us.”
“Do you know what’s in them?”
Waverly frowned sourly in a rare display of frustration. “Unfortunately, Mr. Dulles was rather cryptic on that point.”
Mr. Dulles was, of course, Allen Dulles, the first and, so far, only director of the CIA. Dulles was known for his paranoia and taste for covert actions that often conflicted with U.N.C.L.E.’s own goals. Nevertheless, because of their wartime experience working together, Waverly got on with Dulles much better than he did with the FBI chief, J. Edgar Hoover.
“It sounds as if Mr. Dulles is trying to do us a favor,” Solo observed.
“Perhaps,” Waverly conceded. “In any case, I will need you to go over there this afternoon and vet the files. Section Five already has a security detail in place and they can unlock the appropriate room. Please peruse the files and assess their value. Take a security kit with you to seal them afterward. You realize this is strictly FYEO. I’ll expect a verbal report as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir,” Solo said rising. Spending an afternoon at Rockefeller Center was not an unpleasant prospect. He would get a chance to see the tree and perhaps scavenge an hour or two to do some shopping at the stores on Fifth Avenue.
“And take Mr. Kuryakin with you,” Waverly added, seemingly as an afterthought. This made Solo pause. He didn’t have to say it: A Soviet rummaging around in CIA files?
“Mr. Dulles didn’t indicate how many files there were,” Waverly said, ignoring the question clearly discernible in the expression on Solo’s face. “You may need assistance.”
“Mr. Dulles won’t be pleased with the idea.”
Waverly looked up, removing the pipe from between his teeth. “But it isn’t his call any more, is it, Mr. Solo?”
“No, sir,” Solo replied, duly chastised. No matter what history was contained in that file cabinet, the world had certainly shifted since. As Solo headed toward the sliding door, he heard Waverly’s voice behind him: “Wool socks.”
Solo turned. “Ah — beg your pardon, sir?”
“Wool socks,” Waverly repeated almost absent-mindedly, his attention already shifting to the next order of business. “One never has enough wool socks.”
“Yes, sir,” Solo said, unable to suppress a smile.
***
Wool socks.
Four hours later, Solo was still amused by Waverly’s suggestion. It was late afternoon now, sliding quickly toward evening as early winter days were wont to do in New York. The sun had already set below the skyscraper canyons, bathing the streets in a rosy glow.
Solo leaned his shoulder against the wall next to a window and took a drag of his cigarette. They were on the 36th floor of the International Building, and below him stretched a spectacular view of the heart of Rockefeller Center, with the giant twinkling tree standing out in stark relief and gold Prometheus glinting in the fading light. The skaters swirling around the ice rink looked like ants skittering around a white picnic tablecloth.
He and Illya had spent the entire afternoon tearing through the file cabinet’s contents. Browsing through documents peppered with names that were near-legendary had been both an interesting exercise and an education of sorts. Most of the reports were written in crisp, spare, bureaucratic language, but if one had an insider’s knowledge of what it was like to work in the field, one could read between the lines and piece together often startling pictures of risk and courage, triumph and desperation. A few of the agents whose names appeared in faded ink on the yellowed crackling pages were still working in espionage. The rest were retired, dead, or lost, with the latter, perhaps, doing their best not to be found.
Now, the cabinet was empty, its drawers left open like gaping wounds, its contents reduced to ten tall stacks of files piled neatly on the polished cherry wood conference table. Most of the stacks were sealed with fat yellow bands labeled with the words File 40 accompanied by the U.N.C.L.E. organization’s logo. Only a handful remained, awaiting a similar disposition.
“Want to grab some dinner after this?” Solo asked aloud, knowing the answer. The Russian agent was always hungry.
Predictably, from his seat behind the conference table, Kuryakin nodded. “Do you know any good restaurants in this area?” he asked. Like Solo, he knew the answer to his question as well.
“One or two,” Solo replied with a grin. “As soon as we finish here, we can —”
“Huh!” Kuryakin breathed the word out like a scientist making a sudden and profound discovery — like Newton right after he was beaned on the head by an apple.
“What is it?” Solo was genuinely curious. Despite their best efforts and the File 40 seals, they hadn’t really found anything in the files that might warrant such a high security classification.
“Did you know that Victor Marton was a member of the French Resistance during the war?”
“Sure,” Solo said with a shrug. It was pretty much common knowledge. These days, Marton was Thrush’s chief satrap based in Paris and he had an U.N.C.L.E. file as thick as a telephone book. “He did a lot of black marketing smuggling, too. Nate told me a couple of stories.”
“Apparently, he was also the chief liaison between the SOE’s F section and the OCM — the Organisation Civile et Militaire — in the northern part of the country. From what I’m reading here, in the fall of 1941, he rescued an SOE agent who was being held for interrogation at the local Gestapo headquarters.
“So?”
Kuryakin raised his eyes, peering over his reading glasses. “The SOE agent’s name was Alexander Waverly.”
“No kidding?” Solo stubbed his cigarette out in an ancient ashtray of scarred grey glass and slid into a seat at the table. Kuryakin passed him a tattered dossier. “See for yourself.”
The report was written in Waverly’s handwriting; Solo would have recognized that familiar tight scrawl anywhere. He read one page, then another, and another and another. The narrative was concise and matter-of fact. The details were minimal and unembellished, but there was no doubt about what had happened: a mission, like so many, gone horribly wrong followed by capture and a daring rescue with the two men escaping by the proverbial skin of their teeth, thanks to some quick thinking, determination, and more than a dash of plain good luck.
As he reached the end, Solo let out a low whistle. “Wow,” he murmured. “And look how Mr. Waverly refers to Marton: my good friend.”
“Rather hard to believe, isn’t it?” Kuryakin observed. “Did Nate ever mention this to you?”
Solo shook his head. “But I did hear a rumor that Victor Marton was invited to that very first meeting when the organization was being formed. He never showed up.”
“Do you know why?”
“No. I just heard he didn’t.” Leaving his chair behind, Solo wandered back to the window and stared out at the view again. The sun was gone; it was twilight.
Kuryakin replaced the pages in the file, closed the last of the folders, and sealed it with the wide yellow tape. “Well, now at least we know why Mr. Dulles thought Mr. Waverly would find the files ‘interesting.’ The fact that one of the five chiefs of U.N.C.L.E. owes his life to a powerful Thrush satrap is not information that one might wish to spread around.”
“Except if I know Mr. Waverly, he repaid the debt and then some. Maybe he even saved Marton’s life in return.”
“Oh, now there’s a thought,” Kuryakin said with a soft chuckle as he joined Solo at the window. “And lived to regret it?”
“Who knows? If he did, he’s certainly not going to not tell us.”
Following the other agent’s gaze, Kuryakin asked, “What are you looking at?”
Solo pointed downward. “The ice skating rink.”
“Oh. I thought there was a cafe in that plaza.”
“There is, in warm weather. In winter, they fill it with ice.” They stood for a moment, shoulder to shoulder, contemplating the scene. Then, Solo asked, “Do you skate?”
“Of course. I’m Russian. Do you?”
“Grew up in Quebec City, remember?” Solo paused as an idea occurred to him. “So, do you want to?”
“Do I want to what?”
“Skate.”
Kuryakin looked up, surprised. “Now?”
“Sure, why not? It’s dinner time. It’ll be less crowded.”
“But I don’t own a pair of skates.”
“We can rent them.”
“I don’t know...”
“We’re finished here. I’ll call HQ and Section Five will send a courier over in an hour or less. We’ll have the rest of the evening free.”
“I suppose...” Kuryakin said, considering. The suggestion had come out of the blue and he was still getting used to it.
Solo patted his shoulder. “C’mon,” he said, and then with a playful grin, he added, “It’ll be fun...”
***
It was fun, more fun than Kuryakin had experienced in years, and he enthusiastically admitted as much when their allotted hour on the rink was over and they’d retired to a nearby diner for coffee and sandwiches, the desire for a formal meal forgotten. Solo, by contrast, appeared pre-occupied.
“Something wrong?” Kuryakin asked as he watched Solo pour a dollop of cream into his cup. The Russian took his own coffee black, although he was more liberal with the sugar.
“Oh, I was just thinking about Mr. Waverly and Victor Marton: colleagues during the war, enemies afterward.”
“It happens all the time, especially in our business.”
“But don’t you wonder what caused the falling out between them?”
Kuryakin’s shrugged as he prepared to bite into his overstuffed turkey sandwich. “Isn’t it obvious? Marton joined Thrush.”
“It can’t be that simple,” Solo replied skeptically. “I mean, look what Waverly wrote: my good friend... In espionage, no one uses that expression lightly.”
“True, but circumstances do change. People change. People’s politics change.”
“This couldn’t be about politics.”
“Perhaps, in the end, it was. The personal can be political and vice versa. Or maybe it was simple greed. You said Marton was involved in wartime smuggling. Working for Thrush is far more lucrative than working for U.N.C.L.E.”
“Virtue is its own reward,” Solo intoned with mock solemnity.
“Or so they keep telling us.”
Solo responded with appreciative laughter. Illya’s dry wit continued to catch him off-guard. “Such cynicism, Mr. Kuryakin. I’m shocked.”
“A man who suddenly suggests ice skating in the middle of a city should not be shocked by anything. Nevertheless, speaking of small surprises —” Digging deep into the pocket of his coat draped over the back of his chair, Illya retrieved a small box and set it on the table between them. “Merry Christmas.”
The box was black with a hinged lid, the sort that usually contains jewelry. Solo took it, flipped up the lid with his thumb, and found a pair of brushed gold cuff links. “You shouldn’t have,” he said.
“I didn’t. You may express your gratitude to the ingenious staff of Section Eight. But when I saw these prototypes, I thought of you. Be careful; they contain charges.”
“What? No rope ladder?”
“That’s in the tie clasp.” When Solo appeared to believe him, Kuryakin offered a careless wave. “Sorry, just making a joke. But those do contain explosives. I’ll show you how to arm them when we’re safely back at headquarters.”
“I’m touched, Illya,” Solo said, because he was. “I’m afraid I didn’t buy you anything.”
Which only prompted Kuryakin to shake his head. “Sometimes Napoleon, you can be so bourgeois,” he observed, but the chiding was affectionate. “Not everything of value can be purchased from a store — or picked up in the lab. Since I came to New York, you’ve already given me a gift of friendship many times over. I shall not forget what happened in October.”
“Dragging you out of that burning warehouse? That was in the line of duty.”
“Yes, it was. I meant what you told me in the hospital room afterward. You said, “‘If we don’t look after one another, no one else will. The mission will always come first — that’s a given. But if you’re in trouble, my friend, and there’s even the slightest chance that I can help, I’ll come back for you. Always.’ If you’ll forgive me for saying so, no one has actually cared that much about my personal welfare for a very long time.”
Solo glanced away, feeling unexpectedly embarrassed at hearing his words quoted back to him. “I meant it.”
“I know you did, and that was the gift.”
Uncharacteristically, Solo found himself at a loss, so he took a sip of his cup instead, draining the last of his coffee. Recovering, he said, “But don’t you feel uncomfortable living and working here among the — what did you call me? — bourgeois?”
“Not at all. I am very content here.”
“Y’know, we can talk politics. I was a philosophy major. I’ve read Marx.”
“And what did you think of him?”
“Overrated.”
Kuryakin chuckled softly. “Many of my countrymen would agree with you. But I don’t need to talk about politics. I think what I like best is that we don’t talk about politics. I like that ideas occur to you that don’t occur to me.”
“Like today?”
“Yes, exactly, like today.”
“I could say the same thing.”
“Yes, I know. It’s enjoyable, isn’t it?”
“It’s fun,” Solo agreed.
“Yes.”
They looked at each other, joined in a moment of keen and mutual recognition, their smiles coming easily. Finally, Solo checked his watch and reached for his topcoat. “We’d better be getting back to the office. Mr. Waverly wants a verbal report.” But as Kuryakin slipped on his own coat, Solo asked off-handedly, “Do you play billiards?”
“No,” Kuryakin said, the shadow of a smile returning and slowly spreading across his face. “But I’m willing to learn.”
***
... Friendship — true friendship, what the Greeks called Philia — is rare. In espionage, as with honor among thieves, even rarer. As Napoleon once observed, spies do not use the word lightly.
But Aristotle defined it well. He described it as “wanting for someone what one thinks good, for his sake and not for one's own, and being inclined, so far as one can, to do such things for him.”
Noble and selfless, friendship brings out the best in us, perhaps even more than Eros, which is prone to feelings of jealousy and possession.
As with Eskimos and snow in the myth, there are many words for friend in every language. English alone has dozens. But at least in my own life, there has really only been one. And, at the risk of flattering myself, I suspect for Napoleon, despite his gregarious nature, that has been true for him, as well.
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