Mood-Y: Challenge 5 -- THREE (Part 1)
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section7mfuName: THREE
Genre: GEN
Length: approx 11,250 words
Rating: Everyone
Warnings: Mild Language
The story is posted in two parts because of LJ posting restrictions on size:
Part 1: Prologue; Act I; Act II (contained in this post)
Part 2: Act III; Act IV; Epilogue
Author’s Note: Written for the Mood-Y: Challenge 5 on LiveJournal’s Section VII community.
The key mood is: spooked
For this story, I have returned to the scenario of my trilogy: CHIMERA, IGNIS FATUUS and OF ILLUSION AND DELUSION. I do recommend reading those tales (in that order) to get a full grasp of the setting for this one.
As an additional note, the references to the little Norwegian albino girl and Napoleon’s loss of his appendix as the result of a recent mission scenario involving her derive from the flashback sequences in my story THE WAVES OF CHANGE AFFAIR. However, those background references can stand on their own in this tale.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
THREE
by LaH
Spring 1965
“What on earth, or rather in hell, did you do?” Alexander Waverly demanded, with noticeable irritation, of the defected Thrush scientist on the other end of the phone line.
That former Thrush inventor was the supposedly dead Dr. Rimheac, a man very much alive but in secret protective custody by the Command. Custody indeed so secret, the Number 1 in Section I Northwest had kept that information from even his own Chief of Enforcement.
In what could only be described as something of a whine, the presumed dead man now sought to explain the situation with which his protector was taking issue. “I warned that the results might be unpredictable. That… Well, it’s all rather difficult to control.”
“I beg to differ, Doctor. Your initial warning was obtuse. Vague in the extreme is the only way it could be categorized.”
“Still I warned you!” responded the scientist defensively, his voice noticeably rising an octave in pique. “It wasn’t possible to be more specific because—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” conceded Waverly. “It was all too unique to accurately detail in words.”
“Thus the demonstration,” reiterated Rimheac.
“You mean the experiment,” Waverly corrected tersely. He was less than pleased what had been assumed to be merely a form of show-and-tell had metamorphosed into an unapproved trial run of something so patently perilous.
“What would you have had me do, Mr. Waverly? I was well aware your agents are trained for hazardous work, and you pledged to send your best. Thus—”
“My agents are also trained to assess inherent risk versus possible reward in all such dangerous situations,” interrupted the Continental Chief of U.N.C.L.E. Northwest. “In this scenario my best operatives were not given any such opportunity.”
“It had to be as it was,” insisted Rimheac.
“So you say,” Waverly challenged icily. “No prior information was made available that would have permitted me to knowledgably gainsay that opinion.”
“Well, it’s all over and done with now.”
“Not for my two men.”
“Yes, it’s done. I’ve managed to leverage some control,” Rimheac revealed unexpected good news.
“About time,” Waverly stated bluntly, even as he inwardly breathed a cautious sigh of relief.
Act I: Ghosts of missions past
Autumn 1966
Napoleon Solo tried unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn. Truth be told, he was exhausted. And there was no excusable reason for that as he was currently on a fortnight of desk duty after a run-in with another Thrush mad scientist that had in the end cost him his appendix. Thus he could not claim that any hectic assignment was interfering with his regular patterns of sleep as he was for the nonce mired in naught but the more boring part of the CEA job: paperwork.
Yet, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit there was indeed cause for his undeniable exhaustion: the nightmares.
It was not unusual for a Section II enforcement agent to suffer from an occasional bout of bad dreams and sleeplessness due to something that had happened during a mission scenario. They were all only human after all, and some of the things they witnessed and endured would drive the sleep from the eyes of the very Sandman. Yet again if Napoleon was completely honest with himself, he also had to admit the nightmares preoccupying him of late were of an entirely different variety and thus infinitely more disturbing.
For in his chilling night visions, she was always there: the lonely young girl with the sad, golden eyes. He hadn’t consciously thought of her in over a year. Not since that strange incident in the spring of last year when he had slashed his hands and arms breaking through a window in a Thrush prison cell. At least that was what supposedly happened. His personal recall of the episode was… well, hazy at best.
Anyway that was the very last time she had come into his mind at all: the forlorn little girl with the woe-filled golden eyes. Until recently, that is, when she had started to constantly invade his nightmares. And now she inhabited not just his sleeping hours. Even waking he sensed her… everywhere.
His most recent Command mission had indeed involved a rather strange young albino girl who was part and parcel of an unfathomable Thrush experiment. But that child had been five or six at most, and the girl of his nightmares was more like twelve or thirteen: a juvenile on the cusp of adolescence.
Both children were haunting, no question. Both seemingly victims in Thrush’s never-ending quest for world dominance. Yet the golden-eyed girl was different: in the main because he wasn’t sure she really even existed. She was there in his mind like a memory, and yet… Surely she was nothing more than a hallucination generated by the electrical shock he had received in Dr. Rimheac’s lab two years before? Anyhow that was his first recollection of her… if it was actually a recollection.
Napoleon rubbed his forehead, somehow hoping the gesture would relieve the ache in his very brain. He knew he likely should discuss these particular nightmares with a professional of some sort, but he had a Section II’s natural loathing of shrinks. It was all fine and good for such medically trained individuals to hear and assess, confidently assuming they understood the mental shadows that plagued an enforcement agent. Yet the truth simply was that they could never really understand. They had never been in the field; they had never experienced the real-life terrors such operatives faced on a seemingly regular basis. Thus they were, in the most fundamental sense, clueless.
Blissfully intruding upon Solo’s uneasy ruminations, the pneumatic door to his office slid aside, revealing the person of his partner, Illya Kuryakin, newly returned from a lone assignment.
“Glad to see my not-quite-smiling face, Napoleon?” teased the other man with a small half-grin.
“Glad to see you back in one piece from Australia,” conceded Napoleon as he indicated with a casual hand gesture for his partner to take a seat in one of chairs set before his desk.
“It was a rather tame mission honestly,” conceded Illya in turn.
“Which is why I still don’t understand that I couldn’t be released to join you.”
“Napoleon, you only recently had your gut sliced open without benefit of anesthesia while a madman removed a perfectly viable organ from your body. Mr. Waverly was right to sideline you for a bit.”
“I’m fine.” Napoleon used Illya’s standard line with just as much nonchalance as the Russian usually did.
Kuryakin cocked his head and assessed his friend. “Are you, Napoleon?” he queried pointedly. “You do look rather peaked for someone who has been on desk duty more than a week.”
Solo gave the other man a smile, but it was irrefutably a rather wan one. “Just bored,” he hedged.
Illya was quiet for a few moments. Then he ventured, “I will admit paperwork is boring and therefore rather enervating, but I get the feeling it’s something more than that.”
“It’s nothing.” Napoleon attempted to dismiss the matter. “Nightmares. You know the deal. Sometimes they can be rather intense.”
Illya’s expression changed, became somewhat distracted. “Yes, I know the deal.”
Now it was Napoleon who silently assessed his partner. “You’ve been having them too, haven’t you?” he finally asked.
“We all have them from time to time.” Illya made his own attempt at dismissing the issue.
Napoleon shook his head. “Not like this. Has she been invading your dreams too? The girl with golden eyes?”
Kuryakin uncomfortably shifted his body position in the chair. Yet it was truly not a physical discomfort that assailed him. “She never existed, Napoleon,” he stated firmly, almost as if he would convince himself as much as Solo.
“She doesn’t need to have actually existed to be part of our nightmares, Illya.”
“We recently completed a very stressful assignment,” Kuryakin endeavored to rationalize. “During that very stressful assignment we came in contact with an unusual young girl who, under the influence of Thrush, could be perceived as evil—”
“She wasn’t evil,” interrupted Solo. “She was used. She didn’t understand half of what she was doing.”
“We don’t agree on this, Napoleon, and we never will.” Illya was well aware his partner had a form of sympathetic empathy for the Norwegian albino girl. Kuryakin, however, had a less romanticized view and, from personal experience during the Great Patriotic War, knew that children weren’t always innocents. “Be that as it may; it is perhaps only natural that she recall to mind that incident in Rimheac’s lab where we thought to have encountered another seemingly Thrush-victimized child.”
“I wish I could just conveniently tag it like that, Illya, as a perfectly natural mental correlation. But…” Napoleon sighed as he ran a hand through his dark hair, though whether in frustration or confusion Illya couldn’t say.
“It’s not just the dreams… nightmares…” He subsequently revealed. “I see her eyes in the glow of an incandescent light; I feel her presence whenever I’m alone; I hear her voice in the softest whistling of the wind.”
“How can you know it is her voice when she never spoke?” Illya chose to focus on a logical caveat.
“How can you know she never spoke if she didn’t exist except in our minds?” submitted Napoleon in turn.
“In the manifestations,” Illya tried to backtrack, “her lips never moved.”
“But we heard her voice in our heads nonetheless, didn’t we?” pressed Napoleon.
Kuryakin released an exasperated sigh. “Yes,” he acknowledged, albeit reluctantly.
“I never understood what we experienced in Rimheac’s lab.” Solo expressed his dissatisfaction with the supposed facts of that previous event.
“There was an electrical short that caused a complete blackout of the facility and an arc of sufficient magnitude to knock us both unconscious,” declared Kuryakin sensibly.
“That is all we actually remember,” pointed out Napoleon more intuitively. “I think there was more that happened that we don’t remember… except as supposed hallucinations.” Solo now eyed his obviously discomfited partner. “And so do you.”
“This is all pointless speculation,” determined an exasperated Illya.
“It isn’t pointless if it rids me… us,” he then corrected with another assessing look at his partner, “of the nightmares. Of our fixation with this… illusion… or whatever she is.”
“Delusion,” proposed Illya, “for we are sadly deluded to account her in any way real.”
“We are sadly deluded if we do not pursue what further information we can,” steadfastly attested Solo. “We owe ourselves that much leeway, Illya,” he pressured persuasively. “We owe ourselves that peace of mind.”
Reluctantly, after a rather long moment of pause, Kuryakin nodded his agreement.
Despite his initial acquiescence to the idea, Illya remained unsure whether acceding to Napoleon’s resolve regarding further pursuit of whatever might have (but more than likely didn’t) happen in Rimheac’s lab two years before was a wise decision or not. It was all over and done after all. And Rimheac himself was dead; so there could be no clarification of any sort from the source. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that it would all lead back to the same dead-end it had at the time.
Still, he had to admit his own nightmares were of late as beset by the image of the golden-eyed girl as apparently were his partner’s. That the same imaginary manifestation had simultaneously invaded both their subconscious minds was profoundly perturbing and palpably eerie.
Their actual nightmares, from what little Solo had willingly revealed of his, did not seem to be at all the same, though they were all rooted in unsettling happenings from their past lives. Yet into the mix of those often reality-stretched and macabrely exaggerated memories had come the golden-eyed girl: a central figure and yet not. An inserted presence of which one could not help but be viscerally aware.
She stood like a sentinel on the outskirts of every shattering reflection. She said nothing in the dreams themselves; both of them agreed on that. Napoleon though insisted he heard her voice elsewhere: in the wind, in music, in any form of ringing whether it was the insistent chime of a telephone, the intrusive peal of an alarm clock or the boisterous clang of a church bell.
For himself Illya could not say he had experienced the same phenomena. Or at least he couldn’t say for certain. Instinctively his more analytical side fought against accepting any such unscientific notions. But now, as he forced himself to ponder on it, he realized the undeniable truth there existed the distinct possibility he had indeed sensed the same. And that possibility left him even more disquieted and definitely uneasy in his mind.
So perhaps a bit of investigation, just to allay those mental distresses, was indeed the sensible solution.
“The mission report for THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR isn’t part of Central Records, Napoleon,” Illya informed his friend three hours later after an initial forage in the U.N.C.L.E. archives.
“And I managed to glean from Dr. Pirelli’s very pretty and rather sassy assistant that the psychological evaluations we underwent after those incidents last spring – when we couldn’t recall the exact causes of several injuries we’d suffered? – are no longer part of the good doctor’s medical records,” Napoleon informed his partner in turn.
“That might not be related,” stubbornly suggested the pragmatic Russian.
“Yet we both mentioned the Rimheac mission to Pirelli during those interviews, didn’t we?” insistently forwarded the intuitive American.
“Yes,” Illya reluctantly conceded.
“Then my gut tells me it’s related.”
Illya let out a huge sigh. As little as he liked to acknowledge it, Napoleon’s hunches turned out to be spot-on nearly all of the time. It was a rare occasion when his friend’s perceptual instincts failed him. “So what then do we do next?” Kuryakin instead pressed rather than questioning the reliability of Solo’s inherent sixth sense.
“Well, my guess is, if those reports continue to exist at all, the one place to find them would be in the Old Man’s private files.”
“Napoleon, we can’t!” protested an emphatic Illya.
“Why the hell not? We are spies, aren’t we?” stressed Napoleon in turn.
“We are talking about the confidential files of Alexander Waverly, the Continental Chief of U.N.C.L.E. Northwest.” Kuryakin reminded the other man pointedly.
“We are also talking about our potential sanity,” batted back Solo just as pointedly. “Look Illya,” he then softened his stance, “we don’t intend to use anything we find against U.N.C.L.E. or Waverly or the Queen of England, for crissake. All we are after are answers to assure our own peace of mind. We are entitled to that.”
“And I don’t disagree with that in theory,” Illya allowed. “However, in reality we would be doing something highly debatable with regard to the tenets of our service with the Command. Less you forget, we are bound by rules we agreed to by contract.”
“If you don’t want to be part of this, tovarisch,” suggested Solo, “I’ll understand. Still, with you or without you, I am going to do this. Frankly, I need to know. I need to halt the nightmares. I need to cease seeing, hearing and sensing that golden-eyed girl everywhere and in everything. And just as frankly, I won’t be of any further use to U.N.C.L.E. if I can’t somehow free myself from this haunting.”
“Now you’re bringing ghosts into the equation?”
“Why not?” Napoleon badgered. “Oh not the booing, floating-down-staircases and disappearing-through-walls archetype, to be sure. But ghosts in a very real sense nonetheless: mental specters of missions past.”
Illya was silent for a long time, a time long enough for even Napoleon to wonder what thoughts were going through his friend’s head. What moral scales was the Russian utilizing to weigh the positives and negatives of what Solo was proposing?
“You don’t have fingers light enough to pull this off without me.” Kuryakin finally voiced his acceptance of the plan in an acerbic manner very much in character.
Napoleon broke out in a patented, teeth-flashing, eye-crinkling smile. “Is that an offer of assistance, I’m hearing?” he queried teasingly.
“For someone who manages to catch the sound of hidden voices in the wind, your auditory processes leave much to be desired,” grumped Illya, again very much in character. “Yes, that was an offer of assistance.”
Napoleon clapped his partner companionably on the back. “We’ll do it right, Illya; never fear. Once we have some credible intel to go on, we’ll confront Mr. Waverly in person. I’m not hankering to become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“I think all the female personnel here in HQ would disagree about the wolf part,” gibed Kuryakin.
“But it’s you who owns a shearling overcoat, I.K.,” Solo good-naturedly gibed right back.
Act II: We are spies
“Do you enjoy sitting in the big chair, Napoleon?” asked Heather McNabb as she set a tray holding several tall glasses and a pitcher of iced coffee on Mr. Waverly’s round desk-cum-conference table. Around that table currently sat Solo in Waverly’s chair, Illya Kuryakin as the stand-in head of Section II, and the Section V Security Chief Jason Corinth.
“For the nonce only on the rare occasion, Heather my sweet,” Napoleon responded conversationally to McNabb’s question. “My heart is still in field work.”
Heather nodded her understanding.
“That’s true of Section IIs till the day they die, isn’t it?” Corinth inserted something of an unintentionally callous outsider’s opinion.
“While getting shot at, tortured, chased and otherwise harassed by dangerous foes does have its challenging moments, we Section IIs are indeed a stubborn breed.” Illya made his somewhat snarky contribution to the casual exchange.
At that Heather could not suppress a smile. “No question about that. Have a good meeting, fellas. Let me know if you need me to take any notes.” She then sashayed out of room, Napoleon taking admiring note of her backside as she exited.
The meeting commenced as scheduled with the three men all enjoying a cooling glass of the iced coffee on this Indian-summerlike autumn day. It was indeed rather a routine gathering, with Corinth detailing to Napoleon various security protocols that would be in place for his personal protection while he served as Waverly’s proxy. Once that order of business was concluded, Corinth rose and took his leave after offering Solo a hearty handshake.
“We likely don’t have much time.” Illya summarily focused his partner’s attention on the task next at hand.
Napoleon nodded. “Right. Can you get a clear fingerprint off Jason’s glass?”
“Checking,” stated Illya simply. He had already pulled on a pair of latex gloves to handle the object in question. “It was rather fortuitous that Mr. Waverly wound up having a meeting in the Geneva office with the new head of U.N.C.L.E. Northeast,” he mentioned offhandedly as he dusted the glass for the needed print.”
“Yes, wasn’t it?” returned Napoleon with cool nonchalance.
His partner’s vocal tone caused Kuryakin to quirk an eyebrow in the other man’s direction. “You had something to do with that, didn’t you?”
“Moi?” protested Solo in mock surprise.
“Tu,” rejoined Illya bluntly. “Napoleon, others may be sufficiently deluded to imagine your much-touted luck some form of cosmic intervention, but I’ve known you at least long enough to realize in the main you make your own luck.”
“Ratted out by my own partner,” commented Napoleon with a huge pseudo-sigh.
“So how did you manage it?” Illya wanted to know. “Getting Mr. Waverly on a plane to Geneva?”
Napoleon shrugged. “I might have put a bug in someone’s ear about beefed-up security in the reopened Geneva HQ being a subject that deserved face-to-face dialogue between the Continental Chief of Northeast and the CC unofficially his superior.”
Illya couldn’t help gawking. “Harry Beldon took advice from you?” he inquired with unconcealed incredulity.
Beldon had been in the position as CC of U.N.C.L.E. Northeast for less than a year, promoted shortly after the bee infiltration in the Geneva headquarters in January had resulted in the death of Carlo Farenti. It was not exactly a secret that Beldon was less enamored of Waverly’s ‘golden boy’, Napoleon Solo, than were the other top members of Command administration.
“Would never happen,” agreed Solo as he watched Kuryakin take the impression of one of the prints on the glass he held and transfer it onto what could only be described as a wax finger.
“It couldn’t have been Gerald Strothers either,” surmised Illya regarding Solo’s counterpart CEA in the Northeast region. “He is so jealous of you, he is lucky his eyes don’t glow green when you are so much as mentioned in passing to him.”
Again Napoleon shrugged. “Beldon does have an assistant,” he hinted.
“Helga Deniken?” Illya again gawked at his friend.
Napoleon put up a hand to forestall the other man’s likely conclusion. “I hardly know the lady.”
“But you used the legendary Solo charm on her nonetheless,” ragged Kuryakin uncompromisingly. “Amazing how you can successfully employ mere words spoken into a communicator to seduce the ladies of U.N.C.L.E.”
“Hey, you yourself said it, partner: A man has to make his own luck. And speaking of luck, how is that little apparatus of yours working out?”
“We’ll soon see. I do appreciate that you ordered iced coffee that needed to be served in glasses rather than hot coffee that would have been served in mugs. Getting an impression from a cup handle would have been all but impossible.”
“The unseasonal warm weather is something for which I can’t take even minimal credit,” returned Napoleon. “So I guess sometimes the Solo luck really is due to cosmic intervention.”
Illya took a deep breath as he finished putting the final touches on the wax digit. “There. Done,” he announced.
“So we’re ready to make like spies?” prompted Napoleon.
Illya nodded. “As ready as we can be. Maneuver us some more luck, cosmic or otherwise, my friend. Else the best result we can anticipate from this spyly foray is permanent assignment in Antarctica.”
“You know how I hate the cold,” remarked Napoleon with extraordinary ease considering the dicey situation.
The security lock on the Continental Chief’s set of three confidential filing drawers utilized a method of fingerprint recognition. However, without the print of Alexander Waverly himself, it required the prints of two other approved individuals to gain access. The other four Continental Chiefs were all approved of course. As an emergency fallback measure, Solo as Chief of Enforcement here in Northwest and Jason Corinth as Chief of Northwest Security were also both approved.
Moving his chair on its casters somewhat away from the table to provide Kuryakin easier access to the file cabinet behind him, Solo held his breath as his partner-in-this-crime slipped the wax digit onto his own index finger, stood up and moved toward the set of drawers.
“Ready, Napoleon?” Illya questioned unnecessarily. The other man nodded. “Then together,” he instructed.
Illya placed his fake finger down on the lock plate in time with Napoleon placing his own index finger on the plate. An audible click signaled that the cabinet was now unlocked.
“Too easy,” suggested Illya uncomfortably.
“Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, tovarisch,” suggested Napoleon in turn even as he was sliding open the top drawer of the cabinet and carefully rummaging through its contents. “Let’s pray the files aren’t stored by codenames or otherwise encrypted,” the CEA voiced his hope.
“I don’t pray,” came Illya’s expected retort as he slid open the bottom drawer and knelt to facilitate delving inside. “No need for prayer in this case anyway,” he then confirmed triumphantly as he held up a yellow U.N.C.L.E. folder clearly labelled THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR.
Grabbing the file from his partner, Napoleon directed, “See if there’s anything more while I snapshot this.”
That said, Solo placed the report on the table, pulled out a small pocket camera expertly concealed in a cigarette lighter, and began systematically turning the pages of the report and quickly taking a photograph of each page.
“Nothing more I can find,” Illya informed Napoleon after several more minutes of searching through the contents of the drawers.
“Dr. Pirelli’s case studies not there?” prompted Solo.
“Seems not,” stated Kuryakin.
“Makes you wonder what were the good doctor’s recorded observations after the conclusion of those sessions, doesn’t it?”
“I’m too nervous to wonder about anything at the moment, Napoleon. This is a risk we likely shouldn’t have taken.”
“Too late for regrets, tovarisch,” Napoleon determined as he snapped a picture of the final page of the report. “All over and done,” he finalized as he closed the file and slipped it back in its original place in the cabinet.
With a decisive push, Solo closed the last open drawer and the two men had the satisfaction of hearing the distinctive click that indicated the security lock was again back in force.
Handing the camera-lighter to Kuryakin, Napoleon then admonished,” You’ll have to use resources outside of HQ to get these developed.”
“I am well aware of that fact,” the Russian retorted brusquely.
“Bit testy, aren’t we?” the American queried with a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.” Illya candidly confessed his continued misgivings.
“The legendary Solo charm of course,” Napoleon gibed, perhaps a good deal less candidly.
The two simple words written in Alexander Waverly’s own hand stared back at him uncompromisingly from the developed photo of the last page of the report.
Demonstration complete
Yet supposedly nothing at all had happened in Rimheac’s lab, nothing more than an electrical short that had caused him and Illya to black out. What then did those words, annotated to the very end of the documentation on THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR, signify? What had comprised the demonstration? How had it been completed? What the hell had really occurred that day in the Thrush scientist’s lab two years ago?
Napoleon was deeply ensconced in his own thoughts, entrenched far enough that he didn’t even hear his partner use a spare key to open the door to his apartment and subsequently disarm the security system as he entered the internal hallway.
Kuryakin rearmed that system as necessary and made his way first to the kitchen where he placed on one of the counters several large paper shopping bags he was toting. “Napoleon?” Illya questioned softly as he finally made his way into the living room where Solo was seated on the sofa, hunched over the coffee table, concentrating intently on the photo laying on that polished surface.
“What does it mean, Illya?” Napoleon queried hypothetically of his friend, for he certainly was aware Kuryakin had no further clue in this regard than he had himself.
“I truly don’t know,” Illya nonetheless responded, somehow sensing this was confirmation Solo needed to hear.
At last Napoleon looked up at the other man, a man as affected by this distressing incongruity as he was himself. Yet somehow Napoleon couldn’t acknowledge that. He felt absolutely alone.
“Why are you here?” Solo asked of his faithful Sancho. “I know you blame me for what we did in Waverly’s office. I know you’d rather disassociate yourself from me and my ideas. I know you’d prefer not to be here with me now.”
Flabbergasted, all Illya could think to do was sit down on the sofa beside his friend and place a companionable hand on his shoulder. “I would never do that, Napoleon,” the blond man tried reassuring his dark-haired counterpart. “I would never, even in the innermost secret reaches of my mind, ever harbor any such thoughts.”
Napoleon’s eyes, when he gazed at the other man, were as sorrowful as Illya had ever seen them: desolate, lonely. Yet, even seeing his friend so devastated, while wondering what he could do to comfort Solo, Illya couldn’t help but inappropriately ruminate on how extremely hungry he himself was.
“I’ve brought dinner,” Kuryakin therefore advised rather brightly. “Chinese takeout. Cartons and cartons of it. You should eat something.”
“I don’t want anything,” disputed this isolated Napoleon.
“Surely you must want something to eat,” Illya forwarded perhaps a bit desperately himself. “I am absolutely ravenous!” And truthfully he could not hide nor did he even attempt to disguise the look of sheer famishment on his face.
Solo stared at Kuryakin with steady eyes before finally blinking. “Illya?” he began.
“What?” prompted the Russian somewhat testily. Truth be told, he wanted to do nothing so much as tear into the cartons and cartons of Chinese food he had brought with him. Alleviating the American’s unaccustomed emotional bleakness at this moment seemed little more than an ill-timed nuisance.
“I want to ask you something… something personal,” Napoleon ventured on.
“Whatever,” conceded Illya, also uncustomarily. “As long as we can eat after I’ve answered.”
“When we first encountered the golden-eyed girl—”
“Hallucinated her,” corrected Illya didactically.
“Whatever.” Napoleon now was the one conceding. “I need to know… what you felt. What came into your mind?”
Now it was Illya who stared at his friend with steady eyes for a long moment before finally blinking. “I felt hungry. I sensed she was hungry. I remembered…”
“Yes?” pressed Napoleon.
Illya’s discomfit was evident but he spoke the words at last. “I remember nearly starving as a child, and stealing a turnip top from a pack of wild dogs that was all that remained of what the dogs had previously stolen from me.”
Napoleon nodded slowly and then sighed shakily. “I felt lonely. I sensed she was lonely. I remembered Clara leaving me, telling me she couldn’t be a part of my life if that life included U.N.C.L.E.”
A long bridge of silence stretched between the two men. And then suddenly, as if overtaken with a violent ague, Illya began to shake uncontrollably.
Jostled just as violently out of his current sense of secluded melancholy, Solo wrapped his arms around his friend’s torso, trying unsuccessfully to stabilize his quaking frame.
“Illya, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know!” shouted out Kuryakin in a hoarse and definitely frightened voice. “I have to eat, Napoleon! Please, I have to eat!”
“Oh God!” exclaimed the now wholly terrified Solo. “It’s her! It’s her!”
“She doesn’t exist!” The wildly trembling Kuryakin tried again to convince himself.
“She does!” insisted Solo. “I don’t know how or why or as what, but she does exist! And somehow she is bonded to us!”
...continued in Part 2...
Genre: GEN
Length: approx 11,250 words
Rating: Everyone
Warnings: Mild Language
The story is posted in two parts because of LJ posting restrictions on size:
Part 1: Prologue; Act I; Act II (contained in this post)
Part 2: Act III; Act IV; Epilogue
Author’s Note: Written for the Mood-Y: Challenge 5 on LiveJournal’s Section VII community.
The key mood is: spooked
For this story, I have returned to the scenario of my trilogy: CHIMERA, IGNIS FATUUS and OF ILLUSION AND DELUSION. I do recommend reading those tales (in that order) to get a full grasp of the setting for this one.
As an additional note, the references to the little Norwegian albino girl and Napoleon’s loss of his appendix as the result of a recent mission scenario involving her derive from the flashback sequences in my story THE WAVES OF CHANGE AFFAIR. However, those background references can stand on their own in this tale.
"I saw her, in the fire, but now I hear her in music, in the wind, in the dead stillness of the night," returned the haunted man.
~~~ Charles Dickens
by LaH
Spring 1965
“What on earth, or rather in hell, did you do?” Alexander Waverly demanded, with noticeable irritation, of the defected Thrush scientist on the other end of the phone line.
That former Thrush inventor was the supposedly dead Dr. Rimheac, a man very much alive but in secret protective custody by the Command. Custody indeed so secret, the Number 1 in Section I Northwest had kept that information from even his own Chief of Enforcement.
In what could only be described as something of a whine, the presumed dead man now sought to explain the situation with which his protector was taking issue. “I warned that the results might be unpredictable. That… Well, it’s all rather difficult to control.”
“I beg to differ, Doctor. Your initial warning was obtuse. Vague in the extreme is the only way it could be categorized.”
“Still I warned you!” responded the scientist defensively, his voice noticeably rising an octave in pique. “It wasn’t possible to be more specific because—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” conceded Waverly. “It was all too unique to accurately detail in words.”
“Thus the demonstration,” reiterated Rimheac.
“You mean the experiment,” Waverly corrected tersely. He was less than pleased what had been assumed to be merely a form of show-and-tell had metamorphosed into an unapproved trial run of something so patently perilous.
“What would you have had me do, Mr. Waverly? I was well aware your agents are trained for hazardous work, and you pledged to send your best. Thus—”
“My agents are also trained to assess inherent risk versus possible reward in all such dangerous situations,” interrupted the Continental Chief of U.N.C.L.E. Northwest. “In this scenario my best operatives were not given any such opportunity.”
“It had to be as it was,” insisted Rimheac.
“So you say,” Waverly challenged icily. “No prior information was made available that would have permitted me to knowledgably gainsay that opinion.”
“Well, it’s all over and done with now.”
“Not for my two men.”
“Yes, it’s done. I’ve managed to leverage some control,” Rimheac revealed unexpected good news.
“About time,” Waverly stated bluntly, even as he inwardly breathed a cautious sigh of relief.
Act I: Ghosts of missions past
Autumn 1966
Napoleon Solo tried unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn. Truth be told, he was exhausted. And there was no excusable reason for that as he was currently on a fortnight of desk duty after a run-in with another Thrush mad scientist that had in the end cost him his appendix. Thus he could not claim that any hectic assignment was interfering with his regular patterns of sleep as he was for the nonce mired in naught but the more boring part of the CEA job: paperwork.
Yet, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit there was indeed cause for his undeniable exhaustion: the nightmares.
It was not unusual for a Section II enforcement agent to suffer from an occasional bout of bad dreams and sleeplessness due to something that had happened during a mission scenario. They were all only human after all, and some of the things they witnessed and endured would drive the sleep from the eyes of the very Sandman. Yet again if Napoleon was completely honest with himself, he also had to admit the nightmares preoccupying him of late were of an entirely different variety and thus infinitely more disturbing.
For in his chilling night visions, she was always there: the lonely young girl with the sad, golden eyes. He hadn’t consciously thought of her in over a year. Not since that strange incident in the spring of last year when he had slashed his hands and arms breaking through a window in a Thrush prison cell. At least that was what supposedly happened. His personal recall of the episode was… well, hazy at best.
Anyway that was the very last time she had come into his mind at all: the forlorn little girl with the woe-filled golden eyes. Until recently, that is, when she had started to constantly invade his nightmares. And now she inhabited not just his sleeping hours. Even waking he sensed her… everywhere.
His most recent Command mission had indeed involved a rather strange young albino girl who was part and parcel of an unfathomable Thrush experiment. But that child had been five or six at most, and the girl of his nightmares was more like twelve or thirteen: a juvenile on the cusp of adolescence.
Both children were haunting, no question. Both seemingly victims in Thrush’s never-ending quest for world dominance. Yet the golden-eyed girl was different: in the main because he wasn’t sure she really even existed. She was there in his mind like a memory, and yet… Surely she was nothing more than a hallucination generated by the electrical shock he had received in Dr. Rimheac’s lab two years before? Anyhow that was his first recollection of her… if it was actually a recollection.
Napoleon rubbed his forehead, somehow hoping the gesture would relieve the ache in his very brain. He knew he likely should discuss these particular nightmares with a professional of some sort, but he had a Section II’s natural loathing of shrinks. It was all fine and good for such medically trained individuals to hear and assess, confidently assuming they understood the mental shadows that plagued an enforcement agent. Yet the truth simply was that they could never really understand. They had never been in the field; they had never experienced the real-life terrors such operatives faced on a seemingly regular basis. Thus they were, in the most fundamental sense, clueless.
Blissfully intruding upon Solo’s uneasy ruminations, the pneumatic door to his office slid aside, revealing the person of his partner, Illya Kuryakin, newly returned from a lone assignment.
“Glad to see my not-quite-smiling face, Napoleon?” teased the other man with a small half-grin.
“Glad to see you back in one piece from Australia,” conceded Napoleon as he indicated with a casual hand gesture for his partner to take a seat in one of chairs set before his desk.
“It was a rather tame mission honestly,” conceded Illya in turn.
“Which is why I still don’t understand that I couldn’t be released to join you.”
“Napoleon, you only recently had your gut sliced open without benefit of anesthesia while a madman removed a perfectly viable organ from your body. Mr. Waverly was right to sideline you for a bit.”
“I’m fine.” Napoleon used Illya’s standard line with just as much nonchalance as the Russian usually did.
Kuryakin cocked his head and assessed his friend. “Are you, Napoleon?” he queried pointedly. “You do look rather peaked for someone who has been on desk duty more than a week.”
Solo gave the other man a smile, but it was irrefutably a rather wan one. “Just bored,” he hedged.
Illya was quiet for a few moments. Then he ventured, “I will admit paperwork is boring and therefore rather enervating, but I get the feeling it’s something more than that.”
“It’s nothing.” Napoleon attempted to dismiss the matter. “Nightmares. You know the deal. Sometimes they can be rather intense.”
Illya’s expression changed, became somewhat distracted. “Yes, I know the deal.”
Now it was Napoleon who silently assessed his partner. “You’ve been having them too, haven’t you?” he finally asked.
“We all have them from time to time.” Illya made his own attempt at dismissing the issue.
Napoleon shook his head. “Not like this. Has she been invading your dreams too? The girl with golden eyes?”
Kuryakin uncomfortably shifted his body position in the chair. Yet it was truly not a physical discomfort that assailed him. “She never existed, Napoleon,” he stated firmly, almost as if he would convince himself as much as Solo.
“She doesn’t need to have actually existed to be part of our nightmares, Illya.”
“We recently completed a very stressful assignment,” Kuryakin endeavored to rationalize. “During that very stressful assignment we came in contact with an unusual young girl who, under the influence of Thrush, could be perceived as evil—”
“She wasn’t evil,” interrupted Solo. “She was used. She didn’t understand half of what she was doing.”
“We don’t agree on this, Napoleon, and we never will.” Illya was well aware his partner had a form of sympathetic empathy for the Norwegian albino girl. Kuryakin, however, had a less romanticized view and, from personal experience during the Great Patriotic War, knew that children weren’t always innocents. “Be that as it may; it is perhaps only natural that she recall to mind that incident in Rimheac’s lab where we thought to have encountered another seemingly Thrush-victimized child.”
“I wish I could just conveniently tag it like that, Illya, as a perfectly natural mental correlation. But…” Napoleon sighed as he ran a hand through his dark hair, though whether in frustration or confusion Illya couldn’t say.
“It’s not just the dreams… nightmares…” He subsequently revealed. “I see her eyes in the glow of an incandescent light; I feel her presence whenever I’m alone; I hear her voice in the softest whistling of the wind.”
“How can you know it is her voice when she never spoke?” Illya chose to focus on a logical caveat.
“How can you know she never spoke if she didn’t exist except in our minds?” submitted Napoleon in turn.
“In the manifestations,” Illya tried to backtrack, “her lips never moved.”
“But we heard her voice in our heads nonetheless, didn’t we?” pressed Napoleon.
Kuryakin released an exasperated sigh. “Yes,” he acknowledged, albeit reluctantly.
“I never understood what we experienced in Rimheac’s lab.” Solo expressed his dissatisfaction with the supposed facts of that previous event.
“There was an electrical short that caused a complete blackout of the facility and an arc of sufficient magnitude to knock us both unconscious,” declared Kuryakin sensibly.
“That is all we actually remember,” pointed out Napoleon more intuitively. “I think there was more that happened that we don’t remember… except as supposed hallucinations.” Solo now eyed his obviously discomfited partner. “And so do you.”
“This is all pointless speculation,” determined an exasperated Illya.
“It isn’t pointless if it rids me… us,” he then corrected with another assessing look at his partner, “of the nightmares. Of our fixation with this… illusion… or whatever she is.”
“Delusion,” proposed Illya, “for we are sadly deluded to account her in any way real.”
“We are sadly deluded if we do not pursue what further information we can,” steadfastly attested Solo. “We owe ourselves that much leeway, Illya,” he pressured persuasively. “We owe ourselves that peace of mind.”
Reluctantly, after a rather long moment of pause, Kuryakin nodded his agreement.
Despite his initial acquiescence to the idea, Illya remained unsure whether acceding to Napoleon’s resolve regarding further pursuit of whatever might have (but more than likely didn’t) happen in Rimheac’s lab two years before was a wise decision or not. It was all over and done after all. And Rimheac himself was dead; so there could be no clarification of any sort from the source. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that it would all lead back to the same dead-end it had at the time.
Still, he had to admit his own nightmares were of late as beset by the image of the golden-eyed girl as apparently were his partner’s. That the same imaginary manifestation had simultaneously invaded both their subconscious minds was profoundly perturbing and palpably eerie.
Their actual nightmares, from what little Solo had willingly revealed of his, did not seem to be at all the same, though they were all rooted in unsettling happenings from their past lives. Yet into the mix of those often reality-stretched and macabrely exaggerated memories had come the golden-eyed girl: a central figure and yet not. An inserted presence of which one could not help but be viscerally aware.
She stood like a sentinel on the outskirts of every shattering reflection. She said nothing in the dreams themselves; both of them agreed on that. Napoleon though insisted he heard her voice elsewhere: in the wind, in music, in any form of ringing whether it was the insistent chime of a telephone, the intrusive peal of an alarm clock or the boisterous clang of a church bell.
For himself Illya could not say he had experienced the same phenomena. Or at least he couldn’t say for certain. Instinctively his more analytical side fought against accepting any such unscientific notions. But now, as he forced himself to ponder on it, he realized the undeniable truth there existed the distinct possibility he had indeed sensed the same. And that possibility left him even more disquieted and definitely uneasy in his mind.
So perhaps a bit of investigation, just to allay those mental distresses, was indeed the sensible solution.
“The mission report for THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR isn’t part of Central Records, Napoleon,” Illya informed his friend three hours later after an initial forage in the U.N.C.L.E. archives.
“And I managed to glean from Dr. Pirelli’s very pretty and rather sassy assistant that the psychological evaluations we underwent after those incidents last spring – when we couldn’t recall the exact causes of several injuries we’d suffered? – are no longer part of the good doctor’s medical records,” Napoleon informed his partner in turn.
“That might not be related,” stubbornly suggested the pragmatic Russian.
“Yet we both mentioned the Rimheac mission to Pirelli during those interviews, didn’t we?” insistently forwarded the intuitive American.
“Yes,” Illya reluctantly conceded.
“Then my gut tells me it’s related.”
Illya let out a huge sigh. As little as he liked to acknowledge it, Napoleon’s hunches turned out to be spot-on nearly all of the time. It was a rare occasion when his friend’s perceptual instincts failed him. “So what then do we do next?” Kuryakin instead pressed rather than questioning the reliability of Solo’s inherent sixth sense.
“Well, my guess is, if those reports continue to exist at all, the one place to find them would be in the Old Man’s private files.”
“Napoleon, we can’t!” protested an emphatic Illya.
“Why the hell not? We are spies, aren’t we?” stressed Napoleon in turn.
“We are talking about the confidential files of Alexander Waverly, the Continental Chief of U.N.C.L.E. Northwest.” Kuryakin reminded the other man pointedly.
“We are also talking about our potential sanity,” batted back Solo just as pointedly. “Look Illya,” he then softened his stance, “we don’t intend to use anything we find against U.N.C.L.E. or Waverly or the Queen of England, for crissake. All we are after are answers to assure our own peace of mind. We are entitled to that.”
“And I don’t disagree with that in theory,” Illya allowed. “However, in reality we would be doing something highly debatable with regard to the tenets of our service with the Command. Less you forget, we are bound by rules we agreed to by contract.”
“If you don’t want to be part of this, tovarisch,” suggested Solo, “I’ll understand. Still, with you or without you, I am going to do this. Frankly, I need to know. I need to halt the nightmares. I need to cease seeing, hearing and sensing that golden-eyed girl everywhere and in everything. And just as frankly, I won’t be of any further use to U.N.C.L.E. if I can’t somehow free myself from this haunting.”
“Now you’re bringing ghosts into the equation?”
“Why not?” Napoleon badgered. “Oh not the booing, floating-down-staircases and disappearing-through-walls archetype, to be sure. But ghosts in a very real sense nonetheless: mental specters of missions past.”
Illya was silent for a long time, a time long enough for even Napoleon to wonder what thoughts were going through his friend’s head. What moral scales was the Russian utilizing to weigh the positives and negatives of what Solo was proposing?
“You don’t have fingers light enough to pull this off without me.” Kuryakin finally voiced his acceptance of the plan in an acerbic manner very much in character.
Napoleon broke out in a patented, teeth-flashing, eye-crinkling smile. “Is that an offer of assistance, I’m hearing?” he queried teasingly.
“For someone who manages to catch the sound of hidden voices in the wind, your auditory processes leave much to be desired,” grumped Illya, again very much in character. “Yes, that was an offer of assistance.”
Napoleon clapped his partner companionably on the back. “We’ll do it right, Illya; never fear. Once we have some credible intel to go on, we’ll confront Mr. Waverly in person. I’m not hankering to become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“I think all the female personnel here in HQ would disagree about the wolf part,” gibed Kuryakin.
“But it’s you who owns a shearling overcoat, I.K.,” Solo good-naturedly gibed right back.
Act II: We are spies
“Do you enjoy sitting in the big chair, Napoleon?” asked Heather McNabb as she set a tray holding several tall glasses and a pitcher of iced coffee on Mr. Waverly’s round desk-cum-conference table. Around that table currently sat Solo in Waverly’s chair, Illya Kuryakin as the stand-in head of Section II, and the Section V Security Chief Jason Corinth.
“For the nonce only on the rare occasion, Heather my sweet,” Napoleon responded conversationally to McNabb’s question. “My heart is still in field work.”
Heather nodded her understanding.
“That’s true of Section IIs till the day they die, isn’t it?” Corinth inserted something of an unintentionally callous outsider’s opinion.
“While getting shot at, tortured, chased and otherwise harassed by dangerous foes does have its challenging moments, we Section IIs are indeed a stubborn breed.” Illya made his somewhat snarky contribution to the casual exchange.
At that Heather could not suppress a smile. “No question about that. Have a good meeting, fellas. Let me know if you need me to take any notes.” She then sashayed out of room, Napoleon taking admiring note of her backside as she exited.
The meeting commenced as scheduled with the three men all enjoying a cooling glass of the iced coffee on this Indian-summerlike autumn day. It was indeed rather a routine gathering, with Corinth detailing to Napoleon various security protocols that would be in place for his personal protection while he served as Waverly’s proxy. Once that order of business was concluded, Corinth rose and took his leave after offering Solo a hearty handshake.
“We likely don’t have much time.” Illya summarily focused his partner’s attention on the task next at hand.
Napoleon nodded. “Right. Can you get a clear fingerprint off Jason’s glass?”
“Checking,” stated Illya simply. He had already pulled on a pair of latex gloves to handle the object in question. “It was rather fortuitous that Mr. Waverly wound up having a meeting in the Geneva office with the new head of U.N.C.L.E. Northeast,” he mentioned offhandedly as he dusted the glass for the needed print.”
“Yes, wasn’t it?” returned Napoleon with cool nonchalance.
His partner’s vocal tone caused Kuryakin to quirk an eyebrow in the other man’s direction. “You had something to do with that, didn’t you?”
“Moi?” protested Solo in mock surprise.
“Tu,” rejoined Illya bluntly. “Napoleon, others may be sufficiently deluded to imagine your much-touted luck some form of cosmic intervention, but I’ve known you at least long enough to realize in the main you make your own luck.”
“Ratted out by my own partner,” commented Napoleon with a huge pseudo-sigh.
“So how did you manage it?” Illya wanted to know. “Getting Mr. Waverly on a plane to Geneva?”
Napoleon shrugged. “I might have put a bug in someone’s ear about beefed-up security in the reopened Geneva HQ being a subject that deserved face-to-face dialogue between the Continental Chief of Northeast and the CC unofficially his superior.”
Illya couldn’t help gawking. “Harry Beldon took advice from you?” he inquired with unconcealed incredulity.
Beldon had been in the position as CC of U.N.C.L.E. Northeast for less than a year, promoted shortly after the bee infiltration in the Geneva headquarters in January had resulted in the death of Carlo Farenti. It was not exactly a secret that Beldon was less enamored of Waverly’s ‘golden boy’, Napoleon Solo, than were the other top members of Command administration.
“Would never happen,” agreed Solo as he watched Kuryakin take the impression of one of the prints on the glass he held and transfer it onto what could only be described as a wax finger.
“It couldn’t have been Gerald Strothers either,” surmised Illya regarding Solo’s counterpart CEA in the Northeast region. “He is so jealous of you, he is lucky his eyes don’t glow green when you are so much as mentioned in passing to him.”
Again Napoleon shrugged. “Beldon does have an assistant,” he hinted.
“Helga Deniken?” Illya again gawked at his friend.
Napoleon put up a hand to forestall the other man’s likely conclusion. “I hardly know the lady.”
“But you used the legendary Solo charm on her nonetheless,” ragged Kuryakin uncompromisingly. “Amazing how you can successfully employ mere words spoken into a communicator to seduce the ladies of U.N.C.L.E.”
“Hey, you yourself said it, partner: A man has to make his own luck. And speaking of luck, how is that little apparatus of yours working out?”
“We’ll soon see. I do appreciate that you ordered iced coffee that needed to be served in glasses rather than hot coffee that would have been served in mugs. Getting an impression from a cup handle would have been all but impossible.”
“The unseasonal warm weather is something for which I can’t take even minimal credit,” returned Napoleon. “So I guess sometimes the Solo luck really is due to cosmic intervention.”
Illya took a deep breath as he finished putting the final touches on the wax digit. “There. Done,” he announced.
“So we’re ready to make like spies?” prompted Napoleon.
Illya nodded. “As ready as we can be. Maneuver us some more luck, cosmic or otherwise, my friend. Else the best result we can anticipate from this spyly foray is permanent assignment in Antarctica.”
“You know how I hate the cold,” remarked Napoleon with extraordinary ease considering the dicey situation.
The security lock on the Continental Chief’s set of three confidential filing drawers utilized a method of fingerprint recognition. However, without the print of Alexander Waverly himself, it required the prints of two other approved individuals to gain access. The other four Continental Chiefs were all approved of course. As an emergency fallback measure, Solo as Chief of Enforcement here in Northwest and Jason Corinth as Chief of Northwest Security were also both approved.
Moving his chair on its casters somewhat away from the table to provide Kuryakin easier access to the file cabinet behind him, Solo held his breath as his partner-in-this-crime slipped the wax digit onto his own index finger, stood up and moved toward the set of drawers.
“Ready, Napoleon?” Illya questioned unnecessarily. The other man nodded. “Then together,” he instructed.
Illya placed his fake finger down on the lock plate in time with Napoleon placing his own index finger on the plate. An audible click signaled that the cabinet was now unlocked.
“Too easy,” suggested Illya uncomfortably.
“Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, tovarisch,” suggested Napoleon in turn even as he was sliding open the top drawer of the cabinet and carefully rummaging through its contents. “Let’s pray the files aren’t stored by codenames or otherwise encrypted,” the CEA voiced his hope.
“I don’t pray,” came Illya’s expected retort as he slid open the bottom drawer and knelt to facilitate delving inside. “No need for prayer in this case anyway,” he then confirmed triumphantly as he held up a yellow U.N.C.L.E. folder clearly labelled THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR.
Grabbing the file from his partner, Napoleon directed, “See if there’s anything more while I snapshot this.”
That said, Solo placed the report on the table, pulled out a small pocket camera expertly concealed in a cigarette lighter, and began systematically turning the pages of the report and quickly taking a photograph of each page.
“Nothing more I can find,” Illya informed Napoleon after several more minutes of searching through the contents of the drawers.
“Dr. Pirelli’s case studies not there?” prompted Solo.
“Seems not,” stated Kuryakin.
“Makes you wonder what were the good doctor’s recorded observations after the conclusion of those sessions, doesn’t it?”
“I’m too nervous to wonder about anything at the moment, Napoleon. This is a risk we likely shouldn’t have taken.”
“Too late for regrets, tovarisch,” Napoleon determined as he snapped a picture of the final page of the report. “All over and done,” he finalized as he closed the file and slipped it back in its original place in the cabinet.
With a decisive push, Solo closed the last open drawer and the two men had the satisfaction of hearing the distinctive click that indicated the security lock was again back in force.
Handing the camera-lighter to Kuryakin, Napoleon then admonished,” You’ll have to use resources outside of HQ to get these developed.”
“I am well aware of that fact,” the Russian retorted brusquely.
“Bit testy, aren’t we?” the American queried with a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.” Illya candidly confessed his continued misgivings.
“The legendary Solo charm of course,” Napoleon gibed, perhaps a good deal less candidly.
The two simple words written in Alexander Waverly’s own hand stared back at him uncompromisingly from the developed photo of the last page of the report.
Demonstration complete
Yet supposedly nothing at all had happened in Rimheac’s lab, nothing more than an electrical short that had caused him and Illya to black out. What then did those words, annotated to the very end of the documentation on THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR, signify? What had comprised the demonstration? How had it been completed? What the hell had really occurred that day in the Thrush scientist’s lab two years ago?
Napoleon was deeply ensconced in his own thoughts, entrenched far enough that he didn’t even hear his partner use a spare key to open the door to his apartment and subsequently disarm the security system as he entered the internal hallway.
Kuryakin rearmed that system as necessary and made his way first to the kitchen where he placed on one of the counters several large paper shopping bags he was toting. “Napoleon?” Illya questioned softly as he finally made his way into the living room where Solo was seated on the sofa, hunched over the coffee table, concentrating intently on the photo laying on that polished surface.
“What does it mean, Illya?” Napoleon queried hypothetically of his friend, for he certainly was aware Kuryakin had no further clue in this regard than he had himself.
“I truly don’t know,” Illya nonetheless responded, somehow sensing this was confirmation Solo needed to hear.
At last Napoleon looked up at the other man, a man as affected by this distressing incongruity as he was himself. Yet somehow Napoleon couldn’t acknowledge that. He felt absolutely alone.
“Why are you here?” Solo asked of his faithful Sancho. “I know you blame me for what we did in Waverly’s office. I know you’d rather disassociate yourself from me and my ideas. I know you’d prefer not to be here with me now.”
Flabbergasted, all Illya could think to do was sit down on the sofa beside his friend and place a companionable hand on his shoulder. “I would never do that, Napoleon,” the blond man tried reassuring his dark-haired counterpart. “I would never, even in the innermost secret reaches of my mind, ever harbor any such thoughts.”
Napoleon’s eyes, when he gazed at the other man, were as sorrowful as Illya had ever seen them: desolate, lonely. Yet, even seeing his friend so devastated, while wondering what he could do to comfort Solo, Illya couldn’t help but inappropriately ruminate on how extremely hungry he himself was.
“I’ve brought dinner,” Kuryakin therefore advised rather brightly. “Chinese takeout. Cartons and cartons of it. You should eat something.”
“I don’t want anything,” disputed this isolated Napoleon.
“Surely you must want something to eat,” Illya forwarded perhaps a bit desperately himself. “I am absolutely ravenous!” And truthfully he could not hide nor did he even attempt to disguise the look of sheer famishment on his face.
Solo stared at Kuryakin with steady eyes before finally blinking. “Illya?” he began.
“What?” prompted the Russian somewhat testily. Truth be told, he wanted to do nothing so much as tear into the cartons and cartons of Chinese food he had brought with him. Alleviating the American’s unaccustomed emotional bleakness at this moment seemed little more than an ill-timed nuisance.
“I want to ask you something… something personal,” Napoleon ventured on.
“Whatever,” conceded Illya, also uncustomarily. “As long as we can eat after I’ve answered.”
“When we first encountered the golden-eyed girl—”
“Hallucinated her,” corrected Illya didactically.
“Whatever.” Napoleon now was the one conceding. “I need to know… what you felt. What came into your mind?”
Now it was Illya who stared at his friend with steady eyes for a long moment before finally blinking. “I felt hungry. I sensed she was hungry. I remembered…”
“Yes?” pressed Napoleon.
Illya’s discomfit was evident but he spoke the words at last. “I remember nearly starving as a child, and stealing a turnip top from a pack of wild dogs that was all that remained of what the dogs had previously stolen from me.”
Napoleon nodded slowly and then sighed shakily. “I felt lonely. I sensed she was lonely. I remembered Clara leaving me, telling me she couldn’t be a part of my life if that life included U.N.C.L.E.”
A long bridge of silence stretched between the two men. And then suddenly, as if overtaken with a violent ague, Illya began to shake uncontrollably.
Jostled just as violently out of his current sense of secluded melancholy, Solo wrapped his arms around his friend’s torso, trying unsuccessfully to stabilize his quaking frame.
“Illya, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know!” shouted out Kuryakin in a hoarse and definitely frightened voice. “I have to eat, Napoleon! Please, I have to eat!”
“Oh God!” exclaimed the now wholly terrified Solo. “It’s her! It’s her!”
“She doesn’t exist!” The wildly trembling Kuryakin tried again to convince himself.
“She does!” insisted Solo. “I don’t know how or why or as what, but she does exist! And somehow she is bonded to us!”
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Date: 2014-10-25 07:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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