Man from U.N.C.L.E. Section VII

"We suspect that Glock Drugs has been infiltrated by THRUSH, and that operatives passing as pharmacists are substituting legitimate drugs with mind-control chemicals," Mr. Waverly told Illya. "Your assignment is to pose as a lab technician there long enough to find out if these suspicions are true and, if so, to bring the operation to an end."

The following morning, Illya found himself standing on the corner in front of the drugstore, wearing a white lab coat. The store was inside a red brick building which had a large white marquee with red neon letters in front stating its name and the fact that it had been established in 1885. Right underneath, the large windows at the front of the store were littered with notices, messages, and cards taped to the glass, but the store's interior could still be easily seen.

Entering the laboratory at the back of the store, Illya immediately caught curious glances from a couple of young women in identical white coats. "You must be a new hire," one of the women remarked.

"Why, yes, I am," Illya replied pleasantly. "My name is Phil. Phil Culkin."

"Nice to meet you, Phil," the young woman replied with a smile. "I'm Peggy."

Ill

It did indeed appear to be a nice day for a walk as Illya Kuryakin and Marion Raven set out from UNCLE headquarters on their way back to Marion's apartment. The evil plan of Harold Bufferton and Gervaise Ravel to use a fear-inducing gas to control the world had just been thwarted, and the Russian looked forward to getting to know the beautiful blonde better.

All of a sudden Marion felt a raindrop land on her nose, and without warning, the sky opened up and unleashed torrents of rain onto the sidewalks of New York City.

"Quick! In here!" Illya urged Marion, tugging her in the direction of a quaint little shop on the corner. They were barely inside the door when a bolt of lightning struck the place on the sidewalk where the two of them had been standing just five minutes before.

"Oh my God!" Marion cried, clinging to Illya. She shielded her ears as the loud clap of thunder sounded right afterwards.

As if that weren't bad enough, the next bolt of lightning hit the power lines, causing the light in the store to immediately go out.

"Well, it looks as if we are going to be here for awhile," Illya said glumly.

"I don't like being in the dark during thunderstorms." Marion's voice was shaky as she clung to Illya.

"What we have both just survived was worse than this," the UNCLE agent pointed out.

"I know, but being in the dark during thunderstorms has always given me the creeps," Marion replied. "My mother died during a thunderstorm."

"Did she?"

"She was driving home in the rain one night and never made it. The next day, the police found her inside her wrecked car. She'd lost

He never even saw her approach, and yet suddenly she was there. She was young, fifteen or sixteen at the most, and there was a vague, ephemeral quality about her which Illya couldn't quite put his finger on, but which made her seem almost as if she were a sprite or pixie or another of the magical creatures said to inhabit this land.

"Who are you?" he asked her.

"Siobhan." Her voice was almost a whisper, and it had a lilt, an almost musical quality to it. "Come with me."

Transfixed, Illya seemed to have lost his power of free will as he followed her beckoning finger. The place she led him to was a castle, high on a cliff beside the sea. The uneven terrain leading up to its entrance seemed hazardous, yet Siobhan seemed to scale it effortlessly, and Illya found that, to his surprise, he was also able to do so.

The castle's walls were bleak and grey, and although it was still almost completely intact, Illya could tell that it had been built many years ago. Wordlessly, his mysterious visitor led the UNCLE agent down stairs that looked as if they might crumble beneath their feet at any minute. Down, down, even further down they went, until the Russian realized that he was standing in a dungeon beneath the castle.

Once his eyes became adjusted to the dark, Illya had to gasp in shock. Chained to the floor right beside him was a skeleton. From its size, he could tell that its owner had been very tiny and petite, little more than a child, and from the width of its pelvis, he knew that it was female. Right beside it was a much larger skeleton, this one belonging to a male.

"Who were they? What happened to them?" Illya demanded, but when he turned his head, he saw that Siobhan had completely disappeared, and he was all alone in the dungeon with the two skeletons. Badly shaken, he somehow made his way out of the castle and to the local authorities, where he reported his discovery.

Much later that evening, Illya was involved in an animated discussion with one of the locals at a neighborhood pub. "Twas the O'Connor castle ye seen, me boy," his companion told him. "Been there several hundred years, it has. Paddy O'Connor was a mean, cruel brute of a man. They say even the fairy folk was a' feared 'o 'im. One day 'e saw a local girl and lusted after 'er. Legend says 'er name was Siobhan, and she was only 'bout sixteen years old. Paddy asked 'er father for 'er hand in marriage. Scared ta death, the man was goin' to take 'is whole family and run away ta England wi' 'em. Night afore 'e was ta leave, Siobhan disappeared. Nobody ever saw 'er or Paddy O'Connor again. They say that castle is cursed, me boy. Best ye stay away from it from now on."

Illya was stricken with awe, and even felt honored in a spooky kind of way. It was me, he told himself. After all these years, it was me she chose to find her so that she could finally have a Christian burial. I cannot wait to tell Napoleon. He is not going to believe this.

llya grasped the casket's handle firmly as he and the other pallbearers bore it to its destination. For Ekaterina Nikolaevna Aleksandrova, there was no brass band to play as she was laid to her final rest. Instead, dead silence filled the air. Katya had died not as a martyr, but as a traitor.

There was no way the KGB officer who'd shot her could have understood the urgency of her mission, that she'd had to see her brother who'd defected to Canada just one more time before leukemia claimed his life, that there would have been no time to wait the months it might have taken to get an exit visa, that by the time one could have been procured, Kolya would have been long gone.

The mournful procession reached the open grave and sat the casket down beside it, and Illya looked down at the familiar face framed with flyaway blonde hair so like his own, the eyes now closed in death that used to twinkle and laugh every time she saw him, the lips he'd kissed so many times when they'd been warm and vibrant.

It was a crisp, cold day, and a tundra wind whipped the grieving young man's golden locks to and fro as he stood, the only Soviet citizen willing to eulogize his fallen comrade. "Katya was a very special girl," he began. "When I first arrived at the academy, I was a very lonely malchik. Katya taught me how to laugh again, and how to love. For everything she gave me, I could never repay her. I will never forget the kindness she showed me."

Several men moved forward to nail the lid of the simple wooden coffin shut, but Illya signaled for them to wait a moment. He bent and kissed the cold lips. "Dosvidanaya, moy vozlyublennyy podruga."

As he slowly walked away, he felt as if a part of himself had died as well. Never before had he realized that anything could hurt this much. He'd heard the phrase 'love hurts' before, but never had it rang so true for him as it did right now.

It was almost fifteen years later that he and his new partner Napoleon Solo were discussing their love lives; or rather, the gregarious Napoleon was going on about his own, while a taciturn Illya merely listened.

"So tell me, Illya, have you ever really loved a woman?" Napoleon finally asked.

Illya opened his mouth to lie, then suddenly telling his new friend Katya's story. "She was so young," he said mournfully. "She never even really had the chance to experience life."

"I can tell that it still hurts you, even now," an observant Napoleon replied.

Illya nodded his agreement. "I had hoped that the two of us would spend the rest of our lives together. I do not know if I will ever find another woman like her."

Knowing that this was one of those times when no words would suffice, Napoleon nodded sympathetically.

Illya was headed up the stairs leading to the First National City Bank of New York when he saw a young man whiz past him carrying a woman's purse. At the same time, he heard calls for help in Russian.

Like a flash he was after the man, tackling him and knocking him to the ground. In the following tussle, Illya snatched the purse and looked about for its owner. He was amazed to see that she was none other than Larissa Kirillovna Romanova, his father's old flame whom he himself had befriended recently.

"O

"It doesn't really look like a haunted house to me," Napoleon remarked. "Abandoned and dilapidated, yes, but not haunted. He and Illya stood at the entrance of the dwelling they'd been sent to investigate. There was an overhead arch with a curved design inside, and the door frames looked as if they'd come completely loose from the wall at some point and had been very sloppily glued back into place with spackling paste. The wooden doors, which had been painted white and light blue and were in a similar state of disrepair, were slightly open. Residents of the area had complained of high-pitched inhuman wailing noises coming from inside the building.

"I tell them that we are investigators, not exorcists, but they will not listen," Illya complained as his partner pushed the door open.

The inside of the old house was indeed creepy, with spiderwebs and layers of dust everywhere. It was obvious that no living person had been on the premises in a very long time. One section of the interior had, at one time, been blocked off by a brick enclosure, behind which had been stored God-only-knew what. A few of the bricks had fallen away, leaving an opening that a petite human could possibly barely squeeze through.

Once inside the long-deserted building, the two agents suddenly heard the inhuman wailing sound they'd been told of, and it was evident to both men that it came from behind the brick enclosure.

"I'm too big to fit through that hole, so it looks like it's up to you to solve this one, partner mine," Napoleon said, the relief he felt obvious in his voice.

Illya scowled but obediently approached the opening. By twisting his limbs into seemingly impossible angles, he was barely able to make it through the opening.

All was silent for a moment, and then Napoleon heard movement, a slight scuffle, from behind the wall.

"Here is your 'ghost'." A tiny orange cat appeared at the opening. Its fur was filthy, and it was very skinny. Napoleon took the animal from his partner's hands, and a moment later, Illya reappeared, covered in dust and grime.

"Her paw was caught in a crack in the wall, and she could not get it out," the Russian explained. "There was a puddle of water on the floor from which she had been drinking, but if I had not found her, she would have starved to death soon."

"Looks like it's your lucky day, kitty," Napoleon said to the tiny creature, who mewed hungrily. "Now that our 'mystery' is solved, we can go find you some nice warm milk. How does that sound?"

The cat jumped out of his hands and began to weave in circles around Illya's legs.

"She certainly seems to prefer you," Napoleon remarked. "It's as if she knows you're the one who rescued her."

Illya grinned and picked the cat up. "I shall call you Malinka," he decided. "That means 'little berry.'" The cat purred and rubbed the top of her head against his shirt.

Maria de Jesus had been one of THRUSH's most formidable threats. From her secret lab deep in the heart of rural Mexico, she'd conducted all manner of unethical and, some said, even bizarre experiments. She'd met her end when her lab had finally been discovered and raided by a band of UNCLE agents, one of whom had put a bullet through her heart.

Yet, it was rumored that THRUSH had stolen her body and spirited it out of Mexico, then used a secret formula to reanimate it so that she could continue her nefarious work. It was only a rumor, Illya knew, but it still sent chills down his spine.

Now he'd been assigned to come to yet another lab in rural Mexico, this one run by a newly employed UNCLE agent, Consuelo La Viva, who was attempting to develop a formula for a food substitute, a highly nutritious energy supplement of compact size that could be utilized by UNCLE agents who ended up either imprisoned or stranded in inhospitable environments for long periods of time. It was hoped that Illya's sophisticated knowledge of organic chemical compounds would prove advantageous to Consuelo's research.

As he neared the pristine white building which he knew contained Consuelo's lab, Illya was approached by an obviously inebriated local who stumbled past him. Illya almost retched from the stench of tequila mixed with that of unwashed bodily filth.

Suddenly the man turned lucid eyes toward Illya and stared straight into the Russian's blue ones as he spoke a few words in English. "You must beware of black haired girls, Senor! Else, one will cause your death." The man then turned away from Illya, muttered a few words in Spanish, and then ambled on.

Illya shuddered as he struggled to put the incident out of his mind, soon arriving at the entrance to Consuelo's lab.

"Senor Kuryakin! It is a pleasure to meet you!" She pronounced his name 'Kurya-keen.' Her teeth looked very white against her tanned skin, and she had hair that was as dark as coal with eyes to match. Illya guessed that she must have at least some Aztec ancestry.

"It is nice to meet you as well, senorita. Please call me Illya." He smiled and shook her hand, which to him felt unnaturally cool to the touch. Perhaps she'd recently worked with specimens that had been refrigerated, Illya surmised as she led him back to the portion of the lab that was for his use.

Soon Illya was busy adding chemicals to test tubes and heating them over a Bunsen burner, recording his results in his journal. He became so absorbed in his work that he almost didn't even notice his stomach rumbling several hours later.

Suddenly he turned to see Consuelo smiling brilliantly at him and holding a large brown bag. "Time for a break, si?"

"I hope that you have something delicious in that bag." Illya grinned. "I am famished."

"Of course I intend to feed my new lab assistant well," Consuelo replied.

She led him to a picnic area behind the lab, and on a table beneath a large shade tree, she began to set out all manner of delicious food.

"This is indeed a meal fit for a king!" Illya exclaimed jubilantly.

"I hope that everything is to your liking," Consuelo told him.

While Illya ate voraciously, he couldn't help but notice that Consuelo merely picked at the food. After he'd finished, he was surprised to find that he was unnaturally sleepy, as if he'd somehow been administered a sedative.

"If you would like to take a siesta, Illya, that is fine," Consuelo told him. "It is the custom in my country. There is a small room with a cot adjacent to the lab if you would like to use that."

Illya thanked her and went to the room containing the cot. However, he was by now suspicious and, rather than lying down on the cot right away, he first swallowed a couple of caffeine pills and then lay down and feigned sleep.

Soon he became aware of muted voices coming from the other side of the door. Soundlessly, he arose from the cot and crept close enough to hear.

"I have finally perfected the formula," said Consuelo La Viva's voice. "Today they shall arise."

"And what of the UNCLE agent?" asked a male voice.

Consuelo laughed. "There is nothing to worry about. I put enough tranquilizers in his food to make him sleep for a week."

"Very good, Senora de Jesus," a different male voice complimented her.

Illya felt the hair stand up on his head. Consuelo La Viva was really Maria de Jesus! She'd somehow faked her way into the UNCLE organization as a double agent, seeking to use Illya's superior scientific skills to her own advantage.

Yet, what could he do? He was a man alone in a strange country. Napoleon was far away in New York. The only course of action he could see open to him was to return to the United States to gather reinforcements to destroy the lab and return Maria de Jesus to the netherworld, but by the time he could do all that, it might well be too late...

Meanwhile, in the small cemetery behind the church on the hill right behind the laboratory, long-dead joints and tendons stretched and creaked, and skeletal fingers pushed aside coffin lids, making their way through dirt toward blackened headstones...

Illya shivered as he lay underneath a pile of blankets on his bed. This horrible case of the flu had turned even the stoic Russian into a quivering mass of misery. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this sick. His head felt as if it were about to explode, and his throat felt as if it had been scratched by sandpaper. He recalled numerous bouts of tonsillitis as a child in which his throat had hurt so badly that he could hardly swallow, and this seemed even worse by comparison.

Suddenly he heard the doorbell. The last thing in the world he felt like doing right now was getting out of bed, but it might be an important visitor, so he grabbed his warmest robe and, with difficulty, shoved his feet into a pair of threadbare slippers and made his way to the door, grabbing his special and slipping it into the waistband of his pajamas in back just in case there was trouble.

As soon as he opened the door, he saw Napoleon holding a big pot from which a delicious aroma wafted and felt his mouth water in anticipation.

"Come in," he said, stepping aside so that his friend could enter the small apartment.

"Waverly told me you called in sick this morning, so I brought over a little something to make you feel better." Napoleon carried the pot to the stove and sat it on one of the front eyes. "It's Aunt Amy's special recipe. I hope you like it."

"Spasibo," said Illya. "It was very kind of you to think of me."

He'd already begun to feel terribly dizzy, so he hastily pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. Napoleon served up the soup, which was a tasty combination of boiled chicken, noodles, sliced carrots, and celery, with garlic and spices added.

Illya savored the taste as he sampled the first spoonful, and the warmth of the soft food sliding down his throat soothed the scratchiness. "It is delicious," he told his friend.

"When I was a child and got sick, my mother used to always make this soup for me," Napoleon said. "Aunt Amy gave her the recipe, and then she in turn gave it to me."

Illya smiled, picturing Napoleon as a scruffy little boy with unruly brown hair and a smudged face. "It is the best soup I have ever tasted," he replied.

Napoleon stayed and visited for awhile and then had to leave. Illya felt much better after eating Aunt Amy's soup. He went back to bed and slept for most of the rest of the day.

Several days later, he felt well enough to return to work.

"Good to see you back," Napoleon remarked as the two passed in the hallway.

"Spasibo," Illya replied. "It is good to be back."

"Any of that soup left?"

Illya grinned. "Nyet."

Napoleon laughed. "I didn't think there would be."

"You know me too well," Illya replied.

Illya walked briskly through Del Floria's tailor shop and into UNCLE headquarters, noticing that someone had placed a bowl of apples on the front counter and grabbing one on his way into his office.

"Good morning, partner mine," said Napoleon as he breezed past the blond.

"And you you," the Russian replied. "To whom do we owe the gift of the apples?"

"Mrs. Waverly. They're from her friend's orchard," Napoleon told him.

"Did I ever tell you about the time an apple saved my life?" asked Illya.

"No, you didn't." Intrigued, Napoleon pulled up a chair for his partner and asked him to sit down. It was so unusual for Illya to share an anecdote from his past that Napoleon had come to treasure these rare glimpses into his partner's former life.

"It was after my mother's death, when I was sent to Moscow to live with my Uncle Ivan and Aunt Katya," the blond began. "I was only eight years old, frightened, confused, and grief-stricken. My whole world had been torn apart, and everything and everyone I had known and loved was gone. I had been suddenly cast into a new, confusing world."

"How vividly I remember meeting my Uncle Ivan at the train station! I didn't recognize him at first, of course, but he knew me right away. He helped me down from the train, and I walked with him to my new home. Everything in the world that I owned was in a small bag that I carried with me."

"Although their house was relatively small by American standards, it was the grandest home I'd ever seen. There was a large dark green rug on the floor, a large, comfortable-looking red sofa, and a fireplace. I had the urge to just curl up and go to sleep on that sofa, but I was too frightened to move."

"My Aunt Katya saw me coming and rushed to meet me. 'Bednomu mal'chiku!' she cried, giving me a fierce hug. I was too scared to respond. For hours I just sat huddled on that sofa, watching the rest of the family going about their business, longing to join in but too afraid. I was famished but did not dare ask for a bite of food."

"Then my cousin Sonya, who was just my age, brought something to me. It was a shiny red apple. 'Eat,' she urged me. 'For me?' I asked in utter disbelief. I had not had a piece of fresh fruit in so long that I could not even remember the last time. Hesitantly I took the apple from her and bit into it. To me it tasted better than anything had ever tasted before. After that I lost my shyness and was able to join in with the rest of my new family."

"It certainly is amazing what one small act of kindness can do, isn't it," Napoleon remarked.

"It certainly is," Illya agreed.