Spies, one American, one Russian. Forever.

Solo and Angelique: Kiss. Fuck. Uh-oh.

Mission (villain, innocent, captured, boom) accomplished.

Red wire or blue? Illya chooses.

U.N.C.L.E.! Love! Four seasons. Over... not.

Thrush wins. Agents consider their options.

"Open Channel D. Anyone there?" Silence.

Solo pulls the coat hook. Nothing happens.

My boyfriend is a giant gorilla.

"So? Are you dead?"
"That depends."

I remember dying...and who's responsible.

"I heard you were dead."
"Wishful thinking."

-------

"Papa,” said Monica to her father, “please get the moon for me."

-- from the children’s book by Eric Carle.
Spring, 1976.

They were running, they were racing, they were flying, and they should have been afraid but they weren’t. Napoleon Solo felt a long, slender, feminine hand clasped tightly in his. He glanced around to see Serena, her head thrown back, her thick mane of coiffed hair now a mass of uncoiling tendrils in the wind. She was laughing, they were both laughing, like kids, frigid air burning in their lungs. The surrounding landscape whizzed by them as they ran, snowy and mountainous, but whether it was Aspen or the Himalayas or somewhere in between, Solo couldn’t say.

Nor could he identify the men chasing them, or the reason for the chase. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except the physical sensations of the moment that permeated his entire being. The connection of their hands, ungloved. The pounding of their boots and the crunch of snow underfoot. The clouds of their own exhaled breath that followed them like a vapor trail. The pumping of Solo’s heart and surging of adrenaline, so strong and constant, it felt like a stream of electricity shooting through his system. He felt wild and free, intensely, acutely alive.

Suddenly, a gunshot smacked close to the side of his foot, shattering the snow. They kept running. Another. Still, they kept running.

“Napoleon!” Serena squealed. He turned his head, seeing her, her lovely sculptured smile, and beyond that, white snow and black figures.

“They’re going to kill us,” she was saying, concern evident in her voice if not her smile.

“Nonsense,” he laughed, squinting past her to locate their pursuers. He knew the men were there and closing fast, even if he could not determine their appearance, allegiance, exact position, or even, how many there were.

“We must hide,” Serena urged again, breathless. Her ski jacket was open and her bosom heaved deliciously under the vanilla colored sweater. Solo slowed his pace but didn’t stop, head swiveling as he searched for possible shelter. Ice and rock below; titanium clouds and falling snow above. Flat sky; wide, sloping, open ground. No cabins, no stand of pine trees, no caves.

More strafing bullets and then, some shouting in the distance. Solo’s right hand automatically dug under his ski jacket and liberated his U.N.C.L.E. Special. Now he had warm flesh clutched in one hand and cold steel in the other.

Then, abruptly, a small, weathered shack materialized nearby. From its roof, a thick black wire stretched upward, like a lifeline to heaven. A bulky shadow descended out of the mists.

“Cable cars,” Serena hissed, voicing Solo’s own thoughts. He nodded and cried, “C’mon,” then diverted course.

They reached the shack just as the car arrived. No other waiting skiers were queued. Indeed, no one else was around. The shack was eerily deserted. The car’s door swung open and Solo jumped in, pulling Serena after him and slamming the door.

Outside, more shots. Then, shouts, peppered with curses, but it was too late. The car climbed upward, groaning as it went, lifting the couple to safety. Serena peered out of one of the smudged windows and coyly waved bye-bye to the men below.

“Are they waving back?” Solo inquired, chuckling.

“They’re too flabbergasted, I think, too amazed by your virtuosity.”

Solo shrugged modestly. “Just lucky.”

Serena spun on her heel, eyes shining with amusement and a fire he’d seen before. “Still, you’re a wonder, my darling.” She pursed her full lips. “So what else can you do?”

“C’mere,” he said, “and I’ll show you.”

And in the next moment, she was in his arms and he was dropping his weapon so he could fill his hands with her. She pressed her mouth to his, nudging back his lips. She wedged her body against his, pushing aside their various layers of clothing. Locked together, they melded quickly into a mass of swirling, squirming, searching movement, all mouths and hands and welcoming skin.

Of all the Thrush women he’d ever known, Serena was his favorite. Every time they came together, Solo remembered why. She felt wonderful, all smooth and velvety. She smelled wonderful, too, of tangy musk and sweet spice. And she sounded wonderful, the sighs and short gasps, sipped from his own breath.

They spun in a circle so that her back was slammed against the cable car’s wall, her torso bared beneath the rumpled clothing. “I really should make love to you in a bed, sometime,” Solo whispered into her hair. He nuzzled her throat as she unzipped his fly.

“Nonsense,” she purred, echoing his earlier retort.

He burrowed into her, his tongue into her mouth, his fingers into the folds of her clothing, his sex finding hers. She moaned his name aloud.

/Daddy/.

A bullet zinged against the steel roof of the car. “They’re ... shooting... at us,” Solo managed without breaking his rhythm. “They must be ...in the ...other car.”

Serena’s thighs clenched, squeezing his hipbones in response. “Ohhhhh, darling,” she groaned. “Forget them... keep going...”

/Daddy?//

“Pleeeease.... don’t stop....”

He obeyed her, pumping so hard and being met in kind, that the whole cable car began to sway. Back and forth, back and forth.

“Napoleon, ahhhhhhh yessss...”

Serena’s long nailed fingers clawed his shoulders, raking his back, clutching his neck. He felt himself rock her, and then, she was rocking him in return, and as she did, her touch gradually grew smaller, lighter, weaker, though just as determined. As if it were becoming another hand; a child’s hand.

/Daaaddddee// “ahh...ohh...mmm... mmm...yes...”/C’maaaa-onnnn/./

NO! He clung to Serena’s round, voluptuous body.

/Time to waaaaake uuuu-upp./

NO! He heard the cable snap overhead. NO! He felt the floor drop from under him. NO! They were in free fall. NO! Serena fell away. NONONO! The car fell away. The sky fell away. The dream fell away.

And all at once, he was awake.

His eyes snapped open and for one, brief, fleeting second, every muscle in his body tensed, alert and automatically ready for action. This time, he got control before he even moved, though when he glanced to the side of the bed, he saw that Allyson had already taken several steps backward, just beyond his reach. She watched him, the expression on her pert, eight-going-on-nine- year-old face, calm, even blasé.

“Good morning, Daddy,” she greeted him matter-of-factly.

“Good morning sweetheart,” he responded with a sigh. Only now, after he’d acknowledged her, did she bolt forward, throw her arms around him and plant a kiss on his cheek. That was the drill, and they both had learned it the hard way.

“We’re going to the circus, today,” she reminded him, barely able to contain her excitement. He noted she was already fully dressed, with only her hair yet to be brushed.

Oh yeah, he thought. And then: Oh God. “What time is it?”

“Nine-ten. You told me if you weren’t up by nine, to wake you.”

He nodded, all their earlier negotiations coming back in a rush. “Madison Square Garden, right?”

She grinned. “That’s right. We have to be there by eleven.”

“Okay,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster. “Just give me a couple of minutes, all right?”

“Sure, Daddy,” she said, the soul of congeniality. Obviously, she wasn’t going to do or say anything that would ruin things. She’d maneuvered him too long and hard to make this outing a reality. She kissed him again and bounced out of the room.

Rolling back against the pillows, Solo groaned and rubbed his face. Where did she get all that energy? He’d had a full night’s sleep and still felt tired. It was like that every morning. He closed his eyes for the moment, and lay in the still, quiet bedroom, mulling over the dream.

Serena. He hadn’t thought or dreamt of her for a long time. Idly, he wondered where she was in the world and what she was doing, now that her masters were out of commission. There was no way of knowing unless he bumped into her by chance. With the places he frequented these days that was unlikely.

Take today, for example: The circus. And then lunch with Aunt Amy. And then a visit to F.A.O. Schwartz, no doubt, to check out the new Barbie dolls. Christ.

But there was no help for it. He’d promised and as he’d begun to understand, a promise to his daughter was more binding than his blood oath had been to U.N.C.L.E. So, he didn’t make them lightly. When he failed her, she could be more unforgiving than Alexander Waverly.

He allowed himself to sift the dream over in his mind once more, trying to revive the experience. But dreams had a terrifically short shelf life and this one was already fading fast. Ah well, he thought. At least, for once, he hadn’t dreamt of his dead wife. Or, God forbid, The Other One, the Thrush woman he’d killed, the one whose name he could not bring himself to speak aloud. That was progress. His therapist — if he’d still been seeing the man, that is — would have been pleased.

Marshaling his strength, Solo forced himself fully awake. Pulling aside the covers, he swung his feet to the floor and headed for the shower, leaving behind a bed he hadn’t shared with anyone in over a year.

***
The rest is here.