Disclaimer: I don't own The Man from UNCLE and no infringement is intended.
A/n: just a shade darker than usual. An experiment, shall we call it? Heavy spoilers for the Fiddlestick Affair.
No need
"Illya…" Napoleon whispered.
They had joked about the possibility that he could not make it to the vault in time to disarm the mined wall before Illya began opening his way from the drain-pipe… Illya had smiled when Napoleon had told him that, in that case, he would be blown all over the Caribbean… And had answered that ubiquity would be priceless to an agent… or something to that effect.
They had joked about it, for God's sake!
"How long before your friend starts working on the wall?" asked Marcel Rudolph, from the corner where he sat smoking a cigarette.
Napoleon glanced at his wristwatch, not because he needed to, but in some wild hope that it could be earlier than he thought… Of course it wasn't.
"Two minutes." he answered grimly.
" Oh… Pity!" Said Rudolph.
Napoleon ground his teeth against the quiet sneer in the burglar's voice.
"He'll die quickly, though…"
Rudolph waved carelessly his cigarette, a half smile playing over his lips.
Napoleon turned to face him, with murder in his eyes…
Then the time-lock clicked.
Napoleon immediately forgot about the burglar and hurried to pry the door open, almost tumbling into the vault in his desperate haste.
There was a panel there, with rows of unmarked switches… Napoleon gazed at the switches, trying to figure them out, not helped by the fact that his heart was thumping wildly in his chest.
"Not yet, Illya, not yet…" he breathed, as he pushed a first button…
Then came the explosion.
The safe room shook and the steel wall caved in.
"No!" yelled Napoleon, staring in horror at the pitch black, jagged hole in the wall.
"Oh… Pity!" came Rudolph's mocking voice from behind him…
Napoleon awoke with a start, drenched in sweat, heart in his mouth, clutching the linen… His own linen, in his own bed, in his own apartment.
With a groan, he fell back on the pillow. He was back in New York. He had been for a couple of days… They had been: he and a very alive, very unharmed Illya, with Susan in tow. And he kept having nightmares about what might have been, but for a blessedly faulty welding-torch…
Napoleon shook his head. He considered calling Illya on the communicator, just to make sure… The thought of the remarks he would get by raising the Russian from his sleep made him think better of it. And it would have been really childish, anyway.
With a sigh, Napoleon curled on his side and applied himself to go back to sleep. A dreamless sleep, if he had any say in the matter... As he drifted away, what came back to haunt him was Marcel Rudolph's smile, full of unconcern, mockery and cruel smugness… as though he had known of the time-lock, as though he had delayed their progress on purpose so that they would be too late for Illya…
Susan being the thoroughly depraved femme fatale she was, they decided to spend her last night in New York dancing 'til dawn, before seeing her to the airport. Napoleon's original plan had included only him and Susan, but he hadn't been half as annoyed as he had pretended to be when the girl had poutingly insisted that Illya too should be of the party. All the more so because it was becoming increasingly clear that "dancing 'til dawn" pretty much exhausted Susan's notion of depravity. It hadn't even irked Napoleon too much that Illya had accepted the invitation with uncharacteristic promptness and one of his calling-for-slaughter grins.
So, the three of them made the little hours at the Purple Unicorn and Susan danced and flirted alternately with both of them.
It was very late as Napoleon sat alone at their table, an absolutely absurd tumbler of Scotch and Cola in his hand, watching absentmindedly as Illya and Susan danced a rumba. He always found it amusing to watch his partner dance: the Russian combined a natural grace with an almost deliberate awkwardness of step in a way that defied every logic. Napoleon was grinning at the sight of Illya gazing in deadly earnest at a slightly tipsy and very flirtatious Susan, so pretty in the same white gown and faux pearl headband she had worn in the casino… he suddenly sobered at the thought of what might have happened under the casino, of how close he had been to never sneering at Illya's dancing again. He frowned at the memory of Rudolph slowly, oh so slowly, negotiating their way around the booby-traps in the underground corridor…
The rumba ended, and the dancers returned to their table. Napoleon rose as Susan announced that she would go powder her nose before they left, and sat down again, still frowning.
Illya joined him.
"May I ask what are you brooding about?" the Russian inquired.
"Revenge." tautly answered Napoleon.
Illya grinned.
"It is not my fault that she wanted to dance her last New York dance with me, you know…" he teased.
Napoleon smiled back and shook his head. No need to tell Illya, after all, and Susan was heading their way, ready to go and have a very early breakfast of coffee and donuts, as they had promised her, before driving to the airport.
Napoleon and Illya were in line for a cab, after seeing Susan to her plane to Minneapolis. It was surprising how many people could be wanting a cab at something past nine in the morning, and Napoleon was beginning to regret they hadn't driven to the airport in his car.
"I've heard from HQ, while you were assisting Susan with her luggage." suddenly announced Illya "It seems that THRUSH caught up with Rudolph already. I wonder…"
"You wonder what?" cut in Napoleon, with more sharpness than he had meant.
Illya shrugged.
"I wonder whether we should have offered him something in the line of protection." he mused.
Napoleon waved the notion away.
"He was no innocent, Illya." he pointed out.
Illya smiled in wry amusement.
"Hardly." he admitted "And yet… We blackmailed him into assisting us. You cannot really blame him for disliking us a little."
"Come on!" protested Napoleon "According to Mr.Waverly, he was dying to join THRUSH!"
Illya pursed his lips.
"Well, he is dead all right, now." he said " They found his body in a back alley in Nassau… That was quick, even for THRUSH."
Napoleon hailed the next cab, and they ended sharing it with two elderly Japanese ladies in kimonos who were so delighted in finding someone who spoke their language… By the time they had dropped the two ladies at the Hilton, helped them with their baggage and resumed their journey, Marcel Rudolph was out of Illya's mind. Napoleon watched him lean his head against the upholstery and rub his nose as the cab drove through the mid-morning traffic.
"I only want to sleep for a whole day…" he sighed, already nodding away.
No, there was definitely no need to tell Illya.
END
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