There was a dark side to Illya Kuryakin, one that he let no one ever see, not even Napoleon.

While a young man being trained for work in Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye, otherwise known as GRU the Soviet Intelligence Service, Illya Kuryakin like other agents, had been subjected to psychological conditioning that would bring out a more violent side in them.

The Kremlin wanted their operatives to be not only killers but ones who would never hesitate to dispatch their target whether it be a man, woman or child.

Illya had managed to sublimate that training, even when he'd been put to the the test, having been sent to assassinate Nicholaí Alexandrov. The man was one he knew from his early training days; he was told Nicholaí was planning to defect and that was all Kuryakin needed to know.

Illya discovered the truth and tried to save Alexandrov as well as his wife and child. He failed in that attempt, thanks in part to interference from KGB. Illya saw to eliminating those agents, and in the end made it look as if his assignment to kill Alexandrov was a success. *

It was eventually suspected by his Soviet masters that the special training had failed with Kuryakin. That knowledge bacame part of their decision making process in offering him up as a sacrificial lamb to the U.N.C.L.E... that and Illya's connection to Viktor Karkoff who had dropped out of favor in part due to his former protegé... Illya Kuryakin, who nearly caused an international incident during his further training in Paris. **

Illya's former superior at GRU Colonel-General Korabelnikov Vladimirovich, the Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate and his assistant Captain Borislav Nikitin, both thought their young offering to UNCLE would be dead within a year.

It was of no concern as the deal made with Alexander Waverly...intelligence in exchange for a Russian representative to the Command, would remain intact with the death of Kuryakin; they had to merely send another expendable replacement. To them it was a win/win situation.

And now that dark side, that training which was a part of Illya's hard hearted coldness was finally rearing its ugly head and he didn't care, not this time.

He sat in an oversized high back Georgian leather wing chair, with his leg draped over one of the arms, seemingly relaxed.

In his right hand was a Soviet made Makarov pistol instead of his UNCLE Special, which he was aiming at the only other person in the room, a man named Albert Brun.

That man had once been a lieutenant in the German army during the war, stationed at the concentration camp outside of Kyiv called Sryets.

He'd been responsible for collecting the children of the city, the street orphans known as bespriorzi.

Illya was among dozens of them had been brought to the camp and slowly starved while being worked to death sorting through the endless belongings of prisoners who'd be executed within days of their arrival via train.

The extermination vans, all three of them, were kept busy day and night, with the bodies disposed of at the nearby ravine.

And now how many years later, Kuryakin had stumbled upon Albert Brun completely by accident in West Berlin while at one of the local markets. He was picking up a few things as he was having dinner with an employee from headquarters.

He'd developed a friendship with Gerta Schmidt, an older woman who worked in the records section. She treated Illya like family, as she'd lost her own son in the war. He'd been taken to a munitions factory as they needed the small hands of children to polish the shell casings. The factory was destroyed by an allied bombing.

When Kuryakin was in town between assignments Gerta would make a nice home cooked meal for him. Apparently her blond son would have been the same age as Illya had he lived.

Illya had purchased a box of chocolates for her, a bottle of red wine for dinner and had walked into a small shoppe to pick up a bouquet of flowers when he spotted a face he hadn't seen since the camp.

He knew Brun immediately though his hair was a bit grey and he was heavier...even though Illya's memories of him were that of a ten year old boy, they still were crystal clear.

And now here the Russian was with his gun trained on the man responsible for the deaths of so many children Illya had once managed to save and protect during the harsh Kyivan winter.

He taught them how to find food, shelter, showed them how to defend themselves against the packs of wild dogs that hunted anything amidst the ruins of the city.

They were all dead now, none of them survived thanks to Albert Brun.

"Please don't kill me? "Albert begged. "I was only following orders. I had nothing against the people of Ukraine." The man had no recollection of Kuryakin at all, all the faces of those children were the same to him.

"Ahhh, but the Jews were another thing or perhaps I should say, nothing to you? How many times have I heard the excuse of 'I was only following orders' from pigs like you?" Illya hissed. He raised a glass to his lips, a drink of red wine from the now half empty bottle.

Illya had missed his dinner with Frau Gerta but this was more pressing. He would to apologize to her later, after the fact. She knew agents were called away last minute and never asked why.

"Turn me in if you like. Take me to the Hague for trial but please don't shoot me? I have a wife and children. They are innocent and know nothing of my past," Brun begged. In reality he knew that in the west trials were less brutal than in the Soviet Union. There had been acquittals and light prison sentences; some of the more notorious SS camp members were who the allies were after. Brun felt he didn't fit into that category. He never directly killed any of his young charges.

"How many innocent children did you work to death in the camp, how many wives and mothers did you send away in the vans?" Illya barked. There was a voice inside his head, amorphous and unrecognizable. It kept saying the word 'kill' to him over and over.

Kuryakin knew what it was; the training he'd been given back in the Soviet Union was calling to him, the training he fought against almost every day of his adult life.

Brun was correct. He should be taken in and turned over for trial in the Hague, it was the right thing to do. Illya should ignore the voice in his head.

"Kill!"

"Nyet!" He blurted out while massaging his left temple with his finger tips.

No, it wasn't the training, it was his conscience.

"For the children…" he said.

There was a muffled bang, and the body of Albert Brun dropped lifeless to the floor in the man's own office; a crimson stain spread out across the beige carpet..

Kuryakin let go a deep sigh, what he'd done was wrong but it was so right. He'd gotten retribution for the lost souls who haunted his dreams to this day...perhaps they would no longer visit him now that he'd done this for them,

Illya dismantled the Makarov and as he left Brun's flower shop, he disposed of the pieces. Some were tossed down a few sewer drains, some in trash bins.

He disappeared into the night, unseen with the near empty bottle of wine tucked under one arm and the box of chocolates under the other. The glass he'd been drinking from was shoved into his pocket.

He was invisible now, something he'd always been good at ever since his father had told him to do so many years ago during the war. * It was a talent that helped him survive those years, and would continue to serve him.

This wasn't the first Nazi he'd killed, nor would it most likely be the last. He was aware of those who were hunting down war criminals and more power to them, he thought.

Albert Brun was a minor player from a camp in the Ukraine associated with the ravine at Babi Yar, where thousands of Jews were executed in just one day. It was something the Soviet government was refusing to acknowledge; Illya doubted the Nazi hunters could do much about it until that happened.

He was sure those hunters not have minded what he'd done today, though no one living but he would ever know he'd done the deed… not even Napoleon.

.

* ref to "The Test"

** ref to " First Kill

*** ref to "Beginnings"