Six months down the road, U.N.C.L.E. had grown from Waverly's modest little team to a minor agency of its own – not with the resources of its national counterparts, perhaps, but with the advantage of easier international access. Napoleon was getting used to strangers around the headquarters and no longer saw any need for immediate introduction. Well, unless the stranger in question was a particularly beautiful woman, but that was a rare event.
Even so, the men walking past him, in their drab, grey suits, stood out in some way he couldn't explain. He looked them over, but could find no signs that they were infiltrators or in any way disingenuous, and so he continued on his way.
Halfway through the corridor, he realized the nature of the aberration. The men seemed like clerks, not spies, yet their clothing, dull as it may be, was too upscale for secretaries.
Curious, he turned back, watching them depart. He could ask, of course, or steal their identification, but headed in the other direction was one of his new colleagues, and she gave them a friendly, somewhat nervous smile that indicated she knew who they were. And so instead, he waited.
When the girl came close, he quietly called her over. They had spoken before, and he thought her name was "May", but he was nowhere near certain enough to use it.
"Hey," he said instead. "Who are those two?"
"Inter-agency investigation," she said, keeping her voice even lower than his. "Sent from Washington on orders from the US government."
He raised his eyebrows. "Has Waverly been pilfering from the funds?"
"Have you?" she shot back. "I think they're investigating a single agent, not the agency as a whole."
That was a troubling thought. At CIA, Sanders had turned a blind eye to Napoleon's activities, and Waverly had continued in that tradition, but if anyone wanted to cause trouble for him, they definitely could.
The men had entered Waverly's office now, and Napoleon positioned himself outside, winding his watch. He kept winding it so long that he lost track of what time it was supposed to say, yet failed to pick up anything more from inside than a few murmurs. Waverly's tone was displeased, that much he heard, but whether with his conversation partners or something else was impossible to tell.
Eventually, the men exited again.
"Gentlemen," Napoleon greeted them, and they gave him quick nods before proceeding on their way. Further inside, he noted, not towards the exit.
"Did you have an errand, Solo?" Waverly asked.
"Is there something going on?"
"You tell me. How's the Boldemann case?"
"Boldemann's on the flight," he replied. "We're monitoring him there and awaiting his arrival."
"Good. Then I expect you to take care of the preparations of that case, rather than concern yourself with matters above your access level."
With that, Waverly shut the door.
Napoleon's eyes narrowed. Preparations for his case could wait an hour; with a transatlantic flight in play, there was no rush. And Waverly hadn't met his eyes.
Well, when you encounter something fishy, what else to do than to go fish? Napoleon followed in the strangers' footsteps, and bit down on a smile when he saw that one of them was headed for the men's room.
Possibly, stealing from the investigators wasn't the smartest idea in the world, but old habits die hard. He went inside, bumped against his target at the sinks, and proceeded into a stall, where he could sit down on the toilet lid and read the notebook he'd acquired.
It was written in shorthand, but that wasn't a problem. He flipped past most of the pages, finding nothing of interest in them, and stopped at the latest notation.
"Kuryakin, I. Suspected paragraph 17 violation. Contacts at Julius, . Expense of 50$ concerning Boyd added to expense account."
The names told Napoleon nothing, but he dutifully copied them down among his own notes. Paragraph 17 he vaguely recognized as the morality clause, though he'd never heard of anyone being investigated for it. And Illya, of all people? Fits of rage notwithstanding, you couldn't meet a more straight-laced guy.
Figuring that the best way to appear above board was to make use of the toilet as intended, Napoleon did so, and then returned to the sinks. He washed his hands diligently until he heard the other toilet flush, and then dried them at equal length, returning the notebook to its proper owner at the opportune moment. The entire venture was surprisingly easy; the man was definitely not a spy.
Having been provided with more questions than answers, he went to search out Illya, but could find no sign of him in his office or the common areas. He went back to get his tracking devices – if he was lucky, Illya was still wearing field-ready clothes.
On the way, he passed by Gaby's door, and she called out to him: "Solo! Do you know why they're talking to Illya?"
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. "Who's talking to him? The investigators?"
"Yeah. Do you know why?"
Glancing around the room, Napoleon tapped his ear, to indicate that they were potentially bugged. In response, Gaby reached into her drawer and pulled out one of her most recent inventions, a white noise machine.
"Paragraph 17," he said after she'd turned it on.
"17? Which one is that?"
"Morality clause."
That made her frown. "Morality clause? Illya? Are they discussing you?"
"Strangely enough, it doesn't seem like it. Have you two been playing advanced sex games in Waverly's office, or something? Ropes and gags, that sort of thing?"
"Funny," she spat. "We're not even seeing each other anymore. You know that."
"Why is that, anyway? Was there something he did?"
"No, it's just..." She sighed and got a faraway look. "You know what he's like. Everything would be going fine, and then he'd shut down, push me away. I think he was scared."
"Illya Kuryakin," Napoleon said slowly, "tall as a tree, can pull off a car hood with his bare hands, never saw a problem he didn't want to punch, and you think he was scared of you?"
"Of me, of us. I don't know." She shook her head. "I'll talk to him once they're done with him."
Napoleon shrugged. "You're welcome to try."
If Gaby did find something out, she didn't tell Napoleon, and Illya wasn't very forthcoming either, once he'd left the interrogation. As Boldemann's plane approached, they made their final preparations and headed out to the airport, where the entire operation went down... all right, with a few glitches, but more or less as planned. Right after midnight, the team handed over the target and their report, and after that, Napoleon went home to crash.
In the morning, Napoleon was determined to get the truth from Illya, and pay for whatever piece of interior decoration got broken as a result, but the moment he stepped into headquarters, he was taken in for questioning.
Oh, they called it an "interview", and there were no spotlights or handcuffs, but beneath the polite veneer the sentiment was the same.
"How do you like it here at U.N.C.L.E.?" the most drab of the drab men asked, spelling out the entire acronym. The other one was taking notes and said nothing at all, not even hello.
"I like it fine," he said, leaning back against his chair. "Nice, cosy little team, new experiences – recommended workplace, for sure."
"And your partner?"
"Illya? He's great too. Reliable as anything."
"You've never felt uncomfortable around him?"
"Well," Napoleon said, drawing it out, "when we first met he took some shots at me and tried to rip my car apart, but we were working for separate agencies at the time. No hard feelings."
"And on a more personal level?"
Napoleon put both feet firmly on the ground and his elbows on the table. "Any reason I should?"
Not so much as a change in tone from the questioner. "What of his private life?"
"As far as I know, he doesn't have a private life," Napoleon said. "Very dedicated to the job, is our Illya."
"Any close relationships?"
"Apart from myself and Agent Teller, I would say not. As I said, he doesn't socialize much outside the agency. And if you've got his file, you know about his family."
"And your own personal life?"
"Is doing just fine, thank you." Having the topic at hand move on from Illya to himself seemed like the perfect time to push back without appearing hostile. "Care to tell me why you're asking?"
The clerk straightened his glasses with both hands and looked down into his file. Reading upside down, Napoleon could see it was part of Illya's official KGB file. No surprises there. "Women?"
"Was that an offer?" Napoleon asked mildly.
"You have a reputation as a ladies' man."
"On my good days," he agreed.
"What of Kuryakin? Does he have any luck with the ladies?"
"Illya's a bit more guarded," Napoleon said. "That Russian gloom, you know."
"Is that a no?"
"Would you like us to help you pick up some ladies?" Napoleon asked with mock concern. "I'm sure we could both give some pointers. On fashion, if nothing else."
A faint blush crept up over the clerk's collar, but his expression remained the same. "If you have any awareness of Agent Kuryakin's activities, we would appreciate your cooperation in telling us."
Napoleon thought of a computer disk with invaluable data, burning on a table in Rome.
"I don't," he said. "But if you have any awareness of why you're asking, I'd appreciate your cooperation in telling me."
The clerk closed his file. "That will be all for now, Agent Solo."
Leaving the room, Napoleon was, to his own surprise, fuming. It wasn't a feeling he had much experience with, but he had learned nothing in there. He would have been given more useful readings from a dead salmon. All he had to go on was words, and words didn't say enough.
With quick strides, he headed to Illya's office, and for once, his partner was actually in there. Methodically, Napoleon went through the room, finding and dismantling surveillance bugs in every corner while Illya watched, silently.
"There," Napoleon said once he was finished, and threw himself in the visitor's chair. "Now can you tell me what this investigation of you is all about? Because I've just been interrogated about your goddamned relationships with women, and I don't even know if I was helping you or hurting you because I don't know what they were getting at."
Illya didn't reply, and in the end Napoleon had to press further:
"Come on, what's going on? All I got are some names of people in a notebook, Julius and Boyd, and a payment of $50."
"There was payment?" Illya asked.
"Yeah, apparently. To whom? To what? Are they even people, or something else, code words, places..." He broke off as Illya's muscles tensed. "Places? One place, at least. What kind of a place? They were pressing on your private life, so, a brothel? A den of vice... okay, a den of vice, and you were... I swear, this is like playing charades with someone who doesn't even have the decency to move."
"I don't know how to say it," Illya admitted quietly. "I never have."
"Okay, that's something, at least," Napoleon said. "I don't know how bad it can be, I mean, you know what I get up to. And I know what... well, your rough shit. What could possibly be harder to say than that? Orgies, goats, fiddling little boys... oh my God!"
"Not little boys!" Illya said, horrified.
"Men," Napoleon said, all the bits finally snapping into place in his head. "You meet up with men. Julius – of course. Julius' restaurant. That's where you met them? That guy Boyd?"
"And some others." Illya's gaze was steady on Napoleon, but there was no challenge in it, just caution.
"Well, that makes sense. I don't know why I didn't see it earlier. I just thought you and Gaby... so what was that, just deflection?"
"I care for Gaby," Illya said, heavily. "Sometimes I do, with women. Not often, but she is special."
"She is, at that. I take it she doesn't know?"
Illya gave a helpless shrug. "I couldn't tell her. I couldn't... not."
"Instead you dumped her," Napoleon concluded. "Smooth. So it's mostly men, but on occasion a woman, like Gaby. That's fine. I'm the other way around, but I get where you're coming from."
Illya's eyes widened. "You?"
"Me. That's right. I've been there. Even if I hadn't, I wouldn't ever let you go through this alone. You saved my life, remember? And I've saved yours, and I'm not going to let it go to waste because a couple of pencil pushers don't know how to mind their own business. You may be in a bit of a pickle right now, but I've finagled my way out of bigger pickles than this every day of the week and twice on Sundays."
Very slowly, the corner of Illya's mouth quirked up. "That is good speech," he said. "Improvised and everything!"
"Asshole," Napoleon said amiably.
The half-smile hung in there for a few seconds, and then Illya sighed. "Do you have any suggestions, then, cowboy?"
"Not yet. I will, though." Possibilities were already running through Napoleon's head, most of them too far-fetched to be viable. "So will you, when you start thinking like a spy instead of a hunted animal."
"I am not a hunted animal," Illya said, throwing a warning glare in Napoleon's direction, but there was no heat in it.
"And you should tell Gaby."
All the tension was instantly back in Illya's frame. "No."
"Yes. You need to convince people you can flirt with a girl. Which you can't, but at least with Gaby you can make a decent enough show of it. We have to get the team assembled on this."
"Oh, you think she will be on the team?" Illya rose abruptly from his desk, fingers beginning to drum out a dangerous beat on his thigh. "You think she forgives me when I tell her that I have lied to her, that I am izvrashchenets. She will want to work to help me, after that?"
"Maybe not," Napoleon admitted. "But it's worth a shot. Either way, she's not going to sell you down the river."
Of course, though it would be a less convincing option by far, they did still have the option of trying to establish Illya's heterosexuality through some other means, like roping in that girl May... no, April, that was her name. Someone who didn't have any betrayed feelings to mess things up. But Napoleon wouldn't be able to trust them, the way he trusted Gaby. And though lying to her would be easy enough, the truth was, he simply didn't want to.
"If you don't know how to tell her, I can do it," he offered, well aware of the inherent blackmail.
Illya was well aware of it too. He cursed under his breath. "I will do it."
The rest of the day was mostly spent rubbing shoulders with suspected gun smugglers. Illya had been placed on temporary suspension from active cases, which meant it was just Napoleon and Gaby. Judging by her effortless performance in her bartender role, she had as of yet been told nothing, though it was clear that she wondered. Well, it was a conversation ill suited for their current whereabouts, and so he figured he could give Illya a little more time to step up before he did it himself.
Once they wrapped up, Napoleon noticed that Illya was waiting to take her home and so it wasn't entirely a surprise when both of them appeared on his doorstep an hour later. Gaby's eyes were red-rimmed, and Illya's jaw clenched tight, but they were both calm. Like funeral goers, Napoleon thought, and let them in.
"Welcome," he said. "I take it we're all on the same page?"
"I think so," Gaby said, closing the door behind her.
She made a quick gesture with her finger towards the ceiling and raised her eyebrows – alone? Napoleon nodded. He'd fixed the surveillance ages ago.
"I'm his alibi, right?" she continued. "Proving that he likes women. Making it obvious in some way that skirts against the rules about agents dating, without quite crossing it."
There was a tinge of bitterness in her voice, and Illya looked away.
This was going to require alcohol. Napoleon beckoned them further into the apartment, so he could fix up a drink while he spoke. "And are you okay with that?"
"We'll manage," she said.
Her fingers curled slightly towards Illya, as if she was resisting an urge to take his hand. That she wanted to, at least, was a good sign.
Napoleon poured her a scotch, and then another for Illya, who declined.
"It will not be enough," Illya said morosely, crossing his arms. "They have names. They will think it's a ruse."
"Which brings me to the next part," Napoleon said. "Pardon me for asking, but how much did you care for that guy Boyd?"
Illya's eyes flicked, very quickly, towards Gaby. "He was just... some man."
"Good," Napoleon said. "Because we're going to discredit the hell out of him."
If he'd had any worries that Illya was only downplaying those trysts for Gaby's benefit, those worries dissipated by the wide wolf grin that spread over his friend's face.
"I would be happy to. You have ideas?"
Napoleon took a sip out of the drink he'd poured for Illya. "Plenty."
Most of which, it turned out, got nixed by the others. His first suggestion was that they should frame the guy as a KGB agent looking to take down their former colleague, but as Illya pointed out, Boyd wasn't Russian."
"KGB sometimes employs locals," Napoleon said.
"Yes, and you can usually tell what ones," Illya countered. "It's easier for him to prove innocence than for you to prove guilt."
"All right, he's a mobster."
"What would a mobster do with me? What would I do with a mobster? We have not been working mob cases."
"Fine, you tell me when you saw him, I'll tie him to a case."
Gaby's expression turned into a careful blank.
"Last time three weeks back," Illya said after a moment's pause. "And one time a month before that. We were working... huh. Both times we were..."
"Working THRUSH cases," Napoleon said. "Not so strange, we've been doing a lot of THRUSH cases lately. So we put his name in the files, plant some evidence to make it seem like he's a THRUSH agent and we just couldn't get the proof before.
"Not agent," Illya said. "Errand boy. Low enough to get him off with slap on the wrist, but enough to make him seem like a liar."
"Right! That gives a motive quite apart from that bribe he took. He'd started to suspect you were an agent – you did have the sense to use a false name, I hope! Because it's one thing if we say Boyd unveiled one of your covers and another entirely if your whole identity is down the drain."
"I did, yes."
"Okay, we should be able to pull this off no problem, then."
"And commit some actual crimes to cover up the misdemeanor," Gaby said in a false chipper voice.
That stopped them both for a while. Napoleon didn't care one whit if this was legal or not, but he wasn't about to do anything without Illya's approval, which in turn seemed to depend on Gaby's.
"I'm sorry," Illya said, hand briefly touching Gaby's arm before he let it fall back down, heavily. "I shouldn't have got you into this."
"That, I don't have a problem with," she said and drained her drink. "Because this is bullshit. You know that, right? Why would the US Government care who you take to bed? They want you out because you're KGB, and they can't get you on that. They can't get you on your other mental issues either, because they're an asset to the agency. But this petty nonsense they can get you for."
"'Other' mental issues?" Napoleon asked pointedly. "Is that what you consider this?"
Illya shifted on his feet, and Gaby looked first puzzled, then sad.
"You are who you are," she said, attention wholly on Illya now. "No matter how it happened, I know it can't change. I wouldn't want you to change."
"Thank you," Illya said, with a tenderness that made his gigantic form seem like a big ol' sheepdog.
Napoleon got ready to excuse himself and head into the kitchen, in case they needed their privacy, but just then, Gaby's jaw set again.
"But you lied to me for six months, Illya Nikolaievich Kuryakin! You would rather go off with strangers than tell me the truth – strangers who sold you out, even. You may not be able to help your desires, but you can help being ein dummes Arschgesicht!"
"You are right," Illya said, his eyes softening in a way that tugged at even Napoleon's shriveled heart. "I'm sorry. I should have told you."
They were face to face now and inches apart, hands brushing each other, and Napoleon began his retreat.
"You, get back here," Gaby said without even turning to look at him. "We're going to nail that bastard. You'll plant the THRUSH connections?"
"Sure thing," Napoleon said. "Illya, will you help me get a disguise that'll help me get close to him?"
"Yes," Illya said, his eyes still on Gaby.
"I'll fix the files," Gaby said. "And try to act like I'm not mad at you. Might be a chore."
Illya smiled softly. "We did it before."
The disguise Napoleon had to take on seemed taken from the lower-scale end of Illya's closet. The dark slacks weren't too bad, though the keychain hanging from the left side of his belt marred the sight. He supposed with the mission at hand, he had to make allowance for the codes of homosexual subculture over personal aesthetics, though he'd always found it ridiculous to state such a rigid set of preferences about who got to be on top. The suede jacket, however, had no such excuse, and the turtleneck was even worse. It itched against his skin almost as badly as the long bangs of his ridiculous wig.
He tried the ensemble on at home, and once he was done wincing at the mirror, changed back and packed it into a suitcase. The regular detours through subway lines, random alleyways, movie theaters and late-hour department stores took care of any followers he might have had, until he once again put on the disguise in a hotel room and went to work.
Alex Boyd turned out to be quite young and handsome, like a buffed-up Alain Delon, which was a perk when trying to get close to him. Planting a few encrypted notes in his pockets went quickly enough, and that was really all the contact necessary; they already had the guy's home address and could easily break in. Still, Napoleon was curious to know what could have made Illya go for this guy, who was good looking, sure, but also a self-absorbed bore. Lots of alcohol, he presumed, but just in case there was more to it than that, he intensified his flirting. In the end, he ended up in the apartment the old-fashioned way, with the homeowner on his arm – and soon enough on more than that. To his surprise, Boyd was remarkably authoritative, more for giving orders than taking them, even lying face-down in bed.
It wasn't exactly a romance and roses kind of deal, and Napoleon had to take care not to rumple his wig, so the whole thing took no more than half an hour, including the time spent planting more incriminating evidence in Boyd's home.
Less than an hour after he'd left, he strolled into headquarters and asked Gaby, "All set?"
"Yeah," she said. "How do we get them to look at the files?"
"Better not come from us," he said, and called, "Hey, April!"
And so, April, seemingly of her own accord, informed Waverly that the investigators had asked for all of Agent Kuryakin's case files for the past three months. Meanwhile Gaby slipped off to canoodle with Illya somewhere secluded, yet within the daily path of some of the office gossips. And Napoleon sat back to wait.
He didn't hear back from the others, but two hours later, he was called into Waverly's office.
Waverly sat back and did his best disapproving principal impression – which was one of the top three that Napoleon had seen in his lifetime.
"We have been reviewing some old THRUSH cases," he said. "It seems there is a name in there that I don't recall ever seeing before."
"Memory can be tricky that way," said Napoleon noncommittally.
"It can be," Waverly said, "but it's not."
He bore his gaze into Napoleon, who remained mum. If there was one surefire way to incriminate yourself, it was by opening your mouth when it wasn't necessary.
"I can't say I'm pleased with your conduct during this investigation," Waverly said. He sighed. "Then again, I'm not pleased with this investigation."
"No, sir," Napoleon said, carefully keeping the smile out of his face.
"I've sent Agents Kuryakin and Teller on separate assignments for the day. They seem to have come dangerously close to fraternizing."
"You don't say?"
"Solo – stop meddling. I can't afford to lose all three of you."
Napoleon contemplated making some grand gesture, declaring that if Illya was kicked of the team, he'd go as well. But the truth was, he couldn't. U.N.C.L.E. had taken over his contract after the CIA, but there were still more than four years left before he was his own man. And while Gaby wasn't in the same kind of servitude, she needed her work visa to stay in the States. Unemployed, she'd be sent straight back to East Germany.
"Agent Dancer is going to Tokyo this evening on a yakuza case," Waverly said. "I want you to assist her on it. Put your Japanese to use."
"Sir..."
"That's an order, Solo."
