A stir swept like a breeze through headquarters as the rumour took hold.
"The Russian is coming back! Kuryakin! It's true, have you heard? They reckon he'll be here sometime today!"
As Napoleon Solo stared mutely through the cabin window at the blanket of cloud below, he reflected that this day had been a long time in coming. A year ago, almost to the day, his partner Illya had disappeared, vanished. Snatched by assailants just one block away from the UNCLE building, sent by his CEA on an errand to pick up some flowers and doughnuts for an impromptu office `do', a small party to say goodbye to UNCLE's favourite nurse, Naomie Watkins who was leaving to have a baby.
For a year, Napoleon had had to try to comfort and reassure his partner's adoptive daughter, Katiya, that her papa would eventually be coming home, even while desperate for reassurance himself.
At first, there had been no clue to the Russian's whereabouts at all. No whispers from THRUSH, who after all, would have sung the news from the mountaintops if they had secured him as their bounty.
Desperate times had called for desperate measures. Whilst Alexander Waverly felt himself behoved to impart the news to the Soviet Navy that their UNCLE export had vanished without trace, Napoleon took his appeal in a completely different direction.
He appealed for information to Angelique. At first, she was maddeningly smug about the Russian agent's disappearance; but eventually, seeing how intent her sometimes lover was for information, she recognized an opportunity to gain the upper hand; if only she could find out something.
"Don't you UNCLE types have operatives everywhere?"
"Yes, but then so does THRUSH, and…"
She had kissed the tip of his nose.
"Very well Mister Solo, I'll see what I can dredge up for you. Unless he's fallen into a hole somewhere, someone knows something. But if I find anything, it will cost you."
Napoleon, despite his unease at deliberately putting himself in Angelique's debt, was anxious enough to agree without hesitation.
Six weeks later, Waverly had received no confirmed sightings from anyone, and only grief from the Russian navy at losing their man. No one else had heard anything either. Angelique had slipped a note under Solo's door in the dead of night, which he found the next morning.
"Illya is in the hands of the KGB, being held in a detention camp in Siberia. This information comes from our THRUSH agent in Moscow. No chance of getting him back. Best to forget him. I'll be in touch when I am ready to collect. This one will cost you dear."
This time, Waverly had had to be extremely forceful in ordering Napoleon to hold off and leave Illya's extraction to those properly assigned.
"You are too well known to the Soviets as Kuryakin's partner. Your appearance would put him in greater jeopardy. Besides, we should give his own commanders the chance to make the first move in getting him out."
To say that the Russian Naval Commander was skeptical when given the news was an understatement, but once he had been convinced, his fury was palpable. He hung up on Waverly without even officially terminating the connection.
Thereafter, Solo and the rest of the staff of the New York had spent an agonizing nine months without news. Still nothing on the THRUSH airwaves, which gave added credence to Angelique's information. The Russian Naval Commander had finally contacted Waverly to say that all diplomatic avenues had been tried and had failed. The UNCLE office in Moscow was officially out of bounds to the KGB under international law, and Kuryakin was therefore regarded as their only link to gaining vital strategic and international information.
"If you want him back Mister Waverly, you will have to find a way to do it yourself. He's been in their hands for almost ten months now though, sir. If he's still alive, there won't be much of him left if you don't hurry."
And so the game-plan that Waverly and Solo had worked out months earlier was put into action. Solo was banned from taking an active part himself, and was relegated to the waiting game. Selected agents from Rome, Geneva and London joined forces to put Waverly and Solo's plan into action.
A game-plan involving dangerous undercover work to infiltrate the KGB Siberian base, and search for their missing colleague.
Waverly and Napoleon had been informed by their office in Geneva that Kuryakin had been discovered in a damp cell, chained to the wall with chains on his wrists and ankles and a large metal collar around his neck that was itself clamped to the wall. He had clearly been severely neglected and badly abused during his incarceration, and had been barely aware as he was finally freed, cleaned up and taken away in the waiting truck to the hidden plane.
Napoleon had been about to dash off to Geneva to catch up with his partner when he was required to stay and deal with a serious THRUSH plot back in the States. He was in an agony to see for himself that his partner was alright. The Geneva medical team had reported that aside from constant severe beatings, dehydration and malnutrition, physically Kuryakin was in reasonable shape considering the hell he had been through for a year, but Napoleon was not prepared to believe that his best friend was `fine' until he could see for himself.
Waverly sent an UNCLE plane to collect the Russian and bring him home, and Napoleon made sure that he was on it.
He was momentarily stunned by his first sight of his friend.
Illya's usually bright blond hair had faded and darkened to an unhealthy yellow colour, his cheeks were pinched, his blue eyes looked slightly haunted. His clothes hung from his frame as though they had been made for a much larger man; the clothes he had been wearing a year ago when he was abducted. His eyes ranged round the spacious cabin of the plane and stopped at the sight of his friend.
"Illya."
Illya had spent months dreaming of this moment.
"'Polyon."
"Drink?"
"No milk. Had enough milk."
His English was rusty. He'd not had chance to speak it or even think it for so long. He caught his partner's encouraging smile. Napoleon spoke in slightly halting Russian.
"You will be fine, my friend. I have two things for you that will help you to heal."
"What?" Illya replied in English.
"First, a large glass of vodka."
"Good." He took the glass and took a long swig. "What about rest of bottle?"
"I'm saving it for you for later."
"What else do you have for me?"
"I have someone here who has been waiting a year to see you."
Napoleon opened the door at the other end of the cabin and beckoned. A little girl, around eight years old poked her head round the door from the flight deck and her eyes opened wide.
"Uncle Napoleon, is my papa really here?"
"Go on, little one."
Napoleon watched, just for a moment, as the little girl rushed headlong into the arms of the father she had been waiting for, for almost a year. As Illya looked up and saw the child running towards him, the little knot of courage in his heart that had kept him going for so long, his love for his little Katiya, exploded. His face flushed, and tears sprang to his eyes.
"Papa!"
"Katiya!"
Napoleon withdrew to the flight deck with the pilot, just for a few minutes, to give father and daughter some privacy.
It would take a little while, but with the help of his friends, and his family, Illya would be all right.