Act I: The devil is in the details
Evening…
"Still nothing substantial to report, Mr. Kuryakin?" questioned Alexander Waverly in a tone that left no doubt he was less than pleased with his operative's reports thus far.
Illya Kuryakin momentarily bit his bottom lip to keep from making too short a retort in response to the Continental Chief's accusatory query. He and his makeshift partner had been searching these less-than-hospitable rugged reaches of Czechoslovakia during every hour of available daylight for two long days. Now evening again closed in around them without the setting sun marking any achievement of success in their current quest. He was tired, he was cold, and the tent in which they were encamped offered extremely little in the way of creature comforts. Even the food wasn't as plentiful as he could have wished.
"Unfortunately not, sir," Illya answered into the mike of the shortwave radio over which he was currently communicating with his superior. "We still have reason to believe that the Thrush base is hidden somewhere in these mountains. Yet the cave systems are extensive, and—"
"I am aware of that, Mr. Kuryakin," interrupted Waverly abruptly. "However, I am also aware that time may not be on our side."
"Sir, I realize there are undoubtedly valid security reasons why you didn't provide all specifics when you assigned myself and Mr. Steffensen to this task," Illya adeptly prefaced his next informational request, a request that could perhaps be viewed as bordering on insubordination. "However, I do think it important for us to have a heads-up regarding whatever Thrush may be working on in this satrapy."
Hell, a heads-up? Illya at this moment would settle for a charades-like hint. All he and Steffensen had been told was: "Locate the local Thrush den in Czechoslovakia, and do it pronto." Sometimes it did seem to Illya as if Mr. Waverly kept the finer points of U.N.C.L.E.'s undertakings a bit too close to the vest.
"There is no physical project housed within this Thrush unit. Or at least none of which we have current knowledge. There was a proposal of one, but that failed to come to even marginal fruition," the Old Man finally delivered details to his agents. "Thus the agenda for this particular satrapy during the present timeframe is apparently different."
"In what way?" Illya found himself bluntly demanding.
There was a silence of long seconds, countable to fully eighteen or twenty, before Waverly next spoke.
"We originally received intelligence that the Czechoslovakian section of Thrush might be testing a means to cause flooding in underground cave systems, enough to destabilize large masses of land. So I dispatched Mr. Solo to investigate that possibility a week ago."
"While I was still on assignment in Madrid."
"Indeed. Unfortunate set of coincidences there. Though in the end perhaps not so coincidental."
"Excuse me, sir? I'm afraid I don't understand," Illya openly voiced his confusion.
Again a silence of countable seconds before Waverly spoke again.
"We now have reason to believe our received intelligence was nothing more than a clever ruse propagated by giving purposeful notification of a since outdated and shutdown scientific enterprise."
"To what purpose?"
"To bring Mr. Solo within ready reach of the operatives of this well-hidden Thrush satrapy."
Illya glanced over at his partner for this mission, the rather high-strung Tage Steffensen, and noted the other man was nibbling on one of his cuticles as he listened somewhat bug-eyed to Waverly's words. Though an agent with an above-average record in the field, the big Swede certainly had none of Napoleon's self-ease and composure.
"Mr. Solo is a feared enemy operative to be sure, sir, one Thrush would dearly love to put permanently out of commission," admitted Illya. "Yet why go to such particular trouble at this time?"
Waverly harrumphed noisily, the sound rumbling roughly over the airwaves. "It is possible," he began. "No, it is likely," he purposely corrected himself, "Thrush intercepted a communiqué that enticed them into this pointed action."
"What could possibly—" Illya himself began, and then fell silent. He knew, of course he knew. Waverly had sent a message through supposedly secure communication channels to the other Continental Chiefs forwarding Napoleon as his own eventual successor. It was something that had been broached with Solo by the Old Man quite a few months back, but Solo had only recently provided his superior his final agreement to the plan. With that done, it had become imperative the other chiefs be advised as soon as possible and allowed to voice their opinions on the decision. "Oh, I see," Illya thus commented in complete comprehension.
"What, Illya, what?" anxiously required Tage. "What's going on?"
"Later, Tage." Illya cupped his hand over the microphone as he put off the other man's plea to be brought out of the dark. "I'll explain what I can later."
"I'm glad you seem to have gotten the full drift of the issue, Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly conceded with unmistakable gravity.
"Yes sir."
"Mr. Solo's last contact was four days ago," Waverly provided this necessary fact. "At that time he believed he had located the satrapy and advised that he would be out of transmission range as he ventured into the Carpathians to verify his hunch. We uncovered the unreliability of our initial information but a few hours later, but were unable to regain communication to apprise him to abort the mission."
"So we now more than suspect that Napoleon is in the hands of Thrush. That is, if they haven't killed him already."
"In such a situation—"
Now it was Illya who interrupted. "Indeed sir. Killing him would be the last stroke, not the first."
"Nor even the second stroke," furthered Waverly. "Whatever plans Thrush ultimately has for Mr. Solo, they do need to be thwarted, Mr. Kuryakin. Not merely for his sake, but for that of the organization as a whole. Currently we remain in danger simply because we have no consistent handle on their full intent."
"We'll find him, sir," pledged Illya certainly. For he had absolutely no intention of letting Thrush make some foul use of his friend simply because of a position he had been recommended to one day attain.
"Stand back, Solo, well back!" commanded Budek through the iron bars that sectioned off a portion of this underground cave to serve as a cell. Jahoda's demand of course was punctuated with the business end of a Thrush rifle sited through those bars directly at Napoleon's midsection.
Having already been thoroughly roughed up before his incarceration in this prison, Solo considered it the better part of valor to heed the Slav's instructions and stay alert for any opportunity that might come as a result. Raising his shackled hands palms up in a gesture of submission, Napoleon shuffled his equally shackled feet backwards till he stood at the end of the natural stone enclosure furthest from the door. The iron grate then was swung open and two underling guards, also brandishing distinctive Thrush rifles, slammed Napoleon back against the far wall and held him there, the barrel of one's gun shoved forcefully into his chest and the barrel of the other's shoved even more forcefully into his stomach.
Budek entered behind them. After seeing that the U.N.C.L.E. agent was for the moment firmly under the control of his subordinates, he nodded his head toward the door. A girl of perhaps fifteen or maybe sixteen but surely no more entered the lockup between two more armed guards. Yet they didn't hold her and she wasn't struggling. She simply walked between them resignedly, her face a mask of perfect calm.
"Though I know U.N.C.L.E. likes to claim Thrush has no knowledge of the boundaries of justice, we do indeed conform to a certain organizational code. And we make examples, Solo, of those of our own who pointedly break that code. We thought an U.N.C.L.E. man would enjoy firsthand observation of Thrush's form of self-administered justice. Something to ease your boredom," Jahoda spat out contemptuously, "while we wait upon the arrival of those of the Council who would personally chat with you."
With that, Budek nodded once more toward the door and another man, this one in a white lab coat, made an entrance. He was unarmed… except for a hypodermic needle he held in one hand with a small bottle of some solution in the other.
"We ready then?" the white-coated man questioned Jahoda once he had filled the syringe from the bottle.
"Do it and do it quickly," advised the Slav. "Keeping Solo contained is a count-your-luck-by-seconds thing."
The tech nodded shortly, turned and efficiently stabbed the girl in the right arm. She didn't even flinch.
"Hey, what are you doing?" demanded Napoleon as he recklessly pushed through the guns of the Thrush muscle restraining him and propelled his body, despite his shackled ankles, toward the girl.
Budek brought the butt of his own rifle down sharply across the nape of Solo's neck, felling him to the ground in a single blow. He then pressed the barrel of his weapon directly against the back of Napoleon's head. "All in the name of justice, Solo," he declared with a half-laugh.
Jahoda kept his gun firmly anchored against Napoleon's skull as he signaled the other men to leave the premises ahead of him. Seeing stars from the heavy bash to his neck, Napoleon was inopportunely in no condition to tackle Budek before the Slav made his own exit from the cell, the heavy iron-barred door being swung firmly shut behind him.
"You all right?"
As she spoke, Napoleon looked up into the face of the girl who was now kneeling beside him. He smiled crookedly. "I've survived worst."
"So I've heard tell," she countered.
"What was all that about?" he then asked her straightforwardly.
The girl shrugged. "Life as it is for me."
"What kind of life is that? Who are you anyway?"
"My name is Klara: Klara Jablonska.
Napoleon swallowed convulsively. "Clara? Your name is Clara?"
"Yes, but with the Slavic pronunciation. Bit different emphasis on the first syllable. In English you would spell it with a K instead of a C, I believe. I'm Polish, you see."
"I thought I detected a bit of an Eastern European accent to your otherwise excellent English," Napoleon commented in an attempt to keep his voice clear of the emotion that had unexpectedly overwhelmed him upon hearing that this girl shared the name of his one-time great love.
"And, in Czechoslovakia, you expected to find North Americans instead of East Europeans?" challenged the girl.
Napoleon gave her an amused smile as he awkwardly pulled himself into a seated position from his previous one flat on his stomach. "I guess I expected to find only Czechs and Slovaks," he teased.
That elicited a bit of a sheepish grin from the girl. "Touché. Or, as we say in Polish: Dotykać!"
"Łaskawie uznała," responded Napoleon, his accent far from perfect but not too patently awful.
{Translation: Graciously acknowledged.}
"You speak polski?" inquired Klara in some surprise.
"Unfortunately only a few phrases my partner taught me," Napoleon conceded. "He's Russian."
Klara crinkled her nose in distaste. "Bah! I have no use for Russians."
"And what about U.N.C.L.E. agents?" Solo asked with a tilt of his head. His curiosity had been piqued by his captor's comments regarding this girl being dealt a form of Thrush organizational justice with that injection. "You have a use for them?"
"I am completely Thrush in my beliefs, if that is what you are asking."
"That's what I was asking. I suppose you were put in this cell with me to some undermining purpose then?"
Once more Klara shrugged. "I am here because I did something of which the Council did not approve."
"Why don't you tell me what that was? If the Council didn't approve, I most likely will."
"I sincerely doubt that," Klara pledged with an odd smirk.
"Why don't you try me?" pressed Napoleon.
Klara looked him straight in the eye as she declared with surprising ease and without an iota of regret, "I killed my father."
Napoleon cleared his throat a bit uncomfortably. Such a no-frills revelation was certainly not what he had expected. "There was a reason I presume?" he subsequently asked, wanting full facts before he drew any hasty conclusions.
"Of course there was a reason. He had failed Thrush."
"What?" The stunned Napoleon couldn't hide his initial shock at such an uncompromising answer.
"He was the aquifer specialist in charge of Thrush's groundwater incursion project here. His efforts in this regard were rather spectacularly unsuccessful. He had been given years to accomplish what was needed, yet his results were in the main unproductive."
"And for that I'm sure the Thrush hierarchy tagged him for extermination, perhaps not in a humane manner. So you decided to make less miserable his inevitable end."
"What a poetic scenario you paint," Klara mock-complimented him as she sat back on her haunches. "Only someone with U.N.C.L.E.'s ideals seeded deep in the very neuron network of his brain would make of my barefaced assertion such a quixotic possibility."
Napoleon instinctively hunched and unhunched his shoulders in an attempt to physically relieve the mental and emotional tension that was building in him at this girl's arbitrarily bizarre admissions and intensely cool attitude in making them.
"Tilting at windmills is my specialty," he gibed somewhat awkwardly. "So what's the actual scenario?" Solo then inquired with as much detachment as he could himself muster.
"He failed Thrush; yet the Council was willing to give him a second chance. I knew that was a mistake, knew that he hadn't the internal discipline to achieve what they wanted. And I knew what was unquestionably required was punishment for his abject failure. So I doctored his food one night with a heavy sleeping potion and subsequently shot him as he lay in drugged unconsciousness."
Napoleon's jaw reflexively dropped in a soundless "oh" of stunned amazement. He simply couldn't find words adequate to express his reaction.
"Yet realize there is still humanity in me," forwarded the girl. "Thus I insured it was all quick and clean: one precise bullet to the right temple. I didn't see any point in making him suffer unnecessarily."
"Very…" Napoleon stumbled as his mind tried to capture an appropriate word.
"Charitable?" proposed Klara. "Generous? Considerate?"
"I was thinking more unemotional," responded Napoleon as neutrally as possible.
"Emotion clouds judgment; thus it should have no place in difficult decisions."
"I disagree, as emotion is what in the end accounts us as fully human."
Klara shrugged: a seemingly habitual gesture with her. "Then account me as inhuman, if it satisfies some inner moral principle in you to do so. The opinion of one knotted Gordian-like within the apron strings of U.N.C.L.E. matters not to me."
"What was in that syringe?" Solo avoided further venturing into the previous sensitive subject and instead inquired into a topic more plain fact-driven.
"A slow-acting poison," stated Klara without a qualm. "Eventually it will kill me, but not at once, and not with that single dose."
"So Thrush intends to draw out your death? Nothing quick and clean?"
The habitual shrug. "It is justice."
"I would more readily call it torture," hedged Napoleon.
"Because you are U.N.C.L.E. and therefore do not understand."
"I would hope the reason is more that I am human and therefore do not understand."
"Perceive it as you wish."
"So they will have to give you more injections? To complete their… justice?" Napoleon again backed away from one confrontational topic, though likely stepping smack-dab into another.
"Yes. Three more. Six hours between each."
"Twenty-hour hours to live then?"
"Such is the expanse of life planned for me, yes."
"Yet plans don't always go to plan, do they?"
Klara shrugged. "There is always an element of unpredictability in life… and death."
Napoleon found he could not disagree with that sentiment, even when expressed by one of Thrush.