Act III: Dancing with the devil

Morning…

When he first heard it Tage Steffensen was sitting before the shortwave radio console receiving from Section IV in New York HQ standard mapping information on another area of the Carpathian Mountains. However he couldn't be sure exactly what it was he heard. After all, daybreak was just showing its first flush on the horizon and thus he was still rather sleepy. And what he heard was no more than a quick background hiss that was just as quickly gone. Yet he doubted it was merely standard radio interference.

That hiss lasted no more than a second. So he let the report from Section IV continue. And then there it was again: the same low-frequency hiss.

Tage cut off the mike. "Illya," he then called to his temporary partner, "come listen to this."

Obligingly Kuryakin came and stood beside the other man's chair as they both listened intently. It took a moment or two, but then the hiss came again – barely audible yet distinctive as separate from generic static.

"Our transmissions are being tapped," Illya confirmed Tage's suspicion.

Steffensen made to completely cut off contact with HQ when Illya laid a hand over his to halt this standard reaction.

The two agents were about to begin the third day of their search and still they had not located the local Thrush hideout. They suspected the entrance was somewhere in the underground cave systems, but that labyrinth was seemingly endless. Eventually, if they continued their current trial-and-error method of spelunking into every major and minor cavern that presented a reasonable possibility, they would likely locate their target. But, as Waverly had stated, time might not be on their side. What they needed was a bit of guidance to focus their efforts in the right area. And that guidance might just have quite miraculously come their way from an enemy source.

"This is only a routine transmission. Nothing classified," Kuryakin noted matter-of-factly. "Let the frequency stay unchanged for now, Tage."

"Let Thrush monitor?" Tage questioned dubiously as he again nibbled at a cuticle.

Illya nodded. "Because if they are monitoring, we can trace the source. And that might give us some coordinates to aid in targeting the satrapy location."

"The birds will catch on before we can manage that," protested Steffensen.

"Not necessarily," insinuated the Russian.

"It's risky, Illya. We've be giving them a handle on our location as well."

"Of course it is risky," conceded Illya perhaps a bit impatiently.

"And it could be a trap you know," Tage ventured. "Like the one they laid for Napoleon."

"It could," Kuryakin admitted.

Still it was a risk he was willing to take and on this mission he was, after all, the senior agent. Such decisions were his, and he wasn't going to ignore a possible chance to rescue Napoleon. He simply couldn't.

"My orders, Tage: we do this."

Biting the cuticle on his right index finger for another moment in consternation, Steffensen finally nodded his nervous acceptance of the tactic. He didn't like it, but Illya did have seniority.

Kuryakin pulled a stool up beside the other man's chair where it was set before the console. He then nodded for Tage to reactivate the mike and continue requesting general information from Section IV as he himself set about working with specialized dials and switches auxiliary to the radio unit in an attempt to track the trackers.


"It's U.N.C.L.E., isn't it?" questioned the intently listening Daiya as she sat beside her mother before the main communications console in the Thrush Czechoslovakian satrapy.

"Very likely," Madzeija kept her answer ambivalent. She really couldn't say why she did so. It was perhaps some hazy maternal instinct in her that warned her to be vague. "I can only get frequency, not specific communications. So it's difficult to confirm that it actually is U.N.C.L.E."

Fluctuating the radio oscillation of her own transmissions in a way to keep whoever might be monitoring her tracking operation from pinpointing exact coordinates, Madzeija held the trace on the discovered frequency as steady as she could. Daiya, meanwhile, watched her mother's intricate maneuvers in some frustration.

"I bet you could get specific communications if you stopped altering your own frequency like that, Mama," suggested the inexperienced twelve-year-old.

Madzeija smiled indulgently at the preteen. "What I am doing is called ghosting, moja droga. It may keep us from overhearing the actual conversations of the target, but it also keeps the target from easily finding us."

Always meticulous in her work, Madzeija carefully wrote down into a logbook the frequency she was tapping. Daiya diligently paid attention to everything her mother was doing, mentally filing it all away. Angelique might have an interest in this and if so…

"Is it a rescue party for that high-profile U.N.C.L.E. man we have imprisoned here? Napoleon Solo?" the daughter inquired pointedly.

That possibility turned over a gear in Madzeija's mind. If U.N.C.L.E. came soon enough for Solo, perhaps Klara would be spared her fate. If the Command captured her elder daughter, they would surely do something about the poison in her system. Klara might live…

"Possibly," Madzeija conceded. "Or perhaps U.N.C.L.E. still believes the groundwater incursion project active and is continuing to look for a means to stop it."

It would be easy to just misstep a hairsbreadth with the ghosting. Just stay on one wavelength long enough to become more than a phantom presence that could be estimated but not completely placed. No one else now in this satrapy was skilled enough in communications protocol to even guess she might have performed that misstep on purpose. So she wouldn't be risking herself by doing it. And it could mean Klara might live…

Still, she couldn't bring herself to do it. Klara had cold-bloodedly killed her husband, the girl's own father. Thus had Klara demonstrated in no uncertain terms that she belonged heart-and-soul to Thrush with no emotional commitment leftover for family. Yet Madzeija's own body had bred and brought forth the girl into this world. And if that child of her womb could yet live…

Madzeija was noncommittal, conflicted. Her practical soul and her protective heart were at odds. And then she looked over at Daiya seated beside her and she knew she didn't need make any choice at all. All she had to do was let Daiya report everything to Angelique LaChien, as her younger daughter was more than wont to do.

Madzeija knew Angelique and Solo had something of a past… and a present. She had "accidentally" overheard enough radio conversations between Uripides and LaChien to be more than aware of the truth of that. And of course the salacious details of that "dangerous liaison" were bruited about the various corners of Thrush with the regularity of any such tantalizing gossip. So she could simply let the choice be entirely someone else's, and she didn't have to concern herself with the actual "how" of it at all. She didn't even have to know the whys or wherefores. All she had to do was let happen whatever would happen.

"I always log tracking frequencies, Daiya," she pointedly reminded the girl as she let the communications register fall back into place on the cord that kept the book readily connected to the side of the console. "It's a good habit to get into. Such information can prove invaluable."

As Daiya's eyes narrowed in speculation regarding the prospect of what invaluable intelligence she would have to provide Angelique this morning, Madzeija let all responsibility for anything that might occur with either Solo or her eldest daughter wash completely clean from her conscience.


He was in a room with many narrow passages, most seemingly much too constricted to accommodate even the sideways width of a normal-sized human being. Standing beside him was his Clara, she with the name starting with C. He knew as one always seems to know such realities in dreams that they had but a limited amount of time to find their way out of this enclosed area before something truly disastrous occurred. Exactly what was that something, he wasn't sure. Nonetheless, like the sword of Damocles, it hung with the persistence of impending doom within the very air around them.

One passage, the third to the left, seemed slightly wider than the others. It was this passage where Clara wanted to take a chance on finding a way out. Napoleon was on his cigarette-case communicator with Mr. Waverly, however. And the Old Man was advising his operative that, despite how it might appear to the naked eye, Section IV was sure the only way out of that room was through the second passage on the right.

"That opening is much too narrow for us to make it through," objected Clara.

"On the contrary," the Continental Chief's disembodied voice offered ready assurance. "U.N.C.L.E.'s calculations on this are precise. You will indeed make it through, and that is absolutely the only way out."

"All right, Mr. Waverly, we'll follow those instructions," Napoleon verbally articulated his acceptance of U.N.C.L.E.'s directive.

"You can, Napoleon," Clara stated bluntly, "but I won't. I don't have your supreme faith in U.N.C.L.E.," she further declared, "and therefore would much rather choose based on what I perceive with my own senses."

Before Napoleon could make any argument, she strode swiftly to the third passage to the left and sidled through. The walls of the channel immediately closed in around her, hiding her completely from Napoleon's view.

"Clara?" he called desperately. "Clara, are you out?" There was no response. "Clara, are you all right?" he cried out again.

"Take the second passage on the right, Mr. Solo," Waverly spoke again over the communication line.

"Sir, I need to go after her. I need to know she is okay."

"She made her choice, Mr. Solo. Having elected to ignore U.N.C.L.E.'s insight into the situation, she is no longer a concern of ours and therefore no longer a concern of yours." …

Napoleon awoke with a start. Momentarily disoriented by his disquieting nightmare, the pain in his dislocated right shoulder quickly cleared away any lingering mental cobwebs and served as a physical reminder regarding his current situation. He turned his head to see Klara, she with the name starting with K, wide awake and watching him.

"So even righteous men from U.N.C.L.E. suffer from bad dreams," she taunted. "I didn't try to wake you because I know how dangerous that can be with a trained enforcement agent."

"Very prudent of you."

"And what would have happened if I had woken you? Would you have strangled me with your one good arm?"

"Probably with the chain between my wrist shackles," supplied Napoleon with annoyed nonchalance.

With abrupt swiftness then, Klara sat up. Yet her action was not quick enough for her to avoid a sudden gasping for breath.

"You're having even more trouble breathing now, aren't you?" Solo demanded as he too sat up upon the bed.

"It is not of concern," readily declared Klara as she swung her legs off the side of the cot in preparation to stand.

"Oh yes," acknowledged Napoleon with noticeable bitterness. "You have made your choice, so are no longer a concern of mine," he then paraphrased Waverly's words from his undeniably disturbing dream.

Somewhat dumbstruck, Klara swiveled her countenance back to his. "I was never, am not now, and will never be your concern," she reminded him matter-of-factly. "We two, Solo, have always been, are now, and will always be sworn enemies."

"You are too young to be anybody's sworn enemy," batted back Solo in frustration.

"I am not too young," bristled Klara.

"You are too damn young to even realize you are too young," countered Napoleon rather heatedly. "You imagine yourself in some way or other spectacularly capable of making your own way even in the most dangerous of circumstances, just like every other innocent."

"I am not an innocent!" protested Klara even more hotly now.

"Sorry, you just won't convince me of your complete understanding of everything you say or do, little girl."

"Why, you arrogant, sanctimonious, pretentious prig!"

"Sticks and stones may break my bones," jeered Napoleon, "but words will never hurt me. And kiddo, all you got is words."

"Leastways I don't have the presumption to think I need to save every human being from him or herself. The protective, nurturing worldview of U.N.C.L.E.," she sneered sarcastically.

"Admittedly at odds with the destructive, self-serving worldview of Thrush."

"The world is not a spiritually generous place, dream-drunk U.N.C.L.E. man.

"It's not a heartless miserly pit either, delusion-diseased Thrush girl."

"You can't win this argument you know, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. Agent," came another female voice from just beyond the perimeters of the cell.

Both Klara and Solo turned the focus of their attention from each other to the woman who stood beyond the bars carrying a food tray in her hands.

"There may be ways and means to seek goodness in this world," the woman continued in a resigned voice, "but the paths are all too often self-defeating."

"Good day, Mama," Klara greeted the older woman.

"I have food for the two of you," Madzeija more or less snubbed her daughter's greeting.

"Reduced to waitressing now?" questioned Klara in a condescending tone.

"I suggest you eat the soup while it is hot," again Madzeija ignored her daughter's pointed remark to her. "I shouldn't count on being given more than this one meal today."

With that Madzeija electronically opened a small panel at the very bottom of the cell door and slid the tray inside, closing the panel immediately after the tray cleared the access point.

Since Klara made no move to do so, Napoleon shuffled forward, then bent and took the tray awkwardly within his chained hands, further encumbered by his sling-bound right arm. "Thank you," he, with one of his winning smiles, nonetheless readily expressed his gratitude to the woman.

In a gesture eerily similar to that displayed so habitually by her daughter, Madzeija casually shrugged. "Mr. Uripides said to see you were fed, so I'm seeing that you are."

"The condemned ate a hearty breakfast," paraphrased Klara unflappably.

"Not so hearty," Madzeija amended. "Just soup and bread."

"Still appreciated," Solo assured her.

There were no utensils included with the meal. The soup was contained in shallow wooden bowls with two chunks of thick black bread laid out beside them on the tray. Napoleon set the serving platter on the only elevated surface in the cell, the mattress within the cot niche. He then lifted one of the bowls and sipped gingerly at what smelled and looked like some sort of thick mushroom soup.

"Delicious," he noted after his first mouthful. "My compliments to the chef," he added particularly as he turned another winning smile Madzeija's way.

"Zupa pieczarkowa," stated Madzeija with another casual shrug. "Simple enough to make. Eat quickly. I am to wait and take the dishware away."

"What's the problem, Mama?" queried Klara aloofly as she lifted her own vessel of soup off the tray. "Jahoda concerned our shackled and disabled U.N.C.L.E. agent might still be able to fashion some kind of weapon out of a plain wooden bowl?"

"I am not privy to Mr. Jahoda's concerns," replied Madzeija with equal aloofness. "I was told to wait and take the dishes away once the food was eaten. So that is what I will do."

"Klara is your daughter?" Napoleon ventured further dialogue with the older woman.

"The eldest of my two daughters, yes," answered Madzeija factually.

"So you have not mentally disowned me?" questioned Klara rather flippantly.

Madzeija simply shrugged. "Co to jest, jest."
{Translation: What is, is.}

"Undoubtedly the essence of your entire philosophy of life, Mama," mocked the girl.

"I realize you believe there are abstract ideologies worth giving your life for," Madzeija criticized her child, "but I personally have never found it to be so."

"So Thrush for you is but a means to an end?" submitted Napoleon, very familiar with this type of self-seeking allegiance amidst the fold of those voluntarily associated with the supra-nation.

"Once upon a time, perhaps," confessed Madzeija. "Now?" Again the shrug. "Co to jest, jest."

"You could always change what is," suggested Napoleon.

"Are you trying to convert my mother to the ideals of U.N.C.L.E.?" demanded Klara in somewhat astonished vexation.

"Why not?" teased Solo. "I certainly couldn't fare worse than I would in any attempt to so convert you."

"I don't believe in conversions in any form, Mr. Solo," Madzeija spoke her own mind. "Such require a sense of internal conviction I simply do not possess."

"How sad," was Napoleon's only comment. Then he added, "Yet your daughter seems to possess a surplus of such internal conviction, and all of it centered on the skewed global outlook of Thrush."

"My husband and I brought up both our daughters as we thought reasonable in our current set of circumstances. Little did either of us ever suspect that pragmatic decision would in the end burn our family so badly."

"I resent the implication that I am the result of some sort of misdirected childrearing," Klara offered her own take on the situation. "My beliefs are based on my own understanding of the world."

"An understanding your father and I aggressively encouraged in you," mother noted plainly to child, "without ever truly allowing you to actively seek another viewpoint. But we have paid for our mistake. So there is no call for needless self-recriminations or penitential breast-beating. The only regret that might be is that you too must now pay for that mistake."

"I have no qualms regarding my punishment," Klara herself noted just as plainly, "though I still believe what I did needed to be done."

"And therein lies the tragedy," forwarded Madzeija, "because, moja droga, abstract philosophies – no matter how grand – are in the end cold and impersonal, with little room for true humanity in their spheres."

"That rather depends on the philosophy," submitted Solo certainly.

Madzeija smiled with benign indulgence at Napoleon. "You would of course think that, Mr. U.N.C.L.E. Agent, but I would submit you think just as wrongly as does my Klara."

"You won't convince me of that," Napoleon informed her with just as benign a sense of indulgence.

"I'm not trying to convince you of anything, Mr. Solo," Madzeija guaranteed him, "no more than I would try to convince Klara of anything at this stage in her life. Yet I will remind you of one undeniable truth: Life is hard, and death offers nothing by way of consolation, even if you die for a cause."

"Take the dishware and go, Madzeija," ordered Uripides as he made his way into the area trailed by a single rifle-toting guard and the browbeaten lab tech. "It is time for Klara's next injection, and I don't want to subject you to watching that take place."

"How considerate of you," mocked Napoleon.

"I am a considerate man, Mr. Solo," Ciriaco recommended himself to his prisoner. "As you should appreciate since it is my express instructions that are keeping Jahoda from going to work on you with all his famed methods of intelligence extraction."

It was Klara who placed the tray containing the empty bowls near the access point of the sliding panel and pushed it back through as that panel was again electronically opened by her mother. Madzeija bent and pulled the tray toward her; closing the panel immediately after doing so. She then lifted the serving platter and walked away from the cell block without another word.

Uripides followed Madzeija's retreating figure with his eyes. "Damn, but that woman has one fine set of legs," he seemingly complimented yet at the same time undoubtedly disrespected his secretary.

Klara openly grimaced at Uripides' off-the-cuff aside. Napoleon merely smirked, realizing here was yet another man who imagined himself some sort of jaunty grand seducer of the female sex, yet who had absolutely no inkling how to actually woo a woman to his side and not just his bed. Why did it so often seem like these types of egotistical Romeo-wannabes found a home amongst the self-deluded megalomaniacs and self-absorbed powerbrokers of Thrush?

"So you are the Thrush in charge," remarked Solo easily.

"Ciriaco Uripides, Mr. Solo," Ciriaco introduced himself, "though certainly not at your service."

"Thrush's form of service is generally lousy anyway," quipped back Napoleon without a qualm.

"I can certainly comprehend why you would feel that way, Mr. Solo," acknowledged Uripides. "I might add, however, that those of Thrush have a similar opinion of U.N.C.L.E.'s form of service."

"Opposing worldviews and all that," Napoleon nonchalantly continued the banter.

"Surely so," agreed Ciriaco, "but at least now you've more of an appreciation of our forms of internal justice, no?"

"I think those lousy too."

"Don't think murderers should pay the ultimate price?"

"She's just sixteen years old."

"So nothing more than an unfortunate, deluded, guileless innocent, heh?"

"There is no need to speak of me as if I am not standing right here listening to it all," protested Klara irritably.

"Come stand here at the bars, Klara, to get your next injection," directed Uripides indifferently. And Klara unhesitantly did exactly as she was bid, much to Solo's obvious chagrin.

"Can't you even offer token resistance?" queried the aggravated Napoleon as he watched the lab tech insert the needle in Klara's arm, the white-coated man barely able to properly manipulate the syringe through the close-set bars.

Klara swiveled her countenance toward Solo. "To please you?" she questioned. "Most definitely not."

"Don't you even want to live?" Napoleon demanded of the girl.

"Everyone wants to live," she pronounced dispassionately.

"Done," the lab tech remarked as he withdrew the hypodermic from Klara's flesh and made his strategic retreat.

"Not you apparently," Napoleon acerbically muttered.

The girl ignored him as she went and sat on the ground in one corner of the cell, making a purposeful show of not seating herself beside Solo on the mattress in the cot niche, though it was the only surface raised off the cold earth in the lockup.

"So true, Mr. Solo," Uripides gleefully forwarded. "All sane people do want to live, don't they? But perhaps our young Klara is somewhat less than sane."

"We all know that dedicating yourself to Thrush is indeed a form of madness," taunted Solo.

That only brought forth a light laugh from Ciriaco. "What if I offered you a chance to save the stubborn little lady from herself?" he then tempted.

Napoleon's eyes narrowed. "Why would you do that?"

"Because Klara Jablonski is not very important to us. While you could provide us information that would be."

"From what she herself told me, one more injection is all that is required to complete your 'ultimate justice'."

"True enough, and I can't guarantee her survival. Yet, if she isn't given that last injection, there is a chance she could survive, with some treatment."

"Will you provide her that treatment?"

"Will you provide me the information I seek?"

"I don't even know what that information might be," hedged Napoleon.

With that, Ciriaco took a folded paper from his inside jacket pocket, knelt, opened the sliding panel at the base of the cell door, and propelled that paper forcefully within. The panel snapped shut with an aggressive click as the paper fluttered forward on the ground a few feet.

Rising from the cot once more, Solo shuffled forward in his shackles until the paper was directly before him. For a moment he hesitated to even lift it, to even look at it. Then, taking a deep breath, he raised the missive, opened it, and scanned it quickly.

"You know what that is?" questioned Uripides.

"As indeed do you," Napoleon minced no words. "It is a Level 1 Command communiqué."

"Continental Chief to Continental Chief," acknowledged Ciriaco with a condescending smile. "It was intercepted over the wire exactly as you see here. Of course it is encrypted."

"Of course," agreed Solo.

"Yet you know what it says, don't you, Mr. Solo?"

"Maybe."

"And maybe, if you tell me, I'll see to it that Klara doesn't get that last injection and instead gets treatment for the adverse respiratory effects of the poison. Do we have a deal?"

"I'll need time to consider," Napoleon prevaricated.

"Of course, Mr. Solo. I am myself after all, as I have already made mention, a considerate man. Klara is to receive her next injection in six hours' time; so that is how long you have to consider."

With that Uripides turned away from the cell to make his departure, but then pointedly turned back. "Do remember: she is just sixteen years old," he just as pointedly turned Solo's own words back upon the emotionally ensnared U.N.C.L.E. agent.