Colonel Lesnichy saw Andropov off to the motor pool, handing him a sealed courier pouch, and a piece of paper indicating the time and place to where it was to be delivered. "Moskva will expect you once you have completed the drop. I suggest you do not linger too long in Kyiv." Then the Colonel saluted him before before he left.
Kiril Andropov climbed into another boxy Trabant that the KGB had provided for him, this time a drab blue-grey color instead of a red one. This made him happy for at least the car would surely blend and disappear among other similar vehicles that would be on the motorway as he continued on his journey. Though Illya's bum was not as enthusiastic as these cars just were not made for comfort.
Illya was sure this was no courier mission and had no doubt this assignment was some sort of test. The package had to arrive at it's destination intact and undisturbed, this side trip could potentially throw a monkey wrench into his time table.
He looked at the communications disc that he pulled out of his pocket. Best to keep it just in case, even though things were running smoothly, perhaps too smoothly?
That little annoying creature tried gnawing at him again until he banished it. It was not out of fear that he decided to keep the homing devise, it was a precautionary measure as it might come in handy. One never knew in this sort of game. Not that there was anyone from U.N.C.L.E. around to help him, and he guessed that maybe just having the disc in his possession made him feel a little better.
He tried to separate himself from his fears, allowing his instincts to take precedent. They were usually spot on, and as Napoleon trusted his so-called gut, he needed to trust his own beyond the rumblings of hunger pangs.
Illya pulled the car out into traffic heading west to the Rheinsteinstrasse. It would be a fairly direct trip across the border and to his next destination of Warsaw. That, he estimated would take him between seven to eight hours of straight driving. He was tired, the contacts were burning his eyes terribly but he dare not remove them until he was well away from the city and across the border into Poland.
Once there he would find an out of the way place to eat and sleep for a short while and remove the lenses to give his eyes a break. He couldn't afford an overnight stay anywhere as he had no idea if he would encounter any sort of unrest or dissident behavior in that country.
Since Dubçek's bold political moves, sympathetic upstart groups showing him support had been cropping up all across the Soviet bloc and and were being suppressed, so who knew what sort of travel delays and diversions he could encounter. He had to stay clear of any such complications, even Lesnichy was correct in that in that assumption, but for different reasons.
He needed to get Moscow not only or report to the Kremlin but to meet his next C.I.A. contact. That was the only way they would know that he was still alive and on target and there he was to receive the last of his instructions on where to find Kvantrishvilli in Gorky.
In that he was under a time table and he was very much aware of. If he missed his deadline, he would be caught and executed and no doubt the scientist along with him, and whether it was as Kiril Andropov or Illya Kuryakin, it mattered not. The result would be the same.
He used to have nightmares of being in front of a firing squad, standing to be executed at the hands of Viktor Karkoff.* And now his dreams had the definite chance of coming true if he failed in this mission, the only difference would be that Viktor would not be his executioner as he was dead, He had heard it was in the Solovki gulag and was punishment from the Directorate.
But that was when the balance of power had swung in favor of the GRU, now he was very much aware that the KGB was once again in a position of political favor. That was what it was all about in the Soviet Union in the final analysis, and not about truth, not about following what the party believed in...it was about the bullshit of politics and power and nothing more. The Tsar, the Bourgeoisie were gone and in their place were the corrupt politicians and people jockeying for their piece of the pie, and control over who got what and nothing more.
The Soviet people as always suffered because of it, they were nothing but worker bees in a great hive but the Socialist ideals never seemed to apply to them as they were supposed to, as so many of them labored long hours for so little, living in sub-standard housing and eating poorly. They plodded on with their daily existence with few hopes of a better life for themselves, their children and their children's children.
Illya thought about the United States, it was now his home and he knew there too existed problems, but at least there was hope, at least a person had a chance of making a better life for themselves and their family. America was truly an amazing place and not what he was lead to believe it was when he was first sent there to work for U.N.C.L.E.
He tried not to let is mind drift to Elliott and the children, but seeing Dresner and Beyer made him think of home. Elliott's face kept popping up in his mind's eye, as well as that of his brave Demyachka and his beautiful Lourdes...he could hear her tiny little voice saying his name along with her infectious laughter. He almost lost her in that awful car accident and yet God spared her, now he asked for himself to be spared so that he could return to her, Elliott and Demya.
Illya avoided organized religion, again feeling the restraints and controls that were there were not for him...not after having lived a life of control in the Soviet Union. To him belief in God had returned to him as a personal thing, his thoughts and prayers were between him and God and no one else.
His was a hope that God was listening to his entreaties to let him survive this, but he remembered his prayer when he was looking at his child as she lay in that hospital bed, his plea for God to take him instead of her. Would this be his time to pay the piper and give God his due? He prayed again, asking for forgiveness at being greedy...asking God not to take him yet. **
"Pozhaluĭsta, Bog slushaet?_God please be listening? " he whispered as he shifted gears and gave the Trabi a little more gas to accelerate into the faster moving traffic on the Rheingoldstrasse leading away from the bleakness that was East Berlin.
He did not see a black Mercedes as it lay back, having pulled out as well from the motor pool at the Karlshorst, and was following him at a discreet distance out of the city...
.
Breakfast was a normal one at the Kuryakin household. "Miaow!" Boris complained vehemently until she was fed.
Demya had his bacon and eggs in front of him, slipping some pieces of meat to the cat when he thought his mother wasn't looking. Lourdes was happy as usual, as she spooned her Farina into her mouth but conveniently let some of it fall to the floor, taking a hint from her brother, and giggled as Boris lapped it up from the linoleum. Sadly it didn't feel odd to not have Illya there. Demmy seemed to take it in stride that it was just part of life; his father came and went and accepted that he would be gone longer some times more than he liked.
Elliott looked at her son's drawing of Ireland that was displayed on their refrigerator door, making her smile not only at his thoughtfulness, but also his inquisitiveness as to how far Russia was from Ireland. Perhaps when she returned home from work, she would get out the atlas and show him where each country was situated.
Illya was fiercely proud of his Russian heritage, being sure to teach Demmy the language and he was well on the way to teaching Lourdes too, but he would never really talk to them about his home and family, nor the Soviet Union. His life had been too harsh there and she supposed he didn't want his children knowing that, feeling Demma needed to get a better sense of the world as it was. She wondered if her husband would be near anywhere his home in Kyiv.
Her own mother was from Kyiv also of Russian extraction like Illya's family and she remembered being told about beautiful things, the city and the countryside surrounding it. The cold winters when they would glide through the snow in a troika pulled by three horses, and her mother spoke of the beauty of spring and the time rebirth for all things living.
Illya surely had to have some pleasant memories...but somehow they seemed to get lost in all the terror and sadness that overtook his childhood. He was traumatized by the war and losing his entire family, and his stay in that concentration camp colored his memories deeply. He told her about many things from his past, both good and bad, but he would not talk about the death camp, she realized that it was too horrific for him to speak of it. She'dseen books about the camps, and photographs and found it unimaginable what he had lived through.
She supposed that held true for her own mother as well...she too like Illya had been in a concentration camp... Ravensbrück. Shortly before the evacuation of the camp the Germans had handed over several hundred female prisoners, mostly of French nationality, to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross and because her mother spoke French, she was somehow mistakenly put in that group. A British patrol found them and that's how Da' had met her...somehow in the midst of all that suffering her mother and father felt that spark, that connection. Love at first sight.
When Mam talked of things it was always before the war, and after Da' had brought her back to England...never the in between times. It was if Illya himself were caught in that gap, unable to talk about his time in the camp, yet trapped by it as well and unable to remember the good things like her mother did. Though like him there were the things that her mother couldn't bring herself to talk about, even with her dying breath.
She remembered her Mam telling her to be strong that sad last Mother's Day that she lost her, and now those words and her mother's face came to her and she called upon her to help deal with Illya going away on this dangerous mission.
"Mam...help me cope?" she whispered.
"Ma-ma ...Pa-pa?" Lourdes said looking again for her father at the breakfast table, but before Elliott could speak Demmy chimed in to his sister.
"Lala, Papa is away. He went to go see where he used to live when he was a little boy. Russia, can you say Russia?" He said in all seriousness to her.
"Roose...Rusah. Rusah Rusah?"
"That's right Lala, Russia, " he laughed, " Did you hear Mama, she almost said it."
"Yes Demmy that was very good, you keep doing that ...teaching your sister. That's a very good thing ta do." Elliott smiled weakly."
Tonight when I come home Demmy we'll get some books out and ye and I, we'll look at Russia. Pictures and the like and maybe ye can draw a map of the Ukraine, that's where the city where yer Papa was born is."
"Papa told me it's called Kiev."
"That's right Demmy, good job that ye remembered that." She smiled in earnest now, running her fingers through his blond mop of hair.
She turned over the care of the children along with the breakfast mess to Olga, giving them all hugs and kisses before she left for headquarters.
"Don't you worry, " Olga whispered to her, "He will come home, I feel it."
.
Elliott McGowan-Kuryakina walked into to the Del Floria employee entrance at U.N.C.L..E.'s New York headquarters, taking a deep breath as it was going to be a rough day. It was earlier than usual for her to arrive there, but she wanted to avoid seeing too many people just yet.
She had to prepare herself as today was the day that Waverly would let it be known that Illya Kuryakin was purportedly 'dead'. There would be a role for her to play, one full of surprise and shock, then of course she would have to be the grieving widow.
If asked why she was at headquarters, her answer would simply be was that she needed to keep busy. She needed to hold it together for the sake of her children.
Heather Mc Nabb sat at the security desk and as soon as she saw Elliott she burst out into tears. "Oh my God Elliott I am so sorry!" She came out from behind the desk her arms wide open offering a hug, but Elliott took a step back.
She took a tough stance, not shedding any telltale tears just yet.. Then as Heather realized she didn't want the physical contact, and she too retreated back behind her desk.
"Thank you Heather, I appreciate the gesture." Elliott said, keeping a stiff upper lip. She took her badge from the woman, pinning it on and proceeded through the secondary entrance.
"Feck!" Elliott cursed under her breath. Waverly had let the news leak sooner than she anticipated. "Calm down, now ye at least know the cat's out of the bag, so do yer part," she told herself.
She encountered several other people in the corridors and the same overwhelming message of sympathy from them, it was then that Elliott turned on the waterworks as she retreated to the safety of her office, sitting at her desk staring at the family portrait there on her desktop.
It was a photograph of Illya holding Lourdes in one arm with Demya wrapped in his other arm while sitting in his father's lap. She grabbed it, staring at Illya's face and began to cry in earnest out of worry for him. Then her telephone rang.
"Good Morning Miss Mc Gowan," Alexander Waverly spoke to her cheerfully.
"Good morning sir, " she sniffled.
"I heard about your performance this morning and commend you on it, and I am sorry to say that you need to keep up the ruse for a bit longer. I have received word from several of our operatives in East Berlin stating that our target has been contacted and all is proceeding well and as planned...that is to be precise, they spoke to Mr. Kuryakin."
"He's alright then?"
"Yes my dear he is. I have also received intelligence from Bill Klein...on the QT of course, the mission has an anticipated completion date of May 11th and he asked me to relay that information to you in hopes that it would be of some comfort to you."
"Klein said that sir?" Elliott was taken completely off guard with that news..."in hopes that it would comfort me?"
"Yes, it seems that Mr. Klein and your husband had a rather heart to heart talk and Mr. Klein has shall we say, developed a new found respect for Mr. Kuryakin. I also have a package he sent for you in my conference room, which Security of course had to search. It's your husbands belongings...the clothes he was wearing when he left here and several personal articles. Mr. Klein felt that they would be better to have in your hands to return to Mr. Kuryakin once he is back home."
"Really?"
"Yes, apparently Mr. Klein seems quite genuine in this matter. Come up to my office after my noon meeting and I will give the package to you." At that the call from Waverly ended, no pleasantries as usual.
Illya's things? She had a good idea what they were and knew that seeing them would in truth
upset her but at the same time, her heart leaped for joy hearing that he was alright...so far. But that good news would have to be short lived with her. She still had to play the part of the grieving widow. With the exception of Waverly, no one but Napoleon knew that Illya was still alive and on a mission to Russia and it had to stay that way
It would be easy to maintain an upset demeanor, given that she was still worried about him. All she had to do was picture Illya with the children and that would be the trigger she needed to allow her to turn on her tears for show but maybe not quite all show.
Elliott let her mind drift to that wonderful night they spent together, the romantic dinner then the concert at Breezy Point, then home afterward when they were dancing in the dark in the living room...to their song as it play on the radio.
She let the words ring out in her head. "Oh my love my darling, I hunger for your touch..." They made love slowly and tenderly that night, both of them very much aware that it could be the last time but she prayed that it wouldn't be the last time that she'd feel her husbands embrace.
No, her tears would not really be false tears of grief, they would be ones coming from worry that she would never see and feel her Illuysha again.
At noon time she ran the gamut of hugs and sympathy as word spread like wildfire throughout headquarters of the death of Illya Kuryakin. By the time Elliott reached Waverly's conference room, it was all she could do to contain herself, constantly being reminded that your husband was dead, though not true was upsetting enough. But knowing the truth that he was in mortal danger and could actually die compounded matters and helped to keep her emotions to run high, enabling her to put on a good act.
When she arrived to see Alexander Waverly her face was red and her eyes were puffy from the tears that had fallen.
Waverly was not insensitive to her plight. He reached into his private cabinet and withdrew a glass and a bottle of Acquitaine, pouring the libation for her. "Here drink this my dear, it'll help calm your nerves."
"I'm fine sir."
"Please don't humor me with that line Miss Mc Gowan. I know you are not. Now sit down please?" He reached behind his console, pulling out the package for her and sending it around on the rotating conference table.
Elliott opened the flaps to the box, indeed finding the clothes he wore the day he left. His weapons as well as his wallet, St. Andrews medal and his wedding band. The last two items she held tightly in her hand as she flipped open his wallet, seeing the photograph of she and the children that he kept there, and then she quickly downed the Acquitaine. She told herself he was alright and forced herself to swallow her emotions as well, for the moment.
"Two of our agents met with Mr. Kuryakin in East Germany and were taking him to the Karlshorst Rezidentura...the main KGB office there to be debriefed. Apparently his cover has passed muster no less than four times, so this may be his last major hurdle for a bit. The agents in place have reported that he is to head across Poland making a stop in Warsaw, then onto Moscow at that point we hope the C.I.A. will inform us of his progress as they have several contacts for him to meet along the way at checkpoints as it were."
He could see a change in Elliott's expression, as she looked a little relieved at that news. "Now in the meantime you have your continuing role to play as the bereaved widow. We will of course have to have a memorial service."
"A what?"
"Yes, you heard me correctly, a memorial service for a fallen agent. Standard procedure you know that. Of course it would be a closed casket, since we in reality have no body."
"Well, Napoleon isn't here, wouldn't it be appropriate ta wait for him, I mean after all?"
"Yes I suppose you're correct there, but depending upon how long Mr. Solo may be with his current assignment...that might not be possible?"
"I understand sir. I'll prepare myself."
"Good. Now dismissed."
.
Napoleon Solo sat with Dieter in his office, going through a few more files when April Dancer came bursting into the room, quite distraught.
"Oh my God Napoleon!" She pulled a tissue from the cuff of her sleeve, wiping her eyes as she'd obviously been crying.
"What's wrong?"
"It's...it's Illya , he's dead."
Napoleon sat frozen for a moment, trying to act his part in the charade, but deep down inside he hoped the news wasn't really true. " Huh? When where?" He asked, dumb founded.
"Waverly just sent word, it was some KGB agent named Andropov who assassinated him, they said he was caught off guard in Central Park...oh dear God, he was just out for a walk." She wrapped her arms around Solo's neck not fighting the need to cry. "Napoleon I'm so sorry."
He held April for a few minutes, then released her and walked over to the sole window in Rheinhardt's office, and stood there staring out through the window at the grey, rain-soaked day.
"I am so sorry Napoleon," Dieter said to him. Then Mark Slate came in as well, his face flustered from the bad news.
"Jeeze mate, I'm sorry. I can't believe it. I really can't. It was if he were almost indestructible," Mark said running his fingers through his hair in disbelief.
"I know," Napoleon said quietly as he dropped into a chair at the conference table covering his eyes with one of his hands."
April signalled for Mark and Dieter to leave the room with her, giving Napoleon his privacy to grieve. Once he was alone, Napoleon muttered to himself. "Tovarisch, I hope you know what you're doing?" He then let out a long sigh, and he loosened his tie then mussed his always perfectly coiffed hair, making him look a little more distraught.
A half hour later April and the others appeared with a bottle of vodka and shot glasses, filling them to the brim, passing them to each other.
Napoleon raised his glass. "To Illya Kuryakin, the best friend and partner a man could ever hope to have."
"To Illya, " they all chimed in.
"God Bless him, " April added. "Elliott and the children too."
"From your mouth to God's ears, he'll need it." Napoleon mumbled, giving April cause to look at him quizzically.
.
* ref " Such is stuff that Dreams are Made on."
** ref "Bozhe moi, spacibo."