THE PROTECTING THE PAST AFFAIR

Chapter 4

"Forty-five minutes is…better than forty-three years "

Having already landed at Heathrow Airport in the quad-prop plane secretly contracted by U.N.C.L.E. under an assumed semi-business for privatized purposes, carrying two older-than-normal covert operatives to quickly and quietly, if possible, liberate the held-against-his-will Sir James Harold Wilson…

Napoleon Solo, this time, sat at the steering wheel of the English rental, right-sided, due to the undeniable absence of GPS systems in the Sixties and, instead, still four decades distant. Illya Kuryakin, this time, would ride proverbial shotgun.

"Now this seems much more natural, Illya," said a smiling Napoleon while his Russian-born friend and partner opened a paper map, gleaned from the glove compartment of the car, in order to properly plot a precise path through London. "Me driving and you navigating. Better still, no high-tech 'toys' to complicate my private life. When we get back to New York, I'll go back to my old apartment and pick up right where I left off 43 years ago. Uh…I mean 'now'."

"Yes, well," bemoaned the man from U.N.C.L.E. with the blonde hair and blue eyes while looking over the unfolded road map in his lap, "I, for one, will unmistakably miss the personal computers, the DVD players, the internet, and definitely the satellite-accessed directions displayed on a screen instead of…this."

"I always believed you were spoiled by the 21st Century, Illya," playfully implied Napoleon with that customarily crooked grin on his still-handsome face. "By the way…better contact HQ and let them know we're alive and well and working our way toward THRUSH's UK location."

"I'm certainly glad to see that you are enjoying this primitive period, Napoleon," sarcastically said the Russian-born U.N.C.L.E. operative even as he pulled the special Cross pen from his suit's coat pocket, pressed up on the silvery ball of its clip which…

Caused the semi-expensive implement for writing to, in the space of a single swift millisecond, quickly convert its functionality from ink pen to pen communicator, which Illya casually lifted before his lips and…

"Open Channel-D. Open Channel-D."

"Channel-D open, Mr. Kuryakin, go ahead," said, via the speaker-microphone combo situated atop the 21st Century version of a very special design for the 20th, an emphatically feminine sonority via Section 5 of United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

From the corner of his eye, Illya couldn't help but be amused because of this second aged agent's sharpening sense of overwhelming merriment in direct relation to the clear-cut actuality that the whole world suddenly seemed a sexually simpler place.

Even if such did seem especially sexist to someone as uncommonly enlightened as Illya Kuryakin.

"We should be arriving at our predetermined destination, where THRUSH has its headquarters in the United Kingdom, in, uh, well…let's put it at around an hour-and-a-half. We'll, uh, contact you again after arriving just outside said secret HQ. Illya out."

Now pressing that self-same thumb's tip atop that self-same pocket clip, causing said pen communicator to almost instantly return to being an ordinary ink pen, which was promptly returned into his suit's coat pocket, as Illya glanced at a silently laughing Napoleon.

"I, uh, might need more time than you to reacquaint myself to this less precise point in Time."

"Whatever helps you get through this mission affair, my Russian friend," said the still-smirking Napoleon Solo as their rented car continued on toward downtown London from where they would gradually drive in the direction necessary for such as THRUSH's UK headquarters.

At least, where it was physically situated in this delicate decade.

Meantime, many kilometers from the current locality of the driven-by-Napoleon Solo sedan in which Illya Kuryakin continued turning a paper maps multicolored lines into orated directions for his fellow agent to follow…

…hidden behind some seemingly flaccid façade, posing as upscale public apartments, was none-other-than this side of the Atlantic's headquarters for the diabolically dangerous Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

Especially so now that the masked menace from the future, Darien Driscoll, had temporarily settled therein.

However, to attest to the tyrannical strengths of Darien, especially after personally assassinating Andrew Vulcan the last time he was in 1964, he had proverbially herded the thugs and scientific types together under one imaginary yoke.

Made much easier because of his recent apprehension of Sir James Harold Wilson.

Although the technological level of THRUSH in 1964 was nowhere near what it would be in decades to come, it was still significant so as to place the kidnapped Prime Minister in a specially designed soundproof chamber well within their HQ's multistory structure.

A chamber making use of several proven brainwashing procedures, some starting to use a certain amount of Sixties super-science, while the rest revolved around time-tested torture techniques.

And all under the anxious attention of a mysteriously masked man with a mien as monstrous as his twisted soul.

"Bring him around again," Darien Driscoll commanded from the room hidden behind a two-way mirror amidst dimmed illumination, by way of a handheld microphone broadcasting over less-than-outstanding, compared to 2007!, speakers, while the jumpsuit-and-bereted brutes prepared to repeat their rather barbaric actions.

Even as ice-cold water was tossed into the bloody, bruised bulldog facial features of Sir Wilson, strapped so securely to a bolted-to-the-floor chair, consciousness suddenly sweeping past a subconscious desire to remain largely oblivious…

"What? Where?" Sir Wilson at first said suddenly, until, several short seconds after, the answers were agonizingly clear. "No. Please. You must stop. Do you hear? You must stop!"

"Sorry, Sir Wilson," said the speaker-delivered voice of the masked man who'd kidnapped this new PM and cold-bloodedly killed British Secret Service stationed nearby the 10 Downing Street residence. "Until I am certain that you are a willing pawn of THRUSH…your 'reeducation' will continue. Proceed!"

"N-no. No!"

No sooner had such an utterance of terror and anger issued forth from the already badly beaten Prime Minister, than…

Krack! Thumpf!

"Ooof! Uhnn!"

…blows from gloved fists systematically impacted with fleshy face and well-fed body hard enough to continually torment the man, but not hard enough to cause serious injury.

"Enough!" Darien Driscoll called out via the microphone in his hand, while watching from the non-mirrored area of the two-way. "This is taking too long. Time to hook him up to the device."

"S-sir," nervously said the head English technician, Dr. James D. Duncan, dressed in a Sixties suit and starched smock, at the thought of using something still so experimental. "Th-though the hypno-programmer presents us with interesting results, it has not yet been proven anywhere near…"

"You either hook up the hypno-programmer to that beaten down bastard," snarled the masked Master of THRUSH in a thoroughly threatening tone, made all the more so via the mask's mini-speaker system. "Or, by the blood of Christ, I'll put you in there, Dr. Duncan. Are we clear?"

"Y-yes, s-sir, M-Mister D-Driscoll," Dr. Duncan said in ready reply of uncommon cowardice prior to turning toward his smock-wearing assistants. Then Dr. Duncan rowdily ordered, "Bring in the device. Ready it for sustained use. Quickly!"

As the lesser scientific types quickly complied with even less individual audacity, Dr. Duncan swallowed hard prior to reporting back to the masked man from the future…

"W-we'll be r-ready to employ the hypno-programmer in a p-perhaps forty-five more minutes, Mr. Driscoll, s-sir."

Suddenly understanding how the cybernetic-assisted, barely alive Andrew Vulcan in his recent past, in 2007, was so unreasonably restless. Darien heaved a very heavy sigh as he stared straight through the two-way once more at the battered, bruised, and bleeding British Prime Minister force-seated in the center of the semi-darkened room.

"Forty-five minutes," he whispered to himself inside the mask of metal, gems, and ivory, "is a lot better than forty-three years."

END OF CHAPTER 4