THE COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION AFFAIR
Chapter 2
"…this looks like it'll be a lot of fun"
Napoleon Solo was losing his patience with Illya Kuryakin as the two of them, having been driven out to JFK Airport once again, had taken off in the cushy HQ-chartered/maintained Learjet currently bound for…
"Aqtau, Kazakhstan?" Napoleon Solo asked aloud. "Okay, Illya, don't you think it's about time for you to tell me about this place? I mean, I already know why the two missing…probably dead…U.N.C.L.E. agents were there…to stop THRUSH from purchasing weapons-grade plutonium from rogue Russian secret service agents. But why the hell do you look so…?"
"My father died there," Illya said suddenly, his eyes pensively staring out the oval window next to him. Then, with a heavy sigh, added, "My biological father, that is. He was assigned to work on one of the oil-drilling sites in Aqtau…which used to be called Shevchenko, after the Russian poet, around the time I first became an agent with U.N.C.L.E., but was later changed to…"
"Illya, what happened?" gently interjected Napoleon, taking care not to add to Illya's emotional pain.
Still staring intently out the oval window, Illya recapped a terribly personal tale, "Because the Soviet Union was still very much alive in those days…as was the, then, KGB… the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti…"
Nodding brusquely, Napoleon said, "'The Community for State Security'. Which sounded really harmless, when it was anything but. Go on, Illya."
"The KGB took my father, one I'd never known about until just before my U.N.C.L.E. years, along with other state-assigned oil workers, and forced them to, instead, work on moving plutonium to lead-lined storage compartments. They weren't provided with adequate personal shielding against the radioactivity. They all, not long after, died terrible deaths from the exposure," Illya said, never once turning to look at Napoleon who was filled with a combination of curiosity and caring.
At last, Illya turned in Napoleon's direction with his blue eyes filled with deep-seated sadness mixed with a burning desire for vengeance, then added, "My mother took me to see him, before he died. We watched him quickly wither away. Then she…"
Illya's final statement of personal woe trailed away, choked off by not only the incredible grief he was feeling, but a need to, somehow, exact retribution.
Napoleon noticed and said, "Illya…you can't even think about doing what you are thinking once we get to Aqtau, Kazakhstan. Hell, the KGB doesn't even exist anymore and whoever was over it back then is probably long dead, so…"
"Fifth Chief Directorate Vladmir Sorkenvek," spat Illya. "He's still alive. I checked. He lives in Aqtau. Retired, of course."
Slightly embarrassed by his ignorance of the present-day situation of former KGB persons, Napoleon, brow knitted in puzzlement, said, "Uh, Fifth Chief Directorate?"
"The Fifth Chief Directorate of the KGB was in charge of internal security as well as with dealing with 'dissension', something that, until then, had been part of the duties of the Second Chief Directorate. And the term 'dissension' was used officially when referring to my father, as well as the others chosen for an 'internal security task' that guaranteed death from radiation poisoning. That was one of the reasons I decided to join U.N.C.L.E."
"This Vladmir Sorkenvek," said Napoleon, "must have one boot in the grave, Illya. He'll die all on his own. Don't go 'rogue' on me. You know what security procedure dictates should you go 'off the grid' in the middle of a mission affair."
"I know, Napoleon," said Illya, pensively looking out the oval window again. "I know."
"Well, this looks like it'll be a lot of fun," Napoleon sardonically said beneath a very heavy sigh.
END OF CHAPTER 2