"Illya, this is not exactly the place for the revealing of secrets, how about you get yourself cleaned up and we go to my place before the locust begin to descend about your fight?"
"No you have to meet Bella, it is alright, we can talk another time."
"Right now, I think listening to you is more important...I can discuss flower arrangements with her another night." he winked. "Meet me in the parking garage in an half hour, and that's an order."
Illya nodded his agreement, then stripped his clothes, getting into a cold shower, with a sigh of satisfaction as it cooled his burning muscles.
He opened his eyes as he finished rinsing the blood away and that was when he saw the shadow on the the other side of the curtain, thinking it was Anderson. But instead of taking a defensive posture, Illya suddenly found himself backing up against the shower wall, panting heavily as his heart rate jumped. Then he forced himself to regain his composure readying himself; his adreneline still running high.
Then as the shadow disappeared, he calmed. He thought he was over his fear, but for a split second it had returned...but only for a second too long. He told himself to put the fear aside; taking a deep calming breath.
They met in the garage, riding in silence in Solo's car to his penthouse apartment. Illya stopped for a moment eyeing the photograph mounted on the wall of he and Napoleon surrounded by a cloud of red smoke; the image caught by security as they responded weapons drawn to an alert in headquaters. He tried to remember how long ago that was as he'd fogotten about the picture but seeing it again made him smile.
It had been a long time between visits to Napoleon's place since he had moved from the apartment building they had once both occupied; his partner lived conveniently one floor above him and they would often see each other after a day at headquarters as well as ride there together in Napoleon's convertible. But then he met Elliott, then had a family, and his partner didn't see that much of him except through work.
Napoleon's Aunt Amy passed away, leaving him the penthouse and a sizeable inheritance. Though he could have retired and sailed around the world if he wanted; t the lure of the field was stronger. Illya knew his partner could never give it up willingly.
That seemed like a lifetime ago. Illya now owed his own home, living with his Elliott and Demya in a two-story brownstone in Washington Square. And soon Napoleon would be married to Bella, both deciding to remain in the penthouse.
The two agents took the elevator upstairs still not saying a word; Napoleon unlocking the door after entering the alarm code.
"Make yourself at home," he said, pulling off his tie and jacket. "you know where the bar is. Pour me a scotch if you don't mind. I have to make a phone call.
Solo walked into his bedroom, picking up the telephone, dialing Bella's number.
"ICU, Nurse Graziani speaking."
"Hi beautiful."
"Napoleon, I would have thought you'd be on your way here by now?"
"Look, about tonight...I'm going to have to cancel. Something important has come up."
"Napoleon, with you it's always important, " she laughed," so I'll just pick the flowers without you but don't complain to me if you don't like what I get?"
"Bella, I've already told you, what ever you want is fine with me. I trust your taste and judgement implicitly."
There was silence for a moment at the other end. " I know you do, but it would just be nice for you to take some interest in your own wedding? You leave all the decisions up to me and that's not really right. This is supposed to be a joint operation Mr. Solo?"
"Bella la mia colomba_my dove. I do care, but you're much better at these things than I am. Now if you asked me how to disassemble a weapon, or construct a bomb...I'm your man? Well actually, Illya is better at the bomb thing than I am." he teased her, "Si ottiene quello che sto dicendo, il mio tesoro_ do you get what I'm saying, my darling?"
"Don't worry, I got ya'." she laughed. " I'll do the girl thing, while you stick to the guy thing. By the way, tell Illya I said hello. Ciao amore mio."
The phone clicked, then went to a dial tone as she hung up, leaving Napoleon wondering for a second how she knew he was with Illya. Then he shugged as he changed into a smoking jacket; returning to the livingroom.
Illya was pressing a glass vodka on the rocks to his eye, holding up the scotch to pass off to his partner.
"You never drink vodka with ice, what gives?"
"I am killing two birds with one stone...saves time no icepack needed."
Napoleon sat down on the couch next to him, trying not to look too serious, but knowing Illya, what was about to come was defintely going be significant. " O.K. what is it you want to tell me," he finally asked.
Illya swallowed a mouthful of vodka, then put the glass down on the coffee table.
"Firstly I need to tell you how grateful I am for all your years of friendship, you have always had my back, no matter what. You are a very big reason that I am on the road to recovery.
"Illya I..."
"Please Napoleon, do not interrupt me? Though I said I would reveal my past to you, that still does not make it easy for me?"
Napoleon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, holding the glass of scotch in his two hands. "I'm listening."
"Where to begin? I suppose it might help if you told me what you know about me," Illya asked, " that way I can fill in the gaps."
"Illya, wait a minute, before you start. Please tell me why you feel the need to do this...is there anything wrong with you? You're not dying are you?"
Illya laughed, then apologized. "No I am fine, well almost fine but nothing life threatening. You see, after nearly losing my life in the gulag and having to deal with having been...raped, I needed to confront many things in order to find myself again. Napoleon, I was lost and thought my life, my family, my career were all at an end. But thanks to you, Elliott, Demya and Dr. Mansur I was able to find myself again. I rememered who Illya Kuryakin was, where he came from...how I got to be me."
"You actually saw a psychiatrist?"
"Yes believe it or not I did."
"And you didn't try to kill the man?"
Illya lowered his head, smiling. "No, I did not. He was very helpful and guided me, allowing me to find my own anwers. You all told me the truth; I just wasn't ready to listen. I was too busy being ashamed and afraid. But we digress, please tell me what you know about me?"
Napoleon put his drink down on the table as well. " You were born in Kiev, orphaned during the war, raised by the state, recruited by military intelligence. You served in the Russian navy. Went to school at the University of Georgia, the Sorbonne and Cambridge...you have several degrees and are linguist...how's that?"
"You just stated what is in my dossier, anyone can know that information, but what do you really know about me...Illya Nickovich?"
Napoleon was momentarily at a loss for words as he realized there was really nothing he knew about his parter even after all these years.
"You welcomed me into your life from the moment I arrived in New York and was assigned as your partner. You never hesitated telling me about your childhood, military service, your family. You have included me in so many of your holidays and gatherings like a long lost brother. You have shared your dreams and disappointments...I on the other hand have done none of this."
"Hey, I was your best man at your wedding? You've let me be part of you life with your family...I'm Uncle Napoleon remember?"
"That is true, but I never shared any other part of my life with you, before I met Elliott that is."
"True, but Illya all I've needed to know was that you are loyal to a fault, you're my best friend...and will always have my back. I trust you with my life. What else is there to know?"
Illya smiled. That was a simple summary of his relationship with his friend and a kind one.
"I know you have always been curious about my life back in Russia, though you stopped asking after I continually avoided answering your questions all these years."
"True. I resigned myself to it just being your way."
"Would you still like to know about me?"
Napoleon paused for a moment, being very much aware how private Illya was; he wasn't sure if he should say yes, but then again his partner was offering.
"Yes I would," he decided.
Illya took a deep breath. " I lived in a small dacha on the outskirts of Kyiv, one of the four grandsons of Count Alexander Kuryakin."
Illya paused for a second as Napoleon's eyes widened in surprise.
"So that means you're a Count?
"Technically, but the title no longer has meaning. The last true Count Kuryakin died in the Solovki gulag, as I almost did."
"I am...was, the second son of Nickolaí and Tanya Kuryakin. I had an older brother named Dimitry, twin brothers younger than me...Sasha and Misha and a baby sister named Katiya. My maternal grandmother Marina Kuryakina, the wife of Count Kuryakin lived with us."
" She was Rom gypsy, so that answers your question as to way I am so familiar with gypsy ways. I think you may recall I mentioned an Uncle Vanya once?"
"Yes, but I thought you were making him up?"
"Vanya...Ivan Ursari was my grandmother's brother and the leader of my Romany tribe. It was terrible times in the Ukraine during the war, the gypsies along with the Jews were targeted by the Nazis, but no one was safe from them. I watched as my mother and the twins were murdered on the street in front of me not long after my eighth birthday. After that I went to fight with the partisans and the Rom alongside my father and Dimitry and Uncle Vanya, and my cousin Anastasiya. They were all killed in an ambush by a German patrol after having been betrayed by someone in our camp in Bykivnia forest."
"Except for a few members of the tribe, I was the only one to survive and made my way home to the dacha. Food was scarce and we were starving to death, the Nazis were rounding up everyone, killing people in the forests, and at a Babi Yar. My grandmother hid my sister and myself in the attic then left us in search of food...she never returned."
"I was forced to leave Katiya alone, we needed food desperately and when I returned the Nazis had thrown a grenade into the dacha, setting it on fire. She..." Illya stopped for a moment, composing himself, "Katiya was burned alive. She was only three."
Illya suddenly looked very frail to Napoleon, "You don't have to do this?" he said, placing a hand on his partner's shoulder.
"Yes I do, please let me continue?"
"I made my way into the city, living like an animal, scavenging food and supplies where ever I could them in the ruins on the outskirts of Kyiv. I was hunted by packs of wild dogs and barely escaped with my life several times."
"So that's why you're afraid of dogs?"
"Pretty much so...but they used dogs on us in our GRU training, so that did not help my phobia."
"I managed to survive the Russian winter living on rats, dog meat and vodka, though it was Russian masquerading as a German cook who me food that really helped me to survive."
"Because of his kindness and risk to his own safety, I helped other street orphans to make it as well. I had a friend...I suppose my first girlfriend at the tender age of ten. Her name was Irina, she was a few years older than me when we were captured by the Nazis as they did their sweeps through the city, taking any orphans captive to be slave labor at the Syrets concentration camp next to the Babi Yar ravine."
"I've heard of it, it was a death camp wasn't it? "Napoleon said quietly,
"that's were you were tattooed?"
Illya nodded quietly as he looked down at his arm, running his fingers across the blue-inked numbers.
"It was a labor camp at first, then a death camp...they, the Germans killed thousands and buried them in the ravine. We worked for twelve to fifteen hours a day sorting the belongings of the people who were brought in by the trainload to die in the extermination vans. Sometimes they just lined them up naked at the edge of the ravine and gunned them down. Their bodies piled up and they were buried there even if they were not dead. The children in the camp began to slowy die of starvation and exhaustion while every day we witnessed torture and murder in the camp as the Nazis became frenzied in their killing."
Illya was shaking now, concentrating to remain calm as he recounted the terrible tale of his childhood to his friend.
"There was an older boy named Vasily who worked for them, bringing the children to the soldiers for their amusement. Karl Voelker was the assistant to the camp doctor. He...he impregnated my friend Irina then had her sent to the death vans. Vasily brought me to Voelker one night, it was right around my tenth birthday when he attempted to molest me, but that night there was a revolt in the camp."
"Not the same Voelker who...?"
"Yes, you can say it, the Voelker who raped me in East Germany."
Napoleon didn't know what to say. It was bad enough what had happened to Illya, but to have it to happen at the hands of one of the monsters from his childhood was unfathomable. He hadn't told Illya that he had used his favor with Angeliqe; having her be the instument of revenge for Illya against Voelker. She had sent word to him when the deed had been done.
"I was able to escape from the camp and survived for another month but then nearly died back on the streets of the city, having given up. I wandered out from my hiding place...I will never forget it. I wanted to see the sun again before I died. The Red army having liberated the city found me nearly dead from starvation."
"I recovered in a refugee camp, then was sent to the horrors of a disease ridden, corrupt state run school. There I had to defend myself again from being raped. I learned to be a thief, smoked drank gambled, slept with girls...I was becoming a model Soviet citzen, " Illya laughed softly.
"The orphanage was closed and I was selected to go to a school for the intellectually gifted. It was there that Viktor Karkoff found me; taking me on as his protegée and through his sponsorship I went to the University of Ukraine. I did my mandatory military service aboard the submarine Moskva, there too I had to fight to keep from being raped. After my military service I was trained as an agent for GRU; quite brutal standards compared to Survival School. If you failed, then you were went to your end in the blast furnaces in Sepka, just south of Moskva to be burned alive."
"Katiya Revechenkov told me that, "Napoleon cringed, " I thought she was making up to be dramatic?"
Illya shook his head. "I am afraid she was not lying."
"My first major assignment as an agent was being west to the Sorbonne, while earning my masters degree, I spied on other Soviet students and professors; as you already know Katiya was my handler. You also know she and I had an affair but what you did not know that I was actually very much in love with her, but she set me up and to make a long story short, it nearly caused an international incident with the West German Ambassador."
"Karkoff lost face with the Directorate because of it and swore his revenge against me, which he nearly had in Solovki. It was not until we met Katiya in Paris* that I found out she had set me up, because she was in love with me and thought she could have me forced into a desk job...but but her strategy did not work and I was sent to further my education at Cambridge, continuing to spy on students and teachers as I had in Paris. After I recieved my doctorate I was recalled to Moskva, to what I thought would be a disciplinary hearing, but to my surprise; I was being offered up to Alexander Waverly and U.N.C.L.E."
"I was told once I had accepted the position that I would no longer be permitted to go home again to Russia, unless I was recalled for military service in the event of war. I was a man without a country, without a home. The rest I think you know."
Napoleon sat with his mouth hanging open, "Jesus Illya, I'm so sorry, I had no idea?"
"Nyet! I did not tell you for you to feel sorry for me, please do not do that?This is a fear that I must be rid of. All my life I have been told where to go and what to do and I have lived my life in fear of being found out, of being pitied...until I came here and met you. You showed me nothing but friendship and kindness and I put up a wall around myself in response. That was not right."
Napoleon held out his hand to lllya then when the Russian accepted it, he pulled his partner to him in a hug. " Thank you for sharing this with me tovarisch, clearly it wasn't easy. What you told me explains a lot about you and I'm sure you gave me a very abridged version of you life story but If you ever feel like talking again, you know my door is open to you any time, I mean that Illya."
"Thank you Napoleon" Kuryakin smiled. He lifted his glass raising it for a toast. " Za na nashyei druzhbe_for our friendship."
"To best friends." Napoleon said as they tipped their glasses together.
They changed the topic to less serious subjects and after copious amounts vodka, then scotch the Russian finally passed out on the sofa.
Napoleon wasn't too steady on his feet either and didn't have the heart to wake him, and just stood staring at Illya, wondering how he managed to suvive those terrible things and still tuned out to be decent man. He called Elliott, giving her a heads up that Illya was going to be spending the night.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Let's just say it's been a long time since we got drunk together and had a real heart to heart talk."
"A heart to heart did ye say? About what? If ye don't mind me asking?"
"He told me about his childhood, his past."
"The camp?"
"Yes he did, he felt the need to unburden himself of alot of baggage. I think it was all part of the healing process for him."
"I'm glad to hear that. He always felt guilty about not sharing things with ye. It's good that he did. Now ye are more like a brother to him than ever before. Good night Napoleon...behave, no more of the booze for ye now?"
"Thanks Ellie, good night."
ref.* "The Thirty Seven Bridges Affair"