The thrill was there again at three a.m., as Napoleon slipped into black jeans and a black t-shirt and Illya smelt the familiar scent of the black grease paint that would help him slip in unseen.

'You're not putting it on yet?' he asked.

'No, just checking,' Napoleon said, and screwed the lid back on the tin. 'No, I don't want to look like Al Jolson if anyone picks me up. I'll slip out through the back entrance and only put on the paint when I'm outside the place.'

And Illya listened to him strapping on his holster and checking his gun, and a new thrill ran through him. He reached out to touch Napoleon, to feel his firm muscles through the brief t-shirt and to feel the supple leather of his holster and the weight of his gun at his side.

'Be careful,' he said, and Napoleon chuckled.

'I'm always careful,' he said.

'I know,' Illya replied, but the worry was there. Napoleon was perfectly good at this sort of thing, but creeping and climbing and breaking and entering had always been Illya's forte, and had everything been as it should be, he would have been going along, Napoleon hovering outside on guard and Illya slipping in through a skylight or something and placing the bugs where no one would ever think to look.

'I do this all the time when you're home in New York,' Napoleon assured him, reading his thoughts. He touched a finger to Illya's nose and then kissed it affectionately. 'Don't worry, button. You just curl up in bed and I'll be back before you know it.'

Illya gave a hollow laugh. He wouldn't be sleeping until Napoleon returned. He was sure of that. When Napoleon left he opened his case and dithered between the single volume of Camus that he had brought, only a third of the book because in Braille it just took up so much damn space, or the latest journal article that Sarah had so wonderfully taken the time to transcribe and print for him. He was so lucky to have someone who could do that; to have the vast resources of U.N.C.L.E. there and someone willing to spend time to give him things to read. Without U.N.C.L.E. he didn't know where he would be.

He shook that thought away, because it didn't help. He took a chair out onto the balcony and got a blanket because the night air was chilly, and he propped his feet on the edge of the balcony and picked up the Camus. After a few sentences he put that down and got the journal article instead, and folded that and his hands deep inside the blanket, and sat there slipping his fingers over the words and trying to take them in, but really just waiting for either his communicator to sound or for Napoleon to return.

When his communicator did trill, it took him by surprise. He had finally managed to focus his mind on the physics article, and it had set his thoughts racing. Then there was the familiar warble at his breast pocket, and he quickly assembled the device and said, 'Kuryakin here.'

'Illya,' came Napoleon's breathless voice. 'I've been in. Bugs are set. No one saw me. I'll be back asap.'

Illya breathed out his relief very quietly. He didn't want Napoleon to hear it.

'Good,' he said simply. 'A safe return.'

'Thank you, mon cher,' Napoleon said, and then he was gone.

Illya got to his feet, the blanket wrapped around him and the article, and felt his way back inside. He went straight to his cases and opened up his equipment case and got out the recorders and slipped the headphones over his ears. He switched the channel to the first bug and got the reassuring hiss of sound that showed it was alive. The second gave him little moments of muffled snores and grunts, and he grinned at Napoleon managing to creep into this man's bedroom and get a bug so close without waking him. The third gave him that quiet hiss again, just night noises, nothing more. The fourth should be in the man's wallet, and it wouldn't always give the best quality sound but that was where Illya would come into his own, because he had grown so good at deciphering the mess of sound that came through these things. He switched to that one and found the same blank hiss, with occasional sleeping noises rather fainter than the bug by the bed. The man's wallet was in his room, but not very close to him.

He flicked back to the second bug and just listened. The creak of bedsprings. The noise of the man turning in sleep. He sounded overweight; not obese, but large. The man grunted and gasped and the bed creaked again, and he got out of the bed and walked across the room. A small room, hard walls with little to soften them and probably a tiled floor. There was a door that creaked when he opened it, and then faintly the sound of urination and a return to bed. Illya smiled. The man hadn't washed his hands. He drank. Illya heard the gulps deep in his throat. Then he set the glass back and sighed and settled back into bed. Not long after, snoring started again.

There was a noise beyond the headphones and Illya switched off the monitor and slipped the headphones off.

'Napoleon?' he asked.

'Yes,' came Napoleon's soft reply.

The door closed and Napoleon came across the room and Illya stood up and reached out a hand to touch his cheek. He sniffed at his fingertips. Cold cream, stronger than the greasepaint. Napoleon had cleaned it off before coming back into the hotel.

'The bugs are sound,' Illya said. 'I've been listening to Mr Sharif's sleeping habits. He is not very sanitary.'

'Huh?' Napoleon asked.

'He does not wash his hands after using the toilet.'

Napoleon laughed then, and leaned in and kissed Illya on the lips. 'You're not going to let Waverly down,' he said. 'Uh, but perhaps I should wash my hands before I do anything else, going by what you said.'

So he went to the bathroom and Illya heard the tap run, then Napoleon came back. This time when he took Illya in his arms Illya felt his naked torso against him and he grinned and ran his hands over Napoleon's muscles, firm and a little damp with sweat, and said, 'You know, you are extremely distracting. Extremely.'

Napoleon kissed him and fingered Illya's shirt and said, 'You haven't even undressed tonight. That's very unsporting.'

'I did undress, earlier,' Illya reminded him. 'Napoleon, really we should sleep.'

'Hmm,' Napoleon said. 'Well, the early bird does catch the worm. Which bed shall we squeeze into?'

Illya laughed and said, 'I think in the interests of sleep, lyubimy, we should each take to our own beds tonight. Have you set the alarm?'

Napoleon sighed. 'Yes, I've set the alarm, and it's set for disturbingly soon. All right then, honey. Let's sleep.'

((O))

Napoleon mooted the possibility of eating breakfast in the room, but Illya was anxious to become more familiar with the hotel, so after an hour of monitoring the bugs they took themselves downstairs and found a table in the dining room. The food was disappointingly western, but perhaps it was good to have some familiarity, because Illya was still muzzy headed after the long night and yesterday's journey, and croissants and coffee were easy, at least.

'Busy this morning,' Napoleon said.

'Yes, so I hear,' Illya replied, turning his ear towards the room. There was a lot of clinking of cutlery against china and the sounds of footsteps and chairs scraping. He could hear a rich melange of languages, mostly spoken by men, it seemed. 'Businessmen? A conference?'

'Yeah, I think so. Doctors, if I had to guess. A lot of them seem to know one another, but not terribly well. The conference facilities here are the best in Cairo, apparently.'

'Ah, I see.'

Illya touched his fingers to his plate, found it empty, and asked, 'Is there anything else to eat around here?'

Napoleon chuckled. 'I'll have them kill the fatted calf. Or would you like a couple more croissants?'

'I'll settle for croissants,' Illya said, so Napoleon got the attention of a waiter and not long after there were two more hot croissants on his plate and he was tearing into them with great pleasure. And then Napoleon suddenly said, 'Illya, that's our man, right over there by the bar. I don't know what he's doing here...'

'You think someone's picked up on our presence?' Illya asked in a low voice. Perhaps they should have stayed upstairs. If he were in the room right now he could be listening to the wallet bug.

'No, I don't think so. He hasn't sent so much as a glance our way. Maybe he's meeting someone. I'd go over but if anyone did catch a glimpse of me last night...'

Illya shoved the last bit of croissant into his mouth and dusted off his front with his napkin, then got to his feet, cane in hand.

'Where is he?' he asked.

'Illya,' Napoleon said in a low, warning voice.

'Napoleon, don't be ridiculous. You'd better get out of here. Where is he?'

Napoleon sighed. 'The tables are lined up straight so if you step a pace back from your chair and turn ninety degrees to the right you have a straight run to the bar, about thirty yards away. There's a step up separating the bar from the dining area. There are stools along the bar and you can buy alcohol or hot drinks. At the point you'll hit the bar, he's about three yards to the right. No one else is sitting on that side. The bar is curved.'

'Yes, I remember from last night.'

Illya took off his glasses and put them in his pocket, because he knew his pupils were milky and his eyes looked blind, and who would suspect that a blind man were a spy? He turned his back on the table and struck out into the open space. The many murmuring voices at the other tables helped him to keep to his path, and then he found the step, then the cane clattered into what were probably the legs of a bar stool. He moved a little way to the right, palming his hand on the top of each stool, then sat down.

'Just a coffee,' he said when the barman asked him what he wanted. 'Black. Large.'

Then he held out a handful of coins and the man's fingers plucked out the right change. He received his coffee and curled his hands around the cup, and angled his body a little away from the man he could sense a couple of seats away from him. The man was drinking, and there was the same heaviness in his breathing and movements that he had heard through the bug last night. He sipped at his coffee, and wondered if Napoleon were going up to the room to listen to the bug. It was undoubted that Illya had a much better vantage point here, though.

Footsteps approached and someone else sat down, and Illya knocked his cane where it was leant up against the bar and it clattered to the floor.

'Oh, er – excuse me,' Illya said rather deferentially. 'Could you help? My cane. I'm not sure where it went.'

'Yeah, sure,' a man replied, in an American accent. Illya held out his hand and received the cane, and was pretty sure that the man had got a good view of his damaged eyes. He smiled and put the cane between his knees, and thanked the man, reaching out clumsily to pat his side, then turning back to his drink. That was enough. He would almost certainly be discounted by the pair now.

He lifted his coffee and took a sip, and listened. The Egyptian addressed the American as Leon. The American called the Egyptian Abdul, but Illya already knew that was his name. They spoke obliquely, not quite in riddles, but so that any casual observer would suspect nothing about the true nature of their conversation. But Illya knew exactly what their conversation centred around. Mr Sharif was engaged in trafficking large amounts of drugs out of the country and into America, where their sale would boost Thrush's coffers by millions of dollars. Illya had to assume that Leon was Sharif's American contact and the meeting they were discussing was to pass on the drugs. They were haggling about prices, and Illya didn't particularly care how much money Leon was standing to lose or gain in this exchange, so he concentrated on the clues he could gain from his voice and movements instead. He didn't recognise the man's voice, which was a relief, because he had encountered so many Thrush men in the past that it was quite possible he would be recognised by the wrong person. Leon sounded as if he came from the west coast of the US. He was drinking beer, while Sharif seemed to be drinking coffee. While he sat there Leon lit up a cigarette which Illya was pretty sure had been made by Malborough. When he moved suit fabric rustled, and his shoes tapped occasionally on the foot rest of the bar stool and sounded light, much like any businessman might wear. He didn't really need a physical description of the man, because Napoleon had probably stayed around long enough to get a look at him, but in case he hadn't he stored those details in his mind.

He drained his coffee and slipped off the stool before the conversation to the right of him had wound down. From long experience he was sure that he had heard all that was vital to hear, and to leave while the men were still there was far less suspicious than nursing his drink and waiting for them to finish. He rapped his knuckles on the bar and asked, 'Er, excuse me?' and when the barman came over he said, 'I wonder if someone could give me some help back to my room?'

'Certainly, sir, certainly,' the barman said quickly, and a moment later a slim Egyptian woman was holding his arm and saying, 'Which is your room, sir?'

'Oh, please, let me hold like this,' he said, rearranging things so that he was holding her arm with his left hand and his cane arm was still free. There were very few people, really only Napoleon and Sarah, that he trusted to guide him without also using the cane and a good deal of personal awareness to be sure of his step. In the early days he had had far too many experiences of guides who had led him off kerbs without warning him, or let him walk into signposts or overhanging trees, of people who had told him the road was clear to cross just before a car appeared, or not noticed dog mess on the pavement. The dog mess was something the cane couldn't help with either, and he despised it, but there was little he could do about that.

Napoleon had learnt so much, really. It had been almost as steep a learning curve for him as for Illya. It was rare now that a door in their apartment wasn't either fully open or fully closed, because early on Illya had walked into half-open doors far too many times. He always told Illya on which side the door was hinged, he always warned him of kerbs or steps or low ceilings and overhanging objects. He knew Illya relied on absolute order in the apartment and in the office so he could find things, and he was almost more rigid about those things now than Illya was himself. Really, he was very good. He couldn't imagine a better person to live with.

'Oh, it's Suite thirty-seven,' he told the young woman guiding him as soon as he was far enough away from the pair at the bar. He didn't want to naively tell them exactly where he was staying, just in case they did suspect.

'Ah, thank you, sir,' she replied.

He smiled a little. He could feel her nervousness through her arm, and through the way she walked.

'I rarely bite,' he told her in a confidential tone.

'Oh – I – er – I beg your pardon, sir?' she asked, flustered.

He laughed then. 'There is no need to be so nervous,' he told her. 'I'm only blind. I don't bite girls who are kind enough to help me.'

'Oh.' She laughed lightly, then said, 'This is the elevator now,' and Illya halted while she stopped to press the call button, and when the doors slid open he tapped his cane against the metal edge of the open doors. 'Have you always been blind?' she asked as he followed her into the small room with its sharp, quick echoes.

He smiled and shook his head. 'No, not always,' he said. 'No. Almost two years.'

'Oh,' she said again, then said, 'I – don't know if I should say that I'm sorry.'

That made him smile again. 'If you want to be sorry, you may be,' he told her graciously. 'I try not to be too sorry because I have no choice but to be blind and I have to live my life.'

He remembered those awful, awful days of raging anger and pain. He remembered how much of Napoleon's crockery he had broken in anger, and pressing his fingers over his shins and arms to work out how many new bruises he had got each day, and standing on the kerb of the street with Napoleon and wondering how easy it would be just to pull away from him and step out in front of a passing bus. He had screamed and raged and wept at the injustice, at how his life had been destroyed, at how he had become a helpless cripple in a world full of happy people with working eyes. And then, as with all grief, the storm had slowly passed. Crying did not work as a kind of last-minute irrigation of the acid-damaged corneas. Nothing would make his eyes better. He had seen three different ophthalmologists in New York and they had all told him that the burning was too bad, too deep, the eyes were too damaged and nothing could be done.

Really it was Napoleon who had saved him. It was Napoleon who persuaded him in the end that he had no choice but to go to the rehabilitation college, that he couldn't spend every day in bitter misery and every evening trying to make it go away with scotch or vodka. It was Napoleon who patiently tried to teach him techniques for managing that he'd picked up from leaflets and friendly advice and books from the library. It was Napoleon who convinced him in the end that the only way to live was to adapt, and he had gone with him, sick with nerves, to the college, where they had welcomed him and enrolled him on the earliest possible programme, and for months after that he had spent his days learning to live again. It was Napoleon who persuaded him that U.N.C.L.E. could still use him, and had persuaded Waverly of the same thing, and then in making enquiries for an assistant to help him in his job they had found Sarah, and everything had come together in a beautiful whole. It had been strange at first going back to U.N.C.L.E. and learning to do a useful job without sight, but he had managed that too, and most of the shock and awkwardness in the other personnel had worn off the longer he spent around them, and almost everyone had been kind and helpful and bent over backwards to accommodate him.

'The door again,' the girl guiding him said, and he followed her out of the elevator. 'It was Suite Thirty-seven you said, yes?'

'Yes,' Illya nodded. 'Thirty-seven. Thank you.'

He trailed the cane along the wall to his right, counting the doors as they passed them. There were six, and then the woman stopped and turned to the left and said, 'Have you your key, sir?'

'Oh.' Illya dropped her arm and felt in his pocket and drew out the key.

'Would you like me to – '

'No, thank you.' He found the door frame first and then brushed his hands over the door at waist height and found the keyhole. It was better to be able to do this himself. But as he was trying to get the key into the lock the door suddenly opened, and Napoleon said, 'Illya!'

Illya turned briefly to the woman who had helped him and said, 'Thank you very much. Don't be nervous again, will you?'

And she laughed a little and promised not to be, and left.

Napoleon tugged Illya inside and closed the door and kissed him.

'You mad, crazy Russian,' he said. 'I was listening on the monitor, you know. I heard you asking for someone to bring you up here.'

'That much you heard,' Illya said. 'But did your cauliflower ears pick up anything else?'

'From the man's wallet, in his pocket? Not as much as I would have liked. It's a tricky place for a bug. You would have done better, Illya. You're better at picking these things out. But tell me what you heard. Anything good?'

Illya smiled and followed Napoleon's hand in his to the sofa. He dropped down next to Napoleon and said, 'They will be meeting again tonight at a warehouse, where the American will inspect the merchandise. Eleven p.m., they decided on. The American is called Leon. Sharif never used his surname. Did you see him?'

'Briefly,' Napoleon said. 'I didn't want to hang around once he turned up because I'm sure I've seen him before. Clean shaven, dark hair, grey suit, cheap shoes. I think he's Leon Michea, works in Thrush's drugs arm. Did you get the location of the warehouse?'

Illya shook his head. 'The warehouse. That's all they said. They both knew where they were talking about so they had no need to mention the address.'

'Hmm. I'll need to follow him,' Napoleon murmured. 'Well, that's tonight's activities sorted. You stay on the bugs and I'll trail Sharif.'

'Talking of the bugs,' Illya said with a grin. 'We now have a fifth.'

'Huh?' Napoleon asked. 'Oh, Illya, you didn't?'

His grin broadened. 'I did.'

'How the hell?'

'I dropped my cane. Just to make sure they could see I was really blind, you know. When the man picked it up for me I reached out to thank him, and – '

'Illya, you're incredible,' Napoleon said. 'But if he finds it and realises it's you – '

Illya shrugged. 'It's a risk, but an acceptable one. No, I'm pretty sure he got a good look at my eyes and this doesn't look fake, does it?' he asked, gesturing vaguely at his eyes.

'No, Illya,' Napoleon said rather ruefully. 'No, it doesn't look fake.'

Illya smiled and reached out to stroke Napoleon's cheek. 'It's all right, you know. I'm all right. Look at where we are, Napoleon. We're out here, in the field. I know it's not everything I used to have, and I'd be stupid to pretend it doesn't get to me sometimes, but I'm all right. I get through each day.'

'Hmm, you do,' Napoleon said warmly, reaching out himself to brush his fingers through Illya's fringe. 'You get through amazingly.'

'I'm nothing special,' Illya cautioned him. He always felt uneasy when people, even Napoleon, implied that in his blindness he was something special.

'Oh, but you are,' Napoleon told him. 'No, regardless of your blindness. You were special before that. You're the brightest person I've ever met. You with your doctorate from Cambridge. I was in awe of you on paper before I saw you, and then when I set eyes on you – god...'

Illya smiled. 'Now, Napoleon, you're not telling me you were smitten with me from the moment you set eyes on me. You spent most of our partnership seducing beautiful women.'

Napoleon chuckled. 'Maybe I did, and men too, Illya, although I always kept that one under the carpet. But that didn't mean I didn't look at you.'

Illya leant his head against Napoleon's shoulder and Napoleon's fingers kept stroking at his hair. 'Oh, yes, I do remember that. The amount of times I caught you with your eyes on me. The amount of times I was sure you were flirting with me. But then I thought you'd flirt with anything that had a pulse.'

Napoleon laughed at that. 'Well, maybe I would, but I never really let myself feel anything until I settled with you.'

'I miss your eyes,' Illya said after a moment. 'I do miss your eyes.' And he felt it, sharp and strong in his throat. He was happy enough now. He was. It was just that sometimes he missed everything so much. He took those feelings and tamped them down and sat on them, but then sometimes they erupted and felt so strong.

'Come on,' he said briskly. 'I want to see if that bug took.'

'I didn't even know you had any,' Napoleon said, taking him by the elbow and helping him over to the case with the monitoring equipment in it.

'I like to be prepared,' he said with a flashing smile.

He sat down at the little table and opened the case and turned on the machine, then tuned the frequency to the fifth bug and set it as a preset. He picked up the headphones and slipped them on and heard rustling, joggling sounds, voices speaking in Arabic, cars and car horns.

'He's walking,' he said briefly. 'He hasn't found the bug.'

That was good. The longer it went unnoticed the less likely they would be to associate it with him. Anyone could have slipped it into his jacket on the busy streets of Cairo.

'Well,' he said, leaning back in his chair. 'It's going to be a long, tedious day, I think, Napoleon.'

Napoleon patted him on the shoulder. 'Don't worry. We can take turns, and I'll be sure to keep you well fed.'

Illya grinned. 'Well, that's the main thing. We'll take dinner in the room and just listen in, and when you go out to track Sharif later, I'll be listening in and I'll pass you any info that you need.'