In vodka veritas
by Victoria Martin
Set immediately after See Paris and Die.
Napoleon was an old hand at globe-trotting, and in his considerable experience there was no fruit or vegetable in existence that human ingenuity could not turn into alcohol. In the aftermath of missions, he had gotten hammered in little beach huts, drinking vile native concoctions that appeared to consist mostly of coconut, up until the moment you went blind. He had knocked back home-made fruit schnaps in quaint hillside wine cellars that looked like hobbit holes, and had had to be rolled downhill to his guesthouse afterwards. He had learned the true meaning of the word "paralytic" drinking a weird local variant of fermented rice in Southern China, that had left his head feeling as if a herd of water buffalo had trampled through it, and his tongue as if they had shat on it copiously on their way out.
And fruit and vegetables were only half the story. Everyone in England knew that the taste of scrumpy was significantly improved by the addition of a dead rat. The Mexicans swore that tequila without a snake was only half the drink it was meant to be. The Spanish made wine from bull's blood; Tibetan chang was rumored to involve yak hide; and once Napoleon had shared with a bedouin tribe an illicit brew derived chiefly from camel dung. He had awoken the next morning in an Arabian jail, facing a sentence of forty lashes for "demeaning human dignity," and the diplomatic contortions Waverly had had to go through to get him out of it were the main reason why he now never drank anything he couldn't pronounce. Conventional Western drinks were fair game, however. Which was just as well, given how often his job left him stranded after a mission, with a massive adrenaline dose careering through his nervous system, and no obvious way of getting rid of it. Those were the times when he was most thankful that the Almighty had seen fit to invent alcohol and sex. Whatever His original purpose may have been in the matter, those activities could be adapted just fine to the needs of a tightly-wound UNCLE agent in the grip of an adrenaline high.
This time, however, things were different. This time Illya was with him, and much as he liked the little Russian, Napoleon couldn't see him staggering from bar to bar in pursuit of wine and women. He was too buttoned-up for that, too strait-laced. In truth, it was an unlikely friendship, for Illya was reserved to the point of introversion, whereas Napoleon - wasn't. And while he genuinely appreciated Illya's competence, and had been glad to have him along on this last couple of missions, he sometimes found him too tempting a target to resist, in his fear of Mr Waverly and his anxiety to get everything right. It was so easy to torture Illya. Too easy, really. Napoleon wished he would show a little backbone sometimes. He hadn't even resisted when Napoleon abandoned him to the Grushenka gorgon, whilst he worked off his own excess energy with the delightful Mary. Alas, the delightful Mary's appearance of sexual availability had turned out to be as much an act as her fondness for van Schreeten, and after a little mild flirting and almost no champagne - at least on her part - she had insisted on collecting La Grushenka and returning to her apartment. That left Napoleon without female companionship, and with Illya in tow, a combination which was bound to put a damper on the evening.
On the other hand... On the other hand, perhaps he should see this as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. After all, you didn't have to be Sigmund Freud to know that the way to a man's heart's blood was through his wine glass, and knocking down some of that wall of Soviet reserve to find out what lay behind it would be more of a challenge than getting legless, or laid. And maybe it would be almost as satisfying. As he ushered Illya into a small, smoke-filled bar - a more suitable venue for an intimate interrogation than the smart salon they had attended with the ladies - his eye fell on the Russian's wedding ring, and a surge of adrenaline told him he'd found his target. If he could extract the truth about that from his clam-like friend, then he could deservedly pat himself on the back and call himself UNCLE's top agent.
Illya, still visibly intimidated by his encounter with Madame Grushenka, was peering owlishly around the bar from behind his noli me tangere spectacles, the Kuryakin equivalent of a chastity belt.
"You can take them off now," said Napoleon, amused. "The dragon's lurking outside the lady's bedroom door, making sure no nocturnal visitors come."
"Too late in your case," muttered Illya, sliding off the glasses, and Napoleon blinked. Was that -? But no, Illya's command of English wasn't up to that kind of pun, and his character even less so. He leaned across the table and said "What'll you have?"
Illya eyed him distrustfully. "What are you having?"
"I'd better stick to champagne," said Napoleon solemnly. "It's not a good idea to mix your drinks. I guess that means vodka for you, Illooshinka."
"Vodka and aspirin do not mix either," said Illya sullenly.
"Are you still taking painkillers?" Napoleon raised an eyebrow. "For a little bump like that? Do me a favor and don't let the other guys in Section 2 know, okay?"
The jibe was a bit below the belt. The bruising on Illya's face was spectacular, even for their line of work, and the headache probably equally so. On the other hand, Napoleon knew Illya well enough to be certain that there was no hope of worming anything out of him without chemical help. And the tactic worked. Illya flushed, gave him what Napoleon privately thought of as the Lost Puppy look, and said, "All right, but just one shot."
"Spoken like a man." Napoleon caught the waiter's eye and ordered a bottle of champagne and a measly single shot of vodka - no point in giving the game away too early, and he had enough confidence in his own rhetorical skills to be sure he could prevail upon Illya to sample another glass later on.
In the event, he didn't need to. Whatever Illya's scientific opinion about the inadvisability of mixing alcohol and medication, he was far too Russian to sit nursing a shot glass. He tossed the vodka down with visible relish and began to relax. Twenty minutes later there was a whole bottle of the stuff in front of him; two hours it later it was half empty, and he and Napoleon were at the confidential stage of intoxication, leaning across the table for emphasis, and gesticulating into each other's ears.
"I dunno why I din - didn't - see the diamons," Illya was saying mournfully. "I sat right down on them. I had a million trillion rubles under my backside an I jus din see."
"Could happen to anyone," Napoleon consoled him. "Just bad luck it was you. I mean, anyone could have sat right down on what we were looking for and failed to notice it."
"But wass Waverly gonna say?" Illya fixed him with watery blue eyes, his gaze slightly unsteady. "He's gonna burst my arse back to Section 8."
"It's 'bust'," said Napoleon, "As in 'I must, I must, I must improve my bust.' And don't worry about it, Uncle Napoleon will amend the written report to say you were interrupted before you could complete the search. After all, the Old Man doesn't need to know exactly where you were sitting when you 'pulled the apartment to pieces'."
Illya's face lit up. "Oh, thank you, Napoleoleo- Napoleoleolon - you're a pal," he said effusively, and then added, with a lack of caution quite shocking in a secret agent, "I owe you one."
Napoleon grinned back at him, the smile of a hunter whose trap is about to spring. "I've got your back, buddy," he assured him, "You can rely on me. Here, have another shot of vodka."
Glowing with relief, Illya did as he was told, and as he tipped back his head and raised the glass, Napoleon allowed his glance to fall on the wedding ring, then sent a look of surprise scurrying across his face.
"What's that?" he said, reaching out and tapping the ring. "Are you married? I thought there was a regulation against that?"
Illya hiccupped. "Ish a long story," he said.
"I've got time."
Illya looked away. For what seemed like ages he stared at the floor, then he glanced at Napoleon, opened his mouth as if to speak, and then looked down at the table. The candle had dribbled wax onto the wooden surface and Illya seemed to find the shape of absorbing interest. But when he finally looked up again, it was to find Napoleon's implacable eyes resting on him.
"Don' really like to talk about it," he said, squirming.
Napoleon scented victory, and put out his paw to pin it down. The adrenaline sparkled in his veins as he pulled on a hurt expression and said "Don't you trust me, Illya?" before adding, with just a hint of claws unsheathing, "If I can keep your cock-up over the diamonds secret from Waverly, I'm certainly not going to broadcast your private history all over HQ."
Illya's shoulders hunched forwards. His face looked positively haunted. Napoleon wondered fleetingly how anyone with so few emotional defences had ever managed to get accepted into Section 2. Break down that façade of detachment and the man was all naked hurt. But at the same time, genuine curiosity flared in his gut. It had started as a game, a challenge, but now he honestly wanted to know what strange Russian trauma his friend was hiding.
"You can tell me, Illya," he said in his gentlest, most trustworthy tone.
Illya's eyes finally met his. He was twiddling the ring now, twisting it this way and that, and after a few turns he appeared to come to a decision. Still looking at Napoleon, he eased the ring off his finger and placed it on the table between them.
"If I tell you this one thing, will you stop asking questions?" he said.
A headrush of satisfaction hit Napoleon. He nodded, then picked the ring up and held it closer to the candle. It was surprisingly light, and in the orange flame it seemed to glitter and glow, in a way that was rather disturbing - if he held it into the flame, would dark letters appear around the edge, in some awful language of death and destruction? Come to that, even if it was written in an earthly language, would he be able to read the message? Time to brush up on his Russian, he reflected. If he was going to be teamed up with Illya regularly, it wouldn't do to let him have too many advantages. Turning the ring between his fingers, he searched for the lettering, but the burnished surface remained blank and unreadable. Could it really need the agonizing caress of fire before it would give up its secret?
That had to be the champagne thinking for him; he wasn't normally prone to fantasies. Or perhaps it was Illya's proximity that did it. Napoleon was suddenly acutely aware of him as an alien, a Soviet, surrounded by the aura of snow, and tundra, and dark, dark fairy tales of wolves and bears and blood. When the ring's code was cracked, what secrets would it reveal? It struck him that Illya was like one of those Russian dolls, blank-faced and smooth, with an unreadable smile. And when you broke it open, you found another doll inside, and then another, and so on, ad infinitum. No matter how many masks you took off, you could never get to the truth, because there was always another one inside.
He turned the ring again. Still nothing.
And then he laughed. There was nothing mystical about it. Of course the words wouldn't be on the outside of the ring, where anyone could read them. They would be on the inside, hidden away. And what would they speak of? An incantation? Proof of royal descent? Napoleon smirked at the thought of Illya as the last surviving Tsar of All the Russias, but really, for all he knew of him, anything was possible. Or it might be a lover's vow, its promise of eternal devotion soured by the memory of betrayal. Or the last message from a wife abandoned behind the Iron Curtain, a hostage for Illya's good behavior.
Searching for a clue, Napoleon glanced from the ring to its owner, trying to read in his face some hint of the truth. Illya looked impossibly pale in the smoky dark, his bruises livid, his eyes huge and full of ghosts. It evoked in Napoleon an unexpected sense of guilt, a feeling that he was prying his friend apart, and leaving dirty fingerprints all over his soul; but the guilt warred with curiosity, and curiosity won. Shifting his thumb so that he could see the undersurface of the ring, he found what he was he was looking for. To his surprise, the words were not in Cyrillic but in plain English.
A PRESENT FROM MARGATE
For a long moment he stared at the phrase, as unable to decipher it as if it really had been written in an alien tongue. Then his neural circuits kicked in, battling the effects of the champagne, and he tossed the ring onto the table top. It gave a pathetic little clink, less impressive even than a coin striking wood.
"Plastic!" he said in disgust, then looked at Illya. The haunted look had vanished, wiped away by a broad grin. Damn, but the man was a good actor!
"You still haven't told me why you wear it," he said, struggling to salvage something from the wreckage of his opportunity, but Illya shook his head, and scooped up his property.
"One question only," he said, and there was no trace of slurring in his speech. "And now I must go to bed. I have to be in Amsterdam tomorrow, and I do not want Mr Waverly to think I am some kind of dipsomaniac."
As he started to rise, a hand emerged from the crowd and lingered on Illya's shoulder. It belonged to a girl, an exceptionally pretty girl, trailing a perfume powerful enough to cut through the fug of cigarette smoke.
"Avez-vous du feu, m'sieu?" she said huskily.
Illya whipped out his spectacles and peered at her through them, in a remarkable impression of a hygiene inspector confronted with a giant cockroach. "Oh, er, oui, mademoiselle," he said finally, and began hunting inefficiently through his pockets, only to drop the matches onto the floor. But by then the lady had long since switched her attention to Napoleon, and barely noticed the original object of her interest as he backed away from the table.
Napoleon, watching his partner slip unobtrusively through the crowd, was hard-pressed to restrain a laugh. By all objective standards of reckoning, Illya had won this particular round hands down, gaining the promise of a fudged report in return for precisely zip in the way of useful information. But the insight he had gained into how very skilfully his Russian doll partner used his props to keep the world at bay was more useful than any number of secret wives or lovers. And it wasn't as if he had really told Waverly that Illya had forgotten to check the furniture. No, in Napoleon's reckoning they had come out pretty even-handed, and he was looking forward to seeing how Illya would take the revelation that he didn't actually have to go to Amsterdam tomorrow. He was about to ask the girl to join him in a celebratory drink, when it struck him that he would probably come out of the morning's encounter better if his brain cells weren't gummed up by champagne.
"May I have this dance?" he asked instead, and as the girl melted into his arms he felt a surge of satisfaction at an evening well spent, a satisfaction that lasted until a good half hour later, when he learned something else about his friend: when you drink with a Russian, make damn sure he pays the bill before he leaves.