It was cold in Russia. Illya had expected that since it was early winter, but still he wished it could be warmer. The cold had started as he and Napoleon had opened the door of the small plane carrying them and leapt out into the icy slipstream. The cold had continued as they plummeted towards the earth, the air streaming past wickedly in icy ribbons. When each man pulled his ripcord and the parachutes opened, the cold had continued, softened very little by their reduced speed, and when they had hit the ground it had been hard as iron, rough with frost that furred every grass blade and froze the earth beneath.

Napoleon had landed not far from Illya, but he couldn't see him until he got up and started to move, pulling the dark billowing parachute fabric in as he ran. He could just see the glint as Napoleon uncapped his communicator to call to the plane above, 'We're down. Any sign?'

'Nothing on monitored channels, sir,' came the muffled reply from far above, and as Napoleon reached his partner he slipped the communicator back into his pocket. Until they met up with Phelps and his team, they were on their own. Napoleon grinned, and his teeth flashed in the moonlight.

'A little chilly, mon cher?'

Illya shrugged. 'I've been colder.'

'Well, pity those of us who don't have your icy Slavic blood.'

'In 1936, when I was three years old, the temperature reached almost forty Celsius in Kiev,' Illya commented idly as he packed away his 'chute. 'That heat is one of my first memories.'

Napoleon shut him up by kissing him, but Illya pulled away, shaking his head. 'Napoleon, don't...'

Napoleon reached after him, catching his gloved hand. 'Illya, please. We don't have much time left. Don't push me away now.'

Illya stood in the icy field, eyes cast down to his feet, just making out the dark shape of his boots against the slightly lighter mess of grass and earth. How could he explain his unease to Napoleon? He was about to be incarcerated for exactly what Napoleon wanted from him, and even if it wasn't in his own name, he still felt such a turmoil of emotion around that, that he couldn't think of a single word to describe his feelings.

He looked up slowly, looked into the dark glitter of Napoleon's eyes. Oh, how he wanted him. He remembered their last lovemaking; not, as he had expected, the slow and languid love in Napoleon's bed, but an urgent shoving and rubbing and mutual stimulation in the aeroplane toilets somewhere over the North Atlantic. There had been icebergs in the sea far below, ice crystallising at the edges of the windows, and Napoleon had just given him that look, one long, penetrating look, and the next thing Illya had known he was in that tiny compartment, pressed up against the bulkhead by Napoleon's body, head pressed back by Napoleon's lips. They had held their strident erections together, Napoleon's hands pressing around Illya's hands, and had pumped until the climax came, which Napoleon had caught in a bouquet of tissue and flushed into the ether.

The expression on Napoleon's face as he forced himself to stay silent as he came was the most erotic thing Illya had ever seen. Just now, thinking about it, he was becoming hard. In the freezing field he leant against Napoleon and then kissed him very softly on the lips.

'I'm sorry, lyubimy,' he whispered. 'I love you. I will not stop loving you. But I can't do that. Not here. Not until it's over. Please, understand...'

Napoleon's gloved hand was at the back of his neck, holding him. Slowly the American nodded. 'I'll try,' he promised. 'I'll try.'

((O))

The trek across the fields was cold and largely made in silence, scarves wrapped around their faces to cut out the freezing air and heads tilted down to further protect them from the cold. Illya's presence beside Napoleon felt like a spirit stalking alongside him. He couldn't encapsulate it, how he could seem so bulkily present and yet so absent, so frigid and yet like a burning coal at his side. He wanted desperately to reach him, but he didn't know how, because the way he knew best was to take Illya in his arms and kiss and stroke and coax a response from him, and right now that was making his lover turn even further away. He tried, tried so hard, to understand why this mission and being in his homeland was affecting him like this, but he thought if it had been the other way round he would have wanted to hold his partner and kiss him and make love to him until the last possible moment. Instead, Illya was like a creature huddled inside a shell.

The sky was at its darkest as they finally reached the pre-arranged coordinates, and Napoleon sighed out his relief at the sight of the car there; a grey, battered old thing with Phelps in the driving seat, his knees jutting up, and looking as though he would have welcomed a hole cut in the roof to accommodate his head. He was lit only by the glow of his cigarette as he pulled air through the filter, and then he sank into darkness again as he exhaled. Napoleon and Illya made for that intermittent beacon of light, anticipating if not warmth, at least a slightly warmer chill. As they stopped by the driver's door Phelps looked up at them with a broad smile on his face.

'Gentlemen, I'm glad you got here. Any trouble?'

Napoleon glanced at Illya, but Illya didn't look in the mood to speak at all.

'None at all,' he said. 'You have a plan to get rid of this gear?'

'Furnace in the bottom of the hotel building,' Jim said simply. 'Barney will take it all down after we get in.'

Illya seemed to come out of his self-imposed isolation, looking at Jim's cramped position and offering, 'Would it be easier if I drove?'

Jim grinned again. 'Ah, you get used to it. Get in the back and get out of your gear. You need to be in civvies once we reach the town.'

Illya raised one eyebrow, and Napoleon caught the expression with delight as Jim's cigarette glowed again. As always, with action Illya was coming back to himself.

'I know how Russians drive,' Illya said with cynical humour. 'Are you sure you don't want me to take the wheel?'

Jim shook his head economically. 'Get in the back. I've been sitting here for an hour. We need to go.'

Napoleon shuffled in first, and Illya joined him. 'Tell me, IK, how do Russians drive?' he asked with a grin.

He couldn't see Illya's expression now because Phelps had stubbed out his cigarette and carefully placed the butt in the footwell.

'Like maniacs,' Illya replied, and even in the dark he knew his partner was grinning back.

((O))

It was a relief to be in the safety of the hotel, even if Napoleon and Illya had been forced to shinny up the outside of the building rather than walk in through the front door. It was even something of a relief that the only sleeping accommodation for the pair was a tangle of cushions and blankets on the floor, the other beds already being taken. Officially, Napoleon and Illya were not here. But the less-than-ideal accommodations meant that there was no reason why they could not huddle together for warmth on the narrow spread of cushions in the rather chill room. Rollin and Cinnamon were already huddled together in their bed in a separate room, and Jim went back to his own bed not long after knocking on Barney and Willy's door and dumping the armful of parachute fabric and drop suits in their arms for disposal.

The suite was almost silent, but for the slight occasional sound of a snore from Rollin's room.

'Do you think that's him or her?' Illya whispered into Napoleon's ear, and Napoleon replied without a beat, 'Her.'

He snuggled his arms around Illya's chest, spooning him from behind, and they drifted into a deeply needed sleep.

((O))

Illya was back in his shell the next day, a hermit crab hiding deep inside impenetrable walls. Napoleon watched him at breakfast, picking at his food with uncharacteristic fussiness, before pushing most of it aside. And then Rollin commandeered him for the application of the appliances, and once those thin and fragile seeming bits of artificial flesh were attached to Illya's face he looked like another man. It wasn't just the make-up. He really was another man, Napoleon thought. This was a part of Illya he had never seen. As he stood there in a copy of Lagoshin's tired winter clothes and Rollin moved about him holding a photograph and checking every last detail, the Illya Napoleon knew seemed to have retreated deep inside, leaving only this facsimile of a stranger.

Rollin fussed and tutted, touching a hand to the stubble on Illya's chin – he hadn't shaved since they left New York – and the soft fuzz on his shaven scalp. He altered minute details of appliances and clothes, tutted again, altered again, then finally stood back, a broad smile coming onto his face like a slow opening flower.

'Jim?' he asked, turning to Phelps.

Jim took the photograph and walked around Illya himself, while Illya stood like a waxwork, his eyes far away.

'Very good, Rollin,' Jim said eventually, and Rollin beamed like a child under a parent's praise. 'Napoleon, what do you think?'

Napoleon started, then cleared his throat awkwardly. 'Oh, I, er – '

Illya's eyes came to life, and he half-smiled apologetically.

'It's all right, Napoleon,' he said simply.

'Do you want a mirror, Illya?' Rollin asked, and Illya snapped, 'No.' But his eyes were alive again when he looked towards Napoleon.

'Come and look, Napoleon,' he said. 'You won't break me.'

Napoleon had largely avoided looking at the photograph of Lagoshin, but he took it now before looking at Illya, hoping that he would be different enough to reassure him that his very own Russian was still himself. But when he looked at the photograph he saw a man who could have been Illya's brother. Not quite his twin, but at least his brother. There was just a slight difference of the nose and brow; and when he looked up at Illya he saw Lagoshin standing before him, shorn of head, gaunt of cheek, with fear in his eyes. The sight took his breath away, and he found he couldn't speak. When he swallowed it was like swallowing a lump of concrete.

'Perfect,' he managed after a moment. 'It's perfect.'

But Illya's eyes met his and read the truth.

Napoleon glanced over at the door to Jim's bedroom, and asked with a lightness he didn't feel, 'Can we use your room for a moment, Jim?'

'Oh, sure, go ahead,' Jim waved them in, then glanced at his watch. 'Just remember that we have to leave in half an hour. No later. The timing is vital.'

After a moment of hesitation Illya followed Napoleon into the small, shabby bedroom.

'I'm not going to ask you to kiss me. I'm not going to ask anything of you,' Napoleon said in a low voice before Illya could speak. 'I just wanted to see you alone before you leave. Is that all right?'

Illya smiled slightly, then touched a hand to the appliances on his face as if the movement had felt strange.

'It's all right, Napoleon,' he said quietly.

'Is it?'

Illya nodded. 'It's all right.'

Illya took a breath, then reached inside his top and drew out the fine gold chain he always wore, its slim medallion glittering and twirling on the end like a hypnotist's tool. He took off the old, thin-banded wedding ring he wore and added it to the little pile of glitter in his palm. He dropped them into Napoleon's hands and curled his fingers closed around them.

'Keep them safe,' he said.

Napoleon locked his eyes into Illya's. 'I will,' he promised. And he hung the chain around his own neck and slipped the small wedding band onto his first finger, where it fitted snugly. Illya had never explained the importance of those items, although he thought the wedding ring might have belonged to his father or grandfather. But he knew how important they were. Illya wore that chain on almost every mission, and no agent would wear something precious or potentially compromising without very good reason indeed.

Napoleon tentatively reached out to cup Illya's cheek, hoping that amount of touch would be allowed. He just needed to feel him, to feel what was really Illya now he was wearing Lagoshin's clothes and part of Lagoshin's face and exhibiting what was probably a fair facsimile of Lagoshin's despair. Suddenly he felt deeply for Lagoshin as well as Illya, sent into this horrific captivity simply for loving another man. Opushchennye, Illya called them. Degraded, he had explained. Crestfallen. It was an odd mixture of terms and Napoleon suspected it wasn't really translatable. But Illya did look crestfallen now, more than crestfallen. He looked lost.

Illya leant in to his touch. Napoleon wanted to ask if he could kiss him one last time, but he was mortally afraid of Illya withdrawing completely. But then Illya came closer, his lips parting a little, and he explained in a husky voice, 'Rollin says the make-up should stand up to a lot. It has to. This is a good test.'

And Napoleon stayed motionless as Illya's lips moved to his, to capture them with their heat, and then they both came alive, sharing love and desperation and despair as Illya's tongue came fiercely into Napoleon's mouth and Napoleon teased it with his own. Their arms were cinched around each other now, their bodies pressed together hip to head, and finally it was Napoleon who broke the kiss with something like a sob.

'Oh my god, Illya, don't go,' he said, and then stood, stunned at himself, stunned at letting the selfish words slip that he had promised himself would never pass his lips.

Illya's eyes were so blue they brought tears into his own. 'I have to,' the Russian said. 'You know that, Napoleon.' He reached a finger up, brushed a little at something on Napoleon's cheek. 'I've never left make-up on you before,' he said in an attempt at humour that failed because of the sadness in his voice. 'Is my face still – ?'

'Your face is perfect,' Napoleon promised him, meaning so many things in those four words.

Illya nodded. 'Good. Now, I have to go out there, Napoleon. I need to go through some things with Rollin.'

Napoleon nodded. When Illya went through the door he couldn't follow him immediately. He sat down instead on Jim's bed, rubbing his hands over his face, scrubbing away the tears that he hadn't let fall. He was an agent, goddammit, and he should be able to mask over these terrible feelings.

He gave himself a few minutes, then joined the others in the main room. Barney and Willy were there too now, and Cinnamon was making a few last minute adjustments to Illya's clothes while Rollin held something up for Illya to take and spoke earnestly about it. It was the communicator, Napoleon realised, wrapped in a condom, and some diaphanous stuff that must have been the very fine thread and the patch that would keep it from being clenched up into Illya's gut. He hoped to god Illya was in practice – but then, Illya always kept in practice, whether it was with target shooting, ancient samurai techniques, or the art of pushing contraband so far up his rectum that it wouldn't be discovered with a simple squat and lift search. It was, strangely, one of the things he loved about Illya; not that he was an expert at hiding things in his gastrointestinal system, but that he was so damn dedicated to every single facet of his job.

He swallowed over his mixture of pride and dread. He didn't want to let Illya go into this, but he had no choice. He determined to hold on to the memory of that kiss, of Illya's fire and love. It was the last gift he might ever give to him.

'All right,' Jim said suddenly. He was looking at his watch again. 'We have to go. Gentlemen?'

Napoleon started forward, but he knew he couldn't come. He was not supposed to be here in this country, and bringing him along to the jail would just be an unwarranted risk. Only Rollin and Illya were going, with Cinnamon along to help.

'Illya,' he said.

Illya looked up and met his eyes. Napoleon rubbed his fingers over the gold wedding band on his first finger, and Illya saw that and smiled.

'Take care, little flower,' Napoleon said.

Despite everything, there was a brief spark of joy in Illya's eyes. He grumbled about Napoleon's irreverent endearments, but he loved them, every one. Illya nodded, but didn't speak, and Napoleon silently prayed for him to say something, just so he could hear his voice one last time, although he knew that one last time wouldn't be enough, would never be enough. Loving Illya was like a drug.

'Goodbye, Napoleon,' he said, and he walked out the door.

((O))

It was a good thing, a very good thing, that Illya wasn't claustrophobic. It was a good thing that he was small. Rollin had told him they had used this trick a few times and it had never failed yet. Somehow, people just didn't suspect the disabled.

So it was that Rollin was being wheeled into the town jail in a cumbersome bath chair, pushed by Cinnamon in a prim grey skirt-suit. And inside the bath chair, catching tiny glimpses of his route through the patterned wicker weave, was Illya, legs stretched out beneath Rollin's seat, arms clenched around his chest, breathing in shallow breaths and trying to remain invisible.

The cell they were wheeled into felt small and smelt of damp. The prisoner appeared silent and dejected. Illya could just see him sitting on his bunk, arms wrapped around himself much as Illya's were. When the door was closed and the lock turned, Illya let out a long breath.

Rollin knocked his knuckles on the edge of the chair, and Illya leapt into motion – or, at least, slowly moved himself into motion, cracking open the back panel of the chair and sliding himself out into the room, while Rollin kept talking loudly in his passable Russian, in his guise as a lawyer making a last ditch attempt to get Lagoshin out. It struck Illya with some irony that Lagoshin would be getting out, would be smuggled right out of the country, while Illya took his place.

In one swift motion Illya slipped up to his feet, noticing as he did that Cinnamon was standing in front of the small window in the door, that Rollin was holding Lagoshin's gaze as he spoke, with a finger pressed to his lips, and that Lagoshin was open mouthed and mute with astonishment as what appeared to be his twin emerged from under his lawyer's chair. Illya wasted no time. Lagoshin was an innocent, and as such could not be trusted. He uncapped the syringe he had been carrying in his pocket and plunged the contents directly into Lagoshin's exposed neck. Lagoshin slumped, and Illya caught him and began to stuff him into the undercarriage of the chair, throwing the used syringe in after him. Then he shut the concealed hatch and seated himself on the bed exactly where Lagoshin had been sitting, folded his arms around his chest again, and looked up at Rollin.

'Well, I'm sorry, Lagoshin, but there isn't anything more I can do for you,' Rollin said in Russian, but his flashing smile between words told Illya that he had done well. 'I truly am sorry.'

Illya matched the pattern set by his doppelgänger, and didn't speak. He just looked at Rollin with what he was sure were appropriately haunted eyes. It didn't take much acting talent. He glanced up at Cinnamon and she gave him a sympathetic smile, but then turned and knocked on the door, calling, 'Guard, we're ready to go.'

He was left in the cell. He felt very small despite the cramped conditions of the room, but he wasn't given long to mull on his situation because he could still hear the rumble of Rollin's chair moving off down the corridor when the door was opened and he was ordered out by a guard muttering invectives about time-wasting lawyers and how they needed to get to the train before it left without him. Rollin had deliberately left the visit as late as possible in the hope that Illya wouldn't then be submitted to a search before being taken to the train, and it looked as though his instinct had been right.

It was icy outside, but it wasn't long before he was hustled into a truck with the name of some bakery in large letters on the outside. On the inside it was a different story, as it was already half full of prisoners. Illya shuffled in and sat down against the wall, disinclined to talk or even to look up. The journey seemed to take hours as they kept stopping and more men were thrust into the space, until it became cramped and unbearable. It was dusk by the time they were unloaded by guards with guns at a railway siding separate from the main station and shouted at to kneel on the ground while a general air of fear and disorder raged around them. Illya knelt on the cold ground, shivering, waiting, as an interminable counting of heads went on.

He eyed the wooden cattle wagon which would be his home for now with a strong feeling of trepidation. When he was finally yelled at to stand his legs almost did not cooperate, but he staggered to his feet, tottering a little on the gravel. He kept his head down and kept his hands limp, and walked up into the lightless interior of the wagon with the rest of the men. There must have been sixty in there by the time the thing was considered full, and he stood uncomfortably, packed alongside his fellow prisoners like a sardine in a tin. Invisible beyond the huddle of men a guard shouted instructions, and he gleaned that there was a hole somewhere in the floor to be used as a toilet, and that at some point they would be given food.

Somehow he managed to move his way towards the edge of the wagon through the other milling bodies. Men were shoving, some were talking, asking names and crimes, and he prayed that no one would ask him. He didn't want to attract any undue attention, especially the kind of attention he would garner for being homosexual. He moved himself right to the wagon side and leant against the rough wood planks, reasoning that the others would probably try to stay nearer the centre for warmth. He would need the warmth too, but it was better to be cold and left alone.

He pressed his hand over the slimness of the communicator in a deep inside pocket, wishing that he could open it up and call Napoleon, but that would be suicide. The communicator was already modified so that it showed no sign of an incoming signal except a very slight vibration. It was too risky otherwise. If things went as they should he wouldn't use it at all until he called for the extraction of him and Permyakov. The other option was an unthinkable one; if his position in the zona had become so dangerous that he had to request help. Then the mission would be a complete failure.

((O))

Napoleon was almost beside himself by the time Rollin and Cinnamon returned, although he managed to coax his visible anxiety down to pacing. When they came in through the door grinning, with a pale and obviously terrified Lagoshin between then, it was all he could do to stop himself rushing them and bellowing at them for information. Instead he just dropped into a chair and waited for Jim to speak.

'What took you so long?' Phelps asked as Rollin poured himself a brandy.

'Prison governor was a little over-zealous and took us up to his office for a long interview,' Rollin replied. His face was glowing with the kind of joy one only got from a mission that had come very close to the wire. 'I was afraid Lagoshin here was going to wake up, but he slumbered through the whole thing, thank god. Didn't come to until we'd ditched the chair and were driving back.

'And Illya?' Napoleon couldn't stop himself from asking that question. He saw Lagoshin look at him sharply, and remembered with a strange bitterness that the man shared the name. But that was all he shared. Here, in the flesh, he didn't seem to resemble Illya at all. Sure, there were surface resemblances, and with his appliances Rollin had made Illya his twin. But to someone who really knew Illya, knew his spirit and his soul, there could be no mistaking the two.

'Well, we drove down past the siding where he was due to board. The train was still standing. It might be hours before they move off, perhaps tomorrow morning. As far as we can tell everything seems to have gone off fine,' Rollin said.

Seems, seems. Those words weren't enough for Napoleon. He instinctively fingered his communicator, but it would be a death sentence for Illya were he to open a channel to him.

'Are you sure?' he asked in a voice he barely recognised.

Cinnamon smiled at him. 'The prison governor showed no suspicion at all. He was just anxious to confirm that we'd been received as we should be. There isn't any reason for them to suspect Illya, Napoleon. We just need to play a waiting game now for him to get to the camp.'

'And then?' Napoleon asked, very aware of how on edge he sounded.

Then Jim smiled. Napoleon was starting to feel that whenever Jim smiled it meant things were all right. The trust he was gaining in the IMF team, and particularly their leader, was priceless in this precarious situation.

'We managed to get Rollin a place at the camp, Napoleon. I didn't want to say anything until it was certain. He's just about fluent enough to get by. So we'll travel up to the logging zone while Barney and Willy get Lagoshin out of the country. Then they'll join us up there. Don't worry. There's plenty of time.'

It was the plenty of time that worried Napoleon the most. He wasn't exactly clear on how long it would take for Illya to get to the camp. No one seemed clear on that, because it was impossible to anticipate the delays and bureaucratic hold ups that might interfere with the journey. And the longer the journey was, the more danger Illya was in simply of dying from the conditions under which he was being transported. Illya was healthy, he knew, and while not overweight, had a useful amount of body fat. But thoughts of dysentery and pneumonia and dehydration haunted Napoleon. It was terrible to think of Illya being brought down by something like that, something he had no chance of fighting.

((O))

The first complication arose the next morning, when Lagoshin refused to go. Napoleon stood staring, trying to grasp what was going on as a torrent of impenetrable Russian left the man's mouth, while he stood looking between Jim and Rollin and Cinnamon, who were the only ones who could follow him.

'What is it?' he asked. 'What's wrong?'

Barney and Willy were similarly baffled. Then Jim turned and took the three aside and said in a low voice, 'He says he doesn't want to go.'

'Doesn't want to go?' Napoleon repeated incredulously. 'He knows what he was facing, doesn't he? He knows what – ' His voice unaccountably stalled, and he coughed. 'He knows what Illya's taking for him, doesn't he?'

'Yes, he knows all that,' Jim said with patience that was far beyond Napoleon's capability. 'But he – er – he doesn't want to leave his friend.'

'His friend?' Barney echoed.

'His – special friend. The man he was seeing. He managed to evade identification. Lagoshin doesn't want to leave him.'

Napoleon stared at the voluble Russian across the room, then back at Jim. He tried, tried so hard, to reel in his impatience, tried to understand the man's feelings. Would he ever leave Illya behind in this kind of situation?

That thought almost floored him with guilt. He had left Illya behind. Illya was alone right now…

'Then take him too,' he said suddenly.

'Napoleon, all the arrangements are for one man,' Phelps reminded him in a low, terse voice. 'It was hard enough – '

'Barney can make him up documents. Can't you, Barney?' he asked, appealing to the man who thus far had had far more dealings with Illya than with Napoleon.

Barney rubbed his hand over his chin. 'I could, Jim. If you can get the extraction team to wait just one more day. Do you think you can do that?'

'You can't leave him here,' Napoleon pushed. 'You certainly can't leave Lagoshin here – you know the risk that would pose to Illya – but look at what his – his partner will have to face if he's implicated too!'

Phelps glanced over at Lagoshin again, then back at the others. 'Well, we can't drag him out of the country unconscious, that's for sure. He needs to be able to walk onto that plane looking like an ordinary citizen.'

'Have you ever been in love?' Napoleon asked him. Jim stared at him, and Napoleon was caught by his eyes, blue as Illya's. Oh, but they were not Illya's eyes. They were a world from Illya's eyes. 'Have you?' Napoleon pressed.

Jim didn't answer, but something in his face softened.

'Their love is no different,' Napoleon carried on pushing. 'Would you ask a man to leave his wife behind?'

'If he had to,' Phelps said, going back behind a façade again. But then he turned to Barney and said, 'Get on it, Barney. Start to draw up the documents and I'll get the necessary details of this man's lover. Willy, contact the extraction team and let them know what's going on.' Then he turned back to the other side of the room, where Rollin was still arguing with Lagoshin, and started speaking slowly and carefully to the man, obviously taking great care with his Russian words. Gradually, Lagoshin started to calm down. His face softened, and suddenly Napoleon saw a ghost of Illya in the man.

He stumbled to the armchair behind him and fell into it, suddenly light headed. He was grateful that the last occupant of the chair had left a tumbler and a bottle of whiskey on the side table. He poured himself a tumbler brim full, and drank it down like water. He felt as if he had been ripped bare, as if he had peeled away a sheath of skin and almost, almost, revealed that sensitive, so secret place where he held his love for Illya. His mind spun. What was he, after all? A queer? A fag? Opushchennye, as Illya had called it. Was that what loving Illya made him? An object of disgust, a creature so foul that he should be dragged away to a very Nordic hell of ice and snow?

The glass clashed against his teeth, and he set it down, realising that while he had been off in his little void of self-pity the others had been talking, making plans. He felt useless. He was never this useless on a mission. It was his feelings for Illya making him so. But that didn't make him wrong, did it? Anyone would be the same if the person they loved was in such danger. It didn't make their love wrong. It couldn't. There could never be anything shameful in how he loved Illya.

A slim figure sat down in the chair opposite. Lagoshin was wearing Illya's clothes. It only made sense, since they were the same size, and Illya didn't need his. But to glance up and see Lagoshin in Illya's dark trousers and poloneck shirt was like being stabbed in the stomach. The man looked at him and smiled, and Napoleon read days of haunting agony in that smile. But in a small, strange, twisted part of himself he hated Lagoshin. He hated him for looking like Illya but not being Illya, for being the reason why Illya had been chosen for this mission. He hated him for wearing Illya's clothes and sitting in the chair Illya would be sat in, and looking up at him with eyes that were blue like Illya's, but were not his.

He picked up the tumbler again, refilled it with a shaking hand, and drank.

((O))

Illya was terrified that he had lost count of time. It was starting to blend into one long run of pure misery as the train juddered for days through the freezing countryside, stopping occasionally for bread rations to be handed out to the inmates, or for cups of water to be given out. It was the food and water that made it easiest to count the days, because there was one cup of water a day and one hunk of dark bread that wasn't nearly enough for a grown man. The cold grew more intense daily, and the toilet hole in the floor had frozen over. The whole place stank of shit and piss, the dark air was filled with moaning from sick prisoners, and Illya held on to his bread ration with iron fingers for fear of it being taken from him. He had learnt not to bolt it all at once, but to take small bites from it through the day. In that way the worst of the hunger cramps were avoided.

Sometimes he found a crack or knothole in the rough boards, and he stood or sat by it, either sucking fresh air through the hole or putting his eye to it to spy out at the countryside rolling past. There had been no snow when he had left the town, but the further north they travelled the whiter the ground became. It was almost a relief at first when the train was stopped by snow on the tracks and the prisoners were ordered out into the bitingly fresh air. He pushed snow into his mouth surreptitiously and drank the meltwater. They kept the prisoners low on food and water so they needed the toilet less often, and were quieter and more easily controlled.

Illya watched impassively as a dead body was dragged out and two of the prisoners were given shovels to bury it; but how they would bury anything in this frozen ground he didn't know. It was a relief to be free of the corpse, though. There was something about travelling with a dead body that pushed the men over the edge.

Then they were ordered to dig the snow away from the tracks, and the relief of being outside turned to numb exhaustion after an hour of digging at ice and snow with his bare hands, in clothes that barely kept him warm enough inside the wagon, let alone outside. The guards hovering around with their breath clouding in the air and rifles ever ready made him nervous, so he kept digging without a murmur of protest, working as fast and hard as possible, actually eager to get back in that stinking prison just to get out of this bitter cold. It was better in the dark, where if he didn't speak, no one noticed him.

Once back inside he pressed his hands into his armpits and almost wept at the pain that shot through his fingers as feeling came back. The pain was good. The pain meant his hands weren't dangerously frozen. Most of the other men were in the same position, and he could hear some of them sobbing. And then after some time just sitting on the tracks the train jerked and the wagon started to rumble over the rails again, and he pressed his eye to one of those holes in the boards to see that dark was falling outside. He sank down into a crouching huddle and tried to get vaguely comfortable, resting his head on his knees and trying to sleep.

He dreamt of Napoleon, of being wrapped around Napoleon in his bed, of being warm and well fed. And then the dream started to unravel into a nightmare and he jerked awake, half a breath away from screaming. He saw faint streaks of light through the holes in the boards and realised that he had slept the whole night through. It was funny how exhaustion and stress could make someone sleep in the most terrible of situations. He came blearily to full wakefulness as the wagon door was dragged open and guards came to distribute the black bread. He grabbed at his own shamelessly when it was his turn, broke some off and stuffed it into his mouth, then pushed the rest into his pocket so that he could take the cup of water that was allotted to him. He heard one of the other prisoners asking something about how much longer the journey would take, and he held his breath waiting for the answer. Two more days. It would be two more days.

He leant back against the boards, processing that. It seemed harder to think now than it had when he had been back in the hotel, warm and well fed. Two more days. He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out the tiny white tablet concealed there, which would stop up his bowels for a few days. It was a nasty thing to take, but he couldn't risk losing the communicator through an unplanned bowel movement, and he had been tending towards diarrhoea lately, which was worrying in itself. He slipped the pill into his mouth, and swallowed. He would insert the communicator later, at night when most of the men were asleep, and less likely to notice his contortions in the utter darkness.

((O))

It had been a month, he thought. Much, much longer than he had imagined the journey being, although really he should have known. He had found out what he could about his likely fate before leaving New York, and he had heard of longer journeys, and worse. At least he had been spared the ships. But it was hard to imagine a journey of that distance taking a month. There had been the stops, scheduled and unscheduled. Once they had spent a day just sitting on the tracks, for no discernible reason. There had been no bread and no water that day, and a man had been strangled for the food he had saved. There had been a day when they had all been transferred to a local prison overnight and Illya had bitten in his breath for the fear of being searched, but he hadn't. In the end they had been transferred to a different train and a different cattle wagon – and viva la difference, Illya had thought, until that wagon too had become fouled and filthy as the last. And then at last the train clanked to a halt and they were ordered out, and Illya didn't know if it was with relief or terror which he looked on his new home. It had to be better than the wagon. Didn't it?

He shuffled off the train with the other men, very conscious of the communicator inside him, in its protective cover. What if they find it, what if they find it, what if they find it? The thought drummed along with his heart as he walked staggering from the train through a wide gate, over which the legend was painted, Through Labour – Freedom. He stood in the freezing yard, legs shaking like a newborn animal, while orders were screamed at them, as they were told to line up in fives, to line up again, and again. The counting seemed to go on forever, as the men grew colder and colder. Some of them were warmly dressed, but some were in rags, and Illya was somewhere in the middle. His fingernails were turning blue when finally they were ordered inside and yelled at to strip off their clothes and throw them in a pile. The room became a pink mass of naked men, all thin, all filthy, all being screamed at to line up again, and Illya kept his head down and pretended he did not exist, only keeping the barest sliver of awareness attuned to the shouting guards so that he would not miss an order. The queue for the washroom lined up the stairs, and he shuffled along with the rest, pretending he did not exist, telling himself he did not exist as he walked into the room, did his best to scrub off the filth and sweat and faeces of the journey, and then stood in line again, wondering what would be next.

As he got closer to his turn he saw the men were being shaved; not just their heads and a month or more's beard growth, but their entire bodies. One of them protested as he was told to lift his arms, and the guard casually slammed the butt of his rifle into his side. After that he lifted his arms meekly, and spread his legs when he was ordered.

Illya swallowed as it came to his turn. He was glad he wasn't overtly hairy, like some men, but still, this was intolerable. He tried to look on it as welcome, knowing it was to rid him of the lice that had started to swarm over him not long after first being put in the cattle wagon, but no amount of that logic helped to dispel the dread and humiliation at the dehumanising process that was turning him from a man into a zek, a prisoner of the state.

He kept his eyes unfocussed, directed straight ahead, as the razor slipped over his skin, waiting the whole time for the fishing wire taped to the inside of his buttock to be discovered. When they directed him to squat to find if he was trying to smuggle anything in his rectum or beneath his scrotum he was afraid his heart would stop beating, afraid he would collapse to the ground right there and then, waiting for that patch to be discovered.

It wasn't. And then it was over, he was being shoved onwards, handed clothing with a painted panel with a number sewn onto each piece, B 307, and a pair of knee-length felt valenki. He pulled the clothes on over the strange feeling of skin shaved of its hair. The trousers were a little too long, the jacket a little too big. The guard laughed at him for his stature, and he said nothing. He pulled the felt boots onto his feet, and actually started to feel warm for the first time since he had been taken from the cattle wagon.

The process of being assigned to a place in the barracks and given a work assignment was interminable. He was almost fainting with fatigue and hunger, standing dazedly as all around him shouting and ordering and counting went on. A doctor looked at him and pronounced him fit. And then he was standing in front of a desk where a guard sat, and the man was scratching on a piece of paper and muttering, and then he looked up, and –

Illya almost did faint then. Rollin looked at him with no recognition in his eyes, and for a moment Illya wondered if he were hallucinating. But then there it was, just the briefest spark of connection, and he knew he wasn't entirely alone.

When Rollin spoke his voice was bored, disinterested, no familiarity to give him away. 'You'll be assigned to the logging teams, grazhdanin,' he said. 'And barrack number five. You're opushchennye, am I right?'

Illya nodded cautiously. Rollin spat, very precisely, and the gob of spittle just missed Illya's arm and landed on the floor.

'You'll have to take a bunk with the other perverts, then. You'll sit at a separate table to eat. Don't get above your station.'

His voice was still languid with disinterest, but his eyes gave a different message. Illya's gratitude was boundless. He was being assigned to a special kind of purgatory, but Rollin at least was making him aware of some of the rules.

By the time he clambered into his bunk, the top right of a stall of four rough wooden platforms near the end of the barracks, his head was dizzy with exhaustion. Other men were piling into the room, talking, some of them even laughing, and the sound was alien to Illya's ears. He lay still on the sawdust filled mattress, still feeling the swaying of the railway wagon beneath him. Despite the washing and shaving there were lice in the seams of his clothes, and he could feel them now, crawling onto his skin, setting up their unbearable itching again.

He hadn't realised he had fallen asleep, but he jerked awake to a bestial sound of grunting. He lay there frozen, pressed against the mattress, becoming aware that the bed to his right now held a body, another opushchennye like him. He turned his head sideways and caught the glimmer of the man's eyes in the semi-darkness. He was awake too. And then his mind deciphered the odd sounds of grunting and then the cries of pain he could hear. On the floor just a few yards away a man was being raped.

Those glittering eyes held his. He couldn't look away. They felt like a safety net as he heard the grunts increasing in intensity, the wild cry of pain from the man being assaulted, the gasp of completion, and then the shuffling as another man came to take his turn.

'It happens to us all, grazhdanin,' came the almost inaudible voice from just below the glitter of those eyes.

Illya couldn't speak. He didn't know what to say.

'You're new,' the man continued. 'And you're opushchennye. I warn you now. When they come, don't fight them. A week ago Ivan Gregarin died beneath twelve of them.'

Illya licked his dry lips very slowly, and swallowed. 'Thank you, grazhdanin,' he said. He slipped a hand out from under the blankets and the man took it, pressed it in a firm hold just for a moment. That was all he was; glittering eyes, a voice, and that hand.

'Ivan Vdovushkin,' the man said.

'Ilya Lagoshin,' Illya responded.

He lay flat again, pressing his head back into the thin pillow and wishing he could somehow block his ears. As the third man took his place Illya couldn't stop himself. His stomach muscles clenched, he started to sit. And then Ivan Vdovushkin's hand caught around his wrist in an iron grip.

'They will kill you,' he said in that low, steady voice. 'But they will fuck you first.'

The fight went out of him. He still had the communicator inside him. He couldn't imagine the agony that would ensue if one of those men tried to rape him with that inside his body, not to mention what would happen to the mission if they either killed him, or dragged him to the camp commander with the discovery of what he was smuggling. He closed his eyes, tried to close his ears, but after the third man had done his business footsteps stumped away, and all that was left was the sound of their victim groaning and dragging himself back to his bunk.

Once he was confident that those close around him were asleep he hitched up his knees and carefully drew the communicator out of his body. He ran his fingers silently over the worn material of the mattress until he found a place where it was almost threadbare, and he turned a tiny hole into a bigger one with his fingers. Then he slipped the communicator, condom, thread, and all, through into the inside and dug it deep into the sawdust. Like the princess and the pea, he thought he could feel it there, just under his left hip, and he fell asleep again with the thought that Napoleon was there in that slim metal device. He was not alone.