Act II: We are spies
"Do you enjoy sitting in the big chair, Napoleon?" asked Heather McNabb as she set a tray holding several tall glasses and a pitcher of iced coffee on Mr. Waverly's round desk-cum-conference table. Around that table currently sat Solo in Waverly's chair, Illya Kuryakin as the stand-in head of Section II, and the Section V Security Chief Jason Corinth.
"For the nonce only on the rare occasion, Heather my sweet," Napoleon responded conversationally to McNabb's question. "My heart is still in field work."
Heather nodded her understanding.
"That's true of Section IIs till the day they die, isn't it?" Corinth inserted something of an unintentionally callous outsider's opinion.
"While getting shot at, tortured, chased and otherwise harassed by dangerous foes does have its challenging moments, we Section IIs are indeed a stubborn breed." Illya made his somewhat snarky contribution to the casual exchange.
At that Heather could not suppress a smile. "No question about that. Have a good meeting, fellas. Let me know if you need me to take any notes." She then sashayed out of room, Napoleon taking admiring note of her backside as she exited.
The meeting commenced as scheduled with the three men all enjoying a cooling glass of the iced coffee on this Indian-summerlike autumn day. It was indeed rather a routine gathering, with Corinth detailing to Napoleon various security protocols that would be in place for his personal protection while he served as Waverly's proxy. Once that order of business was concluded, Corinth rose and took his leave after offering Solo a hearty handshake.
"We likely don't have much time." Illya summarily focused his partner's attention on the task next at hand.
Napoleon nodded. "Right. Can you get a clear fingerprint off Jason's glass?"
"Checking," stated Illya simply. He had already pulled on a pair of latex gloves to handle the object in question. "It was rather fortuitous that Mr. Waverly wound up having a meeting in the Geneva office with the new head of U.N.C.L.E. Northeast," he mentioned offhandedly as he dusted the glass for the needed print."
"Yes, wasn't it?" returned Napoleon with cool nonchalance.
His partner's vocal tone caused Kuryakin to quirk an eyebrow in the other man's direction. "You had something to do with that, didn't you?"
"Moi?" protested Solo in mock surprise.
"Tu," rejoined Illya bluntly. "Napoleon, others may be sufficiently deluded to imagine your much-touted luck some form of cosmic intervention, but I've known you at least long enough to realize in the main you make your own luck."
"Ratted out by my own partner," commented Napoleon with a huge pseudo-sigh.
"So how did you manage it?" Illya wanted to know. "Getting Mr. Waverly on a plane to Geneva?"
Napoleon shrugged. "I might have put a bug in someone's ear about beefed-up security in the reopened Geneva HQ being a subject that deserved face-to-face dialogue between the Continental Chief of Northeast and the CC unofficially his superior."
Illya couldn't help gawking. "Harry Beldon took advice from you?" he inquired with unconcealed incredulity.
Beldon had been in the position as CC of U.N.C.L.E. Northeast for less than a year, promoted shortly after the bee infiltration in the Geneva headquarters in January had resulted in the death of Carlo Farenti. It was not exactly a secret that Beldon was less enamored of Waverly's 'golden boy', Napoleon Solo, than were the other top members of Command administration.
"Would never happen," agreed Solo as he watched Kuryakin take the impression of one of the prints on the glass he held and transfer it onto what could only be described as a wax finger.
"It couldn't have been Gerald Strothers either," surmised Illya regarding Solo's counterpart CEA in the Northeast region. "He is so jealous of you, he is lucky his eyes don't glow green when you are so much as mentioned in passing to him."
Again Napoleon shrugged. "Beldon does have an assistant," he hinted.
"Helga Deniken?" Illya again gawked at his friend.
Napoleon put up a hand to forestall the other man's likely conclusion. "I hardly know the lady."
"But you used the legendary Solo charm on her nonetheless," ragged Kuryakin uncompromisingly. "Amazing how you can successfully employ mere words spoken into a communicator to seduce the ladies of U.N.C.L.E."
"Hey, you yourself said it, partner: A man has to make his own luck. And speaking of luck, how is that little apparatus of yours working out?"
"We'll soon see. I do appreciate that you ordered iced coffee that needed to be served in glasses rather than hot coffee that would have been served in mugs. Getting an impression from a cup handle would have been all but impossible."
"The unseasonal warm weather is something for which I can't take even minimal credit," returned Napoleon. "So I guess sometimes the Solo luck really is due to cosmic intervention."
Illya took a deep breath as he finished putting the final touches on the wax digit. "There. Done," he announced.
"So we're ready to make like spies?" prompted Napoleon.
Illya nodded. "As ready as we can be. Maneuver us some more luck, cosmic or otherwise, my friend. Else the best result we can anticipate from this spyly foray is permanent assignment in Antarctica."
"You know how I hate the cold," remarked Napoleon with extraordinary ease considering the dicey situation.
The security lock on the Continental Chief's set of three confidential filing drawers utilized a method of fingerprint recognition. However, without the print of Alexander Waverly himself, it required the prints of two other approved individuals to gain access. The other four Continental Chiefs were all approved of course. As an emergency fallback measure, Solo as Chief of Enforcement here in Northwest and Jason Corinth as Chief of Northwest Security were also both approved.
Moving his chair on its casters somewhat away from the table to provide Kuryakin easier access to the file cabinet behind him, Solo held his breath as his partner-in-this-crime slipped the wax digit onto his own index finger, stood up and moved toward the set of drawers.
"Ready, Napoleon?" Illya questioned unnecessarily. The other man nodded. "Then together," he instructed.
Illya placed his fake finger down on the lock plate in time with Napoleon placing his own index finger on the plate. An audible click signaled that the cabinet was now unlocked.
"Too easy," suggested Illya uncomfortably.
"Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth, tovarisch," suggested Napoleon in turn even as he was sliding open the top drawer of the cabinet and carefully rummaging through its contents. "Let's pray the files aren't stored by codenames or otherwise encrypted," the CEA voiced his hope.
"I don't pray," came Illya's expected retort as he slid open the bottom drawer and knelt to facilitate delving inside. "No need for prayer in this case anyway," he then confirmed triumphantly as he held up a yellow U.N.C.L.E. folder clearly labelled THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR.
Grabbing the file from his partner, Napoleon directed, "See if there's anything more while I snapshot this."
That said, Solo placed the report on the table, pulled out a small pocket camera expertly concealed in a cigarette lighter, and began systematically turning the pages of the report and quickly taking a photograph of each page.
"Nothing more I can find," Illya informed Napoleon after several more minutes of searching through the contents of the drawers.
"Dr. Pirelli's case studies not there?" prompted Solo.
"Seems not," stated Kuryakin.
"Makes you wonder what were the good doctor's recorded observations after the conclusion of those sessions, doesn't it?"
"I'm too nervous to wonder about anything at the moment, Napoleon. This is a risk we likely shouldn't have taken."
"Too late for regrets, tovarisch," Napoleon determined as he snapped a picture of the final page of the report. "All over and done," he finalized as he closed the file and slipped it back in its original place in the cabinet.
With a decisive push, Solo closed the last open drawer and the two men had the satisfaction of hearing the distinctive click that indicated the security lock was again back in force.
Handing the camera-lighter to Kuryakin, Napoleon then admonished," You'll have to use resources outside of HQ to get these developed."
"I am well aware of that fact," the Russian retorted brusquely.
"Bit testy, aren't we?" the American queried with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't know how I let you talk me into this." Illya candidly confessed his continued misgivings.
"The legendary Solo charm of course," Napoleon gibed, perhaps a good deal less candidly.
The two simple words written in Alexander Waverly's own hand stared back at him uncompromisingly from the developed photo of the last page of the report.
Demonstration complete
Yet supposedly nothing at all had happened in Rimheac's lab, nothing more than an electrical short that had caused him and Illya to black out. What then did those words, annotated to the very end of the documentation on THE RIMHEAC/CHIMERA AFFAIR, signify? What had comprised the demonstration? How had it been completed? What the hell had really occurred that day in the Thrush scientist's lab two years ago?
Napoleon was deeply ensconced in his own thoughts, entrenched far enough that he didn't even hear his partner use a spare key to open the door to his apartment and subsequently disarm the security system as he entered the internal hallway.
Kuryakin rearmed that system as necessary and made his way first to the kitchen where he placed on one of the counters several large paper shopping bags he was toting. "Napoleon?" Illya questioned softly as he finally made his way into the living room where Solo was seated on the sofa, hunched over the coffee table, concentrating intently on the photo laying on that polished surface.
"What does it mean, Illya?" Napoleon queried hypothetically of his friend, for he certainly was aware Kuryakin had no further clue in this regard than he had himself.
"I truly don't know," Illya nonetheless responded, somehow sensing this was confirmation Solo needed to hear.
At last Napoleon looked up at the other man, a man as affected by this distressing incongruity as he was himself. Yet somehow Napoleon couldn't acknowledge that. He felt absolutely alone.
"Why are you here?" Solo asked of his faithful Sancho. "I know you blame me for what we did in Waverly's office. I know you'd rather disassociate yourself from me and my ideas. I know you'd prefer not to be here with me now."
Flabbergasted, all Illya could think to do was sit down on the sofa beside his friend and place a companionable hand on his shoulder. "I would never do that, Napoleon," the blond man tried reassuring his dark-haired counterpart. "I would never, even in the innermost secret reaches of my mind, ever harbor any such thoughts."
Napoleon's eyes, when he gazed at the other man, were as sorrowful as Illya had ever seen them: desolate, lonely. Yet, even seeing his friend so devastated, while wondering what he could do to comfort Solo, Illya couldn't help but inappropriately ruminate on how extremely hungry he himself was.
"I've brought dinner," Kuryakin therefore advised rather brightly. "Chinese takeout. Cartons and cartons of it. You should eat something."
"I don't want anything," disputed this isolated Napoleon.
"Surely you must want something to eat," Illya forwarded perhaps a bit desperately himself. "I am absolutely ravenous!" And truthfully he could not hide nor did he even attempt to disguise the look of sheer famishment on his face.
Solo stared at Kuryakin with steady eyes before finally blinking. "Illya?" he began.
"What?" prompted the Russian somewhat testily. Truth be told, he wanted to do nothing so much as tear into the cartons and cartons of Chinese food he had brought with him. Alleviating the American's unaccustomed emotional bleakness at this moment seemed little more than an ill-timed nuisance.
"I want to ask you something… something personal," Napoleon ventured on.
"Whatever," conceded Illya, also uncustomarily. "As long as we can eat after I've answered."
"When we first encountered the golden-eyed girl—"
"Hallucinated her," corrected Illya didactically.
"Whatever." Napoleon now was the one conceding. "I need to know… what you felt. What came into your mind?"
Now it was Illya who stared at his friend with steady eyes for a long moment before finally blinking. "I felt hungry. I sensed she was hungry. I remembered…"
"Yes?" pressed Napoleon.
Illya's discomfit was evident but he spoke the words at last. "I remember nearly starving as a child, and stealing a turnip top from a pack of wild dogs that was all that remained of what the dogs had previously stolen from me."
Napoleon nodded slowly and then sighed shakily. "I felt lonely. I sensed she was lonely. I remembered Clara leaving me, telling me she couldn't be a part of my life if that life included U.N.C.L.E."
A long bridge of silence stretched between the two men. And then suddenly, as if overtaken with a violent ague, Illya began to shake uncontrollably.
Jostled just as violently out of his current sense of secluded melancholy, Solo wrapped his arms around his friend's torso, trying unsuccessfully to stabilize his quaking frame.
"Illya, what is it? What's wrong?"
"I don't know!" shouted out Kuryakin in a hoarse and definitely frightened voice. "I have to eat, Napoleon! Please, I have to eat!"
"Oh God!" exclaimed the now wholly terrified Solo. "It's her! It's her!"
"She doesn't exist!" The wildly trembling Kuryakin tried again to convince himself.
"She does!" insisted Solo. "I don't know how or why or as what, but she does exist! And somehow she is bonded to us!"
…continued in Act III…