"Really?" The balding man listened to the voice on the other end of the line. "And you are absolutely certain?" He puffed furiously on the cigar sending smoke rings into the path of the sunlight filtering through a crack in the heavy green drapes. He waited for the conversation to turn back to him. "All right, Chet, that is terrific news! I have been waiting to get my hands on those two for a long time. Let me know when their jet lands. Don't intercept them immediately, though. I want your boys to wait for further instructions." Leonard Brown returned the phone's receiver to its cradle. He turned to the two men sitting beyond the cigar smoke.
"Well, gentlemen, there you have it. In the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours we will have UNCLE's two top agents in our custody and we'll soon destroy them both!" He reached for the antique brass ashtray to knock the ashes off of the cigar.
"What is your plan, sir?"
Leonard Brown pulled his lips into a thin smile. "Suffice it to say, Brad, that that nasty superior acting Russian will regret the day he was born. That little cockroach killed my father five years ago when he was still with the KGB."
"So you're going to kill him."
Brown leaned forward in his chair. "Kill him? Oh no, killing him would be too easy. I want him to suffer the same anguish I suffered. No, Illya Kuryakin will return to UNCLE a broken man…unable to forgive himself for killing Napoleon Solo!"
The pilot of the UNCLE jet called back to the agents, "Gentlemen, we'll be landing soon in Santa FE, please prepare for landing." As the agents buckled their seat belts, he looked at Illya. "Im sorry Mr. Kuryakin I tried to get clearance to land in Los Alamos at the laboratory landing strip, but when the lab learned that the passenger manifest included a Soviet they balked. I guess even Mr. Waverly couldn't pull enough strings."
"Not to worry, Sid. I'm not at all surprised. Disappointed but not surprised."
Napoleon glanced at his friend. "Sorry, Illya. It's a damn shame that these people don't get it that you are here to provide their security. It wouldn't surprise me that our friends with the FBI had a hand in the decision." His partner merely rolled his eyes and sighed.
As the jet passed over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains the resulting air turbulence made the agents glad that they had their seatbelts fastened. Once the plane had landed and taxied to the small terminal and stopped the pilot shut down the engines and opened the door. "Good bye, gentlemen. I just got a call from New York and have another pick up back in Chicago so I won't be hanging around. Good luck on your mission." Solo and Kuryakin nodded their farewell and walked across the tarmac to the terminal.