TWO MASTERS

Uncleslash by

Emily Veinglory

Warnings; not explicit

far amount of Illyaangst


TWO MASTERS
Emily Veinglory

I made my first mistake one dark night in Essex. Napoleon and I were waiting outside a building that was a missile silo disguised as a grain silo. I had already disabled the launch mechanism and we waited merely to see who would come to investigate the malfunction. We waited past dusk, crouched inside a miserable hedgerow. This dubious shelter acted only to channel the rain into cold streams and insinuate them under my collar.

It became very cold and dark, as did my thoughts. Twice foreign in this land I began to feel as friendless as a star alone in the inky blackness. The countryside all around was completely unleavened by any light.

Napoleon did not quite snore but the sound he made was a little too distinct for respiration alone, and its peaceful regularity was beginning to wear on my nerves. I contemplated this latest of his untidy habits. Napoleon was a warm and wanton man, but it was a feckless heat that did not travel the space between us.

I reached to try and move the twigs in a way so as to deflect the relentless spigots of rain, and as I drew it back I touched Napoleon's hand lying lax across a mass of branches. Surprise made me freeze and as I paused the feeling of his skin beguiled me.

His wrist was surprisingly narrow under my palm. The edge of his glove was soft and curled over so that the rain had begun to dampen the lining. Where my skin touched his, warmth began to build. I sighed quietly and in doing so noticed the silence.

Napoleon had woken, but he could not know the sound he had been making and thus not know that I could tell he was now awake. I could have just patted his hand in some comradely fashion and moved away, but I did not choose to do so. I wanted him to accept my touch, not openly but tacitly, feigning sleep, but he was never such a convenient man. His hand turned over and his fingers curled over my arm, firmly enough that my reflex to draw away was thwarted.

I sensed he was about to speak when headlights flashed across our hiding place; a car coming up the long and isolated driveway. I rolled out of the hedge and away from him and ran behind cover to the silo. Napoleon swore and it seemed to me that it was not entirely due to our quarry's sudden appearance.

Somewhere in the confusion I managed to push that uncomfortable moment to the back of my mind. I thought the notion it suggested properly stillborn.

A difficult day all round and the man behind the scheme escaped. Doctor Fenetre, long presumed dead, but back to haunt us.

I set my wandering mind to memorising his file.



{2}

My second mistake began more as a sin of omission. Some weeks later and Napoleon had given no sign of dwelling on that fleeting touch, until I caught him regarding me speculatively as he headed out the door one evening.

"Quick drink?" he asked. "I know a place."

This turned out to be his place, and it is true that the bar was well stocked and the measures generous. That morning a THRUSH agent had infiltrated the laboratory and put two bullets within an inch of my head on either side. He had looked confused when I threw beakers of water at him, assuming perhaps that I hoped to cut him with the glass or was merely using the only objects close to hand, and was not incorrect at that but when I got to the last beaker, sodium and oil, the results were explosive. Needless to say our prototype remained safe.

A brush with death has an unpredictable effect on focus.

Sometimes it makes things exquisitely sharp; priorities become clearer and sensations more intense. Other times everything seemed to retreat behind a layer of frosted glass. It was a perilous time to take the latter path.

Napoleon became suddenly bold. He had been telling some convoluted tale of a childhood adventure when he seemed to suddenly lose his place. I had been looking at nothing in particular with unfocused eyes and couldn't quite seem to care about the sudden silence or its cause.

A rustle of cloth and the glass was wrenched from my hand. Napoleon's lips were pressed against mine and I failed to make any attempt to repulse him.

Napoleon is a gentleman of a sort. One need only say no, which I did not do. I can't see I did anything to encourage him except to the extent that physiology followed its inexorable course and those responses were unmistakable. Except to the extent that I held what fell into my arms. Held it quite tightly because I knew I would have to let it go again.

Napoleon spoke with his hands and I with my body. Unconditional surrender. Ah, bittersweet. In the early hours of the morning it all came back into focus. Napoleon's arm ran under my neck. A passionate man a ... I searched for just the right word, an English word, or American, as the folk here would have it. A righteous man. I meant that well, he had a code of honour and he held to it so strongly that he could imagine no other form of virtue. Nor could he imagine any one he respected holding views substantially other than his own.

The homogenous world of UNCLE encourages such a thing. It required operatives with confidence in action and ethics; it recruits from a pool of forthright and moral people and builds them into force for good. But it was not the only institution to do so, nor the only way in which it might be done.

Do not mention the Soviet Socialist Republic to Napoleon. He cannot understand that it might be better for the state to make the men, rather than the men the state. It is worse for the men sometimes, but generally better for the state. I crept out while he still slept which was an act so outside of his understanding that I knew even then that it would confuse him greatly.

On the way to the office I noticed a KGB tracer on my coat. I moved it under my lapel so that no one at headquarters would bother it. The KGB might suspect that my attachment to UNCLE, and certain of its personal, was becoming strong enough as to be improper; they might even know for sure and merely be gathering the necessary evidence. Then again, it might merely be my turn. Either way my response would be the same. Let them watch, and do nothing of which they might disapprove.

Napoleon found me in the lab over-seeing the repairs. The maintenance staff were proceeding correctly and apace, and so I turned to seeing what equipment was destroyed, and what was recoverable. The damage to the centrifuge was minor but if one became unbalanced it can be very dangerous. I span the arms speculatively, noting how they still held the shattered necks of test tubes. Napoleon stepped meticulously over the shredded linoleum.

"A word," he said.

"As many as you like," I replied, but stayed where I was, turning to the undamaged spectro-photometer.

It would need nothing more than recalibrating, and that only to be on the safe side. Napoleon's glare cleared the room of even the most insolent of workers. One of my technicians lingered until I gave her a nod. She thought Napoleon a troglodyte. She thought science was the only real form of civilization she paid no heed to his other kinds of erudition. With an audible sniff she left us alone.

"She thinks it will be great loss to science when you get me shot," I explained.

Napoleon tilted his head, and leaned back to be sure we were alone, there being no door to close.

"You're not really going to pretend that nothing happened?" he said quietly.

"Nothing happened," I confirmed.

I stood quite still. If I turned away or made any moved he might touch me, and one way or another that would be more than I could bear.

We stood, a frozen tableau for several long seconds. The he nodded and looked at the floor. He turned and walked away.

Over lunch he flirted shamelessly with a female operative whose name I did not know. He cast me many glances and if I happened to be looking his way I met them. When I first went to America I performed my manners by rote, dutifully learned in the Trotsky Institute. They had become more natural with use, but I never lost the ability to appear just as comfortable as I wished to in any company, under any circumstances. Even when I made my oath to UNCLE, to obey them above all others, knowing that I lied. I had my orders. Participant-observer as the anthropologists would say, if UNCLE were a tribe they were called upon to study. UNCLE was tolerated for exactly as long as the Party knew they could trust it, and trusted as long as it was infiltrated by an operative that was unimpeachably loyal to the Motherland. Which I was. To the Motherland, UNCLE and Napoleon in an order that varied from moment to moment but rarely found the CCCP other than foremost.

That precedence was currently somewhat under threat and it behoved every-one's safety to remove that doubt. A mole in love was a double agent waiting to happen. The least that would happen was that I would be recalled to Moscow and lose that which I sought to gain. What benefit it a man...? And Napoleon, for his part, had shown every sign of being able to find happiness in other arms. I was sure he would get along well enough without me in his bed.

The afternoon found us driving to a reception. There was some suspicion that the new Australian ambassador was Doctor Fenetre in disguise. It was difficult to sit beside Napoleon in the car.

His hand moved through the air so close to me, as he changed the gears with rather unnecessary vigour. His movements were determined and aggrieved. He kept up his silence into the embassy foyer and from there, diplomacy kept me safe from one subject at least.

I had a good look at the ambassador under the cover of a discussion about east-west relations and deterrent politics. His hair was cut a little long for a man in his middle years, which made me consider that it might be arranged to hide the scars of cosmetic surgery. But otherwise, there was no reason to suspect him of anything more than a most cursory resemblance to one of our feathered friends. Napoleon was concentrating his `mingling' on the Mexican consul's charming personal secretary. I could only hope the KGB was taking a good long look at the mutual indifference Napoleon and I were displaying. After several hours of fixing a convivial grin on my face and being asked altogether too many questions about Soviet foreign policy, I was looking for Napoleon to suggest a timely exit.

Napoleon, it seems, had already given up working for the evening and was concentrating his attentions on the coat check girl.

It was a little too much to hope that he wouldn't see me, even when so occupied. I gave him a mildly exasperated look and stepped back into the party.

Well, there was no particular reason to interrupt his current recreation. I found a side entrance and walked down the street to Main to catch a cab. After the sound and fury of political society my apartment seemed particularly dingy under the harsh yellow light of a low watt lamp bulb. I was cold and discouraged and knew better than to resort to the bottle when in such a state. A warm shower and bed seemed the best course of action. I stopped for a moment to see whether the television was showing anything of merit but it was past midnight and the day broadcasts had already ended.

A knock at the door interrupted my listless thoughts. I hoped it was not Napoleon, come to demand a properly private explanation of my desertion. I was not sure my will power would be sufficient to the task of resisting his considerable, if widely distributed, charms.

In retrospect even that would have been preferable to the brown-suited man with the bland Bostonian accent who promptly delivered up code and counter-code, and told me I had been recalled.

I took nothing with me, just buttoned my jacket to cover the holster beneath and followed him down the steps to the dark sedan that waited on the street. My head felt as if it was full to drowning of warm water; a feeling of pressure, partway between pain and sorrow. My driver congratulated me. `Back to the Motherland soon, eh?' He seemed truly wistful and more than ready to return himself. I had been the same in the beginning. The Americans seemed brash to the point of vulgarity and their culture, unsubtle, but I had learned to understand the many shades of meaning that lurked behind those colourful masks.

We drove for hours out to a small house beside a private airstrip. It looked to be a cottage intended for a farm labourer and his family, but it was equally obvious that it had not seen continuous occupation for some time. There I was told to wait.

The refrigerator buzzed with life but held only expired milk and the bathroom's single towel was less than clean. I lay, fully dressed, atop the chenille cover of the bed in the smaller bedroom.

A child had lived here once, the marks could still be seen where posters had been hung. It was a reasonable precaution to be in the room that would not be the first that would be searched, if someone unexpected came for me.

It grew dark and I closed my eyes, and slept.

I think it was some indication of my hopelessness that I slept so deeply and was not alert to the sounds of a person entering the house, and the room. Or perhaps it is merely that Napoleon was preternaturally quiet on his feet, when it pleased him to be. The faintest starlight wreathed his head as he stood by the uncurtained window in the darkness of the room. He knew, somehow, that I was awake although I had not moved. Perhaps I also snore; there have been few with the opportunity to tell me so.

"UNCLE has reached an agreement with the KGB," he said. "You are free to return."

I puzzled over that phasing. Did it mean that I was also free to go? Knowing the KGB they would not be so accommodating. The most likely explanation was that UNCLE had been over-quick to notice my absence and over-threatening in demanding my return, and I was now considered affectively a defector. That being the case I was either an exile or a walking corpse, neither prospect being particularly pleasing - nor reversible by any action of mine.

"I found the bug on your jacket," Napoleon ventured. "I wondered why you left your coat behind and found your apartment, unlocked but empty. Long story short, Waverly had some high level talks about enforcing your contract. You do remember your contract?"

I stood and went to the doorway to flick the light switch, to no effect.

"I remember."

Mostly at that moment I remembered the mist rising from the river and spreading across the square. The way our neighbour used to cut branches from the trees alongside the cobbled road for firewood and how my mother would go out and yell at him. I saw flashes of every beautiful part of the Soviet Union that I had ever seen and every person I had know before leaving her. I know that they say you can never go home again, but most can at least try. At that moment I was mourning my loss, not considering Napoleon's tender feelings much.

I walked down the hallway and out into the still early morning. Napoleon's car sat slantwise in the dirt drive as if he had leapt from it in haste only to become more solemn at the doorway or shortly afterwards. His thoughts, I realized must be no more clear than mine, but he recaptured his tongue out in the open air.

"I assumed you pulled back from me because you were being observed," Napoleon said uncertainly. "I assumed that you answered you controller's call because you had little choice."

I understood what he was saying. Napoleon, the arch-romantic, had somehow expected that I would run into his arms and we would live happily ever after. He had rescued me, and I did not seem appropriately grateful. He suspected that it was not so simple, but he was not yet entirely ready to believe it.

"I made my choice," I said distantly. "It was a painful choice but not, in the end, a difficult one."

Napoleon went to the driver's side and paused. "To choose what?" he said. "Over what?"

"The Motherland," I said. "Over all."

Melodramatic, but true. I looked across the roof of the car into his eyes. They are beautiful eyes and they matched the man.

But his country was, to him, a father not a mother. He stood apart from it like some great armoured knight, wenching, crusading, somehow invulnerable. A man who was his own master. But not mine, I thought grimly. I had masters enough already.



{3}

Teresa was smugly serene in the laboratory, having me where she though I should be. The situation was growing complex and I was building up to my worst mistake yet. UNCLE's hierarchy was unsure of my allegiance now, having caught me in mid-flit. Waverly having fought so hard to retain me found that he was little able to use me given my unsecure status. Even in the lab I found myself restricted to blue file matters, which in an institution like this means little more than technician's duties and not much of that. Teresa seemed to be my baby-sitter and as much as I could think of no reason to resent that; I did.

She seemed surprised when the clock read precisely five and I packed away my pipette and took off my lab coat. Usually the job would keep me there well after everyone else had left, but that was because other duties meant I was squeezed for time, and the interest in a problem held me. Neither was now true.

Given the uncertain mood of my erstwhile compatriots in KGB I was living in one of the safe houses in the bowels of the building.

Waverly, at least, seemed to realise he had made something of a mistake. Better to have let me go back to the Soviet Union and then negotiate my return. His hasty reaction smelt of double-agency on my part; that I was afraid of my reception at home. Which now I had good reason to be.

The apartment was small, but functional. I lacked the will to read. A bottle of vodka would have been good company now and the wisdom of it be damned, but I did not think it wise to step out of the building, nor politic to ask someone else to provide it. It had been a few days since I had seen natural light, and I blamed my weariness on this. Napoleon had been in Turkey on an assignment sufficient urgent and perilous to be no ruse.

I fancied I saw a movement behind the mirror, which was definitely not a real mirror, but if someone had drawn the duty of watching me stare at the ceiling I could only pity them. A few minutes later my thoughts were ranging widely enough to tell me that sleep was near irregardless of the early hour of the evening. Then I heard a quiet knock on the door.

Knocking rather suggested that I had the prerogative not to answer, but then I could hardly pretend to not be at home. So I stood and went to he door.

Napoleon slipped in as if assuming I would want to see him, leaving me still standing and holding the door-handled. I paused just long enough to suggest my dispeasure then shut the door and turned to him.

"We need to talk; privately," he said. So I have disabled or locked off all the surveillance devised that could be aimed at this room. Frankly I am surprised you had not done so yourself, you are not here as a prisoner or a suspect."

I shrugged and sat down on the small chair, he need only think it through to understand why7 I was not evading surveillance.

Napoleon took the sofa and propped his feet up on the small coffee table. It was doing a better job of pretending to be made of wood than Napoleon was doing pretending to be relaxed. Though to be fair we wasn't making much of an effort at pretence; just enough to suggest that we should be able to have a calm conversation on a topic neither of us felt particularly calm about.He looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I found my eyes straying to the distastefully patterned carpet, or the Goya print on the wall. Finally, he spoke.

"So, I screwed things up royally," he said. I was startled enough to look back at him, but rather than reply I waited for him to explain and he obliged. "You wanted to go back to Russia, and now maybe you never will. I had no idea the Soviets were so paranoid."

"Hardly paranoid, they know that a man can not have two masters and have every reason to think UNCLE is mine. If only from UNCLE's efforts to retain me."

"Was it not?"

I could not but notice the past tense he used. "I job," I said. "A profession and one I am proud enough of. One that my continuing alleigence to the KGB in no way comparimised given that they were free to know all that I was given to know."

I rubbed my eyes tiredly.

"And if they asked for more than that?"

"And if your president did? It would depend in the situation, of course. Should the order be genuine, even were it without obvious justification I dare say I would have to trust in the Party's wisdom and even failing that, obey the State."

Napoleon looked at me as if I was some new creature rather than the man he though he knew so well. "Has it never happened?" I asked. "In all of UNCLE's history with all its international operations?"

"No," Napoleon replied.

And but for his excuses that I looked tired and he should let me rest, that was all we said. That was my mistake, I should have lied. I should have told him what would have become of us if I had tried to stay. That I had disobeyed would go ill for me, but that he had incited me to. Well the KGB knows well how sexual situations can be turned to its advantage. They would have tried blackmail to turn Napoleon double, and in failing probably have ruined him. Failing that they would have killed me as a warning to other defectors and probably ceased to cooperate with UNCLE. In all likelihood ejecting all UNCLE agents in the CCCP. All of this was true and was an answer that he could have accepted. That it was not my reason for my actions should hardly matter.

That, despite my confusion I wanted to stay with him, should matter - but I had not even told him so.



{4}

Weeks later I was still doing drudge work in the lab, my security level crept a few notches so that I was assigned to some forensic testing - but little that was more than routine. I was, quite simply, used to too much more than these simple duties. Teresa had taken to bringing me soup and tea, though to be honest I had certainly not lost weight. Gained some, in fact, from my forced inactivity. I was listless to be sure, but I had little to do and though too much about things I could not change. I preferred not to go out to the cafeteria, being the subject of gossip was bad enough without promenading around for people to point at.

Rather to many still came to beard me in my lair, to `keep my spirits up.' A place they had not been for some time. Waverly had earnestly assured me of his understanding and support and seemed to be entirely sincere. Napoleon was being bluff and oblivious. As if we were the stalwart comp-anion we had been short weeks ago, with the subtler strains of our association unexplored. It was an act he performed with persistence, showing up at least once in the course of each day.

I was titrating samples for traces of blood. Each sample split into several fractions and an equal number of blind controls.

There were hundred to assess and I was working methodically at the task, grimly determined not to let boredom interfere with my care.

Napoleon strolled in. A happened to glance at Teresa and was surprised that she seemed pleased to see him. I did wonder at the reason for that as I continued with my appointed task. I did my best to play along with Napoleon's forced comeradery.

"Another thrilling briefing?" I enquired, though I don't think I achieved the arch tone I was aiming for. "You're not forth yet you know. It's a little early to retire from field work."

"My partner is still ill-disposed," he replied stubbornly.

"Oh yes," I replied. "I hear he has a bad case of Benedict Arnolditus."

That was a bit too sarcastic for Napoleon's taste. "No one would think you a traitor," he said. "Rather that you are too loyal, and that besides you can stop doing whatever ever the hell that is that you are doing. We have a little errand to run. He seek him here, we seek him there, but it appears that Doctor Fenetre has appeared in Vancouver, the plane leaves in half an hour. He tossed the file on the bench beside me, its double red coding quite clear.

At my guarded look he smiled and winked. "I told you it wouldn't be long." It was easy to see that Napoleon considered the matter solved. Once we were working together again everything else would just fall in line. If one is generous to him in the accounting, that was his first mistake.



{5}

We arrived in Vancouver in the early hours of the morning and took a double-bedded room in a hotel near the airport lest THRUSH be monitoring the UNCLE office. Napoleon's act broken down a little in such close conditions. He was very careful not to be in the bathroom when I was there.

"It must be good to get out of the lab for a while," he said.

"Actually I was working on an idea for a new haemoglobin test," I said.

I could here Napoleon brush his teeth vigorously and spit. "Teresa was very worried that you weren't working on any of your research projects," he said diffidently.

"Not experimentally," I replied. "I was working through some of the ideas in my head."

I pulled back the curtain to see the city lights, and could imagine, if not see, the mountains beyond.

"In your head," Napoleon replied as he came back into the room. "For three and a half weeks."

"Yes," I replied.

He turned out the light and we lay awake in the darkness. My weeks of too much sleep quickly transformed to the impossibility of finding it at all. The darkness helped my say something that had long been on my mind.

"Napoleon."

"Yes."

"About that night."

Apparently that needed no further explanation as he interrupted me in reply.

"It was a mistake, forget about it."

Not an `I'm sorry' mistake, apparently - an `I was mistaken' mistake. Reds being meant for strictly under the bed. I closed my eyes and began to revise the periodic table, in lieu of sheep. Napoleon's lay quietly still and an hour or so later began gently to snore.



{6}

We were high enough up the mountain that I felt distinctly out of breath. Our vantage clearly showed the small building. Its assymetrical A frame roof reached almost to the ground and was painted black and cover with pebbles and boulders of the same type as surrounded us on al sides. It would be all but invisible from the air. My equipment suggested that there was fissionable material nearby, and not too well contained at that.

"He's certainly persistant," Napoleon acknowledged. "We shall have to be sure he doesn't get away this time."

I slipped into my familiar role. "We don't know it's him," I cautioned. "Or if it is whether he;s inside."

"Oh, he's here. I can smell him." Napoleon drew his pistol. Besides, its probably warmer in there than out here."

"In more than one way." I waved the gamma meter.



{6}

Fenetre had been tentatively identified by an observant female agent as frequenting the large ground floor of the Bay department store. This might not be unusual in itself, except that his whereabouts were of great concern to UNCLE and the cosmetics section was a curious place for him to be. Local agents had reviewed security tapes for the last few weeks, which was as long as the store kept then before recording over, and it seemed he had a regular Wednesday afternoon appointment. He would enter, loiter around without obviously meeting with anyone or making a drop, and leave again. But the tapes were grainy and their coverage incomplete, thus Fenetre's purpose was unknown.

This time we would be waiting for him and see who he met and where he subsequently returned to. After arriving in Vancouver we made no contact with the local office. Having lost Fenetre once, Napoleon wanted both airtight security and a chance to rectify the situation himself, without outside help, present company excluded.

We agreed that I would remain hidden and photograph Fenetre's encounter, whilst Napoleon would blend in with the crowd. A battered derby and slight stubble modified his appearance sufficiently, given that Fenetre in flight had seen much less of us than had we of him. Napoleon was on of the few men in the crowd and the only one to seem completely at ease. He flirted convivially with a sales girl whilst ostensibly selecting a perfume for his mother; any other agent would have said his wife or girlfriend, but not our Napoleon.

I was in the floor managers office, its windows designed to give a view over most of the sales area but be barely visible in their own right.

"Directly behind you Napoleon," I murmured into the mike.

He did not even falter in his repartee but his eyes flickered over the girls shoulder, to the reflection in the glass cabinet.

I continued to dictate for his benefit. "He is moving around pretending to browse, looks like he's waiting for something."

Fenetre's eyes scanned the room without any particular emphasis but it was soon clear what he was waiting for. Near the back corner of the room was a section selling woman's shoes and purses. At one side there was some seating arranged, largely for the use of disinterested spouses, waiting for their wife to make a selection but not caring to involve themselves in the process. The middle seat had just been vacated by an elderly gentleman, rising to greet a parcel-laden girl. With careful casualness, Doctor Fenetre moved around the edge of the room. Napoleon brushed by him nonchalantly and pressed a smaller tracer onto the back of Fenetre's over coat. Fenetre remained oblivious to the interception as he ambled over to the seat, a section containing no merchandise and hence not the target of any surveillance camera.

He sat a while and then slipped his hand down the side of the upholstered arm and drew out what looked to be a small envelope.

"He's made a pick-up and is moving towards the rear exit," I briefed.

Napoleon slipped quickly though the crowd and I raced down the back stairs to meet him. A discreet Audi waited parked on the curb and Napoleon had it started and in gear by the time I got there. I took the back seat where the signal detection equipment was arrayed.

"South," I said, at first glance, and Napoleon swung us out into the dense Saturday morning traffic.

We drove on, out of the city and into the countryside with no more communication than my occasional instructions and his non-verbal responses to them. The air was crisp with the impending winter and most of the fields were bare of stock except for the occasional horse or late grazing herd of dairy cows. We hung further back, without other cars or cover to obscure our pursuit.

Finally the signal stablised and strengthened.

"He's stopped, a short way of the road on a sharp right."

The Audi pulled to a smooth stop where a dirt road diverged from the sealed lane. He backed along the side of the road and swung us sharply into a small verge where the grass grew tall, plowing the vehicle in behind a small fence and an untenanted goat hutch.

Napoleon checked his gas-pistol and the load of its canister, he pushed his more conventional weapon into his waistband. "Fenetre we want alive," he reiterated. "So we can find out to whom he has sold the weapons technology he stole."

To my mind it was theft, for although it was a technology Fenetre researched and designed himself he did so in the employ of the French government and thus the innovations properly belonged to them, I was a little surprised however to hear Napoleon phrase it so. In either case, the man was now with THRUSH, which rendered the semantics moot.

We struggled across to a field from which we could see the curving drive leading to a distant and ramshackle house.

"I'll take the cover of the fence to the left and get to the rear of the house," Napoleon said. You go to the right and come up the front. Give me time to get in place and then give me a diversion so that I have time to break a window and get the gas in without having my head taken off."

A nod was sufficient reply and we went out separate ways. The house, on closer inspection, was larger than it appeared with more than one room on its narrow ground floor. Its windows were fortuitously too high and small for anyone inside to easily see us. From a careful vantage I glimpsed some movement but waited longer. It seemed that there were two men in the front room, and with only one car by the side of the house that might be all who were within. Napoleon would have to either circle around the front to target them, or gain entrance through the back and move up through the house. Although the first was more sensible the second was more in keeping with his character.

I gave him two more minutes, and then used the simplest diversion available.

I inserted the nose plugs necessary to protect me from the soporiphic gas and walked quietly to the front door; no window over-looked it, and rang the bell. I held my pistol carefully before me and stepped back out of immediate range of the doorway. I heard a voice and the sound of someone moving within, then an exclamation. Either Napoleon had made his move, or he needed my assistance.

The warped wooden door gave way beneath my shoulder revealing a short hallway and beyond that a large living room half full of grey-yellow fumes.

Fenetre was nowhere in sight but I glimpsed Napoleon ascending the stairs and followed. At the top I encountered a crucial instant in which many things became clear. One was that the second man in the house was Colonel Narther of the KGB, and that he was aiming his revolver at Napoleon's heart.

I did not think of shooting him, which would have taken only a moment, but threw my self forward and knocked Napoleon to the ground. A couple of wild shots rang out.

Narther had never been in my direct chain of command, but he was a superior officer. At this moment he had vanished from sight reducing the immediate need to decide where my loyalties really lay. Napoleon and I rolled to opposite sides of the corridor where he encountered my pistol and tossed it back to me. We both heard the sound of a car engine started below.

"Fenetre," Napoleon exclaimed. "I thought the gas had him."

He waved for me to cover Narther and scrambled back down the stairs. I had other matters on my mind. My body belatedly informed me that I had been shot. The wound was in my thigh, hard even to see but for a small hole in the navy-blue cloth. It seemed to have missed the bone, but dome some damage to an artery by the amount of blood that was quickly pooling and soaking into the dingy carpet. Out of necessity I put my weapon down despite the risk that Narther felt less compunction than I about killing a fellow operative. I wrenched off my jacket and wadded it over the wound, binding the improvised bandage tight with my own belt. A movement caught my fading vision.

"Kuriakin,' Narther said, without any obvious pleasure or dread.

He raised his revolver; the muzzle of its barrel a distinct black spot whose orientation was quite explicit. I reached for my own pistol with one blood slicked hand and let my body slide down the wall towards it. We both fired at once in a dense fog of noise and cordite.

Narther, missed.

He toppled slowly backward and landed with a heavy, final, thump. A headshot leaves no room for doubt as to the outcome, but in the protection of my own life I felt no uncertainty about my action. Perhaps surprisingly so, flavoured by the knowledge that the same man had tried to kill Napoleon and was associated somehow with THRUSH. Should that be so because the Party ordered it, I would have tangled loyalties indeed.

I wonder for a moment why the hall went suddenly dark before I realised that I had closed my eyes, and although it seemed prudent to open them I didn't feel quite ready to do so. The floor was solid beneath me and I continued to breath the dusty air in and out while faint wisps of knockout gas began to insinuate themselves up the stairs, letting me know that one of my nose plugs was dislodged. I was still conscious when Napoleon returned. He was puffing with the exertion of chasing Fenetre to ground.

I let my eyes stay closed, it seemed too much trouble to say all the ridiculously obvious things that would be said in conversation between us under the circumstances. Napoleon checked first that Narther was safely dead then returned to check that I was still alive. I almost spoke when it became clear he was going to move me, for fear of the pain that that would likely cause, but I did not. He lifted me carefully in his arms and my drifting mind recalled a time when I was young and my mother would carry me up the narrows stairs to my small room beneath the eaves. She would lay me on the bare sheet and tuck the blankets tightly over me. The dusky air would smell of wood smoke and the blankets would be taut and cool across my body as she looked down at me, smiling, so that I knew everything in the world was properly ordered and completely safe.



{7}

My mind limped along, stumbling by a crooked path to waking. I had killed a KGB officer, but such an officer had no business being where he was.

Physically, I felt quite comfortable, but innate caution told me that the same might not be true if I were to move in the slightest.

It was too quiet for a hospital so I was in UNCLE care; either hale enough to be out of hospital or. I heard the faint shift of cloth on cloth. Not of someone walking in, but of someone shifting on a seat. I cracked my eyelids open. I had absolutely no idea what time of day it was. The lights were dimmed, Napoleon wore a crisp new suit, and through the doorway the Goya print still hung. The one of St. Martin cutting his cloak in half to share it with a naked beggar. I did not like that painting, both figures young and strong, not looking at all like a nobleman or a beggar.

He was reading a newspaper, which looked like a fresh morning's edition. Coffee steamed by his right hand balanced upon the bedside table. He glanced down at me and smiled in a strangely timid way.

"You knew about Narther," I whispered not trusting my voice to more.

His look turned solemn. "He and Fenetre were seen together in Vancouver. So I convinced Waverly that this was the way to clear your security. If you would bring Narther into custody they would have to clear you, and by any measure it was only my own life I was risking. And that's been in your hands often enough before now."

I sighed, and coughed. "Well, I guess that must have cleared it up for every-one." I meant the KGB more than UNCLE and Napoleon seemed to understand that. Napoleon rubbed his eyes wearily. "We figured they pulled you in to protect their operation with THRUSH, but the message we're getting now is that Narther was a rogue. He went AWOL with some of their latest H-bomb research, which he was putting together with the modelling the French were doing, to make a suitcase bomb that could take out a city. For preventing this they seem to be very grateful to both UNCLE and yourself. It's hard to know for sure but they seem to be above board on this. We intercepted the same basic message on a coded Baring Strait cable that they have no idea we can access."

My mind was foggy with whatever they had been giving me but it register with some dismay that UNCLE was intercepting KGB communiqués - but that was an argument for another day. I wanted to decide what I really thought about these developments, but I didn't seem to be entirely capable of doing the necessary thinking.

"Napoleon?"

I felt like parts of me had yet to wake. The parts that cared about all the layers of loneliness and misunderstanding. The parts that were cut to the core every time Napoleon flirted with yet another girls, and were too scarred to properly respond when he turned to me. They slept on so it was merely faint and habitual suspicion that tinted my voice.

"Is it going to be alright?" I sound like I hadn't since I was a child. I need reassurance as much as I ever had after waking from a bad dream to a dimly lighted dawn.

"Yes," he said. "It will."

I needed that to be true. I understood that he believed what he said and would do everything in his power to make it so. It was enough.



{8}

I recovered rapidly. There was every indication that although the KGB still resented their treatment over my recall, the diplomatic circles had been ambivalent to begin with and were now mindful of the embarrassment, not to mention extreme terrorist threat, they had been saved from with the dispatch of Narther. More importantly the Party followed the diplomatic line. I was still not entirely sure of my motives when I shot him; perhaps it was nothing more than unadulterated life preserving instinct. I was certainly more emphatic in my own defence than Napoleon's.

Whereas in Vancouver he had been standoffish and slightly cold, now Napoleon was peculiarly protective and solicitous. While I was on crutches he dodged other duties to stay around headquarters; he was in and out of my lab and apartment - something he was easy with because he simply decided to be and I could only go along with that. I actually started working on my research again, with the time for once to do the reading and the tests the endeavour requires. Teresa watched mutely for a while, and suddenly went back to hating Napoleon again. Something that failed to surprise me though I do not exactly understand the mechanism of it.

Napoleon is currently asleep on my sofa. His head slumped over to one side and one long arm draped loosely down to the floor. I am waiting for him to slip back into indifference, to become bored with me, and whatever duty or guilt he feels. I am rather hoping for the peace of it; but that I have a memory. Soft edged and idealised as if it were much older than it is. It is a memory that is largely tactile, a little desperate and hungry; furious and yet somehow mundane. Body to body in the way bodies have always known, then holding close together, tight, like a jewel in its setting, till morning.

But it was a silent dance and words were never set to it even later. It flared and burned and returned to the darkness and I was too taken up with other things to really wonder what had doused it, but it must have been me.

Napoleon certainly kindled the flame, so it must have been I that put it out. But, God help me, I am still too afraid to reach back towards him. He starts awake quite suddenly and finds me looking at him. His raffish smile appears again without the slightest thought and he stands sheepishly to excuse himself.

"It is late," he says with a glance to his small gold watch. "You should have woken me."

In passing, his hand touches the arm of the chair on which I sit, and I put mine to cover it. Napoleon freezes and the manufactured ease of our last few weeks is shown as the veneer it is. He seems almost afraid.

"Illya," he says. "I don't expect that of you."

"Expect," I reply with surprise. "I was not thinking of your expectations."

Napoleon looks to the floor. His thoughts swim palpably below the surface of his silence but I cannot see their forms. I curl my fingers around his hand to be sure he will not escape with this mute suffering intact. A pain I had not seen being blinded by my self-absorption.

His head dips and he does not look at me. "Illya," he says. "I think that if we talk about this I might lose this truce we're working under. I might lose you altogether."

But I am insistent, I do not even really understand by what He means by our truce but that many strains have been put on us both of late; not least by each other.

"Talk, Napoleon. I have no interested in a seeming of your friendship if I do not have it in fact."

Napoleon seems defeated somehow. His legs seems no to support him so that he kneels and then sits on the floor at my feet. There is much that I would say, but I think it is time instead that I listened.

The silence extends.

"That night," Napoleon finally says. "As you called it. I acted as no man should, let alone towards a person so important to him, as you are to me. I knew that you were a little in shock after the attack on the lab, and I told myself that I was merely acting as a friend should, but we have been through such perils before without me showing any particular concern. No. When we were both pretty drunk I knew I was going to do what a part of me had planned all along. And as you were, well the kindest thing to say would be that I took advantage of you, but I think it may have been something far worse."

There was Napoleon still staring fixedly at the floor. I was stunned.

Without being able to see my expression Napoleon continued an as if in confessional.

"Then when you rejected me I behaved boorishly, I made feeble attempts at causing you to be jealous, then I assumed that it was KGB surveillance that caused your response and then I thought you had left me. I demanded your return in a many that was open to few sympathetic interpretations by either side; causing a diplomatic snarl that only Waverly's delicate intervention and the greatest good fortune are now beginning to unsnarl."

"Napoleon," I interrupted in a calm voice, wondering at the way that men say mostly not enough to each other, and occasionally too much. "There was no advantage taken, or if you must insist there was, no regret afterwards.

And it is true that I would not have the KGB know, in either case, though I am bound to not evade their surveillance. I thought that you would not find it a particular hardship not to pursue the matter, given the range of your other. opportunities."

He is finally looking at me now. "My opportunities," he says. "Are many flirtations, occasionally affairs, and never more than amicably brief and entirely peripheral. You, Illya, are something entirely other than that."

His gaze is dark and fixed in a suddenly haggard face. He attempts no charm or light remark and I feel the weight of his regard. I daunts me somewhat to know the importance of my reactions now, there is a faint, guilty feeling in my heart. A feeling of mastery. There is a touch of indecision, that we could return by mutual pact to the friendship and professional partnership of before, no 'mere' friendship that after all. But that way would be cowardice and it is not where the heart's compass points.

I lean forward a little finding it hard to touch him, sober in a fully lit room. This is my own long-honed reluctance to care and thus be compromised.

"I'm not sure I deserve it, Napoleon. Nor is this a good time, until the dust settles and it is clear how things lie with those higher up - who may yet deem any association between us to be inopportune."

"Damn them if they do," Napoleon says with a more usual degree of confidence, if less than usual levity.

"They can more easily damn us," I reply with apparent equanimity. "But given time and a little prudence neither may be necessary."

I know I am putting a little distance between us, but we need time to heal.

Physical wounds on my part and others on either side. For a long time I had been like the proverbial donkey between two bails of hay, wanting Napoleon and Russia both and starving from the inability to surrender either. And if I am now wary of my good fortune it is, perhaps, because such bounty is often illusory.

"You are, no doubt, wise," Napoleon says with a smile that seems to signal that he accepts my terms. He rises and recovered his hand from my grasp, but not before running a contemplative finger across my palm. A touch so slight, yet so over-powering that I am lost for words as he takes his leave.

It is a tentative beginning, but one that promises, at least, to not be tainted by our all too many other cares. And in the hallway Napoleon is whistling as he walks away, the sound soft through the wall and wooden door. I smile to hear it. Small signs of hope, that greater ones might follow.



Veinglory's Slashphyle