"Thank you," he whispered when the glass was partly drained. "I need to find my friend, Napoleon Solo. Is he here?" Napoleon, where are you? He tried to look around him again, become dizzy from the effort.

  "Napoleon? Are you serious? That name should stand out," she said with a soft laugh, trying not to wake anyone else. "I'll check our list. What's your name, in case he's looking for you?"

  "Illya Kuryakin." He tried to spell it for her, tripping over the letters, but she finally had it down correctly. "I was with another man when we collided with something. His last name is Brown. I don't know his first name."

  "I'll check on that, too." She started to get up, then crouched beside him again. "We've got almost fifty people sleeping in here right now. This is the school gymnasium at the Maillardville high school. Three of the classrooms are set up as a clinic, and there's fifteen bodies in a makeshift morgue in another of the classrooms. Just so you know."

  "Thank you," he whispered again, closing his eyes.

  * * * * *

  Illya?

  The voice was insistent and he finally gave in to it and forced open sleep-heavy eyelids. "Napoleon?" It was a long name. Much too long.

  The face matched the name, though. It was Napoleon.

  He relaxed and went back to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Solo stood at his feet and watched him sleep, then dropped to sit beside him on the gymnasium floor, his knees suspiciously weak suddenly.

  He had still been in the local police office of the next town when the call came through that someone giving the name of Illya Kuryakin was at the Red Cross center in Maillardville. He thanked the woman for remembering his request, promising a hefty donation to the relief fund, then hitched a ride with a group of emergency workers heading over to the county high school.

  Thirty minutes later, he had approached the motionless body, crouching down to rest his hand on the matted blond hair. He tried gently waking Illya, but his partner scarcely recognized him, slipping back into the sleep his body craved. Napoleon sat beside him for a few minutes, then called in on his transceiver. They put him straight through to Sam Lawrence, who took in the information calmly. Napoleon read the Red Cross doctor's notes, and the New York physician on the other end of the line seemed satisfied for the time being that Kuryakin was indeed uninjured, in one piece, and just needed to sleep. The local doctor had listed Kuryakin's lungs as sounding clear, so Lawrence—and Napoleon—were both reassured by the report.

  Feeling much more confident, Napoleon walked through the gymnasium, staring down at each sleeping, exhausted face, but there was no sign of Brown. Nor was he in the clinic. But he was in the morgue. Solo made a tentative identification for the workers, then returned to his partner.

  "I've found some clothes for him." A young woman who introduced herself as Donna Marie brought a bundle and laid it down next to the dark-haired agent, who didn't seem to notice her. "Your friend's okay," she said. "A few bruises, but he's okay. He'sluckier than a lot of these folks. In the other room, we've got people with horribly deep cuts, crushed arms or legs, and broken bones. He's just exhausted. Most of these people in the gym are emotionally and physically worn out. They've lost everything. Some of them are missing children or husbands or wives. He just needs to sleep." She reached beneath the blanket and cupped Kuryakin's white-knuckled left fist. "Maybe you can get him to relax this. The doctor didn't have time to pry his fingers from whatever he's got. The longer his fist is clenched like this, the more likely he will have muscle spasms later. I've tried a few times, but I can't get him to open it."

  Solo nodded and waited till she had moved on to the next patient before tapping his partner on his cheek. "Illya? I need whatever's in your hand. Come on, wake up. Illya?" he called softly.

  Still asleep, Kuryakin relaxed his hand and something fell into Solo's palm. It was an old-fashioned pocket watch on a broken chain. Solo opened it, then turned it over, shaking the water from beneath the glass face. The chain was recently broken, he could see, and glanced down to his partner's unreadable face. Did you do this?

  He held it up to his ear, but it wasn't ticking. All in all, a good sign. There were various reasons he wouldn't want it to be ticking. Solo worked on the back piece of the watch. Without the proper tools, it was slow work, but he had nothing else really to do. It took almost thirty minutes—interrupted by one progress call from Sam Lawrence and another from Heather McNabb—before Napoleon finally pried it open. The dot was on the inside.

  He snapped the watch closed, aware of blue eyes on him. "Checkmate. We have the facility under siege, there's been virtually no struggle, and now we have the formula."

  "I know," Illya mumbled, one eye checking over his partner. "How's Lafitte?"

  "He'll make it. They flew him in to New Orleans this morning."

  "And the deputy?"

  Napoleon shook his head, a tired regret on his face. "Not so lucky, I'm sorry to say. He didn't survive. Neither did Brown. The rest are fine, though. The vacationing family—the couple and their two kids—are on their way home to Baton Rouge. I don't think they're going to venture down this way for a while."

  Illya sat up slowly, grimacing as his aching muscles complained. He wrapped the blanket around himself, sitting for a moment in silence as he collected his thoughts.

  "Napoleon, you say checkmate, and I think it is here that our differences lie. I think it does not matter if one is the knight or the pawn. Or the king, for that matter," he said, glancing pointedly at the senior agent. "It is still the one playing the game who moves the pieces. Each piece has its own abilities, but it is not the one to decide where it is to go. The chessmaster does that. The piece makes itself available to the chessmaster, then goes where it is told. What should it matter if one is the pawn or the king?"

  "And you think Waverly is the chessmaster."

  "It is obvious that he is."

  Napoleon sat down beside him, arms encircling his knees, his fingers lightly interlocked. "I prefer to think of U.N.C.L.E. itself as the one playing the game, not any one person. We individually are a part of U.N.C.L.E. just as Waverly is a part of it. There are times when we are forced to make a decision on behalf of the Network—we don't have time to call in for instructions or check to see what anyone in Section One thinks. We call the shots. We take our position—and our abilities reflect our range—and we decide where we are going to move within those parameters. Sometimes the pieces have to make the decisions on their own."

  Illya was staring at him, his face almost unreadable but for the thin thread of fear.

  Napoleon tried again, softening his words with a smile as he studied the floor. "The KGB employs some of the most dangerous men on the face of the earth, but their worth is only as good as their assignment instructions. They are, as a rule, not trained to think, merely to act. To be the pawns you are referring to, and I think you still identify with. But that's not what we are. That's not why UNCLE hired us. That's not what I believe Waverly wants from us." Napoleon studied the Russian's reaction to that, but Illya was quiet, thinking.

  Listening.

  The CEA cleared his throat after a few minutes, and the watchful eyes darted back to him. "Illya, I may not always agree with Waverly, but as long as both he and I hold U.N.C.L.E.'s aims to be true and foremost, we will work out our difficulties, because we have to. I may not have handled this situation between us the best way, but I've learned something from it. And I, too, only want what's best for U.N.C.L.E., especially as how one day, I may well be in his shoes, doing his job.... And if I call you my white knight now and again, you must understand what I mean by that. It's not ownership. I just find that you appear out of nowhere like a knight piece does. Or, to use another analogy, you've been my bank shot on many occasions now."

  Illya still said nothing. Not agreeing. Not disagreeing. Just staring across the room vacantly.

  "What is it you need, my friend? What do you need to hear? What do you want to do?" Napoleon prodded.

  The answer didn't take long. "What do I want? I want to go home and sleep for twenty-four hours without worrying about saving the world."

  "You've earned it. To Washington then?" Napoleon asked, helping him to his feet.

  Illya shook his head. "New York." He met his partner's eyes and smiled, then gave a shrug.

  Napoleon grinned, dark eyes warm. "Your trip to Oz is over now?"

  Illya stared back, blankly.

  "New York sounds good," Napoleon said. "The helicopter's on its way to get us." He steadied the other man as he stood, relieved to see no further injuries on this mission. Maybe they would have time to heal after all before Waverly sent them on their next assignment. "Are you sure you don't want to stay in New Orleans for a few days? I still owe you a pizza dinner—kielbasa and anchovies, wasn't it? And I thought you wanted to see the Jazz museum," he teased gently.

  "Home. Now," Illya demanded, imperiously, holding his blanket tight around him as he moved ahead, threading his way through the sleeping bodies, his donated clothes in his arms as he looked for a place to change. "I want to go home."

  Napoleon pocketed the watch and followed compliantly. "Whatever you say, Dorothy," he chuckled softly as he stepped outside the gymnasium and the sun broke though the clouds.

  Epilogue

  Alexander Waverly closed the summary Dr. Mercer had submitted, nodding to himself.

  It was as he had suspected.

  A tug on the pipe, the smoke curling into the air.

  Norman Graham's report was already read, alone on one side of the massive desk. Waverly smiled indulgently. That had been a good move, early in the game. Risky, but there had been no sacrifices.

  Sam Lawrence's terse synopsis of the past month, medical and psychological, on his two top agents lay next to the Thrush nerve gas preliminary report New Orleans had wired to him.

  Yes. His King and Knight were almost ready.

  Soon he would bring his Queen and Bishop into play.

  Then the game would really begin.

  Note:

  The author mentions two stories that had been written by Pat Foley for an earlier edition of this book, Red Retriever Affair and Cost Accounting. These stories are (likely, though I haven't checked in years) still available at some archive or another, but since I have copies of them, I'm going to include them here for convenience's sake. Just note that there is some plot overlap between the stories and what you’ve just read above. Since there will be some minor points that come up in the later novels that actually reference these two stories more than the newer ones, it'll just as well to know the original ones, too.

  The Red Retriever Affair

  By Patricia J. Foley

  First published in "Collection, Summer of '65"

  Chapter One: Prelude

  July 13, 1965

  New York City

  "Stop at my place in a few minutes for dinner," Solo caught his partner's arm as the elevator doors opened at the floor of Kuryakin's apartment, several levels below his own. As of late, he'd tried to avoid making his suggestions sound like orders, but now he was too tired to care. "You know you never have any food at home."

  Still flipping through a sheaf of several days' mail, Kuryakin nodded absently. The other occupant of the elevator, an elderly lady, edged fastidiously away from the mud-encrusted blond and wrinkled her nose as the slight enforcement agent slipped past her. Solo ignored her and her outraged stare, but moved to the other end of the elevator, painfully aware that the little dog in her arms was better groomed than himself at the moment.

  Solo dropped his dirty backpack and dirtier jacket on the floor just inside his own door. Kicking off his muddy boots, he stripped off his shirt. Peeled down to T-shirt and chinos, he headed barefoot for the kitchen. Napoleon was starving, grungy and exhausted, not an unusual state after a long, arduous mission. Over the years, he had developed a routine to deal with those items that was almost down to a science. He started the water running in the sink to replace the stale, week-old liquid in the pipes. Looking through his cabinets, the Chief Enforcement Agent then found and opened a can of evaporated milk, knowing the once fresh milk in his refrigerator had probably long gone sour. He rinsed and filled the kettle; while that was rumbling over the flame, he searched through his small stock of canned food until he found two items similar enough to be combined. Tossing their contents into a saucepan, he heated them up. Canned stew was not exactly his preferred Five-Star restaurant fare, in fact under normal circumstances he would have found it barely palatable. But his standards lowered in proportion to the elapsed time since his last meal and for a hungry field agent, it had the virtue of being fast and easy. Illya, of course, would eat anything, anytime, anywhere. And then ask for more.

  He made tea, adding a generous amount of milk and sugar to his own, sugar to his friend's. Officially, Kuryakin preferred his tea plain, but Napoleon knew Illya actually snuck jam into it whenever he thought himself unobserved. Solo was out of jam, but considering the short rations they'd been on for days, the slight Russian agent could use whatever calories were available.

  Sometime during his preparations, he heard his partner enter the apartment and reset the security alarms. After dishing out their dinner into two bowls, he came back into the living room, dropped one mug and bowl beside his partner, and put his own on the coffee table.

  Kuryakin was sitting cross-legged on Solo's Persian rug, his nose buried in a thick journal that had been in with his mail. He'd taken time for a quick shower, his fair skin pink from a combination of sunburn and vigorous scrubbing. His hair was still damp and he smelled like baby shampoo and Ivory soap. Solo had once tried to tell him one stood a better chance of scoring with women when one broadcasted an aura something over five years old. But the Russian had taken one shocked look at the prices on the toiletries he'd recommended and had shaken his head violently in negation. The innocent scents contrasted oddly with his cat burglar clothes: black T-shirt, black jeans and sneakers. Illya didn't see any conflict—the black clothes were useful in his work and that particular soap happened to be the cheapest in the local supermarket. At that argument, Solo had given up, knowing that trying to reform his frugal partner was next to impossible.

  Solo had warned him that his own reputation was being irretrievably damaged associating with someone whose clothes indicated he was on his way to a police lineup and who smelled like he was on his way to kindergarten. Kuryakin, used to his partner's insults, was unmoved. However Kuryakin had picked up his miserly ways, it was clear he had no intention of spending a nickel more than he had to on clothes or toiletries. At the moment, though, Solo had to admit that Kuryakin smelled better than his host.

  Illya looked up from his reading long enough to grab the bowl and go after the contents with the ferocity of a starving wolf. Solo glanced at the journal, his eyes crossing at the thick formulae filling the pages. Shaking his head, he went to stretch out on the couch, resting his bowl on his stomach, eating slowly. Someday, he would get up, shed the remainder of his dirty clothes, shower and go to bed properly. Now he was too tired.

  Finishing his food, Solo lay back and closed his eyes. He could hear Kuryakin flipping pages at his usual breakneck rate. Once, the Russian got up, refilled their mugs with tea and went back to his reading. Solo ignored the tea, drifting pleasurably. He was tired and relaxed, the soft rustle of pages a gentle counterpoint to his own disjointed thoughts. It was good to be home, assignment complete, both himself and his partner intact, with a shower and bed the only items on his immediate agenda. He heard the clink of dishes being collected and mentally frowned at the sound of them being washed with a great deal of unnecessarily awkward splashing, but he was too tired to give his partner a lesson in basic housekeeping, however sorely needed. It was the silence that got his attention, followed by the rustle of clothing and the jingle of keys. Sitting up, he blinked owlishly at the sight of Illya doing up his jacket.

  "Where are you going?"

  "I have school—class," Kuryakin corrected, "tonight. You know that."

  "You have got to be kidding." Solo sank back against the couch cushions, drained by even the thought of moving. "We just got back from a week-long case. I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Surely you don't need to—"

  "Napoleon, I cannot miss school. I missed it last week." Kuryakin picked up his journal, bending a page near the end to indicate his place and busily gathered up a few texts and a notebook Solo hadn't noticed he'd brought in with him. "Unless you need me for a debriefing?" He looked over at the senior agent, a slight frown furrowing his forehead as he considered this possibility.

  "God, no," Solo replied, appalled at even the thought of holding a meeting in his current weary state. "We'll debrief tomorrow morning, Waverly's office, nine a.m."

  Solo's grandfather clock chimed the half hour and the senior agent blinked at it. "I thought your class was at seven? It's only 5:30."

  "I have a study group that meets at six that I must attend," the Russian called over his shoulder, heading for the door. Then he turned around and came back peering cautiously at his superior. "If that is all right?"

  Solo waved at him irritably. "Go on. Let me get some sleep. Just make sure you get some. We've got a full day tomorrow, you know."

  "Class lasts only for a few hours. Thank you for the dinner." The door closed behind him and Solo got up wearily and reset the security system. "Right. Four hours of physics on top of a week long mission, on top of reading two hundred pages of the Physicist's Review or whatever the hell that was. I'm not that old yet," dropping back on the couch, Solo winced at the pain in his shoulders, "so he must be crazy." He sipped his now cold tea and grimaced. Kuryakin had remembered to put the milk in, but had forgotten the sugar. It could be subtle revenge for his having given his partner sugar he didn't want, but Kuryakin hadn't seemed in one of his rare mischievous moods. That he had forgotten proved he was tired or distracted and that mollified Solo somewhat.