Nelson was irritated with Solo's nit-picking as they went through his documentation. The team leader fetched himself another cup of coffee and came back to the table. "We've used these groups dozens of times, Solo. They're solid."

  "And how many times have they sold you out?"

  "Are you going to tell me you've never had an organization turn on you? It happens. But it's a statistical improbability. I picked these groups myself. I've used them before. I'm in this operation too, you know."

  "True, but it's not you that Mr. Waverly has charged me with bringing back."

  "What the hell do you want, references? In this business?" Nelson turned on the two agents beside them in frustration. "Will you two shut the hell up with that physics crap—or, better yet, go find an ivory tower somewhere to chat it up in."

  "Hey," Solo said, scowling, as his partner blinked in surprise.

  Markowitz grinned and pulled at Kuryakin's sleeve.

  "Come on, Illya. I know an ivory tower that happens to be vacant at this hour. And Napoleon, I've been on two operations with Sam." He reassuringly patted the U.N.C.L.E. agent on the shoulder. "Everything went like clockwork."

  "Yeah, well, they say the third's the charm," Solo commented dourly.

  "Behave yourself, Napoleon," Illya said, "or I'll tell Mr. Waverly that I can't take you anywhere."

  "Just wait till I get you back to New York," Solo replied, irritated that his usually reserved and professional partner chose this particular moment to tease him—and in front of Nelson, too. "You may end up warming a lab bench for another two years."

  Kuryakin raised his eyebrows at Solo's bad temper, but didn't deign to reply.

  "Don't worry, Illya," Markowitz said, as they walked out the door. "If Solo doesn't want you, remember the CIA is always looking for a few good ex-KGB agents."

  "Just like the KGB will be shortly looking for us?" Kuryakin queried, with the trace of wickedness that Solo had been hearing more and more. He had been welcoming it when it came, because it told him Illya was in high spirits, ready for whatever would come. It rather irritated him, though, that Kuryakin had fallen into that mood before a CIA mission. Didn't his partner have any sense of propriety? Meanwhile, Markowitz was clowning in turn, unaware how rare it was for Kuryakin to unbend to this extent with strangers.

  "Ouch! You cut me to the quick. I assure you our motives toward you are the purest." They walked out the door.

  "God, do I hate science types," Nelson swore. He glared at Solo. Solo frowned back. Then they both, reluctantly, started to chuckle.

  As Solo and Nelson were making their requisite truce, Markowitz stopped outside a door and touched his fingertips to the electronic lock. "This room should be vacant at this hour. And it has a whiteboard and a computer terminal. Hawkins and I hang out in here." The door slid open and they stepped inside. Both their hands went automatically to shoulder holsters, Kuryakin's non-existent in his case, as a figure turned in surprise in the dimness. Then Markowitz put his hand down and turned up the lights. "Elsnic. You startled me."

  "You startled me," Elsnic said rudely. "Shouldn't you both be tucked up in your beds, counting neutrons or something?"

  "What is this, open season on physicists?" Markowitz said easily. "First Sam and now you. If I didn't know better, I would think some people are feeling superfluous on our mission and maybe just a little defensive about that." He grinned to take any sting out of his words and came into the room. "What are you doing, Elsnic? Checking out equipment? I thought Hawkins did all that?"

  "It never hurts to be too careful. And I am his backup. Some of us are actually still working tonight, instead of shooting the theoretical breeze."

  "Touchy, touchy. No, problem. Illya and I can find another ivory tower to theorize in."

  "Don't bother." Elsnic brushed past them. "I'm done."

  Markowitz looked at Kuryakin, who hadn't moved from his position just inside the doorway and shrugged. "Nerves, I guess."

  "They seem to be a little frayed all around tonight," Kuryakin said diffidently, eyes trailing over the devices Elsnic had been working on.

  "What about you? You don't have to explain that process now. You want to catch a nap?"

  "I'm not tired yet. Here," Kuryakin picked up a marker and twisted off the cap, "You raise the core temperature to-"

  Chapter Four: Mission

  Solo hadn't worried about smuggling the team into the Soviet Union. The CIA was well experienced at that and the real dangers would come when they were trying to escape, perhaps with the KGB in hot pursuit. He read over the plans again and then tried to get some sleep. Failing that, he settled down by his partner, who was sacked out in a corner of the transport plane, his head resting on an impromptu pillow of reactor specs Nelson had told him to shred as soon as they crossed into Soviet air space. Kuryakin opened his eyes briefly as Solo plopped down beside him and then closed them again.

  "How are you doing?"

  "I was sleeping, until you caused the plane to lurch by settling your enormous weight down here."

  "Just because you're—" Solo stopped, his heart suddenly not in the usual ragging. The blue eyes opened at the silence, but Solo didn't notice, lost in thought.

  "Napoleon?"

  "Hmmm?" He looked into Illya's worried gaze.

  "Are you all right?"

  "You're asking me? This isn't my assignment."

  "Of course it is." Kuryakin sounded puzzled, his glance slightly unsure. "It's ours."

  "In case you hadn't noticed, partner, I'm just along for the ride and to make sure you're not left behind at the amusement park."

  "I know it has been hard for you—"

  "For me?"

  "To not be CEA. To not be in charge of the operation. I appreciate your coming along anyway."

  "I don't have to always be in charge."

  Kuryakin said nothing.

  "All right. I like being in charge. I'd like to punch everyone of these stinking CIA agents' lights out. Especially Nelson."

  The corner of Kuryakin's mouth lifted in the edge of a smile before he pursed his lips ruthlessly and looked away.

  "You don't mind it, do you?" Solo asked curiously. "Working like this?"

  Kuryakin shrugged, rolling from his side to his back, staring at the plane's low ceiling. "It's different for me. I've worked a lot of places. With a lot of groups. Not the same people all the time, or the same organization, like with you and U.N.C.L.E.. I'm used to being," Kuryakin fumbled for the word, "lent."

  The word is 'used', Solo thought.

  Kuryakin shrugged again as if he heard the thought. "This is nothing new to me. I thought I had left this behind, but it seems not. You are used to being in charge. I am familiar with this. I'm accustomed to being a subordinate. To being offered to various groups for particular assignments. To taking orders from people I don't know and don't have much basis to trust."

  "Then how do you do it?" Solo asked softly. He was concentrating on the present issue, but at the back of his mind was the image of Illya as Waverly had first presented the new Section Two agent to him. He had seen the Russian around headquarters before that fateful day, had even briefly encountered him once on a mission. But he had never paid him much attention. There was some truth to the saying that U.N.C.L.E.'s CEA gave first attention to anything in a skirt, then his Section Two colleagues, then the few upcoming Section Three agents who merited his notice. Illya had been none of these.

  When Waverly finally brought Kuryakin into Section Two, Solo's impression of the slight bookish foreigner, before he'd seen his dossier or ever seen him in action, had been singularly unflattering. Kuryakin had worn the same blank impassive expression he gave to all strangers. It was an odd thought to realize he was one of a long line of people his partner had been given to, another person offered a potential tool to use as he saw fit. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

  I don't think of you that way, Illya. At least not now. I'm pretty sure you know that, but suddenly there's this niggling doubt. And Waverly didn't offer you to the CIA. You had a choice. Didn't you know that? Worse, did Waverly realize you wouldn't know that and left you with that misconception, because it's what he wanted?

  He was drawn back by Kuryakin's answer. "How do you do it?" the Russian repeated, puzzled. "Because you must."

  So you didn't know you had a choice. Damn him. Well, there's nothing else for it now. We're about as committed as we can be.

  "At any rate," Kuryakin added reasonably, "you can judge their professionalism. Their commitment to their cause, whether you agree with it or not. You can usually get a feel for the desired outcome of the case."

  "How much they want to retrieve you or not?" Solo asked darkly, thinking of their present assignment. How easy it would be for the CIA to arrange some accident, some convenient leak of information. A bullet from some guard, a mistimed explosive device. The possibilities were endless. My job to see it doesn't happen. And it won't either. They wouldn't dare.

  Kuryakin nodded. "The rest you have to let go. Play by eye."

  Against his will, Solo grimaced, well aware he was being teased. "I told you it's 'by ear'."

  "Prove it to me." Kuryakin's mouth curled in his corner smile again.

  "There ain't no dictionary of American colloquialisms here, tovarich. And none where we're going either. I guess you'll just have to trust me."

  "Hmmm. Maybe." Kuryakin closed his eyes again, still wearing his half-smile and Solo let him sleep.

  I still don't understand how you are handling this. Sometimes I can read you so easily and sometimes you hide behind that inscrutable mask. And I'll bet sometimes you show one face and feel another, but I'm not sure that's the case now. Are you really so accepting of this assignment? Or are you frustrated, scared to death and would quit it for two cents, just like me? I'm supposed to be the one in control, who can read everyone's motives and manipulate situations.

  You're not cooperating, partner. You act like you're drifting through this, doing what you're told, the useful tool in everyone's hands, and yet I don't believe it. I can't believe it. Waverly thinks there's a CEA in you somewhere, Illya. It's my job to find him and train him, but I can't mold smoke.

  You act like this is just another case. No different if it were one of ours, one of U.N.C.L.E.'s, just you and me in the field. In a way, I'm grateful if that's true. At least you're not feeling the hell I'm experiencing. Unless—do you feel this, the lack of control, the sense of being used, all the time? Have you gotten so used to it, you don't even protest it anymore? I know why I hate this case; I want to be in charge and I'm not. But if Waverly is right in some respects, if you are a CEA under all that tractable deference, then this assignment has to be getting to you in more ways than you're letting on. You ought to want to be in charge. And I should know that. When are you going to stop being inscrutable to me? And is it just habit, or, somewhere, do you still not trust me?

  God, I hate this job.

  ***

  The nuclear plant was huge and it took all of Solo's years as an agent not to show any reaction to it and to the implied threat it represented. The local team received them with noticeable tension, glanced at Kuryakin in shock, and one of them nodded. "He's good. If I hadn't seen Antipov's body myself—"

  "Can we not talk about bodies, please?" Solo snapped.

  The CIA agent had the grace to look flustered.

  They settled in over mugs of Russian tea. Solo took one sip and grimaced at the taste. Kuryakin didn't seem to notice the difference. "The exchange is to take place tonight. They wouldn't make a personnel exchange—of course we never expected that. We settled on getting 5 million rubles in exchange for the boy. We give the money back when he and his father are returned."

  "Well, we don't have to worry about that part," Nelson dismissed. "Why did they agree to negotiate?"

  "They're under a tight timetable. I understand the fuel is being shipped as we speak. It will be here within two weeks."

  "Are we ready to make the switch in the power plant?"

  "Our operatives are ready. Your team will go in on their shifts in their place. We have a contact in the physicists' living quarters, a housekeeper. Two pen cameras and a weapon have been smuggled in already, though the guards are very careful about searching everyone on the way out. They're worried more about leaks of information than anything else." Daniels looked at Kuryakin. "Are you familiar with the living quarters?"

  The U.N.C.L.E. agent nodded. "I've studied the plans. And the power plant. The reactor and the control room I will just have to keep my eyes open and guess well until I learn the layout. There aren't too many variations on nuclear plants, anyway."

  "The weapon is here." The agent pointed to the map. "Hidden in the furniture."

  Kuryakin made a small sound of protest, "Not the furniture," he said.

  "A sofa pillow actually. You should be able to extract it fairly easily. What's wrong?"

  "Inside joke," Solo said and returned Kuryakin's small smile with a rueful grimace of his own.

  "We don't have time for jokes, Solo," Elsnic said coldly.

  "Never mind that. It's small, just a .22, but it might make a difference if you can find a way to carry it. There is another weapon here, and here, in the power plant." The pen cameras look like this." Daniels showed him a model and Kuryakin, typically, started to disassemble it, then guiltily stopped himself. "We can't risk having you carry one in—anything you take in there is going to be searched for bugs. But these look just like their usual pens; you should have no trouble using them.

  "They brought in a whole new regiment of guards, so I don't think there's anyone except the plant personnel—Baranov, the plant manager, and Zhukhov, the ranking KGB —who knew Antipov from before. Word is he was a sullen, troublesome teenager and they handled him with kid gloves because they needed him."

  "I know the type," Kuryakin said, smiling slightly.

  "Mother's dead, clashed with the father a bit—the kid was smarter than dear old dad and not too shy about claiming it— no siblings —so the KGB didn't have much with which to blackmail him. They bribed him with toys—the computer network, American jeans and rock music, a few more freedoms than the adults had: that's how he slipped their leash, by the way. Basically, they tried to make a happy productive worker out of a self-centered, selfish, genius kid; cursed him through their smiles and themselves for needing him. This kid was not exactly diplomatic. An obnoxious brat is one how one of our maintenance workers put it who saw him with Baranov. And like all seventeen-year-olds, he thought he was not only invincible, but irreplaceable, so he could do anything he wanted."

  The agent looked at Kuryakin carefully. "Be careful in there. As soon as they got the plant on line and could replicate his work, they were going to take the kid and his father out. Permanently."

  Kuryakin nodded. "I understand."

  "He had a photographic memory. Could read anything and tell you it word for word, chapter and page. They might test you for that."

  "I'm not worried." Seeing the CIA agent's dubious look, he added, "I have one too."

  "Jesus, you really are like this guy. How's your Russian?"

  "I was born in Kiev," Kuryakin told him in that language. Solo stared at him, surprised his partner was being so forthcoming to someone he'd barely met.

  "You've got a good Muscovite accent, though. That's important; this kid was educated by the best."

  "Look, Daniels, we know all that." Nelson said impatiently. "If you're through chatting, I want a team meeting to go over the plans one more time."

  ***

  In the hour before the transfer, Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin, new American citizen and Number Two in Section Two, Enforcement and Operations of the North American U.N.C.L.E., disappeared and in his place a dead seventeen-year-old physics genius was resurrected. Solo kept in the background as Illya settled into his role in earnest, not comfortable with the near lack of recognition when Kuryakin's eyes met his. The secondary CIA team, who had been negotiating with the KGB, had taken charge of him, surrounding him, briefing him. Solo sat at the periphery of the group, listening to and evaluating the reports of the negotiations and the CIA's detailed perception of what Kuryakin would encounter.

  "With Antipov gone, Zhukhov is nervous and vulnerable. He should be; his career, if not his life is on the line. He lost you once and lost Antipov permanently. You'll be under tight security, no question about that, but he needs your cooperation, too, and he can't afford to lose that at this point. He's going to try to give you less freedom than before, but he's not likely to push you too hard. Remember, you don't know about your father's death. They don't think much of you, outside of your scientific expertise: you're reputed to be demanding, but easily manipulated with minor concessions."

  "I have lived a sheltered life," Kuryakin offered.

  "Certainly, yes. Raised in a community of scientists, essentially."

  "Then perhaps I found my sojourn in the big capitalist world unsettling. Perhaps frightening. Have realized my 'mistake'."

  The CIA agent stared at him. "You're thinking they might relax their security a little if they think you've changed your mind?"

  "What do you think?"

  The CIA agent scratched his head. "I guess that's a thought." He hesitated. "You know they plan to—"

  "Yes. This will not change that. This Antipov has proven himself unreliable—their ultimate evaluation of him won't be changed. But the short term treatment might. As you say, they require his cooperation, at present. They will be ingratiating—for the moment. Do not think I am not aware that it is only for the moment."

  The agent nodded and the briefing went on. "I don't know how experienced you are in these sorts of operations," Daniels began the summing up. Solo hid a smile, but Kuryakin's expression didn't flicker, his eyes serious. "But remember the longer you spend in there, the more likely you are to be detected. You have two jobs. Get the pictures. Place the explosives. Well, three jobs actually—get yourself out. Keep focused on that. It's easy to be seduced by the activities of the character you are impersonating and let yourself get sidetracked. Certainly, others will be trying to dictate your schedule. It is tempting to let that happen, especially when you are trying to gain their trust. But you can't let any of that interfere with your objectives. We'll be watching you as best we can, but we won't be able to help you if that happens."