But his search for problems seemed in vain. Kuryakin, was, indeed, in reasonably good health. In spite of the mild concussion, his pupils were nicely reactive. The bruise on his cheek was leaching to an unattractive color, but Lawrence found no loose teeth in the jaw underneath, not even so much as a cut inside the mouth from the tender skin being pushed against sharp molars. The odd bruises on his ribs, arms and legs indicated quite a few heavy things had fallen on the agent, but none had resulted in any dangerous internal injuries. Lawrence poked and prodded, watching his patient for any change of expression or tension in the long muscles, but Kuryakin seemed to be hiding no internal injuries. Lawrence gave a cursory inspection to the soles of the Russian's feet, but although Illya flinched a little at his gentle touch, he seemed to find the contact ticklish rather than painful.

  Kuryakin's lips and eyes were tightly closed during the necessary internal exam, but clearly it was distaste for the procedure and not apprehension. Every agent, male or female, had to be checked for signs of rape after a field assignment. While some were indifferent, most loathed the procedure and needed a moment to recover, and in this, Kuryakin was no different than his colleagues. The physician stripped off his gloves thoughtfully and washed his hands, giving his patient a break before he continued.

  Taking up a stethoscope from the instrument cabinet, Lawrence turned back to his patient, who was lying quietly, his eyes still closed, his breathing even. "You can sit up, Illya. I want to listen to your heart and lungs again."

  Kuryakin complied, but frowned. "You did that once already."

  "Just perfunctorily. I know you are breathing," Lawrence grinned cheerfully. "Now, I want to see how well."

  He spent a long time on the process, moving the stethoscope around to various places and asking his patient repeatedly to breathe and cough. Lungs were always critical. Agents were forever being exposed to toxic gases, breathing smoke from fires and explosions. Too many of them, like the patient before him, had taken a bullet through the fragile organs. He had been forced to retire more than one otherwise perfectly useful Section Two or Three agent because their lungs had been too compromised for the ordeals of the position.

  Kuryakin's lungs had always bounced back, but he had recently been exposed again to smoke, fire and heated gases, and Lawrence didn't like the disturbing rattle he could clearly hear. Nothing serious, yet, but definitely compromising for the moment. He checked the trache incision with gentle fingers, was satisfied that it was healing well, not likely to even leave much of a scar, and reached for a penlight again.

  "Open wide."

  "You did this already, too," Kuryakin accused.

  "And I discovered the KGB didn't cut your tongue out. Now I want to look at your throat.

  "This is a waste of time," the Section Two agent complained.

  Lawrence pulled back a little and fixed him with a commanding glare. "Do it."

  Kuryakin did, but he wasn't happy about it. Lawrence could feel the resistance in his patient as he held his chin and peered at the still reddened throat, larynx and vocal cords. Again, nothing serious, but the bronchial tubes were undoubtedly equally affected. Kuryakin was obviously barely holding onto his patience as his physician listened to his respiration again, trying to memorize the faint rattling. At the next exam, Lawrence knew he would need to know if the rattle had lessened or increased. When he was satisfied he'd be able to identify any change, he put down the stethoscope and scribbled his findings on the chart.

  Kuryakin instantly became alarmed, craning his head to see. "What are you writing? I told you, I am fine."

  "So, you are," Lawrence said, continuing his scribbles. "Pretty fine. Not perfect, but not bad."

  Illya, who had relaxed at Lawrence's first words, straightened up again. "There is nothing wrong with me."

  "I understand Dr. Abrams gave you a prescription for antibiotics," Lawrence asked casually, still scribbling. "What was the drug?"

  At the silence, Lawrence looked up from the chart to meet his patient's gaze. Kuryakin had a sheeted look in his eyes that told Lawrence he knew he had been well and truly caught, and was trying to decide on how damning a lie would be in their relationship.

  "When was the last time you took the medication?" Lawrence continued. He poised his pen as if to take down the answer. "Did you take the medication?"

  The agent let out a held breath in a gust of exasperation. "Do you think I am crazy?"

  "They were antibiotics, Illya." Lawrence opened the chart to the forwarding report from the physician. "Penicillin, to be exact."

  "They were capsules!" Kuryakin expounded. "Do you think I would take capsules given to me by the CIA?"

  "If you had looked at them—"

  "Oh, I don't care what they were stamped," Kuryakin said derisively. "Anything can be put in a capsule. I am not that much of a fool."

  "No, you're just foolish enough to ignore one physician's prescription, duck another physician's exam, and risk pneumonia," Lawrence shook his head. "Do you still have them?"

  "I flushed them down the toilet five minutes after I received them," Kuryakin said coldly. "As any prudent person would do."

  "Before you even got out of Langley?" the physician asked incredulously, and then seeing by the stubborn look on Kuryakin's face there was no point belaboring the issue, he turned to the supply cabinet in the room and removing a vial and a syringe, began preparing an injection, squinting a little as he drew in the correct amount and squirted the excess out of the needle.

  "What is that for?" Kuryakin asked suspiciously.

  "What do you think? Penicillin, of course. Unless you would rather risk pneumonia. Turn over."

  "Are you sure this is necessary?" Kuryakin protested, looking anxiously over his shoulder. "Ouch!"

  Lawrence half smiled as Illya made a pained sound, winced artistically, and rubbed his hand over the injection site.

  "Anyone would think you aren't a trained field agent, capable of standing up to incredible tortures."

  "Usually promulgated by U.N.C.L.E.'s chief physician," Illya complained, sitting back up with every indication he found the action distinctly uncomfortable. "I really hate you, Sam."

  "It serves you right, for dumping your meds and avoiding me."

  "You told on me to Mr. Waverly," Kuryakin accused.

  "Damn straight. I don't have time to chase you all over HQ. You know better than to play those kind of tricks. What's happened to you anyway?"

  Kuryakin said nothing, staring uncomfortably at the physician.

  "What is it?" Lawrence continued. "That trip back to the Soviet Union make you regress? Are you sorry you took on the mission?" Lawrence waited a bit. "Sorry you came back here? Is it the problems you had with the CIA?"

  "No." Kuryakin finally met Lawrence's eyes. "I am okay with it, Sam."

  Lawrence sat down on the cabinet across from his patient. "What are you okay with?"

  "I thought I might not be," Kuryakin seemed to be talking almost as much to himself as his companion, his English oddly stilted. "But I have considered it, and I am okay with it."

  "With what you did?"

  "Yes," Kuryakin looked back up. "The first time I went home, you remember, I was investigating some missiles that were threatening the grain crop."

  "Yes, I remember."

  "Then, I was working for my country. But this last time, I was working against it."

  Lawrence nodded, not betraying by a flicker his mental wince at hearing Illya refer to the Soviet Union as his own country. What the CIA would make of that, he knew all too well.

  "And that bothered you," he prompted.

  "At first it did."

  "On the mission?" Sam asked cautiously. He had worried about Kuryakin going on that mission. Worried enough to challenge Waverly on it. And he had been right. He had imagined all the possible problems of sending an agent, a recent defector hostilely received by the CIA, on a CIA mission against his former country. Waverly had rejected his concerns, but they had been valid. To think that Illya had been in the Soviet Union with second thoughts about his mission! Sam was enough of an psychiatrist and U.N.C.L.E. operative himself to keep his expression neutral, but inside his stomach clenched at what might have happened.

  Kuryakin nodded, watching the doctor's eyes for any negative reaction. "And afterwards, a bit too, when I woke up at CIA. But now, here, I have had time to think. It is really no different than what I did before I came to U.N.C.L.E., when I passed on information to Mr. Waverly."

  "When you were an 'agent-in-place' for Mr. Waverly, but still working for the KGB."

  "Yes. Then I passed information, and here I destroyed something. But information also can destroy. What I did was really no different."

  "Does it bother you?"

  Kuryakin shrugged. "I do what I must. I trust I am doing for good." He met the physician's eyes. "I am okay, Sam. It is all right. I did the right thing."

  "I'm sure you did, Illya," Lawrence said carefully. "You know Alexander would never send you on a mission that was really against your own country, however it might have seemed outwardly."

  The relief and trust in his patient's eyes was almost painful for Lawrence to see.

  "I know. I am satisfied." Kuryakin hesitated a bit, then continued. "So I am okay." He made it sound like a question, but the force of his intentions was clear. "You do not need to write anything down."

  "No. Except for one thing," Lawrence grinned at the worried cast to the agent's features. "A new prescription for antibiotics. Capsules, again. And unless you want a needle in your ... well, you know what I mean, you had better take them."

  Kuryakin sighed, but nodded.

  "Go on and get dressed." Lawrence picked up the chart. "I'll get your pills."

  After dispensing the drug and seeing the young Russian on his way, Lawrence sat down again at his desk, the chart staring at him accusingly. Unfortunately, he was now the one lying to his patient. He did, indeed, have a lot to write down.

  And then he had to talk to Waverly.

  ***

  11:15 a.m.

  "He sold you to the CIA, Illya."

  Kuryakin sat down in Solo's office, looking puzzled. Solo had caught him at his desk where he had been hurriedly finalizing the past mission report and pulled him into the Chief Enforcement Agent's private office. Then, after turning off the security monitors, a luxury only allotted to Waverly and the CEA, who often had to review and discuss matters too confidential to be recorded, he briefly explained what he had found, but Illya apparently didn't share his sense of outrage.

  "I don't think so," the Russian was saying, "And if he did, I am his to sell anyway."

  Solo frowned at him. "Don't say things like that. It worries me when you say things like that. Don't you understand the difference between the Soviet Union and the United States yet? More importantly, the difference between U.N.C.L.E. and the KGB? Just because you are an U.N.C.L.E. agent doesn't give Waverly unlimited rights over what he can do with you. Yes, you're an operative. Yes, we're all expendable. But there's a difference between assigning an operative to a mission and deliberately putting one blindly in the enemy's hands for a price."

  "But didn't you just say that's exactly what he did?" Illya said, still sounding puzzled rather than angry.

  Solo frowned at this evidence that Illya still found anything Waverly did to be above reproach. "If he did, that doesn't make it right. U.N.C.L.E. is not supposed to be run like the CIA, much less the KGB."

  Kuryakin looked amused. "You only prove to me how little you understand the KGB when you draw parallels like that. In no way can U.N.C.L.E. even slightly compare. But this has nothing to do with U.N.C.L.E.. My obligations to Mr. Waverly go far beyond being an U.N.C.L.E. operative."

  "That was a long time ago, Illya," Solo said impatiently. "Just because he arranged your defection doesn't give him unlimited powers over the rest of your life."

  "But our history goes back far before my defection. He has saved my life at least twice. If he and his men had not been there when my father was assassinated, they would have killed me too."

  "You don't know that."

  "It was Thrush. We know they do not leave loose ends. If he had not been present, I would have been killed. And when I was sixteen, he took me in again, sent me to U.N.C.L.E. survival school, made me an agent-in-place."

  "For which you richly repaid him by providing him with information."

  "Is information the same as a life?" Kuryakin pushed his bangs away from his forehead. "Sometimes it saves a life. Sometimes it takes a life. But it is not the same, Napoleon. And then, if he had not arranged my abduction, I could not have gone on in the course my life had taken. Either I would have taken my life deliberately, or I would have done something to make another take it. Alexander Waverly saved me. And he did so much more. He gave me a job, a purpose, and work in which I can believe. He sent me to the Grahams: gave me a home, and a family. I have never had so many riches in my life and Mr. Waverly made them all possible."

  Solo was quiet, shaking his head. "I think you are making more of his involvement than is there. Yes, he arranged your abduction. You were an undercover agent, so to speak, for U.N.C.L.E. and he had a responsibility toward you when your cover became untenable. He arranges a lot of defections."

  "He helped me." Kuryakin looked stubborn, irritation beginning to show. "Not many people have done so much for me."

  "For himself, Illya. He brought a talented Soviet-trained agent into the Network, once that agent first proved his mettle as an agent-in-place. He'd been negotiating with the Soviet Union for years to get a legitimate agent, and you were his fail-safe in case the deal fell through. He never gave a damn about you."

  The expression on the Russian's face was troubled. "You weren't there, Napoleon. You don't understand."

  "I understand better than you. He realized he either changed your assignment or lost his agent. You were a business deal, Illya. He bought and sold you to U.N.C.L.E. then, just as he sold you to the CIA now. We're all nothing but commodities to him. And the sooner you get over your hero-worship and realize that, the better off you'll be."

  Kuryakin's usually pale eyes were dark with anger but his voice was rigidly controlled. "I do not want to hear any more. I appreciate your concern, Napoleon, and I value our partnership and your friendship. But it is you who does not understand. It does not matter to me what Mr. Waverly thinks of me, it is my obligation to him that matters."

  "That is the most stupid— I can't believe after two years of being my partner, you still talk like some naive Komsomol scout who just fell off a Ukrainian turnip truck."

  Color flooded the Russian's face at the insult, but he kept his temper. "It is you who are naive, Napoleon," Illya bit the words off shortly. "You speak to me of rights that I own, and responsibilities that others have toward me, but that is all Western propaganda—fairy tales your country has taught you to believe in as if they were reality. I believe no such dreams. If you have only found out now that they are not true, than I am sorry for you, but it was not I that misled you. Nor, I suspect, did Mr. Waverly."

  "Damn it, Illya, you do have rights. I have rights. Every citizen in this country, including you—"

  "No." Illya's voice was cold. "There are people with power and they have those which serve them. If one if fortunate, one can choose a service which works for good. If one is unfortunate, one works against good, or chooses death. I have been on both sides, Napoleon. I know this better than you, who have never been caught like an animal in a trap, forced to chew off a limb in order to escape. I am grateful that you have never been put in the positions I have been placed in, but that is your luck and good fortune, and nothing else. And it was Alexander Waverly who helped me, who saved me. I lost my family, my country, my language. I lost the oaths I made in the past and the integrity that went with them."

  "Illya—"

  "No," the Russian responded, ignoring Solo's horrified expression. "You do not understand. I regret nothing. For people like myself, the options are limited."

  "As long as you keep that attitude, you are going to continue to be placed in those situations. You're just asking to be used by people like Mr. Waverly. The fact that U.N.C.L.E.'s aims are for good doesn't make what he did right. No U.N.C.L.E. chief has the right to use an operative the way he set you up to be used. He ought to answer for it. Both the CIA and U.N.C.L.E. ought to answer for it."

  "No!" Illya rose to his feet, breathing heavily. "I will have no part of this. Do not speak to me about it again. I am an U.N.C.L.E. operative first. I will not be used against a service which has done nothing but good, or against the man who created it. Not even for you, Napoleon. Before I am even your partner, I am an agent for Alexander Waverly, for U.N.C.L.E. I will not speak against him and I will not hear this."

  Solo opened his mouth, but Kuryakin turned his back and left him alone in the room.

  ***

  Noon

  Lawrence stuck his head in the Section One Chief's office. "Got a moment, Alexander?"

  "No." Waverly didn't look up from his work.

  "I need to talk to you, right away."

  The U.N.C.L.E. chief scribbled his name across one document, filed it, and opened another folder. "Do you not understand the word 'No'? And how is it you have gotten past my secretary? I left strict orders not to be disturbed."

  "It concerns Mr. Kuryakin."

  Waverly still refused to acknowledge the physician. "I have told the young man to visit your section for his physical. If he has not appeared, you have my permission to have Security track him down and escort him to your offices. But kindly leave me out of these petty problems. I have far more to do than deal with issues involving Mr. Kuryakin."