Collection 5 - My Brother's Keeper Read online

  "I have space. How about twelve thirty?" Linden reached for his appointment book, penciled in the name, then left the room.

  Illya said nothing, staring up at the doctor coldly.

  But Samuel Lawrence was not new at the game. He had been with U.N.C.L.E. since the late fifties, had been head of the New York facilities for the last six years, and, most important, was well acquainted with the young Russian that sat before him now, stubbornly silent. Lawrence had met him a week after his arrival in the U.S. in 1961, and had seen him through countless injuries and traumas in the last four years. In many ways, it was a common problem shared those in his profession: how to care for and deal with agents whose survival of often brutal childhoods and horrendous backgrounds was the very things that formed their strength of character and steered them to a career in law enforcement or espionage. Not too many overindulged spoiled children sought out a vocation that forced them to live daily on the edge of danger and fear. U.N.C.L.E. required from its agents discipline, the ability to follow orders, and most of all, a passion for their work, for seeing justice happen, for seeing wrongs righted.

  Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were good at their jobs because they had already been through hell. It no longer frightened them. But life was not always the job, sometimes it was personal. Sometimes two very stubborn men, from very different backgrounds, both of whom preferred to work alone, found they both desperately needed a friend... So what had happened to pull them apart, when they should be working together?

  Lawrence walked across the room and ran a cloth under the tap, then returned to his patient's side and handed him the warm wet cloth and a dry towel. "Wash your face."

  "Why?"

  "Because I told you to." He waited until Illya backed down and ran the cloth lightly over his face. "Scrub it. I want all that stuff off." At least Kuryakin had the decency to flame crimson. "Who exactly were you trying to fool with the concealer?"

  Illya shrugged again. "I'm tired, Sam. No need for the staff to ask unnecessary questions."

  "I could see that through the pancake, despite your skillful application." Now that the makeup was off, dark circles rimmed the eyes. "Not sleeping?"

  "I realize I should have come in for some potion, but––"

  "No," Lawrence interrupted. "You should have come in to talk."

  The young man looked down, knowing from experience the futility of arguing with this man. "What is there to say? 'I have nightmares?' 'Come hold my hand, Sam, I can't sleep?'––I should not be letting it all get to me like this."

  Lawrence pulled up a chair, straddling it easily. "Are you worried about Napoleon?"

  Another shrug. "He told me not to worry about him. He would handle this himself"

  Oh. Okay. Things were falling into place. "Illya, have you ever heard the question: Am I my brother's keeper?"

  "What?" Illya frowned, trying first to place the quote, then decipher its meaning in this context.

  "Am I my brother's keeper?" Lawrence repeated. "It's how Cain responded when God asked him where his brother was. That's what you're wrestling with, isn't it?"

  "A religious issue? I do not understand what you mean––and why have you canceled my appointment? Sam, my work is not substandard. I have not missed one briefing. If it does not affect my workload, does it matter if I do not sleep seven hours at night?"

  "From what I can see, it looks like you're lucky if you get one hour." Illya made no attempt to correct him, so Lawrence continued, "I've known you for many years now, my young friend, and these past few months have been grueling for you. Since December, you've had to deal with deaths and kidnappings and injuries and car crashes. With being attacked and gang-raped in a prison riot, and with being locked in a cellar by Thrush's answer to George and Gracie. At one point, you actually attempted to remove your partner's appendix. On top of that, you had the audacity to take a university evening course, as if your time is not full enough already. And, during all that time, I have never seen you as weary as you've been since Napoleon left. Why?" Blue eyes stared back at him. Empty. "Illya, tell me what the nightmares are about."

  Illya's head dropped, the face hidden and the spoken words lost in the hushed mumble.

  "Louder."

  The head abruptly raised. "The nightmares are that he is dead. Napoleon is dead. Or he will soon be dead. It will happen. He's not coming back, Sam."

  Lawrence noted the thread of anger in the restrained words. "He's come back before."

  "Yes."

  "But... this is not an assignment. If it was, you wouldn't worry, would you?––Don't shake your head at that You are worried. You worried during the trip to Terbuf and you worried during the trip to the Middle East. Because they were not assignments. You stuck to his side like glue. Do you know why? Why is it different for you if it's an assignment? I'll tell you. It's because there's a difference in your mind between the Napoleon Solo who is your friend, and the Napoleon Solo who is the CEA and your partner. When Napoleon disappears in the line of work, you know your partner will come back, if he at all can. You will have done your duty to U.N.C.L.E. But this is different because you don't know if your friend will come back and you don't know what your duty is. And you don't want to be left alone."

  Kuryakin stared across at him. "Why do you say things like that?" Facial features immaculately blank.

  "Because I'm your doctor and I know these things. It's my job, just like your job is to fight Thrush and whatever other nasties are out there. Illya, besides the very real worry of not knowing where Napoleon is right now, I want you to keep in mind that you are not even three months away from everything that happened to you at the prison."

  "Those injuries have gone. They have healed."

  "Then why aren't you sleeping? Why the nightmares of Napoleon dying?" Lawrence shot the question out, then waited patiently for the young man to find an answer.

  "He is my partner. He does not have to tell me what he does on his own time. Napoleon is…" the voice trailed off.

  "Not here," the doctor finished. "If he's just your partner, what does it matter?"

  "It has no matter. I am––I am not to help him in this." Kuryakin shrugged, for a moment stammering and fumbling for English words as he had done years before when Lawrence had first met him. As though the emotional input had cut across his carefully-maintained American persona. He collected his thoughts and tried again. "Napoleon is like a stranger sometimes, preoccupied. It is––it is because of his memories. Because of Morgan. Because of what happened in Atlanta. It is a personal problem for him." He calmed himself and looked up suddenly. "What do you mean Brother's Keeper?"

  Lawrence chose his words carefully. "I want you to think about this. You say Napoleon is your partner. Now, your duty and responsibility to him, as your partner, is clear and laid out in great detail in your job description. But if you are just his partner, why do you feel this anxiousness now, for, as you have said, it is a personal problem?"

  "Because I feel he is also my friend," Illya reasoned softly.

  "Yes." The doctor let him think about it for a while.

  "And... the question was, am I my brother's keeper?"

  "Are you responsible for your brother's welfare? If so, what have you done to help him?"

  "I have respected his desire to exclude me from this."

  "But this is not an assignment."

  "No," he answered, almost reluctantly.

  "In this instance, is Napoleon your partner or your friend?" Lawrence watched calmly as the brilliant mind tried to work its way through this problem, Illya's hands revealingly twisting the towel in his grasp.

  "He is my partner first... yet he is my friend." The frown deepened. "It is my job to obey him."

  "Why? This is a personal matter. Personal, not business. In a friendship, is one person superior to the other? Don't they have equal responsibility?"

  The tense shoulders slumped, unable to respond, the head downcast. They sat in silence for several minutes until Ill
ya sighed wearily and looked up. "What should I do then? I don't know how to handle this, Sam."

  "What do you want to do? Are you responsible for his welfare, apart from his request?"

  Illya stared up at Lawrence, eyes wide in consternation. "I don't know," he breathed.

  "Find out," the doctor said gently. "Ask yourself what you should do. Stop using this," he tapped Kuryakin's forehead, "and use this," he added, tapping his chest. "Allow yourself the luxury."

  *****

  Illya left the infirmary and propelled himself down the corridor. His head was spinning with Sam Lawrence's words and halfway to the elevator, he stopped and leaned against the wall, trying not to pass out. Strange how it was affecting him. The dark spots finally receded and he quickly entered the elevator as the doors opened.

  In the sanctuary of his office, he sat for a moment and thought about it all, replaying the conversation and his reaction. It wasn't as simple as Sam claimed it was. There weren't the same kind of compartments to his relationship with Napoleon as there were in the USSR. There, with friends like Sasha Travkov, with whom he also worked with on occasion in the ballet, there were levels to their association. They knew when they crossed from one to another. There was an order of hierarchy to the different levels. Their job relationship always came first. The public professional life. If one made mistakes at that level, the rest fell apart. Sasha had known Illya was mamka, a KGB babysitter, while Illya was stationed in the ballet. That always came first. That was never compromised. Despite the difference in their ages, when Illya, in his role of mamka, told Sasha something, it was obeyed, despite Illya being the younger of the two.

  When he lived with Sasha, and whomever Sasha's current girlfriend was, he was like a little brother to them, a time of great joy for him, even though it was just for a few months. He had been happy. He had behaved there as a younger brother should. It was no problem to shift from one moment to the next, one level to the next. Every Soviet child knew about levels and faces and masks and protocol.

  Now, both in exile in America, he and Sasha were still friends, even if they seldom saw each other. Life had taken them in different directions; there were little opportunities to be alone, to talk. Yet, Sasha had no difficulty thinking of him as dead on one level—the professional—since to the Soviet public, Illya Mikhaylovich Zadkine was dead. Sasha easily referred to him in the past tense when with others. Maybe he shed a tear or two in public with someone. Yet, once a month they would meet, he at Sasha's, or Sasha at his place. They would drink and laugh and tell stories. Another compartment. They adapted.

  But Napoleon was American. The lines were blurred with Americans; it was difficult to know where there were lines, or when he had stepped over one. Illya only knew one way of keeping the lines straight, the way he had been taught. Of most importance, always, was that Napoleon was his supervisor, the head of the section. Then they were partners. But Napoleon was the senior partner, and that had to be adhered to, even if it was permitted, and expected, that Illya would make suggestions or offer corrections when necessary. Only after the first two criteria were met, and there were no obstacles left, then they were friends. They could laugh a bit, share a meal, see a movie.

  What Sam Lawrence was suggesting was that the first two things should be ignored, in this case, in favor of the latter. That Napoleon had no authority over him in personal affairs.

  Illya blinked.

  What did it matter?

  There was nothing to be done now. Nothing he could do.

  Except the paperwork.

  *****

  "He's frightened." Lawrence threw the statement out, knowing the reaction he would get.

  "That's absurd." Waverly waited for Lawrence to continue his report, glancing up to meet the doctor's face when the silence stretched. "Kuryakin is a competent agent. One of my best men."

  "I concur. He is also not sleeping because he is frightened."

  "Of what, in heaven's name?"

  "Of being alone."

  Waverly stared at Lawrence, dumbfounded. "He told you this?"

  "Aren't you aware of what you've created?"

  "Now this is my fault? Confound it, man, I have an organization to run. I expect my agents to function as professionals, not run crying to the psych section when their colleague takes a leave of absence."

  "You told me to talk to him, Alexander. Illya has been coping remarkably well on his own. We both know that he is a remarkable individual. He is coping, however, because I don't think he knows what else to do. Your damned precious agency is made of humans––and humans bleed. I should know." Lawrence took a sip of his cup of coffee. "In Africa, there is an expression, 'When the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.' This young man, brilliant though he may be, has been trampled a few too many times lately."

  "It is a hazard of his occupation—one he freely accepted."

  Lawrence snorted in disbelief. "When did you first decide to enlist Illya in U.N.C.L.E.? When he showed up in Paris in 1961? Or when you dealt with him when he was a teenager? Or was it when he socked you in the jaw when he was ten years old?" The doctor stood now, leaning over the desk, demanding Waverly's attention. "You have manipulated him for the last sixteen years to get him to this point, grooming him to work with Solo eventually, and you have the balls to sit there and tell me that Illya freely has made these decisions, without coercion? The young man looks up to you like you're God or something. You should have seen him when you were poisoned a couple of months ago. Napoleon could control him, but I doubt if anyone else could have. Illya was furious that anyone would harm you. When he talked at all, he sounded like something from a melodramatic Gothic novel."

  "What is your point, doctor?" Waverly was angry now, but Lawrence was ready for it.

  "My point? You are quite aware of Kuryakin's background. The abuse he suffered growing up––especially psychologically. The way he has been used since he was a child. The dysfunctional upbringing. The intense loyalty to you above anyone or anything else. You have used it to your advantage to get an intelligent talented operative put under your supervision here in New York, despite the odds of it being allowed at all. You deliberately set up a series of safety nets for Kuryakin, in order for him to function smoothly. You have used him. And you knew you were using him.

  "And now he's hurting. This situation is new and foreign to him. Trish and Norm Graham are not around for him to talk to. Their son Tony is in our Mexico office, doing his summer medical apprenticeship. Napoleon is absent. Your safety nets are missing, Alexander. On top of that, he is still recovering from several abductions––being held, confined, bound, and raped––and this is not a time when he should be apart from these people whom he knows care about him. Especially his partner. And you."

  Waverly stared back incredulously. "He is Number Two, Section Two. I show him no more preference than I do any other of my agents. He is a fully qualified, adult, operative––"

  Lawrence interrupted, his fist impacting on the table as he spoke. "So why does he still wear your Number Two visitor's badge? Why have you never issued him a permanent number? Why has he been free to come and go from this office since the day he started working here? No other operatives, including Napoleon, have the freedom you have given Illya, to walk into this room any time he wants to and speak with you. To use your office when you are not here. To have full use of any lab, any equipment, any area of this building that he wants to. Are you going to sit there and try to convince me he means nothing to you?"

  "He is a fully qualified operative whom I..." Waverly stopped speaking. Lawrence had left the room.

  Sunday, May 23

  In the quietness of the midnight to eight shift, the old man drifted down the sterile gray corridor, his pipe smoke trailing around him like a ghostly specter haunting the empty hallways. Now and again, he paused outside a closed doorway, his head tilting to one side as though, even through the soundproofed walls, he was able to hear the conversations within or sense the
clutch of workers bent laboriously over their desks, long past normal shift.

  At this time of the night, the secretaries and clerks were gone. Sections Three and Four had cleared out at six. A skeleton crew operated in Section Five, Communications and Security, while half the men and women of Section Two, Operations and Enforcement, who were presently in the city came and went as though the clock had no meaning. The organization slowed down, but it never stopped moving.

  In many ways, Alexander Waverly was the organization, for it was he, with a few others, who created the network out of the still warm ashes of the second World War, fashioning it into the multinational structure now respected around the world. This office was his brainchild and his responsibility. He owed allegiance to no other. He was the rock the network stood on, the craftsman who molded the men and women into professional soldiers. He had created U.N.C.L.E. and he had created them.

  At ten minutes after midnight, Waverly halted outside one door, his attention captured. He waited, part of him wanting to continue down the hallway, while part of him demanded he enter the room and deal with what lay beyond the gray door. The problem that had weighed on him all afternoon. As Lawrence had reminded him, his responsibility. After a few minutes of numb indecision, he activated the hidden sensor and the door slid open, almost silently, revealing the lamp-lit room.

  There was no reaction from the young man at the desk, his blond head resting face down on crossed forearms. The shoulders, Waverly noted critically, were hunched, weighted down with unshared burdens. Jacket and tie lay on a heap beside the desk. The ashtray was full. Coffee cups and sandwich wrappers littered the paper-strewn desktop. He had gone home at 6:00 in the evening, when he was scheduled to, but when the Security section had reported that Kuryakin had returned to work at 10:00 p.m., Waverly knew he had to do something.