How Napoleon and Illya Assisted Gaby in Foiling a Nefarious Plot
Title: How Napoleon and Illya Assisted Gaby in Foiling a Nefarious Plot: A Story of Friendship and Stabbings
Fandom: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Characters: Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo
Word Count: 7949
Rating: T
Summary: When someone threatens Illya and Napoleon, Gaby must figure out how to save them.
A.N: The book Napoleon is reading is The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, by John le Carre.
Thirteen weeks after Italy, Gaby is approached by Paul Schneider, one of U.N.C.L.E.’s West German men. He follows her after work, catching up to her while she’s walking to a café to meet Illya and Napoleon for a late tea.
Gaby hardly knows Schneider, but he makes plenty of conversation as they walk. They reach the café in just under seven minutes. Gaby’s near enough to see Illya and Napoleon sitting at a table inside, arguing about Napoleon’s waistcoat, when Schneider stops, crowds her towards a lamp post, and asks her to steal a ten-thousand pound necklace on her next mission.
Gaby says yes.
It starts like this: immediately after Italy comes Istanbul, and immediately after that comes Napoleon’s little personal crisis. Gaby doesn’t expect that Waverly knows every detail of his operatives’ lives, but he’s a spy as well as a very smart man, so she’s not surprised when they’re granted some more vacation after Czechoslovakia.
Napoleon has a lease and some personal things to deal with in New York, and Illya has, if fewer personal belongings, more in the way of family and friends than the American, and he makes his way to Moscow. They have two weeks off, and though neither man says how long he’ll be away, Gaby doesn’t expect to see anything of them until their first day back at work. Trips behind the Iron Curtain or across an ocean are hardly jaunts one can take in a day or two, and even if the three of them are friends, they’ve spent an entire month in very close quarters, and they all three of them are accustomed to solitude and privacy.
Gaby, of course, has nothing.
Oh, there’s her new flat, not as large as her foster parents’ apartment but adequate, and her soft, square yellow sofa, and a case full of books forbidden in East Berlin, and an enormous, ridiculous tabby cat that follows her home one day (which she names Illyusha, because she knows it will bother Illya to no end). All the rudiments for a pleasant urban life are there, but Gaby knows no one in the city, aside from Waverly, one or two staff members at U.N.C.L.E., and a friendly German bookseller named Elfriede who may or may not be a spy.
She goes shopping the first three days, spoiling herself with Western excess. She buys mores shoes, more dresses, more makeup than she could realistically use in an entire year, and when she’s sick of shopping she prowls around and finds restaurants and coffee bars and jazz clubs that cater to men and women of her age and interests.
She can’t quite bring herself to attempt to be friendly, though. She knows, of course, that it is highly unlikely that any stranger she bumps into will be a spy, but-but no one would have thought the same of her, in Berlin, and the part of this business she best understands is suspicion.
She’s alone, then, carrying three shopping bags with frilly lingerie nestled in layers of papier maché, when she enters her flat at nine o’clock the third evening and finds Illya and Napoleon playing chess at her coffee table.
Illya has light bags under his eyes, and Napoleon still smells of stale smoke and perfume from the airplane. There’s a pot of soup simmering on the stove, some sort of meat in the oven, and a bagful of bread from the bakery down the block on the sideboard. Illyusha is nowhere in sight, but there is a plaintive yowl from beyond the closed doors of her bedroom.
“Finally,” Napoleon says, then, when his eyes catch sight of the bags Gaby’s holding, “Excellent taste, fraulein, though I wouldn’t have thought that you-”
“Checkmate,” Illya says. He knocks over Napoleon’s queen and stands, crosses the room and kisses Gaby on both cheeks as any Russian would a dear friend. His hands are light on her shoulders. “Good evening.”
Napoleon stands as well, though he heads to the kitchen.
“I demand a rematch.” He uncovers the soup and deftly opens the cabinet to his right to grab three bowls and matching plates. “You’re just in time. Any longer and this wouldn’t have been fit to eat.”
Napoleon pulls out a chair for her at the table, and Illya tries to hide the handful of bugs they doubtless discovered around the place in his pocket. It’s all very gallant and sweet, even if Napoleon rolls his eyes whenever Illya smiles at her, as if he’s honestly nauseated by the sappiness.
He probably is, at that, but his hand lingers, too, on Gaby’s when he hands her the pepper, and his eyes flicker up and down in what almost looks like concern when Illya mentions how his mother’s schedule kept them from meeting during his trip.
Gaby doesn’t understand that particular interaction yet, but she’s sure she will soon enough.
The rest of their vacation falls into a pattern: days, Illya and Napoleon visit her and take her education in hand. The first day, Illya tells her he’s hidden seven listening devices around her flat and watches her from the couch while she looks, occasionally giving her some hints or instruction. Napoleon sits on the couch that day and reads an advanced review copy of some spy novel which Waverly passed on to her, Illyusha curled up, purring, in his lap, though Napoleon occasionally pretends to glare at it. Both he and Illya also pretend not to be as pleased as they are when Gaby finds eight bugs instead of seven, but Gaby can tell.
The next day, Napoleon teaches her how to pick pockets. It’s made far more amusing than it should be when he makes Illya play the unsuspecting businessman, and Gaby has to fit her hands into his pockets without Illya noticing.
Nights, when she’s not learning how to pick locks and sneak into warehouses (the fact that Napoleon and Illya pick a warehouse at random, with real guards, is excellent as motivation to excel), Gaby takes the two of them to all the night clubs she’s discovered, and also to concerts, jazz clubs, coffee bars, and even a smoking club that’s so hazy Illya’s eyes water.
Illya usually sits-looms, really-at their table and looms on the nights when Gaby wants to dance, but he never asks that they stay in or go elsewhere. Gaby asks him if he’d rather do that, one time.
“It is all right,” he says. “I enjoy watching you dance.”
He pauses.
“And is not bad, seeing the Cowboy dance, either.”
Gaby makes sure to find ample opportunity for him to watch them, after that.
The night before they’re due to report for their next assignment, they go home early, with very pleasant plans to get plenty of rest, but end up falling asleep on Gaby’s sofa, half a bottle of wine and a vase a quarter full of vodka nestled between their bodies. They wake up achy and hungover and don’t have time for the boys to change before they have to go in to report.
Waverly, at least, seems to find it all amusing.
Waverly sends them to Croatia. It all goes well until the last ten minutes. They gather intel, sneak into the compound, sneak back out, and run into a security guard who shoots Illya in the gut.
Illya almost dies.
Gaby knows it’s not her fault, of course: Illya’s the one who missed the guard on their way in, and Napoleon’s the one who turned a corner without checking around it first. Illya doesn’t die, even, though Gaby has to keep pressure on his wound for twenty long minutes while Napoleon drives them to the airstrip, and Waverly even congratulates them on a job otherwise well done once it’s clear that Illya’s going to be fine.
None of that changes the fact that Gaby had to tend to Illya so Napoleon could cover them and find them a car, even though Napoleon, who served in the war before he ever turned spook, has far more experience caring for bullet wounds. It doesn’t change the fact that Gaby’s a better, faster driver than Napoleon, but she had to stay in the back with Illya because their driver needed to be able to shoot-and to hit whatever he shot at, even while speeding eighty miles per hour down unpaved country roads.
Gaby and Napoleon trade off watching Illya after he gets out of surgery. Napoleon’s taking a catnap when Illya wakes.
“I will be fine,” he says once Gaby’s given him some water and told him what day it is. “I am strong for Russian, and Russians are strongest men alive. You will see.”
He smiles, though his words are slurred and his accent’s noticeably thicker, and he squeezes her hand in comfort when she wraps it around his.
That afternoon, Gaby goes to Waverly and asks to be trained.
Her training proceeds, mostly, with more of the same as on her vacation, with Illya and Napoleon taking up the bulk of the tutoring. Napoleon takes the sneaky bits, Illya takes the actual spying bits, and they team up for weapons and hand-to-hand. Illya is strong and steady and never fails to praise her when she does something well, and Napoleon is, though sharper, somewhat more lenient when it comes to how exactly she achieves results, and he never makes her feel small or stupid. They’re not soft on her, even if the three of them do go out for lunch and dinner most days, but Gaby knows it’s nothing like as brutal as the education the two of them must have gone through.
So she’s very careful, when she asks Waverly to put her through torture resistance training, to specify that she does not want either Illya or Napoleon to be there.
Waverly, for his part, informs her that he’d already figured as much, and had made arrangements. He’s in the middle of telling her when she’ll go through the program when Gaby sees movement out of the corner of her eye and feels something prick her neck.
She wakes up in a steel box that’s barely big enough for her to sit in.
Eventually, the exercise ends with a fake rescue led by Illya and Napoleon. It’s cold and drizzling, and it’s Gaby’s second hour of the day doing jumping jacks outside. Gaby hasn’t eaten in three days or slept in four, and her legs tremble so much that Illya has to carry her out. She cries into his shoulder from relief when Napoleon reaches over and pets her on the head, and she falls asleep listening to them tell her how well she did.
They sit with her in the infirmary all thirty-six hours she’s kept under observation, trading off for naps and coffee breaks as usual. Someone brings in a chessboard for them, and they’re in the middle of a game the second time she wakes up from a nightmare.
“It is all right to have bad dreams after such an experience,” Illya says before anyone else can speak. “Even many Russians in the service do, and Russians are among the strongest in the world.”
Napoleon doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but Gaby can tell it’s a close thing. “And you’re strong even for a Russian, of course.”
“Of course,” Illya agrees amiably, and he noisily topples a piece on the board. “Checkmate.”
Their next mission goes off without a snag.
They get drunk, after that mission. They’re riding high on the elation of having saved the world (or at least a sizable chunk of it), and instead of making their way to headquarters to report, they pile into a cab and ride to Gaby’s flat.
They mean to go to the office eventually, but by then Gaby is tipsy and Napoleon has gone past merely happy and progressed to speaking so quickly that his mouth can’t keep up, so Illya confiscates the scotch and makes them hot chocolate, and the three of them pile under a blanket in front of the fireplace and tell stories about their lives before U.N.C.L.E..
That’s when the truth about Illya’s parents comes out, spilled in bits and pieces that suddenly fit together understandably, and Napoleon shares just a little bit of what it was like to work for Sanders.
“When I’m free,” Napoleon says, sprawling, undignified, against the couch in a way he would never do if he were entirely himself, “I’m moving here-to London, or Paris, maybe-and if they try to make me stay, I’ll tell Sanders I’ll sell everything I know about them.”
“I love my country,” Illya says in that deep, soft voice Gaby’s heard him use when he’s threatening to strangle someone. “But the KGB is shortsighted. Working together, I think, is easier way to solve problems. Better.”
Gaby lightens the mood by telling them of how her foster-father thought any boy she took an interest in was an informant. The next day, when she’s at headquarters, she realizes they didn’t sweep her flat for bugs. When she gets back that evening, however, her careful search turns up empty, and she forgets about the conversation.
Four weeks after that, Gaby is approached by Paul Schneider, one of U.N.C.L.E.’s West German men. She’s on her way to meet Illya and Napoleon for a late tea at a nearby German café, which is rumored to be owned by a member of a spy ring (untrue though those accusations are, once the three look into it) but which serves genuine Berlin pfannkuchen, which makes the visit more than worth the occasional look of suspicion. The three of them have spent the day passing what are to be yearly qualifications tests, and she’s starving by the time she files her last bit of paperwork.
She’s one block away from the office when she hears footsteps behind her and Schneider calls out.
“Ms. Teller,” he greets her with a smile. “I’m on my way towards the library. Would you mind if I walk with you?”
Gaby shrugs, but she waits for him to catch up. She hardly knows Schneider, really. She’s seen him around the office, of course; he works directly under Waverly, overseeing operations around the Wall. He’s tall, almost Illya’s height but leaner, always dressed with a distinctly Teutonic cut to his suits. She doesn’t think she’s ever spoken with him directly, but he hasn’t treated her like a secretary or asked her to bring him a coffee, so she’s prepared to be pleasantly surprised.
She’s not.
“I’ve been pleased to see you taking an interest in training,” he says. He holds her lightly by the elbow as she walks; the touch wouldn’t bother her, coming from Illya or Napoleon, but Schneider’s hand is clammy. “It’s so unfortunate when good agents are brought down by silly, avoidable mistakes, don’t you think?”
Gaby makes a noncommittal ‘hmm’ and checks her watch. Illya and Napoleon will be at the café already, no doubt. Napoleon is nothing if not quick with paperwork, and Illya’s as efficient at filling out forms as he is at anything else.
“It would be tragic, for example,” Schneider continues, and something in his tone has changed so that Gaby looks up at him and sees him smile. “If two otherwise outstanding agents made some ill-judged comments in a moment of carelessness-say, while inebriated after a long trip-which might be misjudged and taken as treasonous.”
Gaby doesn’t ‘hmm’ this time. Her mouth is dry. She’d stop, but Schneider’s hand on her elbow grips tighter and urges her forward.
“Now, of course, we both understand that one might speak of threatening to sell your country’s secrets and have absolutely no intention of following through, or that one might intimate they distrust their country’s politics without betraying any allegiance, but spies, Ms. Teller, are suspicious by our natures, and such talk would be frowned upon.”
They pass the alley where Illyusha first spotted Gaby and followed her home from. Just a block and a half to the café.
“And if those two agents were under suspicion of, for example, colluding to destroy technology vital to their countries’ future weapons programs, or of ignoring orders to neutralize dangerous targets on a whim, the exposure of such a conversation might end very badly for them, perhaps even in charges of treason, and, given a man from their agency willing to testify to further behavior of a similar nature, it could only end in execution for both agents.”
They round a corner and catch sight of the café. Even down the street, Gaby can see two familiar shapes silhouetted in the soft yellow light above the tables on the patio outside. Illya’s gesturing at Napoleon’s waistcoat, and they’re clearly having another one of their animated arguments over fashion.
There’s a street lamp on the corner where she and Schneider stand. Schneider turns her so her back’s to it, and he crowds her back until she’s trapped between it and him.
“Your next mission will be to Argentina,” he tells her in a low tone. “Your target owns a very distinctive ruby necklace worth ten thousand pounds. You will bring it back to me, and if you’re caught, you will not mention my name.”
There’s a knife tucked into the waistband of her skirt, underneath her loose top. There aren’t many people about, and if she did it quickly enough, she could probably slip away in the confusion with no one the wiser.
But he’s not stupid enough to keep the recording on himself, and if she can’t find it before someone else does, Napoleon and Illya will still be shipped off to their own countries, very likely to prison if not killed. As things stand, there’s no way that Gaby can think of to save them.
“I understand,” Gaby says. “Shall I bring it to you at the office when we return?”
“I am so happy,” Schneider says, “That you understand.”
She smiles when she reaches the café, so that the boys won’t notice that something’s wrong.
The target’s name is Elsa Becker. Her husband is an SS officer who kills himself in early 1945; Elsa, whose family ruled the society pages long before the war, gathers her jewels, her children, and as many bars of melted-down gold as she can and flees the country not a month after she’s widowed. She settles in Argentina, as many other Nazis do, except that, rather than live off the spoils of genocide in comfort, Elsa uses some of her money to fund, of all things, a cryptographer reporting China who’s decrypting Soviet and American wires.
The team’s assignment is to infiltrate Elsa’s home, steal whatever information she has, and kidnap and deliver the cryptographer to an on-ground team for extraction.
They establish themselves as an engaged couple from the USSR and a distant cousin whose political leanings have made things hot for him in the States. Napoleon uses all his charm on Elsa at a party and gets himself invited back for brunch the next day. He lures Elsa and her children to a wine cellar and locks them inside before letting Gaby and Illya in through the back garden. He and Gaby head to Elsa’s bedroom while Illya sneaks outside to hide it in the toolshed before finding several security guards and distracting them.
Elsa, Gaby is pleased to discover, keeps her most precious jewels and her stolen, top-secret information in the same safe. Napoleon is pleased to discover that the safe is eminently crackable-even thick-fingered Peril, he says, could do it. Illya isn’t particularly pleased about anything, as Argentina is far too hot for his tastes, but he satisfies himself with knocking thirteen men unconscious when things go down.
The trick, of course, is to get Gaby alone with the open safe in such a way that Waverly won’t suspect a thing when he reads their three reports later and corroborates them with the surveillance tapes and audio he’s got at the Becker estate. It’s tricky, but Napoleon’s just finishing up with the safe when there’s an explosion across the compound, where Illya’s leading several security guards on a chase.
What no one needs to know is that it comes from a device Gaby herself smuggled in in her backpack, which should make plenty of noise and knock out any electronic devices within a fifty-foot radius but not cause particular damage to any human-in this case Illya-who might be near it. Gaby’s really quite talented at that sort of thing, now she has time to practice.
Napoleon, naturally, runs off to Illya’s rescue. Gaby joins them several minutes later, the papers and a hard drive in her backpack, the heavy necklace in a secret pocket sewn into the bottom of her dress.
Schneider’s not satisfied, of course. Gaby didn’t expect that he would be. They’ve arranged to meet at Parliament Square, in the shadow of Big Ben where dozens of tourists mill around, taking pictures and blocking Gaby’s path should she wish to make a quick getaway.
He greets her by her first name and asks her how the trip went, and she hands over the paper-wrapped parcel without a word. He doesn’t unwrap it, but he sticks it in his coat pocket with a smile.
“I’ve got another job for you,” he says then, and Gaby’s head snaps up because she expected, at least, a longer reprieve. “Your next mission will be-“
Schneider stumbles as an American tourist in a baggy overcoat bumps into him from behind without apology. Schneider grabs Gaby and yanks her towards him so her wrist aches.
“Your next mission,” Schneider repeats, “Will be to collect incriminating information on a diplomat in the Netherlands. In the course of your mission, you will attend a ball thrown by the Minister of Finance. While you are there, I want you to steal the bracelet his wife, Liesbeth, will be wearing.”
“They’re going to get suspicious,” Gaby tells him. She flexes her wrist; she thinks it might be sprained. “Waverly’s going to figure this out, sooner or later.”
Schneider shrugs. “Leave it to me, liebchen. I am not an unreasonable man, and I promise you won’t get into any trouble unless you’re careless enough to get caught.”
He leaves her in the shadow of the clock tower. Gaby doesn’t move until a gentleman with a camera asks her if she would mind taking his picture.
Fifteen weeks after Italy, Napoleon’s in the sort of mood that goes better for him with friends but worse with crowds, so Gaby and Illya eat supper at his flat, a comfortable set of apartments in a Georgian home four blocks from the office.
Napoleon does most of the talking, because that’s the sort of day it is for Napoleon, but Illya breaks in with an occasional quip. Gaby sits back and lets the words flow around her. She wonders, sometimes, if she’s missed a bug or a tracking device, if Schneider’s listening on their words and finding more incriminating evidence. Does he know about Napoleon’s illness? Has he found more of Illya’s weak spots?
She doesn’t realize the conversation’s stopped until Illya touches her arm.
“Is everything all right?” Napoleon asks. His foot’s still tapping restlessly against the hardwood, but he’s looking with a very particular focus down at her plate, which Gaby realizes is practically untouched.
“I’m-” Gaby starts, and she’s going to say fine, but they both know her far too well for that to fly. “I’m worried about the-about the mission.”
The boys share a look.
“You’ll do fine,” Napoleon says even as Illya’s hand wraps, large and calloused, around hers. “Your firearms scores were more than adequate, if it comes to that. And it shouldn’t: or are you forgetting you fooled the best of the CIA and the KGB your first time out?”
“It is all right, little chop shop girl,” Illya says, leaning over and placing his lips on her forehead. “We will all be fine. You will see.”
Napoleon’s not the sort who speaks softly or in platitudes unless his cover requires it-and even sometimes when it does-and Illya doesn’t lie, for all he is sweet, especially not when her or Napoleon’s safety depends on the truth, so Gaby knows she should be able to trust them and trust in themselves.
It’s considerably harder than it sounds.
The night before they leave for the Netherlands mission, Gaby’s just walking in her door when her phone rings with an urgent call from Waverly himself: Napoleon’s been beaten, stabbed, and dumped outside of Charing Cross Hospital.
Waverly’s already there when Gaby and Illya arrive, masterfully harassing doctors and nurses without raising his voice or losing the slightest bit of his temper.
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” he tells them after a few minutes. “He’s already awake and complaining, and as far as anyone can tell-” and here, Waverly’s face crinkles with what looks like amusement-“It was just a random mugging.”
“A mugging.” Gaby sinks down into one of the chairs. Her fingers are trembling, and she can’t catch her breath. “Napoleon Solo. Taken down by street thugs.”
“They jumped him from behind. He took quite a knock to the head, but aside from that and a relatively mild stomach wound, he’ll be fine in a day or two. Quite remarkable, really.”
Waverly says the last looking, a little sternly, at Illya’s hand, which has somehow found its way around Gaby’s. Illya tries to pull away, but Gaby squeezes his fingers, and he stills and squeezes back.
“Perhaps we can put off the mission to-”
“Oh, of course, of course,” Waverly says when Illya starts. He smiles and taps his umbrella against the linoleum. “I must be off: Mrs. Waverly’s been put out enough for one day. Teller, Kuryakin, I’m sure you’ll be able to use your time off to catch on some of your paperwork.”
They see him off with a nod and a promise to ‘give his regards to Mr. Solo’.
Napoleon’s white as a sheet when they finally get to see him, but he grins. He’s bare-chested, but his stomach is swathed in bandages, and there’s a red bump on his forehead from where he hit the pavement when he was hit.
“You’d be surprised,” he says when he sees them, “But this is far less painful than it looks.”
He doesn’t drop the bravado, of course; Gaby’s not entirely sure he’s capable, after so many years, but he makes space for Gaby to sit on his bed, and he doesn’t complain when Illya insists on checking his bandages.
Napoleon’s released to their care the next day; Gaby takes the morning off and Illya the afternoon, but Napoleon sleeps throughout. Gaby and Illya both go into the office the next day. Napoleon’s out for the week, but he’s well enough to walk around and manage for himself.
The fourth day, Illya and Gaby are in the middle of a demonstration of fighting techniques to use on larger opponents, teaching some twenty-odd office workers the basics in case headquarters is ever breached, when someone fires a gun in Waverly’s office.
“Stay here,” Illya tells her before he sprints off, grabbing the Beretta he’s not supposed to be wearing in the office from the holster at the small of his back.
By the time he comes back to let her know it’s safe, Gaby’s organized the clerks into teams focused on barricading the two doors to the training hall, and Illya, accompanied by Anton David, a high-ranking member of Waverly’s staff, has to wait several minutes so they can let him in. Illya’s fine, but Anton’s got a quickly-blackening eye and a bloody nose, and the set of his mouth is grim.
The story comes out eventually: Paul Schneider, in addition to blackmail, had apparently resorted to treason as well. After Anton David, one of Waverly’s top staff members, grew suspicious, a safe in his home was discovered to contain several pieces of top-secret Soviet and American information as well as five thousand pounds in small notes which he claimed never to have seen before.
There’s no mention of any recordings of any agents in Schneider’s possession, and, as Waverly is granted complete control of the investigation by the rather embarrassed Soviet and American diplomats, who just want the whole thing to go away, Gaby knows any copies of such conversations would doubtlessly be destroyed. Schneider, now discredited as a traitor, could yell accusations at the top of his lungs all day long and nobody would believe him. He’ll rot in a dark little prison for the rest of his life, and Gaby’s family will be safe.
It is quite a satisfactory conclusion.
Waverly calls her and Illya to his office the next day to brief them on the situation, as he ostensibly wants their opinion on some of the operations Schneider was running.
He waits until they’re standing to leave before he looks up from the mission reports form West Berlin.
“Give me regards to Mr. Solo, and by the way, Ms. Teller, well done,” he says. He smiles, and there is respect in his voice. “I couldn’t have planned it better myself. And Mr. Kuryakin?”
“Sir?” Illya asks, back straight and shoulders stiff.
“Nicely done as well, though the next time you stab someone, do make sure to clean thoroughly under your fingernails if you wish to hide it.”
Illya looks at Gaby. Gaby looks back.
“Yes, sir,” Illya says.
“Thank you, sir,” Gaby says.
They excuse themselves without another word.
Because it starts like that, but it goes like this:
Thirteen weeks after Italy, Gaby is approached by Paul Schneider, one of U.N.C.L.E.’s West German men. He follows her after work, catching up to her while she’s walking to a café to meet Illya and Napoleon for a late tea.
Schneider, of course, tries to blackmail her by threatening the only friends she has left in the world, which is something that Gaby will never forgive. Gaby’s near enough to see Illya and Napoleon sitting at a table inside, arguing about Napoleon’s waistcoat, when Schneider stops, crowds her towards a lamp post, and asks her to steal a ten-thousand pound necklace on her next mission.
Gaby thinks about stabbing him in the neck and running, but he’s not stupid enough to keep the recording on himself, and if she can’t find it before someone else does, Napoleon and Illya will still be shipped off to their own countries, very likely to prison if not killed. As things stand, there’s no way that Gaby can think of to save them.
Without their help.
So she agrees to Schneider’s terms and pretends her shaking hands are born of fear rather than anger.
She smiles when she reaches the café, so that the boys won’t notice that something’s wrong. It would have worked in Italy, probably, but it’s been thirteen weeks since then, three months of nightclubs and burgling lessons and eating supper at each others’ flats, and it works for maybe ten minutes before Illya and Napoleon are sharing worried looks and trying to have a conversation with their eyebrows over Gaby’s head.
Gaby picks Napoleon’s pen from his pocket and grabs a napkin.
I may have a bug planted on me, she writes. We need to talk.
She hesitates, because if she makes one wrong move here Illya and Napoleon could die, but-but doing nothing might result in the same, and the odds that Schneider will be satisfied with a few stolen pieces of jewelry are about the same as Gaby letting either of her friends come to harm when she has the means to save them.
Paul Schneider’s trying to blackmail me by threatening you, but I have a plan.
They do most of their planning at various night clubs across the city, which have the double benefits of looking like a normal evening out and very often containing secluded back rooms which Napoleon obtains and Illya sweeps for bugs.
The Becker theft, when it comes to it, is simple. The trick, of course, is to get Gaby alone with the open safe in such a way that Waverly won’t suspect a thing when he reads their three reports later and corroborates them with the surveillance tapes and audio he’s got at the Becker estate. The three of them study the blueprints of the estate for hours while they plan.
Once they’re in and Elsa and the children are safely locked away, Napoleon and Gaby head to Elsa’s bedroom while Illya takes the bomb from Gaby’s backpack and sneaks outside to hide it in the toolshed before finding several security guards and distracting them.
Napoleon cracks into the safe barehanded, but he and Gaby both pull on gloves before they rifle through its contents. The necklace is there, of course, and Napoleon helps Gaby sew it onto her dress, but of greater interest to both of them are the decrypted messages. There are some secrets that it would be far too dangerous to risk-that might ignite a nuclear war if either country ever learned they’d been compromised-but some secrets are a little less dangerous. The real identities of one or two spies, a report on a new listening device being developed by the KGB; they take a few of these and sew them into the pocket with the necklace. The rest of the papers and a hard drive Gaby tucks into her backpack.
They’re just about done when the bomb goes off, and Napoleon stages a very noisy rush to Illya’s rescue for the benefit of the listening device in the hall outside of Elsa’s bedroom.
Gaby joins them several minutes later, once all the guards have been subdued and the way is safe.
Schneider arranges to meet with her at Parliament Square where there are dozens of tourists on any given day. He probably thinks it’s safer that way, maybe even has a companion posing as one of the clueless Americans snapping pictures around the plaza.
He’s not the only one.
“I’ve got another job for you,” he tells her, the sound carrying crystal clear to Illya over all four of the bugs Gaby has hidden on herself. “Your next mission will be-“
He’s interrupted when Napoleon bumps into him and plants a tracking device under his collar. Dressed like a boorish American, camera dangling from his neck, Napoleon’s practically unrecognizable, and Gaby stumbles into Schneider so he never gets a good look at the tourist in the baggy overcoat.
He sprains her wrist when he yanks her further away from the crowds, he’s so upset, and Gaby hopes against hope that Illya doesn’t cause any major damage to the van he’s parked in a hundred feet away.
Schneider leaves her in the shadow of the tower when he leaves. Gaby stays where she is until a very tall, familiar man with a camera comes up to her and asks to take her picture.
“It worked?” she asks.
Illya nods. “The tracker is transmitting well. Napoleon is following.” He points the camera at her and waits for it to beep.
“You’re clean,” he says after a moment, squinting through his ‘camera’. “No bugs.”
“Except yours.”
“Da.”
He takes her hand in his and rotates her wrist until she winces. “Come, we will get you some ice for this. You will need both your hands for driving, next part.”
The next part is a little trickier.
First, Napoleon follows Schneider at a safe distance, using the tracker Illya planted on him. Schneider wouldn’t want to walk around London with the necklace in his possession, so they figure he’ll either take him to a hiding place or a fence. They have plans for either eventuality.
Schneider, to their surprise, heads straight back to his own home. Napoleon, who has to bump into him, again, to steal back the tracker so Schneider doesn’t get suspicious, waits for over four hours, but he leaves when Schneider goes to bed.
Second, Gaby phones Schneider the next day, a Saturday, and asks him to meet her at the German café which serves pfannkuchen that tastes like it came straight from Berlin. She says she’d like to discuss the terms of their arrangement over a quick lunch.
Illya, for his part, makes arrangements to meet with Anton David, who is quiet and friendly and more ambitious than anyone Illya’s ever met, even in the KGB. Illya also pays the waitress, the daughter of the proprietor, twenty pounds to stop at Schneider’s table and flirt.
Gaby then manufactures an emergency at U.N.C.L.E. which requires the knowledge and experience of someone intimately familiar with life in East Berlin, requiring her to go in on her day off. It will all be perfectly legitimate, should Schneider look into it, and she’ll have a cast-iron alibi.
Illya and Anton, then, are perfectly placed to see Schneider arrive by himself, sit alone at a table for twenty minutes, and have an animated conversation with the daughter of a German refugee who is rumored to be part of a spy ring.
Schneider sees them, of course, but he’s not suspicious yet, so it means nothing to him. He nods his head at them, and they nod back, and it’s all very friendly until he finally gives up on Gaby and leaves.
Illya doesn’t say too much, because that might draw suspicion onto him instead of Schneider, but he does make an offhand remark, sandwiched between inconsequential small talk, about how someone had mentioned to him that they’d asked Schneider to lunch today, but Schneider had said he was busy with work. Illya passes it off as a joke about good-looking waitresses, but he sees Anton look at the table Schneider was sitting at very thoughtfully for a moment.
After that, it’s just the matter of a whisper campaign.
Napoleon’s job, while Illya and Gaby are running the play, is of course to break into Schneider’s house and discover where Schneider keeps the recording and the necklace. Schneider, of course, has been a spy for ten years, which means keeping things hidden is his stock in trade; Napoleon, however, has spent the last ten years stealing things from men just like Schneider under orders from the CIA, and it only takes him twenty minutes to discover the small, loose panel in the back of Schneider’s linen closet.
The recording is there, and the necklace, and several other tapes carefully labeled with the names of agents from several countries who, when Napoleon looks them up later, died in missions which Schneider ran.
He leaves everything precisely where it is and is safely back at Gaby’s flat by the time Schneider gets back.
By the weekend before their scheduled mission to the Netherlands, rumors about Paul Schneider are flying around-well, around Anton David’s office. Illya, Napoleon, and Gaby, are careful to target clerks and agents who work with Anton, as there’s just not the time, given the propensity of those being blackmailed by Schneider to die, to infect the whole of U.N.C.L.E..
Each rumor is not, in and of itself, particularly damning or suspicious.
Mr. David and Mr. Kuryakin saw Mr. Schneider talking to a waitress at that café by the bookshop, and Schneider told me he was supposed to meet Gaby, but Gaby said they hadn’t made plans. Apparently he’s interested in one of the waitresses there. I suppose they both miss Germany.
Axl-my fiancé, in accounting, told me that someone from Internal Reports pulled Mr. Schneider’s files, and when they came back some of them had been altered. Spooks, huh?
Schneider? I heard he was offered a job with MI-5, but he wanted to keep running missions in Berlin. Turned down an extra forty thousand a year-though I suppose he doesn’t need it. He is a department head, after all.
Taken together, though, that little seed of mistrust in Anton’s mind blooms, and he starts watching Schneider, pulling a few of Schneider’s files and looking through them, and spending an unusual amount of time flirting with Schneider’s secretaries despite the fact that he isn’t actually interested in women (though neither the secretary nor most of U.N.C.L.E.’s employees know that).
He’s close, but it might take him some weeks or months to make a move, and they can’t afford that, so, despite Gaby’s misgivings, they put the next part of their plan into action.
“Just do it,” Napoleon says. He’s standing in between Gaby and Illya in a dark alley a mile away from Charing Cross hospital. His breath mists when he speaks in the cold, but he’s taken off his coat and jacket and given them to Gaby with explicit instructions on their care. “Now, please; it’s cold.”
“But-” Gaby starts, but cuts herself off when Napoleon turns to glare at her. This is the best way; they’ve been through this time and time again, and Napoleon’s idea really is the best chance they’ve got. “Fine. Illya?”
“Peril,” Napoleon says, turning back to the Russian. He starts to say something flippant, smirk at the corner of his mouth, but something in Illya’s face stops him.
“Illya,” he says instead. “I trust you.”
Illya nods, steps forward, and punches him in the side of the head. Illya catches him as he falls, but the ground is slippery with rain from the afternoon, and Napoleon slips in his grip far enough that his head smacks into the ground with a thump.
Illya makes a disapproving noise, but he flips Napoleon over and takes a knife out of his coat pocket. It’s a small thing, a switchblade any number of petty criminals might carry around, but it’s sharp enough to do the trick. Illya is very careful; he settles Napoleon flat onto his back and finds just the right spot on Napoleon’s stomach, where it will look like a nasty, panicked stab wound but cause no real damage beyond pain and some blood loss.
His hand shakes, inches above Napoleon’s limp body, until Gaby puts hers on his shoulder.
“He trusts you,” she tells him, and Illya looks up at her and nods once.
Then he drives the knife into Napoleon’s gut.
This is the part where Gaby’s hands come in useful. Illya stays in the backseat with Napoleon, this time around, and Gaby drives through the crowded streets of London like a drunk madman.
They try to be as gentle as they can when they leave Napoleon outside of the emergency doors, the switchblade still sticking out of his stomach, but there are only so many ways you can dump a man out of a car without risking being seen yourself.
Gaby screeches out of the ambulance bay before Illya even has his door closed all the way. Illya’s flat is on the way to hers, from here-which is why they chose Charing Cross-and she drops him off by the fire escape around the back of his apartment. The drive to her own place usually takes fifteen minutes, this time of night, but she makes it in six. She forces herself to walk, not run, up the stairs, and to make sure her hands aren’t shaking and her breathing is measured. She’s just walking through her door when the phone on her kitchen counter rings.
It’s Waverly, of course; they made sure he’d be the first contacted, having left Napoleon’s work identification in his wallet.
Napoleon, Waverly says, has been beaten, stabbed, and dumped outside of Charing Cross Hospital, and if Gaby would like to come-
Gaby’s not entirely sure she answer him, breath seems so short, but she heads back out as soon as she checks that there’s no blood on her dress. Illya, in his home, does the same, changing his shirt and pants and scrubbing his hands, but he doesn’t notice that some of Napoleon’s blood got under his fingernails.
Everything else, of course, goes perfectly.
Napoleon’s injury is of triple use: first, it gets them out of going to the Netherlands; second, it frees Napoleon up to sneak around as much as he likes as soon as he’s well enough; third, Gaby and Illya make sure to have a conversation in front of Anton David’s secretary about how Napoleon told them Schneider asked him some rather strange questions about his work with the CIA on the afternoon before he was stabbed.
Three days after Napoleon’s release from the hospital, Anton requests a meeting with Waverly for the following morning.
They all know what that means, so, while Anton and Waverly meet and Gaby and Illya demonstrate fighting techniques in front of thirty witnesses, the supposedly-laid-up Napoleon sneaks out of Gaby’s flat, drives to Schneider’s home, and steals the tapes and necklace from the cubby hole in the linen closet. In return, he takes the papers they sifted from Elsa Becker’s stash and five thousand pounds in small notes and leaves them in the very obvious safe in Schneider’s study.
By the next morning, when Anton leads several agents into Schneider’s home, the necklace has been sold to an old friend of Napoleon’s and is on its way to Iceland, never to be traced to anyone from U.N.C.L.E.. Five thousand goes to cover what they left in Schneider’s safe; the other five they donate anonymously to a war orphans and widows fund.
Illya and Gaby, tapped for a second day of lessons after the first proved so useful, are there when Waverly calls Schneider to his office and has him arrested.
Schneider doesn’t go quietly, but he only manages a few wild shots that don’t hit anything before Anton David tackles him. By the time Illya runs in, all the fuss is over, and Schneider’s being led out in handcuffs.
Waverly gives them the afternoon off, and Illya and Gaby go home to Napoleon. Just because he can break into places while recovering from a stab wound doesn’t mean he should, and they spend the afternoon watching over him while he naps.
That evening, though, they order in takeout and drink champagne and stay up until three in the morning dancing in Gaby’s living room (and even Illya joins in). It’s wonderful.
Gaby sits, again, on a nest of blankets in front of the fireplace that evening, her two boys strong and warm on either side of her and her ridiculous tabby cat purring in her lap. She’s exhausted now that everything’s over, her stomach aching and her breath, sometimes, growing short so her heart pounds and it feels like she’s suffocating, but for the moment-well, Illya’s got his arm curled around her shoulder, Napoleon’s holding her hand, and she rests safe in the knowledge that they’re not going anywhere.
“Thank you,” she murmurs just before she dozes off. She squeezes Napoleon’s hand and rubs her cheek against Illya’s shoulder.
She is aware, once more, of a conversation being held over her head, but she doesn’t mind. The boys shift in closer to her, so she’s flush with them on either side, thighs and shoulders rubbing together soft.
“It was your plan,” Napoleon says.
“For once, the Cowboy is right,” contributes Illya, and there’s a fondness for both of them in his voice that almost makes Gaby ache-but there will be more time to figure all of that out, later.
For now, it’s enough to sleep and to know that the people she cares most about in the world are safe.
Fandom: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Characters: Gaby Teller, Illya Kuryakin, Napoleon Solo
Word Count: 7949
Rating: T
Summary: When someone threatens Illya and Napoleon, Gaby must figure out how to save them.
A.N: The book Napoleon is reading is The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, by John le Carre.
Thirteen weeks after Italy, Gaby is approached by Paul Schneider, one of U.N.C.L.E.’s West German men. He follows her after work, catching up to her while she’s walking to a café to meet Illya and Napoleon for a late tea.
Gaby hardly knows Schneider, but he makes plenty of conversation as they walk. They reach the café in just under seven minutes. Gaby’s near enough to see Illya and Napoleon sitting at a table inside, arguing about Napoleon’s waistcoat, when Schneider stops, crowds her towards a lamp post, and asks her to steal a ten-thousand pound necklace on her next mission.
Gaby says yes.
It starts like this: immediately after Italy comes Istanbul, and immediately after that comes Napoleon’s little personal crisis. Gaby doesn’t expect that Waverly knows every detail of his operatives’ lives, but he’s a spy as well as a very smart man, so she’s not surprised when they’re granted some more vacation after Czechoslovakia.
Napoleon has a lease and some personal things to deal with in New York, and Illya has, if fewer personal belongings, more in the way of family and friends than the American, and he makes his way to Moscow. They have two weeks off, and though neither man says how long he’ll be away, Gaby doesn’t expect to see anything of them until their first day back at work. Trips behind the Iron Curtain or across an ocean are hardly jaunts one can take in a day or two, and even if the three of them are friends, they’ve spent an entire month in very close quarters, and they all three of them are accustomed to solitude and privacy.
Gaby, of course, has nothing.
Oh, there’s her new flat, not as large as her foster parents’ apartment but adequate, and her soft, square yellow sofa, and a case full of books forbidden in East Berlin, and an enormous, ridiculous tabby cat that follows her home one day (which she names Illyusha, because she knows it will bother Illya to no end). All the rudiments for a pleasant urban life are there, but Gaby knows no one in the city, aside from Waverly, one or two staff members at U.N.C.L.E., and a friendly German bookseller named Elfriede who may or may not be a spy.
She goes shopping the first three days, spoiling herself with Western excess. She buys mores shoes, more dresses, more makeup than she could realistically use in an entire year, and when she’s sick of shopping she prowls around and finds restaurants and coffee bars and jazz clubs that cater to men and women of her age and interests.
She can’t quite bring herself to attempt to be friendly, though. She knows, of course, that it is highly unlikely that any stranger she bumps into will be a spy, but-but no one would have thought the same of her, in Berlin, and the part of this business she best understands is suspicion.
She’s alone, then, carrying three shopping bags with frilly lingerie nestled in layers of papier maché, when she enters her flat at nine o’clock the third evening and finds Illya and Napoleon playing chess at her coffee table.
Illya has light bags under his eyes, and Napoleon still smells of stale smoke and perfume from the airplane. There’s a pot of soup simmering on the stove, some sort of meat in the oven, and a bagful of bread from the bakery down the block on the sideboard. Illyusha is nowhere in sight, but there is a plaintive yowl from beyond the closed doors of her bedroom.
“Finally,” Napoleon says, then, when his eyes catch sight of the bags Gaby’s holding, “Excellent taste, fraulein, though I wouldn’t have thought that you-”
“Checkmate,” Illya says. He knocks over Napoleon’s queen and stands, crosses the room and kisses Gaby on both cheeks as any Russian would a dear friend. His hands are light on her shoulders. “Good evening.”
Napoleon stands as well, though he heads to the kitchen.
“I demand a rematch.” He uncovers the soup and deftly opens the cabinet to his right to grab three bowls and matching plates. “You’re just in time. Any longer and this wouldn’t have been fit to eat.”
Napoleon pulls out a chair for her at the table, and Illya tries to hide the handful of bugs they doubtless discovered around the place in his pocket. It’s all very gallant and sweet, even if Napoleon rolls his eyes whenever Illya smiles at her, as if he’s honestly nauseated by the sappiness.
He probably is, at that, but his hand lingers, too, on Gaby’s when he hands her the pepper, and his eyes flicker up and down in what almost looks like concern when Illya mentions how his mother’s schedule kept them from meeting during his trip.
Gaby doesn’t understand that particular interaction yet, but she’s sure she will soon enough.
The rest of their vacation falls into a pattern: days, Illya and Napoleon visit her and take her education in hand. The first day, Illya tells her he’s hidden seven listening devices around her flat and watches her from the couch while she looks, occasionally giving her some hints or instruction. Napoleon sits on the couch that day and reads an advanced review copy of some spy novel which Waverly passed on to her, Illyusha curled up, purring, in his lap, though Napoleon occasionally pretends to glare at it. Both he and Illya also pretend not to be as pleased as they are when Gaby finds eight bugs instead of seven, but Gaby can tell.
The next day, Napoleon teaches her how to pick pockets. It’s made far more amusing than it should be when he makes Illya play the unsuspecting businessman, and Gaby has to fit her hands into his pockets without Illya noticing.
Nights, when she’s not learning how to pick locks and sneak into warehouses (the fact that Napoleon and Illya pick a warehouse at random, with real guards, is excellent as motivation to excel), Gaby takes the two of them to all the night clubs she’s discovered, and also to concerts, jazz clubs, coffee bars, and even a smoking club that’s so hazy Illya’s eyes water.
Illya usually sits-looms, really-at their table and looms on the nights when Gaby wants to dance, but he never asks that they stay in or go elsewhere. Gaby asks him if he’d rather do that, one time.
“It is all right,” he says. “I enjoy watching you dance.”
He pauses.
“And is not bad, seeing the Cowboy dance, either.”
Gaby makes sure to find ample opportunity for him to watch them, after that.
The night before they’re due to report for their next assignment, they go home early, with very pleasant plans to get plenty of rest, but end up falling asleep on Gaby’s sofa, half a bottle of wine and a vase a quarter full of vodka nestled between their bodies. They wake up achy and hungover and don’t have time for the boys to change before they have to go in to report.
Waverly, at least, seems to find it all amusing.
Waverly sends them to Croatia. It all goes well until the last ten minutes. They gather intel, sneak into the compound, sneak back out, and run into a security guard who shoots Illya in the gut.
Illya almost dies.
Gaby knows it’s not her fault, of course: Illya’s the one who missed the guard on their way in, and Napoleon’s the one who turned a corner without checking around it first. Illya doesn’t die, even, though Gaby has to keep pressure on his wound for twenty long minutes while Napoleon drives them to the airstrip, and Waverly even congratulates them on a job otherwise well done once it’s clear that Illya’s going to be fine.
None of that changes the fact that Gaby had to tend to Illya so Napoleon could cover them and find them a car, even though Napoleon, who served in the war before he ever turned spook, has far more experience caring for bullet wounds. It doesn’t change the fact that Gaby’s a better, faster driver than Napoleon, but she had to stay in the back with Illya because their driver needed to be able to shoot-and to hit whatever he shot at, even while speeding eighty miles per hour down unpaved country roads.
Gaby and Napoleon trade off watching Illya after he gets out of surgery. Napoleon’s taking a catnap when Illya wakes.
“I will be fine,” he says once Gaby’s given him some water and told him what day it is. “I am strong for Russian, and Russians are strongest men alive. You will see.”
He smiles, though his words are slurred and his accent’s noticeably thicker, and he squeezes her hand in comfort when she wraps it around his.
That afternoon, Gaby goes to Waverly and asks to be trained.
Her training proceeds, mostly, with more of the same as on her vacation, with Illya and Napoleon taking up the bulk of the tutoring. Napoleon takes the sneaky bits, Illya takes the actual spying bits, and they team up for weapons and hand-to-hand. Illya is strong and steady and never fails to praise her when she does something well, and Napoleon is, though sharper, somewhat more lenient when it comes to how exactly she achieves results, and he never makes her feel small or stupid. They’re not soft on her, even if the three of them do go out for lunch and dinner most days, but Gaby knows it’s nothing like as brutal as the education the two of them must have gone through.
So she’s very careful, when she asks Waverly to put her through torture resistance training, to specify that she does not want either Illya or Napoleon to be there.
Waverly, for his part, informs her that he’d already figured as much, and had made arrangements. He’s in the middle of telling her when she’ll go through the program when Gaby sees movement out of the corner of her eye and feels something prick her neck.
She wakes up in a steel box that’s barely big enough for her to sit in.
Eventually, the exercise ends with a fake rescue led by Illya and Napoleon. It’s cold and drizzling, and it’s Gaby’s second hour of the day doing jumping jacks outside. Gaby hasn’t eaten in three days or slept in four, and her legs tremble so much that Illya has to carry her out. She cries into his shoulder from relief when Napoleon reaches over and pets her on the head, and she falls asleep listening to them tell her how well she did.
They sit with her in the infirmary all thirty-six hours she’s kept under observation, trading off for naps and coffee breaks as usual. Someone brings in a chessboard for them, and they’re in the middle of a game the second time she wakes up from a nightmare.
“It is all right to have bad dreams after such an experience,” Illya says before anyone else can speak. “Even many Russians in the service do, and Russians are among the strongest in the world.”
Napoleon doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but Gaby can tell it’s a close thing. “And you’re strong even for a Russian, of course.”
“Of course,” Illya agrees amiably, and he noisily topples a piece on the board. “Checkmate.”
Their next mission goes off without a snag.
They get drunk, after that mission. They’re riding high on the elation of having saved the world (or at least a sizable chunk of it), and instead of making their way to headquarters to report, they pile into a cab and ride to Gaby’s flat.
They mean to go to the office eventually, but by then Gaby is tipsy and Napoleon has gone past merely happy and progressed to speaking so quickly that his mouth can’t keep up, so Illya confiscates the scotch and makes them hot chocolate, and the three of them pile under a blanket in front of the fireplace and tell stories about their lives before U.N.C.L.E..
That’s when the truth about Illya’s parents comes out, spilled in bits and pieces that suddenly fit together understandably, and Napoleon shares just a little bit of what it was like to work for Sanders.
“When I’m free,” Napoleon says, sprawling, undignified, against the couch in a way he would never do if he were entirely himself, “I’m moving here-to London, or Paris, maybe-and if they try to make me stay, I’ll tell Sanders I’ll sell everything I know about them.”
“I love my country,” Illya says in that deep, soft voice Gaby’s heard him use when he’s threatening to strangle someone. “But the KGB is shortsighted. Working together, I think, is easier way to solve problems. Better.”
Gaby lightens the mood by telling them of how her foster-father thought any boy she took an interest in was an informant. The next day, when she’s at headquarters, she realizes they didn’t sweep her flat for bugs. When she gets back that evening, however, her careful search turns up empty, and she forgets about the conversation.
Four weeks after that, Gaby is approached by Paul Schneider, one of U.N.C.L.E.’s West German men. She’s on her way to meet Illya and Napoleon for a late tea at a nearby German café, which is rumored to be owned by a member of a spy ring (untrue though those accusations are, once the three look into it) but which serves genuine Berlin pfannkuchen, which makes the visit more than worth the occasional look of suspicion. The three of them have spent the day passing what are to be yearly qualifications tests, and she’s starving by the time she files her last bit of paperwork.
She’s one block away from the office when she hears footsteps behind her and Schneider calls out.
“Ms. Teller,” he greets her with a smile. “I’m on my way towards the library. Would you mind if I walk with you?”
Gaby shrugs, but she waits for him to catch up. She hardly knows Schneider, really. She’s seen him around the office, of course; he works directly under Waverly, overseeing operations around the Wall. He’s tall, almost Illya’s height but leaner, always dressed with a distinctly Teutonic cut to his suits. She doesn’t think she’s ever spoken with him directly, but he hasn’t treated her like a secretary or asked her to bring him a coffee, so she’s prepared to be pleasantly surprised.
She’s not.
“I’ve been pleased to see you taking an interest in training,” he says. He holds her lightly by the elbow as she walks; the touch wouldn’t bother her, coming from Illya or Napoleon, but Schneider’s hand is clammy. “It’s so unfortunate when good agents are brought down by silly, avoidable mistakes, don’t you think?”
Gaby makes a noncommittal ‘hmm’ and checks her watch. Illya and Napoleon will be at the café already, no doubt. Napoleon is nothing if not quick with paperwork, and Illya’s as efficient at filling out forms as he is at anything else.
“It would be tragic, for example,” Schneider continues, and something in his tone has changed so that Gaby looks up at him and sees him smile. “If two otherwise outstanding agents made some ill-judged comments in a moment of carelessness-say, while inebriated after a long trip-which might be misjudged and taken as treasonous.”
Gaby doesn’t ‘hmm’ this time. Her mouth is dry. She’d stop, but Schneider’s hand on her elbow grips tighter and urges her forward.
“Now, of course, we both understand that one might speak of threatening to sell your country’s secrets and have absolutely no intention of following through, or that one might intimate they distrust their country’s politics without betraying any allegiance, but spies, Ms. Teller, are suspicious by our natures, and such talk would be frowned upon.”
They pass the alley where Illyusha first spotted Gaby and followed her home from. Just a block and a half to the café.
“And if those two agents were under suspicion of, for example, colluding to destroy technology vital to their countries’ future weapons programs, or of ignoring orders to neutralize dangerous targets on a whim, the exposure of such a conversation might end very badly for them, perhaps even in charges of treason, and, given a man from their agency willing to testify to further behavior of a similar nature, it could only end in execution for both agents.”
They round a corner and catch sight of the café. Even down the street, Gaby can see two familiar shapes silhouetted in the soft yellow light above the tables on the patio outside. Illya’s gesturing at Napoleon’s waistcoat, and they’re clearly having another one of their animated arguments over fashion.
There’s a street lamp on the corner where she and Schneider stand. Schneider turns her so her back’s to it, and he crowds her back until she’s trapped between it and him.
“Your next mission will be to Argentina,” he tells her in a low tone. “Your target owns a very distinctive ruby necklace worth ten thousand pounds. You will bring it back to me, and if you’re caught, you will not mention my name.”
There’s a knife tucked into the waistband of her skirt, underneath her loose top. There aren’t many people about, and if she did it quickly enough, she could probably slip away in the confusion with no one the wiser.
But he’s not stupid enough to keep the recording on himself, and if she can’t find it before someone else does, Napoleon and Illya will still be shipped off to their own countries, very likely to prison if not killed. As things stand, there’s no way that Gaby can think of to save them.
“I understand,” Gaby says. “Shall I bring it to you at the office when we return?”
“I am so happy,” Schneider says, “That you understand.”
She smiles when she reaches the café, so that the boys won’t notice that something’s wrong.
The target’s name is Elsa Becker. Her husband is an SS officer who kills himself in early 1945; Elsa, whose family ruled the society pages long before the war, gathers her jewels, her children, and as many bars of melted-down gold as she can and flees the country not a month after she’s widowed. She settles in Argentina, as many other Nazis do, except that, rather than live off the spoils of genocide in comfort, Elsa uses some of her money to fund, of all things, a cryptographer reporting China who’s decrypting Soviet and American wires.
The team’s assignment is to infiltrate Elsa’s home, steal whatever information she has, and kidnap and deliver the cryptographer to an on-ground team for extraction.
They establish themselves as an engaged couple from the USSR and a distant cousin whose political leanings have made things hot for him in the States. Napoleon uses all his charm on Elsa at a party and gets himself invited back for brunch the next day. He lures Elsa and her children to a wine cellar and locks them inside before letting Gaby and Illya in through the back garden. He and Gaby head to Elsa’s bedroom while Illya sneaks outside to hide it in the toolshed before finding several security guards and distracting them.
Elsa, Gaby is pleased to discover, keeps her most precious jewels and her stolen, top-secret information in the same safe. Napoleon is pleased to discover that the safe is eminently crackable-even thick-fingered Peril, he says, could do it. Illya isn’t particularly pleased about anything, as Argentina is far too hot for his tastes, but he satisfies himself with knocking thirteen men unconscious when things go down.
The trick, of course, is to get Gaby alone with the open safe in such a way that Waverly won’t suspect a thing when he reads their three reports later and corroborates them with the surveillance tapes and audio he’s got at the Becker estate. It’s tricky, but Napoleon’s just finishing up with the safe when there’s an explosion across the compound, where Illya’s leading several security guards on a chase.
What no one needs to know is that it comes from a device Gaby herself smuggled in in her backpack, which should make plenty of noise and knock out any electronic devices within a fifty-foot radius but not cause particular damage to any human-in this case Illya-who might be near it. Gaby’s really quite talented at that sort of thing, now she has time to practice.
Napoleon, naturally, runs off to Illya’s rescue. Gaby joins them several minutes later, the papers and a hard drive in her backpack, the heavy necklace in a secret pocket sewn into the bottom of her dress.
Schneider’s not satisfied, of course. Gaby didn’t expect that he would be. They’ve arranged to meet at Parliament Square, in the shadow of Big Ben where dozens of tourists mill around, taking pictures and blocking Gaby’s path should she wish to make a quick getaway.
He greets her by her first name and asks her how the trip went, and she hands over the paper-wrapped parcel without a word. He doesn’t unwrap it, but he sticks it in his coat pocket with a smile.
“I’ve got another job for you,” he says then, and Gaby’s head snaps up because she expected, at least, a longer reprieve. “Your next mission will be-“
Schneider stumbles as an American tourist in a baggy overcoat bumps into him from behind without apology. Schneider grabs Gaby and yanks her towards him so her wrist aches.
“Your next mission,” Schneider repeats, “Will be to collect incriminating information on a diplomat in the Netherlands. In the course of your mission, you will attend a ball thrown by the Minister of Finance. While you are there, I want you to steal the bracelet his wife, Liesbeth, will be wearing.”
“They’re going to get suspicious,” Gaby tells him. She flexes her wrist; she thinks it might be sprained. “Waverly’s going to figure this out, sooner or later.”
Schneider shrugs. “Leave it to me, liebchen. I am not an unreasonable man, and I promise you won’t get into any trouble unless you’re careless enough to get caught.”
He leaves her in the shadow of the clock tower. Gaby doesn’t move until a gentleman with a camera asks her if she would mind taking his picture.
Fifteen weeks after Italy, Napoleon’s in the sort of mood that goes better for him with friends but worse with crowds, so Gaby and Illya eat supper at his flat, a comfortable set of apartments in a Georgian home four blocks from the office.
Napoleon does most of the talking, because that’s the sort of day it is for Napoleon, but Illya breaks in with an occasional quip. Gaby sits back and lets the words flow around her. She wonders, sometimes, if she’s missed a bug or a tracking device, if Schneider’s listening on their words and finding more incriminating evidence. Does he know about Napoleon’s illness? Has he found more of Illya’s weak spots?
She doesn’t realize the conversation’s stopped until Illya touches her arm.
“Is everything all right?” Napoleon asks. His foot’s still tapping restlessly against the hardwood, but he’s looking with a very particular focus down at her plate, which Gaby realizes is practically untouched.
“I’m-” Gaby starts, and she’s going to say fine, but they both know her far too well for that to fly. “I’m worried about the-about the mission.”
The boys share a look.
“You’ll do fine,” Napoleon says even as Illya’s hand wraps, large and calloused, around hers. “Your firearms scores were more than adequate, if it comes to that. And it shouldn’t: or are you forgetting you fooled the best of the CIA and the KGB your first time out?”
“It is all right, little chop shop girl,” Illya says, leaning over and placing his lips on her forehead. “We will all be fine. You will see.”
Napoleon’s not the sort who speaks softly or in platitudes unless his cover requires it-and even sometimes when it does-and Illya doesn’t lie, for all he is sweet, especially not when her or Napoleon’s safety depends on the truth, so Gaby knows she should be able to trust them and trust in themselves.
It’s considerably harder than it sounds.
The night before they leave for the Netherlands mission, Gaby’s just walking in her door when her phone rings with an urgent call from Waverly himself: Napoleon’s been beaten, stabbed, and dumped outside of Charing Cross Hospital.
Waverly’s already there when Gaby and Illya arrive, masterfully harassing doctors and nurses without raising his voice or losing the slightest bit of his temper.
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” he tells them after a few minutes. “He’s already awake and complaining, and as far as anyone can tell-” and here, Waverly’s face crinkles with what looks like amusement-“It was just a random mugging.”
“A mugging.” Gaby sinks down into one of the chairs. Her fingers are trembling, and she can’t catch her breath. “Napoleon Solo. Taken down by street thugs.”
“They jumped him from behind. He took quite a knock to the head, but aside from that and a relatively mild stomach wound, he’ll be fine in a day or two. Quite remarkable, really.”
Waverly says the last looking, a little sternly, at Illya’s hand, which has somehow found its way around Gaby’s. Illya tries to pull away, but Gaby squeezes his fingers, and he stills and squeezes back.
“Perhaps we can put off the mission to-”
“Oh, of course, of course,” Waverly says when Illya starts. He smiles and taps his umbrella against the linoleum. “I must be off: Mrs. Waverly’s been put out enough for one day. Teller, Kuryakin, I’m sure you’ll be able to use your time off to catch on some of your paperwork.”
They see him off with a nod and a promise to ‘give his regards to Mr. Solo’.
Napoleon’s white as a sheet when they finally get to see him, but he grins. He’s bare-chested, but his stomach is swathed in bandages, and there’s a red bump on his forehead from where he hit the pavement when he was hit.
“You’d be surprised,” he says when he sees them, “But this is far less painful than it looks.”
He doesn’t drop the bravado, of course; Gaby’s not entirely sure he’s capable, after so many years, but he makes space for Gaby to sit on his bed, and he doesn’t complain when Illya insists on checking his bandages.
Napoleon’s released to their care the next day; Gaby takes the morning off and Illya the afternoon, but Napoleon sleeps throughout. Gaby and Illya both go into the office the next day. Napoleon’s out for the week, but he’s well enough to walk around and manage for himself.
The fourth day, Illya and Gaby are in the middle of a demonstration of fighting techniques to use on larger opponents, teaching some twenty-odd office workers the basics in case headquarters is ever breached, when someone fires a gun in Waverly’s office.
“Stay here,” Illya tells her before he sprints off, grabbing the Beretta he’s not supposed to be wearing in the office from the holster at the small of his back.
By the time he comes back to let her know it’s safe, Gaby’s organized the clerks into teams focused on barricading the two doors to the training hall, and Illya, accompanied by Anton David, a high-ranking member of Waverly’s staff, has to wait several minutes so they can let him in. Illya’s fine, but Anton’s got a quickly-blackening eye and a bloody nose, and the set of his mouth is grim.
The story comes out eventually: Paul Schneider, in addition to blackmail, had apparently resorted to treason as well. After Anton David, one of Waverly’s top staff members, grew suspicious, a safe in his home was discovered to contain several pieces of top-secret Soviet and American information as well as five thousand pounds in small notes which he claimed never to have seen before.
There’s no mention of any recordings of any agents in Schneider’s possession, and, as Waverly is granted complete control of the investigation by the rather embarrassed Soviet and American diplomats, who just want the whole thing to go away, Gaby knows any copies of such conversations would doubtlessly be destroyed. Schneider, now discredited as a traitor, could yell accusations at the top of his lungs all day long and nobody would believe him. He’ll rot in a dark little prison for the rest of his life, and Gaby’s family will be safe.
It is quite a satisfactory conclusion.
Waverly calls her and Illya to his office the next day to brief them on the situation, as he ostensibly wants their opinion on some of the operations Schneider was running.
He waits until they’re standing to leave before he looks up from the mission reports form West Berlin.
“Give me regards to Mr. Solo, and by the way, Ms. Teller, well done,” he says. He smiles, and there is respect in his voice. “I couldn’t have planned it better myself. And Mr. Kuryakin?”
“Sir?” Illya asks, back straight and shoulders stiff.
“Nicely done as well, though the next time you stab someone, do make sure to clean thoroughly under your fingernails if you wish to hide it.”
Illya looks at Gaby. Gaby looks back.
“Yes, sir,” Illya says.
“Thank you, sir,” Gaby says.
They excuse themselves without another word.
Because it starts like that, but it goes like this:
Thirteen weeks after Italy, Gaby is approached by Paul Schneider, one of U.N.C.L.E.’s West German men. He follows her after work, catching up to her while she’s walking to a café to meet Illya and Napoleon for a late tea.
Schneider, of course, tries to blackmail her by threatening the only friends she has left in the world, which is something that Gaby will never forgive. Gaby’s near enough to see Illya and Napoleon sitting at a table inside, arguing about Napoleon’s waistcoat, when Schneider stops, crowds her towards a lamp post, and asks her to steal a ten-thousand pound necklace on her next mission.
Gaby thinks about stabbing him in the neck and running, but he’s not stupid enough to keep the recording on himself, and if she can’t find it before someone else does, Napoleon and Illya will still be shipped off to their own countries, very likely to prison if not killed. As things stand, there’s no way that Gaby can think of to save them.
Without their help.
So she agrees to Schneider’s terms and pretends her shaking hands are born of fear rather than anger.
She smiles when she reaches the café, so that the boys won’t notice that something’s wrong. It would have worked in Italy, probably, but it’s been thirteen weeks since then, three months of nightclubs and burgling lessons and eating supper at each others’ flats, and it works for maybe ten minutes before Illya and Napoleon are sharing worried looks and trying to have a conversation with their eyebrows over Gaby’s head.
Gaby picks Napoleon’s pen from his pocket and grabs a napkin.
I may have a bug planted on me, she writes. We need to talk.
She hesitates, because if she makes one wrong move here Illya and Napoleon could die, but-but doing nothing might result in the same, and the odds that Schneider will be satisfied with a few stolen pieces of jewelry are about the same as Gaby letting either of her friends come to harm when she has the means to save them.
Paul Schneider’s trying to blackmail me by threatening you, but I have a plan.
They do most of their planning at various night clubs across the city, which have the double benefits of looking like a normal evening out and very often containing secluded back rooms which Napoleon obtains and Illya sweeps for bugs.
The Becker theft, when it comes to it, is simple. The trick, of course, is to get Gaby alone with the open safe in such a way that Waverly won’t suspect a thing when he reads their three reports later and corroborates them with the surveillance tapes and audio he’s got at the Becker estate. The three of them study the blueprints of the estate for hours while they plan.
Once they’re in and Elsa and the children are safely locked away, Napoleon and Gaby head to Elsa’s bedroom while Illya takes the bomb from Gaby’s backpack and sneaks outside to hide it in the toolshed before finding several security guards and distracting them.
Napoleon cracks into the safe barehanded, but he and Gaby both pull on gloves before they rifle through its contents. The necklace is there, of course, and Napoleon helps Gaby sew it onto her dress, but of greater interest to both of them are the decrypted messages. There are some secrets that it would be far too dangerous to risk-that might ignite a nuclear war if either country ever learned they’d been compromised-but some secrets are a little less dangerous. The real identities of one or two spies, a report on a new listening device being developed by the KGB; they take a few of these and sew them into the pocket with the necklace. The rest of the papers and a hard drive Gaby tucks into her backpack.
They’re just about done when the bomb goes off, and Napoleon stages a very noisy rush to Illya’s rescue for the benefit of the listening device in the hall outside of Elsa’s bedroom.
Gaby joins them several minutes later, once all the guards have been subdued and the way is safe.
Schneider arranges to meet with her at Parliament Square where there are dozens of tourists on any given day. He probably thinks it’s safer that way, maybe even has a companion posing as one of the clueless Americans snapping pictures around the plaza.
He’s not the only one.
“I’ve got another job for you,” he tells her, the sound carrying crystal clear to Illya over all four of the bugs Gaby has hidden on herself. “Your next mission will be-“
He’s interrupted when Napoleon bumps into him and plants a tracking device under his collar. Dressed like a boorish American, camera dangling from his neck, Napoleon’s practically unrecognizable, and Gaby stumbles into Schneider so he never gets a good look at the tourist in the baggy overcoat.
He sprains her wrist when he yanks her further away from the crowds, he’s so upset, and Gaby hopes against hope that Illya doesn’t cause any major damage to the van he’s parked in a hundred feet away.
Schneider leaves her in the shadow of the tower when he leaves. Gaby stays where she is until a very tall, familiar man with a camera comes up to her and asks to take her picture.
“It worked?” she asks.
Illya nods. “The tracker is transmitting well. Napoleon is following.” He points the camera at her and waits for it to beep.
“You’re clean,” he says after a moment, squinting through his ‘camera’. “No bugs.”
“Except yours.”
“Da.”
He takes her hand in his and rotates her wrist until she winces. “Come, we will get you some ice for this. You will need both your hands for driving, next part.”
The next part is a little trickier.
First, Napoleon follows Schneider at a safe distance, using the tracker Illya planted on him. Schneider wouldn’t want to walk around London with the necklace in his possession, so they figure he’ll either take him to a hiding place or a fence. They have plans for either eventuality.
Schneider, to their surprise, heads straight back to his own home. Napoleon, who has to bump into him, again, to steal back the tracker so Schneider doesn’t get suspicious, waits for over four hours, but he leaves when Schneider goes to bed.
Second, Gaby phones Schneider the next day, a Saturday, and asks him to meet her at the German café which serves pfannkuchen that tastes like it came straight from Berlin. She says she’d like to discuss the terms of their arrangement over a quick lunch.
Illya, for his part, makes arrangements to meet with Anton David, who is quiet and friendly and more ambitious than anyone Illya’s ever met, even in the KGB. Illya also pays the waitress, the daughter of the proprietor, twenty pounds to stop at Schneider’s table and flirt.
Gaby then manufactures an emergency at U.N.C.L.E. which requires the knowledge and experience of someone intimately familiar with life in East Berlin, requiring her to go in on her day off. It will all be perfectly legitimate, should Schneider look into it, and she’ll have a cast-iron alibi.
Illya and Anton, then, are perfectly placed to see Schneider arrive by himself, sit alone at a table for twenty minutes, and have an animated conversation with the daughter of a German refugee who is rumored to be part of a spy ring.
Schneider sees them, of course, but he’s not suspicious yet, so it means nothing to him. He nods his head at them, and they nod back, and it’s all very friendly until he finally gives up on Gaby and leaves.
Illya doesn’t say too much, because that might draw suspicion onto him instead of Schneider, but he does make an offhand remark, sandwiched between inconsequential small talk, about how someone had mentioned to him that they’d asked Schneider to lunch today, but Schneider had said he was busy with work. Illya passes it off as a joke about good-looking waitresses, but he sees Anton look at the table Schneider was sitting at very thoughtfully for a moment.
After that, it’s just the matter of a whisper campaign.
Napoleon’s job, while Illya and Gaby are running the play, is of course to break into Schneider’s house and discover where Schneider keeps the recording and the necklace. Schneider, of course, has been a spy for ten years, which means keeping things hidden is his stock in trade; Napoleon, however, has spent the last ten years stealing things from men just like Schneider under orders from the CIA, and it only takes him twenty minutes to discover the small, loose panel in the back of Schneider’s linen closet.
The recording is there, and the necklace, and several other tapes carefully labeled with the names of agents from several countries who, when Napoleon looks them up later, died in missions which Schneider ran.
He leaves everything precisely where it is and is safely back at Gaby’s flat by the time Schneider gets back.
By the weekend before their scheduled mission to the Netherlands, rumors about Paul Schneider are flying around-well, around Anton David’s office. Illya, Napoleon, and Gaby, are careful to target clerks and agents who work with Anton, as there’s just not the time, given the propensity of those being blackmailed by Schneider to die, to infect the whole of U.N.C.L.E..
Each rumor is not, in and of itself, particularly damning or suspicious.
Mr. David and Mr. Kuryakin saw Mr. Schneider talking to a waitress at that café by the bookshop, and Schneider told me he was supposed to meet Gaby, but Gaby said they hadn’t made plans. Apparently he’s interested in one of the waitresses there. I suppose they both miss Germany.
Axl-my fiancé, in accounting, told me that someone from Internal Reports pulled Mr. Schneider’s files, and when they came back some of them had been altered. Spooks, huh?
Schneider? I heard he was offered a job with MI-5, but he wanted to keep running missions in Berlin. Turned down an extra forty thousand a year-though I suppose he doesn’t need it. He is a department head, after all.
Taken together, though, that little seed of mistrust in Anton’s mind blooms, and he starts watching Schneider, pulling a few of Schneider’s files and looking through them, and spending an unusual amount of time flirting with Schneider’s secretaries despite the fact that he isn’t actually interested in women (though neither the secretary nor most of U.N.C.L.E.’s employees know that).
He’s close, but it might take him some weeks or months to make a move, and they can’t afford that, so, despite Gaby’s misgivings, they put the next part of their plan into action.
“Just do it,” Napoleon says. He’s standing in between Gaby and Illya in a dark alley a mile away from Charing Cross hospital. His breath mists when he speaks in the cold, but he’s taken off his coat and jacket and given them to Gaby with explicit instructions on their care. “Now, please; it’s cold.”
“But-” Gaby starts, but cuts herself off when Napoleon turns to glare at her. This is the best way; they’ve been through this time and time again, and Napoleon’s idea really is the best chance they’ve got. “Fine. Illya?”
“Peril,” Napoleon says, turning back to the Russian. He starts to say something flippant, smirk at the corner of his mouth, but something in Illya’s face stops him.
“Illya,” he says instead. “I trust you.”
Illya nods, steps forward, and punches him in the side of the head. Illya catches him as he falls, but the ground is slippery with rain from the afternoon, and Napoleon slips in his grip far enough that his head smacks into the ground with a thump.
Illya makes a disapproving noise, but he flips Napoleon over and takes a knife out of his coat pocket. It’s a small thing, a switchblade any number of petty criminals might carry around, but it’s sharp enough to do the trick. Illya is very careful; he settles Napoleon flat onto his back and finds just the right spot on Napoleon’s stomach, where it will look like a nasty, panicked stab wound but cause no real damage beyond pain and some blood loss.
His hand shakes, inches above Napoleon’s limp body, until Gaby puts hers on his shoulder.
“He trusts you,” she tells him, and Illya looks up at her and nods once.
Then he drives the knife into Napoleon’s gut.
This is the part where Gaby’s hands come in useful. Illya stays in the backseat with Napoleon, this time around, and Gaby drives through the crowded streets of London like a drunk madman.
They try to be as gentle as they can when they leave Napoleon outside of the emergency doors, the switchblade still sticking out of his stomach, but there are only so many ways you can dump a man out of a car without risking being seen yourself.
Gaby screeches out of the ambulance bay before Illya even has his door closed all the way. Illya’s flat is on the way to hers, from here-which is why they chose Charing Cross-and she drops him off by the fire escape around the back of his apartment. The drive to her own place usually takes fifteen minutes, this time of night, but she makes it in six. She forces herself to walk, not run, up the stairs, and to make sure her hands aren’t shaking and her breathing is measured. She’s just walking through her door when the phone on her kitchen counter rings.
It’s Waverly, of course; they made sure he’d be the first contacted, having left Napoleon’s work identification in his wallet.
Napoleon, Waverly says, has been beaten, stabbed, and dumped outside of Charing Cross Hospital, and if Gaby would like to come-
Gaby’s not entirely sure she answer him, breath seems so short, but she heads back out as soon as she checks that there’s no blood on her dress. Illya, in his home, does the same, changing his shirt and pants and scrubbing his hands, but he doesn’t notice that some of Napoleon’s blood got under his fingernails.
Everything else, of course, goes perfectly.
Napoleon’s injury is of triple use: first, it gets them out of going to the Netherlands; second, it frees Napoleon up to sneak around as much as he likes as soon as he’s well enough; third, Gaby and Illya make sure to have a conversation in front of Anton David’s secretary about how Napoleon told them Schneider asked him some rather strange questions about his work with the CIA on the afternoon before he was stabbed.
Three days after Napoleon’s release from the hospital, Anton requests a meeting with Waverly for the following morning.
They all know what that means, so, while Anton and Waverly meet and Gaby and Illya demonstrate fighting techniques in front of thirty witnesses, the supposedly-laid-up Napoleon sneaks out of Gaby’s flat, drives to Schneider’s home, and steals the tapes and necklace from the cubby hole in the linen closet. In return, he takes the papers they sifted from Elsa Becker’s stash and five thousand pounds in small notes and leaves them in the very obvious safe in Schneider’s study.
By the next morning, when Anton leads several agents into Schneider’s home, the necklace has been sold to an old friend of Napoleon’s and is on its way to Iceland, never to be traced to anyone from U.N.C.L.E.. Five thousand goes to cover what they left in Schneider’s safe; the other five they donate anonymously to a war orphans and widows fund.
Illya and Gaby, tapped for a second day of lessons after the first proved so useful, are there when Waverly calls Schneider to his office and has him arrested.
Schneider doesn’t go quietly, but he only manages a few wild shots that don’t hit anything before Anton David tackles him. By the time Illya runs in, all the fuss is over, and Schneider’s being led out in handcuffs.
Waverly gives them the afternoon off, and Illya and Gaby go home to Napoleon. Just because he can break into places while recovering from a stab wound doesn’t mean he should, and they spend the afternoon watching over him while he naps.
That evening, though, they order in takeout and drink champagne and stay up until three in the morning dancing in Gaby’s living room (and even Illya joins in). It’s wonderful.
Gaby sits, again, on a nest of blankets in front of the fireplace that evening, her two boys strong and warm on either side of her and her ridiculous tabby cat purring in her lap. She’s exhausted now that everything’s over, her stomach aching and her breath, sometimes, growing short so her heart pounds and it feels like she’s suffocating, but for the moment-well, Illya’s got his arm curled around her shoulder, Napoleon’s holding her hand, and she rests safe in the knowledge that they’re not going anywhere.
“Thank you,” she murmurs just before she dozes off. She squeezes Napoleon’s hand and rubs her cheek against Illya’s shoulder.
She is aware, once more, of a conversation being held over her head, but she doesn’t mind. The boys shift in closer to her, so she’s flush with them on either side, thighs and shoulders rubbing together soft.
“It was your plan,” Napoleon says.
“For once, the Cowboy is right,” contributes Illya, and there’s a fondness for both of them in his voice that almost makes Gaby ache-but there will be more time to figure all of that out, later.
For now, it’s enough to sleep and to know that the people she cares most about in the world are safe.