Collection 2 - The Defector From Leningrad Affair

by LRH Balzer

  Solo saw Norm Graham emerge from behind one of the curtains at the far side of the stage. Graham shrugged, indicating he had no idea as to Illya's whereabouts. Well, he would have to show up soon; he was next on the program.

  The ballet ended, the Bolshoi dancers reorganizing on stage as the curtains swung open again, bowing, moving forward, bowing again, then backing up to let the curtains fall shut. The audience continued to clap and the entire procedure was repeated. The curtains closed a second time and the dancers scuttled away, herded out of sight by the Soviet watchdogs.

  Under the stage manager's watchful eye, the backdrop was changed, becoming an icy blue. From the rafters, an ironwork gate was lowered. A heavy boulder was wheeled on to the stage near the back and several beefy stagehands lifted it into place. The orchestra was tuning, a signal to the audience that the final program piece would begin soon.

  Only then did Rodian Voronskiy and Illya Kuryakin appear on the stage, escorted by Petrov and the Bolshoi ballet master, Malikov. Although merely ten feet away from him, there was no way Solo could get near Kuryakin, blocked by several Soviet escorts.

  The blond agent looked up, aware of Solo's scrutiny, and their eyes locked briefly. Napoleon pointed to his forearm and then to Illya. There was a long frozen moment as Illya stared back at him, no magical communication in his eyes.

  Then Malikov interrupted with last minute instructions for Rodian and Illya. They both listened intently, nodding. Petrov turned to someone else and Illya dropped his gaze, his face slightly turned towards the U.N.C.L.E. Enforcement agent, blinking rapidly as though he had something in his eye.

  It took Napoleon a few moments to realize the code. Possibly crucial. Exit uncertain. It repeated and he caught the first bit of the message. Wrong group.

  Solo scratched his elbow, showing he had received the message. So there was a possibility that Petrov would try to snatch him. That was precisely why he, Norm Graham, and several other Washington U.N.C.L.E. agents were there, to prevent that very thing from happening, ready to move in and whisk the blond agent away.

  He watched fascinated as his partner slipped from Illya Kuryakin to transform into the Illya Zadkine the program had publicized. From agent to dancer. From West to East. It was a cover that had lasted so long and ran so deep in Illya that he virtually was two people, Kuryakin and Zadkine, each life separate and conflicting, and yet entwined in a confusing way the Soviets were famous for.

  Petrov and the others had stepped back now, giving the two dancers room to prepare, to move to the stage box and dust their leather slippers, to exchange a mumbled "merde" and a quick hug. Then they took their places, Rodian already mid-stage as the curtain rose.

  Rodian Voronskiy was, as the program had stated, one of the three principal male danseurs of the Bolshoi. Solo grudgingly admitted the opening sequence was brilliant, the man's technique and ability were flawless as he interpreted the father's anguish while waiting for his son to return home. In build and in height, Voronskiy resembled Grigory Zadkine and it was obvious who the role was originally intended for.

  Solo glanced around the stage but Zadkine was not in sight. Perhaps he was in the audience watching this first performance from his ballet. More likely, if he knew about the warrant, he was hiding. There had been no word as to where he was.

  The music shifted and Illya appeared on stage. The next fifteen minutes were entrancing as the two men--portraying father and son--spun and leaped and moved with such power and emotion that it left the viewers on the edge of their seats. This was no typical Bolshoi performance and the audience was captivated.

  Watching from the wings backstage, Napoleon Solo remembered very little of it later, except the uneasy wonder that his partner had this buried ability. What really did U.N.C.L.E. have to offer him? A career? Not with the CIA and FBI forever tailing him. A chance to express himself? Never. Not like this. The cost would be too high. The recognition he deserved? Hardly. After this performance, Illya Zadkine would once more be laid to rest and U.N.C.L.E. would try to bury any mention of him, to let the Western world believe he had gone back to his motherland to disappear into obscurity. In America, Illya Kuryakin would have to make it on his other talents. But he had done it already for three and a half years, Solo reminded himself.

  The last few moves were breathtaking. In unison, the two men vaulted from the boulder on stage, cartwheeling, one moving right, the other left, their paths separating. The father, Rodian Voronskiy, froze with his hand stretched before him as his son tried to reach out to him one last time, then turned away broken-hearted, unable to watch his son leave. Illya leaped into the air, his body soaring length-wise across the stage, before twisting in mid air and falling to the floor to the crash of cymbals as the music died.

  The audience was silent for a moment, stunned by the emotional force of the performance. But the clapping broke out, shouts and cheers for the raw power of the ballet--truly something unexpected from the Soviet Union, not a standard performance from the classics that was their usual fare. Both danseurs remained motionless as the front curtain slowly lowered.

  Then Solo saw Rodian's horrified face as he turned and saw where his partner lay, and the U.N.C.L.E. Enforcement Chief spun to see a bright red splotch spreading across Illya's chest. The audience beyond the curtain was clapping enthusiastically, unaware that the dance had ended differently than rehearsed and there would be no curtain call or bows.

  Chapter Ten

  The audience was clapping.

  Solo reached Kuryakin first, crossing the thirty feet in seconds, his gun out. His partner's eyes were open but unseeing, his body curiously bent, the vermilion stain on his right upper chest dark against the white costume, and growing. Blood oozed down the side of his head.

  The audience was still clapping. Rodian Voronskiy fell beside him, reaching out a shaking hand to Illya's wrist. Not knowing who Solo was, he tried to shelter the downed man from this new menace with the waving gun, looking around anxiously for help. A Soviet official was on Voronskiy's heels and dragged him away from the inert body.

  Solo knelt at Kuryakin's head and reach for the artery on his throat. "He is alive," he called after Voronskiy, in Russian, as he felt a fluttering pulse beneath his fingers.

  The clapping beyond the curtain faded quickly, drowned out by the backstage chaos. All the dark-suited men were now talking loudly, walkie-talkies in one hand and flashing their identification with the other. They all wanted to be in charge, insisting their organization had precedence here. If it wasn't so deadly, it would be funny. He slipped his gun back into its holster.

  Norm Graham was beside him, ripping through the resistant tunic fabric, baring the bloody chest. "There's no first aid case on stage. I've sent far help. An ambulance is on the way."

  Solo nodded. "Who shot him?"

  Graham shook his head. "I've no idea. It had to be someone on stage though." He looked behind him as another commotion erupted at the stage door and straightened as he recognized who was being detained. "He's a doctor!" he yelled. "Let him through. My orders!"

  A young man fought his way through the crowd, gasping for breath and taking over from Graham. The rest of the tunic shredded beneath the doctor's hands and without asking for permission, he grabbed Solo's right hand and placed the palm tight over the bubbling wound on Kuryakin's chest. He eased Illya onto his right side and only then did Solo realize the bullet had passed completely through his partner's body, the larger exit wound on his back ragged and bleeding profusely. Solo's left hand was placed over the hole and he felt as though he were holding his partner together, feeling the heartbeat, the warmth seeping around his fingers.

  "Keep your pressure firm. You are keeping the air out of his chest cavity and maintaining a negative pressure. He's on his side so the blood won't drain into his good left lung," the doctor explained calmly, while examining where the first bullet had clipped the back of Illya's head just behind his right ear.

  While the greater part of his attention
wrestled with shooting angles, suspects, and weapons, Solo watched with growing unease at the amount of blood Kuryakin was losing. The doctor rested Illya's head gently against Solo's knee and he felt blood soak into the wool fabric. The doctor then took a clean rag that was handed to him and carefully wiped the blood and stage makeup off Kuryakin's face, checking for other wounds.

  Who had shot him? Petrov was conspicuous by his absence. So was Zadkine. By now they must have heard what had happened. Where were they? Petrov had been standing near him when the ballet had started, but had moved after the music began. To where? Solo glanced around trying to spot where the KGB agents were. There were thirty or forty men that all looked the same. An agent approached holding out his U.N.C.L.E. ID and when Graham greeted him with a wan smile, Solo sent him off looking for Petrov and Grigory Zadkine.

  Norm Graham pulled off his suit jacket and covered Kuryakin as best he could. "Look at the position of the wound. It had to have originated from near where you were standing, Napoleon, probably one curtain over. I've no idea who was there. Do you remember?"

  "I was watching the performance," Solo said tightly.

  "I didn't see or hear anything, but it must have been an automatic. The two shots came rapid-fire. The first grazed his head, the second caught him on the chest as he started to twist. We'll have to have someone locate the bullet." Graham looked towards the back of the stage, calling another of his men over and telling them what to look for. "Napoleon, we have to--"

  The doctor interrupted them, his voice angry. "Not now! Ilyusha is dying here! Talk about that later! We have to keep him alive until the ambulance can take over. Take his hand and talk to him, Dad. Let him hear your voice. Yours, too," he said to Solo.

  The young man suddenly had a name in Solo's mind. Tony. Norm's son. The doctor.

  Solo glanced at the cluster of CIA agents on the stage, all talking into their radios at once. They had a motive. Several, in fact. Waverly had intimated that they would do whatever they felt necessary if Kuryakin was judged a security risk.

  Well, someone had decided he was a security risk.

  The FBI were there as well and he suddenly trusted none of them. The State Department, Security officers, Soviet diplomats. All had motives. All had stated their mistrust of his partner.

  He caught two U.N.C.L.E. agents staring at them from the front of the stage, both men showing no remorse at one of their fellow agents being shot down. They had reached their own conclusions and found Kuryakin guilty. But had they pulled the trigger?

  "The guns, Norm. Have someone check all the guns and see if any have been fired."

  Graham was on his feet and moving, issuing the orders as Solo knelt on the stage feeling trapped and useless, unable to do anything else but keep his palms clamped against his partner's body. He stared at where he had stood during the performance, trying to re create who was standing around him. It had been dark in the wings. Stagehands, dancers trying to glimpse the stage, the intelligence agents--and who else?

  Without warning, Kuryakin came alive beneath Solo's hands with a gasping moan, struggling, disoriented. The doctor clamped him down, ordering him to lie still, and called for one of the stagehands to hold Kuryakin's legs to keep him from fighting their help.

  Solo fought to keep the pressure even, while his mind stayed centered on the other scenes playing around him. He heard bits and pieces of information, filing them for retrieval later.

  The President was safe. Both he and Kosygin had been quickly escorted out of the building, surrounded by a sea of security guards.

  No spent bullets had been located on the stage yet.

  Waverly was safe. He had been taken out to his private helicopter and was being flown directly to the U.N.C.L.E. office in Washington to handle the situation from that location.

  Waverly had made Solo responsible for Kuryakin's safety.

  Sirens were audible.

  And then--a weapon had been found abandoned on the floor by the edge of the weighted curtains not ten feet from where Solo had watched the performance.

  An FBI agent was pointing at Solo, his words lost in the cacophony of sound on the stage and Graham moved towards the accuser with fire in his eyes.

  Tony Graham bent over his patient, talking directly into Illya's left ear. In Russian. "Ilyusha, it is Tony. You have been shot. I know it feels bad but you are going to be fine. Can you cough? It will clear your airway."

  There was no response. The ambulance crew were moving on to the stage. A blanket was spread over Illya's twitching body.

  "Talk to him!" the young doctor insisted. "I can't take his vital signs and keep him focused at the same time."

  Solo looked down at the head resting on his knee. "Come on, Illya. Stay with us." The Russian agent's eyes were still unfocused, his head lolling. Solo stared back across the stage to where a verbal fight had broken out between Norm Graham and the FBI agent. Graham was angry, the other man, determined, and both were pointing at Solo.

  The ambulance attendants pulled Solo's hands from the wounds, rapidly sealing the holes with tape. They eased Kuryakin away from him, pushed Solo back out of their way. An oxygen mask was already in place as they lifted Kuryakin onto the stretcher, strapped him into place on his side, and covered him with blankets against the cold winter air. Shouting for everyone to get out of their way, they moved towards the outside stage door.

  Blood dripped from Solo's hands and he brushed them against his ruined suit pants. Graham had walked away from the FBI agent in disgust and had joined his son and the other members of the Washington team, already giving instructions for their investigation. He gave a brief wave to Napoleon, his eyes lingering on the stretcher for a moment, then turned his attention back to the search.

  The sound on the stage dulled as the stretcher proceeded through the crowd. Solo followed it, watching the faces in the crowd as he passed, his own face cool and composed.

  In all likelihood, one of those faces belonged to the assassin.

  ***

  On the street below, a well-dressed man in a business suit stood at a bus stop across the street from the theater. He saw the ambulance pull into the back of the complex. Two attendants disappeared with a stretcher into the throng at the back entrance.

  Eight minutes later, the medics brought out an injured man on a stretcher and loaded him into the ambulance. Another man joined them in the ambulance as it screamed back onto the street.

  He frowned and carefully picked up his large briefcase. A second man, sitting beneath the bus stop's shelter, refolded the newspaper he had been reading, retrieved his own case, and followed him into the black Lincoln that pulled up to the curb.

  ***

  Solo stood to one side out of the way in the Emergency Trauma Room and watched as Kuryakin was rapidly examined and diagnosed by the hospital's triage team. They worked as a unit: a physician called information to a nurse who recorded it, a masked nurse adjusted the oxygen flow, another nurse and an orderly cut away what was left of his costume.

  Simultaneously, they connected leads on his chest to a cardiac monitor, withdrew blood from Kuryakin's arm, and attached two large bore IV fluid replacement lines to his left wrist. Still other personnel came and stuck other needles and tubes in his chest and body, and then an endotracheal tube was worked down his throat as Solo watched silently.

  A portable X-Ray unit was pulled into place over the wounded man and they stood back for a moment as it took the necessary pictures to trace the bullet's path and the damage done. They twisted the wounded man on the table as they took skull, chest, C spine, and abdominal x-rays. That accomplished, it was wheeled out of the way and the team once more descended on his partner, wrapping the still-bleeding head laceration.

  There was an urgency in the way they worked; these people who operated on diplomats and ambassadors knew this case was different, unusual. This man now in their hands, whose life they were attempting to stabilize, was supposedly a government agent with vital information, which also e
xplained Solo's presence in the triage area and the guards at the door. The medical staff had handled government agents countless times before.

  But they also knew they had not been told everything. They knew from his costume--and from the news that had preceded him--that he had been shot down at the end of the final Bolshoi ballet performance. He was no ordinary American intelligence officer. They usually weren't ballet dancers in their spare time. And they usually didn't have Russian names.

  They had been instructed that Solo was to be allowed to stay in the Emergency Room and he was grateful he did not have to answer their questions. They were curious, looking sideways at him when they thought he was focused elsewhere. He remained silent, returning any stares with the cultivated calm detachment that worked well for him in these situations. But he felt light-headed from lack of sleep and the smell and sight of blood, and casually leaned back against the wall, resting his tired body.

  A few minutes later, the physician heading the team came to him and in terse language informed him that his partner was diagnosed as having a penetrating chest wound--an open pneumothorax--and a head injury; as soon as the chest surgeon arrived, they would be taking him into surgery to clean and close the chest wall defects and to re-expand the collapsed lung by aspirating the chest cavity around it. At this time, full recovery was expected.

  Solo nodded mutely, uncertain of what the man had said, but grateful they were keeping him informed. He tried to get his body to relax a little and breathe normally as he smiled and joked with the doctor, thanking him for his cooperation. Excusing himself, he moved out into the corridor, checking for the police that were to have met them at the hospital. No one yet.