Illya awoke to the soft jingle of curtain rings. Jessie was still a silent mound under coverlet, apparently deep in sleep. There was no sign that she heard anything, but eerie sense of watchfulness made her stillness seem poised, the soft flexion of her body not rest but a momentary pause. The woman in the cat suit was back, whispering that she was going off shift and that breakfast would arrive in ten minutes. Her bland, round face never changed expression as she took in the disorder in the booth.

"Max says we'll be putting on the Demesne’s day-time face within the hour, so the two of you need to get scarce. D' you need a flop?" Seeing the momentary confusion on Illya's face, she tried again, in a patient, explanatory tone. "I can find you wheels, I think, but any extensive travel had better wait ‘til moonrise. You need a place to stay ‘til then?"

"Thank you," Jessie's voice, wide awake and tart as cider came from under a of satiny material. "We do not need a flop, but we could use some clothes that aren't quite as obvious as what we came in. Maybe Max can find us something from his clothes for my friend. I would be grateful for anything in one piece and not pink.

" Don't worry about wheels- we can take a cab, or call our uncle and ask him to us up." She intercepted a blue bolt from the Russian's eye, and smiled demurely, complete unruffled calm while she squeezed his thigh, hard, under the covers. There was nothing sexual about this: it hurt, but it did encourage Illya to put a rather pale imitation of her smile on his face and nod silently.

"That is, our uncle can pick my friend up. The fewer who know we were here together, the better."

Rising to the occasion, Kuryakin managed a collusive wink. The waitress, invited share their "little secret", would be spurred to even greater efforts on their behalf, and guard their love-nest like a tiger until they could slip away.

"Sorry if I hurt you," she apologized with real contrition as soon as the waitress had left. "But, the less eager you seem to go away without me the better our relations with the help will be. Max has decided we're the next best thing to newlyweds, and I am the baby he never had. If we want them to do whatever it will take to save our skins, we have to keep Max happy. If that means being nice to me for another half hour, I'd suggest you do it."

"I quite understand your position," the Russian replied stiffly, sliding out from the coverlet, and searching the floor for the sodden remains of his clothes. "I will behave myself. I want to get out of here with the fewest possible witnesses, and I do not want my private life to become the order of the day in the secretarial pool."

Illya turned his back deliberately, and began to pull on his trousers, fighting the resistance of the fabric and his own urge to peek and see what reaction his latest remark had caused. There was a muffled sound behind him. Could it be a sob, a sneeze? He couldn't resist stealing a glance. The left corner of her mouth had developed a definite quirk, and she had pressed face into the satiny fabric to hide her eyes. Her shoulders were shaking, and a gasping noise was emanating from her huddled form.

"Please," she sputtered, waving away the sight she could not bear to see. "Please don't try to put those trousers. They're wool, and have shrunk up to your kneecaps. Your dignity would never recover, and I would never recover from seeing your so-elegant self in such a state. Come back to bed, and I will not be so prickly. Not even your sensitive soul could prefer cold, wet dignity to warm satin, can it?

He tried; even gave a few more half-hearted yanks to the pants before he gave them up as hopeless, and deigned to accept the barest corner of their sweet-scented nest. "Better?" he asked acidly, ignoring with stoic pride the soft, downy bed and the warm, fragrant flesh just a finger's width away.

"Much better." Now, she laughed outright, a peal of delight that took in their disarray, her spiky pride, and his own. "I really am sorry, but we are both so silly. I would prefer to be greeted with a good-morning kiss, not fled as if my touch was disaster. Of course, I understand why our leaving together would be a problem. I merely suggested it to relieve her mind- we have plans to make and did not need any more anxious hovering than we will already have to endure when Max gets here. Will you please try to be pleasant? I promise to bridle my sarcasm, and try too?

Though Illya hated to be called ridiculous, hated it more when he felt like he was, and also had the distinct feeling that he was being "managed", he shook off his irritation, and allowed his back to rest, barely, against the pillows. To his dismay, she laughed again.

"Wonderful! We have not spent 12 continuous hours together, and already the first lover's quarrel has been accomplished! What have I fear in Sandalia, when I can be so entertained here at home! I will go and scout us a place to eat breakfast, which has to be now if ever. You stay warm until Isabelle brings you some dry clothes." She stood up, thrust aside the jingling curtain, careless of her nakedness as Venus stepping into her bath, and stepped down onto the cold marble floor.

Isabelle turned out to be the dark-haired young woman who had exchanged her cat outfit for an elegant linen suit. She handed a pile of multi- colored clothes through the curtain and disappeared in a business-like flurry of clicking high heels. La demesne’s early morning transformation had already begun. The blue jeans were a little wide at the waist and long in the inseam, and the white "poet’s" shirt was narrow in the shoulders, but the clothes fit well enough, and they were clean and dry. As soon as he had dressed himself, he let his nose lead him to a small private dining room where breakfast was set out on heavy earthenware platters: eggs, potatoes and bacon, scones and clotted cream.

Illya’s taste in breakfast food tended to be much more stark, but old habits die hard, and the privations of his homeland during the last war had taught him well. He did not know when or where he would eat again, and so he settled down to take advantage of the feast. He had barely begun when Jessie rushed in from the main room.

She might have escaped from an amateur stage production of Guys and Dolls. Her dress was mermaid green and broad- shouldered, trimmed in black velvet. It was not as outrageously out of fashion as some things she would have worn willingly, but it was a departure from her usual subtle style.

She had not eaten since early lunch yesterday, but she could only pick at her food. Finally she gave up all pretence- drew a deep breath and let it out slowly over the top of her coffee cup. "I suppose now is as good a time as any, Illusha. I have not been entirely honest with you."

He was too much of a gentleman to mock her with false surprise. He merely nodded and filled his mouth before he could speak too soon. "I said that I was here on Vacation. That is so patently untrue that I doubt you bought it for a second- but the habit of misdirection is hard to break. And, I didn’t want you to come with me- that much certainly is true "

He did not meet her gaze. He was contemplating the irony that he had now been told twice that he was not to go precisely the place he had to go.

"I came here to enlist Mr. Waverly’s aid- to ask him for an agent to accompany me since I could not ask any of my own staff to join me on this particular escapade. I thought he might agree since I would, in the end, be operating in the U.N.C.L.E.’s favor, after all. He refused. I know the courier who was captured. He is an old colleague of ours, Illya, from when we knew each other by code names like "Badger" and "Sunset". Before the world became so complex and confused. He was expecting to die protecting his secret. In some ways it may be unfortunate that he did not- however I can understand how life grows more dear at the end of the day."

This irony, too, was not lost on Illya. Jessie Taylor was his contemporary as far as he had been able to guess. But, her references to advancing age were serious, not playful. She was not fishing for compliments. He made a non- committal noise around a forkful of eggs, encouraging her to go on.

"If you are determined to come with me, in spite of orders and my express request, you may as well do it openly" she mused. "Your reputation may actually make things easier, and I would rather have all the jokers out of the pack and on the table where I can keep track."

You are coming with me?"

He wiped his hands fastidiously on a napkin and caught her eyes, then lowered one pale eyelid in a slow, deliberate wink. "Miss Taylor", he said with utter sincerity, "I doubt there are many forces on this Earth that could keep me away. So! We go to Sandalia, you supervise this mysterious exchange, and I go home with some information, which could be damaging to the U.N.C.L.E. if it becomes common knowledge. The scenario doesn’t wash, shall I tell you why?" He raised two fingers, telling off his points. "First, it is much too neat. You come here asking for help when you have people of your own you feel you can’t call on for some reason, and you are going to intervene in what should be a simple exchange- why? Because it isn’t that simple. You have not suddenly developed affection for the agency which employs me, and I strongly doubt Mr. Waverly has anything on you which you can’t bewitch your way out of. So, you are helping us, why? Because it helps YOU. You are not telling me something here. I should tell you I hate secrets, especially when my own skin is at risk, and, if you get me killed I shall take it much amiss."

She reached to him across the table. Capturing his pale hand in her own paler one. "Agreed and completely mutual. I have told you all I know at the moment, Illusha- at least all which will be useful to you now."

"You haven’t told me why no one from Austria is coming with you," Illya pointed out. "You haven’t told me who is being exchanged. Is this any one I know? Why were you so sure UNCLE would want to save him?"

" I did not ask anyone from home to go with me because I have the problem with them that they would be focused on protecting me, and possibly try to prevent me from taking the risks I may need to take. Simple, this is not. I will not attempt to deceive you on this. As for why the U.N.C.L.E. might be interested, it is not the man, but the information he carries which is so valuable. The person he is to be exchanged for I do not know. He’s a young man who has more talent for getting into trouble than getting out of it. That is really all I know."

"You are going there merely to supervise the exchange, to rescue this old player of the great game?", Illya prompted, smelling a rat, but unable to identify the breed.

"If possible. I am prepared to interfere if necessary, though I hope to get by with merely observing. I am not there to rescue our "old friend" I am there to keep his information in friendly hands. This means I will kill him, if necessary." The jaguar glow was back in her eyes, and Kuryakin knew she spoke in deadly earnest. Napoleon’s lame joke about a "suicide run" came back into his mind, and he resolutely shook it away. She was chatting on, seemingly oblivious.

"Max has summoned a cab for your bags, and arranged for me to leave by another way. Oh, if you run into Mr. Solo, you might say hello for me."

"Why do you expect me to see Napoleon? I am going home get my bags, and then we are off to Sandalia are we not? After all, Mr. Waverly specifically refused to send anyone with you."

"And yet, Illyusha, here you are." She paused for a moment to let the implications sink in. "Just give him my regards if you see him, will you? I will look for you in the VIP lounge awaiting our flight within the hour." A brief caress touched his cheek near his ear, and she was gone.

It did occur to Illya to wonder why she had been so sure he was already packed. Shaking such a question from his mind as irrelevant on the face of things, he finished his breakfast alone.
***
There was someone in his apartment. Illya knew it before he saw the tell-tales near the door flashing red. He knew it by a prickle of ice that ran up his arms and clutched his heart as he strode up the front steps of his building.

Reaching instinctively for the gun strapped below his left armpit, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. No shots whizzed by him, nothing moved. Nothing had been moved. Still, that sense of an alien presence was strong; as strong as the certainty of who it was who had slipped past his voice lock. "Napoleon", Illya muttered half to himself. "I know you’re here. Why not come out and tell me what you want?"

There was no answer but silence. It extended just long enough for the Russian to feel faintly silly. Then the deeper blue-gray shadows behind the door coalesced into a tall, dapper man in an immaculately pressed suit. His brown eyes were alight, and a sly smile was just fading from his lips. He dropped with elegant nonchalance into an uncomfortable white upholstered chair. "So, you’re going." It was not a question.

"So are you", Illya replied in the same even tone. "Are you here to say bon voyage or to advise against it? In either case, I am quite busy, and have no time "

"You know," Solo replied as if idly considering the possibility, "We could come down on opposite sides of this. That may be what Jessie Taylor has in mind, did you think of that?"

"It has crossed my mind," Illya admitted grimly. "But I rejected it as unlikely. What she is going to retrieve will be useful to us, or at least harmful in the wrong hands, and I am quite sure she will go to some lengths to keep that from happening. Do not tell me you want THRUSH to get the information? Why should you, or don’t you believe our uncertain ally will give us the papers once she has retrieved them?"

"Do you believe her?"

Illya occupied himself with checking his mental packing list for a moment before he replied. "I believe she has no immediate use for them, and as such, she is likely to give them to me. This is based on my observation of the moment, and likely to change with the weather or the phase of the moon, which would make at least as much sense as whatever whim it is she uses to decide."

"Do you trust her?"

"Trust is a slippery concept, Napoleon. Most often, I believe it is mostly a matter of correct prediction and accurate observation. I do not trust her as much as I believe I understand her. For example, you trust me?"

"Trust you? Now, that’s a silly " Solo’s words trailed off as his partner crossed the intervening space in two strides, smoothly drawing Napoleon’s own gun and aiming it squarely at his left temple.

"Do you trust me now?"

Solo didn’t blink. "It’s getting harder, but yes, I do."

"You have made my point. You observe correctly that I have a macabre sense of humor, and you accurately predict that I wouldn’t shoot you here in my own apartment, now matter what you did, if only because I’d never get the mess out of my carpet. Our Miss Taylor is, in her own way, just as fastidious as I am. She also has the convenient notion that the innocent are to be spared at all costs. I say convenient, because by her reckoning I am an innocent."

"That must be irritating to a man of your talents- being sidelined that way," Solo said dryly. "By the way, if your point is made. Would you give me back my gun?"

Illya, whose aim had never wavered, started as if returning from far away. "Actually I find it restful. By all means, take it." He dropped his aim and let the gun dangle loosely from the trigger-guard for his partner to recover. "Look, if you do not mind, Napoleon, I am busy."

"I didn’t really think I could dissuade you, but I thought I’d give it a try. He offered a tiny rectangle of cardstock. "If you get tired of playing babysitter, you’ll know where I am. There aren’t too many Americans in Sandalia, and I don’t think there is more than one American fashion photographer."

"Fashion photographer? You will forgive me Napoleon, but you know nothing of fashion, and less about photography. Who thought that one up?"

"I did," Solo said grimly. "I don’t have to be a photographer, I just have to look like one, and my costuming will be impeccable. Just you watch yourself, you smart Russian, or you’ll find yourself on the cover of Privateer in that outfit."

Kuryakin did not smile. "Thank you for reminding me. Now, you really must go, Napoleon. I have clothes to burn and an airplane to catch. It would never do to keep a lady waiting."

True to her word, Jessie was waiting for him when Illya arrived. She had changed into her own clothes and looked much more comfortable. "I hope you don’t mind travelling business class, she whispered, as she handed him his boarding pass. " We are going to Sandalia on business, and will be billeted in a small industrial complex. I didn’t want us to stick out too much."

Right, Illya thought to himself grimly, watching a gray coffle of corporate high-rollers toil up the boarding ramp. I will just have to look as gray as I can, and hope no one notices that I am leading a jaguar on a leash. You are a jaguar, not a tiger, aren’t you, Jessie? Moreover, I do have you by the leash, and not by the tail?

The exchange will take place the morning after we arrive", she commented, as they buckled in. I think it is wise, don’t you? The less waiting time, the less chance for things to go wrong."

Illya could not share Jessie’s optimism, so he turned toward the window, stared at the lights which swiftly appeared below, and employed his genius for sleeping anywhere.
Part Four