David McDaniel - The Final Affair

"And that fall you came to Hudson High as a senior, even though you were a year younger."

"And it took you three months to notice me."

They laughed together, then stopped and studied each other searchingly, as though neither one was sure what they were looking for.

"And just a few months after that we graduated. I was just starting to find out what kind of man you really were when you went into the army."

"I think I still have your letters – and that picture of you I…" his voice caught slightly, "…I took on our honeymoon."

"I never even had that much." She took his hand, and they stared at each other wordlessly for several seconds. Mr. Waverly and Illya stared at each other too, with rather different expressions.

"Twitterpated," said the U.N;C.L.E. chief, and cleared his throat. "I believe Mr. Solo had just left for military service. "

"We wrote a lot back and forth, sir," Napoleon explained. "I proposed to her when I finished my basic, conditional on my survival, and she accepted."

"Now you were working for Thrush all this time?"

"Yes. My original assignment was to assess Napoleon for subversion to Thrush before U.N.C.L.E. actually got around to making their first contact with him."

"Did your assignment include marrying him?" Illya asked.

"No. But – well, I had to talk my nest leader into vouching for my report that convinced them to allow me to marry him. I wanted to marry him." She smiled. "The. Ultimate Computer did a good job of match making."

"Then what happened?"

"We were married. I was home on leave for a few weeks, in the summer of '52, and we were married on August third."

"And you shipped out again on the eighteenth, and I never saw you again until tonight. Or is it this morning?"

"I'm afraid the sun's up already. Mr. Waverly, we can quarter here under the circumstances, I should think."

"I would like to hear the rest of her story, if she feels up to it?"

"Of course. That's really most of it. Central wasn't very happy about my marrying my subject, and they were, well, very difficult during those few months. And I finally had to tell them that you were very stubborn and single-minded, and would never work out as a double agent. They had already pretty well decided that from studying your charts, so they declared my assignment cancelled and pulled me out."

"They staged the accident?"

She nodded. "I don't know where they got the body, but I'm told there wasn't much left of it. I was in Paterson, New Jersey, at the time, and I've never been closer than that since, except for once about six years ago when I flew past a hundred miles away. It was too overcast to see anything, but I- thought about you for the next week."

Napoleon took over the narration. "I was in the middle of Kanghwa when I got the message. It was supposed to have stopped at the armored base but I got it about fifteen minutes before the attack. I didn't really think about it much – and I don't remember any of the battle very clearly, but that was when I won my silver star. Anyway, she was buried a month before I came home.

And a few weeks later, Captain Kowalski got in touch with me – he'd been my superior in Korea – and talked for about two hours about what I wanted to do with my life. At that point, I didn't know. I'd known pretty well what I'd wanted to do, but it all included Joan. And then she wasn't there anymore. Captain Kowalski told me a little bit about U.N.C.L.E. and said they'd asked him to come to me as a friend, and present their offer. They gave a wide choice of college curricula for which they would pay and offered me, in addition to a full scholarship with a little spare cash on the side, a guarantee of at least a year's trial employment at a good starting salary when I graduated. And an opportunity to do something really constructive with my life, which somehow seemed to matter a lot to me right then.

"Was there any more?" Mr. Waverly asked Joan.

"Not really. I spent about six weeks being debriefed of everything I knew about Napoleon, and then they gave me a three month vacation all over South America. It didn't really help much. They didn't let me keep anything that would remind me of you, naturally. But they didn't have the memory blocks then, and I never let anyone know that I remembered everything about you – that I could never forget you.

"I didn't exactly pine away. I stayed busy one place and another." She hesitated. "I. married another Thrush in 1957 – he was a chemical engineer. We were reasonably happy together, though of course there's no such thing as a quiet home life when you work for Thrush. We weren't in one place more than two years the whole time. He died almost three years ago – in an industrial accident. About six months ago, I was starting to go out of my mind in a routine job as a lab secretary in the psychogenic section, so I reapplied for active field status. My record looked good, I passed the physical, and training was a snap. I always kept in shape." She flexed herself and Napoleon grinned.

"I've been in San Francisco for more than a year. Baldwin knows all about my connection with you, and he knows you were supposed to mean nothing to me. But he told me when I started to work there that if you ever came west of the Rocky Mountains again he would ship me to Madagascar until you were gone.

He's suspicious of the Computer, but he trusts its accuracy. And sometimes I think he can read minds. Because I've known for – well, at least two years that if I had the chance I'd come over to your side to be with you – if you'd have me."

"Ah -I – well, I can't tell yet. I mean, we've both changed a lot in eighteen years. I've been through a lot, and I don't know how much I'll be like what you remember."

"Are you willing to try for a few weeks and see? After all, we're like old friends reunited. We'll have to find out if the old spark is still there."

"It may be awhile before anything can be done about that," Napoleon said. We're sort of in the middle of something very important, and I don't know whether you can do much more than sit in a room and occasionally be guided to the commissary for meals. You'll have a tv and books and whatever else you want, but I don't think you'll be allowed to move around much."

"If you'll come and see me once a day, I'll be happy."

Illya stared at his oblivious partner. Alexander Waverly drummed his knobbly fingers restlessly on the black leather tabletop.

Ward Baldwin sat at a rolltop desk and scowled at the autopsy report on the two corpses found downstairs this morning. Stevens had been shot full of their finest. Mickey Finn and the post-mortem had shown a sufficient amount still in his bloodstream to have kept him in solid slumber for another five hours. Yet by all the evidence dutifully recorded on the scene and reported to him, this man had somehow jimmied his door – which was not impossible to a sober, alert man with sufficient ability – gotten out and down the corridor during an unexplained malfunction which had blanked that particular camera at that particular moment and had the strength and stamina to overcome and disarm a guard after having been shot in the back. Or perhaps the guard, with two bullets in him, had finally gotten his rifle aimed, and released the fatal shot.

But Stevens should have been incapable of consciousness, let alone coherent thought, let alone this intense and coordinated display of physical activity. Even granting his miraculous immunity to whatever was used on him, the coincidence of the television monitor malfunction was just too much to take.

He flipped a toggle beside his speaking horn. "Robin, would you order printouts of Harry Steven's medical reports from last night? And find out who followed him down when they put him to sleep. Then request a polygraph operator to my office for two this afternoon. I will have a team of medical technicians to interview."