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To say I was angry with my best agents was an understatement. Perhaps I was also a little hurt that they had felt it necessary to go behind my back. In any case, I couldn’t just brush this incident aside.
“Gentlemen, I am very disappointed that neither of you had the common sense nor courtesy to explain your problem and request leave through the proper channels. Now, after being out of contact against all regulations, and absent without leave, you reappear as if nothing has happened.
“Mr. Kuryakin, you have officially resigned your position with UNCLE and according to the terms of our contract with the Soviet Union, we are required to return you to them, after first detraining you.
“Mr. Solo, by leaving your communicator and gun on your desk and remaining out of contact for so long, you have effectively resigned too. We are well within our rights to detrain you and terminate your employment with UNCLE as well.”
Both agents started to speak at once, each defending the other, as I expected.
“Sir, it was not Napoleon’s fault. He knew I was in trouble and followed me. He never meant to quit UNCLE – leaving his things was just a reaction to our last mission.”
“Mr. Waverly, Illya was dealing with a family emergency! You can’t send him back to the Soviet Union; you know they will kill him. You can’t sentence him to death just for trying to protect a child.”
I harrumphed, “Gentlemen, there is no question of your loyalty to each other. My concern is your loyalty to UNCLE, or the lack of it. Perhaps it is my fault for allowing your partnership to continue for too long. Or I have given you some reason to feel you could not explain your personal problem to me and request time to deal with it?
“I now need to know that you have not compromised our security. Given your training, I expect that arriving at the truth will require at least three days of interrogation with a combination of our best veridicals and hypnosis, before we will be ready to detrain you.”
I paused briefly to let them absorb that before continuing, “Unless you have some proof of your, frankly improbable, story about searching for Mr. Kuryakin’s phantom child and an encounter with Dragoslav Broz, who was declared dead several years ago?”
Mr. Kuryakin typically followed the principle that the best defense is a good offense; “Broz’s death was apparently yet another premature report. A verified newspaper article announcing my wife’s death and that she left a child was published last month. That was the start of this affair. Of course, if I had not been misinformed about her supposed death when I was in Survival School, I would have known about my child and the arrangements for her safety.”
That was a failure of verification on my part and I softened my stance as I replied. “I assure you, Illya, I believed Mrs. Kuryakin was dead when I gave you that information and have had no reason to believe otherwise until that obituary surfaced. I am sorry that you had to feel you lost her twice.”
Mr. Kuryakin simply regarded me with the look that has broken so many enemy agents. I believe some staff call it the “Frozen Death Stare”. I now understand why it is so effective, but resented it being used on me.
With his talent for reading the emotions in others, Mr. Solo offered a distraction, “Broz’s body was destroyed in the fire, but I took photos of his remains and the burned building and Illya collected his jaws and teeth. The lab is working on identifying him from dental records. I also found the woman and girl who were involved. Her name was Brigitte Bouchard and the child was her little sister Élisabeth. I got a recorded statement from her and have the contact information if you want to follow up. They were innocent in all this; Broz seduced Brigitte and lied about what he was doing, making Illya out to be the bad guy.”
I sighed; I did believe them as much as anyone can believe agents of their caliber. I’m quite certain they could come up with a convincing story and incontrovertible proof to back a claim they were kidnapped by Martians if it suited them. It was once again an issue of trusting my instincts. I took my time cleaning my pipe, charging it with fresh tobacco, and lighting it while they stood there doing a fine job of simulating confidence.
“Very well gentlemen. I will await the results of the witness interviews and lab reports before undertaking any interrogation. While you are under suspicion you will be on unpaid leave and barred from headquarters. Once your adventure has been verified, we will decide if you have a future with UNCLE. You can expect disciplinary action if you are reinstated. Security will escort you out of the building.”
They left with two escorts, which would not have been enough had I truly distrusted them. This was just to impress on them the seriousness of their behavior and perhaps to humble them a bit. They were getting far to inclined to be a law unto themselves.
I made sure Personnel knew they were on leave without pay from last Saturday until further notice and went back to dealing with normal emergencies.