Bodie gave Doyle's leg one last long squeeze before he got out of the car and joined the head of CI5 in the back of the laundry service van parked on the side of the road.

Illya squinted against the sudden onslaught of light as he read the digital display in front of him. Solo took earphones off and moved to one side, revealing an elderly English gent, complete with overcoat, hat and umbrella. A strangely innocuous sight given the circumstances and conditions.

"Bodie, Doyle," Cowley intoned. "This is Mr. Waverley, head of UNCLE North America."

Both stepped forward to shake the old man's hand and were astounded by the strength of grip.

"Surveillance," Illya started, "indicates no movement within the property at all, we've sent a team down the sewerage system to identify if there are hidden levels."

"Which Igor suggested there was. The property," Solo leafed through some pages on a clipboard and read aloud, "was a KGB arms house for over fifteen years. The floor plane indicates that there are over three levels below ground and we believe this is where Pakoslav has made his base."

"I don't suppose that any of that fancy electronic gadgetry tells us if there is a bomb down there?" Bodie asked.

"Actually Mr. Bodie it does," Alexander Waverly cut in. "There is a massive surge on the equipment that indicates the presence of C4."

"Tell me it's not by the front door," Doyle asked hopefully

"Well then," Solo drawled, "I won't tell you."

Illya smiled as he looked away at his instruments, "Mark and Bryan have located the lower levels sir."

"Indeed?" Waverly chewed absently on the end of his pipe and read the instrument panel.

"Yes sir, it appears your original hypothesis was correct. There is a subterranean entrance to the property which appears to be clear of explosives. They are starting to drill now sir."

"Very good. Proceed, Mr. Kuryakin."

Illya flipped a toggle and watched the instrument panel closely as both the agents underground went to work on the locking mechanism.

"Alex, have they delivered the package as yet?" Cowley asked.

"Yes, George all present and accounted for," Alexander answered with an odd twinkle in his eye, both sets of operatives looked quizzically at their partners, who shrugged.

~~~~oooOOOooo~~~~

Of all the places Mark Slate hated to be it was underground. Worse still he was underground, stinking of sewer and wet. Bryan Endicott looked sideways at the Brit and found himself laughing silently.

"Oh nice, yes I expect you feel at home down here." Mark spat as another piece of fetid earth fell into his face.

"And just why would that be?" Bryan stopped the drill and fixed a small camera to the end of a piece of fiber optic cable.

"With a name like Endicott? You'd have to be Welsh."

"And your point?" Bryan eyed him coldly.

"Coal mining's in the blood."

Bryan pushed the camera through the opening and checked the sensors on the LCD panel in his hand. The chamber opened up in the surreal green of the panel. Bryan checked up and down and across the floor, stopping for a brief second as he recognized the heap of decaying matter in the middle of the room. Horrified he watched as the tiny creatures corrupted the already rotting flesh.

"See anything?" Mark asked as he came closer.

"Dead body."

"Murphy?"

"Can't tell. Been dead awhile."

"How can you tell?"

"It's ripe."

Mark shuddered and continued packing up the equipment. "Bombs?"

"No, alert the others readings are clear. There's an opening across the room, looks like a door has been left ajar. Thermal readings are showing at least one hot spot inside."

"Human or bomb sized?"

"Can't tell. Better open up this place and let the big boys come and play."

"Since when did we get relegated to the technical crew?" Mark asked as he opened the com channel on his pen.

"Since I have no desire to go in there." Bryan stood up and placed several small detonators in a semi arch around the top of the old rusted door.

Mark relayed his message with practiced ease and stepped back awaiting the arrival of Solo and Kuryakin. He used the time to study the man who was temporarily partnered with him. Over six feet tall, fair to red hair and pleasant looks, his dark eyes betraying an inner turmoil despite the cool professionalism of a trained agent.

"Gives you the creeps doesn't it?" Mark asked gently.

"Lost my partner in Hamburg to this madman, seen enough of his handiwork to last me a lifetime." Bryan's voice was soft and full of an ancient revulsion. Like a man shrugging off a coat it was gone, and Mark Slate knew better than to push him any further.

"Bloody typical," Mark swore softly as Solo appeared in front of him.

"What did I do?" Napoleon asked.

"Don't mind him sir," Bryan deferred quickly as he passed the LCD to Illya, "he's just a little ticked that he got his nice blue overalls all dirty."

Despite the gravity Illya ducked his head, barely in time to conceal the grin that threatened to overwhelm him.

"Illya?" Solo warned perfunctorily.

"You would go up inestimably in other people's opinions Napoleon if you got dirty just once in a while."

Guiltily Solo looked down at his overalls, the dark blue not only clean, but the pressmarks were still fresh, whereas Illya's looked like he had crawled through a sewer.

"Won't do to have the kiddies see the grown ups all dirty," Solo smiled as he came close enough to read the display.

Illya ignored him as Solo settled down to wait.

"Illya, tell me about Pakoslav."

Illya shrugged, "What is there to tell? You have the file."

"Yes, but I want you to tell me about him," Solo insisted.

"He is bland."

"Bland?"

Illya thought for a moment and squinted as he rechecked the detonators. "Yes, bland. Ordinary."

"You mean he blends in."

"Of course, if he were in a group of people he would blend so seamlessly that you would not see him. Pakoslav whilst in the KGB built a career on being a non-entity, you could never know the man beneath the layers that were constructed. Maybe because he doesn't exist."

"So why bring himself out in the open like this?"

"Nyet. He wants us to find him."

"To what purpose. I know we have a complete media ban on his enterprises, and still we have come up short on him in this gruesome game of cat and mouse, but still Illya, appearance aside, conspicuous appearance in what he can do remotely is too far out of character for him."

"Da, but what is the good of a cause if you cannot tell people about it, have sympathy for what you do, hide you when you need them too. We built a career on convincing people we are something we are not."

"And what precisely are you not?" Solo asked softly as he squatted down in the tunnel next to his partner.

Illya shrugged again. "It's hard to analyze. I am a child of the KGB and of Mother Russia, always will be. But even in that I have my own standards of what is right and wrong. To me there has to be a reason why things are done."

"A very good reason."

"I was still a child when I was sent to the KGB Red Banner Academy and Foreign Intelligence School 101 to prepare for service abroad."

"But you believed what you were doing was the correct thing?"

"No, I believed I was doing the only thing I could to escape. There is a marked difference Napoleon."

"If you say so," Solo shifted uncomfortably on the hard ground aware of his partners gaze.

"Napoleon," Illya sighed as he wiped his hands and set the last of the charges. "When I was in service to the KGB my life was not my own. I was controlled and sold on a whim by my various KGB masters. Even a Lieutenant Colonel has no security."

"Well that's something I didn't know," Solo remained calm almost as expressionless as the man Illya described. His dark penetrating gaze raked over the younger man, bored into him, and yet even if you tried you could never penetrate them. Sometimes Solo's eyes were a mirror, reflecting what you want to see. Other times more often they are the masks that disguise the real intentions. Very few had seen to the heart of the man, fewer still survived the heat that scorched their souls as he orbited passed their lives. Despite his flirtatious nature, his unnatural cool and inestimable will, Solo as with Kuryakin was very much an enigma.

"What that I went to the academy?"

"No that your true rank was Lieutenant Colonel. That's very high for someone your age."

"I told you I became a remarkable student so I could escape. You pick an odd time for this discussion tovarishch." Illya was still now his blue eyes cold as the Siberian ice.

"Not really. In the midst of battle to reflect is often to understand the nature of what we are fighting, and for whom."

"Profound. Pointless, but profound."

~~~oooOOOooo~~~

On a sidewalk in the dying rays of the sun a man walked, his short blond hair unremarkable against his beaten leather jacket and fading blue jeans. He stopped and leaned against the damp brick wall of the old house, with deliberate and calm movements he lit a cigarette and watched.

The van housed at least four men, two already having donned workmen apparel and moved towards the manhole cordoned off in the middle of the road. Another two entered number twenty-seven. The bulky weight of their revolvers obvious to the trained eye.

He waited till the tobacco burned down to the filter and flicked the butt to one side.

Two more men in service uniforms went into the back of the truck and another, older and well dressed limped down towards the waiting Capri. His sandy blond hair thinning as he pulled the door closed and spoke to the man hidden in the back seat.

With the arrogant calm of the innocent he walked slowly passed, not making eye contact, no seeming too interested in the comings and goings of the van. Pakoslav knew his trade well and plied it with the knowledge of how to operate successfully in the twilight world of cold war espionage. He stopped to do up an errant shoelace, propped his food on the curb as he did so and slipped a small device to the undercarriage of the van. The adhesive gripped the metal firmly as he withdrew his hand and went calmly on his way.

~~~oooOOOooo~~~

The alarm on Bodie's watch beeped twice. He stopped it as he reached down into the duffel bag and produced a wad of material wrapped in silver tin foil.

"You sure you know how to handle that?" Doyle asked sceptically as he pulled out the detonator and primer.

"Safe as houses mate, WWII surplus this stuff."

"It's supposed to be unstable." Doyle was always slightly nervous around explosives.

"When we used to use it in Angola they always packed toilet paper in the same box."

"Nice."

"Demolition Bodie style. Watch and learn mate. This stuff is guncotton."

"Guncotton?"

"CETNT. We place it thus," Bodie said as he unwrapped it and taped it to the adjoining wall to the KGB arms house. Doyle handed him the primer which fit neatly in the hole in the middle of the brick sized grey slab of explosive. "Then we put the detonator in and cover the whole thing up with some nice solid packing."

"Say an old door," Doyle added as he helped manipulate the splintered wood into place.

"Now you get it," Bodie beamed his maniacal best and pushed a length of wood between the door and the nearest pole. "Ready?"

Ray nodded and gripped his gun in both hands as he hid behind another pole 20 yards away from the entrance they were about to make.

Bodie lit the six-inch safety fuse and bolted down the old warehouse to find cover of his own.

The wall blew in with a thunderous sound, echoed by another rumble from deep below.

~~~oooOOOooo~~~

Illya brushed the rain of debris from his hair and with night goggles on stormed into the room with Solo close behind. Napoleon secured the area, searching out the entrances and flanked one side of the open door.

Illya took the opposite side of the door and pushed it open to search out the room and found the source of the earlier hot spot.

Murphy sat propped against a steel bench, a piece of metal in his hands as he took a swing at the blond agent. Solo stopped him with a hiss.

"Murphy?"

The injured man nodded once.

"UNCLE." Murphy relaxed and indicated another door with his hand.

"I think," he croaked, "that your man is in there."

Napoleon checked his gun and quietly approached the semi open door to yet another chamber, this one revealing a blond man laying face down in a pool of ichor and blood. Using a piece of metal he cautiously turned him over and had to forcefully stop himself from retching when he saw the face burned away by what looked like acid. The hands too suffered the same fate and he had died a most agonizing death.

Illya came close to inspect the corpse and pulled out his pen. "Open Channel D."

"Ah Mr. Kuryakin," Waverly answered.

"Sir, we need a paramedic team down here, Murphy is alive but requires immediate assistance. There are two other bodies, one my partner believes to be that of Pakoslav Krasinskii."

"Indeed? We have a back up unit on the way in now."

"What of the other team?" Solo asked as he stood by his partner.

"Top two sections of the building are secure. The bomb squad has been called in to diffuse the situation."

"Understood sir, we will attempt to breach the upper levels and connect with the rest of the team. Close Channel D."

Napoleon looked around the room and found hidden in one of the metal wardrobes a blanket and used this to wrap Murphy in. He then handed over his own communicator.

"There is a team on the way to get you to hospital, they will only be a few minutes away. You know how to use this?" Solo asked as he pushed the pen into his hand.

Murphy nodded.

"Good," Solo turned his attention to the blond who still knelt by the blond man's body. "Tovarishch." Solo move with cat like grace and speed to the landing at the bottom of the steps beyond the second corpse. "Are you ready?"

Illya turned grim faced and followed his partner.