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“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads,” announced Napoleon Solo cheerfully, as he finished disarming the security devices that defended his partner’s place of abode and wrestled numerous shopping bags across its threshold.
This might be a bit rich, given that he was addressing the ceiling and floorboards of Illya’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. Still, Napoleon figured Illya would appreciate the sentiment, borrowed as it was from Henry David Thoreau. After three years as U.N.C.L.E. New York’s Number Two, and missions that had taken him from Parisian ballrooms to the crowded streets of Lagos and the wastelands of Antarctica, Illya was a homebody at heart. Off the clock, his preference was for a solitary evening at home with his music and his books.
Illya had had little opportunity to enjoy these home comforts this year. He’d spent most of it being tortured by villains in Lisbon, brainwashed by Barnaby Partridge’s pet doctor at Club Thanatopsis in the Caribbean, and used as bait in Viktor Karmak’s lethal quest. And as the year closed, he’d been targeted and captured by yet another Partridge relative, Major Atherol. It had taken two weeks for Napoleon to find Partridge’s stronghold in the Kashmiri Valley, kill the major, and bring Illya home.
The New York winter afternoon was overcast. Illya’s long-unoccupied apartment was dim and freezing. Napoleon put the shopping bags on the kitchen table, picked up Illya’s mail, and set about turning on lights and the central heating and making the place habitable again.
Kashmir had seemed even colder than this. It would have certainly felt colder for Illya, brutalized and alone at the hands of another deranged Partridge cousin. The major had claimed he’d been taking revenge for Sir Emory, but you didn’t keep someone chained naked in a dungeon in the Kashmir Valley out of family feeling.
Napoleon was no stranger to the torments his partner had suffered over the years at the hands of other madmen, but when he had finally found Illya, hanging naked by his wrists in that dungeon, torso covered with blood and balls beaten blue, he’d first thought he’d lost him. Illya had been beaten so badly that his spleen had almost burst. If he hadn’t had emergency surgery at the U.N.C.L.E. field office in Jammu, he would have bled to death before Napoleon could get him back to the States. As it was, he’d spent the last week and a half recovering from a state-of-the-art partial splenectomy, the surliest patient of University Hospital’s high-security ward.
Napoleon had promised to spring his partner from hospital as soon as he could. Today, he’d finally managed to talk Dr. Walker into releasing Illya back to the comforts of his own home.
Which was why Napoleon Solo was here at 3 pm on Christmas Eve, armed with wine and flowers and a pre-cooked roast from Lüchow's in the East Village: to celebrate Illya’s homecoming and to ring in the season with the reluctant invalid himself.
It was just as well that Napoleon was dateless for the holidays this year; he’d been too busy re-reading Walden, Thoreau’s voyage of spiritual discovery, at Illya’s bedside to consult his little black book. Come to think of it, he’d not had the time or the inclination this year to date much; not even pretty, perky blonde Terry Cook from November’s affair with the Gurnius Project. Aunt Amy had readily understood that he couldn’t make his customary appearance at Christmas dinner because he needed to take care of his ailing partner.
Also, the thought of wining and dining the holidays away while Illya was alone and unwell - - after a fortnight of not knowing whether he was alive - - and then, after days of frantic searching, finally finding what could easily have been his lifeless corpse...
… Napoleon shook off the chill that ran down his spine. He needed to get a move on. Get Christmas dinner going, spruce up the place a bit, and then return to the hospital to pick Illya up and bring him home.
As the apartment began to warm up, Napoleon stashed the shrimp cocktail in the fridge beside the slivovitz, set the oven on low and popped in the roast and trimmings. Then he set the dining table - - at which he and Illya had stayed up on numerous late nights, planning missions and playing chess - - before opening the wine and taking a glass into the living room, where he rifled through Illya’s extensive jazz collection and selected a record.
Soon the strains of Nat King Cole lifted into the air, and savory smells began to emerge from the kitchen. Napoleon let himself relax on the familiar second-hand sofa where they’d spent so many evenings and weekends with Illya’s music and their respective choices of reading material: the New Yorker (him), and the New Scientist and the Village Voice (Illya).
Thoreau had written, Man is in want of a home, a place of warmth and comfort: first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
This modest walk-up had been home for four years to Illya Nikolaievitch Kuryakin, envoy from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Though it had taken a while to prove himself worthy of the promotion to Section Two, Number Two, U.N.C.L.E. New York had also become Illya’s home - - which the orphanage in Georgia, and, after that, the Soviet Navy and the G.R.U, hadn’t been - - a place of warmth and comfort, where an atheist communist demolitions expert with a PhD in quantum mechanics and a proficiency in a number of martial arts disciplines could say he belonged.
And what, after the physical warmth, about the “warmth of the affections”? In all of four years in New York, Illya had never had a serious girlfriend; after Marion Raven had gotten engaged, Illya’s dating life had become more and more sporadic. As far as Napoleon knew - - and he knew things about Illya Kuryakin that no one else in the world knew - - his partner spent his days off playing music in the Villages’ many jazz clubs, and enjoying his own company.
It had to be said, though, field agents didn’t tend to have serious girlfriends, didn’t marry or settle down. For Napoleon himself, after Clara had left, there had always been a different woman for every season and in every port. Like his field agents in Section Two, their C.E.A. had no one constant in his life.
That is, no one constant save for Illya.
Napoleon grimaced over his wineglass. While it was true that field agents didn’t marry or settle down, they might as well be married to their partners. These days, Thoreau’s “warmth of affections” resided with Illya, and Illya with him.
And while field agents put their lives on the line on a daily basis, how close he’d come to losing Illya to the obsessions of Major Partridge was a still-raw wound; one that not even Nat Cole’s dulcet tones could smooth over.
A house with love in it is rich indeed
Although there are a thousand things that house may need
The carpet may be old, the room so plain and bare
And yet it's beautiful somehow when love is living there
The knock at the apartment door startled Napoleon out of his contemplative mood. He reached into his jacket for his Special, but it was only Illya’s U.N.C.L.E.-screened superintendent, Mrs. Corlett, who didn’t bat an eyelid at Napoleon’s choice of firearm. In her hands was a large, flat brown parcel.
“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Solo, but I forgot that this was dropped off for Mr. Kuryakin this morning.”
Napoleon took custody of the parcel. Brown paper, with Illya’s address written on the front in a vivid hand. A magazine or periodical; not explosive-laced, by the heft of it. No postmark.
“It didn’t come with the rest of the mail?”
“No. A young man brought it. Thin fellow, with a dark moustache and glasses and one of those flat black caps. Handsome, real nice manners. Said he was a friend of Mr. Kuryakin’s from out of town. Accent sounded like he was from Philly.” Off of Napoleon’s skeptical look, she added, “Don’t worry, of course I didn’t say anything about Mr. Kuryakin being in the hospital. Plus, I tested, and the package’s clean.”
“Thank you,” Napoleon said. He smiled his reassuring smile at her through long years of habit, but when he shut the door on Mrs. Corlett, he turned his frown to the package.
Illya and he never stood on ceremony with each other. It was hard to keep secrets from the partner who slept beside you in a hundred crappy hotel rooms, whom you’d had to sew up in a Libyan field hospital and who’d held you to keep from freezing to death in a cave in the Arctic Circle.
Napoleon reached for the letter opener, telling himself he was following security protocol. Who was to say that THRUSH hadn’t started hiring handsome moustachioed Beatniks from Philadelphia to throw unsuspecting U.N.C.L.E. superintendents off the scent?
Inside the package was a slender magazine.
DRUM, it was titled, in bold red typeface: ISSUE 21 NOVEMBER 1966. On its front cover was a smiling, square-jawed man, tanned and muscular, sprawled at the edge of a Californian swimming pool, wearing tight yellow swimming trunks that left very little to the imagination.
Napoleon discovered his throat had suddenly gone dry. He knew the sex magazine industry existed across many different subcultures, but explicit homophile magazines weren’t sold at newsstands, and he’d never seen any which were this professionally shot and published.
Someone had come from Philadelphia to hand-deliver the November issue of DRUM to Illya’s residence. Someone who knew where Illya lived. Who thought Illya might enjoy leafing through this magazine, with its veiled articles about sexual liberation and men’s issues, and soft-filtered photographs of muscular jocks in various states of undress…
Napoleon had to swallow. Field agents were notoriously quick on the uptake, and the evidence was staring at him in the face.
Maybe this was why Illya had stopped dating. Or maybe Illya had never really been interested in Marion Raven and other girls from the start.
He wasn’t sure what to think, let alone how to react, to this sudden news. Thanking this most recent bout of Solo’s Luck that Mrs. Corlett hadn’t been the one to open the parcel, Napoleon began to return DRUM back to its original packaging, when he felt a hard sliver laid along the magazine’s inner spine.
It wasn’t a weapon, as Napoleon had first feared. Instead, a discreet card had been inserted into the magazine, containing a note in the same vivid hand: Thought you might enjoy this! I did. It was signed with the single initial, J. Napoleon flipped to the indicated page.
The card bookmarked a black and white photograph of a nude man sitting on a musician’s stool, holding a horn. The accompanying article purported to be an interview with someone called “The Horn Player”, who lived in the Village, who played the English horn, and who idolized Benny Golson.
The man in the photograph was looking down, thick blond hair obscuring most of his face. His lean, corded muscles glistened in the flattering light, a contrast with the glowing expanse of skin on display. He was cradling the silvery length of the Cor Anglais between his thighs in a way that preserved most of his modesty but did nothing to hide anything else.
The gold medallion was missing from that lean chest. The large hands were devoid of the wedding ring that so confounded the ladies in the typing pool and young Felix from Section Six. But this was, unmistakably, an image of Illya Kuryakin.
The photographer’s dreamy focus smoothed over, but couldn’t fully conceal, the scars that were as identifying as fingerprints: the neatly-stitched-up bullet wound courtesy of the episode on the Scottish island, the knife wound in the upper thigh from Aqaba, the marks left by Mother Fear’s whip in Switzerland.
And Napoleon didn’t need the scars or a medallion or a ring to recognize his partner’s body. He’d spent enough time sleeping beside it mid-mission, enough time holding it in his arms when the need called for it. Had seen that body for a heart-stopping moment hanging naked from the wrists in Partridge’s Kashmiri dungeon, an image he’d carry with him as long as he lived. He’d spent the last week and a half painstakingly nursing it back to health.
Napoleon couldn’t stop staring at the photograph. He realized his heart was beating very quickly, as it never did in the field.
Illya’s position on the stool was very deliberate, poised on the cusp of lifting the horn from his lap and revealing the neat, uncut cock to the camera. His body language was coy, almost shy, the hair obscuring his expression but revealing the long line of neck and sinewy shoulder.
Napoleon had never seen his partner play the coquette like this before, not even when flirting with him in Kiryu. Now he saw Illya through this photographer’s lens - - posed to draw a man’s sexual gaze, the ambient light spilling over his slick skin and taut musculature - - and the discovery landed like a blow to the solar plexus: Illya was beautiful.
Napoleon couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Field agents were trained to observe, and this field agent had indeed noticed how undeniably attractive his partner was. But he had always held himself back, even when Illya was flirting with him in Kiryu. He couldn’t afford to lose Illya, and didn’t want to drive Illya away - - because Illya didn’t feel the same way or because Napoleon screwed things up somehow.
Now, with his pulse hammering in his ears, Napoleon couldn’t hold it back any longer. This frankly sexual photograph of his partner, designed to arouse men’s desires, was working its spell on him.
He didn’t know whether it was the notion that Illya had gone to that photo shoot and stripped off for the cameras and put himself on display. Or whether it was the discovery that Illya had a secret life, kept hidden from his partner and U.N.C.L.E., and that this J from Philadelphia was a part of it somehow.
Was J. Illya’s lover?
Napoleon flipped to DRUM’s editorial, which informed him, in one of life’s coincidences, that the magazine's title was inspired by a quote from Walden. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer."
Did Illya hear that different drumbeat? If so, to what extent did he march to it? If not this J., did Illya have a lover, someone to show him Thoreau’s “warmth of affections” who wasn’t Napoleon himself?
The magazine’s folio announced that it was published in Pennsylvania, by something called the Janus Society. Napoleon had never heard of them.
Solo had less than an hour before he was expected at University Memorial, and the holiday traffic uptown was likely to be bumper to bumper. But instead of replacing the magazine and sealing the package back up, he pulled out his communicator.
“Open Channel D. Merry Christmas, Lisa. Could you connect me to the Philly field office?”
Nathan Drexel, the chief of the Philadelphia field office, wasn’t on duty that afternoon, but Napoleon was connected with Billie Adler, the soft-spoken head of research.
“Yes, Mr. Solo, we’re aware of the Janus Society. It runs out of South Street by Clark Polack, a local businessman.” Billie paused, and added, too-casually, “It publishes a gay magazine and organizes gay and lesbian rights demonstrations along the East Coast.”
Napoleon rubbed his brow, which was unaccountably sweaty. “Do they make trouble for law enforcement?”
“Philly P.D. is aware of them, of course, but for the most part the demonstrations are peaceful. They’re mostly under the radar. As I understand it no one’s looking to press obscenity charges, not even the Feds.” Billie cleared her throat. “Sir, am I to understand there’s a security concern? Has THRUSH infiltrated the organization somehow?”
Napoleon had to swallow down the temptation to say yes. To send field agents to Philly’s South Street, to investigate its photographic studios, and track down a moustachioed man whose name began with J. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to justify that, not even to himself.
Instead, he made himself say, “No evidence yet of avian activity. Tell me, does the society have a New York branch?”
“One moment.” Typing sounds emanated from the communicator, and Billie returned to say, “They’re affiliated with the Mattachine Society chapter in New York. The chapter meets at the residence of Sam Morford in the Village, along East 8th Street.”
Napoleon raised his eyebrows. This was a couple of blocks away from Illya’s place, and the East Village jazz clubs Illya frequented.
“Thank you,” he said, when no further information was forthcoming. “I’ll take it from here. Merry Christmas, Miss Adler.”
He put his communicator away. He could see his hands weren’t entirely steady.
Was Illya a member of the Mattachine Society? Was that how he’d met J., and why he’d said yes to appearing in DRUM? Thought you might enjoy this! I did.
Walden had gone on to write, after his words on marching to the beat of a different drummer: If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?
What was the reality that Illya had chosen? How many times might he have been to Philadelphia, and what freedoms had he found there amongst its sexually liberated men?
He’d closed the magazine, hiding the tantalizing photograph within its pages, but Napoleon could still see Illya’s body stretched toward the light, even when he closed his eyes.
Napoleon’s imagination didn’t stop there. It pictured Illya tilting his head up, shaking the hair out of his face, and then locking that Arctic gaze with Napoleon’s. Lips curving in that small smile the girls in the typing pool never saw, Illya put aside his instrument and got to his feet. He was unabashedly naked, big hands outstretched in welcome...
A clattering sound distracted him. Napoleon opened his eyes and leaped to his feet, but before he could draw his weapon, the door burst open and in walked Illya Kuryakin. In the flesh, this time, as opposed to celluloid, or Napoleon’s feverish fantasies.
Now Napoleon couldn’t unsee it. Leaning on a cane, dressed in the spare clothes that were badly creased from days in Napoleon’s overnight case, with shadows under his eyes and terrible bedside pallor, his partner was beautiful, every unkempt inch of him.
Finally, Napoleon found his voice. “What are you doing here?”
Illya shrugged off his coat and made his way gingerly over to the sofa, waving away Napoleon’s belated attempts to help. “I got tired of waiting for you and asked one of the nurses to give me a ride back here. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t trashed the place without me.” He paused, and put his nose in the air. “It smells like I’m just in time, too. Something’s about to burn.”
Guilt rocketed through Napoleon. “It’s the roast,” he said, aiming himself at the kitchen. Fortunately, the top of the roast was only starting to blacken, and when he hauled it out of the oven, it still looked salvageable.
He deposited the tray on the pan coaster and fanned it for good measure. Then he turned back round, to find Illya settled on the sofa, the issue of DRUM open on his lap.
Napoleon stood rooted to the spot. I can explain was on the tip of his tongue, but he wasn’t sure what reason he could give for invading Illya’s privacy, to say nothing about his disturbing fantasies about his partner.
Illya himself looked perfectly calm. His blue gaze was frigid. Voice as chilly as Thoreau’s pond in winter, he remarked, “Well, this is awkward.”
Belatedly, Napoleon found his voice. Adrenaline burned through him; it was remarkably difficult to match Illya’s icy tone. “Your friend J. from Philly hand-delivered the magazine this morning. It must have come hot off the press.”
“I can tell from the card,” Illya said, as slowly as if Napoleon was a child. “And, just to be clear, Johannes isn’t a friend. I met him at Swing Rendezvous on McDougal Street. He plays the French horn. He introduced me to his band, and the Philadelphia jazz scene.”
Napoleon knew how petty he sounded, but he absolutely couldn’t stop himself. “If he isn’t your friend, it sounds as if he very much wants to be. The kind of friend that would enjoy that photograph of you.”
“Enjoyment is the whole point of this magazine,” Illya said coldly. Even more coldly: “Is it going to be a problem, Napoleon? No one could recognize me from this photograph.” He held up the relevant page, very deliberately, to make good his point. “No one but you, that is.”
Napoleon dragged his eyes from the alluring photograph to the even more alluring man himself. “Yes, I recognized you right away. Though admittedly no one else might.”
Illya put the magazine down, and got to his feet. He limped over to where Napoleon stood at the threshold of the living room. Despite the low light, it was impossible to mistake how utterly furious he was.
“Then if that’s not the problem, what is?” He thrust his anger at Napoleon as if it was a blow. “Is it a problem that I date men? Or that I might have a boyfriend?”
Heat rose up in Napoleon’s throat, filling him with a rage that equalled Illya’s. “I don’t care about any of that. It’s the fact that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me!”
Illya took a step closer, eyes scouring Napoleon’s face. He was opening his mouth for an angry retort, when something he saw made him reconsider. Instead, he said, quietly, “That’s not why I didn’t tell you. I do trust you.”
“Then why?” Napoleon demanded. He took a step forward as well, and found himself chest to chest with his partner.
This close, Napoleon could see the hazel flecks in Illya’s eyes, could feel the heat curling from Illya’s skin through two sets of clothes. He could see that closeness register in Illya’s expression, in the breath that sighed from Illya’s body.
“You idiot,” Illya said, more gently than he’d sounded in all the years of their partnership. “It’s because you’re the one man I can never have.”
Napoleon’s lungs heaved. Here on dry land, it almost felt like he was struggling in the water, at the bottom of Thoreau’s frozen pond, very far from home, with only Illya’s steady gaze to light the way.
“I lied,” he found himself saying at last. “I do care about whether you have a boyfriend. Because if you do date men, then why haven’t you ever given me the time of day?”
All those missions saving each other’s life and sleeping in the same room, all those evenings when they’d eschewed dates and Innocents in favour of each other’s company. All those times when Napoleon turned away because he couldn’t afford to look at his partner in that light. Was it worse to know now that, rather than being blissfully unmoved, Illya had also been turning away?
Illya’s answering snort was entirely characteristic. Rolling his eyes, he snarled, “For the love of … it’s because Napoleon Solo would sooner sleep with a different girl every night of the week! He’d choose to bed THRUSH agents out to kill him, rather than notice the partner at his side! The same partner who always has to haul his arse out of the fire, who has to wait up while he’s out tomcatting, wondering whether this is the night he doesn’t make it home? That’s why!”
The long-repressed outrage shivered through him, and also through Napoleon, standing so close by. It took Napoleon’s breath away: Illya had seen. More, he’d waited, and watched, and taken care of his clueless, philandering partner, all the while believing that Napoleon would never look back at him in the same way.
As Illya’s little speech died away, his fury subsiding, something else rose within him, between them, thick and palpable. Napoleon took a deep breath. “I didn’t know.”
“So now you do.” Illya’s eyes glittered, not with his usual malice, but an emotion that Napoleon had no idea how to read.
Illya’s lips were pursed, as if on the cusp of hurling more insults. Napoleon had never imagined kissing the invective off that lush mouth, but now it was the only thing he could see.
The words rose slowly, from a place within him that he’d locked away after Clara had left. First in a trickle, and then a flood that couldn’t be held back.
“It’s not true that I never looked at you, Illya. I’m not made of stone. But I couldn’t let myself admit it. Dating women is easy. Dating THRUSH, at least you know what to expect going in. Dating my partner is another proposition altogether. I couldn’t afford to lose you, Illya. I still can’t.”
The days of frantic searching, not knowing if Illya was alive or dead, then holding his partner’s brutalized body in his arms, gripped with the fear he’d been too late…
Illya didn’t take his eyes from Napoleon’s face. A small frown line appeared between his brows. He reached up to grip Napoleon’s shoulder, not gently, pulling him even closer.
“Who says you’re going to lose me?” he asked, quietly, and leaned in to kiss him.
Close-mouthed, it was an almost-gentle press of lips from a decidedly ungentle man. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, like coming home after months adrift at sea. Napoleon wrapped his arms around Illya, careful of his bruises, and kissed him helplessly back.
They were both shaking when they separated. Napoleon leaned his forehead against Illya’s and murmured, “Who says I’m the man you can’t have?”
Illya’s kiss-swollen lips curved up in his small, wry smile. “Does this mean you’re finally going to let me have you?”
“I think I am,” Napoleon managed. “I nearly lost you in Kashmir. You’d have died without giving me the chance to tell you how I felt about you.”
Illya snorted. “You’re not going to be that lucky. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m the luckiest man alive,” Napoleon said fervently, and drew his partner in for a second kiss. Illya’s arms looped around Solo’s neck, his lips parted for Napoleon’s tongue, and he surrendered to Napoleon’s embrace with his usual no-quarter-given intensity that told Napoleon that he was alive, that they both were, and finally ready to give in to each other.
They adjourned to the sofa, where Illya could stretch out without putting weight on his injuries, and they did their best to make up for lost time.
“Dinner’s getting cold,” Illya said, when they came up for air.
His bright hair was standing on end, his face was rosy from Napoleon’s five o’clock stubble. Napoleon had never seen anything he wanted more. He pulled away from his partner reluctantly. “I should heat the roast up again. Don’t go anywhere in the meantime.”
“I’ve spent enough time waiting for you; I can afford to wait a bit longer,” Illya sniffed. “Besides, as you know, I live here and have nowhere else to go.”
As Napoleon headed for the kitchen, he heard Illya bustling around in the living room. He turned over the record once more, and again Nat’s voice filled Illya’s apartment:
A house with love in it just seems to bloom
As though the month of May were filling every room
So darling through the years with all my heart I'll pray
A house with love in it is where we'll stay
Napoleon could hear Illya singing along. As he glanced back to the fireplace, he could see Illya had started paging through the magazine again.
They didn’t have to wait any longer. Thanks to DRUM and that photograph, he and Illya had found their way towards this different drumbeat and this reality, this Christmas and for Christmases to come.