Collection 5 - My Brother's Keeper

by LRH Balzer

  Nobody would really kill someone in cold blood, would they?

  Solo wiped his nose on his sleeve, trying to hold back the tears. The blood no longer ran from the corner of Tommy's mouth. Was that a good sign? Maybe not. He tried his best to make the young soldier comfortable, but everything he did seem to make it worse.

  Scarce minutes went by before a noise at the door drew his head up and he twisted around; the North Korean guards had returned and they reached for Tommy. "No! No, take me! Not him! Me!"

  As Tommy was dragged from the shed, the other POW'S held Solo back, arms locked around him as he sobbed and fought against them until, finally, exhaustion claimed him and he collapsed unconscious.

  December 1952, Korea

  RCN Sub-Lieutenant Napoleon Solo dropped unceremoniously to the ground, utterly exhausted and clutching his chest His lungs burned from the mountain air, from the bitter cold as well as the thin oxygen. He was dimly aware of hands pulling him upright, of strong arms slipping around him, and sharp orders whispered into his ear.

  "Move your feet, Lee! Come on!" U.S. Army Corporal Kelly Robinson pleaded, his desperate voice barely sounding as he peered around in the darkness. Ahead of them, their leader, First Lieutenant Robert McCall, two years their senior, turned and waved them silent and they both nodded in fearful acquiescence.

  Since making their escape from the North Korean holding camp twelve hours previous, they had scaled two treacherous snow-capped hills and were now winding their way down into yet another rugged valley. Walking through the drifts was difficult, almost impossible, but turning around and going back meant sure death.

  There was no path through the snow. No moon shone through the blackness. Paralyzing wind blasted at them, pushing them into the side of the rocky hill, relentlessly wearing at their energy. They staggered in the darkness, gnawing hunger a constant ache, trying to stay on course, a lone compass and the occasional light of a match all they had to verify their position. They were afraid to speak out loud or stop and make a fire, for they had no idea where the Chinese or North Korean forces were.

  Solo stumbled again, falling to his knees and sprawling in the snow, only to feel himself hauled upright a moment later. Robinson's voice coaxed him to move, left foot, right foot, left foot. He could no longer feel his feet and he lifted the dead weights, barely clearing the top of the snow and letting them drop to the ground. Unlike the American Army soldiers he was with, his uniform and boots were designed for the Navy and the ocean, not for hiking around the uneven terrain of Korea.

  Twice he had begged them to leave him and keep going. They had refused. Robinson had stayed by his side, prodding him on, encouraging him to take each step, resolutely determined not to let him slip away into unconsciousness.

  Morning came with a slight increase in light, but the clouds were dark and hung heavy in the sky. The frozen air was smothering, impossible to breathe into ice-chilled lungs. They no longer flinched at the shadows around them, but labored down the slope, their minds as numb as their bodies. Halfway up yet another hill, figures emerged from the bushes and rose from the snow around them, surrounding them in seconds. They raised their hands, Solo and another soldier, Bob Laurier, dropping once more to the ground.

  But the men who they had come upon were Americans. Food was rationed to the eight starving ex-POWs. Water was gulped from canteens. But they were still in dangerous territory and they were hurried to their feet. By midmorning they passed over a nonexistent line into relative safety and Solo was dimly aware of the smiles around him as they half-carried him to the camp they were searching for.

  He remembered waking, feeling the blankets around him and realizing he was in a bunker of some kind. Heat came from a stove in the corner, not enough to take out the dampness or mildew, but enough to let his aching chest breathe comfortably. The roof was low, barely clearing the head of a man standing huddled by the heat, hands stretched out before him. Through the cracks in the boards, Lee could see daylight outside, streaks of brightness that were piercing to look at.

  In another cot across the narrow bunker from him, Robinson lay on his back, one arm across his eyes, sleeping. A man was carefully removing Kelly's boots, adding them to the pile near the stove. Solo glanced at his own feet, seeing them raised by his jacket, propped up, and heavily bandaged. He wiggled one toe, feeling the pain and seeing the bandage move.

  Each of the eight bunks was full, the faces he tried to focus on belonging to some of the soldiers he had escaped with, he noted with relief. A few other men sat around a table near a larger wood stove that also did double duty as a cooking surface. He drifted, listening to the cacophony of the snores of exhausted men. Wherever they were, they had all made it together.

  Well, not all of them. One of their men had died before they escaped. And Tommy Sorgensen was dead, too.

  He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the nightmare memory of the tortured body that had been thrown in the tiny shed with them, Tommy's lifeless eyes staring up at him, forever asking, why? He had held him, trying to press life back into the body, to will the eyes to blink and focus. But it hadn't happened. Tommy Sorgensen was dead. And he couldn't stop it, no matter what he tried to do.

  He drifted until a hand touched his face, feeling for fever. He opened his eyes to the startled glance of a MASH doctor.

  "Awake, are we? Good," the doctor said, with a somewhat drawled Bostonian accent. He pushed down the blanket long enough to read the dog tags around his neck. "Well, uh, Lee, I've checked your feet and I don't think you're going to lose any toes, but you're going to have to stay off them for a few days. You're all suffering from varying degrees of hypothermia, which is to be expected, but we've got it under control. Since you're not in any immediate danger, I'm told we're going to leave you here for the time being rather than transfer you to a MASH. The unit commander here, a Major Alan Morgan, has agreed to this and will see that you eventually get back to your own unit—when you're strong enough. We've sent word that you are here and alive. Now, I'm going to be heading out in about half an hour, going back to my MASH unit. Is there anything else I can pass on for you?"

  Solo looked up at the gentle smile and kind eyes, and started talking about Tommy. The doctor took notes for a few minutes, then just sat and listened to him, nodding in support. Solo's voice was raw when he stopped, but he was surprised at how the ache inside had lessened.

  'Well, good luck, Lee. I'm sorry about your driver, Sorgensen. I'll pass this on to your unit with the rest of the information." He reached beneath the covers and lightly shook Solo's bandaged hand. "The medic here knows what to do about your dressings. Take care of yourself"

  When the doctor stood to leave, Solo grabbed his arm. "Could you do one more thing? Could you send word to Seoul for me? There's one other person who should know I'm alive." He took the offered pen and carefully made his trembling fingers print the letters.

  The doctor smiled again and looked at the name and telephone number shakily written on the paper. "I'll send this off first thing when I get back, Lee. Get some rest."

  When he woke again, Robinson, Opperdorff, Carter, and Laurier, along with a few others, were noisily eating at the wooden table. Robinson saw he was awake and called out, "Hey, Lee There's hot food here! Are you hungry?" Without waiting for a reply, he filled a bowl with stew and brought it over to his friend.

  With the help of another soldier, they arranged pillows and sleeping rolls behind his back, enabling him to sit up. Solo spooned the stew into his mouth with unsteady hands, savoring each bite, as Robinson sat on the edge of the bed and filled him in on where they were and what was happening.

  The door to the bunker opened, letting in a blast of cold air and two men. Robinson quietly identified one as Major Morgan, the head of the unit, and another as Captain Thomas "Hawk" McGuire, the second in command. Morgan left after a few welcome-home words to the men, but McGuire stayed, pulling up a chair close to the fire, helping himself to coffee, and listening to the conversation
at the table.

  After they had finished eating, McGuire took a bottle of whiskey out of his case and proceeded to pass it around—everyone present, including Solo, taking a relished swig from it. The liquor got the men talking, and when a second bottle appeared, they started giving McGuire information about the North Koreans who had held them prisoner, about the Russians who had haunted the camp like stern parents, and about the Chinese, whose fiery presence had injected hate and fear into each interrogation session.

  The men talked about their friends who had not come back. About those they had seen who had died of hunger, or torture. With McGuire's encouragement and direction, they talked of loathing and retaliation, revenge and vengeance. One by one, fueled by the alcohol, they each fervently declared all the painful and humiliating things that they wanted to do to their captors if they ever had the chance.

  And in the midst of it all, a tape recorder spun.

  ******

  May 1965, Atlanta

  Twelve and a half years later, in the middle of the hotel's penthouse suite, Napoleon Solo sat with the remnants of that group and listened to his voice cry out with the other ten men for castration and death for all Russians. Castration and torture for the North Koreans. Castration and dismemberment for the Chinese.

  They had been terrified young men, unprepared for a war and pushed beyond their resources. The pain evoked as the sounds traveled across the years was intense. Loud, drunk, frightened voices. Only the pseudo-courage of the alcohol and the faces around them had stopped most of them from breaking into hysterical screams and sobbing at what had happened.

  The tape recorder spun endlessly, replaying the horror they had gone through, as the young men disclosed to the listening ear of their superior officer the countless humiliating and degrading things done to them and their colleagues by their captors.

  Then pain had given way to shame as the tape continued and the juvenile threats started, the bragging and the feverish promises of bloodshed and massacre.

  Kelly Robinson's haunted eyes met Solo's as the Californian's voice on the tape said in precise details exactly what he would do if he ever got his hands on the Russian who had kicked him so viciously in the stomach and groin. The slurred voice went on to say that any Russian would do. He would kill any Russian he got his hands on. Any Russian.

  Solo's voice came on next, and the U.N.C.L.E. agent held firmly to his whiskey glass and shut his eyes at the anguish in his younger self's words, the hateful threats issuing from his mouth. Like an attack that was impossible to stop, the tape played, letting them hear the torment of young men faced with death and indignity.

  He tried to wonder why. He tried to think about why the tape recorder had been there in the first place. What purpose had there been in taping their pain? He vaguely remembered it was for reports, or debriefing, or information purposes. He remembered––He remembered little, actually. Just the pain he had felt. The intense inner pain of guilt and anger and unspeakable rage. Everything he had buried and left behind twelve years ago came back to him in overwhelming clarity, leaving him trembling. He tried to wipe the cold sweat from his palms, but it clung resolutely, making him feel ill.

  When the last man had spoken, the tape reached the end of the spool and McGuire pressed the stop button. The army colonel sat staring at each of them, measuring his next words against their unknown reaction. For whatever reason the tape had been made in the first place, it was clear why he was playing it now. "Colonel Morgan is dead. The man who saved your lives. If he hadn't, against orders, sent out a patrol to try and retrieve those of you who had been captured, you would have died before you made it back to camp. As for the rest of you, you served under a man who showed you what it meant to be a true leader, a man who was not afraid to get his hands dirty dragging his soldiers off a battlefield.

  "Most of you had not seen Alan Morgan since Korea. You have gone about your lives, the very lives he gave to you. You heard his accomplishments today at the memorial service. You also heard he died of a heart attack That was a lie––a lie perpetrated by the United States Government in an attack on one of the country's most respected officers!

  "For the past three months, I have used every means at my disposal to discover what they have been hiding. I mean to find out why this has happened. What are they so afraid of? What great truth did Alan Morgan discover that made the United States Government resort to covering up the assassination?

  "Or––" he paused for effect, and they all stared at him, "or did they arrange for the assassination in the first place?

  "I am well aware of what your service records stated at the end of the Korean War. To get into the Rangers, you were highly-trained, highly-intelligent soldiers. In my recent investigations, I was able to discover that you, Laurier, work as a tax accountant for your own firm in the city here. Powhatan, you're a Private Investigator with a firm in Detroit. The rest of you have jobs that seem incongruous with your abilities as shown in Korea. Robinson: a tennis bum? Not likely. Coleman: an electronics consultant? Possibly, but there is probably more. Carter the import/export business? Opperdorff: a newspaper reporter for the New York Times? An interesting cover, it would certainly give a reason for your frequent excursions into the Soviet Bloc countries. You just came back from two years in Moscow, didn't you? Even you, Solo, not a member of the Rangers, yet you were with our unit for several months and showed exceptional promise in warfare tactics––you appear to be nothing more than a junior partner in a fledgling computer company owned by your maiden aunt and spend your time as a playboy flitting around the world."

  McGuire pocketed the reel, then took a gulp of his drink and continued, his voice the same dull monotone. "I don't believe these latter occupations. I assume that one or more of you is working as an espionage agent or in one of our security groups––CIA, FBI, U.N.C.L.E., NSA, Military Intelligence, whatever. What I need from you gentlemen is information, information that you may be able to retrieve from your various organizations.

  "As I said, Alan Morgan did not die of a heart attack We have obtained a high-level French police report and the cause of death is listed as bullet wound. There are no details given as to what occurred, other than claiming that Morgan was shot in self-defense. The man who pulled the trigger is identified on one single sheet of paper only, an Illya Kuryakin of New York City."

  Without moving his head, Solo glanced at McGuire, then around at the other men, who were riveted to the colonel. The nagging fear that had been itching at Napoleon all through the banquet, that had sent him to his hotel room in the middle of the second course to call into headquarters on his transceiver to see if everything was okay, now made sense. He had every reason to be apprehensive.

  McGuire rose from his chair and circled the room, continuing his lecture. "One of my associates has access to files at the Central Intelligence Agency. He investigated the name 'Kuryakin' and discovered it was listed but cross-referenced to a security file as the alias of a man known as Illya Mikhaylovich Zadkine. Zadkine was first identified as a KGB agent in 1959, but it is suspected he worked for them long before that. A fake death was arranged in 1961 and he resurfaced in the United States, supposedly to defect, and according to entry logs, the CIA spent many sessions in interrogation. The results of those sessions are classified and unavailable, but the fact remains: He posed a problem for them. In Zadkine, we have a man whose file lists him as a trained assassin, who was used by numerous Soviet organizations, and who has never been satisfactorily cleared by the CIA.

  "In December of 1964, there was a picture of this man, Zadkine, taken with a high ranking Soviet KGB agent by the name of Petrov. The picture appeared in a Soviet paper, identifying Zadkine as a Soviet agent. He apparently was murdered again later that month," McGuire paused and tossed a photo torn from a newspaper onto the coffee table in front of him, "he was also identified as the man who killed Morgan three months ago. We are trying to determine whom he is working for. I can see no reason for the Soviets to take out
Colonel Morgan. He was not working in a country of interest to the Soviets. Therefore, someone else hired Zadkine to assassinate Morgan."

  Solo's head pounded from the alcohol. He reached out for the picture, willing his hand to be steady, as he stared down at his partner. It was the Soviet newspaper photo, the one Petrov had used in hopes of blackmailing Illya. Petrov stood tall and straight, one side of his mouth curled in a smile; Illya was standing blandly at his side, eyes dark-rimmed, passive. The caption, in Russian, listed Illya as a KGB officer, Zadkine, on long-term assignment in the West. The article accompanying it was missing, but it would have explained the blank look. Illya had been blind at the time, also by Petrov's design[7]. It was an unusual thing to have, a picture carefully ripped from the forbidden communist paper.

  Solo swallowed, then passed the picture on to Robinson, who had an "I-told-you-it-was-him" smug look on his face.

  McGuire moved to the well-stocked bar and refilled his drink. Without turning, he continued to speak. "I can provide duplicates of this picture. I need the following information, if you are able to provide it. I need any information you can come up with as to the involvement of Zadkine: whom he works with, whom he knows, whom would be controlling him. I need to know anyone with a vendetta against Colonel Morgan, who might have reason to see him killed. Solo––?"

  The U.N.C.L.E. agent tore his eyes from the photograph in Robinson's hand as his name was called, and Robinson passed the picture on to Carter.

  "Solo, you were the last of us to see Alan Morgan. Maybe there is something you can add?"

  He shook his head slowly, wondering exactly how much McGuire knew but was not saying. Morgan had been aware of his U.N.C.L.E. affiliations. Had that fact been passed to McGuire? Morgan tended to keep information to himself, reluctant to trust anyone. Did McGuire even know about the business with the scepter and Morgan's plans to take the money and run? "Alan Morgan asked me to come and visit him in the Middle East about a week before he was killed in France. It had been several years since we had last spoken––I bumped into him now and again in my travels and always tried to look him up if I knew I would be in his area. He seemed… distracted when I was there. His mind was obviously on other things."