Chapter Text
Perched on the windowsill, Gaby’s cigarette glowed brightly as she breathed in anxious drags. The New York lights shimmered in time to the radio, her heavy lashes fanning over rouged cheeks as she watched pedestrians weave through gridlocked cabs. She was living alone, working under an alias, and speaking openly only to Waverly in brief telephone calls. This new American life had turned out to be dreadfully lonely without Napoleon and Illya. When Waverly briefed the mission files to her she had been thrilled, imagining car chases, blazing guns, and gasping lungfuls of fresh American air. She wanted heroism followed by hangovers. Instead the mission had consisted entirely of too-tight cocktail dresses and shaking her ass behind feather fans.
She learned striptease the same way she learned to fight – with painful repetition, early mornings, and a stern trainer. Her instructor Ida was a rake of a woman with hard coal eyes and thin poppy-red lips, a former ballerina turned pinup girl turned lethal MI6 agent. There were similarities between the gritty fights of her agent-in-training teens and this, learning to know her body and how to use it like a weapon. Seduction, in this mission, would be far more useful than a burly agent holding a gun. The target was Samuel Lange, owner of Lange Jewelry, a known drug trafficker with connections to a violent neo-Nazi organization. Gaby was going to become his favorite dancer and charm her way to his bedroom so that she could steal intelligence about this organization from his heavily secured home.
She started at the Midas Club under the alias Sabine, introduced to the manager as a first-rate burlesque dancer. She aced tryouts and was immediately taken in by the other girls as family. They welcomed her with warm hugs and excitedly showing her to her dressing station.
The Midas Club was expensive in every way. Cover, drinks, and girls. But if you had the cash to burn then Midas would take care of you. The club manager explained how the private dances worked, the non-touching policies for standard customers, and how enough money could buy sex. If she decided to sleep with customers then the establishment was entitled to the same percentage of any ‘tips.’
That night Gaby drank an entire bottle of champagne and played the radio too loudly, wishing desperately that this assignment had required she work on engines instead.
Gaby’s first dance was with two other girls. The three of them were dressed as sailors with little white hats and navy blue shift dresses dancing a silly go-go routine. After, Gaby scurried offstage feeling lighter and hopeful, joining the other girls for celebratory drinks and laughing for the first time in a long time.
It took several weeks of dancing on the sidelines before Gaby was granted her first main stage appearance and finally, the pieces in this elaborate game of chess were starting to move. It was time to work.
A garment bag from Waverly appeared at her flat and she unzipped it to reveal a diamond-encrusted bodysuit corset with a fluffy train of six feather boas that protruded like tails. Gaby ran a hesitant hand over the fabric, feeling the hardness of the diamonds, knowing with certainty that they were real. How else to bait a cocaine-fueled jeweler than with a woman made of precious rocks?
Gaby put the outfit on without lacing the back and admired herself in the mirror, holding the loose unlaced bodice to her breasts. The hundreds of diamonds reflected the daylight into millions of sparkling fragments that danced on the floor and walls. She looked at the reflection and felt like she didn’t know this woman. Her eyes were still smudged with shadow from the previous night, there were crumpled American bills strewn on the table next to her, and her feet ached with blisters from ill-fitting heels. Living as Sabine was exhausting but Gaby had to admit she enjoyed elements of it - the independence, the glamour, the doting attention, the girls backstage and their champagne and laughter.
America was a land of excess, and Gaby didn’t have to pretend to enjoy shopping with the girls. Wherever she went she heard Illya and Napoleon bickering in the back of her mind over the clothes she would try on. Thank god they wouldn’t see her in this ensemble, dressed up like sparkling drug-lord bait, and that made Gaby feel somewhat relieved. Absentmindedly, she rubbed the pearl of the fake engagement ring on her finger and wondered where they were now.
Once Illya slipped back behind the iron curtain Oleg had kept him busy with assignments. Nothing calmed the pulsing in his brain quite like breaking a man’s bones and his director commended him on his ruthlessness, stating smugly “the West has not softened you.” Oleg was wrong though, Illya felt riddled with weaknesses. There was an ache in his chest that he had not felt since he was a boy and he would rub his palm against his chest so frequently that his KGB comrades offered him antacids.
That night, as he lay on his cot and thrashed with agitated discomfort, he thought of a woman and how her lips had hovered so close to his without ever touching. What would the KGB say if they knew that little Gaby Teller had made him weak? He had survived torture and countless battle wounds but it was a petite brunette with violent eyes that cut him at the knees.
Just as sleep was beginning to pull Illya under he heard a sharp knock on the apartment door. He leapt to his feet and grabbed for his gun, the weight of the metal reassuring and familiar as he padded silently to the threshold.
Throwing open the door he pointed the barrel right between Napoleon Solo’s eyes and couldn’t help the way his lips twisted into a brief smile. “Cowboy,” he said, holstering the gun.
“Nice to see you too, Peril,” Solo regarded the gun with distaste before handing him a manila envelope, “You’ve got mail, and a mission. We leave in two hours.”
Illya furrowed his brow and ripped into the package, rifling through the pages of the dossier and squinting at the small type. New York, Neo-Nazis, no violence unless absolutely necessary, how inconvenient. Illya froze when he turned the page to a wallet-sized photo of Gaby – unsmiling, eyes to the camera – her MI6 profile picture.
“She’ll be there,” Solo smirked at the way Illya’s posture suddenly straightened, “U.N.C.L.E. is having a little reunion.”
Later, he would carefully slip the photo into a small cigar box in his luggage where he kept his favorite keepsakes.
There was a swarm of activity around Gaby’s mirror as several women fussed with her hair. Carol, a tall blonde, backcombed the back of her skull with vigor while Helen, a stout redhead, undid Gaby’s hot curlers. Her makeup was already done, dark kohl cat eyeliner, a dramatic cut-crease, false lashes and a pink pout. She looked predatory and she loved it. Carol doused her in a shower of hairspray and the girls all laughed when Gaby started coughing.
The band fired up a new brassy song, signifying the beginning of another act.
“Curtain in ten!” a male voice called into the change room and Gaby stood, startled, shucking her silk dressing robe immediately so that she stood wearing nothing but nipple pasties and a glittering g-string. “Hurry! Help me get dressed!” she laughed at the nervousness in her voice and Carol patted her on the shoulder, the other women merely congratulated her on how ravishing she looked as they helped her step into her one-piece corset, fluffing up her feathery tails and lacing her in tight. They made quick work of her stockings and as they clipped them to her garter she felt distinctly like a soldier preparing for battle.
Finally, Gaby stepped into her heels and stood in front of the mirror to really look at her transformation. She had tried on the diamond-plastered outfit in the hotel in natural daylight with no makeup on and had thought it satisfactorily sexy. Now, under hot lights and with her female entourage buzzing behind her, she felt exactly the same she felt the day she first held a gun: powerful. Like she could make Samuel Lange tell her anything.
Solo and Kuryakin arrived via private jet at the newly named JFK airport. News of the president’s assassination chilled the air as much as the oncoming New York winter.
An unmarked car delivered them to a posh hotel and Illya couldn’t help but look up at everything, his normally dour expression melting away to softer awe. When they arrived at their room they found two thick wallet-sized cards waiting for them on the table with the words ‘Midas Club Member’ embossed in gold foil. Like clockwork, the phone rang and an appealing feminine voice told Solo that a car would be waiting for them at midnight outside the hotel.
“We will meet Gaby there?” Illya said, his eyes betraying some uneasiness. Solo simply nodded.
Both men dressed for the evening in smart suits with white shirts, Solo favouring dark blue, Kuryakin in dark gray. Each had a gun snug to their side in shoulder holsters. There was a very sobering silence between them as they pulled up to the club, flashing their membership cards and walking in without incident.
The lights were dim and the air was thick with cigarette smoke and roving figures half-obscured in hazy red light. A quintet jazz band kept the room buzzing, spitting out raunchy brass numbers and chart-topper covers. The two picked out a spot at the bar and ordered drinks, Solo ordered an Old Fashioned for himself and a White Russian for Illya before he could open his mouth to object. “Very funny, cowboy.”
Solo was scanning the floor with what looked like suave nonchalance but he was carefully cataloguing who was who in this zoo.
“In the VIP booth?” Illya asked quietly, trying to conceal his accent.
“As to be expected. Mr. Lange isn’t one to stay out of view.”
Samuel Lange was tall, dark, and handsome. His broad shoulders filled out his expensive suit and his pronounced cheekbones made his face look sculpted when cast in the glow of the stage. He was rich too. Solo looked forward to shooting him if things went south.
Lange had several large men with him, cronies, all with a dancer perched on their knee or dancing on their table, giggling and grabbing at the large bills being handed to them. It would be difficult for them to try to slip in there. Gaby could slip in there, Solo thought, if she presented herself a certain way. If she dolled up and undressed a little she could--
His eyes slid suddenly to the empty stage, the crushed velvet curtains, the dimming lights, and to his partner’s unsuspecting scowl.
The band fired up into a number that was louder and more triumphant than the last two. Everyone straightened up and turned toward the stage as a spotlight formed on the curtain. It was very dark and quiet and the band played a drum roll. A disembodied voice boomed, announcing a dancer named Sabine. Cymbals crashed, the band swelled with warm brass and a driving drumbeat.
Curtains parted to reveal a silhouetted woman reclining on an ornate chaise lounge chair, her back to the audience. A tantalizing trick of the light. As she stretched, backing up her ass into the air like a stretching cat, the audience grew raucous with whistles and yells.
Solo couldn’t help but look at Illya, try to gauge his expression, whether he knew, or if he even suspected, but he was staring at the stage with rapt attention, looking entirely undisturbed.
The mystery woman stood and took several sashaying strides forward as the spotlight turned on, catching her like a photograph in a sultry pose, one arm up, the other running down her throat, her chest thrust forward and her leg bent with perfect pinup flair. She was encased in sparkling diamonds and the visual effect was stunning, but Solo found himself looking at the familiar female face hidden behind that stage makeup.
Illya stood abruptly, his glass clattering to the ground as his slack, shaking hands lost their grip. His eyes were wide, stricken. His chest was heaving.
"It's Gaby."