Chapter One
Outside Rivas, Nicaragua
"What's the matter, Ingo? Something you don't like?"
German arms dealer Ingo Krauss - who is in truth Jack Bristow, CIA agent, deep undercover - remains impassive. If he were genuinely to begin naming off everything about this situation he doesn't like, it would take a while. "I want us to conduct our business. Is this too much to ask?"
Some of the dark eyes in the room think that it is. Eduardo, who understands more than the others do and yet still not enough, is more willing to play up to Krauss. "No way. We're there, okay? Let's do this thing."
He's in a small, squalid room in a large, squalid compound; the heat is blistering, the smell of sweat and marijuana thick in the air all the time. At this moment, he's seated across from Eduardo Reyes, a low-level courier in the illegal arms trade who has higher-level friends. One of these friends is - or was - Ingo Krauss, who has had a long, hard couple of weeks, undergoing interrogation in US captivity, stripped of his freedom from torture by the Patriot Act. Very early in the process, the CIA learned that Krauss and Reyes never met face-to-face, and that Reyes is better connected than they'd thought. And that's what brought Jack here.
Jack was sick of speaking German by day two, and sick of these jackals by hour two. Within another week, the CIA's trap will be sprung and he'll be rid of them. For now, he's trapped here, pretending to be someone he's not, someone he has no desire to be.
Eager to please, Eduardo talks Jack through some of his trade routes, naming contacts, mapping out specific locales. Jack's memory is a precise instrument, but even he finds himself hard-pressed to retain this much information at this level of detail. A few bits of data stand out from the rest: an FBI agent who's taking kickbacks to let them dock in Florida, sources for false documentation, the first solid intel they've gotten on Anna Espinoza in two years. Jack keeps interrogating Eduardo the way Ingo Krauss would, demanding insurance for his investment; the afternoon heat is oppressive, plastering his pale shirt to his body. Even the stucco walls that surround him are hot, but he presses on.
One of Eduardo's lieutenants - young for the job, knife-scarred, obviously still a little drunk from the night before - has been chafing under the bridle he has to put on his temper for Krauss. Jack has noticed that since he arrived five days ago and has watched him closely. The challenge isn't unexpected when it comes: "Wait, wait, wait - what are you asking about Espinoza for? You work with US. Not with K Directorate. Not with that bitch."
"I work with whomever I choose." Inwardly Jack curses himself for asking too much; this boy's arrogant demand is meaningless, but it might lead Eduardo to wonder whether Krauss wouldn't know all this about Espinoza already.
Eduardo doesn't seem to be that introspective, though. "Shut up already." He gestures dismissively to the boy. "Say something when you have something important to say. Which means never."
That takes it too far; humiliated and furious at being dismissed by his idol, the boy is on his feet in an instant. His anger isn't directed at Eduardo, though, but at the interloper who took him away. "Some of us are tired of you coming in here and giving us orders. You give us money, we do a job. That's it. Got it?"
Jack's natural inclination would be to ignore this; it's scarcely worth notice. Unfortunately, he has to obey Krauss' natural inclinations. Those jagged gears are grinding within him now, telling him what to do, telling him not to care.
"That doesn't make us your slaves or your servants, and you don't get to come in here and -"
Jack has his pistol in his hand in half a second; half a second more, and one of the boy's kneecaps explodes in blood and bone. Screaming fills the room even before Jack fires again and sends the second knee the way of the first.
The boy's shrieks are the only sound in the room then; coal-colored smoke rises from the pistol as Jack holsters it. When Jack breathes in, he can smell the dusty, metallic edge of blood in the air. He knows that scent well.
Eduardo sighs and motions to the others. "Get him out of here and clean this up. Damn, Krauss, you didn't have to do both knees."
"Back to work," is Jack's only response, but the truth of it hits him hard. No, he didn't have to do both knees.
"Christ!" Eduardo is clearly more upset about the mess on the floor than he is with the sobbing boy on the floor. "You know how the K Directorate people described you to me? They said you were a machine made of black metal. They didn't lie."
Jack allows himself to be relieved that they didn't follow it up with a picture. But that is only a poor distraction from the widening puddle of blood on the floor.
Damn, damn, damn. He never should have taken this assignment. Another agent could have done this job, and Jack should have declined it. Perhaps Michael Vaughn would benefit from six weeks away from both his wife and Jack's daughter. Vaughn, of course, is entirely the wrong age to pretend to be Ingo Krauss, but in Jack's opinion, perspective would do him a world of good.
Perspective is the last thing Jack needs.
When Jack left Los Angeles for Nicaragua, Sydney insisted on driving him to the airfield. She makes excuses for them to be together now, dropping by his apartment when she's "running errands," calling to ask his opinion about the most trivial things. He's always glad to hear from her, he always makes the time, even drops by and calls in return. At first it felt as though they were playing the roles of loving parent and child, but it doesn't feel like that any longer. It has become real.
"You'll be careful," she said to him, before she put him on the plane. She wasn't an agent speaking to another agent, but a daughter wanting a promise.
"I'll be careful," he said, touching her shoulder. Her beautiful face lighted in a smile.
For years, Jack couldn't remember how to be the loving, attentive father that Sydney needed. Then he thought he'd lost her, and damned himself for putting his duty as a spy ahead of his duty as a parent. Finally, he spent a year in solitary confinement, knowing Sydney was alive and in trouble but that he couldn't reach her, and promising himself that if he ever, ever got the chance again, it was all going to be different.
Jack has kept his word. He has become the man Sydney needs him to be, a role that feels more natural, more real, to him all the time. But that man has very little to do with this room, this work, or the ragged screams of the boy who's being dragged down the hall. A separate, sticky line of gore traces the path of each leg.
If I told Irina about this, he thinks, she'd laugh at my reaction. More troubling than this is the fact that he wants to tell Irina about it. If there's one way to make his mind more confused than it already is, that's by bringing Irina into it.
Jack cannot afford to confuse himself any more deeply than he already has. He has to find his way back to Sydney, and soon.
"Back to work," Jack says again. Eduardo shrugs and pulls out another map.
The rest of the session, Jack lets the menace in the room simmer, broiling up from all of them like heat and sweat. He knows the others are now very aware of his pistol. When they're finally done, Jack makes quite a show of wanting some space to himself. They give it to him, poorly hiding their relief.
This allows him to pass without suspicion from the main hall into what passes for a control center.
Free at last from the need to pretend to be anyone else, Jack straightens his back, rolls up his shirtsleeves and gets to work. He hacks into their security with little difficulty; this operation is low-tech, so much so that it until now it had worked to Eduardo's advantage. Marshall can't even find the parts to make the equipment that would be compatible - they aren't manufactured anymore. Which is how Jack's presence became necessary here in the first place.
He's able to turn off the electric locks that stand vigil over each of the armament-storage facilities; the CIA will be able to access those areas easily on their arrival. Eduardo's men don't need to realize he's done this, of course, so Jack activates a code he designed years ago, back when this technology was current: It bounces false signals back and forth, reporting the locks operational, lying for him all the time.
For a moment he remembers the CIA reports on the excellent computer work done by Irina's organization - remembers how she looked when she sifted through the Echelon files for their purposes and her own. Her hands were so broad and swift, so purposeful, muscled down to the fingers. He remembers those hands well, so many delicious things they can do.
Jack closes his eyes tightly and damns the heat. Then he finishes his work and gets the hell out of the control room before anybody notices where he's gone.
**
That night, they try to appease his temper by throwing a party.
"What's the matter, Ingo?" Eduardo says, cupping his hand appreciatively over his girl's ass. "You don't like girls?" All around him in the basement hall, men are laughing, drinking, groping the young women they've paid for. They've had a long, hard couple of weeks, preparing for a large shipment coming in from one of Ingo Krauss' Ukrainian contacts; tonight, they're going to let off some steam.
"When I see one I like, I'll have her," Jack replies, almost sneering. "I'm more selective than your men." Eduardo laughs and turns back to his girl for the night.
Jack has no objections to prostitution or its patronage; he spends much of his time with people who give and accept money for more troubling acts than sex. In the mid-1980s, his desire in as much wreckage as his heart, he took advantage of the discretion and disposability of a few professionals himself. But those were, without exception, women who had made their choices and could be expected to honor his. These girls - their average age is probably 15. He suspects they're desperate at best, slaves at worst, and the thought of using one of them is repugnant.
But he also has a cover to maintain.
He goes and pours himself another drink. One of the girls - no doubt seeing that he is the cleanest and most sober man in the room - attaches herself to his side and, by way of introduction, offers to suck him off. Jack puts his arm around her shoulders, claiming her for his own; she'll do as well as any other. A relieved smile illuminates her round face for a moment, before she assumes her best version of a seductive pout. The girl's long-fingered hands explore his body inexpertly. She hasn't been at this long.
Quickly, Jack pours her a tequila; she's too young for it, but that's the least of her problems. She gulps it down, her long brown throat rippling with every swallow. More to the point, her hands are now busy holding the glass.
Jack hasn't taken a woman to bed since the last time he was with Irina, now more than a year and a half ago. Just the nearness of sex - the upward tilt of young breasts beneath thin fabric, the way the men fondle the girls they're dancing with - has more power over him than it ought to. Not enough to make him enjoy this spectacle, but enough to make him wish for -- better things. Time to get the hell out of here.
So he steers his girl back to his room of the compound. Her hair is in two pigtails, fastened with glittery pink beads, and those are what he focuses on as they go upstairs. Even as he shuts the door behind him, she flops down on the bed and lifts up her white skirt. She's naked beneath, and Jack has more than a glimpse of thighs and dark curls before he can push her skirt down again.
She stares at him in dull surprise, and he claims to be sick - the alcohol. At this, she springs into action, getting him settled on the bed, wringing out a cloth with water and putting it on his forehead. The girl - Gabriela is the name she gives, though it's no doubt false - knows how to take care of people. Somebody must have taken care of her once.
He thanks her, tries to make some conversation. It's a mistake. "Why are you - how did you come to do this?"
Gabriela says, so casually she might be describing the weather, "My father sold me."
Jack thinks of Sydney, and the rotgut tequila churns in his gut, and in another few moments his head is over the basin, vomiting for real. Gabriela pats his back and clucks her tongue in sympathy.
**
Sydney is holding out a wineglass for Jack to fill. But when he pours, only black powder and oil flow from the bottle. He watches his daughter's face change as coal-colored smoke swirls around the goblet.
"I don't know this vintage," she says.
"It's all we have." Jack wants to take the glass from her, but it's too late; the jailers have closed the glass wall already, and now he can't touch her, only see her. She looks so beautiful, but so sad.
"It's okay. I'll drink it." Sydney smiles as she holds the goblet up, as if for a toast. "I love you."
His clumsy hands of stone slam against the glass, in despair at his own impotence. "Sydney, don't drink it. You don't have to. Give it to me, and I'll drink it for you."
"You already drank it, didn't you?" He nods, though he can't remember when. "Then we should drink it together. Besides, I can do it. Watch me, Daddy."
And then she's lifted her cup to her lips, as though it were filled with wine and not that strange, brackish mess; the powder shifts around the bottom like silt, tossed about in the oily liquid. Coal-colored smoke flows over the rim, onto her hand, and it turns her skin the stone-gray. No, this can't happen. Not to Sydney. He has to stop her, no matter what, and he hits the glass again and again and again --
Jack awakens with a start; it's dawn. Gabriela is asleep beside him in the bed; she must have climbed in after he fell asleep. If her owners work her as hard as Jack suspects they do, she no doubt needs the rest. Now that some light is coming in through the window, he can see just how young she is. Her cheeks are soft with baby fat.
Jack's room smells like sweat, his own and the girl's. He brushes off his pale suit - hopelessly wrinkled from having been slept in - and goes to the window to breathe some fresh air. It's already hot. Outside, a snake slithers along a leafy branch, green inside green. Something about the scents of the world outside - fresh and alive, dirt and leaves and some kind of crimson flower with drooping petals - awakens the desire he hadn't known the night before.
He thinks of Irina, and shuts his eyes.
If she were here, if she were the one lying in that bed, the sordid, rank room wouldn't matter. Or the dirt on the floor, or the dingy walls - none of it. Jack knows he'd be incapable of noticing anything in the room but her. He imagines her waking to his touch, smiling up at him hot and slow, arching her back so that her breasts fill his hands -
But when Jack tries to imagine kissing her, it's Katya's mouth he remembers.
Dammit. That is not a good direction for his thoughts to be going, not at all.
Jack is gifted at self-deception, but not even he could lie to himself about the most basic fact: Irina is the only woman he's ever loved, probably the only one he will ever love. He wants and needs her as badly now as he ever did when she called herself Laura, and the fact that he's unlikely to be with her again soon, if ever, doesn't change that.
But Katya has an allure of her own, and he can't lie to himself about that either. After months of solitude and months more of simple loneliness, it was Katya who first kissed him, who first reawakened the slow stirring of desire in his body. He'd banked those fires down deep while he was imprisoned; Katya fanned those embers into a blaze that takes wild directions of its own. That gives her a kind of power that he wishes she didn't have.
So does the fact that she's Irina's sister. Normally, that might be a turn-off, or at least a warning sign, but it only aggravates this situation. Being closer to Katya would mean being closer to Irina, in a way; the reasoning is twisted, but Jack realizes that means it fits their current relationship all too well.
Katya is not Irina, and he does not love her; she is enough like and unlike Irina that he can want her, and it doesn't feel like betrayal. It feels only natural.
Irina, no doubt, would disagree.
Enough of this. What happened between him and Katya was a moment's impulse, no more. Probably he will never see her again. Whatever may yet come to pass for him and Irina appears to be entirely beyond his control for the time being. And he has more pressing concerns to concentrate on.
He tucks a few bills into Gabriela's fist, clenched even in her sleep, and hopes she will be able to keep them for herself. But he doubts it.
**
The next day passes in much the same way: Eduardo's men all have hangovers, which makes them even surlier and more resentful than usual - but they're trained enough to go out on their usual patrols. Jack keeps demanding the information Krauss would demand, turning it that way and this to get the information the CIA can use. There are trails of dried blood on the floor, but he manages to ignore them; what's done is done.
In mid-afternoon, when it's somehow even hotter than it's ever been before, he excuses himself to his room, supposedly for a siesta. As much as he craves a shower, he forces himself to sit on his bunk and take notes about what he's heard today, while the information is still fresh. Jack encodes his notes as he goes, a process as simple and automatic to him as writing in cursive. Granted, it's not the world's most complex code, but Eduardo doesn't have anybody on staff who can break it.
Just as he's beginning to think he might be able to take that shower after all, Jack hears shouting downstairs. They've captured someone -
--someone who was breaking into the armaments-storage chambers. DAMN it.
Jack grinds his teeth as he goes downstairs. Who could have detected the changes he made so quickly? Who would have been watching them so closely? Somebody else was monitoring this situation, somebody good enough to detect alterations and move fast, but somebody who got caught nevertheless. Whoever it is, Jack hopes to have the chance to kick his ass; now he has twice as much work to do before the next shipment arrives, and security's going to be even tighter. Nothing about this situation is good.
Then he goes into the basement, sees who the guards are clustered around, and realizes it's a thousand times worse than he thought.
Irina sits on her knees in the middle of the room, her arms handcuffed in front of her. Her high forehead is smudged with dirt and blood, and a tiny cut at the corner of her wide mouth glints, blood reflecting the light. The gray tank top she's wearing reveals scrapes along her slim, muscled arms; she didn't go down without a fight. She holds her head up like a queen who can't deign to notice the peasants around her. Doesn't she realize she's in trouble?
Guilt slashes at Jack, punctures his cool. She came because she recognized his codes - and because of that, she made the wrong assumptions. Whatever mess she's in is his fault. So it's up to him to get her out of it.
"Talk to me, bitch!" Eduardo waves his pistol in the general direction of her face. Contempt drips off him with the sweat; obviously, he has no idea who he's dealing with. "Who sent you? What fool sends a gringo puta to do his work?"
Irina says nothing. She might be a statue, an Egyptian terra cotta -- still, serene and eternal. This place cannot touch her, or so she believes. Jack never knows whether to damn her foolhardy confidence or envy it.
"You don't hear me?" The muzzle of Eduardo's pistol presses into her temple. Irina doesn't even blink. "You're gonna hear me."
Jack is 95% certain that Eduardo has no intention of pulling the trigger yet. But even a 5% margin of error is way the hell too much. He steps forward. "What fool leaves himself open to a woman's interference?"
Irina's head doesn't move, but her eyes dart over to him for just a moment. Her features remain smooth and impassive, betraying no recognition or surprise; of course, she would've been expecting him. For his part, Jack gives her only a moment of his attention before fixing his glare upon Eduardo.
Eduardo, his fragile patience already frayed past endurance, begins gesturing wildly with the gun. "We were sabotaged! Somebody took down our systems!"
"The same systems you intend to use to protect my merchandise?" Jack knows he's laying the German accent on thick, but that works: It's common, at moments of strong emotion or stress. "That doesn't inspire confidence."
"I swear to you, Ingo, we never had anything like this before -"
"See to it that you never do again." Jack walks closer, so near to Irina now that he could reach out and touch her. "I suggest you investigate."
Eduardo kicks Irina's thigh with his heavy-booted foot. "We'll get it out of her, don't worry."
Jack wishes he were free to wrench the pistol away and use it to remove Eduardo's face. Instead, he puts his hands around Irina's neck, his fingers encircling her throat. "I prefer to handle this matter myself."
Before Eduardo can consent or refuse, Jack jerks Irina to her feet. To maximize the distance between her and the pistol, he swings her around, shoving her roughly into the wall. Irina stifles a quick moan of pain - one he's pretty sure she faked for effect.
Although Eduardo is clearly disappointed to miss out on his fun, he wants to stay on Ingo Krauss' good side. "You do that."
Eduardo doesn't leave, nor do the other guards show any sign of doing so. That complicates things, but fortunately, Jack's partner in this charade is a brilliant actress - as he knows very well.
Jack grabs the knot of hair at the nape of Irina's neck and jerks her head back. "We'll start with something simple," he says. "What is your name?" She spits in his direction, and he shoves her back into the wall.
With her face hidden from the guards by Jack's shoulder, Irina dares to meet his eye for a moment. He tries to determine what it is she's trying to communicate: panic, anger, pain?
Lazily, she winks. The game is on.
**