November 13, 2001

"What are you doing in here today?" asked Bill Vaughn.

"Not sure. Guess I'll find out." Jack poured coffee for himself and for Bill as a matter of habit. They'd worked next to each other in the CIA for ten years now, and knew each other's ways. It wasn't friendship, but Jack preferred that; Bill was one of the few uncomplicated elements in his life.

Bill took his coffee and raised it in a gesture of thanks as they headed down the hall toward their offices. The morning flurry of activity had agents and secretaries bustling around, talking on phones, and distributing sheaves of memos on every subject under the sun. SD-6, on the other hand, was a virtually paperless office. At times Jack thought he should stop bringing the CIA intel and start bringing them organizational plans. And Marshall.

"It's just weird, Devlin calling you in like this," Bill said. "Were you able to cover?"

"Sloane's covered." Jack could have left the conversation at that. However, he suspected he knew the reason why Devlin had asked him to come into the agency today; he wanted to be ready for the discussion that would follow, and having a sounding board beforehand would probably help. "Actually - do you have a minute? I'd like to talk something over with you."

"Yeah, sure thing." Of course Bill realized that Jack wanted to discuss something important, but he gave no sign until they were safely within Bill's office, the door shut. "Now, tell me what's up."

"I'm not certain," Jack said as they each took a seat. Bill's desk was a riot of paper and pens and knickknacks; he had to meet Bill's eyes over the obstacle of a misshapen clay pencil-holder his son had made as some sort of class project years ago. "But I suspect this is Devlin finally responding to a memo I sent him a couple months back, right before the world went crazy."

Bill groaned, a sound that somehow both expressed tragic grief and chronic sleeplessness. "Right. The man finally worked his way to the bottom of his in-box. What did your memo say?"

"I want permission to confront Arvin Sloane with some information. Nothing classified."

"Since when do you ask Devlin's permission for anything you really want to do?"

"Since I started needing Devlin on my good side. My work at SD-6 requires - more latitude than it once did." Jack hated waiting, but he hated the prospect of a short leash far more.

"Okay, then. What's this info you want to run by Sloane?"

"I've learned that, seven years ago, Sloane made an effort to recruit Sydney into SD-6."

Bill studied him for a second. "Am I supposed to be shocked by this? On the list of reprehensible things SD-6 does, recruiting comes down pretty low. We recruit the same people, in pretty much the same way. And you ought to know. You ran Project Christmas, after all."

"Sloane wasn't recruiting Sydney for her skills. If he had been, he would have told me first. The man meant to use her as a kind of hostage for my loyalty, and that is unacceptable."

"Listen, I know it's - unnerving, thinking about your kid in this business. My son joined the agency a couple years back."

"Yes, but Michael's an analyst," Jack said. He remembered this information purely as text from a personnel sheet; his only impressions of Bill's son were vague and half-formed, a suggestion of a quiet young man who wore indifferent suits. "That's as safe as banking."

"Until the day your analyst son puts in for field-agent training, which Michael did last week." Bill ran one hand through his steel-gray hair and sighed. "I can't talk him out of it. His mother can't cry him out of it. So, yeah, I know where you're coming from. But why get up Sloane's ass about it? Sydney didn't join, right?"

"No." He would have liked to add that his daughter had more sense, but in light of Michael's decision to apply for field training, he let it go. "Sloane believes he holds the balance of power in our personal and professional relationship. I let him believe that, because it serves our purposes. But there are lines he can't cross, and I think I'm entitled to remind him of those lines."

"Jack. If you walk in there and make it sound to Devlin like you just want to take Sloane down a notch, he's never gonna go for it."

It helped when the sounding board was smart enough to know he was a sounding board. Jack tried again: "If Sloane even suspects that I've found out - and he's close enough to my daughter that she could possibly allude to my reaction - then he'll expect me to confront him about it. Not doing so would raise his suspicions, whereas a confrontation will be a day's argument, no more."

"Better." Bill gave Jack an approving nod, then sipped his coffee. "Not much arguing with that one. You're in good shape for your meeting. Assuming that's what it's about."

**

"We're not here to discuss your daughter," Devlin said, then sighed. "At least, not directly."

Jack mentally filed away his counterarguments for another time. "What do you mean, not directly?"

Devlin was silent for a few moments, tapping his fingers on the desk and looking anywhere but at Jack. A faint stir of unease with Jack was quickly damped down. Whatever was coming would require his full attention and resources.

At last Devlin said, "As you know, we've been tracking the workings of a new player in Eastern Europe, an arms syndicate that recently challenged K Directorate's market in North Africa. The organization's not a major contender at this point, but you know as well as I do that this is the stage where they need to be stopped."

Jack nodded; this was old news, more or less, and the work was only tangentially related to his mission at SD-6. "I take it there have been new developments."

"We managed to get a lead on the young man who gave us so much hell in Tangiers - turns out his name is Julian Sark." A file skidded across Devlin's desk, sliding neatly into Jack's hands. Jack studied the face within for a moment, memorizing it as best he could. "Stories about the guy's background conflict, but we've finally received some solid intel on who it is he's working for."

"Sloane's going to want that name." Finally, his involvement was becoming clear. "That means we have bait for a trap."

"We want to set up a phantom source, somebody Sloane will believe in but who's actually under our control. We have a candidate in Latvia, an oil broker named Einar Birkavs, who's in prime position and willing to begin. But to gain credibility, Birkavs first needs to give Sloane some genuine information, something he really wants - specifically, the name of the leader of Sark's organization."

"I understand."

"I'm not so sure you do." Devlin pushed another file toward Jack. "First you have to know who it is Sark's been working for."

Jack opened the file and looked down at the photo inside - a black-and-white, grainy image that nonetheless showed a woman so spectacularly beautiful that he could never have mistaken her face, not if she'd aged fifty years instead of twenty, not ever.

He spoke the only word his mind could hold: "Irina."

Jack hadn't said her name aloud in years.

**

Before Sydney arrived, Jack thought it was very, very important to have a drink. Jim Bean had never been so welcome.

It was also important to stop at one drink. At the moment, Jack longed for nothing so much as the dark oblivion of alcohol, but there was no way he'd ever get through this conversation if he didn't have some control left.

He'd finally gotten it out of Devlin: The agency had suspected the truth for years. "If you had known, what could you have done differently?" Devlin had said, all surface sympathy, daring Jack to send his career to hell with any answer besides "Nothing." But wasn't that the answer? He wouldn't have changed anything then, and the truth shouldn't change anything now, not in terms of determining his course of action.

But Irina --

He took a deep sip of his drink; the ice cubes clinked against the glass as he set it down and took up Irina's picture again. He stared down into her face, reading the history of two lost decades in the new lines. She still had glorious hair, dark and thick, longer than it had been when he'd last known her. She was slightly thinner, too; Jack wondered if that was the result of discipline or desperation.

And Irina was also an international arms merchant, photographed on her way to sell surface-to-air missiles to the people in the world who least needed to own them. He had to remember that. He had to remember not who she had been, but what she had become.

What he had made her -

Jack pushed that thought from his mind, eradicating it as though it had never been.

On many occasions in his life, Jack had endured being tied up or chained for an extended period of time. The pain lasted for hours, then was replaced by a dull, welcome numbness that clouded both sensation and thought. You could use that numbness as a barrier between you and your captors, disassociate yourself from the abused body that contained you. Jack had mastered the skill through difficult practice. So he knew that the most dangerous moment - the moment that could break you completely - was when your captor released your bonds. Blood pumped freely where it had been cut off; feeling returned, and with it all your pain and vulnerability. Even worse was the emotional reaction: You wanted to be grateful, to feel relief, to express thanks or even happiness. Giving in to that impulse was fatal.

Jack had never given in, and he didn't intend to start now.

The doorbell chimed twice, a habit of Sydney's from childhood. Jack bolted the last of his drink, then turned the photo over on the table and went to the door. Sydney was shifting from foot to foot, wearing a short skirt and sparkly blouse; he felt a strange pang of guilt for interrupting a night out with her friends. She gave him an uncertain smile before quickly kissing him on the cheek. "Hi there," she said, stepping inside. "What's the 911 call about?"

"It's not an emergency. I just needed to talk to you tonight."

"Okay." Sydney was clearly unconvinced, and with good reason: He'd never summoned her home like this before. There had never been cause.

She sat down with care, placing both hands on the arms of her chair as if bracing herself for an impact. He realized that he hadn't turned on the overhead light when the sun went down; the room was illuminated only with the burnt-orange glow from one mica-shaded lamp. The golden light caught in Sydney's hair - her mother's glorious hair. All at once, Jack was struck by her youth, her beauty, the concern for him written so clearly in her features. He gave into a desire he rarely indulged and said, "I hope you know how much I love you."

"Oh, God." Sydney's face went white. "You're dying."

"No! No, honey, I'm fine."

"Are you sure? When you called, you sounded so strange." She held out her hand and he clasped it as he sat on the sofa, grateful to be able to give his daughter some comfort, and to take some in return. "You don't call out of the blue like that. I could set my clock by you calling, but tonight  -- and you wanted to talk to me right away, and you - are you just sick, maybe? Maybe some tests -"

"I'm perfectly healthy. That's the truth. I wanted to talk to you about something else entirely."

She breathed in and out, visibly calming herself. "Something important."

"Yes."

"Something bad."

"No. But it's something I need you to keep a secret. You're going to want to tell people about this, very badly. But you absolutely must not tell anyone until I let you know it's all right."

Her voice was no more than a whisper. "Okay."

Jack covered his daughter's hand with both of his own. "I received word today that your mother is alive."

He expected her to scream or shout or laugh or leap up from her chair. But at first, Sydney's face didn't change at all; she just kept staring at him, her mouth set, her body completely still. But then Jack saw that her eyes were welling with tears. As they began to trickle down her cheeks, she said, "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, yes." After a moment's hesitation, he picked up the photo and handed it to Sydney, who held it with shaking hands.

"But - but I heard them kill her."

"You heard them hurting her. But you didn't hear her die."

"Oh, my God. Oh - Dad, it's her, it's really her - she looks so beautiful, so beautiful -" Sydney gulped back a sob, then flung her arms around Jack, embracing him more tightly than she had in years. "How did you find out? Did - did she call you? Is she coming here? Or are we going - Dad, I can pack tonight, we can fly out first thing tomorrow -"

"She didn't call me, Sydney." From now on, Jack knew, the revelations could only hurt. He let go of his daughter slowly, trying to store up the sensation of her embrace and etch it deeply into his memory. "I don't think she even realizes that we know she's alive."

"Did they put her in jail? Is she still in jail? No, she wouldn't be. And this doesn't look like a jail - is this some kind of market or something? It's not Russia." Sydney turned to her father in a panic. "Do you think that - all this time - she thought WE were dead? The KGB might have told her that, to - to hurt her, maybe."

"I don't know what she knows about us." It was possible that Sydney's guess was correct, but Jack's knowledge of KGB procedures suggested that such a lie was unlikely to be sustained long-term. Probably she knew they were alive - at the very least. For the first time, Jack realized that Irina either didn't give a damn about her lost family, or that she'd found out much more about them than they knew about her. He should have found the second option the more disturbing of the two.

"She must have been looking for us for so long." Sydney brushed her fingertips reverently above the surface of the photo; she didn't even want to smudge her mother's image. "We never should have changed our last name when we moved to America; I never even got why you wanted to do that in the first place. It's not like the KGB was going to come after us in California."

"Sydney -"

"Sydney! We even changed my first name. No wonder she couldn't find us." She gripped Jack's hand for a moment, then slumped back in her chair, as if exhausted. "How did you find her? Have - have you been looking for her all this time, and not telling me?"

"No." His short answer jarred her, he could see. But from now on, it would only get worse. Jack wanted to do anything but tell Sydney what he was about to tell her - a cocktail of truths, half-truths and lies that would damage her for a long time, and their relationship forever. But it was better that he should hurt her now, in a way he could understand and control, than to leave it for Sloane to do later.

"Then how?"

"I found out through work."

"The BANK?"

"I don't work at the bank. For that matter, neither does Arvin Sloane." Jack took a deep breath and continued, "I work for the Central Intelligence Agency."

Which was precisely what Sloane would tell Sydney when she asked him - and she would ask him, soon.

Sydney stared at him. "The CIA."

"Yes."

"But you - it's not like - I mean -" She was apparently too bemused to do anything but gape at him; Jack had the distinct sense that, if matters were any less dire, this moment might be funny. "You're just an office guy, though, right? Those trips you take - those aren't - it's not like you're James Bond or anything."

"Not really."

"Wait - wait. I'm on overload here." Sydney got to her feet, shaking her head to clear it. With a pang, Jack saw that she was already unsteady, trembling slightly as she paced in a slow circle. "Okay. Whoa. Dad's with the CIA." Her eyes narrowed. "That time people asked me to join the agency - that was because of you, wasn't it?"

"Absolutely not." It was comfortable, for a moment, to be able to take refuge in the full truth.  "Children of agents are often recruited as agents themselves; that's routine. But I didn't know about it, and I wouldn't have approved it if I had."

She gave him an odd look, but he didn't have time to determine why. Her next question was the one that he'd been dreading: "When did you go to work for the CIA?"

The room seemed quieter than it had ever been before. "In 1969."

Even now, when Sydney was overwhelmed with emotion, her fine, logical mind was at work, and Jack could see her making links, drawing connections. The realization struck her, jolting her to a standstill. For a few long moments they stared at each other, motionless, without words.

"You went to Russia for the CIA." There was no need to confirm it; she knew. "Were you working with my mother?"

"No."

"I was afraid you were going to say that." Sydney didn't look afraid. Her face had the expression he'd seen behind a few snipers' rifles. "Were you - were you spying on her?"

"Yes, Sydney. I was." Jack wished he'd had more than one drink.

Tears were in her eyes again, her mouth twisting in a terrible grimace of grief and rage. "What happened to her - the way that they hurt her - tell me the truth. Was that because of you?"

Oh, God. "Yes."

Sydney raked her hand through her hair, pulling it back so tightly it seemed as though it should hurt. The shadows in the room almost obscured her face, but Jack could still see. "Did you marry her because you loved her? Or because they told you to?"

One day ago, Jack would have said that he had only obeyed orders. He still wanted to believe that. That was the answer that made the past twenty years of his life make sense.

"Did you ever love her? At all, Dad?"

He wanted to say yes. He wanted to say no. Most of all, he wanted to know which of the two answers would be a lie. But Jack realized, in a flush of nauseating defeat, that he wouldn't know the truth unless and until he saw Irina again.

The silence stretched out between father and daughter, falling onto Jack, weighing him down. When Jack stood to face her, he felt heavy and slow.

"I've never really known you at all, have I? My own father is a total stranger. All this time - I used to wish I knew you better, that you'd share your secrets with me. I was so wrong. I'd have been better off never knowing you at all."

"Don't say that." A thousand trips to school in the morning, half-a-dozen ballet recitals, hours of working at his desk with her hiding at his feet: Surely this didn't erase all of that, make it worthless.

"Your wife never knew you. So why should your daughter be any different?" Her eyes widened. "Oh, shit. Dad - that photo, your job - are you going to spy on her again? Are you?"

"That's part of my assignment."

In the space of a second, Sydney was in front of him; Jack knew the blow was coming, but he didn't dodge it. Her slap echoed in the room, a flat, dead sound.

They stood there for a long few moments, pain sparking across his skin, Sydney with her fists balled at her sides as though she wanted to strike again. She kept opening her mouth to speak, but then she would close it again to stifle a sob. Jack wished he could hold her but knew it was impossible, now and possibly from this moment on.

He'd tried to brace himself but nothing - nothing - could ever have prepared him for the pain of looking into his daughter's eyes and seeing only hate.

At last she stumbled away from him, putting the chair between them. "You let me spend my whole life believing in lies. The truth obviously doesn't matter to you. So why are you telling me anything now?"

The truth was all Jack had, but it gave no comfort. "I'm telling you so that Arvin Sloane can't tell you first. I wanted you to hear it from me."

Sydney gripped the back of her chair as though she wanted to break it apart, and her father along with it. "Mr. Sloane just would have wanted me to know. Because I deserve to know about my mother, and about what you - what you did to her." She laughed, a short, hard sound unlike any he'd ever heard from her. "You should have left it to Mr. Sloane, Dad. He would've tried to make you sound like a good person, like there was some reason that could possibly excuse what you've done."

"Don't be naÔve," Jack snapped. "Do you think for an instant that Sloane isn't up to his neck in this? He knew my assignment in 1972 before I did."

That startled her, and Jack felt a mean kind of gratification; it felt dangerously good to have some solid ground on which to stand, from which to strike.

But then Sydney whispered, "Mr. Sloane didn't spend eight years betraying my mother, every single second of every day. And you did. Dad, I will never forgive you for this. Never."

Jack believed her.

This time, the silence stretched out even longer, and was broken only when Sydney stalked around the chair to grab her evening bag and her mother's picture. "Don't call me. Don't come to my house."

"If that's what you want. Sydney, listen to me: You can't tell anyone any of this. Not your friends, not --" What was that oaf's name? To hell with it. "Not your boyfriend, not anyone."

"I can tell Mr. Sloane," she said. "He already knows, right? So, no harm done. And I need to talk about this with somebody I can actually trust."

Jack held up his hand. "Not even Sloane. Not yet. Give it - three days, and if you can, let him be the one to approach you. He probably will. When you talk to him, don't reveal when I told you."

"Oh, I get it. You're telling me that your best friend knows everything, so you're not the only guilty one, but then when I go to talk to him -"

"Sydney, THINK. In this business, it's difficult to know when you can speak openly, and where. If you raise this subject at the wrong time, in the wrong place - it could mean lives. Not just mine. I don't say this lightly."

She hesitated, and Jack was relieved to see it; no matter how furious she was, Sydney was still in control, still able to see reason. "Three days."

"Thank you," Jack said, but she was already going out the door; the slam drowned out his words.

**

outside Valmiera, Latvia

Two days later, Sydney's words were still ringing in Jack's ears.

Somebody I can trust, she'd said, talking about Arvin Sloane.

I will never forgive you for this. Never.

Did you ever love her?

He pulled aside the waterlogged wooden gate that stood between the gravel road and the pathway up to the source's house. Chilled by the temperature and the misty air, he tugged the hood of his black parka over his head. At 3 p.m., the sun was already near setting in Latvia; Jack knew this primarily because the rainclouds above were becoming a darker shade of gray.

The sun set so early at these latitudes; he remembered Moscow sunsets that seemed to come just after lunchtime. Needing streetlights to guide his way home after work. Looking up at the light shining from his apartment window, wondering if he would see Irina silhouetted there.

Focus, he told himself. He had four hours to work with Einar Birkavs, too short a time to prepare him for the work of a double agent, but all they had. Part of that time would be spent briefing Birkavs about Irina Derevko, and Jack could not afford to be distracted by emotion, nor to betray any.

On the other hand, part of preparing for any assignment was assessing and confronting his weaknesses in the given situation. To do otherwise threatened his concentration, his objectivity, and therefore his life.

His footsteps crunched on the stones in the pathway as he trudged up the steep hillside; Birkavs' country home was now visible in the twilight, a small, roughly built house that reminded him of the dacha where he had spent so many summer days with Irina, where he had asked her to marry him. This time, Jack allowed the association to linger in his mind.

For eight years, he'd told himself that his love for Irina was real, and that his duty was just a shadow, a set of tasks to be fulfilled and then forgotten, no more. For the next twenty years, he'd told himself that his duty was real, and that his love for Irina had been the shadow. His mind was geared to accept that one of those perspectives - either of them - was true. But both seemed to share an equal measure of the truth, and neither of them made any sense any more. His mind had become a foreign country, incomprehensible and unfamiliar; Jack had the same sense of disorientation he'd known when Sloane first arrived in Moscow to extract him.

To hell with it. He'd learn to deal with this another day; certainly the situation seemed unlikely to resolve itself any time soon.

And Jack had already realized he wouldn't know the most important truth of all until he saw Irina again.

By the time he reached Birkavs' home, he had steadied himself and felt ready to start work. Jack took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of the rain-damp earth, the nearby pines. His head clear, he stepped to the door and lifted his hand to knock -

--and saw that the door was slightly ajar.

Jack was already visible from the windows. Run or stay? Birkavs was supposed to be completely safe. This indicated a serious breach. Stay.

Within two seconds, Jack had his pistol in hand; within three, he was through the door, making no sound. Birkavs' house appeared to be completely dark, save for the overhead light in the hallway. He cocked his head to listen, damning himself for forgetting to pull down his parka hood; sound was now muffled, but taking the hood down at this point would probably make more noise than its presence concealed.

His back near one wall, Jack moved along to the first open doorway, which appeared to lead to the kitchen. One, two, three and he ducked inside. Birkavs' body lay sprawled on the floor, his hands and legs splayed out like a child making a snow angel. A sharp corner of light, drawn by the doorway, bisected the dead man's arms. The house was built at a slight tilt, so Birkavs' blood had streamed from his head to pool in a far corner; one bloody footprint, apparently a man's, led away from the body.

On one of Birkavs' hands was an oval circled by two brackets - the sign of Rambaldi. Jack hadn't seen that sign in twenty years.

Focus.

Birkavs confirmed dead, Jack thought. The next step was confirming the house secure. After that, he could begin finding out what had gone wrong here.

Then the sharp corner of light from the hallway changed.

Jack spun around just in time to block the blow. He recognized the face of Julian Sark a split second before he smashed his fist into Sark's nose.

Sark's head snapped back, and he staggered, but an instant later his foot slammed into Jack's side with a splintering crack. When the adrenalin wore off, Jack thought as he shoved Sark against the wall, the broken rib was going to hurt like hell.

"Agent Bristow." Sark smiled with bloodied lips. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I've heard so much about you."

Jack brought his pistol down across Sark's head, hard. Sark sagged against the wall, unconscious, held up only by Jack's elbow against his chest. "Charmed, I'm sure."

He let Sark fall to the floor in order to pull his hood down; if anyone was within hearing distance, he'd already been revealed. Sark might have been alone, and probably he was; if so, the location would be secure, and having Sark as a captive was better luck than Jack had hoped for only a few seconds ago. But before he could bind Sark and contact Langley, he'd have to make certain that nobody else was in the house. Unwillingly, he edged away from the unconscious man, moving toward the back rooms.

Was there an entrance in the back? Find out when you get there. Move fast.

The front room was empty; the bedroom was trickier, requiring a closet check. Jack pulled open a door, smelled mothballs and wool, saw nothing, shut it again. Then Jack moved back into the hallway, and he saw her.

Irina stood in the front door of the cottage, next to Sark's unconscious body. She wore a black shirt and jeans; her hair hung free, thick and dark. As she focused on him, her lips parted in what might be shock.

For a long moment, they only stared at each other, not moving, not breathing. Jack couldn't think; he could only look at her. The photograph could never have prepared him for the sight of her in color, in motion, three-dimensional, alive.

And, as he saw her, he knew the truth.

Her shoulder twitched, just the slightest bit, and in a blur of motion her hand was coming up, and Jack didn't have to see her gun, his body was reacting faster than his mind, raising his own arm to fire.

The two blasts deafened him; paint chips and splinters jabbed into the side of his face. Jack stumbled backwards, trying to see through the smoke and the dark whether or not Irina was still standing -

A heavy blow thudded into his head, so powerfully that Jack could smell his own blood. He heard himself fall rather than felt it; above him, he could faintly see a large form looming.

Irina's voice spoke the first words he'd heard from her in twenty years: "Well done, Piotr."

So there was a back entrance, Jack thought, before he passed out.

**

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