"Unremarkable to look at," Sark said, his voice slightly muffled by the bag of ice he was holding to his nose. "But stronger than he appears."
"Are you analyzing Jack Bristow for me?" Irina didn't bother meeting Sark's eyes; he would understand without it, and she was busy cleaning the stripe of gunpowder burn across her cheek.
"I wouldn't presume. But, I admit, I had my own curiosity on the subject." Sark could always apologize without apologizing. Irina liked that trait in him; it reminded her of herself.
She studied her face in the bathroom mirror; a long shadow of grit still lay embedded beneath the skin along her cheekbone, but she knew from experience it was best to leave that alone. The particles would work their way out in time. And it was appropriate, she thought, that Jack would see her wearing one of his scars.
His bullet only missed her by an inch, perhaps two. Still, he missed. Irina had missed as well, but she was glad of it; she'd acted on instinct, without considering the consequences. It wasn't a mistake she made often.
From his perch on the bathtub's side, Sark said, "Piotr's ready to start the fire whenever you are; we brought enough accelerant to compensate for the damp weather. I suppose the only remaining question is whether your ex-husband should be inside or outside the residence at that time."
"I haven't decided." Irina smoothed her hair behind her ears. She hadn't expected to see Jack today - her plan would have brought them together soon, but not yet. So far, however, reality was outstripping all her plans; this scenario was more ideal than any of those she'd designed. "When Bristow awakens, I'll speak with him. After that, I'll give you your instructions."
"Understood." Sark nodded briefly and went out, to check on either Jack or the arsonist. Irina didn't care which.
In truth, she had no plans to kill Jack - at least, not yet. She'd crafted the scenario for the next stage of her life painstakingly; it was the work of years, and she'd spent effort, money and blood to buy this chance. Jack was a necessary element of that plan. He had to be in his proper position to ensure that she could claim hers.
But Sark didn't have to know that. And neither did Jack.
Rain began to rattle the windowpanes, harder than it had been in hours. Irina took a deep breath. She'd been waiting for this moment for more than twenty years, and yet now that it was here, she found herself hesitating. It wasn't that she wasn't ready, she realized. It was merely that she would miss savoring the anticipation.
Focus restored, she stepped out into the den. Piotr's hulking form leaned against the front doorway, looking out - too late - for intruders. Sark had abandoned the ice bag and now met her gaze cleanly over his blue-swollen nose. Very softly, he said, "I heard a groan a few seconds ago. Then nothing."
Irina nodded, understanding. A semiconscious man would perhaps still be groaning in pain. A conscious one would certainly have the sense to remain quiet.
She glanced at the hallway; no light shone from the bedroom where Piotr had hauled Jack's limp body. After a moment's pause, she took up a candle from a side table and held it out to Piotr. "Light this for me."
"What?"
Irina smiled. "Don't tell me you don't have a match."
**
She pushed open the door to the bedroom slowly, holding the candle out in front of her as she entered. In the flickering light, she could see a sparely furnished room, with a wooden bed in the center. On that bed lay Jack.
His arms were bound together above his head with rope that interlaced with the latticed headboard; his feet were similarly tied to the footboard. The posture didn't look comfortable. Good, Irina thought.
Jack's eyes met hers. He said nothing. She shut the door behind her and walked to the bed. Carefully, she set the candle on a nearby windowsill, then sat on the side of the mattress, next to Jack. The bedframe creaked with the extra weight.
For a few moments, Irina simply studied him in the candlelight; this meant offering him an opportunity to do the same, but she was willing to endure that. His surveillance photos hadn't done him justice, she thought. Jack had aged into his looks. She could admit that, give him his due.
She would give him everything he deserved, before she was done.
Irina said, "When I let them photograph me in Marrakesh, I knew the images would make their way back to you. But I don't know when you finally received them. I do know that you've spent whatever time you've had planning what you would say to me, when you saw me again." In the past twenty years, she had imagined countless versions of his speech, in every form from abased apology to sneering contempt. "Tell me, what did you choose?"
Jack hesitated only briefly. "Our daughter is healthy, and smart, and strong, and - I think she's happy. As far as a father can know these things. She's had a good life, and she'll have a good future."
It was the only thing he could have said that she wanted to hear. At least this - the most important of the countless debts he owed her - had been paid. "Good to know."
He spoke again; strange, how familiar his voice was, and yet how unknown. "Tell me what happened to you."
"Are you giving me orders?" She cocked her head. "Seems unwise."
"I'm not giving you orders. I'm not a fool. But I'd like to know."
"Why is that?" Irina brushed her hand against his hair - the color of steel now, not black; somehow it was more jarring to see how Jack had aged than to find her own gray hairs in the mirror. Almost invisibly, he flinched from the touch, no doubt sensing how little tenderness was in it. "Do you want to celebrate how complete your victory was over me? I suspect you already know, and that you knew it all along."
Jack didn't respond. She stared at his wrists, bound so tightly that his fingers were pale. How many times had she imagined him like this, completely at her mercy? There were nights when she had only managed to stay alive by convincing herself that this day would come, and that she would then have her revenge. It was tempting to answer the starved, frightened woman she'd been then, to simply pick up the nearest blunt object and pound the kidnapper, the betrayer, the shell that had masqueraded as her husband into so much flesh and blood and bone.
But her ideas of revenge had become more sophisticated in the past few years. If that meant denying herself more immediate kinds of gratification, so be it.
"They tortured me for weeks. They beat me until I bled, asked me questions I couldn't answer, told me truths I never wanted to hear. Then they put me in prison. Siberia. I was alone for twenty-two hours out of every twenty-four. I didn't read a book, or see a film, or have a friend in all that time. I scarcely had a conversation. I looked at the snow, and I looked at the stars. I went mad, and I came back again."
She would never know cold like that again; Irina had sworn it to herself.
"You want to know what happened to me," she continued. "But I'm the one who's sitting on this bed with you right now. Admit it, Jack - you've asked for the story you know ends well, or well enough. There are other stories, too."
Jack shifted slightly on the bed, and she saw that he was unable to fully contain a grimace of pain. Sark had done some damage, then. Irina put her hand lightly on his chest, as if to comfort him. "Katya also went to prison. She hadn't had KGB training, as I had. She didn't know how to handle the deprivation. I saw her one day across the yard, and she was pulling her hair out by the roots. Blood in the snow. I called her name and she didn't know me."
She remembered the wire fence against her hands, how unearthly it had been to scream to her sister when she'd almost forgotten how to speak.
"Babushka died only two months after you ran away; there was no family to take her in, not with all of us taken in for questioning. So she ended up with those terrible neighbors next door - you remember. I've always wondered if she died of old age, or grief, or whether that bastard had too much vodka and spent a night beating my grandmother to death instead of his wife."
Jack's eyes betrayed nothing; he met hers evenly, never glancing away. His heartbeat thumped evenly against her palm.
"They shot Nikita Ilchenko. Eight years after he'd been assigned to you, but it didn't matter; he should have detected a top-level CIA operative, and he didn't." A faraway clap of thunder rattled the windowpanes, then stilled into the soft pattering of rain. "You'll be relieved to know that they didn't keep Oleg Petrukhin jailed for long - a month or two, no more. They were quite sure he knew nothing after they'd questioned him a few times. But by then, they'd broken every bone in his hands. Ground them to powder. Remember how we used to joke, that Oleg wouldn't be able to talk if he didn't have his hands to gesture with? From what I understand, we were very nearly right. Or perhaps he simply didn't have anything else to say."
"If this casualty list is meant to injure me, don't bother," Jack said, his voice louder and sharper than she would have thought. "You trained for deep-cover assignments. You know the work and the risks. You were willing to do what you had to do; so was I."
Irina tried to remember just how long it took to strangle someone with her bare hands. "I see. Nothing personal."
"That's not entirely true." He was still as firm and stony as a general giving orders. "Whatever else you think of me, I know you've never doubted that I love Sydney." The non sequitur made Irina frown. Jack's eyes finally betrayed emotion - horror, she realized, at his own slip. What had he done?
"Valentina, you mean." It wasn't a guess. "Let's use our daughter's real name, between us."
"She's called herself Sydney for a very long time."
"You called yourself John Leary for a very long time. That didn't make it true." Valentina was still Valentina, still her daughter. If she'd forgotten that, Irina would make her remember it, and soon. Irina leaned forward and lay her head on his chest, hands beneath her chin, like she had when they were lovers; his face blanched, and she knew the weight was causing him still more pain. "Yes, I know you love Valentina. You loved Valentina enough to deny her a mother for her entire life, to take her away from everyone else she'd ever known or cared about. That's your idea of love. I should be grateful that you never loved me."
So quietly that it was almost washed away by the rain on the windowpanes, Jack said, "I did love you."
Irina smiled. "Is this my cue to swoon?"
He would still say anything, use any trick, to serve his own means.
"I loved the woman I knew in Moscow. I don't think she exists any longer." Jack's eyes narrowed. "I've read your dossier, Irina. I know how you've spent the last ten years. Trafficking in weapons, drugs, even human beings. You're not in a position to sit on moral judgment on me or on anyone."
No point in explaining her reasons. No need. "I stopped believing in moral judgments and other dreams a long time ago. I believe in realities now. I believe in cause and effect."
Irina was enjoying herself thoroughly, but it was time to stop. If it kept raining like this, soon there wouldn't be enough accelerant in the world to burn Birkavs' home and corpse to the ground. Besides, she'd said everything she wanted to say to Jack. From now on, she intended not to talk, but to act.
She sat up and stretched. "Want to beg for your life?"
"You'll do what you want to do. Nothing I say is going to make any difference."
Still unshaken. Well, she'd see him shaken soon enough. Irina slowly lowered her face to Jack's; their eyes met for one instant before she closed hers. When she brushed her lips against his, she felt his entire body tense. Good, she thought, and kissed him harder. Impossible to tell if he liked it or hated it; impossible, too, to know whether the flush of dizzying pleasure and power came from bullying him or from - no, it was because she was bullying him.
Irina pulled away; Jack had never responded to her kiss, but he was staring at her with his lips still parted, breathing just a little harder. That was more like it.
"You're right, Jack. You can't make any difference now." She stood up and walked out of the room, noticing only as she did so that her legs were slightly shaky. Adrenalin from the gunfire, of course. She left the candle behind.
Quickly, Irina put as much distance between herself and Jack as she could; she needed to refocus her energies immediately. She went out the front door, slamming it shut, using the sound as a barrier between what she'd done and what she needed to do next.
As she stepped out into the dark, Sark stood on the muddy path holding an umbrella, as neat and precise as if he'd been waiting for her on a London sidewalk. "Piotr's bringing the car around. Did you enjoy your chat?"
"I learned what I needed to know." She lifted her hands to her face to breathe on them; her gloves were in the car, and the night air was cold. When she did so, she realized her skin smelled faintly of Jack - not sweat or cologne or anything else, just the pure scent of him. She thought she'd forgotten that scent, but it was still in her memory - breathed in from the clothes she'd washed, the sheets where they'd made love. Annoyed with herself, she let her hands drop.
"Excellent. I'm glad this surprise turned to your advantage," Sark said as the car's headlights swept over them, the wheels crunching on the gravel.
"I won't be holding it against you." Irina didn't have to see any reaction on Sark's face to know how relieved he was, or to enjoy that fact.
Piotr got out of the car, slamming his door in impatience. Irina tried to damp down her own displeasure. Piotr was exactly the kind of amateur that she would originally never have dreamed of employing; when she'd first conceived of her organization, she had planned matters on a far more professional footing, and on a far grander scale.
But she'd begun her planning when she was an active KGB agent, with current names and intel at her fingertips. She hadn't been able to begin building her organization until after she was released from prison, and those four years had cost her contacts and credibility. Irina knew she was still playing catch-up from what Jack Bristow had done to her; that was just another item on the long list of his sins.
"We should start." Piotr walked through the rain toward them. "I can't work if it gets much wetter."
Sark put up one hand. "First we have to determine - will Agent Bristow be surviving the night?"
"Yes, he will." Irina could not tell these two her real reasons, but then, she didn't have to give them any reasons at all. "We'll release him some distance from here. He's not stupid; he won't cause us trouble."
"Release him?" Piotr bellowed, as though it didn't matter if they were overheard. "This man - you said he is SD-6? Have you forgotten what those bastards did to us in Oslo?"
"I forget nothing. You forget your place," Irina snapped.
"SD-6 are not a significant problem for us, in my opinion." Sark's unruffled demeanor might have masked an attempt at peacemaking - or an effort to stoke Piotr's temper even higher. With Sark, it was difficult to tell. "Fools who believe themselves to be working for the CIA? If we can't outsmart that lot, we deserve to lose."
"Forget SD-6. That man is a witness to what we've done here, and you are just letting him go!" Piotr walked up to her, within her personal space, looming over her so that she could smell the beer he'd had at lunch. "Why? Because he was a lover of yours once? What kind of reason is that?" He grabbed her arm, his fingers pressing down too hard into her skin. "I don't like this."
Irina raised an eyebrow. "Mr. Sark?"
Sark instantly pulled out his pistol and fired. Piotr did not even turn; the only movement at first was the jerk of his head as blood misted into the wet air. Irina watched his eyes dilate and cloud until he slumped over to the ground. She shook her bruised arm. "I take it you can set the fire yourself."
"It isn't among my specialties." Sark put the gun away and stepped over Piotr's body to stand at her side. "But arson scarcely seems to require an advanced degree, if Piotr's mental capabilities were any judge. Shall we remove Agent Bristow now?"
They went inside without any further conversation; Irina's main point of curiosity was whether she should come up with a pretext for releasing Jack - not just to pacify Sark's too-active curiosity, but also to set Jack on the wrong path. She didn't need her husband distracted for much longer, but she wanted another day or two yet. Besides, if she offered no explanation, Jack might believe she'd done it out of some sort of vestigial affection for him. That would serve her purposes just as well, but even the idea of inflating his ego through such a lie disgusted her.
Sark pushed open the door to the bedroom, and his eyes widened. Irina muttered a curse as she saw the bed - and only the bed. Jack was gone.
"Shit." Sark folded his arms as he studied the scene. Irina stepped forward, looking at the parts of the bedframe that lay on the floor; the old-fashioned bed was made of joined-wood pieces, and Jack had apparently been able to lift or pull parts of the footboard and headboard free. When she'd let the door slam, Jack had known he was alone and made his move. More quietly, Sark added, "I supervised Piotr, and I should have double-checked his work. I failed to foresee this method of escape."
"Bristow's good at his work. Don't underestimate him. I made that same mistake; you can't afford to do so again."
"I imagine he can't have gotten far. Agent Bristow was already hurt, and he likely aggravated his injuries through the effort of breaking the bed. This is unfamiliar terrain. I have no doubt we could find him."
"No need," she said. "Let's start a fire."
They spread the accelerant quickly, concentrating on Birkavs' corpse and the kitchen where he had died; nobody would know or care who the body in the front room belonged to. By this time, the storm had weakened to a drizzle, and as they drove away, Irina could see the house blazing a brilliant blue-white despite the rain.
Sark drove them down the hill, handling the old car so smoothly and with such care that he might have been driving a Lamborghini at Le Mans. "Despite the unexpected delay, I think we can reach Valmiera before midnight."
"Excellent." Irina could put off her next step so longer. "In the next few months, I'm going to need you to take on more responsibilities."
"I'm gratified to hear it."
"In fact, you'll take the organization over completely until I return."
Sark half-turned to her; she could see the gears turning, know his calculus of opportunity almost as quickly as he did. If Sark took the organization for a short time, he would probably gain the ability to hold onto it. He knew that she had to realize as much. They worked well together in large part because neither of them expected extraordinary personal loyalty from one another; theirs was a tactical relationship, and Irina had just made it in Sark's best interest to betray her, rather than serve her.
In other words, she was surrendering without a fight, under the assumption that later she could remove Sark by force when she chose. She was paying Sark the compliment of giving him due warning.
"I see," he said, and she had no doubt that he did. "Thank you."
"Before I go, I need you to perform one more task for me."
Sark nodded, acknowledging that he was still at her bidding for the time being. "What will that be?"
Irina had denied herself one piece of information for more than twenty years; she had refused to know it, for fear of what she might do, how much she might forsake to pursue it. And she had been right to wait, because the knowledge had come to her when it could damage her no longer, precisely when she could finally use it. Jack had given it to her, a turn of events so appropriate that it almost made her believe in justice.
She said, "I need you to find every piece of information you can on a young woman named Sydney Bristow."
**
Go back to the last chapter.