The woman's heavy hair brushes his skin as she sways above him, her hands on either side of him; she covers him, envelopes him, silent, skilled, alert to every response that might increase the pleasure she gives him. She is lovely, a feast for the senses, and her smile is tranquil as she rocks against the gathering intensity of his stroke. She flicks back her hair and raises herself slightly, letting sensation localize, enticing him upward, harder, and he rises into her from the cool bed until orgasm flashes through him like sheet lightning, bright and smooth and soundless. Her hands are soothing as he comes to rest, light and pleasant against his heated skin. Finally she dismounts, attends to the condom, dresses with quiet dispatch. She smiles again when he happens to open his eyes. He watches from the bedroom of the suite as she slips out the door, then rises and resets the telltales, checks the electronics, throws the lock. He finds the bed again and plunges into heavy sleep, the first in weeks.
Force the brain to let the body rest. Saturate the senses; shut down, for a while, the endless recalculation of risk and advantage.
Kill memory.
OneWorking capital: the world is awash in money, Sark reminds himself, without Rambaldi's name attached to it.
"—Delighted, should the volume of your deposits bear out, certainly," Mr. Leung is saying. Sark is tired and he's bored, but it won't do to rush the man.
"—Several lines of credit, yes. Direct access to funds from many desirable points-of-sale, naturally: ship brokerages, say, or perhaps"—a delicate pause—"less orthodox venues."
Sark smiles perfunctorily. The day's third business meeting is winding down. Things are going smoothly but the courtesies are tedious.
"And obviously we would be most interested in an equity stake in any venture… More tea? A tour of the facility, then." Ramillies Bank AG (Schweiz) has a new client. Mr. Leung of the Hong Kong office is charmed.
Sark strolls beside the banker, glad to be moving at last. His head aches, slightly, in the cool air. Every office in every high-rise in Hong Kong shares the same morgue-like chill, overcompensating for the humid furnace outside.
Fortieth floor of tower three, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building, a relatively conservative choice in light of the local predilection for showy architecture. Outside the building's glass skin, its grim exoskeleton frames the view. The interior of this floor is transparent, as well, its core a huge glass cube.
Sark stares down the long sightline out the other side of the enormous space. Mr. Leung's urbane commentary necessitates a leisurely pace along the endless, overcooled corridor, wide as an LA freeway.
A selection of private storage vaults, Mr. Leung explains, gesturing. It looks more like someone's idea of a stylish library: tables, carrels, alcoves. People drifting along the aisles of vaults, some seated, apparently studying. No books.
Armed guards at the heavy glass doors.
Nor is there any good reason why that should make Sark uneasy, but he suddenly finds he's no longer bored. Experiencing a slight feeling of confinement, in fact, despite expansive views through the transparent barriers.
A movement in the foreground, then, through the near glass wall, and the banker's chatter recedes as Sark gathers his senses, headache forgotten, seeking a focus. There's something—something—he can't tell what. Something has just happened.
It's a ludicrous conviction in this sterile, white-noise environment. Residual sensitivity, that's all; even after a year or more, glass walls make him irrationally edgy. He's looking in from the outside, this time. It should be funny.
Nevertheless.
Mr. Leung falls back politely as his guest slows the pace further.
And stops. He's still as a scenting animal, with no idea why. He waits, the other man patient beside him. Some threat here. He scans the group inside the cube, not a clue what he's looking for—some anomaly—there. That one. The woman. Not Chinese: brown hair, too tall, square-shouldered. His pulse jumps.
He can't see her face, only her seated figure, three-quarters angle, from behind, but he knows, he knows, and he's rehearsed this moment every day and every bloody night for the past year—
And there it is; she moves again, right hand. The long hair brushed out of her face, swept behind her ear, unthinking gesture that she'll repeat—his heart is racing—several times an hour, because that lock of hair never stays anchored. He forces himself down from full flight/fight but his heart won't listen. It's all he can do to keep her name between his teeth.
She moves once more, turns her head, reaching for a banker's box farther down the table, and he sees the profile: high slash of cheekbone, ripe mouth, and now his heart threatens to stop altogether.
Not Irina.
Sydney Bristow.
He takes another breath, hyperalert with adrenaline and, he discovers, a fine, cold anger. He waits, needing to be sure of his voice.
"Very impressive," he finally tells Mr. Leung, who's been waiting for some comment. "Reassuringly secure and—quite attractive, as well." The other man smiles appreciatively, following his gaze.
"We do hope," he agrees with amusement, "to please our clients, when they have occasion to visit."
He goes on, with the air of an obliging tour guide, "The lady is Miss Lee, a scholar from, ah, Vancouver, I believe. Assisting one of our distinguished professors at the university. She is studying some family papers, stored here, having to do with" —he coughs apologetically— "British expatriate collaboration, Nazi, you understand, during the Japanese occupation. There were rare cases, I regret." As though he were personally responsible.
"She is making the translation from the German," he adds. "The family have agreed to allow access."
Back to earth and thinking fast. He briefly considers whether the man might be Irina's. Her order, directing this sighting? Her way of letting him know he's playing on her field again?
Odds against. Alex Leung's got mid-level associations with Sun Yee On, a giant among triads; he knows that Sark's references come from the top of the pyramid. Freelancing for Irina against that level of influence would do him permanent damage on his home ground. And he's not a long-term asset of Irina's. Sark knows that signature, and it's nowhere in the extensive file he's assembled on Mr. Alexander Leung Wing Chan.
So the man's a potential well of information. "How unusual," Sark says softly. "That seems—trusting." He looks back at the seated woman.
She's making notes in longhand. The lock of hair has come loose again and he's breathing past a sudden constriction in his throat. You damned fool, he thinks, and the anger ices his blood another few degrees in the frigid air.
Mr. Leung is watching his client, not the woman. "There are many ways, you see," he says casually, "of paying a debt."
Sark shows him a bland smile. "My dear sir," he says, "I'm afraid I'm a conservative at heart." He lets the smile widen just a bit, never losing sight of the woman on the other side of the glass.
"So I gathered," Mr. Leung replies, smiling in turn. "Your air of—assurance, mm?—does suggest so. Yes, unusual. In one so young, I mean to say." Another smile. Mr. Leung adds, "Would you wish to see the terrace garden? Also very beautiful."
Sark has always known it would be impossible not to intersect Irina's operational lines at some point; she's been building her networks for as long as he's been alive. But it's been more than a year since he walked into that nightclub in Stockholm and waited to be taken. He's seen no sign of her.
"I need one month," she'd said, the litany going through his head once more as he watches her daughter through the chilly, armored glass. "I'll see to your extraction personally."
He'd held out almost half a year under interrogation in that other glass cage, waiting for her, before finding his own way out. He'll never be that stupid again.
Beside him, Mr. Leung looks up inquiringly. Sark takes a deep, silent breath, with a feeling that the air's a little richer than it had been sixty seconds ago. Fatigue hovers, a constant, but he ignores it in favor of this new sensation tickling him with a barbed and icy claw. He smiles once more.
"Yes," he says pleasantly, "I'd enjoy that."
TwoThe bank's patrons favor the Peninsula, in Kowloon, over most of Hong Kong's more centrally located hotels. Mr. Leung sends his new client back across the harbor in a sleek helicopter, a seven-minute trip the pilot must make a dozen times every business day; the man looks as though he might even be asleep. Sark takes the private rooftop elevator to his suite a few floors below.
He knows there's still a small, poisoned shard of hope in him somewhere—that Irina had never intended to leave him there, that she'd struggled to reach him but couldn't; that she was dead, or fighting for her own survival, and could find no way to get to him. That she'd tried.
The other explanation's simpler. It was what she really wanted all along, to mend what she'd broken when she abandoned her husband and daughter. And what, moreover, she believed was required to triumph in her long contest with Sloane over the solution to Rambaldi's puzzle.
Jack Bristow. Sydney Bristow. Irina. The family circle, complete at last.
It doesn't really matter anymore.
He's spent the last eight months in overdrive, patching the holes in his reputation, establishing himself as a top-tier independent without, he hopes, so much as causing a tremor in the vast, shapeless web of Irina's influence. Planning.
Three months, two contracts, the first winning the second, as planned. He took out the second target and arranged to implicate his client's political rival as a douceur. It got him the reference he'd aimed for from the start.
Another three months, research and advance work. Third client pays for all, and when everything's in place he'll make the jump from freelance to executive of a small, elite organization in one quick move. He's got a few dependable lower-level contacts in various places and he's been talent-spotting for future recruitment, but the real work is all on him. He hasn't stopped moving since he jammed the fucking CIA almost a year ago, and he's not about to back off now.
Especially not for Irina, or her daughter.
Third client: Mr. John Chiu, of Hong Kong, San Francisco, and New York.
The Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China is a giant laundry for profits from the sale of narcotics, easeful treasure from the Golden Triangle. Service providers bring the money into Hong Kong's labyrinthine, under-regulated financial systems and disperse it, deloused and legal, to the global investment community—retaining a healthy share for themselves. The sheer scale of activity is stunning.
Consequently, criminal culture achieves a rare sophistication here. The executives in charge of competing branches within this area of enterprise conduct endless quiet wars for status and dominance. There's a delicate balance, necessary in a society so tightly packed into its environment, of rule and transgression, even at the highest reaches.
Sark has created an opportunity to buy in: a private murder. It's not policy, or pre-emptive action, or even profitable. It breaks the rules. But the man who commissioned it is situated to give him a share in the lucrative business of turning drug money into upstanding investment capital; as an outsider he runs less chance of discovery and reprisal, and he'll be invisible, a silent partner, when the terms are met.
He knows Chiu's got fourteen ways figured to cross the deal once it's done. He knows each of those fourteen ways has consequences Chiu's not willing to suffer. The upcoming meeting is the one where he explains that to Chiu.
It took him three solid months to cover that ground. He's got no second, no right hand—no one, yet, whom he trusts enough to handle such mortal issues.
He'll give the whole meeting half an hour, he decides; if he's not satisfied by then he'll walk away. Chiu will cave, eventually. He loved a woman who left him for someone else. He wants the man's blood.
He's a fool, but that's not material. The woman's brother is a potential problem—but again, that's Chiu's lookout. The deed won't reverberate unduly; it's actually fairly simple. For everyone, he imagines, except Chiu, who'll learn that he's bought nothing, in the end—certainly not satisfaction.
But now there's Sydney, and that means Irina.
Chiu's job is the least of it; he's been investing extensively, using his personal reserves in anticipation of the flow of new funds. He'll have to postpone the next trip to Shanghai, find out what Sydney's up to and what Irina's interests are in this game. He puts a hand to his eyes, briefly, to shut out the glare of the overhead lights. The timing couldn't be worse. But Irina's a threat that can't wait.
ThreeTagging Sydney is almost a joke under the circumstances: he's solo and obviously foreign. He's got access to a few low-level contractors, but not nearly enough tested resources to handle the job properly. No way to do it right; no choice, either.
He's put off three meetings and an ungodly amount of research to take care of this. The heat intensifies his resentment.
Four days and he's got nothing definite. Her tradecraft is almost nil; she's taking no more than elementary precautions. It's atypical—Sydney's sharp, creative, and nearly clairvoyant about the environment when she's operational. Now she seems almost asleep. It's uncanny, not right.
Her pattern is home-university-market-home, on foot and by public transit. It's varied the first day by a trip to Ramillies, no surprise but also no way to get inside the bank unnoticed. He picks her up again when she comes out two hours later, stays with her easily through the raucous streets, to the stalls in the Central Market and up the escalator past Hollywood Road. Home: a block of flats in the Mid-levels, separated by wide green spaces from the other huge residential blocks in the immediate area.
He checks the mailboxes once she's in the elevator. This an expat ghetto; the labels include English. There are five Lees but only one V-for-Victoria. Second floor, number 221, a cheaper let near the ground. He goes up the stairs, finds the door, marks the probable orientation of the interior windows.
The blinds are down. He settles next to a tree across the landscaped grounds, cateye binoculars in the backpack he's been carrying all day. It's all but raining and he's boiling with impatience. Come on, Sydney, he thinks, leaning his head back against the rough bark. Give me something to do.
Nothing.
Day two, early, she goes to the Zoo before heading to the university, joins the crowd at the fountain staircase in Peng Fau Garden. He drifts from tour group to tour group, watching through a pair of Zeiss birding glasses while she and a hundred others follow the old woman at the top of the stairs through the complete t'ai chi set. Her face is absolutely blank as she turns from each move into its successor.
White Crane Spreads Its Wings. But who's the bird, Sydney, and who the snake?
She lacks Irina's coiled menace, he decides; she doesn't need it. She's physically perfect, intention and action all one thing to her—thought into motion, nothing between. He can barely breathe in the humid air.
No contacts, no dead drop, no sign of anything.
He follows her to the cool underground of the MTR.
Day three. The heat makes everything more difficult; he'd like nothing better than for her to disappear. Instead, he trudges to Man Mo Temple in her wake, two o'clock of another stifling day. The courtyard is a pandemonium of vendors and supplicants; he loses her in the crowd, risks going inside to see if she's ducked out of the chaos. The interior is cool and dark and he pauses to let his eyes adapt.
Come on, Sydney. Make it worth my while.
He drifts methodically around the inside perimeter for a full ten minutes—fucking hell, she must have seen him, shaken him off. But he spots her at last, back in the shadows against a pillar, sitting cross-legged, staring at nothing. The smoke from a bank of burning joss sticks drifts past her. She blinks, occasionally, and once he sees her shoulders rise and fall, as if she's taken a deep breath.
An hour later she gets to her feet and leaves. MTR, market, home.
Finally, a contact. Sark is lounging in the shade of the university's main library forecourt on the fourth day, with the Post and bottle of water, good for another twenty minutes before he'll have to change position. And here she comes, north entrance of the building opposite, looking over her shoulder. He folds the newspaper casually and gets to his feet. His eyes burn with fatigue.
She turns onto the walk and is intercepted by a tall man who draws her by the arm to the grassy verge, apparently to her surprise. Sark fades deeper into the shadow of the library and takes out the birding glasses. He'll be noticed by the curious, but that can't be helped. He's sweating freely, disliking the wet track along his hairline as he raises the glasses.
No idea who the man might be: Chinese, probably about middle age, handsome. He's speaking with obvious urgency to Sydney, who looks up at him gravely. No evasion, no tradecraft, not even the most basic precaution against being observed, overheard, recorded, photographed.
Not a typical meet. Not a meet at all, and the man reaches up as though helpless and draws a tender line with his fingertips from her temple to her jaw. Sark hears himself take a sharp breath in the heavy air. Good God, he thinks in disgust. Another fish on the hook, Sydney?
She hasn't moved, makes no gesture in return, no turn of her head into the man's caress, but something in the regret on her face tightens Sark's grip on the glasses and he's surprised to find that he hates her a little, for just a moment. The man's hand lingers against her skin and yes, her cheekbones are a miracle straight from Tartary. Irina's Slav but her daughter—
She's saying nothing and the Zeiss lenses show with flawless clarity the bent-bow perfection of her mouth, how it dives in at the corners, how there's a tension to it, as though she's thinking explosive thoughts. The glasses slip in his sweating hands.
The man's arm drops to his side and he stands there, despair in the slack hands and the set of the shoulders. Sark forces his teeth apart and realigns his grip on consciousness. That's enough, he thinks, watching the man slew himself into the path of oncoming foot traffic and walk away. That's enough, as Sydney looks down, her face blank again. She sets off almost blindly toward the market and he lets her go. He's finished watching.
It'll have to be tonight, and it'll have to be the hard way. He finds he's looking forward, a bit, to that.
FourHe has no intention of actually hurting her—not seriously. He knows better than most that real damage, where Sydney is concerned, is Irina's province exclusively, all others please note.
Her flat is tiny and barren, holds nothing but a few changes of clothes and some incidentals. He finds the little HK under the pillow on her narrow bed—a cot, really. He ejects the round from the chamber and pockets the clip, replaces the gun.
And here she comes. He moves before she's even inside the door, giving her no time to sense his presence in the dimness.
He tries for a chokehold from behind but she's too good, slides out of his grip like water through a net, driving her elbow hard into his belly and turning like a dervish. He accepts the hit, enjoying the brute smack of bone against muscle, as the price for a quick sweep at her ankles, but she goes vertical on a sharp breath and launches a kick for good measure. That's fine, because he can dodge, and it gives him the split-second opening he needs to catch her mid-turn and bring her jarringly to earth, on her feet but just barely.
They come to stasis with the advantage all his. She's lost; a move in any direction will break a bone or tear a ligament and he's got leverage every which way. His right hand curves lightly around her neck from behind.
But for Irina he could solve this whole problem so easily, he thinks, and moves his thumb along the soft skin under her jawline, his face against her hair. She smells very slightly of something dark—vetiver or sandalwood, maybe—and he's briefly displaced because Irina—
"Are you going to kill me," she asks, and he can feel the tension in her jaw, "or just fuck me?" Her voice is murderous. His thumb finds the artery in that tender spot below the bone, presses just enough to make her gray out for a second or two. Her head lolls briefly, thrillingly against his cheek. He puts his mouth to her ear.
"Now there's a question, Ms. Bristow—" He gives her a sudden, comprehensive shove because he feels her preparing to move, slides forward in syncopation with her stumble, regaining his hold.
"—And we'll get to it, I assure you, but first—" Another shove, her left shoulder hitting the wall hard. "You're going to tell me a story." He forces her legs wider, keeping her off balance.
"Concisely. Accurately. Immediately." Tightening the lock on her right arm viciously with each word. Getting an involuntary sound out of her with each jolt.
"You know, Sark, I didn't—think a professional could afford that kind of kink," she says, gasping a little, and he pulls her closer, smiling into her hair, inhaling luxuriously. Sandalwood.
Smoke from those burning joss sticks, he remembers, when she sits at the temple thinking—whatever it is she thinks. He can feel the fear bubbling under her bravado and finds it does arouse him, a bit. She's not as smart as she should be. She should know he can't afford to hurt her. His hand tightens around her throat again.
"My dear Sydney" —softly— "you surely don't imagine I do this for just anyone." The sound of her struggling breath sends a little charge of explosive tension down to the base of his spine.
"The Bristow women—no, don't try that—are so distracting," he finishes, "but we're going to address that later—"
"What—do you want, Sark?" A little gasp there.
And that deserves another wrench of the arm. Her answering groan is satisfying but this is new territory for him. He wonders briefly where the line is, how eager it's acceptable to be. She feels very good, so snug against him. He speaks softly into her ear, a few strands of her fine hair brushing his mouth.
"Don't." Again, a small movement of the locked arm. Again, a sharp, pained sound. "Don't be stupid." There's a desperate rhythm to her breathing now. He lightens the pressure on her throat.
"Will you at least ask me a goddamn question?" She's hoarse but he can't tell whether it's rage or pain or just the bruise from his too-enthusiastic grip. He smiles again, though she can't see.
"Sydney. Whose operation? The objective?"
Silence.
"Now, Sydney."
A scraping breath.
"Forget it, Sark—ah—"
He doesn't quite dislocate the shoulder. The next breath is more like a sob.
"Where—" he finds he's clenching his teeth "—where is your mother? And, Sydney, what does she want?"
He feels her weight, suddenly, as though she's decided to relax against him. He compensates, preparing for a countermove.
But she's still.
It's so unexpected that he's off balance, just briefly—and she reads him like yesterday's news, he remembers that now; she's out of his reach with a savage kick. He barely manages to dodge before she's got the HK in her fist and pointed at his face.
He's got the clip. There's nothing in the chamber.
The flat is inadequately cooled and he's aware of a knot in his belly. He understands clearly that it's his own stupidity that's produced the impasse. This shouldn't be happening at all. There's a brief, measuring pause in which her ragged breathing is clearly audible. She lowers the useless gun.
"The landlord was right about this place," she says conversationally. "The feng shui sucks."
Typical. The shoulder, at least, must be causing her pain, and her eyes are furious because he frightened her and she knows he knows it.
"Good evening, Sydney," he replies politely. "I would have knocked but I thought you'd react badly."
"Like hell, Sark. What do you want?" She hasn't moved but he can tell she's considering it. "I'd like the clip back when you leave," she adds. "It's the only one I've got."
He's calmer now, looking at her across the small room, and he breathes deliberately, fighting self-disgust. Six months locked up like a rat in a cage, almost a year clawing his way out of the wreck, and the proximity of Irina's daughter undoes him so badly he wants to kill her? Fuck, no. Fatigue drags at him and he flexes his hands, dismissing it irritably.
"Suppose," he says, "we sit and talk. Do you think we might manage that, Sydney?"
Useless. He learns nothing.
"I'm out in the cold, Sark," she tells him. "But that doesn't mean I'll give you word one."
She knows nothing of Irina, or Sloane, or their plans, individually or severally, she says. Isn't that his department? She ran, after discovering Tippin bleeding out in the bathroom of her apartment. She says.
Activated the first of several identities she'd long ago prepared. Grabbed the cached money and weapons and ran. Not even her lover knew about the motorcycle in storage, the numbered accounts, the hacked records establishing patterns of activity for each stolen ID. Double agents trust themselves, full stop.
Even the best have blind spots.
Jack Bristow? he asks. Michael Vaughn? No contact in all this time?
"You think I'm stupid, Sark?" she says harshly. "I'm worse than poison. Let them chase me all over the fucking globe. It's safer than the alternative."
Besides which, she adds, the place leaks like a sieve, hasn't he noticed? Meaning the CIA.
She asks what he's getting from Sloane, as though he's some sort of bounty hunter, and she's the prize. She shows no sign of knowing that her father is missing—or was, at any rate.
No contact with anyone. No attempt at passive intelligence gathering. No idea, not operational, no, no, no …
She's an accomplished liar.
"How'd you get out?" she asks, and he's sure Irina's already heard the story, whether she's told Sydney or not. He considers mentioning Michael Vaughn in that connection, just to gauge the reaction.
No. He'll reserve that.
"You're not with Irina now," she comments. He smiles. You should know, Sydney.
He leaves, finally, with the promise that he'll kill her the next time she crosses his track. Her eyes are haunted but he doesn't flatter himself that his threat is the cause.
Useless, and four precious days wasted.
FiveDown Po Shan Road outside the block of flats, and he flags a cab just discharging a fare, traveling in the opposite direction, out of habit. If Irina's covering him evasion's hopeless; she already knows where he is, what he's got running. It's just a matter of waiting for the next move.
Back to his suite at the Mandarin Oriental, his pied-à-terre on the Hong Kong side of the harbor. He keeps wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all, but it won't do; he knows it's just fatigue. He finally drops onto the bed, lies back and lets himself calm down—which is inevitable because the hotel sees fit to cool this suite to within a few degrees of absolute bleeding zero, and he's shivering as the sweat starts to wick off in the dry, refrigerated air.
He can still smell the sandalwood from her hair and that, for some reason, brings on the urge to laugh again. He pulls the duvet over his legs instead, licks his lips, drowsing.
Even now, Irina won't leave him alone. I need one month and her hands against his skin: strong, cruel, sweet, needful touch …
—Refusing to let himself pretend. Keeping his hands relaxed, at his sides. He beds only the best, lately, and wouldn't stoop to getting himself off—especially thinking about her—if his life depended on it. When the need arises, in any event, he pays for the top of the line, since pharmaceuticals are out of the question. And tonight, it seems, is one of those nights after all.
He picks up the phone and dials the unlisted number of an exclusive establishment off Lugard Road. Jiang Furen specializes in amnesia when it's appropriate, but her memory for her clients' preferences is unassailable. The women she manages are exquisitely skilled; he's never yet been dissatisfied.
He's got to get some sleep.
+++++
End Part I