2. Ballroom
We meet again in the field. But here there can be no cries of 'out of bounds' or 'foul'. There are no penalties, no referee, and certainly no time out. Our standings are calculated from kills and casualties, healed bullet holes and scarred stab wounds, money, weapons, and Rambaldi artifacts accumulated.
The winner, as ever, is a mystery. But I think it's clear that both of us are losing.
She looks ravishing in a confection of purple silk, waltzing around the dance floor under Agent Vaughn's less than skilled guidance. Her chocolate locks are hidden under a wig of glossy black curls, but I recognize her by the way she moves. Ever since our time together at SD-6 she is unmistakable to me, in any disguise.
I debate whether to cut in on them, in this ballroom crowded with foreign dignitaries and prominent businessmen. After our meeting in the desert, I'm not sure she would even protest. It might be worth it to see her partner's fit of apoplectic rage, unable to make a scene, unwilling to blow their cover. But I am on a schedule. And if I stole her away, I might not want to give her back.
So I skip the posturing, but not the glass of vintage champagne offered me a nameless waiter in black, as invisible as a piece of furniture in this crowd. It is a skill to blend into the background, to escape notice even in plain sight.
I am here on the Covenant's behest, to steal an old Rambaldi ruby, harboring some secret which holds not the remotest interest to me. For myself, I plan to acquire Mr. Benett's account codes to skim a few million for personal use. The safe is easy enough to crack, as is the cipher used to protect his account.
Almost blood red, the cabochon-cut ruby is set as a gold pendant, as large as my thumbnail, with the typical cabochon star glimmering in the dim light of his office. Absurdly, I wonder what it would look like draped around Agent Bristow's neck, rather than languishing in a CIA warehouse or assembled into some madman's masterpiece. I have an odd desire to have it re-cut, to destroy any value it may have to Sloane and Irina, the CIA, the rest of Rambaldi's ardent believers.
At my back, I hear the door handle turn and swing open on well-oiled hinges. Sydney appears, and we have our guns aimed at each other's throats.
"Well, well….this is becoming rather a habit of ours, isn't it?"
"Hand it over, Sark."
"Did you try the champagne? It really is a remarkable vintage."
"I'm not here for small talk. Give me the ruby or I'll shoot."
"I really doubt that."
I hold up the ruby, it's chain twisted around my left hand.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
She snorts, "Stop playing games."
"Oh, but it's all a game."
She moves to strike, a vicious kick that I block with my forearm. I slam her hand on the edge of the desk and she drops the gun; bend her over with my weight on her back, her arm cranked towards her shoulder until the delicate bones of her wrist, bird-like, grate against each other, ready to break. A hiss of pain is all the noise she makes.
I hold the Sig Sauer to her temple, but keep the safety engaged. Maybe she notices, maybe not. It would be easy to kill her, but I toy with her instead.
"I would give it to you, if I wasn't sure you'd just hand it over to the CIA. And then I'd just have to steal it back from project Black Hole."
"A gift? How romantic," she sneered, and bucked underneath me, trying to get free. An extra twist of her arm stilled her once more.
"Just think about this game we play, Sydney. Think about whose pawn you are."
I pressed against her neck, collapsing her carotid, until she began to gray out in my arms, and fell limp against the table. She'll recover quickly, well before her Boy Scout even realizes anything is wrong. On my way out, I grab another glass of the Dom Perignon.
I don't think she realizes how few choices she has had. At least I know I'm nothing more than a puppet, valuable, but ultimately expendable. Again, I wonder where this concern for her comes from. I push it out of my mind as fatigue, as concern for something Irina considers valuable. Sydney is a colleague of sorts. Though we may work for competing interests, she could just as easily be me. She is me: my cognate in the CIA. Her dead eyes, her fatigue is a barometer of my own condition.
I preferred her young and furious, live and livid, as she was in her double agent days. Now, something is missing. And it does not bode well for either of us.
