X
It was a perfectly normal SD-6 briefing, right up until the end. "Jack, Sydney, can I see you in my office for moment?" Sloane said mildly. Marshall and Dixon didn't even glance back as they filed out of the room.
As they entered the office, Sloane produced what looked like a digital recorder for dictation and pressed a switch on it. Sydney saw her father's body language subtly shift, and realised that it must be some kind of bug-killer.
Sloane indicated for them both to take seats with a disgustingly ingratiating smile. "We can speak freely for a few minutes," he said.
Sydney was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be speaking freely with Sloane, or even acknowledging that they knew he'd allegedly turned double agent, but her father didn't seem to be hampered by that concern. "Is that wise?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
Sloane tilted his head in a kind of minimalist shrug and steepled his fingers together. "SD-6 is swept scrupulously for bugs other than those placed by Security Section. Meeting here is far safer than meeting outside, especially when information leakage is an issue."
Her father looked a silent question at him, and Sydney had the maddening sensation that part of this conversation was going on over her head. She knew her father and Sloane had worked together as real CIA agents once, probably developed the same kind of unspoken language that she had with Dixon, but that didn't mean she liked the idea of them using it. Especially not to keep things from her.
Sloane rested his chin on his hand, one finger pressed to the side of his face. "I received a proposal from our friend Mr Sark last night. It seems that his employer has heard of my shift in loyalties and wishes to make my acquaintance." He slid a folded note across the table to her father.
"Khasinau has a plant in the CIA?" Sydney blurted. Sloane's defection - alleged defection, she reminded herself - was seriously restricted information. If Khasinau knew about that, he could know all kinds of details about their operations.
But her father seemed unperturbed. "I believe I know the source of the leak," he said. Sloane raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Stephen Haladki, the agent whose email we had Marshall investigate. He went missing the day after the manuscript exchange, and was later found shot dead in a warehouse." He pursed his lips. "I am reliably informed that our other leak also went silent as soon as your change in loyalties was revealed."
Wait, when had Marshall been investigating CIA agents' emails? And what other leak? Sydney stared from one man to the other, wondering how many secrets her father was keeping from both her and the CIA. She knew he had to work with Sloane to preserve his cover, but she didn't like the thought that he might not be sharing everything.
"You believe Haladki was the one feeding information about SD-6 to Tippin?" Sloane said.
Sydney almost fell off her chair. "Will?"
"It's no longer a cause for concern," her dad said to Sloane.
"You guys have been investigating Will?"
Sloane turned his cool, reptilian gaze on her. "Your father has been doing his best to protect your friend from the consequences of his unfortunate desire to follow an anonymous tipster bent on sacrificing him to the cause of exposing SD-6." He said it as if he too could claim credit for the efforts, and the hypocrisy made her shake with barely suppressed fury.
Sydney leaned forward and planted her hands down on the desk. "What he's been protecting Will from is you," she hissed.
Sloane had the gall to smile pleasantly, with a hint of condescension. "Sydney," he said, shaking his head. "You know it's Security Section who enforce matters of breached security."
"Under your direction," she said coldly.
Sloane's face hardened abruptly, his eyes turning near-black as he narrowed them. "I remind you that Alliance security intended to murder my wife," he said. "Security Section acts independently of my authority. I can order them to take steps against someone I consider a threat; I have no power to prevent them taking action against someone they consider a threat."
Was he...? He was actually... He was seriously trying to disclaim responsibility for Danny's death? Sydney clutched onto the edge of her seat until her knuckles turned white, afraid to move or say a word in case she snapped and actually leapt across the desk to beat him to death. How dare he? How dare he? How dare he?
The rest of the meeting was lost to her in a haze of white noise. When they were finally out of the door, she grabbed her dad and dragged him into the nearest side office. He clicked his bug-killer pen just in time, because she couldn't have held this outburst in one second longer.
"You were investigating Will?" she spat. He'd been discussing what to do about one of her best friends with Sloane, the man who'd murdered her fiancé, and he hadn't said a word to her about it, hadn't tried to warn Will of the danger he was in...
"The matter was under control," he said stiffly, but she was sure she could see a flicker of panic in his eyes.
"How could you not tell me?" she demanded. Her father leaned in towards her as if to persuade her to take his side through force of physical presence.
"Sloane was watching you too closely. If he'd believed for a second that you were responsible for the leak of information about SD-6-"
"You don't trust me to have the slightest bit of discretion?" No, of course he didn't. She pulled back sharply. "Would you have let Will get killed rather than blow my cover?"
Her dad didn't answer nearly fast enough for her comfort, and when he did, it wasn't even a denial. "I was able to defuse the situation without resorting to drastic measures."
"Trusting me is not 'drastic'," Sydney said coldly. "You share more with Sloane than you do with me. Have you forgotten that he's the enemy?" Her dad knew Sloane. He should have been adding his voice to her attempts to talk the CIA out of a terrible mistake, not championing this farce of an alliance.
"Sloane could be instrumental in bringing down the Alliance," her dad said, back in his comfort zone now he could lecture her. "Whatever his personal agenda, the CIA would be fools to ignore such a valuable asset. And with Emily's biopsy due to take place the day after the meet with Sark, he has extra motivation to play straight with us."
'Valuable asset'. The phrase made her sick to her stomach. "What happened to bringing down Sloane?" she demanded. "What happens to him when this is all over? A slap on the wrist? A full pardon?"
Her father didn't say anything. Which meant she was absolutely right. They were going to let Sloane walk free from his crimes on the strength of a laughable 'agreement' that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.
She worked her jaw, but before she could even begin to find scathing enough words, his pen bleeped the one-minute warning. She stared at him for a moment longer, then made a sharp, furious gesture and turned to stalk away.
She was the only one left who actually cared about Sloane being brought to justice for his crimes.
Well, if she had to do this by herself, she would do it by herself. One way or another, Arvin Sloane was going to pay. And keep on paying, because there was no form of restitution in the universe that could begin to make up for what he'd taken from her.
She wasn't going to let him get away with it.
When you provided psychiatric support to the CIA, you got used to dealing with... difficult cases. Judy could tell Jack Bristow would be one of those within seconds of opening his file. Ten years married to a KGB spy, wrongfully imprisoned for six months on suspicion of working with her, long-term double agent against a former best friend who had recruited his daughter to a terrorist organisation... The list of issues that needed delving into would make a fatter document than the session paperwork that was actually on file.
She found no evidence at all that anyone had provided Jack with psychiatric support after his '81 imprisonment, and the mandatory sessions for his long stint as a double agent were cursory at best. Her predecessors had apparently seen little need to question the self-reporting of a man whose whole life revolved around presenting convincing façades to people who knew him extremely well.
It was checkbox psychiatry, more concerned with the field efficiency of the agent than the welfare of the man. Well, Judy didn't intend to endorse or perpetuate that approach, and she certainly wasn't going to let Jack Bristow snow her.
Although she had to admit, he was giving it a damn good try. The most telling thing was the absence of tells, answers that weren't too pat but delivered with exactly the right degree of awkwardness and hesitation. It was a masterful performance.
Unfortunately for Jack Bristow, Judy had come into this session in the full awareness that it would be a performance.
Finally, she sat back in her chair. "Well, Jack," she said with a wry smile, "on the evidence of this session I would have to pronounce you remarkably emotionally healthy for all the things that you've been through." She held his gaze levelly. "Which just goes to show that this session has been a gigantic waste of time. You haven't said a single honest word to me over the last hour. Oh, believe me, your ability to mask your true feelings is impressive. You do it very well. But unfortunately for you, my job is not to make sure you can parrot all the right sentiments, but to get to the root of whether you believe them."
His body language grew noticeably colder as the fictional character she'd been talking to for the last hour dropped away. He spoke with a sense of curt distain, and none of the emotional affect he'd been showing previously. "The life I lead is extremely demanding, extremely dangerous, and requires me to strike a balance between different worlds. I live by two distinct and contradictory sets of values, and am expected to believe them utterly. Discussion of my inner feelings is meaningless. I feel what I am required to feel by the job."
She couldn't say she was surprised by that. Compartmentalisation so extensive he'd managed to fool himself that he could lock Jack Bristow away as easily as any other deep cover he'd adopted.
"But now the balance of that life has changed," she said. "You're working with Arvin Sloane again towards a common goal. How does that affect your work as a double agent?"
As she'd suspected, he was more willing to engage with what he saw as a professional rather than personal topic - apparently in wilful denial about any link between Sloane and his trust issues. "It doesn't," he said coolly. "The agency is fielding Sloane as a lone operative, keeping him in the dark as to the identity or existence of our other agents within his organisation. My cover remains the same."
She made a preliminary mental note about his tendency to frame relationships in terms of how the other person related to him - removing his own feelings from the equation. Judy wasn't taking any actual notes in this session, nor did she intend to in any of the later ones. It would be unproductive in the extreme to show Jack any evidence that she was learning things about him.
"But you know about Sloane's defection," she pressed. "Has it changed your perception of him at all?"
"Yes," he said shortly - and surprisingly. She prompted him with an eyebrow, and he shifted position in his seat. "I used to believe that he was greedy, egomaniacal and a traitor," he said emotionlessly. "Now I merely believe that he's mad."
That gave her pause. "Mad?"
"Arvin believes that the CIA lost their right to his loyalty when they abandoned and betrayed him. I assumed that in the absence of that loyalty, he joined the Alliance in pursuit of money and personal power, a logical - if abhorrent - motive." His face tensed. "I have since learned that he was, in fact, using the Alliance as a means to an end in pursuing the works of a fifteenth century inventor he believed to be a prophet."
Ah. Of course, Sloane's visionary quest would hold no appeal for a man like Jack Bristow. "You don't believe in Rambaldi."
"I believe that he existed," he said. "He was clearly a very intelligent man with ideas and ahead of his time. But the fact that he created inventions that are still advanced to us now proves that he was an original thinker, not that he could see the future. To treat his claims of prophecy as a form of religion..." He shook his head in disgust.
She tilted hers, curious. "You speak of religion as if it were a bad thing."
"When it overrides rational thought? Yes," he said, with a firm nod. "I have learned the folly of choosing to believe what you want to rather than what reality dictates."
She gave him a sympathetic smile. "Let's talk about how you learned that."
"I don't like this." Sydney was pacing, all frenetic energy, though there was barely enough room in the surveillance van for her to do it. "There's no way we should be letting Sloane make this meet."
Vaughn had to admit that he shared her misgivings. Sark's employer was still a wildcard. They didn't know nearly enough about Khasinau's ultimate goals, and the possibility that Sloane might be persuaded to switch sides a second time was entirely too high. The only thing truly binding him to the CIA was his supposed love of his wife, and - all heartfelt confessions aside - Vaughn wasn't at all convinced that it was any more than possessive pique that the Alliance had tried to take her from him. In his experience, bad guys 'loved' their wives the way they loved their collections of sports cars and expensive paintings.
"We have three agents on site, and access to all the security cameras," he reminded her. The meet was scheduled to take place in an obscure German restaurant. Two of their guys were in there as waitstaff and the third on the back entrance, and they themselves were in the van out front. "Sloane's not going to go off the radar."
"I should be in there," Sydney said.
"Sark knows your face," he pointed out.
"He didn't recognise me in Italy," she quibbled.
That had been a two-second flash past on a motor scooter, when he'd had no reason to be looking out for a SD-6 agent in the background. But of course, Sydney didn't really need to be told that.
"Here we go," Vaughn said, as Sark entered the restaurant. He looked like a skinny kid, but he walked with an arrogant swagger. He crossed the room to join Sloane at his table.
"Mr Sark," Sloane said mildly, the words coming through loud and clear on the concealed microphone.
"Mr Sloane," Sark said, and peeled his lips back from his teeth in a slow, knowing grin. "So glad you could make it." He nodded at the wine list open in front of Sloane. "I hear you're quite the connoisseur of fine wines. That's why I chose this place."
Sloane closed the menu smoothly. "I'm not sure any of this list merits the descriptor of 'fine'."
Sydney snorted loudly, and Vaughn was quietly glad that he was the one on comms, not her.
Sark smiled wider. "Oh, that's just the swill they put out for the tourists," he said. "Walther allows close personal friends to make their own selection from the wine cellar." He stood and extended a hand. "Won't you join me?"
"This wasn't part of the plan," Syd said, abruptly halting her pacing.
"Morton, we need you in the wine cellar," Vaughn addressed one of the agents in the kitchens. There was a brief, tense pause as they waited for him to be able to speak freely.
"Wine cellar has a combination lock," Morton reported. "Only the owner and his wife have the code."
"Damn!" Vaughn quickly cycled through camera views until he found the one that covered the cellar door. Sark and Sloane were already approaching it.
"We can't let them go in there," Sydney said. "They'll be out of reach and off-camera."
"We still have the audio feed," Vaughn said, but he could feel the tension pooling in his belly. He spoke into the mike. "Sloane. We need Khasinau up in the main restaurant - if he's in the wine cellar, you have to draw him out of there."
On the black-and-white video feed, Sloane was smiling thinly at some small remark of Sark's, and betrayed no sign that he'd heard the instruction. Which was exactly how a good agent should react, and yet... Vaughn's teeth were starting to ache from the way he was pressing them together.
The angle of Sark's hand obscured Vaughn's view of the keypad, but Sydney was watching the way his fingers moved. "Two - one - seven - four," she reported confidently. "Tell Morton to follow them in there."
Vaughn winced. "Syd, we can't. It'll blow Sloane's cover for sure."
"Better than letting him get away," she snapped. Vaughn started to respond, but cut himself off in mid breath as Sloane's voice came in over the audio feed.
"An impressive selection," he said.
"Wait until you see what we've got in the back," Sark's voice came through, more distant and slightly muffled. "But there's a small matter we need to attend to first."
There was a soft, staticky pop... and then nothing.
Too much nothing. Vaughn could no longer hear the two men's footfalls or the rustle of Sloane's clothes. "Speak to him, Sloane," he ordered. Nothing. "If you can hear this, give us a signal."
Pure, dead silence. He looked up at Sydney. "Sark's cut the audio."
Sydney was already swinging away from him, headed for the doors of the van. "I'm going in."
Sydney ran for the back door of the restaurant. She wasn't set up for comms, so she could only hope Vaughn had told the other agents not to stop her. If that cellar had a back door, Sloane could disappear without a trace, and she wasn't about to let that happen.
Whatever the hell Sloane was planning, he was not going to get away with it on her watch.
The back area was mercifully clear of anyone but Agent Morton guarding the door. She didn't spare the time to return his nod of acknowledgement, but ran straight to the combination lock and tapped in the code. She was already pushing at the door as she hit the last digit, confident she'd read it right.
She had.
She slowed her pace to a cautious crawl, squeezing through the door when it was only a fraction open to minimize the change in light levels. The wine cellar was dimly lit and the individual bottles of wine thick with dust, although the floor tiles were swept clear. No footprints in the dust either to guide her or betray her presence. No voices, either. If Sloane and Sark were truly choosing wines or even holding their meet down here instead of up in the less secure restaurant, she would be able to hear them from where she was. No wine cellar was that large.
Jaw set, Sydney moved forward. One of those alcoves must conceal a second door or a hidden passageway-
She didn't hear a sound - only felt the barrel of the gun as it pressed against the back of her head.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart," said a woman's voice, "but I really can't allow you to interfere with this."
A stomach-churningly familiar woman's voice. For the first time in her entire espionage career, Sydney felt like her legs had turned to jelly.
"Mom?"