Peregrine (E.Klisiewicz)
Alias is owned by ABC, Touchstone and is the creation of JJ Abrams and Bad Robot Productions.
Chapter Ten: Denouement
Three weeks later
My new car is a black Jetta and my new parking space is at the very back of Lot 13. Where all the hourly workers park their cars. I make my way up the ramp to the salaried lot and that's when I notice the red Maserati. I mean, how can you not notice a hot car like that? It sits there and begs for attention.
The owner gets out and runs his freckled hands over its satiny smooth finish. The contrast between old and new is startling. Brand new paint and leathery skin marred by too many hours in the sun. A ruin of wrinkles on a once attractive face.
Enraptured with the new ride that is way beyond his current salary.He turns and walks away with that arrogant saunter of his and I feel a slow burn start to rise from my gullet. As I follow him down the stairs, I remember my recent conversation with Barnett.
"You're making good progress."
I nod my head and paste an agreeable smile on my face. "Great."
"But we still have some work to do." She leafs through my file and stops at a page that interests her.
I cock my head and pretend to wait with baited breath for her next proclamation.
"For instance, there's your grudge against Agent Lambert." Judy watches me closely, but I give her nothing.
"I wouldn't call it a grudge exactly…." My voice trails off and I smile faintly.
"Then how would you describe it?" she asks.
Shrinks live to ask these open-ended questions. The kind where you can hang yourself on the turn of a phrase. So I'm careful not to tell her that I hate the man for taking my place. He's not worthy of her and doesn't deserve to handle her case. He's classified her as a piece of meat that he wouldn't kick out of bed. That knowledge twists like a knife in my gut and extracts a memory from the dusty recesses of my mind.
If you were paying me to analyze you….
Shut up! Stop it!
I've got to tell you, I'd actually say that maybe you're a little jealous.
Of Agent Lambert? Give me a break! I mean, the guy may be senior but he's junior, trust me.And now he gets to see Sydney every week, and it's making you crazy.
Weiss's voice fades away. "I don't trust him." A safe answer with a smattering of truth.
"Would you care to elaborate on that?"
I glance at my watch and see that I have two minutes to go. "Not really."
She sighs and puts her pad down on the desk. "Why won't you let me help you?"
"I thought I was making good progress."
Another sigh and she gets to her feet. I'm what's known as a hard case. Flippant and unconcerned about my fate. Really, I don't give a shit if they deep-six me. And while Barnett knows this, she is determined to rehabilitate me. No matter the cost to her own reputation. "Our time is up. Let's continue our discussion on Thursday at 2."
Today is Thursday. On Wednesday, Lambert was driving a Ford. Today he has a Maserati. My distrust knows no bounds and I am determined to bury the bastard.
****
A bright pink post-it note is stuck to my Walkman. Loopy writing fills the paper. "You're late. Come to the media center when you get here."
The media center is where they store all the captured content. Stolen conversations. Clandestine meetings. You name it. They have it. Analog and digital. Tape, film, CD, DVD, and optical disks. All jammed together into a 20 x 40 hole in the far corner of the basement.
I walk through the door and spot a bright set of eyes peering through a teetering stack of files. Like Curious George in a banana tree. Overwhelmed with excitement.
"What's up?" I ask.
Paulie emerges from behind the mountain of file folders and shoves a dusty records box at me. "Interesting reading in here."
I read the label and see that it dates back to the 70's. With a groan, I ask, "What now?"
"We're running out of space, so we need to start digitizing our older files." She perches on the edge of the table like a parrot looking for crumbs.
"Let me guess. Digital cams and downloads?" Dirty, tedious work. Boring to the nth degree.
"Not just any digital cameras. Check this out." She plucks a tiny camera out of her pocket and hands it to me reverently. "6 Megapixel. 5x optical zoom. Video and audio capture."
It fits in the palm of my hand and bristles with bells and whistles. "They bought this for you?"
Paulie shakes her head with a laugh. "It's yours."
Now I'm really confused. "I don't…"
"You never know when you might need it. Have fun."
*******
Two hundred file folders with at least a dozen sheets of paper in each folder. You do the math. I carefully place each piece of paper on a white background and line up the registration marks. Point and shoot. When I fill up a flash card, I download the files to my laptop. Hour after merciless hour ticks by and I feel a crick form in my neck.
I fill my mind with anything but the task at hand and think back to the phone call with my Aunt Trish. Telling her what I can't tell my mother. That I've failed miserably as an agent. A disgrace to my father's name. She lets me talk. The consummate listener. Compassionate and non-judgmental. Everything that my mother is not. And she doesn't offer the usual list of platitudes that are meant to comfort but only serve to annoy me.
I know you don't want to hear this right now, but maybe it's for the best. In a month or a year from now, you'll look back on this and laugh.
This is a sign from God. You're meant to do something else with your life.
"So, tell me about your dream," she says in her heavily accented English.
"What makes you think I had a dream?" I ask lamely, knowing she can see right through me.
She laughs in my ear. "It's always about a dream when you call."
I tell her everything that I won't tell Barnett. Seeing Jack and Laura together. Lovers and conspirators. The kiss from hell and the way the dream hangs over me. Like the haze of a bad acid trip. My meeting with Sydney and the things I said to her. "What else am I supposed to think?"
Now Trish turns deadly serious. "Dreams are never what they seem."
"That's what you always say." I know she is trying to reassure me, but it's not working. "But it seems so real."
"Of course it does. And you've learned not to ignore your intuition…..all of that is good. But you cannot interpret this literally. You do not know for sure that this Jack has conspired against you. And you don't know the whole truth about Sydney and her mother. What you have seen is symbolic." I know all of this, but I still need to hear it.
"Symbolic of what?"
I can almost hear her shrug. "That is not for me to say. But you'll know the truth when it finds you."
The next folder looks like all the others. Boring rhetoric in a vanilla wrapper. Neatly typed label in the lower right corner.
February 1976.
Headlines scream out at me.
Five-alarm fire destroys director's Los Angeles home.
Arson ruled out as the cause for the blaze.
Names jump out of the badly smeared newsprint.
Lambert. Davenport. Bristow. Devlin. Vaughn.
All listed as friends of the director. Photographed at his burial service. I look closer and see much younger versions of my father and his peers. Standing huddled in the rain. Dark trench coats and matching umbrellas. Somber reminders of what they really are. One figure stands out from the others. A woman with dark hair and eyes that burn through the sepia tones of the photo. A face I would know anywhere. One hand resting on the shoulder of a young girl. Standing far too close to the owner of the red Maserati. Invading his personal space. Ten feet away from her husband.
Laura Bristow and Peter Lambert.
I blink my eyes a few times but the images are still there, burned into my retinas. My hands are shaking as I finish up the last few folders. When I leave the room, the contents of the folder are stashed in one pocket and the digital camera is jammed in the other. I'm not a complete idiot. Lambert is hiding something and I plan on getting to the bottom of it.
******
"Meet me at 11. Big news."
Weiss has a key to the director's private bathroom, and whenever he's out of town, we use it as a safe meeting place. Out of all the privies in the building, we are pretty sure this one isn't bugged.
He hands me a file. Eyes-only. Dated today. "Where did you get this?"
"Just read it."
I am barely past the first paragraph and I feel the ground dropping away from me. Words explode in my brain like heat-seeking missiles.
Level 1 security breach at our off-site facility.
No remaining Rambaldi artifacts.
Source reveals that SD-6 has also been compromised.
The file drops to the floor and I sink to my haunches. Too much coincidence for me. With my head in my hands, I say, "I need a favor."
I know how his mind works and I can almost hear the questions fluttering around in his head. The old Eric would have jumped to my aid without hesitation, but the new one is trying to watch his back. Still, it's only a few seconds before he says, "Name it."
I look up at him and wonder if he knows what he's getting into. If I fail, this could blow up in our faces. "Can you get me a tracking device?"
"What's this about?" Of course he wants to know, but I can't get him involved.
"Can you get it or not?" Do I sound as tired as I feel?
"Sure, but I need Devlin to sign off on it. And he'll ask questions….." He shrugs and jams his fingers in his pockets. No yo-yo to siphon off his anxiety.
"And you'll have answers to those questions. I need it before the close of business today."
Weiss sighs heavily. "Don't shut me out. If you don't tell me, then how can I protect you if something goes wrong?"
I weigh the consequences and decide that it's his choice to get drawn into my little vendetta. With a return of my shaky hands, I dig for the article and hand it to him. "Something I found in my travels."
It doesn't take him long to add it up. "Director Quinn and that fire. Wasn't he….oh crap."
I memorized the names of those twenty five agents that died for the cause. Director Quinn was on that list. "Yeah. I think we found our mole."
"The evidence is mighty slim," he warns.
"So we dig up more evidence." I hold up the digital camera. "I'll follow the Maserati and get the goods on him."
"What Maserati?" Oh yeah, how can I forget the best part of this?
"The red one in Lot # 10. One day he drives a Ford and today he shows up in a sports car. On the very day that our Rambaldi artifacts get liberated." I've learned to modulate my voice so I sound cool, calm, and collected. It helps me deceive the shrink, but Weiss knows me better than that. "I also need you to pull his personnel file."
Now he holds up his hands. "From under Sherwood's nose?"
"Get Paulie to help you." They have electronic records on everyone. Encrypted and encoded every which way, but no problem for someone like Paulie.
His face changes at the mention of her name and I realize that he likes her. "When do you need this?"
I needed this twenty six years ago when Lambert conspired with Irina to kill my father and all those other agents. And I need it now to right the wrongs that have been done to so many. "It may already be too late…..but this is our last chance to nail him."
"I'll see you up here at 4." Weiss is already out the door when he says this.
"Thanks," I say to the empty air. My voice bounces off the pristine tiles and mocks me with its echo.
Hollow man with a hollow life.
It's never a good idea to hang on the executive floor for too long, so when I hear people approaching, I duck out the back door and get the wind knocked out of me by none other than Jack Bristow.
******
Jack pushes me into an empty office. "We don't have much time. I assume that Weiss briefed you?"
I nod my head woodenly and wonder if puppets feel this way when someone's playing with them. "Yeah."
"Heads are already rolling upstairs, and they're on a witch hunt," he reports grimly.
Here we go again. "So it's not over."
"It's never over. Expect to get called before the day is out. Sydney is also on alert at her end."
Jack has always been intimidating, but never more than now. I'm not sure how I feel about him. If he tried to betray me, then why is he warning me now? With a heavy sigh, I admit, "They're wasting their time."
That comment interests him and I see straighten up even more. "Explain."
I extract the newspaper from my pocket and hand it to him. His eyes widen slightly and I realize he's never seen this. "Your friend Lambert gets around."
He crumples the paper in his hand and throws it at me. "What's your point?"
Ooh, clearly I've hit a nerve. "Have you seen his new Maserati?
Jack's already dark eyes blacken even more and I wonder if he's about to blow his stack. Maybe I should back off a little. When he doesn't answer, I add, "He usually drives a Ford, so I thought it was odd when he showed up in a red sports car. Kind of arrogant, don't you think? Especially after what's happened."
He's taking me seriously. "It doesn't prove anything."
"Yet." I smile and show him the camera.
"That's your plan?" Jack says with thinly veiled contempt. "You're way out of your league with Lambert."
"Maybe, but I'm not about to wait while everyone sits on their hands in some meeting. I'll tag his car and we'll see what happens when I follow him."
Now he shakes his head and his next words surprise me. "I've never trusted him. Not since the days when we all came on board. And when they partnered him with your father…..they were always butting heads."
My mouth is open but I can't help myself. Dad never mentioned this in his journal. "I didn't…..know."
"Sorry. It's just….." Jack stops when he sees the look on my face.
I swipe my hand across my eyes. "What were you going to say?"
"Bill used to go on about moles at the office. I chalked it up to paranoia, but maybe he was right."
"He suspected you….until he caught your wife with a Soviet sympathizer." The words shoot out of my mouth before I can stop them.
The muscles in his jaw are working overtime. "I remember, but how do you know about this?"
"He kept a journal." Black with gold trim. Wrapped in my mother's scarf and buried in a shoebox under my bed. "And he mentioned a mole…..but he never got to finish his work."
"So Haladki had help." Looking inwardly as he talks. Almost like I'm not there. "Look, you shouldn't go this alone. It's dangerous work and I can't get involved, but I know someone who can."
"Who?" He looks me square in the face and then it dawns on me. "You can't be serious."
Jack digs in his pocket and passes a CD to me. "It's all in here."
He's gone in the blink of an eye and I stand there staring at the disk in my hand. The evidence I've been waiting for? Vindication for my time in Taipei? I'm about to file his gift away when my pager vibrates. It's Weiss, and he has the goods.
******
We execute a brush pass in the cafeteria and I have the transponder in hand. I catch myself up short when I see Lambert and Devlin in the doorway, but they never look my way. I'm so low on the totem pole that I've become a non-entity. Too bad for them that they've discounted me so quickly. It's an easy walk to the stairs and out to the parking garage.
I dart across Lot #10 and secure the transponder to the underside of Lambert's new baby.
…you'll know the truth when it finds you….
Will a neon sign flash at me in Morse code? Will the cop on the corner send me secret signals? It's never that easy.
I return to the media center and see Paulie sitting in my chair. Waiting for me with a determined gleam in her eyes. "I've had a call about you."
"Really?" I feign ignorance and hope I'm projecting an innocent air.
"They want you upstairs at 2." She picks at her cuticles and watches me hopefully.
"What about Barnett?" The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.
"Re-scheduled for tomorrow."
"OK." I wait for her to get up but she doesn't budge.
"So where you been?" Paulie asks brightly.
A dozen lies come to mind but they stall in my throat. "Me and Eric….we…."
"Sure you did." Now she gets up and waits for me to sit. She lays one hand on my shoulder and leans closer. "Your girlfriend was here. She'll be back at 1. Be careful, OK?"
Paulie pats my arm and jogs out at a trot.
My girlfriend.
There's that word again. Why does it keep coming up?
It's dangerous work and I can't get involved, but I know someone who can.
Am I the only person who doesn't get this thing between me and Sydney? I look at my watch and see that I have an hour to review whatever it is I'm supposed to see. The CD slides into my hand and into the player on my laptop. I close the door and wait for what will come.
*****
Devlin and Jack. Head to head. Davenport taking notes. Barnett pulling her shrink routine in the corner.
We can't support you on this.
We're not in the habit of extracting civilians.
You've gone way beyond the call of duty.
Use of excessive force.
Nearly sacrificing your daughter for the greater good.
No one sanctioned this assignment.
Talking heads. Words flying at him. And he sits there stoically, waiting for them to finish.
"What if your child was the one they were torturing? Would you sit back and wait for help to arrive or would you take matters into your own hands?" Jack's question is quite reasonable, but they have no answer for him.
Devlin confers with Davenport and they both whisper sweet nothings in Judy's ear.
Jack doesn't wait for them to come back with a snappy response. "I did what I had to do and I needed Mr. Vaughn's help."
"But he was less than willing, wasn't he?" Barnett asks. "In fact, you threatened him with a gun."
"Indirectly, yes." Well at least he admitted it.
"What happened when you got to the warehouse?" Devlin asks.
"I asked him to back me up and gave him an earpiece."
"When you say back up…." Judy knows perfectly well what it means but she likes to draw her victims out.
"He was supposed to alert me if anyone arrived on the scene. Which he did not. In fact, he went radio silent."
My breath rushes out of me. I mean, I expected this, but it still feels like I've been sucker punched. Jack doesn't play by the book, but he's brutally honest. And it's not personal. I can see that now. Really I can. Distance and time gives me a little perspective. He's doing his job. He's doing what any agent is supposed to do. Report the facts in a clear and concise manner.
"Do you know why he did that?" Barnett asks.
"He didn't want to be there, and he had no reason to trust me." Well what do you know?
A long beat before Devlin butts in. "Why not?"
Don't they know about Russek?
I'd just learned that my daughter was about to be tortured, Mr. Vaughn. Most likely executed. I had no time to go for help. ….. And now you can judge what I've done. I don't give a damn what you do.
At the time, I understood why he did it, but Syd sure had a problem with it at first.
If you know so much about Russek, then you know he wasn't with K-Directorate.
It seems he was sacrificed, yes.
Well see, that's not a choice my dad can just make.
What would you have done? Had it been your daughter? Or your son? Or Danny?
That memory still haunts me. But what bothers me more is the way her opinion turned on a dime.
What happens when someone you care about is in trouble. What you said, that nothing else matters, that it all just goes away. Last week, when I learned what my father did for me, sacrificing Russek, it made me sick. But, now I know I would have done exactly the same thing. You should have seen him.
The two of them are unbelievable. Syd is morphing into Jack before my eyes. The darkness that she tries to keep at bay is destroying her. And while I still have a soul left, I can't let her take that from me.
"You remember my report on Russek." I know he regrets it. The life of a spy, the things he's done…..hell, the things we've all done. So not worth it.
"Yes," Davenport hisses, rubbing his eyes like he's wiping out the image of Jack.
"He knows the lengths I would go to. Were I in his shoes, I would have the same doubts." Jack is coming clean with all of this. Unbelievable. OK, so maybe I misjudged him. "He thought I brought him along as collateral."
"So you lost track of him, and then you were captured by Khasinau's men," Davenport says, breaking into a hacking cough. Perpetual smoker. Well on his way to emphysema and an early grave.
"Yes. I offered to trade places with Sydney, but they weren't interested. In fact, they were more interested in beating information out of us than making a deal." Not one iota of emotion passes across his face, but I remember the way he looked when they nailed him to the wall. And I know he remembers it too. It's there in his eyes. Just a flicker behind the mask that he always wears.
"And then Mr. Vaughn showed up with his own agenda…." Devlin looks at Jack over his glasses. So they saw me. Of course they did. Highly trained agents know everything that goes on. Even in a less than salubrious state, we mark every event as it happens.
My agenda. They make it sound so formal. Like I had my to-do list prepared in advance.
Get gun.
Knock grunts senseless.
Take out Derevko.
It was nothing like that. Nothing even remotely rational lurked in my mind when I went rogue. It just happened. How can you explain what you don't understand?
"Yes, but they removed us from the room when she arrived." Jack says the pronoun with a slight sneer that is probably unconscious, but they pick up on it immediately.
"And you say there were ten of them?" Barnett queries with a slightly dubious tone.
Jack nods. "Not counting Laura and Sark….yes, I'd have to say it was something like that."
Barnett turns a few pages and looks at Jack. "This is the part where I'm confused. How did you escape from them?"
"We didn't. They let us go." Jack looks as mystified as the rest of them.
"After torturing you," Devlin says with an even greater air of disbelief than Barnett. "Do you have any explanation for this?"
He shakes his head. "None. It made no sense."
"Maybe someone was watching out for you." Davenport's suggestion comes out of left field and I rear back at the thought of it.
Jack considers this and shrugs. "Maybe."
The clip ends and I load the second clip. Sydney.mpg. One file on a disk that could change everything.
*******
She takes my breath away whenever I see her and she's no less beautiful on this grainy video clip. With hands folded, she looks at her three accusers and they seem to shrink back from the glare in her eyes. "I already filed my report, so why am I here?"
"We'd like to hear it in your own words." Barnett's honeyed tones do nothing to mollify Syd. If anything, they aggravate her even more.
"I was tortured and drugged. How much do you expect me to remember?" Syd spits.
"Agent Bristow, we appreciate that you've been through an ordeal……" Davenport starts, but she jumps in with both feet.
"An ordeal? Is that what you call it?" Fighting mad. "Tell me, have you ever been tortured?"
Davenport has flown a desk for his entire career. She knows this, but she asks it anyway. "No," he admits reluctantly.
"Has anyone ever extracted your teeth….without novocaine? Have they stuck needles in every orifice? Or how about putting you in a body press and breaking as many bones as they can in 60 seconds?" Anguished words forced out through clenched lips. Whitened fingers grasping the table.
Davenport shakes his head and looks at his hands.
"These events are unfortunate," Devlin says, trying to restore order. "And we regret what has happened to you, but…"
"So do I." Sydney tosses her head like a wild filly. "Ask away."
"How did Agent Vaughn get involved with this mission?" Barnett asks, and I see how this will go. They'll play on her emotions to bring me down.
Her eyes brim with tears and I know what she's thinking. The train station and all that stuff I said. "He followed me…it was his idea."
"So it wasn't your suggestion." Barnett needs confirmation. In case Syd left something out. Hoping to catch her with the trip wire of emotional distress.
"Not at all."
"Tell us about the flood." Devlin fast forwards to what they really want to know.
Syd is overcome for a moment. Words get stuck in her throat and emerge as a coughing spell. When she finally manages to speak, it comes out as a barely audible whisper. "I tried to save him. I saw him…..thought he drowned. Vaughn just faded….and was gone. Gone forever."
"And the next time you saw him….was at the warehouse." I watch the shrink's face and wonder if I am imagining the flash of apology.
Syd was on auto pilot now. "They strung me up….and then Michael was there. It was like seeing a ghost. I thought it was the drugs, but when they let me go and I saw his gun….aimed at my mother….and I saw their guns…..I had to make a choice…"
I barely notice the tracks of my own tears until they splash the keyboard.
She said my name.
"And what was that choice?" Barnett asks gently.
Chocolate drop eyes plead with her inquisitors.
Don't ask me to do this.
A sob catches in her throat. "I couldn't let him do it. Couldn't let him shoot her. Couldn't live with that. There's been enough death….and God, the thought of losing him again….so I stopped it. And they got away….and that's my fault. You can't blame him for this. If you want to blame someone, blame me."
It's so like Syd to take this all on herself and so like her to see the good in everyone. What she said to me….it was all true. And all I could see was the shadow of my own dream. The miasma of my own distrust. But why the dream?
Jack and Laura.
Laura and Lambert.
Lambert leering at Syd. Her amazing resemblance to her mother.
It makes me sick. I am going to stop this.
She bites my tongue and I scream.
What the hell does it mean?
Set me free from this nightmare. I can't handle this anymore. I am swaddled in the blanket of my own discontent.
And that's when I look up and see her in the doorway, frozen by what she sees on the screen. Her own face peering back at her. Crumpled like an old paper napkin.
"I'm sorry," is all I can manage in the moment that stretches to eternity, saved only by the sudden appearance of my boss.
"Hey," she says to Syd, then, "That thing you wanted? Here you go."
She hands me a thick folder and exits with, "Happy reading."
*******
"What's that?" Better than asking what I'm doing with her testimony.
"Lambert's personnel file." Happy illegal reading. I stuff it into my backpack and wait for my marching orders.
"We don't have much time." Syd looks all buffed and polished and I can't help but notice the new haircut. Tapered at the sides. Framing her face like a cameo. "Dad says Lambert hits the links at 3."
So I follow her through the tunnel and try to ignore the sway of her hips. Graceful as a gazelle, even in combat fatigues and Doc Martens. I direct her to Lot # 10 and Lambert's filly stands out like a whore at a debutante ball. "Now we wait."
"Here?" The walls are closing in on me and at approximately 2:00, I'll take my final bow.
"You got a better idea?" she snaps.
"There's two hour parking on the street…shall we?" I start heading to my car and stop when I see her standing there, still staring at the car. "Syd?"
She seems to awake from a dream and comes jogging up to me. "We need to take precautions."
I blush, because what I'm thinking has nothing to do with the mission. "Sure. Follow me."
There's a guard shack on this level and I happen to know that Larry takes a three hour break on Wednesdays when he's downtown with his mistress. "You're kidding, right?"
"What kind of precautions did you have in mind?" I crack and watch the smile that threatens to break out on her face.
She digs through her pack. "Take off your shirt."
Maybe I was right the first time. "What…."
Syd tosses a Kevlar vest at me. "Can't take any chances."
"Right." I peel off my shirt and see that she's taking slow, careful inventory. Long sweeps of those damned eyes….scorching every inch of me. Mesmerized by the heat that shimmers from her in waves.
"Need some help with that?" Words softened by desire. Syd steps closer and takes the vest from my hands. Pulls it over my head and fastens it behind me. Nails grazing my arms. Head moving closer, she whispers, "Who's SG?"
So close and yet so far away. I blink at her a few times before the question registers. My tattoo. "Old girlfriend," I say hoarsely, overwhelmed by her proximity. "Dead."
"Oh." That breaks the spell. "Sorry."
She turns away and lets me finish dressing. "So why are you here?"
My question seems to surprise her. "I'm…..returning a favor….for Taipei."
I snort and roll my eyes. "A favor."
Her left fist balls up. "Look, I don't have to do this……"
"I never asked for your help." Derision replaced by indecision.
Now her right fist is ready for action. "You can't do this alone."
"The last thing I want….."
Syd won't let me finish the thought. "Damn you, Vaughn." She slams her right fist into the wall and nearly takes it down.
Keep your distance. Don't try to make it better. You're done with that game. "We better get into position."
She follows me to the Jetta without another word. Examines it with a raised eyebrow and holds her hand out for the keys. "Quite the chase car you've got here."
Syd is baiting me and she knows how easy I bite. So I don't. Which stuns the hell out of her. "Drive to the street and park at the corner. He should be out soon."
On our way down the ramp, my phone rings. It's Eric. "Where the hell are you?"
"Street surveillance." I see that it's 2 and we make it out of the garage before they can stop us.
I can hear him chewing the inside of his cheek. "They just slapped me around for helping you."
"With the equipment?" What else could it be?
"With everything." He sighs and says, "Look, I did this voluntarily, but it's got to stop."
Sydney sees someone leaving and zooms into a space. My head snaps back and I ignore her glance. "I know."
"Is she with you?" Paulie must have told him. He sounds resigned.
"Unfortunately." The cycle is repeating itself. Vaughn lusting after his agent. Sydney's lapdog. She doesn't belong here. The fewer people involved, the better. But she's in it up to her eyebrows and I have to let her be part of this.
"Well…..good luck." He hangs up abruptly and I figure that someone has walked in on him.
"What do we do now?" Sydney asks, more to fill a conversational space than anything else.
"Like you said, we wait."
******
"So you saw my testimony."
The silence has been deadly and I'm glad she's taken the first step.
"Yup." Better than a grunt.
"And?" It takes a lot of courage to broach the subject that we both want to avoid.
"I'm not sure what to think." I'm looking down at Lambert's file with half an eye and keeping the other eye riveted on the exit to the parking garage.
"But you believe me, right?" Sydney is unlike most women, but she's a product of her upbringing. One in which she tries to please everyone but herself.
"That depends." Interesting. Lambert comes from a poor background. No family money. No inherited wealth.
"On what?" I know I'm pushing her, but someone has to.
"Get this. Lambert got into Harvard on a scholarship."
"Are you even listening?" Her hands drum mindlessly on the steering wheel and I wonder if she's practicing on my face.
Now she has my full attention. "Do I believe the story you told them? Not entirely."
"Why not? It's the truth." So controlled when she wants to be, but there's a lot going on under the hood.
"It's one version of the truth, but I'd like to hear the other version. The one you're not telling them. The one you're keeping to yourself."
Without even looking at her, I can see the steam rising, but that's nothing compared to the inferno inside me. The one that remembers the dream and the feeling of utter betrayal. The one that picked up the gun without thinking. The one that lies in wait for that one moment, that one trigger to set me off.
"Here we go again….I told you…." Syd cries.
"Why does it matter if I believe you?" I've always wondered about that. Why does she care about my opinion?
"Because you…. matter…..to me." That last admission is wrenching and sad and it's all I can do not to reach out to her.
What do you say in response?
You drive me crazy. I can't be around you anymore. You're bad for me. I feel better when I don't have to worry about you. My new job is the best thing that's ever happened to me. But when I'm not with you, all I do is think about you. Wanting you…wanting what I can't have. Tearing me apart.
"I want to believe you, Syd, but there's something missing. Something that doesn't make sense. Our enemies wouldn't free us without a reason. I think….you gave them a reason." I pick and choose my words carefully, but it's no less horrifying when I say it.
You betrayed the cause.
She flexes her jaw but is instantly distracted by the sudden appearance of a Maserati. "It's show time," she intones, her voice low and deadly.
*****
The traffic is always heavy in L.A. and today is no exception. My faithful watch says 2:45 and I wonder how Lambert plans on hitting the links on time. Unless he's going somewhere else. Because by my nearest estimation, it will take him at least a half hour to get to the nearest golf course.
We head onto the freeway and Sydney says, "Where the hell's he going? Ventura Beach is in the other direction."
That's where Weiss lives. And he stays as far away from the sand traps as he can. "Why would he go there?"
"He's a member….golfs with Devlin." I aim the receiver and the transponder beams back a signal just fine.
It figures. The Maserati picks up speed and my Jetta is barely up to the task. When she gets up to the red line, I warn, "You plan on replacing my car?"
"We can't lose him…..if he gets off somewhere…."
I show her the receiver and she instantly backs off the accelerator. "We have this. Remember?"
"Yeah…right. I forgot."
We drive in silence for a good ten minutes and the signal starts getting fainter. "I think we passed him by. Take the next exit and turn around."
That chews up another fifteen minutes of strained silence. Eyes avoiding each other. Focused on the mission. The way it always should have been. Not this damned morass of angst. "Vaughn, we're close to the observatory. Think he went up there?"
Remember what they told you at Langley. The Soviets always prefer to meet outside. They feel more secure. "Yeah. And I'll bet your mother's up there too."
"Or she's on her way." Now we're in concert and I breathe a sigh of relief that we can forget our personal differences….at least for a moment.
"Do you ever….meet him up there?" It used to be one of our special places. It was where I told her that I shared her feelings. That I wanted more than the status quo. What a mistake that was. Look what it started. Where will it all end?
Syd shakes her head and we climb the hill to the observatory's twin domes. "Never."
We crawl at a snail's pace and turn into the parking lot. He's at the far end, sitting on his hood, leafing through a magazine. A dozen cars lie between us and she inches the Jetta under a shady tree. "We need to stay low. What else did you bring?"
She fishes a camera out of her bag. An SLR model with a huge telephoto lens. "Good. We also have audio."
I hold up the digital camera as a joke and she smirks. "No way."
"Actually, we have a digital feed from the transponder." The afternoon light paints her in a flattering light and I snap her picture.
"Stop that." Syd starts wrestling with me and almost snatches the camera out of my hands. We are as close as too people can get in a Jetta without doing the nasty. She stops suddenly and stares at me, doe's eyes blinking at me. Bambi. More innocent than she should be. "I wish….I could take it all back."
"Me too. But we can't." My pulse rate has ramped up and I'm sure she can hear my heart pounding against my rib cage. And then I stroke her cheek with my free hand, following the contours of her face and tucking her hair behind her ear. Her eyes close and I hear the intake of her breath as I drop my hand to her shoulder. Glancing along her collarbone. Running down her arm and brushing her thigh. Hardened with muscle.
Syd lowers her head and rests it against my shoulder. "Vaughn. What you said before….you were right about me."
The moment of truth is interrupted by the arrival of a black Mercedes. Shiny and new. Out of state plates. Tinted windows. It glides past our hiding place and proceeds to the far reaches of the lot. Half a dozen yards from the Maserati. "Get the camera ready," I hiss, shoving my earpiece into my ear and putting the recorder on hold.
And it happens. Doors open on both sides. Khasinau and Derevko emerge, followed by two knuckle-dragging grunts. Syd and I look at each other. Frozen. Not believing that the impossible is about to go down. Then her instincts set in and the camera starts whirring.
They are talking quietly. In Russian. Lambert speaks it like a native. Irina waves off her second in command and approaches the Maserati. Runs her hand over its hood. Then turns and embraces Lambert. The way they are hugging. Not just comrades. Lovers. And when they turn slightly, they are kissing. Ardently. Open mouthed and extremely passionate kisses.
Just like my dream. Except it's Lambert in Jack's place.
Syd starts gagging. "Take the camera."
She's out the door and under cover in a matter of seconds. Tossing her cookies. But the show must go on. And it does. Interminably.
******
I grab the digital camera and find that its optical zoom is really powerful. In no time at all, I use up the flash card, but it's enough to hang Lambert. Full facial shots. License plates. A personalized soundtrack. The whole nine yards.
Syd staggers out of the bushes and lurches against the car. And that's when they see her.
No kidding.
My cup runneth over.
Call for backup," she orders, a gun magically appearing in her hand as she heads back to the treeline.
Bullets start pelting the car and one almost takes my ear off as I duck and hit the speed dial on my cell phone. I am half out the door when Weiss answers.
"Yeah?" Gee, not even a hello for his oldest friend?
"We need your help." A bullet sings by my ear and embeds itself in the driver's side door.
"Is that gunfire?" Now he sounds worried.
"Yeah. Send a team….half a dozen or so….Griffith Park….we have Khasinau, Derevko, and Lambert…." I fling myself to the ground and have the presence of mind to empty my pockets. Using my pitching arm, I toss the flash card and my tape recorder into the woods.
"Vaughn….you're breaking up…."
"Hurry… not much time." And that's when I see a set of feet. Clad in elegant shoes. Italian if I'm not mistaken. Flanked by two wooden sticks with rubber stoppers.
Crutches. But that can only mean…..I look up and see Sark. And he's not amused. Most definitely not. In fact, he looks rather annoyed. And he has a gun pointed at my head.
"We meet again," he says in that velvety accent that makes my blood curdle. And without preamble, he pulls the trigger and the dart centers itself in my forehead. Parting its multiple creases.
My head hits the ground and my vision starts to blur. "Oh, crap. Not again…"
Stronger drugs this time. His face looms over me, upside down, looking perfectly pleasant in that English way he has about him. A true gentleman to the end. "Until next time," he says with a tiny smile, and that is all I remember.
*****
Round two. Someone is cradling my head and I look up and see her. She touches my brow and I feel a bandage. "How long was I out?"
"Twelve hours."
I try to sit up but the room is still tilting like Don Quixote. Whirring about like the proverbial windmill. Syd hands me a cool glass of water and it tastes like a piece of liquid heaven.
"Thanks." I look around, alarmed that I don't recognize my surroundings. "Where are we?"
"My dad's house." Should I be worried about this? Were the two of them ganging up on me? How paranoid should I be after getting tranked for the second time in two months? Really, enough is enough.
"Why…..what happened?" My thoughts are randomly scattered like the bits of evidence I gathered.
"You should rest." Jack approaches from the kitchen. Garbed in his perennial suit with his perpetual mask still in place.
"Did we catch them? Did we….." I know what I want to say, but my words twist around themselves and come out garbled.
"Easy, son." Jack rests his hand on my shoulder and forces me to lie down.
I am not your son. Don't even go there.
My eyelids start to get heavy and I realize they've doped me. That not so perfect drink of water. I should be angry….but all I want is sleep. And so I surrender to the welcoming arms of slumber.
****
The harsh light of day wakes me up. Lying down. On a different couch. Head still bandaged. Pounding from whatever they gave me. And I see Syd. Sprawled in a chair. Looking rather haggard. And that thought pleases me. To know she's not perfect. That she looks like hell in the morning.
But what alarms me is the gun in her hand. Fingers curled around the trigger. Relaxed in sleep. Safety in place.
Does she plan on shooting me?
Lambert's file lies open on the coffee table. Some of the pages are pulled out. Items highlighted in yellow. Not a total loss then.
A shadow crosses the doorway and I see Weiss, fiddling with his yo-yo, talking on the phone. Sotto voce.
This is a safe house. They've moved me.
Should that thought comfort me? That we did some damage to the other side? That they're after us for some reason?
I feel someone watching me. Syd is awake. She puts the gun down and walks over to me. Lowers herself to her knees. Pats my arm. "How are you feeling?"
Good question. I'm pissed off. Confused. And hungry. "Coffee." It comes out as a growl. Then I remember. "Fresh coffee. You have some too."
Drug me and she drugs herself.
I get to my feet and manage to steady myself against the wall behind me. When I get to the kitchen door, I see Weiss rummaging in the cabinet for some java. Syd is murmuring, but I hear snippets of her conversation. "Doesn't trust us…..don't blame him…."
Weiss shrugs and hands over a packet of coffee. "Hey, buddy. You had us worried."
Way too friendly. And far too cheerful for my tastes. "Why am I here? Why did you drug me?"
My thoughts are lucid, and my diction is finally normal. No thanks to them.
Syd starts the coffee pot and moves to within a yard of me. "You have no reason to trust us…."
"You think?" I toss out angrily, ripping the bandage off my forehead and bouncing it off the trash can. A trickle of blood leaks down my face and I ignore her helping hand. Spotting some paper towels, I tear off a sheet and wad it up against my wound.
"We had no choice. You were in no shape…."
And I interrupt again, "It wasn't your choice to make. As for trust….that's a fucking joke." I crash into the kitchen table, as unsteady as a newly born colt. Her hand comes out again and I swat at her like a bug. Her mouth opens in shock. She's never heard me swear, and definitely never seen me in a fit of temper. Other than the times I chewed her out over breaking protocol.
"Lambert is dead." Little explosions of sound as it forces its way through her perfectly shaped lips.
This does not compute. Last time I checked, he was in good with the Soviet faction. Consorting with the enemy. In plain view of the public. Almost like he was thumbing his nose at us. And slipping his tongue down Irina's throat. "How?" I bark.
Weiss pipes in, "PPK 9 mm bullet. Point blank range. Perfect hole in his forehead."
So the bitch killed him. Will her daughter also be the death of me?
"The kiss of death," I crack, but no one but me thinks it's funny.
"You were right about him." Weiss rolls up his sleeves and starts washing dishes. Funny, I never would have pegged him for the domestic type. "His deals go all the way back to the '60s. And after a bit of digging, we discovered his long lost relative. Are you ready for this? Kim Philby is his adopted cousin."
"No way."
"Way. So his Red connections go way back….and the Agency didn't catch it. Doesn't say much for us, does it?" Weiss is pinch hitting for Syd because he knows I'm too pissed to think clearly.
"What about the others?" Sark. Khasinau. Derevko.
Eric wipes off his hands. "I better let Syd tell you this."
And we are left. Two actors on the stage. Gauging each other. Wary. Syd pours out coffee in two oversized mugs and offers one to me. Her hands shake and it almost spills on me. I anchor it with fingers that tremble for different reasons and watch her carefully. "So tell me. All of it."
Her mouth moves and I am reminded of a silent film star. Glamorous. Emoting with her body. "I don't know where to start," she says, flitting around the room and finally landing on a stool.
"Try the beginning. The deal you made in Taipei. The truth you were about to tell me." My voice is harsh. Acrimonious. Relentless.
"That's….well, what you heard on the tape….was the truth. And what I told you before….was true too."
I did it for you.
"But that's not all of it…." Statement of fact. Not a question.
Sydney laces her fingers together tightly. Like she did on the tape. Fending me off. "Not all of it….no."
"So let's have it."
She sounds unfocused at first, dreamy, inward turning as she remembers. Then her voice takes flight and is underscored with a web of emotion. "When you came….they had tortured me for hours. I told them nothing….didn't care what they did to me. Didn't matter if I died. But Dad….they took him and started taking him apart….he wouldn't talk….they would have killed him….I had no choice."
No choice. "There's always a choice."
"You don't understand…..she was there. When she arrived….they were about to finish him off. She told them to cut me down….said she would deal with me. And that's when you….had that gun. And I knew….knew you would do what I couldn't bring myself to do….so I had to stop you. Because it was impossible….we had no chance against them. So I gave her what she wanted. To save you and Dad."
The breath I've been holding escapes like a slow leak in a balloon. "What did she want?"
"The codes…Rambaldi. It seemed so simple. Some numbers to save two lives…but I swear, I didn't betray the CIA. All I gave them was SD-6 intel. The rest must have come from Lambert," she explains, desperately wanting me to believe her.
It all fits together. Except the bits from my dream. And maybe that's my inner voice telling me to get out completely. Before she drowns me. Before this life takes over. "I believe you….but I don't know if I can ever trust you again."
And that's where we leave it. I place the coffee mug on the table and walk away. Leaving her there. Staring after me like a lost soul. Hands still clenched. Part of me aches for her. Part of me wants to turn back time. To when it was simple. When all I had to do was look at her to make my day. Before the darkness took hold.
"Wait," she calls, but it's too late.
I'm done with this life.
*****
There is one more chapter after this one. Stay tuned.
