By three a.m. Jack Bristow had swept the warehouse for bugs twice, paced through the corridor seven times, and cursed one Agent Michael Vaughn at least a dozen times--all after taking his time driving across town to Agent Vaughn's sanctuary. No, Jack corrected himself, not just Vaughn's. It had become Sydney's as well.
Instinctively he had known the young CIA handler would be late. "Incompetent," Jack muttered to himself. "How the hell did he get promoted to senior agent?" he asked the desolate walls. The walls seemed to answer him. "Sydney, of course," Jack replied and sighed heavily before pacing once more.
It was another ten minutes before Jack finally saw the flash of headlights reflect against a stack of crates. Seconds later footsteps could be heard, followed by a weary, mismatched Vaughn. Jack's sharp eyes instantly noticed the white sock on his left foot, the brown sock on his right, the unlaced sneaker, the shirt half-tucked into the pants with the hole in the knee.
"Jack, thanks for meeting me," Vaughn began. "I'm sorry to bring you here in the middle of the night, but it's urgent."
"You said as much on the phone, Mr. Vaughn," Jack responded crisply. "Exactly what is wrong?"
"A lot. For starters, Tippin's been kidnapped."
"Kidnapped?" The only thing that indicated Jack's surprise at this news was a slight twitch in one eye. "He was kidnapped from the safe house?"
Vaughn kicked the toe of his sneaker against a crate, willing himself to look Jack in the eye. "Yes. Johansson and Parker are dead. We suspect they were poisoned, although we're waiting for confirmation from the lab work," he continued as Jack stared at him. "Our video feed was damaged; we have nothing except for this," Vaughn finished, removing a portable cassette player and two cassettes from his pocket.
"The audio wasn't damaged?" Jack inquired.
"It doesn't seem to be. When we got to the safe house, we only listened to ten minutes or so--apparently Will is quite the talker--but it came through loud and clear," Vaughn answered, hoping he sounded like a professional. There was something about the man standing in front of him that always made him feel like a stupid little kid. "There was one garbled section in the ten minutes we listened to, and it only lasted a few seconds." Why the hell did you bring that up, Mike? Why don't you just admit your feelings to her cold, calculating father?
Jack glanced at his watch--3:17 early Sunday morning. "Does Sydney know yet?" he asked.
"Not yet. I thought we might wait until we had more news to share with her before we bring her into this," Vaughn answered.
The two men looked at each other for a minute, understanding each other for quite possibly the first and last time. If Sydney could be spared a moment's pain, these two men were willing to move heaven and earth to make it happen.
Vaughn broke the silence. "There's more," he said, feeling a headache beginning. "Zoe Pierson is dead. Weiss found her outside the safe house as I was about to leave."
"Pierson? What was she doing there?" Jack wanted to know.
"Motormouth Tippin was worrying the agents; they thought they were going to run out of audio, so Weiss arranged for Zoe to drop off more cassettes on her way home. Whoever ambushed the safe house must have encountered Zoe as she was leaving. She's signed out in the log book at ten p.m." Vaughn exhaled slowly. "Three murders, one abduction, and all we have as possible evidence is two sixty-minute tapes."
"Well, then, let's listen to these cassettes from the beginning," Jack ordered as he finally sank onto a nearby stool. "Maybe we can find something."
"Okay. Well, the audio is voice-activated, so normally it doesn't pick up a lot. But apparently Will had a lot on his mind after he landed in the States . . . ." Vaughn trailed off. "But you can listen for yourself." With that, he placed a cassette labeled "Tippin 1" in the recorder and pressed play.
********
At 3:29 Will wondered if there were any "normal" clothes, like corduroy, he could change into.
At 3:47 he vowed to never stick his nose where it didn't belong again.
At 4:06 Will decided to boost his spirits by singing a rousing rendition of "I Will Survive." It took all of Vaughn's willpower not to burst into laughter in front of Jack.
"Agent Vaughn?"
"Yes?" he answered nervously.
"Never let Mr. Tippin go undercover as a lounge singer," Jack ordered sternly.
"Yes, sir," Vaughn choked out as a chuckle escaped his lips.
By 4:58 Jack's patience was wearing thin. Over the course of cassette one and most of cassette two they had learned that Will enjoyed berating himself for getting himself into "this mess," as he put it; he didn't like the wig and new identity; and he couldn't speak with a French accent, no matter how many hours he spent trying (presumably in front of the two-way "mirror").
"Doesn't he ever shut up?" Jack muttered to himself as Vaughn stilled. He must recognize this, Jack realized. It's almost as if he's listening for something in particular.
As Jack tuned back in to the audio recording, he recognized a new voice, a voice he would know anywhere. Sydney.
He hit the pause button. "What the hell was she doing at the safe house?" he burst out.
"I thought it was a good idea . . . for both of them," Vaughn defended himself. "After the way things were left in Paris, Sydney needed to see him and remind him that he couldn't reveal anything about this. And I think she wanted to reassure herself that he was still alive, not suffering the same fate as Danny," he concluded as his headache raged to life.
"That is no excuse. Security section could have been tracking her. Did you ever think that this abduction could be the work of SD-6?" Jack shot back.
Shit. Vaughn had been so busy focusing on the three who now lay dead, as well as the missing Will, that SD-6's possible involvement had not occurred to him. Who were they dealing with here? Khasinau? SD-6? The Alliance? K-Directorate, even?
"Let's just finish the tape," Vaughn said in a low voice as he pressed play again.
Sydney's plea to Will to stay quiet filled the warehouse, as did his realization that she had needed his sister's passport to save herself from a similar situation. Then came the moment Vaughn was dreading.
"I love you." As much as Vaughn hated to hear those words directed at Sydney from this man's lips, he strained to hear her answer, hoping that it would be picked up on this machine. But once again the tape gave him nothing.
"If my daughter said anything to Mr. Tippin at this moment, it was the 'I love you as a friend' speech," Jack matter-of-factly told Vaughn as the younger agent looked at him, mouth open. "She's had a lot of practice giving that speech over the years."
"That--but--we just need to make sure that--" Vaughn sputtered.
"Focus!" Jack commanded. "Whatever your opinion is of Will Tippin, he is gone and at the mercy of one of any number of organizations. We do not have time for your silly attachment to my daughter." As he said this, Sydney's explanation that there were CIA agents watching could be heard. Moments later, a door closed, followed by Will's request for food.
The tape made a clicking noise and was silent for a few seconds except for a humming sound in the background. Vaughn reached over to stop the tape. "Don't," Jack ordered. "There's more." He leaned over and turned up the volume.
"How can there be? There's just this odd humming noise that's probably just the recorder. If there were anymore audio, the tape player would have picked it up by now."
"Do you know that for sure?" Jack challenged. "You said yourself that you only listened to ten minutes of tape."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Vaughn answered sarcastically. "After finding two agents down and their charge kidnapped, we had nothing better to do than listen to two hours of Will Tippin's blathering!" He pinched the bridge of his nose, doing his best not to jump out of his seat and fully lash out at Jack, who was his superior. And Sydney's father. "We rewound the tape that was in the player and listened to ten minutes just to confirm that at least we had audio that was operational. I never claimed to have listened to the whole damn tape, Jack. If I had, do you think I would have put you through the last two hours of torture?"
Jack blinked once, surprised. Perhaps the kid is developing a spine after all. "Well, Mr. Vaughn, why don't we finish this tape and see what else Mr. Tippin decided to sing?" he suggested as he pushed play.
Thirty seconds later, Vaughn once again felt like a stupid child when the humming grew louder and more insistent. It was a certain safeguarded civilian, humming the theme song from Jaws, Vaughn realized. Two minutes later the tape was silent, then could be heard clicking back on. A knock at the door. A comment of some sort from Will that could not be distinguished. And what sounded like a gunshot.
"This part is critical," Jack stated. "We need this analyzed--now."
Vaughn nodded, looking at his watch. 5:36. Could it really be just four hours ago that he was rushing to the safe house? "One of us needs to take this for analysis, and one of us needs to tell Sydney."
"I'll take this to the lab--"
"I'll call Sydney--"
Jack and Vaughn stopped, each mid-sentence. "I'll notify you when I hear something," Jack said. He stood up and walked away, the cassette tucked in his coat pocket.
********
Weiss pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition. Wrapping his fist around the keys, he leaned his head against the steering wheel and closed his eyes. This isn't happening. When I open my eyes I'll find out it was just a bad dream. Even as Weiss thought this, his gut was telling him otherwise. The hollow ache was still there, beating in his chest, as was the lump in his throat so large it threatened to choke the oxygen his lungs so desperately needed.
Giving up, he opened his eyes and raised his head from the wheel. Swallowing, he exited the car and walked up the steps leading to the front door. One key from his key ring and he was in. The image before him assaulted his senses. It was so normal--the stack of bills on the table, waiting to be paid; the dishes stacked in the sink; the textbooks sitting next to the computer, many sections highlighted for emphasis. He knew that if he walked down the hall he would find the nightgown on the floor next to the unmade bed; she never could accurately toss it back to the bed from the bathroom when she got ready in the morning. Her favorite blouse would be hanging in the shower, drying from its latest wash.
Slowly Weiss walked through the living room, examining every detail, exploring every memory this place held of Zoe. There was this morning's cereal bowl resting on the end table, next to the remote. The movies they had rented two nights ago were still sitting on the coffee table. They had to be returned before noon tomorrow, Weiss noted bleakly to himself. "We never even finished watching them," he said aloud. They had planned on having a movie marathon over the weekend, this weekend, before getting overwhelmed at the office. And the one movie they tried to watch ended up forgotten as their latest tickle fight got out of hand, Weiss remembered with a small smile; her nightgown never made it to the bed that night either. He could still see every image of their last night together so clearly; he clung to those memories now.
Her death was so pointless, so unnecessary. Why did it have to be her? She was young, beautiful, intelligent. Loved by her family, whom she loved with a fierceness that surprised most. Extremely well-educated, six hours away from completing her second masters degree. She even made working for Haladki into an art--she was the only one who could put up with his crap and give it right back without getting a trip to Barnett or a pink slip. Perhaps because she hoped that one day the tables would be turned and she would be his superior as a CIA deputy director.
That was her dream, discussed late at night as she lay against his chest. She was graduating in August, December at the latest, with her degree in criminal justice. From there she was hoping to parlay her education and language experience into admission into the CIA training program. She was already prepping for the endurance testing, running two miles every morning and strength training three times a week. The CIA would have been lucky to have her as an agent.
But that would never happen. And it was all his fault. He was the one who cajoled her into running one little errand for him on her way home after a full day on the job that wasn't even part of her forty-hour paid work week. "It'll just take a minute, Zoe," he had pleaded. "It's even on the way home."
He knew she would say yes, even if she didn't really want to. He could see the exhaustion in her face, the messy ponytail she now sported after hours of doing Haladki's bidding. But he also knew that she could see the stacks of papers and files surrounding him, realize that last night instead of being with her he had been buried in the work that still surrounded him. So to ease his load, she said yes to his simple request.
And it killed her.
He cursed the agents who had not stocked the safe house with enough audio tapes, he cursed Will Tippin for talking so damn much when he was the only one there, he cursed whoever or whatever (probably Haladki) had kept Zoe from leaving for the safe house before 8:30 p.m.
He cursed himself for sending her on the errand as he sank to the ground and let the tears flow.
********
He was in Paris with a ravishing Sydney at his side. She looked so beautiful, her long brown hair gleaming in the light, the slinky purple dress showing off her curves. They were dancing cheek to cheek when suddenly Sydney twirled in his arms . . .
. . . and was suddenly jumping off a chair, her legs kicking some thug who held him hostage. Her red hair--was it a wig?--framed her face as she grabbed him by the arm and urged him up the stairs. Who is this? he wondered as the hand on his shoulder became more insistent.
"Good morning, Mr. Tippin," he heard a man with a clipped British accent say to him. "Did you enjoy your nap?" he asked patronizingly.
"Who--what--where am I?" Will finally chose a question to ask.
"Why, you are an intelligent one, Mr. Tippin," the man--hell, he looks more like a kid to me, Will thought--said with a smirk on his face. "I would have thought a modern American such as yourself would know that when you can look out a window and see nothing but clouds, chances are good you are on an airplane."
Turning slightly, Will could see out one of the windows. Apparently, they were on a plane, although maybe not for long. It felt like they were descending into . . . somewhere.
"Who are you? And why am I here?" Will asked as he tried to figure out what exactly had happened.
"The agency regretted that it didn't have an opportunity to get your full statement, so I was sent to question you myself."
"Couldn't you do that in L.A.?"
"Mr. Tippin, are you really as dumb as you appear?" After looking at his dumbfounded expression, he emitted a short laugh. "Perhaps you are. It's amazing that you disturbed the world of intelligence at all."
"You mean you're an intelligence officer too?" Will inquired.
"Yes."
"Do you work with a man named Jack Bristow?"
"We have worked together on occasion," the man answered as he smoothly ran one hand through his blonde hair.
"Oh, good," Will said with a sigh of relief. He opened his mouth, prepared to ask another question, when a woman in a pilot's uniform suddenly materialized and conferenced with the young man standing before him.
"Mr. Tippin, the co-pilot has informed me that I need to be in my seat buckled up. We will talk again soon," the man said formally before stepping through a curtain.
********
The sound of the door opening caused Weiss to jerk out of his restless sleep. Yawning, he stared at the sweatshirt he was clutching for a pillow as he stood up from the sofa and stretched.
"Hey, baby," he said softly just before Vaughn appeared in the doorway. "Mike? What are you--" he stopped suddenly. "Where's Zoe?" he asked, his brain muddled.
His nightmarish reality quickly returned as Vaughn gave him a sympathetic look. "It--it wasn't a dream? She's really . . . really . . . ." he couldn't finish.
Vaughn nodded. "I thought that was her coming in the door," Weiss said quietly. "We're supposed to finish watching those movies we rented so we don't have ten dollars in late fees like last time. She never even got to see that new comedy she was so excited about seeing. She's supposed to get cold and put on this sweatshirt again," he indicated his makeshift pillow, "and then she's supposed to make me into her pillow and I'm supposed to complain about it and then she's supposed to fall asleep on me before the end credits," he finished, his voice rising.
Vaughn had never seen his friend look this way. This was not the same man who some thought could solve the world's troubles with beer and a stripper; he had never been that man really, it was nothing more than an act. An act that had protected him from his parents' brutal divorce, something he had only mentioned once in all the years they had known each other. Deep down was a man more than willing to commit; he was just waiting for the right woman. And that woman, he now realized, had been Zoe Pierson.
Weiss walked away from Vaughn and sat down at the kitchen table. From this vantage point his eyes could carefully study the rising sun from the nearby window. Vaughn was certain that Weiss didn't really see anything but images of Zoe, images that would haunt him. The tears began to roll down his cheeks once again as his whole body trembled. "Zoe," Weiss cried as a helpless Vaughn stood by him, offering him a Kleenex, patting his shoulder.
Many minutes later the tears slowly stopped and a red-eyed Weiss looked up at Vaughn. He swallowed before speaking. "Do we know yet who is responsible for this?" he asked, the smoldering rage evident even in his low tones.
"Not yet. But Jack Bristow found some more audio on tape 2. It's in analysis right now. From there hopefully we'll be able to pinpoint the assassin."
"But it won't bring Zoe back," Weiss said mournfully.
"No, it won't," Vaughn told him honestly. "Look, I don't want you alone. You're coming with me," he ordered.
Weiss stood up and followed him back into the living room without argument. "Where are we going?"
"We'll talk on the way," Vaughn replied as he turned off the lights and locked the door using the spare key under the doormat. Vaughn revved the engine and backed the car out onto the street as Weiss noticed that the clock read 6:49 a.m. Wordlessly, Vaughn pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. After a short pause, he said one phrase before hanging up the phone and speeding towards the highway.
"Joey's Pizza."
********