For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.

Previously, on the West Wing/Alias: Flashbacks abound. In the present, Josh and Crystal attend a memorial service at the Vietnam Wall while Crystal ponders her past. In 1986, she lived with boyfriend and CIA agent Ian Guthrie. A few days ago, Sydney and Vaughn were assigned the task of digging through the history of SD-6 in order to locate Sloane, and maybe even Irina Derevko, in the present. Also, Amy Gardner bugs Josh over an appropriations measure.

I know you well enough to tell You've got your reasons That's not the kind of code you're inclined to break Some things unknown are best left alone forever And if a vow is what it takes Haven't you paid for your mistakes?

West Berlin, Germany

Sixteen years, Eleven months ago

Evening

Crystal looked at Ian with a frown. "I don't know. Something's not right."

"What do you mean?" he asked, wiring an explosive device.

"This doesn't sound right."

"Crys, c'mon."

"We're blowing something up. What's the big deal?" she asked.

"Hand me that C-4?"

She sighed, handing him the brick of plastic explosives.

"I knew I should've told the DCI you weren't ready for this yet. It's just that he trusts you, y'know."

"Ian. We're blowing something up. It's gonna take like two days. I don't even know why I'm here. I've not done anything. I could be touring the Parthenon right now."

"You distract me enough, I'm going to blow up this apartment complex instead of the Embassy."

"I just don't understand."

"Crys. Sometimes you're not supposed to understand. Sometimes you're just supposed to do it."

"You're doin' it just fine on your own."

Their discussion was interrupted when the telephone rang.

"Want me to get it?" she asked.

He shook his head, prompting Crystal to flop back on the couch. She'd done absolutely nothing since arriving in West Berlin.

Ian picked up the phone. "Ja?" he answered. He listened, glancing over at Crystal as she stared up at the ceiling, her arms crossed. He carried on a hushed conversation in German, knowing Crystal's German wasn't perfect.

"Are you going to bring her in?" asked the voice on the other end of the phone, in English.

"I don't know that she wants it," Ian admitted.

"Ian, you were supposed to take care of this."

"I'm working on it, sir," he said, picking up the base of the phone and taking it away from the table as far as the cord would reach.

"You're obviously not working hard enough."

"She's a kid, Sloane."

"And I'm beginning to think the same thing about you."

He sighed. "She's suspicious."

"You're supposed to be better than this."

"I'd like to see you do better."

"Watch it, Ian. Because I'm watching you."

"I'm going to blow up the damned Embassy and we're going to get the damned artifact. What more do you want from me?"

"I want Crystal Seaborn if she's as good as you say she is."

"She is."

"And the hold up is...?"

"She's a patriot."

"'SD-6 is an extension of the CIA, a more covert branch. The Director wanted me to tell you that you're being promoted...' How hard is that going to be?"

"Cut me some slack, would you?"

"I'm thinking of cutting you from SD-6."

"Y'know, I know where and how you operate, Sloane. I'm the guy tooling with C-4 right now."

"I would love to see you try, Ian. I would love it."

"Will you let me work?"

"I expect results."

"You'll get them."

"I better."

Ian sighed heavily, hanging up the phone. He carried it back to the table and dropped it unceremoniously, causing it to ring due to the jar.

"What's going on?" Crystal asked, still stretched out on the couch, her arms crossed over her chest.

"One of my contacts isn't happy. It's nothing new. He'll have to learn to live with it."

"So, what now?"

"I'm working on the bomb."

"I'm going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs since that's all you'll let me do."

"You're just so good at it, babe."

She sighed heavily.

He shook his head, sitting down to work on the wiring. "Y'know, I thought you wanted to be with me."

"I do."

"Then why are you complaining?"

"Because you're the guy who pushed me for three days to get out, to take a break. The minute I get to Italy, you say, oh, sorry, babe, got this other thing we gotta do first."

"Like you said. In two days we'll be done and I'll take you to Italy."

"I really don't mind working. Just let me work. I'm not worried about burning out. I'm not worried about fatigue. I like this job, all right? I like protecting people."

"Those people don't know you exist."

"That's the beauty of it."

"Yeah... And tomorrow night, I will need your help." He paused for a moment then looked up at her. "I've been talking with the Director about you."

"And saying what?" she asked cautiously.

"That I think you're too good for this branch of field work."

She sat up and looked at him, tilting her head to one side. "What do you mean?"

"There's another branch. More independent, more covert."

"Yeah?"

He nodded. "And you'd be perfect for it."

"What's the difference?"

"It's based in California. It's more of a collection agency in a lot of ways. Location and procurement of important pieces of equipment, property... There's even some cooperation with other nations' security agencies."

"Yeah?"

He nodded. "Little better pay, even."

She smiled. "I don't do anything with the money I have now. I mean, I'm hardly ever home to use it. And with us sharing an apartment, I put two hundred towards rent and another hundred for food... and that's like it."

"Think about it?"

"Yeah, sure," she said with a shrug.

"That's my girl."

"Y'know, I'm not seventeen or anything."

"Twenty-one."

"Doesn't make me a little girl."

"No... but you are mine."

She laughed, flopping back down on the couch. "Work on your bomb."

He looked at the makings of the incendiary device on the apartment's dining room table. "Think you'll have an answer in a week?" he asked, picking up a pair of pliers.

"What?"

"Your answer. Think you'll have it in a week."

"What's the rush? Plus, if I leave before December, I don't get my degree."

Damn. He'd forgotten about that. "Oh, yeah."

"GWU's nice, y'know. I'm sure UCLA is, too, but... I'm not sure they'd give me my degree if I just take my last semester there."

"Something else to think about."

"Uh-huh."

Ian sighed, and started to work again.

Los Angeles, California

Yesterday

Afternoon

Sydney rubbed her eyes, turning the page in the file folder she currently had open on her desk. She'd been scanning e-mail messages sent decades ago. There was one particular recipient that seemed highly unusual. The e-mail address of the recipient was confusing, and she had already called for an audience with guru Marshall later. The address consisted of a name-Iggy-at an address made up of a string of numbers. Messages were often short, and Sydney was positive they were encoded. The messages appeared harmless enough, talking about the weather and about music.

She wanted to know who Iggy was.

And curiosity was really starting to get the better of her.

Finding another e-mail to "Iggy," she pulled it out of the main file and placed it in another folder. Frowning, she grabbed a spare sheet of paper, determined to decipher the message inside.

She worked for an hour, at least, on the one message, trying whatever came to mind: using the first letter of each word, the last letter. Going by the date, she skipped letters accordingly. She used letter replacement. She rearranged letters, words.

She kept coming up empty.

Her frustration level was rising--she should be able to crack this. It was Sloane, after all, a man she *knew*.

Coming up with gibberish again, she cursed under her breath, crumpling up the paper and hurling it at a garbage can across the room.

"Did you play softball in past life?" Vaughn asked, admiring her throwing arm.

She looked up at him, shaking her head, and sort of calming down.

"You okay?"

"Iggy."

"Icky?" he asked, unsure if he'd heard correctly.

"No. Iggy. Some guy Sloane was in contact with frequently in the eighties."

"Oh?"

"I know all of these are in code, but I can't crack them..."

"Why don't you get the computers to work on them? Give the Cryptologists something to chew on for a while?"

She nodded. "I just... There's something about this guy. This Iggy person." She sighed, looking up at him. "How goes your mission?"

Vaughn blinked then unrolled a large piece of paper across her desk. It was a massive web of blue lines. "CIA operations through the 80s." He then unrolled a transparency, with a web of red lines. "SD-6 operations through the 80s."

Sydney took a moment to look over the information splayed out in front of her. "There doesn't appear to be too much overlap. Just random areas where someone from CIA was coming in as SD-6 was going out or vice versa."

"Looks that way at first," acknowledged Vaughn. "But check out these..." With a dry-erase marker, he circled areas where the two missions coincided perfectly. "With turn around times including briefing and debriefing, travel... These missions are spaced and concentrated in certain areas, where it could theoretically be one person's work. Or a partnership or group."

"Do you know who were on these missions?" she asked, looking up at him.

Vaughn shook his head. "No, I just have dates and locations. Dixon's got part of the break down, I think Weiss has some more..."

"Go find out who's on these. See if there's an Iggy somehow... I'm going to take some of these e-mails to Cryptology." With that, Sydney stood, rolled up his flowcharts, and picked up the file she'd been gathering on "Iggy."

Vaughn watched as Sydney breezed past him, heading down the corridor.

West Berlin, Germany

Sixteen years, eleven months ago

Afternoon

Crystal stood at the gate of the Embassy, her dark hair pulled back, a frantic look on her face. "Please," she begged in perfect French. "I think someone stole my passport and I have to get home, my flight leaves tomorrow... I can give you numbers you can call at home, to check my identity. You can check my student enrollment at the university... Please!"

In a green jumpsuit, with a patch over his right pocket, Ian approached the gate as well, holding a large toolbox. "Gunter Air Conditioning," he said, holding up an identification badge as well as a work order.

"About time," muttered the guard, opening the gate. "Come through."

Ian started to enter, and Crystal was on his heels.

The guard stopped her, grabbing her arm, as Ian continued on. "You'll have to wait for an escort inside," he told her.

She nodded dutifully.

Ian entered the Embassy, setting his toolbox on the front desk. "Gunter Air," he said, handing the staffer the work order.

The young man looked up at him and smiled. "Finally. It's been unbearable here."

Ian smiled. He and Crystal had actually been by the Embassy once before--a few days earlier, sabotaging the air conditioning system. "It is warm," he acknowledged.

"Hot," corrected the staffer.

"Won't be for long," assured Ian.

"Down the hall, up the stairs," instructed the employee.

Ian tipped his baseball cap, heading down the hall and up the stairs. He heard his girlfriend's familiar voice as he started to climb the stairs. Her job was to keep the staff downstairs distracted while he eased into a storage room. He quickly crossed to a safe--one he'd located when in the Embassy earlier, and opened his tool box, pulling out his lock picking tools, listening for the familiar tumbler clicks as he slowly rotated the dial. He smiled slightly when he heard the lock click open and quickly opened the heavy safe door, pulling out a black felt bag. Carefully pushing the bag down, he saw the thin, small sculpture. Checking the base, he nodded.

It held the mark of Rambaldi.

Securing it in the false bottom of his toolbox, he closed the safe and quickly exited the storage room. "Working" on the air conditioning unit actually meant implanting the bomb, although he did reconnect the wires they had disconnected a few days earlier. He smiled again as the air conditioner roared to life. Setting the timer on the bomb quickly, he replaced the cover, picked up his toolbox, and headed down the stairs.

"We'll bill you for services rendered," Ian told the man at the front desk.

He nodded, watching Crystal rant and rave at a consular official.

"Floor show?" Ian asked.

"Lost her passport."

"Some people." He shook his head before leaving.

Crystal, meanwhile, had to finish out her part of the deal. Taking her purse, she dumped the contents out on a desk, still ranting about the staff being particularly rude and anything but helpful.

The official stopped her in mid rant, by selecting the passport from the debris her purse had made. "I believe this is your stolen passport."

Crystal snatched it out of his hand and opened it. Her shoulders drooped slightly before she wordlessly tossed her belongings back in her purse and hightailed it out of the building.

A few blocks from the Embassy, she jumped into the back of Ian's Gunter Air and Cooling truck. "Did you get it?"

He nodded. "Any trouble with you?"

"No, we're clear," she said, glancing back at the Embassy as Ian put the truck into gear and drove off.

Washington, D.C.

Yesterday

Morning

Josh watched as the rest of the Senior Staff and aides filed out of the Chief of Staff's office. He lingered by the conference table, approaching his boss as the office emptied out. Leo McGarry glanced up. "Yeah?"

"You got a minute?"

"Probably two," he said with a nod, continuing to pack up files he'd been looking at during the meeting. "What's up?"

"What is it with a lack of understanding on the chain of command the part of new staffers brought in to fill gaps?" Josh asked.

"Is this hypothetical or is your anger aimed at someone?" he asked.

"Remember Mandy? She was supposed to report to me or Toby and what did she do--?"

"You want to spend your two minutes rehashing about a staffer who hasn't worked here in four years?"

"Amy Gardner."

Leo glanced up at his deputy for a moment then looked back down. "What's up with Amy Gardner?"

"Apparently the First Lady is upset over budgetary changes and she apparently called Donna two dozen times this morning to get to me so I could somehow talk to Chris Wick and get him to fall inline with her policy wishes."

"What's going on with Wick?"

"He's introduced legislation that would take money away from the children's health initiatives and put it towards National Security."

Leo stopped what he was doing and looked up again. "National Security?"

"Yeah. That's what Amy said."

"Find out what kind of 'National Security' matters he's talking about."

"Leo--"

"Look, if it's going to cause a rift where the First Lady's gonna come out and say our party sucks, I'd rather avoid that at all costs especially when you know Wick and can smack him upside the head. You did it once, you should do it again."

"It'll look like I'm taking up the First Lady's cause, and if there's a problem with the First Lady's office, it should be handled by the First Lady because it makes Amy look like she can't run it and it degrades me."

"I'm not sure *why* Wick's doing this. Find out what the money's going to. You've got the clearance to figure that much out, don't you?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Call Wick as a personal favor. You don't want to do that, call CIA or NSA or whomever and see if they know if they're getting a budgetary increase."

"I could do that..."

"Figure it out."

Josh nodded. "Yes, sir," he said, turning to go.

West Berlin, Germany

Sixteen years, eleven months ago

Evening

Crystal watched footage of the Embassy in partial ruin on the television. She tried to ignore the death toll, and turned away when the news station started running pictures of the dead.

Ian crossed to the television set and turned it off. "I don't see why you have to torture yourself with watching stuff like that."

"I don't see how you can't be even the slightest bit curious about what kind of damage we do."

"It's not damage. We're protecting people, remember?"

"That wasn't protection. That was destruction."

"Of the enemy. What that newscast isn't telling you is about the terrorist ties the members of that embassy had."

"Yeah..." she said quietly.

He sighed, dropping onto the couch beside her. "This may not be the best of times to bring it up, but have you thought anymore about being upgraded? Moving to California?"

"A little, but, Ian, you asked me yesterday."

"I know."

"I mean... If I have to make the call today, then I'm not ready for it yet. Let me finish my degree and then we can go at Christmas. Be in sunny California for the worst part of the D.C. winter."

Ian nodded slowly. "I may go on now."

"What?" she asked, looking at him.

"I don't think I can wait."

"It's six months if that, Ian."

"It's six months I could have a settled apartment, I could know the region--"

"It's L.A. I know that region like the back of my hand. We could go together, find a place *together*. I moved into your apartment in D.C., too. Do I get a say in anything in this relationship?"

"You're saying you're going to stay in D.C. until December."

"Six months. What's wrong with that?"

"It's a long time."

"You were the one yesterday saying, 'don't you want to be with me? Why are you complaining? We're together...' What the *hell* happened to that?"

"I've been doing this job a lot longer than you have, Crystal, and I need the advancement. I don't know if they'll take me in six months."

"Oh, c'mon! You've gotta be kidding me. You're one of the best, everyone says so. You waiting six months isn't going to do a bit of damage to your ability to be promoted."

"A lot can happen in six months, Crystal. I could die, for one. I could be injured, I could... who knows what, a thousand bad things could happen. If I get transferred to California, making more money and if something happens *then*, then it'll be *fine*! I'll have the means to take care of myself. I'll have the means to take care of you."

"Perhaps you haven't realized in all this time you've gotten to know me, Ian, but I can damn well take care of myself!"

"Crystal--"

"Look, you want to go, that's fine. Go. I'm going to finish my degree first. And maybe a little time apart would be best."

"Crys, I..."

"You were the one sayin' you were gonna go without me, buster. You brought up this whole moving-to-California thing in the first place. You tell the Director, next time you see him, that I'm finishing my degree. I think I can best serve the CIA and the people with letters behind my name."

He nodded slowly. "Fine. Listen. I'm going back home to debrief. You should go on to Italy."

"For what's left of my vacation. Wonderful," she said sarcastically.

"Don't do this, Crystal."

"I'm not doing anything. You're the one moving to California. You're the one who said: 'Crystal, take a vacation.' You're the one coming and getting me before I could even reach my destination. You're the one calling the shots. And you call your own shots just fine, so I'm gonna call mine."

He stood, his intense eyes meeting hers. "Fine," he said coldly. So cold it made Crystal's spine tingle.

After the moment passes And the impulse disappears You can still hold back because You don't crack very easily

Stay tuned...

Lines from the next installment:

"Do you remember an SD-6 mole named Ian?"

"A mole in SD-6? I believe that was only the two of us."

"No, for SD-6 in the CIA."

"There were no SD-6 moles in the CIA."