Day 14 – A Profile

I stray between consciousness and blissful unconsciousness until I feel cool fingers on my temples that push me one way or another. Last time they lulled me back into sleep. Now they bring me awake.

I try and stir, to shift my weight but she stops me. "Don't move. I've tried to tie up your ankle using strips from my clothes but you're better off lying as still as possible. Your convulsions have stopped and your breathing and pulse are better today, but you shouldn't stress yourself anymore than you need to. You were in pretty rough shape there yesterday."

There's only one way she could have diagnosed me in the complete darkness that surrounds us. She would have had to comb my entire body with her hands. I'm touched that she took the time to do that. We weren't exactly friends before this mission started, and I haven't given her any reasons to change that so far.

At least, I hope I haven't. I hope I haven't unraveled that much that I would have spoken unintentionally.

"Thank you," I manage to croak out before she helps me to sit up so that I can take a sip of our foul tasting water.

We sit in silence for some time.

"Who do you work for then?" she asks me casually, as if trying to take my mind off of my physical anguish and I remember asking her to write the symbol on the window.

Briefly, I consider lying to her, but I change my mind. I recognize that impulse as my last vestige of self preservation. She's not going to believe me, and it's going to hurt. But at this point, I might welcome the emotional pain, simply to contrast the great physical pain that I'm in.

And, there is the odd chance that it might help my cause; if she believes me that is.

"I'm MI6." I say quietly. She doesn't respond right away. "I don't expect you to believe me –"

But she interrupts. "You're British SIS?" Her voice is full of suspicion and disbelief.

I sigh. I anticipated no less. "Yes. I was recruited eight years ago, when I was sixteen."

"You're full of it. Why would the SIS recruit someone so young? Are you a super genius?"

I try not to laugh bitterly. "My IQ is relatively high, but I don't think I qualify as a super genius. I just fit a profile. That's all."

"What profile would that be? Psychopath?"

I chuckle sarcastically. "Sydney what would I have done these last few weeks without your sardonic wit?" I shift slightly and a sharp pain travels up my leg all the way to my spine. I find myself reluctant to talk about it, now that the moment of truth has arrived. "No, I have no family, they died when I was ten. I have an above average IQ, and a knack for getting myself into tight places and then out again. Ironically enough they recruited me the one time they caught me. I had tried to rob the Tower of London. Needless to say, I was not completely successful. My friend tripped and set off the alarm and then cried to the police about everything…" I pause as I hear some wheezing coming from the person next to me. "Are you laughing at me Sydney or are you suffering from acute asthma?"

She starts to laugh harder and it momentarily lightens the mood that's been hanging over us.

"You tried to steal the Crown Jewels?"

"The recruiter was actually sufficiently impressed that I had broken into Waterloo Barracks, that he was willing to recruit me even though I had failed."

The laughter slowly dies down until it stops altogether. It is some moments before she talks again, her voice quiet. "How can I believe you? With everything you've done? With all the people you've killed?"

I pause a minute as I try to phrase my answer. I have one, but I don't think it will make it easier for her to understand how I could do the things that I have done. "To their public, all governments will claim that the ends do not justify the means. All governments assert that they have lines that they will not cross. In private however, away from parliamentary oversight, you know as well as I do, that they state the very opposite. That's why the CIA does certain things and that's why my government does certain things. They tell us that the ends do in fact justify the means, and therefore to use any means necessary to accomplish the mission that we are given."

There is silence for a minute.

"How long have you known?" her voice is sharp.

I sigh again. "Almost since the beginning. Haladaki worked for your mother and she shared all of her intel with me. Remember, I took your fried Mr. Tippin from CIA custody."

She stands up quickly and leaves my side. I think perhaps she had forgotten about that. "Sydney, I had no choice. I am a deep undercover agent. I have no support from my Agency. In fact there are only two people at MI6 who even know that I work for them. I was tasked with infiltrating Irina Derevko's organization which I did. Then I was tasked with infiltrating SD-6. So I did that as well. You know as I do that there is no room for sentimentality or leniency in this business. I needed to be cold, calm and ruthless to gain their trust. So I did what I had to do."

Her silence forces me to continue. "That's why I so often tried to recruit you to my cause before I joined SD-6. There were many times when we were working at odds with one another when we did not have to be."

"That's no excuse—"

"No, it's not. And I accepted that there would be things that I would have to do that I didn't necessarily want to when I accepted the assignment. But that's why it is so important that you leave that symbol on the window for me. Because I work in deep cover, and so few know about me, the codes that I know are the only things that let me access MI6. There are no biometric scanners that will identify me and I have no badge that I can flash. The codes are my only safety. But if they manage to pull them out of me, then they will be able to access all levels of MI6 as well. There will be nothing to stop them."

Sydney stops her pacing in front of me. "But if I nullify your codes with this symbol and you do manage to escape…"

"Then I will be on my own and forever an outlaw even to my own government. I will have no proof that will allow me to identify myself unless I can some way make contact with my two handlers. But once that symbol is placed, my handlers will be split up and moved to different assignments. I will be alone with only the alias that everyone now knows me as."

"But—"

I've been interrupting her a lot during this conversation, but it is my confession. I figure that I am allowed certain liberties. I force false bravado into my voice. "Don't worry though love. I don't think that I will be long in this world after that happens to get too depressed about the matter."

"If they manage to break into your mind, you might tell them about me. They could sell that information to Sloane."

Perhaps her self-centeredness should bother me, but it doesn't. It's a trait that we both share. "Yes, but at that point I will probably be telling them the color of my favorite underwear. If you nullify my codes then they will have no way of attaining any collaboration. In fact, if they believe that the codes I gave them are false, then they will not be able to trust any of the information that they managed to extract from me."

The silence that settles now is complete as she contemplates my secrets, and I contemplate my likely death. But what more can there be to say?

"I'm sorry about Tippin." I say at last. "I wish that I had found some other way, now."

She doesn't respond but she sits back down next to me, though not touching me this time.

Finally she responds softly as well. She sounds like she wants to cry. "I'm sorry to hear about your family."