* * * *
"Do you really believe that this is necessary?"
"Damn it, Jack. If I didn't think it was necessary I wouldn't be asking you to do it," Kendall said in exasperation. "Sark is the best link we have to Ibarra's operations. He's the only informant we have who's ever actually seen the inside of that Curitiba compound. Find out what he knows."
"And how credible as source are we considering him?" Jack asked. "He's been out of play for over half a year."
"I guess we'll let you be the judge of that. Much time as you've spent working on his profile, you ought to be able to read him better than his own mother could. Just see what he knows, Jack. We'll decide on credibility once we see what we've got."
Jack headed toward the isolated sublevel with some trepidation. This was the first time that he'd been sent to officially question Sark since his unauthorized interview several weeks ago. Despite his subsequent hours of observation, he had not spoken to the boy at all in the meanwhile. As he approached the cell he saw that Sark was reading, stretched out on the floor as usual. Books were carefully screened and approved before being passed to the prisoner and Jack knew that this one was Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones". Sark had specifically requested it, knowing undoubtedly what conclusions of his own Jack would be drawing. It could not have been coincidental. He stopped midway down the transparent wall and Sark conscientiously marked his page before rising to meet him. The boy stood a few feet from the glass with a mocking grin on his face.
"Hi Dad," Sark said. "Am I still grounded or can I come out and play?"
It was a glib opening salvo and could have been interpreted by any other observer as merely another example of how nonchalant he was about his confinement. Jack knew better. He could also see something behind the smirk. Sark's grin said that he understood what Jack's questions had been driving at but that he didn't think there was any truth in it. His eyes, however, said something quite different. There was a fear there - an unwilling acknowledgement that Jack would not have broached the possibility without incontrovertible evidence. He knew, Jack realized. But he didn't believe.
"Intel has you at Carlos Ibarra's Curitiba safe house a little over a year ago," Jack began as if Sark hadn't spoken. "Tell me everything you know about his security."
A puzzled expression flickered across Sark's face but was quickly schooled with resignation into a more professional mode. As usual, he never asked why the information was needed. He simply began to recite all that he could remember. As Jack listened to the list of alarm systems, bodyguards, attack dogs, and other interesting features of Ibarra's security he studied the lean, fair-haired boy more closely than he'd been able to do for weeks on the other side of a television monitor.
And as he stood there images rose unbidden of a past that had never been. A past where Laura had "died" but a year later, leaving him with not one but two small children to raise alone. In that instant he saw what Irina had done - not just to this boy, but to himself and even to Sydney. This conscienceless young man - so bright and talented and full of potential should have been his. Jack should have been the one to raise him. He should have been an ally. He should have fought with Sydney over the last slice of pizza or whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher - not over Rambaldi artifacts in the Antarctic wastelands or Red Army office buildings. The sudden thought of how often and how near his children had come to killing each other in the past couple of years chilled him.
Almost without pausing to consider his actions, he removed a well-worn sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. In the guise of displaying a preliminary approach plan he unfolded the paper and pressed it against the glass. To his credit, Sark's monologue faltered only momentarily as he scanned the four labeled columns with their painfully obvious findings. Jack could see the moment of comprehension in the boy's eyes. Jack had seen that expression once before - on his daughter's face nearly two years ago. Irina had done more than betray him and abandon their daughter. He had once thought that this was more than enough, but now he knew.
"Is this the most current intelligence you have on the compound?" Sark asked, tapping a on the glass separating him from the page of DNA strands.
"It is."
"And how do I know that it's accurate? It looks different from what I remember." There was a slightly frantic edge to his tone, but Jack doubted that it would be evident to anyone not listening for it.
"What reason would we have to give you faulty intelligence when we need your cooperation?"
"None," came Sark's soft reply. "There wouldn't be any point to it at all."
As Jack turned to leave, Sark returned to his book on the floor. Although the pages were open, Jack knew that he was not seeing the words. There was an unfocused look in the boy's eyes as his thoughts were far from the eighteenth-century novel. Jack wasn't entirely sure why he'd done it. He hadn't come down here intending to reveal so much, but looking into those clear blue eyes and into the past that should have been, he hadn't been able to stop himself. It was too late though, he told himself. Much too late to reclaim something that he'd never had. Wasn't it?
* * * *
Hours later Jack Bristow stood unobserved in the shadows of the corridor. The lights of the cell had been dimmed for the night but it wasn't truly dark. Although Sark couldn't be seen on the security camera, his position was clear from Jack's vantage point. The boy sat on the floor at the end of the cot. His arms were wrapped around his shins, forehead resting on his knees. Jack could only speculate as to what might be going through his mind, but he thought that he had a fairly good idea.
Everything that Sark had once thought made him special was now being called into question. He had not attracted Irina's attention because of anything exceptional about him. He had simply been expedient. Far from overcoming the accident of an inconvenient birth, he had been deliberately orphaned and his seemingly improbable rise from street brat to notorious prominence had been engineered from the beginning. Whether that decision had been Irina's or if it had come from her KGB superiors, the results were the same. Deprived of that first and most basic human connection between mother and child, he had never quite mastered the ability to forge others. He had grown up in isolation calculated to foster the self-reliance that he had been so proud of. The only focus in his life became a driving ambition to prove his own worth and he had played right into their hands. These were all just steps taken to ensure that he became the perfect operative and in only a few years Irina and her colleagues had been able to mold the lonely ambitious child into a peerless agent - just as they'd always intended.
It was a lot to absorb, Jack knew. Part of him had begun to wonder if even this had been part of Irina's machinations. She had given them Sark so that he could give them Sloane. But was that the only reason? He hated to overestimate her, but he knew that it was also hazardous to underestimate her. Could she possibly have wanted Sark in CIA custody, knowing that they had the genetic database in their possession as well? Had she wanted Jack to discover his son? Had she wanted Sark to learn what had been done to him? Or was he giving her too much credit? He didn't know anymore.
A small, sudden movement within the cell returned his attention to the current situation. It was a convulsive twitch of the shoulders that resulted in even more tightly clenched muscles. Whatever inner demons plagued him, whatever difficulties he was having in adjusting to his new worldview, it appeared to Jack that Sark was slowly losing ground.
The boy didn't look up when the cell door opened in a few minutes. Nor did he stir when Jack sat down on the empty cot. The only sounds were that of the air conditioning unit and slightly uneven breathing.
"I could kill you," Sark said at last, though he still didn't raise his head.
"That wouldn't accomplish anything," Jack replied, unruffled. There had been no threat in his tone anyway; it had merely been an observation.
"Might make me feel better."
"For how long?"
There was a small sigh in the darkness. "Probably not long enough to make it worth the effort."
The silence returned and stretched on for several more minutes.
"It doesn't change anything." Another observation with no tinge of emotion behind it.
"No," Jack agreed. "It doesn't." Out of the corner of his eye he could see the tension slowly leaving Sark's body. Whether it was resignation or shock finally setting in, he wasn't sure.
"Who else knows?"
"Only Marshall."
"That explains the 'how', I suppose."
Jack watched as the boy shifted slightly, moving only enough to lean his head on the edge of the cot rather than his knees.
"You know, this isn't precisely how I expected my life to turn out," Sark went on after a bit. "For one thing, I'd rather hoped for a better view, preferably from a nice villa in southern Italy." The words were flippant, but Jack could hear the profound sadness in his voice now. "It's cold in here."
The last statement startled him as the tone edged closer to despair. The cell was indeed cooler than it probably should have been, but that wasn't entirely what Sark had meant. They were such simple words, but Jack heard a frightening depth in them. The boy was afraid. For the first time in all the months he'd been confined here, Jack realized that he was finally admitting just how little control he had of his own life now. Perhaps how little control he'd ever had of it.
Without understanding quite how it happened, Jack saw his own hand brush the top of the boy's dark blond head. He could feel Sark's sudden tension and heard his breath catch. There was a long moment of complete stillness. Then Jack felt the first tremor. It built soundlessly and Jack felt Sark's head turn beneath his hand to muffle the ragged gasps against the cot. Despite the fact Jack knew that he was a terrorist, an assassin, a trained sociopath, all he could see in that instant was one very lost little boy.
Eventually the shaking stopped and Jack listened to Sark's breathing return to near normal. Neither of them moved or spoke for a long while. It was with some surprise - but not much - that Jack realized his hand was moving after all in a small, soothing motion against the boy's head.
"You need a haircut," he said absently. Sark's snort of amusement still had an uneasy edge to it, but he didn't shrug the hand away either.
"Now what?"
"I don't know."
"If I promise to be good, could I get out of here to go on missions? You let Irina."
It was Jack's turn to chuckle quietly at the inanity of the suggestion as much as at the winsome tone. "You could promise to be a saint, but the Agency won't fall for that one again."
"Things can change. You never know. You might need me out there one day. I am very good at what I do. It seems a shame to waste all this talent." Sark paused and Jack could tell that he was searching for a new angle. He was almost impressed with the boy's resilience. "Let me look for Sydney."
Jack's hand jerked. There had been quite a few interrogation sessions since Sydney's disappearance before he'd been satisfied that Sark didn't know any more about it than anyone else seemed to. His fingers tightened reflexively and the boy winced.
"I don't know anything more than I've already told you," Sark spoke quickly. "But you know I'm as good as she is. Let me look for her. Your Agency isn't getting anywhere, is it? Let me try. What do you have to lose?"
* * * *
"You've got to be kidding!" Kendall stared at him in disbelief. "Need I remind you that this is exactly the sort of thing that lost us Derevko?"
"I am well aware of that," Jack conceded patiently. "But I also think that this is a feasible course of action. Sark is resourceful. He's as well-trained and proficient as any CIA operative and better than most. You've seen how capable he is in the field. He's..."
"He's a homicidal bastard who will work for anybody who pays him enough!"
"Then we just make sure that nobody gets close enough to make him a better offer."
"Do you really believe that you can give him enough leash to do what you want him to do without giving him so much that he vanishes without a trace? Just like Derevko?"
"I do."
Kendall scowled at him for a long moment. "So help me, Jack, if you lose another one..."
"If he can turn up anything at all on what's happened to my daughter, it's worth that risk."
* * * *
"Do you really believe that this is necessary?"
"Damn it, Jack. If I didn't think it was necessary I wouldn't be asking you to do it," Kendall said in exasperation. "Sark is the best link we have to Ibarra's operations. He's the only informant we have who's ever actually seen the inside of that Curitiba compound. Find out what he knows."
"And how credible as source are we considering him?" Jack asked. "He's been out of play for over half a year."
"I guess we'll let you be the judge of that. Much time as you've spent working on his profile, you ought to be able to read him better than his own mother could. Just see what he knows, Jack. We'll decide on credibility once we see what we've got."
Jack headed toward the isolated sublevel with some trepidation. This was the first time that he'd been sent to officially question Sark since his unauthorized interview several weeks ago. Despite his subsequent hours of observation, he had not spoken to the boy at all in the meanwhile. As he approached the cell he saw that Sark was reading, stretched out on the floor as usual. Books were carefully screened and approved before being passed to the prisoner and Jack knew that this one was Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones". Sark had specifically requested it, knowing undoubtedly what conclusions of his own Jack would be drawing. It could not have been coincidental. He stopped midway down the transparent wall and Sark conscientiously marked his page before rising to meet him. The boy stood a few feet from the glass with a mocking grin on his face.
"Hi Dad," Sark said. "Am I still grounded or can I come out and play?"
It was a glib opening salvo and could have been interpreted by any other observer as merely another example of how nonchalant he was about his confinement. Jack knew better. He could also see something behind the smirk. Sark's grin said that he understood what Jack's questions had been driving at but that he didn't think there was any truth in it. His eyes, however, said something quite different. There was a fear there - an unwilling acknowledgement that Jack would not have broached the possibility without incontrovertible evidence. He knew, Jack realized. But he didn't believe.
"Intel has you at Carlos Ibarra's Curitiba safe house a little over a year ago," Jack began as if Sark hadn't spoken. "Tell me everything you know about his security."
A puzzled expression flickered across Sark's face but was quickly schooled with resignation into a more professional mode. As usual, he never asked why the information was needed. He simply began to recite all that he could remember. As Jack listened to the list of alarm systems, bodyguards, attack dogs, and other interesting features of Ibarra's security he studied the lean, fair-haired boy more closely than he'd been able to do for weeks on the other side of a television monitor.
And as he stood there images rose unbidden of a past that had never been. A past where Laura had "died" but a year later, leaving him with not one but two small children to raise alone. In that instant he saw what Irina had done - not just to this boy, but to himself and even to Sydney. This conscienceless young man - so bright and talented and full of potential should have been his. Jack should have been the one to raise him. He should have been an ally. He should have fought with Sydney over the last slice of pizza or whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher - not over Rambaldi artifacts in the Antarctic wastelands or Red Army office buildings. The sudden thought of how often and how near his children had come to killing each other in the past couple of years chilled him.
Almost without pausing to consider his actions, he removed a well-worn sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. In the guise of displaying a preliminary approach plan he unfolded the paper and pressed it against the glass. To his credit, Sark's monologue faltered only momentarily as he scanned the four labeled columns with their painfully obvious findings. Jack could see the moment of comprehension in the boy's eyes. Jack had seen that expression once before - on his daughter's face nearly two years ago. Irina had done more than betray him and abandon their daughter. He had once thought that this was more than enough, but now he knew.
"Is this the most current intelligence you have on the compound?" Sark asked, tapping a on the glass separating him from the page of DNA strands.
"It is."
"And how do I know that it's accurate? It looks different from what I remember." There was a slightly frantic edge to his tone, but Jack doubted that it would be evident to anyone not listening for it.
"What reason would we have to give you faulty intelligence when we need your cooperation?"
"None," came Sark's soft reply. "There wouldn't be any point to it at all."
As Jack turned to leave, Sark returned to his book on the floor. Although the pages were open, Jack knew that he was not seeing the words. There was an unfocused look in the boy's eyes as his thoughts were far from the eighteenth-century novel. Jack wasn't entirely sure why he'd done it. He hadn't come down here intending to reveal so much, but looking into those clear blue eyes and into the past that should have been, he hadn't been able to stop himself. It was too late though, he told himself. Much too late to reclaim something that he'd never had. Wasn't it?
* * * *
Hours later Jack Bristow stood unobserved in the shadows of the corridor. The lights of the cell had been dimmed for the night but it wasn't truly dark. Although Sark couldn't be seen on the security camera, his position was clear from Jack's vantage point. The boy sat on the floor at the end of the cot. His arms were wrapped around his shins, forehead resting on his knees. Jack could only speculate as to what might be going through his mind, but he thought that he had a fairly good idea.
Everything that Sark had once thought made him special was now being called into question. He had not attracted Irina's attention because of anything exceptional about him. He had simply been expedient. Far from overcoming the accident of an inconvenient birth, he had been deliberately orphaned and his seemingly improbable rise from street brat to notorious prominence had been engineered from the beginning. Whether that decision had been Irina's or if it had come from her KGB superiors, the results were the same. Deprived of that first and most basic human connection between mother and child, he had never quite mastered the ability to forge others. He had grown up in isolation calculated to foster the self-reliance that he had been so proud of. The only focus in his life became a driving ambition to prove his own worth and he had played right into their hands. These were all just steps taken to ensure that he became the perfect operative and in only a few years Irina and her colleagues had been able to mold the lonely ambitious child into a peerless agent - just as they'd always intended.
It was a lot to absorb, Jack knew. Part of him had begun to wonder if even this had been part of Irina's machinations. She had given them Sark so that he could give them Sloane. But was that the only reason? He hated to overestimate her, but he knew that it was also hazardous to underestimate her. Could she possibly have wanted Sark in CIA custody, knowing that they had the genetic database in their possession as well? Had she wanted Jack to discover his son? Had she wanted Sark to learn what had been done to him? Or was he giving her too much credit? He didn't know anymore.
A small, sudden movement within the cell returned his attention to the current situation. It was a convulsive twitch of the shoulders that resulted in even more tightly clenched muscles. Whatever inner demons plagued him, whatever difficulties he was having in adjusting to his new worldview, it appeared to Jack that Sark was slowly losing ground.
The boy didn't look up when the cell door opened in a few minutes. Nor did he stir when Jack sat down on the empty cot. The only sounds were that of the air conditioning unit and slightly uneven breathing.
"I could kill you," Sark said at last, though he still didn't raise his head.
"That wouldn't accomplish anything," Jack replied, unruffled. There had been no threat in his tone anyway; it had merely been an observation.
"Might make me feel better."
"For how long?"
There was a small sigh in the darkness. "Probably not long enough to make it worth the effort."
The silence returned and stretched on for several more minutes.
"It doesn't change anything." Another observation with no tinge of emotion behind it.
"No," Jack agreed. "It doesn't." Out of the corner of his eye he could see the tension slowly leaving Sark's body. Whether it was resignation or shock finally setting in, he wasn't sure.
"Who else knows?"
"Only Marshall."
"That explains the 'how', I suppose."
Jack watched as the boy shifted slightly, moving only enough to lean his head on the edge of the cot rather than his knees.
"You know, this isn't precisely how I expected my life to turn out," Sark went on after a bit. "For one thing, I'd rather hoped for a better view, preferably from a nice villa in southern Italy." The words were flippant, but Jack could hear the profound sadness in his voice now. "It's cold in here."
The last statement startled him as the tone edged closer to despair. The cell was indeed cooler than it probably should have been, but that wasn't entirely what Sark had meant. They were such simple words, but Jack heard a frightening depth in them. The boy was afraid. For the first time in all the months he'd been confined here, Jack realized that he was finally admitting just how little control he had of his own life now. Perhaps how little control he'd ever had of it.
Without understanding quite how it happened, Jack saw his own hand brush the top of the boy's dark blond head. He could feel Sark's sudden tension and heard his breath catch. There was a long moment of complete stillness. Then Jack felt the first tremor. It built soundlessly and Jack felt Sark's head turn beneath his hand to muffle the ragged gasps against the cot. Despite the fact Jack knew that he was a terrorist, an assassin, a trained sociopath, all he could see in that instant was one very lost little boy.
Eventually the shaking stopped and Jack listened to Sark's breathing return to near normal. Neither of them moved or spoke for a long while. It was with some surprise - but not much - that Jack realized his hand was moving after all in a small, soothing motion against the boy's head.
"You need a haircut," he said absently. Sark's snort of amusement still had an uneasy edge to it, but he didn't shrug the hand away either.
"Now what?"
"I don't know."
"If I promise to be good, could I get out of here to go on missions? You let Irina."
It was Jack's turn to chuckle quietly at the inanity of the suggestion as much as at the winsome tone. "You could promise to be a saint, but the Agency won't fall for that one again."
"Things can change. You never know. You might need me out there one day. I am very good at what I do. It seems a shame to waste all this talent." Sark paused and Jack could tell that he was searching for a new angle. He was almost impressed with the boy's resilience. "Let me look for Sydney."
Jack's hand jerked. There had been quite a few interrogation sessions since Sydney's disappearance before he'd been satisfied that Sark didn't know any more about it than anyone else seemed to. His fingers tightened reflexively and the boy winced.
"I don't know anything more than I've already told you," Sark spoke quickly. "But you know I'm as good as she is. Let me look for her. Your Agency isn't getting anywhere, is it? Let me try. What do you have to lose?"
* * * *
"You've got to be kidding!" Kendall stared at him in disbelief. "Need I remind you that this is exactly the sort of thing that lost us Derevko?"
"I am well aware of that," Jack conceded patiently. "But I also think that this is a feasible course of action. Sark is resourceful. He's as well-trained and proficient as any CIA operative and better than most. You've seen how capable he is in the field. He's..."
"He's a homicidal bastard who will work for anybody who pays him enough!"
"Then we just make sure that nobody gets close enough to make him a better offer."
"Do you really believe that you can give him enough leash to do what you want him to do without giving him so much that he vanishes without a trace? Just like Derevko?"
"I do."
Kendall scowled at him for a long moment. "So help me, Jack, if you lose another one..."
"If he can turn up anything at all on what's happened to my daughter, it's worth that risk."
* * * *