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That immunity agreement was a bitch to work out -- but you're glad she's not biting. She needs time, no, you need time, to bring her in, to do it right, to make certain beyond any doubt that this time it sticks.
You tell yourself this as you're crouching behind a water-heater in a subbasement in London, trying to keep your mind off the muscle cramps. You try to focus on keeping still, on keeping one finger on the trigger and one finger on the safety, the way you always have. You wonder what would happen if you let off the safety once or twice -- or better yet, if you let off the trigger.
She's not coming. You've crouched in a damp corner behind a water heater that's hotter than hell and against a wall damp with some murky liquid that's slowly seeping through your turtleneck, and it's taken an hour in this attractive condition to figure it out. She's not coming.
Five hours wading through meaningless Echelon data, three aspirin to get you through, two beers, and one entirely sleepless night spent stringing two sentences of code together all to figure out that Sydney A. Bristow ("The Woman") was supposed to make a drop in this very basement half an hour ago.
And she's not coming.
You let your aching head rock back against the grimy wall, algae-smelling liquid notwithstanding. You let your eyes snap shut, just for a moment, an extended blink. You imagine she walks through the door with a whoosh of dry air and a Sig in her hands and she spots you behind the heater, without either of you needing to raise the gun, and she says the words you keep running through your head, aching to hear: Vaughn, I want back in.
Your eyes snap open when you hear a sound, but it's only a cockroach shuffling quietly through a copy of yesterday's newspaper discarded beside your feet. The muscles in your shoulders tense: you're not supposed to lose focus like this.
You're also not supposed to fantasize about internationally wanted criminals, but that's another story.
Wait…yesterday's newspaper? You bend down slowly, back sliding through the strange dampness on the wall, one hand reaching down for the paper at your feet while the other rests lightly against the trigger. You grasp the edge of the paper between two fingers, cockroach scurrying and finally dropping to the ground as you lift the paper to waist height. It seems ordinary enough, but you notice something -- pencil-marks, light like shadows, so faint you think they are shadows at first. One under the word four and one under the word be -- you flip slowly (difficult to accomplish with one hand) to page 4B. No lines, no shadows, but full of ads for movie theaters.
One of them is showing The Godfather.
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She's sitting in the grimy projector room, perched on the stool with one leg resting on its rungs, knee jutting out before her, and balanced on that knee, a tub of extra-buttery popcorn. She's laid her forearm across the top of the tub, and she's still holding her gun.
"Popcorn?"
"No, thanks." You run one hand against your side, reflexively, subconsciously brushing off the buttery popcorn grease that's not there and the light glaze of perspiration that is. Your palm bumps the barrel of the Beretta tucked in your belt, but you don't pull it out. Not yet.
"So now you're running movie projectors?"
She inclines her head toward a crumpled heap in the corner. Your stomach does one of those nauseous clenches you've been having so many of lately. Mostly around her.
"It was only a stun."
You clench your jaw, unsure whether you can believe her. Then you do what you've always done best in tense moments with Sydney. Change the subject.
"So I'm guessing you called me here to accept my deal."
The corners of her mouth flick up, then back down. Funny joke, Michael.
You shouldn't be able to read her like that.
"I would, but I'm really not all that interested in working with Mr. Sark again."
Oh, so here it is. Her little game. Make you take the blame for every wrong step the CIA has made in the last five years. Make you squirm. Make herself feel better about her choices.
But you'd rather take the blame for your employer's mistakes than for your own.
"We keep Agent Sark under strict surveillance. His release is conditional on his good behavior. Much like Derevko's once was."
Served and returned. How do you like that, Bristow?
"And you see how well that worked out."
"She cost us a good agent."
"Two." The edge is back, the bitterness in her voice, along with a dark flicker in her eyes. You glance at the floor, because Jack is not a subject you know how to think about.
"He -- he changed, during those two years."
"So I'm told."
"He took it hard, Sydney. When you left." We all did.
"I didn't leave, Michael. I was taken. But everyone seems ready to place all the blame on my shoulders." Except my mother -- the unspoken coda to that sentence.
"Have you heard from him?" You don't know why you ask the question, it's like something you would ask a friend -- a close one. Perhaps it's one more way she manages to put you off-guard. Perhaps it's because you know something about losing fathers.
Her perfectly shaped eyebrows arch.
"You'd like that? If I would give tips to the CIA. Then you could have the whole family in custody."
"I wasn't fishing for intel. I was asking about you." You wonder if she's really that far gone -- if she doesn't know there's a difference.
"You wouldn't bring my father in? If you got the chance?"
"I haven't brought his daughter in."
She smiles a little, a real smile with her lips curling up a bit, not the bitter little grins you've been getting.
"Even though he could lead us to Sloane. Tell me you don't want that to happen."
She shrugs, a small gesture, just a twitch of the shoulders. "You'd just end up hiring him. Maybe he could team up with Will. Work with Dixon and Sark."
"Agent -- Dixon -- has done an excellent job of keeping Agent Sark in line. Look, I don't like him either -- you think I like working with a man who almost killed me? Do you think Will does? He's valuable, Sydney. He's provided the Agency with good information, and it's not my call to make."
"And we both know how much you like to follow protocol."
Nice shot, Sydney. Your hand is perspiring again and you're thinking maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to draw that Beretta after all. It's not like she isn't doing the exact same thing.
But she doesn't give you the chance.
"You have to answer my question."
"What question?"
"Could you ever trust me?"
You knew it was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier, doesn't ease the way you feel like you've been shot in the sternum, burning and bruised. You swallow, Adam's apple bobbing up and down against the suddenly too-tight turtleneck, and her brown eyes are locked on yours.
She shakes her head, slowly, drawing the gun back toward her as she does. She slides it back in the hip holster, lifting the popcorn from her knee as she slides off the stool. She breezes past you, leaving you to look at her back as she fires her parting shot.
"I'll never accept a deal that would force me to turn in parents."
The flimsy door creaks shut behind her, and you're left in the dingy little room that smells of beer and over-buttered popcorn. You're so busy feeling deflated (do you always feel this way when she leaves?) that it takes a moment for her words to process, for you to realize what she was really telling you. Then your collar constricts and your heart pounds and you have to slide both sweaty palms against the rough fabric of your pants.
She told you she would accept a deal.
