The sun beat down mercilessly, the glare almost blinding him. Buried up to his neck in the soft sand, Jack struggled frantically but was unable to move. He could hear the thunder of the waves behind him, and felt a cold chill on the back of his neck as a finger of one of the waves stretched up and touched him. In front of him, Sloane conscientiously tamped down the last of the sand before standing up satisfied.
"Don't. leave. me. here." It came out as a plea, and Jack silently cursed himself for showing weakness.
Sloane brushed the sand off his hands, and smiled smugly. Raising his hand to shade his eyes, he studied the ocean. "Tide's coming in pretty fast," he said off-handedly. A larger wave hit the back of Jack's head. Sloane smirked as water dripped down Jack's face. "The fun's in the anticipation, don't you think, Jack? I mean, we both know how this will end. We just don't know when, exactly." With a manic laugh, Sloane turned on his heel and headed up the beach, out of sight.
Jack desperately tried to jerk his body free from the weight of the sand, but it was no use. She'll come, he told himself, swallowing his fear. Larger waves crashed over his head and receded. Jack shook his head to clear the water out of his eyes, trying to ignore the roar behind him as waves crashed closer and closer. The high tide mark was a good 20 feet beyond him. He would be covered in another couple of minutes.
A movement caught the corner of his eye, far down the beach. A piece of paper? A bird? He craned his neck to see and was rewarded with a face full of water as another wave crashed on top of him. Ominously, the wave did not recede. The water level was now half way up his neck. Stifling his panic, he continued to focus on the spot in the distance. It was moving closer. It was running. It was
"Irina!" he yelled. "Here!"
He coughed as he swallowed a mouthful of seawater. Swiveling his head again, he could see she was running faster. The water was up to his chin now – it would be close. He tilted his head upwards, struggling to breathe. He could no longer turn to watch her. Would she come? In time?
"Hello, Jack."
A shadow loomed in front of him. Irina, holding a bucket. "Thank God," he breathed. "Hurry!" And then watched with horror as she lifted the bucket and poured water over his head, covering him completely. He couldn't breathe. He was. . .
Drowning.
**
"Agent Bristow, welcome back. I hope you've recovered from the flu?"
"Yes, thank you, Dr. Barnett. Just a stomach virus, I think, getting adjusted to normal food again," Jack lied easily. It hadn't taken him long to find the transmitter the NSC had inserted in his watch while he was in prison. It had spent the past 24 hours in his bed while he had gone to visit Sloane in Zurich.
"I'd like to see if we can wrap this up today, Agent Bristow. Last time we met you were expressing some confusion about your relationship with your w-, with Irina Derevko," she said, smoothly recovering.
"Yes," agreed Jack. "It's been a difficult few years for me, and I haven't always been clear in my own mind about the strength of my feelings towards her."
Barnett nodded sympathetically. Return of a long-dead wife, death of his daughter, imprisonment. Silently she indicated that he should continue.
Jack took a deep breath. "But these sessions have really helped," he said with noteworthy sincerity. "And the past 24 hours have allowed me to crystallize my thinking." At least one of those was true, he thought grimly to himself.
"Yes?" Barnett prompted.
"I now recognize that I was just deluding myself. I believed because we both grieved over our
daughter's death, that something more might be possible."
"And?" said Barnett encouragingly.
"I've finally realized that the only certainty in my relationship with Irina Derevko is that she'll use me whenever it's convenient for her. I'm no more to her than a chip in some greater game that she is playing." Jack paused, his mouth set in a grim line. "We shared a past. We don't share a future."
Dr. Barnett sat back in her seat. In those rare moments when she was completely honest with herself, she acknowledged that she had chosen a profession where success was difficult to measure and failure blindingly obvious. Helping Jack Bristow to finally see Irina Derevko clearly was a triumph.
"Congratulations, Agent Bristow," said Barnett warmly as she signed the bottom of his evaluation form and returned it to him. "You're ability to analyze this situation objectively does you credit."
**
The Abbe pondered the most recent moves left in the dust of the exercise run with a frown. The first was easy – 'Nc3' – and the Abbe responded by castling. "Castle often, castle early," the Abbe recited softly. The second – the Abbe looked again, startled. 'Qf6+'. Good god, he was sacrificing his queen. In almost a year of play, the Abbe's opponent had never sacrificed his queen, a tactical weakness that the Abbe had tested on a number of occasions.
But there it was, thought the Abbe, deciding on a response. 'Nxf6'. Accept the sacrifice. But it was pointless, the Abbe knew. The game was as good as over now. The Abbe was losing.