Chapter 32
"Don't say it." Jack raised his hand warningly. He and Sydney sat in the back of the van, collecting their breath.
"If you insist," smirked Sydney, picking up a pencil and tapping it lightly on the counter.
"You okay?"
"Yes. Although it's a little disconcerting to have the men on either side of you drop dead simultaneously." She continued to tap.
"*What* are you - ," Jack paused, recognizing what Sydney was doing. Tapping out 'I told you so' in Morse code. "Do you *mind*?" he grimaced, exasperated. "This could all be an elaborate setup. We have to cross-check his statement, analyze his voice to make sure he wasn't lying, check his DNA against records to make sure it was the real Lazarey -,"
"Yeah, but what does your gut tell you?"
"Sydney," Jack expostulated, "you know it's a mistake to be driven by -,"
"Dad!"
Jack exhaled loudly. "He was telling the truth. And I'm an idiot. Satisfied?"
"It's a start."
"But," he pointed out, "there's still a lot we don't know."
Sydney nodded. "Like how they knew where the meet was?"
"Just one of many questions. But that's a good place to start."
**
Marshall looked up and felt a twinge of pleasure. Or was it fear? Or maybe both? Jack and Sydney Bristow stood in front of him, looking grim. Perhaps if he concentrated on Sydney's face. . .
"Marshall, we need your help," she said sweetly. Marshall relaxed.
"Sure, Syd, you know I'll do whatever I can. I was just working on -,"
"Marshall, Sydney and I are having difficulty evading surveillance," interrupted Jack abruptly. "We need you to find out why."
"Oh," said Marshall flustered. "What kind of surveillance? Video, audio, remote -,"
"Remote. We're being tailed."
"Uh, well, we can check for transmitters. . . ," his voice trailed off as he rummaged through his office. He pulled out a crate that contained an assortment of electronic devices, candy wrappers, and action toys. "Here," he said victoriously, pulling out a scanner. "This puppy'll do the trick." He waved it over both of them and studied the readout. "Unh-uh. You're clean."
"We're *not* clean," Jack corrected. Marshall's face fell.
"Dad, it was only once. Maybe they just tailed us and got lucky."
"Sydney, we changed vehicles twice and clothing once. We booked on three plane flights simultaneously. We changed ID when we entered Prague. That's a level of luck that's hard to imagine." He hesitated. "And it wasn't only once."
Sydney frowned. "I don't remember -,"
"Later," said Jack tersely.
"Well you're not transmitting, that's for sure." Marshall thought for a minute. "Although, maybe. . . " he said to himself meditatively. "Nah."
"What?"
"Well you remember at SD-6, after Emily died, and Mr. Sloane was being blackmailed, and we coated the bonds he was carrying to trace the blackmailers? We didn't use a transmitter, because we were sure it would be detected. But we weren't going to let $100 million walk away from us, either."
"Although you did," interjected Jack, sotto voce.
Marshall stopped, flustered again. Sydney shot a withering look at her father. "Go on, Marshall," she said soothingly. You were saying?"
"Oh, well, once coated, the bonds could be traced using a long-range infrared scan. The bonds themselves produced no energy, so if you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't find it. But aim those little infrared rays at it, and 'Voila'!" Marshall beamed. "But only a couple of people even know that technology exists."
"Like Sloane?" pointed out Jack dryly.
"Could you check for us, Marshall?" prompted Sydney gently.
"All right, but you'd have to be a pretty smart cookie to pull this off...if I do say so myself," he said modestly. He busied himself for a moment, wiring several different components together before sitting back, satisfied. "Marshall Flinkman, superhero," he murmured to himself, then realized with a start that he wasn't alone. "Uh," he stammered, "I didn't mean I was a real superhero. I mean, you're the superheroes. I just kind of sit here in my little room and -,"
"Whenever you're ready, Marshall," interrupted Jack.
"Oh, right." He ran his improvised scanner over Sydney. "Nope, nothing here." He turned to Jack and the device immediately issued a small chirp. "Hoho!" said Marshall gleefully. Slowly he moved it up and down, stopping over Jack's breast pocket as a stream of chirps were emitted. "Bingo!" He reached forward, only to find Jack's hand holding his in an iron grip.
"That's enough, Marshall, thank you."
Marshall shrank back as he saw the fury in Jack's eyes. "B-but, d-don't you want me to confirm what's emitting the signal?"
"I've got a pretty good idea," replied Jack in clipped tones. "I think we're done here." He turned on his heel and stalked out. Sydney followed, puzzled.
"You're welcome!" called Marshall down the hall. "Anytime I can help!"
**
Sydney entered her father's office, closing the door behind her. "What was that all about?"
With disgust, Jack withdrew the folded pictures from his pocket. "Sloane gave me these. They were copies of the pictures that your mother had provided to him, the ones that confirmed to the NSC that I had been working with her. He's been tracking me ever since."
"What's on them?" asked Sydney curiously, reaching her hand out.
Jack held his hand away and walked over to the corner. "That, sweetheart, would fall under the category of 'too much information'." He dropped the pictures in the shredder.
"Oh," said Sydney, biting her lip to keep from laughing. "Need-to-know basis, huh?"
"Yes. And our *daughter* is definitely not on the need-to-know list."
**
"Just checking in. I've been out of touch the past day or two."
"Nothing to report, Mr. Bristow. No new codes."
"Call me when they change."
"Yes, sir."
Jack hung up the phone, mildly disappointed. It was not uncommon for the Abbe to skip a day or two. He had as well, when he was in prison. An interrogation, a block-wide strip-search, illness.
He hoped the Abbe was back in play soon. He could certainly use the distraction.
**
"Okay, let's go over what we know." Pizza and beer littered the table; Jack had a large legal pad in front of him, pen poised in his left hand. He waited patiently while Sydney organized her thoughts.
"One. You conditioned me as part of Project Christmas, giving me the code name 'Julia Thorne'."
Jack winced. "Did you need to start there?"
"But it all started there, didn't it?" Sydney pointed out reasonably. "Two. Lazarey provided additional 'development' - don't you love that term - while you thought I was attending camp, from the age of seven."
"You used to sing those stupid camp songs all the way home." Jack shook his head. "A brilliant strategy for making sure I didn't ask you any questions." He jotted a note down on his pad. "I'm going to keep track of things we don't know as well. Like who arranged for that training. Sloane's the obvious candidate, but we can't rule out the KGB. Or," he hesitated, "your mother."
"Uh, actually Dad, we can." Sydney chewed on her lip for a moment. "Those dreams I told you about? They're of the place where I had the additional conditioning. I can clearly remember Lazarey, and I can remember Sloane dropping me off and picking me up. He -," she halted for a moment, "I -,"
Jack put his pen down. "Yes?" he said in a low voice.
"I thought he was my father. All the time I was Julia. I remember. . . ," her voice grew strong with loathing, "*hugging* him."
Not a muscle moved in Jack's face. "Sydney," he said carefully, "do you remember. . . were you. . . ," he swallowed, "abused in any way?"
Sydney's eyes grew round. "You mean. . . ?"
Jack nodded.
"No," she said decisively. "To be honest, my memories are mostly happy. Playing games with him, laughing, being glad to see him." Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember. "He was. . . kind."
Jack ran a hand through his hair in relief. Perhaps Sloane would die a quick death. Not a slow, lingering one. He picked up his pen. "Okay, what's next?"
"Something else we don't know. Wouldn't Lazarey have needed to have the trigger phrase to have done the extra conditioning? How'd he get it?"
Grimacing, Jack studied a spot on the wall above Sydney's head. "I'm afraid I know the answer to that. I gave it to him."
"Why?"
"You'd need to crawl back into my paranoid mind back then to really understand, but I was convinced that the other shoe would drop. That the KGB would come for you. They would have," he took a deep breath, "had to kill me in the process, if they were going to take you while I was there." Sydney reached over and squeezed his hand gently, but did not interrupt. "Arvin worked with me on Project Christmas. I confided in him what I'd done; he was my closest friend. One of my only friends at that point in the CIA, to be frank. I gave him the trigger phrase to use in the event that I. . . couldn't."
"But surely, later. . . ,"
"Oh, yes, once Arvin went rogue, I changed it. You were about 16, I think. But by that time you were working during the summer, and hanging out with your friends. You weren't going to camp anymore. I still don't know how he found out the new one." Jack leant forward and jotted another note on the pad. "Sydney, I don't give up information very easily. And there are a few things that I would have rather died than given up. This is one of those things. I'm sorry, honey." He shook his head. "I wish I could stop saying that."
"We should probably move on," said Sydney softly, wanting to erase the bleak look on her father's face.
"You're right," he said shaking himself. "And I think we're only on point two."
"Three. I disappeared. What I remember of that fight with. . . Allison, I would have been pretty banged up. I either went to the hospital and was activated, or I was activated right away. I became an assassin."
"And Sloane did a first-class job of simulating your death." Jack stared at Sydney unseeing for a moment, as he remembered her funeral. Sydney squeezed his hand again.
"Right here, Dad. I'm right here."
Jack pulled his gaze back. "Yes, you are," he said gratefully.
"Four. You and Mom started to look for my killers."
"Separately, at first," Jack offered. "Later we worked together."
"Five. This is where it gets a little fuzzy. Mom, apparently, finds out I'm alive, and determines I've been activated. She goes to Lazarey and coerces him to help her."
Jack sat silently for a moment.
"Dad?"
"She didn't tell me," he said evenly. "She knew you were alive, and didn't tell me."
"Perhaps she had her reasons?" suggested Sydney. "Why don't you write that down as a question that we don't have the answer to?" she said, a slight strain in her voice.
Jack's pen didn't move. "I'm your father, Sydney. And while I might not have been the *genius* that your friend Dr. Lazarey was, there wasn't much about Project Christmas that I didn't know. Or couldn't have figured out with time."
"Riiiight. Maybe we could come back to that."
"I'd prefer not to, if you don't mind," he said stiffly.
Sydney sighed. "Six. I attempt to murder Lazarey, presumably on Sloane's orders, but kill his body double instead."
"Didn't Lazarey say that your mother had come for him only the day before?"
"Yes."
"Then Sloane must have found out, or guessed, what your mother was planning."
Sydney nodded. "She just got there faster than he expected. Seven. You spot me via a surveillance camera. Now you also know I'm alive." She looked at her father curiously. "Did you contact Mom?"
"Yes," said her father briefly, his face still unforgiving. "We'll get to that in a moment. Actually, I should probably pick it up from here. Eight. Julia boards a plane to LA."
"We don't know why," observed Sydney.
"Self-centered as this might be, I have to believe that you were coming to see me. Maybe subconsciously you knew that I could help. Nine. Your mother provides surveillance photos to Sloane that conclusively demonstrate that we've been working together."
"You can't be sure of that," said Sydney. "It could have been Sloane who obtained them."
"But we can," reminded her father. "Your mother told me she had given the photos to Sloane. Of course, we don't know *when* she gave him those photos. But I'm guessing we have the timeline right, because the NSC received them while Julia was in the air to LA. And your mother also confirmed that she had prevented you from seeing me."
Sydney shifted uncomfortably, knowing what was next.
"Ten," said Jack, voice unsteady. "I go to prison."
"Don't say it." Jack raised his hand warningly. He and Sydney sat in the back of the van, collecting their breath.
"If you insist," smirked Sydney, picking up a pencil and tapping it lightly on the counter.
"You okay?"
"Yes. Although it's a little disconcerting to have the men on either side of you drop dead simultaneously." She continued to tap.
"*What* are you - ," Jack paused, recognizing what Sydney was doing. Tapping out 'I told you so' in Morse code. "Do you *mind*?" he grimaced, exasperated. "This could all be an elaborate setup. We have to cross-check his statement, analyze his voice to make sure he wasn't lying, check his DNA against records to make sure it was the real Lazarey -,"
"Yeah, but what does your gut tell you?"
"Sydney," Jack expostulated, "you know it's a mistake to be driven by -,"
"Dad!"
Jack exhaled loudly. "He was telling the truth. And I'm an idiot. Satisfied?"
"It's a start."
"But," he pointed out, "there's still a lot we don't know."
Sydney nodded. "Like how they knew where the meet was?"
"Just one of many questions. But that's a good place to start."
**
Marshall looked up and felt a twinge of pleasure. Or was it fear? Or maybe both? Jack and Sydney Bristow stood in front of him, looking grim. Perhaps if he concentrated on Sydney's face. . .
"Marshall, we need your help," she said sweetly. Marshall relaxed.
"Sure, Syd, you know I'll do whatever I can. I was just working on -,"
"Marshall, Sydney and I are having difficulty evading surveillance," interrupted Jack abruptly. "We need you to find out why."
"Oh," said Marshall flustered. "What kind of surveillance? Video, audio, remote -,"
"Remote. We're being tailed."
"Uh, well, we can check for transmitters. . . ," his voice trailed off as he rummaged through his office. He pulled out a crate that contained an assortment of electronic devices, candy wrappers, and action toys. "Here," he said victoriously, pulling out a scanner. "This puppy'll do the trick." He waved it over both of them and studied the readout. "Unh-uh. You're clean."
"We're *not* clean," Jack corrected. Marshall's face fell.
"Dad, it was only once. Maybe they just tailed us and got lucky."
"Sydney, we changed vehicles twice and clothing once. We booked on three plane flights simultaneously. We changed ID when we entered Prague. That's a level of luck that's hard to imagine." He hesitated. "And it wasn't only once."
Sydney frowned. "I don't remember -,"
"Later," said Jack tersely.
"Well you're not transmitting, that's for sure." Marshall thought for a minute. "Although, maybe. . . " he said to himself meditatively. "Nah."
"What?"
"Well you remember at SD-6, after Emily died, and Mr. Sloane was being blackmailed, and we coated the bonds he was carrying to trace the blackmailers? We didn't use a transmitter, because we were sure it would be detected. But we weren't going to let $100 million walk away from us, either."
"Although you did," interjected Jack, sotto voce.
Marshall stopped, flustered again. Sydney shot a withering look at her father. "Go on, Marshall," she said soothingly. You were saying?"
"Oh, well, once coated, the bonds could be traced using a long-range infrared scan. The bonds themselves produced no energy, so if you didn't know what you were looking for, you wouldn't find it. But aim those little infrared rays at it, and 'Voila'!" Marshall beamed. "But only a couple of people even know that technology exists."
"Like Sloane?" pointed out Jack dryly.
"Could you check for us, Marshall?" prompted Sydney gently.
"All right, but you'd have to be a pretty smart cookie to pull this off...if I do say so myself," he said modestly. He busied himself for a moment, wiring several different components together before sitting back, satisfied. "Marshall Flinkman, superhero," he murmured to himself, then realized with a start that he wasn't alone. "Uh," he stammered, "I didn't mean I was a real superhero. I mean, you're the superheroes. I just kind of sit here in my little room and -,"
"Whenever you're ready, Marshall," interrupted Jack.
"Oh, right." He ran his improvised scanner over Sydney. "Nope, nothing here." He turned to Jack and the device immediately issued a small chirp. "Hoho!" said Marshall gleefully. Slowly he moved it up and down, stopping over Jack's breast pocket as a stream of chirps were emitted. "Bingo!" He reached forward, only to find Jack's hand holding his in an iron grip.
"That's enough, Marshall, thank you."
Marshall shrank back as he saw the fury in Jack's eyes. "B-but, d-don't you want me to confirm what's emitting the signal?"
"I've got a pretty good idea," replied Jack in clipped tones. "I think we're done here." He turned on his heel and stalked out. Sydney followed, puzzled.
"You're welcome!" called Marshall down the hall. "Anytime I can help!"
**
Sydney entered her father's office, closing the door behind her. "What was that all about?"
With disgust, Jack withdrew the folded pictures from his pocket. "Sloane gave me these. They were copies of the pictures that your mother had provided to him, the ones that confirmed to the NSC that I had been working with her. He's been tracking me ever since."
"What's on them?" asked Sydney curiously, reaching her hand out.
Jack held his hand away and walked over to the corner. "That, sweetheart, would fall under the category of 'too much information'." He dropped the pictures in the shredder.
"Oh," said Sydney, biting her lip to keep from laughing. "Need-to-know basis, huh?"
"Yes. And our *daughter* is definitely not on the need-to-know list."
**
"Just checking in. I've been out of touch the past day or two."
"Nothing to report, Mr. Bristow. No new codes."
"Call me when they change."
"Yes, sir."
Jack hung up the phone, mildly disappointed. It was not uncommon for the Abbe to skip a day or two. He had as well, when he was in prison. An interrogation, a block-wide strip-search, illness.
He hoped the Abbe was back in play soon. He could certainly use the distraction.
**
"Okay, let's go over what we know." Pizza and beer littered the table; Jack had a large legal pad in front of him, pen poised in his left hand. He waited patiently while Sydney organized her thoughts.
"One. You conditioned me as part of Project Christmas, giving me the code name 'Julia Thorne'."
Jack winced. "Did you need to start there?"
"But it all started there, didn't it?" Sydney pointed out reasonably. "Two. Lazarey provided additional 'development' - don't you love that term - while you thought I was attending camp, from the age of seven."
"You used to sing those stupid camp songs all the way home." Jack shook his head. "A brilliant strategy for making sure I didn't ask you any questions." He jotted a note down on his pad. "I'm going to keep track of things we don't know as well. Like who arranged for that training. Sloane's the obvious candidate, but we can't rule out the KGB. Or," he hesitated, "your mother."
"Uh, actually Dad, we can." Sydney chewed on her lip for a moment. "Those dreams I told you about? They're of the place where I had the additional conditioning. I can clearly remember Lazarey, and I can remember Sloane dropping me off and picking me up. He -," she halted for a moment, "I -,"
Jack put his pen down. "Yes?" he said in a low voice.
"I thought he was my father. All the time I was Julia. I remember. . . ," her voice grew strong with loathing, "*hugging* him."
Not a muscle moved in Jack's face. "Sydney," he said carefully, "do you remember. . . were you. . . ," he swallowed, "abused in any way?"
Sydney's eyes grew round. "You mean. . . ?"
Jack nodded.
"No," she said decisively. "To be honest, my memories are mostly happy. Playing games with him, laughing, being glad to see him." Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember. "He was. . . kind."
Jack ran a hand through his hair in relief. Perhaps Sloane would die a quick death. Not a slow, lingering one. He picked up his pen. "Okay, what's next?"
"Something else we don't know. Wouldn't Lazarey have needed to have the trigger phrase to have done the extra conditioning? How'd he get it?"
Grimacing, Jack studied a spot on the wall above Sydney's head. "I'm afraid I know the answer to that. I gave it to him."
"Why?"
"You'd need to crawl back into my paranoid mind back then to really understand, but I was convinced that the other shoe would drop. That the KGB would come for you. They would have," he took a deep breath, "had to kill me in the process, if they were going to take you while I was there." Sydney reached over and squeezed his hand gently, but did not interrupt. "Arvin worked with me on Project Christmas. I confided in him what I'd done; he was my closest friend. One of my only friends at that point in the CIA, to be frank. I gave him the trigger phrase to use in the event that I. . . couldn't."
"But surely, later. . . ,"
"Oh, yes, once Arvin went rogue, I changed it. You were about 16, I think. But by that time you were working during the summer, and hanging out with your friends. You weren't going to camp anymore. I still don't know how he found out the new one." Jack leant forward and jotted another note on the pad. "Sydney, I don't give up information very easily. And there are a few things that I would have rather died than given up. This is one of those things. I'm sorry, honey." He shook his head. "I wish I could stop saying that."
"We should probably move on," said Sydney softly, wanting to erase the bleak look on her father's face.
"You're right," he said shaking himself. "And I think we're only on point two."
"Three. I disappeared. What I remember of that fight with. . . Allison, I would have been pretty banged up. I either went to the hospital and was activated, or I was activated right away. I became an assassin."
"And Sloane did a first-class job of simulating your death." Jack stared at Sydney unseeing for a moment, as he remembered her funeral. Sydney squeezed his hand again.
"Right here, Dad. I'm right here."
Jack pulled his gaze back. "Yes, you are," he said gratefully.
"Four. You and Mom started to look for my killers."
"Separately, at first," Jack offered. "Later we worked together."
"Five. This is where it gets a little fuzzy. Mom, apparently, finds out I'm alive, and determines I've been activated. She goes to Lazarey and coerces him to help her."
Jack sat silently for a moment.
"Dad?"
"She didn't tell me," he said evenly. "She knew you were alive, and didn't tell me."
"Perhaps she had her reasons?" suggested Sydney. "Why don't you write that down as a question that we don't have the answer to?" she said, a slight strain in her voice.
Jack's pen didn't move. "I'm your father, Sydney. And while I might not have been the *genius* that your friend Dr. Lazarey was, there wasn't much about Project Christmas that I didn't know. Or couldn't have figured out with time."
"Riiiight. Maybe we could come back to that."
"I'd prefer not to, if you don't mind," he said stiffly.
Sydney sighed. "Six. I attempt to murder Lazarey, presumably on Sloane's orders, but kill his body double instead."
"Didn't Lazarey say that your mother had come for him only the day before?"
"Yes."
"Then Sloane must have found out, or guessed, what your mother was planning."
Sydney nodded. "She just got there faster than he expected. Seven. You spot me via a surveillance camera. Now you also know I'm alive." She looked at her father curiously. "Did you contact Mom?"
"Yes," said her father briefly, his face still unforgiving. "We'll get to that in a moment. Actually, I should probably pick it up from here. Eight. Julia boards a plane to LA."
"We don't know why," observed Sydney.
"Self-centered as this might be, I have to believe that you were coming to see me. Maybe subconsciously you knew that I could help. Nine. Your mother provides surveillance photos to Sloane that conclusively demonstrate that we've been working together."
"You can't be sure of that," said Sydney. "It could have been Sloane who obtained them."
"But we can," reminded her father. "Your mother told me she had given the photos to Sloane. Of course, we don't know *when* she gave him those photos. But I'm guessing we have the timeline right, because the NSC received them while Julia was in the air to LA. And your mother also confirmed that she had prevented you from seeing me."
Sydney shifted uncomfortably, knowing what was next.
"Ten," said Jack, voice unsteady. "I go to prison."