Chap.8
Her words stung him but he knew that it was true. She would have waited for him. She wouldn't have given in. She would have done everything that he didn't.
"Syd...I..."
"I should get back to the party." She said, cutting him off and turning around, nearly running into Lauren.
"Michael! I was looking everywhere for you!" Lauren exclaimed. She looked at Vaughn and then at Sydney. "Am I interrupting?"
"No! No!" Sydney said, assuring her. "We're just talking about..."
"What happened at the office last week," Vaughn added in.
A look of confusion crossed Lauren's face.
"But I thought you worked at a bank..." Lauren asked, frowning. "And Michael works for the government....how could you work together?"
"Our bank handles their transactions; so technically, I guess we do work together..." Sydney said, letting out a small laugh although she really didn't know where the CIA handled their transactions or if they even had transactions at all...
"I see." Lauren said, looking at Michael for confirmation. He nodded. "Alright, well...we better get going. We have to feed the dog and everything...but we had a lovely time. Thank you, again, for inviting us."
"Likewise, it was wonderful meeting you. I'm so glad you had a good time."
"Well...we should get together sometime." Lauren suggested. She took Vaughn's hand and started to lead him out of the garden and towards the backyard.
"Of course," Sydney said nodding. Then, her mind whirled back to what Lauren had said previously. "The dog?"
"Huh? Oh," Lauren said, suddenly remembering what Sydney was referring to. "Yes, we have a dog."
"I love dogs!" Sydney remarked.
Michael looked at her, but didn't say anything. His wife didn't know about his and Sydney's past. As far as she was concerned, he had never had any girlfriends before her.
"Oh? Would you like to see him?" Lauren asked, picking up on her hint.
"You wouldn't mind?"
"Of course not."
The three of them reached the empty backyard and they discovered that Scott was waving good-bye to James and Ana who had finally come back from their walk. His back was turned toward her and she walked softly toward him. He whirled around instinctively and when he saw that it was Sydney, he relaxed.
"Hey, where have you been?"
"In the garden...thinking..." Sydney said, answering him. "I'm going to walk our neighbors home. I'll be back really soon, okay?"
"Okay...but I want you to call me as soon as you get there." Scott mocked in a stern fatherly tone.
As soon as Vaughn unlocked the front door, Donovan came running on his short legs. He jumped up to catch Vaughn's attention and then immediately headed for his feeding bowl. They all followed him into the kitchen and while Vaughn and Sydney followed Donovan to his bowl, Lauren went to the stove to make tea.
"Can I?" Sydney asked, motioning to the yellow bag of dog food that Donovan was hungrily eyeing.
"Um..." Lauren started to say, knowing that Donovan didn't like anybody but Michael feeding him. But, she decided to leave it at that, and went back towards the stove to watch the water boil.
"Sure..." Vaughn said hesitantly.
But Donovan and Sydney had met briefly before in the park when she went on her runs every morning and she had become attached to his friendly sniffing and yaps.
Sydney took the bag of food and poured it into Donovan's bowl. He sniffed at it, curiously, and then started to eat. She sat down next to him and he looked up. Sydney took his head in both of her hands and kissed the top of his head. Donovan licked her face reassuringly and then presumed eating.
Sydney got up and looked at her watch.
"Well...I better get home. I have to go into the office early tomorrow."
"Good night." Lauren said, walking her to the front door with Vaughn trailing behind.
"Good night, Lauren." Sydney said opening the door. She looked past Lauren's shoulder. "Good night...Michael."
"Would you like me walk you home?" Vaughn asked, looking at the pitch black sky.
Sydney looked at him curiously, and then smiled.
"No...I think I'll be okay." She said, laughing.
He understood her joke and laughed along with her. Lauren, caught in a moment of awkwardness and not understanding the joke, retreated to the bedroom. Vaughn walked forward and held the door for her.
"I do want you to be happy, Syd." He whispered.
"I know, Vaughn."
He watched as she skipped down the stone steps and crossed the lawn to reach her own house, disappearing into the front door. He thought, sadly, of how successful Sydney was with her own marriage while his was disintegrating before his own eyes. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. He and Lauren loved each other, but like Scott, he could tell that Lauren wasn't satisfied.
Sighing, he closed and locked the door, heading in the direction of the bedroom. At least he and Sydney were okay now...
'One thing at a time, Vaughn,' he said, thinking to himself, 'one thing at a time.'
Sydney yawned loudly and stretched in her seat. She shuffled her papers around but then slumped back into her chair, closing her eyes as she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. It quickly subsided and she was grateful. Sydney didn't want to take maternity leave until it was absolutely necessary, knowing that Kendall needed as many field agents as he could get. The new recruits were still undergoing training and they would be too inexperienced for the upcoming mission.
Her beeper started to vibrate and she looked at the small screen. It was a notice of the meeting in the conference room that would take place in five minutes. Sighing, she got up and started for the long walk to the conference room. Nodding to the people that she passed by, she noticed that Vaughn was gathering up his things and heading for the conference room too.
She thought about stopping to wait for him, but decided against it. Even though the "tension" between them was settled at the barbecue on Wednesday, Sydney still thought that it was best to act as they had when she first transferred back to the CIA. She suspected that everyone else still thought that there was something between them, regardless of the fact that they were both married.
She shook her head. No matter where you work, there will always be office gossip.
Three minutes later, Sydney walked into the conference room and sat down in her usual seat. The seats were almost filled, and everyone was waiting for Kendall and Jack's arrival. As soon as Jack set foot into the room, the buzz subsided and the room held an eerie, silent atmosphere.
Immediately following Jack was Kendall. As he opened his mouth to speak, he was interrupted by the hurried patter of Marshall's footsteps, along with papers hanging dangerously out of the folder in which they had been hurriedly stuffed into. Marshall lowered himself into his seat and looked at Kendall expectantly with his hands folded and his eyes at full attention.
"Quite a workout you've had there," Kendall remarked dryly, commenting on Marshall's face that had a small sheen of sweat on it.
Marshall extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his face dry.
"I don't like sweating..." Marshall explained, "you're actually urinating out of your face since sweat is composed of urea, salt, and water except that when you urinate...um...in the bathroom, it...um, is more concentrated...giving it the yellow colorization..."
"Thank you, Marshall." Jack firmly intercepted.
Vaughn cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted in his seat. He looked across the table at Sydney, who was watching the whirling logo intently and then lifted her head listen to Kendall start the debriefing.
"A few local contacts in France, have informed us of this man," he said as a large picture of a young, handsome man flashed onto the large screen behind him. "Jacques Jacobins-Robespierre. Apparently, he has been seen associating with an unidentified man, who knows the location of a nuclear warhead and in three weeks, he will start to ready 3.5 billion dollars as payment."
"What will he do with a nuclear warhead?"
"Research, threat, bribery..." Jack answered, trailing off, indicating the numerous things that could be done.
"Where is the warhead located?" Sydney asked, looking up from the picture on her screen.
"We're not certain, but we suspect...that it's located somewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
"Which leads me to your mission," Kendall said, the picture behind him changing into that of an old, elegant castle in France. "Agent Voyer and Agent Chaplin are posing as siblings, who have recently come into a family fortune and have risen in Russian society. You have been invited to Jacques Jacobins-Robespierre's masquerade party through a Countess Turovstyn whom you two are extremely close to. Agent Lee and Agent Jamison will be stationed two blocks away and will be on the other end of the comm. link."
The picture behind Kendall changed again, this time to a middle-aged man.
"This man will also be attending the party. He is the only person in possession of the location of the nuclear warheads and we have been told that it is tattooed somewhere on his body, in a code that only three people know of."
"What are we going to do with the code if we can't break it?" Ana asked.
Kendall looked at her, irritated and continued.
"You are to bring the code back with you, and destroy the tattoo. Marshall..." Kendall said, indicating to Marshall.
"Oh, ok. Um, thank you. These," Marshall said, extracting a series of small needles out of his bag, "all contain a chemical that I have synthetically produced in the lab. They, um, mutate the melanin in the area of the skin in which you inject forever, so even if um, Monsieur here," Marshall laughed, "decides to get an operation; his skin will always produce the mutated melanin which is the same color as his tattoo. Um, you only need about one milligram of um, this chemical for every five inches of his um, skin. If you over do it, you will probably give him malignant melanoma, or skin cancer, which isn't good...at all...but I even added a ruler on the side of the needle for your convenience..."
Marshall trailed off and sat back down.
"Thank you, Marshall. Ana, you will be administering the chemical. I hope you haven't forgotten too much from medical school...Mark, you will be the only one observing the security cameras when Ana leaves."
Mark knew what he meant and he nodded as Jack took over the debriefing.
"After you bring back the code, the four of you," Jack said, looking at Sydney, James, Ana, and Mark, "will set off for Venezuela four weeks later. Only two of the three people that know the code are living today. The man you see on the screen is one and the other is the one that you will become acquainted with. She now goes by the name of Mariana Veltri."
The picture behind Jack changed to become that of a pretty and surprisingly young woman that looked as if she was younger than Ana.
"When she was a child, her family sold her to the third and deceased code-breaker as a servant in exchange for money. When she was clearing his study one day, she came upon the code and the process of how to break it, and instantly memorized it without knowing. The third code-breaker, who had come to love her as his daughter, discovered this and sent her to live in hiding, in fear that the other man would find out and kill her."
"Why can't we just get the code from France and fly immediately to Venezuela?" Mark asked.
"It's too suspicious, Agent Jamison." Kendall answered. "When Robespierre discovers that he has been compromised he is bound to trace you to Venezuela and not only be in possession of the warhead but the identity of four CIA agents as well."
"You will obtain the code from France and cross into Italy. There will be somebody tailing you for exactly three miles from when you enter the border. After that, you are to pull over to the side of the road, let the car pass, and the driver will signal the location of the safe house in Morse code with the brake lights. The road should be deserted, but as a precaution, your contact will get out to check the brakes as if there is something wrong with them." Jack said, talking rapidly. "You will then reach the safe house and stay for exactly five days. After the five days have passed, you are to come straight here from the airport."
Everybody nodded and Kendall summed up the conference.
"Any questions?"
Nobody spoke. As they were getting up to leave, Jack spoke again, and everybody sat down into their seats again.
"I almost forgot. Agent Chaplin, you will need to brush up on your Russian. I sense that Russian is not your strongest language and as you and Sydney are supposedly siblings, your accents cannot be different in the slightest."
James nodded, taking a mental note to see the dialect expert. As everyone started to get up again, Vaughn protested and they all sat back down, sighing.
"Wait...You're telling me, that Agent Chaplin is not sufficient in the Russian dialect, and he is posing as a native Russian. Wouldn't Robespierre suspect something? It's too risky."
James looked at Vaughn, insulted, but held back his words in respect for a higher-ranking officer.
"Well...Agent Vaughn. If you have any better ideas please...now is the time." Kendall prodded.
Vaughn didn't know what else to do. He knew that he was the only one aware that Sydney was pregnant and it was too much of a risk. He felt protective of her physical and emotion well being. He breathed deeply,
"I'll go."
Her words stung him but he knew that it was true. She would have waited for him. She wouldn't have given in. She would have done everything that he didn't.
"Syd...I..."
"I should get back to the party." She said, cutting him off and turning around, nearly running into Lauren.
"Michael! I was looking everywhere for you!" Lauren exclaimed. She looked at Vaughn and then at Sydney. "Am I interrupting?"
"No! No!" Sydney said, assuring her. "We're just talking about..."
"What happened at the office last week," Vaughn added in.
A look of confusion crossed Lauren's face.
"But I thought you worked at a bank..." Lauren asked, frowning. "And Michael works for the government....how could you work together?"
"Our bank handles their transactions; so technically, I guess we do work together..." Sydney said, letting out a small laugh although she really didn't know where the CIA handled their transactions or if they even had transactions at all...
"I see." Lauren said, looking at Michael for confirmation. He nodded. "Alright, well...we better get going. We have to feed the dog and everything...but we had a lovely time. Thank you, again, for inviting us."
"Likewise, it was wonderful meeting you. I'm so glad you had a good time."
"Well...we should get together sometime." Lauren suggested. She took Vaughn's hand and started to lead him out of the garden and towards the backyard.
"Of course," Sydney said nodding. Then, her mind whirled back to what Lauren had said previously. "The dog?"
"Huh? Oh," Lauren said, suddenly remembering what Sydney was referring to. "Yes, we have a dog."
"I love dogs!" Sydney remarked.
Michael looked at her, but didn't say anything. His wife didn't know about his and Sydney's past. As far as she was concerned, he had never had any girlfriends before her.
"Oh? Would you like to see him?" Lauren asked, picking up on her hint.
"You wouldn't mind?"
"Of course not."
The three of them reached the empty backyard and they discovered that Scott was waving good-bye to James and Ana who had finally come back from their walk. His back was turned toward her and she walked softly toward him. He whirled around instinctively and when he saw that it was Sydney, he relaxed.
"Hey, where have you been?"
"In the garden...thinking..." Sydney said, answering him. "I'm going to walk our neighbors home. I'll be back really soon, okay?"
"Okay...but I want you to call me as soon as you get there." Scott mocked in a stern fatherly tone.
As soon as Vaughn unlocked the front door, Donovan came running on his short legs. He jumped up to catch Vaughn's attention and then immediately headed for his feeding bowl. They all followed him into the kitchen and while Vaughn and Sydney followed Donovan to his bowl, Lauren went to the stove to make tea.
"Can I?" Sydney asked, motioning to the yellow bag of dog food that Donovan was hungrily eyeing.
"Um..." Lauren started to say, knowing that Donovan didn't like anybody but Michael feeding him. But, she decided to leave it at that, and went back towards the stove to watch the water boil.
"Sure..." Vaughn said hesitantly.
But Donovan and Sydney had met briefly before in the park when she went on her runs every morning and she had become attached to his friendly sniffing and yaps.
Sydney took the bag of food and poured it into Donovan's bowl. He sniffed at it, curiously, and then started to eat. She sat down next to him and he looked up. Sydney took his head in both of her hands and kissed the top of his head. Donovan licked her face reassuringly and then presumed eating.
Sydney got up and looked at her watch.
"Well...I better get home. I have to go into the office early tomorrow."
"Good night." Lauren said, walking her to the front door with Vaughn trailing behind.
"Good night, Lauren." Sydney said opening the door. She looked past Lauren's shoulder. "Good night...Michael."
"Would you like me walk you home?" Vaughn asked, looking at the pitch black sky.
Sydney looked at him curiously, and then smiled.
"No...I think I'll be okay." She said, laughing.
He understood her joke and laughed along with her. Lauren, caught in a moment of awkwardness and not understanding the joke, retreated to the bedroom. Vaughn walked forward and held the door for her.
"I do want you to be happy, Syd." He whispered.
"I know, Vaughn."
He watched as she skipped down the stone steps and crossed the lawn to reach her own house, disappearing into the front door. He thought, sadly, of how successful Sydney was with her own marriage while his was disintegrating before his own eyes. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say. He and Lauren loved each other, but like Scott, he could tell that Lauren wasn't satisfied.
Sighing, he closed and locked the door, heading in the direction of the bedroom. At least he and Sydney were okay now...
'One thing at a time, Vaughn,' he said, thinking to himself, 'one thing at a time.'
Sydney yawned loudly and stretched in her seat. She shuffled her papers around but then slumped back into her chair, closing her eyes as she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. It quickly subsided and she was grateful. Sydney didn't want to take maternity leave until it was absolutely necessary, knowing that Kendall needed as many field agents as he could get. The new recruits were still undergoing training and they would be too inexperienced for the upcoming mission.
Her beeper started to vibrate and she looked at the small screen. It was a notice of the meeting in the conference room that would take place in five minutes. Sighing, she got up and started for the long walk to the conference room. Nodding to the people that she passed by, she noticed that Vaughn was gathering up his things and heading for the conference room too.
She thought about stopping to wait for him, but decided against it. Even though the "tension" between them was settled at the barbecue on Wednesday, Sydney still thought that it was best to act as they had when she first transferred back to the CIA. She suspected that everyone else still thought that there was something between them, regardless of the fact that they were both married.
She shook her head. No matter where you work, there will always be office gossip.
Three minutes later, Sydney walked into the conference room and sat down in her usual seat. The seats were almost filled, and everyone was waiting for Kendall and Jack's arrival. As soon as Jack set foot into the room, the buzz subsided and the room held an eerie, silent atmosphere.
Immediately following Jack was Kendall. As he opened his mouth to speak, he was interrupted by the hurried patter of Marshall's footsteps, along with papers hanging dangerously out of the folder in which they had been hurriedly stuffed into. Marshall lowered himself into his seat and looked at Kendall expectantly with his hands folded and his eyes at full attention.
"Quite a workout you've had there," Kendall remarked dryly, commenting on Marshall's face that had a small sheen of sweat on it.
Marshall extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his face dry.
"I don't like sweating..." Marshall explained, "you're actually urinating out of your face since sweat is composed of urea, salt, and water except that when you urinate...um...in the bathroom, it...um, is more concentrated...giving it the yellow colorization..."
"Thank you, Marshall." Jack firmly intercepted.
Vaughn cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted in his seat. He looked across the table at Sydney, who was watching the whirling logo intently and then lifted her head listen to Kendall start the debriefing.
"A few local contacts in France, have informed us of this man," he said as a large picture of a young, handsome man flashed onto the large screen behind him. "Jacques Jacobins-Robespierre. Apparently, he has been seen associating with an unidentified man, who knows the location of a nuclear warhead and in three weeks, he will start to ready 3.5 billion dollars as payment."
"What will he do with a nuclear warhead?"
"Research, threat, bribery..." Jack answered, trailing off, indicating the numerous things that could be done.
"Where is the warhead located?" Sydney asked, looking up from the picture on her screen.
"We're not certain, but we suspect...that it's located somewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
"Which leads me to your mission," Kendall said, the picture behind him changing into that of an old, elegant castle in France. "Agent Voyer and Agent Chaplin are posing as siblings, who have recently come into a family fortune and have risen in Russian society. You have been invited to Jacques Jacobins-Robespierre's masquerade party through a Countess Turovstyn whom you two are extremely close to. Agent Lee and Agent Jamison will be stationed two blocks away and will be on the other end of the comm. link."
The picture behind Kendall changed again, this time to a middle-aged man.
"This man will also be attending the party. He is the only person in possession of the location of the nuclear warheads and we have been told that it is tattooed somewhere on his body, in a code that only three people know of."
"What are we going to do with the code if we can't break it?" Ana asked.
Kendall looked at her, irritated and continued.
"You are to bring the code back with you, and destroy the tattoo. Marshall..." Kendall said, indicating to Marshall.
"Oh, ok. Um, thank you. These," Marshall said, extracting a series of small needles out of his bag, "all contain a chemical that I have synthetically produced in the lab. They, um, mutate the melanin in the area of the skin in which you inject forever, so even if um, Monsieur here," Marshall laughed, "decides to get an operation; his skin will always produce the mutated melanin which is the same color as his tattoo. Um, you only need about one milligram of um, this chemical for every five inches of his um, skin. If you over do it, you will probably give him malignant melanoma, or skin cancer, which isn't good...at all...but I even added a ruler on the side of the needle for your convenience..."
Marshall trailed off and sat back down.
"Thank you, Marshall. Ana, you will be administering the chemical. I hope you haven't forgotten too much from medical school...Mark, you will be the only one observing the security cameras when Ana leaves."
Mark knew what he meant and he nodded as Jack took over the debriefing.
"After you bring back the code, the four of you," Jack said, looking at Sydney, James, Ana, and Mark, "will set off for Venezuela four weeks later. Only two of the three people that know the code are living today. The man you see on the screen is one and the other is the one that you will become acquainted with. She now goes by the name of Mariana Veltri."
The picture behind Jack changed to become that of a pretty and surprisingly young woman that looked as if she was younger than Ana.
"When she was a child, her family sold her to the third and deceased code-breaker as a servant in exchange for money. When she was clearing his study one day, she came upon the code and the process of how to break it, and instantly memorized it without knowing. The third code-breaker, who had come to love her as his daughter, discovered this and sent her to live in hiding, in fear that the other man would find out and kill her."
"Why can't we just get the code from France and fly immediately to Venezuela?" Mark asked.
"It's too suspicious, Agent Jamison." Kendall answered. "When Robespierre discovers that he has been compromised he is bound to trace you to Venezuela and not only be in possession of the warhead but the identity of four CIA agents as well."
"You will obtain the code from France and cross into Italy. There will be somebody tailing you for exactly three miles from when you enter the border. After that, you are to pull over to the side of the road, let the car pass, and the driver will signal the location of the safe house in Morse code with the brake lights. The road should be deserted, but as a precaution, your contact will get out to check the brakes as if there is something wrong with them." Jack said, talking rapidly. "You will then reach the safe house and stay for exactly five days. After the five days have passed, you are to come straight here from the airport."
Everybody nodded and Kendall summed up the conference.
"Any questions?"
Nobody spoke. As they were getting up to leave, Jack spoke again, and everybody sat down into their seats again.
"I almost forgot. Agent Chaplin, you will need to brush up on your Russian. I sense that Russian is not your strongest language and as you and Sydney are supposedly siblings, your accents cannot be different in the slightest."
James nodded, taking a mental note to see the dialect expert. As everyone started to get up again, Vaughn protested and they all sat back down, sighing.
"Wait...You're telling me, that Agent Chaplin is not sufficient in the Russian dialect, and he is posing as a native Russian. Wouldn't Robespierre suspect something? It's too risky."
James looked at Vaughn, insulted, but held back his words in respect for a higher-ranking officer.
"Well...Agent Vaughn. If you have any better ideas please...now is the time." Kendall prodded.
Vaughn didn't know what else to do. He knew that he was the only one aware that Sydney was pregnant and it was too much of a risk. He felt protective of her physical and emotion well being. He breathed deeply,
"I'll go."