Chapter 4: Just Distance - the distance at which you are close enough to hit your opponent, and they are close enough to hit you.
In a glass fronted cell in a basement of the L.A. section of the CIA, Irina Derevko, ex-KGB, ex K-Directorate and ex-The Man, unobtrusively and repeatedly clenched her jaw. The accompanying slight tilt of her head saw one of her antique earrings come into contact with her fine jaw line, the electrical pulse in the muscle movement was picked up by the earring's molecularly restructured crystal and was transmitted out as an undetectable signal.
Sark received it as a pulse against his wrist. It was an easily discernible rhythm, even in competition with the thrumming of the plane's engines.
Unlike Irina to be so anxious for news, he reflected.
He responded to her, tapping out his own signal: component collected.
He flicked a look at the 'component' - James Dodgson, inert, opposite him.
Christ! How could one small woman have been so bloody difficult to collect? And the sodding attitude on her! Oh shut up and get back on the clock Sarkey.
He continued tapping: switches collected. All in transit.
By 'switches' he was referring to the two further hostages – the leverage he might need to get Dodgson 'switched on' and running.
Almost unwillingly Sark found himself appraising Dodgson's appearance again, his look finishing at her thin ankles and small feet shod in large ugly shoes. He would have felt far more confident if he hadn't just spotted that their plan was dependent upon someone who wore odd socks.
Well, no need to alarm Irina.
He signalled off.
Sark knew that Dodgson had to 'run' for them. It may have been Sloane's idea to kidnap Dodgson - he had stumbled across her existence through reading her obscurely published scientific papers on Knot Theory. Obscure? - she was hard to find even on the internet! – but Sark and Irina intended to use her for their own ends. Sark realised that he wasn't sure what Irina's ends were exactly – was he ever? - but his was a brute determination to get her out of that damned glass box in the basement of the CIA!
Hearing from Sark, Irina lent back against the stone wall of her cell and allowed herself one small smile. If the end to her captivity was not yet in sight, then at least this was the beginning of the end.
She could admit to herself that it was a relief, after all, it wasn't every woman whose husband was happy to help keep her incarcerated - when he wasn't fitting her up for attempting to murder their daughter and trying to have her executed!
Jack had tried to have her killed.
The knowledge weighed stubbornly within her.
Dammit! When we were married, I thought he loved me! I thought I had had him fooled, not the other way round!
Okay, she had married CIA agent Jack Bristow on orders from the KJB, posing as Laura Bristow, but what the hell? He had loved her, right? And she was still the same woman, right?
Irina still did not believe he would actually have had her executed; he wouldn't, would he? He had been planning to save her at the last minute? Well, that was what she had told herself when she had upped the anti and hastened her own execution with a plea of guilty to all crimes charged.
Metaphorically she'd stood there, chin out, hands on hips, calling Jack's bluff.
Only to find later that it hadn't been Jack who had reprieved her. He had already been slung in jail himself; their daughter, Sydney, had saved them both.
When he stood before her on the other side of that glass wall these days, giving her nothing but his impassive poker face, she told herself that she cared for him as little as he cared for her.
She gave a small huff of exasperation.
And they way he stood there, still obviously not trusting her, even now after she'd saved all their lives in Kashmir! Honestly – couldn't he at least pretend to believe her when she lied to him?
Back on the plane Sark pondered on Irina's position. What to make of a known enemy of the United States who had chosen to hand herself over to the tender mercies of the CIA, an organisation which had already tried to incarcerate her daughter, Sydney Bristow, for life?
And Sydney had been one of its most valued agents for God's sake!
Irina had laid out her walk-in as part of a complex plan to gain access to CIA held Rambaldi artefacts, but they could have pulled that off in any number of other ways. No, Irina would never admit it, but Sark was sure there were other reasons for her actions.
He knew that it was partly Irina's stated plan that, by being held at what he privately considered 'Dunce Central', she would have the chance to create a connection with Sydney, a connection that would eventually enable her to move forward in her plans for 'the Prophesy' – and God how he wanted to roll his eyes at mention of that 'prophesy' bollocks. However, Sark strongly suspected that after shooting Sydney in Taipei, Irina had been simply overcome by an urge to contact her child.
And to see Jack Bristow too? He wouldn't put it past her.
Irina being Irina of course, she couldn't just fire up the barbeque and invite them on over for surf'n'turf, no she had to dress it up in complex manoeuvres designed to hide her motives from others, and on this occasion to hide them even from herself?
Sark pondered it. Well, if Irina's eventual success and extraction didn't come off, then it would be because the plan was much too convoluted.
Mr. Sark disapproved of the convoluted.
In his experience even the most simple plans were prone to mishap – so why increase the odds by wilfully compounding the detail? This wasn't gymnastics where one was awarded extra points for 'degree of difficulty'.
Sark's gaze flicked back to James Dodgson, his eye caught by a stray frond of her messy hair. Here was an example of 'prone to mishap' right in front of him. Who would have thought she'd have put up such a fight? With hindsight he ought to have drugged her from the off and carried her out as a fainting case, but then everyone was a genius in hindsight. Drugging her should have attracted more attention than just walking her out – as he'd been able to do with the husband.
Well, he had her now, so controlling her shouldn't prove too difficult.
Yes, even the most simple plans were prone to mishap. Sark wondered where the trip-up would come in this endeavour.
He rubbed his shin where Dodgson had whacked him, flicking her an irritated look. Great. He had Irina trapped in a glass cell in L.A. – the situation giving him a drip-feed of subliminal guilt - and James Dodgson lashing out at him in person like an angry cat.
Bloody women!
