Chapter 8: Trovar Di Spada - the art of placing your sword against the opponent's without touching his blade, so that yours will have the advantage of a lever at the moment they meet.

In the basement of the L.A. CIA after her recent raid on Shipman airfield to gather intel on the 'Caplan' kidnapping – trying to trace Sark's flight plan when he'd transported his hostages - Sydney Bristow stood before her mother, the two women separated by the invisible wall of glass.

Sydney was sobbing. "Mom, Dad hates Vaughn, and then Vaughn lied to me about how badly it had gone with Dad. Why does Dad hate him, Mom, why?"

"Sydney, I'm your mother and I love you," but right now I'd happily slap your face off if it would stop you whining, "but I don't know what's going on inside your father's head, and I can't tell you."

Irina sometimes wondered how she kept her honey-sweet tone going when actually what she really wanted to do was metaphorically send Sydney to her room.

She had just lied of course. It was totally obvious to Irina what Jack was thinking.

What's going on inside Jack's head is the recognition that Vaughn's needy. That Vaughn's the human equivalent of a weak climbing plant that needs something to wrap its tendrils around to give itself shape and support. That he'll always be a drain on you Sydney and not a partner. And Jack's right.

Sydney sobbed on. "I feel as though my whole life has been one long round of people deceiving me." Sydney's voice ran on as her mother regarded her with increasing exasperation from behind a display of nodding maternal support. "I just don't know if I can trust anymore …." More sniffling sobs and words tumbling out. "I just don't know, will I ever find anyone …" Irina tuned out. Yep, it was another long litany of me, me, me.

This wasn't the first time Irina had rued the glass which prevented the delivery of a good, hard smack when it was needed.

During her captivity Irina had been landed with a lot of time on her hands, a lot of time for unaccustomed introspection. Trapped in a glass cell with limited distractions and risking only the necessary contact with Sark, there hadn't been much else to do but think and reflect back, pondering on how things had happened in her life and why.

She had never allowed herself to ponder on how things might have been different.

In that time her thoughts had returned repeatedly to her daughter. She now watched Sydney from behind the glass, taking in the sniffling and the self-pity. Sometimes she was unable to fathom the girl at all. No, she corrected herself sharply, not a girl but a young woman. And not so young anymore, either. Sydney was in her late twenties, an age by which Irina herself had been a mother, an age by which many people were finding direction and fulfilment in their lives, but seemingly not Sydney. Sydney still behaved immaturely, trapped in a cycle of unhealthy introspection and self-centredness with a sugar coating of 'goof-ball'. Their current 'conversation' was just another example. As Sydney sniffled on in front of her, Irina nodded sympathetically, not really listening to any of it. Why should she? She'd heard it all before.

"And Mom … but since Danny, I've just not known what to feel anymore, that maybe its not safe to feel. And now when I have, Vaughn's lied to me!"

The words leapt out of Irina's mouth before she even knew they were coming. "Sydney Anne Bristow! Are you actually trying to compare the murder of Danny Hecht with Vaughn's scared, little white lie?" Irina had been shocked out of her reverie. If she'd had a kitchen table to thump on, she would have thumped; she had meant what she said.

"Oh, dry your eyes!" Irina was genuinely exasperated. She felt like a vexed mother upbraiding her teenaged daughter, except that Sydney wasn't a teenager, she was a grown woman who could see 30 coming up. Irina stilled at the sudden recognition: Sydney was a teenaged 30 year old and that was a queasy, unappealing mix.

She wondered what the CIA spent its money on when training its agents. Classes in Introspection, Self-absorption, and Self-pity? Sydney looked so like her, in some ways was so like her, but Sydney's brilliance and fire were awash in a sea of untrammelled, soap-opera emotion that she, Irina, had been forced to walk away from aged 17.

Even as her mind strove to analyse the situation, Irina's voice barked on.

"Sydney – it's times like this that I most regret having left you. It hurts me to say this, because it'll hurt you to hear it and it'll remind us both of just how remiss I was in leaving, but if I'd been there for you, you wouldn't have turned out like this!"

Irina ordered herself to 'shut up'. She told herself she was undermining all the work she'd put in on turning Sydney against Jack, portraying herself as the warm, sympathetic mother to Jack's stern, distant paterfamilias. Well … to hell with that! She surged on.

"Look at you. You're twenty eight and you're whining like a girl over some boy at school who was mean to her in the halls!" Jesus, she hissed to herself, Jack's done a lousy job raising our child! "You came here ostensibly to talk about a case involving a missing scientist and a kidnapped child – serious issues Sydney - but within minutes it's about you and your boyfriend? Do you have any sense of perspective?"

The two women stood either side of the invisible barrier, each shocked by Irina's torrent of words. There were long seconds of embarrassed silence and each glared away from the other in an attempt to govern her own thoughts.

Irina found herself boring holes in the wall and, of all things, suddenly feeling sorry for Jack. She nearly laughed out loud at the thought, because just moments earlier she'd been blaming him for ruining Sydney, but it hadn't been all his fault. After all, it would have taken the two of them to successfully wrangle a wilful creature like Sydney into adulthood! Her sudden humour left her and she felt a dark bitterness, because it hadn't been all Jack's fault, a lot of it had been hers.

If only she had stayed, if only she had been there, if only she had put her family before ideology. Better still, when Jack had brought that rat-bastard work colleague Sloane round to dinner, if only she hadn't listened to him when he'd started talking about Rambaldi and instead had just killed him on the spot! Yeah, offed him right there, throat chopped him to death on the dining room rug! Okay, so she would have revealed herself as a Russian agent and dinner would have been ruined, but Jack would have been cool, they -

If, if, if!

She flinched in annoyance. She knew there was a reason she hadn't dwelled on 'might have been'.

She shook her head to drive away the thoughts and her mind lighted again upon Jack. She was struck by something almost quizzically comic. Poor Jack, having to manhandle Sydney through adolescence and having nowhere near the right tools to do it, she almost grinned at the thought. Forbidding, austere, reserved Jack having to deal with a flighty Sydney; it would have been like an elephant being spooked by a mouse! No, Irina had to fully admit that the way Sydney had turned out hadn't been all Jack's fault, some of it was Irina's own. Her duties may have lain elsewhere, but her responsibilities and love had lain with Sydney and Jack. She should have confessed everything to Jack, trusted that the total love Jack held for her, Laura Bristow, would have been transferred to her, Irina Derevko. She should have believed that Jack would have found the strength to rise above himself, to conquer his wrath at her betrayal when he realised that Irina – the woman who was his wife – had risked everything in choosing him and their child over all else. She should have had faith.

But Irina Derevko hadn't done faith – only Laura Bristow had the strength for faith.

Across the barrier of glass a tense Sydney – arms folded, glaring away into a corner - wrestled with her own thoughts. Her sudden flare of anger had dissipated to reveal feelings of utter shame. She flushed red with self-mortification. Her mother was right. Faced with an extreme danger to others what had she done? - she had behaved with an utterly blind self-centredness, concentrating instead on her own petty issues. And, oh God, but to have ever attempted to compare Danny's terrible death with Vaughn's pathetic little lie!

When did I become such a total jerk?

Staring down at the floor she compressed her full lips, trying to swallow a golf-ball of grief whilst blinking back tears.

Oh stop crying! she told herself. Because who are you crying for? Danny? Vaughn? Mom? Or just yourself?

Okay so she'd had a bad life – no make that a really bad life – but there were others who'd had worse. Far worse.

She wanted to look at her mother and ask for forgiveness, for her mother to tell her it was alright. But why? So she could fall back on yet another round of provoked emotionalism? Hadn't her mother just told her to pull herself together? And her mother had been right.

Each woman looked up at the same moment, each had eyes which glittered with unshed tears brought on by might-have-beens and self-recriminations. Each paid the other the respect of ignoring the fact.

When Sydney had come to her mother she had told Irina about the events surrounding Dr. James Dodgson. She was hoping Irina might impart some intel that would help. Sydney swallowed hard and got back onto that topic. She said the first thing that came to mind.

"Mom, what's Sark got to do with it?"

Irina shook her head for a second, buying herself time to take the tremble out of her voice. "He's probably working with Sloane." She got her thickened, shaky tone back under control. "But then Sark often has his own agenda."

Irina knew that Sydney was weakened by her need to believe that her mother was fundamentally good, and that this clouded Sydney's field-judgement, but it was something Irina exploited and was going to exploit now.

Just for a moment, she despised herself.

So? Get your head back in the game – get information but don't give any. Sydney's not the one with the prospect of execution hanging over her!

She gave that head tipped sideways 'considering' look that had Sydney so fooled. "What's Dr. Dodgson's field of expertise?" she enquired, as if she didn't already know. "Do you have any leads on why they would need her in particular?"

Sydney answered and both women were grateful for the chance to leave their tortured thoughts for a few minutes and to retreat into the safety of talking business. After listening to Sydney describe the abduction and give a run down on Dodgson's known research, Irina interjected with a seemingly innocent prompt. "Any leads on where they went?"

After her daughter had gone, Irina cast her mind back over the conversation. So, they knew about Sark having kidnapped Dodgson, and they knew they'd gone to Switzerland, but these were incidentals. What stood out to Irina was that in her moment of emotional need her daughter had pulled herself clear of her inner turmoil by turning to the subject of Sark.

She squashed the inner voice that said darkly: yes, the way you retreated to the subject of Jack.

Stubbornly ignoring her inner voice, Irina sat on the floor with her back against the stone wall and drew her knees up before her. She thought about the past.

She thought about Sark.

She felt that it would be no surprise if Sydney were secretly fascinated by him, even if so secretly she did not realise it; after all, he was a fascinating creature.

Irina had first met the little boy who had become Mr. Sark through her involvement on the Russian Project Birthday, after her escape from the U.S.. 'Project Birthday'. Typical of the Communist Government she thought, so unimaginative that they could barely be bothered re-naming the project they had stolen. Project Christmas: Project Birthday – so bureaucratic, so uninspired. The project had run on for several years, and then – Sark.

Upon first hearing that a child of four were to enter the programme, she had argued against it.

'His mind won't be formed enough to take the training, it could damage him.'

'So? If the boy dies, if any of the children die, it will add to the fund of knowledge. Besides, think of the child's genetic inheritance. Won't it be interesting to see how he fares?'

From his files Irina had noted who his father was – Andrei Lazarey. As soon as she saw the name she had known why the authorities were fascinated, why they had selected that little boy and taken their last chance to shove him through the program as the funding was running out. The Lazareys were of an ancient lineage, one still secretly regarded in Russia with a superstitious awe that verged almost on the religious. Irina guessed that inducing the four year old into Project Birthday, almost deliberately testing him to destruction, was partly motivated by the communist elite's almost primitive urge to uncover whether the family really had been in any way singular. The blood-line represented by the Lazareys may only have been a cadet branch of the family, but in the USSR 'Romanov' was still a dirty word.

Was that why Lazarey had given up his son so easily, to curry favour with the authorities? Lazarey had been a diplomat – wealthy and privileged by Russian standards – but a man could always want more.

If his aim had been to remove Sark from him, he couldn't have found a better way to do it. For excluding outside influences, Project Birthday had been as secure and safe as a Witness Protection program.

She rolled her head back against the cool stone wall, tilted her jaw, and started to signal to Sark. From talking to Sydney she had things to tell him about the CIA's tracking of the kidnap victims, and perhaps she could pique his interest with news of Sydney and Vaughn and their burgeoning relationship?

Pique his interest? Why not? Because as she wondered what Sydney really thought of Sark, she sometimes wondered what Sark really thought of Sydney.

In any case, if nothing else, she certainly wished to know how Dr. Dodgson was progressing in her endeavours.

She cast no shadow against the floor as she signalled, the harsh overhead lighting saw to that. Whatever the time for everyone else, it was always High Noon for Irina Derevko.

A continent away, Sark stepped out of the shower in his rented apartment. He'd spent the day at the warehouse where James Dodgson was imprisoned and now he was scrubbing off the grime he associated with the place, readying for dinner with Sloane when he would report back on progress.

The only thing he wore on towelling down was a titanium wristwatch. Originally a chunky diver's watch, specified to withstand deep sea pressures, it had been further upgraded to be bomb-proof, fire-proof, sonic sock resistant, and cased to withstand electro-magnetic pulses, it also had a micro transceiver installed under the bezel. The upgrades had cost in excess of one hundred thousand dollars. It was hardly a beautiful thing, but he admired the serviceability of its basic design, and although he knew it didn't pass muster as a dress watch, he never took it off.

Having hitched a white towel loosely about his hips, and using another to roughly towel-dry his hair, the mirrored bathroom wall showed Damp!Sark. (Okay reader – that's what I wanted to write, but as I have to do it properly, let's rewind and do it again.)

Having hitched a white towel loosely about his hips, and using another to roughly towel-dry his hair, the mirrored bathroom wall showed a young man with a sleek, smooth musculature, his hair and skin tones variations on ivory and gold, a background against which his cobalt eyes were all the more stunning. He was a thing of balanced beauty.

Almost feline.

He moved across the bathroom like a cat across a rooftop.

And like a cat his full weight and determination only became apparent when he chose to pounce. Before he struck he seemed almost delicate, something only really designed for decoration. It was only when the attack came that the blood-instinct, speed and ruthlessness showed. Also like a cat – a street cat - he had survived in an emotional vacuum, a place of no affection or feeling, getting by on whatever glancing scraps others just casually threw out, learning to live without until 'living without' had become normal. He was not without a dark appreciation of it though. Loveless yet beautiful, the combination allowed him to seduce his way out of difficult situations.

If pressed he'd admit that he secretly enjoyed seduction, he got a sneaky kick out of the sheer manipulation and deceit involved: it was emotional revenge, and revenge was always one of his favourite games. Indeed, when seducing a man, the manipulative power-play was pretty much the only turn-on for him.

One of his few points of pride was that you could never accuse him of being a nice boy.

Vengeful and cool-blooded or not, when he picked up Irina's message abruptly beating through his signalling device – his wristwatch - he still felt as though she'd walked in on him in the bathroom.

Still in the bathroom a few minutes later, Sark reflected that Irina's message had informed him of the CIA's knowledge of his flight plan to Europe – useful to know, but not overly alarming. What had caught Sark's attention more was the news that CIA agents Michael Vaughn and Sydney Bristow had finally become lovers.

Closing the exchange by signalling that all was well regarding Irina's other query – Dr. Dodgson's work - he thought one thing: thank God Irina was thousands of miles away and couldn't hear him laughing.

What? The Prom Queen and Captain Cardboard had finally gotten some? Sydney, a woman who straight-armed life and Vaughn, a man who wanted to hide away from it? They were made for each other! Ignoring the bathroom mirror – despite his beauty and love of fine things, Sark lacked vanity - he dropped down into a chair, towelled his arms and shoulders dry, and astounded himself by barking with genuine laughter.

The part of his mind which was permanently on run-time, analysing himself and his surroundings, noted that his response of amusement was utterly authentic. He was truly not hurt by the news. Which was surprising really, he reflected, given how he had once felt towards Sydney Bristow.

Sark was a man who had no problems admitting when he was sexually attracted to a woman, and he'd been wildly attracted toward Sydney, but now he could see that there had been something else lurking there too. From the safe vantage of hindsight he could admit that he'd once had a world-class crush on Sydney Bristow, a crush he could finally confess to only because at some point he must have gotten over it. He knew he'd gotten over it because before the news of Sydney and Vaughn would have hurt him, but now it just amused him.

He was still chuckling as he left the bathroom.

So she was shagging Vaughn? Well see if he cared!

He dressed: black silk shirt, black knitted silk tie, black Armani suit; his shoes hand-made black leather oxfords from John Lobb of London. Black, black, black. His appearance was given interest by subtle variations in texture and tone rather than by colour. He traditionally dressed in sombre colouring, it had become somewhat of a sartorial signature, that and his immaculately tailored single breasted suits. Unless deliberately dressing down or wearing more practical assault clothes for a job, going tie-less and having the top button of his shirt undone was Sark's one concession to casual. He knew that to be immaculately presented, to dress in classically understated, formal, bespoke tailoring, was a necessary counterweight to his obvious youth; it enabled his appearance to project authority.

For him perception was everything. You wanted people to treat you with respect? – then you had to look like you deserved it.

No-one ever thought to ask why he traditionally wore black or other dark colours, he supposed others simply imagined it to be some affectation on his part. Well let them think that, it saved telling them the truth. Sark wore black because if he got into a fight or a shoot out then it wouldn't show the blood – his own or anyone else's. Initially Sark had worn black when he had gone out to deal trouble or when he was expecting to get it. The 'black days' had numbered ever greater as time passed, now he just wore black automatically.

Closing the apartment door as he left for dinner, he surprised himself by feeling almost light hearted. It was as though the news about Sydney and Vaughn had enabled him to leave behind some old baggage he no longer wanted and hadn't even realised he still been carrying around.

An ocean away, Sydney Bristow faced her father in a quiet corner of the office. He was calmly explaining to her how he thought she might want to review her level of emotional maturity, and her relationship with Vaughn. As usual in such matters, Jack had retreated to addressing his daughter as though she were a CIA Tactical Awareness sub-group.

"Oh shut up Dad, not you too, I've just had that from Mom!"

Honestly, did both her parents think she was a complete jerk?

Yes, sniped her inner voice, and so do you, so shut up and get off your high horse.

She stumbled off leaving Jack to his thoughts.

Jack was stumbling himself, through a moment of confusion.

What? Oh shut up Dad, not you too, I've just had that from Mom! He mooted over his daughter's words. Irina had been remonstrating with Sydney about Sydney's behaviour? Irina had jeopardised all her work of cozying up to Sydney at his expense and dealt out some maternal home-truths?

Just what was going on?

Jack wandered casually over to a work station, logging on to the surveillance monitor of Irina's cell. He could see her quite clearly on the closed-cap link. He looked with every appearance of dispassion at the screen, only his mind in a turmoil over how he'd explain it if anyone casually enquired as to why he was watching.

There she was, long hair, slender figure, serene poise, and patently still capable of dealing out a comprehensive telling-off to their daughter. A more than twenty year gap and she was still totally recognisable as the woman he'd loved.

Down in her cell Irina ignored the camera, she was still thinking on the subject of her protégé, Sark.

Such a melange of the enigmatic and the half–known.

She had some of the answers to the question of who Sark really was but she suspected no-one had all of them, not even Sark. He couldn't, he didn't know the things she hadn't told him. He was not even really aware of his own surname. He knew nothing of his royal ancestry, or of the far greater secret she had held about him for a short while now. Having extracted – more like stolen - him from Project Birthday aged 11 and then installed him in an English Public School, she had almost eradicated his full awareness of being Russian.

When she had left her Homeland and taken the boy with her – after all there was nothing for him in Russia and besides, he was an asset - she had chosen to ensconce him in England because it seemed the obvious place.

Under his Project Birthday training he had acquired many languages. The children were tutored in languages by defectors, people whose accents were genuine. The defectors came from many countries and many backgrounds, but it was noted that most of the British ones were disaffected members of that country's ruling class. The little boy who became Sark, one of the greatest remaining scions of Russian Nobility, had been taught to speak English by England's aristocrats. The irony was not lost upon Irina.

His accent had given him a head start in being acceptable in England, and Irina saw no reason to waste it. It had pleased her to place him in a prestigious English boarding school, a private establishment in Wiltshire, where he was given an education not only first rate academically, but also one fitting for a gentleman; a place where not only his intellect but also his neglected social skills could be polished.

He had worked for Irina in the holidays.

In taking him she had never really thought her motives through, and on the few occasions the truth about it did pop into her head, she suppressed it. She hadn't 'stolen' him, she hadn't 'taken' him – it hadn't really been anything to do with him being an asset – the truth was she'd been trying to save him. She didn't like to think of it because what she had been trying to save him from – the worst effects of Project Birthday – were the very things she had done to him: Project Birthday was really all her fault. Without her, the Russians would never have gotten their hands on it.

Putting him in an English Public School, surrounding him with the sons of English gentlemen and having him taught by English eccentrics, had been a desperate effort to blur his laser-sharp edges. To swerve him back into some semblance of humanity. Knowing it was too late for him to escape the world of espionage, in his 'English' years she had calculatedly plunged him from school-boy cricket to field assassinations and back again, like a blade tempered between hot and cold as she'd tried to beat him into some other, less vicious, shape.

She didn't think she had entirely succeeded, but she hoped she might have, just a little.

By the time he had officially left school at 16, called to his place at Irina's side, his birth-right had bestowed upon him a gifted intellect whilst his various schoolings had added the skills and detachment of an assassin, the social poise of a political animal, the vocal delivery of an aristocrat and the manners of a gentleman. At age 16 he was sprung fully formed upon the world - already Mr. Sark.

Sometimes she told herself she didn't tell that fabulous creature what she knew of him because he wouldn't believe her. Well, he wouldn't believe at least one of the things she had to say, she had always sensed that Sark was somewhat resistant to the lure of the Rambaldi Prophesies, deep down he just loved the gadgets. At other times she told herself that she didn't tell him because he actually might believe her - and then what would happen? How would the controlling, action-orientated, self-contained Sark react to being informed that he was part of Rambaldi's inescapable, pre-destined web?

She could imagine Sydney's phrase for it: he'd freak out, that's what.

Thousands of miles distant, Sark moved to the underground car park of his apartment block.

He didn't give a single thought to Sydney, Vaughn, or Irina – well, maybe a little to Irina. He didn't have the time to, even if he'd had the inclination. As the self-determined Mr. Sark drove from the building in a rented black Merc drop-top his expression hardened: tonight wasn't about Sydney or Irina, tonight was all about getting Arvin Sloane to believe that all was going to plan, that Mr. Sark wasn't having difficulties with that exasperating creature he'd come to think of as That Bloody Woman – Dr. James Dodgson.

He drove off, gunning the gears in frustration.

Christ, that bloody woman should come with her own users' instruction manual!