Chapter 26: Stesso Tempo - to parry and riposte in one action, often a deflecting counter-attack.

Jack was a man as little given to acknowledging his emotions as Sark, but he had to acknowledge one now, because it wasn't giving up on him until he did: he felt small.

He had treated Irina badly – projecting the fear and uncertainty he had over Sydney's potential involvement with Sark onto Irina herself, and now he felt … Jack had so little engagement with his emotions these days that he'd forgotten their names, all he knew now was that he felt bad.

He had gone to see Irina. Following the firebombing and Kandahar incident he knew, as did everyone else, that if anyone had a good guess as to anything Sloane and Rambaldi related, then it was her.

Staring at her, he wondered if she could tell that he was sorry. Staring at him, she wondered if he could tell that she was desperate, because if Sark's Mexico City enormity were not enough to tip the CIA's hand into letting her out, then she did not want to imagine what worse crime Sark might have to commit.

He had already hocked his soul enough.

As Jack and Irina's conversation progressed, he intent on intel, she intent on an out, the old magic between them kicked in again and at the end they were finishing each other's sentences. It was agreed, Irina would be let out to run and bring in Sloane.

Sark sprang Irina during the 'meeting' with Sloane in Panama City. Irina had co-operated in letting Jack implant a tracker chip in her, Sark had immediately excised it on her extraction, casting it into a decoy vehicle so it could act to draw off the CIA. Satellite surveillance had been wiped out by Allison Doren who had exploited Will Tippin's CIA access, as Sark had planned that she would.

The few minutes Sark and Irina had alone, between eluding the CIA and Sloane's arrival, had not seen the reunion between them that, until recently, each had imagined. Knowing of the Mexico City firebombing, Irina looked at Sark and wondered how well she really knew him. In turn, Sark looked at Irina and wondered at how much longer he would continue to know her.

He had come to a decision: he needed to get his life back.

He knew it.

Him being the 'bad guy' had nearly gotten Sydney killed in Kandahar. He couldn't risk that happening twice.

Him being the 'bad guy' had seen him sink to the level of a kiddie-snatching, congregation-killer. He knew he could not afford to let himself sink any further, if he sank any further down he'd be crushed to death under the deep-sea pressures.

Sark had uncomfortably faced up to one core truth: his life wasn't going the way he wanted it, and to change that he would have to break with Irina.

The plane journey away from Panama - with Sark, Irina and Sloane in a private jet - went like a bad family outing, with 'Mom' and 'Dad' at each other and their child told to leave the room. After she'd then blown up at Sloane and the man had retired to his private cabin, Irina had requested Sark's return. A bug-beater was in operation beside her, buying them refuge against any surveillance by Sloane. Sark saw it the moment he sat down across the central aisle from her, and he knew from its presence that she intended to attempt a re-kindling of their previous closeness.

Like water pressing against a dam wall and then breaking through it, he felt a panic lash out within him. He couldn't afford to go back to Irina!

All his suppressed memories of Mexico spurted out at him like high-pressure jets through the wall of his self-control.

I KILLED 62 PEOPLE! - I BURNT THEM TO DEATH! OH MY GOD, I BURNT THEM TO DEATH!

He felt like a sleepwalker who abruptly awakes from a nightmare, only to find that the nightmare is real.

JAMES! – SHE'LL FIND OUT! - WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WHEN SHE FINDS OUT?

His vision spotted and darkened, his breath shortened, his heart pounded, he was going to pass out. He was going to go into some dark space, and he might never get back. A detached part of him wondered if he were about to go completely mad. And then he didn't go. Instead he held on. Gripping hard to the last shreds of his sense of self, he seemed to straighten out of it. His vision cleared, dark spots disappearing, that rushing sound in his ears dissipating, his heartbeat settling back to a normal rate.

He had nearly toppled over some terrible edge into some place from which there was no return, but he had clawed his way upright, even though he didn't know quite how. All he knew … was that he must never, never, lose it like that again.

If he did that again, he might be lost forever.

Dry mouthed, he conquered the urge to faint and vomit as he faced up to the terrible technicolour memories of what he'd done in Mexico.

He saw Irina looking at him, her brows drawn together, head angled, concerned.

He stiffened, alarmed that in his near collapse he had shown a vulnerability that she would exploit. Because now he knew one thing for sure, he knew that after Mexico he couldn't afford to work for Irina any longer, not if he wanted to keep even a finger-tip grip on the tattered remnant of his humanity. He was going to break with Irina because he was going to have to. But even as he sat there he knew that she was going to pull on every last thread that had ever bound him to her in an effort to keep him.

To resist her he would need a very heavy defence – so he steeled himself and got one. For the first time in many years he forced himself to dredge up one of the worst memories of his entire life as connected with Irina: the first time he had ever tortured a woman. It hadn't been the last time, but it had been the worst time, because it turned out he'd been torturing her for secrets she did not have.

He had been fourteen at the time.

He approached the memory as one would a sealed radiation unit, opening it gingerly and then walking quietly in, knowing he was going into Hell.

How old had the woman been? He guessed about, what, 28? He rolled it all out before him, everything he had done to her. It had been so hideous, so horrible, that at the end he'd killed her out of mercy. And also out of cowardice. He could not live knowing she would have to in the state in which he had left her.

He had been told by Irina's lackeys that the woman was a deadly enemy, skilled in deception so he shouldn't believe her pleas of innocence, she was party to plan to torture and kill Irina, that Irina was being held somewhere being tortured even now, and that the woman knew where she was. The woman hadn't been any of that, it turned out shortly afterward she had been a complete civilian.

He hadn't spoken for a week after it happened, just stayed in bed, curled on his side, staring blankly at the wall.

Irina had turned up, mysteriously unhurt, several days after the woman's death, giving a fine show of tear-stained fury when she heard what had happened to the woman and thus of what had happened to Sark.

Yes, very convincing Irina, but how odd that you were just that little too late.

For the first time in his life he faced the worst part of his memory, the dark suspicion that despite her show of scalding tears and grief, that Irina had in fact set the whole thing up. The woman had not known the answers, had not even understood the questions, so she could not 'break' even though she wanted to. Had that been Irina's way of arranging it so that he would have to keep inflicting pain no matter what? So he could not quit because the answers that would let him stop could never come, because they were never there to begin with?

Sitting in the plane, he viewed the logical supposition that Irina had arranged the incident to destroy the last of his humanity and recreate him as some heartless machine suited to protect her. He decided on the grounds of probability that it was true.

She'd been party to essentially killing him when he was four years old, she'd done it again when he was fourteen. He'd died twice and each time had come back as a slightly more hollowed echo of what he had been before. How many more times could he die inside and still come back as someone even faintly recognisable as himself? Not many more, he knew it. He'd just died again in Mexico, he was running out of lives.

From his seat opposite her he regarded her. He decided that he could deal with her now, because he had to.

"How was Sydney when you last met her?"

Irina's question was so incongruous that Sark almost blinked. But then incongruous was what she did best wasn't it? – setting you up for the sucker punch. He replied to her query, keeping his voice as even as possible.

"She was tolerably well when I saw her last." Even voiced? - he'd thrashed the ass off 'even'. With his clipped sentence structure and his proper pronunciation he'd managed to sound like the drawling hero of an Oscar Wilde comedy.

"Oh really, when was that?"

"Switzerland," he lied, hiding the business in Kandahar and the quick-step over the Echelon call in Mexico - no point in telling her anything she didn't need to know, she already had enough on him as it was, "when she failed to prevent the theft of the Magnetometer."

Irina smiled with an almost familial affection, and then came her sucker punch. "She failed to stop you firebombing a church too I hear."

Sark felt a shock akin to being plunged into ice-cold water and defensively clung to one thing: the certainty that Irina had just made a tactical error. She had lead with her strongest card, it must have been her strongest card, right? - because surely there was no worse? Recovering, solidifying, he took courage from it, because now he had survived her worst attack, he knew that whatever else she had left was something he could also withstand.

That which does not destroy me … just hurts like hell. Staggering to his psychological feet, instead of 'broken' he felt something else instead, something very cold slowly arising within him, something so strange it took time for him to identify … he felt a contempt for Irina Derevko. Even as he struggled to accommodate to the sheer unbelievability of it, his voice had moved on, instinctively counter-attacking because he knew he must. His next words were a chill wind biting across some Arctic wasteland.

"You know perfectly well I had to do that thing in Mexico City for you," – 'that thing', I still can't even bear to say what it was, can I? "After you'd wilfully chosen to hand yourself over to the CIA." Irina's gaze widened in surprise, but those words were as nothing to the next. "Irina, don't ever set yourself up in judgement upon me again." He was stunned at his unhurried tone. It was as though he'd rehearsed this speech all his life – ever since aged 4 - but had only just delivered it. "After all, in Shelley's Frankenstein Irina, Frankenstein isn't the name of the monster, it's the name of the doctor who created him."

Sark was almost stunned with disbelief at what he was saying, his mind a tumble of confusion and, he admitted it, some fear. Not just fear of what Irina might immediately do, but a much greater fear - fear of the whole unknown which now lay before him. He had just severed a connection with Irina and taken the frightening first steps into his own future where he would have to be the master of his own destiny and not the servant of someone else's. He had just left the last of his childhood behind.

The part of Irina's mind that was still working wasn't sure whether Sark's words had been a declaration of war or of independence. She looked at him wide eyed. To her, his handsome face portrayed only conviction and certainty, she saw nothing of the inner fear and confusion, the grief and the guilt. She had schooled him so well in hiding his emotions that now even she couldn't see them.

Instead, an alarm went off within her - she was losing Sark!

How could she keep him? She instinctively fell back upon her traditional method for gaining what she wanted – trading information. She began to deal.

"Sark, I know that things have been strained between us, by an enforced distance if nothing else, but we can fix that. I have things to tell you, things about yourself."

As an alarm had gone off in Irina, one now went off in the confused and reeling Sark. He did not want to hear what she had to say, he'd made his break for freedom and now he had to keep running to make sure he got away. "I'm not interested."

His words were another stunning blow to Irina. In return she ignored her own panic, refusing to quite acknowledge just how rejecting of her he was. Instead, of the information she had at her disposal about Sark, she chose to lead with her least revealing card, in case it was enough and she subsequently did not have to deal out more.

"Sark, you are a Romanov."

"A what?" Sark was so puzzled by her statement that he actually spoke when he had intended to remain silent.

"You are a descendent of the great Russian royal line."

Sark was side-swiped by a flurry of memories and instincts, chief among them of how the rooms at their palace safe-house suited him and of how Irina had always been so slyly amused to see him there. That last memory was enough to tell him she was, astoundingly, speaking the truth now. She had been so amused because she had always known who he was. He gave a jerk of laughter and was stunned to find that incipient hysteria could actually sound quite dismissive. "Really? I'm a Romanov you say? How quaintly Ruritanian."

Irina knew she needed to play a stronger hand.

"Your father is Andrei Lazarey."

Two weeks ago Sark would have given almost anything to know that; well in the meantime too much had happened and he almost didn't care, he didn't have the space for it in his head. He couldn't afford to care. "Never heard of him," came his response.

He didn't care? Irina felt she'd been chopped off at the knees. She played her final card. "You are part of the Rambaldi Prophesies."

Oh for God's sake!

The thought exploded inside Sark's head as he wondered if being on a plane was like being on a train, was there some 'stop-handle' he could pull and then just jump out? His voice spat at her. "Irina, I don't think you've ever noticed this, but out of the six billion people on this planet, with the exception of maybe 500, nobody cares about Rambaldi. And shall I tell you something surprising? For once, I'm with the majority."

What she had intended to use to bind him to her was the thing which had finally snapped the thread between them. Irina felt her solid certainties with Sark sliding away from beneath her – she was losing him and she couldn't afford to. Not now.

"You are prophesied."

Sark snapped. "Oh for God's sake, you really don't think I'm going to believe that do you?"

"You are part of an unusual family Sark - "

"You can talk."

" – one that has carried on down the generations - "

"Every family has carried on down the generations Irina – that's how we all got here - all six billion of us."

" – that was designed to culminate in you."

Sark felt as though he had been slapped. What? What had she said? Designed? Culminated? Designed? Did that mean he wasn't real? That he was a creation? Just some prophesied thing? Feeling the sands of certainty being sucked away from beneath him he knew that Irina hadn't lead with her strongest attack after all, she'd kept the worst back, she'd kept this one. He fought against her horrifying implication – that he was just a pre-planned flight plan and could do nothing to affect it - with everything in him.

I am not someone's creature! It's not true! I KNOW WHO I AM!

"Me? I was the best they could do?" Sark forced himself to laugh out loud. "Someone should be asking for their money back!"

Irina leapt at him: half trained assassin, half angry mother figure who won't be cheeked by her child, only for the palm of Sark's hand to slam into her sternum, the energy of his blow sending her flying backwards so that she landed in an ungainly sprawl in the same chair from which she had sprung.

For the first time in their lives they had fought seriously - and he had won.

Sark fought down another flood of panic. He was fighting with Irina? She was almost his mother! He felt another stumble of confusion inside his head, but then … came to. He had to. If he were to survive this he had to cling to his self-determination.

He wasn't some pre-planned automaton! He wasn't! No matter what anyone thought or wanted! He belonged to no-one but himself!

"You've been in a cell for months Irina. I've been out in the field all that time, considerably adding to my body count in case you hadn't noticed – oh but there I'm wrong aren't I, because of course you had noticed." He looked at her quite calmly, irrespective of whether he felt calm.

He executed their relationship.

"I extracted you from the CIA and that calls us quits Irina. Let's not part enemies shall we?" The traditional ending to the sentence reverberated in his head, not after all we've been to each other, but he finished it the way he wanted to: "not after all we've put each other through."

Irina was staggered. Sark was rejecting her? This was Sloane's doing!

Oh my God – I can't afford to lose him, not now and not to Sloane of all people!

She thought of all that was at stake – but what could she do? And then a small internal voice told her: you could tell him the truth. She looked at Sark as he sat across from her, taller than she, broader, no longer that physically slight boy she had known for so long, had nurtured for so long: he was almost a man now. He was defensive, coldly angry at her, yes - but a man. She decided it was time to tell. Sark had to know what she did, and then they would see if he would walk away!

"Who do you think Rambaldi was?"

"A mad bastard the Vatican was right to have offed. I've got to hand it to those crazy Catholics, the Inquisition managed to get something right."

"The Church didn't manage to kill him."

"Yes they did Irina. Elvis left the building over 500 years ago."

"Sark, how do you think he arranged all this?"

"He didn't arrange anything. He died hundreds of years ago. So he left behind the blueprints for some impressively nasty boy's toys? So what? None of it matters now."

"He's coming back."

Sark managed not to laugh out loud – Christ did these Rambaldi freaks ever give up? "And how do you know that Irina? Did he phone you up and tell you? Get your number from the International Felons-R-Us directory?"

Irina was astounded, how could anyone so enmeshed in the Prophesies as he be so laughingly dismissive of them? Who did he remind her of? He reminded her … he reminded her of Sydney, that's who!

Sark carried on. "Irina, I've got better things to do with my life than chase after old scraps of paper with some mad bastard's old doodles on them."

"You know, I'm almost proud of your attitude."

"So you should be, I'm a chip off the old butcher's block."

"You won't get to really leave you know, it's your destiny to be involved."

Destiny? Sark told himself that there was no such thing as destiny; he would make his own fate. "Irina, I know you really love me, but trust me, even the most devoted sons have to leave home eventually. It's time to cut the apron strings Mummy."

His mockery stung her.

"Well, if you feel you ought to go, you should go." She could hear her voice spiral upwards but couldn't control it - she had come so far, done so much, and now Sark was deserting her? "Go, go on, leave, - "

"What, right now?" Sark laughingly indicated the plane about them.

" – Go! And leave Sydney to fight on alone when you should have been at her side helping her!"

Sydney.

Sark felt that internal radar. Since Kandahar those sixth, seventh and eighth senses he had about Sydney were back and fully functioning. Abruptly alert, suddenly aware, he realised with a lurch of sick disbelief that he now regarded Irina as a danger to Sydney – her own mother!

"What about Sydney?" His voice sounded like a sword being drawn.

"She's Page 47 - "

Sark laughed dismissively, "according to some."

" – and you are Page 48."

There was a silence.

Sark's mind flared within him, shock versus determination to resist. Determination to resist won. How could it not? - there was no alternative for him.

That does it, this has gone far enough! Irina was that intent on keeping him by her side that she was prepared to tell any lie, however crazy? Prepared to drag him down into her life-sucking Rambaldi obsession? Sark registered it as meaning one thing, that she would never let him go. He made up his mind. He would never be able to break with Irina, she wouldn't let him. He came to a conclusion, he wouldn't even try to break with her, he'd kill her instead.

He would kill her, and then slot Sloane too and make it look as though Sloane had killed Irina. James – he flinched at even her name, at that grinding anger that even thinking about her set off in him – well if he ever told James she would just have to understand it as self-defence and deal with it. As for Sydney … well, he would make damn sure that Sydney never had cause to find out.

He was going to kill Irina when he got off the plane.

In fact, maybe he wouldn't wait that long? Maybe he'd do it now? Kill Sloane and the aircrew too, take over the jet, change the flight plan, avoid any 'welcoming party' either Sloane or Irina might have waiting on arrival, and fly it to an unknown destination of his choice. Easy.

In the run up, all he had to do was to keep Irina on the back foot and softened up.

"Irina, I know what Page 48 is, I've seen it, it's some drivel about the human liver."

"That was a fake of mine, but I'll forgive you for considering my best efforts as drivel. I hid the real page for your safety. The U.S Government imprisoned Sydney for her prophesy involvement, they will simply kill you."

Sark couldn't decide if her statement was meant as emotional blackmail over the care she'd taken to protect him, or as an oblique threat on his life with the implication that she could expose him. Irina being Irina, he decided it was probably both.

Irina spoke on, evincing no awareness of his calculations. "According to Rambaldi," she continued, her voice low, smoky, cutting across his thoughts, "you are The White Devil."

Sark's mind stopped.

She's bluffing. She knows about Moscow, that's all. This is all just one big lie!

Irina pick up the tell of his pause, her eyes narrowing, head to one side. He'd learned not to trust her when she did that. "What does that title mean to you?" she enquired, "I can tell it means something."

It means you're a lying bitch!

He mentally ran through all the weapons he had on him and alighted upon the comfortable heft of a knife holstered against his inner left ankle. As quick to draw as a gun and no danger of it puncturing the fuselage. He wondered if he could fling it into her throat before she could move. He intended to try.

"What does it mean to me? Well, seeing as it's part of a Rambaldi Prophesy," he drawled, "it means about as much to me as the long range weather forecast – it means nothing. If it says 'sunshine', I'm still taking my umbrella." He casually shifted so that he sat with his left ankle propped across his right knee, his left arm trailing along the back of the bench seat next to him, his right hand dangling limply across the supported ankle. He looked almost languid, projecting a bored disinterest.

The fingers of his right hand were now only inches from that knife.

Having committed to his course of action, he did not allow himself to reconsider. He knew that if he did, he'd back down, with all that she had ever meant to him re-asserting itself. He got a grip on himself. She had to die. He drove himself toward that one aim and remembered a brief line from a childhood tale: off with her head!

"I'm someone called the White Devil?" he shrugged indifferently, hoping to Christ that his voice sounded as indolent as he meant it to, "it's meaningless Irina. It's the same with all the Rambaldi prophesies, they inherently mean nothing. People project meaning upon them, after the fact. It's like the horoscopes in the Abby Someone column, whatever kind of day you've had, I'm sure you can always make the prediction fit."

He moved his hand another inch toward the knife.

"So that is what the prophesies mean to you? Nothing?" Irina looked at Sark as though measuring up a jump. "Very well, I will tell you what they mean to me."

She took the jump, she told him.

Minutes later, Sark stared across the aisle at her with his mind reeling from the input of so much unwanted knowledge, his psyche rejecting the horrifying picture she'd painted of just what the whole world would be like if Rambaldi's prophesied return came to pass - like Nazi Europe but without the fun parts. His gaze at her was something which would have lazered paint off a wall: so threatening because he felt so threatened.

"And why are you so sure of all that Irina?"

"Oh I don't know. Bad dreams, maybe? I just know. Like I know that as of ten minutes ago you decided to kill me with that knife you have on your left ankle."

Sark felt a small detonation in his chest. Fucking hell!

Irina may have lost her ability to read his emotions, but she had not lost her survival instinct. "I know you Sark. When you're sitting there, oh so casual, oh so relaxed, almost sprawling – that is when you are at your worst."

"Really? And I thought I looked such a nice boy too."

In an action so quick that she couldn't have stopped him if she had tried, he threw the knife.

It was three seconds before Irina realised that she wasn't dead, wasn't even cut. The knife had lodged exactly where Sark had hurled it, in the top of the side table upon which she rested one of her hands. It had landed blade first, embedding itself into the expensive veneer only two inches from her fingers.

He had launched after it before she could collect herself, wrenching it up out of the wood as his eyes locked with hers, only to slam it blade down into the table again, this time one inch from her hand. His free hand pinned her to her chair by her throat.

Irina involuntarily shuddered.

He spat his words at her. "Irina, why should I trust a thing you say? After all, you were once party to putting a four year old boy to death; don't lie, I was there when you did it." She flinched in shocked disbelief – what was he talking about? Sark saw her puzzlement and it enraged him – she didn't even know what she had done? All the years of being with her and she knew him so little? Rage ripped out of him. "It was me Irina, you killed me!" His voice rose to a shout, any louder and it wouldn't matter if they had a bug-beater in play, Sloane would hear anyway.

He still held her by the throat though he had no need, she was helplessly pinned by his furious gaze. Irina stilled under the sudden revelation of all that he thought she had done to him. Well, wasn't he right? What could she say? There was no justification for the things she had done, no possible apology she could ever give – not to Sark, not to one who did not believe the prophesies even though he was very much part of them. She went on instinct, the words out of her mouth before she had even thought them through.

"You ask me why you should trust me? Well you shouldn't. I can't be trusted. But as far as the prophesies are concerned, you should believe me, because I'm telling you the truth!"

She and Sark stared at each other, mere inches apart, neither of them blinking. Irina knew that if he didn't kill her within the next five seconds then he wasn't going to.

He didn't kill her.

Instead he flung himself back into his seat, ripping the knife up out of the table top and taking it with him, glaring at her furiously. Shades of an almost adolescent anger burned off him, a remnant of the juvenile life he had not allowed himself to have. He sat across from her, legs straight out before him, crossed at the ankles, arms folded tight across his chest, glaring at her from under his brows. Although he was now fully a man, it was one of the few times Irina had ever seen him really look like a boy.

"So let me get this straight," he spat, "Rambaldi's coming back. And when he gets here he'll be armed with super-weapons no one will be able to stand against, and then he'll turn the planet into his own personal fiefdom. That if Rambaldi isn't stopped then the whole world becomes one large death camp, with everybody in it?" He flicked her an acidic look which, for a moment, reminded her breath-takingly of Jack. "Why Irina? Why would anyone do that?" Sark reminded himself he was supposed to be impenetrably cynical and added, "if, that is, he's found some way to return from the dead and this isn't just more Rambaldi bullshit."

Irina verbally got off the back-foot and came at him.

"You ask why would he do that? Look at history and ask instead why he would not! Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, they committed insane atrocities upon the hundreds of millions under their sway for no reason other than they could. Why won't Rambaldi do the same? He'll consider himself a god, he'll have conquered death itself. He won't see himself bound by normality."

She felt herself almost blister under his disbelieving resentment but detected something flickering beneath his expression, his unwanted recognition that, at least on the argument of motive, her logic held good. She pressed her point. "Sark, it's one of your own sayings: 'You know when a petty dictator needs killing - they start naming days of the week after themselves'. You've met enough insane tyrants to know that they don't fuel up on logic. Don't look for logic in Rambaldi's motives."

"Irina I don't look for logic in his motives because he doesn't have motives; this is mindless superstition, he's not coming back!"

"He is."

Sark closed his eyes for a second – this is like dealing with a two year old!

"Okay," he said, grinding out the words, humouring her, "assuming that he were actually coming back, how do you know it will end that way?"

"Because he said so in the last pages of his own manuscript."

"Oh, for God's sake! What? Quite openly? Wasn't that rather remiss of him?"

"Not if you consider it as advertising." She held his gaze. "Come on Sark, answer me: why would he advertise?"

Glaring at her, Sark was the very picture of defensive irritation. Irina knew, however, that his gimlet-keen mind would be working. He answered her - annoyed, indignant, resentful of even having to - but he answered her.

"Because where there's a bad guy, there's always somebody who wants to be his side-kick. Where there's a schoolyard bully, there are always those who'll line up with him rather than against him - those who'd rather share the spoils than be them."

"Quite."

Irina's face was aglow with an almost maternal pride at his analytical mind. Sark thought it was just her crazy Rambaldi streak coming out again. Irina continued, pressing her point.

"There will be no escape Sark. Destruction and death and horror and fear, they will be everywhere for everyone. And Rambaldi's henchmen, his signed-up minions, they'll hunt you down until they find you. He knows who you are, he knows what you look like, you're picture's on the page. Plastic surgery? It won't help, because he's even got your DNA code there too. You won't be able to run."

"What about the CIA? They'll stop him." What had he just said? - the CIA! They couldn't stop traffic with a stop-light! And he was responding like he actually bought it? - I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this!

"The CIA is corrupt. As an organisation the CIA will line up with him. All those organisations – those whose raison d'etre is power – they will all line up with Rambaldi. Oh, there will be pockets of resistance within them, people like Jack, but they will be overcome and destroyed." Irina saw Sark unconsciously stroke his finger across his lower lip as he focussed internally. She pushed on. "Why do you think the CIA have never destroyed any of the artefacts they have captured? They want to use them as much as the next power-seeker does!"

His gaze flicked back to her. "So why haven't you destroyed yours Irina? Same reason?"

She almost took pleasure in his quickness of attack.

"I haven't destroyed them because I don't have any."

Sark blinked.

"Sloane has 24 artefacts, the CIA has 23. I just had knowledge."

"Rather careless of you. A bit like a stamp collector who never quite got round to collecting any stamps."

Irina's mind shot off at a tangent and her eyes narrowed in an almost maternal exasperation. "Have you ever been told that you can be very annoying?"

"Frequently."

Irina ignored him and got back on the issue. "The only real way to stop Rambaldi is to not let him start."

She saw the expression on Sark's face lose its calculating edge and she knew he had come to a conclusion.

"Irina, Rambaldi was a genius, centuries ahead of his time, but these prophesies - they're fairy stories. No one can predict the future Irina, and they can't determine it either. If anyone were to even try, then tiny fluctuations in random events down the centuries would disrupt any fine-tuned outcome so it became something quite different from what was intended, it's called the Butterfly Effect. What you're saying – someone determining the future from the past - it just can't be done."

"I never said Rambaldi had determined or even predicted the future Sark, instead I think he saw it. There's a big difference. I don't think he predicted the future, but that he simply watched it happen like a movie showing on a giant screen and then he described it."

Sark's eyes narrowed. Well, he thought, if you were going to buy into six flavours of crazy, then that explanation was a lot less nuts than some spiritual, mumbo-jumbo, prophesy bollocks.

Irina carried on speaking. "I think that a lot of his inventions were things he simply stole from the future, where he saw them being created. Yes he was a genius, but one 'standing on the shoulders - "

" - of giants' ." Sark finished the Sir Isaac Newton quote for her. "So, he wasn't a genius so much as the biggest plagiarist who ever lived? Oh dear, Mr. Sloane will be upset."

"Sark, I know you still don't really believe me, but think about it. All his inventions, the cell-phone, his understanding of genetic code, of DNA, nuclear submarines, these are all things we have now. Things seem to be coming to a focal point now. All the key players are here now, all the inventions are things we can readily understand because we're nearly there anyway." She looked up. "He can see events as they happen now."

The key players, the words set off a dark chime in Sark's head.

"What's it got to do with Sydney?"

Irina looked at him and wondered why he had not instead asked - what's it got to do with me? Then she realised why. In all of this Rambaldi mess Sark would instinctively put her daughter's safety first. She felt a tremendous lurch of love for him because of it.

"I think he wants to come back, and he wants to do it physically. I think he's using some device mankind invented in our future to somehow bring his consciousness back into a physical entity. I think he needs Sydney to do it. Maybe genetically, he knows she is somehow suitable."

Sark gave a bark of laughter. "What, he's going to occupy Sydney? He's going to have a hell of a time trying to fit into a size eight frock!"

Irina gave a dry, uncomfortable half laugh. "No, I think he wants to breed a child by her, one he can … utilise."

"What?" Sark's word was an explosion in the small space. "He's going to use her to procreate someone he'll use as a shell? What's going to happen to the poor kid?" His disgust echoed around the cabin. He stopped and looked at Irina with a dawning horror. "Oh don't tell me I'm the other half of his baby-making deal? What are we, two pedigree dogs put together to make 'a litter of lovely puppies'?"

Irina held up a staying hand.

"I don't know what your role is," she staved off a wave of his disbelieving anger, "I didn't have time to properly read your page. I don't really know what you are in this."

Sark stared hard at her, his jaw shifting. He told himself that he didn't believe a word of it, wouldn't believe a word of it, but … there was a page on him. Maybe Rambaldi – whoever - knew things about him? He swallowed hard, looking down at his folded arms, "Irina … have you ever thought … have you ever thought that maybe I'm the bad guy?" He kept staring at his folded arms, unable to look up at her.

"What?"

"That maybe I have a page as a warning and not as some kind of help?"

Irina stared at him until he felt compelled to look up at her. "Sark, I've known you since you were four years old; believe me, you are not the bad guy."

Sark held Irina's gaze. Some lump in his throat hurt, he tried to make his swallow of it imperceptible. He wished she had told him that years ago, but she hadn't and it was too late now. She continued.

"Just promise me one thing - "

"I won't promise you anything." He suddenly sounded painfully young.

"Just one thing," she persisted, "for anything good I might ever have given you." She sounded suddenly desperate. "Look, I know you've rejected me, but promise me this - that you won't go to Sloane. That you aren't aligning with Sloane now. Sloane is just like the CIA, he wants Rambaldi back so that he can be one of his all-powerful lieutenants."

Sark's amazed look told her that whoever had wrested him from her influence, it was certainly not Sloane. But then … if it's not Sloane, who is it? Some new Khasineau?

She enquired about what was preoccupying her.

"Why have you suddenly rejected me?"

There was a silence and then, in deference to all the years they'd spent together, Sark paid her the respect of answering. "You've had possession of my life for over 16 years." He looked up at her. "Now I want it back."

"Is there someone new?" Irina saw the shutters slam down behind Sark's eyes. Was there someone? He didn't trust her to know – well, maybe he was right not to. Was it Sydney? "Are you going to try and kill me now?" she asked.

"No."

She believed him. "Will you continue to be my ally?"

"I won't work for you if that's what you mean."

Irina was very careful to note that he had not said 'no'. She probed further, onto the important point: was Sark's preoccupation with her own daughter? "What about Sydney?" The shutters stayed down, not a flicker, it told her nothing. "Will you help Sydney?"

Sark looked down, almost as though he were looking inside of himself, and then looked up again. He sounded almost puzzled, either puzzled at what he had found within or perhaps only puzzled that she should have asked. "I have always tried to help Sydney."

It was true, and it was enough for Irina, for now. However, she pushed slightly, wanting to use this new-found emotional core within him as leverage to tip him squarely back in to the game.

"If you do not stop Rambaldi, then you, and anyone you care about, will never be safe." And anyone you care about. She hoped that her words would resonate within him. She was struck by a sudden thought. "You're going to kill Sloane aren't you?"

"Well it's certainly on my 'to do' list."

"Don't. Not yet. Not until I can his get his collection of artefacts off him, I can't let anyone else have them. After that …"

He shrugged. "After that there'll be one less potential Rambaldi lieutenant in the world."

"There's one more thing I want."

Sark laughed. "Irina, there's always one more thing you want. Remind me never to go shopping with you if I'm picking up the bill."

"There's a DNA database in Stuttgart. I need it to locate the man carrying the Rambaldi Heart." Sark knew what she was talking about, she had briefed him on it. "Besides … for all we know, that database may be one of the things Rambaldi is using in our present, and his future, to track you and Sydney. Will you help me?"

Rambaldi again. Was there any getting away from it?

"Irina, do you really believe that Rambaldi nonsense?"

"He drew both your and Sydney's faces six hundred years ago. With your DNA codes. Yes, I believe it."

Sark blinked. "Okay," it was an almost weary resignation, "I'll get your database for you."

Irina had smiled in relief, feeling some chance to re-establish relations with the man who had once been her protégé. She still had hopes of a rapprochement. She had taken Sark on almost as an injured bird, and nurtured him and raised him – but as her hunting falcon. Now that he was flying free, would he eventually choose to return to her wrist of his own accord?

She hoped to establish a more equal relationship, but not a totally open one. She hadn't truly discussed her own thoughts with him: that her theory about Rambaldi didn't truly explain Sydney and Sark. It had often puzzled her why Rambaldi had indicated – certainly with Sydney and even from her cursory reading of Sark's page she knew it was the same with him – of how potentially destructive they could be to his prophesies, to his 'powers'. It was almost as though he needed them to fulfil part of his prophesies, but that he feared them too: that their strength, which he needed, was the very thing about them which could destroy him. Tools forged for his use, but made so sharp that they were the only things that could cut him?

As she smiled and moved on to charming small-talk, she was unaware that in her body, moving slowly through her, a tiny passive tracker had just begun to ping out its signal to Jack Bristow and the CIA. Prior to Panama, Jack had secretly implanted one in her, without anyone knowing. Jack Bristow had totally trusted Irina Derevko on the Panama mission – he had totally trusted her to jump bail and run for it.

After all, that was what he would have done.

Author's note: this is the one chapter in the book that I'm actively unhappy with - no matter what I do with it, it seems to drag and slow the story down. I think it's because it has to symbolically traverse Sark's 'teenage' years; it has to take him from Irina's servant to a reasonably balanced independence without a crass severing of everything between them, and that takes quite a few words - plus I had to get a lot of Rambaldi stuff in here.

For me this chapter feels like a self-contained short-story within the novel. Trouble is, that whenever I tried to take it out or spread the salient points throughout other chapters and so delete this chapter, I lost Sark's development arc.

Hmmn … not happy with it … I don't really know why it doesn't work for me, it just doesn't.