Chapter 28: Spada Libera - "Keeping your sword free". Keeping your sword in such a way that the opponent does not have leverage on it or the "advantage of the sword"
Sark looked at his hand encompassed in an ice-pack, it was still slightly swollen. Well, having a gun shot out of your grip tended to do that to you.
Goddamn Sydney Bristow – I wish I'd never met her!Mere days ago he'd been planning to kill Irina partly because she was a threat to Sydney. Well, travelling back to Russia in a private jet, surveying the recent events of Brucker Biotech at Stuttgart with the extra deaths involved, he never wanted to see Sydney again. In Brucker Biotech he'd been a screw tightened one turn too many and the thread had finally snapped. He told himself he no longer cared about Sydney, Irina, any of it. No that wasn't true, he did care about Sydney, but he was determined to get away from the whole Rambaldi-obsessed mess.
Inside Brucker Biotech, during his and Irina's raid on the DNA database, Sark had died yet again for Irina.
What had he come back as this time, the ghost of a ghost?
He had made up his mind that he had done it for the last time. He could die no more times for Irina, he didn't have another resurrection left in him.
As part of the job when stealing the database, Irina had stipulated that no-one was to know that they were ever there. He knew full well what Irina and he had arranged as their method of 'no-one knowing they were ever there' - detonating a charge to rip through the building. Irrespective of what Irina said, fundamentally he still would not believe in the prophesies, or that he had a role in them – he couldn't, the survival of his sense of self wouldn't allow it. Hence, for him the bomb going off had been one more round of utterly motiveless killing.
Another round of it, to add to his earlier career high of incinerating a church congregation.
Despite that, flying back into Russia he still felt a terrible sense of guilt about rejecting Irina, it was as though he really had rejected his own mother. But had he really broken away from her? He couldn't, really, could he? He doubted he could ever make himself stop caring about Sydney at any rate because even now he was plagued by the memory of what she had done, or rather of what she had not done.
In a stairwell at Brucker Biotech she had not shot him.
He had held Agent Michael Vaughn at gunpoint, with the ostensible aim of shooting the little git in the head, and Little Miss Perfect had not shot him. Faced with an unmissable opportunity to nail him, or at least injure him and capture him – and when he'd been aiming at lover boy's head for Chrissakes – she had not put a bullet in him. She'd had his whole body to aim at and what had she done? – shot the gun out of his hand! She didn't even shoot after she'd disarmed him! What? - she didn't shoot again because she'd run out of ammunition? He knew the CIA were subject to budgetary constraints, but not even they were cheap enough to send a field agent out with only one bullet in her gun! No, if she had wanted to shoot him she could have done so right then.
Sark's jaw ground in annoyance. It was paradoxical, but he was almost angry that she had not shot him. It put him in her debt. And the way she did it was so damned typical of her, managing not to shoot me but still being judgemental about it! He remembered the look on her face after she'd blasted the gun from his hand; along with her usual disgust, anger and disdain at him, she had added a fresh hell – she had looked so utterly disappointed in him.
What has she got to be disappointed about? I was only living down to my reputation, she'd be disappointed if I did anything else! Besides, I wasn't going to shoot him anyway! If she'd waited three more seconds she'd have found that out!
The CIA had moved in on the building as Sark was moving out. He had set the charge, giving he and Irina minutes to get away. He had known that it would probably kill scores of people. He had been filled with a kind of self-hate.
And then he had gotten the heads-up on something that pushed aside all self-loathing in a blast of unholy glee. Through a porthole window in a stairwell doorway he saw the CIA coming at him. Two of them. An unknown operative and … well hey, what did you know? Life may give you lemons, but sometimes you can turn them into pure hydrochloric acid. Fate had handed him a glorious release for all of his self-disgust, anger and frustration: the chance to beat the living shit out of one of the most annoying twats he knew, that righteous, pompous, ineffectual, undeserving, furrow browed, pursed mouthed, pissy faced little whinger, Agent Michael Vaughn.
It had come down to hand-to-hand and within seconds one thing was clear: Vaughn had never been properly taught how to fight. He had fought like it was a schoolyard brawl, uncoordinated attempts at grappling, moves too telegraphed and slow: wide, swinging punches. In contrast, Sark did not fight as though combat were a confusing random melee that one just hoped to get through, Sark engaged in combat as though it were physical chess. Irina had made damned sure that he did. Just one of the many things he owed her for. Just one of the many things he should never have had to learn in the first place.
The quick, vicious exchange – with elegant, concise brutality ranged against panic-stricken flailing - had ended as it was destined to, with Vaughn tossed ignominiously down the stairs. During the fight – if you could call it a fight – Sark had driven a crunching blow into Vaughn's undefended ribs, only to find that: Oh look, Vaughn's wearing the bullet-proof vest his mummy knitted for him.
Within seconds Sark had flattened Vaughn to the floor with a shot to his protected chest, using the man's own gun. He'd then moved down the stairs on him with all the fluid elegance of a young, gun-toting Mikhail Baryshnikov and had taken aim at Vaughn's head, aiming to kill. After all, killing the little pratt was the logical thing to do.
Except that he couldn't do it.
Looking back on it, he knew it wasn't anything to do with Vaughn's pathetic struggles to get up and stay alive - he was inured to pathetic struggles, particularly Vaughn's - it was to do with Sydney. He couldn't kill Vaughn, because if he did then Sydney could never forgive him. Worse still, although she didn't know it yet, Sydney had already lost Francie Calfo, if he had killed Vaughn then she would have been left with nothing.
He had pointed Vaughn's own gun at the man's head and had quite simply not known what to do.
And then Sydney Bristow made it easy for him, she had shot the gun out of his hand.
A short while ago, the concept - that Sydney would risk her boyfriend's life for him - would have left him elated. Well, now he wanted to be free of her. It was a wish, no a need to escape everything Rambaldi-related she was knotted up in. But at the same time … he felt almost a duty to stay involved and protect her. It was as though part of him were under secret orders where Sydney was concerned.
Trying to harden himself against her he folded his arms and mentally rattled through a list of Sydney's flaws. She was a prim, vindictive, adolescent drama-queen. Hell, she wasn't even mature enough to be a drama-queen, she was a drama-princess.
She was judgmental and high-handed, immature and needy. Selfish? Hell, she was so selfish that even before poor little Francie Calfo had been killed – Sark's mind veered away from the exact circumstances of that – her life had been mangled up anyway. From records Sark knew that Sydney had gotten in the way of Francie's marriage to her fiancé Charlie, taking it upon herself to de-rail it because of Charlie's infidelities and not giving Francie any real choice in the matter! Talk about high-handed! And did 'high-handed' even begin to describe her? Her treatment of Marcus Dixon was breath-takingly arrogant. She, Miss Emotional Problems, had set herself up in judgement on him and had decided that Dixon wasn't to be told the true circumstances of his life at SD-6, that he couldn't be trusted to bear up under the truth! Marcus Bloody Dixon? Sark clenched his jaw in annoyance. He had no love for Dixon – precisely because the man was so good at his job – but by the same token he damn well respected him. Marcus Dixon's rectitude, solidity and sheer patriotism were above any possible doubt. If asked even he, Sark, would have nominated Dixon as the missing face on Mount Rushmore, but Sydney? Oh no, she in her wisdom had decided that Dixon wasn't fit to know the truth about his own life!
And talk about hypocritical! Was that even a strong enough word for it? What about the time she'd weaselled her way in to Sloane's house to access his safe under cover of a personal 'farewell' dinner for the cancer stricken and, at that point, dying Emily Sloane? She had exploited the dying Emily as a tool to burgle Sloan's safe!
And ungrateful? Oh she certainly was! At Emily's 'funeral' after the woman's faked death upon remission, had Sydney respected the situation even though she thought Emily was genuinely dead? No! She'd used the Eulogy as a tool for tearing into Jack Bristow, effectively using it to list all his failings as a father. Christ but the man would lay down his life for her! – what more did she want from him?
He coldly weighed up all the cons against her and – oh buggering hell! He expelled a breath of sheer exasperation because, nope, not even listing all her faults had helped – dammit he still liked her! In fact, sod it to damnation, he even felt guilty about her! When he had run down the Stuttgart stairwell away from Sydney, he had been convinced that she would come after him, trying to catch him. He had been sure he could lure her out of the building and away from the imminent explosion. Although Sydney's wrath had impelled her instead to stay and seek out her mother, he still felt that his failure to absolutely ensure Sydney's safety had represented some strange dereliction of duty.
He glared unseeingly out of a porthole window.
The guilt he had felt about 'abandoning' Sydney obliged him to help Irina further by covering for her as she dealt with Sloane at his villa. Well, now he felt straight with Irina. She had lost the DNA database they had stolen and he did not feel obliged to get it back for her, furthermore he had been party to rescuing her when the CIA had raided Sloane's villa. As far as he was concerned, he had discharged all debts to her. As to any she owed him, well he didn't want to meet her long enough to collect. He had his own life now, and his own problems.
And one of them was now James.
He twisted in his seat, glowering. He could almost spit with wrath.
He remembered back to the flaring bitterness of their farewell in the Dacha. He refused to even acknowledge the earlier episode he'd suffered in the bathroom. Every time he thought of her he could almost choke with the mixture of resentment and bitterness she provoked within him, that and … a vague, chest-twisting, painful –
He slammed the door on it.
He felt nothing – that's what he felt!
If he felt anything, he felt angry! A justified anger! She deserved everything he might do! She deserved everything she was going to get! She'd hurt him and then she'd kept on hurting him, and that was against the rules!
I don't care about her! I won't care about her!
He had tried calling her earlier to taunt her, but the call hadn't connected. He was not overly worried, in-flight mobile phone calls were notoriously fickle.
Seething, he looked down at his gun-hand and wondered if the swelling had caused his aim to be off when covering Irina's escape from Sloane's Italian villa. If his aim had been absolutely bang on, could he have shot Dixon before Dixon had shot Emily Sloane dead? Yep, Emily was dead, she had seemingly escaped cancer only to be gunned down in the crossfire between Sloane and the CIA.
Sark reflected that there was something almost classically tragic about it.
Sark had known who had pulled the trigger, from his raised vantage point in the escape helicopter he'd had a reasonable view of things, but he hadn't told Sloane. Emily Sloane was dead, and Sark saw no reason to spread the misery over a woman he hardly knew. Sark didn't know what would be visited upon Dixon if Sloane uncovered who had killed his wife, but he was willing to bet it would be something nasty, something very Websterian.
Dixon better start watching his back.
Sark reflected that had no idea where Sloane was now – he was probably hunting down after Emily's killer. Well, as long as the man was away from him, he didn't really care.
Angry, scowling, he looked out of the porthole window as he flew east into the gathering darkness.
