Chapter 30: Falso Filo - a strike that is brought to deceive the opponent and then transformed into something else.

"Dad, what do you mean, you think Sark's on our side?" Sydney's tone was almost accusatory. She had rounded on Jack, clamouring for information almost before they had left Kendall's office.

The opinions Jack had voiced to Kendal concerning Sark, about double-gaming, about the potential use of Echelon, had all been things which a mere week ago she would have leapt at and clung to. Well, now what Sydney needed above all regarding Sark was certainty. What was he? - good? bad? - she needed to know. At her words Jack Bristow stared down at his daughter and noted her barely hidden intensity.

My God, does she really have something going on with Sark? Jesus Christ, where's Irina when you need her?

He veered away from considering anything between Sydney and Sark.

"Sydney, what I said I that room I said primarily to clear you."

"Dad, just give it to me straight, yes or no? In or out? I need to know. Did you mean that about his use of Echelon to tip off the CIA?"

Jack blinked. "Well, it is certainly logical to suppose he did."

"Then why did he set the bomb off at all?"

"Because he was working to get your mother out of that cell. With hindsight, he obviously needed an enormity pinned at Sloane's door so great that it made letting Irina out to catch him seem a worthwhile risk." Jack was astonished. He was justifying Sark? - a man he was wary of letting anywhere near his only child? He tried to redress the balance. "Sydney, your life is your," Jack dodged the use of the word 'affair', "your business. However, I will say this, that even if Sark is against Sloane, it does not mean he is for us. Sark is a very dangerous man Sydney, he has his own agenda."

"Dad!" Jack winced at the force in her voice – yep, just like her mother! "You can't just say what you said to Kendall and then avoid the issue with me! Is he double-gaming or not?"

Jack went on the attack. "Sydney, why do you care? Sark has tried to kill you at least twice! It's in your own reports!" His voice halted abruptly as he saw something odd – Sydney's gaze evasively sliding away from his own. Jack paused. "Sydney, what do you know about Sark that I don't?"

Sydney felt a clutch of panic. "Dad, I … know nothing!"

Jack wondered just how much of a lie his daughter was telling him. "Sydney, a couple of days ago Kendall put a peculiar question to me - "

Sydney's inner alarm went off – uh oh, this is it.

" - he point blank asked me if you were having an affair with Sark. I said you weren't, but now I'm asking you directly: are you?"

Sydney was amazed that the implosion in her chest didn't show up on the Richter Scale. She was dumbfounded when her voice came out evenly. "You know, a while back I said to Mom that there was nothing like a Derevko for getting straight to the point. I should have said that there was nothing like a Derevko except for a Bristow."

"You're prevaricating."

"Dad, I'm just letting you know that on the Bristow Family Scale of Weirdness, this conversation rates pretty high - "

"And now you're dissimulating."

"- higher than even Mom turning out to be a spy for the Russkies."

They stared at each other, Jack accusing and Sydney defensive. Both Bristows refused to waver, after all, stubbornness was a family trait.

"You were the one who brought him up in this conversation Sydney and the one who shot the gun out of his hand in Stuttgart. Truthfully, what do you know about him?"

Sydney held her father's gaze. She was being called out and she knew it. It was cards on the table time.

What did she really know about Sark?

That he'd never tried to kill her, ever. That he'd conspicuously failed to kill her a short while ago in Switzerland. That he'd once made her the offer of explaining himself and that she hadn't let him. That if she'd behaved slightly differently then, he might have been here right now, talking tactics with Dad. And that if he were, then Dad … Dad might have liked him.

"Dad, I don't know anything about Sark." Oh for God's sake Sydney, get a grip and spit it out! – "apart from that … he's never really tried to hurt me." She gabbled to a finish before she could lose her nerve, "not even once."

"What?" Jack sounded astounded. "What about that time in Siberia when he shot the ice out from under you - "

"That was an accident. His finger jerked on the trigger when I pinned him with an ice pick. If he'd wanted to kill me, he could have shot me earlier during that incident because he saw me well before I saw him. And if you're wondering – that time with the acid shower in Paldiski? - he was never going to let me burn. If I'd called his bluff, he would have backed down, I know it."

Jack was aware that Sydney's reports on those incidents hadn't been written up in quite that way. He was still doubtful. Sydney saw his mistrust.

"Look Dad, that guy's had so many chances to kill me now that I've lost count of them, and he hasn't taken a single one. If you want any more proof then … in Switzerland a couple of days ago he had the chance to kill me outright during the Sloane extraction. He had me in his sights at point blank range and he deliberately altered his aim and chose instead to shoot my car off the road."

"Was that event in your report?"

Sydney hung her head. "Not exactly."

Staring down at his daughter's bowed head, Jack was confronted by a truly alarming choice. If Sark were playing a double game and he had his defences lowered towards Sydney, then she might gun Sark down if she was going flat-out and he wasn't. But … if Sark weren't playing a double game and he told Sydney that he was, then his daughter's instincts and reflexes could be blunted, so that Sark might succeed in shooting her even if only by accident. Kendall had been right about one thing, Jack had no intention of blunting his daughter's edge one iota if he were, in fact, hopelessly wrong. He did not want her lowering her guard on the grocery packer at the supermarket, never mind on a man like Sark.

He could imagine Sydney's statement for his predicament: own petard – hoist on anyone?

When it came down to it the question was just how much faith did he have that Sark might turn out to be even vaguely human? When it came right down to it, just how much faith did he, Jack, have in his own instincts?

Jack looked hard inside himself, narrowed down his options and took a leap of faith. Well, a leap by Jack's standards, a crouchy, half-step forward by anyone else's.

"Sydney, I don't know what Sark is up to, I doubt anyone does. But," he echoed the words he'd given to Kendall, but this time saying them for real, "if you have a shot at him and it's not in self defence, then consider not taking it."

He left, embarrassed, unwilling to speak further.

Sydney almost fell into a nearby chair. Dad genuinely thought that Sark might be double-gaming? She was dazed.

What did she feel about Sark? Really?

She scolded herself, reminding herself of all the things she'd previously called him, all the things that were still true: he was a killer, a thief, a liar, a deceiver, a traitor. He was capable of committing almost unthinkable enormities – and if Dad's right about Echelon, he tried to save hundreds of people. Yes, but what did he have to save them from? – his own actions! And what else was he? Sydney wanted to slap herself for admitting it, but in his own way he was charming, brave and strangely honest.

She thumped the seat of her chair with her fist, angry at herself.

Stop thinking he's human! He's just a block of marble! Beautifully carved, but still just stone!

He was almost the Devil incarnate, seemingly incapable of sticking to anything like rules, and … she finally started to get a handle on what she felt: she felt cursed with a sense of being responsible for him, of trying to guide him. And just how unfair was that? She hadn't asked for it, she didn't want it, but goddammit it was there! And she still didn't know if he were good, bad or anywhere in between! She had been hoping that her father could clear it up for her, but what he had said had just made it worse, because now she had to cling onto hope.

Goddamn Sark! I wish I'd never met him!

Off at a distance, Vaughn watched; watched the woman he still regarded at His Girlfriend. For a while now he had been suppressing the unwanted knowledge that something had been going wrong between he and Sydney; well, now he could no longer evade it. Something was going wrong and that something was called Sark. Sark, that twisted bastard she hadn't shot in Stuttgart. Sark, the man she had risked his life in favour of. Sark, the man who in a gunslinging instant she had chosen over him.

He closed his eyes. Why did everything bad always lead back to that cool, cocky, smirking, frightening, British blond bastard?

Vaughn never allowed himself to dwell on it, but he was afraid of Sark. Afraid of his coolness, his self-possession, his soul-withering disdain. Afraid of the air he projected that he might just kill Vaughn one day simply to tidy him up as an annoying loose end, as he might casually snip a loose thread off one of his immaculately tailored suits.

Sark was everything Vaughn was not – the anti-Vaughn in a way – and Vaughn had an instinctive understanding that if Sydney were ever to leave him she would pull a complete 180 and go for someone like Sark.

He felt a resentment toward Sark that was born in fear.

He tried to fight down his anger but the more he thought about what Sydney had done in Stuttgart the more hurt he felt. And just before, in that Stuttgart debriefing, the way Jack Bristow had cut him off, the way Sydney had excluded him from adding to her explanation. He knew Sydney had never aimed to shoot Sark, he had seen her do it, but had she and her father really believed he would ever betray her to Kendall?

And Christ, he was trying to patch things up between them, but she wasn't making it easy for him, was she? He recalled the incident of his father's watch, where he'd told her that it had stopped on the day he had first met her, and how she had looked at him in response? She'd smiled but looked as though she secretly wanted to stomp it under the heel of her boot! And she thought he couldn't tell?

Dad's watch! It had stopped the time he'd met her. He recalled his father's far off words: always keep this watch Mikey, you could set your heart by it – remember this. Surely Sydney would be impressed by what were in effect a dying man's last words? But it was as though deep down she just didn't want him, as though deep down … she wanted Sark.

Frightened, he tried to fling his anger from him, but was assailed by yet another memory. Jack's words filtering through his mind … Vaughn's opinions are irrelevant. He remembered again what Sydney had done in Stuttgart … she risked me to let him go …

Kendall's secretary called for his attention, Mr Kendall wished to see him. In his office Kendall addressed him, a mammoth boulder of flesh hunched on the other side of the desk.

Kendall, a man who was considering contacting Arvin Sloane, a man who was willing to deal with the devil to be free of the Bristows, a man who was seeking out allies against them.

"So Vaughn, what's it like to be dismissed as 'irrelevant' by the Bristows?"