Chapter 34: Disengage - deceptively altering the line of attack by passing the blade under the adversary's point.

"That's us – the non-communication experts. Ask us to bug a conversation in Murmansk using a 1950's short-wave radio from Idaho and we can do it. Ask us to understand each other and we cannot." Irina looked across at Jack, and smirked. "Oh and by the way, sorry I gave you the slip in Panama. Not that it makes me the better field operative, you understand."

"Gracious of you Irina. Sorry I bugged you, already knowing you'd run. Not that it made me the better strategist, you understand."

She narrowed her eyes. "Just for curiosity's sake, when did you know I was going to run?"

"I always knew. It didn't matter. I knew I could pick you up later."

"Sure, just that when you tried, you missed."

"I could have picked you up easily prior to your destruction of the tracker chip."

"Could have, but didn't, eh?"

"I prefer to see it as field-discretion."

"Oh. So it wasn't that you were powerless to stop me Jack, it was that you were discreetly watching me swing my ass out of the building?"

"Actually the CIA nearly caught you. Kendall wanted to send in the intercept team before you were off the grid. I stopped him. I argued that we should wait until Sloane appeared. It was quite an energetic debate, if I recall. Indeed it took so long that by the time it was ended, you had pretty much got away."

There was a silence.

Jack looked at Irina. With his innate tactician's subtlety he had, without compromising himself in any way should any recording of their conversation ever get back to the CIA, just admitted to Irina and to himself exactly what he had done in Stuttgart. He had let Irina go.

Irina looked at Jack. When she spoke her eyes were shining, from the distance across the room Jack could not tell whether it was with laughter or tears. She spoke, slightly hesitant, like a girl standing on a beach asking a guy for a date whilst stirring the sand with her foot.

"Hey Jack, assuming we get out of this … wanna come for coffee?"

"Just tell me, I really want to know. I'm all ears. No, really, I am. I definitely inherited my lugs from dad."

Sydney had moved out through kitchen patio windows onto the terrace and Sark had followed. He wasn't sure why he had, he just had.

Sydney still wanted to know whether he had used Echelon to alert the CIA that time in Mexico. But she was now asking rather than demanding, for the first time since, well, ever, she was approaching him as though he was a human being and not a piece of trash she wanted to scrape off the sole of her shoe.

Sark was almost disturbed by the switch in tone.

She was treating him with a friendly respect? She was trying to engage him?

Sark had wanted that from her for so long, and now it had come, he was almost unsettled at it.

He hadn't realised until she'd stopped just how steeped he had been in expecting an automatic enmity from her. He had been so used to it he had almost felt secure in it, and now it seemed to be changing?

He felt like a Viking mariner who steers by the heavens, only to look up one night and find the Pole Star gone.

He knew he should have liked Sydney's switch toward him, her seeming willingness to extend her hand – God knows he'd wished for it often enough in the past – but now it had come, he felt almost threatened. It took away one of his certainties: Sydney hates me. And it was so unexpected.

Was she just softening him up, so she could trick him and betray him?

In the nearby kitchen, Walker was still tied up and James sat at the table, leaning forward, compressing the cut in her arm. Keeping her in view, Sark leant backwards against the balustrade of the terrace, arms straight out behind him, palms pressed flat to the stone, legs elegantly crossed at the ankles, staring unblinkingly in through the kitchen doors at James. From the way she sat: staring ahead, crouched over, stiff, like a small mammal trying to be still enough to evade a predator, even with Sydney chattering away distractingly at his side, Sark knew James could feel the weight of his stare.

He felt a cool determination as he gazed unyieldingly at her.

You are not getting away from me.

For her part Sydney was slumped against the balustrade, elbows and forearms propped on it, head hanging down, facing out across the darkened lawn and away from Sark, unseeing and unaware of his expression. She was dead beat from the kitchen bust-up. When she spoke, her voice was quiet.

"Look. Just tell me. Did you flare that warning signal off to Echelon?"

Staring fixedly at James, and unsettled by this new Sydney, Sark was startled by her repeated question. Dipping his head slightly he took a breath, playing for time. Faced with having to answer, he didn't know what to say. He was a creature schooled in secrecy, deception, in the art of getting and not giving. It was against everything in him to impart information unnecessarily and – goddammit – for free. He remembered something Sydney had said to him once on their SD-6 mission to Paris … we're not friends and we're not going to be friends …

"Sark." Sydney sounded exhausted. "Please, just tell me. Did you flare that warning signal off?"

"Yes."

He'd answered before he'd even known he was going to. Having done so, he almost felt a panic. He was giving away information. He'd been rained never to do that, he'd been trained -

At his side, Sydney expelled a breath she hadn't even known she'd been holding.

"Dad'll be pleased." She gave an aghast half-laugh. "God. What I meant was … he guessed you'd done it."

Sark stared ahead expressionlessly, still numbed that he had given the information. He felt the rough texture of the stone balustrade beneath his hands as he leant back. It was like sandpaper against his palms. If he pressed down hard enough, it would begin to hurt. He remembered Mexico City and began to press.

He spoke to Sydney tonelessly.

"He can hardly be pleased Sydney, but he might be able to accept it. I'm not proud of it. I'm not a hero, I never will be, but I have tried to step back from being a complete monster." He had said similar to James before now when flirting with her on the airfield in Russia – he sharply veered away from the memory - but this time it was a flat delivery of fact. He wasn't trying to get Sydney to like him, he was trying to get her to understand him. He didn't even know why he was speaking. He just knew that the more he spoke the more he felt unburdened, and the better he felt. He continued.

"Out of the two of us you're the heroic one. We're both in this game almost by accident Sydney. If our lives had been left alone you would have been something like a …" He was going to say 'doctor' but hauled himself up short; he knew about Danny Hecht. "You would have been something like a fire-fighter. Left to my own devices, I would have been raiding my way through Wall Street by now."

Sark didn't know it, but the truth was he wouldn't allow the possibility that he could ever have been anything better than ruthless and amoral. He was scared that if he tried for more and failed then he would be left with the recognition of is own lack and not merely the suspicion of it.

"Well, I guess truth will take time after all," said Sydney.

"What?"

"The truth, far from being 'out there'," she said, "apparently it 'takes time'."

He continued to gaze unblinkingly into the kitchen, staring at James. Sydney was unaware of it. When he spoke, his voice was almost distant. "I don't understand."

"My mother earringed me to say 'truth takes time'."

Sark raised his eyebrows infinitesimally. So Irina had given Sydney her signalling device? He reminded himself not to use his watch in future. The watch he only now realised he still wore. The watch he hadn't brought himself to discard. The watch he had not even considered discarding.

"Truth takes time, you say? Irina always did specialise in meaningless niceties."

So, Irina had essentially told Sydney nothing? Well then, Sark knew he wasn't going to change that state of play, not when he didn't have to. Sark knew he was Page 48 – whatever the hell that meant – but he saw no damned reason to let the CIA know it. Ever. They'd locked Sydney up for being Page 47, they'd do worse to him.

Sydney Bristow was Sydney Bristow, but she was still the CIA.

Sydney paused and looked down at the stone balustrade beneath her hand, taking in a breath, steadying her thoughts. Even gazing straight ahead of him, Sark could read the tell, he felt almost attuned to her: she was winding up for a big one.

"Sark, you once said that I was adept at reigning in my curiosity about Mom – that you thought of her almost as a mother yourself - "

He cut her off. "I won't betray Irina. I won't see her stuck in that glass cell again."

Sydney felt a painful squeeze around her heart. She had been overcoming her cowardice, bravely trying to reach out to Sark and had met this unexpected rebuff. She lowered her head and swallowed. Sark, like her mother, was so unknowable. Even standing right next to her now, he felt a thousand miles away.

"Sark, how old were you when you got yanked into this game?"

"Inducted full time? I was four. Into a thing called Project Birthday"

Once again the information had jerked out of him before he even knew he was going to give it. And once again that sense of lightness met him, as though he was dropping burdens he'd been carrying for far too long.

Sydney's eyes flew wide in shock. "Oh dear God! What do you remember of it?"

Everything. But I shan't tell you that. There are things I'll never tell you, there are things I'll never tell anyone.

"Well I do remember the start," he drawled, choosing to make light of it. "I recall racing up the steps to a big granite building, feeing really happy."

"Why happy?"

"I'd heard somebody mention the word 'birthday'," he responded, "and I thought I was going to get a present."

Sydney gave out a gasp of horrified, shocked laughter.

The corner of Sark's mouth gave a quirk of amusement as he chose to urbanely smooth over the situation. "Well, you can laugh, but when your birthday's on Christmas day, you feel short-changed on birthday presents your whole life."

His delivery was drawling, amused. Sydney wondered what at, and then realised it was because he had just deliberately chosen to elegantly give her his birthday. There was a silence. She screwed up her face, abashed at pushing it, but angling for more intel.

"Would you mind telling me the year - " she was interrupted by her phone ringing. "Oh, it'll be Marshall!" Her hand flew to her mouth, "I forgot all about him!" She hurriedly answered. "Sorry I didn't contact you Marshall but everything's okay here now, I've got Doc … "

Sark poised, tense, wondering if she was going to reveal his presence – to betray him and give him away even now - when he heard her voice trail away. Shifting his head slightly, out of the corner of his eye he saw her face grow pale. The rest of her conversation was a series of ums and grunts until even they faded away and she closed the clamshell in a shocked silence.

"Dad's been snatched."

Sark blinked.