and casualties of war
It is a surprise to her, the pain that comes with the thought of giving up this, whatever this is. She has long fought for the impossible: to live in normality and leave the whole clandestine business behind her, freed of being everybody's last hope and best chance. Now there is a new ache, and she does not know what she wants anymore.
She has been standing in the doorway, wordless, watching him at his computer. Over the last few months, Sark has gradually been leaving traces of himself in her house: things as mundane as a packet of razors, kept in the spare-bathroom closet so as not to draw notice, or a Yeats anthology on her mantel.
The laptop though, it goes when he does.
Five minutes later, he still has not raised his head. "Bad day at the office?" False joviality peppering his voice; it warms her regardless, as he intended.
In equally trivial tones: "Ogling supervisors, missing paperclips. The usual."
They do not avoid mentioning work. For both it is their lives, and the truth is that they have known little else. But often, when it comes up, it is like the business of other people. A theoretical couple stranger than they.
She will hear it first as noise in her earpiece, a minor note in the auditory chaos her mind is trained to analyse and instantly configure into meaningful data. Without an immediate visual from Vaughn, she does not give the body a name. She sets herself to the task of liberating the case containing the set of detonators, each one worth over a million in dollars and far more in human lives. They will encounter no surprises, and Vaughn calls the retrieval a success.
When they are back on the jet, Weiss will be on the phone to headquarters. He will then turn to them, excited. "You're not going to believe this. Marshall has finished decoding the message that was sent to the other cells leaders. The execution you overheard just before the alarms went off? It was one of the Covenant's own, a traitor apparently."
"Did Marshall say if it was anybody of significance?" Vaughn will ask.
"None other than our friend Julian Sark." Weiss will pause to digest their looks of astonishment. "I guess all that backstabbing finally caught up with him. How's that for irony?" He sounds proud, as if the CIA was holding puppet strings that could make their enemy dance mysteriously.
After there has been a silence she will say, "You're absolutely sure about this?"
"Marshall says that he is eighty-five percent certain, without an actual body."
Vaughn will be laughing softly, dry-chuckling into the back of his hand. "Good," he says, almost to himself. "Good."
They will gradually move onto other topics. She concentrates on breathing. Her throat is tight.
It is an ineludible inconvenience of Europe missions that half the time is lost in flight. She should be home; in LA it is just a little after nine p.m. Last weekend she dug up a scrapbook of Francine's dating back to college with recipes she wants to try. Did she dare honey-seared salmon or the roast chilli salsa? Between episodes of talk, Vaughn and Weiss keep looking at her. Their sloping glances connect random pairs of target and origin, never lingering. She turns her cheek flush against the headrest, as if to doze. Eyelids squeezed shut so that they will not hear her scream.
(The End)
