Found this and thought it was better than my usual disclaimer...... Anti-lawyer spell: Only borrowing, not making any money with it, promise to return ( although condition should have improved, no guarantee is given).

Ch. 10 "A Clue"

While Jack was looking for some clean bed sheets for their guest, wishing he had asked the nanny where she kept them before he let her go, he wondered what his father was doing there. His father hadn't talked to him in almost two decades and all of the sudden he just appears. He wasn't dying was he? No. Nothing could kill his father. Except bees, he was allergic to bees. If his father stayed true to his father's nature, Jack might just want to remember the bee thing. It was so hard to predict his father, yet it was also so simple. The only other thing Jack could think of was that his dad wanted to yell at him some more. But why wait this long to do it? Maybe he wanted to recruit Sydney into the family business? Well, he better get in line. Mathew had tried to get Jack to join the family business, but he had refused. That might have been what started the third world war. That and a whole list of other things they disagreed on. Jack had always liked to think that he was the total opposite of his father and he still firmly believed that, or at least wanted to. Recently he had realized that he had become almost as bitter and resentful and all the other scrooge like characteristics his father cherished. But at least he admitted his faults. Not like "Mr. I'm right and if you don't agree with me, don't ever come near me or talk to me again". Jack could never see why his carrying on the family work meant so much to the old man. It wasn't even work. It was a hobby. His dad fixed and sold clocks. That's what he did. Day after day after day, there was no end to it. Just the same old thing day in and day out. If he had done that he would have gone crazy. As a boy he had craved adventure and the CIA had provided plenty and more of that. Sometimes though, especially after he found out the truth about Laura, he had wished he had listened to his father.


Sydney was dying of curiosity. If she didn't find out what was going on between her father and her new grandfather, well actually he was rather old, she would just die. Curiosity had gotten her into trouble quite a few times before, especially on missions. She had seen this guy that looked like Brad Pitt and so she had sort of wandered down the wrong hall way accidentally. Then a group of security guards had seen her and she had had to run for her life. She never did find out if it was really the superstar she saw or not, but she did find out that he had been in Switzerland before, so it very well could have been. Anyway, it was all Sydney could do not to race down the stairs and pounce on the old man until he gave her information. But for some reason, somebody up there didn't like her and she had a report on the history of the discovery of America. She so hated Leif Erickson and Christopher Columbus right now.

Downstairs the unwanted/very wanted guest was making himself quite at home. True to Bristow curiosity and the famous "sticking your honker where it don't belong", as great aunt Abigail Bristow use to say, to put it plainly he was rummaging through drawers. Jack had left the house to take Francie home and Sydney was upstairs working on homework. Mathew saw this as an opportune time to learn more about his son. What better way than by learning dirty secrets that are kept in his son's very untidy drawers? After finding nothing interesting at all, except some dust and something that smelled like week old bologna, he closed the drawers and started across the room. He opened the closet and was surprised to see so many women's clothing. "Either Johnny is sentimental about these things or I just learned something I didn't want to know," Mathew reflected.

Never having much interest in fashion or appreciation for it I might add, the man who owned only one tie that he never wore, went over to the second set of dressers. He pulled the first drawer open with some difficulty and was puzzled when he found ten pounds worth of photos. Each and every photo contained his daughter in law, or so he assumed, since the child looked just like her, and they had all been stuffed into this drawer carelessly. He remembered now that he hadn't seen a single picture of her since he set foot in the house. He found that rather odd. Some people put away pictures of those who died because it made them sad, but he was sure that wasn't the case with his son. Even after two years had passed Johnny had still kept a picture of his dog, Nick, who had died. Of course, that was when Johnny was seven, but things like that usually didn't change, at least in Mathew's experience they didn't. "Hmm," he said. "Another question to add to my budding list," he grumbled. He took out a picture to look at it more closely. It was a photo of Johnny, his wife, and the little girl when she was even littler, maybe six or so. They were in front of a gigantic castle and had the most ridiculous black hats with two circles on them. They looked like rats.

He was about to close the drawer and find somewhere else to snoop when something caught his eye. In the very back of the dresser's frame he noticed a small protrusion. He took out the drawer and examined it further. A part of a board stuck out father than the other. In his work with clocks he had seen this before. He had once fixed a clock for some Russian guy and had seen a similar characteristic. He had, as always, poked around and had found a little drawer within the clock. He started to prod at the protrusion, and was not surprised, well maybe a little, when it popped open, revealing an empty space or so it would have been if not for a small folded piece of paper. He opened it and found something that he never expected to find.


Jack had just returned from dropping Francie off and there was no way he was ever doing that solo again. Sydney had said she need to do her homework, so he had agreed to take her friend home by himself. It was the longest ten minute car ride of his life. The girl had packed two hours worth of conversation into the ride. That meant she had crammed twelve minutes of conversation into each tiny one minute she was in that car, while driving him crazy. Jack could handle guns. He could handle bombs. Heck, he could even handle five Japanese body guards chasing at him with their big bazooka guns and him having a sprained ankle. But he could not handle another car ride with that yapping teen.

Of course, once he got home and realized he would have to deal with his father, he began to wish the ride had been longer. He went upstairs and walked into his room just as his father walked out. The two collided and the piece of paper went flying up in the air. It fluttered down to the ground and landed on the bewildered Jack. Mathew, knowing this would not look good on his résumé for father of the year, tried to think up some good excuse for something that was very hard, as he found, to come up with excuses for. He didn't need to worry so much. Jack was too interested in the note. It had been quite a while since he had read Russian, but the meaning of this note was unmistakable. After giving his father a very pathetic excuse, he rushed off to CIA headquarters. Once inside, he went straight to his partner, Grant. As he walked in, Grant was picking at his supper, which evidently, because of the disgusting color and smell, came from the CIA canteen.

"Hey Bristow, you wouldn't happen to know what the meat in the cafeteria really is made out of, would you? Considering we're government employees you would think we'd get better...." Grant stopped his blathering when Jack laid the note right in front of his face.

"Oh me oh my," Grant exclaimed as he stared at the note. "It's in Russian."

"Really," Jack said sarcastically, "I didn't know that." Although he knew too well what it said, he wanted a second opinion to prove he wasn't destined for the loony bin. "My Russian is a little rusty. Would you mind translating it for me?"

Grant knew full well that Bristow was much better at foreign languages than he was, but he also knew full well that when Bristow asked for something you did it or suffered a wrath ten times greater than death. Grant read through it, his mouth dropping lower and lower with each word. Jack watched his reaction and assumed it was as much of a confirmation that he was going to get from the speechless agent.

"This is insane," Grant finally stuttered. "Where did you get this?"

Jack knew his answer was going to kill his partner, but he couldn't help himself. "I got it from my father," he said just as naturally as he could under the circumstances.

"Your WHAT?" Grant shouted. After receiving several dirty look from colleagues around him, he lowered his voice. "What you talking 'bout Bristow?"

Before Jack could answer, his stupid cell phone went off. Jack was really beginning to hate technology. "Hello," he answered in a not so pleasant voice.

"Dad, what's going on?" Sydney asked from the other side of the line. Jack inwardly laughed at the very question, if somewhat phrased differently, that had been asked by Grant. "I'm at work sweetie," he replied. "I'll be home soon." He was about to hang up when Sydney said something that surprised and made him want to strangle his father all in one sentence. "Grandpa said he found a note in some weird language."

Why did his father have to be so willing to tell his granddaughter everything when he hadn't told his son anything in the past nineteen years? But this also presented an opportunity. "Did grandpa tell you where he found it?" Jack asked.

Sydney said she didn't know, but she'd ask if he wanted her too. Jack refused her offer and said he'd ask the old idiot himself. When he said it to Sydney however he didn't use the words "old idiot". He told her good night and reassured her everything was okay and then hung up, hoping that matter was taken care of.

Well, it wasn't. Sydney wasn't about to forget something of this weird a nature. She was in the intelligence business after all. What kind of spy would she be if she let matters such as this slip under her nose? Since her father wasn't being very helpful and her grandpa had fallen asleep, she decided to take the matter into her own hands.

When she had heard the crash she had opened the door to see her father and grandfather sprawled on the floor and a piece of paper covering her father's face. Then suddenly she had seen her father jump up, mumble something about work to her grandpa, and then make a mad dash for the door. She had gone out after that to figure out what had happened. Her grandpa hadn't been much help. She had told her father everything she had learned from her grandpa, except she had left off the part about his complaining under his breath about foreign people. Since they had collided right outside her father's bedroom, she guessed that's where the mystery began. She crept in, although she didn't need to, Mathew could have slept through a nuclear explosion. He had once slept through a Richard Simmons's video and that's pretty much the same thing. Once she opened the door she saw one of her mother's drawers lying on the ground. She went over and looked at the contents. Not finding anything she hadn't already seen a million times she looked towards the dresser. She was about to put the drawer back in when she noticed what her grandfather before her had seen. It was already slightly open and she pulled at it a little more. It was empty this time, but Sydney was beginning to put the few pieces of the puzzle together. One: She knew Mathew was curious. She had seen him going through the cupboards and cabinets downstairs. Two: That strangely mysterious piece of paper had to come from somewhere. Three: Her mother's drawer was pulled out and lying on the ground. Four: There was some kind of secret compartment in her mother's dresser.

So from what she knew, she deducted that Mathew, being curious and nosey and having no sense of privacy and all, had looked through her mother stuff and had some how stumbled across this compartment. Since she had never seen it before and from the looks of it, neither had her father, she guessed that the note had been inside the compartment. Feeling very proud of her achievement, Syd put the drawer back in the dresser and was about to call her father about her discovery when something hit her. Why did her mother, a literature professor at UCLA who had only spoken English, to the extent of Sydney's knowledge, have a secret compartment it her dresser containing a note written in another language? Then again, who said her mother knew about it in the first place? Since the dresser was an antique it very well could have been from someone else who owned it a long time ago and spoke another language. That was the only reasonable explanation. But if that was it, why did her father rush out of the house so quick? Why was he so weird when she spoke to him on the phone? Maybe she should just keep this to herself for awhile, wait and see what happened when he got home. If she could wait that long.

Meanwhile back at CIA headquarters:

"This is big."

"This isn't just big, Donaldson, this is major."

"Doesn't that mean the same thing?"

"Guys!" Jack interrupted. "We have more important things to discuss than how big," he said turning to Donaldson, "or major," he continued as he turned to face Grant, "the fact that I found an order from the KGB, giving my..." He was about to say wife, but stopped. "Giving their agent instructions to kill my daughter and I before she was extracted." The words did not come easily. "Never the less, we must find out as much as we can about the manufacturing of this paper and maybe it will give us a clue to finding out more about the KGB." Considering what he had just learned he was surprising calm and business-like and Grant didn't like it. "

"Jack," he said, and Jack knew that it was serious when Grant used his first name. "Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. We'll stay here and do the research," he offered.

"No thanks," Jack replied, somewhat offended that Grant didn't think he could handle it.

"We promise we won't do anything fun without you, Bristow. Like raid Moscow," Grant said, returning to his funny mode.

Jack allowed himself to laugh with the others and for the first time in the last few hours he felt better.

At the same time in another building, someone else wasn't feeling very good. Sloane had decided to work late that night, looking over some reports from his minute spies. He had decided to eat school lunch that day and had been sorry about that decision ever since. Something had tasted funny the moment he had bitten into his salad, and his spaghetti, and his breadstick. If he didn't know better he'd think someone was purposely tampering with his food.

In yet another building in this town, someone else was laughing. Irina had been laughing all day, ever since she had seen Sloane run to the bathroom after delivering his lunch to him. It was the little things in life she enjoyed. Making her boss, a man she despised, throw up on a business client was even funnier. Well, after what he had done to her family he deserved every last, spoonful of a substance that's not suppose to be consumed for a reason.


To black ops: It'll eventually be Syd/Vaughn if I ever get there. And your review is the second longest I've ever received. Now on to the longest...

To scary-girly: i agree, he is really,really,really,really,really,really,really x a bizillion, hott!

To drama queens rule: Hopefully Sark will make another appearance later, after Syd gets into the CIA or something.

To Surfy, may-j, and sweetytweety013: Thanx 4 the reviews!!

To Rach5: Well, he wouldn't be a very good Bristow if he didn't cause trouble.

To morriseylover: I think the reason they haven't talked about people's past so much on the show is they want to leave it open for one of those jaw dropping revelations they're so famous for. One thing I do know about Jack's character is that, like Vic Garber, he was born in Canada. Which is weird because then wouldn't he work for the Canadian government and not the US? Just curious.

To Eyghon Fr: I'm glad there was something you liked.