There was light streaming through the gauzy curtains across the bed she lay in, when she finally woke.

She wasn't under the covers, and she was still clothed. Wasn't she? Had he… her fingers fluttered over the button of her jeans.

No.

Whew.

She propped herself up on one elbow, and glanced around the room. She was upstairs, in a smallish bedroom. It was sparse, with a bedside table with a drawer next to it. There was a hardcover novel on the table, a bookmark in its pages.

Had he left it there? She rolled onto her stomach and rutched towards the table, grabbing the book. At the bookmarked page, she read:

I promised to tell you how one falls in love.

Ok, not Sark's, she decided, but kept reading.

When I met Katharine she was married. A married woman. Clifton climbed out of the plane and then, unexpected, for we had planned the expedition with just him in mind, she emerged. Khaki shorts, bony knees. In those days she was too ardent for the desert.

What was this? The spine of the book told her: The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje. She'd read this book before, for a graduate class. It wasn't really anything like the film version everyone had been so wild over. The main characters in the novel, the Canadian nurse and the Sikh, were relegated to being background characters to the hot 'n heavy romance of the married Katharine and the Hungarian cartographer Almaśy, whose status as… a spy… had not been brought through.

It was a novel about pacifism, she'd decided, about how loyalty to one country or another wrecked everything between the pairs of lovers. Actually… what was that quote?

All that I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

They were nearing that, she mulled. Gone were the days of the Cold War, the easy schism between East and West, red and blue, black and white. That was her father's world, the world her mother came from. Her generation had it different. There was the questionable war in Iraq, the hunt for the multi-national Al Qaeda, all the terrorist splinter groups that had formed from the remnants of the USSR. Eastern Europe was crawling with ex-KGB specialists who'd gone freelance. Even the CIA was rife with doubles, she was sure of it- like Haladki, that snarky little bastard who'd been terrified of her involvement in the Rambaldi prophecy.

Freelancer. That had been her CIA code name while she'd been working at SD-6 as a double agent for the CIA.

Sark had no country, either. He was loyal to no one, except for himself. His first language hadn't been English; it was Russian, though he did a good job of concealing whatever latent accent he might have had. So his mother had been Lazarey's mistress. He was, in the truest sense of the word, a bastard.

So where was the bastard now, she thought. He planned to send Vaughn her rings if she didn't cooperate? What was his plan?

She replaced the book on the table and went to the window. She was higher up that she expected, maybe an attic room, and on the opposite side of the house than she'd snuck up on. It wasn't that high- the house was only three stories, but she didn't have any of the gear she'd need to just… jump. She was good, but she wasn't able to sprout wings.

There was a light rapping on her door. "Sydney?" Sark's muffled voice came through the wood. "Have you rejoined me from the realm of Morpheus?"

She stalked to the door and tried the knob, but it wouldn't turn. She heard him put the key in the deadbolt on the outside of the door, and the door swung inwards, scraping the skin on the top of her big toe.

"Oww!" she howled and jumped back.

He looked mildly down at her foot, as if it were perhaps a mouse that had invaded his house instead of her bleeding, stinging foot. "I didn't realize you'd be standing so eagerly by the door."

At that she leapt at him, but he saw her coming and jabbed her with the heel of his hand in her solar plexus, knocking her backwards onto the floor. The door slammed behind him and he grabbed her shoulders as she struggled up, his fingertips digging into the back of her shoulders, and threw her backwards onto the bed.

The sensation of falling aroused her a little, it always had. But no time for that. Before she could even bounce, he was on her, straddling her torso and pinning her arms uselessly at her sides.

"Sark!" she spit, "Get off me!"

"Hah," he gave a short laugh, his face so close to hers that she could smell his toothpaste, "I thought you liked it rough! Or is that only when you're dishing it out?"

"None of your business!" She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks at the thought that he had seen the tape from the VCR. One Night in Sydney.

"Your reputation precedes you, my dear," he tsked with the tip of his tongue. "Word does get around. Rumor has it Mr. Simon Walker was lucky enough to sample your wares a time or ten."

Walker. That asshole she'd worked with for the Covenant during The Lost Years. Her father had shot him later.

"I must admit," Sark whispered, his face almost within her biting range, "These reports have made me quite… curious."

She closed her eyes and breathed hard. "What do you want with me?"

"Sydney!" he laughed again, "I always told you, we're destined to work together, you and I. Even I'm not low enough to force you to be disloyal to your husband. I would hate to rock the proverbial boat, as it were."

With that he eased off of her, and left her lying on the bed.

"I need your help to find someone."

So this was how it was going to be, she thought. She stared up at him from the bed, not moving. She didn't want him to think he made her desperate to jump up. So this was how he was going to play it- the threat of rape? Of erotic violence? Too bad he'd chosen her specialty.

"Who are you looking for?"

"I knew you had some manners," he sighed, "I'm looking for a man-- someone I knew in my youth. I have a score to settle with him."

A revenge plot, huh? Lame, she told herself, lame and childish. Also lame that someone as young as Sark referred to his past as his "youth". He was still a youth.

The closed door was behind him and he leaned back, his hands on the knob. She noticed he was still breathing hard from the exertion of holding her down. The spot where he had punched her chest was beginning to throb- she would be bruised from his hand.

She sat up, slowly, so as not to give him reason to pounce on her again. Not that that would necessarily be bad. Maybe lead him on a bit. Let him think she was giving in to his rakish charm.

His…. What? Disloyal brain.

"I have reason to believe that the individual in question murdered my mother," he began. "He was a rival of mine here at boarding school. But also in the agent training protocol."

So… He had been subjected to training as a child too. They were… unsettlingly alike.

"Fine," she shook her head, and hoped she'd be back in LA soon.

They went downstairs to the study.

Sark's laptop, silver and barely an inch thick when closed, stood out like a sore thumb on the oversized wood desk. The house was old school: dark wood, leather, overtly masculine in a way that made Sydney wonder if perhaps Sark's sister was a lesbian.

He caught her staring at the device and shrugged, "It gets the job done."

"So, what is the job?" She was eager to know what she'd been sucked into.

"Like I said," he raised his eyebrow, "I need your help to find someone. Unless you had already forgotten."

She stared at him. "You didn't tell me who your mark is."

Sark opened the laptop and flicked it on. He settled back into the desk chair and after a few seconds of clicking and mousing, he said, "This man."

Sydney moved around behind the chair to see. Daniel Wells. "Ok?"

"Mr. Wells," Sark's politeness was arch, "has been working as a freelancer for various groups in the former USSR states for some time now. Not long ago, I was the gracious recipient of this photo-" he clicked something in the taskbar that opened a gruesome photo of a woman strangled, naked on a bed.

Sydney pressed her lips between her front teeth, ignoring the pain in the lower one. She needed to pay him back for her puffy lip, she noted mentally.

The dead woman was, or had been, gorgeous at one time. Long, auburn hair, a little curly- what Francie had jokingly called "porn star hair", a style Sydney's straight, thick mouse brown locks defied each time they'd attempted it- slender legs and waist despite her age, graceful arms that were now spread akimbo across the bed she'd been laid on.

She was not dissimilar, Sydney noticed, to her own mother. Passable as an American, but something about the woman's physique- perhaps the defiant refusal to slowly widen and soften with age the way many American women do- belied a hungrier, more desperate upbringing. A Cold War baby.

"So that's your mom?"

"At one time, yes." Sark's eyes betrayed nothing. Sydney couldn't tell if he was playing her or not.

Sark clicked the photo closed while she was still staring at it. "The title of the email in which it was delivered bore the subject, 'From Russia with Love'."

"But… why?" she asked. "Why send you the photo, why now, why your mother?"

"That," he said with a raised eyebrow, "Is what I need you for. The CIA has been tracking Daniel Wells for some time now. I want their files."

She rolled her eyes. "No."

"What, no?" he actually feigned surprise well, she observed. "You said you would help me."

"I don't have access to the files like that, Sark," she explained very logically. "Agents don't actually have that much access. The analysts have higher level of clearance that we do, and only pull the info we need for briefings and missions. It's all pretty standard security detail, I think you know that."

He sighed impatiently. "Yes, I suppose most mundane CIA agent might let this slow them down. You, however, are anything but mundane. You wouldn't let this stop you if it were Vaughn who needed your help."

She stared at him, her eyes cold. "Don't bring him into this."

"I do admire your skill," he placated her, "I've never lied about that. I can't believe they've beaten your spirit down into thinking that you're one of them, Sydney," he barely hid his disgust from her. "Please… don't be ridiculous. The Alliance trained their operatives at a much higher level than any agent that that pathetic excuse for a training camp of the CIA's has ever turned out."

His disdain for the Agency was palpable to her, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to slap him for his disrespect, or agree with him.

"'The Farm'?" he smirked. "That place would be like holiday camp compared to what you and I were up to as children."

She sighed.

"And let's not forget about our little discussion from last night." He dangled the threat again like a carrot in front of one of his precious horses.

"You are out of what passes for your goddamn mind," she finally relented. "Let's get down to business."