The following day she began her hunt for Sark's mother. The woman in the photo he'd shown her was a redhead, maybe 55, tops. How could she find her identity? If she had been a prostitute, she probably didn't work under her real name.
His birth certificate—nearly everyone had one.
Wait. If his parents' relationship had been secret, would she have given birth to him at a hospital? It was worth looking.
She queried the database for all birth entries logged on March 15, in 1978, 1977, and 1979 for good measure.
Damn, there were a lot of people born on the same day, she thought.
Ok, apply filters: gender, continent.
It was down to 1,435 matches for males born in one of those years in European and Eurasian medical facilities.
Would Lazarey have allowed his name to go on a birth certificate? Especially one belonging to the son of his lover?
It was worth looking. She had worked to protect Lazarey during her time as Julia Thorne—that was the reason behind her faux "murder" of Lazarey, so he could go into hiding from the Covenant, who were desperate to get at Lazarey. But why?
Sonuvabitch.
There was a match.
Sark's birth certificate. Could it really be this easy?
Father: Andrian Alexsandr Lazarey. Mother: Anastasia Marta Szarkochev.
Weight: 3.18 kg, Length: 48 cm. So, he'd been small, about 7 pounds.
Holy shit, she realized, Sark had parents. It was so... weird.
It made her uncomfortable to think about him like that. She never thought of Sloane as being someone's son. And if anyone had been a mother to Sark, it was her own mother. Even weirder.
"I've waited almost thirty years for this," her mother had said, in Taipei. "You must've known this day would come. I could've prevented all this, of course," Irina had given the tiniest shrug, "You were so small when you were born."
Sydney just stared at the gun in her mother's hand, at her side.
"It would've been so easy," Irina said, "Tell me, Sydney." She said her name almost sarcastically, "Who sent you here?"
She forced herself to look up, meet Irina's eyes.
"You must tell me," her mother insisted.
"Or what?" Sydney started speaking before even thinking of what she was going to say, "I'm grounded?i"
She got up and went to her father's office.
"Sydney," he looked up from his pile of papers. "How are you?"
"I found out who Sark's mother is," she said breathlessly. "A woman named Anastasia Szarkochev."
"Good work," Jack nodded proudly. This was so much less uncomfortable than their conversation from the previous day. "We need to find out about her… I wonder if Irina will still respond to our contact protocol."
He was having a good bit of fun, surveilling her like this.
Her midnight phone call proved to him that she was still rattled by their encounter in England.
Good. Keep her on her toes, keep her loyal while he needed her. After that, Vaughn could have her back. And if they happened to repeat their tryst along the way a few more times, so much the better for him.
He followed her everywhere.
Of course he'd checked out their house before. It was a white stucco with a red tile roof, probably a 1950's construction from the post-WWII bungalow building craze in LA. A solid, modest house with a small yard and a flowering tree that hung over the driveway. Nothing that would belie anyone living there to be anyone but Mr. and Mrs. American Everycouple.
She had a steel grey Mercury Cougar, a car GM had since discontinued. Two doors, a little sporty, but nothing outrageous. Nothing that screamed Deadly Girl Agent.
He had been spot-on about the cars; he suspected the agency didn't bankroll its agents terribly well, a pitiful mistake in his not-so-humble opinion. The CIA spent its money on higher ups, and on highly skilled desk analysts who were extremely unlikely to get the shit shot out of them their first time out in the field.
He'd read that the mortality rate for 1st year field agents was astonishingly high, somewhere around 60? Pathetic, he thought as he saw her walk out of the CIA building towards the parking garage, so close he could hear the heels of her Manolo Blahnik slingbacks clicking on the sidewalk. She was so much better than this bunch of losers they were recruiting these days.
Like the particular gentleman who was due to meet him in 5 minutes.
And seeing her lean, strong legs made him sigh impatiently, wondering if he could get her to come to his hotel.
On schedule, a car pulled into the parking space next to him in the ABC Kwikie-mart lot and honked once, as if by accident.
He opened his door and swung out, a fluid movement, like a jungle cat slipping from its perch on a low-hanging branch to drop onto an unsuspecting victim below.
Before he opened the backdoor to get in, he smoothed his suit jacket over his shoulder holster. He was working. He wasn't nuts about how the holster felt over his dress shirt, but it was a necessary evil, he supposed.
"Don't turn around," he instructed the driver. "You're going to drive me over to the public garage on 4th and Vine."
"Ok," Closet Homo Newbie agreed. He really, truly didn't want Mr. Sark to shoot him in the back of the skull. It would mean a closed-casket funeral, and he'd always kind of imagined himself lying in state for all the world to admire. Not that he thought about his funeral a lot- but there were idle times at the Farm when he debated whether he'd want to be in a charcoal grey suit or his navy pinstripe.
They drove cautiously to the appointed garage, and pulled into a spot in the back, next to a structural column. It was out of view of the security camera that periodically recorded the area.
"Mr. Franklin," Sark began, "You've done a good job so far. Your intel on Agent Bristow has proven useful." Sark specifically meant the brief from the Chechnya mission, but using this fool to mess with Sydney from inside the Agency was entertaining, too.
"Thanks," Franklin said nervously. This business made him nervous. Like that stunt with the fake porn box? He didn't really care what Agents Bristow and Vaughn were up to, but it had apparently really rattled her. Now, that Agent Vaughn… he was a tall drink of water.
"Have you got time for another job?" Sark asked, knowing the answer.
"Sure," Franklin agreed. They really weren't too busy, the newbies. Mostly they had to tag along on boring, routine missions, like surveilling people who had previously been held under the Patriot Act, foreign nationals inside the US who were suspected of having terrorist ties. The whole world had gone terrorist-crazy, post-9/11. It sucked, frankly. They didn't get to use cool gadgets, like the ones that dork Marshall invented. They didn't get to travel to foreign countries. And they certainly didn't get to shoot at anyone.
"I want you to keep tabs on Agent Vaughn," Sark said, trying to keep the smirk from his voice. "I need to know what he does when Agent Bristow is absent."
Franklin nodded, nervous. If there was anything he'd learned, it was that that whole family was one big clusterfuck. For starters, there was her dad. Jack ruled his group of operatives with an iron fist—there was no double-crossing him. Her mother had been a KGB agent, one who had murdered her husband's father, and had faked her own death to take off back to Mother Russia.
"Ok," he finally verbalized. "I need at least…" he stopped momentarily, trying to decide how much he wanted for this job. This was decidedly more risky than making a fake porno. "At least 10 grand." It seemed like a lot of money, it was more than he'd make in 4 months. Thirty-two grand a year really didn't go very far.
Sark stared at Franklin in the rearview mirror, trying to hide his disgust. How old was this man? 23? Sark felt infinitely, high-handedly older than Franklin. They were only 4 years apart, but in the time it had taken Franklin to muddle through a program in Criminal Justice at Georgetown, get recruited into the Agency, and undergo basic training at the Farm, Sark had lived though enough covert activity to last most people several lifetimes. Ten grand? What was that? Pocket change. He had horses that were worth 12 times that.
"Done," Sark sighed, as if it pained him to part with that much money. "It'll be wired to your account in the morning."
Franklin smiled. They'd made a good deal.
She continued pouring through the files on Sark, his mother, and Lazarey's wife. She was astonished that Lazarey, a diplomat and loyal party member, would've allowed a birth certificate for an illegitimate child to be printed.
His mother, his mother, his mother… who was she? Anastasia Marta Szarkochev. At least they knew where he got his main alias from.
Could she have been an agent too, she wondered idly. Like her own mother, sent to seduce a man to steal something from him?
Wait, wait.
Her mother had known Lazarey's wife. They kept in touch. Why? Her father had thought Lazarey's wife was a childhood friend of Irina's.
When her mother had been in CIA custody, she'd told Sydney, "It was an honor, to be chosen- for a woman to serve her state. It meant… freedom."
Irina had been sent to marry a man she didn't love, to betray him, and steal his secrets. Had Lazarey's wife been tasked to follow the same path? Maybe that was why they kept in touch; they really were friends, and could at least keep each other company through the guise of letters to an old friend.
You're not the only one who spies on old friends.
But then why the mistress? Her mother had been quite capable of keeping Jack's attention.
Did the KGB need something from Lazarey? They had sent a mistress to him to leverage him, force him to have secret?
A secret son. By a secret lover.
It was perfect for someone who was attempting to rise to power, someone from a satellite state in the USSR, a petty diplomat who was unlikely, because of ethnic politics in the upper echelons of the Party, to ever amount to much.
So what was it that they needed from him that they'd tasked two capable agents to him?
Shit, she sighed, she needed to talk to Sark.
Episodes:
i The Enemy Walks In. Season 2, Episode 1. Written by J.J. Abrams.