The next day at the office, her father called her into his office. Again.
"Sydney," he rose from his chair, formal, when she'd slipped in the door. "I've been able to contact your mother."
"Dad," she said, "I may have figured it out without needing her."
"Oh?" he was a touch surprised, probably that she hadn't shared her intel with him sooner.
"Lazarey's mistress—Sark's mother—she was an agent, too," she said, the words coming out in a rush. "They needed to get leverage over Lazarey for something, so they sent Szarkochev to seduce him."
"And she got pregnant," Jack concluded, "Hence Sark." His lips quirked a rare Spy Daddy smile. "You would think, during all that KGB training, they might've taught their female operatives a bit more about birth control."
She didn't smile. The vibe about the circumstances surrounding her own birth still made her uncomfortable.
"Sorry," he apologized, "I take it you don't think Sark's conception was entirely accidental."
"Right."
"So why?" Jack was on top of it.
She paused. She couldn't tell him about the inheritance being stolen without revealing how she'd gotten her intel. She couldn't risk Sark delivering on his threat to reveal her infidelity.
"That's why we need Mom," she finished.
"Good." Jack smiled again, which was the most consecutive smiling she'd seen him do since… ever.
Sark hadn't seen Irina in 5 years.
Not since she'd abandoned him to the winds of fate, into CIA custody. Before Sydney had disappeared to the Covenant. He had spent two years in solitary, his only visits from the agents who came to ask him questions that he didn't know answers to.
Where is Irina Derevko?
Where is Arvin Sloane?
Where are the Rambaldi artifacts?
It was a particularly cruel fate, especially coming from someone he had always tacitly trusted. That word had never actually passed between them, Irina and Sark, but it was implicit.
She had been the one to come get him, when he was in school. He was 15, an upstart, intellectually superior to nearly all of his classmates, particularly in languages, writing, and mathematics. By then he was well fluent in English, despite the slow start with learning an entirely different alphabet, and had picked up a decent amount of German, Dutch, some of the Scandinavian tongues, and was thinking of going to university in Germany- they had a strong background in Oriental studies. The far east fascinated him, not just the martial arts, but their philosophies. Buddhism, meditation. The search for peace and enlightenment in one's self.
He was restless, a dreamer. He was tired of the other boys, most of them heirs to various family fortunes in England. He thought of them that way, too— as boys. He had always somehow been older than them; maybe it was being sent away from his parents when he was 5, a relief anyway, since his father had been only intermittently there, and when he was, he remembered mostly his cruelty to his mother. Which occasionally spilled over to him.
It was a shock to receive the picture of his mother from Wells; Irina had told him his mother had died. That, as the picture had proved, was obviously not the case.
He'd placed an ad in the Sunday Times, their old protocol for setting up a meet. He doubted she'd answer him. He had the distinct feeling she'd used him in whatever plot she'd schemed up, and then left him for dead.
Russian cutie seeks XXX fun w/ fellow landsman.
But she'd answered the call. Placed an ad of her own in response to his.
Molotov cocktail ready 2 explode 4 Russkie QT.
So he'd gone, against his better judgment, to Regent's Park in London, to the bench where they'd met so many times to set up jobs. He listened to his iPod as he waited. He listened to music from all over the world, all different languages. Mostly it was to train his ear for accents. Like this song. Rap, by Groove Armada. The fellow singing was English, but he had a different accent altogether than Sark's- more urban, more Cockney.
They want rap- Ok, we'll give them rap on a platter- it don't matter- it could be I was white or black-a- the fact of the matter- I drop some 'ip 'op- and progressed a message…
The double t's, they were dropped, a glottal stop connecting the vowels in platter, matter. No h's in hip-hop. He wondered how anyone could speak so ineloquently.
London town- runs you down- I got sound- that's why I be comin' back to rebound…
He liked London. The general grayness of it, punctuated by the bright green squares of parks and gardens. At any moment you could come around a corner and find yourself outside a tiny postage stamp of perfectly manicured grass, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.
Pulled around tugged and shoved as people we could expose those as rogue and evil to the sound of siren or the mayday, they say, come follow me, but to be frank I did it my way1
He'd waited, and waited, past the appointed time— 4:47 sharp—Irina was nearly always a little late.
"Julian." Her husky voice cut into his memories from behind him. Her voice was alto, like the sweetest choirgirl he'd ever heard, the kind that snuck out of practice in the church to drink a scotch and have a smoke at the corner pub with a man who was much too old for her.
"Irina." He didn't turn around, but he did press Pause on the iPod. It seemed very quiet in the park.
She slipped beside him then, and looked down at him from what seemed like a great height. She was tall, as tall as Sydney, but wore heels most of the time. She still looked fabulous. He didn't understand how someone as old as she could look better than most women in their 20's. He wondered momentarily if Sydney would be this good looking when she was in her 50's.
He almost felt like crying a little. He stood up, nearly nose-to-nose with her, and she leaned forward and pressed her lips to each cheek in greeting.
He didn't return the gesture, but instead watched her impassively as she looked him over proudly. She shook her mane of hair back off her shoulders and said, in Russian, "Should we go have a drink?"
He shrugged. He wasn't buying this old-friends-meeting-up-for-a-drink crap.
"Julian," she said, her voice low, still in Russian, "I know you're hurt- you need to give me a chance to explain."
"It's going to take a lot more than a drink to excuse your behavior," he said tersely, feeling his tongue roll around the Slavic consonants. It had been a long time since he'd spoken Russian with anyone. It was a more beautiful language than English, in his opinion.
He was trying not to be sullen, but seeing her again was making it difficult. She was the most mother he'd ever had. What little he could remember about his mother, she had been dramatic, flighty. If that had been her real persona at all. For all he knew, that was part of her alias. He wasn't even sure if Anastasia was her real name. Irina had been… firm, steady.
"Come on," she said, taking his arm in hers as if he hadn't even said that, "I know I owe you at least a few bottles of Chateau Petruse."
They strolled, arm-in-arm, across the length of the park. Despite his resolutions not to soften to her, he could feel his anger slipping away.
Finally, after the silence was killing him, he said in English, "So, how are you?"
Sitting across from each other in the bar, at a corner table with a wall at each of their backs, she'd smiled at him. Still he refused to give in and give her any leeway.
"I knew you'd come back to me, eventually," she said this certainly, as if there'd never been any doubt about their allegiance. "Even when you were working with the Covenant, trying to find Nadia, I knew you'd come back to me."
Oh, for fuck's sake, he thought. You thought I was coming back after my employer stole my inheritance and sent me looking for your lost daughter, so they could use her for some evil device in the whole twisted Rambaldi mess? Spare me, Mommy Dearest.
"Really."
"Yes."
They sat in silence, sipping the wine.
"What on earth would make you think that," he said at last. "You left me for dead and took off."
"You were always safe," she said, her eyes firm with belief. "Your being in custody kept you safe from the Covenant for two more years."
"Kept me safe?" he hissed. "They tortured me, do you realize that? They had plans to execute me at one point."
She waved her hand dismissively, "Jack made sure you stayed alive. He knew I had let you go willingly."
He rolled his eyes and took a big—no, giant—drink of his wine. These people were all crazy.
"Julian," she said, urgently. "How is Sydney?"
He was midswallow when Irina said her name. "What?" he coughed. Maybe he would meet his death today after all.
"Jack has contacted me," Irina divulged. "He needs intel on something that he and Sydney are working on. I figured…" she didn't look directly at him, "You might have been in contact with her."
"Yes." He agreed, but he wasn't willing to share all the details of their… "contact". And so Sydney had told her father about their agreement. Typical.
Irina nodded, her eyes still expectant. "They're beginning to put your life together. About your mother, and Lazarey. And your inheritance."
He stared sullenly at her. He felt like he was 15 again, the first day after she'd taken him out of the Academy to have him work for her. One day he had no relatives, then next he'd had an "aunt" from Russia.
"How is she," Irina's voice betrayed her a little- she missed Sydney, missed seeing her grow up, get married. Maybe now she was missing her grandchildren.
"She's about like always," Sark said, coldly. "She works for people who're useless at what they do, who don't make use of her real talents as an operative. She works constantly. She's… " He had been about to say she was still loyal to Vaughn. "She's still married to Vaughn."
"Mmm," Irina's response didn't imply judgment one way or the other. "She reminds me of myself at her age."
"Actually, she's working for me," he blurted out. Maybe Sydney was right, maybe he did have an unconscious death wish.
Irina's glare was harsh. "What do you mean, working for you?"
"I asked her to get some intel on a man I'm trying to track down."
"What was your price?" Irina was clearly confused as to why Sydney would willingly cooperate with Sark.
To hell with it. He didn't feel particularly indebted to Irina after her abandonment stunt.
"She gets to keep Vaughn in the dark about a little indiscretion." He sat back, waiting for her to shoot him under the table. Or maybe above the table, for everyone to see. That would be… dramatic.
They stared at each other without blinking. Irina looked surprised, though he wasn't sure why. Maybe it was surprise at him, or maybe at Sydney's actions; he didn't know. He had the impression that she held Sydney in a higher regard than him, her perfect firstborn. After all, she was actually Irina's blood. He was just the adopted son. But with that, she somehow held Sydney to a higher moral code than him, too.
At last she nodded, and looked away. "With you." She wouldn't look at him.
"Yes."
"Julian," she sighed, as if overcome with the weight of what this meant to her, "How could you? After all she's been through, you couldn't leave well enough alone?"
Now that hurt.
"How could I?" he mocked her with his tone, "She's your daughter. I would think you'd know her well enough to know she doesn't do anything she doesn't want to do. And besides," he threw in for extra sting, "Your precious Sydney is not altogether innocent in the skills of seduction."
Her slap turned his head so fast his neck cracked a little. So, that was where Sydney got that move.
Some of the other patrons of the restaurant stared at them. He didn't care what it looked like to them- a May-December lovers' spat.
"I'm sorry," she apologized almost immediately. "You didn't deserve that. You're adults, you can do what you want."
His cheek stung where her fingers had connected. "No, I deserved that."
"I'll help you," she agreed, "But you need to respect what Sydney has with Vaughn. She needs some stability, everyone does. Even you," she said, pointedly. "You know I've always looked out for your best interests. That's why I arranged for you to be sent away, away from Lazarey and your mother's troubles, where they couldn't find you until you were old enough to be on your own."
"Julian," she was the only one who ever called him by his first name, "You know that."
He just nodded.
Songs:
1 "Rap." Gone in 60 Seconds, Groove Armada.