They relocated to a café down the street, one with pleasant ochre colored walls and little round glass tables. The glass was so thick that it looked blue-green instead of clear. There was a single red gerbera daisy in clear glass vases on the tables.
"I have a crush on a guy at work," she had finally said, breaking the awkward silence.
"Really? Who is he?"
"Someone in my… department," she admitted, "We've worked together for about a year now."
"You're kidding me," Francie was on the verge of a smile. "What's his name?"
She hesitated, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with her nail, because it felt weird, for about a million reasons: they weren't allowed to date, he had a girlfriend, and because just saying it was strange, as if saying it out loud would make it true that she really did have feelings for him: "Michael."
"And he's…" she continued, not knowing why—why even entertain the thought--but Francie seemed so interested, "I don't even know how to describe him. He's smart, and he's funny… And he's so cute," she grinned despite her best effort not to and looked at the floor.
"Hot-cute, not goofy-cute?" Francie clarified.
"Hot-cute," she had agreed, meeting her friend's eyes.
They giggled for a second, and Francie asked, "So why haven't I met this guy?"
It seemed like such an obvious question—who wouldn't ask? "Oh," she waved her hand, "He has a girlfriend."
"Of course he does," Francie seemed disgusted. It had been so long since she'd seen Sydney like this. Not since before Danny, certainly.
"Which is ultimately irrelevant anyway," Sydney interjected quickly, "Because the bank has a policy against coworkers dating."
"You know," Francie was trying to say it nicely, "You could quit."
"Francie--"
"Look, I dunno what kind of a hold that place has on you—"
"They don't have anything on me, I just can't quit my jobi"
They ordered a round of stiff German coffee and looked at each other, expectantly.
Irina flipped her lion's mane of hair over her left shoulder and looked at them before she began to speak. "When I was a teenager, I was recommended by my teachers at the academy for a test that the government used to recruit agents into the KGB. I didn't want to take it, but my mother- your grandmother, Sydney," she looked at her daughter, "Encouraged me to go ahead with it. It was an opportunity most people would never have, to do something different, something exciting," Irina rolled her eyes slightly at the memory.
Sydney wondered briefly if they were supposed to feel sorry for Irina. She decided she couldn't do that.
"So, long story short, off I went to the training for female operatives," Irina glossed over the early part of her training with a dismissive wave. "It was there that I met Anastasia, and Nikola as well."
"Sark's mother, and Lazarey's wife," Jack confirmed.
Irina nodded and took a sip of the coffee the waiter had put down in front of them. "We were so young, and so proud to have been chosen to serve our country," she reminisced, even smiled a little at the memory. "Anastasia was the boldest of us, she would play pranks on the less advanced girls, and easily the most beautiful- she had that hair, that fiery red hair—like a sunset over Moscow in the winter time."
Sydney tried not to think of the woman in the picture. It disturbed her, thinking about it.
"Even in those days, the government was interested in Rambaldi, in his work," she said, her smile disappearing. "They were also interested in getting rid of any vestiges of the old Russia. You know your history. Stalin wanted to drag Russia into the modern age, whether it was kicking and screaming or not. Much like Peter the Great wanted to, but with far less finesse.
"There were always rumors that some of the Romanovs had survived the revolution," she shook her head, "But no one knew where they were, or how much they were worth."
Jack glowered. "Lazarey was a Romanov, then."
"You're ruining my storytime, Jack," she admonished him, but she smiled coyly.
Sydney looked between them, uncomfortable. She didn't like it when her parents got flirty with each other. Parental sex was freaky, even when it was Spy Parent Sex.
"Anyway, yes," Irina agreed with his conclusion. "Andrian Lazarey was a Romanov. So the KGB tasked Nikola to go to Bucharest, seduce and marry Lazarey, and hopefully produce a son who would inherit his fortune- something on the order of more than half a billion dollars in today's money."
"But she had a girl," Sydney breathed, realizing how many people's lives must have played out this way. Her mother's, Sark's mother's, shit, for all they knew, maybe Vaughn's mother had been a double.
"Correct," Irina nodded her approval at Sydney. "I see you've done your homework." I also see you've done Sark, she left off.
"Nikola gave birth to Natashya after she and Lazarey had been together barely a year," Irina continued, "And that was when the trouble began. Up until that point, Lazarey had been a loving, doting husband. But after Natashya was born… he became abusive towards Nikola, particularly, but also towards his own daughter," Irina's eyes were dark with the memory of it. "Nikola begged to be reassigned, with the baby, but the agency made her stay put.
She glanced at Jack. "I was the lucky one amongst us," she said. "I was lucky to be sent marry a good man."
Jack only blinked in response. They both knew good was a relative term in matters like this.
"When the agency saw that its plan wasn't working, they sent Anastasia after Nikola to Bucharest to seduce Lazarey and get pregnant, this time hopefully with a son."
Jack sighed disgustedly. He was less enamored with the concept of countries and their governments with each passing year.
"So Julian was born within a year of Natashya," Irina said, "And Anastasia suffered the same fate at Lazarey's hands. He was decent enough to pay for her apartment—well, he really couldn't afford not to, she threatened to make their 'affair' public, wreck his career—" Irina smiled, "She did always have a flair for the dramatic."
"Not long after that, I got the order to get out of my assignment," she carefully avoided looking at them, "And I escaped back to Russia."
"I was in touch with them both, through letters and cipher books," she explained, "But I didn't realize the gravity of their situation until I got back to Russia. By then Elena had risen to a position of considerable power within the KGB," Irina shook her head at the memory of her oldest sister, "And she was already possessed by the pursuit of the Rambaldi artifacts. She knew, somewhere down the line, she'd need a massive amount of funding to bring Rambaldi's prophecy to fruition."
"It was Elena who had tasked Nikola and Anastasia to the Lazarey matter, so she knew full well the importance Sark had in the matter. I had to extract them."
"You were the one who arranged for Sark to be sent to England," Sydney finally pieced it together. So their work together wasn't happenstance at all.
Irina drained her coffee cup and nodded as she swallowed. "I arranged for him to go away from Anastasia and Lazarey, from their craziness. And away from the eye of the KGB, until he was old enough to claim his inheritance rightfully. Elena would have killed him in a second if had meant she could lay hands on his money sooner," she said, and it was obvious then to both Jack and Sydney that Irina was much closer to Sark than either of them had previously realized.
"I had had Nadia by then of course," Irina looked at Sydney sadly, "So it was like I had three children I could never see, instead of just you girls."
Sydney almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
Sark was back in Cheltenham within a matter of hours after his meeting with Irina in London. The British railway system was certainly one thing he missed when he was elsewhere.
He made the rounds for the horses, greeting each one by name, patting them under their manes, where they were a little damp with sweat in the summer heat.
Back in the house, he turned the alarm system on and laid on the couch in the den.
So Irina disapproved of his methods? That was rare. He shouldn't have told her about his bargain with Sydney.
Sark reached into the neckline of his shirt and pulled out her chain, with her rings. He'd put it on for safekeeping. It wasn't much good to him if he lost it.
Her fingers were fairly slender, he observed by the size of the rings. The engagement ring had just a single, fairly small diamond on it, and the actual wedding band was just plain white gold. It was very Sydney, he decided. She didn't seem like the glitzy jewelry type.
As much as you can know anyone's type, Sark thought grimly. He was becoming steadily more convinced that there never is a single person in any given body. Each of them was just a collection of aliases. Granted, some had more complicated uses for their aliases than others, but everyone did it: pretended to be someone they weren't while at work, put on a brave face to hide their pain at a funeral, acted the part of the elated friend when a best friend gets engaged to your former lover. And some people were more skilled than others at switching between the aliases. It was those individuals, he decided, who wound up as agents. The ones who could call up the appropriate lie for any given situation without any prep, any real connection to the world to set it in motion.
Irina's slap still stung, though more figuratively than literally. He'd been asking for it, taunting Sydney like that to Irina's face, but shit. It was like she put all the responsibility for their affair squarely on him. And that was hardly the situation at all.
He'd turned it over and over in his mind over the last week. She'd been sitting on the couch here, and when he'd turned back from the bookshelf, she'd stood up and beckoned him to her. He hadn't hesitated—it fit perfectly into his plan—but then it had gotten out of control. Way out of control. He wondered what was going on with Sydney. She was a tough nut, like her mother, but she seemed to be somewhat unhinged after their fling. When he'd kissed her hand that night in the car, she hadn't tried to kill him. She'd just stared at him like… he didn't know like what.
He reached above his head to the end table and picked up the stereo remote. It hummed to life and he pressed play. He didn't know what was in the CD player.
Sucker love is heaven sent
You pucker up, our passion's spent
My heart's a tart, your body's rent
My body's broken, yours is bent.
Oh, right--Placebo. Without You I'm Nothing. He liked this album.
Carve your name into my arm
Instead of stressed I lie here charmed
Cuz there's nothing else to do
Every me and every you.
He'd had it. This plan wasn't being executed as he desired—he needed to force its hand, so to speak. He was up off the couch in a fluid motion, and over to the desk.
Sucker love is known to swing
Prone to cling and waste these things
Pucker up for heaven's sake
There's never been so much at stake.
He unclasped the chain from around his neck and set the rings on the desk in front of him. In the drawer, he found a fountain pen and a piece of stationary.
I serve my head up on a plate
It's only comfort, calling late
Cuz there's nothing else to do
Every me and every you
Every me and every you
Every me…
This, he printed in his smallish, slanted printing, trying not to drag his hand through the wet ink—curse of the lefthander—is for my shoulder.
Like the naked leads the blind
I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind
Sucker love I always find
Someone to bruise and leave behind
By now he knew their address by heart; he'd followed her that many times.
All alone in space and time
There's nothing here but what's here's mine
Something borrowed, something blue
Every me and every you…1
Songs:
1 "Every Me Every You." Without You I'm Nothing, Placebo.
Episodes:
i A Higher Echelon. Season 2, Episode 11. Written by John Eisendrath.