Alone in his office, Jack poured over records of bank statements, phone call logs, and travel itineraries from the previous two months. No one was beyond suspicion. Most likely, though, the mole would be someone they least suspected.

Jack had no tolerance for moles. There was a measure of difference, he thought, between working as a double agent and being a mole. Being a double required at least a grasp of two organizations, the skill to serve two masters at once. A certain… delicacy was necessary. On the other hand, a mole was a coward: someone who took money for covert activity but who didn't have the guts to actually break out and work actively against the organization they worked for.

The clock on the wall clicked over to 9 PM. Jack frequently worked late, long after the other agents had been released from their 9-to-5 office appearances. Those agents without field duties, mostly the injured, the untrustworthy, or the newbies, had fairly routine schedules; their days consisted of reading briefs on existing or emerging threats to national security, reviewing incoming intel, and the like. The agency's culture was far different than SD-6's had been, Jack mused. The CIA was a picnic compared to the field training ops that the Alliance had devised for its operatives. Sydney had had a hard time adjusting to the rigid bureaucracy of the agency, having been used to being largely autonomous, designing her own missions at Sloane's behest, with Dixon at her side.

This was, perhaps, Jack's largest problem with Vaughn. He mistrusted his son-in-law's ability to grasp what it was like, to work as a double agent, to be a field operative. After all, what had Vaughn been, before Sydney had fallen into his lap? A desk officer, non-field rated, someone who had entered the service to chase some memory of his deceased father, with some naïve notion of avenging his honor? Jack had tried to get Sydney reassigned to a different handler when she had first become a double. He had met Vaughn before, around the office, and had been… unimpressed. Vaughn hadn't made a bad impression, per say, he had just failed to make a good one on Jack. He was… forgettable. Still, he and Sydney managed to hide whatever attraction they had for each other from Jack, until that mission with Irina to reacquire the suitcase nukes that SD-6 had stolen.

The cargo plane dipped and shuddered as it climbed out of Dover Airfield, en route to India. They were already dressed in tactical gear, and Sydney was trying valiantly to screw the stubborn cap of a flashlight back on after replacing its batteries. She finally got it threaded correctly and clicked it on, illuminating her face from under her chin for the briefest second before she turned it off.

"Agent Vaughn has trouble sleeping," Irina said, studying her daughter, "When you're in the field."

Sydney's eyes had betrayed her surprise when her mother said his name, but she looked away quickly and said, with a small shake of her head, "I doubt he told you that."

Jack just stared at Irina, unsure of her motive for saying something like that at a time like this.

"He didn't have to tell me, I could see it in his eyes," Irina said certainly, "And I can see it in yours."

Sydney just stared at her mother, her eyes narrowing in what appeared to be disgust, "Agent Vaughn is my… colleague," she said.

"You're so willing to take risks for your country," Irina forged on, despite the uncomfortable vibe that was developing, "Why aren't you willing to do the same for your own happiness?"

Jack couldn't listen any longer without interjecting, "I hardly think you've earned the right to give anyone relationship advice."

"Jack," Irina chided him, "Sydney's smart, and she's strong, but she's not happy."

"Ok!" Sydney mumbled something, trying to stop the conversation, but Jack was infuriated.

"And after a twenty-year absence, you've gleaned that from a cumulative half-hour you've spent in her presence?" He couldn't believe what he was hearing from his former wife.

"I knew it from the moment I saw her," Irina insisted, "I'm her mother—"

"Your motherhood, which is a biological fact, and has no substantive value in Sydney's life—"

"Hey!" Sydney fairly yelled at them. "Stop baiting him," she said to Irina, then looking to Jack, "And stop being such an easy target.i"

At the time, Jack had been mentally kicking himself for not seeing something that Irina apparently found completely obvious to even the most casual of onlookers. Then he'd gotten angry at Vaughn, who still had a civilian girlfriend the entire time he was apparently pursuing Sydney on the side. This, when Sydney had risked her very life carrying out badly-designed ops for the CIA, when she had arranged to deliver Sloane to Sark so Sark could kill him to secure the antidote to the virus that was killing Vaughn, when—

Stop, Jack commanded himself. He could feel his blood pressure rising. This wasn't finding the mole. It was just making him more upset about Sydney's disappearance.

The list of frozen offshore accounts was lengthy, and growing day by day as the agency put holds on the assets of foreign nationals within the US. Recent re-activations were categorized separately, in a subsection on a subsequent page. Jack sped-read the list, waiting for one to look familiar.

Three pages later, there was still nothing. Jack sighed.

Suddenly, one account in the list caught his eye.

P. Garo, account number 311197847. It had been reactivated two months earlier, on May 17. Account balance: $185, 229, 100.40.

Peter Garo. It was one of Sark's aliases. He had used the mole to reopen his account that was frozen when he was taken into CIA custody nearly three years ago, the one that had remained frozen when he'd escaped their custody.

Jack closed his eyes and clenched his teeth together. Where had the money come from? That was an obscene amount of money.

The re-activations were traceable to the user accounts within the agency. The user ID for the individual who had authorized the change to the status? "jdfrankl".

Franklin? That little shit, Jack thought, gathering the papers and his gun from his desk drawer. He was going to pay the agency's closet case a personal visit.

Anastasia had left them alone again, and they sat in uncomfortable silence. Sydney's headache was beginning to subside, though hunger was beginning to make her irritable. Despite her vows from just that morning that she would never touch food again, she was quickly becoming ravenous.

"Sydney," Sark's voice finally cut the quiet air. "What are you thinking?"

"That I'm hungry."

"Oh."

"Why, what are you thinking?" she was curious now.

"I was wondering if my horses are all right," he replied, shrugging. "I haven't exactly made provisions as to their well-being if I were to disappear again for any length of time."

"We're going to get out of here," she said, silently wondering at how he could care so much for animals and simultaneously have so little regard for human life or companionship.

Sark just nodded.

"Sark," she said, suddenly curious, "How did you know I was pregnant? The ops reports are on a secure server, remote from the field office in LA."

His lips parted slightly in amusement, and a dimple formed on one cheek. "I have my ways."

She rolled her eyes, "Bullshit. How did you hack in without anyone knowing?"

"No one knew because I didn't," he replied smoothly.

"What do you mean, you didn't," her eyes narrowed in suspicion. She hated his whole cryptic routine. Why couldn't he ever just come out and answer her questions?

"It would be a pitiful mistake to believe that I haven't been building assets these past few years, Sydney," he said, in his supremely bored tone that made her want to slap him silly. "Just because you didn't know what I was up to doesn't mean that nothing was going on."

She stared at him, veil of rage beginning to cloud her thinking. "What do you mean, 'assets'? Money? Operatives? Contacts, what?"

He smiled, or rather, smirked with amusement at her obvious disgust. She wanted to kill him.

She was getting angry, he could see it in the set of her mouth, the way her eyes were hardening with every exchange. He loved to piss her off. It was one of the few pleasures he found in work these days.

"How do you suppose your new batch of university recruits found out about the footage from the bug that was in your VCR?" he let his right eyebrow arch. "That was dead and buried in the CIA archives. They just needed to know where to look."

"You sick…" her brow folded between her eyebrows as she looked to the side and searched for a word that could possibly match her disgust with him, "I cannot believe you."

"Why?" Her moralistic tendencies were beginning to make him annoyed.

"One of them is working for you? Which? All of them?" She was starting to speak really quickly in a half-whisper, the way she always did when she was furious.

"You overestimate my ambitions, Sydney, why use four when one is enough to do the job," he smiled just to enrage her further.

She closed her open mouth and nodded like she'd heard it all before. Stared at the floor a little, thinking about it. "The video box," she said, slowly, looking at him out of the tops of her eyes without raising her head, "That was your doing, wasn't it."

"A bit crass, I admit, but effective nonetheless," he continued smiling. "The agency really ought to reconsider its payroll structure. It favors the wayward actions of cash-strapped young men with secrets to keep."

"Where did you get the money to pay an operative? I thought the Covenant took all your money," she said, obviously suspicious of his claims.

"The Covenant made a small error in my favor by promoting Lauren and I to be heads of the North American cell," he said, feeling a small glimmer of pride in their teamwork, even now, "Which meant I was in charge of managing the funds allocated to carrying out the Covenant's agenda there."

"Which you carefully allocated to yourself," she finished for him. "What about Lauren?"

He shrugged, "She was due a portion of it, at least—we had planned to divvy up the money between us, but Vaughn's killing her took care of my needing to share with her."

Episodes:

i Passage, Part I. Season 2, Episode 8. Written by Debra J. Fisher & Erica Messer.