Chapter 14: Dublin
(Sark)
Irina communicates via O'Neil, who keeps us informed of the death toll, the price on our heads. But then she sends word for us to go to Dublin for the weekend, that it's safe enough for us to do this. Sydney is excited. She packs clothes she never gets to wear around here: knee high boots and slim sweaters, a leather trench coat she picked up in Russia.
It's a four hour trip. I'm at the wheel, and she's watching out the window. It feels good to be moving again. We're anonymous, free from the cover we maintain in Gleninagh. Cows and sheep and drying sod give way to the hazy gasoline smell of every city. The Westin is across the street from Trinity College, not exactly low profile, but after six months in the Styx with no major activity reported, we can risk it. Valet parking, room service: I order up red wine and rack of lamb as soon as we're checked in.
(Sydney)
The bathroom is all marble tile and sleek fixtures. Behind frosted glass, the shower is divine. Hot water, high pressure, soap that smells like sage and lemongrass. I must have stood under the spray for half an hour. By the time I wrap myself in a terrycloth robe and step back into the room, Sark is sipping red wine, a loopy half-grin on his face. He hands me a glass, and we eat New Zealand lamb and hydroponic greens drizzled with balsamic vinegar and Italian olive oil. I will be happy if I never see another potato in my life.
Spring is wet and dreary in the city, but we head out onto Grafton Street—it's barely a block from the hotel—full and slightly buzzed, and find boutiques and brand names and upscale jewelers. I don't buy anything in Gleninagh but food and toilet paper. There I must blend in, drab, and fade into the alias. Glamorous. Really. I miss dressing up, even for a mission, with makeup and jewelry and a knife hidden in my boots or at my thigh.
(Sark)
We split up to do our own errands. After commissioning two suits to be tailored the same day, I head to Weir & Sons, making sure Sydney is nowhere in sight. The cases are littered with so many Claddagh rings and ordinary trifles. But it's there, the perfect ring: one and a half carat brilliant cut, internally flawless, flanked by tapered baguettes. Because I am ice, and she is trapped, and together we are something more. For a fee they size it while I wait. It all goes on Irina's tab, of course. Our assets are hidden, almost inaccessible. I buy a chain, so Sydney can wear it hidden under her clothes when we return.
She's in the bathroom when I get back: at the mirror half dressed, applying eyeliner, lipstick the color of a fine roset. Across her lower abdomen the surgical scar has paled to white, a testament to her lost years and a reminder of what led us here. Vengeance, a long time coming. She is stunning all in black, knee high boots and a thin sweater with beading at the open neck. I haven't seen her look so alive in months, since before our awful fishing village, before Cuba even. It was Paris. She was fighting and furiously alive in Paris.
I hold her coat as she slips her arms in, guide her to the elevator with my hand at the small of her back. Smiling, she turns to kiss me. Her hand rests in the crook of my elbow as we walk.
"Reservation for Bob Brown," I tell the hostess. Tucked away in a corner our small table is draped in white, set with silverware and napkins folded into fans. I order champagne, and remember our first date, at a French restaurant in the Ukraine. She had just shot Petrov and I was still reeling from the disaster with Vagt in Moscow.
"To freedom, and to our future."
(Sydney)
He toasts and we drink. The lighting is dim. His skin is pale against the charcoal suit and black dress shirt. I admire the way he holds the delicate crystal in his hands, gentle and precise. Those are the same hands that so expertly fire a sniper rifle, the same hands that I've seen calloused and bloody from fights.
We flounder about for conversation: can't talk about our fugitive status in public, don't want to talk about the dismal months in Gleninagh. And really, what else is there for us to say? What else do we have in common?
The waitress clears away the dinner plates, and scrapes the bread crumbs off the tablecloth. We drink red wine in silence, and then he is grasping my left hand across the small table.
"Sydney, when this is all over, when we're done running, what will you do?"
"I haven't thought about it much. I'v wanted to get out of this life for so long, but part of me misses the excitement."
"Do you want to do stay in the business? Or are you just unhappy with our current village life?"
"It Gleninagh that's the problem, really. I feel I'm dying of boredom there."
"We never discussed payment, but for your instrumental role in recovering my inheritance, I will give you a third of my assets, should you choose to strike out on your own."
I was furious. Did he really think of me as nothing more than an employee? A convenience?
"You're going to pay me? For helping you take them down, or for warming your bed the past year?"
"Sydney, stay calm. You'll make a scene. Please, just listen. I would like nothing more than to have you stay with me. You've asked me over and over what I want from you, if I really want you, and the answer is yes. The answer is always yes. But you've never told me what you want. You've never expressed love, or even attachment, besides a stubborn unwillingness to leave. I would let you walk away, and I would give you enough to spend the rest of your life anyway you please, because I love you. I have seen you at your best and worst and I am in awe of you every day. Nothing would make me happier than to have you with me forever. But I need to hear it from you, Sydney. You need to say it."
But everyone who loves me, they all die in the end. Danny—it took me months to take off the ring, after I found him in the bathtub. Will's life is as good as ruined because of me. Noah, though at least I killed him outright. And then Simon, though I don't even remember that relationship. I'm a curse on the men in my life.
And I think I know what's coming next.
(Sark)
I saw the waitress approaching in my peripheral vision, and turned to motion her away. Sydney looked on the verge of tears, either angry or elated. She was staring at our hands, interlocked on the table between us.
"I do want you. I am attached to you," she says softly, but she isn't meeting my eyes and something in my chest tightens to breaking point, waiting for the bad news.
"Do you love me?"
I fish the small box out of my pocket, flip it open. She looks at it, and then at me, and shakes her head, finally manages to whisper 'no'. I don't believe her for a second. Still, everything shatters when she puts her napkin on the table and walks away.
I waited for her. If I were to be honest, I knew she wasn't coming back. But I ordered dessert, and paid the bill, and tipped the waitress well for not saying a word about my companion's hasty exit.
And inside, everything human left inside me broke apart.