Nicky lunges across the table, hand outstretched for Byer; the origami pieces scatter and flatten under her attack. A scream is ripped out of her, full of rage and blood.
She never touches him; Byer meets Nicky's forward surge with a swift backhand. Pain explodes behind her eyes and then her head slams against the table, her neck pinned by his inflexible hand. His knee is directly across her back, painful and hard, keeping her in place.
His face is right next to hers as his breath hisses in her ear. "Did you think we wouldn't find the two manifests for the same names? Did you think we wouldn't know? We know everything, Nicky."
"WHERE IS SHE?" Nicky shrieks, pain and fear lining her voice.
"Tell me what I want to know," Byer snarls. "And maybe I'll consider letting her live."
Nicky screams, howling as she struggles, claws at the table, flinging paper figurines as she tries to break free. He is immoveable. The hand clamped around her neck tightens, causing Nicky to cry out in pain. Byer pushes his knee deeper into her spine. His purpose is far more fearsome than his strength: he could – and just might – snap her in half. Nicky shudders. Byer doesn't threaten; it's not who he is. He makes promises. Worse, he keeps them.
"What the fuck happened to Bourne?" he demands, snarling through gritted teeth.
He is too close, an apex predator. Even in turmoil, Nicky has enough sense to be afraid of him.
She spits out the name like it's a curse: "Maggie."
Then
A body slams into Nicky. Gasping, the wind knocked out of her, she and her assailant collapse in a heap of arm and legs on the floor.
"Goddammit!"
Dazed, Nicky pushes herself upright, her gaze sweeping upward as the other woman has already gotten to her knees. The auburn hair, the pale skin, the British vowels…she recognizes Margot Henley. Maggie is Owen's – The Professor's – handler. They are normally based out of Barcelona, but all the handlers have been called to Paris to review the protocols for the new chems Treadstone has been ordered to test. They are colleagues who work more closely with one another than the other analysts, because all the handlers are required to share and corroborate data regarding their assets' chem use and effect, but they are not friends. No one at Treadstone has friends.
Still, Nicky knows more about Maggie than even Maggie is aware. Nicky knows Maggie and Owen are lovers, and have been for a year. She knows because in her secret foraging in Treadstone's digital files, Nicky uncovered Maggie's footprints in the same system - detailing Maggie's search for blackouts and memory loss. Maggie's never brought up these problems in any of the analyst debriefs, which fact made Nicky curious. A few months of digital forensics and discreet surveillance, and Nicky had deduced Maggie's and Owen's ongoing affair. It was the first confirmation she'd had of another handler/agent relationship. She'd cleaned up after them, erasing all records that tied Maggie intimately to Owen.
"Sorry Parsons," Maggie says tersely, grabbing at a slim file on the floor beside Nicky. Maggie springs quickly to her feet, leaving Nicky on the floor. Nicky watches the other woman's swiftly retreating figure as she climbs to her feet, cataloging her stunned body for injury. Nicky pauses, closes her eyes. The images flash like a series of snapshots in her mental filing system: the folder that was too thin to have contained anything of import; and yet Maggie's shaking, proprietary hand as she grabbed it. The speed at which she'd plowed into Nicky, her undue rush to leave; haste draws attention at Treadstone. The pale cast of Maggie's skin, stark white against the vivid reddish-brown hair that drapes a tailored navy jacket. The grim set to Maggie's lips…the terror in her clear grey eyes.
Nicky turns in the direction Maggie came from, moving without urgency, keeping her expression neutral. She tracks back to the conference room where they've spent several days going over the new chems reports. She slows imperceptibly so she can observe the empty room. Their last meeting ended an hour earlier. They're all supposed to go back to their respective stations and continue the existing chems protocol until they're told otherwise. Nicky knows something's off, but she can't pinpoint it. It's a feeling, a sense that something is missing, something is out of place. She keeps walking, facing forward, but she feels the prickle across her skin, like fingers brushing lightly along her shoulders, down her neck. She forces herself to maintain her calm, aware she's being watched.
He has her in his sights and she doesn't breathe until she turns left down the quiet corridor that leads to Conklin's office. There, she'll come up with some excuse for seeking him out; but she's got to get out of Colonel Rick Byer's – she knows it's him watching her – line of sight.
Now
Byer is confused. "Henley?"
"You watch everything. You know everything," Nicky grounds out.
A hard shove smashes her cheekbone on the table. "I asked you a question."
"I gave you an answer."
She didn't, not really. Love is not in Byer's lexicon. His job is to smooth out sines and cosines; to tune out inconsistencies, to break down human beings and rebuild killing machines. He doesn't understand what they did – what he did. If Treadstone purposefully put handlers and agents together, it was done with plenty of data to suit a purpose. But love is unpredictable, and for people who live on death's edge, it can become consuming, an unintended consequence.
"Why did you put us together?" Nicky presses. "Desh and Constantine, Owen and Maggie…"
"You and Bourne?" Byer finishes.
"You do everything for a reason."
Nicky doesn't expect Byer to answer, so she's surprised when he says softly, "Because they'd come back. They wouldn't be able to help themselves." He leans in again, whispering, sending goosebumps crawling over her skin. "You're the air to his canary."
As if on cue, the lights flicker again. A distant "boom" sounds and a moment later, the room shakes. Klaxons blare and the lights cut out, leaving them in the dark. Nicky shoves up, hard, elbow jamming into Byer's solar plexus.
Marta watches, transfixed as shaky video footage on the widescreen mounted on the wall captures the chaotic scene unfolding at the American Embassy.
"What's happening?" exclaims Christian.
"Parsons," Cross answers confidently. "This is her play."
"You better be sure," says Christian. "We get one shot at this and if we trip their alarms, we're fucked."
"Aaron!" Marta calls out, pointing at the television monitor in front of her.
Both men look up from their terminals to watch the news. The blonde anchor is reporting in rapid-fire French that there appears to be a fire at the American Embassy. They cut from the polished blonde to news footage of the embassy, where spotlights shine on black smoke that is curling into the sky from a point beyond immediate view. The embassy looks strangely dark, but dawn illuminates the roofline. The reporter on the scene is a young brunette, who calmly tells the anchor that firemen have been called to the scene, and the wailing of fire engines can be heard in the distance. But suddenly, in the background, beyond the embassy's gates, the cameraman swings to follow people racing across the rooftop, armed men and women – they are chasing something? Someone? Unexpectedly, one of them fires his weapon. The brunette reporter and the cameraman both duck, she with a half-scream, as she tells her station that American agents are firing their weapons.
"It's Parsons," Cross says again.
"All right, let's move," Christian calls out. They're both busily tapping away at their terminals when Christian exclaims, "Do you see that?"
"What the fuck?!"
Marta stands, hearing the alarm in Aaron's voice. "What is it?"
"They're looking for us. They have a lock – shit. SHIT. They have a lock on our vicinity."
"What?" she cries, dismayed.
"How is this possible?" Dassault demands. "We're clean – " he breaks off and stares at Marta. "FUCK!" he screams. "Did you sweep her before you came in?"
Aaron curses as he pushes back from his terminal.
"What's happening?" Marta asks.
"You've got a bug," Aaron says grimly, his hands brushing across her body, searching, patting, feeling. "At some point they got one on you."
Marta knocks his hands out of the way, stripping off her jacket and pulling her shirt over her head at the same time Aaron unzips her pants and pushes them down her legs. Hurriedly, she steps out of her jeans, toeing off her socks as Aaron shoves her clothes into the backpack she brought.
"Cross," calls Christian. "Cross."
Marta pulls off her socks, throws them at Aaron, quickly followed by the serviceable cotton bra and panty set, heedless and uncaring that she is nude. She wraps herself in the blanket on the couch. But Christian isn't looking, doesn't care.
"Cross!" he shouts.
Aaron looks up, aggravated. "What? I gotta get this stuff out of here now!"
"You can't," Christian says grimly, pointing at the terminal. "They're on to us."
Aaron looks like he wants to kill something.
"You can't go," Marta whispers.
"If he goes, we lose this opportunity," Christian says, nodding at the terminal. He gestures at Cross. "This is a two-man operation. You leave now, they shut us out."
Cross shakes the backpack he's holding. "I don't get this out of here, they find us. How long do we have before they get a lock on us?"
"The location scramblers are still engaged. They've got a 10 mile radius, but it's narrowing."
"I can do it," Marta says. Cross is about to protest when she cuts him off. "I can do this. You trained me for this."
During their time together, Aaron has run all sorts of simulations in which they're forcibly separated. He's taught her how to escape, evade, and find her way back to him. She can see the torment in his eyes, that agile brain trying to find a solution that doesn't involve her leaving here by herself, carrying a beacon that leads Byer directly to her.
"I found you tonight," she reminds him.
Nodding curtly, he grabs a long, dark wool coat from a chair – it's heavy and warm around her naked body. It's not his – it must be Christian's – as are the boots he hands her. They're slightly big on her feet. She'll have blisters from running in loose boots, but there's no choice. They move swiftly to the door, Marta grabbing the backpack from him. He hands her his gun, which she slips into the coat pocket.
How quickly things change; it wasn't that long ago that handling a gun was foreign, frightening. Now it's a matter of fact.
"Cross," Christian calls, frazzled. "Now."
"A minute," Cross bellows. He turns to Marta. "Get this at least a –"
"I know," Marta interrupts. "I can do this, Aaron. I can do this."
There's fear in his eyes, worry – but there's also faith. Marta clings to that as she closes the distance between them to kiss him quickly, hard; then she's out the door and running down the hall for the stairs.
A moment later she's back out on Schiffbauderdamm, the loose boots scraping against her heels as she runs for her life.