Chapter 21
The pictures held her in place.
They were scattered across the large table in front of her, covering an area map of the airbase and the surrounding cities near Rammstein - pieces of a puzzle that, if Annie focused long enough, patched together her fragmented memories of the past twelve hours. She had been standing, studying them - searching, hoping to find a clue, a sign she had missed. She relives the nightmare instead. The Land Rover, crushed, unrecognizable. Still images from what looked like a traffic camera near the sight of the accident. She could see, frame by frame, what it had looked like as they flew through the air. The SUV that had hit them. The hooded figure. Black car, black clothes, black shadows, sharp against the pristine white of the snow.
And then there was Danielle.
Rage was a burning, agonizing weight that sat heavily on her chest, the severity strangling.
It was impossible to focus on anything but the anxiety brewing in the pit of her stomach, tying it in knots, knowing that every passing second meant their window for finding her sister was growing smaller and smaller.
Calder had said they were doing everything they could.
Then why did it feel like it wasn't enough?
She blinked, her distracted, distant thoughts replaced with the reality around her. Straightening up, she grimaced at the twinge of her ribs, and - with less grace than usual - slowly made her way to where Auggie sat at a makeshift command station further down the large table. The Joint Mobility Processing Center at the Rammstein airbase was full of conference halls, and they had graciously allowed their sister agents to occupy this one. She couldn't help but clench her teeth with each move she made; everything hurt, and it hardly helped that the concussion itself prevented her from taking any painkillers. She glared indignantly down at the shoulder immobilizer currently holding her left arm in place, the unappealing addition to her wardrobe only serving to add insult to injury.
Calder, the Germany station chief, Marcus Vaughn, Oliver and Eric were on their way back from tracking down the same SUV from the pictures, having located it outside a business district near Kaiserslautern. It had been a dead end though, with nothing left behind in the vehicle that served as any real source of evidence. To make matters worse the vehicle was registered to an identity that, according to Interpol, belonged to a business man who died of a heart attack three months ago.
She sat next to Auggie as his fingers traveled with practiced precision over the braille keyboard in front of him, headphones in place. Eric, thankfully, had enough foresight to bring Auggie's equipment from the DPD with him - everything else had been lost in the wreck. "Anything new?" she asked. Her rattled cage effectively hindered her ability to control her tone of voice, belying the anxiety just beneath the surface.
"Not yet." Auggie hands stilled momentarily. "I'm trying to determine a travel pattern for the SUV using traffic camera footage from the past twenty-four hours, but it's slow going." He rubbed his eyes, and Annie's heart fell at the circles she saw there, "but we'll be able use the GPS on the Mercedes to track Tam's driving history-"
"- Like we did Henry's during the FBI shakedown." Annie brightened, jumping at the idea of a tangible lead.
"Exactly," Auggie nodded, "Meanwhile I started cross-checking immigration and German border authorities, in case something worthwhile shows up - ideally she slipped up, and left us trail somewhere."
"Ideally." Annie echoed, her good hand resting on Auggie's shoulder where she worried the fabric of his shirt with her index finger. "Have you heard from Eyal?"
"Not yet," Auggie repeated, "but we will."
Annie longed for Auggie's certainty. When he had originally told her that Eyal had disappeared to do some reconnaissance of his own, Annie had trusted the Israeli's actions without necessarily understanding them - which was the basis of their relationship to begin with. But now, several hours later, and with no less evidence to help find her sister, her anxiety was getting the best of her. Regardless of the fact that Eyal could hold his own, Annie feared Sarah Tam's unpredictable behavior, and she wasn't sure they would be able to survive any more surprises.
She had to force herself to close her eyes for a moment, wishing she could ignore the splitting pain that wracked her head, the constant drumming of her own pulse that threatened to make the world spin, like nails on a chalkboard, ricocheting off the walls of her skull.
"Annie Walker, how nice to see you again."
At the sound of her name both Annie and Auggie startled. She glanced over her shoulder - instantly regretting the move at the protest of her body - just in time to see the entourage returning. Oliver Lee leered at her from between Calder and Eric as they approached, and she realized he was the one who had spoken - and something about the way he looked at her sent a chill down her spine. Auggie, though unable to see the icy exchange between the two spies, could detect the unease rolling off of Annie in waves, and he frowned, eyebrows furrowed.
"We got it." Eric announced triumphantly, holding up the device that they had used to pull data off the GPS of the Mercedes. He hurried over to Auggie, and the two of them began the process of uploading the data to the computers spread across the table. Oliver leisurely took a seat at the end of the table, furthest away from all of them, disturbingly aloof. Annie's hands itched, and it took all her self-control (and then some) to keep herself from jumping across said table to strangle him where he sat.
She was so distracted by the idea that she didn't even notice when Calder came to stand directly behind her.
Ever since they had left the medical clinic, Annie had found it difficult to shake off "The Sheriff's" blatant attack on her capability to keep herself together, and even now she had to suppress the little flare of resentment that rose up out of the ashes of her previous resignation - an ember that could give way to a much larger flame, if only she would let it.
"Once we get the GPS data, we'll be able to create a more definitive perimeter of where Tam's been, and hopefully a better idea of where she's going," Calder stated, folding his arm and appraising the traffic camera footage that was currently being filtered through Auggie's laptop at an accelerated rate. "We didn't find anything else in the vehicle, at least nothing alarming."
Annie's anxiety was only aggravated by Calder's ability to appear completely unfazed by the crisis currently unfolding in front of them. And it did grate her, all of it: Calder's steely indifference, his detachment, Oliver's smug complacency as he sat in his chair, entirely unbothered by the part he played in everything. Rage reared its ugly head again, and as involuntarily as breathing, something inside Annie invariably snapped.
"It's been almost twenty-four hours since Tam took Danielle." Annie's voice was flat, her reasoning calculative and disconnected as she surrendered to the actuality in front of her. "Twenty-four hours and no attempt to contact us." Voice raised, she stood, turning and invading Calder's space with the sudden movement, forcing the man to take a step backward. "No demands, no ransom - nothing! We're sitting here, and you have the nerve to tell me 'at least it's nothing alarming'?"
The room became deathly quiet.
"Annie…" Her name was a warning that fell from Auggie's lips, but she ignored him, hazel eyes flashing, dangerous and violent, as she stood toe to toe with Calder, unwilling to backdown.
"Like I told you before," Calder growled, eye to eye with her, "we are doing everything we can do."
"Everything you can do isn't good enough." Annie seethed, jaw locked, fist clenched.
"Watch it, Walker," Calder took Annie's bait, snapping, "you and I both know there's no need to remind you why we're even here in the first place." Temper effectively fueled, he continued, "if you'd gotten on that damn carrier like you were supposed to, we'd all be home right now, Danielle included."
Calder's words were a proverbial knife in her back, and Annie flinched, the blame effectively reopening the wounds she had acquired over the course of the past several months. And just like that, the dam broke, and all the skeletons, all the demons and ghosts, suddenly came rushing back.
"You're saying this is my fault." Emotionless, broken - she felt nothing but an overwhelming desolation taking hold of her soul.
Auggie, who had been standing while assembling the GPS device to sync, now faced them both. His own expression was a mixture of outrage at Calder's blatant antagonization, and worry for the woman who, not to be outdone, was determined to meet the "Sheriff" blow for blow. Even Oliver and Eric seemed to watch the exchange with glazed over looks of surprise, speechless and unmoving where they sat, frozen in place. Auggie moved to grab her arm, to reel her in, to bring her back to him, but she dodged just out of his reach.
"Annie-"
"No," she shook her head, finality. "No - I'm not doing this."
And just like that, she could feel the chasm between herself and the rest of the world break open, an invariable downward spiral as she slowly slipped away, the war-weary shell of her former self replaced with something colder, something harder, something cruel. Compartmentalizing emotions was an essential tool, internalizing conflict a necessity for survival; two things at which Annie was exceptionally talented. And perhaps it was that, her newfound ability to remain, at times, ruthlessly indifferent, that made her aware of the dangerous disconnect that was steadily pushing her away. It seeped into her bones, dug under her skin, until the person left behind was someone else entirely.
Someone who no longer cared what means it took to meet her ends.
She would find Danielle.
But Sarah Tam would have to pray that Annie did not find her first.
Before anyone could stop her, despite Auggie's attempt to call her back, she walked out of the room, out the door, not entirely certain where she was headed, but knowing that she had to get away. The silhouette of her former self evaporated in her wake, leaving her weightless - leaving her with nothing but a gnawing emptiness that devoured her with every step.
Liat Varga's mother, Johanna David, was Israeli by birth, but fled the country as a young girl to escape the conscription into the Tzahal, more commonly referred to as the Israeli Defense Forces by the rest of the world. However, despite Johanna's attempt to distance herself from the militancy of her country, it seemed she would not be able to escape that world entirely. A summer in Berlin introduced her to an alluring, mysterious man named Isaak Varga, who - unbeknownst to her when she fell in love with him - just so happened to be a member of the German Federal Intelligence Service.
The rest, of course, was history.
The saying the apple did not fall far from the tree was - despite being terribly cliched - incredibly accurate when considering spies. Unsurprisingly, Liat followed closely in her father's footsteps, the only difference being that thirty years after her mother fled Israel, Liat had returned, and subsequently became one of the Mossad's best and brightest. Her mother, having died in the church bombing in Frankfurt, the year of 1996, on Christmas Eve, most likely rolled over in her grave the second her daughter passed her fire arms training - a pacifist to the bitter end. Her father, also killed in the same bombing, would have nodded in his subtle way - she liked to think he would have been proud, even if she was playing for the other team.
She was stationed in Germany, coincidentally in Frankfurt, of all places, several years after joining Mossad.
It had been exactly seven years, and three months to the day, since she had first laid eyes on Eyal Lavin (he had been driving an armored military vehicle, and rolled it into a ditch in the West Bank during Palestenian rocket attacks on the region).
It had been four years since she had first slept with him, and six months or so since the last time she had seen him - the last time he had needed her help.
So needless to say, when Liat received a phone call from him out of the blue, it surprised her. She couldn't surmise any reason he would be calling her on Mossad business - she'd heard nothing from Tel Aviv regarding any current operations. It was possible he was just in the area, but it was almost impossible to know for sure. Given she and never found him easy to read, she let him leave her a message, something she could better gauge his intentions with. She was further shocked when said message contained no invite to his hotel room or promises of wine over dinner. Instead, he had asked for help, again, and for her to talk with him in private at a local café not far from her apartment that was famous for its Pfannkuchen pastries.
After some internal debate, she called him back and agreed to meet him, and somehow by the end of the conversation she had promised she would take a rain check for a real dinner-date once his "business" in Germany was finished.
He was charming, she would give him that.
Still lounging in her apartment, Liat glanced at the time, noting she had an hour until he would arrive - he'd told her he was driving from Rammstein, and that had been thirty minutes ago. She went about her day, checking the mundane and monotonous items in her email inbox, as well as the other outlets of protocol she had established with her handler back in Israel. There was chatter from Asia, word of a rogue agent - interesting. She studied the encrypted message, pulled from her online account with the local library just down the street from where she lived. No further action was being requested of her yet, so she deleted the message and made a mental note to check back later to see if anything had changed.
She then went about her business: showering, getting dressed, blow-drying her near-black hair into its natural curl, and debating on whether or not she should go through the sometimes laborious process of putting on makeup. She compromised by settling for simple - mascara, eye shadow, and red lipstick.
Eyal had always told her she looked better without it anyway.
The hour passed, and donning her boots and matching leather bomber jacket, she left the apartment and made her way to the café.
A/N: Thanks for all the reviews you guys, got a few updates headed your way. As always, a shout out to Ash for all the hard work she does for me, hehe. If you haven't read "Traffic" yet, I demand you go do it now. *demands*