* * * * Their third mistake, Jack thought as he read the mission transcript one more time, was sending the boy to Australia in the southern spring.
DIXON: ETA to rendezvous - twelve minutes. I hope your old buddy Rutherford is on time.SARK: I scarcely expect that he’d consider us ‘buddies’. Do you surf?
DIXON: Do I…? No. And what did you do? Double-cross him too?
SARK: Something like that. Did you know that it’s only an hour’s drive from here to Geelong? Best surfing on the southern coast.
DIXON: This is not a fieldtrip. How badly is this guy going to be pissed at you?
SARK: Not enough for you to worry about. Lovely weather. It must be twenty degrees warmer here than in that cell.
DIXON: Enjoy it while you can then.
SARK: I intend to.
* * Their second mistake, Jack thought as he recalled Kendall’s tirade, was thinking that he would be controllable without the threat of certain death hanging over his head and residing under his skin.
“How the hell could this happen?” the director had stormed at Dixon. “He was three feet away from you!”
“I don’t know,” Dixon had said. “There were absolutely no prior indications. The meet went off exactly as planned. Not a hitch. We got in, we got the info, we got out. We were at the extraction point and then…” He had shrugged. “I just don’t know. I looked at the plane. Fifty yards away. I looked back… nothing.”
“He was wearing a damned tracker! How could you lose him that quickly?”
“It was an earring,” Dixon had protested. “It couldn’t have taken him two heartbeats to rip it out. I knew that was a bad idea from the start.”
“Why didn’t you anticipate this?” Kendall had turned his ire on Jack then.
“I believe that I did send you my analysis,” Jack had said. “Four months ago. It stated that I thought it was highly probable Sark would attempt to escape on the first mission we sent him on without the toxin capsule.” He had shrugged. “It seems I was off by one.”
* * Their first mistake, of course, Jack thought as he picked up Tippin’s report, was believing even for an instant that Sark hadn’t had his own agenda from the very beginning.
“Did you know that there was a contract out on Sark for most of last year?” Tippin had asked when he’d brought Jack the report.
Jack had nodded. Deccan Rajkot was not the only person who had found Sark to be uncommonly bad for business one way or another. That Jacques Gauzin, head of one of Europe’s strongest post-Alliance covert intelligence factions, had placed a sizable sum on the boy’s head wasn’t exactly surprising.
“Did you know the exact date that contract was first publicized?” Tippin had said then. “Three days before Derevko sent Sydney to Stockholm to pick up Sark. Do you know when it was cancelled? A month ago. After Gauzin was killed in a professional hit of his own.”
* * Now Jack sat alone at his desk with the transcript, the report, and the earring that was still coated in his son’s dried blood. He had his suspicions that the timing of the contract and its expiration were merely convenient coincidences, but he couldn’t be sure. Although he knew that he ought to be reevaluating the prior year in its entirety, he couldn’t. Try as he might to analyze even the current situation objectively, his mind was inevitably drawn back to the morning before the mission. He realized now what he had seen but refused to acknowledge at the time.
The boy had been trying to say goodbye.
* * * * “What’s wrong?” Irina demanded. Her first words at their rendezvous were sharp and insistent. “You’ve missed two meets.”
“How was I supposed to learn about them?” Jack snapped back at her. Without Sark to intercept and interpret Irina’s more subtle ciphers, he had only known about this intended meeting in Warsaw because she had sent a discretely coded email to him directly.
“Why wouldn’t…” She altered her question mid-asking as she realized what Jack’s own question had meant. “Where is he?”
“Funny. I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Irina’s expression became oddly blank for an instant, so quickly that he barely caught it. Then she smiled lightly. “You’ve lost him.”
“He hasn’t contacted you either.” It was a statement, not a question.
“How long has he been gone?”
“Three months.” He could see she was considering whether or not to tell him something by the way that her eyes narrowed fractionally.
“The communiqué on the lead in Jakarta last month,” she said slowly. “That wasn’t from you after all, was it?”
“Jakarta? No. He’s still looking for Sydney?”
“Apparently. I’d thought the message was from you. He’s a very good emulator of your style.”
“He’s disturbingly good at a lot of things.”
“So how did he elude you?” There was no mistaking the sense of pride in her tone.
“Not me,” Jack frowned, chagrined at the defensiveness he could hear in his own voice. “He ditched Dixon in Melbourne. We’re still not entirely sure how.”
“It’s nice there this time of year,” she observed almost absently.
“Warmest place he’s been in a long time.”
They both stood in silence for a moment, contemplating their cold-natured son.
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the implications that he’s still looking for Sydney without you at his shoulder,” Irina said eventually.
“Doren?” he asked. “You think he’ll hold it against her?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. He has always been pragmatic about this business, but…” She shrugged.
“How could you let him get attached to someone like her?” He’d meant to sound sarcastic, but Irina took his words at face value.
“I wouldn’t have if I’d known,” she said grimly. “I allowed him considerably more autonomy in the last few years, but I would have put a stop to that if I’d realized what he was doing. The last thing he ever needed was to become involved with someone else in this business.”
Jack unconsciously nodded his agreement. The unease that he had felt rising for the past several months was not alleviated by Irina’s sharing of his concern. Allison’s death could have provoked a desire for revenge that no newly forged fraternal bond could preclude. The loss of the one fragile connection that he’d chosen for his own could have just as easily triggered a complete emotional shutdown. Or it could have caused something else entirely unpredictable.
“Do we re-prioritize?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Current evidence suggests that he’s still working with us. It remains in all of our best interests to continue our cooperation.” She paused and tilted her head. “I do suggest, however, that we make a point of attempting to reach her before he does. No sense in allowing him the opportunity to give in to temptation. How did he seem when you last saw him?” she asked then.
“Tense,” he said. “Disturbed. Allison was the last thing we talked about.”
“Not exactly the ideal mind-frame to send him out on assignment in.”
“It was something we needed to discuss. I’d anticipated having more time to defuse him, but we were interrupted.”
“He seemed willing to talk to you about it?” There was the barest hint of wistfulness in her voice.
“Not precisely willing,” he admitted. “But he wasn’t leaping out of the chair either.”
“It’s easier than you expected, isn’t it?” She smiled at his uncomprehending look. “Being a father to him. Your head keeps telling you that it’s a lost cause, but your heart keeps making overtures.”
“For all the good it seems to have done.” The bitterness in his own tone surprised him. Irina smiled at that too.
“You always knew that this was a temporary arrangement. Just because the Agency has lost him doesn’t mean that you have.”
“Then where is he?” Jack asked evenly, his voice firmly under conscious control once again.
“I have no idea. He could have gone anywhere. Someplace warm as an indulgence, someplace cold to mislead us.”
“Track his accounts. You know all of them, don’t you?”
Irina shook her head. “I know most. He’s bound to have at least one that I’m not aware of and that’s the one he’ll be using.”
“Then how do we find him?” For a fleeting moment he saw the absurdity of it all. Two parents trying to find a pair of lost children… and all the world to search. Irina must have caught a glimpse of that herself as she looked at him.
“Do you remember when we took Sydney to Disneyland?” she asked.
“She was five,” he nodded. “Too small to ride much of anything but so adamant about going that we finally gave in and went anyway.”
“And somehow just after lunch we got separated. Even after all we’ve been through, I still think that may have been one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.”
“And it didn’t seem to faze Sydney one bit.” He couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “I remember we found her at the base of the Rocket Jets begging them to let her on because it was the tallest ride in the park and she was sure she’d be able to see us from the top.”
Irina echoed his fond smile. “We have very resourceful children,” she said. “When he’s ready, he’ll find us. Until then, we focus on Sydney. Once we determine that she’s safe, then we can… deal with him.”
“I suspect that his current absence may be a commentary on all our previous… dealing with him.”
“He’ll come around, Jack. He needs us.”
“Do you think he know that?” he asked dryly.
“On some level he does. Whose approval do you think he’s really been trying to earn all these years? He may not like it and he may not want to admit it, but he’s been trying for two decades to prove himself worthy of being claimed. He is not going to walk away from the opportunity that he’s been waiting for all this time. You know he can’t.”
* * * *
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