Author's Note: I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever. School's gotten really busy for me, and I barely have time to breathe, let alone write for fun... Enjoy the new stuff and I hope you haven't forgotten the old!
Chapter Twenty Four
Sydney pulled her arms tightly against her body as she wandered down the snowy streets of Moscow. She had been to many cold places in her time working as a secret agent for both SD-6 and the CIA, but this was ridiculous. Her breath was practically freezing in the air in front of her face, and snow was continually blowing into her face, making it impossible to see more than two inches in front of her face. She had determined this whole situation was a little ridiculous, but there weren’t many other options to go with.
Vaughn had been conscious for over two weeks now, and still no one really knew why what had happened to him happened. There were no leads, no further investigation. They had nothing to go on except for the man in question’s crazy theory about his deceased ex-wife. Nothing really promising there.
Which served as the half-explanation why she was willing to wander from street to street on the coldest day in Russian history, waiting for her contact to greet her.
“Contact,” she muttered to herself with a laugh. That was almost funny.
Meeting up with Peter Connelly, Sark’s old mentor and father figure, was incredibly ironic, bordering on completely insane.
Sark was the one who had come up with idea the night before when she was telling him how frustrated she was by the CIA’s lack of forward motion on discovering more information about Vaughn’s illness. He explained that the reappearance of Connelly in his life couldn’t be coincidence. Maybe during his two missing years, he had gotten into contact with the man who had taught him almost everything.
“It made sense,” Sydney thought as she paused at a street crossing. If Sark had decided that she needed to be killed, he would only want the best helping him meet his objective. And obviously, the man who had trained him could be placed in that category.
“Hello, Ms. Bristow,” said a deep, male voice from behind her in Russian.
She turned to see a fairly attractive man with eyes that irritated her skin. There was something inherently creepy about the way they bored right into her and made her feel like she was standing in front of him naked and not in ten layers of clothing. He was a few inches shorter than her but made up for it in the large presence he had. She would have written him off as another guy hitting on her while she was on the job if he hadn’t addressed her rather directly by name.
“How do you know me?” she asked back in Russian, still looking him over in an attempt to figure out more information on who he was without actually having to ask him for it.
The man switched to English. Sydney immediately noted the slight British accent present in his voice. “I met you in Korea. You were trying to steal my warheads.”
Sydney was proud to find herself stifling the gasp which was on the tip of her tongue. “Peter Connelly?”
“Yes, Sydney. Can I call you Sydney? I hate these stupid formalities we have to go through in the field.”
“You can call me Sydney. But I want to let you know that charm doesn’t go very far with me. I need information.”
“Right to the point. No wonder Julian chose you.”
She almost let loose the huge smile when he said those words. So, there was a connection between Sark’s decision to have her killed three years ago and what’s happening to the people she loved now. “Chose me?” she asked, playing dumb.
“For his lover.”
Her heart sank. Connelly was just talking about her personal life. This had nothing to do with Vaughn and absolutely nothing to do with Sark‘s motivation for joining the Covenant. At least it had nothing to do with those things that she could see up front. “I figured it was more like I chose him.”
“Maybe you chose each other.”
“Why the hell are we talking about this on a cold street corner in Moscow?” she asked shrewdly.
“Excuse me, Sydney. My car is a block away. It has a wonderful heating system.”
Nodding, she followed him in silence as he led them down the street and into the car. When they had both climbed inside and relaxed slightly, he let out a large sigh. “That’s so much better.”
“Let’s get down to business.”
“Yes. What is your business with me?”
“I need information. Did Julian contact you three years ago to discuss the subject of eliminating me?”
“You go right for the jugular. A trait to be admired.” Connelly looked her over. “Nice costume by the way.”
Sydney unconsciously adjusted the ends of the small blond wig which were sticking out from underneath the extremely warm hat. “The same could be said of you. I really thought you were balding when we met in Korea. Makes me wonder if maybe you’re still in costume.”
Connelly laughed. “Would you like to feel my hair? Or will you take my word that it’s real? That I’m real? Because I didn’t show up in any sort of disguise. I want you to trust me, Sydney.”
“Why?”
“Because your trust can come in handy down the line.”
Sydney glared at him. “Let’s get one thing straight right now. I am not going to give you my trust, and I am not going to be indebted to you. You’re going to tell me what I want to know because that’s the only way you can insure I won’t kill you.”
“Oh you won’t kill me, Sydney. You need me.”
“Do I? Because all you’ve been giving me so far is some unwanted flirting and banter that I could get from home. I need information. I don’t need you.”
Connelly began to smile that large, wicked grin that Sydney had already begun to hate. “Yes. You are a spitfire. Just like your mother.”
This time, her glare turned into a rolling of the eyes. “If you think invoking my mother’s name is going to get you any farther, you are wrong. Every one I encounter in the field says that I’m just like my mother. I don’t know if it’s supposed to make me feel closer to them. Perhaps they use her in an attempt to gain my trust. Or maybe they just want to unsettle me a little so that they can gain the advantage. Either way, it doesn’t work. I just get pissed off.” She leaned in close to his ear, pressed the gun she had pulled into her hand a moment ago against his side, and whispered, “In case you didn’t pick up on it, I’m very, very pissed off right now. Talk, Connelly.”
“Now, now, Sydney. There’s no need to bring firearms into this situation.”
“I think there is a need,” she said, although she did ease back and pulled the gun away from him and down to her side in a relaxed position that still offered her the ability to shoot him with ease.
Peter Connelly stared at her for a moment before saying, “Sark did hire me to help him with his little situation.”
“Why? What exactly was the situation?”
“You two really don’t know anything about what went down.”
She groaned. “We were making progress there for a moment. You were talking. I was resisting the urge to kill you on the spot. Why did you have to screw it up?”
“I’m sorry. I just find this whole thing so intriguing. What happened to make you forget all that?”
Here eyes locked with him, and it was her lips that spread into a wicked grin this time. “There’s something you don’t know either, I take it. Because it was never really a secret why Julian and I don’t remember the events leading up to our work together for the Covenant. But obviously, a man of your stature isn’t privy to that kind of information. It’s sad, really. I thought you might be a little more of a player in this game. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“I suggest a little information exchange. I tell you what you want to know, and you satisfy my curiosity.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Agreed. Start talking.”
“Julian contacted me with an offer. I help him move himself up the hierarchy of spies, gain more power, get more say in what’s happening in the world, and he would make sure that I wasn’t bothered for the rest of my life. I’m getting old, in case you didn’t notice. It’s time for me to bow out with grace and dignity and let the younger kids take over.”
“And you have Sark, your little protégé, to carry on with the good fight.”
“Exactly. I trained him for years just for that moment. So, naturally, I agreed. When he explained that all he needed from me was help in killing one spy, a woman, an American, I practically laughed in his face. The trade he proposed was far from fair.” Connelly turned purposefully so that he could look her in the eye. “I’ll admit I wasn’t familiar with your work at the time. If I had been, I would have realized that the short end of the stick was on my half and not his.”
“So, how did you help him?”
“I convinced him that the only way to kill you was to first gain your trust.”
“That’s the first thing we learn when studying how to get into a mercenary’s mind. Tell me something I don’t know, Connelly.”
“You can call me Peter.”
“I don’t want to,” she said, continuing to scowl at him.
“Okay then. We’ll just move on. Julian told me everything he knew about you. It took a long time since the boy seemed to be such a great fan of you. Not only did he know about every mission you had ever gone on with any of the agencies you worked with, he also knew every single detail of your personal life, right down to the way you eat a sandwich. That was what gave me the idea on how to gain your trust. I told Julian that all he had to do was convince you that he was secretly in love with you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Her cool demeanor was beginning to falter. Sydney couldn’t understand why her romantic relationship with Sark had anything to do with his motives. They hadn’t even gotten involved with one another until both of them were submerged in the Covenant with no way of getting out. Connelly wasn’t making any sense.
“Doesn’t it make sense? I would have thought you’d be quicker to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Maybe I have overestimated you.” He waited for her snappy comeback and was disappointed when she just stared at him. “The boy was already halfway to love at that point, and he hadn’t even spent that much time in the field with you. I figured if anything was going to shape him into the super spy that I needed him to be, it would be killing the woman he loved.”
“There’s always the death of the woman the man loved in the stories,” Sydney volunteered. “That’s nothing new. What I don’t see is what went wrong in our particular situation. He did love me. I’m not going to doubt that, no matter how much I think you want me to. But he didn’t kill me. He didn’t even try.”
“No. He didn’t. The only thing I can think of is maybe he figured it was more beneficial to keep you alive for a bit. I don’t doubt that he was going to kill you at some point. But somehow you found a way out of the Covenant and his clutches. You were a worthy adversary.”
“So my escaping the Covenant was the only reason he didn’t kill me?”
“I have known Julian since he was little. He doesn’t let his emotions get in the way of his job. It’s what makes him so good. When Julian sets his mind to something, nothing and no one can deter him from that objective.”
“What you’re telling me makes no sense.” She shook her head at him in disbelief. Never in a million years had she thought this would be the information that Connelly had for her.
“Sydney, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but I really don’t think Julian ever decided to not kill you. He’s just biding his time until the situation arises where he can get away with it. That was why I wanted to gain your trust before getting into the nitty gritty. I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
The words stung her to her core. It was something she had always been afraid of, a nagging fear in the back of her mind. A little voice whispered to her every morning before she was fully awake that she was stupid to let Sark that close. The man was a cold-hearted killer once, and things like that don‘t change easily. “You’re trying to tell me that he’s still trying to kill me even as we speak?”
“Let me ask you this. Has he tried to make a lasting commitment with you?”
“Yes,” she said, defiantly, sure that he was expecting her to say no.
He nodded. “Then you are really in trouble. Commitment makes an agent sloppy. Forgetting what their job is and the dangers it entails is the quickest way to get you killed. He’s distracting you with everything he has. Has he started to attack your friends and family? I don’t mean outright. But has there been weird unexplained occurrences involving the people you care about?”
Sydney’s mind flew to Vaughn. It made sense. If Sark was trying to kill her, hurting Vaughn would keep her distracted enough to finish her off.
The problem with that was, somehow, even though they had that rich history between one another, she could no longer picture Sark hurting Vaughn. Somewhere, somehow, they had developed respect for each other. Mostly she thought that it was due to her presence in both their lives, but now she wasn’t sure. Sark could just be calculating that his reformation into one of the good guys would keep her guard down, making it easier for him to complete what he had started three years earlier.
“Now, I have shared some information with you, given you my trust. I would like to see something in return.”
She wiped the tears that were forming in the corners of her eyes away as quickly as possible. “You wanted to know why Julian and I don’t remember the specifics about his position in the Covenant during the time I went missing? Well, obviously, I didn’t know because it seems he’s been hiding anything and everything from me. Skilled killers never let their victims in on their plans, you know.”
Connelly nodded in agreement. “The movies get that wrong every time. Telling people too much information is a juvenile mistake that no one makes anymore.”
“So, obviously, the reason I’m in the dark is because Sark has kept me there.”
“I did know that,” Connelly agreed.
“So, now all you want to know is why Sark is so confused by his newly materialized motives.” Sydney wiped another set of tears away. The absurdity of the situation made her spit out a small laugh. She had just found out that the man she loved had planned on killing her and still intended to kill her, and all the person brave enough to tell her the truth wanted in return was to know why Sark wasn‘t carrying through with his plans.
Taking a deep breath, she prepared to answer Connelly. “He told me that we both needed to get our memories of our time together erased. He said that it was the only way to protect ourselves and the ones we loved. So he took me to some specialist he knew in Zurich. I guess that was all a sham, too?”
“No, I think he really did have his memory erased. He must have let something slip when he was with you. Given you some sort of hint to what he was planning on doing. The Julian I know would go to any lengths to meet an objective he had set.”
“Even erasing his memories?”
“He only erased up until the point where you two worked together in the Covenant. He still remembered his objective to terminate you.” Connelly watched her face pale as she realized that he was right. “What? You object to my using of that word?”
“It’s so cold,” she managed to spit out in his general direction. Her mind was racing with the possibilities that Connelly’s words created. If Julian had intended to stop himself from killing her, he would have erased his memories back far enough to do just that. Somewhere inside of him, he chose not to give up his decision to kill her. “Terminate is a brutal word, Connelly.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “You need to accept that that’s how he thinks of you. Cold and detached. You‘re really nothing to him except another mission to carry out.”
Sydney’s face lit up in realization and pain as the tears continued to pool in her eyes. “He did say something odd to me right before we got into the car accident on my last mission working with the Covenant. I asked him if he was mad that I had been working with the CIA during the last part of our partnership. He told me that in the end it didn’t matter. At the time, I chalked it up to him saying that he had faith in what was between us. But, come to think of it, after that moment, he was a little distant.”
“Almost like he was measuring you?”
“Exactly like that.” Sydney let a new round of tears out, this time not stopping them as they fell down her cheek. “I can’t believe that Julian would do something like this.”
“He would, and he is. You need to be careful, Miss Bristow.” Connelly leaned across her and pulled the handle that opened the door. “It’s a cold, cruel world out there.”
“That’s it? You’re kicking me out? There’s so much more I need you to tell me.” She was in complete shock that he wanted her gone.
“I’ve said too much already,” he explained. “I don’t want you to get overloaded with all this new information. You need to stay focus if you’re going to stay alive.”
“Because he’s still trying to kill me,” she said out loud, mostly to remind herself. She stepped out of the car and turned to look back at Connelly through the open door. “Do you think he ever really loved me?”
Connelly grabbed the handle of the door. “Honestly?”
She nodded.
“No,” he said softly before shutting the door.
That final word made her last few defenses break down, and she sunk down onto the snow-covered ground. Hiding her face in her hands, she let the sobs take over. She could feel Connelly’s eyes watching her as his car sat for a moment before speeding away. She let herself cry for a few more moments before pulling herself together and standing up.
She watched as the car disappeared in the far horizon, knowing how dejected and pitiful she must look to him. Unable to help it, she felt her mouth twitch up in a slight grin.
“Obviously he underestimated you, love,” Sark said, stepping out from the doorway of the building behind her.
After brushing the snow she picked up on herself when she had sunk to the ground a few seconds earlier, Sydney pulled the ear piece out of her ear and tossed it to him. “The bastard lied to me, Julian.”
“You lied to him, too. I never said that you’re working for the CIA didn’t matter to me. I was bloody pissed off at you for going behind my back.”
“Yeah. But the lie, in addition to the broken heart and the crying, helped sell my story.” She pulled her hat and wig off in one motion, which also released the bobby pin that had been holding her real hair down. Separating the two, she dropped the wig onto the ground and placed the hat back onto her head. “Those wigs are itchy. I really need to talk to wardrobe about that.” She slipped her arm into his and started walking down the street. “So how much of that do you think was true?”
“A good portion. He had to use the truth to make it convincing. I think that I might have gone to him at some point for help in eliminating you as a way of getting into a better standing in the spy world. It sounds like something I would do.”
“So you think he told you to get me to fall in love with you so that my guard would be down and you could kill me?”
“It was a good plan. Too bad he didn’t think about its one weakness.”
Sydney leaned her head against his shoulder as they continued walking. “And what would that be?”
“The fact that I wasn’t supposed to give into to any sort of feeling I had for you. Knowing what I know now, that’s the most impossible thing to do. He might have thought I was half in love with you when we started this little endeavor, but he didn’t realize what a stupid thing it would be to let me go the other half of the way. I mean, even if he didn‘t know what a great spy you were, you have several attributes that a man couldn’t resist like the legs that go on for miles and the stunning ability to respond to anything with a sarcastic comment. ”
“Aw. I think you were actually being sweet to me there for a moment.”
He smiled at her. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
“Speaking of not telling anyone, I think your father is the only one who knows about our engagement.”
“Yeah. I’ve been dreading telling anyone else. They’re just starting to get used to the fact that you’re a big fixture in my life. I’m trying to ease them into it.”
“You have to tell them eventually.”
She lifted her head up and looked him in the eyes. “I know. I think it’s best to wait until we’re sure that you’re not still trying to kill me.”
Sark smirked at her and shrugged. “It’s only fair.”