Fic: Spending Eternity (3/?)
Title: Spending Eternity (3/?)
Timeline: After the series finale
Pairings: Sydney/Sloane eventually. Past Sydney/Vaughn
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Six years after the series finale, an older man who calls himself Giovanni and a younger woman who goes by the name of Emelia live in separate estates on the coast of Italy. The last time she saw him she put a bullet in his forehead. The last he'd heard she was dead.
Sydney was a little surprised that Sloane wasn’t waiting for her outside the bookstore the next day. Somehow she didn’t believe that he planned to leave her alone, especially after she had had the last word in their conversation yesterday.
She breathed deeply, enjoying the fresh scent of the breeze off of the ocean. She had lived by the ocean her whole life, of course, but it had never smelled the same in Los Angeles as it did here. Here, it meant freedom, and life, and peace. There it had been marred by the smog and the cloying weight of the secrets and lies that surrounded her.
She was still surrounded by secrets and lies in her new life, but now she wore them like a cloak, embraced them.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, composing her face. Seeing Sloane yesterday had been…more than unpleasant, and she worried that her expression might show it. Her other hand she kept tucked in her pocket, concealing the loose swathe of bandages she had wrapped around the injured areas. The cuts from the glass had not been deep, but her hand was littered with small scabs.
The bell over the door chimed as she stepped inside. She inhaled deeply; she loved the musty smell of old books. “Good morning, Carlo,” she said cheerfully.
The old man stood up from his desk with a wide smile and open arms. “Bella,” he greeted. “It is so good to see you.”
She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry for coming yesterday,” she said. “I know you weren’t expecting me.”
“You know you are welcome any time,” Carlo rebuked gently. “I am just sorry that that man was there.” He glanced at her sidelong glance. “Did you know him? You both left fairly quickly.”
Sydney laughed. “I met him once before on a business trip,” she explained. “We didn’t talk much then, but we remembered each other because it turned out that we had the same surname.”
Carlo raised an eyebrow. “Are you related?” He knew nothing about her family.
“No, nothing like that,” she hastened to say. “Just an amusing coincidence.”
He nodded, taking her words at face value as he returned to his desk. “Well, your books came in the day before yesterday,” he said, bending and retrieving a package wrapped in brown paper. “The Tolstoy was particularly hard to find, but I finally tracked it down to a nice little store in Amsterdam.”
She smiled gratefully as she took the package. “Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate you going to such lengths for me.”
He waved her thanks away. “Do you have a package for me to send to my friend in Rome?” he asked. “You know he loves your restorations. I still don’t know where you get such rare books.”
“Family secret,” she said with a wink, pulling her wallet from her purse and handing him the pre-counted cash. In the old days she would never have paid so much for books, rare or no, but she was living a new life now. “And no, I don’t have anything to send today, but I’m just finishing a restoration of a copy of War and Peace that he’s going to drool over. I’ll bring it sometime in the next few days.”
“I’ll be here,” he said. “Would you like to look at anything else?”
She tucked the package under her arm. “I’m good, thanks,” she said. “Have a great day, Carlo, and say hello to Lucia for me.”
“I will,” he promised. He eyed her in a fatherly way. “Actually, you should stop in at the bakery before you go home, Emelia,” he said. “You’re too thin.”
“You’re sweet,” she said with another smile. They kissed on the cheek again before she left the store.
She did stop in at the bakery before she left the town, stepping inside to be greeted by a chorus of “Emelia!” from Lucia-Carlo’s wife-and the young woman who helped with the baking. She ordered some cannoli.
She had parked her car-her other Mercedes-at a small parking lot primarily meant for tourists and she headed back there once she was done at the bakery. She unlocked the doors and tossed the package and pastries onto the passenger seat.
The drive to her estate was long and beautiful. The road ran alongside the ocean most of the way, the blue-green vista spreading out into the curved horizon. The car purred beneath her, the V8 engine handling the light inclines easily. She had never been interested in owning nice cars as Sydney Bristow, but since moving to Italy she had come to love them. Opera poured quietly from the speakers, more soothing than she really wanted, but music with the kind of beat she wanted did not really match the Emelia persona. Even if Emelia was who she was now.
At last as the road began to curve inward she veered off onto a narrow dirt road back toward the ocean. It extended only a short way before an iron gate blocked her path. She lowered her window as she pulled up to a small black key pad, pulling a card from her pocket and swiping it through before dialing an eight digit number on the pad-the number was Isabelle’s birth date plus Jack’s, run through a fairly sophisticated encryption program.
She drove through the now-open gate and waited to make sure that it closed behind her, then carefully drove around the large, deep pit in the center of the road that was covered by very thin wooden boards and concealed by a layer of dirt and grass. She drove nearly a mile through the woods before her home came into view. It was not quite a mansion, but if it had been any larger it would have been. The walls were off-white, with the typical baked red tiles of houses in the area. There was a large yard with luscious flowers that spilled out onto the neatly-trimmed grass. As she pulled into the driveway she noticed a small mound in the grass and her lips tightened.
Moles. She hated moles.
Her displeasure lifted immediately as she parked next to the house and climbed out. The sound of eager barking filled her ears as a medium-sized dog charged around the house at full speed, leaping onto her and bathing her face and arms with slobber before dropping to all fours.
Sydney laughed as she ran her hand over the top of his shaggy head. “Good boy, Will,” she cooed, crouching to hold his face in her hands and rub her nose against his. “You’re such a good boy.”
She hadn’t meant to name the dog after her old friend. She’d found him on the drive to her house nearly a year ago, beaten and hungry. She didn’t know what breed he was, probably some mixture of border collie and golden retriever. He had fallen in love with her almost immediately and spent his days following her around the house and yard. She hadn’t known what to name him until the third time he broke into the kitchen after she told him not to, too eager to investigate the exciting things which were surely hidden inside. Then the name had just come to her.
She walked around the car and opened the passenger door, pulling out the packages. She entered the house through the front door, pushing the key into the lock before putting her eye against the peep hole for a retina scan. Then she turned the key in the lock and stepped inside, Will following on her heels with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.
The house was beautiful, inside and out. The kind of place she had never dreamed of owning herself. The foyer led directly to a marble staircase. Continuing past the stairs she walked past the large living room and into the kitchen, where she placed the cannoli and her purse on the counter. The kitchen was large and had an island with a set of six gas burners on the stove.
The walls were shades of green, mostly a rich hue that reminded her of the woods around the house. They were decorated with pictures in simple frames: her father, her sister, Vaughn, Weiss, Dixon and Diane, Marshall with Mitchell and Carrie, Francie, Danny, Will, and of course her children, though the pictures were somewhat outdated. They would have grown much larger in the two years since she’d seen them. She bit down hard on the side of her mouth at the thought, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it.
She walked back to the staircase, ascending the stairs two at a time. The second floor held two furnished spare bedrooms which had never been slept in, an exercise room with the latest in gym equipment, and a small room with a doggie bed which was meant for Will. That room had never been slept in, either; the dog always managed to sneak his way onto her bed sometime in the night and she never had the heart to push him away.
She continued up to the third floor, which housed storage space and her two offices-one for her day to day business and book restoration, the other for her brief forays back into her other life. She dialed the fourteen digit code for the latter office (the phone number of her childhood home and the phone number from the apartment that burned down when she fought Not Francie, run through a different encryption program), said “Derevko” to the voice print analyzer, and breathed into the tube that obligingly emerged from the wall. The thick steel door slid aside, revealing a large room filled with state-of-the-art equipment: a powerful computer with two monitors, an ergonomic keyboard, faxing and copying equipment, and some gadgets that Marshall might have taken credit for with pride if he’d been the one to make them.
This was the one room in the house where Will was not to follow her, which he knew. He sat at the door and watched as she entered, his golden eyes mournful although his tail twitched hopefully when she turned to send him a regretful smile. The motion sensors sensed when she entered and closed the door behind her with a resounding thud.
She sat at the desk, placing the package in her lap. She pushed the power buttons on the computer and one of the monitors, then set to unwrapping the package swiftly, dropping the paper into the wastebasket next to her. The book on top was the Tolstoy Carlo had mentioned, and she caressed its cover lovingly before setting it gently on the desk. The second was a first edition of Through the Looking Glass. She held the book in her lap, turning carefully to page 47. That particular page had not been her choice. She ran her fingers lightly down the page, enjoying the slightly rough texture before her finger caught on a different, smoother texture. She slid her fingernail under the thin film, the size of a stamp, and gently pried it off.
She set the book on the desk and held the film up to the desk light, quickly memorizing the long series of numbers written there. Then she filled a cup of water from the sink against one wall of the office and dropped the film in, watching to make sure it dissolved fully before pouring the water down the drain.
She sat again and stared at the computer. Her fingers flew over the keys, first logging on and then connecting with the secure network. The code she had just memorized and destroyed gave her complete access to the account she wanted.
Her eyes scanned a list of numbers and figures and she typed quickly, depositing money from one of her other accounts into this one. She turned next to the message that was waiting for her in the account.
“All going well.” She felt muscles she hadn’t known were tense begin to relax. “Events are proceeding as planned. More funds required.” She thought the amount she’d just put in would suffice, but decided to add more just in case. “On another note, Isabelle and Jack-” Her finger twitched spasmodically on the mouse, closing the message. Eyes flashing furiously she opened a window to type her response.
“Continue with the plans. Have added more money, which should suffice. Inform me of any new players. Continue to keep tabs on the children. Never mention them again.”
She stared at the message for a long moment, her face tight, before clicking send. She added more money to the account, scanned the reports again, and signed out. She relaxed her mental control to allow herself to forget the numbers she had just memorized-though due to her near-perfect memory they would linger for some time. The numbers were good for one use only and she received a new one once a month.
She turned to her other accounts, sending some e-mails and moving money, then checked upcoming flights, putting together an entire itinerary that would to take her to Mongolia and back in the next few days. She stared at it for a full five minutes, the mouse posed over the button marked “submit.” At last she sighed, closed the window, and logged out.
She stood, picking up the books. She slapped her hand against a button on the wall, waiting as the door slid open.
Will barked, tail wagging. He hadn’t moved since she went in. Emelia grinned. “What?” she asked cheerfully, ruffling his fur. “Is someone hungry? Me too. Let’s get something to eat. Then we can play in the garden.”
********************
Giovanni had decided the night before not to go to the bookstore the next day. Instead he caught an early train back to Monterosso Al Mare. From there he called his driver to come and take him back to his estate.
His house was a mansion about twenty minutes from the town. In many ways it resembled the home he and Emily had chosen during his brief stint as a retiree, though it was larger and had fewer flowers. Normally he found some comfort in the simple pleasure of observing the house as he approached, but today he was too wrapped up in his thoughts.
He did not wait for the driver to open his door but opened it himself, striding swiftly into the house and heading straight for his office computer. There he pulled up the many files he had saved in a folder labeled simply “Sydney.”
The first file he opened was a picture. It had been taken by one of the many bugs Allison Doren had placed in Sydney’s apartment, but he didn’t care to think about how he’d gotten it. Sydney was laughing in the picture, light hearted in a way he could barely remember from her. Her face was flush with happiness, her head thrown back, the wrinkles around her eyes from laughter for once instead of stress. She was beautiful.
Yes. He nodded decisively. He was reassured that he had not been delusional, hallucinating. This was the woman he’d seen, spoken to, yesterday.
The next file was a newspaper article. The headline read, “Local Banker in Coma After Heroic Effort.” It included a picture taken outside a bank, with Sydney-yes, he told himself, that was definitely Sydney-on a gurney being wheeled to an ambulance, police cars and reporters all around. The picture was taken from a bad angle, but it was clear that Sydney was pale. Though the pictures were in black and white he could just make out the bloodstains on her dark suit.
The bank was not Credit Dauphine. If it had been he might have been much more suspicious about the reality of her death, but she had undoubtedly considered that and covered herself well.
The next file was a video clip, depicting a young pregnant woman standing outside of the bank immediately following the robbery.
“I was so scared,” the woman said tearfully. “I had just come in to cash some checks when these men with guns burst in. They screamed for us to get down on the floor, and then they started grabbing money from the registers. One of the security guards, he tried to fight back. He-he had a gun, and he raised it. They were about to shoot him when this woman in a suit-I think they said she worked at the bank-she just jumped right in front of him, and they shot her instead. She saved his life.”
Sloane’s face was stony as he closed the file and opened another. This was another newspaper article. “Hero Banker Taken Off Life Support.” Apparently Michael Vaughn had kept Sydney on life support for nearly a month before getting the courage to take her off. Sloane would not have waited so long; he knew that for someone like Sydney, who was so vivacious and intelligent, the thought of being in a coma from which she could never awaken, of being a vegetable for the rest of her life, was worse than death.
Sloane had attended this funeral as he had her previous funeral: watching through a pair of high-powered binoculars from a short distance down the beach. He’d thought it tacky to spread the same woman’s ashes at sea twice, but Vaughn had looked impressively pained both times and he supposed that was what counted. The second time had been even more painful for Sloane than the first, not least because this time instead of Jack being there it was four year old Isabelle and baby Jack. The older Jack’s absence had been a stark reminder of the losses he had brought upon himself. The children’s presence reminded him of the role he had played long ago when Sydney lost her mother. He remembered how Laura Bristow’s supposed death had destroyed Sydney when she had been a child, the way that it had driven Jack to alcoholism and neglect.
Sloane resolved then that if Vaughn showed any symptoms of heading in the same direction-of being more wrapped up in his own grief than his children’s lives-that he would see the children taken from him and given to a loving family. Even thought dead he had enough influence to manage that. Maybe the Dixons, since Marcus had recently wed Hayden Chase after a long-time affair. Even Marshall and his clan of geeks would be better than leaving the children to be neglected and unloved. Vaughn had not shown any such signs yet, however, and so for now the children remained in his care.
In his thoughts Sloane never thought of Isabelle and Jack as Sydney and Vaughn’s children. They were Sydney’s children; Vaughn’s involvement was not worth mention or consideration.
The final file was a CIA document it had taken a month of hacking and quite a lot of bribery to get. It described the CIA’s investigation into Sydney’s death, which had ultimately classified it as nothing more than what it looked like: a botched robbery.
How had she done it? Sloane pondered the question as he leaned back in his chair, staring at the CIA report. She was an incredibly talented agent, of course, so he wasn’t surprised by her ability to disappear or her apparently large supply of funds. Faking a robbery and death required more people than just her, though. She couldn’t have done it alone. He was convinced that none of Sydney’s close friends or family had been involved. Their grief had been very real.
How had she done it? She had been on life support for a full month before being taken off and left to die peacefully. The switch must have occurred before then, someone else’s body for hers, someone who must have been a Project Helix clone. More than a clone, even-the look-alike would have had to have Sydney’s scars and old broken bones to pass close, long-term inspection.
Clearly she had pulled it off, so really the question he should have been asking was why she had done it. He stared at the pictures on his desk as he brooded. One showed him and Jack on a mission when they were both much younger men. Jack had his arm slung over Sloane’s shoulder as they both held their mugs of beer in a toast. That was the day Jack found out he was going to be a father. Another picture was of Nadia, taken midway through the blessed year when she had worked at APO. She was sitting on his sofa with one of her legs outstretched and her other knee pulled up to her chest with a book balanced on it, reading with a slight furrow in her brow. He could never look at the picture without remembering how she died, the way her apparition had haunted him in the days and months to follow.
The last picture was of Sydney with her children: Isabelle at her side and baby Jack in her arms. Sloane had stolen the picture from their house shortly after Sydney’s death; there had been so many photos that he was sure this one wouldn’t be missed. It had been his favorite of the pictures in their house, not least because Vaughn was not in it.
Sydney did not look unhappy in the picture, though surely by the time it was taken she was already plotting how to fake her own death. Her love for her children was obvious even though she wasn’t looking at either of them. Isabelle was leaning into Sydney’s leg, an adoring expression on her face-so like Sydney’s at that age-as she gazed up at her mother. Jack looked as happy as a baby could be. Sydney’s face was perhaps a little more tense than a young mother should be, a little too thin-but though Sloane wanted to he couldn’t blame Vaughn for not noticing that she was on the verge of abandoning her entire life. Based on this picture he wouldn’t have expected it either.
Sloane heaved a great sigh as he tore his eyes from the picture. He laid his fingers on the computer keyboard, hesitating only a moment before signing onto one of his old accounts. He sent a cryptic e-mail to a contact he knew he could trust not to go blabbing about his reappearance, then began setting up a new account, looking into arranging new contacts.
If Sydney found out-and he was fairly certain she would-she would be furious. She’d probably try to kill him. He doubted she’d give him time to explain that he was doing this to help her, to protect her against the other Rambaldi fanatics in the world. If Rambaldi’s devices were in his hands then he would know that they could not hurt Sydney, because he would never hurt her intentionally.
It was for her own good, really, that he was going to stretch out his feelers and start collecting a few Rambaldi artifacts. It never even occurred to him to doubt himself.
Timeline: After the series finale
Pairings: Sydney/Sloane eventually. Past Sydney/Vaughn
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Six years after the series finale, an older man who calls himself Giovanni and a younger woman who goes by the name of Emelia live in separate estates on the coast of Italy. The last time she saw him she put a bullet in his forehead. The last he'd heard she was dead.
Sydney was a little surprised that Sloane wasn’t waiting for her outside the bookstore the next day. Somehow she didn’t believe that he planned to leave her alone, especially after she had had the last word in their conversation yesterday.
She breathed deeply, enjoying the fresh scent of the breeze off of the ocean. She had lived by the ocean her whole life, of course, but it had never smelled the same in Los Angeles as it did here. Here, it meant freedom, and life, and peace. There it had been marred by the smog and the cloying weight of the secrets and lies that surrounded her.
She was still surrounded by secrets and lies in her new life, but now she wore them like a cloak, embraced them.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, composing her face. Seeing Sloane yesterday had been…more than unpleasant, and she worried that her expression might show it. Her other hand she kept tucked in her pocket, concealing the loose swathe of bandages she had wrapped around the injured areas. The cuts from the glass had not been deep, but her hand was littered with small scabs.
The bell over the door chimed as she stepped inside. She inhaled deeply; she loved the musty smell of old books. “Good morning, Carlo,” she said cheerfully.
The old man stood up from his desk with a wide smile and open arms. “Bella,” he greeted. “It is so good to see you.”
She gave him a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “I’m sorry for coming yesterday,” she said. “I know you weren’t expecting me.”
“You know you are welcome any time,” Carlo rebuked gently. “I am just sorry that that man was there.” He glanced at her sidelong glance. “Did you know him? You both left fairly quickly.”
Sydney laughed. “I met him once before on a business trip,” she explained. “We didn’t talk much then, but we remembered each other because it turned out that we had the same surname.”
Carlo raised an eyebrow. “Are you related?” He knew nothing about her family.
“No, nothing like that,” she hastened to say. “Just an amusing coincidence.”
He nodded, taking her words at face value as he returned to his desk. “Well, your books came in the day before yesterday,” he said, bending and retrieving a package wrapped in brown paper. “The Tolstoy was particularly hard to find, but I finally tracked it down to a nice little store in Amsterdam.”
She smiled gratefully as she took the package. “Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate you going to such lengths for me.”
He waved her thanks away. “Do you have a package for me to send to my friend in Rome?” he asked. “You know he loves your restorations. I still don’t know where you get such rare books.”
“Family secret,” she said with a wink, pulling her wallet from her purse and handing him the pre-counted cash. In the old days she would never have paid so much for books, rare or no, but she was living a new life now. “And no, I don’t have anything to send today, but I’m just finishing a restoration of a copy of War and Peace that he’s going to drool over. I’ll bring it sometime in the next few days.”
“I’ll be here,” he said. “Would you like to look at anything else?”
She tucked the package under her arm. “I’m good, thanks,” she said. “Have a great day, Carlo, and say hello to Lucia for me.”
“I will,” he promised. He eyed her in a fatherly way. “Actually, you should stop in at the bakery before you go home, Emelia,” he said. “You’re too thin.”
“You’re sweet,” she said with another smile. They kissed on the cheek again before she left the store.
She did stop in at the bakery before she left the town, stepping inside to be greeted by a chorus of “Emelia!” from Lucia-Carlo’s wife-and the young woman who helped with the baking. She ordered some cannoli.
She had parked her car-her other Mercedes-at a small parking lot primarily meant for tourists and she headed back there once she was done at the bakery. She unlocked the doors and tossed the package and pastries onto the passenger seat.
The drive to her estate was long and beautiful. The road ran alongside the ocean most of the way, the blue-green vista spreading out into the curved horizon. The car purred beneath her, the V8 engine handling the light inclines easily. She had never been interested in owning nice cars as Sydney Bristow, but since moving to Italy she had come to love them. Opera poured quietly from the speakers, more soothing than she really wanted, but music with the kind of beat she wanted did not really match the Emelia persona. Even if Emelia was who she was now.
At last as the road began to curve inward she veered off onto a narrow dirt road back toward the ocean. It extended only a short way before an iron gate blocked her path. She lowered her window as she pulled up to a small black key pad, pulling a card from her pocket and swiping it through before dialing an eight digit number on the pad-the number was Isabelle’s birth date plus Jack’s, run through a fairly sophisticated encryption program.
She drove through the now-open gate and waited to make sure that it closed behind her, then carefully drove around the large, deep pit in the center of the road that was covered by very thin wooden boards and concealed by a layer of dirt and grass. She drove nearly a mile through the woods before her home came into view. It was not quite a mansion, but if it had been any larger it would have been. The walls were off-white, with the typical baked red tiles of houses in the area. There was a large yard with luscious flowers that spilled out onto the neatly-trimmed grass. As she pulled into the driveway she noticed a small mound in the grass and her lips tightened.
Moles. She hated moles.
Her displeasure lifted immediately as she parked next to the house and climbed out. The sound of eager barking filled her ears as a medium-sized dog charged around the house at full speed, leaping onto her and bathing her face and arms with slobber before dropping to all fours.
Sydney laughed as she ran her hand over the top of his shaggy head. “Good boy, Will,” she cooed, crouching to hold his face in her hands and rub her nose against his. “You’re such a good boy.”
She hadn’t meant to name the dog after her old friend. She’d found him on the drive to her house nearly a year ago, beaten and hungry. She didn’t know what breed he was, probably some mixture of border collie and golden retriever. He had fallen in love with her almost immediately and spent his days following her around the house and yard. She hadn’t known what to name him until the third time he broke into the kitchen after she told him not to, too eager to investigate the exciting things which were surely hidden inside. Then the name had just come to her.
She walked around the car and opened the passenger door, pulling out the packages. She entered the house through the front door, pushing the key into the lock before putting her eye against the peep hole for a retina scan. Then she turned the key in the lock and stepped inside, Will following on her heels with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.
The house was beautiful, inside and out. The kind of place she had never dreamed of owning herself. The foyer led directly to a marble staircase. Continuing past the stairs she walked past the large living room and into the kitchen, where she placed the cannoli and her purse on the counter. The kitchen was large and had an island with a set of six gas burners on the stove.
The walls were shades of green, mostly a rich hue that reminded her of the woods around the house. They were decorated with pictures in simple frames: her father, her sister, Vaughn, Weiss, Dixon and Diane, Marshall with Mitchell and Carrie, Francie, Danny, Will, and of course her children, though the pictures were somewhat outdated. They would have grown much larger in the two years since she’d seen them. She bit down hard on the side of her mouth at the thought, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it.
She walked back to the staircase, ascending the stairs two at a time. The second floor held two furnished spare bedrooms which had never been slept in, an exercise room with the latest in gym equipment, and a small room with a doggie bed which was meant for Will. That room had never been slept in, either; the dog always managed to sneak his way onto her bed sometime in the night and she never had the heart to push him away.
She continued up to the third floor, which housed storage space and her two offices-one for her day to day business and book restoration, the other for her brief forays back into her other life. She dialed the fourteen digit code for the latter office (the phone number of her childhood home and the phone number from the apartment that burned down when she fought Not Francie, run through a different encryption program), said “Derevko” to the voice print analyzer, and breathed into the tube that obligingly emerged from the wall. The thick steel door slid aside, revealing a large room filled with state-of-the-art equipment: a powerful computer with two monitors, an ergonomic keyboard, faxing and copying equipment, and some gadgets that Marshall might have taken credit for with pride if he’d been the one to make them.
This was the one room in the house where Will was not to follow her, which he knew. He sat at the door and watched as she entered, his golden eyes mournful although his tail twitched hopefully when she turned to send him a regretful smile. The motion sensors sensed when she entered and closed the door behind her with a resounding thud.
She sat at the desk, placing the package in her lap. She pushed the power buttons on the computer and one of the monitors, then set to unwrapping the package swiftly, dropping the paper into the wastebasket next to her. The book on top was the Tolstoy Carlo had mentioned, and she caressed its cover lovingly before setting it gently on the desk. The second was a first edition of Through the Looking Glass. She held the book in her lap, turning carefully to page 47. That particular page had not been her choice. She ran her fingers lightly down the page, enjoying the slightly rough texture before her finger caught on a different, smoother texture. She slid her fingernail under the thin film, the size of a stamp, and gently pried it off.
She set the book on the desk and held the film up to the desk light, quickly memorizing the long series of numbers written there. Then she filled a cup of water from the sink against one wall of the office and dropped the film in, watching to make sure it dissolved fully before pouring the water down the drain.
She sat again and stared at the computer. Her fingers flew over the keys, first logging on and then connecting with the secure network. The code she had just memorized and destroyed gave her complete access to the account she wanted.
Her eyes scanned a list of numbers and figures and she typed quickly, depositing money from one of her other accounts into this one. She turned next to the message that was waiting for her in the account.
“All going well.” She felt muscles she hadn’t known were tense begin to relax. “Events are proceeding as planned. More funds required.” She thought the amount she’d just put in would suffice, but decided to add more just in case. “On another note, Isabelle and Jack-” Her finger twitched spasmodically on the mouse, closing the message. Eyes flashing furiously she opened a window to type her response.
“Continue with the plans. Have added more money, which should suffice. Inform me of any new players. Continue to keep tabs on the children. Never mention them again.”
She stared at the message for a long moment, her face tight, before clicking send. She added more money to the account, scanned the reports again, and signed out. She relaxed her mental control to allow herself to forget the numbers she had just memorized-though due to her near-perfect memory they would linger for some time. The numbers were good for one use only and she received a new one once a month.
She turned to her other accounts, sending some e-mails and moving money, then checked upcoming flights, putting together an entire itinerary that would to take her to Mongolia and back in the next few days. She stared at it for a full five minutes, the mouse posed over the button marked “submit.” At last she sighed, closed the window, and logged out.
She stood, picking up the books. She slapped her hand against a button on the wall, waiting as the door slid open.
Will barked, tail wagging. He hadn’t moved since she went in. Emelia grinned. “What?” she asked cheerfully, ruffling his fur. “Is someone hungry? Me too. Let’s get something to eat. Then we can play in the garden.”
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Giovanni had decided the night before not to go to the bookstore the next day. Instead he caught an early train back to Monterosso Al Mare. From there he called his driver to come and take him back to his estate.
His house was a mansion about twenty minutes from the town. In many ways it resembled the home he and Emily had chosen during his brief stint as a retiree, though it was larger and had fewer flowers. Normally he found some comfort in the simple pleasure of observing the house as he approached, but today he was too wrapped up in his thoughts.
He did not wait for the driver to open his door but opened it himself, striding swiftly into the house and heading straight for his office computer. There he pulled up the many files he had saved in a folder labeled simply “Sydney.”
The first file he opened was a picture. It had been taken by one of the many bugs Allison Doren had placed in Sydney’s apartment, but he didn’t care to think about how he’d gotten it. Sydney was laughing in the picture, light hearted in a way he could barely remember from her. Her face was flush with happiness, her head thrown back, the wrinkles around her eyes from laughter for once instead of stress. She was beautiful.
Yes. He nodded decisively. He was reassured that he had not been delusional, hallucinating. This was the woman he’d seen, spoken to, yesterday.
The next file was a newspaper article. The headline read, “Local Banker in Coma After Heroic Effort.” It included a picture taken outside a bank, with Sydney-yes, he told himself, that was definitely Sydney-on a gurney being wheeled to an ambulance, police cars and reporters all around. The picture was taken from a bad angle, but it was clear that Sydney was pale. Though the pictures were in black and white he could just make out the bloodstains on her dark suit.
The bank was not Credit Dauphine. If it had been he might have been much more suspicious about the reality of her death, but she had undoubtedly considered that and covered herself well.
The next file was a video clip, depicting a young pregnant woman standing outside of the bank immediately following the robbery.
“I was so scared,” the woman said tearfully. “I had just come in to cash some checks when these men with guns burst in. They screamed for us to get down on the floor, and then they started grabbing money from the registers. One of the security guards, he tried to fight back. He-he had a gun, and he raised it. They were about to shoot him when this woman in a suit-I think they said she worked at the bank-she just jumped right in front of him, and they shot her instead. She saved his life.”
Sloane’s face was stony as he closed the file and opened another. This was another newspaper article. “Hero Banker Taken Off Life Support.” Apparently Michael Vaughn had kept Sydney on life support for nearly a month before getting the courage to take her off. Sloane would not have waited so long; he knew that for someone like Sydney, who was so vivacious and intelligent, the thought of being in a coma from which she could never awaken, of being a vegetable for the rest of her life, was worse than death.
Sloane had attended this funeral as he had her previous funeral: watching through a pair of high-powered binoculars from a short distance down the beach. He’d thought it tacky to spread the same woman’s ashes at sea twice, but Vaughn had looked impressively pained both times and he supposed that was what counted. The second time had been even more painful for Sloane than the first, not least because this time instead of Jack being there it was four year old Isabelle and baby Jack. The older Jack’s absence had been a stark reminder of the losses he had brought upon himself. The children’s presence reminded him of the role he had played long ago when Sydney lost her mother. He remembered how Laura Bristow’s supposed death had destroyed Sydney when she had been a child, the way that it had driven Jack to alcoholism and neglect.
Sloane resolved then that if Vaughn showed any symptoms of heading in the same direction-of being more wrapped up in his own grief than his children’s lives-that he would see the children taken from him and given to a loving family. Even thought dead he had enough influence to manage that. Maybe the Dixons, since Marcus had recently wed Hayden Chase after a long-time affair. Even Marshall and his clan of geeks would be better than leaving the children to be neglected and unloved. Vaughn had not shown any such signs yet, however, and so for now the children remained in his care.
In his thoughts Sloane never thought of Isabelle and Jack as Sydney and Vaughn’s children. They were Sydney’s children; Vaughn’s involvement was not worth mention or consideration.
The final file was a CIA document it had taken a month of hacking and quite a lot of bribery to get. It described the CIA’s investigation into Sydney’s death, which had ultimately classified it as nothing more than what it looked like: a botched robbery.
How had she done it? Sloane pondered the question as he leaned back in his chair, staring at the CIA report. She was an incredibly talented agent, of course, so he wasn’t surprised by her ability to disappear or her apparently large supply of funds. Faking a robbery and death required more people than just her, though. She couldn’t have done it alone. He was convinced that none of Sydney’s close friends or family had been involved. Their grief had been very real.
How had she done it? She had been on life support for a full month before being taken off and left to die peacefully. The switch must have occurred before then, someone else’s body for hers, someone who must have been a Project Helix clone. More than a clone, even-the look-alike would have had to have Sydney’s scars and old broken bones to pass close, long-term inspection.
Clearly she had pulled it off, so really the question he should have been asking was why she had done it. He stared at the pictures on his desk as he brooded. One showed him and Jack on a mission when they were both much younger men. Jack had his arm slung over Sloane’s shoulder as they both held their mugs of beer in a toast. That was the day Jack found out he was going to be a father. Another picture was of Nadia, taken midway through the blessed year when she had worked at APO. She was sitting on his sofa with one of her legs outstretched and her other knee pulled up to her chest with a book balanced on it, reading with a slight furrow in her brow. He could never look at the picture without remembering how she died, the way her apparition had haunted him in the days and months to follow.
The last picture was of Sydney with her children: Isabelle at her side and baby Jack in her arms. Sloane had stolen the picture from their house shortly after Sydney’s death; there had been so many photos that he was sure this one wouldn’t be missed. It had been his favorite of the pictures in their house, not least because Vaughn was not in it.
Sydney did not look unhappy in the picture, though surely by the time it was taken she was already plotting how to fake her own death. Her love for her children was obvious even though she wasn’t looking at either of them. Isabelle was leaning into Sydney’s leg, an adoring expression on her face-so like Sydney’s at that age-as she gazed up at her mother. Jack looked as happy as a baby could be. Sydney’s face was perhaps a little more tense than a young mother should be, a little too thin-but though Sloane wanted to he couldn’t blame Vaughn for not noticing that she was on the verge of abandoning her entire life. Based on this picture he wouldn’t have expected it either.
Sloane heaved a great sigh as he tore his eyes from the picture. He laid his fingers on the computer keyboard, hesitating only a moment before signing onto one of his old accounts. He sent a cryptic e-mail to a contact he knew he could trust not to go blabbing about his reappearance, then began setting up a new account, looking into arranging new contacts.
If Sydney found out-and he was fairly certain she would-she would be furious. She’d probably try to kill him. He doubted she’d give him time to explain that he was doing this to help her, to protect her against the other Rambaldi fanatics in the world. If Rambaldi’s devices were in his hands then he would know that they could not hurt Sydney, because he would never hurt her intentionally.
It was for her own good, really, that he was going to stretch out his feelers and start collecting a few Rambaldi artifacts. It never even occurred to him to doubt himself.