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I. Fionna Hackett
One because no thought...
Could ever come between
Mind and delighted mind...
I was raised on stories of fairies and kings and saints, each more magical than the next. (Yes, I know saints were holy rather than magical, but I could never tell the difference.) My ma and I were Hacketts, of a clan descended from the little people themselves, to hear them tell of it. And they told often.
She was always one to hedge her bets. She named me Patrick for the saint and Conal for the king that the fairies loved. And my ma's family, they were as close to nobility as you could get in that little village outside Galway without having any money or position.
Everyone always assumes I was abandoned in a churchyard or whipped by my teacher or some such. Those with nothing better to do with their time than hyper-analyze my "deficits" like to blame them on my fatherless upbringing. Truth is, I never needed a da; I had a grandfather, uncle, and cousins, but mostly I had her. She raised me with love and warmth and a joy that made even a hundred-times-told tale seem new. I was everything to her, and she was everything to me.
So of course she died.
I was seven. We'd gone all the way to Dublin--funny that I don't remember why. Some sort of holiday, I suppose. After two days of traveling, I remember being excited and tired and, well, seven, so Ma probably had her hands full with me. She took me into a side street, sat right down on the curb with me in her lap, and started a story.
"There once was a great king of the west..."
She had nearly lulled me to sleep when a loud noise stopped the story. I looked up, and to put it simply, her face was gone.
She toppled over, still holding me. There were more loud sounds. There was screaming. Then the soldiers. Then--I don't remember the then.
As it happens, that side street had a boarding house where British embassy workers lived. Ma was shot by IRA hotheads who seemed sorrier for missing the British than for hitting my mother.
My mother taught me that the Irish kill for love, God, and politics. I kill for money, ambition, and, when the mood is upon me, ego. But then, I'm not Irish.
II: Irina Derevko
And one because her hand
had strength that could unbind
What none can have and thrive...
The settlement from Sinn Fein, and some judicious investing, bought me an entirely new identity (Sark is an island which, as far as I could tell, was the furthest spot in the country from Galway), enough education to eradicate the last of my accent, and my first gun. I was using it to make my name as an assassin when I came to Irina Derevko's attention.
"So you're Philip Sark," she said.
I'd just been chloroformed and thrown in the back of a sedan, but I tried to look blase about the whole thing. "I am." I smoothed the front of my jacket as best I could. "So, madam, did you bring me here to kill me or interrogate me?"
She didn't laugh. Not once in ten years have I heard Derevko laugh. But she smiled.
"Actually, Mr. Sark, I'm offering you an opportunity. If you take advantage of it, more will follow. If you fail...to take advantage...then let's just say I won't interrogate you."
"Intelligence," she said once, "is not a man's business. Oh, the men think so. But in addition to the obvious sexual advantages our gender gives us, women can also take advantage of the cultural bias against us. A fawning mistress or a mother with a harried look and a diaper bag-- easily ignored. Women always, always have the element of surprise, Mr. Sark."
Since she'd just used that element to garrote an African head of state, I merely smiled and nodded.
She underestimates men, though. She underestimates me. It's her one weakness, this assumption that she is superior to all of us all the time. Perhaps it's true now, but no one can prepare entirely for the element of surprise.
If Rambaldi indeed chose Derevko to further some grand scheme--and from Haladki's intel, I find that likely--he could not have chosen better. She is a woman who, having once decided on an agenda, will not waver. I've seen her work her way through seven backup plans to take out a target. She takes some of her blackmail pictures personally, to ensure the best possible coverage.
So when she gave me control of the organization and promised to return in a year, there was no arguing with her, no asking questions or expressing concern. This is the greatest of many opportunities she's offered me, and I intend to take full advantage of it. And when she returns...well, that's another agenda altogether, isn't it?
Because it's the reason for her absence that has finally revealed her weakness. Her attachment--I won't call it love--for her child.
III. Sydney Bristow
And what of her that took
All till my youth was gone
With scarce a pitying look?
How could I praise that one...?
The first time I saw Sydney Bristow's dossier, it was on Derevko's desk. She was paging through it with an intensity she usually reserved for choosing dinner wines and assault rifles.
"A new player?" I asked as I sat down.
"Not precisely. An older player coming into new prominence." She passed me the folder. "Agent Bristow is an SD-6 agent who has just been turned."
"By whom?" We'd been trying to get a good recruit from SD- 6 for several years, but they were all so damned patriotic. Worse than the real CIA, even--although we'd had some luck with the FBI. Then the last name registered. "Any...ah...relation to Jack Bristow?"
"Daughter," she said simply.
"I see." Bristow does look remarkably like her mother. I looked away from the picture and said quickly, "So the CIA turned her?"
"Yes, although I doubt that's the terminology they used."
I shrugged. "One agency is much the same as another. What matters is the work."
I read scattered reports on Agent Bristow over the next several months. She figured prominently in many of Agent Haladki's debriefings. After you filtered out the sexism and blatant envy coloring his reports, it was obvious that she was a gifted field agent. Given her DNA, I was not surprised. But I found myself a bit bored with the obsession Haladki, Derevko, and even Khasinau had with the girl.
And then came Denpasar.
You understand, it wasn't until Dixon came in and she panicked that I realized with whom I'd been fighting. But she's good. She's very, very good. Agile, strong, and clever--which she needs to balance out the bloody fools working with her. They deserved to lose me to SD-6.
I won't deny the temptation to reveal Bristow's true status to Arvin Sloane. Two things stopped me. One, Derevko would remove my spleen with her fingernails once she saw me again. Two...all right, I'll admit that my boredom had shifted to just a hint of intrigue. Just what is Sydney Bristow capable of? How many agendas can she juggle at once? How far can she be pushed, and by whom?
I often fantasized, when I first met Derevko, about meeting her in battle. Not necessarily hand-to-hand combat, but the undeclared war that marks global intelligence. I was content to be her employee, for a time, but I always wanted to know if I could defeat a master of the game.
Bristow's attraction? I have the chance to watch her become a master. To enjoy her position at the forefront of the intelligence world. And then I'll break her.
--the end--
The poem quoted is "Friends" by W.B. Yeats. The fairy stories used are from "Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland," which he edited. See what happens when my computer breaks and I have to go to the library every day? :)
Photo from www.abc.com and used without permission.
