The Perfect Weapon Ending 1 Chapter 1003: Part 1
Ending 1 Chapter 1003 Part 1
In Kashmir:
Hurry up! she muttered to herself, as she listened for the thwap, thwap, thwap of the helicopter blades, touching the three diamonds in her necklace over and over, the necklace worn in the hopes that Jack would arrive soon. But soon, soon, she would have not just the necklace or even those earrings he might bring as well. But what she really wanted was, she knew, in that box in the helicopter that was even now landing.
The chain! Finally! She almost shouted in triumph as she watched her courier exit the helicopter, knowing she would have in her hands what she had waited for, wanted, for...ever. That chain. In mere moments she would have it in her hands. She could not wait to circle her waist with it, to snap that clasp closed. And then....He could chase her, find her.
It would be over soon.
Earlier:
Jack had commented, “Boy Scout, as expected the package appears to be headed in your direction. Is everything in place?”
“Affirmative. I’ve been sucking up endlessly, just oozing.”
Jack chuckled. “Glad to hear your natural talents are coming in handy. And the documentation--”
“Perfect. As you know. As Dixon said, anyway. I didn’t see the entire packet. But it’s all perfectly legal. Perfectly damning. Perfect.”
“Good.”
“The locals are here as well. Amina’s checked in. As soon as the courier delivers the package, she’ll take out Derevko’s three personal bodyguards. But are the other teams in place now? Your just-in-case teams?”
“Yes. Three teams, one each in Morocco, Italy, Cypress just in case she eludes us. Somehow.”
“I don’t know how she would, Dad,” Sydney said quietly, looking at the satellite images of the estate. “There’s no where to hide out there. It’s just...full of nothing.”
Cough, cough. Vaughn cleared his throat and said, “Nothing but dust. This damn---”
Jack groaned when Kendall commented, “True, Sydney. There’s no skyscraper to jump off of or river to drive into---”
“Stop dangling your prepositions,” Jack said, laughing. Sydney looked startled, then laughed too.
Weiss interrupted, “Helicopter coming in.”
“Yes. Transmitter is on it,” Jack said.
“Courier exiting helicopter, running toward estate entrance,” Kendall interjected in a few moments. Shortly, he relayed to the team in Kashmir, “The courier appears to have entered the estate’s main building. We see a body moving toward the courier. Now the body appears to be heading back into the family wing, going into, staying in a room.”
Jack asked in a moment, “Dolly, are you on target?”
“Confirm,” she said softly. “Courier is behind me en route to the kitchens. And before you repeat yourself, I know, Old Man, that I have three minutes to take down the three guards.”
Dixon asked, “Confirmation on room?”
“Bedroom. Her bedroom,” Sydney’s voice came over Vaughn’s headset. Wait a minute, he thought suddenly in surprise. He thought Jack had told her she could not be in the Op Center unless.... What had happened? What had Jack done? He sighed. There would be time later to hear that tale, assuming he truly wanted to open that Pandora’s box.
Irina put the package down on the bed, then frowned when she saw how the dust on it seemed to settle on the previously-pristine surface of the burgundy bed linens. Picking it up, she brushed the bed cover clean and put the package down on the floor. Looking at it, she smiled at the poor wrapping job; Jack had never been able to wrap a gift in his life. Typical man.
She smiled again as she lifted the box top, pushed aside the newspaper used as cushioning and saw the books inside. Ah, a little game of remembrance. Those books: The Wizard of Oz. Pride and Prejudice. Gone with the Wind.
Those were her favorites, although she would rather have had the DVD of the Wizard of Oz. But then again, she already owned that, anyway. Maybe they could watch it when he caught up to her, remembering watching that movie with him on the plane for the first time, his soft smile as he watched her enjoyment, then later his aggravation in that movie house when he had just wanted to make out.
She sighed as she patted the book, remembering how he had given her the Baum book, read it to her. All those books he had given her, read to her. Even the volumes with her mission instructions she could remember fondly when she recalled his voice transforming the cold reality of those books into something warm, just as she wanted.
All those memories of books and of words and of his voice, she thought, as she smoothed her fingertip over the title of Pride and Prejudice, their favorite. She paused briefly, luxuriating in the memories of cuddling close as they read together on the couch or the glider or in bed. Smiling, she lifted the books with their memories out of the package one by one, shaking them, but hearing nothing, she put them down.
“One minute,” everyone said, their eyes on the clock.
Amina reported, “One guard down. These utterly ridiculous robes are so handy to hide tranq guns within, are they not? How ironic to use such oppressive clothing to---”
“Cut the philosophizing, Dolly, and just plug the guys, alright?” Vaughn said impatiently.
“Affirmative....Pretty Boy.”
Jack chuckled. And tapped a pencil against his knee. It was almost over. She was holding the instrument of her own destruction in her hands. At her own request. Well, he had always told her that all she had to do was ask and he would give her whatever she wanted. And he had. Perhaps, however, not exactly the way she had imagined. Surprise, surprise. How long would it take her to ascertain the correct book, he thought as he looked at his watch.
Where was it? She pushed aside more newspaper, noting absently that it was this morning’s edition of the LA Times. Ah...here were more books. It must be here. But what were these....Neither she nor Jack had liked these books. Of Human Bondage? About some poor sap who thought it was better to love than be loved? Madame Bovary? Another sap, a woman, this time, who had wasted her life looking, searching for something that did not exist outside of fantasy?
Then she remembered what Natasha had told her decades ago, about Jack’s cover when he was a young man. Comparative literature doctoral candidate. Good, another game. Which book.... She smiled. Well, it had to be Of Human Bondage, didn’t it? Somewhat overt symbolism for Jack. But then again, she had always been the one with the true interest in symbolism; she had often felt that Jack merely indulged her. As he had this time, she thought. Sure enough, she lifted the cover of the book, that was no book in reality and nestled inside the custom-made container was the original box. Amazing.
She lifted it out, stroked the wood of the small box with trembling hands. He had even sent the box. He was sweet to have saved that as well. It looked pristine, none the worse for wear after twenty years. He must have taken good care of it. Must have cherished it as much as she did. Holding the box in her left hand, she quickly depressed the latch with her right and flipped open the lid.
Sighed in sheer happiness, felt a wide grin consume her face at her first glimpse of the gold links before she closed her eyes to savor the moment. Finally, she had what she had wanted for more than twenty years. That chain. That perfect circle connecting them. Forever. She began to reach her hand in, expecting to see it coiled just as she had left it. Then she snatched her hand back with a snap as if a snake were within, coiled, rattling and ready for a fatal sting.
She stared in complete shock. Felt her smile collapse. Blinked. Knew those were the only muscles on her body capable of moving, for surely, surely, her heart had stopped. Because, what was this? Had the chain broken in transit? That must be it. Oh no. Well, that, she told herself firmly, was very bad, but not fatal, after all. Merely an accident, one that could be repaired with a little time and effort. She could have it fixed. It might require a skilled artisan and some new gold, but.... She reached her hand in and pulled at the gold, watched it shift and move unnaturally under her fingertips. Frowned as an anomaly registered slowly.
She gingerly picked up one link and examined it. Then looked again, more carefully, then gasped as she realized the truth. Frantically, her heart hammering, her blood pounding in her ears, behind her eyes, she pushed and prodded at the nest of twisted gold. There must be more than one hundred links in there, or was it two hundred or a thousand? A million, it looked like a million....How many links had been in that chain? And and they were...Broken? How could this be? How could all those links be broken, she screamed internally, as she held up the one link in her hand for closer inspection. Then another, then another, then another.
No....
No.
NO!
Jack looked down at his hands, remembering how sore his fingers had been the night he finished working on that chain and had closed the box for the last time. A small price to pay, however, for the benefits derived.
This was no accident, she realized as the coldness begin to creep over her. How odd, she thought, that she should feel so cold when her heart was pounding so hard. She held a link in her hand and brought it closer to her face. What......There was something more. Something....The ends of each link...what had happened to them? Or, to use the active voice, not the passive voice, who, who would have done this....vandalism? Each link had been carefully forced open and the ends bent and broken as if someone had used a tool to twist the pieces of gold, to open the links. That was not vandalism, that was not a casual, thoughtless act. No, this was not casual. No, this had been a careful, cautious act requiring time and thought. Who...Why? Why?
“The time...” Marshall muttered, biting his nails, having been warned that long-winded dissertations on any topic whatsoever would result in his banishment from the electronics lab for a week.
“Second guard down, on schedule,” Amina said breathlessly, obviously running.
“The timing has to be precise. Two minutes,” Jack said crisply.
Maybe, maybe, it wasn’t her chain. He would not have done this to the real chain, no. Maybe it was a replica...maybe, she poked around searching for the clasp. The clasp would tell. She gasped, unable to believe the truth before her eyes. There it was, the clasp. With her initials engraved on the back of it, the main latching portion of it slightly twisted. But there was something missing from that latch. It was the original though, she could tell...that kink, that twist.
It had been a pain, he remembered, extricating the snapping mechanism from that twisted clasp. But in the end, it had merely required patience and a careful hand and voila, the lock was broken.
The kink from her last day as Laura Bristow, the day she had driven into that river. That twist she had accidentally created as she forced herself to remove the chain, her hands shaking and too rough in their attempts to discard what she had wanted to retain. Finally tugging at it, the clasp had popped open with loud metallic sound. She had been so afraid she had damaged it, then had looked at it carefully, sighed in relief as she carefully coiled it into the box, believing it safe for the last twenty years.
But....Now.. was something far worse than the twisted clasp. The clasp itself was damaged, irretrievably broken, the small latching mechanism missing entirely. How...the links broken, the clasp never to be closed again. How...Had this happened? What did this mean....
She stared in disbelief. Never in her wildest imaginings could she have foreseen this....This nightmare. She blinked, willing herself to awaken. But there it was. Before her. The truth.
The chain was broken.
Broken
Broken
Every link opened, broken. Into tiny, little, twisted pieces that could never, never, never be repaired.
She put her hand to her chest, feeling quite certain that her heart had broken into tiny, little, twisted pieces.
She gasped again, put her free hand over her mouth to keep the scream from erupting. Unable to move. Feeling nothing, nothing but...coldness, brittle coldness, as if someone touched her, spoke to her, if she moved, she would break.
She forced herself to take a deep breath, tried to feel, to think, to plan. But she could feel nothing but coldness and loss. This coldness that crept from deep within and moved, so gingerly, so insidiously, creeping like a thief in the night....
But no, more all-encompassing, enveloping....like a fog. Like...the fog creeping in on little cat feet, walking over her grave, she thought fancifully, letting her mind wander as she tried to find her way, feeling more lost with each passing second.
Knowing that what had kept her anchored for so long, the bond between them.... But it could not be, could not be....
There must be a way out of this...
She just had to think.
Find an option... She had time, she told herself, trying to fight her way free of the shock that enervated her, made her limbs heavy and trembling simultaneously. She took a deep breath.
She could do this.
She was a master games strategist.
This was just another game. She had time.
“We have her. Three minutes. That’s it. Three minutes have passed. Move in. Have the assisting team move in, Boy Scout,” Jack ordered.
“Three down,” Amina said. “And there’s the door chime. Quite on time, I must say.” Then she swore softly, “Bloody hell!”
“What is it?” Dixon asked sharply. They could not afford any errors at this point---
“The screwdriver just poked me quite frightfully,” Amina said. Everyone sighed in relief. Then with bated breath they heard her say, setting the next phase of the game in motion, “Mem, Mem.” She tapped on the closed bedroom door. “Mem! Please open!”
TBC at Chapter 1003 Part 2