Completed Fic: "The man with The plan"
This was the work-in-progress version
Title: The Man with the Plan
Author: Lisek16 (lisek16@yahoo.com)
Timeline: Set Season 1, pre- “The Box” (Parts 1 and 2)
Summary: McKenas Cole, Sark, Irina… official covenant business.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Alias
***<0>***
He strides confidently into the whitewashed, industrial makeshift office, “I’m the man,” he says. Slowly the dark leather chair behind a large metal table swivels to face him, “the man with the plan” he says. The seated figure silently nods her head in what he can only suspect is approval and interest. He pulls a metal folding chair from across the room, and she eyes him suspiciously as he unfolds it across from her. “Do you want to know how I plan to get it?” he asks boldly. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of playing along; actually his plan is irrelevant, no matter how ingenious and plausible. He took too long, and now his window of opportunity has passed.
He doesn’t wait for her to ask him to continue, instead he begins to detail the plan he crafted to grab the priceless piece of artwork from the Szepmuveszeti Múzeum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Occasionally, he pauses and looks up to her for some reassurance and feedback, but her face remains reserved and emotionless. When he finishes explaining his tactical feat, he waits for her to say something, anything. But she doesn’t. So he begins to talk again believing he has missed something crucial, that she is still waiting to hear.
“…So after we cut the power source, we are going to loop the feed and route all outgoing and incoming calls through one of our people…”
She still looks distinctly disinterested, so he decides to ask her if something is wrong, a mistake he’s sure, but certain to get a response. “Has something happened?” he asks.
“That’s the first tolerable thing you have said McKenus.” Her voice is quiet, bitter and yet motherly. You can’t help but respect her, and listen intently, because everything she says is vital information that can be drawn upon in the not-so-distant future.
His expression is slightly hurt, and yet hers is slowly revealing a bemused smirk. “What time is it McKenus?” she asks sweetly.
He looks at his watch, knowing it must be a trick question. He answers it seriously nonetheless.
“11:53 AM” he replies after examining his watch.
“I see, and pray tell what time was the painting to be moved?”
He doesn’t need to really answer the question; it’s a moot point. Her sources had confirmed that a secure transport of the artwork would take place at 12:00 noon, Monday. And that’s when it hit him. Today was Monday. He was screwed.
“In 7 minutes…” he mumbled trying to mask his rage. The plane ride from Paris had taken longer than expected, and with the layover in Warsaw he had lost a day that he thought he still had.
“Yes, and do you have your assets in place and the necessary security protocol in check? While you are in here detailing your mission specs, is a team in place waiting for your signal?” she asked politely.
He could be dead no matter what he said. He thought he had another twenty-four hours. If he answered honestly saying “no” and excusing his actions and mistakes then he was a worthless component of her team; but if he said “yes” then he’d be caught in a lie, and if the agency didn’t have your loyalty, then they had didn’t need you. He didn’t want to die, so he decided to wing it, maybe she’d reconsider his value.
“Actually, that’s unnecessary. I received Intel just moments before I came to see you, it seems as though the transfer ordered was intercepted and the Hungarian government is working on alternative plans. My source said that our painting is in a vault in the South wing basement and gave me the necessary schematics.” He rambled on emphatically.
Thinking on his feet was not what he was best at, though out in the field it’s what kept him alive. Seeing the position he was in he knew he had to try his best to convince Irina Deverko to let him live.
“So you detailed a plan that was irreverent, concealed crucial information about the transfer, and wasted my time for what particular reason, McKenus?”
“I…” he began as a loud bang sounded nearby. To McKenus, the room seemed to rumble; seeming to be swallowing him whole, but it was only his mind playing tricks on him. Deverko remained calm and collected; she did not look amused.
“It seems your source was incorrect, that would be Julian with the painting.” She said.
“Julian? You sent him out on my operation? Why?” he asked still reeling from the Julian’s knock on the office door.
“I didn’t think you’d have all your ducks in a row on time. Seems I was correct. McKenus, this wears on me, your failures become mine… they reflect poorly on the organization and in turn on myself. Julian takes it upon himself to keep on schedule; perhaps you can stand to learn something from him…” she explains in a soothing tone he was accustomed to hearing from her.
“McKenus, if you can’t do the job…” she continues with a sense of finality in her voice, but he quickly interjects.
“I can do the job. I can do the job better than Julian or Tchen, anyone. You know I’m good…”
“Yes, I do. Otherwise I never would have hired you. But these oversights and miscalculations are not acceptable. I only mean to say, if you value your position within this agency then perhaps you should… simply, take advantage of the opportunities I offer you.” She notices how pale his skin has turned and how rigid his limbs have become, “Relax, McKenus, I’m not going to send you down to human resources… ” She coos in an attempt to placate him. But he still flinches at those last two words, the employees who were sent down there were never heard from again.
She continues, “I want you to instead reflect on the three mistakes you made today. Reflect and don’t let them happen again…otherwise there will be dire consequences… do you understand, McKenus?” he nods gravely.
“Good, send Julian in on your way out, and perhaps… take the day off, you don’t look well. After all I wouldn’t want you to make any more mistakes today. You made too many as it stands, and in the future it could cost someone their life”.
With a “Yes Ma’am” he leaves the office and catches a glimpse of the toe headed teenager clad in black fatigues and a smug expression.
“How is mommy dearest this afternoon?” Julian asks as McKenus exits the office into the main hallway.
McKenus simply brushes past him, ignoring Julian’s presence all together, but Julian Sark, instigator extraordinaire, won’t have that.
“Nice to see you too. How’s Allison, you ask? She is absolutely lovely; thanks for asking. I’d love to stay and catch up on old times but I’m afraid my employer is urgently awaiting this package, and you know how she is about such pressing matters. But please do send my regards to the guys in H.R” he continues in his cocky, British accent.
McKenus, brooding, does not look amused. “Deverko didn’t…” he begins, but decides the effort would be wasted on his employer’s prodigal son.
“Didn’t? Well just because she let you walk out of her office alive doesn’t mean she values your services. She probably didn’t want you to bleed all over her new office… I bet the hit has been ordered though, snipers in place, brake lines cut, maybe even poisoned your coffee…” he sneers as he gives McKenus a smug look, it results in McKenus spitting out the swig of black coffee he just took onto the linoleum floor. “Never assume she didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t…” he continues, he feels compelled to look over his shoulder and abruptly stops speaking.
Irina is standing in the now open doorway, her arms are crossed and her eyes are burning a hole through the back of Sark’s head. “Sark, you’ve had your fun, stop taunting McKenus. He feels badly enough for his errors in judgment…” she glances at the frightened face of McKenus Cole and says “I haven’t had your desk emptied yet, don’t give me a reason to reconsider”
Julian shots McKenus a dirty look and before the door to the office closes, and McKenus Cole can distinctly hear Irina say, “Congratulations, you got the job”.
***<0>***
“The Man”, head of the up-and-coming Russian crime syndicate was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, low-level agents seen as security risks, such as McKenus Cole, had never even seen him. When McKenus was approached about joining a new terrorist organization hell bent on destroying all other terrorist cells he was elated and confused. All the communication between himself and his future employer was through Alexander Khasinau, ex-KGB, who referred to the elusive “The Man” as his employer. When McKenus’ curiosity got the best of him and he finally asked whom “The Man” was, he was stonewalled. It was not just a secret; no one seemed to know.
McKenus had been in this business long enough to know that announcing to the public or even telling your employees the truth about your identity was a death wish. Everyone had their price and you’d be surprised how quickly people are willing to break promises when their limbs are being dismantled. McKenus had deduced early on, that “The Man” could be anyone in this office, anyone other than Irina Deverko. She was the highest-ranking officer there; she had surpassed even her KGB handler Alexander Khasinau, but only a handful of people even knew she existed. There seemed to be invisible strings pulling her at times, she was not in control, and definitely not a man.
In fact, McKenus had only known of her existence within the last month. One of his smaller operations had snagged them an alliance with a K-Directorate mole that provided his new employer with a wealth of information on the inter-workings of the rival Russian terrorist cell. His reward for a job well done was a meeting with an official of the organization about a possible promotion. They were at the point in their operation that they needed to divide and conquer. Team leaders and international co-chairs would emerge to delegate responsibilities, and McKenus wanted to be on the front lines, bringing down Section Disparu cell 6, more commonly known as SD-6, the agency that lied to him and left him in Chechnya to rot.
He had walked into that meeting prepared to offer them the world for his chance to finally destroy SD-6 and Arvin Sloane. But Comrade Deverko, as she referred to herself, would not have it. “The Alliance of Twelve is a worthy adversary, but only 11 cells will be attacked, SD-6 will not” he remembered her explaining, and he couldn’t help believing her, everything she had made perfect sense. It wasn’t until after the meeting, after McKenus really thought about it that he realized he had been duped. No job promotion, no revenge, he didn’t even find out who “The Man” was. The next day he stormed into her office, in an attempt to calmly explain that he had not gotten what he had come for, but there sitting on the corner on her desk, in spy chic was a blond teenager with an English accent marred by an Irish brogue. This was Julian Sark.
Julian Sark had never been approached to join the syndicate. He hadn’t even graduated high school; he was a con artist, a petty thief, and an arms dealer, not to mention a long list of other accomplishments that he could proudly rattle off. He was the perfect candidate to execute the raids on terrorist cells. He had excelled faster than any other agent in this facility, and perhaps any agent McKenus had ever known.
When he entered Comrade Deverko was not in serious forum like the day before, instead she was tousling his hair with her manicured hands and they were deeply engrossed in conversation and blueprints. Irina, as she had instructed Sark to call her, reprimanded Cole. Ever since then the two men had been competing to win the coveted position of East European co-chair.
It wasn’t much of a competition, Sark was always team leader, and got to orchestrate reconnaissance missions that McKenus didn’t even have access to those files. He resented Julian Sark for his successes and in turn McKenus’ subsequent failures. Sark was Deverko’s lapdog; she introduced him to Allison Doren, the beautiful leggy colleague who recently returned from a deep cover mission in Algiers. The closer the agency came to the raids, the more distant McKenus felt from Deverko and from finally seeking retribution on Arvin Sloane and all the other pretentious bastards at SD-6 sitting in their ultra modern glass cages watching all the brainwashed worker bees fight the good fight for the unbeknownst enemy.
It wasn’t that long ago that he learned the truth about SD-6. It was on an operation that went awry and Chechnyan rebels caught McKenus, and when he said he was just a all-American boy working for good old Uncle Sam, the rebels weren’t too happy to discover there was no record of SD-6 or McKenus Cole through their back channel connections. They beat him for days, asking questions only after their brutal interrogation tactics. It was a tactical team of “The Man” who rescued him before he would be killed. They gave him a life working against terrorist organizations, and he owed him that life.
But that was ancient history, which was all in his file buried in some metal filing cabinet or on an encrypted hard drive in someone’s tastefully minimalist office. McKenus didn’t live in the past anymore, and when nightmares of the torture he endured kept him awake he thought of how Arvin Sloane would have begged for them to stop, “I’ll tell you anything” he’d imagine he’d scream. That placated him; thinking about how Arvin Sloane would pay comforted him. Maybe he wasn’t over the past, but he liked to pretend he was.
***<0>***
They are sitting around a long makeshift table. They are a low-tech operation; they didn’t need fancy desks and flat screen monitors, not for mission briefings, not even for this raid. They had identical manila folders with maps and diagrams. Sark was sitting adjacent to Irina; he was assigned a raid and assassination on FTL, another rival Euro-Asian terrorist organization. McKenus sat across from Sark; he was getting his raid on SD-6… finally. McKenus knew Irina would never go for the raid, unless there was an incentive.
Once he discovered that the infamous Rambaldi fluid was in the SD-6 vault, he knew he had his in. Sitting around the table were other team leaders, co-workers that McKenus had never seen, that meant their jobs were of the highest level of confidentiality, or on a need-to-know basis. McKenus didn’t ask questions, when he knew the answers were classified. If you needed to know, chances are you did. After all information was a commodity in this business, your rivals would kill you for your ID badge let alone for a detailed summary of the inter-workings of your unnamed covert agency, and your co-workers would kill you for looking at them the wrong way. It didn’t take long to learn to not ask questions.
They were going over the specs; Irina was edgy. She kept warning him not to maim or execute any SD-6 employees; he only had the operational authority to take care of Sloane and the vault. He couldn’t understand why Irina was so interested in the well being of Sloane’s task force, but he didn’t ask questions, he just blindly followed orders.
After clarifying the mission and the objective - to obtain Rambaldi artifacts and disorient and destroy underground organizations, which played an active role in the collection of the artifacts of the fifteenth century prophet Milo Rambaldi - Irina excused herself from the makeshift briefing room and left Sark alone with McKenus and a sea of new faces.
McKenus stood up to leave and prepare his five-person team: Endo, Tchen, Toni, the lookout and himself for the raid. They were leaving for America in a matter of hours. This was it.
***<0>***
McKenus was sitting in a dark cage. The operation was not a success. In fact, he has sat in this isolated cage for the last two years. He had no visitors, after the interrogation by psychoanalysts and agents trained in brute force as a way of ascertaining truthful answers. He had been captured by the real C.I.A., not Sloane’s fake front company posing as a clandestine black-ops branch. This was a real American jail cell, not in the basement of the bank of Credit Dauphine. McKenus didn’t find it as easy to pretend the past didn’t bother him, actually every time he closed his eyes he pictured Sark and Irina, and Sloane still alive, and the girl with pigtails, Sydney Bristow, the pretty girl years ago he had wanted to kiss. This was it; he was a shell of a useless man. Incarcerated by the government he thought he was working for, which led him to work for a rival agency, which was an even bigger threat to American security. The irony was all along he thought he was fighting the good fight, but everyone played him and used him for their own personal agendas. He was Satan’s lapdog; he was Irina’s scapegoat, Sloane’s sitting duck, and Julian’s lackey pushover. He was everyone’s pawn in the espionage game, and he had two years to think about it, and two years to hate it.
Eventually there came a day when someone did visit. The guard announced that Agent Sydney Bristow, Agent Pigtails, was coming to interrogate him before an impending transfer to a more aggressive detention center. The woman who approached his cell was not a stranger, not just another suit and tie with a list of questions and tepid coffee. She spoke in an American accent, and as soon as the guard left, she unlocked the door and tossed McKenus a loaded Beretta.
“The CIA really knows how to treat its prisoners,” she murmured in her slightly Russian accented English, “Let’s go before the guard realizes I’m not Agent Bristow…”
McKenus was stunned at Irina’s resolve; his rescue maybe two years late was not expected. McKenus assumed “The Man” would leave him for dead like Sloane did back in Chechnya. She has to practically push him down the hallway towards the exit; he couldn’t believe he was being saved again.
They escaped before the guards were any wiser. That’s when Irina revealed herself as “The Man”. She told him about her time in the CIA’s glass cage and that Agent Bristow was her daughter. She told him that “The Man” no longer existed; the Russian-nationalists and contract killers were now using the guise of “The Covenant”, after the Leonard Cohen quotation “To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself.”
They were fulfilling a manifest, a prophecy Irina was given. They would help bring the two Rambaldi heirs together and prevent utter desolation, through reform.
They were Neo-Nazis, they were liberals, they came from every country, and knew everyone’s secrets. They were a terrorist organization, hell-bent on destroying anything and anyone who got in their way, and they were brainwashing Sydney Bristow to prevent her from discovering the truth, her prophecy could not come true.
There McKenus sat in the back of an unmarked van stolen from long term airport parking; he was finally in the inner-circle. Where was Sark, he asked, Irina explained he was in CIA custody. He was still in jail and Irina hadn’t broken him out. McKenus was elated, and that’s when Irina gave him a job.
The End
Title: The Man with the Plan
Author: Lisek16 (lisek16@yahoo.com)
Timeline: Set Season 1, pre- “The Box” (Parts 1 and 2)
Summary: McKenas Cole, Sark, Irina… official covenant business.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Alias
***<0>***
He strides confidently into the whitewashed, industrial makeshift office, “I’m the man,” he says. Slowly the dark leather chair behind a large metal table swivels to face him, “the man with the plan” he says. The seated figure silently nods her head in what he can only suspect is approval and interest. He pulls a metal folding chair from across the room, and she eyes him suspiciously as he unfolds it across from her. “Do you want to know how I plan to get it?” he asks boldly. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of playing along; actually his plan is irrelevant, no matter how ingenious and plausible. He took too long, and now his window of opportunity has passed.
He doesn’t wait for her to ask him to continue, instead he begins to detail the plan he crafted to grab the priceless piece of artwork from the Szepmuveszeti Múzeum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. Occasionally, he pauses and looks up to her for some reassurance and feedback, but her face remains reserved and emotionless. When he finishes explaining his tactical feat, he waits for her to say something, anything. But she doesn’t. So he begins to talk again believing he has missed something crucial, that she is still waiting to hear.
“…So after we cut the power source, we are going to loop the feed and route all outgoing and incoming calls through one of our people…”
She still looks distinctly disinterested, so he decides to ask her if something is wrong, a mistake he’s sure, but certain to get a response. “Has something happened?” he asks.
“That’s the first tolerable thing you have said McKenus.” Her voice is quiet, bitter and yet motherly. You can’t help but respect her, and listen intently, because everything she says is vital information that can be drawn upon in the not-so-distant future.
His expression is slightly hurt, and yet hers is slowly revealing a bemused smirk. “What time is it McKenus?” she asks sweetly.
He looks at his watch, knowing it must be a trick question. He answers it seriously nonetheless.
“11:53 AM” he replies after examining his watch.
“I see, and pray tell what time was the painting to be moved?”
He doesn’t need to really answer the question; it’s a moot point. Her sources had confirmed that a secure transport of the artwork would take place at 12:00 noon, Monday. And that’s when it hit him. Today was Monday. He was screwed.
“In 7 minutes…” he mumbled trying to mask his rage. The plane ride from Paris had taken longer than expected, and with the layover in Warsaw he had lost a day that he thought he still had.
“Yes, and do you have your assets in place and the necessary security protocol in check? While you are in here detailing your mission specs, is a team in place waiting for your signal?” she asked politely.
He could be dead no matter what he said. He thought he had another twenty-four hours. If he answered honestly saying “no” and excusing his actions and mistakes then he was a worthless component of her team; but if he said “yes” then he’d be caught in a lie, and if the agency didn’t have your loyalty, then they had didn’t need you. He didn’t want to die, so he decided to wing it, maybe she’d reconsider his value.
“Actually, that’s unnecessary. I received Intel just moments before I came to see you, it seems as though the transfer ordered was intercepted and the Hungarian government is working on alternative plans. My source said that our painting is in a vault in the South wing basement and gave me the necessary schematics.” He rambled on emphatically.
Thinking on his feet was not what he was best at, though out in the field it’s what kept him alive. Seeing the position he was in he knew he had to try his best to convince Irina Deverko to let him live.
“So you detailed a plan that was irreverent, concealed crucial information about the transfer, and wasted my time for what particular reason, McKenus?”
“I…” he began as a loud bang sounded nearby. To McKenus, the room seemed to rumble; seeming to be swallowing him whole, but it was only his mind playing tricks on him. Deverko remained calm and collected; she did not look amused.
“It seems your source was incorrect, that would be Julian with the painting.” She said.
“Julian? You sent him out on my operation? Why?” he asked still reeling from the Julian’s knock on the office door.
“I didn’t think you’d have all your ducks in a row on time. Seems I was correct. McKenus, this wears on me, your failures become mine… they reflect poorly on the organization and in turn on myself. Julian takes it upon himself to keep on schedule; perhaps you can stand to learn something from him…” she explains in a soothing tone he was accustomed to hearing from her.
“McKenus, if you can’t do the job…” she continues with a sense of finality in her voice, but he quickly interjects.
“I can do the job. I can do the job better than Julian or Tchen, anyone. You know I’m good…”
“Yes, I do. Otherwise I never would have hired you. But these oversights and miscalculations are not acceptable. I only mean to say, if you value your position within this agency then perhaps you should… simply, take advantage of the opportunities I offer you.” She notices how pale his skin has turned and how rigid his limbs have become, “Relax, McKenus, I’m not going to send you down to human resources… ” She coos in an attempt to placate him. But he still flinches at those last two words, the employees who were sent down there were never heard from again.
She continues, “I want you to instead reflect on the three mistakes you made today. Reflect and don’t let them happen again…otherwise there will be dire consequences… do you understand, McKenus?” he nods gravely.
“Good, send Julian in on your way out, and perhaps… take the day off, you don’t look well. After all I wouldn’t want you to make any more mistakes today. You made too many as it stands, and in the future it could cost someone their life”.
With a “Yes Ma’am” he leaves the office and catches a glimpse of the toe headed teenager clad in black fatigues and a smug expression.
“How is mommy dearest this afternoon?” Julian asks as McKenus exits the office into the main hallway.
McKenus simply brushes past him, ignoring Julian’s presence all together, but Julian Sark, instigator extraordinaire, won’t have that.
“Nice to see you too. How’s Allison, you ask? She is absolutely lovely; thanks for asking. I’d love to stay and catch up on old times but I’m afraid my employer is urgently awaiting this package, and you know how she is about such pressing matters. But please do send my regards to the guys in H.R” he continues in his cocky, British accent.
McKenus, brooding, does not look amused. “Deverko didn’t…” he begins, but decides the effort would be wasted on his employer’s prodigal son.
“Didn’t? Well just because she let you walk out of her office alive doesn’t mean she values your services. She probably didn’t want you to bleed all over her new office… I bet the hit has been ordered though, snipers in place, brake lines cut, maybe even poisoned your coffee…” he sneers as he gives McKenus a smug look, it results in McKenus spitting out the swig of black coffee he just took onto the linoleum floor. “Never assume she didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t…” he continues, he feels compelled to look over his shoulder and abruptly stops speaking.
Irina is standing in the now open doorway, her arms are crossed and her eyes are burning a hole through the back of Sark’s head. “Sark, you’ve had your fun, stop taunting McKenus. He feels badly enough for his errors in judgment…” she glances at the frightened face of McKenus Cole and says “I haven’t had your desk emptied yet, don’t give me a reason to reconsider”
Julian shots McKenus a dirty look and before the door to the office closes, and McKenus Cole can distinctly hear Irina say, “Congratulations, you got the job”.
***<0>***
“The Man”, head of the up-and-coming Russian crime syndicate was nowhere to be seen.
In fact, low-level agents seen as security risks, such as McKenus Cole, had never even seen him. When McKenus was approached about joining a new terrorist organization hell bent on destroying all other terrorist cells he was elated and confused. All the communication between himself and his future employer was through Alexander Khasinau, ex-KGB, who referred to the elusive “The Man” as his employer. When McKenus’ curiosity got the best of him and he finally asked whom “The Man” was, he was stonewalled. It was not just a secret; no one seemed to know.
McKenus had been in this business long enough to know that announcing to the public or even telling your employees the truth about your identity was a death wish. Everyone had their price and you’d be surprised how quickly people are willing to break promises when their limbs are being dismantled. McKenus had deduced early on, that “The Man” could be anyone in this office, anyone other than Irina Deverko. She was the highest-ranking officer there; she had surpassed even her KGB handler Alexander Khasinau, but only a handful of people even knew she existed. There seemed to be invisible strings pulling her at times, she was not in control, and definitely not a man.
In fact, McKenus had only known of her existence within the last month. One of his smaller operations had snagged them an alliance with a K-Directorate mole that provided his new employer with a wealth of information on the inter-workings of the rival Russian terrorist cell. His reward for a job well done was a meeting with an official of the organization about a possible promotion. They were at the point in their operation that they needed to divide and conquer. Team leaders and international co-chairs would emerge to delegate responsibilities, and McKenus wanted to be on the front lines, bringing down Section Disparu cell 6, more commonly known as SD-6, the agency that lied to him and left him in Chechnya to rot.
He had walked into that meeting prepared to offer them the world for his chance to finally destroy SD-6 and Arvin Sloane. But Comrade Deverko, as she referred to herself, would not have it. “The Alliance of Twelve is a worthy adversary, but only 11 cells will be attacked, SD-6 will not” he remembered her explaining, and he couldn’t help believing her, everything she had made perfect sense. It wasn’t until after the meeting, after McKenus really thought about it that he realized he had been duped. No job promotion, no revenge, he didn’t even find out who “The Man” was. The next day he stormed into her office, in an attempt to calmly explain that he had not gotten what he had come for, but there sitting on the corner on her desk, in spy chic was a blond teenager with an English accent marred by an Irish brogue. This was Julian Sark.
Julian Sark had never been approached to join the syndicate. He hadn’t even graduated high school; he was a con artist, a petty thief, and an arms dealer, not to mention a long list of other accomplishments that he could proudly rattle off. He was the perfect candidate to execute the raids on terrorist cells. He had excelled faster than any other agent in this facility, and perhaps any agent McKenus had ever known.
When he entered Comrade Deverko was not in serious forum like the day before, instead she was tousling his hair with her manicured hands and they were deeply engrossed in conversation and blueprints. Irina, as she had instructed Sark to call her, reprimanded Cole. Ever since then the two men had been competing to win the coveted position of East European co-chair.
It wasn’t much of a competition, Sark was always team leader, and got to orchestrate reconnaissance missions that McKenus didn’t even have access to those files. He resented Julian Sark for his successes and in turn McKenus’ subsequent failures. Sark was Deverko’s lapdog; she introduced him to Allison Doren, the beautiful leggy colleague who recently returned from a deep cover mission in Algiers. The closer the agency came to the raids, the more distant McKenus felt from Deverko and from finally seeking retribution on Arvin Sloane and all the other pretentious bastards at SD-6 sitting in their ultra modern glass cages watching all the brainwashed worker bees fight the good fight for the unbeknownst enemy.
It wasn’t that long ago that he learned the truth about SD-6. It was on an operation that went awry and Chechnyan rebels caught McKenus, and when he said he was just a all-American boy working for good old Uncle Sam, the rebels weren’t too happy to discover there was no record of SD-6 or McKenus Cole through their back channel connections. They beat him for days, asking questions only after their brutal interrogation tactics. It was a tactical team of “The Man” who rescued him before he would be killed. They gave him a life working against terrorist organizations, and he owed him that life.
But that was ancient history, which was all in his file buried in some metal filing cabinet or on an encrypted hard drive in someone’s tastefully minimalist office. McKenus didn’t live in the past anymore, and when nightmares of the torture he endured kept him awake he thought of how Arvin Sloane would have begged for them to stop, “I’ll tell you anything” he’d imagine he’d scream. That placated him; thinking about how Arvin Sloane would pay comforted him. Maybe he wasn’t over the past, but he liked to pretend he was.
***<0>***
They are sitting around a long makeshift table. They are a low-tech operation; they didn’t need fancy desks and flat screen monitors, not for mission briefings, not even for this raid. They had identical manila folders with maps and diagrams. Sark was sitting adjacent to Irina; he was assigned a raid and assassination on FTL, another rival Euro-Asian terrorist organization. McKenus sat across from Sark; he was getting his raid on SD-6… finally. McKenus knew Irina would never go for the raid, unless there was an incentive.
Once he discovered that the infamous Rambaldi fluid was in the SD-6 vault, he knew he had his in. Sitting around the table were other team leaders, co-workers that McKenus had never seen, that meant their jobs were of the highest level of confidentiality, or on a need-to-know basis. McKenus didn’t ask questions, when he knew the answers were classified. If you needed to know, chances are you did. After all information was a commodity in this business, your rivals would kill you for your ID badge let alone for a detailed summary of the inter-workings of your unnamed covert agency, and your co-workers would kill you for looking at them the wrong way. It didn’t take long to learn to not ask questions.
They were going over the specs; Irina was edgy. She kept warning him not to maim or execute any SD-6 employees; he only had the operational authority to take care of Sloane and the vault. He couldn’t understand why Irina was so interested in the well being of Sloane’s task force, but he didn’t ask questions, he just blindly followed orders.
After clarifying the mission and the objective - to obtain Rambaldi artifacts and disorient and destroy underground organizations, which played an active role in the collection of the artifacts of the fifteenth century prophet Milo Rambaldi - Irina excused herself from the makeshift briefing room and left Sark alone with McKenus and a sea of new faces.
McKenus stood up to leave and prepare his five-person team: Endo, Tchen, Toni, the lookout and himself for the raid. They were leaving for America in a matter of hours. This was it.
***<0>***
McKenus was sitting in a dark cage. The operation was not a success. In fact, he has sat in this isolated cage for the last two years. He had no visitors, after the interrogation by psychoanalysts and agents trained in brute force as a way of ascertaining truthful answers. He had been captured by the real C.I.A., not Sloane’s fake front company posing as a clandestine black-ops branch. This was a real American jail cell, not in the basement of the bank of Credit Dauphine. McKenus didn’t find it as easy to pretend the past didn’t bother him, actually every time he closed his eyes he pictured Sark and Irina, and Sloane still alive, and the girl with pigtails, Sydney Bristow, the pretty girl years ago he had wanted to kiss. This was it; he was a shell of a useless man. Incarcerated by the government he thought he was working for, which led him to work for a rival agency, which was an even bigger threat to American security. The irony was all along he thought he was fighting the good fight, but everyone played him and used him for their own personal agendas. He was Satan’s lapdog; he was Irina’s scapegoat, Sloane’s sitting duck, and Julian’s lackey pushover. He was everyone’s pawn in the espionage game, and he had two years to think about it, and two years to hate it.
Eventually there came a day when someone did visit. The guard announced that Agent Sydney Bristow, Agent Pigtails, was coming to interrogate him before an impending transfer to a more aggressive detention center. The woman who approached his cell was not a stranger, not just another suit and tie with a list of questions and tepid coffee. She spoke in an American accent, and as soon as the guard left, she unlocked the door and tossed McKenus a loaded Beretta.
“The CIA really knows how to treat its prisoners,” she murmured in her slightly Russian accented English, “Let’s go before the guard realizes I’m not Agent Bristow…”
McKenus was stunned at Irina’s resolve; his rescue maybe two years late was not expected. McKenus assumed “The Man” would leave him for dead like Sloane did back in Chechnya. She has to practically push him down the hallway towards the exit; he couldn’t believe he was being saved again.
They escaped before the guards were any wiser. That’s when Irina revealed herself as “The Man”. She told him about her time in the CIA’s glass cage and that Agent Bristow was her daughter. She told him that “The Man” no longer existed; the Russian-nationalists and contract killers were now using the guise of “The Covenant”, after the Leonard Cohen quotation “To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself.”
They were fulfilling a manifest, a prophecy Irina was given. They would help bring the two Rambaldi heirs together and prevent utter desolation, through reform.
They were Neo-Nazis, they were liberals, they came from every country, and knew everyone’s secrets. They were a terrorist organization, hell-bent on destroying anything and anyone who got in their way, and they were brainwashing Sydney Bristow to prevent her from discovering the truth, her prophecy could not come true.
There McKenus sat in the back of an unmarked van stolen from long term airport parking; he was finally in the inner-circle. Where was Sark, he asked, Irina explained he was in CIA custody. He was still in jail and Irina hadn’t broken him out. McKenus was elated, and that’s when Irina gave him a job.
The End