summary: There were three fingers on the table.

*

Her fingers clamped down on the pliers, and she smiled at the responding crack. The man did not move.

“Very good, Mr. Vaughn,” Irina smirked. “But I might remind you, this is just the beginning of our very long affair.”

She grabbed his hair and jerked his face up toward hers. His eyes were almost depthless. “We could make this easy, you know, but I know your type.” She smiled. “Fuck, I’m married to one.”

She twirled around the table and grabbed the finger she had just cut off. She slipped the ring off it, and slid it over her thumb. “I’m sure your family is very proud of you, Mr. Vaughn. I’m very proud of you. Managing to get the Passenger away so quickly.” She played with the ring. “But you know, you took something that belongs to me. And I intend to get it back.” Irina walked behind him and caressed his exposed neck.

“If it’s the last thing that I do.”

Vaughn practically spit at her. “You’ll never find her.”

“Oh, now there’s the fire of the CIA I’ve learned to expect. But you should know, Mr. Vaughn, never say never. Especially when there’s a woman involved.”

She went over to him. He was tied sitting down in basic wooden chair. A drop of blood dripped from his knuckle onto the oriental carpet. She straddled him, and ran her right hand through his hair. Her other hand contained the pliers.

“The nice thing about cutting off fingers,” Irina started, “is that they don’t leave a lot of blood behind. Very little clean-up.” She fitted the pliers around his middle finger. “Just a quick snap,” and she clenched her fist, “and the finger is gone.”

This time Vaughn groaned. She gyrated against him. “Did that feel good, Mr. Vaughn?” She leaned forward and whispered into his ear. “Do you like these little games we play?” Irina threw back her head and laughed. She climbed off of him, and cut off his remaining ring finger. “You are just too easy, you know, Mr. Vaughn? It really is a pity. Such a pretty man like yourself.”

His head started to droop. “Oh, really now, you’re going to give in that easily? Why, we’ve just begun here. I’ve only got,” she counted, “three, and that means you still have seven. Fingers are such funny things aren’t they?” She wiggled her fingers in the air, examining them. “You don’t even really pay attention to them until you haven’t got them.” She stretched her left hand out and held it up against the light. Her wedding ring caught the light, and the diamond sparkled.

Quickly, she pulled her hand down, and turned her back on Vaughn. Irina planted her hands on the table in front of her and considered her options. Every passing moment, and the Passenger was getting farther and further away. And this man held the key to all her problems. But like all good bread-and-butter American duty boys, Irina learned he wasn’t going to divulge anything easily.

She sighed. This had all come so suddenly. The Passenger was churning out the equation in God-knows-where, and she was working undercover with the perfect family. Then suddenly, contact. Jack brought the book back from Prague and there was his name. This man. Vaughn. She hated the way it sounded on her tongue. This man had taken something that belonged to her. But of course he didn’t know that. No, this man was just one cog in the wheel. Important, only for the moment. Irina, on the other hand, Irina was a key. She idly stirred a beaker of hydrochloric acid. She knew she was more important than her handler in Russia let her know. Irina meant truth, and Irina was tied to the Passenger, and this man was getting in her way.

The man behind her began to laugh. “You’ll never find her. You’re so off-track already –”

Irina whirled, furious. She threw the acid at Vaughn’s face, and listened to him scream. She listened to the acid bubble, and she threw the empty beaker on the ground.

“No one will recognize you now, Mr. Vaughn. Especially not your little son.”

Vaughn was still screaming. Irina suspected his eyes had been open at the point of impact.

“Oh, yes, I know you have a son. A son of which you are so proud. He’s young and smart and wants to be just like his dad, doesn’t he? Does he play baseball well? That age-old American tradition? Or, if memory serves me correctly, he likes the ice better, doesn’t he? Don’t you like to watch him skate around that small pond?”

Irina settled back, leaning on the table, like a cat playing with a half-dead bird. She watched him writhe.

He gasped, “Sydney,” and his breaths were heavy and irregular.

“Oh yes, I have one of my own.” She walked around him, clapping. “Good for you, Mr. Vaughn, did your homework. Tell me, when did you realize who I was? Was it when you first opened your eyes and found yourself tied here? Did you think, what is that woman doing here?”

She traced a finger along his reddened cheek.

“Oh, don’t think I didn’t notice your gazes at the agency parties. I’m good at looking innocent, don’t you think?”

Irina sighed. “You aren’t making this very enjoyable.” She purposefully avoided looking at his face, angry at herself for losing control like that. Briefly, she thought of Sydney, safe asleep at home with Jack. She was at a literary conference, the type she had to go on every three months or so. It amazed her that Jack never put Prague and the conferences together, but love is blind and she exploited that to her every advantage.

“I could be home, reading stories to my daughter, but instead I have to sit here with you. I must say, your conversational skills leave something to be desired.”

Once again she cursed the quickness of this operation. She had none of the devices she needed, and no truth serum. Her life would be so much easier if everything simply went according to plan. But Irina was good at improvising. She knew she would get nothing out of this man, but she was going to have her fun with him while she could.

“So tell me, Mr. Vaughn, was she relieved to see you? Did she clutch at your neck, crying? Did you feel like the great American hero, saving a poor little innocent girl from a life of torture?” Vaughn’s head had dropped forward. Irina wondered if he was even listening.

“Unfortunately for you, you have no idea what you have stumbled into. Protect the innocent, I’m sure, and yes, you protected her from the likes of me, you got her out of that miserable environment, but why, Mr. Vaughn, why?”

She played with the three fingers on the table. She was reminded of Sydney running around the house singing, “Three Blind Mice.” Irina resisted the urge to make the little stubby fingers dance.

“Your government is after the same thing we are, Mr. Vaughn. The minute the Passenger arrives at Langely, she will be subject to myriad tests, and eventually, yes, the serum. And she will begin to produce, as she was programmed to do, and the equation will begin to spill out across the page.”

“What have you really saved her from, Mr. Vaughn?” Irina laughed. “Nothing. You have saved her from nothing. You have merely shifted the pawns on the chessboard. Do not kid yourself into thinking you are the knight. No, you are all pawns in this game. Why do you think it was so easy for me to get my hands on you?”

Irina strode right up to him. “Because you are expendable. You can be replaced. The Passenger cannot. And unfortunately for you, either can I.”

She sighed. “I have grown tired of this game. I give you one final chance. Perhaps I’ll return this ring to your wife.” She was still wearing it on her thumb. “Where, Mr. Vaughn, is the Passenger? How do I find her? How did you get her away? How did you find her location?”

He was silent. She expected as much. Irina grabbed a knife and held it above his ear. “All senses are expendable, in the end, Mr. Vaughn.” She waited a moment and then said, “You disappoint me.” She sliced his ear off with one quick motion. Blood began to spill all over the carpet, but Irina didn’t care. He would be dead long before they found anyone.

She threw the ear on the table. Why make things easy, she thought? She was furious. All this blood on her hands and no results. The Passenger gone, and Irina stuck in her role as doting mother and loving husband. Waiting for the next book, or sudden drop. She would have to go to this man’s funeral and listen to the ostentatious guns firing. She grabbed another set of pliers and tilted his head back. One by one she removed all his teeth, except for one molar in the back. She considered herself generous. He drooled on himself. It was a mixture of salvia and blood and it stained his shirt.

He was close dead at this point; she was merely making a mess.

Irina lit a fire and threw all evidence into it. The pliers turned red in the heat. She pulled the carpet over to the edge of the fireplace, and waited long enough for it to catch fire. As she left the burning upscale apartment, she scattered the teeth in the bushes around her.

She twisted the ring on her finger. She would have to get rid of it before she returned home, but for now she calmed herself with the weight of the gold against her pale, thin thumb.

Everything lost must one day be found. She lost today, Irina knew, but she did not make a business of losing. The Passenger would be returned to her. They would fulfill their destiny.

Rimbaldi had foretold it all, after all. And Irina believed in demons and destiny.

She was living proof.

*

. the end .
  . send a flower .
    . pick another.
       . back to the garden gate.