He arrives at work half an hour early, 30 more minutes he will have to fill. But he'd woke long before he should have this morning, after a few hours of shallow sleep on the couch, the television still on, bass fishing in place of the Lakers. Sleep seemed impossible, and he'd decided there might be more to distract him at work.

There would have been, at his old job. Here, he has no clue where to start, no idea how to occupy himself until five, much less do something productive, useful. They just pull you away from everything you knew, everything you were good at — from Sydney, from Weiss — and drop you into this job you're nowhere near qualified for, with no guidance whatsoever. What the hell do they expect you to do?

First things first. He turns on his computer, works through logins and security scripts, and then calls up the Agency's secure messaging system. Encrypted at twice the level of the secure servers that are the backbone of e-commerce, and located on a classified network, this is most agents' preferred means of communication. The others — secure telephone calls and paper files transferred via courier — have largely been replaced, in the same manner as their civilian counterparts.

There is one message, from Devlin, sent only a few minutes ago:

He smiles slightly, thankful that at least someone knew he was going to be floundering here, and locks down his desktop, heads off to the far side of the divider maze for a cup of coffee. The pot is fresh, only one cup gone, presumably to whoever made the coffee.

Powdered creamer, no sugar, back to his tiny office. He unlocks his desktop, pounding through all three passwords, and leaves Devlin's message up as he calls up the records database. The case numbers make it easy to find both records, and he sends them to his printer, although that means he'll have to pack everything in a burn bag later and take it down to Disposal. He'd rather have the paper in his hands, be able to mark it up.

It takes the files awhile to print, and when he goes to collect them from the LaserJet, they're more than an inch thick. Finally, something to do.

Munich had set off a dull alarm in his head, and he recognizes why as soon as he starts to read. The primary task of the Munich station for the last five years has been infiltrating SD-2, headquartered in that city. This first file is a status brief on the station, dated a little over two months ago.

He pulls a fresh legal pad and blue Bic from his desk drawer and reads on, hand and pen poised over the paper, ready to take down anything that stands out in the files. He'll have to deal with disposal of the legal pad, as well, but he's found he prefers them when he's plowing through files.

The raid on the Munich cell was messy — eight agents dead in one of the more egregious examples of a mass operation that hadn't gone as well as they'd originally thought. Some of the cells had rolled over quickly — they hadn't even lost an agent in Montreal, only one in Israel. Others — Munich, Beijing, Chile — had been largely disastrous.

The headquarters of every cell had either been destroyed or secured, lower-level agents and support staff taken into custody. But top leadership had managed to escape, including Arvin Sloane and Alain Christophe. And they hadn't recovered nearly as many weapons or Rambaldi devices as they'd expected. The latter had been completely missing from SD-6, and scant at other cells.

None of the cells will be able to rebuild into anything formidable any time soon, but the CIA still has a lot of cleanup ahead. Not that you'll get to be a part of it.

This, though, is better than he'd expected. Working on something related to SD-2 means that, in some small way, he will be helping with the Alliance cleanup, helping Sydney. And working in something he considers an area of expertise — he's spent the last three years on the Alliance, assigned first to operations and then as Sydney's handler.

The words have grown blurry, thick gray stripes across the paper. He narrows his eyes, forces everything back into focus, reads on.

Some of the agents in the Munich station had suspected a mole, someone who was feeding information to SD-2 at the end. The cell couldn't prevent the CIA's strike — they'd moved far too quickly for that — but it was enough to give top leadership, including one Alliance member, the head of SD-2, time to escape. They are still at large.

The file references six other operations with distinct "suspect activity." He notes the case numbers; he'll need to pull them all later. One is the second file Devlin suggested, the operational file for the takedown of SD-2.

Like their own operation into SD-6, this one was large and hastily planned. Twenty-six agents, 18 of whom returned, three of those after a lengthy stay in the hospital. He considers eliminating the dead and injured, decides against it. The mole could have been shot by accident, or purposely, even, to throw off suspicion.

Five of the agents, however, were tactical experts from Station Berlin, brought in to assist with the operation. There were only 35 agents and support staff in the entire Munich station, according to the first file. Twenty-eight, now; one of the dead was from Berlin.

He starts a list on the legal pad, scribbling out the names of everyone from Munich directly involved in the operation, including three who'd helped plan but stayed behind to work comms, and the station chief, Larry Turner. He's never met Turner, and can't recall hearing much about the man, who is in his first posting as chief.

The other five files help him narrow the list until he has nine people who were involved in either the planning or execution of the suspect operations. It is possible that the mole was not directly involved, merely someone with access to the files, but he's got to start somewhere, and this seems right.

He makes a note on the pad to look at bank accounts and financial records. That's how you do this, isn't it? You look for the guy who just bought a big-ass house he shouldn't have been able to afford, because that means somebody's paying for intel, or worse. But he begins by pulling the profiles of his nine. The printer is just winding up when his cell phone rings.

"Sydney" on the call ID, a warm rush of relief through his body.

"Hey, Syd."

"Hey." Her voice sounds like a smile. "I just wanted to call and tell you I'm on my way back. I'm still at the airport in — I'm still at the airport. But I should be home later this evening."

"Great. Call me when you get in?"

"Yeah." A pause, and he can hear the airport announcer in the background. It is not clear enough to discern where she is. "I miss you."

"Miss you too," he says. "I'll see you soon."

"Okay. Bye."

"Good bye." He thumbs the end button, leans back in his chair with his eyes closed. She's fine.

———

Brian Collins, the third agent on his list, is as unremarkable as the first two, and he sits, elbow on his desk, head in hand, and tries not to feel discouraged. This can't be the way to go about things. Everyone looks good in their profile; the CIA wouldn't hire them if their faults were that obvious.

So how do you do that with these people? Same way. He decides to skim the rest of the profiles and then look up mission debriefs for each, maybe even file access records. The discrepancies would be down in the details.

He sets to skimming the rest of Collins' file, but he's interrupted by a short rapping on his door. Weiss opens it unacknowledged.

"Hey, how's it going over here in the land of counterintelligence?"

"Not as bad as it was before," Vaughn says. "Is Sydney back already?"

"No. She took a later flight." Weiss spreads his hands wide, an exaggerated smile on his face. "But hey, remember me? I'm back!"

"Sorry. Welcome back." Vaughn pauses. "I was just worried about her."

Weiss crosses the office and sinks heavily into one of the chairs in front of Vaughn's desk. He leans forward.

"Everything went fine. She's the best, you know. Obviously you know. Don't even know why I was there. She definitely didn't need me."

"I'm still glad you were there. Sydney needs someone she can trust to back her up."

"You mean someone you can trust."

"Both."

"You know I care about Sydney, too, Mike. I'm doing my best."

"I know. So everything went okay? Who designed the operation?"

"Smooth op," Weiss says. "Wish I could tell you more, buddy, but we're all under strict orders — "

"It's okay. I understand." He will have to stop quizzing Weiss and Sydney; this is hard enough without making everyone uncomfortable.

"You feeling okay, Mike? You don't look so good."

"I'm fine." He glances down at the pile of papers on his desk. "Just didn't sleep very well last night."

"Are we back to that again?" Weiss doesn't wait for an answer. "You know what you should do? Cook a turkey. Tryptophan, like Thanksgiving? You'll be out in no time."

"Thanks, but no thanks." He's already tried milk, anyway, and prescription zolpidem, which left him groggy in the morning and didn't work much better than the milk.

"Seriously. She's good at what she does. You don't have to worry about her."

"Good agents die. You know that."

"Yeah."

He wishes Weiss had more of a response.

———

Early evening drags along. With a clean apartment and bills paid, there's nothing he needs to do, and nothing he particularly wants to do except see Sydney. Eventually, he takes to sitting on the couch with another game on — hockey, at least, this time, the volume low.

The nine from Munich soon on his thoughts; he's finished all the profiles and none have stood out so far. He'll go through debriefs tomorrow, and hope for better luck. There has to be something — everyone slips up. Even Sydney, occasionally. They were just lucky she hadn't been caught.

His cell phone rings, finally, from the end table beside him. Better be Sydney.

It is. "Hey, I'm at LAX, but I should be home in about twenty minutes. Do you want to come over?"

He thinks, oddly, of the cartoon Roadrunner, "meep meep" and feet spinning, as fast as he possibly can get over there. A small grin at that, almost giddy with relief. "Of course. Have you eaten yet?"

"No. The airline food looked particularly scary this time."

He smiles again. "I'll pick up some dinner on the way over, then."

"That's okay, Vaughn. I can cook."

"Syd, you just got back. Go home and relax."

"Okay. See you soon."

———

He knocks on her door twenty-two minutes later with a white paper bag of Thai food in one hand, hoping she didn't just return from Bangkok.

She opens the door, clad in a simple black turtleneck sweater and jeans, bare feet. Big smile. "Hi."

"Hi." His free hand around the back of her neck, leaning in for a long, slow kiss. And now he feels truly relieved — one thing to hear her voice on the phone and know she's safe, quite another to be able to see her, kiss her.

She pulls back, opens her eyes, a little breathless. "Come on in."

He follows her inside the apartment, to the kitchen, and places the food on the counter next to her purse and a large black shopping bag.

"I got you some things," she says. "In the bag."

He turns his full attention to the bag, made of good, unlabeled glossy cardboard, ribbons for handles dangling down the sides, considers what might be inside.

"You didn't have to get me anything, Syd."

It's a bit odd, he thinks, that she's buying presents this early in their relationship. Then again, they've known each other a lot longer. And this gives him a good excuse to return the favor — not so soon as to be obvious, but soon enough. Start to work through the list of things he's seen over the years and wanted to buy, but never could. At least he can do this, now.

"I wanted to. I stayed a little later to do some shopping and I saw the one thing and thought of you, and the other — just look in the bag already, Vaughn."

He does, peeling aside the tissue paper on top to find a soft blue v-neck sweater. "It's beautiful, Syd. Thank you."

She gives him a shy, proud smile as he reaches down to the bottom of the bag, wraps his fingers around what feels like a wine bottle. It is — his favorite Bordeaux.

"To replace the one we drank last week. I know you said you could only get it in France."

"So you were in France?"

"Yeah, Paris. We were — " She freezes. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't even have told you Paris."

He pushes aside his frustration, crosses the kitchen and places his hand on her arm. "It's okay, Syd. It's just going to take some getting used to, that we can't talk to each other about everything, anymore."

She nods.

"And next time you want to buy me a bottle of wine from France, no questions asked," he says. "Thank you, again."

———

As hungry as they both were, he must have been overzealous in his ordering, because nearly half the food goes into her refrigerator.

He carries two half-full and very large wine glasses into the living room. Not the good stuff; she'd suggested they save that for a special occasion. It had occurred to him briefly that in their business you couldn't be sure there would be a next special occasion, but he'd just nodded and said okay, opened a California cabernet instead.

He hands her one glass and sits close beside her on the couch.

"So how's the new job going?" she asks.

"It's not going much of anywhere right now, but I'm surviving. What about you? I know you can't tell me anything specific, Syd, but have things been okay for you?"

"Fine," she says softly, her eyes distant, like she's holding something back. "It's really school that's killing me. I've got this big paper due Friday that I've barely started, and I'm going to try to take the day off tomorrow, but you know how that goes."

"Yeah."

She takes a sip of wine, turns to him. "I'm sure it will all work out. It always does." Big, fake smile.

"Syd, what's wrong? Is it school, or is it work?" He stares into her, willing himself to be patient, to wait, draw her out.

Her shoulders slump. "Work. There's something going on right now that I'd like to talk to you about, but I can't."

There are few things she could have said that would hurt more, but he tries to hide it. He shouldn't attempt to stop her if she wants to follow the rules now, of all times. But before, if something was really bothering her, she would tell him, clearance be damned.

She has to know she can trust you. She does know, she does trust him — he wouldn't be here right now if she didn't. Perhaps his transfer has scared her back to the rules — it would kill her to be pulled from the hunt for Sloane.

He realizes he's left a long silence, and speaks carefully. "Syd, I don't want you to break protocol. But I also don't want you to be carrying something around that's obviously bothering you. You know anything you say to me stays between us. You know you can trust me."

She appears on the verge of tears for a moment, then blinks it away. "I know. But Vaughn, it's really not a big thing. I'll be fine."

It is a big thing, he thinks. It is a big thing and she's pushing it away. But he knows from experience that she will not share until she's good and ready. He waits for her to make the next move.

She does, tossing back the last of her wine and placing the glass down on the coffee table. "Will and Francie are going to be out late tonight," she says, sliding her hand up his free arm. She takes the wine glass from his other hand and sets it next to hers on the coffee table, then slips a leg over his, straddling him, her palms flat on his chest.

She leans in to kiss him, hard and slow, and slides her hands down his chest, up under his shirt. It feels good, amazingly good; it hasn't taken her long to learn how to touch him, her fingers light, feathery, skimming along his stomach. Too good, and yet he can't give himself fully to the sensation, can't let go, because this feels like a distraction, something meant to pull his attention away from whatever's worrying her.

Her hands on his chest now, delicate little kisses down his neck. Just let it go. His hands find the seam of her sweater, the warm, smooth skin on her back and this, he thinks, this makes it worth it, because they're together.