Sydney is now determined to find her mother, and she meets privately
with Sloane to ask for his help, and insists upon a leave of
absence. He agrees...but to her surprise the following day, he
assigns her onto a mission to retrieve material about Alexander
Khasinau...
When Sydney
protests -- reminding Sloane that she wants to find her mother
first -- he explains that Khasinau
was Laura
Bristow's superior at the KGB. Dixon and Sloane are to fly
to Vienna and rendezvous with an undercover agent stationed
at the
Russian embassy. The agent, Wexler, has a microchip with valuable
information about Khasinau's organisation.
Wearing
a mask, Sydney attends a masquerade ball at the embassy. Another
man, also wearing a mask, whispers to her that Wexler
is dead and that they are both now in jeopardy. In private,
the masks are dropped. The man is Noah Hicks, an SD-6 agent
whom
she dated years ago.
Together, they make it to the basement and find Wexler's
corpse. Suspecting that he swallowed the microchip to keep
it hidden,
they cut the chip out of the body. With enemy agents in hot
pursuit, Sydney and Dixon extract Noah from Vienna and make
their escape.
On
the plane home, Sydney asks Noah why he left five years earlier
without saying good-bye. It becomes clear that
their separation
was the result of a misunderstanding, before Hicks had
to be transferred out of the States.
That evening, Francie borrows Sydney's coat and discovers
a ticket stub for a trip...to Italy. Sydney said she had
flown
to Seattle,
so she and Will contemplate an explanation for the mysterious
ticket, and speculation fills the air... Is she having
an affair? Why would she lie to her friends? ...and they
resolve
to confront
her about this.
Meanwhile,
Jack -- after learning that his wife is still alive --
is furious that Sloane kept the truth from him
for this
long. He tries to console himself with drink, until
Sydney finds him
in a local tavern in the middle of the afternoon. She
informs him that Devlin has ordered him to visit Dr.
Barnett, the
agency psychiatrist... and the wall, between father
and daughter, goes up once again.
Following
orders, Jack visits Dr. Barnett. She is a shrewd judge of Jack's
character, and does not believe
that
he is being truthful,
with her or with himself... She asks that he visit
her once a week.
After the microchip is analysed at SD-6, Sydney and
Noah are sent to the Arkhangelsk forest in Russia.
In an underground
complex, below a ranger station, is a computer with
information about
Khasinau's organisation. They break into the complex
to steal the data-core from the computer. Sydney
also uses
this opportunity
to confirm background on her mother...
The data-core is kept under sub-zero conditions in
a cryo-chamber, and Sydney must don a protective
suit to
access it. During
the invasion, one of Khasinau's men triggers a
large, robotic lever-arm
-- and knocks her to the ground, cracking her helmet
-- and Noah must rescue her before she succumbs
to the paralysing
cold. Sydney
and Noah narrowly escape with the core, and make
it to a
cabin -- a remote SD-6 safe house. With hours to
kill before they
are rescued, they discover that their passion has
not been extinguished...
