By Genevieve and JayBee

Part Six

Two days

Nikita stared at the vast array of computer games, trying to remember exactly which ones Birkoff already had in his collection. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a well-dressed, fair-haired man come to stand beside her. Darting a glance sideways, she noticed he was gazing up at the display with the same bewilderment she was experiencing. Obviously feeling her eyes on him, he turned his head and gave her a friendly smile. �It�s difficult to choose, isn�t it?� he asked in beautifully accented French, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe.

Nikita forced herself to return his smile. Not only did he have a wolfish gleam in his eyes as he stared at her breasts, but he also looked a little too much like Alec Chandler for her liking. Turning her attention back to the computer games, she replied without looking at him. �I�m just trying to find one that my friend doesn�t already own,� she replied flatly in English, unwilling to make the effort to translate her less than enthusiastic answer into French.

�Your boyfriend?� he asked smoothly, also switching to English.

She rolled her eyes. Same old lines. Why couldn�t the male species invent some new ones? �No,� she replied shortly, still not looking at him.

�Would you like to have dinner with me?�

Nikita blinked, then turned to fix him with an icy stare. He was gazing at her smugly, as though he was in no doubt of her reply. �No, I�m afraid my husband doesn�t like me having dinner with other men,� she lied blithely. �Especially when I should be out buying the Christmas presents for our five children.� She smiled at him and patted her flat stomach proudly. �Number six will be arriving next year.�

The blonde stranger�s eyes widened as his smile vanished. �Excuse my presumption, Madam,� he muttered stiffly, hastily choosing two video games and backing away. �Merry Christmas to you.�

�You too,� she called sweetly after him, barely resisting the urge to cackle. Idiot. She turned back to the display of video games, trying to ignore the little pang brought on by her teasing brush-off. God knows she didn�t want six children, but having the choice would have been nice. The decision whether or not she wanted a husband was no longer hers either.

With a skill born of long practice, Nikita shoved her resentment to one side. There was nothing she could do about either issue right now, but perhaps when it was all over� She shook her head. She didn�t want to think about Centre, or Mr. Jones and his annoying alter ego right now. She wanted to think about Christmas presents and eggnog and Belgium chocolate truffles and icy cold glasses champagne with strawberries lurking at the bottom of them.

Easy to say, hard to do, she thought with a sigh. She eyed the video games, scanning the titles. Birkoff loved anything that required shooting the living daylights out of everything in sight. Pretty funny, really, when you considered his attitude toward guns in real life.

�Popsicle!�

Nikita froze. No. It can�t be. God couldn�t be that cruel. She slowly turned, and came face to face with Mick Schtoppel, aka Mr Jones. The man about whom she�d just been busily thinking bad things. Putting her hands on her hips, Nikita looked him up and down. Judging by the bad suit and the cry of �Popsicle�, he was obviously in a Mick mood today. Well, if that�s the way he wants to play it�

�Go away, Mick,� she drawled, turning her back on him. One of the few perks of having Mick around was that she could take out any anti-Mr Jones sentiments on him, and there wasn�t a thing he could do about it. After all, her dislike of Mick was well known. If she suddenly started being nice to him, people would notice.

�Don�t be like that, darling,� Mick danced around her until he was once more in her line of sight. �Can�t a bloke say hello to his favourite neighbour?�

�As far as I know none of the other neighbours talk to you, Mick.� Nikita plucked two promising looking video games off the shelf. �Being your favourite is hardly a stretch.�

Mick clapped his hands over his heart. �Ouch, baby.�

She sighed and looked at him in exasperation. �Did you actually want something?�

His expression didn�t alter from its comical mask but his voice was no longer that of Mick Schtoppel. �Just wanted to have a little chat, Popsicle.� The endearment was quite different when said in Mr. Jones� voice, and Nikita felt a little shiver dance down her spine. His dark brown eyes never left hers. �You weren�t at home, and it is rather important.�

Damn, damn and more damn. Nikita looked down at the video games in her hand, then back up at Mr. Jones beseechingly. �Can�t it wait?�

He hesitated, and just for a moment, Nikita had the strangest impression that Mr. Jones and Mick Schtoppel were competing for supremacy. However, it was Mr. Jones who glanced at his watch and gave her a crisp smile. �Meet me in an hour.�

Her heart residing somewhere in the pit of her stomach, Nikita swallowed hard. �Okay. The usual place?�

Instead of answering her, he studied the games in her hands, then lifted his eyes to hers. �You�re doing Christmas shopping,� he said in an odd voice.

Nikita tightened her grip on Birkoff�s intended present. �Yes.�

His dark eyes were unreadable, but once again Nikita could have sworn she caught a glimpse of Mick Schtoppel. �Have you finished?�

�No,� she replied softly, then pressed her lips into a tight line. I will not ask for favours. Not from him.

�Hmmm.� Mr. Jones glanced over his shoulder, his head tilting in an almost imperceptible nod. Following his gaze, Nikita spotted no one that even remotely looked like they could be Centre goons, but she had no doubt they were there. He turned back to Nikita. �There�s a coffee shop on the fifth floor,� he said smoothly. �Meet me there in ten minutes. I�ll need half an hour of your time, then you can return to your shopping.�

Nikita was too taken aback by this unexpected show of generosity to say more than a hasty, �I�ll be there.� She took a few steps toward the cash register, then turned back to offer him an uncertain smile. �Thanks.�

�If you�re doing your Christmas shopping, Popsicle,� Mick Schtoppel grinned at her, �do try to remember that I like red wine, not white, and I�m definitely an �easy listening� kind of guy.� He wriggled his well-shaped eyebrows comically. �None of that techno rubbish you like to play.�

Nikita opened her mouth to retort, then clamped it shut. Mick Schtoppel was certainly annoying, but at this very moment, she liked him much more than she�d ever liked Mr. Jones. Marveling at just how very weird her life had become, she gave her neighbour a wry smile. �I�ll see what I can do.�

Christmas Eve

Gently lifting the earthenware pot, Madeline poured herself another serving of tea. The green liquid gurgled from the spout, trailing a wisp of steam as it filled the tiny cup. Finished, she set the pot back down; it came to rest on the glass surface of her desk with a light clack.

She sipped slowly, the delicate flavor filling her mouth and lingering on her tongue. Closing her eyes, she forced her perception to narrow, limiting her awareness to the sensation of the hot liquid slipping down her throat, to the mild aroma that clung faintly to the sides of the cup. When other thoughts threatened to seep into her consciousness, she took another sip, concentrating harder, until finally they were vanquished.

Calm.

Control.

Focus.

In the waning hours of the night, such moments of clarity were becoming increasingly difficult to achieve. After a full day -- and now evening -- of intense activity, she felt her mental sharpness blurring, her energy fading under the strain of juggling too many tasks for too long a time. In an effort to stave off growing fatigue, she began engaging in mental exercises at brief intervals throughout the evening. Setting aside all abstract thoughts, she would contemplate something simple and concrete: the subtle flavor of the freshly brewed gyokuro; the rich color of the orchid bloom in the center of the room; the gnarled shapes of the bonsai in the cabinet.

It worked, as always. But it required more and more effort each time -- especially now, a full twenty hours after the telephone had jarred her awake that morning.

~*~*~*~

She reached for the beeping telephone instinctively, not even bothering to switch on the bedside lamp. When she answered, Paul's voice greeted her, crackling with impatient energy.

"Madeline. I have an idea."

She had long since lost count of the number of times her day had been launched by exactly those words; their utterance rendered her instantly alert, no matter what the hour. When inspiration seized Paul, the time of day was irrelevant -- as was whatever else she might have been doing.

Sitting up, she ran a hand through her hair. "What is it?" she asked, her throat still rough with sleep.

"I've decided I want to play Santa Claus this year," he announced matter-of-factly.

His words registered in her mind, but they made such little sense that she couldn't conceive of a context to place them in, much less a coherent response. After a moment spent recovering her capacity for speech, she asked numbly, "I beg your pardon?"

She heard him chuckle darkly. "You know. Fat man. Beard. Red suit. Slides down chimneys Christmas Eve to leave surprises for all the little girls and boys."

This was a dream, she concluded. Not a nightmare, exactly, but perhaps some bizarre expression of job stress and sublimated seasonal sentiment. If she remembered it when she awoke, she would have to write down the details for further analysis. For now, she had no choice but to allow it to take its course.

"I'm well aware of who Santa Claus is, Paul," she said, struggling to keep the bewilderment out of her voice. "What I'm not clear about is why we're discussing this subject at two in the morning."

"Because we have a lot of work to do," he replied, sounding strangely pleased with himself. "I've got my list, and I've checked it twice, but I think I need your input to decide who's been naughty or nice."

If this weren't a dream, then he had completely lost his mind. Either that, or he was deliberately trying to goad her into anger -- and succeeding at it in a truly spectacular fashion.

"Is there a point to this?" she asked icily.

He burst into laughter, apparently amused at her annoyance. "Yes, actually, there is a point," he finally answered, the laughter fading and his tone growing serious.

"And that might be?"

"Every year at this time, just like clockwork, we go on high alert, waiting for one of these groups to try and take advantage of the season and catch us off guard. Well, I'm sick of playing defense every Christmas. I want to go on the offensive instead, and hit our enemy full force just when they expect us to be slowing down."

As she listened to his explanation, her eyes began adjusting to the darkness, the outline of the room slowly taking shape. She nodded in relieved comprehension. "You want to initiate a preemptive strike. On the holiday."

"On Christmas Eve," he affirmed, his voice rich with mirth. "I want to pay them a little nighttime visit, just like good old St. Nick. Except without the sack of toys."

Through the telephone, she heard him suck in a long drag on a cigarette, then exhale forcefully. She could picture him perfectly; right now, he'd be looming at the Perch windows like a dark-suited Mephistopheles, framed in a hazy swirl of smoke as he stared intently across the nearly-empty floor below. Judging by the trace of hoarseness in his voice, he'd probably been up all night, pacing and mulling over his idea until he couldn't stand to keep it to himself any longer.

Not that she blamed him for wanting to share it. It was brilliant, inspired, and pure Paul -- an aggressive, impulsive plan of action, full of that lethal deviousness that she had come to admire so much in him. It was the sort of idea she never would have conceived of herself, but took joy in taking and bringing to life, painstakingly molding it from abstract vision into material existence.

"Who's the target?" she asked, her mind starting to race with the various possibilities.

"All hostiles posing a Class C level threat or above, where we have a seventy-five percent or better fix on their location. I'll leave it to you to coordinate with DRV to narrow it down to specific individuals. But I'm committing full capacity to this -- I want this to be the biggest surprise raid in the history of the Agency."

She caught her breath, taken aback by the scope of what he was proposing. "An operation of that magnitude will strain our resources to the limit," she cautioned. "If anything goes wrong, Section could be crippled irreparably."

More to the point, Section's leadership would likely suffer the harshest possible punishment for such a colossal failure. However, she declined to voice that thought.

"Then we'll just have to make sure nothing goes wrong," he replied confidently. "After all, that's what I have you for, isn't it?"

~*~*~*~

She glanced at her watch. Only five more minutes before the first wave of missions went live and she was needed on Tactical. She had spent the past twenty hours working frantically -- sifting through data, coordinating profiles, redeploying teams -- all with the aim of striking against virtually all their enemies at once, in a single, frenzied moment of concentrated violence.

The plan was insane: excessively ambitious, hideously complicated, and dangerously dependent on their being able to prod scores of reluctant and resentful operatives into working harder than ever before -- on a day when all of them wanted desperately to be at home. Paul's idea was virtually impossible, in fact, and he had dropped it in her lap with the blithe assumption that somehow she would figure it all out.

Yet, to her surprise, the experience had been completely thrilling. The unprecedented scope -- and the dire cost of failure -- made it a form of high-stakes gambling: risky, nerve-wracking, and utterly addictive. Indeed, as the final minutes wound down, she found herself caught up in a sense of excitement that swept away her fatigue, restless with an impatient anticipation of the coming holiday that she hadn't experienced since the earliest years of childhood.

It seemed that everyone celebrated Christmas in their own, special way. At long last, she had found one that suited her.