“Succession”

Alias season 3, episode 2
Original air date: October 05, 2003

Two undercover CIA agents in Berlin are abducted by the Covenant when the elevator they're riding in is ripped out of the building by helicopter. The Covenant sends an audio message to the CIA claiming responsibility for the abduction and stating that they are officially enemies of the U.S. government. To emphasize the point and draw the CIA's attention to their demands, they instruct the CIA to pick up a package in a porn theater in Berlin. Sydney finds the package, which contains the head of one of the abducted agents and a list of demands.

The chief demand is an exchange of prisoners: the Covenant wants Sark released by the CIA and will return their agent for him. Sydney and Jack are particularly distrustful of this exchange, since Sloane is also involved. He's told the CIA and the NSC that he believes the Covenant wants to kill Sark in retaliation for his killing of one of their high-ranking operatives. NSC Director Lindsay has approved the trade of prisoners, over Sydney and Jack's objections.

Jack goes to see Sloane, since he knows that Sloane will be expecting him, now that he's out of prison. Indeed, Sloane is waiting for him and hands over a disk with the information Sloane collected on Sydney's disappearance. He claims that he also attempted to find out what happened to her, but only encountered dead ends. Jack warns Sloane that he doesn't trust him at all and promises to bury him.

Weiss helps Sydney move into a new apartment near his own. While they're moving boxes, he reveals that he's been trying to get Vaughn to return to the agency. Sydney realizes that Vaughn's not really considering it because of her presence, so she meets him at his school to say that he shouldn't hold back out of courtesy for her.

Sydney also confronts Sark before she transports him to Mexico for the exchange. She pressures him to tell her what he knows about her disappearance, accusing him of burning her place down to cover up for Sloane abducting her. He laughs at her, and swears that if Sloane was behind her abduction, Sark knew nothing about it. She doesn't believe him, but has little time to waste, as they're preparing to leave for Mexico. The Covenant releases the CIA agent, and the CIA releases Sark; however, as they meet halfway between the two groups' cover, police vehicles and a U.S. military helicopter appear out of nowhere. The helicopter crew informs the CIA agents to drop their weapons under orders from the NSC. Dixon furiously phones Lindsay to ask what the hell is going on, and Lindsay admits that he staged the whole thing to recover the CIA agent and keep Sark. Unfortunately, in the chaos that follows, the Covenant takes Sark and recaptures the CIA agent.

Sydney confronts Lindsay in the men's room about how unacceptable his doublecross of the CIA was. He threatens to have her arrested, and she spits back that he ought to, to teach her a lesson in the abuse of power. Seems he got the message, though: he removes himself as the NSC liaison to the CIA and instead appoints Lauren Reed, an agent of the NSC. She's not only there as a liaison, but she'll also be investigating the death of Andrian Lazarey, the Russian diplomat Sydney killed during her absence. And Reed turns out to also be Vaughn's wife.

Lazarey's death, it turns out, is bizarrely intertwined with Sark, the Covenant and Sydney's disappearance. It seems that Sark was taken by the Covenant because they want the $800 million in gold buillion he just inherited from his father — Lazarey. He didn't even know he had it coming to him, but he hands it over to the Covenant. Jack gets in touch with Derevko through the secret protocol they established during their contact while Sydney was away to ask her what she knows about Lazarey. Derevko promises to upload all her intel on him to her and Jack's FTP drop point.

Meanwhile, the CIA is still attempting to get their agent back. They discover that he's being held in a sub-basement of a club, and Sydney works the owner to gain access to the basement. Vaughn, by this time having rejoined the CIA, assists Sydney in hacking the security system to get to the room where the agent is being held. When Sydney gets there, she encounters the same creepy doctor who cut the other agent's head off. She shoots him, and as he's dying, he mutters, "You kept your promise. You said you would kill me. You were my favorite. You never broke." Sydney tries to get more out of him, shaking him and yelling at him to tell her why the Covenant took two years of her life, but he dies.