September 1st, 2007
What am I doing here? she asked herself, and not for the first time. It was a question she had found herself asking repeatedly over the last few months, and now, asking herself again.
After Bryce’s blowup in Belfast back in May, their relationship had grown strained. Some days it was good, some days it was bad.
Some days were June 14th, on which day Bryce managed to forget not only Sarah’s birthday, but the fact that it was their second anniversary. Those facts combined made her very, VERY unhappy.
When Bryce was informed of his mistake, he was incredibly apologetic, but Sarah was growing tired of his apologies. He tried to make it up to her by taking her to dinner – something she had never been a real fan of – and by buying her a hugely expensive birthday present – a box set of the Beatles’ entire catalog.
Too bad she was a Rolling Stones fan. And that was something that she knew for a FACT he knew.
And now, here they were, in Cabo san Lucas, where it had begun more than two years prior. Sarah knew that it was a last ditch effort to save their relationship, but unlike Bryce, who seemed determined to save it, she knew that it was done.
She just didn’t have the heart to tell him.
Well, she didn’t have the heart to tell him until he came up to her on the beach on Saturday afternoon with a drink. He handed it down to her.
“What is this, Bryce?”
“That would be a vodka martini. You know, the drink of international spies worldwide!”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “I seem to distinctly recall asking for a strawberry daiquiri.”
“Well, they were out of strawberries.”
“And so, instead, you got me a vodka martini,” Sarah shot back, her ire beginning to rise. “And not only did you get me a vodka martini, but you got me one with olives in it.”
“So?”
Sarah narrowed her eyes and stood, facing Bryce. Her hands on her hips, she said, “I HATE olives. You KNOW that.”
He looked confused. “I really didn’t.”
Sarah was astonished. “How could you NOT know that?! I’ve told you on any number of occasions!”
“I’m sorry, Sarah, but how am I supposed to remember these things?”
Her brain just about exploded. “Well, how about you try remembering that I’m your GIRLFRIEND, Bryce, or maybe we should think about the fact that you’re a FUCKING SPY!”
That last part was enough to attract the attention of several people right around them. “Shhh,” Bryce said.
“Don’t shush me!” Sarah snapped. “I’m willing to bet you don’t remember that I hate muenster cheese, do you? Or, let’s see, how about the fact that I think the Rolling Stones are ten times the band the Beatles ever were?!”
Bryce stood in shock as Sarah reamed him. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Well, believe it,” Sarah growled. “I can’t believe you could forget such basic things!”
Bryce’s face went emotionless, but she could hear the rage below his voice. “I can’t believe I was going to ask you to marry me,” he said softly.
That one threw Sarah for a loop. “You were going to what?!”
Bryce shrugged, his face growing an irritated expression. “Yeah, Sarah, I was going to ask you to marry me. I thought we worked well together. I guess I was wrong.”
Sarah clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh, Jesus Christ, Bryce. I mean… shit.”
She started walking away. “Sarah!”
“Don’t, Bryce, just don’t!”
An hour later, he discovered that their rental car was gone. Sarah refused to pick up her phone. When Bryce called Langley and asked them to pinpoint her GPS, they told him that she was halfway to San Diego and moving quickly.
Now Bryce was pissed. He had to rearrange his airline tickets to fly out of Cabo instead of San Diego, and that cost him an arm and a leg.
When he landed in Washington, he drove to his and Sarah’s apartment. Walking inside, he looked around. “Fuck this,” he muttered.
Four hours after that, most of his possessions were in a storage unit. He had just what he needed in a hotel room twenty minutes from CIA headquarters.
After depositing his necessities in his hotel room, he drove over to Langley. As he stormed into the building, he ran into Director Graham, who was somewhat surprised to see him.
“Larkin?” Graham said. “I thought you were on vacation!”
“Cut it short,” Bryce replied.
“Alright then.”
Graham got a thoughtful look on his face. “Come up to my office when you have a chance, would you, Larkin?”
Twenty minutes later, Bryce knocked on Graham’s office door. “Come in!” he heard from within.
“Have a seat,” Graham said when Bryce entered.
Bryce seated himself across from Graham. “So, what can I do for you, sir?”
Graham looked at him for a moment, then switched on the white noise generator. “The Intersect has been compromised,” he said without preamble. “There’s a group of agents within the CIA that thinks it needs to be destroyed. They’re calling themselves Fulcrum. The problem is, even though we’ve pinpointed which agents are involved, some of them are in such sensitive positions that we can’t take them down without taking the whole agency down.”
Bryce’s eyes widened. “Jesus H. Christ.”
“Exactly,” Graham agreed, nodding. He took a deep breath.
“What I want to do is destroy it before they do,” the CIA director informed Bryce.
Bryce was shocked. “What?!”
“Hear me out,” Graham replied. “I want to send a single agent to infiltrate the complex, download the Intersect database into a portable computer, and then destroy the computer itself. We’ll have to do a little rebuilding, but it’ll be worth it to keep it out of the hands of these Fulcrum people.”
Bryce shook his head. “Why are you telling me all of this, sir?”
Graham looked directly at him. “Because I want you to be that agent.”
This time, Bryce was shocked speechless.
“It means that Bryce Larkin has to die to the world,” Graham said. “It means that the world is going to believe that Bryce Larkin has gone off the reservation, and it means that the world is going to believe that Bryce Larkin’s attack on the Intersect was a suicide mission. And the world that believes all that has to include Sarah Walker.”
Bryce closed his eyes and blew out his breath slowly. “That… won’t be a problem, sir. My world no longer includes Sarah Walker, as far as I’m concerned.”
Graham was a little surprised, but didn’t show it. “Very well, then,” he replied. “When you walk out the door this afternoon, Bryce Larkin ceases to be. You have until the end of the month to execute the mission. Once you’ve downloaded the Intersect, contact me. I’ll meet you to retrieve it.”
Sarah had decided to drive back to Washington. She took her sweet time about it, too, taking three weeks to drive cross-country in the rental car, for which she was certain she would be paying a great deal for.
As she was driving into Washington, a Rolling Stones song came up on her iPod. “I’ve been hanging out so long, I’ve been sleeping all alone, Lord I miss you,” Mick Jagger sang.
“Yeah, right,” Sarah muttered bitterly. “I miss you about as much as a bad cold.”
It was when the song reached its last verse that Sarah smiled grimly, rolled down the windows, and began singing along with the Stones.
“I guess I’m lying to myself, it’s just you and no one else, Lord I won’t miss you!” she belted as she drove through the streets of Washington. “You’ve been blotting out my mind, fooling on my time, no I won’t miss you, baby!”
The song came to an end as she rolled to a stop in front of the apartment building. Grabbing her bags, she headed upstairs – and came to a stop when she walked in the door.
All of Bryce’s stuff was gone. It was pretty clear that he hadn’t been there for several days.
“Well, fuck you too, you bastard,” she whispered.
The light on the answering machine was blinking madly. Ninety-seven messages, it informed her. They were all from Director Graham, requesting that she call in, and berating her for not having her cell phone on.
Rather than calling in, she decided simply to go in to Langley. When she arrived, though, she started getting looks – looks she had gotten before.
They were the looks she’d gotten after Piers de Klerk had died.
She found herself walking toward Director Graham’s office with more urgency, bursting through his door when she reached it.
He was on the phone, and looked up when she came in. “I’ll call you back, General Beckman,” he said, and hung up the phone.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked. “Why am I getting looks from people like somebody died?”
Graham pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “I don’t want to sit,” she said. “I just want an answer.”
“Fine,” Graham replied. “Agent Walker, it is my duty to inform you that your partner, Bryce Larkin, has gone rogue.”
Her eyes widened, and she sat. “What?”
“He’s gone off the reservation, Sarah. We don’t know where he is, what he’s doing. We just know that he sent us a communication informing us of his intention to wreak havoc. We don’t know how.”
“There has to be some mistake,” Sarah insisted. “I can get in touch with him. I can find out what’s going on.”
Graham simply shook his head. “We can’t risk you like that,” he said. “But it’s worse – the NSA has put out a sanction on him.”
Sarah’s eyes widened in shock and horror. A sanction from the NSA was essentially a “kill on sight” order.
“They wanted to put one on you, too, when we couldn’t get in contact with you for several days,” Graham continued. “Fortunately, I was able to convince them that there is no way you’d turn.”
Sarah felt like she’d been punched in the stomach.
“That’s all I can tell you,” Graham finished. “You’re dismissed.”
Sarah returned to her apartment. Nothing to do. Nothing left there to remind her of Bryce. Even the framed picture of the two of them in Cabo from two years earlier was nothing but an imprint in the dust. She couldn’t decide if that was a blessing or a curse.
She couldn’t conceive how Bryce could have so thoroughly betrayed his country – betrayed HER. It was enough to make her sick.
Her eyes were beginning to tear up as she stood. She needed a distraction, something to take her mind off of things. She slipped her iPod into its boombox and hit shuffle.
The song that came up was definitely the wrong song to take her mind off of things – Joseph Arthur’s “In the Sun”. But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to change it.
I picture you in the sun, wondering what went wrong, and falling down on your knees, asking for sympathy…
Bryce paced his hotel room. It was September 24th. He was infiltrating the Intersect complex that night.
As he looked around the place that had become his refuge, his eyes fell on a silver frame, lying on its front in a box. He picked it up.
Him and Sarah, in Cabo. Two years before.
His eyes teared up as he looked at the picture. “What went wrong?” he whispered.
And being caught in between all you wish for and all you’ve seen, and trying to find anything you can feel, that you can believe in.
Sarah left the apartment to go for a run. As she ran down the streets, though, she saw things everywhere that reminded her of Bryce.
More than once, she realized that she had a tail. The NSA, trying to find a reason to put out a sanction on her as well. But she didn’t care.
As she began to cry, she angrily made herself run harder, causing the tears to streak out of her eyes. The saltiness stung her cheeks as the tears fell.
May God’s love be with you, always. May God’s love be with you.
Bryce didn’t go anywhere that day. He ordered in lunch, spent the afternoon watching television.
Perhaps the last day I will ever do anything normal, he thought to himself.
He started thinking about everything with Sarah, realizing what she must think of him.
He laughed bitterly, realizing that once again, somebody thought they were being betrayed by Bryce Larkin, when the opposite couldn’t be more true. Sarah Walker, thought he’d gone rogue. Jill Tanner, left behind because the CIA was simply too dangerous. Chuck Bartowski, kicked out of Stanford because Bryce didn’t want to see him corrupted by the CIA.
“Will there ever be anybody I DON’T have to betray?” he asked of nobody in particular.
I know I would apologize if I could see your eyes, ‘cause when you showed me myself, I became someone else.
When Sarah returned from her run, she stripped down and showered. She stood under the hot water until it grew cold, trying to cleanse herself of the betrayal she had experienced.
When she got out of the shower, she wrapped a towel around herself and walked into the bedroom. She opened a dresser drawer – and there was one of Bryce’s old t-shirts, one she’d commandeered long before.
She lifted the shirt to her face, faintly smelling the scent of his cologne, his soap, his deodorant. The scent caused her to crack, and she collapsed onto the bed, sobbing uncontrollably.
But I was caught in between all you wish for and all you need. I picture you fast asleep – a nightmare comes, and you can’t keep awake.
Bryce drove down the darkened highway toward Greenbelt, Maryland – the NASA complex, where the Intersect was kept.
It looked like he was going to a black tie event – decked out in a tuxedo. But the tux was just a cover for a far more sinister purpose – he had had it custom designed to essentially hold a small armory.
If somebody had looked under Bryce Larkin’s jacket, they would’ve thought he was invading a small country single-handedly.
May God’s love be with you, always. May God’s love be with you.
As Sarah lay on the bed, she fell into a restless sleep. Unable to leave the sense of betrayal in her conscious mind, it followed her into her dreams.
As she dreamed, she saw one after another the people she had killed. She saw the four men in Belfast. She saw Alexander Litvinenko.
She saw the face of the Hizbollah commander whose van she had blown up. Santa Anita Air Base in Brazil, burning from the explosion of twelve Exocet missiles.
She saw Piers de Klerk, standing before her, ghostly. He didn’t say anything out loud, his mouth silently forming but one word: Why?
She saw the eight men in Belgrade. And then, she saw the one face that hurt most of all –
Her mother.
“NOOOO!” Sarah screamed, sitting bolt upright in bed.
‘Cause if I find, if I find my own way, how much will I find, if I find, if I find my own way, how much will I find you?
Bryce had ditched the car about half a mile before the Greenbelt complex. Jogging the last few hundred feet, he sped up in preparation to vault the fence before him.
It was topped with razor wire, but no matter – very skillfully, he avoided the razor wire, landing silently on the inside of the fence. He moved like a ghost toward the Intersect building.
He was well inside the building when the first alarm went off. “Crap,” he muttered, as the first NSA agents appeared.
He dispatched them with ease, but the next set was a little rougher. By the time he reached the room where the computer was housed, he was bloodied and breathing heavily.
Locking the door from the inside, he set an explosive charge. Then, donning a pair of sunglasses, he squatted in front of the Intersect computer, setting his computer to download.
It didn’t take very long. As soon as it was done, he stood up, and set the explosive to go off. He started running, and reached the door just as it blew, being propelled into the hallway, four agents being taken down by the flying door.
I don’t know anymore what it’s for, I’m not even sure if there is anyone who is in the sun, who can help me to understand…
Sarah sat on her bed, her knees curled up to her chin. She had a feeling that something absolutely awful was about to happen.
She just didn’t know what, though. So many absolutely awful things had happened in her life, what difference would one more make?
“I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered to herself. “No more lies, no more death. No more.”
‘Cause I’ve been caught in between all I wish for and all I need – maybe you’re not even sure what it’s for, any more than me.
Bryce knew he was trapped. The NSA had effectively sealed off the entire complex.
He almost laughed at the irony of the situation. Here he was, trying to keep the data out of the hands of what was essentially a domestic terrorist organization, and the NSA was trying to take him down.
His only option to get the data out so that the CIA could recover it, was to get it off his computer – to send it to somebody.
He began to type frantically as he ran, pulling up an e-mail address from the address book. “Chuck Bartowski will know what to do with this,” he muttered, having no idea why he thought that, but having an overwhelming sense of confidence that his old roommate would know EXACTLY what to do with it.
The only thing left to do was to type a code phrase. He didn’t have time to think about that, though, as he crashed through an emergency door out onto an overhang. He jumped off the overhang, thinking as he landed.
ZORK! he realized excitedly. Of course!
He quickly typed, entering the message, “The terrible troll raises his sword.” Bryce was ready to press send when he heard the shot – and then he was thrown backwards as the bullet slammed into his torso.
“Don’t move,” he heard a distant voice say. As his vision grew blurry, he saw a familiar shape come into his vision.
John Casey.
Bryce tried to laugh, but didn’t have the breath. “It’s too late, Casey,” he whispered, pressing “Send.”
May God’s love be with you, always. May God’s love be with you, always.
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