Author’s Note: Yes indeed, this chapter is the behemoth to top all behemoths. A large part of that is because, as you will notice, it cribs heavily from the Pilot episode, essentially retelling a large portion of it from Sarah’s point of view.
However, I thought that it was important to fully flesh out the end of this long, long story, especially to give Sarah’s thoughts and feelings throughout the Pilot.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed The Seduction of Sarah Walker: A Tale of the CIA. This will be the last chapter, and there will be a brief epilogue to follow.
As Sarah lay in her bed, all alone, she found herself suddenly growing cold. It wasn’t the temperature in the apartment – it just came out of nowhere, this cold.
She huddled under the blankets, trying to fall asleep, but after half an hour with no success, she gave up. Wiping the seemingly never-ending tears from her eyes, she rolled out of the bed and stood.
Sarah left the bedroom, going out to her desk and turning on the desk lamp. Opening a drawer, she withdrew a sheet of letterhead from a rarely-used stationery set. Reaching to the coffee mug at the back of the desk, she grabbed a pen.
To whom it may concern, she wrote.
Due to emotional and mental stresses that have been placed upon me over the last year and a half, I have come to the realization that I am no longer able to fully discharge the duties of a deep-cover operative of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Therefore, effective immediately, I resign my post with the Central Intelligence Agency.
September 24th, 2007
Elizabeth Lisa Reynolds
It was strange to sign that name to a piece of paper. She hadn’t done that in over five years. But if she was leaving the agency, then Sarah Walker would have to cease to be.
She folded the letter into thirds and sealed it with a gold seal embossed with the initials “SW”. Sarah shook her head at the lunacy of the whole thing.
Going downstairs, she got into her car and started driving. She felt like she was in a haze the entire way, and found herself in the Langley parking garage before she even realized she had driven that way.
More cars than usual were in the garage for this time of night – including, she saw, Director Graham’s. With a backward glance at the unusual number of cars, she headed into the building.
When she stepped out of the elevator onto the administrative floor, she found that at least half the directorial staff was still there. As soon as she stepped out, though, they all looked at her – with a completely different set of looks than those she had received sixteen hours before.
This time, their looks were looks of suspicion, even of hostility. Trying to ignore their looks, but feeling their eyes burning into her back, she quickly crossed the administrative floor. Knocking on Director Graham’s door twice, she opened the door and stepped in.
The office was dark, but Graham was there, standing at the window, looking out. “Do you know what hell is, Walker?” he asked by way of greeting.
“I don’t believe in the afterlife, sir,” she replied simply.
He turned and sighed heavily. Drawing up the lights slightly, he said, “I’m not referring to the afterlife, Walker. I’m referring to right here, right now. Hell is where I have found myself.”
Graham sat in the chair behind his desk, indicating that Sarah should sit across from him. “Two hours ago, Bryce Larkin infiltrated the Intersect building at the NASA complex in Greenbelt. He downloaded the entire database, and then destroyed the computer.
“He attempted to escape, but he was intercepted and shot by the National Security Agency. He… died.”
Sarah’s heart felt like it had frozen. Her mind told her to cry, but her body responded that it had had quite enough crying over the last three weeks, and refused to cooperate. She ended up just sitting there, a look of shock and horror painted on her face.
Graham saw the look, but pressed on. “Before he died, he sent the entire database to the e-mail address of an individual named Charles Irving Bartowski. He is apparently a civilian, but also apparently somewhat of a computer guru, and has managed to put ciphers on his e-mail that we can’t break without support from the NSA. Needless to say, they aren’t really big on helping us right now, so we’re sort of stuck.”
Sarah couldn’t think of anything to say, and what ended up coming out of her mouth was certainly no help. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
Steeling herself, and trying not to think about Bryce, she reached in her purse, withdrew the letter, and handed it to Director Graham. “This had better not be what I think it is, Walker,” he said softly as he took it from her.
He slid a finger under the seal, popping it open, then unfolded the letter. He read over it quickly, and promptly ripped it in half.
“I can’t accept this right now,” he said by way of replying to the look of shock on Sarah’s face. “First of all, this agency needs you. Secondly, if you quit now, don’t you think the NSA might find that a bit suspicious and come after you, too?”
She put a hand to her forehead as that message sank in. “I didn’t even consider that,” she whispered. “I just wanted to be done with it all.”
Graham nodded. “Understandable, under the circumstances. However, there’s one last mission I need you to undertake, and then you can go spend the rest of your life sipping mai-tais on a beach in St. Kitts, for all I care.”
Sarah looked up at him. “And what would that be, sir?”
Graham reached into his desk, pulling out a manila mission folder – computers were not being used for ANYTHING at that moment, for obvious reasons. “Charles Irving Bartowski,” he said, throwing the folder on the desk.
“You are to make contact with Mr. Bartowski. See if you can determine the location of the Intersect data. If it’s on a hard drive somewhere, retrieve the hard drive. If he’s a hostile, you will terminate him; in the unlikely event that he’s an unwitting victim of Bryce Larkin – well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
He sighed, looking at her over his crossed fingers. “This is a very sticky situation, because right now, under the urging of the NSA, the President has personally issued an order that you not take part in any overseas operations, and they’ve also convinced the Secretary of State to suspend your passport. However, since this is strictly a domestic operation, there shouldn’t be any problems.
“Nonetheless, keep your nose clean. I guarantee you it won’t be long until the NSA comes to the same conclusions we have, so do try not to piss them off should you come into contact with them.
“When you complete the mission, if you don’t feel like coming back here, fine. Stay in Los Angeles. It might be for the best.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
Director Graham gazed at her. “Go home, Agent Walker. Collect only what you need for this mission. If you need more, use your Agency card to buy it in Los Angeles. The Agency will arrange for your remaining belongings to be placed in storage, and we’ll arrange the termination of your lease. If, of course, that’s what you want.”
She simply nodded again.
“Very well then. Your flight leaves Langley Air Force Base at 6:00 AM.”
With nothing further to say, she turned and left Graham’s office, gently closing the door behind her.
The one thing that she wasn’t around to hear, which might’ve made a difference down the road, was as she was driving out of the CIA parking garage.
Graham’s office phone rang, and he snatched it up quickly. “Graham.”
He listened for a moment, and then: “What the hell do you mean Larkin’s body is MISSING?!”
Sarah went back to the apartment. Exhaustion finally caught up with her, and she fell into bed, setting her alarm clock for 4:00 AM – all of three hours’ sleep.
The alarm came too soon, and she dragged herself from bed. She showered and did her best to wake herself up fully. She packed a small overnight bag, taking just one gun – her old Colt 1911. The others stayed behind.
As she was walking out the door, she considered taking her iPod – but just as she touched it, her hand recoiled. Too many songs on that iPod that were reminders of Bryce. It was best to leave it in Washington, with the rest of her past.
She arrived at Langley AFB at 5:30 AM, to be greeted by the sight of a plane she’d flown on more than once – the black Dassault Falcon 7X, the same one that she had first flown on for that disastrous mission in Brazil just two years before. Finally FAA certified, it could fly her on in-country trips.
The plane went wheels-up at 6:03 AM, just as the eastern horizon was beginning to lighten the slightest bit. Sarah promptly fell asleep, waking just once, somewhere over the Midwest, to use the lavatory.
She awoke again when the plane landed at Bob Hope International Airport in Burbank. It taxied to a remote part of the airport – no small feat, as it appeared to be a fairly small airport. The Falcon rolled to a stop next to a Porsche 911 that was the same jet black as the airplane.
As the engines wound down, Sarah climbed down the Airstair. “Agent Walker?” asked a young man, dressed in black, standing next to the Porsche.
She nodded. He didn’t say anything else, just handed her the keys. She got into the Porsche, and her first order of business was to try to turn on her cell phone. No such luck. “The hell?” she muttered, reaching into her overnight bag and retrieving the car charger. She plugged the phone in. Still nothing.
“Goddammit,” she said under her breath. At least it gave her a good excuse to go to… where did Bartowski work again? She pulled out his file. Right, the tech support group at Buy More. Time for a little reconnaissance, and first stop, his residence. Looking into the file again, she punched his home address into the 911’s navigation system.
It told her to take a right turn out onto Hollywood Way, to follow that down to Olive Avenue, which would become Barham Boulevard. From there, she got onto the 101 freeway – to immediately encounter congestion worse than the worst afternoon on the Beltway.
“Los Angeles, this is not a very good first impression,” she muttered to no one in particular. After what seemed like an eternity – but was really only about fifteen minutes – she reached the exit for Temple Street. A couple blocks down Temple, she turned onto Glendale Boulevard, and then up to the famous Sunset Boulevard.
She turned off of Sunset onto a street called Laveta Terrace. She followed the street up about a block, slowly driving past the address listed as Bartowski’s residence. As she watched, a brunette woman who looked to be a little older than Sarah came out of the complex and drove off in a Pontiac G6. She matched the description of Bartowski’s older sister, Eleanor.
With that bit of intelligence confirmed, Sarah punched in Bartowski’s work address. When it told her to take the I-5 freeway for seven and a half miles, she groaned and said, “I don’t think so.”
She stopped off at a 7-Eleven to see if a local might give her a little better insight. Sure enough, ten minutes later, she was on San Fernando Road, heading north, back into the San Fernando Valley. San Fernando Road took her through downtown Burbank, which she had to admit was charming, if a little over-commercialized.
San Fernando Road ended at Magnolia Boulevard, which took her over to Victory Boulevard (“Is everything a boulevard here?” she asked herself). A mile up Victory, and she found what might have been the largest urban shopping center she had ever seen – and in fact, there was the Buy More electronics store that Bartowski was supposed to work at.
She pulled into the parking lot, looking around herself in amazement. Next to the Buy More was a large discount retail store called, appropriately enough, Large Mart. There was a Sports Authority, a Barnes & Noble, a whole array of restaurants, and a little place with the vaguely sexual name of “Wienerlicious.”
Sarah got out of the Porsche, locked it, and headed toward the Buy More. As the doors opened, she was greeted by the cool blast of air that came out the doors and into the rather warm September afternoon. Looking around, she saw the Nerd Herd desk that Bartowski was assigned to, right in the center of the store.
He was easy to identify – the tall one, with curly brown hair, clearly in command of his situation. Charles “Chuck” Bartowski was taller than Sarah expected – although, that might have just been an illusion due to the small, gnome-lie individual who was standing next to him. Morgan Grimes Bartowski’s best friend, according to the file.
Grimes thought he was being quiet, but Sarah could hear every word he said as she approached. “Stop the presses!” he hissed to Bartowski. “Who is that?!”
He turned to Bartowski. “Vicki Vale!” he stage whispered.
Was I REALLY just compared to Kim Basinger? flashed through Sarah’s mind. As the thought ran through her head, Bartowski started doing a freestyle… something… to the phone he was clearly on hold on.
“Vicki Vale, vick-va-Vicki Vale… vickity, vickity…”
He glanced up briefly, seeing Sarah but not really registering her presence. She waited, amused, as the fact that she was standing in front of him kicked in.
And when it did, he literally dropped everything he was holding. The binder in his hands, the phone between his shoulder and his ear went crashing to the floor.
Unable to suppress a small smile, she said, “I hope I’m not… interrupting.”
Bartowski, clearly flustered, choked out, “No… not at… all… that’s from… uh, it’s from Batman.”
I know that, Sarah thought, as the expression on her face changed to one of tolerant amusement. “Because… that makes it better,” she replied, trying to not be TOO sarcastic.
Bartowski laughed nervously, and then the gnome leaned over toward Sarah. “Uh, hi, hey, I’m Morgan,” he introduced himself.
Oh, I know you better than you know yourself, Sarah said to herself, as Morgan continued, “And this is Chuck.”
Before she could stop her mouth from moving, Sarah realized that she was saying, “Wow, I didn’t realize people still named their kids Chuck, or, uh, Morgan, for that matter!”
Realizing what she had said a moment too late, Sarah mentally kicked herself and started preparing an apology, but Bartowski seemed to take it in stride. “Oh, my parents were sadists,” he replied, “and carnival freaks found him in a dumpster.”
“And they raised me as one of their own,” Grimes continued, his eyes widening and taking on a bit of a crazy look.
“How can I help you, uh…” Bartowski said, fishing for her name.
“Sarah,” she said.
“Sarah,” he repeated.
“I’m here about this,” she said, lying her phone, battery out and battery cover off, on the counter in front of him.
“Oh, yeah, the Intellicell. Yeah,” he said, picking the phone up. “Yeah, this model has, uh, a little screw…”
He started explaining what was wrong with the phone, but Sarah wasn’t really listening. As she watched and listened to Bartowski, she just seemed to find him extremely likable. Maybe it was the way he tolerated Grimes, maybe it was just his persona, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept that he could possibly be some sort of enemy agent, working with Bryce Larkin.
STOP THINKING LIKE THAT! she mentally commanded herself. You let your guard down, you could end up DEAD!
And then Bartowski was handing her phone back to her, and it was on again. “Good as new, no problem,” he said, finishing up his technical spiel.
“Wow!” Sarah said, with a note of actual sincerity in her voice. “You geeks are good!”
A pained expression crossed Bartowski’s face. “Nerds!” Grimes interjected, just as Bartowski said, “I would say nerds is probably more…”
Grimes jumped back in. “It’s no big deal…”
“You know, uh, yeah, you know, Nerd Herd –“
Bartowski was cut off by a rather desperate looking man in a plaid shirt – Who the hell wears those? Sarah thought nastily – accompanied by a girl in a ballerina outfit. The man started babbling about how he didn’t understand why his digital video camera hadn’t recorded his daughter’s recital, and when Chuck – BARTOWSKI! she commanded herself – opened the camera and patiently explained to the man that he needed digital video tape, it was all she could do to not reach out and smack the man in the back of the head for his stupidity.
The man started to panic. “Oh, no,” he muttered. “Her mom’s gonna… kill me.”
Bartowski raised his eyebrows, looking back over at Sarah. He made eye contact with her, and she did her best to smile at him supportively.
Bartowski didn’t react to the man’s panic, though. He just looked over at Grimes and said, “Morgan, I need the wall.”
And that split second decision turned into a taping of the girl doing her entire routine in front of a wall of at least twenty large-screen televisions, all showing her. Bartowski looked back over at Sarah once during the whole thing, and despite the puppy-dog smile on his face, despite the deep brown eyes that she could lose herself in –
“Goddamn it, get a hold of yourself, Walker,” she muttered under her breath, smiling back at Bartowski. Despite those undeniably attractive traits, she realized that lying beneath that outward nerd persona was a very credible threat, especially if he had the Intersect data.
As a small Asian man in a green Buy More polo shirt came rushing up to berate Bartowski for wasting Buy More’s time and money and for acting like a stock boy, Sarah placed a card on the counter. It said nothing more than her name and phone number, but it would be enough for Bartowski to contact her.
What Sarah did not count on was Bartowski not having a life. So, four hours later, when she broke into his apartment, dressed in black from literally head to toe, including a balaclava mask, she expected to be alone for awhile.
She walked directly to his bedroom, and groaned when she saw his computer – an enormous Mac G4. “Jesus, you couldn’t shell out the extra hundred bucks for a MacBook?” she asked in despair. With a heavy sigh, she crossed to the computer and began disconnecting everything from it.
Sarah was on her way out of the apartment, computer in hands, when the front door opened, and the lights came on – and in walked Bartowski and Grimes, having a conversation about… a porn star? What the hell?
They just stared at her, and Bartowski said, very quietly, “Please, not the computer.”
She set the computer down, and sighing inwardly, took on a defensive stance. Grimes picked up a plate and threw it at her, Frisbee style. Sarah punched it, deflecting it back into Bartowski’s gut. As he groaned and clasped his chest, Grimes threw a candle at her.
Again, she punched it, and sent it flying back into Bartowski’s groin. The look on his face was one of pure agony, and as he bent over in pain, she found herself feeling rather sorry for him.
But she had a mission. And Grimes was making it easier, as he accidentally broke a vase over Bartowski’s head. “Come on, Chuck, do something!” Grimes yelled.
As if he could. He was already pretty much disabled, and Sarah could take him down in the time it would take Bartowski to take exactly one step toward her.
Rolling her eyes, Sarah bent down and picked up the computer. That was all it took for Bartowski to recover. Stepping toward her determinedly, he said, “Gimme the computer!”
So she did. She tossed it up in the air, and as he caught it, she hit the ground, and swept his legs out from under him. He lost his grip on the computer, and as it flew up in the air, she grabbed it, delivering a solid kick to his chest. He flew into the wall.
Sorry, she thought, cringing as the apartment shook.
Sarah turned and set the computer back down, resuming her defensive stance as Grimes shouted, “That’s my friend!” and foolishly attacked Sarah with a golf club.
She grabbed the golf club out of his hands, and whipped it around, scaring the living daylights out of him. “Okay, look, he’s not that good of a friend.”
Yeah, and some friend you are, Sarah thought as she delivered a kick that sent Grimes to land on top of Bartowski.
As he landed, though, there was a crash behind her. She turned just in time to watch in despair as the shelf the computer was on went crashing to the ground, and the computer disintegrated before her very eyes. A lower shelf crashed on top of it, scoring a direct hit on the hard drive.
Well, shit.
This particular portion of the mission a failure, she ran outside as fast as she could. She practically dove into the 911 and sped away, leaving rubber marks on the pavement.
“Dammit!” Sarah hissed as she pulled the balaclava off her head.
She opened up her newly-restored-to-life phone and called Director Graham. “Graham, secure,” he said on answering the phone.
“This is Walker,” she replied. “I’ve made contact with Bartowski, and I almost got away with his computer, but he and his weaselly little friend put up a fight that ended with his computer being trashed.”
Graham sighed at the other end. “But he may have transferred the data to some other media.”
“I have no idea, sir.”
“Find out, Walker. Whatever means necessary.”
As Sarah headed to the Buy More once again the next day, she knew she was going to have to turn the flirt up a notch. Not that that would be a particular hardship – Bartowski was kind of cute, and he seemed to be the anti-Bryce, which was really what she knew she needed just at that moment, not that she’d ever actually admit it to herself.
“I have eyes on him right now,” she told Director Graham, watching him come out of the Large Mart and head into the Buy More. He looked… uneasy, even frightened for some reason. “But like I said, the computer was destroyed.”
“Okay,” Graham said with a sigh. “It’s done. I want you in the air in an hour.”
We discussed this last night, though! she thought. “But… what if he has an external drive? A backup –“
“It’s over, Sarah,” Graham replied. “The NSA is stepping in.”
He paused. “Bryce was CIA, he was our guy, and he burned us. Casey’s on his way out. You’re being recalled.”
Sarah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Casey?! After his stunt in Brazil? After his episode in Atlanta?! “Because of Casey?” she asked, the disbelief evident in her voice. “He’s a burnout!”
“He’s a killer, Sarah,” Graham said, his distaste for everything to do with Major John Casey evident in his voice. “A cold soul.”
In an office two thousand miles away from Sarah Walker, Art Graham sighed, having to once again go down the road of deceiving one of his best agents with regard to Bryce Larkin. “I want you to listen. Whatever happened with Bryce, you couldn’t have known. You couldn’t have stopped it.”
“But I can fix it!” Sarah objected. “If there’s a backup, I’ll find it! Just give me… twelve hours.”
And with that, she hung up the phone. Opening the door of the Porsche, she braced herself against the warmth of Burbank as she headed into the store.
As she walked up to the Nerd Herd desk, she saw Bartowski, his head down. “I’m losing my mind,” she heard him mutter as she approached.
She gently pressed the bell. “Morgan, not now,” Bartowski grumbled, reaching out to swat what he thought was Grimes’ hand away from the bell –
And as his hand grabbed hers, it sent an almost electric shock right to the pit of her stomach. Fortunately, she had a moment to compose herself, as he very slowly came to the realization of who it was standing before him.
“Hi!” he said, flustered, shooting up. “Hi, uh, phone trouble again?”
Sarah sighed inwardly, turning the flirt level up to maximum. “Uh, yeah, I’m not sure I’m able to receive calls, ‘cause I never got one from you.”
Bartowski looked like he was about to pass out. Sarah could see Grimes behind him, a look of sheer disbelief on his face. A startled laugh snuck out of Grimes’ mouth, causing Bartowski to look over his shoulder in disgust.
“I’m sorry I left so quickly yesterday,” Sarah continued when Chuck looked back at her. “I had an appointment with a realtor – I just moved here.”
“Welcome!” said Chuck, still flustered.
And suddenly, Sarah found herself off script. She realized that she had gone from thinking of him as “Bartowski” to thinking of him as “Chuck” and had landed somewhere far outside of where she had been intending this conversation to go.
Fortunately, improvisation was one of her strong suits – it had to be, as a deep-cover operative. Well, a disgraced and Presidentially bitch-slapped deep-cover operative.
She decided to add “charm” to “flirt.”
“And, uh, I don’t really know anybody here… I was wondering if you could show me around… that is, if you’re free.”
Chuck looked absolutely shell-shocked, speechless. Grimes had snuck back up behind him, and answered for him. “Oh, he’s free! He’s got nothing but time on his hands. He is VERY available. You guys are gonna have a great time!”
Chuck’s expression had gone from shell-shocked to unspeakably happy to utterly disgusted, as he shot a look of death at Grimes. Babbling something about Xerox machines, Grimes quickly disappeared.
“Apparently, my schedule’s wide open,” Chuck said, becoming calm again as he turned back to Sarah.
In a situation like this, she normally would’ve said something witty and disarming, and yet, all that came out was, “Great,” and an embarrassed laugh.
GREAT?! she berated herself as she exited the store. What the hell is this, junior high?!
When Sarah stepped out of the shower, she had a sudden realization.
“Holy shit!” she said out loud. “That’s where I’ve seen him before! Chuck Bartowski was the guy in the bar in Monterey! The guy with that Jill girl!”
She remembered what she had thought, all those years before – that she could’ve had a normal life, that that could’ve been her with him. And remembering the context in which she’d been in that bar –
Sarah suddenly found herself hoping, totally irrationally, that she wouldn’t have to seduce Chuck, not for her own sake, but for his. He just seemed like too much of an innocent.
But the little voice inside her head said, “You think like that, you could get dead, Walker.”
And so, in addition to reluctantly putting on the black lingerie, she strapped a set of knives to her ankle, and got out the hairpins. The same hairpins she’d used years before, to kill Milan Popović. She even dipped them in Ricin, just in case.
The last touch was a Kevlar vest. Not that she was afraid of being attacked by any enemy forces, but rather because she was quite certain that the NSA was still looking for an excuse to shoot her.
Finally, she called Director Graham to report in. “He’s picking me up for a date,” she told him.
What he said in reply shocked her. “You’re on your own on this one, Sarah. I can’t help you if something goes wrong.”
WHAT?! Now I’M off the reservation, too?! “I don’t know about this guy, Graham,” she said, a note of despair in her voice.
“Nice guys can have secrets.”
And with that, the knocker on her door clicked – once, twice, three times. She stole a quick glance at the video monitor – yep, it was Chuck.
She cocked her Colt, slid it into her waistband under her dress. “What should I do if she runs?”
The answer from Graham was chilling, and yet, so indicative of the way things had gone the last few days.
“Kill him.”
Dinner found them in some Mexican restaurant in East L.A., where a crummy mariachi band sang the song that Sarah had grown up knowing as the “Frito Bandito” song. Staying alert, she nonetheless tried to just let this be as normal a date as possible.
“I live with my sister and her boyfriend, Captain Awesome,” Chuck said, sarcastically emphasizing his sister’s boyfriend’s nickname.
Sarah laughed. “It’s true, though!” Chuck insisted.
“So, wait. You call him Captain Awesome?”
“Yeah,” Chuck replied. “Wait till you meet him. Everything he does is awesome. Climbing mountains, jumping out of planes… flossing.”
Amateur, Sarah thought. But she said, “That’s funny!”
Chuck actually blushed. “What can I say, I’m a funny guy.”
“Which is good,” Sarah replied, “because I am… not funny.”
From there, she managed to lose herself in the conversation – she managed to almost let it be a real date with a real guy, not some half-cocked spy get together, like everything with Bryce had been, and much as she hated to admit it, like everything with Piers had been. When she mentioned relationship baggage and Chuck sweetly offered to be her baggage handler, it was all she could do to not grab him by his lapels and scream, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!”
Then, unexpectedly, he managed to bring up Bryce. She almost said his name when referring to him, and lamely changed it to Bruce. “Bruce,” Chuck replied. “And you give me crap for being named Chuck.”
And then, something happened that wasn’t part of the mission. It wasn’t supposed to be part of anything. The words, “I like you, Chuck,” slipped out of her mouth.
He responded with a smile – an electrifying smile.
As they were walking to their next stop, Chuck asked if she liked music. She almost said the Rolling Stones, but she really didn’t want to think about music in any way shape or form right now.
He led her into a club where a live band was playing. She sat for a moment, just enjoying herself – until she looked to the doors and noticed an entire NSA strike team slipping into the club.
Thinking quickly, she grabbed Chuck by the hand. “Let’s dance!” she said.
“I’m not really a dancer,” he protested, but she dragged him out on the floor anyway. Under the pretext of dance moves, she managed to withdraw a knife, which she threw to pin an agent to the wall, whipped out her hair pins and threw them, taking down two more agents, and then used another knife to take out a fourth. Sliding under Chuck, she bounced back up, a smile on her face –
And there he was. Major John Casey. The man who blamed Sarah for all his troubles. But she wasn’t really in the mood to confront him. Instead, she grabbed Chuck by the hand and dragged him outside. “Where’s the fire?” he asked weakly, following.
Once they were outside, she demanded his car keys. He started babbling about being old-fashioned and company policy. Sarah didn’t have time for his protests, so she picked the lock of his car – had he REALLY called it a HERDER? – and got in. “Get in the car,” she commanded.
As he protested, a black Suburban came whipping around a corner. Chuck got into the car. Sarah dropped it into reverse and floored the gas.
However, a Suburban in drive goes much faster than a Toyota Yaris in reverse, and the Suburban slammed into the Herder’s front end several times. Sarah had to get out of the situation. “Tell me when to turn!”
“Left in five seconds!” Chuck shot back.
“Your left or my left?”
Even as the question escaped her lips, Sarah realized how stupid it was. Their lefts were the same. Regardless, she cranked the wheel hard to the left, whipping the Herder’s back end that direction – to shoot down a flight of stairs.
As they bumped down, the hood flapped up, but it stayed put long enough for her to see the Suburban come to a halt at the top of the stairs.
When the Herder came to a halt on the street below, Sarah looked at Chuck, and with urgency in her voice, said, “Listen to me, Chuck, those men will hurt you. They’re from the NSA, and they’re after you.”
“Me?” he objected, looking terrified and confused all at once. Sarah’s heart was just about ready to break as he babbled on, wondering “Why me?”
As he came to his senses and stopped babbling, she heard the roar of an engine, and headlights approached rapidly. Chuck pointed out the window, eyes wide.
Casey’s Suburban. It t-boned the Herder, probably in excess of thirty miles an hour. Every airbag in the car deployed, but Sarah was still quick enough to drag Chuck out of the Yaris. “Get down, Chuck!” she ordered him, as the Suburban reversed itself and came roaring back their way.
Chuck tripped, and it looked like he was in serious trouble – but it was Sarah he was concerned about. “Look out!” he yelled, as the Suburban came speeding up behind her.
She looked around frantically – and there it was. A button to deploy emergency barricades in the middle of the street, because they were right outside of the Library Tower.
Drawing her last knife, she hurled it at the button, and scored a direct hit. Behind her, the barricades flew up, and she ducked as the Suburban ran into them full tilt.
“Eat shit and die, Casey,” she muttered, looking at the wreckage of the Suburban behind her.
Turning back toward Chuck, she pulled out her cell phone, and as he looked on in astonishment, requested an emergency air evacuation.
As Chuck requested, even demanded an explanation, Sarah went back into full-on deep-cover operative mode, dragging him up to the helipad at the top of the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Finally, she decided to give him something.
“How do you know Bryce Larkin?” she demanded.
“What? How do YOU know Bryce?” he shot back, the shock evident in his voice.
“We work together at the CIA.”
“The WHAT?! The CIA?! Bryce is a SPY?! Bryce Larkin from Connecticut is a spy?!”
“A rogue spy,” Sarah snapped, pushing down feelings that were threatening to come flying to the surface. “Did he try to contact you?”
Chuck, looking more and more confused, said he hadn’t heard from Bryce… since the night before. “He sent me an e-mail.”
“Did you open it?!”
“Yeah, it was a line from Zork!” He tried to explain what Zork was, but Sarah wasn’t particularly interested. When he got to the part about “lots and lots of pictures”, though, she just about had a heart attack.
“You saw them?!”
He nodded slightly. Sarah asked if he backed up his computer. “Was there an external drive?”
“It crashed,” he said distractedly. “Wait, was I not supposed to look at those pictures?”
Sarah’s attention was elsewhere, though – there was the last person she wanted to see, coming up the ladder to the helipad. “Okay,” she said softly. “I may have to aim my gun at you, so just don’t freak out.”
Chuck’s eyes went wide. “WHY?”
John Casey came walking onto the helipad. “It’s late!” he growled. “I’m tired. Let’s cut the crap, and give him to me. Now. He belongs to the NSA.”
And that was when Sarah’s Colt cleared her waistband. It snapped up, aimed at Chuck. “The CIA gets him first.”
Casey’s gun came out, aimed at Sarah. “You come any closer and I SHOOT,” she spat at Casey.
“Sarah?” Chuck said nervously. “I’m freakin’ out!”
“You shoot him, I shoot you, leave both your bodies here, go out for a late snack,” Casey said drily. “Thinkin’ maybe pancakes.”
That was when Sarah realized Chuck was moving. He ran toward the edge of the helipad, and fear gripped Sarah. “Chuck, no!” she screamed.
And he froze. Right there, on the edge. What in heaven’s name? she thought, as he just stood there for a moment.
Slowly, she approached him, her gun still on him, Casey’s gun still on her. Without warning, he whipped around to face them.
“They’re gonna kill him!” Chuck said, pointing toward the Wilshire Grand Hotel.
“Kill who?” Casey asked, a look of confusion crossing his face.
“Stanfield! The general!” Chuck said. “The general, Stanfield, the NATO guy!”
Casey and Sarah gave each other sideways looks. For a moment, Sarah could almost imagine being back in the Czech Republic, working with Casey and Carina again.
But right at the moment, he had his gun trained on her. That kind of shattered the thought.
“Look, something is wrong with me,” Chuck said, bringing her out of her reverie. “I don’t know what it is, but something is very, very wrong with me, and I’m remembering things that I shouldn’t know.”
As he said that, an old memory of a long-since-cancelled CIA program called the Omaha Project went through Sarah’s head. Agent education through subliminal imaging, the abstract had said.
No way, she thought. That’s not possible.
But maybe it was. “Talk to me, Chuck,” she said. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “For example, uh, there was a Serbian demolitions expert at the Large Mart today! That’s kind of odd, wouldn’t you say?!”
Chuck turned to Casey. “Look, last week, the NSA, you guys intercepted some blueprints. Blueprints of a hotel. THAT –“ he pointed at the Wilshire again “- hotel. And then the CIA, you guys found a file, the schematics of a bomb in Prague! The bomb is in that hotel!”
And with that, Casey whipped is gun around, training it on Chuck. Like hell, Sarah thought, bringing hers around to aim at Casey just as quickly.
“He was workin’ with Bryce,” Casey said disgustedly.
“No!” Sarah shouted. “He opened Bryce’s e-mail!”
Casey slowly looked over at Sarah, realization dawning on his face.
“Chuck, those pictures that you saw were encoded with secrets,” Sarah told him, realizing that the Omaha Project had indeed come to fruition – just not in the expected fashion. “Government secrets. If you saw them, then you know them!”
Chuck clearly didn’t believe her. “There were thousands of them!”
“Wait a minute,” Casey said, also still clearly having a hard time with the idea. “You’re tellin’ me that all of our secrets are in his head?!”
Sarah finally said it out loud. “Chuck IS the computer.”
“What did you say?” Chuck asked in disbelief. “What does that mean?!”
“Chuck, you have to listen to me,” Sarah said. “You have to tell us where the bomb –“
“WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!”
“You said there was a bomb!” Sarah yelled. “Is there time to stop it?!”
“What, what, WHAT?! Are you crazy?!”
“No, we’re the good guys,” Casey replied, suddenly trying to sound sincere and failing miserably – at least in Sarah’s opinion. “We get paid to keep bombs from exploding.”
And just right than, as irrational as it was, as much as she beat herself up every day over the incident, it was all Sarah could do to keep herself from reminding Casey how poorly that worked out in Brazil. It was probably just as well – he likely would’ve turned and put a bullet in her head.
Chuck began objecting, saying he couldn’t help, insisting that they call Bryce.
“Bryce is dead,” Sarah choked out – the first time she’d actually said it out loud. “He died sending those secrets to you.” Her voice broke as she finished the sentence.
Chuck’s eyes went wide. “Bryce is dead?” And then he fell silent.
Casey rolled his eyes in frustration, pointed his gun skyward, and fired off a shot, bringing Chuck back to reality. “Yeah, and he’s gonna have a lot of company unless you start talking. So pretty please, can we defuse the bomb now?”
Ten minutes later, Sarah found herself running into the Wilshire Grand Hotel, Casey behind her – somebody she’d never thought she’d be working with again. They tried to get Chuck to stay put, to tell them where the bomb was, how to get to it, but instead of telling them, he just started running off toward the main ballroom, with them hot on his heels.
As Chuck burst in the doors of the ballroom, he froze, the two agents freezing behind him. He had no idea where to go.
“Chuck, where is it?” Sarah asked, urgently.
“I don’t know,” he said, as he looked around the room – and then he saw a banquet cart in the middle. “That’s it.”
They approached the cart and pulled it open, revealing a laptop connected to a bomb. Casey and Sarah fended off approaching Secret Service agents with their IDs.
As Chuck stared at the computer, rapidly counting down to zero, Sarah had a sick realization – she was about to die.
But was that such a bad thing? After all, Bryce was dead, Piers was dead, her mother was dead, everybody she had ever cared about was dead to her, her father was crazy, her career was in ruins – what did she have left to live for?
Other than this seemingly innocent, fairly cute and friendly guy who had somehow gotten a massive intelligence database dumped into his head?
And that’s the point at which Chuck’s phone rang. Sarah could only hear his end of the call, but she gathered quickly that it was Morgan Grimes at the other end – and then, Chuck clearly had an idea, as he pulled the phone away from his ear, crouched down by the laptop, and started typing furiously.
“Okay, okay, I have an idea,” he said.
“That’s not an X-Box,” Casey replied derisively, grabbing Chuck’s hand, “and you’re not an X-Man.”
“This is a Prism Express,” Chuck shot back, ignoring him. “We sell this at our store. It has a DOS override.”
He looked from Casey to the computer to Sarah, his eyes pleading with her. “I think I can do this. I can do this, please.”
And she found herself really wanting to live, by whatever means necessary. “He’s our best shot,” she said, staring at Casey, daring him to challenge her.
Casey looked down at the bomb, and then, surrendering, released Chuck’s hand. “Go!”
Chuck cracked his knuckles, and started typing furiously.
When he started searching for Irene Demova, Casey’s face took on a disgusted look. “He’s searching for porn!”
But Chuck just held up one hand, and clicked on the top link on the search engine.
And as Sarah and Casey stood there, watching in astonishment, the computer melted down, crashing catastrophically. The lights on the bomb went dark.
“You did it!” Sarah said, a feeling of elation and incredible happiness washing over her.
“I did it!” Chuck shouted, fists going in the air. But then, his face changed. “But what if I was wrong?!”
“Don’t puke on the C4,” Casey cracked. Sarah squeezed his shoulder, and then left him to recover.
After leaving the hotel, Sarah and Casey had an argument over who was taking Chuck into custody. Just as it was about to get really nasty, Chuck walked up, basically told them both that as the keeper of the secrets, he was in charge, and departed into the Los Angeles night, saying that he was going home.
By the next morning, Sarah and Casey had come to an agreement with their respective superiors. Chuck would stay in Los Angeles, under their supervision. “You realize, this means I have to extend your final mission, Agent Walker?” Graham had asked her.
“I understand, sir,” she replied. “I’m okay with that.”
Chuck hadn’t gone home, though. Sarah drove past his apartment. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t at the Buy More. Finally, getting desperate, she called Langley and had them do a search on his phone. He was at the beach in Santa Monica.
When Sarah found him, the sun was rising, and he was sitting alone, on the beach. She pulled off her boots, shivering at the feel of the cold sand underneath her feet, and approached him.
She slowed as she came up next to him.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“All night,” she replied. A little lie never hurt anybody.
“There’s nowhere I can run from you people, is there?”
As he said those words, she could hear the contempt, the bitterness dripping from them – something that hadn’t been there the day before. For some reason, it tore at her soul.
She was desperate to keep him – she wasn’t quite sure, but innocent was the best thing that came to mind. “Talk to me, Chuck,” she pleaded.
And he did. He couldn’t figure out why Bryce decided to send him the Intersect. He wanted to know what was going to happen, and she really wasn’t sure. She came up with the best answer she could, but it wasn’t enough to pacify him.
As she sat on the beach with him, watching the sun rise, she asked him to do something – something that she hadn’t asked anybody in years. The last person she’d asked this of had gone on to betray her.
“Trust me, Chuck,” she said.
He didn’t say anything, just looked back at her, and then down at the sand. Trying to encourage him, she playfully bumped him with her shoulder, and he cracked a small smile.
Together, they sat there for a while, as the sun continued to come up. Sarah had no idea where this was going. One thing was certain, though.
This was going to be like no mission she had ever been on before.
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