The jury's still out as to whether New Kids On The Block is going to go anywhere, if not this may be the next story. If NKOTB flies, this will probably be the next one after that.
This is another yet Alternate Origins story. I offered a bone to Jill in the last story (Not that! Get your minds out of the gutter! ;^), so I think it's time to give Langston his time in the sun, as I think he's starting to look a little pale. That's right kiddies, Langston Graham gets to be one of the good guys in this story.
Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, this isn't real and it certainly ain't no Disney Princess story!
Moscow – September 2007
When the Armageddon phone hidden in her night stand started ringing in the early hours of the morning, Mary snapped into full consciousness, and her heart was full of dread as she hastily ripped the drawers out of the night stand to get to where it was stashed away. They called it the Armageddon phone because they wouldn't use it unless it was the end of the world.
She grabbed the phone and answered it with a "DA?"
The voice on the phone was one that she hadn't heard in over ten years. "Mary, it's Lang, get your arse back here! They're going after your boy!" With that he hung up and she started to shake as she sat there with her head down.
Anyone who saw her might have thought that she was crying until she raised her head. What her face showed was pure rage, enough that any rational person would have run from the carnage promised by that look.
Mary leapt into action, moving about the room quickly and purposely without turning on the light as she threw clothes, money, travel documents, weapons and phones into the bag on the bed. She got dressed and straightened up the room before she slipped out of the room, and hence the entire Volkoff compound, as if she were a wraith.
Though the older Lada Samara parked behind a business about four or five kilometres away from the Volkoff compound looked as though it was being held together with string and bailing wire, it started surprisingly easily, and she drove away quietly into the night.
On the outskirts of Moscow there was a small airfield which looked all but abandoned, but it was just possible to see that there was a light on in one of the hangars if you knew where to look. She drove the Samara up to the hangar and parked out the front, smiling when the light went out as she drove up. Getting out of the car, she went to the smaller door and stood off to one side as she knocked and called quietly in Russian "Ivan, it is Marika."
The door unlatched and she slowly opened it, standing where she could be seen. After a few moments a man rushed out, sweeping the area with an AS VAL assault rifle. When he saw that the area was clear he hustled her inside without a word, shutting the door behind them and turning on the lights.
As the lights came on, the L-39 Albatros that he began prepping when she called him from the car dominated the hangar. He asked in Russian. "Marika, what is going on, why do you need the jet?"
She looked grim as she answered. "My friends back home just called to say that the CIA are going after my son so I need to come home, how much longer before it is ready Ivan?"
Ivan was outraged "No more than thirty minutes, but why would those bastards go after your boy?"
"I do not know my friend, that is why I need to get back. I will fly the Albatros to Vilnius and then get a commercial flight into Canada, fly domestic across to Vancouver and then enter the United States in Seattle. Once I am there I can contact my friends and find out what is going on."
Ivan nodded "You make tea, I will get the jet ready!"
True to his word, the jet was readied, fueled up and running within half an hour. Mary embraced him and kissed him and then he hoisted her into the cockpit, squeezing her shoulder and telling her "Save your boy!" before he closed the canopy.
Mary kept the jet low and avoided towns as she flew across Belarus and into Lithuania, putting it down there at another out of the way airstrip with nothing but the moonlight to light the way. Ivan had called ahead and another friend was waiting for her. He turned the lights on in the hangar to guide her in as she taxied up, and as soon as she cut the engine he shut the doors.
They'd closed everything up within fifteen minutes and drove back to his place, and a couple of hours later she woke on the couch to him and his wife talking. She told them what she'd told Ivan, as that was as much as she knew, and they got her onto the next flight to Montreal as soon as they had the details of her Canadian passport. With that done, they also arranged the Montreal to Vancouver and Vancouver to Seattle flights under her other identities for her.
With the time zone differences, the twelve and a half hour flight effectively arrived in Montreal five and a half hours after departing from Vilnius. Being early in the morning it didn't take long to get through customs, but she hardly had time to change her clothes, appearance and identity before she was on the flight to Vancouver. Once again the time zones effectively cut the five and a half hour flight to two and a half hours. Another quick change job had her onto the flight to Seattle and an hour later she was back in the USA for the first time in years.
It had been less than twenty four hours since she was woken by the phone call from Langston when she got through U.S. Customs, and she only hoped that she'd been quick enough to get ahead of whatever was coming after Charles.
Once she'd changed identities again she booked herself onto a flight to Los Angeles and bought a few pre-paid phones (it was SO much easier than the old way to get burner phones) to call Langston to find out what the hell was going on. His answer of "I'm just heading into a meeting, Di has been wanting you to come to dinner, why don't you work the details out with her?" said that someone was listening in, so she got off the call quickly. "Oh sorry Honey, I'll call her, see you then, bye."
She stripped the phone and deposited the pieces in different trash receptacles on the way to another part of the airport where she pulled out another pre-paid and called Diane. Diane had been expecting her call and quickly gave her the rundown. "Oh Honey, I'm so glad to hear from you! It's been such a mess here, Bruce has gone off the rails and got himself mixed up with those people he was involved with in Omaha again. He even sent some of that stuff to his college buddy, John was so angry he said that he's dead to him. On top of that Samantha's run off to the west coast chasing some boy and John's gone after her! I just don't know what to do with myself!"
It was a struggle for Mary to keep her tone moderately concerned without showing her real reaction as she responded. "Now don't you worry Sweetie, I'm sure that Bruce will come to his senses, and Samantha's a good girl, she's just a little boy crazy. Everything will be fine, I'm sure. Look, I'll be in town the week after next, why don't we catch up for dinner and see if we can forget about our kids for the night?"
"Yes, that would be wonderful! Give me a call when you know you'll be here!"
"Will do Sweetie, now don't you worry yourself none, I'm sure it will all come out fine."
After she hung up, she was on autopilot as she stripped the phone and deposited the pieces in different bins, because what Diane had told her had chilled her to the core.
That bastard Bryce Larkin had attacked her son again, sending him the Intersect program, that abomination which had come out of the CIA's MKUltra program that Stephen had been working on. Those bastards at the CIA had convinced everyone that they'd scrapped their mind control program back in seventy three when in fact all they'd done was give up on trying to use drugs and chemicals and started looking into using electronic mechanisms instead.
Obviously John Casey, who was generally known as the NSA's Lethal Weapon, had killed Larkin, but not before he'd managed to send that thing to Charles, and now Casey had been sent after Charles by the NSA. On top of that, Emma's girl Samantha, who was the CIA's Enforcer under the name of Sarah Walker now, had been sent after Charles as well. Langston wouldn't have known who was being sent after Charles when he called, but that wouldn't have been what he was warning her about when he called her though, his warning would have mainly been about that Intersect program.
That was the worst of this, not knowing whether Charles had actually received and loaded that abomination, because the later versions of it had destroyed or killed everyone they had been tested on. Larkin obviously hadn't been content with trying to destroy Charles' life, now he had tried to kill him! Yes, Lang had been right in calling the Armageddon phone, because she could be looking at the end of her world if that had happened!
Mary had a few stiff drinks in the half hour before her flight to Los Angeles took off, and kept drinking on the three hour flight. She had to concede that the flight attendants may have been right to cut her off as she'd been a bit loud when she told the sleazy business man what she'd do to him if he didn't stop trying to proposition her. Even with the grudging respect she'd had for the fact that he was at least coming on to someone age appropriate for him, her reaction had been enough to scare him into wetting his pants. She really needed to get herself under control.
Arriving in Los Angeles, she got a rental car at the airport and headed straight to the hospital where Eleanor was working. She had to make sure that that idiot who was screwing her daughter while he was supposed to be watching her and Charles for Alexei Volkoff, care of the SVU, didn't find out that she was in Los Angeles. For that matter she also needed to keep an eye out for his mother, because she was the real agent, she'd just taught Devon enough seduction techniques to manage women so he could get the information that her masters, or more to the point in this case Volkoff, wanted.
Mary snorted to herself at that, sending a trained seducer probably would have worked if Eleanor hadn't been trained better than his mother was, but she'd seen him coming. She couldn't really fault her daughter for using him as a state supplied sex device to make up for the distinct lack of any love life that she'd had through the years that she'd spent raising both herself and Charles, but she couldn't help wishing that she'd held out for what she deserved rather than sleeping with that idiot.
She disguised herself again and set it up so that she'd present like someone suffering from a mild stroke so that Eleanor would be the one allocated to examine her when she stumbled into the Emergency Room. Eleanor saw through her disguise and got her into a private examination room ASAP. After she'd confirmed that Devon was off duty at the moment and they'd had their reunion, Mary got to the point and asked about Charles.
Her heart was in her mouth when Eleanor confirmed that Charles had indeed received and loaded the Intersect, but Ellie rushed to reassure her that he was OK. They'd both recognised the Intersect for what it was from what they'd been told, but it hadn't effected him the way it had everyone else, the worst he'd gotten from it was a terrible headache that they managed to blame on that idiot Morgan Grimes spiking the punch at his birthday party the night before.
When she asked whether Samantha and John Casey had arrived yet, Ellie grinned. "Samantha has arrived, from what they told me they both got a shock when she walked into the Buy More and they recognised each other, because as you know he was using Kowalski back when Uncle Joe took her away and the picture they gave her hadn't been clear enough for her to identify him, but as soon as she walked in she knew it was him. She said that as soon as she looked in his eyes and saw him smile, she only just stopped herself calling him Charlie. Luckily the rest of them just took his staring at her without saying a word as him being stunned by her beauty, and Mom, she IS a beauty! She's even lovelier than Aunty Em was when we were little!"
"Anyway, she left him a card to call her and I ducked out of the hospital on my break so that the three of us could meet up last night away from everyone else to work out what the hell was going on. She got a hell of a surprise when she found out that Uncle Lang was both your and Aunty Em's friend, though she did say that his instructions about making sure that she didn't do anything rash before she had all the facts made more sense now. She said that this Casey guy should be here by now that she hasn't seen him yet. She was worried about that because she said that he's the one that the NSA sends in to clean up its messes, should we be worried?"
Mary hugged her "No, you'll be fine, he's part of the Spooks and it's your Auntie Di who he's reporting to on this. She also knows that Samantha, Sarah, is the one who's been sent by the CIA, so she would have made it clear that he was to ensure that neither she or Charles are harmed. Is there any way for me to talk to her before she has a run in with him though?"
"I've got her number, I can try and get her to meet you somewhere?"
"Yes please Sweetie, this whole thing is like a powder keg at the moment and I want to make sure that none of you get hurt. The best way I can think to do that is to fill her in on everything we know. Forewarned is forearmed as they say."
She hesitated. "Also. I won't be able to stay long Honey, I dropped everything to get here when Uncle Lang called to say that they were coming after Charles, but once I've made sure that he's, well all of you are OK, I'll have to get back before Volkoff starts looking for me. I also can't risk Devon seeing me and reporting it back to Russia, so I think that I'll have to head back tomorrow. I can explain disappearing for two or three days by saying that I just had to have some time to myself, but any more than that would be difficult. I'll try to make sure that I see you and Charles again before I leave, but it will be tight, so try and keep tomorrow as free as you can."
"OK Mom, I don't want you to go but I understand. Now I'll call her to try and set something up, but there's one thing I have to tell you first. The way they were looking at each other, it was incredible! They never want to be apart again. I've never been so dissatisfied with the walking sex toy as I was when I saw their palpable need for one another. I guess what I'm trying to say is don't push her, don't try to test her Mom, she loves him and he loves her, far more than they did when they were kids. If you push her too hard I'm afraid that you could lose Chuck."
Mary had a tear in her eye as she nodded her acceptance of what her daughter was saying, and Ellie picked up the phone to call Sarah. They set up a time and place for Mary to meet her, then she and Ellie said their goodbyes and Mary headed out to meet with her possible future daughter in law.
Sarah recognised her Auntie Mary immediately, and Mary saw what Eleanor had been saying, because as beautiful as Emma had been when they were younger, her daughter surpassed her. That reminded her of something else that she had to discuss with her, as Emma was only down in San Diego, they had to see each other before Sarah left again.
They spoke for over an hour, and Mary explained as much as she could to her about what was happening, what this program that Charles had loaded into his head was and did, and who her extended family were, the members of the Spooks.
Mary explained that they'd been a group of CIA and other Field Agents and Analysts who kept crossing paths back in the seventies, eighties and nineties and became friends. At first, they'd just been meeting to swap stories over drinks but it had become more than that. While there were many more involved now, the initial members had been Bryan Mills, a CIA Field Agent in the SOG. Diane Beckman, a DCS Field Agent. Mary Harrison, a CIA Field Agent. Stephen Kowalski, a CIA Scientist. Emma Bukoska, a CIA Analyst. Joe Blake, a CIA Field Agent. Langston Graham, a CIA Field Agent. Charlene Baltimore, a CIA Field Agent attached to a black ops operation with the State Department. William Graham, an FBI Special Agent and Jack Ryan, a CIA Analyst. Others joined later but they were the original Spooks.
"I married Stephen when I was pregnant with Eleanor and she was born in February seventy eight, then three and half years later Charles was born in September eighty one."
"Di got pregnant to Bry Mills, but didn't find out about it until after he'd been sent on a long term deep cover assignment. The CIA told her that he'd died on assignment when she tried to contact him to tell him about the baby and she fell apart, so she gave the baby up for adoption when she was born in June seventy eight. Bry came back after Eighteen months and they tried to find their daughter, but the family who adopted her had been killed in a car crash."
"There was no mention of their daughter so it was presumed that she'd died as well, Di and Bry's relationship couldn't stand the strain of losing their daughter that way so they broke up. A few years ago her birth certificate showed up in DEA deep cover profile though. We haven't been able to track her down yet because she keeps going from one deep cover identity to the next, but we're still looking for her."
"The next one to come along was you, of course, Emma got pregnant with you and married Joe, and you were born in May eighty two."
"We had a few others join the Spooks in the eighties and nineties, Roan Montgomery, a CIA Field Agent. Jeffrey Biddle, an NSA Technical Analyst. John Casey, a DCS Field Agent. Gertrude Verbanski, a KGB Field Operative. Robin Cunnings, a CIA Field Agent. Sydney Prince, a CIA Field Agent and Alex Forrest, a DCS Field Agent. We also made associations with other people around the world, some of those were the people who helped me get back here when Lang called me."
She made no bones about the fact that she loathed Sarah's father for taking her and disappearing the way he did in eighty nine while her mother was away working on the big operation that they had running in Panama for months. When she finally managed to come home and they'd disappeared, it almost broke her. They'd all tried to help Emma search for her, but they later found that her father had changed their names a dozen times while they moved across the country. They kept getting further and further behind them as they discovered and investigated the identities they shed, until they just had to accept they they'd never manage to catch them that way.
"We had another problem then, because when Emma disappeared to chase you across the country, someone in the CIA had decided that she was a security risk because of the sensitivity of the information she had in her head as their best analyst, and they had a burn notice issued on her, so she had to disappear completely."
"The plan had been for her to lay low until the burn notice was lifted and then come back and explain what had happened, but it was changed to a permanent termination notice when the powers that be decided that she knew enough to blow the story that the government was using to justify itself on the Panama operation out of the water. That meant that she could never go back to being Emma Blake, so she became Emma LaBeau, a librarian from New Orleans."
They were running out of time, so Mary skimmed through the rest. She covered how about six months after her father took her away, the ones running the project that Stephen was working on demanded a practical demonstration of the Agent-X program which was the first generation of the new technology about a month before Charles turned nine. Stephen had been against it but they somehow got one of the other scientists to try it. When Hartley loaded it though, his personality wasn't what it was supposed to be, he was more violent.
"They sent him into Russia to see how well the imprinted personality would hold up, and then sent an agent in to get him out six months later when it finished. We lost touch with the agent and I was sent in to see what happened to him. I found that he'd been killed and that the Agent-X program hadn't finished, Hartley WAS Alexei Volkoff now and he seemed far crazier than he'd been at the start, he was totally paranoid."
"He didn't trust me either, but he must have remembered me at some level because he didn't kill me, instead he made me his right hand and wouldn't let me leave. I was making my plans to get out when he showed me the file he had on Stephen, Eleanor and Charles and told me that he knew where to find them if I tried anything, so I was trapped there."
"Stephen was spending too much time worrying about how to get me back, and he got sloppy and careless and left his workroom open when he went off to get something. Charles was getting upset about how his father kept ignoring him and must have decided to set his experiment off out of spite. What he set off was the upload of an early version of the information Intersect, and Stephen was frantic when he found him, he thought that he'd burned our son's brain out because he wasn't reacting to anything. Charles came back though, and he was fine, so Stephen presumed that that meant that that version was safe. He had it stuck in his head that with the right resources he could get me out of Russia, so he went and loaded the same version as Charles had into his head."
Mary shook her head. "It wasn't safe for him though, it started frying his brain. He tried to fix it over the next couple of years but he kept deteriorating. In the end he decided that he didn't want Eleanor and Charles to see him turn into a vegetable, so he contacted the others in the Spooks and asked them to get our children out of there and look after them. He told them that he was going to go away and try to fix himself, and he'd be back if he was successful. Most of the group were field agents, so they couldn't guarantee that they could be there to look after them, and Di was climbing the ranks in the NSA by then so your mother moved to Los Angeles to look after Eleanor and Charles, and Jeff Biddle did as well to help, as he'd been caught hacking systems to create your mother's new identity, so he had to disappear before he was locked up."
"Somewhere between Maryland and California, Jeffrey Biddle became Jeffrey Barnes, Emma's nephew, and they thought that they had it sorted out, but trouble wasn't done with us yet. A month after they moved Eleanor and Charles into a new house with Emma, they spotted CIA people hanging around the area. Apparently someone connected with the CIA had seen your mother and reported the sighting, so they were looking for her again."
"The only way to get them out of that was to move them again, but Emma couldn't live with them as she had to stay hidden. Emma moved into the house with Jeff and they set up Eleanor and Charles in an apartment nearby. Jeff drove them around and did their shopping and the like until Eleanor got her license, and your mother watched over them and did what she could for them. It meant that Eleanor had to mostly be a mother to Charles while she was a teenager herself, but they both turned out OK."
"Anyway, that's most of the story. Stephen came back four years after that, but the best he'd managed to come up with was a way to stop, or at least severely slow, the deterioration. He was a mess by then, so they had him transferred to Washington where Di knew a therapist who was a family friend as well as an agency therapist to secretly work with him. Eleanor and Charles both managed to get full scholarships to study medicine and engineering, though they had to have jobs to keep up appearances and Charles got screwed over, twice, by that bastard Larkin just before he graduated. First he hid exam results under his bed and framed him for cheating to get him kicked out of Stanford, then he slept with his girlfriend and stole her away from him to rub his nose in it."
Mary took Sarah's distraught expression as a reaction to Chuck having a girlfriend and tried to explain that it only happened when he was trying to live a normal life at university but Sarah shook her head with tears in her eyes. "No Auntie Mary, you don't understand! I was Larkin's partner for two years and we were having sex while we were partners! I really don't believe that it was any more than that and it wasn't all the time, but I slept with him during missions and after missions sometimes too. How can I tell Chuck that I was sleeping with the bastard who screwed him over three times like that? I. I can't face him, I have to leave!"
When she tried to stumble off in tears, she found that Auntie Mary was still an incredibly strong woman, because there was nothing that she could do to stop Mary grabbing her and pushing her back down onto the seat.
Mary looked her in the eye. "Listen to me, Samantha Lisa Blake! Charles knows how these things happen, he's accepted that I've had to give in to Volkoff, as well as my partners sometimes, to stay alive and they've had an agent who's been watching them for Volkoff living with them and sleeping with Eleanor on and off for the last six years. Jill wasn't the only one Charles slept with, but it wasn't love with any of them because he gave his heart away a long time before that. So tell me the truth, were you sleeping with Larkin out of love, because you desired him, or was it because it would have been dangerous to work with him otherwise?"
"It wasn't love! I don't think it was even desire or attraction really. Oh he certainly knew what buttons to push to get a woman worked up and make it happen and I have to admit that sometimes the after mission excitement got to me and I was into it as well but generally….. I didn't think of it that way but yeah, I guess that was why I was giving in to him sometimes. I do know that his half arsed performance almost got me killed more than once after I found out about how he was screwing anything that stayed still long enough and refused to sleep with him any more because I couldn't stand the thought of something like him touching me."
Mary smoothed her hair. "Sweetie, like I said, Chuck doesn't like it, but he understands how this world works, he won't hold that against you, just be honest with him. Do you think he likes knowing that I had to do that or having his sister sleep with that bastard who was planted there to keep an eye on them for Alexei Volkoff? Eleanor's case is a little different in that she's using him to make up for what she missed out on because she was being a mother to Charles when most girls were partying and doing what they wanted to have fun, but when it comes down to it she's sleeping with the enemy to keep him where they can see him. Samantha, trust me, that isn't enough to make you lose Charles, as long as you're honest with him."
She held Sarah for a while until she'd regained her composure, then quickly ran through the rest of what she had to tell her. It hadn't been safe for her mother to stay nearby after Devon turned up, so she'd moved down to San Diego, Mary told Sarah how to contact her there. Jeff was still nearby and and he was working with Charles at the Buy More in case he needed help. They'd selected the Buy More as a place for them to hide in plain sight as it fit with their official stories as failures. Bry Mills had left the CIA and was in Los Angles too, working in security.
John Casey wasn't a worry, as he was part of the Spooks, just like General Diane Beckman who he was reporting to was. Casey was the ultimate soldier and a good man, and Di wouldn't have chosen him for this if he wasn't the best. After all, she was Eleanor and Charles' godmother, as well as Samantha's, so she wouldn't do anything to put them at risk. Lang was also part of the Spooks and his orders were for their own good too, and Charles was handling the Intersect better than anyone else ever had, so the situation wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had looked when she'd been called.
They still had to find a way to get this set up the right way though, to make sure that Sarah and Casey were assigned to watch Charles and have him make use of the abilities of this Intersect to make an on-going operation worthwhile. There would also be others be looking over their shoulders all the time, so as long as this was going on they'd have to keep up the act constantly.
Sarah had to be seen as nothing but the CIA's Enforcer, Casey had to be the NSA's ultimate soldier, Charles had to be the bumbling civilian who'd been thrown into the middle of this and Di and Lang had to be the unfeeling bosses who were willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to serve the greater good.
They'd be under surveillance most of the time, so they wouldn't let anything slip about how things really were. One thing that they might be able to do, if she wanted, was to have Di and Lang order her to use a cover relationship with Charles as an excuse to be close to him most of the time.
Mary broke off and grinned at the shy smile that broke out on Sarah's face when she said that last, because it was obvious that Eleanor was right about them, now that they'd found each other again they wanted to stay together. "I take it that that arrangement would suit you then?"
She saw the sweet little girl that Samantha had been again when she blushed and said "Yes Auntie Mary, I'd like that." in a quiet voice.
Mary held up a hand and took out one of the pre-paid phones, calling Di again. "Hi Sweetie. Look, I was thinking about what you were saying about Samantha and I think that you and John might be going about this the wrong way. You know how headstrong she can be, so if John goes out there to drag her back she's bound to just dig her heels in. Maybe you should let her have a relationship with this boy and stay out there with him, John can keep an eye on them for a while and see how things work out. It could be the best thing for them, and the family."
There was a break as Di took in what she was saying, and Mary could hear the smile in her voice when she responded. "I think you're right Honey, John hasn't found Samantha yet but I'll talk to him about this. It could work out if she stayed out there with her boy, she can work for the family business out there and be happy, but if we drag her back she's likely to throw everything away. Yes, I'll talk to John and her Uncle, I'm sure that we can set something up. Thank you Honey, I can't tell how much this has been worrying me."
"You've done the same for me Sweetie, remember how I was when Nora had her boyfriend move in? And don't worry about Bruce either, I'm sure that business with his college buddy has already blown over. Look, I've got to go but like I said I was thinking about Samantha and wanted to talk to you about it. See you soon, bye."
When she hung up she looked at Sarah, just in time to brace herself as she threw herself on her to hug her. "Thank you Auntie Mary!"
Mary hugged her back and said that they needed to talk this over with Charles, adding what she'd said to Ellie about having to head back to Russia soon. Sarah nodded, saying that she hadn't officially engaged Chuck yet so she could go back and talk him into a date, using the excuse that he hadn't called her back. Mary told her to get Charles to bring her to Bry's and they could talk there.
Just before they split up, Sarah stopped as she realised something. "Wait a minute, did you tell me that NSA General Diane Beckman is my Godmother? How did I not know that?"
"You were all too young to remember it at the time. With you and Charles, it was partly to give her something to hang onto after she and Bry lost their daughter the way they did, but she'd also transferred to the NSA by then, so she was staying in the States and would be there to look after you. We didn't tell Eleanor and Charles about it either until I was stuck in Russia and they needed people to look after them."
"Who's my Godfather then, Director Graham?"
"No, it's Deputy Director Ryan, for the same reason, he was more likely to be there when you needed him than the others, except maybe Stephen, but Jack was always more dependable than Stephen."
With that, Sarah went to put on the show of asking Chuck out at the Buy More while Mary went back to Bry's to start making the arrangements for her trip back to Russia, aside from crossing back into Canada from Chicago rather than Seattle, it would be the reverse of her trip out, and she'd be flying the same L-39 Albatros that she'd flown out in back into Moscow.
Of course, they had to put up with Morgan Grimes' interference again. He'd gone through Elementary school with Charlie Kowalski up in Encino, and getting away from him had almost been as good as getting away from the CIA for both Chuck and Ellie, because as well as bring irritating and stupid, his obsessive crush on Ellie and ridiculous conviction that she returned his affections no matter what she said drove her around the bend. While they'd never discussed the matter directly, Chuck believed that keeping Morgan at bay may have been part of the reason why Ellie let Devon move in.
Being free from Morgan Grimes from ninety two to ninety six had been wonderful, but when Chuck turned fifteen, they decided that to keep up the appearance of them being struggling students, he needed to get a job like Ellie. It was decided that the best job he could get at that time was working on the Burbank Buy More's Nerd Herd technical support team, so he signed up to work in the after school and weekend slots, Jeff also signed up to look out for him.
The problem was that it wasn't until after he started working there that he found out that Morgan was part of the sales staff and Morgan decided that it was fate. In his mind they were destined to be bestest buddies for ever and ever, amen. He always hung around like a bad smell and there was no way of getting rid of him.
Being chronically stupid, he couldn't understand why Charlie Kowalski was now Chuck Bartowski, but they managed to get him to swallow the story that Chuck and Ellie were in witness protection and convince him that even speaking the names of Charles and Eleanor Kowalski could get them killed. They trotted out Uncle Bry with his U.S. Marshals credentials to sell the story, and he'd done a surprisingly good job of sticking to only calling them Chuck and Ellie Bartowski since then.
Unfortunately that didn't stop him sticking his nose into everything that Chuck (and Ellie when he could find an excuse) did. This meant that he almost screwed up their setting up the date, and insisted on following Chuck home to boast to Ellie how HE got Chuck a date with a mega hottie.
When Chuck and Sarah got to Bry's, Sarah was surprised to find that she did remember Uncle Bry, and after the joyous reunions they sat down to work out what they were going to do while they waited for Ellie to have her break and slip out and meet them.
Mary pointed out that they'd need something big to use to justify keeping Charles out in the world with two handlers at Sarah and Casey's level.
Casey actually arrived at this point and that made the atmosphere uncomfortable, as he and Sarah only knew each other as adversaries, but seeing Mary and Bry greet him as an old friend and tell him that Sarah was Emma's daughter helped smooth that over.
By the time that Ellie had arrived, Chuck had gone over the information flashes that he'd had since he opened the email from Bryce Larkin and triggered the upload of the Intersect. He didn't realise just how bad an bad idea it was to remind them that he'd been stupid enough to open the email until Ellie and his mother tore into him over that.
When that had settled down, the five of them went over what he'd come up with and tried to put the clues together. Casey was probably the most surprised when he was the one who did. Chuck had flashed on a Serbian bomber and General Leland Stanfield and a few other things, and Casey remembered seeing that the General was speaking at the Pacific Security League Conference at a hotel downtown that night.
When he said that, Chuck had a number of other flashes which showed the plans of the hotel, bomb design, the schedule which highlighted the time that the General was speaking etc, which pretty much confirmed his hypothesis. Ellie had to go back to the hospital, but the rest of them headed for the hotel. Mary and Bry couldn't afford to be seen so they waited in Bry's car and listened over the radio while Chuck, Sarah and Casey went in.
Casey and Sarah used their credentials to get the three of them into the conference room, though Sarah made a note to ask Chuck later about what he had been reaching for when the security people were questioning their authority to be there.
Chuck identified the bomber, but the security guards killed him when he reached in his jacket for something before they could capture him. Swearing under his breath because they'd killed him BEFORE the bomb had been located, Chuck quickly cast his gaze about the the room until he noted a food cart which seemed out of place.
Sarah and Casey were on his heels as he ran for the cart, and when he slid the top open, it was a hard to work out who's exclamation was loudest, as the timer was running and already under thirty seconds, so they didn't need two guesses to work out what the bomber had been reaching for. Something wasn't right though, the explosives under the cover with the arming mechanism weren't enough to be sure of taking out the General up on stage from here, or much of the room for that matter. With a feeling of dread, Chuck looked behind the drapes around the body of the trolley and went white, as it was absolutely packed with explosives. There was no way to contain that big an explosion, or to evacuate the room in the time available, so they HAD to disarm the bomb.
The problem was that it wasn't built according to the design he'd flashed on and it wasn't anything he or Casey recognised (bomb disposal wasn't among Sarah's many skill sets) either. Chuck was about to give up when he realised that the cheap laptop that was being used for the arming mechanism was one that he'd seen a lot of over the past couple of days because their design was particularly susceptible to the Irene Demova virus that was going around. With that, he jumped onto the laptop, working urgently to enable WiFi, connect to the hotels WiFi network and bring up a browser. He quickly ran a search to find the virus site, entered the site and used the virus to fry the laptop, with three fucking seconds to spare!
Chuck and Sarah fell into each other's arms, not caring for the moment about the need to keep up appearances after coming so close to being blown to smithereens. They were brought out of if by a commanding voice asking "Commander, what happened here?"
When they pulled back, they had General Stanfield giving Chuck a very worried look. Chuck quickly gave him a professional rundown on what had happened, and when the General commented that the explosives on display didn't look like much, Chuck pulled the drapes back to show the massive amount of explosives packed into the body of the trolley.
The General went white and barked for someone to get the trolley out of there, but when one of the security people hustled up to grab the handle to push it away he hissed "GENTLY! That whole thing's packed with explosives!" The man looked as though he fouled his shorts at that, and he pushed the trolley away VERY gingerly.
They wound up their explanations and Chuck stressed to the General that they were never there. The General nodded at that without saying a word and shook each of their hands as he thanked them before going back to the front of the room. When he left, Sarah grabbed Chuck by the arm and dragged him from the room.
As soon as they were outside and no-one else was in earshot, Sarah started in on him. Casey wanted answers too, but he was content to let Sarah do the work. "OK, what's with 'Commander', why does a four star General know you by sight and take what you say without question and what's in your pocket?"
Chuck took a breath. "Uncle Bry took over Ellie's and my training as soon as we relocated down here to make sure that we could look after ourselves, so we both got full Special Operations and Covert Operative training. Uncle Bry thought I had a talent for the Special Operations side so he somehow got me put through main special operations trainings. My identity in the system showed me as Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Charles Carmichael when they fast tracked me through SEAL training in late ninety five, my records showed that I was twenty two at the time."
He glanced at them before continuing. "Uncle Bry and I have done missions with the SEALs, Delta Force, Special Forces, Rangers, Marine Raiders and others, as well as the CIA's SOG, the FBI's HRT and some with Israel's Special Operations Groups in the last twelve years and I was promoted and decorated for some of those operations, so I'm Navy Commander Charles Carmichael now. I've dealt with General Stanfield a number of times and he didn't ask any questions because I'm normally with Uncle Bry so he's always presumed that I'm CIA, we've never confirmed or denied that."
He looked at Sarah again as he reached into his pocket, pulled out the leather folder and handing it to her. "What I was reaching for was my FBI credentials because it looked like they'd picked up on the fact that you aren't part of the CIA's National Resources Division and therefore aren't authorised to operate inside the United States, but they gave in, so I didn't need to use them. I was added into the FBI system back when I was added to the Navy."
Sarah looked at FBI Senior Special Agent Charles Carmichael's credentials and passed them on to Casey without a word.
Bry pulled up beside them then. "Why don't we talk this over back at my place, and then you two can make your phone calls to Director Graham and General Beckman to get this operation set up?"
When Chuck went to get into Bry's car, as he wasn't getting the impression that Sarah wanted to be anywhere near him at the moment, she reached out and grabbed his hand, leading him off towards where her rental Porsche was. Casey called out and when Chuck looked his way, threw him his credentials. Chuck nodded as he caught them and put them away in his pocket.
On the way to Bry's, she asked without looking at him. "There's a lot about you that I don't know, isn't there?"
"Probably, but I presume that I can say the same about you?"
She nodded musingly. "Why didn't Auntie Mary say anything about this when she was telling me about what happened this afternoon?"
"I guess because she thought that giving you the history of how the family, your family and mine, got here was more important than the details. I expect she thought that we'd have time to go through this later, I know that I was hoping that we would."
She reached out to grab his hand. "You know that that's what I want too, don't you?"
He lifted her hand to his lips and gave it a soft kiss. "I hope so, but you didn't seem happy to find out what you did earlier, so I'm a little worried how you'll react when you hear about the rest."
She glanced at him "Do you have a wife, girlfriend or family somewhere?"
"No, none of that, though Ellie says that I treat my Harley like my baby."
Sarah snorted at that. "Well we'll be fine then, as long as you can handle what I have to tell you."
She paused, thinking. "Where's your Harley? I didn't see one anywhere near the apartment when I was scoping it out."
"They're stashed away in Jeff's garage, mine, Ellie's and Jeff's. With this stupid cover life we're supposed to be penniless, and we can't let the walking sex toy find out about them either."
Sarah snorted again at the 'walking sex toy' description and pulled his hand over to kiss it like he had her's. She didn't let go until she needed her hand back to work the gearbox.
They talked over the events of the night and Mary and Bry offered their suggestions to make a more compelling case with Langston and Diane. Mary reminded them that they weren't trying to convince Director Graham and General Beckman, the purpose of this was to convince the people who they knew would be listening in.
Sarah and Casey made their calls, then they settled down to have a few drinks and relax while they were waiting for a reply. Bry waved Sarah over while he was getting the drinks and pointed to the pictures on the wall. He smiled and handed her her drink before he went back to the others because he knew she'd be there for a while.
Some of the pictures were from Bry's past, but most were from the period where he was training and operating with Chuck and Ellie, and they included promotions and medal ceremonies for the two of them. The majority were Chuck's, but Ellie had some impressive ones up there too.
Ellie had finished her shift at the hospital and turned up by the time Diane and Langston called back two hours later, Sarah and Casey both answered the calls on speaker to make it a teleconference. They'd managed to get the necessary authorisations from the powers that be to create an inter agency operation with Sarah Walker and John Casey protecting and supporting the Human Intersect. They could hear that Diane was struggling not to laugh when she told Casey that his cover job was going to be part of the sales staff at the Buy More.
His expression said that that made him want to shoot someone, but the musing look he posed at Chuck made it clear that he now understood that Chuck wouldn't be the easy target he'd been expecting after what he'd heard earlier that night. He may bag them out, but he knew that those groups that Chuck had been operating with were tough, and if he'd been promoted and decorated for operations with them, so was he. Still, the fact that a kid like Chuck held a higher rank than he did rankled, even if he had earned it.
Hearing that he was being set up in an apartment across the courtyard from the apartment that Chuck shared with his sister and her boyfriend (he didn't know about him yet) alleviated some of his aggravation as that would make his job easier.
It was Walker's turn next though and he leant forward in anticipation, even though he mused as he looked at her that the original members of the Spooks must have been hell on wheels if all of their kids were like these two.
Casey cheered up considerably when he got to see Walker's reaction when she was told that HER cover job was working at the Weinerlicious. Her expression was delicious, which was more than he could say for the crap that they served there. He couldn't wait to see her reaction to the uniform. Her demeanour didn't improve much when Graham said that she'd remain where she was at the Maison23, a long stay hotel, but General Beckman cut in then.
"Agent Walker, as Major Casey has been placed in the Buy More to keep watch over Mister Bartowski at work and will be monitoring the surveillance equipment when the rest of it is installed in the Bartowski apartment, your responsibility will be to keep watch over the Asset outside of work."
Chuck looked up and his eyes narrowed in anger at the mention of surveillance in their home, Casey could now see the guy who'd been working with the Special Operations elite for the last twelve years. Ellie leant over and whispered in his ear that it was OK, she'd talked it over with Mom and it was an acceptable requirement. Chuck's expression said that he didn't agree with it being OK, but he wouldn't fight it.
"To enable you to get close enough to to perform your duties, it has been agreed between Director Graham and myself that you will go into a cover relationship with him. You have already laid the groundwork for this with the way that you engaged him, visiting him twice in two days at his work and asking him out on a date, so it should be believable for you to continue with this. Do you foresee any problems with following these orders?"
Casey really wanted some popcorn at the moment, because watching Walker trying to wipe that shit eating grin off her face for long enough to sound professional as she responded. "No, Ma'am." was hilarious. Chuck's anger had flared up again when he heard Auntie Di say that, but Sarah leaned in to kiss him and whisper that his mother had set this up for her that afternoon.
Langston had to step in for the next part as Diane started coughing to cover up her laughter.
"General Beckman appears to be indisposed at the moment so I'll cover this part Agent Walker. I'm sure that you understand that the accommodations at Maison23 are intended to be a short time option only. Given the importance of this asset, we will be requiring twenty four seven coverage on him. To this end, we expect you to ramp up your relationship with him very quickly and move in with him at the earliest opportunity, is this understood?"
Chuck's eyes had gone wide at this last and he went to respond, but Sarah swooped in to seal his lips with a kiss before he said anything and she had tears in her eyes as she whispered in his ear that this was the least intrusive way of getting the twenty four seven protection that would be required. They could have separate bedrooms if he wanted, but this was the way it needed to be. He kissed her back and whispered that one would be fine, this was just coming a little fast for him. She smiled and kissed him again, but was interrupted by Langston.
"Agent Walker?"
"Sorry Sir, I was just trying to take it in. You know that I have always avoided assignments of this nature Director."
"Yes, I am aware of that Agent Walker, but the importance of the Human Intersect demands this level of commitment to ensure his protection. Will you accept the terms of the assignment or must we find another agent to replace you?"
Sarah smiled at Chuck and mouthed 'No fucking way that's happening!' before speaking. "No sir, there is no need to find another agent, I understand the requirements for an asset of this importance and am prepared to accept the terms of the assignment."
"We appreciate your sacrifice Agent Walker. I believe that we have covered off what's necessary at this point. We will make the necessary arrangements at the FBI's Los Angeles office for yourself and Major Casey to attend a secure video conference at 0900 tomorrow morning to set up everything necessary. Does anyone have anything else to add?"
After their 'No, Sir's and Diane's 'No, Director', he said. "We will speak in the morning then." and hung up, Diane hung up at the same time.
After they'd hung up their phones, Sarah and Casey talked about the videoconference in the morning and Sarah asked him if he knew where the FBI Office was. When Chuck answered to give her the directions, she looked at him as something occurred to her. She looked over at the pictures on the wall and then back at him. "Chuck, why are you an FBI Agent?"
Ellie, Mary and Bry smiled as they saw what she'd just realised.
"Because I needed to be an FBI Agent to operate with their HRT."
"How do you operate with the CIA's SOG then?"
"The same way, the identity for CIA Agent Charles Carmichael was set up at the same time as my Navy and FBI identities."
Casey spat a mouthful of scotch across the table at that, because he hadn't put that bit together. This just kept getting better and better! He was angry about how he'd been kept in the dark at first, but he realised that there had been no need to know these details until they'd confirmed that he did in fact have this Intersect.
With the operation set up, Mary spent what time she could with Ellie and Chuck, because she was heading straight to the airport from there to begin her trip back to Moscow. Sarah was surprised when Mary embraced her and whispered a heartfelt plea in her ear for her to look after her boy.
When Sarah snorted and started to say that he could obviously look after himself she was startled by the intensity of Mary's gaze as she shook her head. "No, not where it counts, remember what I said about him giving his heart away? Protect that gift, please?"
Sarah nodded with tears in her eyes as Mary kissed her.
Mary left soon after that, and so did the others. Sarah took Chuck to the beach for a while to talk before she dropped him off at the apartment to ensure that he and Ellie didn't get home at the same time.
A/N: As noted up top, not sure whether this story will get going now or later, or whether it will at all I guess. It all depends on what people say.