I, Spy
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Castle! Do I? Rating: M, in spots. Time: The future. After season eight, but before children.
Author's note: This is a sequel to Alexis's in Wonderland and Four of a Kind. Once again our intrepid heroes find themselves going into alternate universes.
Chapter One. One of Our Storms is Missing.
"This is unbelievably beautiful." Kate said, taking her husband's hand.
"You like it?" Castle was beaming with pride at having made his wife happy.
"Like it? I love it. When I told you I was burned out from running the precinct, I was hoping you'd take me to the Hamptons for a week. I never expected this."
This, was a large, single story, rock and timber home with three bedrooms, two and a half baths, a family room and as the Airbnb ad had said, all modern conveniences. It sat on a deserted stretch of New Zealand's South Island, about two hundred yards away from the Tasman Sea, facing Australia some 2500 miles away.
"And we're here for a whole month, not counting travel time." Rick hugged Kate. "By the time we get back, you'll be so unburned out that you'll probably eliminate crime from New York all together.
"I would have settled for the Hamptons you know. As long as you were with me."
Rick snorted. "The Hamptons? Too close to One PP. Every time the Chief of Police lost his hat, they'd be calling you in a panic. This way, we're twenty miles from the nearest town, by four wheel drive," He gestured to the Land Rover behind them, "Although we do have a satellite dish and we can keep in touch with the family with that. And get internet access."
"I still feel like I'm intruding." Said a second female voice.
Kate turned to face Simone Renoir. Simone had been born Kathleen Beckett on an alternate Earth, and had been another of the many Kate Becketts they'd found throughout the many Earths they had visited. When Kathleen had returned with them to their Earth, a little cosmetic surgery and an expensive new identity had turned her into a woman who looked like she could be Kate's sister, although everyone was told there was no relationship. As long as no one checked Simone's fingerprints or DNA, who, and what, she was would remain a secret.
"Nonsense, Simone." Kate hugged the other woman. "You're like a sister to me. And after what happened with Paul, you needed a break as much as I did."
Simone shuddered. "Please never mention that bastard's name to me again. Every time I hear it, I'm right back in our bedroom, with him on top of her, grunting and…." Simone stopped and began to cry softly on Kate's shoulder.
"Take her inside and I'll unpack the car." Rick said. "I'm cooking dinner tonight for you two. I guarantee this will be a night you won't forget."
Rick didn't know how accurate that was.
Rick found that the kitchen was large, sparkling clean and had everything a chef could ask for. He soon produced a dinner of a garden salad, filet mignon, fresh corn on the cob, fresh peas and chocolate ice cream.
After dinner, the three sat in the living room, sipping coffee and looking out at the sun setting into the ocean.
Rick heard a soft scrape in the kitchen and went to see what it was. He stepped into the kitchen to find six armed men, dressed in black facing him. Their faces were obscured by black face paint and what he thought were night vision goggles. He raised his hands over his head and backed into the living room. Kate saw him and automatically reached for the Glock that was in the safe back in Manhattan. She shot to her feet, prepared to fight. Then seeing that the men were armed with assault rifles she relaxed. Fighting would just get them killed.
"You can have everything we have. I'll show you where everything is. Just don't hurt my wife and our friend." As he spoke, six more armed men came through the front door.
"Mr. Castle, all we want to do is keep the three of you alive. Now, we have to go right now. Leave everything. We don't have much time. It's just your wife and Ms. Renoir with you? No one else?"
Castle nodded, shocked. What the hell was going on? He thought.
"What's this all about?" Kate asked in a firm voice.
"It's about keeping everyone alive. We can have a nice long discussion and all end up dead or we can leave now. I'm in charge and I say we leave now."
"We leave now." Kate agreed, grabbing a jacket from a coat tree by the door. Rick grabbed his laptop and a coat, as well as one for Simone.
But before they left the house, the electricity went off. "We did that. It's okay. Now head for the beach." The leader said.
They ran across a grassy strip, over a stretch of gravel and arrived at the beach. Everyone knelt at the water's edge. Castle looked around, but could see no boats. How were they supposed to get away from whoever, whatever was going to kill them? He wondered if this was trap and that he and Kate and Simone weren't going to be shot there on the beach.
"Watch out." The man beside him said. "LCUs are coming up."
The words were hardly out of his mouth when two large somethings drove up out of the ocean stopped just a few feet out of the water.
"Go! Go!" Someone yelled.
"To the back! There a ramp there. Go inside and sit." The man next to Castle said.
The three stumbled inside where it was totally dark. With some help, Castle found a canvas seat and someone put a harness over his shoulders and fastened it between his legs.
The ramp closed and the machines began backing into the surf. Red lighting came on inside. Castle saw Kate and Simone across from him and breathed a sigh of relief. "You two okay?"
"Yes. Are you?"
"I guess." Castle turned to the man sitting next to him. "What is this thing?"
"LCU." Was the brief reply. Seeing Castle's look of confusion, he went on. "Landing Craft, Underwater. It's a mini-sub with tracks like a tank for going on land. Mostly it's made of a ceramic matrix. Strong as steel, but very light, so it'll float in spite of being small. It carries twelve troops, three crew, and is armed with a thirty mike mike and a coax machine gun. It's a cool ride."
Castle decided that they were with some kind of military force, but who and more importantly, why, he had no idea. The leader came over to him and handed him a set of goggles attached to a wire. "Put these on. It'll give you a good visual of the house." A quick look showed that Kate and Simone were also getting the goggles. Castle put his on and saw their house in the greenish images he associated with the night vision videos he saw regularly on the TV news.
"There! To the north. See the trucks pulling up?"
Castle looked. Four pickups had stopped several hundred yards from the house. Two dozen or so men ran for the house. There was a flash of light and then the goggles were went out for a second.
"Light overload." Said a voice beside him. "They used an RPG, rocket propelled grenade, on the house to bust in. See the flashes? Those are gunshots. Full auto. Spray and pray. Now, just wait for it."
The men seemed to be spraying the whole house with automatic weapons fire. There were larger flashes which he was told were grenades being thrown in the house. Then the house blew up.
The man next to Castle laughed. "That was us. We booby trapped the place. It's burning like a son of a bitch. It'll be days before anyone figures out there aren't any bodies in the house and we'll be long gone."
Castle wondered where he'd be long gone to. Castle called to the leader. "Who are you? Who are they? What's going on here? Where are you taking us?"
"Sorry, sir. You'll have to get those answers from the civilians back on the boat."
Castle felt the LCU back up and then turn. He wasn't sure, but he though they were acting as a sub now and not as a tank, or something. Anyway, his goggles had gone dark.
Someone pulled out a thermos and everyone had coffee. For about a half an hour, they sat in silence until an amplified voice said, "Listen up. We're beginning the docking sequence. Hold on, people."
The sub seemed to slow down and possibly stop. Then there was a loud metallic clank and the little sub shook. Castle was sure they were being pulled downwards and then they came to a jarring stop.
"Docking completed. Now we just have to wait to evacuate the water and get tied down." Said the voice.
After a few minutes, a green light came on in the back of the sub and the troops gave an ironic cheer. Then the ramp came down. They saw what looked like sailors working on the vehicles.
A Navy officer stood at the end of the ramp. "Mr. and Mrs. Castle? Ms. Renoir? Over here, please."
Rick and the two women left the LCU first, the troops debarking after them. Castle looked around at the brightly lit space he was in and saw at least eight of the LCUs in some sort of a hanger.
"Sir, ma'am, I'm Lieutenant (jg) Hollis. Welcome to USS Indiana."
"And this is…what?" Kate demanded.
"A submarine, ma'am. The civilians will explain everything to you. Come with me please."
They followed Hollis through the very confined quarters of the submarine until they came to a door. Hollis knocked. "The Castles and Ms. Renoir are here, sirs."
The door opened and Rick and Kate saw a face they never thought to see again.
"Roy? Roy Montgomery?" Kate said in shock. "Is it really you?"
Montgomery laughed. "It would have to really be me, but I'm Ray Montgomery. Dr. Ray Montgomery, to be exact. This is my colleague, Dr. Phil Namura.
"Hi, glad to meet you. I guess you have a lot of questions. But so do we." Namura looked at Ray. "I can't believe it. Overlap isn't just a once in a million fluke."
As he spoke, there was a flash of blue light. "Damn! You're from Earth One! What the hell do you want now?" Castle cried out.
Ray Montgomery held his hands up. "We are from another Earth, but were not from what they like to call Earth One. We know about them, but they don't know about us. Which is fine. We'd like to keep it that way."
Namura kept looking at Rick oddly. "I just can't believe it."
"Believe what?" Rick shot back.
"Overlap. Right here in front of me."
Rick sighed. "And what the hell is overlap?"
Ray spoke up. "We have looked at a number of alternate Earths. On one we found that there had been a man named Sherlock Holmes who was a consulting detective and lived at 221B Baker Street in London. Oh, he wasn't exactly like the Sherlock Holmes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His flatmate was Dr. James Watson, not John. The adventure with the huge dog took place at the estate of the Chelmsford family, not the Baskervilles, and a few other things. It was quite exciting. And then we found you. You're exactly like him."
"Him whom?" Castle asked, becoming more exasperated by the minute.
Namura pulled out a photo and handed it to Rick. "So? It's a photo of me."
Namura shook his head. "No, it's a photo of Derrick Storm."
Castle shook his head. "Derrick Storm is a fictional…." Castle stopped. He had an idea who that was. "But he's real someplace."
"This is a photo of another Derrick Storm." Ray said, handing Rick another photo. This one was some sort of official portrait, Castle guessed. Storm was sitting facing the camera with the US flag behind him, his expression very stern. He was in uniform, but it was no uniform he'd ever seen. A black thigh length jacket and tan pants. Rick could see this Storm had a chest full of medals and some kind of shoulder boards, presumably showing his rank, although Castle had no idea what it was.
Ray tapped the photo. "This Derrick Storm is a colonel in the Security Service, the secret police."
"Secret police? What country?"
"The United States. At least one United States. We're at war with them."
Before Rick could ask another question, Namura broke in. "We really should just give them the briefing as planned, otherwise, we'll be all over the map, so to speak."
Ray nodded in agreement. "The briefing, then."
Namura turned on a computer. A map of the US came up as Namura spoke. "The United States. You can't see it in this view, but North America is wider than on your Earth. More so in the middle than the north and south. So, the US is about a hundred miles wider. That just means the Midwest States are wider." He tapped the northern border. "The border with Canada is the same." He tapped the southern border. "At the end of the Mexican War in 1848 some genius in Washington DC looked at a map and decided that the mouth of the Colorado River would one day be a great seaport and it should be American. So, the US ended up with what on your Earth is Baja California and a bit of the Mexican state of Sonora. That seaport never happened, of course. There are a few other differences, Catalina Island off of LA is about a third bigger than in your world, but nothing really major."
Namura put up another map. "The North American Customs Union. Canada, the US, Mexico and the island nations of the Caribbean. One vast market with well over half a billion people." Castle noticed that the countries of Central America were shown as just blank spaces, except for a dark green dot in Panama.
The map changed to Europe. "The European Union. Note that it extends all the way to Eastern Europe, including Belarus and Ukraine. Also the nations of the Caucus, Turkey and Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine in the Eastern Med." Castle noticed that Israel seemed to extend all the way to the Suez Canal in Egypt and that there were also green dots by the Canal and around what he thought must be Tunisia.
The map changed again. "The Asian Economic Sphere. Run by Japan, more or less. It includes Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Hainan Island, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand."
"What about the rest of the world?" Kate asked.
"The rest of the world doesn't count. It's all failed states. Russia…Well, Putin put together a corrupt system and surrounded himself with second rate people so he didn't have to worry about them overthrowing him. When he died, the system fell apart. China? The economy ran great for a while, but all the Communist party did was get in the way and provide opportunities for corruption. India? As time went on it became less and less a country and more a collection of separate and distinct races, religions, castes and ethnic groups. It finally fell apart. Brazil, too. As it stands, the US is still the only superpower. Oh, that's not to say that everything else is stone age barbarism. There are areas in Russia, around Sverdlovsk in the Urals and Volgograd and other places that have some functional industries. Manchuria has some, and parts of the Chinese coastal provinces. Some in Brazil and elsewhere. "
"Speaking of which, we'll tell you now about Derrick Storm. Ours and theirs." Ray broke in.
The map changed to a photo of Rick's dad, his mom, his teenaged self and a little girl. Namura went on. "Your dad, on our Earth, was CIA, but was badly injured and was taken out of the Special Activities Division and given a desk job. He hated it and soon resigned. A friend got him a job on a movie about a sniper. Technical consultant. That's where he met your mother, fell in love and got married. When he left the CIA, your dad took the name Michael Storm and his son was named Derrick. The daughter is Danielle Storm. To make a long story short, Derrick entered the CIA and was every bit as heroic and competent as your books made him out to be."
"The other Derrick Storm's story was much the same, except his father was more seriously injured. That Michael Storm became sullen and withdrawn, as well as addicted to painkillers. He made his son's life miserable. That Derrick entered the US Constabulary, the uniformed Federal police. When President Bracken was elected, he put together the Security Service and Derrick Storm rose rapidly. When Bracken was assassinated, Vice President Nolan took over. Nolan was a complete nonentity. An obscure Army general named Demming was appointed as the commander of the Washington Military District, all the military forces around DC. In six months Demming had been appointed the new Vice President and then Nolan resigned. Nolan died shortly after, leaving Demming in charge of the police state Bracken had built."
"Excuse me," Kate said, "but is that Tom Demming?"
"No, his name is David Demming." But the picture that came up on the computer screen was a match for the Tom Demming back in their New York.
"Colonel Storm was put in charge of the Security Service's Special Operations Division. Their job is to keep Demming in power and increase his power by any means necessary. And I do mean any means necessary, murder, kidnapping, torture….You name it and Storm has done it."
"The two Storms are each other's nemesis. They've been trying to kill each other for years."
"This is all very interesting, but why the hell am I here? Along with Kate and Simone?" Rick demanded sharply.
"Because our Derrick Storm has disappeared. Just vanished. We know that the other Storm didn't grab him. If he had their propaganda would have announced it to the world. But our Derrick Storm is missing. We want you to be Derrick Storm until we can find ours."
Rick shook his head. "Look, I'd love to help you, but I'm a writer and I help my wife with her police work. I'm certainly not a super spy."
"You won't have to be." Ray assured him. "All you have to do is be seen, give a few briefings, toss a few tidbits to the press. That sort of thing. You can do it." Ray smiled at him. "And Demming's men are pretty sure our Storm is gone. That's why they tried to kill you. To prevent us from getting you. But if Derrick Storm shows up again, they'll have to think long and hard about things. Maybe the guy they're seeing is some author named Castle, but maybe it's really Storm."
"There are a million Rick Castle's out there. Why me?"
"We haven't explored the other Earths that much. You're the only Rick Castle we've found that could pull this off. The only other one we found is an illiterate farmer in an England that never got out of the Dark Ages. Demmings's people found the same ancient device you did, and managed to reproduce it, much as we have and those on Earth One did. With one exception. Their device was damaged somehow. They can't get to an infinite number of Earths, just seventy one. Regrettably that includes your Earth and ours."
Rick glanced at Kate and saw her nod ever so slightly. "Okay, I'll do it. I can't have a bunch of thugs trying to kill me and anyone near me."
"We should tell you more about our United States." Namura said. "If we bothered with it, we'd have an unemployment rate of about seventy five percent."
"What?" Rick, Kate and Simone said at once.
"That's way more than in the Great Depression. You must have riots every day."
"Not a one." Namura said smiling. "Between computers and robots, our society only needs about five percent of the population to actually work. Of course, that five percent are the smartest, most imaginative, risk taking, problem solving part of society. Another twenty percent of the population works for the five percent as secretaries, cooks, bartenders, teachers, doctors, nurses and what not. A robot may be able to mix a perfect martini, but if you're one of the five per cent, you want your martini mixed by a human. It's a status thing."
"What the hell does everyone else do?" Castle asked.
"Our society produces enough goods and services to provide every one of the others with a nice middle class life style. What people do when they don't have to work is spend their time on their hobbies. There are any number of sports leagues: Baseball, soccer, bowling, ice dancing, curling, motor sports. Or the arts. People write books or screen plays. There are actors, directors, musicians, painters, sculptors, poets, singers, song writers."
Ray took over. "There are amateur archeologists, geologists, astronomers, any and all of the sciences. Some people even start businesses. I buy only home made donuts from a woman who lives near me."
"And then there's the police and the military."
"Yes, the military." Namura said.
"Is there something wrong with the military?" Castle asked.
"Not really. It's just that the five percent has an, um, low opinion of the other ninety five percent. Basically, they ignore them."
A map of the world came up on the computer. Castle saw little green dots all over. "When Brazil and Venezuela began to collapse, it brought down other countries. Refugees, soldiers, militias, gangsters, started fleeing to safer places, which collapsed under the strain of so many people. Many in Central America headed north, but the Mexicans stopped them. Violently in some cases. They turned south and eventually got to Panama. Their constant fighting closed down the Panama Canal. The US sent an infantry division to restore order. The Seventh Infantry Division is still there."
The map changed to the Mediterranean. "The EU is mostly interested in perfecting the welfare state, not in military activities. The Caliphate runs from what was Pakistan to Morocco. They've run out of people whose education covers something more than the Koran, but they can buy weapons from rogue Russians, Chinese and others. They attack Europe with ballistic missiles, aircraft, missile boats, subs and commando raids. The EU has anti-missile batteries, aircraft and even some ships in the Med, but mostly it's the US Sixth Fleet fighting there. And there is a US Army corps in both Tunisia and another along the Suez Canal. There are US troops all over the world. In fact the military is bigger than at any time since World War Two. But…"
"But?" Castle said. "I hate it when there's a but."
"The government, that is the five percent, have no interest in the military. So, the military has become self supporting. Transit fees for the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal go to the military. The US corps in Central Africa exports rare earths used in computers in the industrialized world. The US Navy taxes ships it protects in dangerous waters. And so on and so on."
"And the but is?" Castle had an idea, but wanted to hear it from Namura.
"The US is basically at war with the Caliphate. The Sixth Fleet launches near daily raids with manned aircraft, drones and missiles. They raid the coast with everything from SEAL teams to Marine battalions. And the Army and Air Force in North Africa are in combat daily. The same for forces in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic near North Africa. And the politicians in DC don't care. As long as the military is self supporting and doesn't take any tax dollars, they don't care. The five percent are busy making fusion power plants more efficient or some damned thing. What do they care what some of the other ninety five percent do? Only the five percent are important, or so they think. And the military never thinks to ask Congress or the White House for any guidance, let alone orders. I'm not saying it's happening now, but I think one day the military will figure out just how much power they do have and we'll regret it."
"Okay, but what are we going to do now?"
"Oh, we're headed back to the task force. Now that we have you, I'm afraid the Navy has other things they need to do."
"Where?" Simone asked.
"Darwin."