A/N1 The placement of some pieces on the board...

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Don't own Chuck.


ACT I

CHAPTER ONE

Jigsaw


Senator Olin Huntaker put down his coffee: put it down with such force it some of it sloshed out of the cup and onto the large, heavy oaken table. He rubbed his head even as he shook it. Looking around the room, he saw the familiar faces of the other members of The Intersect Committee. Donna Dandridge, Alma Smythe, Diane Beckman, Patrick Colbach, and Taylor Littleton. Although Huntaker was the Chair of the Committee, it was General Diane Beckman who ran the meetings. She had just briefed them on the current status of the Intersect. Goddamn infernal contraption.

Huntaker had relievedly believed these meetings were about to be finished and the Intersect finally buried, a good, a very good riddance. But it hadn't worked out. The Intersect was a damned peculiar problem, the kind of problem that gets worse anytime you try to solve it, get free of it. It stuck to your hand. When you used your other hand to pull free, then it stuck to that hand. And so on. And so on, Ad infinitum, ad goddamned nauseum.

Now, Sarah Bartowski, once Sarah Walker, had the Intersect, and Nicholas Quinn had her. Team Bartowski, her husband, Chuck, John Casey and Morgan Grimes, had done everything in their power to find her, but Quinn had gotten away with her. She had not been seen in days. Team Bartowski had been searching frantically but to no result.

The version of the Intersect Sarah Bartowski had was faulty. It had been damaging her, at least her memory, when Quinn took her. It was unclear to the committee what Quinn hoped to do with Walker, but they thought the likely Quinn was hoping to use her, somehow, to get the pristine copy of the Intersect currently in a disguised DARPA laboratory in LA. Huntaker shook his head, rubbed his temples.

Fools.

Quinn. Another fool.

Although Beckman was the Director of the NSA, one of her roles on the Committee was to ensure that security around the DARPA laboratory was as heavy as personnel and payroll and disguise would permit. Huntaker knew she had done so. If Quinn made a play for the pristine version of the Intersect, he would die. If he sent Sarah Bartowski, she would die. It was that simple. That copy was squared away for now...

And Chuck Bartowski no longer had the Intersect. At least there was that. Things would have been...worse...if he had it. The only extant copy was Sarah Bartowski's faulty one, the one in her head. If Huntaker never saw another pair of those darkened sunglasses, it would be too soon. He needed the Intersect to go away. To goddamn go away. His life would be so much...simpler. He'd hated that movie anyway-what was it? Risky Business? With the goddamn sunglasses. Yes, Risky Business, the Intersect was always a risky business.

ooOoo

Beckman surreptiously watched Huntaker rub his temples. He seemed more vexed than usual, and that was worthy of notice. He'd hated the Intersect from the beginning, and seemed committed to hating it more as the years had gone by. Beckman wasn't entirely sure he was wrong to have done so, even though the Intersect had allowed Team Bartowski to do lots of good. Or rather, Chuck Bartowski with the Intersect-and with Sarah and Casey and eventually Morgan-had done lots of good. It was now clear that the Intersect was only as good as the man or woman who had it. It was a tool and nothing but a tool, for all its technical sophistication. Well, and a good tool only if it wasn't faulty in the way that the one poor Sarah got had been.

Where was Sarah? Where had Quinn taken her? What was he doing to her?

Beckman had become attached to Sarah over the past few years and was deeply personally worried about her. Chuck, Beckman knew, was on the edge. That man loved that woman. He would do anything to find her. Well, Beckman was calling in a favor; she was determined to find Sarah too. An old friend from Beckman's days in the field who might know about Quinn. She would meet with her later today. Maybe she'd have some insight, help Beckman help Chuck.

ooOoo

Nicholas Quinn was pissed. Pissed. For Quinn, being pissed did not differentiate his days; he was always pissed. But rarely this pissed. It had all gone wrong with Sarah Bartowski. His careful planning gone to hell because the faulty damn Intersect was even more faulty than he knew. Damn! Quinn wanted to howl in rage and frustration.

He had believed he could target and suppress particular memories, particular stretches of time. He wanted to recreate the Sarah Walker who existed before Burbank, Langston Graham's Enforcer. Create Quinn's Enforcer. There were various reasons for his plan-but the most important was that he wanted her to believe that she was on a mission, deep cover, and that Chuck Bartowski was her mark.

Quinn knew that such a mission-a long-term, deep-cover infiltration/seduction mission-was not Agent Walker's sort of mission. So he had to make her think she had adequate motivation: he was going to make her think that Bartowski was responsible for the deaths of Bryce Larkin and Langston Graham, and that she had known it and accepted the assignment as a result. Revenge was a powerful persuader. And, anyway, he wasn't really concerned about seduction at this point. He just needed infiltration. He needed Sarah to use Chuck Bartowski to get the pristine Intersect away from the CIA. How she did it didn't matter. She could do what she needed to to get it done. If she was as good as he believed, she'd be able to do it quickly. No 'wifely duties' would be likely required of her. Chuck Bartowski was an idiot, anyway.

But it all went wrong. His flashcards from hell blanked far more than he had intended. When he finished, she did not know she was Sarah Bartowski. She did not know she had been Sarah Walker. She did not even know that she was Sarah, or a CIA agent, or...much of anything. The amnesia was...extensive.

Quinn had worried that it was a trick at first, that she was pretending, and so he had his men beat her. Just to be sure. They went at the task eagerly, savagely. Too savagely. But he knew she wasn't faking. She was of no use to him at that point, except perhaps as a hostage, but he did not want to nurse her or tend to her. He didn't want to deal with her body, either. Blank as she was, she was no threat to him. So, he and two of his men dumped her next to the water.

She was in bad shape. She had no idea who she was. Let her try to find her way. Dumping her on the dock was, Quinn reckoned, more or less tossing a kitten in a kennel. It was a bit of evil Romantic poetry. Let nature take its course. It would serve the other Bartowski, that self-righteous, undeserving husband of hers, right. That man had not only had had the Intersect, he had defanged it, turned it from its proper role as securer of power, and tried to make it the securer of innocents. What a damned idiot! He had no business with the Intersect or with a woman like that.

Quinn had shown her one final, disastrous flashcard. Even tied down, her body arched in a spasm of agony, stayed arched for long, paralyzed seconds, then went wholly limp. His men untied her and threw her into the van.

ooOoo

Chuck was so worry-sick he kept forgetting to breathe. Sarah was gone. He could not find her. Quinn had taken her. Sarah! The faulty Intersect had been claiming her memories before she had been taken. Who knew what it might continue to do to her? Who knew what Quinn might do?

Quinn, Chuck knew, wanted the pristine Intersect, wanted it for himself. But it seemed unlikely that Quinn was working alone. He did not have the resources, the connections to do all that needed to be done. Of course, Quinn was Quinn-power-mad and a betrayer of the first rank. Chuck's gut told him that Quinn might not be working alone, but Quinn was always working for himself, in it for himself. No doubt he believed that if he could download the pristine Intersect, then he could...sunder...ties with his benefactor and go his own way. Chuck told Beckman this. She promised to see if she could find anything, even to go to outside channels.

Chuck felt suddenly dizzy, sitting still on his couch. His Sarah-less couch. He made himself gulp some air. Sarah. My God, Sarah, where are you? Please be ok. Your heart is my heart. I love you! Chuck dropped his head in his hands.

ooOoo

Beckman took up a spot in a corner booth far back in her the DC coffee shop. She had a slice of pound cake in front of her. But she had so far devoted no attention to it. She was drinking coffee from a large blue mug. She hadn't slept much in the past couple of weeks. She was nearly exhausted. She needed to go home and sleep for about a day, maybe two. But that wasn't going to happen today, probably not anytime soon.

She had been staring into her coffee cup as if it might tell her a secret when she realized that someone had slid into the booth. She looked up into the graceful face of Madeline Upshaw.

Beckman's immediate response was pleasure alloyed with envy. Madeline and she were old friends. They had been spies together in the 80's when Beckman's hair had been dyed dirty blonde and Madeline's deep red lacked its current streaks of gray. But other than the streaks of gray in her hair, Madeline had aged remarkably well, and retained much of the stunning beauty that she had during those early years of their friendship. She was one of Beckman's old friends, but Beckman had to admit she found Madeline's eternal youth a rankling source of envy.

Of course, Madeline had chosen a career path very different than Beckman's. One that had taken less of a toll on her, physically and psychologically. She had left regular spying and became an expert on spying and spies. Her business was very hush-hush and frowned upon officially by both the NSA and the CIA, but both made use of her from time to time, as did the intelligence agencies of numerous nations. She watched the watchers. She jokingly called herself a 'meta-spy': "I operate in the shadows cast by those who operate in the shadows," she had once jokingly explained to Beckman over drinks. Beckman normally used other folks to deal with Madeline, go-betweens. She knew that it would not be a good idea for her to be too closely linked to a woman's whose professional life was so...gray. There were other reasons too…

But Madeline had an oar in every water, intelligence-wise. Maybe she could help. Beckman did not have the time and energy to approach her circuitously.

"Diane, good to see you. You look well-but overworked, if I may say so." Madeline's richly cultured voice always made whatever she said sound like a compliment. Beckman chose not to reply to that directly.

"Hello, Madeline." Pause. "I will cut to the chase. I need your help. Sarah Bartowski, formerly Sarah Walker, CIA, was kidnapped by Nicholas Quinn, formerly CIA. Quinn is after a particular piece of crucial US intelligence. I can't say anything about it, at least not in detail. But I was hoping you might have information on Quinn, an angle, something...anything.

"You know I wouldn't come begging to you unless it mattered. Agent Bartowski, Sarah, is a woman I have become fond of, Madeline. This is both a matter of national security and of personal importance."

Madeline reached over the table and drew Beckman's pound cake toward herself. She grabbed the fork and cut off a sizeable bite, pulling it from the fork's tines and then eating it from her fingers. She studied Beckman's face for a moment.

"Mmhm. Carbs," she grinned, "hardly ever eat them. So, so sick of green food. But what's a girl to do? Hmmm...Quinn? Let me start by saying I know the name.

"He's been of...interest to me for a while." Madeline's voice became the voice of a file, impersonal, recitative. "Napoleonic and tornadic: obsessed with being a player, he leaves a swath of destruction behind him. A bad man. If he took Walk-um, Bartowski, that's...worrisome. He's vindictive. A bit of a psychopath. Obsessed, at least that's what I hear. Chasing some mythical computer thingy that will turn him into a super spy. Comic book gonzo stuff. Most shadow folks won't touch him with a ten-foot pole, as the saying goes. Too crazy even for the bad guys." Madeline went through the ritual with another bite of pound cake.

After swallowing her second bite: "I suppose you must know most of that, though?" Madeline's intelligent gaze scrutinized Beckman.

Beckman nodded, pursing her lips. "Yes, but not that he was a pariah even among bad guys. Not surprising but worth knowing...Sarah's husband, Chuck, also an Agent," Beckman studied Madeline's face but saw nothing register in response to Chuck's name, "is convinced that Quinn is working for someone, someone who is paying the bills, as it were, but more importantly, someone who has an agenda of his or her own, one that may well not coincide with Quinn's own. What do you think?"

"I don't believe Quinn is capable of working for anyone. That doesn't mean he isn't capable of pretending to work for someone, of getting someone to believe it, or maybe of being himself used by someone who can outwit him. Quinn was a very capable spy at one time. I suppose in many senses he still is. It's also possible that he could have found someone who wanted to employ him to whom Quinn could not easily say 'No'. That's probably the worst-case scenario. If there's someone out there who scares Quinn…."

Beckman completed Madeline's thought, "...that person is very scary indeed. So, have you heard anything that might be of interest?"

Madeline pushed the remainder of the pound cake back toward Beckman. She looked torn for a moment, then she made a decision. "Some are saying that the mythical computer thingy may not be so mythical, Diane. There's been scuttlebutt, chatter, that there are two versions of the thingy, and that one is bad, very bad.

"Word is that its roots run back to the Ring, maybe even to Fulcrum." Madeline shrugged, but gave Beckman a sharp look. "I still bet it's a myth, hell, it sounds like some juvenile Tolkien fantasy or something, but here's the most interesting tiny bit of the chatter: There's supposed to be information in the bad thingy that complements information in the good thingy, and that reveals some very explosive, potentially government-rocking secrets. If that were true, and if Quinn were working for someone, maybe he'd be working for someone who wanted to be sure that the two thingies never...um...intersected."

Beckman suppressed a wince, steeled her facial features, and searched Madeline's eyes. If Madeline was baiting her, Beckman couldn't tell it. Maybe the word was a coincidence. Beckman made herself laugh. She'd been a spy too, a good one; she could act when she needed to do so. "That reminds me of a definition of petting I once heard: 'When the thingamajig is in the hand and the hand in the thingamajig, but the thingamajig is never in the thingamajig.'"

Madeline laughed in response. "Well, 'petting' is a word no one uses anymore, and it's just as well, since that definition needs to be forgotten." Madeline stage shivered. "We're getting old, Diane." Madeline did not look like she believed it of herself. "Bottom line, Diane. I don't know anything for sure. But take what we do likely know, pretend the computer thingy does exist, and do the math. Quinn wants the good computer thingy. Say he is working for someone. Then that person must want it too. Maybe for a different reason, but still. Quinn took Agent Bartowski. Can he leverage her somehow to get to the good computer thingy? Can he make her get it for him somehow?..."

Beckman nodded once, sharply. "Right, Madeline. The somehows are a big part of the problem though. I suspect that what Quinn wanted to do was to...somehow...use Sarah to find the...computer thingy, pretending that it exists. Quinn is not going to put himself into danger if he can help it. That's was part of his pattern in the CIA." Madeline nodded agreement. "Sarah has a history of doing the impossible, a fifteen-year history now, and Quinn knows that. She walks into lions' dens and routinely walks back out. But I don't see how Quinn could get her to do anything for him, short of a credible threat against her husband." Beckman thought of Sarah's mom, Emma, and sister, Molly, but right now she had no reason to think Quinn knew of their existence. "Yet, Chuck is in Burbank-alone, miserable, but safe."

Beckman knew that she couldn't safely dwell on this anymore without inviting Madeline to take too much notice of the discussion, to begin to wonder more seriously than she seemed to be wondering about...the computer thingy.

Beckman let the conversation devolve into dispiriting small talk. Madeline's life always seemed so much...shinier than Beckman's. She finished her coffee. It didn't help her much. She still felt exhausted, more now than when she started the conversation. She knew she did, because to the pleasure and envy she felt upon seeing Madeline, she had slowly, steadily been stirring in jealousy. She had promised herself not to go there, not to do that, but she was tired and still tiring, and she did.

Rumor was that Madeline and Roan had been an item, quite an item, tumultuous and passionate, a while ago, during a period when she and Roan were...what? On the outs? Not exactly. Taking a break? Not exactly. Since she and Roan had never defined exactly what they were, not for all these many years, it was impossible to say exactly what, if anything, had been or had not been going on between them when he was supposed to have had the affair with Madeline.

It was hard to rein in your emotions when you were tired. Madeline left. Beckman sat a moment longer, peering down into her empty coffee cup and then staring with disrelish at the more than half-eaten dessert. Hard to bridle your emotions where you were tired, she thought again, and when the woman who you believe had an affair with your...Roan...eats most of your pound cake.

She rubbed her temples, cursing Madeline under her breath.


A/N2 And what of our favorite amnesiac? More next time in Chapter 2, "Emissary".