Scene XVI – CIA Facility

Sarah and Skip showed their badges at the security desk and were quickly admitted. As the two walked down the hall, she adjusted her oversized purse on her shoulder to make it easier to carry the box.

Skip followed her like a lost puppy, positioning himself to her left side. Their synchronized footsteps resonated down the sterile hallways. Her irritation grew.

"Thanks for the lift," Skip said playfully.

"No problem."

She wasn't sure what he was after; he wouldn't be the first agent to hit on her, and he wouldn't be the first agent looking to turn a chance meeting into a networking opportunity. Either way, she wasn't interested in mentoring a young agent in the ways of the world.

"Where are you taking that?"

She stopped cold, turning to face him. "Didn't you say that you had work to do?"

He looked surprised. "Well, yeah, but it can wait."

"Look, Skip." It took all her self-control not to call him Skippy. "What I'm doing is well above your clearance, and way above your pay grade. I need you to go and do your job so I can go do mine."

Skip became crestfallen. "OK, I guess. But if there's anything I can do…"

She turned to start walking. "…I'll call you." She strode off with long deliberate strides, glad to have finally escaped. Sarah refused to look back; she was afraid of doing anything to encourage the agent.

If she had looked back, she would have seen Skip's boyish face turn surprisingly menacing.


Sarah approached the elevator bank. A middle-aged white agent with a dark suit and red tie stood waiting for her. With a perfunctory nod, he pushed the button; the pair entered the elevator.

As the doors shut, she punched in a code. The elevator light shifted from bluish to a dark red. A female voice said, "Passcode, please." A timer appeared on the elevator monitor, counting down from ten with a beep each time the number changed. The male agent checked a small scrap of paper and entered a sequence onto the code keypad.

"Code accepted," the female voice said. The light returned to its normal bluish tint and the elevator descended into the subbasement that most of the facility's agents didn't even suspect existed.

The door opened, revealing a single long hallway with two doors evenly spaced on the left wall and a single door on the right. After nodding thanks to the other agent, Sarah left the elevator and headed for the single door. The elevator doors remained open; the agent kept watch on her until she reached her destination.

Sarah didn't really notice; she was considering Director Graham's order that anything they found at the warehouse be taken to the special holding room on the bottom level. She was puzzled by the order at first, until she opened the door.

The front of the room had been fit with securable a pass-through area with a desk designed to have full visibility of the room. It struck her as odd that the set-up was not designed to keep people out: it was designed to keep people in.

The outside of the room was lined with filing cabinets and ceiling-high shelves laden with items. The center of the room had a series of tables, also loaded with items. It was one hundred feet by thirty feet of evidence and intelligence.

She shut the door behind her, absent-mindedly setting the box and her purse on an unoccupied corner of a nearby table as she moved towards one corner of the room. Ultimately, the mounds of evidence didn't bother her; what bothered her was a small room that had been erected in the back corner. The placement of the door and a small rectangular extension of the room seemed to confirm her worst fears.

Hesitating for a moment, she suddenly yanked the door open.

Inside was a bedroom. A bed was centered against the near wall. There was a closet and a bookcase and a fake window, covered with blinds, mounted against the outside of the larger room.

She strode around the room, marveling at the terrifying level of detail. They had got it perfect, right down to the Tron poster on the near wall and a chip of wood missing from the windowpane.

It was an exact replica of Chuck's bedroom.

She dug her cell phone out of her pocket; she hit a speed-dial button.

Her call was answered. "Graham here. Secure."

"Walker here. Secure. What the hell is going on?!"


The red-tied agent rode the elevator back to the first floor. The doors opened.

The agent was startled by the short brown-haired man standing, waiting, in the center of the doorway.

"Hi," the man said in an obsequious tone. "Skip Holliwell. I'm new here."

The agent in the elevator stared dumbly; his expression became even more confused as a hiss of air accompanied the bullet piercing his heart. He collapsed to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

"Don't worry about it," Skip said as he boarded the elevator and dragged the dead body back into the corner. "I'll show myself around."


"Agent Walker," Graham began, "Given recent events, I have come to the conclusion that Chuck needs to be confined for his own safety. Please make him aware that this will be his temporary home until we can transfer him to more permanent arrangements. He can make himself useful by starting to review the items in the warehouse, letting us know when he flashes on anything. Stay with him for as long as necessary; as his handler, I expect you to keep him calm and help him adjust."

Her mind spun out of control; it was all she could do just to function. "Sir, Chuck is not here with me."

"What?! Where is he?"

"He and Agent Casey went somewhere south at the request of Representative Jennings. General Beckman gave the order. I assumed you knew."

"Jeanine!" Graham bellowed.

Sarah heard the voice of Graham's admin answer distantly, obscured by the intercom.

"Did General Graham alert us that any agents would be meeting Drew Jennings?"

She still couldn't make out what Jeanine said in response, but the tone sounded apologetic. She could, however, clearly made out Graham's curse. "How soon can you get Bartowski back there?"

"I don't know, sir. Agent Casey, Chuck and myself are supposed to rendezvous close to downtown in about ninety minutes."

"Very well. Try to find a way to get Chuck there as soon as possible."

"Is Agent Casey aware of the situation?"

"No."

The short answer surprised Sarah, both because she and Casey had acted like a team to that point and because Graham was clearly holding back some key information. "Sir, what is it that you aren't telling me?"

"You have your orders, Agent Walker. Your job is to get Bartowski to his new home ASAP. I'll worry about … everything else." -click-

Completely stunned by the latest developments, she unthinkingly collapsed onto the bed, staring blankly around the room.

The detail really was perfect. If she didn't know better, she would think it was nighttime and she was relaxing on Chuck's bed. However, she had little doubt how Chuck, who was so sensitive to what was real and what was fake, would react to it.

She had to get out of the fake room. Just the thought of Chuck's reaction made her feel nauseous.

As she came through the door, she nearly let out a scream despite all her training. Skippy was standing near the entrance, about twenty feet away, poking through items on the one of the tables. "Skip, what are you doing down…?!"

He turned towards her, and she saw the small gun in his hand. The boyish enthusiasm was gone, replaced by a intense, almost vicious determination. "Hello, Agent Walker. I have a couple more questions for you, if you don't mind."

Scene XVII – Dana Point, Jaime Veron's Residence

Escorted by one of the DEA agents at the end of the driveway, Casey and Bartowski entered the house, turning into a stairway leading into the basement. In the back corner of the unfinished basement was a wide opening leading down into a downward-sloping tunnel.

The two descended into the earth. Miner's lights strung on a line and pinned to the wooden beams of the tunnel supports provided enough illumination for the two to navigate the undulations of the rough-hewn floor. The air grew warmer as they went deeper; neither man really noticed, as each was lost in his own thoughts.

Two hundred yards later and one hundred feet deeper, flickering light foreshadowed the end of the tunnel. A few dozen more paces carried the pair into a smuggler's cave.

Bartowski had found the cave. Its entrance to the ocean had been cleverly concealed in the back of the house's boathouse. He, Casey, and Carina had been given one hour to prove that Jaime Veron was the drug dealer that they claimed he was, and literally at the last minute, Bartowski had pulled their collective bacon from the fire with his discovery.

Casey looked around the cave. It was smaller than he remembered, a rounded chamber about 150 feet across and twenty feet high. A J-shaped ten-foot wide stone ledge ran around the outside of half the chamber, leaving enough water for a large boat to navigate in and turn around while allowing enough room for storage of a great deal of cocaine and money.

The source of the flickering lights was clear: several agents were working to disassemble a pair of large metal containers using acetylene torches. Even with the cool water lapping below, the chamber felt hot and smoky. The air reeked of the acrid scent of the cutting torches.

Casey glanced over at Bartowski. The wavy-haired man was staring around the cave with dead eyes and a dull expression. Casey kept forgetting how seriously Bartowski took everything he said, although even the NSA agent had to admit that the comment about his mother was probably out-of-bounds. Still, he couldn't figure out why Bartowski cared what he thought. Walker certainly didn't.

"Agent Casey! Agent Bartowski!"

Jennings waved at the pair; he stood over near the passageway that led to the secret entrance in the boathouse. He apparently located himself over there to get away from the heat and the noise of the cutting torches; his pant legs blew in the breeze, indicating that the secret door from the passenger tunnel to the boathouse was open, even if the boat access was not.

Remembering their plan, Chuck directed a cold stare at Casey before he trudged to the other end of the room to see if he could flash on anything.

There was nothing he could do at the moment but join Jennings. Shaking off his mood, Casey strode across the cave as if he owned it. When he reached Jennings, he firmly gripped the proffered hand of the US Representative in greeting.

"So, Agent Casey, how are things?"

"Busy, sir. To what do I owe the honor?"

"To the point, I see. I just wanted to get some questions answered, and this seemed like a reasonable place to talk."

"I still don't see why we couldn't have done this at your home or your office. This was a little out of our way."

"Well, I wanted to discuss some things in context."

"Such as?"

"Such as how did you know about Veron and his operations? The DEA had been after him for years. What broke the case?"

Casey gave the representative a thin smile. "Sorry, sir. That's classified."

Jennings' eyebrows arched. "You do realize I have TS clearance, along with several SCIs."

"That may be, sir, but I'm confident you don't have clearance for this."

"Interesting. Does part of what you can't tell me explain how an NSA agent ended up working on a domestic case with a DEA agent?"

"You know I can't answer that, sir."

"And you see? That's what's so frustrating about the intelligence community. We spend more time keeping things from each other that we do actually getting things done."

Casey smiled. He had been railing against that very thing earlier in the day. "That's one place where you and I can agree, sir."

Silence overtook the pair. Casey glanced across the way to where Bartowski was glancing through a cornucopia of items seized from Veron and his men. Following his gaze, Jennings said, "I couldn't find out much about Agent Bartowski. His file is pretty much empty."

"He's new."

"Good man?"

Casey paused for a moment, staring across the cave at the lanky man. "Yes," he said with a slight smile, seeming to surprise even himself with the answer. "He's a good man."


Feeling eyes on him, Chuck glanced across the room at Casey and Jennings. The two were looking across the cave at him. Casey, caught, tried to hide his smirk as he turned back to Jennings and said something. The two shared a laugh.

Chuck flushed. What Casey said in the car was bad enough, but to make him the butt of a joke to cozy up to Jennings on top of it?

He tried to find a way to keep his anger in check. Desperate for something to focus on, he moved on to the next pile of items. They were mostly just threadbare clothes, much like the previous pile. These looked like the work clothes of some of the Colombians imported to do the hard labor on the operation; he doubted he would find much here.

"Yo!"

Chuck turned around. A man in a DEA jacket was eyeing Chuck doubtfully. "You're not in charge here, are you?"

Chuck fought the urge to laugh. "No. Why?"

"Got a package of stuff from DEA headquarters here. We were examining Jaime Veron's possessions and got an order to bring it all back here. Know anything about it?"

"Not a thing. Sorry."

"Typical, ain't it? Really, all I need is a signature and I'll be on my way."

Chuck looked around the ledge at the people who might be better suited to sign for something like this. Mostly, the ledge was full of workmen focused on disassembling the two metal containers. Casey and Jennings stood at the far ends.

He was feeling a bit rebellious after Casey's tirade in the car. What the hell. "I'll sign for it."

The delivery man smiled. "Thanks." He handed Chuck a clipboard. It was remarkably similar to signing a clipboard – except for the part where he needed to put his agent number.

He invented one on the fly: 09281980. He picked one he could remember in case he needed it again.

The DEA agent examined the information. "Thanks. I don't need to see your credentials, do I?"

"No-o-o. No need if I'm down here, right?"

"Makes sense to me." The man's grin grew as he handed Chuck a very large, sealed, padded envelope, larger than any envelope Chuck had seen before. "Thanks again!" The cheerful agent headed back for the tunnel leading to the house basement.

Chuck glanced across the way. Casey and Jennings seemed to be engrossed in their surprisingly friendly conversation.

Seeing Casey, Chuck's anger came flooding back. Impetuously, he took the envelope with Veron's belongings and decided to open it.

It was only as he pulled the string to open the package that he realized how stupid he had been. That package could have contained anything.

Luckily, it contained exactly what the agent said: Jaime Veron's belongings. Chuck started a new pile on the floor: a ridiculous white pair of pants, a black tank top, a gold neck chain and matching bracelet, a gold watch, a pair of …

Ew. There are certain things that had never occurred to Chuck when he considered what the life of an agent might involve. One of those things is to suddenly find yourself holding a pair of used thong underwear. He quickly dropped them onto the other clothes on the floor, flicking his fingers in the air as if that would somehow help to cleanse them.

Chuck decided to kneel down and carefully dump out the rest of the contents of the envelope to avoid any more unpleasant surprises. Shoes, socks, keys and a wallet fell out. Last, a surprisingly heavy package with bubble wrap taped around it slid down the padding of the envelope, coming to a rest on top of the pile. He curiously picked up the package and carefully removed the wrap, revealing a large PDA.

He turned the device over in his hands; in many ways, it was a model similar to the high-end models that they sold at the Buy More. However, the back of the device contained a couple of ports he wasn't used to seeing in a PDA. Still, the pattern of the back panel looked strangely familiar…

Chuck's eyelids fluttered.

A picture of a green sea turtle floating in blue water.

A series of schematics of the PDA.

A schematic of ports on the Intersect.

A picture of the PDA connected to the Intersect, downloading and encoding information.

A picture of the sea turtle floating in the water.

As Chuck snapped out of the flash, he stiffened. He knew one thing – he wasn't about to let anything to do with the Intersect out of his sight.

He casually stood up; nobody was paying any attention to him. He slid the PDA into his pocket, behind his iPhone. Another scan of the room seemed to indicate that he'd gotten away with it. He let out a slow, controlled breath as tension started to flow out of him.

He wandered around the other piles of items, poking a pile here or prodding a pile there to make it look like he was actually doing something. In reality, he was staring with unseeing eyes as he considered what he had found.

The real question was – how did Jaime Veron end up with a PDA capable of downloading all the information on the Intersect?