-A/N I just watched the first section of Frosted Tips. Amazingly bad. The Casey scenes just cry out to be rewritten. So I'm going with the banter instead.
"All of them."
"Dumb and Dumber decided to buy some diamonds without us."
"Guns are easy to lose, Chuck."
"Impressive, Mr. Depak."
"I can't believe you just let him go out by himself like that," said Carina, throwing herself into a chair with her usual abandon. "He's a sitting duck, a helpless little muffin–"
Sarah rolled her eyes. "He's one of the most dangerous men in the world, and please don't talk about muffins…"
"I meant the good ones," Carina grumbled.
"I know what you meant, but the damage is done," said Sarah with a slight shudder. "The point being, I don't have that kind of authority. I'm not his handler."
Carina threw herself out of the chair. "Oh, God!"
"What?"
"Please don't mention him and handling in the same sentence. I just got a visual it'll take me weeks to forget."
Sarah shrugged. "Could be worse. I once got 'John Casey' and 'Speedo'."
Carina must have had a stronger imagination than Sarah had. She gagged. "You…You…" She whirled, took a few steps and opened the door. "Chuck! What's a harridan, again?"
Chuck was in his sleeping berth, getting ready for his meet. He didn't pause putting on his shirt, completely unfazed by the sudden appearance of Carina in his room while he was getting dressed, or the apparently random question. "An unpleasant and bossy older woman."
Crap. No, wait. Sarah was older than her. "So if I call Sarah a cruel harridan…?"
"Not redundant, no."
"Thanks, sweetie," called Sarah.
"Yeah, thanks." Carina started to close the door.
"I'd have to wonder why, though," said Chuck.
"Of course you would," said Carina, closing the door , leaving him alone with his curiosity.
"Banter lessons?" asked Sarah.
"I try to learn from the best, you cruel harridan."
"He is that," said Sarah, with a small, carefully hidden grin.
"You're smirking, aren't you?" said Carina. "I can feel you smirking from here. Cut it out, or better yet, go with him. You know the DoD's not after you. You could be out with the hubby at this meet, maybe spend some quality time together. I can handle this op as well as you, probably better."
"And yet, he chose me," said Sarah. "I wonder why." She flipped a switch. "Casey?"
"What?" he replied, his voice low.
"Carina wants to know if she can run the op, apparently Chuck and I aren't giving her enough vicarious smoochies."
Casey ignored the question so completely he didn't even mention ladyfeelings. "Don't bail on me now, Bartowski," he snarled. Quietly. "I'm almost in position."
Sarah made a thumbs-down gesture at her red-headed companion. "So you're finally ready?"
"I was conceived ready."
Sarah muted the mike as Carina snickered. "That must have been painful for Mrs. Casey," said the red-head. "Coburn, whatever. Good thing they didn't have sonograms a zillion years ago, otherwise the Gatling gun would have shown right up. Blown his cover before he even had a diaper."
"That would be a Mauser, Carina," said Sarah. "Or maybe a flintlock. It wouldn't have been a Gatling gun until the seventh month at least."
Carina laughed. "I don't know what's worse, you saying it or me thinking it's funny."
"Laughter has been detected," said Chuck from his room (it really was a small facility), in a robotic voice. "Must seek out amusing situation."
"We were just joking about Casey as a fetus," said Sarah when he came in, suddenly aware of how ridiculous that must have sounded. She cleared her throat, pointing at the speaker. "He started it."
"Oh," said Chuck. He tried to look menacing, but that didn't work so well, because…Chuck. "What do you mean, no cigars," he snarled, or tried to. "And no Black Label? This place sucks! Sorry, mom, no offense."
Both women dissolved in a fit of giggles.
Chuck frowned. "Do I have to remind you that government regulation one-four-seven specifically forbids expressions of joy-slash-happiness on government grounds?"
"Does it?" asked Sarah, rising to meet the challenge, and the challenger. "You mean like this?" She drew Chuck into a kiss, the kind that says 'fifteen minutes apart is just too goddamn long', her fingers in his hair.
He made a sound of joy-slash-happiness. "Bus-ted," said Carina in a sing-song voice.
Sarah looked down. "What are you doing in my seat?"
"Taking notes," said Carina. "How do you spell 'vicarious'?"
Sarah pulled away from her husband, patting him on the chest. "You, go." She turned, and grabbed Carina's collar. "You, move."
"Hey, Manoosh," said Chuck, knocking on his door. "You ready to move out?"
Manoosh opened his door instantly. "Willing and waiting, Captain Spiderman, sir. What's the mission?"
"That's what we're going to find out." As they headed to his car, he noticed the screen lit up on Manoosh's phone. "You reading something?"
Manoosh took out his phone, tapping the screen to keep it live. "I was reading up about Spiderman and his clones, like you said, and I found this blog about power, and stuff like that. Pretty cool, especially this one guy, he only signs on for a little while every day, but he always says something interesting. You read much of that sort of thing, Chuck?"
"I get most of my philosophy from comic books and fantasy novels, Manoosh, you know that."
"Spoken like a true nerd," said Manoosh. "Jeffster1 says he gets his inspirations from music–"
Chuck stopped. "Jeffster who?"
"Jeffster1, that's his handle. You know him?"
Chuck started again. "I knew a band called Jeffster, out in LA."
"That's where he says he's from."
Small world. "And he only signs in once a day? When?"
Manoosh had been tracking his usage. "Noon-ish, his time, for about an hour."
Jeff Barnes? Locked in a broken bathroom stall, all by himself. Chuck shook his head in a daze. "Well, at least now I know what he does on his lunch breaks."
"Five…four…three…two…one!" said Sarah, and right on cue, Casey turned the corner and stopped right in front of Gertrude Verbanski. The encounter had been planned to happen in front of a traffic camera, and of course they could hear the whole thing over Casey's surveillance equipment.
"John?" said Gertrude, recovering from the surprise first, even though for Casey it was no surprise at all.
"Oh, uh, hi, Gertrude," said Casey. He laughed nervously. "Small world."
"Hmm," she hmm-ed, stepping forward. She ran a hand up his arm, fingers trailing lightly. "Nice and cozy, but I expect some parts of it will be getting larger before too much…longer."
Casey urk-ed in the back of his throat but made no audible sound.
"Casey! Casey!" Sarah hit the button several times, knowing it would make some obnoxious beeps in his ear. "Restore your perimeter, Colonel."
"Sarah?" asked Carina. "What the hell are you doing? She's totally into him!"
"Who cares? It's him being totally into her that I'm worried about," said Sarah. "This is not a seduction mission, Casey!"
"It is for her," said Carina, pointing at the video from the traffic-cam. "Why are you so eager to block his…play?"
"He told me to," said Sarah. She dropped her voice, not very far, but managed to capture his tone a bit better. "'It's Gertrude, Bartowski, I can't trust myself. I need you to keep me on script.'" She leaned close to the mike. "Not that he's listening when I do. Casey, plant the bug and get out of there!"
"I was on my way to this little oyster place I know, not far from here," said Casey, as the script dictated.
"The Cerulean, my favorite," said Gertrude. She smiled up at him. "I'm thinking maybe I could go for some Blue Points right about now…"
"They have a mignonette sauce to die for," said Casey. "Something to thank the French for, along with helping to establish this great country of ours."
Carina hit the switch. "Oh, that's smooth, Romeo."
"Good," said Sarah, "We don't want smooth."
Gertrude laughed lightly. "You never were very good with the chit-chat. In case you don't know, this is the part where you ask me to dinner."
Casey stuck out a hand. Gertrude looking puzzled, took it.
"No," said Carina. "You're supposed to move in, give her a kiss on the cheek, let her know you're interested."
"Good work, Casey," said Sarah. "You're back in the friend zone. Plant the bug already, and walk away."
John raised her hand to his lips, and brushed a kiss across Gertrude's knuckles. "If I may have the honor…?"
"No!" said Sarah.
"Yes!" said Carina. "And away they go." She pointed at the traffic-cam image, as Gertrude turned in Casey's arms and they stepped out into the street.
Sarah threw herself back in her chair. "Am I the only one who knows how to stay on mission?"
"Hey, Chuck?" asked Manoosh, as Chuck pulled his car into the small lot for restaurant employees.
"Yeah, Manoosh?"
"Shouldn't we be parked in the customer section?"
"We're not here to eat," said Chuck, killing the engine. "I was asked to keep this meeting as low-key as I could."
"Someone'll be coming out?"
"Nope."
"So we're going in?" Manoosh said with distaste. "Waiting on tables?"
"Like Casey always says, no one notices the waiters. Or was that Morgan?" He snapped his fingers. "Nope, it was Morgan. With Casey it's bartenders, or janitors."
"You're taking spy advice from those two?"
"Why not?" Chuck opened the door, and Manoosh followed him out. "The name of the game is to be invisible, and that takes skill. Doesn't it, Sam?"
Morgan's favorite headwaiter was waiting for them. "Yes it does, Mr. Carmichael, although the uniforms don't hurt. Most people don't notice the guy inside the jacket unless he screws up or something, so don't do that." He scanned Chuck's body as they walked to the side entrance. "Not sure I have anything in your size, though."
Roll with it. "What about my partner here?"
Sam sized Manoosh up. "Oh yeah, you we can do. You up to it?"
Manoosh snorted. "Anything he can do, I can do."
Sam nodded. "We'll set you up with a good bottle of wine. Your party's in the secure booth already."
"I don't know what you're crying about." Carina pointed at the other screen, the street, the people, the Cerulean in the distance. "He planted your bug, you big baby. Even better, now we know how John Casey ever managed to have a daughter. Every ounce of moxie that girl's got, she must have inherited from her mother."
"If you ask Casey, I think he might even agree with you," said Sarah. "But I wouldn't recommend asking. I don't think he likes Alex Coburn very much. He never talks about him."
"It's not a 'him', it's a part of his life," said Carina. "He has a past he's not proud of, so what? He seems to be enjoying his present well enough." Gertrude's bug showed Casey's large hand as he opened the door to the oyster bar.
Sarah snapped off the monitor, letting them have their privacy.
"What's the bug for, anyway? Seems kind of stalker-y, even for an emotionally-stunted Marine."
"It wasn't Casey's idea, it was Chuck's."
Okay. Um…"Why would Chuck want to put a bug on Verbanski?"
"Protective coloration," said Sarah. "He figures as long as CI is around, it should look and act like other spy companies, but he doesn't know how other spy companies act."
"Bugging the CEO of your rival is a good start."
Sarah squirmed at the charge. Gertrude may have been a rival, but she was a friendly one, very friendly where John Casey was concerned, and it bothered Sarah a bit to take advantage of her good graces so soon after getting back into them. "We're not bugging her, we're…studying her."
Manoosh walked to the booth, back straight, tray level, and bottle steady. He tapped lightly on the plaque by the secure booth. "Madame, your wine?"
"Come in," said General Beckman.
If Manoosh was surprised to see Alex McHugh in the booth as the General's guest, he kept it buried. He busied himself preparing the General's wine as she continued her conversation, apparently with her guest. "The target is Mats Zorn."
"The guy with the whistleblower website?" asked Alex.
"Exactly," said Beckman, waving away the cork Manoosh offered to her. He placed it on the tray. "He males Wiki-Leaks look like child's play."
"And he's got my disk?"
"Along with a number of other highly-confidential CIA memos, but the disk is by far the most important," said Beckman. She took the glass with a small amount of wine from Manoosh, inhaling the aroma. "We've had inquiries about the Norseman from numerous government agencies from around the world. They can't be allowed to know that we destroyed such a unique device." She sipped her wine. "Not to mention what would happen if the news went public." She nodded to Manoosh, setting down her glass, and he poured for both ladies.
"I'd think people would be happy to know it was gone," said Alex.
"People are far too easily manipulated, by anyone with a billion dollars and an axe to grind, and there are far too many of those," said the General. "Better that they never know." She held up a small flash drive. "This has the details of the mission. Zorn's constantly on the move, as you can imagine, but he can't risk his mole in the CIA getting discovered and he'll need authenticity, so they can't transmit the recording. He'll have to pick it up himself." She placed the drive on the tray. "We'll leave it to you to figure out when and where to take him down. We can and will have no connection to the entire affair, is that clear? If you can figure out a way to collect the bounty on Zorn, so much the better."
"Yes, ma'am," said Alex.
"Then here's to a successful mission," said the General, and she and Alex toasted as Manoosh scooped up the drive and his tray, and left.
Sarah scanned the room as best she could from the vantage point of Gertrude's shoulder, as the other woman sat bent over her desk, hard at work. The date had ended, with Casey on his way back to base and Gertrude heading back to her office. While Sarah couldn't fault her work ethic, the décor was another story, all metal and plastic.
Metal and plastic what? "Trophy cases?" They didn't look like weapons intended to be used. Not only were they not racked properly, she recognized some of the outlines as being those of museum pieces. That silenced pistol looked like it was twenty years old!
She looked around their own small space. Not enough room down here for the stuff they used, much less any trophies, even if they were tacky enough to put them up.
The phone rang on the screen. By a strange coincidence, the phone in her pocket rang as well.
"Hello?" they both said.
"Sarah?" asked Ellie.
Sarah turned down the volume on the speaker. She'd check the recording later, if Casey thought it was safe. "Hey, Ellie, what's up?"
"Is Manoosh there?"
"He went out with Chuck," said Sarah, checking the time. They should be on their way back by now. "They had a meet with a client."
"He had an appointment with me," said Ellie. "Dad and I don't like the look of the scans, and we wanted him to come in for a full workup."
"I thought you wanted us to keep him safe and away from the lab?"
"That was before," said Ellie. 'Before what', she didn't say, but Sarah thought she knew. The fall of Karl Sneijder had made the news, and naturally they'd told her the true story behind it. "Diane said we'll have the DoD off our backs soon, but Dad and I don't think we can wait that long. We asked him to come in tonight."
"He didn't say anything about it to us…"
"I was afraid of that."
"That's why you asked him and not me or Chuck?" said Sarah. "Some sort of test?"
"We don't have a baseline," said Ellie. "So we're trying to make some behavioral correlations. We wanted to see what he'd do. Or not do."
Sarah went for the most innocent explanation. "You think he forgot? Something's wrong with his memory?"
"I wish I could," said Ellie. "But whatever's going on I don't think it's nearly that straightforward. Can you just get him in here, please?"
"As soon as they get back, shouldn't be long."
"Thanks."
Naturally, the second the call ended she heard the outer airlock open. "Chuck?"
"It's me," said Casey. He checked the feed from the bug straight off. "What's with the sound?"
"She got a phone call."
"And you turned it down, good." He'd been very emphatic that they not spy on Gertrude or her clients. All they wanted were some visuals, after all, but they couldn't just drop by and visit, not now. He put on his earphones to check the feed, while fiddling with the visual controls to blur the writing on the pages she was looking at. "You'd better not have been looking at this."
"Relax," said Sarah with some exasperation. "I was on the phone with Ellie, she's worried about Manoosh."
Casey grunted a me, too but his reasons were probably not the same as a trained health care professional's. Just then they heard the airlock cycle again. Sarah got up to welcome her husband back from his evening away from her, while Casey turned up the gain on his headphones until it was over.
"Where's Manoosh?" Sarah asked, and Casey knew it was safe to pay attention again.
"No idea," said Chuck. "I stopped to get some munchies and he was gone." He turned to look at Casey, intent on the screen. "Casey, you up for a little hide-and-seek?"
"I don't think so, Bartowski," said Casey.
"Come on, big guy, it'll be fun," said Chuck in a cajoling tone. "He's even got a head start on us and everything."
Casey took off his headphones and turned up the sound. "I mean I don't think so because I don't have to." He gestured at the screen angrily. Manoosh was there, sitting across from Gertrude in her office. "I can't believe she'd poach from us!"
"Shh," said Chuck and Sarah together.
"Well, Miss Verbanski," said Manoosh, his face coming closer to fill the screen. "Have you thought about my offer?"
A/N2 I always thought of Casey as the embodiment of personal honor and courage, so that's the way I wanted that scene to play out, plus he'd already established a stronger relationship with Verbansski in this story, so the cowardly lover angle wouldn't have worked anyway. The hardest part of the chapter was coming up with a semi-plausible explanation for why they'd bug Gertrude that wasn't too stalker-y. They portrayed Chuck as being overly-obsessive about his proposal, of all things, so why not put that attention to detail into CI? Better than a cowardly, dishonorable Casey.
