A/N: I'm enjoying how things are playing out. We may only have a few chapters left before this AU runs its course, at least for the time being.
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Chuck or any of the associated characters. I receive no compensation for this work.
Sarah and Chuck didn't leave right away as the gathering broke up. Most of the people in attendance were locals and had various jobs to get to the next day, but the two of them were under no such constraints. They started walking along the beach at the crest-line where the waves rolled in, feeling the cool wet sand on their feet. They walked wrapped up in each other, her with an arm around his waist and his arm around her shoulders. They walked along slowly, quietly, just soaking in the picturesque night, the nearly full moon lighting the way for them. Neither of them felt the need to speak. At some point they stopped to stare out at the moon reflecting off the ocean and the waves rolling in endlessly, then started walking back, still wrapped in each other's arms.
Sarah had made the decision pretty quickly to not talk to him about the Piranha stuff until… later. At that moment, she just wanted to bask in the evening, enjoy the quiet companionship with another person in a way she'd never had before. That specific phrase seemed to suddenly resonate in her mind. Quiet companionship.
It felt important, like her subconscious was trying to tell her something. Rather than reach for it, she just let her mind drift and after a few moments she remembered an excerpt from a book she'd read as part of her Harvard curriculum, a psychology class. She didn't remember the title of the book, but the excerpt was an observation about how loneliness was not an absence of love, but an absence of intimacy. It was an exploration into human interaction and how love was an emotion that didn't exist alone, or rather wasn't a singular emotion but an amalgamation of emotions, the root of which was intimacy.
She suddenly found herself looking at the last few months of her life through that lens and everything came into focus. She hadn't been angry all that time, or rather she had been, but the anger was just her psyche giving her an emotion that she understood to help her deal with an emotion she couldn't. She'd been lonely. So goddamn lonely it was slowly driving her insane. She'd been lonely for a long time but somehow she'd found a way to feed it through the arms-length relationships she did have; the missions and the limited interactions with other agents. Interactions with Kieran, a person she realized she had considered a 'friend', in a loose interpretation of the word.
Those relationships, such as they were, had been the bare minimum of human contact required to sustain her. Like living on nothing but white rice, it would make you feel full, but it didn't have much nutritional value. During the mission to bring down Kieran, she'd been directing things behind the scenes. She didn't even have that bare minimum contact. Then after the mission, she'd been fully and completely isolated. Very little human contact at all. Her mind and body finally rebelled at the seclusion.
She quickly realized that this was why the anger couldn't coexist with Chuck; he was the antidote for her loneliness, which in turn quenched her anger. She experienced a deeper level of intimacy with him than she'd even known could exist.
The comfortable silence continued on the drive back to their cottage and while they slowly undressed each other once they arrived. Other than the various moans of desire and pleasure they each experienced in their passionate embrace, the first one to break the silence was Chuck as he quietly exclaimed, "Oh my God, Sarah!" at the end of their third lovemaking session of the day. Sarah was only a moment behind him as she cried out his name softly in her ecstasy, reveling in her new understanding of the intimacy they shared and how precious it was.
The next morning was spent lazing around their comfortable cottage with breakfast ordered in. They'd each had their fill of sand, sun and water the previous day and were in no hurry to start the long drive back to LA. Chuck had morning shifts at the Buy More for the remainder of the week so the plan was to leave after lunch, have dinner on the way back and Sarah would drop Chuck off at home in the evening.
"So, why didn't you take me out for Karaoke last Thursday, Chuck?" She asked him curiously at one point in the morning. "You had to know how impressive that would be."
Chuck smiled shyly. "Well, first of all, I haven't even thought of Karaoke in years. That was very much a Stanford thing and I guess I kind of built a wall around all things Stanford related after I came home. I needed to distance myself from all of that and looking back at it now it feels crazy selfish. I just ghosted everybody without realizing what I was doing or even thinking about it. I owe a lot of apologies; they deserved better than that. I remember them calling, Joe and those guys, but I couldn't bring myself to answer. Eventually the calls stopped." He shook his head.
"And anyway, even if I had thought about karaoke, I wouldn't do that on a first date. That would sort of make the date about me, not us." He said simply.
Sarah had known that's how he would answer before he said the words. It would have been insanely impressive, and it would have overshadowed the rest of the evening, created an imbalance between them.
The morning passed in a lazy blur, the sexual heat between them sated after the previous days marathon. They went to Brophy's Tavern for lunch again and were happy to see Mandy working. They lingered over lunch, spending time chatting with her about the fish-fry, her husband, their life in Carmel.
They learned that Mandy and her husband had been high school sweethearts but mutually decided to break-up after graduation, not wanting to face the prospect of dating long distance in college. Then they'd each come home after college to discover that neither of them had met anyone that could take the other's place while they were away. They gotten married a month later.
As they were leaving, Sarah told Mandy she needed to take her husband back out to that secret spot and keep taking him there as long and as often as she could.
Chuck drove on the way home again, but neither of them were in any particular hurry for this time together to be over, so he stayed in his typical grandma mode and Sarah didn't feel the need to pressure him to step on it. At one point, Chuck brought up them having dinner with Ellie and Awesome on Thursday.
"You know, thinking about this from Ellie's perspective," Sarah made a motion with her hand to indicate the two of them. "She must really be wondering what exactly the hell is going on, and I have to admit, the fact that she hasn't been blowing up your phone shows a considerable amount of restraint on her part." Sarah smiled at the thought
Chuck grinned deeply. "She's texted me a couple of times here and there just to make sure everything's ok and all, but I can tell she's about to burst with excitement and desperate for more information." He laughed. "I don't imagine I'll be going to bed tonight before the wee hours of the morning. She is a doctor after all, she's used to operating on very little sleep when necessary."
Sarah smiled at him. "I kinda wish I could be a fly on the wall while you talk to her. Get some insight into what all this looks like through your eyes."
"Well, first off, it's like some amazing dream that I keep expecting to wake up from. And I know that's a bit of an overused trope between us, but it's appropriate."
"Yeah, we're on the same page there." She said.
"Beyond it being a dream, for me I guess it's a little bit of a wake-up call. A kind of metaphysical slap in the face to get over myself and grow up. I feel pretty childish now looking back and thinking about how I sort of climbed inside a shell and have been living there for five years." He looked a little upset. "People go through bad stuff all the time and they figure it out and move on."
"Chuck don't be too hard on yourself. What happened to you was a truly traumatic event. I think you handled it pretty well actually. You didn't lash out. You didn't become bitter or angry."
Sarah thought about it for a few moments. "What you really did Chuck, was pull a sort of security blanket around you, which is completely understandable. You went back to something you were good at and you continued to do that thing to the best of your ability. You didn't resent having to do it, which just about anyone else would have. You didn't start blaming everyone else around you for the shitty hand you were dealt. You owned it. It was your issue to deal with and you did."
"Thank you, Sarah." He said, pulling her hand up that he'd been holding and kissing it. "I find myself wanting to ask you the same question, look at these past five days through your eyes."
"I was actually thinking about a lot about that during our walk on the beach last night, after the gathering ended and I feel like I had some insights. It seems like we were both at a crossroads in our lives, going through our own crisis, some of which we understood, a lot of which we didn't and maybe still don't. I remembered you talking about our amazing chemistry and everything you said was spot on. But I was thinking there was another element to it." Sarah paused here, unsure if she should or could continue.
After a few moments, Chuck squeezed her hand. "Please don't stop. Finish your thought." He said encouragingly.
Sarah sighed, frustrated. "Uhg, I'm so bad at this. Talking about feelings. This was never part of my training. I was taught almost from birth that feelings make you weak." She took a deep breath. "I think that other element was a suppressed but overwhelming loneliness, Chuck. For both of us. You were destroyed by losing not just Stanford and all those friendships, but also the one truly intimate relationship you had with Jill. All just gone, basically overnight. I think Ellie and Awesome and Morgan have kept you sane, but they couldn't make up for what you lost. For the last five years, you've been dealing with that loss but also dealing with the mounting loneliness that the intervening time created. There's no denying you're a people person, Chuck. You need that human connection. And I think I'm just now coming to terms with the fact that I've really been alone most of my life but was just waking up to it over the past few months. People aren't built that way. We're social creatures. I think that was the root of all that anger I was experiencing."
Sarah paused for a moment, thinking about how to share with him things that were classified. "At work, there was a man that I dealt with on a regular basis. I realized that I considered him a friend without even understanding it at the time. And that friend betrayed everything I stand for. Everything. That's when my anger started, and I think it was because of that betrayal. He destroyed one of the few human connections I had. But even after that situation was resolved my anger was still there. I don't really have any other people I consider friends. Well, I have one other one, but if she could hear me talking like this, she'd push me out of the car. She's as bad as I am, when it comes to dealing with… this stuff."
"So, what you're saying is that on top of our crazy-level-chemistry, there was this element that we were each just desperate in our own way to make that human connection? This crisis of loneliness that both of us were experiencing just… turbocharged our already innate connection?" Chuck asked.
Sarah nodded. "Yeah, exactly. Turbocharged is a perfect analogy. I mean, in all seriousness, besides sex, what has been one of the most amazing things between us over the last four days?"
Almost as one, they both said. "Intimacy." Which caused them to smile at each other warmly.
Chuck was shaking his head, laughing a little. "What is it? What's funny?" Sarah asked.
"It's not funny, it's just.. a little mind-blowing I guess. I was just thinking that you're even smarter than you are beautiful. I mean I've known that all along, but you keep showing me how much smarter." Chuck looked at her with a little bit of awe. "I mean, that's some next level insight, Sarah. I never would have picked up on that, but now that you say it, it makes perfect sense. It explains so much."
That intimacy continued throughout the drive, through the dinner they had at the same ocean-side restaurant they'd stopped at previously, and right up to the point where Chuck parked her car at his Echo Park apartment. They stepped out of the car together, Sarah not wanting to wait for him to open her door. They met in front of the car, standing in the twilight of dusk, the headlights of her car casting long shadows on the pavement. The shared a long, sweet, wonderfully intimate kiss that suddenly fanned the flames of desire that had been dormant all day.
"It occurs to me that this is the first day in the last five days that we haven't had sex at least twice, and I don't think we'll see each other until Wednesday afternoon." Sarah said, gripping the lapels of his shirt in her fists. "It makes me wonder what the heat is going to be like between us when we do see each other again." She said with a seductive smile.
"It's worse than that." He said, the heat she was feeling reflected in his eyes. "When we do see each other again, it will be at the Buy More when you come to pick me up. Then we'll be coming here where we will be getting the third degree from my sister for several hours."
Her eyes got wide as she considered the full implications of what he was saying. "I'm not even going to ask if you think this is crazy, and I feel crazy selfish knowing what Ellie must be going through, but do you think you could sneak into your room, get what you need for work tomorrow and come back to my hotel with me tonight? I could drop you off at work tomorrow morning."
His smile made the encroaching darkness retreat just a little. "I'll be back in five minutes. Ellie will forgive us. Well, she'll forgive you."
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The next morning Sarah had to admit that any residual guilt she may have felt at stealing Chuck away for one more night was completely washed away by their time together.
As they pulled up to the Buy More Wednesday morning, Sarah noticed a number of green shirted sales staff and white shirted, grey tie wearing Nerd Herders were making their way inside. She looked in the store and saw others inside staring out at the sleek sports car most of them had never even breathed on before. As they pulled up to the front of the store, she saw them looking with eyes wide as they recognized Chuck in the car. She smiled an evil little grin. "I find myself wanting to put on a little show for your co-workers, Chuck." She said looking at him.
"What are you thinking, Sarah?" Chuck asked with wide eyes. "That smile is both incredibly sexy and truly terrifying!"
"Trust me, you'll love it. When you get out of the car, close the door and just stand there." She looked at him as he blushed furiously. "C'mon Chuck! It'll be fun! But don't laugh, it'll spoil the effect. Ok, get out now." The passenger side of the car was facing the store, so everyone inside would get a front row seat.
She opened her door, and took her time setting each of her long legs out of the car slowly, happy at that moment that she had decided to wear the high heeled shoes this morning, which pushed her over the six-foot mark. She then stood up out of the car purposefully, with a dramatic arch to her back. She looked over at Chuck and gave him her best thousand-watt smile and went into full on seductress mode as she swayed around the car to him, walking slowly, each step crossing dramatically in front of the other as her hips rolled side to side. She stepped up to him, grabbed his ridiculous polyester tie in her fist and put the other hand in his hair, pulling him aggressively towards her. As she leaned in for her kiss, she whispered, "Grab my ass like you've got a point to prove!" He fully complied with her demand as she kissed him passionately for a solid ten count. She noticed that he gave as good as he got with the kiss.
She flicked the tip of his nose with her tongue as she pulled away and made a light rowring noise, clacking her teeth together. He was grinning ear-to-ear and only blushing a little. She playfully tossed his tie over his shoulder as she let him go, then repeated the same slow sashay around the car.
"Have a good day, Chuck." She said with a sultry lilt to her voice. She got in the car the same way she got out, facing away from the car, sitting down, and then pulling each leg in slowly as she turned her body and closed the door. She then revved the engine and spun-out the tires as she raced away through the empty parking lot.
She saw Chuck straighten his tie purposefully in the rearview mirror, then turn and stride confidently into the store as if nothing at all unusual had occurred.
"Well played, Chuck." She said to herself, as a smile bloomed on her face.
Her mood turned more serious the closer she got to her office and without realizing it, she made a full mental transition into field agent mode. She finally had a mission, and this time, it was personal. Someone at Stanford was going to give her some damn answers, one way or another.
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"Stanford University, Department of Science and Technology." Sarah heard the voice say on the other end of the line.
"This is Special Agent Walker with the FBI. May I speak to Professor George Fleming, please?" Sarah intoned officiously.
"Of course, Special Agent Walker. I'll get him on the line right away." Sarah suspected she wouldn't have to wait very long. For most people, a call from the FBI out of the blue was more a matter of curiosity than anything else. But she knew that Professor Fleming had reasons to not want to receive calls from the FBI. He would want to know why they were calling, and he'd want to know as soon as possible.
"This is Professor Fleming. How may I help you Special Agent Walker?" The Professor said, sounding a little rushed.
"Professor Fleming, I apologize for the intrusion into your day. I'm following up on some old case files and I came across one from Stanford regarding a potential scholarship fraud case that was somehow misfiled in our records." Sarah could hear a continuous clicking in the background and realized that the Professor was nervously clicking a pen.
"I don't have any recollection of any scholarship fraud cases from here at Stanford Agent Walker. At least, not in the last ten years or so?" The Professor said.
"This never rose to the level of actual fraud, Professor, as there was never actually an investigation, but there was a case number assigned and I tend to be a stickler for these things. It was actually filed by your office about 5 years ago. Rather, I should say it was mis-filed by your office, which is why it's taken this long for anyone to follow up on it. I only found it by accident. It's very possible, likely even, that this report could have gone undiscovered until after the statute of limitations had expired."
"You're going back a little far for me Agent Walker. I'm afraid I don't have any recollection of the report you're referring to." The Professor replied. Sarah thought maybe she heard something of a defensive tone from the man.
"I understand Professor. I just have a couple of questions that I'm sure will clear things up quickly. Do your mind if we run through them?"
"Well, actually, I'm currently very busy-"
Sarah cut him off quickly, "I understand of course, Professor. When would you like to schedule a time to come into our Palo Alto office and submit a sworn statement?" She said abruptly. It was a risk to bluff him about coming in, but she was fairly certain that's the last thing he wanted to do.
"Uh, a sworn statement? I, uh…" He stammered. She heard the pen clicking like mad in the background.
"I understand it's an inconvenience, but like I said, I'm something of a sticker for these things. It's really just a matter of formality. I'm sure it would only take a few minutes to go through some questions over the phone if you prefer?"
"Yes, I guess that would be fine." He said slowly.
"Great, thank you Professor." Sarah said. "My records indicate that you are currently a Senior Associate Dean of the School of Science and Technology at Stanford, is that correct?"
"Yes, it is."
"And how long have you held that position?"
"For about the last 8 years or so."
"So, you were in this position at the time in question?" She asked
"Yes."
"And do you recall a student by the name of…" Sarah shuffled some papers around loudly so that he'd think she was looking through notes. "Charles Irving Bartowski?"
"Uh, honestly Agent Walker, you can't expect me to remember all my stu-"
"Of course not, Professor." Sarah interrupted. "I would however expect a Professor at Stanford to remember a student who had been caught cheating, thus committing fraud against the parameters of his scholarship?"
"Agent Walker, this is clearly a state of California matter. If you don't mind my asking, why is the FBI interested in this particular case?"
"The scholarship that Mr. Bartowski received was funded out of Maryland, Professor Fleming. Once an act of fraud crosses state lines, it's within the FBI's purview." Sarah said, inflecting some heat into her voice. You don't get to question me, dickhead.
"Oh, yes. Of course."
"Seeing as how your office actually filed the report in question with our San Francisco field office, you can understand my confusion with your question, Professor. It would seem that someone there realized this fell under the FBI's jurisdiction." Sarah said pausing, leaving some silence on the line to see if he'd try to fill it. He didn't let her down.
"Yes, I do seem to remember something about that student. An answer sheet was found in his room, under his bed. We had a tip that he was selling the answers."
"Yes, thank you, Professor. I see that from the report." Sarah said coolly. "It also states that the student in question, Mr. Bartowski, was summarily expelled from Stanford?"
"Of course, we have a zero-tolerance policy for cheating here at Stanford."
"Yes, but the report does not include the minutes from the Student Council Trial for Ethics Violations hearing that is required as part of your State charter, Mr. Fleming." She said, changing his honorific intentionally to see if he noticed. "When a student is accused of an act with these ramifications, they are entitled to a hearing, is that not true?" She asked.
"Uh, yes, of course. Uh, I uh." The Professor stammered again. "Uh, I seem to remember the student waived his right to a hearing."
"And yet that waiver is also not included in the report, Mr. Fleming. I also note that the identity of the anonymous tipster was redacted from the file?" Sarah said, letting the implication hang there. "That's highly unusual in cases like this, isn't it?"
"Uh, I suppose I wouldn't know if that was, uh, unusual." The Professor replied lamely.
"Mr. Fleming, it was your office that submitted this file to the FBI. It would seem apparent that it was a conscious decision on the part of someone in your office to intentionally hold back the identity of the anonymous tipster."
"Uh, yes. I suppose that's true."
"Mr. Fleming, I also see here that this report is actually signed and dated by you personally. Do you have staff in your office that often sign federal documents on your behalf?" Sarah had this Professor dead to rights, and he had to know it too, but she still couldn't see the motive behind it. Chuck had totally been railroaded into quitting, but why?
"Uh, no, of course not!" He stated quickly.
Sarah let a pause drag out on the line. "Mr. Fleming, I'm very confused. Since you've stated that no one would have filed this report in your name, that means that you filed it, or as I stated previously, misfiled it. A report that carries significant penalties for the accused parties. And yet that report is completely lacking in any substantive documentation to support the underlying accusation. In fact, specifics were intentionally withheld from the report." It was time for a final push, send him over the edge. "Mr. Fleming, can you help me understand what exactly is going on here? You do understand the penalties for filing false reports with the FBI or lying to a Federal Agent, do you not, Mr. Fleming?"
That last statement seemed to finally inflame the Professor. "It's Professor Fleming, Agent Walker, if you please, or alternatively, Dr. Fleming. And yes, I do understand what you're saying, and I don't think I like your insinuation." The Professor said heatedly.
"The FBI does not insinuate, DOCTOR Fleming." Sarah said, unable to keep her anger from bleeding through. "The FBI makes charges and prosecutes those who willfully break federal laws."
"I'm afraid I don't have any additional time for this, Agent Walker. If you want to make any charges or accusations against me then you're free to contact my attorney!" The Professor said, slamming his phone down.
At this point, Sarah activated the laser microphone she had trained on the Professor's office window. She was sitting in a surveillance van with the logo of a local HVAC company stenciled on the outside, parked on the street about a quarter of a mile away from the Professor's office with a perfect line-of-site to the window behind his desk. The laser microphone had an effective range of up to 10 miles, at which point atmospheric distortion and the curvature of the earth had a negative effect. At this range, the tech guy said it could pick up mouse farts.
She immediately heard the Dr. rambling and swearing. "Goddamn it, where the fuck is it?" He said, sounding genuinely nervous. She could hear him opening and closing what sounded like drawers on his desk, obviously looking for something. He eventually found it. She had to admit, the laser mic picked up an amazing depth of frequencies. She could hear every minute detail. "There you are you piece of shit!" He exclaimed, then fumbled with something again. "Ahh, fuck you with your stupid goddamn battery!"
Sarah felt a chill run down her spine. After some fumbling and clicking noises, she heard an electronic beeping; a phone she was all too familiar with.
"Come on, come on, pick up, pick up…" She heard the Professor mumbling.
"YES! Glass Castle – Secure! We've got a fucking problem!" She heard the Professor shout into his CIA issued secure phone.
Sarah felt her blood turn to ice in her veins.
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That Wednesday morning, before she made the call to talk to the Professor, Sarah had spent a period of time doing research and investigation into the processes regarding how a university handled a cheating case. Her break had come when she got into the legal ramifications of students who cheated that were receiving scholarships. They were not inconsiderable, and one of which was that the student in question could be held liable to repay the scholarship funds they had received to that point. The other important part was that the university in question was required to report the event to the appropriate authorities. The State Attorney's office in the event of in-state scholarship funding, or the FBI for out of state funding.
Once she discovered the reporting requirement, it was a fairly simple process of gaining access to the FBI database that these reports were filed under. When she didn't find the report under the appropriate headings, she expanded the search and finally found it. The report had been completely misfiled, under a subsection that dealt mostly with misdemeanor issues the FBI wasn't interested in. It was a wonder the report hadn't actually been purged from the system. Thank God for bureaucratic inefficiencies.
The fact that it appeared to have been intentionally misfiled, and the fact that it was bereft of any underlying documentation told Sarah that the report was completely bogus. Until she knew the why of it though, the rest was academic. Armed with the information regarding the bogus report, she felt it would be pretty easy to back the Professor into a corner, but she knew she probably wouldn't get any kind of confession out of him. However, she also knew from long experience that when you confront people with their wrongdoing, and then give them a little rope, they often can't help but hang themselves. Such was the case with Professor Fleming. The downside was is that she didn't know exactly how he would respond. Would he leave and try to meet with someone, or would he make a call? She knew she needed to be physically on him after the call, to see exactly how he used the rope. She needed to be there in person, so she'd hopped a quick flight to Palo Alto late that morning and requisitioned a surveillance van for the afternoon.
The problem was that the call that he made was absolutely the last thing she would have ever expected. Professor Fleming was a goddamn CIA recruiter! She rewound the recording and listened to it again, still unable to believe her hears. She could only hear Fleming's side of the conversation, but it was enough.
"YES! Glass Castle – Secure! We've got a fucking problem!" It seemed someone on the other end of the line, most likely the Professor's handler, told him to calm down.
"I am calm, but you're not going to be. Listen, I'm going to tell you something that's going to really piss you off, but you need to understand that I didn't have a choice in the matter." He paused for a moment, listening.
"Ok, A little over five years ago, I had a student in my psychology and symbolism class. He scored in the ninety-eighth percentile on his final exam." Here the Professor pauses to listen for a moment. "Yes, exactly, the encoded images section." Another pause. "Yes, I know I didn't forward you the results, that's what I'm getting at. I was ordered not to by Bryce Larkin." He pauses, listening. Sarah winced again as she had each time she'd listened, and the picture unfolded before her.
"Look, I know Bryce wasn't in my chain of command, but he was here ok. He'd been a field agent for nearly 2 years by that point. He made it clear, in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to forward you this student's information. The student was Bryce's roommate, his friend. He felt like the CIA would not be in this student's best interest." Another pause. The recording picks up his breathing, and it's obvious he's getting agitated.
"Yes, I understand my mandate perfectly well, thank you and I've lived up to without fail, except in this one instance." Another pause. "Bryce ordered me to help him frame the student for cheating and then expel him to keep him off the CIA's Alpha1 recruitment list." He said quickly, then stopped to listen.
"You know what, fuck you! You want to bring me up for review, that's just fine, I stand by my record, and I stand by the fact that I was ordered by a senior field agent to do this. I'm a goddamn scientist, what was I supposed to do?" He listened for a few moments.
"Well that's the problem. I thought I had covered my tracks pretty well, I misfiled the report with the FBI but somehow an agent stumbled across it and she seems to have a bug up her ass about it for some reason!"
"She called me to ask about the report and why it was so poorly done. No supporting documentation obviously, because it was a bogus report in the first place. I thought I had it so buried under the wrong headings that it would eventually get purged from the system, but it didn't." He listens for a moment.
"What I want is for you guys to get this FBI Agent to back the hell off from looking into this report. I'm exposed here, possibly a criminal complaint but definitely a civil complaint if this were to get back to the student in question."
"It WAS buried, don't you get it? But now it's been found!. If this student were to come back now and demand a hearing, he'd be within his rights and it would take no time at all to discover that there wasn't really any evidence against him. All I had to do to get him to back down and accept expulsion was to imply that his sister would be affected. She was a 4th year med-student at the time, she practically raised him, so I knew he'd accept it and leave if it could have any effect on her. Like I said, I'm exposed here. This is my career we're talking about; the agency owes me on this."
"The students name was Charles Irving Bartowski. The FBI agent that called today said her name was Sarah Walker." The Professor stopped to listen. "What? Yes, I'm sure that was her name, I just got off the damn phone with her five minutes ago." He pauses to listen.
"What do you mean she's not FBI?" He exclaims incredulously.
"Are you sure, I mean it's not that uncommon of a name, surely it's possible there's more than one Sarah Walker working in law enforcement?"
"Ok, that's fine. I'll wait to hear back from you, but it better be soon!" The Professor snaps the phone shut and you can hear it hit the desk.
"Asshole." The Professor says. He then proceeds to gather up his things and leave the office for the rest of the day.
Sarah sat back and worked through the implications of what was going to happen. She had some exposure here, but nothing she couldn't handle. She'd gone a little of the reservation with the digging into the FBI database and calling the Professor, but she'd bought herself a lot of goodwill over the years. Especially after the incident with her handler three months prior, she figured she was about a step below untouchable.
But she couldn't deny that some people were going to be mighty pissed and those people were currently burning up the phone lines right now trying to figure out what was going on. She'd stumbled on to a pretty fertile recruitment center apparently and there was going to be a lot of CYA happening. They would want to know if this was an actual intrusion into their covert training efforts, was it a penetration test, or was it something else. In this case it was something else that was actually pretty benign. She just wanted her boyfriend to have an opportunity to get the goddamn diploma that he'd earned, but nobody would believe that. She barely believed it. Either way, she expected a call from Director Graham within the next hour, two at the outside. She might want to preempt it and call him; get in front of it and own the narrative.
Then she thought about the other side of things. The 'Chuck' side of things. He'd scored so high on a CIA developed test that he would have been designated Alpha1, which basically meant put on a forced recruitment list. That was a little mind-bending for Sarah, who'd also been brought up on a forced recruitment list. She tried to calculate the odds of the situation she found herself in and gave up when she got into the hundreds of billions to one against. It's like the CIA was stuck in some kind of bizarre orbit around Chuck Bartowski.
The CIA, like any other large organization, worked a lot with lists. One of the most important of those lists was recruitment. The work the CIA did was incredibly demanding, especially for field agents. They wanted the best; the smartest, the strongest, good with math, good with language, good with psychology, good with creative thinking, problem solving, good with working alone or as part of a team. And a certain "moral flexibility". They were always looking for the best candidates and they started looking when they were young. Malleable. There were CIA recruitment centers at all the major universities. Some of them operated in a more clandestine manner, such as the one at Stanford, apparently, others with slightly more oversight. Harvard was a good example of that.
With such stringent requirements, recruitment was difficult, as very few people fit that bill. But even beyond normal recruitment, a very tiny percentage of people scored so high in a particular discipline that the CIA wanted them even if they didn't want the CIA. It basically wasn't an option, like it really hadn't been for Sarah. And Chuck would have been on one of those lists. They would have gotten him, and they would have absolutely ruined him. Because no matter how high he scored on their test, the one he would have scored the lowest on was the "moral flexibility" test.
On one hand, she wanted to kick this Bryce Larkin's ass and on the other she wanted to kiss him. He'd destroyed his friends life in order to save his life.
The other concern she had was, would the CIA still be interested in Chuck. Generally, after a certain age, civilian candidates were considered less desirable. People become less malleable as they get older. If they were still interested, she would be the one who'd opened the door. That was the part that was really doing her in right now. If she was the reason the CIA got their hooks in Chuck Bartowski, well, she didn't know how she would handle that. He could be an analyst, but even that would be difficult for him. You saw a lot of the bad shit going on in the world as an analyst and you had to be dispassionate about it all. Chuck was not a dispassionate person.
She decided she needed to get in front of this. She dialed Director Graham's personal number. It was something that not many people had and it's one of the things that set her a apart.
"Director Graham. Secure."
"Walker. Secure."
"Agent Walker, good to hear your voice." Director Graham said pleasantly.
"Thank you, sir."
"What can I do for you?" He asked.
"Sir have you received any calls asking about my activities over the last few days."
"I have not." He replied warily.
"You're going to sir."
"Elaborate?"
"I stumbled onto recruitment activities at a Uni out here. Purely a personal matter I was looking into."
"Agent Walker, one of the things I prize so highly about you is your decided lack of personal matters." Graham said, with a dangerous edge in his voice.
Sarah paused for a moment. She needed to tread lightly here. "Sir, as you're aware, my situation out here is… Unusual. I find myself distracted without the mission planning and execution that has been the focus of my career to date."
"That's understandable."
"Sir, with all the free time I've had out here, I've actually met someone. I was trying to do something for this person, and it took a very bizarre twist that I couldn't have anticipated."
"Let me guess; something about how he was kicked out of school didn't sit well with you. You looked into it and discovered the recruitment activities." Not much got past Director Graham.
"Yes, sir. But beyond that, I also uncovered a conspiracy to keep this person's name off the Alpha1 priority recruitment list."
"That's a very important list, Sarah." Director Graham said plainly. "Some would say it's second only to the NOC list."
"I understand that, sir. But this person would have never made it through. It would have killed him or at the least… ruined what makes him… special. I'm sure you'll be getting the details very soon, sir." Sarah said. She heard the Director talking to someone else in the room for a moment, his voice muffled and unintelligible.
"Sarah, I was just notified that Associate Director Barnes is outside my office asking for a meeting. Do you know one of his areas of oversight?"
"Yes, sir. Recruitment." Sarah said. "Sir, you should bring him in immediately. I called you to let you know this was coming. He can shed light on the specific parties involved. The recruiter was ordered to accuse my friend and expel him on orders from a field agent. My friends roommate at the time. The recruiter has already reported the conspiracy to his handler, along with my name."
"Your name?"
"I called the recruiter before I was aware of his activities as such, under the guise of an FBI agent following up on the report the recruiter filed regarding the activities that led to the expulsion of the student – specifically cheating, sir. Since the student was an out of state scholarship recipient-"
"Their state charter required them to file a report with the FBI regarding the potential scholarship fraud. Let me guess, the report was misfiled?" Graham said.
"That's correct, sir." No one could ever say that Graham was stupid, Sarah thought. She felt like this was an opportunity to give the Director some cover, in case things with Barnes turned ugly. "Sir, I'm officially requesting a leave of absence pending review of my continued service. I do not feel that I'm adequately prepared to continue in my former role with the company." Sarah felt the words leave her mouth and it was like they took the weight of an ocean with her. It felt so goddamn good to get that out there.
"Sarah, this is a little sudden. Maybe you should come to DC for a few days and we'll talk things out."
"Sir, if that's an order, I will of course comply. If it is not, I must respectfully decline." She paused for a moment. May as well be upfront about it. "I want to see where this relationship leads, sir. It's very important to me and leaving now, even briefly, could complicate things."
"Let me talk to Barnes and get back to you." Graham said and disconnected the call.
Sarah took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She was walking the knife's edge at the moment. She'd actually done it. She'd said the words. Requesting leave pending review was the CIA equivalent of giving notice. She thought she'd be terrified of this, but she found she was exhilarated. She was almost giddy. It occurred to her that her life was going to be her own. She started running through deep breathing exercises to slow her heart-rate.
Sarah was prepared to wait for as long as it took, but Director Graham called her back in less than half an hour."
"Walker. Secure." She said.
"Graham. Secure." The Director said and she thought he might be laughing. She tried to remember when she'd last heard the Director laugh and couldn't. "Oh, Sarah, that was quite enjoyable. You may know that Barnes has been gunning for my job for some time. He thought he had me with this one, but you forearmed me with knowledge Agent Walker. He wanted to use my "rogue Agent Walker" to try and stage a coup against me. He wasn't prepared for me to have all the information before hand and upstage him with a rogue recruiter and field agent to boot." The Director chuckled.
"Sir, for what it's worth, the agent in question, Larkin? I agree with his assessment wholeheartedly, sir. He was making a judgement call based on his intimate knowledge of the subject. And in this instance, the recruiter had no choice but to follow orders from a field agent."
"Oh, I agree completely, Agent Walker." Director Graham said. "That doesn't mean I'm not going to use the information to twist Barnes's nipples until he screams." The Director laughed again. "And the project that the subject would have been earmarked for has been… let's call it, back-burnered for the time being. So, you can put yourself at ease that the CIA currently has no interest in a Mr. Charles Bartowski."
"I'm very happy to hear that, sir." She said honestly.
"Now to this other matter regarding your leave of absence. I'm granting you six months of paid leave with an option for an additional six months if you only agree to meet with me to discuss things at that time. You have my word that if you still wish to separate pending review, I will sign the documents that day."
"Sir, I don't think that's nec-" Sarah started.
"It's not a request, Agent Walker." The Director said firmly. "These are my terms." He sighed, then continued. "Take the six months, Sarah. Take the year if you need it. You've been going full throttle for ten years. I'm surprised it took you this long to get here. You are not Kieran, Sarah. You still have good work you can do, even if it's not in the field. You could work as an instructor at The Farm, you could consult. There are more options for you than you may realize right now, possibly even make a cross-agency transfer, you've earned those kinds of options. Just take the time, relax and call me six months from today."
"Sir, I have a request." Sarah said. "I'd like to see my friend get his degree. He earned it, sir, and compensation the denial of his degree has cost him over the intervening years. It would be very easy to have an actual Fibby follow through with what I started. The University violated their state charter and defrauded the student in question. It was solely the act of the recruiter and the agent, but all the same... The University is ultimately the responsible party. Fleming is exposed, but I feel like he'd be open to a research grant and a posting at Langley. We may have to shuffle funds to appease Stanford, keep them from pursuing Fleming as it pertains to the settlement payout to the student. I'm thinking Tanaka Foundation. Is protecting Fleming worth a million?"
"Fleming is worth a lot more than that. His encoded images project has astounding potential, but then you aren't read-in to that project. You could be if you wanted to be, Sarah." Sarah started to object, but the Director cut her off. "I'm just throwing it out there Agent Walker. No, moving the Professor to Langley actually works out perfectly in this instance. His recruiting efforts are a distraction from his important work at this point. You have my authority to make that happen, Sarah. Reach out to Stanford and the good Doctor. Use Tanaka with authorization for funds up to one million to protect the Professor from any tantrum Stanford might throw. Reach out to the FBI and push through on their side. That's not even a favor, that's just good business. You get any push back from anyone, you direct them to me."
"There's more to my request, sir."
"Continue."
"I'd like your permission to tell my friend the underlying story. As well as the field agent who initiated the accusation." Sarah asked, holding her breath for a moment. There was a long pause. They both knew what she was asking. Disclosing a lot of CIA dirty laundry to a civilian, albeit one the CIA would have force recruited if they'd known about him a few short years ago.
"That is a favor, Sarah." He said but didn't hesitate. "Approved. And it gives me another idea. I can appreciate what this Agent Larkin did for his friend. It shows real commitment and loyalty. When you talk to Larkin, brief him on your recent mission's secondary findings, then instruct him to call me ASAP. And you call me in six months, Sarah." The Director said, then disconnected the call.
"Yes sir. Thank you, sir." Sarah said to herself, smiling. Then she started the van up, put it in gear and headed back to the office. She needed to get back to LA and she had a lot of calls to make. She wanted this all in motion before her dinner with Chuck and his family tomorrow night. After that, well, she'd have at least six months to figure out what 'after that' meant.
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