"Have you been able to get an identification for the subject?" a concerned General Diane Beckman asked Chuck and his team deep in the bowels of Castle on the main communications monitor.
"We have, General. His name's Bert Wraydon, and he works deep classified intelligence projects for the CIA," Sarah told her, "It appears he's been overseas for about a decade..."
"And Bert Wraydon's the perfect name for a spy too, if I may say so," Chuck added with a grin, "since that essentially makes him Spring-Heeled Jack."
"What the who?" Sarah frowned at him, confused.
"Spring-Heeled Jack, he was one of the very first costumed superheroes when he appeared in British penny serials in the late 1800s; he was based on numerous sightings of a supposed spectral figure that appeared all over England in the 19th Century," Chuck explained, "And in the serials, his civilian identity was Bertram Wraydon, who was on a mission to right the wrongs of his evil half brother, who'd cheated him out of his inheritance, and in the process protect the innocent and downtrodden who were wronged by similar evildoers. So he adopted the guise of Spring-Heeled Jack, complete with mechanical boots that could make him take unnaturally high and long leaps, and a special mechanism that made him appear to breathe fire. He had his secret base in a cemetery, and he..."
"We don't need to hear the whole history of the character, Mr. Bartowski, thank you very much," Beckman interrupted with an impatient glare. "Has Mr. Wraydon been able to reveal anything useful so far about what happened to him?" she asked her team.
"She shot me!" Wraydon wailed for at least the tenth time since he'd been whisked downstairs to Castle, howling as CIA surgeons performed mop-up operations on him on the table in the main room. "Does that answer your question, General?" Morgan quipped from next to the table.
"I suppose it's a start," the general shook her head, "What else have you found on Mr. Wraydon?"
"As I was saying, General, the available files on Wraydon has him working overseas for the last ten years," Sarah typed more information in the computer to bring up the files in question for Beckman to see, "Up till a few months ago, he was implanted deep in Lieberstan watching for any illegal activity there..."
"Lieberstan?" Beckman's eyebrows shot up.
"Yes, Lieberstan. Is something wrong, General?"
"No, no, not at all," Beckman shook her head, "Where was he last stationed before coming here?"
"His last known positioning was in northwestern Pakistan, and he was there as of last week. What he's doing here, I don't know yet," Sarah shook her own head, "Hopefully we can find out something soon; it looks like he got mixed up in something bad..."
"We're all done, General," the head CIA surgeon declared, stepping back away from the table Wraydon was laying on.
"What's his condition?" Beckman asked him.
"He'll live. Fortunately the bullets missed all his vital organs. That's the surprising thing, though; ordinarily, fired from the trajectory they appear to have been, they would have gone straight through the heart..."
"I see," the general mused. "Mr. Wraydon," she addressed the spy, who groaned as he lurched upright, "Could you explain to us all what happened that brought you here today?"
"Gretchen shot me!" Wraydon lamented again.
"Yeah, we got that, we've definitely got that by now," Chuck told him, "Gretchen being...?"
"My wife. She called me a traitor and shot me! I loved her with all my heart, there was never any problems before now, and she shot me...!"
"So this was just a domestic dispute gone bad?" Casey rolled his eyes, "Thanks for wasting our time..."
"No, no, there's something else going on here!" Wraydon insisted desperately, "Somehow Gretchen got mixed up with something bad, I just know it!"
"Well why don't you tell us from the beginning, Bert, if we can call you Bert?" Chuck goaded him.
"Yes, I guess you can. As you were just saying, I was stationed in northwest Pakistan up till last week. I'd spent the previous six years in Lieberstan, watching there for any signs they'd been violating the sanctions they'd been put on by the U.S. government after General Leonid Mountainski seized power ten years ago."
"No surprise there; General Mountainski's been calling for war for years now," Sarah noted out loud, "Did you see anything suspicious?"
"In fact, right before I left the country, I noticed troop buildups were starting to increase throughout Lieberstan," Bert related, "And there seemed to be high-grade weaponry entering the country..."
"From Volkoff Industries?" Chuck asked him, wondering if he was going to get another link to his own personal quest at the moment.
"In fact, yes; I saw the crates with their logo on it several times," Bert nodded, confirming the lead for him, "Lots of heavy grade stuff too. And worst of all," he shuddered, "There might have been nuclear material at play, but I couldn't confirm it."
"Hoo boy, sounds like you had good reason to be suspicious," Morgan shuddered. "And then they transferred you out right as the buildup started?" he asked the spy.
"Two months ago, I got an order direct from the CIA director transferring me to Pakistan. I protested, insisting I was needed with what seemed to be happening in Lieberstan, but I was overruled. So I was left to watch the border with India to make sure nothing flared up there..."
"That doesn't explain why you ended up getting shot by your wife here," Casey interrupted him.
"I'm getting there," Bert told him, although the pained look on his face made it clear to Chuck that it was, understandably, a difficult topic to revisit for him. "Last week, I got a call from a cohort of mine. He'd stopped in to debrief at another station near here, and swore he saw Gretchen going out with another man. I was stunned, but didn't believe it. So I asked him to keep tabs on her..."
"What does she do normally?" Sarah asked him.
"She's CIA too; top secret research and development. Anyway, my friend called a few days ago and grimly confirmed that he'd seen her with the man again. And I...I guess I completely snapped. I took the first plane to Los Angeles, tracked her down to the facility I was told she was working at..."
"Which was...?" Chuck inquired.
"A warehouse in the San Gabriel Mountains, disguised to look like a paint factory to civilians. When I got there, though, there was complete chaos; people were leaving the building in droves, carrying things with them, things that looked pretty top secret. I saw Gretchen leaving with several handfuls of paper, and I called to her. She turned...and gave me the angriest look I'd ever seen from her, and she...she shouted, and I quote, 'How could you, Bert, betraying me and your country!?' And then she drew a gun, and...and..."
He broke down sobbing. "We get the idea," Chuck comforted him, grimacing at the depth of the betrayal, "And she was always a straight shooter before this?"
"Absolutely; we never had any problems before this. So why she would...whatever they were doing in there, it must be really big and really dark," Bert said glumly, wiping at his eyes, "Maybe I should have kept in closer contact with her; maybe..."
He broke down again. "It's all right," Chuck patted him sympathetically on the shoulder, "You've come to the right place."
"The only place; the other substations were too far away for me to reach with the injuries from the bullets; I'd've been dead long before I'd have reached them," Bert admitted. "So I'm glad this location was put in place," he turned to the general on the screen.
"As am I at the moment for your sake, Mr. Wraydon," Beckman concurred, "Do you think you can retrace your steps to the warehouse in question?"
"I probably could...but it's probably all cleaned out now..."
"Perhaps, but my team has a knack for getting leads off the smallest of evidence. I want you to go with Mr. Wraydon and try and ascertain what was going on in that warehouse that turned his wife dark," Beckman instructed her team, "I'm going to call the CIA brass and see what the story was behind his transfer order out of Lieberstan; the fact something appeared to be going on before he was asked to leave the country does seem suspicious to me."
"And if I may, General, I caught a few glimpses of some of the personnel leaving the warehouse before things got personal, and I think I recognized one or two of them as Lieberstani agents," Bert admitted, "So I think there must be a connection of some kind."
"Duly noted. "Contact me again when you have something tangible to work off of," Beckman said in closing before disconnecting the feed. "OK, so I never was good with geography or current events; what the story with Lieberstan again?" a confused Morgan asked the rest of the team.
"I'm not surprised, you moron," Casey grumbled, "In layman's terms, Grimes, Lieberstan has been a rogue state since the fascist commie General Leonid Mountanski overthrew the rightfully elected government a decade ago; we have strong evidence he's consorted with terrorist groups and has been trying to start a war with his neighbors during that time."
"Just so you know, Casey, not every citizen of every former Soviet republic was a communist," Chuck pointed out with a frown.
"Mountanski was a high ranking member of the Soviet Union's military brass in its final days though, Chuck," Sarah told him, "He made it clear he considered the communist government's collapse a great tragedy of history; he's blamed the United States without evidence for causing it, and has sworn the country would pay somehow."
"And now we apparently have Lieberstani agents running loose here in the U.S. and a possible military buildup in Lieberstan," Chuck shot a worried glance towards Bert, "I know what you went through was painful, Bert, but maybe it's a good thing you did, as this might be really big."
"I just want to know why," Bert lowered his head, "I loved Gretchen, she was always a good woman...I have no idea what made her like this...to actually want to do this..." he gestured at the bandages on his chest.
"Well it might not be her fault; maybe she was mind controlled or something, and..." Morgan was cut off by his cell phone ringing. "Uh, yeah?" he answered it.
"Where are you, Grimes!?" Big Mike hissed on the other end.
"Uh, helping still with the bleeding guy; he should be all right, though," Morgan explained quickly, "Is there a problem?"
"You bet there's a problem, Grimes; Barnes upchucked all over a guy needing help with his phone," Big Mike lamented with a growl, "The whole store's in chaos right now, so I think it could use some help from its main manager..."
"OK, right, gotcha, Mike, be right up," Morgan signed off with a sigh. "Typical Jeff," he muttered to the others, "OK, guess I've got to take care of this," he told the rest of the team, "You guys can handle this mission for now; keep me informed, though."
"We will, Morgan," Chuck agreed. "So, I guess we head on out now?" he asked the others as Morgan bustled back up the stairs to the Buy More proper.
"Load Wraydon here into the ambulance and go where he tells you," Casey instructed the CIA medics, who started shifting Bert onto a gurney, "We'll follow at a discreet distance. "Hope you didn't have anything planned tonight, Bartowski," he told Chuck, "Because this could take a while."
"Fortunately no, Casey, not tonight. But I hope we do get all the answers quick. Because who knows how far this goes?" Chuck shuddered, "Who knows what all this entails, especially with Volkoff Industries apparently involved too...?"
Outside the Buy More, the man Jeff had thrown up on-now having cleaned off in the bathroom-strode rapidly towards a dark van parked as far away from the store's front doors as possible and climbed into the back. He slammed the doors shut, then activated several computers. "Checking in," he declared to the vague human face that appeared on the screen, shaped by 0s and 1s, "I scanned all the store's employees over the course of the last hour as you requested, and was able to successfully avoid any anti-electronic defenses they may have set up in there. I am sending the footage now."
He hooked his phone up to a port on the computer and pressed some more buttons that sent a download bar zooming along. "Got it," the figure on the other end said in an electronically scrambled voice once the download had completed.
"So now what?" the man in the van frowned.
"Give me a second to look this over," his compatriot told him impatiently. There was silence for a moment before he or she continued, "OK, I know who definitely isn't the Intersect simply because..."
"What makes you so sure one of these people's already got this computer in their heads?" the man interrupted.
"Believe me, I know. I know full well someone in this store has been harboring it for a while now," the pixelized figure said firmly, "And I've narrowed it down to the final four or five possibilities by now."
"How did it go with Finklestein? Was he able to tell you anything?"
"Finklestein knows nothing at all. It was clear after five minutes of putting him through the wringer that he's been completely oblivious to what's been going on in the Burbank Buy More all this time. So we can cross him off the list of possibilities too."
"You realize there's a danger he could..."
"Hold on, I'm getting another message," the figure on the screen ducked out of sight for a moment. A minute or two later, it returned. "Just some unnecessary pressure from him again," it muttered, "OK, first, don't worry about Finklestein; it was dark and we were all well disguised; he couldn't ID any of us if he tried. Second, it's time to take this into the next level. I'm sending the team down; you're to grab the following people I'm going to put up on the screen when they come out of the store tonight. One of them has the Intersect in their head, and I want it..."