A/N: Having finished Book One, The Pirc Defense, we begin our Second Book: Pivot.

Jeux Sans Frontières

Chapter Seven: Walking on the Spot

The odd times we slip
And slither down the dark hall
Fingers point from old windows
An eerie shadow falls
I'm walking on the spot
To show that I'm alive
Moving every bone in my body
From side to side

— Walking on the Spot, Crowded House

Chuck peered out the windshield of the van. A white fence ran along the side of the road.

Lou had not spoken but the shift in her posture, her attention, signaled to Chuck that they had arrived.

In the distance, he could see a farmhouse, large, two-storied, white beneath a green metal roof. The house had green shutters and a dark red door. Near the house was a bright red barn that looked freshly painted. Two small buildings stood on either side of the barn, white like the house and the fence.

Lou aimed the van into a driveway that led to a gate in the white fence. She stopped the van, rolled down her window, and pushed a button on an intercom box.

"Hello, Lou!" said a voice from the speaker, "do you have our guest, Mr. Bartowski, with you?"

The voice was rich, a baritone with a slight accent. French? Chuck wondered.

"I do," Lou chirped. "We're here — and we're getting hungry.

"Well, come to the house and bring him in. We are looking forward to meeting him. We can all have drinks before dinner."

Lou rolled up the window as the gate opened. She looked at Chuck. "That was Charlie. You'll like him. He's so...interesting...he's like a comic-book character: you'd bet no one like him could exist. "

Chuck shook his head. "That's quite a recommendation coming from a spy, from someone like you."

Lou smiled as she looked toward the house, blushing red. "Thank you, Chuck Bartowski. Thanks."

As they went through the open gate, Chuck noticed horses in the fields around the house.

He knew little about horses but enough to recognize the beauty of these. One, a chestnut, ran toward the fence and then turned parallel to it, galloping easily, matching the pace of the van. For a moment, Chuck lost all contact with his plight and marveled at the grace and power of the horse, and the deep, contrasting colors of the scenery.

Lou stopped the van near the front of the house. "We're here, Chuck."

She got out and opened the side door. Chuck unfolded and stretched as his feet hit the ground. Lou looked up at him. "I forget how tall you are," she said, her voice sounding slightly husky.

Her gaze somehow became slightly husky too and Chuck was unsure how to respond.

"Hello!"

Chuck looked to the house. A man stood on the large front porch. He was older, his balding white hair cropped short. He wore a dark shirt, navy or black, beneath bibbed overalls. His smile was quick beneath gold-rimmed, circular glasses. He had on black workboots, worn but clean.

"Hi!" Chuck responded.

The red door opened and a woman walked onto the porch. She too was older, her hair still dark though streaked with grey. She was tall, taller than the man, and there was no doubt she had been a beauty in her day. She remained a handsome woman, striking and regal. She smiled brightly at Chuck and Lou as she put her hand on the man's shoulder.

"Ask them in, Charlie. Welcome, you two!"

The man turned sideways and gestured toward the door. Lou dashed up the porch steps and gave first the man, then the woman, an enthusiastic hug. "So good to see you, so good to be here!"

Chuck slowly climbed the stairs, feeling very much the stranger. As Lou hugged the woman, the man stepped to Chuck and shook his hand. The man's grip was strong, although he was thin and not very tall.

"Mr. Bartowski! Welcome to Horseplay Farm. Feel at home, feel at home. I am Charlie," he bowed slightly, the bow incongruous performed in overalls, and he gestured to the woman hugging Lou, "and this queenly woman is Delta."

Delta smiled at Chuck over Lou's shoulder. She was about to speak when she was interrupted by a snort.

Charlie gestured toward the chestnut horse, standing now as near the house as the white fence allowed.

"That is Sentinel. He's five-sixths thoroughbred, but one-sixth hound. He wants to be our housedog — but he's a pinch large for indoors. I'll take you to meet him after dinner. He needs to learn patience."

Chuck nodded, staring at Sentinel, who looked even larger and more powerful now that Chuck was out of the van. The horse seemed to return Chuck's stare.

"Chuck, good to meet you," Delta said as she took a step toward him.

Chuck turned to her. She had an accent too, but not a foreign one, like Charlie's. Hers was pure American South, a slow, sorghum drawl.

"Good to meet you too, ma'am," Chuck responded, unsure whether to offer to shake her hand. He suddenly felt his own manners dull, unpolished. She saved him and answered the question by hugging him. She smelled redolent of cinnamon.

When she finished the quick hug, she turned and spoke to everyone. "Let's go inside. I have an apple pie to put in the oven and we should all enjoy a drink."

Chuck had known few homes — lots of houses, populated by foster families, some foster parents okay, some not okay (thank God, Ellie had managed always to be with him), but he had known few homes. Homeliness was unfamiliar to him. Even so, this felt like a home. It wasn't just the distracting smell of dinner, laced with apples and cinnamon, it was the simple, well-used but well-maintained furniture, the faded, handled books in the bookcase, the loud-ticking clock on the mantel, and the pipe stand holding blackened corncob pipes beside the clock.

Chuck felt like he'd entered a Wendell Berry novel, some Port William farm.

Charlie walked to the bookcase and opened a door in the middle of it, revealing a selection of filled bottles and gleaming glasses.

"Lou, what would you like?"

"Do you still have any of that fantastic bourbon, Charlie?"

Charlie grinned. "I do, indeed. Chuck?"

"Um, I'll have some bourbon too."

"Ice, either of you?"

"No," Lou said. Chuck shook his head.

Charlie turned up four glasses and began to pour the bourbon.

"Chuck, I know this has been...quite a day for you, if you'll forgive the coarse understatement. We understand what a shock it must all be and how bizarre your circumstances must seem. Please sit down and relax — as best you can. We can talk more seriously later, after dark. What was it Heidegger wrote of the night? 'The night...which without forcing compels concentration.' Isn't that lovely?"

Chuck nodded politely, not entirely sure he understood the quotation.

Lou sat in the middle of the couch and patted the spot on the end beside her. Chuck sat.

Charlie handed them each a small glass half-filled with bourbon, then walked back and got one for himself. He sat down in a leather Mission armchair. A book was open, face-down, on the small table beside the armchair.

Charlie saw Chuck notice the book. "It's Henry Bugbee's Inward Morning. Do you know it, Chuck?"

"No, I don't."

"It's a minor classic, I think. Perhaps it should be judged major. It's written as a journal. Bugbee patterned it, I believe, on the journals of my favorite writer, Gabriel Marcel."

"Wait, I know that name," Chuck said, feeling less lost suddenly, "The Mystery of Being. Isn't that a book of Marcel's?"

"Yes," Charlie nodded, obviously pleased. "It's not one of the journals, but it is a wonderful book."

"I've not read it," Chuck admitted, "but it came up once or twice in an existentialism course I took."

"Ah, yes, existentialism. Marcel was...impatient with that title, impatient with the existentialists, Sartre, in particular. I once heard Marcel speak in Paris. Sartre too, for that matter, several times."

"Really? I liked that play of his, No Exit."

Charlie's eyes narrowed slightly. "Yes, that is very good." He shifted in his chair. "When I heard Sartre, I was a young man, a student. Heady days, those, heady days."

Delta, who had gone into the kitchen, came out, wiping her hands in her apron. She saw the drink in Charlie's hand. "Well, Charlie, did you pour one for me?"

He smiled and pointed to the fourth glass, still standing beside the bourbon bottle. "Of course, my love."

Delta walked to the bookcase and got her drink. She turned to look at Chuck.

"Don't get him started on Paris and philosophy; he'll talk all night, telling us tall tales about drinking famous French thinkers under the table, about protracted arguments conducted in bizarre terms."

Charlie lifted his glass to Delta. "You know me too well, my dear."

She smiled at him indulgently. "I do. Many years together." She lifted her glass to Charlie.

Lou watched them with a happy grin. "They've been married, — what, forty years?" She looked at Charlie.

Charlie chuckled. "Yes, forty. When you put it like that, it sounds positively biblical. But, yes, we have had many good years together."

Lou went on. "Charlie's parents were killed late in the second World War, Chuck," she shot a look at Charlie but he merely smiled sadly and gestured for Lou to continue.

"He was an orphan, taken in by nuns. His parents had been important figures in the French Resistance…"

"...And," Charlie cut in, "they were in it for a few days too long. They were gunned down by soldiers in the streets in July of '44. I had been born only a few weeks before. What my mother was doing on a mission so soon after giving birth...Well, I have never known what she was thinking, although a man I met years later, another resistance fighter, said that he heard that my mother had learned of a traitor in the Resistance and that she left me with a friend to go and save my father and the others with him. If that is true, it makes a sad day even sadder for me, to lose parents and as the result of betrayal..."

Charlie was quiet for a moment, very still, and then he took a slow sip of his bourbon. "So, you see, Chuck, you and I share something, the early loss of parents."

Chuck nodded, his throat closing, preventing him from speaking.

"Enough of sad stories of the past," Delta said, attending to Chuck's reaction. "Chuck has enough on his mind at present. Let's move to the dining room; it will soon be time to eat."

Delta led them into the dining room. The large plain table was set with heavy china. Charlie took the seat at the head of the table and motioned for Chuck to sit at his right hand. Lou sat beside Chuck.

Delta went through the dining room door to the kitchen. In the time it took for Chuck to unfold his cloth napkin and put it in his lap, she returned, carrying a bowl in one hand and a tray in the other. On the tray was a meatloaf, sliced thick; in the bowl were steaming mashed potatoes. She placed both on the table and left again, to return with another bowl of green beans and a pan of golden-brown rolls. One final trip brought a full gravy boat and a butter dish.

Delta surveyed the table as she sat down, clearly pleased with herself and the hungry looks on the faces of the others.

Charlie picked up the meatloaf and handed it to Chuck. "Guests first, of course."

Chuck took a slice and handed the tray to Lou.

Casey and Walker stood in the back room of the soup kitchen. Although the door, now closed, read Storage, it was not a storage room. It was where Lou Palone had taken Chuck Bartowski, hidden him. Or so Walker insisted. Casey was willing to believe she was right.

Walker had questioned the manager of the soup kitchen, but the woman seemed to know next-to-nothing. She recognized the picture Walker showed her, and knew Lou's name, but all she seemed to know was that Lou was a student volunteer who showed up once in a while to work the soup line, and who was friends with the owner, a man the manager knew as Adam Bray, and who she described as of average height, with light brown hair and eyes that were green, maybe blue, maybe brown and who seemed to lack all distinguishing marks or features.

Casey had felt like Walker was on the edge, on the verge of physically attacking the poor woman during the interrogation. Walker's iciness had become cold as death and it radiated from her, terrifying the poor woman. Casey was certain the woman was not lying — and even Walker began to grudgingly accept that.

They were now waiting on a call from the analysts at Langley.

Walker had sent them the information on the soup kitchen and Adam Bray — and she was hoping for something from them. She had been pacing around the room, her phone in her hand, looking at the blank screen and from it to the unmade bed.

She had also called Graham, and that call had been short and hostile. Graham was unhappy and Walker was unhappy and they made each other unhappier.

Walker was supposed to call him back in an hour and he had demanded that she have at least a clue by then.

But at the moment they had nothing.

The analysts had reviewed traffic camera footage in the area but found no leads. There were no cameras trained on the back of the soup kitchen or on the block around it, unsurprisingly. Such things followed the money and this was a poor neighborhood.

No one in the kitchen, staff or client, had seen Bartowski. None had seen Bray. A few had seen Lou the day before, but none saw her today. The bulk of the soup kitchen's activity took place in the front of the building, in the cafeteria, and no one had been in the back that morning. No one, including the manager, had a key to the storage room.

According to the manager, Bray had one but she had never known him to use it. He had told her the room was empty, just extra space.

Casey was impressed. Pivot knew what they were doing, Bray and Palone knew what they were doing. The choice of safe houses was a good one and they had managed it all well.

Walker's phone buzzed. She looked at it. "Damn. Nothing on Bray. Nothing. And the ownership of the kitchen traces back to a dummy company. A dead-end, at least for now. "

"Look, Walker, we're not sure they were here; no one saw Palone or Bartowski."

"Oh, they were here, Casey. I know it." Walker put her phone back in her purse and glanced around the room. "They were here. The problem is figuring out where they went."

"You seem to know as much about Pivot as anyone," Casey said, wording his comment carefully, "where do you think they took him?"

"Someplace not far away. They wouldn't risk a flight, a train, a bus. Probably someplace not more than a day's drive away."

Walker seemed willing to talk so Casey hazarded another question. "What do they have planned for him, do you think?"

"I don't know. Pivot has been interested in Operation SpyCraft for a long time. But we don't believe they have the program or any version of it. I assume they just wanted to keep us from programming Bartowski."

"But if they know he is...programmable," Casey noted, "wouldn't it make sense for them to keep him until he could be programmed?"

Walker sighed. "Yes, or they might just kill him. They'll either use him themselves somehow or render him unusable." Walker glanced again at the unmade bed, the room. "Casey, stay here until the San Francisco CIA team arrives and can examine the room.

"I'm going back to campus to ensure everything's been dismantled there, cleaned up, and secured. Then we will all meet back at my apartment, Roberts and Larkin included, and try to figure this out."

Casey tossed Walker the keys. "Okay, I will see you later."

It was the strangest dinner of Chuck's life precisely because it was so unstrange, so homely.

Delta was a terrific cook; the food was delicious, comfort food of the highest order. Charlie and Delta and Lou carried the conversation for the most part. Chuck joined in now and then, but mostly he listened to them, to talk and laughter about daily life at Horseplay Farm, about previous visits by Lou, and about Charlie and Delta's first date in Paris: she'd been at the University of Bordeaux as an American exchange student and she met him during a long weekend in Paris.

At times during dinner, although Chuck was still not date-nervous, he felt like he was at his girlfriend's house, meeting her parents.

Except he wasn't.

He was seated among members of a secret organization of which he had never heard and that had saved him from a secret organization of which he had heard. Lou was cute and lively but she was not his girlfriend: she was a Pivot spy who kept him from being enslaved or killed by the CIA's cold and deadly Agent Walker. He was not in Palo Alto anymore but somewhere near Point Arena.

He was soon no longer to be Chuck Bartowski.

Chuck discovered that when the apparently unstrange is foregrounded against the strange, the unstrange does not remain unstrange. It begins to lapse into the background, to distort, change, lose its shape.

Dinner became stranger and stranger. Chuck felt at ease but that made him tense. His superficial feeling of belonging clashed with a deeper feeling of alienation. Even the evening sunshine, golden through the dining room window, seemed fool's-golden, false.

Finally, Charlie pushed his plate away and looked at Chuck. "Shall we go out to the porch? We can have our pie and coffee out there. It's a glorious evening."

Delta got up and went to the kitchen while Charlie led them out onto the porch. The chestnut horse was still standing near the fence and when Charlie saw him, Charlie shook his head.

"Sentinel demands to meet guests. Come with me for a minute, Chuck."

Lou excused herself to go back inside and help Delta. Chuck followed Charlie down the steps, across the gravel drive, and to the white fence. The horse crowded the fence, his head over it. He tossed his mane and snorted and danced a little as Chuck slowly reached out to him. Chuck pulled back his hand.

"Now, Sentinel," Charlie whispered to the horse, "you wanted to see him. Don't be fickle."

The horse quieted and Chuck tentatively rubbed his nose.

"Go ahead, Chuck. He's excitable today for some reason, but it's perfectly safe."

Chuck stared into Sentinel's large deep eyes and rubbed him more confidently. "So," Chuck began, looking at Sentinel but talking to Charlie, "you folks are going to give me a new identity, a new life."

Charlie nodded. "That we are, yes. It will take a few days — but Horseplay Farm is a pleasant spot, and you have Delta and me, and Lou, of course, for company. I can hardly imagine the shock today has been for you but I do sympathize and hope you'll find some peace here."

Sentinel snorted again and gave his mane a shake. It surprised Chuck less this time and so he did not pull back his hand. Sentinel nipped at it, his teeth clicking. Chuck jumped.

"Sentinel!" Charlie yelled. The horse backed away from the fence, but his dark eyes remained on Chuck. After a moment, he reared up, then ran away from the fence.

"Did he hurt you, Chuck?" Charlie asked, concerned.

Chuck looked at his hand. The skin was not broken; he was not sure that the horse's teeth had even made contact with him. "I'm fine; it just surprised me, the movement, the sound, scared me."

Charlie looked relieved. He turned and gazed in annoyance at Sentinel, who had run a distance and stopped beneath a tree. The horse was still staring at Chuck.

"I can't fathom what got into him. He's normally gentle. Well, let's go back to the porch. I'm sure Delta and Lou will be out in a moment. — Say, Chuck, do you play chess?"

Lou Palone leaned against the kitchen counter watching the coffee maker as it dripped its last drips.

"I can see why you like him," Delta observed as she sliced the pie, "he's a nice young man, endearing."

Lou nodded slowly before she looked at Delta. Lou shrugged. "Yes, he is. More's the pity."

Delta pushed a slice of the pie from the pie server and onto the dessert plate.

"Do you think you can do it, get him to download the program willingly, even now, after he knows something about it? Can you control him once he's downloaded it?"

Lou watched the transfer of the pie and smiled confidently. "Easy as pie."

Sarah Walker glanced around, saw no one watching, then opened the trunk of the car.

Bartowski's bag was there — where she'd thrown it earlier. She opened it and dug out his phone, slipping it into her pocket.

She stood straight, and glanced around again. Still no one watching.

She leaned into the trunk, opening a secret compartment in its bottom. The two go-bags she'd hidden were still there. She pushed Bartowski's bag into the compartment with the two go-bags.

Sarah stood straight, closed the trunk lid, and glanced around a third time. No one.

Her hands were shaking. That never happens. She had not been sure how the day was going to turn out — but she had not expected this.

The adamant of her self-control was cracking, cracking badly. But it had been ruthlessly overtaxed.

Sarah slipped into the driver's seat and held her shaking hands out in front of her, hovering just above the steering wheel. She glared at them, commanded them to stop shaking.

They disobeyed.