CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
You don't know how you got here
You just know you want out
Believing in yourself
Almost as much as you doubt
"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"
U2
July 14, 2012
Washington, D.C.
"Those are some pretty hefty accusations, Diane," Deputy Secretary Heller said, still seated at his desk though Beckman and Montgomery both stood in front of him. Behind his bald head was a mosaic of books and knick knacks crammed onto mahogany shelves. "And explain to me again why he's here?" he added, pointing to Roan with a flat, open palm.
"He was invaluable in recovering evidence, George," she said, not hesitating to use his given name, as he'd started that way with her. She had known him for many years; she had been somewhat relieved that he was in charge here, and not his direct superior. Convincing him of her veracity had become less of an issue.
"I wouldn't have come here if I wasn't certain. The proof is on this drive," she said, sliding it across his desk, noticing briefly her broken and unkempt nails, evidence of her night of spying.
"So, let me get this straight, just so I can wrap my head around this," he said, narrowing his eyes, shaking his hands in the air. "Arthur Meriwether, who I play golf with every Wednesday, barring thunderstorms, was the driving force behind the Ring?"
Beckman stayed silent, knowing her proof spoke for itself, and stopping to explain would only delay the direct intervention she was here to secure. She stood with her chest puffed out, her chin lifted defiantly towards him. Heller forgot in the moment how small of stature she truly was.
Heller continued. "Because the ultimate goal of the Ring was to secure the Intersect files, which he had a hand in manipulating from the very beginning, in 1978." He sighed, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "He ran the CIA back then," he said, a frustrated disbelief on his face.
"How better than to manipulate it all to his agenda?" Roan asked.
"Which was what? Is what? From what you said, he stole the working version and replaced it with the help of a double agent. To what? To intentionally create Alexei Volkoff?" Heller asked incredulously, still gesturing with his hands as he spoke.
Roan looked at Beckman out of the corner of his eye, as she gestured with her hand, giving him the floor. "He didn't know what he did was going to have the direct result that it ended up having. His only purpose, at least at the beginning, was to destroy Stephen Bartowski. In the end, creating Volkoff did that very well, wouldn't you say? The intelligence community ended up losing two of its best spies, after they went underground, to fix a mistake that was an act of sabotage," Roan told him, stopping in front of the desk and pointing for emphasis.
"So Volkoff was or wasn't an accident?" Heller asked directly. Then stretched out both hands, palms open.
Beckman jumped in. "Oh, he was, just not Stephen Bartowski's mistake. Meriwether wasn't all that smart. He relied on Jonah Zarnow to translate to layman's terms, but Zarnow paled in comparison to Bartowski's skills and intelligence. The two of them didn't think it would persist. The personality it created was the exact opposite of Hartley Winterbottom's. He was so meek and unassuming they never imagined he could turn into one of the most evil men the world had ever seen. When, from what is explained in Bartowski's original notes, which are on that file, he took explicit steps and precautions to ensure that while the Intersect was capable of implanting information, it didn't affect personality at all. Zarnow used that and reverse engineered it to create Volkoff. Only he thought it could be turned off—removed—at will." She ran her tongue against the inside of her cheek, shaking her head slightly. "Arrogant as all hell, considering we know Bartowski took 20 years to even begin to develop a way to remove it. And he couldn't remove it from himself. He died with a version of it in his head."
"If it's so complicated, how do you know what is on there is decipherable?" Heller asked her, drumming his fingers on the desktop.
Giving Roan an ironic lift of one eyebrow, Beckman lifted her chin, to proclaim the truth. "Because someone smarter than us," she said, pointing to all three of them in the room, "plus Meriwether and all his lackeys, as well as maybe Stephen Bartowski too, all combined, figured it out in less than 30 minutes. It's there. Just read it."
"Who is this genius, Diane?" Heller asked sarcastically.
"Dr. Eleanor Woodcomb. An analyst working for the company who had her personal residence shot to bits earlier today by Meriwether's allies. I'm here now because he must know, by now, that we know his dirty little secret. And if you don't get ahead of this right now, he's going to get away with it. And I'll be damned if that sonofabitch wins. Not on my watch." Beckman's green eyes burned with intensity.
Heller pulled at his collar, sliding two fingers in between the cloth and his skin as he seemed to contemplate this situation in full. "What about Operation Restoration? He authorized it. Why? Why try and explain why the Intersect didn't work if he already knew it didn't because he sabotaged it?" He asked.
Smiling, Roan told him, "He was arrogant enough to think he could disguise it, cover it up with jargon and technical nonsense and that he could just breeze right through. But he was wrong," Roan said, squinting and tilting his head as he drove the point home.
"Talk to me like I'm an idiot," Heller said, slapping his hands down on the desk and rolling his eyes upwards. "Don't say it, Montgomery," he added, pointing to Roan.
Roan answered with a crooked smirk, "He wanted Bentley to prove that Intersects as a part of espionage were not feasible solutions. He hated the idea of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and NCS all sharing their intel. He's an old school Cold War relic who thought without an Intersect, that collaboration would just stop. It's much easier to hide things that way. Like the real reason Black Morning failed. Meriwether tried to push MI6 with the idea that Corrine MacArthur had turned. Because he blew her cover, to the microbiologist, Paul Jeffries, who was working with Bartowski and Winterbottom, who was also a double agent. Working for the Soviets," Roan finished. He looked at Beckman, adding under his breath, "Sorry if I stole your thunder, my love."
She lifted one eyebrow only, not saying a word. She sighed, and turned back to the Secretary. "We were spies back then, George. He's perfectly right, on all counts. Meriwether made a grand gesture of trying to change with the times. But it was all a lie."
"He doomed his own operatives? Are you serious?" Heller prodded.
Beckman nodded, almost in sync with Roan. "He never wanted that solution in place. There were too many politicians with their hands in his pockets who had a lot to gain financially if Black Morning failed. Meriwether was a presidential appointee, don't forget, although he was still retired military. Bartowski figured almost everything out, with Frost's help. They were going to get to the bottom of it. So Meriwether created a diversion-one that is still diverting people from the truth today. That Arthur Meriwether is a traitor," she finished, almost growling on the last sentence.
"Wait a minute, Diane. You said he was wrong, about why it failed," Roan reminded her. She nodded in silent thanks to him.
Her hands still crossed in front of her, she said, "He was so certain the modifications Zarnow made were undetectable. That no one could tell the difference between the real version and the defective one. What Zarnow, and Meriwether for that matter, didn't understand, was that Stephen Bartowski modeled the first version using his infant daughter's brain. Turns out she has a unique genetic mutation that makes her brain work differently than most people. In case you haven't figured it out yet, his daughter is Eleanor Woodcomb."
"Are you saying Eleanor Woodcomb is an Intersect?" Heller asked, flabbergasted.
Beckman shook her head side to side quickly, telling him, "No, she wasn't. Isn't. But her brain works like an Intersect, without the file. Bartowksi tried to repair the damage he thought he did to Hartley with another version based on his daughter's brain as well. Only it was lost. Orion was still in the process of creating another version, when he found out his son, Charles Bartowski," she stressed, her eyes wide, as she turned to make sure Roan knew exactly what she was talking about. "Was an ideal model, hundreds of orders of magnitude better than his older sister."
"Still the idiot here," Heller interrupted in frustration. He ignored Roan's second smirk.
"Meriwether found out the truth- the reason Dr. Woodcomb and Jane Bentley, and me, by default, had concluded that the Intersect should be mothballed indefinitely. We were due to present it at a closed session of Congress. He found out that no Intersect could ever work as designed in any brain except Charles Bartowski's. He is the only possible human Intersect." She had moved closer to the desk, leaning forward on her hands for emphasis.
"That was enough to try and eliminate the Woodcombs and Bentley, and you, too, it looks like?" Heller asked her.
"Charles' Bartowski's brain works like an Intersect. Add the program, and he, well, he became what he became. One of the best spies the world has ever seen. Meriwether had no idea the Intersect was based on Bartowski's children. How could he keep that lie going, when proof existed that he was the culprit? Once we had the proof that the brain scans in those files were Bartowski's own children, Meriwether's days were numbered. He kept that data under lock and key and encrypted deep in the Langley archives. Bartowski knew his original model would work. His mistake was trusting Jonah Zarnow."
"But Meriwether knew the scans were of Stephen Bartowski's children, right?" Heller asked. "And he still put Eleanor Woodcomb in charge of the project? That sounds crazy."
"It never occurred to him that anyone would be able to figure it out. That was his own arrogance that did him in, thinking if Stephen was dead that he was safe. The man knew who their parents were. You'd think maybe he would have thought about that first," she said sarcastically, shaking her head.
Heller shook his head, almost as if he'd seen stars. "So all of that is on this drive, is that what you're telling me?" he asked again.
"All the proof, transcribed into a readable document. His ties to Black Morning, and everything after," she said.
"So what would you like me to do? Walk into the Joint Chiefs meeting with an FBI contingent and arrest him? I have a feeling that might not be as easy as you think," Heller told her.
"All I need you to do is head him off. Don't let him run, now that he knows. My team is still in Chicago, but they can still help me. There is surveillance footage from six months ago on his hard drive, the only file that was so encrypted I could not access it. It shows him in Thailand, dealing with Shaw before he was put away. He must have lifted it off the feed. Stupid of him to not delete it, but we've already established how pleased with his own cleverness he was. Their conversation was...enlightening, shall we say," she finished, a catlike grin on her face.
"How would you know that?" Heller asked her.
"Because I was there," she announced sharply. "I didn't know it was Meriwether-he stayed in the shadows. Once I had all the other information, it all fell into place. All I could see was the date. The same day I went to Thailand to see Shaw myself."
"So you still need the last file?" Heller asked.
"My team can get that," Beckman told him. "That's the least of my concerns. Just get ready and don't let him out of your sight."
July 14, 2012
Chicago, Illinois
The moment Morgan was around the corner, he shuffled quickly to catch up with Devon. The other three lingered as Devon stopped walking. "Devon, what were you not intentionally saying in front of Sarah?"
He sighed, looking immediately uncomfortable. Morgan just stared. The Winterbottom family waited, watching Devon's face expectantly. "Look, Ellie left voluntarily while her brother was in surgery. There is no world where that happened, I don't care how tired she was or how many times Alex had to sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" for Clara. Why did she leave? With Chuck's mother no less?"
"She did miss Clara, Morgan. She wanted to see her daughter, is that so hard to believe?" Devon asked.
"Not usually, no. But I can tell from your face-you left something out because Sarah was right there. Whole story, right now," Morgan demanded.
Devon sighed so deeply Morgan started counting the seconds before he stopped letting out the air. Wearily, he started, "Chuck's blood pressure was giving them trouble during surgery. And it seems like it's persisting. It's an effect from the anesthesia, happens sometimes, rarely, but it can happen. I didn't think getting Sarah worried over something that may not be a problem was a good plan. He's got a long recovery in the PACU, but if his blood pressure doesn't start normalizing soon, he could slip into a coma."
"Oh my God," Corrine gasped, looking at the worry that had pinched her husband and daughter's faces.
"You told Ellie all that, right? And she still left?" Morgan said in disbelief.
"She didn't have time to explain. It had to do with something on that file. Something about the Intersect. I don't know what she was talking about, but if she left in the middle of all that, I knew it was important. So I just let her go," he said sadly.
Morgan had heard the collective gasps behind him, knowing the others had at least heard how tenuous the situation was. "Yeah, you're right. Don't tell Sarah unless you have to, ok? Why worry when we don't even know yet, right?" Morgan tried again to force rationality, but the look on Devon's face stopped him dead. "Except, you're already worried, aren't you?"
"Doctors are supposed to worry. That's part of our jobs," Devon said, very diplomatically avoiding a straight answer. The haunted look in his eyes turned Morgan's blood to ice.
Distracted, he gestured for everyone to continue. "I'll go and get Sarah."
"Come on, let's go," Devon told the others.
"Is there anything else we can do?" Morgan heard Hartley ask.
The door shut as he heard Devon answer, "Be here for them. I think they're going to need support."
XXX
Unknown place, unknown time
Chuck stood, looking at himself, behind the wheel of his sister's car that was parked, the solitary vehicle in the last row of the parking lot before the sand. Both hands were resting atop of the steering wheel, and he was resting his head against his hands. He could see the cuffs of his olive green shirt, unbuttoned and rolled back. The sky overhead was overcast, streaked with orange ribbons of sunlight that blazed through as the sun dipped below the horizon as the day approached the end.
"Dad?" he called, not seeing his father at first, but knowing somehow, if he was watching himself live out a memory, like he had before, that his father should be here. Chuck could still see the sun, and the sky, and the pale color of Sarah's sweater as she appeared as a tiny dot seated on the beach, much closer to the water. The palm trees, other people, the gravelly parking lot all receded into the background, blurred like in a photograph.
"I'm here, Charles," Stephen said, standing at his shoulder as if he had always been there.
"Is this another dream?" Chuck asked, disoriented as he watched himself open the car door and step out, closing it gently and turning towards the horizon. He watched himself, his hand clutching at his chest. He felt the pain inside himself, both the memory and renewed as if it were happening again. He had let his heart find her, and she was here. It was as close to a miracle as he thought he could ever come, at least now, that the worst possible outcome had come to pass.
"Yes and no, son. You remember this, don't you?" Stephen asked him.
Chuck turned to his father, his eyes red and tears pouring down both cheeks. "I do," he said, forcing the words out like each weighed a thousand pounds. "I came here to tell her...to tell her that I would always be there for her, if she needed me, no matter what happened. To let her go, if she needed to, because we could never...never be...the way that we were…" He couldn't continue, the ache in his throat burning as he swallowed the rest of the words.
He felt his father's arm, circling around his shoulder, and without thinking, knowing this couldn't be real but unable to pull away, he turned and wrapped his arms around his father, pulling him close and holding him tight. "That was the hardest thing you'd ever had to do, wasn't it?" his father asked him, his voice husky as he spoke into Chuck's shoulder. "Love her enough to let her go?" Chuck knew he also meant himself, the decisions he had made long ago to leave his family in order to protect them.
"She didn't remember our lives together, our history, our hopes and dreams, how she felt about me," Chuck whispered , pulling away from his father's shoulder, wishing he had had the option to be held by his father when this had happened the first time. Maybe he wouldn't have hit the bottom of the fall quite so hard afterward.
"That's not entirely true, son," Stephen said, cupping Chuck's neck with affection.
"Dad, she left, right after I talked to her," he said, watching himself standing still, undecided, unable to walk forward or back to the car.
"She didn't leave because she didn't love you. She left because she did. Sarah was always afraid, Chuck. Of how she felt, about how you felt about her, about what she could lose if she let you matter to her, about how helpless she was to stop anything from affecting her. You believed her, when she told you she didn't feel anything for you?" Stephen asked. Chuck stared at him, tears continuing to stream down his face.
"You know Sarah better than anyone, Charles. You let your despair get in the way of seeing everything she didn't say. You can read Sarah, son, you always could," Stephen said with a smile.
The scene in front of Chuck shimmered, wavered, until he found himself in a new place. A dark, empty house. The sense of dread circled him like a cold wind. He looked at the top of the stairs, cringed as he saw himself tumbling down, each point on his body aching as if he were feeling it again. "Dad!" he called out, almost in panic. "I can't watch this happen again, please." He closed his eyes hard, but somehow, the vision persisted. Because he was dreaming.
"You told her she wasn't a good a liar as she thought she was. You were right, son. She could never really lie to you, without some pretty specific tells. She was yelling at you to fight back. Why would someone who wanted to kill you do that?" Stephen asked. Chuck looked down, watched himself slide on his back through a pile of broken wood and shards of glass. "She couldn't just follow her orders. You were affecting her, and it scared her." He was on his feet, his face streaked with tears, as she held the gun at his head.
He felt his father at his side, as he watched the rest of the story play out. Quinn's appearance, Chuck's vitriolic accusation as he turned away from Sarah, then his awkward dive in front of her as Quinn fired the gun. She could have run after Quinn, he knew, but she didn't. Instead she had knelt beside him. "Look at her face, Charles," his father told him. "She was pale. She thought you were shot, until you told her to run. She didn't want to leave. Do you see how she hesitated?"
This is only a memory, Chuck reminded himself. But part of the memory he had never taken the time to examine closely, his adrenaline pumping and in unbelievable amounts of pain. His father was right, though. Why had he not seen that? Seconds later, his sister and Casey had come blasting through the door, and by then he had convinced himself what Casey had told him before. That she was gone.
The scene shifted again, and he was in the courtyard, watching himself pause at his apartment door, afraid to go inside and see the living remnants of a life that was no more. He watched himself turn, at the sound of her voice. It was dark, and she approached slowly. "This is when she told you she believed you, but she didn't feel it, right, Charles?" he heard his father ask, as he looked to see him standing at his side again. "Look at her face, her eyes. She looks like she has been crying, doesn't she? Why cry if you don't feel anything? She couldn't look at you either. You thought it was just because she felt guilty, and the moment here, watching her walk away, was hard, I know. You weren't as focused as you could have been. But she lied to you there, because she was afraid."
The image blinked, and he was on the rooftop of the concert hall, Quinn dead at his feet, with the glasses in his hand, explaining to her what he had to do-put everyone else's safety above his own happiness. "She wasn't expecting you to do that, you know. But she wasn't that surprised. She knew what you were capable of by then. You were so focused on downloading it, you didn't see how sad she was, when she knew your plan wasn't possible," Stephen told him again.
One more blink, and he was in Castle, and he was saying goodbye to her again, for the second time, only this time feeling like his entire world had come apart while he watched helplessly. Chuck felt it tearing through him again, watching her turn to ascend the stairs, calling out one last time, and changing his mind. "She wanted you to say it, Chuck. She wanted you to stop her. Look at her face," Stephen told him. "That sadness is because of you. You were so focused on your own, you missed hers."
And then he was back at the beach, watching from the parking lot, watching himself walk down the sand towards her. "And why was she here, of all the hundred million places she could have gone? Why did she go back to the first place that she had ever let herself feel what she felt for you?"
"Dad, I don't understand," Chuck lamented. "She remembered how she felt about me, here?"
"It wasn't a memory, those were still buried. These were just feelings, feelings she didn't understand without her memories. Feelings that never went away, despite what you thought. She loved you almost at first sight the first time. Is it so hard to believe that it happened again?" Stephen argued.
"She...uh...she asked me to tell her our whole story. And I told her the same thing, Dad. The first time I met her. Love at first sight isn't real, though, is it?" he asked.
"You tell me," Stephen said, a crooked smile on his face. "You'd be hard pressed to prove that hypothesis in this situation, don't you think? I mean, come on. Could you really have disarmed Sarah Walker in the Intersect room otherwise? The day before you met her, five years before that, she would have killed you without blinking. But that wasn't her, was it? You thought you got through a few times, because you did, Chuck. That's why she's here."
"I still don't really understand, Dad," he admitted with a sigh.
"You will, Charles. It doesn't have to make logical sense, you know. Love isn't logical. It loses its magic once we carve it up and analyze it. Always think with your heart, and not your head. Best advice you ever gave yourself. But Sarah had to learn that too, you know. She learned it from you. That was the devastating thing that she forgot."
XXX
July 14, 2012
Washington, D.C.
"What the hell am I looking at?" Beckman swore, looking at a distorted image on her computer screen. "What is this?" she asked, trying to click open a file and realizing she had no control over her own computer. The images on the screen were black and white, reminding her of photographs she had seen when she was younger, of ordinary objects as they looked under a microscope. After she had spoken, and the image in the camera stepped back so the camera could focus, she realized she had been looking up the nose of one very strange, scraggly looking Indian man in a white button down shirt.
"You two idiots realize if you hacked into the camera, then you have to not block the camera, you giant morons!" Casey could be heard, but not seen, until two gristled and manly hands reached in front of the camera and cleared a way like he was parting the Red Sea.
Casey leaned down, and Beckman could see his face, comically close to the camera. "General? Can you see me?" he asked.
"Yes, Colonel. Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?" she barked. "Why are those two anywhere near you, this mission, or that camera?" She could see Bentley and Mary Bartowski over Casey's shoulder in the background.
"They're all we had, General," Casey told her.
"Where is Chuck?" Beckman demanded.
"Seriously injured, General, in a showdown with Leonid Poshenko, who had downloaded an Intersect in Romania," Casey told her. "It'll be in my report."
Beckman's stern visage slipped, the neutral line her mouth had always been now an accentuated frown. "Casey, is he alright?" she asked, with an air of genuine concern Casey barely recognized.
He looked back over his shoulder, knowing Mary had the latest update on Chuck's condition. She took two steps forward and said, "He's headed to recovery. He survived," Mary added bluntly, watching Beckman pale as she understood just how serious the injuries were.
"What about Sarah?" Beckman asked.
"Very worried as you can imagine, but alright," Mary responded.
"Fill us in, General," Casey said, refocusing the conversation to the business at hand. "I heard you are on a campaign to take out Meriwether."
"You're damn right I am," she barked. "Pull up a chair, people. Grab those nerds and let's get to work. There's a file here that needs decrypting."
Lester mumbled under his breath, out of one corner of his mouth, "Can we do that? That sounds like a job for Chuck."
"Chuck needs our help, Lester. This is serious. We can handle this little bit, can't we? We just hacked into the computer camera of a general at the Pentagon. Sounds like Chuck et al need our help to save the day again," Jeff reasoned.
"It's Jeffster to the rescue? Again?" Lester said dramatically, half questioning, half triumphant.
"No 80s cover tunes this time, just regular Nerd Herder skills," Casey shot into their little tete a tete.
"Has that ever worked before?" Lester asked, quirking up an eyebrow.
"Once or twice," Jeff deadpanned. "Make it the third, for Chuck, Lester. He needs us."
Lester nodded, and sat at the computer. He made a grand gesture of cracking his knuckles in a stretch over his head, then dug in. Lester did most of the work himself, only asking Jeff a few questions as he worked. Once the conversation turned to sandwich toppings, Casey had to tune them out.
He stood and walked out of their ear shot, to talk to Mary. "What is Ellie doing back here?" Casey asked her. "Or you, either for that matter. Chuck's not out of the woods yet, is he?"
Mary shook her head gravely. "No, he's not. And there may be complications," she told him. She had been around John Casey enough to recognize the breathy grunt as concern for his friend. "I'm here to make sure Meriwether gets what he deserves for tearing my family to shreds for his own benefit. Ellie said something about her research. She's in a state. I don't know what she's talking about, but I trust my daughter. She has something she needs to figure out."
Mary looked around her, noticing how much better condition Ellie's house was in only a few hours after having been almost completely destroyed. "Those NSA cleaners are good," she grumbled.
"Gertrude took charge of that. She's still outside," Casey told her. "There won't be a blade of grass out of place when she's done telling them what to do."
Half of Mary's mouth twitched upward, ever so briefly, at the admiration she heard in John Casey's voice. One more transformation, courtesy of her son and his ability to affect everyone he touched. The emotion surged, closing her throat and stealing her voice. Please, Chuck, you have to be alright, she pleaded silently. She couldn't lose him now, after she had already lost the majority of his life.
"Here we go, Colonel," Lester called, pulling his attention away from his conversation with Mary. With a flourish, he clicked a button, and the file began to play.
"That was the weakest encryption I've seen since the combination on the safe at the Buy More," Jeff scoffed.
Casey looked concerned, but Mary stood, staring, tapping her foot and narrowing her eyes. "He was always a condescending bastard," she hissed. "He never thought anyone could touch him. Why use complex decryption? Defeated by the Nerd Herd. Has poetic justice, don't you think, Casey?"
His attention was riveted on the screen, the scene playing out on the video, with the conversation watery but audible. Casey reminded himself they were probably hundreds of feet underground.
"Your days are numbered. They will find out it was you, you know. It's only a matter of time." Daniel Shaw's voice, coming from off screen.
"Now that you're here for the rest of your life, I doubt that. You let Bartowski and his girlfriend get the better of you, once more. I thought the Intersect was supposed to make you invincible. Seems like it impaired your thought processes, no?" a low, distorted voice spoke, also off camera.
There was a loud rattling off screen, the sound of chains clanking together, then Daniel Shaw was in the video, being hauled in a rolling chair, chains securing him, also keeping him away from any guards he could potentially overcome. He growled like a rabid animal, his eyes dark and sinister.
"You were half insane before that virus took over your brain. Who would believe you now?" the other voice spoke again. "Decker's dead, and you're locked away. The Elders were neutralized, and not a single one knew it was me calling the shots. And no one ever will. There will never be another Intersect."
Daniel Shaw was laughing, maniacally, irrationally. On the edge of the scene, the shadow took form. Meriwether stood in civilian clothing, half of his face in the light, the other half hidden in the shadows of the cavernous hallways in the underground facility. He shook his head, laughing back, with a condescending pity. "Decker removed the last one from Charles Bartowski. Quinn died with it. And now it's done. Rot in hell, Shaw," he snapped, turning to walk away.
"They'll find out what you did. Mark my crazy words," Shaw almost cackled, as Meriwether walked off camera.
"Was that what you were looking for?" Lester asked into the silence.
Casey heard him, but was distracted as he watched Mary Bartowski, standing a foot behind the computer. She was trembling with rage, panting and struggling to keep her breathing in control. Casey saw two trails of blood dripping from her hands, clenched fists at her sides, her fingernails having torn into her palms. She was oblivious to the pain.
"You're damn right it is," she growled.
The computer screen blinked on and off, and the image of General Beckman was on their screen once more. "Did you get that, General?" Casey called. He watched as Roan Montgomery moved into the frame, as he walked to stand behind her, grunting in greeting.
"Hello to you too, Casey," Roan quipped.
"We did," she announced, sounding almost giddy, in terms of Beckman' usual demeanor. "Ladies and gentlemen, that's game, match, and set. We thank you for all your help." Her eyes shifted, looking for Jeff and Lester, who were still in the shot. "This is a matter of national security and classified as such, gentlemen. Please do not discuss this outside of this room. I and your country thank you for your service."
Lester made an exaggerated effort to sit up tall and puff out his chest, while Jeff made a clumsy and uneven salute.
Beckman added quickly, "We are on our way to deliver this to Deputy Secretary Heller. Meriwether has a meeting in," she gazed off camera, then back, "25 minutes with the Joint Chiefs. Looks like we're crashing his little pre-meeting shindig. Shame you couldn't be here, Mary," Beckman told her, a soft sympathy on her face, understanding of anyone, Meriwether had taken the most away from her.
The complexity of her mixed emotions had left her with tears in her eyes. She felt her husband's presence with her, knowing he was there in spirit, and in her heart, where he had always been since almost the day she had first seen him smile. "Give him my regards, Diane," she replied, no one in the room questioning the acidic hatred in her tone as she spoke.
Beckman nodded slightly, crisply, and then cut the connection.