A/N: More story. Some brief writerly comments at the end.
Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy vs. Spy
Chapter Four: Eyed
Sarah stopped, a wave washed across her bare feet, cold.
Chuck had a pair of binoculars in his hand. He was standing beside a small silver car, the driver's door open, the car parked sideways. The lights of the city were blinking on behind him as if he were a director in front of a choir of stars.
Sarah felt her heart leap in her chest. Chuck!
Without thinking, she waved at him. He put the binoculars to his face, pointed toward her. She stopped waving, her arm still in the air. Chuck did not respond.
Sarah could see the last of the sunset reflected in the lenses of Chuck's binoculars. The lenses lingered on her, both Chuck's hands on the binoculars.
Self-consciousness flooded over Sarah. All she had done — and not done. All that Casey had said to her, Ellie said to her. Her pre-Burbank past. She felt it all close around her as the binoculars remained trained on her, sins of commission, sins of omission. The unblinking lenses of Chuck's binoculars saw it all. She slowly dropped her arm. "Chuck," she said softly.
Another wave washed across her feet. Chuck lowered the binoculars. He looked at her with his naked eyes. She had never felt Chuck's gaze as anything but warm, even when she had hurt him, frustrated him. His gaze now washed across her cold as the waves across her feet. Even at this distance.
She took a step toward him. He stepped back. As he did, Sarah caught a glimpse of another person in the car, just a glimpse. Chuck turned his head slightly, spoke. Sarah could hear nothing, she could only see that he had. She took another step in his direction. He stiffened but did not move.
She dropped her sandals and began to run toward him. Chuck turned and handed the binoculars into the car. Sarah was almost sure the hand that took them had red nails. Chuck started to get in.
Sarah ran harder. "Chuck!"
Chuck turned and looked at her again, the door of the car open but between Sarah and him. Her feet sank in the sand with each stride. "Chuck, please!"
He stared at her with no expression. She was closer, a dozen yards. Chuck got in and drove away before Sarah's feet found the pavement of the parking lot.
"Chuck! Please, wait! Chuck, what's going on?"
The car pulled out of the lot, into traffic. Sarah waved both arms. Various folks standing around the beach or walking by were staring at her.
She got the license plate of the car but Chuck had left her behind.
The Next Day, Morning
Shaw was playing with a pencil as he sat at the small table in the hotel room. His laptop was open in front of him but the screen was dark. He was spinning the pencil through his fingers, so fast that it was a streak of yellow. As he spun the pencil, one leg went up and down quickly beneath the table.
The Intersect Orion has implanted in Shaw was an upgrade over the Intersect that Chuck downloaded, the one Chuck previously had. It had augmented Shaw's skills.
The upgraded Intersect was 'modular'. It had a 'place' for the insertion of specific 'modules'. Eventually, 'modules' would provide Shaw with skills he did not currently have — physical skills, specialized pieces of knowledge. The modules were not ready yet, although Orion was working on them back in DC. But the upgraded Intersect had already made Shaw's formidable physical skills much more formidable.
He had come to the Project intelligent and strong, in peak physical condition, an able fighter with developed forms of the all the fighting skills the Farm taught. The Intersect had smoothed, sped-up, and otherwise perfected those fight skills. Sarah had seen the result.
The laptop screen flashed on. Beckman was there, on the screen. Sarah sat down, her coffee in her hand. Bryce sat too, a coffee in his hand. Shaw looked at Bryce and the distance between Bryce's chair, his own, and Sarah's. Frowning, Shaw snapped the pencil in his fingers. That sound seemed to spur Beckman into speaking.
"Alright, Project. We've had a BOLO out on Chuck since Sarah saw him last night. The whole situation has become confusing. Chuck seems to be acting on his own, free, not anyone's captive. Sarah reports that someone, a woman," Bryce glanced at Sarah but she kept her face immobile, "was in the car with him. Does anyone have any suggestions, after a night of sleep?"
Sarah had not slept. She had re-lived seeing Chuck over and over, re-lived the look he gave her.
"Well?" Beckman asked, waiting, annoyed.
Shaw's head was down. He was inspecting one of the broken ends of his pencil. "He's rogue. He and that Amy, both. They set it up to make it look like he'd been taken."
"Technically," Sarah said, "Chuck can't go rogue. He's not a spy, not a government employee. None of this makes any obvious sense. But treating Chuck as an enemy," she glared at Shaw, who looked up from his half-pencil, "is way, way premature. Given all that he's done, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Our doubt — that he's doing something...wrong."
Snap! Shaw's half-pencil became two quarter-pencils. He picked one of them up, dusting lead off the desk.
Beckman ignored the sound. "Yes, Sarah, that's my view too. Until Chuck does something provocative, we will continue to assume that there is an explanation for all of this. Like Sarah, I trust Chuck. What do you think, Bryce."
Bryce was sipping his coffee, looking over the top of it at Shaw fingering pencil parts. Bryce lowered his cup. "Chuck's a...good guy. I can't see him engineering all this, but I don't know what to make of it, either. I guess I agree with Sarah." He peered at Sarah quickly. "But something's rotten. We haven't made contact with any Ring agents here, despite the chatter, despite the word that's out, directing attention to Shaw and Sarah."
"Well," Beckman responded, "you haven't been in town long. Word that Shaw and Sarah, the Westons," Sarah shuddered as Beckman used their couple cover-name, "are here hasn't had a chance to circulate for long, long enough for any Ring agent to make contact. But the claim that you, they, the Westons, have intel on the Intersect to sell should prove irresistible to the Ring. Someone will contact you."
"But we're no longer are sure there's a connection between Chuck and the Ring. We may be set up to go in the wrong direction," Sarah noted.
"That's true. But Chuck knows you are here, knew it before word could circulate. And that's why I am changing my orders. Sarah, Chuck found you. I'm of a mind to think he will do that again. So, I want you to go back to the beach and spend the day there. Shaw, you will remain at the hotel, to see if the Ring contacts you. Bryce, I want you to back up Sarah. Keep your distance — she's supposed to be a married woman. But if Chuck shows up again, I want you to make sure he can't get away like he did last night."
Bryce frowned but nodded. Shaw looked at the screen. "It seems like a waste to leave the Intersect in a hotel room…"
Beckman, about to finish the briefing, stiffened. "The Intersect may give you certain powers, Agent Shaw, but it did not give you my powers. I run this Project. You have your orders."
Shaw shrugged with obviously put-on meekness. The computer screen went dark.
The three of them sat there for a moment. Sarah had come to love being part of a team, that team, Team Bartowski, in Burbank. This, in the room, was no team. It was a junior high lunch table. She sighed and stood up.
"Ok, I'm going to change for the beach. Bryce, go ahead and scout out a good place. I'll be along. I'll have my phone, Shaw, if you need me."
Shaw nodded, still fiddling with his pencil parts. His frown had deepened.
Bryce left the room. Sarah got a one-piece out of her suitcase, along with a tunic dress as a cover-up, and she went into the bathroom to change.
She closed the door and leaned against the bathroom counter. None of this made any sense.
What is Chuck doing? Who was with him? Why would he do whatever it is he's doing? Does he hate me as much as he seemed to hate me last night?
The feeling of Chuck eyeing her with his binoculars returned.
She shook herself. She put on the one-piece and slipped the tunic dress over it. She ran her fingers through her hair. She had sunglasses and other items in her purse. Her sandals were by the bed.
She looked down at her bare feet and thought about that very first night, when she had watched over Chuck as he grappled with the fundamental change in his life the Intersect had caused. She had taken off her boots and walked barefoot to him as the sun rose.
Sarah had always been a toes-in-the-sand sort of girl, but she knew that taking off her boots that morning had been sacramental, the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual change. She had fought against that change, or she had once she understood that it was, for her, as fundamental as the change Chuck had undergone.
Asking him to trust her had been completely out-of-character for Sarah, a transvaluation of her values. And she had done it easily, spontaneously, without deliberation or premeditation; she shattered the habits of a lifetime in a moment, and happily.
That had been a completely true moment. And, God, how many times did I try to walk it back, in word or deed? I tried to distance myself from him, interpose other men between us, allow him to interpose other women between us, and I could not undo what I did at that moment. I ran to DC and failed to do it.
She looked up at herself in the mirror. "So, Sarah," she whispered to herself, Chuck in Conversation with Chuck, 'you're not in DC. Here for a visit?"
"No, Chuck, I'm here to stay, if you want me to stay?"
She remembered the binoculars, Chuck's glassy stare. "Why would I want you to stay? You'll just leave again the moment you understand what staying means."
She dropped her head.
Even her version of Chuck had had enough of her.
Sarah sipped her lemonade and adjusted the large umbrella shading her and her beach chair.
Bryce, she knew, was in the distance, behind her, seated in a picnic area. He had on a large straw hat and headphones, with a dollop of sunscreen, thick and white, on his nose. Hunched over, he did not look like himself. Sarah gave him credit. He was good at the job.
Sarah looked out at the water, watching a couple of small children wading along the edge of the water. She saw a man in a wetsuit swimming out in the distance. Two women, complaining about their husbands, were trailing the children. Seagulls circled overhead.
Sarah let her chest ache. No one could see her face now, and she let the hurt and frustration she felt show on it for a moment, relaxing her hold on her features.
The swimming man stood up and began to walk toward the beach, water glistening on the black wetsuit. Sarah regarded him for a moment with curiosity. He had on swimming goggles. He continued to rise from the water in strong steps, a spear-gun in one hand.
The sun, still climbing above and behind Sarah, reflected on the swim goggles, turning them orange. The orange eyes, she realized with a start, were fixed on her. Two more strides and the man was standing in front of her, the spear-gun angled at her.
He slid the goggles down and looked at her with his naked eyes, brown replacing orange.
Chuck!
He spoke. "So, Sarah, you're not in DC. Here for a visit?"
Sarah's mouth opened but no words came. She saw Chuck looking down at her bare feet, her toes in the sand.
A/N: Bear with me. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is not my standard novella. While it will not be as experimental as Burying Dirt, it will be a change-up. The exposition will often, as it is here, be presented en passant in dialogue or event. It will jump around, be diced up, both in time and in scenic structure. Much will be stylized, hyperbolic, cartoonish: a live version, in its way, of Mad Magazine's Spy vs. Spy. All of that will become more apparent as the story unfolds.
This story will be a pay-as-you-go proposition. If you care about it continuing, review it. It's that simple. If you don't care, don't. If I feel there's not enough interest at any point, I will take it down. I'll mention that only this once, but if you come back, and it is not here, you will know why.
I write to interact with the audience. As I said long ago when writing Sarah vs. Omaha, for me this is the virtual equivalent of telling a story around a campfire. Who'd want to do that if no one was there or no one reacted?
Thoughts?