For notes and disclaimer, please see part one.
Previously, on the West Wing/Alias: Crystal and Sydney put the first part of their 'ghost' plan into action at the first rally for Sam with the President. Weiss and Vaughn try to figure out whatever happened to Jordan while, on the road to the hotel for the White House staffers and the campaign headquarters, Donna realizes Crystal is not all she seems. Sydney might've hit pay dirt with a taxi company to discover Jordan's whereabouts while Sam gets into a knockdown, drag-out with his campaign manager, and Weiss is left to try and pick up the pieces.
Crystal never did show up to Josh's Friday night. She wound up working most of the night. Thanks to the All American Taxi Corporation and one of their drivers, they had the location of Jordan and his men. And there was a stakeout team across the hall, in the building across the street, and in cars near all the exits.
Marshall was working on a bug that, when planted near the television sets in all the rooms Jordan had in the hotel, could control the feed remotely.
Crystal spent part of the morning talking with Josh and Toby about campaign rallies and how to stage one before designing the layout of the rally the CIA was going to put on.
Vaughn was in charge of acquisitions and appropriations. He managed to secure a stage, much like the one the Seaborn for Congress campaign used the night before.
Sydney, armed with information about when the hotel maid staff got to work, was dressed in the bland gray uniform and a dark wig. She was going to plant Marshall's devices.
Will was able to get in on the act as well. Using his reporting skills, he wrote up several stories about the Seaborn campaign, using details Crystal gave him about the location of the next big event, complete with remarks by President Bartlet.
It was going to be a huge deal, and they had less than twenty-four hours to pull it off. Crystal learned, through her many phone calls to Josh, that events like the one they were planning, usually had weeks of advance time.
"We have until seven o'clock, what else can you give me?" she asked. Okay, she was pushing him for information. She needed to know! "Bands, crowds, balloons... food?"
"Just how credible are you trying to make this? I mean... why can't you take him down right now?"
"We want Jordan and his men where we want them, where they can't get away. In that hotel... it's too public. They like too much blood. They could take out twenty people while we try to take them down. If we get them out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trained CIA strike teams? His ass is going to be *mine*."
"I didn't know you were that kinda girl."
She ignored his comment. "If he suspects that this is a hoax, he's not coming. He's not going to risk it."
"What about your alter-ego the ghost?"
"We're gonna feed him the footage we took last night through the TV when we're ready to."
"Which will be...?"
"Shortly, but you're ignoring my questions! What else is there? What else do I need to get?"
"Are you going to be able to get enough agents? Enough people to pull this off?"
"We can get other branches of law enforcement if we have to. As I understand it, Conrad's makin' a plea with the FBI since they're officially 'in charge' of this little operation, but, again, that's not helping me."
"People. Stage. Entertainment. Balloons. Yes, food."
"What else?"
"Media."
"We'll bring our own."
"All these people are going to have to have cars. Regular cars. Nice cars. Fancy cars. Beat up clunkers. It's not going to hurt to have a couple black SVUs lined up to look like the motorcade, as well as getting one or two of the campaign cars from Sam with all the stickers and magnets and streamers and whatever else they did to bastardize those poor cars."
"That it?"
"For now. I'll call you back if I can think of anything else."
"Thank you," she said hanging up. "Anybody got word from the DCI yet?" she asked, looking at the assembled CIA agents at desks and tables, at phones and computers. When she received no direct response, she sighed. Still nothing.
~~~
Sydney, hunched over, knocked on the door to Jordan's room. Her mind flashed briefly on the pictures from the hotel in Borneo. She was going up against the man himself, if only to vacuum, make the bed, change the towels, and plant the bug. All of which were tasks she wasn't looking forward to.
A gruff, mottled accent spoke through the door: "Who is it?"
"Maid," she answered in an accent that wasn't her own.
She heard him grumble and open the door, soon face-to-face with the head assassin for a rough-and-ready terrorist organization.
"I'm going to my friend's room. Touch... nothing..."
She nodded, and watched as he walked by her. She pushed the cart inside and immediately planted the device on the cable box before emptying the trash, making the bed, and fixing the towels. She was tempted to poke through the drawers of the bureau, to see what kind of weaponry he had, maybe through the closet, his luggage. She refrained from all of this, having a dread fear of the location being secured with some sort of trap and visualizing rather unpleasant outcomes.
And she had five more rooms to go.
~~~
"You need campaign and rally signs?" Sam asked, looking at Weiss with a rather perplexed expression on his face.
"Yeah."
"What for?"
"We're flushing Jordan out tonight and we need those things to make it look real."
"Is this going to come back and bite me in the ass? Because, turns out, the assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff had lunch with a Communist. The President held up kids wanting to go home from Disney and I, apparently, still look like a White House errand boy."
"If this goes bad, somebody's gettin' killed. It'll probably steal the headlines away from those other things. Can we have the signs?"
"Take what you need. But... why do you need the campaign and rally signs?"
"We're staging our own rally. Don't worry; it's outside of town, away from populated areas... the picnic area at Griffin Park."
"What time?"
"Seven."
"I want to be there."
"That's a very bad idea."
"How are you going to pull off the rally without the candidate?"
"Well, since it's not *really* a campaign rally, we figure just fine."
"I want to be there."
"Sam..."
"Is Crys going to be there?"
"Yeah."
"Then, the candidate's making an appearance."
"You really shouldn't..."
"I'm coming."
"What about your own campaign stops tonight?"
"There isn't anything, not at seven."
"Sam..."
"I'll see you at Griffin Park."
Weiss sighed heavily and retrieved the signs. He'd just tell Crystal and he'd let her deal with her cousin. He was temporary roommate and bodyguard. He was no miracle worker.
~~~
Sydney watched as Marshall toted a television set into his office and set it down on a table by her. "What's this?" she asked.
"Your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill television set. Got your cable, got your remote." He handed her the remote control. "So, you're cruising along the channels. Oh, look, Night Court... And then you're watching and a commercial comes on. Sometimes, y'know, at night, they might have the first two seconds of one commercial, followed by the start of something like, uh, buy this CD 'cause it's got great music on it. Then, by the time they're done telling you the eight-hundred number and you're dialing it, you get the last two seconds of a different commercial: 'don't be fooled by imposters, our deal's the best: buy one get one free' or something like that. So, by then, you've forgotten what the number was and you're never going to get that CD that the TV wanted you to buy. If they'd only done the cut-in seamlessly... which is exactly what we're going to do." Marshall turned on the television set and watched the footage for a moment, before punching in some keys on his computer. "You'd have your CD."
Right as one commercial faded to go to the next, Sydney was suddenly on TV, holding the remote control and looking out. "Marshall..."
"Don't worry, it's only on this TV. The device for this one has a different frequency than the six at the hotel. But, look! It's the Sydney Bristow Show."
"And we can send thirty to sixty-second ads?"
Marshall nodded. "Anything we want. When it comes to news time, we may have to take over, so to speak, and do it all."
"Hopefully we won't have to," she said softly. "I think the ads are almost ready. You can start running them within the half hour?"
"I can run them anytime."
"Great."
"'This is the Sydney Bristow Show, saying goodnight,'" Marshall said, putting on an "announcer" voice, as the TV automatically returned to its regularly scheduled programming.
Sydney smiled, and slipped out of his office.
~~~
By three in the afternoon, Crystal was sitting at a desk with her head down and her eyes closed, at least for a moment. She hadn't slept, not since her nap on Air Force One in Josh's arms and she could use another. She'd been to the FBI headquarters to brief agents. She'd been to the local police's training rooms and briefed cops. She'd orchestrated a campaign rally, a massive one, in roughly twelve hours and she was paying the price for it.
"Whoever is standing behind me is going to get a biiiig surprise if they don't acknowledge the fact that yes, whoever it is, you are there."
"Do you ever sleep when I'm not around?" Josh asked, placing a warm hand on her shoulder.
She couldn't stop a soft, contented sigh at his touch. "You put me to sleep right now, you die. I have to keep going. I have to make it through tonight."
"Powernap?"
"Actually, no... Come out to the site with me, tell me what you think," she said, forcing herself to stand up. She was no longer in her clothes from the day before. She was in a pair of blue jeans and a snug- fitting retro tee shirt. Without the dark circles under her eyes and the exhausted look in them, she could've easily passed for someone younger.
"On one condition."
"What's that?" she asked, sliding her glasses on.
"You let Sam and I come tonight."
"Are you two out of your *minds*?" she asked, looking at him as though he'd grown an extra head.
"We want to come."
"This man is a butcher, you can't possibly *want* to come. He's going to want to kill *Sam*. Heaven forbid something go *wrong* and he decides he's gonna make sure the ghost--that's me, by the way--is good and gone then turns on *him* or *you*. You two are important, visible people. We're the spooks. We're covert. We're cloak and dagger. We like it that way. You two are *not* coming."
"Then, I'm not going with you."
"Josh..."
"That's the deal."
"Forget it," she said and started to walk away.
Josh, however, grabbed her hand. "Don't."
She pulled her hand free of his grasp quickly. "Don't think you can negotiate with me. There is no posturing, no diplomatic talk. Thanks for your help this morning, but that's it." She continued, walking down the hall in her sneakers. She stood out from the rest of the CIA crowd in her casual clothes. Even Sydney and Vaughn were in suits that day.
And Josh was not to be outdone and he was not going to let her have the last word. "Crystal, wait..." He charged after her.
"How did you get in here anyway?"
"You think I don't know how to find my way onto the property of a government organization?"
"I think that if you know the way in, you should know the way out and I'd use it if I were you."
"I think you're going to have to get used to seeing me. Sam and I want to be there."
"It's a matter of national security. You can't come."
"I have a higher security clearance than you!"
"I have more seniority than you. You and Sam are *not* coming."
"What's it going to hurt if--"
"It could hurt *everything*! Everything, Josh. I've been through hell this week, trying to figure out a way to keep him alive and I'll be *damned* if I get to the end of this only to have a stray bullet catch Sam in the chest while we're all focused on blowing away Jordan and his men. A minute goes by... You're yelling over the sound of the gunfire for us to do something and we can't hear you because we're all focused on what we're doing. Five minutes... ten guys are still finishing off clips just to make sure the bastard's down for the count. Somebody's checkin' to see if he's actually dead while representatives from all branches of law enforcement-- and this is, if I do say so myself, an incredible feat of diplomacy, we're gonna have so many agencies working together on this--that you're still yelling at ten minutes and we can't hear you over the commotion. By the time anybody does, it's gonna be too late. We'll put pressure on the wound and I'll freak out but by the time we get paramedics out to Griffin, it'll be too late. Sam'll be gone. And I won't want to be here either."
"Crystal..."
"You're not coming. That's final."
"Crystal--"
"That's it! Your part in this is over, so's Sam's. I've got Jordan where I want him. I'm the one that got away... and I'm not going to let him do the same."
"Aren't you taking this a little too personally?"
"This is personal! He's after *me*!"
"Crystal--"
"I'm going to the rally site. You can come with me or not, but that's it. The end of the line."
"Then, this is the end."
~~~
Josh kept glancing over at Sam during the dinner fundraiser. At some point, they were going to slip off, and he wanted to make sure he didn't miss the exact second when they could leave. Weiss and Jack were still Sam's wingmen, and as soon as they slipped off, they would, too.
Donna noted that her boss was on-edge. "Are you all right?"
"Uh-huh."
"Does this have anything to do with..." Donna drifted off.
"Nope."
"Then, something is wrong?"
"Nope."
"Josh..."
"Look, it's Christina Applegate!"
Donna turned, and Josh took that moment to slip into the crowd and migrate towards the door.
See? He could be all international-man-of-mystery, too.
Weiss and Jack were gone, and Sam was inching out of a conversation with donors and supporters. Josh clapped his hand on Sam's shoulder and flashed a smile at those he was talking to. "I hate to interrupt, but I need to borrow the candidate for a moment. If you'll excuse us?"
Sam made his apologies as well as the two exited the ballroom. "You really are good at that," he said as the two broke out into a run to get to the parking lot.
"Yeah, well... Just hope I can still get us in over there."
"Think they're gonna miss me at the party?"
"Nah. Why would they? Just 'cause it was thrown in your honor and people are throwing money at you..."
"Yeah, they're not really, but, thanks."
"Candidates talk and run all the time..."
~~~
The CIA operatives were suiting up. Crystal's dark hair was down and she was dressed in her blue jeans and sported a flack jacket. She checked the clip in her CIA-issued sidearm. "Give me a sound check, please, Sydney?" she asked, slipping an earpiece into her ear.
Sydney, dressed similarly and across the room, spoke softly into her microphone. When Crystal gave her a thumb's up, she stopped.
"Everyone set?" Jack asked, entering the room.
"Who's at the site now?" asked Crystal, crossing towards him.
"Everyone but the five of us," he said, indicating everyone in the room: Crystal, Sydney, Vaughn, Weiss and himself.
"Sound and video check has been done at Griffin?"
"Crystal, it's all set," Jack assured her.
"Our stakeout guys know that they're at the hotel and they're gonna come? Marshall's receivers worked?"
"We have confirmation that everything is a go."
She nodded slightly.
"We've got to get moving ourselves. Let's load up."
Crystal and Jack took off first, followed, at a slightly slower pace, by the other three.
"Is she going to make it?" Vaughn asked Sydney quietly.
Sydney nodded. "She'll be fine."
"She seems kinda tense, though," said Weiss.
"She's about to go up against a man who almost killed her. I don't think it's that uncommon that she'd be worried, but I don't think she's going to freeze or anything when we're out there. I think she wants him more than the rest of us do, but it's going to be fine."
"She won't jump the gun?" Vaughn asked.
Sydney stopped walking, prompting the other two to stop as well. "In all the 'legendary tales' you've heard about her... what do you think?"
When neither could answer, she continued on, leaving them in the corridor for a moment.
"Now you're in trouble with your girl," Weiss said. "Not a smart move."
"And you were helping me out?"
"I'm stayin' *out* of your quarrels."
"Thanks."
"Can't be worse than what Seaborn did to Josh Lyman this afternoon..."
"Oh?"
"Ripped him a new one."
"Ouch..."
"CIA women are not to be trifled with."
Vaughn exhaled. "Tell me about it."
~~~
Had Josh and Sam been running a little faster, they would've run right into the disembarking CIA troupe. As it were, they missed each other in the corridors by mere seconds. It was better that way. Josh had hoped to avoid another confrontation as had gone on earlier in that very same building.
"Marshall Flinkman, I presume?" Josh asked, holding out his right hand to the technical genius.
"Yeah, that's me."
"Josh Lyman, White House Deputy Chief of Staff. This is Sam Seaborn."
Marshall smiled. "Very nice to meet you both. Come in, come in," he said, ushering them into his cramped office. "Cleaned up a bit and everything since I heard you two were coming."
"We'll be able to watch everything from here?" asked Sam.
"Yep. The 'rally' isn't set to start till seven... but, uh, we've already got audio and visual." He turned on the television set he'd used to demonstrate his receivers earlier. "Live feed from Griffin Park."
Sam and Josh stood, watching for a moment, taking it all in. "Any way we can pull her from CIA and put her on your advance team?" Josh asked, shaking his head.
"Doubtful," Sam answered.
"Look at that crowd..."
"It's made up entirely of fuzz," Marshall said with a nod.
Josh and Sam exchanged glances before looking up at him.
"Y'know... police," said Marshall, noting their confusion. "Cops... Law enforcement officers..."
"Still. If we could just get Sam's rallies to *look* like that one. They've got the projection screens for people in case they can't see... It looks like a professional political operative set it up. She called me, sure, but... I was expecting fifty people, a truck bed, and six balloons, not... There's a band!"
"LAPD," Marshall said with a nod. "They play really great; there's talk of a record deal..."
Both Sam and Josh realized it was going to be a long, long hour.
Especially when Josh's cell phone began to ring. Pulling it out of his pocket, he looked at the caller ID. "Ooh."
"Who is it?" asked Sam.
"Toby."
"He probably wants to know where we are."
Josh nodded. "Too bad he's not going to," he said, turning his phone off before replacing it in his pocket.
~~~
Crystal was behind the wheel of the decked out SUV. It had a sticker on the bumper, proclaiming "Sam's the Man for Congress." Large magnetic signs hung on the front doors with the more professional looking "Seaborn for Congress" logo.
Sydney sat beside her, the only other passenger in the SUV since they dropped the guys off to check in with team and squad leaders.
"Nervous?"
Crystal shook her head, pulling the SUV onto the grass to drive it near the stage. "Pretty calm actually. I want this over with."
"I, um... I've wanted to ask you something since this whole thing started... and since we have a little time to kill..."
"What's up?" she asked, parking the car behind the stage and in the direction for a hasty escape if necessary.
"When you first joined the CIA... did you ever meet a man named Arvin Sloane?"
Crystal looked at her and shook her head. "I've only seen the man in pictures."
"What about my father?"
She nodded. "Yeah, 'couple times I ran into him," she said, unbuckling her seatbelt.
"What happened... before he left?"
"I don't know. I was seventeen, eighteen and wrapped up with my own identity problems to notice a guy I'd run into a few times and what was up with his life, his career."
Sydney nodded slowly.
"I'm sorry. I know how weird it gets, with family, how you want, and deserve, to know. I wish I could help."
"It's all right."
"Too bad we don't all have time machines," Crystal said with a heavy sigh. "I'd go back and do so many things differently." She opened her door and stepped out. Making sure her earpiece was in, she activated her microphone. "Ground control, I need a twenty on the six-pack."
A few minutes later, she heard the answer in her ear. "ETA to Griffin... Fifteen."
Crystal climbed up on the stage and headed to the microphone at the center of it. "Showtime, people. We've got one shot at this, one shot..." She glanced around at the faces in the crowd before her. "We can do this. Agent Weiss, I believe you're our warm up act..."
Weiss rushed up to the stage, charging up the stairs. He shook hands with Crystal, watching as she jumped off the stage before starting in on what little he'd picked up about Congressional campaigns in the week he'd been protecting Sam.
Stay tuned...
Lines from the next installment:
"Holy shit..." Josh muttered. "What the hell just happened?"
Marshall turned up the volume on the television set, trying to listen to the commotion.
Sam paled, watching the scene in disbelief.
Previously, on the West Wing/Alias: Crystal and Sydney put the first part of their 'ghost' plan into action at the first rally for Sam with the President. Weiss and Vaughn try to figure out whatever happened to Jordan while, on the road to the hotel for the White House staffers and the campaign headquarters, Donna realizes Crystal is not all she seems. Sydney might've hit pay dirt with a taxi company to discover Jordan's whereabouts while Sam gets into a knockdown, drag-out with his campaign manager, and Weiss is left to try and pick up the pieces.
Crystal never did show up to Josh's Friday night. She wound up working most of the night. Thanks to the All American Taxi Corporation and one of their drivers, they had the location of Jordan and his men. And there was a stakeout team across the hall, in the building across the street, and in cars near all the exits.
Marshall was working on a bug that, when planted near the television sets in all the rooms Jordan had in the hotel, could control the feed remotely.
Crystal spent part of the morning talking with Josh and Toby about campaign rallies and how to stage one before designing the layout of the rally the CIA was going to put on.
Vaughn was in charge of acquisitions and appropriations. He managed to secure a stage, much like the one the Seaborn for Congress campaign used the night before.
Sydney, armed with information about when the hotel maid staff got to work, was dressed in the bland gray uniform and a dark wig. She was going to plant Marshall's devices.
Will was able to get in on the act as well. Using his reporting skills, he wrote up several stories about the Seaborn campaign, using details Crystal gave him about the location of the next big event, complete with remarks by President Bartlet.
It was going to be a huge deal, and they had less than twenty-four hours to pull it off. Crystal learned, through her many phone calls to Josh, that events like the one they were planning, usually had weeks of advance time.
"We have until seven o'clock, what else can you give me?" she asked. Okay, she was pushing him for information. She needed to know! "Bands, crowds, balloons... food?"
"Just how credible are you trying to make this? I mean... why can't you take him down right now?"
"We want Jordan and his men where we want them, where they can't get away. In that hotel... it's too public. They like too much blood. They could take out twenty people while we try to take them down. If we get them out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trained CIA strike teams? His ass is going to be *mine*."
"I didn't know you were that kinda girl."
She ignored his comment. "If he suspects that this is a hoax, he's not coming. He's not going to risk it."
"What about your alter-ego the ghost?"
"We're gonna feed him the footage we took last night through the TV when we're ready to."
"Which will be...?"
"Shortly, but you're ignoring my questions! What else is there? What else do I need to get?"
"Are you going to be able to get enough agents? Enough people to pull this off?"
"We can get other branches of law enforcement if we have to. As I understand it, Conrad's makin' a plea with the FBI since they're officially 'in charge' of this little operation, but, again, that's not helping me."
"People. Stage. Entertainment. Balloons. Yes, food."
"What else?"
"Media."
"We'll bring our own."
"All these people are going to have to have cars. Regular cars. Nice cars. Fancy cars. Beat up clunkers. It's not going to hurt to have a couple black SVUs lined up to look like the motorcade, as well as getting one or two of the campaign cars from Sam with all the stickers and magnets and streamers and whatever else they did to bastardize those poor cars."
"That it?"
"For now. I'll call you back if I can think of anything else."
"Thank you," she said hanging up. "Anybody got word from the DCI yet?" she asked, looking at the assembled CIA agents at desks and tables, at phones and computers. When she received no direct response, she sighed. Still nothing.
~~~
Sydney, hunched over, knocked on the door to Jordan's room. Her mind flashed briefly on the pictures from the hotel in Borneo. She was going up against the man himself, if only to vacuum, make the bed, change the towels, and plant the bug. All of which were tasks she wasn't looking forward to.
A gruff, mottled accent spoke through the door: "Who is it?"
"Maid," she answered in an accent that wasn't her own.
She heard him grumble and open the door, soon face-to-face with the head assassin for a rough-and-ready terrorist organization.
"I'm going to my friend's room. Touch... nothing..."
She nodded, and watched as he walked by her. She pushed the cart inside and immediately planted the device on the cable box before emptying the trash, making the bed, and fixing the towels. She was tempted to poke through the drawers of the bureau, to see what kind of weaponry he had, maybe through the closet, his luggage. She refrained from all of this, having a dread fear of the location being secured with some sort of trap and visualizing rather unpleasant outcomes.
And she had five more rooms to go.
~~~
"You need campaign and rally signs?" Sam asked, looking at Weiss with a rather perplexed expression on his face.
"Yeah."
"What for?"
"We're flushing Jordan out tonight and we need those things to make it look real."
"Is this going to come back and bite me in the ass? Because, turns out, the assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff had lunch with a Communist. The President held up kids wanting to go home from Disney and I, apparently, still look like a White House errand boy."
"If this goes bad, somebody's gettin' killed. It'll probably steal the headlines away from those other things. Can we have the signs?"
"Take what you need. But... why do you need the campaign and rally signs?"
"We're staging our own rally. Don't worry; it's outside of town, away from populated areas... the picnic area at Griffin Park."
"What time?"
"Seven."
"I want to be there."
"That's a very bad idea."
"How are you going to pull off the rally without the candidate?"
"Well, since it's not *really* a campaign rally, we figure just fine."
"I want to be there."
"Sam..."
"Is Crys going to be there?"
"Yeah."
"Then, the candidate's making an appearance."
"You really shouldn't..."
"I'm coming."
"What about your own campaign stops tonight?"
"There isn't anything, not at seven."
"Sam..."
"I'll see you at Griffin Park."
Weiss sighed heavily and retrieved the signs. He'd just tell Crystal and he'd let her deal with her cousin. He was temporary roommate and bodyguard. He was no miracle worker.
~~~
Sydney watched as Marshall toted a television set into his office and set it down on a table by her. "What's this?" she asked.
"Your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill television set. Got your cable, got your remote." He handed her the remote control. "So, you're cruising along the channels. Oh, look, Night Court... And then you're watching and a commercial comes on. Sometimes, y'know, at night, they might have the first two seconds of one commercial, followed by the start of something like, uh, buy this CD 'cause it's got great music on it. Then, by the time they're done telling you the eight-hundred number and you're dialing it, you get the last two seconds of a different commercial: 'don't be fooled by imposters, our deal's the best: buy one get one free' or something like that. So, by then, you've forgotten what the number was and you're never going to get that CD that the TV wanted you to buy. If they'd only done the cut-in seamlessly... which is exactly what we're going to do." Marshall turned on the television set and watched the footage for a moment, before punching in some keys on his computer. "You'd have your CD."
Right as one commercial faded to go to the next, Sydney was suddenly on TV, holding the remote control and looking out. "Marshall..."
"Don't worry, it's only on this TV. The device for this one has a different frequency than the six at the hotel. But, look! It's the Sydney Bristow Show."
"And we can send thirty to sixty-second ads?"
Marshall nodded. "Anything we want. When it comes to news time, we may have to take over, so to speak, and do it all."
"Hopefully we won't have to," she said softly. "I think the ads are almost ready. You can start running them within the half hour?"
"I can run them anytime."
"Great."
"'This is the Sydney Bristow Show, saying goodnight,'" Marshall said, putting on an "announcer" voice, as the TV automatically returned to its regularly scheduled programming.
Sydney smiled, and slipped out of his office.
~~~
By three in the afternoon, Crystal was sitting at a desk with her head down and her eyes closed, at least for a moment. She hadn't slept, not since her nap on Air Force One in Josh's arms and she could use another. She'd been to the FBI headquarters to brief agents. She'd been to the local police's training rooms and briefed cops. She'd orchestrated a campaign rally, a massive one, in roughly twelve hours and she was paying the price for it.
"Whoever is standing behind me is going to get a biiiig surprise if they don't acknowledge the fact that yes, whoever it is, you are there."
"Do you ever sleep when I'm not around?" Josh asked, placing a warm hand on her shoulder.
She couldn't stop a soft, contented sigh at his touch. "You put me to sleep right now, you die. I have to keep going. I have to make it through tonight."
"Powernap?"
"Actually, no... Come out to the site with me, tell me what you think," she said, forcing herself to stand up. She was no longer in her clothes from the day before. She was in a pair of blue jeans and a snug- fitting retro tee shirt. Without the dark circles under her eyes and the exhausted look in them, she could've easily passed for someone younger.
"On one condition."
"What's that?" she asked, sliding her glasses on.
"You let Sam and I come tonight."
"Are you two out of your *minds*?" she asked, looking at him as though he'd grown an extra head.
"We want to come."
"This man is a butcher, you can't possibly *want* to come. He's going to want to kill *Sam*. Heaven forbid something go *wrong* and he decides he's gonna make sure the ghost--that's me, by the way--is good and gone then turns on *him* or *you*. You two are important, visible people. We're the spooks. We're covert. We're cloak and dagger. We like it that way. You two are *not* coming."
"Then, I'm not going with you."
"Josh..."
"That's the deal."
"Forget it," she said and started to walk away.
Josh, however, grabbed her hand. "Don't."
She pulled her hand free of his grasp quickly. "Don't think you can negotiate with me. There is no posturing, no diplomatic talk. Thanks for your help this morning, but that's it." She continued, walking down the hall in her sneakers. She stood out from the rest of the CIA crowd in her casual clothes. Even Sydney and Vaughn were in suits that day.
And Josh was not to be outdone and he was not going to let her have the last word. "Crystal, wait..." He charged after her.
"How did you get in here anyway?"
"You think I don't know how to find my way onto the property of a government organization?"
"I think that if you know the way in, you should know the way out and I'd use it if I were you."
"I think you're going to have to get used to seeing me. Sam and I want to be there."
"It's a matter of national security. You can't come."
"I have a higher security clearance than you!"
"I have more seniority than you. You and Sam are *not* coming."
"What's it going to hurt if--"
"It could hurt *everything*! Everything, Josh. I've been through hell this week, trying to figure out a way to keep him alive and I'll be *damned* if I get to the end of this only to have a stray bullet catch Sam in the chest while we're all focused on blowing away Jordan and his men. A minute goes by... You're yelling over the sound of the gunfire for us to do something and we can't hear you because we're all focused on what we're doing. Five minutes... ten guys are still finishing off clips just to make sure the bastard's down for the count. Somebody's checkin' to see if he's actually dead while representatives from all branches of law enforcement-- and this is, if I do say so myself, an incredible feat of diplomacy, we're gonna have so many agencies working together on this--that you're still yelling at ten minutes and we can't hear you over the commotion. By the time anybody does, it's gonna be too late. We'll put pressure on the wound and I'll freak out but by the time we get paramedics out to Griffin, it'll be too late. Sam'll be gone. And I won't want to be here either."
"Crystal..."
"You're not coming. That's final."
"Crystal--"
"That's it! Your part in this is over, so's Sam's. I've got Jordan where I want him. I'm the one that got away... and I'm not going to let him do the same."
"Aren't you taking this a little too personally?"
"This is personal! He's after *me*!"
"Crystal--"
"I'm going to the rally site. You can come with me or not, but that's it. The end of the line."
"Then, this is the end."
~~~
Josh kept glancing over at Sam during the dinner fundraiser. At some point, they were going to slip off, and he wanted to make sure he didn't miss the exact second when they could leave. Weiss and Jack were still Sam's wingmen, and as soon as they slipped off, they would, too.
Donna noted that her boss was on-edge. "Are you all right?"
"Uh-huh."
"Does this have anything to do with..." Donna drifted off.
"Nope."
"Then, something is wrong?"
"Nope."
"Josh..."
"Look, it's Christina Applegate!"
Donna turned, and Josh took that moment to slip into the crowd and migrate towards the door.
See? He could be all international-man-of-mystery, too.
Weiss and Jack were gone, and Sam was inching out of a conversation with donors and supporters. Josh clapped his hand on Sam's shoulder and flashed a smile at those he was talking to. "I hate to interrupt, but I need to borrow the candidate for a moment. If you'll excuse us?"
Sam made his apologies as well as the two exited the ballroom. "You really are good at that," he said as the two broke out into a run to get to the parking lot.
"Yeah, well... Just hope I can still get us in over there."
"Think they're gonna miss me at the party?"
"Nah. Why would they? Just 'cause it was thrown in your honor and people are throwing money at you..."
"Yeah, they're not really, but, thanks."
"Candidates talk and run all the time..."
~~~
The CIA operatives were suiting up. Crystal's dark hair was down and she was dressed in her blue jeans and sported a flack jacket. She checked the clip in her CIA-issued sidearm. "Give me a sound check, please, Sydney?" she asked, slipping an earpiece into her ear.
Sydney, dressed similarly and across the room, spoke softly into her microphone. When Crystal gave her a thumb's up, she stopped.
"Everyone set?" Jack asked, entering the room.
"Who's at the site now?" asked Crystal, crossing towards him.
"Everyone but the five of us," he said, indicating everyone in the room: Crystal, Sydney, Vaughn, Weiss and himself.
"Sound and video check has been done at Griffin?"
"Crystal, it's all set," Jack assured her.
"Our stakeout guys know that they're at the hotel and they're gonna come? Marshall's receivers worked?"
"We have confirmation that everything is a go."
She nodded slightly.
"We've got to get moving ourselves. Let's load up."
Crystal and Jack took off first, followed, at a slightly slower pace, by the other three.
"Is she going to make it?" Vaughn asked Sydney quietly.
Sydney nodded. "She'll be fine."
"She seems kinda tense, though," said Weiss.
"She's about to go up against a man who almost killed her. I don't think it's that uncommon that she'd be worried, but I don't think she's going to freeze or anything when we're out there. I think she wants him more than the rest of us do, but it's going to be fine."
"She won't jump the gun?" Vaughn asked.
Sydney stopped walking, prompting the other two to stop as well. "In all the 'legendary tales' you've heard about her... what do you think?"
When neither could answer, she continued on, leaving them in the corridor for a moment.
"Now you're in trouble with your girl," Weiss said. "Not a smart move."
"And you were helping me out?"
"I'm stayin' *out* of your quarrels."
"Thanks."
"Can't be worse than what Seaborn did to Josh Lyman this afternoon..."
"Oh?"
"Ripped him a new one."
"Ouch..."
"CIA women are not to be trifled with."
Vaughn exhaled. "Tell me about it."
~~~
Had Josh and Sam been running a little faster, they would've run right into the disembarking CIA troupe. As it were, they missed each other in the corridors by mere seconds. It was better that way. Josh had hoped to avoid another confrontation as had gone on earlier in that very same building.
"Marshall Flinkman, I presume?" Josh asked, holding out his right hand to the technical genius.
"Yeah, that's me."
"Josh Lyman, White House Deputy Chief of Staff. This is Sam Seaborn."
Marshall smiled. "Very nice to meet you both. Come in, come in," he said, ushering them into his cramped office. "Cleaned up a bit and everything since I heard you two were coming."
"We'll be able to watch everything from here?" asked Sam.
"Yep. The 'rally' isn't set to start till seven... but, uh, we've already got audio and visual." He turned on the television set he'd used to demonstrate his receivers earlier. "Live feed from Griffin Park."
Sam and Josh stood, watching for a moment, taking it all in. "Any way we can pull her from CIA and put her on your advance team?" Josh asked, shaking his head.
"Doubtful," Sam answered.
"Look at that crowd..."
"It's made up entirely of fuzz," Marshall said with a nod.
Josh and Sam exchanged glances before looking up at him.
"Y'know... police," said Marshall, noting their confusion. "Cops... Law enforcement officers..."
"Still. If we could just get Sam's rallies to *look* like that one. They've got the projection screens for people in case they can't see... It looks like a professional political operative set it up. She called me, sure, but... I was expecting fifty people, a truck bed, and six balloons, not... There's a band!"
"LAPD," Marshall said with a nod. "They play really great; there's talk of a record deal..."
Both Sam and Josh realized it was going to be a long, long hour.
Especially when Josh's cell phone began to ring. Pulling it out of his pocket, he looked at the caller ID. "Ooh."
"Who is it?" asked Sam.
"Toby."
"He probably wants to know where we are."
Josh nodded. "Too bad he's not going to," he said, turning his phone off before replacing it in his pocket.
~~~
Crystal was behind the wheel of the decked out SUV. It had a sticker on the bumper, proclaiming "Sam's the Man for Congress." Large magnetic signs hung on the front doors with the more professional looking "Seaborn for Congress" logo.
Sydney sat beside her, the only other passenger in the SUV since they dropped the guys off to check in with team and squad leaders.
"Nervous?"
Crystal shook her head, pulling the SUV onto the grass to drive it near the stage. "Pretty calm actually. I want this over with."
"I, um... I've wanted to ask you something since this whole thing started... and since we have a little time to kill..."
"What's up?" she asked, parking the car behind the stage and in the direction for a hasty escape if necessary.
"When you first joined the CIA... did you ever meet a man named Arvin Sloane?"
Crystal looked at her and shook her head. "I've only seen the man in pictures."
"What about my father?"
She nodded. "Yeah, 'couple times I ran into him," she said, unbuckling her seatbelt.
"What happened... before he left?"
"I don't know. I was seventeen, eighteen and wrapped up with my own identity problems to notice a guy I'd run into a few times and what was up with his life, his career."
Sydney nodded slowly.
"I'm sorry. I know how weird it gets, with family, how you want, and deserve, to know. I wish I could help."
"It's all right."
"Too bad we don't all have time machines," Crystal said with a heavy sigh. "I'd go back and do so many things differently." She opened her door and stepped out. Making sure her earpiece was in, she activated her microphone. "Ground control, I need a twenty on the six-pack."
A few minutes later, she heard the answer in her ear. "ETA to Griffin... Fifteen."
Crystal climbed up on the stage and headed to the microphone at the center of it. "Showtime, people. We've got one shot at this, one shot..." She glanced around at the faces in the crowd before her. "We can do this. Agent Weiss, I believe you're our warm up act..."
Weiss rushed up to the stage, charging up the stairs. He shook hands with Crystal, watching as she jumped off the stage before starting in on what little he'd picked up about Congressional campaigns in the week he'd been protecting Sam.
Stay tuned...
Lines from the next installment:
"Holy shit..." Josh muttered. "What the hell just happened?"
Marshall turned up the volume on the television set, trying to listen to the commotion.
Sam paled, watching the scene in disbelief.