Summary: Nadia, being in the spy business with Argentina, could very well have interacted with the CIA before we see her in Season 3, without anyone knowing she was the Passenger yet. This fic is about Weiss meeting her briefly before the series "Alias" begins, and about meeting her once again after the CIA recovers her. The first "meeting" (part 1)ended up being a lot longer than I meant it to be—all told, about 6 chapters.


PART I: Takes place sometime before "Truth Be Told"—the first (pilot) episode. For discrepancies in timelines, etc, please read the notes at the bottom of this chapter.

Chapter 1

Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she chose to walk into his. And out of all the movies in all the world—many of which involved Mothra and Bruce Campbell, and so were much better—Rachel Weiss had always had to watch Casablanca. Over, and over, and over. The problem was, neither his sister's movies nor agent training really covered what to do with a woman in a tight, skin-colored dress that looked this incredibly fine.

Trying to look nonchalant, Weiss murmured into his ring, "Retriever to base-ops. All clear." He pretended like he'd brought his hand up to adjust his tie—and then caught his reflection in the mirror behind the glasses and Cachaca bottles, and realize his tie really was crooked. He peered a little more closely at what he could see of himself beside the batidas and over the caipirinha. Did they really let him go out in public like this?

Noticing that that the woman in the skin-colored dress was watching his fingers fumble with his shirt in the mirror, Weiss dropped his hands and plastered on an easy smile. The blonde curled her upper lip in snobbish disdain and focussed her attention elsewhere—i.e., on the spicy looking Italian at the other end of the bar: a genuine Costello with white teeth, toned chest—probably mean spaghetti-making skills—and a fashion sense to speak of.

Hey, Weiss was thinking in his defense. I didn't have a choice. They'd made him wear the fluorescent leopard skin leisure suit. It's not like he usually went out in public with eyeliner on. At least, not until his first big field mission.

And this was it. He'd done his share of paper pushing, desk-work, and the greenie ops they give to gum shoes. He'd done a lot of base ops, too. Usually, he was the van guy. Sutton and Huang were almost always the primary agents on point in the ops Weiss worked; he and Mike usually acted as their junior handlers. Their case workers sat on cushy chairs and worried about people like Jack Bristow.

Weiss wasn't after a higher position. He knew Mike wanted to be the agent his father had been, and Weiss didn't grudge him that. After all the times he and Mike had laughed their asses off watching Sutton and Huang—wearing red wigs and speaking with thick French accents—kick butt in the surveillance videos, there was no telling how awesome it would be to sit in the van and watch Mike make a fool of himself in a silly costume.

But today Vaughn was on Dodge Ram ops—as he and Mike liked to call it—and Weiss was on point with Sutton and Huang. It was the first time Weiss had had to put on a different identity and take an alias in a real life or death situation, and he was determined to prove that he could do it, too.

He could, if only his hands weren't sweating so much. The glass of his drink was cool on his skin, but the condensation from the rum was making the thing slippery and now his hands were wetter than ever. Add to that the fact that his tie was crooked; he was in a fluorescent leisure suit, and he had this big dumbo smile practically sewn into his face. That, and the girl next to him kept looking at him like she could tell the effect she was having on him and was having fun at his expense.

She was medium height, slim and delicately boned, but with a full figure and, he just had to admit it, very nice . . . hips. There were these lips, too—what was he thinking? All girls had lips—but her lips looked made to smile, not a sexy smile but not a terribly happy one, either. It was a sorta sad smile when no one was looking, and she had sorta sad eyes, and droopy, feathery lashes, and she had a strong vein in her forehead and a freckle on her left ear and—okay. Not looking at the blonde. Not even sorta looking at the blonde. Not on his first big mission. No sir, not him.

Instead he was scoping out the perimeter. The man on his left: not a threat, the chick in the red dress near the door checked out; Costello was almost certainly really Italian and the dude in the corner hadn't moved in five minutes. Weiss did a double take through the shifting crowd. Mr. Corner also had a hand in his pocket and had very shifty glasses. Weiss was keeping an eye on him.

Weiss knew where Sutton and Huang were without looking. Huang—in a green dress that both Weiss and Vaughn had admitted to each other was a distraction in itself—was creating the distraction in order for Sutton to infiltrate the compound to get the device. That is, if their intel panned out and the Rimbaldi device—whatever that was—was here in the first place. Weiss was in on the op to keep a look out and because he spoke Spanish better than the others. Despite the crowd, the smoky bar area and the hole-in-the wall setting, this was one of the sweetest clubs in South America, and they weren't about to get in to it if they did anything half assed.

They weren't about to get out of it with the device, either, if one of them stood there like a doofus and let the really really sexy blonde standing next to him intimidate him. She was inserting a cigarette into the end of a holder and lighting up. Good. Girls who smoked weren't hot. Or at least, they hadn't been before he saw this one.

Catching him eyeing her again, the woman in the—really very well-fitting—dress tossed her hair in his face. Good. He liked brunettes better. Probably dyed anyway, Weiss thought bitterly. Probably thought he was trying to pick her up.

Oh, he thought, comprehension dawning. Crap.

The nervousness turned into alarm, and that in turn, increased the sweat. He wasn't the kind of guy who picked up the first curvy woman he set his eyes on. As much as he had been—well, yeah, he admitted—checking her out, the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Till now.

Well, why not? a sudden, unexpected part of him was thinking. He was a spy. Girls found that attractive, he'd heard. He could order a martini—shaken, not stirred—right now, slip an arm around her waist and say . . . what would he say? Probably, "I think you're really, really pretty," because that's what always happened, with him. The first thing he'd ever spoken to April First was to blurt exactly that: "I think you're really, really pretty." It was a disease, by now. But hey, he'd still ended up making out with her in his Gremlin in the parking lot. He wasn't a total delinquent. He'd watched his Sean Connery movies and knew a thing or two, despite the fact that Mike got all the girls.

But as cool as all the Bond material he had up his sleeve was, it wasn't Weiss. First of all, he wasn't going to compromise the mission. While plenty of field agents managed to complete their assignments and end up in bed with someone new the same night, Weiss wasn't about to risk it. More importantly, he wasn't interested in picking up a girl at a bar in Bogota, nor was he interested in all that spy life people see in movies.

Neither was Mike. He'd asked Vaughn once why he wanted to be in the CIA; "Because of my father," Mike had instantly replied, expression turning over.

"Me, I'm in it for the chicks," Weiss had explained. He'd said it because Mike's eyes were sad, a joke was called for, and jokes were Weiss's job, but that hadn't been at all why he'd joined the CIA.

However, since becoming an agent, Weiss had realized that his tongue-in-cheek comment might have some validity for guys like him and Vaughn, even if he hadn't been serious. It wasn't the Bond chicks, though, that changed his mind; 007 could keep his one-night stands with evil babe terrorists and Ursula Andress's in distress. It was the girls—the women—who worked for the CIA, or were associated with it, who began to make him think being in it for the female factor wasn't the shallowest thing a guy could do.

A woman like Huang—fifteen years his senior; he knew that; he wasn't attracted to her, not really; she was just an example—knew a lot of martial arts and could defend herself, yeah. She also was really really toned. Not that he'd noticed. But she was also really really smart, and willing to risk everything for her country, and able to withstand the worst ordeals and not let it ruin how friendly she was, how feminine and how giving.

Okay, so maybe he'd looked at Huang once or twice in a way he shouldn't—she wasn't only fifteen years older; she was married—but more importantly, he respected her, and the women in the Agency similar to her. He respected them a lot. If he ever ended up with anyone through this business, Weiss had eventually concluded, it'd be with someone like Huang. Someone who, when you saw them at the office or got invited into her home, acted more real than most non-spy "normal" people out there. So Miss Blonde In The Eve Outfit? She could go take a hike.

Weiss grinned and swigged down his rum. The blonde made a disgusted look and picked up her drink, thoroughly annoyed with him by now. Weiss's smile widened. She definitely thought he was trying to pick her up, and was trying to get away from the creepy slimeball with the fluorescent leisure suit. He probably would too, if he'd been her. He didn't blame her.

She moved to push past him—

And then everything happened in slow motion. He moved aside so she didn't have to brush him as she went by—it was crowded in here—and the laser sight that had been trained on his back—invisible to him and the blonde—was suddenly trained between the breasts of that fabulous dress, because she was filling the spot Weiss had just vacated—

And Weiss was pulling her down, because you didn't sight someone in a place this packed until you were damn near ready to shoot—so it was too late for the gunner to re-aim; his finger was already squeezing the trigger when the target moved and the girl got in the shooter's way—and the trigger was squeezing, squeezing—and Weiss—and this blonde who actually really didn't look anything like Ingrid Bergman—were going down, down—down—

The bullet grazed his shoulder, but just grazed. It's just a flesh wound! Weiss thought, and then wondered why he was thinking it. It's amazing, really, the Monty Python quotes that pop into your head when a sudden dire situation presents itself.

And this definitely qualified as a "situation." Bullets were flying and people were panicking, and Weiss didn't see Sutton or Huang. "Base-op? Retriever. Do you—" Oops. The blonde was moving under him. "—copy? Repeat, do you copy?"

He got up, half in a crouch, trying to make sure the woman was okay and also trying to take care of more important things, like getting the team's asses out of there. A quick scan of the room only revealed pandemonium. He remained crouching and pushed his way toward where he'd seen the shady looking guy in the corner. From where he was now, he couldn't see who was shooting, so even if the guy was gone, the corner would be a better vantage point. But the crowd was large and frantic and he couldn't see anything—

Come on Mike. He tapped the receiver in his ear. What the hell was going on? "Repeat. Base-op, this is Retriever, do you—" Crap. The ring looked broken; the talkie must've gotten damaged. Either that, or the Dodge Ram op had been made, as well. Which meant Vaughn might be dead. Which at the moment, really pissed Weiss off, because he'd known this was a risky business but he'd always just assumed that if they died they would go down together in a blaze of glory. The picture in his head had been very Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Holding in something very like a growl, Weiss made his way through the crowd into the corner, and turned to look around right into the barrel of a gun.

His first thought was: where did she hide a gun in a dress like that? His second thought was: hey. Where's my gun? Ooooh, crap.

She must have palmed it off him when he'd fallen on her—fallen on her to save her sorry ass from a shooter, he had to add, as if that was a very important thing to be thinking right now. How had he stood next to her for that long—long enough for his palms to get this sweaty—and not seen that she was an alias? He must have looked so green to her. Adjusting his tie? Yeah, right. Maybe if you were five and still believed in the tooth fairy.

His hands went up. "Look," he started in Spanish. "I'm no—"

"Quiete!" she snapped, and he quieted pretty darn fast. "Stay still."

She pushed the barrel to his temple, and he thought it was a pretty good time to stop feeling nervous and to close his eyes and think of nice, happy things. Watching movies with Rachel had always been fun. So had breaking into her Girlscout cookies. The gun was moving around to the back of his head, and the blonde was stepping behind him. Rachel. Think of your sister, Eric. He'd always hated her cat. He didn't like cats, period. He was more of a dog person. Alan slobbered all over the place and chewed on everything, but really, so did Vaughn . . .

Wow. He'd never been so hard pressed to think of something funny except when he was talking to a girl he had a major crush on. It's really hard to get the mood right when there's this woman standing behind you, moving the gun to your other temple so she can walk you forward and use you as a body shield.

Weiss opened his eyes. He still didn't see Sutton or Huang—he didn't allow himself to think it was maybe because they were dead—so why not just shoot him? Why did she need him as a hostage to protect herself? She had to be on the same side as whoever had opened fire . . . right?

Blinking, the crowd parted for a split-second and Weiss saw a face and a gun pointed at them. Another shot went off, but the crowd had closed and it missed them completely. Weiss tried not to think about where the shot hit. This was the Alliance. He'd recognized the face as belonging to a member of SD-3. There would definitely be others, and none of them cared about innocent civilians. And pretty soon, the woman behind him would realize that the only people in this room were members of her own team, and he would be toast. Weiss gulped. The crowd parted again—

—The guy aimed straight at Weiss—and the girl behind him pushed him out of the way and shot the SD-3 face. There was mortal body crumpling action, and the crowd closed again. Weiss, momentarily appalled at the blonde's shockingly quick change of alliances, blinked at her. Eyes wide, she turned back to him. Before she could aim at him he was into the crowd and rolling over toward the dead guy, grabbing his gun, and training it on her. But she was gone into the crowd, too, not bothering to wait for a face off.

Slowly, Weiss's brain started working it out. She'd seen the SD-3 agent and taken Weiss as hostage because she thought Weiss was SD-3 too. When she'd seen the guy with the gun point it straight at Weiss, she'd realized her mistake, and shot the threat, not the hostage. So she wasn't SD-3, which meant there was a third party involved, someone who wasn't Alliance or CIA—because the blonde definitely wasn't CIA. At least, he hoped not. They would've told him, right, if they'd decided to send another agent in?

Weiss shook his head. The priority was to find his people, get the hell out of here, and make the rendezvous point. The blonde . . . well, he'd saved her life; she'd saved his. In the end, he had the advantage, because he wasn't going to have to try to make it out of here in a skimpy dress on five inch platform heels.

To Be Continued . . .

Discrepancies, etc:

Nadia's age: I figure Nadia's age to be about 23 when she first appears Season 3, but I wrote this before I did the figuring. This fic begins 5 years before that appearance (before the year of S3, before Syd's two missing years, before S2 and S1), but Nadia in this fic is over twenty. As such, the Nadia in this fic is older than the Nadia in the show. My bad.

Huang and Sutton: From what I can gather, we really have no clear idea of what Weiss and Vaughn did before Syd walked in on the pilot episode. Huang and Sutton are two agents I created to be precursors to what Vaughn and Sydney become by the end of S2—the CIA's main field agents.

This chapter's inaccuracies and questions: This takes place in Columbia, but the drinks may be Brazilian. Don't know the most common covert communication device; this time it's an ear piece and a ring. Weiss mentions a dog 'Alan' in one epi but never mentions him again. Anything I don't know about the CIA I just make up. If you can correct or point out any technical or logistical errors, I'm always grateful and will try to use what you say to make this more believable. Other than that, it's fiction, and I claim creative license.