STARGATE SG-1: Operation Checkmate
Summary: When General O'Neill is incapacitated, Carter finds herself in over her head as the helpless puppet to a madman! ...
Season: 8
Pairing: Jack/Sam (suggested)
Spoilers: New Order, Lockdown
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in Stargate SG-1. Please don't sue me for this story!
Author's Note: OK, hopefully the plot will be a little more substantial from now on in. It was just that one bit that was a pain to do. So, R&R as always. See you on the other side! Thanx. Enjoy!
WARNING: Strong Language!
Operation Checkmate: Chapter 5 – Castling
Barrett stared at the screen in front of him. It couldn't be possible. There's no way she would do something like that. After all, she had been the one to always put trust first. There was no way she would so blithely betray him like that. There had to be something else going on.
He picked up the phone on his desk.
"This is Barrett," he said to the man on the other end. "I think we might have a problem... just give me a few days to check it out... no, no back-up needed, it shouldn't take too much to clear up... thank you sir, I will."
Replacing the receiver, he took another look at the screen in front of him before deleting the record from the system. It was the least he could do for her at this point. If it turned out there was something amiss, he would be able to retrieve it later. Right now, no-one was to know about it but him.
Sam was rudely awakened by the phone ringing beside her bed. Lazily, she turned on the light and glanced at the clock before she picked up the receiver.
"This had better be important, ass hole!" she said, her eyes still adjusting to the light and her suddenly conscious state of mind.
"Well, aren't we cheery first thing in the morning." Sam cringed at the sound of his familiar, patronising tone.
"It's 3:30. What do you want?" she snapped.
"Can't a guy call a beautiful woman in the middle of the night just to hear her voice?" he replied, his tone light and mockingly so. It made Sam's skin crawl.
"Sure he can," she said venomously. "If he's looking to do time!"
He laughed at her remark – setting her nerves on edge once more. She hated that sound.
"What do you want?" she asked again.
He was still laughing – much to her annoyance – but soon managed to control himself enough to answer her.
"Just thought I'd let you know I got everything. And, hey! I'm impressed! That wasn't a bad turn around on them either! I should have enlisted your help earlier."
Sam bit down the urge to hang up the phone for fear of what effect it might have on Jack. "Glad someone's happy about it," she said instead.
"Don't worry. You're doing great," he said in what was meant to be a reassuring tone, but was actually – as always – patronising.
But what he said gave Sam an idea.
"Can I ask you something?" she said calmly.
He was silent for a moment, as if debating whether he should let her continue or not.
"That depends on the question," he said carefully.
Sam smiled slightly; it was her turn to gain a little ground. She let him sweat a little; carefully considering how to proceed. Truth be told, there was two things she wanted to know from him. Maybe she could get them both in now. It was just a case of choosing words carefully.
"I'm guessing that The Bishop is your preferred pseudonym, yes?" she said lightly, thinking about the e-mail address he had supplied her with.
"Yes, it is actually." He sounded almost relieved as he spoke.
"Why," she said in all curiosity.
"That, as with everything else, will become apparent in time, my dear," he answered her.
"That wasn't the question, by the way," Sam continued, knowing fine well that he thought that she was finished. She enjoyed the small bit of power she was gaining over him. "How are you controlling the General's condition?" She knew it was still a long shot, asking like this, but she had to try!
There was a long pause on the other end of the line before it went completely dead.
"Damn it," Sam cursed under her breath. She put the phone down and flicked the light off once more. She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep now, but she tried.
The next day, Barrett arrived at the source of the security breech. He knocked politely on her door and waited. All the time, he was hoping for some legitimate reason for her to have hacked into the system.
Perhaps his superiors had asked her to randomly test the system again and hadn't told him about it. Or the SGC had ordered her to do it. Or any of a number of different variations he had come up with during his journey from Washington.
Sam's stomach hit the floor when she opened the door. It was just what she had expected – and dreaded.
"Agent Barrett," she said in surprise.
"Colonel Carter," he replied.
It was difficult to tell, at this point, who was more nervous. Barrett for having to raise the subject; or Sam for having to lie to him about it.
"What brings you here?" she asked, breaking the silence that had descended between them. She already knew the answer, but she had to stall him. There was no way she could let him come inside. 'The Bishop' had the place riddled with bugs and goodness knows what else. If he got even the slightest inkling that the NID were there, Jack would be dead in an instant. She had to keep him away!
"There was a security breech in the mainframe last night," Barrett informed her. His mouth suddenly dry as a bone. "It was traced back to here."
Sam leaned purposefully against the door frame.
"Really," she said hostily.
"I'm gonna have to take a look at your computer."
He made to move past her, but she obstructed his path.
"I can't let you do that, agent," she said harshly. "There are classified documents that not even you are permitted to see."
Barrett looked at her. He wasn't buying it. Not one bit.
"I'm sure you can direct me away from them." He tried once more to push past her.
"Barrett, please!" she said desperately. "I can't let you in here!"
"Do you realise how serious this is?!" he demanded. "Five highly sensitive files were stolen last night! Now, I'm assuming there's a perfectly reasonable answer for why the breech was traced to you, and I assure you. Colonel. I'm not leaving here until I find out what that is!"
They stared each other down for a moment. Finally, Sam gave in. She glanced reluctantly into her house. There was no way she could do this here. She stepped outside completely and closed the door behind her.
"You're right," she said in a hushed, conspiring sort of tone. The sort of tone that Barrett only ever heard from his most secret contacts. "There is a perfectly reasonable answer. But it's not something I can discuss here." She hoped this would help get through to him.
Barrett viewed her with suspicion for a moment. She was pleading to him with her eyes. It was a look he had never seen in her before. And one he never expected to see either. Something told him she deserved the benefit of the doubt.
"OK," he said eventually, still with a great deal of reluctance and suspicion in his voice. "Meet me at the diner out on Route forty-two. You know the one?"
Sam nodded. "By the five-and-dine, yeah. What time?"
"When are you free?" he said coldly.
Sam winced at his tone. It was one that reminded her of her father when she got on his bad side.
"Give me an hour," she replied.
Barrett nodded and left.
Sam breathed a heavy sigh of relief. But it was short lived. From inside her house, she heard the phone ringing. She hurried inside.
"Who was that?" he asked before she was able to say anything.
"No-one," Sam replied.
He sighed in annoyance on the other end of the line. "You're a terrible liar, my girl. What do the NID want with you? You haven't blown the whistle, have you? You know what'll happen if you have!"
"NO!" she said quickly. "He came to me! They traced me when I stole those files for you. But I got rid of him. He doesn't know anything, I swear!"
She waited with baited breath as he considered her explanation. She had never known him to be so quiet on the line. And, frankly, it was unnerving.
"OK," he said after an eternity. Sam breathed again in relief. "You should be more carefully, my love. Stunts like that'll only serve to get our boy Jack killed."
Sam's skin crawled with every syllable he uttered, but he had her over a barrel at the moment. She still had to play along.
"I'm sorry. I will be," she replied, just as the line went dead.
Sam sat down in the nearest chair and breathed heavily. It was a fine line she was walking at the moment. Much finer than she cared to imagine. She looked at her watch. She still had most of the hour before she was due to meet Barrett. She just hoped 'he' wasn't able to follow her there.
"Would you like another re-fill, sir?" the waitress asked politely.
"Thank you," Barrett replied, holding out his mug to her. He glanced at his watch. He was fifteen minutes early and already three cups of coffee down. This was never a good sign for his nerves.
As he was half way though the forth, she came in.
Sam took a moment to glance around the diner before she spotted Barrett in one of the booths at the back.
'Gee! That doesn't look suspicious in any way!' she thought sarcastically as she took in the clichéd location for their secret meeting.
Silently, she made her way to him.
"You're early," she said sitting down opposite him.
Barrett looked up at her, eyes cold and unsympathetic. He glanced poignantly at his watch. "So are you," he said harshly.
It was all an act. They both knew that. But neither one was willing to be the first to show that, in actuality, they were nervous about the implications of their meeting. Sam more so than Barrett, as she actually knew fully what could happen if they were found out.
"Coffee, ma'am?" the waitress asked, still wielding her large pot of steaming hot black liquid.
"No thanks," Sam said politely.
The waitress soon left. Sam followed her with her gaze for a second. Anything to avoid looking at Barrett. That would mean getting started on business. Unfortunately for her, he had other plans.
"Care to tell me what's going on now?" His tone was still cold and sharp.
Sam slowly brought her gaze back to his. She paused for a moment. Unsure of where to start. Hesitant, even. For all the level headedness she was displaying, she couldn't shake the thought that as soon as she opened her mouth to say anything to him, Jack would suddenly flat line and it would all be on her head.
"Well?" Barrett prompted, his eyebrows raised, almost to his hair line.
Sam took a sharp intake of breath. "I assume you've heard about General O'Neill's condition?" she said in one breath.
Barrett nodded, failing to see what he had to do with anything at the moment.
"What you don't know," she continued. "Is that what happened to him was no accident. In fact, according to the base medical records, he was in perfect health."
"Oh, so you steel those as well as our files, then?" Barrett interrupted before he knew what he was saying.
Sam recoiled at his outburst. "You bastard!" she said maliciously. "You have no idea what is happening here! How dare you make assumptions about this!"
"Well, what am I supposed to think, Colonel? Security breeches like last night aren't exactly common occurrence!" he retorted.
"None of this is a 'common occurrence'. Agent," Sam spat. She let her statement settle for a moment before she carried on. "As I was saying, it wasn't an accident. Not long after General O'Neill's attack, I was contacted by a man who calls himself The Bishop. You heard of him at all?"
Barrett shook his head.
"Well, whoever he is, he caused the General's heart attack and resulting coma and can kill him at the flick of a switch unless I co-operate with him."
Barrett looked unconvinced. "He's controlling his condition? How?"
"I don't know. He won't tell me."
"Could that possibly be because he's bluffing?"
It was Sam's turn to shake her head. "I've seen what he can do," she said. She explained the incident with her toaster and what had happened to Mrs Wilson, across the street, and even the call she had received today only seconds after he had left. As she continued her story, Barrett became more and more drawn in. She could literally track the change in his attitude as the various stages of doubt, confusion, scepticism, realisation and belief played across his face. It was quite surreal to watch, especially since someone in his line of work was generally trained to hide such a change in opinion.
"So what's he getting you to do?" he asked, his cold tone now replaced with caution and concern.
"So far, not much. Just steel the NID files I swiped last night and some personnel files from the Pentagon."
Barrett's eyebrows shot up yet again. "Well, well. You have been busy!"
"What else could I do?!" Sam said, a little louder than she intended to. "I told you, he said no authorities. I know what he's capable of! I saw it myself! There was nothing I could do!"
"Then why are you telling me now?"
Sam closed her eyes for a second, to regain a little of her lost composure.
"Would you have left me alone if I hadn't?" she asked slowly.
"No," Barrett replied simply. "I'd've gone and come back with a warrant to search your house until I found what I was looking for."
"Exactly. I couldn't allow that. Somehow, The Bishop would have interpreted your intrusion as an attempt on my part to involve the NID in what was going on. Then he would have killed the General. Or, you would have taken the computer. Found what you wanted. Interrogated me about the stolen files, forcing me to blow the whistle, and once again, the General ends up dead."
Barrett looked up at her. Her face, like her tone, was absolutely set in stone. Not a muscle twitched in her tensed jaw. It was clear that she had had enough of her no-win situation.
The only feature that belied her hardened expression was her eyes. They were a wash with fear, pain, revulsion and a few more negative emotions that he could distinguish, but not name. Only someone who knew her much better than he could have named them – someone like the General. It was obviously eating her up inside knowing that she was the only thing keeping him alive right now. A burden like that must have been nearly impossible to bear alone.
Just as this thought passed his mind, a single tear spilled from her eyes and cascaded down her face. As it descended, it was as if she gave up hiding her true emotions. Her entire face broke. Her eyes slammed shut. Her jaw flinched as she gritted her teeth together. Finally, she shaded it all from his gaze with her hands.
Barrett could do nothing but sit and wonder. What sort of mind games had this maniac used to hold such a prominent grip over her? No way in her right mind would Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter have allowed such a slip in her guard.
The uncharacteristic breakdown caused his nerves to set on edge slightly as he downed the last of his now slightly tepid coffee. But mostly, it bred sympathy for her. That and the realisation the he, The Bishop, had to be stopped.
There was no way she could do it alone, though. And no way Barrett was going to let her try.
"What do you need?" he asked, taking her by surprise.
Sam looked back at him through tear smeared eyes. "What do you mean?" she queried.
"You're gonna need some sort of back up chain. What do you need?"
Sam fervently shook her head. "This isn't why I let you in on this!" she asserted. "I just need you off my back about the breech. I can take care of this ass hole on my own!"
Barrett tipped his head to one side. "Take a look in the mirror, Colonel," he said gently. "This is getting to you more than you're admitting."
Sam let her gaze drop away from his. Unfortunately, in doing so, she caught sight of her reflection in the shiny metal surface of the napkin dispenser. He was right. She couldn't keep this up on her own. The very fact that she was crying about it now was evidence enough for that.
"I have to do this alone," she said pitifully, more tears breaking though her defences. "He'll kill him if I don't."
Barrett placed a reassuring hand over hers.
"He won't find out," he said quietly.
Sam pulled her hand away from his. The last thing she needed right now was for him to start with the bravado rant.
"It's what I'm paid to do!" he pointed out. "I've spend most of my adult career tracing creeps like this and usually with less to go on than a pretentious pseudonym and a few stolen files."
Sam thought about his offer for a moment. It was true. This sort of work was right up his alley. Of course, it added another variable into an already precarious equation. If he put even one toe out of line, it would be too many. Something told her they weren't dealing with an amateur. He knew way too much about her (and maybe even more than he was letting on) for it to be some jumped up hacker with too much time on his hands. This guy was after something. She knew it. And would stop at nothing – including threatening the life of an Air force General.
Come to think of it, this wasn't the first time such action had been waged against the SGC. Only four years ago, General Hammond had resigned under similar threats. The culprits, then, had been NID. Maybe there was more Barrett could do here...
Sam glanced suspiciously at Barrett. "Has the cancer in the NID been eliminated yet?" she asked cautiously. She knew this was a raw subject for the agent.
"No," he said, not liking where she was taking this. "Why?"
"Maybe you could start by checking out your own agency," she said, more boldly this time.
For a moment, Barrett felt like walking out of the diner and washing his hands of the whole situation. She always clung to that negative fraction of the NID. Whenever they met, it always coloured everything that went between them.
But then he remembered that a lot of the time, she tended to be right about them. A fact he was fairly reluctant to admit sometimes. But given the current state of affairs, he thought he may as well humour her for now. Who knows? She could have been wrong this time.
"I'll see what I can find out," he said cordially. "In the mean time, is there anything else you can give me to look into as well?"
Sam thought for a moment. "Give me a day or so. I'll get my hard drive to you. It should still have that security virus in it. You might be able to track the files."
Barrett nodded. "I'll see what I can do." He smiled, genuinely, and stood up from the booth.
"Just hang tight, OK?" he said as he placed a few dollars on the table for the coffee and then swiftly left the diner.
Sam sat mesmerised by the money for a moment. It wasn't the money itself she was staring at – or anything else in particular. She was merely staring through it all. Trying to picture a time before 'The Bishop' when she knew what she was doing! Trying to find some glimmer of normality in her addled mind.
Who was she kidding?! The only thing that could be described as 'normal' in her life was the cycle on her washing machine! It just happened that these past few days (or had it been weeks now?) had been even more topsy turvy than usual!
She shook herself out of the psychotic blur that would so easily take over if she let it and quickly made her way out of the diner as well. She had a lot of processing to do concerning her conversation with Barrett. And a lot of string pulling to do to make sure that his part in whatever twisted game of Chess they were in stayed strictly covert.
Author's Note: Well, I hope this is still keeping y'all on your toes! Let me know if it isn't and I'll find some way to fit another 'U' bend in – be warned though, there's already lots more of those planned! ...Right! You're turn to review now! Thanx!