A/N: We begin our second arc, Three's Company. Consider the first arc, Pairing, an extended preface to the story.
If you're familiar with my stories, you know that when I use an arc structure in a long story, each arc has its own rise and fall, internal to the rise and fall of the overarching story, but still distinct from it. So, too, here: we ease into the next arc, consolidating and preparing, looking back and looking ahead.
My epigraph should be taken not just as standing above this chapter, but above the entire story.
The Missionary
How is this daily character of meditation to be accounted for? Meditation is of the day precisely as the human will is. For meditation is the thoughtful reckoning of the will with its own life: Cut off from the central nerve of responsible being, the themes of meditation fall dead. My task has been that of overcoming such abstraction, to accommodate the life of spirit with all of the mind. These pages may serve as a record of such a tendency of thought, and they may testify with some accuracy to the unpredictable alternation of bondage and freedom in which the ambiguity of the human condition is lived, but now and again resolved.
— Henry Bugbee, The Inward Morning (Preface)
Chapter Seven: Inward Mornings
Chuck punched in the codes relocking the Buy More, and he got in the car.
Sarah was already in the driver's seat, staring fixedly ahead, silent. Casey was in the back, still complaining about his stomach, complaining about being the lowest paid of the three people in the car.
Sarah drove silently back to Chuck's. When she parked the car, she finally acknowledged him, looked at him. "I'm going to my apartment. Casey will stay with you. No need for us both to be here. Like you told Graham, you should be safe for now."
Casey snorted. "Hey! And at least it smelled like there was something to eat at your place, Bartowski."
"My sister, Ellie, is a good cook. She refused to leave town without stocking the fridge with casseroles. You can help yourself." Chuck got out of the car. So did Casey, and Casey shut his door. Chuck stood for a second, his door open, then leaned down, leaning toward the car, his face lit by the dull overhead light, looking in at Sarah. "Do you want a casserole? I have, like, four. I can bring you one out." His tone was neutral but — polite.
"No casserole for me." Sarah sounded harsh even to herself; she hadn't meant it that way; she just hadn't been prepared for the offer of…a casserole.
Chuck studied her for a moment, then he leaned back out of the overhead light, rising a bit, his eyes enshadowed in the weak parking lot light, the moonlight. He tapped his hand on the roof of the car.
"Don't take it too hard, Agent Walker. Given who I am, and what I am, you may leave town in short order with a perfect record after all."
There was no taunt in Chuck's tone; the joke, such as it was, was more at his expense than hers.
He shut the door and she drove away without another word or gesture.
Casey stepped toward Chuck and stood beside him as Sarah's tail lights left the lot. "Perfect record, huh? Really? Documented?"
Chuck nodded. "Yeah, documented. Although there's an asterisk beside her current mission."
"Hmmm," Casey responded, amused by Chuck's comment, "you're sure an asterisk. — Stick this out for a few days, Bartowski, a week, maybe, and she'll show she's a Prima Donna. White-collar spy — all private jets and Ralph Lauren tuxedos and expensive cocktails, those silver Halliburton attache cases. A few weeks of you, the Intersect, paper plates and casseroles, real spying, and she'll be begging Graham for reassignment. — Did you say four casseroles? Tell me more."
Chuck looked back over his shoulder as he and Casey walked to the apartment, but Sarah's tail lights were gone.
Chuck decided against a shower.
He threw some sheets and a pillow and a blanket on the couch and told Casey they were there.
Casey was in the kitchen, eating tuna casserole out of Tupperware, using his fingers, not a fork. He nodded at Chuck, noodles hanging out of his mouth, swaying with his nodding head.
In the bedroom, the door closed, Chuck took off his clothes and put on his pajama bottoms and an old Stanford t-shirt Chuck wore only to sleep, never in public. He stretched out on the bed, his body aching suddenly in every joint. He knew he wasn't hurt; it was just tension easing out of him.
He tried not to think, not to replay the evening, the incredible riot of his mind, from El Compadre all the way back to the Home Theater Room.
At least his room no longer stank of vomit. The cleaning he'd done had removed the odor. The thing that seemed stuck in his exhausted mind was the line he'd spoken to Casey, about the lion and the lamb. He hadn't recalled where the line came from until the drive home. It wasn't in the Intersect, it was in Chuck's own memory. The line had come up in a class at Stanford. But maybe it was because of the Intersect that he remembered it. He wasn't sure. But he was pretty sure that the Intersect now had access not only to the data it came with but to his memories too, to his experiences.
When Chuck closed his eyes, he was not shocked but still startled by the utter clarity of his memory of Sarah on top of him in the back of her car. Every image was etched in an HD that rivaled reality itself. He could feel her seated on him, feel her against him. Her eyes held his as she moved her hands to the buttons on her blouse. And…
And, my God, even in Intersected replay I believe her. I want her.
He felt proof of that as he rolled over onto his stomach, uncomfortably.
He groaned, not expressing desire, but self-contempt because of his desire. She was going to kill me. She kills for a living.
Dirty deeds. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the replay away, trying to create interior darkness, free of brilliant, disturbing Intersected memories, Sarah's blond hair, her blue blouse.
He succeeded. The image of Sarah faded, vanished, — trailing anger, not desire.
A moment later, he was asleep.
Casey made a bed out of the couch, kicked off his shoes, took off his jacket, and reclined. The suit couldn't get any wrinklier, and he didn't feel like taking it off.
He was too full of tuna.
Rolling onto his side, holding his gun to his chest, he reached for his jacket and took his wallet from the interior pocket. In the wallet was a picture.
He pulled it out and moved it until it caught the light from outside. He shook his head. Lord, what a beauty.
Casey did not much mind being assigned to Bartowski. An assignment was an assignment. But he did mind being stuck with Walker. For the last decade, he'd lived his life in the shadows — in her goddamn shadow. A CIA skirt, reckoned more fearsome, more deadly, more component than he. A skirt. Crazy shit, no matter if there is documentation.
The way he saw it, she had an unfair advantage — being female and lovely and hourglass-shaped. Casey had no answer, no match to all that. Look what she did to Bartowski tonight. The stupid kid's still landing gear over cockpit.
Well, Casey mused, this is my chance, I guess. Time to show the spy world who John Casey is, time for the NSA to kick some CIA tail in the tail.
He looked at the picture again, pursed his lips, put his hand to them, and blew the picture a kiss.
He chuckled to himself as he snuggled down, arms wrapped around his gun.
Sarah hugged herself as she sat, hunched, on her bed. The lights were off.
Her shoes were on the floor, one tipped over, one upright, her knives between them. Her gun was on the bed beside her.
Sleeping with a gun. That's what I do — when I can sleep.
She had no idea how she was going to manage what had happened, how she was going to manage Burbank, the Intersect, and casseroles.
She still didn't understand that offer.
Politeness from a man she'd planned to kill. Even if he hadn't been taunting her, and he hadn't, his careful politeness was a reminder of her intended mercilessness
Ever since the phone talk with Graham in Chuck's bedroom, Sarah knew Chuck had taken his hatred and anger toward her in hand and had gotten on top of them. She admired the self-control, even if it failed him a few times — like when he called her a government prostitute. The phrase was a knife in her flesh.
But his self-control wouldn't last. Not with them stuck together. It would all come apart, likely in an awful confrontation.
She didn't normally fear any confrontation.
Maybe Graham would change his mind or make Chuck Casey's daily problem. If Sarah had to be here, had to play a role in this espionage farce, let it be simply to establish the CIA's continued claim to Chuck — and nothing more.
That would not likely work out for her.
Graham was going to demand primary custody of the Intersect. He wouldn't settle for joint custody with Beckman. When Graham called Sarah in the morning, she knew he would be plotting against Casey and the NSA, and requiring her to join him in the plot.
Tonight, given all that happened, given the Intersect, given Casey on the scene, Graham had played nice; it wouldn't last. It would all come apart.
She stood up, letting her arms fall to her sides, just hanging there, and she walked barefoot, heavily into the bathroom.
Her moisturizer and her razor sat on the sink top. She stopped and stared at them.
Had she really shaved her legs before a termination? Moisturized? Not her SOP. She had rationalized it at the time — self-care — but barely noticed herself doing it.
But she'd worn, she was still wearing, jeans. She had not had any intention of actually taking them off, baring her legs, exposing them to touch. His touch. Had she?
What was she planning? How could she be so distant from and indistinct to herself?
She lashed out and swept the moisturizer and the razor off the sink top, hard against the glass shower door.
They landed on the floor, the moisturizer's top popping off and its contents globbing onto the floor.
She sobbed once, violently.
Disordered. Tears that had earlier only been mist now gathered, coagulated, and fell down her cheeks.
She needed to get the hell out of Burbank.
All she managed to do was return to her bed and fall fitfully asleep beside her gun.
While Casey dreamed of tuna and cigars and the woman in his photograph, Chuck dreamed Intersected dreams.
The pages of Sarah's file interleaved with the pages of Casey's, corpses and wounds, marks and assets, missions foreign and domestic. Chuck saw places he knew but had never visited, saw them as if he had been there, surveillance photos of empty side streets in Washington, Miami, New York, London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Moscow, and Rio.
He saw photographs of contacts, other agents, terrorists, and provocateurs. Money, jewels, weapons, drugs, sex, favors. It was all in motion, all in exchange, the two agents, Walker and Casey, caught in the reticulations, now here, now there, now light, now dark, moving, moving, always in motion.
And then Chuck saw himself, standing at the center of it all, his arms somehow extended out to the periphery, his fingers disappearing into the partly lighted shadow on the skirts of a total shadow.
He picked up chatter, bits and pieces of information, radio, print, phone, nothing coherent on its own, but each part of some puzzle or another, each belonging to some pattern or another.
Sandwall.
And then he felt strong hands around his throat, strangling him. His arms were too far extended, his fingers too anchored in the penumbra, to resist.
He could not see who was choking him, but he could feel them stealing his life. He looked out toward the edge, desperate, but, in all the motion, he saw only Casey.
With a gasp, he woke up.
He was wound in his blanket, sweating through his Stanford t-shirt.
"Who are they, Langston, for fuck's sake? No more of your ghoul-damn CIA runaround! That blond and her lanky partner saved my ass, my family's asses, and I'm prepared to kiss the asses of the two people in that video. I'm pretty sure she's yours, Graham; Walker, right? But who the hell is he? I have a feeling he's gonna take some explaining. We have his prints on the bomb wires, on the sign, hers on the pen with his too, and we're running them now. We'll eventually figure it out, Langston. — So go ahead: tell me. I won't tell anyone else."
Graham rubbed his forehead and sighed internally.
One General was bad enough. Beckman. Now two Generals. Stanfield. Graham's early morning was proving lousy with Generals.
Casey was scraping the last of the tuna salad from the Tupperware; it was his first breakfast. He had a spoon this time.
Bartowski was still in bed. Even with the door closed, Casey had heard Bartowski twisting and turning, muttering, all night long. Casey had difficulty imagining that such sleep could have provided any rest.
Casey's jacket buzzed. His phone. He put down the Tupperware and the spoon after one final bite, and, chewing, he grabbed the phone from his side pocket.
As he expected, it was General Beckman. Casey let the phone keep buzzing while he went out the front door of the apartment, careful to leave the door open a crack.
"Casey, secure."
"Agent, General Beckman here. Are you still with the Intersect?"
"Yeah, he's asleep in his apartment. I slept on the couch. Walker went back to the place Graham provided before she got to town."
"Did you have any conversation with the Intersect?"
"Not to speak of. He went to bed, understandable. I did too."
"Okay. Do you know what happened between the Intersect and Agent Walker last night?"
Casey looked at the door, looked through the crack. "Not exactly, but I know the basics." He walked the short distance to the fountain in the courtyard, drawn by the gurgling water.
"Seduction?" Beckman asked.
"Yes, and I have no doubt she planned to terminate him. But when the Intersect paired — kicked in — whatever — so did the kid. He disarmed her, Walker. Then he convinced her about the plot against Stanfield. You know how that worked out. They showed up here to see if the Intersect program could be retrieved from Bartowski's computer, but I'd already figured out the thing's a brick now."
"Stanfield has a copy of The Ritz-Carlton video. He wants to know who it is in the video. I've dodged his call but I will have to talk to him. I'm hoping he got to Graham first."
"Orders, General?"
"Stay with Bartowski. Under no condition allow Agent Walker to take him out of your sight. Graham and I will work this thing out and get further, more permanent orders to you later today. So far as I can tell, Walker's seduction played poorly with Bartowski, and, surprise," (Beckman chuckled) "so too did the knowledge that she was willing to terminate him. I know that friendship isn't in your wheelhouse, Agent, and I know he's not a man after your own heart, but try to get Bartowski to like you, trust you."
"Already working on it, General. — Oh, here's a tidbit that he told me and no one else. Walker doesn't know it. Don't think Graham does. Turns out, for unknown reasons, Bryce Larkin is redacted from the Intersect. The kid did not know Larkin had been CIA."
"Are you sure?"
"I believed the kid when he told me. — Yes, I'm sure. What's it mean?"
"I have no idea, but it suggests that Graham's understanding of what the Intersect contains is somehow faulty. Good work, Casey. Stay on your toes. Walker's got a reputation for a reason."
"I can handle her."
"Good. Report if there's anything that changes."
"Yes, General." Casey hung up the phone, hearing the gurgle again.
He really had to pee. For a moment, he thought about peeing in the fountain, then decided against it. That was something to do after dark, not in the morning light.
Sarah's phone buzzed. In her sleepy stupor, she tried to answer her gun. She put it down and groped to the end of the bed, her purse on the floor.
It would be Graham, and it was. She shook her head after a glance at the screen. Always, always he calls before coffee.
"Walker, secure."
"Agent, hello. It's morning there, correct?"
God, I hate it when he does that, the question-thing. "Yes, sir."
"I haven't slept but I hope you have." He didn't sound like he had that hope. "I need a quick recap of what happened last night. The highlights. I will expect a full, written report before the day's end."
"Last night." There was this moon, this blue moon. "I intended to do…what I do. Given the situation, I seduced him into my car, into driving a short distance to a deserted spot. When he was…ready, I put my gun to his head…starting interrogation." She did not like rehearsing this on an empty stomach, even before coffee. It was like bringing up bile, and it burnt as it went back down. "He jerked, violently, and he started talking, soft, fast, about seeing things, visions, I guess. He repeated my file, verbally, abridged. And then he disarmed me." She kept that last part as brief as possible. "He told me I couldn't execute…my orders, because he was the Intersect, and — "
"Alright, Agent Walker. I have the scene. So what did you do?"
"I persuaded him we needed to go to his apartment, check on the computer he used to download the Intersect. He seemed confident that the program had somehow erased itself, destroyed the computer.
"That's right. The device Larkin used was destroyed in the firefight, but the remains suggest that somehow the program erased itself from the device before it was destroyed. Larkin's device added that bit of code to the Intersect program, evidently, although we've not been able to recreate much of it. — The only other existing copies were in the Intersect Lab, and its ashes."
Bryce. Chuck. Chuck didn't know Bryce was an agent, that we were partners. That was part of the reason I couldn't understand his expression. It was a shock and I expected him to already know. She kept that to herself; she was unsure why.
"So Bartowski is not just the Intersect, he's the only Intersect?"
Graham laughed humorlessly. "It's like a cosmic joke on me. All these years, all that effort, money, and just when I'm about to abort the whole research project as a failure, it works. Except, it works all wrong. The makings of my superspy got dumped in a civilian, that civilian — Bartowski. Priceless wine poured in a cardboard box."
"Well, sir, if I may say so, and to continue my report, Bartowski proved resourceful. We were on the way to his apartment when Stanfield's motorcade passed us. Bartowski jerked again, and then he started chasing the motorcade, insisting that the General was in danger and that he had to stop it."
"And you went along with it, with him?"
"It's hard to recreate that moment. What had happened already. What he had said. What he had done. The way he looked. I went with my gut." She paused, considering what she said, then shook her head.
"The rest you basically know. In Stanfield's suite, Bartowski located the bomb, and he studied it for a moment or two, and then he disarmed it. We left and drove to his apartment, where we found Agent Casey. Bartowski's sister and her boyfriend were, luckily, out of town. Casey confirmed Bartowski's computer was dead."
Graham made a sound that Sarah knew meant he was thinking. "I used a codename last night to test Bartowski. Sandwall. Have you ever heard of it before?"
"No."
"If all this hadn't happened, you were going to. I was going to assign you to Sandwall. You are the only agent I trust completely."
The comment struck Sarah as commendation and condemnation.
"I will tell you more about the op tonight. Beckman and I will want a video conference again after you have received your orders. But I plan to put the Intersect to work on Sandwall. For now, Agent Walker, I need you to keep close to Bartowski. I expect Beckman's hope is that what happened last night, in your car, between you and Bartowski, will dispose him in favor of Casey, the NSA. Do whatever you need to do to keep that from happening. My intention is to…reduce…the NSA's involvement with Bartowski. — I'll need you to make sure he doesn't imprint, or something, on Casey.
"Keep in mind that Bartowski is, in important respects, a newborn. What we know — at least what we think likely — is that it takes time, an undetermined interval, for the Intersect and its host to fully integrate, mature. We believed it might take months, but from what we've seen of Bartowski (I talked to Zarnow before I talked to you, so I'm giving you his informed opinion), the process seems accelerated.
"Still, there's going to be a period of adjustment. Make yourself part of that. You're good, Agent, the best. If anyone can overcome what happened between you two last night, it's you. Think of this as a reverse termination, an animation. Bringing the Intersect fully to life. Insinuate yourself into the process…"
This was worse than Sarah feared. So much worse. Her stomach made a sound reminiscent of the one Casey's made in the Home Theater Room.
"Yes, sir. But how long do you think I will be assigned here? Wouldn't I be of more use — with Sandwall, with whatever — if I were back in the field?"
"You are in the field, Agent. The field is Burbank and Bartowski's head."
"Right." She put her hand on her stomach.
"You'll hear from me again as the day unfolds. Are you with Bartowski now?"
"No sir, Agent Casey and I decided he would spend the night at Bartowski's. I will go there directly."
"Do, directly. Don't leave those two alone for long."
Chuck took a shower and dressed. He found Casey in the kitchen, making coffee. Casey raised an eyebrow. "Cup?"
"Please."
Casey poured a cup for Chuck and then one for himself. "Anything for breakfast?"
Chuck motioned to a cabinet. "Cereal. If Ellie's not here, I don't go in for big breakfasts, eggs, and suchlike."
Casey opened the cabinet. "Honey Nut Cheerios. Great!" Casey reached for the box, grinning.
Chuck, seated at the small kitchen table, saw the scene superimposed on flickering photographs of Casey's termination victims.
The incongruity dizzied Chuck; the kitchen floor seemed to pitch and yaw; Chuck grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself, feeling seasick.
It was going to be a long day.
There was a soft knock at the door. Oh, goody, one killer inside and another at the door.
Sarah had dressed with care, and she glanced down at herself as she stood at the door. The clothes she chose were the closest to frumpy, maiden-aunty, that the CIA supplied. She wore no makeup, no earrings, no perfume. Her hair was held back from her face by a folded blue bandana. Her blouse was gray, her jeans blue, the loosest pair she had.
Although she cleaned up the moisturizer in her bathroom, Sarah had not used it after her shower. She smelled of soap and shampoo but there was nothing she could do about that.
She wanted to be as unseductive as possible, to distance herself and Chuck from the dubious closeness of last night.
If it had been a first date, it would have been the strangest first date on human record.
The door opened. Casey stood there wearing the same suit as the day before, but with a bevy of fresh wrinkles. He had a bowl of…Cheerios?...in his hand, spoon in the bowl, and a calculating look in his eyes.
Sarah took a deep breath, smelled coffee, and, luckily, not Casey.
"Honey!" Casey yelled over his shoulder and into the apartment, "It's that saleswoman again."
Then Casey gazed at her complacently, a smirk in his eyes but not on his lips. "Didn't you see the sign, babe? No soliciting."
"Go to hell, Casey. And take your Cheerios with you."
Casey held Sarah's eyes as he ladled a massive pile of cereal into his mouth. He stepped aside, crunching.
Sarah saw Chuck emerge from the kitchen as she came in, his coffee in one hand, his spoon in the other. He stared at her — and seemed to be stirring dread into his cup.
A/N: Come back next time for Chapter 8. The CIA Satellite Office is planned and Zarnow comes to town with probes.
