A/N: Onward. Operation Overlook and our team begins to come into focus.


The Missionary


…[A]s much as our life and our knowledge are patchwork, they are nonetheless progress on the way — even though this way is also unending.

— Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart


Chapter Ten: Patchwork


Sarah got out of the car.

She put her gun in her purse. Chuck got out, laptop tucked under his arm.

Casey's request and Graham's orders were squeezing her. She knew Casey was right; she should talk to Chuck. But she did not want to obey Graham, did not want to try to control Chuck.

She understood part of the reason why Chuck kept asking her what it was like to be her.

It was a puzzle to her too. So much of her life was receptivity, passive — a response to external orders. Little of her life was spontaneous, active, a response to orders to herself. First her father and then Graham had inserted himself between herself and her, usurped her ability to command herself. At least, that was how it felt to her. Her father had inserted himself, naturally, when she was too young to command herself — but he had never yielded that position to her as she matured, as he should have, as nature demanded. As she got older, he instead kept it, gripping it ever more tightly, teaching her self-mistrust instead of self-reliance, chipping away determinedly at her independent sense of what was real, what was good.

The world he taught her to inhabit was a world in which the only true motives were covetousness and envy. All will was ill-will: the demand to have what others had or the demand to see others reduced. This had been crucial to her father's justification of what they did, justification of the cons.

Not 'To be or not to be', Sarah, that's not the question, 'To con or not to be conned' — that's the question. You or them, baby, you or them. It can't be any other way.

Graham had not taught her to inhabit a different world but only a deadlier version of her father's world. Motives remained the same, they just became more ambitious, global and collective, not local and individual. Graham ordered and she obeyed. Whether what she did was justified wasn't her concern: it was Graham's.

But last night she had told Chuck that Graham was Machiavelli. She had not had that thought before last night, although, now that she had spoken it, she knew it was true. Have I always known that, known it the same way I knew Dad was a liar, that he was lying to me? But if I knew, how could I believe I didn't know? It's not like I forgot — is it?

She had no more answers to give to her own questions than she had to Chuck's earlier questions.

But she could be decent to Chuck without being docile to Graham.

She turned to Chuck. They were close enough that the fog did not obscure them from each other. She saw ghosts in his eyes.

"What you saw, Chuck, the…violence, that's new to you. It's hard even when it's not new. When we get inside, sit down for a few minutes, get something to drink, a cola, it'll steady you. Breathe slowly. For a little while, what you saw is going to replay in your head, like a visual echo of the event. Don't fight it but don't engage with it either. Just let it flow through you each time. Eventually, it will be less vivid, less disturbing."

"Is that what you do, Agent Walker?"

"It's a tactic for coping, Chuck. Thanks to the Intersect, you now have a head chock full of violence, I know," (she looked down) "a lot of it mine. But it's different when you really witness it yourself — when you're part of the event, involved as it unfolds — and when you just watch it, like on a screen, an observer but not a partaker."

He stared at her and shook his head. "It's like something funny. You tell it and no one who hears it finds it funny, and you say, 'You had to be there,' except, in this case, it wasn't funny, and you say, 'Be glad you weren't there.'"

Sarah nodded.

Chuck's posture shifted, and his eyes became less haunted. "Thanks, Agent Walker."

She was going to say Call me, Sarah but she decided not to press her luck.


Chuck hugged the computer to himself as he and Sarah walked to the apartment complex. The symbolism of that did not escape him.

He'd taken a computer to heart — with a vengeance. And now it looked like a computer might harden his heart, turn it from flesh and blood into wires and capacitors.

Since he was a kid he'd loved computers. Played with them, learned how to program them, to build and repair them. He'd shared that with his father, although he knew his father saw more deeply and completely into computers than he did. That mastery had been what Chuck had been chasing at Stanford. He wanted the ready, inward, and sympathetic understanding of computers that his father had, and he had felt like he was making progress toward it, serious progress, when he had been expelled.

Since then, and despite his job at the Buy More, he'd distanced himself from that kind of involvement with computers. He repaired them, he sold them, he played games on them, but he quit trying to inhabit them as he once had.

And now one inhabited him. Its inhabitation had plunged him into a world he did not recognize, a deadly world, where beautiful women made their beauty into an edged weapon, and where stunning blue eyes could glow with cold, exact violence.

He'd been a passenger in a car that had been made a blunt weapon. His weight had been part of the unbearable weight on those two now-dead men.

He shuddered, the memory coming back as Sarah said it would. He breathed slowly and let it come, then let it go. Maybe it was not as bad that time as the previous umpteen times?

They entered the apartment complex and followed the sidewalk into the fog.

Behind them, the fog closed on the path they'd taken.

Chuck peered ahead. He could see a bright orange glow, diffuse in the fog. It took a moment for him to realize it was Casey, standing by the fountain, a burning cigar clamped in his mouth.

Casey squinted at them and blew out a cloud of smoke as they approached. The smoke added to the fog.

"Nobody here, no sign of nothing," Casey said, sounding like a sentry rendering a report.

Sarah blew out a breath. "Let's get inside. You still have Zarnow's phone?"

Casey produced it. "Yeah, I shut it off when I took it from him at the hospital and I've left it off."

"Good," Chuck interjected, and both spies looked at him as he took the phone. "Don't want to be tracked. I can probably get Zarnow's data if I can unlock it."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Intersect?"

"No, just me. I'm actually pretty good at this kind of thing, even when I'm plain old Chuck."

"Let's call Graham first," Sarah said, then, after a glance at Casey, "Beckman too if you want, make sure of what they want us to do."

Casey studied her for a moment, puffing. "Okay," he shrugged and dropped the cigar onto the sidewalk, looking down and grinding it with his heel.

He looked up at Chuck. "Are you doing better?"

"I'll be alright," Chuck answered. He gave Casey a tight smile, shifted his eyes for a moment to Sarah. She met his gaze.

Casey glanced around at the complex slowly, then smiled at Chuck. "You're tougher than you look, kid. Course, I've seen junior high girls who looked tougher than you look. — Let's get inside. This damn fog is damp," he twisted at the waist, grimacing, "and I ain't built for wind sprints anymore."


Inside, the lights were on.

Sarah dropped her purse on the couch and sat down.

Chuck put the computer on the dinner table and then sat down in an armchair. Casey went into the kitchen and Sarah heard the fridge open.

Her phone buzzed in her purse. She took it out. Graham. They would not need to call him. She answered, holding the phone at arm's length.

"Walker, secure. I'm going to put you on speaker," she said loudly, giving Graham no chance for disagreement, no private talk with herself, "Agent Casey and Mr. Bartowski are listening too. Or should I call him Agent Bartowski, since he now makes more money than I do?"

Casey and Chuck laughed; Graham did too. Sarah blinked. She was not funny.

"Agents," Graham said, an answer to her question seeming implicit in the use of nothing but the plural, "Dr. Zarnow is dead. I am still trying to determine how anyone could have known where he was going or what he was doing, or if they did know that. I'm not sure if this is related to Agent Bartowski or not."

"We have Zarnow's phone and…Agent Bartowski believes he can get Zarnow's data. Do you want us to do that?"

"Yes," Graham said, "do it, and let me know if you find anything. Where are you now?"

"Back at Agent Bar — back at Chuck's apartment." Sarah lifted her eyes from the phone and glanced at Chuck. "Casey swept the apartment and the complex; everything seems fine here.

"Assuming that what happened was about the Intersect," she continued, "right now it looks like we succeeded in preventing anyone from discovering Chuck. — Have the two men been identified?"

"Didn't the Intersect ID them?"

Chuck spoke up. "No, they were both on the ground before I got a good look at them. Maybe, if Sarah's car had a glass bottom, like some boats — " Chuck stopped himself.

"Yes, Agent Bartowski, I know about — their fatal injuries. They were both CIA. Unfortunately. Both are recent additions to the Agency. Agent Joe Wood and Agent Kent Daniel."


Chuck saw their faces but not from memory, from Intersect files. But neither had much of a file, mere comic books compared with the vast novels of Sarah and Casey's files.

Chuck did not try to consult the files. He let them go and listened to Graham.


"We're going through their records carefully right now. They've never worked together, and I don't believe you ever met either, Agent Walker."

"No," Sarah agreed. "I don't even recognize their names. I didn't recognize their faces, but then again," she dropped her voice and looked down, "I wasn't trying to identify them."

"What about your vehicle, Agent Walker?"

"Damaged. Windows shattered. Likely bullet holes in the body, although I didn't examine it. Can you send someone to pick it up?"

She looked at Casey and he recited the address to Graham.

"Okay," Graham responded, "someone from the LA field office will see to it. I want the three of you to stay there tonight. Don't separate for any reason; we need to be sure that Wood and Daniel were the complete team. Work on Zarnow's phone. I'll work on Zarnow, and on Wood and Daniel, here. I will call you when I have more information." The call ended.

Casey cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, addressing Sarah. "Is he always such a sharer?"

She nodded. "Pretty much."


Beckman ended her latest call to Providence St. Joe, put her phone on her desk, and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.

The bags under her eyes were swelling from grocery to duffel.

Damn Langston Graham. Being forced to work with that man had taken years from her life, and kept taking years from her life. She had talked to him before she talked again to the hospital.

It was all his fault. Greedy to control the Intersect, he'd nearly gotten the Intersect kidnapped or killed or ID'ed. All part of a scheme to scare the Intersect into obedience. Langston Graham did not abide even the thought of insubordination. He kept everyone and everything around him under his thumb. As Walker was.

Beckman admitted Walker's competence, — how could she not? But she had never been able to find the woman in Sarah Walker, and Beckman did not trust an agent who was not a man or a woman as well as an agent. Casey was definitely a man as well as an agent.

Beckman also conceded that Walker had all the proper womanly equipment.

Beckman stood and glanced down at herself. She had once had an appealing figure but hers had never rivaled Walker's, never been so tall, so statuesque. But then again, Walker was statuesque through and through — more stone than flesh.

Beckman had met Walker the first time, and briefly, at the Farm. Walker had struck Beckman as belonging at the prom, not at a seduction class — until Beckman saw her demonstrate a technique for the class. To this day, Beckman could remember that performance, how real it had seemed, not just to Beckman but to the other students, the instructor, Roan Montgomery.

Beckman wondered how it was possible, such a complete immersion in a pretense. Later, over drinks with Roan — he was then and still was now her on-again, off-again lover, she had been visiting him at the Farm — she asked him.

"Walker is remarkable. A prodigy. As good as anyone I've ever taught, better, in fact. I would never want to face her when she has turned the seduction up to eleven," Roan chuckled, but sobered when he saw that Beckman was not laughing.

"Walker can do it because there's less of her inside her than inside anyone else I've ever known. There's no Sarah Walker to conceal because there basically is no Sarah Walker. So, she can pour all her energy into the role; she's not fighting who she really is because, keeping it out of the light, she really isn't anyone." Roan shook his head in teacherly appreciation.

Beckman shook hers too, but in personal distaste.

She's perfect for Graham. He's an asshole solipsist anyway, convinced that only he exists. She'll be his perfect agent, a nobody who can be any somebody.

Beckman crossed the room and poured herself a glass of water, eschewing the whisky she wanted but knew she did not need.

Damn.

Graham sent Zarnow to Burbank because he wanted the theater of the visit, all for Bartowski's sake, wanted Bartowski anxious and vulnerable and impressed. It was stagey, and almost all for effect. Graham wanted the bad news about the Intersect supplied by Zarnow so that Bartowski wouldn't associate Graham directly with it.

And now Zarnow — the person who knew the Intersect best — was dead, a victim of Graham's Kabuki theater, his goddamned showmanship. Without Zarnow, Bartowski was in an important sense alone. As Beckman understood it, no one else who worked at the Intersect Lab was close to Zarnow's deep, synoptic understanding of the project. The rest had at best a grasp on some part of the project. Only Zarnow knew it whole.

Only Zarnow might have been able to extract it from Bartowski.

And Zarnow was no more. Bartowski was the first and last surviving host, and it looked like he would never part company with the Intersect. They were together, paired, forever. Until ages of ages, amen.

She drank her water and walked back to her desk, collapsed into her chair.

Operation Overlook was all of two days old and Beckman was bone-tired.

The only bright spot in this mess was that it was rogue CIA agents, not rogue NSA agents, who'd been responsible for the shitshow at Providence St. Joe.

There's some insubordination, Langston.


Chuck hooked the phone, still powered down, to his new computer. It took him a few minutes of hunting and downloading to get the software he needed on it.

Zarnow's phone was an iPhone. Chuck knew them well from selling and repairing them at the Buy More. He was beginning to be aware of the Intersect again, after Wood and Daniel, could feel it at the periphery of his consciousness, but he kept it, or it remained, at bay, just beyond the focal point of his attention. Sitting there, percolating, he knew he could call on it if he needed it, but he didn't. Not yet anyway.

He got everything prepared — then he removed the SIM card. He powered up the phone and saw an alphanumeric keyboard appear.

Abruptly, he pushed his desk chair back from his desk and stood. He noticed Sarah was standing at the door to his room, watching him.

She seemed lost in thought, lost in something, and she started when he moved. "Sorry. I was just waiting to see if you could get in the phone. Casey went back out to keep watch. I think that really means mainly to smoke another cigar."

"Right. I've got everything ready. I've 'cloned' the phone to my system and can work in a virtual environment. But to do any of what I want to do, I need to unlock the OS. I can't do that via face recognition or thumbprint, for obvious reasons." Chuck looked past Sarah and stared into the middle distance for a moment before focusing on her again. "So, I need his password."

"How can you get that?"

"Well," Chuck said, "I have a feeling that Zarnow and I were probably a lot alike. Thinkers, not spies. He was in it for the science, I bet. — While he was examining me, he asked me if a particular sentence meant anything to me. I told him it didn't — because he was asking if it meant anything to the Intersect. But it did mean something to me. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

"What?" Sarah asked, confused.

"That's the sentence. It didn't seem to mean anything to the Intersect; I guess it was meant to correct the Intersect if there was something wrong with it but, apparently, it's fine. For now."

Chuck looked away from Sarah for a second then hurried onward.

"I recognized the sentence though. Noam Chomsky created it, and used it in his book, Syntactic Structures (a big book for me in high school), as an example of a sentence that is syntactically correct — grammatical — but semantically defective — meaningless.

"If you know how to diagram a sentence, you can diagram it, and you can look up the meanings of the individual words, but you can't make anything of the entire sentence. Chomsky's a genius, the father of modern linguistics, and one of the founders of cognitive science. Love him or hate him, he's also the greatest public intellectual of our time. A hero of mine." Chuck smiled, enthusiasm gathering. "I'm guessing he was a hero of Zarnow's too. Zarnow didn't make that sentence up; he took it from Chomsky and embedded it as a fail-safe in the Intersect."

Sarah's face showed admiration, she seemed caught up on the wave of his enthusiasm. "So, you think Zarnow's password is Chomsky?"

Chuck's shoulders sank a bit. "No, I think that's too obvious." Chuck stood upright again. "But I think the password is Chomsky's name!"

"So, Noam?"

"No, that's his middle name. His first name, no one remembers it, most don't know it, is Avram. My gut tells me that's the password."

"How many tries do you get with an iPhone?"

"Ten, with a graduated scale of consequences — the amount of time you are prevented from trying again. But you can try six times before the timed lockouts begin. What do you say, Agent Walker, should we take a flier and give Avram a try? It's an alphanumeric keyboard, not just a numeric keypad; that's suggestive."

"This is your bailiwick, Chuck." She paused; her eyes soft but focused. "Trust your gut," she said with emphasis.

He powered up the phone and waited. After a moment, he punched in a-v-r-a-m. Nothing happened. He slapped his forehead. "Duh." He punched in A-v-r-a-m.

The phone unlocked.

Chuck punched the air and leaped up, with a shout, spinning when he landed, then grinned at Sarah — he couldn't help himself. For a moment, he forgot everything else, the last two days.

Sarah grinned back, shaking her head at his antics.

Casey walked up behind Sarah, craning his head to see past her. "Was that a victory dance — or is the kid seizing?"

Chuck was still grinning and so was Sarah.

She answered, chuckling. "Victory dance — although I'm surer about the victory than the dance."


Sarah stood over Chuck, watching him work, Casey beside her.

Chuck typed on the computer, manipulating Zarnow's now powered-off phone by manipulating the created 'clone'.

Zarnow's call history showed only one incoming call before he boarded the plane, no name. His few other calls were from earlier in the day, all from Mother.

The unidentified number could not be traced. Nothing else stood out.

His GPS history showed him traveling from his home to the airport, to Burbank today and to the hospital. No unexpected stops. The day before, until late, he had been at Langley.

Several of his apps were open, accessible. He had almost no presence on social media. On Facebook, there were no pictures of himself. For the most part, there were only received posts wishing him a happy birthday, a small handful of those each year, with nothing but an occasional sci-fi meme between the bouts of birthday well-wishings.

But there were a few pictures, in his photos, of his mother, identified as such. She was a small, very frail-looking woman, always pictured either in bed, seated, or in a wheelchair.

Sarah had a sinking feeling when Chuck looked up from his work. "Okay, now texts."

She had a feeling Chuck had detoured into Facebook to delay checking the texts.

There were two, both received shortly before Zarnow's flight. One was a picture of his mother, showing her and a gloved hand holding a gun to her head. Her lip was bleeding and one eye was swollen shut.

Beneath the texted picture was another text, this one all words, long. Chuck read it aloud.


Do as you are told or she dies.

We want the Intersect.

When you land, go to a locker at the Burbank airport, 51.

A combination was given. The text went on.

You will find a loaded gun, a small vial, and a pill.

Take the pill immediately. It is a counter-agent to the contents of the vial, but it takes twenty minutes to be effective.

The vial contains a drug that vaporizes when exposed to air. It will affect anyone nearby, causing unconsciousness.

The gun is self-explanatory.

Find a way to take the Intersect, get him to your car. If you cannot get to the car, call this number for help.

A number was given.

If you leave the building without him, or with anyone else, you will die and so will your mother.

Do not doubt that.

We want the Intersect.


Chuck stopped. He looked at Sarah and Casey.

Sarah's phone rang, startling them all. Her purse was on Chuck's bed. She walked to it and took her phone out. "Graham."

She answered. "Walker. Putting you on speaker, sir."

Graham's voice was matter-of-fact but taut, creaking.

"We've discovered information about Dr. Zarnow. His mother was found at their apartment; she was murdered. Single gunshot. I didn't know he lived with his mother. We also found out that she was terminally ill, throat cancer, unable to speak; she was expected to live only a couple of months longer. In Zarnow's car at the hospital, in the glove compartment, we found a gun, a via, and a pill."

"Yes, sir," Sarah responded. "Chuck got into Zarnow's phone, and we can explain what you found in the car." She did, briefly. Graham was silent for a moment as she finished.

"So, Zarnow sacrificed himself — and his mother — for the Intersect. He did his job, the job I told him to do, knowing what would happen when he left the hospital."

"And he saved me," Casey said, shaking his head, "he stepped in front of me on purpose.".

Graham cleared his throat and when he spoke, his voice was better controlled.

"This was a makeshift, patchwork plan. The people we're dealing with, though well-placed, seem to have limited information, resources, and personnel. But somehow, they know that there is an Intersect." Graham paused again. "How could they know that? We didn't know a viable host was possible until yesterday when one simply actualized in the form of Agent Bartowski. We are lucky they did not manage to see him.

"But there is someone — one person, at least, still in the wind and who knows there is an Intersect, but not who the Intersect is. A surveillance camera on the building across from Zarnow's apartment building shows cars going into and out of the lot, but does not show the lot itself. Zarnow's building had no security cameras. We're hoping for a lead from the license plates. Beckman's people are working on that.

"Stay where you are tonight. I've asked local law enforcement to step up patrols in your general area, although I did not explain why. Being CIA Director has its prerogatives. I will send an address to you for Agent Bartowski to send me all the data from Zarnow's phone. I will have my people study it to see if there's anything more to be gleaned.

"Agent Casey, everything is set for you to move into your managerial apartment tomorrow afternoon. Preparations of the office for Agents Bartowski and Walker have been made and should be finished by tomorrow night. Assuming nothing…untoward…occurs, we will go ahead with the op as we planned it. But that could change. Have you talked to your sister, Agent Bartowski?"

"No, but I expect to hear from her tomorrow sometime."

"Okay, I will be back in touch early. Get some sleep but either Agent Walker or Casey should be awake at all times."

"Yes, sir." Sarah said, ending the call.

She looked at Chuck. He had turned a sickly white during the call. "Why would Zarnow do that? Sacrifice himself for me? His mother?"

"Look at that photograph of her again, Chuck, the one texted to Zarnow." Something had struck Sarah.

He called the picture back up to the computer screen. "Look at her hand, Chuck." It was down, palm up, on the blanket covering her legs. Her index finger and pinky were raised, the middle two fingers folded, her thumb extended on the side. "It's upside down, Chuck, but it's the hand sign for 'I love you'. — She was telling him it was okay. I'm guessing she understood — her own situation and his. He never met you, but you were his life's work, Chuck. He wasn't going to let them have you, and she wasn't either."

He looked at her, his eyes vulnerable. "I don't get to choose people's reasons for dying…"

"No, Chuck, you don't. Zarnow chose his, and so did his mother."


The fog vanished as dawn broke

Sarah stood at the window and watched it dissipate. Casey had watched for the larger part of the night. He'd only come to have her replace him when dawn was not far off.

Chuck had put Sarah in Ellie's room, after explaining that his sister had just changed the bed before she left.

Sarah felt lost in the kingsize bed, the master bedroom. The room had the faint odor of Ellie's perfume and Devon's aftershave, and it showed all the signs of happy cohabitation — at least as she understood what that might be. (She had never known it.) Two nightstands, his and hers, his with a copy of a workout magazine and of The New England Journal of Medicine, hers with a (surprising, to Sarah) copy of a romance novel and the most recent issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Sarah realized the household was a brainy bunch. On the dresser was a photograph of Ellie and Devon. She was beautiful, her dark hair framing her tanned face and green eyes, and he was magazine-cover handsome. Bryce-like, in that respect. The truth was, she'd always preferred men whose faces were less chiseled, more animated, men who smiled from their feet up, and who carried the holiday in their eye. — That was how her grandmother described her grandfather, but he had died when Sarah was too young to remember him.

That description stuck with her, though.

She stretched out on the bed, still fully clothed, not knowing for sure when Casey would ask to be relieved.

It occurred to her as she drifted off to sleep that she'd had Chuck beneath her twice in twenty-four hours, each time unsatisfactory.

That thought came back to her as she watched the sun brighten the complex. She walked down the hallway to Chuck's room and opened the door carefully. He was asleep.

She looked at him for a few moments, unsure why she did it, what she came to see, then she closed the door and went to make coffee.


The Intersect woke Chuck.

It had been in the background of his dreams all night, low-volume white noise, but had not disturbed him, intruded on his focal consciousness — until a moment ago, when a vision came into his mind, insistent and vivid, so much so that it woke him like a slap.

Sadie Collier. She was an attractive, bespectacled young woman who worked on Zarnow's team at the Intersect Lab.

Zarnow and Collier sleeping together — high probability.

Visions of their work schedules over past months appeared, always with them having the same afternoon off. Credit card charges, Zarnow's. Visions of satellite photos, social media photos — a cheap, U-shaped, one-story motel on a two-lane West Virginia road, Zarnow's credit card used there several times. Collier's car and Zarnow's too, in one of the social media photos, in the background of a random couple's casual selfie. "Almost heaven" was their selfie caption.

Collier source of the leak — high probability.

Chuck rolled out of bed and hurried up the hallway. Sarah was standing in the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee. Casey was asleep on the couch. Chuck stopped in front of Sarah.

"The Intersect. A woman, Sadie Collier, was probably the person who knew about me. She was on the Intersect Lab team. Zarnow was sleeping with her, now and then."

Sarah nodded, her lips a straight line. She put down her coffee and took her phone from her back pocket. She dialed and put the phone on speaker.

"Director, Sarah Walker. You're on speaker. I'm with Agent Bartowski — he has a name." She looked at Chuck as she said it. "Sadie Collier."

Graham did not immediately speak. "Very impressive. I was just going to call you. We found Ms. Collier last night at the airport, trying to get on a flight to LA. Her car was one that entered Zarnow's apartment complex yesterday. We are about to begin the interrogation. We found a gun, gloves and lockpicking tools in her car's trunk. We believe she killed Zarnow's mother. Her gun has been recently fired, gunpowder residue on her hands She was in Langley yesterday, early in the day. — How did you figure this out, Agent Bartowski?"

"I didn't, exactly. It just came to me this morning. The Intersect computed the probabilities somehow. I wasn't aware of it, not really, until the computation was finished."

Casey entered the kitchen, buttoning his shirt over his t-shirt. He was listening, but staring at Chuck. "Nice boxers. You're sister crochet those?"

Chuck glanced down. He hadn't thought about what he was wearing — not weaning. A pair of boxers, white with repeated clusters of purple grapes.

Casey chuckled. "What do you think, Walker? In vino veritas? Or in nigrum capulus?"

Chuck blush nuclear, shoulders, neck and head.

He put crossed one arm over his bare chest, dropped the other so that his hand was shielding his fly. He glanced down, relieved to see that his fly was not open.

But when he looked up at Sarah, she had blushed too; her mouth was open.

"Be right back, everyone, sir," Chuck said, mainly to the phone, then he ran back down the hall to his room.

Casey's hearty cackle chased him, nipping at Chuck's naked heels.


When Chuck returned, dressed, Casey was eating Cheerios and Sarah was sipping her coffee. Casey shook his head at Bartowski.

"I'll have you know," Chuck said, moved to defend himself, "that Ellie did buy me those boxers. It was a joke between us about Morgan, my buddy, who loves grape cola, and — "

Chuck quit talking. Casey seemed in danger of joking on his cereal and Sarah was staring into her cup.

" — And I'm making this so much worse."

Casey slapped the small breakfast table with his huge hand, trying to inhale without choking, his face beet red. Sarah seemed to have pulled her lips to the side of her face to hide a smile.

Chuck changed topics. "What about Collier?"

"CIA interrogation. Don't envy her that. — I remember her, sort of, from the lab. Mousey, brainy. Glasses. Cute, though, too bad, chose the wrong team." Casey said, shrugging, sobering, his red paling a little.

He shifted topics by scooting his chair around to better face Chuck. "Graham's given me the go-ahead on my place. Owner's supposed to send someone by with the key at noon."

Sarah nodded. "I'll move into the empty place near here in a couple of weeks." Her look at Chuck was earnest but careful. "We'll need to think about that, how to explain it, but not right now. Also, since people have seen us here, you had me over a couple of times for coffee and to talk about the new office, and you met Casey when he came by to see the place and interview. You two hit it off."

"Casey and I hit it off? That's at least as unlikely as you really asking me on a date. It's like David getting chummy with Goliath."

"Hey," Casey said, "I'm good people. And I'm just big-boned."

Chuck shook his head. "This gets sillier and sillier. We'll be lucky if Ellie doesn't see through it in a minute."

"What matters, Chuck, is that your sister believes that you believe us."

"Huh?" Chuck frowned at Sarah. "Could you get 'believe' into that sentence just one more time?"

"What she means, grape nuts," Casey offered, his tone hectoring Chuck as Sarah smothered a laugh, "is that your sister's going to take her cues from you. As long as you sell it, she'll buy it, buy us. But you've got to sell it, sell us. Lying isn't so much a matter of what you say as how you say it. You can't say it like you're waiting for her to believe it while you say it, or say it as if you're worried about plausibility at all. Look, kid, most people most of the time mostly tell the truth. It's like a norm; if it weren't, we'd never listen to each other. People don't tell the truth thinking of it as the truth. They just talk. When you tell your sister about us, just talk."

"That place where spies get trained — the Farm — is there, like, a graduate seminar on lying that both of you took?"

"If everyone were a spy, Chuck," Sarah said in a kinder tone, ignoring the question, "there'd be no spies. Casey's right. Just talk."


Saturday grew into a beautiful day even for Burbank.

The fog seemed to take every trace of humidity with it. Everything appeared etched, hard-lined, utterly clear, as if balancing the scales after having been cloudy and obscure the night before.

At noon, Casey carried his things to the apartment at the front of the complex. A courier arrived with the apartment key.

Chuck had taken a lawn chair out the living room closet and unfolded it by the fountain. He was sitting there, his feet on the fountain's edge, chair tilted back, staring into the water.

He sat there, letting his mind gurgle with the water, attempting to take Sarah's advice about letting things flow through him. Chuck sat there, his mind attuned to the water, visions rushing past, some memories, some Internet data. He could feel the Intersect closer to him, closing the distance. What was his and what was the Intersect's were not indistinguishable — he did not know that they would ever be indistinguishable — but they felt more akin to each other than they had during his first day and night with the Intersect, as if they'd somehow changed status from distant cousins to first cousins.

"Chuck?"

He lifted his mind from the fountain. Sarah was in the apartment doorway, motioning to him. He got up and went to her, wondering again how a woman so lovely could be what she was, seductress and assassin, a liar and a killer. He was simultaneously attracted to her and repelled by her. He could not make sense of her. She had been kind to him not long after killing those two men. What sense did that make?

Chuck delighted in imagining the interior lives of other people, trying to catch the world from their angle, as it were. But he could not begin to imagine her interior life; his imagination had nothing to work with. He might as well have been trying to imagine being a hermit crab. Sarah's form of life, whatever it was, seemed even more alien to him than a crustacean.

Except no hermit crab could make him ache dully in his mid-section as Sarah did each time he looked at her — if he were honest.

Sometimes the ache was eclipsed by other, more manifest reactions, like fear and anger, but it was there.

He reached the door. She seemed to be studying him as he studied her. "Graham called. Collier talked. She doesn't know who the Intersect is — but we didn't think she did. She never got the call she was scheduled to receive from Wood and Daniel, and so she killed Zarnow's mother and then tried to get out of town. Evidently, she had not reported what happened to her superiors and she doesn't know who they are. She seemed terrified of them, begging Graham for protection in return for her information. Whoever they are, the cost of failure seems to be death. She kept saying: 'No one gets a second chance.' Graham and Beckman said we are to go ahead with Overlook as planned."

Chuck took all that in.

"We'll tell Casey once he gets back from his interior decorating," Sarah said. She smiled at him and he nodded.


Later in the day, at dinner time, as Sarah warmed the final casserole, Zucchini Pizza, and as Casey set the table, Chuck's phone rang. It was his sister.

Seeing her name on the screen cheered and terrified him, more of the radical ambivalence that characterized his life since Sarah pressed herself against him and pressed her gun to his forehead. At almost every moment since, he seemed to feel contradictory or inconsistent emotions.

He took a deep breath and answered.

"Hey, El! What's up?"

"With me, Chuck? Nothing. Devon and I are ready to head home. Believe it or not, we're exhausted from laying around the pool, walks on the beach. Santa Cruz is great but we're ready to be in our part of California again. We'll start back in the morning. I assume you've laid around the whole time we've been gone, watching movies and playing games with Morgan?"

"No, actually, I haven't seen Morgan since Thursday night. I've been busy."

"Big Mike giving you overtime, on the weekend of your birthday?"

"No, not Buy More busy."

"And not Morgan busy? You don't have any other kinds of busy, brother of mine."

"Well, I do now. But it's kind of a surprise. — Do you know The Marshall Building?"

"Yes," Ellie said, drawing out the word, "I've seen it, why?"

"Well, when you and Devon get back tomorrow, go straight there, not here. I'll be there, with a surprise." Each word tasted and felt like a cotton ball soaked in castor oil.

I hate lying, especially to Ellie. How could anyone get used to this?

"What's going on, Chuck?" Ellie sounded excited but cautious.

"Like I said, it's a surprise. I know I said I didn't want a birthday party, and I didn't, but let's say that this is to make that up to you guys. It's been sort of an eventful weekend for me. Well, the news actually reaches back farther than that. But I'll explain when you get here."

"Ok, The Marshall Building. Say, 2 pm?"

"That's fine. Great, I mean. See you then. Text me when you get to town and I'll give you more details."

"Okay, Chuck. Devon's gonna be as curious as I am. Love you!"

"You too!" Those final words weren't false but they still tasted false.

He wanted to spit.


A/N: More in a few days.

My humble thanks to Smatterchoo for guidance. Any errors are the result of my obtuseness in following his expert help.