A/N: Our story begins to reveal its direction as some backstory comes into view.
The Missionary
And you know I'll be fine
Just don't ask me how it's going
Gimme time, gimme time
'Cause I want you to see
'Round the world, 'round the world
Is a tangled up necklace of pearls
How will you go?
How will you go?
Drive through the wind and the rain
Cover it up
Cover it up
I'll find you a shelter to sleep in
— How Will You Go? Crowded House
Chapter Fifteen: Personal Mission
Casey stopped the van and Chuck slid the side door open. He extended his hand to Sarah and she took it, surprised. He helped her into the van, dropped her hand, and said to Casey while still looking at her: "She's in. Let's go."
"So we know when Bob's likely moving the shipment," Casey said, as he drove the van onto the street.
Sarah's mind was racing. She was trying to decide what to say and how to say it.
Was that really Bryce?
It looked like him — it sounded like him. She had half-recognized his voice before she saw him through the keyhole. But Bryce was dead. Dead. Casey said so, and he was not likely to make a mistake about death, no more than she was.
What did it mean that Bryce wasn't in the Intersect? Chuck had not mentioned that fact to her; she inferred it.
Had he mentioned it to Casey? Did Beckman know?
Sarah was sure only of one thing. Her new mission, the one she was assigning herself: her personal mission: she was going to keep Chuck safe. Maybe she could not make up for all she had done, her spy past, the way she had lived, her obedience to orders she should have questioned, maybe she could not make up for what she had done to Chuck, the seduction and the pulled gun. But she responded to him at her deepest levels, to his aliveness, to his goodness, and she had from the start — despite his (understandable) unkindnesses to her. Just being around him made her more alive, made her better.
She was going to trust that responsiveness, trust herself for once, and be her own master.
I will protect Chuck Bartowski.
That personal mission might overlap with the one Graham had given her, but if the missions came into conflict — when they came into conflict — she would choose Chuck, her personal mission, and not Graham, her Agency mission. She had a feeling she had assigned herself her own most difficult mission.
"I have to tell you something, and you're likely not going to believe it. I saw the man Bob met with. It was Bryce Larkin."
"Fuck," Casey spat at the windshield, "that can't be. He's dead."
Chuck stared at Sarah, wordless and otherwise reactionless.
Sarah went on. "I'm not doubting you saw someone dead, and someone who looked like Bryce, Casey, but I don't think it was Bryce. I think Bryce was in Bob's den, talking to Bob about the shipment."
Casey was grinding his teeth. When Sarah finished, he spoke through his teeth, quietly at first, his tone begrudging. "If you say so, after all, you're the only one here with biblical knowledge of the shithead. I'll trust your lady parts. — Fuck, I wish he would just get dead and stay dead. He's like Ralph Lauren's Frankenstein monster; he stinks of cologne, not the grave."
Sarah saw Chuck's eyes narrow at Casey's phrasing but there was nothing she could do about it now. Biblical knowledge. Lady Parts. "Well, even if I'm wrong, and maybe I am, we should assume it's Bryce until we have reason to believe otherwise. The question is: why is he both dead and alive, so to speak? If it wasn't Bryce who was killed at the Intersect Lab, and somebody was killed there, I'm sure Casey is right about that, who was it, and why was he a Bryce look-a-like?"
Chuck gave her a grim, sardonic smile. "I knew a lot of guys at Stanford who would've killed to be a Bryce look-a-like."
"Bryce, assuming it was Bryce, told Bob he was here to oversee the shipment, that Bob is being considered for promotion."
"That guy?" Chuck asked, "Mattress Bob's involved with spies?"
Sarah nodded sharply. "There's more than Mattresses to Bob. His public persona is just that, a persona, a mask. It dropped in the house and we shouldn't underestimate him. Bryce's tone was arrogant, superior, as always, but it also contained a trace of respect. Bob's a disgusting pig, but that's not all he is. I suspect he's a dangerous man. I was lucky to get out of there."
Chuck had gestured for Sarah to take the passenger seat. He sat down on a stool in the rear.
"What would you have done if you hadn't gotten out?"
He asked as if the answer did not matter to him, but he asked. Sarah looked back at him as she clicked her seatbelt into place.
"I'd have found a way out of there before anything happened," she said in exasperated embarrassment. "Given all you know about me, Chuck, about us," she glanced and gestured at Casey, "you should know that 'seduction' is a technical term in spying. 'Seduction aims at securing compliance, often by means of promises the seducer usually has no intention of keeping.' That's textbook. The promise isn't always sexual. And I don't sleep with marks; I break that promise if I make it; I never let things go that far."
Chuck's frown deepened in contradiction but he said nothing. Sarah knew what was on his mind, the memory of her hand insistent on his crotch after El Compadre.
She was glad for the dark of the van, glad he could not see her face. She had been avoiding any serious conversation about that. She had no idea how to explain that date to herself, much less to Chuck. The whole night was an indistinguishable blur of orders and desires, all crisscrossed and knotted.
Okay, so spies do have motives as well as orders. Sometimes orders camouflage other things, maybe.
Chuck shrugged. "Okay, so now that I've been told the textbook, what do we do about Bryce Larkin?"
Casey answered, glancing at Sarah. "Well, if we assume that Walker's lower abdomen litmus test has correctly identified Larkin, then we not only need to know why his duplicate is dead, we need to know why the original is here. It doesn't seem like it's tied to Chuck. Our involvement with Mattress Bob is coincidental, an accident of a furniture sales page. So, presumably, he's here for Mattress Bob and the shipment, although we don't know whether he was telling Bob the whole truth or any of the truth. But Larkin showing up just before the shipment is due — that does not seem like a coincidence, no matter what he told Bob."
"No, it doesn't," Sarah agreed.
Chuck spoke — sheepishly. "Oh, by the way, there's…um…a high probability, given the day and time that Sarah found, that Bob is using his warehouse on the northernmost side of the city. I know the address."
Both Sarah and Casey wheeled toward Chuck, Casey for only a second before facing the road again.
"You're just figuring that out now?" Sarah asked, perplexed.
Chuck shook his head. "No, I knew it as soon as you told us the date and time; I just had…Well, I was distracted; all this is new to me. And…the visions are getting more…familiar. I know when I'm having them, but it's possible for me to back-burner them; they don't dominate my consciousness." He shrugged.
In the brief glimpse of his face in passing headlights, Sarah thought she saw Chuck redden. She wasn't sure if the blush was for himself or for her.
Casey broke in. "So, we know where Larkin and Bob will be tomorrow night. We need to tell Beckman and Graham to get a team ready. We can put a stop to the shipment and maybe catch Larkin and Bob at the same time. — Larkin can explain himself to me."
Sarah saw Chuck gulp at the serrated edge in Casey's voice. After a moment, Sarah took a breath and faced Chuck. "Bryce isn't in the Intersect, is he?"
Casey's head snapped up; he stared into the rearview at Chuck Sarah noted it but did not react. Casey's eyes slipped to her before they went back to the road.
Chuck glanced away. "No — for the Intersect, it's like he never existed. It doesn't make any sense to me. How could he have been erased? His files don't exist in the program, and he doesn't show up in anyone else's files, your's or anyone's, all the files that would've mentioned him are gone too. It would take programming of enormous reach and complexity to work at that level of redaction."
"I don't get it." Chuck paused, then went on, his voice changing. "I even dug out some of my Stanford stuff, memorabilia, I guess, one night last week. I found a couple of photos with Bryce in them, but seeing him triggered nothing, at least nothing in the Intersect."
Sarah wondered what the pictures did trigger. But she stayed with the topic at hand. "So, a duplicate Bryce shows up at the Intersect Lab, steals the Intersect, destroys the Lab, and then sends the Intersect to Chuck. The Intersect Chuck downloads contains no Bryce, original or duplicate. And now original Bryce is in LA, dealing with Mattress Bob, but presumably not here for Chuck. Does that sum it up?"
Chuck nodded and shrugged at once.
A moment later, Casey's brow furrowed. "Is it possible that the original Bryce has no idea of what duplicate Bryce did?".
Sarah shook her head. "I have no idea. This makes less than zero sense. One Bryce was enough." She saw Chuck studying her narrowly.
Casey turned the van into the Bedroom Dreaming parking lot. It was deserted, dark, except for Sarah's car. "Here we are. I need to return the van to the NSA and get my car. Can you take the kid with you? I'll meet you at the apartment complex."
"Okay," Sarah said, getting out. "We'll be at my place. Text me when you get there. We can report to Beckman and Graham."
"Right. See you in a bit."
Chuck slid the rear door open and got out. Sarah opened her car with the key fob and they both got inside.
"I'm not sure it's safe for me to get into a car with you," Chuck said with a forced laugh.
Sarah glared at him. "Chuck, can't we get past that night?"
He looked at her. She held his eyes, willing for the first time to face him and that night. Chuck shook his head.
"I was actually thinking about our trip to Providence St. Joe's. The time you pulled the trigger. Twice."
Sarah turned away from Chuck and started the car. She wasn't sure what to say to him. But then she remembered him studying her in the van. She guided the car from the lot carefully and then spoke — also carefully.
"So, Casey was right. Bryce and I — we were partners. And more. For a while. It never amounted to much, really, although I guess it sounds awful to say that. He left one day, vanished, went rogue, and I never heard from him, or even heard about him, until Graham called me and sent me to you."
Chuck listened without turning toward her. He was staring ahead.
"At Stanford, Bryce dated, you know, dated, a lot of women. He had his choice of the whole campus, basically. But he never cared much about any of them. I don't know if he was — is — capable of caring much about anyone other than himself."
Chuck shifted in his seat. "The sad thing is I knew that and I was still his friend. I never called him out on his bullshit." Chuck's voice was filled with regretful self-annoyance.
"But karma came back to bite me on the ass — when he ended up with Jill. I knew how that would end, how it did end. It didn't last. But that just made it worse, because Jill should have known too; she was dating me while I was his friend; his behavior was on display. — Sorry, I don't know if saying this makes things better or worse. Not amounting to much — that's Bryce's M.O.; it wasn't you, Sarah. I don't know. He always seemed driven by some ambition, some restlessness, that I couldn't name or fathom…The next thing, the next girl..."
Sarah nodded as her breath caught. He called her Sarah. She had expected the re-advent of Bryce to create more difficulties between her and Chuck, but it didn't seem to have done so.
Not wanting to press her luck, Sarah softly said, "Thanks, Chuck, that's true, and that does make things better. But I've been over him for a long time. His ambition never included me in any permanent role, and I knew that, sorry to say, but I ignored it.
"But I meant what I said — one Bryce is enough. I've had my fill. I don't need to duplicate the experience. And I didn't recognize him by any lower abdomen litmus test. I just used my ears and my eyes."
Chuck smiled for a second before he pursed his lips thoughtfully. They drove on in silence for a few minutes.
Sarah ventured in a slightly different direction: "So, you told Casey that Bryce wasn't in the Intersect?" Him and not me — was unspoken but audible.
Inhaling, Chuck replied, "Yes, but it's not like he's my confidant. I wasn't sure how to understand your relationship with Bryce. You seemed upset by what Casey said in the Home Theater room."
"I was, but not really for Bryce's sake. It was everything, everything that night and…everything leading up to it."
She stalled, then went on, her voice thickening. "I'd been sad for a long time."
Chuck turned to look at her, staring at her, as if he had never seen her before.
She glanced at him nervously, feeling exposed, expecting him to say something, but, after a stretched moment, he turned back to the windshield.
At the complex, they got out and walked to Sarah's apartment. She opened the door and Chuck followed her inside. She realized that she had yet to spend a night there; she'd just moved in.
Other than changing her clothes there before going to Bedroom Dreaming, she had done nothing to settle in. A few boxes were stacked in the living room. The kitchen was bare other than her coffee maker on the counter. Her small box of kitchen things was beside it. She had coffee in the box.
"I don't have anything to offer but water or coffee," she said loudly since Chuck was still in the living room. "Do you want anything?"
"Coffee, I guess, since I doubt I'll be sleeping anytime soon," he called back. She opened the box, took out the metal can she used to store coffee, found two cups, and quickly got the coffee started.
When it began to drip, she left the kitchen. She found Chuck sitting on one end of her couch, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed, and she was suddenly very aware of the romper, her high heels.
"I'm going to change. Coffee's on and there are cups beside the pot."
He nodded and she left the room. She found a sweatshirt and sweatpants and put them on, remaining barefoot, her feet exhausted from long hours in the dramatic heels.
Back in the living room, she found Chuck seated as before, but he had pulled up a box and two cups of coffee were sitting on its taped top. He looked up again, and she was glad she had changed. The romper seemed to bring Mattress Bob into the apartment.
Sarah sat down near him on the couch, close enough to reach her coffee. She picked it up and took a sip and sighed.
Chuck gazed into his cup. "So — this has been your life for — a decade?"
Sarah nodded. "Yes."
Chuck changed position on the couch, sitting up and angling himself toward her. "You must've started like, right out of high school." Chuck's words sounded like a comment but she knew they were a question.
She put down her cup and pulled her knees up to her chest, encircling them with her arms. "I was young."
"And being a spy, that was, like, your dream job?"
Hearing it put like that made Sarah laugh out loud. "No, absolutely not. My hiring is a long story, not one I'm up to tonight." She reached for her cup again.
"But if it's not your dream job, why do you keep doing it? Missions like tonight…"
Sarah gave Chuck a flat look over her coffee cup. "Why were you still at the Buy More?"
Chuck laughed softly. "Inertia, I guess, sloth. It was a way to keep from facing myself, facing what happened at Stanford. It was something to do, it filled my days. What's that phrase, from my Eighteenth Century Lit class at Stanford? — 'The vacuity of existence.' I guess we all need something to do, some way to fill the hours."
Sarah sipped her coffee. "The vacuity of existence." She spoke the phrase aloud then rolled it around in her mind.
Sitting there on the couch, Chuck beside her, committed to her new, personal mission, her life seemed less vacuous than before.
Her phone buzzed. Casey was back. "Casey?" Chuck asked.
"Yes, we should go to his place."
Casey let them in with a soft grunt. If he noticed Sarah's change of clothes, he gave no signal of it, unless the grunt was also supposed to signal that.
When they were inside, he started, bluntly: "Walker, does Graham know that Larkin's missing from the Intersect?"
Sarah glanced at Chuck before she answered. "No, at least, I didn't tell him." Sarah could feel Chuck's eyes on her.
Casey's eyes widened just a bit. He cleared his throat. "Well, Beckman does know; I told her. She's been trying to figure out what it means. So far, she's had no luck. I'm sure it was news to her. Beckman can make the hard calls, but she can't lie as well as Graham."
Sarah knew there was a concession in this, in Casey sharing it with her.
"I don't think we need to tell Graham yet," Sarah said. "We need to cope with our immediate situation, Bryce and Bob, and the shipment, and then we can decide what to do next."
Chuck was looking from one of them to the other. They both looked at him.
He put his hands out, palms up. "I'll do whatever the two of you want, but I'd like it if the three of us," with his index finger he drew a circle in the air, uniting them, "tried to be open with each other."
Sarah and Casey looked at each other before nodding.
"So," Casey said, rubbing his hands together, "we keep the stuff about Larkin and the Intersect to ourselves?"
Sarah and Chuck both nodded.
Casey sat down at his computer and began working. A minute later, Beckman and Graham were on a split-screen.
Graham was tapping his desk with a pencil. He was unsure about the whole Mattress Bob mission. He was unsure about Overlook altogether.
Dammit all, how did I get here?
Graham reluctantly recollected. Reviewing past mistakes was his least favorite pastime.
The Intersect had been a thorn in Graham's flesh forever — or it seemed like it.
It had started years ago, with another Bartowski, Chuck's father, Stephen.
The initial work on the project was not even known by the name 'Intersect'. It was just Project X. Stephen Bartowski worked on it at his home in Tarzana and at UCLA. From the beginning, Stephen Bartowski was a pain in the ass. Graham had managed to control him by using an agent, Mary Rotterdam, code name Frost. He sent her to Stephen to seduce him — only she did the job too well, or failed miserably, depending on how you looked at it; it rebounded on her.
Stephen Bartowski had seduced her right back.
Graham had not seen that coming, not at all. Until Stephen, Frost had been as dedicated to her job as Walker and had seemed completely committed, completely controlled. But she had fallen in love with her mark, and from then on Graham was no longer giving orders to Frost, he was negotiating with Frost and her husband. Stephen proved barely manageable through Frost. But then Frost disappeared on a mission — she kept working, taking missions even after marriage, even after her children were born. Shortly after she disappeared, Stephen disappeared too.
There was no one who could take up Project X, and so Graham scrapped it, sealing Stephen's notes and work, and putting it all away.
Until Vito Zarnow showed up, and Graham hired him, realizing he stumbled onto someone who was almost as capable as Stephen had been. Graham resurrected Project X, unsealed Stephen's work, renaming it the Intersect Project, and he built the lab and put Zarnow in charge. But the Project still seemed doomed. Zarnow made progress, but the Intersect, in Zarnow's new version, proved deadly. No one could download it and live, no one could carry it.
And then Bryce Larkin, who had gone rogue months before, and vanished, reappeared and destroyed the Lab, sending the only Intersect copy to the son of its creator, Chuck Bartowski. When Graham found out who had received the Intersect, he had been caught between morbid laughter and frustrated rage. Fitting. This is how the whole thing would go, in a massive circle, Ouroboros, Bartowski to Bartowski, father to son. A fucking Russian novel, Turgenev with a sci-fi twist.
Graham had told none of this to Beckman, of course. He had brought her on board after Zarnow told him that NSA data was necessary to fully equip an Intersect, and he had given her almost none of the backstory. Now, Chuck Bartowski had the Intersect and he was proving as wilful, and as headstrong, as his father — except he was not designing the program, he was living it. It was almost too bad that Stephen was dead, as Graham assumed he was since only Stephen could have appreciated the overwhelming, nauseating irony of Graham's last few weeks.
Graham was stuck with another Bartowski. Graham's hope had been to effectively bunker Bartowski in Burbank, guarded by Walker and Casey. But now Bartowski was actually out on a mission, and Graham had to admit that he had no idea where any of this was going to go. Zarnow had built an Intersect according to Graham's wishes, one predicated on the assumption that the recipient of it would already be a spy, already loyal to Graham.
Now, Graham was effectively reduced to negotiating again, this time with the son, not the father. Luckily, Graham had a wild card. Walker. She knew nothing about how far back this extended, about Stephen or Mary Bartowski. The one thing Walker knew was how to take orders. She might have shown some reluctance earlier, but her training, her habits, would always win.
Graham had scrapped Project X. He could scrap the Intersect Project too, if it, if Bartowski, proved too hard to manage. Scrapping the Intersect would mean terminating Bartowski. Walker was there, close to the Intersect.
When — if — when — it was time to scrap the Intersect, she could put a bullet in Bartowski's head and that would be that. Maybe another Zarnow would come along, maybe it could all be started again, but maybe Chuck Bartowski was proof that the whole damn thing, from the beginning, had been star-crossed, cursed. Maybe it was Graham's punishment for hubris. But the next few weeks would presumably tell the tale. Bartowski had been useful so far but Graham had a feeling that the honeymoon with Appolcalypse Enterprises would end.
What a damn tangle.
Graham's computer beeped. Agent Casey was signaling. Graham signed on, Beckman did too, from her office, and the screen lit up, showing Walker, Casey, and Bartowski.
Beckman had been on the phone with Stanfield. Graham had never come through with what Stanfield wanted, a chance to convey his personal thanks to the man and woman who had saved him. He was demanding that chance. Somehow, he had discovered that Beckman was involved with the two of them, and now Stanfield was hounding her.
She had long had a good relationship with Stanfield, and she promised him that she would manufacture an opportunity for Stanfield to convey his thanks. Beckman was herself even more unhappy with Graham than usual.
He was slow to share the data Bartowski was producing. Beckman was sure that Graham was sifting through it before sharing it with her. The man was a control freak. But she had a notion. Maybe she could use Stanfield to her advantage, find a way to use Stanfield, and for his added weight, his additional stars, to balance the scales currently tipped in Graham's favor.
Beckman joined the video conference, still thinking about how Stanfield might be of use.
Graham spoke first. "So, you are back from your meeting with Mattress Bob?"
Sarah stepped forward, ignoring Graham's question and only then noticing her feet were still bare.
"We believe we know where the shipment will be and when it will be there. But we have a piece of surprising intelligence. Mattress Bob met with a man at his house tonight. I was there — I can provide more details about that later — and I saw the man. It was Bryce Larkin."
Graham's jaw dropped.
Beckman hissed "What the hell?" in a disbelieving whisper.
"I'm sure it was him," Sarah added, anticipating Graham's next question.
"But Larkin is dead. Buried." Beckman said, her voice flat, her face discomposed.
"It can't be…" Graham choked out.
"Somebody is dead. Somebody was buried. Somebody who looked like Bryce, but it wasn't Bryce. Bryce Larkin's not in the ground — he's in LA. If you don't believe it, exhume the body you buried."
Casey added, in the following silence. "I trust Agent Walker on this. If she says it was Larkin, it was Larkin."
For the first time when facing Langston Graham, Sarah felt free — strangely free. She was not Graham's. Her self-possession made her dizzy. She had no idea what this new freedom might demand of her. But Chuck felt solid standing near her.
"I say it was Bryce. — Do you have any idea what this means, sir?"
A/N: We're nearing the end of this arc. See you next time for Chapter 16, Warehouse Blues.
