A/N We're diverging a bit from the plot of the movie here, since the poor agent who got caught smuggling drugs in the movie never appeared again, while I have a use for Kieran Ryker. This section is a bit shorter than the first, since it has a different and sillier tone to it than what comes next. At least I expect it will, I don't know what's going to happen next. While I don't want Chuck to be a total fool I also don't want the suave Piranha-guy he became. He's just an unappreciated genius-nerd slacker. Jeff and Lester also make a brief appearance, but that's my own notion. One of my readers mentioned Mr. Bean, and I thought of a use for the bizarre pair.
Kieran Ryker prowled the concourses at Bob Hope International, head down and eyes open. The only 9:30 arrival was this way, but there was still a lot of–shit! The crowd melted away, and he had to melt away with it or be exposed. He took a few steps back and stopped.
A woman was standing by a row of seats, yelling at a man lying on the ground.
Bryce Larkin?
Ryker watched the woman–not the woman, too early yet–probably some skirt Larkin couldn't keep his hands off of, stalk away. Larkin got up and Ryker looked elsewhere, watching the reflection in a window as Larkin checked his watch and walked away in some other direction. Ryker followed.
The spy stared up into the face of the man who'd made such a shameless spectacle of himself just moments before. His eyes were so brown, so warm, so incredibly penetrating. She felt like he was looking through her, but that couldn't be true, could it? Nobody looked through her, nobody saw anything that she didn't want them to see. So hard to tear away from that gaze.
What did he say? Love your...shoes?
She looked down, saw their feet, standing toe to toe, his chucks black against her yellow ones. She looked back up, taking her time to scan the entire long...well, maybe not the entire long length of him, but certainly a good 90, 95%–what they hell am I thinking?
She frowned, and he frowned with her.
She smiled, and his response lit the airport.
"Chuck!" shouted a woman's voice over the hum of the crowd, the roaring of her own pulse in her ears. "There you are!"
The brown eyes pulled away from her and she reached out to...to...
The tall brunet's arm was clutched in the grip of an equally brown-haired woman, not equally tall, but ever so much more determined. "She's not the one!" The woman turned to her with a guilty smile. "Please, excuse my brother, we're here to meet someone else, but apparently the only word he heard was 'blonde'. Safe travels."
The spy watched as the woman walked away, with the man in tow, looking back at her and waving apologetically. As she debated whether to wave back, two people detached themselves from the crowd and followed the pair of 'siblings', pausing to give her a once-over as they passed.
She turned away and...a woman brushed by, forcing her to step back or be bowled over. The spy turned back around, pretending to be annoyed by the woman's rudeness, and saw the male member of the pair up ahead suddenly stop and check six. The woman who'd brushed by suddenly found great interest in a display of hats. When the man turned back, she lost that sudden interest and resumed her pursuit. The spy took her place at the hat rack, trying one on and checking her reflection in the mirror.
Bryce Larkin stopped at a small kiosk, not to buy anything (don't be silly), but to use their handy mirrors to repair his appearance. A spill on the floor, a bang on the head, those he could live with, but being yelled at by El really shook him up. A little touch-up would calm his nerves, plus he did look a little abused.
Feeling refreshed he continued his stroll, realizing once he'd gotten there that he was coincidentally in the very debarkation lounge he'd been intending to visit all along. He checked his watch as people began to come out. Just for the hell of it–the Atlantic could wait–he decided to stay a bit and look around, see who, if anybody, he might have chosen. Businessmen and tourists, for the most part, none of them stood out. Okay, a black guy in a green suit, he might have done.
Tall and blonde, she stepped out onto the floor as if challenging anyone to make noise about her leopard-skin coat, and Bryce had no doubt it was real. She walked forward slowly, and somehow it seemed as if no one dared stand between them. As if she was gliding across the floor, right to where he stood.
"Is all that drool for me?" she asked.
"Drool?" shouted a voice from somewhere. "Coming through, coming through. Scuze me, drool patrol." A man with frizzy tangled hair and dressed in the uniform of airport services swept through with a mop. "Sorry folks, I'll be out of your way in a minute."
"Jeffery!" shouted a thin man in a similar uniform from one of the entrances. "I told you the meet-cute was in 2B!"
"2B, or not 2B, what is the question?" Jeffery plopped his mop in the bucket and looked up at the pair of confused travelers. "Sorry, it's LA, I just had to say it."
"Sorry," said the thin man as Jeffery ambled past, grinning hideously. "Please, continue. Meeting, and, and cuting." He bowed himself out obsequiously.
"It never ends," wailed Jeffery, to no one.
Bryce looked at the blonde in the coat. "Well."
"Well," she said back, with a twinkle in her eye. "I came here to meet somebody..."
"I'm somebody," said Bryce, with a hopeful smile.
"Indeed you are, Mister...?"
"Larkin. Bryce Larkin."
She laughed, a light musical tinkle. "You watch too many spy movies, Mr. Larkin."
"It's LA, or so I'm told. I just had to say it, Miss...?"
"Forrest," she said, taking his arm. "Call me Alex."
Kieran Ryker narrowed his eyes as he watched Larkin and that had to be the bitch agent who'd stolen his phone stroll away, as if they had not a care in the world. He'd just have to prove them wrong, wouldn't he?
"God-damn it," muttered El as she stood in the doorway, watching them go. She dug her hands in her hair and pulled, hard. "What are the fricking odds!"
"Odds of what?" asked Chuck, popping out from behind her. "I could calculate them for you, if I knew all the parameters."
El put her hands down, and took a deep breath, settling herself. "The odds of my friend Alex missing her flight."
Chuck tried to look over her shoulder. "You didn't see her?"
"Nope." El grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. "Time to go home, little brother. Time and pot roast wait for no man."
"Especially if that man is Morgan."
"You're using the term loosely. Excuse us," said El to a short Asian lady standing there doing something with her phone, like everyone seemed to be doing nowadays.
"Uh-huh," Anna mumbled, stepping aside.
"Pot roast," muttered Jim Rye as they walked away. "God damn."
"Talk to me when it's sushi."
"Damn it. Scatter," said Decker. "They're coming back!"
Not just coming back. The tall guy was looking around like a dog looking for a bone. Searching the crowd. Not good. Half way across the room he slipped and fell, catching his arms on two airport services guys who just happened to be there, and dragging them down with him.
"Ow!" The tall guy fished under his knee and pulled out a little brown pellet. From his pocket he got a little pill bottle, twisted off the cap with two fingers, and dropped it in. "Sorry."
"Chuck." The woman pulled him up yet again, watching as the two airport guys stood awkwardly. "Are you all right?"
Strangely, the two men seemed more embarrassed by the event than she was, ducking their heads and making it difficult for her see their faces. "Okay," she said as they waved her off.
Decker waited until they'd left the building before he pulled out his phone and started typing. You 2 are in the van. Get checked for bugs. Send Vincent out.
"Who the hell is this guy, boss?" said Laszlo, as Gruber and Delgado walked away in spy shame. They'd been made.
"I don't know, said Decker, "But we'd better find out, or we may as well stay out here."
Outside the airport...
El and Chuck stood on the airport sidewalk. "I don't suppose you remember where we parked?"
Chuck paused in checking his email on his phone, thought about it a second. "Nope."
El sighed. "Of course not. You remember everything except what's useful."
"Define useful."
"Remembering where we parked in a sea of almost identical cars, for a start."
"If I could do that I wouldn't be fixing phones at a Buy More, sis. I'd be out in the world, charging top dollar at a kiosk somewhere, like maybe right over there." He pointed at a corner where a person stood waiting.
On the corner outside the airport, waiting...
Fixing phones?
The spy turned and looked at him.
"Holy crap, it's her!" said Chuck, pulling out of El's grasp to walk over to the woman a completely non-yellow outfit. "Hi."
"Hi," she said back.
"You're not yellow."
"No, I'm not." She took off her new hat, letting her long blonde hair fall. "Except here."
He looked down. "I liked the shoes."
"Oh, I still have those," she said, unzipping her bag so he could see. They were the only things she still had from her former outfit. She'd chastised herself for being sentimental in the bathroom where she'd changed, but now she could chastise herself right back that they were operationally useful, so there.
"Chuck," said the long-suffering El. She looked the woman over, recognizing her hair at least, and she saw the shoes in the bag. "Hello again. Please excuse my brother here. He's like a puppy sometimes."
"I like puppies."
"Then you'll like me," said Chuck. "El says I'm like a puppy sometimes."
"I do like you, Chuck."
El blew hair out of her eyes, except there was no hair in her eyes. "Fine, then, not to make too fine a point of it, what's your name? I don't need to know who you are or anything, but who are you?"
"Who am I? Just a woman on a street corner, dependent on the kindness of strangers."
"Well, there's no one stranger than us," said Chuck proudly.
"I have little to me beyond my name, and you may have that." The woman offered her empty hand. "Sarah Walker."
"Okay, Sarah Walker," said El, taking her hand. "I'm Ellie Bartowski, and this is my brother Chuck."
"I didn't know anybody stilled named their kids Chuck," said Sarah.
"They didn't," said Chuck, also taking her hand, but not letting go of it. "They named me Charles. My friend Morgan named me Chuck."
"His parents found him in a dumpster," said Ellie. "You can let go now, Chuck."
"Do I have to?"
"No," said Sarah.
"Yes," said Ellie. "If we want to welcome your new friend to LA with a home-cooked meal, we have to get home to cook it, and to do that we need to find our car."
"Four cars left from pole K-27," said Chuck absently, staring at Sarah's blue eyes like a man seeing God.
"Chuck!" Ellie snapped. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"
"You never asked."
They held the conference in the van, Delgado driving as the team used multiple cars to trail the target while avoiding detection by Rye and Wu.
"What have you got?" asked Shaw.
Decker put up a photo so he wouldn't have to look at his boss' creepy bland face. A man held upright by a woman, looking drunk. "Charles Bartowski. Twenty-seven years old, unmarried. Works in the Burbank Buy More, lives in Echo Park, a suburb of Los Angeles."
"So why was he there? No, don't answer that. The arrival thing had to be a bluff. Typical Graham. Anything on him?"
Decker looked up. Gruber shook his head. "No, sir, not in our files, and the police don't have anything either. Not surprising, he's an exceptional talent. Completely spontaneously, he made his every move since the initial meet look totally natural, as if he really was a harmless fool."
Decker flashed several images, photos of Bartowski touching his head, buying the bottle, struggling with the bottle, picking up the pills, scrambling in all directions. A series of images focused on his backside, and Decker clicked through those quickly. "Sorry, sir. For a moment only Sasha could engage."
"Understood. You've got 24 hours, Decker. We've got to know by tomorrow morning who he is and what he's up to."
Gruber started typing faster.
"You're not giving us much time."
"You have to move fast. We have to find out what he knows before we neutralize him."
"Why wait?"
"I need to know what he knows, so I can present it myself. Divert blame from us while boosting my chances to take the top seat once Graham falls."
"Yes sir."
"Leave no stone unturned but keep it quiet. Don't blow our covers any more than you have." Shaw flashed a picture of his own, Bartowski falling with Delgado and Gruber. Decker went cold, wondering how Shaw had acquired the picture, and from whom. So many weasels in this business. Shaw's face took over the screen. "Wu and Rye don't know you, keep it that way."
"Yes sir."
"Decker?"
"Sir?"
"Why a Buy More geek?"
A/N2 In the movie they did a very artistic switching back and forth between the airport lobby and the report to the boss, using the still photos of the Tall Blond making silly faces. The aide was an observer to the everything that happened in the film, reporting to his boss. I realized that it would make things easier to swap out Bryce for Sarah as the spy-observer, so he's gone off to find a motel somewhere. His story will continue off-screen.
