Notes: OK, a quick comment about why I'm doing this story the way I'm doing it.
I'm eager to get feedback, both positive and reasonable negative. But I also suspected when I first started posting this that I would also get some negative feedback in the form of 'shipper rage'. I suspected it because I've seen the same effect on other Chuck fics that deviate from a certain pattern, and I've certainly seen it in fics for other fandoms when a popular ship is questioned or deviated from. Sure enough, I've gotten a little shipper rage. 'Sarah would never stay away!' 'Sarah is Chuck's world!' Well, yeah...until Quinnzilla. Then everything changed.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Charah fics, I'm a Charah shipper myself and I have certainly enjoyed many Charah fics...but I also recognize that it's easy to let a pair of shipper glasses blind us to the parts of the canon that don't fit. I see this all the time with passionate ships, not just with Chuck.
Let's think about Sarah not coming back for a minute. I've gotten some feedback to the effect that it's OOC for Sarah not to run home to Chuck immediately upon regaining her memory. Well...wouldn't that depend on what we're comparing to?
It's certainly OOC for the Sarah of S4! We saw her go to Thailand and be ready to fight the world to be with Chuck. But is it OOC for Sarah in terms of her entire life? If we're being honest, the answer would be no. It's the last 2 or 3 years of Sarah's life that are OOC...compared to how she's lived most of her teenaged and adult life. The way Sarah behaved after Quinnzilla rampaged through her life is completely in character...for the Sarah of most of her adult life, because Quinn suppressed her memories of the past five years, and the experiences that made Sarah behaving OOC...in loving and marrying Chuck.
I probably just triggered some more shipper rage with that comment. But if you are mad at me for saying that, it is not me you have a problem with, it's the Chuck canon. A lot of shippers want to tell themselves that Sarah never really cared for anybody but Chuck, she didn't sleep with her marks in the old days, etc. I've even seen assertions occasionally that Sarah never actually had sex with Bryce or Shaw when things really get carried away.
Well, sorry, but all that just does not fly. She obviously cared for Bryce, a lot. On some level, I'm sure she loved Bryce, not as much as she came to love Chuck, but it was there. Look at her face when she sees his dead body in the Intersect room. When she chooses Chuck over Bryce, in that scene where they're both on the phone calling her at once, she has to struggle with the choice.
As for her seduction work in the old days...I am sure she did not sleep with all her marks, but there is no plausible way that she did not have to do it sometimes. She was dealing with wealthy, powerful, often corrupt people in seduction situations, those kind of people are not going to be satisfied with first base, folks. It comes with the territory, especially if she was doing a deep cover long-term operation, where she has to win the mark's trust to believe in her as a girlfriend or mistress. To make it the more so, consider this: when Quinn deceived Sarah into believing she had married Chuck as a long-term deep cover assignment, and that the culmination of her pretend marriage would be to murder the spouse...it seemed entirely plausible to her. She did not seriously freak out at the idea, or say she would never do such a thing. I don't know if the pre-Chuck Sarah ever pretended to marry anyone as part of a mission, but obviously she would have been willing to consider such a thing. Canon, folks.
Likewise, we tend to joke about the fact that Sarah is a trained assassin, or it gets used teasingly in romantic moments...but folks, jokes and warm fuzzy moments aside, what does an assassin do?! Assassins kill people, that is what they do. Yes, I am sure some of Sarah's kills were self-defense, others could arguably be justified...but at the end of the day, the CIA, and especially Langston Graham, sent Sarah Walker out to kill people they wanted dead. We already know that Graham had no problems with ordering the deaths of innocents, he tried to have Chuck himself killed! Sarah worked for Graham, he recruited her personally, do you think she didn't know what kind of person he was?
Remember one of Chuck's earliest flashes? What looks to have been a whole family poisoned to death by Sarah Walker. She claims they were assassins themselves, maybe that's true...but it's still a (probably) family poisoned to death by our sweet kind Sarah Walker. Take away the memories of the past few years, like Quinn did...and you have that earlier Sarah back again. Yeah, she still has some of her feelings for Chuck, even if she does not understand them, but feelings by themselves are a limited thing. Also, there's the issue of innocent bystanders, witnesses who saw too much, marks who know too much.
So do we really believe that pre-Chuck Sarah was a nice person, in canon? Maybe she wanted to be nice. I don't believe for a moment that she was sadistic or that she killed and betrayed for fun. Sometimes she certainly did the right thing in defiance of orders, just ask Molly and Emma. But that was also very much the exception. Remember what Casey said, Sarah's reputation, before Chuck, was 'unfriendly, unforgiving, unquestioning about her orders'. Did our Sarah knowingly kill innocent people before she met Chuck? If we're honest, it's more likely than not, given the nature of her work and the fact that she took orders from Langston Graham.
What I am getting at here is that a canon-compliant fic has to deal with the canon we have, and that canon just does not match up with the warm-and-fuzzy preferred shipper-glasses view. Yes, Chuck and Sarah had overcome the obstacles and were together and happy...and Quinnzilla arose from the depths and attacked and leveled Happy Ending City. It's what happened. With her memories gone, while they were gone, Sarah was mostly that same Sarah from the old days. She would tend to behave like that former Sarah. She would tend to mostly do the stuff the Sarah from five years before would do, if she found herself suddenly five years in the future, married to a stranger who roiled her emotions for no visible reason, and let's face it...that she would almost inevitably tend to perceive as kind of wussy, weak, soft, ineffectual. We saw her display that attitude when she tried to break out of the cell in episode 5x13 without Chuck. She thought he was weak. That's not me being anti-Sarah, that's the canon.
What would that Sarah do at the end of 5x13, if her memories did not immediately return in full with that kiss? Stay around based on the warm and fuzzies? Or try to run back to the closest thing she can find to her comfort zone? What would you do if you suddenly found yourself 5 years in the future, your current significant other dead, and you're married to a stranger you can not remember (save in bits and pieces), a stranger whose outlook on life and attitude are 180 degrees out of synch with what you've been your whole adult life? Surrounded by people who know lots and lots of things about you, and you're conditioned by years as a con artist and spy to want anonymity and secrecy? People who just can't help but expect you to be and behave like someone you have no idea how to be and who apparently is somehow the opposite of who you are?
Let's face it, folks. It if we take off the shipper glasses, it's a near certainty that Sarah either regains her full memory right away...or she leaves. Runs away as fast as she can. It's what almost anybody would do in her situation. If Bryce was still around she would most likely try to seek him out, but he's dead as far as she knows. Her friends are all 5 years older, and they know the stranger she were married to. Some of 'em were apparently bridesmaids for Sarah, if Old Sarah can imagine Carina and Zondra as bridesmaids. Heck, she can't remember the reconciliation with Zondra! She might have been told that Amy was the traitor, but her last actual memory of Zondra is one of suspicion and hostility, and he reconciliation apparently involved her stranger-husband. Even her friendships and hostilities are suddenly topsy-turvy.
Imagine that person, that confused, trying to sort it all out. Then she regains her memory...but now a lifetime of old habits have reemerged too, and she has to integrate them, if she's been Old Sarah for months, regaining her memories won't just magically restore New Sarah, unless she also lost the memory of the time since the finale. She's going to be a confused mess, a mix of life-long habits and New Sarah, even after she regained her memory...and that ignores what she might have done that would seem natural while she was Old Sarah but which New Sarah would not be happy about.
Notice that all this flows pretty naturally from the premise of the finale and a period of amnesia, and who Sarah Walker is/used to be. It emerges pretty easily from canon, whereas 'Chuck and New Sarah live happily ever after', post Quinn, is hard to picture unless we squint hard and put on our shipper glasses.
And that doesn't even touch of what might be going on in Chuck's head as 2012 unfolds.
So angry shippers, it's no use getting mad at me. I didn't wreck Happy Ending City, Quinnzilla did that. I'm just exploring what might get rebuilt atop the wreckage. Someone accused me of writing an angst-heavy story. This story is not angsty, folks. Oh, maybe a smidgen here and there, and certainly implied past angst, but that's all. Yeah, Sarah is not with Chuck (at least not as husband and wife), but she's obviously still close to him (notice that when she surprised him with a Big Damn Kiss earlier in this story, he didn't freak out), she has a little girl with him that she intensely loves and who loves her back, she's free to be with her mother and her sister semi-openly now. She has close friends, and she no longer obeys the CIA without question. Yeah, she has a rival for Chuck, but that can happen in life when happy endings get blown up and bad relationship decisions are made. Sarah is still in a way, way better place in 2020 in my world than she was in 2006!
You want angst? Wait until we're exploring the time immediately after the Quinnzilla rampage, back in 2012 when the rubble is still smoking and we're still digging the survivors out of the ruins of Happy Ending City. Then there'll be angst, believe you me. But one advantage of starting the stories in 2020 is that when we come to the really angsty stuff, at least we'll know that somewhat better times do lie ahead, even if Chuck, Sarah, and the others don't.
Do Chuck and Sarah eventually end up all the way back together, further in the future? Believe it or not, I don't know myself yet. It'll depend on how the story-logic unfolds. We'll find out together, if I can keep this thing going long enough.
So...onward!
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER SEVEN: Business and Pleasure part 5...
The Joint Intelligence Alliance Regional Headquarters, Los Angeles, CA, 10:45 a.m. local time...
When the laughter died down, Chuck tried to keep a cheerful countenance on his face, and to bring his 'Carmichael' façade back up. He must have succeeded, he reckoned, since nobody seemed to think he had behaved in any out of character (for Carmichael) way. Or at least, none of the men did. There was something about the way Agent Bennett had looked at him during the momentary laughter that he found unnerving. She had smiled, but not joined in the laughter herself, and there had been this momentary, but definite, appraising look on her face.
"Gentlemen," General Conroy commented, "if everyone is ready to return to business, we do have another issue to discuss. I will have to request that Agent Bennett leave the room, this will involve Level 10 compartmentalized information."
"I understand, Ma'am," Bennett said as she rose. "It was good to meet you, Mr. Carmichael."
"The same, Ms. Bennett," Chuck replied smoothly, although he was not completely sure he meant it. There was that about Bennett that he found unnerving.
After Bennett had left the room, General Conroy went through the usual spiel about specific security requirements, it was second nature to him after all these years. When she and the others had finished their ritual warnings, Conroy said, "Mr. Carmichael, I have been authorized by the Directory Committee to inform you that Project Omaha has been reactivated."
Chuck, in spite of his best efforts to maintain the smooth 'Carmichael' façade, felt his eyes widen and he knew he had shown some of his shock and dismay. After years of practice, he was able to cloak his tells again in only a moment, but he suspected Conroy and the CIA man, at least, had seen the reaction.
"General," Chuck said, leaning forward, "please tell me I'm misunderstanding this."
"Charles," General Conroy said, "you know that the intelligence community retains a key interest in the applications of the Intersect technology. It was only a matter of time before Omaha was resurrected. The research teams are fairly sure that they are on track to duplicate C.I.'s successes, given time and funding."
"They were sure about that the last time, too," Chuck reminded her. "How many volunteers were left comatose or permanently damaged on that round?"
"Six," Conroy admitted. "Six men were left in a vegetative state, and eleven suffered from permanent mental and physical disabilities during the last incarnation of Project Omaha. But the research team is confident that they now know why those results happened."
"And before that? In the second and first rounds of Omaha?" Chuck demanded. "If I recall correctly, there were at least seven comatose Intersect recipients during the testing rounds those times, and at least twice that many people left with irreversible damage. So that brings us up to thirty-eight people mentally or physically damaged, and a fair number of those people more or less destroyed, unless some miracle restores cognitive function in the comatose patients."
"Which is why the decision to reactivate Project Omaha was not taken lightly," General Conroy said calmly.
"The intelligence community needs the Intersect technology," the CIA man said, looking seriously at Chuck. "We need it rather desperately. That's why we keep trying it."
"Keep in mind, too, that all the test subjects on Project Omaha were volunteers, after the first round," the NSA officer commented. "We haven't repeated the mistake of the first round, with the forced recruitment."
Chuck caught himself grinding his teeth, and stopped it by force of will.
"Volunteers," Chuck mused aloud. "And I'm sure all the implications of the Intersect experiment were clearly explained to them, and the downsides of being a human Intersect explained? Or were they inexperienced personnel with heads full of 'duty to your country' and visions of being supercharged badasses dancing in their heads?
"The first Project Omaha recruitments, back around the turn of the century," Chuck continued, "were theoretically volunteers, too. Major Ivy League and other first-tier universities were the site of clandestine recruitment operations. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, they all had CIA or NSA presences looking for likely student recruits, and every one of the choices was technically a 'volunteer'."
Chuck drew a breath. Calmly, he insisted to himself.
"All the potential Omaha recruits, back in that first round, were 'volunteers' in the sense that they could theoretically say 'no' to the recruiters. There's no legal basis for compulsory CIA service."
Chuck felt a bitter laugh starting somewhere in his chest and suppressed it hard.
"But the recruiters were trained experts dealing with 21 and 22 year old students," Chuck went on. "The CIA could offer big money, big incentives, and play on patriotism, ego, excitement, whatever worked. If a student still showed signs of saying 'no', they could get nastier. There were a number of perfectly legal dirty moves they could try, and there was enough juice behind Project Omaha to get laws readily broken, too.
"The particular mental talents Omaha required were rare enough that when the recruiters found a solid candidate, they rarely were willing to let him or her go. They'd offer what they had to, and threaten what they had to, to ensure cooperation. Usually it wasn't that hard,, like I said, experts recruiting from college kids. Like you said, forced recruitment, for practical purposes."
Which would have been me, except for Bryce running interference, Chuck thought to himself. Eighteen years ago, I hated Bryce for what he did. Now, I'm actually kind of grateful to him for trying...and he did buy me five years of freedom.
"But we all know how that worked out," Chuck continued. "Dozens of candidates from across the country, not one success story. Not one. In every case, uploading the Alpha Intersect either damaged the candidates right away, or rapidly degraded their mental states afterward."
To say nothing, Chuck thought in a mixture of anger and sadness, of what happened to poor Hartley. And how many thousands of people got killed or maimed or devastated as a side effect of that? To say nothing of shredding the Bartowski family apart...
"Until you," the NSA man observed.
"Yes," Chuck acknowledged, "I was the closest thing to a success story with the Alpha Intersect."
Chuck knew that all the men in the room, and of course General Conroy, knew at the very least that he had been the first successful human Intersect. Not even all of them knew every detail, though.
"But I still had problems, eventually," Chuck went on.
"But Carmichael Industries appears to have solved most of those problems," the NSA man observed, somewhat angrily. "It's all very well for you to criticize us for reopening Project Omaha when you are sitting on the exact technology your country needs, and refusing to share it! You tell me whose fault it is if patriotic volunteers get hurt in the experiments when you could provide the answers were seeking immediately! If you did that, we wouldn't need Project Omaha!"
Chuck felt a wave of fury wash over him, at both the words and the tone from the NSA officer. For a moment, it was an effort simply to speak coherently, and it took a momentary effort of will not suppress a sudden strong urge to knock that smirk off his face with his fist.
"Do you what Dr. Bartowski originally intended the Intersect technology to be used for?" Chuck managed to get out, keeping his voice level and his fists at his sides. With an effort of will he unclenched his hands. "It was meant to be a teaching and research tool, an educational tool. As he developed it, other possibilities emerged, including use of it as a weapon. But that was not the original purpose."
"That's all very crunchy granola," the CIA officer put in, "but it was the CIA that provided most of the primary funding, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Chuck said, turning toward the CIA man, "they did. And my-that is, Dr. Bartowski understood that there would be strings attached to the money. He might have been a dreamer but he was not stupid. But the CIA went far beyond the bounds of the original agreements, tried to apply the technology years before it was ready for field testing, and ignored most of its potentials to focus purely on its use as a weapon and tactical tool.
"To make it worse," Chuck went on, "they altered its function and parameters without telling Dr. Bartowski. The Intersect technology works with the most complex structure, the most complicated thing, that is known to exist, the human body and brain. But they made changes in a cut-and-paste kind of way, took shortcuts, and then wondered what went wrong when their test subjects emerged paralyzed, blind, or with an IQ of zero."
Silence fell.
Yeah, Chuck mused, dying's one thing, but being in a coma for fifty years, or blinded, is something else. That gives even these people pause.
"So yes, C.I. has made advancements in Intersect technology," Chuck went on, turning back toward the NSA man, "Hell yes we have made advancements in Intersect technology. That's no big secret in itself, at least in the business. But my sister and I have no intention of sharing it, because we do not trust the CIA. We don't trust the Joint Alliance, we don't trust you, any of you, not to take short cuts again. We don't trust you not to use the technology to take crazy, tempting risks. We've been there!
"I've been dealing with this for thirteen years! I've been dangled from buildings because of it, I've been shot at because it, tortured because of it. I've used it to save American lives and American interests, and my sister had been doing it for over half that long, and between us we've been beaten, poisoned, tortured, shot at, we've both been shot! We've lied, cheated, and compromised our consciences to save lives and prevent catastrophes. We've lost privacy, dreams, and hopes. We've made enemies that will probably put us both in early graves, sooner or later. A good part of the time, we made things better with the CIA and the NSA and the rest of the alphabet soup working against us while we did!"
Not to mention my family torn apart, my father on the run from his own government, my mother lost in a deep cover trap for years...
"So don't you dare presume to play the patriotism card on me!" Chuck snarled. "Yes, we've got proprietary technology that we won't share, no, you can not guilt me into sharing it, and no, I won't let accept the guilt if you guys start up Project Omaha again with the old bullshit and get the same old results. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes! You play the stupid game, you win the stupid prize!"
Chuck realized he was half out of his chair, and settled back into the chair. Calm, Chuck reminded himself. Breathe deep.
"Anyway," General Conroy said into the momentary silence, "the fact remains that the Committee has decided to restore the project. From your comments, I take it that I can inform the Committee that Carmichael Industries is not interested in joint cooperation on this matter?"
Chuck let out a long sigh. "You may so inform them, General. Along with my urgent recommendation that they take no short cuts before human testing."
"I-I will pass that recommendation on," General Conroy said. "Now, we have a few other matters to discuss..."
About that same time, in another part of the JIA regional headquarters...
Agent Allessandra Bennett walked into a section of the building that would have passed for a section of a good quality university library. The walls were covered in bookshelves, there were drawers full of maps, records, and other printed materials. There were carrels with computer terminals, such as might be found in any number of libraries and laboratories. The carrels were, of course, so positioned as to make it next to impossible for anyone but the person sitting at the terminal to see what work was being done.
Though the terminals looked normal, they were in fact unusual. Their circuits were designed for minimum EM leakage, their internal workings from keyboard to screen rated TEMPEST secure. Even the keyboards were so designed that the sound pattern of their use would not reveal what was being typed to a listening microphone.
When the system had acknowledged Ms. Bennett's relevant security ratings and opened up to her, she put on a special pair of glasses. Without the glasses, the information on the display screen would have been blurry gibberish.
Bennett was curious about certain aspects of the meeting she had taken part in earlier in the day. Though her security clearances were very high, there were still always more things going on at any security level within the vast labyrinth of the American and other governments than any one person could know. So it was that she sat down at one of these carrels and inserted an ID card and typed in several strings of identifiers. A retinal scan was also required.
Moreover, Bennett was curious about the discussion that was currently occurring in her absence. It was higher classified than she was cleared for, and even if her clearance went that high, it was 'compartmentalized' material that she had no recognized 'need to know' about. Alessandra Bennett was not one to let such rules stand in her way, though, and she had ways to get around them when she wanted to use them.
An additional series of identifiers and authenticators went into the terminal, and the screen lit up with an image from the security cameras in the meeting room. There was a low but audible sound from the tiny speakers in earpieces of the glasses she wore, and Bennett was attending the meeting, totally without the awareness of the people so engaged.
The software and hardware 'back door' she was using had been installed years before, during the Directorship of Langston Graham, and she was one of a handful of agents who had been given the necessary override authenticators to make use of the feature. She idly wondered if using a special authorization from a deceased Director would carry any weight, considering it had never been formally rescinded. The answer, she knew perfectly well, was 'no', since the surveillance was unofficial and contra-regulation, and the authorization had been granted off-book.
Bennett listened to and watched the meeting, while opening another window on the terminal to review some intel that she was authorized to see. Among the subjects Bennett was curious about was the mysterious woman widely known in the intelligence community as Wild Card. She had heard of her, of course, most people at her clearance level and in her line of work had, but she had never come into any contact and she knew most of what she had heard was probably a mix of rumors.
So...
In response to her query, the screen displayed and the glasses translated:
WILD CARD: Code name, originally assigned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in early 2010. Real Name: CLASSIFIED LEVEL 12 COMPARTMENTALIZED ACCESS, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE APPROVAL REQUIRED. AGE: CLASSIFIED LEVEL 12 COMPARTMENTALIZED ACCESS, EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE APPROVAL REQUIRED.
Real name, age, date of birth, all the most relevant information was locked away behind tight security seals. Which means, Bennett mused, that the highest higher-ups know exactly who she is. If they didn't know the file would just say that it was unknown, instead of locked tight. For some reason they're protecting the identity of a wanted criminal. Most interesting.
What she did find was interesting, if not entirely revealing. Boiling down pages of data, Bennett put together a picture in her mind. It seemed that sometime in late 2009, a new player had been recognized in the 'private' ranks of the world-wide intelligence, espionage, and criminal world. At first the new player had been minor, identified at the fringes of various criminal activities and espionage operations. Second-hand reports all indicated that she was female, but little else was known. She acted as a fixer, a middle-woman, and she seemed to have access to valuable information, for a price, of course. In itself, this was not that unusual, there were many such people in the world.
She kept turning up, however, and her profile steadily rose. The turning point had apparently come in the summer of 2010. The collapse of the Ring and most of its subsidiary organizations had left much of the world-wide intel community in chaos, as well as sending shockwaves in the global criminal and corporate worlds. Struggling law enforcement and intelligence organizations, reeling from the arrest or disappearance of key members of their own ranks, struggled to clean up the mess and figure out who was doing what to whom, and why. National governments, behind the scenes, had worked together and worked against each other, trying to clean up the problem and also gain the most benefits from the reshuffled deck.
In the USA, the former organization of disaffected or corrupted personnel called FULCRUM had been disrupted, but not entirely out of business. As high-ranking Ring personnel were caught and interrogated, sometimes brutally, information had been extracted and more and more FULCRUM members had been identified and arrested or vanished. FULCRUM had already been on the ropes because of a list of agents recovered by Charles Carmichael and his handlers, Agents Walker and Casey. The list had not been complete, but it had enabled large chunks of FULCRUM to be neutralized or turned. When the new information from the capture of the highest Ring members became available, FULCRUM almost ceased to exist as a separate force. The U.S. Government had been quite ruthless in purging this problem with their own ranks.
But in all the chaos, some members got away, and much valuable information and material vanished. It was widely suspected by FBI personnel that Wild Card had managed to abscond with a collection of hard drives containing some of FULCRUM's most valuable information and data. Data about FULCRUM, about other Ring-affiliated organizations, about corporations and businesses, about organized crime in a dozen countries. Disks containing government secrets, sensitive data, lists of agents, lists of bank accounts, locations of valuable property and equipment. That information had been inconceivably valuable, and Wild Card had apparently beaten everyone to it, and made profitable use of it.
Certainly, by early 2011, Wild Card had risen to be a major private player, heading up her own organization, buying, selling, and trading information and valuable commodities. The woman herself had become something of a legend by middle 2011, a subject of intensive searches and interesting (and sometimes salacious) rumors.
The very code name 'Wild Card' had apparently been applied originally by FBI agents, out of recognition that nobody ever knew which side she would be on in any given situation. Apparently she was equally capable of working with Americans, Russians, or Chinese, she would buy or sell on the open market or on the black market. She was rumored to have turned people to act as sources and operatives in many intelligence organizations, corporations, and other power centers.
She was also known to be unpredictable personally. One case in the files Bennett read mentioned that she had actually stolen evidence out from under heavy security at Quantico...only to abort the operation in order to avoid harming FBI personnel in the course of the theft. Another instance reported that she had left piles of bodies behind in a conflict with the CIA in Japan. She had apparently been willing to expedite the provision of medical supplies after a major earthquake in Indonesia, at no charge...and she had also supplied military-grade weaponry to brutal guerillas in Africa. Nobody seemed to have a solid fix on why she did what she did. Still, while she might sometimes do apparent acts of charity, she had certainly become very wealthy. Estimates of the wealth directly or indirectly under her control ran well in excess of a billion dollars. She and her organization had apparently filled much of the vacuum left by the breakup of Volkoff Industries, nine years earlier.
The files also mentioned that Wild Card was known to have a hostile relationship with the highest ranks of the U.S. intelligence community. She seemed particularly wiling to go out of her way to frustrate them. The files were silent on the why, however, and it seemed to be more a dispute between her and the governmental organizations rather than any animus against the United States as such.
There were arrest warrants out for her, under various names, in most of the major nation-states of the world. Yet the efforts to capture her, or 'disappear' her, were half-hearted. She had made herself so very useful to many of those some governments that she was under a certain amount of unofficial protection.
Accounts of her appearance seemed to vary. Some had her as a blonde, some a redhead, some a brunette. All that claimed to have actually met her agreed that she was beautiful, but the only feature all the accounts seemed to agree on was that she wore her hair long and straight, and that she had, as one agent had reported, "...a wicked sexy smile."
Bennett smiled slightly. Males were males. Wild Card's reputation had grown, and she was by now a subject as much of erotic speculation as professional interest among many agents. Bennett knew how to read the signs, she was quite sure Wild Card maintained this aura deliberately. Apparently she was known for mysteriously appearing and disappearing, she was reported to have dozens of aliases available to her around the world. Rumor had it that she had broken as many male hearts as she had bank vaults and data files.
So, she's an 'international woman of mystery'. Interesting. That scam usually works much better for men. I wonder just what kind of person she is under the illusions? Bennett asked herself. One thing I'd bet on...Carmichael knows. It was obvious from the laughter in that meeting, men are so freaking predictable. Rumor has it that she and Carmichael often work together professionally, and obviously the higher ups think he's got more than a professional connection. Hell, it's obvious they're right, the man actually blushed when she came up! Carmichael does the 'calm cool James Bond' act well, but James Bond never blushed when someone mentioned a woman he knew.
Which is very interesting, because it's an open secret in the CIA that he and Walker are still...well, they're something, anyway, divorce or not. Very, very interesting. I wonder what Mr. Graham would say...
Bennett remembered her last briefing from Graham, just hours before the old Beta Intersect AI system had been scheduled to come on line. She had been somewhat shocked by it, though certainly she had been prepared to carry out her orders. Still, she had never dreamed this order would come against that particular person.
"...no question about it, Agent Bennett. Agent Walker has been extensively compromised. I'm quite certain of it. I've seen videos, received reports, analyzed her reports. I would have sworn it was impossible, but whatever doubt was in my mind is long gone at this stage. That's why I've convinced General Beckman to agree that we should task Agent Casey to carry out the termination order on Mr. Bartowski. I'm still amazed that this situation has arisen at all, but I can't say with certainty that Walker would actually carry out a termination order on Bartowski at this point.
"So, Agent Bennett, I want you to fly into Los Angeles ASAP. You'll receive detailed instructions upon arrival, and you will terminate Agent Walker with all deliberate speed that is consistent with secrecy. Make it look FULCRUM action, using our standard methods. Once Walker is neutralized, stand by in case my team needs backup on the final cleanup."
Bennett had known what he meant, Langston Graham had decided that after Bartowski, whoever he had been, and Agent Walker were dead, that Agent Casey was also not fully trustworthy and could not be left as an uncontrolled risk. Relations with the NSA had required that Casey's death be very carefully handled, but plans were in place to make it look as if FULCRUM operatives had killed both Walker and Casey and their asset.
The operation had been unfolding on schedule, and Bennett herself had been flying into LAX for her role, when news had come of the sabotage of the Beta Intersect AI and the death of Langston Graham. Ironically, Graham had lived only hours longer after commanding the deaths of Bartowski, Walker, and Casey, and FULCRUM had reportedly been responsible. The irony was not lost on Bennett, but she took little pleasure in it. Graham's loss, in her opinion, had been tragic.
In the confusion that had followed, the termination op had not so much been canceled as simply fallen apart. Graham's death had left Beckman dominant on the Committee, and Beckman had been much slower to kill than Graham, more sentimental. Between that and the loss of the Intersect AI, it had been necessary to spare the mysterious Bartowski anyway, since he was the only working Intersect then available.
Ironically, Bennett had worked with Sarah Walker from time to time after that, obviously making no reference to the canceled termination order. She had never met Casey, but had heard of him often.
The meeting had ended, and Bennett closed the window to the software back door. The system would keep no record of the use of this feature, it had been designed that way by order of Graham.
One thing Bennett had always wondered about was the mysterious Bartowski himself. All she had known, from an off-the-record briefing by Graham, was that he was an involuntary civilian asset and the human Intersect. She had never laid eyes on him or met him. Until today, she had never suspected that the legendary Charles Carmichael was the mysterious 'Bartowski' from the abortive termination op twelve years before.
Today, though, she had heard it admitted that Carmichael had been the first successful human Intersect, and he had confirmed that he had been in the business for 'thirteen years'. He had referred to Dr. Bartowski, the original creator of the Intersect technology, and for a split-instant he had started to say 'my'. She had caught it.
My what? My father? VERY interesting...suddenly a lot of pieces are falling into place. So Carmichael and this Bartowski are the same person! How very...odd.
Bennett shut down the computer, she had work to do, but her mind was busily considering what her next move should be.
A training room in the JIA Regional Headquarters, 11:40 a.m. local time...
"So remember," Sarah was saying to a circle of young women sitting around her, "the key to hand-to-hand combat with a male opponent is balance. You have to avoid two basic errors, either of which can and will get you crippled or killed in such a fight.
"The first is to give too much weight to the size and strength difference. You can fight a male and win, with skill, speed, and the right mindset. This last is critically important. You can't hesitate. That's true in any combat, of course, but especially so in this scenario. You also need knowledge, trained into you so that you don't even have to think about it, it's just part of you. Vulnerable points, places where intense pain can be inflicted with little force, leverage to turn the opponent's strength against him.
"The equally deadly opposite error is overconfidence," Sarah went on. "Males are stronger than females, in the vast majority of cases. Likewise they are bigger, with longer arms, longer legs, they can hit you farther away than you can hit them, and they can hit you harder than you can hit them. Contrary to what you see in the movies, size and strength do matter in combat. They matter a Hell of a lot. It's simple physics. That's why there are weight classifications in boxing. A heavyweight boxer will almost always win a match with a lightweight. Skill can offset that...up to a point. But if the skill levels and mindset and circumstances are equal, then the bigger guy will almost always beat the smaller guy in a fight, and the guy will almost always beat the girl.
"So the first rule for a woman fighting a male in hand-to-hand is, don't. Unless you have to. If you have a gun, use it. If there's a knife available, use it. Never mind pride. If there are three of you and one of him, gang up. Fair is irrelevant, and pride doesn't count. Your goal is to survive and win. If you do have to engage hand-to-hand, don't waste time and don't hold back. He can quite possibly end the fight with one solid hit. Don't give him the chance. Take him down before he has a chance to kill you."
A tone chimed from the speakers, marking the end of a class period.
"We'll continue this at our next session," Sarah told six women around her, all of them prospective trainee CATs. "Which will probably be at least a week away, possibly longer. I can't tell you where or why, of course. Class dismissed."
As the women left, the man in the doorway noted that all six were very beautiful, taller and stronger than average for females, and a couple of them looked at their teacher with something like awe.
"Still available for lunch?" Charles Carmichael asked their blonde instructor.
"I don't know, Charles," Sarah Walker replied, turning to face him as he stood in the entrance to the dojo. "I'm a little annoyed at you."
"Why would that be?" Chuck asked.
"Do you think I didn't notice you looking at Ms. Adams as she was sparring with me? Very inappropriate, Charles. She's a fellow professional and not here as eye candy for your entertainment."
"I was watching her sparring partner, thank you very much, Agent Walker," Chuck replied, as he and the blonde walked toward her office. "Purely professional interest. You make combat into an art form. It's like watching ballet."
Sarah snorted. "And you didn't notice that Adams was wearing skin-tight spandex?"
"Of course I noticed," Chuck replied. "In bright red and yellow, with vertical black stripes. Just as I noticed you were wearing a blue tank top and snug black shorts. I also noticed that the mats were green, there were three alternate entrances that could be used as exits in an emergency, and a rack of swords on one wall in case they were needed. Situational awareness, you know. My first handler made sure I mastered it."
"OK, that's the best excuse for ogling I've heard in months. I guess it'll get you off the hook. Let me change clothes and we'll go get something."
Chuck waited in her office for a few moments, until she emerged from a side-room clad in blue jeans and a T-shirt, and a pair of sneakers. It made him wish he could shed the three-piece suit, but there was no good place to change, so he figured he would just have to put up with it.
As Carmichael and Walker left the building, walking toward Carmichael's Suburban, neither was aware that Agent Bennett was watching them from behind a frosted-glass window on the third floor.
TO BE CONTINUED...