CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 14: Bad Pennies Part 1...
A secret location, shortly past eight a.m. local time...
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the constant miniaturization of and increase in power of computers had become a cliché. By 2020, individual smartphones and wristwatches had computing power greater than that of supercomputer complexes in previous decades. Yet for some purposes, computers still had to be sizeable. The most powerful cutting edge supercomputers were still room-sized or bigger, even in 2020. There were various technical reasons why this was necessary.
In a secret location, known only to a very few very senior members of Carmichael Industries, there was a computer complex unlike even the cutting edge supercomputers used for weather forecasting, protein folding modeling, nuclear reaction simulations, and such like esoterica. This supercomputer was fundamentally different from the others in both its hardware and its software, it embodied principles quite different than those of conventional computing. Only a handful of machines like it had ever existed, and none had ever been built that equaled the power or subtle performance possible with this machine.
Like more conventional cutting-edge supercomputers, though, this one was large. In fact, it was the size of a small building, or a good-sized high school gymnasium. For all its size, though, its components were among the most miniaturized ever created. Two different requirements had gone into its design, it had to be as small as possible to reduce the signal lag time between its components, or else it would be too slow to ever be useful. Yet it had to be big enough to let the waste heat escape, or the machine would melt down in operation. Much of its surroundings were filled with cooling systems and other support equipment to let the great machine work at all.
This supercomputer was the Epsilon Intersect-AI, and it was possibly Carmichael Industries' greatest secret. Built on the same principles as the previous incarnations of such machines, based on the seminal work of Dr. Stephen Bartowski, this version of the system was the most capable yet constructed. It was constantly fed an endless stream of information, from countless sources. Reports from agents employed by the Carmichaels went into it. News feeds from all over the world, of every slant and nature, constantly went into it. Left wing and right wing, American and British and French and Russian and Israeli and South African and Australian and others, constantly fed into it. Reports and statistics from governments and corporations went into it. Intercepted secret communications between governments, and within governments, went into it. All this information flowed in, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.
As it was designed to do, the great Intersect-AI sifted this information, seeking patterns and connections. It sorted the data into countless categories, even the results of its own previous outputs fed back in as feedback to refine the models and the results. From time to time, the machine made predictions, identified emerging patterns that no human being would ever be able to detect simply because of the vast volume of data necessary to find them, and sometimes because the patterns were such that they were not obvious to human thought processes.
A staff of programmers and engineers constantly tended the machine, they and the security personnel who guarded it were isolated from the outside world, for the most part. Carmichael Industries paid them very well, and the isolation and security requirements had been made clear to them when they accepted the job. For many of them, the exhilaration of the technical challenge was itself enough reason to accept the job, even aside from the money.
Today, the Epsilon Intersect-AI was signaling the emergence of a new pattern, a potential threat situation, in Russia and Eastern Europe. The details were not clear, and tracking down the source of the warning would have involved sifting through endless terabytes of data. The Epsilon System was not infallible, of course. No human creation was or ever could be infallible. It was right more often than it was wrong, however, and it was right often enough in such warnings that they had to be taken seriously.
The man on whom the responsibility of initially evaluating the warning fell was named Manoosh Depak, and he was both excited and frustrated when he saw the printout on his desk as he came in for the morning shift as Operations Supervisor.
The technical man in him was excited by the latest demonstration of the Epsilon System's abilities, abilities that he himself had helped bring into existence. But he also had to evaluate how much urgency to apply to the warning. The supercomputer could do many things, but it was ultimately still just a machine. It had no judgement, no ability to grasp the subtleties of human affairs, save in purely statistical terms. Its output had to be evaluated by humans, and that was no small challenge considering how obscure and unclear the source of the patterns in the great machine could be.
Depak took a long drink of the very strong coffee he had brought with him to his desk, and began to challenging task of deciding how seriously to take the yellow alert warning from the Epsilon Machine.
JIA Regional Headquarters, Los Angeles, CA, 9:00 a.m. local time...
Sarah Walker pulled her Porsche into a parking slot near the L.A. Regional Headquarters of the JIA, parked the vehicle, and emerged from it, all while automatically and unobviously surveying the area for threats. This was second nature to her after so many years in the business, and she did it without even thinking about doing it. Satisfied that there was no visible danger, the tall blonde locked her car, leaving it behind as she walked across the parking lot toward the corner stair that would take her to ground level.
Sarah could have had an assigned parking place nearer the building if she had so wished, but she preferred to park in a different place every day. It made her less of a stable target. One of the basic principles of being a 'harder target' was to make a point of not following an invariant routine. Don't park in the same place every day, don't eat at the same restaurant on the same day every week, etc.
Plus parking farther from the door is good exercise, Sarah mused, as she walked over the immaculate grounds to the entry of the building. Every bit helps.
Several young men, relatively new NSA secret branch recruits, were manning the security checkpoints on the first level. They maintained an impeccably professional attitude, but more than a few appreciative gazes followed the blonde woman as she crossed toward the main elevators. Clad in an office appropriate, if slightly snug, skirt and a form-fitting blouse, wearing modestly high heels that clicked as she walked, her golden hair flowing down her back, she was a sight to appreciate. The fact that she was almost old enough to be the mother of a few of those young men did little to reduce the appreciation.
Another day, Sarah Walker might have appreciated the appreciation. She was not unaware of her own beauty, both for its own sake and its utility as a weapon. Today, though, her mind was elsewhere.
The elevator deposited Sarah on the tenth floor, and a short walk down a corridor brought her to a conventional-seeming small conference room. As she approached the door to the conference room, Zondra emerged from a connecting corridor, and nodded at Sarah.
"You too?" Zondra asked.
"Yeah," Sarah said. "I was supposed to be off today, but the phone rang and awakened me out of a sound sleep on the first morning I managed to sleep in in weeks. They wouldn't tell me what's going on, just told me to get into here ASAP."
I finally managed to get to sleep, to actually sleep through the night, for the first time since Chuck told me about Dad, and so of course they call and wake me, Sarah mused sourly.
"I was putting my trainees through a discussion on how to recognize honey trapping used on them," Zondra said, as she and Sarah took seats in the conference room, across a small table from a video screen. "when I got a similar call. Cancel all classes, confine my trainees to base, and get over here as fast as traffic would let me."
"What about Carina?"
"What about my sweet charming self?" Carina Miller said as she came through the door. Unlike Sarah and Zondra, she looked tired and jet-lagged. Sarah recalled a moment later that Carina had been pursuing a private lead on about her recent surgery and had been flying in that morning.
Seeing the look on Sarah's face, Carina nodded. "Yeah, my phone rang just as I was getting off the plane. I was hoping to get some beauty sleep before I had to come in to work, but somebody doesn't seem to care about my poor tired body."
"And you're not used to people not caring about your body," Zondra teased. "Probably good for you."
"Don't be jealous, Zonnie," Carina advised, sitting on the other side of Sarah from Zondra. "It's not my fault that I was born a natural redhead, or that people appreciate natural redheads!"
"Jealous? Me? Carina, you've been letting the red dye on your hair sink into your brain again!" Zondra retorted with a wicked grin. "I'm a Brooklyn girl! I don't get jealous of flighty redheads!"
"Enough," Sarah advised her friends. Though she tried to sound irritated, in fact it was somewhat soothing to listen to Zondra and Carina bicker, they had been having that same argument, more or less, for the better part of two decades. IT was part of the background of her world.
The screen lit up, and General Conroy, somewhat larger than life, appeared in front of the three women.
"Good morning, CATs," General Conroy said. "Thank you for coming so quickly. Buckle in, we've got quite a bit of territory to cover and not much time.
"Several days ago, there was a well-funded and well-organized operation focused on the Ebony One black prison site, and several high-security secret prisoners were successfully extracted. Among them were Augusto Gaez, and your former teammate from the original CATS."
"Amy and Gaez are out?!" Sarah exclaimed in shock. Suddenly Sarah understood why the JIA communications networks had been so jammed and slow for the past few days.
"Yes," Conroy confirmed. "Both were successfully extracted, along with four other prisoners. I am not at liberty to tell you all of their identities, though Sarah, I am told you are familiar with Dr. Jonas Zarnow."
A photographic image of Dr. Zarnow appeared on the screen, alongside Gaez and Amy. Sarah drew in a breath.
"Has Mr. Carmichael been informed of this?" Sarah demanded, memories of that nearly disastrous early operation as Chuck's hander rushing back. She recalled her confusion and fear as had talked a terrified Chuck through landing a helicopter, and her anger over the accusations from Casey and her hurt and anger that Chuck had believed them...
Of course he would, Sarah thought sadly, why wouldn't he? But that's neither here nor there, the important thing is that Zarnow knows about Chuck! He knows that Chuck was and is a human Intersect!
"He will be, Sarah," Conroy said. "We're still in the process of figuring out who needs to be told and telling them. For the moment, though, your primary issue is Gaez and Amy."
"Do we know who extracted them?" Zondra asked, face hard as she looked at the image of Amy on the screen.
"No," Conroy admitted, "though we have our suspicions, which I can't go into right now. What we do know is that Gaez has been spotted. Our agents in Moscow have confirmed his presence in Moscow, less than six hours ago. We don't know why, we don't know what he's doing. But we have photographic and signature confirmation of his presence."
Sarah nodded. Signature confirmation meant that he had signed his name to something, somewhere, and an agent had gotten a copy of it and checked the signature against his recorded handwriting.
"Russia was never Gaez' primary operations zone," Carina said darkly. "Now he's spotted there just days after his extraction? This has 'trap' written all over it."
"In giant capital letters," Zondra agreed. "Is there any trace of Amy?"
Sarah winced slightly as the hatred in her tone as she said that name. Not that she did not understand it, or share it to some degree.
"No trace of Amy," Conroy said grimly. "As for it being a trap, I tend to agree, CATs. But we're going to risk tripping the trap. Sometimes the best way to deal with a trap is to pretend to walk into it. Which is exactly what you three are going to do.
"I want you three to take your best subordinate CAT team, and go yourselves to Moscow. If this is Gaez letting himself be seen to lure us in, we'll let you three do the same thing. Go in quietly, but make just enough noise that Gaez will know you're in Moscow. Have your support team stay hard out of sight until they're needed. Select the technical support you need as well, but be on your way to Moscow ASAP. We're going to trip the trap and hope to trap the trapper."
Conroy paused, as if speaking that last sentence had broken her chain of thought. Sarah hardly noticed, most of her mind was whirling around the order to 'go to Moscow'. For once, that was an order she could truthfully say part of her was very glad to receive!
"General, what about the ongoing training exercises-" Zondra started to say, but Conroy cut her off.
"On hold until further notice," Conroy said. "And as well as taking your best field team with you, put the other women on alert. We don't know what's going on, or what may happen, you need to have your personnel ready to act quickly if need be."
The screen went dark, leaving the Senior CATs looking at each other in a mixture of shock, anger, and dismay.
"Damn," Zondra finally said. "Amy loose?! And she's been loose for days and they're only just now telling us?!"
"I like that 'trap the trapper' bit," Carina said darkly. "We're going to him, it's a lot easier to trap someone if you make him come to you!"
"Our best team," Sarah said thoughtfully, "probably CAT Two."
Carina nodded. The various CAT squads had their specialties, all of them were competent, but CAT Two was probably the best of the best, and the ones with the broadest, most general skills and experience. Also, the Seniors knew that all four members of CAT Two were fluent in Russian, which would be a major consideration.
"They're working counter-intel against a jihadis group in Yemen right now," Zondra said. "If we pull 'em suddenly, word's gonna spread fast."
"Let it," Carina advised. "The general said she wanted us to make some noise, so let's make some noise. Pull them in, and let the rumors fly. In fact, I think we should skip the usual maneuvering when we put the rest of the girls on alert, and just bring them in, let them drop what they're doing when the reasonably can and report in to base. Only the most basic attention to secrecy, let lots of rumors fly. If Gaez showing himself was bait for us, we can let some rumors move that we're taking the bait, as counter-bait."
"Sounds good to me," Sarah nodded after a moment of thought. "How fast can we have CAT Two back at base and ready to go?"
"Maybe two days," Carina said, after a moment of thought, "if they don't worry too much about hiding their movements. Three days and we could all be on planes for Moscow. Should we fly separately like usual, or really be blatant about it and all go on the same plane?"
"Let's not be stupid here," Zondra advised. "We don't know if this is a trap aimed at us in particular or not, but either way all three of us on one plane, under these conditions, is tempting fate. We should go on separate planes, but one of us should make a really noticeable entrance when she arrives.
"You want that spot, Sarah?" Zondra went on.
"I...don't think so," Sarah said. "This once, I think I'd rather go in quietly."
"Fine with me, I'll take the spotlight," Carina said with a grin. "It's been dull lately."
Zondra and Sarah nodded in agreement. As the three of them worked out their preliminary plans, a substantial part of Sarah's mind was elsewhere.
Moscow! Part of me thinks I should have already been there, now I've been ordered to go! Which if I play it right should give me a chance to find out what's going on with Dad, and make sure he's safe from those three-piece-suit wearing thugs around him, not to mention safe from Jill! But it's better I slip into town relatively quietly.
Sarah forced herself to focus on the discussion, as close as she was to Zondra and Carina, even they knew nothing about her con artist father, and she wanted to keep it that way. So it was best to keep her full attention on the conversation and not leave them wondering why Sarah Walker's head was not in the game.
Carmichael Estates, CA, 1:45 p.m. local time...
"All right, girls, it's almost time for me to go," Chuck Bartowski was saying to his daughters, as the three of them were standing in his living room. "I should only be gone for a few days, and while I'm gone, Uncle Awesome and Aunt Emma are in charge. I want you to promise me you'll both do what they say!"
"I promise, Daddy!" Charlotte-Mary said.
"Me too, Dad," Stephanie added.
Devon had arrived back home from Italy the day before, and would be staying at Carmichael Estates for a few days before joining Ellie again in the field. That meant he could supervise his children and nieces while Chuck was away. Emma would also help him keep track of the kids and keep things in order, because Devon, like all of them, was a busy man with many things on his plate.
Thank Heaven for Emma! Chuck thought, for perhaps the millionth time in several years.
"All right," Chuck said, looking down at the sad-faced six-year-olds. It was flattering that his daughters hated to see him leave, but it also made leaving hard! There was always a big part of him what wanted to stay with his girls, no matter where he was going or why he had to go.
"Now I want you both to promise me that you'll stay off the roof while I'm gone," Chuck added.
"Daddy, how long are you gonna keep remindin' us a that?!" Charlotte-Mary demanded.
"Until I'm sure you'll both stay off the roof!" Chuck laughed.
"When we get big," Stephanie announced, "we're gonna go with you on these trips!"
Chuck looked down at the little brunette, and smiled and knelt down to hug her. He was of distinctly mixed feelings about the possibility of what she had just said, though he knew it might just happen.
After hugging Stephanie he squeezed Charlotte-Mary close, and stood up again.
"Will you say 'hi' to Mommy for me?" Stephanie asked as she looked up at him. "And tell I love her!"
"Of course I will, baby," Chuck promised.
It took a few more minutes for Chuck to finally get away from the house, and he was already missing his girls he drove his Suburban through the gates of Carmichael Estates and onto the main road that would eventually bring him to LAX.
A safehouse in Moscow, Russian Federation, 1:00 a.m. local time...
"I want to see Amy," Gaez said.
"All in good time, Mr. Gaez," Tommy Delgado informed him. "All in good time. Rest assured that she is quite well."
For now, Gaez heard the implied threat in Delgado's calm, even tone, even after Delgado left the room. As long as I do as I'm told.
Gaez was well aware that he had been extracted from Ebony One as part of a larger plan by the mysterious FULCRUM organization that seemed to have reemerged from nowhere. He had heard rumors about FULCRUM back in the days when he was the head of the Gentle Hand, but he had never had any direct dealings with them, or at least, if he had, he had not been aware of their FULCRUM affiliation.
It was not that Gaez was not happy to be out of the steel cage that had been his home, prison, and world for so many years. Nor was he sorry to be reunited with his lover. He and Amy had occasionally been able to see each other during their time in prison, it had been a useful carrot to encourage Gaez to share information, and he had a great deal of information to share. But now their situation was not necessarily much better than it had been before.
He had been afraid that the passage of so many years behind bars would cool Amy's feelings toward him, but that did not appear to be the case! Of course she was a masterful liar. Gaez knew that it was always possible that she was 'playing' him, she had certainly played many other people masterfully. It was possible, but Gaez tended to doubt it.
FULCRUM had certainly treated them both well since they were extracted. Their quarters were comfortable, the food ample and excellent, especially by comparison with prison fare. They had been able to spend some time together before this current mission to Moscow had begun. But now contact was limited, and Gaez knew damned well why. Amy was their 'leverage' over him to keep him cooperative. As long as he served their purposes and was useful to them, he was fairly sure he and Amy would both be safe and well-treated.
But that could change in a heart beat if Gaez defied his new 'employers', and it could also change if at any time they became more of a liability than an asset to FULCRUM. Gaez knew that for the moment, his best bet to protect himself and Amy lay in being cooperative and obedient, but he also knew they needed to be watching for a chance to escape. They were still prisoners, after all, it was simply that instead of being illegally held prisoners of the U.S. intelligence community, they were well-treated prisoners of FULCRUM.
When they had arrived in Moscow, Gaez and his 'handler' Delgado had driven through the maze of streets and Gaez had seen, to his surprise and irritation, that right there in Moscow was a Buy-More store! It was almost as if the corporation had opened a store in Moscow simply to add to his irritation. To make it worse, Delgado had been playing American music on the car's sound system, and Gaez had been forced to sit through a truly ghastly musical styling called Hairspray and Handcuffs, by a band called Jeffster. Apparently that ghastly noise was currently the number two song in the USA!
Delgado had taken them to a FULCRUM safehouse, and there they had at least been spared the torment of that song. It was peaceful and quiet, and they had planned out the carefully-chosen public appearances that were met to draw American attention. As they did, Delgado had impressed Gaez in two ways.
The first was competence. The man was smart, focused, and professional. He did not miss a single detail, he overlooked nothing. The team he had assembled to assist them in this operation were professional and disciplined and knew what they were doing, the whole plan was going off without a single glitch. Delgado would have made a good Gentle Hand operative, Gaez knew, back in the day.
The other impression Gaez took from Delgado was that the man was sociopathically cold. Ruthless. That he would balk at nothing to achieve his goals. Gaez suspected that killing human beings meant no more to Delgado than killing an insect did. He did not think that Delgado was cruel, particularly. It was not cruelty that motivated the man, it was utter, total indifference to the feelings and needs of others. Gaez doubted that Delgado would ever inflict pain or suffering simply for pleasure, unless perhaps in revenge for something. Gaez likewise doubted that there was any pain or suffering that Delgado would hesitate to inflict if it somehow served his own goals.
Gaez was not shocked, he was no saint himself. He had killed many people, ordered the deaths of many more. He was himself ruthless. But he knew that Delgado was colder and more ruthless than he was.
Still, this plan was not without its compensations. Gaez was not averse to the idea of some revenge on those damnable CATS. He shook his head in amusement. What idiot came up with that name?! Clandestine Attack Team Squad?! It has to have been chosen simply to spell C.A.T.S. Did the CIA let a 13 year old boy name the project? Why did those women spend so much time chasing me when they could have been pursuing whoever gave them that name? Even my Amy gets angry when she thinks about that!
Gaez had been told that now the three remaining members of that original group had organized and trained dozens more women, but they had changed the name so that at least the 'squad' was no longer part of the name. CATs instead of CATS. What an earth-shaking improvement, Gaez thought in amusement.
Still, they caused me so much trouble, cost me so much money, so much time, and then so many years in that damned cell. No, it would not bother me at all to repay them for their kindness, and I know Amy feels the same. But I must keep my priorities straight. Revenge is all very well, but perhaps I can use them if they do come to Moscow, use them and FULCRUM against each other? If I can break my Amy and myself away from all of them that way...yes, if I can do it, better to trade off revenge for escape. I can always seek revenge later, once Amy and I are free and safe.
So...FULCRUM puts me out there as bait for the original CATS. I have my own reasons for wanting revenge on those women, but what is FULCRUM's interest? Why go to so much trouble to draw their attention? Are the CATs somehow a major problem or threat to FULCRUM, more so than the rest of the American intelligence community? It's hard to see why they would be...but then again, who would have thought that the original team could make so much trouble for the Gentle Hand? Yet they became a thorn, no more like a knife, in our sides, constantly. So perhaps FULCRUM's concern is justified.
Gaez shrugged to himself. No way to know for sure. I'll have to play this by ear, as I've heard Amy say. Keep my eyes and ears open, wait for opportunities but be ready to seize them if they come. Perhaps we can still be truly free, if we play our cards right.
Gaez walked to the window and looked out at the city of Moscow, a cold, thoughtful look on his face as he did.
TO BE CONTINUED...