A/N: I don't read other fanfic sections, so I have no idea if the other communities are as outstanding as the Chuck writers and readers. It was great to receive so much encouragement from some old friends, as well as new faces. Constructive criticism is welcome, and encouraged. To the guest reviewer who noted the "were" where it was supposed to be "weren't" regarding Chuck's discussion with the LAPD officers, you were completely correct. I had reviewed it on the computer and on paper, and I still missed it. I'm going to redouble my efforts in proofreading to see that it doesn't happen again.
In Ch. 2, some familiar faces enter the field of play. Sarah's character's background diverges from canon, but hopefully it all makes sense why in the end. As with Ch 1, this is mostly background on the characters. Any words in italics represent the internal thoughts of the character. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to let me know your thoughts on the good or bad of the story. It will only help me to make it better.
Ch 2 The Threat
[Present Day]
Major John Casey, USMC detached duty to the NSA, strode into General Diane Beckman's office at NSA headquarters at precisely 0815 hours. He took one of the two chairs arranged in front of her desk, his back just as ramrod straight as it had been when he had walked into the room. He noted the two neatly arranged piles of folders on the polished, yet plain, oak desk. The only other items on the desktop being the two 42" UHD computer monitors.
There was none of the pretentious trappings of power that had been present on the desk of her counterpart, Langston Graham, Director of Central Intelligence at the CIA, when the Major had accompanied Gen. Beckman to Langley two weeks earlier to discuss a rogue agent's efforts to destroy a joint NSA-CIA project. Major Casey had fought to keep a sneer off of his face when he had seen the DCI's inner office. To Casey it represented an insecurity in the owner to have such an overt display of power. He clearly preferred General Beckman's office- neat, orderly, competent and confident.
"Major Casey," Beckman started, without any fanfare or wasted pleasantries. "The NSA will be solely responsible for physical security for the Intersect Project moving forward. Your recommendations will be passed along to the new liaison officer."
"We've got another situation that is developing that requires your skillsets," she continued with minimal preamble. "SigInt (signals intelligence) has recently picked up chatter that indicates that Javier Cruz has accepted a contract to carry out an assassination at the upcoming Democratic party debate."
Diane Beckmann was well aware of the Major's contempt for the hippy liberals, as he would put it, who would be attending and taking part in such an event. But she was also aware of his dedication to preserving the democracy especially from kinds of threats such as this one.
"Some of the analysts," General Beckman continued while pretending to not notice the sneer on the Major's face at the mention of analysts, "believe that there is a link between the threats to the Democratic party debate to the bomb attempt on General Stansfield from a couple of months back."
"At this time," Beckman continued, raising her voice to drown out the growling noises from her senior operator that had predictably come after she mentioned the Democratic Party, "we do not know for certain if the attack is aimed at one of the two candidates, or an attack on the debate itself. Regardless of your animosity to the Democrats, Major, we will not allow some foreign national to impact our electoral process." Between her stern tone, and the thought of a foreigner dictating to Americans who they could elect, Casey had gone quiet.
"We are anticipating additional intel to be developed within the next 90 minutes. As the threat matrix indicates an attack during the debate, we have to assume that one of the two candidates will be the primary target, with part of the objective to be public shock and chaos," the General noted as she flipped open a folder atop one of the piles on her desk. "The first candidate is Jedidiah Bartlett. Economic professor turned governor of New Hampshire. Generally popular in his home state, liberal political orientation," more grumbling came from Casey about damned hippies, "with no known threats during his term as governor. He is the mainstream candidate with a slight lead in delegates heading into the debate, with the Pennsylvania primary taking place after the debate. A primary win in Pennsylvania could lock up the nomination for Bartlett."
Beckman turned her attention to a folder on top of the second pile of documents on her desk.
"The second candidate is Charles Bartowski. Goes by 'Chuck'," Beckman noted with clear distain. "No prior political history. However, he was the one who thwarted the attempted bombing of General Stanfield back in February. Literally walked in off of the street to disarm a bomb wired up to a computer. The bomb was big enough to take out the entire hotel. After that, a couple of comments he made went viral and suddenly grassroot campaigns popped up around the country to get him to head the ticket."
"There are two indicators that would point to Mr. Bartowski as the likely target of Cruz. First is the Stanfield bombing attempt. Not only wasn't Stanfield killed, but a Serbian bomber is now serving a life sentence in a supermax prison because of the candidate's actions. Second, Bartowski is the son of Orion and CIA agent Frost."
"Oh, Christ."
"Neither Charles Bartowski nor his sister Eleanor appear to know about their parents' actual careers, and neither has had any contact with their parents who went off grid 15 years ago. Plenty of countries or groups would like to get their hands on Orion. Killing his son, especially publicly, could be a way to flush Orion out of hiding. Frost was one of us, the CIA's top agent with plenty of people who would be holding a vendetta against her. The issue is that only a handful of people know the true identities of either Frost or Orion. Did someone learn the identity of Frost or Orion and connect that to Charles Bartowski? At this point, we simply do not know."
General Beckman closed the folders in front of her and fixed John Casey with a stare as she continued.
"If Charles Bartowski is the intended target, we have to stop the threat. Not only would Congress rip the intelligence agencies to shreds if he were to be killed, whether or not it was our fault, but Orion and Frost would likely go on the warpath…literally. We would be picking up the pieces for years to come if that happens. Which it cannot."
"I want you to head up the corridor to Newark, Delaware. You will liaise with Ron Butterfield who is heading up the Secret Service detail for the debate. Get him up to speed on our signals intelligence. Keep an eye out for any threats to the event."
"Yes ma'am."
"Oh, and John?" Beckman said as she tilted her head up from the documents to give Casey another hard look.
"General?"
"No shooting anyone just because they are Democrats. The only person you are authorized to shoot on this assignment would be the assassin. Preferably before he gets a shot off at either candidate."
Sarah Walker stepped out of her Porsche into the wilting humidity of Washington DC. It was going to be another 90/90 day. 90 degrees, 90 percent humidity. She didn't know how the desk jockeys at Langley handled it. But she wasn't headed to work at Langley. Today would mark her first day of her temporary assignment to the Secret Service- a break from her regular routine of jet setting from mission to mission in one location after another. Her boss Langston Graham, current Director of the CIA, felt that a short term change was needed after the Ryker mission debacle in Hungary.
Graham told her that a burn notice had been issued for Ryker, and Sarah desperately wanted to be the one to carry out that assignment. She had had a more pressing problem at the time that she hadn't trusted her mentor Graham to know about. Sarah had managed to slip into the country, undetected, with the baby that Ryker had sought to kidnap and possibly kill, and made contact with her mom, Emma.
Sarah had known that reconnecting with her mom would be difficult, and would open up a lot of memories she had worked hard at suppressing. Seeing her mom had been harder than she had expected. Sarah had been stunned at the longing to give up her career and fix the bridge that she had thought she had burned so many years before. But as much as Sarah was tempted to stay, she knew that for the sake of the little girl, Sarah had to make yet another sacrifice in a career full of them.
Both Sarah and her mother were familiar with making sacrifices. Emma had been a single mom, raising a young daughter after a college Spring Break dalliance had resulted in an unexpected pregnancy, as well as the discovery that "Jack Burton" didn't actually exist. Emma's attraction to "Jack" had been overwhelming, and he had proven to be a smooth operator. However, when she attempted to track him down to share the news of her pregnancy several weeks later, there was no trace of any "Jack Burton". Sarah had grown up without a father, without any real male influence or relationship with any father figure.
Once Sarah had joined the CIA, she had used the Company databases to search "Jack Burton". Was it misallocation of government resources? Yes. Was Sarah worried? Not in the least. Was she successful? Also not in the least. Jack Burton was a ghost. It was an alias that cropped up from time to time, but no trace to the real man using the name. After the search, Sarah regretted her childhood accusations that her mom had kept her father from her. All the years later, the hurtful (and now provably false) accusations had created a strain between mother and daughter which Sarah now hoped to someday fix.
Her mom had taken in baby Molly, fortunately with relatively few questions. It was clear to Sarah that her mom also wanted to bridge the gap that had formed between them. Unfortunately, the timing of this discovery could not have been worse, as Sarah needed to keep her distance from Molly in order to prevent anyone at the CIA from learning that the toddler was still alive and where she was. Keeping her distance from Molly regrettably went hand in hand with keeping her distance from Emma.
Graham had delivered the news of her short term transfer to the Treasury Department with a trademark backhanded compliment. First there was the dig at her need for some time away from the field, while also noting that her skills as an elite assassin would be useful to the Secret Service in order to outthink another assassin. But his compliment at her unparalleled skills as a killer was also a subtle jab and reminder-she didn't fit in to regular society. She was his Enforcer and he expected her to get her head back in that game. The problem was that her last mission had been a mess, both in literal terms as well as in terms of political fallout.
Sarah gathered up her temporary ID to get into the headquarters for the Secret Service in the Treasury Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue just down the street from the Capitol. As she was operating stateside, she would once again be known as Sarah Walker. It would probably be the longest time she would operate under the same name since before her teenage recruitment into the CIA.
Making her way through the maze of hallways, she got to the conference room just before a meeting which was scheduled to begin. She had just placed her folder on the conference table when her new temporary boss, Ron Butterfield, made his entrance. He was no nonsense, but not hostile or arrogant. "Good, you are here. Everyone, this is Agent Sarah Walker of the CIA. She'll be joining our team for a little while. I had to call in quite a few favors to pry her away from the Agency."
It was thanks to Sarah's years of training that she didn't react to that news. So, was her new boss just blowing smoke? Was he trying to make it seem like he was in control when Director Graham had dumped her on the Secret Service after the Ryker debacle? Or did Graham just conveniently forget to tell her that her new assignment had been at the request of Special Agent Butterfield?
"Folks, we have a new, credible threat against the upcoming debate in the Democratic primary. We are working with other agencies to flesh out the threat, but indications are that Javier Cruz is targeting the debate. Cruz is a killer from higher, one of the best in the business. The problem is that we don't know for certain which candidate he is after, or if he's going after the debate in general."
"Agent Walker, I've been told that you've tracked Cruz in the past. What can you tell us about his profile?"
Sarah watched as all the eyes in the room focused on her. The men and women in the room were all veteran agents who dedicated their lives to keeping their charges safe.
"Unfortunately," Sarah began, speaking in cool measured tones, "Cruz is one of the top two or three assassins in the world. And one of the biggest reasons why he's among the best is that he's completely unpredictable. Sometimes he uses a bomb in the home or office, sometimes it's a car bomb, sometimes it's poison. We tried to grab him in Cartagena when he disguised himself as a member of a mariachi band. He had fast acting poison darts that he shot from a device built into his guitar. He's shot people up close with a pistol, and at a distance with a long gun. About the only weapon we haven't heard of him using is a crossbow."
"If the intel turns out to be credible," Butterfield responded, "and we are dealing with Cruz, we're going to look to you, Agent Walker, to run point on the mission. If it isn't Cruz, your skills and experience will still make you an invaluable and welcome addition to our team, for as long as we can keep you from the CIA."
"We're going to head up to Delaware to do advance recon for the debate site. I've got a meeting set in the morning with NSA Agent John Casey," Agent Butterfield continued. "He's going to update me on the NSA's latest intel on the threat chatter."
"Agent Walker, you, me, Gomez and Pugh will prepare a report on why Mr. Bartowski might be the target. Krinsky, Sakay, Lancaster you're going to do a threat assessment on Bartlett."
Sarah grabbed the packet on Charles Bartowski, flicking the folder open to see a photo of a young man with an easy smile and warm eyes. She knew perfectly well that looks could be deceiving-how many of her targets had assumed that she was some simpering blonde who couldn't harm a fly, only to discover that the beautiful wrapping covered up a lethal capacity? Bartowski's bio concluded that he was a nice guy. So why would a top international assassin target him? Then again, how many nice guys were involved in presidential politics?
Reading on, she noted that Bartowski was a wildly successful videogame creator/programmer who had stumbled into fame by saving hundreds of lives (including several prominent members of the military) by putting his computer skills to use in defusing a bomb. Press reports indicated that he was both liked and respected by his peers in the gaming industry. He has an older sister whom he frequently mentions in interviews, and appears genuinely close to. Both parents went missing when he was very young. Neither parent appeared to be affluent or politically connected in any way. In fact, there was surprisingly little data on either his father or mother.
Bartowski had been engaged to his college sweetheart, but he called off the wedding after his fiancé's boss was discovered dead while naked in her bed when the two were on a "business" trip to Paris. Looks like he would like that city about as much as I do, Sarah thought as her Red Test leapt to mind, despite how hard she tried to repress the memory. Bartowski never publicly revealed any details on the split, but there was an interview with his business partner/childhood best friend Morgan Grimes, who ripped into "a heartless ghoul who betrayed the greatest guy in the world." Any subsequent interviews only resulted in "no comment" from Grimes. Bartowski simply never answered any questions on the subject.
Looking at the photo, Sarah was surprised to realize that her protectee (there was one idea that would take some getting used to- the objective being saving a life rather than taking it) was around her age. Her first thought at looking at the photo was "warmth". Warm eyes, honey brown in color with with flecks of green scattered throughout. A warm, open smile. Unlike the career politicians that Sarah had crossed paths with in her career, Chuck didn't have the smooth, polished, practiced smile that appeared to be photogenic. Instead, the protectee was shown with a big grin that looked like he was sharing a joke with everyone rather than the bland politician smile.
And then there were those glorious curls. She'd never seen curls that angled off in every possible direction-and this from a woman who had suffered more than her share of bad home perms as a teenager. Like his smile, Bartowski's hair wasn't remotely sophisticated or polished. But, like his smile, it came across as unmistakably genuine, real, rather than crafted to project a desired image. Simply put, the man was the real thing. Unabashedly nerdy, unmistakably intelligent, brave yet humble. She did not find it remotely surprising that he had found so many followers so quickly in grassroots campaigns.
She read up everything that she could get her hands on. For background research, strictly research. She learned of him making a fortune on videogames. His educational software that was revolutionizing the way children were being taught fundamentals from math to grammar to geography.
She learned that his first video game had premiered at ComicCon in her hometown of San Diego. Despite growing up there, Sarah hadn't ever attended the convention and wasn't clear on what went on there. Within an hour of him setting up his booth, the lines to play the demo had grown so long that the convention organizers had to arrange for a new location for the Carmichael Industries display just to handle crowd control. Overnight, Chuck Bartowski had gone from unknown to multimillionaire. However, when he was interviewed about the breakout success at ComicCon, he just kept talking about how amazing it was to be in the same building as so many of his childhood idols. He had completely geeked out in a thoroughly adorable (adorable?) way, completely focused on others instead of himself.
While still fresh in her mind, Sarah shot a text off to a guy she had used in tech support at the CIA Science & Technology Directorate. She was sure he would know about ComicCon, maybe even Carmichael Industries if she was lucky. He would be able to give her some background intel not found in these government reports. While waiting on his response, she returned to the briefing materials.
Sarah turned to the protectee's educational profile. Before reviewing the academic transcripts, Sarah's stomach plummeted when she saw a photograph of Bartowski with his fraternity brothers. He had his arm wrapped around none other than Bryce Larkin, and both young men had huge matching grins on their faces. That could complicate matters. She was fascinated with the image of her former partner as a younger man. The Andersons were over. The lines had definitely been blurred when they were operating as a cover couple- but there hadn't been any real relationship outside of work. She had always preferred to work alone, even though Bryce had hinted that he was open to taking on more missions together. But then he had said that he was going on a quick solo mission, Operation Sandwall, and shortly thereafter he had completely dropped off of the grid.
Chuck's academic transcripts were beyond impressive. They were almost intimidating. Graduated magna cum laude with a BS in Computer Engineering. She was surprised to see that he had taken a course with Professor George Flemming, who Sarah knew to be a CIA recruiter. She noted that Chuck had stellar scores in the class. Looking into the classified CIA packet on the protectee, Sarah saw that Flemming had reported Chuck to be unfit for recruitment to the Agency. He was reported to be too open, too trusting and too incapable of accepting that wrong actions could be right in certain circumstances. He'll probably hate me. That was the key to my recruitment by Langston Graham himself.
Feeling slightly dejected, Sarah next moved on to read about the protectee's family. His parents were merely listed as Stephen and Mary Bartowski, current location: unknown. There were no details such as date of birth, social security numbers, or any sign that they were still living. The lack of information was surprising, unprecedented even. Suspecting that something was off, she shot off another text to her tech support guy to do a little digging on the absent parents.
The details on when the parents vanished were sketchy at best. However, from what Sarah could piece together, it appeared that both parents were gone by the time that Eleanor was 15 and Chuck was 12. It was a little surprising that the siblings had not gone into a group home for foster care. The first official notice of the parents being absent was a school report on Chuck Bartowski's file noting that his sister Eleanor had been appointed his legal guardian on the day she turned 18. Sarah suspected that the high school guidance counsel may have played a role, considering the glowing reviews for the then children, replete with references to a stable, loving home.
The next information was on his only sibling. Eleanor Faye Bartowski nee Woodcomb. The article in Wired had noted the fact that she had raised her brother since she was just fifteen. As if it weren't enough of an accomplishment to single-handedly raise a brother who did so well academically that he got a full ride scholarship to Stanford, she had also managed to graduate with honors from UCLA and then UCLA Medical School. She currently worked as a board certified neurosurgeon, alternating between patient care and research. The bio packet noted that she had married Devon Woodcomb, a board certified cardiothoracic surgeon who had attended medical school with her.
As Sarah started to read the brief biography on Devon Woodcomb, text messages from her tech support started coming in fast and furiously. Apparently ComicCon was a much bigger deal to the nerds in S&T than to field agents. From the sheer number of text messages, it appeared that she had made her guy's week by asking for information on the convention. Message after message poured in about what ComicCon entailed, its history, the various panels for tv shows and movies, as well as comic books and videogames. She even got an entire message dedicated to describing some of the cosplay costumes that fans would wear to the event. She texted a follow up request for an outline of some of the more popular comic book histories, as she hadn't paid any attention to comics during her own childhood.
More messages came through with information about Carmichael Industries. Not surprisingly tech support guys were big fans of video games. The respect that he had for "Chuck" was evident in the messages describing the educational software innovations, and the development of an entire educational software division for the company that focused on optimizing the learning experience while ensuring the latest academic techniques were being integrated. The entire philosophy appeared to be aimed at helping teachers make learning both more fun and more rewarding for their students.
While reading up on the philanthropic activities of her protectee, Sarah had to wonder whether such a thoroughly good person could truly exist. Just as Sarah was pondering the difference between her career path and Chuck's, she realized that the text messages had abruptly stopped. Her suspicion increased when she got one final, cryptic message: "No further information known on Stephen or Mary Bartowski. Going to meet with my supervisor at the Inspector General's office, no further communication possible." It appeared as though she had just burned a trusted contact, and she had little reason as to why. Sarah was convinced that there was something suspicious about Bartowski's parents, but evidently the CIA had no interest in allowing anyone to know what that was-not even the woman tasked with the job of keeping him alive.
Sarah next looked up information the ex-fiancée. Just for the sake of being thorough. Jill Roberts. Aka Skank. Oops, that's not in the official file. Although it should be. From the photographs in the file, Chuck had clearly been crazy about her even though the photographs appeared to show that she wasn't as besotted as he was. I guess that she's ok looking, for a brunette. The file materials largely consisted of articles about Chuck and/or Carmichael Industries that made reference to her. She had graduated from Stanford at the same time as Bartowski, with an honors in biomedical engineering. Looks like Chuck is into strong, intelligent, independent women.
Roberts had landed a job straight out of college with a major pharmaceutical giant in their research division. She had been working under-under is one way of putting it-Dr. Guy LaFleur on infectious disease research. Two years after graduation there was a newspaper announcement of the engagement of Dr. Jill Roberts to Chuck Bartowski. Six months afterwards, hotel security found her trapped under the naked body of LaFleur, who was determined to have died of a heart attack while having intercourse. She and her boss had been in Paris at a conference, evidently mixing business with pleasure. The news report on LaFleur's death had merely noted that Roberts had been engaged to another man at the time of LaFleur's passing.