A/N: My last chapter didn't include the statement that I don't own Chuck. I'm sure you were all confused by that, and considered the possibility that I had suddenly acquired Chuck. No such luck. But, just to be sure, for this chapter I must double down. So, I still don't own Chuck, but two times now.
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A big, jovial voice behind Chuck and Sarah said, "Wow, my lucky day. Agent Sarah Walker. The star of the CIA. And you must be Carmichael. Hey, guys."
They spun to face the speaker. Sarah's hand had moved slightly, so that she could draw her gun instantly if need be. The speaker was a tall, fat man in his forties, brown hair and brown eyes twinkling with humor. He was wearing khakis, a blue polo shirt stretched tight and a gray sports jacket. Slung over one shoulder was a beat-up messenger bag. He didn't move, but he had clearly seen Sarah's defensive posture.
She relaxed as she recognized him with a sudden smile, "Hello, Jim." She stepped forward to give him a quick hug. "Chuck, this is Jim Mead. Jim, Charles Carmichael. We call him Chuck."
Chuck shook the man's hand and said, "How do you do?" Chuck noted that while he was certainly overweight, his hand was hard.
"Much better now that I've seen you two. Things here are truly boring," he said, smiling.
"Chuck, Jim is one of us. CIA. We met in...well, we met a couple of years ago. What are you doing here, Jim?"
"Oh, come on, Sarah. You're kidding, right? You can't swing a dead cat around here without running into a CIA agent...or FSB, or MSS, or whatever. It's like Lisbon in the '40's." He laughed loudly at his own joke. "I'm supposed to be a mid-level State Department drone, sent here to take some International Relations courses and meet some of the other IR students. But come on, let's walk and talk. Which way are you heading?"
"We're going to Jordan," said Chuck. The three of them began to walk, Sarah allowing the other two to lead the way.
"Where they keep the psychology department. So, you guys just went through Fleming's car. I'm not a genius, but ...whatever. Good luck finding him. Call if you need a hand."
"You know about Fleming?" asked Sarah.
"Sure. After he split some of the local Agency idiots, the kids, came by to ask a bunch of questions. Interview witnesses...that sort of thing. They clued in me and the other Company people on campus, but none of us knew what he was up to or where he might be hiding. Keep our eyes open, that sort of thing. But nothing. Sorry."
"How many other Agency guys on campus?" asked Chuck.
"Probably about a dozen or so, spread among all the schools of the University. Anyway, I'm guessing that Graham called you guys to fly up from LA when Fleming didn't surface after a couple of days. See what you superstars could unearth."
"Superstars, Jim? You flatter us," asked Sarah, with a hint of embarrassment.
"Oh, come on, Sarah. It's not like there's a press release or something, but you know the Company grapevine. You guys are burning it up. Andric, La Ciudad, that Triad thing you just pulled off. Anyone not jealous is starstruck. Maybe some are both." He turned to Chuck and said, with good humor and a twinkle in his eye, "And you seem to be a fucking whiz-kid." Chuck looked embarrassed. Mead clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Enjoy it now, Chuck. One day you'll fuck up and hope like hell they remember the past successes." He said it chuckling, but Chuck sensed a real message being conveyed.
"But you asked a different question. What am I doing here? In the spring I had a rough mission in...well, in the field. Graham sent me here to recuperate. But now I'm bored and hoping to convince him to let me get back out in the field again when the semester ends.
"So, here's the deal. We've been hitting on academia since Donovan set up the OSS. All of us alphabet guys, CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, all of us, have people here. Pentagon. State Department. Everybody. And not just Stanford. All the top schools have cohorts of intelligence folks. The smarts of the academic community is the main draw, but some of us come for the activity by the watering hole. Free flow of information is the life blood of places like this. Is it any surprise you would find guys like us here? After 9-11 schools are much more open to us. And, with globalization, the number of foreign students studying here is huge and growing. Students like that pay full freight, so schools love them. I'm here to recruit some of the foreign ministry students from Russia or China or wherever."
He started to laugh, which seemed to be his normal approach to life. "Of course,...well, early in the semester I spent six weeks seducing one of the Russian guys. It was going so well. Fucking awesome." He was laughing and sparkling with the humor of his story. "Came time to make the pitch. I got all ready. Took him to a nice, quiet place in Palo Alto to pop the question. And..."
Chuck said, "Yeah?"
"He asked me first," Mead said, laughing his ass off. His belly shaking with mirth. "He asked me. He wasn't Foreign Ministry. He was FSB. He thought he was recruiting me, while I thought I was recruiting him. Two fat old spies just wasting each other's time. Stupid shit. That kind of thing happens all the time here now. Let me tell you, when we realized what had happened, we got totally shitfaced drunk and I don't even remember which one of us paid the bill. I was hung over for a week."
"Do you recruit American's too?" asked Chuck.
"Oh, sure," said Mead. "Graduate students in Islam, the Middle East, IR guys, the sciences, you name it. Foreign born citizen academics who might have contacts in their country of origin. We have interest in all those guys. And gals. Sometimes as assets. Sometimes to come work for us. Spies. Analysts. Whatever."
"Undergraduates too?"
"Not really. We have a pretty extensive internship program, but you need your degree to be hired as a spy or analyst. We get the internship kids doing open source stuff. Civilians underestimate the amount of open source information we mine. Newspapers, interviews, websites, government reports, speeches, all kinds of stuff. It all has to be read, cataloged and analyzed.
"We talent spot though, for sure. Find kids we want to hire when they graduate. Kids with potential. Smart kids good with languages. Athletic. Like that. We might even sign them up before graduation. But we wait for them to graduate before we bring them on board for real...before their job really starts...their hardcore training. You don't think we'd really turn college kids into spies, right? What, they are going to have machine guns under their beds in their dorms? For God's sake, most of them can't even legally buy beer.
"But foreign undergraduates? As assets? For sure. Some kid from China or something. We think we can recruit him or her? For sure. Think about the Cambridge five. The Soviets got them all when they were undergrads and Philby turned into one of the most successful spies in history. You can bet that the enemy services are busy trying to recruit our undergrads. Semester abroad? Perfect time really."
They turned onto a wide walkway leading to Jordan Hall up a few steps. Stopping on the checkerboard of tiles on the covered walkway, Mead said, "You want to go in here." He flashed his student ID on the pad by the door to unlock it for Sarah and Chuck. "There you go."
"Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it," said Sarah.
"No worries, girl. Good luck."
"You too, Jim. Take care of yourself."
He shook hands with Chuck and gave Sarah a hug. He turned to leave. Stopping himself, he turned back, "Listen, it's lunch time and I was going to get a sandwich. I didn't get to be this size by fasting. You guys are going to be searching Fleming's office. Want me to bring you both some lunch? I'll meet you in there in twenty minutes or so, if you're interested. There's a place just on the other side of the building to get food. I promise not to get in your way."
Sarah really didn't want to waste any time today, but she was hungry. She glanced at Chuck who gave a shrug that said, sure, why not. "Ok, Jim. Thanks." She gave him her number, so he could tell them what was on the menu and disappeared around the corner.
They went in to the building and looked for Fleming's office. Chuck said, "What's the story with Jim?'
"Nothing too crazy. He's been a spy for years. Maybe not as long as we've been alive, but close. I met him on a mission. He was good...a good spy. He convinced … a bad guy, to be less bad and saved the entire mission. He's a great choice to hang around here and recruit foreign assets. He could charm the socks off anybody. You're not jealous, are you?" she asked with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.
"Naw, I was just curious. Why? Should I be jealous?"
"I don't know, he's kind of cute," said Sarah, teasingly.
"I guess, if you have a daddy complex," said Chuck.
"Ughhh," said Sarah.
They found Fleming's office. Chuck looked pretty unhappy to be there. This was where he'd been accused of cheating on Fleming's test. The office was unexceptional. A messy desk, a few bookshelves packed with volumes, an old-fashioned rolodex, a computer. Pointing at the desk, Chuck said, "Oh, I forgot that."
"What?" asked Sarah.
"Look at the name plate on his desk," Chuck said.
"Yeah? What about it?"
"They misspelled his name. The nameplate has Fleming spelled with two M's. That's a mistake."
"Huh. Weird that he just lived with it," she said.
"Yeah. We thought so too. Never did get a decent explanation though." He dropped his messenger bag to the floor by the desk. "So, I'll start on the computer and you start on the rest?"
"Sounds good," she said.
Chuck sat at the desk in Fleming's chair and pushed the button to boot up the computer. Sarah said, "Don't you need Fleming's password or something?"
"Nope," Chuck said while holding down the F8 key. "It's running Windows XP. I got this covered."
"What do you mean? Special nerd secrets?"
"Oh, not that secret. I'm just opening the computer in Safe Mode."
Sarah's phone rang and Jim and Sarah talked about the lunch order while she flipped through the papers on Fleming's desk. Finishing on the phone, she said, "So what does Safe Mode mean?"
"It means I can log in as an Administrator to the system. And...I just removed Fleming's password. Now I'm restarting the computer. And...we're in."
"Oh, come on. You're kidding me, right? It can't be that easy to get into a password protected computer."
"Sorry, sweetie. Here, take a look." Chuck swiveled the screen around so Sarah could see that they were, in fact, into Fleming's computer.
"That's just wrong," she said, shaking her head.
Mead arrived with sandwiches. He offered to leave the sandwiches and them to their work, but Sarah indicated he could stay. As the three of them began to eat, Mead started to gossip with Sarah about Langley. He was telling stories about people Chuck didn't know. Who was assigned where. Who got a promotion. Who got a divorce or had an affair. Who had quit to take a job in the private sector. Many of Mead's observations seem to have been pretty funny, but Chuck found it tough to be entertained when he didn't know the people being discussed. Chuck kept working on Fleming's computer while eating his lunch.
Eventually he shut down the computer. Sarah looked up in surprise. Mead said, "You're done already?"
"Yup. Nothing here. All the files have been erased," said Chuck.
"So? You tech guys know how to retrieve deleted information from a hard drive. Even I know that," said Mead.
"Not this one. It's been scrubbed." Seeing the look on their faces he continued, "If you delete a file from your hard drive, you essentially removed the address from the index. The file is gone from the list of files, but it's still on the hard drive waiting to be written over. If it were a book, the page still has the writing on it, but is marked to be overwritten when you need a blank page to write on. If you really, really want to wipe a hard drive, other than physically destroying it with a sledge hammer or something, you have to overwrite the whole thing. That's what happened here, probably multiple times. All random ones and zeros. Nobody is ever going to figure out what used to be here. The hard drive is as clean as if it came out of the factory. Totally scrubbed."
"Ah," said Mead. "Well, that's that. Sorry for you. Your job just got harder. Looks like you guys will have to do it the old-fashioned way. Old school." Throwing away the remains of his lunch, Mead said, "Good luck to you both. I'll get out of your hair. Let me know if you need some help. I'm bored here and would jump at some action."
Once again, he hugged Sarah and shook hands with Chuck. Mead left them alone to search the rest of the office.
Chuck and Sarah continued to search thoroughly. They discovered the cameras and microphones of a recording system. Chuck dreaded the idea that his last meeting with Fleming might have been recorded. They looked through the drawers, files, and books. Underneath desk drawers and bookshelf shelves and the rug. Inside the pockets and linings of the jackets in the closet. Checked the globe for hidden compartments. In the closet they found the trap door escape route that Fleming seems to have used. It was actually an old maintenance hatch for the boiler in the building's basement, with exits from there to the rest of campus.
After several hours, they called Casey. "How are you doing?" asked Sarah.
"Close to finished. Coming up empty, though. You?"
"About the same," she said. "We'll come back to get you."
"Right."
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That night Chuck and Sarah lay in their hotel room bed wrapped around each other as breathing and heartrates return to normal. She, Chuck and Casey had established themselves in a two-bedroom Palo Alto hotel suite, ordered in room service for dinner and spent frustrating hours thinking and discussing Fleming's possible current whereabouts.
They had established a plan for the morning, though. They intended to head to San Jose and pick up the trail where Fleming had been dropped by the Uber. See if there was anything there that might provide a clue.
Chuck said, a little hesitantly, "Sarah, sweetie, can I ask you to think about something?"
"Sure. Good timing, cause I wasn't doing much thinking a little while ago," she said with a little smirk, planting a small kiss on the tip of his nose.
"Well, here's the thing. You and I have only been a couple for a few months and it's really, really great. I want to be around you, with you, all the time..."
She tensed slightly and said, "But...?"
He chuckled and said, "No. That's the thing. There's no 'but'. I want to be around you all the time. We've slept in the same bed almost every night since we've been together. Those few nights when we didn't, I could barely sleep the emptiness was so awful."
"Me too," she said softly.
"So anyway, that's why I want us to think about taking Mrs. Prommer's apartment together."
"You want me to move in with you?" she asked. She realized that she was a little startled and realized again, a moment later, that she had no right to be startled.
"No. I want us to think about moving in together. I don't want you to move into my apartment. I don't want it to be my space that you come to. I want it to be our space from the beginning. Both of ours. I don't want to take that apartment without you.
"I know there are a ton of practical reasons to do it. It's a two bedroom so there's lots more room. With both our salaries and your housing stipend we can afford it easily. It would be so much more convenient to have all our stuff in one place. It would be useful to have the whole team in one place too, with Casey right across the courtyard. It's closer to our cover jobs than your current place. All sorts of good, practical, sensible reasons. But I don't really care about those. Not really. The real reason is just that I want to be around you. I want to be with you. Not just on dates and stuff, when you are dressed up and have on your make-up. All the time. When you are cranky and smelly and bored. I want to hold you every single night when we sleep. I want to wake up next to you every morning. I'm excited by the thought of watching you decorate our apartment. Our home."
She felt the emotions bubbling up inside her, her intense feelings for him mixed with joy and fear that she was losing control...of herself...of her life...of everything. She thought of her father and his repeated warnings about getting involved ...emotionally... with anyone. She leaned in and kissed him. "I feel the same way, Chuck. It's just...it's a big step, you know. I've...I've never lived with anyone before. I mean, except I had roommates in college, but that's it. I don't know..."
"It's ok," said Chuck, kissing her and rubbing her back. "I don't want you to feel pressured or anything. Just think about it. If it's too soon, I understand. I don't want you to feel that I'm rushing you. I really, really don't. You take all the time you need to think about it. If the landlord leases out this apartment, there'll be another one later. There's no rush."
"Ok. I'll think about it. I promise. It's a good idea," she said, kissing him again. "Now go to sleep. We're getting up for an early run with Casey."
"G'night."
"G'night."
She listened as his breathing slowed and he fell asleep in her arms.
Her thoughts and feelings were chaotic. Joy and warmth mixed with trepidation. Moving in together. Sharing a home with another person. Sharing a home with him. With Chuck. With her Chuck.
Wait a second, back up. Having a home? A home? A real home? She thought for an instant of her apartment in DC. That was where she kept her stuff and it only qualified as a home to that extent. She felt no warmth for it. There was no comfort for her there. It was empty of feelings. Just a place with her stuff. When was the last time she actually had a home? Twenty years ago, maybe? With her mom, before she abandoned it to leave with her father. What if she abandoned a home with Chuck? What if she wasn't made for a home, any home? Like her dad. That realization would be crushing, if it came true. And what would that do to Chuck? What if they moved in together and it didn't work out? If she had to leave? Thinking of the pain that would cause him almost made her groan aloud.
On the other hand, what if it did work out? Chuck was so sweet in wanting it to be their place from the beginning. He was so thoughtful and fun. She really wanted to be around him all the time too. What if it was just as wonderful as her brightest imaginings? What if every morning was filled with sunshine and lo...good feelings? Happiness and warmth? What if she woke up every day smiling? The kind of life that her father would scoff at, if he ever even acknowledged that such a life could be anything other than an elaborate lie...the worst kind of con...a con you pulled on yourself. His views had ingrained themselves into Sarah's psyche so deeply that she had to make a conscious effort to reject them, more and more frequently the last few months.
It would be an enormous risk to rent an apartment with Chuck. Sure, the payoff might be huge, but the potential downside was huge too. Would it be fair to him? Did she have the courage to try? To jump off this particular cliff? She had been outnumbered in gunfights, run into burning buildings, defused bombs, and been in knife fights with maniacs who outweighed her by a hundred pounds, but she fell asleep pondering if she were brave enough to rent an apartment with this man sleeping in her arms.
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A/N2: No single note can possibly explain the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) from World War II and the genius of its founder, General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, but suffice it to say that he tapped academics extensively in his work to set up the forerunner of the CIA. Nor can one note do more than brush the surface of the story of five upperclass British undergrads recruited as spies by the Soviets in the 1930's who eventually made their way twenty years later into the upper ranks of the British government, including Kim Philby who was seriously considered, at one point, to take the top spot in MI-6.
A/N3: The award-winning journalist Daniel Golden recently wrote a book called Spy Schools describing how extensively the Intelligence Community has integrated itself into American higher education. I haven't read the book yet because I've been too occupied reading and writing Chuck fanfiction. (That's not a joke, guys.) However, I heard Golden interviewed a couple of times a few months ago and he has some really interesting things to say. What Mead describes here comes partially from those Golden interviews. This is my nod to canon and the whole "spies on campus" part of the episode.
A/N4: The prop guys dressing Fleming's office didn't coordinate with the visual guys who prepared the dummy CIA file they showed our friends during the initial video conference. So, in canon, either the nameplate on the desk or the CIA's file was wrong in the spelling of Fleming's name. I choose to assume the nameplate was wrong so as not to annoy the good people at the CIA, who scare me.
A/N5: At the bottom of this page is a box. You know what do to.