A/N: Sorry for the long hiatus. I just got positively distracted by … real life. It's a really pathetic explanation ... but truthful nonetheless.

Something really amazing happened to this story that I find worth mentioning. In Chapter 12 there was a scene describing how Carina dealt with Vinnie, the mafia enforcer who organized the murder of her family. What she did was extremely barbaric, cruel and shocking. The interesting part is that as a direct result of this scene I lost about 65-70% of my readers for the next Chapter 13. Wow. That's how many were turned off, repulsed by the scene. Wow.

But then, the next chapter 14 was visited by the previous, normal for this story number of readers. So you couldn't resist it, huh? :)

Very special thanks to my editor extraordinaire, NickyR, for her advice and editing, which I find extremely helpful. Since I still make changes after her work, the bad stuff is positively mine.

Disclaimer: Ziva David, the Israeli damsel/Mossad assassin, is owned by the CBS folks.

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Chapter XV

Eh, Women, Women, You Angry Women!

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Next Day, US Navy Support Facility at Diego Garcia, 10:15am

Chuck, Sarah, Carina, and their new buddy, Ziva David, were sitting in front of a large plasma screen showing the interior of an interrogation cell. It was the classic set up, a large rectangular table with two chairs at opposite sides. Three more, smaller screens, were showing the same cell but from multiple angles.

'I thought we would be behind one of those large, one-directional glass-mirror things,' Chuck wondered loudly.

'Several HD-cameras from different angles are much better,' Ziva pointed out casually, 'you can eventually catch a grimace, or a wince or something that we could have missed otherwise.

'I see.' Chuck murmured.

'Here she is,' Sarah said raising her voice.

A door had just opened and Diane Beckman, still in her military uniform, entered the room and sat on one of the chairs. A young marine had escorted her in, quickly turned around and left.

For the next 15 minutes nothing happened. Beckman was looking around nervously, struggling to remain calm, trying not to betray anything on her face.

But it was impossible. The discomfort in her mouth alone made her feel so surreal. Everything was weird, starting with the missing tooth in her mouth. The tooth! The one with the poison, that she had been determined to activate … just in case…

The last thing she remembered was Sarah Walker popping up in front of her and reading the Miranda rights. To her, General Diane Beckman. On behave of the US government!

Her worst fears had materialized.

Once she had been informed about this black op she fell into this, terribly insecure mode, wondering, worrying, unable to sleep at night. Why was she being ostracized?

Even though it was a black op, it was she, who had been running team Bartowski! It was such a relief when the White House finally let her know she was back into the game.

Well, it was a lie, of course. They obviously knew, arresting a full blown general, who was the DNI, for heaven's sake! They must have more than enough to convict her, she thought horrified! Her life was most probably over...

'Now what,' Chuck asked, gazing at Beckman on the screen, 'what's the plan? What would the US government want from her now?'

'We have to get her start cooperating first of all, ... so we can feed her handlers with some information,' Carina said.

'What if she refuses to accept?' Chuck asked. 'What if she accepts our offer but secretly warns her handlers about being under our control?'

'Here is where you come into play, Chuck,' Sarah chimed in smiling gently. 'Your new ability to detect half-lies will make sure she is not misleading us.'

'And Ziva, I mean agent David,' Carina added, 'is known throughout the entire western intelligence community, for her gift.'

'Gift, what gift,' Chuck murmured. 'What gift could a Mossad assassin have except …'

'She tends to guess when somebody is telling the truth … or lying respectively, 'Carina said. 'Female intuition at its best, at least in all these cases so far her judgments have always proved to be right on the money …'

'So far,' Ziva added, shrugging. 'Tomorrow I may get it wrong …'

'Of course, and then, we have voice analyzing software and some other, major, major weapons against Beckman,' Sarah added. 'Like this one.' She rolled her eyes toward the screen.

Chuck realized that Roan Montgomery had just entered the room.

Beckman's eyes were about to pop out, this was the last person she expected to see.

'Roan?!' She exclaimed, 'Uh … what-what are you doing here?' Her voice was clearly trembling.

'Hmm,' Carina thought to herself, staring at Beckman on the screen. "She still has feelings for him. This is going to be so easy!' Not that she minded that. The sooner this was over, the better; she would finally have the time to think about her next set of moves.

'Hello, Diane.' Roan said sadly, letting a sigh out. 'Hm-huh, … I'm here to uh ... have a talk ... with you.'

'Oh, … oh.' she grimaced. 'Where am I, … why have I been arrested?'

Roan Montgomery sat across the table and gave her an inquisitive look.

'Diego Garcia, of course. You know, it's a British territory. The government offers you this opportunity … for an informal conversation, I mean, before the law starts kicking again when we get back on American soil. You know the drill …, dear.' He made a pause here.

'Diane, is there, hmm … anything that you want to ... share with me?' he asked gently, raising his brows at her.

She pondered for a couple of seconds but then shook her head.

'My life is over, Roan. I have no desire to talk … about anything.' She sighed. 'I-I don't think I have even a desire to live ... anymore …' She shook her head again.

'It's not that simple, Diane.' Roan leaned toward her. 'They have you on tape, passing this message, inserting it into a piece of bread, in the leftovers of your lunch, … and then the waitress just happening to pick it up. It's all documented. They know who this waitress actually is. She is a covert operative, working for …'

'I know! I know who she is...' Diane exclaimed angrily. 'I know ...'

"And then, they have you on tape ordering Casey to kill Chuck. They have more than enough to convince any jury … and they're going to go for the death penalty. You know how serious treason is these days... ever after the Ames's case.' He paused again, letting her process his words.

'Diane, you're facing torturous legal procedures, about 10 to 15 years in jail ahead of you ... at least. Most probably, it'll be death penalty with all the legalities, rejected appeals … it'll be years in confinement, disgrace … do you really want that?' He stopped again.

Montgomery took out a touch pad device, started a video clip, and then placed it on the table in front of Beckman. It was, of course, one of the video clips where Beckman was ordering Casey to kill Chuck.

'Imagine how a jury of a military court would react when they see that.' Roan said sadly.

Beckman was staring down the table in front of her; tears started rolling down her cheeks.

'Oh, Roan,' she started sobbing. 'What choice do I have …?'

'Cooperate.' Montgomery chose to quickly interrupt her. 'Both with the damage assessment back to the point when … you-you know ...stopped being one of us ...'

'Yeah,' she nodded.

'And most importantly,' Montgomery went on with the same friendly tone, 'they need you to stay as the DNI, pro-forma, of course. So that we can feed some disinformation to … you know who. The deputy director will be the actual head. Thus, once your services will be no longer needed, you'll be allowed to retire and go off grid ... But the debriefing will last for a very long time, of course, as you well know. Down to the very first operation you … umm, have betrayed.'

'But first,' he went on shortly, 'the disinformation op … we have to do that in the next month or two.' Roan made another pause here.

Beckman was silent.

'Well,' Roan went on. 'What is it going to be, Diane?'

Beckman was still unable to say a word. She looked totally distracted, not listening to him, at all.

'Diane,' Montgomery had raised his voice.

'Huh?' She winced and then tried to focus on him.

'What's your answer?' he asked again. 'But before you let us know, you need to realize … mm, this is an incredible offer. You get it only because your cooperation could be enormously helpful at the moment. The government can figure out the damage you caused back over the years. It's only because you can be very valuable now ...'

'I know, Roan, sorry … I was thinking back, how it happened, how I got myself involved into this … mess.' She stopped here, thinking. She had stopped crying and her makeup was a mess as well but she didn't seem to care at all.

'Of course, I agree,' she said quietly. 'I have no choice, obviously, but … Roan; I didn't want it to be that way in the first place …'

'Good,' Roan said, sighing out. 'After, mmm … after we finish with this session now, a lawyer from the DOJ will talk to you in detail about the exact conditions of your immunity deal. But first you have to tell me, why. Why did you turn against us … against your own country, Diane?'

Now she raised her head and gazed at him. 'Their guess is right, Roan …the fact that they picked you, I mean … it was because of you …' Beckman swallowed hard, her eyes were swimming in tears again. She didn't even try to wipe them off. "My life was such a mess, Roan… such a mess,' she repeated angrily. ''I mean after you left ...'

"Yeah, that's what they told me,' Roan nodded at her grimacing, 'and … and now I can see that …they were right … that it's, it was me.'

"We were so young and so … happy together … remember … Roan?' Beckman said quietly while trying to wipe the tears, 'during the training course, at the Farm. And then ... then the government started sending you on all those missions, entrapping enemy agents,' she sobbed again, 'seducing all these women ...I-I could never get over it, … never, ever!'

She sighed deeply while looking down at the table and then continued. 'I was so furious, so mad at them, at my bosses, … your bosses actually. I was sending you letters after you went on your first mission. Via the CIA of course, and I never got an answer from you. '

'Oh, really? Hmm, I never received any … any such letter,' Roan murmured to himself.

'Of course, you didn't!' she sobbed. 'Later on, several years ago, thanks to my position, I was finally able to find out what has happened to my letters actually … somebody had stopped and buried them deep into the CIA archives. They didn't want to distract you.'

'Oh, God!' Roan exclaimed.

'I was angry, furious … sooo furious at them, at the government … they didn't care about me, so … so … I stopped caring about them. I was desperate, Roan, started drinking ...and then, one evening, hm-mmm,' she tried to clear her throat, 'there came, ... popped up, out of nowhere, this man, Nathan, … sat next to me at the bar. He presented himself as just divorced, his wife cheating on him.' Beckman paused here. She was clearly going back, remembering something.

'And …?' Montgomery asked gently again.

'Uh, … we hit it off, soon became lovers. I was so young, this was so stupid.'

Beckman made another pause and sipped some water from the glass in front of her.

Roan, realizing that she was in the mood to talk, chose to stay silent, let her get it off her chest.

'Two months later,' Beckman went on, sniffling, 'they somehow knew that I hadn't reported this affair to my bosses. NSA was still the ultra, ultra-secret agency back then. In the NSA, even low level officers knew too much about encryption, encryption of all government agencies, so … we were supposed to report every relationship … for risk evaluation purposes …'

'And you didn't report ...'

'Of course I didn't.' She said sadly. 'I didn't care about the agency, about the whole government anymore. So when Nathan later told me he worked for the Israelis and asked for a favor I couldn't turn him down, … and it was for the Israelis, they were an ally.'

'Of course, the false flag entrapment …' Roan thought to himself shaking his head. 'All spy agencies love the false flag, it makes it so much easier. How many times did he himself, do that to all those poor women!'

'I was out of my mind at the time …,' Beckman went on. 'Only a couple of months later did Nathan let me know he wasn't actually working for the Israelis … but I was already too deep in … betrayed too much, I had no choice … or-or so I felt … then.' she uttered quietly.

Roan Montgomery sighed deeply again.

'Well, it's time for a break, dear.' he got up. "The DOJ people will talk to you next ….'

'Is that all, Roan, … you're disappearing again, after having me confess …?' she asked timidly.

'Nooo, Diane, I'll be here with you the whole time. We're finishing this, our first mission together, I'm your new handler now.' He got up and gallantly offered her his hand.

'Let's have something for lunch, shall we?' He gently smiled at her.

Xxx

'Wow!' Chuck exclaimed after they both left the room. 'That was … heartbreaking, … and easy.'

'Well, that remains to be seen,' Carina turned away from the screens. 'The easy part I mean. Was Beckman truthful, Chuck … Ziva?' She narrowed her eyes focusing on Chuck.

'Uh, I didn't flash … on anything,' Chuck uttered first. 'So, I guess, no half-lies,' he shrugged.

'I didn't detect any signs that would suggest she was hiding something,' Ziva added ponderously. 'Or being deceitful ...'

'Very well then, we are off to a really good start,' Sarah chimed in smiling.

Xxx

Diego Garcia, The Calm Beach, on the inside rim, 16:35

Sarah and Chuck were walking slowly along the beach. She had been here twice before, preparing for secret missions in the region and she had always enjoyed her stay on the island.

'Do you like this place?' Sarah started.

Chuck stopped and slowly turned, scanning around. The beach was not like anything he had seen before. The almost perfect white sand strip was several times as wide as the West coast beaches and was virtually flat. And then the water in front of him was so shallow, only a couple of feet deep, extended about half a mile inside the ocean. Several hundred yards further however, he could see about 10 large military ships, some of them with large satellite dishes and two had shapes so weird that Chuck wondered what purpose they could possibly have.

Sarah noticed Chuck's fascination with the ships and suddenly was taken over by a horrible thought.

'Chuck,' she started with an obvious anguish in her voice.

'Whu-what, Sarah,' Chuck asked still pondering on something. 'What's the problem?'

'Did you flash on any of these ships …, I mean on the two strange ones?' she asked quietly.

No,' he furrowed, 'nooo, why?'

'Oh, thank God,' she released a really deep breath. 'Those are not just top secret. They are above top secret. If they had included that kind of stuff in the new Intersect, I don't know, the government would most probably want to keep you inside some military base or something. It is very good news, are you sure you didn't flash?'

'No, of course not, don't worry.' he assured her with a really wide and relaxed smile.

Sarah stayed silent for a couple of minutes, obviously weighing something in her mind.

'Chuck,' she started again, 'there is something I have to tell you. We expect this operation to be over in a month or two, will need to know what your plans are.'

'To be or not to be ... the Intersect, I mean, just the Intersect, nothing too fancy,' Chuck quipped.

'Exactly,' she smiled at him.'So you have to decide this time, once and for all.'

'I actually did, Sarah,' Chuck suddenly became serious and somewhat official.

'And ...,' Sarah raised her brows, realizing her heart was pounding. 'What is it then?'

Xxx