Sorry if anyone was actually waiting for this, been tied up reading some great stories in other spaces here.
A couple of minor changes to the last chapter to correct oversights, Vincent was added in as I liked the character but the story arc with him was a waste of time IMHO, and I've replaced a marginal CIA agent with someone else from one of Arnie's movies as an ex-Mossad agent. This means that there's an extra guy in the second string, bringing the team possibly to fourteen.
Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.
When Casey went after Sarah, Chuck tried to sit there quietly, but he gave up and threw down the napkin to go looking for something which might hopefully keep his mind off what was going on upstairs. While his mind was churning, his feet led him to what they were supposedly there for that evening, the paintings that were being auctioned.
He stopped in front of the painting that had triggered the initial Intersect flash when he saw the picture in the paper. If anything, the painting was even less inspiring than it had appeared in the paper but something did catch his attention, the fact that the frame had been changed since that picture was taken. Now that he was focussing on that earlier frame, a new set of Intersect flashes came to him, detailing how that frame had been a creation of the British Secret Service years ago for the purpose of getting sufficient plutonium to make a bomb past the normal checks by using the protections being afforded to delicate artworks to prevent intrusive scanning or inspections. He saw how the plutonium was carried in a number of small containers embedded in the frame, the frame that this painting was no longer mounted in.
Chuck was drawn out of his musings by a soft voice at his side. "Beautiful painting, no?" That voice had the promise of being even more useful for taking his mind off what was happening upstairs, because its accents told a very interesting story, Spanish born, but he heard a number of other languages and dialects in it, and they appeared to indicate that the beautiful latina he turned to hadn't spent much time in her native country since she was a teenager.
Thanks to the perfect memory they inherited from their Mom, both he and Ellie were polyglots, they could pick up a new language or dialect in days and they'd been doing that for most of their lives, even more so in the past twelve and a half years they'd been working for Auntie Di, so he could pick up the nuances of accents from a few words now. That told him that this might provide enough of a challenge to stop him charging after Sarah, so he engaged her.
"Pardon? Oh, sorry, I'm not sure it's my thing, seems a bit too Bob Rossian for my taste."
"Bob who? I don't believe that I am familiar with that artist?"
Hmm, curiouser and curiouser, the French, English and Italian influences were expected, even the Middle Eastern ones weren't a surprise, but the Russian or Kazakh ones, now they were interesting. He smiled at her. "I'm sorry, that was meant to be a joke, but I obviously forgot how many people have never seen that stupid painter on American TV, I guess you're not American, huh?"
She shook her head with a smile. "No, sorry, not North American anyway, I am from Brazil. I am Malena, and you are?….."
Ooh, bad girl Malena, that was a lie, and you've spent rather more time down there in Columbia than you have in Brazil for that matter. "Charles, Charles Carmichael."
"It's nice to meet you Charles, I must admit, you're more interesting than most people who come to these things…."
"Why thank you Malena, do you come to many of these things then?"
She looked around, falling for his easy charm against her better judgement. "Unfortunately yes, I have to come to these things to buy stock for my company to sell…..."
At that moment the band struck up the opening movement of the tango and she looked incredibly wistful. "Oh I love the tango!"
Chuck smiled. "Who doesn't?"
She turned to him with a hopeful smile. "Do you….?" at his confused look she added. "Tango?"
It was on the tip of his tongue to say 'No', but something stopped him. The more she talked, the better he was mapping out where she'd been, and that was matching up to what was in the Intersect flash he'd received for La Ciudad. If she was part of La Ciudad's party, the more she let slip, the better chance they had of catching him, and if she was La Ciudad's woman... well dancing the tango with her would almost certainly flush La Ciudad out. Concentrating on her would also give him something to think about that wasn't worrying about Sarah, so he smiled at her. "Of course! Would you care to dance Malena?"
She beamed at him and nodded as she took his arm.
As he led Malena onto the dance floor, Chuck glanced around, hoping to see Sarah and Casey had returned, but he was disappointed. Malena was a good and rather….. enthusiastic dancer, but the way she was grinding on him was telegraphing her intentions for what she wanted to follow quite clearly. The upside of where her mind was was that she was more open with her responses, and Chuck was having little trouble mapping out where she'd been spending most of the time, and that was confirming that her movements matched La Ciudad's.
Chuck dipped the laughing Malena at the end of the tango, which caused her hair to swing away from her neck and reveal the nasty scar that she had there. He glanced away to see whether Sarah and Casey were back, but it was also an attempt to cover up the Intersect flash that he'd just had. He now knew that the Englishman who had taken Sarah away wasn't La Ciudad, because he currently had her in his arms!
Chuck made a mental note to ensure that they always had mics, and cameras if possible, on them at all times on missions after this. With the rush to get things organised in what time they had, they had skipped them for this mission because the three of them were supposed to be in the same room the whole time, and Jeff and Anna were hooked into the hotel's security cameras and watching what went on in the function room. Having La Ciudad right by his side prevented him from activating his comms device without her knowledge, so he couldn't let the others know. This meant that the only thing he could do was try to keep her there until Sarah and Casey returned so he could signal them to let them know who the woman beside him was. He had tried mouthing 'La Ciudad' at the security camera, but didn't know whether Jeff and Anna would be watching the right camera at the right moment.
Mindful of what Casey had said earlier about the expected watchers, Chuck knew that he couldn't take down Malena and the guards that he knew she'd have there in front of everyone at the auction, but the kicker was that that meant that he was also unarmed, so he tried to keep her talking until Sarah and Casey got back, trying to find ways to beg off going back to her room as she was suggesting more and more aggressively without making her suspicious.
Any chance of that working went out the window when one of Bryce Larkin's clique of over-privileged fratboy buddies, Alan Watterman, came charging up to him, drunk. "Bartowski! What the hell are you doing here? There's no place for pathetic losers like you in our world! Didn't you get the message when Roberts dumped your arse and moved up to Bryce after he caught you cheating, scholarship boy?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Chuck caught the flash of suspicion that crossed over Malena's face at that, but he tried to get the situation under control anyway. Reaching out, he grabbed a nerve point on Watterman's shoulder, paralysing him with the wave of pain that shot through him. "Alan, you're drunk, I think you should leave before you embarrass yourself any further." Leaning in, he added, too quietly for anyone but Watterman to hear. "If you don't leave, right now without another word, I'll make sure that this pain you're feeling stays with you for the rest of your miserable life! Nod if you understand!"
Watterman nodded frantically and hobbled away as quickly as he could the moment Chuck released him. Chuck tried to explain it away. "Poor Alan, he really has been drinking way too much if he's confusing me with that guy who got kicked out for cheating back at university."
Unfortunately, Malena wasn't fooled for a minute and as he caught her signal and the approach of her rather large guards, he was not at all surprised to feel a pistol barrel being pressed into his back just after she moved in close to whisper in an apparently intimate manner. "You have two choices, Mister Carmichael, or Bartowski or whatever your name really is. You can leave quietly with us now so that we can have a private chat about who you really are, and no-one will get hurt, or….. You can cause a scene and you and a number of the people around us will most definitely get hurt, maybe even killed. So…. Are you going to come quietly without causing a scene?"
Chuck nodded frantically, playing the terrified civilian to a 'T'. Malena smirked suggestively up at him and drawled. "Good!" before taking his hand and leading him from the function room, with her guards following close behind.
As they left the function room, Chuck swore to himself, because he'd just realised that not only couldn't he afford to make a scene in front of the guests and possible watchers in the function room, he couldn't even afford to deal with La Ciudad and her guards in her room, because the powers that be would demand that La Ciudad be brought in for questioning, and if she was questioned, the lie of him being an inept civilian would be exposed. He was hoping that they'd run into Sarah and Casey on the way to Malena's room, but they didn't.
Once in the room, Chuck was tied to a chair and Malena started asking him questions. Chuck was holding up the part of the terrified civilian quite well as she threatened him with knives and other implements, 'breaking' and admitting that he wasn't Charles Carmichael, he was just Chuck Bartowski, a computer repairman who had been putting on an act to try and impress his date, but she'd dumped him before they even got inside.
Eventually Malena told him to shut up because she believed him and he hopefully asked if she was going to let him go, but she just laughed, saying that she couldn't do that because he'd seen her face and knew who she was. Chuck kept up the scared civilian act but inside he was shaking his head, because this was one sick bitch, she spent ten minutes going over the pros and cons of a number of messy and painful ways of killing him before giving up in apparent disappointment at failing to make him wet himself and coming back to what had almost certainly been her intention all along, making an atrocious pun about 'chuck'ing him off the balcony and signalling the two gorillas she had for guards to do so.
Chuck was making a last ditch effort to talk her out of it as he prepared to blow his cover by breaking free of the chair and taking them out when they heard the guard stationed outside the door challenging someone and Malena signalled the gorillas to drop the chair. Just before the chair hit the floor Chuck threw himself back, twisting as he did so to have it come down on one arm and break it off. Luckily Malena and the gorillas were concentrating on the door where the guard's challenge had been followed by a thump, and then silence, and raising their pistols as one of the gorillas called out. "Bob? What's going on out there? Bob? Answer me!"
Their focus on the door meant that the three standing in the room paid no mind to how the chair had hit the floor hard enough to break something and didn't see that the figure on the floor was presenting the smallest possible target. They also didn't see that he was releasing himself from his restraints.
When Sarah and Casey ran into the function room, they looked to the bar where Casey had left Chuck. When he wasn't there they scanned the room, expecting to pick him up easily enough, given the fact that he was at least half a head taller than many of the people in the room.
The borderline panic in Sarah's voice as she asked. "Where's Chuck?" over the radio chilled chilled the ones who knew her, because it carried the threat of the emergence of the Enforcer. Anna's "Wait..." was almost pleading as she and Jeff called up his tracker and ran the security footage back.
Jeff blurted out. "Eighth floor!" had Sarah and Casey running out of the function room on the way to the lifts, but Anna's horrified "Oh Fuck!" left them waiting with baited breath. When she didn't continue Sarah spat out. "What?"
Anna gulped, hoping that someone would be able to calm Sarah down before she got to her. "Chuck was taken from the function room at gunpoint by two gorillas, and the woman he was dancing the tango with about five minutes before. As he left the dance floor with her he mouthed 'La Ciudad' to the cameras…."
Jeff cut in. "Just after he came off the dance floor, he had an altercation with someone he was at Stanford with as Chuck Bartowski, so he may have blown his cover as Charles Carmichael."
"What the fuck were you two doing while this was going on?"
"We were trying to make sure that you weren't harmed, because he would have torn this place apart if you were!"
Ellie cut through the impending fight. "Enough! What room has Chuck been taken to, and what room is right above it on the floor above?"
Jeff came back with "Eight nineteen." quickly followed by Anna. "Nine fifteen!"
"Right. Sarah, you and Casey get ready to move on eight nineteen on my command, but stay out of sight until I give the order. We'll get into nine fifteen and lower ourselves onto the balcony of Eight nineteen. When I tell you to move in, get their attention so that we can take them out from behind."
Casey grunted and Sarah muttered "OK", relieved that Ellie had a plan that sounded workable. They got off on the eighth floor and got their pistols ready, Sarah had the Glock in her clutch cocked and loaded, her finger on the trigger, while Casey had a similar Glock ready in the rear of the waistband of his trousers, along with a tranq pistol.
On the ninth floor, Ellie sent one fire team down the fire stairs to the eighth floor, ready to move in on 819 when she gave the order, while she broke into 915 with another fire team. Unfortunately, the room wasn't empty, Alan Watterman was demanding that his wife to get their fucking bags packed so they could get out of there before that maniac from Stanford found him again. Watterman opened his mouth when four black covered figures burst into the room, but before he could shout out, he and his wife were peppered with tranq darts and collapsed to the floor.
The black figures proceeded to the balcony without a second look at the room's occupants, Bry lowering Ellie over the rail by her ankles so she could determine whether they could get onto the balcony below without being seen. At her signal, he pulled her back up and they quickly secured lines to the railing to lower themselves down to the inner corners of the balcony. Once they were down, the other two pulled the lines back up and readied their weapons, then Ellie called for Sarah and the others to move in.
Unfortunately, Malena had apparently left the bright guard watching the door, because he took one look at the beautiful blonde in the evening gown coming down the hall with a big guy in a bartender's outfit and challenged them, because that didn't make any sense at all. To keep the noise down, and because a bright guard may in fact be able to tell them something, Casey grabbed the tranq pistol instead of the Glock and used that to take the man down.
Someone inside started calling out for 'Bob' and Casey signalled Sarah to get down as he called out. "Everything's fine!" and dropped to the floor himself. The lack of the expected hail of bullets was explained when Ellie's voice came over the radio. "The situation's under control, come on in."
When they got inside with 'Bob', the two gorillas were down with half their heads missing, Malena was sporting a few tranq darts and Chuck was untying himself from the remains of the chair. Casey pointed out that having the bright one guarding the room probably meant that there was something of value in there, so they went over it with a fine toothed comb. They found a few things that might had value, but the most interesting items had been concealed on Malena's person.
By the time they finished searching the room, the six from upstairs had brought down the three Brits and removed any trace that they'd been in 915, or the room they had been using. The gorillas had been dragged out onto the balcony to limit the mess to be cleaned up. Anything of interest was removed from the bodies, and Ellie had called for a clean-up crew to get rid of them. While they were searching for evidence, Bry recovered the two 9mm slugs from the suppressed 9mm AS VAL assault rifle he'd used to drop the gorillas so that there was nothing to link them to the scene.
It took them three elevator trips to get them, their five prisoners and all their gear down to the basement where the vans were waiting for them, but they managed to get out unseen, thanks to Jeff and Anna.
Back at El Castello, the prisoners were either hooded or tranqed as they were taken down to the Dungeons. Diane made a quick call to confirm that the Brits were definitely not part of any officially sanctioned operation on US soil, which meant that they had to go ahead to extract the information of what they were doing here and why they believed that they had authorisation to be there. The way Sarah had been treated meant that nothing was off the table to get the intel out of them, short of death or permanent incapacitation.
The story they told was quite interesting, because the Brits currently had enough plutonium to make a nuclear bomb sitting in their consulate in Los Angles. They were the ones who'd killed the last one in the string of deaths leading to L.A. and swapped the frame on the painting that triggered the Intersect flash, because they didn't want anyone to discover that they had been the ones who created and used the mechanism to smuggle enough weapons grade plutonium into the USA to create a bomb. Even more interesting was the fact that apparently Director Graham had known that British intelligence were following the frame and what was hidden in it onto US soil and had made a highly illegal under the table deal with the Chief of the British SIS to allow the SIS agents to operate on US soil.
The story they got from La Ciudad and her guard was a much simpler one, she was there to obtain the plutonium at the auction, then have the bomb built and sell it at a considerable profit to the buyer she had lined up.
Now that they had the relevant information, they called the DNI and filled him in. The DNI went to the President to get his indignant confirmation that Graham had not been authorised to make these deals with the British SIS.
With the key parties in agreement, Diane went to Chuck's Special Projects office and Sarah and Casey relocated to Casey's apartment for the official briefing. What Graham didn't know, of course, was that the DNI was also on the link, just waiting to step in, and both Chuck and the President were watching as well. Sarah let Casey lead the briefing.
"Bartowski encountered an individual as he and Walker were going into the function who triggered an Intersect flash. The information in that flash gave a high degree of confidence that the individual might in fact be La Ciudad, so he and Walker agreed that the only way of determining whether it was, in fact, La Ciudad was for Walker to engage him."
Sarah cut in here. "I engaged the individual, but he seemed to recognise who I was, and his men managed to approach me while I was talking to him, so I was removed from the function room at gunpoint. They supposedly took me to the roof to question me, but I believe that their intention may have been to rape me, because the one who searched me spend much of the time fumbling inside my underwear while the one holding me groped me. Casey arrived before they could go too far and identified himself as a federal agent, telling them to put down their weapons, but the man in charge insisted that he was interfering with an authorised operation and would be in serious trouble if he didn't leave. That was when our support team arrived and subdued them."
Graham shouted over her. "Support team? What support team?"
Diane glanced at him dismissively. "Did you think I was going to send my team into a situation with so many unknowns without any backup Director? Please continue Agent Walker."
"Yes Ma'am. I asked the one who was in charge what they were there for but he just told me that I wasn't authorised to know that, so we left them with the support team and went back to the function, but Mister Bartowski was gone. Because of the rather limited timeframe and information given to us, we only managed to arrange for two agents to be at the event with the Intersect, so when Casey came to rescue me, Mister Bartowski was left unprotected…."
Casey cut in this time. "Bartowski wanted to come with me to rescue Walker, but I wouldn't let him because I thought it was too dangerous and he'd be safe inside the function, that was an error…."
Diane waved that away. "We can look into that later Agent Casey, but it was the obvious decision to make under the circumstances, you could not just stand by and allow your partner to be taken away at gunpoint by three unknown assailants. For now though, what happened is more important."
Sarah took over again. "Yes Ma'am. We had a tracker on Mister Bartowski and located him on the eighth floor. Our support team got into the room above and used that to access the balcony of the room where he was being held. Agent Casey and I caused a disturbance outside and the support team took out the assailants in the room while they were distracted. When Mister Bartowski was freed, he told us that the woman was actually La Ciudad. He also told us how he had been taken…."
"He apparently decided to have another look at the painting that caused the original Intersect flash that led us to the auction to take his mind off worrying about Agent Casey and myself, and he discovered that the frame had been changed since the photo was taken. When he concentrated on the frame, he had another flash that told him that the original frame was something that had been created by British Intelligence to allow weapons grade plutonium to be smuggled past all the usual checks, because valuable artworks were spared intrusive and potentially damaging inspections. While he was getting this information, the woman who later turned out to be La Ciudad began talking to him and asked him to dance when the tango started. Mister Bartowski realised that it would be suspicious to deny a beautiful woman a dance when he was standing there alone, so he agreed. As the dance finished, a distinctive scar on La Ciudad's neck was uncovered and he had another flash which identified her as La Ciudad. Mister Bartowski tried to keep her there, talking, until Agent Casey and I returned, but he was accosted and verbally abused by one of Bryce Larkin's friends from Stanford and outed as being Bartowski, rather than Carmichael as we used as his identity for the event."
"This made La Ciudad suspicious and she had her men bring Mister Bartowski back to her room to question him. He managed to convince her that he was just a computer repairman who had pretended to be someone else to get me to go with him, but then she decided to dispose of him and her men were about to throw him off the balcony when we took them down."
She looked at Casey and he took over. "We called for a clean up of the room and the bodies of the guards that were killed when we breached and extracted Bartowski and the prisoners. When we questioned them, it turned out that the reason that La Ciudad had come up in the original Intersect flash was that she was the intended buyer for the plutonium, and the British SIS agent came up in connection with La Ciudad because they had set the operation up to capture La Ciudad. Apparently, Director Graham was aware of because he had reportedly made an agreement with the Chief of the British SIS to allow them to smuggle the plutonium into the United States and operate on US soil."
This was Diane's cue. "What? Graham, did you set my team up as bait in an operation you were part of, giving them no information to work with?"
Graham glared at her, he so wanted to cut this little bitch down to size but he had to be careful, this had blown up in his face far more than he could have believed possible. "I was made aware that something was coming in that was related to La Ciudad and it presented an opportunity to test the value of your Intersect, as you have refused to allow any tests to confirm whether or not we can rely on him to access information when needed, or whether the initial event was a fluke that he could not repeat."
The glare she directed at him didn't need to be faked, so she snapped. "Let's see what the DNI thinks about that!" as she grabbed the phone. It didn't take long to be put through to him and she repeated to him what had been said before giving him the details needed to get into the video conference. After a suitable delay, he hit the key to enable two way access and started demanding answers from Graham.
As he started to wind down, Graham thought that he'd dodged a bullet and that the old fool had missed the point about the agreement to allow the SIS to operate in the USA, so he was caught out when he was suddenly hit with. "What are these agreements you made Director Graham, and who authorised you to make them?"
Shit, he had to get onto the Chief and make sure that their stories matched in case they took this up with the British PM, but for now he had to cover this up. "I don't know whether Agent Casey made this up or the British agent just said that to stop the illegal interrogation he was being subjected to sir, but that is incorrect."
"What do you mean by illegal interrogation Director Graham?"
"Agent Casey advised us that this was given up in the interrogation of allied intelligence agents, who under pre-existing agreements are authorised to operate within the bounds of the United States."
"What pre-existing agreements Director? I have not been made aware of anything of this nature by you or the President!"
"It is a gentlemen's agreement between the Director of Central Intelligence and the Chief of the British SIS sir, to allow our agents to pursue assignments into each other's countries if required."
"Leaving aside the fact that a gentlemen's agreement would by definition require that gentlemen make it, why was I not advised of this agreement when I assumed the role of the Director of National Intelligence for the United States? For that matter, has the President approved this agreement?"
"It must have slipped my mind, sorry Sir. As for the President, I did not believe that it was of sufficient import to bother him with."
"It slipped your mind in the year since you became the DCI that you made an agreement with a foreign power to allow foreign agents to operate on US soil? If that's so Director, I have to wonder whether it's time for you to retire! You have overstepped your authority more than once in this matter. Firstly, you never had the authority to make any agreements of this nature without the President's approval, and I expect that he will be asking the British PM whether his Chief of the SIS had his approval to authorise our agents to operate on British soil either. Secondly, you know full well that it was your duty to advise me of any and all agreements and alliances with foreign powers when I became the Director of National Intelligence, and that this is not the only thing that you've withheld from me. I will be having you investigated to determine what other critical intel you have been keeping from me Director and you better hope that I don't find anything more serious than this!"
"Quite aside from making agreements that you had no authority to make, you also failed in your duty to inform me that there was a foreign intelligence operation entering the USA, and you have accused General Beckman's most trusted agent of fabricating reports about you. No, I didn't miss that Director, it just wasn't the primary issue to be addressed. Then we had the matter of how Agent Walker was sexually assaulted by these individuals when they had her and how they responded to Agent Casey. And the matter of murdering someone who was potentially a US citizen on US soil. Even if these agents are in fact legitimate British SIS agents who mistakenly believed that they had the authority to operate here, the murder and sexual assault of US citizens on US soil is something that I can assure you will never be condoned, and nor will refusing to comply and put down their arms when ordered to do so by someone who has officially identified himself as a US Federal Agent. So on the evidence presented, there was nothing to indicate that these men were anything but common criminals, or perhaps rogue agents trying to muscle into a nuclear arms deal. I would not have faulted General Beckman's team if they had killed them to deal with the armed threat that they presented, and there was nothing illegal in interrogating them to extract the information that they refused to offer up when questioned on the scene."
"Now, where's this plutonium that they brought onto US soil, I don't want that laying around for someone to make a bomb out of!"
Sarah glanced at Casey and he responded. "They gave that up in the interrogation as well Sir, it's currently inside the British Consulate here in Los Angeles. I expect that it will require a political solution rather than a tactical one to get our hands on it."
The DNI snorted. "Yes, Agent Casey, I believe that you are correct in that, I will add that to the list of matters for the President to take up with the British Prime Minister. Now, to the only positive aspect of this operation, you actually managed to capture La Ciudad?"
Casey nodded. "Yes Sir. When we questioned her, she advised that she was actually here to obtain the plutonium, which she intended to use to build a bomb and sell for a hefty profit. She already had a domestic terrorist lined up to buy the bomb so she would not have any need to get it back over our borders. We've passed the information to the FBI for them to round up the team that were building the bomb and the buyers. We've also handed La Ciudad and the guard we captured alive over to them."
"Very good! What about the foreign agents?"
"They're in FBI custody here in L.A. Sir."
"Good, I'll have the President include handing them over to the Brits when they hand over the plutonium. They'll be banned from ever entering US soil again, if they try they'll spend the rest of their lives in one of our black sites."
Graham spoke up. "Sir, I must protest, La Ciudad was captured as a result of a CIA operation, we should be getting her!"
The DNI's expression was grim as he answered. "If I were you I'd keep my mouth shut Director Graham. For a start, this wasn't a CIA operation, it was a Human Intersect operation that you engaged under false pretexts. Without my authorisation, you decided to conduct a test of a critical intelligence asset that almost got that asset killed, and almost got a federal agent raped..."
Graham cut him off. "I hardly think that Agent Walker was in any risk of being raped Sir…."
The DNI in turn cut him off. "Agent Walker, I'm sorry to ask you this, but do we have any evidence that we can present on that matter? Please understand that I am not questioning your account in any way, but obviously some others will."
Sarah glared at Graham's image before answering the DNI. "I understand Sir. The one who 'searched' me spent so much time fumbling around over and under my underwear that there should be a good chance of recovering at least partial if not full fingerprints from it. For that matter, the one who was holding me while he did that was also groping at my breasts, so we may be able to recover partial or full fingerprints from him on my dress as well. The one in charge didn't touch me, but he basically encouraged the other two while they were doing it."
"Thank you Agent Walker, if you can deliver those garments to the FBI, I will make the necessary testing to see whether we can recover any fingerprints from them a priority, they can fingerprint the two men while they have them in custody to check for matches."
"Thank you Sir."
He just nodded and addressed Graham again. "So, Director Graham, what you will get for the fees being charged for this operation was exactly what you said you were looking for, confirmation that we can rely on the Human Intersect to deliver the information needed in an operation. Mister Bartowski certainly proved that in this operation."
"Fees? What fees are you talking about Sir?"
The DNI just looked at him for about thirty seconds. "Didn't you read the documentation provided on the terms for engaging the Human Intersect team for an operation Director?"
"I scanned it, my staff are going through it in depth Sir."
"Perhaps you should have done that yourself Director. As the Human Intersect team is outside of the existing agencies, it does not have an ongoing operational budget, therefore the President and I have approved the proposed fee structure for their engagement to fund their ongoing operations. The initial engagement fee is a hundred and fifty thousand for physical operations and fifty thousand for purely information processing. Additional fees are thirty thousand per day or part thereof for physical and ten thousand per day or part thereof for information operations, plus any expenses that are accrued. On top of this there is a penalty of a hundred thousand for each individual incident where team members are put at risk because known information was withheld from them. Were there any significant additional expenses accrued on this operation agents?"
Sarah and Casey looked at each other and tried to hide their grins as Casey answered. "Well we had to spend thirty thousand to get the limo and another four thousand for Bartowski's dinner suit in time, but we can use them for future operations, so not really Sir."
The DNI nodded. "Thank you Agent Casey. By my calculations then Director Graham, this test that you decided to conduct without consulting me will cost the CIA three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, two hundred thousand of that being the penalty fines for putting members of the Human Intersect Team at risk by withholding information. Oh, and I would advise against holding up the payment for this operation, because the President and I also approved the late payment penalty clause of five percent of the total per day, accruing from a month after the invoice was submitted. You must have some business majors in your people General, we never saw that in government contracts of this nature before."
Diane had a hard time keeping a straight face as she answered. "Yes Sir."
Graham was furious, whoever failed to tell him about this was going to pay, but he had no intention of paying this! "Sir, you can't expect me to authorise the payment of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a simple test when I was not aware of these fees!"
The DNI was making him reconsider the determination that he was no more than a worn out old politician as he looked at him with more than a little steel in his eye. "I most certainly do expect the fees that were laid out in the documentation supplied to you and accrued for the operation that you engaged the Human Intersect Team for to be paid Director Graham, including the penalties for putting at least two of the team at risk through deliberately withholding significant information from them. If you continue to argue about this, I may well reconsider my decision not to include Agent Casey in those penalties, as he was facing three foreign agents who refused to drop their weapons until forced to by the arrival of their support team. What's it to be Director Graham, will you be paying this invoice when you receive it today, or will I be having the President authorise the immediate transfer of four hundred and fifty thousand from the CIA budgets to the Human Intersect Team?"
Graham gritted his teeth. "The invoice will be paid when it arrives Sir."
"Good, we will discuss the matter of these agreements you've made after the President has raised the matter with the Prime Minister, and we better not find out anything else that you've... forgotten to tell us about director."
He smiled to himself at the flash of worry that briefly appeared in Graham's eye, as a note from the President had just appeared to say that the Prime Minister had not been informed of any of this either, and he had already called the Chief of the SIS to his office. It was obvious Graham wanted to get away to make sure that the Chief of the SIS told the same story he had, so he insisted on going through the operation step by step to pull apart what had gone wrong, he even managed to spend over ten minutes questioning Graham about why he had supplied Agent Walker with an eye catching red dress when she had specifically requested an understated black dress. The way that Graham was fuming about being dressed down in front of Beckman, let alone Agents Walker and Casey, was just icing on the cake for the DNI.
The others could see what he was doing, and as he was winding down Casey raised another matter they wanted on record. "Sir, while you're here, could I raise a matter that Walker and I have been discussing?"
"Yes, of course Agent Casey."
"It's Bartowski Sir. This whole operation is based around him and the majority of the workload is his. As was proven on this mission, he's in as much danger as Walker and myself, if not more, on field missions but as an asset he isn't getting anything for this. Walker and I believe that Bartowski will be better motivated to make an effort if he's being fairly compensated for his contribution and feels part of the team, so we were thinking that this would be justification for making him a high level field analyst."
Graham started to say that that was ridiculous but the DNI told him to be quiet before turning to Diane.
"General, what are your thoughts on this? I must say that I believe that the Agents have a point."
Diane pretended to ponder this as she nodded. "Yes, I agree Sir. An asset is not normally put on the payroll, but they are not normally a core part of the operation either. As Agent Casey said, this operation is built around Mister Bartowski and depends on him for much of its output, he should have the status and compensation that reflects that."
"Good! Send up the paperwork to have Mister Bartowski added to the team as the highest grade field analyst and I'll get the approvals through. Agent Casey, Agent Walker, thank you for raising this matter, it will be good for the team."
They had a laugh afterwards about the fact that Chuck's field analyst role had gotten a considerable promotion and pay rise when the DNI specified that it was to be the highest grade. They weren't about to argue with the one that Diane reported to, so Chuck got a raise.
By the time Graham managed to get out of the meeting, the Chief of the SIS was in the Prime Minister's office, so he couldn't get him. Luckily for Graham, the man was adept enough at covering his own arse to swear that he had not been informed that they were actually smuggling plutonium into the United States as part of this operation, and used a similar argument to Graham about the pre-existing bilateral agreement for the two side's agents to operate in each other's countries.
The man, like Graham, was informed that he was not authorised to make any agreements of that nature and that they were thereby cancelled. He was also informed that if his three agents ever set foot on US soil again they'd be in a US black site for the rest of their lives, and ordered to take them all off active duty and put them under house arrest until the charges had been investigated as their actions had embarrassed Britain for the last time.
The three agents were handed over to the British Consulate in Los Angeles in exchange for the plutonium that they had stashed there. The resident Consol-General there was also handed the documentation of the evidence of the charges for murder, smuggling plutonium into the United States, sexual assault and attacking US Federal Agents in the pursuit of their duties that would be applied to the three men if they ever set foot on US soil again. He hadn't been at all impressed that he was required to formally apologise on behalf of the British government to Sarah personally, as well as to the officials there to take possession of the plutonium, for the actions of the men who had been in the employ of the British government at the time of these actions being committed.
The President had actually avoided being heavy handed in this matter and had allowed the Prime Minister to handle things on his side as he saw fit. He was happy to have a trump card that he'd be able to use the next time he wanted something from the Brits though.
Graham made sure that the invoice was paid immediately when Diane had it sent to him personally within half an hour of getting out of the meeting, then he fired everyone who had been looking over the documentation for engaging the Human Intersect Team, effective immediately. He was kicking himself for not picking that up, because there was an advice right at the start that stated that, as the Intersect team didn't have an ongoing operations budget, fees would be charged for any and all engagements to fund their operations.
The actual fee structure was exactly what the DNI had stated, but there also were additional penalties defined of fifty thousand per incident for purely informational engagements if ongoing operational risks or problems were accrued as a result of known information being withheld that related to the engagement. Damn, that Beckman bitch and her people had locked this down!
Graham had to admit a grudging respect for the way they'd tied this up, but he told Bentley and everyone else that they were forbidden from engaging the Intersect Team without his explicit approval. Yeah, they were far better than anything he had available, but he was damned if he was going to let Beckman take his best agent off of him and then throw his budget at her for the privilege of solving the big issues.
A/N: A bit shorter, but this was a logical place to leave this one.
