A/N1 Our title is part of a line from the Bon Iver song, "re: stacks". "Today is Kumran." Kumran (Qumran) is the site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bon Iver mentions it in "re: stacks" as a way of talking about a decisive moment in a person's life. As the song continues: "Everything that happens is from now on."
Two chapters to go after this one. Thanks for spending some of your time on this story. As always, I'd be glad to hear from you, so send me a review or PM.
Thanks to michaelfmx for wrestling this long, unruly chapter.
Don't own Chuck.
Miss Trust?
Saturday afternoon Sept. 2, 2017 (Labor Day Weekend)
Boca Raton, Florida
The Airport
CHAPTER 7 Kumran
Chuck knew that Sally had said something to Sarah that had upset her. He had seen her tense in Sally's hug. He knew it wasn't the hug itself that had caused the problem. Sarah tried to smile when she turned back to him, but failed. She did, however, reach out her hand—but Chuck wasn't sure if that was because she wanted to hold his hand or because she wanted to keep him from asking about what had just happened.
He was almost certain Sally would not have said anything intending harm, but he also knew that Sally harbored thoughts of them getting back together again. He also knew that Sally was not someone who cut corners, cheated, to get her way. It seemed likely that she had upset Sarah unintentionally.
Sally had walked to him and whispered. "Remember this. She won't mean to hurt you."
}o{
They walked out of the airport and back to the Land Rover in silence. Chuck was carrying the tote bag with the Vortex in it. He put it in the back seat. Sarah took the wheel as usual. As they pulled out of the airport, she was carefully checking to see if anyone was following them. As far as she could tell, they were in the clear.
Chuck wanted to talk about what had happened with Sally, but Sally's warning had made his stomach tense up, made him anxious. Sarah had seemed lost in her own thoughts since they had gotten back in the car. Chuck started somewhere else.
"So, where to? Back to the Pelican?" Chuck had asked that before he thought about how it might sound. "Um…I meant as a place to sleep…to stay?"
Sarah turned her face to him and managed a smile. "No, not back to the Pelican, at least not right now. I think if we stay away from your apartment and your lab at school, we're probably ok. I was thinking we would swing back by my place and see if everything is still in order there. I also want to call Casey and see if he's caught wind of anything. Let's call Casey first."
Sarah steered into the parking lot of a small coffee shop, one that she had not stopped at before. When she stopped the car, she asked Chuck if he had ever been there before.
"No, I've not been in this part of town yet, really."
"Good. Keep your hat and sunglasses on. Get me an iced coffee, please." Sarah's voice was slightly strained. She picked up her burner phone as Chuck got out of the car.
When he got back, she had just finished the call. "Talked to Casey. There's not been anything happening on campus. Your lab had been locked and shows no signs of disturbance. Casey went to your apartment. As far as he could tell from the outside, it seemed undisturbed too. He drove around a few times and saw no evidence of anyone watching it.
"This is all strange, Chuck. Are they looking for you because of the project or for some other reason? Is this political espionage or corporate espionage? I was sure it was the first, although I also believe Janet was, at least initially, only involved in the second. It's all…strange, strange and increasingly puzzling."
She pushed a straw into her coffee and took a sip. She looked at a loss. "I just don't know exactly what is happening. I've never known any spies who lollygagged quite like these seem to be doing. There's no lollygagging in spying, although sometimes you get stuck doing lots and lots of waiting. But these people don't even seem to be going to the trouble of waiting anywhere." She was now fully focused on the problem, her brow furrowed.
Chuck was glad to see that Sarah had regained some of her equilibrium.
"If my place is clear, I think I need to contact the CIA, Chuck. I need to know if anyone has any idea what's going on."
"Is that really necessary? Won't you have to tell them about me, about the project, everything?"
Chuck had not planned on divulging anything about the project until it was finished, the failsafe installed, everything ready. He was, frankly, as worried in some ways about his own government as anyone else's. He also didn't understand the shift with Sarah. And Casey's warning about Chuck possibly being her way back into the CIA—well, Chuck didn't believe that, but the whole situation was making less sense to him. He believed that what happened between them this morning was real. Despite Janet. Despite Casey. He didn't understand everything that was going on with Sarah. But he would hold onto this morning until someone pried it out of his cold, dead hands. They hadn't just gone through physical motions together this morning; they had not even just had sex; they had made love. True, neither of them had used the word 'love' specifically (although the waiter at breakfast had); true, Sarah had not referred to what happened between them that way. But in his heart, that was what Chuck believed it to be—and as much as he wanted her, he wouldn't have slept with her if he thought it wasn't that, or on a trajectory to that. It wasn't his style. (And since Tamara never happened, he could actually say that again!)
Chuck knew it could all go wrong. He was in as good a position as anyone to know that. But he didn't believe it would, at least he felt justified in hoping it would not go all wrong, and he was going to act out of that hope.
Sarah gazed at him, a gaze full of complications. "Tell you what. I still have a fancy email account of my own that I used during my CIA days. Let me get on it and send an email to an old CIA contact. I will ask him if he knows anything or can find out anything."
They climbed out of the Land Rover and both went into the coffee shop. It was the heat of the day in Boca Raton; not many people were out and about. The coffee shop was sparsely populated. They sat down and Chuck fired up his laptop. Once it was ready for use, he turned it to Sarah. She began typing.
}o{
Sarah knew that Chuck was on edge. She knew how much their morning meant to him because she knew how much it meant to her. To say that it had been the best morning of her life was a massive understatement. No one had ever touched her as Chuck had. She had never felt more truly intimate with another human being. She hadn't known it was possible. She had gotten up with feelings—deeper and more thorough and more permanent-feeling than the ones she had when they laid down. And she had strong feelings when she laid down; she could now admit that to herself. Her feelings now, in fact, were deeper and more thorough and felt more permanent than any she had ever known. And she had reveled in them until Sally had said the word 'partner': then her heart, still full to bursting, had skipped several beats. Her feelings didn't change, but they were suddenly ringed in fear. Bryce.
She shook her head gently. Now wasn't the time to relive that nightmare—a nightmare she tried constantly to keep from creeping back into her thoughts.
She had been right about one thing all along. The cost of feeling again, having these wonderful new feelings, would be that she would have to find her way past those old feelings. She had been numb because all her emotional energy was spent keeping those old feelings at bay. Chuck had radically redirected her emotional energy. And, as soon as her emotional back was turned, as it were, those old feelings tidal-waved into her mind. She fought them back—but the cost of doing so was retreating from Chuck, redirecting her redirected feelings. She knew he could tell that her feelings were no longer focused on him as they had been. Her feelings for him weren't gone, weren't going anywhere—how could they?—but she was no longer as emotionally available to him. The cost of beating back her memories of Bryce was forcing her feelings for Chuck to become harder to access. She didn't have enough energy to fight back her past with Bryce and be available to Chuck in the present.
Maybe it would be enough if she could just help him with all this. Maybe—but enough for which one of them, him or her?
It would not be enough for her. To keep Chuck she was going to have to acknowledge what had happened with Bryce, own it, face it.
Maybe that price was just too high. Maybe.
She refocused: she needed to figure out what was going on with Chuck. She would reach out to an old contact at the CIA, an old contact who just happened to be the Director of the CIA. She had been his golden girl, his go-to agent, for many years. Their relationship was not friendly. It was what it was: professional. He had sometimes given her orders for which she could not forgive him, and for the execution of which she still had not forgiven herself.
Langston Graham. He had recruited her himself. He had sent her to the Farm as a teenager. She'd finished at nineteen. In her early years as an agent, he had kept her close, groomed her, sent her to Harvard. Over her four years there, she performed several missions, almost always sent somewhere dangerous when her fellow students were going home for the holidays or to the beach for Spring Break.
He had made it clear to her (without ever saying so) that a condition of her remaining in school was that she perform these missions without complaint or resistance, and perform them successfully. That wild abnormality was Graham's tax on the normality of her undergraduate life. When she wasn't on missions, she kept her mind on her schoolwork, mainly as an attempt to keep from remembering earlier missions and to keep from pondering those to come. She hadn't dated. There had been no point. She had no time and any conversation would have been filled with lies. She wouldn't have wanted to talk about her childhood. She wasn't allowed to talk about her present.
She'd finished her degree—majoring in Italian and International Relations—with high marks. But Graham had her flying out of the country moments after her final class at Harvard. She hadn't even been able to attend graduation. She hadn't set foot on the campus again until she ran through it in the dark one night, chased through Cambridge by North Korean spies trying to kill her. She hadn't had time to reminisce—although she had a wild impulse to run through Emerson Hall and to salute the statue of Ralph Waldo Emerson kept there. She'd always liked that statue, liked Emerson. But there was really nothing to remember. She had passed through Harvard as she passed through her later life—as a ghost, a spook, a human shadow. Metaphysical detritus.
Most of her missions had been the real stuff of spy life, not movie fantasy. Long, boring hours spent waiting and watching. Cultivating contacts, marks, assets—most of them not particularly dangerous or interesting, but some of them connected to others who were. She had ferried documents, smuggled items, aided double agents. Often it all seemed little more than a bad night-shift job. But there were missions that were dangerous and missions on which Graham had, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps sometimes knowingly, forced her into situations where the lives of innocents depended on her making choices that were—gray. Gray at best. It wasn't like she was the only agent who had to make such choices. But they seemed to weigh on her in ways they didn't weigh on many of the others. She could force herself not to think about the choices, but she couldn't forget them or forgive them.
Most of the other agents seemed to find some sort of comfort or solace in the "Greater Good" talk that people like Graham sought refuge in. Maybe that talk occasionally made sense—but her experience of it was that it was a way of masking greed—for power, for money, for influence—under a fine sounding but an ultimately empty abstraction.
The soldier who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies was not acting for the sake of an abstraction, he was acting for Tom and Dick and Harry, his very concrete, very real buddies. But so often, any attempt by Sarah to get clear about who or what constituted this "Greater Good' ended in a vague citation of "US interests", "foreign policy", "maintaining the balance of power". It was rarely about any actual people with actual names, actual histories, actual addresses.
She didn't think Graham an evil man, not exactly. He was what he was: a power-coveting career bureaucrat who treated what he found expedient as right, and who allowed the beliefs of other bureaucrats to serve as his standard when his judgment was unsure. The government was supersaturated with such men.
Sarah was certain Graham was behind her being teamed with Bryce. He knew she was disillusioned and ready to leave, and he had tried to keep her by assigning her a partner for the first time in her career. She had worked with other agents of course, but never really been partners with any, although there were a few, male and female, she had worked with more than once. But Graham had liked her being free of encumbrance so that she could be sent wherever he thought best: he liked his leashed wolf to be alone.
But he saw the burnout in her eyes eventually. The loneliness she was coming to find unbearable. She had no real friends. By nature, she was quiet, pensive, introverted. She could overcome her nature on missions, but when she returned, she almost always paid for that squelching of her nature by an even more intense quietness, pensiveness, and introversion.
At Harvard, that had been ok because she could fill those lonely hours with school work. Sitting alone in her DC apartment, however, she could do little but turn inward on herself. Replay her missions. Castigate herself for failures or breaches—of spy protocols or of her own values, which were often in conflict with each other, adding to her turmoil. It had become too much. And, so, Graham had given her Bryce. Or given her to Bryce. Anyway: Bryce.
Perhaps Graham was merely being avuncular, looking out for his golden girl and trying, in some distorted CIA way, to find her a boyfriend. Perhaps he was simply being patronizing, assuming that he knew better than she did what she needed. Maybe, worst of all, he was simply manipulating her, trying to keep her in the field for as long as he could, getting all that was left before burnout turned her to ash. She wasn't sure. But one day she was in his office and Bryce was there too and they had left as partners, almost as if Graham had pronounced them spy husband and spy wife—and husband and wife did become their normal cover...
Sarah shut this line of thought down. She was headed toward the nightmare—or it was headed toward her. She returned her full attention to Chuck's computer. Her email was up. She had gotten to it on autopilot, yet more proof of how ingrained some of her old habits still were. She was surprised to see that she had an email in her inbox. It was from Graham.
It was sent yesterday shortly before 7 pm, shortly before she had opened her door and found Chuck standing there. Nowadays, she didn't check this account daily. She mainly kept it out of some sense of nostalgia—and on the off-chance that she would one day need it.
She stared at the screen. The email had no subject line. There was only Graham's name. She felt dread grip the pit of her stomach. She opened the email.
Agent Walker,
I need your help. I know you are no longer with the Agency. But the Agency needs you. I need you.
There is a new professor at Commonwealth, Chuck Bartowski. We have discovered that he has developed new encryption technology. We do not know if he has fully finished with his project, but it must not be allowed to fall into the hands of any foreign government or terrorist organization. We do not fully trust Bartowski. He has no questionable ties but he has been, on occasion, a critic of the US government. We are not entirely certain he will give the technology to us. We believe he will but we cannot wait to find out. He must not give it to anyone else or be allowed to sell it.
I am mounting a fake attack on his lab. I have dispatched a team to a location in South Dakota. Bartowski left a prototype of his project there. The team is supposed to stir up trouble there and, I hope, cause Bartowski's former girlfriend to return the prototype to him.
My intention is to scare Bartowski into giving the technology to us. Our best guess is that, with the resources of Commonwealth, he will have the encryption technology done soon. With the right pressure, which I have undertaken to apply, we believe Bartowski will prove easy to manipulate.
I believe that you could help our efforts. This is a matter of national security, of the greater good. I would like you to get to know Bartowski in the next day or two. He should be rattled from the 'attack'. I am not asking you to do anything more than to get to know him, offer him someone to talk to, steer him in the right direction.
I'm asking—but you also know that I could say that I am calling in a favor. You owe me one or two. But let's still just say that I am asking.
If you are not willing to do what I ask, then, besides being disappointed in you, I must demand that you stay away from Bartowski and do not interfere in what we are doing in any way. You know that we—that I—could create problems, quite serious problems for you.
Call me. You know the number. I can give you more details. I left a text on your phone to alert you to this message. We intend Bartowski no real harm—but we will get the technology.
LG
}o{
Son of a bitch!
Sarah kept that to herself, but she couldn't keep a glance from darting toward Chuck. He was watching her but he had evidently not picked up on any signal. She grabbed her bag and dug her phone out. It was still disassembled. She put it back together and turned it back on. There, on her list of messages, was one from Graham. She had missed it. Chuck really did affect her.
Email. Urgent.
She put her phone down. The coffee shop was going slowly in and out of focus. Damn it. She was done with Graham and the CIA. And now she was caught…in a mess. Damn it.
Chuck, the man she…the man she...anyway, the man she had promised to protect…Now she had been…encouraged…to make him her asset, her mark. If she wasn't willing to do that, then she was to have nothing to do with him.
Graham could easily end her job at Commonwealth. He had been a major force in getting her hired and in seeing that she was able to turn field experience into academic credit, in effect securing her a Master's Degree in Italian. He hadn't been happy about it, but he did it.
But he could also do far worse now than getting her fired. If he knew she…felt something for Chuck, the fake attack could become a real attack on Chuck. Graham could ruin Chuck at Commonwealth. Graham was a manipulator of the first order: there was no telling how bad he could make things for each of them. He could try to bend her to his will by threatening Chuck. Maybe he wouldn't do that—but Sarah knew him well enough to know that she couldn't rule it out.
She had been better off numbly lecturing her undergrads.
Hadn't she?
She logged out of her email. She got up in a daze and, without saying anything to Chuck, walked to the bathroom. Once inside, she splashed cold water on her face. She knew she was getting pulled back under last night. She was getting dragged under now. She had kept everything ordered for over a year, and then Chuck showed up; now disorder ruled the day. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She was bent slightly toward it. She still hadn't dried her face, and water was beading and dripping from her chin into the sink basin. She looked like she had been crying although she had not.
She grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and dried her face. She needed to come to some sort of decision. What was she doing with Chuck? What was she willing to risk for him, on him? What was she going to do?
What question am I really asking myself, what decision am I trying to make?
}o{
Chuck had watched Sarah's weird non-reaction to the email and her glance at her reassembled phone. She had left it. He reached across the table. Sarah had logged out of her email. Her phone screen was still lit up. He picked it up and looked. He saw a text from Langston Graham.
Email. Urgent.
It had been sent last night at around the time Chuck left his lab. Langston Graham? Chuck knew that name; the memory of him made Chuck bristle.
He had met the man once some years ago at Stanford. Graham had recruited him—he wanted him to work for the CIA alongside working for Stanford. Graham wanted him to do research for the CIA but also to recruit from his best undergrads and grads students.
Chuck didn't feel like he was cut out even for that much cloak and dagger. He wasn't interested in serving two masters. He also wasn't interested in recruiting for the CIA. But most importantly he really didn't like Graham. He would have turned down anyone who asked, but he had to admit, in retrospect, that he had shown a certain contempt for Graham when he refused the man to his face. Again, in retrospect, that was probably not the most prudent way to have refused: Chuck should have just said "No, thank you" instead of mounting his high horse.
Why was Graham contacting Sarah? Why urgently? Could it be a coincidence that the message came when it came, just more or less synchronous with the break in at his lab? He thought again and harder this time about Casey's warning. Maybe Sarah was still CIA? Maybe not, but maybe she was trying to get back in? Of course, the message from Graham could be a coincidence—but Chuck's gut rejected that idea. No, something was going on. It seemed even more likely after Sarah's non-reaction. Would she have become unreadable unless there was something to read?
}o{
Sarah was still looking at herself in the mirror, as if the woman in the mirror could decide for her if given enough time.
What had Sally said to her about burdens and about Chuck?
Was Chuck going to be another burden, or was he going to be her way past some or all her burdens?
Sarah began to understand what Sally was saying—although she had no idea how Sally had known to say it.
If she did what Graham asked, Chuck would be her asset, her mark, a burden for her to bear. Even when it ended, he would remain a burden on her heart and her conscience—two organs already overtaxed with burdens.
Sarah did have to decide. But it wasn't a decision about whether to give Chuck to Graham. Her decision was about herself. What did she want from her new life in Boca Raton? Was she just there to escape the CIA and to perhaps sweat out—in the suffocating humidity—the effects of her past? Or was she there to build a life, a new life, a different kind of life—a life of the sort that she hoped and believed Chuck could give her?
She left the bathroom and rejoined Chuck at the table. She could tell he had something on his mind, but he didn't seem like he was ready to share it yet. There was a slightly guarded look in his eyes. She picked up her phone and sent a text to Graham:
Bartowski is with me. He is frightened. Call off the 'attack' dogs. I will see what I can do. Give me 24-48 hours.
SW
She had decided.
She got a response almost immediately.
Relieved to hear it. Expect results, as always.
LG
}o{
Chuck could tell that Sarah had settled something with herself.
She had seemed unsettled since Sally had spoken to her at the airport. She picked up her phone and sent a brief text. She hadn't put her phone down before it pinged lightly. She had gotten a response. She read it and put the phone back in her bag.
"C'mon, Chuck. Let's go."
Chuck hesitated. What was she doing? Had the morning been forgotten or discounted so soon? She seemed settled now. But she wasn't the warm, playful woman who had been with him all morning until they said goodbye to Sally in the airport. Her eyes were more artic than electric blue.
He was tempted to just refuse to go. She had done the cold/hot, step back/step toward thing with him since he showed up at her office. Casey had warned him about it, about induced lovesickness. And, yes, he was lovesick. Maybe he had gotten out of bed with her this morning as her asset after all. If he was going to refuse, he needed to do it in a public place. Maybe he could approach this in stages.
"Where are we going, Sarah?" He peered into her eyes—arctic or electric? Arctic, still. That hurt, it really hurt. Darkness filled Chuck's vision and he felt wobbly. His stomach heaved and his palms got sweaty. He hadn't felt like this since Janet ran from his apartment after finding him and Tamara.
Chuck had had enough.
"I'm not sure that's a good idea, Sarah. Maybe we need to part company right now, right here. I'm not sure…I'm not sure of your intentions. I don't want to be with a woman who's only with me when she chooses. I've been manipulated enough for love's sake, don't you think?" He stopped, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them and going on. "My claim on the crown of the King of Fools is already uncontestable." He looked at her with a piercing honesty. "Why should…Why should I go with you? Where are you taking me, Sarah?"
He knew she could hear the doubled meaning of his question. Other people in the coffee shop had picked up on the tension between them and were now watching them.
"I don't want to talk about this here, Chuck. But there's a lot we need to talk about. I'm asking you to trust me….again."
She won't mean to hurt you, Chuck. Sally.
}o{
Sarah had put her hand out, slightly flexed, palm up, an invitation for Chuck to take it. She had a sudden feeling—influenced a little, she knew, by her sudden simultaneous awareness that the coffee shop was now watching them—a sudden feeling of standing on a razor's edge.
If Chuck didn't take her hand, it was all going to be over. Her previous decision would be moot. She wouldn't compel him or charm him into doing what she wanted.
If he took her hand, then she could follow through on her decision. The question of whether he would trust her—in the face of all he knew, in the face of her mysteriousness, her wildly mixed signals, her inconsistent reactions—that question now loomed as maybe the most important question of her life. She realized that it was so important because, as backward as it seemed, whether he could trust her in the face of all he knew was going to reveal more about him than it did about her. It would reveal whether he was the man to whom she could give her future, a man who believed in her.
A man like Bryce would never take her hand in this situation. Detached, calculating, prudent in that steroidal spy way that she had been for years too, Bryce would have walked if he were in Chuck's shoes. Her father and mother would have walked. If you know all the cons, you can't be conned. They knew all the cons. Each would have walked—in something like the way they walked on each other. Doubt before trust. Make them earn your trust.
And then she knew something she had not known before. She wanted Chuck's trust because she trusted him. She did. No denying it. She felt it to her toes. Maybe she had from the very beginning, and maybe that was what scared her, caused her to threaten him with a champagne flute, caused her flight from the Union, caused her back and forth with him. It almost certainly was what made possible her midnight confession and their…lovemaking (yes, that is what it was, so what it was) this morning. It wasn't that she was trying to calculate whether she trusted him: she just did—from the very beginning. When she had no reason to, when he had not earned it. She just did. And for someone like her, who had lived her life, that should have been impossible. No one should have been able to evoke such trust from her, and her capacity for it should have been rusted beyond salvage. But he had evoked it and her capacity for trust wasn't beyond salvage. It could be brought back to life. It had been. It was touch-and-go for a while, but it had been brought back to life. Chuck had breathed life back into it. She trusted him to take her hand.
She trusted him, and it terrified her. She wanted his trust in return, the same kind of trust. Trust at first sight: was that a meaningful possibility? Hadn't Chuck said that he was trying to tell her he trusted her when he approached her at the new faculty party? And hadn't he trusted her again and again when the evidence was against her, hadn't he kept coming back to her, even after she pushed him away, warmed her even after she'd gone cold?
She still held out her hand. Chuck was staring into her eyes. She felt her eyes shift, the quality of her gaze change as her heart finished reorienting, settled. She needed more time to think, to work this all out, but she knew she had changed. She thought she was fighting the change from when she met him, but she was fighting only to keep herself from realizing that she had already changed. Her gaze warmed and softened. Understanding all this mattered—but it mattered more to live it, to live it right now. She and Chuck could work on understanding it together after they dealt with Graham.
She still held out her hand. Chuck took it. She was illumined in the glow of his smile, freely given—a smile freely given, she knew, despite his confusion and questions.
}o{
Sarah's hand was extended, an embodied request: "Please trust me!" Her eyes shifted slightly, abruptly, back to electric blue—like the shift of an impossibly responsive mood ring. She had understood something, realized something. The shift in blue went with a shift in her bodily attitude. Without changing her position, she seemed vulnerable in a way that she hadn't a moment before. Whatever it was that she had realized, it was something about herself, and about herself in relation to him, because her vulnerability was a vulnerability to him.
She trusted him. As soon as he knew that, he also knew why he was at that table, looking up at her—and why he had gone to her house, gone to Okeechobee, gone to the airport and…gone to bed with her. Because he trusted her with all that, trusted her with himself, with his…heart. All the questions he had just been asking masked that fundamental fact, were superficial: of course, he would go with her and, of course, he wouldn't run from her. He was with her. He was hers.
All his life he had waited for a moment like this and never had it, not with Sally, not with Janet. Let the scoffers scoff. Let the rom-com haters hate. He was with Sarah. She doth teach the torches to burn bright.
He took her hand, smiled, and stood beside her. He grabbed her and kissed her—to her great surprise, even a bit to his. After a moment, she kissed him back, hard. There was a ripple of pleased responses and slow claps from the coffee drinkers around them. Sarah pulled back, her color rising.
"Well, this is a little uncomfortable…"
Chuck, normally reticent about PDA, simply smiled. "Pretty comfortable for me…Just saying"
"Oh, I didn't mean the kiss, Chuck—only the circumstances." She leaned in close as she said that since their audience was still watching.
"I know—and normally I would agree with you, except I'm finding that kisses from Sarah Walker are so earth-shaking that I'm unwilling to pass up on any, if I can help it."
"'Earth-shaking', huh? Homeric?" She grinned at him cheekily, forgetting their audience. "I'm not sure anyone has had recourse to Homer before in describing my kisses. I rather like your kisses too, you great-souled man.
"Let's go, we need to talk, Chuck."
They left the coffee shop and climbed back into the Land Rover.
}o{
Sarah drove them back to her house. It was getting late in the afternoon. The shadow of her massive live oak tree lay dark and heavy across her house. When got out of the car, and climbed onto the porch, they could feel the difference in temperature. It was noticeably cooler on the porch.
"Sit down out here, Chuck. I think I still have some lemonade I made yesterday. Would you like a glass?" Chuck nodded and took a seat in one of the old metal lawn chairs Sarah had on the porch, leaving the rocker for her. Chuck was both eager for the coming conversation and anxious about it. It now seemed clear that Graham had emailed Sarah about him. She had texted Graham back and got a response. He trusted her—but he was curious and worried. He didn't think she would do anything except what she thought best for him. What would that be, though? What was going on?
Sarah came back and handed Chuck a tall glass of lemonade. She had one for herself. She sat down in the rocking chair, smiling at him to acknowledge his remembering that it was her chair. Her smile also seemed to say that it would have been fine with her if he had chosen to sit in it.
"I have several things I need to tell you. Each is difficult in its own way. I want to start by…telling you about my old partner, Bryce Larkin."
"Wait—Bryce Larkin? Didn't he go to Stanford? Track guy, gymnast, hunk?"
Sarah nodded but looked shocked. "You knew each other?"
"Yeah, he was a couple of years behind me, school-wise, because I started at Stanford without ever finishing high school. I was just starting as a grad student when he was a freshman, but we were the same age. He was in a class for which I was the teaching assistant."
"You're kidding me."
"No. But he's an…accountant. At least, that's the last I heard. We weren't close friends or anything. So, he was a spy…became a spy?"
"Yes, he was recruited at Stanford. I should have realized that you two might have known one another."
"Not really. Big school. We ran in…different circles. We were…are, I'm guessing…still pretty different men." Chuck looked down at his lemonade and then lifted it to his mouth and took a drink.
Sarah still seemed flustered by the fact that he knew Bryce.
Chuck went on, "So you two were partners? For a…long time?"
"Not really. About two years. Chuck, Bryce is…dead."
"Oh, sorry. It must have been awful to lose a partner." Chuck turned sympathetically toward her.
"It is. But there is…more to it than that. I guess I should just try to tell the story. I need you to hear it, Chuck." Sarah started. The story came in fits and starts.
}o{
"I had been in the CIA already for a long time when Bryce became my partner. For years, I had been a solitary agent. The CIA director, Graham, considered me his go-to agent, his personal…trouble shooter. Don't get too excited by that. It still meant that most of the time I was little more than an undercover cop who worked in foreign cities. Most of the work was the boring work that spies spend their work time doing. Watching, listening, trailing. Certainly, there were missions that were like the ones in the books or on TV, glamorous or deadly or politically consequential. I've done things of which I'm very proud, Chuck. But I've also done things of which I'm bitterly ashamed, things I will…tell you about or try to…down the road. We'll have time…the time I'll need…for those talks.
"I had become disenchanted with the job, with Graham, with all of it, and I wanted out. Graham caught on. I guess he thought the problem was that I was lonely. Maybe it was—maybe it was part of the problem. He assigned Bryce to me and would brook no debate about it. At first, Graham kept finding us dreamy sorts of assignments—tropical paradise settings, little danger, usually an assignment that required us to play the part of a married couple.
"Why I didn't see it at the time remains a puzzle to me. It should have been obvious. Graham was setting me up to fall for Bryce. I now suspect he even told Bryce that was what he was doing, encouraged Bryce to make a play for me, probably assuring him I was ripe for the…plucking. Anyway, Bryce did the job. By our second mission of that sort, I thought I was falling for him. I did fall into bed with him.
"I know that men think I'm beautiful. As a spy, that was to my advantage in some ways and to my disadvantage in others. I could influence marks or assets reasonably easily. The cost was that they were always pushing for more, and I was always having to find ways to avoid it. If I was captured, I knew ahead of time what kind of…torture was most likely to be my fate. Thank God, the only two times I was captured I was rescued right away. It had been obvious what even another hour would have meant for me, if I couldn't have found a way to free myself—and I doubt I could have done so in either case. I was lucky. I knew other attractive female agents who weren't so lucky.
"Anyway, I know that men think I'm beautiful. But where love is concerned, beauty can be as tricky as wealth. It's hard to know why men who are interested in you are really interested. Do they know you, or just see you? I guess I don't have to tell you that men are slaves to their eyes in almost the same way beagles are to their noses? I don't mean that women can't also be that way—God knows we can. But…
"Sorry, I'm drifting…I guess...I really don't want to have to tell you this story.
"Things with Bryce were good…for a while. Then I began to think about leaving the Agency again, this time to have a family—with Bryce. I hugged that thought close for a long time without saying anything to him about it. Graham gave me an additional push, because once he felt like Bryce and I were together, he started changing the venues and types of missions.
"Soon we were in grimy eastern European cities, working long weeks of surveillance, making deals in dark bars, chasing bad guys through sewage near the docks. All that risk and darkness made me start thinking even more seriously about getting out and having a family. Bryce seemed genuinely to care for me. I thought he would at least be willing to talk about it. But before I could even begin a conversation with him about it, he began to change, to act…differently.
"He became distant, more distant, really. He didn't do intimacy. He insisted that he was in control of the missions and that he was, in effect, my handler, and that I was his asset. Our…time together…changed. It had always been, well, not much about intimacy or communication or sharing but mostly about need. It now became brief and rushed and rare. Bryce no longer even acknowledged that I had my own needs. We were together, when we were, to serve his. He became rough and demanding. I thought maybe he had understood what I was hoping for and was trying to make it clear to me that he didn't share my hopes—but he could have just told me that. I had finally had enough of it. I gave up on a future for us. I still thought I…loved him. But I couldn't go on. I contacted Graham and asked to go back to my old status, to go back to being alone.
"Graham seemed surprised, puzzled. It turned out that it hadn't been Graham who'd made things worse for us, sent us to all these hellhole assignments. Bryce had lobbied for them, claiming that he and I both wanted them. Graham never questioned Bryce or said anything to me about it.
"I began to wonder what was going on. I started watching Bryce as much as I could without him detecting what I was doing. His behavior was suspicious. He had always been the recon person on our team—that meant he went out without me a lot, to look over drop sites and meeting places and so on.
"One day, I followed him. He was on a meet instead of doing recon in preparation for one. I knew the person he met, a dangerous high-ranking player in an organization of rogue spies known as Fulcrum. They didn't seem to meet as adversaries or to make a deal. The man from Fulcrum seemed to be Bryce's handler. I began to suspect that Bryce had been a double agent all along, or had become one at some point, that he was himself a member of Fulcrum. I played a dangerous game for the next couple of days. I kept him at bay (I couldn't stand the thought of him touching me but, luckily, he didn't seem that interested) and I kept tabs on him as well as I could. I finally overheard a conversation he had on his cell when he thought I couldn't hear. The conversation confirmed my suspicion. He was a double-agent. But then I realized that the conversation had turned to me. I had been seen following Bryce to meet with his Fulcrum handler. Bryce, I realized, had been ordered to kill me.
"I honestly didn't think he would do it, could do it. That night, I pretended to be sick so that I could go to bed early. He knew I had followed him, so he was watchful. But he had no idea that I had heard the phone call.
"I managed to get into bed with one of my knives. He didn't know I'd done it. He got in bed beside me. I regulated my breathing and rolled over, exposing my back to him. I knew that we couldn't lie like that forever. If he was going to try something, he would do it sooner rather than later. I…gave him the chance.
"At first, I thought I was right—that he wouldn't do it. But then I felt him get out of bed. He moved as silently as he could. If I hadn't been alerted to what he was doing, I doubt I would've had a chance. I heard him get to the chair where he'd placed his shoulder holster. The steel-on-steel sound of him twisting his silencer on was barely audible—but I knew that sound. I'd made it a few times myself in preparation for…
"Anyway, I was praying I was wrong, that he couldn't do it. Graham knew nothing about the situation really. Maybe I could turn Bryce again. I held out no hope for us, of course, but I did hope that I wouldn't be forced to kill my…lover, the man with whom I'd hoped to leave the CIA.
"Bryce padded back toward me. He stood by his side of the bed. I knew he was aiming the silenced pistol at me. He was going to execute me. I'd worked with him long enough that I had come to know his breathing when he pulled a trigger. I heard him take a slow deep breath and start to exhale it slowly. He was about to squeeze the trigger, maybe he was squeezing it.
"I whirled over and threw my knife. I caught him in the throat, severing an artery. There was…a geyser of blood, immediately soaking his side of the bed. He fell. I got to him just as his eyes fixed. I straddled his body, my knees in his pooling blood…I demanded to know why he'd done it. He said nothing. He just died."
}o{
They sat in silence for a long time when Sarah finished her story.
What words were there?
Chuck reached over and took her lemonade out of her hand. She was squeezing the glass so tightly he feared she would break it. When he got the lemonade out of her hand, he scooted his metal chair closer to her. He kept hold of her hand, chilled both by the lemonade and the story.
He pulled her gently into his lap. She moved to him and put her arms around his neck. She buried her face in his shoulder and she began to cry. There were no great, wrenching sobs. In many ways her quiet, intense tears were worse—more focused, a steady drip-drip-drop of slow-thawing agony. She had held onto this story, to this pain, for a long time, Chuck knew. Held it cold against her heart. He guessed she had held onto it so tightly that in a sense she couldn't begin to reckon with it, because she could gain no distance or perspective on it. It was just a vast ice floe of raw pain threatening to suffocate her—a thick, translucent sheet of anger and disappointment and fear and betrayal and guilt.
He said nothing to her. He held her. His shirt became damp, then wet. The late afternoon passed into evening: the shadow of the umbrageous live oak lengthening and finally dispersing into the general gloom as the sun slowly sank. After a while, he realized that Sarah had fallen asleep. He took her into her bedroom and put her in her bed. She was in a deep sleep. She did not awaken as he took off her shoes and tucked her beneath the soft blue blanket. But just as he let go of the blanket, she trembled. Her hand seemed to clutch at his for a moment. Then she was deeply asleep once more. He grabbed the heavy blanket folded at the foot of the bed and unfolded it. There was a white cross on the blanket, placed in the middle of a thick red stripe: a Swiss Army red cross blanket, as he had suspected on his first visit. He got in bed beside her, careful to stay on top of the blue blanket she was under, and then he covered them both with the red cross blanket. He laid there on his back staring at the ceiling. It had been quite a day. Sarah Walker had been naked in his arms, albeit in two different ways, as the day began and as it ended.
They still hadn't talked about Graham's email or Sarah's response. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Sarah didn't seem concerned that anyone was after him any longer. He wondered why that was. But if she was ok with it, he was too. Tomorrow. He trusted her. God help him, he did.
AN2 In an interview, Bon Iver's mother said the following about "re: stacks": "To me…it is about going through the sadness, taking some of it with you and being made whole because of it…"