A/N: We continue our story.


Patriot Tours


Chapter 3: Mock Tour


Jill had watched TV with Chuck again after they got back to Capitol Fountain. They stopped on the way and bought some beer at a gas station on a corner near the motel. He felt uncomfortable buying it, although he and Jill were both over twenty-one and even though she had been the one to suggest it. He was worried that his agreeing to buy it would make her wonder if he aimed to get her drunk. But he didn't know how to deny that without admitting that the thought had crossed his mind, even if it had not crossed it as actionable.

"Not so sleepy after all?" he finally asked her, referring to her yawning in the face of Grayton's slow southern drawl.

"Not so much. Must have been the snowflakes and the walk; they woke me."

Chuck carried the beers in a paper bag. Snow was still falling. At the motel, he stopped again to look at the fountain, still covered in ice but the ice now covered with fresh snow. He didn't know why the fountain kept drawing his attention. Part of it was that it was like a winter still-life of the sunny moving picture fountain outside his apartment in California. But that did not seem to be all.

The fountain — like the huge mirror in his room — seemed a portent. Both seemed to have a meaning, as if signs of a coming event.

And Jill found both irritating.

That she was irritated by the fountain was suggested by her comments that morning, and again, now, when she bumped Chuck as he stared at the fountain and shook her head at him, clicking her tongue. In his room, she made a comment about how bizarre it was for them to come home to themselves — and she pointed at their reflections in the mirror.

Chuck only shrugged and took out the beers, freeing one from the plastic, and handing it to her. She took it and opened it, then put it on the coffee table and took off her jacket.

She sat down on the loveseat as she had the night before and patted the empty spot beside her. She reached for her beer, picked it up and sat back. Chuck took off his coat, put it on the bed, then got himself a beer and opened it. He sat down in the spot she had patted.

She kicked off her shoes and sighed. "So, tomorrow we get the tour."

"Guess so," Chuck said, nodding. "I'm actually excited about the mock tour. I've only seen photos of these places, images on TV. For me, it'll be more of a real tour than a mock tour."

Jill took another sip of her beer. "It'll just be mock for me. I've been to DC a bunch of times. Been to all these places. But I am eager to hear Jacob and Tammy do the script."

"So, you've seen all the sights, and met all the A-list celebrities. What's left?" He meant the question as a joke, but by the time he climbed the rising inflection, he was no longer sure it was.

Jill didn't take it as one. She gave him a long, serious look. "Like I said, I've got senioritis. I'm ready to be done with school, start my life."

"Like, start your career?"

"That, sure," she said, nodding, "but not only that. I want a career but not at the expense of a family. I want both. I want both a lot." She paused but did not meet Chuck's eyes immediately. After a minute of silence, she lifted her eyes to his. "What about you? I know you have another year, but what happens after Stanford?"

Chuck hated that question. Ellie asked it. Her boyfriend, Devon, asked it. Big Mike, the Buy More Manager asked it. It seemed like everyone wanted to know his plan. But he didn't have a plan. He dreamed vaguely of a good job, programming, designing games or apps; he dreamed of a wife and kids, a home. But those were dreams, not plans. He had taken no concrete steps toward making any of those things happen. He thought maybe he had with Alice, but that went sour. And, though he enjoyed the Buy More, he had no intention of staying on after he finished college. That was strictly a summer job, temporary.

He was waiting — waiting to be galvanized, waiting for something to come along that claimed him. His preference was to be chosen, not to choose. It didn't have to happen in one cataclysmic event — a tidal wave that crashed to shore and dragged him out to deep water, a blinding light containing a voice from above — but he wanted a call, a vocation, the feeling that he had found his life's purpose, his proper orientation. He had potential, he knew it; real potential, and more potential than was gauged by the Employee of the Month board at the Buy More, or even by the Dean's list at Stanford. But Chuck needed something to actualize it.

He glanced at Jill as she took another sip of her beer. Maybe it was going to be her. She was growing on him, that was sure.

Her face was prettier than he thought when he first saw it, and he thought it pretty then. And the cuteness of her expressions added whole dimensions to her prettiness — allowing her to be both at the same time, pretty and cute, although not quite in the same way. She was smart too, obviously, and funny and playful. Mischievous.

But he wasn't going to get ahead of himself.

He no longer doubted she was flirting with him, but she had flirted with Grayton at the restaurant (though Chuck had denied it and Jill hadn't admitted it) before shutting Grayton down with sleepy yawns. Chuck was in no hurry to be the recipient of one of those. With his luck, it would happen in front of everyone at Patriot Tours, in front of a crowd. A repeat of Alice.

No, he was not going to hurry where Jill was concerned, even though their time together in DC would be brief, just a few weeks. Scripps wasn't impossibly far from Stanford, though. He could see her during her final term, if that's how things worked out. He was not going to fall again as he fell for Alice, plunging headlong. He was willing to fall — but only in a controlled fall, with handholds and pauses along the way, feet first, not headfirst.

"After Stanford," he said at last, repeating Jill's words. "I don't know. Computers in some form or fashion, probably…"

"Family?"

"Probably. I want one, always have, but I don't know…"

"You don't know about a lot, for a straight 'A' student at Stanford."

Chuck put his beer down and regarded, puzzled. "How do you know that?"

"A little bird named Tammy told me, while you went to the restroom today. I might have asked her about you."

Jill sipped her beer but looked at him from the corner of her eye.


Sarah finished doctoring her heel and picked up her CIA phone.

She let out a long, heavy sigh. She hated to fail: she hated it for its own sake, first, but she also hated it because it meant having to face Director Graham with bad news.

He did not take bad news well. Luckily, she rarely failed and so she rarely had to break bad news, but she was going to have to do it now.

She'd been in Bordeaux for almost three weeks, posing as a buyer from a US fashion house, in Bordeaux to purchase the newest and the best of French fashion. According to her cover, she had come to Bordeaux after a few weeks in Paris, and was hoping to conduct more satisfactory business there, away from the overbearing haute couture of the French capital city. In effect, Bordeaux would complete Sarah's brief fashion tour of France. That was her cover. Her cover name was Erica Snow.

But she was really there hoping to track Marcuse, Phillip Marcuse, an assassin and a terrorist. He was rumored to work in the French fashion industry, using the glamor and the jet setting and the freedom of movement as a cover for his real work, the destabilization and ruin of capitalist democracy around the globe. Marcuse was that rare thing — a professional killer who was also a political believer. But his political beliefs were all negative: he wanted to pull down democracy and capitalism but he was neither a communist nor a fascist. If anything, he seemed to be some kind of anarchist — but no one knew what kind. He had ties to terrorist groups all over the globe and of all stripes, although he remained stubbornly independent, his own entity.

Sarah been sent to France because the CIA had picked up infrequent but repeated chatter that Marcuse was planning an attack on the US, something large-scale and serious, involving multiple terrorist groups, but still in the planning stage — there were no concrete details, only the repetition of the chatter, but the repetition slowly made the chatter credible.

Marcuse was rumored to have a personal weakness for blonde supermodels, and he hoped that Sarah, with her blond hair, her height, her youth and her figure would either run into Marcuse herself or that he would hear about the beautiful young American, and be unable to stay away.

The problem Sarah faced, that the CIA faced, was that no one knew what Marcuse looked like. Somehow, in an age of omnipresent cameras and infinite busybodies, he had remained unidentified. He was known to conduct his business anonymously, or through multiple intermediaries, usually women or children, and was believed to kill anyone who saw him and knew who he was.

He was supposed to work sometimes in Paris and sometimes in Bordeaux, and, for various reasons, the CIA analysts designated Bordeaux as more promising, But If Sarah met him among the many Frenchmen she met who tried to seduce her, she did not know it.. Sarah had been in Bordeaux for two weeks, almost certain that she had not met Marcuse, when a woman, Mathilde, who worked at one of the small businesses near Sarah's apartment, told her of a man who wanted to meet her. Sarah had refused, telling Mathilde that if a man wanted to meet her, he could find her and talk to her face to face. The next day, Mathilde called Sarah, telling her again of the man and offering excuses for why he could not meet her in person.

"He's very busy, Erica, but he's…well, he's beautiful, and absolutely charming, like melted diamonds. Andre. The kind of man who is bold and reckless in relation to the world, but tender and attentive to the woman who is his intimate companion."

Mathilde was herself a tall blond Frenchwoman, comely, and Sarah began to put it all together. "Were you once his…intimate companion?"

Mathilde paused for a split-second before she answered, then answered just above her breath. "No, but a friend of mine was and she still rates her weeks with him as the best of her life. Mémorable."

Sarah knew Mathilde was lying but she fell in with the lie. "What happened? I'm not here looking for a fling.."

"Oh, you Americans, always so moraliste. Amorous dalliance and morality need never cross paths, no more than lovers or husbands need to cross paths!"

"Have it your way, but I still want to know why your friend's not with him if he's so beautiful and charming."

Mathilde paused again. "He's not the sort of man who settles, Erica — but he's also not the sort of man you should miss. You will be glad you met him. Your body will be glad you met him. Délicieux…"

Sarah now began to suspect it was possible that the man was Marcuse. Something about Mathilde, the conversation. Everyone said he was a man who did not take "No" for an answer, a man who got what he wanted. There was an urgency in Mathilde's manner that suggested she was not just facilitating an affair.

"Are you sure your friend will not resent me, and so resent you, for arranging this?"

"We French know that no good thing lasts. She will understand. This man, he is very interested in meeting you, and he is a man who could be a help to me. Do us both a favor."

The comment about help sounded true to Sarah. Mathilde's urgency seemed to be equal parts fear and ambition. But fear of what, ambition for what?

"Can he meet me for dinner? Maybe Peppino's?" Sarah offered up the popular pizzeria.

"No — he'd prefer someplace less public."

"Well, I refuse to meet him for the first time anywhere there's a bed, Mathilde."

Mathilde sighed. "You only delay the inevitable. Meet him and you will be looking for the nearest bed."

Sarah finally agreed to meet him the next day.

But she chose one of the old churches — St. Michael's — and a time early in the day, 9 am. "Tell Andre I will meet him inside, near the prayer candles." Mathilde was not happy about the choice, but she relented.

Sarah knew that few tourists went inside the church in the morning; most of the people there, if any, would be worshippers, focused on God, and not paying attention to those few who were there to gawk.

The next day, at 9 am, Sarah stood outside the church, near its tall, separate bell tower. She wore her hair up inside a touristy hat and a large pair of sunglasses. She was further hidden in a heavy, oversized coat. Stepping back in the shadows, she waited. Three men entered at around 9 am who might plausibly be Marcuse. All left shortly after entering. Sarah got a good look at the face of each but she did not reveal herself to any. None saw her.

Each hurried away from the basilica.

Sarah called Mathilde back later in the morning, claiming that she had been suddenly ill and unable to make the rendezvous. Mathilde was frantic. "Erica! He wants to meet you. I tell you he is not a man to trifle with."

Sarah was now confident that Andre was Marcuse. By that point, analysts had combed through Mathilde's past, particularly her recent travels, and found that in the last year, she had been in three different countries at times when Marcuse was reputed to be active in them.

That was how Sarah ended up at Arcachon in the gray drizzle. She was supposed to meet Marcuse on Thiers Pier for an evening stroll on the beach. But this time, he did not show up. Sarah was unable to find out which of the men at St. Michael's was the assassin.

She started to dial Director Graham when she realized she had two missed calls from him, both in the last few minutes. Her phone vibrated in her hand before she could press the Director's name.

"Walker, secure."

"Agent, get the hell out of Bordeaux, now. Your contact, Mathilde, was found dead a couple of minutes ago. Her shop was robbed apparently — but we believe it was Marcuse. Get to Paris and on a plane home?"

"But what about dismantling the cover? The apartment?"

"Doesn't matter. The analysts will do as much mop-up as they can from here. Get your personals and get gone. I'll see you when you get to Langley."

"Does Marcuse know me? Is my cover blown?"

"We don't know, but Mathilde was executed, the kill too clean to have been some sloppy robbery. If she's dead, we have to worry you are compromised. Now, get off the phone and away from the Rue de Lurbe!"

The phone went dead. Sarah jumped up, rushing to the bedroom, worried that she might go dead too, if she didn't hurry.

Her heel was still burning, but that didn't signify. Despite the imminent danger, a tiredness overtook her but did not slow her escape.


Chuck clicked off the television, sighing inwardly as it went dead.

Jill, two beer cans on the coffee table in front of her, was leaning against his shoulder, snoring very lightly. Her hair smelled like violets.

She'd fallen asleep at about the middle of the movie. Chuck hated to wake her, so he slipped off the loveseat, lowering her on it. Jill was still asleep. He went to the closet and grabbed the extra blanket he had seen there, and a pillow.

He put the pillow on the arm of the loveseat and carefully picked up Jill's stocking feet, turning her so that she was supine on the seat, her head on the pillow. Then he put the blanket over her.

He walked to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, slipped into his pajamas, and turned out the lights. The last thing he saw as he clicked the switch was his reflection in the mirror, Jill reflected beyond him, stretched out on the loveseat. She was still snoring lightly.

He'd throw away the beer cans tomorrow. He climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling for a moment thinking of violets but fell asleep more quickly than he expected.


The plane from Bordeaux to Paris was on-time. Sarah was in the seating area at the gate. People milled around, all yawning or blinking, all already red-eyed even before the red-eye flight.

If Marcuse intended her harm, he had missed his chance. She was in the airport now and would remain in De Gaulle when in Paris, never out of the airport.

Sarah exhaled slowly, trying to focus herself. Not only had she failed, but she was in retreat from a mission, chased from France by the threat of Marcuse. It galled her, tasted bitter. The only satisfactions of her life were successful missions, her ability to tell herself that she was making the world a safer place.

Her life as an agent was an exercise in self-negation. She had been able to stand it because her life before the Agency had been an exercise in self-negation too. It was her way; it was what she knew. She was twenty-three, her birthday just past, uncelebrated on the day she arrived in Bordeaux. Her life as an agent stretched out before her, winding out of sight like the Way of Sorrows.

She could no longer remember quite why she had signed the papers, joined the CIA. Ostensibly, she had done it to keep her father from serving much, if any, time in jail. But she thought there was a deeper reason — that she had done it as a form of self-punishment. She had done things when she was her conman father's helper that had plagued her conscience, and she had somehow reasoned that she could atone for those things by doing worse ones. No twenty-three-year-old should know of the world what she knew of it or have done in it the things she had done.

She needed a break, time off, but she knew she would not take one. She shook her head. The mood that drizzly Thiers Pier had induced in her she was unable to shake. Her feet still felt wet and cold, despite her wool socks and dry boots.

Scanning the gate, she unwrapped the jambon-beurre she bought outside the gate and took a bite. It had been hours since she had eaten anything. The sandwich was good but she ate it mechanically, almost in disrelish. She had the flight to Paris ahead of her, a forty-five minute layover in De Gaulle, and then an eight-flight to DC. Graham would expect her to be at Langley as soon after landing as possible. Once he knew she was safe, he would reckon with her failure.

Another bite, making herself eat, another.

Maintenance.


Chuck woke up the next morning just as dawn broke.

He glanced at the loveseat. Jill was gone.

And then, a movement beside him, he realized she wasn't. She was in his bed. Asleep on her side, just rolled over, Chuck could see her bra and the otherwise bare skin of her back.

He looked the other way. Her sweater was folded on the coffee table — and her pants, although she was covered waist to feet by a blanket. The empty beer cans, his and hers, were gone.

He did not move.

"Chuck," she said, facing away from him, "It's okay. I got cramped on the loveseat, and cold, so I climbed in here." She rolled over again, now facing him. She used one hand to pull the blanket up closer to her chin, covering her bra, her cleavage.

Chuck managed to keep his eyes on hers. "It's okay. Do you want me to get your clothes?"

She stared at him for a minute. "It's early, right?"

"Yes," Chuck said, "it's early."

Jill waited, one eyebrow rising slowly. After it reached its height, she huffed a little. "Okay, give me my clothes. I'll go to my room and get a shower."

Chuck got up and retrieved her clothes, handed them to her.

"I'm going to get in the shower, so you can get dressed. I'll meet you down by the fountain in time to walk to Patriot Tours."

She sat up, letting the blanket fall, revealing the white lacy bra. She glanced at him again then gestured to the bathroom. "Well, get going."

Chuck did. Only after he closed the door did he realize what he had done wrong. Or not-done wrong.

His sin of omission.

He heard the door to his room slam just before he turned on the shower.


The mock tour began at the Smithsonian.

Jacob and Tammy let one of the Smithsonian guides do the honors, and the museum took about two hours. They finished in a large room with an enormous, brilliantly shiny wooden table, surrounded by many chairs. They ate a box lunch in the room together, as the students would when they were on official tours.

Chuck spent the tour walking mostly alone. Jill had been icier than the fountain on the walk to Patriot Tours and she showed no signs of melting, not even in the well-warmed museum. She had glared at him a time or two, and at one point during lunch, she had been whispering with Grayton and Grayton had shaken his head and rolled his eyes. Chuck focused on his tuna salad sandwich and tried not to notice.

After lunch, they got back on the bus. The buses were not large. When the students were on the tour, there would be two groups on each bus, along with the two tour guides and the bus driver. Today, there were the six tour guides and the two Patriot Tour bosses, Jacob and Tammy. The bus driver was a square, bulky woman named Marge. Chuck liked her. Marge smiled at him each time she made eye contact with him in the mirror she used to keep a watch on her passengers.

The bus went from the Smithsonian to the Capitol Building. Chuck stopped worrying about Jill as the building came into view. He had looked forward to seeing it but had not expected such a visceral reaction. His heart was thumping. The building looked and did not look like the images of it he had seen: it seemed grander, its stone whiter. The pivotal role of the building in the nation's history settled on Chuck as Marge parked the bus.

Tammy stood up. "So, folks, although as you've seen, the Smithsonian will provide a tour guide while you have your students there, once here, the show's all you." She turned to Jacob. "Jacob, will you lead us around the Capitol Building?"

Jacob led the group off the bus. The day had dawned gray but the sun came out almost as soon as Jacob stepped off the bus, making the Capitol gleam. Chuck stepped off the bus and craned his head around, trying to see as much as he could, enjoying the contrast of the white building and the blue sky. He was listening to Jacob but the script was background: the building was foreground.

They moved around to some steps and descended into the Visitor Center. There were two lines, one for tour groups and the other for visitors with no reservation. Jacob led Chuck and the others into the tour group line. They stopped in a small room, took seats, and watched a film about the founding of the Republic, construction of the Capitol and about the essentials of democracy. Chuck watched carefully, although he was distracted for a moment when Jill moved into a seat next to him. She gave him a quick smile as he glanced at her, the first thaw of the day. He nodded.

When the film ended, Jacob led them further, to the Crypt, the Rotunda and to Statuary Hall, commenting and explaining as they went, mostly on script but adding occasional personal comments or flourishes. Chuck marveled at all, but when they ended by standing before the door the President used to enter when giving the State of the Union address, Chuck actually trembled. It was as though he could feel power emanating through the doors and enlivening the whole mighty edifice.

He was silent as they went back to the bus. Jacob stopped and turned to the group before they boarded. "The other stops, the War Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, will be thematically different. These were the halls of power and you want the students to feel that, find it palpable. The War Memorial shows the cost and consequences of power. The Lincoln Memorial shows the cost and consequences of statecraft. Make sure your students feel each. It's not enough to see — they need to feel each location." Jacob paused and grinned. "But kept to the timetable, the schedule."

Everyone boarded and this time, unexpectedly, Jill sat beside Chuck.

She grabbed his hand as they sat down and her eyes lifted to his, imploring. "Sorry, I've been…a little bitchy. I was disappointed about last night, this morning. I thought we…But I really was tired and the beers…I shouldn't have expected you…I should have told you what I wanted, not made you guess…"

She was struggling.

Chuck squeezed her hand. "I like you, Jill, but I'm in no hurry. Even if it sounds paradoxical, it's because I like you that I'm not in a hurry. We have the weekend ahead of us, to get to know each other better. No timetables for anything, alright?"

She smiled in relief and squeezed his hand back. "Thanks, Chuck. No timetables."


Sarah could barely hold her head up on the ride to Langley. As she expected, Graham would allow the weary no rest. She glanced at her watch but she was too tired to heed it. She had lost track of time.

At least Graham had sent a car for her, one unexpected kindness.

The flight had been long and claustrophobic. Cramped hours of recycled air. She was glad for the cold air and sunshine as she got into the car.

She sat looking out the window but seeing nothing until Langley loomed into view.

The building was, as always, massive, umbrageous. Gormenghast, Sarah thought, brooding and vast, remembering a book she had read as a teenager.

Langley always seemed to Sarah to be hoarding secrets, keeping them, hunched over them greedily, as if the building were itself part of the Agency, an agent, the Master Spy, and not simply the house of the Agency, home of spies.

Its secrets were its power.

The driver dropped her at the usual entrance she used when she visited Graham. She got out and stared up at the building, something she never did. Usually she walked straight inside.

Strange, that such a building felt as much home to her as anywhere on earth. Her home was the House of Secrets — not her apartment a few miles away, its hard bed and dead plants.

She took a deep breath of the cold air, composed her mind as best she could. The mood from Arcachon was still on her. She walked inside, limping slightly, her blister.