A/N: Hey, Warner Bros., you own Chuck. Time to re-think your plans for a Chuck movie and put it on the front burner. Seriously, guys, if you wait too long two of the stars are going to be too expensive for your little TV budget. Have you seen what great stuff they are up to lately? Come on, this is the perfect time. Don't dither. At least a webisode, as has been recently suggested by LetsGoRed, should be on the agenda. Something, for God's sake.
Apologies for the longer than usual delay between postings. Real life interfered. Thanks for your patience, those of you still here.
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Reis and Mead followed the ambulance to the hospital. Once Fleming was safe to move, they would arrange to have him transferred to a secure CIA medical facility in San Francisco.
Sarah and Chuck went to the nearby Holiday Inn on Beach Street. They had forgotten to get the room key from Casey, but they would have needed to stop at the desk anyway to get the room number. Their credentials as Federal Officers secured the necessary cooperation from the hotel staff. Fleming was registered under his brother's name, as they had expected.
The room, a moderately sized room with a Queen bed, overlooked a grass covered roof and the other wing of the hotel. It had been serviced by the maid already, but Fleming had clearly been back to the room since. An empty beer bottle sat on a side table next to an armchair. A book was open, pages down, on the seat of the armchair – Trance: Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips.
Sarah gestured to the book. "Well, that figures," she said.
"What?" Chuck asked.
"It's a book about CIA mind control studies," said Sarah.
"Did you guys do that?"
"I guess. I don't know. I never read the book."
They got busy looking for the disk, any indication of where it might be, or any explanation of what the mysterious numbers Fleming had given Chuck meant.
They worked efficiently. Fleming didn't have much in the way of possessions, as he'd fled with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. He'd bought some socks, underwear and shirts. All his stuff was dumped in the center of the bed and searched.
Chuck had learned by watching Sarah search Fleming's office the day before where to look for hidden caches. Using a multi-tool, which he had begun to carry every day, he was unscrewing the grill over the air vent when Sarah asked him, "Chuck, the woman at the front desk, who gave us the key to the room...was she right or left handed?"
"Umm...I don't know."
"She was left handed. Was she married?"
"Sarah, I've got the best girlfriend in the world. I'm not looking to see anymore," he said.
"She was married. The manager she called...was she married?"
"I don't know," he was confused by now and answered somewhat tentatively.
The grill came off and he looked inside. The vent was empty. He began to screw it back into place. The TV was wall mounted, so they ignored it. Had it been free standing, Chuck would have opened the back to make sure nothing had been cached in the empty areas inside the box.
"She was not married," said Sarah.
"How could you tell?" he asked.
"No wedding ring and she was checking you out," said Sarah. "How many people were in the lobby?"
"Uhhh...there was a family...with kids," he said.
"There were six people in the lobby, not counting us or the woman at reception. There was a bellman by the doors. There was a woman with two kids waiting for someone. There was a maintenance guy watering a potted plant, and there was a single man sitting in an armchair looking at his phone."
"Do you always notice that stuff?" asked Chuck, walking into the bathroom.
"Always. It's called situational awareness. I've been doing it my entire life," she said.
"Even before the CIA?" he asked.
She paused and answered, "Long story, but yes. Even before the CIA." He knew better than to ask a follow-up question about the long story. "Chuck, you have to work on your situational awareness. When Einerson was right up to you, you handled it really, really well. I'm proud of you for that. But...the man had a goddamn crossbow in a public park. A crossbow. And you didn't see him. You were so focused on Fleming that you failed to look around to see anything else. What if he'd had a gun? I know the situation was stressful. I understand that. I'm not mad at you. You've never had the training I have. Or Casey has had."
"Ok, you're right. I blew it," he said, with a hint of dejection in his voice.
"Now listen, I don't want you to feel bad about it. You handled it better than any other civilian ever could. Spectacularly even. Did you see how impressed Mead was? The thing is, though, you aren't quite a civilian anymore. You're not a spy either, thank God, but, you're not really a civilian either. For your own safety...Chuck..." her voice caught slightly, "I can't have anything happen to you...I can't...You have to be safe. It's my job to keep you safe. I'm going to start working with you on situational awareness. Consider this your training. Most spies get this stuff at the Farm, you'll be getting it in the field. Not that you're a spy, of course."
She had followed him into the bathroom and had opened the tank of the toilet to look inside. Chuck was unscrewing the bracket holding the shower rod into the wall.
"Ok, I'll start looking for wedding rings and handedness. But there's got to be more, right?"
"Wedding rings and handedness are tiny little things. Almost always meaningless. I was just using them as an example. First thing I want you to do is just start to be more aware of your surroundings. Most people, most civilians, live in a happy little bubble. They will pay limited attention to their surroundings. Maybe they will look around about three feet in any direction. And it's almost always fine. You live in a city. People are nice and civilized. Bad things don't happen.
"Until they do, Chuck. Everyone should be more situationally aware all the time, including civilians. But you've come with Casey and me into a different world. You have to develop some very acute situational awareness. At first just be more observant. This training may take years, so be patient. Eventually, you'll have to establish base lines for normal, so you can pick out abnormal. After that, we work on automatically developing contingency planning without conscious thought. "
"Ok," Chuck said. The shower rod was empty of hidden objects. He began to screw it back into the wall.
"I'm not trying to make you paranoid. But I really need you to be safe." She reached out and touched his arm.
"I understand, Sarah. I do. And I'll try. I promise." He put his arm around her and gave her a hug.
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Several hours later Chuck and Sarah were back in their hotel room in Palo Alto. Fleming's hotel room had yielded no clues. They had dropped the car at the hospital so Casey could drive himself back to the hotel later. Reis had given Chuck and Sarah a ride back to their hotel, barely saying anything the entire trip.
Fleming was out of surgery but still sedated. Casey and Mead were at the hospital in San Francisco arranging for a team of guards to watch over the unconscious academic and keep him incommunicado until he could be moved to the CIA facility. Mead had also volunteered to stay overnight to keep watch himself. He promised to call them when Fleming woke up in the morning, so they would go and interview him.
Chuck had called Beckman and given her Fleming's numbers. The NSA's cryptanalysis teams were working on it and she promised to contact them with any breaking news.
Meantime, Chuck and Sarah had eaten a room service dinner and tried their hands at figuring out the message for Bryce from Fleming.
Sarah said, "If it's a cipher, the NSA will break it."
"Yeah," said Chuck. "The problem is it might be a code, not a cipher." A cipher used some sort of algorithm to transpose symbols from a clear text message into the enciphered message. If you could establish the algorithm (for example, the simplest, use the next letter of the alphabet [+1], or the prior letter [-1]), you could read the message. A code, on the other hand, used a seemingly random assignment of a different symbol (or entire word). "Carmichael" was a code name. Unless somebody told you it went with "Bartowski" or you got your hands on a code book, you would have to rely on context clues to solve the puzzle.
"Did you do any cryptography at school?" asked Sarah.
"A little. I know the encryption software and how it works, but it's not really my thing. Those guys who really dug into that stuff aren't really computer guys at all. They are heavy, heavy math guys. The code breaking field today is all math. Prime numbers and stuff like that. My math is pretty decent, but not even in the same zip code as those guys."
"Well the NSA guys are among the best in the business," said Sarah.
"Yeah. This is a Bryce thing though. He wouldn't be breaking this through his genius. It would either mean something to him or he would know how to decipher it," said Chuck.
"I know. I'm betting this would mean something to Bryce. There has to be a solution," she said, staring at the numbers. She had written them out on a page and was just looking at it, as if she hoped the answer would materialize.
219F5U922
Sitting on the couch next to her, Chuck had his arm around her and was looking at the same numbers on the page. Eventually he said, "You know, they weren't straight across. On the page Fleming gave me. They were grouped three and six."
"What?" she said. "What do you mean?"
"Like this." He rewrote the numbers on the page.
219
F5U 922
"I don't know. Still doesn't do anything for me. What do you..."
"Holy shit. Chuck, it's not a code or a cipher. This is a book. These are Dewey reference numbers. It's a book."
"How do you know that?"
Her mind was still on the puzzle she had just solved and she answered somewhat absently, "Because I worked at the Widener Library for beer money at school. I re-shelved thousands of books. This is definitely a book."
"Yes!" He pumped a fist into the air. "Wow, that's fantastic. You're fantastic. You figured it out, Sarah. You're the best. Ok, then let's get to a ... the Widener? Wait a second. You went to Harvard?" He had a grin and a funny, surprised, awed, happy, proud look on his face.
She looked up startled, then replayed the conversation over in her mind. A slow smile played on her lips and her eyes sparkled as she said, "We liked to think of it as the Stanford of the East."
"Ha. My girlfriend went to Harvard," he said with a huge grin. "What did you study?"
"Romance languages and linguistics, double major. What can I say? I liked learning languages."
"How many do you speak?" Chuck asked.
"It's complicated," she said, with a slight frown.
"Got it. Sorry. Forget I asked," he said, with a raised defensive hand.
"No. I don't mean it's complicated and I don't want to tell you. I mean, it's actually complicated. In how many languages can I find the ladies room or a bus stop? Probably a couple of dozen. In how many can I discuss philosophy and the latest fashion trends? Probably ten. In how many can I pass as a native? Four. That's what I mean by complicated. I've actually been slacking off since I got to Burbank. I will normally be studying a new language or brushing up on an old one pretty much all the time."
"I'm a bad influence on you," Chuck said with a smile.
"It's worth it, lover," she said, giving him a little kiss.
"Hey, my girlfriend went to Harvard. I have a smart girlfriend." He was grinning like a madman.
"Yes, you do. You remember that the next time we have a fight," she said.
"I'm just going to roll over and play dead the next time that happens," he said, kissing her. "Brilliant, talented and not too bad to look at. I did ok."
"Not too bad?" she asked with a mock scowl and a raised eyebrow.
"Mmmmm," he nuzzled her neck with his lips. "Not too bad at all."
"Stop. Stop. Stop. If you keep that up we'll get distracted. How late is the library open?"
"Oh, yeah. Right. The disk. Sorry. There are a bunch of libraries, but the two main ones are Green and Lathrop. Both of them are open late. Let's go."
Walking out of the hotel room, Sarah touched her watch. "Casey, what's your status?"
"Just leaving the hospital. He's still unconscious, but the surgeon says he ought to make a full recovery. Be tough on him for a while, he had a collapsed lung, but he is going to be ok. Won't wake up until tomorrow though."
"Good. We'll go talk to him then. Chuck and I figured out the message Fleming sent to Bryce..."
Chuck interrupted, "Not true. She did it. I just watched and applauded." He reached out and held her hand.
Casey said, "Good job, Walker."
"Anyway, it's a reference to a book. Chuck and I are heading to campus now. We'll hit the main libraries looking for the book until we find the disk."
"Roger that. I'll let Beckman know to call off the eggheads. Maybe you can alert campus security you are on your way. They know we are looking around. It'll save you from breaking into a library."
"Yeah. I don't need to do that again," said Sarah.
"Again?" asked Chuck, with a little smile.
She smirked at him and said, "Long story."
"I'll let you know as I approach campus. If you're not done, I'll meet you."
"Right, Case," said Chuck. "Drive safe."
"Thanks. I'm getting to really hate I-280."
As they drove to campus, Chuck called campus security and arranged access. Something was niggling at him. A half a memory he couldn't put his finger on. He let his mind wander over the recent and not so recent past. Bryce...library...books...hiding...Bryce...
"It's not a book, Sarah."
"No, I'm pretty certain..."
"It's a location in the stacks. The book reference is marking a place in the stacks in Lathrop."
"How do you know?" asked Sarah.
"Bryce and I used to play around in Lathrop. A game called Gotcha!. Like a tag game, but with dart guns. There was a spot once where he got the drop on me because he'd hidden a gun in a secret spot he'd discovered in the stacks."
"A dead drop," said Sarah. "Makes sense. Putting the disk in a book was a stupid idea. Some random person could take the book out of the library and find the disk. Then you'd be out of luck. A dead drop identified by the location of a book is a much better plan. No risk of losing the disk to a reader."
"Yeah. I agree. Makes much more sense than stashing it in a library book. That would be pretty dumb," said Chuck.
They parked and walked to Lathrop. A security guard let them in and offered to accompany them upstairs, but they declined the assistance. A few minutes later and they had found the right location in the stacks. The books had all been knocked off the shelf and lay on the ground.
"Shit. Looks like Einerson figured it out. I guess he's smarter than he looks," said Chuck. Sarah started to check the books as he reached underneath the bookshelf and moved his hand side to side along the underside of the shelf. "Got it...and...there." With a small click, a compartment opened downward. Sarah handed him a pen light from her jacket pocket and he shined it into the hidden compartment. "It's empty. Damn."
"Could there be another compartment?" asked Sarah.
Chuck bent down and looked along the underside of the shelf with the help of the pen light. "Nope. This is it. I don't even know why this one is here."
"Shit. I guess Einerson got here first and found it." She touched her watch and said, "Casey. Looks like Einerson beat us here. Bryce had a dead drop in the stacks, but the disk is gone."
"Dammit. Alright, I'll meet you both at the hotel. I'm almost there."
"Right. We'll head back there now," said Sarah, touching her watch again. They began to walk back the way they had come moments ago.
"Sarah, why would Einerson knock the books off the shelves just to open the dead drop? That's not necessary. It wouldn't have been obstructed by the books on the shelf."
"Frustration?"
"About what? He wouldn't be frustrated if he found the disk. He'd be a pretty happy camper. What if he didn't find the disk there? What if he had figured out the library book, but didn't know about Bryce's secret hiding place? That would be pretty frustrating."
"Ok, but then why was the dead drop empty?" asked Sarah.
"I don't know. But I want to hear what Fleming has to say about it in the morning."
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They looked at Fleming from the open door of the private hospital room. He had been impaled on the left side of his back, so he was lying on his right side propped on a large pile of pillows. An IV tube snaked into his left arm. An oxygen monitor was on his left index finger, glowing red. A blood pressure cuff encircled his left bicep. A nasal cannula came from the wall to a machine and from there around his head to vent oxygen directly into his nostrils. Bulky bandages covered his upper chest. He looked pretty bad.
However, the surgeon assured them that the operation had been a success and he would make a full recovery given time and rest. He had emphasized rest and forbidden them from questioning him for very long.
Chuck, Sarah, Casey, and Mead stood in the hospital hallway.
"I'm happy to try if you guys want," said Mead.
"Naw. Thanks, but it should be one of us. It's our mission," said Sarah.
"Chuck, you know him," said Casey.
"Yeah, and there's no love lost. When he was shot he was starting to apologize to me for getting me expelled from Stanford," said Chuck.
"He got you expelled from Stanford?" asked Mead.
"Long story," said Sarah.
"Look, I think it should be Casey," said Chuck. "He's big and scary and will get answers none of the rest of us would."
"The guy's just come out of surgery. He doesn't need big and scary. Anyway, we're the good guys. He'll want to cooperate. I'll do it," said Sarah.
"Ok, but if you think he's not cooperating, just let me know and I'll come in big and scary," said Casey.
"Can I watch?" asked Chuck. Sarah gave him a frown, to which he responded with a look of feigned innocence.
Sarah went into the room quietly, closing the door behind her. She pulled the visitor's chair over to the head of the bed, close to Fleming.
"Professor?" she said quietly.
Fleming slowly opened his eyes and looked at Sarah.
"My name is Sarah Walker. I'm an agent of the CIA. You contacted Black Code for assistance. We are here now." Fleming's eyes flickered from her to the door. "There are guards outside the door. You're safe now. How do you feel?"
He licked dry lips and said, "Like I've been shot in the back with an arrow."
"Would you like me to get you some water?"
"Yes. Please."
She poured him a drink from the little plastic water pitcher on the nightstand, and put a little bendy straw into the cup. She held it up to his mouth as he drank from the straw.
After a bit he said, "Thank you."
"If you want more, just ask. Ok?" He nodded. "Professor, I need to ask you some questions." He nodded. "What's on the disk? What intel did you download?"
"Project Omaha files," he said. That meant nothing to Sarah, but she had time to figure that out later and it wouldn't help her find the disk.
"Ok. Where is it now?"
"I put it in the dead drop. In the library. Larkin's dead drop. I can give you the location. I tried to give it to Chuck Bartowski yesterday. It's..."
"No, it's not, Professor. I checked the dead drop last night. It's empty."
"Oh...then Agent Larkin has it. He would have cleaned out the dead drop," said Fleming speaking barely above a whisper. Talking was clearly painful for him.
"Why do you say that?" asked Sarah.
"Because he's the only other person who knows about the dead drop. At least I think he is. I left him the signal. That the dead drop was full. He must have emptied it. So, you have it already. Just ask Agent Larkin."
"What signal?"
"A chalk mark on a garbage can in front of Lathrop. If I make that mark it means the dead drop is full and should be serviced."
"Which garbage can?"
"The one to the right of the door."
"Right as you are facing Lathrop or with your back to Lathrop?"
"Oh, uh, facing Lathrop," he said.
"Ok, and then what happens?" asked Sarah.
"I guess it's serviced. When the chalk mark is gone, I know someone cleaned out the dead drop," said Fleming.
"But you don't know if the chalk mark has been erased this time. You don't know if the dead drop has been emptied."
"No. I haven't been back to Lathrop since … since I put the disk there."
"When was that?"
He licked dry lips again. "Can I get some more water, please?"
"Sure." She held the water cup up to him as he drank from the straw.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome. So, when was that? When did you put the disk in the dead drop for Larkin to pick up?"
"About a week...maybe a week and a half ago."
"Why did you leave the disk for Larkin?"
Fleming looked away. His eyes skittering around the room nervously. "Well, I know I shouldn't have. I know it was a mistake. He told me to destroy it..."
Sarah's eyes widened in surprise, but just for a moment. "Wait. What? Larkin told you to destroy it? Destroy what? When did he tell you this?"
"Larkin contacted me several months ago. He told me to destroy the Omaha files and wipe my hard drive clean. I told him I'd do it, but only when I got back to Stanford. I was on a special interim teaching arrangement in Barcelona. It would last until, well, just a few weeks ago. I told him I'd do it when I got back here."
"But you didn't," said Sarah.
"No. I didn't. I know I should have, but I hated seeing that much data destroyed. I had worked so hard to collect it. Many of us did. It seemed such a waste. If the Agency was going to destroy it...well, ok...but I didn't want to be the one to do it. I'd let Larkin do it himself. So, I loaded it into his dead drop and left the signal." He was visibly weakening, his eyes drooping and his voice fading.
"Just a few more a questions," said Sarah. "Who else did you tell about the disk? Who else knew?"
His eyes had closed. A nurse scurried in and shoo'ed Sarah out, promising that she could come back and talk to him again in the afternoon.
Sarah stepped out into the hallway and said, "Jim, could you give us a few, please?"
"Sure, Sarah. No worries. Any of you want coffee?" They declined and he left them alone.
Sarah briefed Chuck and Casey on her conversation with Fleming, including the fact that he fell asleep while she still had questions.
"Son of a bitch," said Casey.
"Well, he had just had surgery, Case. I don't think you can blame him too much for falling asleep," said Sarah reasonably.
"Not him. Larkin. That son of a bitch is manipulating us from beyond the grave."
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A/N2: A great example of the difference between a code and a cipher occurred in World War II. In the first half of 1942, the Americans had broken the Japanese naval cipher and were decrypting the messages, but the Japanese had labeled pertinent islands in code. Breaking the cipher was not enough, as the deciphering effort only resulted in the discovery of the code names in the messages. The Americans told the garrison on Midway to report a problem with a water distilling machine. Soon the Americans deciphered a Japanese message that island "AF" had a water shortage, thereby identifying "AF" as Midway Island. Only then could they read and understand Japanese messages containing the code "AF", at least until the Japanese Navy changed the cipher again.
A/N3: You know how on TV and in movies whenever they give you a phone number they use the 555 prefix central office code to stop real people from calling the number shown and trying to speak to a fictional character? Well, the same guys in charge of that (or gals, I guess) picked this Dewey number. The number 219 is unassigned in the system. It's in the Religion section and follows 218, which is Humankind. I think it's fitting that we are faced with a book dealing with something beyond humankind, given Chuck's Intersect abilities.
A/N4: I can't be the only one who realized that in canon Fleming left the disk in Bryce's dead drop and told Chuck to get the book reference to Bryce. They never explained why he did that or why he downloaded intel in the first place, while knowing he shouldn't have. I've tried to do so here.
A/N5: Just saw Captain Marvel. Really great movie. A lot of fun. And, although there's no question that Brie Larson did a wonderful job as Carol Danvers, I couldn't help but think of Yvonne Strahovski in that role (rumors are that she was seriously considered). Who knows? We might have ended up with our favorite couple in competing superhero movies. For the future, Sue Storm anyone?
A/N6: Love to hear from any of you so inclined.