NOTES: Once again, your humble author made a mistake in proofreading. In chapter 2, I had failed to catch a name error for Sarah's mother Emma, I had her in the story as 'Ellen'. I corrected it, but I promise I'll try harder to catch the errors in my proofreading.
In the following chapter, speech enclosed by [] indicates Italian. 'Elaine Carmichael' is Ellie's field alias, Charles Carmichael's sister and business partner.
Now, some people have noticed that a certain someone seemed to be missing from the Bartowski Clan gathering. That certain someone might just turn up in this chapter...
Chuck vs. The No-Win Question Chapter 3: Business and pleasure part 1...
Naples, Italy, the weekend following the Bartowski barbecue, 7:00 p.m. local time...
["Ms. Carmichael, I must say I am very pleased by everything your firm has done in a short time,"] the medium-height, gray-haired man said to the lovely brown-haired woman standing beside him on the balcony. Through the open doors of the balcony, a gathering of nicely-suited and nicely-dressed men and women were socializing, and of course doing discrete business, in the course of an early-evening gala.
[Thank you, Mr. Nachera,"] Elaine Carmichael said, poised and calm, as she sipped her drink and looked out at the city of Naples, glittering in the swiftly-darkening evening. ["We do strive to keep our employers happy."]
["I confess,"] the Neapolitan businessman said, sipping from his own drink, ["when it was recommended to me that I hire your firm, I had my doubts about the necessity. I've been in business since I was a teenager, and I took over the family firm in Naples when my father died, and I've run it for thirty years since. Until lately, we've never needed more security that our traditional arrangements provided."]
Behind the calm face of 'Elaine Carmichael', Eleanor Woodcomb suppressed a cynical laugh. Traditional arrangements, indeed, she mused to herself. Meaning they paid protection to the local organized crime lords and received protective services in return. Not very nice protective services, but probably good enough for the time. But now things are getting a little nastier.
Mr. Nachera was the third-generation owner and operator of a shipping business that used Naples as their home port, but had connections to cities all along the southern coast of Europe, especially in France, Italy, and Greece. Over two dozen ships were operated by the Nachera firm, and therein lay the rub.
["I assure you, Mr. Nachera,"] Ellie said, her 'face' as Elaine Carmichael second nature to her now, ["we are going to identify the agents among your personnel. We already have some of them tagged, we're only waiting to finish the job before we act against them. We don't want to alert any of them prematurely."]
["I still don't understand why so many criminals are suddenly so interested in my business,"] Mr. Nachera said nervously, sipping his drink. ["And apparently many of them are actually government personnel, spies or formerly so. Even my former, ah,...security people...are nervous about them. What is so special about my company?"]
Ellie sighed and wondered how much of the truth to mix into what she told him. He was nervous, scared, and of course he was paying them for their services, she owed him some version of the truth. But at the same time, the full truth was so dangerous that telling him could put his life in immediate danger, which it currently was not. His company was threatened, his life was, at the moment, relatively safe. Ellie did not want to change that.
I wonder if this is how Sarah and John used to feel, Ellie mused, thinking back a decade or so, back when we were all in the dark?
Of course, along with the risk of telling him too much was the problem that the full truth, revealed all at once to an outsider, sounded so absurd as to be unbelievable. It sounded like a bizarre combination of the science fiction and comic books Chuck and Morgan so loved with James Bond, George Smiley, and just a bit of As The World Turns, Ellie mused. Sometimes she herself did not know whether to laugh or cry at what was going on in the world that so few people knew about.
I hope Chuck and the girls are enjoying their day on the water, Ellie thought to herself wearily, suddenly wishing that she and Devon were with them at home instead of business tripping in Italy. Setting that thought aside, Ellie composed her mind and began to put together an...edited...version of the truth for their client.
A beach near Burbank, CA, 10:00 a.m. local time...
The sand was hot under her bare feet, but the woman walking across the beach scarcely noticed.
The beach was lightly occupied, in spite of the unseasonably hot weather. It was a Saturday morning, but it was also a windy day, and the waves were choppy, and getting higher. Some surfers were out on the water, taking advantage of the waves, and a few boats could be seen out on the water. Still, the beach was nowhere close to as occupied as it would typically be later in the summer season.
That suited the woman walking along the sandy shore perfectly. She was in no mood for company...or at least, she was not in the mood for the company of random strangers.
Clad in blue jeans and a pale red sweater, barefoot and with her currently-long golden hair bound up in a pony tail, the woman looked ordinary enough, except for the fact that she was beautiful enough to have passed for a model or a movie star. A few of the males on the beach certainly looked, but it was clear from her body language that she was not interested in talking, and when she sat down on the sand, looking out at the choppy Pacific, she was left in peace. She spread a blanket, set a thermos bottle of hot coffee on the sand beside her, and appeared to relax.
For a long time, the blonde woman simply sat there, looking out at the ocean, to all appearances at peace with the universe. A few loose strands of blonde hair occasionally blew in the breeze from the sea. From time to time, she would idly lift a small pair of binoculars to her eyes, looking out to sea, sometimes looking at one boat or another, occasionally looking skyward at passing birds or planes.
There was little to show that the inner thoughts of the blonde woman were in fact as roiled as the nearby sea, save perhaps a slight tension in her hands as she held the binoculars. The woman's name, or at least the name she most commonly pretended was real, was Sarah Walker, and she was remembering.
"There's no where I can run, is there?"
"Not from us," she said, trying to sound playful, reassuring.
Thirteen years ago, she mused. It had actually been thirteen years since she and Chuck had sat here and had that conversation.
"I need you to do one more thing for me."
"Yeah?" Chuck asked, fear and nervousness and something edging close to despair in his voice.
"Trust me, Chuck!"
As she remembered that day, so long ago, Sarah almost laughed at herself at the absurdity of it. Sarah Walker, CIA operative, Langston Graham's 'special' field agent, assassin, seductress, former con artist, urging a naïve and terrified Chuck Bartowski to trust her. If ever there was a person, Sarah mused to herself, who merited the term 'untrustworthy', it had been the Sarah Walker who sat here thirteen years before with a newly Intersected Chuck Bartowski.
"But he did it," Sarah said to herself, barely above a whisper. "He did trust me."
Trust her he had, and somehow, some way, the naïve computer nerd had discovered someone else in Sarah Walker, someone Sarah herself had been surprised to discover living in her skin, wearing her clothes, and walking in her shoes. Someone, unbelievably, impossibly, who might be at least somewhat trustworthy. Someone who had vanished like a mist when Quinn her erased her memories.
"...someone you can call, whenever! Trust me, Sarah!" Chuck had pleaded.
"I wanted to," Sarah whispered softly, as the more recent memory unfolded in her mind. "But I just couldn't."
She laughed humorlessly, remembering the contrast between the two moments on this very spot. "He was as trustworthy that day as I was treacherous, five years earlier," Sarah continued in her whispers to herself. "But somehow he could trust and make it work, and I couldn't."
She looked through her binoculars, and saw that a particular boat was the not the one she was interested in seeing. Lowering the glasses again, her mind vanished back into the past.
"Sam," Emma said, her voice soft as her hand caressed the face of her child, "why are you here?"
"Can't I visit my mother?" Sarah asked. "We spent so long apart, don't you want to see me, now that we can see each other safely again?"
"Of course I do," Emma said, "but that's not what I meant, and you know it, Sam. Why are you here, and not with him? You remember everything now, why have you not gone back to him?"
"It's too late, Mom," Sarah said, "the divorce was final a month ago."
"He won't care, Sam," Emma assured her daughter, as they sat on a sofa together. "Go to Chuck, Sam. Tell him you've regained your memory. Believe me, he'll be overjoyed to see you. There's nothing on Earth that Chuck wants more than just for you to come back to him, Sam."
"I wish I could go back, I do," Sarah admitted. "But it's...complicated."
"Why did I know you were going to say that word?" Emma asked with a sigh as she sipped her coffee. "Ever since I've been exposed to the people in your world, that word keeps coming up. Usually when somebody doesn't want to face up to something or explain something or do something that they know they ought to do."
"What would I do, Mom?" Sarah demanded, fighting tears as she sipped her own coffee, tasting brandy in it. "Just walk up to his front door and knock and announce that I want to come back? 'Hi, honey, I'm home!'"
"Why not?" Emma asked her, in that practical voice of hers. "Nothing would make Chuck happier than to find you at his door, Sam. And you want to go back so badly you barely stand it. Yet you're here and not there."
"You make it sound so easy, but it's not, Mom!" Sarah protested.
They had all said it as if it were so easy, Sarah mused. Her mother, and her friends. Though, Sarah recalled with a mirthless smile, her friends had been less gentle about it.
"You're being a freaking idiot, Sarah," Carina said, without bothering to leaven the words.
"Some things can't be righted," Sarah said. "I've talked to Morgan, and to Ellie. He's angry now, bitter."
"Of course he is," Zondra said, as she cleaned her pistol. "It's been two months since you regained your memory, after all. I figure he expected to hear from you as soon as he heard about that."
"It's still classified," Sarah said. "Chuck's a private contractor now, he's not in the CIA loop."
Carina laughed. "I guarantee you he had heard about it within a week of it happening, Sarah. He's still got contacts and connections in high places. He's not the naïve nerd you met in 2007 anymore, in case that still hasn't quite penetrated. If the rumor mill at Langley can be believed, he or someone working for him have been hacking Federal databases left and right, too. Nobody can prove anything but everybody knows it's Carmichael Industries doing it.
"So it's a bang on certainty that the nerd knows you've regained your memories," Carina went on, idly pointing her own unloaded pistol at a target ring.
"Which is why it's too late," Sarah said. She carefully adjusted her knife-holsters as she spoke.
"You're full of it, Walker," Zondra put in. "Yeah, it's been two months since you remembered. But from all everybody's heard, and what the rumor mill is saying, he's still single, still pining for you. Yeah, he's mad. I can't say I blame him, honestly. If you'd gone back as soon as your memory was restored, he'd have rolled out the fatted calf and gone back to worshipping the ground you walk on again. Heck, he'd have had you in front of a judge or a minister to renew your vows so fast you'd have gotten dizzy.
"Now, though...you didn't come back, and now he's had time to get mad, and you've given him more time to dwell on it all and think about it and brood over it and hey! Guess what? Now he's a little bit less eager. You might have to grovel just a little bit where you wouldn't have had to two months ago."
"But after a little bit you'd have him back, Sarah. All you have to do is take out that phone in your pocket and call him." Carina said. "You should call that nerdy cutie of yours. Right now."
"But every day you wait," Zondra put in, "it's going to get a little harder. Every day, and he gets a little angrier, dwells on it all a little more, gets just that much more resentful, every day that passes and you'll have to grovel and work a little more and longer to get back to where you were. Time is passing, Walker."
"Not to mention," Carina said with a smirk, "that every day that passes before you call him and start trying to fix this is one day closer to the day when he'll be crying on someone else's shoulder. Someone of the female persuasion. The day that happens, it suddenly gets real hard to fix things, you know. And that day will come if you wait too long, girl. He loves you, but he hasn't seen you or spoken to you in months. I know he loves you, but he's still human, and he's going to get lonely."
"Plus," Carina went on, a wicked light appearing in the redhead's eyes, as she set her pistol aside, "on top of all that we both know what boys like, Sarah, to quote the old song. What is it, five months now since he's been getting any? Some female's eventually going to give the cutie some, if you stay gone long enough. And you went and filed divorce, so there's nothing stopping him from accepting an offer now.
"Hell, I know for a fact that there are a couple of my fellow ladies of the DEA , just recruited out of college, who have been trying to finagle a meeting with the elusive Mr. Carmichael," Carina added with a soft chuckle. "He's good looking, he has a reputation for being a polite and nice badass, and he's got lots and lots of money. You know, in the circles we move in, sooner or later you're going to run into him again. Face to face, if only in the line of duty. Do you really want that day to involve running into him and some twenty-something Langley analyst or one of Verbanski's young female trainees hanging on his arm?"
"Carina," Zondra inquired archly, "are you thinking of trying your luck?"
"Well, I've never gotten anywhere with him before," the redhead said, looking at Sarah with an evil glint in her eye, "but now, he's probably getting lonely and horny..."
"Tick tock, Walker," Zondra said with a grin, gesturing at the redhead. "Case in point."
Sarah stirred from her reverie as she saw something out on the choppy waters.
The binoculars rose to her eyes, and she intently examined the vessel. It was a small catamaran, with a single mast sporting a white sail, currently cutting smartly through the waves. Sarah felt her breath catch as she realized that this was the boat she had been waiting to see.
It was not a large vessel, but it had a broad sail and the wind was up, driving the twin-hulled craft smartly across the water. The binoculars were powerful enough to enable her to clearly make out a male figure steering the craft and watching the sail, distant but clear. Even at their distance Sarah could make out that the man was brown-haired, though she knew that there were of late a few strands of gray that had appeared on his head.
Sitting not far from the man was an older child, whom Sarah immediately recognized as Clara Woodcomb. Opposite Clara, clinging excitedly to the railing, their long hair flowing in the wind, were two much younger children. Once had golden hair, one had hair of deep black. The younger children clung to the railing and were inches apart, and even at that distance Sarah could easily see that both of the younger children were enjoying every moment as their boat raced across the waves.
As Sarah watched, she saw the man adjust the sail and the tiller, and the catamaran responded by swinging in a remarkably tight curve, one side of the vessel actually lifting slightly out of the water. Her breath caught in her throat for a moment, a surge of maternal terror flooding her body, but the craft was firmly under control and splashed down again, on a new path. She was of course much too far away to hear it, but through the binoculars she could see them. All three girls were sporting enormous smiles, and Sarah could hear in her mind, if not with her ears, their shrieks of excitement.
Sarah let out a breath, relaxing, as the boat steadied its new course. She took a long drink of her coffee, and when she looked through the binoculars again, she saw that they were moving closer to shore. As they did she could now make out that all the girls had on life jackets, and were obviously familiar with boating safety. Most of her attention, of course, was on the golden-haired girl that sat to the captain's right.
She's getting so big now, Sarah mused to herself. But she needs a haircut! No, Charlotte Mary, don't do that-!
Sarah felt herself becoming suddenly nervous as Charlotte Mary got out of her seat and started to climb up on the railing instead, only to see her daughter pause and return to her seat at a gesture from the captain. Sarah sighed in relief when the golden-haired child was safely back in her proper place.
Damn it, she's so...so...it's like she has no sense of danger at all!
In her mind, she almost felt as if she could hear her own parents laughing. Sarah blushed slightly at the recollection of a few incidents from her own childhood.
"Sam! Get down from there right now!"
It was the Fourth of July, and the annual Firemen's Parade was underway. Unfortunately, the crowd blocked much her view, so eight year old Samantha decided that it would be better to get a higher perspective. Unfortunately, before she had climbed more than three-fourth's of the way up the enormous maple tree, she heard her father's voice commanding her to stop and return. She sighed in frustration and began to climb back down.
Sarah smiled, the first smile with some genuine humor in it since she had arrived at the beach. Her own daughter's tendency toward bravery had given Sarah a new appreciation of her own parents' travails, long before. She felt less fear facing a room full of murderous killers than she sometimes did watching her six year old daughter climbing railings or sneaking out of open windows to sit on the roof of a house.
Sarah raised the binoculars back to her eyes, watching the family on the boat, wishing she could be with them as she did. As she watched, she saw the captain answer his cell phone for a moment, then she saw him speaking to the children, as he steered the craft further from shore. The course change looked sudden, as if plans had just changed.
Sarah lowered the binoculars, reaching for her coffee, and noticed something. The beach had become slightly more crowded over the last few minutes...and several man had staked out locations on the sand that were not too close to her, but not that far away, either. They were casually dressed, looking quite normal for a day at the beach, one in trunks, another in cut off jeans and a T-shirt reading a book. A couple had women with them.
Interestingly, though, their apparently random locations were such that they more or less surrounded Sarah. Further, she saw that others were arriving quietly as well. Though all of them looked ordinary enough, average enough, the sort of person you would expect to see enjoying a day at the shore, Sarah knew what to look for.
The man with the book was carrying a concealed pistol in his cut-off jeans.
The couple sitting a hundred yards to her left were both carrying a number of concealed knives, and the lone woman fifty yards to her right had at least one gun concealed under her swimsuit coverall. Several 'ordinary' people had positioned themselves between Sarah and the parking lot where her car waited.
She had been made.
Her heart rate rose, and her mind raced through a dozen unpleasant possibilities. She knew what was happening, but not who or why. She began to consider possible escape routes, and which of her mysterious visitors looked to be the 'weak link' in the net. The men were bigger and stronger, but the woman to her right was wearing a huge swimsuit cover that would enable her to hide any number of possible weapons. The path back to the car looked to be impassable, two many people, many of them ordinary civilians but some of them not, were on that line.
The water? If she could reach the water, she might be able to swim for it, staying underwater long enough to evade pursuit until she could reach a spot to safely come ashore. But there were a couple of the mystery types between her and the water now, too.
Did she dare try to use her phone to call for backup? Did they realize that she had spotted them? She could not be sure from their behavior if they realized they were revealed yet. If they did not, she might get away with using her phone, but if they knew...
Sarah looked around, as 'casually' as she could. There were perhaps a dozen people she was sure were part of this, but there were several others she was sure were civilians, and a couple that were 'unsures'. She had two pistols on her, but gun play on the public beach was best avoided if possible, for obvious reasons. The only good thing about that was that it probably applied to her mysterious opponents as well.
Let them take her? It was obvious that this was not someone simply doing a hit. If that were their goal, all this elaborate maneuvering would be pointless. No, it only made sense if they meant to take her alive. There were obvious huge problems in letting them take her, but it might give her a chance to get away from the beach. If they did that, then there was at least a chance they might make a mistake and give her an opportunity to escape or overcome them.
All her choices looked bad, and she was still cursing herself for taking so long to notice the emerging situation. I should have been aware of them at least five minutes before I was!
She decided to risk using her phone. If they thought she was unaware it would probably work, if not, she had little to lose by trying. She slipped her phone out of her jeans pocket, brought it up. Nothing, no action from the mystery people. So far so good.
Just as she was about to punch to call for backup, however the phone began to vibrate, and the pattern of the vibration told her who was calling. Sarah gasped in disbelief. She was never sorry to get a call from that source, but just then was not the best possible time!
Nervously, she accepted the call.
"Honey?" Sarah asked, trying to keep her voice normal. "Is that you?"
"Hi, Mom!" Charlotte Mary's squeaky voice emerged from the cell phone. "Daddy wants to know if you're the woman on the beach watching us!"
Sarah blinked. "What?!"
"There's a woman on the beach who's been spyin' on us with binoculars, Mommy!" Charlotte Mary said, sounding more excited than worried. "Daddy's on the phone 'bout it, but I thought it might'a been you since I told you we were gonna go sailing when we talked on the phone last night!"
Sarah looked around her, and suddenly, among the strangers that had arrived, she saw a familiar face. Edwin Neil, a former CIA man in his fifties, one of her instructors at Langley, and since employed in the private sector...by Carmichael Industries' security department. A slow sigh of relief escaped from the blonde woman.
"Yes, honey, it's me. Tell your Daddy not to worry, and put him on the phone, OK?"
TO BE CONTINUED...