NOTES: OK, to start with I have not abandoned the story. It's been a couple of months since I updated but real life has been kicking my ass time wise. It may or may not be a little while before the next update, it'll depend on how things go, but I have not dropped the story!
1529 says: 'Again with a team that supposedly knows technology and yet they have no way to protect or verify their communications? In two days, I could build the hardware and software needed to make it newly impossible (very nearly functionally so) to make sure that I could always verify my communications was accurate and not being hijacked and yet CI has nothing better than a standard telephone?
This story could be very good, but constantly giving power-ups to the bad guys and lobotomizing the good guys gets old.'
The bad guys are very powerful. They've penetrated major governments and have access to resources on a governmental scale, and they've had decades to apply them. Remember some of what FULCRUM was shown as being able to do in the show. They have access to tech ahead of the cutting edge from somewhere and they use it. Bryce, for ex, was shot up to the point of basically the edge of death in the pilot, FULCRUM was able to put him back together to the point where he could run, jump, make out with Sarah, escape custody, fight, etc. in just a few months. Bryce even told Chuck, Sarah, and Casey that he had no idea how they did it. Likewise, FULCRUM/the Ring was able to save and revive Shaw to nearly good-as-new after Chuck shot him on the bridge. The secret societies are drawing on some enormous powers in the show, which were never fully explained.
As for the communication, if the fundamental hardware and software of the system has been suborned, from the get-go, then detecting it would be difficult, because the system isn't malfunctioning, it's just carrying out instructions built into it. CI phones are not standard, they've got exceptionally good security, but the whole system is compromised. Note that the FULCRUM techs pointed out that they couldn't keep it up long, even with their resources.
1529 says: It's an interesting concept, but all of the authors defenses of their plot background didn't quite make it plausible.
Finally, as is so often done, the 'backdoor' into a secure meeting area is so ridiculous a plot point... in reality, secure meeting areas have no electronic connections and are properly isolated from any possible method of eavesdropping (no communications devices allowed) while also being insulated so no eavesdropping can occur... even by remote listening devices (including parabolic and laser mikes)... such areas should also be routinely swept for bugs and equipped with active countermeasures for any such attempts. Driving down the good guys to amateurish levels of tradecraft is not the way to write a good story.
You have a partial point. Chuck as a show was very, very unrealistic, of course. It was a comedy at heart. In a fanfic we can try to make it somewhat more realistic, but certain aspects of the unrealism are so fundamental to the show and the Chuck universe that they can't be avoided. Remember that we saw Beckman giving instructions to the group via videoconferencing, and they routinely did use electronic recording and commo gear in places were 'realism' says they would not. Sarah Walker drove a Porsch and lived in a suite that she could not possibly afford on a Wienerlicious salary...a fact which Jack Burton actually lampshaded. Very bad tradecraft on the face of it.
(I actually plan to address why she was doing that later on.)
But sometimes we just have to roll with the show.
And also keep in mind that the eavesdropping system Agent Bennett was using was installed from the inside by rogue CIA people at the top. So the same people charged with preventing it were installing it.
1529 says: MICE, to my memory was used by Tom Clancy in his Jack Ryan series, but the 'C' was Conscience, not compromise.
The MICE acronym is actual trade jargon, but the C is sometimes said to stand for a lot of things: compromise, coercion, conscience, curiosity, etc., depending on who is using it and the context.
Dialogue within / / indicates Russian.
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 22: Fire and Ice 2
A safehouse at a secret location, Monday, February 10th, 2014, 10:35 a.m. local time...
The window air conditioner was running at full blast, and sounding somewhat labored as it did. In spite of the air conditioner, the room was warmer than Chuck would have preferred, the current unseasonable heat was too much for the AC to entirely overcome. Still, it was far better than the oppressive heat outside!
"The Buy-More retail chain filed an official notification of expected losses in first quarter", the girl on CNBC morning finance show was saying, as Chuck nervously went over the list of preparations for the upcoming births. Even through his nervousness and confusion, though, some small part of his mind did take note of what he was hearing. The television was mostly background noise as Chuck Bartowski poured over the lists he had put together, with considerable help from his older sister, to prepare for the blessed events so soon due.
Blessed events, plural, Chuck said to himself as he shook his head in disbelief at the situation he had somehow gotten himself into. He was about to become a father...twice over. With two different mothers, at that. That fact overshadowed such trivia as his former employer being on track to lose money again. Still, part of him could not help but feel something about it, the Buy-More had been a huge part of his life for a very long time, after all.
So it's true, Chuck mused, as he went down the list yet again. Diapers, check, baby bottles, check, new bedding...the Buy More is losing money again. Another bad quarter and they might be heading into closure territory...car seats, check...between the Internet and on-line shopping, and the ineptitude of the current corporate management, I shouldn't be surprised.
"The current CEO of Buy-More, Randy Hacklyn, expressed confidence in the prospects of the chain, and assured the Board that the turn-around plan is proceeding smoothly." the anchor woman was saying.
Turn around plan, Chuck smirked, as he double-checked the order for baby cribs, their turn-around plan is to do more of what isn't working and hope for a miracle. Oh well, not my problem anymore. I've got enough problems of my own!
In that moment, a 'bumping' sound like hard plastic striking linoleum could be heard, and then Chuck heard one of his problems, currently in the bathroom and cursing like the proverbial sailor.
"Ow!" Sarah exclaimed, loudly and irritably, along with a variety of four letter words. "CHUCK! I dropped my hair dryer!"
Chuck sighed. Sarah was not dealing with the final months of pregnancy with complete calm. He could guess what had just happened: Sarah had emerged from the shower, and had been drying her hair when she dropped the hair dryer, and was finding it difficult to bend over to pick it up in the confines of the bathroom.
Sarah's usually the very embodiment of grace and dexterity, she's used to being that, Chuck mused as he went down the hallway to assist her. Now she's a little clumsy from the extra weight and...er...'size', and she's not taking it well. And of course the heat isn't helping.
With a sigh, Chuck went into the bathroom to help the woman carrying his child (well, one of them, anyway) with her current issue, leaving the fate of the Buy-More to others.
A recording studio in Los Angeles, Monday, April 6th, 2015, 9:40 a.m. local time...
"In today's financial news," the cable news channel anchor was saying in the background, "a court test of the provisions of Dodd-Frank-"
The two men sitting at the table, surrounded by sheets of music and page after page of possible lyrics, paid little attention to the television set playing in the background. One of the recording engineers liked to watch cable news during the breaks between actual sessions. Currently, the two men were trying to get their song ready for the next attempt at a recording session.
"OK, what if we drop in a second drumbeat between these two chords," Lester Patel suggested, as he and Jeff Barnes worked to put their new song into shape. They had believed the song was perfect, until they actually tried to record it, and discovered that it was very difficult to move from one of the chords to another smoothly. "That would give us time to catch our breath between the lines."
"Yeah, but that would throw off the timing for the second refrain," Jeff objected. "We'd need to either shorten the refrain or take out a note or two earlier."
"Well, we could cut these last two words from the refrain and not alter it much," Lester observed.
As Jeff was considering that, they heard the anchor on the television saying, "...CEO Randy Hacklyn announced today that the Buy-More big box chain would be formally filing for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy-"
"Wow," Jeff said. "They're really doing it."
"Not like it's any surprise, Jeffrey my man," Lester replied. "Been coming for a year or more."
"Still...after everything, I hate to hear it. At least maybe they can recover now."
"Not with the current management," Lester opined. "No, Jeffrey, the Buy-More is on its way to the last roundup. But about this refrain, I just had an idea..."
As the two returned to their songwriting, the anchor was saying something to the effect that Wall Street had little confidence in the Buy-More restructuring effort, and that Large-Mart was expect to buy up the remnants of the chain.
The Roberts residence in California, Tuesday, May 3rd, 2016, 12:40 p.m. local time...
It was a beautiful day, almost the embodiment of the legendary middle California weather, and in the wide, neatly maintained back yard of a very typical suburban home, a man, two younger women, and a little girl of toddler age were sitting on lawn chairs enjoying the glorious weather. A picnic lunch was on the agenda for the immediate future.
"I think I'll go give Mom a hand," Jillian Roberts said. "She should be about ready to start stocking the picnic table."
"Absolutely not, Jilly," her older sister Rhonda said firmly, as she rose to her feet from her lawn chair. "I'll go help Mom, you stay here with Dad and my niece and relax! You didn't come all the way from Helsinki to make lunch!"
"But-"
"No 'buts', Sis! We'll take care of lunch, you and Dad need a chance to catch up!"
It was true that Jill had spent most of the morning 'catching up' with her mother and older sister, while her father had just arrived at home shortly before noon. Currently, Wally Roberts and his two-year-old granddaughter were having a grand time playing with a yo-yo. Jill turned back to watch, as her father bounced the yo-yo expertly up and down, and around and back, and her toddler daughter watched in wide-eyed wonder as the yo-yo, with its shiny decorations, flashed and sparkled in the warm California sunlight. Every now and then, the little girl would grab for the sparkling yo-yo as it passed close, but it would always retreat out of her reach just in time for her tiny fists to close on air. The baby toddled back and forth chasing the toy, which remained tantalizingly out of reach.
Through the open window of the kitchen, Jill could hear her mother and sister talking cheerfully as they finished lunch, and the sound of a television on in the background as well.
"Gimme!" Stephanie demanded, toddling forward and grabbing at the yo-yo again, and Jill sighed. Her daughter had been talking for a little while, albeit in baby talk, and one of her favorite words was 'gimme'.
And of course 'no', she likes that one, too, Jill mused with a smirk.
"Stephie, ask nicely!" Jill ordered the toddler standing in the grass beside her grandfather's lawn chair.
"She did ask nicely, didn't she, little one?" Wally asked his granddaughter indulgently. He allowed the yo-yo to slow down and this time the toddler caught it between her hands, though her grandfather made sure to keep control of the string so she could not move it much. Two year old Stephanie stared wide-eyed at the toy in her hands, obviously wondering why it had stopped moving. "You always ask nicely, don't you?"
From her own lawn chair, Jill snickered. "As if! Lately I've learned what they mean by 'the terrible twos!'"
Wally Roberts laughed aloud, cheerfully and happily, as he scooped up his granddaughter and held her in his lap and let her play with the cuff of his sleeve.
"This is where I laugh," Wally said with a smirk. "Because somebody I know was an absolute little terror when she was two!"
Jill blushed slightly, and laughed herself. "Sorry?" she offered.
"Well, thirty-two years late, but I'll take it," Wally said with a loving smile at his daughter. "But you were way, way worse than this sweet little creature, I promise you that! She's so nice I think she must take after her father!"
"Oh, she does," Jill admitted in answer to her father's teasing. "In so...ooo...oo many ways."
Through the window, they heard the news announcer on some FOX business channel show mention something about a mysterious group of investors who had bought up the stock of the bankrupt Buy-More chain, and were going to reopen it.
At least Chuck doesn't have to put up with that nightmare anymore, Jill mused.
As if he could perceive his daughter's thoughts, Wally asked, while bouncing his granddaughter on his knee, "So, how are things between you and Chuck?"
Oh, he would have to ask that, Jill thought to herself in dismay.
"Complicated," she replied after a moment, grimacing as she pondered just how true that was.
"That's what I was afraid you'd say," Wally said, even as Jill's mother emerged from the kitchen with a plate of hamburgers for their outdoor lunch.
A concealed laboratory and operational complex in the Ural Mountains, Wednesday, June 3rd, 9:32 a.m. local time...
There was a man clinging to the side of a cliff.
The man, whose real name was a classified secret of both the United States Joint Intelligence Alliance and the private intelligence organization called Carmichael Industries, and whose usual code name was currently 'Lone Wulf", had been planning this activity for weeks, and making active preparations for days. Everything had been going smoothly throughout most of that time, there had been few problems in the planning stages and few issues as he laid his preparations.
The day had dawned when he was to carry out his plan, and he had been actively out and about since before that dawn. He was officially still in his quarters, asleep on his day off. In actual fact, there was a dead body in his bed, and an electric blanket operating to conceal the lack of proper body temperature. That ought to be sufficient, Lone Wulf thought, to fool the automatic thermosensors, at least long enough for him to complete his mission and get clear.
The dead body had been obtained from the laboratory complex's morgue, which had a surplus of such, and did not keep track of them as well as the living relatives of those corpses might have wished, had they even known their kin were dead.
After leaving his quarters in the dark hours before local dawn, the man had left the living complex, a building on the level ground above him, through a window, and then used a rigged remote control to turn the surveillance cameras, which he had previously sabotaged, back to normal operation. During the sabotaged period, the cameras would have shown a loop of an empty corridor facing the windows.
His quarters had, unfortunately, been on the third floor, but climbing down the side of a building was nothing Lone Wulf had not done before. There were surveillance cameras watching the buildings, of course, but fewer of them on the side Lone Wulf had descended, since that wall faced the cliffs that surrounded most of the surface buildings. He had sabotaged those cameras much like the ones inside the hallway, and once he reached the ground and the edge of the cliffs, he remote-restored them as well.
That had been the easy part.
The entire facility had no formal name, merely an alphanumeric designation: ST-35. Originally built and delved in Soviet times, it was located on, and in, a plateau in the Ural Mountains, with steep cliffs dropping away on three sides, and a narrow level road coming in from the east. On the surface were a number of buildings, mostly living quarters, support facilities, and administrative areas, as well as parking garages and the like. Most of the really crucial parts of the facility were delved into the rock of the plateau, on multiple underground levels. Access, or at least approved access, was by means of various stairs and elevators from the surface buildings, are with extensive security and armed guards.
Unapproved access to the underground facilities was possible, but rather more difficult and by no means safe. Lone Wulf had been into the underground many times, making use of forged papers, false identities, and a certain amount of fast talk. That had enabled Lone Wulf to scout out the areas that interested him, but he could not act because he was never alone at such times. To actually carry out his self-assigned mission, Lone Wulf needed to get into one of the lab levels unescorted, and to do that required going in by another means.
So it was that as the Sun climbed over the higher mountains to the east, the agent called Lone Wulf was climbing down a fairly steep cliff face on the western side of the complex, hoping that the could reach his goal while the cliff remained in shadow. His dark clothing and mask would blend into the shadows and make him very hard to spot, but once the sunlight fell across the cliff face, matters would change. He had to be inside before that moment.
The CIA had trained Lone Wulf well, and he had done this sort of thing before, both as a CIA agent and then as an agent of Carmichael Industries. That did not mean, though, that it was not still nerve-wracking!
He had to free-climb down the face, and time was of the essence. Yet hurry too much and one would lose time, or worse. Too much haste would leave him climbing down into 'dead ends' with no hand holds and force him to lose time climbing back up and retracing his route. Too much haste might easily cause him to misjudge how secure a hold was, or how steep the slope currently was, and doing that might end with Lone Wulf as a broken corpse at the bottom of the cliff.
Thus Lone Wulf had to take his careful, methodical time, while at the same time being acutely aware of the rising light. Already, the hills to the north and south were in full sunlight, and the long shadow of the plateau that stretched out to the west behind him was steadily shortening. From above, Lone Wulf could hear the sounds of more and more people moving around on the plateau, engines starting, the work day beginning. The more people out and about, the higher the odds that he would be spotted, even in the shadows. Time was pressing...but he dared not hurry.
At last, after what seemed like an eternity of slow descent, Lone Wulf reach his goal: an air intake in the side of the cliff, covered by a heavy steel protective grille and watched by security cameras. He still had a long way to go and a great many things he had to do to complete his operation, and the descent had left his muscles sore and aching.
I'm not getting any younger, the black-clad man mused. Ten years ago I wouldn't feel this tired already at this point in an an operation like this. Oh well, do what we have to do.
The cameras here were working perfectly, Lone Wulf had never been able to get physical access in order to sabotage them. He had no way to 'spoof' them when he entered their field of view. He would have to destroy them, and hope to make it look like a natural accident. He thought he could do that, but of course as soon as they went dark an alarm would ring in the security control room and before long somebody would arrive to check on them.
Which meant that this was the point of no return. Once he destroyed the cameras, a metaphorical clock would start ticking, he had to get in, get it done, and get out, and he had to do it within an unknown but definite time limit. Right now he could still, at least in theory, climb the rest of the way down to the valley floor, or back up to the top and at least possibly make his way back to his quarters unseen. It was not a sure thing but he estimated at least a sixty percent chance that he could do it. Once the cameras were destroyed, though, it was 'do or die'...or worse.
Lone Wulf grimaced. He knew all too well that there were indeed 'fates worse than death', and many, many ways to die, some of them very unpleasant indeed. The people who ran this place were experts in such matters.
Lone Wulf knew he had to decide quickly. Already the sunlit area was starting to approach the base of the cliff as the sun rose higher in the east.
Oh well, Lone Wulf mused, it's the life I chose and what I do. But when this is all over, if I'm still in one piece, I think I'm gonna tell Chuck I need a long, long vacation! Somewhere with lots of drinks, decent food, and a few pretty girls to take my mind off my work! Maybe a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette...in various combinations. Never mind that, focus!
His nerves taut, Lone Wulf now contemplated the next step in his plan.
The ST-35 complex had been constructed by the USSR in the 1970s, and Lone Wulf had gained access to the original plans before he even began this operation. One of the things he had learned from studying those old plans was that this particular air vent had also been designed as a secret exit route. If was for that reason that the vent opening was easily five feet wide and circular, rather than the multiple smaller vents that would have been the secure practice.
The protective steel grille over the air vent looked as if it was fixed in place, but according to the plans he had reviewed, it was actually hinged and could be opened. Of course it was likely that the hinges had not been used in years, and they might be difficult to move. Before he could deal with that, though, he had to deal with the cameras.
There were four cameras to deal with. Two were mounted on platforms on the hills to the west, watching the site from a distance. Those cameras he had long since sabotaged, and could switch to a prerecorded loop by remote, just as he had done the cameras in the residence halls on the plateau. Which left the two immediately next to the air vent. These were older than the modern cameras used elsewhere in the complex, leftovers of the original builders, but they still worked well enough. Positioned as they were on the side of the steep cliff, they had been safe from his sabotage because he needed physical access to do that, and this was the first time he was close to them.
He pulled out his remote control unit, and pressed one of the buttons, and the cameras across the valley began to transmit a prerecorded loop of innocuous footage. Now he pulled out another device he had prepared, two of them in fact. They were tiny drones, no bigger than the palm of his hand, that he could remotely guide with his control unit. Using that, he steered the tiny drones into position next to the cameras mounted on the air vent, careful to keep each one outside the field of view of the lenses.
Now he pressed two buttons in quick succession, and overhead a small sound echoed, followed by rocks falling along the cliff face. He had rigged the small charges earlier, trying as he did to make sure he left a gap in the falling rocks for himself. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the rocks slide past him in front and behind, but well clear of his precious perch. As the rocks slid past he triggered another button and the small drones flashed and exploded...taking the cliff cameras out as they did.
The moment the drones destroyed the cameras, Lone Wulf could almost hear an imaginary clock start ticking. He had passed the commit point.
If all went as he hoped, the security men in the control room would believe that the rockslide had destroyed the cameras. There were small rocksides on a regular basis in that area, the local rock was friable and fractured easily. The fake footage he had rigged the other distant cameras to show would show a rockslide at just about the right time, so it might take a little while before somebody came to check on things...hopefully.
Lone Wulf swung into position in front of the grille, balancing on the narrow metal ledge in front of it, and now he called on one of his advantages from Carmichael Industries, one the CIA had wanted him to have but never managed: he activated his Intersect.
Images, data, and calculations flashed through his mind, and he perceived the hidden latches that held the grille in place, and saw the intel on how to work them. Moments later, with a slow, rusty creaking sound, part of the metal grille swung inward. It caught, and Lone Wulf had to call on the Intersect again to boost his strength. Adrenaline and other hormones flowed, and with a more-than-ordinary-strength shove, Lone Wulf forced the hidden door open. He ducked inside quickly, and half-ran, half-crawled down the round metal tube. He noted the long rope ladders folded in compartments in the wall, signs of the old escape route planning. He noted them, but hoped not to have to use them, if all went well he would be leaving by a different route than he came in! But it was good to note them just in case, he mused. Things had a way of suddenly going sideways in this line of work!
He reached a place where the air vent met a huge, slowly rotating mechanical fan. The fan was moving slowly enough that it might have been possible, just barely, to slide safely between the blades, but Lone Wulf was not nearly desperate enough to try that. At least, not yet.
Instead, drawing on the plans stored in his Intersect, Lone Wulf opened a concealed side door, and slipped through it into the laboratory complex. As soon as he was in the hallway, he took off running. As he did, part of him wondered if maybe he needed to find some safer line of work.
Someone peaceful and quiet, Lone Wulf mused as he ran through the corridors. Maybe programming...or mabe even accounting. That'd be ironic, wouldn't it?
With a self-deprecating laugh, Lone Wulf ran on.
A CIA safehouse in Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday, June 3rd, 3:55 p.m. local time...
Sarah Walker's life was saved by a combination of trained reflexes and sheer luck. The thick wooden door deflected the first two shots enough that they missed Sarah by inches, and she was in motion, kicking away from the table and pulling out her own pistol in the same movement a split-second afterward. The door came crashing in, under the impact of a shoulder-blow from a very large male, and then there were several men, dressed in black clothing and masks, and the safehouse was a free-fire zone!
Their attackers were wearing body armor, but Sarah aimed for the head and took down one man in a single shot. Then she dodged another attacker, drawing a knife and slicing his throat as she did. He went down, alive but in gurgling agony, as Zondra shot another man and Fredericks and Payton double-teamed another one.
They had already inflicted heavy losses on their attackers, but Sarah knew they had to get out! They were outnumbered, caught by surprise, and on foreign territory. Zondra obviously had reached the same realization, because she covered the retreat through the other door, and moments later, the Senior Cats and the members of CAT Two were in the corridor and making for the hidden exit, still unhurt.
More by luck than good management, though, Sarah mused about their good fortune. Somebody's sold us out, revealed our safehouse to someone!
"We need to scatter," Zondra said. "And rendezvous at our emergency fallback!"
They heard footsteps coming up the corridor from ahead of them, and they knew they were cut off.
"We have to get out!" Sarah said. "The window!"
Fredericks needed no further urging. The butt of her pistol smashed against the glass, and moments later they were crawling out the second-floor window and onto a fire escape not far below. A few minutes later the group was scattering, each woman for herself until they reached their backup rendezvous point. Sarah and Zondra were still together, but as they made for the street, two groups of black clad men appeared, on either end of the alley, cutting off their escape.
Sarah and Zondra exchanged looks. They were outnumbered at least seven to one, and their masked enemies had heavier weapons, which were being leveled as they spoke.
However, braced through she was for the agony of bullets tearing into her flesh, the pain did not come, and instead the men (if they were men, the outfits they wore were loose enough, and some of the figures were short enough, to leave that in doubt) carefully surrounded the two women, keeping their weapons leveled and carefully staying out of easy reach. Any sudden movement would have been suicide, so the two women remained still.
Moments later, Sarah and Zondra had been bundled into an unmarked, non-descript car, which rapidly sped away.
An office complex several blocks from the site of the fire, Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday June 3rd 3:55 p.m. local time...
The man currently calling himself 'Tony Rogers', but who was known to certain others as 'Jack Burton', sat at his desk in his office in his fictional 'law firm', going over some papers that were associated with his current, rather complex con operation. As he did, however, he heard footsteps and looked up to see the man he had been introduced to as 'Niles Foxe' standing in the doorway. A tall, imposing man with a nice suit and a deceptively mild manner, Foxe was the head of the protective detail that Jill had given Darya and himself since this business had become so complex and dangerous.
"We need to go," Foxe said, his British accent somehow perfectly matching his nice suit. "We've got hostiles in the building!"
Tony saw that Foxe's surface calm was just that, surface. The man was tense and alert for trouble, which was good enough for Tony.
"Darya!" Tony called, and his girlfriend-of-a-year entered the office. "We've got to go!"
"Oh dear," the Russian woman said in perfect English, sounding a little dry. "Surely not."
A few moments later, Foxe, two security guards, Tony and Darya were heading down a stairwell, avoiding the elevators because it was all too easy to be trapped in an elevator.
"Any idea who it might be?" Tony asked Foxe.
"Not for sure," the British man replied, "but we think they are professionals."
Tony swallowed hard. He knew from his association with Jill Roberts what Foxe meant by 'professionals'. The man was talking about professional agents, either employed by some government or a private agency. Professionals could mean any of several things, of course...among them such uncomfortable possibilities as assassins. Basically, it was distinctly possible that there were trained professional killers in the building and that they might be looking for Tony and his associates.
Foxe and his men hustled their principals down to the bottom floor, and out a back entrance, and moments later they were speeding through the streets in an unmarked, unremarkable van.
In the back, Tony and Darya spoke quietly, nervously.
"Tony...do you think they were after us?"
"I can't think of any other reason that agents would be in that office building," Tony replied softly. "But we're out, anyway. I just wish we had heard from Trouble. After all that uproar with the fire and the terrorists or whatever they were earlier today, I'd like to know she's still OK."
"You're very fond of her, aren't you?" Darya asked, and Tony noticed that his girlfriend was looking at him closely as she asked. He sighed.
"I suppose I am," Tony said. "She and I are...not...well...we're as close to friends as we can be. We've helped each other out more than once over the last few years. She wasn't always a big shot in the shadows, you know. When we first met she was just a kid on the run who needed money and wanted to learn the game. Our game, that is. And she was good at it, once I started teaching her. Almost as good an assistant as-well, as a girl I worked with a long time ago."
For a moment, Tony was lost in memories of the times when he and his teenaged daughter had the world by the tail as a con team, so long before. Samantha was a natural at it, he mused, and she had been the best assistant he ever had, if he did say so himself as her father.
Darya smiled, and Tony thought she seemed slightly relieved. Okay, maybe I've relieved her of any thought that Trouble and I were ever...close that way. I mean she's Sam's age and also involved with the Schmuck, she and Sam-no way I could ever get 'involved' with Trouble. Even if she is damned hot.
Tony was willing to admit that last to himself, but he had no intention of mentioning it to Darya!
"So why do you call Jill 'Trouble', anyway?"
Tony actually laughed aloud.
"Because that's what she is," Tony replied with a grin. "I knew that the day I met her! She's walking talking trouble on two legs, and she's proved it over and over. But she's a friend...more or less."
"Mr. Rogers," Foxe said from the front of the van, where he road in the passenger seat, "we've identified two of the men we saw in the office tower. One's a trouble-shooter for a major agricultural concern based in India, the other one is Indian Intelligence. It looks like various 'players' are closing in."
Trouble was afraid of that, Tony mused. She knew that this damned fungus, or whatever it is those crazy white coats created, was being tracked by all kinds of spies and other sorts. That's why she thought we needed to get this done fast before somebody beat us to it and got ahold of the damned thing. Looks like she was right. We've got to find out where she is and get this show on the road!
Tony was still pondering what he would do if something serious had happened to Jill even as they reached their fallback safehouse.
Two blocks from Buy-More Moscow Site #1, Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday June 3rd 4:00 p.m. local time...
"Let me get this straight," Jill said, as she and Chuck made their cautious way through the late-afternoon crowds on the streets of Moscow. "You think somebody has been intercepting all your calls to your headquarters, and pretending to be them?"
"I can't prove it," Chuck replied, adjusting the stolen jacket he was wearing to fit slightly less badly. "But I'm pretty sure of it. I told you about our communications man whose wife has cancer a little while ago? Well, when I was supposedly on the phone with home earlier today, I heard his voice in the background. But he should be in Tennessee, not California, right now. To make it worse, I heard him, or whoever it really was, refer to a CI operation as if was ongoing, but I know for a fact that op was cancelled before it began. That registered in my head just before I took my little nap.
"So now I don't dare trust my phone communications, and if the enemy knows you're with me, they might be able to spoof yours, too. If so, we could give Tony and Darya away by trying to call them!"
"So CI has an emergency communications station in one of the the local Moscow Buy-Mores?" Jill said doubtfully.
"Yes," Chuck nodded. "If we can get there we can use higher-security communications there, and then get fresh clothes and get ourselves halfway patched up. And get in touch with Tony."
Of course, Chuck mused, 'getting there' was more complicated than it sounded.
When they had made their way out of the half-flooded tunnels, both of them had more than half expected to be attacked again at any moment. Nothing had happened, however, and it appeared that their mysterious attackers had lost the trail in all the confusion. That was good, but that same confusion had the area crawling with police and other official presences, and neither of them wanted to deal with that just then!
They had needed to conceal the damage to their clothing and bodies, and so they had ended up shoplifting outfits from a clothing store. Chuck had made a note of the store and the address, planning to recompense them later on, when he had time to deal with something other than immediate survival.
I may be an agent, and my world may be lies and deception and sneaky behavior, Chuck mused, but there's no reason I can not at least try to behave decently.
Now they were making their slow, careful way through the late-afternoon crowds. Slowly and carefully, because they were trying to avoid attention, and because they were sore, banged up, and needed to avoid drawing attention to their cuts and bruises and overall condition. So slow and careful it was, the more so because the police and other authorities were out in force in response to the earlier chaos.
Not to mention the fact, Chuck mused wearily, that my head won't stop hurting and my stomach is kind of unsettled still. I'd hate to throw up all over the street, that might draw attention!
Chuck was doing his best to conceal his discomfort from his companion, but even so he knew she was watching him out of the corner of her eye, and he had a fair idea what she was thinking: concussion.
I did hit my head on that concrete wall pretty hard, Chuck admitted to himself. But the Intersect isn't detecting anything out of order. True, it's not infallible, but under the circumstances I can't do much else but trust it and hope for the best.
The on-again, off-again rain was on again, and now it had become a slow, steady drizzle. That made for a chilly, damp walk, but the rain did help them avoid attention. The drizzle was keeping people focused on staying dry and getting where they were going, not observing other people around them.
The weather was chilly enough that it came as a welcome relief when he and Jill finally reached the Buy-More, passing through the automatic front doors into the warm, dry interior. As soon as they did, Chuck headed for the Nerd Herd desk, his companion right behind him.
Waiting behind the desk was a young woman in her mid-twenties, with platinum-blonde hair that she wore in a short but sexy style, sea-green eyes, and curves that her Nerd Herd outfit did nothing to conceal. She was also about five foot ten and clearly in excellent shape. Chuck stepped up to the desk like a customer, Jill hanging back by a few feet. Chuck was all too aware that his old girlfriend was watching everything and missing nothing, though!
/"May I help you, sir?"/ the blonde woman behind the desk asked him politely as he reached the desk. Chuck saw her give himself and his companion a doubtful look, which he supposed he could not blame her for doing. He knew that he and his brunette companion certainly looked the worse for wear after their busy afternoon.
/"I certainly hope so,"/ Chuck replied. /"My laptop seems to be in need of new RAM cards, but I left all my best memory in my other car."/
The woman behind the desk hesitated for just a moment, barely perceptibly even to Chuck, who was watching for it, and then she replied, /"What is the normal RAM load of your laptop, sir?"/
/"Oh, just the usual RAM,"/ Chuck replied meaninglessly. /"It's not like it's fancy RAM."/
/"Very good, if you would just sign here,"/ the woman said, as she offered Chuck a conventional-looking 'signature pad', which he promptly signed with a name he had never actually used in his life. Along with the name, tapped the screen with the stylus in a particular pattern. Moments later, the device beeped in a particular pattern as well.
/"I understand, sir,"/ the Nerd Herd woman said, sounding more respectful. /"Perhaps you would like to speak with my manager?"/
/"That might be best at that,"/ Chuck said agreeably.
The Nerd Herder emerged from behind the desk and led Chuck and Jill from the Nerd Herd center toward the manager's office. As she led the way, Chuck noticed that the blonde Nerd Herder was wearing a rather snug pair of pants and that part of her anatomy looked pretty good from behind. Apparently he was being slightly more obvious about noticing this than he had realized, because he felt a sudden sharp poke in the ribs from his companion!
He looked at Jill, who was walking beside him and saying nothing, but even so expressing her opinion with her glare nonetheless.
"Hey," Chuck whispered intensely. "Cut that out!"
"My sentiments exactly!" she whispered back, just as sharply. Chuck saw her glare go from him to the swaying backside in front of them, and he knew what she meant.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Chuck lied, and he could see that she was not buying it. Perhaps fortunately, they arrived at the office of the Store Manager moments later.
The manager of the Buy-More proved to be a tall, burly man with a friendly manner, who shook Chuck's hand, nodded at Jill in a respectful way, and asked, /"So what can we do for you today?"/
Several more innocuous sounding code phrases were exchanged, and Chuck at one point punched a long serious of alphanumeric codes into the keypad of what looked like a piece of administrative equipment on the desk. When that device beeped contentedly, the managed suddenly changed from speaking impeccable Russian to English, with a noticeable Texas accent.
"Mr. Carmichael," the manager said. "This is an unexpected visit."
"My plans have been changing on the fly," Chuck replied. "I need to get in touch with Headquarters, and I have reason to believe our usual communications have been compromised. But if I remember rightly, this facility has one of the laserlink installations."
"Yes, sir," the manager replied. "It was installed earlier this year."
Chuck felt a certain amount of relief. "You can't know how glad I am to hear that," he said. "While I'm using it, we'll need clean clothes, and get us some first aid packs, too. As soon as I contact my sister-"
"Sir, were you aware that your sister is already in Moscow?"
"What?!"
The manager looked at Jill for a moment, and Chuck knew he recognized her.
"Go ahead, CI and Wild Card are working together...for the moment," Chuck said. "What do you mean, Elaine is already in Moscow?"
"Sir, you're almost certainly right about the communications issues. We received a LaserLink message from Doctor Demento earlier today."
Chuck grimaced. Whatever possessed Devon to pick that as a code name?!
"Apparently, when that explosion a few hours ago made the international news, he expected to hear from you, or your sister, or someone else associated with CI in Moscow, and never did. That made him suspect that our communications were being interfered with, and he and the HQ staff used the LaserLink to contact us. Apparently your sister is in Moscow, and you are, but until Dr. Demento contacted us we had no idea about either one. Sir, this morning I would have said that you were at Carmichael Estates and your sister in Italy."
Chuck had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Help Wild Card get what she needs to cleaned up and patched up," Chuck ordered, "while I use the LaserLink!"
"I'll get things set up," the Manager said, heading out the door.
As soon as Chuck and Jill were alone in the office, she turned to him and said, "You've got a lot more than a communications facility in here, don't you? This whole Buy More is a CI substation, isn't it?"
Chuck sighed. I knew she'd figure it out if she saw very much, but what choice did I have?
"Yeah, more or less," Chuck admitted. He could see her mind work, and he was very much afraid of what she was concluding. Moments later, she confirmed his fears.
"It's not just this store, is it, love?" Jill asked. "Now that I think about it, and see this place...it's the whole damned chain of Buy Mores, isn't? That mysterious group of backers that rescued the chain when it went bankrupt a few years ago...it was you and Ellie, wasn't it? It all starts to make sense now...why you always seem to be able to get help so quickly in emergencies...the chain is the perfect cover! ALL the Buy Mores are CI substations!"
"Not all of them are full substations," Chuck said. "But yeah, we bought out the chain and converted it. And no, I won't pay you to keep it quiet and no, you won't spread it around! Unless you want a few of your secrets suddenly on the market too, Wild Card!"
"Isn't it a pretty expensive cover?"
"What expensive? Buy More has posted a profit every year since 2017!"
"For real? CI is not subsidizing it?"
"For real. It just so happens, gorgeous, that somewhere along the way I did learn how to successfully run a Buy More."
A car moving through the streets of Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday June 3rd 4:30 p.m. local time...
Sarah and Zondra were sitting in the back of the car, wrists tied, gagged, and blindfolded. Her ears were unblocked, though, and Sarah could hear her captors talking in low voices, barely more than whispers. Most importantly, they apparently did not realize that she understood most of the common dialects of Chinese. Their voices were low enough that she could not pick out everything they were saying, but she had no doubt that they were in the hands of some group or other of Chinese intelligence operatives.
As the car came to a stop, she and Zondra were urged to emerge by the poke of a gun barrel into their ribs. Clumsily emerging due to their bonds and blindfolds, Sarah heard one of their captors conferring on some communications device, probably a phone. Sarah felt her herself being positioned against some kind of hard narrow object, and her wrists snugly tied to it. Their blindfolds were pulled free, and Sarah blinked in the sudden light for a moment, before she saw that they were in a garage of some kind.
Their captors were clearly preparing for a quick 'field interrogation', which made Sarah's stomach churn. No matter how much experience one had, no sane person was relaxed about the prospect of something like that.
It turned out, though, that other matters were of more immediate concern, because the sudden sound of gunshots outside the building caused all their captives to grab their own weapons. Moments later, yet another exchange of gunfire was raging, as their captors fought someone else.
Sarah and Zondra remained snugly tied to the metal pole that supported the garage ceiling, as their captors and someone else fought. Sarah would have liked to believe that the newcomers might be allies, but while that was possible, it was not something they could count upon. A line from one of the science fiction stories beloved of her ex-husband and Morgan went through her head: 'The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, nothing more, nothing less.'
"Can you get lose?" Zondra whispered.
"I'm trying," Sarah said, equally quietly. "But whoever tied these knots knew what he was doing! It's gonna take a bit!"
"I don't think we have a bit, Sarah," Zondra whispered back. "It sounds like the fighting is ending out there."
Moments later, several of their captors reentered the garage...fewer than had gone out moments before, Sarah noticed, and three of the five men were wounded one way or another. One of them was talking on a phone, and when he put away the phone and spoke to the others, Sarah felt her blood ran cold as she heard the Chinese words for 'terminate them'.
Two of the men, without further formality, pulled out their pistols and were taking aim when they both fell over within seconds of each other. The other three men saw them fall, and were pulling out their own pistols when they, too, keeled over and collapsed on the floor, motionless.
What the Hell? Sarah thought in wonder. She had heard something as they went down, but it was not a gunshot. It was a familiar sound, but she was having trouble placing it in the stress of the moment.
Then she heard footsteps, and looked around to see something that left her blood running even colder. She instantly recognized the woman calmly walking across the garage toward them, carrying a strange device in one hand, and smiling a smile that seemed half warm and friendly and half predatory as she looked at Sarah and Zondra.
"Hi, girls, long time no see!" the newcomer said cheerfully.
"Amy!" Sarah heard Zondra gasp.
Buy-More Moscow Site #1, Moscow, Russian Federation, Wednesday June 3rd 5:19 p.m. local time...
Chuck emerged from one of the hidden rooms of the Buy More, more nervous and scared than he could remember being in a very long time. The LaserLink system had enabled him to make contact with headquarters, and now he knew that their communications had been badly compromised. The LaserLink system was separate, though. It used a dedicated set of satellites and a line-of-sight laser beam relayed by those satellites, it completely bypassed the international phone and data systems. The entire LaserLink system was entirely controlled by Carmichael Industries.
He had made contact with Devon and they had brought each other up to date on what they both knew. It was a bad shock to find out that Ellie was in Moscow and he had never suspected it. He had thought she was safely back home, and she probably thought the same of him, Chuck mused.
Whoever is doing this is Dangerous with a capitol D, Chuck thought. To compromise our telephony that way, with all the precautions we take, that would require some Serious technical chops, and probably access to the hardware and software of the whole system at a pretty basic level. Who knows how far this goes?!
Chuck had used a first aid pack to do what he could for his injuries, he felt a little better than he since impacting that concrete wall, though still far from good.
"Jill," Chuck said, as he rejoined his companion, who also looked a little better for wear than she had, and was wearing new clothes that actually fit her. She was munching on a bag of Gummi bears in the Manager's office when Chuck returned. "I was right. All our telephone communications have been compromised, badly. Heaven only knows how badly, or how wide it runs."
"I've got some wonderful news too," Jill said, setting aside her snack. "While you were using your super duper communicator, I got to see some news coverage on one of the TVs on the store floor. The building where Tony and Darya have their 'law firm' got raided by the the authorities, or at least, that's the version the local TV news is giving."
Chuck had the distinct feeling of standing on a rug that was being ever more rapidly pulled away. Events seemed to be whirling faster and faster and making less sense all the time.
"What would they do in that event?" Chuck asked. "I'm sure you and Tony had some kind of backup plan."
"We have an emergency safehouse," Jill replied. "Niles would take Tony and Darya there as soon as he realized that something unexpected was going down."
"First we should contact Tony and make sure they're all right," Chuck said. "Then we need to make contact with my sister, not only is she in Moscow but so are several of our senior people!"
"We don't want to draw attention to the safehouse," Jill said.
"I know, but we'll use inconspicuous transportation," Chuck said with a smirk. "Just let me change clothes and we're on our way!"
It took Chuck a few minutes to get changed, because every time he made a too-sudden movement, he stomach felt as if his breakfast was going to put in a repeat appearance. But he managed to get his outfit on, and emerged a few minutes later to rejoin Jill, who was finishing off her Gummi bears. When she saw him emerge wearing the white shirt and dark pants of a Nerd Herd employee, her eyes widened and she looked as if she could not decide whether to laugh or cry.
"A Nerd Herd uniform? Bruce, this isn't a moment for reliving old times!"
"Laugh all you want, Selena, but you'd be amazed how many places a Nerd Herd uniform and a little fast talk will get you into without anybody paying attention!"'
They emerged from the store to the park area in the back, and Chuck pointed at one of the Nerd Herder vehicles.
"We're taking that one," Chuck said. "I'll be there in a moment."
Chuck paused to shut the door behind them, and then walked as briskly as his roiling stomach and aching head would permit over to the car. Jill had already reached it and started to open the door, then stopped.
"What are you waiting for?" Chuck asked. "Get in!"
A slow, malicious smile appeared on the brunette's face, and then she looked meaningfully from the Buy More car to him and back, and then back to him.
"You first."
TO BE CONTINUED...