NOTES: Schi is a Russian soup made with beef and cabbage and various vegetables.
Dialogue between / / indicates Russian. Dialogue between * * indicates Chinese.
CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 23: The Grand Hotel 2
The Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 8:30 a.m. local time...
Chuck awakened.
For a moment, he was confused as to exactly where he was, the bed was unfamiliar, as was the ceiling. There was a warm presence beside him in the bed, though, and moments later memories came rushing back through the sleep-fog, as he looked over at the sight of Jill Roberts, still sound asleep, on the other side of the bed.
Chuck was reassured by the fact that he had awakened when he did. One of the little conveniences of the Intersect-8 was that it could refine his bodily 'time sense' almost to the second...when everything was working right. Normally, Chuck had no need of such devices as alarm clocks or wake-up calls, he could program himself to awaken at a given time and the I-8 would make sure he awoke within a few seconds of that time.
Chuck had programmed himself to awaken at 8:30 a.m., and by his watch he had done exactly that, within thirty seconds or so. Which indicated that his mind and body were working at least well enough for the I-8 to do that much. Which, considering how hard he had hit his head the day before, and how horrible he had been feeling since, was reassuring.
On the other hand...he felt like crap. Granted he had only had six hours of sleep, and had gone to sleep utterly exhausted. Still, he was pretty sure he felt too awful for that to account for all of it. His stomach was roiling, he felt hungry, but at the same time the thought of actually eating anything seemed repulsive. His head was aching, his mouth was dry, and he felt slightly dizzy.
Not good, Chuck thought to himself. But it's no use complaining when you've got a job to do, in the words of the old song. I'd better get started, maybe I'll feel better after I'm up for a bit.
First order of business: getting out of bed without waking Jill. There was no reason to deprive her of sleep...and he knew from experience going back to when he was 19 just how short-tempered she could be when awakened before she was ready. She was actually worse about mornings than Sarah...which was saying something, Chuck mused, when he pondered the number of alarm clocks that had ended up with knives in them over the years.
The hard part of not awakening his old girlfriend would be that she had an arm over him. Chuck slowly eased her arm to one side, very carefully, and though the brunette stirred in her sleep, she did not quite awaken. Chuck would have found that worrying under other circumstances, if he could do that, so could someone else, someone with bad intentions. He knew, though, that he was able to do it in part because she knew it was him with her, so that she was more relaxed.
When her arm was safely clear, Chuck slowly sat up, slowly both to avoid disturbing his companion and because he suspected sudden movements might make some of yesterday's meals reappear at an inconvenient moment! He managed to sit up, and then, very slowly, to stand up.
The world seemed to spin for a moment as he did, but then it settled down.
OK, Chuck thought to himself, so far so good. Now let's see if I can get next door to my rooms and get cleaned up.
Moving with deliberate caution, Chuck pulled on the clothes he had been wearing the day before, and made his way to the door. So far so good, Jill was still asleep and he had not thrown up. He went into the corridor outside, locking the door behind him, and made his way to the suite that was supposed to be his. Inside, he forced himself to do the standard walk-through, to avoid any untoward surprises, and when he was sure he was alone, he took a hot shower, which did help him feel somewhat better. A shave left him looking mostly presentable, but now he was facing the question of clothes and supplies for the day.
He dared not use his 'Terry Stanton' legend, not now. He thought of the much more luxurious suite he had on a higher floor, he needed to get up there and retrieve what he could that he had to have, especially the special equipment. But he had to it carefully in case the suite was being watched. His current alias, Liam O'Grady, was also problematic because the man looking back at him in the mirror looked a good deal more like Chuck Bartowski than 'Liam O'Grady'.
He had sent an email to the Buy More the evening before, using a blind account in the Hotel servers, calling for clothes and gear to be delivered. They ought to have arrived, but there was still no sign of them. Chuck was just thinking those thoughts when the buzzer indicated a visitor.
Chuck went to the door cautiously. It was probably Jill, he mused, but he had his hand on his nine millimeter just to be safe. A glance through the safety peephole told him that it was not Jill, but someone he recognized all the same: the blonde from the Buy-More that he had met the day before.
Cautiously he let her in, and he saw that the tall blonde was dressed in a nice business outfit, skirt and blouse and blazer, and had a small suitcase with her, which she placed on the floor.
"Good morning, sir," the blonde said. "I've brought the materials you sent for, I'm sorry it took so long, but quite a bit has happened during the night. I hope the delay was not too problematic."
"You're just in time," Chuck said. "Ah-"
"Ashley," the blonde said with a smile, "Ashley Howard."
The moment she gave her name, Chuck tapped the I-8, and information came pouring back...'Ashley Howard', real name Staci Gorton...age 28...graduated from Princeton with honors...majored in electrical engineering and computer science...minored in history and languages...recruited by CIA in university, recruited by Carmichael Industries in 2017...unmarried, no children...speaks eight languages...
"Pleased to meet you, Ms. Greene," Chuck said, ae he opened the suitcase to find a variety of clothes suitable for his current alias, as well as some special items he had called for. "If you could wait a few minutes-"
"I have a message for you from your sister, sir," Ashley said, which caught Chuck's full attention immediately.
"Let's hear it," Chuck ordered.
The Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 9:40 a.m. local time...
Jill Roberts blearily, wearily came awake, or half-awake, in response to a horrible noise! It sounded as if someone were torturing an elephant to death, and the elephant was making its displeasure loudly known. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to bury her face in the warm, soft pillow, but the elephant just kept trumpeting.
No, Jill thought in sleepy protest, no! It can't be time to get up yet, we just went to bed! It can't possibly be morning already! GO AWAY!
The elephant ignored her mental command, instead choosing to increase the volume of its protests, and now it seemed to have been joined by some lunatic with a base drum!
I must have mis-set the alarm clocks, Jill thought desperately. I probably thought I was setting it for nine-thirty and got six-thirty instead. That must be it, it can't be time to get up yet-damn.
Jill's fervent hope was dashed when she finally raised her head from her pillow, looked over at the pair of alarm clocks she had set (since one was often not sufficient), and saw that both were clearly displaying that the current time was 9:45 a.m. Contrary to her fervent hope and conviction, it was time to get up.
Wearily, the brunette managed to silence both clocks, and fought against the temptation to snuggle up with Chuck and go back to-Where is Chuck?!
Jill sat up in bed, and sure enough, her bedmate from the night before was absent...as were the clothes he had left on the floor when they went to bed.
Of course, Jill thought, Chuck always did like to get up at the crack of dawn. You'd think I could have broken him of that in almost two decades, but nope. My man wants to get up before the roosters for some reason.
Jill wearily got out of bed, and a quick shower helped bring to her full wakefulness. Before they even went to bed, Niles had delivered her a suitcase full of clothing and other accoutrements, and now she donned clothing suitable for her current alias. Some strategic makeup helped cover the colorful bruises from the day before, though she winced as she applied it to the tender skin. Finally feeling halfway presentable, Jill left her suite to pay a visit to the next one over, where she was fairly sure she would find Chuck.
As she started to step into the corridor, though, Jill heard Chuck's voice and another voice speaking.
"Tell Ellie that we'll meet as agreed," Chuck was saying. "I'll make the necessary arrangements to get there. In the meantime, Ashley, I want every operative that can be spared looking for Morgan Grimes."
"Will do, sir," the woman was saying, and after a moment Jill placed the familiar voice. It was the girl that had greeted them when they first visited the Buy-More the day before, the tall blonde with the green eyes and the swaying backside.
So she has a name, does she? Jill mused sourly. 'Ashley'. It would be. She looks like an 'Ashley'.
Jill stepped out of her suite as the blonde walked away, and knocked on Chuck's door. When he answered it, it was all Jill could do not to giggle.
"Oh, Chuck," she said, "you were never meant to be a redhead!"
"That makes two of us," Chuck replied.
It was true that both of their current aliases called for red hair. Jill's hair was currently dyed dark red, Chuck's curly hair was a lighter red-auburn.
"Are you sure it was a good idea to cast yourself as Irish?"
"...and a credit to old Ireland is MacNamara's band!..." Chuck sang, in a quite passable Irish accent.
"Well, OK, the accent might pass muster," Jill admitted.
"I needed something as far from my 'Terry Stanton' alias as I could reasonably get on short notice," Chuck said. "So, Liam O'Grady. And nobody expects Charles Carmichael to be a redhead."
"I know I never pictured you as one," Jill said. "It just feels wrong.'
"Anyway, I have some news," Chuck said.
"I know," Jill replied. "I overheard some of your conversation with the girl from the store. Is Ellie all right?
"Apparently she's basically all right," Chuck said, "but Morgan has gone missing. I still don't know much, but I'm supposed to meet with Ellie later today and then I'll find out the details. Right now I'm just grateful she's alive!"
Chuck finished putting the final touches on his disguise, and closed the suitcase and locked it. Jill recognized the type: it had two compartments, one for normal clothing and items, one for 'special' items, and opening the later hidden section required both knowing a combination and knowing how to enter it.
"Well, I guess we're ready to start our day's work," Chuck said. "We've got about thirty things we need to do, which do you want to start with?"
"None of them, until you tell me how you feel this morning. And don't say 'fine'! You might not have realized I was looking but I saw you have to catch yourself to keep from falling a minute ago!"
Chuck sighed, and started to wave it away, then paused. Jill knew him too well for that to work, there was no point in even trying it.
"All right," Chuck admitted. "I feel like someone kicked me in the stomach and threw me onto a tilt-a-whirl afterward. But so what? It's not like we have time to worry about it, and I definitely don't dare go to a hospital right now! Not with who-knows-who trying to kill us and messing with communications."
Jill nodded, reluctantly. He was right about the hospitals, it was too big a risk. She resolved to keep a close eye on him, though. She knew Chuck was in worse shape than he was trying to let on.
I told Chuck last night I wanted to spend some time with Stephie when this is over, Jill thought to herself, but I sure don't want it to be me taking her to her father's funeral!
A sudden ghastly mental image invaded Jill's mind for a moment: Walker and herself and their daughters, dressed all in black at a graveside service as the children clung to each other and sobbed. She shook the image away, she did not even want to think about that!
"All right," Jill said. "For now we'll play it your way. But if you start to get worse tell me, don't play macho man! Remember what Richard Pryor used to say about Macho Man, he's one step away from Dead Man."
"I am not Macho Man," Chuck protested with a wan smile. "I'm a very modern, sensitive kind of guy."
"You're more stubborn than my father and stronger willed than Niles Foxe," Jill replied, "even when it's not in your interest. I mean it, Chuck, tell me if it gets worse!"
"All right, all right," Chuck promised. "I promise."
"You'd better damned well keep it, O'Grady," Jill warned.
"For now, let's go check in with Tony," Chuck said. "We need to find out of if our Hail Mary pass is about ready to throw."
Chuck and Jill left his suite, Jill still quietly watching how he walked as they did.
A provisional safehouse, Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 10:00 a.m. local time...
At just about the same time that Jill Roberts was emerging from the shower in her suite, Sarah Walker was sleepily groping her under pillow for the knife she usually kept secreted there...and not finding it.
No, no, no! Sarah raged internaly, I don't want to get up yet! Where is the damned knife?!
"It's not under your pillow, Sarah," Carina's amused voice informed her. "I moved it."
"Why would you do that?!" Sarah demanded angrily, as she watched Carina, clad in her usual sleepwear, i.e. nothing at all, get off her cot to turn off the alarm clock.
"Because I'm tired of you using our alarm clocks as target practice," Carina said with a laugh as she reached the clock and stopped the hellacious jangling racket. "It gets expensive!"
"I can afford it," Sarah groused, as she sat up on her own cot. Unlike Carina, Sarah preferred to sleep in at least a little something, but the night before she had been so tired when she finally got to her bed, or rather her cot, that she had ended up sleeping in the maid's uniform she had been wearing the evening before. She felt grungy and grumpy, and little wonder, she mused, considering the sun had rising by the time she finally got to sleep, a few short hours before.
The Senior CATs had set up an emergency safehouse in a building a few blocks away from the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, on an unused floor. The floor was divided into several enormous, echoingly empty rooms, and the CATs had broken into one of them and set up housekeeping.
It had been the best they could manage on short notice, since they had to assume that all their official safehouses and backup locations were compromised. It was far from the most comfortable temporary lodgings the CATs had ever used...but far from the worst, too. Cots in an echoing empty room were far superior to some of the places where they had slept over the years!
The empty level of the building had little in the way of furnishings, but it had bathrooms, and they had rigged a sort of shower with hoses connected to the pipes. Zondra had gone out during the night while she and Carina slept, to make contact with the other junior CATs and bring them to their temporary headquarters.
I hope Zonnie manages to lay hands on some better clothes, too! Sarah mused If they can raid our official safehouses that shouldn't be a problem, but we can't linger near any of them. Somebody tipped off the Chinese about the one we were in yesterday, most likely our mystery-leaker. If it's someone as highly placed as we think, they probably know about all our official hideouts and fallbacks. So...here we are in an empty floor of a department store. Nobody can leak it if nobody but us knows about it!
Sarah rose to her feet, and saw to her delight that fresh clothes were already available.
"Yeah, Zonnie brought 'em during the early morning hours, you were too out of it to wake up," Carina said. "You want the shower first?"
"Nah, go ahead, you're already dressed for it," Sarah said with a smirk.
While Carina was using their 'shower', Sarah walked across the echoing emptiness of the enormous chamber to the line of windows on one side. All the windows had drawn drapes already in place, which make life that tiny bit easier for the CATs, but Sarah pushed aside one of the drapes slightly and looked down the street. A few blocks away, clearly visible as it towered over the neighborhood, the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi was glimmering in the morning sun.
Sarah's thoughts were in a turmoil of conflicting impulses as she looked at the hotel. Knowing as she did that her father was there, or at least had been in the wee hours of the morning, had left her unable to fully focus on her formal mission. That could be dangerous, but she could not help it under the circumstances.
A beeping sound from an electronic device near the cots brought Sarah's attention back to the moment. Her gun in hand, she aimed at the doorway of their hideout, but to her relief it was Zondra Rizzo and the other junior CATs who entered the room. Apparently, everyone had managed to survive the surprise attack the day before, and Zondra had also managed to retrieve a great deal of useful equipment and supplies from their compromised safehouses.
Finally things seem to be going our way, a little! Sarah mused.
An hour or so later, a hot if not-very-private shower, a T-shirt and clean blue jeans, and some hot coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon later, Sarah felt almost like her usual self. Unfortunately, along with the good news, Zondra brought some alarming information as well.
"There's something going on besides what we know about. This city is absolutely crawling with agents," Zondra said, stifling a yawn. Sarah and Carina were short of sleep, but Zondra had been awake all night and all morning. "While I was out and about I spotted two British agents I've worked with in the past, a Canadian agent I knew by pictures, and a couple of Australian people as well."
"It's not just government operatives," Carla Fredericks said. "I spotted some people that I've encountered before, they're private contractors, usually working for a big Brazillian agribusiness cartel. But they were clearly on business, I saw 'em trying to trail another guy, but he gave them the slip while I watched."
"Did you track their quarry?"
"I tried," Fredericks said, then blushed. "But he gave me the slip, too! Whoever it is, he's good."
"I secured a picture," Sharon Woolsey, another member of CAT Two, said. "I had my best necklace on!"
Sarah knew what she meant, the necklace was a bit of jewelry that concealed cameras for both stop motion and video. It could record information while its wearer was apparently casually fingering it.
Carina flipped a laptop open, and Woolsey hit the infra-red transmitter on her necklace. Moments later, grainy but recognizable video images appeared, first showing two men in casual clothing, but one look and Sarah knew they were agents, the body language, the attitude, she just knew.
"I started tailing them when I made them," Woolsey said, "keeping out of sight, of course. But most of their attention was on their prey, that made it a little easier to keep them from noticing me."
Two names popped up on the screen as the visual-recognition software tagged them, along with a note about their employer. Apparently they were both in the CIA/NSA databases.
"OK, here's the guy they were stalking," Woolsey said. "Sorry about the shaky view, but I had to make it look like I was just a local Russian out for a stroll."
The viewpoint shifted, and now they could all see a man in a nice suit and sunglasses, walking down the street apparently unaware that the two burly men were closing in on him.
As soon as the man appeared on the screen, Sarah felt her stomach turn over and had to bite back a scream. There was no mistaking it, the man in the suit was one Jack Burton.
DAD?! Sarah thought in horror.
"How long ago did you film this?!" Sarah demanded.
"I don't know-maybe ninety minutes," Woolsey replied.
On the screen, they saw the man, still apparently unaware of his followers, go into a crowd, move across a small park, and double-back. Within moments, without showing a sign that he ever knew they were there, the man had left his pursuit confused and shaking their heads, and walked out of the park apparently unconcerned.
"Pretty good," Lana Payton said admiringly. "I couldn't have done it better myself."
"OK, so I was curious and tried to follow him myself," Woolsey said, blushing, as the video continued to show the man in the suit, off and on. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
"One minute I had a lock on him," Woolsey said, "I wasn't fifty feet behind him. Next moment, he's gone. I don't know how he did it but he just stepped right out of my view to somewhere, looking back it's obvious he knew I was there."
You're damned right he did, Sarah thought to herself with fierce pride in her father, suppressing a smirk. He's been dodging cops and crooks his whole life, you can bet your ass he knew those guys were there and that he spotted you too before you knew you wanted to follow him!
In fact, Sarah had been watching the video closely, and she did know how her father had eluded Woolsey. She could remember him teaching her that particular distract-and-double back move when she was 12.
In spite of her pride, though, her fear was now stronger than ever. Why was her father having to dodge agents at all? What was he involved in that had caught the interest of a Brazilian agriculture corporation?!
Damn it, I have to get in touch with him! Sarah thought in frustrated fear and anger.
Over the course of the next hour or two, the CATS Senior and Junior worked out their plans for the immediate future. For Zondra, that meant sleep. She had already been awake for over twenty-four hours. For Sarah and Carina, it meant a return to the hotel, but not, this time, as maids. Even as Zondra was crashing unconscious on a cot, Sarah and Carina were changing into clothing suitable for their chosen aliases.
The Mediterranean Coast of France, Thursday, June 4th, 8:25 a.m. local time...
A knock on the door of the villa, in a particular pattern, was enough to bring Pan Shen to the door, and a look through the warning hole was enough to shock him: it was Ren Liu!
Nervously, he opened the door. Ren stepped inside, and Pan shut the door.
*"What are you doing here?!* Pan demanded. *"The protocol was that we would communicate by dead drop and coded media messages!"*
*"I know,"* the man who went by the name 'Ren Liu' replied, hastily. *"I would have done it this time, but it's an emergency!"*
Fear clutched at Pan's guts as he demanded, in a near-whisper, *"Have they found us?!"*
*"No,"*, Ren replied. *"Not yet, and probably not for a little while yet. We buried our trail very deeply, and even if he talked under interrogation Chang can't have revealed this place because he never knew about it. I think we're safe for a little while yet."*
Pan breathed a sigh of relief.
*"Then why are you here?! Why didn't you follow our protocol?"*
*"Because we might just have a chance to escape from this mess with a little more than our skins,"* Ren replied. *"It's only a matter of time before our former employers, or someone else, does locate us, you know. We might stay safe for weeks yet...but I would not place any money on months. If this chance is real, if it works out, it could be the escape path we've been looking for since things went sour."
*"I've been in touch with out contact in Moscow,"* Ren continued. *"Apparently, he has a possibly buyer lined up for our, ah...product. Someone who might be willing to pay a little extra, if he can receive it soon. From what I've been told, it might be enough money to finance our disappearance, maybe a little extra. And once the 'package' is our of our hands, we won't be so important anymore, either! Oh, they'll still look for us, but not nearly as hard as they are right now."*
Pan paused. He was nervous about any sudden changes in plan, considering how far wrong things had already gone, but at the same time, he knew that Ren was right that their time was rapidly running out.
*"How sure are you of this?!"*
*"Not sure enough,"* Ren admitted. *"But anything we do is high risk now, including doing nothing. If this does work out, it just might be our saving."*
Pan sighed and said, *"Tell me the details."*
Pan listened nervously as Ren explained the opportunity that might just be their last chance.
A cafe on the outskirts of Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday June 4th, 1:15 p.m. local time...
A tall man with sandy red hair emerged from a taxi, and walked casually down the street, not obviously lingering but also not apparently in any particular hurry. It took him about ten minutes to make his way along the small street full of local businesses until he came to a small, utterly ordinary cafe tucked away between a clothing store and a beauty salon. He went inside, and found a table near the back. It was so situated that from there he could see the front door, the windows that faced the street, most of the dining room, and through the door behind the counter that led into the kitchen.
Once settled in, he told the waitress, a fresh-faced girl who looked to 'Liam O'Grady' as if she ought to be in middle school, that he would order as soon as his companion arrived. Then he opened up a newspaper and began to read, smiling occasionally at some of the coverage of the events the previous day.
First it was Ukrainians or Chechens, Chuck mused, behind the 'Liam O'Grady' disguise, then it was NATO provocateurs, now it's a coalition of Western corporations. At the rate they're going, by tomorrow the Russian press will be blaming it on aliens from Tau Ceti IV.
Even as he read, very few moments Chuck would look up unobtrusively to scan the room, and on the latest such look, he saw the front door open, and a woman step inside. The moment he saw her, he felt a wave of relief wash through him.
She was taller than average for a woman, her long hair up in a modest pony tail, currently dyed white-blonde, she looked average in a beautiful way. 'Mom jeans' did little hide a spectacular figure, and Chuck saw several men give the new arrival appreciative glances.
Forget it, guys, Chuck thought with amusement. She has eyes only for her husband. OK, well, I've caught her looking, she's only human, but that's all any 'em are gonna get.
/"Mind if I join you, Liam?"/ the newcomer asked.
/"Please do,"/ Chuck nodded. /"Always glad to have company."/
As she sat down, Chuck asked her in a very low whisper, so low that he knew she would get most of it by reading her lips, "Who?"
"Ulyana Kozlova," Ellie replied, equally softly.
Chuck nodded. He activated the sonic device that would scramble most microphones and detectors, and said softly in Russian, /"Thank Heaven you're all right! What are you doing in Moscow?!"/
They were speaking in Russian, which was slightly risky, but using any other language would have been even more of an attention-attractor. Between their low, normal sounding conversation and the buzz of the lunch trade in the restaurant, and the scrambler under the table, there was little risk of being overheard.
/"I was about to ask you the same question, Little Brother,"/ Ellie replied. /"Until yesterday I thought you were at home!"/
Over bowls of schi and plates of boiled potatoes, Chuck and Ellie began to fill each other in on their activities since the communications interference had begun. It was a long conversation, and still ongoing when they finished their meal and left the restaurant. A great deal had happened in a few days.
It was warm and sunny outside, and after they finished their meal, brother and sister strolled through a nearby park, careful to make sure they were not too close to anyone else, and Chuck kept his scrambler going. He knew without having to ask that Ellie had a similar one on her person as well.
/"So when we had to disappear ourselves before the Russian authorities could do it for us,"/ Ellie was saying, /"Mom called on her old contacts and we scattered across the city. I wasn't able to safely reach a Buy-More until early this morning. This city is crawling with agents from half the governments in the world and a bunch of private outfits too! But if Jill is right about this thing...it's no wonder!"/
/"Still no word from Morgan?"/
/"Not as of the last time I checked in,"/ Ellie replied. /"But don't panic, Chuck. Morgan is a born survivor."/
Chuck let out a long, uneven sigh.
/"I know he's not the same guy he was ten years ago,"/ Chuck replied. /"Hell, none of us are! But it's hard not to worry even so. Between the Russian authorities, whoever it is that's been trying to kill me over the last 24 hours, agents from anywhere and everywhere...it's a bad time to be out of touch!"/
/"Speaking of that,"/ Ellie said, a firm note in her whispering voice, /"what's the matter with you?"/
/"What do you mean?"/
/"I mean you're unsteady on your feet, you keep catching yourself when you stand up and sit down, and your color is off,"/ Ellie replied. /"Do you really think I can't tell when there's something wrong with you after all these years, Little Brother?"/
Chuck sighed. He knew he had done a good enough job of concealing his misery to deceive almost anyone else. Even Jill did not realize how horrible he actually felt. He was pretty sure he could have concealed the worst of it from Sarah, too, or Mary Bartowski. Anyone but Ellie.
Ellie had seen right through him. Between her medical skills and the fact that she had more-or-less raised her brother, she was attuned to the tiniest tells and could read them at a glance.
/"I...kinda hit my head yesterday," he admitted.
/"What do you mean, 'kinda'?"/ Ellie demanded, her voice still quiet but carrying a note of authority in it that not even Mary Bartowski could ever match. /"That's like being kinda pregnant. Either you did or you didn't. How did you hit your head and what did you hit?!"/
With a sigh of defeat, Chuck told his older sister about a detail of the previous day's events that he had left out of his earlier description.
/"The blast wave slammed me into the concrete wall,"/ Chuck confessed. /"Head first."/
/"How hard?"/ Ellie demanded.
/"I don't know for sure,"/ Chuck admitted. /"It knocked me out instantly. Jill managed to get me out of the danger zone, and I'm not totally sure how long I was out. But I'm functional now, the 'special equipment' didn't detect anything out of true."/
Ellie was looking at him with fury in her face.
/"Of all the stupid-you mean you've been walking around and working for-what? almost 24 hours after being knocked out by a head blow?! Damn it, Chuck, do you have some kind of a death wish?!"/
/"No, but time is pressing, and I don't have a wish for my children to be starving to death for lack of food, either!"/ Chuck retorted. /"Things are kind of desperate right now, and I don't dare go near any of the hospitals in Moscow under current conditions anyway!"/
/"Maybe so, but we're going to improvise,"/ Ellie retorted, with Big Sister Authority in her voice. /"You know as well as I do that the 'special equipment' can be unreliable if the mind and body are out of whack, and a head blow is one of the easiest ways for that to happen! When are you supposed to meet Jill and Sarah's father again?"/
/"About two hours,"/ Chuck replied.
/"Your plans just changed,"/ Ellie informed him. /"I know you don't dare phone them, but can you contact them any other way?"/
Chuck nodded. /"We've set up a dead drop. It's slow but it'll work."/
Ellie nodded. /"OK, we're going to the main Buy-More. You can use the dead drop on the way, if it's not too far out of our way. But I want to take a good look at you, and if we can't use a hospital we'll wing it. Let's get moving."/
Chuck shook his head as he followed her toward the edge of the park, but he knew better than to argue with Ellie when she was invoking Big Sister Authority.
Half an hour and two taxi rides later, Chuck placed a written, coded message in the prearranged dead drop at the Gagarin-Tolstoi. Another twenty minutes, and another pair of taxi rides, Chuck in one and Ellie in the other, for secrecy, deposited Chuck and Ellie back at Moscow Buy-More Number One, where he had gone for assistance the day before.
A few minutes after that, and in a room in the underground facility below the Buy-More, Chuck found himself sitting on a makeshift cot, sans shirt, as Ellie performed an examination. Their people at the Buy-More had been able to supply some medical equipment, and more was being brought even as Ellie worked.
"Your pupillary response is slow," Ellie muttered, after shining a light in his eyes. "And out of synch."
"I take it that's not good," Chuck said in a feeble attempt at a joke. He knew of course that it was not good, he was not a doctor but he was far from ignorant about medicine, and the Intersect-8 was a veritable medical library.
"Blood pressure is OK," his sister muttered. "Pulse a little rapid, but that could be nervousness...skin clammy..."
After a few minutes, Ellie turned to him and said, "Chuck, if we were at home I'd sideline you, just based on what I've seen so far. I think it's a near-certainty that you do have a concussion. I'd like to do a brain scan, but we don't have the equipment for it here. Not yet, anyway. Damn it, we need to make sure all the Buy-More's have proper medical facilities. That's been a bad oversight. Anyway, we will have the equipment for a proper examination in a few hours, I've got agents out putting their hands on it. We're going to convert this room into a mini-clinic.
"In the meantime, I don't want you driving. You can probably rest better at the hotel than you can here. Is Jill coming here?"
"Yes," Chuck nodded, "assuming she gets my message at the dead drop, and by now she should have."
"OK, she can take you back to the Hotel, but when you get there, Liam O'Grady is to rest. Peaceful and quiet rest, do you understand me, Little Brother?! That means no stress and you are off duty! Is that clear?"
"Yes, Ma'am." Chuck replied. In spite of his frustration, part of him was almost relieved. Having Ellie looking out for him had been a constant in his life since he was nine. In some ways it was still a reassuring feeling.
"But Jack's plan is supposed to go down in the next few days," Chuck added. "I need to at least be able to take part in the preparations-"
"What part of 'no' is not getting through, Little Brother?" Ellie demanded to know. "I will take your place for now, Chuck, and represent CI in this little con game. Once I'm sure you aren't risking your life, you can get back in the game, but not until then. We'll bring you back here tomorrow and do that brain scan. Until then, rest. Lots of rest. Sleep."
As they emerged back onto the main floor of the Buy-More, Chuck saw two agents/green shirts moving a flat cart with a large box on it, marked: 'television' in Russian. However, instead of moving it out of the store to a customer's vehicle, they were bringing it inside.
"Medical gear, I take it?" Chuck whispered to his sister.
She nodded and whispered back. "Yeah. By tomorrow I'll have a semi-functional treatment room down there."
"You had a point about the lack of medical equipment," Chuck said. "We need to-"
At that moment, the front doors opened again, and a woman walked in. A woman who was very, very familiar to Chuck, even though she was currently wearing a disguise.
"Sarah!"
To be continued...