Chuck vs The No Win Question

by HC68

It's a beautiful summer day in 2020, and Chuck Bartowski and his family and friends are having a gathering and an outdoor barbecue. But trouble is brewing between the two most important women in Chuck's life. Can Chuck navigate the perils of the No Win Question?

27. Chapter 27: The Grand Hotel 4

CHUCK vs. THE NO-WIN QUESTION CHAPTER 27: The Grand Hotel 4

Moscow Buy-More Site #1, Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 8:50 p.m. local time...

Silence reigned among Sarah, Jill, and Chuck as the three of them left the manager's office of the Buy-More. It was a tense, fraught silence, the kind of silence that seems loud. It was the sort of silence that made one want to say something, anything, just to break it, but at the same time one that made one fear to speak for fear of breaking the silence.

Chuck saw that Jill was standing too straight as she led the way to her car, her back was rigid, her body was tense. Sarah was in a similar state, and both women were carefully avoiding looking at each other as the three of them made their way across the busy four-lane street and into the huge parking lot opposite the Buy-More.

Chuck, for his part, had only been awake for about twelve hours by this point. Unfortunately, he had only gotten about six hours sleep that night, or morning, before, and now his body was confirming for him the wisdom of his older sister's injunction about resting. Chuck had felt marginally awake when they left the manager's office, but now his eyes were getting heavy and it was becoming a real effort of will merely to put one foot in front of the other as they left the Buy-More.

The evening air was blessedly mild, though there was a nip in it that promised chillier temperatures by morning. It had been a mild, sunny day, but the weather forecast was calling for more rain before the night was over, and indeed, clouds were already moving in overhead.

That morning, he had told Jill that he felt as if 'someone kicked me in the stomach and threw me onto a tilt-a-whirl afterward'. That had been true, but as the day had proceeded and the warmth of late spring had made the day pleasant, he had felt somewhat better. He had never felt good, but he had felt as if he was getting better. Ellie had thought otherwise, though, and now Chuck was discovering that his sister knew what she was talking about. His stomach was knotted, his legs felt spongy, and he was beginning to feel very chilly in spite of the mild evening. His head was also aching, not intensely but enough to add to his misery.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm, and he looked up to see that Sarah had caught his arm to stop him, and that she had her other hand on the pocket of her pantsuit. The pocket, Chuck suspected, which held a gun.

"What's-"

"Shhh!" Sarah said. Jill looked back at them in irritation, then stopped herself as she saw the look on Sarah's face and followed her gaze in that direction, with the apparent casualness of an experienced field agent.

There were substantial crowds moving on the sidewalks, but Sarah was looking at two particular men. They did not look out of the ordinary, in any particular specific way. Still, as soon as Chuck saw them he knew that they were not the Muscovite workers on their way home after work that they seemed to be dressed to appear as. They were too alert, their eyes constantly watching everything, and they had that indefinable air about them that spoke of violence.

"Do you know them?" Chuck asked Sarah in a whisper, as the two men vanished into the crowds. Neither had shown any sign of realizing that they were being watched from a distance.

"Yes," Sarah said softly. "One of them is a troubleshooter for the Montesaro Mafia family. I'm not sure about the other one, but one of them I've encountered before."

"I know him," Jill said softly. "Or at least I recognize him, we've never been formally introduced."

Sarah and Chuck looked at her, and she continued, "He's a new 'soldier' in the Montesaro Family, or at least that's what the last batch of intel I saw about the major New York mob families reported. The Montesaro's are branching out, they've really been raking in the dough from their fentanyl and heroin operations, and they brought in a former NSA man to handle some 'delicate' matters for them. That was him with their regular troubleshooter just now."

Chuck started to shake his head, then immediately regretted it as he felt even more nauseous.

When his stomach settled and the parking lot steadied down and stopped trying to throw him off, Chuck said, "Three guesses why the New York mob would have players in Moscow just now," Chuck said softly as they crossed the main street at a crosswalk. "And the first two don't count."

"Yeah, it has to be EREBUS," Jill said, very softly. "They may not know how bad it really is, but just what that idiot trying to sell this thing advertised as the whole underworld in a stir. Everybody and his dog wants to get control of this thing."

"We've got to get hold of it before they do," Chuck said as they reached the row of the parking lot containing Jill's car. "We've got quite a rogue's gallery in town, and probably more arriving all the time."

As they reached the car that Jill had been using, Jill opened the back door and pointedly gestured for Sarah to get in. Sarah glowered at the 'redhead', and started to slide into the roomy back seat, and Chuck was reaching for the car door to get in the passenger seat in front when the world, which had been swaying a little for the last few minutes, suddenly began to spin more rapidly, and the next thing he knew he was halfway sprawled on the asphalt, gasping for breath and trying desperately to avoid vomiting his lunch onto the asphalt.

"CHUCK?!" he heard two female voices cry out, almost in perfect unison, and then Sarah and Jill were helping him to sit up. Gasping for breath, Chuck tried to stand, but his legs seemed to suddenly be made of rubber. It required help and support from both Sarah and Jill for Chuck to get to his feet, and when he did he was very unsteady. He leaned against the top of the car, and after a moment his breathing returned to normal.

"I-I'm all right," Chuck gasped, the words sounding pathetic and false even to his own ears.

"The Hell you are!" Sarah snarled. "You can barely stand!"

"Just let me get in the car, and I'll be okay," Chuck managed to say, his voice a little steadier. Chuck lifted his hands from the top of the car, and managed to balance on two legs without falling. With a sigh of relief, he reached for the door handle, and pulled on it-and the only thing that kept him from sprawling on the hard pavement again was that Sarah and Jill had been hovering close and caught him before he did! They helped him back to his feet, but that left him leaning against the car again, feeling as helpless as an infant.

"Every time you try to bend over to get in you lose your balance, Chuck!" Jill said. "You are not all right!"

"Chuck, the back seat is big enough for you to stretch out," Sarah said, adding, "and we can help you slide in that way."

She opened the back passenger door again, and with some help from Sarah and Jill he managed to very carefully slide inside, and as the blonde had said, there was room enough for him to stretch out a little. He leaned back against the car seat, gasping in relief.

Sarah immediately slid into the back seat as well, and pulled the door shut, leaving Jill standing there looking angry and worried at once as she glared at them.

"What are you waiting for, Jill?" Sarah demanded, "we need to get Chuck to the hotel where he can have some peace and quiet!"

The red-dyed brunette paused, looking as if she was torn between some angry retort and worry, and then she got behind the driver's wheel, shutting the door with a loud angry slam. Moments later the car was in motion.

Chuck was aware of that, but only half, his exhaustion seemed to have become vastly worse in the last few minutes, and he was half-asleep in the back seat already, his head resting on Sarah's shoulder. He was dimly conscious of a warm arm around him, though, holding him tight.

Somewhere in Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 9:00 p.m. local time...

Lana Payton was no longer bored.

Her 'stakeout' had finally paid off a few minutes earlier, when the two men Beckman had assigned her to track had emerged from the motel and drove off into the maze of streets. Payton had been cautiously following ever since, carefully gauging her movements to avoid being spotted. 'Shadowing' a car in another car was a fine art, but Payton had been trained by the Senior CATs, and she knew what she was doing.

If Beckman was right, these two Italian agents had been 'turned' by FULCRUM and were actually in Moscow on business for the conspiracy. Beckman hoped they would lead to some of the other players, and so Payton was tracking them, with strict orders not to engage.

"This is recon, not a strike op," Beckman had informed her firmly. "You are only to engage directly if no other options exist, let them go rather than interact if you can. We need them to lead us to their confederates."

Unfortunately, it was beginning to look as if her quarry were planning to leave the city entirely! They kept making toward the edge of the megalopolis, and now the traffic was thinning out. If they continued on their current trend, within another thirty or forty-five minutes they would be outside the metropolitan area entirely. Payton was beginning to debate with herself about her next move, because soon traffic would be thin enough that it would be difficult to conceal her presence.

So intent was Ms. Payton on keeping her pursuit and surveillance of her quarry secret that she only saw the oncoming SUV in her rear-view mirror moments before it rear-ended her car!

It was not a swift collision, but it jarred the entire vehicle and left his bones rattled. She was forced off the road and onto a sidewalk, and she had to stop suddenly to avoid striking another parked car.

Payton knew of course that this was no accident, the other vehicle had slipped in behind her at a stop light and then sped up behind her to ram into the back of her car quite intentionally. Her hand went for her gun, but she was rattled and her reactions were still slow, and moments later the driver's side window of her car shattered and a gun was pointing at her head, causing her to freeze all movement.

Oh shit, she thought, as she saw several other men appear from various directions around the car, and realized that she had been led into a trap.

The parking garage of the Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 9:15 p.m. local time...

Jill parked the car on the second floor of the parking garage, blessing the lucky break of an empty parking slot on that level. It was lucky because that was the level with the over-the-street bridge to enter the hotel from the parking garage, and Jill suspected they would need the easiest route they could manage, given the situation.

She looked in the rear-view mirror, and saw what she had seen every time she glanced that way during the drive back to the Hotel: Chuck half-asleep/unconscious, leaning against the blonde with his head on her shoulder and her arm around him, and her other hand occasionally stroking his hair as she whispered to him. It was enough to make her want to vomit, but she bit back her anger and started thinking about how to quietly get Chuck to his suite.

"Walker," she said, "he's in no shape to get where we're going on his own."

"Obviously," Walker replied, coldly. "We'll have to help him."

"But we're not safe in the Hotel," Jill pointed out. "The enemy is here too, Chuck and I switched aliases to hide from them. We think they don't know us in these disguises, or which rooms we're in, but we can't afford to draw attention, either."

Walker hesitated, then admitted, "You're right. One of my teammates was attacked here, just last night, an attempted bag job. She got away but we still don't know who was behind it. Maybe FULCRUM, maybe one of the national intelligence agencies with teams in Moscow, maybe a private player of some kind, but somebody tried it."

"So we have to get Chuck inside, but we have to do it without drawing attention," Jill said. "Two women helping a half-conscious guy who can't even stand up on his own are not going to be inconspicuous!"

"I imagine the Hotel probably has a wheelchair or two for emergencies, but we can't ask them without drawing attention either," Walker said, sounding frustrated. "Maybe we'd have done better to keep Chuck back at the Buy-More!"

"London," Chuck said, his voice weak and shaky but sounding as if he was fully awake again.

"What about London?" Jill asked him, but Walker suddenly looked as if she already knew what he meant.

"When Zondra was tranqed!" Sarah said.

"Yeah," Chuck replied with a feeble but definite grin. "Only I'll be the drunk this time instead of Zondra! Everybody'll see, but it won't look like what it is, it'll look like something else. If you can't be invisible, be something else! At least that's what my first handler taught me once upon a time."

"What are you two talking about?!" Jill demanded, as she saw Chuck and Walker exchange a grin.

"Oh, just that Liam O'Grady has been on a bender," Walker laughed. "And now his poor, put-upon associates have to get him back to his suite before he embarrasses the company and loses the account!"

"I worked an op with the CATs a while back in London," Chuck explained. "Zondra had gotten a lungful of tranquillizer gas, she was still awake but only barely, she couldn't walk on her own and we had to sneak her past some agents. So Zondra pretended to be plastered drunk, and Sarah and I were just two Londoners trying to get our drunk friend into the car. It worked like a charm, it let us support her without drawing undue attention right past the agents. It might work here."

Jill thought about it, and unable to come up with a better idea on the spot, decided it was the best they could do.

Somewhere in Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 9:30 p.m. local time...

Lana Payton had been removed from her car at gunpoint, and marched back to the SUV that had rammed her own vehicle. Her captors confiscated her high-heeled shoes, which was more-or-less a standard thing to do, given that high heels could make effective stabbing weapons...especially CAT high heels, with the razor-sharp extensible metal blades concealed with them. Another man produced handcuffs, which they used to secure her hands behind her. A few minutes later, they were driving through the night, Lana securely tied at wrists and ankles and blindfolded.

She was already working to get free, and she suspected that she could manage it given time. Unfortunately, the ride proved to be brief. They pulled into a garage somewhere in Moscow, though, and moments later she heard one of her captors saying, in English, to someone else, "We caught her, sir. One of their Kittens, just as you ordered."

"Excellent," a male voice said. "Now let's see how much leverage we can apply with her."

The Hotel Gagarin-Tolstoi, Moscow, Russian Federation, Thursday, June 4th, 2020, 9:35 p.m. local time...

Anyone watching the trio arrive through the second-floor parking entrance of the Hotel would have known immediately what was going on. Two women, one with long straight red hair and the other with brownish hair, were helping a man across the footbridge and into the Hotel. One of the women wore a pantsuit, the other jeans and a sweater, but both showed all the mannerisms of American business types. The man between them was clearly drunk. No, he was well past 'drunk', he was more like 'plastered'. He was so far gone that he could hardly stand, he had his arms over the women's shoulders and they were clearly supporting much of his weight and guiding him as they walked, or staggered, back and forth across the hallways of the Hotel.

In fact, though Chuck was not drunk at all, it was no great effort to play the role! He was in-and-out of being completely focused, he really was barely able to stand, and if Sarah and Jill had let go it was likely enough that he would actually fall, and he knew it. To help carry off the deception he managed to slur his words, sometimes he would sing a little, off-key and in songs that were not quite appropriate for public consumption. He ogled some passing women in a less than polite way as well, and generally behaved as a drunk lout would be expected to behave. Fortunately, he was singing in English, and most of the people around spoke Russian, but anyone could see what was apparently happening.

Inevitably they attracted amused, resentful, or just idly curious glances, but Sarah and Jill were dressed to pass as businesswomen, and the trio looked like a couple of exasperated business types trying to get a drunken colleague back to his rooms before he embarrassed them any further. When somebody looked more closely, Jill or Sarah would give them an embarrassed look. They both looked convincing as exasperated colleagues of a man who had been on an all-day bar crawl!

After what seemed like forever, but was really just a few minutes and an elevator ride, they reached the corridor with their suites, and a blessed few moments after that, they reached the door to Chuck's rooms. Chuck was desperately eager to lie down, and when Jill opened the magnetic lock with the card he had given her in the car, they went inside and Chuck relaxed, just a little.

Jill did a quick 'walk through', confirming that the suite was empty, and scanned it with a detector to make sure no bugs had been planted, and detected none. Meanwhile Chuck leaned against the door frame of his bedroom, Sarah ready to catch him if he fell. When they were reasonably sure that they were momentarily secure, Jill rejoined them and she and Sarah helped Chuck over to the bed, and when he finally was able to fall onto it, his aching head coming to rest on the soft pillows, Chuck let out a sigh of relief and closed his eyes.

"Damn, but Ellie was right," he said in a voice barely above a whisper. "There's no way I could have made it back here on my own."

"I told you not to pull the Macho Man crap this morning, Chuck!" Jill said angrily, sitting on one side of the bed with Sarah on the other, Chuck between them. "Why didn't you tell me how bad it was?!"

"I didn't realize it myself," Chuck protested. "I was doing fine last night and functional this morning."

"Fine?!" Jill snorted. "You do remember that you practically collapsed when we went to bed last night? Why do you think I was so worried about you when we got up this morning?"

Chuck opened his eyes to look at Jill, but as he did he also saw Sarah glaring at them both. She said nothing, but Chuck knew what his former handler was thinking.

Oh boy, Chuck thought to himself, an echo of his father's voice in his mind.

"OK, yeah, I knew I was bad, I admitted that this morning, remember?" Chuck said. He knew there was nothing he could say under the circumstances that would make things sound any different, so he pressed forward in spite of Sarah's expression. "But I didn't realize how bad I was. Heck, when we left the Buy-More I was more or less all right, it's only been in the last hour or so that things got this bad!"

"Concussions can have delayed effects," Sarah said, her voice worryingly mild. Chuck turned his head to look at his ex-wife, who was sitting on the bed a few inches to his left. "Sometimes the symptoms don't fully kick in for a day or more...which you damned well know, Chuck!"

Her calm voice had suddenly given way to anger. "Damn it, Chuck, you know better than this!"

"What choice did I have?" Chuck demanded, his voice weak but a little anger stirring in him as he spoke. "Considering the circumstances!"

Sarah started to answer, then sighed and said, "You're right. This isn't the time to argue about it anyway, Ellie said you needed to rest, remember?"

Chuck had closed his eyes again, and he responded with a simple nod. He started to say something else, but lost the thread of his thoughts as he faded out.

XXX

"He's asleep," Jill said.

"Good," Sarah replied coldly. She looked at Jill, sitting on the other side of Chuck, and wished for the hundredth time that the red-dyed brunette was somewhere else. Somewhere further away from Chuck. Maybe Patagonia...or Madagascar!

The two of them looked at each other tensely. Sarah had no intention of leaving the room while that...unprintable...female was sitting on the other side of the bed. Unfortunately, it appeared that Jill was harboring a similar disposition, as neither of them showed any sign of moving.

The silent, tense standoff was interrupted by the sound of the door buzzer. Jill looked at the sleeping Chuck, at Sarah, and with a frustrated expression she went to see who was at the door. Sarah breathed a little sigh of relief at her absence and reached out to stroke a curl of hair out of the sleeping agent's eyes. As she did, it suddenly struck her how different he looked right then.

She had known Chuck for thirteen years, and people change, slowly but steadily, with age and life. Most of the time the changes are so slow, day to day, that one does not even notice, as they accumulate over the months and years. That is, unless one happened to look at an old picture or something on those lines. Then suddenly the changes could be startling.

As Chuck lay there, asleep, quiet, momentarily at peace, it suddenly struck her how much he he had changed in the thirteen years that she had known him. It was suddenly obvious because the man lying there somehow looked to Sarah as if ten years or more had vanished from his face and form. The Chuck of 2020 was always alert, always on guard. Even when he was happy and comfortable, some part of that man was always on the watch for trouble, always scouting out escape paths and possibly sources of trouble or danger, just in case. There was usually a tension in his body, hard to define but impossible to miss if one knew what to look for.

The watchful look that was his current normal mien, the tension in the shoulders that was there more often than not, the weary look that so often occupied his eyes these days, all were gone, and as he slept he looked remarkably like the innocent, naive, unbelievably kind and caring Buy-More computer nerd that she had known so many years before. Oh, the touch of gray was still in his hair, and there were lines around the eyes and mouth that were not there thirteen years before, but even so, just for the moment, it was as if time had been partly erased, and the man she first met so long before had returned.

You shouldn't ever have been part of my world, Chuck, Sarah thought to herself as she sat there on the bed, one leg folded under the other. I used to blame Bryce for it, but it really wasn't his fault, I know that now. With your parents, it was inevitable that you'd be drawn into the shadows sooner or later, you and Ellie both. Bryce knew that. But inevitable isn't the same thing as right, and I hate what my world has done to you! You were always so...pure...and my world is dirty. You've managed to be part of it and stay yourself...somehow...but not without paying a price.

Sarah found her memory going back to the Chuck she had known at first, his unbelievable naivete, at once so irritating and charming, his child-like (which was very different from childish) sense of fun, his confusion at the strange, twisted world he had been so suddenly shoved into.

'Why are all those people sleeping?' she remembered him asking, when seeing pictures of the corpses Tommy Delgado had murdered. At the time, she had been flummoxed at how naive a grown man could possibly be, but eventually she had realized that it was less naivete than it was a man so good that the nastier realities of her world seemed unreal to him. It had been the exact same goodness that Bryce had wrecked Chuck's college career to protect, and in retrospect Sarah understood exactly what had motivated him to do it.

'You don't get it. Chuck's a good person! He's got too much heart for this kind of work. He's no operative. You can't put him out in the field! He won't survive!'

Sarah remembered seeing Bryce, a much younger-looking Bryce than the man she had known and loved, on that computer monitor, that day when she and Chuck had learned the truth about Chuck's expulsion, telling Professor Fleming why Chuck should not be part of Project Omaha.

Ironic, that, Sarah mused, as she brushed Chuck's hair some more, considering that Chuck's father invented the technology that made Omaha a thing at all. But even Bryce didn't know that then. Bryce turned out to be wrong, Chuck finally did end up in the field and he survived...but would he when he was five years younger and even more naive? Even if Bryce was wrong about Chuck surviving, Chuck definitely paid a price. The Chuck I first met could barely bring himself to hurt a fly. That Chuck had to learn how to kill in cold blood to survive in Bryce and my world, and he did it...but you don't learn how to do that without it changing you.

Sarah's mind went back to Chuck's abortive 'Red Test', and her own reaction to it, and she blushed.

Not my finest hour, Sarah admitted to herself. It wasn't Chuck's fault he was in my world, he never asked for it, and he was learning how to function in it...and I was ready to give up on him because I thought he was becoming more like me and the rest of us in the business. I was so relieved when John told me that he killed the mark.

'He didn't have the stones to pull the trigger. Kid's not a killer. He's just not wired that way. Unlike us.' Sarah could remember Casey's words as if she had heard them yesterday, and the incredible relief she had felt.

Then her memory flashed to a hotel room in Paris, and her waking up after Shaw's attempt to kill her. She remembered the fear and nervousness on Chuck's face when he confessed to killing Shaw to save her, as if it was something to be ashamed of, as if he was afraid she would hate him for it.

After the mixed signals I'd been sending for months, Sarah thought, why wouldn't he think I might react that way?

In the years since, of course, Chuck had killed more than once, and like anything else, Sarah knew dismally, the more you did something, the easier it became. That was true even of cold-blooded killing, and she knew Chuck was fully capable of putting a bullet in a helpless target if the situation demanded it.

But he's still not like I used to be, Sarah thought, not like too many of us in this business are. He'll kill, yes...but he does it less than anyone in the business would imagine you could get away with. I've seen him find the most amazing ways to avoid the necessity, he'll go way out of his way, spend huge amounts of time and effort, to avoid violence whenever he can. And I've seen the look in his eyes after he has had to kill. He's not cold inside, not the way so many of us end up...not the way I was on track to be if I hadn't met him.

Sarah slipped off her shoes, and stretched out on the bed beside her ex-husband, pulling off her wig and letting her golden hair rest on his shoulder. He stirred in his sleep, but did not awaken as her weight came to rest against him.

Charles Carmichael is a legend now, Sarah mused, closing her eyes. Everybody in the business has heard of him, a lot of them fear him, but everybody also knows that he's got a reputation that he only kills if he absolutely has to. I know a lot of people in our line of work can't quite decide if they think that's weak or admirable. But I've noticed that a lot of agents seem to try to copy him, too.

Sarah started to put an arm around him, completely prepared to slip off to sleep right there with him, but then she heard the door to the main room open, and footsteps. Sarah sat up, one hand going to her gun pocket, as she realized Jill had just let someone into the suite. Then she heard a heard a very familiar masculine voice saying, "Trouble, what's going on with the Schnook?!"

DAD?! Sarah thought in shock as she heard his voice. Her father was in the main room of the suite!

Sarah rose to her feet as quickly as she could without waking her nerd, and slipped her shoes back on before heading hastily for the main room.

TO BE CONTINUED...