Everybody casts a certain light
A special gift
It's theirs to use for wrong or right
When you face the night
"American Storm"
Bob Seager and the Silver Bullet Band
December 9, 2012
Montreux, Switzerland
Sarah pushed Ciel back, hearing her own voice but speaking Russian, unsure where the impulse to do so had come from. She heard Ciel shriek and braced herself for a blow. One that never came.
"Sarah." The white-haired man on the doorstep said her name and it forced her to focus. His face was familiar as his voice and it chilled her to the core. Only, there was something about his face that made her stop. His face was familiar, but his expression was not. Sarah knew she had never seen him look like this.
"Alexei Volkoff." Sarah had uttered the name without thinking. She watched the older man's face crumple as he blanched, squinting as if he were bracing for a blow.
"Sarah, what are you talking about?" Ciel asked, her voice shrill. "This is Halmstad. Hammersmith."
Ciel's hands trembled, just the mention of the name affecting her. Ciel pulled Hammersmith inside and slammed the door behind him.
Hammersmith placed his hand over Ciel's as she rested it on his arm. He patted her hand affectionately, like he was offering comfort. "I came as soon as I could. I was already on my way before you raised the red flag." He squeezed her hand, adding emphatically, "David's alright. He's in London at the Royal Hospital. They'll take care of him. I'll take care of him, I swear to you."
Ciel's eyes misted as she gave him a trembling smile. She nodded, unable to speak, confused and cautious. Sarah stood, glaring at them, her nostrils flared as she poised for combat.
"But…" Hammersmith sighed, taking stock of the situation. "Maybe it's time…we had a conversation." He looked up at Sarah. "Where is Charles?"
"I'm here, Hartley." They turned to see Chuck standing at the edge of the hallway. His hair was still damp from his shower. He was dressed, but his feet were bare. "Or…Hugh, is it?"
Chuck had mentioned the name, Hartley Winterbottom, when he had been speaking to Casey and Morgan at the hospital. It sounded familiar, but Sarah couldn't shake the initial impression, the knowledge that this man was Alexei Volkoff.
But he was taken into custody. Chuck had been instrumental in that. What was going on?
"I didn't say anything yet. I, uh, I wasn't sure how." Chuck approached hesitantly. "I'm not sure I understand everything anyway."
Choking on emotion, Hammersmith turned to look at Ciel again. He pulled his shoulders back, resolute. "Ciel, Sarah was right. I am…or at least I was…Alexei Volkoff."
All the color drained from Ciel's face as she violently jerked her hand away from his touch. "Wh-what are you talking about?" Shock quickly turned to a murderous rage and Ciel charged at him, screaming.
Chuck grabbed her from behind, restraining her by her wrists. Hammersmith stood perfectly still, not defending himself at all. Ciel continued to rage, hysterical, howling in Spanish so rapidly and in such deep pain that Sarah couldn't make out what she was saying.
"Ciel, please, let us explain," Chuck said, raising his voice over her.
Sensing the admission in what he said, Ciel turned on Chuck, flailing in his arms. "You knew! You knew and you didn't tell me! How could you?"
"It's more complicated than you know. I didn't know where to start, how to tell you the truth. It sounds…crazy."
Ciel dissolved into tears, sobbing and rambling in Spanish. Eventually, she started in English again. "All this time…all this time…I trusted you and you…you…" Viciously, she snarled, "Did David know the truth?"
Hammersmith had tears on his cheeks. "He does now. But he didn't, not when I recruited him. He told me about you and what had happened to you." He took a deep breath. "If you tell me to go, i'll walk away and never return. But please, will you let me explain?"
Sarah was trying to make sense of it, her fractured memories making the narrative a jumble in her head. Her emotions had taken charge instead. Distrust and anger, but like everything else, those weren't quite right. There was gratitude as well, though she didn't know why.
"Ciel, listen to what he has to say," Sarah pleaded. "I don't…I don't know what's going on…but Chuck trusts him." For Sarah, that was all that was required, because she trusted her husband implicitly. Sarah believed, from what she had seen between Ciel and Chuck, that Ciel held him in the same regard.
Sarah was relieved when she watched Ciel stop fighting, tentatively relaxing in Chuck's grasp.
"Let's sit. It's a long story."
{}{}{}{}{}{}
Chuck sat beside Sarah on the sofa while Ciel sat in her chair. Hammersmith stayed on his feet, though he was pacing as he spoke. Sarah sat close, her legs and shoulder touching Chuck. Her physical default, enacted without conscious thought. His instinct was to wrap his arm around her shoulder, but he resisted it, feeling awkward in the moment. If she sensed his tension, she never let him see it. As strange and tense as the scene was, for a moment it reminded Chuck of a first date, of commingled attraction and uncertainty…
Hammersmith explained the history, starting with Chuck's father and their friendship as scientists working for their respective governments. He ended where his own memory ended–where the procedure had gone wrong, when Volkoff could not be separated from Hartley any longer.
"So the same thing that happened to Sarah happened to you?" Ciel asked cautiously.
"It's not the same thing," Chuck offered. "My father's first Intersect was an identity. Once the Volkoff identity took over, Hartley's personality was suppressed. The two separate identities had no connection and so no recollection of each other. Hartley lost 30 years of his life. He didn't remember anything that happened while he was Volkoff. One body, two men."
"As it actually turns out, Charles, there was some overlap, although not with memories, more with traits. No one realized it at the time, but it is important," Hammersmith added. "There was a little bit of Hartley left in Volkoff. The painting, the music…that was me." Hammersmith shrugged sheepishly. He straightened his shoulders. "And there is some Volkoff left in me, after all that time. I wouldn't have been able to do what I've done without some of his masterminds. I built a benevolent Hydra. Hartley, as he had always been, was far too timid for that." Chuck noted how he spoke of himself in third person, understandable considering the man's life was sectioned like a grapefruit.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Ciel snapped, her eyes and voice still venomous, full of rage.
"No." Hammersmith turned sad eyes to her. "I won't ask you to forgive me because I don't deserve it. I was weak and I took advantage of my best friend's willingness to help me. I ruined his life and his family. I destroyed more than I can ever create, or re-create, in one lifetime. None of this makes up for anything. Reparation was never my intention, Ciel; it is beyond my power."
"Then why? Why go through this trouble? Why drag us all into your network?" Ciel was still so bitter. Chuck understood, knowing what she had lost, what she blamed ultimately on the man standing in front of her.
"Why?" Hammersmith asked. He shifted his gaze to Chuck and held it, silently. Eventually Ciel turned to look at Chuck as well. "You want to know why. It was because of Charles."
Chuck felt the heat on his face, burning down his neck and under the collar of his shirt. He shifted his eyes downward.
"When I was Volkoff I did everything in my power to destroy him. I raised my daughter to be the same. And yet, Charles chose to forgive me, and my daughter, even though my daughter almost killed Sarah. He let us go, to start a new life…and he didn't even know at the time that Sarah was going to survive." His voice softened. "I couldn't waste the chance he gave us. I left with Vivian. We became Hugh and Victoria Hammersmith. I used the resources he gave to us and created my network."
Her eyes still fixated on Chuck, Ciel asked, "Is that true? About Sarah?"
Chuck noted Ciel's gaze shifted before he spoke, as she looked at Sarah. Chuck turned to see his wife, her hand pressed tightly over her mouth as tears streamed from her eyes. He cursed himself for not noticing sooner, and for forgetting Vivian's name in conversation had the chance to affect her.
"Sarah," Chuck said urgently, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her against him. "I–"
"Vivian," Sarah proclaimed. Chuck felt her shaking and squeezed her tighter. "It was Vivian…in the base. She…she…delivered my baby...our baby."
It wasn't the reaction he had been expecting, the information shocking to him. "My God, Sarah, you remember that?"
"Bits and pieces. But she was there. I didn't remember her, but she thought I did. I didn't understand." Sarah wiped her eyes with her hand. "She apologized, for what, I had no idea. She promised that I could trust her."
Sarah tilted her head up to look at Hammersmith. "Both me and our baby would have died if she hadn't done what she did."
"It was the least she could do, Sarah, and she knew that," Hammersmith said softly.
Hammersmith was bleak when he turned back to Ciel. "Ciel, I promised David I would keep you safe. He came to find me because he was worried about you. It's easier to protect you if I'm here, but…if you can't stand to look at me, I understand."
"Right now my only concern is helping Chuck and Sarah find their baby. And I don't think they can do that without your help." She sounded defeated. At least she wasn't furious any longer, or at least, she had temporarily buried those emotions.
"I know the beginning…and the end. But a lot of the middle is still fuzzy," Chuck said after a pause.
Hammersmith nodded, a silent agreement that he needed to tell them more. "At the end of January, I got a coded message from Mary. She used the same encryption that Stephen and I used to use. I missed several before I realized it was her, looking for me. She had heard rumors…and she thought Halmstad could have been me. She told me what happened to Sarah.
"I knew you were looking, the CIA was looking…but there's a lot of red tape with that. Mary was looking, off the record. That was when she contacted me."
"Why didn't she tell me?" Chuck growled, swallowing down the rage, not wanting to pollute the conversation with his emotions.
"She was trying to protect you, Charles."
Sarah's hands were on his shoulders. Chuck wasn't sure when their posture had shifted, from him holding her to her comforting him. Sarah had sensed his wrath, the tension in his shoulders. "I've had about enough of that word to last me for the rest of my life," Chuck grumbled bitterly.
"It was a legitimate concern, considering the laws she was breaking to do what she did. She couldn't implicate you, Charles." Hammersmith paused, then continued.
"With all the resources I had, it still took Mary almost nine months to find Quinn's base. And when she did, she found Sarah about to give birth at any time. It complicated the rescue. So she reached out through the network to ask Vivian for help." Hammersmith's eyes filled with tears. "They tried to wait until Sarah was stronger, but it became clear to Vivian that Sarah was going to bleed to death if something wasn't done right away. So Mary got Sarah out of there, and Vivian took the baby."
"Where?" Sarah asked pointedly. "Where did Vivian take her?"
"I don't know. She made contact with David right before Quinn targeted him. Now Quinn is after her and I have to find her before he does."
"What about Mary?" Sarah asked, sensing what Hammersmith hadn't said.
Hammersmith paled. "I haven't heard from Mary since the end of October. Since she called me to let me know she found the base. I didn't even know she'd found Sarah alive until someone else reached out to me about her."
Ciel sat up, suddenly more attentive. "But…David brought Sarah to me three weeks later. How is that possible?"
Through gritted teeth, Chuck added, "My mother called Ellie in the last few days of October, after the NSA declared Sarah dead. She didn't tell Ellie Sarah was alive. She didn't say anything about what was really going on."
"I don't have definitive proof, but a lot of circumstantial evidence suggests Sarah's passage was…bargained for." Hammersmith's face pinched as he paled. "Mary requested medical transport through proper channels…but the pilot I sent was found dead in Tokyo. I believe Quinn replaced the pilot with one of his men. Mary was under duress the entire time. Probably even when she called your sister."
Chuck's chest constricted, each breath progressively more painful. His cheeks burned with shame. "Wh-what does that mean, what you're thinking?"
"Mary was trying to give Vivian time to get the baby away. She may have had to make a choice, thinking the child had a better chance of survival, I don't know. One of Quinn's men, if not Quinn himself, was on the plane when it landed in Zurich. Mary most likely told him she had information, or something else valuable, that she would give him…if he let Sarah go."
Sarah's arms were still around Chuck as he felt the scalding tears on his cheeks. He felt sick, disgusted with himself for his misdirected rage, blaming his mother for things she had never done, it seemed.
"Why would Quinn just let Sarah go…after all that time he held her captive?" Chuck challenged. "Parsons told me he kept Sarah alive after he extracted the Intersect because he was waiting for her to give birth."
"At the end, he left her to die. He was waiting for the child…but he didn't need the child alive, apparently. Or he wouldn't have left Sarah there, alone, while she was in labor. I don't know the reason, I mean, the man is insane, so maybe there isn't one. Mary thought Sarah was worth whatever she did."
"What would she have that was so valuable?" Sarah asked. Chuck grabbed her hand and squeezed, freshly horrified as Hammersmith described the torture Sarah had lived through.
"The location of the components of the key. I'm almost certain."
"David never saw anyone but Marseille…Mary," Ciel added.
"Mary was protecting David, and Sarah, and you, too, Ciel." The finality, the cold dread in Hammersmith's voice chilled Chuck to the bone.
"So…Quinn has had my mother for…six weeks? Is that what you're saying?"
Somber and sullen, Hammersmith chose his words carefully. "After all this time, it's unlikely that Mary is still alive. Didn't David tell you he has two pieces of the key?" Ciel nodded. "He took the first from the man he killed in Zurich. But the second piece's location…he may have extracted that information."
Hammersmith refrained from saying torture, but Chuck knew what he meant. Chuck's tongue felt like sandpaper in his mouth as he struggled to speak.
"Who has the third?" Chuck croaked.
"It's in the United States. Or at least, it was. Diane Beckman knows precisely. And she purposely never told Mary."
"Quinn wouldn't have known that, though, would he?" Chuck asked, now breathless from anguish.
"No." Hammersmith didn't need to say anything more. A torturer convinced a subject had information they did not in fact possess was a hellish prospect.
His voice was still unsteady when he continued. "His number one focus is Vivian. And she's alone. I have to bring her in. I don't have a right to ask this of any of you. But I need your help."
