Epilogue

A/N- Here we are at the end of this story. Sincere thanks to those who read, those who review and those who PMd. Merci, michaelfmx, a very busy person who graciously takes the time to edit my stories.

"From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain and nourish all the world."

― Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act IV, Scene III

Sunset Blvd, LA

Law Offices of Bartsch & O' Neill - August 10, 2009

Shane O'Neill's corner office was spacious and tastefully decorated with a few personal touches. Sarah was relieved the office wasn't paneled in dark oak with a stuffy looking chair and leather couch. Rather, it was filled with the morning light reflecting off the pastel colored walls. On Mr. O'Neill's desk there was a small paperweight with the inscription, 'If you are going through hell, keep going.' Sarah smiled to herself, she recognized the quote, it was a Churchillian saying.

Mr. O'Neill had already dealt with the American Cancer Society and sent them an initial distribution from Madelaine's estate.

He would now meet with Ellie, Devon and Chuck, the designated beneficiaries. Chuck had informed Mr. O'Neill that he wished his girlfriend to also attend the reading.

Sarah and Ellie had agreed that, out of respect for Madelaine, they would wear black dresses to the reading of the will.

A smile appeared on Sarah's face as she remembered dressing this morning. She'd finished her makeup and was putting on the dress. She'd finished zipping up the black dress and was checking herself in the mirror, when she caught Chuck's reflection, looking at her.

Chuck didn't think she'd caught his admiring glance, nor did he realize Sarah had seen the desire spring up in his eyes. The thought made her smile. 'So, you like me in a black dress?'

She quickly pivoted around. "What do you think Chuck?" She'd been correct because Chuck had gulped and blushed. He then stumbled on his response. "Aaah…Amaaazing, …really great."

Chuck had been standing in the middle of their bedroom, still in his briefs and socks with his white shirt unbuttoned. She was only going to give him a quick kiss, alas, one thing led to the other and they ended up keeping Devon and Ellie waiting for fifteen minutes.

On the drive down to the lawyer's office, Sarah had leaned over and whispered to Chuck in the backseat of Ellie and Devon's Subaru, "It's all your fault, what am I supposed to do when you look at me that way?"

The reading of the will was a straightforward affair and only took about ten minutes. Mr. O'Neill explained that the long hold up in settling the estate was because initially Madelaine had wanted the bulk of her estate to go to her third cousin. Sadly, the cousin had predeceased her and there were now no longer any other family members alive to inherit. It took over a year and a half to track down and confirm the details of the cousin's death.

There were pleasant surprises in store for Ellie, Devon and Chuck. The American Cancer Society would get the sizeable residual value of the estate after the specific distributions.

Ellie and Devon would each get a fixed amount of $100,000, and Chuck would have the right to purchase Madelaine's condominium in Echo Park for $200,000 under its current market value, OR, receive $100,000. He had fourteen days to make his decision.

Mr. O'Neill looked up at Chuck. "There's one more item, a codicil added to the will." He reached down and then placed a brown shoe-box on top of his desk. "Madelaine wished for Chuck to have this shoe-box and its contents. The box was sealed by Madelaine prior to her death and, as you can see, remains unopened."

{}

Evening, The Same Day

Echo Park

After leaving O'Neill's office, they drove back from Sunset Blvd. to Ellie and Devon's condominium. They were all still amazed that their act of kindness towards a palliative Madelaine had caused her to put them in her will.

Ellie was all smiles because she could now pay off her student loans. Devon's family had paid off his loans already, so his share would go towards their wedding and the 'let's get a house' fund.

Intense discussions ensued about what choice Chuck should make with the two options Madelaine had left him in her will.

Ellie sipped her second glass of burgundy and offered up, "Chuck, it's a no brainer, buy Madelaine's condominium. You've been renting the place for the last two years…. Sarah, you like the place…don't you?"

Sarah wasn't sure what to say and mumbled, "It is a lovely place, roomy…..but it has to be Chuck's decision, whatever he wants to do."

Devon had his arm around Ellie. "Chuckster, I think it's pretty obvious Madelaine wants you to buy her condominium. Clever, the way she set up your choices. I know what my dad would tell you. Buy the damn condominium."

Chuck shook his head. "The market value of the condominium is $785,000. Where am I going to come up with $585,000? At the moment, I have $2,489 in my bank account. My salary is too low to get any bank to approve me for a $585,000 mortgage." He did a quick calculation, "I'd need a raise in my salary of $120,000."

Devon jumped in. "Hey, you own 13% of our company, GAMUTS."

Chuck laughed. "GAMUTS is a startup, and, as you well know, all we have at the moment are expenses with no revenue coming in. Maybe, I should just take the $100,000?"

{}

After they imbibed a lot more wine with Ellie and Devon, and savored an ordered in Thai dinner, Sarah and Chuck bid their goodnights and walked the thirty yards to Chuck's unit. They got ready for bed quickly.

The two of them sat in bed with pillows piled up behind their backs. They stared down at the brown shoe-box resting on Chuck's knees, still sealed, unopened for two long years.

Her patience finally ran out. "Chuck, if you don't stop staring at that box and open it, I think I'm going to explode. Pleeeease!"

"I'll need a knife…..", before he could complete his sentence, Sarah produced one of her throwing knifes from under her pillow. She flipped it in the air, caught it by the blade and passed it to him handle first. "Careful, don't cut yourself."

Chuck's eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up. "You keep a knife under your pillow?"

"Habits are hard to break Chuck, open the damn box." She gestured with her right hand towards the box.

Chuck once again reflected on the fact that his girlfriend possessed some interesting and lethal talents. She was unlike any woman he'd ever known. He suspected that a lifetime might be too short a time to really figure out who Sarah Walker really was.

Chuck opened the box and gasped. "What the hell, it's a gun."

Sarah leaned over and picked up the gun, checked that the safety was on, slid back the barrel to make sure there was no bullet chambered, pressed a button and the 8-clip magazine dropped out of the handgrip. There were no bullets in the magazine or the gun. She gave him a smile, "This German gun is almost seventy years old, but Madelaine took good care of it. See the sheen of oil? I'll hang on to this."

Chuck looked in the box. "Well, here are your eight bullets." He passed them over to Sarah.

He then pulled out all the old photos and a small black leather diary. They worked slowly, going through each of the photos. The identity of the people in the photos, apart fromMadelaine, Sean and John, were unknown. Chuck looked at her, "Maybe the diary will tell us who some of these people are."

Sarah estimated that the photos spanned a fifteen-year period based on the clothes, cars and hairstyles.

She touched the photo of three uniformed individuals standing in front of a four-engine plane. When Chuck was twelve, he had bought a book about allied planes of WWII. He still had the book somewhere but he didn't need to refer to it; his eidetic memory served him well. "Hey that's a Halifax Bomber, I think it's a Handley Page."

Sarah pointed out the young, good looking woman with dark hair. The eyes gave her away, it was Madelaine Ross. She pointed out Sean and John (Jean) Simpson, the two men on either side of the young Madelaine.

Two hours later, Chuck was exhausted, they hadn't even managed to look at the diary.

Sarah could see he was fading quickly. "Chuck, can I ask you a huge favor?"

Her blue eyes mesmerized him. How the hell could he refuse her anything she asked? "Okay."

"Can I take the photos and the diary and do some research. I promise that once I'm done, I'll tell you what I find." Sarah wanted to carefully sift through the diary and check it against the photos and any archival material the CIA might have. Sarah loved solving a mystery and Madelaine's past life was just waiting for her to roll up her sleeves and dig into it.

She also wanted to shield Chuck from parts of Madelaine's spy life, noted in her diary, that he might find difficult to hear. Chuck had heard the story, as had she, from Jean Simpson of how Madelaine had killed the two guards in East Berlin, while rescuing Sean.

In spite of Jean's graphic retelling of the rescue, Chuck still believed Madelaine to be a lovely old lady. Sarah needed to look at this information first. She was positive that Madelaine, like her, had to do things as a spy, that were best forgotten.

Chuck stretched and yawned. "Deal, can we go to sleep, what time is it? Geeez, it's two in the morning."

Sarah put everything back in the box and put it down on the floor on her side of the bed.

Chuck turned the bedside table lamp off and was instantly snuggled by a warm body. He hoped he would never grow used to the lovely sensation of her blonde hair against his chest and her legs intertwined with his.

{}

Fifteen Months Later

Echo Park, Los Angeles

January 9th, 2011

Hi my name is Chuck, and here are some things you may not know.

I'm going to be a father in six and a half months. If my calculations are correct, based on the latest ultrasound and my research in the Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics, the birth will occur in 194 days or July 21st.

Sarah shook her head, mumbled the word, 'Nerd', and wandered back into her study, after I shared with her what my research and calculations indicated about the delivery date. That's okay, I'm sure the delivery date of our first child, with ninety-five per cent confidence will be July 21, plus or minus 2.3 days.

A lot has happened, so please allow me to quickly bring you up to date.

In the end, I did buy Madelaine's condominium. Nope, that's wrong, I should say Sarah and I bought it together. It was Sarah's idea. She came up with the down payment and suggested we combine our two salaries and then approach the bank.

A shell company called, Leith Import & Exports, owned by the CIA, produced an employer's letter verifying her salary. I strongly suspect someone might've called the bank and put in a good word for us. The long and short is that we live here and are now in the process of figuring out where the nursery is going to go.

Devon and Ellie moved to Chicago, three months ago, to take up their new careers at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. We're very happy with the folk who moved into their place. In fact, I helped move them into my sister's old place; our new neighbors are Sarah's mom, Emma, and her adopted sister, Molly.

Emma sold her house in San Diego where she'd been living for the last fourteen years. She got a decent price for her place. Ellie and Devon did a private deal with Emma to purchase their condominium and they both saved because there was no commission.

Sarah's over the moon that her mother will be close by to help with her first grandchild. Molly, when she's not attending junior kindergarten, spends a lot of time visiting over at our place. I think Sarah will be a good mother, even though she keeps saying she hasn't got a clue how to raise a child.

I'm unemployed at the moment but I don't want you to worry, let me explain.

Devon, Angar, Woody and I sold our startup company to Siemens. The algorithms that we designed and perfected worked well. They say timing is everything; we were lucky that we were four months ahead of two other startups working on similar software.

The good news is the payment for my shares allowed Sarah and I to pay off our mortgage. My algorithms and the software we developed are selling well. I also get a royalty check each month for about $2,850. The bad news is that I need to find a new job.

I'm exploring creating a 'White-Hat' hacker company. It's sort of like being a White Ninja, where I do good things instead of bad things. I would hack companies, with their permission, in order to help them improve their cyber security. Sarah likes the idea and thinks she could help me out with her CIA and DEA contacts. We'll see.

Sarah worked for another seven months as a CIA field operative. The seven months were hard on both of us. I didn't want to force her to choose between her career and me, so I kept quiet. The nature of her work built in a lot of separation between us.

When she was away, I missed her and worried if she was alright. Often it was too dangerous for her to break her cover and stay in contact with me. I'm glad to say that it was Sarah's idea to resign, her exact words were, "Chuck, it's not like it was before I met you, I miss you, I miss my mom and Molly, all the time. My heart just isn't in the game anymore."

I was totally surprised with what she wanted to do next.

Sarah Walker, ex-CIA operative, kickass spy and my beautiful wife.

Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you we decided to get married four months ago. We both wanted to have the wedding before Ellie and Devon moved off to Chicago. Sarah and Ellie were thick as thieves planning the wedding and the reception.

Sarah didn't want her dad to come to the wedding. She really wanted her mom and Molly to be there, so sadly she was forced to choose one over the other.

Ellie was, of course, the matron of honor, Molly was the flower girl and Carina was a bridesmaid. (Yes, I finally got to meet the irrepressible, always fun, always flirty, slightly crazy, beautiful DEA agent.) Morgan was my best man and loved dancing with Carina at the reception. They disappeared for about thirty minutes during the reception. All, I know is that Morgan came back smiling from ear to ear.

Sorry, I got sidetracked.

Sarah wanted to write a book; she's now a budding author.

Madelaine's shoe-box, the photos and the diary, touched something deep within Sarah. She spent every moment of downtime as a spy, (apparently, it's not like the movies, there is a lot of 'sit on your ass' time being bored), reading and researching Madelaine's photographs and her diary. The more she read and the more she researched Madelaine's background, the more her desire grew to write a book.

Sarah often told me that Madelaine's story needed to be told. Madelaine had been center stage during the Normandy invasion and had a front row seat in Berlin during the Cold War as a French Intelligence Agent.

Madelaine's diary covers her three years in Indochina; five long years in Berlin, from 1950-1955, fighting the Cold War with the East Germans and the Russians.

As soon as Sarah left the CIA and was back in Burbank, she signed up for creative writing classes at UCLA. At first blush you might think there's no way the taciturn, slightly introverted Sarah Walker would be an author. You'd be wrong.

Hell, it's not like she was some illiterate from a fly over town in the mid-west; she graduated from Harvard with a major in English Lit. and two minors in French and Spanish. My wife can write. I'm proud of her and, of course, she has this amazing material that she has turned into a great story.

We talked about whether she was going to write a biography or a fictional story about Madelaine.

I wasn't aware of this but, because she is ex-CIA, and she is writing about real events that happened in Berlin, Sarah had to submit her draft to the CIA, to get clearance to publish.

I told Sarah this was patently ridiculous; I mean, all this stuff happened seventy years ago. Looks like I was wrong.

Sarah sat down with me and we went over four changes she had to make because some of the items were still classified. Also, there were two assets Madelaine recruited who were still alive and needed to remain anonymous. What that means is that the book will now be a history/fictional book, with one of those watered-down paragraphs that says, 'Loosely based on the life of Madelaine Ross'.

The story is now written, cleared by the CIA, and Sarah has a publisher.

But hold on, now the hard work begins.

Sarah has an editor, Emily Fuller. There's not a day that goes by without them talking on the phone or Facetime.

Sarah has a deadline to get the work done. The book is to be published on April 2, 2011.

On the whole, Sarah and Emily get along but sometimes I hear shouting coming from Sarah's study as she argues with Emily, about rewriting this paragraph and changing this, or adding that. Between you and me, I think Sarah is loving the back and forth.

At the moment Sarah is bursting with energy. Ellie says that a burst of energy, along with being dog tired, is all part of being pregnant. I've also noticed some interesting changes in Sarah's libido, sorry, don't want to get sidetracked, I'll move on.

Ellie's words to me, "Chuck, scans clearly show noticeable changes to the brains of first-time mothers. Sarah's brain is being rewired as we speak."

Interesting, after fifteen months of living together with a complex, intelligent, beautiful, potentially lethal and still mysterious woman, here she goes changing again. There is some hope that my efforts to understand her haven't been in vain. A number of times Sarah has spontaneously reached out and hugged me. She then, in a conspiratorial tone, whispers in my ear, "You know me better than any other person in the Universe".

I still spend Saturday afternoons and Thursday evenings volunteering at the Library. Sarah has warned me to be extra careful if I slip into Piranha mode. Apparently, the CIA/NSA and CGHQ, plus four or five other agencies around the world, are still looking for me.

Prior to Sarah reestablishing contact with Emma and Molly, I did a lot of work as the Piranha to make sure there was no fallout to the Budapest Incident. Also, I carefully checked to see if there was anything stirring in Hungary.

Molly's real name is Tedora Farkas, and because no body was found, the lawyers handling the huge estate refuse to wind it up. The money is all invested and safe and sound, of course the lawyers take 1% each year as their fee for being executors. They're in no hurry to make any changes.

Sarah asked me to hack into the Hungarian lawyer's computer system. It was a little more difficult than I first imagined. However, once in their system, I discovered that if Molly, sorry Tedora, doesn't make a claim on the estate by the time she turns twenty-one, the entire estate will go to four charities picked out by the parents before they were killed.

Well, I think that brings you up to date. And look here comes my beautiful wife. Hmmm, looks like I've done something wrong.

"Chuck, have you moved my gun again. It should be right behind the box of Muesli."

A perplexed look came across his face. "Yes, I put that old German gun, you hold onto, back in the drawer with your throwing knifes. You're no longer a CIA agent, why do you need a gun or knives? You do know we can't have guns in the house once our daughter's born, right?"

Patting her bump, she smiled at him. "Of course, we won't have guns lying around when our daughter arrives. Everything will be baby and toddler proof by then. "

Putting her arms around his neck she reminded him. "Speaking of potential hazards for babies and toddlers. You'll have to move all those Star War figures in your study into our storage closet. It's just too easy for a toddler to swallow them."

THE END

{}

A/N2- Be safe, be well.