So the time had come to find out exactly what Christopher LaSalle would be doing for the next few weeks. Percy thought about how she had to make Chris go back to his hotel and sleep. He has no idea the amount of information that they will be throwing at us tomorrow. Percy knew that while you could take notes, they have to stay in your folder which is locked up each night. Every morning participants check their folder out and every night back in with their thumb print. Percy recalled seeing them go get a guy once and once they got the folder back they helped him pack and put him on a plane back to where ever he came from.
Chris must have run that morning because he looked red faced when he got into Percy's vehicle.
"Good morning Country Mouse."
"Hey beautiful. Can I kiss you lipstick and all? Does it stay on forever? Thank you. I think that will get me to lunch."
"Here. Take this and try getting it off." She says as she hands him a tissue.
Chris proceeded to ask Percy a bunch of questions. She finally said "it's just something that you have to experience for yourself. It cannot be fully explained, just experienced.
"Hey LaSalle. I haven't seen you in years. What are you up to?"
"Craig Johnson? Where are you now? Still with NCIS?"
"Yes, I'm in Boston. I got detailed for this assignment. I have no idea why I'm on an overseas gig".
"Are you going in here too?" LaSalle responds pointing to the White Cloud Briefing room.
"Yeah. I have no idea what's going on."
"Everybody grab a seat please. We'll reconfigure the room this afternoon. After a quick up brief, we'll give you some time to read through the entire mission. Remember it's classified so you should not be discussing this with anyone outside of this secure room except for the two directors."
"All right ladies and gentlemen. We need you to come up one at a time and met Agent Kelly over there. He will pull your prints from the system and assign your briefing packing. You need to try to memorize as much data as you can over the next few weeks. You are allowed to take notes but nothing can leave this room until we issue you your new identity papers. Even then you can only take the assigned passport, drivers' license and credit cards for this mission."
All of you have bolted safes in your living quarters. If you are staying in a contract hotel, we will assign you a safe in the secure room in this facility. There may come a day when you will need to completely swap out your legal identity with the one in your briefing folders. On that day, you will exchange those credentials with every identifying document in your bags, purses, suitcases and briefcase as well as your birth certificate and government issued passport."
"All right so let's get started."
"This is John Pierre from the French General Directorate for Internal Security and Colin Jones from MI6.
Team Leaders are: Electronics, Juan Sanchez; Hair, Paul Thomas; Make up, Mary Smith; clothing, Kelly Johnson; Documents, Carolyn Ashcroft; Jewelry, Sarah Cox and Passports/Travel, Montgomery Collins.
"Underground agents will be Mark Johnston, Nikki Freeman, Craig Johnson and Frank Mc Coy. You will meet them in person but when you see them in public you are expected to either ignore them or act like you're meeting them for the first time or have forgotten having had met them before. Understood?" Everyone shakes their heads.
"There are five primary agents on the ground that will serve as decoys. Aaron Ahrens of France whose parents were German. Aaron holds a dual passport. The second agent will be Sonja Percy of the FBI . Her partner/spouse will be Christopher LaSalle on loan from NCIS. Some of you know Aaron and Sonja from other projects. Agent LaSalle was assigned because he speaks French fluently even if it is with an Alabama twang and he and Agent Percy have shared several assignments in the past while working at NCIS. We did not feel that we had the time to completely groom a new team from scratch to work so closely together so we borrowed Mr. LaSalle for a key piece of the puzzle."
"Agents in the Far East will be Aiko and John Kim also posing as a married couple. We are not sure if we will be in Hong Kong or China, but we want to make sure that we have all of our bases covered."
"Okay Neil, you're up"
"Ladies and gentlemen please turn to page B-1 in your packet.
The topic today ladies and gentlemen is Gold. It is one of the top twelve trafficked item in the world. The primary sources are from the nations of Russia and South Africa to the western nations of Germany, the United States and China. Our mission is to find the primary sources coming out of Hong Kong and terminating in the US and Germany."
What seemed forever began. LaSalle soon realized Percy had been correct there was a lot of information to remember and this was all in English.
"All right, I think that concludes the briefing for this morning. Leave your notebooks in this box. We will reconfigure the room and you can pick them back up at 1300. Remember that this is classified."
"Percy, over here" Chris whispers.
"Stop Chris, someone could see us."
"Who cares we're married remember" he says stepping even closer.
"Chris stop before you get too motivated."
"All right."
Four hours later in the car
"Wow that was deep. How are we going to pull that off" Sonja exclaims?
"Well Mrs. Lafayette I don't see the problem. It will provide perfect cover for us to get a little closer."
"LaSalle your incorrigible" Percy responds with an exasperated look on her face.
"What do you want to do for dinner?" He asks.
"How about going shopping? "You can stash some of your food at my place for when you are there."
"You're assuming I'm going to spend time there" he says with a raised eyebrow?
"Well, yeah. We have a mission to prepare for."
"All right let's do it."
"Hey that wasn't so bad. I haven't been in a real store for a long time. I'll try a few new foods."
The week went by quickly. Sonja and Chris spent almost every night in his hotel room or her condo quizzing each other or working on financials for the European Union, France and Germany. She was good about keeping him at a distance but did give in to him kissing her on occasions and holding her hand. On week three, however, their handler asked to meet with them.
"Okay you guys, I thought that you were going to work into this naturally but you seem to be keeping each other at arm's length. You are going to be a married couple on this mission. You need to start acting like it. I'm sending you shopping next week here and in NYC. While you will have a two bedroom hotel suite in New York, I expect you to come out of your main hotel room door as a couple."
That weekend the two partners went dancing. LaSalle was reprimanded for holding her too tight as she poked him in the stomach.
"Stop LaSalle. That's too much." Percy snarked.
"What?" he queried as he looked down at her.
"I'm not the only one poking here."
Oh she was right LaSalle realized. "Look Sonja. You must know how I feel about you by now. That was my body responding to my heart and mind being so close to you like this". They walked out to the balcony closely so that LaSalle could calm down.
Their goodbyes however became more difficult to overcome. Twice she shouted at him to get out. She didn't know that he was still on the other side of the door and could hear her panting too.
Sunday afternoon they went to play tennis. It was no match and they just volleyed as a way to let off steam. LaSalle opened the car door for her to get in and bent down to kiss her. She let him and that was that. A horn honked at them and the guy shouted for them to go find a room.
When they got back to her condo Sonja said "just let me out at the curb." Chris knew Sonja Percy enough not to argue. She was in running mode. How far could she run he thought? We worked at the same place.
YOU ARE READING
Retrouvailles Revisited
FanfictionChristopher LaSalle and Sonja Percy were fictional characters that found a place in the hearts of their television fans. Many of us regretted that they were never provided with the love story they deserved so I wrote this one for them and am republ...
