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“Damn it, Tony, what the hell happened?” Jack asks angrily.

“Like I said before, we decided that lobbying the Administration and members of Congress wasn’t working, so we realized we were going to have to be a little more creative.”

“What do you mean by creative?” Jack asks pointedly.

RESUME FLASHBACK (8 MONTHS AFTER DAY 5)

Audrey leads Tony into her home office. “Everything I have related to Jack’s abduction is in here,” she says, pulling up a folder on her computer. “Go ahead and look through it while I go check on the casserole.”

Tony nods and starts looking through what she has. He glances at the door to make sure she is gone before inserting a flash drive. He copies a file that he noticed on her desktop called “passwords” to the drive and then puts it away quickly.

She comes back a minute later.

“Thanks,” he says as she hands him a bowl of food and a glass of soda.

“I don’t think there’s much there that’s useful…I know that there are people at DOD who know where Jack is but they’ve found a way to keep me from finding it. Maybe you’ll see something I’m missing.”

“What’s this?” Tony asks, bringing up a list of names.

“A list of members of Congress who are on record opposing renewal of the trade agreement. And here’s some information I got from Amnesty Global on Chinese prisons…if we can find out where Jack is we can try to match it to one of these profiles.”

“I’m not sure I follow…” Tony says, confused.

“You were right with what you said the other night on the phone. Gardner’s not going to do anything about Jack unless we force him to. Given the fact that he’s trying to get this trade deal through Congress and move past all the Logan scandals so he can win the election, the last thing in the world he wants is for Jack’s capture to become public.”

“Do you think it matters? You’ve been talking to people about it all day and you’ve been met with nothing but indifference.”

“That’s because I’ve been talking to jaded Washington insiders. If the American people knew that the Chinese had kidnapped a federal agent who had saved millions of lives on US soil and that the president knew about it and turned a blind eye, I have to believe that they’d be as outraged as we are about it. If we do this right and work with the people on this list and the labor unions and human rights groups that oppose this treaty we can help turn public opinion against the treaty and create public pressure for the president to do something to get Jack out of there. Much as I hate the idea of letting him be used as a football for politicians with their own agenda, at this point I think it’s our best option.”

“Listen, I can help you get together whatever you need to give to the media or to the people you mentioned, but if you’re going to take this public I’ve got to get out of here first.”

“I’m not going to the media yet. I need to find more concrete evidence, and I need to find out where Jack’s being held. Then I can use what I have to try to persuade the president to do something before taking it public.”

“You’re going to blackmail the president?” Tony asks incredulously.

“I prefer to think of it as playing politics,” Audrey says slyly.

“Alright. Obviously I don’t have as much experience dealing with politicians and the media as you do, but if you think it’ll work I’m in. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“I need to figure out where Jack is being held, and I’m hoping to find some evidence that people from Logan’s Administration who are still in their jobs today were complicit in his capture. I have a list of names here of people I think might have been involved.”

“Alright, I’ll hack into some databases and see what I can find.”

Audrey opens up another file on her computer, which shows a picture of Cheng Zi. “This guy, Cheng Zi, was the head of security for the consulate in Los Angeles when Jack went in there. It looks like he left that job around the same time Jack was abducted. I think he’s the one who came and questioned us, but I can’t remember for sure…given everything that had happened the whole thing is a little bit of a blur to me,” she admits.

“Yeah, well, who could blame you? But I’m pretty sure you’re right,“ Tony says. He notices Audrey getting teary-eyed.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks gently.

“Nothing, I’m sorry…it’s just hard remembering that night. Curtis asked me to talk to the Chinese to help protect Jack’s cover, but it was right after Paul died and I was so angry with Jack at the time. I keep replaying the conversation and wondering if I had been more convincing when I talked to Cheng…”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Tony says firmly. “The Chinese had pictures of one of our agents from their surveillance camera. They were going to figure it out no matter what you or anyone else said.”

“Yeah, I know,” Audrey says in a tone that doesn’t sound too convinced. “I just had no idea something like this could happen…”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us. I’m the one who ran point on the operation to extract Lee Jong from the Chinese consulate…Jack asked me to keep everyone else out of the loop to help keep it off books. I’m not aware of any mistakes on our end but I keep running the whole thing through my head over and over and over, wondering if there’s something I could have done differently. Something that would have prevented the consul from being killed, and prevented Jack from having to fake his own death and put all of us in danger…sometimes I just wish I hadn’t agreed to go along with it in the first place. Of course, if he hadn’t gone in and gotten Lee Jong we might all be dead, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we could have found some other way.”

“You and me both,” Jack says to Tony.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Tony says, realizing that for as many times as he’s replayed that day wondering what they could have done differently Jack has suffered a thousand times worse than he has for the decisions they made that day.

“Frankly, if we could do that day over there are a lot of things I would have done differently,” Jack admits. “Sometimes I wish I had just gone with the Secret Service agent and not gotten you and Michelle and Chloe involved.”

“Please, Jack, for both of our sakes…don’t go there,” Tony says with a whiff of irritation. He has replayed the conversation where Jack asked for his help escaping a thousand times since Michelle was killed, wondering if he would have agreed had he known what the consequences would be, and he honestly doesn’t know. As much as part of him wants to go back in time and tell Jack to leave him and Michelle out of it, part of him knows that if he did have a chance to do it over he’d do the same thing all over again. That part of him knows that he would not have been able to turn his back on a friend in need no matter how much he wanted to.

Jack sighs. Tony knows what Jack is thinking, so he eventually answers the unspoken question.

“Look, Jack, I know what you’re wondering, and the answer is, I honestly don’t know. If I had it to do over again I don’t know what I would have done. But for what it’s worth, I want you to know that I don’t blame you for Michelle’s death.”

“That makes one of us, but I appreciate your saying it,” Jack says regretfully.

An awkward silence hangs over them for a moment, until Tony continues with his story.

“Anyways, Audrey and I figured if we could figure out where Cheng had been reassigned we could use that to figure out where you were. So I told her I needed to go dark for a while and see what I could find on my own. I got back in touch with my contact and he was able to get me in touch with someone who worked at the Chinese consulate who would give me some information about where Cheng took you.”

“In exchange for what?” Jack asks. Tony looks away, not eager to answer Jack’s question.

“In exchange for what, Tony?” Jack repeats, his tone sharper the second time.

“In exchange for structural information about CTU,” he admits.

“You mean how to get inside the building?”

“Yeah,” Tony says quietly, hanging his head.

“Damn it, Tony. Do you remember Milo Pressman?” Jack asks angrily. Tony nods. “He died as a result of Chinese hostiles getting into CTU.”

Tony sighs, obviously pained by this news, but then he becomes indignant. “Look, Jack, I said before that I’m not proud of the things I did. But the cold hard truth is, our government had left you for dead, and Audrey and I were the only ones who cared enough to keep looking. So we can have a debate about methods all you want, but the bottom line is, after we realized the government wasn’t going to do anything unless we forced them to, we had to decide whether to give up or do whatever it takes. And we decided to do whatever it takes, alright?”

“Fine, keep going,” Jack says, exasperated.

“Using what I remembered I drew a schematic of CTU for my contact at the LA Consulate, and in return, he gave me enough information that enabled us to figure out where you were being held. We also got more evidence to suggest what we’d suspected all along, that your capture wasn’t initiated by the Chinese government in Beijing.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack asks.

“You mean they never told you?” Tony asks incredulously.

“Told me what?”

“Your capture was initiated by people within our own government, people who were behind President Logan’s oil grab scheme. Cheng Zi was acting outside the authority of the Chinese government…he was paid off by these oil tycoons connected to President Logan. I had suspected that all along and I was right. What I didn’t realize was that members of your own family were involved.”

I hope this isn’t dragging on too much…in the next chapter, you will find out why Audrey went to China, why Tony feels responsible for her capture, and what Jack’s father and brother had to do with it. So stay tuned, and please review!

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