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Lee Stetson sat at his desk in the bullpen of the Agency. Impatiently, his pencil tapped at a three inch pile of papers as his gaze swept up to the clock mounted over the coffee station across the room. It was 10:45 a.m. He glanced toward the guarded glass doors. Empty. And from the M.P.'s relaxed expressions, there wasn't anyone coming down the hallway either.
After checking the clock again, he frowned down at the stack of surveillance reports. It seemed to be getting bigger by the moment. Tap. Tap. Pause.
Of course. Bet she forgot the password again.
Reaching for the phone, he punched in the extension. "Mrs. Marston. Lee Stetson here. Is Amanda King there?"
Listening to the receptionist's reply, he noticed Francine Desmond approaching his desk. He signaled for her to wait. "No. No, that's all right. I was just wondering. Thanks." He glanced to Francine and she handed him a coded document.
"MI-5's latest list of suspected IRA terrorists residing in the U.S.," she stated.
He flipped through the pages. "Doesn't look like anyone new."
"Nobody we hadn't already spotted," Francine agreed. She turned to leave, but stopped. "If you're looking for Amanda, I saw her go into Billy's office around 7:00."
Lee's eyes shot to the clock which now read 10:55. "Seven?" He frowned. "Thanks." Standing, he tossed the report onto his desk and headed towards Billy Melrose's office. He knocked once, then thrust open the door. "Billy, have you seen Amanda? We were supposed to go over those security transcripts this morning."
"I sent her out on an assignment."
"How am I supposed to get anything done if she's always late to... You what?" Lee exclaimed.
"I said, I assigned her to a case," Billy stated, a suspicious note of amusement in his tone as he continued looking over the paperwork on his desk, "I felt it was time that she got her feet wet. She says she's ready for more and I..."
"Get her feet wet? Billy, the way Amanda tends to get her feet wet is by diving head first into the Potomac." Lee began to pace.
Billy slashed his signature across the bottom of the letter he'd been perusing and picked up the next one -- a reminder about the due date for the end of the year fiscal report.
"She's not ready for her own assignment. She's not fully trained," Lee argued. "And shouldn't she have been sent with someone experienced, someone like..."
Billy glanced up. "You," he finished for his agent.
Lee blinked, then chose to ignore the comment and change tactics. "Look, don't you remember the last time you sent her out on her own to Germany? She nearly caused an international incident passing out counterfeit money."
"That was all a simple misunderstanding ended up helping us solve the Tegernsee matter," Billy lectured. "Besides, I didn't send her back to Germany. This seemed like an easy assignment, and last time I looked, I was still in charge around here and you had work to do." Billy paused meaningfully. "Unless, of course, you'd rather help me formulate this year's budget report."
Lee winced and reached for the door knob, but then something made him ask. "Where is it, if it's not Germany this time?"
Billy shook his head. "That's on a need to know basis."
"A need to know?" Lee exploded. "I'm her supervising agent of record!"
Billy gave a pointed glance toward the door. "Mrs. King has the training manuals down cold; she's worked hard for the past year. Now, quit taking up my time and get those transcripts done," he barked out the last.
Lee shut the door behind him. "Need to know my..." he grumbled.
"Good morning, Scarecrow." A young agent smiled as she walked past.
"Not anymore it's not," Lee muttered darkly as he headed back to his desk and the mound of paperwork waiting there.
The day dragged to the late afternoon and Lee had barely made a dent in the files. He blamed that on the fact that nothing seemed to be where it was supposed to be. He kept having to dig in the drawers to find the simplest items. How many times had he told Amanda to stop trying to organize his things. He caught his eyes wandering yet again towards the glass doors. Still no one came through.
That was another thing -- the least she could have done was left him a note so he could have suckered someone else into typing up the dispatches. It wasn't like he needed Amanda to do it, but without knowing how long she would be gone, he couldn't exactly make a request for a temp to take her place.
He unconsciously checked the entrance again. Francine was just passing through with a more reports in her arms. He hated typing, everyone knew that. Lee looked back down at the typewriter and stabbed out at a few of the buttons. The keys immediately crossed, causing an x to type over a y. He frowned at the typo and punched at the correction button only to see that it was out of tape -- again. Enough was enough. He got up from behind the desk and headed into the hall.
Francine glanced down, surprised at the hand gripping her elbow as Lee hustled her into the elevator, brushing past two women from the steno pool.
"Sorry, ladies. This one's full," he said, as he pushed aside the coats that gave the concealed elevator its mock closet-look. He pressed the button, causing the doors to close abruptly in their faces.
Francine glanced around at the privacy now created in the enclosed space and then peered up at the man standing only inches from her. A small smile pulled at the corner of her lips. "My, my it's been a while since we did this," she purred.
"Not now, Francine." Distractedly, Lee hit the number for the main lobby, which was the furthest floor away, then he turned to face her. "Do you have any idea what assignment Amanda's on?"
"Oh, I should have guessed -- Amanda." She shook her head. "When did you stop being fun, Stetson?"
"C'mon, Francine. You're Billy's number one aide. He must have briefed you."
She moved to face the doors. "What do I look like, a social secretary?"
He stared at the back of her head for a moment, then his gaze sharpened. "Are you going to answer my question or..." his voice took on a casual quality and he began inspecting his fingernails, "do I have to let Purchasing know the real story about certain expense vouchers from last quarter, including the one with the name Halston on it?"
Her back stiffened, then she swung around and raised an eyebrow at him. "All you had to say was that you were serious."
He gave her a look. "I'm serious."
"All right. Fine." She sighed and shifted the folders to a more comfortable position in her arms. She lowered her voice considerably. "All I know is that Billy has her out on some courier pick up. And before you ask, I don't know where. It's not local, but I'm sure it's a walk in the park. You know he'd never send her on anything really dangerous. She's hardly trained for it."
A slight thump indicated that the elevator had reached its destination. Francine contined. "He's got her slotted as being back by 6:00, which means that she'll make her Monday night PTA meeting, or... whatever." The doors slid open. "So you have nothing to worry about. I'm sure your little junior partner will be home eating milk and cookies before you know it."
"She's not my partner," came the knee-jerk response.
She resisted rolling her eyes as she stepped out, but just barely.
Lee reacted to the gesture, even if he didn't see it. "Amanda is not a partner. She's not even a full-time agent. She's an emergency... fill in," Lee insisted.
"Yes, but who are we kidding here, Lee? She's been filling in for over a year and half now," Francine put in sweetly.
"I don't have partners." Lee's words persisted as the doors shut in his face.
Francine let her eyes rest on her reflection in the polished surface for a moment. "That's what we all thought," she sighed.
Lee strode into the bullpen and headed for his desk. He tossed a set of computer disks and a blue security folder down onto its surface. Everything was exactly as he'd left it before running up to cryptography for the latest transmissions from their operative in Kiev. The empty coffee mug, the papers scattered in random piles, the center drawer haphazardly left open a quarter inch. Nothing had been moved. Nothing had been rearranged in his absence. He stood for moment looking down at the disorganized surface before him and then around at the other work stations, most of which were now empty, the primary day shift having gone home and the evening shift working mostly on other levels. He should probably head on out as well. There was nothing more he really needed to get done that day. He glanced at the time, the big hand was well on it's way to counting down past six. Maybe he'd just have one more cup of coffee before going home.
"Hey, did you hear the news?"
Lee was busy digging through the cabinet below the coffee maker, silently cursing whoever had put away the last box of Sweet N Low, so didn't bother to look up at Fielder's comment. Fred Fielder was an agent with a receding hairline, wire rimmed glasses, and a gaze that took in everything with the rabid glee of a mongrel dog waiting for something edible to fall off the garbage truck. He'd joined the Agency about a year after Lee had and was considered a competent networker in the grand scheme of things, but somehow to Lee, he always looked like his bow tie was snapped on a little too tight. The man was an annoyance at best and a back stabbing office rat who would some day be an administrative chief at worst.
"What news?" Lee asked, prying up the edge of one cardboard box. More stirring sticks, he noted disgustedly. Wasn't three boxes enough already?
"Emergency meeting going on in Billy's office. Apparently a courier assignment just hit the fan due to some sort of communications snafu on our end," he announced, proud at being able to pass on the latest office scoop.
Lee's eyes locked onto Fred's face like twin laser beams and he straightened.
"Yes, sir. Somebody's butt's gonna be on the line for this one," he chattered.
"What courier assignment?" Lee asked grimly.
Fred shrugged. "Don't know." And the 'don't care', was easily inferred, as long as it wasn't his career involved. "Something going down in Cairo."
Cairo? Cairo wasn't Germany, Lee thought. "What happened?"
"I heard the operative was nabbed in the airport. Something about smuggling out national treasures or artifacts or rocks or something. The Egyptians are claiming it's some sorta conspiracy using government agents to defraud them of their national treasures." He stopped and laughed at that. "Anyway, they're screaming bloody murder and we're just as busy denying everything. Meanwhile, the courier, poor guy, is rotting in some cell with the rats until it's all straightened out. It's a mess."
"Did they say who the pickup was?" His words were intense.
Fred blinked, finally seeming to truly focus on the man beside him. "No," he answered, drawing out the word. "Why? You running someone there?"
"I have people everywhere," Lee allowed, carefully vague as he poured coffee into a mug.
"Yeah, well, you better hope it's not one of yours this time. From the sound of things, it's gonna be trouble for a while yet."
Trouble. Lee stared into the dark depths of the black liquid. When was it he'd handed over that personal title to someone new? Someone with hair that was just a shade lighter than the coffee.
"Hey, any truth to the rumor I hear 'bout you chatting it up with Petrovsky's new translator at the last embassy shindig?" Fielder prattled. "I tell ya, she is one seriously happening..."
"She's KGB," Lee interrupted absently.
"Even better," Fielder enthused, unaware he'd lost his audience's attention. "You just have to love the way those women handle their guns."
Amanda couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, Lee remembered. At the very sight of a gun her eyes would get wide and she'd grab onto him like he was her personal bodyguard, or hero or... something, trusting him to get her out of harms away. Harms way. He shook his head. What the hell was he thinking about? This time this was not his problem.
"Look, Fred. I've gotta get things packed up and head on out," Lee declared, setting the untouched coffee mug down.
"Okay, yeah, sure," Fred answered, puzzled.
And that's just what Lee intended to do as he returned to his desk. He intended to put away the last of the classified folders, shove them into their slot in the security lock up, and go home. And he had begun doing just that when he noticed Francine heading for Billy's office, a worried frown on her face. The words escaped his mouth before he had time to check them.
"Francine what's going down?"
"No time," she called over her shoulder as she made a beeline for the manager's door.
"Wait."
"Can't." She grabbed for the doorknob, but Lee got there first. "I wouldn't if I were you. Smythe is in there," she warned.
Lee's hand recoiled with the speed of someone who has just been notified the thing he was about to touch was set to lethal electrocution levels. The last thing he wanted to do was barge in on the Chief of Operations. He was a grim reaper of a man who's only joy in life appeared to be breaking other agents down. And somehow, he seemed to take a particularly fiendish delight in trying to shoot Billy's head operatives out of the water and into early retirement. In fact, Lee and Francine had often speculated during more than one long hour passed on a stakeout, that Dr. Smythe was most likely a Russian mole sent to destroy the Agency from within.
No. Going in uninvited and unannounced to one of Smythe's fire-eating meetings was definitely not the way to gain information. He stepped away and gestured to let Francine pass. She gave him a grimace of not quite thanks and went into the lion's den.
Frowning, Lee turned and surveyed the rest of the room until his eyes settled on the secured computer station. His mind spun through the conversations of the day until three keywords whispered the solution into his ear -- purchasing, budgets, money. All agents had to travel on an expense account. In fact, everyone who worked for the Agency, official or not, had to log their travel expenses, though there were a number of classified missions whose expenditures wouldn't be accessible, not even to someone with the proper access codes. There were even missions that mysteriously never made it into the auditing files for the financial powers-that-be. Lee himself had been on a number of those -- missions that marked an operative deeply, and took an accounting in far darker ways than Purchasing ever could.
But, Lee's eyes gleamed speculatively, Amanda wasn't on any sort of black-ops mission. She was on a simple milk run. A milk run that even now was silently adding itself up into a nice little set of debits in an accounts payable file.
He sank into the chair before the keyboard and typed in the reference for the Agency Air-Transportation Division. Not hesitating, he logged in his password and pulled up the screen that would access the files of the current day's ledgers. An airline ticket to Detroit had been issued to Amanda King, then an inter-agency car was assigned in her name.
That's all I need to know, he thought with satisfaction. She was not in Cairo. She was still stateside. Most likely she was already home doing the dinner dishes while he was acting like an over-cautious babysitter checking up on her.
Lee paced back and forth in front of the TV, flipping channels with the air of a tiger left too long in his cage. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Why was there never a good game on when you needed it. He growled angrily at the remote and snapped off the set.
She's not home. He ignored the distracting thought and dropped down onto the couch. He picked up a magazine and glanced through it.
Okay, so she wasn't home yet. He'd only driven by her house to get the full story about her assignment so that it wouldn't slow them down the next day. It wasn't as if he'd missed her or anything. They had a lot of work to get done and Amanda did have a tendency to go on and on. She was a chatterbox. She'd insist on telling him all about it and he thought he'd just get it over with so he didn't have to face it the next morning. But she hadn't returned yet and he'd nearly given himself a heart attack popping up in her backyard window only to see her mother doing the dishes. Fortunately, she'd been looking away at the time.
So, she wasn't in Cairo and she wasn't home. But where was she? Francine had said 6 O'Clock, which meant that Amanda was overdue. He hadn't been joking when he'd told Billy that she seemed to be a trouble magnet. Not that he was wor... He stopped himself abruptly.
Who the heck bought this magazine anyway? He tossed it back on the end table. Since when did he read Better Homes and Gardens?
Scowling, he leaned over and scooped up his address book. He flipped through the pages. They were full of women's names. He could call any of them and they'd be eager to go out for a night on the town. He scanned through the A's. Any one of them would do. They were all sophisticated and coiffed and perfect. He flipped more rapidly through the pages. They would take in a show or perhaps dancing and end up at Chez Jacque or some other equally appropriate restaurant. The evening would consist of a delicate dance of social niceties and subtle innuendos and seductive gestures. Both on his part and his chosen date's. He snapped the notebook shut. It sounded boring as hell.
He got up, but found himself automatically pacing again. With an oath, he dropped back to the couch and reached over to snatch up the phone receiver. He starred at it's beige plastic for a moment and then punched in a number.
"Michaels,"came the familiar voice.
"Hey, Murph. It's me."
"Lee!" There was genuine surprise in the tone that immediately changed to concern. "What's wrong?"
"Why would you think there was something wrong?" Lee asked.
"Not to be rude, cuz, but you never call," Murphy answered wryly. "I can count on one hand the number of times you've called me in the last year."
"I call," Lee responded indignantly.
"No," Murphy reminded gently. "You don't."
"Well, I think about it," Lee defended, as if that was just as good.
Murphy laughed kindly. "So, what's the situation?"
Before Lee could say anything, respond he heard Sherry calling Murphy from the background. Murphy's voice became muffled as he covered the mouthpiece, "It's Lee."
Lee clearly heard Sherry's voice. "Lee? Is everything all right?"
Lee rolled his eyes, maybe this hadn't been such a hot idea. "Sounds like I called at a bad time. I didn't realize you and Sherry were on a date. I'll just call back some other time."
Murphy grimaced at the phone. They both knew he wouldn't. The Colonel still had a lot to answer for when it came to Lee's separation from the family. Even now, over twenty years later, it made the man act like an intruding stranger with his own family. He shook his head, even though Lee couldn't see the gesture.
"Sherry and I have been engaged long enough that she can live without me for a few minutes." He drew his fiancee into the crook of his arm. "So, what is it? Bad case? Boss trying to take a bite out of you again? Amanda?"
"No, everything's great," Lee insisted. "Couldn't be better. In fact, Billy just assigned Amanda to her first real case."
"Amanda's on a case?" Murphy echoed, trying to feel his way through the conversation and giving Sherry a puzzled look. "That sounds like good news."
"It is. It's great. She's finally getting her feet wet, learning the ropes, pulling her own weight and, what's even better, I have a little peace and quiet for a while."
Murphy frowned, Lee seemed to be invoking way too many metaphors.
"Alone?" Sherry's muffled query came through as she raised her head from Murphy's shoulder, where'd she'd been blatantly easedropping. "Is she out alone?"
"Billy has no business putting her out on the streets without my being with her. She hardly knows the check-in procedures and can't seem to remember a password to save her life. Case in point, she's already three hours overdue as it is."
Murphy knew immediately Sherry had hit the nail on the head. He smiled down at his future wife, who was also a pretty savvy psychologist. They'd discovered the real reason for the call.
Lee rubbed a hand wearily over his face and gave the clock a baleful glance. It was Tuesday. A full fifteen hours past six O'Clock Monday. Lee eyed Billy's door. It had been shut since he'd arrived that morning. No doubt things were still being mopped up from the Cairo affair. He was going to give it another five minutes to open and then to heck with Billy's need to know order. He would just interrupt and sit on him until he fessed up as to the status of Amanda's assignment.
It was her voice that he heard first -- caroling its usual cheerful good morning to the stone-faced guards at the entrance. Lee's back stiffened but he didn't turn around. She was back.
His eyes silently tracked her progress in the reflection of the computer screen as he finished up his call with communications. "I'm scheduled to go online with the Section later today. Yes, we need to know about Brussels," he concluded hastily.
She knew he'd seen her come in but Lee hadn't even looked up as she came to stand by his side, catching the tale end of his conversation.
"The secure conference room should be big enough to hold everybody from our side. Thanks." Lee hung up the phone.
That was one thing that she had discovered about Lee Stetson. She'd realized it shortly after they had started working on their first assignment together. She'd made the mistake of asking about his last partner. Lee had rattled off the information about how he'd been "a man who laughed at your jokes, borrowed your socks and then one day took a bullet for you" like he was reciting Agency statistics on office supplies, but his eyes -- his eyes had been haunted and told an entirely different story -- one of wrenching guilt and meaningless death.
It was then she realized that you had to watch his actions, not his words. The two modes of communication frequently contradicted each other. Fortunately, she'd figured out a long time ago which set of signals to pay attention to.
"Hello, stranger," Amanda prompted.
He swung his chair around to face her. "You're back?"
"Apparently," she responded lightly.
"How'd it go?" He tilted his head nonchalantly.
She leaned forward and gave him a mock stern-look and quoted crisply the words that he had so often used to drive her to distraction. "That's on a need to know basis, Scarecrow." But she ruined the professional effect by gazing up through her lashes with a mischievous gleam in her eyes -- a gleam that slowly faded to puzzlement at the brief glimpse of a stunned expression crossing his face. She searched his features, then realization caused an odd sensation to course through her. "You were worried about me?" she declared.
Lee shook his head and brusquely turned away. "Did I say that? I never said that." He suddenly seemed to find the information on the computer screen requiring serious attention. "I was just wondering when you were going to get back from your little jaunt to help me out with these expense reports, which you promised to do, I might add."
"I thought they were transcripts?" Amanda asked, puzzled.
He threw her a frustrated glance. "Whatever... the point is that I'm used to doing things a certain way with certain people and I don't like it when they go off unannounced."
"Gee, from the way you're talking, you'd think we were partners or something," she teased.
"Amanda, you know that I don't work with a partner." He glared. "But," he added, still watching her, "if I did have a partner, I'd expect her to consult with me before running off on an assignment."
Amanda returned his gaze and then slowly nodded. "That might be for the best."
His expression lost some of its tension and the smile she'd been repressing came to life across her face. Now they were back on course. She propped a hip against the corner of his desk. "Do you want to hear about my mission? Or should we get straight back to work?" she asked eagerly, fairly bursting to share her news with him.
Lee leaned back in his chair. "Only if you feel like sharing." He shrugged with a been on one courier assignment, been on them all attitude. "It's up to you."
Watch his actions, not his words, she thought. Although his response was casually phrased, Lee made no move toward the keyboard or the work that had so absorbed him when she'd first entered the room. She grinned.
"Well, it all started with Billy telling me that it was a simple courier assignment. 'You'll be back in Arlington for dinner,' he said." Her voice had deepened to imitate their boss. "Well, it didn't quite work out that way. You'll never guess what happened to me. First, I was assigned this car in Detroit from the local office. Heaven only knows where their motor pool hijacked it from. I think it must have belonged to the circus or something. Anyway, I was supposed to drive up to Lansing. That's in Michigan you know...
Lee did know, but he let her go on anyway, a faint smile beginning to tug at one corner of his mouth.
"Anyway... I was supposed to meet up with a Canadian task force. Did you know that some of those Mounties still wear the traditional red uniform. And they're so polite." She paused reflectively. "Fraiser... that's the agent I was assigned to help out... he says it's part of their training or something. You'd think they'd feel conspicuous in red. Especially when you're supposed to be handing off microfilm concealed in... But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let me tell you about the code words they had me use. Honestly, my two small boys could think of better phrases..."
Her words continued to pour out and surround him like a wild and untamable font of enthusiasm. Lee couldn't resist grinning back any longer. She might not be his official partner, but his Amanda was definitely back.