Amanda King Stetson
Amanda knocked on Mr. Melrose’s door sill. “Sir? You said you wanted to see me?”
“Yes,” he answered, shortly but not unkindly. “Come in, Amanda, and shut the door behind you. Have a seat when you’re done.”
She complied. “What’s going on?”
He extracted and opened a file folder from the pile on his desk, but looked away for a long moment before asking, “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” she replied. “A little tired sometimes.”
“Mm,” he responded, looking back at the file folder. “I, ah, I’m not really sure how to start this.” Then he sighed. “I suppose I should just give it to you straight. I’ve had some recent reports about you that are a bit concerning.”
“Sir?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Dr. Joyce says you’ve missed your last two appointments.”
“That’s because I don’t have anything to talk about with her.”
“Well, it seems she has things to talk about with you. Is there a reason you haven’t been going? Is your case load too heavy?”
“Oh, no, sir. It’s just that…” Amanda trailed off. “We seem to be discussing the same things, over and over. All it does is upset me. I don’t think I’m actually getting anything out of the sessions.” She paused. “Are you ordering me to go back?”
“Do I have to?”
“No,” she muttered, dropping her own gaze. “Was there anything else?”
“Yes, unfortunately.” He extracted a few more sheets of paper from the folder. This time, he handed them to her. They were her most recent transcripts of the Middle Eastern intercepts, and she could see where someone had gone through and circled several items in red ink. Corrections were scribbled in the margins.
“Sir, I don’t speak Arabic or French, and —”
“These calls were originally in English, Amanda. You weren’t listening to translations.” He shuffled some more papers. “This is the third transcript you’ve turned in with less than a 90% accuracy rate on review. The Middle Eastern desk has asked about pulling you off the project.”
Amanda felt herself paling. “I’m sorry, sir. I got a little rusty while I was out. But I’ll work on it.”
“That’s not all. Leatherneck says he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of you since you got back. Your firearms qualification is about to expire for lack of range time.”
She frowned. “Lee and Francine haven’t been going there that often.”
“This isn’t about either of them. It’s about you.” He leaned forward, and while his words were firm, his tone was tinged with worry. “Your scores were low enough that you needed to log more range time than they did, and show some improvement as well. Amanda,” he continued before she could protest, “what’s going on? That’s three different issues with poor performance, and you’re usually one of the best in this section. Even one would ordinarily be a surprise. I’d give you a break based on what’s been going on with your family lately, except that you tell me you’re fine.”
“I am fine,” she answered with an edge in her tone. “I’ve just made a few mistakes, that’s all. I’ll make sure they don’t happen again.”
He shook his head. “Failure to show for your therapy sessions or at the range time isn’t a mistake, Amanda. That’s something someone does on purpose.”
“I just…” she trailed off. “Every time I go to the range, I feel my heart just pounding, and I don’t really know why except that I know Lee is looking into the possibility that someone shot out one of Mother’s tires.” She sighed. “Every time I get ready to fire, I think about it, and it spoils my aim. Since my scores were already just barely passing, the last thing I need to do is lower them. Not to mention it’s loud in there, which has been bothering me more than usual. It’s been something of a blessing that you’ve mostly had me working on transcripts lately, and that was just me being a little distracted and out of practice.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t sound convinced. “And it never occurred to you to talk to Claudia about the trouble you’ve been having on the range?”
“What good would it do?” It was an effort to keep from raising her voice in frustration. “She just wants me to talk about my feelings, and I feel fine. That’s not going to solve the problem anyway!”
“You’re not performing ‘fine,’ Amanda,” he answered. “And that’s part of the reason we have mandated therapy for our agents anytime they’ve been through a trauma. It doesn’t have to be work-related for it to affect you.”
She dropped her eyes. “We’re supposed to leave our personal lives at home.”
“You and Lee have never done that,” he remarked with a pointed look at her left hand. “But it’s never been a problem, which is why I’ve never needed to come down on either of you about it.” He paused. “I was dropping a hint the other day, when I told you that it was okay if you needed more time off. Amanda, you’re not working up to snuff. Some loss of performance is normal, given the circumstances, but I can’t keep looking the other way. Especially when people are complaining about you.”
“Sir, please, let me have another chance. With the transcripts, too. I’ll bring my numbers back up.” The last thing she needed was to lose her job, especially right now!
Closing the file folder, Mr. Melrose folded his hands. “With a lot of other agents, I couldn’t do this. But I want to believe you, Amanda, and I know how well you did before all this happened. I’ll give you another chance. But I can only give you one, and I’m going to have to see a significant reduction in the number of complaints I’m getting about you. I also expect you to comply with the requirements for firearms training and mandated therapy.” He paused. “Is any of this going to be a problem?”
“No, sir,” she said.
“One other thing. I’ve been hearing some people say you’ve become difficult to work with, to the point that at least some are avoiding you. That interrupts the flow of information and response times. I don’t want to put that in your file either, but I have a responsibility to everyone in this section.”
“I’ll work on that, too.”
“If you need some more time off before —”
“No, sir. I don’t need any time off. I just need some time to prove myself again.”
“Amanda, nobody’s asking you to prove yourself! Just to pull yourself together, follow the therapy guidelines, and do your job. If you can do that, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“That’s all I need,” she repeated, putting every ounce of conviction she could into her tone. Her insides were shaking with embarrassment, but she was long practiced in keeping that from showing. In fact, it would probably better if she didn’t show any emotion at all right now. She had her second chance. She knew what to do with it.
One foot in front of the other.
As the days passed, it became one of Amanda’s mantras. If she just kept putting one foot in front of the other, just kept up with all the things she needed to do, she could get through a day. If she could get through five days, that would be a work week. Two more and she’d have a calendar week. And each successive day was a tiny victory, a small reason to celebrate.
Mr. Melrose had released Lee back to field work, but he hadn’t yet been willing to release her. After the conversation in his office last Friday, she supposed she understood why, even if it sometimes got a little too quiet in the Q-Bureau’s office.
This afternoon, the quiet had finally gotten to her, and she’d decided it was time to make good on her promise for more range time. Leatherneck had been delighted to see her, but his expression had become a frown after her first series of shots. The frown had only deepened as she completed several more series, until he’d finally stopped her halfway through.
“The only thing worse than a firearm being used by a bad shot,” he’d told her, “is one being used by someone who’s distracted.”
“I’m not distracted! I’m just a little rusty after so much time away.” It seemed to have become a familiar refrain over the past several days. She didn’t want to admit that it wasn’t her mind that had wandered, anyway; it was her hands and arms that were shaking. Again.
“Mrs. King — er, Stetson,” he’d begun. “How many times did you fire in this last series, before I stopped you?”
She’d started to answer before realizing she honestly hadn’t known. Her heart began pounding even harder than it already had been.
“That’s what I thought,” he’d answered after looking her over. “I’ll tell you what. You’ve still got a couple more weeks before I have to decertify you. Why don’t you knock off for today, go talk to Scarecrow or maybe someone else, try and settle down a bit. Then come back tomorrow and we’ll try it again.” He’d torn up her used targets. “I’m going to pretend that these never happened. I can get away with it, once, anyway.”
He’d couched it as a request, but she’d known an order when she heard one. She supposed it was a good time to go see Claudia Joyce, but instead of doing so she’d dragged herself back up the stairs to the Q-Bureau and its suddenly welcome quiet. She’d corrected the errors on her earlier transcriptions, and in the process had begun to recognize the beginnings of a pattern. There was clearly some sort of activity involving a planned response to the recent Battle of Maaten al-Sarra, for which Muammar Gaddhafi was apparently blaming the French instead of focusing on the Chadian military’s own intelligence sources. Somehow a Syrian called Abu Jihad also seemed to be involved, but she couldn’t quite figure out his role in any planned response. That was assuming there would be a planned response at all, which couldn’t be confirmed using available sources.
Then again, she knew enough about Arabic names to recognize “Abu Jihad” as a nom de guerre, so his involvement alone was enough for her to alert Mr. Melrose about a need to track his movements more closely. He’d passed on the alert to operatives in Beirut, Tel Aviv, and Ankara. At least one of those had slipped into Damascus to obtain whatever intelligence they could, but they’d ironically been stymied by CIA agents who were trying to plant someone into Hafez al-Assad’s government. Amanda had drafted the first version of Mr. Melrose’s recommendation for an inter-agency task force, but she didn’t know what had happened after the report had been submitted.
Assuming anything had happened to the report all. She didn’t even know if Mr. Melrose had rewritten any parts of it.
Until she heard otherwise, it was safe to assume that she needed to keep collating and analyzing the translated phone tap receipts, so she had gotten to work on that after taking an ibuprofen to appease her screaming muscles. Then, a couple of hours later, her desk phone rang.
Amanda frowned; her direct extension rarely rang. Most of her calls came in rolled over from Lee’s line, but she hadn’t heard his phone ring first this time. She answered it cautiously.
“Mrs. King, this is Alma Dennis.”
The name got her complete attention. “Oh, my gosh! What’s wrong with Jamie?”
“Well,” said the assistant principal, “he’s been in a fight. And, ah, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened recently, but —”
“It what? Why haven’t you called me before now?” She’d known there’d been trouble at school, but not like that!
“It’s the first time an adult has witnessed anything other than shoving, although we’ve seen some indicators that things might have happened off school grounds. Both boys are all right and are being treated by our school nurse, but we need you to come in.”
She was already out of her chair and had her purse. “I’m on my way. Let me just…” she trailed off. Lee was out of the office, overseeing the security set-up for a new safe house. Her new minivan had needed some fine-tuning and adjustments, so she’d taken it back to the dealership yesterday afternoon, and she’d ridden in with him today. But Lee had later driven the Corvette out to his appointment at the safe house.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?” she finished. Then she hung up and grabbed her address book, flipping it open to pull out Joe’s office number.