Amanda King Stetson
Amanda slipped her gloved hand into Lee’s as they made their way along the sidewalk toward their townhouse. “What were you talking about just now, in French?”
As he explained, her surprise became disbelief and then horror. She finally held up a hand. “Stop. I’ve heard everything I need to. We’re going back over there and finishing the conversation right now.”
“Ah, Amanda,” he began. “It’s getting late, and tensions are still kind of high, and you’ve already had to deal with Jamie tonight —”
“Which is exactly why I want to go back over there now!” she countered, indignant. “After all those accusations about us keeping secrets and then we find out they’ve been keeping a huge one themselves! Didn’t they learn after watching how our secrets affected Jamie? And you’re right. Taking those positions is selfish! Then there’s Carrie, talking out of both sides of her mouth, saying that Joe shouldn’t have left back in ’77 because the boys were too young but it’s now all right to leave because Jamie’s in middle school. She’s a teacher. She studied child development. She should know he’s still not grown up! He’s going to think they’re abandoning him again, and he’ll be absolutely right!” She was breathing heavily, and tears pricked at her eyes. “How dare they even contemplate hurting Jamie like that!”
They were stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and now he reached out for both her hands. “You’re right. Jamie’s not yet grown up. They’re probably still trying to calm him down. So how do you think he’d take it if we went back over there and started the argument again?”
She didn’t know whether to be proud of Lee for considering Jamie’s emotions, or angry at him for being the voice of reason. “We need to resolve this sooner instead of later.”
“Tomorrow night’s soon enough. Let’s let everyone have time to get some distance.”
Amanda blinked. “Who are you and what have you done with Lee Stetson?”
His brow furrowed. “What?”
“You’re not usually so…” she trailed off, fumbling for a description. “Aware of the emotional side of things.”
He shrugged. “Been reading those step-parenting books again. A lot still seems like hokum to me, but so far, their advice has been consistently good. I’m willing to try more of it.”
She relented, reaching over to touch his face. “I love you.”
Using her hands to pull her closer, he leaned in for a quick kiss. “I love you, too. Can we go inside where it’s warm now?”
With a start, she realized they were standing right in front of their own front door. Suddenly feeling a bit impish, Amanda pulled Lee back toward her. “Speaking of all these emotions flying around…”
“Yeah?”
“What say we go in there and see about working some of them out of our systems. And getting warm at the same time.”
His eyebrows went up over sparkling eyes. “Killing two birds with one stone?” Then horror flashed across his features. “Oh, Amanda, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about what I was saying —”
“It’s all right,” she managed around the ringing in her ears. “I knew what you meant.”
“Yeah.” He brushed fingers along one cheek. “Maybe I should try again. Call it a…a double play? Throwing two strikes with one pitch, or freeing two runners with the same hit? I imagine I can come up with others.”
At that, she couldn’t help giggling a little, and he looked relieved, though his eyes were still anxious.
“Or we could just rephrase it into something else entirely,” he suggested.
“Maybe,” she answered. He was trying so hard that her sorrow had already begun segueing into amusement. “I might have a few ideas.”
“You do? Care to enlighten me?” His voice lowered. “You know your…skill and technique…have always left me amazed and wanting more.”
“Skill and technique? That’s the best line you’ve got, Scarecrow?”
An almost-innocent look appeared. “I’m talking about your problem-solving abilities.”
“I see.” She was smiling by now.
“What did you think I was talking about?”
“You’ll have to come in if you want to find out.”
Francine and Jonathan came over for supper two days later. Amanda had wanted to make a nice meal, but Lee had shaken his head. “Don’t put yourself out. We’ve both been at work all day. If one or both of us ends up too upset, having to face a big clean-up job in the kitchen will only make it worse.”
Amanda couldn’t imagine how dinner with Francine and Jonathan could upset either one of them, but she’d acquiesced and asked Carrie for the recipe for that casserole she’d made the other night. She’d worried that it might not suit the two of them, with their cosmopolitan palates. To her surprise, they’d both cleaned their plates, asked for more, and even volunteered to help with cleanup duty.
Lee shooed them into the living room, going to the cabinet to pull out glasses for white wine. “Why don’t you get out that Frank Célèbre, the one that they gave us for a housewarming present. It’d be just right after that casserole.”
“And I know they’d appreciate the gesture,” she agreed as she found a corkscrew. The bottle uncorked with minimal fuss. “Does it need to breathe?”
“It’ll have enough time being carried in there.” He retrieved a tray from its place and began putting filled glasses on it, finishing by placing the bottle in the middle and then balancing the whole thing as they made their way to the living room. For a few minutes, there was polite conversation as they distributed glasses and enjoyed the wine, but soon enough, the talk turned to the real reason they were there.
“Well,” began Francine, “we’ve confirmed the Colonial Cookery case wasn’t a Stasi op.”
Beside Amanda, Lee frowned. “I thought we’d confirmed that at the time.”
“We’d figured it likely wasn’t, since it wasn’t their style, but we hadn’t ever had a need to be completely certain. I actually hadn’t known that until I started digging back into it for this case. I hadn’t known it wasn’t confirmed, I mean.” She was speaking rapidly, one leg beginning to bounce. “Since the, ah, the compromised agent was from our division, I asked Thompson from Research to do the confirmation. He has a source inside the East German consulate and was able to contact them today. They hadn’t ever heard about Colonial Cookery. But those Kurz-33s were definitely the kind East Germany uses. Thompson suggested maybe it was some sort of a rogue faction.”
“Which would make sense,” remarked Lee, “given that they all chose to kill themselves rather than face interrogation.”
Jonathan spoke up. “Why is that significant?”
“Most Iron Curtain operatives assigned to the United States develop some ambivalence,” explained Amanda. “When they get here and see that life in this country isn’t what they’d been led to believe it’s like, they start asking questions. If they are captured, they’ll often change sides to avoid being sent back. These operatives didn’t, which suggests that they either hadn’t been here very long or were very emotionally dedicated to their cause.”
Lee’s eyes had become distant, but his voice was crisp. “Even when the chips are down, it’s hard to actually push yourself into going through with suicide. If it weren’t, there’d be no need to teach us how to resist interrogation.”
The other man paled. “I hadn’t ever thought about it that way. Don’t you have suicide pills anyway?”
“Yes,” said Francine. “Except I can probably count on one hand the number of times anyone from the Agency has actually used one since I’ve been there.” Then she blinked. “Wait a minute. Lee, I think you’re on to something. What if they committed suicide because they hadn’t been trained in interrogation resistance?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if they knew they probably would break while being questioned, and were afraid of what would happen if they later got sent back?”
Now Amanda was the one who frowned. “But we rarely send enemy operatives back if they break or switch sides. We just —” then it hit her. “Oh. Oh.”
“What?” asked Jonathan as he looked between the three of them.
Francine was the one who explained this time. “They didn’t know the United States’ usual practices. That would add one more check mark to the ‘rogue faction’ column.”
“Okay,” he said, “but how is this useful information?”
“Because of what they were doing,” said Lee. “They were trying to make it look like we couldn’t protect our agents even when they were inside our own country.”
Francine cocked her head. “It was a psy-op? Creation of propaganda? I didn’t ever get that impression.”
Amanda, who’d been watching Lee, had caught on immediately. “Of course. I’m surprised I didn’t see it at the time. They wanted to use the media in order to show how easily it could be manipulated. That’s why they chose, of all things, a cooking show that focused on ‘decadent’ desserts with a patriotic theme. If even our harmless cooking shows can be twisted around, what else would people find suspect?”
He reached over to take her hand. “It was your first case, Amanda. You didn’t yet have enough background to analyze all aspects of it.”
She squeezed his fingers gently as a thank-you, and he winked back at her.
Francine was still frowning slightly, but she had begun to nod. “That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense, actually. I’m surprised I didn’t see it at the time.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” said Amanda. “You had good reason to be distracted.”
“You know,” replied Francine after a mollified nod, “if we start from this media angle, we could narrow it down. What kind of television show takeover could make our country look bad, and why that? Why not do something more direct? And why would they want to attack again now, after four years?”
“Are you sure it was me they targeted?” asked Amanda. She kept her voice even, but her stomach began to churn. “What if it was Lee?” She glanced over. “We do switch cars sometimes, sweetheart.”
His lips twitched as he thought. “You’re right. I’m sure I’ve been seen driving the Jeep.” But then he shook his head. “No. No, if they were after me but they’d been watching you, they’d have known I picked you up in the Corvette that morning. Which means,” he said, voice rising, “they weren’t targeting either one of us. It had to have been your family they were after!”
“But why?” she asked. “What would that have accomplished that wouldn’t be better served by coming after us?”
“Psychological impact,” said Francine. “We’re back to that. They know who broke that case open, and what happened as a result.”
“What did happen?” asked Jonathan.
“That’s when I started working part-time for the Agency,” said Amanda. “They brought me on because they liked how I’d handled myself during the case. You know, the one where…” then she trailed off. This might be a story Francine had never told him.
“It’s all right,” said Francine softly. “Just keep in mind he’s not completely cleared.”
Amanda took a preparatory breath. “All right. Lee had been captured, and I’d figured out where, but I didn’t know who to call since his was the only phone number I had at the Agency. So I went out to where they filmed Mrs. Welch’s show and sneaked in, and then when I hid in a dumbwaiter because I didn’t realize what it was and it moved up, I saw them, um, trying to get some important information from Francine. After that I got back down to where Lee was when I saw them bring him out of the house toward a helicopter. I didn’t know what else to do and I just knew he’d end up dead if that thing took off, so I sort of made a few things up to keep that from happening.”
“Did you ever,” remarked Lee. “I had nightmares about it for a month.”
“We didn’t crash, though! Francine, you were there when I told Mr. Melrose how everything happened.”
The other woman chuckled. “Yeah, I was, and the look on Lee’s face when you talked about flying the whirlybird was priceless. He hadn’t mentioned it in his official report.”
Lee shot her a look. “That detail wasn’t relevant, any more than the fact that y —”
“Yes, I know,” interrupted Francine before he could finish.
“Except that the details might have been relevant,” Jonathan pointed out. “To them, I mean. The East Germans.”
“That’s true,” said Francine. “I suppose this means we’ll need to do in-depth interviews with the two of you, then. Again, damn it.”
“What?” asked Lee. “We do multiple witness interviews all the time.”
“No!” she cried. “You’ve already had to relive this once, when I did the first round of interviews, and that was once too many. I won’t make you do it again!”
“Francine,” said Amanda gently, “If it will help the case, interview us again. Let us worry about our own emotional reactions.” She met the other woman’s eyes levelly. “I want you to interview us as however many times it takes.”
Lee nodded his agreement, but Francine was still shaking her head. “There’s other evidence to be gathered, other avenues we can explore. I can check with my contacts over at Tass and Pravda to see if anything interesting has come down in the last couple of months, and Lee, don’t you have a contact at that government broadcaster? The one that’s ours, I mean, when we’ve been in Europe on a case. Not Radio Free Europe or Radio Liberty, but the other one.”
“The Voice of America,” he confirmed as he took out his pad, wrote a name and number on it, and passed the paper over. “Try him. He’s one of their news directors. I did him a couple favors a while back, so use my name if you need to.”
Francine tucked the slip of paper away. “Thanks. It’s still a pretty wide net, though. We need to narrow the topics down.”
“Which is exactly why you’re going to interview Amanda and me again, first, before you do anything else. You heard her. We’re available for re-interview as much as you need. Just say when.”
“Damn it, Lee —”
“Don’t!” he snapped, and Amanda nodded along with his words. “Don’t go easy on us just because we’re agents, or victims, or whatever it is that you’re thinking. We don’t want you to. What we want is for you and Zeta to solve this case!” As he finished, the phone rang, and he stood but waved Amanda back down onto the couch. “I’ll take care of that. Amanda, you —”
“Of course,” she replied. She turned to face Francine. “I know I was pretty traumatized when we left for Thanksgiving, but don’t you remember how angry I was when we got back? I was mad at whoever did this, not at you and not at the Agency. I want the perpetrators held responsible. I want them brought in and tried and imprisoned for life! If it means I have to re-live this case a dozen times, then that’s the price I’ll pay. My family is worth it!” Despite her resolve to stay strong, her voice broke on that last word, and she had to force her hands to stop shaking. But she did, because she’d meant every word.
Francine took a deep breath. “All right. All right, we’ll —” she was interrupted when Lee came back into the living room, his face pale.
“What is it?” asked Amanda, standing up to go to him.
He took her hand, but his look encompassed all of them, even Jonathan. “We need to get to the Agency. Right now.”
Jonathan frowned. “At nine o’clock in the evening?”
“At nine o’clock in the evening,” repeated Lee. “There’s been a development.”
Author’s Notes:
- Dr. Konstantin Frank Célèbre is a medium-sweet Riesling from the Finger Lakes region of New York.
- The Voice of America broadcasted news and information outside the United States from February 1942 through March 2025.