Francine Desmond
It was hotter than normal in the firing range, as though someone had set the thermostat a little too high. Francine welcomed it, though; the range was cooler than normal most of the time, which meant that she often had to wear a heavy jacket during her visits here.
She was positioned in one of the booths at the end of a lane; Amanda and Lee were next to her. Due to the noise, they weren’t speaking in soft tones, although Francine’s ear protection kept her from hearing much. Only a few words were audible here and there: Jamie, therapy, angry, long-term, adjustment. She also heard them mentioning Claudia Joyce’s and George Pfaff’s names.
The puzzle pieces weren’t too hard to put together, especially when combined with Amanda’s fierce focus on hitting the targets as they popped up. There was no hesitation, no indication of discomfort, nothing to reflect the woman who’d almost seemed afraid to even handle guns at first. This Amanda was clear-eyed and determined, and her score reflected that. While a seventy-eight was far from perfect, it was a respectable figure and within the Agency’s qualification requirements.
They finished the cycle and pulled off their ear protection to hear cheers from Leatherneck. “Personal best, Mrs. Scarecrow!”
“Sunlight,” corrected Amanda.
He held up his hands. “Yes, ma’am. Sunlight. Still your personal best. You should be proud of yourself.”
Amanda smiled, but there was no mirth or happiness underneath. “I am. Good.” Then her arm drooped, although she remembered to flick the training weapon’s safety before letting it fall to her side. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t required, but most agents preferred to train the same way they would operate in the field.
Francine couldn’t help a quiet internal chuckle. Who would have thought that Amanda King’s — Amanda Stetson’s, she corrected herself — best firearms score would be sparked by anger and determination? Francine would have thought that her best scores would come while protecting children, either hers or others’. Apparently not.
She checked her own score and groaned.
“Problems?” asked Lee, who had moved down the line to pick up his own training weapon. “Eighty-nine is a sharpshooter’s score.”
“I’ve done better,” said Francine sourly, resetting her lane for another cycle.
“Hey,” he said. “Not everyone needs to be an expert at everything, you know.”
She pushed a harsh breath out. “I can usually edge into expert range.”
“So try it again,” he suggested, reaching for his own ear protectors. “Ears on, Amanda,” he called.
Francine followed suit. This time she scored an eighty-seven. Amanda improved to eighty, only one point below sharpshooter. Lee, being the expert shot that he was, scored a ninety-three and called for the next level of difficulty in his targets.
Amanda reset her lane. “Again,” she called. “Let’s see if I can keep improving.”
“Take it easy,” said Francine. “You don’t want to get tired and start losing points.”
The other woman jammed her ear protection back on. “I said, again.”
Lee and Francine exchanged a glance before resetting their lanes. For this cycle, Francine scored a ninety-one, the minimum score for an expert rating. Lee’s score was a ninety, but that was using the higher-difficulty targets.
Amanda scored sixty-nine. She ripped her ear protectors off with a soft exclamation that might have been a curse. Since the word was muffled, though, Francine couldn’t be absolutely sure.
Lee answered her at an equally low volume. Again, Francine couldn’t hear the exact words, but she could clearly hear a soothing tone in his voice. Amanda responded by screwing her eyes shut, vigorously shaking her head, and reaching for the reset lever. Lee blocked her, which resulted in some surprisingly vociferous and loud protests.
Focusing, but not willing to fire as long as there were unprotected ears around — this didn’t qualify as a field exception — Francine lined up several shots and tried to ignore the rising voices off to her side. That wasn’t particularly easy, especially after Leatherneck’s Southern-accented voice joined the fray. She felt her ire rising and pulled off her ear protection to go wade in herself.
That was when she heard the actual words. The first were from Amanda. “…just fine, Lee, except that my partner’s gotten overprotective again!”
“No you aren’t fine,” snapped Lee. “Seventy-eight, eighty and sixty-nine? That’s not consistent shooting. And look at you. You’re sweating like a pig!”
“When was anyone ever going to tell me consistency was a requirement?” Amanda’s voice was shrill now. “When I failed to qualify again?”
“Now, hold on, Mrs. Scare — ah, Sunlight,” began Leatherneck. “You’ve known about that part of it all along.”
Amanda all but threw the practice gun down in front of her. It bounced and clattered on the countertop. “Fine!”
“Amanda,” began Lee, “damn it —”
“Don’t you try me.” Francine had never heard such an unpleasant tone in the other woman’s voice.
“Then act rationally!” he shot back. “You’re in no shape to be on the range right now. Leatherneck, can’t you keep this session off the record books? Just for once?”
Leatherneck sighed. “You know better than that, Ace. Besides, all three scores were qualifying. Not to mention that one personal best.”
Lee laid his own training weapon down, more gently than Amanda had, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I suppose. But we are done here, no matter what she —”
With a wordless screech, Amanda charged out of the firing range, slamming the door behind her. For a moment, it looked like Lee was planning to follow her, but then he sighed and sat down, turning his attention toward Francine. “I’m sorry. To you, too, Leatherneck.”
“For what?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t have had to see that.”
“Something’s got her fired up good, Ace,” observed Leatherneck. “And it’s not you, either. We all know what that looks like.”
“I know it’s not me.” Now his shoulders drooped a little. “It’s been…a bit rough at home lately. Amanda’s son especially isn’t taking things well.”
Francine squatted next to his chair. “Much as I hate to say something like this, Lee, he has just been through a lot of trauma. He needs some leeway.”
“He’s had it!” Lee argued, but there was no heat behind the declaration. “But the acting out’s just getting worse. Amanda…” he trailed off. “This can’t leave this room.”
“I got to go record the scores,” said Leatherneck, executing a quick and strategic exit.
Now that they were alone, Francine shifted to her knees and laid a hand on his arm. “Do you want to talk it out?”
Lee sighed. “I know I should. Amanda brought Jamie in to meet with Claudia this morning. She wanted him evaluated and referred to a specialist.”
“Sounds like it didn’t go well.”
“No,” he agreed quietly. “I was hoping to calm her down enough to get some details, but if anything this got her more riled up instead of less.” He rubbed his nose again. “The latest…I don’t know what to call it. The latest flap, I guess, saw Jamie accusing her of not caring like a mother should. Along with a good many other things.”
Francine winced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah, it was pretty awful, and it’s getting to her.”
“I can only imagine. Being a mother is really important to her.”
“Jamie knows it, too, which is why he knew exactly which button to push.” Lee climbed to his feet. “I should go find her before something else blows up.”
She patted his arm. “You know that thing about not wanting to see me get hurt?”
“Yeah?”
“That goes both ways. And don’t you forget it.”
By the time Francine cleaned up and went up to the Q-Bureau, Amanda was acting as though the whole incident in the firing range hadn’t happened. Instead, she had her head down over some file folders, pencil busy as she made notes on whatever was in front of her. Francine tried not to be very obvious about sidling around behind her, but when Amanda laid the pencil down and sighed loudly, she knew she’d failed.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stop snooping. If you’ll tell me what you’re working on.”
“I think I might know who put out the Segal Report,” said Amanda. “It came to me while I was coming up the elevator.”
“Amanda,” said Francine testily. “That’s not your case.”
At that, the other agent turned to face her. “But it is my son. Francine, nobody knew him better than I did, and I know that if he’d run across something like this, he’d have tried everything he could to figure out where it came from.” She paused. “We already know he lied about some of his source work.”
“We,” said Francine irritably, “don’t know anything. But I can take that into consideration. I’m still waiting for Zeta to get back with whatever information she was able to dig up. You, however, are not doing any further research.” Leaning forward, she reached for the folders.
Amanda slid them out of the way. “Where is she? I thought she’d be back by now.”
“This isn’t school, and I don’t take attendance. It’s going on five o’clock anyway. If she finds something, she’ll bring it in tomorrow. And she will bring it to me first.”
“I’ll want to see it.”
“No.”
Now Amanda’s voice was hardening. “They were my family, Francine.”
“You’re in the middle of dealing with some sort of crisis about the rest of your family! If you’re not focused on work, you should be focused on that. Not on this case! I’m not going to let you use it as a distraction away from whatever happened with Claudia this morning!”
“Use what as a distraction?” Lee appeared at the door, smelling faintly like the industrial-issue soap from the locker rooms. His hair was still damp.
“I had an idea about the Segal Report,” answered Amanda, her tone still rough. “But Francine thinks she can lecture me about my priorities.”
“When it comes to this case, I do determine the priorities!”
“Even if I’ve found something?”
“What did you find?” asked Lee before Francine could snap back a reply. “And how’s it going to help the case?”
Amanda pivoted to face him, and the tone of her voice softened a bit. “I think I know who’s behind the Segal Report. The KGB.”
“What?” exploded Francine. “We’ve already eliminated them as a possibility.”
“Francine, hear me out, damn it!” yelled Amanda as she turned to face her again. “We know that the KGB uses East German resources to cover up their activities sometimes. We also know the Russians directly funded some of their more covert activities, including what otherwise looks like rogue elements within the Stasi. What if that’s what they did this time? What if they were able to get to the remnants of whoever ran the Colonial Cookery case and re-mobilize them?”
“Re-mobilize them how? They all committed suicide!”
“All of that cell’s members that we know about committed suicide!” Amanda gestured to the files on her desk. “But nobody ever confirmed that they were all of the members, period. Because of their failure they’d have been stuck here and looking for a way to get themselves back into good graces with Stasi! What better way to do it than to successfully launch a smear campaign against the United States government? Something this big would have caused a huge scandal with lots of finger-pointing! And while everyone’s focused on that, they could slip in and do something else!”
“Oh, come on, that’s —”
“A plausible theory,” interrupted Lee again. “But a bit far-fetched. Amanda, give the files to Francine. It’s her case.”
She turned on him, her face a study in fury. He met her eyes evenly, his own expression impassive. Francine could almost hear their argument, even though neither said a word out loud. It took a few minutes, but Amanda eventually turned away from her desk, pointing at the files.
“There you go,” she said to Francine. “Take them.”
Lee’s eyes shot Francine a warning before she could offer a really sarcastic reply. Physically biting her lip in order to stay quiet, she picked up the folders. “I’ll take these downstairs and then we’re done for the day.”
“Yes,” said Lee. “All three of us. Amanda, we need to talk about Jamie and Claudia in private anyway.”
Amanda’s response was a furious look, and Francine decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Just as she stepped into the hallway outside the Q-Bureau, a mail room courier ran up with a package. “Miss Desmond?”
“Yes?”
The courier shoved the package into her hands. When Francine opened the envelope, a VHS tape fell out.
“I assume you’ve already checked this for booby traps,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s…” he trailed off, swallowing hard. “Agent Beaman called it a proof-of-life video.”
That got her attention. “A what? From who?”
“Agent Zeta, ma’am.”
“What?” She felt the color drain out of her face. “Who brought in the video tape?”
“We don’t know,” he admitted. “We’re reviewing security footage now. But ma’am, Agent Beaman said you’d want to see this right away.” He swallowed again. “She says that she’s going to be executed in twenty-four hours.”
Author’s Note:
- There seem to be several different systems for scoring shooting drills. For the sake of simplicity, I’m using a hundred-point scale with a qualifying score of sixty-one and ten-point spreads on the rankings.