Lee “Scarecrow” Stetson
Francine was using her hands more than normal, clearly wanting to show off their new adornment. Lee had noticed right away, but just for his own amusement, he decided not to say anything. How far would she take things before coming right out and talking about the news she so obviously wanted to share?
Smothering a smile, he nodded in response to her latest question. “No, I don’t know how he figured out Briarwood. Amanda admitted that she’d taken the boys with her on a visit at least once, but as far as they knew it was just a retirement facility. You really think former agents wouldn’t have been smart enough to keep up the ruse?” He shook his head. “They’re out of the game, but they’re not senile.”
“Most of them,” mumbled Zeta, who had accompanied Francine up to the Q-Bureau this morning.
“Watch it,” Lee cautioned, though he kept his tone light. “That’s a place we’d all like to end up in, sooner or later.”
He could see the retort in the younger agent’s eyes, but to her credit, she managed to squelch it before it came out of her mouth. Good; she was learning. He remembered reading Beaman’s assessment: once she got control of her impulsive comments, she’d be one of their best agents. In light of that, it made sense that Billy had paired her with Francine, whose caustic remarks were enhanced by her sense of timing.
“Lee?”
He came out of his thoughts to see Francine peering at him. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Are you even here?” she asked. Speaking of caustic…
“Yes,” he answered. “Just lost in thought. What was your next question again?”
“Did you say anything to anyone about this?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t even know about it until this past weekend. Amanda’s the one who made the connection.”
Francine looked around. “Where is she, anyway?”
“She’ll be in later,” he temporized, not wanting to confirm that she was already in the building with Jamie. This interview was also going onto the official record, he knew, which meant that some things did not need to be discussed.
“All right.” Francine sounded unconvinced, but she let it go for now. “You say you don’t believe some of your stepson’s source work? Why is that?”
He sighed. “Phillip wasn’t the greatest student. He tended to do the absolute minimum to slide by on subjects he didn’t like, and he was smart enough to get away with it. As far as both Amanda and I knew, civics was one of the things he didn’t care about, which is why I suspect he made some of his sources up.”
“We’ll still need to check on them,” she replied, with a glance at Zeta, who nodded. “Where do you think he got his information instead?”
Lee rubbed the bridge of his nose. “That’s the thing. We don’t know. The Segal Report, the one that made those claims about AIDS and Fort Detrick, was just presented last September. At a conference in Africa.”
“Yes,” said Zeta, “but it made the news here. I remember reading about it. Wasn’t it attacked as unscientific right away, though? That alone might have led someone to believe there was a propaganda campaign.”
“An adult, maybe,” said Lee. “But a high school freshman who’s just learning about disinformation? My best guess is he saw something on the news and decided it would sound good for his project. He knew enough to make his sources sound legitimate.”
Francine laid the report down. “Why are you so determined he made everything up?”
He met her eyes. “Why are you so determined he didn’t? We could chase our tails forever trying to find all these sources!”
Her lips thinned. “We aren’t chasing anything. Zeta and I are.” She turned to her assistant. “I’d like you to go over to the Library of Congress and the National Archives and…oh, wherever else you think might be relevant. I’d like to find out everything we can about this Segal Report, including who wrote it and who published it. Leave me a list of the places you’re planning to go and — what, Lee?”
“If you’re checking the Library of Congress, then what about T.P. Aquinas?”
“What about him? He’s your contact, not mine.”
Aggravated, Lee took out his pad and wrote down T.P.’s contact details. “Doesn’t mean he’s a compromised source. And are you also going to at least give her my guy at the Voice of America?”
“All of my media contacts are in the address book in my desk drawer,” she answered archly, looking at Zeta instead of him. “Including a higher-ranked news director at the Voice, along with several others. I’ve been stationed in D.C. longer than you have, Scarecrow. I was already sourcing press outlets when you were over in Italy taking classes in mumbo-jumbo by day and gallivanting along canals at night!”
“That,” he interrupted her tightly, ignoring the pain twisting through his gut, “was a cheap shot, Desmond.”
“Yes,” she admitted after a long, uncomfortable moment. “It was. And I’m sorry. I think we should all take five to calm down.”
Zeta’s eyebrows had climbed nearly up to her hairline, and there was no mistaking the curiosity in her expression.
“It was before your time,” muttered Lee as he tried and failed to take a steadying breath. “And not related to this case.”
Francine nodded. “Yeah. Go downstairs and get started with the research. Lee, I’ll go with her and bring you back a cup of coffee —”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently. “Stay. Coffee’s better up here.” Getting up, he pulled out two of the maroon-colored mugs and started pouring, beginning to add cream to both before he remembered Francine took hers black. The Q-Bureau door rattled slightly as Zeta left.
“Lee,” Francine said into the awkward silence that followed. “I can, ah, go downstairs anyway and — well, I’m sure there’s something needing doing in the bull pen.”
“Francine,” he chided as he put her mug down in front of her. “We both know part of the reason you came up here was so you could show off that rock on your hand. So why don’t you go ahead and tell me about it.” A change of subject, he thought, would benefit both of them right now.
She shrugged. “Jonathan proposed last night at dinner.”
“Francine.” Didn’t she understand he was trying to de-escalate? “Come on, details. Did you make him grovel?”
“What?”
“Well, with your history and everything, he kind of owed you a bit, don’t you think?”
“Oh, please,” she answered with a hint of her usual bite, although the ghost of a smile had appeared in her eyes. “We talked through that before I even agreed to go up to the Adirondacks with him. It’s old news.”
“Yeah, but it happened,” he pointed out as he reached down to pick up her hand and bring it up for a closer look at the engagement ring. It was a simple marquise-shaped solitaire, and if he had to guess, he’d figure it was two carats. “You know better than to pretend it didn’t.”
She was starting to relax. “Of course. But we’ve decided to look forward, not back.”
“Always a good idea.” He leaned against the desk, not wanting the formality of having it between them. “But how do you know history won’t repeat itself?”
“I don’t,” she admitted. “But I won’t give up this chance just because I’m afraid.”
“You guys set a date yet?”
“He just proposed last night.”
“Oh,” he replied. “So you decided to celebrate instead of talking about the next steps, then? Whoa, whoa, don’t get all huffy. I wouldn’t have blamed you.” In fact, he and Amanda had done exactly that, the night he’d presented her with her engagement ring. “Just don’t let it sidetrack you from actually making concrete plans.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Voice of experience talking?”
Despite the fact that his gut hadn’t completely calmed down, Lee found himself chuckling. “Yes. I won’t go into the details.”
“You asked for all my details,” she argued back, though a smile had broken through. “Turnabout is fair play.”
“Hey,” he replied, holding up his free hand. “Aren’t you supposed to be respectful toward your elders or something like that?”
She snorted. “Elder by what, all of two years and change?”
“Even a day counts.”
“Not for this it doesn’t.” But then Francine relented. “It was perfect, Lee. He took me to L’Etoile and ordered all my favorites from memory. And this ring? He deliberately chose something that wasn’t the same as the first one. In fact, I like this one better. It’s classier.”
“Will you feel safe wearing that in the field?”
She shrugged. “Amanda doesn’t wear her engagement ring in the field.”
He was surprised she’d noticed. The first time Amanda had taken off her engagement ring and locked it inside her desk for safekeeping, he’d been startled enough to protest before he thought it through. That protest had sparked a minor argument, although they’d had it resolved before they got to the car.
“Lee? That is why you and Amanda have plain gold bands, isn’t it?”
He chuckled. “No, actually, it wasn’t a consideration. I had just wanted us to have matching wedding rings, and the jeweler said I couldn’t go wrong with those. I’d known that Amanda had left the original ring box here, but it wasn’t until our first field assignment after…” he trailed off, swallowing quickly. “After the funeral, that she explained she’d left the box here so she would have somewhere safe to keep her engagement ring.” He gave her a speculative look. “I take it you’re planning on doing something similar?”
“We haven’t even decided on single-ring or double-ring yet,” she replied.
“That’s not what I asked. I’m talking about whether you’ll wear the ring in the field.”
“I answered that already. I don’t feel safe wearing it out there, so I’ll do what Amanda does. It’s not like I’m out in the field as often as other agents, anyway, especially since Billy is thinking about —” she broke off. “Never mind.”
He gave her a level stare.
“Don’t, Lee. I really can’t talk about it. Not even with someone I trust.”
Suddenly touched, he looked down into his coffee cup. “You know, I didn’t realize it until I heard it, but I’ve been needing to hear you say that. That you still trust me.”
She reached over to lay a hand on his arm. “You guys did a number with this whole secret marriage thing, and then with you going off the rails on this case. But in both cases I understood the reasons why, and I still want to trust you.” A rueful look crept across her face. “Even though right now it’s pretty hard. I’ll go off the record here. Is there anything else — anything at all — that you think I should know about?”
He remembered having this same conversation with Carrie. “No, Francine. There are no more secrets. You can trust me there.” One of the most painful lessons he was learning was that true friendships were valuable enough to be worth keeping.
Her hand squeezed his arm. “Thank you. I think I needed to hear that.”
Lee could feel his smile spreading all the way across his face, and it was echoed in Francine’s expression. “By the way,” he continued, “you definitely want double-ring.”
The smile on her face segued into a frown. “What, because you think I shouldn’t trust him? Jonathan’s not going to betray me!”
“He already has,” replied Lee, although he kept it mild. “The fact that you two worked through it doesn’t change the fact that it happened in the first place. Or is that another part of looking forward and not back?”
Her lips thinned as she nodded.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt again, Francine.”
“I’m a big girl, Lee,” she replied, her tone short. “When I say we talked it through, I mean we had a couple of knock-down, drag-outs. He didn’t try to just sweep things under the rug and neither did I. Look, I understand what you’re trying to do, but on this one I need you to back off. Please.”
Friendships are worth keeping. “All right,” he began. “I’ll —”
The door to the Q-Bureau slammed open, admitting an Amanda he’d only occasionally seen before: a whirling dervish of activity driven by heightened emotions. She dropped her bag on her desk with a loud thud before turning around to deal with the door, which she shut with more than the necessary force. After that, she started rooting through her desk.
Francine found her voice first. “Good morning to you, too, Amanda.”
His wife nearly spat her reply. “No, it’s not.”
Lee exchanged a glance with Francine before asking, “Do you need to talk about it?”
“No.” Amanda slammed a desk drawer shut and stood up, revealing what she’d retrieved: her service weapon. “I just want to — I need to —” she broke off with a slight gasp, and that was when Lee realized she was panting. “I’m going to the firing range.”
“What?” Francine’s voice had gone up. “You’re actually voluntarily going down there?”
“I need to do something,” snapped Amanda. “And I’m supposed to be getting more range time in anyway.”
Lee crossed over to her desk and took the pistol from her. “Put that back where it belongs. I’ll go with you,” he continued, “but only if you use the training weapons. No live fire. Not if you’re this upset.”
“I am not —” but then she broke off, and now he could see she was shaking. “All right. We’ll use the training weapons.”
Francine stood up. “I’ll meet you down there, too. Just as soon as I put my ring away.”
Author’s Note:
- The Segal Report, named for its primary author, was a part of Operation Denver, a Stasi-operated, KGB-supported disinformation campaign. It was first presented to the world in September 1986, and its effects can still be felt today.