Russell Gabriel Conway really hated compiling the field agents' periodical performance assessment test reports.
Oh well, he thought, washing his thoughts down with a swig of coffee, just one of the banes of being promoted. He believed in getting the unpleasant tasks over first, so Robinson and Scott's file was at the top of his in-tray.
He opened the manila folder, groaning inwardly. What was he going to do with those two? To see their performance on the standardized tests was to see a pair of kooks who needed to have been given their walking papers years ago. With a deep breath, he flipped to the first page.
Boxing. They had almost flunked that test. Neither of them could box to save their lives. It was only the way they'd mopped the floor with that gang in Libya last March that allowed Russ to plead their case with Bowles, the British boxing instructor; the man had agreed to arrange a special test. Bowles and four other professional pugilists had ambushed Scott and Robinson in the street as they walked out of the Department facility that night. The instructor had not appreciated the sprained shoulder, but had grudgingly given the pair a passing grade.
Camouflage. They'd flunked that one roundly, appearing in that ridiculous Laurel and Hardy get-up with the bowler hats and fake mustaches. The impersonation had had all the other agents in stitches, though, he remembered, smiling, especially Scott's harangue and Robinson's impersonation of the sniffling Stan Laurel… He shook his head sternly. Thank God he had still had photos of that miserable incident where Robinson had impersonated a stiff in the morgue well enough to fool his own partner, and Scott had been extremely convincing as a working-class saboteur, not to mention Robinson's forays into encyclopedia salesmanship. That had been enough to secure the pair a passing grade, although he had the distinct sensation that both of them wanted to forget that that particular mission had ever happened.
Infiltration. Somehow he doubted that Superman capes and suits were suitable attire for climbing drainpipes and getting documents from top floors. The instructor had been all set to flunk them, although they had got the documents; a video of Scott and Robinson's infiltration of the Department's top-secret base in Granada had been enough to change the camouflage instructor's mind, but Russ really wondered what he'd have done if he hadn't had the forethought to order them to break in there last month in preparation for just this eventuality.
He flipped through the pages. Target practice. Just barely passed that one, shooting lazily at the outside of the paper targets, seemingly unconcerned with the other teams' ability to hit the target dead center. It was as though they didn't care how well they did on the tests, although it wasn't that they lacked the ability… He remembered the report on that miserable affair with Jack and the gold, when Robinson had shot out a gunman from behind Scott on the fly, fifty yards away. Another time when Scott had jumped off a railing, shooting the knife out of the hand of a target who had to be taken alive, seconds before he could drive it into an unconscious Robinson's chest. Well, they'd passed, so no special consideration there.
First aid. He shook his head; he should not be smiling, not the way they'd shamelessly offered any and every nurse the chance to perform artificial respiration on them, finishing off their performance with creating custom-made bikinis out of bandages for Agents Danvers and Clark – and that was another pair he'd have to be keeping an eye on – and wrapping Scott up in bandages for what they called the Mummy Exhibit, taking snapshots and frightening the secretaries.
In order to get them to pass that one, he'd presented the instructor with their hospital reports from the last twenty-four months. Robinson had treated Scott for hypothermia, saving his life; applied tourniquets to his wounds, keeping him from bleeding out, and saving the afflicted limb into the bargain; given first aid for sprains and bruises; and expertly nursed him through a fever that might well have claimed his life. Scott had tended to dozens of minor injuries with textbook precision, taped his partner's bruised and broken ribs, nursed Robinson through heatstroke and dehydration, and helped him recover from terrible injuries that—were classified. The instructor had shaken his head in wonder and suggested Russ give the men a vacation before giving them a passing grade.
Negotiation. Presented with hypothetical situations in which they had to convince someone of something, plead their case, Scott and Robinson had treated the whole thing as a joke, sending up the simulations and making the instructor laugh so hard that he'd passed them just because "you cats could charm the birds off the trees." Russ shook his head; that had been a narrow squeeze, because their encounters with Sorge—the way Robinson had fought for Scott's life, acquiring a diamond necklace at midnight on a Sunday; the way Scott had stood up to the international trader and reclaimed Kelly in Santorini; for that matter, the way Robinson had pleaded for, and saved the life of, that incompetent Maximilian de Brouget; the way Scott had, by sheer force of will, snatched Robinson from the jaws of a brainwashing technique that had nearly claimed both their lives—those incidents were classified, and he couldn't have shown them to the instructor if they'd flunked.
Russ closed the file, shaking his head. The whole trouble with field agents, he thought wearily, was that you couldn't keep them in line once they'd been in the field for a certain number of years: everything was a joke unless it was a matter of life and death. He recognized it as an occupational hazard, but it made evaluating their performance pretty damn hard. Still, there was no faulting their results; Robinson and Scott had pretty much the best track record of any pair of agents in the Department.
He thought for a moment about calling them in and ordering them to take their performance reviews more seriously. Be more professional in their attitude. But the mere thought of the juggernaut of stand-up comedy and doubletalk he'd be unleashing on himself upon asking that pair to take anything seriously made him shake his head and change his mind. Decisively, he moved the file to his 'Out' box.
At least it was five years before he'd have to be facing these reports again.