Modem Operandi
By Fiona Robinson
Disclaimer: the characters in this story belong to Shoot the Moon Productions and Warner Brothers Inc.. The plot, with its probable inaccuracies and wild speculations, is mine. Enjoy. And as always, thanks to GW, the voice of reason in all stories SMK.
Amanda King sighed and looked at her watch. She was running late, again. For her entire life she had prided herself on being prompt - at least when it was important. Lately, she had struggled to make it to every appointment on time.
She carefully pulled into the parking lot at International Federal Film and grabbed her identification badge from her purse. She contemplated the new color, thinking about the advanced security clearance she'd been granted just the week before. Her promotion still felt strange. She still couldn't believe she'd earned it.
"And that's exactly what you did do," said her Section Chief, as he granted it to her. "If anyone thinks you're getting special treatment they can look at your test scores. I don't think I ever scored as high as you do."
Amanda had rolled her eyes, laughing. "Oh, come on," she'd said, giving him a shove. "I'm sure your scores were just as high, if not higher."
Now, as she rode the elevator down six floors below ground to the Section Chief's office, and the meeting she was late for, she turned her accomplishments over in her mind. In the past fifteen years, she had advanced from civilian to rookie agent to senior level operative with minimum difficulty, but not without personal cost. Any agent, she reasoned, incurred personal costs. She had found an aptitude for investigative work - some people said she had a sixth sense, but she simply maintained that common sense made her a success. A housewife might have seemed like a strange candidate for a career in intelligence, but Amanda believed that keeping one foot in the "real world" had kept her instincts fresh.
The funny thing about the real world was that those who lived in it had no idea what Amanda did for a living. She and her husband, Lee Stetson, had managed to not only keep their careers with the Agency a secret - when they had married twelve years ago they had managed to keep their relationship a secret, too. For just over six months, they had pretended they were only engaged, until they made their marriage "public" with a small ceremony in the backyard of Amanda's old house. It had seemed appropriate at the time, since Lee - code named Scarecrow - had spent a good portion of the previous three years knocking on Amanda's kitchen window, trampling her tulips, and trying to stay out of her mother's sight.
She settled her bag on her shoulder and thought of everything she needed to do before the day was out. She was meeting her mother for lunch, she had promised to give her younger son, Jamie, a lift to the mechanic that afternoon, and she had three reports to write and two new cases to review. Somehow, she was going to fit it all in.
The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. Amanda stepped out into the buzzing bullpen and looked at her watch again. She had one minute to spare.
Amanda often marveled at how much "the business" had changed over the last decade or so. Now they were not only battling lunatics all over the world, they were battling lunatics with technology, who used their computers to buy guns, trade information, and manage alliances. Now, they had the Internet, and an entire computer could fit in the palms of their hands. Even as they sat around the boardroom table, trying to figure it all out, people were organizing revolutions, up-and downloading pornography, and stealing money. She sometimes thought about the Atari her boys had so desperately wanted, and how reluctant she had been to buy it for them, afraid they'd be addicted to Pac-Man. Now Philip created and broke codes on a computer in France, and when Jamie came over for dinner he talked about programs that manipulated light and shadow in his photographs, or put things in them that were never there at all.
She had adapted to all this much more readily than Lee, who still railed against e-mail and couldn't understand why anyone would want to surf the Net if they didn't have to. Amanda thought that aspect of his personality rather strange, since he hadn't really had a problem learning how to read a microdot or defuse a complicated bomb ten years before. She understood that those things were different, more "hands-on", and that the human element they required was important to him. He was, he told her once, afraid of intelligence becoming artificial.
And technology was precisely what had landed the group of agents in the conference room that morning. As the Section Chief stood in front of the group, Amanda listened to him tell them about a hacker who had managed to access Agency networks, despite the almost constantly changing, obscure codes. She thought of Philip, and wondered if he knew how to get into a system like the Agency's.
"I don't get it," she said, finally. "What are they looking at? Anything in particular?"
"We can't tell," her boss said, resting his palms on the table and looking at each agent carefully. "The first…sweep…whatever you want to call it that went on last night…accessed only low-security, low-priority files. It seemed random." He shook his head. "But it wasn't. The next sweeps accessed more files - more files with higher security. And those are only the files we know about. There could be others."
"Wait a minute," Amanda said, leaning forward in her chair. "Pete," she addressed an agent, their systems specialist, sitting to the right of the Chief, "if you access a file, doesn't the time and date show up on the system?"
"Not if you don't want it to," Pete Williams said, shrugging. "If they can break into our system, they can get around that."
Amanda shook her head. "So we're looking for a needle in a haystack, is what you're saying. We don't know what they're after."
Pete nodded. "Exactly."
Amanda sighed, leaning back in her chair. "Great. So what do we do now?"
"Pete's boys are taking a look at the files that have been accessed. They're trying to figure out if there's a pattern," said the Chief. He stood at the front of the room, scratching his beard, thoughtfully. "Once we figure out what they're after, we can make a definite move to shut them down."
"Or at least smoke them out," Pete added.
"Do we even have any idea what kind of technology they're using?" Amanda wondered, absently rolling her pen between her thumb and fingertip.
Pete shook his head. "Nope. Not at all. It might not even be dependent on technology. It might be dependent on how smart they are, how familiar they are with our system."
"Could it be an inside job?" Amanda asked.
"That's always a possibility."
Amanda sighed. She hated that sometimes the first thought she had was whether a fellow agent had betrayed them, but every time there had been a security leak in the past, it had been due to something an agent had done, intentionally or not. She wanted to trust her coworkers, and she liked to believe that people who worked in normal offices could do that. Even if they really couldn't.
She looked at their Section Chief, who'd been taking in the exchange silently, stroking his beard and thinking about what Pete was telling them. That this was a tough one, that they were up against more than they had been in the past.
"I know we're dependent on Pete's team to figure out what's being targeted," the Chief said, "I just wanted to give you all the heads-up, because you're probably going to hear from us again sometime this afternoon."
"Anything else?" asked Sheila Marler, a young blond rookie to Amanda's left.
"That's it.…Oh, wait. You all know you have to have your department expense records ready for the auditors at the end of this week, right? I'm not saying they're definitely going to take a look, but I don't want to see any of you coming in here with shoe boxes." He grinned as the agents in the room collectively groaned and laughed. "That's it, people. You're free to go." He watched as the group stood all at once, discussing their new developments as they filed out the door. Pete Williams picked up his belongings and headed out of the boardroom, his pace brisk. His team had an incredible amount of work to finish before the day was out. Sheila Marler poked her head back through the doorway and caught her superior's eye.
"There's a call for you on line two," she said, and her boss nodded, following her out of the boardroom, leaving his agents to catch the curveball he'd just thrown them.
Amanda watched him leave, but stayed in the silent boardroom, thumbing through a manila folder and mulling over what they'd been told in the last hour. She stayed, engrossed in her latest assignment, until she heard a slight noise in the doorway and looked up to see the Section Chief. His tall frame filled the entryway for a moment before he caught Amanda's eye and gestured to her.
"Hey," he said, his green eyes twinkling. "Is that interesting?"
Her face relaxed in a smile and she shrugged. "Oh, you know."
"Come here for a minute." He bobbed his head in the direction of his office, and Amanda nodded and followed him inside.
She raised her eyebrows and followed him into his office. "What's up?"
Lee Stetson turned and grinned at his wife. "I got the tickets," he said, holding them up in front of her. "There's no going back now."
Amanda laughed. "There's always a possibility, Stetson," she teased. "I won't believe you until we're on the plane - not when this place is involved." She gestured around his office, referring to the organization that had not only thrown them together, but was a constant obstacle in keeping them that way.
But Lee shook his head. "Nope, not this time. We're going to meet Philip in Paris, and that's the end of it."
"We have to get this case out of the way, first," Amanda reminded him, and for a moment Lee didn't feel like the Section Chief at all. He felt like a field agent, codenamed Scarecrow, who had been partnered with a suburban housewife named Mrs. King.
"Yeah," he nodded, scratching the beard that he had grown for an undercover assignment four years ago and never shaved off. "Well, I'm sure we'll figure it out. Especially with you on the team."
"Oh, you." She laughed. "I don't know what goes through your head sometimes."
Lee's grin turned wicked. "You wouldn't believe it. Especially during meetings like the one we just had…." His grin widened as he watched her cheeks color and she shook her head, and it delighted him that after twelve years of marriage he could still make her blush. He leaned forward and brushed his mouth against hers. "You have got to stop wearing that perfume to work," he said softly, "or everyone's going to think I'm the security breach."
Amanda didn't answer for a moment; she looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes, knowing perfectly well the effect she had on him. "Maybe it isn't the perfume at all," she said primly, still holding the file folder against her chest. "Maybe it's just me."
Lee laughed, wishing they both had a free afternoon - certainly an afternoon without a security leak hanging over their heads. "I'm sure it is just you, Mrs.…King."
"Stetson," she said. "I'm only Mrs. King at work. If you're talking to me, I'm Mrs. Stetson."
"Always Mrs. Stetson." He looked at the lapel of her jacket. "Except on your security pass." She had kept King at the Agency to keep the connection between them to a minimum. Not that everyone didn't already know they were married, but Amanda was adamant about separating her identities at work. "Just think of it as a code name," she said to him. "You're Scarecrow, and I'm Mrs. King."
Now Amanda grinned at him, her primness gone, and leaned over the folders she was holding to kiss his cheek. "Yes," she said. "Always Mrs. Stetson, except on my security pass…and the passports with my alias on them, and on my false social security cards, and on the nameplate on my desk in the Q-Bureau…." She shook her head. "I'm not Mrs. Stetson nearly enough."
"No. You're not."
"What are we going to do about that?"
"Well…" Lee paused, looking to the ceiling, as if for guidance. "There's always the possibility of a nice, quiet evening with your husband, to reaffirm your identity."
"I like the sound of that," Amanda said, laughing softly. "What would that include?"
"Dinner, wine, maybe a little romance…."
"You really know how to show a girl a good time, don't you, Stetson?"
"I do have a reputation for it."
Amanda bit her lip. "Except it can't be tonight."
"Aw, Amanda. Why not?"
"Late meeting with crypto. I know it seems crazy to have it now, but we haven't been able to coordinate our schedules in weeks."
"Neither have we," Lee protested, clearly disappointed. He sighed. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow's possible," she said. She smiled, suddenly. "I'll make sure it's possible if you make sure it's possible."
Lee grinned. "Deal. I'll even make reservations."
She smiled. "I'll even get that black nightgown out from the back of the closet."
Lee's eyes lit up, and Amanda laughed as a knock sounded on his office door. "That's my cue," she said, stealing a quick kiss before she opened the door to admit Pete. "Hi, Pete," she said. "Bye, Pete. See you later, Mr. Stetson."
Lee laughed as she shut the door, and turned to Pete. "What's up?" he asked. He hadn't been expecting Pete to make such a speedy appearance.
"I just wanted to let you know…I think this thing goes much farther than we can tell right now. My team has figured out a way to keep them out for now, but I don't think it's going to last."
Lee nodded, moving to sit behind his desk. "Damn," he muttered. "And there's no pattern?"
"Nothing discernible. Yet." Pete shrugged. "Maybe another sweep isn't such a bad thing. Maybe they'll give us an idea of what they're looking for."
"Yeah, but…" Lee shook his head. "All that information is classified for a reason, right? We can't just let anyone look at it."
"I'll see what we can do about making our firewall stronger. Maybe we can figure it out without really letting them see anything."
Lee watched Pete turn and head out the doorway, as always quick and efficient. He leaned back in his chair and looked around his office. It sometimes amazed him that he sat on the other side of a desk, dishing out assignments, advice, and reprimands to his agents. He'd spent more than his share of time sitting in the chairs across the room from him, hearing again and again from Billy how he had to follow the rules, how he had to solve his cases by the book, or he'd be suspended again.
He wasn't a typical Section Chief - Billy had known he wouldn't be when he offered Lee the job. For the most part, the position was considered a desk job, but Lee had taken it back out into the field. He felt that the worst thing he could do was be out of touch with what his agents dealt with - so he regularly took cases himself, spent nights on stakeouts or followed paper trails. When Billy had been the Chief the Agency had been a different animal - there had been a Cold War on and Dr. Smyth had been in power. Agency hierarchy had been clearly delineated. Today, Lee found that counter-espionage was completely different than it had once been, and the Agency, as an organization, was much "flatter." He wasn't sure if it had become what Harry Thornton, the founder, had envisioned, but he was called onto the carpet a lot less than he had been ten years ago.
He thought of Amanda, suddenly, because she had often been subjected to Billy's lectures with - or because of - him. It was funny - in some ways she was as by-the-book as the straightest agent, but in others her instinct got the better of her and she ended up taking things into her own hands, much like he had. He knew that becoming an agent hadn't been easy for her - that other agents had referred to her as "Scarecrow's protégé" or worse. The Happy Housewife. But she had proven herself, and he had absolutely no doubts about her abilities. Ever.
Of course, that didn't mean he didn't worry about her safety - he often did. He thought of the night before, watching her brush her hair before bed, and how for some reason his eyes had lingered on the scar on her back - the exit wound from a bullet that had nearly ended their life together before it had begun. Oddly enough, he had nearly lost her when they weren't out on a case.
It had taken him a long time to let go and realize that she was an adult who had chosen the life she had, and often enjoyed it. He had always assumed she'd want to give it up as soon as possible - maybe that she wouldn't want more than him or their marriage - but that hadn't been the case at all. He occasionally had to remind himself that there had been a time when he'd loved it, too, when nothing had been more exciting than cracking a case.
And now, he had a huge case to crack. And Amanda was going to crack it with him.
Dotty West was looking at her watch as her daughter hurried up her sidewalk, adjusting the purse on her shoulder. "You're late," was all she said, smiling.
"Oh, Mother, I know," Amanda said, leaning in to kiss Dotty's cheek. "I'm sorry. The meeting ran late. You haven't been waiting long, have you?"
Dotty shook her head. "I watered my geraniums," she said, gesturing to the bright blooms lining her path. "What do you think?"
"Oh…they're lovely. You always grow the loveliest geraniums." Amanda admired them for a minute, then sighed. "Well, what do you feel like? The tea house two blocks down, or that funny sandwich place near the mall?"
"The tea house," Dotty decided. "I need a walk." She glanced at the lapel of Amanda's jacket, suddenly. "My goodness, that isn't the best picture of you, is it?"
"What?" Amanda looked down in horror to see her Agency identification badge, clipped to her coat. She felt sick, wondering how she'd managed to walk right past Mrs. Marsden without turning it in. "Oh. No. But it's just my security pass. You know, it's like a driver's license. No one expects the picture to be nice."
"No. I guess not," Dotty agreed, laughing as she swung open the gate. Amanda dragged the pass from her lapel and shoved it into her bag, thankful that her mother wasn't wearing her reading glasses.
"What do you need a security pass for, anyway, dear?" Dotty wondered.
"Oh, you know…Every federal organization has them. They don't want just anyone walking in off the street."
Dotty nodded, the subject suddenly forgotten, and Amanda let out a deep breath. She watched her mother walk briskly down the street, stopping for a moment to look at the neighbor's tulips, and thought how amazing it was that Dotty, at seventy-five, was as energetic as ever. She had nearly remarried a few years before, and probably would have been Dotty Bachmeyer if she and Gordon hadn't decided at the last minute to skip the nuptials and, as Dotty put it, "shack up." She had thought the entire family would be horrified, but Amanda was simply happy to see her mother get what she wanted - Gordon - and Philip and Jamie liked to tease her about it.
She and Gordon lived in his small but comfortable two-story house, about ten minutes away from Lee and Amanda, and not far from what had once been Dotty's condominium. She had missed having a garden and living in a place that let her walk everywhere, and her home with Gordon was perfect for all that. Jamie, who practically lived in his studio, was a frequent dinner guest.
Lee and Amanda had moved away from 4247 Maplewood Drive shortly after Philip went away to college. Amanda had thought Lee would have a problem with living in what had once been Joe's house, but he'd insisted that he had enough memories there that didn't even come close to including Joe that he didn't mind. "For instance," he'd said when he moved in, "I have an intimate relationship with the tulips under your kitchen window. And the trellis outside your bedroom." But now they lived in a smaller house, more suited to two people who were rarely home, and their things mixed together perfectly.
"So how is that husband of yours, Amanda?" Dotty asked over lunch.
"Oh, you know. Working hard," Amanda said, sipping her tea. "How's Gordon? Still renovating?"
Dotty rolled her eyes. "He's at Home Depot as we speak," she said, pulling a piece of crust from her sandwich and chewing it thoughtfully, before steering the conversation back to her chosen subject. "I haven't seen Lee in weeks."
"There's, uh, a lot to do. Busy season."
Dotty nodded. "Mm-hm." She stirred sugar into her cup of tea. "Does he still have that beard?"
"Yes, he still has that beard."
"I don't understand why anyone with such a handsome face would want to cover it up with hair," Dotty muttered, shaking her head. She had told Lee this, on more than one occasion, and he'd simply laughed.
"He's still handsome," Amanda said, now.
"Oh, I know." Dotty agreed. "He just looks more…responsible…with it."
"Well, he isn't," Amanda said, picking onions out of her salad. "We bought our tickets to see Philip, though," she continued. "There's no backing down now."
"I seem to recall you saying that last time, right before you canceled the trip."
"Oh, last time was my fault, Mother. Lee was all set to go, and then I got that…ear infection." Her ear infection had actually been the aftereffects of a gun going off at alarmingly close range to her head. She had been on an assignment with two other agents that had nearly gotten all three of them killed. She had thought for days that she was going to lose her hearing - the constant ringing had nearly driven her insane - but there had been no permanent damage.
"You haven't had any more of those, have you?"
"Oh, no, just the one."
"Because you never once had one as a child. You always had the most efficient Eustachian tubes."
Amanda laughed a little, taking a bite of her sandwich. "I'm sure my ears are fine, now," she told her mother. "And nothing - absolutely nothing - is going to stop us going on this trip."
"How's your mother doing?" Lee asked that night, as Amanda sat on the sofa looking over some notes from her late meeting. He had been enjoying a rare moment of idleness, reading the morning paper he never got to read in the morning anymore.
"Oh, she's fine. She asked after you."
"Hm? In a good way, I hope."
Amanda laughed. "It's always in a good way. She loves you."
"So you say," Lee said. "She's still a mother-in-law, and anything that's wrong with your life is automatically my fault."
"There isn't anything wrong with my life," she said, surprised, and Lee laughed. "And you'd have to do something pretty horrible for her to even think about disliking you."
"Yeah," Lee chuckled. "I guess I would, wouldn't I?" His forehead creased, suddenly. "Are she and Gordon coming for dinner this weekend?"
"Sunday. With Jamie."
"Hm." Lee folded the paper and put his feet up on the coffee table. "I wonder if Jamie'll be able to keep his eyes open through dinner."
"Well, you know he's been travelling all over the place, and – hey, feet off the table, I have rules, you know – he didn't choose a nine to five kind of job." Amanda leaned over and smacked Lee's shins with the file folder in her hand. He grabbed her wrist and tried to pull her into his lap.
"You never stop mothering, do you?'
"It's in my bones, I guess. Besides, I never had any of your babies to mother so I've got to let it out somewhere. Your feet on the table is the last stand, so to speak." His gaze held hers for a moment, and she waited for an "I wish", but none came. She decided to prompt him.
"Do you ever wish we'd had kids?" she asked suddenly, settling into his lap.
Lee gave her a gentle squeeze and shrugged. "Hardly ever," he admitted, and he was telling the truth. "You?"
She sighed, stroking his cheek. "I think about what a little girl with your eyes would be like," she said, and then smiled at him. "You know. And sometimes I wonder why it never happened." They had both been for tests, when they first began wondering, and everything seemed normal. When months - and then years - went by and there wasn't even a hint of a pregnancy in their future, they elected not to pursue fertility treatments. At the time, Amanda was watching one of her best friends' marriages dissolve because of procedures that were grueling to her physically and financially. She remembered feeling an incredible relief when Lee finally suggested they concentrate their efforts on the family they had.
Lee nodded. "There was a reason," he said. "Like that I was meant to have you all to myself."
"That's greedy," she said, laughing.
He nibbled on her earlobe. "I'm a greedy man."
"Mm. It seems that way. Funny how it took me so long to notice," she breathed, concentrating on what he was doing.
"That was due to my superior skills as a spy," he murmured, his fingers finding her blouse buttons. His mouth covered hers and she leaned back in the chair with him, only to let out a squeal of surprise as Lee suddenly jumped. "What the hell was that?" he yelped, suddenly digging around in the chair, searching for the source of a strange vibration.
Amanda burst out laughing. "You're sitting on your cell phone, my superior spy."
When she stopped laughing, Amanda realized that Billy Melrose was on the other end of the cell phone conversation. And since he was calling on Lee's "work phone" Amanda had an idea that could only mean one thing: Billy had a hot tip for them. Since retiring as section chief, and making way for Lee, Billy had taken what Amanda estimated to be the sum total of a week off in three years. "You can take the boy out of the Agency…" he'd told her, and she suspected the same would be true for her husband.
"Billy thinks the breaches might have something to do with Senator Birdsell," Lee said when he got off the phone. He watched Amanda as she moved around the kitchen, putting dishes away, and couldn't help grinning at her as she turned to look at him.
"Senator Birdsell? Isn't he crusading for tougher Internet policing?" Amanda asked.
Lee nodded. "He's been knee-deep in that and a couple of other things, too. Pornography laws are a big favorite of his. He was also involved with us a while back - I can't remember the specifics, but I think it had something to do with offshore banking."
Amanda nodded. "I remember that."
"Francine's section," he said, leaning against the counter. "She was his contact."
"Are you going to talk to her?"
Lee nodded. "Tomorrow." There had been a time when he would have rushed over to the Agency, stayed up all night chasing a lead, and Amanda was surprised that he wasn't doing that now.
"It can wait until morning?" she asked, a little confused.
"Yeah, it can wait until morning."
Amanda peered at him, running a dishtowel through her fingers. "Are you all right?"
Lee nodded. "I'm fine. I just know that it can wait. The boys are working on keeping whoever it is out, and Francine's at some function with Jonathan…and I'm here with you." He grinned. "So it can wait."
She contemplated that, then picked up a wine glass. "So since you're here with me, do you want a drink?" she asked, laughing a little as he nodded and headed for the wine rack. He picked up a bottle of Merlot and held it up for her inspection. Amanda nodded. "Perfect," she said, and he gave her a quick kiss, opening a drawer and hunting for the corkscrew.
As Lee poured the wine he suddenly remembered a time when Amanda had admitted to him she didn't have a clue about wine. "Joe always bought it," she'd told him over dinner at Emelio's. "And he bought whatever the partners were drinking." He thought it was funny that she'd changed as much as she had, yet still stayed the same. She was leaning against the counter, beside him, and he reached out and drew the dishtowel from where she'd flung it over her shoulder. She smiled at him as it hit the countertop, caught his hand and kissed his fingers.
"You don't really want wine," she said to him, her brown eyes twinkling. "You want dessert."
Lee laughed. "I want both." He touched his glass to hers. "You don't have work to do, do you?"
Amanda hesitated, then shook her head as he leaned in to kiss her. "Nothing that can't wait until tomorrow."
"Are you sure?" Lee asked, his mouth against hers. "You hesitated a little there…is there something you need to work on?"
"No," she breathed, tasting wine on his mouth, her fingers reaching for his shirt buttons. "Nothing beyond getting you out of this shirt."
"Now you see, those are the assignments I should be giving you at work," he said against her neck. "I should make you Special Agent in charge of Section Chief Wellness."
"I am," she said, untucking his shirt, "I just don't get paid for it."
Lee ran his fingers through her smooth, dark hair. The scent of her shampoo tantalized his senses and mixed with the feeling of her fingers on his skin to make him giddy.
"Well, Special Agent," he said, "let's go into the other room."
Now Amanda grinned, drawing away from him. "What's the matter, Scarecrow?" she asked. "Aren't you up for a little…" she patted the worksurface behind her, "encounter?"
Lee laughed again. "I was thinking of something a little more comfortable," he said, replaying an old joke between them. When they had moved into the house, and "christened" every room, the kitchen had been a particular disaster.
Amanda picked up her wine and turned for the door. "Race you to the fireplace," she said over her shoulder, and he followed her back into the living room.