"Toby, you got a second?" C.J. appears in the doorway of the Roosevelt Room. Toby looks up from the pile of papers.
"How important is it?"
"Depends. Important to you or important to the country?" C.J. says.
"Aren't those the same thing?" Toby replies.
"It's important to you," C.J. says.
"Okay. I'm coming." Toby stands and meets C.J. in the hall. She purses her lips and drums her fingers on the folder she's holding.
"C.J.?" Toby says.
"Yeah?"
"You had something you wanted to tell me? Something important?"
"Yeah," C.J. says, fingers curling around the folder. "The-the Secret Service came to see me. They caught Anna Barber trying to get into the building again." Toby pauses.
"What?"
"It turns out Anna Barber is now Rachel Grant, a CIA operative, and she came with the director," C.J. says. "Secret Service stopped her and took her to Treasury while they got things sorted out."
"Have things been sorted out?" Toby asks.
"They're still working on it. She will have to serve some time for the whole fraudulent entry into the White House thing," C.J. says. "Leo wants us to go over there and talk to people."
"Talk to Anna Barber?" Toby says.
"Among others," C.J. replies. "Can you do it now?" Toby turns back to the Roosevelt Room, where Sam is trying to coordinate the speechwriters into something vaguely resembling order. Then Toby faces C.J. again.
"Yeah. Let's go."
"And I'm gonna need to see Toby about the event on Tuesday, there's something we gotta put in the speech," Josh says, coming out of his office.
"Toby's at Treasury," Donna says. Josh stops at her desk.
"Toby's at Treasury?"
"Yeah. He just left." Donna looks up. "Bonnie said he'll be back in time for Staff."
"Why did he go to Treasury?" Josh asks. Donna shrugs.
"I don't know. I didn't ask. But he'll be back for Senior Staff, so you can talk to him then," she says.
"Fine. I'll go check on Sam and the speechwriters," Josh says.
"Do Sam and Ainsley have a thing?" Donna says as Josh walks past her. He stops and turns around.
"What?"
"Do Sam and Ainsley have a thing? People keep saying they have a thing," Donna says.
"What people?"
"People who work here. Do they have a thing?"
"No. Sam and Ainsley don't have a thing," Josh answers. "It was one incident under the mistletoe-"
"Carol showed me the picture," Donna interrupts with a smile.
"And that was it," Josh says.
"Aw. That's disappointing." Donna turns back to her desk. Josh pauses.
"Okay, I'm gonna regret asking, but why is that disappointing to you?" he says.
"Well, they'd be very cute together. They have that witty banter thing going, and Ainsley loves Cerulean," Donna says. "Plus, any other kids they'd have would be absolutely gorgeous."
"How do you figure that?" Josh asks.
"Well, Sam is, you know, Sam, and Ainsley's very pretty," Donna says. "Just think-"
"Yeah, sorry I asked," Josh says. "Just…they don't have a thing. Let it go."
The Treasury building is not all that dissimilar from any other office building. The biggest difference is the weapons carried by every person and the wire on every ear. Agent Taylor, who is no exception, leads Toby and C.J. through the building to the basement.
"We are pretty much finished interrogating her. She's told us how she got into the White House and where she made her badges," Agent Taylor says.
"What's going to happen to her?" C.J. asks.
"Five, ten years in prison. CIA is going to burn her, too, she won't be able to work for them or any other intelligence agencies," Agent Taylor says. They come to the interrogation hall and walk into one of the observation rooms. On the other side of the two way glass, a short woman sits at a black table. Her sandy brown hair is cut close to her chin, out of the way, and her wide blue eyes study the manicured nails on her folded hands.
"Huh," Toby says.
"Problem, sir?" Agent Taylor says.
"No, I just… I didn't expect her to be so normal," Toby answers. Agent Taylor nods.
"They always are, sir. No one expects it, but they are," he says. "Mr. McGarry said you might like to talk to her."
"I would, actually. C.J., you wanna come?" Toby says. C.J. shakes her head.
"I don't think I could speak to her without slapping her silly," she says.
"Yeah, we can't have that," Toby says. He follows Agent Taylor out the door. The Secret Service agent opens another door and Toby walks into the interrogation room. Anna Barber looks up as he enters.
"Well, this is a surprise," she says. "I was expecting Sam Seaborn."
"He doesn't know you're here yet," Toby replies, walking further into the room. "I suppose you know who I am, then?"
"You're Toby Ziegler. Though in this instance Uncle Toby might be more appropriate," Anna says. Toby gives a false smile as he put his hands in his pockets.
"There's very few people who can call me that. You are not one of them," he says.
"My daughter is."
"Yes. She is," Toby says. "Your daughter is very dear to me. I would like to spare her some confusion and unnecessary pain, which is why I'm here." He stands in front of the mirror, directly across from Anna. She raises an eyebrow.
"What do you mean, Mr. Ziegler?" Anna says.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions, questions I think Cerulean might have in the future," Toby says. "You are under no obligation to answer them, but it would save us a lot of time and drama if you told me now, so I can tell her when she has them herself." Anna watches him for a moment, regarding him with cool blue eyes.
"All right," she says finally. "Fire away."
"Thank you," Toby says. He rocks on his feet. "You left the family when Cerulean was a year old. Why then?"
"Because Thomas was an abusive prick," Anna replies.
"But why then? Why not before?" Toby asks. Anna smiles.
"That was when I got my hands on enough money and a fighting knife," she says. "That's how I got him to let me leave. He would have probably killed me if I hadn't had the knife."
"Hmm." Toby nods. He's fairly sure there's no way to respond to that other than the obvious 'that sounds like Thomas.'
"I suppose the next question is why not take the children?" Anna says. "That's a simple answer. I was never going to get custody of them, and you can't take babies on the run with you, so the only option was to leave them behind. Thomas would surely punish them if I tried to take custody from him."
"He punished them anyway," Toby says. "You did read about how Cerulean reported him to the President, right?"
"I did," Anna answers coldly.
"So why didn't you come back for them?" Toby says.
"I was working for the CIA. I didn't have the time or resources to-"
"They're your children."
"I'm aware of that, Mr. Ziegler, but it wouldn't have been fair to them to bring them into a one-room apartment where they'd be alone most of the time," Anna says. "Zachary and Cerulean are better off where they ended up."
"There was no way for you to know that they would end up where they did. They could have been sent to Mr. and Mrs. Satan in the middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania," Toby says. "Or Mr. Pedophile and Mrs. Oblivious in Backwater, Kentucky. You had no idea where they were going to go."
"Fine. I didn't know," Anna says, crossing her arms over her chest. "But I did know I couldn't take care of them. What would you have had me do?" Toby stares at her. It's completely self-evident to him what she should have done: she should have claimed her children and provided for them. Quit the CIA; go back to being the mother she wasn't in the last five years. But that would require more selflessness than Anna is apparently capable of. Toby shakes his head, looking down at the floor.
"What about the gifts?" he mutters.
"The gifts?"
"The bear and the ornaments at Christmas," Toby says louder. "What was the point of all that?" Anna shrugs.
"Cerulean wanted them."
"How would you know that?" Toby looks up at Anna again.
"The bear was easy. All the papers talked about her carrying it around and the police report said it was lodged in the car somewhere, so I went to the store Will told me about and got it for her," she says.
"And the ornaments?"
"I took them from the house after Thomas was sentenced," Anna says. "Zach said she really liked them."
"You've been talking to Zach?" Toby repeats. She nods.
"I send him postcards. He didn't answer right away, but eventually he warmed up to it."
"Yeah. I can see why he'd be reluctant to talk to you," Toby says. "I certainly would be." Anna gives him a cold look.
"Mr. Ziegler, it seems to me that your main purpose here is to criticize my choices," she says. "Do you have any questions that actually help Cerulean or would you like to judge me some more?"
"You should be glad it's me here and not the people I work with. C.J. Cregg wants to slap you into next Tuesday." Toby nods at the glass behind him. "I can only imagine what the President and Leo McGarry would like to say to you."
"They're not here right now. And if you don't have any more questions, I'd prefer if you weren't either," Anna replies.
"Why didn't you give the gifts to Cerulean in person?" Toby says. Anna hesitates, her cold mask slipping for an instant. "Anna?"
"It wasn't for lack of concern, or anything like that," she says in a low voice. "I just… I couldn't have her look at me and not know who I was. I couldn't bear it."
