Chapter 6: The Game is Finally Afoot
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Annie wasn't at her desk when Auggie stopped by to ask about dinner. The woman at the next desk told him that Annie had been in the gym for half an hour.
("Gym. Good idea," he thought, figuring it was about time to work off some of the Special Frustration he was experiencing trying to run a Special-Projects department at this point in CIA history. Upper management was so spooked [so to speak] by the death of Henry and the undeath of Annie that it was hard to get authorization for a normal project, never mind a Special one.)
"I'm Auggie Anderson," he said, facing in the general direction of the voice, wondering what the woman looked like.
"Clara Weinberg," the woman said. Her firm handshake came in at an angle that reassured him he'd gotten the direction more or less right.
"Clara! Annie told me that she's really enjoying working with you on the Ukrainian review. I think you're the first person in the company she's worked with who speaks Russian as well as she does."
"Yeah, they had to get me out mothballs," Clara said. "I was rotting away in Annex C with all of the other Cold War relics. I can't afford to take any of the pathetic retirement packages they've offered, because my husband's job disappeared in the Great Recession. But my language skills and cultural knowledge haven't been in high demand around here for a while. I was a nice, Jewish girl from Long Island back when I was recruited, but I can't even read Hebrew any more, much less Arabic."
"Well, Snowden's in Russia. Joan told Annie that Ukraine is about to blow. Maybe Cold War II is an idea whose time has come."
"A girl can dream," she said as he walked toward the door. "Nice to meet you, Auggie."
"Likewise," he said as he went through it and headed toward the elevator.
###
No one said hi to him when he entered to the gym. The only sound he heard was that of one person running fast on a treadmill, but still he said "Annie?" pretty softly, not wanting to disturb anyone else who might be in the room, concentrating hard on a workout. No response. She might be wearing headphones. Hoping that she was the one pounding away on the treadmill, rather than silently lifting weights or already in the shower, he walked over to it, felt for the handrail, and made his way around to the front where the runner could see him.
"Hey," she said – loudly, in order to be heard over the pounding of her feet on the tread; they must indeed be the only two people in the room. She'd pulled off the headphones but hadn't broken her stride.
"Hey. I stopped by your desk to ask whether you're coming over for dinner, but Clara said you were down here."
"Dinner sounds good. What did you think of Clara?"
"I liked her," he said. "She told me a hefty chunk of her life story. I guess people start craving conversation when they've been in mothballs for 20-plus years. What time should I expect you tonight?"
"How about you come to my place?," she said. "I've got a freezer full of Lean Cuisine and refrigerator full of Diet Coke."
"Oh boy. Sounds yummy."
"Don't worry," she said laughingly. "We can order up some pizza and beer for you. I just figured it's time for me to get back to my pre-Geneva self. Physically anyway."
"OK. I promise to take home all of the leftover pizza. Unless I eat it for breakfast. See you around seven?"
"Yeah," she said. "Seven. Bye." She put her headphones back on.
Lean Cuisine and Diet Coke – so much for rounder and softer. That's ok. Rounder and softer Annie, …, leaner and stronger Annie, …, just about any kind of Annie would be fine with him. Physically anyway.
###
Annie went to Joan's office after showering and dressing. She didn't have an appointment and knew that it was unlikely that Joan would be free to talk to her, but she'd been chomping at the bit since talking to Arthur and wasn't going to be able to wait much longer. If she acted without consulting Joan, she'd be in for at least another lecture and maybe something worse.
Fortunately, Joan was in the office and actually seemed happy for the interruption. ("Maybe the DCS has worse things to deal with than my lone-wolf tendencies," Annie thought. "Good to know.") Annie sat across the desk from Joan and got right to the point.
"Joan, I want to find out who really killed Jai and why."
Joan did her damned eyebrow thing, leaving Annie to wonder whether she was impressed and intrigued or had been expecting that for a while. Probably the latter, which meant she was now waiting to hear what else Annie had to say. No doubt Joan wanted to know whether they were on the same page or one of them was already a few moves ahead.
"Arthur's official investigation ended right after we finally got some evidence of what Jai was up to and why someone might want to kill him," Annie continued.
Joan leaned back in her chair. "Go on," she said.
"Think about what happened, step by step. Weeks after Jai was killed, we found a clue at his safe house: He was collating the files from all of his blown missions, hoping to figure out who had an interest in tanking all of them. The picture of Simon was in one of those files. We decided that I should try to bring Simon in, but I failed. Then, to make a long story short, Lena killed Simon, and I killed Lena. At that point, I figured `case closed' on Jai. Lena had been a double for years, and Simon was part of her network. She must have been the one sabotaging Jai's ops, and she or someone working for her must have killed Jai when she discovered that he was investigating and was on to Simon."
Joan leaned forward, putting her elbow on the desk and her chin on her fist. She directed rapt attention to Annie and said "Sounds like a reasonable explanation. Why do you think it's wrong?"
"I'm not sure it's wrong, exactly, but it's incomplete," Annie answered. "It doesn't explain all of the facts. Mostly it doesn't explain what happened next."
"Henry," Joan said.
"Yes," Annie continued, now pacing around the office as she told the rest of the story. "If everything connected with Jai had actually ended when I killed Lena, there'd be no reason to doubt that theory of his death. But things didn't end there.
"Before long, Henry was released from prison. Why was he released at that time? Did the deal that he cut have anything to do with Lena's operation? Was he unable to reveal something valuable while Lena was still alive to take revenge? But the really big question is 'why did Henry blame Arthur for Jai's death?' Henry was a vicious bastard, but we all know that he wasn't stupid. He knew that Arthur isn't the kind of person who would want to see Jai dead, in spite of whatever professional differences Arthur had with Jai or with him."
Joan leaned back again. Now she was smiling broadly, leaving Annie no doubt that she'd had the same thoughts and was happy finally to be discussing them. She stood, walked to the window, and picked up the narrative as Annie sat back down on the other side of the desk.
"No, Henry certainly wasn't stupid, but he seems to have been deranged at the end," Joan said. "I never believed that he really blamed Arthur for Jai's death. I was never even sure that Henry truly mourned Jai; he'd been such a lousy father. But Henry did have an axe to grind with Arthur – many axes. He'd been a mentor and an ally of Arthur's early on. He felt betrayed when Arthur refused to go along on the journey to the dark side that he took as DCS. He must have been crazy with jealousy when he was forced to retire early and Arthur got the job.
"If he were still the old Henry, though, he wouldn't have gone on a murderous rampage in order to get back at Arthur. He'd have used his political connections and his remaining friends at Langley to sabotage Arthur's career and mine. Lexington Global would have been a perfect staging ground for his dirty tricks. What made him freak out? And why did he keep telling Arthur that he was just after revenge for Jai when it was so obvious he was after more than that?"
"I want to find the answers – all of them," Annie said. She waited for Joan to sit down and face her across the desk. She felt surprisingly calm now and knew that she'd made the right decision to tell Joan what she wanted to do. Joan's reprimand the week before had not been for taking initiative, only for taking it without the blessing of anyone in authority – in other words, without her blessing. Well, now Annie was doing it Joan's way; if no blessing was forthcoming, maybe she really was in the wrong job.
Joan sat across from Annie, keeping her back ramrod straight and her face inscrutable. "Ok," she said quietly. "It will have to be an off-book op. For now, just you working alone and reporting to me. Until we know what, if anything, you're likely to find, I don't want you even to read in Auggie."
"Fine," Annie said. "We all know at this point that I can work without Auggie. He's got his own ops to deal with in Special Projects, anyway."
She hadn't consciously thought about whether she wanted to involve Auggie, but, as soon as Joan said not to, she knew Joan was right. "Ill advised" is what the old Auggie would have told her calmly. At this point in their relationship, he might just scream "Are you out of your goddamned mind, Annie?" as soon as she even hinted that she wasn't finished with the Wilcoxes, father and son. Joan would have to find someone else if they needed tech expertise.
"Well," Joan said as she stood up and put her coat on, "I'm pleased that you came to me with this idea rather than just forging ahead on your own. Think about where you want to start, and we'll talk again in a day or two. Right now, I have to get home to Mac and Arthur."
Annie put her own coat on and headed for the door. "Thanks, Joan."
"Don't forget that you'll have to continue your work on the Ukrainian review. This Jai and Henry stuff is off-book and can't take up all of your time."
"Of course. I can work on more than one thing at a time," Annie said. "Have a good night, and give my regards to your guys."
Joan sat back down and dialed the phone a few seconds after Annie shut the door. "Clara," she said. "Annie just left. She wants to … how did she put it … `find out who really killed Jai and why.' Is everything ready on your end?"
"Oh, come on, Joanie" Clara snorted. "Everything was ready on my end before Annie and I started the Ukrainian review. I'm monitoring every keystroke, every mouse click, every file, every phone call – so far, she hasn't done anything you'd want to hear about. Good to know that the game is finally afoot."
"Ok, keep me posted," Joan said. "And Clara, it's great to be working with you again."
"Any time, Joanie. Good night."
THE END
A/N: As some of you have probably guessed, I was immensely frustrated by Season 4. I didn't believe that a conniving, venal bureaucrat like Henry would suddenly become a deluded mass murderer. I felt cheated when both Teo and Helen were killed off as soon as they started to get interesting. I thought Annie behaved totally irresponsibly, even by the standards of a lovable maverick. For months after the season ended last November, the characters kept talking to each other in my head, trying to tie up loose ends and make sense out of all of the inconsistency and unanswered questions. I finally decided that I had to get all of that dialogue out of my head before Season 5 begins. The result was "Heart to Hearts Require Talking."
I'm still deciding whether I want to write more C.A. fanfiction and, in particular, whether I want to develop my O.C. Clara Weinberg. If you have an opinion on the subject, please either private-message me or post a review of "Heart to Hearts Require Talking."