13

Scotch Thoughts

Spiderweb

His fingers ached. He couldn't remember the last time he had done so much typing, certainly not since Amanda had come to the Agency. But he would have typed twice as much today if he'd had to; he was so glad that Operation Spiderweb was concluded, and they had at least been able to successfully bring Kuragin in. But the expense of the operation had been high. Losing those two other defectors had been tragic. On a more personal level, investigating the Agency leak had been costly as well. Maybe in the past an investigation like that would not have had personal costs to him, but the suspicion that Amanda could have possibly been the double agent had almost been more than he could handle. The fact that he had to acknowledge that fact was true concerned Lee, and he prepared to sit down and once again debrief himself. This was becoming a regular routine for him, he recognized, as he took his scotch to the couch and gathered his thoughts.

Searching Amanda's house had been the hardest order that Lee had had to obey in a long time. It had been even harder than escorting her from the bull pen the day before. That had been hard enough; he had begun to take for granted having her friendly face around. For a moment after she had left the bull pen, he had been tempted to consider the Agency without her presence; he couldn't then. Staring at her house as he and Francine had followed her earlier that same day, it had felt for a moment that the white house, its picket fence and the family inside of it had begun to blur into a mirage. Actually, standing outside her door preparing to go inside was like waking from a bad dream and determining whether it was just a dream or reality; what he would find on the inside would determine his reality. For some reason that he was only beginning to become aware of, it was very important to him that Amanda be the person he thought that she was. He couldn't believe that she was the one being targeted for such an investigation. He had just begun to feel connected to a person, a real person, and all of a sudden he wasn't sure what was real. He had never doubted that Amanda was anything other than she had presented herself - she had to be. Although he didn't actually doubt her, maybe this time he had been tempted to doubt because in his life experience people could and did betray you; what would make Amanda any different?

As he entered the familiar kitchen, he found that he had to force himself to look at his surroundings with the critical perspective of his professional eyes. His memory was assaulted with images and sensations of other times he had entered that very space: with a toothbrush that had been left behind on their first weekend assignment together, the time he had snuck in to try to bring her back to the Agency so that she could remember who he was, and the time he entered her house as a dead man and was brought back to life in more ways than one with her relieved embrace. This time he had entered as a cat burglar looking for things he never wanted to find. All of a sudden, the apparently innocuous surroundings that he had always attributed to a suburban mother were suspect.

He hadn't found anything except a scared Amanda clutching a baseball bat - and a map of Czechoslovakia. He had never been so relieved to see a map of Eastern Europe before. Of course, it had been for a school project, as were the radio parts. Of course, Amanda was who he had known her to be. The relief that had flooded through him at that moment had made him almost giddy, until he realized that he had broken her trust by entering her home in such a way. In that next moment he knew that what he really had wanted to do was return to her the faith in her that had just been restored to him. In the past, he would have bluffed his way through her inevitable question of why he was there, sneaking up on her in her own house. But this time he needed to tell her the truth. Why did he need to tell her the truth? He knew she would be hurt by it. He wanted her to know that he had never doubted her innocence for a minute, even though he had to admit that when all the pieces were put together like Larner had done, it was logical to conclude that Amanda could be a double agent. But only if you didn't really know Amanda, and he did. He knew her well, he realized, and he took a sip of his scotch as he tried to keep his memory clear of certain recent experiences with Amanda in San Angelo that would highlight how well he really was getting to know her.

Bringing his thoughts back to the moment in her house, he couldn't help but remember the relief he had felt when she had told him about the map and the radio. It had made him feel light headed. He'd sure had to work hard to get his professional side back on the job; his relief had gone a little too far into the personal side, he realized now. Among the other questions he had needed to ask her, he had needed to ask about her coffee with Bryce Topping because being seen with him was also part of the case against her. But did he need to be that relieved to hear that he was only an acquaintance through her son's school? Why on earth would he have felt anything like jealousy over what Amanda did in her free time? As long as the guy wasn't using her to compromise national security, why would it concern him? Lee tried to casually sip his scotch, but he was halted by the recollection of the moment in the restaurant when he had first seen Amanda walk in with that stiff and then again his questions about how she knew Topping as they talked about code words in the Bull Pen. Why did he feel like he had responded with jealousy? He had no claim on Amanda, and he had no intention of even wanting one either. He laughed at himself; it wasn't as if they were married! Or anything like that.

Feelings were such irrational and counterproductive things sometimes anyway, just like he had told Amanda as she sat there on the edge of her family room couch. It was clear that there was an inside job being planned and executed from somewhere inside the Agency. Someone was trying to destroy Spiderweb and Amanda along with it. True, it was very important to her that people could trust her; she was simple in that regard. She was straight forward, and she wanted people to believe the best about her; he could understand how something like this would hurt her very much. But he had been right, it was no time to get bogged down in hurt feelings - they had a case to solve.

And she had been the one to recognize that Margaret was the true culprit. She had endured Francine's insensitive remarks about being someone who was easily overlooked. Thinking about it now, he could have wrung her neck for how dismissive she was of Amanda, but Amanda had taken it in stride and had done the very thing he had encouraged her to do earlier in her family room, she had put the pieces together. He was no longer surprised at this, he noticed, and he sure was proud of her. He was also very excited to finally have a plan to stop the Spiderweb sabotage and reinstate Amanda as the asset to the Agency that she truly was.

Putting Amanda in charge of collecting Kuragin was a great way for her to prove how trustworthy she was and how much everyone really did trust her. Lee trusted her; he knew that now completely, if he had even doubted it in the first place. It was nice to have someone in his life that he knew would always be who they said that they were. It was nice to know that Amanda's concern and friendship had no ulterior motive. Finishing off the last drop of the scotch in his glass, he smiled to himself again as he remembered how he had felt the other morning outside Billy's office when Amanda had told him that she was glad that he was ok after the attack in the restaurant the night before. It wasn't often that someone let him know that they had lain awake all night wondering what he was doing or if he was ok. It was nice to have someone to trust and not just with Agency secrets.