Author's Note: Virgil chauffeurs the chauffeur. Alan and Tin-Tin set a date. Miss Hansa resurfaces. Someone cases the World Senate. Jeff and Gordon have a heart to heart. Thanks to Hobbeth for betareading, and to her, Susanmartha, and Lillehafrue for being sounding boards.

Disclaimer: I don't own the canon characters, I'm just writing about them. Please do not copy or hyperlink this fiction without my express written or verbal consent. This includes adding this fiction to C2 communities. I may be reached at my email of record. Any and all original characters, including Cindy Lou/Lucinda and her cats (especially the cats) are mine and may not be used without my express written consent.

Enjoy,

Tikatu

"Are you comfortable back there, Parker?" Virgil asked. He didn't look back at his passenger, who was strapped into one of Thunderbird Two's crew seats.

"Yus, Mr. Virgil. Ay h'am. Very comfortable." Parker tried looking out the wide windscreen, but all he saw was unending bright blue sky. He mentally went over his checklist again: land at Bongo-Bongo, drive FAB-1 to Sydney to catch the Skythrust non-stop to London. Then to Foxleyheath for a good night's sleep and a chance to clean FAB-1 before taking the back seat to the Rolls-Royce plant for reupholstering. After that, a mechanic friend of his with a deft hand at "unauthorized modifications" would help install the surprising little odds and ends Milady insisted on in back... such as the handcuffs built into the arm rest.

The thought of Bongo-Bongo, coupled with the presence of the young man before him, made him wince. While on the island, he had kept himself busy taking care of Milady, and helping Kyrano in the kitchen, avoiding Virgil Tracy as much as possible. Now there was an hour's flight to Bongo-Bongo, where Thunderbird Two could land undetected and disgorge the Rolls. It was time to say what needed saying – no matter how humiliating it might be.

"A-hem."

Virgil shifted his gaze from the instruments, turning his head as far to the right as he could. "Is there a problem, Parker?"

Parker took a deep noisy breath, filling his sizable proboscis. "Not so's much a problem, Mr. Virgil, as a matter between h'us." He hemmed and hawed for a moment, trying to figure out how to say what he needed without looking a right fool. Finally, he took another deep breath. "Wot Ay'm tryin' to say is... Ay was a bit 'asty-like wiv me fists the day we was last h'at Bongo-Bongo. And Ay h'apologize fer takin' a pop at you. Ay 'ope Ay didn't 'urt you much."

The pilot snorted a laugh. "You happened to hit me just about where my brother had a couple of days before. Made a few people wonder why the bruise hadn't healed up." He paused, and shook his head. "Apology accepted, Parker. I won't say I deserved getting decked with the old Parker Haymaker, but I certainly did need something to wake me up to my own stupidity. Seems that the Haymaker did the trick." He turned back to his instruments. "My timing couldn't have been much worse in that situation."

Parker nodded in silent agreement. He paused, then asked, his voice hesitant, "H'If Ay may be so bold as ter ask, 'ave you an Milady come ter an h'agreement on the matter?"

Virgil sighed. "Not really. She wasn't willing to discuss it, other than to say she felt my drubbing at your hands to be appropriate punishment." Pausing, he frowned. "I am puzzled, though. Why isn't she going back to Foxleyheath? And why Johannesburg?"

"Ay don't rightly know if h'it's my place ter say h'anything," Parker slowly replied. "H'Except per'aps ter say that she 'as an old school chum living there."

"Ah, okay." Virgil nodded, and left it at that.

xxxx

"But I don't want to wait until next year!"

Alan speared his asparagus with vigor, as if to punctuate what he had to say. He and Tin-Tin had spent some time making love on their return to the hotel, and were just now getting around to having dinner. Tin-Tin had her PDA open to a calendar, and they were trying to decide on a date.

"There's just not enough time to have the wedding at Foxleyheath this summer when the roses are in bloom, no matter how much money we throw at this," Tin-Tin argued, her brows drawn together in a frown. "And if we wait for fall or winter, it will look dreary. It so rarely gets snow before January."

Alan swallowed what he had in his mouth, and pointed his fork at his fiancée. "We could ask Brains to make snow, like he did that one Christmas."

She shook her head vehemently. "I wouldn't ask it of him. I'd feel it was like... rubbing salt into the wound."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and instead turned his attention to his fillet. An idea came to him, and his chewing slowed as he considered it. "Let's get this straight. I don't want to wait a year to get married. There's no way to have the wedding this summer, when Foxleyheath would look its best. If we're to have it in the winter, and in the Northern Hemisphere, you want snow."

"That's right," Tin-Tin said, giving him a calculating look.

Alan sat back and smiled. "So, why don't we say 'thanks, but no thanks' to Lady P's offer, and have the wedding where there's bound to be snow on the ground... and maybe some great skiing. Let's have the wedding at..."

Tin-Tin's eyes grew wide with startled comprehension as they finished the sentence in unison. "...Paradise Peaks!" She smiled widely. "Oh, Alan! That's a wonderful idea! I love it! Let's do it!" Looking again at her PDA, she asked, "What date do you think would work best?"

"How about the first Saturday in December?" he suggested. "It'll be after Thanksgiving, and not too close to Christmas. Do you think that'll be enough time to get things done?"

"It might be." Tin-Tin sounded thoughtful. "It will depend on the dresses, I would think. Hopefully we'll find this date open at the resort. If not, what should we choose as an alternate date?"

"That Sunday?" Alan shrugged. "Really, it doesn't matter to me as long as we have that snow, and it's before December 31."

Tin-Tin smiled, a sly look. "In time to file our taxes jointly?"

Alan, who'd been sipping his wine, sputtered with laughter. "Somehow, I don't think we'll be able to take the married couple's exemption." He put his glass down and stood, leaning over the table to reach her and planting a soft kiss on her lips. "The sooner we marry, the better I'll like it."

"We could always elope," she softly quipped, returning the kiss.

"No! No way! Grandma would have my hide!"Alan's eyes opened wide with shock and he shook his head vigorously. "She wants to see us marry and give her great grandchildren, in that order!" A grin spread over his face as he sat back down. "Still, I'll bet that Dad will wish we'd eloped by the time this is done."

"I think we'll wish we had by then, too!" Tin-Tin said fervently. She looked at the PDA once more. "So, we have a date and a place to take to the wedding planner in the morning?"

"Yeah. I think we do."

xxxx

"Well, that's a sight for sore eyes."

From his desk, Jeff glanced over his reading glasses to where Lou was sitting. She had her legs stretched out, her feet on one of the coffee tables, and the laptop perched on her thighs. "What are you talking about?"

"That defamatory website, the one we hacked? It's down. Got a 404 error when I tried to access it."

"That's good news."

"It is, for the moment. They might just pack up and move to another service provider if they didn't have their own servers. I'll keep an eye out and see if they resurface." Lou closed the window that had the error message, and pulled up another. "However, one of the fan sites has gotten to the survivor of that rescue in Bangkok. She's given them quite an interview, including an interesting description of your Mole prototype."

"The Micro-mole." When Lou looked up with a questioning expression, he added, "Gordon named it at the rescue; he's insisting we keep the name and give the thing a paint job to contrast with the full-sized Mole."

Lou chuckled and shook her head. Jeff thought a moment, then asked, "Can you send me the address? I'd like to know what she had to say."

"Sure. Coming your way." Lou smiled, and her fingers tapped out a quick burst of syncopation. A small box appeared on his screen, asking if he wanted to receive an instant message. The name on it was a simple "208". He gave her a quick, wry look, which she returned with a playful smile, then he clicked on the "yes" button. The IM window popped up with the words, "Hi there, handsome!" in a fat, purple-tinted script, followed by an emoticon cat that stuck its tongue out at him. He chuckled, then a second line scrolled up with the address of the site. He clicked on the address, and a new window opened up.

"This looks pretty slick," he said as he skimmed the homepage. He found the navigation bar titled "Reports from the Field", and used his cursor on it. When he found himself faced with a world map, he clicked on the gold star that indicated where Bangkok was, and beside which a little red "NEW!" floated. The link took him to another page, where the interview's questions and answers were interspersed with pictures of the debris that had been the both the bank and the building across the street.

"Q: What was it like, waiting for International Rescue?

A: It was terribly dark and warm. The walls groaned, and I thought they might fall in on us at any moment. The only light came from Mr. Banyat's phone, and the only voice I heard was that of the man who answered the call. One of the other men called him 'Epsilon', but I called him 'Mr. Thunderbird'. He was so kind, and spoke to me at length, helping to distract me from the terrible position I was in. When the phone's batteries faded, I felt very, very alone and frightened."

"Sounds like John did a great job in keeping her occupied," Jeff murmured. Lou glanced up, but saw Jeff was himself occupied with reading, and went back to her surfing.

"Q: You said that there were two digging machines, one large and one small. What was the small one like?

A: I couldn't really see it very well, but it took up a great deal of the room we had. Though I didn't think about it at the time, it came up at such an angle that it could have drilled right through a wall. The driver must have been very good to keep it from doing that. I could see some colored lights within when the door opened; I would guess the door was on the side, like it was in the huge digger. What I could see of it was dull gray metal, not the bright yellow of the big one. The man who drove it said there was only room for one inside, so he couldn't take me with him. I wanted him to! I was so frightened! But he covered me with a blanket, and gave me air, and a radio, so I could talk to Mr. Thunderbird again. He also left a light, so I didn't feel so frightened."

Jeff glanced up. "It doesn't sound like she really got a good look at the Micro-Mole. She thought the hatch was on the side when it's on the top." He leaned back and tapped his chin with a stylus. "Gordon must have all but rolled out of that thing if she's credible. He didn't tell me that."

"There are probably lots of details that you don't get," Lou commented without looking up. "I've been reading through a few of the official logs, and I've got plenty of questions, many I'm sure can't be accurately answered after so long a time. Memories fade, or get confused. That's why your policy of having a debrief right after the rescue is so important."

"Even so, there are details that the boys remember later as they're writing their reports." Jeff continued to read even as he spoke. "This Miss Hansa remembers a lot, but mostly she remembers her feelings."

Lou put her laptop aside and rose, walking over to Jeff. "That's because these aren't trained interrogators, Jeff. They're amateur reporters, and they're looking for the emotions. In the hands of someone trained to ask questions, Miss Hansa would give up far more information than she even consciously knows she has." She hitched a hip up on the edge of the desk so she had her back to one of the supports and folded her arms. "And that's why this site is as dangerous as the defamatory one was. There are names, dates, ways to identify the people involved. And this is very likely how Tom got most of that information he gave me. If he'd been at it a little while longer, he might have blown your cover entirely." Unfolding one arm, she extended her hand, palm up. "That smear website has an agenda, and will be looked at askance by most people because of that. This site's agenda is information, and it will be treated as an authority of sorts."

Jeff snorted a breath, and gave Lou a long, searching look. "What do you propose we do? Send a cease and desist?"

She frowned and looked down, arms folded again. "I'm of two minds there. You don't want to look like the neighborhood bully, pulling down all the sites and spoiling everyone's fun. But... you also don't want to leave yourself open to the kind of investigation that would lead to outing the family." Shaking her head, she sighed. "Let me think about it some more. Do you have any legal consultants for IR?"

"Yes," Jeff said, nodding as he tapped the stylus lightly on the desktop. "When I first got this idea, I asked a couple of lawyers, international ones, old friends of mine and trustworthy. I made them agents, and consulted them on how to do this so we'd be legal... or as legal as we could be in this world." He dropped the stylus on his desk, and laced his fingers together. "Obviously we can't fulfill every little rule and regulation of every single country, but we've managed to keep from breaking too many laws."

Lou looked up at him, her face reflecting her troubled thoughts. "I don't think you've been as successful as you think, Jeff. As we discussed earlier, IR may not have been directly, criminally implicated in a couple of episodes – that business in the Anderbad Tunnel being chief among them – the evidence left behind was probably very incriminating. And in those episodes, people died at the hands of your operatives. Your sons." She paused, and the quiet between them grew, until finally she softly added, "It's the reason why I want to keep your family clear of this incident in Maine, because I don't see any way at all to keep IR out of it. And why I want to help you keep IR secret – and your boys safe."

Jeff said nothing for a long moment. "Anderbad was self-defense," he finally said, his voice rough. "And a rescue. Penelope would have died if the boys hadn't taken action."

"I know that," Lou said, gazing at him and nodding slightly. "But how would it look to a judge and jury? How would it look to the world?"

A quiet clanking sound made both of them turn their attention to the other end of the room. Gordon had just closed the grillwork door, and was on the steps from the study. He glanced over at them and smiled. "I'm sorry if I interrupted you. I was wondering, Dad, when we could get together and discuss the agents... and that offer you made."

Jeff and Lou exchanged a look, and Lou shrugged a little. "No time like the present," she said.

"I agree." Jeff sounded relieved. "We can finish this discussion later."

"Yes. I do need time to come up with a plan to deal with those fan sites." She slid off the desk and went back to the sofa and the laptop. With a few quick keystrokes, she was ready to go. "I'll talk to you later, Jeff."

"Sure."

Lou slipped out onto the balcony, settling into a lounger there. Jeff dipped into the files behind his desk, and came out with a folder. He brought it with him as he joined Gordon on the sofa, sitting right where Lou had been a few moments before.

"So," he said, opening the folder and pulling out a copy of the sheet he'd given Gordon when he'd made his offer. "Let's take a look at these operatives."

xxxx

The World Senate building was never truly empty, though after a certain hour, it did become quiet as it was closed to the general public. The politicians often worked into the night, negotiating, reviewing, delaying, expounding, obfuscating, and generally getting on with the business of lawmaking. Select pages and secretaries stayed, as did a cadre of security officers, and of course, the janitorial staff. So no one commented when a smartly dressed young woman, a secretary in the Vice President's office, entered the building before it closed.

The junior senator from Great Britain ran into the young woman in the senators' powder room. She smiled and greeted the secretary, who was now dressed in the drab khaki of the cleaning staff. The cleaning woman – for that's the assumption the senator made – said nothing in response, and seemed to be unaware of the politician's existence. The older woman sniffed in mild derision, and went about her business as the secretary-turned-janitor left the restroom.

Once in the hallway, the young woman headed further up into the building, seeking out the quiet stairwells, climbing until she had reached the level above the gallery balcony. She used her ID card to give her access to a restricted stairway, one that took her up beyond the ceiling of the Senate chamber and into the world of lighting and audio hook ups. She opened a door to where a long row of bright, slightly tinted halogen spotlights shone down on the Senate floor. Since the open legislative sessions were covered live on televid no matter when they were held, a good lighting system, one that could illuminate individual senators as they spoke, was essential.

The secretary eased her way along behind the bank of lights, her shoes making no noise. Occasionally she would crouch to peer out between the spotlights, focusing on the main podium. She watched as the various lamps shifted, noting which ones were most frequently aimed at the Senate's President pro tempore, who was at the podium, presiding over the evening's session. At last, the young woman finished her reconnoiter, and headed downstairs. In the powder room, she changed back into her smart business clothes, folded her janitor's uniform into a tiny parcel, tucked it in her jacket pocket, and left the building by the front door. She walked two blocks before a sedan pulled over, and a rear door opened.

"Natane."

The one word was enough to catch her attention, and she got into the car willingly. As the car pulled out into traffic again, the other passenger retrieved the uniform from her pocket, slipping it into a briefcase at his feet.

"Now my dear, take a deep breath and close your eyes. When you open them, you will remember only that I called for you after work, and we are going to dinner."

Natane obeyed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. When her brown eyes fluttered open, she looked vaguely disoriented for a moment, then saw her companion and gave him a brilliant smile.

"So, my dear," Carlos said, returning the smile. "Where shall we go for dinner?"

xxxx

"I'm glad to see that Paul's staying the course," Gordon said, "though I don't blame Atlanta for pulling out. She and Lee are trying to start a family and their jobs are dangerous enough." He put aside the list he and Jeff had been going over.

"Speaking of Paul," Jeff interjected, "we have to do some damage control on our visit to Maine. Lou is certain she'll have to speak to the police at some point or other, and she wants us all to have our ducks in a row regarding how we got to Portland and why we were there." He picked up the list and put it back into the folder, then leaned back, crossing his legs at the ankles. "She thinks that perhaps you could say you were in Maine visiting Paul, which would account for the JT-1's presence the day this all happened."

"What about the hospital?" Gordon asked. "I did my best to avoid being filmed, but I'm not sure I was entirely successful."

Jeff sighed. "In that case, you fall back on a version of your original story: you found Shelley Clarendon in her car, saw she was hurt, and brought her to the hospital. Then you waited around to see how she was doing. In this case, Paul would have been the driver, and came back for you later. You can leave Virgil's friend out of it entirely."

"I see." Gordon nodded slowly. "I'll talk with Paul about it, let him know what's up. He might come up with something better." He let out a sigh. "I guess this all ties in with what I wanted to talk about."

"I'm listening," Jeff said, fixing his gaze on Gordon's face.

Gordon stood and paced back and forth a little before his father, gathering his thoughts. Finally, he sat down again with a sigh.

"Ever since the episode in Maine, I've been having trouble with my role in IR. We're a rescue organization, dedicated to saving lives. And... well, I've come to realize I've taken more lives in the line of duty with IR than I ever did when in WASP." He spread his hands. "In WASP, it was different; it was the military, and I knew that there was a possibility I'd have to kill someone. I never had to, but it was expected, and I was okay with that."

He glanced at his father, who nodded slightly as if to say, "Go on," and "I understand," at the same time. "I do understand that, by saving Dr. Borrender and Lady Penelope, we were stopping a crime. And by saving Aunt Lou and her sister, we were keeping our secrets out of enemy hands." He frowned, uncertain. "But why us? Why did we have to get involved in the first place?" Shaking his head, Gordon continued. "The saboteur in the Fireflash... well, we didn't expect him! He shot first, and if my bullet didn't kill him, the fall from the plane certainly did. But more and more, I feel like we've been acting like FBI agents, or police officers, and that's not what International Rescue is all about. Or, at least, that's not the way I look at it, anyway."

"That's an interesting thought, Gordon," Jeff said, trying to keep his voice and manner neutral. A pause, then he asked, "Is there anything else bothering you?"

Gordon nodded. "Yeah, I guess there is." He looked down at his hands for a moment then raised his gaze to meet his father's. "Don't get me wrong; I do love what I do. When I'm piloting Four, it's all I could want, all I could have wished for when I was thinking of becoming an aquanaut. More than that, actually. But," here he sighed again, "I find myself yearning to get away from the island, to meet more people, to maybe earn that lazy playboy rep I've gotten living at home with Dad." He smiled, and Jeff smiled back, acknowledging the little joke. "Out of all my brothers, I'm the one who never went on to college, never got a degree. I followed in your footsteps that way, Dad, choosing the military right out of high school, getting right into the action without the classroom work." He shrugged. "Sometimes I wonder if I've missed something there."

A deep breath, and he plunged in with his final say. " What I'm trying to say is: I can't continue in IR if I'm going to have to get involved in these... these police actions. And, I want the time to go to college, to have a social life away from the island." His voice lowered. "I want to drop out of International Rescue."