12:18 pm—IFF

Amanda needed the stability of something normal. Her stomach bug had been nothing more than a little stomach upset the evening of her daughter's illness and into the evening after the attacks. And given her worry about Philip during that time, she wasn't even sure it had been an actual stomach bug. It could have just been stress.

Those two days had been hell—and she didn't use that word lightly. Still, she'd taken the morning off before she'd gone into work. She, like Lee and Jamie and everyone else, needed to be needed today.

"Amanda!" Francine cried, in surprise, as she walked past Amanda's cubicle in the bull pen. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm working, Francine," Amanda said, practically ignoring the blond.

"But—but what about your family?"

Amanda looked up in surprise. "They're fine," she said, eyeing Francine curiously. "Philip was taken to a VA hospital in Richmond after the attack on the Pentagon."

"I'm glad he's safe," Francine said, earnestly. "And—it's good to see you."

Amanda blinked as Francine walked into Lee's office. Had that really been Francine Desmond? The woman who had taken it upon herself since Amanda's first day at the Agency to point out how ill-equipped the housewife was for espionage?

Amanda shook the thoughts from her head as she gathered up her laptop, notepad, pen, and tape recorder. She'd probably need the speed of typing quickly to keep up with the debriefing, but truth be told, she preferred to take notes on a piece of paper with a pen—like she'd always done it.

And given Lee's experience in New York, she thought it only prudent to make a back-up of the back-up by taping the debriefing.

"Mrs. King!"

Amanda turned back, not surprised to be called by her ex-husband's name. She and Lee still hadn't told the Agency about their marriage—and they'd been married for nearly fifteen years.

"Phone call on line 3," Justine said as she put the phone down.

Amanda nodded, juggling the items in her hands as she walked over to the phone. Placing the laptop and other items on the desk beside the phone, she picked up line 3. "Amanda King."

Lee poked his head out of his office, motioning for her to come.

She shrugged and pointed to the phone as she heard a deep, moderately raspy voice. "Amanda? It's me. Joe."

"Joe?"

Lee sighed, hearing her ex-husband's name, and nodded his approval as if he understood that she would need to be late to the meeting.

"Yeah. Is this okay?" he asked, nervously. "I mean, that I call you at work."

"Yeah, Joe. It's okay," she said with a small smile. "I hear you're in Paris."

"Yes," he affirmed. "I was supposed to go home yesterday, but they grounded all the flights to the States until further notice. The EAO isn't thrilled, but I think they understand."

"What were you doing for the EAO in Paris?" Amanda asked, in surprise. "I mean, it's not like France is a third-world country…"

"No, but France has allied with us in a few aid projects lately, so I'm meeting with some of my contacts," he explained calmly. "Or, rather, I was meeting my contacts up until yesterday. Now, I have to figure out what I'm going to do with my time."

Amanda nodded. "Yes."

"Look, I'm not calling to talk about being in Paris or having free time here or anything," Joe explained earnestly. "I wanted to know—how's Philip doing?"

"Philip? You hadn't heard?" Amanda asked as she sat in the chair beside the phone. "Well, he's going home today."

"I hadn't heard," Joe explained. "The last thing I knew was that he was in Richmond, and that he was safe."

"Yes. He's been in Richmond for the past couple of days. Julie phoned and said he'd probably be discharged later this afternoon," Amanda clarified.

"Good."

"She also said he's, uh, not doing very well emotionally right now," Amanda added, slowly. "Apparently, he's had a few mood swings since she got there, and he's reluctant to talk about anything that happened, and he insists that he wasn't scared."

"You've got to give him some time, Amanda," Joe said slowly. "It can't have been easy to witness—to experience—what he did."

"I'm afraid that he hasn't told us everything about the Colonel," Amanda said with a sigh. "I'm afraid he might actually have witnessed everything that happened to the Colonel."

"Well, if he did," Joe murmured with a sigh of his own, "you can't exactly fault him for not wanting to talk about it, can you?"

"No, I suppose not," Amanda admitted.

"I wish I was there," Joe said after a few moments. "I hate not being able to do anything."

"Join the club," Amanda murmured herself. "Lee, Jamie, Julie, and I have all felt the same way. And I suspect the whole country has as well."

"You're probably right about that," he admitted.

"What time is it over there?" Amanda asked, curiously.

"Six-fifteen. I have reservations for dinner soon, but I wanted to catch up with you. I wanted to see how you and Lee were doing."

"We're good—well, not good, but we're going to be okay," Amanda explained. "I mean, hearing about his uncle was a shock, and so, we've been taking each day a little at a time, but he's safe, Philip's safe, and—we're going to be okay."

"That's good to hear."

"Listen, Joe, I've—I've got a meeting I've got to head off to," Amanda said regretfully.

"Oh, I didn't even think about how your work must have been affected by all of this!"

"We're—busy," she said after a moment. "But we're going to be okay at work too."

"Ever the optimist," Joe said somewhat affectionately. "Tell Lee I said hello."

"I will," Amanda said with a smile as she stood. "Goodbye, Joe. And good luck."

"Thanks—if I'm ever going to get home, I think I'm going to need it." Joe paused for a moment before he began again. "Goodbye and good luck to you too."

"Thank you, Joe."

"I guess I'll see you when I'm back in DC," Joe said after a moment.

"You will, "Amanda affirmed. "Good bye."

"Goodbye, Amanda."

With a small sigh, she hung up the phone before she picked up her load again and hurried into the meeting.

"…we have thirteen agents who have been on assignment outside of the country who can't return until the travel restrictions are lifted," Francine explained, reviewing her notes. "Penelope Granger, who was on assignment in the Czech Republic, Bill Michaels, who was on assignment in the Caymans, Yolinda Carter, who was on assignment in Beirut…"

"I sent them all on their assignments, remember?" Lee interrupted as he reached for her notes. "I'll review the file when we're through with this meeting."

Francine looked somewhat wide-eyed at his desire to speed the meeting along, but she nodded and turned over the single sheet of paper. "All right. There they are—all thirteen of them."

"Wonderful," Lee said as he handed the paper to Amanda to include in her notes. "Amanda, Francine has been filing me in on the agents who are out of the office."

"Oh," she said with a nod. She could tell that Lee was getting somewhat bored. She knew he hadn't come for this kind of bureaucratic necessity. He'd come hoping that someone needed him in the field—needed him to find justice or something like it for his uncle, his stepson, and the rest of his family.

She'd also known that he wasn't likely to get such a call.

"We've been working with Crypto to reduce the lag in communications. So far, we've managed to reduce the backlog by almost one quarter," Francine reported.

"We?" Lee pressed.

Amanda noticed a slight blush appear on Francine's cheeks. "Dr. Walker from Cryptology and I have been working closely together to try and increase man hours while we tried to make sense of the attacks."

"And what have you found about the attacks?"

Francine looked uncomfortable. "Nothing yet."

"There could be another attack tomorrow," Lee said, looking at her with a pointed and steely look that Amanda had rarely seen in their partnership and never seen in their marriage.

"Actually," Fred Fielder interrupted. "The DIA suggests that is highly unlikely."

"I tend to agree with Fred," Amanda added.

"If they haven't attempted another attack by now, I don't think they've got another one planned," Francine managed, visibly intimidated by Lee. And Amanda couldn't blame her.

Lee sighed. "I know that in my head," he admitted. "But I have to—we all have to—assume that the attacks two days ago weren't the end game. It's our job to be vigilant." He swallowed. "We let the country down in the worst way possible. We didn't hear about this—we should have heard about this. And because we didn't hear about this, thousands of people died."

The whole room was deathly still and quiet, the heaviness of his words settling over them like a dense fog.

"I don't ever want to experience anything like that again—not as a member of this Agency, not as a citizen of this country," Lee continued. "So, let's keep working with Crypto." He turned to Francine. "You're already liaising well with them. Keep it up." He turned to Fielder. "I want you to cover Transcriptions and Translations. Tell Transcriptions that the tapes I sent over this morning are priority one."

Fielder nodded.

"I know this office has been through a lot in the last few days. Each of you has taken up a lot of responsibility, and I wanted to offer my personal thanks," he said, and Amanda could see the emotion welling up in him again. "But the Colonel was a man who always did his duty, and so, I'm here—to do what he would have wanted me to do. To serve this country in the only way I know how by making sure that this never happens again."

The others in the room nodded.

"Francine, if you have any other information I'll need, you can just leave the reports on my desk," he said, looking almost twenty years older than he really was.

She nodded, placing a stack of papers on his desk.

"You're dismissed."

The other agents left, and Amanda looked over at her husband. "You didn't have to come back so soon—not even the Colonel would have expected that of you."

"Maybe," he said with a shrug. "But I'm here now, so let's just get some good things done, okay?"

She nodded as she reached for the files on the desk. "Why don't I read through these and get you a bullet-point summary of them?"

Lee turned a grateful, though sad, smile to her. "What would I do without you?"

"You'd have to read a lot more reports," Amanda teased, hoping to get a smile out of him.

He managed a wan smile before he returned his attention to the desk. "That was Joe on the phone?"

"He wanted to make sure that we were okay."

"And what did you tell him?" Lee asked, fingering the corner of the desktop calendar absently.

"I told him that we were going to be okay."

Lee nodded.

"I told him that Julie's worried about Philip."

Lee's brow furrowed as he lifted his gaze to hers.

"He's started to exhibit some signs of traumatic stress," Amanda said with a sigh.

Lee nodded as he began to understand. "It's hard," he murmured quietly. "You're never the same after you see something like that."

"Did he tell you what he saw?"

Lee shook his head. "He didn't have to," he admitted.

Amanda knew better than to ask questions. Lee had a whole section of his early Agency days which were classified—even from her. What little she'd pieced together about the Oz network and their early dealings was enough to tell her not to ask any absolutely unnecessary questions—for her sake as well as for his.

Lee put his hand on his wife's. "It won't be an easy ride back to a normal life for Philip, and it won't ever be the same, but you're right—he will be okay. Especially with Julie's help."

Amanda nodded as tears welled up in her eyes. "The thought that my little boy—" she began.

"He's not your little boy anymore, Amanda," Lee said with a sigh. "He's a man. He's a soldier. And his life has just been turned on its ear. He probably won't talk about some of these things with you, but I'll make sure he gets whatever help he needs, okay?"

Amanda nodded. "Thank you."

Lee's face grew stony. "The Colonel would have done same." Lee's jaw flexed as if he was holding back tears. "The Colonel did do the same for me—after I got home from the Turkish catacombs. But I was too stupid to realize it meant he cared. I thought he was disappointed in me."

Amanda patted his hand in an effort to reassure him.

"Philip needs to take this in his own time," Lee explained as he forced an attempt at a supportive smile. "He'll be okay, Amanda. He just isn't right now. And, for now, that's okay."

Amanda managed a brave smile, and Lee squeezed her fingers gently. "He's going to be fine."

Amanda nodded slowly. "He's going to be fine," she repeated softly.