Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Tail of the Dancing Weasel
It was hard not to wonder what Billy's reasoning was. Why would he put Lee Stetson, one of the top agents, in the Q Bureau? The little office was where dreams went to die — or, to put it in less fanciful terms, the place where second- or third-rate agents went to serve their probationary term before they were inevitably fired.
All she was saying was that Fred Fielder would be a better candidate to fill the newly-vacated Q Bureau than either Lee or Amanda.
If she thought that the change would signal the start of an era of peace and sleepiness, she was dead wrong. She was still bitter about the fact that she had been stuck in a planning meeting when the excitement happened.
Who knew that Mrs. Marsden had a semiautomatic hidden behind that desk? Or that anyone, least of all the aged founder of the agency himself, could leap from the second-floor railing and dodge thirty-six bullets?
To her chagrin, she discovered that not all the details were true. Yes, Harry V. Thornton had used his security pass to come through the parking garage into the Q Bureau, and, yes, he had leapt from the second floor. No, it had not been the real Harry V. Thornton. Yes, Mrs. Marsden had a semiautomatic behind her desk. No, she was not a good shot.
Billy sent her to Fabrications to find the weaselly-looking hiring mistake that was Ephraim Beaman. He was the only one who could explain how Larry Crawford could manage to gain entry to the agency under Thornton's name. She lured him up to Billy's office under the somewhat erroneous assumption that he would be handsomely rewarded for his information.
It was, as Francine had taken to saying lately, such a mess. How had Crawford, a distinctly bottom-of-the-barrel type of agent, managed to so effectively abuse his position that he was able to secure a top-level clearance? And, since he definitely was not using that top-level clearance for anything even resembling legitimate agency business, what was he really doing?
The four of them — Lee, Amanda, Billy, and Francine herself — got down to business investigating that question. Lee's part of the investigation involved delving into some extra-important business for Billy, and Amanda's part seemed to be inexpertly tailing Lee, so Francine took over the responsibility of setting the search grid in the Q Bureau. She roped Duffy into it, and they sat down with a computer and sifted gingerly through piles of old food containers, takeout cartons, and haphazard files. She knew that they were looking for the last thing Larry Crawford had touched, since he had clearly come back to get it. She didn't know anything about what they were looking for, though, which made the whole job much more difficult.
She was in the middle of section 14J when Amanda breezed in, looking far too casual to be allowed. She settled herself in one of the chairs and began riffling through one of the stacks of files, hemming and hawing and straightening until Francine thought she just might bite her head off.
"Amanda, please! Wrong side! I am still setting the search grid!"
Amanda, as usual, tried to use common sense. Unfortunately common sense didn't really have a place in a government agency.
"Francine, can't we just clean the place up a little bit while you set the search grid?"
Her reply sounded more defeated than she meant it to. "This is a search, Amanda, not Home Ec."
"You're right," Amanda replied instantly, sensing danger and trying to avert it. "I'm sorry."
Francine eyed her curiously. That sounded like something someone would say if they had already been chewed out a few too many times in one day.
"All right," she said, without acknowledging Amanda's apology outright. "We have to establish a time sequence here. We have to figure out the very last thing that Crawford left in here."
"The last thing that Crawford left in here," Amanda repeated slowly, and then she was off — off on some wild tangent involving lost earrings and pinched ears and who knew what other non sequiturs, before she plunked herself down in Crawford's chair and pulled a file out of the desk drawer. Both Francine and Duffy watched in utter confusion as she read the label. "Atkins Chemical. Look at this, Francine," she said, rolling the chair absently from section 9F to 10G.
She just might scream.
"Amanda, excuse me, but your lightning intuitive leaps fail to make any sense."
"Francine," Amanda replied seriously, "you're probably right. But I think I'll just check the file in the vault anyway."
She pushed off and stood up, leaving the chair straddling the line between 8E and 9F. Francine stared after her, trying to get the better of her irrational irritation, and the phone rang.
It was mystery upon mystery now. Why was the phone set to record immediately without picking up? Why was someone with a vaguely familiar voice asking for "Kolinsky"? Who was this "Kolinsky"? Why did the person hang up as soon as she spoke?
The door opened and Lee entered, looking incredibly ticked off. Perhaps a more formal word like "annoyed" would do for a report, but the slang term described it better.
"Hi," she said, surprised to see that he glanced over at Amanda with pursed lips and flared nostrils.
"Hi," he replied, the gentle tone unusually directed at her and utterly at variance with the exasperated and angry expression he wore.
"Any luck?"
"Nah, not the good kind," he said, sliding the chair back to 9F where it was supposed to be. "What's with the unmarked line?"
"I don't know," she replied, because if anyone could figure it out, Lee could. "Crawford's got some kind of phone surveillance hookup here. A call just came in for a 'Kolinsky'."
"What?" he asked, confused now.
"Kolinsky," she repeated.
"Never heard of a Kolinsky," he said, the defeat now evident in his tone. He glanced at the vault. "Look, why don't you and Frank knock it off for the rest of the day, huh?"
It was still weird to hear Duffy called Frank.
"If you feel like cataloguing, we're up to 14J," she said, slapping her notebook on his desk. "Have fun."
"'Night, Amanda," she called as she left.
"Goodnight, Francine," was the too-loud reply. Something was definitely going on.
She waited behind, but all she could hear was an overly-polite conversation about Lee walking Amanda to her car. It was farther from IFF now, with the parking garage closed and locked until they got this Crawford-Thornton thing resolved.
She missed everything. She had missed the Marsden scene in the foyer. Then she missed the fact that Gregory was involved. Then she missed the revelation that Harry had been a triple agent for thirty years.
Nobody tells me anything, she thought, and she slammed the door of the Q Bureau behind her just a little harder than she needed to.
She might not be kept in the know, she reflected bitterly, but she had done an excellent job on that search grid, at least.