A/N: This is a necessary denouement kind of chapter that will serve as a calm before a very stormy story arch that will end Three Wise Men Season 2. It's going to be a long, action-packed road ahead, but it should be fun. Enjoy!
It was another late afternoon at the Three Wise Men offices. CIA Special Agent Mike Bradley had his shoes kicked off to reveal a new pair of argyle socks propped up on his desk. "Mike, would you put those things away? They smell like rotten limburger cheese!" Peach protested, plugging her nose in a mocking gesture.
"Come on, guys we've still got the problem with the Provos in Afghanistan. Peach, are you greasing the diplomatic wheels with the British?" Harm asked, with Nate's departure, Harm was now the senior officer on the project.
"No such luck, the British are worried that Irish casualties would restart problems, especially in Derry and that's a risk that they're not willing to take." Peach explained with a heavy exhale.
"Did you tell them that British Army casualties at Irish hands would be even tougher to explain?" Harm shot back.
"They aren't listening. As it is, the '98 Good Friday Agreement created a fragile peace. Blair wouldn't shake that if his political life depended on it." Peach retorted.
"Mike, how are we coming on the bio-terrorism database?" Harm turned his focus.
"With the help of our big friend at the State Department, and those intelligence sharing agreements we worked on last week, we've been able to monitor most of the known labs capable of creating biological weapons. The problems occur with China and Iran. Both of them have facilities for the production of strains but neither of them are willing to help us out." Mike tossed Harm a two-hundred page database compilation.
"Of course it's not like we were expecting them to cooperate." Peach rubbed her eyes. "The Chinese have the facilities for super-strains and the Iranians have known black market ties and even with the Russians agreeing to help, their bureaucracy is so shoddy that if something went missing into the underground, it could be seventy-two hours before we knew."
"So, while we're safer then we were a month ago, we're still too vulnerable for the world's superpower?" Harm questioned rhetorically.
"Basically." Peach answered with a nod. "God, this has been the week from hell!" Peach lamented with a whining tone.
"You thinking Beach Blaster this weekend?' Mike asked looking over at Peach.
"Totally feeling that, think we can talk the Secretary into it?" Peach replied with a new light in her eyes.
"Have you ever known Nate to turn down two nights and a day of dancing, drinking, loud music, waterskiing and random hooking up?" Mike retorted.
"Good point." Peach chuckled.
"Excuse me, Beach Blaster?" Harm questioned, a little off kilter about being out of the loop.
"Oh God, Harm, you have to come, bring some of your friends too. They're basically weekends out at the Ross Cottage in Chincoteague where we do nothing but behave like we're in high school again. We do every conceivable thing. The whole weekend turns into a wild pagan bacchanal. People hook up, there's skinny dipping, loud music, Nate normally ends up talking to the cops about the noise or I flirt shamelessly until they join the party and forget about the noise violation, it's great!" Peach was riled up just thinking about it.
"It sounds like all that happens is that everyone throws their maturity out the window for a weekend." Harm chuckled.
"Come on, now, don't get all pretentious on us. Even Bev has come out to Chincoteague for a few of the Blasters, granted she still limits her fun to God appropriate doses. Hell, even Clayton Webb loosens up with us out at the shore on Blaster weekends." Mike added, Harm knew that Mike was goading him by just mentioning Clayton Webb but Harm couldn't very well let Webb upstage him on something like this.
"Alright, so what, I just call a bunch of people and we just show up late Friday night at the shore and party until we pass out in the wee hours of the next morning?" Harm questioned disbelievingly.
"Yeah, well, we have to call Nate and set everything up first. No one's ever been turned away from a Beach Blaster though." Peach hit the 'speakerphone' button and dialled the number for Nate's office.
"You got Nate." Nate answered in his typical fashion.
"Nate, it's Peach, how's your week been?" She questioned lightly awaiting a response.
"A scenic trip through Dante's Inferno. Yours?" Nate replied, even sound exasperated through the phone.
"The Purgatorio, so only slightly better. Mike and I were thinking Beach Blaster for this weekend, you think we can handle it?" Peach asked and she and Mike looked as though their very lives were staked upon his answer.
"Best idea I've heard all day! Mike you order the beer and get your usual crowd. I'll commandeer the helicopter that apparently comes with my new job and pick up some people to make sure that everything's set up for when it really starts jumping. Harm?" Nate, knowing he was on the speaker, fished for the third familiar voice.
"Yeah, buddy, what's up?" Harm hunched over the phone.
"Get Sergei and Mac and everyone up there alright, this is going to be a blast, we haven't done one of these in a long time. Peach, you in the mood to play hostess this weekend?" Nate asked.
"Oh totally, Leatherneck." Peach chuckled. "Finish your work, I'll meet you at Truman in an hour."
"Got it." Nate cut the line.
"Oh Leatherneck." Mike mimicked in a dreamy tone.
"Shut it, Spy guy." Peach tossed a pencil at him. "I'll call the regulars, Mike you get the alcohol and Harm, you call some people, this has got to be one hell of a weekend." All three of them picked up phones and started placing calls.
0246 ZULU
ROSS COTTAGE
CHINCOTEAGUE, VIRGINIA
Harm had managed to wrangle Mac, Sturgis, Sergei and Bobbi into coming to the party. Everyone walked up the walkway from the gravel driveway to the front door. The music could be heard from the road, Nate and Peach had evidently put up some Christmas lights in the house and the patio lanterns outside were covered in coloured tissue paper.
Harm rapped his knuckles on the wooden frame of the screen door to the cottage. Nate opened the bigger wooden interior door before opening the little exterior screen door. "You guys finally made it!" Nate joshed as he handed Harm and Sturgis beers.
"Well, the Beltway was absolute murder." Harm complained as he gave Nate a pat on the shoulder. "And, we couldn't just take a chopper out here."
"No beer for me, Mr. Secretary?" Bobbi asked in her usual argumentative tone.
"No beer for Senators, loose lips." Nate replied s everyone moved a little further into the house. The stereo system blared some great classic rock, the barbecue could be smelled throughout the house and the gang from the CIA seemed to have gathered around the beer cooler.
"Guarding the beer, Mike?" Harm joked as he passed his co-worker.
"Monitoring Webb's intake, we don't want him clubbing any more unsuspecting bovine and getting us hauled into the slammer." Mike replied which cause Harm and Nate to laugh and made Sturgis raise his eyebrows.
"That's probably a wise move." Harm shook Mike's hand and then followed Mac who was following the smell of barbecue out toward the back porch. What they saw was a most amusing scene. The Admiral and Bev were standing over the grill; the Admiral had a chef's hat on and a 'Kiss the Cook' apron.
"You know, Bev, you're only supposed to kiss the cook once, right?" Nate asked, noting the position that his sister and the Admiral were in.
"You play by your rules and I'll play by mine, Nathan." Bev shot back as she kissed the Admiral on the cheek again.
"Sir?" Mac questioned, trying to contain her smile.
"Nice to see you, Colonel." The Admiral nodded, barely moving his eyes from the grill.
"What are you doing here, sir?" Mac had her eyebrows raised in suspicion.
"I was told by a very reliable source that this was an ideal way to spend a weekend. I haven't felt this young in years!" The Admiral joked and laughed heartily along with his girlfriend.
"In that case, sir; pass me a frankfurter and point me toward the ketchup!" Mac replied, the Admiral handed her a hot dog and pointed her off toward the plastic patio table that was adorned with condiments.
"Mac, how can you eat that stuff?" Harm questioned with a familiar, mock lecturing tone.
"Harm, you're going to eat red meat this weekend or so help me God, we'll wax all the hair off your body while you sleep." Nate threatened with crooked grin.
"I'd take him seriously, sir, Marines aren't light with threats like that." Gunny popped out from behind Harm.
"Gunny? Did you stowaway with us?" Harm asked, pleased to see the Gunny here at the party.
"No, sir, the Secretary and I know each other from Physical Therapy; he came by to drag me out here for the weekend. I'm looking forward to waterskiing tomorrow." Gunny was smiling from ear to ear.
"Don't forget the skinny-dipping tonight!" Peach came walking out on to the back balcony.
"Skinny-dipping? You don't approve of this, do you Reverend?" Harm asked, turning toward Bev.
"I'm normally asleep by the time anyone is that drunk." Bev retorted with a very maternal smile.
"Harm, tell me that you're not so square as to find something wrong with a little skinny-dipping." Nate coached with a pleading look.
"Well……I…uh…I." Harm stammered over his words.
"He is. I thought he was going to have a coronary when he thought I was going topless in Australia. Peach, if the girls are doing any skinny-dipping, count me in!" Mac raised a glass of Lemonade that Peach had brought out for her.
"Will do, Colonel." Peach smiled slightly. It was the guys who were trying to contain their intrigue however. The prospects of Mac, Peach and a few of the other girls at the party skinny-dipping certainly held some promise.
"I know what you're thinking." Nate joked, elbowing Harm in the back.
"They won't actually……" Harm started but Nate caught his drift right away.
"They certainly will." Nate affirmed with a nod.
"You mean, completely buck…" Harm's sentence was finished again.
"Naked as the day they were born." Nate was still nodding.
"Nate, this was the best idea EVER!" Harm gave Nate a pat on the back and the two men headed back into the house. "So, you guys just come out here and party like teenagers until Sunday afternoon when you all pack up and head home?"
"That's the plan, between the drinking, dancing and just about anything else, these weekends are great. It's one weekend where almost everything is at your fingertips; you just have to reach for it." Nate extended an arm to illustrate his point. "There are nine bedrooms in this huge cottage and my guess is that you will hear screams of ecstasy coming out of at least seven of them tonight. Think I'm wrong? Go around tonight with Mac and press your ears up against the bedrooms doors."
"Why go around with Mac?" Harm asked, ignoring the rest of the statement.
"If you go around alone and you're caught, you look like a weirdo. If you go around with Mac, you look like an adventurous couple. There in lies the difference. Nate and Harm walked into the kitchen, Nate limped over to the fridge, his ACL still a little tender from the incident a few months back. Nate opened the fridge and tossed Harm one from the private stock of beer that Nate kept in the fridge.
"Did you know that you and the President have the same taste in beer?" Harm opened the can. "Is there some story behind why you drink this stuff too? Some vivacious redheaded Canadian diplomat get you hooked on the stuff?" Harm chuckled.
"Nah, actually, I was sitting in a minaret post in Kuwait City with a Canadian sniper Staff Sergeant. We were shooting the shit and normally the only time I touch a beer can is to ice down a bruise but the Sergeant pulled a beer out of his case and tossed me a beer of this Keith's stuff. He told me that this stuff was brewed by a Scot, my ancestry being largely Scottish, I figured it couldn't hurt. This stuff fast became my favourite beer." Nate laughed.
"So, you have the same beer preference as the President out of a similar wartime chance? There's a telling sign." Harm started to move out of the kitchen.
"Of what?" Nate shouted after him.
A little more than an hour later, Harm was standing with Sturgis and the Admiral off to the side of the room as the normal attendees along with the girls danced around under the coloured strobe lighting in the dark living room. "You think they care that they look like carefree morons?" Sturgis shouted to Harm over the thumping music.
"No, I think that's the whole point of this weekend. No one here cares what other people think of them for a few days. They do whatever they want because they don't judge and they aren't judged. It's a weird atmosphere." Harm laughed as he raised another beer to his lips. Beverly Ross ran out from the crowd over to the stairwell where the guys were gathered and pulled the Admiral into the fray. Harm and Sturgis couldn't help but laugh at the Admiral's lack of resistance to the action.
"Is Nate dancing with Stacy Anderson from ZNN?" Harm questioned, pointing his index finger over to the centre of the room.
"If you call that dancing. That's certainly who it appears to be." Sturgis was the next to be pulled into the fray as Bobbi appeared seemingly out of nowhere, yanked him by the arm. As the night dragged on, the music got louder and the dancing got more suggestive. The people that Harm knew were scattered around the room. The girls seemed to have moved downstairs for a few quick games of pool. Well, not all the girls, just Mac, Peach, Bobbi and Bev. The rest of the women were mostly still on the main level of the house being chatted up by the guys, all of whom were still up here.
Harm thought it wise to follow Sturgis and the Admiral down to the basement. On the main level of the house, Nate was rapt in conversation with Stacy. "You know, there's a reason I'm in Washington." Stacy led the conversation.
"I figured that there was a reason that a correspondent from the New York office would be transferred to the Washington office." Nate returned as they leaned up against the doorframe that led out to the back porch.
"It's you. The news director thinks it's wise to have one reporter covering what you're doing. You're a story, Nate and they know that I'm someone who can get close to you." Stacy admitted.
"But of course, you would never betray a friend for your job. I know that much." Nate was slightly shocked by her open admission.
"Don't worry, they're not looking for gossip, they're looking for insight on you from someone who knows you. What you might have been thinking when you made a big decision, you know Oprah stuff like that." Stacy smiled a little shyly.
"There's only one problem with that theory, you have no idea what I'm thinking." Nate shot back, with his typical charm.
"I bet I know what you're thinking right now." Stacy challenged and Nate raised his head as if to say 'oh yeah'. "You're wondering how much effort you would have to put into carrying me upstairs, throwing me down on to a bed and peeling my clothes off." Nate looked surprised and retreated slightly from the topic.
"I……uh…I……I…" Nate was stammering.
"Well, let me tell you this, Mr. Secretary, with my willing participation, there would be very minimal effort required, until you get my clothes off that is." She whispered in his ear in a husky bedroom voice.
"Why the sudden change of heart?" Nate questioned as the two of them moved through the party toward the stairs.
"Because, there's something about you I can't keep fighting. I mean, God, Nathan you've known me for the better part of fifteen years, I can't remember a time when I wasn't just a little bit attracted to you. Philadelphia just intensified it, I don't know what we were thinking just trying to have that one night and go back to life but we did try, and it was hard, wasn't it?" Stacy asked as they broke away from the party and headed up the stairs.
"The hardest." Nate admitted.
"Ready to stop fighting it?" She questioned.
"So ready." Nate picked her up and carried her up the remaining stairs to one of the bedrooms.
The girls never got to the skinny-dipping, by the time that the pool games down in the games room were finished everyone was well into the wee hours of the morning. Peach took a room downstairs that she normally used when they had these things. Bobbi and Sturgis had fallen asleep together on a futon in the games room. Bev had taken the Admiral upstairs to her room a little earlier, being the Reverend, she was dressed head to toe in flannel pyjamas.
So, Harm and Mac ventured upstairs in search of some place to sleep for the night. They went in search of Nate, as he was the only person who might be awake that could direct them toward a suitable place to sleep being as everyone else seemed to have just passed out where they were last seen standing up. As Harm and Mac turned on to the upstairs stairwell, they saw Nate walking across the top of the stairs toward the bathroom in his orange and black Princeton bathrobe.
"Hey!" Harm called up the stairwell and Nate turned his face toward the two of them.
"Hi." Nate had this goofy look on his face.
"You have total sex hair, I hope you realize that." Mac commented and Nate's expression sank through the floor.
"No, I don't." Nate refuted weakly.
"Sweat drenched, flattened on the back and ruffled all to hell on top. Have to say, buddy, that's total sex hair." Harm chuckled as he climbed the stairs. "Seriously though, we need a place to sleep." Nate reached into the pocket on his bathrobe.
"Here's the key to the master bedroom." Nate tossed Harm the key. "Normally, I'd worry about an opposite sex pairing sleeping on my parent's bed because we'd be risking a fluid spill. But it's you two, so that's not an issue." Nate gave Harm a pat on the back. "Have fun, kids."
Nate headed back toward his room, closed the door and within seconds the sound of giggles could be heard coming from the room next to the master bedroom. Harm and Mac took the key and headed toward the master bedroom. "Not as if we've never shared close quarters before." Mac chuckled nervously.
"Yeah, nothing out of the ordinary for us." Harm affirmed as he put the key in the lock and turned the doorknob. He opened the door to find a king sized bed along with a television that was easily in excess of thirty inches and various types of Marine Corps memorabilia mixed in with décor that looked straight out of Martha Stewart. "You think they had Martha herself come in? Think she's tight with the Commandant?"
"Come on, Harm, it's not that bad." Mac threw herself down on the bed and sat uprights.
"Maybe not for you, you're a Marine and a woman, this room is like a fantasy in your little mind. All it would need is a Ben & Jerry's freezer in the closet and a Beltway Burger in the en suite." Harm joked as he took a seat in the rocking chair in the corner of the room. The two of them sat there looking at each other for a few seconds when their companionable silence was broken by cries of ecstasy coming from the next room. Loud moans and multiple invocations of God had infiltrated their little world and disturbed them.
"Thin walls in this place." Mac joked nervously.
"Did she just say 'Oh, Mr. Webb.'?" Harm questioned.
"Well, two rooms border this one and I don't hear anything coming out of Nate's which is on the other side. So, it's not unreasonable to assume that Webb is in that other room." Mac deduced as she lay back on the bed.
"Oh, I'm not doubting that. I'm doubting Webb's ability to make any woman moan that loudly." Harm joked and Mac had to laugh loudly. "Although, if Nate's hair was anything to judge by, the action in the other room should be firing up soon." Harm rolled his eyes.
"Any idea who it was? Peach was with us all night." Mac inquired as Harm paced the floor in front of the window.
"Well, Nate seemed pretty up close and personal with Stacy Anderson all night." Harm mentioned in passing but Mac's eyebrows rose.
"Really? You think the Secretary might be giving ZNN an exclusive interview?" Mac's smile quirked up in suspicion. It was at that moment that the groans and moans began to come from the opposing wall that the first set of moans came from. "A lot of really horny people here this weekend."
"The rest of the weekend is an excuse to act like a teenager, why can't night time be as well?" Harm offered weakly.
"Are you propositioning me?" Mac chuckled lightly and watched as Harm retreated.
"I don't proposition. You should know that after all these years." Harm peeled off his socks and overshirt.
"Oh I do, I've often wondered what it would take to get you to proposition a woman. I bet it's a whole spectacle. I bet for an observer, who knows your playbook, it's probably really funny." Mac laughed light-heartedly. "Admit it, Harm, you're still running off the playbook that you were using when you were twenty. Which would be fine if you were still acting like you did when you were twenty."
"People change. Events change us, Mac. Sometimes we like the people we were a lot more then the people we are." Harm yawned and lay back on the bed.
"When did you like yourself the most?" Mac asked, turning on the bed to face him.
"When I was flying for the first time. Everything kind of seemed right with the world. I was doing what I always wanted to do and I knew I was capable of having a relationship that didn't blow up and I had four of the best friends a guy had the right to ask for. It was everything I could ask for. I think I've always been trying to get that back." Harm let out a heavy breath. "When did you like yourself the most?"
"When there was nothing to like." Mac admitted. "I liked myself the most when Uncle Matt was drying me out because it all meant that I could be so much more then a drunken daughter of a drunken father and absent mother. That was when I proved that I was worth something to someone, hell that was when I proved that I was worth something to myself. I learned so much about how much someone can like themselves this year."
"Nate?" Harm asked, fishing for an insight into the murky relationship that Mac had with him.
"Hates who he is. Hates himself completely. Nate most liked himself in the period up until his brother got shot. Nate is a man who has blamed himself for everything that has happened in his life since he got back from Desert Storm. That's why he works as hard as he does; he wants it all to be worth something, to mean something to him or anyone else." Mac explained. "Why don't you talk to me?"
"What do you mean, aren't we talking right now." Harm replied.
"No, we're speaking but it's pointless. All our words are being driven by my vulnerability and your jealousy. You know what I want most?" Mac propped her head up on her hand.
"No, what?" Harm stated plainly.
"I want us to be able to talk. Enough with the bullshit and the lies and the doubletalk, enough with the lawyer bullshit, Harm. Enough with the running. Just talk to me. That's all I want from you. Just realize that you have a friendly ear and talk into it once in a while. For seven years we've done everything else, we never talk. I never know what the hell you're feeling and guessing is just way too damn difficult and risky. You rarely know what I'm think and when you do; you only see what's on the surface. So, here's what I want. I want our use of the word friendship to actually mean something." Mac explained.
"You want me to tell you when I'm feeling what I'm feeling so that we can work out why I'm feeling it and work through it together? What in our seven years of friendship would ever lead you to believe that I'd go for that?" Harm questioned, hoisting his body into a sleeping position. "Or are we at the point in a male-female friendship where you can say pretty much anything and I'll either agree with you or do whatever you say?"
"Oh, we've been at that point for a while, I'm just seeing fit to use it now." Mac smiled as she crawled up to her own pillow. "You are under my power." Mac taunted with a few waving fingers in a humorous gesture.
"I'm trained to withstand torture, you know?" Harm's voice was getting slightly dreamy.
"I don't intend on torturing you. I intend on making you do something much worse. I intend on making you be honest." Mac rebuffed.
"And that's worse because?" Harm laid his head on the pillow.
"You never know what lies beneath the surface." Mac retorted, yawning aloud before closing her eyes. The rest of the weekend was largely held in the same juvenile spirit as was Friday night. Those who would partake, got drunk. Those who would disregard, got laid and those who could let loose had fun.