1623 hours
Sometime later, body aching from the hours sat at the same position, straining her eyes, Catherine decides to take a break and goes in search of Steve, who's been unusually quiet for the better part of an hour. He's moved on from repairing the bullet-riddled wood that separates the living room from the study, to painting the wall on both sides. Catherine can't help but be impressed at what determination and grief can accomplish and hope that Steve manages to quickly work through it and reach normalcy again. But she also knows that he won't truly start the healing process until he's managed to put Omar Hassan in the ground. And with that, she can help.
Steve finishes his painting in the living room and, moving to the table, busies himself with the open cans and dirty paint brushes, while Catherine sits down at the other end, in silence, yearning for a neck massage, but not daring to ask for it.
"Can I ask you something? To do with your work?" His voice is strong, determined, but he doesn't look her in the eye.
Catherine is surprised, as he never asks her anything about the CIA. In fact, she suspects he nurtures a deep hatred for her employer because of Doris - forgetting to account for her own choices - so she is very careful never to refer to her work, or that part of her life.
"Sure, anything, as long as I can talk about it", she assures him, smiling.
"How did you get to me so quickly? I mean, how did you know where I was and what had happened? My phone was turned off."
Catherine winces, not exactly sure if she should answer his question truthfully. After all, what they do is not exactly legal. But she lets the thought slide and looks him in the eye as she answers.
"As soon as I got back to my flat, day before yesterday"…
"Where were you? he interrupts, feeling the need to imagine how she lives her life, nowadays.
"It's classified, sorry", she says, looking sufficiently pained. "Suffice it to say, very far away and very cold."
"Go on", Steve answers, childishly annoyed at the secrecy.
"As soon as I got back, I got a call from a colleague who knows I know Doris and Joe." Catherine stops and looks at Steve, giving him a few seconds to process hearing his mother's name. But he remains perfectly still, eyes focused on anything, but her. "He broke the news to me. I couldn't believe it. So I immediately called my handler and told him I wouldn't be able to focus on any more ops until I could see you. We have ways of tracing disconnected cell phones. You left the battery inside, so we remotely turned it on, just long enough to trace your location. As soon as I knew where you were, I got on a plane within the hour. I landed at the nearby military airbase, and there was a car waiting for me there. I called as soon as I was close. You know the rest."
Steve huffs ironically and shakes his head, annoyed at how the CIA works. And consequently, her. He can't forget how they tried to kill him, at least once before and abandoned Danny in a Colombian prison, effectively to be killed. If it hadn't been for Doris… who also happens to still work for them… Without looking at her, still, he says:
"I'm going to take a shower. See you in a bit."
Feeling sufficiently put in her place by his reaction, Catherine turns to the kitchen to start preparing something for them to eat. Steve's lack of appetite at lunch hasn't escaped her notice and she decides to cook something that he may like, perhaps Italian.
By the time he comes back into the room, the smell that wafts from the stove is heaven, the coffee maker percolates happily away, the table is set and Catherine is nowhere to be seen. Annoyed at having let his emotions carry him, Steve sighs and decides to go look for her and apologize. He feels… conflicted, tangled in a mesh of positive and negative feelings, grappling for balance and control. He knows how lucky he is for having such a good friend by his side and he wants her to know that.
"Hey, Cath…" he says, entering the back room. "I'm sorry for still not dealing very well with your employer".
"Speaking of which," she says, not taking her eyes from the laptop, "we got some more interesting intel."
"Well, I guess the CIA sometimes comes in handy," he says, smiling at her, chastised.
They share a complicit smile and a look of understanding; she's telling him it's OK that he's acting the way he is and he is genuinely sorry for not being able to get a better grip on his emotions. Steve comes closer and finally faces Catherine's laptop and all it represents. After all, without it, it would take them much longer to get the information they now possess.
"See, here? On the surface, everything appears to be above board. But he does lead a double life. He's been Hassan's lawyer for 4 years, and despite making a very good living as a lawyer, his net worth has multiplied 10 times in the last four years."
"No doubt, courtesy of our mutual friend," Steve says, looking attentively at the screen. "What else?"
"Apparently, Hassan isn't his only "special" client. So much so, that the Swedish authorities have had him under surveillance for the past two years. Unfortunately, he's very good at covering his tracks. So they've been unable to make any accusations stick."
"Meaning he knows exactly what to do, and how to do it."
"And not get caught. We need to be extremely careful. He has a network behind him and they won't hesitate to retaliate."
"They can't retaliate if they don't know who struck at them. And we'll be so stealth, they won't see it coming."
"Absolutely," she says, confidently smiling at him. "Now come on, let's go grab some dinner."
"I'm not really hungry, Cath. I'm going to continue reading these reports."
"Dinner, first, reports later. Come on, I made something I think you'll like," she says, extending her hand to him. "You need to eat if you want to keep your strength up."
"Yes, mother."
"Oh, please, let's not go into that minefield, OK?" Catherine says, chuckling.
He laughs too and follows behind her.