Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
Chapter Four: Counter Intelligence
"Billy, we have a problem."
He sighed. What could possibly be so important that it could only be solved by an eighty-six-year-old former Section Chief?
"What is it, Francine?"
"There's talk of getting Scarecrow back in the saddle," she said.
"Come on," he protested. "The man's been retired for five years. Why do they need him so badly?"
She sighed, and shook her head. "I'm worried, Billy. It doesn't make sense to get him out of retirement, and I don't know enough details to keep him current on what's going on. I think that Bart's going to try to use him to break an intelligence ring that's transmitting secret material to Russia and others right under our noses." Her lip curled a little. "Americans in league with Russia and Al-Qaeda," she said bitterly. "It makes Stemwinder look like a walk in the park."
He nodded thoughtfully, taking another sip of the sugar-free lemonade in the hope that it might have lost its artificial aftertaste since his last try at it.
"I don't know what to tell you, Francine." The aftertaste hadn't diminished, of course. "I guess all you can do is keep an eye on him." A line from a movie came back to him, and his mouth quirked up. "Two eyes, as often as you can spare them."
She shook her head. "How, Billy?"
He didn't know. No one really had ever been able to keep an eye on Lee Stetson, except for Amanda. She had worked her way past his walls and into his heart, and then he had allowed her to keep an eye on him. Not even Billy or Francine, his two closest friends in the world, had managed that.
"Tell me all you know," he suggested, instead of giving her any answers.
She sat back and looked toward the ceiling, and her eyes went unfocused as they always did when she was thinking, darting around as she pulled details from her memory and arranged them into neat categories and timelines.
"It started when Bart found out that some of our movements in the Middle East were compromised before they happened. There are only so many places or people involved in any one plan or case, so it should have been easy to narrow down. But it wasn't. Rumor has it that something stinks at the highest level of the agency, but Bart refuses to believe that his inner circle is involved."
She stopped and chuckled, and her eyes met Billy's.
"I always used to hate being left out of inner circles, Billy," she mused, her mouth twisting as she saw the humor even in this situation. "But somehow I don't mind being left out of the popular kids when it comes to Bart."
He understood. Bart, now in his fifties, still considered himself a rising star in D.C. politics, and was determined to do whatever it took to make that true. It led to some truly awkward social gaffes that everyone but Bart recognized as disastrous. But he never learned.
"You should have been Smyth's successor," he said suddenly, and she laughed.
"What, and miss the joys of interacting with someone I like even less than I liked him?" The smile dropped from her lips, and she continued. "I don't understand why they want Scarecrow to do this job. He isn't Scarecrow anymore, Billy; he hasn't been Scarecrow for thirty years. He's a father and a grandfather and a family man. It's not fair to expect him to go back to that with no training." She shook her head dolefully. "He doesn't even own a smart phone."
Neither did Billy, so that complaint was lost on her audience. But the rest were good points, and he nodded slowly.
"Do you know what his assignment is?"
She considered. "It depends. I've heard conflicting information from different people. Some say he would join a group in Chicago. Some say he would rejoin the agency at the San Francisco department. I don't think it's either one of those."
"All right; you don't think it's Chicago or San Francisco. What do you think?"
"I think it's right here in D.C."