Disclaimer: I don't own the situations or characters portrayed herein. I'm just playing with them for a while.
My apologies for the incredibly long delay between chapters! Hopefully now that life has settled down a bit, it won't be so long again.
Stemwinder 2, Part 2
Every agent had a civilian "family" — a network of outsiders who assisted the agent but didn't get paid for it or have government clearance. For most agents, the word "family" was simply what each network had been called since time immemorial. Lee — young, brash, suave, incapable of holding onto relationships — had apparently taken the word seriously and built a network that was, truly, family. For the first time, they were seeing how deep his connections ran, and the level of prior planning she saw in the efficiency of his civilian family would have made her wonder anew about his loyalties if she hadn't decided not to question them until she could hear it from him, himself.
Did what she was planning amount to treason? Maybe.
Was it right? She didn't know.
Was it what she wanted to do, deep down in her soul? Yes.
She would help Lee and Amanda — run interference with Dr. Smyth, and stick her neck out much too far to draw it back in. After all, she considered Lee to be "family", too.
"Any news?" was Billy's new greeting, now. And, as was becoming usual, she gave the standard reply: "No".
Billy cursed, slamming his fist down on the desk. Not for the first time, she wished she could curse, too. She hated the dichotomy: men cursing, while not strictly professional, was expected; women cursing was cause for raised eyebrows and disciplinary action.
She drew a deep breath. "Actually, Billy, there is something. Nothing new, mind. Just something I've been mulling over."
"Go on," he said, his voice dull.
"Suppose we examine Lee's bank accounts."
"Accounts? How many does he have?"
"My janitors have found seventeen so far, under a few different names."
She might as well have cursed. The eyebrows shot up, anyway. There was a pause.
"Ok," he said finally. "But don't make it obvious. Keep your janitors on it, but make sure Smyth doesn't find out."
She hoped and prayed that Smyth hadn't bugged Billy's office. If he had, they'd all have a cell waiting in Guantanamo — if they were lucky.
She put Ernie on it, telling him to find patterns in the fake names. Oddly enough, most seemed to run on the same track: Lee S—. Steadman. Stetsman. Sonderson. Sanderson. Stelton. Swinton. And one account under the name Marty Weathers, which Ernie promised her really was Lee and gave a list of reasons she couldn't have understood if he explained them fifty times.
Bob and Martha, a few more of her "janitors", were put in charge of finding suspicious or unusual activity in the accounts Ernie found. They gave it to Dave Perkins, a genuine janitor who moonlit as one of her intelligence janitors, and he aggregated the data for her so that even Francine could see the patterns.
She couldn't help but notice that the one checking account under the name Stetson seemed to be particularly full of obviously Amanda-related expenditures. It also had a steadily decreasing number of takeout orders and an increasing number of both grocery store transactions and dinners at Emelio's. She did a double-take at the restaurant name, and a sudden hope overwhelmed her — hope that maybe the dates were genuine, and that they weren't just ways for Lee and Amanda to meet with Rostov.
It took her a few days to sift through the data. The morning that the ad appeared in the paper — that damning ad that threatened to shipwreck what stubborn hope she had that Lee had not, in fact, turned traitor — she was sitting at her desk mulling over the transactions, getting more and more bewildered. It took her a moment to process the snide, strident voice in the hall, but when she did, she leapt to her feet, forcibly turning off her computer as she did so.
She burst into Billy's office, not bothering to wait until he was done talking on the phone.
"—want that information yesterday!" he roared, and slammed the receiver down as she repeated his name.
"Billy, the old man is head—"
She hadn't been in time — and what was worse, the insufferable voice spoke at her elbow. He had to have heard her refer to him as "the old man".
"'Import-export agent seeks permanent employment opportunities abroad. Must relocate immediately. Ten years international experience with major U.S. company.'" Smyth read the ad with cold detachment, but she could feel the fury radiating from him.
"There could be any number of explanations," Billy the stout-hearted replied, as if he hadn't just been bellowing frantically at a poor newspaper intern who had chosen the wrong day to answer the phone.
"One," Smyth replied, his voice even more infuriatingly clipped than usual. "Scarecrow's put himself on the auction block. Every spy in town has read this by now." His lip curled. "We're coffee and croissant gossip, Melrose, and I don't like that."
As if we like it any more than he does, she thought, actively despising the pretentious way he said croissant.
"Scarecrow did mention Alexi Makarov," Billy said, a little heavily. "They let him out five weeks ago. Sonja Chenko — Lee's peacock dance partner? — is Makarov's granddaughter."
It felt like grasping at straws.
"Conclusion?" their director asked.
"None, yet," Francine answered. "But we do have conclu—"
He cut her off, reverting to the tortured nursery rhymes and mixed metaphors that were his trademark. "Then let me butter your bread and cut your meat, children. Scarecrow's hung us out to dry. And that's the last mistake he's ever going to make." His eyes glittered. "Kick out the jambs, Melrose. I want Scarecrow — dead or alive."
So much for a fair trial. Or innocent until proven guilty. This was personal for Dr. Smyth; he had been humiliated and now his vindictiveness was out in full force.
She hated him for it.
"Get out of here, Francine," Billy said bitterly, as they watched Dr. Smyth's retreating back. "I'm going to try for a final appeal."
She wasn't offended by his instructions. She knew him well; since he was going to try to get in contact with Lee, he was giving her plausible deniability. She swallowed down the sudden lump that rose in her throat, then nodded quickly and left.
Billy might be planning a final appeal — how nightmarish to think about that in regards to Lee! — but she still had work to do. She sat back down at her computer, staring at the green letters and numbers that made up Lee's labyrinthine finances until they swam across the dark screen and clattered together in her mind, blurred and obscured by the stubborn tears that she resolutely blinked away.