THE LINE IS BUSY

On the way home from the agency, I stopped at the tiny warehouse - the one I'd rented for all the 'overflow' from the apartment's basement locker. The one with all those silly hairpieces and false facial hair…. and a mirror. We're going to need a second one, maybe a third. If only just for the untraceable cars Elizabeth is procuring from Philadelphia and Gregory Thomas's network.

I'd also rigged a stealth antenna at that first warehouse - a proper one cut for the frequencies we used - unless someone really knew what they were looking for, they'd never see it. I learned to also pay attention to surrounding metal - towers, sidings, and such, to frustrate any direction-finding attempts, and make the antenna more directional. As we were taught.

The new transceiver was working like a charm. It took a while to master all the grounding issues, but things were working well. I now could sit for 1/2-an hour putting everything into code rather than fight with equipment, then it would take only 5 minutes to pound it out via Morse. At the approved times. I'd never deviated from procedure, but Elizabeth had said that The Centre seemed to be getting only half of what I was sending.

Speaking of Elizabeth. Once when I turned on the transceiver, tuned in to that hours' frequency - there was traffic on it. Morse traffic, outside of ham-bands, but on one that we often used. And I could recognize the 'hand' on the Morse-key which was sending it.

It was Elizabeth. Yet she was still in Philadelphia with Gregory Thomas's people! She'd built her own station there! I mean, did she live with me or not? Copying it, I made a go to decrypt it. No luck. How on earth did she get a transmitter?

When she got home…. ah, er, when she got back to D.C., we were going to have to have a little talk.

OLD FRIENDS

One more Americanism, this one about my truant-wife. Elizabeth, she now smoked like a chimney. Ever since her first Philadelphia sojourn, never lighting-up in our apartment - even so, she still smelled like an astray.

Our car, it now smelled like one too. Yet I'd actually never directly seen her smoke. For her part, Elizabeth was spending an inordinate amount of time returning to Philadelphia. She said she was making inroads that Directorate S never dreamed of. To Mrs. Jenkins, ever with her nose in our business, I said that Aunt Helen had needed more attention from Elizabeth's family than we'd anticipated.

Then one morning, who should show his ugly face at DuPont Circle Travel. During my shift. Ballsy.

You guessed it. My old buddy, Emmett.

He hadn't even said hello - or even repeated the last thing I'd said to him back in Moscow, 'duty and honour'. All he'd said was, spreading his arms like I'd remembered, "as if anything else!"

Of course that was a non-sequitur to the other staff at the Agency. So I got up and announced to all at their desks, "my friends, this is my buddy, Emmett Connors. This lucky son-of-a-gun, he was there in 1960 when Bill Mazerowski ended the World Series with the shot heard 'round the world. He's never let me forget that!"

I got up, we hugged, the boss came out and introduced himself to Emmett. It was the boss who'd said, "say Philip, it's almost lunch. Why don't you take your friend for a bite, but be back by 1 pm."

Which is what happened.

CATCH-UP

"I thought I'd come see you face-to-face, Philip, The Centre wants to know what's going on. I told them, I'm not your handler. None of us have one! They know full well that Elizabeth is here, but they want me to put my eyes on you." Emmett's English was now impeccable, a bit of a North Carolinian 'something' to it, which was probably natural. As I learned he was now in the 'lumber business', supplying building sites with emergency material that had run out, that a contractor had needed immediately so as to accommodate the next sub-contractor waiting down the line.

His mobile job from their base in southern Virginia, took him all over the Carolinas as well as into Georgia and sometimes Florida. As he said, he was making a buttload of money - legitimately - yet his travels put him at the front door of most of his operations.

As such, his English language skills were getting special percolation and authenticity! You'd never get that in training.

But back to the matter at hand. I said, "Emmett, we're not even supposed to know much about each other. Protocol is that if operations put us in each other's sphere, The Centre will inform us. But otherwise, if we're caught, the less we know of each other the better."

He said, "that's why I'm here, Philip. You completely missed that Elizabeth was on her way. Leanne, she had to drop an assignment and head to New York to go get her." That was the first I'd heard about that. "Leanne would have stopped to say hello to you after dropping off Elizabeth at your place…. but, as you say…. 'protocol'."

I felt a flash of anger, "did you tell The Centre that all that is a reason NOT," I emphasized the word, "NOT to send in an illegal, not alone? There's simply an overwhelming amount to do, which they continue to pile on, regardless!" I paused, "you're in the loop. How long before we get some support? I mean, 'people', here on the ground?"

"That's years away, dude," he said straightforwardly. "We'll be back in Moscow before that happens. Leanne and me, we're adapting. I'm hoping you will too. Sink or swim."

I got a little more flustered. "Precisely. Sink or swim. And I'm sinking. It's not my fault."

Emmett sat back for a second. Then he blurted out, "Leanne, she's pregnant again." He looked away and shoved both his hands into his pockets.

"A second one? Wow," I said. "How does THAT work!?"

Emmett smiled and answered, "well, each of you takes off your pants, you cuddle a bit, then you….."

"Stop, stop!" I insisted. "You already have one! Two!?" I waited for the obvious comment, "what does The Centre say?"

"You know me. I say, fuck The Centre," Emmett spat out. He paused, then said, "we haven't told them. You're the first to know. So we now have something on each other."

"Emmett," I said, adopting protocol, "I'm going to have to tell them. You know the drill, we report on each other. I mean, that's why you're here about me, right?"

Emmett smiled, then said, "well, Elizabeth is here now, to report on you." He paused and smiled again, "So, how's it in the bedroom with the ice queen?"

"Shut your foul mouth," I spat. "What, you're supposed to report us on that!?" When he didn't reply, I continued. "She's in Philadelphia, with one of the men we're supposed to develop, someone in the civil rights movement. A young Negro-guy - about 19 or 20. As such, she's not spent much time at 'home'."

Emmett caught the connotation I had put on to my use of 'home'.

He finished what he had to say by saying, "Look, Philip, you have to redouble your efforts to shore up communication. The Centre doesn't see it as their problem, they think of it as your problem. Your assignment in D.C., it's more important than ours down South. It's not working. Don't make The Centre pull you out, send you back home. That never works out."

THE COUP DE GRÂCE - TWOFOLD

Emmett took in a deep breath, then let out a long sigh.

"Okay, I have to go, but I also have to tell you. I'm telling you this because I do understand what it is like here in the field. I could tell you stories about me and Leanne and the fuck-ups we initially had with The Centre, but you don't need to know that."

He leaned back and studied me. Paused a little longer he eventually said, "Leanne thinks that Elizabeth is pregnant. I mean, Leanne is pregnant, I think the ladies can tell those sorts of things in each other….."

That simply could not be true. Elizabeth and I had not been within a meter of each other.

"But here's the deal, Philip," he said, adopting an even more grave tone. "Leanne and Elizabeth, they did a job together. More to the point, it was in Silver Springs, Maryland. They killed a guy they were marking. Back home it would be another cadre who'd have handled disposal. Leanne and Elizabeth, they had to do that, too."

I was less interested in that, than in Emmett's former revelation. But trying to focus, I said, "they said that sometimes it would come to that. I don't like killing. It comes with the real estate."

Emmett continued, "Leanne said that after, Elizabeth got all nonchalant about it, Leanne wasn't buying it. Next morning in their room at the motel….. Leanne found her in the fetal position in the bathroom tub, fully clothed. Elizabeth's not done many, and it is showing."

Emmett then said, "look, Leanne and I have agreed. The Centre does not need to know any of this. Those Cossacks just don't seem to know how tough it is, here in the field." I cautioned him about his Russianisms used so casually.

"Okay," he corrected, "those bastards don't need to know."

But it was something that I needed to confront Elizabeth about. Our otherwise 'excellent' teaming-relationship was now at stake.

THE PISTOL

I was sitting at our kitchen table, so far quite alone in our quiet apartment. In front of me between the knife and the fork, and on the place-mat - a pistol, the one I trusted.

I hadn't seen her in a week, but I eventually heard her faint footfalls out in the long hallway outside. I heard her keys in the lock, the door open - saw her step in with her coat already off, she then placed her keys in the pot on the table beside the door.

Unlike a normally situationally aware Elizabeth, she closed the door and locked it. I caught her not on point, so something must have been very wrong. She then looked up at me, saw my pistol. Saw that I was not holding it.

"You know, Philip," she said now fully operationally aware, standing ready about 3 meters away, "it's 50-50 who gets to that first. It's unlike you to be that sloppy." She then added, "okay, what's wrong now?"

I got to the point. "Did you go on an operation with Leanne, one where you'd had to terminate someone? Silver Springs?"

Her face contorted in a manner I'd never seen. She then said, "someone has been ratting me out. Was it The Centre? They seem to think that that is a weakness of mine." She then all but yelled, "I can do my job, Philip."

I then dropped the final bomb. "Are you pregnant?"

ANHEDONIA

Did I like my job? As 1965 turned into 1966 that was hard to tell.

I was going through the motions, apparently well enough so that The Centre actually did set up a second warehouse just outside of D.C.-proper, out in Virginia. The intelligence both Elizabeth and I were gathering was worth it to the motherland.

Maybe 'like' was the wrong way to evaluate it. More like, 'job satisfaction', knowing that I was excelling at an important job for my country - Elizabeth and I, operationally speaking, were still hand in glove.

She'd even been there for me after my own first termination. That one simply did not have to happen, I was working a girl involved with General Dynamics - she'd been one of the few women involved in the development of the F-111, and its successor, the F-111B, which was 'carrier compatible'. She liked me because I had been the first male to actually listen to her, I convinced her that I 'knew' what it was to be a woman in a male dominated industry.

I don't know how it had gone wrong so fast. I may have panicked, but no one needs to know that. She apparently had known all along about the 'silly wig', as she called it. Elizabeth chewed me out for terminating the woman before finding out all that she had known about me. Of course, Elizabeth was right.

And….. yes, Elizabeth had been pregnant in 1965. No, I was not the father, but I had a good idea who was. Elizabeth came back from Philadelphia once - saying to me the only thing she'd ever said about it, other than it was not my concern.

"Gregory's people, they helped to take care of it. I'm no longer pregnant." That's all she had said, to me at least. According to Emmett, though (who had got it from Leanne), Elizabeth had once shown up at their door down in Newport News - had spent two days up in their spare room, not eating, not talking to them. Just sleeping. She'd left as silently as she'd arrived.

Did Elizabeth like her job? As near as I could tell, such things never occupied her. She had her moments, that's all. If it was 'eating her up on the inside' as it did me, I could not tell.

Operationally, we continued hand in glove. And 'we' were now not pregnant.

Me, I continued with military contracts. Elizabeth, she spent less time in Philadelphia. Gregory's people, they were our primary source for cars, both new ones as well as disposing of ones we feared had been compromised.

As 1966 turned into 1967, we fully anticipated to be exfiltrated by 1970.

Then the War in Vietnam took a turn.