AU: Agent Barrett makes a dig at the Colonel... O'Neill goes to Hammond about his little whoopsie with the Detective...
Chapter 4: Covert tea party
Monday, 8th March 2004 – Stargate Command – General Hammond
Sitting in the conference room, I noted the subdued mood from SG-1 along with Agent Barrett. Jack was here purely as the team's commander, though he wasn't a part of the mission due to his extended leave after the loss of Major Carter and the arrival of Doctor O'Neill and Grace a little over two weeks ago.
The final debriefing with Agent Barrett about the rogue NID Goa'uld experiment was going longer than I thought it would, and I could see that I was losing Jack to his boredom with each passing minute. Doctor Jackson had been sitting in a muted silence for well over ten minutes.
"Were we able to save the girl?" I asked, though based on the Doctor's temperament, I already knew the answer.
"No. She died from the toxins after she killed Keffler." The Doctor replied sadly.
"Were we able to bring a sample back to the labs?" I asked. This time it was Major Kawalsky who spoke up.
"Yes, Sir. Sama…" I gave him a hard look which he picked up when he cast his eyes over to Agent Barrett. "Doctor O'Neill is running the analysis as we speak, Sir." He finished.
"Doctor O'Neill?" Agent Barrett asked, looking up from his files and straight at Jack.
"Yes, Agent." I replied, "Our Head of Science after the loss of Major Carter." I informed him without providing any further information. He looked down at his files again and muffled a cough into his hand before looking back up.
"I was sorry to hear of her passing. She was a special woman." He replied, looking at each man in the room but choosing to focus on Colonel O'Neill.
"Indeed." Teal'c broke the silence. "She will be greatly missed." Agent Barrett looked at him and smiled slightly before looking back at Jack.
"Bet that was hard for you, Colonel." He indicated snidely making Jack bristle with anger and ark up, though not as much as I had been expecting after what he had been through.
"She was a very important member of SG-1." He stated unequivocally, fixing the Agent with a fierce gaze that dared him not to continue. He didn't get the message which would have brought him to bodily harm if he had been sitting on the same side of the table as Colonel O'Neill.
"Yes, more important than…"
"Agent Barrett!" I interrupted, pinning the man with a stare that silenced him. He had neither reason to cast assertions nor proof of whatever accusation he planned on levelling at my 2IC. "SG-1. You're dismissed. Colonel, follow up with the Doctor on those results."
"Yes, Sir." He responded succinctly but without standing from the table.
"Agent." I nodded at the man who continued to stare at my 2IC, "I believe you have a report to write." Finally, he looked at me, composed himself then stood and stalked from the room slamming the door as he left.
"Jack? Something else you need?" I asked, noting that he had brought his simmering anger under control the moment Barrett had left the room.
"Yes, Sir." He responded and looked in the direction of my office. Picking up that he needed a confidential conversation, I motioned for him to join me. Taking a seat on my chair, I motioned for Jack to take a seat. "How can I help you, son?"
"There's a situation, Sir. With Room 9 on Level 17." He informed me. Leaning back into my chair and looking at him thoughtfully for a moment, then picked up the phone.
"Walter."
"Yes, Sir." Walter responded while shuffling paper which meant I would be getting another load of documents for signing in the near future. Room 9 had been converted to a temporary medical room to house Detective Pete Shanahan while he recovered from his injury. Having a problem with that room meant he was stirring up trouble on the outside.
"We require a pot of tea." I requested and heard him pause for a moment before giving his affirmative. A few seconds later, I noted the red flashing light on the corner in the top corner of my office blinking out.
"Tea, Sir?" Jack replied with a wry smile. "You don't drink tea."
"How very astute of you, Colonel." I replied as I leaned down to the bottom draw of my desk and retrieved a bottle of fine Scottish Whisky and two tumblers.
"MacCallan's. Nice drop, Sir. Still prefer my Bushmills 25-year-old from Antrim County in the old country." He confessed though still reached for the glass I had poured for him despite it being Scottish whisky instead of Irish whisky. "My grandfather took my brother and I there once, just before James shipped out for Nam. Said we should learn a good whisky from a bad." He confessed with a faraway look. He rarely spoke about James; in fact I didn't think any of his team even knew he had a brother. The only reason I knew was because losing someone we cared about in Nam was common ground.
"Good advice, son. But you're not here to discuss the merits of whisky." I prompted him to get what was bothering him off his chest. He merely looked into his glass for a few moments.
"No, I'm not." He looked up at me and I could see in the depths of his eyes pain laced with anger, sorrow, and a touch of disgust. At himself.
"What have you done, Jack?"
"Sir…"
"George." I prompted, giving him permission to talk to me as a friend and the honourary uncle of the greatest love of his life rather than his boss and superior officer. He took a deep breath and tipped the contents of his glass down his throat before sliding it back over to me. Tipping the bottle, I deposited another two fingers of scotch.
"Shanahan is making trouble." He said as he pulled the refreshed glass across the table and nursed it in his hands. "We were at the zoo on Friday. He was there, following us. He saw Samantha and started tracking her every movement." I could see the tension ratcheting up in his clenched jaw and dark foreboding eyes. "That made me angry. I…" He swallowed and took another sip of his renewed drink.
"Go on, son." I prompted, though I assumed I would not like what he was going to tell me. Jack had the most level head of any soldier I had ever met, and I had known quite a number of black operatives in my time serving this country. For him to have lost his composure in a public setting meant he must have felt threatened, or he felt his charges were being threatened. When that charge was his new wife and daughter, well… I hazarded that he would do anything to keep them safe.
"I put him down." He replied, looking at me, then added, "Temporarily." When I figured my widened eyes asked silently what the hell he meant by that turn of phrase. "He knew it was me, but he'll have no proof." He reassured then took another sip of his scotch.
I believed him because there had been no evidence of the damage that he had rendered to the Detective other than what Doctor Fraiser reported after she stitched him up a second time and the supposed ravings of the man reported to me by the MP's that dumped him at the door of his car which had been parked on the outside of the base perimeter.
"Cameras?" I queried because I knew the zoo had them in the event of vandalism.
"Disabled remotely." He produced the small device I had given Doctor O'Neill permission to take home for field testing with Grace, the soft glow winking out as soon as he pulled his hand away.
"Good." I replied, though normally I would have to reprimand both of them for taking an alien device beyond the limits of the approved area of testing – namely their house.
"Witnesses?"
"None." He said with a wry smile before emptying his glass and sliding it back across the table for me. Gathering both, I placed them back in my draw. I would have Walter replace them with clean ones later.
"Excellent. Though we probably haven't seen the last of him." I reminded him. "Seems our list of enemies grows by the day." He replied with a heavy sigh.
"So, it seems, Sir." Jack replied with a straight face, though I knew he was smiling internally.
I regarded him silently for a moment. "They will run out of operatives soon enough." I commented with a wry smile knowing that we had an Ace on the inside watching those who were supposed to be watching us. He nodded in agreement.
"I'm sure Martin knows what he is doing, George." Jack added with a level of familiarity afforded to him by his sheer importance to this program and the fact that he would be running this place by the end of the year. Maybe sooner.
"That he does, Son." I replied. I was looking forward to retiring, but somehow, I figured that Henry had something else in mind for me, though right now I had a part to play in this ongoing pantomime. It was only a matter of time before I would be on my way to DC.
Senator Kinsey had been sniffing around again the last few days and I knew for a fact his laptop dog Lieutenant Colonel Samuels had been in Colorado a few times in the last week under the guise of flight hours, though why he would be rostered to come here over Nevada which was where the majority of flight hours were directed was a mystery to me. For some reason, Kinsey was under the impression that his links to the rogue NID outfit and Lieutenant Colonel Samuels were well disguised.
What the affluent Senator didn't realise was that Kennedy's involvement with planning rogue operations via the NID and his so-called 'allegiance' to the Senator were the Air Force's best kept secret from the last decade and that he was reporting his findings on those trying to undermine and discredit military operations and instalments directly to General Ryan, and more recently General Jumper. He was the reason why we managed to get Jack into the rogue off world operation so quickly. It was Kennedy that suggested to Maybourne to make contact because he knew about Jack's off world sojourn. Kennedy was also the reason why Maybourne had been temporarily released and why he hadn't been brought back in. Having someone like Maybourne on the outside with the contacts that he possessed was better than having him on the inside.
Martin was – without a doubt – the best intelligence officer I had ever had the opportunity to work with. He deftly presented the side he wanted people to see without showing his hand along the way. All the rest of us had to do was go along with whatever façade he showed even when what he was doing grated with our sense of honour.
Colonel O'Neill was one of three officers who had this information. The General of the Air Force and myself were the other two. Not even Samuels knew who he was really working for due to General Kennedy's extreme undercover persona and his ability to convince anyone of anything he wanted them to believe. It was only a matter of time before Kinsey tried to make his move on the SGC again. The last covert communique from Martin stated that Kinsey was making plans to replace me with a civilian.
"You don't need to worry about the Detective, Jack. I am told that his presence at the Zoo was a necessary evil and that he has been routed to a new mission. Though perhaps warn your younger counterpart not to get caught in compromising situations." I said with a smile that made him frown.
"Sir?" The question was open ended and for the first time in ages he had no idea what I had suggested.
"Jack. I'm sure I don't need to remind you who your clone is spending time with." I gave him a knowing look as I put my bottle of whisky back into the draw alongside the two glasses. The face he pulled was simply priceless.
"He wouldn't. Sir, the kid is 16! She's well… old…er by a lot." Jack replied with an honest to goodness look of shock on his face. Raising my eyebrow at the man in front of me, I leaned forward on my forearms. "He's not gonna go there." He insisted.
"Jack, if the threat of court martial, demotion and imprisonment couldn't keep you from her, what makes you think other laws would?" I asked, enjoying the look of unrelenting realisation that crossed his face when he worked out that the answer was nothing.
"Oh crap!" He sighed heavily, "Absolutely nothing, Sir." He responded as he leaned back into his chair and dropped his head backwards to look at the ceiling. "Carter's gonna be the death me." He said, then put both his hands on his face before rubbing them up and over his head through his silvering hair making it stick up more so than it already was. Suddenly he barked out a laugh, "Well… I guess he can't get her… well you know." He motioned with his head and quirk of his lips before furrowing his forehead and squinting at me.
"Yes, well. Unlike another O'Neill that shall remain nameless." I couldn't resist mocking him for his little accident five years ago. He smiled as I checked my watch and noted we had less than one minute of our allotted off the record time. Opening the draw to my right, I drew out an empty tea pot and two cups painted in a myriad of colour, then settled them on my desk making the Colonel laugh. My youngest granddaughter's handy work from art class a few years ago.
"Nice prop, Sir." He said just as the light began flashing once again.
"Room 9 on Level 17 is on the maintenance crews list to be dealt with. Now, could you take this to the commissary for me, Colonel?" I requested, motioning to the tea pot and cups, as was expected of a man in my position.
"Yes, Sir." He replied with a suitably smug smile.
"Dismissed, Colonel." I replied then watched as he stood, saluted, and picked up the tea pot and cups, then turned and left my office. I would get them back from Walter in a few hours.