Tug of War: Family Secrets

Timeline: February 1997

February 10, 1997 6:00AM

Lee Stetson paced back and forth relentlessly in the secluded well-secured office, and office that very few fields agents, including those with his experience and tenure, had ever been allowed inside. He had known when he'd seen the coded message on his desk late last night before leaving the office for the day that it could only mean one thing: trouble. He wasn't wrong. He ran both hands through his hair as he continued his journey back and forth in front of the large, solid mahogany desk, barely taking notice of the expensive one-of-a-kind paintings on the wall as he contemplated what was being asked of him.

He finally halted mid-step and leaned over the desk, glaring at the man behind it and said, "No! Absolutely not! I won't do it." He then pointed his finger as the other man and added, "and you can't make me!' It sounded childish he knew. He couldn't count the number of times over the past ten years that he'd heard those same words come out of the mouths of his children, but he didn't care.

"I'm afraid you have no choice," the older man replied as he twirled his cigarette holder.

"Oh, I have a choice," Lee fired back. "You'll have my resignation on this desk by the end of the day." He tapped his finger on the desk as if to demonstrate.

"No, I won't and you and I both know it," Austin Smyth answered keeping his cool despite the fact that the hot-headed agent in front of him was not. He took a long drag from his cigarette and continued. "Not as long as you have a family to support, including a child in law school, one starting medical school in the fall...young James has done quite well for himself...working so hard, taking summer courses to finish college in three years instead of four..."

"It's Jamie, okay?" Lee snapped. "Nobody, not even his mother, calls him James." Thoughts of Amanda only made Lee's anger flare even more at his boss. What Smyth was asking him to do to her wasn't fair or right.

"Then you've got one in high school and three more in elementary school. How much does Little League cost these days?" he asked purely rhetorically, "Then there's your namesake's cheerleading expenses. How old is little Leah these days? Thirteen?"

"Fourteen," Lee corrected. "She turned fourteen last October."

"And Chip and Dale?" Smith inquired even though he knew the answer.

"If you mean Matt and Jennie, they're nine, just turned nine the first of last month, Emily will be eight in at the end of this month, Phillip's turning twenty-four next month and Jamie just turned twenty-one in November. What's your point?"

"My point, Scarecrow, is that you are a dedicated family man. The fact that you just rattled off the birthdays of all your children without having to stop to think about it proves that-"

"Which is exactly why I can't do the job you're asking me to do!" Lee cut in with a steely gaze at the agency's director. "I'll quit first."

"No...You won't," Smyth said.

"Don't be so sure. After twenty-four years of this, I've had enough! You're just going to have to find someone else to do your dirty work for once!"

"I'm afraid I can't. I don't like it any better than you do, but you're not only the best man for the job, but the only man for the job; the only one with the experience, the skills and furthermore, the connections to pull off this hat trick, I'm afraid."

"I'll resign," Lee threatened again.

"You won't," Smyth argued as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, then reached for a file beside it, handing it to Lee, "And this is why you won't."

"What is this?" Lee snapped glancing at the file, noticing that it was the agency's standard personnel file, but didn't look at the name, assuming that it was the subject of his new assignment.

"Open it and find out," Smyth barked with a wave of his hand.

Lee did so, and his eyes widened in shock at the color photo right inside the front cover of the manila file folder, a photo he knew all too well as a copy of the same photograph adorned the mantle in his living room. "No," Lee said with a firm shake of his head. "That's not possible."

"I'm afraid it is," Smyth confirmed. "I interviewed the young lad myself."

"How did we not know about this? Amanda and me, I mean?" He looked at his boss quizzically.

"That's partially my doing and partially his. He approached me personally, not an easy thing to do as I'm sure you know since I keep my distance as much as I can from the help, preferring to stick to my very posh hidey-hole here." Smyth gestured to the large lavishly decorated office, "Or my private country clubs where I can't be approached, a matter of necessity given the fact that I'm not well liked because of the difficult choices that I'm sometimes forced to make, this being one of them."

"Why would you keep something like this from us? On a need-to-know basis, this is something we needed to know." Lee glowered at Smyth, "So, why?"

"When your boy there came to me, he insisted that during his recruiting period, I not say a word to anyone. He was terribly afraid that his doting daddy would try to talk him out of it."

"You're not wrong about that," Lee agreed vehemently. "Joe King's going to have kittens over this."

"Oh, I'm sure he will, but he wasn't talking about his father, he was talking about you," Smyth replied pointedly. "This is how it's going to work. Your misses will be moved back to the training department for that one." He nodded toward the folder in Lee's hand. "Billy will be giving her the special assignment today while you...You will be working on this one." Smyth handed him another personnel file, this time the one related to his new assignment.

Lee grudgingly took the other file. "You can't be serious," he protested weakly. "This is who you suspect?"

Smyth nodded. "I wish I weren't serious, there's enough circumstantial evidence there to merit further investigation. The problem is that getting RD Frampton and her team on board for a full-scale review will get too many people involved and this has to be handled delicately to avoid our little mole digging herself a bigger hole to hide in. I wish there were another option, but this isn't my choice. This order was handed down from the White House directly to the Department of Justice and we both know that's where our paychecks come from." Smyth leaned forward on his desk, steepling his hands together. "I don't think that I have to tell you, but this assignment goes no further than this office. Not even Melrose knows. As far as everyone is concerned, you're going on assignment as Station One to help with the new recruits as disciplinary action for that reckless car chase last week that demolished two agency sedans." When Lee nodded in acknowledgement, he continued. "You also can't use any of the regular agency resources. There can't be a paper trail of any kind. Your contact will only be with me. That way no one will question it since it will be made public via our ever-reliable grapevine that you're on my hit list."

"God," Lee muttered as he raked his free hand through his hair. "I can't believe this."

"Just think of your family, Scarecrow," Smyth reminded.

"I am thinking of my family..." he said sadly. "I'm thinking of how this is going to destroy them."

"Think of how much more your family would be destroyed if your children were to become motherless."

"What?" Lee looked at him, a startled look on his face.

"That file you hold, as I said is all circumstantial, but it seems to indicate that not only is our little chickadee playing footsie with the other side, but from data that I was able to gather myself, that she has put a contract out on your wife."

"Why Amanda?" Lee questioned.

"Who do you think compiled most of that data?" Smyth replied. "I knew I made the right decision a decade ago offering her a job as a full-time agent. She's smart, notices things that others don't. When she found these inconsistencies, she went straight to the justice department for guidance, rather than taking it to internal affairs fearing that someone in IA might be corrupt as well. It made is as far as the secret service and from there trickled down to me."

Lee heaved a deep sigh as he glanced down at the well-worn wedding band on his left hand, his thoughts drifting to his and Amanda's upcoming wedding anniversary this Friday and the plans they'd made to go away for the weekend as they done for their last nine anniversaries. He resigned himself to the fact that he was once again going to have to pull out the Scarecrow, swinging playboy persona that had suited him so well and made him feel so free over a decade ago, but now felt confining. He made one last-ditch effort to get out of it by saying, "Those skills you mention?" When Dr. Smyth raised a questioning eyebrow while fitting a new cigarette into his holder, he continued, "I've been married to Amanda for almost ten years. What makes you think I've still got them?"

"If the smile I saw on your Lady Scarecrow's face last Friday morning is any indication, you've still got them. And didn't I just catch the two of you in a clinch in the Q Bureau twice last week?" He winked at him. "No, you've still got it. That argument won't work. You may have confined yourself to one cornfield for a while, but a scarecrow's job is to chase the birdies, isn't it?"

"Will you spare me the damned verbal potpourri, for once?" Lee sniped. At Dr. Smyth's stern look, he asked sheepishly, "So, when do I start?"

"The moment you leave my office," Smyth answered. "And remember, when you get to your meeting with Billy, you're to act surprised by the news in the other folder I showed you...and that one..."

"Yeah, I got it," Lee grumbled as he handed Smyth back the folder in his hand. "Eyes only, I know the drill."

"All right, all right, I'll do it, but on one condition," Lee said in a warning tone.

"And that would be?"

"Protection...for Amanda," Lee answered firmly. "If there really is a contract out on her, I want her guarded. Out at Station One, she'll be exposed..."

"Already taken care of," Smyth replied. "You'll be there yourself to look out for her, as you'll find out in your morning briefing with Billy."

"Great," Lee mumbled.

"Don't forget, it has to look real. Even your lovely bride can't suspect that it's not," Smyth warned, knowing all too well how hard it was for the man who kept the nation's secrets to keep any secrets from his wife.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Lee muttered as he violently yanked open the door to the office and vacated it as soon as possible walking to the internal elevator as fast as his legs would carry him, hoping to see Amanda before the hoopla had to start, to spend at least one more normal moment with her before he broke her heart. "Come on, come on, come on," he grumbled as the elevator began what seemed like the slowest descent in history. Why was it that every time you were in a hurry, everything seemed to slow down? Particularly now when he wanted to get home to his wife just to tell her how much he loved her, how much he'd treasured their life together.

As the elevator slowed, he exited rapidly before the doors even fully opened, grateful that in the early morning hours, there were very few people in the corridors of the agency. He just had to get home before Amanda got to the office. His heart leapt as he rounded the final corner to the outside elevator, his destination in sight, but then his hopes fell as he saw his wife exiting it. Too late, he thought miserably as Amanda walked cheerily toward him.