Max knows Mouse likes (muchness) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-06-24 11:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | dormouse |
Who: Max
What: Narrative
Where: "Taking care" of Ian's informants re: Lin's adoption
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: None
The call came as soon as Max put Amanda on the plane.
She didn't even manage to make it out of the airport, the long walk requiring multiple, multi-minute stops along the way. She was sitting at one of the airport bars, having decided to rest with a beer before the last stretch, when the phone rang.
Calls from the General were infrequent enough that she stared for a second before answering. Max was the one who called her father weekly, without fail. The General only called when something was wrong, and whatever was wrong generally had to do with the country, and not with him at all. She took a deep breath, and she answered, and she listened.
She considered telling him that she might have exaggerated the reports of her mobility. After all, she'd been giving him progress reports for the past six month, and the General always expected actual progress. She might never make it into the field again, but he didn't want a daughter in a chair. And Max had spared him that embarrassment by giving him very optimistic reports. And now, here she was, listening to particulars for an assignment that she wasn't sure she was up for.
But, once the panic settled, she realized these targets were easy, corrupt civilians without training. And while their crimes were significant, and their threats to homeland security intensive, there was no indication that it would end up as a firefight. She didn't ask why her father had pulled rank to get her on this job. It had happened dozens of times in the past two years, because the General still thought he held her strings. And when it came to this, he did.
She asked for the encrypted files to review, accepted the details about her cover and the flight arrangements, and she agreed to the timeline. Forty-eight hours, in and out, and Max had done this so many times in her career that she didn't think anything of it. The clearance on this was high enough that Davis wouldn't be informed. This was a job without extraction, if she botched it up, and she only hoped her hips held out. She almost considered going in using the chair, but a woman in a chair was too memorable. No one remembered a good spook.
She didn't bother giving Daniels a heads up. She left after Daniels had gone to bed, and she left a note about sleeping out that she knew would be misinterpreted, especially given all their conversations about McKendrick lately.
The flight to California was short, and she reached the adoption agency early in the morning, under the guise of looking to adopt. A librarian, black hair and thick glasses, she spoke to the adoption agent with an accent that spoke of the south, and a stammer that spoke of shyness. By the time she left, she'd already decided on her entry point and hit method.
She didn't question, because it wasn't her job to question, and she had a digital file as thick as her proverbial arm on this man selling information to highly questionable individuals in the country, including recent indications that he was interacting with a trafficker of children. That night, under cover of night, she got in, and she got out, and the General's clean-up crew handled the rest.
The trip to Washington took longer.
The CPS agent wasn't on her original assignment clearance, but she'd forwarded the intel she'd gotten from the adoption agent's office to the General mid-flight, and she had her new, approved assignment before the plane landed.
She didn't bother with an intel run, not with this man. He was a nothing, a low-ranking cog in the organization, but the amount of dirt that had come back on his brief intel ping was revolting. And when it came to misusing authority regarding children? Well, Max had no patience for that. The man in California was after money, and he got a quick death. The CPS agent wasn't as lucky, and the General's cleaning crew had a lot more work to do. Normally, Max prided herself on being meticulous, but not this time.
It wasn't until the flight home - 22.5 hours later - that she got to wondering why her father, of all people, had been handling a case regarding children. Yes, there was some indication of possible adoptions overseas, but that didn't actually impact national security. She re-checked her intel, and she verified that yes, these men had been corrupt, horrible in some cases, but not terror threats.
A good agent didn't question their assignments, and she had a feeling she was about to - for the first time in her career - be a very bad agent.