Who: Maria, NPC Grant Ward (+Open?) When: 1/15/17 Where: SHIELD HQ What: Counter-espionage never gets old. Just tiring.
There were certain facts of her life that Maria accepted only because there was no way to change them: gossip among agents, being polite to Congressmen, and coffee with cream were some of the more tolerable. The part that she would never be comfortable with, or accept that it couldn't be changed, was the part that had her on shore now, sipping nicely black coffee as she stared out the window of her office, looking over the city.
Of course the various intelligence agencies would try to worm one of their people into her organization; she was quite content to do the same to them, and know who got the better end of the deal. That was just domestic suspicion and rivalries, because no matter they were all nominally part of the same country, they still were competing for the same resources and stepping on each other's mission mandates at regular intervals. When push came to shove, they could probably cooperate enough to stand against the world, share enough information among each other without ever really trusting their fellows.
The part that was harder was that of course enemies foreign did the same thing; it was even more natural for one of her agents to have been turned by HYDRA instead of the CIA. That was the war they fought, not a thing of front lines, or even for hearts and minds. They fought for intelligence, and often tried to use the same people to do so, because a high-placed insider could give far more information than a mere hack on a server. Part of the business was observation, and part of the business was being charming and persuasive and bringing people she'd never trust with her Jeep keys onto her side of the job. And part of the job was looking at her people and making sure they remember who they worked for, and had neither been persuaded nor merely stupid about who they befriended.
She wondered which way it had gone with the miserable traitor in question. Probably the former; he was not a stupid man, by all accounts, that canny sort of intelligence that was so easy to prey on, ask where the angle was for him. He'd been a good agent, too, good enough it had taken time to hone in on him, even knowing that there was someone feeding HYDRA regular information. She was the only one who could handle this, because she was the only one she could ever be sure wasn't turned.
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
She didn't turn around as Ward entered, gave her proper rank as if he was still her good and loyal agent. "I have a mission for you," she informed him.
'Handle' was one of those euphemisms SHIELD used. It could mean a situation, which usually implied a bullet in the brain, discretely. Or, it could mean handling an agent or asset, feeding them enough information to gather more, and receiving their reports in turn. In this case, it could even be both. She gave him a little of the truth, and more of the shadows, and let him assume she wanted him to find where Eddie was holed up in Gotham. And from the moment he stepped out of her office, she'd be waiting for him to make contact with his other handlers.
She damn well hoped she wasn't going to get people killed doing this. That, too, was the hard part of the job.