CHAPTER 30 – THE UK TEAM'S DIFFICULTIES
Richard was still in France, meeting with contacts, strolling unfamiliar neighborhoods, introducing himself to persons who might prove useful sooner or later, and generally doing that sort of routine intelligence gathering that makes for poor drama but good security work, not to mention forms the basis for workable foreign policy.
He had asked Stolemaker to not order him home before his scrapes and scalds were healed, so as not to worry Emma, who had been told he was unscathed but busy. Now that he'd had some time to think of himself, though, he desperately missed his wife. He badly wanted to chat with Stolemaker face to face, too, to use the man as a sounding board. He hadn't realized how much he'd come to depend on Emma and Stolemaker, or how much of that bolstering depended upon their presence.
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Stolemaker, in the middle of the night, slipped into the hall to make a trip to the bathroom. There was faint light in the kitchen. He shuffled down for a peek. Emma was on the floor, bent forward, kneading her leg. Her face was wooden and pale. Seeing him, she smiled and looked up. The eyes went from glazed to sparkly before she locked looks with him.
"Are you okay?" Stolemaker asked.
"I'm just having a little trouble with my leg. I came down here because I didn't want to whimper in front of Janice."
"Should I get Westmoreland?"
"No thanks. This is normal for me. The pain from old injuries usually hits me worst in my sleep. Go figure. It doesn't happen often, and it doesn't last long, usually."
"Well then, if you don't need anything, I'll be off."
"Chief?"
"Yes?"
"I'd let you know if I thought it would get in the way of an assignment."
"I'll hold you to that," Stolemaker said. He immediately felt like apologizing. "Sorry," he said.
"For what?"
He hesitated. He didn't want to admit that it seemed wrong to worry about another person's injuries when he didn't want other people to worry about his. It also seemed horribly bad manners somehow.
"I wouldn't be you for a million bucks," Emma said.
"How's that?"
"I happen to have a fair idea of how many of your workforce is old, creaking, and scarred, that's all," she said with a wink.
"Ugh. Don't remind me. Call if you need anything."
"Affirmative," Emma said, with a salute.
The chief shuffled down the hall, a bit shaken. He wasn't sure which was worse, the pain that had shown in her face before she realized he was there, or the ease with which she hid it – make that the apparent ease with which she'd hidden it. Olympic athletes might be fabulous at what they did, but they still had to work hard at it; they worked harder, in fact, than most folks. The victories reflected untold amounts of effort and sacrifice. In the same vein, Emma might be great at pain management, but she'd had a lot of practice at it, sadly enough. Her discipline was only a mercy, not a cure. She was an amazing woman, no question; someone a man could gauge himself against to good effect.
Stolemaker smiled, appreciating the absurdity of his situation. Between not wanting to be outdone by Emma, and not wanting to come across even remotely like Janice, he was pretty well trapped into not feeling sorry for himself for the duration. Here he had a perfect excuse to demand some sympathy – two bullet wounds, count them, two – and he didn't feel he could get away with using it, not unless he played it for laughs. It was just his luck.
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Janice so favored her barely hurt foot that she seriously twisted the other ankle. She took this as an excuse to stay at her workstation almost all day except for meals. Dennis used that as an excuse to take snacks to her. She didn't appreciate it. She doubted his motives.
Janice then tried eating meals in her room instead of at the dining table, but Emma put her foot down, for a host of reasons: manners, mess, protecting the computer from spills, and the principle of the thing. Janice countered by eating at the dining table, but at odd hours to avoid everyone. Stolemaker declared this an acceptable compromise.
There was, after a while, amazingly little contact between Janice and the rest of the household. It cannot be said that she was greatly missed by all and sundry.
Dennis and Janice were supposed to be trading off on the computer, but Janice was in clinched-jaw mode and froze him out as often as not. Dennis decided none of his projects were all that time sensitive. He learned to sneak in to work on the computer when Janice went to eat. He would have liked to use the computer when she was taking a shower, since she took such long showers, but he didn't dare broach the subject of whether she'd mind dressing in the bathroom instead of the bedroom. So he contented himself with working while she ate.
Dennis was so horrified at the rudeness she was showing in taking long showers that he compensated by taking ultra-short ones, so that the overall guest load on the facilities would be as close to acceptable as he could make it. He never broached the subject with Janice. In this and other matters, he just tried to discreetly make up for her heedlessness where he could.
Emma noticed Dennis's valiant efforts to cover for Janice and was upset by it. Hippo held her off. As he pointed out, Dennis was a big boy now, and should be left to shift for himself on such matters. Besides, as he also pointed out, if you had the right frame of mind, the whole big game was hysterically funny.
Janice sent numerous emails. Carterson reported that they all seemed harmless. Whiny, but harmless. Most of them went to someone named Naomi, and were an odd combination of complaining, veiled hints of being in the midst of a secret no-holds-barred romantic fling while on an important business trip, and reassurances that everything was all right. Naomi turned out to be her roommate. Naomi had long since been checked out, but was checked again. The off-the-record consensus was that she was unpleasant and narrow-minded but considerably too self-absorbed to have time to be a security risk.
Carterson counted himself lucky that he was engaged. Too much exposure to females like Janice and Naomi would cure him of women, he thought.
On the upside, when she wasn't sending self-aggrandizing, reality-stretching emails, Janice was proving to be a yeoman of a worker, as long as she was set to work on projects she considered proper for an enlightened woman such as herself to be asked to do. Stolemaker dug up cold file drudgework that he hoped she could be talked into taking on. Janice was exceedingly competent at drudgework, as long as no one called it that. Her mind seemed specially attuned to sifting material for consistency. Not proportion, though. The woman displayed no sense of proportion.
Dennis was encouraged to call Dr. Orchard from time to time, to ask if everything was all right, and to offer suggestions on who might fill in for this or that project that he wasn't there to finish personally.
Being advised by Dennis Uppington annoyed Dr. Orchard, especially since Dennis showed amazing aptitude about who was best suited for what. Orchard accused him of working with someone in the department, behind his back. Dennis proclaimed his innocence on that charge, and was innocent in fact, but that didn't stop Orchard from walking through the offices with a gimlet eye looking for a conspirator, which didn't help morale. Morale, to be sure, was iffy enough after Uppington and Pendergrast were pulled for special duty ahead of people with more seniority. It was a department that held great store in seniority.
To keep Dennis occupied, Hippo and Stolemaker got their heads together, and had him work on various projects around the house. He wasn't experienced in do-it-yourself matters, but Hippo was a patient teacher, and the two of them worked well together.
After a chance mention of hobbies, Hippo dug out sketchpads and pencils of various sorts, charcoal and colored, and had Stolemaker send Dennis outside to draw nature scenes. It gave him a good excuse to wander, and also a bit of satisfaction, since he got better at the sketching as he practiced.
Dennis thought of the sketching as a cover job. His real job, as he saw it, was two pronged. He needed to protect Stolemaker, and he needed to keep his eye out for tra
itors. Janice was no longer a suspect in his eyes, except in the sense that she was too easily duped, and therefore could be useful to real traitors. Dennis spent long hours trying to think how he might protect her from herself.
Not Exactly Allies Page 30