He started to kiss her, when she grabbed his testicles and squeezed hard. His face turned white and he reared back on his tiptoes.
“Nice balls,” she said, then she let go, stepped back and shot him in the chest at point-blank range. “You’re dead.”
Billings was enraged. “Fuck,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Billings,” she said. “Next time I won’t be so gentle.”
“This exercise is over.”
“Tell it to your wife.”
“Goddammit, your approach wasn’t in the scenario.”
Elizabeth laughed, the look on his face was rich. “Neither was yours.”
She grabbed the briefcase, slipped out of the office, waved merrily at the two guards, then made her way back across the creek. It was Friday, the late-summer weather beautiful, and as she walked she sang a little French song her father had taught her on one of his infrequent visits when she was a young girl, the day and nearly everything about her life just now absolutely perfect.
Kirk McGarvey parted the venetian blinds in the ops officer’s office as Liz marched up the hill, her shoulders back, the briefcase in her left hand, the paintball pistol in her right as if she were willing and able to take on the world. His heart swelled with pride. The failure rate for the exercise she’d just successfully completed was almost one hundred percent.
“She’s on her way up,” he said, turning back to the ops officer.
Paul Isaacson, a big, red-faced Swede originally from Minnesota, laughed. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“I want you to flunk her out, Paul. I want her out of here as soon as possible.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Isaacson said seriously.
“No, I’m not.” There was a flutter in McGarvey’s gut just thinking about her back in the field.
“I can understand your reason. My own daughter, Chrissy, is about her age. But hell, Kirk, she’d find a way around me, just like she did this morning.” He shook his head. “She’s not the kind to take a simple no for an answer. Anyway, I’m not going to do your dirty work for you. If you want her out, you can fire her when you take over the DO.”
McGarvey looked sharply at him. “Where the hell did you hear that?”
“The word’s out,” Isaacson said. He and McGarvey went way back together. Though Isaacson had never wanted to be chief of station, he’d handled just about every foreign desk at Langley. In one way or another he’d been involved in almost every assignment McGarvey had ever been given. For the past five years he’d been in charge of training the new kids to survive the first couple of crucial years in the field. He’d not lost any of them because those who’d graduated under his tutelage were ready. And he still had an inside track at Langley for the simple reason that he’d trained half of the current staff in Operations, and the other half wished he had. He heard things.
“Well, I told the general no.”
“Right,” Isaacson said. He wasn’t convinced. “Are you taking Liz for the weekend?”
“Unless her class is going to be busy.”
“Hell week doesn’t start until the twenty-fifth, so we’re taking it easy on them right now.” He popped a videocassette out of the recorder behind his desk and gave it to McGarvey. “Her only real mistake was not checking for hidden cameras.”
McGarvey chuckled. “She’s not going to be happy.”
“What about Don Billings? He was way out of line, but if he’d really been an Iraqi commandant it would have been worse.”
“They’re even. And I expect he’ll think twice the next time he wants to grope a woman.”
Isaacson gave McGarvey a long appraising look. “Working behind a desk would be different than being out in the field. You’d have to get used to the idea of sending green kids out there, who in your estimation wouldn’t know how to wipe their own noses. Might be some tough calls.” He glanced toward the window. “But it’d be a shame to throw away your experience, even if the Company has treated you like shit. I know a lot of guys over there who’d like to see you take the job. They’d feel more comfortable than they did under Ryan.”
“I’ll get her back to you Sunday night.”
“Do that,” Isaacson said. “But give her a chance, Kirk. You had yours, don’t take this one away from her.”
“Maybe she’d be one of the green kids I’d have to send out.”
“Maybe,” Isaacson said. “That’s the whole point of this place.”
McGarvey nodded, then headed out to where his daughter was perched on top of a picnic table with several of her classmates, all of them young men who eagerly hung on everything she was saying. He was even more unsettled than he had been in Murphy’s office this morning.
It took Liz less than twenty minutes to shower, change clothes and pack a few things, then meet her father outside the barracks where he was smoking a cigarette. It was a few minutes before one, and the Farm was already winding down for the weekend. She looked bright and innocent in a crisp white cotton blouse, short khaki skirt and sandals, her hair pulled back and still damp.
“Are we having dinner with Jacqueline tonight?” she asked, tossing her bag in the backseat. She had a bittersweet look on her face.
“We’re meeting her for drinks at Jake’s at four, so we’re going to have to hustle,” McGarvey said. “Do you know something that I don’t?”
“Just girl talk,” she said mysteriously. “But I’ll let her tell you.” She gave her father a look that said it would be totally useless for him to try to pry anything else out of her.
The Farm was in Camp Perry off Interstate 64 outside of Williamsburg, about 150 miles south of Washington. Traffic was moderately heavy but moved well.
When they were away McGarvey gave his daughter the videocassette. “Paul gave this to me. Presumably it’s the only copy.”
“What is it?”
“You might want to take a look and then get rid of it. But don’t let your mother see it.”
Sudden understanding dawned on her face and she looked from the tape to her father. “Hidden cameras?”
“All over the place.”
A rueful smile curled her lips. “Did you see it? Everything?”
McGarvey nodded. “They’re going to come down on you pretty hard at Monday’s debriefing.”
“I got the briefcase, Daddy,” she retorted defiantly.
“If that had really been Iraq you wouldn’t have made it.”
“I gave them a distraction.”
McGarvey had to laugh. “One that’s going to make the rounds this weekend.”
“Billings is a prick.”
“He’s one of your primary instructors, and you’ve still got a lot to learn from him if you’ll keep your mouth shut long enough to listen.”
Liz gave her father an appraising, manipulative look that McGarvey caught. He’d spanked her once when she was a little girl for the same thing. “I thought you wanted me out,” she said.
“Don’t play games, Liz. And don’t count on the operational experience you got in France and Moscow, because you didn’t do such a hot job. Nearly got yourself killed, as a matter of fact.”
She lowered her eyes. “I know, Daddy.”
He wanted to take her in his arms, cradle her, protect her. But she was too big for that now. It was something he should have done years ago, but never had. “I want you to get out of the Company, or at least out of the DO. But if you’re going to do a thing, then do it right.”
“I know,” she said, looking up. “I’m a McGarvey.”
“Don’t forget it,” McGarvey said, trying to be stern.