"Mister Maxwell, do come in," Justine
Gilmore said with a practiced smile, standing up and holding out her hand as Duo
walked into her office. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but you know how it
is; busy, busy."
"Not a problem, Ms Gilmore," Duo replied easily, falling
automatically into the proper role as he felt all his mental warning signs snap
on. *Whoa. I do not like you, lady... and it's not just because you're
a scary lawyer. Now, why is that?* "I appreciate your taking the time to
speak to me." He shook hands with her, applying exactly the right pressure and
smiling his best 'totally-honest-and- open' smile, watching her do exactly the
same thing back.
"Anything for our brave defenders of law and order," she
chuckled, eyes flicking over him in a quick evaluation and then returning to his
face. Her smile warmed a notch, and she gave his hand a little extra squeeze
before letting go.
Duo snorted inwardly. *You're good, lady, but I'm
better -- I'm never that obvious about checking someone over. And you've
just decided I'm worth schmoozing up to. Guess 'Fei was right about the
jacket.*
He settled into the chair she waved him to and sat back,
pulling out his notebook and getting ready for what he privately vowed would be
one of the best bits of fast-talk in his life.
----------
Justine
busied herself pouring water for her 'guest', marshalling her thoughts. When
she'd heard that someone from the Preventers wanted to speak to her, her first
thought had been that one of her firm's clients -- one of her clients --
was mixed up in something... serious. A bit more thought, though, and she'd
dismissed that idea. Even if one of her clients was up to something, ah,
'irregular' enough to attract the Preventers' attention, lawyer-client privilege
still meant something; nobody would expect her to testify against someone with
whom she had a fiduciary relationship.
Besides, she was smart enough to
arrange things so that she could honestly say she didn't have proof of
anything illegal her clients might be doing. Knowledge without proof wasn't
admissible in court, even if she might be giving her clients advice that somehow
applied perfectly to the shady dealings she definitely didn't admit they might
have.
Which meant, of course, that the Preventers were interested in
something else, and that meant her brother Patrick. That surely couldn't be too
serious; little Pat was too prudish and too stolid to have involved himself in
anything major. Besides, she hadn't really spoken to him in years. That's what
she'd told herself... before she saw the agent they'd sent.
He didn't
look like a Preventers agent at all, which immediately set off warning
bells in her mind. That young, and with that ridiculous non-regulation braid...
but his ID would have been checked as he came in, and an impostor would have
tried to look more normal anyway. Therefore he was one of 'those' agents, the
ones everyone knew the Preventers had, the ones who had special skills or
special duties and were allowed leeway in other areas. That, plus the number of
colours in the band across the bottom of his ID, plus the lack of insignia on
his uniform, had to equal 'highly cleared secret agent of some
sort'.
*He's a prodigy,* she thought quickly, passing him his
glass with a smile and pouring for herself. *Either
that or he's a lot older than he looks. Probably works undercover. This is
serious. Little brother, what have you done?!*
*Well, I'm
sorry Patrick, but if you're going down I'm not going to be tarred by
association. Mister Maxwell, you just got yourself one very cooperative
interview subject.*
Settling back in her seat, Justine steepled her
hands in front of herself and fixed her best smile on her face. "Now, Mister
Maxwell, how exactly can I help you?"
----------
Ms Gilmore's
bustling around with carafe and glasses gave Duo time for a more subtle
evaluation of her and her surroundings than she'd managed, and by the time she
was finished he was frowning inwardly.
*Big
imposing desk, squishy leather furniture that's so retro it's been back in half
a dozen times, power suit from a major designer,
subtle-yet-screamingly-expensive jewellery... that plus what I've seen of the
rest of this firm equals money money money, all right. You don't get this high
in this corner of the legal world as young as she is without family money and
connections, either, no matter how good your Uni scores in law and butt-kissing
were. Which means she's rich from birth. Therefore her brother should be rich,
too... but I checked, and he's living within his not-exactly-handsome Preventers
salary, no extra sources of income.*
A glance
at the expensively-framed photographs on the wall turned into a longer look as
Duo's instincts nudged him again, telling him that something important was there
to be seen if he could just get his conscious mind to notice it. There were
several 'brag wall' photographs, pictures of Ms Gilmore shaking hands with
assorted celebrities and politicians (presumably after winning cases for them),
and two or three that looked like family shots -- no, five; the tall,
powerful-looking man standing next to a younger Justine in academic robes with a
proud hand on her shoulder in the graduation photograph there was also shown
there, there, there and there, always the centre of attention, and the
older-brother type standing on her other side at graduation was sharing a frame
with him there and there- -
*Oh. So that's it.*
Patrick
Gilmore was standing in the background of the graduation photo, half-hidden
behind their father, somehow managing to give the impression that he was
huddling into his Alliance uniform collar despite the fact that he was standing
up straight.
He didn't show up anywhere else.
*Hm. Daddy darling rates a good proportion of the brag wall, and big
brother dear is almost as favoured despite being a typical boring Suit if ever I
saw one, but little brother gets the short end of the stick. One photo, and it
doesn't look like you actually meant him to be in it. So much for the 'brave
defenders of law and order' schtick, huh lady?*
Duo shifted his gaze back to Ms Gilmore in time to be looking polite-
and-attentive at her when she turned back to him, flipped to a blank page in his
notebook, poised his pen, and never noticed that he was now completely
calm.
"Now, Mister Maxwell, how exactly can I help
you?"
----------
The young man sitting opposite her smiled, a
wonderfully warm expression that didn't reach his eyes, and Justine found
herself shivering inside.
*This is one dangerous man,* she
thought, recognising the mannerisms of someone who was completely in control of
events as he shifted his shoulders, pushed his booted feet out a fraction, and
somehow took control of the space around him, making a large chunk of her
office subtly his territory. It was something she did herself in court,
but she'd had to study and really work at it to pull it off, and she felt a stab
of jealousy as her visitor accomplished it without effort.
"Before we get
started, I should let you know that this interview is completely unofficial," he
told her, sparking another surge of alarm. "You are under no obligation
whatsoever to answer any of my questions, and you can end the interview and ask
me to leave at any time."
*And have you get a warrant and come back--
or worse, not get a warrant and come back anyway? No thank you!*
Justine thought, mind filling with unpleasant scenarios where 'unofficial' meant
'covert', or maybe even 'black op'. "I'm sure that won't be
necessary."
His smile widened. "Thank you."
* * * * *
Wufei
eyed the clock for perhaps the fifteenth time in five minutes. *Unless that woman's keeping him waiting, his appointment should
have started twenty minutes ago. He hasn't called or come back, so she didn't
just refuse to talk to him, which is... good?*
*Unless she refused to
talk to him and he's sitting somewhere feeling like a failure. That would be
bad. Very bad.*
His hand reached out for his terminal, then pulled
back and clenched into a fist. *Chang Wufei, you are not going to
phone him!*
Another glance at the clock. Twenty-one minutes.
*
* * * *
Lady Une sat at her desk, paperwork lying forgotten in front of
her, moodily playing with the ears of the floppy stuffed toy sitting in her
lap.
*Twenty-two minutes and counting,*
she told herself. *Everything must be going all
right. If it didn't, he'd call Chang, and even if Chang didn't think to tell me,
I'd notice when he broke the sound barrier as he left.*
* * * *
*
Sally Po was halfway through an impromptu spring cleaning of all the
cabinets in her surgery. It didn't stop her checking her
watch.
*Twenty-four minutes and Une hasn't
called, so nothing's gone wrong yet...*
* * *
* *
Justine kept her courtroom smile going as she showed the Preventer to
the door after what had turned into nearly an hour of the most searching
cross-examination she'd ever experienced in her life. *Which isn't too
surprising, since I'm not normally on the receiving end!* she told herself,
feeling a drop of sweat prickling at her hairline. *That was worse than
defending my thesis!*
And the boy -- young man, she corrected herself
hurriedly -- had been perfectly polite and courteous the whole time, unlike one
of her thesis examiners. In a way, it would have been better if he'd been rude
or threatening; she was used to dealing with that, and if worse came to worst it
would have been an excuse for her to break off the interview... even though that
would have ended up with her looking over her shoulder for months. As it was,
she'd had to answer dozens of probing questions about her brother and the rest
of her family, staying strictly within the bounds of the truth while carefully
shading her answers to make it clear that no other member of the small Gilmore
clan could possibly be involved in Patrick's wrongdoing.
Whatever it was.
She still didn't know. It would have been far easier to avoid
incriminating herself if she'd just known what it was she was supposed to act
oblivious to.
"Samantha? Hold my calls for the next thirty minutes," she
told her assistant, shook Maxwell's hand goodbye, and hurried back into her
office to regain her composure, go over everything she'd said one more time...
and, most importantly, decide whether or not to call her father.
* * * *
*
A lifetime's instincts and practice kept Duo's expression cheerful and
unrevealing as he joked with Justine Gilmore's assistant ("How'd it go?" "Mildly
chilled, but no frostbite!"), waved to the receptionist and walked out of the
building, but inside he was starting to get genuinely angry. Snatches of the
conversation he'd just had echoed through his mind.
"Well, Mister
Maxwell, my brother Patrick's always been sort of the black sheep of the
family..."
"I haven't seen Patrick lately, so I don't know how much help
I can be, but..."
"We've never been what I'd call
close."
"Oh--" a delicate laugh "--Patrick lives his own life
regardless of what the rest of us are doing. He's always been like
that."
*So much for family solidarity! Why don't you just hand the guy
an anchor and cut the rope?*
And then there'd been the clincher. "He
never really managed to... you know." A wave of the fingers. "Measure
up."
He'd raised an eyebrow at that. "Measure up to what?" A momentary
impulse to leer and make a crude remark was ruthlessly
suppressed.
Another vague wave. "Family expectations."
"Family
expectations? Do you mean your parents' expectations, or yours as
well?"
"Oh, parents' of course, though I shared their feelings. Father
knows best, after all." Justine practically simpered at
him.
*Interesting how that went from 'parents'
to 'father' so quickly. Come to think of it, I couldn't see any pictures that
looked like they might be of their mother either, but Gilmore's file lists both
parents as living...*
*So. Dad runs the family and Father Knows Best.
Mom's either out of the picture -- literally! -- or totally without influence.
Maybe the 'perfect' trophy wife, there to support her husband and be a hostess
but nothing else? Number One Son and Daddy's Little Girl fit in just fine, but
Number Two Son somehow fails... probably every day of his life, judging by the
tone of some of those remarks.*
*Number One Son becomes a rich polished
Suit, just like good old Dad. Daddy's Little Girl becomes a high-powered lawyer,
just like good old Dad wanted. And Number Two Son is supposed to be something
else, but ends up going into the military. In some families that's an honoured
tradition, but in other families it's the sort of thing you do if you don't have
the skills to do anything 'better'. I think I can guess which sort of family
Gilmore's is... which makes his entire career a failure too. No matter how well
he did, it would never count, because it wasn't success in the 'right'
field.*
*And what does this sort of
upbringing do to Number Two Son?*
Duo
frowned, one hand pulling gently on his braid.
*Time to give Une my preliminary report, I
think.*
* * * * *
Wufei leaned
sideways in his chair as he heard light, quick, familiar footsteps coming
into the room, peering past his bookshelf ramparts. Seeing Duo, he started to
get up, smiling... then sat down again as Duo walked straight into his office,
tugging at his braid and apparently muttering into the open notebook in his
hand.
*Oh. I guess... he's
busy?*
Feeling rather deflated, Wufei
suddenly realised that he was beginning to pout.
*Ugh. Stop that! Duo doesn't have to come and talk to me every
time he gets back into the office!* he scolded
himself, scooting his chair back in front of his computer and snatching up a
file at random. *Busy and absorbed is much better than upset or panicked! He
will come and talk to me when he wants to!*
Five minutes later, he
realised he was holding the file upside down.
* * * * *
Une looked
at the thin sheaf of neatly-typed pages sitting on her desk and raised an
eyebrow. "My. That's certainly concise."
Duo shrugged uncomfortably. "You
said you liked brief reports. I put all the facts in there, I just didn't dance
around the evaluation."
"Believe me, I'm glad to see it," Une assured
him, smiling but sounding a little acerbic as she glanced towards her ever-full
in tray. "Sit, please."
Duo sat, fingers and braid tuft twisting together
nervously in his lap. Une picked up his report and started to
read.
*...Well,* she thought, *concise and coherent.
Logically set out, clear, easy to follow...* "I may have to hire you to give
lessons in the proper way to present a report, next," she murmured, turning over
the one-page outline of the problem and starting to read the 'Observation and
Analysis' section. A few of the things listed as observations made her eyebrows
lift again, but she wasn't distracted enough to miss Duo's pleased
blush.
Turning finally to the last page, 'Conclusion and
Recommendations', Une read the two short paragraphs, nodded to herself, and laid
the pages down again. "How sure are you of your conclusions?" she asked, looking
up, and Duo shrugged.
"Like it says, that's just my preliminary report,
but I'm pretty sure. All I need to do before I turn it into my final report is
to talk to Gilmore himself."
"You don't think he'll object to your
suggested changes?"
"If I'm right, he'll jump at the chance to get out of
the job," Duo said seriously, hitching forward in his chair to make his point.
"He's a brilliant solo agent. Not so sharp on the reconnaissance end of things,
but that doesn't matter if someone else is in charge of gathering intelligence
for him, and he makes up for it by being great at improvisation anyway. Teamwork
and teaching, though, nada. Zip. He's useless and he knows it... but he
was offered the position, and in his family that's the same as getting an order.
The person in charge tells you what you're going to do, and you do it. No
excuses. No saying 'I can't' or 'I don't want to'. If you fail, it's because you
failed, not because you were given a job you weren't prepared for. You weren't
good enough. You didn't 'measure up'."
His voice turned biting on the
last words, and Une nodded for him to go on. "You sound..." She gestured
vaguely. "Mildly annoyed about this?"
"I wouldn't say 'mildly'," he
snorted. "Severely narked, that might cover it. I spent nearly an hour listening
to his sister preen herself about how she and her big brother were just so much
better than 'dear Patrick', so much more successful, so much better at living up
to what their father decided for them... She said that a lot. 'Father decided'.
She didn't become a lawyer because she watched a lot of courtroom dramas when
she was a kid; she became a lawyer because 'Father decided' she should go to law
school. She was just lucky he picked something she was actually good at! Same
for her big brother, 'Father decided' he should go into the family
company."
"And Patrick?"
"Yes, well, Father didn't decide so well
there." Duo grinned coldly. "Apparently, 'Father decided' really early that it
would be nice to have a doctor in the family. That was the family expectation,
starting from when our Gilmore was about five... but he only got into medical
school because 'Father decided' to buy him a scholarship, and he bombed his
first year. Y'know, if you're heading for medical studies, you don't do well in
all the preparatory units in high school and whatnot and then suddenly lose the
aptitude. It had to be obvious -- obvious for years -- that he wasn't
headed for the right career, but oh no, Father had decided, so they made him go
on until he hit the wall and made it blazingly obvious. I may not know too much
about families, but even I know that's no way to raise your kids."
Une
studied him for a moment, then quirked a smile. "I'd say you know plenty. So.
Gilmore's personal track record made him look like a good choice, we--
I-- offered him this job--"
"And either he didn't know whether he
could do it or not, or he knew he couldn't, but refusing wasn't an option," Duo
nodded. "As far as you were concerned, he could have said no, but he didn't see
it that way. And he can't teach, because for one thing I think his social skills
are shot, plus he's so good he doesn't think about how he does things any more.
Stealth and infiltration are so easy for him, he can't understand why other
people can't just see him do something once and catch on. Maybe he knows
intellectually that they need to start with the simple things, but
everything is simple to him.
"So his teaching sucked, but he
managed to get his students to look competent by training them to do a
series of classroom problems by rote. Then he had to plan missions. I bet he can
plan one-person missions for someone at his skill level just fine, but he can't
plan anything that takes teamwork. He can't plan for people who aren't as good
as he is. He doesn't remember to write down some things that are absolutely
necessary, because he's so used to them that he doesn't even think about them
any more. They're a given for him, like-- like writing directions to get someone
from the lounge room to the bathroom in your house. You'd write 'go into the
hall, turn left, second door on the right' or whatever it is, not 'get up from
the sofa, walk to the door, stop, open the door, move through it, close the
door, turn on the hall light if it's dark...' You see?"
"I'm beginning
to," Une sighed. "I'm also beginning to feel rather sorry for
him."
"Well, yeah." Duo ran one hand back through his bangs. "He knows
he's screwing up, but he can't ask to be removed from the job. It's the medical
school thing all over again. He's been given a job to do, and he has to keep
doing it until it all comes crashing down around his ears and he's told to stop.
The way he's been raised, he's not allowed any other way out."
"So
what do we do now?" she asked quietly.
"Well, first I talk to Gilmore to
make sure I'm right about all this," he said, grinning sheepishly. He almost
seemed to deflate a bit as he backed off from his anger at Gilmore's family, but
she was pleased to see that he wasn't retreating back into timidity just yet.
"Then, if I am right, you've got to take Gilmore out of his teaching position.
He really is good within his area of expertise, he'd be invaluable to the
Preventers back in the field, and I think he'd be pretty good as a teacher's
assistant. You could bring him in after a mission to tell an advanced
class what he'd done; you'd just need someone else to tell them why he
did it that way, and why other methods wouldn't have worked. And... it might
also be a good idea to get him some counselling, so next time he needs help he
knows how to ask."
"That sounds like the right thing to do. It will mean
a demotion for Gilmore, however, and I'll have to find a
replacement."
"He might not mind the demotion if it gets him out of
something he can't handle," Duo pointed out. "Most of his students said he
seemed like a nice enough guy, and he wasn't a heavy in the classroom -- y'know,
no leaning on his rank, no insisting they called him 'sir'. Besides, it was a
provisional appointment anyway, wasn't it?"
"True."
"As for a
replacement, you mentioned McKenzie, right?" He grinned. "From what Wufei's told
me about her, she definitely wouldn't keep quiet if she thought there was a
problem..."
"I believe I can safely say that failure to communicate her
feelings is not one of McKenzie's flaws," Une said dryly, and waved him
away. "Go. Shoo. I'll have Amanda set up a meeting with Gilmore in the next
couple of days, and I'll expect your final report as soon as it's ready. I doubt
you'll keep me waiting. Now go make Chang take you to lunch or something, it's
nearly two o'clock and you look hungry."
"What, you mean 'Eat, eat,
you're too thin already'?" Duo was already sidling towards the door as he
continued with, "You know, you don't look like a Jewish
grandmother--"
The stuffed puppy hit the door as he yanked it shut behind
him.
* * * * *
Wufei looked up -- again -- as he heard Lady Une's
door open and close, and he nearly catapulted himself up out of his chair as he
saw Duo, heading for him this time.
"How'd it go?" he asked as Duo
stepped into his little homemade office, carefully not asking all the other
questions in his head -- at least, not asking them yet.
"Well.
Um." Duo blinked at him and then seemed to sag all over, wilting forwards into
Wufei's arms for a long, tight hug. Eventually pulling back, he sighed, "Man, I
needed that. Um... how'd it go? Well, it... it went. It went okay, I think. Oh
God, I just advised Une to totally rewrite a guy's career and she agreed
with me!"
"Then she obviously knows how to recognise good advice when she
hears it," Wufei said soothingly, carefully steering Duo to sit
down.
"Uh. Okay. Cool. Thanks." Duo managed a wobbly smile. "I'll know
for sure when I talk to him. Amanda's setting that up. Oh, and the scary lawyer
lady did not shoot me. Actually, I think I scared her, I'm not
sure why but I think it might have something to do with the way scary lawyer
minds work. I guess the jacket worked. And Une says I should make you take me to
lunch."
"Far be it from me to argue with my commanding officer. Where
would you like to go?"
"Somewhere with nice soundproof booths so I can
have a minor nervous breakdown and babble at you without anyone calling the men
in white coats."
"That's doable."
* * * * *
An hour and a
half later, after a leisurely lunch (during which he had indeed babbled, but had
managed to avoid breakdowns of any kind), Duo was back in his office sorting his
files and making a few final notes before putting them away. Leah McKenzie might
not be in charge of the filing room any more, but that didn't mean he was going
to leave them for Amanda to deal with; after all, he liked her, and for all he
knew she might have been taking lessons from Leah on how to deal with file
defaulters.
His reaction when he answered the vidphone and saw Amanda's
face looking back at him was therefore amusing, but understandable.
"I'm
putting them all back, I swear!"
< < What? --Oh! > > She
dimpled at him. < < I'm pleased to hear that, but that's not actually why
I called. I have a call for you, from a Mister Gilmore, Senior. >
>
"...Gilmore Senior?"
Amanda nodded, and he
straightened his tie, suddenly very grateful that he'd left both it and his
jacket on. "Okay, put him through."
< < Certainly, Duo. Ah...
Mister Gilmore asked to speak to 'Preventers Agent' Maxwell, and I did not
correct his assumption. > >
"Gotcha. Thanks, Amanda."
<
< You're welcome. > >
There was a brief flicker of static, and
Amanda's image was replaced by that of a heavy-set, scowling man. He hadn't
changed much since the photos on his daughter's wall were taken.
"Good
afternoon, sir," Duo said politely, cold-calm once more. "To what do I owe the
pleasure?"
Cold brown eyes studied his face, flicked over his clothes,
examined his badge, and returned to his face... now showing the faintest, almost
invisible, flicker of wary respect. < < Agent Maxwell, > > he
said.
*Oh yes. The jacket really
works.*
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