Story: A deeper Kind Of Love
Title: A Deeper Kind Of Love - Chapter 2
Pairing: Jennifer Shepard/Caitlin Todd
Rating: PG-13 (Will change in later chapters...)
Disclaimer: NCIS is owned by CBS or whoever else. It's not mine and I do not intend to make money with this story...
Author's Notes: Dedication's still the same but I forgot to thank my beta, Jen, for doing the wonderful job she did. Shame on me, really!
We can go dancing, we can go walking,
as long as were together
Listen to some music, maybe just talking,
get to know you better
‘cause you know I’ve got
So much that I wanna do,
when I dream I’m alone with you
Its magic
You want me to leave it there,
afraid of a love affair
But I think you know
That I can’t let go
(ABBA - Take a chance on me)
An hour later the bartender approached them. He said something and Kate drunkenly mumbled “Sure” and Jenny didn’t care. All she cared for was losing herself in the traitorous bliss the alcohol had created in order to never think of what she had written in that damn letter.
“Jenny?” Kate had rudely poked her into the side.
“Hmm?”
“They are closing.”
“I don’t want to go.” Jenny complained.
“Me neither.”
“I don’t want to stop drinking.” Jenny complained again like a little girl.
“Me neither.” Kate confirmed.
“I’ve Bourbon at home.” Jenny stated.
“Lucky you.”
“Come with me?” Jenny mumbled. That was perhaps the most absurd situation in which she had ever spoken these words.
“Yeah” Jenny knew that if Kate hadn’t been as drunk as she was, she wouldn’t have accepted this drinking offer in the middle of the night. But honestly she didn’t really care. They had the bartender call a cab and soon enough Jenny’s fingers, made clumsy by one too many drinks, had opened the front door to her family home and she led Kate into her living room.
As soon as they had entered the room Kate let herself fall onto the couch, too drunk to care for pleasantries like waiting for Jenny to invite her to sit. With a few long strides Jenny crossed the room, taking two glasses and a crystal bottle from the cabinet against the far wall. She poured a generous amount of its contents into both glasses. Not bothering to close the cabinet again, she brought drinks and bottle back to Kate. “Cheers”, Jenny murmured and both women gulped their drinks down.
“Gods, I need to pee!” Kate suddenly said.
“I’ll show you” Jenny replied.
Both women stood up at the same time, bumping into each other. Jenny held on to Kate to prevent her from falling. But since Kate was as unsteady on her feet as she was this movement sent both of them tumbling to the floor. Jenny felt Kate’s very feminine body hit her own and involuntarily gasped. Kate had frozen, regarding Jenny’s face with an unreadable expression. Maybe it was the fact that both of them were so drunk, maybe it was the memories of Jethro which were still so vivid in her mind, maybe it was the disappointment of both their failures in their last relationships or every relationship, but some unknown, overwhelming force drew them closer to each other and Jenny held her breath until their lips finally met. There was a little voice in her head asking her what she was doing, but alcohol had already made it no more than a whisper, the feeling of Kate’s demanding lips against her own, and the hope that this might actually help her forget let her ignore it. Soon enough Kate deepened the kiss, Jenny suddenly found her hands under Kate’s sweater and neither of them wasted any second thoughts on the fact that they were both women.
Only a few hours later Jenny awoke to the sound of her ringing cell. The first thing she noticed was the throbbing headache that threatened to blow her skull apart. For a second she wondered if she should just stay in bed, keep her eyes closed and ignore everything that anyone might want from her. But then she remembered that she had a meeting with director Morrow and the SecNav for lunch and opened her eyes with a groan. The bright sunlight made the throbbing in her skull even worse. Fuck. It was supposed to be still dark outside. She turned her head and jerked. What was she doing lying naked on the carpet in her living room and who … who the hell was that woman sleeping next to her? And why was she, too, nude? She sat up and looked around her, not believing her eyes as she did. Their cloths lay discarded around them. Congratulations, Jennifer! Only you would wake up in pile of cloths, next to a woman you don’t even know. What had she done? She was straight, dammit. Hadn’t she spent the last months crying over Jethro like a lovesick teenager? She noticed that her cell phone still kept on ringing. She stood up, not caring, if she woke her … lover? Fuck buddy? Whatever she was.
“Shepard?” she murmured groggily as she picked up the call.
“Agent Shepard, where the hell are you?” Director Morrow. Who else.
“I’m sorry, Director, I’m on my way.”
“In 30 minutes you will be in the Navy Yard, Agent Shepard. 30 minutes. No more.” Damn. That meant 5 minutes at best to get ready. 5 minutes for a meeting with the SecNav.
“Right.”
“29 now” and she heard the phone disconnect.
She had, by no means, the time to take a shower. Neither had she time to find out with whom she had spent the night. She sighed. What should she do? Wake her up? She couldn’t risk being held up by that woman trying to make conversation although she certainly wanted to have one. What for Christ’s sake had happened here? She couldn’t care right now. All she could care about was getting to the Navy Yard within the next… 28 minutes or Morrow would most likely kick her ass. She looked around and her eyes stopped at the desk in the next room. Determined, she strode over, took a sheet of paper and her Mont Blanc Meisterstück, which was only there because she rarely used it, and wrote,
I needed to get to work immediately since I was late for a meeting. If you want to eat something help yourself to the fridge or have Naomi fix you something if she’s here. If you leave before she arrives just pull the door shut behind you.
Jenny paused for a moment, again regarding the sleeping form of the young female in her living-room.
I have to say I am totally oblivious to what happened last night - one thing I know is that I have a hang-over like hell. It’d be nice if you left your number or something
-Jennifer
This was as good as she could do she decided. Putting the note next to their discarded clothes she went in search of something good enough to wear to face SecNav. On her way upstairs she got to look at the grandfather clock in the hall and almost jumped. She hadn’t realized she had slept that late. She still wasn’t dressed. 26 minutes to go.
Jen actually did make it in time. Exactly 25 minutes later she left her car in the parking lot. After all she was in the Navy Yard. That was what the Director had said, wasn’t it? Jenny tried to make herself believe. The following lecture on being on time and not wanting to screw over her career as well as the (going surprisingly well) meeting with the SecNav forcefully pushed all her thoughts about the last night out of her mind. Only when she came back home well after 2200 that evening and she opened her front door did she remember leaving a complete stranger alone in her house. Nonetheless her heart missed a beat when she thought that she would probably find Kate’s number in her… Kate? Was it Kate? The name of that woman? Hopefully she would find it in a few seconds. Why was she suddenly nervous? Without taking off her coat, only carelessly throwing down her purse onto the chest of drawers, she strode into the living room. Nothing. Not on the side table, not on the couch, not on the floor. Only her own note was still where she had left it, mocking her. Hastily she almost ran into her study but still no message from Kate. In desperate hope she called,
“Naomi!”
“Yes, Miss Shepard?” Naomi answered, coming down the stairs.
“Did you take something away from here? A note or something?” Please, please, please.
“No, I didn’t.”
“And was someone here, when you came?”
“No, No-one.”
Jenny let herself fall into the chair behind her. That was it, she thought. She’d never see her again, never know what had happened. Why did it bother her so?
“Thank you, Naomi. You may go.”
The next few weeks weren’t actually much different from the last. During daylight and well after she still buried herself in work, determined to improve at least her career even if her private life was already in pieces, and afterwards she still spent the little time she had left musing over her ‘fucked up’ life, the missed chances and failed romances, her only friends being bourbon and whiskey. The only considerable difference between now and then was that in the breaks from mourning over Jethro Kate’s face would come to her mind. With the weeks a bit of her memory came back, not all of it and surely not the important bits about how she and Kate had come to lie on her living-room carpet but fragments. First she remembered being at a bar, then how they had met, exchanged only words without meaning, most of the time drinking peacefully alongside each other. Then as the weeks advanced, she, too, remembered bits of the night’s continuation. Though these memories were only freeze-frames, short impressions from a life that needn’t necessarily be her own but photographs ripped out of context. Kate laughing over something during the cab ride to Jenny’s town house. Herself fumbling with the keys at the front door while Kate stood closely behind her. The last and most powerful image came to her during a video conference with her liaison officer of Mossad. Standing alone in MTAC, she waited for Ziva David to fill her in on the latest activities of an Al-Qaeda leader operating in Egypt. While talking to her, the young Israeli had unconsciously played with a pencil which she had involuntarily dropped as she had talked herself into rage facing the sheer impossibility of getting hold of that particular dirt bag. Ziva David had bent down to crawl under her desk and, on seeing the camera range automatically follow the young agent stretching to retrieve the pencil; she remembered the rocking body of a woman in her arms.
She had gasped and luckily been able to avoid having Officer David notice her flushed face as she had felt the heat rush between her legs. When the younger woman had emerged from under her desk, fixed her clothing and continued her talk, Jenny had already been able to regain her composure. She was a spy after all. Feigning things was her job. But after that event she was determined to see Kate again. She wanted once more to meet the woman who had been able to do this to her, to be the only one besides Jethro (whose presence seemed small and weak compared to how heavily Kate had invaded her most private thoughts) to make the “ice queen” melt. In addition to that came that her “obsession” with Kate started to affect her sleep. Not so long ago she had begun to have dreams about women. Nameless, faceless women, doing raunchy stuff to each other, to her, to themselves. In fear of these dreams and the heat that possessed her when she woke up, she avoided sleep. Lack of sleep made her tired at work. She was angry and snappish, only bitching when someone tried to talk to her. She was lucky that she hadn’t needed to be in the field for she was sure that she wouldn’t have been able to remain undercover, any cover besides that of a woman who was slowly running herself to the ground because she had discovered that maybe she wasn’t as straight as she had thought.
It wasn’t long until Director Morrow summoned her into his office to have one of their dreaded talks about “the professional and political future”. Jenny had been late again, having lost the battle with sleep in the early hours of the morning and consequently overslept. So she rushed first to her desk and, then upon finding the note from the Director’s secretary, headed up the stairs to his office.
“Ahh… Special Agent Shepard”, he said after Jenny had entered. “There are two things about which I’d like to talk with you” he begun. “Have a seat. This will take a while.”
Jenny sat down and the Director continued.
“It has come to my attention that you have seem to be distracted lately. Is anything the matter, Special Agent Shepard?”
Jenny considered her answer for a second. “I have been having…troubles lately.”
“What sort of troubles, Jennifer?”
“They are private matters, Director. I have been having problems coming to terms with something that happened a while ago.”
“Jennifer, as your superior, I have to tell you that private matters can in no way affect the work of a federal agent. Especially in your position. As someone who has come to like you over the years, however, I want to know if there is any way in which I can help you come to terms with which has happened to you.” He paused and Jenny had already opened her mouth to answer when the Director added, “This isn’t still about Agent Gibbs, is it?”
Jenny gasped. “I never knew that you…”
“Knew? Jennifer, I’m the daddy of this kindergarten. I may not leave the office that often but even I come to know of some of the so called secrets, and your relationship or romance or whatever it was certainly wasn’t a secret between those who worked with the both of you.”
Swallowing, Jenny thought of something to answer. “No, this isn’t still about Jethro. You see, I met someone and did something really stupid and now it seems that I have to face the consequences.”
The director looked at her with wide eyes. “Oh my… You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Jenny gave a bitter chuckle. “No, Director. Only madly in love. And unrequitedly it seems” she said weakly.
Morrow regarded her with sad eyes. “I’m very, very sorry to hear that, Jennifer.”
“Thank you, Director” Jenny said and was surprised to find her eyes moistening. “I deeply appreciate your concern.”
The Director smiled. “Maybe I do have just the right job for you. I had a call from Deputy Director David this morning.” Jenny’s attention instantly rose. Mossad always meant one of two things. Either trouble or interesting jobs. Hopefully it was the second. “He wants to send Ziva to Egypt. It seems as if we finally have a chance of getting these dirt-bags.”
Jenny knew what was about to come but she wasn’t sure if she liked it.
“This has been your op since the very start, Jennifer. I’d like to send you along to keep us informed about what the Israelis are up to. You know as well as I do how far to trust Mossad.”
If she was in Egypt, there would be absolutely no chance of finding Kate again. If she wanted to forget Kate, going to Africa would be the best thing to do. If she wanted to push her career, she would have no chance but go. A successful mission in Africa against Al-Qaeda would undoubtedly make a very good impression on her C.V. She did want to become Director one day.
“Of course you can think about it for today. I need your answer by tomorrow lunchtime” Morrow invaded her thoughts. In a second’s time Jenny had taken her decision.
“No! I mean, yes.” On Morrow’s confused look, she explained. “I just mean that I don’t need the time. I’ll go. It’ll probably do me a hell of good.”
Instantly the Director’s smile broadened. “Glad to hear that, Jennifer.”
When Jenny managed a half-smile the secretary’s voice rang through the intercom. “Director, your wife is in the line. It is about dinner tonight.”
Morrow said he would take the call and gestured Jenny to leave. She rose but she hadn’t even reached the stairs when she was called back. Two minutes later she found herself sitting opposite the Director for the second time in an hour.
“You see, I am in a bit of dilemma. My wife and I have an invitation to dinner tonight at the white house. The thing is my wife is sick, food poisoning after having eaten seafood. As my one female senior agent I’d like you to accompany me as stand-in for my wife.”
Who was she to decline dinner with the president?
Pairing: Jennifer Shepard/Caitlin Todd
Rating: PG-13 (Will change in later chapters...)
Disclaimer: NCIS is owned by CBS or whoever else. It's not mine and I do not intend to make money with this story...
Author's Notes: Dedication's still the same but I forgot to thank my beta, Jen, for doing the wonderful job she did. Shame on me, really!
We can go dancing, we can go walking,
as long as were together
Listen to some music, maybe just talking,
get to know you better
‘cause you know I’ve got
So much that I wanna do,
when I dream I’m alone with you
Its magic
You want me to leave it there,
afraid of a love affair
But I think you know
That I can’t let go
(ABBA - Take a chance on me)
An hour later the bartender approached them. He said something and Kate drunkenly mumbled “Sure” and Jenny didn’t care. All she cared for was losing herself in the traitorous bliss the alcohol had created in order to never think of what she had written in that damn letter.
“Jenny?” Kate had rudely poked her into the side.
“Hmm?”
“They are closing.”
“I don’t want to go.” Jenny complained.
“Me neither.”
“I don’t want to stop drinking.” Jenny complained again like a little girl.
“Me neither.” Kate confirmed.
“I’ve Bourbon at home.” Jenny stated.
“Lucky you.”
“Come with me?” Jenny mumbled. That was perhaps the most absurd situation in which she had ever spoken these words.
“Yeah” Jenny knew that if Kate hadn’t been as drunk as she was, she wouldn’t have accepted this drinking offer in the middle of the night. But honestly she didn’t really care. They had the bartender call a cab and soon enough Jenny’s fingers, made clumsy by one too many drinks, had opened the front door to her family home and she led Kate into her living room.
As soon as they had entered the room Kate let herself fall onto the couch, too drunk to care for pleasantries like waiting for Jenny to invite her to sit. With a few long strides Jenny crossed the room, taking two glasses and a crystal bottle from the cabinet against the far wall. She poured a generous amount of its contents into both glasses. Not bothering to close the cabinet again, she brought drinks and bottle back to Kate. “Cheers”, Jenny murmured and both women gulped their drinks down.
“Gods, I need to pee!” Kate suddenly said.
“I’ll show you” Jenny replied.
Both women stood up at the same time, bumping into each other. Jenny held on to Kate to prevent her from falling. But since Kate was as unsteady on her feet as she was this movement sent both of them tumbling to the floor. Jenny felt Kate’s very feminine body hit her own and involuntarily gasped. Kate had frozen, regarding Jenny’s face with an unreadable expression. Maybe it was the fact that both of them were so drunk, maybe it was the memories of Jethro which were still so vivid in her mind, maybe it was the disappointment of both their failures in their last relationships or every relationship, but some unknown, overwhelming force drew them closer to each other and Jenny held her breath until their lips finally met. There was a little voice in her head asking her what she was doing, but alcohol had already made it no more than a whisper, the feeling of Kate’s demanding lips against her own, and the hope that this might actually help her forget let her ignore it. Soon enough Kate deepened the kiss, Jenny suddenly found her hands under Kate’s sweater and neither of them wasted any second thoughts on the fact that they were both women.
Only a few hours later Jenny awoke to the sound of her ringing cell. The first thing she noticed was the throbbing headache that threatened to blow her skull apart. For a second she wondered if she should just stay in bed, keep her eyes closed and ignore everything that anyone might want from her. But then she remembered that she had a meeting with director Morrow and the SecNav for lunch and opened her eyes with a groan. The bright sunlight made the throbbing in her skull even worse. Fuck. It was supposed to be still dark outside. She turned her head and jerked. What was she doing lying naked on the carpet in her living room and who … who the hell was that woman sleeping next to her? And why was she, too, nude? She sat up and looked around her, not believing her eyes as she did. Their cloths lay discarded around them. Congratulations, Jennifer! Only you would wake up in pile of cloths, next to a woman you don’t even know. What had she done? She was straight, dammit. Hadn’t she spent the last months crying over Jethro like a lovesick teenager? She noticed that her cell phone still kept on ringing. She stood up, not caring, if she woke her … lover? Fuck buddy? Whatever she was.
“Shepard?” she murmured groggily as she picked up the call.
“Agent Shepard, where the hell are you?” Director Morrow. Who else.
“I’m sorry, Director, I’m on my way.”
“In 30 minutes you will be in the Navy Yard, Agent Shepard. 30 minutes. No more.” Damn. That meant 5 minutes at best to get ready. 5 minutes for a meeting with the SecNav.
“Right.”
“29 now” and she heard the phone disconnect.
She had, by no means, the time to take a shower. Neither had she time to find out with whom she had spent the night. She sighed. What should she do? Wake her up? She couldn’t risk being held up by that woman trying to make conversation although she certainly wanted to have one. What for Christ’s sake had happened here? She couldn’t care right now. All she could care about was getting to the Navy Yard within the next… 28 minutes or Morrow would most likely kick her ass. She looked around and her eyes stopped at the desk in the next room. Determined, she strode over, took a sheet of paper and her Mont Blanc Meisterstück, which was only there because she rarely used it, and wrote,
I needed to get to work immediately since I was late for a meeting. If you want to eat something help yourself to the fridge or have Naomi fix you something if she’s here. If you leave before she arrives just pull the door shut behind you.
Jenny paused for a moment, again regarding the sleeping form of the young female in her living-room.
I have to say I am totally oblivious to what happened last night - one thing I know is that I have a hang-over like hell. It’d be nice if you left your number or something
-Jennifer
This was as good as she could do she decided. Putting the note next to their discarded clothes she went in search of something good enough to wear to face SecNav. On her way upstairs she got to look at the grandfather clock in the hall and almost jumped. She hadn’t realized she had slept that late. She still wasn’t dressed. 26 minutes to go.
Jen actually did make it in time. Exactly 25 minutes later she left her car in the parking lot. After all she was in the Navy Yard. That was what the Director had said, wasn’t it? Jenny tried to make herself believe. The following lecture on being on time and not wanting to screw over her career as well as the (going surprisingly well) meeting with the SecNav forcefully pushed all her thoughts about the last night out of her mind. Only when she came back home well after 2200 that evening and she opened her front door did she remember leaving a complete stranger alone in her house. Nonetheless her heart missed a beat when she thought that she would probably find Kate’s number in her… Kate? Was it Kate? The name of that woman? Hopefully she would find it in a few seconds. Why was she suddenly nervous? Without taking off her coat, only carelessly throwing down her purse onto the chest of drawers, she strode into the living room. Nothing. Not on the side table, not on the couch, not on the floor. Only her own note was still where she had left it, mocking her. Hastily she almost ran into her study but still no message from Kate. In desperate hope she called,
“Naomi!”
“Yes, Miss Shepard?” Naomi answered, coming down the stairs.
“Did you take something away from here? A note or something?” Please, please, please.
“No, I didn’t.”
“And was someone here, when you came?”
“No, No-one.”
Jenny let herself fall into the chair behind her. That was it, she thought. She’d never see her again, never know what had happened. Why did it bother her so?
“Thank you, Naomi. You may go.”
The next few weeks weren’t actually much different from the last. During daylight and well after she still buried herself in work, determined to improve at least her career even if her private life was already in pieces, and afterwards she still spent the little time she had left musing over her ‘fucked up’ life, the missed chances and failed romances, her only friends being bourbon and whiskey. The only considerable difference between now and then was that in the breaks from mourning over Jethro Kate’s face would come to her mind. With the weeks a bit of her memory came back, not all of it and surely not the important bits about how she and Kate had come to lie on her living-room carpet but fragments. First she remembered being at a bar, then how they had met, exchanged only words without meaning, most of the time drinking peacefully alongside each other. Then as the weeks advanced, she, too, remembered bits of the night’s continuation. Though these memories were only freeze-frames, short impressions from a life that needn’t necessarily be her own but photographs ripped out of context. Kate laughing over something during the cab ride to Jenny’s town house. Herself fumbling with the keys at the front door while Kate stood closely behind her. The last and most powerful image came to her during a video conference with her liaison officer of Mossad. Standing alone in MTAC, she waited for Ziva David to fill her in on the latest activities of an Al-Qaeda leader operating in Egypt. While talking to her, the young Israeli had unconsciously played with a pencil which she had involuntarily dropped as she had talked herself into rage facing the sheer impossibility of getting hold of that particular dirt bag. Ziva David had bent down to crawl under her desk and, on seeing the camera range automatically follow the young agent stretching to retrieve the pencil; she remembered the rocking body of a woman in her arms.
She had gasped and luckily been able to avoid having Officer David notice her flushed face as she had felt the heat rush between her legs. When the younger woman had emerged from under her desk, fixed her clothing and continued her talk, Jenny had already been able to regain her composure. She was a spy after all. Feigning things was her job. But after that event she was determined to see Kate again. She wanted once more to meet the woman who had been able to do this to her, to be the only one besides Jethro (whose presence seemed small and weak compared to how heavily Kate had invaded her most private thoughts) to make the “ice queen” melt. In addition to that came that her “obsession” with Kate started to affect her sleep. Not so long ago she had begun to have dreams about women. Nameless, faceless women, doing raunchy stuff to each other, to her, to themselves. In fear of these dreams and the heat that possessed her when she woke up, she avoided sleep. Lack of sleep made her tired at work. She was angry and snappish, only bitching when someone tried to talk to her. She was lucky that she hadn’t needed to be in the field for she was sure that she wouldn’t have been able to remain undercover, any cover besides that of a woman who was slowly running herself to the ground because she had discovered that maybe she wasn’t as straight as she had thought.
It wasn’t long until Director Morrow summoned her into his office to have one of their dreaded talks about “the professional and political future”. Jenny had been late again, having lost the battle with sleep in the early hours of the morning and consequently overslept. So she rushed first to her desk and, then upon finding the note from the Director’s secretary, headed up the stairs to his office.
“Ahh… Special Agent Shepard”, he said after Jenny had entered. “There are two things about which I’d like to talk with you” he begun. “Have a seat. This will take a while.”
Jenny sat down and the Director continued.
“It has come to my attention that you have seem to be distracted lately. Is anything the matter, Special Agent Shepard?”
Jenny considered her answer for a second. “I have been having…troubles lately.”
“What sort of troubles, Jennifer?”
“They are private matters, Director. I have been having problems coming to terms with something that happened a while ago.”
“Jennifer, as your superior, I have to tell you that private matters can in no way affect the work of a federal agent. Especially in your position. As someone who has come to like you over the years, however, I want to know if there is any way in which I can help you come to terms with which has happened to you.” He paused and Jenny had already opened her mouth to answer when the Director added, “This isn’t still about Agent Gibbs, is it?”
Jenny gasped. “I never knew that you…”
“Knew? Jennifer, I’m the daddy of this kindergarten. I may not leave the office that often but even I come to know of some of the so called secrets, and your relationship or romance or whatever it was certainly wasn’t a secret between those who worked with the both of you.”
Swallowing, Jenny thought of something to answer. “No, this isn’t still about Jethro. You see, I met someone and did something really stupid and now it seems that I have to face the consequences.”
The director looked at her with wide eyes. “Oh my… You’re not pregnant, are you?”
Jenny gave a bitter chuckle. “No, Director. Only madly in love. And unrequitedly it seems” she said weakly.
Morrow regarded her with sad eyes. “I’m very, very sorry to hear that, Jennifer.”
“Thank you, Director” Jenny said and was surprised to find her eyes moistening. “I deeply appreciate your concern.”
The Director smiled. “Maybe I do have just the right job for you. I had a call from Deputy Director David this morning.” Jenny’s attention instantly rose. Mossad always meant one of two things. Either trouble or interesting jobs. Hopefully it was the second. “He wants to send Ziva to Egypt. It seems as if we finally have a chance of getting these dirt-bags.”
Jenny knew what was about to come but she wasn’t sure if she liked it.
“This has been your op since the very start, Jennifer. I’d like to send you along to keep us informed about what the Israelis are up to. You know as well as I do how far to trust Mossad.”
If she was in Egypt, there would be absolutely no chance of finding Kate again. If she wanted to forget Kate, going to Africa would be the best thing to do. If she wanted to push her career, she would have no chance but go. A successful mission in Africa against Al-Qaeda would undoubtedly make a very good impression on her C.V. She did want to become Director one day.
“Of course you can think about it for today. I need your answer by tomorrow lunchtime” Morrow invaded her thoughts. In a second’s time Jenny had taken her decision.
“No! I mean, yes.” On Morrow’s confused look, she explained. “I just mean that I don’t need the time. I’ll go. It’ll probably do me a hell of good.”
Instantly the Director’s smile broadened. “Glad to hear that, Jennifer.”
When Jenny managed a half-smile the secretary’s voice rang through the intercom. “Director, your wife is in the line. It is about dinner tonight.”
Morrow said he would take the call and gestured Jenny to leave. She rose but she hadn’t even reached the stairs when she was called back. Two minutes later she found herself sitting opposite the Director for the second time in an hour.
“You see, I am in a bit of dilemma. My wife and I have an invitation to dinner tonight at the white house. The thing is my wife is sick, food poisoning after having eaten seafood. As my one female senior agent I’d like you to accompany me as stand-in for my wife.”
Who was she to decline dinner with the president?