Fic: Condor's Flight, Part II
Previous Chapter: Part I
“You do know, Elizabeth, that this is not your job?” There was a bit of scolding in George Hammond’s voice as he watched her from behind his desk in the embassy basement. She sat across from him with her hands folded in her lap like he was sure she had been taught in finishing schools back in New York.
“Yes, sir, I know this isn’t my job.”
“You know we have people who specifically do this sort of thing?”
“Sir, what was I supposed to do? They were right there…”
He smiled again and shook his head. “Where are they now? What is their condition?”
“They’re at my apartment, Teyla is watching over them. I think one of them is injured. I’m going to contact a doctor I trust before I go back home, but I thought you should know first. What else should I have done?”
That was his young protégée all right, always wanting to do the right thing. “It probably wouldn’t have hurt the boys to spend the war in a Spanish internment camp, but what’s done is done and we hope they don’t compromise you or the network. It will take me a few days to get papers for them made up, and we’ll have to put them on the plane to Lisbon on Monday. Do you think you can control them between now and then?”
“I’ll manage them, sir.”
Manage, not control. He’d long ago gotten used to listening to the words Elizabeth used in her reports. They were all chosen carefully. But for now he just nodded, but as she got up to leave he called back. “Elizabeth, I spoke to Colonel O’Neill the other day…”
She stopped at the door to look back, a slightly guilty took on her face. “Yes sir?”
“He’s been a friend for a long time, and he’s frustrated right now with sitting out the war here instead of in the action…”
“Sir, with all due respect… my love life is a little outside of your authority, and my father is an ocean away.” The rebuke did not make him mad though, as he did deserve it, but she quickly added, “Though I think I’d rather have you giving me advice than him. It’s been over for a couple of weeks, but I’ll always care about him. I don’t want to see him hurting any more than you do.”
Hammond nodded, and let her go without pushing the point harder. She was a grown woman, and a good agent after all.
*** *** ***
When John Sheppard woke up it took him a moment to register where he was, and another to get up the willpower to get out of the soft bed that he imagined smelled like her. Lorne was laying a few feet from him and he watched his friend sleeping for a bit, wondering just how badly he was hurt… for about the four hundredth time since they’d landed.
It took him a moment to register the voices from the other room. It was the two men’s voices that drew his attentions and he dismissed the remaining fogginess of sleep to try and concentrate and hear what they were saying.
“I always knew I should hit you over the back of the head and dump your body in a dark alley, you pencil necked little nerd…”
He heard Weir answer, but couldn't make out any of the words, just that she sounded distressed. He turned to wake Lorne up but he seemed to have done that without prompting and was standing behind him. “Damn it, why do you always do that…” John whispered, but did not wait for the answer. He nodded to the door, and then reached for it to quickly open it and storm into the living room to defend their hostess.
He wasn’t sure what he expected to find when he burst into the room, but Weir standing between two men, one of them in an American army uniform, was definitely not one of them. His eyes landed on the collar of the army officer, and seeing the shining, silver birds, he jumped to attention. Lorne followed with an almost inaudible groan.
There was something a little theatrical about the scene now. He wasn’t sure if it was the Three Stooges or a French farce though. There was a dark-haired man in glasses standing by the window. He was probably the little nerd, dressed in a leather jacket and looking a bit like he’d been caught at something. The other man was older, with graying hair and World War I campaign ribbons on his blouse. Between them, trying to maintain more dignity than she probably felt right now, was Weir, and behind her was the maid with a large kitchen knife in her hand. Too many people to be the Stooges, he supposed.
The colonel assessed the situation and what had to have been a powerful rage seemed to quickly cool. He looked over the two flyers and back at Elizabeth. “I know you go for tall, dark, and dangerous, Liz, but isn’t this a little ridiculous? Besides, that one’s a bit short for you.” He jerked his head in Lorne’s direction.
“Jack….” John recognized the tone of voice Weir was using. He’d had a few girlfriends use it on him in the past, and suddenly the situation was very clear to him. Before she could continue, though, there was a knock on the door and everyone in the room froze a bit in fear… except for Elizabeth who inhaled for a moment and calmly walked to the door and peeked out before opening it. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you….”
The new entrant was a short red head carrying a large bag. She also assessed the situation. “Having parties without inviting me, Elizabeth. I’m hurt. Where is my patient?” But before Elizabeth could answer she sized Sheppard and Lorne up and zeroed in on Lorne. “You look pale and pasty and like you’re about to fall down on your feet. Are you trying to make your condition worse? Teyla, can you help me get him back to bed?”
“Si, doctora.” Teyla put down the knife and came over to help.
“I take it this is the doctor?” John asked Elizabeth with a slight smile as his friend was being moved back to bed, but she didn’t get to answer before the colonel.
“So she tells me. I’d rather call her a Napoleonic power monger. Isn’t that right, your holiness?”
The doctor didn’t answer, but just smiled a little. However Weir did jump in. “She’s a countess, Jack, not the Pope.”
“I don’t have to wear funny hats,” the doctor piped in.
“Not helping, Janet.”
“I’m already doing my good deed for the day, Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth….” The other man by the window spoke for the first time. “I think I should come back for those packages tomorrow. This seems like an atrociously bad time.”
“It is, Daniel, I’m sorry.” With that he slipped out behind the colonel, giving him a wary look as he did.
Weir turned back to the colonel, who was looking at her with what John almost wanted to call the face of a kicked puppy. “I never could make you laugh at the right times.” With that he put on his hat and turned to leave.
“Jack…” Elizabeth called after him, but he didn’t stop.
Once he was gone Sheppard looked over at Weir. She was flushed in the face and bits of her hair had escaped their neat places a bit like the chaos that was around her. “Boyfriend?”
“Ex. Recent.”
“Isn’t he a little old for you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Doctor Fraiser, do you mind if I take the other flyboy out and get some coffee? There are too many people in my apartment right now.”
“Go on, Elizabeth. This may take a while.”
She picked up a fedora and put it on John’s head, and practically dragged him for a minute before he fell into line with her. Once outside he glanced over at her. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a café on the corner that serves good strong coffee.”
“And will you explain what all of that was about there?”
“Many things were going on there, Captain.”
Once at the café, Elizabeth ordered for them and they found a table far away from anyone else. “Well?” John prompted.
“Which part?”
“Let’s start with the colonel in uniform. The ex.”
She sighed and held her coffee cup between her hands. “Colonel Jack O’Neill is the American military liaison. We dated for about five months and it’s been over for a bit. His mind is somewhere else right now.”
“Like the war?”
“Pretty much.”
“And four eyes?”
“Dr. Daniel Jackson. He’s an archeologist working on Moorish ruins.”
“Are you dating him?”
“No. Next subject.”
Suddenly John decided that he had a bit more sympathy for the colonel than he had for her. In her eyes he could see certain warmth that she seemed to consciously kill with her words.
“Was that woman really a doctor? She’s American, right? Why did you call her a countess?”
“She’s all three. Came to Spain during the Civil War with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. I’m not sure if it was a need for adventure or just a need to help.”
“She’s another communist?”
Weir shook her head. “I think you’ve got the wrong impression, Captain. To be a communist in Spain is not the same thing as being a communist in the Soviet Union… and not everyone who fought for the Republicans was a communist.”
He gave her his best cocky grin, trying to charm her and take the sting out of the woman’s mood. “Enlighten me?”
She looked off for a moment and back at him. “You do know you’ve landed in the most complicated country on Earth, right?”
“I didn’t land here, I landed next door and walked here.” She chuckled; it was the first time he really thought he’d made her laugh. She should laugh more often he thought idly.
“Okay, so yes, the Republican government was socialist at the start of the war. But they were also a democratically elected government, and when the military launched the coup the only help they could find was from the Soviet Union. While the German and Italian governments were giving the Nationalists all the weapons and advisers they could ever need, the western democracies were silent. It gave the Soviets a lot of leverage and influence to make the Republican government more radical.”
“And the doc?”
“Her hospital was captured, but the Nationalists kept her working. An officer fell in love with her, and I think she fell in love with him. They married…”
“And he was a count?”
“Yes, old influential family. They quickly fell out of love, but divorce is not such an easy thing in this country. They lived separate lives until he died fighting with the Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front a few months ago. So now she’s the widow of a hero to the cause.” Elizabeth smiled a bit. “When I need a doctor I can trust, she’s who I call.”
John sat up a bit when he saw a uniform coming towards them, and Elizabeth looked over her shoulder.
“Isabel.” He was dark haired and John was reminded of Jack’s comment about her liking the tall dark and handsome type. John tried to pay attention to the rapid Spanish the two were exchanging but he could only focus on the Iron cross and other German decorations on the man’s breast…. And on how much she was flirting with him.
When they were finished talking the officer clicked his heels and bowed to John. He just smiled a not particularly warm smile back, and raised an eyebrow at Weir when he was gone. “He was friendly… and so were you.”
“He’s on leave from the Blue Division… they’re volunteers fighting on the Russian front.”
“Do you have a thing for men in uniform, or just fascists?”
“Captain…” she said in a low warning voice.
“Seems to me, Miss Weir, that you’re having a pretty nice little war here, sitting on the sidelines and getting friendly with the enemy.”
She sat back straight in her chair and for a brief moment John thought he saw hurt in her eyes before she looked away and stirred her coffee.
Next Chapter: Part III