Fic: Condor's Flight, Part III
Previous Chapter: Part II
Elizabeth hadn’t had much to say to John after they returned from coffee. Doc Fraiser had confirmed to them both that Lieutenant Lorne had sustained serious injuries including two broken ribs. There was some hemming and hawing around telling her exactly how he’d been injured, but after what seemed like eternity under the doctor’s intense gaze, John admitted that he was sure that Lorne had hit the aircraft as he was bailing out of the B-17.
She’d given him something for the pain and Lorne was sleeping peacefully for the first time in days as far as John could tell. Weir had disappeared for a bit, and sitting in her bedroom with Lorne, John decided that it was the perfect time to find out what the hell this woman’s game was.
Opening a closet revealed several expensive dresses and gowns. “I thought only Ingrid Bergman traveled through war zones with this kind of stash, Miss Weir,” John mumbled to himself in annoyance as he picked through the party dresses of silk and other rich fabrics, idly thinking she probably looked good in red. He was at his depth of disgust with this New York debutante when something else caught his eye in the corner of the closet.
Crouching down he reached into the back and carefully pulled out the harsh gun metal of a German made submachine gun. “Hello, Miss Weir… what are you doing with this and where have you been all my life?” He pulled the magazine out and saw that it was loaded before slowly whistling and putting it back in.
From the other room he heard voices again, Dr. Jackson from that morning, and decided he was going to get some answers from this woman. Storming into the room holding the Schmeisser by the receiver, he demanded, “Lady, you are going to tell me why the hell you have an MP-40 in your closet with your girl stuff right now.”
Elizabeth and Daniel looked up from what they were doing and though Daniel looked like a little boy whose hand had just been caught in the cookie jar, Elizabeth walked right up to him and took the machine gun from him. “I’ve been wondering where that was for days. Where did you find it?” She gave him a sweet smile, and pulled the magazine from the weapon and cleared the bolt. “And it’s an MP-38, not a 40, it doesn’t have a safety, flyboy. So if you could, don’t wave it around the apartment.”
It was just than that he realized that the kitchen table was covered in enough weapons to take down a small country… German mostly, and what looked like some Spanish knockoff of Colt pistols… and boxes of grenades. Elizabeth had walked back over to Daniel and continued her discussion. “I can’t get you any more pineapples, can your people make do with potato mashers?”
“Excuse me?” John tried to interject into this surreal conversation he wasn’t sure had to do with food… or with guns.
“Probably for the best anyway, they don’t track back as easily.”
“That’s what General Hammond said.”
“Excuse me?” John said louder, which got their attention. “I’d rather you not treat me like I’m not even in the room, lady.”
Elizabeth fixed him with the deepest green eyes he thought he’d ever seen. “And I’d rather you not actually be in the room, Captain, but we don’t get what we want in life, do we?” After taking him down a peg she turned to Jackson, “Doctor, do you think you can manage without me? I was supposed to be at the Baronesa de Urquiza’s twenty minutes ago. Even in Spain there are limits on fashionably late.”
He nodded, and with the coldest look John thought he’d ever seen she glanced over at him and left. Even after she’d parted he felt a chill go up his spine and a bit of shame for having gone through her closet. It took him a moment to recover his senses before looking over at Daniel. “Dr. Jackson… I don’t think we met this morning. I’m Captain Sheppard.”
Jackson shook his hand. “Daniel. Elizabeth told me about you. I don’t suppose you can help me pack this stuff back up in the crates?” he asked, gesturing to the weapons.
“As long as I can ask you a few questions.”
Daniel shifted a little. “You can ask. I may not answer.”
“Is she a spy?”
“We get to that part about me not answering.” He looked away.
“Okay, well, let’s start less directly. She seems to travel in fast circles for someone who just works at the embassy. Lunch at the Baroness De Something Or Other?” Sheppard raised his eyebrow.
“I think Elizabeth was born traveling in fast circles. Her father is a Senator from New York. Before the war he had a lot of connections with … certain classes of European elite.”
Now it was taking John his entire mind to travel back to those newsreels he hadn’t paid attention to when he’d taken his little sister to the movies. “Weir… Weir… hey, didn’t he get thrown out of England a few years back? The British accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer?”
“Yeah, probably not something to mention to Elizabeth. He was a big isolationist but I don’t think he actually was a Nazi sympathizer. He’s being pretty quiet these days from my understanding.”
Suddenly John connected all the dots, “But the Germans probably still think he’s a sympathizer and that lets her…”
“Into circles in Madrid that most Americans can’t get into right now. Yes.”
“Is she a fascist?”
“Really now, Captain, she doesn’t think you’re stupid and neither do I. How many Republicans have you seen walking in and out of this apartment?”
It took John a moment to register what Jackson had just said, not just about Elizabeth’s political leanings. “She doesn’t think I’m stupid?”
Daniel chuckled at him, “You really are clueless about some things, aren’t you?”
*** *** ***
Elizabeth didn’t return until well after dark, and slipped quietly into the apartment trying not to wake the boys. She moved about in the dark well, slipping off her shoes so as not to make much noise, pulling down a bottle of wine from the rack in the kitchen and slipping out onto the balcony overlooking the small inner courtyard of the building.
“You look like you’ve got a good place to think.”
John’s voice broke through her thoughts but didn’t scare her as much as it rightly should have. She looked up at him without saying anything and he scuffed a foot a bit before settling down next to her and looking out at the garden and city beyond through the bars of the balcony railing.
“I think I owe you an apology.”
“You think?”
“Okay, I definitely owe you an apology. I made assumptions about what I was seeing that turned out to be wrong.”
“You don’t have to apologize for that, Captain,” she said quietly, looking away for a moment. “I was actively encouraging you to reach those assumptions. Controlling what people think of me has become so important to me that sometimes I forget to be myself.”
“I barely know you. I really don’t have the right to cast judgments on your social life.”
“John, people have been making judgments about my social life since I was sixteen.”
“Senator’s daughter.”
She just nodded.
“Seems to me that you are doing quite a bit more than that now,” he began.
“I’ve always wanted to do quite a bit more than that. I watch my mother drive herself to lunacy worrying about silly things like table settings and where guests will sit or what charity ball she will attend.”
“Somehow I can’t see you doing that.”
She smiled. “No… I decided after I watched my classmates at Wellesley getting the best education an American woman can have only to catch a husband that I wanted to do something productive. To save the world.”
“And right now saving the world brings you here.”
“Right now the world needs a lot of saving, Captain.”
He smiled a little at that in the shadows and watched her face in the moonlight, admiring her form and her eyes that seemed to glow in the low light.
“You wanted to save the world. I wanted to escape it, I think.”
It was her turn to raise an eyebrow.
“I was a math graduate student when I got my draft notice.”
“Math.” She smiled. “That doesn’t quite fit your image.”
“I’ll have you know that I was a very popular teaching assistant at the University of Chicago.”
“Of that I am sure.” She laughed.
“You have a pretty laugh… you should do it more often.”
She stopped for a moment and caught his eyes again. For a bit they watched each other in silence before they realized they were leaning towards one another, and the kiss came as a surprise to him as much as to her.
After a moment, with the taste of his lips still on hers, she looked back into his eyes. “I’m not sure we should have done that.”
"Look, it's not that I don't know for damn sure we shouldn't be doing this, Elizabeth, it's that I don't really care."
Next Chapter: Part IV