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Spys’R'Us Chapter 3

Lee looked up from the papers on his desk. His lunch meeting with Johnson from R&D had gone well. He had a list of the new features that the Animatron 5000 came with – everything from rubber wheels to voice recording. He had also been given a blueprint of the toy that he could send down to the lab for analysis. He took a quick glance at them, but there didn’t seem to be anything overtly wrong about the design. To Lee it seemed like a perfectly harmless toy.

He had wondered if the toy company was a front for some sort of covert operation, but could find no evidence that would support such a claim. No equipment that shouldn’t belong, no dismantled weapons, no lazers. Perhaps it was legitimate. Just a couple of KGB interested in making American kids happy. ‘And I’m Santa Claus,’ thought Lee.

He looked at his watch. There was half an hour more until he needed to go to the staff meeting, plenty of time to get a call in to Billy. He slipped his briefcase under the desk and sauntered down the hall.

Janie was again engrossed in her book, but when she noticed it was Lee she promptly put it down.

“Oh Mr. Steadman,” she cooed. “Is there anything I can do to help you? Something we missed on the tour?”

Lee inwardly cringed. It had been a rather unproductive tour. He had been trying to get background information on some of the employees.Instead he had gotten a healthy dose of Janie’s home life.

“No. That’s quite all right. The first tour was very helpful. I was just letting you know that I will be stepping out for a moment.”

“Okay Mr. Steadman, And where will you be? Just in case any one asks?”

“Just going for a stroll. I’ll be back in 15 minutes.”

“He what?!”

Even on his car phone Lee could hear Billy’s voice reverberating off the office walls. He gingerly put the phone back to his ear.

“It happened too fast Billy. I never had a chance to correct him.”

“And why did you have a picture of Amanda’s sons in your briefcase anyway? On second thought, I don’t want to know. Dammit Lee, that’s a complication we don’t need at the moment. What if he wants to meet them?”

“Well…”

“Not another word Scarecrow. Try to fix this mess. After you’re out of there for the day meet me in my office. Then we shall see what kind of damage control we need to deploy.”

Lee sighed and put the phone back in its holder. Billy was right – he needed to go and clear this up with Simon. Not to mention that Amanda would have a fit if she found out that her sons had been brought into a case.He got out of his car and ambled back to the office building.

When Lee returned to his office he went to pull his R&D notes from his briefcase but encountered nothing but air. He peered under the desk and found that his briefcase had been moved while he was out. Now it was on the right side.

Lee knelt down to get a better look at his briefcase. Running his hands over the sides he found nothing to suggest that it had been tampered with. He gently picked it up and placed it on the desk.

Very slowly he released the latches and lifted the lid. There was no ticking… no suspicious looking items… no flashing of digital numbers. Lee let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

He riffled through his papers to see if anything was missing. But everything was still there. His brow knotted in confusion. He had nothing of any importance in his briefcase, except for possibly the blueprints, and those were still there.

Lee glanced at his watch, the staff meeting would be starting in a few minutes. He slipped the briefcase back under the desk, picked up his papers and made his way down the hall. He would worry about the ramifications of this later.

Through the course of the meeting Lee found his thoughts drifting from the topics at hand to the man sitting next to Simon Mercer. He was almost as tall as Simon, but rather thin with carefully trimmed gray hair. Heavy, almost black eyebrows shadowed even darker eyes. Though this man had aged since the photo Lee had looked at, there was no mistaking that this was Nicolai Yagoda, one of the KGB elite.

Nicolai looked up and caught Lee’s gaze on him. He returned it with something akin to a smile. Lee shuddered, but returned the smile. There was definitely something going on here, it was just a mater of figuring it out. Not to mention who had been in his office. He made a mental note to check for bugs tomorrow.

Lost in thought, Lee failed to notice that Simon had turned on the slide projector and was showing pictures of past picnic events.

“… and we can all remember the look on Andrew’s face when he saw that little number! But this year it looks like the entertainer may be someone new, perhaps our own Mr. Steadman.”

Lee looked up in surprise. There on the screen was a picture of Amanda’s sons standing with a man, who may or not have been Joe, dressed in a clown costume. It appeared to be some sort of birthday party. Lee opened his mouth but nothing came out.

Simon leaned over conspiratorily and half-whispered in Lee’s direction. “Hope you don’t mind but I couldn’t resist when I saw it earlier today. It looks like we have the same sense of humor. You should wear that to the picnic – your sons would love it!”

Lee forced his face into a grin. “Yeah… who knew?” Well at least he now knew who had been in his briefcase and why. The only problem now was that the 20 people sitting in the staff room now thought that Amanda’s sons were his as well.