What Lies Before us
Book 2 of a Jack Thompson X Reader Story
Masterlist (book 1 and previous chapters of book 2)
Chapter 2
Fortunately for Y/N, her old clothes were in Jack’s car – so she got them without telling the rest of the office where she got them from before heading to the men’s changing room to get her blood-stained shirt off. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was still visibly shaken, but not as much as someone should have been that had just stabbed two men to death. That was her.
She was more shaken about the thought of what could have happened if she didn’t do what she did. They would have killed the others. Eliminating witnesses. Once she had translated the document, they would have killed her, too.
She heard the door to the changing room open.
“How’r you holding up?”
She turned away from the mirror towards Jack. She tried her best to muster up a genuine smile.
“I’m good. Really.”
Not really convinced, he came towards her to take a closer look.
“Did they get you somewhere?”
“No”, she shook her head, “I was quicker, it would seem.”
“Y/N, this was my fault. You were right, the theatre-“
“Stop right there”, she interrupted sternly, “no more of the blame game. You wanted to play it safe, and to be honest, no one would have expected that five Russian guys manage to break into the SSR. Maybe we should ask Stark for a better security system.”
“You could have died.”
“I most likely would have died after you guys”, she retorted quietly, smoothing out the folds of the replacement shirt, “it really was quite simple.”
She knew that he wanted to talk back, so she simply lifted her eyebrows, staring directly into his concerned blue eyes and gave him a smile: “I said stop. It all worked out. No one died.”
The Chief grit his teeth, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He knew she was right. It did, sort of, work out.
“You did good.”
“It’s almost like I’ve done it before”, she retorted cynically, hinting at the contents of the file he had initially thought belonged to Peggy.
“Yeah. Well, I’m glad you did.”
She tilted her head: “We’re quite the team, no? The assassin and the sharpshooter.”
“I was no sharpshooter, I was a machine gunner. But similar enough.”
He had hated the sound of machine guns ever since. Firing yourself was bad enough – having to constantly maintain shooting discipline, the short bursts of fire, so as to not overheat the barrel, the quick repetition that echoed in one’s entire body, the deafening sound. It was bad enough doing it – it was a million times worse receiving the fire. Often, the Japanese’s machine guns were hidden deep within the rocky landscape of Iwo, or hidden in the bushes and trees of Okinawa. They were often hardly visible. Fire would erupt from nowhere, mowing down anyone that was unfortunate enough to be in the line of fire. The sound of enemy machine guns, however, was the thing that accompanied him to this day. The loud, rapid sounds, the feeling when bullets barely missed one’s head – he had been able to feel the air being stirred up by them next to his ears.
He remembered his Lieutenant Commander telling them that the bullets you could hear were the good bullets. It was those who you didn’t hear that you should be worried about.
He hadn’t been wrong. But even though those bullets never breached his skin, they left scars all over.
“You okay?”
Y/N brought him back into the present day, back from the island. She looked at him, head tilted, and eyebrow raised.
“Marvellous”, he replied dryly.
She pointed to the door with her chin: “Come on, let’s head out. It shouldn’t take a lady an hour to change.”
They walked towards the door and Jack retorted: “Maybe if she just killed two men, it should.”
“Not in our profession, I think”, she grinned, opening the door. The atmosphere in the office was strange – the bodies had been removed, and the captive had been brought into a nice, highly-protected cell in an undisclosed location.
The other men, Lee, Michaelson, Goldberg, as well as the other three men who had returned from the set-up, Ramirez, Wallace, McKinley and Harrow waited awkwardly for the Chief and Y/N to re-enter the room.
Had they taken too long? Surely not.
But Y/N eventually figured out what was going on. They didn’t know what to say to her.
She raised a hand: “Gentlemen, we don’t have to have any discussion of what has just happened. I’m just glad no one died today.”
She felt Agent Lee’s lingering stare on her, so she put her hands on her hips and addressed him directly: “Is there something wrong, Agent?” Her voice was dripping with sarcasm: “Don’t tell me what you saw offended you. I must apologise for not killing them with the power of motherliness.”
“No, L/N, that’s not- what you did, it was, uhm-“
“It was?”, she asked curiously, yet cynically. There were so many things for him to say – brutish, effective, good – it would all lead to very different statements.
“It was good.”
Good? Well, Y/N internally sighed, that was probably the best she could expect of someone like Lee. “Not bad for a woman who doesn’t belong here, you mean?”, she said, making him visibly uncomfortable, “Fear not, Agent Lee. I’m simply doing my job. Like all of us, I suspect.”
“What did they want you to decode, L/N?”, Thompson asked, crossing his arms before his chest. “Must’ve been real important.”
She nodded, glancing at the paper: “I suppose so. It would have told them what the British and Americans knew about the item that should be transported to Leningrad. It’s the communiqué that was sent to the FBI yesterday.” She pursed her lips, frowning: “And this means-“ She stopped.
“What?”
She looked at Thompson. “I don’t know yet.” That was a lie. But she was proficient at that. Whilst the office returned to normal business, more agents started to trickle in, she made her unfortunate, but sometimes very helpful coffee round. Heading to the Chief’s office, she placed a note below his cup.
We were not supposed to have the communiqué. Neither the British, nor the FBI know we obtained it. Jonas does not seem to have an interest in passing it on – exclusively – to us and then send agents to kill us. Too obvious.
Which means, we have a mole. Someone who knew that we’ve obtained it, and knows our schedule. Someone who wasn’t in the office today before 9:00 and could call in the decoy, or, if he’s smart, someone who paid someone to call it in for him, whilst he is in the office.
She didn’t wait to see his reaction, as whoever it was could be seeing their interaction. She left as quickly as she had entered, knowing that the information would be in the most capable hands there were in all of New York.
Lee; Ramirez; McKinley; Michaelson, Harrow; Goldberg; Peterson; Shaw; Wise; Spencer; Conte; Reed; McGregor; Owens; Simpson; Williams; Martinez; Schommer; White; Bruns.
Those were the names of all the agents who had worked the day before and had been in the main office the day prior. Y/N’s heart wanted to suspect Lee – but her mind knew that there was nothing to mark him out from all the other names, apart from the fact that he did not like her. Something was strange, though – whoever it was, he had been in the room when she had talked to Jonas – but didn’t hear the subsequent conversation well enough to know himself what she had learnt. Otherwise, he could have informed the Russians about what the SSR, MI6 and the FBI knew.
Her gaze wandered through the office. This didn’t quite make sense.
What was becoming clear, though, was that the person knew that she knew it. Also, the person must have contact with another agency, as they didn’t obtain the code. That was only and exclusively received by the FBI.
Which meant that either, this person had access to classified documents by the FBI, but wasn’t trusted enough to receive the decoded message. That wasn’t that unlikely, considering that the clearance level for these types of things was usually very high. Or, there were multiple people. SSR, FBI – people in high positions, relatively speaking, of intelligence services of the US. That was, arguably, the more realistic version.
Meaning. There were probably multiple moles, at least one in the SSR, which had to be a person who only partially got the information regarding the contents of her phone call.
And there was a mole inside the FBI who got a hold of the coded message, but was unable to decode it. And somehow, they figured the next course of action was to inform the Russians about this, and that prompted them to storm the SSR – arguably a less protected target than the FBI – to get it decoded, in order to figure out what it was that the three agencies knew. And, significantly, if the FBI and MI6 knew more details than they did. Otherwise, decoding it was pointless – they could have just put a gun to Jack’s or Y/N’s head and forced them to speak.
Thank God that Peggy and Sousa showed up at Thompson’s front door, Y/N realised. If they had called into the office, or even worse, had showed up, the mole might very well have known that the SSR figured out – most likely – what item they want to steal.
Also, it meant that all agents that were present when she had received the call were now in danger – though the two individuals who the mole would see as the best informed were, unfortunately, Thompson and herself. Naturally.
But who the hell was only half-present yesterday?
She ran through the events as best she could. It had been a busy workday, and it had been fairly loud in the background when she had made the call.
Y/N stared holes in her desk, trying to re-enact the scene in all its details.
Lee had grunted in the background. He had been annoyed that she was busy and couldn’t bring him a new cup of coffee.
Coffee!
Who brought the coffee that day?
She didn’t want any, but she assumed that Jack would have had received some.
She hoped intensely that he didn’t just learn how to operate a machine gun and how to pull of an amphibious assault in boot camp, but also to remember seemingly unnecessary details.
She picked up random papers to make it look like she had something to report to the chief – which technically was true, but nothing that she could write down.
“Chief, your report”, she announced before closing the door behind her. He looked tense, but also confused.
“Don’t look confused”, she hissed between her teeth as she placed the papers onto his desk and pointed to a random line. “Who brought coffee yesterday? When I talked to Jarvis?”
“’Cuse me?”
“Do you remember or not?”, she shot back, “Focus!”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair: “I think that kid…”
“Specifics? Like, a name?”, she asked cynically.
He stopped himself from rolling his eyes: “Christian Owens.” He raised an eyebrow: “Why?”
“I’ll tell you all about how I came to this conclusion”, she said, turning around, “But I’m pretty certain he’s our whistle.”
Christian Owens was an inconspicuous agent. Young, brilliant education. Graduated from Yale. He had joined the SSR some months ago – at the time, Y/N and Thompson were in L.A. with the entire Whitney Frost mess.
The hiring decision had been made by Thompson’s deputy, McKinley. And Y/N didn’t blame him – the kid had a stellar resumé. Born to an American father and a British mother, he had spent much of his childhood in Britain.
Before proposing to interrogate him, Y/N wanted to at least talk to Thompson about her conclusion. They felt pretty compelling to her, but she wanted a second opinion.
......
The two met in Central Park during lunch break. It took a while for them to reach their designated meeting point, as they took widely different routes to get there and reassured themselves that they were not being followed.
“Owens?”, Thompson asked confused, “What the hell brings him to the Russians?”
Y/N ran through her train of thought, listing everything she had come up with during her mind-games at her desk.
The more she talked, the more serious Thompson’s face grew.
“Son of a gun”, he muttered, rubbing his chin, “I guess that’s why they recruited you to be a spy.”
“What, did you think they purely took me from my impeccable skills of knifing people?”, she asked back sarcastically, but quickly became serious again.
“Look, if I’m right, we might be able to use Owens to figure out what their exact plan is. He doesn’t seem to be that experienced at spying. There’s just one catch to this plan”, she paused, searching for Jack’s eyes. “Everyone in the SSR who heard our talk yesterday is a possible target. And the best possible targets are you and I.”
Jack bit his lower lip, thinking.
“Well, we know who they want the most. And it ain’t me, Mrs. Turning”, he stated, “If they need a codebreaker, they need you. And, probably, they need that document back. Which happens to be in your possession, too.”
“So what you’re saying is that I’m most at risk”, she summarised, “how wonderful.”
Jack rubbed his neck. This was all great. Not only did they have a traitor amongst them, no, Y/N was also top of the list.
“Look, we don’t collect our agents’ apartments”, he said, “theoretically, he shouldn’t know where you live. Do you rent under your real name?”
“Until now, I never had a reason not to”, she sighed, “I guess I should have known better.”
He shook his head: “What should you have known better, that the Reds have infiltrated my staff?”
She shot him a glance: “Seriously, Jack, stop it with the blame game! It’s your favourite, and it’s a dumb game!”
“But it’s kinda true”, he shrugged half-heartedly, “But whatever.” He paused. “I don’t rent under my real name”, he pointed to the position where Manfredi’s hitman had shot him, “Not since this wonderful event.”
Y/N winced at the memory. She had never felt such terror than in that moment – and she had seen some horrific things.
“Anyways, here’s the plan. Two days. Two days to investigate him, then I interrogate him.”
Y/N raised an eyebrow: “You really think that’s a good idea? You’ll club him to death.”
“Until now, no one died when I interrogated them”, he gave back, “Besides, he can thank his friends that he’s missing out on the carrot.”
Chief Dooley. Right. That felt like ages ago to Y/N, even though it’s been just a few months.
“Right. Two days.”
“You’re not going to get to stay the night in your apartment if you’re in the phone book.”
Y/N couldn’t help but give him a grin: “You’re sure it’s just my safety that makes you say that?”
Now, it was hard for anyone to make Jack Thompson blush. He was not easy to embarrass – he easily got uncomfortable, but embarrassed was something different. But right now, his cheeks began to redden – and unfortunately for him, this time, no dim light would help him cover it up. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Yes”, she nodded overly empathetic, “Because in Jack Thompson’s imagination, children are still brought to this world by the stork alone.”
She gave him a wink and turned around: “See you in the office, Chief. I’ll meet you at 18:50 down the ally.”
The following night, Y/N was alone in Jack’s apartment as he, supposedly, met up with a friend. She spent the time working through yearbooks she had acquired from Yale, which, incidentally, did show Owens as a student. She wrote down the names of the students in his course to call them up the next day. But what was certain was that he indeed studied there. That much was clear. It was shortly after 11 when she heard a knock kat the door. Jack only had one key, and had given it to Y/N so that she could enter on her own.
Jack hardly waited for Y/N to open the front door, so quickly did he enter the apartment: “You’ll be knocked off your socks by what I’ve found!”
“Well, to be honest, I’m already happy you didn’t knock down the door”, she joked dryly, “shoot.”
“I did some digging on Owens”, he said, “I realised I knew his platoon sergeant. As far as he knows, he checks out. Spoke a lot about Yale, about growing up in Idaho, just as it says in his documents.”
That didn’t leave Y/N speechless, so she assumed the shocking part was yet to come.
“Well, turns out”, Jack fumbled in the folder he carried with him, “Owens had a fiancé back in 44 – apparently married the gal after the war. One Diane Chévalier.” He overemphasised her name – just to underline: French.
“Aha”, Y/N raised an eyebrow, “And that’s somehow an earth-shaking revelation?”
“Absolutely”, he grinned and pulled a single photo out of the file, “She came to visit him once when he was in a training camp in Tennessee. My pal took a photo of the enchanting couple.”
He flicked the photo for her to see.
“Oh no”, Y/N’s mouth went dry as sandpaper, “He married a bitch.”
......
Y/N took the picture from Jack’s hand and took a closer look. Yeah, there was no way around it. The elegantly dressed woman next to Owens was Dottie Underwood. Or whatever she was actually called.
“Well, we can all agree, poor Owens? Horrible taste in women”, she deadpanned. Was that the way he got introduced to communism? Through an affair?
“You know what”, she muttered, “nothing I found indicates that Owens ever veered off into the commie section. I mean, he could be good at hiding it, but then again, it took us one day to identify him. Doesn’t seem to me he is good. Actually, he is an amateur.”
Jack had no idea where Y/N was going with this, but he knew it was better to let her go through her thoughts without interrupting her.
“What if she’d convinced him that if he did this one thing for her, she’d be free?”, she questioned, “Or, I don’t know, that her contract with Stalin is over or somethin’. That he did it not out of conviction, but out of… well, love.”
“No one betrays their country for a gal”, Jack stated flat-out.
Y/N raised her eyebrows and laughed loudly: “Jack, you have no idea. I’ve seen Nazis defect out of nothing more significant than love, I’ve seen people collaborate with them because they fell for one. People betray their country for love – or the promise of it – all the time.”
He sat down on his sofa, facing her. “Idiots”, he grumbled into the empty pace.
“Are they?”, Y/N sat down, too, “I have to give it to Dottie, if she did that, she is damn good at her job. I turned a few, got them to assist me to get at-risk people out of the occupied territories. It is very difficult. But nothing incentivises individuals more than the promise of love. And once they figure it out, that no matter what they do, they’ll never receive it: That is the ultimate punishment. Even those I didn’t kill… many of them died shortly after. Ran into enemy fire, or turned their own gun on themselves.” Y/N pressed her lips together: “Maybe he is a commie. Maybe he isn’t. But at least consider the possibility when you’re taking him apart in the interrogation chamber.”
He looked up: “So you agree that I’ll interrogate him tomorrow?”
She gave him a funny look: “Well, you are the SSR’s most experienced interrogator. And – since when does the Chief has to ask his coffee-fetcher for permission?”
“Since I don’t want to be murdered by the coffee-fetcher in my sleep”, he retorted with a huff.
Y/N pressed her lips together: “I’d be more worried about Underwood showing up unexpectedly. It’s like playing chess against an evil version of myself, and I hate playing chess.”
Jack observed her quietly for a long time.
“What?”
“Nothing”, he clenched his teeth, “Suppose that’s why I joined the Marines. Didn’t really have to think about the moves were doing. You wake up, you’re told to take that island, next thing you know you’re climbing from the ship.”
“I’d still wager that my survival chances were better than members of your company”, she muttered quietly, “I think amongst my type of spies, we had a mortality rate of about a third.” She huffed at the memory, but then tilted her head: “But on that note – why did you actually join the Marines? I mean, Army, Navy – Air Force? You had the academic credentials to get into any of them. Why join the Marines?”
Something in Jack’s eyes changed – there was that boyish sparkle that he had so often when he had been younger and was about to do something very reckless.
“Why not?”, he asked back with a grin, “We all know the story from the Belleau Woods, right? What man wouldn’t want to be part of that?”
“Oh my God”, she muttered cynically, “don’t tell me you wanted to join the toughest possible faction of the Armed Forces only to have the bragging rights for it.”
“Hey”, he interjected jokingly, “I didn’t know where we were headed into.”
“Yes”, she agreed, “You’re right. It was just as likely you’d end up stationed in Britain and knitting socks.”
“Well, maybe not that, but maybe not waiting for the assault of a burning-hot volcano island on a ship that has to fend of kamikaze pilots who’d literally die just to maybe get a hit at their enemy.”
Y/N pressed her lips together. “I read reports from Okinawa, Jack.” He didn’t know what she meant by that, but he eyed her cautiously.
“I read about the Japanese strategy. Horrible”, she clenched her teeth, and having looked at the ground before, she now searched for his eyes, “I read about what they did in many battles over and over. A staged surrender, only to attack the Americans who tried to take them into custody.”
His face turned to stone, and his lips pressed into a fine line.
“You’ll never know if those… those you shot were sincere or not”, she said quietly, “and if they were, yes, it is still a war crime on paper. But no one can fault you for doing what you did. It was a split-second decision, and it was in the middle of the night. You’ll have to learn to forgive yourself for that.”
When he didn’t say anything, Y/N added quietly: “People expect wars to bring out heroes. But in my experiences, they simply don’t exist. No one goes to war and doesn’t make a mistake. Some shoot to quickly, others to slow. Either way, someone dies. Tell me, if you had waited, if you didn’t take the shot, and they ended up killing your buddy, your C.O., would you blame yourself any less? And if the answer is no, then you can’t go on blaming yourself. And if it’s about that stupid Navy Cross, then screw it – they literally shipped you from hell to purgatory, so for what it’s worth, you’ve done enough to be given some form of thanks. Not many had to see action on Okinawa right after Iwo Jima.”
“I must be a hell of a dancer for you to forgive me war crimes”, he said with a thick voice, as if all the grief was re-emerging. Not even his sarcasm could mask the sorrow.
“Jack”, she shook her head, “I’ve seen war crimes. I’ve seen it all. Mass executions, rape, deliberate shootings of unarmed civilians against a wall. Deliberate starvation of entire towns. Intent matters. You were trying to do the best you could. That doesn’t guarantee the ideal outcome. But it doesn’t change that you are a good man, Jack.”
He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger, and Y/N could have sworn it wasn’t because he was tired, but it was to wipe away the sadness. But in her experiences, it was already better to cry over it than to numb it completely. Those who buried it deep enough not to ever cry about it, those were the people with the thousand-yard-stare.
Y/N stood up, walked over to him and sat down next to him, looking at his tired face.
“And you don’t have to wait for me to forgive your war crimes”, she said softly, “I’ve never held them against you to start with.”
A/N: I just realised, I started book one in 2017. For real, that seems like in a different historical period by now. Jesus, I again apologise for taking a million years to write a story. I hope I can do better in part 2, and I hope that my writing style has only improved over the years. As usual, feedback, reactions - anything - is very appreciated, and I hope you enjoy!
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