[Insert a line of dialogue from Raphael here.]
"Oh, I appreciate them as much as the next girl, Mr...?" she waited for him to fill in the blank space and he did.
"Raph Colson. Raphael, if you are my mother. Which you aren't. Thankfully. Going on dates with her would be awkward. She's just not that cute any more."
"Well, Mr. Colson, I think I can safely say that I both like movies and I will not be emulating anyone's mother any time soon. I'm April, by the way."
The banter had gone on. They'd ended up on the same flight – not sitting next to each other, but the person she had sat next to had realized very quickly that Raph was interested in her, and offered to switch seats, and she got subjected to his sense of humor the entire way home, which wasn't the worst thing; he did make her laugh.
By the time they touched down, he had her number and a date, and she was wondering if she was really going to go through with it.
They'd dated eight times before she had to inform Ingrams of her status, and instigate the background check.
April worked for Ingrams & Associates, a semi secret private group that indulged in clandestine aid – usually of a sexual nature – to people who would never accept the help openly. They were available for hire for governments, agencies, large corporations; anyone who could afford their rather high rates. They worked behind the scenes, gathering profile information on the target and the situation, then they injected a field agent into the lives of the people who needed their help, to work behind the scenes and help repair the damage they were there to fix.
Usually they were hired by top level execs, looking to prop up a VP whose marriage had disintegrated and who was questioning their own position in life, or by agencies like the CIA, who were bringing in agents from longer term deep field assignments, who returned only to find their spouses pregnant with some one else's baby, or by governments, whose chief scientist had just discovered his own bi-sexuality and was completely confused about what to do about it, bearing in mind he had been married for twenty years, and was therefore ripe for blackmail.
The assignments were varied, and usually there was a large degree of investigative elements involved. Ingrams was secret, the field agents very well trained, and it completely fucked the social lives of the employees, and the company made no bones about it.
Generally, field agents lasted four to five years in the field before burn-out occurred, or, worse still, godhood was declared by the agent in question, who was so used to manipulating others around them, they couldn't do anything else.
Lies and deceit were the order of the day, and it made being part of normal society very difficult. April had been with Ingrams almost two years at this point, and was still a relative newbie. She had four operations under her belt and was feeling good about her performance in the last one, which, for once, had gone off without a hitch - and she'd met Raph in that high and decided to go for it. He was cute, he was smart, he made her laugh, why not?
She sat across from Dermot McDonald, Ingrams operations manager and second in command, at lunch one day and told him she was in a relationship and she needed them to do the first background check. Dermot was a large bluff man, with a kind face and a red nose, white hair in a tonsure [what is that?], and he still had some degree of his original Scottish accent, despite being in the US for almost thirty-five years now.
Ingrams had strict rules about relationships that developed while employed by them. What Ingrams did was more than flirting with the law. They broke it with an axe on occasion. Part of why they were so secretive was because of this, but it was also because the work they did, by definition, was clandestine.
They had rules for the field agents – no photos on the facebook page, no blogs, in short, be as off line as they could realistically be in the 21st century.
And if they dated, Ingrams had to know about it. There were three levels of relationship status, each with their own set of policies. The first was a casual relationship that was moving into exclusivity status. At that level, there was a positive vetting of the prospective partner – Ingrams basically reviewed the public knowledge of a person's life and attempted to prove that what they said about themselves was, in fact, so. Where they went to school, where they lived, who their family was and so on.
When told of this stage, April had been surprised to learn that almost twenty percent of prospective partners failed this part of the process, to a greater or lesser degree. As Doctor House says, "everybody lies."
The second stage was a declaration of intent – a marriage proposal, or moving in together. At this point, they'd do a deeper vet of the proposed spouse, looking for all the dirt that most people like to keep quiet. The bitter ex's, the drug charge, the illegitimate child in the shadows.
The third stage was an ongoing every other year vet – looking for changes in the status.
Ingrams did all this to protect everyone --hemselves, the field agent, their charges. What they did more than skirted the law and a field agent could find themselves compromised easily due to blackmail of a spouse or if the spouse himself either discovered what went on at Ingrams, or had his own agenda.
It was a shitty thing to do to any employee, but it was clearly indicated before an new worker came on board; this is what we do and you know about it and accept it.
What was more interesting was that even though Ingrams told their employees what they were doing, they did
not
share the results with them, unless the person they were dating was considered to be a direct threat to Ingrams, and the relationship needed to be terminated. It was considered to be a huge invasion of privacy and while they had to do it, the employee would not be given all the inside scoop on their partner that Ingrams found. It was thought to be too much of an unbalancing situation, where one partner would know everything about the other, but not vice versa.
So far, in all the years that Ingrams had existed, they had only once asked an employee to break off a relationship, and that was because they'd discovered that the man in question was in actual fact Naval Intelligence. The Navy knew of Ingrams. All the major agencies did, and they were obviously attempting to penetrate it via the Captain, and he was succeeding. Ingrams needed to send a message back, and the employee was only too happy to send that message, once she realized she was being used.
In fact, Ingrams had only had to do a second background review six times in their entire history – one had failed outright and the others, while passing, the relationship had failed either just before the intended betrothal, or just past it.
Ingrams even had a specific set of protocols in place for what operatives could tell their intended. While it was a nice idea that the spouses be brought in and have everything explained to them, as a company it was just too dangerous of a possibility. What person could handle suddenly finding out that their intended was a trained sex counselor, and was often out in the field, applying those skills to try and bring resolution to other people's relationships? What relationship could survive that? Worse still, what might happen once that spouse knew what went on at Ingrams? Ingrams would have no leverage, and they'd have one pissed off spouse spoiling to get back at them. As a company it made no sense for anyone to be told the realities of what Ingrams did – and they just had to trust their field agents would understand that and not reveal themselves without authorization.
When asked, if a field agent was not on an operation or had a cover identity constructed, they informed whomever was asking that they were therapists, working with high profile clients, and as such they wouldn't talk about it – therapist / client confidentiality. And as such, it wasn't a lie – Ingrams, like most other clandestine organizations, knew that the best lies were the ones made of some truth. Some degree of truth was necessary here, and as such, what they revealed was enough to deter most people from going too much further. As such, April had explained to Raph that she was a psychologist and therapist, and that she couldn't talk about it much, both because of who some of the clients were, and also because discussing it just wasn't either legal or right. Raph had accepted it, or seemed to.
It was common knowledge that traditional relationships were all but impossible to maintain, given what the field agents were required to do as part of their duties – quite apart from the sexual aspect, agents were expected to be self sufficient in the field and that also meant they couldn't maintain any external relationships. You can't pretend to be a secretary named Martha Jones if your boyfriend was calling the office and calling you April. However, almost all agents tried at least once; it's human nature to want the companionship of another. From where Dermot was sitting, hearing April announce she was in a relationship and needing to make them aware of it, was his first indication that she was hitting this wall.
He took a sip of his diet coke, looked around from where they were sitting in the brew pub April had selected, and said, "Ok. I understand. I'm going to tell you this now April and I don't expect you to believe me, nor do I expect to change your mind, but I've got to say it, if only for my own conscience. This won't work out. You might want to think about doing yourself a favor and walking away now, because it'll end badly. These situations always do. Now I don't expect you to understand that; you'll need to go through this and come out the other end with more respect for the emotions. But just know I'm looking out for you and I'll – well, we'll all be there for you at the other end.
"Now, give me his details and I'll get started. Enjoy it while you can."
April had sat there and looked at him and not known what the best response was. She knew he was just looking out for her, but she also considered it too much. It was too much judgment. Too much parental advice. It was just too much. She was going to do it, she was going to prove them wrong and she was damn well going to enjoy it in the process. In the end she just smiled brightly, masking her thought processes and gave him the details she had.
A week later, while she was working operations for a mission Megan was on, Dermot stuck his head around the door of the operations room – a large room with monitors and computers and people looking busy all the time – and said, "April, got the background. Go ahead. He's exactly what you think he is. One manager of a mall jewelry store, nothing more."
Dermot didn't even wait till she responded – she was squinting into the light from the doorway after being confined to the dim light of the operations room; he just popped his head around the door frame and was gone.
*****
That had been five months ago. And now, here they were, having dinner after April had just returned from an operation in Seattle, where she'd been second string to Desiree Richardson, who had been the principle player in their little drama. April had been required to concentrate on pulling a twenty one year old out of his depression, following the revelations that his mother had been abusing him for years. His mother had attempted suicide, after his father had discovered what was going on; how she's had a sexual relationship with her son for the past three years. This kind of situation was more common than was believed and as such, they would have been left to fend for themselves, had not the father in this situation not been the lieutenant governor of the great state of Washington. What was worse, what was not commonly known was that the actual governor was a figure piece – someone who looked good that people could vote for, but was actually utterly incompetent. His team knew it, he knew it and it was the lieutenant governor who actually did all the work.
When this situation was discovered, there was frantic scrambling to figure out what to do, and Ingrams had been approached.
The task had taken seven weeks to get everyone back on an even keel, and she'd been out of touch for quite some time. And that's when the rubber had met the road.
This was the second time she'd had to leave Raph, with barely any explanation. She'd made the decision that she wasn't going to lie to Raph barefacedly – she may omit a lot of what she should have told him, but she wasn't going to make things up, unless absolutely forced to.
When she left the first time, for a five-week operation, she'd just told him she had a high profile client that wanted to be treated in his own home. She couldn't say more; she just had to go – this is what her job was.
The second time, in Seattle, she'd said virtually the same thing. She could see Raph was less accepting the second time and she knew she'd have her work cut out to make him happy on her return but she didn't mind that. She knew how, and she really did enjoy making him happy. It gave her something she didn't get from the professional engagements she had. She knew she wasn't in love, but she knew she was getting more from this relationship than she was putting into it. She also knew she had to do something about that. Balance was very important to April and she knew she was short changing Raph.
