Full Circle: 1980 - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Five

"Come in."

It's an office of a temporary sort, lacking any family photos or hanging degrees. Bare grey walls stand begging for plaques, and medals, and flags. There is only a desk and its chair, sitting beside a pale cream filing cabinet with a drawer drawn open. Lincoln sits hunched with a pen in his left hand, scribbling into manilla as though a life depends upon it. Matt slips in through the door, his knock still lingering on his knuckles.

Lincoln speaks fairly straight by Virginian standards, with a distinct non-accent that belongs to Michigan, or Ohio, or Illinois. He doesn't stop his scribbling as he says, "What can I do for you?"

Matt's not sure if he's supposed to leave the door open or if he should shut it behind him, and Lincoln hardly seems to be in the mood to answer any questions. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

With this, finally, Lincoln looks up from his papers, peering over thick-framed glasses. "Matthew," he says. "You're Cooper's boy?"

For all his life, Matt's been Andrew's boy to friends and strangers alike, but Nebraska is a couple thousand miles away by now, and his pops' name doesn't appear to reach past the Appalachian. Out here, they know Matt by the name of a different veteran. "Insofar as I can be, sir."

Lincoln stands, allowing his glasses to fall to his chest, where they hang from a thin beaded chain. He's the type of man who looks older up close and while he's still quick on his feet, Matt can see the war in his joints. He passes Matt with the slightest limp, and closes the door for him, unwilling to wait for an unsettled mind. "Tell me, Matthew," he says, crossing his arms. "What the hell are you doing here?"

There ain't no niceties in espionage, and that's a damn shame, if only because it would give him more time to come up with answers when folks start asking him these kinds of questions. "Excuse me, sir?"

"You heard me," he tries again. "Why are you here? No formal spycraft training, no college education. Your only intelligence experience is your training in Russia, just shy of a full year, and then seven measly months of transcripts and translating."

"Well I think you'll find that in those seven months, I exceeded every expectation—"

"I've got your resume, Matthew," he says, and he seems to look over top of his glasses again, even though he's no longer wearing them. "I don't want to know about the Yugoslavian arms deals you prevented—I want to know why you're here, in my program, at this camp."

"I'm here to serve my country."

It's an answer that tends to carry heft in his usual company, but the space between them lands flat as he says it. Lincoln merely grunts. "There's plenty of ways to serve your country."

He's trained to see an attack before it hits, piecing together new information as it comes to him in words, and tone, and inflection. This is one of those phrases that, if still at his desk, Matt would mark with a thin, red sticky note. "I was told that I was needed here."

"Were you, now?"

And maybe a sticky note here, too. "By people I trust, sir."

"I'll bet."

There's a second conversation happening, far below the surface, though Matt's not likely to place it without a little assistance from the opposing party, so he gets right to it. If they can abandon all niceties, then so can he. "Is this about the Bug House?"

Lincoln's smiles are more freely given than most men in his field, which makes them all the harder to read. He finally lets his arms fall as he walks back toward his desk, leaning up against its edge. "It's not not about the Bug House."