Disclaimer: I do not own of these characters; they are the property of Shoot the Moon Enterprises and Warner Bros. Television. I acknowledge gratefully the hard work of the creators of the series who brought to life characters we like so much we can't let them go.

Author's Notes: Continues on chronologically from my story "Safe in Your Arms" and falls just before the episode "Billy's Lost Weekend"

A Faithful Friend is a Strong Defence

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"A faithful friend is a strong defence: and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure" Apocrypha 6:16

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"Billy, I am absolutely, categorically NOT going to do it!" Lee had arrived for the meeting in Billy's office in time to hear his boss tell Francine that he couldn't think of anyone in the Agency better suited than Lee to play a bar-cruising womanizer. "I am fed up to here with being the go-to guy for gigolo covers!"

Billy leaned back in his chair and began to guffaw. "Scarecrow, that is not what I said! I said we needed you to pretend to be a gigolo!"

"Jeez Lee, I can remember a time you would have been all over this mission," smirked Francine from her seat in front of Billy's desk.

Lee glared at her from his customary perch leaning on the window. "Well, Sonja Chenko pretty much took the fun out of that kind of thing for me."

Both Billy and Francine sobered immediately and Billy went on "Yeah, I'm sorry, I should have thought of that. But seriously, you only have to look like you're interested in the women – they're not the target we're after. We don't need you to actually do anything except hang around the hotel bar and look good while you keep an eye on Francine."

Lee looked suspicious that it could be this simple. "Ok-aaay. Explain it to me from the beginning."

"You and Francine are going to be sent under separate covers up to the Glenfield Hotel in the island of Veronique in the Caribbean. It's a hotel frequented by mostly extremely rich and powerful people. Very august, very swanky and very, very discreet, if you know what I mean."

"So the kind of place the rich and powerful take their mistresses?"

"Actually no, the kind of place that is so swanky that they take their wives – or more often the wives go on their own – and that's where the hotel's reputation for discretion kicks in and where your covers come in to play."

"You've lost me."

"We've had a report that someone is preying on wives of high-ranking politicians and military brass who are visiting the hotel alone. We think it's someone, maybe more than one, among the men who hang around the hotel to entertain lonely women, – and that's where you come in."

Lee still looked suspicious. "I thought you said I wasn't actually a gigolo for this."

"You're not because the women aren't our target. We want you to go prop up the bar for a week and see if you can pick up anything about the men who hang around them. Francine will follow a few days later with a cover as the wife of a Senator on the Defense Committee. If you can get recruited into whatever criminal activity is going on, that'll would be helpful, but we're counting on them targeting Francine."

"How exactly are they doing it anyway? Wining and dining them until they cough up their husband's secrets?"

"No, it's worse than that. We believe the women are being drugged with something and then pumped either for important information they might have heard from their husbands, or for information that can be used to blackmail their husbands. Our main problem is that while we suspect it's going on, there have been no actual complaints, not from the women who may not even know anything happened or from anyone who may be being blackmailed."

"So if we haven't had any complaints, why do we think anything is going on?"

Billy started to chuckle again. "Well, that's where it gets interesting. We got a tipoff from someone who may have escaped being targeted and it's an old friend of yours, Lee. Elisa Danton to be precise."

Lee's jaw dropped open. "Elisa Danton? How the hell is she mixed up in this?"

"Well the Glenfield is just the kind of place she haunts, you know, and it seems she may have had a run-in with these men that didn't work out quite as planned."

"Nothing with Elisa ever goes as planned. So what did happen?"

"She claims that she was picked up by a handsome barfly and then doesn't remember a thing until she woke up in her own room."

"None of that sounds like anything out of the ordinary for Elisa – why does she think something criminal happened?"

"Because it turns out she may have had a lucky escape entirely due to her unusual predilections."

"Meaning what?"

Billy really started to laugh now as he went on. "Well, whoever drugged her took her back to her room but obviously wasn't expecting to find that Elisa already had some company waiting for her there. Apparently when he found there was an Eastern European acrobat waiting for her, he dropped Elisa like a sack of potatoes and took off."

For the first time since he walked in the office Lee was smiling. "This still sounds more like just a normal weekend for her. Could she identify the guy who drugged her? Have we interviewed him?"

"We would have liked to, but by the time we figured out who he was, his body had shown up dumped at sea. There's more – Elisa was intrigued enough by what her room companion told her when she came to that she began asking around among her friends there and found that more than a few of them admitted to having blackout periods in the last month, and always at this hotel."

Lee leaned back against the window again, and looked at Billy through narrowed eyes. "So you're seriously just sending me on a mission where I hang out at a resort hotel, pretend to admire lonely women and make sure nobody slips Francine a Mickey Finn?"

"And rescue me if someone does" added Francine in a bitter tone. "I just love jobs where I'm only good for being bait."

"Francine, you're not bait, you're the senior agent on this and I'm counting on you catching these guys red-handed." From the exasperated tone, it was obvious Billy had been having this argument with Francine before Lee's arrival.

"By being drugged and pumped for secrets. Again, always my favourite thing."

Lee had got as far as opening his mouth to deliver one of his usual jokes when he took a close look at Francine and realized how much this was bothering her. He recognized the expression on her face because he'd seen it on Amanda and he knew it had just been on his when he'd walked into the middle of Billy's sentence five minutes ago. Everyone carried emotional scars from missions and this was Francine's. 'Amanda must be rubbing off on me' he laughed to himself before leaning forward to say out loud, "Francine? It will never get that far."

Francine lifted her eyes to stare back at him. She relaxed visibly when she read the promise in his face.

"So you'll do it?" Billy asked. After Lee's comment about Sonja Chenko earlier, he had suddenly not been sure Scarecrow would agree to go, orders or not but he was interested to see it looked like Lee's protective instincts for his friend were going to override his initial anger.

Lee shrugged. "I'm not really doing anything else while Amanda finishes up this latest set of classes and I don't trust anyone else to watch out for Francine's butt as well as I would." His sense of humour reasserted itself and he couldn't resist adding "Unless you sent Beaman."

"Har dee har har, Stetson" said Francine but both Billy and Lee could see she was relieved that he'd agreed to go.

"So when does all this kick off then?" asked Lee.

"How soon can you leave?" was Billy's answer.

"Just one thing – Elisa's not still there is she?"

"No, she's on a yacht off Borneo I think."

"Good. I can leave as soon as you need me to."

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