Duplicity, chapter 2
by  ragpants
 

 Seated alone at a table amidst the quiet clatter and low buzz of conversation in the Headquarters' Officer's Club, Janeway slouched lower into her chair. She twirled the stem of her wineglass between her thumb and fingers and wished she had ordered something on the rocks instead. It wasn't the more potent alcohol she wanted; it was the condensation on the glass. If there were water rings on the table she might be able to read them like some people read tea leaves or Rohrschach Blots, and they  could help her divine her mood.

Her earlier conversation with Cmdr. Thompson had left her unsettled in ways she wasn't quite able to define. She and Daniel didn't keep secrets from one another.  Secrets about important things anyway. He really didn't need to know how much she paid for those shoes she bought on Ringgold Station six weeks ago, or that she was planning a surprise birthday party for him in  December. But a promotion? An appointment to the Federation High Court? That was something important, and serious; it affected them both. That was exactly the kind of thing they didn't hide from each other.

But apparently Daniel had.

The reasonable part of her brain insisted that he hadn't told her because the appointment had been too nebulous a possibility until now, sufficiently vague not to bother mentioning to her. And there hadn't been the time to broach the possibility during their truncated conversation before he left this morning.

But whatever Daniel's reasons, she was still hurt by the lack of trust implicit in his concealing the truth.

She twisted her glass stem again and looked out the window at her left elbow. The ceramalloy  glazing has de-polarized now that the sun had set and the lights of San Francisco glittered like a galaxy of familiar constellations over the Oakland hills. The sight calmed her and at the same time sent a pang of homesickness through her heart. She missed the inky eternal night of space. She missed space duty. And after five years, she still missed Voyager.

When she looked back, she noted a slight disturbance in the dining room, a change in the pitch of conversations, an increased hum. Glancing around the room, she found the noise emanated from a moving focus, at whose center she spied a dark blond head. Janeway nodded knowingly to herself. Lt. Cmdr. Gratiano Brazelli. She should have guessed. The Commander had that way about him. He was that kind of man who attracted attention wherever he went. Though only of medium height and slightly pudgy, Brazelli had been blessed with the face of mischievous choirboy as well as a large measure of blond northern Italian good looks. But it wasn't his looks that drew people toward him.. It was his disarming charm. He could sweet talk a Ferengi into parting with his latium--and the alien would thank him for privilege of doing so.  Most people found Brazelli's bonhomie utterly irresistible, but he made Janeway vaguely uncomfortable.

"Ammiraglia, piaceri?"

Janeway looked up, slightly started to find Commander Brazelli at her table. The last time she'd noticed, her had been across the room, chatting amiably with several staffers from the War College. Already it was too late. Brazelli had taken possession of her right hand. He leaned forward in a half bow  and  placed a kiss lightly on the backs of her fingers. Although her first impulse was to snatch back her hand, she knew better. If she tried to pull back, Brazelli would only hold it all the more tightly and a tug of war would ensue. They had played that game before. She'd lost.

Brazelli lifted his eyebrows toward the empty table. "Your husband  seems to have unwisely left you all alone tonight.

His words held a veiled criticism and Janeway felt compelled to defend her husband.  "Daniel is reviewing a matter for the High Court."

Brazelli smiled in delight, like a child being let in a secret, though no child's eyes would have been that shrewd or calculating. "Ah! then it is true that Judge Greenberg has been asked to look into the Bagen matter."

Janeway cursed herself for inadvertently giving Brazelli information. "I can neither confirm nor deny that statement,"  she said frostily, falling back on the PR training she had received when she had first assumed her office as Senate liaison.

Brazelli patted her hand in a way that set her teeth on edge before releasing it. " Ah. Yes. I understand." He touched his forefinger to his lips in the universal sign for secret. "It will be between us. Still, for a lovely woman such as yourself...."

"But I'm not here alone," she interrupted before he had a chance to complete the thought. "I'm expecting to meet a friend." She prayed fervently that her lie would hold up.

At that moment she spied Commander Thompson being escort to an empty table by the hostess. Janeway rose partway from her chair and waved. "Maggie."

The Commander spoke a word to the hostess and changed directions.

Brazelli arched his eyebrow. "Your friend, I presume?"

He stepped away from Janeway's table, intercepting Thompson, kissing her hand and engaging in several moments of low voiced conversation that left Thompson grinning.

"Didn't expect to see you here, Kathryn," Maggie Thompson commented as she seated herself at the table.

"I could say the same thing," Janeway volleyed back. "What happened to your deposition?"

"The witness's lawyer asked for a postponement and her reason sounded plausible enough so..." Thompson made an expressive, nearly Gallic shrug. "It happens. Occupational hazard.  But I see you weren't too bored sitting here by yourself." Thompson glanced across the room to where a gout of laughter erupted around the blonde presence of  Commander Brazelli now seated at table full of senior officers.

Janeway followed her look and frowned slightly.

"Tiano is always such a flirt. Knows all the latest gossip too."

"That he does, " agreed Janeway coolly, lifting her wine glass and taking a sip. "That he does."

***

The wind that blew in off the ocean was heavy with cold and the bone aching promise of snow before sunset.  The man sitting on the park bench turned his collar up against the wind's gnawing damp and shoved his hand into his pockets. He shivered inside his coat. He was used to a more temperate climate. Idly he wondered if his contact had deliberately chosen this meeting place to maximize his discomfort. He tried to dismiss the idea, but it lingered on, like the ache in his shoulder, the legacy of an encounter with the Cardassians.

Restlessness pushed him to his feet, but caution tempered his steps and held them to the sedate, leisurely pace of a tourist as he wandered the footpath that looped among the head high rhododendrons in the park. Some time between 2 and 7 the message had said. He would just have to wait until his contact showed up.

By the time he had finished his circuit on the foot trail, he was thoroughly cold.  Screw it, he decided, his loyalty to the cause didn't require him to freeze to death in some icy Canadian park waiting for a contact who might or might not show.  Hugging himself, he trudged past a large, antique stone building which had once, several hundred years ago, been the private residence. Now the mansion now housed the park's administrative offices, a small number of conference suites and an elegant, exclusive and very expensive restaurant. He continued walking, passing by the restaurant, until he reached what a patinaed bronze plaque explained has once been the mansion's stables. The former outbuilding now held a coffee bar and cafe with a take away food counter.  The man ordered, then retreated with his coffee and salmon sausage on a bun to walk along the sea wall. The food warmed him into a more agreeable mood. Ignoring the posted warning not to feed the wildlife, he tossed the last bite of his sandwich to the gulls. One bird, bolder than the rest, dove, wings folder back to snatch the sausage mid air and swoop back into the gray, pencil smudged sky. He shredded the last bits of bread between his fingers and dropped them into the lead colored water that lapped near his feet. A group of red eyed mergansers swarmed up, squawking raucously, to fight over the scraps. Wiping the crumbs from his fingers, he shoved his hands back into his pockets and wished he had thought to bring some gloves.

As he walked slowly off the stone jetty, heading back toward the designated meeting place, he noticed that someone was already sitting on the bench. He paused, studying the stranger's outline.  After a moment, he recognized the bent nose and the close cropped, sealskin gray hair above the heavy jacket. He grinned and hastened his steps.

"Yatahey, Chakotay!" he called out. "Long time, no see, Cousin."

***

 Commuting.

Whether it was because, as Daniel liked to tease her, that she had lived too long within the narrow confines and Captain's privileges of Voyager, or whether it was because, as she liked to counter, the gruesomely long hours she often had to put in at her job, Kathryn Janeway hated commuting. Thus it was boon to discover that one of the perks of her promotion to Admiral was on demand site-to-site transport. It was privilege she used often, especially at night. Especially on nights like this one. A weather change quivered in the air. Fog had eased in from the ocean and settled in the canyons. It skulked along the curbs, grabbing at ankles, shrubbery and tree roots. It sought to climb higher, to assert its dominance over the landscape, smothering all things in soundless blanket of white.

Janeway materialized on the doorstep of her home. She spoke her codeword and waited while the house security systems scanned her biometric readings and confirmed her identity.  The house, which had been Daniel's house before they married, was an old one, built during the middle of the 21st century. It had survived The Great Slide of 2114 that send most of the greater San Francisco area rolling downhill, but just barely. Subsequent owners had spent a great time of effort restoring the structure to its original condition. Now the house, stabilized by quake adjustors under its foundations, perched not quite so precariously on a steep hillside in the Berkeley Hills. The rear of the house faced westward so that the living room, with its two story expanse of window, had a glorious view of the Bay. At least on a clear day, it had a glorious view; the rest of the time, it had a glorious view of the manzanita that covered the nearby hills and the roofs of the university campus below. Before his appointment to his first judgeship, Daniel had taught at the Law School in Berkeley; his tenure as the home's owner dated from that period.  Janeway sometimes thought the house was too big for just the two of them, but Daniel hadn't wanted to move. He said the house reminded him of his roots and his principles, that it kept him grounded amongst all the infighting and wrangling of his profession. Personally, Janeway suspected a more pragmatic reason for his reluctance; the house was filled with a lifetime's worth of mementos and possessions and Daniel loathed the idea of parting with any of it.

 Finally convinced she was who she claimed to be, the security system opened the door with faint grumble of reluctance. Janeway made a mental note to call the repair service in the morning.  The door was getting balkier all the time. In the distance, she heard the comm center trilling an incoming call. Dropping her briefcase in the entry, she scrambled down a half flight of steps, across the sunken formal living room, circumnavigated around the pair couches that stood at right angles to each other and blocked entrance to the study that opened off living room where the nearest comm unit was located. Naturally, just as she was slapping the 'open communications' button, whoever was calling disconnected. She hoped it wasn't Daniel, calling from his diplomatic transport. He usually knew better than to assume she would be home at any particular hour and just tracked her down through her Starfleet communicator signal. However, she wasn't sure what conditions he was traveling under or what kind of access to the communications he had aboard his transport.

 Swallowing her annoyance, Janeway dropped into the chair in front of the comm unit. She massaged the back of her neck. She felt a tension headache coming on, one of the ones that started at the base of her skull and crawled forward until her whole head throbbed with pain. She'd been plagued by headaches since high school and every doctor who had ever treated her warned her to moderate her workaholic tendencies. She thought she had been doing better; she hadn't had a serious bout in the last 6 or 7 months. It  appeared her respite was over.  Forcing her thoughts away from the nascent pain, she keyed up the message queue. Nine calls. None were from Daniel--there was brief flash of relief she hadn't missed his comm afterall--but five were from Madaleine, Daniel's older daughter, and all five  flashed 'very urgent' flags. If it had been anyone else,  she would have been worried, but with Madaleine, everything was always 'very urgent.'

Still rubbing ineffectually at her neck, Janeway moved to the replicator. She was about to ask for one of the headache medications that the holodoctor had  prescribed for her at her last check-up, but she changed her mind and order a bourbon straight-up instead. While she could probably justify not returning  Madaleine's call until the morning, she most likely had ought to see what the woman wanted.  And now was the perfect time to call her--dealing with Madaleine always gave her a headache anyway.

Janeway resumed the seat in front of the comm panel. Before punching in Madaleine's code, she scrolled through the rest of the messages. She decide they all could wait until later. Except one. The last call had been a voice-only recording from Maggie. Janeway hit play.

"Kathryn, it was good to see you tonight. It's been too long and we're both working too many long hours. What say tomorrow we knock off at a reasonable hour and meet for dinner? Somewhere *away* from all things Starfleet.  I have subscription tickets for the Humanities lecture series at USF. We could go afterwards. It might be fun."

It did sound like fun. Janeway recorded her acceptance and forwarded the message to Maggie's home and office message queues. Then she leaned back into the chair, took a large fortifying swallow of the amber liquor she held in her left hand.  She pecked out Madaleine's comm code. A recorded voice reminded
Janeway it was 3 am where she was calling. Janeway gave a small wicked smile and ordered, "Open communications channel."