I was efficient and coldly calculated in my duties just as she was, which she seemed to respect about me. Her favor towards me could also stem from the fact that I had never approached or even hinted at any romantic involvement with her and for good reason. She may be gorgeous by any man's standards, but I could only imagine what a major pain she would be like to live with!
A man was liable to wake up with the ability to reproduce gone after it had been cut off in the night. I had been about to object to Chantry's plan myself before she had preempted me though.
Chantry's eyes twinkled as he gazed admittedly at his favorite protégé next to Flint. "What is it you object to in the rescue of the boy, Maria?"
"I do not object to the rescue of the boy first, but I do not agree with holding the bulk of our forces in reserve. The Iron Wills society itself has to be taken down! They have broken the treaty many times and this time will not be the last. They were saved the last time, because we lacked the available agents needed to take them out completely. The treaty made sense then, but now it doesn't. I say we create a diversion steal the boy away and then we take them out. Not just their headquarters in Prague, but globally as well. We make such a mess of it that any survivors that are left don't think twice about reforming the society."
Chantry nodded as if mulling the plan over in his head, but I could tell that instinctively he had set up Maria to come forward and speak out as she had. He had manipulated her rather smoothly in his ongoing process of developing her for leadership of the agency.
I glanced at Maria and from the further hardening of her jaw line I could see that she'd realized her duplicity as to how she had just been manipulated by a master of the game. Chantry looked around the table. The nods of support for the second plan were hesitant at first, but grew in strength.
Chantry's eyes focused in on the woman with the Ethiopian accent, "What do you think Madeleine of Maria's plan?"
Madeleine turned her head to glance at Maria, "I do not care for so much violence, but she is right. To borrow from the American children's story, "If you give a mouse a cookie he'll ask for a glass of milk. If the Iron Wills were willing to betray us to this extent, then it is safe to say that when they felt they could, they would take us out. Better to attack first, but Maria in the future it would be wise for you to learn the value of mercy even though we can have none on our enemy at this moment."