She took the red eye

Another apology for the tardiness, but it looks like I'm not stepping on anyone's feet with this entry so I'm going to go on with the one I was thinking about without further ado here we go:
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She took the red eye out of Ronald Reagan Airport heading to Amsterdam with a connecting flight to The Hague. It was already two AM and her expected touchdown was going to be close to noon local time. She was filled with the same trepidation that she had when she had first flown to Western Sahara. The company had chosen her to go. Not Ernest, not Meyers but her and if there was going to be a next time or maybe even a foreign assignment she needed to show off, or at the very least be wildly successful. Problem was, she still wasn't sure what the assignment was.

Iverson had called her in that morning to his office. There was an "Away kit" as he called it sitting on his desk. This was new. He looked cross, brows knit, teeth clenched.

"Your scores are good but not great Claire, I want you to know that you can walk away from this assignment right now and I won't even mark it down on your record."
"I'm sorry, Chris, I don't follow."
"Your field scores. I've been looking over your file. You've been asked to go on a foreign assignment and a cursory look at the file tells me that this is over your head. You're a good agent and I want you around for a while."
"Where am I asked to go?" She had said, heart racing a little, palms beginning to sweat. The back of her head saying "Woo Hoo field Opp. Not Quebec! Not Quebec!!!."
"You have been asked to go to The Hague. You. Claire Newton. By name. Solo."
The voices in her head came down three notches, not entirely silent, but sobering quickly.
"Just before I called you last night a blue department e-mail came through. It was short and to the point, but it basically said that you are to go into the field in the Netherlands and Liaise with Interpol about the Booten incident. By yourself." He paused to let that sink in.
"Why me?"
"My thoughts exactly, but you know how the blue department is at answering questions. They just tend to send their commands from on high and they sent you an away kit via inter-department. So, while this is from blue department, I can tell them that I'm just not comfortable letting you go just yet, especially for a solo mission."
"Do I have a cover story?"
"Yes your story is you're a young CIA agent who has decent field ops test scores but could stand some improvement before she heads out into the real world. So again, I am giving you an out."
Claire definitely picked up on the hint in his voice that time. But it was blue department. It was Europe and there was an away kit in a box the size of an attache' case that demanded to be opened.
"If its all the same to you sir, I think I'm ready. You gave me high marks for Toronto last month."
"You were checking on a police station paperwork trail of a currency counterfeiter."
"And when I went to Africa last year..." Chris raised a hand to stop her.
"I don't want to get in your way Claire, Hell I want you to be my replacement in a few years, I just want you and everyone else on my team to be safe."
"With all due respect sir, I'm ready."
"Very well. Have a suitcase of clothes packed by 10 PM tonight, aim for fancier. You know how those Europeans are. You will be picked up then and taken to the airport. Don't let the away kit out of your sight between now and then. I'd suggest you head home and try and get some sleep between now and then. You will have time on the plane to get briefed."
"Thank you sir! How long do I need to stop my mail for?"
"Its been stopped already. You're scheduled to be gone for about five days."
"Yessir."
Claire stood up, grabbed the away kit which was startlingly heavy and headed to her desk. The rest of the day was a blur. Attached to the outside of the kit was an itinerary and a business class airline ticket on Lufthansa. A quick glance at the itinerary showed no formal evening galas which helped her clothing selection in packing.
Like clockwork at 6 a knock on her apartment door woke her from a light sleep. Through the peep hole she saw a man in a stereotypical charcoal suit with an ID badge at head height that showed him to be Glenn Takahashi, CIA.
Claire opened the door. "You're my ride to the airport?"
"Yes ma'am."
Ma'am, she could get used that. He grabbed her suitcase but left the attache, as he took her things to the car. The clouds had rolled in throughout the afternoon and now a steady rain softly but insistently pelting every surface.

Claire saved Glenn the indignity of playing chauffeur and rode up front of the black GMC suburban next to him. The ride was fairly quiet except for the slip-slap of the wiper blades. Any attempt to elicit conversation out of Glenn ended in either a monosyllabic response or merely a grunt. Halfway through she buried herself in her phone sending e-mails that she hadn't gotten to before. Her attention was roused when instead of the ramp up to departing flights was missed and they began heading towards the freight airline entrance.
"I thought we were heading to Lufthansa?" she said keeping a smile in her voice.
"We are ma'am."
"Shouldn't we be going up to passenger drop off then?"
"No ma'am. I'm to take you directly to the plane."
They stopped at the main freight entrance in between large hangers for DHL and FedEx. A security guard sidled up to the car.
"Can I help you two?"
"Just need to get through." Glenn said and flashed his badge.
"I see. hang on." The guard glanced at his clipboard. "Right, and today's color is?"
"Mauve" Glenn replied cooly.
"Excellent, one second." The guard went into the tiny gate house and raised the gate. Seconds later, Glenn stopped the truck at the bottom of a massive refeuling Airbus.
"Here you are ma'am. Enjoy your flight. The flight crew is expecting you."
"Right, why all the rigamarole to get me in here? I'm not even under cover."
"Its far easier to take agents in through the freight entrance than it is to try and get your average TSA customs agent to respect proper credentials and not spend hours detaining agents. Again, ma'am enjoy your flight."
"Thank you, ah you too." Claire said then mentally kicking herself for the non-suave send off. A baggage handler was already unloading her suitcase onto the trolley of waiting luggage.
She took the stairs up the outside of the terminal bridge and joined the queue of passengers. It looked like boarding had been going for a while as the line was orderly and quiet. She picked up snippets of French and German on top of the low murmurings of English.
Thankfully it was a Tuesday evening and the flight wasn't booked. Claire found she had a window seat assigned and no partner in the seat next to her. The middle rows were empty as well. A couple sat in the far two seats on the other side of the plane.
The plane reached its cruising altitude. Most every light was turned off on the plane. Her seat was the only one for 10 rows bathed in a little pool of light.
The stewardess brought her a coffee and with slightly sweaty palms she realized it was time to open the away kit.
The first thing that she noticed when she opened it was the glint of a 9mm pistol and 4 clips of ammo. A new shiny cell phone lay next to one of the ammo clips. Next she opened an envelope containing a money clip with about $1500 in Euros and a Black American Express card with her name on it. A pin number was attached via pink sticky note to the front, granted she didn't think she'd have much trouble remembering 4,3,2,1. A card with the contact info of the American embassy was attached to some very stodgy looking papers that seemed to describe some limited diplomatic status.
The last thing in the case was an e-reader. She turned it on.
"Please place thumb and forefinger on either box on LCD screen" the message said.
She put her thumb and forefinger on the boxes and the reader chirped.
"confirming ID."
"ID confirmed, Newton, Claire. Security level 42."
"WARNING. The information contained within is considered eyes only. Any person or Persons viewing or attempting to view the information within this device without prior authorization will be subject to prosecution and extradition to the United States of America up to and including the charge of High treason. If you have accessed this device in error know that your actions have been flagged, logged and you now have 5 seconds to stop browsing."
"Seriously?" Claire whispered. Nothing was actually *that* CIA at the CIA she thought facetiously. There was a severe dearth of paperwork so far and she just thought of the volume that would be waiting for her when she got back.
The little device counted down 5 seconds and then opened up showing her a massive table of contents. Reports totaling 15,468 pages and close to 5,000 images were stored on the reader. It took her almost an hour just to mentally catalog all the information that was being presented.
She had just started her fourth cup of coffee when she stumbled across it.
In a sub-file labeled "Miscellaneous, Important?" she found a detailed copy of the Christmas card Andrew Booten had sent her the year before. There it was as clear as if it had still been sitting on her kitchen counter with the others.