KATE LEE

Kate Lee is an agent with the CIA.

She is quite a bit more than just "your average agent", in fact it is doubtful she was ever what you would describe as a field operative. She was/is an analyst who have moved up the ranks in the Agency to eventually become the Director of that huge intelligence organization before moving on to even greater heights, culminating professionally as the one in the chair in the Oval Office.

We first encounter Lee when she is "the new head of the Office of Soviet Analysis, the youngest office head in the agency". The year is 1986 so the Cold War was still ongoing; it would be another couple of years before the thawing would commence so the rivalry and the concern about Soviet intentions and actions is still very strong.

In that introduction we are told that "her colleagues sometimes found her tedious and stubborn when it came to her theories, but she was a brilliant analyst, and she usually came to the meetings with good stuff. She was tall and auburn-haired, and most of the men found her attractive, in a businesslike sort of way, but she was divorced from Simon Rule, who had recently become Deputy Director for Operations. That scared off the more timid of her male colleagues, and she turned down the bold ones. Sitter problems was always her excuse. She had a small son and all the usual problems of a single mother, in addition to a demanding job which, apparently, obsessed her."

She will not have 'sitter issues' when it comes to spending time with up-and-coming Senatorial aide Will Lee. In the second adventure we have of her, we learn that "two years before, in what seemed to be a lateral move, after most of the hierarchy had resigned after a scandal, she had been shuffled into a special assistant's job. Liaison to the Operations Directorate, with no real authority.

Seemingly at a dead end, her enthusiasm had waned to the point where she had promised to leave the Agency and marry [Will Lee] when he returned to Georgia to prepare his campaign for the Senate. Now, she was up for an important promotion, to one of the top half-dozen jobs in the Agency. he wondered whether, in only a couple of years' time, she would be ready to leave it."

As the adventures continue, we find that she does not part ways with the Agency but instead will rise to its top position.

Then will come the position of First Lady as Will Lee gets elected President, and some years later, she will herself take the seat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

The adventures of Kate Lee are not told in tales devoted to her but rather in stories first where her soon-to-be husband, Will Lee, is the primary character, and then in books about a fellow agent, Holly Barker as well as some dealing with an enemy-turned-almost-friend, Teddy Fay, and then in fair number of books dealing with lawyer friend Stone Barrington.

The Kate Lee saga is a fascinating one to me in that she will play major roles in several of author Stuart Woods' books, sufficient, IMHO, to warrant her own page in this compendium, but she will never have her own standalone adventure. Nevertheless, her vital roles in these other people's tales will show her to be a fascinating character, one that Woods obviously thought highly enough to keep her active over many years.

As a character, she makes every scene she is in worthwhile. Couple that with Wood's extremely easy and fun-to-read writing style and you have a lot of very enjoyable storytelling to partake in.