Chapter 2: Something Wicked This Way Comes

January, 1994

Eoin and Ambrose were sitting in the dining room finishing up their lunches by the time I woke up the next morning. As a matter of fact, by the time I washed my face, ran a brush through my shoulder-length hair, scrubbed my teeth, and dressed, it was just after noon. Both men looked like they had not been awake much longer than me and they were going over files as they ate what appeared to be lunch. Eoin's attractively coifed black hair was now liberally salted with white and the penetrating brown eyes had crow's feet wrinkles around them. He was still thinly muscular and elegantly handsome in the white dress shirt and black slacks he wore that morning, but he was starting into middle age and the worries of the last few years were starting to show. Ambrose, on the other hand, was Ambrose. Ambrose wore a green polo sweater over a white dress shirt and black pants. His white hair was still the same crew cut it was when I first saw him that day coming off the ferry with William in Stranraer. Worry never seemed to mark his face and he still looked like he could be anywhere from thirty to fifty-five in age, though I now knew he was near Eoin's forty-six.

They looked up when I entered, one of the cook's assistants hard on my heels wanting to know whether I wanted breakfast or lunch. I sent the girl back to the kitchen with my request for a large lunch and sat myself across from Eoin in my customary place at the long wooden table. I glanced at the papers strewn about and realized that Ambrose was reviewing security procedures at Dulles International Airport and the British Embassy in Washington, D. C. and Eoin was glancing over itineraries and briefing papers.

"Trouble?" I inquired lightly. It had been a while since Eoin had to go to America and it had been a brief trip to New York right before the final vote in the United Nations Security Council on the Gulf War in 1991.

Eoin growled something under his breath and shook his head, not meeting my eyes. Ambrose flicked an anxious glance at him before nodding in response to my question. "I am not sure what Boris Yeltsin was thinking, but he has managed to get himself in deep trouble with the Americans and the only person he seems to trust to act as his go-between is Eoin," he replied tensely. "But there is something not quite right with the whole situation. Something about how the whole thing blew up suddenly and how Eoin got roped into it. The American Ambassador was just as puzzled when we met with him last night and nothing he said the entire night made anything any clearer. The only thing we know for sure is that the Russian President refuses to accept President Clinton's word that it was not their doing and he will only meet with Clinton if Eoin Spencer is there to act as a sort of mediator."

Eoin angrily shoved his files away from him and growled again. "And they refuse to meet anywhere other than the White House, which makes no damn logistical sense for either Yeltsin or me but it was the Russians who chose the meeting place," he exclaimed angrily. His eyes were both irritated and worried as they looked up at me. "None of this makes any sense and I am more than a little worried that there is something else going on here."

I quirked an eyebrow at that to encourage more but he just shrugged. "All of this came out of the clear blue sky, Alice," Ambrose added. "And just after you started poking around about the disappearance of those boys."

"That could just be-"

"Coincidence? I know that!" Eoin snapped, getting up and starting to pace. "But something other than international politics is going on. This situation between Yeltsin and Clinton is not just unexpected, it is idiotic! I know a premise being used for something other than itself when I hear it and the Russians are not telling the truth about why they want me in Washington, D. C.! The only thing that has come up in the last year or so was the kidnapping of my friends' sons. This week, you find and rescue them and that afternoon I get summoned to the Russian Embassy. The American Ambassador is just as puzzled because just last week Boris Yeltsin was instructing his people in Washington to play nice so that they could get that next round of loan guarantees passed without problems from the American Congress. We spent most of last night going over all of the intelligence MI6 and the CIA could come up with on Russia to explain this and nothing fits!"

"I even reached out to a few friends with Greek, Turkish, and Israeli intelligence after you told us where the boys were being shipped to and they know nothing," Ambrose told me with a hint of fatalism creeping into his voice. They were both very worried and it was almost more for me than for their own safety, which should have been on their minds given that they were the ones being roped into walking directly into what sounded like a very expensive and hard-to-arrange trap. "Somehow the eastern Mediterranean Sea has become a vacuum of information and the Russians are becoming just as opaque. I can't find out why those kids were being taken, where exactly they were being taken, why the Russians are working so hard to screw up financing they desperately need, or why they are including Eoin in their scheming. If I did not know any better, I would almost swear it was all connected but I cannot see how that could be."

"Weeeell," I hedged, playing with my napkin in nervousness since I knew one thing that connected them all and it was me. "Do you remember Northern Ireland? Well, do you remember how fast things fell apart on the Soviets in Eastern Europe after that little fiasco? I was assured by Herr Lars that it was because my killing that demon Balor and the vampire Alexandrios of Byzantium in Belfast caused a sort of domino effect. Apparently, Alexandrios was more important to power circles in the Soviet Bloc than anyone knew about and when a certain group of monks moved into that vacuum and began mopping up the smaller, easier to get monsters, the whole house of cards came tumbling down. Suddenly people who had no trouble squashing the Czechs and Hungarians in the fifties and sixties couldn't squash the Poles, Hungarians, and Germans in the eighties. Lars assured me it would be a few years before the survivors wrangled out who was in charge now and reorganize enough to come after me. I think whoever wound up in charge found that those former satellite nations actually hated the Russians and so their former power base was now a region in which they would get little traction. The Balkans, however, were always the historical power base of the Russian Empire and I think that perhaps the new boss decided to go back to old patterns."

"That would mean we need to start looking out for Greek, Serbian, and maybe even Bulgarian and Rumanian links?" Eoin suggested, his eyes looking a little more hopeful.

"Also Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi," Ambrose added with a nod, also looking more positive. "Those may have been more recent Soviet clients but nobody has really flowed into that vacuum and they still look to Moscow more than anywhere else. Especially Syria and Iraq, now that Hussein is weakened. Egypt looks to where the money comes from and right now it is coming from Washington, D. C."

Eoin nodded and then frowned. "So how does that help me decide how to prepare for something that is not real?" he demanded plaintively, making me giggle. He glared at me. "You know what I mean, Alice! Not real to most of the people who will be attending. How do I fix something that was intentionally broken?"

Something one of my professors recently told me came to mind as we were talking. "Do you want me to go with you to Washington?" I offered. What they were laying out concerned me as well. If this had something to do with me, I would do what I could to mitigate the trouble. I smiled wickedly. "You can fix the problem by bringing an axe and smashing it all to hell. Then it will fix itself. The monsters will go away and Boris and Clinton will shake hands and agree it is fixed," I told him patiently.

"An axe?" he asked suspiciously.

I smiled beatifically, holding in another, more wicked giggle. "There are all kinds of axes," I told him pedantically. "Wood axes, ice axes, pole-axes, battle-axes, and perhaps the most deadly, the Alice Axe! Take me with you and swing me around a little and watch your problems disappear!"

Eoin, however, immediately shook his head. "Out of the question! The term starts in two days! You need to get back to your schooling."

The grin I turned on him was probably slightly urchin-like, eyes gleaming with mischief, but I couldn't help myself. "Professor Fergusson informed me before break that I was being recruited for an internship and six-month accredited program in Washington at CSIS and Georgetown University," I informed him impishly. At his look I shrugged. "I didn't say anything because I told Fergusson I probably was not interested at this time but that I might next year. If you are being lured to DC under false pretenses, then my interest might change. I am sure Professor Fergusson would be delighted; he was disappointed I would not go this year."

Ambrose frowned at that. "Disappointed, like a teacher towards a student whom he has decided to mentor, or disappointed, like someone who wants you in Washington for ulterior motives?" the resident paranoiac of our little family inquired suspiciously. "I don't recall William ever mentioning such opportunities being offered him."

I flushed and stared at the table between my hands. "Um-"

Eoin smiled. "Much as I love William," he said warmly, "Alice could run rings around him when it comes to school work. He has brought some of his school problems to Alice when he needed help. She could probably teach a class on Parliamentary History and Rules to the Members. She is that good. From what my friends filling chairs at Oxford say, Alice will probably graduate next year with a double diploma in History and International Studies. A place is already being saved for her in the graduate program."

The Security Chief eyed me. "I knew she was precocious, but I did not realize she was a genius."

"It has been remarked upon by more than one of my friends in the scientific community that it was a shame that her mind was so bent on history and politics and law and not something useful," Eoin replied with a chuckle. He glanced at my flaming red face and it turned into a laugh. "Let's change the subject before the house burns down."

Ambrose joined in the hilarity. "All right. My first suggestion is that we decide just what having you in Washington will do for us," he said more seriously, the amusement at my discomfort twinkling in his eyes. His glance turned to Eoin before coming back to me. "If she is simply changing her school plans to cater to our paranoia, then I would say she can stay at Oxford. However, if there is something concrete that my staff and I, diplomatic security, and the United States Secret Service cannot do, then I would welcome her along happily.

"Without concrete intelligence telling us what is really going on, I don't know that we are not just jumping at shadows," he concluded, somewhat irritably. "I just don't want to see her blow a whole semester in Washington and nothing but Russian idiocy be the reason for it."

I smiled at him fondly. "I appreciate the concern, but I would equally hate staying here and it turns out that they really are out to get you gentlemen. Six months in DC would not be the worst thing to ever happen to me. I used to live in the area, after all."

That comment stirred up paternally concerned looks amongst the menfolk. I think, like my stray thought about dad last night did for me, that it reminded them both how I went from being Alexandra McKiernan to Alice Spencer-Killdare. Despite all that happened, in Belfast and every bizarre little scrape I found myself in here in London and in Oxford, they still backslid from time to time, reverting to the genetically assigned roles of the men protecting the women and the young (of which I was both). Times like this I could be amused by it. After all, we were all well aware who would truly be defending whom. It was the other times, times when there was no time to lean back in my chair and smile tolerantly at their silliness, that was when such paternalism annoyed me. I still had scars from a couple of times when letting me do what needed doing would have hurt a lot less and caused far less collateral damage than trying to "protect" me did. I was actually pretty proud of them for dumping the whole kidnapping thing in my lap without hovering. Though, now that I think about it, I probably had the American and Russian Ambassadors to the Kingdom to thank for that.

"Stop that!" Eoin frowned, irritated despite (or maybe because) of the fact that his eyes skipped up my face to my hairline. My then current hairstyle (think Farrah Fawcett during her Charlie's Angels days, only slightly shorter) hid the three centimeter scar that the Order doctors stitched up for me with a mixture of reverence and horror. A little closer and the Kelpie whose clawed hoof that did it would have bashed my skull in. I was sure Eoin was remembering that his hindrance was what almost got me killed. "Despite past events seeming to suggest otherwise, not every event in the world is a conspiracy aimed at you! Therefore, not every inexplicable event that touches our lives is a plot designed to hurt us to get to you perpetrated by a cabal of monsters!"

"I could mount a fairly good argument countering that assertion," I retorted with exaggerated pomposity, "but I shall refrain in deference to your age and station, sir. Instead, I shall merely point out that you had me emancipated for a good reason. With that freedom I have the right to take an entire semester completely off, if I felt like it. This would simply be me adjusting the location and content of this semester's classes."

Ambrose smiled, something in his demeanor relaxing slightly. It was so minor I doubt he even consciously realized how tense he was over what was going on. He was still worried, but my presence on the trip made him a little more confident he could keep Eoin safe. He grinned at Eoin and clapped a large hand on his boss' shoulder. "I think she probably has a point. At least, her argument to go is better that your argument for her to stay," he told Eoin bluntly. "Besides, I will sleep a little easier knowing she is coming along. Especially if this does wind up being something more her style of problem than one that is ours."

"Great! I will tell Professor Fergusson Monday. He will be overjoyed."

Professor Connor Fergusson was a weedy-looking Scot of early middle-age. He had watery sky blue eyes, sandy blonde hair in full retreat on his head, and enough wrinkles on his face to make you add a full decade to his age of forty-three. He was of medium height and build, which meant he still towered over me by almost a head. Professor Fergusson was brilliant in his field (international laws of conflict and war) but tended towards absent-mindedness on every other front. I think the only reason he remembered my name was because I tended to be the only one in his classes to challenge him on points of merit in his after-lecture question-and-answer sessions. It was also probably the reason he put my name up for consideration for the internship program. After the first class I took with him, he arranged to become my advisor and slowly guided me through my course selections this past year.

I was on my way to see him the day before term started when I spotted his seedy-looking form scurrying across campus in his wrinkled robe and bad comb-over. Why he was out without something heavier on in the sudden cold snap that arrived overnight, I have no idea. It was probably well below 0ºC and I was huddled in a fur-lined black trench coat, knit hat pulled low over my ears with black, fur-lined leather gloves and insulated winter military boots. And I was still cold in the steady wind blowing out of the northwest with the smell of snow on it. There was weedy Prof. Fergusson running about with his beat-up black robe and, if my eyes were not playing tricks on me, sandals with gray woolen socks.

Since he was scurrying away from the social sciences faculty offices, I yelled, "Professor Fergusson!" and went in pursuit before I missed him.