Chapter 3: The Exile Returns

January, 1994

I was going home. Well, not home-home. I never really felt that America was my home. If anywhere could be said to feel like home, it was on the military bases of the United States Army in Germany. There was something different about them in Germany than the ones the Army built in the States. I was never able to pinpoint it, but it was palpable and it made them feel like home in a way that Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri or Ft. Belvoir, Virginia never did. Then again, it could just have been Germany itself. Everything from the climate to the food to the people screamed home to me. But I was going back to the United States and, since I was born an American, I guess I was going home.

I had never flown first class before. Most of the vacations Eoin took William and me on were by boat or car, with a couple being by train. It wasn't that he couldn't afford it; rather, he liked to see where he was going and feel the kilometers traveled in a way that sitting at over ten thousand meters in a climate-controlled aluminum tube with three hundred other people breathing canned air and eating crappy food simply can't match. Of course, I had to rethink that line about the food after the meal we were served. First class really means what it says; lunch was delicious. The seats were wider and more comfortable with enough room so that you were not breathing the person next to you's expelled air.

I was primly informed by Eoin before we even got on the plane that I was not to gawk like a yokel. We were Spencers and we did not fly anything but first class. Except, of course, when I "arrived from Australia when my parents died." Then the Australian government was disgraceful enough to fly me all the way to Britain in coach. And there was paperwork to prove all of that, of course. Nobody outside of Eoin's family and trusted security people four years ago knew that I really arrived in Britain via Ireland and the ferry to Stranraer, Scotland. So I was to act like I was used to the nice treatment instead of acting like someone who did not know what being one of the richest members of the British nobility was all about.

Most of first class was taken up by members of our party. As a matter of fact, most of the flight was taken up by members of our party. They wanted to send us on a Foreign and Commonwealth Office jet but there wasn't one big enough available just then and there were too many people going with us for one of the small jets. There were clerks and secretaries and analysts and Foreign Office types and a few academics and translators for those who did not speak Russian (Eoin did, surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly after I thought about what he did for a living in the 1980's). And then there was Eoin, me, Ambrose, and the security people and our staff. It was almost as bad as a traveling menagerie. And the luggage! Our luggage was almost the only thing in the cargo hold, from what Ambrose was saying.

I was seated behind Eoin who was in the front row. Ambrose sat next to him and his people sat in the two rows on the other side of the aisle. Beside me was sitting a gentleman from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who was some kind of Assistant Deputy to the Deputy Assistant Foreign Secretary. It meant he was connected but not well enough to matter. The man who mattered sat in the back left row of first class with his own people around him; he was the United Kingdom's Ambassador to the Russian Federation. Some of Ambrose's people sat behind us in the very back row as well to keep an eye on them. Ambrose's paranoia spiked through the roof as soon as we left the house. While we were waiting for our plane to board, Ambrose very carefully placed his men in the various parts of the plane to be able to watch everyone.

I may have said it before, but I love to fly. Being comfortable while doing it made it even more enjoyable. I especially love take-off and landing. The building of power pushing you back into your seat as the pressure squeezes you and the engines roar. And then you feel it; you have eluded gravity's grasp and are flying!

Landing is a different rush altogether. That is about the possibility that your pilot may not get it right, that something will go wrong. You fall closer and closer to the ground; objects once washed out in the smear of color that the ground becomes are suddenly closer and more visible with each passing minute. The engines are roaring for a different reason, namely controlling the multi-ton aluminum can you are dropping out of the sky in. You rock with the wind and the pilots struggle to bring the plane down without giving in to gravity's wish to smash you to the earth Icarus-like for your temerity in defying it. Closer, closer, until you finally see the runway beneath you and the wheels reach out, kissing the asphalt with a jolt and a scream of rubber. It is a melancholy rush because it signals that your journey is over.

When we got on the plane in London it was pouring. It had been pouring for a few days to the point that Wales and Anglia were seeing some flooding. After enjoying the take-off, I spent the rest of the trip in the air reading. First, I re-read the packet of information Professor Fergusson sent me. After I made my way through that, I read some of the summaries that Eoin had on the problem he was supposedly going to try to fix. As I went through it, I made notes on a legal pad for him. He decided that he would like a different set of eyes to look at the problem. The assistant deputy sitting beside me was overtly covertly looking over my shoulder and his eyes were getting wider and wider as I went through the information and composed my notes.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" he finally whispered, looking around the plane. He was youngish, meaning he was older than me but not by all that much. I would guess twenty-five or so. He had mud brown hair that hung lankly on his head, brushing his eyebrows and parted in the middle. His dark brown eyes were wide enough that I saw more white than color as he looked at me. He had a scattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks that stood out on his pale, pale face. He was, of course, looking down at me and I was pretty sure he was a couple of inches over six feet. His build was lanky but muscled, like he played sports or worked out to put some form on that skinny frame. He had big feet and hands, making him look a bit clumsy when he wasn't. He was dressed in an impeccably tailored dark gray suit with black leather shoes polished to a mirror shine. But there was something about him that screamed innocence and inexperience. He looked the part of a low level functionary in the Foreign Office but there was nothing about him that hinted at anything that would have gotten him the job on the merits of his abilities or experience. "Some of those things are classified and those notes are things my boss or his boss would write! You are too young to be with the FCO, so who the hell are you?"

I arched a brow at him and snorted disdainfully. "You don't follow the news much, do you?" I retorted waspishly, going back to my reading and note-taking.

"Either tell me who you are or I will tell the Special Envoy or the Ambassador you have papers you are not cleared for!" he shot back, scooting to the edge of his seat.

I felt a presence over my shoulder and I dropped the pen on the tray and slipped it into my jacket, caressing my ceramic knife as I looked over my shoulder.

It was the British Ambassador to Russia, Sir James Kingston. "Paul, are you bothering Dame Alice?" he said in his deep, distinguished voice. He wore a more expensive version of what the kid next to me was wearing and it went better with his steel gray hair cut like Sean Connery in the James Bond movies and the light gray eyes that smiled down on me before glaring at the young man. He was an elegant, older gentleman that made me think he could be a poster boy for the Foreign Service or the actor central casting would send if you were to ask for a handsome, ruggedly built older man with impeccable manners and a keen sense of how important everyone in a given room was. And he was a political animal according to Eoin, who smiled fondly when he said that. "Lord Spencer wanted her to get through those papers before we land, so leave her to her reading."

"Y-yes sir, Sir James," he stammered. "I-I just wanted to m-make sure sh-she didn't have anything she shouldn't, sir."

"Well enough, Paul. And keep your voice down," he said, turning around to go back to his seat. "Sir Eoin has had a rough few days and could use the rest."

Paul watched the Ambassador go back to his seat and looked at me, blushing. "D-Dame Alice?" he said, his tone hesitant and blank of any recognition of the name.

"So much for being famous," I muttered. I was kind of glad he didn't know who I was because it meant the stories were finally dying down. When I first hit Oxford, everyone seemed to know who I was, from the professors and students to the staff and grocery store clerks. I glanced up at him and smiled wryly. "I guess you didn't pay much attention to the news when you were at university about four years ago?"

He shook his head. "I graduated five years ago and went abroad for a year, mostly traveling but working for my father here and there in his businesses."

I shrugged. "About four years ago I rescued Sir Eoin Spencer's son, mother, and ex-wife from IRA kidnappers. I did it in such a way as to incur the wrath of the Office of the Lord Chancellor. The Queen was incensed and had me knighted for the act as a way of getting them to stop threatening to put me in the nearest gaol," I told him. I turned in the seat to face him, putting my hand out. "I am Dame Alice Mary Spencer-Killdare, Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and second year student at Oxford."

He was gape-mouthed, his eyes getting even wider. "But you can't be much older than my sister and she doesn't turn fifteen until spring!" he whisper-shouted, his eyes darting between the seats at his boss.

My hand dropped and I glared at him. "I will have you know that I am seventeen and will be eighteen this summer," I said frostily, going back to my reading and determined to ignore the diplomatic hanger-on.

There was silence from him for a long minute or two before I saw a hand extended towards me. "Cyril Paul Bamford, Deputy Assistant to the Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Lord Gillmore attached me to this trip because he couldn't come; he has to appear before the House of Commons later next week. He trusts me to take good notes and give my impressions."

I glanced back at him and shook the offered hand. He was a knuckle crusher and if I were as weak as my skinny self looked, he probably would have broken my hand. Instead I calmly endured what he assumed would be a nice hard handshake with a bored expression. Then the name hit me. "Any relation to Sir Anthony Bamford of JCB?"

He flushed, taking his hand back. "My uncle. He is my uncle," he replied sullenly.

That shut him up for a good half hour.

Reading over the briefs and papers and notes, it looked like Professor Fergusson's analysis was spot on. This whole thing was either purposefully arranged to be a monumental clusterf•©k or simply the work of incompetent and/or malicious underlings who did not want the same things their bosses did. Especially on the Russian side. From the papers Eoin was given by the American Ambassador, it looked like mere incompetence on the American side. The Russian Ambassador was of the same opinion as the Professor in that the functionary in Moscow was a Communist who wanted things to go back to the old days and was bitter about having to ask for help from their old enemies.

But again, I couldn't tell just from the papers I read through whether it was a case of incompetence and bitterness in and of itself or whether that was a mask for something much more sinister. I doubt Eoin thought I would spot something like that in briefing papers. What he really wanted to get out of my reading them was anything his exhausted mind might have missed in the hectic days leading up to our departure. Yes, Ambrose handled a lot of the details for the trip but Eoin still had to oversee a lot himself, cutting into the time he had to read up on the mess he was expected to fix. Or, perhaps more importantly, sleep.

While the notes Cyril watched me produce were cogent and copious, the only thing that caught my eye as strange or worrisome was the list of attendees and the brief dossiers Eoin was given on all of them, including the flunkies and security people. There was a name among the second tier officials President Yeltsin was sending for which there really was no file. All there seemed to be on him was his name, job title, and age. Little else was on the nearly blank sheet of paper with his grainy picture printed on it in pixilated black and white. I made a prominent note about him among the rest and scribbled one for Ambrose as well. Mr. Pavel Ustinov would definitely be someone to look into.

After that, I caught a short nap.

The ding of the seat belt light and the stewardess asking everyone to prepare for landing woke me. My eyes snapped open seconds before one of the first class stewardesses would have shook my shoulder. The older woman started, snatching her hand back with a breathless gasp before laughing nervously and moving on. I saw Cyril watching me out of the corner of my eye and made a mental note to ask about him, too. He seemed entirely too interested in me and what I was doing for a mere flunky from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The landing was all I had come to expect from flying; a heart-quickening, surging rush of power as gravity once more brought us back to the terrestrial soil from which we were spawned. Unlike my past flights in coach, the people in first class all took their time rising from their seats and getting their bags. Eoin stood and turned a yawning smile on me, stepping into the aisle and reaching up to retrieve my larger carry-on that held two days' worth of clothes, my toiletries, and a couple of books. I was too short to reach the overhead compartment easily and I think it tickled Eoin's paternalistic urges that he could do that for me because I could not do it myself. I struggled into my coat, making sure my knives remained hidden, and slung my school bag, a nice leather satchel, across my chest. I took the larger bag from Eoin with a mock scowl, shaking my head. Ambrose was grinning as he grabbed his own rather huge bag that I knew contained some of his toys that required the Foreign Office to issue him diplomatic security credentials so he could get them through Heathrow and Dulles security checks. As I followed the two of them down the aisle toward the exit, I noticed that Cyril Bamford had been staring at us. Or rather, me. His expression was rather more measuring and observant than I was comfortable seeing. It made me think that perhaps he had been telling the truth and not just puffing himself up when he claimed Lord Gillmore trusted his observations at things like this. It made me wonder just what he was along to observe. Eoin and I would definitely be discussing Mr. Cyril Paul Bamford when we had a little time and privacy.

Sir James smiled and nodded politely to me as I passed him. "I look forward to speaking at length this evening, Dame Alice," he said quietly, his tone sincere and a glimmer in his eyes said he truly was looking forward to talking to me.

I gave him an empty smile, the smile I developed to plaster on my face at official functions I was occasionally required to attend, as either Lord Spencer's niece or as Dame Alice. It worked well for talking to Eoin's political friends as well as pompous professors who liked to poke holes in my growing reputation as something of a wunderkind. "I will place myself at your disposal, Sir James," I replied graciously.

Ambrose's people were waiting for us in the waiting area with several carts for all of the luggage our party had, including my trunk of death. We all trooped through the concourse together, leaving the other functionaries and diplomatic security with Sir James. He would herd them all to the hotel, a different hotel from where we were staying apparently, before checking in at the British Embassy to see if the British Ambassador to the United States had any updates or news. A small coterie of reporters trailed us, snapping pictures and shouting questions at Eoin.

"Lord Spencer, Lord Spencer! Jeremy Eversham, The Daily Telegraph! How would you characterize the seriousness of the diplomatic impasse in which the Americans and the Russians find themselves?" a rather weedy-looking Englishman with a bad complexion and receding hairline yelled over one of the security agents' shoulder.