Fic: Time Out in Washington 4/18 [X-Files/Torchwood/The State Within/Dr Who]
Title: Time Out in Washington (4/18)
Author: fides
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Mulder/Krycek (mostly UST), Mark/Nicholas discussed but whether there is any truth behind the suggestion is open to the reader's interpretation
Fandom: X-Files/Torchwood/Dr Who/The State Within
Rating: NC-17 overall (most parts PG/PG-13, only one part is NC-17 and that part can be skipped with minimum confusion if you want to read the plot but are put off by the idea of graphic sex)
Warnings: Spoilers for The State Within. Some violence and fantasy sexual violence
Disclaimer: None of the recognisable characters are mine, Santa has been really falling down on his job recently, but belong to their respective right holders
Sequal to 1. Plus Ça Change, 2. Hobson's Choice
Prequel to Interlunation
Previous Parts: Part 1 - Prologue -:- Part 2 - Sir Mark -:- Part 3 - Jack
Summary: Finding out Jack's secret in the worst possible way (Hobson's Choice), Alex takes a break from Torchwood Three while he comes to terms with events and his anger towards Jack. To give him the time he needs, Jack arranges a secondment for Alex at the British Embassy in Washington working with the secret service to counter threats to the Ambassador's family. But with Mulder around things don't go to plan and Alex discovers that aliens aren't that easy to leave behind.
Notes: I know that the timelines don't quite fit so I decided to fudge things a little because it was too tempting to compare Torchwood and the Consortium. This story is set concurrent with the early part of X-Files season 6, during the second half of Torchwood season 1, during the time of the 12th Doctor (Doctor Who) and about a year after the events in The State Within. In depth (or indeed any) knowledge of the included fandoms isn't required so please don't let them put you off. Thanks to moth2fic for the beta. Any and all remaining mistakes are own.
"What did you think of Azzam?" Nicholas' soft question caught Alex by surprise. There were many subjects upon which Alex expected to get interrogated, but a child he had only met briefly was not one of them. Not the first time that Nicholas had got him alone in his office. He slanted a look at Nicholas trying to work out what his angle was.
"Quiet kid," he said diplomatically. There had been something not quite right with the child who had looked at him with large dark eyes and solemnly said 'how do you do' when they had been introduced at the end of breakfast. It wasn't the skin-crawling 'not right' that he got sometimes in the presence of child-hosts but the disquieting feeling that you got around tiny adults in children's skins. The ones who had grown up too fast and in the wrong ways. The discreet enthusiasm of his response to his father, and his smile at seeing Nicholas, had gone some way towards reassuring Alex that maybe the missing mother accounted for the difference, but he couldn't quite believe he was looking at a kid who had been brought up in the comparative luxury of the British foreign service.
"Been through a lot," Nicholas commented, seeing Alex wasn't going to ask. "Saw his mother and later his uncle killed. His father was found dead just after his uncle was shot, probably murdered although it was never proven. Nasty business all around."
Alex shook his head sympathetically because he felt it was required. Children had never really been part of his life in a meaningful way since he was one.
"I hope you have the number of a good therapist," he said for lack of anything else to say.
"She seems to be so far," Nicholas agreed. His mouth twitched into a smile and Alex realised the Nicholas must have vetted whoever the person was. He probably knew more about them than they did about themselves.
"So how did he end up here?" Alex felt he was expected to ask something and from Nicholas' brief summary, the kid seemed to be out of close relatives.
"Mark was his godfather and his father named him as legal guardian. Filed the papers after Azzam's mother was killed and dusted them off just before he disappeared."
Alex's eyes narrowed as he thought that through. "Knew he wasn't coming back?"
"Pretty much. Left the boy with Mark, to keep him safe, and ran."
"But not fast enough," Alex surmised.
Nicholas nodded. "Body was fished out of the Potomac."
You had to respect that in a way, making sure the child was cared for. From the look of things Mark had certainly been willing and able to take the child in.
"Sir Mark didn't want to return to Britain to raise the boy?"
Nicholas shrugged. "They were about to announce Mark's return to Britain to take up political office before Azzam came into Mark's care. For unrelated reasons it was decided that the country was best served if Mark remained in place as ambassador. They found some guy called Saxon to stand at the by-election in his stead," Nicholas explained. "At the time Mark also had one of his staff who had been badly injured under his care at the residence. It may have factored in his decision to stay." 'Jane', Alex guessed. The Jane who had just left and might or might not be interested in what Mark supposedly got up to in his private life. "How much do you know about events last year?" Nicholas asked.
Alex mentally ran through all the events within the previous twelve months, put together a few half-remembered rumours and took an educated guess.
"The attack on the plane?" Alex offered. "Linked to Tyrgyztani militants. The opposition leader was assassinated while staying at the British embassy and there was some crap about WMDs in Tyrgyztan," Nicholas raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. "Every information source in existence seemed to think that war was about to start any second. Only it didn't."
Alex had been running errands for the Brit during most of that time and keeping up with current affairs had been part of that. The bombing had made Alex shiver. While the Brit, like most of the Consortium upper echelon, kept his own plane, unless Alex was flying with him, Alex worked under the radar which meant flying economy. Alex didn't kid himself that he was more than a little cog in the system, but the thought that some fundamentalist idiot could take him out over a petty squabble when the entire world hung in the balance had been horribly sobering. It was at times like that when he invented paranoid plots in which the aliens were deliberately stirring up trouble as both smokescreen and fifth column. There had been something strange going on but try as he might, Alex hadn't found any evidence of alien involvement so he had let it drop in favour of more pressing and intergalactic matters.
As he recalled, rumour said that Sir Mark Brydon had been the lone voice against the war and there were many writing off his career over it. In the aftermath of the assassination of the Tyrgyztan leader by Islamic militants who feared he was going to give in to American demands the war was put on hold while the West waited to see who it was they were invading and the objections of one diplomat were filed and forgotten. Alex hadn't put the names together until that moment. And afterwards Sir Mark had stayed in America rather than returning home and taking a run at the cabinet. Punishment for being right and speaking against the war, Alex wondered. Or maybe there had been more to it and Mark's continued presence was the result of his staring down the Americans and coming out even.
Whatever had been going on that hadn't made it to the news, Alex had a strong feeling that Mark, and therefore Nicholas, had been at the heart of it.
Nicholas slid a file across the table to Alex. The bright red stamps emblazened on it suggested harsh but not dire punishments if he distributed the information to the general public. So this wasn't all the answers then, just those that they were permitting him to see. He'd never been very good at respecting such boundaries and made a personal resolution to find out the rest.
"Coffee?" Nicholas asked politely.
Alex nodded, slightly distracted, already absorbed in the documents in front of him. He recognised that Nicholas was giving him time and space to study the material. Most of it was newspaper clippings and public reports, piecing together the mosaic pieces that tied Britain, Washington and Tyrgyztan together in a knotted web that had lasted over a decade. He sipped the coffee when it arrived, pleased to note the pale dilution of milk and vaguely wondering how Nicholas had known how he took it as Nicholas didn't strike him as the type to make do with lucky guesses.
He wished he had some means of taking notes. The years had taught him to take in and analyse information without such supplements but he still liked to feel a stylus in his hand or the keyboard under his fingers. Even when he did not write anything it helped him think.
"Azzam and Eshan were related?" he asked at last.
"Eshan was Azzam's uncle." The conformation was supplied quickly and without emphasis.
The uncle whom Azzam saw murdered. Assassinated on American soil while playing with him and his father, according to the report.
He looked at Nicholas, watching him closely, "You organised the assassination in Tyrgyztan." It wasn't so much an accusation as a statement.
Nicholas acted surprised at the idea. "Usman was killed by Islamist militant extremists." He parroted the official line. Alex hoped his expression adequately conveyed just how little he bought that load of baloney, although he had to concede that Nicholas sold it well.
"Who just happened to kill him at the worst possible time for them." Alex let that hang for a moment. "And the best possible time for you."
Nicholas shrugged, unconcerned. "Such groups are not known for their logical actions," he argued.
'Deny everything', the motto of dubious bastards everywhere. Alex should know - he practically had it tattooed on his heart, right under Mulder's name. Nicholas wasn't going to give anything away but Alex's gut told him he was right. It just didn't make sense otherwise. He could feel the question of why already beginning to percolate at the back of his mind. To stop the war that was brewing? To save Mark's career? Revenge? Nicholas didn't seem like the type, and revenge for what? Eshan's death?
Nicholas had been evaluating him carefully as they spoke. A tight regard that made Alex's skin twitch. He had suddenly become dangerous, Alex realised.
"And now they are after Azzam?" He diplomatically let the matter drop.
Whatever the relationship was between Jack and Nicholas, Alex had crossed a line in Nicholas' mind and he was sure his change of subject was being weighed against what he might do with his suspicions.
"They are one possible source for the threats," Nicholas agreed in the same soft tone he always used, "but we don't know for sure."
Was that an admission? Alex felt himself slipping into the mindset of his Consortium days, seeing three meanings behind every word. Was it too cynical to wonder if the so-called militants existed at all or whether they were a cover story that had been used for so long by so many people that they had gained a life of their own?
Alex found the copies of the threats where he had organised them on the table, pulling them closer to confirm his previous impressions.
"They weren't signed." He tapped the paper where the self-promoting spiel should be. "Someone should be claiming this."
"Which is unusual for terrorist groups," Nicholas agreed, "and why we aren't limiting our investigation."
Alex turned that over in his mind. "Who are the other suspects?"
"Supporters of Usman's old regime who have lost power... Political rivals of Eshan's faction... you have the list of most likely possibilities." Nicholas pointed to a page of the report that Alex had put aside. "Both the FBI and our own security services are investigating but at this point we just don't know."
It didn't make sense. All this over one boy with no family left and no political power. Not that those two factors were unconnected. The entire sorry story was a Merchant Ivory soap opera with its marriage alliances and 'old boys'' networks. The international support given to Usman must have come as something of a nasty surprise given how firmly Eshan was in bed with the British, literally, through his sister... Alex's thoughts skidded to a stop, one question suddenly filling his mind. Maybe it was working with the Consortium that had made him jaundiced to such things, or maybe it was the way that there had never been a question over whether Mark would take Azzam in, a child he had hardly seen or spoken to in years.
"Whose child is Azzam?" Alex asked quietly.
Nicholas looked at him with pale blue, shuttered eyes and said nothing. That figured, Alex thought.
He'd passed the earlier test then. Either that or he failed it so spectacularly that Nicholas was going to have him killed and didn't care what other theories Alex managed to think up. Alex felt a savage challenge well up inside him. Nicholas could try; he wouldn't be the first who had.
"Does he know that 'daddy' wasn't?"
He thought about the quiet, dark-eyed boy who had carefully hugged his adopted father when he saw him, but with a slight hesitancy as if it was a gesture that neither were entirely sure about yet.
Nicholas shook his head. "Even Mark only suspects; he doesn't know for sure."
"But you do." Alex wondered what lie Nicholas had used, whose names he had attached to the test when he had it run.
"It's my job."
"And now you've made it mine. Why?"
Was it another test? Results could be faked easily enough, one way or another depending on the outcome that MI6 wanted. Nicholas smiled in response and Alex couldn't quite convince himself it was friendly.
"So they could be trying to attack Sir Mark through the boy," Alex concluded.
"And they don't need a blood link for that." Nicholas swept that minor detail away. "The adoption is a matter of public record and not everyone was happy about it. There were a few protests that Azzam should be returned to his extended family in Tyrgyztan. Some apparently felt he would be better dead than in Mark's care and that included some of Eshan's followers who blamed Mark for his death."
What a fucking mess, Alex decided. It made him miss the simplicity of the aliens. They came, you either saved them, sent them on their way or killed them and that was the end of it. In Cardiff at least. Which, presumably, was why Jack had sent him here. Bastard. And triple bastard that it was working.
"What do you want me to do?" Alex asked, "I don't have the sort of contacts that you would need to track down the people who made these threats." Not unless they had dropped them from their space ship in passing.
"I want you to help me make sure none of those threats become reality. You would be shadowing Azzam, if you're willing. He has a security detail but I want you working with them. In addition I want you going over both his and Mark's schedules with me and coming up with possible scenarios and how best to defend against them. We don't know whether we are dealing with one lunatic or something more organised and we can't assume that they will scruple at collateral damage."
"You're asking a lot," Alex said honestly. There wasn't room for misunderstandings in this type of situation and Nicholas had laid it out pretty clearly. He wasn't just asking for Alex's input but for Alex to be willing to risk his life.
"Jack seemed to think you could handle it," Nicholas acknowledged. Alex was sure Jack did; set an assassin to catch an assassin after all, but Jack was on the other side of the Atlantic and at something of an advantage when it came to life and death situations. Nicholas must have seen some of that in Alex's expression as he continued, "But if you aren't sure say so and we can get someone else. I don't want to take any chances."
'And that includes you.' Alex could hear the words as clearly as if Nicholas had said them aloud.
Alex took a deep breath and made his decision.
"I can do it," he agreed.
Nicholas nodded, apparently expecting Alex's agreement but recognising the importance of it needing to be given.
"What about the locals?" Alex asked. If the FBI was involved in this then it might bring a whole new Mulder-shaped complication into an already tangled situation.
Nicholas' eyes crinkled into a slight and knowing smile. "I'll be dealing with the FBI. George Blake is our contact. She deals with political cases and we've worked with her before. Try not to get into trouble, but if anything happens for any reason then ask for her."
A polite knock had Nicholas flashing a glance at the clock on the wall. Alex was surprised how much time had elapsed. At Nicholas' welcoming response a man in uniform popped his head around the door.
"Have you finished with him or do you need him for a bit longer?" The clipped accent spoke of a distinguished military career almost more than the insignia on his epaulettes. It was as if even his syllables stood to attention.
"Sorry Paul," Nicholas apologised with what might have been a genuine smile, "we were just finishing here. Go do your briefing with General Lane," he told Alex, "I'll have the information you need made available to you by the time you've finished. Give me your preliminary thoughts this afternoon. We can discuss this further afterwards."
Nicholas would withhold some information, Alex supposed. The man clearly didn't totally trust him although Jack's recommendation had got his foot, and a good portion of the rest of him, through the door.
Alex nodded to himself as he followed the U.N.I.T representative from Nicholas' office. Bodyguarding a kid; could be worse, he supposed.
Next Part...
Author: fides
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Mulder/Krycek (mostly UST), Mark/Nicholas discussed but whether there is any truth behind the suggestion is open to the reader's interpretation
Fandom: X-Files/Torchwood/Dr Who/The State Within
Rating: NC-17 overall (most parts PG/PG-13, only one part is NC-17 and that part can be skipped with minimum confusion if you want to read the plot but are put off by the idea of graphic sex)
Warnings: Spoilers for The State Within. Some violence and fantasy sexual violence
Disclaimer: None of the recognisable characters are mine, Santa has been really falling down on his job recently, but belong to their respective right holders
Sequal to 1. Plus Ça Change, 2. Hobson's Choice
Prequel to Interlunation
Previous Parts: Part 1 - Prologue -:- Part 2 - Sir Mark -:- Part 3 - Jack
Summary: Finding out Jack's secret in the worst possible way (Hobson's Choice), Alex takes a break from Torchwood Three while he comes to terms with events and his anger towards Jack. To give him the time he needs, Jack arranges a secondment for Alex at the British Embassy in Washington working with the secret service to counter threats to the Ambassador's family. But with Mulder around things don't go to plan and Alex discovers that aliens aren't that easy to leave behind.
Notes: I know that the timelines don't quite fit so I decided to fudge things a little because it was too tempting to compare Torchwood and the Consortium. This story is set concurrent with the early part of X-Files season 6, during the second half of Torchwood season 1, during the time of the 12th Doctor (Doctor Who) and about a year after the events in The State Within. In depth (or indeed any) knowledge of the included fandoms isn't required so please don't let them put you off. Thanks to moth2fic for the beta. Any and all remaining mistakes are own.
"What did you think of Azzam?" Nicholas' soft question caught Alex by surprise. There were many subjects upon which Alex expected to get interrogated, but a child he had only met briefly was not one of them. Not the first time that Nicholas had got him alone in his office. He slanted a look at Nicholas trying to work out what his angle was.
"Quiet kid," he said diplomatically. There had been something not quite right with the child who had looked at him with large dark eyes and solemnly said 'how do you do' when they had been introduced at the end of breakfast. It wasn't the skin-crawling 'not right' that he got sometimes in the presence of child-hosts but the disquieting feeling that you got around tiny adults in children's skins. The ones who had grown up too fast and in the wrong ways. The discreet enthusiasm of his response to his father, and his smile at seeing Nicholas, had gone some way towards reassuring Alex that maybe the missing mother accounted for the difference, but he couldn't quite believe he was looking at a kid who had been brought up in the comparative luxury of the British foreign service.
"Been through a lot," Nicholas commented, seeing Alex wasn't going to ask. "Saw his mother and later his uncle killed. His father was found dead just after his uncle was shot, probably murdered although it was never proven. Nasty business all around."
Alex shook his head sympathetically because he felt it was required. Children had never really been part of his life in a meaningful way since he was one.
"I hope you have the number of a good therapist," he said for lack of anything else to say.
"She seems to be so far," Nicholas agreed. His mouth twitched into a smile and Alex realised the Nicholas must have vetted whoever the person was. He probably knew more about them than they did about themselves.
"So how did he end up here?" Alex felt he was expected to ask something and from Nicholas' brief summary, the kid seemed to be out of close relatives.
"Mark was his godfather and his father named him as legal guardian. Filed the papers after Azzam's mother was killed and dusted them off just before he disappeared."
Alex's eyes narrowed as he thought that through. "Knew he wasn't coming back?"
"Pretty much. Left the boy with Mark, to keep him safe, and ran."
"But not fast enough," Alex surmised.
Nicholas nodded. "Body was fished out of the Potomac."
You had to respect that in a way, making sure the child was cared for. From the look of things Mark had certainly been willing and able to take the child in.
"Sir Mark didn't want to return to Britain to raise the boy?"
Nicholas shrugged. "They were about to announce Mark's return to Britain to take up political office before Azzam came into Mark's care. For unrelated reasons it was decided that the country was best served if Mark remained in place as ambassador. They found some guy called Saxon to stand at the by-election in his stead," Nicholas explained. "At the time Mark also had one of his staff who had been badly injured under his care at the residence. It may have factored in his decision to stay." 'Jane', Alex guessed. The Jane who had just left and might or might not be interested in what Mark supposedly got up to in his private life. "How much do you know about events last year?" Nicholas asked.
Alex mentally ran through all the events within the previous twelve months, put together a few half-remembered rumours and took an educated guess.
"The attack on the plane?" Alex offered. "Linked to Tyrgyztani militants. The opposition leader was assassinated while staying at the British embassy and there was some crap about WMDs in Tyrgyztan," Nicholas raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. "Every information source in existence seemed to think that war was about to start any second. Only it didn't."
Alex had been running errands for the Brit during most of that time and keeping up with current affairs had been part of that. The bombing had made Alex shiver. While the Brit, like most of the Consortium upper echelon, kept his own plane, unless Alex was flying with him, Alex worked under the radar which meant flying economy. Alex didn't kid himself that he was more than a little cog in the system, but the thought that some fundamentalist idiot could take him out over a petty squabble when the entire world hung in the balance had been horribly sobering. It was at times like that when he invented paranoid plots in which the aliens were deliberately stirring up trouble as both smokescreen and fifth column. There had been something strange going on but try as he might, Alex hadn't found any evidence of alien involvement so he had let it drop in favour of more pressing and intergalactic matters.
As he recalled, rumour said that Sir Mark Brydon had been the lone voice against the war and there were many writing off his career over it. In the aftermath of the assassination of the Tyrgyztan leader by Islamic militants who feared he was going to give in to American demands the war was put on hold while the West waited to see who it was they were invading and the objections of one diplomat were filed and forgotten. Alex hadn't put the names together until that moment. And afterwards Sir Mark had stayed in America rather than returning home and taking a run at the cabinet. Punishment for being right and speaking against the war, Alex wondered. Or maybe there had been more to it and Mark's continued presence was the result of his staring down the Americans and coming out even.
Whatever had been going on that hadn't made it to the news, Alex had a strong feeling that Mark, and therefore Nicholas, had been at the heart of it.
Nicholas slid a file across the table to Alex. The bright red stamps emblazened on it suggested harsh but not dire punishments if he distributed the information to the general public. So this wasn't all the answers then, just those that they were permitting him to see. He'd never been very good at respecting such boundaries and made a personal resolution to find out the rest.
"Coffee?" Nicholas asked politely.
Alex nodded, slightly distracted, already absorbed in the documents in front of him. He recognised that Nicholas was giving him time and space to study the material. Most of it was newspaper clippings and public reports, piecing together the mosaic pieces that tied Britain, Washington and Tyrgyztan together in a knotted web that had lasted over a decade. He sipped the coffee when it arrived, pleased to note the pale dilution of milk and vaguely wondering how Nicholas had known how he took it as Nicholas didn't strike him as the type to make do with lucky guesses.
He wished he had some means of taking notes. The years had taught him to take in and analyse information without such supplements but he still liked to feel a stylus in his hand or the keyboard under his fingers. Even when he did not write anything it helped him think.
"Azzam and Eshan were related?" he asked at last.
"Eshan was Azzam's uncle." The conformation was supplied quickly and without emphasis.
The uncle whom Azzam saw murdered. Assassinated on American soil while playing with him and his father, according to the report.
He looked at Nicholas, watching him closely, "You organised the assassination in Tyrgyztan." It wasn't so much an accusation as a statement.
Nicholas acted surprised at the idea. "Usman was killed by Islamist militant extremists." He parroted the official line. Alex hoped his expression adequately conveyed just how little he bought that load of baloney, although he had to concede that Nicholas sold it well.
"Who just happened to kill him at the worst possible time for them." Alex let that hang for a moment. "And the best possible time for you."
Nicholas shrugged, unconcerned. "Such groups are not known for their logical actions," he argued.
'Deny everything', the motto of dubious bastards everywhere. Alex should know - he practically had it tattooed on his heart, right under Mulder's name. Nicholas wasn't going to give anything away but Alex's gut told him he was right. It just didn't make sense otherwise. He could feel the question of why already beginning to percolate at the back of his mind. To stop the war that was brewing? To save Mark's career? Revenge? Nicholas didn't seem like the type, and revenge for what? Eshan's death?
Nicholas had been evaluating him carefully as they spoke. A tight regard that made Alex's skin twitch. He had suddenly become dangerous, Alex realised.
"And now they are after Azzam?" He diplomatically let the matter drop.
Whatever the relationship was between Jack and Nicholas, Alex had crossed a line in Nicholas' mind and he was sure his change of subject was being weighed against what he might do with his suspicions.
"They are one possible source for the threats," Nicholas agreed in the same soft tone he always used, "but we don't know for sure."
Was that an admission? Alex felt himself slipping into the mindset of his Consortium days, seeing three meanings behind every word. Was it too cynical to wonder if the so-called militants existed at all or whether they were a cover story that had been used for so long by so many people that they had gained a life of their own?
Alex found the copies of the threats where he had organised them on the table, pulling them closer to confirm his previous impressions.
"They weren't signed." He tapped the paper where the self-promoting spiel should be. "Someone should be claiming this."
"Which is unusual for terrorist groups," Nicholas agreed, "and why we aren't limiting our investigation."
Alex turned that over in his mind. "Who are the other suspects?"
"Supporters of Usman's old regime who have lost power... Political rivals of Eshan's faction... you have the list of most likely possibilities." Nicholas pointed to a page of the report that Alex had put aside. "Both the FBI and our own security services are investigating but at this point we just don't know."
It didn't make sense. All this over one boy with no family left and no political power. Not that those two factors were unconnected. The entire sorry story was a Merchant Ivory soap opera with its marriage alliances and 'old boys'' networks. The international support given to Usman must have come as something of a nasty surprise given how firmly Eshan was in bed with the British, literally, through his sister... Alex's thoughts skidded to a stop, one question suddenly filling his mind. Maybe it was working with the Consortium that had made him jaundiced to such things, or maybe it was the way that there had never been a question over whether Mark would take Azzam in, a child he had hardly seen or spoken to in years.
"Whose child is Azzam?" Alex asked quietly.
Nicholas looked at him with pale blue, shuttered eyes and said nothing. That figured, Alex thought.
He'd passed the earlier test then. Either that or he failed it so spectacularly that Nicholas was going to have him killed and didn't care what other theories Alex managed to think up. Alex felt a savage challenge well up inside him. Nicholas could try; he wouldn't be the first who had.
"Does he know that 'daddy' wasn't?"
He thought about the quiet, dark-eyed boy who had carefully hugged his adopted father when he saw him, but with a slight hesitancy as if it was a gesture that neither were entirely sure about yet.
Nicholas shook his head. "Even Mark only suspects; he doesn't know for sure."
"But you do." Alex wondered what lie Nicholas had used, whose names he had attached to the test when he had it run.
"It's my job."
"And now you've made it mine. Why?"
Was it another test? Results could be faked easily enough, one way or another depending on the outcome that MI6 wanted. Nicholas smiled in response and Alex couldn't quite convince himself it was friendly.
"So they could be trying to attack Sir Mark through the boy," Alex concluded.
"And they don't need a blood link for that." Nicholas swept that minor detail away. "The adoption is a matter of public record and not everyone was happy about it. There were a few protests that Azzam should be returned to his extended family in Tyrgyztan. Some apparently felt he would be better dead than in Mark's care and that included some of Eshan's followers who blamed Mark for his death."
What a fucking mess, Alex decided. It made him miss the simplicity of the aliens. They came, you either saved them, sent them on their way or killed them and that was the end of it. In Cardiff at least. Which, presumably, was why Jack had sent him here. Bastard. And triple bastard that it was working.
"What do you want me to do?" Alex asked, "I don't have the sort of contacts that you would need to track down the people who made these threats." Not unless they had dropped them from their space ship in passing.
"I want you to help me make sure none of those threats become reality. You would be shadowing Azzam, if you're willing. He has a security detail but I want you working with them. In addition I want you going over both his and Mark's schedules with me and coming up with possible scenarios and how best to defend against them. We don't know whether we are dealing with one lunatic or something more organised and we can't assume that they will scruple at collateral damage."
"You're asking a lot," Alex said honestly. There wasn't room for misunderstandings in this type of situation and Nicholas had laid it out pretty clearly. He wasn't just asking for Alex's input but for Alex to be willing to risk his life.
"Jack seemed to think you could handle it," Nicholas acknowledged. Alex was sure Jack did; set an assassin to catch an assassin after all, but Jack was on the other side of the Atlantic and at something of an advantage when it came to life and death situations. Nicholas must have seen some of that in Alex's expression as he continued, "But if you aren't sure say so and we can get someone else. I don't want to take any chances."
'And that includes you.' Alex could hear the words as clearly as if Nicholas had said them aloud.
Alex took a deep breath and made his decision.
"I can do it," he agreed.
Nicholas nodded, apparently expecting Alex's agreement but recognising the importance of it needing to be given.
"What about the locals?" Alex asked. If the FBI was involved in this then it might bring a whole new Mulder-shaped complication into an already tangled situation.
Nicholas' eyes crinkled into a slight and knowing smile. "I'll be dealing with the FBI. George Blake is our contact. She deals with political cases and we've worked with her before. Try not to get into trouble, but if anything happens for any reason then ask for her."
A polite knock had Nicholas flashing a glance at the clock on the wall. Alex was surprised how much time had elapsed. At Nicholas' welcoming response a man in uniform popped his head around the door.
"Have you finished with him or do you need him for a bit longer?" The clipped accent spoke of a distinguished military career almost more than the insignia on his epaulettes. It was as if even his syllables stood to attention.
"Sorry Paul," Nicholas apologised with what might have been a genuine smile, "we were just finishing here. Go do your briefing with General Lane," he told Alex, "I'll have the information you need made available to you by the time you've finished. Give me your preliminary thoughts this afternoon. We can discuss this further afterwards."
Nicholas would withhold some information, Alex supposed. The man clearly didn't totally trust him although Jack's recommendation had got his foot, and a good portion of the rest of him, through the door.
Alex nodded to himself as he followed the U.N.I.T representative from Nicholas' office. Bodyguarding a kid; could be worse, he supposed.
Next Part...