Power Play

Savich said, “When he hears about it, he’ll want to sit on your lap on your flight back to London, Natalie.”

“Why don’t the three of you come to London with Perry and Davis? Maybe Hooley will be well enough in another month to come as well.”

“With Connie,” Perry said.

Sherlock said, “What a wonderful idea. Dillon, can you imagine Sean at the top of the Eye?”

Savich pictured it clearly in his mind. “He’ll think it’s better than a video game. He might even decide he wants to be English when he grows up.”

Perry said, “Did you know there’ll be three NFL games in London this fall? Maybe I can get the Post to pick up the tab and send me over. I can’t wait to see in person how the Brits react to American football. Think of the interviews with the man on the street.”

Sean appeared at the dining room door, holding his mother’s hand. “Oh, wow, a Ferris wheel?”

EPILOGUE

FBI Academy

Quantico, Virginia

Graduation Day

May

Sherlock and Savich sat, with Sean on Savich’s lap, beside the eighth Baron de Vesci, Nicholas Drummond’s grandfather. Nicholas, Sherlock had told Sean, was about to become the first Brit in the FBI, since his American mother had birthed him in the United States. Nicholas’s father, Harry Drummond, and his mother, Mitzie, sat beside them. Excited conversations of families and friends of new agents buzzed around them, all here to witness the new agents graduate and receive their creds and become special agents. It wasn’t long before Sean was leaning toward the baron. “Papa said you were a baron. What’s a baron?”

The old man with his beak nose and big ears gave Sean a startled look, then smiled and leaned close. “It means I get to eat dessert whenever I want.”

Sean whispered, “Even jelly beans?”

“Even jelly beans,” and the baron gave a gruff laugh. Sean thought he smelled like oatmeal and strawberries, and that was good. He leaned close again. “Let me tell you about Gargantua the octopus.” Sean proceeded to explain to the baron the intricacies of his new video game starring Gargantua, Captain Nemo’s pet octopus, each tentacle with a special talent. “Gargantua needs my help,” Sean whispered, “or Benito the Shark sucks all the ink out of his tentacles and leaves him helpless.”

The baron studied the little boy’s face as he listened, surely Agent Savich’s in twenty years, and remembered his own son Harry telling him stories at five years old. When Sean asked, the baron leaned close and whispered that he liked the seventh tentacle the best—who wouldn’t want to be able to swim with a propeller of his own?

Sean didn’t think much of that choice, but he nodded and enthusiastically embarked on Gargantua’s latest adventure.

The baron’s left knee hurt, but then again, every part of him hurt occasionally, only to be expected when someone approached the age of dirt. He heard Mitzie giggle at something Harry said and knew she was excited and worried and happy for her son, and what mother wouldn’t be? Nicholas had become an excellent man, all Drummond he was. He’d been a fine boy; well, not to put too fine a point on it, when he’d hit his teenage years, he’d been wild, occasionally reckless, but there was always a brain at work in there to pull him back from the biggest follies—or sometimes it was his father’s brain, but Mitzie would always give Nicholas the credit.

The baron knew something had happened to Nicholas in Afghanistan. Whatever it was, he’d left the Foreign Service and come home and signed up for Scotland Yard. Nicholas hadn’t spoken of it and the baron hadn’t brought it up because he knew a man had to live according to his own rules and find his own peace.

He realized Sean Savich was still telling him a story, and he patted his cheek. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said to Sean. “I want the fourth tentacle. I want to see even in the dark.”

Sean’s dark eyes glistened. “Something’s going to happen,” Sean told the baron. Savich leaned down and whispered, “Yep, things are getting started, so listen up and watch. Don’t yell at Nicholas when you see him. Wait, then wave when he looks over here.”

Sherlock looked past Sean to Nigel, Nicholas’s butler, his own father the Drummond family butler since the flood. Nigel had told her about the beautiful brownstone his lordship the baron had purchased for Nicholas in New York City. He’d rubbed his hands together. “Imagine,” he’d said, “I will have a floor entirely to myself.” He’d smiled down at Sherlock from his great height. “The kitchen is a marvel. Ah, the meals I shall prepare for Master Nicholas.”