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Even before they hung up, Alec knew McKinnon had been lying, and wondered if his attraction to Angelina was obvious to everyone...or if McKinnon was just more astute than most. Probably the latter, he consoled himself. McKinnon was a damned good special agent. He hadn’t gotten where he was with merely run-of-the-mill powers of observation and an average ability to assemble disparate clues. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.
* * *
Sunday dawned, a bright and beautiful fall day with clear skies and a gentle breeze. A perfect day for the christening of Crown Prince Raoul Theodore Alexei Stepan. As if God himself is smiling on the occasion, Alec thought whimsically as he arrived in the Drago town square just as the sun peeked over the mountaintops to the east.
He wasn’t supposed to be here this early. In fact, he was supposed to arrive with the McKinnons, whose guest he was. But Alec had cried off, telling McKinnon he’d make his own way to the christening and meet them there because he wanted to experience the whole event as a spectator, not just as a guest. But that meant he was already dressed for the occasion in the formal morning suit he wore for official embassy events, right down to a carnation in his lapel.
Alec wasn’t the first to arrive, though. A crowd had already begun to assemble, lines forming to enter the cathedral when the doors opened at noon. Members of the Drago police department and the Zakharian National Forces were on hand to keep things orderly, but they were hardly necessary with the friendly crowd.
Smiles and jests were the order of the day—no pushing or shoving. As he watched the crowd—so different from American crowds—Alec theorized people must have come from miles around, not just from Drago. But everyone seemed to be in a jubilant mood. He struck up a conversation with an elderly couple near the front of one line, grateful his knowledge of Zakharan was up to the task, and his theory was quickly confirmed.
“We are from Timon, near the eastern border,” the husband said. “We left home at midnight to be here today.”
“Why?”
“To witness the christening, of course,” the man told him, as if it should be obvious. “And the official royal acknowledgment that the baby is the true heir of Zakhar’s king. I was right here when the king himself was christened almost thirty-five years ago.” His wrinkled face became animated. “I was almost the same age then that the king is now, and I remember that day as if it were yesterday.”
In his head Alec heard Angelina say, “It is not just the baptism of a child, you understand. It is a celebration of the future of our country...”
Alec smiled, beginning to understand why these two elderly Zakharians were willing to subject themselves to this ordeal along with the rest of the crowd. “We don’t have ceremonies like this in the US.”
“That is your country’s misfortune,” the man said with a touch of superiority, before his wife chimed in.
“This is a historical event,” she explained. “This ceremony—it is more than five hundred years old, you understand. The line of direct descent from father to son has never been broken. God willing, it never will be.”
“Were you here the last time, too?”
“But of course. My husband and I, we were both here. That is why we are here today.” She beamed at Alec and went on to explain that it wasn’t just a historical event for Zakhar, it was a good omen. Not that the Zakharians were any more superstitious than citizens of other European countries, as a general rule, but they had come to believe the good fortune and prosperity Zakhar had experienced throughout the centuries was somehow tied in with the House of Marianescu. Zakhar had never had a truly bad king in all those years of the monarchy’s direct descent. Was this cause and effect? “No Zakharian is willing to put it to the test,” she added in all seriousness. “And now we will not have to.” She took her elderly husband’s hand. “Not in our lifetime.”
After a little more conversation, Alec thanked them both and excused himself to wander around the square outside the cathedral, taking everything in.
Large screens were being erected to project the ancient ritual from inside the cathedral, one performed by every Zakharian king except the first Andre Alexei—his heir had been born in captivity, far away from Drago. But his successor, his son Raoul, had begun the ritual when his first son was born.
The clock tower in the square had just proclaimed the time as nine o’clock when cars began arriving, disgorging a phalanx of steely-eyed men with the distinct look of bodyguards about them. They swarmed up the cathedral steps and disappeared inside. “Security teams,” Alec murmured to himself. A couple of women dressed just like the men were also there, and he remembered Angelina saying Queen Juliana had requested a certain number of female bodyguards, although the vast majority of her security detail were men.
