Chapter 9

Loren stood watching as his ancestor's mood grew as dark and chilled as the room. Winter was coming. It hadn't snowed yet, but it would. They were due. He had no window into his ancestor's thoughts or his background, but his frustration spoke volumes to him. He stood and walked around the desk to join his ancestor by the window. Loren considered his words with care. "As far as information on the present is concerned, I can give you that. I may even be able to spot an abnormality that could indicate the presence of your enemy. As for your misgivings about changing time, sir; the future hasn't happened yet, for either of us. I would think anything either of us does could not possibly be wrong as we know nothing of the greater picture." Phileas turned to the younger man, surprised at that take on the matter. Loren took it as a good sign. "You seem only to know that some event must be avoided. Anything else must be left up to the chances of fate as it always is."

Phileas gave this younger version of himself another assessing look with amusement and a bit of pride. Loren Fogg seemed to have a better grasp of the notions of time and its uncertainties than he did at his age, or at present. "You are saying that I should not try to second guess myself? Things will be as they will be."

Loren waved his hand in invitation for his guest to return to their seats. Phileas accepted that, and the brandy the younger man offered him. "I don't know who these people are who sent you," Loren said, sitting down in a wingback chair of deep red by the hearth. "I have a suspicion they think far too much of themselves if they think two or, counting me, three people have that much sway over the progression of global events. If I have learned anything since this war broke out, it is that individuals don't have much control over the tides. God knows my father and uncle did plenty, but in the end their efforts to stop this war came to nothing."

Loren stopped there, taking a long drink of his brandy, and stared across the room at the first in a set of four portraits hanging on the far wall around the family coat of arms. The portraits showed his father and uncles as young men graduating from university. They had been hung by his grandfather and had been permanent fixtures in this room all his life. They had been rearranged slightly to add his own graduation portrait. He had a painter working on Lacy's to be added on Christmas.

"My father was a diplomat," Loren said to Phileas. "He had great faith in his abilities to negotiate a settlement to this war before it could ignite. He believed a body of diplomats sitting around a table could solve all the world's problems."

Looking at the second of the portraits, his expression lost its sadness and turned hard. "Uncle James was just like him from a different angle. He thought he and the intelligence service could control the fate of nations by foiling the other fellow's plans. He thought he, by stealth, misinformation, and thievery, could keep the powers of Europe from open warfare." Loren laughed at both his elder's naiveté. "No one carries that much power, sir. Events will happen the way they will, whether you or I want them to or not. We are just along for the ride."

Phileas watched the play of emotions the younger man unconsciously displayed while looking on the portraits across the room. "How did such a young man get to be such a cynic?"

Phileas drained his glass by half. He agreed with the younger man's assessment. He had seen plenty of the intelligence service's meddling in world events come to nothing. It had happened that way in China, during the war in Crimea and in other smaller shadowy skirmishes here and there. Phileas had come to those conclusions much later in life than this.

Loren stared at his empty glass, not sure how it had emptied so fast and considered not answering the question. He decided to answer anyway. We may be working together soon.

"Some decades back there was another all-encompassing war in Europe. This one, I believe, is the result of the way that one was handled. My father was part of a group of diplomats who thought a League of Nations should be set up to arbitrate international disputes. Only, the men sent to this League of Nations council were nothing but powerless puppets. More often than not, the representatives were sent to disrupt rather than help. Nothing ever came of it that I could see but infighting. Yet, father doggedly insisted the concept could work."

"It had to be made to work," Jacob Fogg insisted… right up to his death."

"To that effort, father became part of a diplomatic committee that pressured Poland not to modernize or mobilize its forces, claiming that such actions would be interpreted as an aggressive move when Poland perceived Germany's threats. My father was in Prague when the Germans invaded. He was killed in the bombing of that city, still preaching caution and inaction."

"I'm sorry," Phileas said. It was an inadequate platitude, but it was all he could say.

"I had already been working with my uncle in the Secret Service for two years when that happened," Loren said. "I thought Uncle James had the right answers. He believed in pre-emptive measures, getting to them before they could get to us." Loren's voice dripped bitterness. "In my hero worship, I never noticed how paranoid and suspicious he was, or his heavy-handed, ends justifies the means attitude until far too late. Poland fell and then France, along with several others. The behind the scenes scheming he did and the losses he justified as keeping other lives safe came to nothing. He enabled this war as much as my father did. On my last mission, we went into France to sabotage a train carrying munitions. Only the train turned out to be pulling along more than just that."

"And…" Phileas prodded after too long of a pause.

"And–War brings out the worst in people." Loren ended the subject. The ex-agent stood, knowing he had said too much, more than he had admitted to anyone. If he let himself keep going, he would tell this man things Phileas Fogg would not thank Loren for sharing. The man in front of him had no stake in this century, didn't need to know about the larger evil going on. "I will show you to your room. You probably need to rest before dinner." With that Loren invited his houseguest to follow him upstairs.

"Are you still working with the Secret Service?" Phileas said before they reached the door.

"No, I was asked to resign early this year. I was hurt during an explosion in that last raid. I wasn't expected to heal as well as I did."

A deafening explosion, fire, and heat hit him in the dark night. It burned its way across time, forcing its way into Loren's immediate thoughts. He and Daniel had run toward the train at the same time when they heard Roberta question her father about the extra cars added to the munitions train just before it had moved out of the rail station. They had both passed those guarded cars while setting the explosives and knew what they were carrying. With only ten minutes to detach the back cars, they had moved fast to accomplish their rescue of the French prisoners bound for German factory work. Daniel had been sheltered behind the last of the boxcars as he applied the brakes. Loren had been the one to separate the cars, closest to the explosives. He had not gotten far enough away after jumping. The blast had picked him up and tossed him like a leaf in the wind.

Loren fought those memories down. He caught the older man giving him an assessing look, a knowing look. "You won't see any scars while I'm dressed, and I can control the limp as long as I don't have to run." He looked at the fine piece of oak in Phileas's hand. "I put away my cane months ago."

"And your cousin, Roberta?" Phileas said.

"Yes, Roberta," Loren leaned against the still closed door to the study. "Roberta has… had been working with her father for years. Uncle James took her with him on espionage forays, sabotage missions… that sort of thing, since before the war started. She traveled with him from place to place making an oxymoron of the term state secrets. An expert codebreaker, cat burglar and spy catcher that one. She became an official agent at nineteen. I'm not sure how her father's death will affect her status. She will be out of commission at least until her leg heals."

Loren smiled a bit sheepishly. "She and Uncle James trained me. Actually, she did most of it. Bloody nuisance being five years her junior. She's been a mother hen to me all my life. And in the service, it was no different–sometimes worse."

Thank God.

Waking up in the damp root cellar, with the smell of garden soil, and decay at a French doctor's country home. He had been there days after the explosion. Roberta had been there with him, sitting on the dirt floor beside his cot. She had stayed behind, nursing him. Several broken bones, flash burns across most of his back; it had been nearly a month before he could travel.

Uncle James had been furious at what they had done. He claimed they had risked the mission and his injuries had proven it. Uncle James also claimed they had endangered their French allies. He had had to cover for them when German soldiers saw them running for the train. What had been a mission of stealth quickly became an all-out battle. Dead soldiers littered the railway station. He said they had burdened the resistance with a large group of prisoners to hide.

Roberta, in contrast, had stood by him, defending his actions even against her father's censor. She reported that the prisoners had been set free and joined the resistance fighters. France used them as propaganda against the German's instead of the other way around. It had been her report that had justified his actions, and later, gained him his knighthood.

Loren couldn't hide the great love he held for his older cousin, allowing Phileas to see the underlying warmth and admiration. When he had been a young boy of fifteen and her an agent of twenty, he had envied her travels and adventures. Fueling that envy had been his resistance to following his father's footsteps, a path he had never fully appreciated or respected.

With his hand on the latch, Loren wondered how this older man was taking his words and overlong silence. He searched for the usual reaction to Roberta's service. It was expected for people to hold his uncle in contempt for making his daughter an agent. Few understood or approved, and never considered that Roberta had wanted it that way. Therefore, as a pre-emptive measure, Loren decided a little more needed to be said.

"Before you say something around Roberta about the wisdom of having a daughter partner one in such things; I should tell you my father and uncle went round and round about that. From the moment Aunt Caroline died, Roberta's traveling with her father was a constant source of contention. I was never party to those discussions, but from Roberta's side, she believed her options were to either follow her father or become a permanent ward of my family. Roberta loved her father; never saw his faults. She wanted to be with him. And to that end, she became a damnably good agent."

That said, Loren gave his ancestor one last look, seeking further censor. When he saw none, he opened the door and led Phileas to a room near his.