Alexis Castle, MD.
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: Guess what? I own no Castle. Rating: K+ Time: Several years after Season Eight.
She collapsed onto him and then rolled onto her side. He put his arm around her and pulled her close. She threw one leg over his midsection. They relaxed for several minutes.
"Who are you? What are you? What are you doing here?"
"Remember I told you that I don't rat out my employers. That still goes."
She frowned but he couldn't see the frown.
"I read two of your dad's books. One was A Raging Storm, and the other was Frozen Heat. Is your dad's fiancé really like that?"
"She's his wife now. And I now have a little sister named Lily and twin brothers, Jake and Reece. And yes, she's a lot like Nikki Heat. She's smart, tough, caring, determined and surprisingly, rather fragile. Her mother was murdered when she was nineteen. That changed her life. She became a cop and eventually solved her mom's murder. But as one of her bosses once said, she wasn't having any fun until my dad came along. I'm afraid dad was something of a spoiled playboy before he met Beckett. They've both changed for the better."
"Speaking of fiction, I have a fictional story to tell you." He said.
"A fictional story? Are you trying to become a writer?"
"No, I just want to tell you this." He took a deep breath, looked at the ceiling for a moment and then began.
"Once upon a time, long, long ago…"
"You're telling me a fairy tale?"
"Shush, woman. Now I've lost my train of thought. Now, where was I?"
"Once upon a time, long, long ago." Alexis repeated.
"Once upon a time, long, long ago and far, far away, there was a large, wealthy kingdom. Now the kingdom was both wealthy and powerful since there were other kingdoms around that were also powerful, although none were as powerful as the kingdom we're talking about. So, the king had to maintain a large military force. He also had to maintain a large intelligence service to keep an eye on the kingdom's enemies. Sometimes the king had to ask his military or his intelligence agency to do things that he'd rather not have everyone know he had authorized, so he had very special military and intelligence units set up to do those things."
"What kind of things?" Alexis asked.
"Lots of things. Like protecting a young woman from deadly drug smugglers, even though the woman in question was a real bad ass."
"So, this is a fairy tale."
"Just like I said. Now, sometimes the king needed things done that he really, really didn't want anyone to know about. He had a special unit set up for this. They were so secret they didn't have a name. They were just referred to as "they"."
"Who are they?" She asked.
"They? Why they is plain and fancy they. That's who they is."
"Edmond O'Brien as Freddie Sykes in Sam Peckinpah's the Wild Bunch, Warner Brothers, 1969." Alexis quickly said.
"How much movie trivia do you know?"
She smiled.
"There's a Free French garrison at Brazzaville."
"Well, here's looking at you, kid."
She gave him a quick kiss.
"This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"As I was saying, "they" were very secret. All communications with them were face to face. Nothing written or electronic. And their pay and the cost of their operations came out of funds that were off the kingdom's books."
"And this is just a fairy tale and has nothing to do with anything in real life?" She asked.
"Exactly."
Alexis thought about that for a few minutes. Then Jean spoke.
"What did you tell your dad, and the detective, about our little sojourn in Mexico?"
"She's not the detective to me. In fact, I've taken to calling her mom. She's more like a real mom than my real mom is and please don't ask about my real mom. I told them the truth. That you were the same Ishmael who saved me in the bank robbery, and I told them what we did in Mexico. All of it. They were upset, but I think my dad was secretly kind of proud of me."
"Even the part where you killed that sicario?"
"He was more frightened for me than proud, I guess."
"What about your share of the drug money?"
"That freaked dad, Kate and my grandma out. But no one could prove I hadn't come by it legally although the IRS did have some questions. Luckily my dad has great tax attorneys. Anyway, that's how I got through med school without needing any student loans or bankrupting my dad."
"I'm glad you didn't get into any trouble over anything."
"Dad says he owes you big time. If you ever really need help, he'll do anything for you."
"I'm not sure he'd be any help in the kind of trouble I get into."
"You'd be surprised. He knows lots of guys."
"I know lots of guys, too."
"All named "they"?" She asked.
"Pretty much. And speaking of pretty, how about a round two?"
"We're not going to stop at two, are we?"
"Never."
Alexis and Jean were having breakfast in the admin building when Captain Rojas came in.
"More bad news, jefe. The UN is really upset about what we're doing. They want to send a team here to talk to us. They're sending a civilian from Kinshasha, an Algerian called Ibrahim Boughali and the commander of the Force Intervention Brigade, Major General Dyakopu, from South Africa. Foreign Minister Urundi will represent us and they want you there as well. The UN party will arrive in three days."
Jean frowned.
"Okay. If it all turns to shit, we may have to fight. I don't like having to fight the UN, but people in the Congo have done it before. We'll need to get everyone ready. Meet me in the tac headquarters."
Rojas left and Jean stood up.
"Are you really going to have to fight the UN?" Alexis asked, worried.
"You heard Rojas."
"What's this brigade they have?"
"The Force Intervention Brigade is a UN force that was set up to do peace enforcing rather than peacekeeping."
"What's the difference?"
"Peacekeeping works when there's a peace to keep. The FIB was set up in 2013 to fight the March 23 Movement. That's a Congolese rebel force that allegedly has ties to Rwanda."
"Allegedly?" Alexis asked skeptically.
"That's what they say. But M23 is still out there in the bush being good guerillas, hitting and running and making everyone's lives miserable."
"How strong is this Force Intervention Brigade."
"They have three infantry battalions, one from South Africa, one from Tanzania and one from Malawi. They also have a Tanzanian artillery battery and a special forces and reconnaissance company. Maybe two thousand people all told."
"How strong is your brigade?"
"I have three truck mounted infantry battalions, one light infantry battalion, an artillery battalion, a pretty big tank company, an aviation company, plus engineers, support people and a pretty good special forces company of my own. We also have the weapons, vehicles and other equipment the Congolese brigade we defeated left behind. We can man some of it, but not all."
"So, you outnumber them and have more weapons?"
"Yes, but there are nearly twenty thousand UN peacekeeping troops in the Congo, but they were sent here to keep the peace, not fight a war. No one knows if the various countries they come from would want to send their people into combat."
"I don't like the whole idea."
Jean smiled at her.
"Me either."
Jean worked very hard over the next few days, but he always went to Alexis' suite for dinner. After that, they went to bed and made love.
When the day the UN people would arrive, Alexis was not invited to come to the hotel where the meeting was. However, as a conscientious medical professional, she decided that it was time for the kitchen in the hotel to be inspected for cleanliness. The chefs said nothing as she sat near the door where she could hear, but not see everything.
Jean and Foreign Minister Urundi arrived first. They did talk, but in such low voices that Alexis couldn't hear what they were saying. Then she heard the clatter of helicopter blades outside, announcing the arrival of the UN delegation.
There were introductions all around and a bit of small talk. Then Ibrahim Boughali spoke.
"The United Nations is not prepared to deal with a government that does not exist."
She heard the scraping of chairs, then Urundi spoke.
"Well, if we don't exist, there's not much point in us hanging around here. However, I do recommend you try the fish here at the restaurant. It's all excellent. We'll be off now."
She could hear footsteps leaving the hotel.
"Wait." Said Boughali. "We shall talk with you, but this does not mean we recognize your state."
"Fair enough."
She heard a rattling of papers and then Urundi spoke again
"It might help if you knew who and what we are. The Congo is rich in minerals, has fertile soils and potentially great hydroelectric power. But everywhere the people are poor. A small elite has grown rich at the expense of everyone else since independence many years ago. Some were luckier than others. My father had a small store outside of the capital, Kinshasha. He managed to keep from being robbed blind and was able to send me to a Catholic school in Kinshasha. I received a bursary, that's a scholarship to the Americans, to the London School of Economics where I studied political economy. I eventually earned a doctorate."
Alexis wondered if Urundi's remark explaining what a bursary would be to an American indicated that he knew she was listening.
'Other Congolese managed to leave the Congo, or the DRC, as many call it, and settle abroad. Many prospered. But we retained a desire to see our country become a responsible, democratic nation. That is who we are. And we have the support of many Congolese abroad, including some who have gained immense riches by stealing from the state."
"You also have friends in the Arab world who have provided you with much of your weapons. What will happen when your Arab paymasters demand to be repaid. They are not known to be overly generous." Boughali said.
"We wish to be friends with everyone. Are not Arab countries members of the United Nations? And the amount of money that has been stolen by successive governments since the Congo's independence would dwarf anything that any of our friends might, I repeat, might ask for."
"This is all well and good, but the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a member of the United Nations and we have been sent here to keep the peace in the Congo."
"You're not doing the best possible job." That was Jean. "You were here from 1961 to 1964 and managed to stop the secession of Katanga, but once Mobuto was president of the Congo, all he cared about was stealing as much as he could. Bandits, warlords and political and tribal militias ran parts of the Congo with no complaints from Mobuto, the African Union or the United Nations."
"My brigade is quite powerful, compared to previous UN forces." Alexis decided that must be General Dyakopu.
"But not compared to mine. Do you remember the siege of Jadotville?" Jean said.
"Do you remember who finally won that war?" Dyakopu snapped back.
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen." Boughali said. "Please calm down. We are not here to discuss old wars or to threaten new ones. I should point out that the African Union has a policy of not allowing unilateral redrawing of accepted international borders in Africa."
"Unless it suits them." Urundi said slyly. "Somaliland and Punt have seceded from Somalia and the African Union, nor the UN has done a thing. No one wants to get involved in the mess that is the Horn of Africa. The AU's experiences in Somalia itself has not been successful. And you have quite strong military support from the NATO nations and the European Union."
"Then there are the Islamic fundamentalist caliphates springing up in the Sahel. Various nations tried to prevent that with little success so far." Jean added.
TBC