Becoming Agent Rider

Christmas at Downing

A gentle knock on the mahogany door sounded, making Alex pause in the middle of his two hundredth press-up. He had woken up a couple of hours ago in the middle of a spacious guest bedroom, surrounded by sheets that were too soft and too silky on an unfamiliar queen-sized bed. The room that Sir Graham had put him in last night was comfortable, but too luxurious for his tastes. Even though Alex had slept soundly until the nightmares had caught up with him, the sharp contrast of his current room in comparison to K-Unit's hut at Brecon Beacons put him slightly on edge. It was like the more comfortable the accommodations outside of his own home, the more he expected something to happen. He supposed that, along with his nightmares, was why he had woken before dawn. Although, his biological clock was probably used to the military routine too. Since he was awake early with plenty of time to spare, Alex had decided to keep up his training and had either been meditating, practicing his katas, or working out. It didn't hurt that the exercises helped to keep his questions at bay either. With a groan, he pushed himself up, off the floor of the bedroom, and called out for the person to give him fifteen minutes.

Pulling back the thick curtains, he admired the picturesque view of the lawn and listened to the light pattering of rain, enjoying the brief calm that the morning brought. Alex padded silently over to the suitcase that was sitting atop a feather-soft rug on the hardwood floor and rifled through it to get ready for a hot shower, contemplating how he had ended up in another rich family's estate home. After the treatment he had received while posing as Sir David Friend's delinquent son for his Point Blanc mission, he wasn't looking forward to the rest of the week. Although the Adair family treated him well, dealing with rich and important people was not something he enjoyed. But this time, politics - another thing he didn't care for - was also involved which made it even worse. He could see why Treat had been so strict about giving him lectures on the subject though.

Thanks to those lessons, he had had the training to prepare properly in between lunch and dinner after he left Smithers' office. Going through news articles and MI6's database files on the politicians gave him enough research to have already identified potential conflicts within the government. He supposed that he would just have to see if his intuition was correct. His bet was on the leader of the Labour Party or the Democratic Unionists being problematic. In the meantime, Alex knew he had to tread lightly to avoid causing a political nightmare. The whole mission would be a careful balancing act of making friends with everyone while staying in the shadows to identify and prevent threats, preferably without anyone the wiser until he chose to reveal himself to the Prime Minister. Just thinking about the politics irritated him though, and Alex couldn't help but wonder what the mission for the Germans would have been like. It might have still involved politics, he thought wryly as the hot water ran down his bare back. But probably not discreet bodyguard duty in fancy suits.

However, this political headache wasn't the main thing he wanted his exercises to keep away from his mind. After Alex had finished his research for the mission, there had still been an hour left before he met the driver who took him to the Adair residence. He had used that time to read his own file - the unaltered version. Since he had never done any written reports for his missions, Alex wondered who had had the unfortunate task of doing his paperwork for him. Probably Jones or Crawley, he thought. His snorted to himself in amusement at the image of either of them scribbling or typing furiously to catch up with the mountains of paperwork that his missions had created, on top of their own paperwork. Even though he didn't write the reports, they were still very recognizable. After all, the reports on his twelve completed missions had been taken straight from his retelling of events during debriefings. Alex idly wondered which one of those missions had been discounted from the file that the SAS had received on him. He guessed it could have been Wimbledon. Crawley had asked him to do that one as a personal favor. At least, that was how it had appeared at the time. With his file including that as a mission though, he was almost positive that Blunt had ordered it to maneuver him in place to deal with Sarov. Then again, the excluded mission could just as easily have been the one where he went after Cray since Blunt and Jones had actually warned him away from that one. It didn't really matter though. Everything was, more or less, as he expected. Well, almost everything.