“Gracie,” Grandpa snaps. “Go to your room. I’ll speak to you later.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Grandpa. Is this a bad time?”
I grin and turn to study the woman in my grandfather’s office. I look from her white hair worn in a sleek, chic bob all the way down to the tips of her designer heels. She’s so polished she reminds me of … Grandpa. But the Adrian Lady version. She is diplomacy personified.
Something in my look must tell Grandpa that he’d have to summon the marines to drag me from this room, so he finally gestures in my direction.
“Madame Prime Minister, would you do me the courtesy of allowing me to introduce my granddaughter, Grace? Grace, you have the privilege of meeting Adria’s acting prime minister, Ms. Alexandra Petrovic.”
The last time I was this close to an Adrian prime minister I was at the wrong end of a gun. But I guess a week can change things. A week can change everything.
“Hello, Grace,” the woman says.
“Isn’t it your first week on the job?” I ask her.
“It is,” she says with a laugh. “It seems I’m going to have to — what is it you Americans say? — hit the ground running.”
The smile she gives me never quite reaches her eyes. This isn’t a chat, a friendly visit. I have to wonder what she’s heard about me. Does she know I’m the reason the man who had the job before her is in a coma right now and probably isn’t going to make it?
Well, I think, remembering, I’m part of the reason.
There’s a small door that separates my grandfather’s office from Ms. Chancellor’s. It doesn’t look like a door, though — the red wallpaper and white wainscoting simply swing forward on a nearly invisible hinge. As a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. My very first secret passage.
The very first of many, I have to think as the door swings open and Ms. Chancellor steps inside.
“Oh, good. Here you are,” Grandpa says, gesturing her closer. “Madame Prime Minister, you know my chief of staff, Eleanor Chancellor?”
Ms. Chancellor steps forward and takes the prime minister’s outstretched hand. “Madame Prime Minister, so nice to see you again. Please forgive me. If I’d known you were coming I would have met you downstairs myself.”
But the prime minister pushes Ms. Chancellor’s worries away. “That’s quite all right. It was an unexpected stop. I’d prefer to keep this visit … informal.”
That prime ministers don’t just pop by to visit foreign ambassadors is something nobody in the room says but everyone in the room knows.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Ms. Chancellor asks, and I can feel the air start to turn. Grandpa can flirt and cajole, thicken his accent and lay on the charm. But that’s not going to work on the new prime minister of Adria, and Ms. Chancellor knows it. Probably because she knows it wouldn’t work on her either.
I look from Adria’s new prime minister to the woman who shot the old one, and for a second my heart begins to pound and my mouth goes dry. I forget about Spence and Alexei and the protesting crowds outside, and I think about what would happen if the truth about that night ever came to light, if the Society and their cover-up failed.
If that happened, there would be no end to the shouting.
I’m looking at Ms. Chancellor, trying to keep the panic from my eyes, when Ms. Petrovic says, “We would very much like to ask Grace some questions.”
“Absolutely not,” my grandfather interrupts. “Grace, you —”
I don’t let him finish. I just tell her, “I don’t have anything to hide.”
I have everything to hide.
“We have found ourselves in a bad situation at a very bad time.”
Ms. Chancellor raises an eyebrow. “When exactly is a good time, Madame Prime Minister?”
“I simply meant that —”
“I know what you meant,” Ms. Chancellor says. “The Festival of the Fortnight begins tonight and the streets will be overrun with tourists. The death of an American citizen is bad for business.”
“Tourism is Adria’s largest industry. I won’t apologize for that fact. I can’t have Americans making speeches on television and calling for Russian heads on spikes. We haven’t done that in Adria for two hundred years, I’m happy to say.”
“Yes. Well, the last time it didn’t end so well, did it?” Grandpa challenges, finally getting into the fight.
The prime minister studies him, a glint in her eye. “No. It did not. And I believe we shall all spend the next two weeks remembering.”
“Irony is an amazing thing, is it not?” Ms. Chancellor says.
The women stare each other down with cool indifference that has to be anything but. Does she know the truth about Ms. Chancellor and her predecessor? Does Grandpa? How deep and how far does this conspiracy go?
But the adults around me are so calm. I half expect my grandfather to smile and say By the way, Alexandra, did you know Eleanor is the one who shot your predecessor and then had her secret society librarian friends orchestrate a massive international cover-up? Would you like some tea?
It’s Ms. Chancellor’s voice that finally breaks through my foggy brain. “Grace went to the party at about nine. She was home by ten-thirty. She and her brother would have passed at least two dozen surveillance cameras between here and the city gates, and you are welcome to check ours if you would like.”