The King's Deception (Cotton Malone 8)

Other vehicles could be seen outside the moisture-laden windows slowing for a road signal apparently ahead. Rush hour in London, and nobody moved fast. He quickly reviewed his options and determined they were limited. Frizzy still held the knife and kept a close watch. The other man was equally attentive, and the confines of the car did not allow much room to maneuver.

He withdrew his left hand and displayed the drive. “This what you want?”

“There’s a good boy,” the older man said.

Then Ian’s right hand telegraphed the next move, and he almost smiled.

His fingers curled around the pepper spray. He’d thought it useless. Now it was priceless.

The older man reached for the drive.

Ian whipped out his right hand and sprayed.

Both men howled, pawing their eyes in a vain attempt to relieve the pain.

“Kill him, now,” the older man ordered.

Frizzy, eyes closed, dropped the knife and reached beneath his coat.

A gun came into view.

Ian sprayed again.

Frizzy yelled.

Ian unlatched the door nearest to him and slid out onto wet pavement between two idling cars. Before slamming the door shut, he snatched the knife from the floorboard then sprang to his feet.

A woman in an adjacent vehicle gave him a queer look.

But he ignored her.

He wove a path around the congealed traffic, found the sidewalk, and disappeared into the gloomy evening.

MALONE LISTENED TO THE BOY’S STORY.

“So you were there stealing.”

“I lifted a few things. Then I took the drive off the bloke, just before the bugger pushed him into the train.”

“You saw the guy pushed?”

Ian nodded. “I wasn’t expecting that, so I ran, but ended up getting caught by the man who pushed him, then shoved into a Bentley.”

He held up the plastic bag and asked again, “Where’s the flash drive?”

“I kept it, after I left the car. I thought it could be worth something.”

“And thieves like you don’t throw away things that are worth something.”

“I’m not a thief.”

His patience was running out. “Where’s the damn drive?”

“In my special place. Where I keep my stuff.”

His phone rang.

Which startled him.

Then he realized it could be Gary. He shoved Ian into the mews and dared the boy to make a run for it.

He found the phone and clicked it on. “Gary?”

“We have your son,” the voice said, which he recognized.

Devene.

“You know what we want.”

And he was staring straight at it. “I have Dunne.”

“Then we can trade.”

He was fed up, so he said, “When and where?”

Nine

ANTRIM YANKED UP THE COLLAR OF HIS COAT AND BRACED himself for the chilly rain. The man he was following into the lousy night had just killed an American intelligence operative. He had to know who was behind this and why.

Everything could depend on it.

The pace of the hurrying masses on the sidewalk matched the bustle of traffic. Evening rush hour in a city of eight million people was unfolding. Below he knew trains roared in every direction, people headed down to them where the red circle crossed by a blue bar marked an Underground station. All of this was familiar, as he’d lived in London for the first fourteen years of his life. His father had worked for the State Department, a career employee with the diplomatic service who lasted thirty years until retirement. His parents had rented a flat near Chelsea and he’d roamed London.

To hear his father talk, he’d laid the entire groundwork for the end of the Cold War. Reality was far different. His father was an unimportant man, in an unimportant job, a tiny cog in a massive diplomatic wheel. He died fifteen years ago in the States, living off one-half of his government pension. His mother received the other half, courtesy of an Illinois divorce she’d obtained after thirty-six years of marriage. Neither one of them had the courtesy to even tell him before they split, which summed up their life as a family.

Three strangers.

In every way.

His mother spent her life trying to please her husband, scared of the world, unsure of anything. That’s why she took his father’s shouts, insults, and punches. Which left marks not only on her, but in their son’s memory.

To this day he hated having his face touched.

It started with his father, who’d smack him on the cheek for little or no reason. Which his mother allowed. And why wouldn’t she?

She thought little of herself and even less of her son.

He’d walked Fleet Street many times. The first was nearly forty years ago, as a twelve-year-old, his way of escaping both parents. Named after one of the city’s ghost rivers that flow belowground, this was once home to London’s press. The newspapers left in the 1980s, moving to the outskirts of town. But the courts and lawyers remained, their chambers occupying the warren of buildings and quadrangles surrounding him. He’d once thought about law school, but opted for government service. Only instead of the State Department, he’d managed to be hired by the CIA. His father lived long enough to know that, but never offered a single word of praise. His mother had long since lost touch with reality and languished in a fog. He’d visited her once in the nursing home, the entire experience too depressing to recall. He liked to think that his fears came from her, his audacity from his father, but there were times when he believed the reverse may well be true.

His target was a hundred feet ahead, moving at a steady pace.

He was panicked.

Somebody was finally into the business of Operation King’s Deception.

He scanned the surroundings.

The Thames flowed a few hundred yards to his left, the Royal Courts of Justice only blocks ahead. This was the City, an autonomous district, separately chartered and governed since the 13th century. Some called it the Square Mile, occupied since the 1st century and the Romans. The great medieval craft guilds were founded right here, then the worldwide trading companies. The City remained crucial to Great Britain’s finance and trade, and he wondered if his target had a connection to either.

His man turned left.

He hustled forward, rain tickling his face, and saw that the assailant had entered the Inns of Court, passing through its famous stone gateway.

This place he knew.

It had once been the home of the Templars and the knights stayed until the early 14th century. Two hundred years later Henry VIII dissolved all religious orders and allowed the lawyers to assume the Temple grounds, forming their Inns of Court. James I eventually ensured their perpetual presence with a royal grant. He’d many times, as a kid, wandered through the maze of buildings with their courtyards. He recalled the plane trees, sundials, and green lawns sloping to the Embankment. Its gateways and alleys were legendary, the things of books and movies, many with elegant names like King’s Bench Walk and Middle Temple Lane.

He stared through the entrance and spotted his man making haste down a narrow, brick-paved street. Four men brushed past and headed through the gate, so he joined them, hanging back, using them as cover. Light came from a few windows and wall lamps that illuminated the entrances to the buildings.

His target turned left again.

He rushed past the men ahead of him and found a cloister framed out by archways. A courtyard opened on the other side and he saw the man enter the Temple Church.

He hesitated.

He’d been inside before. Small, with few places to hide.

Why go there?

One way to find out.

He stepped back out into the rain and trotted for the church’s side door. Inside, his gaze searched the scattered folds of weak light. Silence reigned, which unnerved him. Beneath the circular roof lay the marble effigies of slumbering crusaders resting in full armor.

He noted the marble columns, the interlaced arches, the solid drum of handsome stonework. The round church was embroidered by six windows and six marble pillars. In the rectangular choir to his right, beyond three more lofty arches, the altar was illuminated by a faint coppery glow. His target was nowhere in sight, nor anyone else.

Nothing about this felt right.

He turned to leave.

“Not yet, Mr. Antrim.”

The voice was older with a hollow tone.

He whirled back around.

In the Round, among the floor effigies, six figures appeared from the deep shadows that engulfed the walls. No faces could be seen, just their outline. Men. Dressed in suits. Standing. Arms at their sides, like vultures in the gloom.

“We need to speak,” the same voice said.

From his left, ten feet away, another man appeared, the face too in shadows, but enough was visible for him to see a weapon aimed straight at him.