“I prefer when you do that.” Malone pointed. “Good taste in books. Ivanhoe is one of my favorites, and King Arthur is hard to beat.”
“I like Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail. Miss Mary gave me a couple of other stories on Merlin and Guinevere.”
“I like books, too.”
“Never said I liked books.”
“You don’t have to. The way you hold them gives it away.”
He hadn’t realized there was a way to hold a book.
“You cradle it in your palm. Even though those books have seen a lot of use, they’re still precious to you.”
“They’re just books.” But his denial sounded hollow.
“I’ve always considered them ideas, forever recorded.” Malone motioned to one of the paperbacks. “Malory wrote King Arthur in the late part of the 15th century. So you’re reading his thoughts from five hundred years ago. We’ll never know Malory, but we know his imagination.”
“You don’t think Arthur existed?”
“What do you think? Was he real or just a character Malory created?”
“He was real.” The force of his declaration bothered him. He was showing too much of himself to this stranger.
Malone flashed a smile. “Spoken like a true Englishman. I would have expected no less from you.”
“I’m Scottish, not British.”
“Really now? As I recall, Scots and English have been British since the 17th century.”
“Maybe so. But those sassanacks’ noses are too far up their arses for me.”
Malone let out a chuckle. “I haven’t heard an Englishman called a sassanack in a while. Spoken like a true jock.”
“How did you know we Scots are jocks?”
“I read, too.”
He’d come to realize that Cotton Malone paid attention, unlike most people he encountered. And he did not seem like a man given to having his knickers in a twist. In that mews, when faced with those fake police and a gun, he’d handled himself as a man in charge, strong and confident, like one of the horses at the track bolting from the gate. His wavy hair, cut neat and trim, carried the burnished tint of old stone. He was tall and muscular, but not overly so. His face was handsome, the features suited to him. He didn’t smile a lot, but there really wasn’t all that much to be happy about. Gary had said his father was a barrister, like the ones Ian had sometimes watched in London courts, parading about in wigs and robes. Yet Malone did not seem cursed with any of that pompousness.
He actually appeared like someone Ian could trust.
And he’d trusted precious few people in his life.
KATHLEEN HAD NO TIME TO REACT. THE MAN PULLED THE trigger and something propelled toward her. It took an instant for her to realize that the weapon was not a gun, but a Taser.
Electrodes pierced her shoulder.
Electricity stiffened her body, then buckled her legs, dropping her to the floor.
The voltage stopped.
Her head hummed with a high-pitched violence. Every muscle cramped for a few excruciating seconds. Then came the shakes. Uncontrollable.
She’d never felt anything like that.
She lay on the checkerboard marble and tried to regain control. Her eyes were closed and she suddenly felt pressure on her right cheek, her head clamped to the floor. Someone had the sole of their shoe on her face.
“I’m sure you now realize that you were led here.”
That she did.
“Next time, Miss Richards,” the voice said. “It will be bullets.”
Anger surged through her, but there was little she could do. Her muscles were still convulsing.
The foot came off her cheek.
“Lie still,” he said, “and listen.” The man was behind her and close. “Don’t turn your head, unless you want more electricity.”
She lay silent, wishing her muscles would respond to her brain.
“We told Antrim. Now we’re telling you. Leave this be.”
She tried to assess the cool, clipped voice. Young. Male. Not unlike Mathews’ tone, but less formal.
“We are the protectors of secrets,” the man said.
What in the world was he talking about?
“Pazan is dead,” the man said. “She knew too much. At the moment you know little. A word of advice. Keep it that way. Knowing too much will prove fatal.”
Her body was relaxing, the pain gone, her wits returning, but she kept her head to the floor, the man still behind her.
“Domine, salvam fac Regnam.”
She’d studied Latin in school and understood what he’d said.
O Lord, keep the queen safe.
“That is our duty,” he said. “Et exaudi nos in die qua invocaerimes te.”
And hear us in the day in which we call on thee.
“Our reward for that duty. We live by those words. Don’t you forget them. This is your first and final warning. Leave this be.”
She had to get a look at him. But she wondered—was he the one who fired the Taser? Or was there someone else here, too?
A gloved hand came across her body and the electrodes were removed.
She heard the chapel door open.
“Lie still, Miss Richards. Wait a few moments before rising.”
The door closed.
She immediately tried to stand. Her skin felt itchy all over. She was woozy, but she forced her legs to work and stood, staggering a moment, then regaining her balance. She stepped to the chapel door and turned the latch. Easing it open, she spied out into the lit quadrangle.
Empty.
She stepped out. The cool night air helped clear her head.
How had the man disappeared so fast?
She glanced right, to the doorway ten meters away, where she’d first sought cover. The closest exit.
She walked over and retried the latch.
Still locked.
Her eyes found the steps and the archway that led back into the dining hall.
Eva Pazan’s body was gone.
Nineteen
ANTRIM SAT ON THE BENCH AND STARED AT THE DARK THAMES. The arrogant bastard from the State Department was gone. He was a twenty-year veteran and resented being ordered around like the hired help. But he had a dead operative on his hands and Langley had made clear that there’d be repercussions.
Now this time crunch.
A few days.
Which nobody mentioned.
Was he being set up? That seemed the way of this business. You were only as good as your last act. And his last few had not been memorable. He was hoping King’s Deception would be his salvation.
He’d stumbled across the idea in a 1970s CIA briefing memo. An obscure Irish political party had investigated a radical way to end the British presence in Northern Ireland. A legal, nonviolent method that utilized the rule of law. But no evidence to support their theory been found, though the memo detailed a host of clues that had been uncovered. Once he proposed the concept, moles within British intelligence, most likely the same eyes and ears who’d alerted Langley to the Libyan prisoner transfer, had provided information from long-buried MI6 files. Enough for Operation King’s Deception to be approved and counter-intelligence assigned. But after a year’s worth of work, nothing significant had been discovered.
Except the information that died with Farrow Curry.
And this Daedalus Society.
Both of which seemed to confirm that there was something to find.
His mind ached from months of worrying, scheming, and dreaming.
Five million pounds. That was what Daedalus had offered, just to walk away. Maybe he should take it? Things seemed destined for failure anyway. Why not leave with something for himself?
Especially after the text he’d just received.
Have one boy in custody, but Dunne escaped.
Idiots. How could they allow a fifteen-year-old kid to elude them? Their orders were simple. Take Malone, his son, and Dunne from Heathrow to a house near Little Ven
ice. There, Malone should have been incapacitated and his son and Dunne transported to another locale. Apparently, everything had happened, except the most important part.
Corralling Ian Dunne.
Another text.
Mews video recording interesting. Watch.
The house in Little Venice was wired both for sound and pictures. So he accessed the feed and found the mews’ hidden camera. A recorded image sprang onto his smart phone and he saw Cotton Malone, gathering clothes back into a travel bag.
And Ian Dunne.
Watching.