The Charlemagne Pursuit (Cotton Malone 4)

He glanced at his watch. 8:50 PM.

He sat at a table in a small trattoria on the outskirts of Washington. Good Italian food, understated setting, excellent wine bar. None of which he cared about tonight.

He sipped his wine.

A woman entered the restaurant. Her tall, slender frame was draped by a stitched-velvet aletta coat and dark vintage jeans. A beige cashmere scarf wrapped her neck. She threaded a path around the tightly packed tables and sat with him.

The woman from the map store.

"You did good with the senator," he told her. "Right on the mark."

She acknowledged his compliment with a nod.

"Where is she?" he asked. He'd ordered surveillance on Diane McCoy.

"You're not going to like it."

A new chill sheathed his spine.

"She's with Kane. Right now."

"Where?"

"They roamed the Lincoln Memorial, then walked the basin to the Washington Monument."

"Cold night for a stroll."

"Tell me about it. I have a man with her now. She's headed home."

All disturbing. The only connection between McCoy and Kane would be him. He'd thought her placated, but he may have underestimated her resolve.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He checked. Hovey.

"I need to take this," he said. "Could you wait near the door?"

She understood and left.

"What is it?" he said into the phone.

"The White House is on the line. They want to speak with you."

Nothing unusual. "So?"

"It's the president."

That was unusual.

"Connect us."

A few seconds later he heard the booming voice the whole world knew. "Admiral, I hope you're having a good night."

"It's cold, Mr. President."

"You got that right. And getting colder. I'm calling because Aatos Kane wants you on the Joint Chiefs. He says you're the man for the job."

"That all depends if you agree, sir." He kept his voice low, below the level of muffled conversations around him.

"I do. Thought about it all day, but I agree. Would you like the job?"

"I'd willingly serve wherever you like."

"You know how I feel about the Joint Chiefs, but let's be real. Nothing's going to change, so I need you there."

"I'm honored. When would this be made public?"

"I'll have your name leaked within the hour. You'll be the morning news story. Get ready, Admiral-it's a different ballpark than naval intelligence."

"I'll be ready, sir."

"Glad to have you aboard."

And Daniels was gone.

A breathless moment passed. His defenses dropped. His fears abated. He'd done it. Whatever Diane McCoy was doing mattered not.

He was now the appointee.

DOROTHEA LAY IN THE BED, TREMBLING IN THAT STATE BETWEEN sleep and wakefulness where thoughts could sometimes be controlled. What had she done, making love to Werner again? That was something she'd never thought possible-a part of her life that had surely ended.

Maybe not.

Two hours ago she'd heard the door for Malone's room open, then close. A murmur of voices seeped through the thin walls, but nothing she could decipher. What was her sister doing in the middle of the night?

Werner lay pressed beside her in the narrow bed. He was right. They were married and their heir would be legitimate. But having a baby at age forty-eight? Perhaps that was the price she would be required to pay. Werner and her mother had apparently forged some sort of alliance, strong enough that Sterling Wilkerson had to die-strong enough to transform Werner into some semblance of a man.

More voices leaked from next door.

She rose from the bed and approached the connecting wall, but could understand nothing. She padded lightly across the thinly carpeted flooring to the window. Fat snowflakes fell in silence. All of her life she'd lived in mountains and snow. She'd learned to hunt, shoot, and ski at an early age. She wasn't afraid of much-only failure, and her mother. She rested her naked body against the chilly windowsill, frustrated and mournful, and stared at her husband, curled under the comforter.

She wondered if her bitterness toward him was nothing more than grief overflowing for their dead son. For a long time afterward the days and nights had assumed a nightmarish quality, a sensation of rushing forward with no purpose or destination in view.

A chill stole the room, and her courage.

She folded her arms across her bare breasts.

It seemed with each passing year that she became more bitter, more dissatisfied. She missed Georg. But maybe Werner was right. Maybe it was time to live. To love. To be loved.

She flexed her legs in a long stretch. The room next door had gone quiet. She turned and stared back out the window at the snow-pelted darkness.

She caressed her flat belly.

Another baby.

Why not.

SEVENTY-ONE

ASHEVILLE, 11:15 PM

STEPHANIE AND EDWIN DAVIS REENTERED THE INN ON BILTMORE Estate. Davis had risen from his brawl, caught in the clutch of pain, his face bruised, but his ego intact. Chinos was in custody, albeit unconscious at a local hospital with a concussion and multiple contusions from the beating. The local police had escorted the ambulance and would remain there until the Secret Service arrived, which should be within the hour. Doctors had already told the police it would be morning before the man could be questioned. The chateau had been sealed and more police were combing its interior seeing what, if anything, Chinos had left behind. Tapes from security cameras located throughout the house were being carefully reviewed in search of more information.

Davis had said little since he'd climbed from the pool.

A call to the White House had confirmed both their identities and credentials, so they hadn't been forced to answer questions. Which was good. She could see that Davis was not in the mood.

The estate's chief of security had accompanied them back to the inn. They approached the main registration desk and the administrator found what Davis wanted, handing him a slip of paper: "Scofield's suite number."

"Let's go," Davis said to her.

They located the room on the sixth floor and Davis banged on the door.

Scofield answered, wearing one of the inn's signature robes. "It's late and I have an early morning tomorrow. What could you two possibly want? Didn't you cause enough havoc earlier?"

Davis brushed the professor aside and marched into the suite, which contained a generous living area with a sofa and chairs, a wet bar, and windows that surely provided spectacular mountain views.

"I put up with your asshole attitude this afternoon," Davis said, "because I had to. You thought we were nuts. But we just saved your ass, so we'd like some answers in gratitude."

"Someone was here to kill me?"

Davis pointed at his bruises. "Look at my face. He's in the hospital. It's time you tell us some things, Professor. Classified things."

Scofield seemed to swallow some of his insolence. "You're right. I was an ass to you today, but I didn't realize-"

"A man came to kill you," Stephanie made clear. "Though we need to question him to be sure, it certainly looks like we have the right person."

Scofield nodded and offered them a seat.

"I can't imagine why I'm a threat after all these years. I've kept my oath. I never spoke of anything, even though I should have. I could have made quite a name for myself."

She waited for him to explain.

"I've spent all my time since 1972 trying to prove, in other ways, what I know to be true."

She'd read a brief synopsis of Scofield's book, which her staff had provided by e-mail yesterday. He supposedly had established that an advanced worldwide civilization existed thousands of years before ancient Egypt. His evidence was a reappraisal of maps, long known to scholars, like the famous Piri Reis drawing, which had all been drawn, Scofield concluded, using more ancient maps, now lost. Scofield believed that those ancient mapmakers were much more advanced scientifically than the civilizations of Greece, Egypt, Babylonia, or even the later Europeans, mapping all of the continents, outlining North America thousands of years before Columbus, and charting Antarctica when its coasts were ice-free. No serious scientific study corroborated any of Scofield's assertions but, as the e-mail had noted, none had refuted his theory, either.