The King's Deception (Cotton Malone 8)
“And could read.”
She smiled. “Exactly. He was fascinated by all of the books, so I indulged his interest.”
But he wasn’t fooled. “As a way to get him to sleep here at night, instead of on the streets?”
“If Ian ever knew my real motives he never said a word. I told him he was my night guard, here to keep an eye on things.”
He immediately liked Miss Mary, an entirely practical woman with a seemingly good heart.
“I never was blessed with children,” she said, “and I am way past the time where I could have one. Ian seemed a gift. So he and I spend a lot of time together.”
“He’s in trouble.”
“That much I know. But he’s lucky.”
He was curious what she meant. “How so?”
“For the second time”—she tossed him a hard gaze—“he’s taken to someone he can trust.”
“I didn’t know that we were buddies. In fact, our relationship has been a bit rocky.”
“Surely you realize that he took that flash drive hoping you would come after it. His way of asking for your friendship. I can see that he made a good choice. You look like a man to be trusted.”
“I’m just a guy who can’t quit doing favors.”
“He told me you were once a secret agent.”
He grinned. “Just a humble servant of the U.S. government. Now I’m a bookseller, like you.”
Which he liked the sound of.
“He told me that, too. Like I say, you are a man to be trusted.”
“Have others really been looking for Ian?”
“A month ago men came around to the shops. Some of the owners know Ian and they pointed them my way. But I lied and told them I had not seen him. Unfortunately, Ian disappeared a week after that and did not return. Until today. I prayed he’d be okay.”
“Like I said, he’s in trouble. He has something those other men want.”
“The flash drive.”
He caught the meaning in her words. “You’ve read it?”
“I read the same two files you viewed.”
Then he saw something in her eyes. “What is it?”
ANTRIM LED GARY FROM THE OFFICE OUT INTO THE WAREHOUSE, the space brightly lit by an array of overhead fluorescent fixtures. Two tables held stacks of old books, some tucked safely inside plastic bags. Another table supported three iMacs connected to an Internet router and a printer. This was where Farrow Curry had worked, trying to make sense of Robert Cecil’s journal, deciphering what seemed impossible to understand.
But the past twenty-four hours had changed his mind.
Not only was it possible, somebody was willing the pay him five million pounds just to walk away from whatever was there.
Gary noticed the stone slab lying on the floor. “What is that?”
“We found that in an interesting place. Not far from here, near a palace called Nonsuch.”
“Is it a big castle?”
“The palace no longer exists. Only the ground where it stood. Henry VIII built it as the grandest of all his residences. A magical site. He called it Nonsuch because there was nothing else its equal. None. Such. All we know of what it looked like now comes from three watercolors that survived.”
“So what happened to it?”
“Centuries later, Charles II gave it to his mistress and she sold it off, piece by piece, to pay her gambling debts. Eventually, there was nothing left but the dirt on the ground. We recovered this slab from a nearby farm where it had been used for centuries to support a bridge.”
Gary bent down and examined the stone. The CIA memo from the 1970s had made mention of the slab’s existence.
A series of symbols were carved on its face.
He stepped close and said, “They’re mainly abstract markings, but some are Greek and Roman alphabet letters. They turned out to be the key, though, to a four-hundred-year-old mystery.”
He could see that the boy was intrigued. Good. He wanted him to be impressed.
“Like a lost treasure?” Gary asked.
“Something like that. Though we’re hoping there’s even more to it.”
“What do these symbols mean?”
“They’re the way to solve a code that was created long ago by a man named Robert Cecil.”
Back in the 1970s, when those Irish lawyers first delved into the mystery, there were few sophisticated computers and the decryption programs were little more than elementary. So the slab’s secrets had remained concealed. Thankfully, modern technology changed all that.
He watched as the boy traced the symbols with his fingers.
“Would you like to see the most important thing we found?”
Gary nodded.
“It’s over here.”
MALONE WALKED WITH MISS MARY BETWEEN THE SHELVES. Her store was a tad smaller than his, but she possessed his same penchant for hardcovers. Not too many repeats, either, which evidenced how careful she was with her buying. No danger of running out of inventory ever existed, since people loved to trade books. That was the great thing about the business. A steady supply of inexpensive inventory always came and went.
She turned into the history section and scanned the spines.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need your help,” she said, pointing to one of the top shelves.
He was six feet tall. She stood a good foot shorter.
“At your service.”
“It’s there. The fourth book from the left.”
He spotted the red-bound volume and reached for it, maybe ten inches tall, four inches wide, and not quite an inch thick. In good condition, too. Late 19th century, he estimated from its bindings and cover.
He read the title.
Famous Impostors.
Then noted its author.
Bram Stoker.
Twenty-six
KATHLEEN PARKED HER CAR. DURING THE DRIVE BACK FROM Oxford she’d become convinced that she was being played. There was no Eva Pazan, or at least not one who worked at Lincoln College. Maybe Pazan was told to lie. But why? Weren’t they all on the same side? And Mathews had sent her specifically to meet with the professor. If Pazan was a sham, what had been the point? She’d re-checked Jesus College and found a deceit. Now she’d returned to the Temple Church. Things about what happened here earlier bothered her, too.
She parked again outside the walls and entered the Inns of Court through the unmanned vehicle gate. King’s Bench Walk was wet and, thanks to the late hour, empty of cars.
Sometimes she regretted never actually practicing law. Neither her father nor her grandfathers had been alive when she chose SOCA. She hardly knew her father—he died when she was young—but her
mother kept his memory alive. So much that she decided that the law would be her career path, too. Being back among the Inns, recalling her days here and at Oxford, had definitely reawakened something inside her. At thirty-six she could easily re-hone her skills and perhaps earn entry into the practicing bar. A tough path, for sure. But soon that might be her only option. Her SOCA career seemed over, and her short foray into intelligence work would probably end before it ever started.
Quite a mess she’d made of her life.
But she had no time for regrets.
Never had, really.
She knew that tomorrow, Saturday, visitors would be everywhere among the Inns, enjoying the grounds and touring the famous Temple Church. But little about the ancient building was original. Centuries ago Protestant barristers, wanting to efface all emblems of Catholicism, whitewashed the interior and plastered the columns—a puritanical cleansing that destroyed all of the olden beauty. Most of what the visitors now saw was a 20th-century reconstruction, the aftermath of German bombs during World War II.
At this hour the church was dark and locked for the night. Midnight was fast approaching. Lights burned, though, in the nearby master’s residence, the custodian charged with the church’s upkeep, a servant of both the Middle and Inner Temples.
She approached the front door and knocked.
The man who answered was in his forties, dark-haired, and identified himself as the master. He seemed perplexed she was there, so she displayed her SOCA identification and asked, “What time does the church close each day?”
“You came here, at this hour, to ask me that?”
She tried a bluff. “Considering what happened earlier, you should not be surprised.”
And she saw that her words registered.
“It varies,” he said. “Most days it’s 4:00 PM. Sometimes it’s as early as 1:00 PM, depending on if we have services or a special event planned.”
“Like earlier?”
He nodded. “We closed the church, at four, as requested.”
“No one was there after that?”