The King's Deception (Cotton Malone 8)

The prospects did not seem promising.

Thirty-three

ANTRIM STEPPED FROM THE WAREHOUSE INTO THE LATE NIGHT and walked another fifty yards, where he could talk in private and watch the door, making sure Gary Malone stayed inside. He called the phone number from the book in the Temple Church. Three rings and the same gravelly voice from the Round answered.

“I’m ready to deal,” he told the man on the other end.

“And at so late an hour. Something must be even further wrong.”

He resented the condescending tone. “Actually, no. Things are going good for me. Not so good for you.”

“Care to enlighten me? Before I agree to pay five million pounds.”

“I have an ex-agent, Cotton Malone, who’s freelancing for me. He was one of the best we had, and he found what I’ve been searching for.”

“Ian Dunne?”

It shocked him that the voice knew. This was the first time the name had been mentioned.

“That’s right. Along with the flash drive. Since you know about Dunne, I assume you know about that, too.”

“A correct conclusion. We thought we might acquire both the boy and the drive before you, but that was not the case. Our men failed in that bookstore.”

“Now you know how I feel.”

The older man chuckled. “I suppose I deserve that. After all, we have made a point to remind you of your lack of success. But since the drive is now secure, it seems fortune has smiled on us both.”

Yes, it had.

“Now that you have decided to make a deal,” the older man said, “there are two other matters that must be addressed.”

He waited.

“The materials stored in the warehouse. We want them.”

“You know about those?”

“As I told you in the church, we have been watching closely. We even allowed you to violate Windsor Castle and Henry’s tomb.”

“Probably because you were curious what might be there, too.”

“We were only curious as to how far you might actually take all this.”

“All the way.” He wanted this man to believe that he was not afraid.

A chuckle came from the other end of the line. “All right, Mr. Antrim. We’ll work under the assumption that you would have taken this all the way.” The voice paused. “We have a precise inventory of what you have accumulated in the warehouse. So please make sure nothing disappears.”

“And the other matter?”

“The hard drives.”

Damn. These people knew all of his business.

“We know that you replaced the hard drives from the three computers Farrow Curry utilized, hoping to retrieve his encrypted data from them. We want those, too.”

“This is that important?”

“You seek a truth that has remained hidden a long time. We want to ensure that it stays buried. In fact, we plan to destroy everything you uncovered so that this worry will never arise again.”

He could not care less. He just wanted out. “I have one other matter, too,” he said.

“Five million pounds is not enough?”

“That buys you the end of the operation, with no residual effects, no loose ends from Washington. It goes away, never to be restarted. That’s what you wanted. I’ll make sure it happens, taking the blame and the heat for the failure.”

“Five million pounds buys a comfortable retirement.”

“That’s the way I look at it. Now, you want the physical evidence we accumulated and the hard drives. Okay. I get that. But there’s a matter regarding the flash drive. Cotton Malone needs to be eliminated.”

“We’re not assassins.”

“No, just murderers.” He’d not forgotten about his man in St. Paul’s or Farrow Curry. “Malone read what’s on the flash drive.”

“You know this?”

“He told me. So if you want this operation closed permanently, Malone has to go away. He has an eidetic memory, so he’s not going to forget any detail.”

Silence on the other end of the phone confirmed that the Daedalus Society had no good argument in rebuttal.

“Your point is made,” the older man said. “Does Malone also have the flash drive?”

“He does.”

“How do we find him?”

“I’ll let you know where and when.”

And he ended the call.

MALONE LEAPED FROM THE FIRE ESCAPE. IAN WAS ALREADY ON the ground. They’d descended to the first floor and fled the building through the same open window the shooter had utilized earlier. No police were in the dark alley.

They rushed away from the bookstore.

Ian had told him what he had in mind. With his options limited he’d decided to trust the kid.

Besides, the idea could actually work.

At the end of the alley they merged onto a lit sidewalk thick with night revelers and approached an intersection. Two hundred feet to their right was the bookstore, where one police car still sat parked at the curb on the opposite side of the street. The second, the one with the SOCA agent inside, was stuck in traffic fifty feet away, waiting for the signal to turn green. He hoped no one in the car, besides Kathleen Richards, knew him or Ian.

Thomas Mathews was nowhere to be seen.

He signaled and, as Ian trotted off, he dissolved into the weekend crowd bustling before the pubs and shops, easing his way closer to where the police car waited in traffic. Ian was now across the street, on the far sidewalk, keeping pace.

The traffic signal changed to green and cars began to creep forward.

IAN LIKED THAT MALONE HAD LISTENED TO HIM.

He wanted to help.

The old man with the cane was dangerous. He knew that firsthand. The lady SOCA agent had flushed the other man from the bookstore, protecting both himself and Miss Mary.

So she was all right with him.

What they were about to do he’d done several times before. A two-person operation, sometimes even three, where the rewards could be great.

But so were the risks.

He’d seen it go wrong twice.

And hoped tonight would not be the third time.

MALONE WATCHED AS IAN DARTED IN FRONT OF THE POLICE car.

Brakes locked and tires grabbed pavement.

The vehicle jerked to a stop.

Ian collapsed, grabbing his legs, howling in pain.

Malone smiled. This kid was good.

The uniformed driver emerged, leaving the door open.

Malone crossed between two stopped cars, whirled his target around, and caught him under the rib cage with a right jab.

The man staggered against the car.

He found the man’s shoulder harness and quickly freed the weapon. The officer seemed to recover but Malone gave him no chance, swiping the gun butt across the right temple, the body going limp to the street.

He aimed the gun at the windshield.

The passenger-side door flung open, but Ian was already on his feet and kicked the panel back, preventing any escape. Malone slid into the driver’s seat and aimed the gun straight at the second officer, relieving him of his weapon.

“You ready to go?” he asked Richards, not taking his eyes off the policeman.

The rear door opened.

She climbed out, helped by Ian.

“Stay here,” Malone told the officer.

He exited the car and recrossed the street. Ian and Richards, her hands still bound behind her back, joined him.

“I suggest we leave,” he said.

Thirty-four

ORDINARILY, ANTRIM WOULD BE CONCERNED AT THE LEVEL OF knowledge the Daedalus Society possessed and the extent of his security leak. Two agents and two analysts had been assigned to King’s Deception. Two more freelancers had been hired separately for his dog-and-pony show with Malone. Two of the six were now dead. Had his man at St. Paul’s been the problem? What were his last words? Not supposed to happen. He’d not understood then what that meant, but he di

d now. And he wondered. What was supposed to happen in St. Paul’s?

It made sense that the dead man from St. Paul’s could be the leak. But the other four were not beyond suspicion, especially the freelancers. He knew little about any of them except they were sanctioned for this level of operation.

But he didn’t care.

Not anymore.

He was retiring. Played right, thanks to Farrow Curry’s death, Operation King’s Deception would simply end. Langley would definitely blame him and he’d fall on his sword, offering his resignation, which they’d accept.

Nice clean break for all involved.

There’d still be the matter of the dead man in St. Paul’s, but how far could any investigation be pursued? The last thing Washington would want was more attention, especially from the British. Better to allow the shooting to go unexplained, the body unaccounted for. Only he knew the culprit, and he doubted anything could be linked to the Daedalus Society. The only connection was his cell phone, which was a throwaway, bought in Brussels under another name, which would soon be hammered to pieces, then burned.

Only the three hard drives remained.

So he left Gary at the warehouse with one of his men and drove to an apartment building on London’s East End. The man who lived there was Dutch, a computer specialist used on other assignments. An independent contractor who understood that the obscene amounts of money he was paid not only compensated for services rendered, but also kept his mouth shut. He hadn’t involved the CIA’s own decryption specialists because they were too far away. And counter-operations did not routinely employ in-house people anyway. Its whole purpose was to operate outside the system.

“I need all three hard drives back,” he told the man once inside the apartment with the door closed. He’d roused the man from a sound sleep with a phone call.

“This over?”

He nodded. “Plug’s been pulled. The operation is ending.”