The 14th Colony (Cotton Malone 11)

His attention turned to the staircase.

A body lay sprawled across the wooden risers near the top. Blood had flowed down and congealed in thick maroon patches. He climbed the stairs, sidestepping the puddles, and rolled over the corpse. An automatic rifle lay beneath, which clattered away down the steps. He came alert and looked around to see if the noise had attracted any attention.

Nothing.

The face on the corpse was of a man, mid-thirties, short hair, thick features. A deep gash had penetrated the throat with a wide smile, which explained the cause of death.

He heard a noise.

From downstairs.

Something moving.

He crept back to ground level and turned in its direction, closing his mind to all messages except those coming from around him. A dining room opened to his left where another body lay on the hardwood, the man’s throat slashed nearly identically to the first. A door stood just ahead, one that swung in and out, which he assumed led to the kitchen. He approached and pressed his body tight to the wall, sneaking a peek through the half-inch space between the molding and the jamb. He was right. A kitchen did lie on the other side. With his left hand he shoved the door inward and burst in.

Empty.

Sunlight poured in through windows, glittering off stainless-steel appliances and marble countertops.

What had happened here?

He was about to check the rest of the house when he heard another noise. Behind him. He whirled and was met by a sharp blow to his windpipe, which immediately triggered a choking response. He knew the move, it was taught to him in the army, but he’d never personally experienced it.

He fought to breathe, but never got a chance.

Something slammed into his left temple.

And the last thing he saw before everything went black was the glistening blade of a knife.

* * *

Malone sat in a café located in downtown Eastport, finishing off a plate of eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. Zorin and Kelly had been gone over two hours. He and Cassiopeia had watched as the two men came ashore in a small dinghy, bypassing the immigration booth located near the docks. As expected, they’d entered the town and called a cab on a cell phone Kelly produced, which arrived a few minutes later. He and Cassiopeia had not followed. Instead, the drone overhead had kept a distant watch, an open phone line providing them with a running account.

The cab had dropped the two at the Eastport Municipal Airport, which sat not far from the central business district. They’d entered the small terminal and exited a few minutes later, walking over to a row of parked cars and driving one away. Malone knew what had happened. Kelly had rented a vehicle, which would be an easy thing for him to do.

Finally, they’d caught a break.

While the drone kept watch, he decided to send Cassiopeia to follow them, cautioning her to stay way back. He’d been told that the drone’s airtime was drawing to a close, so Cassiopeia would become its replacement. He’d catch up to her later. The important thing was not to lose Zorin.

He’d already called Edwin Davis and told him more of what he had in mind. So while he waited, a hot breakfast had sounded good.

The waitress cleared his plate away.

Outside, Eastport remained quiet, understandable given that winter was in command, the morning skies rapidly becoming a solid mass of slate gray. Snow seemed to be on the way. Hopefully, he’d be headed south before it arrived. The café enjoyed a light business, but it was not yet 10:00 A.M. on a Saturday. A white Ford Taurus wheeled into an angled parking spot out front and he saw two men emerge, both dressed in the blue uniform of the Maine State Police.

They entered the café, found him, and introduced themselves.

“We’re told you need our help,” one of them said. “National security.”

He caught the skepticism. “You doubt me?”

The trooper smiled. “Doesn’t matter. When the state police chief personally calls on a Saturday morning and says that we’re to come here and do whatever you want, I come here and do whatever you want.”

He had to give Edwin credit, the man knew how to get things done. Malone had explained that the best way to keep Zorin and Kelly under surveillance would be a running tail. One car follows for a few hundred miles, then another takes over, then another. Hard to notice any interest that way. Right now that only would involve Maine, so Edwin had enlisted the state police’s help. Most likely, Zorin and Kelly were headed south farther into New England, so more tails would have to be ready in other states. So much easier to just have a drone follow the car, but he knew messy legal issues were associated with that on U.S. soil.

No matter, the old-fashioned way should work just fine.

Along with a backup.

He finished his juice and said, “We need to go out to the airport.”

The trip was quick, just over a mile, and inside the terminal he found a single rental car counter. He’d asked for the officers to come in with him just in case of a problem. Nothing intimidates more than uniforms, badges, and holstered weapons.

They approached the counter and he said, “About two hours ago you rented a car to two men. We need to see the paperwork.” The attendant looked like he was going to balk so he pointed a finger and said, “And the only correct response here is, Yes sir, here it is.”

His stern look and the two troopers beside him made the p

oint. The clerk handed over the rental agreement, which was in Jamie Kelly’s name, on a Canadian driver’s license, paid for in cash. No drop-off point noted.

“Is the car coming back here?” he asked.

The clerk nodded. “That’s what they said.”

But he knew that wasn’t true.

So he asked what he really wanted to know. “You have GPS in all of your vehicles, right?”

“Of course. We can find them, if need be.”

He gestured with the rental agreement. “We need the GPS frequency for this one. Now.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Stephanie listened as the male voice on the other end of the cell phone, dry and raspy, like the rattle of some creature in a pile of dead leaves, told her things she’d never known. Apparently, back in the 1980s, while she’d been engaged with Forward Pass, working covertly with Reagan and the pope, others had also been hard at work undermining the Soviet regime with more active measures designed to destabilize.

“It was quite a time,” the voice said. “You have to remember Andropov was head of the KGB when they tried to kill John Paul. He would have approved that operation.”

She listened as the voice explained how Andropov became convinced that John Paul’s papal election was designed by the Vatican to undermine Soviet control in Poland, part of a deliberate plan to collapse the Soviet Union. Ridiculous, for sure, but ultimately, thanks to circumstances that formed outside the church—mainly the election of Ronald Reagan as president of the United States—that’s exactly what happened.