The Malta Exchange (Cotton Malone 14)

Cotton glanced at Stephanie, who seemed to be reading his mind.

“I get it,” she said. “This is the time for you to bow out. I wouldn’t blame you. As you say, you don’t have a dog in this fight.”

That was right. He’d been hired for a job, which he’d extended, but it was over. He should find a hotel, go to sleep, then head for the nearest airport in the morning and fly back to Copenhagen. After all, he was retired from the intelligence business. But he wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. And he was curious. What had the Knights of Malta guarded? The Nostra Trinità? The Constitutum Constantini? Which both Napoleon and Mussolini had been after? Perhaps waiting at the base of an obelisk in Rome? There since 1932? Which might affect the coming conclave and the election of a pope? That was a lot of fascinating questions. He wasn’t due in Nice to meet Cassiopeia for a few days. So why not? He’d come this far.

“I’ll stay in,” he said.

She smiled. “The chopper will be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Kind of sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

“I was hoping. It’ll get us to Rome a good hour before anyone else. I appreciate this, Cotton.”

A man entered the archive and approached, whispering into Gallo’s ear, who nodded as the messenger withdrew.

“I’ve learned some additional information that’s disturbing,” Gallo said. “I’m told men are on Malta, there to kill my brother.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kastor entered the shop.

The door jingled as he and Chatterjee stepped inside, the dim space lit only by a couple of overhead bulbs. He took in the stale air with a hint of sea damp, along with the well-trundled floor, the cobwebbed corners, and the fascinating wares.

Clocks.

Most of their wooden cases were in various stages of construction. Some were being carved, others painted, a couple more half gilded. He tried to remember if he’d seen this shop as a child, but he could not remember ever visiting this side of St. Thomas Bay. He recalled that among the many summer homes ringing the bay there’d always been an array of eclectic shops and entrepreneurs. One, a potter who’d turned out dishes, bowls, and vases on a spinning wheel, came to mind.

But no one who crafted the famous tal-lira clocks.

He knew them well.

Dating back to the 17th century, they were unique to Malta and found all across the island. One had hung in the orphanage. His job one summer had been to wind its inner mechanism. Always two doors, one glassed on the outside, the other inside supporting the face and a small aperture revealing the pendulum. Traditionally, none had ever been produced on a mass level, each made individually.

Like here.

An old dog, worn and scraggy, appeared from behind the counter. It shuffled a few steps, then lay down. A wall shielded the front from the rear of the building, broken by an open doorway. A man emerged through a threadbare curtain. Aged, coarse-featured, silver beard, deep-set eyes peering out from behind thick spectacles.

“You don’t look like a cardinal,” the old man said.

He wanted to come back with a barbed comment but resisted the temptation. “Is this your shop?”

The man nodded. “My family has been making clocks for three hundred years. Sadly, though, I’ll be the last. My two children have no interest in continuing the tradition.”

“And you are?”

“Nick Tawil.”

He faced Chatterjee. “Why are we here?”

“This man knows a lot about the Nostra Trinità. It has been his life’s obsession.”

“Is that true?” he asked Tawil.

“Guilty as charged.”

A sharp flash lit the shop windows, followed by a clap of thunder. Rain continued to splatter the panes. He needed a moment to digest things. So he perused the clocks under construction. “How many do you make a year?”

“Seven, sometimes eight.”

“What do you charge? Five, six thousand euros?”

“More like seven.”

“That’s a good living.”

He recalled the clock that had hung in his parents’ house. Not all that impressive, but it had kept impeccable time. He noticed gilding being applied to one of the frames. “Twenty-four-carat?”

“What else.”

The finish looked a little dull, but he realized that the final product would eventually be buffed to a shine.

He turned back toward Tawil. “What is it you supposedly know?”

“I’ve been searching for the knights’ Trinity a long time. My father searched. My grandfather searched.”

“Are you a knight?”

Tawil shook his head. “I’m not Catholic.”

His suspicious nature took hold and he glanced toward Chatterjee. “How do you know this clockmaker?”

“We’ve been friends a long time.”

“That we have,” Tawil added, walking over and crouching down near the dog, stroking the animal’s dark coat. “There’s a place not far away from here. An ancient graveyard beside the sea that has been there a long time. It’s where the knight Napoleon killed in the grand master’s palace, with his palms nailed to a table, is buried.”

Now he knew where Chatterjee had learned the story.

“My grandfather told me that the map to the Nostra Trinità had been buried with him.”

“How would he know that?’

“I have no idea. But my grandfather was no fool.”

“Was the map buried there?”

Tawil shrugged. “We’ll never know. In the early 1930s

the grave was violated. My grandfather and several other men tried to stop the robbers. But they were killed, and the robbers got away. So no one knows what, if anything, was found.”

He heard the pain in the man’s voice.

“My grandfather spent much of his life trying to find the Nostra Trinità. He learned a great deal. I have all of his books and papers.”

Which he’d like to examine. But first, “I want to see that grave.”

“In the rain?” Tawil asked.

“Why not? I’m already wet.”

The clockmaker chuckled. “Good point.”

Headlights brushed through the store, sweeping inward from the street side windows. He came alert. Car doors slammed. He stepped to the window and spied out into the darkness. Chatterjee stood beside him. Two forms walked to the black shadow of the car he and Chatterjee had arrived in. A flash of light broke the darkness and the vehicle seemed to bulge from within, everything erupting outward, the roof flying off into the rain, followed by a blast of heat and light that tossed the hulk off the ground as it exploded.

His body froze in terror.

He’d never seen such a thing before.

The car smashed downward onto splayed wheels, a mass of gasoline-fed flames and smoke mushrooming upward. In the glow he saw the two men turn toward the shop and aim automatic rifles.

Chatterjee’s sinewy arm yanked him toward the floor.

Tawil still stood near the dog.

“Get down,” Chatterjee yelled.

A torrent of gunfire ripped into the shop.

Windows shattered from the onslaught.

Bullets found flesh with a sickening thud. Tawil groaned in pain and his body crumpled sideways to the floor, muscle spasms jerking from the wounds. The dog sprang up in fright and threw out a shrill bark before bolting toward the back of the shop. The storm outside could now be clearly heard. Rain and wind funneled through the destroyed windows and gave off a wet, eerie moan of longing. More rounds found their way inside, searching for targets.