The King's Deception (43 page)

“He did. But I didn’t get a chance to read it before you showed up.”

She approached the tables and admired the stolen books and papers.

“A five-hundred-year-old secret,” she said. “And these are the keys to its unraveling.”

He hated the smug look on her face. She thought herself so clever. So in charge. Her rebukes of him, both in Brussels and at the Tower, still stung. He hated everything about cocky women, especially that arrogance bred from good looks, wealth, confidence, and power. Denise possessed at least three of those, and knew it.

She approached the empty glass lid. “Where is Robert Cecil’s journal?”

“It’s gone.”

She’d yet to pay any attention to the plastic container.

“Not good, Blake.”

“Do you know what it says?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes. Your man talked freely. He was almost too easy to persuade. We have the copies of the hard drives and the entire translation.”

The two other men stood behind her, now closer to the tables, their guns still aimed. He kept his arms raised, hands still. Percussion explosives were state of the art. Lots of heat, a manageable concussion, and minimum noise. Their effect came from high temperatures directed at a targeted focal point, which could do far more damage to certain surfaces.

Like stone.

Where intense heat weakened its structure.

Here was a no-brainer.

Lots of paper, plastic, glass, and flesh.

“We need that journal, Blake.”

He was a good fifty feet away.

Which should be enough.

“Rot in hell, Denise.”

His thumb pressed the button.

He dove back, toward Gary, pounding the concrete and covering his head.

G
ARY HAD EASILY SPOTTED
A
NTRIM HOLDING THE CONTROLLER
with his right hand, concealed from the three people across the warehouse. He’d wondered what the clumps of clay could do.

Now he saw.

Antrim dove to the floor just as a bright flash erupted from the tables and a swoosh of intense heat surged his way. He’d managed to release the lock before the three had corralled Antrim, the door slightly ajar. Now he fell outside, the door banging against the warehouse’s
exterior wall, his body slapping the pavement. Heat rushed past him and sought the sky. He stared back through the open doorway. The flash was gone. But the tables were charred and everything on them annihilated. The woman and two men lay on the warehouse floor, their smoking bodies black.

He’d never seen anything like it before.

A
NTRIM ROSE
.

He’d been just far enough away to escape the carnage, the heat intense but lasting only a few seconds.

Denise and her cohorts lay dead.

Good riddance.

Everything was reduced to ash. Only the stone tablet remained, lying on the floor, charred and of no use.

Screw the Daedalus Society.

Three dead operatives just about made them even.

He shouldered the bag and hustled out the door to find Gary lying on the concrete.

“You okay?” he asked.

The boy nodded.

“Sorry you had to see that. But it had to be done.”

Gary stood.

There could be more trouble nearby, so he said, “We have to get out of here.”

M
ALONE LISTENED TO WHAT
K
ATHLEEN
R
ICHARDS HAD TO SAY
about Blake Antrim and didn’t like any of it. She and Antrim had been involved a decade ago, their split violent. She painted a picture of a narcissistic individual who could not accept failure, especially when it came to personal relationships. He doted on women, but his ways eventually wore thin and he despised rejection. Malone recalled what Mathews had said in the tennis court. Pam hated Antrim. Refused him all contact with Gary. Richards told him about her final encounter and surmised that a similar incident most likely occurred with Pam. Which explained why she’d refused to tell Gary the man’s identity.

But Gary now knew.

Or at least that’s what Mathews had said.

They were headed back into London inside the cab, toward The Goring Hotel, where Tanya Carlton should be waiting. He’d trusted the older woman with the flash drive, as it seemed the only play at the time. Now he needed its information.

“That’s twice you’ve come to my aid,” Richards said to him.

She was confident and certainly capable, both attractive qualities. Since the divorce he’d been involved with a couple of women like her. He seemed to gravitate toward the smart and the bold. But he wanted to know, “Why’d you take those sheets in Hampton Court and leave?”

“I thought I was doing my job. Sir Thomas wanted that flash drive. He said national security was involved. I thought I was doing the right thing for once, without questioning.”

Which made sense.

One part of his brain was worried about Gary, the other was dissecting the situation. Why would it matter that Elizabeth I may have been a fraud? Why would the CIA want to know, and the British government want that truth suppressed? Vanity? A matter of history? National pride? No. More than that.

He rolled over several scenarios and one kept recurring. So he found his phone and called Stephanie Nelle in Washington.

“This is a mess,” Stephanie said to him. “I learned a little while ago that a CIA agent was killed in St. Paul’s Cathedral yesterday, just as you were arriving. He was on Antrim’s team, part of King’s Deception.”

“And I know who killed him.”

So he told her.

Thomas Mathews.

“This just got worse,” she said. “I only learned that information through a back-channel source. The people at Langley, who called me about you, failed to mention it.”

No surprise. Honesty was not prevalent in the intelligence business, and the higher up the liar the more lies told. That was the thing about Stephanie Nelle he’d always admired. A straight shooter. True, her frankness sometimes tossed her into political trouble, but she’d survived more than one White House administration, including the current one under President Danny Daniels.

He told her what Gary was facing.

“I’m sorry about this,” Stephanie said. “I really am. I got you into this one.”

“Not really. We were all conned. Right now, I have to find Antrim.”

“I’ll see what I can do with his bosses at Langley.”

“Do that. But tell them they have one pissed-off ex-agent over here with absolutely nothing to lose.”

He knew that would open their ears.

“What about Mathews,” she asked. “He’s seriously breached
protocol. I doubt anyone here is going to roll over and allow two dead agents to go unavenged.”

“Keep that to yourself. For now. I need Gary safe first.”

“You got it.”

He ended the call.

“I don’t think Blake would hurt the boy,” Richards said to him.

But her words did not help. He’d left Gary with Antrim. Made that choice.
He
placed him in the situation. Of course, if Pam had been honest and told him the name of the man she’d had the affair with, he would have known. If she’d been open with Gary, then they both would know. If Malone had not been an ass sixteen years ago and cheated on his wife, none of it might ever have happened.

And if … and if … and if.

He told his brain to stop.

He’d been in tight spots before.

But never like this.

A
NTRIM HAD TO KNOW WHAT WAS CONTAINED IN THE EMAIL
the analyst had forwarded. Denise had died trying to secure that information, but he’d taught her a lesson. Contrary to what the Daedalus Society thought, he wasn’t incompetent. He could handle himself just fine.

He and Gary had fled the warehouse, running several blocks to the nearest Underground station and boarding the first train that appeared. He decided to take a page from Malone’s playbook and find an Internet café. From there he could access his secured account and find out what was so important.

“Why’d you have to kill those people?” Gary asked him as they exited the train in a station near the Marble Arch.

He was in survival mode, and the presence of an inquisitive fifteen-year-old seriously complicated things. But this was a question he wanted to answer.

“In every operation there are good guys and bad guys. Those were the bad guys.”

“You blew them up. They had no chance.”

“And what would have happened if I hadn’t? We’d both be either dead or in custody. I didn’t want either of those to happen.”

His words came sharp, his voice tight.

They headed for the
WAY OUT
signs and the street above. Gary stayed silent. He decided that he shouldn’t alienate the boy too much. Once this was over and things calmed down he might want to pick up where they left off. And the thought of Pam Malone winning this fight irked him. Cotton Malone was still out there. Delivering Gary in one piece, even if he wasn’t around to see the reunion, would go a long way toward keeping that bulldog off him.

He stopped.

“Look. I didn’t mean to jump all over you. A lot is happening and I’m a little tense.”

Gary nodded. “It’s okay. I get it.”

K
ATHLEEN FOLLOWED
M
ALONE INTO
T
HE
G
ORING
H
OTEL
. She knew this place. A hundred years ago a man named Goring persuaded the Duke of Westminister to sell him a plot of land at the rear of Buckingham Palace. There he built the last grand hotel of the Edwardian era, each room a suite, equipped with central heating—which, for its time, was quite remarkable. She’d once enjoyed afternoon tea on its terrace, the biscuits and clotted cream heavenly.

No time for such niceties today, though.

Malone was clearly troubled. He’d tried twice more to call Blake Antrim, but with no answer. She sympathized, though she could only imagine his torment. Her SOCA badge made it easy for the front desk to provide Tanya Carlton’s room number. They found the door on the third floor, which was answered by Ian Dunne, who seemed glad to see them both.

“Why aren’t you two with Gary?” Malone immediately asked.