by Steve Berry
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.”
The analyst found the three drives on a worktable and handed them over with no questions.
Antrim was curious, though. “Did you find anything?”
“I retrieved about sixty files and was working on the password-protected stuff.”
“You read anything?”
The analyst shook his head. “I knew better. I don’t want to know.”
“I’ll make sure the rest of your fee is deposited tomorrow,” he said.
“You know, I could have retrieved the protected stuff.”
That information grabbed his attention.
“You broke through?”
The man yawned. “Not yet. But I think I could have. I broke one of Curry’s passwords and an encryption. I could get the others. Of course, all of us being on the same side made it easier than normal.”
In order to satisfy the Daedalus Society he would have to turn over everything accumulated in the warehouse, along with the hard drives. But a little backup might be welcomed. Especially when dealing with a total unknown like Daedalus. Besides, after a year’s worth of work he wanted to know what, if anything, had been found.
Curry was so excited on the phone that day.
He seemed to have made a significant breakthrough.
“Did you copy the three hard drives?”
The analyst nodded. “Of course. Just in case. You’re going to want those, too, right?”
The man started to retrieve them.
“No. Keep working with the copies. I want to know what those password-protected files say. Call me the second you have them.”
KATHLEEN HAD NEVER BEEN SO GLAD TO SEE A FACE AS THE ONE that had darted before the car, which she’d instantly recognized. She’d hoped Ian Dunne had not come alone and was relieved when Cotton Malone appeared. Now they were blocks over, just outside a closed souvenir shop. Ian carried a pocketknife, which was used to cut her plastic restraints.
“Why did you do that?” she asked Malone.
“You looked like you needed help. What did Thomas Mathews want with you?”
“So you know the good knight.”
“He and I have met. In a past life.”
“He told me you were an ex-agent. CIA?”
Malone shook his head. “Justice Department. An international investigative unit, for twelve years.”
“Now retired.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be listening. What’s Mathews’ interest here?”
“He wants me dead.”
“Me too,” Ian said.
She faced the boy. “That so?”
“He killed a man in Oxford Circus, then he wanted to kill me.” She glanced at Malone, who nodded and said, “He’s telling the truth.”
Then she faced the boy. “You took a chance walking in front of that car. I owe you.”
Ian shrugged. “I’ve done it before.”
“Really? Is it a habit of yours?”
“He’s a street pro,” Malone said, adding a smile. “One of them would stop the car and pretend he was hurt, another would steal whatever he could from inside. You were saying? Mathews wants you dead?”
She nodded. “I have apparently outlived my usefulness.”
“Could it have been a bluff?”
“Maybe. But I didn’t want to stay there and find out.”
“How about we trade what we know. Maybe, among the three of us, we’ll actually begin to make some sense out of all this.”
Which they did.
She told Malone everything that happened, since yesterday, at Windsor and Oxford, adding her suspicions about Eva Pazan and what Mathews had told her in the car. Malone recounted his past twenty-four hours, which seemed about as chaotic as hers. Ian Dunne filled in what occurred a month ago at Oxford Circus.
She omitted only three things.
Her current state of SOCA suspension, her past connection to Blake Antrim, and the fact that she’d been led to the Inns of Court specifically to see Antrim. None of that seemed necessary to reveal.
At least not yet.
“How did you find us at the bookstore?” Malone asked.
“Mathews sent me. He knew you’d be there.”
“He say how he knew that?”
She shook her head. “He’s not the most forthcoming individual.”
Malone smiled “What’s a SOCA agent doing working with MI6?”
“I was specially assigned.”
Which was true.
To a point.
MALONE WASN’T ENTIRELY SATISFIED WITH KATHLEEN RICHARDS’ explanations. But they were strangers, so he couldn’t expect her to provide everything at once. Still, she’d said enough for him to make a few decisions. The first involved Ian. He needed him out of the line of fire, back with Antrim and Gary, but he realized that maneuvering the boy to leave would be tough.
“I’m concerned about Miss Mary.”
He explained to Richards that she was the older woman in the bookstore, then said, “Those men could come back, and we left her there.”
“The Met are no help,” Richards said. “They’re working with Mathews.”
He stared at Ian. “I need you to look after her.”
“You said you would do that.”
“I will, by getting both you and her to where Gary is.”
“I want to go with you.”
“Who says I’m going somewhere?”
“You are.”
This kid was bright, but that didn’t mean he would get his way. “Miss Mary looks after you when you need it. Now it’s your turn for her.”
Ian nodded. “I can do that.”
“I’m going to contact Antrim and have him come get both you and her.”
“And where are you going?” Richards asked.
“To get some answers.”
The slip of paper Miss Mary had given him with the phone number was still in his pocket. My sister. I spoke to her a little while ago. She’ll take your call in the morning.
“You going to let me tag along?” Richards asked.
“Hardly. But my SOCA badge could prove helpful.”
That it could. Especially for toting weapons.
He handed her one of the guns he’d snatched.
“I have to make a call to Antrim and check on my son,” he said. “Then I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep.”
“I’d offer my flat,” Richards said. “But I’m afraid that’s the first place they’re going to look for me.”
He agreed. “A hotel is better.”
Thirty-five
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22
8:00 AM
MALONE FINISHED OFF SOME CEREAL AND FRUIT FOR BREAKFAST. He and Kathleen Richards had spent a few hours at the Churchill, he on the pullout sofa bed, she in the bedroom. They’d arrived after midnight and a suite was all the hotel had to offer. Jet lag from the flight over had finally caught up to him and he’d fallen asleep almost immediately after lying down. But not before calling Antrim and making sure Ian and Miss Mary had arrived and that Gary was okay. Richards had told him that they still needed to have a chat, and asked him to keep her identity between themselves until after they talked. So he’d honored that request and not mentioned her to Antrim.
“I was sent by Mathews because of Blake Antrim,” Richards said to him from across the table.
The Churchill’s restaurant opened off the main lobby with a wall of windows that overlooked busy Portman Square.
“He and I were once involved. Ten years ago,” she said. “Mathews wanted me to use that relationship and make contact.”
“Is Antrim a problem?”
He needed to know, since Gary was in his custody.
She shook her head. “Not that way. Not at all. Your son is fine with him. Now, if he were a girlfriend breaking up with Antrim.” She paused. “Different story.”
He thought he understood. “Doesn’t let go gracefully?”
“Something like that. Let’s just say our parting was memorable.”
“And you agreed to reconnect with him?”
“Antrim is apparently into something that threatens our national security.”
That grabbed his attention.
“Unfortunately, Mathews did not say how.”