Baines was writing furiously.
“…that he calls Christ a bastard and Mary a whore.”
“But, sir! That’s—”
“Do you wish to share his fate?”
Reluctantly Baines did as told, then looked up. “I seem to remember hearing him refer to Protestants as…damn, what was it?”
“Asses.”
“Actually, sir, I think it was hypocrites.”
“Hypocritical asses, then!”
Peering over Baines’s shoulder, Phelippes added, “Definitely the bit about Christ and St. John the Evangelist but less delicate. Say he calls them…bedfellows.”
“While on the subject, sir, there’s been talk that he…that he admires, uh…”
“What?” Phelippes demanded, impatient.
“Boys, sir.”
“Splendid. Seems you’re not an utter waste after all, Baines,” Phelippes replied. “Oh, and do make a strong denouement. Something that leaves no doubt but that Marlowe is a danger who must be stopped.”
Quill in the air, Baines mouthed possibilities.
Phelippes stared out the windows. After a few minutes, he said, “When you present it to the chief commissioner, do tell him that Marlowe is at Scadbury House, Tom Walsingham’s estate in Kent.”
“He’s to be arrested so soon? I thought you were—”
Phelippes shrugged. “If he’s not yet finished his investigation, Topcliffe will get the necessary details from him. Probably best for us to finish it ourselves anyway. Marlowe’s always been a bit of a rogue. I don’t entirely trust him.”
Robert Poley was irritated.
Teresa Ramires was late.
He was pacing near the bear-baiting arena, waiting for her. Judging from the last time he had seen a clock, it was about half an hour beyond their noon rendezvous.Damn her.
When he saw the expression on her face as she approached, however, all was forgiven. Teresa smiled that way only when she’d overheard exactly what he wanted.
19
SOUTHBANK, LONDON—9:14A.M., THE PRESENT DAY
Opening a bottle of water, Kate looked over at Adriana. “Mind if I make a quick call?”
“Not at all,” Adriana said, stepping onto Westminster Bridge and leaning against the stone railing to stretch her calves.
They had met in St. James’s Park an hour before and had jogged along the Queen’s Walk—a wooden pathway on the south bank of the Thames—to London Bridge. On their way back, they’d stopped to buy drinks at one of the many kiosks near Westminster Bridge.
“Good morning,” Medina said.
“I have news,” Kate told him, looking across the river at the fairy-tale spires atop Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.
“Tell me.”
“Well, I took your advice to skip to the end, and I realized that Phelippes kept adding reports after Walsingham’s death, at least until 1593. I’m having trouble with the last page, but the second to last—it’s from May of that year and appears to have been written by Christopher Marlowe.”
“What’s it about?”
“It looks like Phelippes asked Marlowe to investigate an Elizabethan trading company. The Muscovy Company, England’s first joint-stock enterprise. Marlowe discovered that one of its top players was shipping arms to a Barbary pirate—illegally—in exchange for riches from the East. He said he had a way to identify the man within a matter of days. But here’s the thing. Marlowe died that month. I can’t help but think—”
“That he was murdered over what he found?” Medina interrupted.
“By the merchant, trying to keep his crimes a secret?”
“Yeah,” Kate said. “And I think Marlowe wrote the last report, too. It’s numerical, and I haven’t been able to decode it yet, but I don’t think Phelippes would have included the report about the smuggling if he wasn’t going to include one that revealed the merchant’s identity. No other entry in hisAnatomy presents an incomplete picture, so…”
“That final page may answer the question you brought up last night—who killed Marlowe and why.”
“Maybe. It’s probably just wishful thinking on my part, but…”
“Sounds logical to me,” Medina said. “Now, Kate, the final page—is that what someone is after today?”
“Unlikely. There are a lot of academics and Marlowe fans who would love to know what really happened, but I doubt any of them would kill a harmless Oxford professor to find out.”
“I’ll buy that. By the way, where are you?”
“On my way to see Lady Halifax. In fifteen minutes, actually,” Kate said, checking her watch. “Remember the Cat’s ruby ring? He stole it from her, and I’m going to ask her some questions about him. She’s playing tennis in Eaton Square. Invited me over for a postgame lemonade. Will you be around later this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll come by soon. I need to examine a few of the pages in the manuscript before I leave.”
Less than a mile away, the man Kate referred to as Jade Dragon was running a fingertip along the three-inch black steel blade of his double-edged Gerber knife. From what he’d just heard, Kate Morgan had, as expected, come across Christopher Marlowe’s final intelligence report, and since she’d also revealed the manuscript’s exact location…
It was time to strike, and quickly.
BELGRAVIA, LONDON—9:30A.M.
“Lady Halifax?”
“Call me Perry,” the petite silver-haired woman replied. She was standing in the doorway of her Eaton Square mansion, wearing a short magenta tennis dress, gold-framed sunglasses, and sneakers so white they sparkled. “Do you play?” she asked, handing Kate a racket.
“Not since high school,” Kate said. “I—”
“Well, you’ll do. Better than Ella, anyway…canceled at the last minute saying her knee was sore.” Lady Halifax shook her head. “Blast, when you get to be my age, everyone’s either sitting idly, whinging about pain, or dead.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Play a set with me, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”
“Deal.”
“You look flushed, dear. Have some lemonade,” Lady Halifax said, handing Kate a thermos. She then grabbed a second thermos and another tennis racket—with pink strings that matched her dress—and pulled her front door shut behind her.
They crossed the street and headed for the entrance to Eaton Square’s gated park. Appreciating the pleasant fragrance of the park’s pink and lilac flowering trees, Kate flipped up the thermos’s mouthpiece and took a gulp, then coughed with surprise.
Lady Halifax chuckled. “It’s got Pimms in it, dear. One should never drink lemonade without it. Now, about my ring…”
“It’s at the Yard. Not yet ready for pickup, though. It needs to be…processed.”
“How did you find it?”
“Actually—”
“Come now,” Lady Halifax interrupted. “I know you wouldn’t be the one delivering this news if that weren’t the case.”
Kate smiled. “I was hired to investigate a failed heist. An unidentified thief was found dead at the scene, wearing your ring. Turns out he was the Cat.”
“Good Lord. After all these years…so who was he?”
“Simon Trevor—”
“Jones?” Lady Halifax finished, her eyes wide. “Lord Astley? Oh, Christ on crutches, I should have guessed! He always seemed to be having a little too much fun at the stuffiest, mostludicrous gatherings. Oh, Peregrine, you blind woman! How bloody obvious it was!”
“You knew him well?” Kate asked.
Stepping onto the court, Lady Halifax shook her head. “No. I’m sorry he’s dead, though. Certainly made things more interesting, wondering if there was really a thief in our midst.”
“Did he have any close friends or regular business associates that you noticed?”
“I can’t remember. But one of my friends will know. I could make some calls.”
“Thank you.”
/> “Now prepare yourself, dear,” Lady Halifax said, taking a sip from her thermos. “I’m going to wipe you off the court.”
Turning onto Wilton Crescent, Kate sighed. The old marchioness had not been kidding. Kate was exhausted. And she’d lost every game in the set.
Her phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hugh Synclair, here.”
“Good morning, Inspector.”
“Kate, I spoke with Rutherford’s doctor. Turns out he had acute metastatic prostate cancer. Would have been dead within a few months. Probably experiencing a good deal of pain, too. Makes me wonder if he asked someone to, uh…”
“He was Catholic?”
“Yes.”
“And with a suicide note, he wouldn’t get a proper burial.”
“Right. It’s a possibility, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. How about the papers taken from his desk, though?”
“Polite shooter, perhaps…trying to tidy up.”
“What’s your gut say, Inspector?”
“Actually, I was hoping you had come across something on your end that’d clear this up.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I do. Thanks for the information.”
“Of course. Good day to you, now.”
Pressing Medina’s doorbell, Kate wondered if asking someone to kill you was really a loophole for the suicide-is-a-sin crowd. If so, maybe a kind, innocent man had not been killed over the manuscript after all. Maybe Mr. Jade Dragon was about teacups and polite parlor mysteries, as she’d initially thought.
Charlotte answered the door.
“What is it?” Kate asked. Charlotte’s face was pale and her hands were shaking.
“I was out round the shops, and when I came back, I saw that Mr. Medina, that he’d been…that someone had…” She swallowed.
“Stabbed him.”
“What?”
“He’s upstairs. Refusing to go to hospital, shooing me away…”
“In his bedroom?”
Charlotte nodded. “The fourth floor.”
Stunned, Kate ran up the stairs. She found Medina in his bathroom unscrewing a bottle of antiseptic. He’d wrapped a dark towel around his waist, over his clothes. “Cidro, are you—”
“Yes. I’m fine. Nothing but a scratch…Charlotte just has a bit of trouble with blood. I’m sorry if she worried you.”
“I feel terrible. I should’ve insisted on a bodyguard, I—”
“Actually, it was kind of exciting. I’ve never been in a knife fight before.”
Kate tried to give him a look of stern disapproval but failed. “What happened?”
“My bell rang. Young fellow said he had a delivery from the Yard. A woman had actually phoned ahead, claiming to be the super’s secretary…”
“Someone must’ve been watching us,” Kate cut in. “Probably saw Sergeant Davies come by here yesterday. Oh, I’m so sorry, I—”
“Kate, it’s not your fault. I’m the ass who’s too cocky to tolerate guards hovering about.”
“True,” she agreed, opening his medicine cabinet and pulling out a bag of cotton wool. “So you answered the door, he forced his way in, and—”
“I think his plan was: knife through the kidney, grab the manuscript. But I grabbed his knife instead.”
“And he…”
“Ran out. Couldn’t face my—”
“Overwhelming tower of power?” Kate said dryly, slipping the towel from his waist.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured, seeing the large bloodstain on the back of his blue shirt. After she tugged it free of his pants and lifted it, her eyes widened at the sight of the gash on his lower back. It stretched from his hipbone to his spine.
“Cidro, if he hadn’t missed, you’d have been dead in less than a minute.” She put a hand on his shoulder and turned him around to face her. “I know you’re an adrenaline junkie, but could you just stick to drugs and bungee jumping please?”
Wetting a washcloth with warm water, she added, “I hate to sound like your mother, but if you continue being reckless like this, you’re going to get yourself killed. I’m calling my office for a guard, and I need you to promise me you won’t shoo him away while I’m gone.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When we’re done here, I’ll drop the knife and the tapes from your security cameras by the Yard.You’ll be getting stitches.”
“Actually, there are some things I—”
“Whoever comes from my office will be armed, and he will take you to get them himself. At gunpoint, if necessary.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Good. Now take off your shirt.”
THETUNISIANCOAST—1:42P.M.
“The Parc Monceau is wonderful,” Surina Khan said, submerging a large natural sponge into the bowl of sudsy water on the table beside her. “Full of flowers…has lovely waterfalls,” she continued, wringing it out. “It’s supposed to showcase different periods of history and places in the world, so there are these fake Roman ruins, an Egyptian pyramid, a Chinese pagoda…. My brother and I used to sneak around where people aren’t allowed—across the grass, up on the hill with the waterfall, into the brook…”
Taking his left hand in hers, she lifted his arm and lightly circled the sponge across his skin. Seconds later, his hand twitched. For the fourth time that day. Was it a spasm from the electric shocks he’d been tortured with, she wondered, or was he squeezing her hand deliberately? Communicating with her the only way he could?
“Maybe you’d like to come to Paris and see it with me this summer? Have a picnic by the pond with the crumbling colonnade?”
Gently pressing her lips against his forehead, Surina let the soft lapping of waves upon the beach, the calls of seagulls, and the constant dripping of IV fluid lull her into a quiet daydream.
BELGRAVIA, LONDON—10:50A.M.
“Uh, Kate?” Medina said tightly, his teeth clenched.
“Cidro, are you a man or amouse?” she teased, cleaning his wound with peroxide.
“Right. Stay strong, Cid,” he said, wincing with every touch. “Find a distraction. Let’s see, uhhh…ow! Fuck me! Okay, focus. Lord’s cricket ground, a balmy Sunday afternoon…uh, hundred runs to win, eight wickets down…”
Kate was also trying to distract herself. Being inches from him, with his shirt off—well, it was a challenge.Okay…bills. You’re sitting down, opening your checkbook—that City Sports one is gonna kick your ass this month. Um, a dentist with bad breath, shots for Southeast Asia…
“Ouch! Must you get medieval, woman?”
“Oh, Cid, I’m sorry,” Kate said, having inadvertently banged Medina’s wound while applying antibacterial cream. She began taping a large bandage over it.
“Thank you,” he said when she was finished.
“No problem.”
He turned to face her. “You sure? You look…”
“Fine. Relieved you’re okay.”
Not in the mood to meet his eyes, she concentrated on putting away the various cleaning supplies.
Then her thoughts stopped.
She felt one of his hands slide across the back of her neck, drawing her toward him. Their faces inches apart, he looked at her for a moment, then pressed his lips to hers. Softly. Twice. When he kissed her the third time, he opened his mouth a little, his tongue caressing her upper lip. He pulled it gently between his own for a moment, then released her and leaned back.
Medina was watching her intently. “I’ve wanted to do that since the first day we met.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?That’s all I get?”
“Okay, I admit. I’m a little dizzy.”
“Good. Lord knows I tried.”
“The thing is, I went for a really long run this morning, played too much tennis…haven’t gotten around to eating anything, and it’s a pretty hot day, so…but I’m fine now. Thanks for asking.”
“I see,” Medina said, pulling her against him once more. Then, running a fingertip along her lower
lip, he asked, “Still fine now, I suppose?”
“Still fine.”
“How about now?” he asked, kissing her neck.
“Can’t complain.”
“Come on, Kate. Tell me something slushy.”
“Slushy?”
“What you people call mushy.”
“Well…”
“I’m waiting,” Medina pressed, his hands caressing her back.
“All right! When you touch me like that, I can’t think straight, I can’t see straight, I’m sure I can’t walk straight. Will that do?”
“For now.”
An hour later, with the knife and Medina’s security tapes in Sergeant Davies’ capable hands, Kate was in her hotel room packing, listening to Medina over her phone.
“I was planning on taking you to Heathrow myself, but as your company’s holding me hostage…”
“I’m hitching a ride in one of our choppers, actually,” Kate said. “Some VIP client is heading over in twenty minutes.”
“Oh. When are you back?”
“Mmm, tomorrow afternoon, I think. Maybe sooner. Depends on how things go.”
“Should I be worried about you?”
“Not at all. It’s just a humdrum identity assignment. A name-that-person kind of thing.”
“Is that person dangerous?”
Kate didn’t feel like lying.How to put this… “He’s a friendly art dealer. I’ll be fine.”
“Ring me when you get there?”
“Okay.”
They said good-bye, and Kate double-checked to make sure that her wallet and airline ticket were in her shoulder bag.Good.
“Oh, thank God I remembered,” she said aloud, pulling out the small white box containing the Cat’s pistol.Heathrow security wouldn’t find this too charming.
Maybe it’s a trank, she thought, her right hand settling around the wooden grip. That would make more sense for a man who was so careful to never hurt anyone. Curious to see what was in the chamber, she used her second and middle fingertips to feel behind the trigger for the magazine catch. There wasn’t one.Come to think of it, there isn’t a visible safety or slide, either. But there was a decorative mother-of-pearl fleur-de-lis within reach of her right thumb.Hmm. Pressing down, she heard a clicking sound and watched as a two-inch steel prong extended from the muzzle.
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