by Steve Berry
“I made a huge mistake with you,” she said. “One I prefer to forget.”
“But you can’t. You have a reminder every day, don’t you?”
He saw that his assessment was correct.
“It’s the only part of my son I despise. God help me.”
“There’s no need to feel that way. And, by the way, he’s our son.”
Her eyes flashed hot. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever say that. He’s not our son. He’s mine.”
“What about your ex-husband? I’m sure he has no idea.”
Silence.
“Maybe I’ll tell him.”
More silence.
He chuckled. “This is obviously a sore spot with you. I can understand that. Seeing me in that mall had to have been a shock.”
“I was hoping you were dead.”
“Come on, Pam. It wasn’t that bad.”
“You broke my ribs.”
“You broke my heart. Just up and told me to get out and never come back. And after all the sweet times we shared. You surely didn’t expect me to just walk away.”
“Get out of my office.”
“How long was it after that you found out you were pregnant?”
“What does it matter?”
“Did you know when you broke it off?”
She said nothing.
“I … should have … ended the pregnancy then and there.”
“You don’t mean that. Aborted your child? That’s not you.”
“You condescending prick, you have no idea who I am. Don’t you get it? To this day I look at that boy, whom I worship, and see you. Every day I have to deal with that. I came so close to ending that pregnancy. So damn close. Instead, I carried the child and lied to my husband, telling him the baby was his. You have any idea what it’s like to live with that?”
He shrugged. “You should have told me.”
“Get. Out.”
“I’m leaving. But if I were you, I’d tell your ex-husband and son the truth. ’Cause now that I know, you haven’t seen the last of me.”
And he’d meant it.
Immediately, he’d hired private surveillance to keep tabs on both Pam and Gary Malone. It cost a couple thousand dollars a month, but had been worth every penny to learn their comings and goings, their wants and desires. The person he’d hired cared nothing about the law and even managed to tap the landlines on Pam’s home phone. Every other day a recording would be forwarded by email of the calls in and out. That’s how he learned Cotton Malone knew that Gary was not his biological son. The conversation between the two of them had been heated, Pam telling Malone that Gary was upset, wanting to spend Thanksgiving break with him in Denmark. Even better, neither Gary nor Malone knew Antrim’s identity. Both had been kept in the dark by Pam.
Good girl.
He’d never followed through on his threat to contact either Malone or Gary. Neither path seemed the way to go. Instead, he’d remained patient, doing what intelligence officers did, gathering information from which smart decisions could be made. Originally, he’d intended on connecting with Gary in Copenhagen sometime next week.
But the unexpected surfacing of Ian Dunne changed that plan.
Making contact here, in London, worked much better.
So he’d ordered Dunne flown from Florida to Georgia and informed Langley that Malone was in Atlanta, headed back to Europe. How about a favor among agencies? The Magellan Billet, or at least a former Magellan Billet agent, helping out the CIA. Simple babysitting. This way we’ll know Dunne will be safely delivered.
Which worked.
Thanks to everyone’s anxiety about what the Scottish government intended doing.
During the rescue he’d studied Gary closely, noting the pinched nose, long chin, high brow, and, most important, the gray eyes. Now he had Gary to himself. Pam Malone was nowhere to be seen. Cotton Malone clearly had no idea of the connection, and, based on Malone’s comment earlier outside the café, he doubted that he’d be checking with his ex-wife. All he had to do was not allow Gary to call Georgia.
And that would be easy.
The next few hours were critical.
He told himself to handle things carefully.
But it should not be a problem.
After all, he was a pro.
Twenty-five
11:02 PM
Malone always liked the throb of Piccadilly Circus. It was boisterous and brash, and comparisons to Times Square were inevitable. But this tangle of noise had existed centuries before its American interpretation. Five roads met at the circular junction and surrounded the plinth of Eros, the statue a London landmark. St. James Palace sat a few blocks away, one of the last remaining Tudor residences. Reading about Katherine Parr and Elizabeth I earlier had set his mind on the Tudors, who ruled from 1485 to 1603. He’d read many books about them and even maintained a Tudor section at his bookstore in Copenhagen, as he’d learned others shared his interest. Now he was privy to something he’d never read in any of those books.
Some secret.
Important enough to have attracted the attention of the CIA.
Cars slithered to a standstill at the busy intersection and he crossed among them, heading deeper into London’s entertainment district that stretched out beyond Piccadilly. Cinemas, theaters, restaurants, and pubs filled the olden buildings, all of them alive with a late-Friday-night business. Wood fronts and plate glass cast him back to another era. He zigzagged a path through the menagerie of people, heading for the address he’d located on his iPhone.
Any Old Books occupied a space not unlike his own shop, a turn-of-the-century structure squeezed between a pub on one side and a haberdashery on the other. Its front door was stained oak and half glass with a worn brass knob. Inside was also similar to his shop. Rows of wooden shelves from floor to ceiling packed with used books. Even the smell, that combination of dust, old paper, and aged wood, reminded him of Copenhagen. He immediately noted an order to the madness, placards jutting from the shelves announcing the various subjects. Organization seemed an affliction common to all successful bookstore owners.
The woman who stood behind the counter was small and thin with short, silver hair. Only a few noticeable lines had settled over her dainty features, like a faint net of age. She spoke in a gentle voice that he noticed was never raised, a smile accompanying every word.
And not a phony one.
She seemed to genuinely care, ringing up a purchase, dispensing change, thanking customers for their business.
“Are you Miss Mary?” he asked her when she finished with a purchase.
“That’s what they call me.”
“Is this your store?”
She nodded. “I’ve owned it a long time.”
He noticed the stacks of books dominating the counter, surely ones she’d just acquired. He did the same, every day, “buying for pennies, selling for euros.” He hoped his two employees were taking care of things back in Denmark. He was supposed to work there tomorrow.
“You’re open late.”
“Friday and Saturday nights are busy for me. The stage shows are just ending, everyone off for a late dinner or a drink. I learned long ago that they also enjoy buying books.”
“I own a bookshop. In Copenhagen.”
“Then you must be Cotton Malone.”
* * *
Gary watched Blake Antrim as he directed his two agents and made things happen. He’d never met anybody who actually worked for the CIA. Sure, you saw them on television and in movies, or read about them in books. But to deal with one in person? That had to be rare. His father had been an agent for the Justice Department, but never, until recently, had he understood what that meant.
“We appreciate your dad helping us out,” Antrim said to him. “We can use the assist.”
He was curious. “What’s happening here?”
“We’re after some extremely special things, and have been for the past year.”
They’d driven to a ware
house located near the Thames River, which Antrim described as their command station. They were inside a small, sparsely furnished office near the warehouse entrance, a tight rectangle with a window that opened into the cavernous space.
“What’s out there?” he asked.
Antrim stepped close. “Things we’ve collected. Pieces of a large puzzle.”
“Sounds cool.”
“Would you like to take a look?”
* * *
Malone smiled. “I see Ian has already arrived.”
“He told me you might be coming, and he described you perfectly.”
“I need to find him, and fast.”
“There are a lot of people looking for Ian, and have been ever since that man died in the Underground.”
“He told you about that?”
She nodded. “He and I have always been close, ever since he wandered in here one day.”
“And could read.”
She smiled. “Exactly. He was fascinated by all of the books, so I indulged his interest.”
But he wasn’t fooled. “As a way to get him to sleep here at night, instead of on the streets?”
“If Ian ever knew my real motives he never said a word. I told him he was my night guard, here to keep an eye on things.”
He immediately liked Miss Mary, an entirely practical woman with a seemingly good heart.
“I never was blessed with children,” she said, “and I am way past the time where I could have one. Ian seemed a gift. So he and I spend a lot of time together.”
“He’s in trouble.”
“That much I know. But he’s lucky.”
He was curious what she meant. “How so?”
“For the second time”—she tossed him a hard gaze—“he’s taken to someone he can trust.”
“I didn’t know that we were buddies. In fact, our relationship has been a bit rocky.”
“Surely you realize that he took that flash drive hoping you would come after it. His way of asking for your friendship. I can see that he made a good choice. You look like a man to be trusted.”
“I’m just a guy who can’t quit doing favors.”
“He told me you were once a secret agent.”
He grinned. “Just a humble servant of the U.S. government. Now I’m a bookseller, like you.”
Which he liked the sound of.
“He told me that, too. Like I say, you are a man to be trusted.”
“Have others really been looking for Ian?”
“A month ago men came around to the shops. Some of the owners know Ian and they pointed them my way. But I lied and told them I had not seen him. Unfortunately, Ian disappeared a week after that and did not return. Until today. I prayed he’d be okay.”
“Like I said, he’s in trouble. He has something those other men want.”
“The flash drive.”
He caught the meaning in her words. “You’ve read it?”
“I read the same two files you viewed.”
Then he saw something in her eyes. “What is it?”
* * *
Antrim led Gary from the office out into the warehouse, the space brightly lit by an array of overhead fluorescent fixtures. Two tables held stacks of old books, some tucked safely inside plastic bags. Another table supported three iMacs connected to an Internet router and a printer. This was where Farrow Curry had worked, trying to make sense of Robert Cecil’s journal, deciphering what seemed impossible to understand.
But the past twenty-four hours had changed his mind.
Not only was it possible, somebody was willing the pay him five million pounds just to walk away from whatever was there.
Gary noticed the stone slab lying on the floor. “What is that?”
“We found that in an interesting place. Not far from here, near a palace called Nonsuch.”
“Is it a big castle?”
“The palace no longer exists. Only the ground where it stood. Henry VIII built it as the grandest of all his residences. A magical site. He called it Nonsuch because there was nothing else its equal. None. Such. All we know of what it looked like now comes from three watercolors that survived.”
“So what happened to it?”
“Centuries later, Charles II gave it to his mistress and she sold it off, piece by piece, to pay her gambling debts. Eventually, there was nothing left but the dirt on the ground. We recovered this slab from a nearby farm where it had been used for centuries to support a bridge.”
Gary bent down and examined the stone. The CIA memo from the 1970s had made mention of the slab’s existence.
A series of symbols were carved on its face.
He stepped close and said, “They’re mainly abstract markings, but some are Greek and Roman alphabet letters. They turned out to be the key, though, to a four-hundred-year-old mystery.”
He could see that the boy was intrigued. Good. He wanted him to be impressed.
“Like a lost treasure?” Gary asked.
“Something like that. Though we’re hoping there’s even more to it.”
“What do these symbols mean?”
“They’re the way to solve a code that was created long ago by a man named Robert Cecil.”
Back in the 1970s, when those Irish lawyers first delved into the mystery, there were few sophisticated computers and the decryption programs were little more than elementary. So the slab’s secrets had remained concealed. Thankfully, modern technology changed all that.
He watched as the boy traced the symbols with his fingers.
“Would you like to see the most important thing we found?”
Gary nodded.
“It’s over here.”
* * *
Malone walked with Miss Mary between the shelves. Her store was a tad smaller than his, but she possessed his same penchant for hardcovers. Not too many repeats, either, which evidenced how careful she was with her buying. No danger of running out of inventory ever existed, since people loved to trade books. That was the great thing about the business. A steady supply of inexpensive inventory always came and went.
She turned into the history section and scanned the spines.
“I’m afraid I’m going to need your help,” she said, pointing to one of the top shelves.
He was six feet tall. She stood a good foot shorter.
“At your service.”
“It’s there. The fourth book from the left.”
He spotted the red-bound volume and reached for it, maybe ten inches tall, four inches wide, and not quite an inch thick. In good condition, too. Late 19th century, he estimated from its bindings and cover.
He read the title.
Famous Impostors.
Then noted its author.
Bram Stoker.
Twenty-six
Kathleen parked her car. During the drive back from Oxford she’d become convinced that she was being played. There was no Eva Pazan, or at least not one who worked at Lincoln College. Maybe Pazan was told to lie. But why? Weren’t they all on the same side? And Mathews had sent her specifically to meet with the professor. If Pazan was a sham, what had been the point? She’d re-checked Jesus College and found a deceit. Now she’d returned to the Temple Church. Things about what happened here earlier bothered her, too.
She parked again outside the walls and entered the Inns of Court through the unmanned vehicle gate. King’s Bench Walk was wet and, thanks to the late hour, empty of cars.
Sometimes she regretted never actually practicing law. Neither her father nor her grandfathers had been alive when she chose SOCA. She hardly knew her father — he died when she was young — but her mother kept his memory alive. So much that she decided that the law would be her career path, too. Being back among the Inns, recalling her days here and at Oxford, had definitely reawakened something inside her. At thirty-six she could easily re-hone her skills and perhaps earn entry into the practicing bar. A tough path, for sure. But soon that might be her only option. Her SOCA career seemed over, and her short
foray into intelligence work would probably end before it ever started.
Quite a mess she’d made of her life.
But she had no time for regrets.
Never had, really.
She knew that tomorrow, Saturday, visitors would be everywhere among the Inns, enjoying the grounds and touring the famous Temple Church. But little about the ancient building was original. Centuries ago Protestant barristers, wanting to efface all emblems of Catholicism, whitewashed the interior and plastered the columns — a puritanical cleansing that destroyed all of the olden beauty. Most of what the visitors now saw was a 20th-century reconstruction, the aftermath of German bombs during World War II.
At this hour the church was dark and locked for the night. Midnight was fast approaching. Lights burned, though, in the nearby master’s residence, the custodian charged with the church’s upkeep, a servant of both the Middle and Inner Temples.
She approached the front door and knocked.
The man who answered was in his forties, dark-haired, and identified himself as the master. He seemed perplexed she was there, so she displayed her SOCA identification and asked, “What time does the church close each day?”
“You came here, at this hour, to ask me that?”
She tried a bluff. “Considering what happened earlier, you should not be surprised.”
And she saw that her words registered.
“It varies,” he said. “Most days it’s 4:00 PM. Sometimes it’s as early as 1:00 PM, depending on if we have services or a special event planned.”
“Like earlier?”
He nodded. “We closed the church, at four, as requested.”
“No one was there after that?”
He tossed her a curious look. “I locked the doors myself.”
“And were the doors reopened?”
“Are you referring to the special event?” he asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m referring to. Did everything perform brilliantly?”
He nodded. “The doors were reopened at six, locked back at ten. No personnel were on site, as requested.”