by Steve Berry
“I brought something for you to see,” Tanya said. “From my own library.”
The older woman produced a smartphone and handed it to Malone.
“That’s an image from a page I made this morning. It’s an account from the day Elizabeth I died.”
“I see you’ve gone high-tech,” Malone said, adding a slight smile.
“Oh, these devices are marvelous. Mary and I both use them.”
Malone increased the image size and they were able to read.
To Lord Charles Howard Elizabeth confided that she was in desperate extremities.
“My Lord,” she whispered hoarsely. “I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck. I am tied. I am tied, and the case is altered with me.”
The Queen lay prone, speechless, cadaverous. All the life that was left in her was centered in one long, still beautiful hand which hung down at the side of her bed and which still made signs to express her wishes. The Archbishop of Canterbury had been summoned to pray for the dying woman, which he did with unction and enthusiasm. It was presumably the last sound that entered the queen’s consciousness. A few hours later the breath left her body. At three o’clock in the morning of March 24, 1603 her body was pronounced lifeless. It was prepared for burial by her ladies and was not dissected and embalmed as was the rigorous custom in those days for sovereigns. The leaden mask and the waxen effigy were prepared, but no man’s hand touched the body of Elizabeth after it was dead.
She went to her grave with her secret inviolate.
She and Malone glanced up from the screen, both amazed.
“Quite right,” Tanya said. “That last sentence is meaningless, except if you know, or suspect.”
“When was this written?” Malone asked.
“1929. In a biography of Elizabeth that I have always admired.”
What had the writer meant?
Her secret inviolate.
“Mary asked me specifically to show you that. She and I have spoken on this subject before. She always told me I was foolish to consider such a thing. But now I hear that the two of you may have new information on this great mystery.”
Malone found the sheets he’d printed out at the Churchill, from the flash drive, and handed them to Tanya.
“Take a look at these.”
Malone faced Kathleen. “Keep an eye out here. I have to make a quick call to Antrim.”
She nodded her assent and Malone left the Cumberland Suite, heading back out to the busy gallery beyond. When he was gone Kathleen asked Tanya, “Are you saying that there is a real possibility that Elizabeth I was an imposter?”
“I have no idea. But I do know that the Bisley Boy legend is one of long standing. I think others, like the author of the passage you just read, suspected and wondered, but were too timid to say it. Bram Stoker, to his credit, did say it. Of course, he was ridiculed for his assertion. The press was not kind. Tommyrot, I believe, is how The New York Times described the theory in its review of his book.”
“But is this real?”
“From these notes Mr. Malone has just given me it seems others now believe it to be.”
She’d learned all she could.
Time to act.
She relieved Tanya of the pages. “I need these. I want you to wait here until Malone comes back.”
“And where are you going?”
She’d already noticed that there was but one way in and out of these rooms — the same way Malone had gone. But there were fair numbers of people milling about. Enough for cover.
“This is official SOCA business.”
“Mary said you were the impetuous type, as well.”
“I can also be the arresting type. So stay here and be quiet.”
Thirty-nine
Antrim made the call from the booth in the pub. He’d eaten his burger and chips and decided on the direct approach. His watch read 10:40 AM, which made it 5:40 AM in Virginia. Of course the CIA operations center never slept and his call was routed to the director of counter-operations, his immediate supervisor and the only person besides the director of Central Intelligence who could give him an order.
“It’s done, Blake,” his boss said. “We tried to stop the Scots from going public, but they were hell-bent. The deal is made. They’re just fine-tuning details while they warm up public opinion.”
“That killer should die in jail.”
“We all agree. Unfortunately, he’s not our prisoner.”
“I’ll shut down things here.”
“Do that. And fast.”
“What about our fatality?”
“I don’t see any way to investigate that without alerting the wrong people. It could have been the Brits. Probably was. But it could have been somebody else. Doesn’t matter anymore. The death will have to stand as unaccountable.”
That meant the family would be told only that the agent died in the line of duty, serving his country — not where, or when, or how, just that it happened — and a star would be added to the wall at Langley. Last he could recall there were over a hundred stars. Doubtful any name would be noted in the Book of Honor that sat just beneath. Only those agents who’d been compromised in death were recorded there. Not that he really cared. In fact, letting all of this fade away suited his needs perfectly.
“I’ll have it ended by tonight,” he said.
“This was crazy from the start,” his boss said. “But hey, sometimes long shots play out.”
“I did my best.”
“No one is blaming you. Though I’m sure there will be some here who’ll try. It was imaginative and, if it’d worked, a stroke of genius.”
“It may be time for me to go,” he said, laying the groundwork for what he had in mind.
“Don’t be so hasty. Think about that. Don’t beat yourself up so bad.”
Not the reaction he’d expected.
“I hated losing this one,” he said.
“We all do. We’re going to look like idiots when that transfer happens. But it’s one we’re going to have to live with.”
He ended the call.
Operation King’s Deception was over. He’d first dismiss the two other agents, then shut down the warehouse himself, handing over everything to Daedalus. Then he’d receive the remainder of his money. By then, with any luck, Cotton Malone would have tragically died. Not a thing would point his way, so Gary would naturally gravitate to him.
They’d bond.
Become close.
Father and son.
Finally.
He thought of Pam Malone.
Screw you.
* * *
Malone waited for his phone to boot up. He’d intentionally left it off to avoid being tracked and realized that for the next few minutes he’d be vulnerable. But he had to talk to Stephanie Nelle. When he’d left the breakfast table earlier at the Churchill he’d not only visited the hotel’s business center but also called Atlanta, waking her from sleep. Though he was no longer one of her twelve Magellan Billet agents he was doing the U.S. government a favor, and she’d told him last night, during their call about Antrim, that she was there if needed.
The phone activated and he saw that Stephanie had already called back, twenty minutes ago. So he answered her message with a return call.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Waiting to see if I’m a fool or a genius.”
“I hate to ask what that means.”
“What did you find out on Kathleen Richards?”
“She is SOCA. Ten years. Good investigator, but a loose cannon. Does things her way. Lots of damage and destruction in her wake. Actually, the two of you seem perfect for each other.”
“I’m more concerned with what she’s doing here with me.”
“Actually, that is a good question considering she’s currently on suspension for an incident a month ago. I was told she was in the process of being fired.”
“Learn anything relative to MI6’s involvement?”
He’d retreated to a
corner in the gallery among the people and the noise. He turned and faced the wall, speaking low, keeping a watch out behind him.
“Not a thing. But I had to be careful with those questions.”
More people spilled in, heading from the Tudor to the Georgian portion of the palace.
“And you never said. Are you a fool or a genius?” she asked.
“That hasn’t been determined yet.”
“There’s a complication here.”
He hated that word. Complication. Stephanie’s code for a total, outright, get-your-ass-kicked mess.
“The CIA called back a little while ago.”
He listened as she described something called Operation King’s Deception, presently ongoing in London, headed by Blake Antrim. She then told him about Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, and that the Scottish government had decided to send him back to Libya to die of terminal cancer.
“That decision was made public a few hours ago,” Stephanie said. “Seems this transfer has been in the works for nearly a year. King’s Deception was authorized to stop it.”
“Which apparently failed.”
“And they just pulled the plug on the operation. But they asked if you could take one last stab.”
“At what?”
“That flash drive you have contains information that died with the man in the Underground station. He was a CIA analyst assigned to King’s Deception. Langley knows you have the drive. Antrim reported that. They want you to see if it leads anywhere.”
He could not believe what he was hearing. “I don’t even know what they were looking for. How in the hell would I know if I found anything?”
“I asked the same question. Their answer was that the drive should tell you. If it doesn’t, then there’s nothing there.”
“Is there a problem with Antrim? He has Gary and Ian Dunne.”
“Not that I’ve been told. It’s just that he wasn’t successful with his operation and they’d like you to give it one last try. That prisoner transfer is going to be a PR disaster for us.”
Which he knew, and the thought of it even happening made him angry. The son of a bitch should die in jail.
A tour group drifted in and moved toward his corner of the room. He used them as cover and kept watch on the doorway that led into the Cumberland Suite.
Kathleen Richards appeared.
She hesitated a moment, glanced around, seemed satisfied that all was clear, then darted right.
“I’m a genius,” he quietly said into the phone.
“Which means?”
“That I was right about our SOCA agent.”
“What are you going to do? The CIA wants to know.”
He hadn’t seen Stephanie in five months, not since France, back in June, when he’d helped her out. So much so that she told him, before leaving, that she owed him a favor. But he also recalled her warning.
Use it wisely.
“If I look into this, does this mean you owe me two favors?”
She chuckled. “This one’s not mine. I’m just the messenger. But if you can do anything to stop that murderer from being released, you’d be doing us all a favor.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
“One last thing, Cotton. Antrim knows nothing of this request, and they want to keep it that way.”
He ended the call and shut down the phone.
* * *
Gary showed Ian and Miss Mary the artifacts in the warehouse. The older woman seemed fascinated with the books, some of which she noted were valuable 17th-century originals. He watched as she examined the special one beneath the glass lid with the green-and-gold pages.
“Your Mr. Antrim is a thief,” she said. “This volume belongs to Hatfield House. I am familiar with it.”
“Blake is CIA,” he made clear again. “He’s here on official business.”
“Blake?”
“He told me to call him that.”
He did not like the appraising look she gave him.
“I wonder what gives Blake the right to pilfer our national treasures? I have visited the library at Hatfield House. The attendants there would have gladly allowed him to photograph or copy whatever he may have needed. But to steal it? That is unforgivable.”
Since his dad retired from the Justice Department, they’d spoken some about fieldwork. Its pressures. Demands. The unpredictability. A month ago he’d even experienced some of that firsthand, so he was not about to judge Blake Antrim. And what did this woman know, anyway? She owned a bookstore and could not possibly understand what intelligence agents did.
She lifted the glass lid. “Did Mr. Antrim explain what this is?”
“It’s a codebook,” he told her. “From a guy named Robert Cecil.”
“Did he explain its significance?”
“Not really.”
“Would you like to know?”
* * *
Kathleen had not spotted Cotton Malone, so she used the moment and embraced the crowd. Hopefully, the information on the sheets she’d obtained would satisfy Mathews. She felt bad about deceiving Malone, but she intended to do her job. Without questions.
She headed away from where they’d entered, deeper into the baroque portions of the palace, and came to what was identified as the Communications Gallery. One wall was lined with windows that overlooked a fountain court, the other was wood-paneled and dotted with doors and oil portraits. Decorative iron posts supported a red velvet rope that prevented visitors from approaching too close to the paintings. Surely there was an exit from the palace if she just kept moving forward.
A quick glance back and she saw a face she recognized.
Eva Pazan.
Back from the dead.
Ten meters away.
A man at her side.
A chill swept through her. Even though she was sure Pazan had not been killed at Jesus College, seeing the woman alive unnerved her.
Was she really part of Daedalus?
Or something else?
Pazan hung back, fifty people in between them admiring the gallery. No effort was made to approach.
Apparently, they were flushing her ahead.
With no choice she kept moving.
At the end of the gallery she decided to buy some time. So she grabbed the last two iron rails, swinging them both around and blocking the path crosswise. The people behind her stopped at the velvet rope, which caused traffic to congeal, her two pursuers trapped at the rear. She caught the quizzical looks, visitors thinking she was someone official and that they could not proceed any farther.
But she didn’t hang around to explain, darting into a doorway and turning left, hustling down what was labeled the Cartoon Gallery. Fifty more people filled the gallery admiring the ambience. She caught sight of a video camera high in the corner at the far end, right of the exit doorway, and realized she was going to have to avoid those.
She heard a shout from behind and saw Pazan and her pal appear twenty meters away. She turned another corner and passed through one elegant room after another, identified as the Queen’s bedchamber, dining room, dressing room, and drawing room.
In the last one she hooked right.
A man blocked her way.
* * *
Malone slipped past the crowd and reentered the Cumberland Suite, finding Tanya Carlton and asking, “What happened?”
“She snatched the papers you gave me and left. Threatened to arrest me.”
He’d wondered what Richards would do, so he’d provided her an opportunity. True, she had the information from the unprotected files but, to his way of thinking, there wasn’t much there.
Nothing at all, in fact.
“You don’t seemed surprised,” Tanya said.
“I’m not.”
“I must say, Mr. Malone, I think you are a bit of a conjurer.”
“Comes from getting burned by dishonest people.”
“What will she do now?”
He shrug
ged. “Go back where she came from. Or at least we can only hope.”
He had a new problem.
Helping the CIA.
“Mary told me that you and young Ian might have saved that woman’s life,” Tanya said. “Strange way for her to repay the debt.”
“But not unusual in my former line of work.”
“I managed to read the papers before she took them. Nothing there shocking. Not to me, anyway. But I have long been familiar with this legend.”
“Let’s get out of here. I’d like to talk with you some more, but with fewer people around.”
“Then we must see the gardens. They are magnificent. We can have a lovely walk in the sunshine.”
He liked this woman, just as he’d liked her sister.
They exited the Cumberland Suite and returned to the outer gallery, which remained noisy and crowded.
Two men appeared to their right.
Both faces he recognized.
The officers from the bookstore, out of uniform, dressed casually, both of whom appeared not to have forgotten what happened earlier. One had a nasty knot to his left forehead.
“We have a bit of a problem,” he whispered. “Seems there are some people here who would like to detain us.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Can you get us out of the building?”
“I worked here for many years as a guide, before being assigned to the gift shop. I know Hampton Court intimately.”
He pointed out the two problems. A small camera hung from the ceiling in one corner of the gallery. He’d seen others throughout. That meant people were watching, and dodging those electronic eyes would be tough.
“Angry-looking chaps,” she said. “Who are these men?”
Excellent question. Probably MI6. “Some type of police.”
“I’ve never been arrested before,” Tanya said.
“It’s not fun, and usually leads to a lot of other bad things.”
“Then it is no bother, Mr. Malone. No bother at all. I can make our escape.”
Forty
Henry VIII fathered at least twelve children. Eight of those were either stillborn or miscarried, six by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and two by his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Three were legitimate. Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward, all mothered by different women. One was illegitimate, Henry FitzRoy, born in 1519 to Henry’s mistress Elizabeth Blount. FitzRoy itself is a surname that meant “son of the king” and was commonly used by the illegitimate sons of royalty. Henry openly acknowledged FitzRoy, his firstborn child by any woman, calling him his worldly jewel, making him at age six the Earl of Nottingham, Duke of Somerset, and Duke of Richmond, the title Henry himself held before becoming king. He was raised like a prince in Yorkshire and Henry held a special place for the boy, especially considering, at the time, his wife, Katherine of Aragon, had failed to give birth to a son. FitzRoy was proof, in Henry VIII’s mind, that the problem did not lie with him. Which was why he pressed so hard to have his marriage to Katherine annulled — so that he could find a wife who could actually provide him a legitimate heir.