The King's Deception

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.

* * *

Antrim 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.”

Fifty-four

Malone listened to what Kathleen Richards 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.