The King's Deception

The wool cap was ripped from his face and the bindings on his hands cut. He rubbed his wrists and blinked away the burning lamps that lit the room. When he finally focused he saw worn gold carpet, brown walls, and a pair of matching chairs on either side of the sofa. The exit door had been splintered from its hinges. His two captors, Devene and Norse, lay facedown on the floor. Three men stood in the room, all armed. Two kept weapons trained on his captors.

The third sat beside him on the sofa.

Relief swept over him.

“You okay?” the man asked.

He nodded.

The man was older, near his dad’s age, but with less hair and a few more pounds at the waist. He wore a dark overcoat, buttondown collared shirt, and dark pants. Pale gray eyes stared at him with a look of concern.

“I’m okay,” Gary said. “Thanks for finding me.”

Something about him was familiar.

He’d seen this face before.

“We met in Atlanta.”

The man smiled. “That’s right. Your mom introduced us. Back in the summertime, when I was there on business.”

He recalled the day, at the mall, near the food court. They’d stopped to buy some clothes. The man had called out, walked over, and chatted with his mother while he shopped. Everything had seemed cordial and pleasant. After they left, she’d said he was an old friend she hadn’t seen in a long time.

And here he was.

He tried to remember a name.

The man offered his hand to shake.

“Blake Antrim.”

Twenty

OXFORD

Kathleen’s mind swirled. She’d faced drug traffickers who’d fired fourteen hundred rounds from Uzis and AK-47s at her. A hotel room on Tenerife shot up by a child sex offender who’d not wanted to return to England. Being submerged in a car that had catapulted off a bridge. But she’d never experienced anything like the past few minutes. A woman assassinated by a sniper. Her own body Tasered. And some man who was protecting royal secrets, threatening her life, disappearing into nowhere.

She stood alone in the dark quad.

Her phone buzzed in her coat pocket.

She found the unit and answered.

“Are you finished with Professor Pazan?”

Thomas Mathews.

“The professor is dead.”

“Explain yourself.”

She did.

“I am here, in Oxford. My plan was to speak to you after your talk. Come to Queen’s College now.”

* * *

She walked the few blocks, following the curve of elegant High Street. She knew it as The High. Many of Oxford’s colleges fronted the busy thoroughfare that ran from the center of town to the River Cherwell. Though after 9:00 PM, frenetic activity raged around her. Cars and packed buses, each trailing plumes of exhaust, ferried people to and from town, the busy weekend unfolding. Her nerves were rattled, but she told herself to stay calm. After all, she could be sitting in her flat waiting to be fired.

The foot to her face had rubbed her the wrong way. Had that been the idea? To put her in her place? If so, it was a bad move. If she and that man crossed paths again, he’d pay for the insult.

Queen’s College was one of the ancients, founded in the 14th century and named as a counterpart to the already established King’s College in the hope that future queens would extend their patronage. The huddle of its original medieval houses was long gone, the fate of time and lack of funding. What remained was a baroque masterpiece, a touch out of place among so much Gothic splendor, centered by a dome-covered statue of Queen Caroline, the wife of George II. Many thought the college was named after her. In reality, it acquired its name from a much earlier benefactor — Philippa, wife of Edward III.

She entered the front quad through the domed gatehouse, the lit walkway ahead framed on either side by winter grass. An illuminated cloister lined with archways stretched left and right, the rusticated stone crusty and brittle, casting the appearance of a mountain monastery.

She spotted Mathews at the far end to her right and marched toward him. He still carried the look of a well-groomed diplomat with his pressed suit and walking stick. In the incandescent light she noticed something not caught earlier. A pale, sullen cast to his skin, along with fleshy jowls.

“I enjoy returning here,” the older man said. “Queen’s College is impressive, but I always thought Pembroke turned out the best-looking, most talented men.”

A tight twist of his thin lips conveyed that he’d made a joke. About himself. Something told her that was a rare event.

“I should have known you were a Pembroke man.”

“Forty-two years ago I took my degree. Not much has changed here since then. That’s the lovely thing about this town. Always the same.”

She wanted to know about Eva Pazan.

“A disturbing thing you reported,” he said. “I failed to realize the scope and breadth of what is clearly afoot. The man who accosted you inside the chapel, we have dealt with his group before. They also confronted Blake Antrim earlier in the Temple Church.”

“Which you obviously knew, since you brought me there.”