The King's Deception

It made sense that the dead man from St. Paul’s could be the leak. But the other four were not beyond suspicion, especially the freelancers. He knew little about any of them except they were sanctioned for this level of operation.

But he didn’t care.

Not anymore.

He was retiring. Played right, thanks to Farrow Curry’s death, Operation King’s Deception would simply end. Langley would definitely blame him and he’d fall on his sword, offering his resignation, which they’d accept.

Nice clean break for all involved.

There’d still be the matter of the dead man in St. Paul’s, but how far could any investigation be pursued? The last thing Washington would want was more attention, especially from the British. Better to allow the shooting to go unexplained, the body unaccounted for. Only he knew the culprit, and he doubted anything could be linked to the Daedalus Society. The only connection was his cell phone, which was a throwaway, bought in Brussels under another name, which would soon be hammered to pieces, then burned.

Only the three hard drives remained.

So he left Gary at the warehouse with one of his men and drove to an apartment building on London’s East End. The man who lived there was Dutch, a computer specialist used on other assignments. An independent contractor who understood that the obscene amounts of money he was paid not only compensated for services rendered, but also kept his mouth shut. He hadn’t involved the CIA’s own decryption specialists because they were too far away. And counter-operations did not routinely employ in-house people anyway. Its whole purpose was to operate outside the system.

“I need all three hard drives back,” he told the man once inside the apartment with the door closed. He’d roused the man from a sound sleep with a phone call.

“This over?”

He nodded. “Plug’s been pulled. The operation is ending.”

The analyst found the three drives on a worktable and handed them over with no questions.

Antrim was curious, though. “Did you find anything?”

“I retrieved about sixty files and was working on the password-protected stuff.”

“You read anything?”

The analyst shook his head. “I knew better. I don’t want to know.”

“I’ll make sure the rest of your fee is deposited tomorrow,” he said.

“You know, I could have retrieved the protected stuff.”

That information grabbed his attention.

“You broke through?”

The man yawned. “Not yet. But I think I could have. I broke one of Curry’s passwords and an encryption. I could get the others. Of course, all of us being on the same side made it easier than normal.”

In order to satisfy the Daedalus Society he would have to turn over everything accumulated in the warehouse, along with the hard drives. But a little backup might be welcomed. Especially when dealing with a total unknown like Daedalus. Besides, after a year’s worth of work he wanted to know what, if anything, had been found.

Curry was so excited on the phone that day.

He seemed to have made a significant breakthrough.

“Did you copy the three hard drives?”

The analyst nodded. “Of course. Just in case. You’re going to want those, too, right?”

The man started to retrieve them.

“No. Keep working with the copies. I want to know what those password-protected files say. Call me the second you have them.”

* * *

Kathleen had never been so glad to see a face as the one that had darted before the car, which she’d instantly recognized. She’d hoped Ian Dunne had not come alone and was relieved when Cotton Malone appeared. Now they were blocks over, just outside a closed souvenir shop. Ian carried a pocketknife, which was used to cut her plastic restraints.

“Why did you do that?” she asked Malone.

“You looked like you needed help. What did Thomas Mathews want with you?”

“So you know the good knight.”

“He and I have met. In a past life.”

“He told me you were an ex-agent. CIA?”

Malone shook his head. “Justice Department. An international investigative unit, for twelve years.”

“Now retired.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be listening. What’s Mathews’ interest here?”

“He wants me dead.”

“Me too,” Ian said.

She faced the boy. “That so?”

“He killed a man in Oxford Circus, then he wanted to kill me.” She glanced at Malone, who nodded and said, “He’s telling the truth.”

Then she faced the boy. “You took a chance walking in front of that car. I owe you.”

Ian shrugged. “I’ve done it before.”

“Really? Is it a habit of yours?”

“He’s a street pro,” Malone said, adding a smile. “One of them would stop the car and pretend he was hurt, another would steal whatever he could from inside. You were saying? Mathews wants you dead?”

She nodded. “I have apparently outlived my usefulness.”

“Could it have been a bluff?”

“Maybe. But I didn’t want to stay there and find out.”

“How about we trade what we know. Maybe, among the three of us, we’ll actually begin to make some sense out of all this.”

Which they did.