The King's Deception

“They are quite diligent,” Tanya said, as they continued to descend. “So many visitors every day. People like to take a wander. But it helps to have worked here for twenty years.”

He was grateful for both her presence and that he still carried the gun from earlier beneath his jacket.

They came to the ground floor and he heard footfalls behind them, on the risers, descending.

Surely the two fake cops.

“We must not dawdle,” Tanya said.

They exited through a door with no latch. Too bad. A simple dead bolt would have been wonderful. But this was surely a modern fire escape from the first floor, once the path where prepared food in the kitchens was transported up to the Great Hall.

A long, narrow corridor stretched in both directions.

Visitors milled about.

Tanya turned left, then right, and entered the Great Kitchen. He recalled what he could about this part of the palace. Over fifty rooms, three thousand square feet, once staffed by two hundred people. Two meals a day were provided from here to the 800 members of Henry VIII’s court. They were inside a spacious room with two hearths, a fire raging in each, the high ceilings and walls more whitewash. People were everywhere, snapping pictures, chattering, probably imagining themselves 500 years in the past.

“Come, Mr. Malone. This way.”

She led them through the kitchen, stopping at a doorway that opened into a covered courtyard.

“Have a quick look and see if our minders are there.”

He peered around the doorway’s edge, allowing more tourists to pass, and caught sight of one of the men in the same corridor they’d originally entered after the stairway. Tanya had led them on a U-shaped path back around to it.

“One of them is behind us,” she told him.

He turned and spotted the problem in the kitchen, who had not, as yet, seen them.

“Come on,” he said.

They crossed the courtyard and he saw the man farther down the long corridor, moving away, but the one behind them would soon be here.

“We need to enter that doorway,” Tanya said, pointing to the right side of the corridor, twenty feet away. If they hurried they could be inside before either man noticed.

“Why didn’t we just go there first?” he asked her.

“And be seen? They were right behind us. This provided a little confusion.”

He could not argue with that.

She scampered off with determined steps, disappearing inside the doorway.

He followed and quickly stepped down a short set of stone stairs to a brick floor into what once served as the palace’s wine cellar, the vaulted ceiling supported by three columns. Windows allowed sunlight to pour through. Huge wine casks, lying on their sides, lined the outer walls and filled the center space between the columns.

Tanya headed for the chamber’s rear and he spotted another set of steps that led down to a closed door. She descended and he saw an electronic lock, but she knew the code, punching it in, then beckoning him to follow.

The two men appeared behind them, at the entrance.

One reached beneath his jacket.

He knew what that meant.

So he reached faster and found his gun, firing one round to the right of the entranceway. The closed space and the stone walls amplified the shot to an explosion. People admiring the wine barrels winced, then realized he held a gun and panicked. He used the moment to hop down the steps and into the open doorway. Once inside, Tanya slammed the door.

“The electronic lock engaged,” she said. “Unless they know the combination, they won’t be following.”

His best guess was the men were MI6, working for Thomas Mathews, maybe with the help of the Metropolitan Police. But who knew. So involving local security was not an impossibility.

He studied where they were, a pitch-black space, the air dank and moldy.

He heard Tanya moving and suddenly a flashlight switched on.

“The staff keep them here,” she said.

“Where are we?”

“Why, in the sewers. Where else?”

* * *

Kathleen reached the bottom of the stairway, back on ground level. She exited into a long corridor, then immediately entered a narrow room identified as the Upper Orangery. The outer walls were one closely spaced window after another. Sunlight filled the chamber. People were here, too. Not as many as on the first floor, though.

If Thomas Mathews was on site, why wasn’t he helping?

Instead, Eva Pazan was after her undaunted. It would not take long for her pursuer to realize that her target had fled downward. She was unsure which side Pazan was on, but after her experience at the bookstore she decided to trust no one.

Just leave.

But not by one of the exits, as those were certainly being watched.

Past the windows she spotted the magnificent Privy Garden, which stretched from the palace to the river.

That seemed the way to go.