The King's Deception (16 page)

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.”

K
ATHLEEN’S MIND SWIRLED
. S
HE’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.”

“That is right. But we did not know they were aware of your involvement. The idea had been for you and me to observe Antrim, unnoticed. That means I have a security problem.”

“What is this group?”

“In years past they have not presented any major problems. The last time they became so brazen was before the Second World War, when Edward VIII abdicated.”

Every British citizen knew the tale of the king who fell in love with an American divorcée.

“What is this group?”

“It is called the Daedalus Society. Best we can tell it was formed at the beginning of the 17th century by Robert Cecil.”

“Pazan told me about him. He was close to both Elizabeth and James I.”

“He was responsible for James becoming king, with Elizabeth’s help of course. The Scot owed Robert Cecil his throne.”

“Should we not be searching for the professor?”

“No, Miss Richards,
we
should not. There are people who will deal with what happened, and have already been dispatched. Our task is to move forward. In this business, no one person can do it all.”

His rebuke came in a voice hard as steel, the tone daring her to challenge him.

“What do you want me to do?”

“The presence of this Daedalus Society complicates matters. I urge you to keep your wits about you.”

Your first and final warning
.

Leave this be
.

“I think I should be issued a firearm.”

Mathews fished beneath his coat, removed an automatic pistol, and handed it to her. “Take mine.”

She checked the magazine and ensured it was fully loaded.

“Don’t trust me?” he asked.

“At the moment, Sir Thomas, I don’t know what to think.”

“I would have thought the excitement you experienced mild, considering your past history.”

He was beginning to rub her the wrong way. “I do what I have to when I have to.”

“I have managed other agents with a similar attitude, most of whom are either now dead or no longer in my employ.”

“I didn’t ask for this assignment.”

“Quite right. I chose you, and I knew what I was getting, right?”

“Something like that.”

He nodded. “You have a healthy attitude, that I will grant you.”

She was waiting for him to tell her what was next.

“If you recall,” he said. “At the Inns of Court I told you about the two Henrys and Katherine Parr, and the great secret that passed among them. A sanctuary, perhaps the vault where the majority of the Tudor wealth was hidden.”

“This is about buried treasure?”

She caught his annoyance.

“Only partly, Miss Richards. And why do you sound so incredulous? That vault could hold a wealth of information. We know that secret passages connected then, and still do, many of the Whitehall government buildings. Something you surely are aware of.”

She was. Accessible today through coded doors. She’d once ventured down into one of the tunnels.

“Henry VIII used similar passages to access his tennis court and bowling alley at Whitehall Palace. We think there were other passages with different uses, ones his father either created or discovered. Ones that have remained hidden for five hundred years.”

Which made sense, as London was crisscrossed with tunnels, dug at differing points in history, new ones discovered all the time.

“Katherine Parr was duty-bound to pass that secret on to Henry’s minor son, Edward, but there is no evidence that she ever did. Twenty-one months after Henry died, Parr herself passed. We think she may have told the secret—
not
to Edward, but to someone else.”

“Who? The Cecils?”

“Not possible. Henry VIII died fifteen years
before
William Cecil rose to power with Elizabeth, and thirty years
before
Robert Cecil succeeded his father. No, Katherine Parr told someone other than the Cecils.”

“How do you know that?”

“Just accept that I do. Professor Pazan was asked to instruct you on Robert Cecil’s notebook and the various possibilities. The deciphering of that notebook holds the key to all of this. The Tudor wealth was never found, nor accounted for. In today’s market it would be worth billions.”

“And the Americans want our treasure?”

“Miss Richards, do you continually question everything? Can you not accept that there are matters here of the highest national security. To know what those matters may be is irrelevant to what is expected from you. I have some specific tasks I need you to perform. Can you not simply do as I ask?”

“I am curious of one thing,” she said. “SIS is charged with protecting against threats on foreign soil. Why isn’t the Security Service, MI5, handling this investigation? Domestic threats are
their
jurisdiction.”

“Because the prime minister has ordered otherwise.”

“I was unaware the prime minister could violate the law.”

“You truly are impertinent.”

“Sir Thomas, a woman died a little while ago. I’d like to know why. What’s curious is you don’t seem to care.”

She caught the annoyance on the older man’s face. He was clearly unaccustomed to challenges.

“If I did not require your assistance, I would join with your supervisors in terminating your employment.”

“Lucky for me I’m so valuable at the moment.”

“And lucky for you the situation has changed. Antrim has involved that ex-American-agent I mentioned to you before. Cotton Malone. He has gone out of his way to draw Malone into this fray. I need you to find out why. As I mentioned, the deciphering of Robert Cecil’s journal is vital to the resolution of this matter. Within the next few hours Antrim may well possess the means to do just that. Tell me, is he capable of capitalizing on his good fortune?”

“He’s not daft, if that’s what you’re asking. But he’s not overly clever, either. More devious and deceitful.”

“Exactly my assessment. His operation has not gone well. He is frustrated. His superiors are pressuring for results. Thankfully, time is short and what he seeks is difficult to find.”

Mathews checked his watch, then stared out into the quad. People hustled back and forth from the street toward the college.

“I want you to travel back to London,” he said. “Immediately.”

“Professor Pazan did not tell me what I need to know. She was on her way back inside to show me more of the coded pages.”

“Nothing was found in the dining hall.”

Why wasn’t she surprised? “Seems everything here is unexplained. I’m not accustomed to working like this.”

“And how many intelligence operations have you worked on?”

Another rebuke, but she had to say, “I’ve handled thousands of investigative cases. Granted, none involved national security, but lives, property, and public safety were at stake. I understand the gravity of situations.”

Mathews leaned on his walking stick, and she noticed again the unique handle.

“That cane is quite unusual.”

“A gift to myself several years ago.” He held up the stick. “A solid piece of ivory carved with the world on its face. I hold it in my hand every day as a reminder of what is at stake with what we do.”

She caught the message.

This is important. Work with me
.

“All right, Sir Thomas. No more questions. I’ll head back to London.”

“And I shall arrange for another briefing for you. In the meantime, be alert.”

M
ALONE FOUND AN
I
NTERNET CAFÉ NOT FAR FROM
H
OLBORN
and immediately surveyed the crowd. Mostly middle-aged. Unassuming. Probably lawyers, which made sense as they were not far from the Inns of Court. He purchased time on a desktop and logged in. Ian stayed close and seemed interested, not making any attempt to flee. His phone had yet to ring and he was becoming concerned. He was accustomed to pressure, but things were definitely different when one of your own was at risk. What provided him solace was the fact that the men who had Gary knew the boy was their only bargaining chip.

He inserted the drive.

Three files appeared.

He checked the kilobytes and noticed that they varied, one small, the other two quite large.

He clicked on the smallest first.

Which opened.

E
LIZABETH
I
WAS FOURTEEN WHEN HER FATHER
, H
ENRY
VIII,
DIED AND
her half brother, Edward VI, became king. Katherine Parr, her father’s widow, quickly discovered what it meant to be an ex-queen, having been denied any involvement with her stepson. The regency council provided for in Henry VIII’s
will assumed complete command. Edward Seymour, the king’s uncle, maneuvered himself into the role of Protector. To placate Parr, the young Elizabeth was placed in Parr’s household at Chelsea, a redbrick mansion that overlooked the Thames, where Elizabeth lived for a little over a year
.

In 1547 an old suitor of Katherine Parr’s reemerged—Thomas Seymour, brother to the Protector, and the second uncle to Edward VI. Thomas had lost Katherine to Henry VIII when the king decided she would become his sixth wife. A near-contemporary description of Thomas said he was “fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty of matter.” He was also recklessly ambitious, ruthless, and self-absorbed. Today he would be called a confidence man, someone who, through charm and guile, convinces his victims to do what they otherwise might never do
.