“Thank you.” The journalist swept her trademark curly red hair to one side. Then she produced a notebook and a micro-recorder from a capacious handbag. Somehow she managed to make all of these actions sensual. Despite the early hour, she looked as if she’d just returned from vacation. Malcolm felt himself stir. He thrust the notion away.
“You don’t mind?” Donna Ross nodded to her recorder.
“Not at all.”
“Thank you for this exclusive, Mr. Malcolm. Can I start by asking what news there is on the prime minister?”
“I’m afraid it’s the worst.” He assumed his gravest look. “It’s polonium poisoning.”
“There’s no hope then?”
“It would be unrealistic to say so.” He wanted to be definitive, but Susannah Armstrong, damn her, was still hanging on. Still, it couldn’t be long.
“When will we know?”
He spread his hands, bit his lip, and looked down. “We have to face the worst.” He wished he could tear up. He’d lost that ability decades ago. “Soon.”
The journalist, who had been scribbling in her notebook, stared at him with the intense hazel eyes that had unnerved more than one interviewee over the years. “So you’ll be prime minister, then?”
“I’m acting prime minister, now. There’s much to be done and someone has to take charge. Whether I continue in that role will be up to the party. I’m merely their servant.” He suppressed a wince as the words came out of his mouth. They sounded pompous. Not the note he wanted to hit.
Donna Ross continued to stare at him, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “I’m told you intend to go ahead with the vote on your private member’s bill today.” She glanced at the England flag. “On the referendum to break up the union and take an independent England out of the EU and NATO. Would you care to comment on that?”
“It’s true.” He wasn’t surprised Ross knew; he’d arranged for the information to be leaked to her. “It’s my firm belief the United Kingdom has run its course. It’s time for England to stand on its own once more. To realize its full potential. The Scots want to go their own way. We should let them. We should also recognize the reality we’ve fought against for generations and let the Irish unite.”
Donna Ross opened her mouth to say something, but Malcolm held up a hand and she leaned back in her chair, crossing one dark-stockinged leg over the other.
“As to Europe.” He tore his eyes away from her legs, willed his erection to subside. “It’s always been a case of a square peg into a round hole. We’ve never really accepted them. They’ve never really accepted us. What have we got from membership? Continuing loss of sovereignty and subservience to a Brussels-based dictatorship that seeks to bring us down to the same level as the Greeks.” He was warmed up now. Enjoying himself. The words rolled from his tongue.
“England was a kingdom long before it joined with Scotland and Ireland. It was ruled by the English. By great kings like Harold.” He nodded toward the painting over the fireplace. “Harold fought against invasion from Europe. I believe we can be a great kingdom again. A fighting kingdom led by those imbued with the spirit of Harold.”
Donna Ross pondered the painting, her pen poised above her notebook. “And the World Trade Organization? It’s said you want to pull us out of that, too.”
“True. England for the English and English jobs for Englishmen. And women. We can’t do that as long as we stay in the WTO. I want to see us revitalize our own industry, and stop outsourcing jobs to the Bangladeshis, and the Chinese.”
The journalist scribbled notes. “And the prime minister?” Her gaze locked on his. “What do you think she’d say to all this?”
“I admire Susannah Armstrong enormously.” Malcolm spoke slowly. Deliberately. Using his most sincere tone, refined over years of political campaigning. “She has been a great prime minister. It is my dearest hope that a miracle will happen and she will recover. But if she does not return to us, the country will have a new leader. That may or may not be me. I make no pretense of my views; I have just laid them out for you. If the party, the country, England, wants me, it will be because of those views. If I am prime minister, I will not hesitate to wield Harold’s sword in defense of England.”
Donna Ross looked surprised for the first time since she’d entered the room. She looked up at the painting. “I thought Harold’s sword had been lost for centuries. Since the Battle of Hastings. Has it been found?”
“I believe it will be found.” He smiled. “When it is needed. To be wielded by a new leader in defense of England.”
“Leader, Mr. Malcolm? Or do you mean king?”
“We already have a monarch, Miss Ross.”
When Donna Ross had departed, Malcolm stood in front of the painting once more. He wasn’t thinking about the journalist, but about the Maltese Falcon and the clue it supposedly contained to the whereabouts of Harold’s sword. He checked the time. Frowned. Where the fuck was Bebe Daniels?
Chapter 23
The woman’s dark hair was shot through with gray. She was only forty, but she looked at least ten years older. Her lined faced spoke of hardship. Suffering. And loss. She was a Palestinian. And a killer. So Strenger had told Bebe. She had no reason not to believe her Master. He had rescued Bebe from poverty. So he told her; she remembered nothing of her former life. Strenger had given her a life of luxury. Taught her…everything.
The woman was from Gaza. She was a suicide bomber. Going to blow up a bus. Or a restaurant. Kill innocent Israelis. Now, stripped to bra and panties, the woman sat in a wooden chair in one of the soundproofed basement interrogation rooms. She was tied to a metal chair. A balled handkerchief had been stuffed into her mouth to keep her quiet. A pistol, a Glock 17, lay on the table that separated Bebe and her Master from their prisoner.
Strenger ran a hand through Bebe’s hair. He gripped the back of her neck and squeezed, hard. Bebe shivered with sexual delight. She smiled into the woman’s pleading eyes. Tears ran down the woman’s furrowed cheeks and her body shook with unheard sobs.
“What do we do with murdering scum like her?” Strenger asked Bebe. He spoke in Arabic. So the woman could understand.
A tremor started deep within Bebe’s loins. Were they going to do it again?
“We kill them,” Bebe answered, also in Arabic.
“Would you like to do it?”
“Can I?” Bebe’s voice was hoarse with desire. The woman’s eyes bulged. She shook her head violently from side to side. Fought desperately to spit out the gag.
Bebe reached for the Glock. Lifted it. Removed the safety and cocked it. Pointed it at the woman.
The shot was deafening in the confined space of the interrogation room. Bebe didn’t hear it, such was the power of the orgasm that swept through her.
As Strenger threw her across the table, ripped off her skirt, and entered her forcefully from behind, she looked into the dying woman’s eyes. She’d succeeded in spitting out the gag. With her last breath she spoke one word. A name. “Ghayda.”
—
Bebe Daniels sat at a table before a wall of television screens in a darkened room, in a bunker far below London’s St. Pancras Station. What had brought back that particular memory? The woman had been one of many dispatched by Strenger, her first Master; the man she’d worshipped. Perhaps it was because she was hunting his killer. Ayesha Ryder. She closed her eyes. Soon, my Master. Soon.
Bebe opened her eyes and focused on the television screens. The location of the bunker, staffed by a private security firm under contract to the Metropolitan Police and London Borough Council, was a closely kept secret, for it was the nerve center from which thousands of CCTV cameras monitored the streets of the British capital. Only authorized personnel were permitted entry. These included officers of the Security Service and Special Branch, and of course high-ranking members of the government—which included the prime minister’s private secretary.
“We have a match,” the watch supervisor told her.
“There.” The supervisor pointed to a screen. “The man and woman. That’s them. Isn’t it?”
“Yes. Ayesha Ryder and Joram Tate.” The Walsingham Institute librarian had been identified from CCTV pictures retrieved from St. Pancras Station. She had no idea why he’d joined Ryder. “Where is this?”
“Victoria Station. This was just a few minutes ago.”
“Where are they going?”
The supervisor typed on a keyboard. Then he used a toggle to change images on the screen. “There they are! At the booking office.” He moved the toggle once more. “And again, on the platform.” He zoomed in on the electronic sign adjacent to the platform. “Battle. They’re going to Battle. It’s in East Sussex. Near Hastings.”
Bebe stared at the images of the two people. Battle. Near Hastings. There was only one reason she could think of why Ayesha Ryder would be going to Battle. She must have found and interpreted whatever clue the Maltese Falcon contained. So, Bebe thought, I don’t have the Maltese Falcon, but it seems I’m on the trail of King Harold. Even better. When she had Harold’s sword, Ryder would be hers. Her eyes glowed with anticipation.
Chapter 24
Longo fired his machine gun until his finger could barely hold the trigger. The last bullet expended, he let go and stared at the black bodies that lay sprawled on the open ground in front of him. Some writhed. Most were still. The smell of blood, excrement, spilled guts, washed over him. He inhaled deeply, relishing it. A lone woman lurched to her feet from amid the heaped dead. She was heavily pregnant. She staggered toward the forest, keening in a high-pitched wail. Longo grinned. He reached for his pistol. Sighted. Squeezed the trigger. The woman fell.
He surveyed the field in front of him. All movement had stopped. Even the very air seemed to hang still, as if afraid to breathe. He stood. Stretched. He felt good. He’d fulfilled his contract. Wiped out everyone in the village. Men, women, children. All except one. A girl. She was maybe eighteen. His reward…
Longo’s cheek was slapped. Hard.
He opened his eyes. Giant figures crouched over him. They merged and became one. “Zak?” Longo turned his head. Realized he was lying in the gutter. He levered himself into a sitting position. God it hurt. “What the fuck?”
“Dunno. Found you here.”
Pain lanced through Longo’s skull. He struggled to concentrate. The old lady. The woman behind him. Tatiana. She’d hit him over the head. Bitches! He focused on his surroundings. He was in the street. Outside Lady Madrigal’s building. Near the entrance to the underground parking garage. He’d been dragged outside and dumped in the gutter. Like a sack of garbage. His cellphone buzzed.
He groped in his pockets. His SIG was gone. Of course. He pulled out his phone. Hit the answer button. “Yeah?” He listened to the familiar voice. Nodded. Wished he hadn’t. “Train to Battle. Right. Yeah. I’m on it.” He ended the call. “Help me up,” he ordered Zak. “We’re going to Battle, wherever the fuck that is.”
Chapter 25
Ayesha opened the door and stepped into the living room of her parents’ tiny apartment in the heart of Gaza City. She trembled in every limb. Exhausted beyond endurance, it was all she could do to stand. Only willpower had taken her this far; that and the simple human need to join her parents.
The familiar sights enveloped her like a warm blanket. The walls covered in photographs of family, relations, ancestors. The keys, iron or brass, to homes in what had been Palestine, stolen by the Israelis, but to which the true owners never gave up hope of return.
Ayesha’s nose wrinkled. The apartment usually smelled of her mother’s cooking. Today there was only a cold staleness. She frowned. Clothing lay on the floor. Unwashed dishes were piled in the sink and on the draining board. A loaf of bread moldered on the dining table. Maggots squirmed in the remains of an orange.
Ayesha’s gut knotted with sick dread. It had been so long since she’d seen her parents. Months. In the past week she’d been captured by the Israelis. Her whole team had been killed. She herself had been imprisoned in an Ottoman-era fort outside Beersheba. There she’d been tortured and raped by a psychopath. She’d escaped—after she’d hacked off his penis and left him for dead. She made her way back to Gaza by traveling only at night, hiding out during the day, drinking from puddles and her own urine. At the edge of her endurance, all she’d thought of was gaining the refuge of her parents’ apartment. Sobbing in her mother’s embrace. Ayesha knew Leila—her mother—would be horrified at what she’d become. What she’d done. What had been done to her. Still, after Ghayda’s murder at the hands of the Israelis, she thought there’d be understanding, if not acceptance. Surely there’d be joy, too, that her mother’s surviving daughter had returned.
Something stirred on the other side of the room. A man rose from her father’s armchair.
Ayesha stared. “Father?” she whispered.
He was gaunt. Emaciated. His hair was totally gray, and he had a beard, also gray.
“What has happened? Where is Mother?”
“She…she…she…”
Ayesha ran to her father. Embraced him. She could feel his bones. “Tell me,” she urged, knowing what he would say.
“Your mother is dead.”
“How?”
Her father shook his head. Sobs racked his frail body.
“She…you know…she kept saying your sister…Ghayda…was still…was still—”
“I know. Mother believed Ghayda was not killed. That she was taken. By the Israelis.”
Ayesha’s father nodded. She felt his tears wet on her face, her neck. “We thought she’d was…you know…that she’d…” He drew a deep breath. “One day she didn’t come home. A week ago it must be….I went crazy. Couldn’t contact you…Then…we found her…her body. She’d been shot.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
“But—”
“Ayesha…There’s more.”
Her father pulled away from her and stood erect. He looked into her eyes. “She was shot in the stomach. It took her hours to die.”
A door slammed somewhere. Ayesha jerked awake. For a moment she was still back in the tiny Gaza apartment, looking into her father’s eyes as he told her about her mother’s horrible death. She wasn’t in Gaza. She was on the train. On the way to Battle. She sighed and blinked away the incipient tears. She’d broken down when she’d learned of her mother’s murder. It was then that she’d been placed in the squalid asylum from which her English aunt Harriet had ultimately rescued her. Begun her new life…
She stretched her arms high, looked at the passing countryside. Fields. Hedges. Cows. All of it boring. She’d never been one for unleavened nature. She checked her watch. Battle was no great distance by train from London. They’d soon be there. She yawned again. Not that she was tired, despite having snatched only a short nap after they’d boarded the train at Victoria. She was much too excited. The idea that they were getting close to their destination—maybe, she cautioned herself—would not allow sleep.
A noisy rattle announced the arrival of the food and drink cart. “Please,” she said, when the steward proffered a coffeepot. “And a roast beef sandwich.” While Joram ordered tea, she groped in her pockets for sufficient cash to pay the exorbitant charge.
She sipped through the hole in the lid. “Shit!” She was desperate for caffeine, but there was no way she was going to drink more of whatever was in the cup. With no optimism whatever she removed the plastic wrap from the sandwich. She took a hesitant bite. “Mmmm.”
Her companion regarded her with a trace of amusement in his blue eyes. “Better?” he asked.
Joram Tate had changed his clothes before they’d left his apartment. He looked very different. Before she’d found him attractive. The librarian’s o
ld-fashioned tweed suit had given way to plain black pants, a dark green T-shirt, and a medium-length leather coat that had once been a dark brown, but which was now so faded and battered that it was hard to know what color to call it. Black boots, much worn and scuffed, completed the ensemble. Sexy.
The resulting effect, Ayesha had decided when the librarian had emerged from his bedroom, was that of battle dress. Joram Tate was going to war. She’d begun to think that they were not so very different. Other than the fact that she always dressed for war.
“Much better,” she answered Joram. “What do you think we’ll find at Battle Abbey?”
“Probably nothing.”
She made a face. “Pessimist.”
“In most things I’d say I’m an optimist.” Joram cocked an eyebrow. Ayesha smiled; it was impossible not to. “But Battle Abbey is a major tourist site,” he continued. “Harold’s tomb, if it is there, isn’t anywhere obvious. It’ll need excavation. Like they did at Leicester when they found the body of Richard III under a parking lot.”
“You’re right…still…” Ayesha toyed with her coffee cup. She almost took a sip. Then she remembered and put it down again. She couldn’t help her excitement. Despite the likelihood of disappointment, she had the definite feeling they were going to find something. “Were you always a librarian?”
“Always is a long time. I’ve been a librarian for many years. But I’ve done other things.”
“Were you ever in the intelligence services?”
Joram grimaced. “You’re very good. You understand I can’t talk about it?”
“We all have things we can’t talk about.”
Touché! Clever boots has blocked me from asking about Maddy, too. Unless I want to open up to him. Which I don’t. She looked at him through narrowed eyes, wondering just how much he knew about her. She really quite liked Joram Tate, she decided. She was surprised at the realization. Perhaps it was the discovery that he also had secrets. Dark ones, probably. Then there was that mop of brown hair and his magical blue eyes. A deal older than her, but so had Evelyn been. From what she’d seen, he was also in very good shape. He also liked vodka martinis. And, too, they shared the knowledge of London’s underground secrets: the Roman catacombs, the plague pits, and Ethelred’s tomb. Then there was the warehouse of lost books below Joram’s building. A frisson of excitement shivered her spine. They had so much to talk about. Ayesha let her thoughts wander. Maybe, when they’d found the Templar treasure, she’d get to know him better. Perhaps they could…
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