Luke sat in the dark, his back against a rock wall, and cursed. Good thing his mother wasn’t around. His shorts and shirt remained damp from the swim, shoes sodden and clammy. His luminous watch noted the time at 2:20 P.M. He felt neither nerves nor fear. Only irritation. He was three for three on mistakes for the day.
He’d tried to avoid the two men who’d confronted him at the dock, dodging and weaving through Valletta’s unbroken cordon of waterfront streets. But they eventually cornered him. An arm had snapped closed across his throat, another hand clamped on his mouth, and then the arm across his windpipe tightened until his vision had flashed with lights.
What happened after that was sketchy.
He vaguely recalled being carried into a building, down a flight of stairs, into coolness, then lowered into the ground and dropped onto soft earth. When he came around absolute blackness had enveloped him, so thick that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He’d used his fingers to examine the rough-hewn walls of his prison, which was circular and measured about five paces across. Reaching up, he’d determined the hole was wider at the bottom, the sides tapering inward as they rose. A clever way to prevent any attempt to climb out since you’d fall long before making it even halfway up.
The air hung humid and stale, as if it had been breathed to exhaustion. Sweat coursed down the small of his back. His mouth felt pasty. What he’d give for a bottled water. As screwups went, this day ranked high on the list.
What would Malone say?
Good going, Frat Boy.
Hard to live up to a legend. And that perfectly described Cotton Malone. But if you were going to strive to be the best, then you had to know the best. Pappy might be retired and selling books in Denmark, but he remained if not at, then certainly near, the top of his game. Of course, he’d never tell Malone that. He’d worked with him twice and both times he’d learned things. The goal? Work hard another decade and new agents might talk about him the way the current ones spoke of Malone. That was possible. Why not? Everybody needed goals. And time was indeed the best teacher.
Trouble was, eventually it killed all of its students.
He wondered where Pappy was now. Probably at his shop in Copenhagen, doing whatever booksellers do.
What a day.
He reached down and played with a handful of the parched sand that formed the pit’s floor. How long had this hole been in the ground? How many others had rotted away here? He figured he was somewhere beneath Valletta, as he vaguely recalled not being carried all that far. But where? Who the hell knew?
A sound disturbed the silence.
Like a door opening above.
Shafts of light appeared across the top of the pit.
He was now able to see that he’d been right. The hole was bell-shaped. About ten feet deep. Tapering upward to an opening about four feet wide.
He looked up and saw Laura Price.
Which caught him off guard. He’d been wondering who the two guys worked for. His best guess had been the guy on the tower with the cardinal.
A rope fell from above, which she used to climb down. The moment her feet hit the earthen floor, he clipped her legs out from under her and she dropped to the soft sandy floor.
He came to his feet and stood over her.
She shook her head. “Feel better after that cheap shot?”
“Where am I?”
“Inside a piece of history. You should feel honored. The Knights of Malta once dug these prisons all over the island. They’re called guvas. Means ‘birdcage.’ Bad little knights were thrown in and left for days, or weeks, at a time. A few even forever. The only guva most people think still exists is beneath Fort St. Angelo, not far from here. But there’s another, right here. As you can see, there’s no way out except by ladder or rope.”
She stood, wearing a look of unpredictability, her blond hair loosely gathered by a leather thong. Everything about her breathed freedom. He watched as she brushed the dirt from her clothes and examined the walls.
“Did you notice this?” she asked, pointing at the rock.
He stepped over and, in the dim light, spotted carved letters.
AD MELIORES.
“Toward better things,” she said, translating. “Obviously, a plea from a former occupant.”
He noticed more carvings. Names. Dates. Coats of arms.
“All they could do,” she said, “was carve away and hope someone above showed mercy. This place is really old. Probably late 16th or early 17th century.”
He couldn’t care less about the history lesson. “Why am I here?”
“You stuck your nose where it didn’t belong.”
“I was doing my job.”
Since this pain in the ass knew who he worked for there was no need to be coy. And besides, his main source of exercise was pushing his luck.
“Do you have any idea what you’re into?” she asked.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
Her right arm whirled through the blackness, her fist heading up for his jaw. But his guard was up and he was ready. His left hand stopped the potential blow with a quick grab of her wrist.
“Not bad,” she said.
“I try.”
“After you shot my engine up, to get here I had to steal a boat from a guy who came by.”
He grinned. What was it about the badass girls that attracted him?
“Do you have any idea what’s happening tomorrow?” she asked.
Because he talked with a Tennessee mountain accent, had never attended college, and showed little to no interest in current affairs, people always thought him uninformed. Truth be told he read several newspapers each day, online of course, and devoured the daily security updates all Magellan Billet agents received. Once assigned to Malta, he’d read everything he could on Kastor Cardinal Gallo and what was about to happen at the Vatican.
“A conclave,” he told her.
“And this is going to be one for the record books. Mind letting go of my arm?”
He did.
“I bet that jaw of yours has had quite a few fists pounded into it.”
She was working him and he knew it. But what the hell? He liked it. “It takes a beating but keeps on ticking.”
“I bet it does. Like I said, this conclave will be a mess. There’s no front-runner. No solid contender. No favorite. One hundred and fifteen cardinals will be inside the Sistine voting. Who will they select as pope?” She shrugged. “I have no idea. Neither do they, by the way. That’s what happens when a pope dies suddenly. But I do know who some people don’t want. Kastor Cardinal Gallo.”
Interesting. “What people?”
“That’s only for me to know.”
“Have you been following me since yesterday?”
She nodded. “I assume that when Stephanie Nelle was telling you to get rid of me, she also told you who I work for.”
“Why does an island this small need an intelligence agency?”
“We sit on the southernmost border of the EU. We’re the front line between Europe and Africa. Get something onto this rock and you can easily get into the EU. That’s why we need an intelligence agency.”
“Why didn’t you just identify yourself to Stephanie to start with?”
“We were hoping to keep this contained.”
“Who is we?”
“My boss. He gave me an order. I do what he tells me.”
“How did you know I was headed into trouble?”
“Same answer. My boss told me. The man on the Madliena Tower, with Gallo, sometimes works with Vatican intelligence. We’ve seen him before. He piqued our interest and led me to you.”
He’d caught the magic words. Vatican intelligence. “The Entity is working with Cardinal Gallo?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Not a complete answer, and he could see that she was acquiring a case of lockjaw, a familiar malady with field operatives since the idea was to always get far more than you ever gave. “Any reason why you didn’t help me out before that idiot cut the towline?”
“And miss all the fun of watching you at work? That was worth the price of admission. But I did tell your boss you were in trouble.”
He shrugged. “What else could a guy ask for?”
“And so we’re clear, if you hadn’t shot up my engine, I would have saved you the trouble of being down here. As it was, all I had to work with was my phone.”
“Which I so conveniently returned.”
“Yes, you did. We need to leave.”
“We?”
“I prefer to work alone, but I’ve been told you’re now on the team whether I like it or not.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Deal with Cardinal Gallo.”