Page 14 of The Last Kingdom

Cotton approached the double oak-paneled doors that stood between two pillars and opened them. The interior was high-vaulted, supported by more pillars bathed in a solemn amber glow. The walls were artistically chiseled and beneath the choir stood a flower-adorned sarcophagus. A placard noted in German that it held the first abbess who’d ruled the convent over a thousand years ago.

His gaze raked the stone floor searching for more blood.

He spotted a small splotch near where an arched entrance led back behind the main altar. The space beyond was dark with no lights burning. He found his phone and used it as a flashlight, spotting another smudge on the tile floor.

He stopped.

The blood ended.

At a door.

He shook his head.

This just kept getting better and better.

He turned the iron latch and opened the heavy slab. Steps led down. He slowly descended, the wooden risers creaking from his weight. At the bottom he used his phone to reveal a tunnel, maybe four feet wide and not quite six feet high. A few feet away from the bottom of the stairs he spotted another splotch.

Everyone had their kryptonite.

His was enclosed spaces.

Something about being encased with no way to escape just rattled his nerves. A weakness. Definitely.

One he despised acknowledging.

But he sucked it up.

And walked ahead.

Chapter 8

COTTON KEPT MOVING DOWN THE DRY FLOOR OF PACKED EARTH.

The tunnel stretched in a straight line about fifty yards and the farther he ventured the more uncomfortable he became. The air hung clammy and close, with an almost textured feel pressing against him. The darkness ahead extended beyond the reach of the phone’s light. But the eventual sight of a metal ladder brought some relief.

He hustled toward it and climbed.

A wooden panel at the top hinged upward. He grabbed a metal ring and pushed. The warped wood groaned and the rusty metal hinges screamed their resistance. He climbed up through the scuttle hole and emerged inside a small, lit room barren of furniture. A door on the opposite wall opened. Two men entered. Middle-aged. Plain-faced. Wearing smiles of contempt. Both were armed.

“Somebody would like to speak with you,” one of them said in perfect English, with not a hint of an accent anywhere.

“And you are?” he asked.

“Come with us,” the other said, gesturing with the gun he held.

“You do know that I have little to nothing to do with any of this,” he said.

“Except you just shot one of ours.”

And there was that.

He was led through a series of twisting corridors. From the look and decor he assumed he was inside the convent. On the walk he studied his two minders, trying to decide just who exactly wanted to talk to him. Couldn’t be military intelligence. These guys were too old. The military liked the young and lean with thirty-inch waists. FBI? A bit out of their jurisdiction, but a possibility as the bureau maintained several European offices. No. The more likely candidate was the perennial pain in the ass.

CIA.

During Cotton’s time at the Magellan Billet there’d been one turf war after another with Langley. Everybody liked to proclaim cooperation against the common enemy, but America possessed far too many intelligence agencies and everybody wanted to be a hero. The whole system ran on mutual mistrust, the military and civilian intelligence services never close, the whole thing designed to keep anyone from becoming either too complacent or too powerful. The problem wasn’t who was in charge. It was thateverybodyconsidered themselves in charge.

Which bred little goodwill.