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After all, a good agent never knew what information might come in handy.
Chapter One
If his wife Dahlia hadn’t died, she might have called this a game of chess. It would have been one of the few instances in which she was wrong. Eric Ericsson hopped out of the black cab on the outskirts of London. He ducked into the pub that he’d told the driver was his destination. Once inside he ordered a beer, passed it off to an attractive brunette with a wink, then ducked into the toilet, emerging a few minutes later in a Manchester United jersey and knit cap. The disguise, such as it was, wouldn’t hide his height. At six and a half feet tall, he was usually the biggest guy in the room.
Less than five minutes after he’d entered the pub, he was walking out, tagging along with a crowd of English football fans who’d been watching the match. He jumped into another cab and gave the address of yet another pub.
King to D3.
He couldn’t hear Dahlia’s voice anymore. She’d been dead more than fifteen years, but when she’d been alive, she had been a master game player. Her chosen game had been finance, and she’d played it beautifully. He’d been by her side, the dutiful husband, happy to support her and help her keep the secrets that needed to be kept. More than that, he’d loved Dahlia, just as he’d loved Trina, the third member of their trinity marriage.
They’d married young—an arranged marriage, as was the way of the Masters’ Admiralty, the secret society formed in a desperate attempt to preserve the art, knowledge, and finances of Europe when the continent was being ravaged by the Black Plague. He’d become a knight of Kalmar at a time when he was still young enough to find that notion romantic.
By the time Eric reached his destination, he’d taken three different forms of transportation and changed his appearance four times. The precautions and circuitous route meant he arrived at the warehouse—his real destination—nearly five hours after he’d touched down at Heathrow. It had taken him far longer to get from the center of London to this former steel manufacturing warehouse than it had to fly from the Isle of Man to London. It had taken him two days to figure out how to get away from the Spartan Guard, his personal guards. More like personal pains in the ass.
King to D4.
When he’d first seen his wives, both of them intelligent and lovely, he’d been sure the three of them would lead a charmed existence. Then life happened. In the space of two years, both his wives had died and he’d been made admiral of Kalmar, a position he’d neither wanted nor been able to handle. Mercifully, the Masters’ Admiralty let him step down, and he’d given in to a self-destructive madness that lasted for years. He did things—crazy, dangerous, unforgivable things.
It hadn’t mattered. There’d been almost no one left who cared if he lived or died, no one except two unruly teenagers he’d befriended on a sheep farm in Galway, of all places. Josephine and her brother, Colum, had constantly found ways to keep him moving, keep him from stepping into the path of the bullets fired in his direction.
His plan had been to die young. Now, at forty-one, he’d lived too long to die young, but at the rate he’d been going, he certainly wouldn’t have lived to see fifty.
Then the admirals—those backstabbing fuckers—had done something unforgivable. They’d made him the fleet admiral.
Now, instead of grimly taking on security missions and ops no sane man would touch, he was in charge of over a thousand of Europe’s smartest, wealthiest, most talented, and most deadly people.
Yes, Dahlia would have called this a game of chess.
It was more like herding cats, except half the cats were assassins and spies, the other half were descendants of kings and emperors, and another half had PhDs.
Dammit, that was too many halves.
He walked the last mile, approaching with his hands held slightly away from his body so the camera with which they were no doubt watching him could see he was unarmed.
Maybe it was like chess, but in the version he was playing, the board wasn’t one smooth expanse of checkered squares, but a fractured landscape of a rainbow of colors. A playing field that had been ravaged by war.
The Masters’ Admiralty was at war, and he was their wartime general. The enemy was still unknown, but he had a group of particularly smart and unruly cats working on that.
Every night when he lay down, he closed his eyes and made lists of people and mission objectives. Since becoming fleet admiral, he’d started working every angle, investigating every clue, working to ferret out the weaknesses, to hopefully secure their defenses. Every time he thought he’d gotten ahead, that he was keeping his people safe, something went wrong. Kidnapping, torture, bombings. He’d fallen through a booby trap. That had been a fun Tuesday night.
If this had been a game, he would be losing. Badly.
Queen to D4.
Queen takes King.
Checkmate.
He shoved open the door of the warehouse. Despite its appearance, the door opened soundlessly.
Eric slid inside, keeping his back to the wall. There was a moment of darkness, and then a red light blinked on. It was enough illumination for him to see a second door, and the small antechamber where he stood. The light changed from red to green with the sound of a lock releasing.
Eric opened the inner door, stepping into a brightly lit, immaculate room. There was a bank of security monitors to his left, and a long workstation on his right. The countertop was stainless steel, the shelves above bearing boxes of surveillance equipment, medical supplies, and emergency rations. In the center of the room was a large square table with several computer terminals. A jacket was draped over the back of one of the chairs.
The wall across from the door had a massive one-way mirror in it. Beyond the glass was an interrogation room.
A half-naked man stood in the center of the room. He was bent at the waist, his wrists shackled together behind his back and drawn up toward the ceiling, forcing him to lean forward or dislocate his shoulders. He was swaying in exhaustion. Eric took a breath and forced himself to go cold. To feel nothing.
