Duncan beamed, then hugged King. “Congratulations! That’s fantastic! Does Fiona know yet?”
Fiona, King’s foster daughter, was attending a boarding school nearby at Brewster Academy, where she stayed along with three rotating Endgame bodyguards.
“No, it just happened an hour ago,” King said.
“You popped the question here at HQ? How romantic, Jack.” Duncan raised a disapproving eyebrow.
“I didn’t want to wait. Who knows when Asya and I will have to head out again on another false lead.” King frowned.
Duncan placed his hand gently on his friend’s shoulder. He knew that King was worried for the safety of his missing parents. The Siglers—no, the Machtchenkos, Duncan reminded himself. Their true name had been revealed once King had learned his parents were former Russian spies. They had been missing for several months now. Endgame assumed that Alexander Diotrephes, their former ally and now a possible enemy, held King’s parents. But they had found no proof, and had seen no sign of Peter and Lynn Machtchenko. Nor had they been able to find Alexander, a man better known as the historical Hercules, who, although immortal, was no bastard child of Zeus. For months, King and his sister Asya had been following every lead, but they kept coming up empty.
“You’ll find them. I know you will,” Duncan said. Then, trying to bring the conversation back to the upbeat, he asked, “So when is the happy date?”
King looked up and grinned again.
“Actually, we—”
“I have hit ‘Herculean Society’ Jackpot!” Asya interrupted. She burst into the room, a living projectile fired from the hallway beyond. She was small and lithe, with long dark hair. Stunning to look at, but often deadly serious. She moved to a computer station and brought up an e-mail account.
Initially given the callsign: Hammer, by Queen, as both a nod to the woman’s Soviet heritage and standing her own in a knock-down drag-out fight with Queen when the women first met in Norway, Asya’s callsign was later changed by Deep Blue to a permanent Pawn status. Far from an insulting callsign, the designation was used for temporary team members in the field, but in this instance, it was an honor for Asya — a woman with only basic Russian infantry training — to be included as a long-term member of Chess Team, which was comprised of former Delta soldiers. Asya had made no complaints about the new callsign.
Now the small woman brought up a digital image of a building. “It is here,” she said.
“What are we looking at?” Deep Blue asked. The photo showed the front of a European building with Roman style columns. A statue stood in front. In the foreground was a plaza full of umbrella-covered tables. It could have been any of a number of similar plazas all over Europe, where tourists and locals alike drank beer, ate pizza and ogled passing strangers.
King leaned closer to the image, and brushed his hand through his shaggy dark hair. “Looks like a library.”
Asya turned to the men. “It is. National Library of Malta, in Valletta.”
The woman turned back to the computer and brought up a second digital image. This one showed a drawing of the building, before the installation of the statue in front of it.
“1812. The library was moved to this building from a different location. Notice the circular arch in front of the entrance.”
Both men had. A huge stone circular arch had been erected before the columns, making the two inner columns on either side of the door form the stylized letter H of the Herculean Society, a group of secretive people dedicated to helping Alexander Diotrephes hide certain historical truths and artifacts. King and Pawn had been searching for Society facilities for months, often finding empty office spaces, and in two instances discovering just recently vacated premises. They seemed to always be two steps behind, in their search for Alexander.
Pawn turned to the men and smiled widely. On the normally dour woman’s face, the smile held a sinister look. “The arch was taken down after just two years. This was only image I could find with it. Queen Victoria statue was placed in the exact same location in 1891, covering up any evidence that the arch had ever even been there. If the Society people are not in the library…” She let the thought hang in the air.
“They might be under it,” King finished for her. “Let’s go.” King turned and strode out of the room. Deep Blue watched him go. As Pawn neared the door, following her brother, he called out to her.
“Asya.”
The woman turned.
“Take care of him. And get him to tell you the good news.”
The woman nodded, then hurried after King. Duncan could hear her Russian-accented voice in the hallway as she asked, “What is good news? Blue says you have some.”
Duncan smiled. He hoped the lead in Malta would finally go somewhere. Then he turned back to the ergo chair he liked best, a swiveling thing that resembled a dental patient chair, with a split keyboard on either side, touch screen controllers that swung in front of the user and comfortable memory foam seating from head to toe.
He activated his radio for the Chess Team members in North Korea and immediately heard rapid gunfire. His good mood was crushed as his heart began to race.
FIVE
“You little shit!”
Queen looked down at her left hip and saw her blood starting to soak through the artificial fabric of the ghillie suit. She looked back up incredulously at the shaking North Korean soldier. “You fucking shot me.”
The wound was shallow — just a nick for Queen, who had taken far worse injuries, but the fact that the soldier had unintentionally loosed six rounds in her direction, made her furious. Most of the bullets had gone into the soil around her, but the one had creased her hip.
The soldiers were shouting at each other now in a heated argument, and Queen quickly determined that no one was in charge. She could probably kill all five with only her hands before they got off another shot, but amateurs were often unpredictable. It made them dangerous. So she hesitated. Plus, she knew Rook had something special in store for them.
Instead of moving toward the men, she took a step backward.
The men ceased arguing and they all trained their weapons more carefully at her. Behind her, she could hear Bishop breathing slowly and regularly.
“Geulaeseo?” she asked in Korean, based on Knight’s radio advice. So? What now?
“Son deul-eo!” the soldier that shot her screamed.
“Hands up,” Knight translated in her ear.
Queen squinted at the man.
“Quee-eeen,” Rook implored her from behind.
“SON DEUL-EO!”
Queen spat on the ground and stared at the man.
“Bil-eo meog-eul!” the man shouted and stepped forward. As he did so, his ankle pushed against a cleverly concealed tripwire Rook had placed, attached to a modified trigger device. The ground in front of the soldier exploded upward with an ear-shattering boom, the C4 explosive in the M18A1 Claymore mine spraying one-eighth inch diameter steel balls directionally through all five North Korean soldiers, effectively turning the young men into little more than perforated meat bags. The five soldiers were dead as their shattered remains collapsed on the grassy hillside with wet thumps. Queen and the others, on the far side of the device, were blown backward by the blast’s pressure wave. They were spared from the hail of projectiles because they launched in just one direction — toward the enemy.
“Queen, what’s going on?” Deep Blue’s voice came over the radio.
“Communication difficulties. These guys can’t read English.” Queen stood and brushed dirt off her face.
“Explain,” Deep Blue’s voice came back, frustrated.