The Intelligencer Read online

  Leaning back in his cushioned seat, the master toyed with the ends of his mustache. He had just successfully raided the queen’s armory on behalf of his employer. Which meant that his employer, however indirectly, was stealing from the queen. Well, he would steal from his employer. When his men were offloading the first few crates, he would conceal a dozen pistols beneath the cushions of his seat. Lie to the liars, cheat the cheaters.That was how the game was played.

  Back on Tower Wharf, the white-haired man stood watching the barge melt into the night. His hands, clenched into fists, were trembling. He did not know who owned the nameless barge, or where it was headed with its deadly cargo. All he knew was that no matter how much he wanted to, he could not stop it.

  Ned Smyth was Her Majesty’s Master of the Ordnance, keeper of the Royal Armory in the White Tower. The mysterious barge master had approached him six months earlier, explaining that he worked for one of the queen’s battle commanders in the Netherlands. The man had then produced a written request for a shipment of weapons. The letter appeared to be legitimate, and by the time Smyth realized he’d been duped—that the letter was forged and that the battle commander it named did not exist—the unauthorized shipment had already been delivered.

  At that point Smyth was trapped. He could not tell his queen what had happened because he had no way of proving that he had behaved with the best of intentions; the wily barge master had kept his forged letter. To make matters worse, the villainous dog had said that if Smyth refused to cooperate and hand over additional armaments upon demand, he would go straight to the queen and accuse Smyth of selling items from the Royal Armory for personal profit, and how could Smyth prove otherwise? The inventorywas missing.

  Smyth strode angrily along the wharf. Part of him yearned to confess and pray for forgiveness, but he knew it was too late. He had just committed his third act of treachery. Besides, he might be afraid of his disloyalty coming to light, but he was far more afraid of the barge master. No doubt that man would kill anyone who stood in his way.

  With that unpleasant thought, the queen’s trusted servant passed through the Tower’s west gate and continued on his way home. No one stopped him. No one asked to see his identification. All the guards had known Smyth for years and, believing him to be a man of integrity, never questioned him. Not even in the middle of the night.

  The barge master had chosen his reluctant accomplice well.

  GREENWICH—NIGHT

  Long after Thomas Phelippes had disappeared from sight, Marlowe remained on the wooden bench near Greenwich Palace. If Phelippes’s suspicions were true, and certain merchants with the Muscovy Company had discovered a secret sea route to the Orient, what were they trading in exchange for the gems? Definitely not English silver. There was little use for that in the Far East. They must be embezzling the company’s exports, he figured. Woolen cloth, in all likelihood. Or perhaps not—perhaps they were using another commodity, from a different source.

  Our weaponry remains far more advanced than what they have in the Orient, Marlowe thought to himself. Were Muscovy men facilitating massacres in remote corners of the world again?

  Marlowe was one of the few people in London who knew that several of the company’s directors had orchestrated the smuggling of surplus English armaments aboard their ships years before. Unbeknownst to Phelippes, Marlowe’s distant cousin Anthony was the general manager of the company’s London warehouse—had been for nearly two decades. A loyal functionary paid handsomely to keep his mouth shut, Anthony had once made the mistake of bragging about the fact that he was privy to a shocking company secret, a secret he swore he’d never reveal. Anthony’s mistake was a grave one, because Marlowe was never able to leave such a stone unturned, even if no payment was involved. From the moment he heard Anthony’s boast, that so-called secret was about as safe as a rabbit cornered by a hungry dog.

  Wanting to give his cousin time to forget their conversation, Marlowe had waited more than a month to do battle with Anthony’s steadfast, determined silence. Then, courtesy of a simple but elegant plan, it had only required one night, one clever whore, and a small armada of ale cups to loosen his smug cousin’s lips.

  That night was seven years ago, when Marlowe was still a student at Cambridge. He’d traveled to London for a weekend and had met Anthony at a popular Southwark tavern, asking questions about everythingbut the Muscovy Company. On that subject he feigned a lack of interest. Then, as soon as Anthony was drunk to the point of slurring, Marlowe pretended to leave but hid behind a thick wooden beam instead. He had paid a beautiful, quick-witted whore to sidle up to his cousin and seductively murmur a few carefully memorized lines, then follow them up with any questions she could think of.

  “I hear you dovery important work,” she had begun, batting her eyelashes.

  “Oh, I shouldn’t…” Anthony had stammered, blushing.

  “They say you work withpowerful men. Men who have the queen’s ear. Is it true?”

  “Well, I, uh…”

  She put her hand on his knee.

  “Yes. I…I do.”

  “Oh, how that fires my fancy! Is it dangerous?” she asked, sliding her hand up Anthony’s leg.

  “Truly. You would not…oh, my.”

  She caressed his inner thigh. “Hmm?”

  “You would not believe what I’m involved in.”

  “Oh, how I should love to know.” Leaning in closely to suck on Anthony’s earlobe, the whore glanced at Marlowe, who nodded, pleased.

  Anthony—now with a hand unfastening the front of his breeches—seemed pleased, too. “You could say that, well, that…” He paused for a moment, searching for the right words. Looking down, they came to him. “You could say I have held the fates of entire cities inmy hands.”

  The whore gasped dramatically, then whispered, “I wonder if you’re as good with them as I?” She tugged at the seeming deadweight of one of his arms, placing his hand on her breasts.

  He groped clumsily, trying to pinch her.

  “Mmm…tell me,” she sighed, feigning near ecstatic pleasure. “Tell me everything.”

  Belching, Anthony shook his head. “I would like to, but I cannot. You see, I—”

  “Oh, but you must! Powerful men, men who face danger—oh, how they make my heart pound! My knees tremble!” With a purr, she climbed onto Anthony’s lap, wrapped her legs around his waist, and demonstrated exactly how she might tremble.

  “Forgive me, but—”

  “If I thought you were a man like that, a fearless, dangerous man, why, I wouldn’t charge you a penny to…”

  Ah, the coup de grâce.In addition to being tight-lipped, Anthony was incredibly tightfisted.No doubt that will push him over the edge.

  Marlowe’s hunch proved correct. Anthony told the whore everything he knew about the Muscovy Company’s secret operation that night, and she, delighted to earn silver with her clothes on for once, repeated it all back to Marlowe as soon as Anthony fell to snoring.

  For decades, she reported, the company had secretly supplied Ivan, then czar of Russia, with the weapons he had used for his terrible massacres.

  “Who was involved?” Marlowe had asked.

  She mentioned a wealthy merchant and a prominent government official, both of whom had been dead for years. Marlowe did not blink. But when she named the third man, a man who was still alive, his mouth fell open. It was Francis Walsingham, his admired mentor. Having read eyewitness accounts of Ivan’s atrocities, said to have been unprecedented in their scope and brutality, Marlowe shook his head with disgust.

  According to Anthony’s drunken ramblings, supplying Ivan with weapons was the only way to secure the company’s monopoly on trade with Russia, a monopoly that was considered too valuable to lose. And England had a vast supply of surplus armaments, so why not? Understandably the leaders of the Baltic States had been furious with Queen Elizabeth for arming their bloodthirsty neighbor. She denied the accusation, but to mollify her allies had issued a specific proclam
ation forbidding the trade. The shipments had continued without interruption, however, and in spite of a few well-placed questions, Anthony had never determined whether the queen had been secretly authorizing them all along.

  Marlowe had cursed loudly as he walked back to his inn that night. Vicious murders and the mass slaughtering of innocents might draw crowds to the stage, but he did not wish to help create them in real life. Disillusioned, he’d considered leaving Walsingham’s employ. Ultimately, though, he’d resolved to stay, planning to carry out assignments in his own way, doing what he thought was right. It was a delicate balance to maintain—satisfying his handlers while operating according to his own set of principles—but somehow, he was managing it. All for a queen and a country he consciously romanticized. It was senseless, he knew, and dangerous. Doomed to an unpleasant end. But so was life.

  Now today, certain Muscovy men might have yet another illicit scheme under way. But who? There were dozens of possibilities, Marlowe realized. It was likely that most, if not all, of the wealthiest and most powerful men in London were involved with the company, either as shareholders or directors. If a select few had, indeed, revived the illicit weapons trade to acquire Oriental goods, how to identify them? All the players in the old scheme were dead.

  Marlowe knew he had no hope of tricking information out of his cousin again. Seven years had passed, but Anthony still scowled every time he saw Marlowe’s face, sometimes even grabbed the hilt of his sword.Perhaps if I hadn’t taunted him the next morning, reminding him in exquisite detail precisely how he’d been so thoroughly bested…

  It then occurred to Marlowe that Essex, a company shareholder himself, could be involved. That Phelippes might have hired him to see how effectively Essex and his fellow conspirators were concealing their scheme.

  He was mulling over that possibility when several faint shouts cut through the quiet evening air. Curious, he stood and headed toward the noise, moving quickly but quietly beneath the thick tree cover.

  It was coming from the uppermost floor of the palace’s south wall. The stables would give him a perfect line of sight into the room in question, but how to scale the tall smooth walls? He noticed one small window just beneath the stable’s rooftop. After entering the building, he slipped past the sleeping stable boy and positioned a ladder beneath the window. Then he climbed up, shimmied out the window, and hoisted himself onto the roof.

  Immediately his eyes shot upward to see two figures silhouetted in a window nestled in a tower at the peak of the south wall. A man and a woman. Both appeared to be quite tall—the man was broad and impressively built, the woman thin and bent, her skirts voluminous. Her thick, snakelike ringlets whirled about as she slapped the man’s face and pummeled his chest. He stormed out. “Robert! Robert, come back here at once!” she cried.

  With a start, Marlowe realized who they were. Elizabeth and Essex. The queen and her handsome young paramour. She disappeared from Marlowe’s line of sight for a moment, but he remained riveted to the window. Suddenly there was a flash of silver, and then another. The muslin curtain floated to the ground in tatters, and Marlowe saw the queen standing before the window clutching a sword, her jewel-encrusted collar glittering in the moonlight.

  Elizabeth’s pale face was twisted with rage. Her dark red wig was slightly askew, revealing some of the thin gray hair beneath. Marlowe retrieved his trick coin for the second time that day and held its face to the light. “You’re more stately on your money than you are in your bedchamber, aren’t you, my queen?”

  Turning his gaze to the window once more, he saw that her features had settled. The queen appeared calm. Only the dark streaks in her thick alabaster makeup revealed the previous moment’s anguish. She disappeared again, and a moment later, sweet musical strains floated out from her rooms.

  A cluster of musicians must be standing just out of sight, Marlowe thought, watching a figure sashay to the delicate lute music. The movements alternated between a pleasing fluidity and an almost violent sharpness. The figure’s face flashed by the window. It was the queen, and she was dancing alone.

  Marlowe looked down at his feet and surveyed the gently sloping roof of the stables. He was standing on its peak. Extending his arms, puffing out his chest, and cocking his head slightly, he began to move. Navigating the awkward surface with deft footwork, he was managing a precarious, though still graceful, pavane in time with his sovereign.

  Suddenly Essex burst back into the room, grabbed the queen by her shoulders, and kissed her roughly.

  “Excuse me, but you may not cut in,” Marlowe said softly, with mock severity.

  Elizabeth pushed Essex away and pointed her finger at the door. After her crestfallen courtier slunk out, she stood stock-still. The musicians had paused.

  Down below on the stable roof, Marlowe held out his arm and bowed. “Shall we?” he asked.

  Up above, the queen began to move briskly as the music started up again, unknowingly joining Marlowe in a lively galliard.

  Pushing through Greenwich Palace’s heavy front doors, Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, dashed down the water steps to his barge and shook his men awake.

  Well aware of their employer’s mercurial nature and volatile relationship with the queen, they had wisely chosen to sleep on the boat instead of in the palace. Groggily they stumbled to their feet, took their positions, and began to row.

  Too upset to sit, Essex paced the length of his barge. “Damn her false promises!” he muttered. “A plague on Cecil, a plague on that pathetic creature!”

  Passing the sleeping town of Deptford, Essex saw another barge—roughly the same size as his own—pulling up to a small abandoned dock. A number of large wooden crates were stacked on board. Was it a wealthy Londoner fleeing the recent outbreak of plague? Essex wondered. Transporting his most valuable possessions to a country home for the summer? Noticing that the barge was unnamed, he also saw that the oarsmen were not dressed in the livery of anyone he knew. In fact, they were not in livery at all. Their clothing was ordinary and mismatched. Essex narrowed his eyes. Didn’t everyone capable of purchasing such a vessel wish the world to know?How very odd.

  With Deptford out of sight, Essex’s thoughts returned to the queen and to the praise she’d showered upon his enemy that evening. Once again she had refused to name him secretary of state, suggesting he had yet to prove himself more capable than Robert Cecil. Why couldn’t she see that a man of action—a man who’d fought the enemy on the battlefield—was far more suited to the position than a faint-hearted penman?

  Essex resumed his pacing and cursing.

  Twenty minutes later, he was standing in the great hall of his London mansion, facing a wooden board with a painting tacked upon it. Gripping the tip of a knife, he drew it over his shoulder and threw. Hard. The handle smacked up against the battered image, then clattered to the floor.

  Crookbacked whoreson! May God rot his soul!

  Breathing deeply, he tried again. The second knife skimmed Robert Cecil’s ear, quivering slightly after embedding itself in the board.

  Not good enough. For several minutes, Essex stared at those hateful eyes, at the dark half-moons etched beneath.

  Then he threw the third knife. Perfect.Soon.

  7

  NEWYORKCITY—8:33P.M., THE PRESENT DAY

  Kate was aiming for his head. He drew closer. She blocked his two quick jabs, pivoted on the ball of her left foot, and with her right knee up in the air, snapped her foot forward.

  Just before contact, Slade grabbed her ankle and, in spite of the sweaty slickness, held it firmly in the air. “Eyes, Kate. What do I always tell you?”

  “Peripheral vision, disguise my intent. I remember, boss, it’s just that I’m about to collapse.”

  “Excuses like that won’t save your life.”

  “Right. May I have my leg back please?”

  “Until next time.”

  Back on two feet, Kate threw off her gloves and smoothed back her hair, pulling it i
nto a ponytail. “You know, if you weren’t my revered elder, the legend of the spook world, and, yes, my personal hero…” She took a step toward him. “Well, if all that weren’t the case, I’d tell you that one of these days, I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  Slade flashed a grin. “I’m waiting.” Turning and moving to the edge of the sparring ring, he slid into his Nike flip-flops, bent to retrieve his gym bag, and added, “I’ve been waiting for a while.”

  Kate had been studying martial arts since she was a teenager and had spent years teaching kickboxing to make extra money during college and grad school, but her ability was still no match for Slade’s. Glaring at the well-muscledV -shaped back outlined by his formfitting blue T-shirt, she said, “Well, the truth is, I’ve been holding back, you know, to spare your ego for a while, but—”

  “You’re too kind.” Slade reached into his gym bag, withdrew a bottle of water, and handed it over. Kate took a drink and grabbed her things, and they strolled from the gym into the cool evening air.

  “You fly to London for Medina’s case…tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, probably the last flight out,” Kate said. “In the morning I’m meeting a source to plan my encounter with de Tolomei, then—”

  “That Sotheby’s guy?”

  “Right. Later in the afternoon, I’m briefing Medina on the progress I’ve made up to that point.”

  “You feel okay with this juggling? If you weren’t so well matched for both assignments…”

  “Hey, it ain’t juggling if you only got two balls in the air.”

  Slade smiled, then looked pointedly at the injury on Kate’s neck. “Stay in better touch this time, all right? You shouldn’t have gone in alone last night. If I’d known—”

  “Yes, sir. Will do, sir,” she responded playfully.

  Slade stopped to face her. “I’m serious, Kate. You were almost killed.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  “You say that every time.”

  “If it weren’t true, there wouldn’t be an every time,” Kate teased.