Page 15 of The Last Kingdom

The CIA especially hated the Magellan Billet since, when Danny Daniels had been president, the Billet was his go-to agency. He routinely relied on both it and Stephanie Nelle to get the job done. Sure, that had generated results. But also animosity. Daniels never cared. He was the boss and everybody who worked for him knew that if you crossed him, there’d be consequences. Two CIA directors had been fired, along with one director of national intelligence. But with the end of the Daniels administration, and the beginning of the Warner Fox presidency, things had changed. The old went out and the new came in. And from what he’d been told, the new was not all that impressive. A few months back he’d witnessed firsthand in Poland the level of that incompetence. Now here he was, on a frozen night in southern Germany, once again caught in the crosshairs of something strange.

They entered a foyer where other corridors began. Its vaulted ceiling showed representations from the life of St. Thomas. Above the entrance to an inner corridor he caught the inscription in stone.Faciendi lures libros nullus est finis. From the Bible, describing a library.Of the making of books there is no end.

How true.

A winding staircase led up and they climbed in silence. Wood-paneled walls exuded an oily, satiny glow. Framed art hung in rows, each with its own portrait light. Down a long corridor they entered a brightly lit hall of graceful proportions. Like a church without pews and aisles. A door at the far end opened and a man paraded into the room. Tall, with sparse ash-blond hair and candid brown eyes topped by bushy, almost amused, eyebrows. His midsection toted a bit of a beer gut and he walked with a shifting gait, his shoulders rising and dipping with each step. He flashed a cheeky smile and held out both arms in a mock welcome embrace.

“Harold Earl ‘Cotton’ Maloney in the flesh.”

He heard theyadded to his last name, something this annoyance had once loved to do.

“Derrick ‘No Middle Name’ Koger. It’s been a while.”

He knew the story. Supposedly Koger’s parents were so poor they couldn’t afford him a middle name.

Koger was career CIA. Last Cotton heard he’d risen to some sort of special operations manager. Every enterprising CIA field officer aspired to a desk at Langley, but that reward was tied to a clock. Don’t rise fast enough and the train simply passes you by. Koger was at least twenty years into his career, definitely into overtime on the clock. Their paths had crossed several times back when he was an active agent. Some good. Others not so much. All part of those turf wars that came with the territory in his former profession.

Koger pointed. “When Luke Daniels said he was bringing you in, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Here we’ll have a certified legend in our midst. The storied Cotton Maloney. Captain America himself, in the flesh. Damn. Watchin’ you on that ferry was like somethin’ right out of a Marvel comic.”

He heard the sarcasm the false praise carried. But it came with a smile and sufficient amusement to make the insult acceptable. That was Koger’s style. Just enough bullshit to keep his listener off guard. Thankfully, he’d worn his lizard skin today so a little ribbing was not a problem. Koger dismissed the other two men with a jerk of his head.

They left the hall.

“Who did I shoot?” he asked Koger.

“The man I had stationed on the lake, who I sent to chase you my way. Thankfully, it was a through-and-through in the shoulder. Clean wound. Bled like hell, though. He’s on his way to a military hospital.”

“He was shooting at me.”

“I told him to miss.”

Nothing about what he was hearing sounded good. “You were watching the whole thing?”

“I was watching Luke’s progress, along with that other boat shootin’ at him. A boat that wasn’t supposed to be there. I was just about to order my man to intervene when, lo and behold, here you came with that ferry. Really imaginative. Did you read that in a book? I hear you sell books now. I never figured you for a shop owner.”

“I never figured you to still be with the company.”

What he left out were the wordsand in the field. A lot of people with Koger’s longevity were retired and out writing revelation books about excess and deceit or appearing on cable news as a talking head. Yet this long, tall glass of water was still on the job.

“I’m a boots-on-the-ground kinda guy,” Koger said. “Always have been.”

He let that bullshit pass. “Luke is working a CIA operation?”

Koger nodded. “Stephanie Nelle is in some deep crap. Which you know all about. Word is she’s gone, along with the Billet, but Fox is lettin’ her dangle. Now, as I’m sure you realize, I’m not the biggest fan of the Justice Department being involved in international operations, but they’re some good folks over there. So we decided to give a few a trial run during this sad time of…indecision. Luke seemed a good fit for us.”

A detail Frat Boy had kept to himself. Cotton nearly smiled. The younger man was learning even faster than he’d imagined.

“Luke is on temporary loan to me, through the esteemed attorney general himself,” Koger said.

He caught the message. “You don’t approve?”

“Any stupider and we’d have to water him twice a week.”

Colloquial, as always. “I assume you’re not a fan of our new president either?”

“No comment on that one.”

He smiled. “You heard about me and Fox?”

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