Page 16 of The Last Kingdom

“Oh, yeah. We were ordered never to use you on any operation. Period. Persona non grata. No exceptions. Never. Ever.”

He held his arms out. “Yet here I am.”

“Abso-friggin’-lutely.”

“You sure you want to get this stink on you?” he asked.

“If I wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”

Fair enough. “That blood trail was for my benefit?”

“Since you’d already shot him, it seemed like a good way to get you here.”

“This was a freebie. Just a favor for a friend. Nothing more.”

Koger had a reputation as a tough ball of wax, with the instincts of a riverboat gambler. Cunning, shrewd, daring. A quintessential hands-on man of action in an agency loaded with desk jockeys. Cotton knew how things worked. The president issued an order, or expressed a concern, and it reverberated through the government like thunder. Directors summoned division chiefs, who emailed station chiefs, who called case officers, and so on until all of them had mobilized to deal with something the president had long forgotten. Ironically, any intelligence agency’s greatest success came from simply being straightforward. Everything depended on one thing. People talking. Or texting. Emailing. Posting on social media. Doing anything where information could be ascertained. But, as with the Magellan Billet, he knew that the reckless, weak-kneed, naive, or plodding rarely survived long in the CIA. To Cotton’s knowledge, no one who ever worked with Koger ever doubted his loyalty or ability. But that didn’t mean they’d enjoyed the experience. Despite the good-ol’-boy rhetoric, this guy was a stern taskmaster who demanded your all.

“My favor is done,” he said. “I’m finished.”

“How’d you like to stick a corn cob up Warner Fox’s ass?”

He stared into brown eyes that had suddenly turned to hard points of light. “What do you have on him?”

“Enough to get Stephanie Nelle out of trouble and back on the job.”

The last time he spoke with Danny Daniels, the ex-president had told him that Stephanie had frozen him out from helping. She wanted to deal with her problems herself, without the help of her boyfriend. Daniels had not liked the rebuke, but he’d respected her wishes. She was facing a disciplinary board and almost certain termination. All bullshit and horribly unfair. But both Cotton and Stephanie had crossed the new president in Poland. Cotton paid the price by being ostracized. She would be fired and her intelligence agency, the Magellan Billet, the one she’d created and nurtured for so long, would be disbanded. So, yes, he’d love to stick a corn cob where the sun didn’t shine.

“What do you have?”

“It comes with a price.”

“Which is?”

“What do you know about a man named Prince Stefan von Bayern?”

“Not a damn thing. Why is he important?”

“He wants to cause the United States of America a lot of trouble.”

Chapter 9

DERRICK STUDIED EVERY DETAIL OF COTTON MALONE. THE GUYlooked great. Tall, broad-shouldered, the sandy-blond hair lacking even a hint of gray. Malone had to be pushing fifty, now retired out of the Justice Department for a number of years. But from what he’d seen on the ChiemseeMaloney had not lost his edge. He’d jumped right in, literally, and protected Luke.

Like a good agent should.

“Bavaria has been around since the twelfth century,” he said to Malone. “Ruled by Wittelsbach dukes. Officially, the place became a kingdom in 1806, thanks to Napoleon. But, after Waterloo, it melded into the newly formed German Empire. That wasn’t a popular move. Bavaria was Catholic, so its people resented being ruled by mostly Protestant Prussia. There were separatist movements, even a few rebellions, but it stayed part of the empire. Today, landwise, it’s one-fifth of Germany. The largest state. Seventy thousand square kilometers. Eleven million inhabitants. A place of few natural resources. A former agricultural and agrarian society that has modernized into an industrialized state. Cars, chemicals, electricity, air and space, high-tech. It’s all there.”

“You’re quite the local historian,” Malone said.

“Let’s just say this place, at the moment, has my undivided attention.”

“Officially?”

He shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Malone shrugged in turn. “Never meant much to me.”

“Good to hear. The Wittelsbach monarchy was abolished after World War I. November 12, 1918. That’s the magic day. Ludwig III signed the Anif Declaration, which released Bavarian civil and military officers from their oaths of allegiance and the kingdom ended. Most people considered that an abdication. But, and this is important, nobody in the House of Wittelsbach has ever formally renounced the throne.”

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