KATHLEEN FOLLOWED MATHEWS FROM THE HALL, OUT INTO the rain. They crossed Middle Temple Lane, turned left, and entered one of the many office buildings, this one with windows opening to the Pump Court. The little courtyard was named after its mechanisms, once used to fight fires. The reservoir was located deep beneath the flagstones, fed by one of London’s underground rivers. The ancient well remained but the pumps were long gone. On the court’s north side she saw the dark outline of a sundial, legendary thanks to its caption. Shadows we are and like shadows we depart.
All of the office doors inside the building were closed, the hallway quiet. Mathews led the way up the stairs to the fourth floor, his cane click-clacking off the wooden steps. The Inns of Court acquired their name because members once studied and lived on the grounds. Once, they were independent, self-governing legal colleges, a graduate called to the bar, becoming a barrister, able to appear in court as a client’s advocate.
But always under the discipline of the Inn.
The custom then was for clients to consult with their barristers not in chambers but under the porch of the Temple Church or at Westminster Hall, where the courts sat until the end of the 19th century. All of those time-honored practices were now gone, the many buildings within both the Middle and Inner Temple grounds converted to working offices. Only the upper floors remained residences, used collectively by the two Inns.
She climbed with Mathews to the top, where he opened the door to one of the apartments. No lights burned inside. A Regency sofa, chairs, and a glass-fronted curio cabinet loomed in the dark. Bare hooks were evident on the walls, where pictures should have hung. The smell of fresh paint was strong.
“They are remodeling,” he said.
Mathews closed the door and led her to a window on the far side. Below stood the Temple Church, smothered by the surrounding buildings, fronted by a wet courtyard.
“Much history has occurred down there, too,” Mathews said. “That church has existed, in one form or another, for nearly 1,000 years.”
She knew that a condition of James I’s royal land grant to the barristers was that the Temple Church must be perpetually maintained as a place of worship. The church itself had garnered an air of mystery and romance, giving rise to improbable legends, but she knew it only as the Inns’ private chapel.
“We Brits have always prided ourselves on the rule of law,” Mathews said. “The Inns were where legal practitioners learned the craft. What has this place been called? The noblest nursery of liberty and humanity in the kingdom. Aptly put.”
She agreed.
“Magna Carta was the start of our faith in the law,” Mathews noted. “What a momentous act, if you think about it. Barons demanding, and obtaining, from their sovereign thirty-seven concessions on royal power.”
“Most of which were never applied and eventually repealed,” she had to say.
“Quite right. Only three still remain in effect. But one overriding principle came from Magna Carta. No free man could be punished except through the law of the land. That singular concept changed the course of this nation.”
Below, in the courtyard, the rain quickened to a drizzle.
The side door leading into the church opened and a figure emerged. A man, buttoning his coat and moving away toward King’s Bench Walk and the gate that led out of the Temple grounds.
“That is Blake Antrim,” Mathews said. “He’s the lead agent on a CIA operation known as King’s Deception that is presently ongoing within our country.”
She watched as Antrim vanished beyond the pale of the wrought-iron lights.
“How close were you and he?” Mathews asked.
“We were only together a year. It was when I studied law at Oxford, then applied for membership here at Middle Temple.”
“And Antrim changed your career path?”
She shrugged. “Not directly. I was drifting toward law enforcement while we were together. I had already applied to SOCA when we separated.”
“You don’t impress me as a woman who would allow a man to affect her so profoundly. Everything I have read or been told about you says you are tough, smart, independent.”
“He was … difficult,” she said.
“Precisely what your supervisors say about you.”
“I try not to be.”
“I notice that you have little to no accent, and your diction and syntax are barely British.”
“My father, a Brit, died when I was eight. My mother was American. She never remarried and, though we lived here, she remained American.”
“Do you know an American named Cotton Malone?”
She shook her head.
“He’s a former intelligence agent. Highly regarded. Competent. Quite different from Antrim. Apparently, Antrim knows him, and made it possible for Malone to be here, in London. There is a young man, Ian Dunne, whom Malone returned here a few hours ago. Antrim has been searching for this boy.”
She had to say, “You do know that Blake and I did not part on the best of terms?”
“Yet he provided a glowing recommendation for your SOCA application.”
“That was before we split,” she said, offering nothing more.
“I chose you, Miss Richards, because of your past relationship with Antrim. If that was hostile, or nonexistent, then you are of no use to me. And as you painfully know, your usefulness to SOCA has already waned.”
“And you can fix that?”
He nodded. “If you can assist me with my problem.”
“I can re-ingratiate myself with Blake,” she said.
“That is what I wanted to hear. He must suspect nothing. At no point can you reveal any involvement with us.”
She nodded.