Crown of Serpents (20 page)

A hesitant smile appeared on Rae’s face. She said nothing.

“How about tonight? I was going to head back to Pennsylvania but I can stop in at Kendaia to pick you up or meet you somewhere?”

“You certainly are a persistent and bold man.” She paused. “Tell you what. Give me a shout on my cell. I have some more business up here in Rochester first and I don’t know how long I’ll be held up. That’s all I can promise.”

“Sounds great. Expect a call.”

Rae spun around, and walked off.

Same time. High Point Casino and Resort.

“Couldn’t pull the recon off,” mumbled Ray
The Mouth
Kantiio on the phone line from his Seneca Sunset Motel room.

“Why wasn’t I informed earlier?” demanded Alex Nero of his top field operative. He gritted his teeth. Kantiio had been slacking in his performance as of late and was skating on thin ice, even before taking care of the pit boss the other night. He had let his physique go and had developed a problem with staying awake. Not good signs for the role he played in the organization. “This was very important.”

“I know. I know,” said Kantiio. “I was tired. I drove nonstop to get there but the place was crawling with cops and fire trucks. They had the road blocked off. Besides, the swamp was on fire.”

“What? On fire? Who did this?”

“Got me. Newspaper said it was suspicious and they’re investigating. They always say that shit. I drove by there again this morning but still couldn’t get in.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Whaddya want me to do now?”

“I’m sending you down to Pennsylvania today. I want your sticky fingers on an old Revolutionary War rifle. There’s something hidden inside of it somewhere. Do not tamper with it, just get it and bring it back here to me. Do
not
screw this one up,” said Nero. “You’ve been warned.”

“I understand. Tell me where it’s located.”

15

Late Tuesday morning. U.S. Army Reserve 98th Division HQ, Rochester, N.Y.

J
UST A FIVE-MINUTE drive down Route 104 east from the Holiday Inn Express, Jake veered his Tahoe off the exit ramp and turned south on Goodman Street into a residential area. On his right, not a block away, was the entrance to the U.S. Army Reserve 98th Division Headquarters.

Stopping at the unmanned, wide-open main gate, it was obvious that security threats to this important training facility were on the lower end of the spectrum. He drove into the front parking lot and chose a spot next to a forest camouflaged open-back Humvee. Should the security threat level go up though, Jake noticed there were certainly enough precautionary measures to thwart an attack.

Bordering the front of the property was an eight-foot high, black steel security fence that acted as an obvious barrier to the road. Each of the thick fence posts was topped with three razor-sharp prongs to deter any climbing. It was both to decorate and to deter. He also noticed a row of concrete blocks lining the length of main building — a precaution he had seen many times in Iraq and Afghanistan against potential car bombs. Although the main two-story brick building seemed less than imposing, it was the brain trust of individuals inside that mattered the most.

Barely on time for his appointment and his stomach rumbling, Jake grabbed his gadget-filled briefcase, donned his black beret, and double-stepped it to the front doors. Glancing up at the heavily contrasted blue and orange entrance signage, he smiled when the unit’s nickname and logo caught his eye. The words
Iroquois Warriors
sat under the division’s logo. It displayed an orange-colored silhouette profile of an Indian head complete with five feathers in a top-knot. The feathers signified the original Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Jake nodded his approval.

Headquartered in Rochester, but having units located throughout New York, New Jersey and New England, the 3,600 Army Reserve soldiers of the 98th were traditionally tasked to train active-duty and reserve soldiers in war fighting skills and battlefield specialties. The 98th’s latest contribution was the training they gave to the Iraqi Regular Army and National Guard, thus expediting the return home of U.S. military units guarding the budding Middle Eastern democracy. It was up to Jake Tununda to capture that unit’s moment in history.

As an MHI field historian, he was not only slated to assess historical items for the institute’s collection, but he was also responsible for preserving and promoting the Army’s history — sometimes one soldier at a time. His assignment today was to orally record the unit’s after-action theatre reports as part of the institute’s Oral History Program. This material was then made available for public access in MHI’s general holdings, an invaluable national asset to educators and researchers. With holdings of 285,000 books, 1,000,000 photographs, and archival items exceeding 6.5 million, MHI was considered one of the most prestigious military educational and historical institutes in the world.

Jake kicked the morning off with three interviews of NCOs who had just rotated back home. He then moved onto the assistant division commander for support, a colonel who had served on a secret task force that hunted down and eliminated terrorist leaders in Iraq. Recording the conversation with his hand-held, voice-activated tape recorder, Jake obtained declassified insight into the operational activities of the most lethal task forces in the military.

Jake then concluded his assignment with a twenty-minute talk of his own experiences when deployed with the 10th. He had a classroom full of personnel eager to hear of his own exploits.

Finishing up his speech he used animated hand gestures and walked back and forth in front of his audience to maintain the attention on himself. He concluded with, “…And to sum things up, whatever your future contribution may be, know that we, as U.S. Army soldiers, have played a major role in American history. In a world that has never known sustainable peace, we have shaped this nation into the most advanced and safest nation on earth. From hand-to-hand combat with the American Indian—” He feigned a cough and got a chuckle. “...to modern-day conventional combined arms warfare. From revolutionary war against a monarchy, to a civil war against our brothers. To world wars, guerrilla wars, hot and cold wars, and now to the war on terrorism, we, the warriors of this nation, have confronted America’s enemies abroad so that our citizens may sleep peacefully at home. Thank you all. I appreciate your time today.”

The classroom of personnel stood up and applauded Major Tununda. Afterward, his government duties done for the day, he was treated to lunch at a local Chinese restaurant and engaged in some catch-up with several men and women he knew from previous tours of duty.

Returning back to the headquarters in the early afternoon with a full belly, Jake thought about calling Investigator Hart as he prepared to head back home to Pennsylvania. Instead, on a whim, he asked the colonel about using a vacant office to conduct some research on the Internet. His intuition told him he ought to do a little investigative inquiry into some of Thomas Boyd’s journal contents before he left. Maybe he would find something to help out Uncle Joe and Lizzie, he thought. But an image of Nero pointing the Glock at him appeared in his mind too. Maybe he would find something to get back at that asshole, despite explicit orders from his own boss not to do so.

The colonel allowed him access to an office of a captain who was out sick. He gave him a password to connect to their WIFI Internet account. Soon Jake was staring at a blank Google Search screen, but the problem was he couldn’t decide where to start digging. Boyd’s missing officer’s sword popped into his mind, or maybe he’d work on the Butler letter to Brant? Maybe the box belonged to Brant, he surmised. But that really had no relation to the White Deer Society and Atotarho’s lost crown, from what he could reason.

Instead, he decided to focus on the clues that were most relevant to stopping Nero in his tracks. The Freemason’s Cipher intrigued him the most for cracking it would reveal the directions to the Kendaia cave — Nero’s presumed goal.

In a Google Search window he typed the phrase
Freemason’s Cipher
and hit the search button. Thousands of hits came up. He clicked on the first link for a free encyclopedia site and started reading. He learned the Freemason’s Cipher simply substituted letters for symbols based on a grid of how the alphabet was presented. It was first used in the early 1700s for secret correspondence. A decoded example key showed the letters and how they were assigned to the grid.

There was the answer staring back at him. It was so easy, too easy. “Utterly ridiculous!” Jake said out loud. One Google Search, one hit, and at his fingertips was the answer to a 230 year-old riddle. He was thrilled but also completely disappointed at the same time. He expected more of a challenge, an investigative research, something. Hell, this was supposed to be a secret code from a secret fraternity. He should have known better, most of the Freemason’s inner workings were readily available all over the Internet — information that men once had their lives threatened over if revealed.

And then it occurred to him that if the key to Freemason’s Cipher was this easily accessible to the public then surely Nero was already one step ahead of him. With a renewed sense of urgency he opened Adobe Photoshop, the premier image manipulation software on the market, and immediately pulled up Boyd’s journal page from September 5, 1779. He scrolled down to the first torn cipher below the reference about Swetland’s Indian cave. It was time Boyd’s secret was revealed.

He used the text tool in Photoshop and started cross-referencing the cipher key against Boyd’s symbols. He keyed in each letter underneath its corresponding symbol and deciphered the message within minutes.

He excitedly read the message to himself. He then pulled up Boyd’s last journal page and scrolled down to where that page was torn off too — the second fragment. This would be the direction to the buried keg of loot.

Once decoded, he read this one out loud. “KEG LOCATION… EAST FROM KAHAGHSAW… BETWEEN TWO PARALLE… UNTIL THEY ALMOST… UNDER THREE L… PLACED EAST W… YOU WILL F…” The rest of the message was conveniently referenced by Boyd to be deposited in his most trusted Craft brother’s most trusted trade tool. What that tool was, Jake hadn’t a clue. But finding it would definitely stop Nero or anyone else from going any further. The White Deer Society’s mission would be intact and he could go on with his life.

“Most trusted Craft brother?” Jake asked himself. Easy. The Craft was a short name for Freemasonry and it being a fraternity they referred to themselves as Brothers. Just as he had suspected when he told his boss Ashland, he scrolled back to Boyd’s journal and found he had clearly named his Brother in an earlier Thursday, September 2nd excerpt as being
accompanied by my most trusted Sergeant Sean McTavish
. And later at the end of the September 12th excerpt again mentioned .
..my most trusted Craft Brother...

With a clear name of McTavish to go by, Jake entered another Google web search. “18,100 hits! Ah, shit,” he said with a sigh. “Wrong approach. Come on, think!”