Lost Empire (23 page)

“Agreed.”

“Start reaching out to your contacts—immigration officers, airport employees, anyone who will alert us when the Fargos appear.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll start with Antananarivo. Anything else?”

Garza stared hard at his underling. “You mean, are there going to be any repercussions for your failure?”

“Yes, sir.”

Garza chuckled humorlessly. “What are you expecting, Itzli? Something from the movies, perhaps? For me to pull out a pearl-handled revolver and shoot you? Or open a trapdoor beneath you?”

Rivera let himself smile.

Garza’s expression went cold. “For now, you’re still the best man for the job. The best I have, in fact. Now I want you to prove that my faith isn’t wasted. Ideally, that would involve Sam and Remi Fargo ending up dead.”

“Yes, Mr. President, thank you.”

“One more thing before you go: I want to make memorial arrangements.”

“For Nochtli,” Rivera said. “Yes, sir, I—”

“No, no, for the other one—Yaotl. It seems he and his wife died in a car accident this morning.”

Rivera felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “What?”

“Sad, isn’t it? He lost control and drove his car off a cliff. They were both killed instantly.”

“They had a child, a five-year-old.”

Garza pursed his lips as though weighing the question. “Oh, the girl. She’s fine. She was at school at the time. I suppose we’ll have to find her new home. You’ll see to that as well?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

 

 

THEIR FIRST LEAD INTO WINSTON BLAYLOCK’S LIFE PRIOR TO HIS arrival in Africa came in the form of an old friend of Selma’s, Julianne Severson, who’d taken over the Library of Congress’s Special Collections Division after Selma’s departure.

Severson met Sam and Remi at the Second Street researcher’s entrance of the Jefferson Building. The other two buildings that made up the library’s campus, the Adams and the Madison, sat a block to the east and the south respectively.

After shaking hands, Severson said, “It’s a pleasure having you, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo—”

“Sam and Remi,” said Remi.

“Wonderful. I’m Julianne. I’ve been a fan of yours for quite some time. You probably don’t realize this but your adventures spark a lot of interest in history, particularly among children.”

“Thank you, Julianne,” Sam replied.

She handed them a pair of laminated badges attached to neck lanyards. “Reader identification cards,” she explained with a shrug and a smile. “All part of the CSP, Collections Security Program. Ever since nine/eleven, the protocols are much more strict.”

“We understand.”

“If you’ll follow me . . .” They started walking. “I’ll be helping you personally while you’re here . . .”

“That’s kind of you,” Remi said, “but we don’t want to take up your time.”

“Nonsense. The library runs smoothly on its own; my assistant will handle anything that comes up.” Severson turned up a marble stairway, and Sam and Remi followed. “How much do you know about the library?”

“We’ve visited several times, but never as researchers, believe it or not,” Remi replied.

The tour alone was a breathtaking experience, Sam and Remi knew. The oldest federal institution in the country, the Library of Congress was founded in 1800 and located in the Capitol Building until 1814, when British troops lit the building on fire and destroyed the library’s core collection of three thousand volumes. A year later, Congress voted to reestablish the LOC and purchased Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of some six thousand books.

The library’s collection had since grown significantly: 33,000,000 books and printed materials, 3,000,000 recordings, 12,500,000 photographs, 5,300,000 maps, 6,000,000 pieces of sheet music, and 63,000,000 manuscripts—in all representing almost 500 languages—some 145,000,000 items altogether on 745 miles of bookshelves.

“It almost seems more a cathedral than a library,” Remi said. “The architecture is . . .”

“Awe-inspiring?” Severson finished.

“Exactly. The marble floors and columns, the arches, the vaulted ceilings, the artwork.”

Severson smiled. “I think Selma once referred to this place as ‘part cathedral, part museum, part gallery, with a little bit of library thrown in for good measure.’ I suspect grandeur was foremost on the Congress’s collective mind in 1815. After the British sacked everything, I imagine there was a ‘we’ll show them’ mentality during the reconstruction.”

“Bigger, better, more ostentatious. Architectural nose-thumbing, if you will,” Remi said.

Severson laughed.

“Are we going to the Main Reading Room?” Sam asked.

“No, we’re going to the second floor—Rare Book and Special Collections. The Main Room is hosting a tour for local elementary schools. It’s going to be a bit wild in there today.”

They reached a door numbered 239 and walked through. “If you want to take a seat at the worktable, I’ll man the workstation. While our catalogue has gotten more user-friendly over the years, it might be easier if I do the legwork.

“Okay, Selma e-mailed me some of the documents and gave me a little bit of background: Winston Lloyd Blaylock, wife named Ophelia, believed to be in the United States prior to March 1872. Anything else?”

“We have a rough physical description,” said Remi.

“Everything helps.”

“Six feet four inches tall, around two hundred fifty pounds probably.”

“Also, he carried a .44 caliber Henry rifle,” Sam added. “As I understand it, those weren’t very common.”

“Certainly not as common as Winchesters, Remingtons, or Spring-fields. The Henry wasn’t standard-issue during the Civil War, but many Union soldiers used their own money to buy one. The government did, however, issue them to scouts, raiding parties, and Special Forces units. The Confederate soldiers hated the Henry. It could hold sixteen rounds, and a trained soldier could fire off twenty-eight in a minute. Back then, that was as close to a hand-carried machine gun as you could get. Do we know if Blaylock was adept with it?”

“According to our source, he was a crack shot.”

Severson nodded. She started typing, and for the next five minutes there was silence save for the clacking of the keyboard’s keys and the murmur of “Fascinating” or “Interesting” from Severson. Finally she looked up.

“I have a service record here, a microfiche copy from the National Archives. Two sources, actually: the CMSR, or Compiled Military Service Record; and Publications M594 and M861, which are the ‘Service of Military Units in Volunteer Union Organizations’ for both the Union and the Confederacy.”

“Any mention of Blaylock?”

“I’ve got fifty-nine entries, in fact. Since Blaylock carried a Henry rifle, let’s start with the Union list first.” Severson started typing again. “The problem is, many of the abstract entries list only the first name, middle initial, and last name. I’ve got several W. Blaylocks, and two W. L. Blaylocks. The first one has an attachment, a medical record. Did your Blaylock have any wounds?”

“Not that we know of.”

Smiling, Severson tapped the screen, clearly excited by what she’d found. “Right leg amputated at field hospital during the battle of Antietam. Guess that rules him out, huh? Oh, sorry, that sounded morbid, didn’t it?”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “You and Selma share the same love of research. We’re used to it.”

“Okay, here’s the other entry. Well, this is interesting. This Blaylock was detached from the Union Army in September 1863, but there’s no reason listed. He wasn’t transferred or wounded. Just detached.”

“What does that mean?” Remi asked.

“I’m not sure. Let me see if I can find more than an abstract on him.”

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER Severson again looked up from her workstation. “Got it! A full service record. This might be your man: William Lynd Blaylock.”

“That’s close,” Sam said. “Conspicuously close.”

“His physical description is close as well: six feet four inches, two hundred ten pounds.”

“It wouldn’t be hard to gain thirty or forty pounds after leaving the army,” Remi observed.

Severson was frowning. “Parts of the record are missing. I’ve got early details of his training and unit assignments, promotions, campaigns he was involved in, evaluations . . . But after 1862 his assignments are all listed as ‘supplementary service.’”

“That sounds very James Bond-ish,” said Remi.

“You’re not far off,” Severson replied. “When it comes to Civil War-era records, the term ‘supplementary service’ is usually associated with guerrilla units—what we’d call Special Forces today.”

Sam said, “Like Loudoun Rangers, Quantrill’s Raiders, the Kansas Jayhawkers . . .”

Severson nodded. “Right. Combine that with this Blaylock’s mysterious detachment from the Union Army in 1863, and I think you’re looking at a soldier turned spy.”

 

 

THE AFTERNOON WORE ON as Severson sat at her workstation typing, jotting notes, and occasionally sharing her progress with Sam and Remi. At four P.M. Severson stopped and looked at her watch. “Oh, my, time flies. It’s almost closing time. There’s no reason you should have to sit here for this. Why don’t you go back to your hotel and have dinner? I’ll call you if I find anything. Correction:
When
I find something.”

“Please, Julianne, you go home as well,” Remi said. “I’m sure you have other plans.”

“Nope. My roommate will feed my cat, and I’ll grab dinner here.”

Sam said, “We can’t—”

“Are you kidding? This is like going to Disney World for me.”

“That sounds familiar,” Remi said with a smile. “Are you sure you and Selma aren’t related?”

“We’re part of a secret society: Librarians-in-Arms,” Severson replied. “You two go and let me do my thing. I’ll be in touch.”

 

 

AS THEY DID EVERY TIME they stayed or passed through Washington, Sam and Remi had booked the Robert Mills Suite at the Hotel Monaco. Twenty minutes after leaving the Library of Congress their taxi slowed before the Monaco’s red-awning-covered steps. The doorman had the door open a moment after the car stopped rolling. Sam and Remi got out.

The Monaco, once the U.S. General Post Office Building and now a registered National Historic Landmark, is located in Washington’s nineteenth-century neighborhood known as Penn Quarter, within walking distance of the Mall, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the U.S. Navy Memorial, and five-star restaurants enough to keep a gourmand enraptured for years.

“Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo,” the doorman said. He walked to the rear of the cab and collected their luggage from the trunk. “I’ll have your bags brought up immediately. If you’d like to step inside, I believe you’ll find the concierge is expecting you.”

 

 

TEN MINUTES LATER they were in their suite. Still fatigued from their African odyssey, they took an hour-long nap, then showered, dressed for dinner, and walked down to the street. They found the Monaco’s restaurant, the Poste Moderne Brasserie, around the corner on Eighth Street through a carriageway portal set into the building.

After a glance at the wine list and menu, they settled on a bottle of 2007 Domaine de la Quilla Muscadet—a zesty, crisp wine from the Loire Valley—arugula salad with basil, mint, and parmesan, and steamed bouchot mussels in white wine, saffron, mustard, and garlic confit. As was visiting the Monaco itself, the choice of fare was something of a tradition for the couple.

Remi took a sip of wine. She closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “I have a confession, Sam. I love adventure as much as the next gal, but there’s something to be said for good food and a warm bed with clean sheets.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

Remi’s iPhone chimed. She checked the screen, then set it aside. “Selma. She found another Aztec symbol in Blaylock’s journal.”

Before leaving for Washington, they’d asked her to focus her search on anything that remotely resembled the Miquiztli glyph. For Selma’s reference, Remi had downloaded from the Internet a high-resolution image of the twenty-four-ton Aztec Calendar, the Sun Stone, on display in Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology.

“That makes four symbols so far,” Remi said.

“Any discernible pattern? Any annotations near the symbols?”

“None. She’s says they’re isolated.”

“At some point you’re going to have to give me a primer on all things Aztec.”

“I’ll see what I can do. There aren’t many ancient peoples with a more complex history and culture. Even after a full semester of it, I felt like I’d barely scratched the surface. Every symbol has multiple meanings and every god multiple identities. It doesn’t help that most of the historical accounts are biased toward the Spanish.”