The God Machine (25 page)

They headed back toward the stairway. Although it was blocked by a low metal gate, Koster straddled it easily and started upstairs.

“Just a minute. You, there.”

A small corpulent black man with a bald head and mustache bustled toward them. He was wearing a lavender polo shirt emblazoned with the seal of the Carpenters' Company—three compasses and a square. “Where do you think you're going?”

His badge read:
Redding, Arnold
.

“Upstairs. To the Library,” Koster said.

“Upstairs is off limits.”

“Someone from my office called yesterday. They gave me permission. If you check your files, I'm sure you'll notice my name. Koster. Joseph Koster.”

The guard raised his eyebrow. “This ain't no club, mister. And there ain't no guest list tonight.”

“Just check your files. We're only going up for a minute.”

“Like I said, no one told me nothin' about no Joseph Koster.”

“Look,” Koster said, drawing himself up to his full height. He tried to look bold and commanding. He stared down with an imperious eye. “Mr. Arnold—”

“That's Redding.”

“Mr. Redding. Someone called yesterday.”

“Yeah, you said that. And I said no one goes nowhere without no permission.”

“I'm Savita Sajan.” Sajan stepped between the two men. “We don't want to cause any trouble, Mr. Redding. What my friend here is—”

“Savita Sajan?” The guard held out his hand. “Well, why didn't you say so? Sure. The boss got
your
message. It's a real pleasure to meet you. I read all about you in
People.”

“I hated those pictures. I think they made me look fat. Don't you?”

The guard chuckled. He patted his belly. “Are you kidding?” He pulled out a keychain, and unlocked the gate at the foot of the stairs. “Let me know if there's anything else I can do, Ms. Sajan.” Then he gave Koster a wink, turned and waddled away.

Koster stood there, staring down at Sajan.

“What?” she said.

“You called Nick last night, didn't you?”

She just stood there and smiled.

“Didn't you?” he persisted.

“We needed permission to scope out the place. I didn't know you were planning to call McKenzie and Voight. What's the big deal?”

“Before, when I told you about my arrangements, you didn't say anything.”

“I learned long ago that when you're part of a team,
it's important to make everyone feel like they're… making an impact, contributing.”

“Especially men.”

Sajan laughed. “Yes. Especially men.”

The sight of her laughing completely undid him. He had planned a rejoinder about the value of honesty, but he suddenly felt petty. So what if Sajan had called Nick without telling him? They were friends, after all. Koster counted the number of steps on the stairs, and multiplied by ninety degrees.

“Can you imagine Ben Franklin climbing these stairs,” Sajan said, “with his hands full of books? I always used to picture him old and fat. Suffering from gout.”

“And from kidney stones,” Koster added. “In fact, by the time the Second Continental Congress rolled around, he was in so much pain that he had to be carried here in a sedan chair.”

At the top of the stairs, glass-covered bookcases lined the walls. The second floor of Carpenters' Hall was divided into two main rooms—to the east and the west—and several smaller chambers to the south, occupied by a caretaker. In Franklin's day, the east room hosted the Library Company, and was where the Board of Directors assembled for their fortnightly meetings. The west room, in contrast, had once been a handsome apartment, although cluttered with Franklin's apparatus and instruments, such as telescopes and air pumps and electrical devices. Today, a replica of the original boardroom and library had been set up in the west wing.

Compared to the great hall below, the Library boardroom felt intimate, cozy. Here too, every square inch of the walls had been padded with bookcases. A massive wooden table—clearly not from the period—stood at the center of the room.

“Franklin rented out the whole second floor for his Library Company,” Koster said. “Books were pretty hard
to come by in those days, and extremely expensive. Too much for most private collectors. So the Library Company was formed. This is also where Franklin met with Bonvouloir, the French secret agent. You don't generally think about Franklin as some sort of spy.”

“More of a Smiley than a Bond,” Sajan said with a laugh. “Ben Franklin—a spy. How did that come about?”

K
OSTER WALKED AROUND THE BOARDROOM, STUDYING THE
books on the shelves. “As war loomed over the colonies,” he told Sajan, “King Louis and his cabinet felt they had a rare opportunity to undermine Britain, their traditional rival. But before they could act, the Comte de Vergennes, France's foreign minister, recommended they gather some firsthand intelligence. So, the French Ambassador to the Court of St. James, a fellow named Guines, came up with a candidate: Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir.”

Koster turned away from the bookcases. He looked back at Sajan. “Guines described Bonvouloir as a retired officer of the elite Regiment du Cap, a gentleman recently returned from America. But, in truth,” Koster said, “Bonvouloir had only been a volunteer in the regiment. He was actually the black sheep of a family of minor nobility. Twenty-six, poorly educated and physically handicapped, he'd spent most of his life wasting his family's fortune. Vergennes warned Bonvouloir that if he
were caught and exposed, he could expect no assistance from France.”

“Undercover,” Sajan said.

“Exactly. He was to carry no written instructions, nor was he ever to present himself as an official ambassador. Given his checkered background, Bonvouloir agreed.” Koster moved to the south side of the room. He stared out the window at the common below.

“How was he received in America?”

“By the fall of '75, the Second Continental Congress realized defeat was inevitable if they failed to secure arms and supplies from abroad. France—Britain's rival—seemed the logical choice. Congress appointed a Committee of Secret Correspondence. Ben Franklin was on it. As was John Jay. Later it was renamed the Committee for Foreign Affairs, and as such became the forerunner of today's State Department.”

Koster paused. Then he shook his head. “But it was a difficult time. Franklin was suffering from kidney stones, as I said, and even if they were successful in procuring new arms and munitions, a long war seemed inevitable. Plus, Deborah, his wife, had died the previous February, while Franklin was living in England. At our meetings,' wrote Bonvouloir in his report to Vergennes, ‘each one of us took a different route through the darkness to the indicated rendezvous.’ Indeed, the only record of those meetings is Bonvouloir's report to Vergennes since, for obvious reasons, no one took notes. Let's not forget that what the colonists were doing was treason, pure and simple. The colonies were in revolt, but not yet at war. Independence wouldn't be declared until July the next year. Franklin was convinced Bonvouloir was an agent of France, but due to his instructions, Bonvouloir couldn't confirm it. For all Jay and Franklin knew, he could have been a double agent.”

Koster stepped behind the large Victorian writing desk in the far corner of the boardroom, crowned with a vase of white lilac blooms. He leaned over and smelled them. They were delightfully sweet, though well past their prime.

Trained as he was to keep secrets, Koster continued, a Freemason versed in codes and clandestine gatherings, Franklin was a good choice to spearhead the endeavor. Despite the great risks, despite what he was going through personally, he and the members of the Committee of Secret Correspondence held three lengthy meetings late at night between December 18 and 27.

“Right here. On this floor,” Koster said. “Soon after, Bonvouloir returned to France with his ebullient assessment. ‘Everyone there is a soldier,’ he proclaimed, ‘the troops are well clothed, well paid and well armed. They have more than fifty thousand regular soldiers and an even larger number of volunteers… Independency is a certainty.’”

“Was that true?”

“Not at all.” Koster continued to circle the room. “But Bonvouloir's report persuaded the French. King Louis gave Vergennes approval to set up a commercial firm, Rodrique Hortalez et Compagnie, to provide munitions for the Americans, or to give them money to buy them. They promised a million
livres
, and said they'd persuade Spain to deliver another million.”

“That was a fortune in those days. Did they actually do it?”

“Franklin had been a newspaperman his whole life,” Koster said. “He was a master propagandist. As a result of the intelligence he spoon-fed Bonvouloir, the French initiated a massive shipbuilding campaign, adding more than two hundred warships to the cause. In 1778, when Franklin secured a formal Alliance, the French granted
open support to the colonies. Some historians estimate that ninety percent of the gunpowder fired by American troops during the war came from France. Ninety percent! Later, with John Jay and John Adams at his side, Franklin signed the Treaty of Paris in September 1783, granting the colonies full independence. Of course, it didn't turn out so well for the French. Financial support for the American war undermined the French treasury, already in debt. The bankrupt nation imploded in '89. Louis and Marie Antoinette were beheaded three years later.”

“The democracy genie was out of the bottle,” said Sajan.

“That's right. There was no turning back. The ideals of the Enlightenment, reflected in Freemasonry; the rise of the middle class, in both America and France; what started here, on this floor, during those three nights of whispering between Franklin and Bonvouloir, changed the world.”

Koster waved at the room. “Franklin was more than intimate with this place. When he wasn't at his print shop, he spent hours here in this Library. And he knew the architect well. If he indeed hid his first piece of the map here, it could be practically anywhere. But I have a feeling…”

“What?”

“We won't find it here, on the surface. Too much has changed through the years.” He turned toward the stairs.

Sajan followed him and they made their way slowly back down the steps. As they moved, Sajan started to whistle and Koster had to stop and laugh as he recognized the tune—“Secret Agent Man.” “They've given you a number,” she sang, “and taken out your gall stone.” And her voice wasn't bad.

At the foot of the stairs, Koster moved toward the door leading down to the basement. There was a man at
the concession stand across the main hall, but he didn't seem to be watching. He was helping some Spanish tourist pick out a postcard. And Redding, the guard, was nowhere in sight. Koster opened the door.

“Power tools were nonexistent in the eighteenth century,” he said, as he flicked on the light and descended the steep wooden stairs. “Picks and shovels were used to carve out the basement.” Sajan followed behind him.

The basement, though as large as the main hall above, felt cramped due to the height of the ceiling. Koster had to duck a little as he entered. There were a washer and dryer at the foot of the stairs, behind which a door led up to the gardens in back. A bathroom had been constructed at the southernmost flank of the basement. To his left, Koster noticed a kind of caged area full of files. Two safe rooms had been built under the northern wall, to the east, where bullion had once been kept when the Hall was a bank. The room was lit by a line of sixty-watt lightbulbs dangling down from the girders. Work tools were stacked in one corner, some paint cans and rags and a ladder and what looked like a few pieces of furniture draped with tarps.

Koster pointed up at the ceiling. “Those two girders support the first floor. Each is forty-five feet long and squared off roughly with an adze. Apparently no saw mill at the time was large enough to accommodate them. They were carved out of eastern white pine, which is hardly available today. To provide maximum support, the timbers were reversed.” He pointed to each end of the building. “You see. The base of that one is at the basement's west end, and the stump end of the other one lies at the east. As a result, carpenters had to custom-fit each joist to the taper of the timbers.” Koster moved through the basement, across the brick floor.

“I didn't tell you that story about Bonvouloir as an
historical curiosity,” he said, “or because of my Asperger syndrome.”

“I didn't think you—”

“Franklin chose this place for his rendezvous for a reason,” Koster interrupted. “They could have met anywhere. At a friend's home. The Tun Tavern. But Franklin chose Carpenters' Hall because he felt safe here. No matter how heated the discussions became, they would not be disturbed. He knew this. From experience.”

“What do you mean?” Sajan asked.

Koster didn't answer. He walked toward the south wall and turned left. As he moved, he ran a hand along one of the cross beams above him. “Look how the supports just continue. They're all about the same length. You can see that as they run to the cross beams. But these here. They just seem to stop at the wall.”