The Jefferson Key (30 page)

That was the first good question he’d heard. And the answer remained unclear, except that “The
NIA
director wants Stephanie Nelle dead—”

“Why?” Cogburn asked.

“There’s something personal there. She did not explain, only that Nelle was investigating both her and us. It was to our advantage to stop that. She asked me to do it, so I obliged. That is what friends do for each other.”

“Why the need for the spy if she had you?” Surcouf asked.

“Because he’s a liar, a thief, and a murderer,” Bolton spat out. “A stinking, crooked pirate who can’t be trusted. His great-great-granddaddy would be proud.”

His spine stiffened. “I have had enough of your insults, Edward. I challenge you. Here and now.”

Which was his right.

Whenever ships in the past joined for a common purpose, the possibility of conflict had been great. By their nature captains were independent—mindful of their own crew, uncaring about anyone else’s. But civil wars were deemed counterproductive. The idea was to loot merchant shipping, not fight among themselves. And never were disputes settled at sea, as crews rarely chanced their own lives or damage to the ship over a silly quarrel.

So another way evolved.

The challenge.

A drama in which the captains could show their courage while at the same time not endangering anyone or anything, besides themselves.

A simple test of guts.

Bolton stood silent and stared.

“Typical,” Hale said. “You have no stomach for a fight.”

“I accept your challenge.”

Hale turned to Knox.

“Prepare it.”

MALONE
HEARD
THE
SHOT
AND
DOVE
TO
THE
FLOOR
,
SCRAMBLING
beneath a table surrounded by chairs.

Glass doors six feet away shattered.

More shots came his way, keeping him close to the floor.

CASSIOPEIA
DECIDED
TO
ATTACK
.
SHE
FIRED
ONCE
,
TWICE
,
THEN
a third time, taking no chances, advancing toward the source of movement.

MALONE
KEPT
HIS
HEAD
DOWN
AND
WAITED
FOR
THE
SHOOTING
to stop. He was going to take Wyatt out, but he needed to make his one move count. He lay flat on the floor beneath the table and gripped the gun, readying himself.

Through the smoke, a shadow came his way.

From the entrance hall, toward the parlor.

He waited for the target to grow larger.

Then he’d take Wyatt down with some well-placed shots.

WYATT
FOUND
THE
CELLAR
,
PLEASED
TO
SEE
THAT
NO
STAFF
OCcupied the small office at the base of the stairway. A series of brick-lined rooms formed both the house’s foundation and subterranean storage. They lined a long passage that stretched the building’s length, lit by incandescent fixtures springing from the rough stone walls. He recalled from the exhibits at the visitor center that the rooms served as food, beer, and wine cellars. He stared at the end of the north passage, maybe seventy-five feet away, which opened out into the morning sun.

All clear.

He rushed ahead.

He knew that behind him were what Jefferson had called the dependencies. The south set held the kitchen, smokehouse, dairy, and some slave quarters. Here, on the north side, were the carriage house, stables, and ice cellar. He came to the passage end and hesitated near a door identified as the north privy.

Good placement, he thought. Ground level, outside the walls, private.

He found his cellphone and hit
SEND
for the message he’d prepared earlier.

READY
FOR
PICKUP
.
NORTH
SIDE
.

That had been the plan.

If anything had changed, so would have the message.

He’d known from the start that getting into Monticello would be easy. Getting out? An entirely different matter. That was why he’d accepted help from Andrea Carbonell.

He fled the north dependency and crossed the asphalt road. His location, on the far side from the main entrance, among trees and shrubs, provided ample cover. A check on Google Maps earlier had revealed an open field about a hundred yards northeast of the house.

A perfect landing spot.

He heard three shots from inside the house and smiled.

With any luck, the woman would shoot Malone for him.

CASSIOPEIA
KNEW
SOMEONE
WAS
IN
THE
NEXT
ROOM
.
SHE’D
caught movement before her barrage, but had not seen any other disturbances through the fog. She was still concerned about Cotton.

Where was he?

Who had shot at her?

A hallway opened to her right where less smoke had collected. She spotted the base of a stairway.

Whoever was in the next room knew she was here.

But they were lying low. Waiting.

For her.

MALONE
AIMED
AT
THE
BLACK
SMUDGE
DRIFTING
ACROSS
THE
smoke.

Just a few more feet and he’d have a clean shot. He didn’t want to miss. He’d tried to draw Wyatt in upstairs. That effort failed.

Now he had him.

He held his breath, finger tightened on the trigger.

One.

Two.

CASSIOPEIA
HAD
ADVANCED
TOO
FAR
.

She was exposed, and knew it.

She darted right, used the hallway for protection, then called out, “Cotton, where are you?”

MALONE
EXHALED
.

He lowered his gun.

“In here,” he said.

“Better for you to come out here,” she called out.

He came to his feet and stepped from the parlor. Cassiopeia appeared from the smoke to his left.

“That was close,” he said.

He saw in her eyes that she agreed.

“What happened in here?”

“I found the source of all our trouble.”

A new sound invaded the silence. A low rhythmic thump of deep bass tones beating air. Approaching.

Helicopter.

WYATT
CRADLED
THE
WHEEL
IN
HIS
ARMS
,
CAREFUL
NOT
TO damage it. A couple of glances back and he saw no one following him. He disappeared into the trees and eased down an incline toward the field.

A chopper swooped in from the west, clearing the trees lining the field, and settled on the grass.

He jumped in the open cabin door.

MALONE
AND
CASSIOPEIA
STEPPED
OUTSIDE
ONTO
THE
EAST
portico and saw a helicopter landing about a quarter mile away.

Way too far to do anything about it.

After only a minute below the trees, the rotors’ thump increased and the chopper climbed back into the morning sky, heading west.

Malone realized that without the wheel there was no way to know what Andrew Jackson had done. And since only one existed, the cipher’s solution had just flown away.

“We can track that thing, can’t we?” Cassiopeia asked.

“Not quick enough. He’ll set down somewhere not far away and drop his passenger off.”

“The person who shot at me?”

He nodded.

The estate manager rushed up to where they stood, along with Edwin Davis. Malone stepped back inside and headed straight for Jefferson’s cabinet.

The others followed.

He found the table where an empty glass cover sat.

“Those windows outside,” the manager said, “were 19th-century glass. The frames were original to Jefferson’s time. Irreplaceable.”

“This isn’t a World Heritage Site, is it?” he asked, trying lighten the tension.

“Actually, it has been since 1987.”

He smiled. Stephanie would love that one. How many of those had he damaged? Four? Five?

He heard windows being opened throughout the house and saw the smoke dissipating. A new face appeared. A middle-aged woman with dark red hair and freckled skin. She was introduced as the senior curator, in charge of the estate’s artifacts. She was visibly upset at the site of the missing wheel.

“It’s the only one in the world,” she said.

“Who was here?” Edwin Davis asked him.

“An old friend, who apparently holds a grudge.”

He motioned for Davis and Cassiopeia to walk with him toward the library while the curator and the estate manager talked in the cabinet. He told them about Jonathan Wyatt, then said, “Last I saw him was eight years ago, at the admin hearing when he was fired.”

Davis immediately withdrew his phone, placed a call, listened a few moments, then hung up.

“He’s a contract agent now,” Davis said. “Works for hire. Lives in Florida.”

Malone thought back to the coded message from the sheet Jackson had written. Twenty-six letters, five symbols.

GYUOINESCVOQXWJTZPKLDEMFHR

“Without that wheel, the final message is indecipherable,” he said. “We’re done. We need to focus on Stephanie now.”

“Mr. Malone,” a female voice said.

He turned at the call of his name.

The curator.

“I understand it was the cipher wheel that interested you.” She walked toward him beneath the room’s arches.

He nodded. “It’s what we came for. We needed it but, like you said, that’s the only one in the world.”

“The only original in the world,” she said. “Not the only wheel.”

He was listening.

“At the learning center, down in the visitor center, we wanted the kids to experience Thomas Jefferson hands-on. So we re-created many of his inventions and devices. We made them so they could touch and feel them. There’s a wheel there. I had it made myself. It’s plastic, and looks somewhat like the original. There are twenty-six disks, each one with twenty-six letters carved on the edge. I had nothing else to go on, so I told the company who made it to copy the disks exactly as Jefferson made them.”

BATH
,
NORTH
CAROLINA

HALE
WATCHED
AS
KNOX
MADE
THE
NECESSARY
PREPARATIONS
. Six glasses were brought from the bar and laid out in a row on one of the tables. Into each was poured a swallow of whiskey. Knox produced a glass vial that held a yellow-tinted liquid. The captains stared at the contents. Bolton nodded his consent to proceed. At any time, a captain challenged could withdraw, conceding defeat.

But not today.

Into one of the glasses Knox trickled a few drops of the yellowish liquid. The poison came from a Caribbean fish. Odorless, tasteless, fatal in seconds. A Commonwealth staple for centuries.

“All is ready,” Knox said.

Hale stepped to the table, his gaze on the third glass from the left where the poison rested within the amber-colored whiskey.

Bolton approached.

“Do you still accept my challenge?” Hale asked.

“I’m not afraid to die, Quentin. Are you?”

That wasn’t the issue. Teaching these three a lesson was the point—one they would never forget. He kept his gaze locked on Bolton and said to Knox, “Shuffle the glasses.”

He heard the bottoms slide across the tabletop as Knox rearranged the glasses, making it impossible to know which one contained the poison. Tradition required that the two participants lock eyes. Centuries ago, the crew would study the shuffle, then wager among themselves when a captain would make the wrong choice.

“It’s done,” Knox said.

The six glasses waited in a row, their swirling contents settling. Since Hale had extended the challenge, he was required to pick first.

One in six the odds.

The best they would be.

He reached for the fourth glass, lifted it to his lips, and downed the contents with one swallow.

The liquor burned his throat.

He bore his gaze into Bolton’s eyes and waited.

Nothing.

He smiled. “Your turn.”

WYATT
SETTLED
INTO
THE
HELICOPTER’S
PASSENGER
COMPARTMENT
. He’d made his escape exactly as planned, leaving Malone empty-handed. Now no way existed to learn the next part of Andrew Jackson’s message.

Mission accomplished.

He laid his gun on the seat beside him and arranged the nylon bag in his lap. Carefully, he extracted the device and balanced its metal frame across his knees. The chopper had risen from the field and was now flying west, away from Monticello, the sunny morning air clear and smooth.