The Navigator (4 page)

Professor Holmberg was a linguist at Oxford University. He apologized for not answering Jefferson sooner but he had been traveling in North Africa. He knew exactly what language the words were written in and enclosed translations.

Jefferson’s eyes widened as he read Holmberg’s findings. With the letter in hand, he roamed his library and plucked volume after volume from his bookshelves. History. Language. Religion.

He spent the next several hours reading and making notes. When he had pushed away the last book, he sat back in his chair, tented his fingers, and stared into space. After a moment lost in thought, Jefferson silently mouthed a familar name.

Meriwether Lewis.

FATE HAD NOT dealt kindly with the man who had led the expedition that opened the floodgates of the American West to United States expansion.

Lewis was a man of extraordinary talents. Jefferson had been aware of his fellow Virginian’s qualities when he’d asked Lewis to lead the exploratory expedition to the Pacific Coast in 1803.

Educated, intrepid, versed in the sciences, tough physically, Lewis was an outdoorsman familiar with Indian customs, and possessed of a sterling character. He’d been a well-respected army captain before he had come to work for Jefferson in the White House, where he added diplomacy, statesmanship, and politics to his quiver of talents.

The expedition had been successful beyond belief. After Lewis returned to Washington in 1806 with William Clark, the expedition’s coleader, Jefferson appointed him as governor of the Louisiana Territory.

Lewis had reason to wonder, however, whether the appointment was a reward or a punishment. Even with all his talents and energy, Lewis had a hard time trying to tame the wild frontier. The explorer’s political enemies were relentless.

One night, after Lewis had spent another wearying day dealing with charges that he’d spent government money on a fur company in which he had an interest, he saw a sealed packet on his desk and immediately recognized Jefferson’s handwriting. Lewis had a smile on his hawk-nosed face as he slid a knife blade under the seal and carefully unwrapped the stiff paper that enclosed a stack of documents. The note inside said:

My Dear Mr. Lewis. Your gardens might benefit from the information contained within. TJ

The next page was entitled “The Cultivation of Artichokes.” The pages contained a detailed treatise, complete with planting tables and a garden diagram.

He spread the contents of the packet on his desktop, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. Lewis knew of Jefferson’s interest in gardening, but it seemed strange that he would take the trouble to send information on artichoke cultivation halfway across the continent. He must have known that Lewis’s crushing responsibilities left no time for gardening.

Then the light of comprehension dawned on Lewis’s long face and his pulse quickened. He pawed through the shelves of a cabinet where he had stored the reports from the Lewis and Clark expedition and found what he was looking for within minutes.

Sandwiched between two bundles of documents was a sheet of heavy paper, which he extracted and held up to the light. The sheet was perforated with dozens of small rectangular holes, and, with trembling fingers, he placed the matrix over the first written page in the artichoke file and copied the letters that showed through the holes onto a separate sheet of paper.

When Jefferson had conceived the idea for the Pacific expedition, he knew that Lewis would be in a diplomatically sensitive position exploring territory held by France and Spain. Behind Jefferson’s sphinxlike imperturbability was a mind as devious as any to be found in the courts and palaces of Europe. In corresponding with his minister to France, he had often used a cipher, which he described as “a mask when we need it.”

While Lewis was in Philadelphia preparing for his journey with leading scientists from the Philosophical Society, Jefferson sent him a cipher he had worked up for the expedition. He based the encryption method on the Vigenere cipher widely used in Europe. The system involved an alphanumeric table and was unlocked with a key word.

Artichokes.

It had not been necessary to use the cipher during the expedition, which was why Lewis had been baffled at seeing it utilized. Casting questions aside now, he attacked the enciphered message with the enthusiasm he brought to all challenges. As he deciphered each letter from the gibberish, the words began to form before his eyes.

Dear Mr. Lewis: I hope this missive finds you well. I have taken the liberty of submitting this report to you in the enciphered form upon which we had agreed, with the goal that it should be for your eyes only, and for your sole disposition. I fear that the information enclosed, whether true or not, would excite certain passions, cause men to go into territory where they were ill-prepared to survive, and create problems with the Indians. I understood that you are fully engaged in the formidable task of placing a harness on the Louisiana stallion, but plead your assistance in resolving this matter.
Y’r ob’d’nt s’v’nt, TJ

Lewis deciphered the balance of the encrypted message. Then he went back to the garden diagram. The lines, Xs, circles, and words penned in an ancient language began to make sense of sorts. He was looking at a map—and something about it struck him as familiar. He pawed through dozens of his charts and documents and found what he was looking for.

Taking up pen and paper, he wrote a brief note. He thanked Jefferson for his gardening advice, and said he had located an ideal spot for his crop to flourish, then he told Jefferson that he would discuss gardening when he came to Washington to clear his name. Lewis planned to start down the Mississippi River early in September 1809. He would let Jefferson know when he had arrived in Washington.

It was not to be. Late that fall, Jefferson received a note from a Major Neelly saying that Lewis had died of gunshot wounds on the Natchez Trace wilderness road. He was only thirty-five.

The loss of the talented young man was incomprehensible to Jefferson. It almost seemed as if an ancient curse hovered over the Indian vocabularies. Several weeks later, Major Neelly arrived at Monticello with Lewis’s young slave. While Neelly was cleaning up from his ride, the slave timidly handed Jefferson a packet and whispered a message.

Instructing his staff that he not be disturbed, Jefferson locked himself in his study and studied the packet’s contents. Then he compiled a thorough written analysis of the events leading to Lewis’s death. The dawn’s light was streaming through the windows as he summed up the synopsis in a single underlined word.

Conspiracy.

What if his Indian word lists had been
stolen,
as the thief had claimed? What if someone knew that Jefferson’s research held the key to an age-old secret? What if the death of Lewis were not a suicide but murder?

Jefferson spent several more days working in his study. When he emerged, brandishing a list of instructions for his staff, he seemed like a man possessed. One night, under cover of darkness, he rode off on his horse, followed in a wagon by his most trusted slaves. Weeks later, they returned, looking tired and disheveled, but there was a glint of triumph in Jefferson’s eye.

He considered the implications of his discovery. He had done everything in his power to keep the United States from being contaminated by the deadly alliance of church and state that had spawned the religious wars which had raged on the continent. He feared that if this information were made public it could shake the foundations of the young country and even destroy the fledgling republic he had helped create.

Without pausing to clean up or change, Jefferson plunged into his study and penned a long letter to his old friend and sometimes nemesis, John Adams. As he sealed the envelope, a smile crossed his weary face.

He could play at the conspiracy game as well as anyone.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ, 2003

CARINA MECHADI WAS INCANDESCENT with rage. The young Italian woman threw off sparks like a Roman candle as she surveyed the rubble that littered the administrative offices of the Iraqi National Museum. Cabinets had been overturned. Files were scattered as if they’d been caught up in a whirlwind. Desks and chairs had been smashed to splinters. The vindictiveness of the destruction was appalling.

Carina unleashed a withering outburst that dissected the parentage, sexual orientation, and prowess of the vandals who had wreaked such senseless havoc.

The wave of blue language washed over the young U.S. Marine corporal who had been hovering protectively nearby cradling an M4 carbine in his arms. The only two Italian words the marine knew were
pepperoni
and
pizza.
He didn’t need a lexicon to tell him that he’d witnessed a display of razor-edged invective worthy of a longshoreman with a sore back.

The muscular language was all the more amazing considering its source. Carina was a foot shorter than the marine. The battle gear the military people had insisted she wear made the slender woman appear even smaller. She looked like a turtle too small for its shell in the borrowed flak jacket. The desert-camouflage uniform was meant for a small man. The helmet that concealed her long sable hair sat so low it almost hid her cornflower blue eyes.

Carina noticed the marine’s astonished grin. She blushed with embarrassment and brought her tirade to a halt. “Sorry about that.”

“No problem, ma’am,” the corporal said. “You ever want to be a drill instructor, the Marine Corps would be glad to have you.”

The heat faded from her dusky face. Full lips that seemed better suited for seduction than for swearing widened in a broad smile that revealed perfect white teeth. With the fire in her words extinguished, her voice was low and cool. Speaking with a slight accent, she said, “Thank you for the offer, Corporal O’Leary.” She glanced at the rubble at her feet. “As you can see, I’m quite passionate when it comes to this sort of thing.”

“Don’t blame you for being pissed—” The marine’s cheeks flushed and he glanced away. “Excuse me, I mean for being
mad,
ma’am. Hell of a mess.”

Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard had set up a defensive position in the eleven-acre museum complex in the heart of Baghdad on the western bank of the Tigris. The Iraqi troops had run for their lives in the face of the American advance, leaving the museum unguarded for thirty-six hours. Hundreds of plunderers had rampaged through the complex until they were chased out by the senior staff.

The Republican Guards had shed their uniforms and burned piles of identity cards in their hurry to return to civilian life. In a last gasp of defiance, someone had scrawled DEATH TO ALL AMERICANS on a courtyard wall.

“We’ve seen all we need to see here,” Carina said with a grimace.

With Corporal O’Leary trailing a few paces behind, she plodded out of the administrative offices. Her leaden-footed gait was only partly the fault of the army boots on her feet. She was weighed down by a feeling of dread at what she would find, or
not
find, in the public gallery, where the museum’s prize holdings were exhibited in more than five hundred display cases.

The walk down the long central corridor only served to heighten her fears. A number of sarcophagi had been cracked open and statues decapitated.

Carina set foot in the first gallery and the air involuntarily escaped from her lungs. She wandered from room to room as if in a daze. Every case looked as if it had been vacuumed clean.

She entered a gallery that had held Babylonian artifacts. A portly, middle-aged man was bent over a smashed cabinet. Standing next to him was a young Iraqi, who raised his AK-47 when they entered.

The marine brought the carbine to his shoulder.

The heavyset man looked up and stared through thick lenses at the marine. There was disdain rather than fear in his eyes. His glance shifted to Carina and his face lit up in a fourteen-karat smile.

“My dear Miss Mechadi,” he said with undisguised warmth.

“Hello, Dr. Nasir. Glad to see that you’re all right.” Carina turned to the marine. “Corporal, this is Mohammed Jassim Nasir. He’s senior curator here at the museum.”

The marine lowered his weapon. After a pause to show that he had not been intimidated by the American, the Iraqi did the same with his gun. They continued to eye each other warily.

Nasir came over to clasp Carina’s hands in his. “You shouldn’t have come so soon. It is still dangerous.”

“
You
are here, professor.”

“Of
course
. This institution has been my lifeblood.”

“I understand completely,” Carina said. “But the area around the museum is secure.” She nodded toward her marine escort. “Besides, Corporal O’Leary is keeping close watch on me.”

Nasir’s brow clouded over. “I hope this
gentleman
is a better guard than his friends were. If not for my brave colleagues the disaster would have been total.”

Carina understood Nasir’s anger. The American troops arrived four days after the museum’s curators had told the commanders about the looting. Carina had tried desperately to have them move in sooner. She had waved the UNESCO identification card hanging around her neck under the noses of the American officers only to be told that the situation was too fluid and dangerous.

Carina saw no use arguing over who was to blame. The damage had already been done. “I’ve talked to the Americans,” she said. “They said there would have been a bloody battle if they came in earlier.”

Nasir shot a drop-dead glance in the marine’s direction. “I understand. They were too busy guarding the oil wells.” The unsympathetic expression on his nut-brown face suggested that he would have preferred bloodshed to looting.

“I’m as sickened as you are,” she said. “This is terrible.”

“Well, it’s not as bad as it seems here,” Nasir said with unexpected optimism. “The artifacts taken from this case were minor items. Fortunately, the museum had put together a contingency plan after the 1991 invasion. The curators moved most of the artifacts to safe rooms known only to the five most senior museum officers.”