by Steve Berry
There’d been a logic to it all. A silent language spoken by only a precious few—which, as Morse noted, had not included sentinels. Thankfully his grandfather had learned some of it, which made him wonder. Had he been a sentinel, too?
“I found that cache today thanks to what I know personally and notes made back in 1909,” Cotton said. “The guy who died in the hunting accident”—his sarcasm was clear—“his notes survived. Whoever killed him missed those. Granted, it’s taken over a hundred years to make use of them, but we made it back. That guy a month ago you scared off? He came to do what I did today.”
He’d always thought it all just stories. A way for a grandfather to entertain a grandson. Not anymore. Not since he’d found a jar of Confederate gold and met a real, live, third-generation sentinel.
“Follow me,” Morse finally said.
They stepped from the porch and rounded the house, heading for one of the outbuildings. Three stood in the nearly gone daylight, all made of notched logs. He heard a steady, low purr in the quiet air.
“What’s that? Machinery?”
A derisive cackle burst from Morse’s mouth. “Bees.”
Morse opened a nail-studded door and switched on the lights. The persistent murmur inside was much louder, the air clotted with a sweet smell. About a dozen wooden boxes sat on stout tables, each one humming like a transformer. A long wooden workbench ran the length of one wall, its scarred surface littered with tools and a vise.
“The bees stay in here for safety,” Morse said. “Keeps the rustlers away.”
“People steal them?” Cassiopeia asked.
“All the time. I rent these out to farmers so they can get their fruit trees pollinated. Rustlers steal ’em, then rent ’em out themsleves. No way to brand a bee. No way to prove it’s yours. So you lose ’em. It’s a big problem.”
Cotton noticed slits in the walls overhead that allowed the insects to come and go.
“Those men who came to see me,” Morse said. “They were after somethin’ special. Somehow they knew that I was the one guardin’. The fellow who came a month ago didn’t seem to know much about it. He never asked the right questions in town.”
“How did you learn about us?” Cassiopeia asked.
“Friend at the lodge where you’re stayin’. He calls and tells me about any treasure hunters. You were askin’ around about things and it caught his ear. It’s what we do for each other around here.”
Which was the same in middle Georgia.
If the stories he’d heard were true, it meant that the Knights of the Golden Circle had accumulated an enormous amount of gold and silver. Some had been legitimately earned, while other parts most likely came from the Confederate treasury, which some said was found in 1865, but others believed it had been hoarded away. Nobody knew anything for sure. History also noted that three U.S. mints were looted in the early days of the Civil War of their gold and coin reserves. Much more wealth was simply appropriated during and after the war, stolen from banks, companies, and individuals. A ton of lost-treasure stories existed across every Southern state, the version different depending on the locale. Book after book had been written on the subject. The only consistent element to it all was that the knights did in fact hide their wealth in the ground, which explained why treasure hunters had been searching for so long.
“My pa told me we were extra special,” Morse said. “We guarded somethin’ real important. Sure, there’s gold hidden in our stake. You found some of it today. There’s more out there, too. But the real important thing we protected wasn’t metal.”
Morse approached one of the tables with hives and bent down beneath to a shelf. Something lay sheathed in a dirty green canvas. About two feet long, nearly that wide. And apparently heavy, as Morse strained to slide it free of the shelf and lay it on the table between the hives. Removing the canvas revealed a stone, about three inches thick, with carvings.
“It’s the Witch’s Stone,” Morse said. “Or at least that’s what my pa called it.”
Cotton was fluent in several languages, another benefit of an eidetic memory, so he was able to translate the Spanish. The top line read, Esta bereda es peligroza. This bereda is dangerous? The word bereda meant nothing to him. But vereda meant “path.”
This path is dangerous?
The second line, yo boy 18 lugares, I go 18 places. Again boy was not a word in Spanish, but voy, to, seemed to fit and was consistent with the b for v from the first line.
I go to 18 places.
The third line, busca el mapa, was easy.
Seek the map.
The same was true with the final line, busca el coazon, which had to be busca el corazón.
Seek the heart.
This path is dangerous. I go to 18 places. Seek the map. Seek the heart.
Cassiopeia snapped some pictures with her phone.
“I don’t want you doin’ that,” Morse said.
“Then why show it to us?” Cotton asked.
Morse did not answer him.
The door creaked open.
Three men entered.
Each armed.
Cassiopeia reached for her weapon but the lead man cut her off with a shake of his index finger.
“Don’t do that. You wouldn’t want the girl hurt, would you? Toss the gun to the floor.”
Cassiopeia glanced Cotton’s way and he nodded that there was no choice. She released the weapon and one of the men quickly retrieved it.
“You got a gun?” the man asked him.
He found his Beretta and dropped it to the floor, too.
“Good work,” the lead man said to Morse, and the old man acknowledged the compliment with a nod.
Lea seemed shocked.
But Cotton was pissed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WASHINGTON, DC
8:50 P.M.
Stephanie Nelle stood beside Constitution Avenue, just outside the National Museum of Natural History. The call had come half an hour ago and she’d come straight over from the Mandarin Oriental, the hotel where she always stayed while visiting the capital.
The building that stood before her was part of the expansive Smithsonian Institution, which owned and operated museums on both sides of the National Mall. The American Indian, Air and Space, and the famous Romanesque Castle lined the south side, while natural, American, and African American history dominated the north. Together they formed the largest museum complex in the world. 140,000,000 objects. Every item regarded as a national treasure. Tonight, though, the natural history museum loomed quiet, closed to visitors.
She entered through street-side doors held open by a security guard and was directed to a windowless room that contained a wall of LCD monitors, each displaying a different slice of the museum’s interior. Six floors, over 1.5 million square feet of space. A lot of territory to watch over. Waiting for her was Rick Stamm, the current curator of the Smithsonian Castle, albeit a little out of his element here in natural history. They’d been friends a long time. Recently he’d helped her out in a pinch. She owed him one. So an hour ago, when he called, she could not tell him no.
“Lucky for you I was in town,” she said.
“Yes, it was. I really appreciate your coming.”
He pointed to one of the monitors where two men stood inside what looked like a library. “That’s the Cullman Library. They’ve been there since before I called you.”
She was familiar with the Smithsonian Libraries, comprising separate locations scattered across the twenty-one museums and research facilities. Together they were regarded as one of the greatest repositories of knowledge in the world. The Cullman was situated on the natural history museum’s ground floor. She knew all about its collection of rare books on anthropology and natural sciences.
“The light-haired man is Martin Thomas,” Rick said. “He’s one of our reference librarians, with a spotless ten-year employment history. I’m told he’s at the head of the list to succeed to the top spot when the current administr
ator of the American history library retires.”
“Why is he in the Cullman at this hour?” she asked. “That place has nothing to do with American history.”
He shook his head. “We don’t have audio. The guy arrived and Martin took him straight there.”
The other man on the monitor was tall and muscular, with a thick head of tight brown curls. He fidgeted a lot, his hands constantly groping for something to occupy them. He stood with his back to the camera, offering no view at his face. He wore a dark sport coat, slacks, and an open-collared button-down shirt.
“What’s that on the back of his neck?” she asked.
They both stared closely at the screen.
“Looks like a port wine stain,” Rick noted. “A good-sized one, too.”
She wanted to know, “Why is all this a problem? I assume staff comes in a lot at night.”
“Martin has been working with us on a special project. The problem is he never reported to us that he was coming here tonight. We’re supposed to be on the same team. Yet we had no idea, until he showed up with this man. Security caught it and called me. I decided to call you.”
“You going to tell me why?”
Two other security guards sat in the dark room, working the monitors, and she caught her friend’s gaze that indicated this was not the time or the place. But he did offer, “One problem is they came in through the staff entrance.”
Which probably meant no metal detectors and little security.
“You have no idea who that other man is, or what he’s doing here?”
Rick shook his head.
“You have a security force and the police.”
“I prefer you.”
She got the message.
Payback could sometimes be a pain in the ass.
He gestured for them to walk outside into the corridor. There he quickly explained that it had all started a few months before when some confidential records, not available for general inspection without administrative approval, were violated in the museum archives.
“I didn’t realize the Smithsonian had a secret archive,” she said.
“We don’t. It’s just that some materials are held in trust, not for general inspection.”
Video surveillance had quickly targeted Martin Thomas. When confronted, he’d confessed that a member of the library’s citizen advisory board, the wife of a Smithsonian regent, a woman named Diane Sherwood, had requested he examine the information.
“Senator Sherwood’s widow?” she asked.
He nodded. “That’s right.”
She was beginning to appreciate the delicacy of the situation.
Aiming to please, Thomas had accommodated Mrs. Sherwood. Interestingly, instead of confronting either offender, or shutting off access, Rick told her that further views into the confidential files had been allowed.
“We thought, what better way to find out what was going on than to allow her to show us the way. Martin was, by then, working with us, so we let it ride.”
“What happened?”
“Something we didn’t expect. Martin flew to Arkansas, returned rattled and scared, reporting on a threat to his life. That’s when we called Cotton Malone.”
That shocked her. “How do you know Cotton?”
“I didn’t. But the chancellor knew about him and had me make some inquiries. I found out he once worked for you, but is now retired. So we called him at his Copenhagen bookstore and hired him.”
“Cotton is here? Working with you?”
“Actually he’s in Arkansas with a Ms. Vitt, going behind Martin Thomas to see what’s there.”
Usually it was the other way around, with her calling Cotton and either corralling or hiring him. He’d been her first recruit at the Magellan Billet and worked for her a dozen years before opting out early and moving to Denmark. At the moment all twelve of her current agents were either on assignment or busy helping her restart the Magellan Billet after its recent temporary shutdown by the new president and attorney general. She’d come to DC to meet with the new AG, trying to forge some sort of working relationship with someone who had no desire to work with her.
“Rick, it seems you have quite a mess. But you also have Cotton and Cassiopeia on this. They’re really good. So why am I here?”
“We’re going to take this new guy and Martin Thomas down. I need your assistance with that. Then I want you to help me find out what’s going on. This kind of thing is a little out of my area of expertise.”
The door to the security room opened and one of the technicians told them that the two men were on the move. They rushed back inside and watched the screen as the two left the library. Thomas was talking and gesturing toward the visitor, who still kept his back to them.
“He knows there are cameras,” she said.
“I see that.”
Thomas left through the exit doors. His guest followed. But as the man turned for the door his jacket swept open for an instant. He quickly caught it and rebuttoned it, but not before the lens captured a disturbing sight.
“Go back and replay that,” Rick said.
She’d seen it, too.
One of the men working the monitors typed on his keyboard. A frozen image appeared on one of the screens. Where the jacket gaped open the metallic butt end of a pistol could be seen in a shoulder harness.
“That’s not good,” she said. “You need to stop this now.”
“I have to see what they’re after.”
“You could be putting that librarian’s life in danger.” She could see his dilemma. “And you’re still not telling me everything, are you?”
“Will you trust me on this a little longer?”
That went without question. She’d known this man a long time.
On the monitor the two men left the Cullman Library and the lights extinguished. Another camera captured them in the hallway, walking down the corridors, finally entering a set of metal doors.
“That opens into a closed-off area that’s under construction,” Rick said.
She knew what had to be done.
“Tell me how to get there, undetected.”
* * *
She eased the metal door shut without a sound. A small radio was clipped to her waist, an ear fob and lapel mic providing her with hands-free communications.
“They’re still there,” Rick said in her ear. “Walk straight ahead and take the first right.”
She stood in a dim corridor, only occasional lights illuminating the cavernous space around her. Shadows hung thick but she could see the construction. Rick had told her that this part of the museum had once been used as a storage basement, though it actually sat at ground level. It had been closed for over a year, undergoing a renovation to add additional office space. Her entry point had been on the far side, away from where the two men had entered, the idea being to allow her to weave a path close and find out more about what was going on before they took anyone into custody. Security guards were waiting for her signal, posted at all the exit doors.
There was nowhere for anyone to run.
No working cameras existed inside the work site. Barricades prevented anyone from wandering into the area, but her two targets had ignored those. It seemed that whatever they were after must be here. She was concerned about the situation but assumed Martin Thomas was in no real danger since the other man was here for a reason and apparently needed Thomas to accomplish that.
Or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.
Carefully she wove her way through the maze of wires, pipes, ducts, and machinery to where Rick had told her to turn. She could hear the two men talking, their voices echoing thanks to the unfinished walls. Perhaps they’d come to this part of the building to further avoid the cameras? The presence of the gun, though, still hung in her mind. Thankfully she, too, was armed, her Magellan Billet–issued Beretta snug in a shoulder harness beneath her jacket. There was a time when she hadn’t carried a weapon. But she’d learned that it was better to b
e safe than sorry.
It should have been easy to keep her steps silent on the concrete floor, but a layer of sawdust, drywall shavings, and dirt challenged her footing. She marveled at how resilient places like this could be. This building had stood since 1910, remodeled over and over, each time adapting to an ever-changing world.
She closed the gap to the voices, finally stopping at a corner with bare Sheetrock walls.
“—appreciate what you’ve done. I truly do,” a male voice said.
“I’ve worked here a long time, but I have to tell you, the pay is not why you stay,” another voice said, which she assumed was Thomas.
“Those gold pieces I gave you should come in handy. Here’s three more for your trouble tonight.”
She heard the clink of metal.
“These are really rare,” Thomas said. “I’ve been looking into all this. You’re after more gold, aren’t you?”
A few seconds of silence passed.
“I can help you,” Thomas said.
“What is it exactly you want?”
“Part of the lost Confederate treasure you’re after.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Grant appraised Martin Thomas. Perhaps he’d underestimated this librarian. Diane had assured him that the man would be fully cooperative, enamored by the fact that she was the wife of a U.S. senator and a Smithsonian regent. And so far Thomas had been nothing but compliant, accessing the right records, providing needed information, even going to Arkansas to investigate things firsthand.
That had been important. Sentinels were still out there. Where? Nobody knew for sure. Only bits and pieces of the Order’s records had survived, though enough for Diane to learn that the Witch’s Stone might be under the care of a man named Terry Morse, whose family had longtime ties to the knights. So she’d suggested to Thomas that he have a look, which the librarian had done. They’d thought that a trip by someone from the Smithsonian might open doors that would have otherwise remained closed, but that had not been the case. They did learn, however, that a sentinel was still there.
