by Brad Thor
When he was finished, there were undoubtedly a million questions she wanted to ask, but Ferguson stayed focused. “So what you’re looking for is a mechanical item that uses gears, which was designed by this al-Jazari, and was brought back to Jefferson by the Marines who were at the Battle of Derna in 1805, correct?”
Everyone nodded as the curator reached for the other document and then said, “We also have a second set of drawings that look like architectural details of some sort.”
“Carpentry work?” said Harvath.
“Definitely carpentry work.”
“Does it look familiar at all?” asked Nichols.
Ferguson examined it under her magnifying glass again. “Monticello was a woodworker’s paradise. Jefferson designed every frieze, every cornice, and every pediment himself. They’re everywhere.”
“So you don’t recognize it, then?”
The curator reached for a book titled Les Édifices Antiques de Rome and opened it to page fifty. “This is a detail of the Corinthian temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome. Jefferson based the frieze in the entrance hall on this design.”
Harvath looked at the Jefferson drawing and the page in the book side-by-side. “They’re nearly identical.”
Ferguson nodded. “You said this Islamic inventor was famous for his clocks?”
“Yes,” answered Harvath. “Why?”
“Because,” replied Nichols, “the entrance hall is the location of Jefferson’s Great Clock.”
Ferguson looked at him. “Which has never been removed from Monticello since its installation in 1805.”
“We need to see that clock,” said Harvath.
“But it didn’t come from an Islamic inventor. It was built by a clockmaker in Philadelphia named Peter Spruck.”
Nichols recognized a book about Monticello that was sitting on the table and picked it up. He flipped through it until he found the section regarding the Great Clock. “Spruck might have built it,” he replied, “but Jefferson designed it, right down to the size of the gears and how many teeth each one has.”
“When was it built?” asked Harvath.
Nichols searched for the exact date. “1792. Three years after he returned from Paris.”
Harvath looked back at Susan Ferguson and repeated, “We really need to see that clock.”
The curator looked at her watch. “Monticello opens to the public in half an hour. We need to be fast.”
CHAPTER 78
Even though Harvath had been based in Virginia as part of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, he had never been to Monticello. As a child, he’d grown up seeing it on the back of the nickel, as well as on the two-dollar bill up until the mid-seventies. It was a magnificent piece of American history that he’d always regretted never having visited.
Once a sprawling plantation of five thousand acres upon an 850-foot peak on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Monticello took its name from Italian for little mountain. Designed completely by Thomas Jefferson, it was the only private home in the United States to have been designated a World Heritage Site.
Susan Ferguson had called ahead so that when they arrived at Monticello less than five minutes later, they were allowed to drive straight up to the main house.
Harvath parked as close as he could and they all jumped out. Beneath the Northeast Portico they got their first view of the Great Clock. It was mounted above a lunette window and a pair of French doors.
Ferguson had explained on the way over that the clock had two faces, one outside which showed just the hour, while another inside the entrance hall indicated hours, minutes, and seconds. What she hadn’t mentioned was that it was mounted more than fifteen feet off the ground.
Nevertheless, what grabbed Harvath’s attention was the hour hand. Its tip was in the shape of a heart while its tail was in the shape of a crescent. Whether it was meant to represent Islam or not, Harvath couldn’t be sure, but it was too much of a coincidence to discount. Looking over at Nichols, he could tell that the professor had noticed it as well. “We’re going to need a ladder,” he said as he and Nichols continued to look up at the clock.
“Mr. Jefferson already saw to that,” replied Ferguson as she removed a ring of keys from her pocket and unlocked the French doors.
The dramatic entrance hall was two stories tall, with an upper balcony connecting a wing on each side. Its floor had been painted grass green and the entire space looked like a mini-museum of its own with maps, antlers, paintings, bones, busts, fossils, animal hides, Native American artifacts, and other objects that had appealed to Jefferson.
Once the group was all inside, they turned and looked up at the interior face of the Great Clock which was housed in a wooden box.
Its face was black and its hands, numbers, and ornamentation were a brassy gold. Upon it rested a classic pediment and behind that a frieze similar to the one in Nichols’ drawing.
A series of cannonball-like weights suspended on ropes that moved up and down through holes in the floor allowed for the precise measurement of time, including days of the week, which were indicated by small signs attached to the weights on the south side of the entrance hall.
In the corner to his right, Harvath noticed a wooden ladder that stretched almost to the ceiling.
“The clock needs to be wound with a special key once a week,” said Ferguson. “We still do it the same way, just not normally with our display ladder.”
Harvath stared up at the clock face and noticed that the tail of its second hand was also in the shape of an Islamic-style crescent.
Ozbek helped bring the ladder over and gently leaned it against the wall. “All right,” said the curator once it was in place. “Who’s going up for a closer look?”
Harvath stepped forward and with Ozbek steadying the ladder, climbed up. Eye-to-eye with the clock, he noticed that the hours were Roman while the minutes of the hour were Arabic.
After a cursory review of the outside, Harvath began to remove the housing.
“Please be careful,” cautioned Ferguson.
It took him several minutes to figure out how to get it all the way off and when he did, he handed it down to Ozbek who set it carefully on the floor and went back to holding the ladder. The entire inner workings of Jefferson’s Great Clock were now exposed.
“Do you see the gear?” asked Nichols. “Is it there?”
There were plenty of gears, but nothing that resembled what was in the schematic. Harvath looked down at the curator and asked, “Is there any way we can stop this for a minute?”
Ferguson looked at her watch and then out the window where visitors were already starting to mill about and gather near the portico.
“Susan?” Harvath repeated. “I need to stop this clock for a minute.”
The curator took a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s how you stop it.”
Once all the movement had ceased, Harvath was able to reach his hand inside and better examine the mechanics.
He wasn’t having any luck. He asked Nichols to hand up the schematic and he checked each gear against each of the gears in the drawing.
He then had Nichols hand up the architectural drawings and compared them to the carpentry work around the clock and the entablature along the wall. It was close, but not perfect. It had all seemed so right, but yet they were missing something.
“We open the doors in two minutes,” said Ferguson. “Do you see anything at all?”
“Nothing,” replied Harvath as he handed the diagrams back down to Nichols.
With the curator walking him through it, Harvath restarted the clock and then replaced the housing. He climbed down the ladder and hung it on the nearby wall.
“I don’t understand it,” said Nichols. “It seemed like the perfect fit.”
Harvath borrowed the architectural detail again and looked at Ferguson. “Maybe this diagram is the clue to what we’re looking for. If Jefferson drew it, he probably drew it for here, right? So what should we do? Go room by room? I know
the second and third floors aren’t open to the public. Maybe we should start up there.”
“Or the stone weaver’s cottage,” offered Nichols.
“There wouldn’t be carpentry like this in the stone weaver’s cottage,” said Ferguson as she bit the inside of her cheek in thought. She then pulled the walkie-talkie from her belt, changed its channel, and spoke into it. “John, this is Susan. Do you copy?”
A moment later, a man’s voice came back over the radio. “Go ahead, Susan.”
“Do we have Paul Gilbertson on the docent schedule today?”
“Who’s Paul Gilbertson?” asked Nichols.
Ferguson motioned for him to hold his question.
A moment later, the voice replied, “Yes, we do. He’s leading the architectural study tours.”
“Will you please ask him to meet me up at the main house right now? Tell him it’s urgent.”
CHAPTER 79
Paul Gilbertson was a large, Santa-like figure in his early seventies with a full beard and glasses that dangled from a cord around his neck. His hands were rough and his fingers looked like thick pieces of rope. A Leatherman tool hung from a nylon sheath on his belt.
He accepted the architectural schematic from Nichols and put his glasses on. With the tip of his tongue between his teeth, he made sucking sounds as he studied the drawings. After turning the document around in his hands he said, “Even without knowing what all of the coded words mean, this definitely looks like Jefferson’s handiwork. They have Palladio written all over them,” and then he went back to making the noises with his tongue.
Harvath looked at Ferguson. “What’s Palladio?”
“Andrea Palladio was a Renaissance architect. Jefferson was completely self-taught in architecture and referred to Palladio’s four books on the subject as his bible.”
A couple of minutes later, as if being led by the drawings, Gilbertson walked away. The rest of the group quickly followed.
They entered the dining room and watched as Gilbertson scrutinized the woodwork around the doors and windows.
As they did, Harvath discovered a clever revolving serving door. It looked like a regular door, but it didn’t have hinges. Instead, it had a rotating pin, fastened at the top and bottom in the center of the door. Food apparently could be loaded on to shelves affixed to the back of the door and then it would be turned outward to present the food to the dining room without a servant ever having to enter.
As Harvath spun the door back to its original position, Gilbertson shook his head and said, “This isn’t a diagram for door surrounds or molding.”
“What is it then?” asked Nichols.
The docent moved away from the window and crossed to the wall. “One of these,” he said.
“A fireplace?” replied Harvath.
The man nodded. “I think it’s a design for a mantelpiece.”
Nichols looked at him. “Are you sure?”
“To be completely sure,” he replied, “I’d need a full drawing, not just a sectional. But with a full drawing, almost anybody would be able to tell what they were looking at.”
“Why do you think it’s a mantelpiece?” asked Harvath.
“The diagrams are of very specific pieces that require sophisticated joinery,” replied Gilbertson as he signaled for Harvath to follow him. Walking over to the side of the fireplace, he said, “It reminded me a lot of this mantelpiece.”
“Why?” asked Harvath.
“Watch.”
Harvath looked on as Gilbertson opened one of the mantelpiece’s panels to reveal an ingenious hidden compartment. Inside was a rope and pulley system.
“What is it?” he asked.
Gilbertson smiled. “It’s a dumbwaiter for wine. There’s one on each side of the fireplace. Jefferson designed them himself. Right beneath us is the wine cellar. When more wine was needed, a slave in the cellar would place a bottle in the box and send it up.”
“So you think this set of drawings is for a fireplace dumbwaiter system?”
“It does appear to have an attachment point for a rope and pulley system, similar to this mantelpiece, but with such a limited diagram it’s hard to tell,” said the docent. “If I had to guess, I’d say that what you have there is a sectional view of a mantelpiece that has some secondary purpose.”
“Speaking of which,” said Nichols, “when we came in here, you didn’t go straight over and show us the fireplace. You studied the doors, the windows, and the ceiling first. Why?”
Gilbertson held up the document. “The frieze Jefferson drew here looks just like the one from the Corinthian temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome. Susan was right to take you to the entrance hall first. But it’s this smaller design at the bottom of the page that made me think of this room.
“Look at the entablature around the ceiling in here,” he said, pointing up. “Jefferson used rosettes and bucrania or ox skulls.”
Everyone looked up.
Harvath was the first to glance back down at the paper. “But that doesn’t look like the drawing. This has a woman’s face.”
“But what’s next to the face?”
Harvath looked closer. “Vines?”
“Flowers,” said Gilbertson. “It’s the edge of a bucranium. Ox skulls draped with flower garlands were a popular sacrificial motif for Roman altars. They became popular again for adorning Renaissance buildings.”
“Did Jefferson use bucrania anywhere else here at Monticello?”
“He did. In his bedchamber and in the parlor,” replied Gilbertson, “but not with faces. The only place faces appear anywhere similar to this is in the frieze in the Northwest Piazza. It was modeled on a frieze from the Roman baths of Diocletian.”
“May I see that again please?” asked Susan Ferguson.
The docent handed her the page.
Nichols was about to say something when he noticed the intense look on his colleague’s face as she analyzed the document.
“Now there could have been a design like this here at Monticello at one point in time,” stated Gilbertson, “but I don’t know of it. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist, though. You may want to speak with one of the librarians about their collection of Jefferson’s notes and letters. They can be excellent research resources. In fact—”
Ferguson suddenly interrupted him. “No, Paul. You’re right. This motif wasn’t designed for Monticello.”
The docent was surprised by her certitude. “It wasn’t?”
“No, Jefferson designed it for his other plantation, Poplar Forest.”
“How do you know?”
“Several of the entablatures there were also based upon an ancient frieze from Diocletian’s Roman baths. They had human faces interspersed with three vertical bars, but Jefferson decided to add some whimsy and directed his craftsmen to include ox skulls.”
“And the mantelpieces?” asked Harvath.
“Poplar Forest has fifteen,” offered Ferguson.
Harvath smiled. “That’s got to be it.”
“The only problem with that,” said Gilbertson, “is that Poplar Forest was gutted by fire in 1845. Only the walls, columns, chimneys, and fireplaces are still original.”
CHAPTER 80
Poplar Forest was located in Bedford County just southwest of the city of Lynchburg, Virginia. Even with a heavy foot, it took Harvath nearly an hour in waning rush-hour traffic to make the eighty-mile drive.
As they drove, Nichols filled them in on the big picture points he knew about Poplar Forest.
“Jefferson referred to Poplar Forest as his ‘most valuable possession’ and began building the house there in 1806, shortly after the First Barbary War.
“It was his retreat where he was free to carry on his favorite pursuits—thinking, studying, and reading. His parlor, which also doubled as his study, housed over six hundred books in multiple languages by authors such as Aesop, Homer, Plato, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Molière.
“The house at Poplar Forest was considered the
pinnacle of Jefferson’s architectural genius. Based upon the design principles of Andrea Palladio, Jefferson constructed the all-brick home in the form of a perfect, equal-sided octagon, which appealed to his love of mathematics. Inside, the home was divided into four octagonal rooms surrounding a central dining room that was perfectly cubed.
“With triple-sash and floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as a sixteen-foot-long skylight in the center of the house, every space was flooded with light. And though the idea was to create a simple, informal country retreat, the entire home, right down to its kitchen, was a state-of-the-art masterpiece.”
The fact that Poplar Forest was closed on Mondays wouldn’t have stopped Harvath from finding a way to get inside, but Susan Ferguson had called Poplar Forest’s director, Jonathan Moss, who agreed to drive over from Roanoke and meet the men there.
Turning right off Bateman Bridge Road at the entrance of Poplar Forest, Harvath followed the long driveway for a mile before it ended near the front of the house. Theirs was the only vehicle there.
“Looks like we’re here first,” stated Nichols. “Should we take a look around?”
The three men climbed out of the SUV, briefly stretched, and then began walking. As they circled the main house and the newly reconstructed service wing, the professor shared the handful of additional modern details he knew about Poplar Forest. In particular, he described how it had been rapidly degrading until 1983, when a nonprofit corporation was formed to buy it and the surrounding five hundred acres. Over the next twenty-five years the corporation painstakingly researched and restored the estate to its original condition.
After fifteen minutes of sightseeing, they heard a car door slam shut. Poplar Forest’s director had arrived. With Nichols and Ozbek right behind him, Harvath turned and headed back to where they had parked.
Jonathan Moss was the skinniest person Harvath had ever seen. Standing about five-foot-eleven, with dark hair and a pronounced Adam’s apple, the man looked to be about fifty and reminded Harvath of Washington Irving’s Ichabod Crane.
