by Steve Berry
“Two hundred years ago, perhaps.”
“Little has changed. Threats still remain. Perhaps more so today than ever. We have done nothing but support this nation. Every effort of the Commonwealth has been directed toward thwarting our enemies. Now we are to be prosecuted?”
“I’m aware of your problem,” Davis said.
“Then you know our dilemma.”
“I know that the intelligence people are fed up with you. What you did in Dubai almost brought the entire region crashing down.”
“What we did was frustrate our enemies, attacking them when and where they were most vulnerable.”
“They are not our enemies.”
“That’s a matter of debate.”
“Mr. Hale. If you’d kept on there and bankrupted Dubai, which was a real possibility, the repercussions would have disrupted this nation’s entire Middle East policy. The loss of such a key ally in that region would have been devastating. We have so few friends over there. It would have taken decades to cultivate another relationship like that one. What you were doing was counterproductive to anything reasonable and logical.”
“They are not our friends, and you know it.”
“Maybe so. But Dubai needs us, and we need them. So we put aside our differences and work together.”
“Why not do the same relative to us?”
“Frankly, Mr. Hale, your situation is not something the White House cares about one way or the other.”
“You should. The first president and the second Congress of this country legally granted us the authority to act, so long as it was directed toward our enemies.”
“With one problem,” Davis said. “The legal authority for your letter of marque does not exist. Even if we wanted to honor it, that could prove impossible. There is no written reference in the congressional journals for that session addressing them. Two pages are missing, which I believe you are well aware of. Their location is guarded by Jefferson’s cipher. I read Andrew Jackson’s letter to your great-great-grandfather.”
“Am I to assume that if we solve the cipher and find those missing pages, the president will honor the letter?”
“You can assume that your legal position will be much stronger since, as of now, you don’t have one.”
“Gentlemen,” he said to the other three. “I am reminded of a story my grandfather once told me. A British merchant ship spotted a vessel on the horizon, its identity and intentions unknown. They watched for the better part of an hour as it bore down upon them. As it approached the captain asked his crew if they would stand and defend the ship. ‘If they be Spaniards,’ the crew said, ‘we will fight. But if they be pirates we will not.’ Once they learned that it was Black Beard himself, they all quit the ship, believing they would be murdered.”
The other three stared at him.
“It is time to raise our flag. To let our enemy know that we are bearing down upon them.”
“Why are you so smug?” Cogburn asked. “What have you done?”
Hale smiled.
Charles knew him well.
“Perhaps enough to save us all.”
TWENTY-ONE
NEW YORK CITY
KNOX ENTERED THE HELMSLEY PARK LANE, THE UPSCALE HOTEL located at the south end of Central Park. Though he possessed a key, he did not know which room it opened. That was the thing about plastic cards. No information. He stepped across the lobby to the front desk. There a bright-eyed woman in her early twenties asked if she could be of help.
“Scott Parrott, checking out,” he said to her, adding a smile and handing her the key.
He was hoping Parrott had not made himself noticeable. If by chance the woman knew Parrott, he was ready with a cover story. I’m the one paying the bill. Scott works for me. But not a word was uttered as she pounded computer keys and printed out a bill.
“Leaving a day early?” she said.
He nodded. “Necessary.”
She plucked a page from the printer and handed it to him. He pretended to peruse the statement, focusing only on the room number.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I just realized I left something upstairs. I’ll be right back. Hold this for me.”
He thanked her and headed for the elevators, riding an empty car to the fifth floor. There he inserted the key card and opened the door. Inside was a spacious suite with an unmade king-sized bed. Picture windows consumed the south wall and offered an impressive view of Central Park’s colorful treetops, hinting at their autumn glory to come, along with the buildings of the Upper West Side.
His gaze raked the décor until he found the laptop on the desk. He stepped over and yanked the power cord from the wall socket.
“And who are you?” a female voice said.
He turned.
A woman stood inside the bathroom doorway. She was short, petite, with straight brown hair, wearing jeans and a sweater.
Her right hand held a revolver.
“Scott sent me to get the computer.”
“That all you got? Or the best you could do on short notice?”
He shrugged, gesturing with the laptop in his grasp. “Best I could do.”
“Where’s Scott?”
“Now, is that all you have?”
“I don’t know, Knox. I seem to be the one with the gun, so answer the question.”
Just what he needed—another problem. Hadn’t he had enough of those for one day. But his suspicions were now confirmed.
This was a trap.
Still, he’d been forced to take the chance.
She advanced farther into the room, keeping her gun trained on him. She reached into her back pocket and found a cellphone. One push of a button and she said, “Our pirate has arrived.”
This just kept getting better.
She stood too far away, maybe ten feet, for him to do anything that would not get him shot. He noticed that her weapon was sound-suppressed. Obviously, the NIA wanted minimum attention drawn to this effort, which might work to his advantage. He had to do something, and fast, since he did not know how far away that assistance was located.
She tossed the phone aside.
“The laptop,” she said. “Toss it on the bed.”
He nodded his assent and started to lob it onto the mattress. At the last second he propelled the device straight at her, spinning it across the room.
She dodged and he lunged, kicking the gun from her grasp. She spun, raised her arms, and attacked. He slammed his right fist into her face, driving her onto the bed. Dazed from the blow, she reached for her bloody nose.
He found the gun on the carpet.
Finger on the trigger, he grabbed a pillow from the bed, pressed the gun into one side, the other onto her head, and fired once.
She stopped moving.
The pillow had muffled the sound-suppressed report to almost nothing.
Dammit. Killing was not something he enjoyed doing. But he hadn’t set this foolish trap.
He tossed the pillow aside.
Think.
He’d touched only the laptop, its power cord, and the door handle.
He retrieved the computer from the floor. It had landed on one of the upholstered chairs and seemed okay. He would keep the gun. He found a washcloth in the bathroom and opened the exit door with it, then wiped the knob on both sides. He stuffed the cloth in his pocket and headed for the elevators.
He turned the corner just as a sound announced the arrival of a car.
Two men stepped off, both young and clean-cut. Surely the radioed assistance. He casually brushed past, never giving them a second glance. It would take them less than a minute to discover the body and begin their pursuit. He wasn’t necessarily worried about these two, but the ones they could radio would be a problem.
He pressed the button with his sleeved elbow and waited.
“Hey,” a voice said.
He turned.
Both men were rushing back his way.
Crap.
His right hand rested in h
is pocket, fingers on the gun.
He withdrew the weapon.
TWENTY-TWO
NEW YORK CITY
WYATT HOPPED DOWN FROM THE LAST RUNG OF THE FIRE ESCAPE to the pavement and grabbed his bearings, deciding to walk the few blocks east toward Central Park and find a cab. The quiet side street was tree-lined, light on traffic, but heavy with parked cars. Several displayed violation tickets on their windshields. Night had arrived with a chill that matched his mood. He did not like being used or manipulated.
But Andrea Carbonell had done both.
That woman was a problem.
She was a career intelligence operative who’d risen from low-level analyst to agency head, managing to keep NIA useful even in difficult times. His previous dealings with her had been varied—occasional jobs for which she paid well—and there’d never been any problems out of the ordinary.
So why was this time so different?
None of this really concerned him. Yet he was curious. More of that operative inside him seeping back to the surface.
He approached an intersection and was about to cross when he noticed a black sedan parked fifty feet away. The face that stared at him from an open rear window was familiar.
“Forty-two minutes,” Carbonell called out to him. “I gave you forty-five. You hurt them?”
“They’re going to need a doctor.”
She smiled. “Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”
“You fired me, then you allowed those idiots to take me. I’m going home.”
“I was hasty on both counts.”
That curiosity inside him swelled. He knew he shouldn’t but he decided to accept her offer. He stepped across the street, and the sedan left the curb as soon as he settled into the rear seat.
“We found Scott Parrott,” she said. “Dead in Central Park. The pirates are predictable, I’ll say that for them.”
He’d worked with Parrott for the past month. He was NIA’s conduit to the Commonwealth, the source of all of his intel. Of course, he hadn’t told NSA or CIA any of that. None of their damn business.
“I knew Clifford Knox would do something,” she said. “He’d have to.”
“Why?”
“It’s all part of the pirate thing. We insulted them by interfering so they have to retaliate. It’s their culture.”
“So you sacrificed Parrott?”
“That’s a harsh way of putting it. What did you say at your admin hearing? Part of the mission. People get killed sometimes.”
Yes, he had said that. But he didn’t catch the connection between his comment, referring to agents under fire who required help, and sending a man to meet with someone you knew was going to kill him.
“Parrott was careless,” she said. “Too trusting. He could have protected himself.”
“And you could have provided him a warning or backup.”
She handed him a file. “That’s not how it works. It’s time you learn more about the Commonwealth.”
He handed the packet back. “I’m done.”
“You realize there’ll be repercussions over what happened back there.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
“They won’t see it that way. What did they want? For you to turn on me? Give up the Commonwealth on the assassination attempt?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re a smart guy, Jonathan. The only one for this job.” She smiled. “I know they’re after me. I’ve known that for a while. They think I’m on the take to the Commonwealth.”
“Are you?”
“Not in the least. I have no use for their ill-gotten gains.”
“But apparently, you have use for them.”
“I’m a survivor, Jonathan. I’m sure you don’t have to worry about a paycheck. You have millions stashed away, no danger of anybody ever getting their hands on it. I’m not that fortunate. I have to work.”
No, that wasn’t right. She loved the work.
“Even in a changing job market,” she said, “courtesy of a presidential downsizing, opportunities still exist. I simply want one of those for myself. That’s all. No payoffs. No bribes. Just a job.”
Since clearly no one at NSA or CIA would touch her, and she wouldn’t settle for anything less than a deputy administrator or a director’s post, her choices were limited. She’d also want to go somewhere safe. Nothing on the chopping block. Why jump from one fire into another?
He caught her gaze.
She seemed to read his mind.
“That’s right. I want the Magellan Billet.”
KNOX WHIRLED, THE SIGHT OF THE SOUND-SUPPRESSED GUN stopping the two men’s advance.
“Hands to the side,” he said. “Step back.”
They obliged and slowly retreated down the hall.
Another elevator arrived, and the doors opened.
Two more threats stood inside, similar to the first pair. The sight of his gun momentarily caught them off guard, as neither of them held a weapon. He fired twice into the elevator, angling the shots up, trying not to hit anybody, just rattle them into a frenzy.
The doors closed as the two men dove to the floor, arms shielding their heads, trying to avoid the rounds. But the few seconds used to discourage the new threat encouraged the old one, and a body slammed into him broadside.
He hit the carpet and lost his grip on the laptop.
Using his legs, he pivoted upward and flipped himself, propelling the man off him. He rolled right and fired at the second agent rushing down the hall, dropping the body to the carpet.
The other man recovered and swung a fist.
Which connected.
WYATT CONSIDERED WHAT CARBONELL HAD TOLD HIM.
The Magellan Billet.
“Seems like a good place to be,” she said. “Daniels loves it. Odds are his party will retain the White House after next year. It’s the perfect spot for a career woman like me.”
“Except that Stephanie Nelle heads it now.”
He noticed their route, toward Times Square, in the direction of his hotel, the location of which he’d never mentioned to Andrea Carbonell.
“I’m afraid Stephanie has come on some hard times,” she said. “The Commonwealth took her prisoner a few days ago.”
Which explained how his email to Malone in Copenhagen had worked so easily. He’d opened a Gmail account in Stephanie Nelle’s name. Nothing unusual would have flagged on Malone’s end. Field agents regularly used common email providers since they drew no attention, revealed nothing about the sender, and blended perfectly with the billions of others. If Malone hadn’t taken the bait, or had communicated with Nelle outside the email, he would have waited for another time to repay his debt. Luckily, that had not occurred.
He was curious, though. “The Commonwealth is helping you acquire a new job?”
“They’re about to.”
“And what is it you have that they want?”
She laid the folder in his lap. “It’s all explained in here.”
He listened as she told him about privateers, letters of marque from George Washington, an attempt on Andrew Jackson’s life, and a cipher Thomas Jefferson considered unbreakable.
“A friend of Jefferson’s,” she said, “Robert Patterson, a professor of mathematics, conceived what he called the perfect cipher. Jefferson was fascinated with codes. He loved Patterson’s so much that, as president, he passed it to his ambassador in France for official use. Unfortunately, there is no record of its solution. Patterson’s son, also named Robert, was appointed by Andrew Jackson as director of the U. S. Mint. That’s probably how Jackson learned of the cipher and its solution. It’s logical to assume that the son knew. Old Hickory was a big fan of Thomas Jefferson.”
She showed him a copy of a handwritten page that contained nine rows of letters in seemingly random sequence.
“Most people don’t know,” she said, “that prior to 1834 there were few records of Congress. What existed was contained within the separate journ
als for the House and Senate. In 1836 Jackson commissioned the Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, which took twenty years to finish. To create that official record, they used journals, newspaper accounts, eyewitnesses, whatever or whoever they could find. It was mainly secondhand information, but it became the Annals of Congress and is now the official congressional record.”
She explained that nowhere in the Annals was there any mention of four letters of marque granted to any Hale, Bolton, Cogburn, or Surcouf. In fact, two pages were missing from the official House and Senate journals for the congressional sessions of 1793.
“Jackson tore those pages out and hid them away,” she said, “concealed behind Jefferson’s cipher. It has done its job well, protecting that hiding place—” She paused. “Until a few hours ago.”
He spotted his hotel down Broadway.
“We hired an expert a few months ago,” she said. “A particularly smart individual who thought he could solve it. The Commonwealth has tried, but none of their hired guns were successful. Our man is in southern Maryland. He’s privy to some computer programs we use for Middle East decoding that apparently worked. I need you to go see him and retrieve the solution.”
“It can’t be emailed or couriered?”
She shook her head. “Too many security risks associated with that. Besides, there’s a complication.”
He caught the implications. “Others know about this?”
“Unfortunately. Two of whom you just sent to the hospital, but the White House knows as well.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I told them.”
TWENTY-THREE
AIR FORCE ONE
MALONE WAITED FOR AN ANSWER TO HIS QUESTIONS—WHO contacted me two days ago and who left the note?—but none came. Instead Edwin Davis handed him another sheet of paper, this one with nine lines of random letters, written in the same script featured on Andrew Jackson’s letter to Abner Hale.
“That’s the Jefferson cipher,” Davis said. “The Commonwealth has tried since 1835 to crack it. Experts tell me it’s not a simple substitution, where you replace one letter of the alphabet with another. It’s a transposition, where letters are placed in a defined order. To know the sequence, you have to know the key. There are something like 100,000 possibilities.”
