by Steve Berry
“Before you leave, there is another matter. Bolton was right about one thing. The equipment that we have secreted at Shirley Kaiser’s residence. It’s time to remove it before someone notices. It’s not needed any longer. Do you have men who can accomplish that?”
He nodded. “Two I’ve been training. They assist me often. They can handle it.”
“I spoke with Kaiser a day or so ago and she told me she would be out this evening at a fund-raiser in Richmond. That should give you an opportunity.”
Hale sipped more whiskey.
“Clifford, the others know nothing of my association with NIA, beyond the little bit I told them earlier. And I don’t want to share any more until we have success. I’m asking you to keep this between us, for now. Contrary to what they think, I will not abandon them, though God knows I should. They are an ungrateful, stupid lot. But I take my oath to the Articles seriously. If we succeed, we succeed for all.”
He could not care less, but feigned interest. “I’m curious about one thing. How did you know which glass to pick?”
“What makes you think I knew?”
“You’re a bold man, but not a foolish one. For you to issue that challenge you must have known you could win.”
“My father taught me a trick,” Hale said. “If you jiggle the glass ever so slightly, the poison comes out of suspension and blurs the alcohol. It’s just for an instant but, if you pay close attention, you can see it. I swirled each glass before I drank. Granted, it’s not foolproof, but it’s better than blind luck.”
“That took guts,” he said.
Hale smiled at himself. “Indeed. It certainly did.”
WYATT STEPPED ONTO AN AIR CANADA FLIGHT IN BOSTON’S Logan International Airport. He’d flown from Richmond, Virginia, and had now been laid over for nearly two hours. A bad storm was delaying every flight, and he wondered if this one would make it out anytime soon. Flight time to Halifax, Nova Scotia, was another two hours, which should place him on the ground by midafternoon—provided there were no more delays. With any luck he’d be on Paw Island by five PM. He’d checked the weather, and the temperature should be around seventy degrees. The area had lately been experiencing a September heat wave combined with a dry spell. If necessary, he’d sleep on the island and finish his business tomorrow. One way or the other he would leave there with those missing pages.
He’d come to New York fully prepared with flash bombs, guns, and ammunition, but his passport would be of little use. Airline manifests could be checked by law enforcement with nothing more than a click of a mouse.
Another identity was required.
So he’d been forced to deal with Carbonell.
The half of his triple fee had been deposited in his Liechtenstein account, as promised. A lot of cash, tax-free. But a lot of risk, too. The greatest of which was dealing with Carbonell. She’d rubbed him wrong. Riled-up feelings within him he’d thought long suppressed. He was an American intelligence operative. Always had been, always would be.
That meant something to him.
Contrary to what Carbonell seemed to think.
He resented her callous, selfish attitude. She had no business heading any intelligence agency. Operatives in the field had to know that their superiors were watching their backs. Things were dangerous enough without having to worry whether your boss was unnecessarily placing your life in jeopardy.
She had to be stopped.
And that was why he’d stayed in this fight.
Malone? The trail for Captain America ended at Monticello. He wasn’t a factor any longer. That would have to wait for another time.
This would be his victory, and his alone.
He’d opted to fly commercial to draw less attention. He’d rent a car once on the ground and drive the fifty miles south to Mahone Bay. He’d bought appropriate outdoor clothing. Anything else needed he could buy once on the ground. The Nova Scotia peninsula was a mecca for outdoor enthusiasts, catering to cyclists, golfers, hikers, kayakers, boaters, and bird-watchers. It being Sunday might offer a few challenges with store hours, but he’d make do. Unfortunately, he was unarmed. No way to import a weapon. He’d read the intel Carbonell had provided, especially the information explaining the last word in the cipher’s message—Dominion—which referred to Fort Dominion, located on the south side of Paw Island.
A ruin not only today, but in Andrew Jackson’s time.
The site possessed a checkered history.
During the American Revolution, after the fort was seized by the Continental army, seventy-four British prisoners died there while in colonial hands. They’d been temporarily incarcerated beneath the fort, in a dungeon-like complex carved into its rocky foundation, and drowned when the level flooded. Three colonial officers were court-martialed over the incident, the charge being that they were told by others that the chamber would flood yet ignored the warning. They were acquitted, as the testimony regarding their knowledge of the danger was conflicted, at best.
He sympathized with those officers.
They’d simply been doing their duty, in a time of war, a long way from any command authority. Of course they hadn’t had the luxury of instant communication. Instead, they had to make local decisions. Then, months later, someone came along and second-guessed them. Unlike him, those men escaped punishment, but he imagined that any military career those officers might have envisioned ended with their trial.
Just like his.
What happened at Fort Dominion remained a sore spot for American and British relations up to the War of 1812, when the two nations finally resolved their differences. He wondered if there was any connection between that tragic incident and what Andrew Jackson had done sixty years later.
Dominion had been specifically chosen by Jackson.
Why?
He’d also reviewed again Jackson’s letter to the Commonwealth and his message hidden behind Jefferson’s cipher. The five symbols remained unexplained.
Carbonell had found nothing on them. Her advice? Deal with them once he was on the ground in Canada.
She’d assured him again that this mission was between the two of them. But a lie for her was far better than the truth, even when lying wasn’t necessary.
This was the end of the line, though.
If she lied to him here, even in the slightest—
He’d kill her.
FIFTY-SIX
WHITE HOUSE
CASSIOPEIA SAT IN THE OVAL OFFICE, EDWIN DAVIS BESIDE her on an upholstered settee. She’d been here once before and not much had changed. A couple of Norman Rockwells still adorned one wall. The same portrait of George Washington hung above the fireplace. Potted Swedish ivy dangled from the mantel—a tradition, Davis explained, dating back to the Kennedy administration. Two high-backed chairs framed the hearth, a scene she recognized from photo ops when the president sat to the left and a visiting head of state on the right. That had started, Davis explained, with Franklin Roosevelt so his guest would be seated, like him, downplaying his handicap.
The door opened and Daniels entered.
The president sat in one of the chairs before the fireplace.
“The press corps will be here shortly. I have some pictures to take with the new ambassador from Finland. They’re not supposed to ask questions when they come here for the pictures, but they will. Hell, their minds are fixated on only one thing, and they do have to keep the public interested.”
She caught his exasperation.
“This assassination attempt will be the story for a while,” the president said. “Of course, if we told them the real story, nobody would believe us. What did you two think of our little gathering?”
“That should rattle their cages,” Davis said.
“Those sons of bitches irk my ass,” Daniels said. “You hear that arrogant NSA bastard as I left?”
“Carbonell is good,” Davis said. “She held her own.”
“Smug as hell, too. With balls. She’s our target. No question. In The Godfath
er, I love that book and movie, Don Corleone teaches Michael that ‘the one who comes to you with an offer of help will be your traitor.’ I know, I know. It’s fiction. But that screenwriter was right.”
“Why did you tell them about Stephanie?” Cassiopeia asked.
“It couldn’t hurt. At least they know finding her will please me and, right now, I imagine most of them want to do that. Maybe one of ’em will surprise me and actually do something. Is Cotton on his way?”
Davis told his boss that the Secret Service flight had been delayed because of weather, then said, “We have no idea how, or when, Wyatt will get there.”
“But he’ll be there,” Daniels said. “Did you learn about the locale?”
Davis nodded. “A letter exists in the National Archives, from a group in Cumberland, Nova Scotia, sent to George Washington. The locals expressed sympathy for the American revolutionary cause against the British and actually invited Washington and the Continental army to invade Nova Scotia. They wanted Halifax burned and the British gutted. We didn’t take them up on that offer entirely, but we did capture a few strategic sites. Fort Dominion was one of those. It helped guard our flank, keeping British ships out of Mahone Bay while our forces moved on Montreal and Quebec. When the British defeated us at Quebec, we abandoned Dominion and burned it. Jackson, as a military man, definitely would have known of Fort Dominion, and he would not have used the British name, Wildwood, for the site.”
Cassiopeia listened as Davis explained about 74 British soldiers who died at the fort under questionable circumstances during the American occupation. The colonial officers involved had been court-martialed, but were all acquitted. After the Revolution, Canada ceased being a military target, becoming more a haven for ambitious pirates and privateers. Nova Scotia ultimately attracted 30,000 British Loyalists from the newly formed United States, one-tenth of whom were fleeing slaves.
“But during the War of 1812 we tried to take Canada again,” Davis said. “We lost that one, too.”
“And what were we going to do with it?” Daniels asked, shaking his head. “Crazy thinking. Just like our roosters back there in the conference room. Accomplishing nothing but their own survival. What did you find out about the five symbols in the message?”
Davis reached for a file in his lap. “I had the national security staff do the research, people I can trust here, in house. Nothing flagged anywhere. But one of the staffers is a big conspiratorialist. Into a lot of the New Age stuff, and she recognized the symbols.”
Davis handed both Cassiopeia and the president a sheet of paper.
“That stone was supposedly found about ninety feet down in the Oak Island treasure pit. When they hit that slab they thought something valuable would be either with it or below it. Unfortunately, that was not the case.”
“What does it mean?” the president asked.
“It’s a simple transposition code.”
Davis handed them another sheet.
“It supposedly says, Forty Feet Below Two Million Pounds Are Buried.” Davis paused. “There’s just one problem. No one alive has ever seen this stone. No one knows if it ever existed. But every book about Oak Island, and there are many, mentions it.”
Davis explained the provenance.
The slab was apparently found by one of the treasure consortiums digging on the island around 1805. A local resident named John Smith subsequently used it in his fireplace for decoration. There it stayed for nearly fifty years, until Smith died. Then it disappeared.
“So how do we know what it looks like?” Daniels asked.
“An excellent question. One to which there is no good answer. That image you have is the one that’s in all the books.”
“Who deciphered it?”
“No one knows that, either. There are multiple stories.”
Daniels sat back in the chair, holding the two pages. “A stone no one has ever seen, translated by no one we know, yet Andrew Jackson uses nearly identical symbols to hide two missing congressional journal pages?”
“It’s possible,” Davis said, “Jackson could have heard tales of Oak Island. By 1835 treasure hunters had been digging there for years. Mahone Bay was also a pirate den. Perhaps he intended a touch of irony in the selection of his hiding place.”
“You’re awfully quiet,” Daniels said to her.
“We need to speak to your wife.”
“You anxious to use that phone tap?”
“I’m anxious about Stephanie.”
“We have Kaiser’s house video monitored now,” Davis said. “We snuck two agents in before dawn and installed a camera.”
“We have to send Hale a message,” she said. “Enough to flush him from the field, too.”
The president understood the importance. “I know. But I wonder. Did those damn pirates really try to kill me?”
“It’s possible,” Davis said.
“I meant what I told those people a few minutes ago,” Daniels said. “We’re going to take the whole bunch of ’em down.”
But she knew Daniels’ dilemma. There was no way this could escalate into a public fight. That would not be good for the White House, the intelligence community, or the country. Whatever he did had to be done in private. Which, she assumed, was where she and Cotton came in. Of course, only she and Davis were privy to what Quentin Hale really knew. But she agreed with Davis: Now was not the time to bring any of that up.
“Cotton needs to find those two missing pages,” Daniels said.
“It may not matter,” she said. “We can telegraph anything we want to Hale through that phone tap. We could lead him to believe that we already have them.”
“Which would help Stephanie,” Daniels said. “If the pirates have her.”
“You realize,” Cassiopeia said, “that Carbonell could have Stephanie—”
Daniels held up a hand. “I know. But I just made it clear that Stephanie’s life is important. And if Carbonell and the pirates are as close as everyone seems to think, then they’ll get that message, too. Let’s hope they all understand.”
She agreed.
“Pauline is in her office,” Daniels said. “She has to leave soon for an engagement. I asked her to wait and speak with you.”
Davis stood. So did she.
The president kept his eyes to the floor, his face solemn.
“Find Stephanie,” he said. “Do whatever you have to do. Lie, cheat, steal. I don’t care. Just find her.”
Cassiopeia and Edwin Davis entered the First Lady’s office. Pauline Daniels waited behind her desk and rose to greet them in a cordial tone. They sat at a grouping of chairs before an ornate French-style desk, the office door closed.
Cassiopeia felt like the odd person out but took charge and said, “We’re going to stage a conversation tonight on your phone. I’m told Ms. Kaiser’s out at an event until eight thirty. By the time she returns, I’ll have a script for you. Memorize the gist of it, then say it in your own words. Edwin will be here with you. I’ll be on the other end.”
The First Lady glanced at Davis. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea any of this would happen.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Danny thinks I betrayed him.”
“He said that?” Davis asked her.
“No. In fact, he didn’t say a word. And that was what said it all.” She shook her head. “I almost killed him.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Cassiopeia said in a curt tone.
“You have no sympathy for us, do you?”
“A woman’s life is at stake.”
The First Lady nodded. “So I’ve been told. Stephanie Nelle. Do you know her?”
“She’s my friend.”
“I can’t believe this is happening. Shirley and I have discussed many things. But I’m not privy to a great deal that goes on around here. As you may have gathered, the president and I exist in separate lives. I was only made aware of the New York trip in a passing remark. Honestly, I thought nothing about it. Just
a quick trip up and back that would be kept quiet until the day of it.”
She heard the plea in her voice.
“I’ve been a fool,” the older woman said.
Cassiopeia didn’t disagree, but kept her mouth shut, as did Davis.
“I’m sure Edwin has made clear that nothing improper has occurred between us.”
“More than once.”
Pauline cast a weak smile. “I don’t know about you, Ms. Vitt, but this is a new experience for me. I’m unsure what to do.”
“Tell the truth. About everything.”
She waited to see if they both caught her message.
“I suppose it is time Danny and I discuss Mary. We haven’t in a long while.”
“I agree. But right now two people I care a great deal about are in danger, and we need your help.” She stood. “I’m headed back to Fredericksburg. I’ll call Edwin about seven and provide the script.”
She stepped toward the door but stopped and turned back. There was one other matter that the First Lady and Davis had ignored.
“Your husband said something to me once. ‘Don’t cut the dog’s tail off one inch at a time. If he’s going to howl, get it over with in one slice.’ I’d recommend you both follow that advice.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
BATH, NORTH CAROLINA
HALE LISTENED TO HIS FATHER, WHO WAS SPEAKING AGAIN OF THINGS he was hearing for the first time.
“James Garfield was the only sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives to ever be elected president. He served eighteen years in Congress before moving to the White House.”
His father had told him about Lincoln’s and McKinley’s assassinations, but he’d never mentioned the one that had occurred in between.
“Garfield was a major general who resigned his military commission in the middle of the Civil War, after being elected to Congress in 1863. He was instrumental in pushing Lincoln to prosecute us. He hated the Commonwealth and everything we did. Which is strange, considering how hawkish he was.”
