A French book from 1947 contained a lengthy section on Napoleon’s adventures in Mexico. Many other books did the same, but this one held a full chapter on “The Emperor’s Lost Treasure.” Journey’s French was not good, and he had to find a librarian who could translate for him.
It took nearly an hour, and the librarian commented, “It would help if the author knew how to write. A third-grader could write better than this.”
Indeed, the book was poorly written. Editing was nonexistent. Journey downgraded the reliability of the source, but he was still intrigued by the content. The author’s wild speculations conjured images of an ancient temple, built completely of silver and hidden in the deserts of northern Mexico. Other paragraphs went on at length about jewel-encrusted silver pieces that should rightfully be housed in France.
It was all hyperbole, but one short section caught Journey’s eye.
L’empereur agents traversé la grande rivière et qu’il y a découvert un plus grand trésor que peut être cru.
Journey read the librarian’s translation: “The emperor’s agents crossed the great river and there discovered a greater treasure than may be believed.”
“La Grande Riviere.” The Great River.
The Rio Grande.
The text was suspect and of dubious reliability, but this author—who cited as his sources the letters of French soldiers garrisoned in Mexico at the time—believed that Napoleon’s agents had crossed the Rio Grande.
Into the Confederate States of America.
“A greater treasure than may be believed.”
No details about what this unbelievable treasure might be or where the French had gone after crossing the river.
But at least one account believed the French had left Mexican territory.
Searching for … what? A life-sized crucifix? A temple?
It was sketchy at best, laughable at worst. The legends were unsubstantiated by any primary sources. Journey threw his pen down again, and it bounced off his laptop and rolled to the floor.
Journey turned in his chair and saw Graham Lashley, dressed in a dark suit as always, bend over and pick up the pen.
“It is maddening, is it not?” Lashley said. “The Leveque text tantalizes, but proves nothing.”
Journey took the pen from Lashley’s outstretched hand. “You’ve read it?”
“I’ve read all of them, Nick, including a few you don’t have here. This is my field.”
The two professors stared at each other.
“You won’t get away with it,” Lashley said, lowering his voice.
“I’m not trying to get away with anything, Graham. This is a consulting project for the U.S. government. The college is aware that I do this. The dean encouraged it. It’s no secret.”
Lashley folded his arms. “Since that business at Fort Washita last year, you’ve been quite the celebrity, haven’t you?”
Journey ignored the jab. “These consultations benefit the college, too. Faculty working on external projects is a good thing.”
Lashley smiled, but there was no humor in it. “‘External projects’? I hardly think concealing a find of major historical importance is what the college had in mind. But I guess I should expect no less from you.”
Journey stood up and stepped toward the other man. Lashley’s eyes widened and he took a step backward.
“So the famously cool Dr. Journey begins to show some emotion,” Lashley said. “And while we are on the topic, don’t waste your time with Sandra Kelly. She is as much a hack as you are. I voted against her receiving tenure.”
“She’ll be here long after you’re back on Barbados and having trouble getting a job as an after-school tutor,” Journey said, his voice rising. “And that’s where you’ll be if you don’t leave me alone about it.”
“That letter falls in my research area.”
“I’ve already told you,” Journey said. “After this project is finished. There’s a bit more at stake here than academic politics, Graham.”
Lashley’s voice rose as well. “Oh yes, people may have been killed because of it. Yes, I remember that bit of melodrama. I believe you may have spent a little too much time with your secret-agent friend.”
“This conversation is over, Graham. And if you don’t let this go, and keep your comments about Sandra to yourself, then I’m going to come and kick your ass. Now get the hell out of my way.”
Shaking with rage, Journey slammed his laptop closed, gathered up his legal pad, and walked away. People were staring—most of SCC had never seen him raise his voice or curse, and half of the fourth floor had seen him get into a shouting match with a fellow faculty member.
He tried to think of what he had learned about the Silver Cross. He had the same things he had when he started: innuendo, supposition, speculation … only more of it. He didn’t know if he had anything that would help Meg Tolman. He was no closer to finding the Silver Cross.
* * *
Journey called home to check in with the sitter he’d hired to stay with Andrew for the evening, then headed for Sandra’s house. She lived in a small house on the far west end of town, in a new subdivision populated mainly by younger faculty and grad students. She’d bought the house after she’d gained tenure last fall—it was her way of putting down roots in Carpenter Center, now that she knew her job at SCC was secure.
She was waiting for him on her front porch. Wearing flats, she was as tall as Journey. He stepped out of the car, kissed her cheek, and opened the passenger door for her.
“You’re so funny,” she said as she settled in.
“Am I?”
“No one opens car doors for women anymore, yet you do it every time. You don’t have to impress me.”
Journey smiled and walked around to his own side of the van. “I know, I’m quaint and old-fashioned. I also know you’re an accomplished professional woman and very capable of opening a door for yourself.”
“Maybe it’s a generational thing,” Sandra said with a smile. She liked to tease him about their age difference.
Journey shrugged, backing out of the driveway. “My aunt who raised me sort of pounded it into my head, that you always open the door for a lady. But she’d say, ‘You don’t do it because she’s a lady, you do it because you’re a gentleman.’ I thought it was so silly at the time.”
“Actually I think it’s kind of endearing. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll lose feminist points for that. So Sarah is with Andrew?”
“I have her until nine o’clock.”
“A little late for someone your age, isn’t it?”
Journey smiled. The banter with Sandra was becoming more natural, bit by bit. She was interesting and sexy, and he was frumpy and outdated, but it felt good. It was still hot an hour and a half later when they left the restaurant and went for a drive around Lake Texoma. It was Friday, and the roads in and out of town were filled with boats and RVs, as they were every summer weekend. Journey cranked the air conditioner and they listened to “All Things Considered” on SCC’s NPR affiliate.
“You know, you’re getting better at it,” Sandra said after a while.
“What?”
“Leaving Andrew with someone else. Actually getting a sitter so we can go out.”
Journey shifted on his seat.
“I know you’re still getting comfortable with it,” Sandra said. “It’s okay, and I appreciate it.” She paused. “That doesn’t sound condescending, does it?”
“No,” he said. “I’m trying. But it’s hard—”
Sandra raised her hand. “You don’t have to explain. I don’t know what it’s like, but I’m learning. You’re starting to let me see a little bit every now and then, the good and the bad. I’m a smart girl, Nick. I can see if you let me see.”
Sandra reached across and put a hand on his arm. A gentle, soft, cool touch. It felt good. Amelia had been gone nearly four years now, and it had been at least five years before she left since she had touched him with any real affection. Journey had
almost forgotten what the touch of a woman felt like.
“And you know what else?” Sandra said. “You only texted Sarah once during dinner. You’re improving all the time.”
Journey laughed, and it was an easy, natural response. For a while he wasn’t thinking about Graham Lashley and Napoleon III and Meg Tolman’s friend, murdered on a North Carolina seawall.
* * *
Sandra invited him in, and they sat on her red leather couch—“the only piece of furniture I’ve ever bought new,” she said with a laugh—and talked for another hour. When the conversation slowed a bit, he took her hand, turned slightly, and kissed her. Her lips, like her hand on his arm in the car, were cool and firm. He broke the kiss much too soon, but still held her hand.
“Well, finally,” she said, the little hint of a laugh always in her voice.
He smiled. “I’m a little out of practice.”
“I like practicing.”
She put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled his head toward her. They kissed again, more deeply. Journey felt light-headed. Sandra opened her mouth, and he felt her tongue, ever so lightly. They held the kiss a few more seconds, then broke off. Journey touched her shoulder, tracing a finger lightly across her neck. She shivered. They kissed again, quickly, and Journey lowered his hand to her breast. He left it there, unmoving, feeling himself growing hard. His motionless hand was a question.
“Please,” Sandra said. “I want you to touch me, Nick.”
He caressed her breast, very slowly, very gently, rubbing in an ever-widening circle, then finding the hardening nipple beneath the fabric of her blouse and rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. She drew in a sharp breath. With his other hand he traced from her neck to her shoulder. She shivered again.
He drew her to him and kissed her again, his hand still moving in circles on her breast. Sandra moaned and arched her back, then he slowly withdrew his hand, sliding it down to join hers, interlocking their fingers.
He kissed her mouth, her neck, her shoulder. She responded to him naturally, letting go. Her body had no tension—when he’d been intimate with Amelia, she’d always felt tense, as if she could never really surrender to the moment.
But neither could I, he thought.
He caressed Sandra’s breast again, then held her hand.
“Not bad for a middle-aged, out-of-practice professor,” Sandra said. She was a little out of breath.
“You think?”
“Mmm-hmm. You feel good.” She moved around on the couch. “But, Nick. I don’t want to go anywhere we’re not both ready to go. You know what I’m saying to you?”
“Just this far,” he said, then he smiled. “For now.”
He kissed her again. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t need to—the silence was easy, an exquisite moment of understanding and promise.
Journey traced his finger along the beautiful curve of her neck and he brushed against the silver chain she always wore. At the end of it, hanging perfectly between her breasts, was a tiny silver cross. He touched it, running his index finger across it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without this necklace,” he said.
Sandra smiled. “I never take it off.”
“It’s nice. Where did you get it?”
“My grandmother gave it to me when I made my confession of faith and joined the church at fourteen.”
“Catholic?”
“Oh no,” Sandra said. “Disciples of Christ denomination. Mainline, even liberal by some definitions. I’m from the rebellious Irish Protestant branch of the Kelly family. You?”
Journey shrugged, still looking at the pendant. “I think I’m sort of agnostic. Hung out with a lot of Unitarians in grad school, but I don’t know. I’m pretty secular in general.”
“You’re suddenly very interested in the cross.”
“This project I’m working on for Meg Tolman,” he said. “It involves an artifact that Napoleon III wanted, something called the Silver Cross.”
“You were feeling me up and thinking about Napoleon III?”
“Multitasking?”
“That’s okay. I was mentally reviewing the presidential campaigns of Eugene Debs for a paper I’m working on. We are the sexy couple, aren’t we?”
Journey smiled at her. It was going to be all right.
“So what’s up with this project?” Sandra asked.
Journey looked at the cross again. “I’ve been going about this all wrong. It was a pious time. Rulers tried to out-Christian each other. Lashley said something about Napoleon wanting this item that would show that God approved of his invasion of Mexico. It makes sense.”
“The symbolism would have been very important to him.”
“Yes. And you know who some of the most reliable writers were among explorers? Priests. If the French crossed the Rio Grande, I’m willing to bet they had a chaplain—maybe more than one—with them.”
“And chaplains with military units kept detailed journals,” Sandra said, “so they could notify the families of soldiers who died in battle.”
Journey sat up straight. “Yes! I need to start working it from the religious standpoint. I’ll go to the library tomorrow after I drop Andrew off—”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday, Nick. He doesn’t have day camp on Saturday, does he?”
“No. No, he doesn’t. Well, I guess I won’t—”
“I could come over for a bit and stay with him.”
“Sandra, you don’t have to—”
“I don’t have anything else going on tomorrow. I was planning to go to the gym and that can wait until later in the day.”
Journey remembered the look on Sandra’s face, in the square when Andrew had become aggressive. “But you don’t—”
“Don’t give me time to overthink it, or I might lose my nerve,” she said.
There was hesitation in her voice, uncertainty—it was new territory for both of them.
“Okay,” Journey said.
“Okay,” Sandra said, then she leaned over and she kissed him again.
CHAPTER
16
After leaving Gray, Mark Barrientos made the three-hour drive to Detroit and checked in to a hotel. He spent the better part of two hours making phone calls and relaying Gray’s instructions. The men had been on standby for months. They had already warehoused the materials. Gray hadn’t known exactly when they would be needed, or even the precise nature of the assignment, but as always, she planned ahead, and as always, she was ready when action needed to be taken.
After he hung up the phone, Barrientos opened his laptop. The anonymous e-mail account had been created some time ago, but had been dormant ever since. Thinking of Gray’s instructions, Barrientos began typing, working on the message. But he did not send it—that would come later.
He finally slept sometime after sunrise, then spent the day keeping tabs on the men in the field. At various times in the overnight hours, three yellow Ryder trucks loaded with fuel oil and ammonium nitrate left a Chicago warehouse. The first reached its destination in under seven hours. The second took nine hours. The third had a twenty-one-hour drive, arriving in its target city at a few minutes after midnight, as Friday turned to Saturday.
By then Barrientos was wide awake again. He remembered what Gray had told him. The three distant locations had to be coordinated. They must operate simultaneously, even across three time zones. At 2:45 A.M. eastern time, he gave them the go-ahead to move into position.
Within ten minutes, the trucks pulled into parking areas adjacent to federal office buildings in Albuquerque, Kansas City, and Cleveland. Their drivers made quick exits to getaway vehicles that their partners drove, usually parked within two blocks. At the top of the hour—3:00 A.M. in Cleveland, two o’clock in Kansas City, one o’clock in Albuquerque—the three trucks exploded. The explosions were simultaneous in Albuquerque and Cleveland. The Kansas City driver’s watch was a little off, and the explosion there came fifteen seconds after
the others.
After Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, many federal buildings installed new parking facilities, designed so that no vehicle could park directly in front of the buildings. Even with this architectural precaution, the blast had its intended effect. Glass and steel and brick and wood and granite flew. Nearby structures were damaged. The entire face was sheared off the Richard Bolling Federal Building in Kansas City, eerily similar to the Murrah Building years before. The fire spread rapidly across several blocks.
The A. J. Celebrezze Federal Building, at the northeast edge of tightly packed downtown Cleveland, absorbed less damage due to its “second skin” construction added after 1995, but most of the windows in the lower half of the thirty-two-story structure blew outward. The building’s glass and granite panels on the lower floors became lethal weapons, careening through the air. Glass rained down onto silent East Ninth Street below. The tops of trees in the plaza across the street were sheared off and caught fire.
At Gold Avenue S.W. and Sixth Street in downtown Albuquerque, the Dennis Chavez Federal Building, at fourteen stories, was the smallest of the three targets. Although the truck was parked on the other side of a brick wall on the street, the blast still reached the building. Winds were strong and fire and debris spread rapidly through the downtown area. Rubble coated both sides of the downtown intersection.
Barrientos spoke to each of the teams as they made their getaway, and he told them to go to ground. They would receive further instructions later.
Barrientos logged in to the e-mail account, retrieved the message from the drafts folder, and pressed send. He sent many copies of the e-mail, all with the same wording. They read:
April 19 is responsible for the bombings in Albuquerque, Kansas City, and Cleveland. There will be more to come. We will hold the government accountable. We are April 19. Maybe now the U.S. government and those who conduct business on its behalf will get the message.
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