by Steve Berry
Except one thing from that time.
Treasure. Confederate gold and silver.
That interested him.
He had a primal need for massive wealth, brought on by a life that had enjoyed precious little of that commodity. He’d been a disappointment to his parents, not given to serious study. His father had been an academic who eventually found a career at the Smithsonian Institution. Now the old man was little more than a babbling idiot.
Talk about disappointment.
“How are you tonight?” he asked his father.
James Breckinridge was pushing eighty. And though the body had survived relatively intact, the mind had slipped away. The old man lived alone, still able, though, to care for himself. Somehow meals were cooked and the house kept reasonably clean. But it was only a matter of time before a retirement home would have to be found.
“Do I know you?” his father asked.
He could see that tonight was going to be difficult. Which was not good. He had no time for nonsense. He needed answers. The house sat on the Virginia side of the Potomac, just beyond the DC Beltway. It had been paid for long ago, which allowed his father to live comfortably off a Smithsonian pension and Social Security.
“It’s Grant. Your son. Think hard. Remember me.”
“My boy is off to college. He wants to be a teacher. That’s a good job, being a teacher.”
“No, I’m here. I’m Grant. I need you to concentrate. Can you do that for me?”
“Julie. Julie,” his father called out.
He shook his head. His mother died years ago. “Mother’s gone. She’s dead. I’ve told you this before.”
His father stared at him with a puzzled look. “Why do you say such mean things? If my boy Grant was here, he’d smack you in the face. That’s his mother you’re talking about. She’s right here. I just saw her a few minutes ago. Julie.”
Repetition was another annoyance that he’d learned to endure.
He stared around the den. Once books filled every available space, floor-to-ceiling. But he’d moved most of the important stuff to his own apartment and sold the rest to used-book shops. The old man could not read anymore. Nothing registered. All he did was sit in front of the television, flicking through the channels, watching nothing.
“Listen to me,” he said, voice rising. “I need you to focus. I’m going to the Smithsonian tonight. You remember that place.”
“I work there. I was there today.”
“No, you weren’t. You haven’t been there in a long time. Listen to me. I need you to tell me some things.”
“Young man, I’m the head curator for the Castle, and I don’t like your attitude. Not one bit.”
His father had indeed held the coveted position of Castle curator, which meant he was in charge of maintaining the Smithsonian’s centerpiece. Only three men had ever held that job, his father the first, in charge from 1969 to 1992. He and his mother had been there on retirement day, when the Smithsonian’s secretary thanked his father publicly for his service and co-workers gathered to wish him a long life. He recalled a momentary feeling of pride, one any young boy should have about his father. But those moments had always been few and far between. Tonight his father’s sick mind was apparently back twenty-five years ago. So he decided to use that fantasy to his advantage.
“I meant no disrespect, but I have to ask you about one of your exhibits.”
“Oh, gosh, we have so many of them.”
“The key. I need to know about the ceremonial key.”
The old man’s brow furrowed. “What key? I have many keys. Too damn many. I’ve tried to tell people we need to eliminate locks, but they just keep adding new ones. I have to have a key to every lock. Secretary’s orders. The curator must have access to everything. No exceptions.”
Some progress. The sick mind was staying focused on one subject.
“Listen to me. It’s the ceremonial key. I need to ask you about that.”
“That’s an odd thing to bring up.”
“No, it’s not. Think hard.”
A swipe from a withered hand dismissed any further thought. “You’re talking nonsense. A key is a key is a key. It’s just a key.”
“No, it’s not.”
He’d tried the easy way, realizing that it would probably be useless. But at least he’d tried. Time now to do what always worked. He reached down and grabbed the old man by the throat, yanking the scrawny body upward from the chair. Breath squeezed out through the constricted airway. With a vise-lock grip he slammed his father into the wall, keeping him there, feet off the ground, the pressure to the throat just enough to allow only minimal air to the lungs.
“I don’t have time for this,” he said. “You have to focus and listen to me.”
His father did not move. He never did. Rarely had simple communication achieved results. But something about violence stimulated the diseased mind. Perhaps it was a primitive survival mode. Or maybe some defensive chemical or hormone was generated. Grant had no idea. All he knew was that force made its way through the fog.
“I’ll ask you again. The ceremonial key. It’s the original that I need, correct?”
They’d talked on this subject before.
“I found it, you know. I’m the one who found the key.”
He did know that. Learned through another encounter just like this one.
“It was in the attic, at the Castle. In the rafters. Just lying there. All brass. Good as the day it was forged. I gave it to the secretary.”
Which he also knew.
He increased the pressure to the throat and the old man’s eyes widened as breathing became more difficult.
A signal that his patience was drawing to a close.
Nothing remained in the worn-out muscles that could offer any resistance. So he lifted the feet farther off the floor, which added more pressure to the throat, keeping his father’s spine tight to the wall.
“Will. It. Open. The. Lock?”
The breaths came in spurts, the lungs now choking for air.
“I swear, Colonel … I’m loyal to the South. I’m … no spy.”
Damn. The Civil War delusions had begun. He was hoping to avoid those.
“The lock is … only for the … righteous. Those of the … Order. Those who pledged their … loyalty to the cause. Are … you one of those, Colonel?”
He knew the right answer. “I am.”
The look in his father’s eyes softened, as if a light had switched on in the dark corners of his brain.
“Then … I shall tell you.”
He loosened his grip enough to allow the feet to touch the floor and his father to breathe unimpeded.
“When at last you need your rest … the South will face its greatest test. Oh elder Knights … all clad in grey, lead the charge into the fray.”
He stared at the crazy old man and shook his head.
Dammit.
More gibberish.
Why didn’t the old bastard just die? No. This fool planned to live forever. And if he could somehow communicate anything of value that fact might not be so bad. Instead, Grant had to endure fantasies and delusions, anything useful coming only in drips and dribbles from micro-moments of clarity. But time was running out. Which explained why he had to take a big chance tonight. Success hinged on two things, both of which were locked away inside the Smithsonian.
“Near and far in warrior’s grey, the final conflict will come our way. Sounds of battle draw ever near, ye gallant knights we need not fear.”
He’d listened to this crap all his life. As a young boy it had at first been enthralling, but it eventually played on his nerves. Nobody gave a damn about the Civil War anymore. But billions of dollars in lost gold and silver? That would interest anyone.
“The gold, you stupid idiot,” he spit out. “Can’t you tell me anything about the gold? Do we need the key?”
“The servant of faith, I shepherd to the north of the river. This path is dangerous. Go to 18 plac
es. Seek the map. Seek the heart.”
A hard knot of anger balled within him.
He popped a fist into the old man’s gut. Not hard enough to break anything, but sufficient to make his point. Breath rushed from his father’s lungs and he allowed the limp body to crumple to the floor. He should take the gun nestled inside his shoulder harness and shoot the moron, like a wounded horse no longer capable of doing much of anything but whining.
He had no more patience.
A massive treasure awaited.
Hidden for over a hundred years.
About the only thing of any value he’d ever acquired from his father was a knowledge of its existence. He was thirty-five years old and tired of failure lying as a foul taste on his tongue. School was not his thing. Neither was a nine-to-five job. Both bored him. He’d been married twice and thankfully fathered no children. He suspected he may be sterile, since he’d never really practiced any form of contraception. He was so tired of wanting. Finally, for the past two years he’d been actively involved in something that could possibly change his life. A fast track to the top. But that outcome hinged on the pathetic excuse for a human being that lay wheezing before him.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
His father remained on all fours, face toward the floor, choking.
“The South will rise again … once more, on honored fields … just like before. Heavenly Father we plead our case … our Southern nation before thy face.”
Puzzles were not his thing. Solving them never came easy. Thankfully, Diane had learned the secrets of the sentinels, which had proved fruitful. Hopefully, by the end of the night they would have what they needed, both here and in Arkansas. He’d hoped to obtain a little more clarity before heading into town. A way to make sure that the risks were worth it. But now he’d just have to hope they were. He was expected at the National Museum of Natural History in a little over an hour.
His father cowered on the floor.
He kicked the old man in the chest. Again, only hard enough to express his irritation. The great thing was that his father never remembered a thing. Not a single blow ever registered in the old man’s memory.
Each time he visited was like the first.
Thankfully, he knew enough to move forward. He’d spent the past few years combing through books, manuscripts, letters, and old documents. The people at the American Civil War Museum in Richmond knew him on sight. One thing he was good at was retrieving things.
Amazing how time leveled the playing field. Once there were tens of thousands of Knights of the Golden Circle. But all that remained were men like the old sentinel out in Arkansas and the man coughing on the floor before him. Who, for all intents and purposes, was dead, too. He’d hired men and sent them to Arkansas, paying them with Confederate gold he’d personally retrieved, following Diane’s instructions. And, yes, himself, Diane, and her brother all wore the cross and circle as a show of unity, but they were not knights. Especially Diane. Women would have never been allowed to take the oath. Nonetheless, like the knights, the three of them were bound together in a common purpose.
Of which he was a vital part.
His cell phone vibrated.
He checked the display. Diane.
He debated answering, but decided to let her wait.
No time.
The call he really wanted was the one from Arkansas.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Knights of the Golden Circle sprang from the Southern Rights Clubs of the 1830s that openly advocated a reestablishment of the African slave trade, which Congress had banned in 1807. More inspiration came courtesy of the Order of the Lone Star, which helped orchestrate Texas’ independence from Mexico in 1836. Some even have argued that the Order’s roots stretched all the way back to the Sons of Liberty during the American Revolution.
The Order was officially organized in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 4, 1854, by five men whose names have been lost to history. It was heavy on ritual, most borrowed from the Masons. Local chapters were called castles, and collectively the Knights of the Golden Circle became the largest, most dangerous subversive organization in American history. By 1860 it boasted 48,000 members across every state and territory. Its economic and political goals were to create a prosperous, slaveholding southern empire extending in the shape of a circle from their proposed capital at Havana, Cuba, through the southern United States, the Caribbean, and Central America. The plan also called for the acquisition of Mexico, which was to be divided into fifteen new slaveholding states, a move designed to shift the balance of power in Congress in favor of slavery. Facing the Gulf of Mexico, these new states would form a crescent, the entire expansion a golden circle, its planned robust economy fueled by cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, indigo, and mining, all employing slave labor.
In early 1860 newspapers across the country reported that the Order was recruiting troops for a planned invasion of Mexico. It’s unclear what went wrong, but the invasion never happened. Some say it was because of inadequate manpower and supplies, but with civil war looming, the more logical conclusion was that the Order did not want to fight on two fronts. So they postponed their plans for Mexico and started preparing to fight the North.
In January 1861 the South began to secede. By February seven former states had ratified a new Constitution and named Jefferson Davis their provisional president. The Knights of the Golden Circle immediately abandoned their expansionist policies and became an ally of the newly created Confederate States of America.
And flourished.
Many Southern military groups were composed either totally or in large part by knights. They infiltrated Federal arsenals, mints, navy yards, army posts, and local governments, playing a major role in the Northwest Conspiracy, designed to foster revolution across Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. In rural areas they ran off horses, driving them away from any possible Union service. They took control of small towns and newspapers, collecting guns, ammunition, armaments, uniforms, and supplies. Burning, plundering, and terror were their main tools. They were essentially a clandestine paramilitary unit engaged in counterintelligence operations. Little is known of their specific activities since most of the records kept by the Confederate secretary of state dealing with the Order disappeared when Richmond fell in April 1865. But when Lee surrendered at Appomattox and the war officially ended, the Order did not disband. What had been a shadowy society became even more secretive, going fully underground, using aliases to hide its activities, which included preparations for a second civil war. Legend spoke of how it invested in mining, railroads, and shipping, amassing fortunes that were eventually converted into gold and silver, then systematically buried across the country.
Supposedly the Knights of the Golden Circle ceased all operations around 1916.
By then the United States was fighting World War I, and most of the fanatical rebels had died.
No new civil war was coming.
* * *
“The Order doesn’t exist,” Cotton said to Terry Morse.
“’Cause you say so?” the old man fired back. “That’s exactly what they want you to think. But they’re still out there.”
Cotton had heard the stories since he was a little boy. His great-great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Angus Adams—who’d fought in the Civil War as a spy for the Confederacy—had also been a knight of the Golden Circle. Letters and papers in his grandfather’s attic talked of a conference held in 1859 at the Greenbrier resort in what was then Virginia. Nearly 1200 came, including cabinet members, governors, and congressmen. They approved a sixty-page booklet—Rules, Regulations and Principles of the American Legion of the Knights of the Golden Circle—which expressed the organization’s intents and purposes. He’d read the copy that had been in the attic, and recalled its opening lines. Let their be no strife between mine and thine, for we be brethren. To maintain the Constitution as it is, and to restore the Union as it was. The oak, the tree of the acorn, became one of their many s
ymbols, representing strength, growth, and diversity. Most men of influence in the South, including his own ancestors, joined. They wanted not a simple confederacy, but a grandiose empire.
And Morse’s tattoo.
The circle and cross.
One of his mother’s family heirlooms had included a gold cross inside a gold circle.
“What is it?” he asked his mother.
“A remembrance of something long gone.”
He was now more curious than ever. “Of what?”
“A time when men believed in things we now find disgusting. When an entire race was enslaved. When women meant little to nothing, and the South thought itself invincible.”
“You mean the Civil War?”
He was in only the fifth grade, just beginning to learn about Abraham Lincoln and all that had happened between 1860 and 1865. But the medallion his mother held seemed fascinating. “Why do you keep it?”
“My grandfather gave it to me and told me to give it to my child one day. He wanted us to remember. But I think the tradition will stop with me.”
He didn’t like that. “Why?”
She dropped the locket back into the jewelry box and replaced the case on the top shelf in her closet. “Because it’s time those memories end.”
His mind snapped back to Morse. “The knights were definitely a force before, during, and shortly after the Civil War. But by World War I they’d faded away, their purpose gone.”
“All I know is that I got a duty and I gave my word to my pa that I’d do it until the day I died.”
Cassiopeia had sat quiet, watching Lea and her grandfather. Cotton caught her gaze and could see she had questions for him. A month ago they’d made a pact. No more bullshit between them. That also meant no more secrets. So he winked, signaling that later he’d offer more of an explanation.
