The Patriot Threat

by Steve Berry

  He’d downloaded that pamphlet to his phone and read about the Declaration of Independence as the key for one of the ciphers. How that discovery had been made was never adequately explained. Which led him to believe that, at least with the Beale cipher, perhaps the solution may have come before the cipher. Which was not the case here.

  As Isabella had noted, the first number of the Beale cipher, as shown in the pamphlet, was 115. The 115th word of the Declaration of Independence was instituted. So the first letter of that word, i, became the first letter of the decoding. The idea would be to repeat that process with each number, garnering a new letter each time. He agreed with Stephanie’s assessment that Mellon had wanted FDR to solve the code, so he would not have made it overly difficult. And from everything he’d read, the Beale cipher would have been a known commodity in Mellon’s time. Also, something else Stephanie had said made the connection more plausible. She’d learned that Mellon was buried in Upperville, Virginia, at the Trinity Episcopal Church. An interesting fact considering Mellon’s connections were all to Pennsylvania.

  What had Mellon told FDR?

  “I’ll be waiting for you.”

  He’d brought a pen, along with the hard copies of Mellon’s cipher and the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It would take a few minutes, but he had to number every word.

  So he started at the top.

  It took another twenty minutes before he came to the final word and wrote the number 901 above other. His driver had stayed quiet, seemingly realizing he needed to concentrate.

  He studied Mellon’s cipher again.

  The first number was 869. He searched for the word that corresponded to that number and found it. Equally. He noticed that other words also began with e. A quick scan showed more than twenty.

  He wrote an e on the page.

  He was assuming that, like the Beale cipher, the numbers corresponded to the first letters on the key, but it could be the opposite and refer to the last. He knew that some substitution ciphers even utilized a certain position within a word—like the third letter of each—which could really complicate matters.

  The next number was 495. Demand. There were multiple words that also began with d, the first appearing in the prologue with declaration.

  He added a d beside the e.

  The third number, 21, led to which from the prologue. He kept going until, at the sixth match he had a word.

  Edward.

  The odds of that being wholly coincidental were next to zero. He apparently was on to something.

  “Mr. Malone,” the envoy said. “I dare not disturb you, but I must pass on a message that came before we left Zadar.”

  They were still cruising on the highway, shrouded in darkness.

  “You’re just now mentioning this?” he asked.

  “I wanted to earlier, but I could see you were absorbed in your work so I left you alone. After all, we have another half hour before arriving and you weren’t going anywhere.”

  This man was more of a diplomat than he’d given him credit for.

  “Ms. Stephanie Nelle, your superior, I believe, passed a message through the embassy’s secured channel.”

  He waited as the envoy reached inside his suit jacket and removed a folded sheet of paper, which he handed over.

  He read the paragraph.

  The last sentence caused him the greatest concern.

  They took the bait and made a move on Kim in Zadar. It failed. Kim escaped, but killed a man in the process. The Chinese and/or the North Koreans are definitely there.

  That gave him pause.

  And he hoped Luke and Isabella could handle things.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Hana stared out into the night through the window. The cold darkness beyond seemed threatening. Night and day in the camp had always been the same, neither offering any respite from suffering. The train churned along on a bumpy ride through the Croatian countryside, nothing but black beyond the glass. She and her father were inside a first-class compartment that accommodated four seats, two on each side facing the other, the door shut but unlocked.

  “Why kill the man at the hotel?” she asked him.

  They hadn’t said a word since fleeing Zadar.

  “It was necessary. We can’t have any interference. Not now.”

  She’d been told all of her life that killing was necessary. Either to enforce camp rules, to prevent escapes, or to free a prisoner from generational bondage. Death is liberating. That’s what Teacher had told them every day. If that was true, she hoped Teacher was enjoying his freedom.

  Her father seemed wholly comfortable with killing whomever he pleased. Three had died over the last twenty-four hours.

  “I learned earlier,” he said, “that our Dear Leader killed my other half brother and all of his family. Your uncle and cousins. He did that to show me that he could.”

  She wanted to say, Just like you, but knew better.

  “We have to stay vigilant,” he said. “And never can we be weak.”

  “What of your other children?”

  She wanted to know what he thought.

  He shrugged. “There is nothing I can do for them, and I doubt they would want me to. None of them stayed loyal, except you.”

  Because she’d had no choice. She was barely ten when her father was disgraced, still unaccustomed to the world beyond the fences. So when he chose to leave the country, she’d had no choice but to follow. True, as she grew older she could have left, but she had no desire to return to North Korea. She hated anything and everything associated with that place. Only once had she gone back, on a personal errand her father arranged, there for only a day. It happened ten years after she’d fled the camp. She was nineteen, fully recovered from years of malnutrition, and had wanted to see her mother. Her father secured permission and she’d reentered the camp that day inside a limousine, the superintendent there to personally greet her. Neither of them spoke of the past. She was taken directly to her mother, who was now working in the pottery factory, her days in the fields obviously over.

  Her mother appeared weaker than she recalled, still wearing the same filthy sack-like clothes that stank of sweat, slime, and blood. And while her own hair had grown long and thick and her body had blossomed—the gaunt hollowness and pale skin no longer there—her mother had shrunk further. Most of the teeth were gone, the eyes sunk deep from lack of food, a prelude she knew to more serious problems.

  “I thought you were dead,” her mother said. “I was told nothing. So I assumed you were gone.” The words were delivered with the flat lack of emotion she so vividly recalled.

  “My father came for me.”

  A look of surprise appeared on the tired face, which was exactly what she’d come to see.

  “And he did not save me?”

  “Why would he?”

  And she meant it.

  She still wanted an answer to the question she’d asked so many times. Why was I a prisoner? Her father had told her about the love affair and how his father had disapproved, her mother sent to the camp, no one at the time knowing she was pregnant.

  “Because he loved me,” her mother said with a sadness in her voice. “I was a great beauty, full of life and excitement.” Then a coldness returned to her eyes. “I never told you why we were here, because I never wanted you to know of him.”

  A curious answer, which compelled her to ask, “Why would you do that?”

  “He sent me here.”

  “That’s a lie.” The swiftness of her rebuttal surprised her.

  “What did he tell you? That his father sent me here?” Her mother laughed. “You’re so foolish. You were always foolish. He sent me here. He wanted me gone. He enjoyed what he wanted from me then, when he tired of me, I was sent here to disappear.”

  She’d never believed much of what this woman said. The camp forced prisoners to remain enemies, constantly distrusting one another. But the angry look in the sad eyes that stared back—which for the first time she could recall
seemed to convey true pain—said her mother was telling the truth.

  “He is a ruthless man. Never forget that. Don’t be fooled. He is as what came before him. You stand here in your fine clothes, your belly full, smug in your freedom. But you are not free. He is Kim. They have no loyalty beyond themselves.”

  Her mother spit in her face.

  “And you are Kim.”

  Those were the last words they ever spoke. Since no semblance of anything resembling love had ever passed between them, she hadn’t given the woman another thought. She learned a year later that her mother was dead, caught trying to escape. How many times had she witnessed such teachable moments, as the guards described executions.

  She could easily imagine her mother’s fate.

  A wooden pole would be pounded into the hard earth. Prisoners would assemble, the only time more than two were allowed to gather. One of the guards would shout at how the ungrateful bitch had been offered redemption through hard work, yet rejected the generosity shown. To prevent any rebuttal, her mother’s mouth would have been stuffed full of pebbles, her head sheathed with a hood. Then she would be tied to the pole, shot, her body heaved into a cart for disposal in one of the mass graves, the occupants’ identities as meaningless in death as in life.

  But she’d never forgotten what her mother told her that final day.

  He sent me here.

  She watched her father as he read more of the documents from the black satchel. Who were those men at the hotel? Why had they come? They had to be from Pyongyang. Who else would care? The Americans? Possibly. She was sure no one had followed them from the hotel and they’d made it onto the train with no incidents. But something told her they were not alone. There was danger here.

  “I’m going to check the train,” she said.

  Her father glanced up from his reading. “I think that is an excellent idea.”

  Before she could rise the door to the compartment slid open and she saw a man. Mid-thirties, sparse hair, slight build. She knew the face.

  Anan Wayne Howell.

  “Where is Jelena?” Howell asked.

  “Nearby,” her father said. “Once we have our chat, you may have her.”

  But she knew that was a lie. Howell would most likely end up dead, too. How many more would die? Fifty? A hundred? Ten thousand? Millions? The fact that she could not say with any certainty was proof enough that her father was indeed Kim.

  “Sit down,” he said to Howell. “My daughter was just leaving.”

  She rose and stepped out into the narrow corridor. Howell allowed her to pass, then entered the compartment.

  She slid the door closed.

  It seemed that with every word she became more distant. Her father lied with such ease. Nothing about his tone or countenance changed, whether his words be truth or fiction.

  So nothing he said could be believed.

  Even more proof that he was Kim.

  * * *

  Isabella had followed Howell through the train. He was searching. She watched through the window in the far exit door, which offered a view into the next car, as Howell apparently found what he sought, disappearing into one of the first-class compartments.

  A young woman appeared in the hallway.

  Hana Sung.

  That meant Kim was there.

  She quickly claimed a seat across from a woman with two small children, who tossed her a faint smile. She returned the gesture and heard the door at the far end of the car open, then close. She was sitting facing away in a four-seat configuration. She waited until Hana Sung passed, heading for the exit that led toward the cars at the rear of the train. Sung should have no idea of her identity. On the cruise they’d both kept their distance from Larks and a variety of wigs had changed Isabella’s appearance by the day.

  So far, so good.

  Howell was in place and Kim’s eyes and ears were on the move, temporarily blind and deaf.

  Advantage to the good guys.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Kim faced the American.

  “I’m not telling you a thing until I see Jelena,” Howell said, the voice sharp and raw.

  “I’m not sure how you believe yourself to be in a position to demand anything. We will talk. Then, once I have what I need, you will have your lady.”

  He could see that Howell wasn’t happy, but that the younger man realized he had no choice. “What do you want to know?”

  He motioned with the original crumpled page. “What are these numbers?”

  “They’re a substitution code Andrew Mellon created.”

  “Have you solved it?”

  Howell shook his head. “I didn’t, but Cotton Malone did. He told me so on the ferry.”

  “And why would he do that?”

  “Because he wanted to know if he was right?”

  “Was he?”

  “Dead on. His solution makes perfect sense.” Howell paused. “I want to know what you’re going to do with all of this.”

  “I plan to end the income tax.”

  “Which will end America.”

  He shrugged. “The seeds for that destruction were laid in 1913 when the amendment was falsely certified as legal. You were convicted because of that wrongful act. I only want to right that wrong.”

  “It will still destroy the country.”

  He was perplexed by the comment. “Which you didn’t seem to mind when you published your book and told the world about your theory. Now it’s somehow my fault that you proved to be right? You are the one who started all this.”

  “I was fighting for survival.”

  “As am I.”

  “What will you do? Funnel whatever there is to some anti-tax organization and to the cable news networks? That should generate enough buzz that it can’t be swept under the rug.”

  He grinned. “Fortunately, America is full of people who want to adopt a cause. I shall simply hand them one. I’m sure there will be plenty of members of your Congress who will want to champion the issue. The lawsuits will be numerous and endless.”

  “Income tax is over ninety percent of federal revenues. If it’s voided, then the United States goes bankrupt. You do realize the effect that will have across the globe.”

  “Catastrophic, I assume. But living in a closed society, such as North Korea, will then become an advantage. We are not dependent on the world for much of anything. And we’re certainly not dependent on the United States. So its fall will have little consequence for us. Isolation will become our greatest asset.”

  “What about China?”

  He shrugged. “It will hurt, but they’ll adapt. One thing is certain. They will have a newfound respect for North Korea, and its new leader. They will not ignore or ridicule me. If you like, I can extend citizenship and you can live there, too.”

  “Like you’re going to allow me to hang around and claim some of the credit.”

  “That’s where you are wrong. I would not mind that at all. You conceived the idea, but I perfected it. And should you not resent your government? It lied to you and to millions of its citizens, demanding tax money that was legally not its to take. You were even sentenced to prison. America loves to proclaim itself a land of laws. It denounces governments across the world who ignore the rule of law. We shall see how accepting America is when those laws are turned against itself.”

  He was enjoying this moment of triumph. The last decade had been one failure after another. Only in the past few months had things begun to turn around. Now he seemed on the threshold of greatness. But he forced his mind from the grand scheme and onto a more immediate problem.

  He motioned with the crumpled sheet.

  “What does this mean?”

  * * *

  Hana made her way through each of the passenger cars, moving from first class back to standard, surveying the passengers. There weren’t all that many, the train perhaps a quarter full. The gun she’d removed from the man at the hotel rested against her spine, beneath her jacket. No security checks ha
d been required to board the train, for which she’d been grateful. Two years ago her father had insisted she take shooting lessons. The world was a tough place, he’d said, and she should be able to protect herself. She hadn’t argued since feelings of security were always welcomed. The entire purpose of the camps had been to strip prisoners of all self-respect and keep them in a constant state of panic. It was a form of control she’d come to both recognize and deplore. She was a person. An individual. Her name was not bitch. She was as unique as each grain of sand on the beach.

  And her mother’s sins were not hers.

  So far her recon had raised no alerts.

  The train slowed.

  They were coming to the first station.

  She made her way to one of the exits between the cars. A few of the other passengers rose and headed that way, too. Apparently, this was the end of the ride for them.

  The train stopped inside a lit building.

  People moved on and off.

  She stepped down to the platform and studied both directions, checking to see who was coming on. Two cars away she spotted a man about to board. Young, dark hair, Korean face. He carried nothing, his hands jutted inside coat pockets. He tossed her a stare that contained a look of triumph, seemingly unconcerned about being inconspicuous. He wanted her to know he was there, daring her to do something about it.

  A bell rang signaling the stop was over.

  She stepped back onto the train.

  * * *

  Isabella had been able to ease back a few cars, keeping pace with Sung. When her target stepped down to the station’s platform, she’d watched out the window and spotted an Asian man hopping onto the train. A glance ahead and the same man now headed straight into her car and assumed a seat, his hands remaining inside his coat pockets.