by Steve Berry
And the vault.
The stones had presented a substantial challenge, one that Angus Adams had surely meant to be difficult. Deliberately misspelled words. Odd phrases. Hidden meanings. Garbled, ungrammatical Spanish. Nothing in any particular sequence. All meant to be interpreted in conjunction with one another. A little bit here and there that collectively added up to the answer.
And the concept had worked.
Where the effects of weathering, erosion, and vandalism had obliterated other maps or signposts, the stones had endured.
With the help of the Smithsonian’s natural and American history museums, satellite images were prepared of the topography extending from the church toward the north, across the river, just as the Alpha Stone indicated. Incredibly, the squiggly lines depicted the right canyons, in the right places, the line with eighteen markers carving a path up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Determining distance had been the tricky part, but the dots along the curvy line that ended at the center of the Heart Stone seemed evenly spaced apart, which they’d taken as a clue. In Adams’ time the varna was the common unit of measure. About a yard. If that were correct, then comparing the stones with the satellite imagery, the dots on the path lay around five hundred yards apart. Adams had probably tagged that trail with eighteen defined markers, but Cotton doubted many of those still existed—and if they did, finding them could be tricky. Nothing about this quest had been easy, so why would Adams, at its end, have made anything different?
In the end, three possible locations, in differing directions, were identified and GPS coordinates acquired for each.
Danny Daniels and Warren Weston arrived yesterday. The chief justice had been relieved to know that the Breckinridges were both dead, along with Jim Proctor, who had long been one of the knights’ bad apples. Both Weston and Daniels wanted to be a part of what was about to happen.
Four horses waited by the trough.
“I haven’t ridden in a long time,” Daniels said. “But I haven’t forgotten how, either.”
“I’ve never ridden a horse,” Weston said.
Daniels chuckled. “This ought to be fun to watch.”
“My predicaments amuse you, don’t they?”
“Actually, they do. Quite a bit.”
Daniels had told them what happened with Vance. He’d called the Speaker, started with Diane’s death and ended with all he knew. Then he’d offered a choice. Withdraw the rule change and never bring it up again, or the junior senator from Tennessee, who once was the president of the United States, would hold a news conference where he’d lay it all out again, this time in public, and then they would see how many on the Rules Committee would keep following Vance. Loyalty was one thing, suicide quite another. Nothing ended a revolution quicker than scandal, especially when it involved conspiracy, theft, and multiple deaths.
Not surprisingly, Vance called a halt.
Cotton squatted on his heels and traced a route in the dirt with his finger, showing them the path and what to look for.
“Let’s keep our eyes peeled,” he said. “What we want will be in plain sight, but difficult to see.”
They saddled up and rode toward the first set of coordinates, crossing the river at a low point, downstream from the rope bridge. He’d learned that Adams’ ranch house was gone, nothing remaining of the buildings. Rangers were not even sure where they’d been located. Little was known of Adams, as he’d kept to himself, which seemed characteristic. A painter, who became an illustrator, who became a spy, who became a knight of the Golden Circle.
Quite an evolution.
Sunlight blazed on the naked soil, reddish brown against a cloudless sky. He breathed in the warm waft of dry earth and was glad to be here. They followed the GPS and rode for nearly an hour, the quivering horizon floating like a mirage. A dark sickle-shaped shadow raced across the ground. A few seconds later it returned, sweeping like a pendulum. He stared overhead and saw a hawk, with its spade tail, gliding along the warm currents of the midday air. They’d already spotted several good-sized bucks, running away from them.
The first site they encountered offered nothing in the way of promise. The cliff faces were too high and too sharp.
The same was true of the second site.
But to Cotton’s eye, the third dangled possibilities.
It was the farthest from the trough, and a lot of erosion had occurred since Adams’ day. Earthquakes had happened here, too. As had flash floods. This land was in motion, but there was also a continuity, which Adams had surely been banking on.
He stared at the sloping face of a steady incline, the weathered, rust-colored soil stretching up several hundred feet. Banks of shale were clear, where the sun, wind, and winter rains had washed the hillside bare. Large boulders littered the way, protruding from the ground like monuments. Clumps of scrub oaks and brush tried to stay alive in the parched soil.
“You see it?” he asked the others.
None of them did.
But he was getting good at this.
Probably those family genes.
“About fifty feet up the incline, that rounded stone.”
All of the rocks were sculpted smooth from the wind and weather. But one had caught his eye. He spurred the horse toward a clump of trees and the others followed, swinging around to a different angle. Visible now was a second part of the stone, it too rounded, most of it embedded, but enough was visible to catch the shape
Like a heart.
“Seek the heart. That’s what the Witch’s Stone commanded,” he said.
“You think this is the place?” Weston asked.
He dismounted.
“We’re about to find out.”
* * *
Cassiopeia felt better after a couple of nights’ sleep, some good food, and seeing Cotton. Learning about his family’s connection to the church and the trough had fascinated her. And he’d clearly been intrigued. More so than she’d seen in him for a long time. She liked that his family was important to him.
Cotton looked over at the chief justice. “What do you think? Is it a killer monument?”
She was curious. “You going to explain that one?”
“The Witch’s Stone said that the path is dangerous. My grandfather told me about killer monuments.”
“Was he a knight?” Weston asked.
Cotton shook his head. “I’m not really sure. I will say, he knew a lot about them.”
She watched as Cotton unbuckled his saddlebags and removed two sticks of dynamite and a collapsible shovel. The park service had assured them that this area was restricted and that they would not be disturbed. Having an ex-president and the chief justice of the United States along helped with avoiding the inevitable questions, but a call from the secretary of the interior quelled all debate. Stephanie had briefed President Fox from her hospital bed on everything that had happened, which had brought immediate, high-level cooperation. Especially when the new president learned what the Speaker of the House had been planning.
Weston and Daniels climbed off their horses.
“The heart was a Spanish symbol for gold,” Cotton said. “Broken hearts were another matter. Check out that one up there. It’s cracked in three places.”
“That could simply be from time,” Daniels noted.
“It could. But it could also be something else. Like, Your heart will be broken, if this warning is not heeded. Lightning bolts and zigzagged lines were all symbols for a death trap. The Alpha, Heart, and Trail Stones are loaded with those. Get the horses back while Cassiopeia and I set the charges.”
She followed him up the incline, feet scrabbling among the loose soil, dust billowing around them. Closer now, the scale of the heart-shaped rock was impressive. It rose over two meters from the ground and had to weigh several tons.
“This rock is pretty obvious,” Cotton said, “if you know what you’re looking for. Adams had to assume that whoever came looking would be knowledgeable. So it’s safe to say he’d plant a trap to
hedge his bets.”
He dug out an area at the base and nestled two sticks of explosives close to the stone, about halfway down its length.
“And they may not have come with dynamite,” he said, examining his work. “This stone is lying at a really odd angle in relation to the slope.”
She understood what he meant. “If it were free, the thing would slide down.”
He grinned. “That was the whole idea. Hence, a killer monument.”
He extended the fuse out about half a meter and found a lighter.
“Get ready to run.”
* * *
Danny watched from fifty yards away as Cotton and Cassiopeia worked on the slope.
“It is a killer monument,” Weston muttered.
“Do we need to tell him?”
Weston’s eyes stayed on the slope. “You were right about him. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Danny was thrilled to be here. Stephanie was recovering and the doctors had said she would be fine. She’d insisted he go, but was standing by for a video report if anything were found. The press had been besieging his Senate office about Diane Sherwood, but he’d stayed silent, saying he had no comment for the moment. Martin Thomas’ remains had been returned to his family with the explanation that he’d been the victim of some sort of foul play, his body not found in the tunnel for a couple of days. Everything was being investigated, they were told.
He saw Cotton bend down and light the fuses, then scurry with Cassiopeia down the slope. They arrived just as the explosion filled his eyes, spewing a pall of red dust outward, rock and scree rattling down the hillside like an avalanche.
But the heart-shaped stone had not moved.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Cotton examined the crater left by the explosion. Just as he suspected, beneath the heart-shaped stone lay a mass of gravel. He saw that Weston understood its significance, too.
He reached down and gathered a handful of the loose rock, his ears ringing with excitement. “You dig a pit down into the bedrock about four or five feet, then up, at a forty-five-degree angle under the boulder, making a pivot point. Gravel gets filled in the pit and under the boulder. As you can see, most of the boulder extends over the gravel pit. The whole thing is a giant lure.”
“That it is,” Weston said. “Someone not fully aware would start digging, thinking the stone marked the entrance. I’m guessing that once they dug down just a little ways, on the underside of the rock, they’d see carvings or symbols. They mean nothing, put there simply to entice them to keep digging. And they would.”
“Until they dug enough to release the gravel under the rock, which acts like ball bearings, with gravity providing a big assist,” Cotton said. “Then over the killer monument comes, sliding down, doing its damage. A perfect trap that doesn’t get worn out with time. And look at this.”
He pointed at a roughly hewn cross, cut deeply into the face of the boulder’s underside. And the letter N. Neither was a freak of nature, the chisel marks clear. “Adams wanted people to dig on this side. But it’s a death trap.”
“So where’s the entrance?’ Cassiopeia asked.
He recalled the Horse Stone and what was below the tail. A double bump. The square U meant an entrance.
But two U’s had been placed together.
Which meant a double entrance.
Another random piece of the puzzle that meant nothing until it meant everything.
“Simple,” he said. “On the other side.”
* * *
Cotton lit the fuse and ran away for the third time. The second explosion had cracked the massive heart. This one should turn the thing to rubble.
And it did.
He retrieved two more shovels and they all headed back up the slope. He, Cassiopeia, and Daniels dug. Three feet down his blade scraped hard metal. They kept digging, sweeping away the cloying dust, exposing a rectangular iron door, fitted into the slope like the entrance to a house cellar.
“There are no hinges,” Daniels said.
Together he and Daniels lifted the cover to reveal a dark niche that stretched deep into the slope. Timber supports stood along the walls and ceiling at the opening, along with the telltale signs of miners’ picks. From their packs, each removed a flashlight. Cotton led the way, followed by Cassiopeia.
“You two wait here,” he said to Daniels and Weston. “Let’s make sure it’s clear. There could be more traps, and I don’t need two dead or maimed public officials.”
“We’ll give you five minutes,” Daniels said.
He slipped his backpack onto his shoulders and entered, allowing the beam of his flashlight to lead the way. Each step he took was like being in a minefield. Explosions, water traps, landslides, and cave-ins were all possibilities. Gunpowder could also be a problem, and it could still be potent even after a hundred-plus years.
A total cloaking darkness enveloped them, their combined lights only illuminating a few feet. He could walk fairly upright, only his shoulders brushing the sides. Tight, enclosed spaces were not his favorite, but he could see the entrance behind them and still feel the warm air. He rotated the flashlight from wall, to ceiling, to floor. Anticipation clawed at his gut. It was unlikely that this path would be unprotected.
Then he saw it.
And stopped.
Dug into the floor, spanning the narrow corridor from side to side, was a dark chasm. He approached and shone the light down into a pit. A sheet of thin leather had once sheathed the top, probably covered by a thin layer of earth. Something glittered like a coronet of diamonds from the bottom and, after a moment, he realized what it was.
“They tossed glass shards down there,” he said. “Lots of it, too. You come by, fall in, get shredded. A dead-fall pit.”
Not unlike another trap he recalled from southern France a few years before.
“These people were serious,” she whispered.
That they were.
They jumped across.
Two more pits lay ahead, one with the leather still in place, which they collapsed onto itself.
At the end stood an iron grate with a locked gate.
“The route’s clear. Let’s get them down here,” he said.
Cassiopeia headed back to the entrance while he examined the gate. The ceremonial key had been found on Grant Breckinridge’s body. He fished the key from his pocket and examined it in the light. The lock on the gate seemed to accept a skeleton key, but its inner workings would surely be corroded. Then again, the climate here was dry, the air in the tunnel free of moisture. He could not blow the gate for fear of destroying the tunnel, and it remained sturdy enough to present a barrier.
So why not.
He inserted the key and turned.
Resistance fought back.
He worked it left and right.
The bolt started to move.
Not much, but he could feel some give. Luckily, he’d thought ahead and, from his backpack, he removed a can of lubricant. The key itself had suggested there might be a lock to deal with at some point, so any help he could give the inner workings would not be a bad thing.
He removed the key and doused the keyhole full of spray.
From behind, he heard the others approaching.
With the key back in, he worked the lock.
More spray.
Finally, the bolt freed.
The others arrived as he was swinging the gate open.
“The ceremonial key worked?” Weston asked.
He nodded. “That and some WD-40 did the job.”
The tunnel extended only for another ten feet, draining into what appeared to be a large room.
“Let’s take this slow,” he said. “As you saw, there’s danger here.”
He led the way, finding no more traps.
The others followed.
Combined, their four flashlights illuminated a chamber about thirty feet square and ten feet high. It seemed a natural cave, its size perhaps artificially enlarged, the floor
covered in loose soil. Wooden containers of all shapes and sizes and large burlap sacks lay everywhere. Too many to count. All iced with a thick layer of dust and dirt and arranged in a circle around a single table at the chamber’s center.
Upon which sat a wooden box.
“Welcome to the vault,” he muttered.
“This is amazing,” Weston said. “The Order was always comfortable underground, figuratively and literally.”
“If all those containers are filled with gold and silver, there’s billions of dollars’ worth here,” Daniels said.
Cotton examined the ground between where they stood and the nearest container. It seemed solid. He stepped ahead, one foot before the other, slow and easy. He approached one of the rawhide sacks and brushed away the dust. He found his pocketknife and cut loose the leather thong tied around the top. The contents spilled to the ground.
Gold pieces, coins, and small bars.
“Quite a sight,” Daniels said.
He’d brought a small crowbar, hoping he might get to use it. He found the tool, pried open one of the crates, and saw a bright mass of more gold bars. He lifted one out. Solid and heavy.
“Look there,” Cassiopeia said.
He followed her beam and saw a small forge and smelter. He approached and worked the bellows arm. The stiff leather cracked from the unaccustomed pressure. “It seems Adams thought of everything. He did his own smelting, right here.”
“What are those?” Daniels asked.
Cotton had not noticed the steamer trunks. But it was hard to take it all in, like on Christmas morning when you rushed downstairs to see what Santa had left, toys everywhere filling your eyes. There were twenty or more of the old trunks. He led the way over to them and opened one.
Inside were stacked with paper, ledgers, and books.
“It’s the Confederate archive,” Weston said. “The Order was charged with its safekeeping. Hopefully the Order’s records are here, too. They haven’t been seen since 1865.”