Sean swallowed and then raised the lid. He blinked against the freezing bite in the air, blinking to make sure he was seeing clearly. Inside the box was a piece of gold. It was flat and curved with grooves cut into either end, as if it fit together with other pieces like it.
“It’s part of a ring,” he said, the realization hitting him.
The section of the ring was about six inches from corner to corner. He took it between his forefinger and thumb and raised it to the light, inspecting every inch of the surface and edges. What was this thing?
He noted the bizarre symbols carved into the top and bottom. They looked like characters but were unlike any he’d ever seen before. They weren’t Japanese or Chinese. For a moment, Sean wondered if they were Norse, but he quickly dispelled that, having seen those kinds of runes firsthand on several occasions.
Triangles, squares, straight lines, squiggly lines, circles, and other shapes covered the curved metal, all in what must have surely been some kind of sequence.
But what did that sequence say? What did it mean? Sean had no idea, but he knew this had to be one of the keys he was looking for. Did that mean the other two keys were the same as this, all fitting together to form a singular ring? And if so, why? What did it do? Or was it just some ancient treasure that Meriwether Lewis thought had better remain hidden?
Sean’s instincts told him that it was the former, that this was part of something bigger and that the ring would lead him to a much grander find, something that the people who took President Dawkins wanted. But what was it?
He started to rise to head back to the SUV when he heard another sound. This time it was distinct. He’d passed off the previous few noises as paranoia, the result of an overactive imagination or simply being too alert, as he tended to be sometimes.
This was different. It was a clear snap of a twig. Sean quickly stuffed the gold into his pocket and shoved the empty box back into the tree’s cavity. He raised his weapon and spun around, surveying the area.
“Sean?” a familiar voice shouted.
Sean lowered his weapon upon hearing his friend. He frowned, but that expression melted away as Tommy appeared on the edge of the forest behind him.
“Tommy? What are you doing here?”
Tommy’s gloved hands went out wide. “Couldn’t let you do this on your own. That’s not how we work, buddy.”
“I’m a fugitive.”
“Yeah, I know. Which is why I sent the plane to Cambodia…with me on the manifest. If they’re tracking my whereabouts, they’ll think I’m on my way to get some street noodles in Phnom Penh.”
Sean arched one eyebrow under his beanie. “Good thinking.”
“I thought so.”
“But I don’t want you to get into trouble. You don’t have to be here. You’re innocent.”
“So are you. Right? I mean, you didn’t kidnap Dawkins, did you?”
Sean chuckled. “I was with you, idiot.”
“Okay then. What did you find?” Tommy pointed at the flat curved piece of gold jutting out of Sean’s coat pocket.
“Let’s get back to the car, and I’ll let you have a look. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He twisted his head around in every direction, eyeing the forest around them.
“What?” Tommy asked. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I…I just get this weird feeling we’re being watched.”
Tommy took a quick survey of the land around them. “Then maybe we should get moving.”
“Yeah,” Sean nodded.
Tommy led the way out of the forest and back into the snowy hillside leading up to the two SUVs. Sean was in the clear when he paused and looked back into the woods. Something or someone was out there. He was sure of it.
24
Atlanta
Emily had waited long enough.
She’d paced around her office for almost an hour, hands folded behind her back, head down, striding back and forth. The monotonous activity did little to calm the raging anxiety in her head, much less the twisting, rotting pain in her gut.
She’d given the Feds as much time as she thought they would need and then promptly drove over to the IAA building near Centennial Olympic Park. She sat in the parking garage for over an hour before she saw the last federal investigator leave the site.
The detectives and agents involved had taken their sweet time. Emily wasn’t surprised. The government’s investigators were always thorough, except when they were told not to be. There’d been many incidents throughout history that she knew had been swept under the rug or covered up in such a way to make things palatable for the American people.
She imagined this wouldn’t be one of those cases.
John Dawkins, former president and currently the man she loved, had been abducted, which had sent both the justice and intelligence communities into a spin. Like dumping water on an ant hill, the two arms had activated immediately. Emily imagined their headquarters up in Washington would have been spilling out agents just like ants from the soil upon hearing the news.
Emily looked both ways and then trotted across the street and around the corner to the entrance.
The gray metal façade of the building shimmered in the waning sunlight. The surface reflected the faint oranges and pinks of the sky. Traffic was picking up as people poured out of the businesses and skyscrapers all around the city, anxious to get in their cars and sit in traffic for two hours before finally arriving home.
Emily stepped into the IAA headquarters and stalked through the lobby. Six or seven people were making their way to the doors, laughing, talking about something they’d read online. Another couple were talking about the implications of a discovery another archaeologist had made deep in the Baltic Sea.
Emily ignored most of the talk as she proceeded through the lobby, the hard soles of her shoes clicking with every step. The sound echoed off the marble tiles and the hard walls. She didn’t care how much noise she made at this point. Emily wanted answers.
She made her way to the restricted entrance door and entered her personal key code that Tommy had given her when the new building was constructed. Emily was more than a friend to Sean and Tommy; she was family. That meant she was given an all-access pass to everything IAA. The door locks clicked, and she pushed through, stepping into a wide hallway on the other side. As she made her way toward the elevator, she considered how many artifacts had rolled through this corridor. Some of the world’s most priceless treasures had graced this hall. Most of the extraordinary items IAA brought in were kept down in the basement, along with the laboratory where Tara and Alex worked. The layout of the building was similar to the original. It had been good foresight on Tommy’s part for both structures, allowing for an underground section that would act as a kind of bunker or bomb shelter.
How fortuitous that had been when several years ago terrorists had blown up the original building. During the cleanup, the construction crews discovered that all of the artifacts and relics in the underground areas remained intact. A couple of things had shaken free of their cradles within display cases, but only relatively minor damage was sustained.
Emily stopped at the freight elevator and pressed the button with the down arrow on it. Thirty seconds later, the large lift door opened and she stepped on board, pressed the button for the lab floor, and crossed her arms to wait.
The door closed again, and the elevator descended into the bowels of the building. The metal walls inside the lift gave Emily a cold sensation, like being trapped in a steel coffin.
The thought fluttered away as the elevator dinged, announcing her arrival in the basement. The door opened and she stepped out into the hall. The wall opposite her was lined with huge windows, all the way from one end to the other. She could see Tara and Alex sitting at a table in the far corner, close to their computer stations.
Emily made her way down to the other end, foregoing the clean station that the workers and visitors would use to enter the lab, making sure they were free of contaminant
s. Emily figured the cops and Feds that had come to visit didn’t use the thing, so why should she?
Tara and Alex were leaning back in their chairs as Emily entered the enormous room. They didn’t move, save for Alex rubbing his temples with both hands. The young married couple looked exhausted. Emily had seen that look before after interrogations. Although what they’d endured this day wouldn’t technically be called an interrogation, she knew that’s exactly what it would have felt like for these two.
“Come to ask us some more questions?” Tara asked as Emily rounded the L-shaped computer station.
Emily eased into a seat at the table and crossed one leg over the other, then folded her arms. She looked like an irritated school teacher with a classroom of kids who wouldn’t behave. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into the tightest ponytail ever made. Her forehead was free of wrinkles except the ones produced by her frown. Her full lips seemed less so at the moment, stretched thin with a scowl that could have terrified a seventeenth-century pirate.
“Where is he?” Emily asked.
Alex leaned forward with a sigh and lowered his hands to the table. “We don’t know.”
“You know I’m Sean’s friend. I have no intention of turning him over to the authorities, but I need you to work with me here.”
Tara twisted the chair around. She scratched the back of her head. “Those dudes were here all day, Em. All day. They’re convinced Sean took your boyfriend…I mean, President Dawkins.”
“It’s okay,” Emily said. She disarmed her fierce expression and put on one that was a little more empathetic. “I know they must have worn you guys out.” Emily leaned forward and put her forehead in her palm. “I’m just so worried about John. And Sean, too.”
For all his flaws and for all the times Emily had been forced to bail Sean Wyatt out of difficult, often tenuous international situations, she loved him like a brother. The two of them had always had each other’s backs no matter what. He’d helped her, too, along the way, made her a better agent, a better director. In no small part, her success at Axis was due to Sean Wyatt. That was something she’d never forget.
Her love of Sean was only trumped by John Dawkins. They were the two most important men in her life. Few had been allowed into her heart the way they were, and now they were both missing: one on the run, one taken. It was all she could do to fight back the tears, the burning emotions roaring inside her chest. Despite all the tight situations she’d been in, the challenges, the difficult spots, she’d rarely panicked and almost never reached the point of desperation, but she was there now.
She took a deep breath to wrest back control of her feelings and then exhaled. “You don’t know where John is, do you.” She said it more like a statement, purely based on logical assumptions.
“No, ma’am, we don’t,” Alex said. “But we do know which way Sean was headed.”
“You do?”
Tara nodded to confirm what Alex had said. “Sean went to find the solution to a letter we received.”
“Letter? Solution? What are you…” Then the epiphany hit her. “Another treasure hunt. Is that what this is about?”
Alex and Tara exchanged a wondering glance. They were in their late twenties now but still had some childish attributes, one of which that they both still looked very young. Another was that from time to time they could get a little deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes. They had that look as Emily stared at them, probing for the truth. She knew Tara and Alex wouldn’t lie to her. Whether or not they would spill all the beans on all this was something she needed to find out.
“Look,” Emily said, sensing the hesitation on both their parts, “I need to find Sean. He might be in trouble. There are federal agents from one ocean to the next trying to find him. When they do, they will bring him in, and I don’t know what I’ll be able to do to get him free, even with my connections. I need to get to Sean before they do.”
Tara swallowed hard, the pale skin on her neck folding in once as she did so. Her reddish hair shimmered in the sterile fluorescent light above. She bit her lip for a moment, then sighed. “We don’t know where he is now. But we received a letter the other day.”
“A copy, actually,” Alex corrected. Then he noticed the irritated look on the two faces before him and retreated from the conversation with a surrendering wave of the hand.
“Right. A copy. Anyway, it was a letter from James Madison.”
“The former president. Early nineteenth century. Go on.”
“Yeah. So, this letter was apparently written in regard to something Capt. Meriwether Lewis found on the Corps of Discovery expedition.”
“The Lewis and Clark expedition?”
“Correct. The same one. Anyway, the letter describes something important, something powerful that Lewis found. It seems that Lewis held back the information for years. When they left to venture west, Thomas Jefferson was the president. Lewis never gave Jefferson his full report. Which makes one wonder…”
“What was he hiding?” Emily’s voice muttered the words.
“We also received a video,” Alex cut in again, this time with helpful information. “It was slightly different than the ones the networks received. Ours had additional footage, footage that contained a threat from the people who kidnapped Dawkins. They told Sean that if he wanted the president to live, he had to leave town and follow the clues laid out in that letter. The first place he was heading was North Dakota, an historic location known as Fort Mandan. It was the sort of the staging point where the Corps of Discovery really started their journey west.”
“I thought that was in Saint Louis,” Emily countered, inadvertently showing off her historical knowledge.
“Initially, yes, but North Dakota was where they met up with a French fur trader and his infinitely more famous wife, Sacagawea.”
“Ah,” Emily said with a long nod.
Most Americans knew that name. She was one of the most famous of all Native Americans. Because of her, the expedition managed to survive through some extreme conditions, including brutally cold temperatures. And she managed to do it all with a newborn baby.
“They left Mandan,” Tara continued, “and went due west, making their way toward Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, where they ended their journey at the mouth of the Columbia River.”
Emily thought about the new information for a moment. It didn’t take long for her to draw conclusions. “So, Sean went to Fort Mandan.”
“Yes,” Tara said definitively. “We’ve received updates from his burner phone on his progress, but only twice now.”
“Twice?”
Tara nodded. “All he told us was that he found what he needed at the first location and that he was heading to the second.”
“Where would that be?”
Alex slid a copy of the Madison letter across the table. He’d hidden it while the Feds went through everything: emails, computer files, paper files, trash, and everything they could get their hands on that wasn’t bolted down or protected in a glass case.
He’d stashed the letter in his desk and had only just retrieved it mere minutes before Emily arrived. His plan was to look through it and try to figure out more of the riddle. He knew he couldn’t necessarily reach out to Sean, but if there was a way to get him some help, that would make deducing the clues at least a little beneficial.
“This is the letter,” he said, tapping the paper with one finger.
Emily reached out and drew it closer. She scanned the sentences in quick order and then looked up at Tara, then Alex, then back to the paper.
“He’s trying to figure this out?”
Alex and Tara nodded simultaneously.
“And John’s life depends on Sean figuring this out?”
“Looks that way,” Tara confirmed.
A worried look fell over Emily like a veil.
“I…do have some ideas as to the solution to part two,” Alex said, his timid voice cutting the silence like a dull knife, imprecise and clumsy, but his
statement carried hope nonetheless.
“Tell me.”
25
Baring
The phone rang twice before there was an answer on the other end.
“This is Winters. I hope you’re calling from a secure line.”
“I am, sir.”
“Good. What’s going on? I assume you’re calling because you have an update for me?” His was a question, uncertain if that was truly the reason for the call.
“I do.”
That was good news. So far, Admiral Winters had been in the dark on things. He’d partially wanted it that way. The less he knew, the more plausible deniability he’d possess, though he knew that would be of no concern once he had located the artifacts and brought them in for research.
Everything was riding on this gamble; his entire career, his home, his reputation, his life. If he was implicated—or worse, caught—he’d go to prison until the day he died. Winters had no intention of going to jail, which is why he was being exceedingly careful, making sure his contact didn’t try calling from a cell phone. He also swept his home once a day to make sure no one had bugged it, not that there was any reason to. Not yet anyway.
Winters had been nothing but an exemplary sailor and citizen. He’d broken no laws, as far as anyone knew, but one could never be too careful.
“What do you have?” Winters asked.
Andrew Boyd paused for a second. Winters could hear sounds in the background—cars passing by, an 18-wheeler rumbling along with a loud grumble from the driver Jake braking. Winters knew that meant his man was on a pay phone somewhere. Where he was able to find one of those, Winters didn’t know. Pay phones were a rarity these days, gone the way of the pager with the advent of advanced mobile devices.
The Omega Project Page 20