The Patriot Threat (Cotton Malone series)

by Steve Berry

  KIM HEARD GLASS BREAK BEHIND HIM.

  He whirled and dropped down at the same time, expecting to see the last Korean bearing down on him. Instead he caught sight of Hana through the now obliterated half of the door to the next car.

  Then the Korean appeared, coming to his feet.

  The squeal of brakes to wheels, then wheels to rails signaled the train was stopping. He saw the man dart left and disappear. The two problems behind him had also sought cover. He decided to give them more reason to stay down. He tossed the satchel aside and fired three shots in their direction, then rushed the door and slipped out.

  The Korean was gone.

  Hana emerged from the car ahead.

  “Get Howell.”

  The train was fully stopped.

  They had to leave.

  Now.

  MALONE TIMED HIS MOVE TO COINCIDE WITH THE TORRENT OF noise that accompanied the train’s arrival, assuming that would be the moment of maximum distraction. Hopefully, his target would not expect an attack from the platform, the focus on the train and what may have happened there. So far he’d stayed back, out of sight, using another of the iron supports for cover. The platform itself was dimly lit, which helped. Several workers busied themselves in preparing for the arrival, the train easing to a full stop.

  A man leaped from one of the lead cars while the wheels were still moving. Asian. Holding a gun. The man on the platform yelled something not in English, the first whirling around and realizing that he now had an ally. He pointed up to the train and signaled for them to retreat.

  Three more people emerged to the station.

  Kim and his daughter, both toting guns, and Howell.

  What the hell happened?

  ISABELLA KNEW INSTANTLY WHAT THEY HAD TO DO, AS APPARENTLY did Luke. Kim had fled ahead so they needed to exit the train from the doors just behind them. The few passengers in the car slowly rose from the floor, where they’d all plunged when Kim starting shooting.

  Everyone appeared okay.

  They slid open the door and hopped down to the station.

  She immediately spotted Kim, Hana Sung, and Howell.

  And the shooting started.

  SIXTY-TWO

  WASHINGTON, DC

  STEPHANIE AND JOE LEVY FOLLOWED CAROL WILLIAMS OUT OF the Founders Room then into the rotunda with the fountain that she’d visited earlier. They turned right and walked down the same long sculpture hall that led to the garden court—except this time they veered into a series of exhibition rooms. The first displayed French canvases, the next British artists. A few visitors loitered here and there, admiring the works. It was approaching 4:00 P.M., closing time a little more than an hour away. In a gallery labeled 62 she noticed that the two open doorways were blocked. NO ADMITTANCE signs were posted at each.

  “The American rooms are being renovated,” Carol said. “They’ve been closed for a month, but follow me.”

  They bypassed the barricades and entered a set of galleries where the canvases were gone, the bare walls and hardwood floors being repaired. on. Workers milled about with paint and stain and the air smelled of varnish.

  “We took down most of the canvases,” Carol said.

  They entered a rectangular room with pale-blue walls and cream-colored trim. Its ceiling was backlit glass panels dotted with floodlights angled down at canvases that remained hung, but covered in white cloth. The floor was the same hardwood planks, which had yet to be refurbished.

  “They’re working their way here,” Carol said. “But what I think you’re after is right there. I had the sheet removed.”

  The exposed image was substantial, around ten feet long and eight feet high, framed in heavy gilded wood the color of burnished gold.

  Carol stepped toward the painting and pointed to its left side.

  “The little boy is George Washington Parke Custis. He was Martha’s grandson by her first husband, but after his parents died he came to live with Martha and George. Of course, that’s George Washington sitting beside his namesake. Martha is across from her husband. Her granddaughter, Eleanor Parke Custis, stands beside her. She and George adopted both children as their own, so this is the actual First Family. The man in the background, behind the two women, is probably one of Washington’s slaves, but no one knows for sure.”

  Stephanie listened as Carol explained more about the work. Edward Savage, its creator, had been an 18th-century American painter. Portraits were his specialty, but his most famous creation was this group started in 1789 and finished in 1796.

  The Washington Family.

  “It’s the only portrait of the First Family painted from life,” Carol said. “They actually posed for Savage, then he painted this from sketches he made. Washington, as you see, was depicted in uniform, his hat and sword on the table, his left hand resting above a set of papers, the idea to symbolize both the military and civilian aspects of his service to the country. Martha sits before a map of the federal city, her closed fan pointing to what is today Pennsylvania Avenue. The grandchildren are there to symbolize the nation’s future. The servant in the background is particularly noteworthy, as it was rare for slaves to be depicted in early American art. He stands overdressed in livery, in the shadows—there, but not. A reminder that Washington remained a gentleman farmer and planter.

  “What’s really interesting are the people themselves. They sit stiff and awkward. Little life to them, and the faces, notice how none of them looks at the others. Their gazes are all off, focused separate, which was surely more symbolism. None of them was particularly close to the others. True, they were a family, but we would call it dysfunctional today.”

  Stephanie studied the image, impressed with both its color and its detail. Behind the figures a vista down the Potomac seemed to complete the patriotic illusion.

  “What you sent over,” Carol said, “Edward Savage, Eleanor Custis, Martha Washington. They all add up to this painting. Mr. Mellon bought it in January 1936. It’s hung here, in the gallery, since we opened in 1941 per his specific instruction. I checked on that to be sure. It’s one of the permanent pieces in the museum.”

  All of the dots connected. That was nearly a full year before Mellon met with Roosevelt on December 31, 1936. But she needed to know more. “Where was it before the gallery opened, from 1936 to 1941?”

  “In Mr. Mellon’s Washington apartment. It stayed there, even after he died in 1937, until we opened.”

  Making it easily accessible if Roosevelt had bothered to go looking.

  I’ll be waiting for you, Mr. President.

  That’s what Mellon told Roosevelt.

  Literally, at least for a time.

  Stephanie held a smartphone in her right hand, its camera pointed at the portrait. On the walk from the Founders Room she’d dialed the number and established an encrypted connection. The unit had been provided by Treasury, so no one would be intercepting this transmission. As Carol Williams gave her explanation, the phone had heard, too.

  Two other people appeared behind them, a man and a woman, the museum’s director and chief curator, who introduced themselves.

  “I involved them,” Carol said. “I hope it was all right.”

  She wasn’t listening. Instead, she was pondering the riddle. Andrew Mellon had left clues that directed FDR straight to this portrait.

  But what now?

  “Ask all of the workers here to leave, please,” she said. “We need privacy.”

  The museum director looked unsure, so she decided to make the point clearer.

  “That’s not a request,” she said. “Either work with me or I’ll shut this place down and do it my way.”

  Joe Levy looked surprised at her abruptness, but there was no time for niceties. Things were playing out in Croatia and she had a timetable. The director gave the order and the chief curator cleared the galleries around them. She stepped closer to the painting and tried to make sense of what Mellon had done. He’d gone to a lot of trouble, everything executed with a
precise purpose, so there was no reason to think that the final parts were any different.

  Edward Savage Eleanor Custis

  Martha Washington 16

  She focused on the granddaughter, Eleanor, and asked Carol about her.

  “They called her Nelly. She lived a long time and spent her life protecting George’s image. Look closely at how Savage depicted her, though. The right hand is lifting the map, as if signaling that there was something beneath it.”

  And she saw that the observation was correct.

  She aimed the phone toward Eleanor’s image, which also encompassed her grandmother Martha.

  Then it hit her.

  Mellon’s clues.

  Edward Savage was for the painting itself. Eleanor Custis for a message beneath. So did Martha Washington complete the riddle? First she studied the painted floor beneath Martha’s hemline, where the toes of one shoe could be seen resting atop the checkerboards. Nothing there. She stepped closer and examined the outer frame in the lower right corner. Clearly it was old and had been hand carved, its edges abundant with chips and gauges. The wood was a good eight inches thick.

  So why not?

  She dropped to her knees and studied the frame’s underside that faced down to the floor. About four inches in from the bottom right corner she saw a round plug embedded into the wood. She immediately examined the opposite left corner and found a similar plug. One difference, though. The one on the right contained tiny engravings, rough, but still legible.

  XVI.

  16.

  She aimed the phone at what she’d discovered.

  “Bingo,” she whispered to it.

  A small toolbox lay atop a padded drop cloth on the other side of the gallery. She laid the phone on the floor, rushed over, and found a hammer and screwdriver. The others watched her in silence. She came back and positioned herself beneath the frame. Three feet or so of clearance existed from there to the floor. She adjusted the phone’s angle, then jammed the screwdriver into the slight depression that encircled the plug. She was just about to pound the hammer when the museum’s director and curator both yelled for her to stop.

  “You can’t do that,” the director told her. “That’s a national treasure. I cannot allow it.”

  “Stay out of this,” she said.

  “Go get security. Now,” the director told the head curator.

  The woman ran away and the director lunged toward her, reaching for the hammer. He yanked the tools away and said, “You’re insane.”

  She allowed him his moment and simply reached for the phone. “What do you want to do?”

  “You know damn well what I want,” Danny Daniels said through the speaker.

  The director seemed shocked. He clearly recognized the voice.

  “Sir,” Danny said. “Please hand those tools back to Ms. Nelle, and get the hell out of the way.”

  Though a command, for Danny, it had been delivered in an uncharacteristically cordial tone.

  “Take it from me,” Joe Levy said. “You don’t want to argue with him.”

  The director definitely appeared to be in a quandary and she could sympathize. His entire job was to protect everything within the museum and here she was about to deface one its original treasures. But Andrew Mellon had specifically wanted that plug removed. If she was right, he’d been the one to actually place it there. So she doubted her violation would inflict any historical damage.

  “I’m waiting,” Danny said through the phone. “You don’t want me to come over there.”

  The director handed back the tools.

  “I also need you and the other lady, Ms. Williams, to leave,” Danny said. “Please make sure Ms. Nelle and Mr. Levy are not disturbed, and that no one comes anywhere near the gallery. Have those security guards you summoned seal the area where you are right now. And shut off any cameras that are recording.”

  “I assume it matters not that I don’t actually work for you,” the director said.

  “You’re kiddin’, right? You think some civil service rules are going to stop me from kickin’ your ass.”

  The director could see he was outgunned, so he nodded his assent, then he and Carol Williams left the gallery.

  “Make sure we’re alone,” she called out to Chick-fil-A Man, who nodded, then followed the others out.

  “They gone?” Danny asked.

  She still lay on the floor. “Yep.”

  “Open that sucker up.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  CROATIA

  MALONE WATCHED AS THE FIRST MAN FROM THE TRAIN JOINED HIS compatriot in the station and they realized that Kim was armed and on the move.

  “Everyone down,” he screamed in English as he found his own weapon.

  The few people on the platform who understood him looked his way, saw the gun, then fled toward the station doors. Kim also reacted to the warning, jamming the barrel of his gun into Howell’s ribs. Malone gave that act some respect, but the two Koreans seemed not to care. They’d taken cover behind a metal bench and aimed their weapons. Their mission did not include returning either Kim or Howell alive.

  And here was a golden opportunity.

  ISABELLA SPOTTED KIM AND HOWELL FIFTY FEET AWAY, THE STATION platform dim, people fleeing. Both she and Luke were exposed with no cover. But Kim’s attention had been drawn in the opposite direction.

  To Malone.

  Whom she saw had drawn his gun.

  Hana Sung, though, was staring straight at her and Luke.

  A row of luggage carts stood lined to their left, which offered some protection.

  She leaped that way as Sung aimed her gun and fired.

  MALONE HAD SEEN ISABELLA AND LUKE EXITING THE TRAIN, AND while the father worried about him, the daughter was shooting at them, rounds popping out in rapid succession.

  A woman screamed.

  Another man yelled.

  In Korean.

  Kim turned his attention away from Malone and toward the other two. More Korean words passed between them. Isabella and Luke had lunged for cover behind a row of luggage carts. Kim forced Howell ahead, toward the doors that led from the platform to the station, using his captive as a shield. It would only be an instant before Luke and Isabella started firing. He hoped they realized that Howell was in a bad predicament.

  “Luke,” he yelled. “Two more to your left. Both armed.”

  Bullets came his way from the Koreans as they now realized his presence. Luckily he’d found cover behind one of the iron pedestals that held the ceiling aloft. Rounds pinged off the metal, tossing sparks, ricocheting in every direction.

  He steadied himself and prepared to return fire.

  KIM’S HEART FLUTTERED WITH PANIC. ALARM BURNED AT THE back of his ears. This town was a trap, one set by both the Americans and North Koreans. He had to flee. Hana had occupied the man and woman from the train, and the two Koreans were shooting at someone else off to his right. Unfortunately he had to cross that line of fire to escape. His left arm wrapped Howell’s neck, the gun still tight to the man’s ribs.

  One of the Koreans stopped firing and turned back his way.

  Anan Wayne Howell was of no use to him any longer. He’d been played on the train. Surely Howell had been told not to mention that he knew Jelena was dead, but the younger man’s emotions had gotten the best of him. Still, though Howell was of no value in one respect that did not mean he was completely useless.

  He pivoted left and placed Howell between him and the rising danger.

  A shot came his way and thudded into Howell’s chest.

  The man’s breath left him in a gasp and the body jerked from the impact. Another round and a second bullet slammed into Howell.

  Neither penetrated through to Kim.

  He released his grip on the American.

  MALONE WINCED AS HOWELL WAS SHOT TWICE.

  He fled his cover, aimed at the Korean shooting, and took him down with one shot. The second man then went on the offensive, firing Malone’s way, which cau
sed him to dive to the concrete floor.

  Rounds whizzed past him and dinged off the train.

  He rolled and used another iron pillar for cover.

  The last he saw, Kim and Hana Sung were fleeing the platform into the station.

  And the remaining Korean followed.

  ISABELLA CROUCHED BESIDE LUKE, THEIR POSITION NOT THE BEST in the world. They had some cover, but not much. Rising up and shooting would involve exposure, but she saw that Luke was willing to risk it. So was she. A lot of rounds were being expended. Their eyes met and signaled that they would do it together. Luke nodded and up they went.

  The platform had gone quiet.

  A body lay on the concrete near the train, a second off to the left in the shadows.

  “Malone,” Luke called out.

  “Here.”

  And she saw a dark figure emerge from behind one of the support pillars. He held a gun at his side and rushed toward the man down near the train.

  They did the same.

  It was Howell.

  Luke rolled him over. Howell was breathing, but spewing blood with each exhale, more fluid pouring from two chest wounds.

  “Hang in there,” Luke said. “We’ll get you some help. Stay with us.”

  Her heart sank.

  “Kim used him as a shield,” Malone said.

  “We had some issues on the train,” she noted. “All hell broke loose just before we got to the station. Three more are dead on board.”

  “The daughter was holding a stack of papers,” Malone said.

  She’d seen them, too.

  “I’m going after them,” he said. “You two get some help. Don’t let him die.”

  And Malone ran off.

  HANA FOLLOWED HER FATHER AS THEY RUSHED FROM THE TRAIN station and onto the street. She’d seen many a town just like this in China and North Korea. Compact and quiet, the paths through it narrow and angular with abrupt endings. Even worse, they knew nothing of the local geography. Above them stood the chief glory, a cathedral with twin bell towers and ornamental windows, its brightly lit belfries framed by the night, then blurred by the fog.