The Jefferson Key: A Novel

by Steve Berry

CASSIOPEIA KNEW SOMEONE WAS IN THE NEXT ROOM. SHE’D caught movement before her barrage, but had not seen any other disturbances through the fog. She was still concerned about Cotton.

  Where was he?

  Who had shot at her?

  A hallway opened to her right where less smoke had collected. She spotted the base of a stairway.

  Whoever was in the next room knew she was here.

  But they were lying low. Waiting.

  For her.

  MALONE AIMED AT THE BLACK SMUDGE DRIFTING ACROSS THE smoke.

  Just a few more feet and he’d have a clean shot. He didn’t want to miss. He’d tried to draw Wyatt in upstairs. That effort failed.

  Now he had him.

  He held his breath, finger tightened on the trigger.

  One.

  Two.

  CASSIOPEIA HAD ADVANCED TOO FAR.

  She was exposed, and knew it.

  She darted right, used the hallway for protection, then called out, “Cotton, where are you?”

  MALONE EXHALED.

  He lowered his gun.

  “In here,” he said.

  “Better for you to come out here,” she called out.

  He came to his feet and stepped from the parlor. Cassiopeia appeared from the smoke to his left.

  “That was close,” he said.

  He saw in her eyes that she agreed.

  “What happened in here?”

  “I found the source of all our trouble.”

  A new sound invaded the silence. A low rhythmic thump of deep bass tones beating air. Approaching.

  Helicopter.

  WYATT CRADLED THE WHEEL IN HIS ARMS, CAREFUL NOT TO damage it. A couple of glances back and he saw no one following him. He disappeared into the trees and eased down an incline toward the field.

  A chopper swooped in from the west, clearing the trees lining the field, and settled on the grass.

  He jumped in the open cabin door.

  MALONE AND CASSIOPEIA STEPPED OUTSIDE ONTO THE EAST portico and saw a helicopter landing about a quarter mile away.

  Way too far to do anything about it.

  After only a minute below the trees, the rotors’ thump increased and the chopper climbed back into the morning sky, heading west.

  Malone realized that without the wheel there was no way to know what Andrew Jackson had done. And since only one existed, the cipher’s solution had just flown away.

  “We can track that thing, can’t we?” Cassiopeia asked.

  “Not quick enough. He’ll set down somewhere not far away and drop his passenger off.”

  “The person who shot at me?”

  He nodded.

  The estate manager rushed up to where they stood, along with Edwin Davis. Malone stepped back inside and headed straight for Jefferson’s cabinet.

  The others followed.

  He found the table where an empty glass cover sat.

  “Those windows outside,” the manager said, “were 19th-century glass. The frames were original to Jefferson’s time. Irreplaceable.”

  “This isn’t a World Heritage Site, is it?” he asked, trying lighten the tension.

  “Actually, it has been since 1987.”

  He smiled. Stephanie would love that one. How many of those had he damaged? Four? Five?

  He heard windows being opened throughout the house and saw the smoke dissipating. A new face appeared. A middle-aged woman with dark red hair and freckled skin. She was introduced as the senior curator, in charge of the estate’s artifacts. She was visibly upset at the site of the missing wheel.

  “It’s the only one in the world,” she said.

  “Who was here?” Edwin Davis asked him.

  “An old friend, who apparently holds a grudge.”

  He motioned for Davis and Cassiopeia to walk with him toward the library while the curator and the estate manager talked in the cabinet. He told them about Jonathan Wyatt, then said, “Last I saw him was eight years ago, at the admin hearing when he was fired.”

  Davis immediately withdrew his phone, placed a call, listened a few moments, then hung up.

  “He’s a contract agent now,” Davis said. “Works for hire. Lives in Florida.”

  Malone thought back to the coded message from the sheet Jackson had written. Twenty-six letters, five symbols.

  GYUOINESCVOQXWJTZPKLDEMFHR

  “Without that wheel, the final message is indecipherable,” he said. “We’re done. We need to focus on Stephanie now.”

  “Mr. Malone,” a female voice said.

  He turned at the call of his name.

  The curator.

  “I understand it was the cipher wheel that interested you.” She walked toward him beneath the room’s arches.

  He nodded. “It’s what we came for. We needed it but, like you said, that’s the only one in the world.”

  “The only original in the world,” she said. “Not the only wheel.”

  He was listening.

  “At the learning center, down in the visitor center, we wanted the kids to experience Thomas Jefferson hands-on. So we re-created many of his inventions and devices. We made them so they could touch and feel them. There’s a wheel there. I had it made myself. It’s plastic, and looks somewhat like the original. There are twenty-six disks, each one with twenty-six letters carved on the edge. I had nothing else to go on, so I told the company who made it to copy the disks exactly as Jefferson made them.”

  FIFTY

  BATH, NORTH CAROLINA

  HALE WATCHED AS KNOX MADE THE NECESSARY PREPARATIONS. Six glasses were brought from the bar and laid out in a row on one of the tables. Into each was poured a swallow of whiskey. Knox produced a glass vial that held a yellow-tinted liquid. The captains stared at the contents. Bolton nodded his consent to proceed. At any time, a captain challenged could withdraw, conceding defeat.

  But not today.

  Into one of the glasses Knox trickled a few drops of the yellowish liquid. The poison came from a Caribbean fish. Odorless, tasteless, fatal in seconds. A Commonwealth staple for centuries.

  “All is ready,” Knox said.

  Hale stepped to the table, his gaze on the third glass from the left where the poison rested within the amber-colored whiskey.

  Bolton approached.

  “Do you still accept my challenge?” Hale asked.

  “I’m not afraid to die, Quentin. Are you?”

  That wasn’t the issue. Teaching these three a lesson was the point—one they would never forget. He kept his gaze locked on Bolton and said to Knox, “Shuffle the glasses.”

  He heard the bottoms slide across the tabletop as Knox rearranged the glasses, making it impossible to know which one contained the poison. Tradition required that the two participants lock eyes. Centuries ago, the crew would study the shuffle, then wager among themselves when a captain would make the wrong choice.

  “It’s done,” Knox said.

  The six glasses waited in a row, their swirling contents settling. Since Hale had extended the challenge, he was required to pick first.

  One in six the odds.

  The best they would be.

  He reached for the fourth glass, lifted it to his lips, and downed the contents with one swallow.

  The liquor burned his throat.

  He bore his gaze into Bolton’s eyes and waited.

  Nothing.

  He smiled. “Your turn.”

  WYATT SETTLED INTO THE HELICOPTER’S PASSENGER COMPARTMENT. He’d made his escape exactly as planned, leaving Malone empty-handed. Now no way existed to learn the next part of Andrew Jackson’s message.

  Mission accomplished.

  He laid his gun on the seat beside him and arranged the nylon bag in his lap. Carefully, he extracted the device and balanced its metal frame across his knees. The chopper had risen from the field and was now flying west, away from Monticello, the sunny morning air clear and smooth.

  He found the two loose disks and studied how to add them. A metal rod ran through the c
enter of the other twenty-four disks, attached to the frame and held in place by a retaining pin. He noticed that the disks, about a quarter inch wide, fit tightly, no spare room except at the end where there was space for two more.

  He examined the two loose ones. Each, like the others, contained the letters of the alphabet, carved into their edge, broken by crooked lines above and below. He’d read enough about the wheel to know that the disks had to be arranged on the rod in a certain order. But Jackson had not included any instructions as to that, only adding the five curious symbols at the end. He decided to try the obvious and rotated the first visible disk on the rod and saw a carved 3 on its inside face. The two loose disks showed a 1 and 2 in the same spot.

  Perhaps the order was simply numerical.

  He freed the center post from the frame, held it firm so the remaining disks would not shake loose, and slipped the two disks onto the rod in the correct order.

  He reattached the rod and found Andrew Jackson’s message, which he’d jotted down earlier.

  HALE COULD FEEL THE TENSION IN THE ROOM, THICK AFTER only one selection.

  Now it was Bolton’s turn.

  His adversary glared at the remaining five glasses. Surcouf and Cogburn watched in apparent disbelief. Good. Those two should understand that he was not a man to challenge.

  Bolton focused on the glasses.

  Interesting that the usually hapless fool showed no fear. Was it anger that protected him? Or recklessness?

  Bolton chose, lifting the glass and swallowing its contents.

  One second. Two. Three. Four.

  Nothing.

  Bolton smiled. “Back to you, Quentin.”

  WYATT STUDIED THE SEQUENCE OF TWENTY-SIX LETTERS THAT Andrew Jackson had hidden behind the Jefferson cipher.

  GYUOINESCVOQXWJTZPKLDEMFHR

  Starting at the left, and the disk he knew was labeled 1, he rotated until he found a G. He continued with the next disk, locating a Y. He kept finding the relevant letters in the sequence.

  The chopper brushed the outskirts of Charlottesville, flying over the University of Virginia. Carbonell was waiting for him a few miles ahead. They’d agreed to no calls or radio contact during the flight to lessen the chance of anyone listening in or following. The pilot was payroll NIA, loyal to his boss. He began to realize why the disks were so tightly packed on the spindle. Friction kept them from moving once the desired letter was found.

  A forest of foliage spread out below as they flew westward toward more trees.

  He had little time left.

  So he kept finding letters.

  HALE GULPED HIS SECOND GLASS OF WHISKEY, WASTING NO time in his selection. He waited five seconds, knowing that the poison worked incredibly fast.

  His father had told him about another challenge, one that happened long ago with Abner Hale. After the failed attempt on Andrew Jackson’s life, and the gutting of the Commonwealth’s letters of marque, tension among the four captains reached a climax when a Surcouf challenged a Hale. Kentucky bourbon had been the beverage of choice then. On the second selection, the one he’d just swallowed, Abner’s eyes had rolled to the top of his head and he’d dropped dead. That had happened not in the room they now occupied, but somewhere within the current house’s footprint in a parlor not all that dissimilar to this one. Abner Hale’s death had relieved the pressure within the Commonwealth. His successor, Hale’s great-grandfather, was more moderate and did not suffer the stigma of what his father had done.

  That was another thing about pirate society.

  Each man proved himself.

  The whiskey settled in his stomach.

  No poison.

  The odds had just worsened for Bolton.

  One in three.

  WYATT SPOTTED THEIR DESTINATION ABOUT A MILE AWAY. AN underdeveloped industrial park with a paved lot that spanned out before a couple of dilapidated metal buildings. Two SUVs waited. A single person stood on the asphalt, looking his way.

  Andrea Carbonell.

  He found the twenty-sixth letter.

  An R.

  He pressed the tips of his fingers on the far left and far right disks and rotated all twenty-six in unison. He knew that somewhere in the circle, among the twenty-six different arrangements of letters there should be a coherent message that spanned the disks’ length.

  A quarter turn later he saw it.

  Five words.

  He committed them to memory, then rescrambled the disks.

  KNOX SAW EDWARD BOLTON LABOR OVER HIS SECOND CHOICE and, for the first time, spotted hesitation as the captain debated the remaining three glasses.

  Just watching rattled his nerves.

  He never dreamed that he would actually witness a challenge. His father had told him about them, none of which had ever gone this far. But that was the whole point of something so unpredictable, its message clear. Don’t fight. Work it out. Still, no captain had ever wanted to show cowardice, so Edward Bolton held firm, knowing that one of the three remaining glasses would prove fatal.

  Hale’s dark eyes, oily and alive, stared unblinking.

  Bolton brought a glass to his lips.

  Mouth open, he threw the contents to the back of his throat and swallowed.

  Five seconds passed.

  Nothing.

  Surcouf and Cogburn exhaled together.

  Bolton grinned, an undisguised hint of relief at the corners of his mouth.

  Not bad, Knox thought.

  Not bad at all.

  FIFTY-ONE

  HALE STUDIED BOTH REMAINING GLASSES. SIX INCHES OF POLISHED wood separated them.

  One contained death.

  “Enough of this,” Cogburn said. “You’ve both proven your point. Okay. You’re men, you can take it. Stop this now.”

  Bolton shook his head. “No way. It’s his turn.”

  “And if I choose wrong, you’re rid of me,” Hale said.

  “You challenged me. We’re not stopping. Choose a damn glass.”

  Hale stared down. The amber liquid lay still as a pond in each. He lifted one glass and swirled its contents.

  Then, the other.

  Bolton watched him with an intense glare.

  He reached for a glass. “This one.”

  He lifted it to his lips.

  All three captains and Knox stared at him. He kept his eyes locked on their faces. He wanted them to know that he possessed true courage. He poured the contents into his mouth, swished the liquor between his gums, and swallowed.

  His eyes went wide, his breathing shallow.

  He choked, as the muscles in his face contorted.

  He reached for his chest.

  Then he dropped to the floor.

  WYATT WAITED AS THE HELICOPTER SETTLED ON THE LANDING area, the wheel back in the nylon bag. He’d worked intelligence since graduating from college, recruited while in the military. He was neither liberal nor conservative, neither Republican nor Democrat. He was simply an American who’d served his country until deemed too reckless to be kept on the payroll. He’d made his contribution to intelligence gathering in some of the hottest spots on the planet. He’d been instrumental in uncovering two sleeper agents within the CIA, both tried and convicted as spies. He’d also taken down a double agent, carrying out a clandestine order to kill the man, despite the fact that, officially, America assassinated no one.

  Never once had he violated orders.

  Not even that day with Malone, when two men died. But he was no longer bound by any rules or ethics.

  He could do as he pleased.

  Which was another reason why he’d stayed in this fight.

  He stepped from the chopper, which immediately lifted from the ground and departed. Most likely it would soon be in a hangar, safe from any prying eyes.

  Carbonell waited for him alone. No driver in the SUV.

  “I see you were successful,” she said.

  She’d changed, and was now dressed in a short navy-blue skirt and white jacket that clung to her curvy
frame. Sandals with medium heels adorned her feet. He stood a few feet away, holding the bagged wheel. His gun rested at the base of his spine, tucked behind his belt.

  “What now?” he asked her.

  She motioned at one of the vehicles. “The keys are in it. Take it wherever you want.”

  He feigned interest in the SUV. “Can I keep it?”

  She chuckled. “If it’ll make you happy. I don’t really give a damn.”

  He faced her.

  “You worked the wheel and know the location, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I do.”

  “Can you get those two missing pages?”

  “I’m the only person on the planet who can.”

  He realized the unique position he presently found himself in. Standing here, holding the one thing in the world that this woman needed more than anything else. With it she could find the missing two congressional pages and complete whatever scheme she’d devised. Without it, she was no better off than anyone else.

  He slammed the nylon bag to the pavement and heard two-hundred-year-old wooden disks shatter.

  “You can glue them back together. Should take a week or so. Good luck.”

  And he walked toward the SUV.

  KNOX LOCKED HIS EYES ON THE BODY OF QUENTIN HALE, LYING on the floor. Neither Surcouf nor Cogburn had moved.

  Bolton stared with visible relief, before saying, “Good riddance.”

  One glass remained on the table.

  The victor reached for it. “Hales are the reason we’re in this mess, and they never would have gotten us out. I say we use that woman in the prison to our advantage and make a bargain.”

  “Like that’s going to work,” Cogburn said.

  “You got a better idea, Charles?” Bolton asked. “Do you, John? How about you, Quartermaster?”

  But Knox could not have cared less about them. He wanted only to save himself, and now more than ever. These men were not simply reckless, they were idiotic. None of them paid attention to anything.

  Bolton lifted the final glass in a toast. “To our fallen captain. May he enjoy hell.”