Silver Cross

by B. Kent Anderson

  He swung into the open cab and found the keys dangling from the ignition. He peered through the window. He could see the man now—young, reddish hair, in fatigue pants, a dark T-shirt, and holding a rifle.

  Journey stabbed at the key and the huge engine roared. The instrument panel wasn’t much like anything Journey had ever seen, but he pulled at a lever that looked like a gearshift—he hoped it was a gearshift. The truck jumped forward.

  The assassin jerked his head up, raised the rifle, and fired. The bullets pinged harmlessly into the huge grill of the truck. He lifted the weapon higher.

  Journey inched the truck forward, feeling his way around the controls.

  The man on the road stopped, seeing what was about to happen. “Drop it!” Journey screamed at the top of his lungs. “Put the rifle down!”

  The assassin skidded, then began to backpedal. The truck rolled toward him, gaining speed.

  Come on, drop it, Journey thought, and he remembered Noah Brandon’s words about justice and revenge. Drop it, please.…

  He pushed the truck forward. The assassin opened his mouth in a wordless scream, then flung the rifle away from him, down the ridge toward the office. He raised his hands. Journey pulled hard on the brake and the giant vehicle ground to a stop. He heard the sounds of running feet, and then Tolman was pointing McCaffree’s SIG at the man and binding his hands with a rope.

  Journey laid his head against the wheel. “Where’s Gray?” he called down to Tolman.

  “Down there!” Tolman shouted.

  * * *

  When Zale was fully inside the office, Gray closed the door, stepped around the bleeding man, and busied herself behind her desk. “What are you doing?” Zale asked again.

  “You said you were shutting it down,” Gray said. “It’s being shut down.”

  Zale heard a clatter behind the desk, as if something bulky were being lifted. Gray was breathing heavily, one arm hanging limp at her side. She straightened from the waist, and in her good hand, she was holding a small rectangular silver box, about the size of a TV remote.

  Zale’s eyes widened. He tried to sit up. “No,” he whispered. “Ann, you can’t—”

  “Tying it off. Snipping loose ends. Shutting it down. Wasn’t that the plan, Victor? Except I’m not the loose end. You are.”

  She pressed a button on the box.

  Zale reached toward her, and he was looking straight into her eyes. Then, in an instant, she was gone.

  How could she be there, and then not be there? Zale thought, then his mind wandered. Was she ever really here? Does Ann Gray even exist?

  Then he heard the explosions begin, felt the ground rumble. The last thing he thought before the tons of steel and wood and concrete collapsed on top of him was to wonder how Ann Gray could completely vanish, right before his eyes.

  CHAPTER

  44

  Journey and Tolman had tied the assassin’s legs with a length of chain they found in the crusher and bundled him into the cargo compartment of the Explorer. They were helping Sharp into the backseat when the office building exploded.

  Then a series of other explosions rocked the ground, boiling up from the pit of the mine. The shelves collapsed into themselves, and plumes of dust, followed by black smoke, drifted into the sky. Shrapnel rained down. Journey felt the blast, and a stray piece of concrete hit him on the side of the face.

  “That’s why she wanted me out of the building,” Tolman said. “She blew herself and Zale up with the building, with the mine.” She remembered Jeremy Rayburn, with his greasy hair, standing in the FTC yesterday morning: “Tick-tock. Time to do what needs to be done.”

  She needed time to set the explosives, then she texted me when she was ready … and she waited.

  Tolman flipped open the book Gray had given her.

  “A history of The Associates,” Gray had said.

  “Look at the first page first.”

  It was a grainy paper that looked as if it had been copied from a brochure and hastily faxed.

  “What—,” Tolman said, then the sentence died in her throat.

  At the top was the legend, GRANT PARK MAP.

  Tolman’s heart thundered. In the center of the map was a grassy open area—the park’s public outdoor spaces. On the northwest side of the open area, in masculine block printing, was the letter “L.” Diagonally across the area to the southeast, the letter “R.”

  The places where the protesters and counterprotesters would face each other.

  Tolman scanned the page. On two structures—the Art Institute of Chicago on Wabash Avenue, and the open-air Petrillo Music Shell, which sat to the southeast along Columbus Drive—the same hand had written, “A19” and circled the notation repeatedly.

  “My God,” Tolman whispered.

  “What?” Journey said.

  “That’s where the bombs are. Jesus Christ.…” She fumbled out her phone—But who the hell do I call?

  Instinctively, she opened the call log.

  Yes.

  Denison answered on the first ring.

  “Chicago,” she said. “I know where the bombs are.”

  “What?”

  “Gray. I got it from Gray.”

  “But she is not—”

  “No, she’s not, but somehow she got the information.”

  I can’t stop it, Gray had said. But you can.

  “We can still stop it. Call FBI—get the Chicago Field Office, then get Hostage Rescue from Quantico in the air now. Get explosives people. The bombs are in the Art Institute of Chicago and the Petrillo Music Shell. Do you have that? They’re on different sides of the park.”

  “The Art Institute and the music shell. Is Gray with you?”

  Tolman glanced down toward the burning office building. “Not anymore. We can still stop this from happening, Denison.”

  “I’ll call the Bureau now. What about The Associates?”

  Tolman sagged against the ground, tapping the book in her hand. “I don’t think you need to be concerned about them anymore, but I do think I met your former employee today. Nasty man.” She rolled over and sat up. “I’m trusting you on this, Denison. This isn’t a turf battle. We can sort it out after the bombs are defused and all those people are no longer in any danger.”

  “Ms. Tolman, you told me not long ago that we were on the same side. I may believe you, after all.”

  Tolman almost smiled. “I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

  “Count on it.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Tolman said, ending the call.

  She and Journey could feel the heat from the fire, but it was fairly contained, thanks to the moist ground from last night’s rain. The mine pit had caved in completely. The office was a smoking pile of rubble.

  Journey drove the Explorer down the road, cutting a path through the smoke. At the office parking lot, they switched to Sharp’s Cherokee, leaving Deputy McCaffree’s body in the Explorer. They would send someone for it later. Journey took the package Noah Brandon had given him and put it under the seat of the Cherokee. He turned left toward the gate and drove out to the highway. When he turned onto Texas 70, he took one look back and saw the smoke rising from the Silver Cross.

  * * *

  Gray hurried through the tunnel, working to stay ahead of the smoke. She’d had the tunnel system built under the office when construction had begun five years ago. She knew the time would come when she—or someone—would need to escape quickly. It was three hundred yards long, passing under the dry bed of the river and emerging from the base of one of the small buttes on the other side. She could smell the smoke, and she knew it would fill the passageway soon. She’d opened the tunnel door beneath her desk after she pulled Zale into the office, and in the split second after she pressed the button, she had stepped down onto the ladder and dropped into the tunnel.

  Nearly half an hour later, bloody and gritty, she emerged from the base of the butte and climbed into the tan Mazda Tribute she’d parked there long ago
and driven periodically, to ensure that it would be operable and ready when she needed it. She opened her first aid kit and took three Tylenol, then wrapped a bandage around her bloody arm. Gray started the Tribute and turned toward the highway.

  In a few miles, she called the house in Fremont. Her son answered the phone.

  “I’m coming home,” she said.

  “Yeah, but for how long?” Joseph said.

  “For a long time, son,” Gray said. She felt a little woozy, but she smiled. “I quit my job. It wasn’t worth it anymore. See you soon.”

  * * *

  In the Jeep, Tolman ran a hand through her hair. She felt dusty, smoky, battered. “Jesus, my head hurts.” She glanced at Sharp, sprawled across the backseat. “But I don’t have anything to complain about. How you doing, Darrell?”

  “Okay,” Sharp said, but he was pale and his voice was a whisper.

  “What’s the nearest real city?” she asked.

  “Amarillo,” Journey said. “But it’s a good hour and a half drive from here, and we don’t know where the hospitals are. Call Sheriff Nichols in Memphis and get him to arrange for a Medevac helicopter. We’ll take him to Memphis and the helicopter can meet us there. If we move fast, they can get him to a trauma center in half the time it would take us to drive it.”

  “Then let’s move fast.”

  “Already there,” Journey said, as the Jeep’s speedometer topped ninety.

  * * *

  The helicopter was waiting by the time they reached Memphis, and the pilot told them Sharp would be taken to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, the region’s only trauma center. As soon as the chopper left the ground, Nichols led the way with siren blaring and escorted the Jeep all the way to Amarillo.

  Sharp was already in surgery by the time Journey and Tolman arrived. Journey thought of how much time he’d spent in hospitals lately—too much. He sat with Tolman and held her hand, watching as the tough-talking façade of the investigator fell away.

  “He better be all right,” Tolman said. “After all this…”

  “He’s tough,” Journey said. “I think being shot probably just annoyed him.”

  That brought a tight smile, then Tolman started to cry in huge sobs that shook her tiny frame. Journey pulled her to him and put his arms around her and let her sob into his dusty shirt. He said nothing, but kept his arms steady around her. She didn’t pull away.

  “I never cry,” she finally muttered.

  “Yeah, you said that the last time I saw you cry.”

  Tolman laughed and wiped tears from her face. “I want him to be okay. He needs to be okay.”

  “Yes,” Journey said, and Tolman finally pulled away.

  Two hours later, a nurse in bloody scrubs entered the waiting area. She spoke in short, clinical terms about gunshots and surgery and recovery rooms, then said, “I think Mr. Sharp may be the toughest man I’ve ever seen.”

  Tolman nodded. “Can we see him?”

  “He’ll be up in recovery in about fifteen minutes.”

  They sat down again and Journey said, “Brandon gave me something.”

  “Yeah?” Tolman said.

  “The letter wasn’t the only thing Rose Greenhow had with her that night.”

  Tolman waited. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He handed her the package Noah Brandon had given him, which was actually a piece of very soft cloth. She began to unwrap it gently. When she saw what was inside, she drew in a breath.

  It was a silver cross, about twelve inches tall, with rubies embedded in the base and at the top, and sparkling emeralds along the arms.

  “It’s—,” Tolman said, and the sentence faded.

  “A real silver cross,” Journey said.

  “Rose had this? But I don’t … the Silver Cross was there. It was the place where they found the silver. All of this … it was all because of the mine. How can this—”

  “Remember at the beginning of all this, when Lashley said that there were stories of an artifact, something that would show the world that God had blessed Napoleon’s invasion of Mexico?”

  “I remember.”

  “Symbolism was so important at that time,” Journey said. “Even though Napoleon knew what he meant by the Silver Cross, he needed a public relations victory, a symbol of what he had done. He had this made as a gift for Jefferson Davis.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tolman said. “The letter. In the letter, Napoleon said something about sending a ‘token of our friendship.’”

  “Right. Some token, yes? Not only a gesture of good faith from one ruler to another, but also a symbol.”

  “But wait … how did Brandon get it?”

  Journey told her the story of Charles Roberts and John and Will Brandon, and Noah Brandon’s desire to complete his collection.

  “But I still don’t understand, Nick,” Tolman said when he’d finished. “So Rose gave the cross to Roberts, too?”

  “No. Maybe she had it in another pouch, maybe she didn’t want to give it up. I don’t know. But it went down with her. Still, it wasn’t with her things when her body washed ashore.”

  “So Brandon’s grandfather thought the Silver Cross was real—”

  “Just as we did.”

  “Just as we did,” Tolman said. “And he went looking for it.”

  “He dived on the wreck of the Condor. Noah told me his grandfather dived on the wreck for two years before he found the cross. Once he found it, Will Brandon thought it was so stunning that he couldn’t share it. He wanted to keep it, not sell it, not donate it, simply … possess it. ‘A treasure greater than may be believed.’ He was right. There was a real, tangible silver cross.”

  “My God, my God, Nick. It’s amazing.” She hefted the cross in her hand, ran her fingers along the jewels.

  “Turn it over.”

  Tolman turned it over and squinted at an inscription on the back, along the main bar of the cross. She looked up slowly. “What is this? What are these numbers? They look like … degrees and minutes. This looks like latitude and longitude, Nick.”

  “That’s right. They’re coordinates.”

  “To the place that became the mine?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no? What else could it be?”

  “I double-checked. When I used the GIS and found the mine, those were not the coordinates. If my calculations are right, this points to a location about sixty miles south of there.”

  “What?”

  “Look beside the numbers.”

  Tolman held the cross close to her face. “What’s this word?”

  “L’or,” Journey said. “It’s French for ‘gold.’”

  “Gold?”

  “Napoleon’s men weren’t looking for gold. Napoleon had plenty of gold. He was short of silver to pay India for cotton, remember? But if his men, in their exploration, found a deposit of gold, they’d be crazy not to document it. No one ignored gold in those days.”

  “So there’s a gold mine there now? More of Panhandle Mining, more funneling illicit funds—”

  “No, no,” Journey said. “I already checked. There’s no mine. If there’s gold there, it’s been untouched since the 1860s.”

  Tolman looked out the window toward the hospital parking lot. “And if it’s as rich a strike as the Silver Cross was—” She slowly turned to face Journey. “Napoleon was giving a little gift to Davis. ‘A token of our friendship.’ Let me have the silver, and you can keep the gold … if you can find it. Napoleon III was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. And it’s lying there, untapped, in the middle of West Nowhere, Texas.”

  “Just like the Silver Cross was,” Journey said.

  “Good God, Nick. This means—”

  “I don’t know what it means.” He pointed at the cross. “But I know what that is, and I know why Rose Greenhow died. She literally protected that letter and this cross with her last breath, and then Charles Roberts did the same for the letter—without ev
en understanding what it was. How many people in the world today would do that? Not many. Noah Brandon, I think. I never saw a more selfless person … he has no interest whatsoever in fame or notoriety. He values history for its own sake, for the depth of understanding it gives. That’s rare.”

  “The silver cross that leads to gold,” Tolman said.

  “Yes. What did you get from Gray?”

  “Not sure yet.” She thought of the black binder. “A book. Some history, I think.”

  They both smiled a bit at that.

  CHAPTER

  45

  Five days later, Tolman waited in the White House Rose Garden, clutching the black binder. Before entering the White House for her appointment with Wade Roader, she’d called to check on Sharp. From Amarillo, he’d been flown to a hospital in Little Rock, near his home in Gravelly, Arkansas. He was still in ICU, and the doctors wouldn’t tell her his prognosis.

  “He never complains, though,” one of the nurses told her. “He never wants pain meds.” That had made Tolman smile, and she knew he would be all right.

  When Roader approached her, with bodyguards at a discreet distance, his face was clouded. He waved at the guards to stay back.

  “Good to see you,” Roader said. “So sorry I haven’t been able to meet with you for a while. A little busy, as you might imagine. How are things at RIO?”

  Tolman ignored the chief of staff’s question. “How are things with the French?” she asked.

  Roader grimaced. “The secretary of state is still in Paris. We’re trying to figure out what’s happened. That idiot Mercer released the map to the media, and they swarmed all over the place, as you know. An explosion, still burning when they arrived, the place littered with bodies … we don’t understand it. And that’s all at the same time as the rally in Chicago, and the revelation that there were bombs in two of the surrounding buildings. It could have been total devastation, with that many people packed so tightly together. I may want RIO to do some follow-up work.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m familiar with it.”