by Steve Berry
So he debated his options.
He assumed the two men who’d brought him were just outside the door. Beyond the window, on the opposite side of the room, past the blinds, was surely a fire escape. All these older buildings possessed one.
Should he be quiet and take two down or make some noise and drop all four?
“You’re coming with us,” NSA said. “Carbonell has a lot of explaining to do and you’re going to be witness number one for the prosecution. The man who can contradict her lies.”
“And you think I would actually do that?”
“You’ll do whatever you have to do to save your hide.”
Interesting how little they knew about him.
A mechanism from deep within seized control, and he allowed it.
One swing of his body and his right fist found CIA’s throat. Then he doubled NSA over with a kick to the chest, careful for the legs not to lose their balance. While the one man fought to breathe, he pounded NSA’s neck with a short chop, breaking the man’s collapse with his arms, then gently laying the stunned man on the floor.
He then stepped behind CIA and wrapped an arm around his neck.
“I could choke you to death,” he whispered in the man’s ear.
He gritted his teeth and increased the pressure on the windpipe.
“I’d actually enjoy watching you suck your last breath.”
Tighter.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Stay. The hell. Out of my way.”
CIA reached for his arm.
He increased the hold. “Do you hear me?”
Finally, the man nodded, then a lack of oxygen sucked all resistance from the muscles.
He released his grip.
The body folded to the floor, hardly making a sound.
He checked for pulses. Faint, but there. Breathing was shallow, but constant.
He stepped to the window, opened it, and left.
Malone was waiting for both Daniels and Davis to explain what was happening with Stephanie. But he also realized the president had much to say. So, since they were 30,000 feet in the air with nowhere to go, he decided to sit back and listen as Daniels explained what happened in the spring of 1835.
“Jackson was furious over the assassination attempt,” the president said. “He openly blamed Senator Poindexter from Mississippi, called the whole thing a Nullifiers’ conspiracy. He hated John Calhoun. Called him a traitor to the Union. That one I can understand.”
Calhoun had been Jackson’s vice president and, initially, a big supporter. But in the face of a rising southern sympathy, Calhoun had turned on his benefactor and started the Nullifier Party, advocating states’ rights—especially southern states’ rights. Daniels, too, had seen his share of vice-presidential traitors.
“Jackson had dealt with pirates before,” Daniels said. “Jean Lafitte in New Orleans he liked. Together they saved that city during the War of 1812.”
“Why do you call these people pirates?” Cassiopeia asked. “Were they not privateers? Specifically authorized by America to attack its enemies?”
“That they were and, if they’d stopped there, it might have been okay. Instead, once they received that letter of marque in perpetuity, they were hell on water.”
He listened as Daniels explained how during the Civil War the Commonwealth worked both sides of the conflict.
“I’ve seen classified documents from that time,” Daniels said. “Lincoln hated the Commonwealth. He planned on prosecuting them all. By then privateering was illegal, thanks to the Declaration of Paris in 1856. But here’s the rub. Only fifty-two nations signed that treaty. The United States and Spain refused.”
“So the Commonwealth kept going?” Cassiopeia said. “Using that failure to their advantage?”
Daniels nodded. “The Constitution allows for letters of marque. Since the United States never renounced privateering by signing the treaty, it was essentially legal here. And even though we didn’t sign the treaty, during the Spanish-American War both we and Spain agreed to observe the treaty’s principles. The Commonwealth, though, ignored that agreement and attacked Spanish shipping, which so angered William McKinley that he finally had Congress pass an act in 1899 making it unlawful to capture shipping or distribute any proceeds taken as a prize.”
“Which meant nothing to the Commonwealth,” Malone said. “Their letters of marque would give them immunity to that law.”
Daniels pointed a finger at him. “Now you’re beginning to see the problem.”
“Some presidents,” Davis said, “used the Commonwealth to their advantage, some fought them, most ignored them. No one, though, ever wanted the public to know that George Washington and the U.S. government had sanctioned their actions. Or that the U.S. Treasury profited from their actions. Most simply let them do as they please.”
“Which brings us back to Andrew Jackson,” Daniels said. “He’s the only one who stuck it up their ass.”
Davis reached beneath the table and found a leather satchel. He withdrew a sheet of paper and slid it over.
“That’s a letter,” the president said, “Jackson wrote to Abner Hale, who, in 1835, was one of the four in the Commonwealth. Jackson kept a copy in a cache of presidential papers that have remained sealed in the National Archives. Papers only a few can access. Edwin found it.”
“I didn’t know there was such a repository,” Malone said.
“Neither did we, until we went looking,” Daniels said. “And I’m not the first to read that. They keep a log at the archives. A lot of presidents took a look at that letter. But none in a long while. Kennedy was the last. He sent his brother Bobby for a gander.” The president pointed to the page. “As you can see, Abner Hale sent the assassin after Jackson, or at least that’s what Jackson thought.”
Malone read the page, then passed it to Cassiopeia and asked, “Abner is related to Quentin Hale?”
“Great-great-granddaddy,” Daniels said. “Quite a family tree they’ve got there.”
Malone smiled.
“Andrew Jackson,” the president said, “was so mad at the Commonwealth, he ripped the two pages from the House and Senate journals where the letters of marque had been congressionally authorized for the four families. I saw both journals myself. A jagged tear in each volume.”
“Is that why you can’t simply revoke the letters?” Cassiopeia asked.
Malone knew the answer. “No congressional record of their passage means no legal authority stating that they have to be honored. Presidents can’t sign letters of marque unless Congress okays them, and there’s no record of Congress ever approving these.”
“Presidents can’t do it on their own?” Cassiopeia asked.
Daniels shook his head. “Not according to the Constitution.”
“And,” Malone said, “if you went proactive and actually revoked these letters of marque, you’d be implying that they were valid in the first place. Also, any revocation would not affect past acts. They’d still be immune to those, which is exactly what the Commonwealth wants.”
Daniels nodded. “That’s exactly the problem. A classic damned if we do, damned if we don’t. It would have been better if Jackson had just destroyed those two journal pages. But the crazy SOB hid them away. Like he said, he wanted to torment them. Give them something to worry about besides killing a president. But all he did was pass the problem down to us.”
“If you had the two pages,” Cassiopeia asked, “what would you do?”
“That’s part of what I had Stephanie looking into. Those possibilities. I don’t pass problems down to my successors.”
“So what happened?” Malone asked.
Daniels sighed. “It got complicated. After Hale came to see Edwin, we became curious, so we started asking questions. We discovered that the head of the NIA, Andrea Carbonell, is linked to the Commonwealth.”
He knew about Carbonell from his days with the Magellan Billet. Cuban American. Tough. Wary. No nonsense. He also knew what the president me
ant. “A bit too close?”
“We’re not sure,” Davis said. “It was an unexpected discovery. One that caused us concern. Enough that we needed to know more.”
“So Stephanie offered to look into it,” Daniels said. “On her own.”
“Why her?” Malone asked.
“Because she wanted to. Because I trust her. NIA is at odds with the rest of the intelligence community on the Commonwealth. They want the pirates in jail, but Carbonell doesn’t. Involving another agency would have compounded that conflict. Stephanie and I spoke about this last week. She agreed that her doing it herself was the best way. So she went DNC to meet with some former NIA agents who could shed light on Carbonell and the Commonwealth. She was to call in to Edwin four days ago. That didn’t happen and, unfortunately, we have no idea why. We can only assume she’s been taken.”
Or worse, Malone thought. “Squeeze Carbonell. Go after the Commonwealth.”
Davis shook his head. “We don’t know they have her. We also have zero proof on Carbonell. She would simply deny everything and go to ground. All four members of the Commonwealth are respected businessmen with no criminal records. We accuse them of being pirates, they go public, and we have a PR nightmare.”
“Who cares?” Malone asked.
“We do,” Daniels said. “We have to.”
He heard the frustration.
But something else ate at him.
Four days gone.
If that were the case, “Then who sent me an email two days ago and who left that note in the Grand Hyatt?”
TWENTY
BATH, NORTH CAROLINA
Hale watched as the other three considered his proposal about raising the flag. He knew they understood its significance. During the glory days pirates and privateers survived on their reputations. Though violence was certainly a way of life, the preferred method of taking a prize was without a fight. Attacking cost in many ways. Injuries, deaths, damage to the ship or, worse, to the booty. Battles unnecessarily escalated operating costs and, inevitably, reduced revenue. Plus, the vast majority of crewmen could not even swim.
So a better way to fight developed.
Raise the flag.
Display your identity and your intentions.
If the target surrendered, then lives would be spared. If the target resisted, the crew, to a man, would be slaughtered.
And it worked.
Pirate reputations became infamous. The cruelties of George Lowther, Bartholomew Roberts, and Edward Low were legendary. Eventually, simply the sight of a Jolly Roger became enough. Merchantmen who spotted the distinctive flag knew their choices.
Surrender or die.
“Our former friends in the intelligence community,” he said, “need to understand that we are not to be taken lightly.”
“They know it was us who took the shot at Daniels,” Cogburn said. “The quartermaster has already reported in. NIA stopped us.”
“Which raises a list of new troubling questions,” Hale said. “Most important of which is—What has changed? Why has our last ally turned on us?”
“This is nothing but trouble,” Bolton said.
“What is wrong, Edward? Another bad decision gone worse?”
He couldn’t resist the jab. Hales and Boltons had never really cared for one another.
“You think yourself so damn invulnerable,” Bolton said. “You and all your money and influence. Yet it can’t save you or us now, can it?”
“I’ve been a bad host,” he said, ignoring the insult. “Would anyone care for a drink?”
“We don’t want drinks,” Bolton said. “We want results.”
“And killing the president of the United States would have achieved those?”
“What would you have done?” Bolton asked. “Go back to the White House and beg some more?”
Never again. He’d hated sitting across from the chief of staff, after being denied a face-to-face with Daniels. And the call that came a week after his meeting with Davis had been even more insulting.
“The U.S. government cannot sanction your breaking the law,” Davis said to him.
“That’s what privateers do. We pillage the enemy with the blessing of the government.”
“Two hundred years ago, perhaps.”
“Little has changed. Threats still remain. Perhaps more so today than ever. We have done nothing but support this nation. Every effort of the Commonwealth has been directed toward thwarting our enemies. Now we are to be prosecuted?”
“I’m aware of your problem,” Davis said.
“Then you know our dilemma.”
“I know that the intelligence people are fed up with you. What you did in Dubai almost brought the entire region crashing down.”
“What we did was frustrate our enemies, attacking them when and where they were most vulnerable.”
“They are not our enemies.”
“That’s a matter of debate.”
“Mr. Hale. If you’d kept on there and bankrupted Dubai, which was a real possibility, the repercussions would have disrupted this nation’s entire Middle East policy. The loss of such a key ally in that region would have been devastating. We have so few friends over there. It would have taken decades to cultivate another relationship like that one. What you were doing was counterproductive to anything reasonable and logical.”
“They are not our friends, and you know it.”
“Maybe so. But Dubai needs us, and we need them. So we put aside our differences and work together.”
“Why not do the same relative to us?”
“Frankly, Mr. Hale, your situation is not something the White House cares about one way or the other.”
“You should. The first president and the second Congress of this country legally granted us the authority to act, so long as it was directed toward our enemies.”
“With one problem,” Davis said. “The legal authority for your letter of marque does not exist. Even if we wanted to honor it, that could prove impossible. There is no written reference in the congressional journals for that session addressing them. Two pages are missing, which I believe you are well aware of. Their location is guarded by Jefferson’s cipher. I read Andrew Jackson’s letter to your great-great-grandfather.”
“Am I to assume that if we solve the cipher and find those missing pages, the president will honor the letter?”
“You can assume that your legal position will be much stronger since, as of now, you don’t have one.”
“Gentlemen,” he said to the other three. “I am reminded of a story my grandfather once told me. A British merchant ship spotted a vessel on the horizon, its identity and intentions unknown. They watched for the better part of an hour as it bore down upon them. As it approached the captain asked his crew if they would stand and defend the ship. ‘If they be Spaniards,’ the crew said, ‘we will fight. But if they be pirates we will not.’ Once they learned that it was Black Beard himself, they all quit the ship, believing they would be murdered.”
The other three stared at him.
“It is time to raise our flag. To let our enemy know that we are bearing down upon them.”
“Why are you so smug?” Cogburn asked. “What have you done?”
Hale smiled.
Charles knew him well.
“Perhaps enough to save us all.”
TWENTY-ONE
NEW YORK CITY
Knox entered the Helmsley Park Lane, the upscale hotel located at the south end of Central Park. Though he possessed a key, he did not know which room it opened. That was the thing about plastic cards. No information. He stepped across the lobby to the front desk. There a bright-eyed woman in her early twenties asked if she could be of help.
“Scott Parrott, checking out,” he said to her, adding a smile and handing her the key.
He was hoping Parrott had not made himself noticeable. If by chance the woman knew Parrott, he was ready with a cover story. I’m the one paying the bill. Scott works for me. But not a word
was uttered as she pounded computer keys and printed out a bill.
“Leaving a day early?” she said.
He nodded. “Necessary.”
She plucked a page from the printer and handed it to him. He pretended to peruse the statement, focusing only on the room number.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I just realized I left something upstairs. I’ll be right back. Hold this for me.”
He thanked her and headed for the elevators, riding an empty car to the fifth floor. There he inserted the key card and opened the door. Inside was a spacious suite with an unmade king-sized bed. Picture windows consumed the north wall and offered an impressive view of Central Park’s colorful treetops, hinting at their autumn glory to come, along with the buildings of the Upper West Side.
His gaze raked the décor until he found the laptop on the desk. He stepped over and yanked the power cord from the wall socket.
“And who are you?” a female voice said.
He turned.
A woman stood inside the bathroom doorway. She was short, petite, with straight brown hair, wearing jeans and a sweater.
Her right hand held a revolver.
“Scott sent me to get the computer.”
“That all you got? Or the best you could do on short notice?”
He shrugged, gesturing with the laptop in his grasp. “Best I could do.”
“Where’s Scott?”
“Now, is that all you have?”
“I don’t know, Knox. I seem to be the one with the gun, so answer the question.”
Just what he needed—another problem. Hadn’t he had enough of those for one day. But his suspicions were now confirmed.
This was a trap.
Still, he’d been forced to take the chance.