by Steve Berry
She advanced farther into the room, keeping her gun trained on him. She reached into her back pocket and found a cellphone. One push of a button and she said, “Our pirate has arrived.”
This just kept getting better.
She stood too far away, maybe ten feet, for him to do anything that would not get him shot. He noticed that her weapon was sound-suppressed. Obviously, the NIA wanted minimum attention drawn to this effort, which might work to his advantage. He had to do something, and fast, since he did not know how far away that assistance was located.
She tossed the phone aside.
“The laptop,” she said. “Toss it on the bed.”
He nodded his assent and started to lob it onto the mattress. At the last second he propelled the device straight at her, spinning it across the room.
She dodged and he lunged, kicking the gun from her grasp. She spun, raised her arms, and attacked. He slammed his right fist into her face, driving her onto the bed. Dazed from the blow, she reached for her bloody nose.
He found the gun on the carpet.
Finger on the trigger, he grabbed a pillow from the bed, pressed the gun into one side, the other onto her head, and fired once.
She stopped moving.
The pillow had muffled the sound-suppressed report to almost nothing.
Dammit. Killing was not something he enjoyed doing. But he hadn’t set this foolish trap.
He tossed the pillow aside.
Think.
He’d touched only the laptop, its power cord, and the door handle.
He retrieved the computer from the floor. It had landed on one of the upholstered chairs and seemed okay. He would keep the gun. He found a washcloth in the bathroom and opened the exit door with it, then wiped the knob on both sides. He stuffed the cloth in his pocket and headed for the elevators.
He turned the corner just as a sound announced the arrival of a car.
Two men stepped off, both young and clean-cut. Surely the radioed assistance. He casually brushed past, never giving them a second glance. It would take them less than a minute to discover the body and begin their pursuit. He wasn’t necessarily worried about these two, but the ones they could radio would be a problem.
He pressed the button with his sleeved elbow and waited.
“Hey,” a voice said.
He turned.
Both men were rushing back his way.
Crap.
His right hand rested in his pocket, fingers on the gun.
He withdrew the weapon.
TWENTY-TWO
NEW YORK CITY
Wyatt hopped down from the last rung of the fire escape to the pavement and grabbed his bearings, deciding to walk the few blocks east toward Central Park and find a cab. The quiet side street was tree-lined, light on traffic, but heavy with parked cars. Several displayed violation tickets on their windshields. Night had arrived with a chill that matched his mood. He did not like being used or manipulated.
But Andrea Carbonell had done both.
That woman was a problem.
She was a career intelligence operative who’d risen from low-level analyst to agency head, managing to keep NIA useful even in difficult times. His previous dealings with her had been varied—occasional jobs for which she paid well—and there’d never been any problems out of the ordinary.
So why was this time so different?
None of this really concerned him. Yet he was curious. More of that operative inside him seeping back to the surface.
He approached an intersection and was about to cross when he noticed a black sedan parked fifty feet away. The face that stared at him from an open rear window was familiar.
“Forty-two minutes,” Carbonell called out to him. “I gave you forty-five. You hurt them?”
“They’re going to need a doctor.”
She smiled. “Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”
“You fired me, then you allowed those idiots to take me. I’m going home.”
“I was hasty on both counts.”
That curiosity inside him swelled. He knew he shouldn’t but he decided to accept her offer. He stepped across the street, and the sedan left the curb as soon as he settled into the rear seat.
“We found Scott Parrott,” she said. “Dead in Central Park. The pirates are predictable, I’ll say that for them.”
He’d worked with Parrott for the past month. He was NIA’s conduit to the Commonwealth, the source of all of his intel. Of course, he hadn’t told NSA or CIA any of that. None of their damn business.
“I knew Clifford Knox would do something,” she said. “He’d have to.”
“Why?”
“It’s all part of the pirate thing. We insulted them by interfering so they have to retaliate. It’s their culture.”
“So you sacrificed Parrott?”
“That’s a harsh way of putting it. What did you say at your admin hearing? Part of the mission. People get killed sometimes.”
Yes, he had said that. But he didn’t catch the connection between his comment, referring to agents under fire who required help, and sending a man to meet with someone you knew was going to kill him.
“Parrott was careless,” she said. “Too trusting. He could have protected himself.”
“And you could have provided him a warning or backup.”
She handed him a file. “That’s not how it works. It’s time you learn more about the Commonwealth.”
He handed the packet back. “I’m done.”
“You realize there’ll be repercussions over what happened back there.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
“They won’t see it that way. What did they want? For you to turn on me? Give up the Commonwealth on the assassination attempt?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re a smart guy, Jonathan. The only one for this job.” She smiled. “I know they’re after me. I’ve known that for a while. They think I’m on the take to the Commonwealth.”
“Are you?”
“Not in the least. I have no use for their ill-gotten gains.”
“But apparently, you have use for them.”
“I’m a survivor, Jonathan. I’m sure you don’t have to worry about a paycheck. You have millions stashed away, no danger of anybody ever getting their hands on it. I’m not that fortunate. I have to work.”
No, that wasn’t right. She loved the work.
“Even in a changing job market,” she said, “courtesy of a presidential downsizing, opportunities still exist. I simply want one of those for myself. That’s all. No payoffs. No bribes. Just a job.”
Since clearly no one at NSA or CIA would touch her, and she wouldn’t settle for anything less than a deputy administrator or a director’s post, her choices were limited. She’d also want to go somewhere safe. Nothing on the chopping block. Why jump from one fire into another?
He caught her gaze.
She seemed to read his mind.
“That’s right. I want the Magellan Billet.”
Knox whirled, the sight of the sound-suppressed gun stopping the two men’s advance.
“Hands to the side,” he said. “Step back.”
They obliged and slowly retreated down the hall.
Another elevator arrived, and the doors opened.
Two more threats stood inside, similar to the first pair. The sight of his gun momentarily caught them off guard, as neither of them held a weapon. He fired twice into the elevator, angling the shots up, trying not to hit anybody, just rattle them into a frenzy.
The doors closed as the two men dove to the floor, arms shielding their heads, trying to avoid the rounds. But the few seconds used to discourage the new threat encouraged the old one, and a body slammed into him broadside.
He hit the carpet and lost his grip on the laptop.
Using his legs, he pivoted upward and flipped himself, propelling the man off him. He rolled right and fired at the second agent rushing down the hall, dropping t
he body to the carpet.
The other man recovered and swung a fist.
Which connected.
Wyatt considered what Carbonell had told him.
The Magellan Billet.
“Seems like a good place to be,” she said. “Daniels loves it. Odds are his party will retain the White House after next year. It’s the perfect spot for a career woman like me.”
“Except that Stephanie Nelle heads it now.”
He noticed their route, toward Times Square, in the direction of his hotel, the location of which he’d never mentioned to Andrea Carbonell.
“I’m afraid Stephanie has come on some hard times,” she said. “The Commonwealth took her prisoner a few days ago.”
Which explained how his email to Malone in Copenhagen had worked so easily. He’d opened a Gmail account in Stephanie Nelle’s name. Nothing unusual would have flagged on Malone’s end. Field agents regularly used common email providers since they drew no attention, revealed nothing about the sender, and blended perfectly with the billions of others. If Malone hadn’t taken the bait, or had communicated with Nelle outside the email, he would have waited for another time to repay his debt. Luckily, that had not occurred.
He was curious, though. “The Commonwealth is helping you acquire a new job?”
“They’re about to.”
“And what is it you have that they want?”
She laid the folder in his lap. “It’s all explained in here.”
He listened as she told him about privateers, letters of marque from George Washington, an attempt on Andrew Jackson’s life, and a cipher Thomas Jefferson considered unbreakable.
“A friend of Jefferson’s,” she said, “Robert Patterson, a professor of mathematics, conceived what he called the perfect cipher. Jefferson was fascinated with codes. He loved Patterson’s so much that, as president, he passed it to his ambassador in France for official use. Unfortunately, there is no record of its solution. Patterson’s son, also named Robert, was appointed by Andrew Jackson as director of the U. S. Mint. That’s probably how Jackson learned of the cipher and its solution. It’s logical to assume that the son knew. Old Hickory was a big fan of Thomas Jefferson.”
She showed him a copy of a handwritten page that contained nine rows of letters in seemingly random sequence.
“Most people don’t know,” she said, “that prior to 1834 there were few records of Congress. What existed was contained within the separate journals for the House and Senate. In 1836 Jackson commissioned the Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, which took twenty years to finish. To create that official record, they used journals, newspaper accounts, eyewitnesses, whatever or whoever they could find. It was mainly secondhand information, but it became the Annals of Congress and is now the official congressional record.”
She explained that nowhere in the Annals was there any mention of four letters of marque granted to any Hale, Bolton, Cogburn, or Surcouf. In fact, two pages were missing from the official House and Senate journals for the congressional sessions of 1793.
“Jackson tore those pages out and hid them away,” she said, “concealed behind Jefferson’s cipher. It has done its job well, protecting that hiding place—” She paused. “Until a few hours ago.”
He spotted his hotel down Broadway.
“We hired an expert a few months ago,” she said. “A particularly smart individual who thought he could solve it. The Commonwealth has tried, but none of their hired guns were successful. Our man is in southern Maryland. He’s privy to some computer programs we use for Middle East decoding that apparently worked. I need you to go see him and retrieve the solution.”
“It can’t be emailed or couriered?”
She shook her head. “Too many security risks associated with that. Besides, there’s a complication.”
He caught the implications. “Others know about this?”
“Unfortunately. Two of whom you just sent to the hospital, but the White House knows as well.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I told them.”
TWENTY-THREE
AIR FORCE ONE
Malone waited for an answer to his questions—who contacted me two days ago and who left the note?—but none came. Instead Edwin Davis handed him another sheet of paper, this one with nine lines of random letters, written in the same script featured on Andrew Jackson’s letter to Abner Hale.
“That’s the Jefferson cipher,” Davis said. “The Commonwealth has tried since 1835 to crack it. Experts tell me it’s not a simple substitution, where you replace one letter of the alphabet with another. It’s a transposition, where letters are placed in a defined order. To know the sequence, you have to know the key. There are something like 100,000 possibilities.”
He studied the letters and symbols.
“Someone obviously deciphered it,” Malone said. “How else did Jackson compose the message?”
“He had the good fortune,” Daniels said, “to appoint the son of the cipher’s creator as head of the U.S. Mint. We’re assuming Daddy told his boy, who told Jackson. But Jackson died in 1845 and the son in 1854. Both took the solution to their graves.”
“Do you think the Commonwealth tried to kill you?” Cassiopeia asked Daniels.
“I don’t know.”
But Malone was more concerned about Stephanie. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“I don’t plan to,” Daniels said.
“You have thousands of agents at your disposal. Use them.”
“As the president told you,” Davis said, “it’s not that simple. CIA and several other intelligence agencies want the Commonwealth prosecuted. NIA wants to save them. We’re also about to eliminate NIA and about fifty more redundant intelligence agencies in the next fiscal year.”
“Does Carbonell know that?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Daniels said.
“And drawing attention to the Commonwealth would only escalate the problem,” Davis made clear. “They’d love a public spectacle. In fact, they may be baiting us into one.”
Daniels shook his head. “This has to be handled quietly, Cotton. Trust me on this. Our intelligence people are like a bunch of roosters I once saw on a farm. All they do is fight one another to see who’s going to be the cock of the walk. In the end, it takes the life out of ’em all, and none amounts to much of anything.”
Malone had personal experience with those turf wars, which was another reason he’d opted to retire out early.
“The big boys have decided to take the Commonwealth down,” Daniels said. “Which is fine with me. I don’t care. But if we start publicly interfering with that effort, then it becomes our fight. We’re then going to have more problems, which will include my least favorite kind. Legal problems.” The president shook his head. “We have to handle this quietly.”
He didn’t agree with that at all. “To hell with the CIA and NIA. Let me go after the Commonwealth.”
“To do what?” Cassiopeia asked.
“You have a better idea? Stephanie needs our help. We can’t do nothing.”
“We don’t even know the Commonwealth has her,” Cassiopeia said. “Seems this Carbonell is the better lead.”
His friend was in trouble. He was frustrated and angry, as in Paris, last Christmas, when another friend had been in peril. He’d been two minutes too late that time, which he still regretted.
Not this time. No way.
Daniels pointed to the sheet. “We have a trump card. That cipher was solved a few hours ago.”
The revelation grabbed both his and Cassiopeia’s attention.
“An expert the NIA hired deciphered it, using some secret computers and a few lucky guesses.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Carbonell told me.”
More dots connected. “She’s feeding you info. Playing both sides. Trying to make herself useful.”
“What irks me,” Daniels said, “is she thinks I’
m too stupid to see through her.”
“Does she know Stephanie was looking into her?” Cassiopeia asked.
“I don’t know,” Daniels said, his voice trailing off. “I hope not. That could mean big trouble.”
As in death, Malone thought. The intelligence business was hard-pitch fastball. The stakes were high and death common.
So finding Stephanie was the priority.
“Those presidential papers I told you about in the National Archives?” Daniels said. “Like I said, only a few people can get into them. An intelligence agency head is one of those.”
“Carbonell was on the log sheet?” he asked.
Davis nodded. “And she’s the one who contracted for the cipher to be solved.”
“She reminds me,” Daniels said, “of one of those roosters. A little scrawny thing who watches all the fights from the side, hoping to become the top bird simply by being the last one standing.” The president hesitated. “I’m the one who sent Stephanie out there. It’s my fault she’s missing. I can’t use anyone else on this one, Cotton. I need you.”
Malone noticed that Cassiopeia was watching the muted TV screens, the three stations replaying the video of the assassination attempt over and over.
“If we have the cipher solution,” Davis said, “then we have something both the Commonwealth and Carbonell want. It gives us a bargaining position.”
Then he realized. “Carbonell provided you the information so you’d obtain the solution. She wants you to have it.”
Daniels nodded. “Absolutely. I assume it’s to keep it away from her colleagues, who would like nothing better than to destroy it. Fortifying those letters of marque could become problematic to their prosecutions. If I hold the key, then it’s safe. Our problem, Cotton, is that right now we don’t even have a pair of twos to bluff with, so I’m willing to take anything.”
“And don’t forget,” Cassiopeia said to him, “you were invited. With a special engraved invitation. Your presence has been requested.”
He stared at her.
“Somebody specifically wants you here.”
“And they wanted you to leave the Grand Hyatt,” Daniels said, lifting the typewritten note from the table. “Stephanie didn’t write this. It was designed to flush you out. Ever thought that whoever sent it might have wanted some cop or a Secret Service agent to shoot you dead?”