by Steve Berry
Cassiopeia agreed.
“I’m a fool,” Kaiser said. “I’ve gotten myself into a deep mess.”
No argument there.
“I never had children. My husband … he couldn’t. The fact never really bothered me. No motherly instincts overtook me.” A squint of regret appeared on Kaiser’s face. “But as I get older, I find myself rethinking my attitude toward children. It’s lonely sometimes.”
She could relate to that. Though a good twenty years younger than Kaiser, she, too, had felt those motherly pangs.
“Are you going to tell me how my relationship with Quentin connects to what’s in the ground outside?” Kaiser asked. “I’d like to know.”
Answering that inquiry could prove difficult. But since she’d already determined that they were going to require this woman’s cooperation, she decided to be honest. “Hale may have been involved with trying to kill the president.”
Kaiser did not react. Instead, she sat contemplative.
“We often spoke of politics,” Kaiser finally said. “But he seemed to care nothing about it. He was a supporter of Danny’s, contributing a lot of money to both presidential campaigns. He never had anything bad to say. Contrary to myself.” The words were expressionless, as if Kaiser was talking to herself, arranging her thoughts in order, readying her mind for what she was about to be asked. “But why would he say anything bad? He was gaining my trust.”
“Who exactly did you tell about the trip to New York?”
“Only Quentin.” Kaiser stared at her with a look of undisguised fear. “We talked about Pauline often. You have to understand, Pauline and Quentin are my two closest friends.”
She heard the unspoken comment.
And one betrayed me.
“We discussed it a couple of months ago, right after Pauline mentioned the New York trip. I didn’t think anything of it. Pauline never said the trip was a secret. I had no idea it wasn’t being publicly announced. She simply said Danny was headed to New York for a retirement dinner.”
Which meant Hale had grasped the significance of the White House withholding the information and decided to act.
“I need to know more about you and Hale,” Cassiopeia said. “The Secret Service is going to want every detail.”
“It’s not complicated. Quentin is well known in social circles. He’s an avid yachtsman. He participated twice in the America’s Cup. He’s rich, handsome, charming.”
“Does Pauline know about him?”
Kaiser shook her head. “I kept that relationship to myself. There was no need to tell her.”
The cocky attitude had been shed, the voice growing more penitent as the realization of what had happened pounded its way home.
“He used you.”
She could only imagine the emotions churning inside the older woman.
“Ms. Kaiser—”
“Don’t you think we can be Shirley and Cassiopeia? I have a feeling you and I will be seeing more of each other.”
So did she. “I’m going to have to report everything, but it will stay contained. That’s why I’m here and the Secret Service isn’t. I do have a proposition for you. Would you like an opportunity to repay the favor to Hale?”
She’d already been thinking on how to do just that since they now possessed a way to draw Hale from the shadows. What better route than a source he thought his own?
“I’d like that,” Kaiser said. “Truly, I would.”
But something was still bothering her. What Pauline Daniels had said. A friend I don’t want my husband talking to. Pauline was afraid of what Kaiser knew about her. Something that might not remain secret if questions were asked.
And she suddenly realized what that was.
“The First Lady is having an affair. Isn’t she?”
The question did not catch Kaiser off guard. It was as if she’d been expecting it.
“Not exactly. But close enough.”
Malone stepped from the car, now stopped under the covered entrance of The Jefferson, Richmond, Virginia’s most impressive hotel. The Beaux-Arts-style building, built at the end of the 19th century, sat downtown a few blocks from the state capitol. Its grand lobby was reminiscent of the Gilded Age, highlighted by a white marble statue of Jefferson himself. Malone had stayed there several times. He liked the place. He also liked the strange look the bellman tossed him when he handed over a five-dollar bill and the keys to the bullet-ridden car.
“Soon-to-be-ex-wife found me.”
The guy seemed to understand.
Though it was pushing three AM the front desk was manned and ready. A room was available but, before he headed up, a twenty-dollar tip bought him entrance to the locked business center. Inside, with the door closed, he rubbed his temples, closed his eyes, and tried to empty his mind. His body was drained with fatigue but, even though he understood the risk he was about to take, he had to do it.
He tapped the keyboard and found the email he’d sent to himself.
Hale stared at the accused traitor. One of Adventure’s crew, a man who’d been with the company for only eight years. Not one of the generationals, but a trusted associate nonetheless. A trial had been immediately convened—presided over, as specified in the Articles, by the quartermaster. Hale, along with the rest of Adventure’s crew, served as jury.
“My contact in the NIA bragged they had a spy among us,” Knox said. “He knew all about today’s execution aboard Adventure.”
“Exactly what do they know?” Hale asked.
“That your accountant is at the bottom of the Atlantic. The names of the crewmen who tossed him, and all the others on board. All of them, yourself included, being guilty of willful murder.”
He saw how those words sent a shiver through the jury, each one of them now implicated. This was justice at its purest. Men who lived, fought, died, and sat in judgment together.
“What say you?” Knox asked the accused. “Do you deny this?”
The man said nothing. But this was not a court of law. No Fifth Amendment privileges existed. Silence could, and would, be used against him.
Knox explained how the prisoner’s marriage was in trouble and he’d turned to another woman who’d become pregnant. He’d offered her money for an abortion, which she refused, telling him she intended on having the baby. She also threatened to inform the wife if he did not support her.
“The NIA offered cash for information,” Knox said. “And this man took it.”
“How do you know that?” one of the crewmen asked.
Questions were encouraged and could be offered at will.
“Because I killed the man who made the deal.” Knox faced the accused. “Scott Parrott. A NIA agent. He’s dead.”
The accused stood stoic.
“I spoke to Parrott at length,” Knox said. “He was gloating about how he knew exactly what we were doing. That’s how he was ready today to stop the attempt on President Daniels’ life. He knew exactly where and when. He was planning on killing me as well, which is why he was so free with information. Fortunately, he failed.”
Hale stared straight at the accused and wanted to know, “Did you sell us out?”
The man bolted for the door.
Two men cut off his escape and tackled him to the floor, where he struggled to get free.
Knox faced the jurors. “Have you seen and heard enough?”
They each nodded.
“The judgment is guilty,” one of them shouted.
Knox asked, “Does anyone object?”
None did.
The prisoner kept struggling, screaming, “No way. This is wrong.”
Hale knew what the Articles provided. To betray the crew, desert, or abandon a battle is punished as the Quartermaster or Majority shall think fit.
“Bring him,” Hale ordered.
The man was yanked to his feet.
This sorry no-good had placed him in an untenable position with Andrea Carbonell. No wonder she’d been so damn smug. She knew it all. Ev
erything he’d anticipated might now be compromised. This man’s death would be excruciating. An example to everyone.
Knox produced a gun.
“What are you doing?” he asked the quartermaster.
“Meting out punishment.”
A panic came over the accused’s face as he realized his fate. He renewed his struggle against the two men restraining him.
“It’s as the quartermaster, or majority, shall think fit,” Hale said, quoting the Articles. “What say the majority?”
He watched as Adventure’s crew took their cue from him and, to a man, echoed, “Whatever you want, Captain,” each grateful that it wasn’t him about to die. Normally, a captain never questioned the quartermaster in front of the crew or vice versa. But this was wartime, when the captain’s word went unquestioned.
“He’ll die at seven AM, with the entire company present.”
THIRTY-SIX
3:14 AM
Cassiopeia drove away from Shirley Kaiser’s neighborhood, found an empty shopping mall parking lot, and called the White House.
“You’re not going to like this,” she said to Edwin Davis.
And she told him everything, holding back only the last thing she and Kaiser had discussed.
“This has potential, though,” she said. “We could draw Hale out, if played right.”
“I see that.”
There was a lot more to say, but she was tired, and it could wait. “I’m going to get some sleep. We can talk in the morning.”
A moment of silence passed before Davis said, “I’ll be here.”
She ended the call.
Before she could restart the motorcycle and find a motel the phone dinged again. She checked the display. Cotton. About time.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Just another fun night. I need the Secret Service to run a license plate. But I think I already know who the car belongs to.”
He gave her information for a Maryland tag.
“But there’s a bright spot,” he said.
She could use one of those.
“The cipher’s been broken. I now know the message Andrew Jackson left for the Commonwealth.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Richmond. At a lovely hotel called The Jefferson.”
“I’m in Fredericksburg. Is that nearby?”
“About an hour away.”
“I’ll join you.”
During my preliminary research in the National Archives, I found correspondence that Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. By then, Jefferson was, of course, president of the United States. Codes were a fascination of both Jefferson and Patterson and they exchanged them often. On one occasion, Patterson sent Jefferson a cipher that he said “would defy the ingenuity of the whole human race.” Bold words from a man of the 19th century, but that was before the existence of high-speed computer algorithms.
Patterson certainly made the task of deciphering the code especially difficult. As he explained in his letter, he wrote the text of a message vertically and from left to right, forming a grid of columns, and using only lowercase letters. He then added random letters to each column. The solution involved knowing not only the number of lines and their order, but the number of random letters added to each.
Here are the letters from Andrew Jackson’s message:
Of course, Patterson never revealed the number keys, which has kept his cipher unsolved for 175 years. Thankfully, within the English language there are letter combinations that simply do not exist and others that always appear together. The best example is how q is always followed by u. And never would you see f followed by z. To get a feel for Jefferson’s linguistic patterns, I studied his State of the Union addresses, paying close attention to such pairs of letters. Of course I had to make some guesses as to the number of rows, their order, and the number of random letters, but computer algorithms were employed to make analysis of the 100,000 possible calculations manageable. It’s important to note that the programs available to me are not available to the general public, which might explain why the cipher has remained unbroken. After a week of working the code, the computer discovered the numerical key.
33, 28, 71, 11, 56, 40, 85, 64, 97.
To utilize the key, let’s return to the cipher rows themselves and lay them one after the other, per Patterson’s instructions:
If we apply the first numerical key, 33, to the letters we would count 3 over on the first row then identify the next 5 letters, FEETH. The next number, 3, indicates the original position of this letter row. Using 28, you would count 8 more letters over and identify 5 letters that would be placed in the row 2 position. By applying the remaining keys to the letters, the grid reappears in its original order:
The message can be read vertically down the 5 columns from left to right:
Malone read again Voccio’s report and Andrew Jackson’s coded message.
Jefferson Wheel.
Followed by twenty-six random letters and five symbols.
He’d already surfed the Internet and determined what the words Jefferson Wheel meant. Twenty-six wooden disks, upon which were carved the letters of the alphabet in random sequence. Each disk was numbered 1 through 26 and, depending on the order in which the disks were threaded onto an iron spindle, and the manner in which they were aligned, coded messages could be passed. The only requirement was that the sender and receiver had to possess the same collection of disks and arrange them in the same order. Jefferson conceived the idea himself from cipher locks he’d read about in French journals.
The problem?
Only one wheel still existed.
Jefferson’s own.
Which had been lost for decades but now was on display at Monticello, Jefferson’s Virginia estate. Malone assumed the twenty-six random letters in Jackson’s message would align the disks.
But what order should the disks be in?
Since none was specified, he would assume numerically. So when the disks were threaded in the correct sequence, then properly arranged, twenty-five lines would contain nonsense.
One would reveal a cohesive message.
He hadn’t told Cassiopeia what he’d found.
Not on the phone.
Monticello was less than an hour to the west.
They’d go there tomorrow.
Wyatt found a hotel just outside Washington, a boutique establishment that came with a computer in the room. He figured in the not-too-distant future that accessory would be as standard as a hair dryer and a television.
He inserted the flash drive and read what Voccio had deciphered.
Smart guy.
A shame he was dead, but it was his own fault. Those men had come to herd them both to that waiting car. Just fire some shots, allow him to do his thing and think he succeeded, then wait and watch as the bomb took care of two problems at once.
Carbonell was covering her tracks. The NSA and CIA moving on him may have spooked her. One less witness against you was never a bad thing.
He was mad with himself, though. He knew better. But he’d wanted the money, and thought he could stay a step ahead.
Thank goodness for a little luck.
On a website for Monticello, he read about the Jefferson Wheel, noting that it was on display inside the mansion. The estate was located not far away. He’d go there tomorrow and do what he had to do to obtain the wheel.
He checked his watch.
4:10 AM.
A few clicks on the keyboard and he learned that Monticello opened at nine AM.
That gave him five hours to deal with Andrea Carbonell.
THIRTY-SEVEN
WASHINGTON, DC
5:00 AM
Wyatt admired the condominium. Roomy, stylish, pricey. He’d easily gained entry, the door secured by a simple lock. No alarm, no dog, no lights. It was located outside the Beltway in an upscale area replete with trendy stores and upscale eateries,
the attractive complex iron-gated. He assumed a remote-controlled entry made for a good selling point to potential tenants who liked the status of having their guests wait for the bars to open. His own condominium in Florida came with gate and guard, which cost him and several thousand others a few hundred dollars a month in assessments.
But it was worth it. Kept the riffraff out.
He studied the décor, an odd mixture of minimalist style and Caribbean influences from onyx, wrought iron, and terra-cotta. Dim light leaking past the windows revealed a vibrant mixture of color and tone. He found a CD stack and noted a theme—mostly mambo, salsa, and Latin jazz. None of it his taste, but he could see how it would suit the condo’s owner.
Andrea Carbonell.
He’d called on longtime sources and learned where she lived. Unlike most of her colleagues, she resided beyond the DC limits and was ferried to and from work each day in a government car with driver. That same source had also told him that Carbonell was aboard an NIA helicopter that would land at Dulles in thirty minutes. She’d already informed her office that she would not be at her desk until eight AM. He hoped that meant she planned to come home for a quick stop. She’d been out all night, traveling somewhere south after she’d dropped him in Maryland. For someone so careful about her thoughts and plans, he wondered about her carelessness when it came to her schedule. He also wondered about the attack in Maryland. Did Carbonell already know that Dr. Gary Voccio was dead? No doubt.
All yesterday she’d stayed a step ahead of him.
Today was his turn.
He noticed nothing personal or intimate on display anywhere. No photographs, keepsakes, nothing. She apparently had no husband, boyfriend, children, girlfriend, pet.
But who was he to talk?
He possessed none of those, either. He lived alone, always had. There hadn’t been a woman in years. Several prospects—divorced, widowed, or still married—had expressed an interest, but he’d never reciprocated. Simply the thought of sharing himself, in return for the other person offering up their vulnerabilities, turned his stomach. He preferred solitude, and the quiet that now enveloped him.