by Steve Berry
A blue nylon duffel bag.
He eased open the rear door and unzipped the bag. Inside lay a sledgehammer, hasp lock, and bolt cutters. The agents back at the McDonald’s had mentioned that all three had been bought at Target, along with a few other items, including a shovel, which was nowhere in sight.
He closed the door softly and pointed ahead.
They moved deeper into the darkness.
* * *
Zorin tossed aside another of the split logs slippery with lichens. “Did you cut this wood?”
“Every piece. I may be getting old, but I’m still in good shape. As are you, Aleksandr.”
They’d removed a section of the stacked wood near the center of the long row, exposing hard dirt beneath. Kelly found the shovel and began a careful excavation, seemingly knowing exactly where to dig. His strikes with the blade were almost surgical, as he worked the tip only a few centimeters into the ground, forming a circle about a meter in diameter.
“Close the door,” Kelly said to him.
He stepped over and eased the two panels shut.
The only light came from their two flashlights pointed toward the circle. With the shovel, Kelly carefully loosened the packed dirt within the outline. Then he laid the shovel aside.
“This has to be done carefully.”
He watched as Kelly knelt and began to remove the dirt, which, thanks to the cold, came away in clumps. Dark metal became visible. More dirt was freed to reveal a hatch.
“No lock?” he asked.
Kelly glanced up at him. “I didn’t see the need. If this is not opened properly, six kilotons of nuclear explosives will ignite.”
His spine stiffened at the danger.
Kelly surveyed the hatch. “It seems okay. Nothing has disturbed it. Could you hand me the shovel?”
He did, and Kelly stayed on his knees, using it to loosen a path half a meter away from the portal. Kelly tossed the shovel aside and reached for one of the flashlights, clearing away more dirt until he found a small plastic box. He brushed it clear, blowing away the last remnants of dirt from its domelike shape. Kelly then reached to one side of the box and twisted, freeing the lid, which opened on a hinge. Inside were three sets of wires, each separately connected with a colored twist connector.
Red. Yellow. Black.
“You have to disconnect the right one,” Kelley said, “or it explodes. Disconnect all three and it also explodes.”
Clever, he had to admit.
Kelly untwisted the red nut. “I change the color each time, just to be safe. Red was this year’s.”
Kelly separated the exposed copper wires, angling them far apart. He then reached back and opened the hatch, the metal hinges offering only minor resistance. Below was a ladder built into one side that stretched down three meters.
“Go ahead,” Kelly said. “There’s a light switch at the bottom.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Luke drove as fast as conditions allowed, heading west on I-66 past DC into Virginia with Sue and her father in tow. Lawrence Begyn had told him about another hiding place within the Charon mansion, one Begyn assumed Brad Charon might have used to secrete the Tallmadge journal.
“I saw the place one time,” Begyn had told him. “Back when Brad and I were still okay with each other.”
“So you have no way of knowing if the journal is there?”
“Brad was a creature of habit. Once he started something, he kept to it. It’s reasonable to assume he’d keep that journal safe, hidden, and nearby.”
So it was worth a look.
“There’s something I don’t get,” he said to Begyn. “If Charon was a big mouth and breached your archives with two strangers, why was he allowed to keep the journal?”
“Brad was a strange man in many ways. Keeping that journal was maybe his way of showing us that he really could keep a secret. That he could be trusted. We decided not to press the issue. And we never heard about it again, which is why we thought this to be long over.”
His watch read nearly 11:00 P.M. He should call Stephanie. She’d tried him earlier and left a message, but there was nothing to report so he decided to play this out a little while longer. The night had not turned completely nasty yet, the wind, cold, and snow unaccompanied so far by ice, which was a good thing. The interstate remained a wet blacktop, snowflakes dissolving atop its surface. He sensed he might be on to something. But he was flying blind with no backup. Just himself. Which he liked. But he did have Sue, who sat in the rear seat, her father’s hunting rifle cradled in her folded arms. Begyn had, at first, not wanted her to come, but relented when she pointed out that she’d already killed three men and that the decision wasn’t his to make. He was glad to have her along.
He found the exit and turned left again on the same two-laned road where he and Petrova had squared off. A few miles later he passed beneath the wrought-iron entrance and sped through the woods to Charon’s house.
They stepped out into the night.
Begyn had brought two flashlights and led the way inside. “I haven’t been here in a long time. What a wreck this place has become. It was once a grand house.”
“It’s what happens when people can’t get along,” Luke noted.
“Can I see the archive you found first?” Begyn asked.
He didn’t want to take the time, but decided a quick peek couldn’t hurt. The flashlight beam he held pointed the way and they entered the study, stepping though the gash in the wall. Petrova’s ax still lay on the floor where she’d tossed it. Sue stayed outside in the hall, keeping watch with the rifle.
He and Begyn surveyed the secret room.
“Amazing stuff,” Begyn said. “We need to get it out of this cold.”
“My boss said she’d get it for you. You can take that to the bank.”
Begyn studied the book beneath the glass cover. “This is a rare volume, worth about $25,000. I know several society members who would pay that and more.”
Which mattered not to him. “Finished?”
His tone conveyed that they needed to move on, so they fled the study. The older man took the lead up the stairs to the second floor, where a long corridor ended at a set of paneled doors. Luke dragged in deep breaths of the freezing air and steadied his nerves, following the two Begyns into a master bedroom.
“I read that the other end of the house is the one that burned,” Begyn said.
The master suite was intact with all the furniture still there, the bed even made with a spread, but everything reeked of mold and mildew, dank as a ditch.
“In there,” Begyn said, motioning to a half-open door.
“You two go,” Sue said. “I’ll keep watch.”
He wondered about her taut nerves. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“I don’t like this place.”
Neither did he particularly, but nothing so far had generated any pause. “Any details you’d like to share?”
“It just feels wrong.”
He decided to respect her instincts so he indicated that they should hurry up. He and Begyn entered a closet larger than his apartment’s bedroom. Nothing hung on the bare rods, the windowless room devoid of everything except the empty racks, wooden cabinets, and shelves.
“It was there,” Begyn said, pointing at the last cabinet, a mahogany rectangle that accommodated a four-foot-wide rod for clothes and shelving above. It sat at the end of a row on the long wall, the cabinets from the short wall nestling tight to it at a right angle.
“We had a party here one night,” Begyn said. “Brad being Brad, was showing off. He brought a few of us up here and grabbed this rod, which then was hung with dress shirts.” Begyn handed him the flashlight and gripped the bare metal. “He twisted it this way.”
They heard a click and the cabinet shifted right, revealing that the corner with the other cabinet was mere illusion. Begyn slid the whole thing farther right, exposing a dark chasm behind.
“I bet Charon liked Harry Potter,” Luke said.
Begyn chuckled. “I’m sure he did. He loved mysteries. He was a bit of an actor, too. He always played Bob Cratchit in the society’s production of A Christmas Carol. Quite good at it.”
He shone the light into the darkness, which dissolved to reveal a small space, about three feet square. The only thing inside was a black, four-drawer filing cabinet. A lock could be seen in the upper-right corner. He hoped it would not be an impediment and was pleased when the top drawer slid open.
“What’s the point of locking it,” Begyn said, “when it’s hidden away.”
He agreed, thankful that Charon was not overly obsessive-compulsive. Inside the top drawer were papers, mostly bank records, financial statements, and stock purchases. The second drawer was full of files for real estate, lots of deeds and surveys.
“Brad was quite wealthy,” Begyn said. “Worth maybe $20 to $30 million.”
“And his kids and the widow couldn’t figure out a way to divide it up?”
“Apparently not.”
The third drawer was empty, but the bottom one contained the jackpot.
An oversized leather-bound volume.
Begyn lifted it out and opened to the first page. Luke shone the flashlight and they both read the handwritten paragraph.
A true account of any and all activities of the Society of Cincinnati as performed for the government of the United States, and the governments of the several states, during the last and great war with Britain lasting from June 8, 1812, to February 17, 1815, meant to record and memorialize those events so that a full understanding of their many intents and purposes shall be clear to all those who might question. Let it be said that every member of this society is a true and loyal patriot and our only desire was to serve our country with honor and distinction.
Benjamin Tallmadge
August 8, 1817
“This is it,” Begyn said.
A scrap of paper extended from the top of the journal, marking a page. He decided to start the examination there and gestured for Begyn to open to that point, about halfway through.
On the evening of August 24, 1814, a shameful thing occurred, one I am sad to say I lived long enough to witness. Within the capital city cannon fire had roared for most of the day and when the explosions stopped the local residents’ feelings were left in fearful fluctuation, fondly hoping that their countrymen had prevailed, then awfully fearing that all was lost. They soon discovered that the dust beginning to rise above the forests in thick clouds, rapidly advancing, came from British forces. Sadly, American soldiers fled the capital. The cry “ruffians are at hand” could be heard from men on horseback as they rode away. The remaining militia dropped their guns and ran like frightened sheep in every direction except toward the enemy. And though they exclaimed that they had taken a good fight to the British and expended all of their ammunition, those who stole a look at their cartridge boxes noticed that not a single round had been used.
Inside the Executive Mansion Dolley Madison awaited the return of her husband, President James Madison, who had left two days earlier to visit the front. He was due back by nightfall and a meal had been prepared for both him and his contingent. But the sight of the British entering the city changed those plans. It was suggested to Mrs. Madison that a trail of gunpowder be laid to explode if the British tried to enter the Executive Mansion, but she refused to allow it to be done. When told to leave, she hesitated until certain things were readied for transport, many of them national treasures. One was a grand painting of George Washington that she urged others to save. A great fear existed that Mrs. Madison might be trapped inside the mansion with no means of escape. Eventually, she left the city by wagon just ahead of the advancing British forces, which claimed the city after dusk.
They first entered the Capitol building and George Cockburn, the British commander, mounted the speaker’s chair and put the mock question, “Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned? All for it will say Aye.” His troops cried their approval so he declared the motion carried unanimously. Chairs, furniture, books, maps, and papers were piled high and set aflame. Soon the entire building burned. The fire raged so hot that marble columns turned to lime and collapsed. Fire burst from the windows and alighted houses to the leeward, some of which contained congressional records stored there for supposed safekeeping. The Capitol eventually became wrapped in a winding sheet of flame that destroyed the building.
Luke wondered about why this passage had been flagged. “We all know we got our butts kicked in the War of 1812.”
“That we did. Tallmadge lived through it. This is an important firsthand account of things.”
And it was damn important to Anya Petrova—
Four pops echoed through the house.
The sound unmistakable.
Gunfire.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Zorin swung open the heavy metal door he found at the bottom of the ladder. The air that greeted him from inside was surprisingly warm, but musty. He flicked a switch and fluorescent bulbs illuminated a closed, windowless space, cylindrical in shape, that stretched ten meters and about half that wide. Metal shelves lined one side and held supplies of drinking water, canned food, blankets, clothing, tools, wire, and weapons, along with both small arms and rifles and spare ammunition. He also recognized portable radio units, standard KGB issue that he’d once deployed at locations himself. Everything was stacked neatly and in order, a sparkling tidiness about the place, one that denoted a devoted caretaker.
Kelly completed his descent and entered the shelter.
He noticed that a layer of heavy plastic sheathed the interior walls. He pointed toward it and asked, “Moisture control?”
“This shelter was built with concrete and waterproofed, but I thought some additional protection was in order.”
Then he saw them, lying on a metal table opposite the supply shelves. Five small suitcases, each lid nearly closed, a wire leading out of the partially shut lid to a trunk line that snaked a path toward the far end, then up and out.
“A vent back there allowed air to circulate. I sealed it off, but it was the perfect place to feed power. The electricity charges the units and gives off just enough heat to keep the air inside warm.”
He was impressed. A lot of thought had gone into this.
He stepped toward the RA-115s and hinged open the lid of the first one. The case was lightweight aluminum. Not a speck of decay tarnished the exterior. Inside were three canisters joined in a cylinder about half a meter long. It lay diagonally with a battery above and a switch below, wires leading from the switch to the battery to a small transmitter, then to the cylinder. He recalled his training. Activate the switch and the battery triggered a small explosion that shot a uranium pellet forward where it collided with more uranium and sparked a chain reaction, causing a blast the equivalent of 5,000 tons of TNT.
He checked the other four.
Everything seemed in pristine shape.
“I maintain them yearly,” Kelly said. “New batteries, new wiring. Of course, the cylinders are stainless steel, and all the parts inside are made of noncorrosive metals.”
He knew there were no moving parts and nothing depended on gears or springs. Once the electrical charge activated the trigger, simple physics took over, generating a coffin of solarlike heat and flame that would vaporize everything within a kilometer.
“Will they explode?”
“Absolutely. They’re all in perfect working order.”
“You understand that the inauguration this year takes place inside the White House,” he said to Kelly.
“As the one in 1985 did.”
He’d not realized.
“That was the whole idea, Aleksandr. It’s why Fool’s Mate was initially created. At Ronald Reagan’s second swearing-in they all gathered in the White House, at noon on Sunday, January 20. But Andropov was long dead by then and the bombs weren’t here. I thought the whole thing over until that call came in 1988 from Backward Pawn. Then everything se
emed back on. But still, no order to act was given. A shame, really. The Americans regard the White House as ultrasecure, though 9/11 probably gave them pause on that one.”
But he caught something in addition to the tone. Certainty? Pride? “What is it you know?”
Kelly smiled. “They have forgotten their own history.”
* * *
Cassiopeia nestled close to the trunk of a tall pine, staring at the darkened hulk of a house and barn. Zorin and Kelly had disappeared inside the barn about fifteen minutes ago, and all had remained quiet ever since. Cotton had swung around to the rear of the house and should be, by now, near the barn entrance. She’d assumed a cover position to keep an eye on the big picture, and make sure they were not graced with any uninvited visitors.
The night was wintry cold, but bearable. She’d ditched the French cold-weather gear in favor of American issue, which the Secret Service had provided. She also carried an automatic pistol, the magazine full, spares in her pocket. Cotton, too, was properly dressed, armed, and ready.
And she agreed with him.
Zorin and Kelly had to be stopped here.
* * *
Malone crept to the barn, careful not to trip on any branches, roots, or slippery rocks. The door had been closed a few minutes ago, outlined for a while by a faint chink of light, now gone. As he came closer he noticed that it had not been latched, nor locked, just pushed shut.
He had to see inside.
But he’d already reconnoitered the entire exterior and the barn came with no windows.
There was only one way.
* * *
Zorin realized that what Kelly was about to tell him formed the missing element he’d been seeking, the one Anya had come to learn.
The second move of Fool’s Mate.
“You can’t just walk up to the White House fence and lay down a suitcase,” he said.
Kelly smiled. “We don’t have to do that. There’s an easier way.”
He stared at the five weapons, nearly thirty kilotons of nuclear power.
“All I have to do is change the battery in one of these and it’s ready to transport,” Kelly said. “The batteries are only a few months old, but no sense taking a chance.”