by Steve Berry
“That weapon behind your back will do you no good,” he said.
His eyes momentarily drifted downward, to her shirt, unbuttoned just enough to expose the rim of her breasts.
“I thought you were a gentleman?” she asked.
“That doesn’t mean I’m blind.”
He gestured with his free hand and one of the men grabbed Lea, who started to kick. The second man gripped her ankles and together they hauled her across the chamber. Cassiopeia had already noticed a rectangular yaw in the floor about three meters long and two meters wide.
They tossed Lea in.
She started to rush over, but was stopped by the gun only millimeters away. She faced down Proctor’s penetrating stare with open hostility.
“Go ahead,” he said. “But first.”
He reached around behind her and claimed the pistol with a smile of superior, mocking pleasure.
She ran over and saw that the opening was a vertical connector, like an elevator shaft, down. A wooden ladder stood propped to one side. Darkness filled the cavity.
“Lea, are you all right?”
Nothing.
“Lea.”
“I’m okay,” a voice said from below. “The bottom is real soft.”
Proctor came up close behind her and she caught the garlicky bouquet of a recent meal. “As I said, I’m a gentleman. Your turn. You may jump on your own.”
“Move to one side, Lea, near the ladder. I’m coming down.”
“By the way, that ladder is of no use. Rotten. The rungs are all gone.”
She leaped into the blackness, the world dropping out from under her feet. The plunge was maybe five meters and she landed hard, rolling to one side. But Lea had been right. The ground was thick with powdery earth, which absorbed the impact like a sponge.
Her eyes searched for Lea but could not see the girl.
“You okay?” Lea asked.
She pinpointed the voice.
“Here,” Lea said. “Crawl.”
“It’s a shame we have to part like this,” Proctor said from above. “But it’s important neither one of you is ever found.”
She knew what was about to come, so she scampered toward Lea, who was huddled at the base of the shaft. When dug, the walls at the pit’s bottom had been flared out. Niches had formed, either from the digging or cave-ins. Lea was inside one and she quickly nestled tight to her, forcing both of them into the slit as far as possible, protecting the girl with her body.
Three shots rained down.
Lead thumped into the sandy earth. She knew what the bastard was doing. Aiming all around, knowing one or more would find their mark. So she gave him what he wanted and moaned in feigned agony.
Four more shots came down.
She went silent.
“Do it,” Proctor said from above.
And something whooshed down the shaft, crashing to the floor. Her pupils had dilated enough that the outline was clear.
One of the trunks.
Another followed, then more, each disintegrating atop the other.
She realized what was happening.
They were filling the shaft.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Cotton entered the National Museum of American History after being waved through a security checkpoint thanks to Rick Stamm being with him. The building would not open to the public for another two hours, so its halls were vacant. They made their way across the empty ground floor to a set of stairs, then up one level, past the Star-Spangled Banner display and into a foyer that led to more exhibits. Stamm bypassed those and led him through a closed door that required a security key card.
One swipe and they were inside.
The slick elegance of the public areas gave way to the employee-only portion, where plain white walls and shiny terrazzo floors dominated. They climbed a steep staircase, then Stamm used the swipe card again to gain access to a carpeted, windowless space filled with tracked shelves. Fluorescent lights illuminated everything, the flowing air cool, clean, and dry.
“This is one of several American history archives we have in the building,” Stamm said. “It deals specifically with the 19th century, and most of this stuff has never been displayed.”
The repository where he and Cassiopeia had spent a couple of days reading had been located on the fifth floor, near the main history library where Martin Thomas had worked.
Stamm had explained how the chief justice had drafted Stephanie’s assistance in hiding Martin Thomas’s body for a day or so while they found the man’s killer. Now, Cotton supposed, that duty had fallen to him.
“This is all way out of my league,” Stamm said.
“And yet here you are, right in the middle of things.”
He hoped the message was received. His bullshit-tolerance level had dropped to zero. Time to shoot straight.
The room was about thirty feet square. Painted pipes and conduits ran close to the gray concrete above. No sounds save for the muted hum of the air-conditioning. No luxury, either, only functionality. A single metal desk supported a computer monitor.
He decided to come to the point. “I want to know how my ancestor, Angus Adams, figures into this. Why was I specially recruited?”
He listened as Stamm told him about an 1854 Smithsonian expedition to the newly acquired American Southwest that also involved some covert reconnaissance by the Knights of the Golden Circle.
“Your great-great-grandfather was part of the expedition, working secretly with the Order,” Stamm said. “How much do you know about Adams?”
Quite a bit actually.
And all thanks to his grandfather.
Angus Adams had been one of the Smithsonian’s early hires, a painter who evolved into a first-rate illustrator. A trunk in his grandfather’s attic contained several lithographs Adams created while working at the Smithsonian. In the time before photography, art was the only way specimens could be memorialized. At the outset of the Civil War, Adams quit his job and obtained a lieutenant’s commission, becoming part of Georgia’s famed Cobb’s Legion. In 1862 he was promoted to major and reassigned to spying. Cotton had seen several grainy, black-and-white photographs of Adams, who’d been short and slender with a bushy head of light hair and a thick mustache, both common for the time. More letters revealed a soft, talkative man with a rash of pessimism, reflected in his constant carrying of both a gun and a knife. Friends called him dedicated, enemies labeled him a zealot. Nobody thought him stupid. He seemed to prefer nature over people, music to books, and ideas to silence. Most remarkable was the resemblance he bore to Cotton, there in the chin, eyes, nose, and mouth.
As a spy, Adams had led the first covert incursion into Pennsylvania with twenty other Confederates, posing as a Union unit in search of deserters. He obtained vital intelligence on troop movements, which Lee used in his march toward Gettysburg. He was then sent to Indiana to stir up insurrection as a way to entice that state to join the Confederacy.
And he almost succeeded.
But he was captured and imprisoned in Ohio.
What happened after that evolved into legend.
Supposedly, while in jail, Adams was reading Les Misérables and became inspired by Jean Valjean’s escapes through the Paris underground. He then noticed how dry the lower prison cells were, with no mold, though they remained in perpetual darkness. That might indicate a constant source of fresh air. Sure enough, he dug down and found a masonry-lined tunnel, probably used for drainage. Adams and five others eventually made their escape through it, and he left a note for the warden.
Castle Merion, Cell No. 20. November 27, 1863. Commencement of digging, November 4, 1863. Conclusion, November 20, 1863. Hours for labor per day, three. Tools, two small knives. La patience est amère, mais son fruit est doux. By order of six honorable Confederates.
That was the thing about an eidetic memory. Hard to forget anything. He remembered every word of the note. His grandfather told him that Adams had possessed the same advantage. And what a char
acter, as the brazen note and French phrase illustrated.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.
The warden had not appreciated having his face rubbed in the insult of an escape, so a massive manhunt ensued. Adams fled south, heading for Kentucky. Near the Ohio River, Union troops cornered him in a small border town. He found refuge inside a farmhouse where the owner lay ill with delirium. Escape was impossible, so he hid himself inside the mattress upon which the sick man lay. When soldiers inspected the house, they checked to see if Adams was the man in the bed, but never thought to look beneath the man, inside the mattress. They left, but posted guards at the door. The following day it rained, but visitors still came to see the sick farmer. Thankfully, the soldiers paid little attention to the faces under the umbrellas, which allowed Adams the opportunity to sneak away. When he made his report to his superiors they were both impressed and amused. One of them made a comment. Something to the effect that Adams was apparently soft as cotton, since no one, not even the sick soul in the bed, had known he was there.
And the name stuck.
Cotton.
“I know a lot about him,” he said to Stamm. “What I don’t know is how he figures into all of this today. Enough for the chief justice of the United States to hire me to help.”
Stamm explained how Adams had recorded his observations from the 1854 expedition in a journal, which had disappeared a long time ago.
“We were hoping your family might have it,” Stamm said.
“If they do, no one ever said a word about it, and I never saw it. Why is it important?”
“I truly don’t know. All I was told was that the chancellor wants to locate it. He’ll be disappointed, but we still need your help.” Stamm walked over to the computer and sat at the screen, tapping on the keyboard, calling up images of a brass skeleton key. “This is what was stolen last night. We catalog everything.”
He studied the images that showed both sides and each end of an old brass key. Stamm told him what he knew about it, and how it had become one of the institution’s ceremonial objects.
“Any idea why the guy wanted this so bad?”
“That’s something else we don’t know. But there might be someone who does.”
He was listening.
“There were two men who once worked here. One was Diane Sherwood’s father, Davis Layne. He headed up this museum. He also accumulated much of the restricted archive you read. Unfortunately, he died about fifteen years ago. The other is Frank Breckinridge. He once had my job as Castle curator. He’s the man who found the key in the attic back in the 1950s. He, too, was an expert on the Knights of the Golden Circle. Luckily, he’s still alive.”
“You familiar with him?”
Stamm shook his head. “He was before my time.”
Cotton’s mind raced and he rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Adams is from my mother’s side of the family. He left the South after the war and moved out west.”
A curtain of time parted in his mind and he began to recall everything his grandfather had told him about Angus Adams.
A cell phone rang, startling him from his thoughts.
Not his.
Stamm’s.
The curator answered, listened for a moment, then ended the call with a perplexed look on his face.
“I had Martin Thomas’ key card flagged. I didn’t find it last night on his body, so I was going to cancel it this morning. But it was just used to gain access inside the natural history museum.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Cassiopeia huddled tight in the earthen crevice, Lea beside her farther inside. The wooden trunks kept raining down, obliterating and filling the shaft. Dust and dirt clouded the air and made breathing hard, but she swallowed the urge to cough or make a sound, not wanting to alert anyone above that they were still alive. She’d whispered to Lea that she should do the same and was pleased that the young girl had stayed silent. Luckily, none of the bullets had found either of them and the men above were most likely more occupied with the retrieval of the gold than worrying about if they were dead.
The crashing stopped, but the air remained fouled. She used her shirttail as a filter and tried to breathe short and shallow. Only a few feeble rays of light penetrated from above.
“Are you okay?” she whispered to Lea.
“I’m fine, but we need to get out of here. It’s hard to breathe.”
She agreed. But there was still the problem of the men. She kept listening, hearing nothing. Were they gone, or just waiting?
Time to find out.
She wiggled free and kicked at the old wood, which gave way to her assault. Luckily, the debris had not packed tight and there were plenty of air pockets. More kicks and she was able to squirm out, feeling her way with outstretched hands. A claustrophobic wave swept through her but, thankfully, unlike Cotton, she was not susceptible to that phobia. High-speed-moving heights were her weakness. Airplanes and helicopters, particularly.
She pushed and prodded, creating enough space that she could rise to her knees, her back against the shaft wall. Her breath continued to congeal in her throat, and she swallowed dust. More chunks of the shattered containers were piled above her, but not tightly. She told herself to be careful of rusted nails.
“Stay where you are,” she whispered to Lea. “I’m going to see if I can get us out of here.”
Hands planted on the debris, she hoisted her body up, shoving more of the dark obstacles out of the way. Her cell phone remained in her pocket and she found the unit. It was useless for calling, considering her location, but it generated enough light for her to study the mess around her.
Not insurmountable.
In fact, only a few meters above her head was nothing but air to the top of the shaft. She replaced the phone and climbed atop the pile, which groaned, then settled from her weight.
“I need you to come out and watch what I do,” she told Lea.
The young girl appeared below.
She estimated it was five meters to the top where a rectangular-shaped slab of weak light waited. Not much leaked below. The shaft was narrow, the sides rough, offering plenty of ridges and crevices for her feet and hands. She could scale it chimney-style, legs braced on the opposite wall.
The climb was tough but not impossible, since her legs and arms were in terrific shape. She came to the top, planted her hands, and pivoted herself up and out of the shaft. Her breathing was harder than she’d like, so she rested a moment, gathering her strength. She was about to help Lea out when a noise caught her attention. To her right. At the doorway leading from the chamber.
A tramp of footsteps.
Approaching.
“We have company,” she told Lea. “Stay there and be quiet.”
The chamber was bare except for two remaining trunks. She’d thought the men had completed their extraction, but apparently that was not the case. How many were returning was unknown and there was no place to hide, so she assumed a position near the doorway, her spine pressed to the rock wall.
One man entered.
Bald, jeans, boots, late twenties.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take him.
He moved toward the two trunks and began to dismantle them with solid kicks. The old wood easily gave way and the noise he generated provided the perfect distraction. Two quick steps and she was on him. A swift swipe from her boots to his kidneys sent him reeling. She then drove her shoulder into the man’s chest, forcing him against the wall. He seemed to momentarily recover his composure, but a pop to his knee buckled his right leg. She was mad and planned to take out her anger on this idiot, but before she could finish him off a pair of arms wrapped her chest, pinioning her from behind.
Another of the men had returned.
She knew better than to resist.
Instead she allowed her body to go limp, which provided an instant of wiggle room, enough for her to slip from the bear hug, the heel of her right boot snapping the other knee.
&n
bsp; The man shrieked.
She whirled and with caution forgotten threw one punch after another, fists a blur, each one a full swing with every ounce of strength she had behind it. The man dropped to the ground and tumbled onto his back, writhing. One more sweeping kick to the side of his head rendered him still.
“That’s enough,” a male voice said.
She turned.
The other man had recovered enough to now have a revolver aimed at her. He lay on the dirt, his eyes cool and unreadable, the face a mask of rage.
“Sit your ass down on the ground,” he told her.
She decided to comply.
He was hurting, unable to stand from her assault, but not incapacitated enough not to pull a trigger. Two meters lay between them, more than enough distance to provide him with the advantage.
“What now?” she asked, her eyes not leaving his.
He struggled up on his side. She’d apparently broken something in his leg. “We wait.”
That meant others would be returning.
Behind her captor she spotted the shaft from below and saw two hands on one edge. A head slowly appeared, then eyes, as Lea assessed the situation. Cassiopeia wanted to tell her to stay put, but realized that would place her in even more danger.
So she watched as the young girl silently emerged.
It took guts and nerve to deal with a situation like this. She recalled her first few times in battle. She’d always been frightened, but that feeling had never paralyzed her. Instead, fear sharpened her determination. Her initial forays into risky extracurricular activities had come at the request of an old friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen, who’d needed her assistance from time to time. That was how she first met Cotton a few years ago in southern France. Henrik was gone, God rest his soul, but she was still here, right in the thick of things. She’d learned a lot from Henrik, especially how to handle pressure. Lea seemed to have the same innate ability, though her grandfather would not have approved.
The girl was now free of the shaft, on all fours, her face streaked with sweat and grime. Lea was too small to attack the man holding the gun. So Cassiopeia decided to send a message, pointing across the room and saying, “Did you plan on throwing those busted crates down on us, too?”