The Devil Colony (40 page)

The Humvee made the turn onto Gold Vault Road. Even with their orders in hand, additional clearances had to be made at a fenced gate flanked by sentry towers. Eventually they made it through and drove down a long road to the front entrance of the fortress.

“Honey, we’re home,” Monk mumbled under his breath.

Gray’s friend reattached his prosthetic hand to its wrist cuff and flexed his fingers. On the thirty-mile drive to the depository, Monk had spent his time running a fast diagnostic on his new hand, clearly still anxious and needing to keep busy. Even after years of wearing the device, he still found it unnerving to see the detached prosthetic move all on its own, like some disembodied appendage from a horror movie. A wireless transmitter built into Monk’s wrist cuff could independently control the motors and actuators of the prosthesis, along with accessing the hand’s other unique features. Luckily, the guards up front missed that little freak show in the backseat.

At last, the Humvee pulled to a stop. A tall man in a navy-blue suit stepped out of the doorway and approached the vehicle.

He had to be the officer in charge. He was younger than Gray had expected, early thirties, with a blond crew cut and a swagger to his step that had Texas written all over it. He shook Gray’s hand in a firm but unthreatening grip.

“Mitchell Waldorf,” the man said with a slight drawl. “Welcome to the Depository. It’s not often we have visitors. Especially at this hour.”

A gleam of amusement sparkled in his gray-green eyes.

Gray made introductions and proffered their presidential orders. The man barely glanced at them and led them promptly toward the entrance, leaving their military escort outside. As they pushed through the doors into a marble lobby, Waldorf passed their orders to a uniformed man standing inside. There was nothing welcoming about the hulking black man’s countenance. Without a word, he retreated with their orders through a door marked
CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD
. Gray suspected their papers would undergo a thorough inspection and verification process. Kat had built up an ironclad cover story and supplied them with false IDs and badges—as agents of the National Security Agency. Hopefully, their paperwork would clear.

In the meantime, they had to undergo their own inspection.

“Latest security protocol,” Waldorf explained. “Just added two months ago. Whole body scanners. Have to be thorough nowadays.”

Stepping into the machine, Gray endured the millimeter-wave scan of his physique as a seated technician wearing a U.S. Mint police uniform studied the small screen. Other mint officers backed him up, but the facility looked lightly manned at this hour. Then again, most of the security measures were electronic in nature and hidden out of sight.

Once the scan finished, the technician waved Gray into the main lobby space. As he waited for the others, he stared at a display of a giant set of weight scales positioned against the back wall. They rose twelve feet high, supporting four-foot-wide pans. A bit farther down the hall rose the massive steel doors to the bullion vault itself. Above it rested the seal of the Department of the Treasury, made out of gold.

“You can’t bring that in here,” the technician said behind him.

Gray turned, expecting Seichan to be causing a ruckus at the security post. Had she forgotten about some dagger hidden on her body? It turned out, though, that the true source of the technician’s consternation was Monk.

His friend still stood within the cage of the machine and held up his prosthetic hand. “This is attached to me,” he complained.

“Sorry. If the scanner can’t penetrate it and clear it, it stays out here. You can wait back by the door or leave your prosthesis with us.”

“That’s our policy,” a gruff voice said behind Gray.

He turned to find that the captain of the guard had returned.

By now, Monk’s cheeks had gone scarlet. “Fine.” He worked the magnetic connections attaching his hand to the surgically implanted wrist cuff and tossed the prosthesis to another technician, who deposited it in a plastic bin. Monk passed the scan the second time and stalked over to join them all.

“I’ll have you know,” he said, “that such a policy is not even vaguely ADA compliant.”

The captain of the guard ignored this and introduced himself. “I’m Captain Lyndell. I’ll be accompanying you while you’re here. The officer in charge will answer any of your questions, but before we open the vault, I have a query for you: What
exactly
is the scope of the national security threat you’re investigating?”

“I’m afraid we can’t divulge that, sir,” Gray said.

The man didn’t like that answer.

Gray understood his frustration. He wouldn’t be any happier if this were his facility. “To be honest, the threat is likely minor, and we may have a challenge even identifying it. Any help you or Officer Waldorf can offer would be appreciated.”

This appeal to cooperation seemed to mollify the man.

Somewhat.

“Then let’s get this done.”

Lyndell crossed to the vault door and dialed in a long combination. Two more people waited to do the same. No single person ever had the complete combination to the lock. After the first two finished, the captain of the guard entered one last additional sequence.

A red light flashed to green above the dial, and the massive steel-plate door began to swing open on its own, all twenty tons of it. It took a full minute to part wide enough for the group to walk through.

“If you’ll follow me,” Waldorf said as he led the way inside. He clearly would be acting as their tour guide.

Lyndell prepared to follow behind, ready to keep a close watch on them.

“At the present,” Waldorf said, “we’re storing around a hundred and fifty million ounces of gold here. That’s enough to forge a twenty-foot cube of solid gold. Of course, that’s not a very convenient method to keep it. That’s why we have the depository. It’s two stories high. Each floor is subdivided into smaller compartments. We’ll be entering the first floor, but there’s a basement level, too.”

Waldorf stepped to the side to allow them to enter and turned to Gray. “That means you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. If there’s any way to narrow that search, now’s the time to reveal it. Otherwise, we’ll be in here for a long time.”

Gray passed through the thick steel door and into a corridor that was broken into smaller vaults. Stacks of gold bars glinted inside them, piled from floor to ceiling. The sheer volume was daunting.

He pulled his eyes away and addressed Waldorf. “I guess the first question to ask is whether anything unusual is stored here, something besides gold.”

“What? Like vials of nerve gas, narcotics, biological agents? I’ve heard it all. Even heard we had the body of Jimmy Hoffa and the Roswell aliens in here. Now, in the past, the depository
has
stored some items of priceless historical value. During World War Two, we preserved the original copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution down here, along with the Magna Carta from England and the crown jewels from several European nations. But for decades, nothing’s really changed here. In fact, no gold has been moved into or out of the depository for many years.”

“Then tell me about the gold itself?” Gray asked. “I see lots of gold bars, but what about gold in other forms?”

“Well, sure. We keep individual gold coins and coin gold bars—made by melting coins together. Beyond the standard mint bars, we also have a mix of older bricks, plates, blocks, you name it.”

“Old gold bullion?” Monk asked, zeroing on target.

“Yes, sir. We’ve got bullion from every era of American history.”

Gray nodded. “That’s what we’d like to see. Specifically anything taken from the Philadelphia Mint that dates back to the colonial era.”

Waldorf’s easy demeanor hardened slightly. “Why would that be of interest to national security?”

“We’re not sure,” Gray said, which was basically true. “But we might as well start there.”

“Okay, you’re in charge of this hunting expedition. We’ll have to go down to the basement, where much of the gold hasn’t been moved since it was first hauled to Kentucky by railroad car.”

Waldorf headed to a set of stairs and led them down to the section of the vault that lay belowground. Gray again wondered if it was true that this place had been engineered to flood if there was a security breach. He pictured the vault filling with water and imagined drowning amid all of this wealth.

“This way,” their guide said, and strode purposefully along the corridor.

The vaults down here weren’t as neatly stacked as above, mostly because of the lack of uniformity in the size of the bars.

Waldorf waved ahead. “This whole section originally came from Philadelphia. We’ve got gold stored here that came from the very first stampings out of that mint. That’s kept in the compartment at the end. Follow me.”

When they reached their destination, Lyndell used a key to unlock the barred gate to the ten-foot-square space. It looked haphazardly packed—but it was also unfortunately
full
. One section of the room contained irregular rectangular blocks that looked like small anvils, another had stacks of square rods, a third had flat plates about the size of small lunch trays.

Gray stared with dismay, picturing waves of subatomic particles washing out of the space. If this was the right vault, how were they to find the needle in this golden haystack?

Never one to shirk from hard labor, Monk squeezed into the room and began to search around. His friend was more a man of action than deep introspection—and sometimes that temperament paid off.

“Hey, come look at this.” Monk pointed to one of the wide plates on a shorter stack. “It’s stamped with the Great Seal.”

Gray joined Monk, shoulder to shoulder. Crudely stamped into the center of the flat gold block was an outstretched bald eagle, clutching an olive branch and arrows.

“Remember what Fortescue wrote about the Seal,” Monk said.

Gray knew it well:
None would suspect the treasure hidden at the heart of the Seal.

“Maybe he meant the Great Seal,” Monk added.

Gray studied the topmost plate. It was roughly fourteen inches by ten and about an inch thick. While there was no precise description of the old Indian map’s dimensions, it had been found lining a mastodon’s cranium. That meant it had to be fairly big—like these flat blocks.

He studied the room.
There have to be over a hundred of these plates.
Which one could it be? Did one of these plates—buried and hidden among the others—depict a crude map on its surface? There was only one way to find out. He would follow Monk’s example. It was time to simply use brute force.

Gray waved at the stacks. “Let’s start taking them out.”

9:10
P.M.

Seichan stood to the side as Gray and Monk labored, carrying each gold block out of the small compartment and stacking them outside. Her bad leg precluded her from helping. But even healthy, she’d have struggled to lift one. Each weighed over seventy pounds.

She didn’t know how Monk managed the effort with only one hand.

By now, the two men had stripped out of their jackets and rolled up their sleeves. Their forearms bulged as they hauled the blocks out, one by one. Gray examined both surfaces, plainly looking for some evidence of a map. He’d also asked the two mint supervisors to let them do this alone. Cooperating, Waldorf and Lyndell had backed away a couple of compartments, talking in low whispers, but keeping a close eye on Gray and Monk’s efforts.

The captain of the guard looked darkly dubious.

And rightfully so.

They were halfway through the stacks with no success.

Gray came out with another plate. Seichan noted that his lips had gone bloodless and thin as he settled the plate to the pile. It wasn’t from the strain, but from frustration. He dropped to one knee to examine both sides, teetering the plate up on its edge. Sweat streaked his brow.

She limped next to him. “I’ll search this side, you take the other.”

“Thanks.” He eyed her over the top of the upended block. “Are we on a wild-goose chase here?”

“Your assessment sounded solid to me.” Seichan ran her fingertips over the gold surface, feeling for any evidence of a faint map. “All we can do is keep looking.”

“Anything on your side?”

“No.”

He manhandled the plate and settled it atop the others. He lowered his voice. “Something’s been nagging me. If Jefferson embedded the old map onto one of these plates, why didn’t someone see it? Comment on it?”

“Maybe the map wasn’t minted
onto
the plate, but
into
it.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to that French guy, the map was made of that nano-gold, a much denser gold that wouldn’t melt at normal temperatures. So to preserve and hide the map, why not pour
regular
gold over it, cover it completely? There’s no risk. If the map was needed later, you could always melt the ordinary gold off of it, since the nano-gold would require a much higher temperature before it softened.”

Gray raised a palm to his damp forehead. “You’re right. I should have thought of that.”

“You can’t think of everything.”

And you can’t take care of everyone
.

She had noted him checking his phone regularly during the trip. The sun had set in D.C., and she knew he was worried about his father’s mental state.

“It was right there in Fortescue’s journal,” Gray said, kicking himself.
“ ‘The treasure’s hidden at the
heart
of the Seal.’ ”

Monk called from the vault. “Better look at this.”

Gray and Seichan joined him inside the compartment, but it was cramped.

Supported by his one palm, Monk leaned over the next plate on the stack. He shifted back. “Look at this one’s seal.”

Seichan stared over Gray’s shoulder, feeling the dampness of his back through his thin shirt. She didn’t understand what had Monk all worked up, but noticed that the muscles across Gray’s shoulders tightened to hard rocks.