The Jefferson Key (26 page)

“Who said there was one?”

“Call it boyfriend intuition. I saw it on your face. What happened with the First Lady? You only gave me the short version.”

True. She’d abbreviated the events, leaving off the last part of her conversation with Shirley Kaiser.

The First Lady is having an affair. Isn’t she?

Not exactly. But close enough
.

“I’m thinking how we can use that phone tap to our advantage,” she said. “It’s our fastest ticket to flush out Hale.”

He gently grabbed her arm. “There’s something else. You’re holding back. That’s okay. I do it, too. But whatever it is, if you need my help, ask.”

She liked that he didn’t try to be the fixer. Instead, he was her partner, watching her back.

And she just might take him up on his offer.

But for now that
something else
was her problem.

BATH
,
NORTH
CAROLINA

8:30 AM

KNOX
WAS
TROUBLED
.
QUENTIN
HALE
HAD
MET
PRIVATELY
with the traitor before the execution and now he’d been ordered to the main house with no explanation. The corpse was on its way to sea, where it would be weighed down and tossed into the Gulf Stream. Perhaps the traitor had told Hale that he’d compromised the murder but not the assassination. But why would Hale have believed him? And even if Hale harbored doubts, nothing pointed Knox’s way, except that he was one of four men who knew every detail, from the beginning, the other three all being captains. True, at least a dozen had worked on the weapons in the metal shop, but they were not told of any planned use. Were they suspects? Of course, but weak ones.

He entered the Hale house and walked straight for the study. All four captains were there, waiting, which immediately raised his anxiety level.

“Good,” Hale said, as Knox closed the door. “I was just about to play something for the others.”

A digital recorder lay on the tabletop.

Hale activated it.

“My marriage has been a problem for a long time, Shirley. You know that.”

“You’re the First Lady of this country. Divorce is not an option.”

“But it is once we leave, and that’s only a year and a half away.”

“Pauline, do you realize what you’re saying? Have you thought this through?”

“I think about little else. Danny’s held office nearly our entire marriage. It’s been a distraction for us both, neither one of us wanting to face reality. In twenty months his career is over. Then it will only be him and me. No distractions. I don’t think I can stand that.”

“It’s the other thing. Isn’t it?”

“You talk like it’s dirty.”

“It’s clouding your judgment.”

“No, it’s not. He actually clears my head. For the first time in many years I can see. Think. Feel.”

“Does he know that we talk about this?”

“I told him.”

Hale clicked off the recorder. “Seems the First Lady of the United States has a boyfriend.”

“How did you record that?” Surcouf asked.

“About a year ago I cultivated a relationship, one I hoped might provide us with some valuable information.” Hale paused. “And I was right.”

Knox had researched Shirley Kaiser and learned of her long-standing friendship with Pauline Daniels. Luckily, Kaiser was outgoing, attractive, and available. A supposed accidental introduction was arranged and a relationship blossomed. But neither he nor Hale had realized the deep chasm that existed in the Daniels’ marriage. That had been an unexpected bonus.

“Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?” Cogburn asked.

“That’s easy, Charles,” Bolton said. “He wanted to be our savior so we’d be in his debt.”

Which wasn’t too far off the mark, Knox thought.

“You berate us,” Bolton said, “for acting alone. But you’ve done the same thing, and for a long time.”

“With the difference being that my actions were calculated and private. Yours were stupid and public.”

Bolton rushed across the room, heading straight for Hale, arm cocked back, fist balled. Hale’s right hand reached beneath his jacket and the same gun used to ease the prisoner’s misery appeared.

Bolton stopped.

The men glared at each other.

Cogburn and Surcouf stood silent.

Knox was delighted. They were fighting among themselves—again—the perfect distraction from him. But it only went to prove what he’d already concluded before dealing with
NIA
. These men would not survive the waves that were about to wash across their decks. Too much conflict, too many egos, too little cooperation.

“One day, Quentin,” Bolton said.

“What will you do? Assassinate me?”

“I’d love to.”

“You’ll find killing me far harder than any president.”

WYATT
ARRIVED
AT
MONTICELLO
.
HE’D
DRIVEN
THE
120
MILES
from Washington in less than two hours and parked in a treed lot, adjacent to an attractive complex of low-slung buildings identified as the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center and Smith Education Center. Its rooflines followed the contour of the adjacent hillside, the wooden walls blending naturally into the surrounding forest and encompassing a café, gift shop, theater, classrooms, and exhibit hall.

Carbonell had been right. He could not allow Malone to succeed. He’d involved his adversary in New York to place him in danger, perhaps even eliminate him, not provide another opportunity for him to save the day.

Carbonell had also been right about one other thing.

He needed her. At least for the short haul.

She’d provided some useful information on Monticello, including its geography, security system, and maps for roads leading in and out. He walked from his car up a stairway into a courtyard dotted with locust trees. He found the ticket center and bought a spot on the first tour of the day, leaving in less than twenty minutes, when the mansion opened at 9 AM.

He wandered around and read the placards, learning that Jefferson had labored forty years on the estate—naming it Monticello, Italian for “little mountain”—creating what he eventually called his “essay in architecture.”

It had been a working estate. Livestock, hogs, and sheep had all been bred there. A sawmill produced lumber. Two other mills provided corn and wheat. A barrel shop fashioned casks for flour. Firewood was harvested and sold from the surrounding forests. Jefferson had raised tobacco for sale to the Scots, then switched to rye, clover, potatoes, and peas. At one point he could ride ten miles in any direction and never leave his land.

He envied that independence.

But inside the exhibit hall he learned that Jefferson had died broke, owing thousands of dollars, and that his heirs sold everything, including his slaves, to satisfy his creditors. The house survived through a succession of owners until being repurchased in 1923 by a foundation, which had labored to restore its original glory.

He drifted among the various exhibits and learned more. The house’s main floor consisted of eleven rooms, each part of the official tour. The careful use of space and natural light, one room easing into another, once divided by glass doors, was meant to convey a sense of a free and open life—nothing hidden, no secrets. The second and third floors were not accessible to visitors, but the cellars were open to the public.

He studied a diagram.

Satisfied, he stepped back outside into a beautiful late-summer morning and decided that quick and fast was the only way to get this job done.

He made his way toward where a shuttle bus would ferry him and the first group nearly nine hundred feet up the mountainside. The fifty or so people consisted of many teenagers. A life-sized bronze of Thomas Jefferson waited with them near the curb. A tall man, he noticed, over six feet. He studied the likeness with a few of the youngsters.

“This ought to be neat,” one of them said.

He agreed.

A little fun.

Like the old days.

MALONE
AND
CASSIOPEIA
MOTORED
INTO
THE
MONTICELLO
visitor center. Edwin Davis stood at the base of a stairway, waiting for them. Cassiopeia ignored a parking attendant, who was directing her toward a vacant part of the lot, and wheeled to the curb, switching off the engine.

“I arranged for you to see the wheel,” Davis said to them. “I’ve spoken with the foundation chair, and the estate manager is here to take us up to the house.”

Malone had never before visited any former president’s home. He’d always meant to come here and Mt. Vernon, but had just never made the time. One of those father-son trips. He wondered what Gary, his sixteen-year-old, was doing today. He’d called Friday when they arrived in New York and talked with him for half an hour. Gary was growing up fast. He seemed a levelheaded kid, particularly pleased to hear that his father had finally made a move on Cassiopeia.

She’s hot
, the boy had said.

That she was.

“The manager is waiting by the shuttle buses with a car,” Davis said. “Only estate vehicles are allowed to drive up. We can slip in with the first tour and see the wheel. It’s displayed on the ground floor, then we can take it upstairs where there’s privacy.”

“Cotton can go,” Cassiopeia said. “You and I need to talk.”

Malone caught the look in her eye—that something was troubling her—and one other thing.

Her suggestion was not open for debate.

“Okay,” Davis said. “You and I will stay here.”

BATH
,
NORTH
CAROLINA

HALE
WAITED
FOR
BOLTON
TO
COW
TO
HIM
AND
,
FINALLY
,
THE
weak soul, as expected, retreated to the other side of the room.

Tensions eased but did not dissipate.

“President Daniels will not want his private life exposed,” he said. “There has never been a hint of scandal regarding him or his wife. America believes them to be the perfect couple. Can you imagine what the twenty-four-hour news channels and the Internet would do with this? Daniels would forever be known as the cuckold president. He’ll never allow that to happen. Gentlemen, we can use this.”

He saw that the other three did not necessarily agree.

“When were you going to tell us?” Cogburn asked again. “Edward is justified in being angry. We’re all angry, Quentin.”

“There was no sense speaking of it until I was sure that it could be used. Now, I am sure.”

Surcouf stepped to the bar and filled a glass with bourbon. Hale could use one himself, but decided a clear head would be better.

“We can quietly apply pressure and stop these prosecutions,” he said. “As I told all three of you a month ago, there’s no need to kill a president. The talking heads on television and bloggers of the Internet will do it for you. This president has shown us no courtesy. We owe him nothing, unless he wants to accommodate us now.”

“Who is the woman you’re holding in the prison?” Cogburn asked.

He’d wondered when they’d finally ask. “The head of an intelligence unit within the Justice Department called Magellan Billet. Stephanie Nelle.”

“Why do we have her?”

He could not tell them the truth. “She was becoming a problem for us. Investigating.”

“Isn’t she a little late?” Bolton asked. “We’ve been investigated to death.”

“I saw her watching the execution from a cell window,” Cogburn said.

Finally. One of them had paid attention. “My hope was that it would send her a message.”

“Quentin,” Surcouf said, “do you have any idea what you’re doing? It seems like you’re headed in three different directions. Taking a hostage could bring even more heat on us.”

“More so than trying to kill a president? And I truly hate to keep harping on that, but not a soul knows my prisoner is here, besides us. Right now, as far as they are concerned, she is simply missing.”

Of course, he did not include Andrea Carbonell in that disclaimer. Which brought to mind the second traitor. If that person existed, he or she could well know of Stephanie Nelle’s presence. But if that was the case, why hadn’t anyone acted to save her?

The answer to that inquiry reassured him.

Surcouf pointed at the recorder. “You could be right, Quentin. Daniels may not want this made public.”

“And the price for our silence is quite reasonable,” he said. “We simply want the American government to keep its word.”

“There’s a chance Daniels won’t give a damn,” Bolton said. “He may tell you to stick it up your ass, like they did the first time you went begging.”

He resented the comment, but there was something else that required mentioning. “Did you notice an omission during that taped conversation?”