The Jefferson Key (Cotton Malone 7)

“What about Daniels?”

“You’ll see.”

HALE WATCHED THE TELEVISION. ADVENTURE WAS NEARING home, now under engine power as they cruised west on the murky Pamlico River. He’d turned the volume down, tired of the anchors speculating in hope of holding viewers’ attention while the same grainy videos of two mechanical devices sprouting from the Grand Hyatt hotel played over and over. Twenty-four-hour news was good for the first thirty minutes of a crisis, but after that it was overkill.

He shook his head, thinking of his fellow captains.

The damn fools.

He knew it was their right to do as they pleased-majority ruled in the Commonwealth-but he’d been excluded from their vote, and that ran contrary to the Articles. Unfortunately, desperate situations bred desperate acts, and he understood their frustration. They were all facing prison and the forfeiture of everything their families had accumulated for the past three centuries. Their only hope rested with the single sheet of paper he now held, encased within its own plastic sheath.

The second page of Andrew Jackson’s scathing letter. Since you adore secrets and plot your life along a path in the shadows, I offer you a challenge that should suit you. The sheet attached to this letter is a code, one formulated by the esteemed Thomas Jefferson. I am told he thought it to be the perfect cipher. Succeed in learning its message and you will know where I have hidden what you crave. Fail and you remain the pathetic traitors that you are today.

He stared at the page.

Nine rows of random letters and symbols.

Gibberish. My sincerest hope is that the unmanly course ascribed to you shall be your ruin and that I shall live to enjoy that day.

For 175 years the failure to solve Jefferson’s cipher had been a source of concern. Four times that concern had risen to possible ruin, and four times the situations had been handled.

Now a fifth scenario had arisen.

But contrary to what his colleagues might think, he hadn’t sat idle. He was working on a solution to their problem. Two separate paths, actually. Unfortunately, his compatriots may have now endangered both of those efforts.

On the television, something new appeared.

The image of Air Force One on the ground at John F. Kennedy International Airport. A scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen announced that a suspect had been apprehended trying to flee the Grand Hyatt, but had been released.

Mistaken identity.

NO WORD AS YET ON THE CONDITION OF THE PRESIDENT, WHOM WE ARE TOLD

WAS TAKEN DIRECTLY TO AIR FORCE ONE.

He needed to speak with Clifford Knox.

MALONE ENTERED AIR FORCE ONE. HE KNEW THE PLANE CONTAINED 4,000

square feet of carefully designed space on three levels, including a suite for the president, an office, staff accommodations, even an operating room. Usually when the president traveled, an entourage tagged along with him including a doctor, senior advisers, Secret Service, and the press.

But the deck was devoid of anyone.

He wondered if Daniels had been brought here for treatment and everyone cleared out.

He followed Davis, who led him through the empty mid-deck to a closed door. Davis turned the knob to reveal a plush conference room, its exterior windows shuttered closed. At the far end of a long table sat Danny Daniels. Unscathed.

“I hear you tried to kill me,” the president said.

“If I had, you’d be dead.”

The older man chuckled. “On that you’re probably right.”

Davis closed the door.

“You okay?” he asked the president.

“No holes. But I got my skull popped when they threw me back into the car. Luckily, as many people have noted through the years, I have a hard head.”

He noticed the typewritten note from the hotel room lying on the table.

Daniels stood from the leather armchair. “Thanks for what you did. Seems like I’m constantly owing you. But as soon as we learned who they had in custody, and I read that note you were carrying, supposedly from Stephanie, we knew the shit had really hit the fan.”

He didn’t like the tone. This conversation was leading somewhere.

“Cotton,” Daniels said. “We have a problem.”

“We?”

“Yep. You and me.”

ELEVEN

WYATT EXITED FROM THE SUBWAY AND STEPPED INTO UNION Square. Not as bustling as Times or Herald, or as high-toned as Washington, to him Union possessed its own personality, attracting a more eclectic crowd.

He’d watched as Cotton Malone had been wrestled into custody inside Grand Central, then led from the terminal. But he wouldn’t stay a captive long. Not once Danny Daniels learned that one of his fair-haired boys had been involved-and Malone was definitely a member of that exclusive club.

He crossed 14th Street and walked south, down Broadway, toward the Strand-four floors of overstock, used, rare, and out-of-print books. He’d chosen the location for the meeting in deference to his adversary, whom he knew loved books. Personally, he despised the things. Never read a novel in his life. Why waste time on lies? Occasionally he did consult a nonfiction volume or two, but he preferred the Internet or simply asking someone. What all the fascination was with words on paper he’d never understand. And why people would hoard the things by the ton, treasuring them as they would a precious metal, made no sense whatsoever.

He caught sight of his contact.

She stood on the sidewalk, perusing carts of dollar books that lined the Strand’s Broadway storefront. Her reputation was one for being sharp-eyed, distant, and coy. A bit difficult to work with. Which was in stark contrast with her physical appearance, her curvy figure, black hair, dark eyes, and swarthy complexion representative of a Cuban ancestry.

Andrea Carbonell had commanded the NIA for more than a decade. The agency was a holdover from the Reagan years, when it had been responsible for some of the country’s best intelligence coups. CIA, NSA, and just about every other agency had hated them. But the NIA’s glory days were over, and now it seemed just another annoying multimillion-dollar line item in the black-ops budget.

Danny Daniels had always preferred the Magellan Billet, headed by another one of his fair-haired favorites, Stephanie Nelle. Her twelve agents had accomplished many of the country’s recent successes-ferreting out the treason of Daniels’ first vice president, stopping the Central Asian Federation, eliminating the Paris Club, even effecting a peaceful transition of power in China. And all without ever contracting for any services from Wyatt. The Magellan Billet worked internally with no outside help.

Except for Cotton Malone, of course.

Nelle hadn’t seemed to mind recruiting her glamour boy when necessary. He knew that Malone had been involved with nearly all of the Billet’s notable efforts. And, according to his sources, had worked for free.

The idiot.

Wyatt had received his call from Andrea Carbonell three weeks ago.

“Do you want the job?” she asked him.

“What you’re asking may not be possible,” he told her.

“For you? No way. Everything is possible for the Sphinx.”

He hated the nickname, which referred to his tendency toward silence. He’d long ago acquired the skill of being in a conversation, saying nothing, yet appearing fully part of it. The tactic unnerved most listeners, nudging them to talk more than they ever would ordinarily.

“Is my price acceptable?” he asked.

“Perfectly.”

He kept walking, passing the dollar carts, knowing that Carbonell would follow. He turned the corner and headed east on 12th Street for half a block, ducking inside the doorway of a closed business.

“Daniels is fine,” Carbonell said as she drew close.

He was glad to hear that. Mission accomplished.

“How close were you going to cut that?” she asked.

“Where is Daniels?”

He saw she did not appreciate the inquiry, but then aga

in he didn’t appreciate her tone.

“At JFK. Inside Air Force One. I heard before I got here he’s about to make a statement. Let the world see he’s okay.”

He decided to answer her question now. “I did my job.”

“And that meant involving Cotton Malone? The Secret Service grabbed him in Grand Central Station. They were led there by a radio alert. You wouldn’t know who provided that information, would you?”

“Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?”

“What if Malone had failed?”

“He didn’t.”

She’d hired him to stop the assassination attempt, telling him she could not trust the assignment to anyone in-house. She’d also told him that her agency was on the budgetary chopping block, the official word being that it would be eliminated in the next fiscal year. He had little sympathy for her. He’d been eliminated eight fiscal years ago.

“I did what you asked,” he said.

“Not exactly. But close enough.”

“Time for me to go home.”

“Don’t want to stick around and see what happens? You realize, Jonathan, that if NIA is hacked from the budget you’ll lose money, too. I think I’m the only one who still employs you on a regular basis.”