The Lincoln Myth (Cotton Malone 9)

Damn. She actually did it.

She tossed the gun over the seat. It thumped to the floorboard on the passenger side. “You think you’re so damn smart.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know about that. You with your master’s degree, working on your doctorate. I thought maybe you might figure it out on your own.”

He stopped for a red light. “And you really gave me the sheriff department’s number as your own?”

“I thought maybe you might turn yourself in.”

“That just wasn’t nice. I was so looking forward to calling you back.”

“My loss,” she said. “I think I’ll leave now.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“And why not?”

“ ’Cause you’re going to miss out on somethin’ really cool. Might even help that education of yours along.”

She made no attempt to open her door and he accelerated through the intersection. It was an easy matter to cut across town, find Pennsylvania Avenue, and approach the guard gate for the White House. Before he’d left for Virginia hours ago, Stephanie had called and told him to come here when he was done.

He wasn’t looking forward to the family reunion.

“What the crap?” Katie muttered.

He rolled down his window and prepared to identify himself. “I told you it would blow your mind.”

They entered through the visitor entrance, a Secret Service agent waiting inside. Katie still carried the hunk of glass, her eyes alight with anticipation.

“I’ve never been here before,” she said.

“Neither have I,” he said.

“You really are an agent?”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Their escort led them through a marble hall. Cut-glass chandeliers lit everything in a daylight glow. They passed a portrait of Eisenhower. More presidential images hung at the far end. Kennedy. Johnson. Ford. Carter. Like a recent greatest hits parade.

They stayed on the ground floor and entered a room with walls sheathed in a red twill fabric. Gold scroll formed a border. The furniture was all upholstered in the same red shade with patterns of gold medallions and more scrolls. The carpet was beige, red, and gold. Another chandelier burned bright. Waiting there were Stephanie and good ol’ Uncle Danny. He hadn’t seen him in thirteen years, not since his father’s funeral. He told himself to be respectful and mind his manners. His boss would want that, no matter what he might feel.

“Who is this?” Stephanie immediately asked.

He realized that protocol was being waived tonight. Usually, no one came close to the president without being vetted.

But this situation was anything but usual.

Katie, though, seemed remarkably composed, as if she met the president of the United States every day.

“A problem that occurred too quickly for me to solve, so I brought it along. This is Katie—”

He suddenly realized he did not know her last name.

“Bishop,” she said. “Katie Bishop.”

And she extended her hand for the president to shake.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Daniels said. “Now could you answer the lady’s question and tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Show him,” Luke said, motioning to what she held.

Katie handed over the hunk of glass.

“That came out of the ice pit,” Luke said. “Hidden behind a brick with IV marked on it. I got it out, but Katie here managed to call the locals on me. They were closing in, so I had no choice but to bring her along.”

“She one-upped you?” the president asked.

“I know it may be a little hard to believe. I’m having trouble with it myself. But stuff happens. As you certainly know.”

“I see you still have that smart mouth,” the president said.

“Probably a family trait. You think?” He caught Stephanie’s glare. “Okay. I’ll stop. Look, I didn’t have a lot of choice. I also thought she might be helpful. She tells me that she has a master’s in American history, and she also knows a lot about Madison. It was either that or get caught, so I took the lesser of two evils.”

“Okay,” the president said, “Katie Bishop, with your degrees in American history, where are we standing?”

“The Red Room. Dolley Madison used to have her fashionable Wednesday-night receptions here. That was the place to be in those days. Since then it’s been a parlor, sitting room, music room. Unfortunately, the walls are reproductions, done when Truman gutted the White House. Hillary Clinton changed things to pretty much what you see now. This furniture, if I remember right, is from Madison’s time. What’s really cool is what happened during U. S. Grant’s term. He was afraid there’d be a problem with Rutherford B. Hayes’ inauguration, since he was elected after a trumped-up commission awarded him twenty disputed electoral votes, so he had him sworn in right here the night before.”

“You know about the Compromise of 1877?”

Katie smiled. “Now you’re being silly. One of the great backroom deals of all time. Hayes lost the popular vote in the 1876 election to Samuel Tilden, and neither one of them had enough electoral votes. So southern Democrats allowed those twenty disputed votes to go to the Republican, Hayes, in return for all troops being withdrawn from the South, a railroad built west through the South, and legislation to help rebuild what the war destroyed. Finally, they had a bargaining tool and they used it to its max. Grant immediately honored the deal and withdrew some of the troops. Hayes got rid of the rest. With them gone, the Democrats took total control of the South, which they kept until the late 20th century.”

“Not bad. Pretty good, in fact.” The president motioned with what he held. “Now tell me what this is?”

“We’ve known about symbols on the bricks in the ice pit for a long time. No one ever figured out their implications. We thought it was just something Madison did. Decorative. Or an idiosyncrasy.”

“Is that why there are no pictures of the pit on the Internet?” Stephanie asked.

Katie nodded. “The curators didn’t want any of that Da Vinci Code kind of press, so they sealed it up.”

“And it’s a good thing they did,” Daniels said. “But you haven’t answered my question. What is it I’m holding?”

“I’ve been considering that all the way from Virginia. And I think I know the answer.”

STEPHANIE WAS CLOSELY WATCHING BOTH DANNY AND LUKE. She’d arrived at the White House an hour ago, after finishing with Rowan at the Library of Congress. The senator had spent thirty minutes alone with the Book of Mormon. She’d watched every moment thanks to a closed-circuit feed from a hidden camera used for security in that part of the library. She and John Cole had witnessed Rowan tear a page from the 1840 edition. Cole had winced when that happened, but there was nothing either of them could do. Thankfully, Cole had already examined the book and photocopied the page with the writing. He told her that anomaly had been known for some time, but no one had any idea what it meant. It was one reason why the book was kept in the restricted access collection. Now, it seemed, the mystery may have been solved.

“Why don’t you have a seat,” the president said to them all. “I want to hear more of what Ms. Bishop has to say.”

Stephanie was a little perturbed at Luke for involving an outsider. But she’d learned long ago to choose her battles when questioning her agents’ decisions. They were the ones putting their butts on the line. All were highly trained, smart people. Luke had apparently weighed the options and made his call.

The president carefully laid the glass receptacle on a table.

“In the early 19th century,” Katie said, “vacuum sealing didn’t exist. Canning technology was just beginning to be explored. Preserving something like paper was tough. The first cans were actually made of glass, but tin eventually replaced that. To save fragile things, they would sometimes seal them in glass.”

The hunk on the table clearly held something that resembled a small book.

&n

bsp; “Madison was good friends with Thomas Jefferson. Monticello sat only thirty miles away, which in those days was like next door. Jefferson knew all about glass sealing. So maybe he told his good friend James Madison about the technique.”

The president sat silent.

So did Luke.

Unusual for them both.

Not a word of affection had passed between them.

Two peas in a pod.

LUKE WAS DETERMINED TO WAIT HIS UNCLE OUT. DANNY HAD always been a cold one. Interesting how brothers could be such polar opposites. He knew all about his uncle’s sad past, and sympathized some—emphasis on some. Luke’s family had always been close. He and his three siblings got along, brothers in the truest sense of the word. All three of his brothers were married, with children. He was the only one still wild and single.

“Good job getting this,” his uncle said to him.

Had he heard right? A compliment? From the great Danny Daniels? For the first time, their eyes met. “That pain you?”

“Luke—,” Stephanie began.