The Jefferson Key (Cotton Malone 7)

He’d known from the start that getting into Monticello would be easy. Getting out? An entirely different matter. That was why he’d accepted help from Andrea Carbonell.

He fled the north dependency and crossed the asphalt road. His location, on the far side from the main entrance, among trees and shrubs, provided ample cover. A check on Google Maps earlier had revealed an open field about a hundred yards northeast of the house.

A perfect landing spot.

He heard three shots from inside the house and smiled.

With any luck, the woman would shoot Malone for him.

CASSIOPEIA KNEW SOMEONE WAS IN THE NEXT ROOM. SHE’D caught movement before her barrage, but had not seen any other disturbances through the fog. She was still concerned about Cotton.

Where was he?

Who had shot at her?

A hallway opened to her right where less smoke had collected. She spotted the base of a stairway.

Whoever was in the next room knew she was here.

But they were lying low. Waiting.

For her.

MALONE AIMED AT THE BLACK SMUDGE DRIFTING ACROSS THE smoke.

Just a few more feet and he’d have a clean shot. He didn’t want to miss. He’d tried to draw Wyatt in upstairs. That effort failed.

Now he had him.

He held his breath, finger tightened on the trigger.

One.

Two.

CASSIOPEIA HAD ADVANCED TOO FAR.

She was exposed, and knew it.

She darted right, used the hallway for protection, then called out, “Cotton, where are you?”

MALONE EXHALED.

He lowered his gun.

“In here,” he said.

“Better for you to come out here,” she called out.

He came to his feet and stepped from the parlor. Cassiopeia appeared from the smoke to his left.

“That was close,” he said.

He saw in her eyes that she agreed.

“What happened in here?”

“I found the source of all our trouble.”

A new sound invaded the silence. A low rhythmic thump of deep bass tones beating air. Approaching.

Helicopter.

WYATT CRADLED THE WHEEL IN HIS ARMS, CAREFUL NOT TO damage it. A couple of glances back and he saw no one following him. He disappeared into the trees and eased down an incline toward the field.

A chopper swooped in from the west, clearing the trees lining the field, and settled on the grass.

He jumped in the open cabin door.

MALONE AND CASSIOPEIA STEPPED OUTSIDE ONTO THE EAST portico and saw a helicopter landing about a quarter mile away.

Way too far to do anything about it.

After only a minute below the trees, the rotors’ thump increased and the chopper climbed back into the morning sky, heading west.

Malone realized that without the wheel there was no way to know what Andrew Jackson had done. And since only one existed, the cipher’s solution had just flown away.

“We can track that thing, can’t we?” Cassiopeia asked.

“Not quick enough. He’ll set down somewhere not far away and drop his passenger off.”

“The person who shot at me?”

He nodded.

The estate manager rushed up to where they stood, along with Edwin Davis. Malone stepped back inside and headed straight for Jefferson’s cabinet.

The others followed.

He found the table where an empty glass cover sat.

“Those windows outside,” the manager said, “were 19th-century glass. The frames were original to Jefferson’s time. Irreplaceable.”

“This isn’t a World Heritage Site, is it?” he asked, trying lighten the tension.

“Actually, it has been since 1987.”

He smiled. Stephanie would love that one. How many of those had he damaged? Four? Five?

He heard windows being opened throughout the house and saw the smoke dissipating. A new face appeared. A middle-aged woman with dark red hair and freckled skin. She was introduced as the senior curator, in charge of the estate’s artifacts. She was visibly upset at the site of the missing wheel.

“It’s the only one in the world,” she said.

“Who was here?” Edwin Davis asked him.

“An old friend, who apparently holds a grudge.”

He motioned for Davis and Cassiopeia to walk with him toward the library while the curator and the estate manager talked in the cabinet. He told them about Jonathan Wyatt, then said, “Last I saw him was eight years ago, at the admin hearing when he was fired.”

Davis immediately withdrew his phone, placed a call, listened a few moments, then hung up.

“He’s a contract agent now,” Davis said. “Works for hire. Lives in Florida.”

Malone thought back to the coded message from the sheet Jackson had written. Twenty-six letters, five symbols.

GYUOINESCVOQXWJTZPKLDEMFHR

“Without that wheel, the final message is indecipherable,” he said. “We’re done. We need to focus on Stephanie now.”

“Mr. Malone,” a female voice said.

He turned at the call of his name.

The curator.

“I understand it was the cipher wheel that interested you.” She walked toward him beneath the room’s arches.

He nodded. “It’s what we came for. We needed it but, like you said, that’s the only one in the world.”

“The only original in the world,” she said. “Not the only wheel.”

He was listening.

“At the learning center, down in the visitor center, we wanted the kids to experience Thomas Jefferson hands-on. So we re-created many of his inventions and devices. We made them so they could touch and feel them. There’s a wheel there. I had it made myself. It’s plastic, and looks somewhat like the original. There are twenty-six disks, each one with twenty-six letters carved on the edge. I had nothing else to go on, so I told the company who made it to copy the disks exactly as Jefferson made them.”

FIFTY

BATH, NORTH CAROLINA

HALE WATCHED AS KNOX MADE THE NECESSARY PREPARATIONS. Six glasses were brought from the bar and laid out in a row on one of the tables. Into each was poured a swallow of whiskey. Knox produced a glass vial that held a yellow-tinted liquid. The captains stared at the contents. Bolton nodded his consent to proceed. At any time, a captain challenged could wit

hdraw, conceding defeat.

But not today.

Into one of the glasses Knox trickled a few drops of the yellowish liquid. The poison came from a Caribbean fish. Odorless, tasteless, fatal in seconds. A Commonwealth staple for centuries.

“All is ready,” Knox said.

Hale stepped to the table, his gaze on the third glass from the left where the poison rested within the amber-colored whiskey.

Bolton approached.

“Do you still accept my challenge?” Hale asked.

“I’m not afraid to die, Quentin. Are you?”

That wasn’t the issue. Teaching these three a lesson was the point-one they would never forget. He kept his gaze locked on Bolton and said to Knox, “Shuffle the glasses.”

He heard the bottoms slide across the tabletop as Knox rearranged the glasses, making it impossible to know which one contained the poison. Tradition required that the two participants lock eyes. Centuries ago, the crew would study the shuffle, then wager among themselves when a captain would make the wrong choice.

“It’s done,” Knox said.

The six glasses waited in a row, their swirling contents settling. Since Hale had extended the challenge, he was required to pick first.

One in six the odds.

The best they would be.

He reached for the fourth glass, lifted it to his lips, and downed the contents with one swallow.

The liquor burned his throat.

He bore his gaze into Bolton’s eyes and waited.

Nothing.

He smiled. “Your turn.”

WYATT SETTLED INTO THE HELICOPTER’S PASSENGER COMPARTMENT. He’d made his escape exactly as planned, leaving Malone empty-handed. Now no way existed to learn the next part of Andrew Jackson’s message.

Mission accomplished.

He laid his gun on the seat beside him and arranged the nylon bag in his lap. Carefully, he extracted the device and balanced its metal frame across his knees. The chopper had risen from the field and was now flying west, away from Monticello, the sunny morning air clear and smooth.