The Devil Colony (Sigma Force 7)

Heisman nodded. “In this letter, one name comes up over and over, a man cryptically identified only as A.F.”

“Archard Fortescue . . .” Gray said.

“Plainly Jefferson did not trust writing the man’s name in full, which was very much in character for this Founding Father. Jefferson had a great interest in cryptography, even developing his own secret cipher. In fact, it wasn’t until the last year or so that one of his codes was finally cracked.”

“That guy was paranoid,” Monk said.

Heisman glanced to him, offended. “If Franklin’s earlier letter was accurate about some great enemy besieging the new union in secret, maybe he had reason to be. This same paranoia may have fueled Jefferson’s purging of the Army during his presidency.”

“What are you talking about?” Gray asked, growing intrigued.

“Just after Jefferson was elected president following a bitter campaign, one of his first orders of business was to reduce the standing army. He chose Meriwether Lewis to help him decide which officers were competent and which were not. Lewis communicated his findings back to Jefferson via a system of coded symbols. Some historians suspect this purge had less to do with competency than it did with loyalty to the U.S.”

Monk glanced significantly at Gray. “If you wanted to weed out traitors, especially those leading armed forces, this would be a good way of going about it in secret.”

Gray knew the difficulty Sigma had in purging Guild moles and operatives from their own fold. Were the Founding Fathers trying to do the same? He pictured Lewis’s involvement in this affair. Soldier, scientist, and now spy. The man sounded more and more like a Sigma operative.

Seichan crossed to the table and took a seat, plopping heavily into it, looking bored. “All well and good, but what the hell does this have to do with volcanoes?”

Heisman seated his reading glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose and spoke stiffly. “I was just getting to that. The letter addresses an eruption that occurred exactly two decades prior. To the day, in fact. The twentieth anniversary of it. The Laki eruption. It was the deadliest volcanic eruption of historical times. In its aftermath, over six million people died globally. It wiped out livestock, and crops failed around the world, leading to massive famines. It was said the skies turned bloodred, and the planet cooled enough to cause the Mississippi to freeze over as far south as New Orleans.”

Sharyn interrupted, lifting one of the papers she’d been sifting through when Gray first entered. “Here’s Benjamin Franklin’s own words describing the eruption’s effect. ‘During several of the summer months of the year 1783, when the effect of the sun’s rays to heat the earth in these northern regions should have been greater, there existed a constant fog over all Europe, and a great part of North America.’ Franklin became obsessed with this volcano.”

“And apparently with good reason,” Heisman added, drawing back Gray’s attention. “According to this letter, Archard Fortescue was present at that eruption—even felt guilty about it, as if he’d caused it.”

“What?” Gray couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

Seichan spoke while he struggled to understand. “Excuse my lack of geographical prowess, but where is this volcano?”

Heisman’s eyes widened, as if suddenly realizing he’d never told them. “In Iceland.”

Gray turned to Monk, who wore a big, amused grin. This was the detail he’d been hiding. Monk shrugged. “Looks like we’re following in that Frenchman’s footsteps.”

3:13 A.M.

As the others discussed the volcano’s location using various maps spread on the table, Seichan sat to the side, fingering a tiny silver dragon pendant hanging from her neck. It was a nervous habit. Her mother had always worn one of the same. It was one of the few details she still remembered about the woman.

As a child, Seichan would often stare at the tiny curled dragon in the hollow of her mother’s neck as she slept on a small cot under an open window. While night birds sang in the jungle, the moonlight reflected off the silver, shimmering like water with her mother’s breathing. Each night, Seichan imagined the dragon would come to life if she just watched it long enough—and maybe it did, if only in her dreams.

With a flare of irritation at such sentimentality, Seichan let the silver charm drop from her fingers. She had waited long enough. No one seemed to be addressing the most obvious question in the room, so she asked it.

“Back to that letter, Doc.” All eyes turned to her. “What did you mean when you said that the Frenchman felt guilty about the volcano blowing up?”

Heisman still had the sheaf of papers in hand. “It’s here in Jefferson’s letter.” He cleared his voice, picked out a passage, and read it aloud. “ ‘We have at last heard from A.F. He has suffered greatly and carries a heavy heart after all that befell him during the summer of the year 1783. I am very mindful that it was in supporting our cause that he followed the trail marked on the map recovered from the Indian barrow, a prize he gained at much grievous personal injury due to the ambush by our enemy. A.F. yet bemoans the volcano he caus’d to be born out in those seas during that summer. He has come to believe that the great famines that struck his home shores following that eruption were reason for the bloody revolutions in France, and bears much guilt for it.’ ”

Heisman lowered the pages. “In fact, Fortescue might be right in that last respect. Many scholars now conjecture that the Laki eruption—and the poverty and famine that followed in France—was a major trigger for the French Revolution.”

“And from the sounds of it,” Gray added, “Fortescue blamed himself. ‘The volcano he caus’d to be born.’ What did he mean by that?”

No one had an answer.

“So then what do we know?” Seichan asked, cutting to the quick. “From that first letter, we know Franklin called on Fortescue to find a map buried in some Indian mound. From the gist of this letter, he succeeded.”

Gray nodded. “The map pointed to Iceland. So Fortescue went there. He must have found something, something frightening or powerful enough that he believed it caused the volcanic eruption. But what?”

“It was possibly hinted at in the first letter,” Seichan offered. “Some power or knowledge that the Indians possessed, knowledge they seemed willing to share, possibly in exchange for the formation of that mythical Fourteenth Colony.”