Steve Berry - The Jefferson Key

His ancestors had certainly known how to live. They’d built an empire, then passed it down to their children. Which made his current predicament even more compelling.

He was not going to be the last in a long line.

He stopped the cart and surveyed the grounds.

The grove beyond was quiet as a church, dotted with shadows, the dwindling open patches whitened by the setting sun. Crew kept the estate in superb working order. What was once a hip-roofed dairy had been remodeled into a workshop. The old smokehouse contained a communications and security center. The privies were long gone, but the saddle-notched log barns remained, each housing farming equipment. He was particularly proud of the grape arbors, his scuppernongs some of the state’s sweetest. He wondered if any of his children were back on the property. They were all grown and married, but none, as yet, with children of their own. They worked in the legitimate family enterprises, aware of their heritage but ignorant of his responsibilities. That had always been kept between father and the singular chosen offspring. To this day his sister and brother knew nothing of the Commonwealth. The time was coming when he’d have to choose his successor and start the grooming process, just as his father had done with him.

He imagined what was happening a mile away as the other three captains, heads of their respective families, responded to his summons. He told himself to control his temper. In 1835 Hales had acted unilaterally to the detriment of the others. Now it was the other way around.

He depressed the accelerator and drove on.

The gravel road paralleled one of his most productive soybean fields, the thick woods on the opposite side loaded with deer. The deep alto of a blackbird, singing the last strophes of a ballad, could be heard in the distance. His life had always been about the outdoors. Hales first came to America from England in 1700, on a voyage across the Atlantic that took so long the pet rabbits had bred three times.

He’d always liked how that first Hale had been described.

A vigorous, intelligent man of wit and charm and diverse abilities.

John Hale arrived at Charles Town, in South Carolina, on Christmas Day. Three days later he plunged northward along trails known only to Natives. Two weeks after that he found the Pamlico River and a blue, tree-ringed bay where he built a house. He then founded a port, sheltered from attack by water, but navigable on an easterly course to the sea. He named it Bath Town, and five years later its incorporation was formally approved.

Always ambitious, John Hale built ships and made his fortune in the slave trade. As his wealth and reputation grew, so did Bath, the town becoming a center of nautical activity and a hotbed for piracy. So it was only natural that Hale became a pirate, preying off British, French, and Spanish shipping. In 1717, when King George announced his Act of Grace, granting absolution for men who swore they would not resume buccaneering, Hale pledged his oath and, openly, became a respected planter and Bath councilman. Secretly, his ships continued to wreak havoc, but he targeted only the Spanish, which the British would care little about. The colonies became an ideal market for the buying and selling of illegal goods. Under British law American exports could be shipped only on English ships with English sailors-a nightmare relative to cost and supply. Colonial merchants and governors greeted pirates with open arms since they could supply what was needed at the right price. Many American ports became pirate dens, Bath the most notable and productive. Eventually the Revolutionary War changed allegiances and led to the formation of the Commonwealth.

Ever since, the four families had been bound.

To pledge our Unity and assert our Cause, every Man has a Vote in Affairs of Moment; has equal Title to the fresh provisions, or strong Liquors, at any Time seized, and may use them at Pleasure. No man is better than Another and each Shall rise to the Defense of the Other.

Words from the Articles, which he took to heart.

He stopped the cart before another of the estate’s buildings, this one with a hipped roof, gables, dormers, and a tower at one end. It rose two stories with a cantilevered stairway. The delightful nature of its exterior concealed the fact that it acted as a prison.

He punched in a code for the heavy oak door and released the latch. Once the walls had been fashioned of only brick and timber. Now they were soundproofed with the latest technology. Inside were eight cells. Not a horrible prison, but a prison nonetheless. One that came in handy.

Like a few days ago, when Knox moved on the target.

He climbed to the second floor and approached the iron bars. The prisoner on the other side rose from a wooden bench and faced him.

“Comfortable?” he asked. The cell was ten feet square, roomy actually considering what his ancestors had been forced to endure. “Anything you need?”

“The key to the door.”

He smiled. “Even if you had that, there would be no place to go.”

“They were right about you. You’re no patriot, you’re a thieving pirate.”

“That’s the second time today I’ve been called that.”

The prisoner stepped close to the bars. Hale stood just on the other side, a foot or so away. He noted the dingy clothes, the tired face. He’d been told that his captive had eaten little over the past three days.

“Nobody gives a damn that you have me,” he was told.

“I’m not so sure about that. They don’t, as yet, realize the danger you’re in.”

“I’m expendable.”

“Caesar was once captured by Sicilian pirates,” he said. “They demanded a ransom of 25 gold talents. He thought himself worth more and demanded they raise the ransom to 50, which was paid. After he was freed, he hunted his captors down and slaughtered them to a man.” He paused. “How much do you think you are worth?”

Spit flew through the bars and splattered on his face.

He closed his eyes as he slowly reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped it away.

“Stick it up your ass,” his captive said to him.

He reached into his other pocket and found his lighter, plated with German silver and engraved with his name, a gift from his children two Christmases ago. He ignited the handkerchief and tossed the flaming cloth through the bars, straight at his prisoner.

Stephanie Nelle reeled back and allowed the burning bundle to drop to the floor where she extinguished it with her shoe, never taking her gaze off him.

He’d snatched her as a favor for someone else, but over the past couple of days, he’d been thinking how to make use of her for his own purposes. She might even become expendable if Knox’s news from New York-that the cipher may be solved-proved true.

Considering what just happened he hoped that was the case.

“I assure you,” he said to her. “You will regret what you just did.”

MALONE HELD TIGHT IN HIS CHAIR AS AIR FORCE ONE ROSE from the runway and vectored south back to Washington, DC. Everyone still occupied the conference room.

“Tough day at the office, dear?” Cassiopeia asked him.

He caught the playful look in her eyes. Any other woman would be highly irritated at the moment, but Cassiopeia handled the unexpected better than any person he’d ever known. Cool, calculated, focused. He still recalled the first time they’d encountered each other-in France, at Rennes-le-Chateau, one dark night when she’d taken a shot at him then sped away on a motorcycle.

“Just the usual,” he said. “Wrong place, right time.”

She smiled. “You missed out on a great dress.”

She’d told him before he left the hotel about the stop at Bergdorf Goodman. He’d been looking forward to seeing her purchase.