Steve Berry - The Jefferson Key

None of the sixteen said a word. They knew better. The captain spoke until he said he was ready to listen.

“It saddens me to think that one of you betrayed us.”

And that was how he viewed his world. Us. A grand society, built on loyalty and success. Long ago pirate ships learned to strike with speed, skill, and urgency, the crews functioning as tight, cohesive units. Laziness, incompetence, disloyalty, and cowardice were never tolerated since those endangered everyone. His father had taught him that the best plans were simple, easy to understand, and flexible enough to deal with any contingency.

And he was right.

He paced the floor.

Captains must always be bold and daring tacticians. Crews intentionally elected them in defiance of a naval tradition that bestowed leadership regardless of competency.

But captains today were not elected.

Heredity accounted for their ascendency. He often imagined himself at the helm of one of those long-ago ships, stalking prey, following at a safe distance for days, all the while determining strengths and weaknesses. If the target proved a powerful man-of-war, he could veer away and seek weaker prey. If she seemed vulnerable they could take her either by surprise or by frontal attack.

Choices.

All born through patience.

Which he intended to exercise here tonight.

“None of you will leave this room until I find the traitor. When morning breaks your bank accounts will be examined, your houses searched, your phone records obtained. You will sign whatever releases are needed, or grant whatever permissions required-”

“That won’t be necessary.”

He was taken aback by the interruption until he realized the voice belonged to Clifford Knox, who’d entered the room.

Quartermasters were not bound by the same rules of silence.

“I know who the traitor is.”

MALONE DOVE INTO THE OFFICE SIX FEET AWAY. THE BULLET fired his way thudded into drywall. More slugs cracked and hummed through the air. He readied his gun and scampered for the desk. But all he heard was the click of a door closing from out in the hall.

The man had left.

An explosion rattled the windows, followed by a flickering glow that signaled something was burning outside.

He approached the glass, keeping low, alternating his attention between the doorway behind him and a flaming car below. Across the hall, in another office, he caught a spray of light across more windows. He quickly made his way there and spotted a man leaping into a car in the front parking lot, then speeding away. He should leave, too, and fast. Though this facility was in the countryside, somebody may have heard the gunfire or the explosion and called the police.

But first…

He hustled back into Voccio’s office and noticed that the three computer screens still burned. He squinted at the glare off the first machine and caught a break.

The displayed file explained the solution to the Jefferson cipher.

Voccio had apparently left in a hurry.

He closed the file, found the machine’s email program, attached the document to a message, and forwarded it to himself. He then deleted the message and file from the machine.

No great security measure, but enough to buy him time.

He stared past the black square of night framed by the window.

The car still burned.

Needles of rain clawed the glass. To his right, a hundred yards away from the flaming chaos, he spotted a dark figure.

Running.

Away.

WYATT DECIDED THAT A PROPITIOUS RETREAT SEEMED THE BEST option. Voccio was dead. He’d told the frightened idiot to stick with him, and if he’d done that the man would still be alive.

So he shouldn’t feel bad. Yet he did.

He kept running.

Carbonell had lured him here with a double fee, wanting him not to escape. Those men were hers.

They needed to chat.

On his terms.

And he knew exactly how to do that.

KNOX ENTERED THE HALL AND STARED AT ADVENTURE’S CREW. Quentin Hale stood silent, clearly waiting to see what his quartermaster had to say.

“Captain Hale, when we spoke earlier I could not say all that I knew since we were on an open phone line.”

He was practicing, to the max, one of the strategies his father had taught him. Always have a plan. Contrary to popular myth, buccaneers never attacked anything blind. Whether their target be on land or sea, to ensure success an advance party would first reconnoiter. The preferred time for any assault was dawn, or a Sunday, or a holy festival, or, as here, late at night, the element of surprise used to prevent escapes and to overwhelm resistance.

“Periodically, I run checks,” he said. “Looking for anything out of the ordinary. Big purchases. Unusual lifestyle. Trouble at home. It’s strange, but a woman can drive a man to do crazy things.”

He allowed the last sentence to linger and watched the yacht’s crew. He was careful to keep his gaze roving, from one man to the next, never settling in one place.

Not yet, anyway.

He was playing to an audience of one. Quentin Hale. So long as Hale was convinced, that was all that mattered.

He focused.

Make your case.

Then figure out how to kill Stephanie Nelle.

MALONE FLED THE BUILDING AND MADE A QUICK INSPECTION of the destroyed car. Indeed, somebody had been behind the wheel, the body now burning with a fury. The license plate was charred but readable and he committed the numbers to his eidetic memory.

He rounded the building and found his government-issued sedan. The rear windshield and most of the windows were gone, the sidewalls riddled with holes. No gas had leaked, though, and the tires were intact, so at least two things had gone right. Soon this place would be awash with the corona of blue and red revolving lights, police everywhere.

The wind moaned through the trees, as if telling him to leave. He glanced up at the sky, clearing of clouds and rain, revealing half-lit stars.

The wind was right.

Time to go.

CASSIOPEIA SAT IN SHIRLEY KAISER’S LIVING ROOM. HER PARENTS had owned a similar parlor in their Barcelona home. Though billionaires, they’d been simple, private souls, staying to themselves, devoting their lives to her, to each other, and to the family business. Never once had she heard a hint of scandal associated with either. They seemed to live exemplary lives, both dying in their seventies within months of each other. She’d always hoped to find someone to whom she could equally devote herself.

Perhaps she had in Cotton Malone.

At the moment, though, she was concerned with the woman sitting across from her who, unlike her parents, harbored a great many secrets.

Starting with 135 telephone calls.

“Quentin Hale and I are lovers,” Kaiser said.

“How long?”

“Off and on for the past year.”

She listened as Kaiser explained. Hale was married with three grown children. He’d been separated from his wife going on a decade-she lived in England, he in North Carolina. They met at a social occasion and immediately liked each other.

“He insisted that we keep things discreet,” Kaiser said. “I thought he was concerned about my reputation. Now I see it may have been something else altogether.”

Cassiopeia agreed.

“I’m a fool,” Kaiser said. “I’ve gotten myself into a deep mess.”

No argument there.

“I never had children. My husband… he couldn’t. The fact never really bothered me. No motherly instincts overtook me.” A squint of regret appeared on Kaiser’s face. “But as I get older, I find myself rethinking my attitude toward children. It’s lonely sometimes.”

She could relate to that. Though a good twenty years younger than Kaiser, she, too, had felt those motherly pangs.