Steve Berry - The Jefferson Key

“So you involved me in an assassination attempt? What if I hadn’t stopped the guns?”

“I knew you’d do something. Then maybe you’d either get the blame or get shot.”

He wanted to smack the SOB in the jaw but realized that would be fruitless. He stared around at their confines. The water level on the floor remained at ankle level.

“So why not just kill me? Why all the drama?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Which means you now owe somebody else more.”

“It means it doesn’t matter anymore.”

He shook his head. “You’re a strange bird. You always have been.”

“There’s something you should see,” Wyatt said. “I found it while you were sleeping.”

Wyatt angled the beam down the rock corridor. Twenty feet away, carved into the stone, gleaming from moisture and encrusted with algae, was a symbol.

Malone instantly recognized it as one from Jackson’s message. “Any more?”

“We can find out.”

He glanced upward from where they’d fallen. No way to climb back up. A good thirty feet of air stretched overhead, the walls a slick mass of slime. Not a handhold anywhere.

So why not. What the hell else was he going to do?

“Lead the way,” he said.

HALE DECIDED TO GRAB A FEW HOURS OF SLEEP. THERE WAS NO way they could make it to sea in this weather. Adventure was good, but every ship had its limits. He’d already ordered Kaiser’s rental car locked away, off premises, where it could not be found. He still hadn’t heard from the two men sent to Kaiser’s residence and he had to assume that they were either dead or captured. But if they had been captured, why hadn’t law enforcement already descended on him?

He left the prison and headed for his cart.

An alarm sounded.

His gaze shot to the darkened trees surrounding him, in the direction of his house. No lights could be seen.

A man burst from the prison and sloshed through the standing water, running his way.

“Captain Hale, there are intruders on the premises.”

CASSIOPEIA HEARD THE ALARM, THEN THE STEADY RAT-TAT-TAT of automatic weapons fire.

What was happening?

She leaped from the boat, taking a line with her, which she tied to a piling.

At the top of the ladder she found her weapon and turned for shore.

HALE RUSHED BACK INTO THE PRISON. HE’D HEARD THE DISTANT gunfire. A disturbing sound within his fortress of solitude. He found a phone and called the security center.

“Ten men entered the estate from the north perimeter,” he was told. “They tripped motion sensors and we spotted them on camera.”

“Police? FBI? Who are they?”

“We don’t know. But they’re here, shooting, and they don’t act like police. They’ve cut power to the main house and dock.”

He knew who they were.

Andrea Carbonell.

Who else?

KNOX WANTED TO LEAVE NOVA SCOTIA, BUT CARBONELL AND her two companions seemed in no hurry. He decided not to try their patience, at least not yet, and sat in the plane.

“Did you find what you came for?” she asked him.

He wasn’t going to answer her. “Two of my men are dead in that fort. Your man Wyatt is battling it out with someone named Cotton Malone. You send him, too?”

“Malone is there? Interesting. He’s from the White House.”

He then realized why she was here. “You were going to take back whatever I found. You had no intention of letting the captains have the solution.”

“I need those two missing pages in my possession.”

“You still don’t get it, do you? The Commonwealth is not your enemy. But you’ve gone out of your way to make it one.”

“Your Commonwealth is radioactive. CIA, NSA, the White House, they’re all closing in.”

He did not like the sound of that.

“We have to go back to Paw Island,” she said.

“I’m leaving.”

“There’s nowhere for you to go.”

What did that mean?

“Your precious Commonwealth is being attacked, as we speak.”

“By you?”

She nodded. “I decided Stephanie Nelle needs rescuing. And if Hale or one or two of the captains is killed in the process? That would be good for us all, wouldn’t it?”

Her right arm moved and he caught the silhouette of a weapon in her hand. “Which brings me to the other reason why we’re here.”

He heard a pop, then felt something pierce his chest.

Sharp.

Painful.

A second later, the world vanished.

MALONE RECALLED WHAT THE BOOKSTORE OWNER HAD TOLD him about the symbols. That they could be found at various points inside the fort and on stones and markers around the island, but she’d said nothing about them appearing beneath. Understandable, considering that this was surely off limits.

The passage they were trapped in seemed to span from one end of the fort to the other. Dark yawns dotted the walls at varying heights. None of it was natural, the cut stones all man-made. He examined one of the yawns and noted that the rectangular chute, which extended into blackness, had also been crafted by hand. Positioned at points about three and six feet high, each dripped with remnants of the last high tide. He knew what these were.

Faucets and drains.

“Whoever built this place made sure it would flood completely,” he said to Wyatt. “These openings are the only way out.”

He began to feel what those 74 British soldiers must have felt. Underground spaces were not his favorite. Especially confined ones.

“I didn’t sacrifice those two agents,” Wyatt said to him.

“I never thought you did. I simply thought you were reckless.”

“We had a job to do. I just did it.”

“Why does that matter right now?”

“It just does.”

And then he realized. Wyatt truly regretted those deaths. He hadn’t thought so at the time, but now he saw different. “It bothers you they died.”

“It always did.”

“You should have said that.”

“It’s not my way.”

No, he supposed not.

“What happened up there?” he asked. “The Commonwealth came to kill you?”

“NIA sent the Commonwealth to kill me.”

“Carbonell?”

“An act she will regret.”

They came to a point where two more tunnels opened into the rock, forming a Y-shaped junction. With the flashlight Wyatt examined another of the chutes that opened from the wall, this one about shoulder-high. “I hear water at the other end.”

“Can you see anything?”

Wyatt shook his head. “I’m not staying here and waiting for high tide. These have to lead out to the sea. Now’s the time to find out-before they start filling.”

He agreed.

Wyatt laid down the flashlight and removed his jacket. Malone grabbed the light and shone it around the junction point. As long as they were here they might as well make a full reconnoiter.

Something caught his attention.

Another symbol, chiseled into the stone to the left of where the main passage broke into two.

He recalled it from Jackson’s message. He studied the remaining walls and spotted a second symbol opposite the first. :

Then directly across from those, on the far wall of the first passage, two more, about eight feet apart.

That made four of the five Jackson had included in his message. And something else. They were positioned in relation to one another.

Wyatt noticed his interest. “They’re all here.”

Not quite.

He sloshed through the water to the center of the intersection of the three tunnels. Four markers surrounded him. The fifth? Down? He doubted it. Instead, he glanced up and shone the light at the ceiling.

“Triangle marks the spot,” he said.