The Devil Colony

Chapter 24

May 31, 4:50 P.M.

Washington, D.C.

This day was never going to end.

In the shadow of the Washington Monument, Gray headed across the National Mall, casting a withering glare toward the sun. It seemed to refuse to set. Though the flight from Reykjavik had taken five hours, because of the time change, he'd landed back in D.C. only an hour after he'd left Iceland-and as much as he traveled, such changes still mucked up his inner clock.

Some of his irritation also came from the two hours he'd spent underground, beneath the Smithsonian Castle at Sigma command. He'd gone through a thorough debriefing, while chomping at the bit to discover the contents of Archard Fortescue's journal.

It had to be important, and he bore the proof of that. He touched his left ear gingerly. A liquid plastic bandage, barely visible, hardened the graze from the bullet he'd taken as he wrestled the backpack from the Guild agent on the island. But injuries he had received weren't the worst from that trip.

"Slow down!" Seichan called behind him.

She hobbled after him, limping on her right leg. Medics at Sigma had also tended to her lacerations, suturing up the deeper bite marks and pumping her full of antibiotics and a lighter dose of pain reliever, as evidenced by the slight glaze to her eyes. She'd been lucky the orcas had treated her as gently as they had, or she could have lost the leg.

Gray reduced his pace so she could catch up to him. "We could've caught that cab."

"Needed to stretch my legs. The more I keep moving, the faster I'll heal."

Gray wasn't so sure that was the case. He'd overheard one of the doctors warning Seichan to take it easy. But he noted the feral glint behind that medicated glaze. She hadn't liked being cooped up underground for two hours any better than he had. It was said sharks couldn't breathe unless they were constantly moving. He suspected the same was true of her.

Together, they crossed Madison Drive. Her left foot slipped as she stepped from the curb. He caught her around the waist to keep her from falling. She swore, balanced herself, and began to push off of him-but he pulled her back, took her hand, and placed it on his shoulder.

"Just hold on."

She started to lift her hand away, but he frowned at her. She sighed, and her fingers tightened on his shoulder. He kept his hand on the small of her back, under her open jacket, ready if she needed more help.

By the time they crossed the street and cut between the Natural History Museum and the National Gallery of Art, her grip was digging deep into his deltoids. He slid his hand around her waist, resting it under her rib cage to support her.

"Next time, the cab..." she gasped out, offering him a small grin as she limped along.

At the moment Gray was selfishly glad they had walked. She leaned heavily against him. He smelled the peach scent of her hair, mixed with something richer, almost spicy from her damp skin. And down deeper, he was enough of a primitive male to appreciate this rare moment of weakness, of her need for him.

Her pressed his hand harder against her, feeling the heat of her body through her blouse, but such intimacy did not last long.

"Thank God we're almost there," she said, leaning away but keeping one hand on his shoulder for balance.

The National Archives Building rose ahead of them. They were to meet the curator and his assistant down in the research room. Shortly after reaching Sigma, Gray had had a photocopy of the old journal's pages hand-delivered to them. The original was safely secured in a vault at Sigma. They weren't taking any chances with it.

Out on the street, Gray easily spotted the two agents assigned to watch the Archives. Another pair should be inside. They were keeping close track of even the photocopies.

As he helped Seichan with the steps, his phone jangled in his pocket. He reached in and pulled it out enough to check the caller ID. He'd left Monk with Kat. The pair was overseeing events in Iceland, trying to determine if they'd triggered another Laki eruption. But as was the case in Utah, the heat of the eruption likely killed the nano-nest out there, but would that exploding archipelago lead to another global catastrophe like the one Fortescue had witnessed?

As it turned out, the call was not from Monk, but from Gray's parents' home phone. He'd already talked to his mother after he'd landed in D.C., checking on his father after that bad night. As usual, his dad was fine the next morning, just his usual forgetful self.

He flipped it open and held the phone to his ear. "Mom?"

"No, it's your dad," he heard. "Can't you tell from the sound of my voice?"

Gray didn't bother to tell him he hadn't said anything until then. He let it go. "What do you need, Dad?"

"I was calling to tell you... because of..." There was a long confused pause.

"Dad?"

"Just wait, dammit..." His father shouted to the side. "Harriet, why was I calling Kenny?"

His mother's voice was faint. "What?"

"I mean Gray . Why was I calling Gray?"

Well, at least he got the name right.

He heard some jabbering in the background, his father's voice growing gruffer and angrier. He had to stop this before it escalated.

"Dad!" he shouted into the phone.

People looked in his direction.

"What?" his father groused at him.

He kept his voice calm and even. "Hey, why don't you just call me back? When you remember. That'll be fine."

"Okay, yeah, that sounds good. Just have a lot going on... 's got me all messed up."

"Don't worry about it, Dad."

"Okay, son."

Gray flipped the phone closed.

Seichan stared at him, silently asking if everything was okay. Her hand had shifted from his shoulder to his hip, as if helping to hold him upright.

He pocketed the phone. "Just family stuff."

Still, she stared a bit longer, as if trying to read him.

He pointed to the door. "Let's go find out what Fortescue thought was so important that he had to hide his journal in Iceland."

5:01 P.M.

Seichan lowered herself onto one of the conference chairs, leaning her weight on her good hip and kicking her right leg straight out. She tried her best not to moan with relief.

Gray remained standing. She studied him, remembering the strained look on his face, the glimmer of fear in his eyes as he spoke with his father. There was no evidence of it now. Where had he bottled it away? How long could he keep doing that?

Still, he was in his element now, and for that she was relieved-almost as much as she was about the weight off her leg. But both their burdens would not stay away for long.

"So what can you tell me about Fortescue's journal?" Gray asked.

Dr. Eric Heisman nodded vigorously as he paced the room. The space was even more of a shambles than before. Documents and books had trebled in number on the table. Someone had wheeled in another two microfiche readers from a neighboring research room. Other people in the building must be wondering what was going on in here, especially with the armed guard posted at the door. But considering all the valuable documents preserved in the Archives' expansive vaults and helium-enriched enclosures, maybe the sight of a guard wasn't that unusual.

Still, by now, Heisman looked more like a mad scientist than a museum curator. His shirt was rumpled, rolled to the elbows, and his white hair stuck up like a fright wig. But the impression came mostly from his eyes, red-rimmed and wired, shining with a fanatical zeal.

Again, though, the latter might have come from the pile of empty Starbucks coffee cups filling the room's lone trash bin.

How long had the man been up?

"Truly astounding stuff in here," Heisman said. "I don't know where to begin. Where did you find it?"

Gray shook his head. "I'm afraid that's classified, as is our conversation."

He waved the words away. "I know, I know... Sharyn and I signed all the necessary documents for this temporary clearance."

His assistant sat at the other end of the table. She hadn't said a word when they'd entered. Her dark eyes merely lifted long enough from the photocopied pages to nod at them. At some point, she had changed out of her clingy black dress and into a smart blouse and casual slacks.

Wary, Seichan kept half an eye on her. There was nothing the woman had done to warrant suspicion, beyond her stunning looks, with her smooth skin, petite features, and flatironed black hair. What was someone so beautiful doing as a mere assistant to a curator in a vault of dusty manuscripts? This woman could easily be walking down a runway in Milan.

Seichan also didn't like how Gray's eyes lingered on her whenever she shifted in her seat, to turn a page, to jot a note.

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" Gray suggested, trying to jump-start the discussion.

"Not a bad suggestion," Heisman said, and pointed Gray to a chair "Sit. I'll tell you. It's a remarkable story. Fills in so many blanks."

Gray obeyed.

Heisman continued to pace, too agitated to sit. "This journal is a diary of events, beginning when Franklin first approached Archard."

Archard...?

Seichan hid a smirk. Looked like the curator was now on a first-name basis with the Frenchman.

"It starts with the discovery of an Indian mound in Kentucky." Heisman turned to Sharyn for help.

She didn't even lift her head. "The Barrow of the Serpent."

"Yes, very dramatic. It was there that they discovered a golden map lining the inside of a mastodon skull, which was itself wrapped within a buffalo hide. It was the hidden Indian map that the dying shaman had told Jefferson about."

Heisman continued, gesturing as he spoke for emphasis when needed, which apparently was a lot. "But that wasn't the first time Jefferson and Franklin met with a Native American shaman. Chief Canasatego brought another shaman from a distant Western tribe to meet with Jefferson. It seems this old fellow had traveled a long way to meet with the new white leaders to these shores. The shaman told Jefferson a long story about previous pale Indians who once shared their lands, a people with great powers. It was said that they also came from the east, like the colonists. This, of course, drew great interest on the part of those two Founding Fathers. Likewise, a fair amount of skepticism."

Gray nodded. "No doubt."

"Eventually the shaman returned with proof. Making sure that what transpired was cloaked in great secrecy, he demonstrated evidence of a technology that baffled and astounded Franklin and Jefferson." Heisman turned to his assistant. "Sharyn... could you read that passage?"

"One moment." She shifted pages, found the right one, and read. " 'They came with a gold that would not melt, weapons of a steel that no Indian had ever wielded, but most important, with a silvery dry elixir a very pinch of which was a thousandfold more powerful than a mountain of black powder.' "

Gray shared a look with Seichan. The immutable gold had to be the same metal as they had seen on the tablets. It was far denser and harder than ordinary gold. And the silvery dry elixir ... could that be the source of the powerful explosions that had been witnessed in both Utah and Iceland?

Heisman continued, "Because the Iroquois Confederacy very much wanted to be part of the new nation, they were trying to broker a deal."

"For the Fourteenth Colony," Gray added.

"The Devil Colony, yes. The negotiations, though held in secret, were fairly well along. It would be a trade. The Iroquois Confederacy even staked out its territory." He turned, but this time Sharyn was ready.

" 'They wished to possess a great land beyond the French territories, lands unexplored and unclaimed, wishing not to threaten the growing interest of the colonists to the east. The Iroquois would give up their old lands and their great secret knowledge in exchange for a permanent new home and a solid stake in this new nation. Additionally, it was ascertained through private meetings with Chief Canasatego that at the heart of the Indian colony was a lost city, the source of these miraculous materials. But of that place's location, they remained duly cryptic.' "

As his assistant read the translation, Heisman slid an open atlas across the table. It displayed an old map of the United States. He poked at a shaded section that spread northward from New Orleans in a V shape, covering most of what would later be the middle of the country. "Here are the lands bought from the French by Jefferson."

"The Louisiana Purchase," Gray said.

"From the journal entry, I think the proposed Fourteenth Colony desired by the Indians must lie somewhere west of the Purchase. But Archard never goes into any more detail on where exactly it was. There's only one tangential mention."

"What was it?" Seichan asked.

"After Archard unearthed that Indian map at the serpent mound, he determined the metal of the map was composed of the same strange gold. And on that map were marked two spots."

" Iceland was one of them," Gray muttered, plainly working the puzzle in his head.

"That's right. The second was far out to the west. Archard believed that the site marked in the Western territories might be the location of that lost city, the proposed heart of the new colony . But it was too far west-off in uncharted lands of that time-and the map apparently was not precise enough on the details, so Archard decided to investigate Iceland first, as that sea journey was well charted by sailors."

Gray leaned back. "I don't suppose the Frenchman thought to make a copy of that map to include with his journal?"

"No. According to Archard, Thomas Jefferson kept the map a great secret. He would not let anyone but his inner circle see it. No copies were to be made."

Seichan understood his caution. The president must have feared his unknown enemy and didn't realize how badly his government had already been infiltrated. Mistrust and paranoia . Yes, she could easily put herself in Jefferson's shoes.

"What became of the map?" Gray asked.

Heisman only had to turn to his assistant.

Sharyn read, " 'Ever crafty, Jefferson devised a way to preserve the Indian map, to protect it, yet keep it forever out of the hands of the faceless enemy. He would use the very gold to hide it in plain view of all. None would suspect the treasure hidden at the heart of the Seal.' "

Gray frowned. "What does that mean?"

Heisman shrugged. "He never elaborates. That's pretty much the first half of the journal. We're still working on translating the second half, starting with Archard's secret mission by sea to Iceland."

Gray's phone rang. "Sorry," he said, and checked who was calling.

Seichan again noted the flicker of worry shine brighter, always hidden just under the surface. He let out a small sigh of relief, though he was probably not even aware of it.

"It's Monk," he said quietly to her. "I'd better take this outside."

Gray excused himself, ducking out into the hall. Heisman used the break to consult with Sharyn as she finished working through the translation of the last half of the journal. The two bent and whispered over the photocopies.

"They should see this..." Heisman said, but the rest was lost in whispers.

Gray popped his head back into the room and motioned for Seichan to join him.

"More trouble?" she asked as she stepped out.

He pulled her over to a quiet, out-of-the-way corner. "Monk just heard from the Japanese physicists. During the Iceland explosion, another massive spike in neutrinos was generated from the island, ten times larger than the Utah spike. It's already subsiding, as is the volcanic activity throughout the archipelago. So we may be lucky in that regard. The consensus is that the extreme heat of Iceland's volcanic eruption killed the nano-nest out there, stopping any further spread."

Seichan heard no relief in his words. Something more was coming.

"But the latest news from Japan came in about five minutes ago. The physicists have picked up yet another site that's going hot. They think the Iceland explosion has destabilized a third cache of nano-material."

Seichan pictured a chain of explosions linked together.

First Utah... then Iceland... and now this third one.

Gray continued: "And according to the physicists' recordings, this new deposit must be massive. The wave of neutrinos being generated is so large and widespread that they're having difficulty pinning down its source. All they can tell us right now is that it's here in the States, somewhere out west."

"That's a lot of territory to cover."

Gray nodded. "The scientists are coordinating with other labs around the world, trying to get us more information."

"That's a problem," Seichan mumbled.

"Why?"

"We were ambushed in Iceland by Guild operatives. That means they're keyed into the same information stream as we are. Since we thwarted their efforts on that island, they're not going to sit idly by and let the same thing happen again. I know how these guys think, how they'll react. I worked long enough in that organization that I share their DNA."

"Then what's their next move?"

"They're going to shut down our access to any new information, dry it up so that only they have the critical intelligence from here on out." Seichan stared up at Gray, ensuring that he understood the gravity of her next words. "They'll go after our assets in Japan. To silence them."

June 1, 6:14 A.M.

Gifu Prefecture, Japan

Riku Tanaka hated to be touched, especially when he was agitated. Like now. He had donned a pair of cotton gloves and had inserted earplugs in order to tone down the commotion around him. He tapped a pencil on his desk as he stared at the real-time data flowing across his screen. Every fifth tap, he would flick the pencil and expertly flip it in his grip. It helped calm him.

Though it was early in the morning, his lab-normally so quiet, buried at the heart of Mount Ikeno-was bustling with activity. Jun Yoshida- sama had summoned additional support staff after the huge neutrino surge was picked up: four more physicists and two computer technicians. They were all gathered around Yoshida at a neighboring station, attempting to coordinate data from six different labs around the world. It was too much to take, so Riku had retreated to the lone console, away from the others, at the back of the lab, as far from them as possible.

While they worked on the larger puzzle, he concentrated on the smaller one. With his head cocked to the side (it helped him think better), he studied a global chart that was glowing on his screen. Various small icons dotted the map. Each represented a smaller neutrino spike.

"Not worth our time," Yoshida had declared when Riku had first presented the findings to him.

Riku thought otherwise. He knew Yoshida was wasting his energy, stirring and making so much noise. He would fail. The new surge detected out along the western half of the United States was beyond pinpointing. While it bore the same heartbeatlike pattern seen from Iceland, this surge was 123.4 times larger.

He enjoyed the sequential numbering of that magnitude.

1, 2, 3, 4.

The sequence was pure coincidence, but the beauty of it made him smile inside. There was a purity and exquisiteness in numbers that no one seemed to understand, except him.

He continued to stare at the map. He'd detected these anomalous readings after the first neutrino blast in Utah. While that blast had ignited something unstable in Iceland, it had also triggered these smaller surges, little flickers from spots around the globe. He'd recorded them again after Iceland went critical.

Not worth our time...

He pushed aside that nagging voice, staring at the small dots, looking for a pattern. One or two were out west, but the exact locations were obscured by the tsunami-like wave of neutrinos from out there, a flood that washed away all details. That was why Yoshida would fail.

"Riku?"

Someone touched his shoulder. He flinched away and turned to find Dr. Janice Cooper standing behind him.

"Sorry," Janice said-she preferred to be called Janice, though he still found such informality uncomfortable. She removed her arm from his shoulder.

He pinched his brow, trying to interpret the small muscle movements in her face, trying to connect an emotional content to them. The best he could come up with was that she was hungry, but that probably wasn't right. Due to his Asperger's syndrome, he was wrong too often in his assessments to trust them.

She slid a chair over, sat down, and placed a cup of green tea near his elbow. "I thought you might like this."

He nodded, but he didn't understand why she had to sit so close.

"Riku, we've been trying to figure out why this surge out west happened."

"The Iceland bombardment of neutrinos coursed through the planet and destabilized a third source."

"Yes, but why now? Why didn't this deposit destabilize earlier, following the Utah spike? Iceland went critical, but not this new deposit out west. The anomaly is troubling the other physicists."

Riku continued studying his screen. "Activation energy," he said, and glanced to her as if this should be obvious. And it was obvious.

She shook her head. Was she disagreeing or not understanding?

He sighed. "Some chemical reactions, like nuclear reactions, require a set amount of energy to get them started."

"Activation energy."

He frowned. Hadn't he just said that? But he continued: "Often the amount of energy is dependent on the volume or mass of the substrate. The deposit in Iceland must have been smaller. So the quantities of neutrinos from the Utah spike were sufficient to cause it to destabilize."

She nodded. "But the neutrino burst from Iceland was much larger . Enough to destabilize the deposit out west. To light that fatter fuse out there. If you're right, this would mean that the western deposit must be much bigger ."

Again, hadn't he just made that clear?

"It should be 123.4 times larger." Just speaking the numbers helped calm him. "That is, of course, if there is an exact one-to-one correlation between neutrino generation and mass."

Her face went a bit paler as he gave this assessment.

Uncomfortable, he turned back to his screen, to his own puzzle, to the tiny flickers of neutrinos.

"What do you think those smaller emissions are?" Janice asked after a long moment of welcome silence.

Riku closed his eyes to think, enjoying the puzzle. He pictured the neutrinos flying out, igniting the fuses of the unstable deposits, but when they hit the smaller targets, all they did was excite them, triggering minibursts.

"They can't be the same as the unstable substance. The pattern is not consistent. I don't see any parallelism. Instead, I think these blip marks are a substance related to those deposits but not identical to them."

He leaned closer and reached to the screen but dared not touch it. "Here's one in Belgium. One or two again out in the Western United States-but they're obscured by the new burst. And an especially strong response from a location in the Eastern United States."

Janice shifted forward. "Kentucky..."

Before he could fathom why she had to lean so close, his world shattered. Sirens blared, red lamps flashed along the walls. The noise cut through his earplugs like knives. He slammed his palms over his ears. To the side, the others began to yell and gesture. Again he could divine no meaning from their faces.

What is happening?

On the far side of the room, the elevator doors opened. Figures in black gear burst forth, spreading wide. They had rifles in their grips. The head-splitting rat-a-tat of their weapons drove him to the floor-not to dodge the barrage of bullets, but to flee the noise.

Screams only made it worse.

From beneath his desk, he saw Yoshida fall and roll. A large chunk of his skull was missing. Blood was pouring from his head. Riku could not take his eyes off the spreading pool.

Then someone grabbed him. He fought, but it was Janice. She snatched a handful of his lab jacket and dragged him around his desk. She pointed her arm toward a side exit. It led to an open cavernous space, a former mine, but now home to the Super-Kamiokande detector.

He understood. They had to flee the lab. It was death to remain hiding here. As if to underscore this thought, he heard the pop-pop of rifle fire. The invaders were killing everyone.

Staying low, hidden by the row of desks, he followed Janice as she headed to the side exit. She burst through, and he dove out at her heels. She slammed the door behind him and searched around.

Gunfire echoed from the tunnel ahead. It was the old mine shaft that led to the surface. Besides the new elevator, it was the only way into or out of the facility. The assassins had both exits covered and were converging here.

"This way!" Janice reached back and tugged his arm.

Together, they fled in the only direction they could, running down another tunnel. But Riku knew it led to a dead end. The gunmen would be on top of them in a matter of moments. Thirty meters farther along, the tunnel emptied into a cavern.

He could see the domed roof stretching far above him. It was draped in polyethylene Mineguard, to block radon seeping from the rock. Beneath his feet was the Super-Kamiokande detector itself, a massive stainless-steel tank filled with fifty thousand tons of ultrapure water and lined by thirteen thousand photomultiplier tubes.

"C'mon," Janice said.

They dashed together around the electronics hut. The cavernous space was littered with equipment and gear, with forklifts and hand trucks. Overhead, bright yellow scaffolding held up cranes, all to service the Super-Kamiokande detector.

A harsh shout in Arabic rebounded behind them, echoing off the walls. The assassins were sweeping toward them.

Riku searched around. There was nowhere to hide that wouldn't be discovered in seconds.

Janice continued to draw him along with her. She stopped at a rack of diving gear-then he understood.

And balked.

"It's the only way," she urged in a hard whisper.

She pushed a heavy air tank, already equipped with a regulator, into his arms. He had no choice but to hug it. She turned the valve on top, and air hissed from the mouthpiece. She grabbed another tank and rushed to a hatch in the floor. It opened into the top of the giant water-filled vault below. Divers used the hatch to service the Super-Kamiokande detector's main tank, mostly to repair broken photomultiplier tubes.

Janice fumbled the regulator's mouthpiece between his lips. He wanted to spit it out-it tasted bad-but he bit down on the silicon. She pointed to the dark hole.

"Go!"

With a great tremble of fear, he stepped over the opening and jumped feetfirst into the cold water. The weight of the tank pulled him quickly toward the distant bottom. He craned up and saw Janice splash overhead, pulling the hatch closed behind her.

Complete and utter darkness swamped him.

Riku continued his blind plunge, screaming out air bubbles as his feet crashed into the bottom. He crouched on the floor, hugging his air tank, shivering-for now in fear, but the cold would soon make it worse.

Then arms found him and encircled him. He felt a cheek press against his, so very warm. Janice was holding him in the dark.

For the first time in his life, a touch felt good.

May 31, 5:32 P.M.

Washington, D.C.

"It took Archard a full month to sail to Iceland," Dr. Heisman was saying. "The seas were especially rough."

Gray sat at the table beside Seichan as the curator set about summarizing the contents of the back half of Fortescue's journal. Sharyn had finished the translation while Gray had been raising the alarm concerning a possible attack in Japan.

His knee bounced up and down. He needed to hear this tale, but he also wanted to be at Sigma command, to find out if the Japanese physicists were okay.

He glanced to Seichan.

Is she just being overly paranoid?

He didn't think so. He trusted her judgment, especially when it came to the Guild. He had promptly called in the warning to Kat, who had alerted Japanese authorities of the potential threat. They were all still waiting to hear back.

"On that long trip," Heisman continued, "Archard spent many days writing at length concerning his theories about the pale Indians, the mythical people who gave the Iroquois' ancestors these powerful tokens. He'd collated the stories he had heard from many tribes, hearing often of white men or white-skinned Indians. He collected rumors from the colonists who claimed to have found evidence of previous settlements, homesteads of non-Indians, as evidenced by the sophisticated building techniques. But mostly Archard seemed fixated on a possible Jewish origin to these people."

"Jewish?" Gray shifted taller in his seat. "Why?"

"Because Archard describes some writing found on the gold Indian map. He thought it looked like Hebrew but different."

Sharyn shared the passage from the journal. " 'The scratches on the map are clearly those of some unknown scribe. Could they have been written by one of the pale Indians? I have consulted the most learned rabbinical experts, who all agree that there appears to be some commonality with the ancient Jewish writing, yet as one, they say it is not in fact Hebrew, though perhaps related to that language. It is a confounding mystery.' "

As she read, Heisman grew more excited, nodding his head. "It is a mystery. While Sharyn was finishing her translation and you were busy contacting your people about Japan, I received word on something that was troubling me about that early sketch of the Great Seal, the one with the fourteen arrows."

Heisman reached to a stack of papers and pulled it free. "Look beneath the Seal itself. There is some faint writing, almost like notations."

Gray had noticed the marks before but hadn't placed any significance on them. "What about them?"

"Well, I consulted an ancient-language expert. The writing is an odd form of Hebrew, just like Archard mentioned. The curve of letters beneath the Seal spelled out the word Manasseh, which is the name of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel."

Gray's attention sharpened. Hours earlier, Painter had passed on information speculating that these ancient people, the Tawtsee'untsaw Pootseev, could possibly be descendants of a lost tribe of Israel. Painter had also referenced the Book of Mormon, whose scripture contended that an exiled tribe of Israelites had come to early America- specifically the clan of Manasseh .

Heisman continued: "In fact, the Founding Fathers seemed a bit obsessed with the lost tribes of Israel. When the committee to draft the original Great Seal first got together, Benjamin Franklin expressed a wish for the design to include a scene out of the Book of Exodus, when the Israelites went into exile. Thomas Jefferson suggested a depiction of the children of Israel in the wilderness."

Gray studied the sketch of the Seal. Had the Founding Fathers known about this lost tribe reaching these shores? Did they somehow learn that the "pale Indians" described by the Iroquois were in fact exiled Israelites?

It seemed that way. They must have been trying to incorporate that knowledge into the Great Seal, to memorialize the tribe.

Heisman's next words suggested that Gray was right. "What I find odd is that the tribes of Israel were all represented by different pairs of symbols. In the case of the Manasseh clan, it was an olive branch and a bundle of arrows ." Heisman glanced up to Gray. "Why would the Founding Fathers plant the symbols of the Manasseh tribe in the Great Seal?"

Gray suspected that he knew the answer to this question, but he had a more immediate concern. He waved Heisman onward. "That's all well and good, but let's continue to the place where Fortescue reached Iceland..."

Heisman looked disappointed, but he slid the draft of the Great Seal aside. "All right. Like I said, it took Archard about a month to reach Iceland, but eventually he grew confident that he'd found the right island, as marked on the map. But once there, he had no luck in finding anything. After twenty-two days of searching, he began to despair. Then his luck changed. One of his searchers dropped an apple while investigating a rather lengthy cavern system. It fell down a chute no one had noted. A lamp lowered down that hole revealed a glint of gold near the bottom."

"They found the spot," Seichan said.

"He goes into great length describing the deep cavern. How stone boxes held hundreds of gold plates inscribed with the same proto-Hebrew writing. He also found solid gold jars filled with the oft-mentioned silvery dry elixir . He was quite excited and drew many pictures."

From the tick in the curator's voice, it was clear that he was also excited. Heisman slid one of the pages over to Gray and Seichan. The curator tapped the picture in the center. "Those are the golden containers for the elixir."

Gray stiffened at the sight. The drawing showed tall urns topped by various sculpted heads: that of a jackal, a hawk, a baboon, and a hooded man.

"Those look like Egyptian canopic jars," he said.

"Yes. Archard thought so, too. Or at least he recognized that they were of Egyptian origin. He postulated that perhaps the pale Indians were in fact refugees from the Holy Lands, some secret sect of magi who had roots in both the Jewish faith and Egyptian traditions. But such speculations came to an abrupt end. After this point in the journal, his writing becomes very sloppy and hurried; it's clear that he was in a state of panic."

"Why?"

At a cue from her boss, Sharyn began to read. " 'I have heard word that a ship approaches Iceland. That the Enemy has discovered our investigation and closes upon us. They must never find this cache of lost treasures. My men and I will do our best to lure them away, to keep them from this island. Pray that I am successful. We will strike for the coast, to the cold mainland, and draw them after us. I will take a small sampling of the treasure in the hopes that I can still reach the shores of America. But I leave this journal as a testament, in case I fail.' "

Heisman crossed his arms. "That's how the journal ends, with Archard fleeing his enemy. But I think we can piece together what happened after that."

"The Laki eruption," Gray said.

"The site of that volcano is not far from the coastline. Archard must have made it some distance, but then catastrophe struck."

Gray had witnessed such an event himself. He pictured the explosion, followed by the violent volcanic eruption.

Heisman sighed. "After that, we know from Jefferson's letter that our Frenchman went into deep seclusion, regretting the actions he had taken, actions that led to the death of more than six million people."

"Until he was summoned twenty years later by Jefferson to undertake a new mission. To join Lewis and Clark on their sojourn west." Gray let the pieces fall together in his head. "According to the date on the map you showed us earlier, Jefferson concluded the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. That very year, Jefferson commissioned his friend Captain Meriwether Lewis to put together a team to explore those former French territories and the lands west of there."

Gray's head buzzed with the certainty of his assessment. "Fortescue went with them. He was sent to find that spot on the Indian map, to find what Fortescue himself believed was the heart of the new colony, that lost city."

Seichan kept pace with him. "And he must have found it. He vanished out of history, and Lewis was murdered."

Gray turned to Heisman. "Do you have a map that marks the trail that Lewis and Clark took?"

"Of course. Just one moment." He and his assistant combed through their stacks and quickly found the right book. "Here it is."

Gray stared down at the page. He ran a finger along the trail, starting at Camp Wood in St. Charles, Missouri, and ending at Fort Clatsop on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.

"Somewhere along this route-or close to it-has to be the location of the lost Fourteenth Colony."

But where?

His phone rang again. He'd left his cell on the tabletop; a glance at it showed Sigma's emergency number.

Seichan saw it, too.

"I'll be right back," he said, and headed again to the door. Seichan dogged his heels and joined him in the hall.

He flipped open the phone. "Monk?"

"It's Kat, Gray. Monk's on his way over to meet you with a car."

"What's wrong? What's the news from Japan?"

"Bad. An assault team killed nearly everyone at the facility."

He swore silently. They'd been too slow.

Kat continued: "But two key personnel survived. Japanese authorities fished them out of the neutron detector's water tank. Rather clever place to hide. They were whisked into PSIA custody at our request."

PSIA was the acronym for the Japanese intelligence agency. Calling in the latter was a wise precaution. If no one knew about the survivors, Sigma command had a chance to get a step up on the Guild. Kat knew it, too.

"I've been on the phone with one of them," Kat said. "An American postgraduate student. She reports that before the attack, the Japanese physicists had been making no headway on discovering the source of the latest neutrino surge. But she related something odd, something that was noted by the other physicist who survived. He was concerned about some spotty neutrino bursts he'd detected. I didn't give this detail much thought until she told me where those readings originated."

"Where?"

"Maybe one or two sites out west, but he couldn't pinpoint the locations due to the background rush of neutrinos from the larger spike. Of the two he was able to identify, one was in Belgium."

She let this piece of news hang. It took Gray only a breath to recognize its significance. He remembered Captain Huld's description of the hunters who'd come to Ellirey Island before Gray and his team. He'd said they were from Belgium. Monk must have made the same connection. It could be a coincidence, but Gray wasn't buying it.

He told Kat as much. "The assault team in Iceland was from Belgium. That's got to be significant. But what about that other spot the physicist noted? Where is it?"

"It's in Kentucky."

Kentucky?

Kat went on: "Monk's on his way over to pick you up. I want you to check out the location. You're wheels-up in fifteen minutes. We must take full advantage of this intel while we still can."

Gray sensed some hesitancy on her part. "What does Director Crowe think about all of this?"

"He doesn't. I've not been able to raise him since we got this news. He was heading deep into the desert. I'll keep trying to reach him while you're en route. But we can't wait. If things change, I'll let you know. I'm also in contact with the president's chief of staff."

That startled him. "Why involve President Gant?"

"Where you're going, you'll need a presidential order to get inside. It will take Gant's signature to open those doors."

"What doors? Where are we going?"

The answer left him dumbstruck. After a few more details, Kat signed off. Gray closed his phone to find Seichan staring at him.

"Where are they sending us now?" she asked.

He slowly shook his head, trying to make sense of what he'd just heard, and told her.

"Fort Knox."