The Jefferson Key

FBI.

They wheeled to the stairs that led up into the plane. The cuffs on his wrists were removed and he stepped from the car, slipping on the jacket. A man appeared from the far side of the stairs. Tall, lanky, with thin gray hair and a tranquil face.

Edwin Davis.

“They’re watching us,” Davis said. “From the terminal. Every network has a camera here with a telescopic lens. Careful with your words. They hire lip-readers.”

“I heard you got promoted.”

Last time they’d met in Venice, Davis was a deputy national security adviser. Now he served as White House chief of staff.

Davis motioned to the rolling stairs and muttered, “Lucky me. Let’s go up.”

“What about Daniels?”

“You’ll see.”

HALE WATCHED THE TELEVISION. ADVENTURE WAS NEARING home, now under engine power as they cruised west on the murky Pamlico River. He’d turned the volume down, tired of the anchors speculating in hope of holding viewers’ attention while the same grainy videos of two mechanical devices sprouting from the Grand Hyatt hotel played over and over. Twenty-four-hour news was good for the first thirty minutes of a crisis, but after that it was overkill.

He shook his head, thinking of his fellow captains.

The damn fools.

He knew it was their right to do as they pleased-majority ruled in the Commonwealth-but he’d been excluded from their vote, and that ran contrary to the Articles. Unfortunately, desperate situations bred desperate acts, and he understood their frustration. They were all facing prison and the forfeiture of everything their families had accumulated for the past three centuries. Their only hope rested with the single sheet of paper he now held, encased within its own plastic sheath.

The second page of Andrew Jackson’s scathing letter. Since you adore secrets and plot your life along a path in the shadows, I offer you a challenge that should suit you. The sheet attached to this letter is a code, one formulated by the esteemed Thomas Jefferson. I am told he thought it to be the perfect cipher. Succeed in learning its message and you will know where I have hidden what you crave. Fail and you remain the pathetic traitors that you are today.

He stared at the page.

Nine rows of random letters and symbols.

Gibberish. My sincerest hope is that the unmanly course ascribed to you shall be your ruin and that I shall live to enjoy that day.

For 175 years the failure to solve Jefferson’s cipher had been a source of concern. Four times that concern had risen to possible ruin, and four times the situations had been handled.

Now a fifth scenario had arisen.

But contrary to what his colleagues might think, he hadn’t sat idle. He was working on a solution to their problem. Two separate paths, actually. Unfortunately, his compatriots may have now endangered both of those efforts.

On the television, something new appeared.

The image of Air Force One on the ground at John F. Kennedy International Airport. A scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen announced that a suspect had been apprehended trying to flee the Grand Hyatt, but had been released.

Mistaken identity.