The Devil Colony

  Painter stared below. The Pitcher’s Mound was still intact. The only change was a bit more steam rising from its cone.

  “That sucked,” Kowalski said. “I was expecting—”

  The entire basin detonated below them. It cracked like a dropped plate and blasted upward in bus-sized chunks that cleared twice the height of the canyon walls and came crashing down, stripping forested hills. At the same time steaming water rocketed upward, forming a geyser twenty yards wide and shooting a thousand feet into the air.

  “Now that’s what I call a colonic!” Kowalski said.

  The helicopter banked away, its pilot fearful of getting caught in the maelstrom of rock, water, and steam.

  Chin watched. “That much heat should definitely have destroyed the nano-nest.”

  Still, another question remained: Did the huge blast trigger the very thing they feared? Everyone held their breath as the helicopter circled, rising ever higher. The geyser continued to churn, but its fountain slowly began to recede. There was no evidence of magma rising or lava erupting.

  After another minute, Chin let out a loud puff. “Looks like we’re okay.”

  The helicopter spun farther out, heading away.

  As they turned, Painter got a bird’s-eye view of the entire Yellowstone caldera. All across the basin, water was shooting high into the air, spiraling with steam.

  “My God, it’s every geyser,” Chin said, amazed. “Every geyser’s erupting!”

  As the helicopter raced across the dazzling display, Painter stared out in wonder at the dance of waters, the twinkle of steamy rainbows, suddenly deeply struck by the wonder of this world, this gift to mankind in all its resplendent natural beauty.

  With his face pressed to the window, Kowalski looked equally impressed. “Next time, we should use more C4.”

  Chapter 43

  June 1, 11:02 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Gray took a cab straight from the airport to the National Archives. He’d taken a short nap on the flight from Columbia, Tennessee, after discovering all had gone well out in Yellowstone. He felt worlds better. Painter would be spending another day or two out there to make sure everything was okay and to make sure his niece was settled into her classes at Brigham Young University.

  Back at the airport, he’d wanted to go with Monk to the hospital, to make sure they took good care of him after his gunshot wound, but Kat had called him as they were landing. Dr. Heisman, she said, had been able to decipher Meriwether Lewis’s coded message and wanted to share it right away. Kat offered to send someone else to the museum, but considering all the trouble and bloodshed involved in obtaining the buffalo hide and its message, Gray wanted to be the first to hear what it said.

  He owed it to Monk.

  He owed it to Meriwether Lewis.

  So he said good-bye to Monk at the airport. His friend had been in good spirits. And for good reason. The private jet they’d flown had been stocked with an amazing selection of single-malt scotches. Kat would take Gray’s place at the hospital. And probably just as well. She would keep Monk from hassling his nurses too severely.

  The cab slowed to the curb in front of the Archives. Seichan stretched next to him in the backseat.

  “Here already,” she mumbled drowsily.

  Gray caught the cabdriver staring at her in the rearview mirror as he paid the fare. He couldn’t blame the guy. She’d changed out of her blue coveralls and back into her leather jacket, her black jeans, and a gray T-shirt.

  They climbed out of the cab, and both hobbled a bit up the steps. Their bruises, scrapes, and injuries had stiffened up. Seichan leaned on Gray’s shoulder without having to be asked. His hand found her hip without her really needing the added support.

  They reached the doors to find Heisman already waiting for them.

  “There you both are,” he said by way of greeting. “Come. I have everything in the conference room. You didn’t bring the buffalo hide here by any chance? I would love to see it with my own eyes, rather than that photo you e-mailed.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” Gray said.

  They entered the same conference room they had been in before to find it all cleaned up again. Only a few books dotted the table. Apparently, deciphering a centuries-old message required merely a couple of spare hours and the same number of books.

  As they settled into the room, Gray asked, “How did you solve it so fast?”

  “What? Meriwether’s final words? It wasn’t hard. The code that Meriwether used with Jefferson is well known. I’m sure they probably used more involved ones occasionally, but for most correspondence, they used a simple cipher. And considering that Meriwether was writing this as he lay dying, I suspect he went with the cipher he knew best.”

  Gray pictured the man, shot twice—once in the gut, once in the head—struggling to leave this last message.

  Heisman pushed and sent his chair rolling down the length of the table so he could grab a book. “I can show you. It’s a code based on the Vigenère cipher. It was used in Europe at the time and was considered unbreakable. The key to it is a secret password known only to the parties involved. Jefferson and Lewis always used the word artichokes.”

  “Artichokes?”

  “That’s right. The code itself involves a twenty-eight-column alphanumeric table to—”

  Gray’s cell phone chimed with incoming voice mail. Saved by the bell. “Excuse me for a moment.”

  He stood up, stepped toward the door, but pointed back to Seichan. “Dr. Heisman, why don’t you explain all about the cipher to my colleague? I’ll be right back.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  Seichan just glared at him and rolled her eyes in exasperation as he left.

  Out in the hall, the smile on Gray’s face faded as he read the number of voice mails on his phone. He’d been using the disposable for the past day and forgot to put his battery back into his personal phone until he hit ground again in D.C. Still, apparently it took over forty-five minutes to route and load the calls after he’d powered up.

  He stared at the screen.

  Maybe this is one of the reasons why it took so long.

  He had received twenty-two messages over the past twelve hours, all from the same number. He kicked himself for not calling earlier. He remembered he’d gotten his mother’s first voice mail as they were fleeing Fort Knox. He’d had no time to listen to it then—and it had slipped his mind during all the commotion.

  He started from the beginning, already feeling that familiar tension at the base of his spine. He held the phone to his ear.

  “Gray, it’s your mother.” She started every phone call that way. Like I don’t know your voice, Mom. “It’s ten-thirty, and I wanted to let you know your father’s having a bad night. You don’t have to come over, but I thought you should know.”

  Uh-oh.

  Rather than listening to all the messages, he hit redial. Might as well hear how things had gone from the horse’s mouth. The phone rang and rang and then went to voice mail.

  That tension in his back squeezed his spine a little tighter. Wanting to know what happened, he listened through the rest of the messages.

  “Gray, it’s your mother again. It’s getting bad, so I’m going to call that number for the home-health-care worker you left in case of an emergency.”

  Very good, Mom . . .

  The next few messages grew increasingly more distraught. The home-health-care worker thought his father was having a bad enough episode to warrant a hospital visit.

  “Gray, they want to keep your father for a couple days. Run another MRI . . . is that right, Luis?” In the background, he heard a faint, “That’s right, Harriet.” Then his mother again. “Anyway, everything’s fine. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  But there were another five calls after that. He continued on, discovering that his mother was growing confused herself about tests, insurance, paperwork.

  “Why aren’t you returning my calls? Ar
e you out of town . . . maybe you’re out of town. I can’t remember if you told me. Maybe I’d better water your plants anyway. You always forget.”

  The last message had been left only an hour ago. Gray was still in the air at the time. “Gray, I’ve got a hair appointment near your town house. Are you still out of town? I’m going to water your plants on the way to my appointment. I think I have your house key here. I told you I had a hair appointment, right? It’s at one o’clock. Maybe if you’re home, we can do lunch.”

  Okay, Mom . . .

  He checked his watch. He should be able to finish here at the Archives and meet her at his house by noon.

  Taking a deep breath, he headed back into the conference room.

  Seichan must have read something in his face. “Are you okay?”

  He shook his cell phone. “Family stuff. I’ll get to it after this.”

  She offered him a sympathetic smile. “Welcome home.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He returned his attention to Dr. Heisman. “So what did Meriwether have to say that was so important?”

  “It was a strange letter, very full of paranoia.”

  “Well, he’d just been shot . . . twice,” Gray said. “That would make anyone a little paranoid.”

  “True. But I wanted you to know about what he wrote at the end. I think it bears on the matters from yesterday, specifically about the great enemy that was plaguing the Founding Fathers.”

  “What does it say about them?” Gray asked, his interest pricking.

  Heisman read from a text that was covered with lots of notes and jottings. “ ‘They’ve found me on the road, those who serve the Enemy. I leave this message, covered in my own blood, as fair warning to those who come after. With great effort, we few have cast most of the fearsome Enemy from our shores, through purges of our great armies and noble houses.’ ”

  Gray interrupted: “Didn’t you tell us something about that? How Meriwether acted as Jefferson’s spy to discover who was disloyal in the armed forces?”

  “That’s true, but it seems they weren’t entirely successful in flushing them all out.” Heisman continued to read. “ ‘Yet one family persists, rooted deeply in the South, too stubborn for us to pull out, like a weed. Lest in doing so we risk uprooting our young nation and tearing it apart. It is an old family with ties to slavers & rich beyond measure. Even here I dare not write that name down & alert the family of our knowledge. But a record will be left for those that follow, if you know where to look. Jefferson will leave their name in paint. You can find it thusly: In the turning of the bull, find the five who don’t belong. Let their given names be ordered & revealed by the letters G, C, R, J, T and their numbers 1, 2, 4, 4, 1.’ ”

  “What does that last part mean?” Seichan asked.

  “I have no idea,” the curator answered. “It is not uncommon to bury a code within a code, especially concerning something that so clearly frightened them.”

  Gray’s cell phone rang in his pocket. Concerned that it was his mother, he checked the number and was relieved to see it was only Kat. She must be reporting on Monk’s condition.

  “Kat, it’s Gray.” As he said those words, he realized how much he sounded like his mother: Gray, it’s your mother.

  Kat’s voice came with a worried, yet relieved edge. “Good. You’re okay.”

  “I’m still at the Archives. What’s wrong?”

  Her voice grew calmer, but it was clear that she was still shaken. “I came home to change clothes before heading to the hospital. Luckily I’ve had plenty of intelligence training. I saw the door had been tampered with. I discovered a bomb, a booby trap. Looks like the same design as the ordnance that took down your jet yesterday, the work of Mitchell Waldorf.”

  Gray pictured the bastard blowing the top of his head off and his final words: This isn’t over.

  His breath turned to ice in his chest.

  Kat continued: “The bomb squad is here, and I’m sending them over to your—”

  “Kat!” he cut her off. “My mother was heading to my town house. Today. She has my key.”

  “Go,” Kat said, without pausing. “I’m out the door already with the bomb team. I’ll alert local forces en route.”

  He snapped his phone closed and simply ran for the door. Seichan bolted out of her chair and followed.

  She must have gleaned enough from listening to his end of the conversation to know what was happening. They fled together out the door to the street. He searched for a cab. She ran out into the street, where the midday traffic had stalled. She headed straight for a stranded motorcyclist and whipped out her black SIG Sauer. She pointed it at his head.

  “Off.”

  The young man leaped and fell away.

  She caught the bike one-handed before it dropped and turned to Gray. “You fit to ride?”

  Until he knew otherwise, he was wired and focused.

  He leaped into the seat.

  She climbed behind him, wrapped her arms around him, and said in his ear, “Break any rules you need to.”

  He gunned the motorcycle and did just that.

  The flight through the city was a blur, wind whipping, leaping curbs, dodging pedestrians. As he made the turn onto Sixteenth Street, he saw a thin column of smoke in the air. Piney Branch Road lay in that direction. He choked the throttle and raced down the rest of the way.

  Emergency vehicles were already there, lights blazing, sirens going.

  He braked hard, skidding sideways, and leaped off the bike. An ambulance sat crooked in the road, half up on the curb.

  He ran toward it.

  Monk came hurtling around the blind corner, still in his hospital gown.

  He must have stolen the ambulance and used the sirens to beat Gray here from Georgetown University Hospital.

  Gray came running up and saw the answer to his unposed question in Monk’s face. His friend held up an arm, stopping him, but didn’t say a word, just one tiny shake of his head.

  Gray crashed to his knees in the middle of the road.

  “No . . .”

  Chapter 44

  June 8, 7:22 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  “Where are my girls?” Monk called out into the apartment.

  “Your girls are still asleep,” Kat replied from the couch, “and if you wake them, you’re staying up with them all night like I did.”

  She was resting on a maternity pillow, her back still aching from the delivery three days ago. She’d been two weeks early, but all had gone well with the birth of their second child, a baby girl. Monk was now surrounded by women here in the apartment, which was okay by him. He had enough testosterone for the whole family and was certainly around enough testosterone at work.

  He plopped down on the couch next to Kat and placed the white take-out bag between them. “Feldman’s bagels and cream cheese.”

  She placed a hand on her belly. “I’m so fat.”

  “You just had an eight-pound three-ounce baby girl. No wonder she demanded to come out early. No room in there.”

  Kat made a noncommittal sound at the back of her throat.

  He lifted the bag out of the way, slid closer, and put his arm around his wife. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, and kissed her hair—then, after a long moment, added, “but you sort of stink.”

  She punched him in the shoulder.

  “How about I warm up the shower—for the both of us?”

  She mumbled into his chest. “That would be nice.”

  He began to scoot up, but she pulled him back down.

  “Just stay here. I like this.”

  “Well, you’re going to get a lot more of this. Me, sitting around the house.”

  She looked up. “What did Painter say?”

  “He understood, accepted my resignation letter, but he wanted me to think about it while I’m out on family leave.”

  She settled against him, again making tha
t noncommittal sound.

  They’d had long conversations about his resigning from Sigma. He had a wife and two children who needed him. After getting shot, having a bomb placed in their home, and seeing the devastation that had been wrought upon Gray’s family, he figured it was time. He already had offers from various biotech companies in D.C.

  The couple remained locked in each other’s arms, simply enjoying each other’s warmth. He refused to put this at risk any longer.

  Finally, Kat swung around, and with a bit of effort, put her feet in his lap. “Since you’re no longer working . . .”

  He took her feet and began to rub them, one-handed. His new prosthesis wouldn’t be ready for another four days, but apparently one hand was enough.

  She leaned back, stretching, and made a sound that was definitely not noncommittal. “I could get used to this, too.”

  But such bliss could not last.

  The small wail rose from the next room, starting low and rising quickly to an earsplitting pitch. How could so much sound come out of such a little package?

  “She’s definitely got your lungs,” Kat said, and raised herself up on an elbow. “Sounds like she’s hungry.”

  “I’ll get her.” Monk rolled to his feet.

  So much for that hot shower.

  He crossed to their bedroom and found the new joy of his life, red-faced, with eyes squinted tightly closed. He scooped her up and out of the crib, lifting her to his shoulder.

  She quieted—slightly—as he gently bounced her.

  She’d been born the day of the funeral for Gray’s mother. Kat had gone into labor during the memorial service. He knew how hard that day was for Gray, how much guilt he bore for his mother’s death. Monk had no words that could comfort that bone-deep grief, but Gray was strong.

  Monk had seen a glimmer of that strength, and the eventual recovery it promised, later, when Gray came to visit Kat at the hospital, to see the baby. Monk had never told his friend what he and Kat had both decided. The revelation brought a sad, but genuine smile to Gray’s lips.

  Monk lifted his girl around to stare her in the face. “Are you hungry, Harriet?”