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There’d been a logic to it all. A silent language spoken by only a precious few—which, as Morse noted, had not included sentinels. Thankfully his grandfather had learned some of it, which made him wonder. Had he been a sentinel, too?
“I found that cache today thanks to what I know personally and notes made back in 1909,” Cotton said. “The guy who died in the hunting accident”—his sarcasm was clear—“his notes survived. Whoever killed him missed those. Granted, it’s taken over a hundred years to make use of them, but we made it back. That guy a month ago you scared off? He came to do what I did today.”
He’d always thought it all just stories. A way for a grandfather to entertain a grandson. Not anymore. Not since he’d found a jar of Confederate gold and met a real, live, third-generation sentinel.
“Follow me,” Morse finally said.
They stepped from the porch and rounded the house, heading for one of the outbuildings. Three stood in the nearly gone daylight, all made of notched logs. He heard a steady, low purr in the quiet air.
“What’s that? Machinery?”
A derisive cackle burst from Morse’s mouth. “Bees.”
Morse opened a nail-studded door and switched on the lights. The persistent murmur inside was much louder, the air clotted with a sweet smell. About a dozen wooden boxes sat on stout tables, each one humming like a transformer. A long wooden workbench ran the length of one wall, its scarred surface littered with tools and a vise.
“The bees stay in here for safety,” Morse said. “Keeps the rustlers away.”
“People steal them?” Cassiopeia asked.
“All the time. I rent these out to farmers so they can get their fruit trees pollinated. Rustlers steal ’em, then rent ’em out themsleves. No way to brand a bee. No way to prove it’s yours. So you lose ’em. It’s a big problem.”
Cotton noticed slits in the walls overhead that allowed the insects to come and go.
“Those men who came to see me,” Morse said. “They were after somethin’ special. Somehow they knew that I was the one guardin’. The fellow who came a month ago didn’t seem to know much about it. He never asked the right questions in town.”
“How did you learn about us?” Cassiopeia asked.
“Friend at the lodge where you’re stayin’. He calls and tells me about any treasure hunters. You were askin’ around about things and it caught his ear. It’s what we do for each other around here.”
Which was the same in middle Georgia.
If the stories he’d heard were true, it meant that the Knights of the Golden Circle had accumulated an enormous amount of gold and silver. Some had been legitimately earned, while other parts most likely came from the Confederate treasury, which some said was found in 1865, but others believed it had been hoarded away. Nobody knew anything for sure. History also noted that three U.S. mints were looted in the early days of the Civil War of their gold and coin reserves. Much more wealth was simply appropriated during and after the war, stolen from banks, companies, and individuals. A ton of lost-treasure stories existed across every Southern state, the version different depending on the locale. Book after book had been written on the subject. The only consistent element to it all was that the knights did in fact hide their wealth in the ground, which explained why treasure hunters had been searching for so long.
“My pa told me we were extra special,” Morse said. “We guarded somethin’ real important. Sure, there’s gold hidden in our stake. You found some of it today. There’s more out there, too. But the real important thing we protected wasn’t metal.”
Morse approached one of the tables with hives and bent down beneath to a shelf. Something lay sheathed in a dirty green canvas. About two feet long, nearly that wide. And apparently heavy, as Morse strained to slide it free of the shelf and lay it on the table between the hives. Removing the canvas revealed a stone, about three inches thick, with carvings.
“It’s the Witch’s Stone,” Morse said. “Or at least that’s what my pa called it.”
Cotton was fluent in several languages, another benefit of an eidetic memory, so he was able to translate the Spanish. The top line read, Esta bereda es peligroza. This bereda is dangerous? The word bereda meant nothing to him. But vereda meant “path.”
This path is dangerous?
The second line, yo boy 18 lugares, I go 18 places. Again boy was not a word in Spanish, but voy, to, seemed to fit and was consistent with the b for v from the first line.
I go to 18 places.
The third line, busca el mapa, was easy.
Seek the map.
The same was true with the final line, busca el coazon, which had to be busca el corazón.
Seek the heart.
This path is dangerous. I go to 18 places. Seek the map. Seek the heart.
Cassiopeia snapped some pictures with her phone.
“I don’t want you doin’ that,” Morse said.
“Then why show it to us?” Cotton asked.
Morse did not answer him.
The door creaked open.
Three men entered.
Each armed.
Cassiopeia reached for her weapon but the lead man cut her off with a shake of his index finger.
“Don’t do that. You wouldn’t want the girl hurt, would you? Toss the gun to the floor.”
Cassiopeia glanced Cotton’s way and he nodded that there was no choice. She released the weapon and one of the men quickly retrieved it.
“You got a gun?” the man asked him.
He found his Beretta and dropped it to the floor, too.
“Good work,” the lead man said to Morse, and the old man acknowledged the compliment with a nod.
Lea seemed shocked.
But Cotton was pissed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WASHINGTON, DC
8:50 P.M.
Stephanie Nelle stood beside Constitution Avenue, just outside the National Museum of Natural History. The call had come half an hour ago and she’d come straight over from the Mandarin Oriental, the hotel where she always stayed while visiting the capital.
The building that stood before her was part of the expansive Smithsonian Institution, which owned and operated museums on both sides of the National Mall. The American Indian, Air and Space, and the famous Romanesque Castle lined the south side, while natural, American, and African American history dominated the north. Together they formed the largest museum complex in the world. 140,000,000 objects. Every item regarded as a national treasure. Tonight, though, the natural history museum loomed quiet, closed to visitors.
She entered through street-side doors held open by a security guard and was directed to a windowless room that contained a wall of LCD monitors, each displaying a different slice of the museum’s interior. Six floors, over 1.5 million square feet of space. A lot of territory to watch over. Waiting for her was Rick Stamm, the current curator of the Smithsonian Castle, albeit a little out of his element here in natural history. They’d been friends a long time. Recently he’d helped her out in a pinch. She owed him one. So an hour ago, when he called, she could not tell him no.
“Lucky for you I was in town,” she said.
“Yes, it was. I really appreciate your coming.”
He pointed to one of the monitors where two men stood inside what looked like a library. “That’s the Cullman Library. They’ve been there since before I called you.”
She was familiar with the Smithsonian Libraries, comprising separate locations scattered across the twenty-one museums and research facilities. Together they were regarded as one of the greatest repositories of knowledge in the world. The Cullman was situated on the natural history museum’s ground floor. She knew all about its collection of rare books on anthropology and natural sciences.
“The light-haired man is Martin Thomas,” Rick said. “He’s one of our reference librarians, with a spotless ten-year employment history. I’m told he’s at the head of the list to succeed to the top spot when the current administr
ator of the American history library retires.”
“Why is he in the Cullman at this hour?” she asked. “That place has nothing to do with American history.”
He shook his head. “We don’t have audio. The guy arrived and Martin took him straight there.”
The other man on the monitor was tall and muscular, with a thick head of tight brown curls. He fidgeted a lot, his hands constantly groping for something to occupy them. He stood with his back to the camera, offering no view at his face. He wore a dark sport coat, slacks, and an open-collared button-down shirt.
“What’s that on the back of his neck?” she asked.
They both stared closely at the screen.
“Looks like a port wine stain,” Rick noted. “A good-sized one, too.”
She wanted to know, “Why is all this a problem? I assume staff comes in a lot at night.”
“Martin has been working with us on a special project. The problem is he never reported to us that he was coming here tonight. We’re supposed to be on the same team. Yet we had no idea, until he showed up with this man. Security caught it and called me. I decided to call you.”
“You going to tell me why?”
Two other security guards sat in the dark room, working the monitors, and she caught her friend’s gaze that indicated this was not the time or the place. But he did offer, “One problem is they came in through the staff entrance.”
