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“You can’t stop this, Alex. If you don’t agree, then just stay out of the way. Let Vance do what he has to do.”
“There’ll be strong opposition to what he proposes.”
“Of course there will. But that’s far different from you, a sitting senator, my husband, screaming conspiracy. Leave it be.”
“You should have told me about this. Not Kenneth. You.”
“The way you told me about your girlfriend?”
He stared at her. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I only suspected. Until this moment.”
He shook his head and chuckled bitterly. “That’s one for you. You ran that bluff like a pro.”
“I am a pro. Who is she?”
“A woman I met in DC. But whether you believe me or not, I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of.”
“Except, maybe, fall in love with her.”
“I won’t deny that we enjoy our time together.”
“Which actually hurts worse.”
“And what about you, Diane? Have you been a saint?”
“Actually, no. I’ve been with two other men.”
She said it to hurt him. Not a lie, either. Strange how love so quickly evolved into hate.
“I didn’t realize,” Alex said, surprise in his voice. “But we’ve been strangers a long time.”
“So leave this alone. Let me have this moment. My father would be so proud. He studied the Order all his life, learned its secret language, found what documents he could, and searched for what was lost. He passed that passion on to me. Alex, let me do this, without your interference.”
“I wish I could, but I can’t.”
He’d left the house, heading out for a midafternoon walk. She knew where he went, up the path at the rear of the property, into the foothills, to his thinking place. He would stay a couple of hours, smoke his pipe, then return, ready for supper and bed. That night, though, they were scheduled to have dinner in Knoxville with some supporters. One thing she would not miss was the constant pandering for money and votes.
She’d sat there that day in the great room, alone, and thought about what to do. Everything seemed to hinge on her. First with Kenneth recruiting her assistance, then her finding Grant, then the moves at the Smithsonian with Martin Thomas, and finally Alex.
A wheel with many spokes, her at the center.
And she had indeed slept with two men.
Lucius Vance and Grant Breckinridge.
One was part of the moment, an intoxicating reaction to power and influence. The other stemmed from a deep longing. Kenneth thought Grant reckless. She considered him passionate. He’d seemed so lost that day when she’d visited with his father. He worked as a paralegal for a DC firm. He’d thought about law school, but considered the profession more word pushing than anything else. Grant craved excitement. Which explained his many job moves among the DC firms, eking out a living until she came along.
How much gold was out there? Many billions of dollars’ worth, for sure. Just waiting for a new set of revolutionaries to claim it in the name of freedom. Long ago passionate men had tried to alter the course of the United States by violently dividing it. They’d been wrong. Instead, the smarter path was to simply use what the Constitution itself provided. Work within its parameters. People tended to follow that which seemed to make the most sense. And what she and Lucius Vance were planning certainly fit into that category.
It almost seemed too perfect. But that was its beauty. The men who conceived the original idea had marveled at its simplicity. They just hadn’t been able to stave off the waves of radicalism that eventually consumed the South. It had taken hundreds of thousands of deaths and the total destruction of a way of life to show the error of their ways.
But a few of those visionaries had been right about one thing.
Change things from within.
She lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.
A part of her missed Alex. He’d brought comfort to her life. Never had he raised a hand to her. Rarely had they argued. She’d lived a life of privilege and importance. He’d always treated her with courtesy and respect, and there was something to be said for that. But she’d come to resent the pained politeness between them, and realized there was something wrong with never daring, never risking, never being willing to take a blind leap with no safety net.
Never living.
She’d finally done that.
By sleeping with two men. Then she went a step further and showed one of them how to create a new United States of America. For the other, she pointed him down a path that could make him rich. She was proud of both endeavors, the results of which would soon be known.
Alex would have denied her all that.
Thank God he was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cassiopeia was not pleased with having to bring Lea along, but the price of directions had been her inclusion. They’d left the lodge quietly, a note slipped under the door telling Terry Morse they’d be back soon. Neither one of them had wanted to wait around until morning. She’d learned that Lea’s special friend lived about twenty miles away. They’d get together when she went into town, or to the store, or running errands. Most of their relationship was electronic—text, emails, FaceTime—which seemed the way of the modern world. Her grandfather was not all that tech-savvy, so a measure of privacy existed there, something Lea seemed to like.
They’d taken Terry Morse’s truck, which Lea and her grandfather had brought from the house earlier. Luckily, Lea had driven and had the keys. The time was approaching 3:30 in the morning, a half-moon illuminating a landscape of forested hills and dark valleys. Their route took them deep into the woods northwest of the lodge. Lea explained that she’d visited the location a few times with her special friend. His uncle had died years ago, leaving behind a trunk full of maps and papers, many in code. Her friend had spent a few years trying to decipher them, especially after Lea explained to him about sentinels. Apparently his uncle had never volunteered anything on that subject, and allowed the duty to die with him.
“We came up here one night,” Lea said as she drove. “Grandpa was gone. There was nobody around, so we had things to ourselves.”
That she could see, since there was not a light in sight. “And what did you do, up here, with things to yourselves?”
Lea did not immediately reply. Finally the girl said, “Nothing all that bad.”
“I was your age once. I get it.”
“I really like him.”
“And that’s fine. But be careful how far you go. If he truly likes you, too, that won’t matter.”
“He does really like me, ’cause it didn’t matter.”
“Good girl. Your grandpa would be proud.”
“No. Grandpa would have shot him.”
Lea turned off the highway and followed a rutted path, wood fences on either side, most nearly hidden by a jungle of weeds and wildflowers springing from the ditches.
“All this land belongs to his family,” Lea said. “Like us, they’ve owned it a long, long time.”
They bucked down the narrow track, headlights swaying and jolting. The road ended at a rocky incline protected by a heavy ring of pine and elm. A gate blocked the path ahead, but Cassiopeia saw that it was not locked shut. Instead, a short length of chain lay in the dirt, the gate half open. Lea eased the front of the truck forward and pushed the panel out of the way.
“It’s usually locked,” Lea said, “and you have to walk from here.”
“How far?”
“About a quarter mile.”
She didn’t like the feel of things.
Why? She wasn’t sure. But her internal
alarms were chiming.
“Shut the lights off and park up in the trees.”
* * *
She led, with Lea behind her, the road dry as a desert. A flashlight found under the front seat illuminated the path. Tall trees and dense underbrush lined the way, the terrain more mountainous than yesterday, loose shale crunching beneath their soles. Ragged clouds scuttled across gaps of stars. The buzz of a cicada masked their steps.
Shadowy hulks appeared ahead.
She counted the remnants of six derelict buildings, all in a state of ruin, every window smashed, walls collapsed, roofs swaybacked with neglect. There was also what looked like a collapsed conveyer.
“What is this?” she asked.
“An old silver mine. There are lots of ’em around here. This one’s been closed a long time.”
“Your special friend’s family owns this?”
“They leased it out once. But nobody comes up here now except his family to hunt.”
“All right. Show me what’s here.”
The camp sat among a chain of tree-covered hills that ran from west to east, dipping and tapering into a trough-shaped hollow that stretched black into the night. She could hear a fast-moving stream. Which made sense. Any mining operation would need a water source.
They entered one of the collapsed buildings. The flashlight beam wove through a yard of battered blocks, slabs of rock, and rusted metal, all piled onto one another in a solid mass. Time had clamped the debris down, flowering weeds springing up among the rubble. Little remained of the structure besides three partial walls and patches of roof. The building had once abutted the base of the mound, and at its far end she saw an opening into the earth.
“That’s not the same,” Lea said.
An archway rose three meters and stretched nearly the same distance wide. Loose rock packed its confines, as if a landslide had sealed it long ago. But a neat hole had been dug through its center, big enough to walk through.
“Always before that was closed off,” Lea said. “Once, we picked out some of the larger boulders and made a squeeze point. It was tight to get through, but we could make it. I was going to show you what’s on the other side. There’s never been an opening like that.”
