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Proctor was forced to slow down, too.
Both lanes congealed as one police car stayed behind the panel truck, another in front, with two at its left side.
She glanced at the dashboard.
45 MPH.
More brake lights glared in the dark.
The police cars finally forced the truck onto the shoulder, officers emerging with guns in hand.
“I guess you won’t be getting those ten bars of gold,” she said.
“Shut up.”
In order to attract the officers’ attention, she’d have to bend her knees, then flex her body down and up, swinging around to use her legs and feet as weapons. A swept kick to Proctor’s head should do the trick, sending the car reeling. But she’d have to be fast to avoid the gun in his lap.
Traffic had slowed to less than 20 MPH.
The police forced the driver from the truck.
She readied herself to move but before she could do a thing, something hard slammed into her left ear.
Everything spun.
Then hope vanished.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
THURSDAY
MAY 27, 1:30 A.M.
Cotton glanced out the window and watched the lights of Washington, DC, recede. He’d just taken off in a Department of Justice Gulfstream, the same one that had ferried him to and from Arkansas. Another day had ended, a new one beginning with him again flying west. Luckily, he’d thought ahead and had transportation on standby and, as he received reports from the agent at the Manassas Regional Airport, he’d heard that he’d been right.
The Breckinridges were leaving town.
Their flight plan called for a trip to another regional airport, just outside Taos, New Mexico, an artsy community about seventy miles north of Santa Fe in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They had a nearly two-hour head start, but the DOJ pilots thought they might be able to make good time. The Breckinridges were aboard a slower Learjet registered to a Richard Choi, who lived just outside DC. The Billet was busy gathering what they could on Choi, who surely had something to do with the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Rick Stamm had stayed behind, working on digitally assembling the Heart and Trail Stones so they could have some idea of what they were facing. But he had brought Angus Adams’ journal along with him. He’d examined every handwritten page, though nothing had jumped out at him. The book seemed far too elegant, the pages clean, the handwriting containing no mistakes, for it to be an original field journal. More likely some sort of reproduction. He assumed Adams himself had penned it, since both the title and last page were signed in a stout, Edwardian-like script.
Angus “Cotton” Adams
His grandfather had told him that, after the war, Adams was never seen again in middle Georgia. Around 1900 Adams’ eldest son returned with his own family to work the family farm. His grandfather’s father. And brought with him a trunk of his father’s prewar letters, some personal papers, a few illustrations and paintings, and a book.
A laptop lay on a small work desk before him. Stamm had provided it, and he quickly secured an Internet connection. The video link established and he saw Stamm’s smiling face inside the archive at the American History museum.
“We did it,” the curator said. “Look at this. The two stones joined.”
And the screen filled with an image.
“At least we know the end point,” he said.
The dotted line on the Heart Stone now connected to a similar one on the Trail Stone to define a clear path with nine markers. The inverted U symbolized that a mine waited at the end. But he knew from what his grandfather had taught him that the arrow from the dagger to the mine signified danger.
A clear warning.
“We still have no starting point,” Stamm said.
No, they didn’t. And he assumed that the remaining Alpha Stone would show the other nine markers, so as to fulfill the inscription from the Witch’s Stone.
I go to 18 places.
Along with the starting point.
Something told him that Frank Breckinridge was not working under the same disability. He replayed again every word uttered during his visit with Breckinridge. Plenty of Civil War history. Jefferson Davis. Lincoln. The knights. Then—
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Stamm asked through the computer.
“Breckinridge tested me on the stones, which I passed. He tested me on the code and I passed that, too. Then he asked me if I wanted to meet with the commander while I was in town. I took ‘the commander’ to mean the head of the knights. He wanted to set up a meeting and I asked where. He told me, ‘In that damn Temple of Justice of his.’”
“You know what that refers to, don’t you?” Stamm asked.
He did. “The Supreme Court building. I read a book on its history. When they moved into it, most of the justices weren’t happy. The whole place was made of marble with columns and looked like something from ancient Greece. They called it pretentious and inappropriate. One of them said they ought to enter the courtroom riding elephants. Another equated the justices to nine black beetles in the Temple of Karnak. The analogy stuck and it became the Temple of Justice. I’ve been so focused on other things, I didn’t notice the discrepancy.”
Stamm looked puzzled.
“While talking to me, Breckinridge seemed back around 1865, toward the end of the war. The Supreme Court then met in the Old Senate Chamber inside the Capitol. The new building didn’t come until 1939. So in his so-called delusion, why did he refer to it as the Temple of Justice?”
“Could be just his mind traveling back and forth.”
“It could, but it’s not. We know that old man isn’t crazy. He was sending me a message. He told me he didn’t trust the commander. He said, ‘That hair around his bald head makes him look too much like a priest.’ Who does that sound like?”
“Chief Justice Weston.”
“You got it.”
“That can’t be,” Stamm said, a little incredulous. “Weston is the commander of the Order?”
“Why not? He certainly knows a lot about all of this. And I don’t think Breckinridge threw in the Supreme Court clue by accident. Everything else he did was calculated. He sent us to Smithson’s tomb and he sent us to Weston.”
“We’d have to be damn sure before treading into those waters,” Stamm said.
He agreed, staring again at Adams’ journal. “It would explain how he knew so much about my family and Angus Adams. Along with his huge interest in all of this. Have you heard from him?”
“Not in several hours.”
Everything was beginning to make sense.
He checked his watch.
“I should be on the ground around 5:00 A.M., New Mexico time,” he said to Stamm. “Keep working on the graphics. We’ll need the best images possible.”
“You want me to talk to Chief Justice Weston?”
He’d been thinking about just that.
“No. I have someone better in mind.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
WASHINGTON, DC
2:30 A.M.
Danny was back on the move.
Paul Frizzell had dropped him at the hospital after their encounter, and he’d spent a couple of hours beside Stephanie’s bed. Her condition had remained unchanged, though the doctors were sounding more hopeful. He’d finally dozed off, awakened by his cell phone. He’d listened to Malone then told him he’d handle it immediately.
So he’d taken a cab to the residence of Warren Weston. His new chief of staff had provided him the address, after he’d woken her from a sound sleep. He was liking her more and more, as she hadn’t uttered a word of protest, only a resolute “I’ll be back to you shortly.” She reminded him of Edwin Davis, who’d been equally resourceful during his time in the White House.
Everything he’d heard from Malone about Warren Weston had sent daggers through his gut. But he agreed. Frank Breckinridge had tossed them the scent for a trail that had to be follo
wed.
He was a little surprised to learn that the chief justice lived in the heart of Georgetown. He’d never known Weston to be a man of money. His Supreme Court job knocked down barely $250,000 a year. A solid salary, for sure, but barely enough to pay what Georgetown real estate commanded.
He realized he may have to deal with the Supreme Court police, who were charged with protecting all the high court’s justices. An agent was on duty near Weston’s front door. Surprisingly, a light burned in one of the house’s ground-floor street-side windows. He stepped down a short brick walk and approached the sentry.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” the man said to him.
“Bet you’re wondering what I’m doing here at this hour?”
“Actually, no sir, I’m not. The chief justice said you might be coming by.”
He nearly smiled.
Warren Weston was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid.
“He said if you did, to just go inside.”
He opened the door and entered. The light he’d seen from outside burned in a front parlor, not unlike his own back in Tennessee. Weston sat in a high-backed leather chair, nursing a drink.
“Come in, Danny. If you want a whiskey, there’s some on the table.”
“Where’s your little gadget for the voice?”
“I told my colleagues that precaution was a waste of time, but they insisted. I would have much preferred the talk we’re about to have.”
The room was wood-paneled with a warm, cozy décor.
He sat on a small settee.
“I meant what I said earlier,” Weston said. “The Order is not some fanatical organization. We are committed to working within the law.”
“But let’s get real, Warren. The Knights of the Golden Circle was a terrorist organization. It may well have been the largest, most successful terrorist organization in American history. They wreaked a lot of havoc and spawned the KKK.”
“That’s all true. From 1854 to 1865. But we moved past that. And for over a hundred years we’ve been quietly waiting for a time when we might do what Alexander Stephens envisioned.”
“Change the Constitution?”
Weston nodded. “The people are ready.”
He shrugged. “You might be right. The problem comes when deciding what that change will be. On that the people may not agree with you. But as you said back in that diner, it’s your right to try.”
