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Almighty God we plead with thee,
Give them strength that we might see.
Stand with them we pray this day,
Our aging warriors all clad in grey.
He’d always admired the lyric prose, ornate and elegant, replete with clever figures of speech. Its meaning now much clearer.
“There’s something else special about the book.”
He saw the twinkle in his mother’s eye and was intrigued. Usually the stories about the family’s past came from his grandfather.
But not today.
He watched as she parted the covers and grasped all of the pages with her thumbs and forefingers. Applying pressure, she fanned out the long edge. The gold gilt slowly dissolved into the image of a pueblo-like building, in a desert, with mountains in the distance.
He was amazed and said, “That’s like magic.”
His mother smiled. “It’s called fore-edge painting, an old art form. The artist would force the pages into this position and use a vice to hold them fanned. He would then paint what he wanted on the edge. Once dry, he released the fan, then gilded the edges to hide the color. It can be revealed only by refanning the pages. The technique was quite popular after the Civil War.”
“What’s the building?”
“We think it was where he was living out west, but I really don’t know for sure.”
He’d waited until now, wanting to be alone, to see for himself.
The embossing at the corners of the front and back covers of the 4, 8, N, and P seemed a sign. Like the odd trees in the woods. There, but not there. Meaningful only if you were able to make a connection. Angus Adams had placed them on both the Witch’s Stone and here on the journal for a reason.
Warren Weston may have been right when he intentionally involved him in all of this.
He did know things.
Time to find a secret.
* * *
Danny was growing impatient.
Malone was waiting for answers, as was he.
“It’s the book Malone has,” Weston said. “Frank Breckinridge apparently stole it from Smithsonian collections and hid it away. I never was able to actually see or touch the book. I know only that Angus Adams handed it over to Joseph Henry in 1877, not long before Henry died. It was to be returned to Adams’ family seventy-five years later. I was hoping that might have happened, and that Malone knew about it. I never knew, until now, that Breckinridge had the book. When I learned about Adams’ connection to Malone, I decided to see where it would lead. Maybe the book had been returned in 1952. The Smithsonian is conscientious in honoring gift conditions.”
“You should have been up front with Malone. That’s a hard man to corral. He doesn’t take to a saddle lightly.”
“Which I’ve learned.”
“What about the book? Why is it important?”
“Adams had a great affection for both the Smithsonian and Joseph Henry. He also was the only man alive who knew everything about the vault. But the Order chose well with Adams. He was a man of honor and protected that wealth as if it were his own. By the 1890s the vault had faded to obscurity. Henry was dead, Adams was an old man, and the Order had deteriorated. We know that Adams made a point to deliver both the key and his journal back to the Smithsonian in 1877. Perhaps he thought that the safest place for both to rest, unnoticed among countless other artifacts. Beyond that, I don’t know how the book points the way to the vault. I only know that it does.”
* * *
Cotton grasped the pages in Adams’ journal, just as his mother had with Adams’ book all those years ago, using the two numbers and two letters on the covers to position his hold on the pages. He was careful, making sure not to clamp the old paper too firmly. Slowly, he fanned the edges out, the gilt dissolving, as he remembered with his mother, into a defined picture.
He brought the book close and examined the image. A river dominated, beside which stood what looked like a church and three other buildings. His gaze shot to the laptop and the images of the Witch’s and Horse Stones.
Together they said, The servant of faith, I shepherd to the north of the river. This path is dangerous. I go to 18 places. Seek the map. Seek the heart.
On the Horse Stone, extending from the head, he followed the squiggly line with a cross beside it. In the upper left corner he studied the other squiggly line marked RIO. Spanish for “river.” Three dots surrounded what looked like a 5, but it had been intentionally angled. Like an L attached to an inverted U. Classic Golden Circle misdirection. You thought you saw one thing, but it was actually quite another. He glanced at the fore-edge painting again and noticed that there were three buildings before the church, arranged in a triangular shape.
Just as on the stone.
Adobe houses with heavy tiled roofs, sash windows, and chimneys, among grass and trees.
He released his grip on the pages and smiled.
Now he knew.
* * *
Danny listened as Malone explained through the phone what he’d found.
“The stones are not meant to be read in any particular sequence. Instead, they’re random instructions, scattered over the four that we have. Part of the puzzle is learning how to assimilate that varied information. The Witch’s Stone is like an introduction. It tells us that the path is dangerous, that there are eighteen markers, and to seek the map and the heart. I suspect the hooded figure and other symbols on there are going to be relevant at some point. The Horse Stone narrows things to a specific location. North of the river. So we need to know more about Adams’ landholdings.”
“It was over ten thousand acres,” Weston said. “In northern New Mexico, which have remained public lands since the turn of the 20th century.”
“The vault is on that land, and the starting point is the church north of the river. We need some satellite mapping. Have Rick Stamm wake somebody up and let’s pinpoint exactly where we’re headed. I’ve got two hours until I’m on the ground. I need an answer by then.”
“You’re assuming,” Danny said, “that Breckinridge found the fore-edge painting.”
“He did. You can count on it. The good thing is, he doesn’t know we have, too.”
“He’ll destroy all the stones,” Weston said. “Including the Heart Stone you allowed him to take.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Malone said. “I’m sitting here looking at the Trail and Heart Stones combined elctronically. There’s still the Alpha Stone, the one that actually gets you going in the right direction. Only nine markers are visible on the merged map we now have. There are nine more on the Alpha. My guess is that stone is waiting at the shepherd north of the river.”
“So you have to beat him to it,” Danny said.
“That’s the idea.”
He ended the call.
And faced Weston.
“We’re not done here.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Grant woke from his sleep.
The drone of the jet engines had lulled him into rest, which he’d needed. Yesterday had been a long day. He checked his watch and noted he’d been out for over two hours. They had to be halfway across the country by now. His father sat across the cabin, spread out on a white leather sofa, looking entirely comfortable in the lap of luxury.
“Sleep some more,” his father said.
There’d been food waiting for them in the galley, and he’d eaten before dozing off. He felt refreshed, ready to go. But some of the wind had gone from his sails. He was no longer on a hunt for gold. Instead he was a prisoner of his father. Sure, he’d been promised a consolation prize. But he wondered if he might be able to get back on course.
“I can be useful,” he said.
His father did not seem impressed. “You have no idea what it means to be a knight.”
“Tell me.”
His father sat up. “They took an oath to freely sacrifice life and everything dear for the perpetuity of the Order’s principles. They pledged death and destruction t
o abolitionists, leaving no means untried to circumvent their schemes.”
“That was 150 years ago.”
“Honor is timeless.”
“Slavery is gone.”
“As it should be. But the Order stood for much more than that. Things many Americans today might find attractive.”
“Name three.”
“Representative government. Political accountability. Voter responsibility.”
He decided to stop being antagonistic and asked, “Have you been part of the Order all of your life?”
“Your grandfather was a member and he encouraged me. But my true calling came during the fight with Davis Layne.”
“How did you find the key?”
His father reached into his pocket and removed it. “A total accident. I was barely on the job in the late 1950s. I was in the Castle attic working on repairs—and there it was beneath some insulation. One of the workers found it and had no idea of its significance.”
“Why did you?”
