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And the vault.
The stones had presented a substantial challenge, one that Angus Adams had surely meant to be difficult. Deliberately misspelled words. Odd phrases. Hidden meanings. Garbled, ungrammatical Spanish. Nothing in any particular sequence. All meant to be interpreted in conjunction with one another. A little bit here and there that collectively added up to the answer.
And the concept had worked.
Where the effects of weathering, erosion, and vandalism had obliterated other maps or signposts, the stones had endured.
With the help of the Smithsonian’s natural and American history museums, satellite images were prepared of the topography extending from the church toward the north, across the river, just as the Alpha Stone indicated. Incredibly, the squiggly lines depicted the right canyons, in the right places, the line with eighteen markers carving a path up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Determining distance had been the tricky part, but the dots along the curvy line that ended at the center of the Heart Stone seemed evenly spaced apart, which they’d taken as a clue. In Adams’ time the varna was the common unit of measure. About a yard. If that were correct, then comparing the stones with the satellite imagery, the dots on the path lay around five hundred yards apart. Adams had probably tagged that trail with eighteen defined markers, but Cotton doubted many of those still existed—and if they did, finding them could be tricky. Nothing about this quest had been easy, so why would Adams, at its end, have made anything different?
In the end, three possible locations, in differing directions, were identified and GPS coordinates acquired for each.
Danny Daniels and Warren Weston arrived yesterday. The chief justice had been relieved to know that the Breckinridges were both dead, along with Jim Proctor, who had long been one of the knights’ bad apples. Both Weston and Daniels wanted to be a part of what was about to happen.
Four horses waited by the trough.
“I haven’t ridden in a long time,” Daniels said. “But I haven’t forgotten how, either.”
“I’ve never ridden a horse,” Weston said.
Daniels chuckled. “This ought to be fun to watch.”
“My predicaments amuse you, don’t they?”
“Actually, they do. Quite a bit.”
Daniels had told them what happened with Vance. He’d called the Speaker, started with Diane’s death and ended with all he knew. Then he’d offered a choice. Withdraw the rule change and never bring it up again, or the junior senator from Tennessee, who once was the president of the United States, would hold a news conference where he’d lay it all out again, this time in public, and then they would see how many on the Rules Committee would keep following Vance. Loyalty was one thing, suicide quite another. Nothing ended a revolution quicker than scandal, especially when it involved conspiracy, theft, and multiple deaths.
Not surprisingly, Vance called a halt.
Cotton squatted on his heels and traced a route in the dirt with his finger, showing them the path and what to look for.
“Let’s keep our eyes peeled,” he said. “What we want will be in plain sight, but difficult to see.”
They saddled up and rode toward the first set of coordinates, crossing the river at a low point, downstream from the rope bridge. He’d learned that Adams’ ranch house was gone, nothing remaining of the buildings. Rangers were not even sure where they’d been located. Little was known of Adams, as he’d kept to himself, which seemed characteristic. A painter, who became an illustrator, who became a spy, who became a knight of the Golden Circle.
Quite an evolution.
Sunlight blazed on the naked soil, reddish brown against a cloudless sky. He breathed in the warm waft of dry earth and was glad to be here. They followed the GPS and rode for nearly an hour, the quivering horizon floating like a mirage. A dark sickle-shaped shadow raced across the ground. A few seconds later it returned, sweeping like a pendulum. He stared overhead and saw a hawk, with its spade tail, gliding along the warm currents of the midday air. They’d already spotted several good-sized bucks, running away from them.
The first site they encountered offered nothing in the way of promise. The cliff faces were too high and too sharp.
The same was true of the second site.
But to Cotton’s eye, the third dangled possibilities.
It was the farthest from the trough, and a lot of erosion had occurred since Adams’ day. Earthquakes had happened here, too. As had flash floods. This land was in motion, but there was also a continuity, which Adams had surely been banking on.
He stared at the sloping face of a steady incline, the weathered, rust-colored soil stretching up several hundred feet. Banks of shale were clear, where the sun, wind, and winter rains had washed the hillside bare. Large boulders littered the way, protruding from the ground like monuments. Clumps of scrub oaks and brush tried to stay alive in the parched soil.
“You see it?” he asked the others.
None of them did.
But he was getting good at this.
Probably those family genes.
“About fifty feet up the incline, that rounded stone.”
All of the rocks were sculpted smooth from the wind and weather. But one had caught his eye. He spurred the horse toward a clump of trees and the others followed, swinging around to a different angle. Visible now was a second part of the stone, it too rounded, most of it embedded, but enough was visible to catch the shape
Like a heart.
“Seek the heart. That’s what the Witch’s Stone commanded,” he said.
“You think this is the place?” Weston asked.
He dismounted.
“We’re about to find out.”
* * *
Cassiopeia felt better after a couple of nights’ sleep, some good food, and seeing Cotton. Learning about his family’s connection to the church and the trough had fascinated her. And he’d clearly been intrigued. More so than she’d seen in him for a long time. She liked that his family was important to him.
Cotton looked over at the chief justice. “What do you think? Is it a killer monument?”
She was curious. “You going to explain that one?”
“The Witch’s Stone said that the path is dangerous. My grandfather told me about killer monuments.”
“Was he a knight?” Weston asked.
Cotton shook his head. “I’m not really sure. I will say, he knew a lot about them.”
She watched as Cotton unbuckled his saddlebags and removed two sticks of dynamite and a collapsible shovel. The park service had assured them that this area was restricted and that they would not be disturbed. Having an ex-president and the chief justice of the United States along helped with avoiding the inevitable questions, but a call from the secretary of the interior quelled all debate. Stephanie had briefed President Fox from her hospital bed on everything that had happened, which had brought immediate, high-level cooperation. Especially when the new president learned what the Speaker of the House had been planning.
Weston and Daniels climbed off their horses.
“The heart was a Spanish symbol for gold,” Cotton said. “Broken hearts were another matter. Check out that one up there. It’s cracked in three places.”
“That could simply be from time,” Daniels noted.
“It could. But it could also be something else. Like, Your heart will be broken, if this warning is not heeded. Lightning bolts and zigzagged lines were all symbols for a death trap. The Alpha, Heart, and Trail Stones are loaded with those. Get the horses back while Cassiopeia and I set the charges.”
She followed him up the incline, feet scrabbling among the loose soil, dust billowing around them. Closer now, the scale of the heart-shaped rock was impressive. It rose over two meters from the ground and had to weigh several tons.
“This rock is pretty obvious,” Cotton said, “if you know what you’re looking for. Adams had to assume that whoever came looking would be knowledgeable. So it’s safe to say he’d plant a trap to
hedge his bets.”
He dug out an area at the base and nestled two sticks of explosives close to the stone, about halfway down its length.
“And they may not have come with dynamite,” he said, examining his work. “This stone is lying at a really odd angle in relation to the slope.”
She understood what he meant. “If it were free, the thing would slide down.”
He grinned. “That was the whole idea. Hence, a killer monument.”
He extended the fuse out about half a meter and found a lighter.
“Get ready to run.”
* * *
Danny watched from fifty yards away as Cotton and Cassiopeia worked on the slope.
“It is a killer monument,” Weston muttered.
“Do we need to tell him?”
Weston’s eyes stayed on the slope. “You were right about him. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
Danny was thrilled to be here. Stephanie was recovering and the doctors had said she would be fine. She’d insisted he go, but was standing by for a video report if anything were found. The press had been besieging his Senate office about Diane Sherwood, but he’d stayed silent, saying he had no comment for the moment. Martin Thomas’ remains had been returned to his family with the explanation that he’d been the victim of some sort of foul play, his body not found in the tunnel for a couple of days. Everything was being investigated, they were told.
He saw Cotton bend down and light the fuses, then scurry with Cassiopeia down the slope. They arrived just as the explosion filled his eyes, spewing a pall of red dust outward, rock and scree rattling down the hillside like an avalanche.
But the heart-shaped stone had not moved.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE
Cotton examined the crater left by the explosion. Just as he suspected, beneath the heart-shaped stone lay a mass of gravel. He saw that Weston understood its significance, too.
