Salem's Cipher (33 page)

Monday
November 7

93

San Francisco

T
he private jet touched down on the San Francisco International Airport's tarmac on schedule.

A car was waiting. The driver stepped out and leaned against the vehicle, arms crossed in front of him, fingers unbelievably muscular.

The plane taxied to a stop, the wind generated by it ruffling the waiting driver's dark hair.

Within minutes, the clamshell door of the jet opened with a pneumatic wheezing and the airstairs were lowered to the ground.

One of the Hermitage's air staff, a pretty flight attendant in a crisp uniform, stepped out and moved to the side of the stairs. Her smile was strained, her neck visibly bruised. She looked like she'd been crying.

Jason appeared at the top of the stairs. He stabbed her as he walked past, a quick throat puncture with a replacement blade. She topped over backward, hitting the tarmac at an awkward angle.

Geppetto laughed.

Jason walked down the steps and slid into the front passenger seat without a word.

Geppetto got behind the wheel and drove the car to Pier 33. Gina Hayes was scheduled to speak in five hours. A specially scheduled ferry was waiting to take them to Alcatraz Island.

Jason's face was set as tight as sinew, reflecting his mood. The nature of his unique craniofacial structure had saved his life, the malleability of his bones absorbing rather than shattering beneath the rock's blow, though he had the mother of all headaches. When he didn't call ten minutes after arriving on the scene of the Beale vault, the backup crew had descended. He was revived. The vault was emptied of its treasure. The corpses of the two men Jason had killed were dumped into it. Same with the bodies of the two backwater cops who arrived, presumably sent by Wiley and Odegaard.

He didn't call her Isabel anymore.

The vault, now a tomb, had been resealed, reburied, and their tracks covered as much as possible. The blood remained, but a heavy rain would erase that. One member of the cleanup crew drove the police car several miles away and abandoned it before being driven back to headquarters by his partner. The subterfuge wouldn't last for long, or it would last forever if the police didn't get lucky. Jason didn't care either way. The Hermitage possessed the treasure.

They also had the Underground leadership docket, according to Barnaby. It had been downloaded into the Hermitage's computer banks. A new underground harvest—the final one—would begin soon.

All that remained was to secure and destroy the documents the women had stolen from the vault and then to kill Hayes.

Jason had been disappointed to discover that much of Barnaby's fuss had been about a two-hundred-year-old land treaty. From what Jason knew of American history, he didn't see how Jackson's past indiscretions coming to light would be more than a quick-burning scandal, harmless to the Hermitage without Beale's treasure to finance a lengthy legal battle or Gina Hayes alive to underwrite an investigation.

Nevertheless, like a birthday piñata, all the remaining treats were wrapped in one tight package: Alcatraz. Wiley and Odegaard's plane from Richmond would be landing at SFO in seventeen minutes. They carried the authentic treaty. They would take it to the Golden Lucky, where they would be told to bring it directly to Gina Hayes in person.

Who else
could
they bring it to? FBI? NSA? Local police?

No. There'd be no way to know they weren't simply handing the document over to the Hermitage. The Underground possessed only one path out. It led them to Hayes, now outed as an ancestral Underground member thanks to Wiley's cracking of Beale's cipher, and the one person with enough power and incentive to use the documents to redistribute much of the Hermitage's wealth back into its rightful hands.

The women would clean up at Golden Lucky and fret over how to sneak onto Alcatraz. The security would be ironclad. They'd find a way in; not too easily as to cause them suspicion but not so hard as to be impossible.

The Hermitage had made sure of it.

And then Jason would tie up every single loose end.

Alcatraz was going to be one bloody party.

94

Alcatraz

“
Y
ou ready?”

San Francisco's famous fog had unfurled itself like a blanket over the sky. Sleet fell, and the air smelled like tidewater. Salem couldn't spot the water from where they stood, but she could feel it, just on the other side of Pier 33, a big wet maw waiting to pull her down, and she could hear its crashing waves.

They stood a block away from the dungeonlike stone archway marking the pier. Salem knew the building had been a bomb factory in WWII, and that's exactly what it looked like. She did her best to ignore the smell of the sea, and the scent of boiling Dungeness crab just up the pier, and the angry honk of sea lions, all of it warning her of the ocean. The three of them did their best to blend in with the masses jostling for a photograph of Senator Hayes.

“No cold feet now!” Lu said, cackling. “You won't believe who I had to blow to get those press passes.”

She pointed at the IDs that hung around Salem and Bel's necks, the photos expertly glued on to match the modified appearance of both women. In fact, Bel was no longer even female. Her laminated press pass read
John Shaw
, and she wore a dark brown mustache to match her hair along with round, wire-rimmed glasses. With colored contacts and expertly applied eye makeup, Salem passed for Asian, her head covered with a sleek black pageboy wig. Her press pass read
Elizabeth Cho
.

The documents they'd obtained in Beale's vault were tucked in a leather messenger bag that Salem carried crossways across her chest. The knives they'd taken off the killer in Virginia had been mailed along with an anonymous note to Agent Lucan Stone. Lu, who'd been almost as excited to see the locket as she'd been to see the treaty and code, had packed the necklace carefully away. She'd immediately sent a security detail to guard Vida in the hospital.

“For real,” Lu said, her laughter melting. “You no look so good.”

“She's afraid of water.” Bel was using the gravelly voice she'd practiced. “At least old Salem was. New Salem isn't afraid of anything.” She smiled reassuringly.

“I might have nightmares about that mustache.” Salem raised an eyebrow, trying for humor. Her stomach felt sour, though, the earth shifty slidy under feet. After not leaving Minnesota for twenty-six years, she'd now traveled cross-country three times in a single week. Despite that, she couldn't think of the ocean on the other side of the archway without going jelly from the neck down.

Bel squeezed her shoulder. “You're going to be okay. Look at how much we've survived. Hell, look at how we've
thrived
. My mom and yours did a good job training us.”

Bel's proud smile unnerved Salem. “How can you look so happy? Mom and Grace threw us to the wolves.”

They'd already had a version of this talk in the airplane ride. Bel's perspective was completely opposite of Salem's. Bel had found her calling and was grateful to their moms for that. “We're part of something important now, Salem. And we're good at it. I get that you're mad at Vida, but you have to get over it. What's done is done.”

Salem dropped her eyes. Strong, street-smart Bel felt like she'd been handed a gift. She couldn't understand Salem's feeling of betrayal. Salem stared in the direction of the water. Hundreds of people stood between it and her, but she could
feel
its pulse.

“No time for fear,” Lu said, studying her, her voice grim. “Your dad never let fear get him.”

A laugh shocked Salem. She pulled her attention back to Lu. “He killed himself. I'd say that's something like fear.”

Lu's eyes grew comically round. “Daniel Wiley didn't kill himself. He murdered!”

Every lick of moisture in Salem dried up. “I was there. He killed himself.”

Lu turned her around, toward the pier, and patted her on the back. “Your mom let you believe that to protect you.”

95

Twelve Years Old
Daniel's Last Hour

I
t's a perfect summer day. The sun beats its cat-stretch heat on Salem's shoulders, cascading golden down her lean twelve-year-old body, weaving around her thighs, warming the sand between her toes. Her ringlets are tied up, but the fiercest ones break free. They frame her face, each curl dizzy with twists from the aggressive humidity.

Vida is filling in for a colleague, and it is fair and even that Daniel has brought Salem to the beach this day because when she was five years old, Vida brought her to the lake without Daniel.

Salem is wearing her rainbow bikini for the first time, and she gets to wear it without her mother's judging eye. Its colors are electric. She doesn't have much to fill out the top, but running her hands over her sun-warmed tummy, she knows it's flat like it's supposed to be. The stomach flu three days ago helped. The strings of the bikini bottom play along her curved thighs. When her top half catches up with her bottom, she'll really be something in this swimsuit.

She realizes she's been alone on the beach for a while. This lake cabin 30 miles north of Minneapolis belongs to the Galvins, friends of her parents. They let the Wileys use it when they aren't. Today is one of those days. Maybe Daniel is inside making lunch?

Salem returns to her book, a thin volume her mother has checked out for her from the library, Helen Fouche Gaines's
Cryptanalysis
. The book is sixty years old, the text cramped, but it captivates Salem's hummingbird mind. When she next looks up, the sun has moved enough for her to adjust her towel so she doesn't tan unevenly.

But there's her dad! He must have been in the cabin.

His back is to her.

He's wading into the lake. She calls for him, but he doesn't turn. It's hot, he must be cooling off. She returns to the words, but something on the edge of her gaze catches her attention. It's a person.

Isn't it?

She slides her apple-shaped bookmark between the pages and sets down her paperback, craning her neck. She is sure she'd heard somebody, or had she seen them? She should ask her dad about it, but he's out too far. In fact, she can't even see his head.

Standing, she begins to walk toward the cabin. Maybe Vida got done early and decided to join them. Salem is at the edge of the cabin. She can almost see who is around the corner.

She takes the final steps toward the person, the air molecules straining to hold her back.

She feels their snap like spiderwebs against her skin.

Still, she keeps walking.

96

Alcatraz

S
alem scowled. Lu didn't know what she was talking about. Daniel Wiley had definitely killed himself. Lu hadn't been there, and Salem didn't want to go back to the memory, not now, not ever.

“Salem?” Bel was smiling but worry lined her eyes. “Time to go.”

Salem breathed deeply and nodded. She'd give her left leg for an Ativan right now. “I'm ready.”

They threaded the crowd, separating to pass through security. Salem walked through a metal detector, was patted down, emptied her pockets and her purse, and handed over her messenger bag. A female SFPD police officer held up the scroll of papers.

“What are these?”

Salem felt the cold squeeze of fear. This was the first of many junctures at which their plan could go off the rails. “Historical land deeds.” Lu had scanned them back at Golden Lucky, but Salem had been sent with the originals. Without them, and the scientific examination needed to verify their accuracy, the Underground had nothing. “They were written by the same stenographer as wrote some of the documents stored on Alcatraz. I'm hoping to match them up. You know, the signatures.”

“This isn't a field trip.” The officer called over one of her colleagues.

Sweat dripped down Salem's spine. “I'm an amateur historian.”

Both officers stared at her before spreading out the papers. They examined them front and back and uncovered nothing. Still, they didn't like it. The female officer was about to call a third officer over when Salem interrupted her.

“It's okay,” she said. “I don't need to bring them. I can leave them with you and pick them up after the speech. My boss would fire me if I didn't make it to the island on time.” Could they hear her words over the thundercrack of her own heartbeat?

The line behind Salem shifted, the herd antsy.

The female officer glanced from Salem back to the papers and then to the crowd. She made up her mind, rerolling the documents and handing them to Salem before sliding her messenger bag to her. “Don't give anyone paper cuts.” She turned away, not waiting for a response, and began searching through the bag of the man behind Salem.

Salem nodded, grabbed her bag and the papers, and scurried away. Her relief was so great that she forgot about the ocean, at least for a moment.

But then it came into sight.

The ferry, perched on the bay, riding the lip of the sea's dark angry mouth.

Salem hadn't been able to conquer her fear of water to save her own father.

Her phobia was too big. She'd been fooling herself. She couldn't do this.

She turned to leave.

She felt infinitesimal. Lilliputian. Worthless. Disappearing. There was no tomorrow. Only fear beating like an electric heart. She should have given the documents to Bel. Who was she kidding? She never even should have left Minneapolis. Everything she'd ever done was wrong. All of it. Even being born. She needed to—

“Hey, you're going the wrong direction.”

Salem brushed at her face. Agent Lucan Stone stood next to her. She almost said his name, but then she remembered her disguise. He might not even recognize her.

He didn't smile. He took her by the elbow, turned her around, and began leading her up the gangplank.

Her skin prickled. “I'm afraid of water.”

“I don't intend to swim. Do you?”

She tried to twist away, but he slid his arm around her waist. She closed her eyes and didn't open them again until they were in the center of the boat, surrounded by the busy chatter of the press and the few lucky civilians who were allowed at the speech. Was the ferry bobbing under her? She could pretend it wasn't.

Stone was staring at her. She blinked, hiding the side of her face with her hand.

“I like the hair,” he said. “And thank you for the package.”

Of course he recognized her. Her disguise was intended to fool anyone who'd seen her mug shot on the evening news, not someone who actually knew her. “What are you doing here?”

He nodded in the direction of Alcatraz, which she thankfully could not see from the center of the ferry. “I've been reassigned to Hayes. Seems there's a connection between the serial killer and her. Anything you want to tell me about?”

Salem shook her head.

“I didn't think so. In a more specific answer to your question, I saw you go through security. You can't enter a room without causing a fuss, can you?” Were his eyes twinkling? “I think I saw Ms. Odegaard as well. Or is she Mr. Odegaard now?”

“We're not going to hurt anyone.”

“That's true.”

It was an odd reply. Her eyes flew to his face.

He was staring at her, studying her. “How long have you been afraid of water?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. “My whole life.”

He nodded, glancing over her shoulder. “You won't be able to get to Hayes, not with the security on the island. You have something to give her?”

Salem didn't answer. The ferry was taking off from the pier, a lurch of movement tossing her into Stone. He held her, as solid as his namesake.

“Give it to me,” he said. “I'll see that she gets it.”

“No!”

He watched her. “You don't trust me.”

“Why would I?”

“I gave you thirty-six hours when I could have brought you in.”

She squeezed the strap of the messenger bag. “So did the Hermitage. You don't think an organization that could set up a”—she glanced around at the active ears crowding the lower berth—“complex plan like the one for today couldn't have gotten at Bel and me anytime they wanted? No, they waited, using us to retrieve what they couldn't. You might not be working for them, but then again you might. We've done just fine without you, so if you don't mind …”

His expression was unreadable.

She turned to go but there was nowhere to storm off to. Bel must be on this ferry somewhere, but to talk with her would blow her cover. Besides, water was out there. The best Salem could do was make her way to a nearby pole and grip it, the messenger bag pressed between her body and the metal. Fear flapped inside of her like a vulture, but she circled her hands around its neck.

Stone didn't bother her again. When the boat heaved to a stop at Alcatraz Island, he was nowhere to be seen. Salem waited until most of the reporters had cleared out before following them off the ferry. Technically, she was now on land, but land visibly ringed by water, five foot swells crashing against it. It was nearly noon, but you'd have to look at a watch to know because the fog was so dense that it softened sound. The air was chilled, soupy and buoyed by a coldness that emanated from the crumbling gray rocks below. Salem swallowed, tucked her head, and made for the recreation yard on the northwest side of the island. That's where Hayes was scheduled to speak. The helicopter parked atop the main cellhouse suggested that she was already on site.

It was a steep switchback climb to the crest of the island. The solid block of the cellhouse perched to Salem's right. To her left was a craggy rock face slipping straight into the hungry sea.

She kept a steady stream of people between her and the water.

“Salem!”

She turned toward the man's voice. Recognition stopped her in her tracks, confusion overpowering the fear. It wasn't Agent Stone.

“Connor?”

Her booty call lover's face lit up, as broad and handsome as she remembered.