The Jefferson Allegiance (3 page)

Another figure loomed out of the darkness, and the Master Sergeant reached for his pistol as the other three Old Guard swung their rifles about.

“At ease, men,” the newcomer drawled. “Just a friend of the Colonel.”

“Sergeant Major Kincannon.” Ducharme introduced the newcomer. He was a tall, whipcord of a man, his face lined and wizened, indicating many years spent out in the elements. His voice was laconic and seemed on the edge of finding something to laugh at. He was also one of the most effective and ruthless killers in Special Operations, a man born in violence and never far away from it.

“We got to go, Colonel,” Kincannon told him. “The General will be waiting for you.”

“Give me a minute,” Ducharme said.

“Roger that,” the Sergeant Major replied. He went over to the Master Sergeant and engaged him in quiet conversation.

Ducharme knelt at the foot of the grave and reached inside his jacket and shirt to a chain that hung around his neck. The pain in his head was almost unbearable; a jackhammer full of deep, twisting shadows he dared not even try to shed a light on. He pulled on the chain until a small leather pouch appeared along with his dog tag. He opened the drawstring and emptied two bulky rings into his palm. One had a smooth black stone of hematite, the other a single diamond set in the center. Ducharme reached underneath his coat, feeling for the knife secreted in the center of his back. He gripped the rough handle and drew out a six-inch long commando knife. It wasn’t a large, gladiator-type Rambo knife. Thin, both sides of the blade were honed razor sharp. It was designed for one purpose: killing.

Except Ducharme stuck it into the frozen ground, the blade slicing into the grave, parting the frozen soil. He dug a shallow hole. He placed both rings into the hole, and then covered them up, tamping the dirt back into place. He slid the dirt-stained knife back into the sheath. Ducharme stood and looked down at the marker. He came to attention and saluted.

“I will get the truth.”

Ducharme was surprised to feel the pain in his head subside, as if high tide had been reached and it was now washing away, leaving clean sand, waiting for the sun to rise. Not likely.

He turned and walked toward the Sergeant Major. “Take me to the General.”

Kincannon nodded, his rawhide, weather-beaten figure stiff in the blowing snow. “The General told me to give you something right after you came here.” He reached inside his long black coat and pulled out a small package wrapped in cloth.

Ducharme unwrapped the cloth, recognizing it as oilcloth, a waterproof fabric that had been superseded long ago. Inside was a circular piece of wood with a hole in the center and a card taped to it. Ducharme recognized the name on the card instantly: his uncle, Peter LaGrange—the General. The disk was old. Etched on the rim were letters. Ducharme tried to read if there was a message, but quickly concluded there was just the 26 letters of the alphabet, randomly positioned. On one flat side the number 26 was lightly carved.

“What is it?”

“No idea, sir.”

Ducharme rewrapped the disk in the cloth and slid it into his pocket. He moved forward. “Why did the General want you to give this to me now, when we’ll be meeting shortly?”

“That ain’t the sort of question I’d be asking the General,” Kincannon said. “He tells me to do something, I do it.”

“He say
anything
?”

“No, sir. Just told me to give that package to you.”

“Let’s go.”

*************

Across the Potomac River in Washington DC, the growing darkness and thick swirling snow almost obscured the dark red object resting on the copper plate capping the Zero Milestone, due south of the White House. Drawing closer, the old man, pale in the freezing January cold, blanched as he realized he was looking at a human heart on top of the waist-high, stone marker. Rising steam fought with climate, and the warmth won, indicating that the heart still yearned for its owner. The man halted, startled as much by the living voice as the newly dead heart.

“Did you bring me flowers?”

The old man turned in the direction of the sensuous voice, in one hand holding a half-empty bottle of cognac, in the other three roses. A short, wraith-like figure followed the voice, her long black cloak matching the darkening heart behind him. Her face was hidden by a hood, all but her piercing eyes and the look. Perceptive people would recognize the look; that this was a person without a soul, without a conscience. The man was perceptive. His fate was sealed, but like all mortals, he refused to accept it.

“You are not Lucius.” His shock caused him to state the obvious.

“I was sent in his place. I assume you brought the Jefferson Cipher rod and your disks.” She came to a halt a few paces away. “Should I call you the Philosopher Chair?”

The wind blew cold across the man’s scalp, no longer covered by his once thick hair. It hurt for him to stand tall, his body bent with the years, but he did so to face her. “You assume incorrectly.”

“About which?”

“I do not have the rod or the disks.”

“But you are the Chair.” A statement of fact, but he felt compelled to respond anyway.

“Yes.”

“The Philosopher you were to meet gave me his disks.”

“You lie.”

The woman pulled back her hood, revealing short blonde hair and an angelic face, incongruous with the absolute darkness in her eyes. She cocked her head slightly and stared as if he were some crossword puzzle to be solved: difficult, but one she would still do in ink, then discard, to move on to the next challenge. “Where is the Cipher rod and your disks?”

“Where is your master, Lucius?” he demanded.

“I am here in his stead.”

He shook his head, glancing at the heart. “I am to meet Lucius and negotiate a deal. Things have gone too far. We must work out a compromise to keep the truce and--”

“I don’t make policy,” the woman cut him off.

The Chair looked left and right, his guts now as cold as his skin. A dim set of headlights made their way down 15
^th
Street, but the brutal winter storm was keeping almost everyone at home or inside. They were inside their own enclosed snow globe.

“No one is coming to rescue you,” the woman said. “The compromise I offer is a quick and honorable death in exchange for the location of the Cipher rod and your disks. And the names of the two remaining Philosophers.” She drew back her cloak and revealed a short, Japanese-style sword strapped to her waist. She drew the wakizashi in one smooth motion as she came within striking distance.

The man tried to stand tall in the face of the weapon, but his legs trembled. “So you don’t have the disks.”

“I will find them,” she allowed, signifying he’d called her bluff. “The Philosopher who was to join you here died bravely and without giving up his secrets, but I know there must still be a way to find his disks. President Jefferson would have prepared for such a possibility. I will grant him his genius.”

The old man held his ground and met her gaze, even as his heart pounded wildly in his chest. On her coat was a bronze eagle medallion dangling from a small tricolor ribbon. “You are an apprentice to the Society of the Cincinnati? I didn’t know they allowed women into their ranks.”

“I will be the first.”

He shook his head. “Behind the times as always. Our first woman was elected in seventeen eighty-nine.”

“Not as a Chair, I’m sure,” the woman said. “Not to the inner circle of your Philosophical Society. I will be on the inside of the Cincinnati.”

“You’re wrong,” the Chair said, desperate to gain time. “We’ve had women in our inner circle. Our first female Chair was in nineteen-oh-four; the President’s daughter, in fact. You’re on the wrong side.”

“I’m on the side I choose. The side that gives me what I want.”

“And what is that?”

“This.” She brought the blade close to her lips, almost kissing it.

Coldness spread through the Chair’s body.

She extended the sword, holding it steady at eye level. “The location of the Jefferson Cipher rod and your disks, and the names of the last two Philosophers. I will make it easy. You will depart this mortal coil peacefully.”

“But is it really the Cipher you seek, or what the Jefferson Cipher leads to?” He was trying to buy time with his babbling, which shamed him, but he couldn’t stop it.

Her face was expressionless, as if carved out of unblemished white marble. “I was ordered to find the Cipher.”

He leaned over, putting the bottle down along with the roses.

She looked down. “What are those?”

“All these years we have been in opposition, and you still know so little.”

“I know enough to have met you here. And to have already interdicted the Philosopher who was to join you here. It is I who holds the power here.”

“You hold the sword, not the power.” He gave a bitter laugh, beginning to accept his fate, an inch at a time, much as he would accept the sword. “On the wall of the Thomas Jefferson building in the Library of Congress is inscribed the appropriate adage for this stand-off: ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’ It has been so for a long time. The power you seek—“ he shook his head—“it’s the core of our Republic. Its very existence has kept the country in balance for over two centuries. You will not gain it with violence.”

“I’ve found violence to be quite effective,” the woman said with flat affect. “Where is the Cipher?”

He stood once more. “You know I will never tell you.”

She cocked her head once more. She wasn’t solving a puzzle now; more inputting data like a computer and then processing it.

“What is your name?” he asked, still stalling for time, giving inches but not feet. Yet. Despite the blizzard, there was a chance someone would see them.

She gave a low laugh; one that would have been appropriate in a bedroom with lights dimmed, but produced goose bumps in this situation. “The Society gave me a code name—the Surgeon.”

“An odd designation.” He could not help but glance at the heart on the Milestone.

“Four cuts to take the chest,” the Surgeon acknowledged. “But he experienced great pain before the end. I’ve studied the body and I know what causes pain. You don’t want to go down the same path he did. He spun a story about where his disks were and who his two fellow Philosophers were, but I knew he was lying and that cost him dearly.”

“How do you know he was lying?”

She stared at him. “One of my surgical specialties was facial reconstruction. There are forty-three distinct movements your facial muscles can make, which result in slightly over ten thousand possible facial expressions. I have learned to read many of these expressions, which you cannot control. Yours tell me there is some truth in what you say, but ultimately you are lying. Just as he did and he suffered for it. As you will now.”

She took at step closer and there was a flash of steel. Pain shot through him as the tip of the blade cut through his coat and shirt as smoothly and easily as if through butter, leaving a thin red line across his chest, not even an inch deep. Yet. He took a step back in shock and she took a step forward--a macabre dance of torture. Even as he was registering the pain from the first strike, the blade darted forward, tip piercing straight through flesh and muscle. Well over an inch. The Chair froze in agony as the sword skewered him in the shoulder, and then just as quickly, the Surgeon pulled it out of him. Despite the pain, he focused his mind on what had to be done.

“A non-fatal blow,” the Surgeon said, looking at his blood on the blade as if it were another curiosity. “Unless you bleed to death. Which will take longer than you have. Where is the rod? Where are your disks? Who are the other two Philosophers?”

He covered the puncture wound, blood slowly seeping through his fingers. His legs gave out and he collapsed to his knees in the snow. The Surgeon stepped closer, sword at the ready. Something was alive in those eyes now. Something worse than the flat darkness. A flame of desire that would put the great lovers of history to shame.

“Never,” he said. “You’re wrong.”

The Surgeon pulled the sword up for another strike.

“You’ve been lied to,” the Chair cried out.

“It is
you
who lie,” the Surgeon said.

He raised his hand up to protect himself, and with one blow she sliced off his fingers, causing him to cry out, the fingers tumbling to the snow, a part of him and no longer a part.

“Who are the other Philosophers?” the Surgeon asked as she leaned close.

He said something and the Surgeon put her free hand in his thinning hair, jerking his head up, and putting the edge of the blade against his neck. “Who?”

He whispered two names and she pressed the blade harder. A warm trickle of blood ran down his neck. “Who follows you? Who is your successor?”

McBride shook his head. “Never.”

The Surgeon shrugged. “We already have a very good idea of who it is. We are taking steps in that direction. Where are your disks and the rod?”