The Jefferson Allegiance (17 page)

Lincoln knew he had done many things in violation of his oath of office and the Constitution. He’d unilaterally expanded the military; suspended habeus corpus; proclaimed martial law; had citizens arrested; seized property; censored newspapers; and, perhaps most galling to many, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. All without consulting Congress. He imagined old Polk would be laughing heartily if he could have seen the events of the last four years.

“I understand that, Mister President,” Grant said. “That’s why I have gotten the Chair to keep the Allegiance in hiding. I told him it would not be needed. Not now, nor in the future. Once peace has taken hold, I am sure we will be back to where we were before the war.”

It will never be the same, Lincoln thought, but did not say. He pressed a long finger against his temple, trying to calm the pounding in his head. “You are quite correct. The Allegiance will not be needed. I will relinquish all those extra powers I have assumed in the name of the emergency as soon as the country returns to normalcy.”

“And the Cincinnatians?”

“They too will be in check. I needed their support for the war, but not any longer.”

Grant heaved a sigh of relief. “Very good, sir. I will tell the Chair.” Grant stood to depart.

“General.”

Grant turned. “Yes, sir?”

“Remember this meeting. I once walked into this room with the Allegiance years ago. You just walked in with the threat of the Allegiance. Some day if you sit in this room, remember what happened, and remember the dangers of the power of this office and of the Cincinnatians.”

Grant removed the cigar from his mouth and nodded. “I will, Mister President.”

“Very good.” Lincoln remembered something. “Mary wants to go to the theater tomorrow night. Would you and Missus Grant like to join us?”

“I will consult with her, but I see no reason why we would not.” Grant turned for the door.

“Very good,” Lincoln said.

Grant paused as he opened the door. “What theater, sir?”

“The Ford Theater.”

Chapter Nine

Burns stared at the Poe Monument. Someone had chipped away at the front of the Monument trying to remove the metal plaque of the poet’s image. He could sense Turnbull behind him and, every once in a while, hear the senior agent whisper something into his phone. The two wounded personnel had given brief statements and then been carted away in un-marked ambulances that never turned on their lights or sirens. The cemetery had been quickly swept, and it was clear. One thing was clear to Burns—the men surrounding the cemetery were not FBI. He’d worn the badge long enough to tell his own.

“Well?” Turnbull said, putting away his satphone. “What have you got, Mister Profiler?”

“Not much to profile on,” Burns said, “but I’ve been on the job long enough to read a crime scene.”

“And?” Turnbull glanced at his watch.

“The killer was here, trying to get this plaque off. Ducharme came from around the back, after incapacitating your number Three. By the way, we can assume he found the bullet-transmitter and left it in the Blazer. He and the killer got in a gun battle. Ducharme shot your number Two in the body armor—he meant to disable, not kill. Then he escaped the same way he came in. He ran into your number Seven. His back-up—I’m assuming that would be Sergeant Major Kincannon—hit Seven twice in the back with non-fatal shots. That didn’t incapacitate Seven, so Ducharme took out his knee. Pretty effective. Pretty brutal. But non-lethal.”

“And?”

Burns walked toward the rear of the cemetery rather than answer, Turnbull reluctantly following. “Whatever they were looking for, I think Ducharme found it back here.” He pointed at the disturbed dirt in front of the Poe marker. “While you were getting the area cleared, I called the curator of the Poe Museum. Woke him out of his deep slumber. Curiously enough, he says there’s a slight possibility Poe is actually buried here, not under the monument out front. I could tell by the way he said it, that ‘slight’ actually meant ‘strong’ possibility, and he was covering the Museum’s ass.”

“So how did Ducharme know that?” Turnbull mused.

Burns was surprised Turnbull even asked the obvious. “Evie Tolliver.” He kicked the dug up dirt with the tip of his shoe. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me what he dug up?”

“No.”

“You don’t give a shit about catching this killer.” Burns said it as a statement, not a question.

“The killer is your responsibility,” Turnbull replied. “I have others.”

Burns spread his hands. “How can I catch her if you keep me sitting in a truck while she—“

Turnbull cut him off. “You can have her when the time is right.”

“She’s your operative, isn’t she?”

“Then I would be part of a murder conspiracy,” Turnbull said.

“You didn’t answer.”

“Of course she’s not my operative,” Turnbull said.

Burns detected not the slightest bit of sincerity. “How many people have to die before—“

Turnbull cut him off again. “There are much higher priorities right now than a few bodies.” Turnbull stepped closer, getting inside Burns’s personal space. “Do you believe in defending your country, Agent Burns? Do you believe in defending it by any means necessary?”

“I believe in the law.”

“The law only goes so far. Even the Founding Fathers knew that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Forget it,” Turnbull said.

“I don’t know about the killer,” Burns said, realizing what he was up against and getting back on task, “but this tells me something about Ducharme.”

“And that is?”

“He—and his sidekick, Kincannon—deliberately shot your men—“

“Our men,” Turnbull cut in.

“—
your
men in their vests, even though all their Special Operations training focuses on killing with two headshots. Double-tapping. He doesn’t want to kill.”

“That means he’s weak.”

Burns shook his head. “You’re underestimating him. Both of them—Tolliver and Ducharme. He’s more than capable of killing when he has to. He took out that man’s knee because he was acting on instinct, not thinking. The issue is whether he wants to kill. Before, it’s always been under the auspices of being a soldier. He’s operating outside the normal parameters of what he’s used to. He stays out there long enough, he’ll adapt. It’s what people do.”

“It’ll be too late,” Turnbull said, walking away and punching a number into his satphone.

“Will it?” Burns whispered to himself. “For who?”

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

Lily felt her satphone buzz, and checked the screen.

***YOU FAILED***

She went rigid at the words. She stopped checking where the rounds had hit the hood of her Liquid Armor cloak. She quickly texted her reply.

>>>I STOPPED THEM FROM GETTING THE DISKS<<<

***THEY GOT THE DISKS. YOU WERE AT THE WRONG MONUMENT***

She shifted in the van’s seat. >>>I WAS AT POE’S GRAVE<<<

***HE IS BURIED IN THE BACK. DUCHARME IS MOVING NORTH ON I95 WHY?***

>>>NO IDEA<<< She rubbed the side of her skull. The skin was tender and there would be bruises where the bullets had hit the hood. But the bone was intact and there was no blood. She had a bit of headache, but she could deal with that.

***DO YOU HAVE LOCATION LAST PHILOSOPHER?***

>>>YES<<<

***WHERE?***

>>>PHILOSOPHICAL HALL PHILADELPHIA<<<

***THEIR INNER SANCTUM***

Lily was pissed about the lack of intelligence support. If Turnbull knew about Poe’s grave, why hadn’t he told her? Most likely he hadn’t known either until after the fact. Fucking desk jockey.

>>>YES<<<

***FIRST. MAKE MEET BWI LONG TERM PARKING SPACE DELTA 42***

Lily frowned. >>>MEET WHO?<<<

***CONTRACTORS. PAY THEM***

>>>PAY THEM WHAT?<<<

***WHAT YOU VALUE. DO IT. DUCHARME IS MINE***

The screen went blank.

She pulled up her left sleeve. There were three cuts there, all as badly healed as the ones on her left arm, but longer, almost encircling the entire arm like a bad tattoo. She drew her sword.

The wakishashi was a weapon her grandfather had brought home from World War II as a prize. He’d received a samurai sword and the shorter wakishashi blade as a token of surrender from the Japanese Army General who was part of the delegation that flew to Manila to negotiate the original surrender with MacArthur, which actually ended World War II, two weeks before the more formal ceremony on board the USS
Missouri
in Tokyo Bay.

Naturally, the samurai sword had gone to Lily’s younger brother, even though he had shown little interest in things military. Her father had dealt her the wakishashi very reluctantly as an heirloom upon her graduation from the Air Force Academy. She imagined the samurai sword was gathering dust somewhere in her banker brother’s attic. She planned on visiting her brother soon and claiming the sword. As soon as this mission was over. It would be an enjoyable visit. For her. Not him.

She pressed the blade against her skin, just below the last cut, slicing in. She rotated the blade as far as she could around the arm. Blood flowed, but she ignored it. She lowered the sleeve and went to the computer set on the bench against one wall, taking the seat bolted to the floor in front of it.

“Blood for blood,” she whispered.

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

“They’re still tracking us,” Evie said.

Ducharme glanced over from the driver’s seat as they rolled up I-95. “Are you asking or telling me something I already know?”

“What’s your problem?” Evie asked.

“My problem,” he told her, “is I’m fumbling around in the dark, here.”

Evie stared at him. “Your uncle was murdered. My friend was murdered.”

“And we’re off on a half-ass wild goose chase after wooden disks two hundred years old,” Ducharme said. His head was pounding, his mind sliding into the dark pool, the beast snarling and grumbling.

“Your logic is backward.”

Ducharme tightened his jaw for a second. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Easy, Duke,” Kincannon said in a low voice.

Evie spoke. “If someone is willing to kill to get them, then it’s not a wild goose chase as you put it. The disks are obviously important just from that simple fact,
and
because your Uncle and my friend died to protect their whereabouts. We’ll know why when we read the message encoded onto the Jefferson Cipher.”

“What if it just says ‘congratulations?’” Kincannon asked.

“It will be twenty-six letters long,” Evie said. “You want my best guess what this is about?”

“I want something.” Ducharme hit the wheel with his fist. “I want to know why my uncle died. Why didn’t those contractors move in on the killer even though they had that graveyard under surveillance?”

“Wheels within wheels, as the Sergeant Major noted,” Evie said.

Kincannon cleared his throat. “Perhaps the government itself is doing it.”

“You guys are the government,” Evie said.

“Not
that
government,” Kincannon said. “The government is not this monolithic organization that most people think it is.”

“Watch the big words,” Evie said.

“Funny woman,” Kincannon threw back.

“I understand compartmentalization in the government,” Evie said. “Hell, half the time people at Langley didn’t know what the person in the next cubicle was up to. But that’s information, not power. There’s a
they
out there. People in the shadows. Pulling strings.”

“What exactly are
they
behind?” Ducharme demanded, as he glanced in the rearview mirror to see if they were being followed. “And who are
they
? My first team sergeant had a saying: ‘There’s no
we
and
they
, until
they
fuck up.’”

“Sounds like a smart man,” Evie said.

Ducharme nodded, feeling the beast settle down. “He also said there were two types of soldiers.”

Evie bit. “And they are?”

“The steely-eyed killer and the beady-eyed minion. And it’s hard at first glance to tell them apart.”

“Now me,” Kincannon threw in, “I’m neither. I’m a free spirit. I’ve been everywhere but the electric chair, seen everything but the wind.”