The Jefferson Allegiance (37 page)

Dangerous times, as we are still wrapped up in two un-declared wars.

“That’s it?” Ducharme asked, scrolling down and finding nothing more. He knew he was being sharper than he intended, but the prospect of the coming conflict was making him edgy. And there was one glaring omission: “What exactly is the Allegiance?”

“We’re going to have to find it to figure that out,” Evie said as she closed the laptop.

Kincannon frowned. “All these wars since World War Two—we really didn’t win any of them. And not a single one of them was fought against a direct threat to our country. You could say after the first nine-eleven we did, but we sure didn’t need to invade Iraq to go after the fuckers who took down the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon.”

Ducharme stirred uncomfortably in the driver’s seat because all of this was touching on things he’d discussed with his uncle, the General. “Maybe that’s exactly why we haven’t won any of them.”

Everyone in the Blazer turned to look at him. “I don’t like admitting it, being a career soldier,” he said, “but we haven’t done too well since World War Two. And I don’t think it’s the military’s fault. We’ve had the best military in the world for a long time—best equipped, best trained, best led. Volunteers since the end of Vietnam. I’ve served with damn fine people.

“I think it’s these people—these fucking Cincinnatians and their ilk. They’ve sent us to fight bullshit wars for bullshit reasons to fatten their pockets. And it’s hard for men—and women—to put their all into a war they can’t believe in. That they actually didn’t sign up to fight in. I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, to defend the country. What the fuck did invading Iraq have to do with that? Even the ‘Stan. Yeah, Bin Laden trained his people there, but we should have just gone after Al Qaeda, not the whole damn country. Hell, Special Forces took out the Taliban in a couple of months. We should have packed our bags and come home. Not hung around to try to ‘build’ a country no one there really wants built. But there
is
an oil pipeline there.”

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

Ducharme realized he’d raised his voice. He was surprising himself as much as the others in the vehicle. The beast was ruling, surging, but in a new direction. Ducharme forced himself to calm down, even though his head was throbbing. It wasn’t time yet for the beast to rule.

Evie leaned forward. “Can I ask you something?”

“Is it going to be a ‘did you know?’” Ducharme said.

“No.” She pointed toward his hand. “Where’s your West Point ring? You said graduates took their rings seriously. How come you don’t wear yours?”

Ducharme knew she was redirecting him, but she was behind the power curve. “Charlie LaGrange—the General’s son—and I left our rings at his family’s home outside of New Orleans when we deployed to Afghanistan. We had a little ceremony, and we agreed we’d repeat the ceremony and put our rings on when we both got back home. We didn’t have that second ceremony. He made it back from the ‘Stan all right—before me. I buried both our rings with Charlie at Arlington just before I met you that night.”

“Why’d you bury yours?” Evie asked.

Ducharme started the Blazer and pulled out, to get back onto the Turnpike. “To be honest. I don’t really know. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time, like Kosciuszko refusing the sword. Now I know it was.”

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

Inside the Anderson House, Lucius’s attention was on the chess set. Half the pieces were scattered about the board, the other half lost in conflict on the sides of the board, indicating a game in progress. He reached out and moved a black bishop three spaces diagonally with utter confidence.

“Who are you playing?” Turnbull asked.

Lucius looked up. “My opponent is a member of the Society far away from here. We have spent considerable time discussing the strategic situation in the world. If we can finally do away with the Allegiance and the Philosophers, there is much we can accomplish. How close are we to achieving that?”

“The Surgeon is ahead of them, for once. She’ll get the disks at Adams’s grave. But I believe they now have the decryption thumb drive for McBride’s computer.”

“You ‘believe?’”

“Three contractors were killed at Monticello. We think the drive was buried at Jefferson’s tomb.”

“Not very efficient. And I’m beginning to hear rumblings. Too many deaths. Too much notoriety.”

“I’ll wrap it up quickly,” Turnbull promised.

“Ducharme and Tolliver won’t give up their disks easily,” Lucius noted.

“Leverage,” Turnbull said simply.

“And the last set of disks?”

Turnbull rubbed his scarred hands together. “We haven’t figured it out. Don’t know if they have. But if they have or they do—leverage will still be the key to forcing them to hand them over.”

Chapter Twenty

It was dark as Ducharme drove the Blazer past the sign indicating the town limits of Quincy, Massachusetts. Another sign proclaimed Quincy: ‘The City of Presidents.’

“Before the Bushes, the Adamses were the only father-son Presidential tandem,” Evie informed them as they entered the town.

“Great,” Ducharme said.

“John Hancock was also from Quincy.” She pronounced it Quin-zee, which irritated Ducharme.

“Fantastic.” Ducharme checked the GPS.

“Are you being sarcastic?” Evie asked.

“Ignore him,” Kincannon advised Evie. “He gets snarly on a mission.”

Ducharme stopped the truck. “There’s the church.”

They all looked ahead at the old building, which claimed the triangle in the center where three roads formed the exterior.

“It’s the only church that has two dead Presidents buried there,” Evie said, apparently undaunted. “The National Cathedral in Washington has one: Woodrow Wilson, although Eisenhower, Reagan and Ford had their funerals there.”

“Can we focus?” Ducharme asked.

“The disks aren’t going to be buried,” Evie said.

“Why not?” Kincannon asked.

“Because John Adams, his son John Quincy, and their wives, are in crypts in the basement of the church,” Evie said.

“OK.” Ducharme tapped Kincannon on the arm. “See any surveillance?”

“Negative, but I should do a sweep around the perimeter,” Kincannon replied, checking his MP-5.

Kincannon was out of the Blazer and gone into the darkness.

“What kind of crypts?” Ducharme asked.

“Stone sarcophagus,” Evie said.

“So we’ll need something to get the lid off if the disks were placed inside,” Ducharme said.

“If they’re here,” Evie threw in.

Ducharme paused and put a hand on her arm. “Don’t waffle on me now.”

“I believe my reasoning to be valid based on the data.”

“You want to bet your life on it?” Ducharme asked.

“I am betting my life on it.”

Ducharme rubbed the back of his head. “Relax, Evie. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Let’s separate the disks again. You keep McBride’s and the rod, I’ll keep LaGrange’s.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re splitting up in a minute, so it makes sense. It’s one of Rogers’s rules.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint old Mister Rogers.” She pulled out the rod, unscrewed one end, and slid off seven disks, handing them to Ducharme. He placed them in one of the Velcro pockets on the outside of his bulletproof vest.

Kincannon appeared in front of the Blazer, the sub-machinegun tucked underneath his long coat. Ducharme lowered the driver’s window.

“It’s clear,” Kincannon reported.

Ducharme looked back at Evie. “Stay here. We’ll be back as fast as we can. You hear shooting, get the hell out of here and we’ll contact you by phone; if we can.”

Ducharme went to the back of the Blazer and opened the tailgate, grabbing a crowbar, which he tucked under his jacket. He headed toward the church, with Kincannon flanking him. Ducharme scanned the area, noting there was little traffic on the streets surrounding the church.

“No security?” Ducharme asked as they approached.

“Didn’t see any,” Kincannon said.

“I guess dead Presidents don’t rate.”

“Ain’t like they’re gonna get any deader.”

Ducharme took the four stairs at the front of the church two at a time. Using one of the four large pillars as concealment, he went to a door. It was locked. He pulled a set of picks out and made short work of that.

He slid inside, pulling out his sub-machinegun. It would be some kind of irony if they were ambushed inside a church. What kind, he didn’t know.

He and Kincannon made their way to the stairway to the presidential crypt. Another gate barred the way. Ducharme pushed on it and it swung wide open. He checked the lock. It had been pried open.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Someone’s been here already. Came in some other door.”

“Let’s hope they haven’t left,” Kincannon said, the stock of his weapon tucked tight into his shoulder.

They entered the crypt as a team. Covering across each other’s fronts, sweeping the room with their eyes, the muzzles of the sub-machineguns following, fingers on the triggers.

The crypt was empty of life.

Resting on top of John Adams’s sarcophagus was a piece of paper. Ducharme grabbed it and read:

CALL FOR A TRADE

“Oh, shit,” Ducharme exclaimed. He ran out of the crypt, Kincannon on his heels. Up the stairs, out the front of the church. He could hear the sound of a helicopter lifting off, and saw the dark silhouette of the aircraft flit across the stars to the west and then disappear. He ran across the street to the Blazer.

The doors were open. The Blazer was empty.

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

Special Agent Burns stood on the roof of the Hoover Building dusting for fingerprints. He lifted the set off the door handle, and then went to the elevator. He took it to the floor that housed the Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Finding an empty room, he processed the prints, and then fed them into the FBI’s database.

Nothing.

As expected.

He dug deeper into the computer. He ran the fingerprints against the IAFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System which held over 47 million sets of prints, gathered from all over the country by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Nothing.

The next largest list of fingerprints outside of the FBI was not as easily accessible. He pulled a little black notebook out of his pocket and thumbed through it. A list of user-names and passwords were listed near the rear. Favors culled from favors he’d dispensed over the years.

Using one set, he accessed the Pentagon’s personnel records database. He ran the prints.

A Top Secret banner popped up, barring any further information unless the user had the proper clearance. He checked his book again and found a name and a password.

He punched it in.

A Department of Defense Form 214 appeared in response to the prints. Of a Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Blake.

He scanned the form, his own brief stint in the military allowing him to make sense of the abbreviations.

Blake graduated the United States Naval Academy in 1962. Was commissioned in the Marine Corps. Served two tours in Vietnam with distinction, winning the Navy Cross. Was assigned to the National Security Council in 1969.

Blake was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1974, still serving in Washington. He retired from the military in 1976. And that was it.

Burns went back to his tiny office and sat down. He Googled “Thomas Blake,” and wasn’t surprised at what came up. Blake’s graduation from Annapolis and his time on the National Security Council were well documented. As were numerous allegations that he was involved in illegal operations involving arms smuggling, drugs and other nefarious dealings. He was indicted on numerous Federal charges.

The charges came to naught in 1977. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Blake, facing six federal indictments, died when the small plane he was piloting crashed at sea off the coast of Florida.

No body was recovered.

Burns had no doubt that Blake became Turnbull in 1977.

A player once more, with a different name and a different position, but doing the same thing.

Burns put his fedora on, pulling the brim down low over his eyes. Time to play the player.

Chapter Twenty-One

“The Surgeon will make the next move.” Ducharme slammed his fist into the steering wheel. “She’ll want the damn disks for Evie.”

“Ain’t gonna be no trade,” Kincannon said. “You know that.”

Ducharme tried to figure the angles to the tactical situation. His head was pounding and he was having a hard time concentrating on the facts. He finally accepted the grim reality: there were no angles other than the disks. “We’re screwed.”