Salem's Cipher Read online

  Killing of the Romanovs? Check.

  Roswell UFO landing? Yes.

  Kennedy assassination? Obviously.

  Then came the Internet, and the theories gained traction. The Hermitage found itself connected to a bloody coup in Nicaragua, a successful assassination in Latvia, an election in Florida. The attention made their work more difficult. Carl Barnaby, as current CEO of the nonprofit Hermitage, cared. Then the Hermitage’s address was publicized—3 East 70th Street, on Central Park in New York—and rumor chasers began to gather on the sidewalk, bothering guests and members equally.

  That’s when Carl Barnaby convinced the board to bring in a new PR team. Historically, the Hermitage’s public face, when they were forced to reveal one, was as a modest organization working toward global religious and political cooperation. The one group with any power who believed otherwise, the Underground, was being systematically downsized, had been since Andrew Jackson’s time. If Jason secured the master list of leaders, the Underground would finally be put out of business, and the Hermitage Foundation would be free and clear.

  They’d still have the annoyance of the Internet. A motley group of bloggers—hackers, socialists, feminists, and the like—was painting them as a cabal of rich white men and religious leaders pulling the world’s puppet strings. The Hermitage had initially met this challenge by ignoring it, allowing the natural weight of conspiracy to fall back in on itself and crush the truth in plain sight. With the protesters outside, however, legitimate news outlets were picking up the story.

  The new PR company proposed that the Hermitage host a conference in Florida, invite the public, and swing wide the doors to the media. Give them something sweeter to chew on besides the meaty conspiracy theories, the firm argued. They manufactured a suitably meaningless name—the First Universal Conference on Religious and Political Synergy—and lined up politicians, CEOs, rabbis, archbishops, imams, and even a handful of NGOs to speak, ninety-nine percent of them unaware of what the Hermitage actually was.

  Barnaby hadn’t made an appearance. He had real work to attend to. But he’d heard it had been going well, with wonderful initiatives being discussed and photo opportunities captured, when a Texas senator attending the conference was caught with three prostitutes in his room, one a mere thirteen years old. Damn Texas politicians, every last one of them too dumb or too liberal, never both at once. Fortunately, the Hermitage’s PR team had quickly distanced the senator from the organization and the conference by uncovering and then distributing records showing his improper use of campaign funds. The senator quietly stepped down from his position, the crisis was averted, and the Hermitage’s public relations men were back at work.

  But the protests continued outside.

  Barnaby sighed. “Don’t they have anything better to do on a workday?”

  Geppetto didn’t answer him. Barnaby was unsurprised. The assassin was quiet and, frankly, terrifying, sitting quietly in the corner for the entire photo op. Where Jason reminded Barnaby of a Machiavellian prince, handsome and flirtatious, Geppetto was taciturn, more tool than man. He looked nothing like his namesake. His age and ethnicity were unclear, his appearance unremarkable, with one exception: his fingers were as strong as steel.

  Barnaby had studied them once, during Geppetto’s induction into the Hermitage. Most of the recruits were nervous in the fancy offices of the Hermitage—most, but not two. Jason melted into his surroundings like he’d been born there. Geppetto was expressionless. He sat, hands resting on his thighs. Barnaby had heard about what Geppetto could accomplish with those weapons, and when they’d first met, he’d expected to see fists like boulders, fingers like sausages.

  He hadn’t been disappointed.

  Still, at that first meeting, Barnaby was considering whether Geppetto was a good fit for the organization. That’s when Geppetto turned to him as if reading his mind, his gaze as flat and black as a shark’s. Without breaking the stare, Geppetto lifted his hand and set it on the shoulder of the man next to him. It might have appeared to be an encouraging gesture, but not to the man under Geppetto’s grip. He had trained with Geppetto. He knew what Gepetto was capable of.

  He moaned.

  And with the effort Barnaby would use to squeeze a lemon into his ice water, Geppetto pinched the front and back of the man’s shoulder together, pressing until only the densest inch of bone separated Geppetto’s pointer finger from his thumb.

  The sick crack of the bone, the pop-squish of muscle turning to soup, would forever stick with Barnaby. Hadn’t doubted Geppetto since.

  “I need you to go to Alcatraz.” Barnaby finally turned, facing his office and the Ziegler Mahal Persian rugs, the Florentine ebony chests, the tables inlaid with garnet, lapis, and malachite. The walls were draped with lush tapestries sewed in Jesus’s time and oils painted by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and Monet. Baccarat chandeliers dripped prisms of light from the ceilings. It had all been here before Barnaby’s time, collected by Andrew Jackson and the men who came after him.

  Geppetto sat on the other side of Barnaby’s desk, hands clasped in his lap, black eyes absorbing the light in the room. Barnaby had been told that Geppetto did hand and finger exercises constantly when he wasn’t working. He believed it.

  “Jason was in charge of that.” Geppetto’s voice had the flatness of one who is deaf. His hearing was fine.

  “He still is.” Barnaby rested his hand on his kangaroo-leather chair. A surge of annoyance flashed through him. Gina Hayes was scheduled to deliver a prison reform speech on Alcatraz the day before the election. The plan to dismiss her had been put in place a year ago, a desperate measure that they should never have had to use. The regular arsenal should have been sufficient to remove her from the political field: swiftboating with directed media attacks on her family, her appearance, and her Senate votes, bribes to her closest staff members, goddamn it her gender, should have been enough. But the woman was like a Bobo doll. Every punch she took, she bounced back up, a smile on her face, her hair perfect. The final insult? Her Republican opponent was a cartoon of a human being. All the woman needed to do to stroll into the presidency was survive this next week. It was Barnaby’s job to make sure she didn’t.

  “You’ll be there to help, if needed.” He didn’t share with Geppetto that he had a third line of defense in place in case both Geppetto and Jason failed.

  It wasn’t just that Hayes’s election to president would cut into the Hermitage’s cash flow, with her promise to remove troops from the Middle East, reduce US dependence on oil, and put an end to no-bid government contracts. It wasn’t Senator Hayes’s impending Mideast peace deal, which threatened to shift power on a global scale, though that would have been more than enough. It wasn’t even her opposition to the Afghanistan Mineral Rights bill currently up for vote in the Senate. If she made it to the Oval Office, that bill was dead in the water, guaranteed, and Barnaby and his brother didn’t have the money to cover the promises they’d made. That was bad, but it wasn’t the ultimate reason Hayes needed to be stopped.

  She had to be stopped because she was a woman.

  A female figurehead on that level would undermine centuries of work.

  There were no lengths to which Barnaby would not go to keep the second-class status of women, and by extension his and his colleagues’ fortunes, intact. It was a full-time job, but the men of the Hermitage had the time, the money, and the incentive.

  “The Underground leader Jason captured in Minneapolis has arrived?”

  Geppetto blinked, which passed for a nod.

  “Bring her up. I have questions.”

  Geppetto stayed motionless just long enough to show that he acted of his own volition. The man never looked like he was taking orders. It made Barnaby uneasy. He’d like to fire him, except he was scared to be on opposite sides of the playing field.

  Finally Geppetto stood and walked toward the door. He paused when Barnaby
issued a second instruction. “I’ll want you to stay here during the questioning. We need her to be completely forthcoming. And I’ll want you to find everything you can about her daughter. About both their daughters.” Barnaby didn’t want to admit to himself that he might have to call Jason off of the daughters and the Underground leader docket they were after to concentrate on the main prize—Hayes. Barnaby wanted it all. “I need to know where the girls work, how much money they have in their accounts, who their boyfriends are, their favorite foods, everything.”

  Geppetto continued without responding. Barnaby returned to the window overlooking Central Park, confident his instructions would be followed, even if Geppetto ended up delegating them. In the moldering coolness of fall, beyond the protesters, his eyes followed a mother pushing twin boys dressed in green in a stroller. Barnaby thought of his own grandson, three years old, blond hair, blue eyes, and the most beautiful thing Barnaby had ever seen.

  The power cannot shift.

  A sudden thought eased the weight on his chest. He didn’t want to be the dog that dropped his bone in the river to bark at its reflection, but maybe he could have it all. He would just have to place the two daughters and their list in storage until Gina Hayes was let go.

  Barnaby reached into his jacket and yanked out his cell phone.

  57

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  One day past Halloween and the decorations still reigned in the shops and houses surrounding Amherst West Cemetery: wiggly white skeletons, cotton cobwebs, black plastic spiders, gigantic blow-up lawn ornaments in the shape of ghosts and witches. Clancy Johnson was raised in the wide, flat bowl of Wyoming. He’d already grown tired of Massachusetts without the added ornamentation.

  It almost felt like claustrophobia, what he was experiencing. The buildings were too close to each other, the trees crowding for attention like five-year-olds at show and tell. It didn’t help that he had a twitchy feeling he was out of the loop on this one. One of his three phones buzzed. It wasn’t the one his wife and kids called him on, which he kept in his breast pocket. The vibration also wasn’t coming from the Android taken from the women killed in Minneapolis, sent to Clancy via the Hermitage. It was coming from his work phone, which he kept looped on his belt. He tugged it out of his pocket.

  “Clancy Johnson.”

  The instructions were clear, terse, and set Clancy back on his ass as hot as a punch. “Tell me again,” he said. It was a reflex, a way to buy time while he figured this out. The instructions were even more succinct the second time.

  He hung up without a good-bye and whistled, low and surprised. “You still got eyes on Odegaard and Wiley?”

  Stone had the binoculars firm to his eyes. “Yup.”

  “Good. Cuz I just received a phone call from the SAC saying we have to take them in. They’re wanted for conspiring to assassinate Senator Gina Hayes.”

  58

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  The late-morning sky over the West Amherst Cemetery was aggressively slate in color and feel. There must be a poultry farm nearby because the smell of fowl and damp was blowing in, coating the headstones, rolling like fog over the low spots, carrying with it a primal scent of survival and butchery.

  “We’re looking for Lot 53, Grave D.” Bel held the cemetery map and led the way, the graves laid out in a roughly triangular pattern.

  Salem was jittery, a leaf before a storm. One two three breathe.

  “1737,” Ernest said, pointing at the tipping white tongue of a gravestone, its inscription so worn by rain and sun that it had nearly disappeared. “Mercy, you see this? Think of it. The person buried here was alive three hundred years ago.”

  The girl stayed close at his heels, not saying a word. Salem thought that if they made it out of this cemetery with whatever they’d been sent for, the first thing she’d do was buy Mercy a doll. No little kid should be without one.

  Bel stopped so suddenly that all three of them almost bumped into her. She glanced down at her map and up again. “There.” She pointed ahead at a wrought iron fence surrounding four headstones, three of them tall, thin marble tablets, and the fourth a squat marble monument. A bronze plaque mounted in the fence read “In Memoriam, Emily Dickinson, Poetess.”

  The first thin tablet inside the wrought iron marked Emily’s sister Lavinia’s grave, the second Emily Dickinson’s, decorated with flowers, coins, and trinkets, and the third belonged to Edward, Emily’s brother. The fourth was inscribed for Dickinson’s grandparents:

  Samuel Fowler Dickinson

  Died April 22, 1838 Aged 62 Years

  ——

  Lucretia Gunn

  His Wife

  Died May 11, 1840 Aged 64 years

  “Why’s that grave different?” Mercy asked, pointing through the fence.

  “Emily Dickinson’s grandparents weren’t originally buried in this cemetery,” Salem answered. “They were dug up and brought back here, to their hometown. Maybe that’s why?”

  Mercy’s eyes grew wide.

  Salem knelt in front of the gravestone, the wrought iron separating them. Mercy stood at her shoulder.

  “Keep watch,” Bel ordered Ernest, kneeling next to Salem.

  Salem stuck her hand through the 4-inch-wide opening in the iron and felt the cool stone of Samuel and Lucretia’s grave marker, running her fingers over the grooves spelling “Gunn.” The name was an inch high, four inches long. The stone around it felt solid. In fact, other than the line separating the information on Samuel from Lucretia’s, the whole inset name panel appeared to be one unbroken chunk of rock. The gray of the sky pressed on Salem’s shoulders.

  “Do you see anything?” Bel asked.

  Salem shook her head. “I’ve never worked with stone.” She didn’t want to alarm Bel by telling her that she didn’t even know what to look for. If this were a dresser, or an armoire, or even a wooden beam, she’d at least know where to start.

  Mercy threaded her hand through the fence and knocked on the face of the gravestone. She had to grip Salem’s shoulder for balance. Her hand felt warm and tiny. Salem found herself protectively covering it with her own hand.

  With her palm over Mercy’s, she felt something unexpected.

  “Do that again.” Salem listened carefully, still covering Mercy’s hand with hers.

  Mercy knocked the inscription panel again.

  “Now knock on the stone outside the panel.” Salem’s heartbeat danced.

  Mercy did as directed.

  “Do you hear that?” Salem asked.

  Bel shook her head.

  “Here.” Salem transferred Mercy’s hand to Bel’s shoulder. “Mercy’s body is serving as a sound transmitter. You have to feel it rather than hear it.”

  Bel closed her eyes and listened as Mercy repeated the knocking. Her eyes shot open. “It sounds different. The panel. Hollow, maybe?”

  Salem nodded, a smile playing across her lips. “I think so. It’s still thick, though, even if there’s a compartment underneath.” She stuffed both hands through the fence and began feeling the edges of the panel. “If we can find a trip switch, we won’t have to bust it open.”

  “Hey,” Ernest said, softly. If they hadn’t been standing so close together, they wouldn’t have heard him.

  “What?” Bel asked crossly.

  “Men in suits,” Ernest said. “Two of them.”

  Salem glanced over her shoulder. Agent Lucan Stone and another man who looked like a heavier version of the actor Ed Harris were charging up the hill toward them.

  Her throat hitched. “They’re FBI.”

  Ernest grabbed Mercy and threw her over his shoulder. “Run!” he yelled.

  59

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  Jason’s jaw was hanging. He stood at the window of the Speed Wash Laundromat on Pray Street, across from the Amherst West Cemetery, watc
hing the fiasco play out. Agent Clancy Johnson and his partner were cuffing Salem Wiley and Isabel.

  Those women were his. Clancy Johnson had been directed to keep his distance.

  Jason had never missed a target in his life. He was pleased to see his hand steady as he withdrew his phone.

  Carl Barnaby picked up on the second ring and spoke without preamble. “They’ve been arrested?”

  Jason felt the fall-stop of deep unease. Wiley and Isabel’s arrest hadn’t been a mistake. Barnaby had ordered this. “My instructions were to harvest the women and get the list. I can’t do that if they’re in FBI custody.”

  Carl Barnaby chuckled, but his conviviality lacked its usual soothing effect. “Consider it a favor. The women are on hold, perfectly preserved until you are done with the real job: the Crucible.”

  It was as if someone had set fire to Jason’s stomach. “I had planned to take care of all of it. There’s time. We have five days until I need to be in San Francisco.”

  “True,” Barnaby said. “But there’s too much at stake. The Crucible is more important than any other woman in the world right now. If she wins, she’ll be untouchable. I want you in California early to make sure everything is in place. But listen to this.”

  Jason was trying to heed, but he was so angry that the world was going white. He could have done it all. He had the situation under control. All his power was being snatched from him, leaving him a small, trembling boy, skinned by the world, nowhere to hide.

  You’re not man enough to eat something raw.

  “The FBI is taking the women in for a planned dismissal of the Crucible.” Barnaby’s laughter deepened. “Isn’t that rich? Her maintenance team will need to divert resources from actually protecting her to investigate the girls. Meanwhile, if the girls already possess the list, our contact will retrieve it when he drops them off at the local police station. If they don’t yet have it, I’ve been assured that they’ll be held for at least a week, until long after your work with the Crucible is done. Once they’re released, we’ll have a new corporate structure. You can follow them to the list, dismiss them once they have it in hand, and use the names on the list to shut down the Underground once and for all.”