Salem's Cipher Read online

  “You look beautiful.”

  “Charles, it’s the new millennium. Don’t you mean I look powerful? Smart? Capable?” But Senator Gina Hayes’s broad smile showed she was teasing. Her husband always said exactly the right thing. It was one of his gifts.

  “I mean it.” He pulled her into an embrace rare enough that Matthew Clemens stopped juggling seven different appointments, hundreds of texts and emails, and a phone conversation with CNN to stare, agape. The three of them were backstage at Kinnick Stadium on the University of Iowa campus. Outside, an unusually plump crescent moon was crawling up the night sky, and the winter-washed air carried ice currents that nipped at noses and fingers. That didn’t keep the record crowd of 35,000 supporters from bundling in parkas, hats, and scarves to hear a historic speech by who looked to be the first female president of the United States of America.

  The election was in six days. News stations were predicting the highest voter turnout in history. Technicians, news crews, and security personnel bustled backstage. Since no moment of Senator Hayes’s life was private, at least two different cable stations were showing a live feed of her husband’s embrace. She knew this, or at least guessed.

  She didn’t care.

  She was going to steal these five seconds in her husband’s arms, safe, grounded, a blink of selfishness before she stepped in front of thousands—millions with television and the Internet—and gave them everything she had. She’d been raised in the ideal of public service, taught by her father that your life only had meaning if it helped others. She’d seen the sacrifices he’d made right up until his death of a heart attack two years earlier. She knew how proud he’d be of her, and that was one of the sparks that kept her fire burning.

  Hayes pulled out of her husband’s arms, letting her hand linger on his cheek for a moment. “Do I still look okay?”

  He flashed the charming smile that had disarmed men and women—too many women—his entire political career. “You’ve never looked more powerful, smart, or capable.” He leaned close to her ear and whispered, “And I’ve never seen you look more beautiful. If you need help getting out of that suit later, you know where to find me.”

  With a wink, he stepped back and let her hair and makeup crew complete their final touches. Hayes threw him one last glance before returning to work, wondering how he could still surprise her, still make her feel so attractive, even after all these years.

  She called over her shoulder. “Matthew, has someone tested the teleprompters?”

  “Yes, but you won’t need them.” Matthew didn’t pause his typing to answer but did stop to issue a threat to the cable news anchor creeping closer to Hayes despite multiple warnings against direct questions until after the speech. With a single gesture, he also managed to have her pre-speech chamomile tea brought to her.

  Hayes smiled as she sipped. American voters were worried they’d be electing her and her husband to run the country when in fact, they should be worried about the package deal of her and her assistant. Matthew had chosen her outfit (a slimming pantsuit in deep “power” red), her hair (“less of the matronly Martha, more Assertive Annie with a dash of Sexy Susie”), and her makeup (“Chop chop! I need her to look like she’s actually slept since last May”). Hayes had chosen the content of her speech, however, and written most of it through the night, working with her team of speech writers.

  The address hit the three points she’d based her campaign on: economic power, global stability, and environmental protection. This one also contained an Easter egg, something her speech writers had begged her not to include: a nod to the so-called kitchen table issues that had been important to her as a law student in college and continued to define her. She would address women’s reproductive freedom, gay rights, income inequality, the pay gap, the minimum wage, immigration reform, and veterans’ rights.

  She would represent the people.

  “Are you ready?” Matthew held his iPad in one hand and her mobile mic in the other.

  Hayes nodded briskly and handed him the empty teacup. “Always.”

  Matthew appeared wistful for a moment.

  “What is it?” Hayes asked.

  “I hate to say it, but Charming Charlie was right. You look beautiful.”

  Hayes actually laughed, a ruby-colored chuckle seldom heard in public. “You’re not getting a raise, Matthew.”

  He winked and stepped away, the melancholy smile still on his face. Hayes was escorted into the wide-open arena, the applause deafening. Tens of thousands of people jumped to their feet, screaming, waving signs, some of them crying. Hayes walked to the center of the stage and held her hands in the air. The teleprompters to her left and right were suspended like thin prisms. The space heaters on the stage created a visible barrier against the frigid November air, a wavy storm front that Hayes had to stare through like a mirage to see her audience.

  But it didn’t matter. This is where she was supposed to be. These were the people she was fighting for. She let the cheers wash over her.

  “Thank you for inviting me to your lovely stadium, Hawkeyes!”

  Impossibly, the volume of the cheers rose.

  Hayes’s smile widened.

  She had her mouth open to begin her speech when the first shot rang out, popping like a car backfire, the bullet piercing the mirage of the stage.

  Two Secret Service agents were on top of Senator Gina Hayes’s body before the second shot was fired.

  66

  Amherst, Massachusetts

  “What’s in it?”

  Ernest had driven them west to the Road King Motel, a roadside two-beds-and-a-bathroom that wouldn’t require them to walk through the lobby to reach their room. Salem and Isabel were wanted women. Ernest had requested the farthest room from the office, paid cash, and settled Bel, Salem, and Mercy before leaving to trade cars, obtain two more phones, procure a handgun if he was able, and refresh their cash supply.

  Bel and Salem hadn’t asked any questions.

  “We don’t know, hon,” Salem said. Mercy was perched on the cheap motel bedspread, leaning against her. Their room was non-smoking, which apparently only meant no ashtrays. Black lips had seared themselves into the edges of the Formica-topped nightstand from cigarettes laying themselves to rest. The air was stained with the dark undersmell of mold. The motel was right off the highway, and cars zoomed past outside.

  Bel was working at the metal box with the penknife. Salem couldn’t tear her eyes away from the container. It was rust-free, constructed of tin or some other flimsy metal, with a simple goat’s eye lock. Bel had inserted the tip of the knife into the clinch and was jiggling it.

  Salem put her arm around Mercy. “We hope it’s something that will help us find out what happened to our moms.”

  The words were like magic, and the top of the box popped loose with a sigh. Bel set the container on the bed and silently pushed it toward Salem, across the stained flower bedspread.

  Heart fluttery, Salem lifted the lid all the way. The hinges shrieked, the noise hurting Salem’s fillings. In that second, she realized that her Ativan was back at the police station, but that she hadn’t missed it.

  Inside the box lay a roll of yellowed papers tied with a bit of ribbon and lace.

  Salem slid her fingers around the paper. It was old enough to feel feathery.

  She unwound the ribbon and laid it on the bed, gasping as she recognized it. “It’s the collar Emily Dickinson wears in the daguerreotype—that famous photo of her that everyone’s seen.”

  “Oh my god.” Bel reached to touch the lace and then yanked her fingers back. “Unroll the paper.”

  Salem laid the scroll on the bed next to the collar. She held one side and smoothed out the other. Inside were three handwritten sheets of paper penned with the same looping script as the note they’d found in the First Church’s beam. Salem began reading out loud:

>   To the Journeywoman—

  If you are reading this—please! You are an Explorer of the highest Order. If your Heart matches your Intellect, than we possess Spring’s Hope.

  Hear my Story.

  It Begins with the estimable Lucretia Mott, Elected leader of

  the Underground in 1817.

  (O—for you to be True, and protect this Secret World!)

  What is now the Hermitage was sleeping, an old Dragon that had lost its way. But the Underground kept watch on the Cave, wary, and their Fear was Rewarded when General Andrew

  Jackson sought to Revive the organization.

  The Underground was all that stood in his Way.

  General Jackson killed hundreds—Women!—Negroes! —Indians!—to get at the Underground. Mrs. Lucretia Mott was

  forced to hide the names of the leaders, the treasure of the people, and this: the Truth of the waltz the Dragon and the Underground had been dancing for 2,000 years.

  “What’s that mean?” Mercy interrupted. “There’s a dragon?”

  “I think she’s saying that the Hermitage, the organization that came after our moms, is a lot older than we thought,” Salem said. She set aside the first sheet of paper, which snapped back to its scroll shape with a swish, and began reading the second.

  Mrs. Lucretia Mott employed the noted Thomas J. Beale—an Explorer, like you!—to Buoy the cause. Mr. Beale coded the Truth

  in an unbreakable Cipher and hid it, with the Treasure and the Membership Docket, in Virginia. He entrusted Mrs. Mott—

  no one else!—with the Key that would open the cipher.

  Salem’s breath shot out of her as surely as if she’d been squeezed. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “The Beale Cipher.”

  “You’ve heard of it?” Bel jockeyed impatiently for a better view of the scroll.

  Salem tilted her head, examining the scroll with reverence. “It’s one of the most famous unbroken codes in history. It’s actually a set of three ciphertexts. The first is rumored to contain the location of a massive treasure, the second an accounting of the treasure, and the third, supposedly, a list of names of the people the treasure belongs to. Only the second cipher has been broken, using the Declaration of Independence as the keytext. The Declaration didn’t work to decode the first and third.”

  “Where’d the treasure come from?”

  “According to legend, Beale and his gang of adventurers discovered it near Santa Fe. Beale returned to Virginia, befriended an innkeeper, and gave him a cryptic story about buried treasure and someone trying to kill him. Beale also gave the innkeeper a metal box and ordered him to open it only if Beale disappeared.”

  Salem pushed her hair back from her face. “If you guessed Beale was never heard from again, you’d be right. When the innkeeper opened the box, maybe around 1840, he discovered the three ciphertexts but couldn’t crack them. Someone eventually published the codes in a pamphlet in the 1880s with an offer to share any treasure they yielded.”

  “How much treasure?” Mercy asked, her eyes bright.

  “Tens of millions of dollars, according to the second cipher text, the only one that’s ever been broken.” Salem’s legs were falling asleep, so she shifted on the bed, scaring up the acrid odor of industrial detergent. “Some people think the story was a hoax used to sell the pamphlet itself.” She tapped the Dickinson scroll. “No one knows, though, because the first and third cipher texts—the ones that are supposed to contain the location of the treasure and the list of names—have never been broken in all this time, even with all the technology we have.”

  “Well, keep reading,” Bel said. “It sounds like they’re not going to remain unbroken for much longer.”

  Salem inhaled deeply.

  Alas, Mr. Beale could not pause for rest—or (Faith, this is Important) to explain the application of the Key to Mrs.

  Mott—because General Jackson became President Jackson,

  and he conducted the slaughter of innocents on a National

  scale, with the Flag behind him.

  Mr. Beale and his men rode out, taking it upon themselves

  with Sweat, Blood, and the Love of God, to risk their lives yet

  again to obtain the Lightning Bolt that would strike down President Jackson and destroy the Hermitage in its present incarnation.

  With Grace and Fortune, Mr. Beale succeeded. Mrs. Mott received word that he’d secured the Lightning Bolt and placed

  it in the same hidey-hole in the hills of Virginia as the Treasure

  and the Docket, and that he would return anon to explain the

  Key’s application and impart the exact location of All.

  Mrs. Mott wasn’t worried—don’t you see? She knew the Docket by her Heart, had counted the Treasure, had nurtured the Truth, and Mr. Beale was on his way to share the Downfall of Jackson.

  All Mrs. Mott was lacking was the exact coordinates of the hidey-hole wherein Mr. Beale had stored it All, and she held the Key that could whisper that to Educated Ears.

  But the Future did not unfold as planned.

  My Tears testify that Mr. Beale was never heard from again.

  I was called into this story 18 years later, in Boston, as so many of us were in those years after Mr. Beale disappeared. We were to put our Honeybee Minds to the task of employing Mr. Beale’s Key to solve his Three-fold Cipher, but we failed. The Wall was too High.

  Like Children who Scheme to hide their Sweets from their Brother, we’d actually hid the Secret from ourselves. We could only wait, patiently, for You—finally, the wisdom to break the code and Set Free the souls of the Gentlest Women in History.

  Salem and Bel exchanged a look charged with amazement and something deeper, almost sacred. Salem wiped her sweating palms on her pants, set the second scroll to the side, heard it whisk back into its 150-year-old shape, and began reading the third and final page of Emily Dickinson’s letter:

  As my Winter rose, I was assigned the task of hiding the Key three levels deep.

  You are now intimate with my work—a message hidden in a brilliant Gentileschi currently on loan in the home of a Boston Brahmin—leading you to a secret drawer in a Church that

  afforded me solace—directing you to the headstone of my

  beloved grandparents.

  Craftspeople of the highest order have assured the subterfuge of the Clues, but I will have to trust the Whispers of the Women to carry through the ages the beginning point and the spectacles that reveal the secret in the painting. (That my Investment was Sound and that you are Reading this gives me Pleasure that echoes through Time to reach my Hand as I Write!)

  When you Apply the Key correctly, Beale’s Cipher will crack as an Egg, revealing the location of the Lightning Bolt that will destroy the Hermitage, the treasure of the Underground, and the Master Docket of Underground leaders. Protect this final Knowledge above all else. It’s a timeless, Fragile Butterfly the Hermitage would seek to Crush under its Boot.

  We are at this Moment.

  Mr. Beale’s Key is thus: SF Dolores Bell

  I Trust, Dear Explorer, that you will take this Beacon and Set Us Free.

  —Emily

  Σ

  The silence in room 23 pulsed. Encountering such far-reaching knowledge in the tight, dirty grip of the hotel was disorienting. Salem was working through solutions, synapses firing, lighting up passages, gray matter straining, but it all led her to the same alarming conclusion. “SF Dolores Bell isn’t the keytext to the Beale Cipher.”

  Bel jumped off the bed. “How could it not be?” She pointed at the scrolls. “There’s no way anyone went to all that trouble—that we’ve gone to all this trouble—for nothing.”

  Salem shook her head sadly. “It’s too short.”

  “Can’t it be one of those ciphers you talked about in your thesis? I remember you wrote that the key could be a short word, even four letters
long.”

  Mercy was burrowing into Salem, eyeing Bel, whose voice was raising.

  “I wrote about Vigenère ciphers, which are polyalphabetic.” Salem tried to keep her tone level, but she was feeling the same panic. They couldn’t dead-end here. “The Beale Cipher is numeric. It needs a full keytext to decrypt it, a work long enough to include all the letters of the alphabet at least once. That’s why the Declaration of Independence worked to decipher the second of Beale’s texts.”

  “Okay, that’s okay,” Bel said, pacing. “Then SF Dolores Bell is something else, something that will lead us to the actual keytext. It’s not supposed to be easy, right? How about this?” She reached toward her hip for a gun that wasn’t there, a soothing, habitual gesture. “How about SF stands for Samuel Fowler. Right? That makes sense. And maybe Dolores Bell is a relative of his? Or a friend of Emily Dickinson’s?”

  Bel’s enthusiasm was edged with hysteria, and it was contagious.

  “It could be that there is no Dolores Bell, and we’re just meant to use those initials,” Salem offered, her heartbeat picking up.

  Bel clapped her hands, making Mercy jump. “There you go! SF DB. Samuel Fowler Dickinson … Boston?”

  “Why don’t you Google it?” Mercy asked. She’d shrunken into herself.

  Noticing how scared the girl looked calmed Salem down a notch. “We don’t have a computer, honey, or that would be a great idea.”

  Mercy reached into her pocket and yanked out an Android phone tucked inside a Dora the Explorer case.

  Salem pulled her into a hug. “You’re the best, sweetheart!” Her thumbs flew as she pulled up the browser and typed in SF Dolores Bell. Bel crowded her shoulder. Mercy tried to peek at the screen too.

  The connection was slow, and the screen went blank for several seconds.

  Finally, the hits appeared.

  The first was the Wikipedia entry for Dolores Park in San Francisco, California, home of a replica church bell erected to honor the memory of Manuel Hidalgo, father of Mexican independence.

  Bel exhaled. “It looks like we’re going to San Francisco.”