May 31, 2:45 A.M.
Washington, D.C.
"Iceland?" Gray asked, shocked. He held the phone tighter to his ear, speaking to Kat Bryant. "You want me to head out to Reykjavik within the hour?"
He and Seichan were sharing the back of a black Lincoln Town Car. As a precaution, Kat had sent the car out to his parents' house once she got word of the attack on the director. At the moment they were headed back to the National Archives. Monk and his two researchers had found something of interest, something too important or involved to discuss over the phone.
"That's correct," Kat said. "On Director Crowe's orders. He wants you to take Monk, too. Pick him up on the way to the airport."
"We're headed there already. Monk texted me about some discovery at the National Archives."
"Well, find out what that is, but be at the airport in forty-five minutes. And dress warmly."
"Thanks, but what's this all about?"
"Earlier I told you about that burst of subatomic particles reported from the Utah blast site. I've just spoken to the head of the Kamioka Observatory in Japan. He's detected another surge. One that has him deeply troubled, coming from an island off the coast of Iceland. He believes the two neutrino surges might be connected, that the bombardment of subatomic particles from the Utah blast might have triggered this new Icelandic activity, literally lit its fuse. Director Crowe believes it's worth investigating."
Gray agreed. "I'll pick up Monk and head out."
"Be careful," she said. Though her message was terse, Gray heard the underlying meaning. Watch after my husband . He understood.
"Kat, this mission sounds like something Seichan and I could do on our own. It might be best to leave Monk with the researchers who are pursuing the historical angle."
The phone went silent. He pictured her weighing his words. She finally sighed. "I understand what you're offering, Gray. But I'm sure those researchers don't need Monk watching over their shoulders. Besides, Monk could use a little stretching of his legs. With a baby coming-and Penelope heading for her terrible twos-the pair of us is going to be housebound for months. So, no, take him with you."
"Okay. But trust me, being housebound with you is not something Monk is dreading."
"Who was talking about him ?"
Gray heard the exasperation in her voice, but also the warmth. He had a hard time imagining such a life, the intimacy of two sharing everything, of children, of the simplicity of a warm body beside you every night.
"I'll bring him home safe," he promised.
"I know you will."
After settling a few more details, they signed off.
Across the seat, Seichan leaned against the side door, arms crossed. It looked like she had been dozing, eyes closed, but he knew she'd overheard every word. This was confirmed when she mumbled, not bothering to open her eyes. "Road trip?"
"Seems so."
"Lucky I packed my sunscreen."
A short time later, the Town Car pulled up to the National Archives Building. Monk met them inside. He wore a wide grin, his eyes bright, and waved to them impatiently, plainly excited.
"Iceland," he said as he led them back to the research room. "Can you believe it?"
From his manner, he was clearly enthused about doing a bit of fieldwork. But there remained a mischievous gleam to his eye. Before Gray could inquire further, they'd reached their destination.
The research room had undergone a dramatic transformation since they'd last been there. Books, manuscripts, and maps, along with stacked file boxes, covered the surface of the conference table. All three microfiche readers along the wall glowed with pages of old newsprint or pictures of yellowed documents.
Amid the chaos, Dr. Eric Heisman and Sharyn Dupre had their heads bowed over one of the boxes, searching its contents together. Heisman had shed his sweater and rolled up his sleeves. He removed a thin dog-eared-looking pamphlet and added it to a pile.
"Here's another of Franklin's monographs about the eruption..."
They looked up as Monk returned.
"Did you tell him?" Heisman asked.
"Thought I'd leave it to both of you. You've done all the hard work. All I did was order pizza."
"Tell us what?" Gray asked.
Heisman looked to Sharyn, who still wore her tight black dress, but she had pulled a long white coat over it and had donned thin cotton gloves for handling fragile documents. "Sharyn, why don't you start? It was your inspired suggestion that opened the floodgates. Then again, your generation is much more proficient with computers."
She smiled shyly at the praise and gave her head a slight bow of thanks before turning to Gray and Seichan. "I'm sure we would have found it eventually, but with a majority of the Archives' documents digitally copied, I thought we could sift through the records more efficiently by expanding and generalizing the search parameters."
Gray hid his impatience. He didn't care how they found it, only what it was. Still, he noted the amused twinkle in Monk's eye. His partner was holding something back.
"We did a global search for the combination of names Fortescue and Franklin," Sharyn said, "but we came up empty-handed."
"It's as if all records had been purged," Heisman said. "Someone definitely seemed to be covering their tracks."
"So I expanded the search beyond Franklin and tried all manner of alternate spellings for Fortescue. Still nothing. Then I simply tried putting in the man's initials, Archard Fortescue. A.F."
She glanced to Heisman, who smiled proudly. "That's where we found it." He picked up a sheaf of brittle yellow pages. "In a letter from Thomas Jefferson to his personal private secretary, Meriwether Lewis."
"Lewis? As in Lewis and Clark. The two explorers who crossed the continent all the way to the Pacific."
Heisman nodded. "One and the same. This letter to Lewis is dated June 8, 1803, about a year before the two left for that adventure. It concerns a discussion about a volcanic eruption."
Gray didn't understand where this was going. "What does a volcano have to do with anything?"
"First of all," Heisman explained, "such a discussion wasn't unusual-probably why this note drew no notice and wasn't expunged with the rest. Over the course of their relationship, Lewis and Jefferson often discussed science. Meriwether was former military, but he had been educated in the sciences and had great interest in the natural world."
Gray realized how much that sounded like any member of Sigma.
Heisman continued: "The two were very close friends. In fact, their families had grown up within ten miles of each other. Jefferson trusted no one more thoroughly than Lewis."
Monk nudged Gray. "So if Jefferson was keeping secrets, there's one person he'd surely take into his confidence."
Heisman nodded. "In this letter, one name comes up over and over, a man cryptically identified only as A.F."
"Archard Fortescue..." Gray said.
"Plainly Jefferson did not trust writing the man's name in full, which was very much in character for this Founding Father. Jefferson had a great interest in cryptography, even developing his own secret cipher. In fact, it wasn't until the last year or so that one of his codes was finally cracked."
"That guy was paranoid," Monk said.
Heisman glanced to him, offended. "If Franklin's earlier letter was accurate about some great enemy besieging the new union in secret, maybe he had reason to be. This same paranoia may have fueled Jefferson's purging of the Army during his presidency."
"What are you talking about?" Gray asked, growing intrigued.
"Just after Jefferson was elected president following a bitter campaign, one of his first orders of business was to reduce the standing army. He chose Meriwether Lewis to help him decide which officers were competent and which were not. Lewis communicated his findings back to Jefferson via a system of coded symbols. Some historians suspect this purge had less to do with competency than it did with loyalty to the U.S."
Monk glanced significantly at Gray. "If you wanted to weed out traitors, especially those leading armed forces, this would be a good way of going about it in secret."
Gray knew the difficulty Sigma had in purging Guild moles and operatives from their own fold. Were the Founding Fathers trying to do the same? He pictured Lewis's involvement in this affair. Soldier, scientist, and now spy. The man sounded more and more like a Sigma operative.
Seichan crossed to the table and took a seat, plopping heavily into it, looking bored. "All well and good, but what the hell does this have to do with volcanoes?"
Heisman seated his reading glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose and spoke stiffly. "I was just getting to that. The letter addresses an eruption that occurred exactly two decades prior. To the day, in fact. The twentieth anniversary of it. The Laki eruption. It was the deadliest volcanic eruption of historical times. In its aftermath, over six million people died globally. It wiped out livestock, and crops failed around the world, leading to massive famines. It was said the skies turned bloodred, and the planet cooled enough to cause the Mississippi to freeze over as far south as New Orleans."
Sharyn interrupted, lifting one of the papers she'd been sifting through when Gray first entered. "Here's Benjamin Franklin's own words describing the eruption's effect. 'During several of the summer months of the year 1783, w hen the effect of the sun's rays to heat the earth in these northern regions should have been greater, there existed a constant fog over all Europe, and a great part of North America . ' Franklin became obsessed with this volcano."
"And apparently with good reason," Heisman added, drawing back Gray's attention. "According to this letter, Archard Fortescue was present at that eruption-even felt guilty about it, as if he'd caused it."
"What?" Gray couldn't keep the surprise from his voice.
Seichan spoke while he struggled to understand. "Excuse my lack of geographical prowess, but where is this volcano?"
Heisman's eyes widened, as if suddenly realizing he'd never told them. "In Iceland."
Gray turned to Monk, who wore a big, amused grin. This was the detail he'd been hiding. Monk shrugged. "Looks like we're following in that Frenchman's footsteps."