January 30, 1835, to assassinate President Andrew Jackson.
The first time in history that a sitting president’s life had been directly threatened.
And Jackson’s response to that attempt-a handwritten letter to Abner, now sheathed in plastic-had tortured Hales ever since. So you have at last yielded to traitorous impulses. Your patience is no longer restrained. I am content with that. This shall be war, as great as when the martial hosts of this nation are summoned to tented fields. You have clamored for a fight and I shall not skulk in a corner now that the first shot has been fired. Because I would not yield to your advances, accede to your demands, or bow in your presence, my life is deemed unnecessary? You dare send an assassin? To retreat from such a gross offense would be shameful. My feelings are most alive and, I assure you, so am I. Your assassin spends his days muttering nonsense. You chose this servant well. He shall be adjudged insane and secreted away, not a single person ever believing a word he might utter. No evidence exists of your conspiracy, but we both are aware that you convinced the man named Richard Lawrence to aim those pistols. At this moment, when my feelings are thus so alive, I should do violence to them if I did not hasten your downfall. Yet I have been perplexed as to a response. And so, after seeking counsel and guidance from some who are wiser than I, a proper course has been chosen. My object in making this communication is to announce that what legal authority existed to shield your thievery is gone. I have stripped all reference to your letter of marque from the official congressional reports. When you approach another president and ask that your letter be respected, he will not be bound by the law as I have been. To increase your torment, and thus to prolong the agony of your helpless situation, I have not destroyed the authority. That would have been my course, I confess, but others have convinced me that such certainty might make your situation so helpless that it would inspire further acts of desperation. Since you adore secrets and plot your life along a path in the shadows, I offer you a challenge that should suit you. The sheet attached to this letter is a code, one formulated by the esteemed Thomas Jefferson. I am told he thought it to be the perfect cipher. Succeed in learning its message and you will know where I have hidden what you crave. Fail and you remain the pathetic traitors that you are today. I must admit, I like this course much better. I shall soon retire home to Tennessee and the final years of my life, awaiting the day when I will sleep beside my beloved Rachel. My sincerest hope is that the unmanly course ascribed to you shall be your ruin and that I shall live to enjoy that day.
Andrew Jackson
Hale stared at the second sheet, it also encased in plastic.
His family had tried to solve Jefferson’s cipher for 175 years. Experts had been hired. Money had been spent.
But the key had eluded them.
He heard footsteps approaching from the ship’s forward and his personal secretary entered the salon.
“Switch on the television.”
He saw the look of concern in the man’s eyes.
“It’s bad.”
He found the remote and activated the screen.
MALONE FINISHED HIS APPLE AND KEPT THE NEWSPAPER OPEN before him. He noticed no story about any presidential trip to New York. Odd. Presidents usually appeared with much fanfare. He should leave the hotel, and quickly. Every second he lingered was making the effort that much more difficult. He knew the Grand Hyatt lived up to its name, a massive, multistoried complex that thousands of people streamed into and out of twenty-four hours a day. Doubtful that the police or Secret Service could seal off every access, at least not this fast. Two televisions played in the room, and he saw how cellphone cameras had indeed captured images-but thankfully, most were blurred messes. No word as yet on Daniels’ condition. People chattered about the attack, remarking how it had occurred right below them. A few had heard the bangs and seen the rocket. The two suits with radios on the other side of the lounge kept their attention below, talking into their radios.
He stood to leave.
The agents abandoned the window and rushed straight for him. He braced himself to react, noting that the thick wooden table supporting the apples and newspapers could be used to break their advance.
Of course, they carried guns and he didn’t, so a table would go only so far.
The two agents brushed past him and bolted out the door, straight for the elevators, one of which they entered when an open car arrived.
He heaved a silent sigh, then left, pressing the DOWN button, deciding to take the direct approach.
Straight out the main doors.
SIX
WYATT WAITED IN THE GRAND HYATT’S BUSY LOBBY, FILLED with tourists here for a weekend in the Big Apple, now made that much more exciting by someone trying to kill the president of the United States. He’d listened to snippets of conversations from a nearby lounging area and learned that no one knew if Daniels had been hit, just that he sped from the scene. Some recalled the Reagan assassination attempt from 1981, when only after the president was headed into surgery had an official statement been made.
At least a dozen New York City police and half that many Secret Service were now racing through the two- story lobby. Voices were raised and positions were assumed near escalators and exits. Hard to say where Malone would make his move, but the paths out of this hotel were limited to an entry down one floor, to his left, that led out onto East 42nd Street-as well as another set of adjacent glass doors that opened into a tunnel connecting with Grand Central Terminal-and a second set of glass doors one level up, which he could observe from his vantage point. If he knew his adversary as well as he thought he did, Malone would simply walk out the main doors. Why not? No one had seen his face, and the best place to hide was always in plain sight.
He realized the authorities would love to clear the hotel, but that could prove impossible. There were simply too many people on the twenty-plus floors. With the usual six months of prep time for a presidential visit, the Secret Service would have been able to handle this. As it was, they’d barely had eight weeks, their main tactic secrecy since no travel announcement had been made until this morning, when the White House simply said that Daniels would be in New York on a personal visit. The precedent for that came from a past president who’d made an unannounced trip with his wife to see a Broadway production. That jaunt had gone off without a hitch, but Danny Daniels was probably kicking himself right now, provided his organs weren’t failing or he wasn’t losing large quantities of blood.
Wyatt loved it when people screwed up.
It made things so much easier.
More than likely Malone had fled upward, at least initially. He’d yet to exit any of the elevators Wyatt could see. He certainly would not be using the stairs, as the police would have those sealed first thing. But the note he’d left in the room should drive Malone forward. He’d be the Lone Ranger, as always. Good and faithful to his beloved Stephanie Nelle.
He liked being back in the fray.
It had been a while since his last contract. Work had come less frequently the past few years, and he missed his job as a full-time agent. Eight years now since he’d been forced out. Still, he’d made a living peddling his services, which seemed the future of the intelligence business. Fewer agents on the payroll, more hired by the job- independent contractors who offered deniability and required no pension. But he was fifty years old and should have risen, by now, to deputy administrator, or maybe even head of an agency. He’d been called one of the best field agents ever.
Until-
“What are you going to do?” Cotton Malone asked him.
They were trapped. Two gunmen had them pinned from above, and another two were positioned in the dark recesses that stretched before them. He’d suspected a trap and now that fear had been confirmed. Thankfully, he and Malone had come prepared.
He reached for the radio.
Malone grabbed his arm. “You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
