The 14th Colony: A Novel (27 page)

“He’s also a liar.”

That caught her attention.

Luke fished another cell phone from his pocket. “It’s Hedlund’s. I took it from him before he headed into the library. He made a call with it while upstairs.”

She listened as he told her what happened—
“Nothing here to find”
—then asked the obvious, “Who did he call?”

“I got the number from the phone’s memory. It’s a 703 area code.”

Virginia. Near DC.

“His contacts list it for a Larry Begyn.”

“I’m assuming you’ve checked on who that is?” she asked.

“Lawrence Paul Begyn is the current president general of the Society of the Cincinnati.”

“I wonder what they’re hiding,” she muttered out loud.

“Enough that ex-G-man Hedlund got his gun for a fight.”

She stared at Luke and nodded.

“We now know there’s nothing at Hedlund’s house,” he said. “But there’s obviously
something
to find. That Tallmadge journal. Petrova knew exactly what to ask for.”

“It’s time we bring in the big guns.”

She saw Luke understood what that meant.

“I assume Uncle Danny already knows the details up to now.”

She nodded. “We’ll head back to DC, right after we do one more thing.”

He clearly knew what that meant, too.

“Lead the way. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.”

They found Peter Hedlund awake, sitting up in his bed, his wife, introduced as Leah, at his side.

“You do realize,” Stephanie said to him, “that what you did was foolishness.”

“I’ve been in worse situations.”

“With me in the middle?”

“You know how to handle yourself.”

She handed his cell phone back. “Tell me what it is Larry Begyn knows. And I don’t have the time for any more lies.”

Comprehension registered in Hedlund’s eyes, a look that seemed to signal cooperation.

“Can this wait?” his wife asked. “He’s been shot.”

“I wish it could, but it can’t. And if your husband had been honest with me to start with, we wouldn’t be here. But, after all, he is the Keeper of Secrets.” She was in no mood for more nonsense. “The woman who shot you is dead. But she knew about that Tallmadge journal. I need you to tell me what it is.”

“How did she die?”

“Acting like an idiot,” Luke said.

Hedlund got the message and held up a conciliatory hand. “All right. You made your point. I’ll tell you.”

*   *   *

Zorin gathered up the parachutes, then stepped out of his jumpsuit. Beneath he wore a coat, black trousers, and a black turtleneck shirt. He needed to hide the bundle so it would not be found anytime soon and decided somewhere in the woods would be best. So he plunged into the trees and found a spot beneath a fallen trunk. He also left the helmet and night-vision goggles, as neither would be necessary any longer. Everything he needed he carried in his pockets or in the knapsack. If something else was required, he’d find it along the way. At the moment transportation was tops on his list. On the drop in he’d spotted a series of cabins not far away, all dark to the night, which could mean they were empty. But he decided to check them out anyway and headed off in their direction.

Night movement came with an assortment of challenges. He’d been taught to feel the ground with his toes before planting his heel, not disturbing anything along the way. Steps should be short, the feet tilted slightly, one hand out ahead. He’d not gripped his gun but, if necessary, he’d keep the weapon tight to his chest, finger on the trigger. The idea was to be aware and stay alert, head turning like a machine—oiled, regular, and thorough—ready for anything.

He found the road that ran adjacent to the shore and followed it east for a couple of kilometers until he came to the cluster of cabins in a clearing among the trees. A sharp tang of salt air filled his nostrils. His greatest fear was that a dog or two might alert anybody nearby to his presence, but the cold air remained silent, disturbed only by the muffled booms of waves that crashed in the distance against an unseen beach. By Siberian standards the cold here was more springlike.

He counted eight cabins, each rectangular, wood-sided with a gabled roof. All were dark. Three had vehicles parked to the side, one in particular drawing his attention. An older pickup truck. He’d been largely out of touch for twenty-five years. A lot had changed with cars since the day when he could hot-wire one in less than a minute. Electronic ignitions, computers, security chips—none of those existed in his day. But that old pickup might be just what he was looking for.

He hustled over and saw that the driver’s door was unlocked. He carefully opened it and reached beneath the steering column, exposing the key cylinder. In the darkness he could see little, but he did not need to. Touch worked just fine and he found the customary three sets of wires. He yanked the pairs free, keeping them apart. Each represented a different position for the key. One for lights only, another for radio, the final pair triggering ignition. Which was which? That was trial and error. He found the utility knife he’d brought and stripped the ends of all six wires.

The first pair he matched together momentarily lit the headlights, which he quickly extinguished by breaking the connection. The next pair sparked when touched, then fired the starter, which coughed the engine to life. He knew that holding the exposed wires together risked a shock, one that could be nasty, so he carefully separated the wires and stretched them as far apart as possible. No time to shield them. He’d just have to be careful.

So far so good.

He leaped inside the truck and sped away.

A quick glance at his watch narrowed the countdown.

38 hours left.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

T
he
A
merican
R
evolution officially ended in 1783, but hostilities
with England continued for many more decades. The British covertly supported Indian aggression along America’s borders, trying to prevent any further western expansion. They forbade some exports to their West Indies colonies. When England and France went to war, the United States proclaimed its neutrality, even though France continued to hold a special place in American hearts thanks to its support during the Revolution. But when Britain ultimately blockaded French ports, the Embargo Act of 1807 halted trade with England. In response, the Royal Navy started boarding American ships and impressing sailors into its service.

That’s when Canada again became important.

During the Revolution the Continental army had invaded, the idea being to convince the French-speaking Canadians to join in the fight against the British. But the Americans were soundly defeated in 1775 during the Battle of Quebec. At the 1783 Paris peace talks negotiators tried in vain to have all of Quebec province ceded over as war spoils, but that effort failed. America’s desire for Canada was so strong that in the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1781, one provision provided that British-held Canada, if it so desired, could join the new Union automatically, without a vote from the other states.

Tensions finally reached a boiling point in 1812 when the United States declared war on England. President James Madison and his war hawks in Congress urged that the time had come to defend the country’s recently won independence. But the vote to go to war only narrowly passed. Critics condemned “Mr. Madison’s War” as a foolhardy adventure, motivated less by patriotism and more by expansionism.

And the offensive began with an invasion of Canada.

Madison’s Democratic-Republican party drew much of its support from the rural South, along with the territories stretching up the Mississippi basin to the Great Lakes. Frontier inhabitants were eager to claim Canada because they suspected the British there of arming Indian tribes. People at the time thought the invasion would be easy, that ordinary Canadians would welcome them as liberators. Thomas Jefferson predicted that the entire campaign “will be a mere matter of marching.”

But that proved not to be the case.

The American forces were poorly equipped and poorly numbered with fewer than 7,000 men, most of them untrained and lacking in discipline. They were led by an aging general named William Hull, whose own subordinates damned him as an imbecile. After an abortive foray across the Detroit River into Canada, Hull was duped into thinking that a vast Indian war party was heading his way. So he surrendered his 2,500 troops to a much smaller British force. With the war only a few months old, the entire Michigan territory fell into enemy hands.

And for the second time, an invasion to the north failed.

After 1815, America abandoned its hope that Canada would become a part of the United States. Peace reigned between the two neighbors. By the 20th century, at a length of 5,522 miles, Canada and the United States shared the longest nonmilitarized border in the world. Neither one gave the other a bad thought.

Except during World War II.

With the Battle of Britain raging in late 1940, the prospect of Hitler taking England loomed large. The United States had proclaimed its neutrality, as both the American people and Congress wanted to stay out of the war. But Roosevelt saw it another way. He deemed it inevitable that America would enter the fight. Intelligence reports at the time indicated that one plan Hitler imagined was to place the abdicated Edward VIII back on the British throne to rule as a Nazi puppet. Edward’s sympathies toward Germany were no secret. Hitler also wanted control of Britain’s Commonwealth of Nations—Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Canada, and an assortment of other colonies across the globe. Though by a 1931 act of Parliament, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ireland were independent of British control, many entanglements with London remained.

For the United States, securing Canada became a priority to prevent it from becoming a staging area for a German attack. Beaches were identified that could be used for amphibious landings. A strategy of a preemptive takeover was devised. A 94-page document outlined plans for stopping overseas reinforcements by taking the port of Halifax, then seizing the hydroelectric power plants at Niagara Falls while the navy blockaded all of Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific ports. The navy would also take control of the Great Lakes. The army was to invade on three fronts–advancing from North Dakota toward Winnipeg, moving from Vermont to capture Montreal and Quebec, then advancing from the upper Midwest to take over the rich mines of Ontario. A military convoy was to travel to Vancouver, and simultaneously all British colonies in the Caribbean were to be seized. The goal was to claim Canada, preparing its provinces to become territories and states upon a declaration of peace.

Stephanie listened in amazement to Peter Hedlund.

“The society developed the invasion plans in 1812,” Hedlund said. “We were charged with the task by James Madison. He wanted it done in secret. At that time most of our members were Revolutionary War veterans. Some even fought in the 1775 Canadian campaign. Our plan was viable, but the army and navy were simply incapable of executing it. We just weren’t the military power we thought ourselves to be.”

“That’s ancient history,” Luke said. “What about invading Canada in the 1940s?”

“We prepared that plan, too, for the War Department, in secret. Roosevelt was familiar with the society. Some of his closest aides were members. He liked the fact that we kept the Revolutionary War alive through descendants. He was told of our work during the War of 1812. Like Madison, Roosevelt wanted to be ready, and he did not want the War Department involved with drawing up the plans to invade an ally. So he came to us and we worked up a workable strategy out of the limelight.”

She was becoming impatient. “What is the Tallmadge journal?”

Hedlund shifted slightly in his bed. His wife stood on the opposite side from Stephanie and Luke, her look of concern undaunted. Stephanie wondered how much of this she already knew, as Hedlund had not asked her to leave the room.

Earlier, when Hedlund had explained about Benjamin Tallmadge to Petrova she’d recognized the name immediately. He’d served in the Continental army and led what came to be known as the Culper Ring, a network of spies that successfully operated inside British-occupied New York. He ultimately became George Washington’s chief of intelligence, in essence the first American spymaster. After the war he served in Congress, and now Stephanie knew he’d also been a founding member of the Society of Cincinnati.

“Tallmadge headed our efforts in 1812 on drawing those Canadian invasion plans for Madison,” Hedlund said. “He recorded his work in a journal. It’s one of only a handful of sensitive documents the society ever possessed, passed down through the Keeper of Secrets. It’s nothing sinister, really. We just thought it best that it never be available for public inspection.”

And she could understand why. “That image of a benign social society of military officers would be shattered if the public had known you were making war plans.”

Hedlund nodded. “Exactly. Everyone at the time thought it best to keep that to ourselves.”

“That’ll make for a great History Channel show one day,” Luke said. “But on the phone, in your bedroom, before you went Batman on us, you told a guy named Begyn that it was
‘starting again.’
What did you mean?”

Hedlund smiled. “You’re a good agent. On top of things. Observant.”

“I’m shooting to be an Eagle Scout by summer. Just a few more merit badges to go.”

Normally she wouldn’t tolerate that Tennessee sarcasm but she could understand how he felt. Petrova was dead and this evasive man was now their only lead forward.

“We had a problem with Brad Charon,” Hedlund said. “Brad was a great guy. I liked him, but he had a tendency to talk too much.”

“Which is not a good thing for a Keeper of Secrets,” she said.

“Hardly. About thirty years ago there was an incident. We learned that Brad had opened up our secret archives to a nonmember. Believe me when I say this, I don’t know the details. I know only that it happened and Brad was removed from his post. And if that were the end of the story, then all would be fine. Instead, we had another breach. One we hoped was forgotten. But apparently, it’s not.”