The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (74 page)

The angry eyes turned to Pinkerton, who didn’t make any excuses for his harsh words. Thomas knew he had a point. Why would he expect any consideration from people who just didn’t care?

Seward coughed. “I was never in favor of this stunt, but you men … actually pulled it off. Now I’m sorry to say the Ark and all of its records must be destroyed.”

“What?”

“Why?”

The questions were venomous as they were spoken.

“Since we lost Mr. Lincoln, we lost all credibility on what is right and what is wrong. The order of the day is punishment.” He coughed again and then pushed one of the large men’s hands away as he continued. “If it now became public knowledge, we would lose the legacy of the man who led us through this disaster, and as his friend, I cannot allow that.” He looked directly at John Henry. “As I’m sure you will agree. History is never fact until it’s written down.”

“Captain Jackson, your last set of orders, sir,” Pinkerton said as he sadly handed over a thin sheet of paper. “From Secretary of the Navy Welles.”

Jackson read the order and then he exhaled as he found he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Accident?” he asked, directing his question at the sickly Seward.

“Yes, you are to set the
Carpenter
adrift and she will succumb to an onboard explosion of her powder magazine. The accident will remain a mystery. Is that clear?” Seward asked with his gray eyes boring in on the young naval officer. “The portion of the Ark you have gallantly returned to our shores is to be sent to the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.”

The three men gathered Secretary Seward into their arms and lifted him free of the dock. He paused and turned to face the men he had hurt beyond measure.

“I am truly sorry. Colonel, your reputation will be tarnished. You will be held responsible for the damage to two American warships and thus far, the disappearance of another, the
Yorktown
. That we cannot cover up, sir. I’m sorry. That little weasel Freeman will see to it you are embroiled in controversy the rest of your life. And we couldn’t very well kill off the entire abolitionist front, now could we?”

Pinkerton leaned over and kissed his niece on the cheek and then faced a stunned John Henry. He slapped a large envelope into Jessy’s hands.

“There are two complete sets of identification papers inside. Use them, Colonel. You owe the nation nothing.”

The three officers and Claire watched the men vanish into the darkness along with their futures.

*   *   *

The
New York Herald
reported the bizarre accident that happened inside the Chesapeake Bay area of Baltimore. It seemed an old and damaged warship, the
Carpenter
, exploded with no hands aboard killed. It was said by the Navy Department that an unsecured storage locker and an unattended lamp were the cause. The ship and its cargo of newly designed uniforms gifted to the United States Army from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire sank in deep water and recovery of the cargo was ruled out. When asked to comment on the accident, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was quoted as saying, “They were godawful uniforms anyway.” Congress was not so quick to laugh.

NEW YORK CITY

APRIL 30, 1865

The rowboat eased out into the harbor. At the oars was a large man with black hair and a recently purchased suit. The man pulled as he looked at the woman and the two men sitting against the transom of the boat as they easily made their way through the fog. One of the men was dressed as always in his bright, stiff naval uniform, the other in a new suit like himself.

Bertram T. Bartles eased up the oars when he heard the soft chime of the ship’s bell.

“I hope you didn’t take us to the wrong ship, Bertram?”

Jessy looked at John Henry and made a sour face.

“I want to meet the man who came up with that alias, let me tell you. At least you have a name that people won’t laugh at behind your back.”

“Yes, I do like his new name,” Claire said as she placed her arm through the stiff-looking former colonel’s.

“Okay Mr.—”

“Don’t say it until I get used to the name,” John Henry said as they came through the dense fog and rounded the stern of a large ship. Claire looked up and smiled.

Rising above them, the fog had parted to show the name emblazoned across the stern—U.S.S.
Yorktown
.

Jessy laid to near the gangway and they were met by an officer who assisted the four aboard. As they stepped upon the deck they hadn’t seen since they’d parted ways in Constantinople, they saw the activity aboard as men went from station to station silently performing their last duties aboard
Yorktown
. The first face Jessy saw once on the main deck was Gray Dog, who had been hidden since the night in Baltimore when they tragically lost the
Carpenter
.

They were greeted by none other than Lieutenant Ferguson, the man who had saved them in the unreported and highly secretive Battle of the Black Sea, as the men had dubbed it. He saluted Jackson as he was the only man in uniform.

“Report?” Jackson said as he returned the salute.

“We’re off-loading the last of the crates now.”

John Henry, Jessy, and Claire, with a Comanche Indian at their side, watched the last of the crates being raised above the ship’s railing toward the open water.

“The Ark was sent to rendezvous with the
Yorktown
in the Mediterranean along with the wagons you sent south, the long route, you sneaky bastard. We had nothing but rocks the whole time,” Taylor said as he watched the last of the giant crates as it teetered on the end of the long cables of the crane that held it in place. “You really didn’t trust me, did you?”

John Henry smiled. “Not on your life. Besides, it wasn’t my fault you failed to notice what was going on which wagon.”

“I say again: sneaky bastard.”

All eyes watched as the last of the crates containing Noah’s magnificent vessel eased into the waters of New York Harbor where they would remain forever.

“Think we’ll regret depriving the world of this knowledge?” Claire asked.

“Why, so more people can kill each other over their religious beliefs instead of riches?” John Henry faced Claire and held her eyes. “They really don’t deserve to know the truth, because we haven’t changed all that much, nor was the lesson of what happened more than thirteen thousand years ago ever learned. No, the world doesn’t deserve to know.”

“Only those we left on that godforsaken mountaintop,” Jessy said as he watched the top of the crate vanish beneath the soft swell of the harbor. He decided at that moment the misery of the past few months needed to be laid to rest.

“That, as they say, is that,” Captain Jackson said. “I feel pretty splendid after our little act of treason. How about you folks? Mr. Bertram T. Bartles?”

“Very funny … Steven,” Jessy said, but smiled anyway.

“You know, there is a rumor going around about an agency tasked to go after antiquities, like the Ark,” Jackson said.

“I’m sure. Besides curses, what in the hell could we ever learn from the past?”

They all looked at Jessy and thought he was right. A government department such as that could never work.

“Could you imagine the headaches involved?” Claire said.

“It would take some extraordinary men to run something like that, and I believe we may not have the patience for it. So, if an agency ever does appear that travels the world looking for history, count me out,” Jessy said as he turned away to return to the small rowboat. He turned and faced John Henry.

“Colonel?” Thomas said as he placed his arm around Claire. This elicited another rise of the brows of Gray Dog, who took a step back from the white woman.

“We really did rattle the gates of heaven, though, didn’t we?”

Jackson, Ferguson, and John Henry exchanged looks and then Thomas’s eyes and smile settled back on his old friend.

“That we did, Mr. Bartles. We surely did.”

EPILOGUE

A FAMILY AFFAIR

The gods want their entertainment.

—Zeus, King of All the Gods

31

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA

PRESENT DAY

Major Jack Collins lowered the journal and placed it on the chair next to him. He stood and paced to the vault’s prized exhibit—the Ark. He examined the damaged bow of the colossal ship and then made his way up the stairs of the permanent scaffolding to the top and looked down upon the reconstructed ship. The crisscross cracks that permeated the wreck had been meticulously rebuilt and aligned as they’d been before the sabotage of the British spy, Captain McDonald, more than a hundred and fifty years ago.

He walked along the theater-style seating as he looked at the large Ark, actually seeing it for the first time. He had seen it before on his initial tour but now he looked more closely at the object that had cost many men their lives. Jack didn’t think about the curse mentioned in the colonel’s journal, but he realized that if Thomas had actually penned it in the journal, it must have been very real to the men on that voyage.

Jack heard someone coming up the stairs and he turned to see Niles Compton. He was holding the journal Jack had left below. Niles was silent as he joined Collins by the railing. He leaned upon it and stared down into the cavity of the greatest archeological find in history.

“Who raised the Ark from the harbor?” Jack asked as he saw the living quarters of the family of Noah and thought about Colonel Thomas, Claire, Jessy, Captain Jackson, and Gray Dog, as they sat inside many, many years ago.

“Ah, 1961, a brash ex-senator from Maine decided to close the original Event File 00001.”

“The Ark?”

“Yes, the Ark. Senator Garrison Lee brought her up and she found her way home to the desert.”

“No curses?” Jack asked, wondering what kind of answer he would receive, and if he received one at all, just how polished it would be since Niles was trying to convince him to stay.

Compton smiled. “No, no curses. But that doesn’t mean that there was not one.” Niles faced Jack and then removed his glasses and started cleaning them with a handkerchief. “Major, we have run into some very difficult situations where we have to throw out all of the known sciences and natural phenomena and have to settle into a gray area. For instance, other than those”—he pointed down to a small display case that held the original petrified wood pieces with the Angelic symbols emblazoned upon them—“we have no absolute proof this is the Ark that Noah built. Although we have his name inscribed, along with the symbol for Azrael, the angel of death, it’s all just speculation. That’s what we do here, Jack. We try to discover where it is we have been on this small planet, and for God’s sake, where it is we are going. We’ve learned that the Ark, such as it is, is only a piece of the grand puzzle that we someday hope to solve.”

“Why me, Dr. Compton?”

“That’s the real point, isn’t it? Why you, why any of us? Because we were all meant to be here. From Gunnery Sergeant Campos, whom we buried yesterday, to the men we lost in that desert valley in Arizona, even to the small green man we have downstairs, we all belong to the history we uncover. But you?” Niles chuckled and moved to the set of stairs and started down past the ancient Ark that rose six stories above the vault floor. He gained the bottom steps and then paced to the nearest chair and sat. He closed his eyes momentarily and waited for the major.

“Vague at best, Doctor,” Jack said as he sat next to the director of Department 5656.

“This whole complex can be that way, Major.”

“Tell me. Is the file on the Ararat mission closed, or was there follow-up done?”

“Major, you’ve been here a few weeks. You’ve seen our completed files. What do you think?”

“Okay, I’ll bite. What happened to the colonel and the others?”

“Ah, the human side of the tale. Very good, Major. Let’s see. Colonel Jessop Taylor, alias Mr. Bertram Bartles. A rather famous attorney in Denver, Colorado, I believe. Represented as a civilian jurist Major Marcus Reno, Custer’s adjutant in the Seventh Cavalry in 1876, at the army’s hearing into the Little Big Horn disaster. Got him acquitted, I believe, but with the admonishment in open court that Major Reno failed his commander in the field against hostile Indian tribes, although there was no dire deed that required a court-martial. Mr. Bartles died in 1927 at the age of seventy-seven years.”

It seemed Collins had come to know the men he had read about and felt sad about learning the colonel’s fate.

“Gray Dog, now that’s a story. He eventually became the largest cattle breeder in the state of Oklahoma. He was funded by a private citizen who remained anonymous throughout the years until we discovered the source.”

“I can imagine,” Jack said, realizing that Colonel Thomas would never have abandoned his adoptive son.

“Gray Dog was accidentally killed in 1936 chasing down a band of rustlers. He fell from his horse at the ripe old age of seventy. He’s buried with honors at the soldier’s cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.”

“The navy boys?”

“Steven Jackson committed suicide in 1919 after the accidental sinking of his latest test platform, the submarine S-23, off the coast of Maine, killing all twenty-eight men onboard. He couldn’t live with himself after that. I guess he didn’t take on all of his mentors’ traits. Ericsson would have laughed it off and kept right on designing. But as you’ve read, young Captain Jackson wasn’t built that way.”

Jack reached out and picked up the battered old journal.

“We recovered it from the National Archives where Secretary of State Seward had hidden it those many years ago.”

“The colonel and Madame Claire?”

“There is the big mystery. We never uncovered the alias as given to him by the Pinkerton Agency. But you may have noticed how tenacious Senator Lee can become when he is faced with a puzzle. He finds the answers, just as he did in the case of the mysterious Colonel John Henry Thomas, for whom we could find no records from the Department of the Army after his service in the department and territory of Oklahoma, in 1863.”