He descended the stairs to a steel door that opened with a pushbutton combination. Behind the door was a room lined with glass-enclosed cabinets. The airtight cabinets were controlled for temperature and humidity to protect hundreds of thick volumes arranged by date.

The books contained the history of the Baltazar family going back more than two thousand years. The chronicles told of the family’s origin in Palestine, its move to the island of Cyprus, where they flourished as shipbuilders. The family provided ships for the Fourth Crusade. They were involved in the bloody looting of Constantinople, where they stole as much gold as they could carry in their vessels.

After the Crusade, the family threw its lot in with the Crusaders. They moved to western Europe and joined a cartel that used the stolen gold as the basis for a mineral empire. Since then, every birth, death, and marriage, going back to Cyprus, had been recorded. Business dealings. Feuds. Diaries. Each detail, no matter how sordid, embarrassing, or criminally liable, was enclosed between the covers of the gold-embossed volumes.

Baltazar had read every word in every volume, and it was his Crusader past that had stoked his interest in jousting and other trappings of chivalry. A touch screen computer built into the wall was used to make entries and serve as a reference guide.

A stone idol sat on a platform in the center of the room. It was the figure of a man, with his palms up, arms angled slightly downward, as if he were waiting to be handed something. He had a round, bearded face, and his lips were spread wide in a smile that was just short of a leer. Twin horns protruded from the sides of his head. The god Ba’al was given a special place because he was the namesake of the Baltazar family, which had courted his favor and asked it to guard its fortunes since its very beginning.

The idol had been used in unspeakable rites of human sacrifice. It had originally been set up on the edge of a fiery pit. The stone feet were still blackened by smoke and heat. In hard times, priests of Ba’al would sacrifice infants, placing them on the sloping arms, where they rolled into the flames. Instead of a blazing fire, the space in front of the idol was occupied by an altar. Sitting on the altar was a chest made of dark wood and decorated with dozens of precious stones.

Baltazar pushed back the lid and lifted out a smaller, undecorated wooden box. Inside the box were several sheets of parchment, which Baltazar spread out on the altar. His father had introduced him to the contents of the box when the family’s main base was still in Europe. The script told of his family’s history before it fled to Cyprus. But it was not until he was older and had studied Aramaic that he was able to understand the dark secrets that had resulted in their exile.

As he read the instructions set forth by his ancient ancestor, he could feel the weight of centuries pressing down on his shoulders. After a moment, he carefully replaced the parchment in its twin receptacles and closed the lid.

He lifted eyes that were nearly colorless and saw Ba’al’s stony gaze. It was as if the ancient god were looking directly into his soul. Power seemed to flow from the statue into Baltazar’s body. He drank in the invisible emanations like a thirsty pilgrim until it seemed as if he would burst.

He backed up to the door, then turned and climbed the stairs to his study. Still shaken by the experience, he finished his brandy to calm his nerves. Then he picked up the telephone. He punched the keys, and his call was relayed to Adriano through a series of connections, each designed to disguise its origin.

Baltazar thirsted for details on the failed hijacking and theft. He wanted to know the identity of the man who had spoiled his plans. Whoever he was would receive the same fate as hundreds of others who had run afoul of the Baltazars: the promise of a long and painful death.

Chapter 16

FOR A SUPERSECRET GOVERNMENT ENTITY, the National Security Agency is remarkably visible to the world at large. The NSA’s headquarters are at Fort Meade, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington, in two high-rise office buildings, faced in blue-black glass, that look as if they had been created by a cubist in a dark frame of mind.

The office buildings are an illusion. The structures represent only part of an extensive complex said to include ten acres of underground operations. The NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the U.S., possibly the world, and the agency’s twenty thousand or so employees include the best cryptologists in the country.

Angela Worth, the assistant librarian at the American Philosophical Society, drove past the NSA complex and turned into the parking lot for the NationalCryptographicMuseum. She had arisen early in the day, called in sick, and driven south from Philadelphia. She found a parking space, grabbed an old briefcase from the passenger seat, and headed for the museum’s front door.

She asked the receptionist in the museum’s lobby if she could see D. Grover Harris. A few minutes later, she was approached by a skinny, mop-headed young man dressed in jeans. He shook Angela’s hand.

“Hi, Angela,” he said with a bashful grin. “Nice of you to come all this way.”

“No problem, Deeg. Thanks for seeing me.”

Angela had met Deeg at a convention of puzzle fans. They had hit it off immediately. They were both geeks. Deeg was pleasant and good-looking, and impossibly bright. And like Angela, he was low on the institutional ladder. He ushered her into his cluttered office and offered her a seat. The space was hardly bigger than a closet, confirming Harris’s bottom status on the agency’s food chain.

Harris settled behind a paper-covered desk that would have been considered a firetrap by any competent inspector. “You sounded pretty excited on the phone. What’s going on?”

Angela unlocked the briefcase. She extracted the Jefferson file copies and handed them over to Harris without comment. He scanned the pages and found the perforated cardboard on the bottom of the stack. He held it to the light and then placed the cardboard over a page.

“This wouldn’t be a cipher grille, would it?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Angela said. “You’re the expert on codes and ciphers.”

“I’m just an aspiring expert who’s been taking courses at the NationalCryptologicSchool.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Angela said. The NSA school trained people from all government departments in the fine points of cryptographic analysis.

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re the one that picked up on this,” he said. “What can you tell me about it?”

“I think it was misfiled by subject. It should have gone into a Thomas Jefferson file.”

He sat bolt upright in his chair. “Jefferson?”

“Uh-huh. I’m pretty sure the handwriting is his. I’ve compared it to the Declaration, and there’s a small TJ in the lower right hand corner of the cover page.”

He held the page up to his face and let out a soundless whistle. “Jefferson. That would make sense.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Angela said with a sigh of relief. “I was worried that I’d be wasting your time.”

“Hell, no!” Harris shook his head. “Most people don’t know that Jefferson was an accomplished cryptologist. He used ciphers to communicate with James Madison and other government figures. He became proficient at codes and ciphers when he was minister to France.” He rose from his chair. “C’mon. I’ve got something to show you.”

He led the way to the exhibition area and stopped in front of a display case that held a brown wooden cylinder mounted on a spindle. The cylinder was about two inches in diameter and eight inches long and was constructed of a series of disks. The rims of the disks were inscribed with letters.

“This was found in a house near Monticello,” Harris said. “We believe it’s a ‘wheel cipher’ Jefferson invented when he was serving as Washington’s secretary of state. You write your message and rotate the disks to scramble the letters. The person getting the message un-scrambles them with a similar device.”