Hank stood, turned, and walked away.
Carrying some of that golden brilliance with him.
5:45 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
Alone, Painter headed across the National Mall, needing some fresh air, but also to follow up on a growing concern.
Everything was quieting down on the global level—at least, geologically speaking. Iceland had stopped erupting, doubling the landmass of Ellirey Island and birthing a small new atoll. Yellowstone remained quiet after a few swarms of quakes following the hydrothermal explosion. To be safe, Ronald Chin was still out there with a team of volcanologists, monitoring seismic activity. Dr. Riku Tanaka, out in Japan, had reported no new neutrino activity.
Still, while they had avoided triggering an apocalypse, the supervolcano still remained—and as Chin had warned, it was still overdue to erupt on its own. A frightening thought.
But there was nothing to be done about that today.
In the end, Yellowstone had a new crater lake, but all signs pointed to nothing worse brewing deeper underground for the moment. Kowalski petitioned to have the lake named after himself: Kowalski Krater Lake.
For some reason, the petition got squashed.
Painter attempted to investigate the remaining Saint Germaine clan in France, but within twenty-four hours of Rafael’s death, fourteen of its most influential members were found murdered. No one else in the family seemed to have any knowledge about the Guild. It seemed the True Bloodline had set about to erase its connection to that family.
Even the site in Belgium where they’d picked up the other neutrino trace in Europe revealed only a firebombed and gutted mansion, one leased by a corporation that proved to be a shell, a false identity that evaporated upon inspection. The Guild clearly wanted to destroy any remaining evidence—fingerprints, papers, DNA—from that place.
So that trail also came to a dead end.
Leaving only one path open.
Painter reached his goal at the east end of the mall—the U.S. Capitol—and set about climbing the steps.
Though the building was open to the public only for another fifteen minutes, the place was a noisy jumble of life: kids ran up and down the stairs; tourists posed for photos; protesters shouted, carrying placards. He enjoyed such exuberance and chaos after being cooped up in his offices below the Smithsonian Castle.
Here was American life in all its glory, warts and all, and he’d have it no other way. It was more representative of democracy than all the stately parliamentary rules and political games going on under that neoclassical dome.
So he enjoyed his walk, despite the stifling humidity of the day.
He had plans to have dinner with Lisa later, but for now he needed to clear his mind. He had to see the painting for himself first, before committing to any course of action. Besides, he did not even know where to start. He had told no one of his discovery, not even his inner circle at Sigma.
It was not that he didn’t trust that circle, but they had enough burdens at the moment. Monk had his new baby girl, Harriet. The man had proffered his resignation early that morning. Painter had agreed to keep it on file but convinced him to take family leave and use the time to reconsider. Hopefully, the life of crying children, diaper changes, and a long stretch of downtime would change Monk’s mind, but Painter doubted it. Monk was a family man at heart. And a week ago, they’d all seen the consequences of his trying to live a double life.
Then there was Gray. He’d sunk into a dark pit of despair, but what would arise out of it: a stronger man or a broken one?
Only time would tell.
So Painter kept quiet for all their sakes. Even coming here was not without risk, but he had to chance it.
Reaching the top of the steps, he crossed under the dome and into the Capitol Rotunda. The huge vaulted space echoed with voices. He sought the second-floor gallery, where giant twelve-by-eighteen-foot canvases circled the dome’s walls. He found what he was looking for easily enough on the south side. It was the most famous painting up here: Declaration of Independence by John Turnbull.
He stood before it, sensing the waft of history that blew through this space. He stared at the brushstrokes done by a painter’s hand centuries ago. But other hands had also been involved in this piece, just as influential. He pictured Jefferson guiding Turnbull, preparing this masterpiece.
Painter gazed up, studying every inch of it, connecting to that past.
The massive canvas depicted the presentation of the Declaration of Independence to Congress. Within this one painting, John Turnbull attempted to include a portrait of everyone who signed the Declaration, a memorial to that pivotal event. But Turnbull couldn’t manage to fit everyone into it. Yet, oddly enough, he did manage to get five people painted in there who had never signed the final draft.
So why include them?
Historians had always wondered.
In his research, Painter read how John Turnbull had offered some obfuscating answers, but none satisfactory—and it was indeed Thomas Jefferson, master of ciphers and codes, who oversaw the completion of this masterwork.
So was there another reason?
At least Meriwether Lewis believed so.
The words deciphered from the buffalo hide ran through Painter’s head as he stared at the strokes of oil on the canvas: Jefferson will leave their name in paint. You can find it thusly: In the turning of the bull, find the five who don’t belong. Let their given names be ordered & revealed by the letters G, C, R, J, T and their numbers 1, 2, 4, 4, 1.
It wasn’t a hard cipher to decode.
Turning of the bull referred, of course, to Turnbull, who had been commissioned to do many public paintings in early America.
Find the five who don’t belong indicated the five nonsigners depicted on the canvas:
John Dickinson
Robert Livingston
George Clinton
Thomas Willing
Charles Thomson
The last of that list, Thomson, did sign an early draft, but he was not invited to inscribe the famous version with its fifty-six signers.
The next bit of the passage—Let their given names be ordered & revealed by the letters G, C, R, J, T—simply meant taking their first names and putting them in the order of those five letters listed.
George
Charles
Robert
John
Thomas
Then all that needed to be done was to select the corresponding letter in each name that matched the number: 1, 2, 4, 4, 1.
The name of Meriwether Lewis’s enemy, the traitorous and secretive family who had confounded the early Founding Fathers, was Ghent.
It seemed meaningless at first—until Painter pondered it more, especially in light of the conversation he had had with Rafael Saint Germaine. The Frenchman had mentioned that the Guild was really a group of ancient families who had been accumulating wealth, power, and knowledge over centuries—possibly millennia—until in modern times only one family remained. His story closely matched Lewis’s tale of the purging of America, in which one family turned out to be rooted too deeply to remove, with ties to slavers & rich beyond measure.