The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [171]
Sure enough, the shadow turned his way, lifting its umbrella and revealing a glint of auburn hair.
“Boyle, that you?” Lisbeth called out. Getting no answer, she cocked her head, squinting into the darkness. “Boyle . . . ?”
Barely ten feet away, the man reached into his pocket and used his good hand—his left hand—to grab his gun.
“Boyle, just relax,” Lisbeth said, backing up as the man approached, his face still hidden by his umbrella. For a split second, he ducked under a wayward branch that caught the umbrella and pulled it aside. The instant Lisbeth saw his jet-black hair, she knew she was in trouble. According to Wes, Boyle was bald. “Listen, whoever you are, I’m just here to—”
Ramming through a row of bushes and bursting from the darkness, he pulled his gun, pointed it at Lisbeth’s chest, and stepped in so close, he forced her back against a tall clay-colored headstone with a carved Celtic cross on top.
“I don’t care why the hell you’re here,” The Roman exploded, knocking her umbrella from her hand. As he moved closer, his skin glowed as gray as the headstones. “But if you don’t tell me where Wes is, I swear to my God, you’ll be begging me to blow your face off.”
Frozen in shock, Lisbeth glanced over The Roman’s shoulder and spotted his associate stepping between the bushes.
The reporter’s mouth sagged open as the final member of The Four came forward.
102
Martin Kassal could read when he was three years old. He could write when he was four. And by five, he would sit next to his father at the breakfast table, eating his raisins and French toast while reading the headlines in the newspaper. But it wasn’t until he was seven that he finished his first crossword puzzle. Designing it, that is.
Sixty-one years later, Kassal tapped at his moon-chin, skimming his way through a small beaten paperback called Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Even with his tinted reading glasses, he still needed to lean close to see, and as he pulled back slightly to flip to a new page, he was so engrossed in the symbols of the sacred rivers, he didn’t even register his phone until the third ring.
“Is this Ptomaine1?” a female voice asked with an accusatory tone.
“I’m sorry—who’s this?” Kassal asked.
“Tattarrattat is my screen name. Also known as Mary Beth Guard to my friends,” she added with a huffy laugh at her use of the longest palindrome in the Oxford Dictionary, second edition. “I saw your posting on the message boards . . . about the glyphs you were trying to identify . . . the four dots and the cross with the slash . . .”
“Of course. No, of course. And thank you for getting back so quickly.”
“Hey, you posted your phone number. I figured it was an emergency. By the way, I like your screen name. Ptomaine. From NPR, right? Famous historic American. Put his first name inside his last name to get a word. Ptomaine. Tom Paine. Cute,” the woman said, almost as if she were looking for a date.
“Yeah, well . . . aheh,” Kassal said, wiping his forehead. “So about those symbols . . .”
“The glyphs—sure—I knew them immediately. I mean, I stare at them every day.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“I work at Monticello. Y’know, Virginia? Home of our wisest and greatest President, Thomas Jefferson—and I don’t just say that as an employee.”
“These were symbols used by Jefferson?”
“Actually, by Meriwether Lewis.”
“Of Lewis and Clark?”
“Oooh, you know your history, Ptomaine,” she said sarcastically. “Of course. But what people don’t realize is that the main reason Meriwether Lewis was picked to explore the Louisiana Purchase—in fact, maybe the only reason he was trusted with the task—was because a few years earlier, he did such an incredible job as Jefferson’s personal secretary.”
“Huh,” Kassal said, already scribbling a note to use the info in an upcoming puzzle. “I didn’t realize Lewis was Jefferson’s aide.”
“Very