The Lincoln Myth(14)

“Yet he follows a man who claims he found golden plates upon which was engraved a foreign language. Nobody, save for Smith and a few witnesses, ever saw those plates. If I recall, some of those witnesses even later repudiated their testimony. But Smith was still able to translate the plates by reading the words on a seer stone dropped in the bottom of a hat.”

“Is that similar to the belief that a man was crucified, died, and rose from the dead three days later? Both are matters of faith.”

Malone wanted to know, “Are you Mormon?”

“Third generation.”

“It means something to you?”

“Since I was a boy.”

“And to Salazar?”

“It’s his life.”

“You took a chance running.”

“I prayed upon it, and was told it was the right thing to do.”

Personally, he’d never been a fan of blindly placing his life in the hands of faith. But this was not the time to debate religion. “Where is our man?”

“Your agent is being held outside Kalundborg,” Kirk said. “On a property owned by Senor Salazar. Not his main estate, but an adjacent tract, directly east. There is a holding cell located in the basement.”

“And in the main house,” Luke said, “does he keep information there?”

Kirk nodded. “His study is his sanctuary. No one is allowed in there without permission.”

Malone stood near the counter, gazing out the front window to the darkened square. Twelve years he’d worked as a field agent for the Justice Department, honing skills that would never leave him. One was to always be aware of what was around him. To this day he never ate in a restaurant with his back to the door. Through the plate glass, a hundred feet beyond his shop, he spotted two men. Both young, dressed in dark jackets and black trousers. They’d been standing in the same spot for the past few minutes, unlike nearly everyone else around them. He’d tried not to stare, but had kept watch.

Luke walked toward the counter, his back to the window. “You see them, too?”

His gaze met the younger man’s. “Hard not to notice.”

Luke raised his arms and feigned being upset, but his words did not match his actions. “Tell me, Pappy, do you have a rear door into this place?”

He played along, pointing, showing irritation, but nodding his head.

“What’s happening?” Kirk asked.

The two men outside moved.

Toward the shop.

Then a new sound could be heard.

Sirens.

Approaching.





NINE





STEPHANIE LISTENED TO DAVIS’ EXPLANATION.

“The American Revolution was not a revolution at all. At no time was its goal the overthrow of the British government. None of its stated aims included conquering London and replacing the monarchy with a democracy. No. The American Revolution was a war of secession. The Declaration of Independence was a statement of secession. The United States of America was founded by secessionists. Their goal was to leave the British Empire and fashion a government of their own. There have been two wars of secession in American history. The first was fought in 1776, the next in 1861.”

The implications fascinated her, but she was more curious as to the information’s relevance.

“The South wanted to leave the union   because it no longer agreed with what the federal government was doing,” Davis said. “Tariffs were the big revenue raiser. The South imported far more than the North, so it paid over half the tariffs. But with more than half of the population, the North sucked up the majority of federal spending. That was a problem. Northern industrialists owed their existence to high tariffs. Eliminate them, and their businesses would fail. Tariffs had been fought over since 1824, the South resisting, the North continuing to impose them. The newly created Confederate Constitution specifically outlawed tariffs. That meant Southern ports would now have a decisive edge over their Northern counterparts.”

“Which Lincoln could not allow.”

“How could he? The federal government would have no money. Game over. In essence, the North and South fundamentally disagreed on both revenue and spending decisions. After decades of this, the South decided it just didn’t want to be a part of the United States anymore. So those states left.”

“What do Josepe Salazar and Senator Rowan have to do with any of this?”

“They’re both Mormon.”

She waited for more.


By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in January 1863, Lincoln was in a panic. After winning at the Battle of Manassas in July 1861, the union   army had been handed a string of defeats. The decisive Battle of Gettysburg was still six months away, when the tide of the war would turn. So in the winter of 1863 Lincoln faced a crisis. He had to hold both the North and the Far West. Losing the Far West to the Confederacy would mean certain defeat.