The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry Page B

debated the proposed course at length, then voted. “I don’t have to say the obvious. We decided not to do this.”
    “
We
changed our minds,” Bolton said.
    “Which I’m sure you championed.”
    Boltons had always displayed irrational aggression. Their ancestors had helped found Jamestown in 1607, then made a fortune supplying the new colony. On one of those voyages they imported a new strain of tobacco, which proved the colony’s saving grace, thriving in the sandy soil, becoming Virginia’s most valuable export commodity. Bolton descendants eventually settled in the Carolinas, at Bath, branching out into piracy, then privateering.
    “I thought the move would solve the problem,” Bolton said. “The vice president would have left us alone.”
    He had to say, “You have no idea what would have happened,
if
you’d been successful.”
    “All I know, Quentin,” John Surcouf said, “is that I’m at risk of going to prison and losing everything my family has. I’m not going to sit by and allow that to happen. Even if we failed, we sent a message today.”
    “To whom? Do you plan on taking responsibility for the act? Does someone in the White House know that you three sanctioned the assassination? If so, how long do you think it will be before you’re arrested?”
    None of them spoke.
    “It was foolish thinking,” he said. “This is not 1865, or even 1963. It’s a new world, with new rules.”
    He reminded himself that Surcouf family history differed from the others. They’d started as shipbuilders, immigrating to the Carolinas just after John Hale founded Bath. Surcoufs eventually financed much of the town’s expansion, reinvesting their profits in the community and helping the town grow. Several became colonial governors. Others took to the sea, manning sloops. The early part of the 18th century had been piracy’s Golden Age, and Surcoufs reaped their share of those spoils. Eventually, like others, they legitimized themselves with privateering. One interesting story came at the dawn of the 19th century when Surcouf money helped finance Napoleon’s wars. Enjoying friendly relations, the Surcouf then living in Paris asked the emperor if he might build a terrace at one of his estates tiled of French coins. Napoleon refused, not wanting people traipsing across his image. Undaunted, Surcouf built the terrace anyway but with the coins stacked upright, edges to the surface, which solved the problem. Unfortunately, later Surcouf descendants had been equally foolish with their money.
    “Look,” Hale said, softening his voice, “I understand your anxiety. I have my share as well. But we are in this together.”
    “They have every record,” Cogburn muttered. “All my Swiss banks caved.”
    “Mine, too,” Bolton added.
    Combined, several billion dollars of their deposits lay overseas, on which not a dime of income tax had ever been paid. Each of them had received a letter from the U.S. attorney notifying him that he was the target of a federal criminal investigation. Hale assumed that four separate prosecutions—as opposed to one—had been chosen to divide their resources, pit one against the other.
    But those prosecutors underestimated the power of the Articles.
    The Commonwealth’s roots lay squarely within pirate society, a raucous, reckless, rapacious bunch for sure, but one with laws. Pirate communities had been orderly, geared to profit and mutual gain, always advancing the enterprise. They’d smartly adhered to what Adam Smith had observed.
If there is any society among robbers and murderers, they must at least abstain from robbing and murdering one another
.
    Which pirates did.
    What became known as the custom of the coast called for articles to be drawn before every voyage specifying the rules of behavior, all punishments, and dividing the booty among officers and crew. Each swore on a Bible to obey the articles. While swallowing a swig of rum mixed with gunpowder they would sign along the