The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

his eidetic memory. It didn’t take much. Photographic was too simplistic a description for the genetic trait, and not altogether right. More a knack for details. A pain in the ass that could, sometimes, be helpful.
    He checked the index and found the reference to a sermon delivered June 17, 1838, by Sidney Rigdon, one of Joseph Smith’s early converts.
“Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt hath lost its savor, wherewith shall the earth be salted? It is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot of man. We have provided the world with kindness, we have suffered their abuse without cause, with patience, and have endured without resentment, until this day, and still their persecution and violence does not cease. But from this day and this hour we will suffer it no more.”
Rigdon directed his comments to other apostates who he believed had betrayed the rest, but he also was referring to gentiles who’d repeatedly meted out death and violence toward Latter-day Saints. One new convert, Sampson Avard, a man described as “cunning, resourceful, and extremely ambitious” played upon the feeling aroused by what came to be called the Salt Sermon. He formed a secret military organization within the ranks known as the Sons of Dan, taken from a passage in Genesis, Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels so that his rider shall fall backward . The Danites were to enlist the youngest, the rashest, and the most vigorous as an elite corps, which served secretly. They acted not as a group, but as individuals who could be called upon to effect swift and immediate revenge for any acts of violence practiced against the Saints.
    He glanced up from the book. “Danites were fanatics. Radicals within the early Mormon church. But they disappeared long ago.”
    Kirk shook his head. “Senor Salazar fancies himself living in another time. He is an obsessive believer in Joseph Smith. He follows the old ways.”
    Malone knew about Smith and his visions of the angel Moroni, who supposedly led him to golden plates, which Smith translated and used to form a new religion—first called the Church of Christ, now known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
    “Senor Salazar is intelligent,” Kirk said. “Possessed of an advanced degree from the Universidad de Barcelona.”
    “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 adjacenttract, 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