“Well, sir, first, the British are better than we are at code-making and breaking. You may recall it was the intercept of a coded French message that alerted General Forbes about the deplorable conditions at Fort Duquesne in November of ’58. The French code was broken by the British nearly a year earlier, but the French were still using it. That’s why Forbes pressed on, despite Col. Washington’s advice, and the French garrison burned Fort Duquesne and fled.

“Second, our ‘calendar codes’ are simple to use. They can be encrypted and decrypted quickly and neither the sender nor recipient needs a codebook. Unfortunately, six of the ‘month codes’ have repeat letters like August’s two U’s. December is impossible with three E letters. ‘daily codes’ are somewhat better because they change every twenty-four hours but ‘Wednesday’ with two letters ‘D’ and ‘E’ is impossible. Given how many of these ­‘calendar coded’ messages have been dispatched by our various Committees over the last two years, I have to believe the British can break them as fast as my young Adjutant.”

As Captain Morgan finished, I handed the decoded message to him. He quickly read it and handed it to Colonel Arnold, saying, “If I may be so bold, sir, it seems this message—and the silver ‘Courier Ball’ in which it was delivered to you—belong next door in General Washington’s Headquarters, where we met yesterday.”

Colonel Arnold, looked at it, nodded his head, and said, “Captain Morgan, you are correct. If the other commanders arrive while I am gone, please inform them I shall return in short order.” With that, he hastened out the door leaving the three of us alone in the room.

As soon as he departed, our Captain said, “Nathanael, I want you to write a letter today to your father, care of Rev. Thruston. Do not reveal where we are going. Ask your dad if he recalls the name of the British officer who caused me to be flogged while your father and I were on the ill-fated Braddock expedition in the summer of ’55. Not the officer I struck. He couldn’t speak for his broken jaw, but the engineer officer who testified falsely at my court martial. If memory serves me right, his name was Ensign John Montresor.”

“The same name that’s on Colonel Arnold’s map?”

“Yes. And if it’s not just the same name, but the same man, the scars on my back tell the tale of his perfidy. If that man had anything to do with the map that’s supposed to guide us through the Maine wilderness to Quebec, we better pray now for our Lord to do for us what He did for Moses: send us a pillar of cloud to guide us by day and a pillar of fire to guide us at night.”6