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Cultivation of Artichokes.” The pages contained a detailed treatise, complete with planting tables and a garden diagram.

    He spread the contents of the packet on his desktop, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. Lewis knew of Jefferson’s interest in gardening, but it seemed strange that he would take the trouble to send information on artichoke cultivation halfway across the continent. He must have known that Lewis’s crushing responsibilities left no time for gardening.

    Then the light of comprehension dawned on Lewis’s long face and his pulse quickened. He pawed through the shelves of a cabinet where he had stored the reports from the Lewis and Clark expedition and found what he was looking for within minutes.

    Sandwiched between two bundles of documents was a sheet of heavy paper, which he extracted and held up to the light. The sheet was perforated with dozens of small rectangular holes, and, with trembling fingers, he placed the matrix over the first written page in the artichoke file and copied the letters that showed through the holes onto a separate sheet of paper.

    When Jefferson had conceived the idea for the Pacific expedition, he knew that Lewis would be in a diplomatically sensitive position exploring territory held by France and Spain. Behind Jefferson’s sphinxlike imperturbability was a mind as devious as any to be found in the courts and palaces of Europe. In corresponding with his minister to France, he had often used a cipher, which he described as “a mask when we need it.”

    While Lewis was in Philadelphia preparing for his journey with leading scientists from the Philosophical Society, Jefferson sent him a cipher he had worked up for the expedition. He based the encryption method on the Vigenere cipher widely used in Europe. The system involved an alphanumeric table and was unlocked with a key word.

    Artichokes.

    It had not been necessary to use the cipher during the expedition, which was why Lewis had been baffled at seeing it utilized. Casting questions aside now, he attacked the enciphered message with the enthusiasm he brought to all challenges. As he deciphered each letter from the gibberish, the words began to form before his eyes.

Dear Mr. Lewis: I hope this missive finds you well. I have taken the liberty of submitting this report to you in the enciphered form upon which we had agreed, with the goal that it should be for your eyes only, and for your sole disposition. I fear that the information enclosed, whether true or not, would excite certain passions, cause men to go into territory where they were ill-prepared to survive, and create problems with the Indians. I understood that you are fully engaged in the formidable task of placing a harness on the Louisiana stallion, but plead your assistance in resolving this matter.

Y’r ob’d’nt s’v’nt, TJ

    Lewis deciphered the balance of the encrypted message. Then he went back to the garden diagram. The lines, Xs, circles, and words penned in an ancient language began to make sense of sorts. He was looking at a map—and something about it struck him as familiar. He pawed through dozens of his charts and documents and found what he was looking for.

    Taking up pen and paper, he wrote a brief note. He thanked Jefferson for his gardening advice, and said he had located an ideal spot for his crop to flourish, then he told Jefferson that he would discuss gardening when he came to Washington to clear his name. Lewis planned to start down the Mississippi River early in September 1809. He would let Jefferson know when he had arrived in Washington.

    It was not to be. Late that fall, Jefferson received a note from a Major Neelly saying that Lewis had died of gunshot wounds on the Natchez Trace wilderness road. He was only thirty-five.

    The loss of the talented young man was incomprehensible to Jefferson. It almost seemed as if an ancient curse hovered over the Indian vocabularies. Several weeks later, Major Neelly arrived at Monticello