Free The Lincoln Myth by Steve Berry

changed.
    No one today would dare challenge the right of a person to serve in government based on their religion. In fact, to suggest such would be offensive. A Saint had even managed to become the Republican party’s presidential nominee.
    But that did not mean prejudice had disappeared.
    On the contrary, Saints still encountered resistance. Not the beatings, robberies, and killings of 150 years ago.
    Prejudice nonetheless, though.
    He entered a multistory residential building that stood east of Salt Lake’s Temple Square, a modest location that housed a church-owned condominium where the current prophet lived. The lobby was staffed with two security guards, who waved him through.
    He stepped into the elevator and entered a digital code.
    As not only an elder but president of the Quorum of the Twelve, the man who would almost certainly become the next leader, his access to the current prophet was unfettered.
    The church thrived on loyalty.
    Seniority was rewarded.
    As it should be.
    He hadn’t changed from his dusty clothes, having driven straight from the airfield. The man waiting had told him formalities were not necessary. Not today. Not with what had been discovered.
    “Come in, Thaddeus,” the prophet called out as Rowan stepped inside the sunlit residence. “Please, have a seat. I’m anxious to hear.”
    Charles R. Snow had served as prophet for nineteen years. He was sixty-three then, eighty-two now. He walked only when outside the residence, otherwise he utilized a wheelchair. The apostles had been informed of his various afflictions including chronic anemia, low blood pressure, and progressive kidney failure. Yet the old man’smind remained sharp, as active as forty years ago when he first became an elder.
    “I envy you,” Snow said. “Dressed in hiking clothes, able to enjoy the desert. I miss those walks through the canyons.”
    Snow had been born near Zion National Park, a third-generation Saint, descended from one of the pioneer families who’d made the original trek west in 1847. While most immigrants settled in the Salt Lake basin, Brigham Young had dispatched vanguards to various parts of the new land. Snow’s family had headed south and prospered in the stark, barren environment. He was an economist, with degrees from Utah State and Brigham Young University, where he taught for two decades. He’d served as an assistant stake clerk, then clerk, bishop, and high councilor before being called for the First Quorum of Seventy, finally sustained as an apostle. He’d acted for many years as president of the England mission, a responsibility eventually bestowed by the brethren on Rowan. His tenure as prophet had been quiet, with little controversy.
    “I’ve offered to take you into the mountains anytime,” Rowan said as he sat across from the older man. “Just ask and I’ll make the arrangements.”
    “As if my doctors would allow that. No, Thaddeus, my legs barely work anymore.”
    Snow’s wife had died ten years ago, and his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all lived outside of Utah. His life was the church, and he’d proven to be an active manager, overseeing much of its everyday administration. Yesterday Rowan had called Snow and briefed him about the find inside Zion, which raised many questions. The prophet had asked Rowan to go and see if there were any answers.
    He reported what he’d found, then said, “It’s the right wagons. There’s no doubt.”
    Snow nodded. “The names on the wall are proof. I never believed I would hear from those men again.”
    Fjeldsted. Hyde. Woodruff. Egan .
    “Damnation to the prophet . They cursed us in death, Thaddeus.”
    “Maybe they had a right to? They were all murdered.”
    “I always thought the whole thing a story fabricated at the time. But apparently it’s a true one.”
    One Rowan knew in detail.
    By 1856 war seemed inevitable between the United States and the Latter-day Saints. Differences over plural marriage, religion,