Текст книги "Night Probe!"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Clive Cussler
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

"Max Roubaix." His breath was coming in short gasps. "Tell Henri to consult Max Roubaix."

Danielle could stand no more. She turned and fled into the corridor.

Dr. Ericsson was sitting at his desk studying Sarveux's charts when the head nurse entered the office. She set a cup of coffee and a plate of doughnuts beside him. "Ten minutes till show time, doctor."

Ericsson rubbed his eyes and glanced at his wristwatch. "I suppose the reporters are getting restless."

"More like murderous," the nurse replied. "They'd probably tear down the building if the kitchen didn't keep them fed." She paused to unzip a garment bag. "Your wife dropped off a clean suit and shirt. She insisted you look your best when you face the TV cameras to announce the Prime Minister's condition."

"Any change?"

"He's resting comfortably. Dr. Manson shot him with a narcotic right after Madame Sarveux left. A beautiful woman, but no stomach."

Ericsson picked up a doughnut and idly stared at it. "I must have been mad to allow the Prime Minister to talk me into administering a stimulant so soon after the operation."

"What do you suppose was in his mind?"

"I don't know." Ericsson stood up and removed his coat. "But whatever the reason, his delirious act was most convincing.

Danielle slipped out of the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and peered up at the resident mansion of Canada's leader. In her eyes the three-story stone exterior was cold and morbid, like a setting of an Emily BrontE novel. She passed through the long foyer with its high ceiling and traditional furnishings and climbed the wide circular staircase to her bedroom.

It was her haven, the only room in the house Charles had allowed her to redecorate. A shaft of light from the bathroom outlined a raised hump lying on the bed. She closed the door to the hall and leaned against it, a fear mingled with a warmth that suddenly ignited within her stomach. "You're crazy to come here," she murmured.

Teeth gleamed in a smile under the dim light. "I wonder how many other wives across the land are saying that very line to their lovers tonight."

"The Mounties guarding the residence."

"Loyal Frenchmen who have suddenly been struck blind and deaf."

"You must leave."

The hump unfolded into a shape of a nude man who stood up on the bed. He held out his hands. "Come to me, ma nymphe."

"No…... not here." The throaty tone in her voice gave away an awakening passion. "We have nothing to fear."

"Charles lives!" she suddenly cried out. "Don't you understand? Charles still lives!"

"I know," he said without emotion.

The bedsprings creaked as he stepped to the floor and padded across the carpet. He possessed a formidable body; the huge, swollen muscles, symmetrically formed layer by layer over years of disciplined exercise, rippled and strained beneath his skin. He reached up, ran a hand through his hair and removed it. The skull was shaven, as was every inch of his body. The legs, chest, and pubic area glistened bare and smooth. He took her head between iron hands and pressed her face against the pectoral muscles of his chest. She inhaled the fragrant musky scent from the light coating of body oil he always applied before they made love.

"Do not think of Charles," he commanded. "He no longer exists for you."

She could feel the bestial power oozing from his pores. Her head was swimming as a burning desire for this hairless animal consumed her. The heat between her legs flared and she went limp in his arms.

The sun seeped through the half-open drapes and crept over the two figures entwined on the bed. Danielle lay with her breasts enfolding the nude head, her black hair fanned on the pillow. She kissed the smooth pate several times and then released it.

"You must go now," she said.

He stretched an arm across her stomach and turned the bedside clock to the light. "Eight o'clock. Still too early. I'll leave around ten." Her eyes took on an apprehensive intensity. "Reporters are swarming everywhere. You should have left hours ago when it was dark."

He yawned and sat up. "Ten in the morning is a very respectable hour for an old family friend to be seen at the official residence. No one will notice my late departure. I'll be lost in the crowd of solicitous members of Parliament who are beating a path here this minute to offer their services to the Prime Minister's wife in her moment of anguish."

"You're a capricious bastard," she said, pulling the twisted bedclothes around her shoulders. "Warm and loving one moment, cold and calculating the next."

"How quickly women change their moods the morning after. I wonder if you would be half so shrewish if Charles had died in the crash?"

"The job was botched," she snapped angrily.

"Yes, the job was botched." He shrugged.

Her face took on a cold determined look. "Only when Charles lies in the grave will Quebec become an independent socialist nation."

"You want your husband dead for a cause?" he asked skeptically. "Has your love turned to such hatred that he has become nothing to you but a symbol to be eliminated?"

"We never knew love." She took a cigarette from a box on the nightstand and lit it. "From the beginning, Charles' only interest in me was a need for a political asset. My family's social standing provided him with entrde to society. I've supplied him with some sterling polish and style. But I've never been anything to Charles except a tool to enhance his public image."

"Why did you marry him?"

She drew on the cigarette. "He said he was going to be Prime Minister someday, and I believed him."

"And then?"

"Too late, I discovered Charles was incapable of affection. I once sought a passionate response. Now I cringe every time he touches me."

"I watched the news conference at the hospital on television. The doctor who was interviewed told how your anxiety and concern for Charles touched the hearts of the medical staff."

"Pure theatrics." She laughed. "I'm pretty good at it. But then I've had ten years of rehearsal."

"Did Charles have anything interesting to say during your visit?"

"Nothing that made any sense. They had just wheeled him out of the surgical recovery room. His mind was still numb from the anesthetic. He spoke mostly gibberish, raked up the past, a memory of an auto accident that killed his mother."

Danielle's lover slid out of bed and stepped into the bathroom. "At least he didn't babble away defense secrets."

She inhaled on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle from her nostrils. "Maybe he did."

"Go on," he said from the bathroom. "I can hear you."

"Charles instructed me to tell you to increase security at James Bay."

"Sheer nonsense." He laughed. "They have twice the amount of guards required to cover every square inch as it is."

"Not the whole project. Only the control booth."

He came to the doorway, wiping his bald head with a towel. "What control booth?"

"Above the generator chamber, I think he said."

He looked puzzled. "Did he elaborate?"

"Then Charles mumbled something about 'great peril for Canada if the wrong people discover'. "

"Yes, discover what?"

She made a helpless gesture. "He broke off because of the pain."

"That was all?"

"No, he wanted you to consult with somebody called Max Roubaix."

"Max Roubaix?" he repeated, his expression skeptical. "Are you certain that was the name he used?"

She stared at the ceiling, thinking back, then she nodded. "Yes, I'm positive."

"How odd."

Without further elaboration he reentered the bathroom, stood in front of a large full-length mirror and struck a pose known in muscle control jargon as a vacuum. Exhaling and sucking in his rib section, he expanded his rib cage, straining until the network of blood vessels seemed to erupt beneath the skin's surface. Next he did a side chest shot, left hand on right wrist, arm against upper torso.

Henri Villon studied his reflection with critical concern. His physique was as ideal as physically possible. Then he stared at the chiseled features of the face, the Roman-style nose, the indifferent gray eyes. When he dropped all expression the features became hard, with a satanic twist to the mouth. It was as though a savage was lurking beneath the sculptured marble of a statue.

The wife and daughter of Henri Villon, his Liberal party colleagues and half the population of Canada would never in their wildest fantasies have believed he was leading a double life. A respected member of Parliament and minister of internal affairs in the open, he walked the shadows as the veiled head of the Free Quebec Society, the radical movement dedicated to the full independence of French Quebec.

Danielle came up behind him, a sheet wrapped around her, toga-fashion, and traced his biceps with her fingers. "Do you know him?"

He relaxed and took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. "Roubaix?"

She nodded.

"Only by reputation."

"Who is he?"

"Better to ask that question in the past tense," he said, taking the brown-haired wig with graying sides and neatly placing it on his scalp. "If my memory serves me, Max Roubaix was a mass murderer who swung from the gallows over a hundred years ago."

FEBRUARY 1989

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Heidi Milligan seemed out of place among the students grouped about the tables of the Princeton University archive reading room. The neatly tailored uniform of a navy lieutenant commander adorned a svelte body measuring six feet from manicured toenails to the roots of her naturally ash-blond hair.

To the young men in the room she was a welcome distraction from their studies. She knew instinctively that she was being stripped to her skin in their imaginations. But since she'd passed thirty, she'd become indifferent, though not too indifferent.

"Looks like you're on another allnighter Commander."

Heidi looked up into the ever-smiling face of Mildred Gardner, the matronly head archivist of the university. "Allnighter?"

"Late study. In my day we called it burning the midnight oil."

Heidi leaned back in her chair. "I've got to steal whatever time I can to work on my dissertation."

Mildred blew the bangs of her nineteen-fortyish pageboy hairstyle out of her eyes and sat down. "An attractive girl like you can't spend all your nights studying. You should find yourself a good man and live it up once in a while."

"First I'll get my doctorate in history, then I'll live it up."

"You can't get passionate with a piece of paper that says you're a Ph.D."

"Maybe the sound of Dr. Milligan turns me on," Heidi laughed. "If I'm to advance my career in the navy, I'll need the credentials."

"Sounds to me like you like to compete with the opposite sex."

"Sex has nothing to do with it. My first love is the navy. What's wrong with that?"

Mildred made a gesture of surrender. "No profit in arguing with a stubborn female, and hardheaded sailor to boot." She rose and looked down at the documents scattered on the table. "Anything I can pull from the shelves for you?"

"I'm researching Woodrow Wilson papers that deal with the navy during his administration."

"How horribly dull. Why that subject?"

"I guess you might say I'm intrigued by covering an untapped sideline of history."

"You mean subject matter no male has had the foresight to research before."

"You said it, not me."

"I don't envy the guy who marries you," said Mildred. "He'd come home from work and have to arm-wrestle. The loser cooking dinner and doing the dishes."

"I was married. Six years. To a colonel in the Marine Corps. I still carry the scars."

"Physical or mental?"

"Both."

Mildred dropped the subject and picked up the fiberboard case that housed the documents, and checked the file number. "You're in the ball park. This file contains the bulk of Wilson's naval correspondence."

"I've pretty much exhausted them," said Heidi. "Can you think of any avenue I might have missed?"

Mildred stared into space a moment. "A slim possibility. Give me ten minutes."

She returned in five, carrying another document case. "Unpublished material that hasn't been Cataloged yet," she said with a pontifical grin. "Might be worth a look."

Heidi scrutinized the yellowed letters. Most were in the President's own hand. Advice to his three daughters, explanations of his stand against Tammany Hall to William Jennings Bryan during the Democratic convention of 1912, personal messages to Ellen Louise Axson, his first wife, and Edith Boning Gait, his second.

Fifteen minutes before closing time Heidi unfolded a letter addressed to Herbert Henry Asquith, the Prime Minister of Britain. The paper appeared creased in irregular lines as though it had once been wadded up. The date was June 4, 1914, but there was no mark of acknowledgment, which suggested that the letter had never been sent. She began to read the neatly styled script.

Dear Herbert,

With the formally signed copies of our treaty seemingly lost and the heated criticism you are receiving from members of your cabinet, perhaps our bargain was never meant to be. And since formal transfer did not transpire, I have given my secretary instructions to destroy all mention of our pact. This uncustomary step is, I feel, somewhat reluctantly, warranted as my countrymen are a possessive lot and would never idly stand by knowing with certainty that

A crease ran through the next line, obliterating the writing. The letter continued with a new paragraph.

At the request of Sir Edward, and with the concurrence of Bryan, I have recorded the funds deposited to your government from our treasury as a loan.

Your friend,

WOODROW WILSON

Heidi was about to set the letter aside because there was no reference to naval involvement when curiosity pulled her eyes back to the words "destroy all mention of our pact."

She hung on them for nearly a minute. After two years of in-depth study, she felt she had come to know Woodrow Wilson almost as well as a favorite uncle, and she'd discovered nothing in the former President's makeup to suggest a Watergate mentality during his years in public office.

The ten– minute warning sounded for the closing of the archives. She quickly transcribed the letter on a yellow legal pad. Then she checked in both file cases at the front desk. "Run on to anything useful?" asked Mildred. "A trail of smoke I didn't expect," replied Heidi vaguely. "Where do you go from here?"

"Washington…... the National Archives."

"Good luck. I hope you make a hit."

"Hit?"

"Discover a previously overlooked treasure of information." Heidi shrugged. "You never know what might turn up."

She had not planned to pursue the meaning of Wilson's odd letter.

But now that she had the door open a crack, she decided it was worth a further peek.

The Senate historian leaned back in his chair. "I'm sorry, commander, but we don't have room up here in the Capitol attic to store congressional documents."

"I understand," said Heidi. "You specialize in old photographs."

Jack Murphy nodded. "Yes, we maintain quite an extensive collection of government-related pictures going back as far as the eighteen forties." He idly fiddled with a paperweight on the desk. "Have you tried the National Archives? They have a massive storehouse of material."

"A wasted effort," Heidi shrugged. "I found nothing that related to my search."

"How can I help?"

"I'm interested in a treaty between England and America. I thought perhaps a photo might have been taken during the signing."

"We carry a wealth of those. The president has yet to be born who didn't call in an artist or photographer to record a treaty signature.

"All I can tell you is that it took place during the first six months of nineteen fourteen."

"I can't recall such an event off the top of my head," said Murphy, with a thoughtful look. "I'll be glad to make a search for you; might take a day or two. I have several research projects ahead of yours."

"I understand. Thank you."

Murphy hesitated, then stared at her, a quizzical look in his eyes. "It strikes me odd that no mention of an Anglo-American treaty can be found in official archives. Do you have a reference to it?"

"I found a letter written by President Wilson to Prime Minister Asquith in which he alludes to a formally signed treaty."

Murphy rose from his desk and showed Heidi to the door. "My staff will give it a try, Commander Milligan. If there is a photograph, we'll find it."

Heidi sat in her room at the Jefferson Hotel, peering into a cosmetic case mirror at a crow's-foot that edged a widened eye. All things considered, she had accepted the merciless encroachment of age, and was keeping her youthful-looking face and a body that had yet to see an ounce of fat.

In the last three years she had weathered a hysterectomy, a divorce and a tender May-December affair with an admiral twice her age who recently died from a heart attack. Yet she still looked as vibrant and alive as when she graduated from Annapolis, fourteenth in her class.

She leaned closer to the mirror and studied a pair of Castilian brown eyes. The right one had a small imperfection at the bottom of the iris, a small pie-shaped splash of gray. Heterochromia ifidis was the highfalutin term an ophthalmologist gave her when she was ten years old, and schoolmates had taunted her about possessing an evil eye. From then on she reveled in being different, especially later when boys found it appealing.

Since the death of Admiral Walter Bass she had felt no urge to search out and emotionally involve herself with another man. But before she realized what she was doing, the blue uniform was hanging in the closet and she was standing in the elevator in a bias-cut, coppery-colored slip dress of silk, piped in saffron that plunged devilishly low in back and front and was dashed with a silk flower at a V far below her breasts. Besides a matching purse, her only other accessory was a long feather and jeweled earring that dangled to her shoulder. For warmth against Washington's bleak winter air, she buried herself in a notch-collared greatcoat of dark brown-and-black synthetic fox.

The doorman sighed at the exhilarating view and opened the door to a cab.

"Where to?" asked the driver without turning.

The simple question took her by surprise. She had made up her mind to go out on the town; she hadn't planned where. She paused, and then opportunely her stomach growled.

"A restaurant," she blurted. "Can you recommend a nice restaurant?"

"What do you feel like eatin', lady?"

"I'm not sure."

"Steak, Chinese, seafood? You name it."

"Seafood."

"You got it," said the driver, punching the button on the digital meter. "I know just the place. Overlooks the river. Very romantic."

"Just what I need." Heidi laughed. "It sounds perfect."

Already the evening was a bust. Sitting by candlelight and sipping wine while watching the Capitol's lights sparkling on the Potomac River with no one to talk to only served to deepen her solitude. A woman dining by herself still seemed an odd sight to some people. She caught the discreet stares of the other diners and guessed their thoughts to pass the time. A date who's been stood up? A wife on the make? A hooker taking a dinner break? The latter was her favorite.

A man came in and was seated two tables behind her. The restaurant was dimly lit and all she could tell about him as he passed was that he was tall. She was tempted to turn around and give him an appraising gaze, but could not overcome her inbred standards of modesty.

Suddenly she sensed a presence standing at her side, and her nostrils picked up the vague scent of a mari's shaving cologne.

"I beg your pardon, gorgeous creature," a voice whispered in her ear, "but could you see it in your heart to buy a poor, destitute wino a glass of muscatel?"

Startled, she cringed and looked up, her eyes wide.

The intruder's face was shadowed and indistinct. Then he came around and sat down opposite her. His hair was thick and black and the candlelight reflected a pair of warm sea-green eyes. His face was weathered and darkened by the sun. He stared at her as if anticipating a greeting, his features cool and expressionless, and then he smiled and the whole room seemed to brighten.

"Why, Heidi Milligan, can it be you don't remember me?" She trembled as a tide of recognition swept over her. "Pitt! Oh my God, Dirk Pitt!"

Impulsively she placed her hands on his temples and pulled him toward her until their lips touched. Pitt's eyes took on a bemused look, and when Heidi released him, he sat back and shook his head.

"Amazing how a man can misjudge a woman. All I expected was a handshake."

A blush tinted Heidi's cheeks. "You caught me in a weak moment. I was sitting here feeling sorry for myself, and when I saw a friend…... well, I guess I got carried away."

He held her hands in a gentle grip and the smile faded. "I was saddened to hear of Admiral Bass's passing. He was a good man."

Her eyes grew dark. "The end was painless. After he went into a coma he just slipped away."

"God only knows how the Vixen affair might have turned out if he hadn't volunteered his services."

"Remember when we met?"

"I came to interview the admiral at his inn near Lexington, Virginia, where he retired."

"And I thought you were some government official who wanted to badger him. I treated you dreadfully."

Pitt paused and stared at her. "You two were very close."

She nodded. "We lived together for nearly eighteen months. He came from the old school, but he wouldn't consider marriage. Said it was stupid for a young woman to tie herself to a man with one foot in the grave."

Pitt could see the tears. beginning to form and he quickly changed the subject. "If you don't mind my saying, you're the image of a high-school girl on her first prom date."

"The perfect compliment at the perfect moment." Heidi straightened and peered around the tables. "I don't mean to take you away from anything. You're probably meeting someone."

"No, I'm stag." He smiled with his eyes. "I'm between projects and decided to relax with a quiet supper."

"I'm glad we met," she said shyly.

"You have but to give the command, and I'm your slave till dawn."

She looked at him and the sights and sounds of the dining room faded into the background.

She stared demurely down at the table setting. "I'd like that very much."

When they entered Heidi's hotel room, Pitt tenderly picked her up and carried her to the bed.

"Do not move," he said. "I'll do everything."

He began to undress her, very slowly. She couldn't remember ever having a man undress her so completely, from her earrings to her shoes. He made as little contact with his fingers as possible and the anticipation mushroomed inside her to an exquisite agony.

Pitt was not to be hurried. She wondered how many other women he had sweetly tortured like this. The passion began to reflect in Pitt's depthless eyes and it excited her to an even higher level.

Suddenly his lips came down onto hers. They were warm and moist. She responded as his arms tightened around her hips and pulled her to him. She seemed to dissolve and a moan escaped her throat.

Just when the blood felt as though it would burst inside and her muscles pulsated uncontrollably, she opened her mouth to scream. It was then Pitt penetrated her and she came and came in a sweeping rage of pleasure that never seemed to end.

The most luxurious hour of sleep comes not in the beginning or middle but just prior to awakening. It is then that one dream falls upon another in a kaleidoscope of vivid fantasies. To be interrupted by the ringing of a telephone and thrust back to conscious reality is as tormenting as the scraping of fingernails across a blackboard.

Heidi's agony was compounded by an accompanying knock on her hotel room door. Her mind fogged from sleep, she lifted the receiver and mumbled, "Hold on a minute, please." Then she slid from bed and stumbled halfway across the room before realizing she was naked.

Grabbing a terrycloth robe from her suitcase, she threw it over her shoulders and cracked the door. A bellhop slipped around the barrier with the ease of an eel and set a large vase of white roses on a table. Still in a haze, Heidi tipped him and returned to the phone. "Sorry for the delay. This is Commander Milligan."

"Ah, Commander," came the voice of Jack Murphy, the Senate historian, "did I wake you?"

"I had to get up anyway," she said, disguising the urge-to-kill tone in her voice.

"I thought you'd like to know your request triggered a recollection in my mind. So I ran a search last night after closing time and came up with something most interesting."

Heidi rubbed the cobwebs from her eyes. "I'm listening."

"There were no photographs on file of a treaty signing during nineteen fourteen," said Murphy. "I did find, however, an old shot of William Jennings Bryan, who was Wilson's secretary of state at the time; his undersecretary, Richard Essex; and Harvey Shields, identified in a caption only as a representative of His Majesty's government, entering a car."

"I fail to see a connection," said Heidi.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to mislead you. The photograph itself tells us very little. But on the back there is a small penciled notation in the lower left corner that is barely legible. It gives the date, May twentieth, nineteen fourteen, and says: "Bryan leaving White House with North American Treaty." Heidi clutched the phone. "So it really existed."

"My guess is it was only a proposed treaty." Murphy's pride at successfully meeting a challenge was obvious in his tone. "If you would like a copy of the photograph we must charge a small fee."

"Yes…... yes, please. Could you also make an enlargement of the writing on the back?"

"No problem. You can pick up the prints anytime after three o'clock."

"That will be terrific. Thank you."

Heidi hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, happily basking in the feeling of accomplishment. There was a connection after all. Then she remembered the flowers. A note was attached to one of the white roses.

You look ravishing out of uniform. Forgive me for not being near when you awoke.

Dirk

Heidi pressed the rose against her cheek and her lips parted in a lazy smile. The hours spent with Pitt returned as though observed through a pane of frosted glass, the sights and sounds fusing together in a dreamy sort of mist. He was like a phantom who had come and gone in a fantasy. Only the touch of their bodies lingered with clarity, that and a glowing soreness from within.

With reluctance she forced the reverie from her mind and picked up a Washington phone directory from the nightstand. Holding a long fingernail beneath a tiny printed number, she dialed and waited. On the third ring a voice answered.

"Department of State, can I help you?"

Shortly before two o'clock in the afternoon, John Essex pulled up his coat collar against a frigid north breeze and began to check the trays of his raft-culture grown mollusks. Essex's sophisticated farming operation, situated on Coles Point in Virginia, planted seed oysters, tending and cultivating them in ponds beside the Potomac River.

The old man was engrossed in taking a water sample when he heard his name called. A woman bundled in the blue overcoat of a naval officer stood on the pathway between the ponds, a pretty woman, if his seventy-five-year-old eyes were focusing properly. He packed his analysis kit and approached her slowly.

"Mr. Essex?" She smiled warmly. "I phoned earlier. My name is Heidi Milligan."

"You failed to mention your rank, Commander," he said, correctly identifying the insignia on her shoulder boards. Then his lips widened in a friendly smile. "I won't hold that against you. I'm an old friend of the navy. Would you like to come up to the house for a cup of tea?"

"Sounds marvelous," she replied. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Nothing that can't wait for warmer weather. I should be indebted to you for most likely saving me from a case of pneumonia."

She turned up her nose at the odor that pervaded the air. "It smells like a fish market."

"Are you an oyster lover, Commander?"

"Of course. They form pearls, don't they?"

He laughed. "Spoken like a woman. A man would have praised their gastronomic qualities."

"Don't you mean their aphrodisiac qualities?"

"An undeserved myth."

She made a sour face. "I'm afraid I never developed a fondness for raw oysters."

"Fortunately for me, many people do. Last year the ponds around us yielded over fifteen thousand tons per acre. And that was after extraction of the shells."

Heidi tried to look fascinated as Essex went on about the spawning and cultivation of oysters while leading her up a gravel path to a colonial brick house nestled in a grove of apple trees. After settling her comfortably on a leather couch in his study, he produced a pot of tea. Heidi studied him carefully as he poured.

John Essex had twinkling blue eyes and prominent high cheekbones on the part of his face that showed; the bottom half was hidden in a luxuriant white mustache and beard. His body had no senior citizen fat. Even when he was dressed in old coveralls, mackinaw jacket and Wellington boots, the courtly manner that once graced the American embassy in London was still apparent.

"Well, Commander, is this an official visit?" he asked, handing her a cup and saucer.

"No, sir, I'm here on a personal matter."

Essex's eyebrows raised. "Young lady, thirty years ago I might have interpreted that as a flirtatious opening. Now, I'm sad to say, you've only excited an old derelict's inquisitive nature."

"I would hardly call one of the nation's most respected diplomats an old derelict."

"Times gone by." Essex smiled. "How may I be of service?"

"In doing research for my doctorate, I ran across a letter written by President Wilson to Herbert Asquith." She paused to pull a transcript from her purse and pass it to him. "In it he refers to a treaty between England and America."

Essex donned a pair of reading spectacles and read the letter twice. Then he looked up. "How can you be sure it's genuine?"

Without answering, Heidi handed him the two photographic enlargements and waited for a reaction.

William Jennings Bryan, portly and grinning, was bending to enter a limousine. Two men stood behind him in seemingly jovial conversation. Richard Essex, dapper and refined, wore a broad smile, while Harvey Shields had his head tilted back in a belly laugh, displaying two large protruding upper teeth, or what dentists termed an over bite surrounded by a sea of gold inlays. The chauffeur who held open the car door stood stiffly unamused.