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 o
f 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."