FIFTY-SIX
WASHINGTON, DC
Stephanie waited for the car to find the curb and Joe Levy to emerge. She’d called him from the Mall just after Cotton’s overseas report and informed him that the code on the crumpled sheet of paper had been broken and she now knew the location of what Andrew Mellon had left for Roosevelt to find. The secretary of Treasury seemed excited and wanted to be there when she made the discovery, so she’d told him to meet her in front of the Smithsonian Castle.
The turreted red sandstone building was reminiscent of something from the Tudor age, which she knew had been intentional as a way to align the building more with England than Greece or Rome. Its spires and towers were iconic, more like a church than a museum, and it had stood on the southwest corner of the Mall since the mid-19th century. Unlike the National Gallery, which she rarely frequented, the castle was a familiar haunt. She was good friends with its curator, which had made it easy for her to make contact and explain what she needed to examine.
“Okay,” Levy said, “I’m here. What have you found?”
“Mellon hid his prize in a clever place. Cotton deciphered the code and I now know where that is.”
“Thank God. I was afraid this would become uncontrollable.”
Traffic whizzed by in both directions on Independence Avenue, busy for a Tuesday afternoon.
“Shall we go and see?” she asked.
She led the way through the gardens and into the castle, her badge allowing them to bypass the metal detector and visitor security checks. Inside rose a majesty of arches and vaulted ceilings, the gray-green color scheme warm and inviting. Once the ground floor had all been exhibits, but now it housed offices, a café, and a gift shop, along with a handful of special displays. Waiting for them was a thin man with a happy face, patches of sparse gray hair dusting the sides of a smooth scalp. He stood inside the vestibule, beyond the checkpoint where visitors were having their bags examined.
She’d known him for years.
“Joe,” she said, “meet Richard Stamm, the longtime curator of the Castle’s collection.”
The two men shook hands.
“Your phone call was quite intriguing,” Stamm said. “The desk you mentioned has been here, at the castle, for a long time. It’s one of our special pieces.”
“Can we see it,” she said.
They were led through the ground floor, away from the café, past the gift shop, and into the building’s west wing. A short corridor opened to a single-story hall, it too painted in the gray-green theme. Arches lined each side. Display cases filled the gaps in between, holding what a placard announced were America souvenirs—relics, keepsakes, and curios. Beyond one of the arches, against an outer wall, stood an ornate cabinet. Visitors milled back and forth, admiring the other displays. Stamm pointed to the cabinet and told them that it had been built in the latter part of the 18th century by the great German master David Roentgen.
“It’s a classic rococo writing cabinet.”
It stood over ten feet tall and spread six feet wide, its façade a riot of dazzling architectural order crowned with a clock. Stamm explained that it was made of oak, pine, walnut, cherry, cedar, curly maple, burl maple, mahogany, apple, walnut, mulberry, tulipwood, and rosewood. Ivory, mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze, brass, steel, iron, and silk added both contrast and accent. Finely detailed colored marquetry panels decorated its front and sides. The cupola above the clock was topped with a gilt bronze of Apollo.
“It may well be the most expensive piece of furniture ever made,” he said. “Three were created. One for Duke Charles Alexander of Lorraine, another for King Louis XVI of France, and a third for King Frederick William II of Prussia. This was Frederick’s. That’s him there in the portrait medallion, on the central door. It’s like a royal entertainment system, full of ingenious mechanisms and hidden compartments. Most of them open to the music of flutes, cymbals, and a glockenspiel. The clock also has some lovely chimes. It’s an amazing piece of workmanship.”
“For the truly rich,” she noted.
Stamm smiled. “Frederick paid 80,000 livers for this, which was an enormous amount at the time.”
“How long has it been here?” she asked.
“I checked to be sure, and my memory was right. Andrew Mellon acquired it in the 1920s. He donated it to the Smithsonian in 1936, with the proviso that it had to be displayed somewhere in the Castle at all times.”
“This desk has been here since then?” Levy asked.
Stamm nodded. “Somewhere, inside the castle. Conditions are not uncommon with gifts. If we accept the restricted donation, then we honor the request. Sometimes we do reject a gift because of the conditions. Not with this, though. I imagine it was simply too tempting. The curator at the time had to have it, which I can understand.”
She admired the exquisite cabinet.
“I took the information you provided on the phone and checked out the desk,” Stamm said. “You were right, there is a paper hidden inside.”
“Did you read it?” Levy asked.
He shook his head. “Stephanie told me not to touch it, so I left it alone. It’s still inside.”
“Joe doesn’t know what I told you,” she said to Stamm.
He led them closer. “I know most of the secret places in the desk. But what you were able to decipher told me about a new one and how to open it. That was exciting.”
He removed a skeleton key from his pocket and inserted it into a slot in the central door. Once turned, it set in motion a multitude of springs and latches. A wooden panel slowly unfolded to create a writing surface. Above it a lectern formed, angled to accommodate a book or a sheet of paper. At the same time two compartments emerged on either side that held inks, sand, and writing utensils. The whole metamorphosis was swift and smooth, done to the tune of tinkling music.
“It’s like a Transformer today,” Stamm said. “It appears as one thing, then becomes another. And it’s all old-school technology. Levers, springs, weights, and pulleys.”
He pointed out a few of the secret compartments. Small ones in nests, long slender ones with mother-of-pearl, swivel drawers concealed behind other drawers, all of them gliding open without a sound and easily slid back into place.
“There are maybe fifty or so secret spaces,” Stamm said. “That was the whole idea. To have spots to hide things. I genuinely thought I knew them all.”
He pointed to a section above the lectern where she saw more gilt bronzes and festoons of leaves and grapes. A Corinthian capital sat between two portraits in marquetry, a man on the left, woman on the right, each peeking out at the other from a side curtain, adding a whimsical touch. Stamm lightly gripped the small column between the images and twisted. “I would have never done this before for fear of damage. But a quick turn of the column releases a latch.”
The image of the man on the left suddenly moved and the wooden panel upon which it appeared sprang open, revealing a secret compartment. Stamm gently hinged the panel out ninety degrees. She saw an envelope inside, brown with age.
“I’ll be damned,” Levy said.
She reached in and slid out the packet. Written on its face, in faded black ink, was
For a tyrannical aristocrat
She realized that they were standing in a public hall, though out of the main line of traffic, people moving back and forth, so she quickly slid the envelope into a coat pocket and thanked her friend.
“I need you to keep this to yourself,” she said.
The curator nodded. “I get it. National security.”
“Something like that.”
“I don’t suppose you could at least tell me who left that.”
“Andrew Mellon hid it for FDR to find. But that never happened. Thank goodness we’re the ones to actually discover it.”
“I’ll be interested to hear, one day, just what this is all about.”
“And I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Without going to prison.”
She and Levy left
the hall as Stamm went about returning the desk to its more benign self. They avoided the entrance they’d used coming in, which led back to the street, and exited the Castle toward the National Mall. She wanted a quiet place where they could read what was inside the envelope.
They followed a wide graveled path toward the museums on the far side. People moved in all directions. An empty bench ahead, beneath trees devoid of summer foliage, beckoned and they sat.
She removed the envelope from her pocket, “It’s definitely from Mellon. FDR said he used these words, tyrannical aristocrat, when referring to him. It seemed to really piss him off.”
“You realize,” Levy said, “that what’s inside there could change the course of this country.”
“I get it. That’s why we have to make sure no one else sees this but us.”
She was about to open the envelope when she heard footsteps behind them. Before she could turn a voice said, “Just sit still and don’t move.”
She felt the distinctive press of a gun barrel at the base of her neck. The man who’d spoken stood close, another man pressed equally close to Levy, obviously trying to shield their weapons.
“We will shoot you both,” the voice said. “Two bullets through your head and be gone before anyone knows the difference.”
She assumed the weapons were sound-suppressed and that these men knew what they were doing. Levy seemed nervous. Who could blame him. Having a gun to your head was never good.
“You do realize that I am the secretary of Treasury,” Levy tried, his voice cracking from nerves.
“You bleed like anybody else,” the voice said.
To her right she caught sight of another man, walking down the graveled path, wearing a dark overcoat, dark trousers, and the same shiny Cordovan shoes that she remembered from last night.
He stopped before them.
The ambassador to the United States from China.
FIFTY-SEVEN
CROATIA
Kim left the first-class car and proceeded back to where Hana said the four men were waiting. He decided that the time to lead had come and fear was the last thing he would show. So far he’d acted decisively, never hesitating in ending Larks’, Jelena’s, and the man at the hotel’s lives. No one would be allowed to stand in his way, and that included the four Koreans he saw sitting together ahead. He cradled the black case to his chest, the gun with sound suppressor still inside, and entered the car. He approached the four and sat across the aisle in an empty row of seats, their faces all set in a frosty immobility. Only eight other people were in the car, all at the far end.
“Are you looking for me?” he asked quietly in Korean.