ZADAR, CROATIA Isabella climbed down from the small plane, Luke Daniels already on the tarmac, his sunglasses gone. The weather had steadily worsened on the flight across the Adriatic. The splendid sunshine of an Italian morning had been blotted out by the black curtain of a Balkan squall blowing in from the east, along with a noticeable temperature drop.
The flight had been quick and uneventful. They should be about an hour ahead of Malone. The ferry’s docking terminal waited seven miles away, on a narrow peninsula that accommodated Zadar’s town center. She’d never visited Croatia, her overseas travel confined to central Europe and England and always work-related. She never took vacations. Her accrued leave time had ballooned off the charts, so much that her supervisor had told her she had to start using it. So far she’d ignored that directive.
“I saw some taxis on the other side of the airport as we approached for landing,” Luke said. “You need to know that the Chinese and North Koreans may have assets here, on Kim’s trail. We could run into them.”
“How would they know where Kim is?”
He shrugged. “Probably because they’ve been watching him, too. Just keep alert.”
“I always do.”
“Yeah, like you did back on the dock in Venice.”
“Did saying that make you feel better?”
“Actually, it did. But let’s get real, okay? How much experience do you have facing down a kill squad? This isn’t a bunch of high-steppin’ tax evaders. These folks will really hurt you.”
She stared him down. “I know how to use a gun. I can take care of myself.”
He chuckled. “Lady, you got no idea.”
“Just follow my lead,” she said, “and we’ll be fine.”
“Here’s a news flash. Pappy doesn’t take orders.”
“Pappy isn’t in charge. I am.”
“Since when?”
Male abruptness seemed an occupational hazard. Of late, though, the female kind had begun to raise its ugly head. Her last two partners had been women, both loose cannons, both trying to stand out in what they believed to be a man’s world. So they took risks. Made mistakes. She hated the description a man’s world. Women could succeed. She was living proof of that, now working directly for the Treasury secretary on a top-secret mission. All you had to do was play by the rules, do as you were told, and deliver results. That always paid dividends, regardless of your sex. Everything about this mission had been explained to her in detail. She got it. The stakes were high. And she knew what had to be done, this Southern cowboy and a retired guy named Pappy be damned.
She. Was. In. Charge.
On the flight over she’d managed to learn a little about Luke Daniels. Washington had emailed that he was ex-military, special forces, decorated, with several overseas tours. He’d worked for the Magellan Billet going on two years and had the good fortune to be the nephew of the president of the United States. Which dropped him several notches on her list of respect. No one had ever helped her climb the ladder, and she resented any and all who took shortcuts.
“We need to get to the ferry dock,” she said. “Before this storm arrives.”
*
Malone waited for Howell to explain.
“Larks told me about an original sheet he found in the Treasury archives, all crumpled up. As soon as I heard what he had to say, it all made sense. We know that Mellon met with Roosevelt on New Year’s Eve 1936. That comes from the diary of David Finley—one of Mellon’s closest people—published in the 1970s. The meeting was to finalize the National Gallery of Art, but Mellon gave something to Roosevelt, which the president crumpled up and tossed away.”
“You think it’s the same piece of paper?”
“If not, it’s one heck of a coincidence.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
“That page has random numbers on it. Larks scanned it and sent it to me.”
“Then it’s within Larks’ email account, or on a computer at Larks’ house?”
Howell shook his head. “The old guy was paranoid as hell. He told me he sent it from somewhere else. He didn’t say by whom or from where, and I didn’t ask. All my email accounts are under false names. A copy is stored on one of them. It’s some kind of code, but I couldn’t crack it. I really wanted to see the original, so he brought it over. That’s part of what that Korean just took with him.”
Which called into question his decision to allow Kim to walk away. Stephanie and the president’s orders had been clear. Retrieve the documents.
“There’s also a copy of a 1913 report from the solicitor general in that satchel. Larks sent me a scan of that, too. It’s significant because it tells the secretary of state that he can pretty much do whatever he wants relative to declaring a constitutional amendment valid. It references a previous memo from the solicitor general. That previous memo, I believe, is the smoking gun. It’s the one that lays out all the problems. But Larks never could find it in the archives.”
He understood. “You think Mellon took it?”
“It’s entirely possible.”
“How in the world do you know about any of this? It seems all of the important information was sealed away. How did you piece it together?”
“I first read about this on the Internet. There’s a lot of crazy stuff about the 16th Amendment. For decades people have tried to convince courts that the income tax is illegal. Was Ohio a state at the time the amendment was ratified? Some say no. I disagree. It was. Others say that the amendment did not specifically repeal previous contradictory clauses of the Constitution, therefore it’s invalid. That’s ridiculous. Still more say that the filing of a tax return violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination, or that it’s a ‘taking’ and cannot be imposed ‘without just compensation.’ One guy argued that the 16th Amendment was unconstitutional since it violated the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against ‘involuntary servitude.’ Original, but nuts. None of those are the way.”
“You a lawyer?”
“Hell, no, they’re useless. I’m just a guy who’s read an awful lot on one subject. Read several hundred books on the same thing and you’ll get a feel for how much the so-called experts don’t know.”