He found his cell phone and dialed.
Wind swirled the misty rain across the bay like ghosts. Cold stung her face. They should find shelter, but Luke Daniels did not move, his attention locked on the two orange boats as they distanced themselves from the ferry, headed north, away from town. When the call was answered she could hear thanks to Daniels activating the speaker.
“Pappy, is that you in one of those boats?”
“It’s me. Kim’s ahead of us.”
“We’re on shore,” Daniels said. “At the dock. I got Wonder Woman here with me.”
She resented his condescending attitude and the insult she knew some of her co-workers at Treasury used for her.
“Kim’s got the documents,” Malone said. “We can’t let him get away. There’s an original in there we have to get back.”
She caught the significance of what Malone had managed to learn, which amplified her containment problem.
“I may not be able to catch up to him,” Malone said. “These tubs are not rigged for speed. Can you pace him from dry land?”
Daniels’ gaze drifted from the dancing waves to the shoreline on their right, which ran in a jagged course northward where buildings and pinewoods strung close. A sheltered marina was visible, maybe two miles away.
But she saw it, too.
A highway rimmed the coast for as far she could see, sandy beaches between it and the water.
“I got it, Pappy. We’ll be right with you.”
THIRTY-FIVE
VIRGINIA
Stephanie drove the car away from Ed Tipton’s house. As requested, they’d shut off the house lights and locked the front door behind them. Danny had borrowed $20 from her and tucked it beneath Tipton’s phone to compensate for the overseas calls. She’d thought it strange, but typical. He didn’t like to owe anyone.
He sat in the rear seat with the wooden crate they’d retrieved from the hall closet. He’d switched on one of the rear ceiling lights and was rummaging through. The glare was blocking her ability to see out the rearview mirror, but she knew better than to ask him to cut it off. The car with the two Secret Service agents followed closely. Dawn was less than an hour away. Strangely, she wasn’t tired, though she should be. She’d passed the fatigue threshold several hours ago and found the point where the body began to run on autopilot, sleep be damned.
“It’s full of old books,” he said. “Most of ’em are on George Mason. And then there’s this.”
He stretched his arm forward and displayed between the two front seats a copy of a thin, hardbound volume. Taxation: The People’s Business. Written by Andrew W. Mellon.
“I didn’t know he was an author,” she said.
The book disappeared back to the rear seat. “This one I know all about. Edwin gave me a rundown on it yesterday.”
“You two have been busy. Don’t you have a country to run?”
He chuckled. “Actually, the thing runs itself. Especially when you’re a lame duck. Nobody gives a crap what I have to say.”
She knew better. “Unless you want them to give a crap.”
“The copyright page says it was published by the MacMillan Company in 1924. Edwin tells me that David Finley, Mellon’s close associate, actually wrote it for him, but everything in it was pure Mellon.”
She heard him flipping through the pages.
Then he started reading out loud.
The problem of the Government is to fix rates which will bring in a maximum amount of revenue to the Treasury and at the same time bear not too heavily on the taxpayer or on business enterprises. A sound tax policy must take into consideration three factors. It must produce sufficient revenue for the Government; it must lessen, so far as possible, the burden of taxation on those least able to bear it; and it must also remove those influences which might retard the continued steady development of business and industry on which, in the last analysis, so much of our prosperity depends. Furthermore, a permanent tax system should be designed not merely for one or two years nor for the effect it may have on any given class of taxpayers, but should be worked out with regard to conditions over a long period and with a view to its ultimate effect on the prosperity of the country as a whole.
These are the principles on which the Treasury’s tax policy is based, and any revision of taxes which ignores these fundamental principles will prove merely a make-shift and must eventually be replaced by a system based on economic, rather than political, considerations.
There is no reason why the question of taxation should not be approached from a non-partisan and business viewpoint. Tax revision should never be made the football either of partisan or class politics but should be worked out by those who have made a careful study of the subject in its larger aspects and are prepared to recommend the course which, in the end, will prove for the country’s best interest.
I have never viewed taxation as a means of rewarding one class of taxpayers or punishing another. If such a point of view ever controls our public policy, the traditions of freedom, justice and equality of opportunity, which are the distinguishing characteristics of our American civilization, will have disappeared and in their place we shall have class legislation with all its attendant evils. The man who seeks to perpetuate prejudice and class hatred is doing America an ill service. In attempting to promote or to defeat legislation by arraying one class of taxpayers against another, he shows a complete misconception of those principles of equality on which the country was founded.
“Easy to see how Mellon and Roosevelt fought,” Danny said. “Class warfare was Roosevelt’s ticket to four terms. He played that card every chance he got. But it was a smart move. There were a whole lot more ‘have nots’ than ‘haves,’ and numbers win elections.”
She could tell something was still bothering him.