She waited.
“It’s bad,” he muttered. “Real bad. There could be a problem with the 16th Amendment. What Howell wrote in that book? It’s amazingly close to the truth.”
“Tell me about the original sheet Larks stole. With the numbers on it.”
“It’s the problem.”
“I need more.”
He stood. “Follow me.”
They left the room and walked down a long hall to a set of double doors marked PRIVATE. People milled back and forth, as the Tuesday work morning had begun in earnest. After speaking with Cotton she’d left the hotel and come straight here. Any briefing of the president would wait until she knew more. Cotton had been right, a lot of things had gone wrong on his end. And things were rapidly deteriorating on her side, too.
But there might be a way to turn it all around.
Past the double doors were fewer people. She’d never been in this part of the building before. But she could only remember coming to Treasury once. Before this encounter, the department had not figured prominently into Billet business. The Secret Service handled most of its covert needs. The secretary led her to another closed door that he unlocked with a metal key he carried. Inside was a small workroom with a table and chairs. Files were stacked in neat rows, some of the paper lying scattered. A shredder sat next to the table.
“This is where I’ve been working on all this,” he said. “Ever since Larks let the cat out of the bag. This is every piece of paper from our archives that even remotely mentions anything associated with what we’re dealing with. I had my agent Isabella Schaefer, the one who is now in Italy, assemble it.”
She approached the table and waited for him to explain.
He closed and locked the door. “The problem is, we don’t have a copy of that original Larks stole. Once he left for Europe, we seized Larks’ home computer and searched his email accounts. There was nothing in either. We’ve only been listening in on Larks’ calls for the past three weeks. We know there were a lot of communications to Howell prior to that. We only know that crumpled sheet is important thanks to a memo Henry Morgenthau wrote to FDR. That we do have. It was located in a set of classified files Larks did not examine. And thank goodness he didn’t. If he’d taken that, we might not know anything.”
“Has your agent reported in?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She told him about what had happened with the police in Croatia and how she’d had the White House intervene. Edwin Davis had handled things with the Croatian government, and the secretary of state sent a representative to Zadar to secure the release of both agents.
“Ms. Schaefer has been indisposed,” she told him. “I had the White House order her to go with my man. I hope you don’t mind, but it seemed better to keep them all together.”
He nodded. “Of course, I understand. This is your game now.”
“Not entirely. I still don’t know what you know.”
“Are you sure you want to?”
She had no choice. “Tell me.”
He reached down to the table, lifted one of the papers, and handed it to her. She saw that it was a memorandum from Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau to Franklin Roosevelt, dated December 5, 1944. Across the top, in large type were the words FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY.
I have the answer to the questions you posed last week. I had agents interview several current and former employees of Treasury, people who were there in the 1920s. We learned that in 1925 former secretary Mellon was interested in a possible financial claim that the heirs of Haym Salomon may have against the United States. Congress, at the time, was considering some form of repayment and made a formal inquiry to Treasury as to any documentation that may exist in our archives. There were, in fact, documents. These were removed and given directly to Secretary Mellon. Those documents were never returned and remain unaccounted for. If you would like a personal briefing, I can provide one on the Salomon claim. Because of its sensitive nature, I would prefer not to commit those thoughts to writing.
I remain troubled by what you told me concerning Secretary Mellon’s actions on December 31, 1936. This quest he left for you to decipher is not only insulting, it borders on treason. This country is now at war and we cannot afford to have anything jeopardize the efficient operation of government. It’s vital we maintain a strong and decisive posture. Mellon’s comments that whatever he left could be “the end of you” is disturbing. The dollar bill you showed me and the anagram of letters is particularly troubling. Is that a coincidence? If so, it’s one only Mellon seems to have been cognizant of. But the reference to “tyrannical aristocrat” is not hard to decipher. I am a student of history and those words were once uttered by George Mason, from Virginia, one of several delegates who refused to sign the Constitution in Philadelphia. Which would also explain the significance of the word Mason formed by the six-pointed star. The crumpled page of numbers you showed me is definitely a code. I would suggest having our cryptographers examine it.