An Asian.
No freelancers. But after all, this was a rush job, and they surely thought that the middle of nowhere would offer them a relatively safe haven. That might be true, except that they’d been lured. His main hope was that they’d yet to figure that part out.
Luke and Isabella were covering the train.
The station was his problem.
So as the one man entered the building through the double doors, he made his way toward the car.
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 fa?ade 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.