WASHINGTON, DC
Stephanie wedged the screwdriver into the circular indentations. With the hammer she tapped the metal tip until it was embedded a good inch, then she worked the handle back and forth. The old wood gave way. She yanked the screwdriver out and repeated the process around the circle, then rested the metal tip at the center. Three taps and she pierced the plug. Chunks of it gave way and fell to the floor. Joe Levy had bent down and was watching her.
“Just bust it out,” he said.
“I agree with him,” Danny said through the phone.
She knew he could better see what she was doing from the camera’s vantage point on the floor, where chips of a two-hundred-plus-year-old frame lay scattered. She took their advice and worked the screwdriver left and right. The plug was obliterated and its remaining pieces rained down. She folded her finger up into the cavity and freed more remnants until an opening about three inches wide was revealed.
“I wish we had a light,” she said.
“We do,” Joe said, pointing to the phone.
He was right. She reached for the unit and activated the camera flash, pointing the bright rays up into the darkness.
“There’s something there,” she said. “At the edge of the frame. The cavity beyond is wider than the opening.”
She laid the phone back down, reached up with two fingers, and felt paper. She found an edge and maneuvered whatever it was to the center where she could see an envelope. She folded it along its length and brought it down. The exterior was brown with age, not unlike the facsimile the Smithsonian had fashioned for her earlier. On the outside was typed A strange coincidence, to use a phrase, by which such things are settled nowadays She showed the words to the phone camera.
“Lord Byron,” Danny said. “From Don Juan. Like Roosevelt said on the tape.”
She remembered.
“’Tis strange, but true. For truth is always strange. Stranger than fiction,” Danny said through the phone. “More from Byron. Which definitely applies here.”
“I never knew you were a poetry buff.”
“I’m not. But Edwin is.”
Something hard was inside the envelope, and she opened the flap to see a skeleton key. She displayed it for the camera. There was also a single page, tri-folded. She slipped it out. “I doubt Mellon thought it would be eight decades before this was read.”
The paper seemed in good shape, helped by the fact that it had rested sealed inside the frame, the painting itself always in a climate-controlled environment, especially since 1941. What better place to preserve something than within the National Gallery of Art?
“What are you waiting for?” Danny asked her.
She stood from the floor.
Levy grabbed the phone and aimed its camera over her shoulder. She carefully opened the page, the fibers still resilient, its typed ink readable.
I recently acquired this painting just for this quest. Its symbolism was too tempting to resist, so I thought it would make an excellent repository. It hung in my Washington apartment until the day I died. I waited for you to send an emissary, but none arrived. So I still await you, Mr. President. How did it feel to step to my tune? That’s what you made me do the last three years of my life, and each day I sat in court I pondered how I would repay you. I won that fight and knew that the day we spoke at the White House. But I assumed you knew the same thing. A part of me realized that you would never go looking so long as I remained alive. Never would you give me the satisfaction of knowing that you might believe what I say, or that you feared me. But you reading these words is proof of both. Please recall that I told you that the page of numbers I left would reveal two American secrets, either of which could be the end of you. The first concerns Haym Solomon. This country does owe his heirs a huge debt. I removed all documentary evidence of that from the government archives in 1925, thereby preventing Congress from making any repayment. I freely admit that I used that knowledge to maintain a hold on my cabinet appointment. It was a difficult choice those three presidents faced. Spit in the face of a patriot, or authorize a billion-dollar repayment. I did no different though than anyone else before, or after me. Power must be taken and kept or it will be lost. I now leave the Salomon documents to you. It will be interesting to see what you do with them. That choice will be yours alone. I doubt you are the champion of the common man that you want so many to believe you to be. The other secret is far more potent. The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution is invalid. This was known in 1913, but purposefully ignored. Proof of that also helped maintain my hold on power. I still have that evidence. What you do with that will be equally interesting. Everything is waiting for you, Mr. President, as am I.
She finished reading the note out loud, her mouth close to the phone, her voice low.
“Joe, I see why you were willing to keep this to yourself,” Danny said. “Looks like the possible just became reality.”
“Unfortunately,” Levy said.
Her mind was racing. “Could you go get Carol Williams?”
Levy handed her the phone and hurried off.
“What do you want to do?” she asked Danny.
“We’re thinkin’.”
That meant Edwin Davis was also watching. Good. His level head could come in handy.
“Anything from Cotton?” he asked.
“Not a word. But he could have his hands full.”
She heard footsteps and quickly pocketed the note and key. Levy reentered the gallery with Carol Williams. She caught the quick glances the younger woman gave to the bits of frame on the hardwood floor.
“Believe me,” she said, “it’s not damaged. Your Mr. Mellon wanted that done. It’s easily repaired.”