THE CAT WILL MEW AND DOG WILL HAVE HIS DAY

 

 

By Richard B. Beal, Jr.

 

 

CHAPTER I

 

 

It was in the springtime that Senator Peter Flatwood, Majority Leader of the United States Senate, was "called to service."  He had tried to convince himself over the past thirty-five years that "they" would never really do it.  They did.

When he was called Flatwood was in London at the head of a joint congressional delegation.  The delegation was there to look over the shoulder of a Secretary of the Treasury of questionable ability who was representing the United States in a monetary conference of some significance. However, the real reason Senator Flatwood was at the conference was a concession to the Chair of Republican National Committee, Jeanne D'arc Morency.  She had been rasping at him for more than a month: "Get some foreign exposure. It's the kind of thing the front runner for the Republican nomination for President ought to be getting, now!"

Flatwood had sighed and said, "Right, Dart, right.  I don't want to go, but I will.  I've been doing whatever you tell me to do for thirty years.  I suppose there's no point in stopping now."

The delegation ended its first day in London at a dinner given by the American Ambassador.  After dinner, Flatwood found himself in the Ambassador's private sitting room with a bottle of brandy and a most amiable and engaging gentleman who, over cocktails, had introduced himself as "Allgood of Scotland Yard."  They sat in large red leather chairs facing one another across a low coffee table.  The windows were covered with heavy black drapes and the floor was covered wall to wall by a deep blue carpet.  The fireplace was laid, but no fire.  They agreed that the room was the closest thing to a morgue that either one of them had ever seen. 

In appearance the two men were quite different.  Peter Flatwood was tall, six feet, three inches.  He was full bodied and had to watch his diet or he slipped quickly into overweight.  His eyes were dark blue and his hair full and gray.  He looked—-and acted—-younger than his fifty-nine years.  He was frequently described as a "born leader."

On the other hand, Gideon Allgood was squat and rotund, deceptively muscular.  He was completely bald.  People tended to avoid direct contact with his intense gray eyes.  He was three years Flatwood's senior, and for that reason their paths had not crossed at Oxford.

They relived their adventures at the "House," as
Oxford's Christ Church was known, and raked over the reputations of the dons and some mutual acquaintances.   Flatwood had a well-earned reputation as a raconteur.  Allgood was at least as good.  They laughed long and hard.  Flatwood liked Allgood, but he was keenly aware that it was not just happenstance that he was ending the evening with this charming fellow alumnus.  He waited for Allgood to make his purposes known. 

Toward the end of the bottle and the evening, their conversation took a serious turn.  With Allgood and the brandy as a pair of resourceful motivators, Flatwood gave Allgood a maudlin account of his love affair with Jane Wellright while at Oxford, and his lasting and undying love for her.  He talked about her tragic death in an automobile accident shortly before they were to be married.  Tears glistened in Flatwood's eyes as he talked. Allgood listened intently.

When Flatwood finished his story there was a long period of silence, finally broken by Allgood:  "Would you—I'm just wondering out loud, you understand—would you, and I admit I'm a bit skeptical—-nothing personal, mind you—-would your love today really be strong enough after thirty-five years, strong enough, let's just say, that you'd be willing to make sacrifices for Jane should she, let's just say, suddenly walk into this room?"

Flatwood squinted in his concentration on the laborious question.  He answered it simply and seriously, "Yes, for Jane, yes."

Allgood held up his glass to the light and talked more to it than to Flatwood.  "Good, good."

"What's that supposed to mean, Gideon?"

Allgood said, "Just that the answer is good."

With a belligerent note creeping into his voice, Flatwood asked, "And?"

"Now I know, Peter.  It's important that both of us understand that."

"That what!" demanded Flatwood, becoming increasingly irritated at the obscure turn of the conversation.

Allgood got to his feet, put his glass down and walked to the door.  He stopped there, one hand on the door knob and answered, "Just that, Peter.  When can you spare several hours before you return to Washington?  It was more of a command than a question."

Flatwood thought for a moment before answering.  "Tomorrow's full.  Wednesday I have to make a quick R712 turnaround flight to Washington for a White House meeting.  Thursday's tight.  That's going to take several hours. I'll have Friday free until mid afternoon or so.  Why?"

"Because," said Allgood, "you need to go to a meeting.  I'll be in touch."  He opened the door and disappeared down the hall.

Flatwood muttered, "Drunken slob," and wove his way downstairs to the car waiting to take him back to his hotel.             Three days later, Thursday afternoon, when Flatwood stopped at the hotel desk to pick up his key, the clerk gave him an envelope.  It was addressed with a broad-stroked pen in vivid black ink to "P.F."  In the envelope was a single sheet of paper on which was written one sentence, also in heavy black ink:  "Franklin will pick you up at 9 A.M. Friday and deliver you to a meeting."  The letter was signed "GA."

Flatwood shrugged.  "Maybe I'll go and maybe I won't," he muttered to himself.  Then he thought about Friday.  Free time.  Everybody sightseeing and shopping, with wives.  Better I go to Gideon's meeting.  It was one of those rare times when he almost regretted not bringing Veronica, who, at fifty-six, still merited her high school nickname, "The Texas Beauty." 

They had long ago reached an armed truce, and one of its conditions was that she would not appear with him unless there was a clear and compelling reason that her presence would help his political career.  On those occasions, she played her role of loving and supportive wife to the hilt.  However, and she was abundantly clear on this, she did it, not for him, but for his career.  She wanted to be the First Lady as much as he wanted to be President.  He had no doubt that she would carry out her threat to destroy him if he tried to divorce her.  They went to the White House together, or not at all.

At precisely 9 A.M. the following morning a tall, lithe, sharp-featured man in his late thirties, dressed in a trim gray suit, appeared at the table where Flatwood and several other delegates were just finishing breakfast.  The man leaned over and whispered in Flatwood's ear, "Sir, my name is Franklin.  Allgood of Scotland Yard sent me.  I am your escort.  My car is in front of the hotel.  I'll meet you in the lobby when you are ready to leave."  Without waiting for a reply, he returned to the lobby and took up a position just at the entrance to the dining room.

The others at the table looked at Flatwood questioningly.  Rather than try to explain, he stood up and made for the lobby.  Without a word Franklin stepped out in front of him and led the way out of the hotel.  Directly in front of the entrance was a maroon colored Rolls Royce.  A doorman opened the rear door for Flatwood and Franklin took the wheel.  In a matter of seconds the hotel disappeared behind them.

Flatwood sat quietly studying the interior of the car.  Nice, he thought, but overdone.  The red leather seats were too soft, too sunken.  With the television set and the well-stocked wet bar, he felt like he was in a high-priced saloon.  He sunk further into his seat and wondered idly, I left without telling anyone where I was going.  Not too bright, considering I've never even seen this guy before.  Looks like a hood, too.  He spoke into the spaciousness of the back seat, "Do you mind telling me where we're going?"

The window separating the two men came down silently.  Not taking his eyes off the road, Franklin reached back and handed Flatwood an envelope.  The window closed again.  The envelope held a single typewritten sheet.  He began to read:

                         Dear Peter,

I apologize for the cloak and dagger bit, but you will understand as your day progresses.  You are on the way to Maidstone, about an hour.  There you will meet Jane. You knew her as Jane Wellright.  The surname was an alias.  Her death and funeral were faked.

There it is, Peter, as brutally abrupt as I can put it.  I couldn't think of any way to sneak up on it.  Jane will try to make you understand that what was done was for a cause greater than personal happiness, yours and hers.

You and Jane will meet in All Souls church, just the two of you.  Nostalgic territory for you, I understand.  Your meeting will last no longer than 70 minutes.

The meeting will concern the things Sir Joshua talked to you about thirty-five years ago.  As I am sure you recall, he told you that in your life time there would be one grand moment in history when we must strike decisively if we are to survive into the farthest reaches of the future.  He also told you that your role could well be central to success.  It is.  You are, therefore, now called to service.

Jane will tell you certain things you must know and things you must do.  Ask questions, but, I repeat, do not prolong the meeting beyond seventy minutes.  Franklin will wait outside the church and bring you back to London after your meeting.  Jane will go her own way.  Do not try to alter this.

Another thing, a bit out of the ordinary: Please eat this letter after you have digested it (not bad, what?).  It's made of soluble paper and actually is quite tasty.  It will dissolve of its own accord after an hour, but it's messy that way.

If you are not eternally angry with me, perhaps we can share another bottle of brandy again.

The letter was signed with the now familiar broad stroked "GA" in dark black ink.  The senior senator from Texas sank even further into the luxurious seat.  He was numb.  He stared at the southern English countryside passing by, and ate his letter.

 

-----------------

 

Elmore Brasted pulled his red Mercedes convertible off the narrow blacktop road he had been following for the past fifteen minutes and stopped at the snout of an old wooden mailbox.  He squinted through the rain to read the name on the box:  "Waightstill Avery, Route 2, Lincolnton, North Carolina."  Elmore smiled and muttered to himself, "Now, that's a prestigious address if I've ever heard one."

He turned onto the gravel-rutted drive that curved up a steep hill and disappeared into a forest of great oaks and tall black pines.  At the crest of the hill he broke into a cleared area.  There was the house.  He stopped the car and stared at it through the rain.  It loomed at him, a big, tall two-story house.  Two massive chimneys, one on each end, bracketed the oblong box-shaped house against the dark rain-soaked sky.  It stood straight and true, squared like a soldier at attention.

The rain slacked and he got out the car and walked up to front door of the house.  The agent had told him it was made of the finest North Carolina pine, and in hot weather it still oozed tar.  Elmore gathered that was good, though he had wondered vaguely if oozing pine tar would not mar the paint.  Now, he knew his concern was needless.  The house was not painted.  Obviously it had never been painted since it was built two and quarter centuries ago.

His thoughts were troubled as he looked at his house.  Anybody who would buy a house unseen deserves what he gets, and I guess I got it.  Elmore's impatience with chitchat had done him in again.  He had concluded the last of many calls to the agent with an injunction:  "I'll sum it up for you.  Revolutionary era, within two hours of Charlotte, no neighbor within spittin' distance, livable, furnished.  When you find it, commit."  So, now he owned the big unpainted pine house.

The rain had stopped and the sun was making an effort to appear.  Elmore walked around the house and looked at the view.  It was impressive.  The hill on which the house set dominated the countryside.  He mused aloud, "if this were Europe, there would be a castle here."  He could see houses off in the distance, "but none that I can spit on from here.  OK, now what else.  Oh, yes, furnished and livable.  I'd better check those."

His concern for the house was really part of a larger, pervasive problem that he had been wrestling with for the past year.  Just the night before, he had asked his best friend, Caleb Wimberly, "What am I going to do with my life?"  They had been sitting in Caleb's backyard nuzzling a bottle of bourbon after dinner.  "At fifty-seven," he went on, "most people are established in their life pattern and have a pretty good idea where they're going and who they're going to end it with.  I had a better idea about the future when we were in grade school and I wanted to be a forest ranger.  Is there something wrong with me that I can't manage my life like everybody else...?"

"Caleb interrupted:  "I hate to break the flow of this brilliant pitty-pot discourse, but you're concentrating on the negatives.  What about the other side?  You've got your health.  And," Caleb rubbed his thinning gray hair and patted a roll of fat at his waist, "you've got your hair and you still have the trim look of the high school football star who picked up a fumble and ran ninety-five yards with time gone to beat Catawba, and you are what I believe is called financially independent, even after the divorce lawyers worked you over, and let's see...."

"OK, OK, Cab," Elmore said, his hands in the air defensively, "but none of that changes the fact that I feel down because I don't know where I'm going.  I have no goals, no challenges.  I don't know how to handle it."

"Christ, what a Jekyll-Hyde!  Aren't you the guy who told us at dinner tonight all about living in a pre-Revolutionary house that would be the inspiration for the great American novel?  I'm hearing you with half my brain and comparing you with me with the other half, and, believe me, you've got a lot going for you."

"Oh, shit, Cab, I know you're right.  Maybe it's the booze.  It always makes me introspective.  Let's shift ground.  How about you?  I thought you were happy in retirement, but somehow on this visit I've gotten the impression that's not so.  You don't miss all that crazy CIA stuff, do you?"

"To tell you the truth, El, I do.  I like the university atmosphere and all that.  They're easy to get along with.  I can pretty much fix my teaching schedule to suit me, and the money makes the difference between living well and living better than well.  But, I do miss the excitement of the Agency."

"You know," said Elmore, "I never did understand why you retired so early, especially since you obviously liked what you were doing."

Caleb sighed.  "Had to, actually.  It's a young man's game.  You can't hang around when your time is up.  My time was up."

"Did somebody tell you that?"

"Yeah," said Caleb, "I did.  It's a hard message to get.  Harder to send."

Elmore deliberately shifted the direction of the conversation:  "You see more of Delphine now, don't you?"

"Well, yes, while she's in Washington, except these days she's so damn busy.  And, her next overseas assignment will be coming up in a year or so—incidentally, an ambassadorship.  Then, I don't know how much I'll see her."

"Holy shit!" exclaimed Elmore.  "Ambassador Delphine Higgins!  By god she'll be hell and gone the most beautiful ambassador we've ever had.  What to they call a female ambassador, anyway?  Ambassalady?  Or, Miss Bassassmissus...?"

"Ambassadress," interrupted Caleb, "but, El, don't joke about it.  She's worked hard to get it, and she's not getting it because they have some female quota to fill...."

Elmore's coal black eyes flashed.  "Jesus, Cab, I know that.  As far as I'm concerned, Del ought to be the Secretary of State, and one day she will be.  I just don't see what she sees in you."

Caleb laughed.  "Thanks a lot."  Then, more seriously, "I worry about what's going to happen when she gets that kind of rank, especially at a small post.  I'm not sure it'll be suitable to see her the way we have these past twelve years, off and on, as it has been.  I'm afraid we'll drift apart, or, more accurately, that she'll drift.  It worries me, El."

The two friends sat quietly for a few minutes, each with his own thoughts.  Elmore spoke first:  "There is an alternative, Cab."

"No, El, not really.  She's been successful—outstandingly so—thus far in her career.  She wants to see how far she can go. I do too.  Marriage would interfere."

"Why, what am I missing?  You've had a relationship that lasted longer than a lot of marriages, and under more trying circumstances than most.  What's wrong with tacking on a piece of legality?"

"You make a great case for marriage, El"

"Touché.  But, Cab, my experience isn't a forecast of yours."

"Yes, I know, El, and I didn't mean to flang it back at you like that.  Anyway, both Del and I are both agreed for the moment to wait and see."

"Speaking of Del, where is she?" asked Elmore.

Caleb pointed to the upper part of his house.  "She's upstairs packing.  She has to leave early in the morning to make it back to Washington in time for her big show."

"Big show?"

"Yeah, she's briefing a White House task force on...well, it's classified—highly classified—so I'm not supposed to say."

"But you know?" asked Elmore.

"Yes, pillow talk," admitted Caleb sheepishly.  "It's the one security gap no one's ever been able to figure out how to plug completely.  Anyway, it's great stuff.  She'll be one on one with the President on this thing."

"One on one with Wisener," said Elmore.  "I hope she can draw cute pictures."

"Oh, come on, El, he's not that bad."

"He ain't all that good either."

 

                      -----------------

 

Standing in the foyer, Elmore hefted his 185 pounds.  "Feels solid," he said aloud.  Methodically and in awe he made his way through the downstairs.  The agent had said that most of the furnishings were pre-Civil War, and a few things going back to the Revolutionary period.  Whatever the vintage, the house was tastefully and comfortably furnished.  Clearly it had been the object of great love by the former inhabitants, an elderly couple who, the agent had said, died at nearly the same time almost two years earlier.  Elmore stood just inside the sitting room door and looked through magnificent glass doors on the opposite side of the room to the now soggy hills and fields of the Piedmont.  "My God," he whispered as one does in a church, "this could indeed be home."

He explored the second floor with its four spacious bedrooms, each with its own bath.  Obviously there had been some changes since the Revolution, for which Elmore was grateful.  Each bedroom was furnished in exquisite taste, each in a different color.  The master bedroom was in brown.  The others were in blue, green, and, finally, to Elmore's surprise, an orange one.  The extreme contrast between the beauty and symmetry of the inside of the house and its unkempt exterior puzzled him.  "Well, hell," he said to himself, "that's just the way it is."

There was a door off the second floor landing that opened to a flight of narrow, steep stairs to the attic.  Elmore climbed the stairs and turned on the single overhead light that barely broke the darkness.  The attic was filled with old suitcases, broken furniture, loose stacks of magazines and newspapers and assorted boxes of papers.  Some other rainy day I'll go through this stuff, vowed Elmore to himself.  Suddenly and unaccountably, a shiver ran up his spine.  "Damn spooky," he muttered, and climbed down, hurriedly.

 

                  --------------------

 

Peter Flatwood awoke with a start, still in the back seat of the Rolls.  He was amazed at himself.  I get the most shocking news of my life and I fall asleep?  Then he recalled his Army paratrooper training.  It was common for trainees to fall asleep in the airplane just before they were to go out the door of the airplane for their first jump, a kind of escape sleep that gives the mind a chance to adjust to radically new circumstances.  He felt refreshed and clear-minded after his nap.

Again, he spoke into space:  "How much longer?"

Franklin punched a button and a message appeared on the window separating the passenger and driver compartments:  "Twelve minutes to Maidstone; another four minutes to All Souls Church."

Peter grunted.

"Are you comfortable, Sir?" asked Franklin.

Peter grunted again and returned to his thoughts.  He had never been certain just when or where it had started.  There was, of course, the mysterious meeting with Sir Joshua, but there was more to it than that.  It had been gradual.  Only years later did he fully appreciate how carefully he had been assessed and how skillfully he had been recruited.  One thing was certain—it had happened.  He had, like it or not, committed himself to a "Higher Cause," as Sir Joshua called it thirty-five years ago.  Anticipating Peter's dilemma, he had added, "It cannot be disloyalty if what you do makes your country stronger and brings glory, power and wealth to it." 

Nevertheless, doubts about the wisdom of his commitment, whenever he allowed himself to think about it, sent him into despair.  He had combated such despair with elaborate self-deception.  The whole thing is a great big practical joke that they'll reveal at my fiftieth class reunion.  It never really happened.  It happened, but by now they've forgotten me.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.  Of all the hundreds of people I know, there's never been anyone I could talk to about this.  I've always been alone with this thing. I still am.  God, help me.

Often he had thought about getting out, but the insane truth of it was that he simply didn't know how to go about it.  Say what to whom?  No one had ever told him to do anything.  He didn't report to anyone.  There was nobody he could jump up and down in front of and yell, "Goddamn you, I quit!"

However, in all those years, "they" had been there.  In his heart of hearts he had always known that, sensed it.  There had been too many instances in the years since he graduated from Oxford when their hand showed, always to his interest and advancement.

Peter had been a Rhodes scholar from Duke University.  It was a high honor.  He had worked hard for it.  His selection brought joy to his anglophilic parents.  He was happy about that, feeling in an ill-defined way that he had paid a debt.

His father had been a successful land developer in Texas with business ties to England.  He met and married Peter's mother in London.  It was not surprising then that by the time Peter enrolled in Oxford's Christ Church he was as much at home in England as he was in the expanse of Texas.

Oxford held pleasant memories for him.  The two years at the "House" were full and rewarding.  He was popular with his British classmates and a leader among the foreign students who gathered at the famous Rhodes House.  It was there, at Oxford, that he fell in love, totally and eternally.  And, it was at Oxford that he faced the greatest tragedy of his life.  The lovely auburn-haired Jane with the liquid blue eyes was killed in an automobile accident just before they were to marry.  Or, as he now knew, he had been cruelly tricked into believing.  How in God's name could they do such a thing.  How could Jane do...?

Several years later he went into politics as Sir Joshua had instructed him.  He married, as "they" would have wanted him to, a beautiful girl from an influential Texas oil family.  They had three children whom he loved deeply.  But, in that special remote corner of his heart he cherished the memory of his first love.  In time his marriage had wilted, held together only by a shared drive for power.

They were now on the outskirts of Maidstone.  Thirty-five years after her "death," in his second year as Majority Leader of the United States Senate, he was about to meet Jane again.

 

                  --------------------

 

Beulah Belle Frid walked briskly but carefully just at the edge of the rocky cliff.  It was early May and the day was unseasonably hot and sultry.  The sky was a faded blue.  A damp warm breeze was beginning to pick up as the day drew to an end.  It was the kind of day, she told herself, she should be strolling quietly on level ground so as not to raise a sweat and reflecting philosophically on the intricacies and goodness of life.

Instead, she was seething, kicking stones off the cliff.  She liked to see the stones bounce and clatter down the face of the cliff.  Some of them simply fell straight down and landed with a thud at the bottom.  Some, however, hit the rounded tops of boulders along the way down and ricocheted like bullets into the pasture that stretched across to the opposite mountain several miles away.  Once before, last summer, one of her "bullets" hit a cow.  Much to her surprise and secret delight, the cow had bucked and reared like a wild bronco.  Today, she wished she could hit another cow.

Then suddenly that awful sense of impending doom swept over her.  It was distinctly unpleasant, depressing.  It defied rational solution or explanation, which made it additionally depressing, which, in turn....She spoke to the cows in the pasture below, "Unlike you girls, I don't have a herd of friends to graze with." 

She felt a cool, dry breeze come across the mountain.  It tousled her long blond hair.  She shivered.  Now the mountain did not seem so friendly.  She felt apprehensive about the approaching evening, alone.  One lone tear left one soft amber-colored eye, streaked down her cheek and was blown away by the rising wind.

Her thoughts were jumbled: I'm halfway through my life and just maybe I'm headed off in the wrong direction.  What a delightful thought.  I need other interests, other people.  But, what?  Who?  I'm doing too much introspection lately.  She shrugged.

Beulah Belle Frid was thirty-six years old.  She had majored in history at the University of North Carolina and graduated with honors.  Like many liberal arts majors, she went into a field she had not even thought about until she graduated.  She started her own advertising business.  By her late twenties she had built a solid and profitable home base in Charlotte and had branches in three other cities in North Carolina.  By the age of thirty-two, she had made her first million dollars and had begun opening offices in cities along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest.  She was beautiful, successful, and unhappy.        


She reached the point where the cliff blended into the mountainside.  Here she climbed down a path leading to a narrow black top road where her car was parked.  She turned on the ignition and sat for a moment listening to the purr of the powerful Porsche and thinking: I simply can't go back to that dinky motel tonight.  Better to drive back to Charlotte.  There's almost an hour of light left and I can be home in two hours.  Dinner, TV, book, and bed.  Sounds good.  With this resolved, she felt better and roared down the winding road which would take her to Route 321 and Charlotte.

On the outskirts of Lincolnton she veered off on a narrow side road that would take her past the old Avery house, a sentimental gesture that would take her only a couple of miles out of the way.  The house had been unoccupied since the deaths of Waightstill and Agnes Avery.  Their deaths had been a special tragedy for her and her foster parents for they had been very close to the Averys.  From childhood, Beulah Belle had come to love the Avery house with its dark old furnishings and high ceilings.  It was like a sanctuary.  She had thought about buying the house after Waightstill and Agnes died, but for the practical reasons that she liked to think governed her life, she decided not to.


The dominating hill on which the Avery house was built came into sight.  As she got closer she could see the house itself.  She was stunned to see lights in the windows.  A sense of dread flooded over her.  Someone was in "her" house.  She was racked by a pang of regret and another self-administered admonition about things she should have done differently.

Beulah Belle was so deep in her thoughts that she misjudged her speed and overshot the turn at the bend in the road just below the Avery house.  She slammed on the brakes.  Tires screaming, the Porsche skidded off the road, jumped a shallow ditch and plowed into the brambles in the adjoining field.  Her car came to a stop inches from a large oak tree.

She sat for several minutes not moving.  At first she was angry with herself for being so inattentive, then stunned by the realization that she had almost been killed. 

A man came running down the steep wooded hill.  He moved with the surefooted assurance of the natural athlete.  When he reached the car, he leaned in her open window and asked, "Are you all right?"

Still staring at the oak tree that could have ended her life, Beulah Belle nodded and said in a voice that she found hard to control, "Yes, I'm OK."

Beulah Belle turned her head and looked straight into his dark, black eyes.  Her eyes, now a rich ocher, reflected the setting sun. 

My God, the man breathed to himself, she's incredibly beautiful.   Then, realizing he was staring, he quickly said, "I'm Elmore Brasted.  I live in that house up there on top of the hill.  You had a close call.  Maybe you'd better come in and sit for a spell, you know, till you get hold of yourself."

 

                  --------------------

 

Delphine Higgins arrived at the White House briefing room twenty minutes before the Green Angel briefing was to begin.  A White House staff assistant escorted her.  He explained the procedures:  "The President will come in last. When he is seated, you begin talking.  Always speak to the President, unless you are responding to a direct question from some one else.  When you have finished your prepared briefing, ask for questions.  Any questions?"

"No, no questions," Delphine said. 

He flipped the pages on his clipboard.  "OK, let's compare our lists of players.  I've got five besides the President.  Senate Majority Leader Peter Flatwood, Secretary of State Levi Whittenburg, Attorney General Anabel Craighead, National Security Advisor Credulous Raper and Director of Central Intelligence Coxheath Lamberhurst.  OK?"

"Check," said Delphine.

"All right, I guess we're set," he said.  As he turned to leave he stopped and added, "Miss Higgins, I know this is your first time in here."  He hesitated.  "I should mention something.  It can—and usually does—get damn rough in here and the one who usually gets kicked to hell and back is the briefer.  You know the old thing about killing the messenger.  So, stay loose."

"Anybody or anything in particular to watch for?" she asked.

The man glanced over his shoulder.  Then in a low voice said, "Yes, Credulous Raper.  He's the hatchet man in briefings for the President, and apparently he's good at it. At least Wisener must think so because he seldom tries to restrain him.  Just be ready when it comes."  He turned abruptly and walked away.  She was left alone in the briefing room.

This encounter caused her a twinge of guilt as the thought flitted across her mind that last weekend she had told her lover, Caleb Wimberly, about Green Angel.  He had tried to comfort her afterwards when she became despondent about such a gross violation of security.  "And on top of that," she had said trying to hold back tears of frustration and anger, "I have doubts—-I mean serious doubts—-about the morality the whole thing."

"Of course you do, Del.  Only an idiot would not, but you've got to stop asking if it's right.  All that's been hammered out, and it's been decided that it's right, so it's right.  Go with it.  Don't fight it."            


"Cab, do you realize what you just said?--it's right because it's been 'decided' that it's right.  Do you know who decided it's right?  People like you and me who just aren't qualified to be God.  You want to know why they decided it was 'right"—-I mean the real reasons?  I'll tell you why: Because of the sheer adventure and grandeur of the thing.  Also, Cab, just think, the President who pulls this off...well...it's obvious where his place in the history books will be.  And, of course, don't forget, about the national recognition for those on a big and successful operation...."

He had kissed her quiet and stroked her dark hair and whispered in her ear, the way she liked.  He told her how much he loved her big brown eyes that lighted up when she smiled, and how cute her pert little nose was, and how much he marveled at her long beautiful legs.  He caressed her breasts and kissed her gently and longingly.  Then he cradled her in both his arms, and both fell silent.  Caleb dozed off.  This annoyed her, as it always did.  This time, however, she passed it off with a small frown because she was still mentally keyed to Green Angel.  What if, she wondered apprehensively as she disengaged herself from Caleb's arms, Coxheath Lamberhurst learned she had talked to Caleb as freely as she had about Green Angel?  She shuttered.

Delphine remembered most vividly her first meeting, over a year ago, with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

She had just been appointed the executive officer for Green Angel and her appointment with Lamberhurst was to learn from the horse's mouth just what Green Angel was and how she should administer "His Baby,"as he called Green Angel.

He received her cordially.  He was a short man, physically symmetrical, dapper.  He was conventionally handsome but lacked that special attraction to women that handsome men usually have.  He was wittily self‑deprecatory. She felt vaguely uncomfortable with him.  Unconsciously, she realized later, she had deliberately tried to irritate him. "For some reason, Mr. Lamberhurst, I hate the name, 'Green Angel.'  It sounds...well, sacrilegious.  Or, maybe it's just that I don't understand its significance."

He smiled at her naivete and said, "Oh, there is none. You may sure of that.  You see, the computer randomly selects operational names so that the human temptation to assign cute and easy-to-remember, and, therefore potentially revealing names is precluded.  We don't want to question the computer, do we?"  That answer, concluding in that characteristically CIA question form, still troubled her. 

At that point the door opened and a slight man wearing an Ivy League brown suit and horn-rimmed glasses came in.  He was in his late thirties, already with a prominently receding hairline. Lamberhurst introduced them simply as Delphine and Thurston.  She never learned whether Thurston was his first or last name, or whether he even had another name.

Lamberhurst looked straight at Thurston:  "Delphine is a Foreign Service Officer.  She has just been appointed a special assistant to Secretary of State Whittenburg for Operation Green Angel.  You knew it as ZBUPTOWN when it was exclusively an Agency project.  Her job will be to coordinate operational developments with Green Angel Committee members.  You are to provide her with alias documentation, money, backstopped cover stories, secure communications and anything else she needs to administer Green Angel.  Today, you are to brief her completely on Green Angel, including the existence of the CAUs and their role, but no names. I repeat no names.  If you have any questions about her support requirements, you are to ask me personally, no one else.  Do you have any questions?"

Thurston, his eyes locked on the Director's face, replied, "No, Sir."

Lamberhurst looked at Delphine and asked, "Questions?"

She started to ask him what a CAU was but realized in time that his question was purely ritualistic.  "No.  No, Sir," she replied.

"Good.  Thank you for coming by, Delphine.  Thurston, take her with you."  He swirled in his chair and began to read the messages on his terminal.

In his office, Thurston had been more relaxed and easy to talk to.  He briefed her on the history and purpose of Green Angel.  He described in frank terms its progress and successes and its shortcomings and flaws.  She learned what the CAUs were, but not who they were.  She left Thurston's office aghast and subdued at what she had heard.

After that, Delphine talked to Thurston three or four times a week.  She never failed to reach him on one of the four telephone numbers he gave her.  If she had a problem with the bureaucracy, he solved it in short order.  She gave him her expense vouchers and he paid them in cash on the spot, quite different from the State Department's plodding methods.

Green Angel was so sensitive that it had its own security classification, "Encased Secret."  Security was strict.  The full committee never met.  The telephone was prohibited, even the "secure" lines.  The effect of this was that Delphine had to do all the Green Angel business by face to face meetings with the Committee members.  Thurston provided her with cover stories to plausibly explain her presence wherever the meetings ware held.  Every inquiry she made for information about the target had to be filtered out and back through the indefatigable Thurston.

Lamberhurst himself had designed the stringent security rules.  They were burdensome, especially on Delphine.  Frequently, she let herself become impatient with her never ending skirmishes with cutouts, cover stories, and outright lies to her colleagues.  At such times she had only to reflect on what Green Angel was all about to make the most tedious effort to protect its security seem worth while. 

Green Angel totally absorbed her.  Whatever doubts she had about the wisdom and morality of the operation, it never ceased to fascinate her.  And, having direct access to the Secretary of State was heady stuff.  She "had arrived."  The hours were long. The only vacation she had since her assignment to Green Angel more than a year earlier had been the recent long weekend visit with Caleb in Chapel Hill.  That had been good. 


Delphine had one assistant, Sally-Lou Rittenhouse, a bright, pretty platinum blond secretary.  Though she had lived in Washington for five years, her soft Tennessee accent showed through, especially when she was excited or angry.  She and Delphine shared a windowless vault as their office.  No one was allowed to enter the vault unless cleared for Encased Secret, which meant that they got very few visitors.  Since Delphine spent so much of her time hustling around Washington to her meetings with the Green Angel principals, Sally Lou ran the office. 

In spite of his authoritative manner, Delphine's relationship with Secretary of State Whittenburg was good.  He was a tall, slender man with dabs of gray in his hair.  Because of his bearing and conservative dress, he was often compared to Anthony Eden.  He was on loan from Dangsbell Enterprises, Ltd., a relatively unknown but prosperous Atlanta company that specialized in financing international trade.  He brought power with him to the office of the Secretary of State.

Delphine had once asked Whittenburg why Lamberhurst had volunteered to make a multiagency operation out of so juicy a plum as Green Angel.  "Because Cock—did he ask you to call him Cock?"

"Yes, he did."

"And did you?"

"No," she said, it just didn't seem...appropriate."

"Good.  Anyway, the answer is that the son-of-a-bitch is scared of it and wants to share the blame if it blows up. And, if by some wild chance it should succeed, he's still going to get credit because he started it, which is why he continues to control it."

Emboldened by this confidence, Delphine asked, "You don't like him very much, I gather."

"More accurately, Del, I don't trust him."  He looked at her reflectively for a moment before adding, "He's a beguiling shit. Watch yourself."

Despite what Whittenburg said, she had to agree that Lamberhurst made a very persuasive case for giving Green Angel its broader base in the government.  At their first meeting, he told her, "Green Angel is more of a foreign policy matter than foreign intelligence that I am responsible for.  With that rational he had argued to make the State Department responsible for Green Angel.  However, she found that what Whittenburg once told her about control was true, that is, Lamberhurst never really relinquished any of it.  She remembered vividly the startled, hunted look that came over his face when once she suggested that she be put in direct contact with the CAUs.  This he had flatly rejected.

She looked at the six names again.  After thirteen months she was still puzzled and intrigued with the widely divergent views and attitudes that these power figures took toward Green Angel.  How their complex and competing concerns would finally coalesce into a decision to continue or cancel Green Angel mystified Delphine.  She would soon find out, for that was the purpose of this first full gathering of the Green Angel Committee.

She continued down her list.  Credulous Raper and Levi Whittenburg were open enemies, partly because of widely divergent personalities, partly because of a fiendish design of American government that put two men in charge of foreign policy—one the Secretary of State and the other the National Security Advisor.  Presidents, including Wisener, seemed enjoy this guaranteed conflict.  With Raper and Whittenburg the enmity went deeper.  Raper, a New Yorker and Wall Street Banker, was well aware of Whittenburg's not so secret goal while in office of completing the transfer of the nation's financial power center to the South.  In her periodic meetings with Raper, Delphine had found him rudely abrupt.  He looked like what she pictured as a has-been prizefighter. He was short and bulky, his nose skewed to the left, apparently broken at some time and not set.  He had green brownish eyes set deep in surrounding red-streaked whites.  From appearances, Delphine put him down as boozer, though she had never heard anything to confirm that.  As far as Green Angel was concerned, Raper's position was simple.  If it would advance the political fortunes of Wisener, then he was for it.  His was her first encounter with a fully functional Machiavellian mind.

Delphine smiled ruefully at the next name on the list, Anabel Craighead.  Craighead as Attorney General was a vote-getting deal that Wisener had blatantly held out to women.  "Vote for me and I'll give women the Justice Department."  Wisener honored his commitment.  The selection of Craighead was widely acclaimed by women militants.  Craighead had credentials.  She had been a successful lawyer for thirty years.  She had argued and won three women's rights cases before the Supreme Court.  It was not, however, easy to like her.  Whittenburg had once told Delphine that "Anabel is one of those very few people in the world who thrive on making and having enemies."

On Green Angel matters, Delphine found Craighead to be evasive and intellectually ill disciplined.  She told Delphine at their first meeting, "If we—I mean you and me—don't watch these assholes called men they are going to set this whole fucking continent aflame."  Craighead, however, had not taken a position on Green Angel, always closing their meetings with assurances that she was "still studying the legal and constitutional aspects."

Delphine's thoughts turned next to the lone Republican, Texas Senator Peter R. Flatwood, the Senate Majority Leader. He was articulate, popular and ambitious.  He could be overwhelming in debate.  In their meetings, she had become aware that behind all that bravura worked a brilliant mind with a finely honed sense of history.  She admired him and was awed by him, but for reasons she couldn't define she was just a little afraid of him. His avowed purpose in life was to become President of the United States in the next election, and, in so doing deprive Wisener, his personal and political enemy, of a second term in the White House.  It was a near certainty that Flatwood would get the Republican nomination.  He believed in Green Angel.

Delphine checked her watch.  Two minutes of eleven.  Doomsday coming up, she said to herself.  Oh, Del, don't be so damn melodramatic.  In this room there will be the best this country can put up.  It'll be all right.  She rearranged her notes on the lectern.  Then, she looked to the door and said to the empty room, OK, you bastards, get in here."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

 

Beulah Belle Frid held her coffee and brandy in both hands and sipped the hot drink gratefully.  She was wrapped in a blanket and sitting in a big leather chair in front of the fireplace.  She gazed into the fire, her eyes carotene in the flickering firelight.

By the time Elmore Brasted got her out of the car she was shivering, not, he explained because of the outside temperature, but because her near encounter with death was sending her into shock.  As her body warmth returned, she became pleasantly soporiferous.  However, cozy she felt, Beulah Belle was aware that she was alone in this house with a strange man.  She was relieved not to be picking us discordant signals, which was comforting because she needed the kind of care she was getting.

Elmore returned from the kitchen.  "I'm sorry," he said, "I made one trip to the grocery store since I moved in.  Apparently, I bought a hundred dollars worth of things that can't be eaten.  I do have this vegetable soup, just like mother never made, and some crackers and peanut butter.  I've got some frozen...."

She stopped him with a raised hand and a smile, "Please, this is fine for now.  Just sitting here in front of the fire is what I really needed...and the coffee and brandy of course.  I just hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Interrupting anything?"  He laughed derisively.  "I was just sitting here with a drink wondering whether to read a book or blow my brains out."  He smiled quickly to make sure she did not take the remark seriously.  "Except the clerk at the grocery store, you're the first human being I've talked to for a week.  To be honest with you, I'm eternally grateful that you ran off the road just here."

Beulah Belle laughed, "Well, anything to help.  Maybe next time I'll plow right into your living room."

Suddenly serious, he said, "I hope there will be a next time."  Before she could reply he jumped to his feet and said, "Now, you must try the soup before it gets cold."  He disappeared into the kitchen again.  She sipped her coffee and reflected on her feelings.           

When he returned, she asked, "I don't suppose I can back my car out of that field?"

`           "No, I'm afraid not.  It sank pretty deep into that muck.  It'll take a tow truck, but I doubt if they'd try it at night," he said glancing toward the darkened window.

Beulah Belle said, "That shoots my plans in the head.  I was going back to Charlotte tonight.  There are two motels in Lincolnton.  If you could run me over...."

"I can, of course," Elmore began, "but, look, and let me get this all the way out before you say no.  You are welcome—-very welcome to stay here."  Rushing on he added, "There are four bedrooms, each with its own bath.  They all have ridiculously big locks on the doors—-say, maybe you want to call somebody and tell them where you—-holy cow, you aren't married are you?  I just assumed not...."

Coolly she asked, "Why did you assume not?"

Elmore stared at her, speechless for a moment as the tastelessness of his remark sunk in, "I'm sorry, I mean really sorry.  That just came out wrong.  I'm trying so hard to make a good impression and now I've screwed it up.  I meant it as a compliment.  I meant you don't have that married look which is good, not bad.  For God's sake, stop me.  I'm digging myself in deeper and deeper."

Beulah Belle laughed and held both hands up.  "OK, stop.  I knew how you meant it.  I just couldn't resist.  No, I'm not married.  But that isn't the important question."

He looked at her guardedly, "No, what is?"

"Are you married?" she asked.

He sparred.  "Do I have that married look?"

"Yes, but perhaps modified."

"Modified!  Is that what they call it now?  I'm still using the old term, 'divorced.  Four years."

"I was sure that was the case," she said.

"Just out of curiosity, would you tell me how you deduced that?"

"Well, let's see," she said reflectively, "a man who was married probably would not be out here in this big house for a week without the wife being around.  On the other hand, the way you served the coffee and soup had the touch of some female training about it, so if not married, then married at one time.  Elementary, my dear Watson."

"Interesting.  I had no idea I was so transparent.  Incidentally, not to take anything away from your performance, I've heard it said that Holmes never actually used that expression.  Anyway, after all that in-depth analysis, where are we?  Oh, yes, you staying.  If you'll stay, I'll charge down to the pizza place in Lincolnton and bring you back something really good to eat.  Will you?  You'll be OK, I assure you."

Beulah Belle's amber eyes glistened in the firelight.  "Only if you'll let me sleep in the blue room."

Elmore stared at her in amazement.  "What...how do you know...?"  Then, cannily, "What if I told you I sleep in the blue room?"

"Then," she said returning his stare, "I'd say you're fibbing.  You're a male.  You most assuredly sleep in the brown room, the master bedroom."

Elmore sat on the footstool in front of her chair, his face inches from hers.  "Suppose," he said slowly, "I just don't ask you the obvious question about how the hell you know about the blue room, the brown room?"

"In that case," she replied, her eyes turning to soft gold, the cadence of her speech matching his, "I might just hang around until you do, but only," she added smiling, "if you're serious about getting that pizza."

"I'm on my way," he said, jumping up from the stool.  "And, since we are making deals, it seems only fair that in exchange for the pizza you'd tell me how you know so much about this house."

"Deal," she said.  "I'm willing to toss in the story about the Avery ghost, which I bet you don't know about."

"Now, that is strange," said Elmore assuming an exaggerated posture of concentration.  "I don't think my trusted real estate agent ever quite got around to mentioning that the house was haunted.  He may have thought I'd believe it and want his overstated price reduced."

"Not necessarily," replied Beulah Belle, "he might have countered with an even higher price if he knew that the ghost guards a most valuable treasure."

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed Elmore.  "My fortune is made.  What is the treasure?  How much is it worth?"

"The pizza, Elmore, the pizza."

"Yes, my fair Beulah, what do you want on...?"

In a clipped voice she stopped him, "My name is not Beulah, not Belle.  It is Beulah Belle."

Elmore looked at her quizzically for a moment, then smiled and sang a line from an old song, "...getting to know you...."

Over pizza and cold beer she told him about the part the old Avery house had in her childhood.  Then she said, "You mentioned that some day you would go through all those old papers in the attic.  I'd like to help you, if I may.  You see, the attic was my favorite place when I visited here as a little girl.  Uncle Waightstill used to let me play among all those old treasures and papers that are up there. Many, incidentally, go back to the American Revolution."

"Your uncle lived in this house?" asked Elmore.

"He wasn't really my uncle.  The Averys and my parents, foster parents actually, were very close friends.  My foster father and Uncle Waightstill shared an obsession with the American Revolution.  Uncle Waightstill's great, great, however many greats, grandfather, whose name was, believe it or not, Waightstill Upon the Lord Avery.  He was one of the twenty signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, and fought in the Revolution, and his ghost still haunts this house which he built.  That is, multiple great Avery built it, not the ghost."

"Ah, yes," said Elmore, "the ghost.  And he guards a treasure.  To return to my as yet unanswered question because I was dispatched for pizza, where is this treasure? What is it?  What's it worth?"

"First," she said, "I obviously don't know where it is. Therefore, I don't know what it is or how much it's worth."

"It could be, I suppose," said Elmore, "a recipe for Revolutionary pea soup, or something equally valuable?"

"No, no," said Beulah Belle, "it's something truly valuable.  Probably not money though.  That would be too crude for an Avery ghost to guard."

"You sound serious."

"I'm dead serious.  And, to anticipate your next question, no, I haven't actually seen the ghost.  But I know he's in the attic, and I know he guards a valuable treasure from the American Revolution, which is not, I assure you, a recipe for pea soup.  According to the legend, the right people will find the treasure at the right time."

"That tells me totally nothing."

Beulah Belle sat back her chair and eyed Elmore warily.  "Precisely," she said.

"Did you and Uncle-what's-his-name? ever look for the treasure?"

"Uncle Waightstill.  Yes, of course we looked for it, as did many others over the years.  It's here!" she added emphatically and rolled her eyes upward toward the attic.  "I told you, the right people at the right time."

"Do you think we may be the right people?" asked Elmore with a smile.

"I think," she said softly, "we may be right for some things.  Time will tell, I suppose, but right for the Waightstill treasure?  The odds are against it.  No one has been right for well over two centuries.  But, who knows?"

"Well, there's only one way to find out, and that is to look for it.  Right?  Tomorrow?"

"Oh, El, I have a business to run."

"A good boss—and I'm sure you are one—has things fixed so that they run themselves when the boss is away, at least for a day or so.  Right?"

"To a point, El, to a point.  But, I do want to stay, if you're serious about exploring the attic.  Besides," she grinned, "my car's stuck in the mud."

Elmore rose from his chair and came around the table to where Beulah Belle was sitting.  He knelt before her.  He put his arms around her and kissed her gently.  She pulled back and looked at him thoughtfully and frankly.  Then she said, "Time for bed.  Make that beds, plural.  I'm blue, you're brown."

 

             ..............................

 

At 11:02 A.M., May 5, 1998, the members of the Green Angel Committee rose and stood at a loose sort of attention when the President of the United States entered the White House briefing room. 

Asbury Wisener looked like a Wisconsin farmer, which he was.  He was short and slim and had never weighted over 140 pounds.  He walked with a slight limp, the result of a childhood accident while operating a mechanical harvester.  His dark complexion contrasted with his full head of sandy colored hair and gray-green eyes.  His slight frame seemed an unlikely source for his deep, resonant voice.

Wisener motioned them to their seats, smiled broadly and said, "Good morning, Folks."

He got back a chorus of, "Good morning, Mr. President."

Wisener took his seat and looked around the table.  Whatever his personal feelings might be, he first acknowledged the only other elected official in the room.  "Peter, how's London going."

"Pretty well, Mr. President," replied Senator Flatwood. "I think we'll get most of what we want and come out with a strong dollar to boot."

"Excellent," said Wisener.  "Sorry to tear you away in the middle of the conference but I'm told this is important."  Not waiting for Flatwood to reply, he turned to Whittenburg and said, "Well, Levi, is it also unpleasant?  Everybody looks so grim this morning."

The Secretary of State answered, "Not unpleasant, I hope, Mr. President, but serious, yes.  This concerns Operation Green Angel that I mentioned to you several months ago, which," he paused and looked directly at Coxheath Lamberhurst, "I am sure the Director of Central Intelligence has discussed with you from time to time."

Wisener, not moving his eyes from his Secretary of State, said, "Yes, Levi, that is correct.  Please go on."

"We are here this morning, Mr. President, to ask you for a 'go, no-go' decision for Green Angel.  The operation has evolved to a point that compels us to decide now to either pursue it to a conclusion or drop it all together.  As a basis for the decision you are being asked to give, I would like to introduce Miss Higgins, who is on my staff, and ask her to summarize Green Angel to date."

Wisener turned in his chair toward Delphine standing in the middle of the room behind her lectern, smiled and said, "Miss Higgins."

Delphine nodded and said, "Mr. President."  Then, changing to her briefing voice, she began: the purpose of Green Angel is to covertly machinate Canada into the Union, province by province, each incoming province becoming a new state.  That would mean ten new states, ultimately twelve or more, depending on how the two large Canadian territories are handled.  It would be the greatest peaceful territorial acquisition in history."

"Eight years ago," she continued, "the Central Intelligence Agency began secret exploratory talks with certain influential Canadian citizens about the possibility and desirability of merging the United States and Canada into one nation.  These talks reflected a concern by certain citizens in both countries about the growing isolation of North America as the powerful trading blocs in Europe and Asia grow stronger and expand their spheres of influence throughout the world.  Another motivating force for these talks was a long-standing belief by parties in both countries that union is both natural and inevitable."

"We refer to our Canadian contacts favoring union as Canadian Advocates of Union, or CAUs.  The concept has evolved to the point that the possibility of success can be perceived.  Because of its foreign policy overtones, the Secretary of State was made the responsible cabinet officer for the operation.  The overall operation was designated Green Angel and classified "Encased Secret."  Until now, for security reasons, this Committee has never met together.  It has been my job for the past thirteen months to keep Committee members informed and to coordinate actions one-on-one with each member."

Delphine saw Wisener move restlessly in his chair.  She pushed her briefing notes aside, leaned over the lectern and looked Wisener straight in the eye.  "Mr. President, we have reached that point in the gestation of this operation that we must either terminate it now or seek to pursue it to a successful conclusion.  So, as the Secretary of State said, we need your decision to continue or not.  To go on involves risks that I will outline to you.  To stop now means we probably will never have another opportunity as favorable as this one to bring Canada into the Union."

"If we go on and Green Angel is successful, the United States will more than double in size and geographically we will become the largest nation in the world.  We would remain the forth most populated nation, ranking well behind China and India, and somewhat behind a fully united Europe."

Wisener spoke:  "That's a real mouthful, Miss Higgins. Just tell me, though, what if I say 'go ahead' and you guys get caught—-this thing is exposed—-before this grand consolidation takes place.  What then?"

Delphine answered, "then, Sir, the political consequences would be adverse, both nationally and internationally.  However, we do not see the failure of Green Angel leading to war."

"That's certainly nice to know," muttered Wisener.  Then looking around the room, he said, "Look, I hope I don't sound too provincial, but what, just out of curiosity, happens to me, besides, at a minimum, impeachment if this thing blows up?"

Lamberhurst spoke up:  "If I may, Sir.  I don't think you should make or not make a decision based on 'what if.'  I can assure you that if you decide to 'Go,' we can be both successful and undetected."

"Wasn't that what you guys told Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs?" Wisener asked.

Lamberhurst flushed.  "That was a somewhat different situation, Sir...and a bit before my time...."

Whittenburg broke in:  "Mr. President, as far as impeachment and other unpleasant ramifications of premature exposure are concerned, you should know it is my intention that our cover story for Green Angel, if you approve its continuance, will have built into it a plausible presidential denial of any knowledge of Green Angel.  Also, built into the cover story will be a scapegoat, a key figure in the Government capable of conducting such an operation without his President knowing about it."

Wisener leaned forward over the conference table, squinted at his Secretary of State and asked, "Like who, Levi?"

"I, of course, would be a candidate.  Certainly the CIA Director would make a most creditable candidate."

Lamberhurst smiled coldly and said, "Most assuredly I would want to be at least thought of.  However, I think I would be too obvious."

Whittenburg returned his smile and said, "Sometimes, as you know, Cock, it's best to do the obvious because no one would believe that we would choose the obvious, therefore, by choosing the obvious, we fool them."

"Sometimes," replied Lamberhurst, his smile frozen, "we can be so tricky that we outwit ourselves."

Whittenburg glanced around the room.  "Of course, the National Security Advisor is in an excellent position to carry something like this off very easily.  That is what happened in the Reagan Administration when they had their Iran/Contra affair. So, there is a precedent for the National Security Advisor to do dumb things without knowledge of his President."    

Credulous Raper looked up from his yellow pad just long enough to snap out, "Don't get cute, Levi."

"And, let's see," said Whittenburg, deliberately ignoring Raper, Green Angel is the kind of operation that could be run easily by the Attorney General.  Perhaps we could explain Green Angel as a God-given mission to save the enslaved women of Canada...."

Anabel Craighead set bolt upright and pointed a long, bony finger at Whittenburg and said, "Goddamn it, Levi, you've been asking for trouble ever since you came to Washington.  If you don't think I know how you're using your position to...."

Wisener slapped hand on the table.  It sounded like a rifle shot.  He said harshly, "Sit down, Craighead.  You will mind your manners in the presence of the President."

Craighead glared defiantly at Wisener, then sat.

"And, of course," said Whittenburg looking down the table at Flatwood.

Flatwood laughed easily and said to Wisener, "Sorry, Mr. President, I believe the rule is that each Party is responsible for providing its own scapegoats."

"The point is, Mr. President," said Whittenburg, "as you can see, there is no shortage of scapegoats.  Any of us can serve.  And, as you have also seen, all of us will willingly serve if asked.  In any event, the issue is academic, as Mr. Lamberhurst has made clear."

Wisener grunted.  He turned to Delphine, "You finish your thing, Miss Higgins, then we'll talk."

Falling back into her briefing cadence, she said, "There are ten CAUs, one for each province.  These leaders are certain that the agitation in the provinces to break from Canada and petition for statehood will snowball, once the first province moves."

"The scenario we have worked out with the CAUs calls for the first petition for statehood three years from now, with the other provinces following in the next two years.


"Public opinion surveys we have made under deep cover over the past three years in both Canada and the United States made several things clear.  First, most Canadians, despite publicly expressed attitudes to the contrary, would like to be part of the United States.  The vote in late 1988 for a free trade agreement with the United States was a manifestation of that desire.  Further, secession is not as shocking an idea to Canadians as it would be in many countries.  Throughout its history, Canada has lived with threats of secession.  For example, in 1996 Quebec voted for 'practical' separation from Canada.

Secondly, we can expect that the American public would welcome petitions for statehood by Canadian provinces.  There is a common heritage and language.  And, the prevailing notion among Americans, whenever they think about it, is that union has always been in the cards."

"In other words, there are no serious political or social reasons on either side to oppose union.  The economic reasons were eliminated with the free trade agreement of 1988.  There may be objections from other quarters."

"For example, objections by the British: Whether they can prove it or not, the British will see through the play of Green Angel.  They will have to be placated.  It may be in our interest to offer Britain an opportunity to join in an Atlantic economic trading bloc.  The British will ultimately realize that they will gain in the end by the incorporation of Canada into the Union."

"There will be objections by the European Union and the Asian Bloc.  In the last analysis, both will view this union as an 'in-house' Anglo matter of no immediate political or military consequence to either of them.  Their serious objection will be to the strengthening of North America as a trading and commercial bloc.  Their most assertive reaction will be to intensify their efforts to increase their economic control and influence in the unaligned countries.  This will mean an increase in contained regional wars."

"Costs:  We estimate that by the time is fully absorbed, that is, in the next five years, Green Angel will cost 22.5 billion dollars."

"That concludes my briefing, Mr. President.  Are there any questions?"

Wisener leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head and repeated the question, "Any questions, Boys?  Excuse me, Anabel, and Girls?"

Credulous Raper spoke up.  "Yes, I have a question.  How do we know that this whole thing isn't a Canadian trick to foist Quebec off on us?  You know how it would go.  It just happens that the first province that applies is Quebec, and none of the rest follows.  Then we'd be with a bunch of would-be frogs cluttering up the courts and the Constitution and God knows what else with that crazy language crap of theirs, like, please note, they've been doing to the rest of Canada for years."

Lamberhurst said to Whittenburg, "May I answer that?"

"Be my guest," replied Whittenburg.

Lamberhurst began, "It's a good question...."

Raper interrupted, "Thanks ever so much, Cock.  I'm glad you like it."

Wisener waved his hand impatiently at Raper and nodded to Lamberhurst to continue.

Lamberhurst began again, "It's a good question, Credge, just because it is, not because you asked it.  I asked the same question in the very early discussions with our Canadian counterparts that ultimately led to Green Angel.  I got solid assurances that was not so.  However, to show you how good the question is, they did admit that they had kicked that idea around a bit.  But, the plan from the beginning has been for all ten provinces to join the Union. And, as far as Quebec becoming a Constitutional problem, all the CAUs, including the one from Quebec, clearly understand that Quebec will not be admitted unless it can satisfy Congress that there will be no agitating for special status as they done in Canada over the years."

"Thanks, Cock," said Wisener.  "Anything else?"

Flatwood said, "Not a question, Mr. President, but a request, if I may.  If you should decide at this time to stop Green Angel, would you authorize the CIA to put it on ice for two years to give the next President a chance to review the bidding in light of circumstances then?"

Wisener gave Flatwood his famous 'death smile,' and said, "Sure, Peter.  I will have no objection to reviewing it again in my next term.  Any other questions, or whatever?"

Raper spoke up.  "You know, when you clear away all the garbage, this comes through as a pointless, hair-brained, unreasonably expensive, crackpot scheme dreamed up in Cock's cookie factory.  We're told that some influential Canadians are behind this thing, these so-called CAUs.  Who are these people?"  Turning to Delphine, his voice sharp and hostile, he asked, "Tell me, Miss Higgins, do you know these Canadians, these CAUs?"

Delphine stared at Raper in amazement.  In her private meetings with her he had always been a strong supporter of Green Angel.  Feeling suddenly chilled, she replied, "No, Sir, I do not know them."  

"Then how in the hell can you stand there and tell the President of the United States that some unknown Canadians can do thus and so?  How do you know they even exist?"

"Well...I...."

"Answer the question, please," demanded Raper, his voice rising.

Lamberhurst broke in.  "Credge, Miss Higgins did ask to meet the CAUs because she believed it would help her do her job better.  I refused her request on security grounds, mainly the security of the CAUs.  I gave my word to them that only those of us who absolutely need to know would learn their identities.  At present, that is limited to myself and one of my assistants who works closely with Miss Higgins in support of Green Angel."

"You mean to tell me," yelled an incredulous Raper, "that we're sitting here deciding whether to commit the United States to wipe out the one country in the entire world that is genuinely friendly to us, based on hearsay?  Yes, goddamnit, Lamberhurst, hearsay!  And, you, Mr. Secretary of State, 'responsible,' Miss Higgins just reminded us, for running Green Angel, do you know who you're dealing with on the other side?"

The room was silent.  Everyone looked at Whittenburg.  He replied, "You are correct, Mr. Raper, I do not know who the Canadian Advocates for Union are."

Raper shifted to a grated whisper which was easily heard in the tense atmosphere.  "Are you satisfied with that arrangement, Mr. Secretary?"

Whittenburg glanced quickly at the President before replying.  Then answered firmly, "No, I'm not."

Raper turned to Wisener.  "Mr. President, do you know who the CAUs are?"

Wisener said, "Credge, you're going to have sit still and listen for a minute.  Lamberhurst!"

"Mr. Raper," Lamberhurst began in a tone of moderation, "there are very good reasons for not telling the President and the Secretary of State the names of the CAUs.  The ten CAUs are all prominent men and women in the fields of government, business and the church.  They are so prominent that over time both the President and the Secretary of State have encountered most if not all of them in the normal course of tending to the affairs of state.  It is absolutely essential that the CAUs be confident that their relationships with all Americans are perfectly normal.  Even the slightest hint that their special statuses were known outside the channels my agency has established with them could wreck the entire operation.  You must understand, the CAUs are dealing with a foreign intelligence agency involving the future of their country.  Granted, there are no lives at stake, but reputations of a lifetime and those of future generations are at stake.  It is for these reasons that I have gone to extreme lengths to protect the identities of the CAUs.  Does that help, Credge?"

"I hear a lot of words, Cock," replied Raper, "and I'm still not satisfied.  I would feel better if somebody besides you and one of your flunkies knew whom we're dealing with on the other side.  Mr. President?"

Wisener looked at Lamberhurst and said, "Cock, after this meeting, I want you to brief me in detail on the identities and backgrounds of the ten CAU's."

Lamberhurst lowered at Raper before saying, "Yes, of course, Mr. President.  If that is your wish."

"And," continued Wisener in an afterthought, "I'd like Miss Higgins to sit in on the briefing."

Lamberhurst shot straight up in his chair, "But, Mr. President, I...."

"Thank you, Mr. Lamberhurst," interrupted Wisener.  "Any other questions?  Anyone?  Anything?"

"Yes," said Anabel Craighead, "I have a comment.  I cannot be a party to the Secretary of State's plan to provide a cover-up scapegoat in case Green Angel blows up.  That kind of conduct is immoral, illegal and offends every American woman in this land.  And, on top of that, my study, not yet finished, will show that Green Angel itself is unconstitutional.  I recommend, no, I demand that Green Angel be canceled now."

Wisener stared at her before replying, "Craighead, you are already a party, and don't you forget it.  Anything else, anyone?"  The room was silent.

The President of the United States stood up.  Chairs scraped as the others rose.  Wisener spoke:  "You asked for a decision.  I'll give it to you.  Proceed full ahead with Green Angel.  And, another thing:  It shouldn't be necessary for me to say it, but I will.  Only the people in this room know about Green Angel.  So help me, God, if a word of this leaks, I'll move heaven and earth to put the person responsible in jail for the rest of his," and, glaring at the attorney general, "her life.  Miss Higgins, please come with me.  Good day, Folks."

 

           .............................. 

 

Peter came out of his reverie when the Rolls slowed to enter the outer limits of Maidstone.  After thirty-five years, he did not recognize the town.  It bustled. 

His thoughts ranged: It's not the quiet unassuming little town it was when Jane and I were here thirty-five years ago. It was just about this time of the year, about six months before her "death."  Good God, these people must be monsters to fake something like that, her death, the funeral, the aftermath.  And, Jane had to be part of it.  Impossible...? But her parents were there, at the funeral.  Her mother cried.  That was the first time I met them, the only time, actually.  They lived in Italy, at least that's what Jane told me, which was the reason I had never met them.  Were those even her parents at the funeral?  Supposedly they were killed about six months after Jane's death, in Italy when their mountain chalet caught fire in the night, according to the letter from Jane's uncle.  In the same letter the uncle said he was going to emigrate to Australia because of trouble with the law...new life, change his name...I'd never hear from him again. How neat!

He spoke out loud to himself:  "Jesus, Peter, you're stupid."

Franklin asked, "Sir?"

"Nothing, Franklin, nothing at all."

By now they were through the down town area and running parallel to the River Medway which winds along the edge of Maidstone.  He remembered teasing Jane about calling the Medway a river.  "Back home we'd call that a creek," he told her.

"That may be," she had cried as she chased him along the grassy bank of the Medway, "but when I push you in it you'll find it's just as wet as any of your old creeks."  He let her catch him, but she did not push him in the river.  Instead, she held him tightly, her long auburn hair glinting in the springtime sun.  Both cried a little with the sheer joy of the moment.  Clinging to each other, they walked the rest the way to the church.  That moment along the Medway River was one of those memories that still haunted Peter all these years later.

They went to Maidstone because Peter's father had once told him that the Flatwood family originally came from Maidstone.  Jane had agreed to help him trace his ancestry, and, after a little research in the library, suggested starting with All Souls Church.  This church, according to the Doomsday Book of 1086, was at "Meddestane" in the time of Edward the Confessor. 

They had not taken the task seriously.  It was really an excuse to get out of Oxford for a long weekend and away from prying eyes.  As that bastard Allgood put it, thought Peter, their meeting place today was indeed "nostalgic territory."

Peter's first sight of the church on that perfect June day in was across from the Medway River.  At first glance, Peter was disappointed.  It seemed small.  Its tower is a modest 78 feet high and by no means soars.  It has nothing of the grandeur of the great cathedrals of Europe.  However, as he soon learned from his beautiful guide, it is the widest and one of the largest churches in England.  "It was rebuilt, starting in 1345," she explained, "and today is one of the finest examples of perpendicular architecture in all of England.  It's that style that gives it the battlements look and makes it appear smaller than it really is."

A stone wall encloses the church.  Its surrounding grounds are mostly taken up with the gravesites of its members going back centuries.  Jane and Peter entered All Souls through the main entrance off the south porch.  They stood hand in hand several moments waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior.  The only light was from the rays of the sun filtered through the stained glass windows.

As they passed slowly through the Regimental Chapel looking at the regimental flags displayed along its length they were startled by a voice.  "Good morning, may I help you?"

They turned to see what looked like a disembodied face moving toward them.  It was a man dressed in black.  In the murky light of the church his body was almost invisible.  He introduced himself, Mr. Clough, the verger.  He was eighty-four years old, he told them later, and had been with All Souls for sixty-eight years.

"Oh, yes," he replied after they told him why they were there, "you would want to see the Flatwood plate."  He led them past the vestry door at the east end of the church.  Just short of the door he stopped and pointed upward to a large brass plate, higher on the wall than even Peter's head.

The plate was about three feet by four.  In the absence of good light it was hard to make out details.  "Here, stand on this chair," the verger said to Peter, "so you can see it better.  It's a most unusual plate as it is segmented in little rectangles, like a modern day comic strip.  Each rectangle represents a generation of Flatwoods between 1310 and 1580.  Sometime after 1580, Richard Flatwood left for Virginia.  Apparently, he wanted to leave a family record in Maidstone until the time he moved his family to the New World.  Incidentally, Richard was twice mayor of Maidstone."

Peter stood on the chair for a long time, totally absorbed in the plate.  He had not expected to find anything like this.  An icy chill passed up his spine as he looked at his ancestors going back almost 700 years.

He looked down from his vantage point standing on the chair. Jane and the Mr. Clough looked up at him.  Jane's mouth was open slightly, a wondering look on her face.  Her hair cascaded down to her shoulders.  She was so beautiful that Peter felt a lump in his throat.  "This, of course," he croaked to Jane, "is where we will be married."

Jane smiled radiantly.

Jane asked Mr. Clough if they could make a rubbing of the Flatwood plate.  He sighed audibly and said, "I'm so sorry.  This plate has been made a national treasure and law prohibits rubbing it.  You see, some of these plates, especially popular ones like this one have been rubbed so often that the metal is wearing through.  I'm truly sorry, but it's the law."

Jane said, "We must, of course, obey the law.  It is a shame though, Mr. Flatwood being a namesake, and an American visiting our country...."

Mr. Clough glanced over his shoulder and said, "The vicar will be in the next town tomorrow until midday.  I'll leave a stepladder here and you may examine the Flatwood plate from 10 A.M. until noon.  His watery blue eyes twinkled conspiratorially.  Then he added, "By the way, Mr. Flatwood, since you are an American, perhaps you would like to see the Washington coat of arms."

Peter, surprised, said, "Our Washington?  George?"

"That very one," said Mr. Clough with a smile.  "Come over here."  He led them back across the church to a point just before the main entrance.  Looking up, he said, "Just below the ceiling you can see a row of coats of arms.  That one," he pointed, "is the Washington family coat of arms."

"Holy smoke," exclaimed Peter, "it looks like the American flag."

"Yes," laughed Mr. Clough, "doesn't it.  Oddly enough, very few Americans know where their flag came from.  You can see that Washington had little trouble in deciding the design of your flag."

"Well," said Peter, "he supposedly was an egotist, but, My God...!"  Peter continued to stare at the coat of arms.  Jane and Mr. Clough stood by quietly, both sensing how deeply moved Peter was by this unexpected insight into American history.

At precisely 10 A.M. the next morning, Peter knocked on the east door of the church, the one nearest the Flatwood plate.  Mr. Clough opened the door, took one quick furtive look outside and let them in.  He said, "There's never anyone around at this time of day so I'll leave the door open so you will have more light."  As he turned to leave, he wagged one finger at them warningly, "Midday."

Good to his word, the stepladder was in place below the Flatwood plate.  Jane began laying out the things they had bought the previous afternoon, i.e., the special rubbing crayons, the special paper for rubbing, and the masking tape.  She said, "Since you've never done a rubbing, you have no idea just how little time we have.  We'll have to be quick about it.  I'll do the rubbing.  All you have to do hold this rickety ladder so I don't fall.  I'm sure even an American can manage that."

"How do you know," he asked as she started up the ladder, "I won't look up your dress while you're up there?"

"Because," she replied, "you've been in England long enough to know how to act like a gentleman, at least for two hours, I think."

With a practiced hand, Jane put a large piece of rubbing paper over the plate and taped it firmly so it would not slip when she rubbed it with her special copper colored crayon.  Soon after she started rubbing, she said, "I'm sorry, Peter, this is not going to be the world's greatest rubbing.  In the first place, the time is too short.  In the second place, Mr. Clough is right, the plate is worn so think that the etched figures don't stand out prominently enough.  Also, I scared to death I'm going to punch a hole in it.  So, I'm just going to have to rub as evenly as I can over the whole surface and not just along the etched lines like you're supposed to."

"OK, whatever.  Will we be able to see the figures and read the names?"

"Oh, yes," she said, "it's just that they won't be as clear and distinct as they would be with a good plate and the time to do it right."

"Well," said Peter, sighing deeply, "if that's the best you can do...."

"Oh, shut up, Peter, and hold the ladder still."

"You know, Jane, I'm reminded of one of those limericks you people are always reciting.  Want to hear it?"

"Not really, but somehow I think I'm going to."

He said, "Now, let's see if I can remember it.  These things have to be done just right, you know...."

While Titian was mixing rose madder,

His model posed nude on a ladder.

Her position to Titian

Suggested coition.

So he climbed up the ladder and had'er.

She giggled and said, "The idea's not bad, Peter, My Love, but I'm afraid this ladder is more rickety than limerickety and not fit for coition as was Titian's ladder where he had'er which makes you madder.  Sorry."

"Say, that's pretty good.  You aren't by chance that anonymous Englishman who writes those things, are you?"

"Stop talking, Peter, and hold the ladder still!"

At 11:50 A.M., Jane peeled the sheet from the plate and climbed down the ladder with her handiwork.  At that moment Mr. Clough appeared.  Jane said, "We've examined the plate thoroughly, Mr. Clough.  Thank you ever so much."

Primed on the protocol by Jane, Peter asked to be allowed to make a contribution to the church.  Mr. Clough dutifully recorded this offering in a record book so big that he had to use both hands to lift the cover.  As Peter and Jane stepped out of the church into the sunshine, a clock in town chimed high noon.  Mission accomplished.

The Rolls came to a quiet stop in front of All Souls Church.  It was as Peter remembered it.  And, he reflected, it was a day like this—bright sunshine, a nip in the air.  Jane's here.  The vicar, I suppose, is away at the next town.  No doubt Mr. Clough will open the door, even though he's...let's see...119 years old.  So, nothing's changed.  Why, then, don't I want to go in there?  Because I just don't want to be put in the spot they're going to put me in. What if I don't go in?  Who's going to do what about it?

The who-might-do-what-about-it opened the rear door and said, "We're here, Senator."

Peter looked at Franklin for a long moment, shrugged and got out of the car.

Franklin said, "I'll wait for you here, Sir.  Remember, no longer than seventy minutes."

"How do you know I'm not going to run out the back door with her?"

"Because you're a man of honor, Sir.  And, besides," Franklin smiled, "all the other doors are locked."

"Charming," muttered Peter as he started along the stone walk that ran through a garden of tombstones to the main door.  He opened the door and entered the church.  It was still dimly lit.  He waited for a moment for his eyes to adjust.  There was no one in the vestibule.  He hadn't expected there would be.  He knew where to find her.  His footsteps sounded loud in the absolute stillness of the bedimmed church.  As he passed under the Washington coat of arms he paused, looked up, saluted and continued to walk toward the east door.

Now, he could make out a figure, a female figure, standing under the Flatwood plate.  He stopped a couple of feet away from her.  From here he could make out her features.  His heart was pounding.  He took two more steps forward and she came into his arms.  The only sound in the darkened church was the hushed sobbing of a man and a woman.

 

             ..............................

 

Beulah Belle leaned on the banister and yelled up the attic stairs, "Did you change that overhead bulb?"

"Yes," Elmore replied.  His voice coming from the inner depths of the attic sounded hollow and far away.  "There's too much light for ghosts now so you can come up."

"I'm not afraid of the ghost.  I told you he is a nice ghost," said Beulah Belle as she made her way up the narrow stairs to the attic.  "That is, he always was a nice ghost. He may change his mind when he sees you, so don't get too cocky.  Where are you anyway?"

"I'm here, toward the front of the house."  Elmore stuck his head around the corner of a stack of boxes and motioned Beulah Belle to him.

"What have you found?" she asked as she picked her way around books and papers stacked here and there in no apparent order.

"Well, I've found the local post office.  There must be a million letters in this one corner, give or take a dozen or so."  He handed her a stack of letters tied with a black ribbon.  "They're all dated in the l850s.  How about that!"

"Oh, that's recent stuff," she said, "as I told you, this house was built before the Revolution and there are letters and other papers going back to the mid 1700s somewhere up here.  Uncle Waightstill knew where they were."

"Yes, and isn't it fortunate that Uncle Waightstill left us such a complete index so we don't have to waste time reading every damn piece of paper to see if it's worth anything."

"Don't be a smart ass.  Uncle Waightstill did not need an index.  Besides, if we had an index, then we wouldn't have to explore.  That's the fun of the whole thing."

"Yes, I suppose you're right," said Elmore, "but, to tell you the truth, I was thinking more about getting the attic cleaned out than having fun.  It'll take forever to separate the junk from anything that might be worth keeping."

"Than might be worth keeping!  It's all worth keeping.  You can't throw any of this stuff away."

"Beulah, what do you think...excuse me, Beulah Belle.

"Thank you."

"It's nothing, I assure you.  What do you think 'clean out the attic means'?"

"In this attic it does not mean throw it out.  That's different.  'Clean it out' means to maybe, sort of straighten it up, but whatever's here stays."

Elmore looked at her several moments before saying, "Oh."

Beulah Belle flushed and stammered, "I'm sorry, Sir.  I confess for just one wee moment I forgot that this is your house and you can do any damn thing you want with the attic, and the ghost.  It's obvious you don't like him, and I've had just about enough of your snide remarks about the house and my ghost...."  Tears began to form in her eyes, now, in anger, copper colored.  She turned to leave.

Elmore caught her hand and pulled her into his arms.  He held her tightly.  Both were silent.  Her face pressed against his chest.  He started to speak but he was choked up and the words wouldn't come.  Finally, he said, "I'm sorry, Beulah Belle.  You told me how much the house and its history and its people, and its ghost mean to you.  I heard the words, but just simply didn't understand the depth of your feelings...."

Beulah Belle leaned her head away from his chest to speak, but he interrupted her with a light kiss and put her head back against his chest.  Then he continued, "We aren't going to throw anything out.  Maybe if your—-no, if our ghost doesn't mind we can sort things out so at least we know what we've got.  Do you suppose that would be OK?"

Beulah Belle looked up at Elmore and said, softly, "Yes, I'm sure he wouldn't mind.  And, Elmore, I'm sorry, too."

After the loose papers in the front half of the attic were sorted, they started to remove documents from trunks and boxes.  They scanned these and returned them to their containers, except "those to be looked at later."  By late afternoon they were both getting tired and had agreed to stop when they finished the boxes they were then working on. 


Elmore's last container of the day was a traveling trunk slightly smaller than a modern day military footlocker.  The trunk was skillfully handcrafted.  He marveled at the workmanship and the elaborate fittings.  As he finished emptying the trunk, he sensed that the bottom was higher than it should be, suggesting a false bottom.  He began probing and tapping on the ends of the wooden pegs that held the trunk together.  First, he pressed on the ends of the pegs one by one, then in combination.  After several minutes of concentrated exploration, he heard a click, and the cover to what was in fact a false bottom sagged and lay loose.  He lifted it out.  Underneath was about an inch and a half of secret storage space.  In this space was a package wrapped in heavy black wax paper, about the size of a modern day legal-size document.  He carefully pulled open the outer covering.

Elmore began to read the document inside.  "Wow!" he exclaimed, "here's one written in 1775.  How about that!"

Beulah Belle, puzzling over a letter, asked absently, "What is it?"

"I don't know," said Elmore.  "It looks like a legal document.  It's dated May 20, 1775, and begins, 'In the Spring of 1775 the leading characters of Mecklenburg County....'  "How about that?  'Leading characters must have had a different connotation than it does now...."

"Elmore!"  Beulah Belle screamed so loud he jumped.  "Put that down," she commanded.  "There on top of that box in front of you.  Put it down carefully, now!  Damn your soul, now!"

Elmore gaped at her, "What the hell's the mat...?"

She rushed at him, leaping a large box in her path.  Elmore, startled by her vehemence and the look on her face, quickly put the document down on top of the box in front of him, and jumped back as though he expected it to strike him like a snake.

Beulah Belle dropped to her knees before the document. She held her long flowing blond hair away from her face with one hand and touched the document gingerly with the other.  She began to read to herself, intently, totally absorbed.  From time to time she gasped, giggled, and gurgled.

Elmore stared at her in amazement.  He could not rid his mind of Macbeth's witches stirring their pot.  She read quickly through the document.  Then, she looked up at him, triumph written all over her face.

"Listen to this," she ordered, and began to skim read the document from the beginning, raising her voice from time to time to emphasize key phrases.  "Great Britain...is an enemy of this Country...When in the Course of human Events it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands...a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires...We hold these Truths to be self-evident...that men are endowed by their Creator...among these are Life, Liberty, and the Seeking of Happiness...deriving their just Powers from the Consent of those they Govern...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those Purposes...that we citizens of these Colonies are and of a Right ought to be Free and independent...we do hereby dissolve the Political Bands which have connected up to the Mother Country...hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown...That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and Independent People...are, and of right ought to be a sovereign and self-governing Association, under the control of no power other than that of our God and the General Government of our choosing...we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred Honor."

"Sounds like the Declaration of Independence," said Elmore.

"No, El, it does not sound like the Declaration of Independence.  It is the Declaration of Independence.  Can you believe it, El?  Finally, finally, after over two hundred years we finally found a copy of the original Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.  I know it's a true copy—-and now we're going to nail old TJ's plagiarizing ass to the wall".

"TJ?" he repeated.

"El," she sighed, "don't you know nothing?  TJ.  Thomas Jefferson, the man who supposedly wrote the Declaration of Independence."

"Oh, yes, Thomas Jefferson."

"El, don't you know what you found?  And you found it! Do you know that you have just rewritten American history?"

"Look," said Elmore, his voice taking on an edge, "just stop the twenty questions stuff and tell me what are you so wound up about."

"El," her voice softened, "you're a North Carolina boy. Surely, you've heard of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence?"

"Yes, of course I have.  It's taught in the schools in this state.  Supposedly the first American Declaration of Independence.  But I always understood it was kind of like Santa Claus.  You stop believing in it when you grow up."

"Yes, El, that's the party line.  American historians have always belittled the Mecklenburg Declaration because of the persistent rumor over the years that their hero, Thomas Jefferson, copied it in Philadelphia and put out as his own work, the one we know as the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.  It's always remained a rumor because no one could come up with an original copy of the Mecklenburg Declaration.  Now, thanks to you, there is one, and I know it's genuine.  You heard all those grand phrases that send chills up and down your spine.  Think of it, El.  The Jefferson Declaration is simply a copy of this declaration written in Charlotte a year earlier.  And, get this:  We know that none other than the British governor of North Carolina sent it to the King, so it was delivered, a condition of a legitimate declaration of independence.  It means—-among a million other things—-that the Independence Day we've been celebrating for over two centuries, July 4, 1776, is wrong!  We're a year older.  Independence Day is actually May 20, 1775!"

"And the ghost?" said Elmore softly, "This, I suppose, is his treasure."

Beulah Belle's amber eyes widened.  Her voice was filled with awe.  "My God, El, the ghost!  Yes, yes, of course!  This is the treasure he's guarded all these many, many years, the greatest treasure in all of human history, the original American Declaration of Independence."

Elmore grinned and said, "The right people at the right time."

Beulah Belle's eyes turned to soft gold as she went into his arms and murmured into his lips, "Yes, El, the right people at the right time."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

 

They sat face to face directly under the Flatwood plate, knees touching.  "I can't believe this," he said.  "You're as lovely as you were thirty-five years ago."  He leaned closer and with his hands pressed her hair alongside her face.  "I think this is the one memory of you that has always been most vivid—your golden auburn hair."  He laughed softly and added, "I can see some streaks of gray, however, even in this dim light.  On you it looks good.  Jane, My Love, I've missed you so very much."

Jane smiled.  "Some things never change, like the Flatwood line.  But, I know you mean it, and thank you, and, Darling, I've missed you too, dreadfully."  Then, hurriedly, "Now, Peter, let me say what I have to say.  I am going to try very hard to make you understand.  Please, for me, listen closely.  Then, in whatever time we have left of our seventy minutes we can talk about us.  But, we come second. That's the way it has to be, Darling."

Peter nodded and sighed, "So I've noticed.  OK, shoot."

 

She hesitated for a moment collecting her thoughts.  Then she said, "I have been trying to think of how to tell you what I must tell you in a way that has some logic to it. I don't think I succeeded in that.  Anyhow, here goes.  I'm going to give you the end first, which you are not going to believe, and then try to convince you by giving you the beginning and the middle.  Does that make sense?"

"No," replied Peter with a smile.

"I didn't think so, but here goes anyway.  Within seven years the British Empire will be reestablished.  The new Empire will not be at all like the old one that died after World War II.  This time it will consist of a select number of countries whose national heritage is British.  You know who they are:  The British Isles, the United States and Canada; Australia and New Zealand.  Possibly others, but that is the core.  It will be an Empire of the same culture, the same laws, the same political system, the same language, and even the same currency.  There will be no trade barriers in the Empire.  Geopolitically, we will dominate the globe, now and forever."

"Look, Jane, I know you told me not to interrupt, but it sounds like you're about to fly off the deep end.  If you think for one second that the United States is going to forget almost two and a half centuries of independence and go back to George the Third...."

"Peter, just for once do you suppose you could forget that insufferable American George the Third hangup, just for a moment?"

"Well," Peter muttered, "it's a little more than that...never mind.  Go ahead.  I'll try to keep still.  For you, Jane, for you."

Jane patted his knee and continued, "We clearly understand that Britain cannot be the dominant power in the new Empire.  However, it is far better to take a secondary role in an English-speaking empire of our own choosing and making than to continue in a secondary role in a united Europe."

"Yes," said Peter, "I do understand that.  I thought it was a mistake when you all went into the European Union...."

Jane ignored this interjection.  "We are quite prepared to transfer the royal presence to the obvious power center of the Empire, North America.  We will change the royal authority from the Windsors to an appropriate American name, a new royalty to which all the countries of the Empire will give fealty.  The first step is to see you elected President.  After one term, you will step down as President, and you will become king.  You will, in a kingly fashion, preside over the formation of the Empire.  The Empire will be called the United States and will continue to have a president.  None of that changes.  The only difference will be the addition of the monarchy that will solidify the Empire.  That in essence is what we call Brass Cup, our most secret plan, and to which you are now a party."

Peter stared at her for a long moment before saying, "I can't believe I'm hearing this."

Jane replied with a drawn out British "really," which by intonation alone spoke volumes.  "I tried to put it simply for you, Peter.  Just what is it you do not understand?"

"Don't be a smart ass, Jane.  I understand your words all right.  It's just that what you said is crazy...just crazy!"

"It's not at all crazy, Peter.  All of this has been most thoroughly thought out for more than half a century.  I am serious in what I've told you, deadly serious."

"Yes, I'm sure you are.  My problem, Jane, is forgetting that you were once serious about our future together.  That's making it difficult, understandably, I think, to give credit to anything you say now, even if it made sense."

Jane gasped and pulled her hand away from his.  Tears came into her eyes.  "I'd hoped, vainly, I see, that you were just a bit more than human and I wouldn't do that one. That was asking too much, wasn't it?  OK, it had to come.  Now," her voice turning crisp, ice-like, "do you suppose we can continue?"

"Jane...I...."

She cut him off.  "I've given you the end."  She was now sitting straight up, her manner formal, professorial.  "Let's back up and I'll fill from the beginning.  That may help you to understand the end, which you are having such a problem with."

Peter leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, glared at her and said, "OK, Sister, let's just see."

Jane began: "It's been said that Britain lost World War II.  It's true.  We lost our Empire and we lost our place among the first powers of the world.  We knew it was happening even as we could see military victory.  Far worse, actually, was the postwar radical political swing to the left in Britain.  That really did the damage.  We weren't alone.  It was a worldwide phenomenon, but it seemed to hit us harder than other countries.  Maybe it was because we had farther to fall.  In any event, in the thirty or so years after World War II it looked like there was no limit to the depths that we could sink.  Fortunately, our postwar plight didn't paralyze us intellectually.  Even before the war ended, a small but influential camarilla—it has always been there—-conceived Brass Cup.  And, you, Peter, My Love, are, as Gideon Allgood told you in his letter, central to the success of this grand plan.  My assignment is to bring you in, to make you understand what you must do, what you are committed to do."

Peter growled, "What do you mean, 'your assignment?'  'Bring me in.'  I don't like the sound of this."  He leaned forward and took her hand back in his.  "Let's just walk out, Jane.  Let's run away and live the rest of lives together, without all this crazy stuff.  If Franklin tries to stop us, I'll bust him in the mouth.  What do you say?"

Jane leaned over and kissed Peter on the mouth.  "You have no idea how much I'd love to do just that.  But we can't, Peter.  We can't!  I gave you up, the one man I have ever loved, even deliberately deceived you about my death.  I've worked my entire life for this cause.  So have you, for that matter.  You just didn't know it.  We've gone too far now to stop."  She looked at her watch and added, "We must get on.  Please let me finish."

Peter slumped in his chair.  "OK, Jane, do your thing for what's left of our seventy minutes.  Where were we?"

Jane said, "Oh, I've forgotten.  This isn't going the way it's supposed to."

"I think you were about to tell me about the frog that turned into a prince, or, in your version, a king."

"I don't think you are even trying to take me seriously."

"For God's sake, Jane, just swap places with me for a moment. Any way you look at it you're passing out a pretty wild tale.  Then, come to think of it, you always did."

"Did what?  Oh, Peter!  I see your mind set hasn't changed after all these years."

Peter said, "I can't really tell in this light, but I bet you're blushing, like you used to.  Always drove me crazy.  Tell me, are you blushing?"

"Peter, please!  We don't have much time left."  She rushed on, "While we were developing the inner workings of Brass Cup in secret for the last half a century, we deliberately filtered the idea to the public in quiet ways. Brass Cup was first announced publicly by Winston Churchill just after World War II.  I'm sure you don't know this."

"Jane, I assure you if Churchill ever announced anything like what you're calling Brass Cup, I would know about it."

"Really," Jane intoned.  "You recall, do you not, that Churchill gave name to the Iron Curtain?"

"Of course," said Peter, "in his famous Fulton, Missouri speech right after World War II, 1946, wasn't it?  But what's that speech got to do with this Brass Cup thing of yours?"

"Everything, My Darling.  That's the point.  The Iron Curtain bit was to camouflage the real purpose of the speech, which was to publicly float quietly and gently the notion of Brass Cup for the first time."  She handed Peter a single sheet of paper and said, "This is an excerpt from that speech."

Peter held the piece of paper up to the single bulb that illuminated the Flatwood copper plate just above them and began to read:

...Let no man underrate the abiding power of the British Empire....  After six years of passionate war effort, do not suppose that we shall not come through the glorious years of agony, or that half a century from now, you will not see...Britons spread about the world and united in defense of our traditions, our way of life, and the world causes we espouse.  If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies...there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure.  On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security....  If all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the highroads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only or our time, but for a century to come.

"Well, I'll be damned," muttered Peter.  "That is what you've been talking about, isn't it?  Does that mean that Churchill was a member of Brass Cup?"

"I'm sorry, Peter.  I cannot answer that."

Oh, for Christ sakes, Jane."  Peter stood up, stretched and sat again.  "Anyway, it does answer another question—-the why now."

"Yes, and that's the exciting part, My Darling.  The half a century has passed, more than passed.  Just recently there have been several propitious developments that make it clear that the grand moment is now."

"Yes, I'm sure," said Peter absently.  He sighed and said, "you know, Jane, this is all very interesting, but, frankly, I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

Her reply was clipped.  "It doesn't matter which you do if you meet your commitment.  I am here to remind you of that obligation and to make it clear that we expect you will fulfill it.  You are, just in case you haven't figured it out yet, called to service."

"Now, look here, Jane...."

"You do recall making that commitment?" her voice hard and brittle.

"Well...yes.  But for God's sake, I was.twenty-three, blindfolded and brought to spooky old house in the middle of the night by a girl I loved so much that I would have followed her to hell and back and made to listen to a spooky old man sitting in the shadows so I couldn't make him out. Come to think of it, they blindfolded you too.  I assume that was also phony."

"Yes, of course, Peter.  All part of the trappings."

"Jane, how could you?"

"Oh, stop it, Peter!  You understood every word Sir Joshua said to you that night, and you know that you willingly made a pledge and you knew then, as you do now, exactly what it involved."

"OK, OK, Jane, relax.  I concede all that, but the circumstances have changed radically since then.  When I talked to Sir Joshua, I was not the majority leader of the United States Senate."

"Oh, really, Peter, is that what's bothering you?  Surely you remember the one thing Sir Joshua told you, not once, but twice and emphasized it both times.  Think, Peter. You damn well remember, don't you?  What was it, Peter?  Say it!"

Peter sighed.  "He said I'd never be asked to do anything that was not in the best interest of my country."

"And so it is and so it will be.  You have nothing to worry about.  Now," glancing at her watch again, "can we get on...?"

Peter interrupted her.  "Hold on for a moment.  I'm curious about something.  The Sir Joshua I talked to a million years ago was an old man then.  This can't be the same one...?"

Jane laughed, "Of course not, Silly.  The Sir Joshua today is two removed from your Sir Joshua."

"Sir Joshua is dead.  Long live Sir Joshua."

"Something like that, Peter.  Now, let's get on with this.  I mentioned a moment ago that several things had happened recently that tells us that we are at a point of decision, aside from the passage of Churchill's half a century.  The most important of these is Green Angel."

Peter realized too late that he had flinched when Jane mentioned the name of his country's most secret plan.  These two words hung between them like an unexploded bomb.  His mind rippled computer-like across the options he had in the way of reactions.  All were weak.  He settled on cocking his head and asking, "Green what...?"

"Green Angel, Peter," her diction hard and clipped as she bored in.  "You know, that ever so secret plan the United States has to steal a member of the British Commonwealth.  Canada, I believe, is the one you have your eye on."

 

             ..............................

 

All in one motion Credulous Raper tapped lightly and opened the door between his office and the Oval Office.  He was the only one who had the privilege of immediate and unannounced access to the presence of Ausbury Wisener.  Raper guarded this singular privilege assiduously.

Traditionally, it was not the job of the National Security Advisor to screen the President's appointments, but Raper did so, also assiduously.  When challenged about this duty by a talk-show host, Raper answered, "I should remind you that I have been his principal advisor for twenty years, so I don't think it's surprising that he thinks I'm qualified to keep an orderly appointment schedule.  Besides, that's the way he wants it."

Ever since he had known him, Raper remained an enigma to Wisener.  As far as he knew, Raper had always been completely loyal.  As a well-placed Wall Street lawyer, Raper had access to money and influence, and used both decidedly over the years to further Wisener's political career.  Without his help, Wisener would not have made it to the White House.  They knew each other as well as any two men could know each other when there is no bond of friendship in the traditional sense of the word.  It was a "marriage of convenience."  Wisener was satisfied with the arrangement.  After all, held the most powerful and exalted office in the world.

And, what did Raper get out of the association with Wisener?  Wisener assumed he got that distinctive pleasure kingmakers get when they make a king, a pleasure only a dedicated kingmaker could understand.  A part of Raper's reward was having a special kind of knowledge.  He knew everything, both personal and professional, there was to know about this President of the United States.  Raper used this knowledge aggressively, but judiciously.

While having Raper as his mentor had been valuable professionally, it had been a constant source of irritation in Wisener's marriage.  Rebecca Wisener hated Raper.  He hated her with equal value.  The two stalked each other like a pair of angry ally cats, seeking a moment to strike.  There were those who theorized that Credulous and Rebecca made for a classic love-hate relationship and that one day the love side would manifest itself.  Those who knew them best just shook their heads sagely at such talk.

Their mutual antagonism took some bizarre turns.  After Wisener was elected, Raper asked the First Lady to make Eunice Hunsucker her social secretary.  Without batting an eye, Rebecca accepted "with pleasure."  It was open knowledge that Eunice had been Raper's mistress for fifteen years.  Raper was most generous in seeing to her upkeep, a generosity that once even got a grudgingly favorable comment from Rebecca.  Through Eunice, Raper hoped to keep an eye on his principal enemy.

At first, the White House staff wondered how Rebecca could be so naive or stupid.  They had their answer the first time Raper made an ass of himself trying to head off a nonexistent crisis that had been artificially generated by Rebecca and duly reported to him most confidentially by his mistress.

Wisener enjoyed this interplay because it was something that Raper could not control and gave his bored wife something to do.  He had to admit-—though not to Rebecca-—that her schemes were masterful.  Raper fell for each, hook, line and sinker. 


Rebecca was a domineering woman, the kind the press treats with caution.  She was willowy and regal, characteristics exaggerated when she accompanied her shorter husband.  Her features were too sharp, but softened by shoulder length gray hair that she made no effort to tamper with, seemingly.  She could, when the occasion called for it, smile and open wide her big brown eyes in a way that could wilt men in their tracks.  Rebecca viewed her feud with Raper as just part of a ridiculous life.  Here she was, First Lady, a goal she had only dared to hope for in the formative years of Asbury's political career.  Now that she had it, she was bored.  To think that the highlight in her life was sending that jerk Credulous Raper off on wild goose chases.  Rebecca's predecessors had filled their time doing something about health, child abuse, literacy or whatever.  She considered these make-work projects and could not bring herself to spend her energy on them.  Her original plan as First Lady was to take over the lead in cause for women's rights.  However, Asbury had cut the ground out from under her (not intentionally, she had to admit) with the appointment of "that dyke," Anabel Craighead, as Attorney General.  Hence, her preoccupation with sabotaging Raper.

Wisener looked up briefly when Raper came in, then returned his eyes to the paper he was reading.  Raper, unbidden sat in the chair in front of the President's desk. Wisener finished reading the paper, threw it in his outbox and repeated one of their old ones:  "Sometimes I don't understand everything I know about this job."

Raper nodded and smiled.  "Yes, I know what you mean."

Wisener dipped his head toward the folder with the bright "X" on its cover that Raper held.  "What've you got?"

"The report on the girl."

"And...?"

Raper opened the folder and read from it.  "Delphine Higgins, thirty-eight years old, born Carrabelle, Florida, Georgetown Foreign Service School with honors, Foreign Service officer fifteen years, on State's next ambassador list."

"Who's she fucking?"

Raper opened the folder again.  "A retired CIA type who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina."

"So, he's not here?"

"No, he teaches part‑time at the University of North Carolina.  They sort of follow each other around, have been for the last twelve years, mostly overseas before he retired last year."

Wisener squinted at the folded.  "Married, either one?"

Raper said, "No, neither, never."

"Well, that doesn't sound too solid.  She play around?"

Raper leaned forward to make his point.  "Look, As, this is no floozy.  She's bright, dedicated, no bullshit.  I strongly recommend you forget this one."

"She's my type, Credge."

"I was well aware of that in the Green Angel briefing.  I think I was the only one, besides her."

"What do you mean, 'besides her?'  I didn't do anything."

"No, As," Raper said, "you didn't do anything.  It was the way you looked at her."

"I thought I was pretty discreet, considering she's the kind that sends me up the wall.  I don't think there was anything for her to pick up on."

"Look, As, I know you've had more experience with women than I, but I have to tell you again, you underestimate them.  If a man is interested, the woman knows it, always.  You have to just accept that as fixed."

"Bullshit!  You overestimate them.  You've been brainwashed, Credge.  You believe all that crap about female intuition and all those other mystical powers they attribute to themselves."

"OK," said Raper, "let's not beat that old one to death again.  It's not the point anyway."

"What, then is the point?"

Raper dropped the folder with the big red "X" to his lap and said, "Actually, there are two points.  One, she just isn't the type to go for it, even for the President of the United States.  Two, you need her unsullied loyalty in this Green Angel thing.  You won't have that if you're fucking her."

Wisener laughed, "I thought it worked the other way."

"Only in the romance novels, As.  I think we agree on that."

"Yeah, yeah.  All right.  Is there a problem with Green Angel that I don't know about?"

Raper shifted in his chair and said, "There's something rotten about it."

"Well, shit, Credge, that's not so profound.  Swiping a whole country...."

"That's not what I mean.  Everybody in that briefing room sees Green Angel in terms of some kind of personal or political gain, or both."

"Still, Principal Advisor, you haven't got profound yet.  Everybody in that briefing is a politician, except, of course, my future girlfriend.  They're bound to see Green Angel the way they see everything-—how can I make it work for me?"

"I mean beyond that, As.  I have that special feeling. Not intuition.  That's what women have.  A feeling.  And let me remind you that whenever I've had my special feeling before, something was wrong."

Wisener said, "Yes, Credge, I'll grant you that.  But, before you start telling me bad things about Green Angel, I want to make one thing clear: I'm not going to give it up. The President who brings Canada into the Union will live in the hearts of his countrymen forever.  I want to be that President."

"I fully understand that, As.  That's not where I'm heading. I'm saying we've got to control it, really control it.  To do that we've got to know who's trying to do what and know it soon.  That completes the circle.  We're back to the girl.  She's the only one who is on a one-on-one with everybody on the Green Angel Committee, and, As, has the trust of them all.  We need her to spy on them all, be your personal spy."

Wisener stared hard at Raper and asked, "Can she do that?  No, wait, that's the second question.  Will she do that?"

Raper said, "She both can and will, if you put it to her...."  Both laughed.  "Jesus, Freud would like that one. If you explain to her that you're asking for her help, you know, presidents being presidents need some unusual help sometimes, like reporting on people around him.  Especially we've got to get an eye on Flatwood.  I got bad feelings about him."

"Yes," sighed Wisener, "I worry about him too.  I wasn't happy about bringing him in on Green Angel in the first place.  But, if we're serious about making a go of Green Angel, then we've got to have the Republicans, and he can deliver them.  Anybody else bothering you?"

"Yes," said Raper, "Craighead.  I haven't the foggiest idea of what she might be up to, but whatever it is, it'll be kooky.  I just wish we could get rid of her."

"Yes, so do I.  And how do you propose that we get rid of her, Principal Advisor, and not have every cunt in the country parading down Pennsylvania Avenue in protest?"

"You know I don't have the answer to that, but I've got the boys working on it.  Incidentally, that was a great slapdown you put on her during the Green Angel briefing.  Maybe that's what she needs—some one to jerk her around now and then."

Wisener laughed.  "That's a good idea, but who's going to bell the cat, so to speak?"

Raper replied, "That, I confess, I also don't have the answer to.  Oh, by the way, how did the CAU briefing go?"

"Surprising well, I thought.  As far as I could tell, Cock laid it all out, once he accepted the fact that he was going to have do it.  Now, don't start some guessing game with me about who the CAUs are.  All I'm going to tell you is that he was telling the truth about the prominence of those guys and gals."

"He could get ten prominent names out of Who's Who in Canada." 

"It's more than just a list of names, Credge.  Good background on each and how and why they're for Green Angel. Very plausible, very convincing."

Raper smiled and asked, "And the girl, Delphine, she sat in on the briefing?"

Wisener said, "She was there, big as life.  Legs crossed, tits bulging.  Jesus!   So, she's as clued in as I."

Raper grinned broadly.  "Lamberhurst came straight up out of his chair like somebody stuck a broomstick up his ass when you told him to include her in the briefing."

Wisener laughed.  "I know.  He needed that.  He's too smug.  What else?"

"That's all I have," said Raper rising from his chair, "except, where are we on this most delicate matter of State: Are you going to fuck her or make her a spy?"

"Oh, crap, Credge, I'll go along with you on this one. But, I reserve the right to change my mind, with due warning, of course."

"Thank you, Mr. President," said Raper and started for the door.  Wisener stopped him with a clearing of his throat. 

"Credge, you might hear that Rebecca is going to convene all the governors' wives here for a seminar to be given by the President's principal advisor on how to run an executive mansion...."

Raper's mouth dropped open.  Then he looked at the ceiling and said, "Jesus K. Christ...."

"But," continued Wisener, "don't believe it."  Wisener turned in his chair and looked out the window at the rose garden. He listened to hear the soft click of the latch when the door to Raper's office closed.  Then he grinned and said aloud, "You owe me one, Credge."

 

             ..............................

 

Elmore and Beulah Belle were in the living room of the old Avery house having a celebration drink.  They were still in their "attic-cleaning" clothes.  Beulah Belle was ecstatic, infectiously so.  They laughed uproariously as they reconstructed the great moment of discovery, that incredible moment of realization that they had found an original copy of the mythical Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. 

Elmore said, "You came across that attic like you were shot from a cannon.  That long blond hair was standing straight on end and your...."

Beulah Belle interrupted.  "All I wanted you to do was put the thing down before you damaged it.  Instead you just stood there like a flaming idiot holding it and staring at me like I was crazy...."

"Like you were crazy!" exclaimed Elmore.  "I'd give anything for a video of you kneeling there on the floor making all those animal noises over a crummy old piece of paper.  Damn sexy for some reason."

"Only you would find the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence sexy.  But," she added, her voice becoming soft, "I'm glad you did, find it, that is.  It's not though," her voice rising, "a crummy old piece of paper.  It's a whole rewrite of American history."

"Tell me, My Beautiful Beulah Belle, how did you know what it was just from hearing the first line?"

"Maybe you weren't listening when I told you I was raised on the American Revolution.  My foster father is Professor Theobald Drage.  He spent fifty years researching and teaching that Revolution.  He and wife, Annie Winget, raised me from age eleven when my parents were both killed in an airplane crash.  You'd love her.  She's tiny, but the only one who dares stand up to Uncle Theo.  You won't love him, but you'll respect him.  On campus he was known, among other things, as "the last man to know everything.'  Also, he is Mr. Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, MDI for short.  He has always been alone among American historians in believing that MDI was written in Charlotte on May 20, 1775, and that it was the true American Declaration of Independence.  The academic community has always said, 'Show us the document.'  You can't imagine what finding this copy will mean to him.  It will be his vindication, and the glorious thing is that he is still alive to see it."

"How old is he?" asked Elmore.

"He's eighty-seven and mean as a snake.  He is confined to a wheel chair these days that makes him even meaner.  But his mind is still like a steel trap...there's the phone.  I'll get it."

She returned to the living room and said, "That was Uncle Theo again.  He wants to see it, tonight."

Elmore looked at his watch.  "It's almost ten now.  We can't get to Chapel Hill until after 1 A.M."

"I told him that.  He said various things in reply, mostly stuff the newspapers used to substitute 'expletive' for.  He wants to see it tonight."         

"Then, we'd better get going."

"We?  Oh, El, you will come?  Thank you, thank you.  I know it's crazy, but it is so important to him.  He's already talking about authentication, and asked if we know some one who could do that, like tomorrow.  I have no idea...."

Elmore said, "The only person I can think of right now is Caleb Wimberly, my best friend.  He's in Chapel Hill, as I told you.  He worked for the CIA so he knows about documents.  I'll call him and tell him to meet us at Dr. Drage's house at 1:00 A.M., and we'll shoot for that."

"Oh, El, that's great.  But isn't that an imposition?  Won't he mind being asked to a meeting in the middle of the night?"

"After twenty-five years in the CIA, Cab thinks that's when people are supposed have meetings."

Beulah Belle's car had been rescued by the local towing service, fortunately without damage, and it was in her Porshe that they sped through the night to Chapel Hill.  When Beulah Belle cleared the town of Lincolnton and put them on automatic in the 100-mph lane, Elmore broke the silence.  "Tell me more about the vindication of Dr. Drage."

Beulah Belle came out of her reverie.  "For years his unpopular views about the validity of MDI has made him a pariah among his academic peers.  This has been hard on him in a way you can't understand unless you've seen first hand just how vicious and unforgiving academia can be to the unorthodox.  Remember the tyranny of political correctness that came off the campuses back in the early '90s?  And, all he's ever had to fight with is circumstantial evidence, and his good name as a historian."

"But no true copy of MDI?" asked Elmore.

Beulah Belle sighed, "Yes, El, that has always been the big flaw.  The 'evidence' that the state of North Carolina accepts for MDI is a reconstruction of the entire document from the collective memories of the survivors of the convention in Charlotte in May 1775.  That was done in 1800, twenty-five years after the event." 

"Well, hell," said Elmore, "I think it would be ridiculous to put faith in a paper like that, especially when the July 4 Declaration was available to prompt memories."

"Exactly, El, and that's why other historians simply quote Mr. Jefferson on MDI who said it was spurious."

Elmore asked, "How good is the circumstantial evidence?"

"Strong, really.  That's what has made it so frustrating over the years for Uncle Theo.  For example, there definitely was a gathering of local leaders in Charlotte Town—-as it was called then—-in late May 1775, and revolutionary documents were written and promulgated.  Another fact: a Captain James Jack delivered those documents to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia where independence was being debated.  Fact: In June 1775, the British governor of North Carolina, Josiah Martin, sent a newspaper reprint of what he called a 'declaration of independence' to London.  His covering dispatch is still in the British Museum.  However, the attachment mysteriously disappeared in the 1840s when a descendant of Jefferson was ambassador to the Court of St. James.  He borrowed the dispatch and its attachment from the British Museum.  That's whole other story all by itself.  Another fact, a thoroughly documented one: In 1819, John Adams wrote a sarcastic letter to Jefferson accusing him of coping MDI as the July 4, 1776 Declaration.  Jefferson replied, by letter, in uncharacteristic fury, saying that this kind of talk imperiled the reputations of all delegates to the convention that produced the 1776 Declaration of Independence.  Adams backed down quickly and abjectly, in writing.  Those letter exchanges are part of the official documents of the United States."

Elmore asked, "What happened to the copy of MDI that Captain Jack took to Philadelphia?"

Beulah Belle said, "Captain Jack gave it to the North Carolina delegation.  In turn, he passed it to Jefferson, logically enough since the Convention had given him the task of writing the draft of a declaration of independence.  After that it simply disappeared.  I'll get Uncle Theo to tell you more about that." 

For the rest of the trip they dozed until the computer signaled their arrival in Chapel Hill.  After a few minutes of in-town driving, she turned up a long, tree-lined curving driveway and stopped with a lurch.  They were in front of a large two-story house where all the downstairs lights were on.  It was three minutes of one in the morning.  Beulah Belle grabbed Elmore by the hair and pulled him toward her. She kissed him long and hard.  Then, they got out of the car and walked up the steps hand in hand into the house.

Dr. Theobald Drage greeted them:  "Where the hell have you been, Girl?  You've never been on time in your life."

Beulah Belle, ignoring the words, knelt beside his wheel chair and kissed him on the cheek.  She whispered in his ear.  His face broke out in a broad grin and he whispered back to her.  Then she stood up and introduced Elmore, and he introduced her to Caleb Wimberly who had arrived just minutes before.

Annie Winget Drage arrived from the kitchen carrying a large pot of coffee.  She was just over five feet tall and at best would not weight more than 105 pounds.  Her hair was silvery gray and framed a face that at seventy-seven kept its beauty.  "And, you," she said turning her dark hazel eyes on Elmore, "must be Beulah Belle's young man."  Not waiting for a reply, she turned to Beulah Belle and said, "He's right cute."

"Good God!" exclaimed Drage.  "Cute!  He's a grown man, Annie Winget.  Come over here Elmore.  I want to shake the hand that found the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence."

"Thank you, Sir.  But you should know that if Beulah Belle hadn't been there I would have plopped in the pile of things to be looked at later, maybe."

"Point is, Son, you found it.  Beulah Belle sticks her nose into everything so she doesn't get any credit for that. Now where is this American Declaration of Independence?"

"Right here," said Beulah Belle, starting to remove the aluminum foil that she had wrapped it in.


Drage suddenly held up his hand and yelled, "Wait!"

"Beulah Belle, before you open that package, I'm going to ask you two questions.  Answer yes or no.  Nothing else.  Clear?"

Beulah Belle said, "Yes, Uncle Theo, that's clear."

Staring hard at the package in Beulah Belle's hands, Drage said, "Does that document have two pages?"

"Yes.  It...."

"Goddamnit, Girl!  I said answer with one word.  Don't you understand English?"

Annie Winget turned on Drage like a tiger:  "Don't you dare speak to her like that, Theo."

Without taking his eyes off Beulah Belle and the document, Drage said, "You stay out of this, Annie Winget.  This is vitally important.  I'm starting authentication now, and I want it done in the presence of the witnesses in this room, and I want it done exactly right.  All right, let's continue.  Are you ready, Girl?"

"Yes, Uncle Theo, I'm ready.  Go ahead."

Drage:  "Are there initials penciled in the upper left‑hand corner of the first page?"

Beulah Belle:  "Yes."

Drage:  "Are the initials, "WA?'"

Beulah Belle gasped, "Yes, but how did you kn...Oops, sorry, Uncle Theo?"

"Damnation!" yelled Drage.  "Unwrap that thing, Girl."

Beulah Belle put the package on the coffee table in front of Drage and began to carefully unwrap it. 

As she passed the document to the man in the wheel chair she said, "Before you start to read, please tell us how you knew about the initials."

Drage said, "Simple.  There was a man at the Charlotte convention named Hezekiah James Balch, a Presbyterian minister.  He was a fireball spokesman for independence before anyone ever heard of Patrick Henry.  He was one of the signers of this document.  It is my belief that he wrote it.  Balch kept notes on the events in Charlotte Town in late May 1775.  About twenty years ago I stumbled across his notes.  Unfortunately, they're fragmented, but it is clear from his notes that he made three copies of MDI.  He marked each copy in the upper right corner with the initials of the recipient.  One went to John NcNitt Alexander, the convention leader, marked 'JMA.'  That copy was destroyed in 1800 in the fire that burned Alexander's house down.  In June 1775, Captain James Jack took the second copy to Philadelphia by horse.  It was marked 'WH" for William Hooper, one of the North Carolina delegates to the Second Continental Congress.  That copy most assuredly disappeared into Jefferson's hip pocket.  The third copy was marked 'WH' for Waightstill Avery, in whose house Elmore now lives.  I don't want to get sidetracked here, but," turning to Elmore, "I've had teams of graduate students search that house from top to bottom any number of times.  How did you find it?  Where was it exactly?"


Elmore said, "It was in the false bottom of a small trunk.  It was more luck than anything else that I 'sensed' something...what would you say...?  'Different,' maybe."

"Damnation!" said Drage.  "Well, better late than never.  Now, back to business.  Let me read our declaration."

Drage began to read to himself.  Once could almost feel the intensity of his concentration.  No one else moved until Drage looked up and said to Beulah Belle.  "Well, Girl, we've got them. This is it.  No question."

Beulah Belle started to reply but no sound came.  She turned abruptly and walked across the room to a window where she stood by herself and stared into the darkness of the early hours of a new day. 

Annie Winget sat on the floor before her husband, her head on his knees, and cried quietly.  Theobald Drage stroked her silver hair reflectively.  Caleb and Elmore stood by awkwardly, feeling intruders on a private moment. 

Finally, Drage broke the silence, broke it in his

harsh, raspy voice, "We can't do it, Girl."

Beulah Belle whirled around.  "What do you mean, 'we can't do it?'  You've waited a lifetime for this moment.  What do you mean, 'We can't do it?'"

Drage sighed.  "Beulah Belle, I never thought when the moment came I'd be saying what I'm about to say now.  There are some things that just too big...too sacred to attack and destroy. And, what's to be gained?  Personal revenge for me that will last for, what?  Maybe a few weeks or months at best.  The potential for damage to the nation is all out of proportion to the gain.  We simply can't do it.  That's all there is to it.  I'm sorry."

Beulah Belle stamped across the room to where Drage was sitting in his wheelchair.  Her face was contorted with rage, her eyes hard and coppery.  She leaned over Drage menacingly.  For one awful moment it seemed that she was going to strike him.  '"Personal revenge!'  What's that got to do with anything?  I thought all these years you wanted to prove where the real impetus for the American Revolution came from.  I thought you wanted all those unknown heroes of the Revolution to be finally recognized.  I thought you wanted to see the drunks in the Boston alehouses and the rotten plagiarists at Philadelphia exposed and relegated to the garbage bin of American history.  That's what I thought you wanted to do, and this document," she jabbed her finger down at the Declaration now back on the coffee table, "does precisely that.  What is it, Drage, have you lost your nerve?"

Annie Winget, her eyes wide in disbelief, said sharply, "Beulah Belle!  Get hold of yourself."

Beulah Belle stared at Annie Winget vacantly and her shoulders sagged.  Turning back to Drage, she straightened up again and said quietly, "I didn't mean to yell, Uncle Theo.  For that I'm sorry, but that's as far as my apology goes.  I meant every word I said.  You cannot just sweep this thing under the rug."

"Believe me, Beulah Belle," said Drage, "I know exactly how you feel, but I don't think you've thought it out all the way.  I never had either until just this moment, because, I suppose, I never seriously believed this moment would ever really come.  We have to consider the consequences and take some responsibility for them.  Surely you see that."

"Uncle Theo, the consequences all seem good to me.  Those who were ignored and scorned all these years get the honors of Revolution.   Those who have hidden behind the false flag of deceit and plagiarism get it in the teeth."

"You aren't thinking, Beulah Belle.  Do think.  Think what release of this document would do to this country.  Is it fair to ask 280 million Americans to discredit their heroes?  These are the heroes we learned about as children and revered them for well over two hundred years.  Will we be expected to expunge Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Lee from our memories and suddenly adopt Alexander, Polk, Brevard and Balch as our Revolutionary heroes?  After all, the men in Philadelphia were patriots.  A charge of plagiarism—-even a conviction—-should not dim their greatness in helping to win American independence.  How are parents going to explain all this to their children?  Are we really going to have to change our day of independence to May 20?  The 4th of July is built into our language, our music, and our very souls.  Is it not likely that our state and we will be hated for bringing into disrepute everybody and everything that symbolizes American independence?  Let's just put the matter to rest, Beulah Belle, for the good of America.  After all, we know what the real story is.  Isn't that enough?"

After a long silence, Beulah Belle spoke.  Her voice was soft and even.  There was no more anger.  "Uncle Theo, I want to say just one more thing, and I want you to listen.  Then, give your decision and I'll abide by it."

"That's fair," said Drage.  "Please go ahead."

"At an early age, you burned a principle into my brain, made it a part of my very being.  If I'm not myself tonight, it's because I feel betrayed, by you.  That hurts more than you can imagine.  I am now forced to believe I adopted a false cause, the cause of truth as I heard it exalted by you.  You made me believe that truth can never be compromised, can never be suppressed, no matter how compelling the reasons of the moment are.  You told all your classes about the Albert Einstein statement, carved in North Carolina granite, at the base of his memorial in Washington. Have you forgotten it, Uncle Theo?  I'll remind you: 'The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.'  Uncle Theo, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is truth."  She turned and walked back to her window and stared into the dark.

Drage dropped his head in his hand.  Minutes passed.  No one moved.  The grandfather clock in the dining room bonged out 2:00 A.M.  Elmore wondered if the professor had dozed off.

Suddenly, Drage raised his head and said, "Girl, while you and your boyfriend were taking forever to get here, Caleb made some phone calls about getting this thing authenticated.  To make up for your negligence, I want you to hightail it to Washington and get this document subjected to every test known to man to establish its authenticity beyond any shadow of any doubt.  Keep the lid on this until I work out the timing and place of announcement.  And, one more thing.  Remember what happened to Captain Jack's copy that he took to Philadelphia.  Don't let this one out of your sight, even for a second.  This is positively the last copy.  Got it?"

"Yes, Sir!" exclaimed Beulah Belle as she ran across the room and dropped to her knees beside Drage.  She hugged him and whispered in his ear.  They both laughed.  Then she rose and said to Elmore, "It's off to Washington we go...you will come, won't you, El?"

He stared at her in open admiration.  "I'd go to the ends of the Earth with you."

"Caleb," she said, "come too and introduce us to the authenticators?"

"Why not.  I was going up in a couple of days to see Del anyway.  Why don't we leave now?"

"Now?" said Elmore, "at two in the morning?"

"Of course, now," said Beulah Belle.  "Who can sleep when we're about to wake up the whole damn country?" 

 

             ..............................

 

Peter Flatwood, stunned, stared at Jane.  His mind whirled. There was no possible way she could know about Green Angel.  It was classified Encased Secret, the highest and most sensitive security classification in the United States government.  Yet, unless his senses were leaving him, she had not only said the name, she had described it.  Fear took over.  Who was this strange woman sitting there calmly looking at him, waiting patiently for him to say something? Without really knowing what he was doing, he stood up, saying, insanely, he knew, "I really must be going now.  You know how they are when you're late."

In the voice he still remembered in his dreams, she said softly, "Sit down, Peter.  It's not that bad.  I'm sorry to have to do it that way, but you just weren't taking me seriously.  Now, can we get back to business?"

She held out her hand.  He took it and sat back down.  He grinned weakly.  "The old shock treatment, eh?  Let's see now, I'm supposed to be so shattered that I think if they know that then they must know everything, so what's the point in trying to hold anything back."

Jane smiled.  "Something like that.  Only I'm not going to exploit your discomfort by pumping you.  Quite the contrary.  I'm going to use my advantage to give you more information, the knowledge you will need in the coming months to do your job."

"Before we go on," Peter said, "I demand to know how you know about Green Angel."

Jane spoke gently, "Don't worry, Darling.  It's in good hands."

"That may be," said Peter, "but I just don't recall that your name was on the list of people authorized by the President of the United States to know about it."

Jane squeezed his hand and said, "Dearest Peter, there's one thing that hasn't sunk in yet.  You and I are not enemies.  We're on the same side.  If I know about Green Angel, that's good, not bad.  I've told you about Brass Cup, which if revealed would be much more damaging to Britain that the revelation of Green Angel would be to your country. But I've told you all about it.  No holds barred.  Can't you trust me the same way?"

"Jane, let me remind you that I didn't come here today with any thought of trading state secrets.  This whole thing is pretty overwhelming for me, which, when I think about it, must be part of your strategy.  Who worked it out, Allgood of Scotland Yard?  Incidentally, why does he go by that ridiculous name?  He's not with Scotland Yard, is he?"

Jane laughed.  "No, he's not with Scotland Yard.  He has a friend there—-a member of Brass Cup—-who lets him use the Yard operationally for telephone messages and that sort of thing.  Also, I think he just likes the sound of it."

"Well, since you're telling secrets, if your surname is not Wellright, as I knew you by at Oxford, what is it?"

"I'm sorry, Peter.  I cannot tell you my true name.  I cannot reveal the true name of any member of Brass Cup.  Even those you will be dealing with in the future will be in alias."

"Is your true name one I would recognize if I heard it?"

Jane answered hesitantly, "Yes, probably."

"If I guess it, will you tell me if I'm right?"

"No!  Please, Peter no more of this, I beg you."

"OK, I'll drop it," Peter said, his voice hardening, "after you tell me who the Green Angel leak is.  I mean that, Jane.  No games."

Jane looked quickly at her watch again.  "We've got to move along.  Our time is running out."

"Yes, I know about the time, Jane.  Who?"

"My Love, you can relax.  There is no leak on your side.  Are you ready...?  Green Angel is actually a Brass Cup subplot.  It was fostered off on your CIA chief, Lamberhurst, by one of our Canadian operatives.  Lamberhurst thinks it was his idea.  The Canadian operative is one of the ten Canadians you quaintly call Canadian Advocates for Union, or CAUs.  There, now you have it."

Peter stared at Jane in astonishment.  Then he laughed, long and loud.  "Lamberhurst!" he managed to exclaim, "that snotty little piss-ant."

Jane asked, "Now, does it make sense?"

"Make sense?  Of course not.  It makes no sense at all.  Why are you running an operation to take Canada out of the Commonwealth?"

Jane sighed and said, "Don't you see, Peter?  When the first Canadian province applies for statehood all the English-speaking nations will begin to examine their futures most profoundly, including, I should emphasize, Britain itself."

"I see," muttered Peter.

Jane continued:  "And, as it stands now, what does the future hold for the English-speaking nations?  Britain will continue to be an unhappy and subordinate member of the European alliance.  Australia and New Zealand will find themselves in a similar role in the giant Asian alliance dominated by China.  Canada and your country will be prosperous in the short run, but already you are conscious of your growing isolation and difficulty in expanding beyond your own North American trade zone.  You need the other English-speaking countries as much as the rest of us.  Any questions, Darling?"

"A million, but go on."

Jane nodded.  "Briefly, a little history, mainly to give you an idea of the depth of Brass Cup.  In the 17th Century when the British Empire began to take shape, a powerful camarilla in Britain quietly nurtured the notion of a world permanently dominated by a federation of English-speaking peoples.  In 1870, John Ruskin at Oxford articulated this theme and inspired Cecil Rhodes to actively seek to bring Empire about.  To this end, Rhodes formed what he called the 'Circle of Initiates,' the camarilla from which Brass Cup descended.  Brass Cup was conceived in 1940 and designed to complete Rhodes' work."

"Interesting," Peter said thoughtfully.  "And Green Angel kicks all this off."

"Exactly.  As soon as the Canadian provinces begin to move toward statehood, Britain will join the parade.  We'll ask for four states from the United Kingdom, one each from north and south England, Scotland, and Wales.  We'll see about Ireland.  We expect the other English-speaking nations will soon follow our lead."

"Well, well," said Peter rearing back in his chair, "four states out of this one little island.  Not at all bashful, are you?"

"And quite easily justified, My Love.  But don't drift off. I want you to talk for a minute.  What will the American reaction be to this, I mean the general idea?"

"Holy cow, Jane, do you really expect me to make an assessment of something this complex—this crazy—without at least thinking about it for a while?  However, just off the top of my head, I'm sure the American people would welcome bids for statehood from the Canadian provinces.  We're pretty close to them, you know.  Also, off the top of my head, I'd see some problems with that king stuff."

"But why, especially if the royal family is American?"

"It's a little hard to explain something like that in a couple of minutes, Jane.  But, you could be right.  It's possible that a king and queen as a unifying symbol might be acceptable.  But, not, Jane, not for a second would we accept the attendant trappings of a titled mobility.  Maybe you can't have one without the other, but that's your problem."

"Yes, we're aware of that and its been allowed for.  In any event, our well-studied position is that the American people would be enthralled with a constitutional monarchy, after the initial shock wears off.  All in time."

Peter gazed up into the darkness above them and said, "Maybe so, maybe not.  You got anything else?"

"No, we've covered it all, except one thing.  We haven't defined what it is you are to do."

"Ah, yes," sighed Peter, "my 'call to service.'  OK, what am I supposed to do?"

"You are help Green Angel any way you can."

"OK.  Actually, I'll continue to support Green Angel, and, I suppose, Brass Cup, if it is in the best interest of the United States to do so.  The second I detect anything to the contrary, I'll rip it to smithereens."

"Fair enough, Peter.  Also, we would like you to include a plank in your presidential platform to seek closer political ties with Canada.  You don't want the Democrats to preempt that position."

Peter thought for a moment.  "Yes, I can do that."

They stood up.  "Thank you, Peter," she said barely loud enough for him to hear.  He took her in his arms.  They kissed long and lovingly.  She pulled back enough to look at her watch and said, "I don't want Franklin to have to come get us."

They started out of the church arm in arm, pausing for a moment for Peter to salute the Washington coat of arms that was barely discernible in the dim light.  They came out of the church arm in arm into the soft Kent County sunshine. Franklin was there.  "Did we make it on time?" asked Peter.

Franklin ignored the sarcasm.  "Yes, Sir, right on time."

Peter and Jane held hands and walked a short distance down the stone path.  Jane looked to see that Franklin was out of earshot and asked, "Do you remember the day in this church when you held the rickety ladder while I rubbed the Flatwood plate?"

"Of course I remember.  How could I ever forget?"

"When you were holding the ladder, did you look up my dress?"

Peter flushed, then grinned and said, "It was impossible not to."

"What color were my panties?"

"For God's sake, Jane...blue.  They matched your eyes."

Jane smiled in that way that still made Peter's heart skip a beat.  She said, "I just knew it.  Goodbye, My dearest, Peter."

"Goodbye, Jane, My Love."

With mounting despair, Peter watched her walk through the church grounds, out the gate.  She disappeared beyond the stone wall, out of his life again. 

Franklin continued to gaze off toward the town while
Peter regained his composure.  Then he said, "This way, Senator.  I'll drive you back to London."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER  IV

 

 

The assistant editor, a new man from Chicago, leaned in the editor's doorway and said, tentatively, "I assume we aren't going to send any one to cover that retired professor's press conference?"

The editor smiled at him and said, "You've learned fast in the few weeks you've been here, and sometimes I forget just how new you are.  Don't let it throw you though.  There's no way you could know."

"Know?  Know what?"

"Who the professor is.  You didn't pick up on the name, Theobald Drage.  No reason why you should.  But, so you'll know in the future, he's a legend in this state, and rightly so.  A great scholar, the greatest, I guess.  And, that's saying a lot in a state that has always held scholars in such high regard.  I'm covering this one myself.  My error.  Should have told you when we first got the word."

"You're covering it, yourself?  I guess I am out of it.  He's that big?"

"Yes, in this state he is.  He's never called a press conference before that I can recall.  That's got everybody curious.  You can be sure it'll be interesting, and you can be sure every newspaper in this state will be there with bells on, as will the national press when they pick up on the degree of local interest."

"I just can't imagine what a retired history professor would have to say that would be all that earthshaking."

"It may not be earth-shaking.  In that event, then we will have gone out of respect for him.  I'll tell you something: Theobald Drage did more to shape my thinking than any other person in my life.  Taught me how to think, actually.  And, I'm not the only one."

"I see.  Don't suppose you'd like to take me along?"

The editor looked at the new man thoughtfully and asked, "You really want to come?"

"Yes, for some reason I do."

"OK, I'll drive.  Pick up at 8:30."

"Thanks."

 

.....................

 

 

On a sunny but chilly autumn day, Professor Theobald S. Drage held a press conference at his house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Drage rolled out onto the front porch in his wheel chair.