by Night Probe!
He bid a good-night and started the car. The gate opened and he swung onto the deserted street. Eight blocks away he parked at the curb between two large homes. He locked the doors and stomped the ignition key into the ground with his heel. What could be more common than a Mercedes-Benz sitting in a stylish residential district, he figured. People who lived in mansions seldom talked to their neighbors. Each would probably think the car belonged to friends visiting next door. The car would be ignored for days.
Gly was on a bus back to Quebec at ten past ten. The exotic poison he had concocted was still in his pocket. It was a foolproof method of murder, used by the Communist intelligence service. No pathologist could detect its presence in a corpse with certainty.
The decision to use the pillow was a spur-of-the-moment afterthought. It seemed a fitting tool for Gly's fetish for inconformity.
Most murderers followed a pattern, developed a routine modus operandi, preferred a particular weapon. Gly's pattern was that he didn't have one. Every kill was completely different in execution from the last. He left no strings to connect him with the past.
He felt a flush of excitement. He had cleared the first hurdle. One more remained, the trickiest, most sensitive one of them all.
Danielle lay in bed and watched the smoke of her cigarette curl toward the ceiling. She was only dimly aware of the warm little bedroom in the remote cottage outside Ottawa, the gathering darkness of the evening, the firm, smooth body beside her.
She sat up and looked at her watch. The interlude was over, and she felt a regret that it could not go on indefinitely. Responsibility beckoned and she was compelled to reenter reality. "Time for you to go?" he asked, stirring beside her.
She nodded. "I must play the dutiful wife and visit my husband in the hospital."
"I don't envy you. Hospitals are nightmares in white."
"I've become used to it by now."
"How is Charles coming along?"
"The doctors say he can come home in a few weeks."
"Come home to what?" he said contemptuously. "The country is rudderless. If an election were held tomorrow, he would surely be defeated."
"All to our advantage." She rose from the bed and began dressing. "With Jules Guerrier out of the way the timing is perfect for you to resign from the cabinet and publicly announce your candidacy for President of Quebec."
"I'll have to draft my speech carefully. The idea is to come on like a savior. I cannot afford to be cast as a rat jumping a sinking ship."
She came over and sat down beside him. The faint smell of his maleness aroused her again. She placed a hand on his chest and could feel his heartbeat.
"You were not the same man this afternoon, Henri." His face seemed to take on a concerned look. "How so?"
"You were more brutal in your lovemaking. Almost cruel."
"I thought you'd enjoy the change."
"I did." She smiled and kissed him. "You even felt different inside me."
"I can't imagine why," he said casually.
"Neither can I, but I loved it."
Reluctantly she pushed herself away and stood up. She put on her coat and gloves. He lay there, watching her.
She paused and looked down, giving him a penetrating look. "You never told me how you arranged to make Jules Guerrier's death appear natural."
A chilling expression came into his eyes. "There are some things you are better off not knowing."
She looked as though she'd been slapped in the face. "We never had secrets between us before."
"We do now," he said impassively.
She did not know how to react to his sudden coldness. She had never seen him like this and it stunned her. "You sound angry. Is it something I've said?"
He glanced at her uninterestedly and shrugged. "I expected more from you, Danielle."
"More?"
"You've told me nothing about Charles that I can't read in a newspaper."
She looked at him questioningly. "What do you want to know?"
"The man's inner thoughts. Conversations with other cabinet ministers. How does he intend to deal with Quebec after the separation? Is he thinking of resigning? Damn it, I need information, and you're not delivering."
She held out her hands expressively. "Charles has changed since the plane crash. He's become more secretive. He doesn't confide in me as before."
His eyes went dark. "Then you've become useless to me." She averted her face, the hurt and anger swelling in her breast.
"Don't bother contacting me again," he went on icily, "unless you have something important to say. I'm taking no more risks for boring sex games."
Danielle ran for the door, and then she turned. "You son of a bitch!" she choked through a sob.
How odd, she thought, that she had never seen the monster in him before. She suppressed a shudder and wiped at the tears with the back of her hand as she fled.
His laughter followed her to the car and rang in her ears during the drive to the hospital.
She could not know that back in the bedroom of the cottage Foss Gly lay highly pleased with himself for passing his final test with flying colors.
The President's chief of staff nodded an indifferent greeting and remained seated behind his desk as Pitt was ushered into his office. He glanced up without smiling. "Take a chair, Mr. Pitt. The President will be with you in a few minutes."
There was no offer of a handshake, so Pitt set his briefcase on the carpet and took a couch by the window.
The chief of staff, a young man in his late twenties with the grandiloquent name of Harrison Moon IV, swiftly answered three phone calls and adroitly shuffled papers from one bin to another. Finally he condescended to look in Pitt's direction.
"I want you to be fully aware, Mr. Pitt, that this meeting is highly irregular. The President has precious little time for pithy chats with third-level civil servants. If your father, Senator George Pitt, hadn't made the request and implied that it was urgent, you wouldn't have gotten past the front gate."
Pitt gave the pompous ass an innocent look. "Gosharootie, I'm flattered all to hell."
The chief of staffs face clouded. "I suggest you show respect for the office of the President."
"How can one be impressed with the President," said Pitt with a sardonic smile, "when he hires assholes like you."
Harrison Moon IV stiffened as though shot. "How dare you-!"
At that moment the President's secretary came into the office. "Mr. Pitt, the President will see you now."
"No!" shouted Moon, leaping to his feet, his eyes glazed in rage. "The appointment is canceled!"
Pitt approached Moon and grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and jerked him halfway across the desk. "My advice to you, kid, is not to let the job go to your head." Then he shoved Moon backward into his swivel chair. But Pitt had shoved a bit too hard. The momentum of Moon's weight tipped the chair over and he spilled onto the floor.
Pitt smiled cordially at the stunned presidential secretary and said, "You needn't bother showing me the way, I've been to the oval office before."
Unlike his chief of staff, the President greeted Pitt courteously and held out his hand. "I've often read of your exploits on the Titanic and Vixen projects, Mr. Pitt. I was particularly impressed with your handling of the Doodlebug operation. It's an honor to meet you at last."
"The honor is mine."
"Won't you please sit down," the President said graciously.
"I may not have the time," said Pitt. "I'm sorry?" The President lifted an eyebrow questioningly. "Your chief of staff was rude and treated me damned shabbily, so I called him an asshole and roughed him up a bit."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes, sir. I should imagine the Secret Service will burst in here any second and drag me off the premises."
The President walked over to his desk and punched an intercom button. "Maggie, I want no interruptions for any reason until I say so."
Pitt was relieved when the President's face stretched into a w
ide smile. "Harrison gets carried away at times. Perhaps you may have shown him an overdue lesson in humility."
"I'll apologize on my way out."
"No need." The President dropped into a highbacked chair across a coffee table from Pitt. "Your dad and I go back a long way. We were both elected to Congress in the same year. He told me over the phone you had stumbled on a revelation, as he put it, that boggles the mind."
"Dad's earthy rhetoric," Pitt laughed. "But in this case he's one hundred percent right."
"Tell me what you've got."
Pitt opened the briefcase and began laying papers on the coffee table. "I'm sorry to bore you with a history lesson, Mr. President, but it's necessary to lay the groundwork."
"I'm listening."
"In early nineteen fourteen," Pitt began, "there were no doubts in British minds that war with Imperial Germany was just around the corner. By March, Winston Churchill, who was then first lord of the admiralty, had already armed some forty merchant ships. The War Department forecast the opening of hostilities for September after the European harvest was in. Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for war, realizing the coming conflict was going to be a colossal drain of men and resources, was shocked to find only enough ammunition and supplies for a three-month campaign.
"At the same time the United Kingdom had been busy on a crash program of social reform that had already caused a substantial increase in taxation. It didn't take a clairvoyant to see that mushrooming armament costs, interest on debts, welfare and pension payments would break the back of the economy."
"So Britain was scraping the bottom of its treasury when it entered World War I," said the President.
"Not quite," replied Pitt. "Shortly before the Germans poured into Belgium, our government had loaned the British one hundred and fifty million dollars. At least it went into the records as a loan. In reality it was a down payment."
"I'm afraid I've lost the trail."
"The Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and King George V met in a closed-door emergency session on May second and came up with a solution born of desperation. They secretly approached President Wilson with their proposal and he accepted. Richard Essex, undersecretary of state under William Jennings Bryan, and Harvey Shields, deputy secretary of the British Foreign Office, then drafted what was to be briefly known as the North American Treaty."
"And what was the gist of this treaty?" asked the President.
There was a cold silence of perhaps ten seconds while Pitt hesitated. Finally he cleared his throat.
"For the sum of one billion dollars Great Britain sold Canada to the United States."
Pitt's words flew over the President's head. He sat blank, unbelieving of what he heard. "Say again," he demanded.
"We bought Canada for one billion dollars."
"That's absurd."
"But true," said Pitt firmly. "Before the war broke out there were many members of Parliament who doubted loyal support by the colonies and dominions. There were liberals as well as conservatives who openly stated that Canada was a drain on the empire."
"Can you show me proof?" asked the President, his eyes skeptical.
Pitt handed him a copy of Wilson's letter. "This was written by Woodrow Wilson to Prime Minister Asquith on June fourth. You'll note that it was creased through part of one sentence. I ran a spectrograph test on it and found the missing words cause the line to read: 'my countrymen are a possessive lot and would never idly stand by knowing with certainty that our neighbor to the north and our own beloved country had become one.'"
The President studied the letter for several minutes, then he set it on the coffee table. "What else do you have?"
Without comment Pitt passed over the photograph of Bryan, Essex and Shields leaving the White House with the treaty. Then he played his trump card.
"This is the desk diary of Richard Essex for the month of May. The entire scope of the conferences leading to the North American Treaty is set down in scrupulous detail. The last entry is dated May twenty-second, nineteen fourteen, the day Essex left the capital for Canada and the final signing of the treaties."
"You said treaties, plural."
"There were three copies, one for each country involved. The first to sign were Asquith and King George. Shields then carried the historic papers to Washington where, on May twentieth, Wilson and Bryan added their names. Two days later, Essex and Shields departed together by train to Ottawa where the Canadian prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, affixed the last signature."
"Then why was it no formal transfer of Canada into the Union took place?"
"A series of unfortunate circumstances," explained Pitt. "Harvey Shields, in company with a thousand other souls, went down with the transatlantic liner Empress of Ireland after it collided with a coal collier and sank in the St. Lawrence River.
His body and the British copy of the treaty were never recovered."
"But surely Essex reached Washington with the American copy.
Pitt shook his head. "The train carrying Essex plunged off a bridge into the Hudson River. The disaster became something of a classic mystery when neither the crew and the passengers, nor any trace of the train, was ever found."
"That still left one copy in Canadian hands."
"The trail goes cold at this point," said Pitt. "The rest is speculation. Apparently Asquith's cabinet rebelled. The ministers, including no doubt Churchill, must have been furious when they discovered the Prime Minister and the King had tried to sell off their largest dominion behind their backs."
"I doubt the Canadians were overly fond of the deal either."
"With two copies of the treaty gone it would have been a simple matter for Sir Robert Borden, a loyal Englishman, by the way, to have destroyed the third, leaving Wilson with no tangible evidence to advance an American claim."
"It doesn't seem possible official records concerning negotiations of such magnitude could be so conveniently lost," said the President.
"Wilson states in his letter he instructed his secretary to destroy all mention of the pact. I can't speak for the Foreign Office, but it seems a safe bet to say they're collectors. Traditionally, the British aren't given to throwing away or burning documents. Whatever treaty papers survive are probably buried under a ton of dust in some old Victorian warehouse."
The President rose and began pacing. "I wish I could have studied the wording of the treaty."
"You can." Pitt smiled. "Essex penned a draft in his desk diary."
"May I keep it?"
"Of course."
"How did you happen onto this diary?"
"It was in the possession of his grandson," Pitt answered without elaboration.
"John Essex?"
"Yes."
"Why did he keep it a secret all these years?"
"He must have been afraid its exposure would cause an international upheaval."
"He may have been right," said the President. "If the press blasted this discovery on a slow news week, there is no predicting the grassroots reaction by people on both sides of the border. Wilson was right: the Americans are a possessive lot. They might demand a takeover of Canada. And God only knows the hell Congress would raise."
"There is a catch," said Pitt.
The President stopped his pacing. "And that is?"
"There is no record of payment. The initial deposit was converted to a loan. Even if a copy of the treaty turned up, the British would reject it by claiming, and rightfully so, they were never compensated."
"Yes," the President said slowly, "nonpayment could void the treaty."
He moved to the tall windows and gazed across the winter brown grass of the White House lawn, saying nothing, struggling with his thoughts. Finally he turned and stared directly at Pitt.
"Who knows about the North American Treaty besides you?"
"Commander Heidi Milligan, who began the preliminary research after finding the Wilson letter, the Senate historian who uncovered the photographs, my father,
and of course, Admiral Sandecker. Since he is my immediate superior I only felt it fair he should know what I was investigating."
"No one else?"
Pitt shook his head. "I can't think of anyone."
"Let's keep it a select club, shall we?"
"Whatever you say, Mr. President."
"I deeply appreciate your bringing this matter to my attention, Mr. Pitt."
"Would you like me to pursue it?"
"No, I think it best if we drop the treaty back in its coffin for now. There is no purpose in damaging our relations with Canada and the United Kingdom. I see it as a simple case of what nobody knows, won't hurt them."
"John Essex would have agreed."
"And you, Mr. Pitt, would you agree?"
Pitt closed his briefcase and stood up. "I'm a marine engineer, Mr. President. I steer well clear of political involvement."
"A wise course," said the President with an understanding smile. "A wise course indeed."
Five seconds after the door closed behind Pitt, the President spoke into his intercom. "Maggie, get me Douglas Oates on the holograph." He settled behind his desk and waited.
Soon after taking up residence in the White House he had ordered a holographic communications system installed in his office. He took an almost childlike interest in studying his cabinet members' expressions, body movements and outward emotions while he visually talked to them miles away.
The three-dimensional image of a man with wavy auburn hair and conservatively attired in a gray pinstripe suit materialized in the middle of the oval office. He was seated in a leather executive chair.
Douglas Oates, the secretary of state, nodded and smiled. "Good morning, Mr. President. How goes the battle?"
"Douglas, how much money has the United States given away to Britain since nineteen fourteen?"
Oates stared quizzically. "Given?"
"Yes, you know, war loans written off, economic aid, contributions, whatever."
Oates shrugged. "A pretty substantial sum, I should imagine."
"Over a billion dollars?"
"Easily," replied Oates. "Why do you ask?"