'You mean subject matter no male has had the foresight to research before.'
'You said it, not me.'
'I don't envy the guy who marries you,' said Mildred. 'He'd come home from work and have to arm-wrestle. The loser cooking dinner and doing the dishes.'
'I was married. Six years. To a colonel in the Marine Corps. I still carry the scars.'
'Physical or mental?'
'Both.'
Mildred dropped the subject and picked up the fiberboard case that housed the documents, and checked the file number. 'You're in the ball park. This file contains the bulk of Wilson's naval correspondence.'
'I've pretty much exhausted them,' said Heidi. 'Can you think of any avenue I might have missed?'
Mildred stared into space a moment. 'A slim possibility. Give me ten minutes.'
She returned in five, carrying another document case. 'Unpublished material that hasn't been Cataloged yet,' she said with a pontifical grin. 'Might be worth a look.'
Heidi scrutinized the yellowed letters. Most were in the President's own hand. Advice to his three daughters, explanations of his stand against Tammany Hall to William Jennings Bryan during the Democratic convention of 1912, personal messages to Ellen Louise Axson, his first wife, and Edith Boning Gait, his second.
Fifteen minutes before closing time Heidi unfolded a letter addressed to Herbert Henry Asquith, the Prime Minister of Britain. The paper appeared creased in irregular lines as though it had once been wadded up. The date was June 4, 1914, but there was no mark of acknowledgment, which suggested that the letter had never been sent. She began to read the neatly styled script.
Dear Herbert,
With the formally signed copies of our treaty seemingly lost and the heated criticism you are receiving from members of your cabinet, perhaps our bargain was never meant to be. And since formal transfer did not transpire, I have given my secretary instructions to destroy all mention of our pact. This uncustomary step is, I feel, somewhat reluctantly, warranted as my countrymen are a possessive lot and would never idly stand by knowing with certainty that
A crease ran through the next line, obliterating the writing. The letter continued with a new paragraph.
At the request of Sir Edward, and with the concurrence of Bryan, I have recorded the funds deposited to your government from our treasury as a loan.
Your friend,
WOODROW WILSON
Heidi was about to set the letter aside because there was no reference to naval involvement when curiosity pulled her eyes back to the words 'destroy all mention of our pact.'
She hung on them for nearly a minute. After two years of in-depth study, she felt she had come to know Woodrow Wilson almost as well as a favorite uncle, and she'd discovered nothing in the former President's makeup to suggest a Watergate mentality during his years in public office.
The ten- minute warning sounded for the closing of the archives. She quickly transcribed the letter on a yellow legal pad. Then she checked in both file cases at the front desk. 'Run on to anything useful?' asked Mildred. 'A trail of smoke I didn't expect,' replied Heidi vaguely. 'Where do you go from here?'
'Washington…... the National Archives.'
'Good luck. I hope you make a hit.'
'Hit?'
'Discover a previously overlooked treasure of information.' Heidi shrugged. 'You never know what might turn up.'
She had not planned to pursue the meaning of Wilson's odd letter.
But now that she had the door open a crack, she decided it was worth a further peek.
The Senate historian leaned back in his chair. 'I'm sorry, commander, but we don't have room up here in the Capitol attic to store congressional documents.'
'I understand,' said Heidi. 'You specialize in old photographs.'
Jack Murphy nodded. 'Yes, we maintain quite an extensive collection of government-related pictures going back as far as the eighteen forties.' He idly fiddled with a paperweight on the desk. 'Have you tried the National Archives? They have a massive storehouse of material.'
'A wasted effort,' Heidi shrugged. 'I found nothing that related to my search.'
'How can I help?'
'I'm interested in a treaty between England and America. I thought perhaps a photo might have been taken during the signing.'
'We carry a wealth of those. The president has yet to be born who didn't call in an artist or photographer to record a treaty signature.
'All I can tell you is that it took place during the first six months of nineteen fourteen.'
'I can't recall such an event off the top of my head,' said Murphy, with a thoughtful look. 'I'll be glad to make a search for you; might take a day or two. I have several research projects ahead of yours.'
'I understand. Thank you.'
Murphy hesitated, then stared at her, a quizzical look in his eyes. 'It strikes me odd that no mention of an Anglo-American treaty can be found in official archives. Do you have a reference to it?'
'I found a letter written by President Wilson to Prime Minister Asquith in which he alludes to a formally signed treaty.'
Murphy rose from his desk and showed Heidi to the door. 'My staff will give it a try, Commander Milligan. If there is a photograph, we'll find it.'
Heidi sat in her room at the Jefferson Hotel, peering into a cosmetic case mirror at a crow's-foot that edged a widened eye. All things considered, she had accepted the merciless encroachment of age, and was keeping her youthful-looking face and a body that had yet to see an ounce of fat.
In the last three years she had weathered a hysterectomy, a divorce and a tender May-December affair with an admiral twice her age who recently died from a heart attack. Yet she still looked as vibrant and alive as when she graduated from Annapolis, fourteenth in her class.
She leaned closer to the mirror and studied a pair of Castilian brown eyes. The right one had a small imperfection at the bottom of the iris, a small pie-shaped splash of gray. Heterochromia ifidis was the highfalutin term an ophthalmologist gave her when she was ten years old, and schoolmates had taunted her about possessing an evil eye. From then on she reveled in being different, especially later when boys found it appealing.
Since the death of Admiral Walter Bass she had felt no urge to search out and emotionally involve herself with another man. But before she realized what she was doing, the blue uniform was hanging in the closet and she was standing in the elevator in a bias-cut, coppery-colored slip dress of silk, piped in saffron that plunged devilishly low in back and front and was dashed with a silk flower at a V far below her breasts. Besides a matching purse, her only other accessory was a long feather and jeweled earring that dangled to her shoulder. For warmth against Washington's bleak winter air, she buried herself in a notch-collared greatcoat of dark brown-and-black synthetic fox.
The doorman sighed at the exhilarating view and opened the door to a cab.
'Where to?' asked the driver without turning.
The simple question took her by surprise. She had made up her mind to go out on the town; she hadn't planned where. She paused, and then opportunely her stomach growled.
'A restaurant,' she blurted. 'Can you recommend a nice restaurant?'
'What do you feel like eatin', lady?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Steak, Chinese, seafood? You name it.'
'Seafood.'
'You got it,' said the driver, punching the button on the digital meter. 'I know just the place. Overlooks the river. Very romantic.'
'Just what I need.' Heidi laughed. 'It sounds perfect.'
Already the evening was a bust. Sitting by candlelight and sipping wine while watching the Capitol's lights sparkling on the Potomac River with no one to talk to only served to deepen her solitude. A woman dining by herself
