“Where is Lukas…?” Arthur whispered.
The velvet cello was gone.
The word was paper-thin. It was the dry, whistling rasp of an ancient water pump sucking air in an empty cistern:
“Where is Ingrid?”
“Lukas and Ingrid are in federal transport chains at the MCC in Chicago, Uncle Arthur,” I answered softly.
My voice had no microphone.
Yet it filled that twenty-foot concrete vault with forty decibels of pure, unyielding, polar diamond:
“The victory party at the Palmer House failed eight hours ago.”
“The communications logs have been decrypted by naval intelligence.”
“The brownstone on Belden Avenue was breached, and Sophia Weber is under armed military protection.”
“And I came to Washington to return your family’s surrogacy waiver.”
CHAPTER 5: THE AUDIT ON THE BLACK GRANITE
I walked down the twenty-foot center aisle of the West Conference Room.
My leather boots left dark, geometric tread marks across the greenstone floorboards: crunch… tack… crunch.
Barnaby walked beside me, his paws striking the stone in synchronized cadence.
Admiral Mercer walked on my right flank, his father’s chronometer watch ticking steadily on my wrist: tack… tack… tack.
We stopped at the head of the black granite table, two paces from the Chief Justice’s leather throne.
I did not draw a weapon.
I reached inside my tweed jacket, pulled out the thick, faded blue vellum envelope containing the original 1944 Mercer Sovereign Charter, and slammed it flat atop the Chief Justice’s sixty-billion-dollar Swiss conveyance deed:
THUD.
The heavy granite table seemed to absorb the blow with a dull, subterranean groan:
“Look at the vellum, Arthur,” I said softly:
“Look at the signature on line four.”
Chief Justice Arthur Vance’s face calcified into an apocalyptic, curdled shade of un-cured limestone.
His pupils dilated until the slate-gray of his irises was swallowed completely by black.
His large, manicured hands, flat on the granite table, began to tremble with that spastic, involuntary tremor of an embezzler whose vault door has just been blown off its hinges by an artillery shell:
tick-tick-tick-tick.
“The… the blue envelope…” Arthur gasped, his voice cracking into that thin, pathetic squeak:
“Lukas… Lukas swore to me that you were completely compliant! That you had zero knowledge of German, zero knowledge of the embryos, and zero knowledge of the Mercer redoubts!”
“Lukas was blinded by his own narcissistic arrogance, Arthur,” Vice Admiral David Mercer spoke from behind our shoulders.
His voice had no brotherly affection.
It was sixty decibels of mountain quarry explosive:
“Lukas was too busy gloating over Sunday dinner to notice that Evelyn was logging his mileage, tracing his wire transfers, and learning his family’s language. She audited your pipeline while your nephew was bragging about his stolen child.”
Admiral Mercer slammed his service portfolio onto the granite table:
KABOOOOM.
The impact pulverized a corner of the black stone into white powder, sending hairline fractures through the Swiss banking contracts:
“Under Section Fourteen-B of the Mercer Admiralty Founding Indenture of Nineteen-Forty-Four…”
Judge Eleanor Mercer stepped forward, opening her leather portfolio, her voice cutting through the vault:
“…the chief certifying surveyor who established the sovereign defense conduits of the Great Lakes and Lake Michigan command sectors… retains an un-divided, un-alienable fifty-one percent legal equity in the property in perpetuity.”
“Transferable to his surviving lineal heirs ab initio.”
Judge Mercer leaned forward, resting her fists on the granite table:
“Evelyn Eleanor Mercer-Vance is the sole surviving direct lineal custodian of Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer Senior.”
“Which means under federal maritime chancery law…”
Judge Mercer pointed her cane toward me:
“…Evelyn Mercer is the registered, sovereign fee-simple owner of Conduit Ten.”
“And under Section Nine of the Rivers and Harbors Act of Eighteen-Ninety-Nine…”
“No commercial lease…”
“No private equity conveyance…”
“And no Swiss defense transfer can be executed without the wet-ink consent of the registered fee-simple owner.”
Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance slowly, agonizingly rose from his leather executive chair.
He stood six feet three inches tall, his black judicial robe hanging from his broad shoulders as if his skeleton had just been liquefied by high-pressure steam.
His silver hair was disheveled; his eyes were wild, burning with an unholy, volcanic fury that stripped away forty years of aristocratic supremacy:
“It doesn’t matter what an antique codicil says, Eleanor!” Arthur roared, his voice shaking the acoustic baffles of the vault:
“I am the Chief Justice of the United States!”
“Under Article Three of the United States Constitution, the judicial power of the United States is vested exclusively in this Court!”
“No common financial administrator, no naval admiral, and no sterile housewife has the statutory authority to question an executive order countersigned by this bench!”
Arthur Vance lunged across the granite table, his manicured hands hooked into claws aimed directly at my throat:
“I will have the United States Marshals Service purged!”
“I will have the Department of Defense sealed under Title Fifty Executive Secrecy!”
“And as for your stolen embryo in Chicago, Evelyn…?”
Arthur bared his teeth in an ugly, dying sneer:
“…I will have the federal court unseal a warrant that declares that bastard a non-person before the morning recess!”
