***
CHAPTER 5: THE AUDIT ON THE BLACK GRANITE
I walked down the twenty-foot center aisle of Committee Room S-412.
My leather boots left dark, geometric tread marks across the polished greenstone floorboards: crunch… tack… crunch.
I stopped at the head of the black granite table, two paces from the Senator’s leather throne.
I did not draw a weapon.
I reached inside my grandfather’s tweed jacket, pulled out the thick, faded blue vellum envelope containing the original 1944 Mercer Sovereign Charter, and slammed it flat atop the Senator’s seventy-four-million-dollar Swiss conveyance deed:
THUD.
The heavy granite table seemed to absorb the blow with a dull, subterranean groan:
“Look at the vellum, Julian,” I said softly:
“Look at the signature on line four.”
Senator Julian 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…” Julian gasped, his voice cracking into that thin, pathetic squeak:
“Daniel… Daniel swore to me that you signed the voluntary waiver at L’Ambroisie!”
“Daniel lied to you, Julian,” Marcus Vance spoke from behind my shoulder:
“Daniel was too busy eating raspberry buttercream off a silver serving tray to notice that his wife had brought the United States Navy to dinner.”
Marcus opened the unsealed federal indictment, turning the vellum pages with a sharp, terrifying snap:
“Under Section Fourteen-B of the Mercer Admiralty Founding Indenture of Nineteen-Forty-Four…”
“The chief certifying surveyor who established the sovereign defense conduits of the Atlantic seaboard… retains an un-divided, un-alienable fifty-one percent legal equity in the property in perpetuity.”
“Transferable to his surviving lineal heirs ab initio.”
Marcus leaned forward, resting his fists on the granite table:
“Sarah Mercer did not sign a divorce waiver tonight, Julian.”
“The document Daniel signed was a Confession of Judgment and an Emergency Receivership Petition.”
“Which means under federal maritime chancery law…”
Marcus pointed his finger toward me:
“…Sarah Mercer is the sole, lawful custodian of Conduit Nine.”
“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.”
Julian Vance slowly, agonizingly rose from his leather executive chair.
He stood six feet two inches tall, his midnight-blue suit 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, Marcus!” Julian roared, his voice shaking the acoustic baffles of the vault:
“I am the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee!”
“Under Article One, Section Six of the United States Constitution—the Speech and Debate Clause—no federal grand jury, no civil litigator, and no museum archivist has the statutory power to question an act of legislative oversight executed within this Capitol!”
Julian 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 Justice sealed under Title Fifty Executive Secrecy!”
“And as for your little historical deeds, Sarah…?”
Julian bared his teeth in an ugly, dying sneer:
“…I will have the National Archives burn every scrap of paper with your grandfather’s name on it before the morning recess!”
