Night Probe! - Cussler Clive (онлайн книги бесплатно полные txt) 📗

"Above the generator chamber, I think he said."

He looked puzzled. "Did he elaborate?"

"Then Charles mumbled something about 'great peril for Canada if the wrong people discover'. "

"Yes, discover what?"

She made a helpless gesture. "He broke off because of the pain."

"That was all?"

"No, he wanted you to consult with somebody called Max Roubaix."

"Max Roubaix?" he repeated, his expression skeptical. "Are you certain that was the name he used?"

She stared at the ceiling, thinking back, then she nodded. "Yes, I'm positive."

"How odd."

Without further elaboration he reentered the bathroom, stood in front of a large full-length mirror and struck a pose known in muscle control jargon as a vacuum. Exhaling and sucking in his rib section, he expanded his rib cage, straining until the network of blood vessels seemed to erupt beneath the skin's surface. Next he did a side chest shot, left hand on right wrist, arm against upper torso.

Henri Villon studied his reflection with critical concern. His physique was as ideal as physically possible. Then he stared at the chiseled features of the face, the Roman-style nose, the indifferent gray eyes. When he dropped all expression the features became hard, with a satanic twist to the mouth. It was as though a savage was lurking beneath the sculptured marble of a statue.

The wife and daughter of Henri Villon, his Liberal party colleagues and half the population of Canada would never in their wildest fantasies have believed he was leading a double life. A respected member of Parliament and minister of internal affairs in the open, he walked the shadows as the veiled head of the Free Quebec Society, the radical movement dedicated to the full independence of French Quebec.

Danielle came up behind him, a sheet wrapped around her, toga-fashion, and traced his biceps with her fingers. "Do you know him?"

He relaxed and took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. "Roubaix?"

She nodded.

"Only by reputation."

"Who is he?"

"Better to ask that question in the past tense," he said, taking the brown-haired wig with graying sides and neatly placing it on his scalp. "If my memory serves me, Max Roubaix was a mass murderer who swung from the gallows over a hundred years ago."

FEBRUARY 1989

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Heidi Milligan seemed out of place among the students grouped about the tables of the Princeton University archive reading room. The neatly tailored uniform of a navy lieutenant commander adorned a svelte body measuring six feet from manicured toenails to the roots of her naturally ash-blond hair.

To the young men in the room she was a welcome distraction from their studies. She knew instinctively that she was being stripped to her skin in their imaginations. But since she'd passed thirty, she'd become indifferent, though not too indifferent.

"Looks like you're on another allnighter Commander."

Heidi looked up into the ever-smiling face of Mildred Gardner, the matronly head archivist of the university. "Allnighter?"

"Late study. In my day we called it burning the midnight oil."

Heidi leaned back in her chair. "I've got to steal whatever time I can to work on my dissertation."

Mildred blew the bangs of her nineteen-fortyish pageboy hairstyle out of her eyes and sat down. "An attractive girl like you can't spend all your nights studying. You should find yourself a good man and live it up once in a while."

"First I'll get my doctorate in history, then I'll live it up."

"You can't get passionate with a piece of paper that says you're a Ph.D."

"Maybe the sound of Dr. Milligan turns me on," Heidi laughed. "If I'm to advance my career in the navy, I'll need the credentials."

"Sounds to me like you like to compete with the opposite sex."

"Sex has nothing to do with it. My first love is the navy. What's wrong with that?"

Mildred made a gesture of surrender. "No profit in arguing with a stubborn female, and hardheaded sailor to boot." She rose and looked down at the documents scattered on the table. "Anything I can pull from the shelves for you?"

"I'm researching Woodrow Wilson papers that deal with the navy during his administration."

"How horribly dull. Why that subject?"

"I guess you might say I'm intrigued by covering an untapped sideline of history."

"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?"