The Patriot Threat (23 page)

“How would they know where Kim is?”

He shrugged. “Probably because they’ve been watching him, too. Just keep alert.”

“I always do.”

“Yeah, like you did back on the dock in Venice.”

“Did saying that make you feel better?”

“Actually, it did. But let’s get real, okay? How much experience do you have facing down a kill squad? This isn’t a bunch of high-steppin’ tax evaders. These folks will really hurt you.”

She stared him down. “I know how to use a gun. I can take care of myself.”

He chuckled. “Lady, you got no idea.”

“Just follow my lead,” she said, “and we’ll be fine.”

“Here’s a news flash. Pappy doesn’t take orders.”

“Pappy isn’t in charge. I am.”

“Since when?”

Male abruptness seemed an occupational hazard. Of late, though, the female kind had begun to raise its ugly head. Her last two partners had been women, both loose cannons, both trying to stand out in what they believed to be a man’s world. So they took risks. Made mistakes. She hated the description
a man’s world.
Women could succeed. She was living proof of that, now working directly for the Treasury secretary on a top-secret mission. All you had to do was play by the rules, do as you were told, and deliver results. That always paid dividends, regardless of your sex. Everything about this mission had been explained to her in detail. She got it. The stakes were high. And she knew what had to be done, this Southern cowboy and a retired guy named Pappy be damned.

She. Was. In. Charge.

On the flight over she’d managed to learn a little about Luke Daniels. Washington had emailed that he was ex-military, special forces, decorated, with several overseas tours. He’d worked for the Magellan Billet going on two years and had the good fortune to be the nephew of the president of the United States. Which dropped him several notches on her list of respect. No one had ever helped her climb the ladder, and she resented any and all who took shortcuts.

“We need to get to the ferry dock,” she said. “Before this storm arrives.”

*   *   *

Malone waited for Howell to explain.

“Larks told me about an original sheet he found in the Treasury archives, all crumpled up. As soon as I heard what he had to say, it all made sense. We know that Mellon met with Roosevelt on New Year’s Eve 1936. That comes from the diary of David Finley—one of Mellon’s closest people—published in the 1970s. The meeting was to finalize the National Gallery of Art, but Mellon gave something to Roosevelt, which the president crumpled up and tossed away.”

“You think it’s the same piece of paper?”

“If not, it’s one heck of a coincidence.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

“That page has random numbers on it. Larks scanned it and sent it to me.”

“Then it’s within Larks’ email account, or on a computer at Larks’ house?”

Howell shook his head. “The old guy was paranoid as hell. He told me he sent it from somewhere else. He didn’t say by whom or from where, and I didn’t ask. All my email accounts are under false names. A copy is stored on one of them. It’s some kind of code, but I couldn’t crack it. I really wanted to see the original, so he brought it over. That’s part of what that Korean just took with him.”

Which called into question his decision to allow Kim to walk away. Stephanie and the president’s orders had been clear. Retrieve the documents.

“There’s also a copy of a 1913 report from the solicitor general in that satchel. Larks sent me a scan of that, too. It’s significant because it tells the secretary of state that he can pretty much do whatever he wants relative to declaring a constitutional amendment valid. It references a previous memo from the solicitor general. That previous memo, I believe, is the smoking gun. It’s the one that lays out all the problems. But Larks never could find it in the archives.”

He understood. “You think Mellon took it?”

“It’s entirely possible.”

“How in the world do you know about any of this? It seems all of the important information was sealed away. How did you piece it together?”

“I first read about this on the Internet. There’s a lot of crazy stuff about the 16th Amendment. For decades people have tried to convince courts that the income tax is illegal. Was Ohio a state at the time the amendment was ratified? Some say no. I disagree. It was. Others say that the amendment did not specifically repeal previous contradictory clauses of the Constitution, therefore it’s invalid. That’s ridiculous. Still more say that the filing of a tax return violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination, or that it’s a ‘taking’ and cannot be imposed ‘without just compensation.’ One guy argued that the 16th Amendment was unconstitutional since it violated the 13th Amendment’s prohibition against ‘involuntary servitude.’ Original, but nuts. None of those are the way.”

“You a lawyer?”

“Hell, no, they’re useless. I’m just a guy who’s read an awful lot on one subject. Read several hundred books on the same thing and you’ll get a feel for how much the so-called experts don’t know.”

“So what’s the way to win the fight?”

“Let me tell you what I found in Tennessee.”

He listened as Howell told him about a trip to Knoxville that a friend of his made about a month ago, to the state archives. They picked the state at random, one of 42 that supposedly ratified the 16th Amendment. In his certification declaration of 1913, Secretary of State Philander Knox noted that Tennessee approved the 16th Amendment on April 7, 1911. Records showed that the amendment itself was transmitted for action to the governor on January 13, 1911. On January 25 a ratification resolution was introduced in the state senate.

“Right there,” Howell said, “we found a problem. A provision of the Tennessee Constitution specifically said that no constitutional amendment could be introduced for ratification unless the legislature in office at the time was elected
after
the amendment had been submitted. Don’t ask me why they have that rule. It’s weird, I know. But it was state law at the time. In their constitution, no less. But they just ignored it and plowed ahead.”

Howell then explained how the Tennessee legislature violated its own procedural rules, which provided that bills be read once, on three different days, in the House, then if passed submitted to the Senate for consideration.

And vice versa.

“That wasn’t done with this ratification resolution. Even more serious, the Tennessee Constitution at the time forbade the legislature from conveying any new taxing powers on anyone that affected the people of the state. Yet they did it anyway, giving Congress the power to tax income without appropriation. That was definitely new. Then, to cap it off, there’s no record that the state senate ever voted on ratification. Zero. Not a thing. So how did it get approved? And how did the U.S. secretary of state notch Tennessee in the yes column?”

The lawyer inside Malone searched for a loophole, some straw to grasp that might explain those errors, but there were none. Legislation had to be passed precisely according to law. To omit or ignore any part of the process would be absolutely fatal. And with a proposed constitutional amendment? “Almost” would never be good enough.

“And get this,” Howell said. “There’s not a single sheet of original documentation about any of that anywhere in the Tennessee archives. It’s all gone. My friend pieced this together from secondary sources, and a real helpful clerk who knew her way around those old records.”

“So none of that does you a bit of good.”

Howell shook his head. “Not a drop. I need evidence. I think that other memo, the one Larks could not find, is my ticket to freedom. Before I was indicted, I made fifty-plus Freedom of Information requests to the feds. Most of the stuff they gave me was useless, but every once in a while I’d get a tidbit here and there. That friend of mine, he’s since made trips to four other state capitols, searched their archives and found the same thing. Sometimes there’d be original paperwork, but most times it was gone. As if someone came along and cleaned it out. In some of the records you could see where pages had been razor-cut out of minute books.”

He shifted the information into context and allowed it to float loosely through his mind.

Things were beginning to make sense.

And his problem had grown.

*   *   *

Kim read the memorandum that Paul Larks had provided to the American Treasury secretary.

I have made a careful examination of all documents relative to any claim of moneys owed to the heirs of Haym Salomon. It appears that documentation of the debts was in fact turned over, by Salomon’s widow, to the Pennsylvania treasurer in 1785. That documentation ultimately made its way to Alexander Hamilton, who seems to have taken no action relative to it. Those papers remained in the national archives until the latter part of the 19th century, when they were returned to the Treasury Department, along with several thousand other records. But they are no longer contained within Treasury archives, whether classified or not. Without the actual commercial instruments, signed by the requisite parties, there is no way to properly evaluate whether any claim of repayment to the heirs of Haym Salomon is valid.

Contained, though, within the scant few documents that do mention the Salomon claim was some disturbing information relative to the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. Of particular note was a memorandum from the then solicitor general to the then secretary of state, Philander Knox, which specifically states that there were concerns associated with the ratification process. There was a specific reference to the state of Kentucky. So, in an effort to test the validity of what was written, I personally traveled to Frankfort and examined what records existed in the Kentucky archives. That investigation revealed that the resolution for ratification of the 16th Amendment passed in the state house (first on January 26, 1910, then again on February 10, 1910) and the one considered in the state senate (first on February 9, 1910, then again on February 11, 1910) were different in wording. Even more disturbing, the actual vote for ratification in the state senate (which occurred for the last time on February 11, 1910) was 9 for and 22 against. But the transmittal memorandum from Kentucky to the secretary of state indicated that the vote for ratification in the state senate was 27 for and 2 against. Incredibly, though rejected, the ratification measure actually made its way out of the state senate and to the governor’s desk. But the measure was vetoed (on February 11, 1910). Never again was ratification considered by the Kentucky legislature. No override of that veto occurred. Yet Kentucky is noted as having ratified the 16th Amendment on February 8, 1910. My visit to the state archives also brought to light one other disturbing fact. Many of the original records are missing. House and senate journal entries, the actual ratification resolution, and the governor’s veto message are no longer there. What I learned came from unofficial secondary sources.

It is clear to me that Kentucky may have never validly ratified the 16th Amendment. This fact was brought to the attention of Secretary of State Knox, who, in 1913, apparently made no attempt to investigate the matter. Knox seems to have ignored a previous communication from the solicitor general that outlined even more concerns. That particular memorandum, which would be dated February 13, 1913, could not be located in our archives. I recommend that this entire question be given a full and complete inquiry.

He glanced up at Hana. “It seems, my dear, that we may have some of what we came for.”

He found the only original page among all of the copies.

A single mangled sheet.

In his conversations with Larks, before he was apparently perceived as a threat, Larks had told him about a crumpled piece of paper with numbers. Some kind of code that Anan Wayne Howell thought had been given to the American president Franklin Roosevelt by Andrew Mellon. Was what he now held that same piece of paper?
The key?
That’s how Larks had said Howell described it. What else could it be?

“Have you given thought to our exit from this boat?” he asked her.

She nodded.

He listened as she explained.

The woman named Jelena lay on the bed, still half dazed from the drugs Hana had administered.

But he’d brought some stimuli along, too.

“Wake her up enough that we can lead her,” he said. “We’ll take her with us. She could come in handy.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Malone ticked off his options, deciding on the best course. He imagined Kim was ensconced within one of the ferry’s many cabins. It wouldn’t be hard to determine which one. A hundred euros to one of the stewards should garner the information. He doubted the booking was under Kim’s real name, but how many fifty-plus-year-old Koreans could there be on board? Someone had seen him or maybe helped with luggage. He’d find that someone. If not, he’d just wait at the gangway.

“Larks got into a lot of trouble,” Howell was saying. “That memo from 1913, where the secretary of state was told by the solicitor general of concerns, is compelling. Kentucky was specifically mentioned. Larks went to Kentucky and found problems, just like my friend discovered in Tennessee. He also found missing originals. When he reported this, Larks was ordered to forget everything he saw and knew. But the old man wouldn’t let it go. Finally they made him sign a nondisclosure agreement and retired him out. He had no choice—it was either that or lose his pension.”

“But Larks told you everything.”

Howell nodded. “And he was bringing the proof so I could do something about it.”

The drone of the engines dulled and the ship slowed. He’d already noticed Croatia out the windows, a few miles away, indicating that they were approaching their destination.

“We’ll be docking soon,” he said.

“What do you plan to do?”

That was a good question, but he wanted Howell to know, “If what you’re saying is true, I’ll make sure it doesn’t get buried.”

“And that should make me feel better?”

He debated whether to tell Howell about a presidential pardon, then decided to hold that piece of information a little longer.