Gray looked at her. She met his gaze and lifted a single brow, her countenance innocent. As she turned away, he noted a small scar under her right ear, half hidden by a fall of black hair. He was sure it was new. Wherever her investigations into the Guild had taken her, it had plainly been a hard path.
Following the curator through a maze of halls, they ended up in a small room dominated by a conference table and lined with microfiche readers along one wall. Gray found two people already waiting there. One was a young college-aged woman with flawless ebony skin. She could have stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. The black pencil dress that hugged her figure only accentuated her appearance. Her perfectly made-up face suggested she hadn’t been lounging at home when she was suddenly called to work.
“My assistant, Sharyn Dupre. She’s fluent in five languages, but her native tongue is French.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” she said, her voice silkily deep, tinged with a slight Arabic accent.
Gray shook her hand. From Algeria, he surmised from her lilting accent. Though the North African country had shaken off the yoke of the French colonists in the early sixties, the language still persisted among its people.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Gray said.
“No trouble at all,” came a gruff response from the far side of the table. The other figure waiting for them was well known to Gray. Monk Kokkalis sat with his feet up on the table, dressed in sweats and a ball cap. His face shone brightly under the fluorescents. He cocked his head toward the slender assistant. “Especially considering the company at hand.”
The assistant bowed her head shyly, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
Monk had beaten them to the National Archives. Of course Sigma command was only a short walk across the National Mall from here. Kat had insisted that her husband join Gray this evening. Though Gray suspected the assignment had more to do with getting Monk out from under her feet than with offering backup for this investigation.
They all took seats at the table, except for Heisman, who remained standing, clasping his hands behind his back. “Perhaps now you could tell me why we’ve all been summoned here at such a late hour.”
Gray opened the manila file in front of him, slipped out the letter, written in French, and slid it across the table toward Sharyn. Before she could touch it, Heisman swooped in and took it with one hand while securing his reading glasses in place with the other.
“What’s this?” he asked, his head nodding up and down as he scanned the handful of pages. He plainly did not read French, but his eyes widened as he recognized the signature at the bottom of the letter. “Benjamin Franklin.” He glanced to Gray. “This appears to be in his own handwriting.”
“Yes, that’s already been verified and the letter translated—”
Heisman cut him off. “But this is a photocopy. Where’s the original?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me!” the curator blurted out. “I’ve read everything ever written by Franklin. But I’ve never seen anything like this. These drawings alone . . .” He slapped a page on the table and stabbed at one of the hand-drawn sketches.
It showed a bald eagle, wings outspread, gripping an olive branch in one claw and a bundle of arrows in the other. Clearly it was still a work in progress. Hen-scratched side notes, indecipherable, pointed here and there at the figure.
“This appears to be an early rendition of the Great Seal of the United States. But this letter is dated 1778, years before this draft of the Seal appeared in the public record around 1782. Surely this is some sort of a forgery.”
“It’s not,” Gray said.
“May I?” Sharyn gently retrieved the pages. “You said you’ve translated these, but I’d be happy to confirm the accuracy of that work.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Gray said.
Heisman paced alongside the table. “I’m assuming the content of this letter is what triggered this late-night meeting. Perhaps you could explain why something two centuries old could not wait until morning.”
Seichan spoke for the first time. Her voice was quiet, but coldly threatening. “Because blood has been spilled to secure these pages.”
Her words sobered Heisman enough to get him to sit down at the table. “Fine. Tell me about the letter.”
Gray began, “It was a correspondence between Franklin and a French scientist. A man named Archard Fortescue. He was a member of a scientific group put together by Franklin. The American Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the group,” Heisman said. “It was an offshoot of the American Philosophical Society, but more specifically geared to the gathering of new scientific ideas. They were best known for their early archaeological investigations into Native American relics. In the end, they became almost obsessed with such things. Digging up graves and Indian mounds all across the colonies.”