Marshall nodded, and a slightly breathless Conservator leaned forward and pressed a code into a little box beside the door. The steel grid opened slowly to allow the three of them to enter the vault. Once they were inside, the Conservator pressed another button, and the door slid back into place.
They paused in front of the great concrete blocks that had been built to house the Declaration of Independence, just as a priest might in front of an altar. Scott checked his watch. It was 9:51.
Mendelssohn pressed the red button and the familiar clanking and whirling sound began as the concrete blocks parted and the massive empty glass casing came slowly into sight. He touched the button again when the frame had reached chest height.
The Archivist and the Conservator walked forward while Scott unzipped the bag. The Archivist took two keys from his jacket pocket and passed one over to his colleague. They immediately set about unlocking the twelve bolts that were evenly spaced around the thick brass rim. Once they had completed the task they leaned over and heaved across the heavy frame until it came to rest like an open book.
Scott removed the container and passed it over to the Archivist. Marshall eased the cap off the top of the cylinder, allowing Mendelssohn to carefully extract the parchment.
Scott watched as the Archivist and the Conservator slowly unpeeled the Declaration of Independence, inch by inch, onto the waiting glass, until the original parchment was finally restored to its rightful place. Scott leaned over and took one last look at the misspelled word before the two men heaved the brass cover back into place.
“My God, the British still have a lot to answer for,” was all the Archivist said.
Calder Marshall and the Conservator quickly tightened up the twelve bolts surrounding the frame and took a step back from the Declaration.
They paused for only a second while Scott checked his watch again. 9:57. He looked up to find Marshall and Mendelssohn hugging each other and jumping up and down like children who had been given an unexpected gift.
Scott coughed. “It’s nine fifty-eight, gentlemen.” The two men immediately reverted to character.
The Archivist walked back over to the concrete blocks. He paused for a moment and then pressed the red button. The massive frame rose, continuing its slow journey upward to the gallery on the ground floor to be viewed by the waiting public.
Calder Marshall turned to face Scott. A flicker of a smile showed his relief. He bowed like a Japanese warrior to indicate that he felt honor had been satisfied. The Conservator shook hands with Scott and then walked over to the door, punched a code into the little box and watched the grid slide open.
Marshall accompanied Scott out into the corridor, up the staircase and back down in the freight elevator to the delivery entrance.
“Thank you, Professor,” he said as they shook hands on the loading dock. Scott loped up the ramp and turned to look back once he had reached the sidewalk. There was no sign of the Archivist.
He jogged across 7th Street and joined Dexter in the waiting car.
“Any problems, Professor?” asked the Deputy Director.
“No. Not unless you count two decent men who look as if they’ve aged ten years in the past two months.”
The tenth chime struck on the Old Post Office Tower clock. The doors of the National Archives swung open and a television crew charged in.
The Deputy Director’s car moved out into the center of Constitution Avenue, where it got caught up between the floats for Tennessee and Texas. A police officer ran across and ordered the driver to pull over into 7th Street.
When the car came to a halt, Dexter wound down his window, smiled at the officer and said, “I’m the Deputy Director of the CIA.”
“And I’m Uncle Sam,” the officer replied as he began writing out a ticket.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Deputy Director of the CIA phoned the Director at home to tell him that it was business as usual at the National Archives. He didn’t mention the traffic ticket.
The Conservator phoned his wife and tried to explain why he hadn’t come home the previous night.
A woman holding a carrier bag with a rope handle contacted the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN on her mobile phone and let him know that she had killed two birds with one stone. She gave the Ambassador an account number for a bank in the Bahamas.
The Director of the CIA rang the Secretary of State and assured him that the document was in place. He avoided saying “back in place.”
Susan Anderson rang Scott to congratulate him on the part he had played in restoring the document to its rightful home. She also mentioned in passing the sad news that she had decided to break off her engagement.
The Iraqi Ambassador to the UN instructed Monsieur Dummond to transfer the sum of nine hundred thousand dollars to the Royal Bank of Canada in the Bahamas and at the same time to close the Al Obaydi account.
The Secretary of State rang the President at the White House to inform him that the press conference scheduled for eleven o’clock that morning had been canceled.
A reporter on the New York Daily News crime beat filed his first-edition copy from a phone booth in an underground garage on 75th Street. The headline read “Mafia Slaying in Manhattan.”
Lloyd Adams’s phone never stopped ringing, as he was continually being offered parts in everything from endorsements to a feature film.
The Archivist did not return a call from one of the President’s Special Assistants at the White House, inviting him to lunch.
A CNN producer called in to the news desk to let them know that it must have been a hoax. Yes, he had verified the spelling of “Brittish,” and only Dan Quayle could have thought it had two t’s.
Scott phoned Hannah and told her how he wanted to spend Independence Day.
