James Twining - The Double Eagle

Baxter slipped out from behind his desk and over to the door which he held open for her.

‘After you.’

‘Thank you, Miles.’

It was only a short walk to the Hall which revealed itself to be a long narrow gallery, flanked on each side by wall mounted rectangular display cases, their contents glittering under the lights. Baxter headed to one of the cabinets in the middle of the room and stopped next to it. Two coins were set apart from the others and lay side by side in a specially constructed chemically inert plastic container, each displaying a different face against the green felt.

‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ Baxter’s hushed voice rippled through the empty room. Jennifer bent forward until she started to fog the glass, the ghostly fingerprints of earlier visitors materialising with each breath and then immediately vanishing.

‘The actual design was commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 from the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. You can see his initials there, just below the date. He wanted to try and capture something of the majesty and elegance of the coins of the Ancient World. I think he succeeded, don’t you?’

She sensed Baxter lowering his face and staring at her as she gazed at the coins, moving his head closer to hers, almost whispering in her ear.

‘As you can see, one side features a large eagle in flight, while the obverse depicts Lady Liberty, a torch in her right hand and an olive branch in the left, symbolising peace and enlightenment. She’s beautiful isn’t she?’

She felt Baxter’s hand brush against her neck and instinctively drew away with an annoyed shrug of her shoulders. She immediately wished she hadn’t. The hurt look on Baxter’s face showed his realisation that this, rather than their earlier flirtatious exchange, perhaps better reflected her true feelings for him. When he spoke next, his voice was tinged with anger.

‘What is this really all about, Agent Browne?’

‘This is about whether my coin is a fake, Mr Baxter.’ Jennifer made no attempt to be friendly now. It was too late for that.

‘Well, it’s impossible to say without running some tests. It’s clearly the same design and looks real enough, but we would need to analyse the coin, take some samples, compare it to our originals. It could take days, weeks even.’ He tailed off.

‘I understand.’ Jennifer nodded. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Baxter. It has been very useful. The lab will be in touch about those tests.’ She turned to leave but Baxter reached out and grabbed her shoulder, his fingers scrabbling against the black material.

‘Jennifer – wait.’ His voice was strained, pleading. ‘You can’t just go like that. Where did you get that coin? I have to know.’

She smiled.

‘I’m sorry Mr Baxter, but that information is classified. A small matter of national security; I’m sure you understand.’

FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia19th July – 12:30pm

‘So we still don’t know if it’s a fake or not? This guy, Baxter, he couldn’t help with that?’

Corbett sat down on one of the wooden benches that lined the shaded banks of the Potomac in this part of the FBI compound and placed a polystyrene cup full of thick black coffee down on the ground between his feet. Jennifer sat down next to him, her sandwich still in its plastic wrapper. Lunch could wait.

‘Not without sending it to the lab for tests which I’ll do this afternoon. But he did mention something else.’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s probably nothing…’

Jennifer noticed Corbett’s forehead creasing. Although he probably had many qualities, she suspected that patience was very definitely not one of them.

‘It’s just that Baxter said that all nine of the coins recovered by the Secret Services in the 1940s were destroyed. But I spoke to someone I know over at the Treasury on the way out here who owed me a favour. He told me, off the record, that although four of the nine coins recovered by the Secret Services in the 1940s were destroyed, the other five were put into storage back at the Philadelphia Mint before being moved to Fort Knox about ten years ago when they re-inventoried the place. As far as he knows, they’re still there.’

Corbett nodded slowly and settled back into the bench, the sunlight seeping under the branches of the overhanging tree. Jennifer studied his face and noticed the total lack of surprise at this latest piece of information. Her eyes widened in realisation.

‘But then, you already knew all that, didn’t you?’ she said slowly.

‘The French doctor who performed the autopsy on Ranieri happened to be a bit of a coin freak,’ Corbett admitted, his eyes fixed on the river, the occasional splash and glittering ripple showing where a fish had risen to the surface and then powered its way back down to the river bed, bending the water with a flick of its tail. ‘He recognised the coin. That’s why we got it back so quickly. I pulled the file. You just pretty much confirmed everything in it.’

‘So what’s this all been about, sir?’ Jennifer fought to control the anger in her voice. She’d thought she was being given a clear run, but Corbett was treating her with the same suspicion as everyone else. ‘Is this some sort of test? Because if it is, I resent…’

Corbett cut her off, his eyes boring into her.

‘You know, there’s a lot of people who think you’re damaged goods. That you’re a liability. That you should have been retired three years ago after the shooting.’

She paused before answering and returned his stare, trying not to let her voice sound too defensive.

‘I can’t help that.’

‘No. But it bugs you.’ He shrugged and turned to face the river again. ‘Me, I think that everyone makes mistakes. It’s how they deal with them that sets them apart. Some just go to pieces and never recover. Others move on and come back twice as strong.’

‘Which do you think I am, sir?’

He paused.

‘It took me two days to get the Treasury to confirm what happened to those other coins. You did it in one phone call. Let’s just say that you don’t strike me as a quitter.’ The hint of a smile crossed his face for the first time that afternoon. ‘The case is yours.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Jennifer stood up, a slight tremor in her voice. This was the sort of chance she had been hoping for. Praying for. ‘I’ll get right on it.’

‘Good.’ He flicked his eyes back round to hers. ‘I want you down in Kentucky first thing in the morning, checking on those coins. I’ll get a plane booked for you.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Jennifer got up and turned to leave, but Corbett called after her.

‘By the way, who bought that Farouk coin in the end? We’re probably going to need to talk to them too.’

Jennifer reached for her notebook and flicked through the first few pages until she found the right entry.

‘According to my Treasury contact several people bid for it. But it went to a Dutch property developer, a private collector.’ She found the name she was looking for and looked up as she said it to see if Corbett recognised it.

‘Darius Van Simson.’

The Marais, 4th Arrondissement, Paris19th July – 6:00pm

‘Vous savez pourquoi on appele ce quartier le Marais?’

His French faultless, Darius Van Simson was sitting behind the large mahogany desk that dominated the right hand side of his office. Circumflex eyebrows over a chopped angular face, his sandy hair and the firm arrow of his goatee were flickering slightly in the stiff breeze from the overhead air conditioning unit. He was sipping whisky from a heavy crystal glass.