Sophie, membership in the Highest Order is hereditary, as you know. I wish you to take my place. I can see you saying, but Dad, there’s never been a woman in the Order. You’re wrong, there have. Madame Curie, for one. Ansonia Rothschild, for another. You are the first woman in the new millennium, true, but not the last. It seems to me the women of the Order are the true heroes. We men have sat back and blathered for a century.
—
SHE SMILED, LOOKED at her brother, all spiffy in his jumpsuit, sitting in a chair behind a small table, the walls behind him blank, painted a bilious green, and he was grinning.
“Are you okay with this?”
“Of course. Dad always understood both of us very well.”
Sophie said, “Nicholas, are you a part of the Order as well?”
“Eventually, it seems. Alfie Stanford named my father to lead the Order. You’ll meet him when you fly to London for an Order meeting next week. You’ll like him. And you’ll be able to trust him completely.”
She nodded, then read the rest of her father’s letter.
If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I will ask to come back as a first-edition Mark Twain. Sophie, take care of me if you chance upon me. Good-bye, my children.
—
“HE’LL MAKE A great first edition,” Sophie said, and swallowed down the curious mix of laughter and tears. She picked up the other letter, yellowed with age. She opened it carefully, and saw the date, written in a curly, old-fashioned script, and the words, in German, which she could translate easily.
She looked up and a huge smile bloomed. “Adam, Dad never showed me our great-grandmother’s final letter to Josef, and now he’s passed it down to us.”
She read:
26 August 1917
My darling Josef:
I have little time. The kaiser’s men are nearly here. We leave as I put this letter in Leo’s pocket and send him on his way to Denmark then to Edinburgh with his old nurse, since now it is far too dangerous for him to travel with me. You know where they will be. There is no choice now, I must be the one to get Madame Curie’s key and instruction book to England, to William Pearce, and the wondrous gift of the kaiser’s gold bars.
I will sail immediately on the Victoria, and will meet you in Scotland. When you see me I will be wearing your spare uniform and you and Leo will laugh and we will be together again. We will beat the kaiser, I know it in my heart, and what we do will end this unspeakable war.
Josef, I love you more than my life. Soon now we will be together again and safe—
Ansonia
—
THE ONLY SOUND in the room was the crackle of the old paper as Sophie slowly refolded Ansonia’s letter.
Adam said, “I knew she was a hero, but I never realized—it’s because of her that we’re all still walking this earth.”
Sophie said, “It’s so sad, to have it all end for her, dying entombed on that submarine.”
Alex said, “No wonder your dad was so passionate about finding the sub. He was a brave and good man. He always did want to right the world’s wrongs.” He took Sophie’s hand. “It’s in the blood, Sophie, it’s in the blood.”
Nicholas said, “It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a first-edition Mark Twain making its way to Ariston’s as we speak.”
—
AS THEY RODE the elevator down, Mike said, “This has to be the most incredible story I’ve ever heard.”
Nicholas smiled at her. “The most incredible story you’ve heard—so far.”
“Maybe you have some lovely mysterious skeletons in the Drummond closet?”
“Oh, Agent Caine. You have no idea.”
As they walked out of the building, Nicholas’s mobile screamed out the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.”
He glanced at the screen, arched an eyebrow at Mike, and answered quickly. “Savich? Is everything okay?”
Savich’s deep voice came through the speakers. “No, Nicholas, it’s not. I’ve cleared it with Zachery. I need you and Mike to fly to D.C. right away. We have a big case for you two.”
“Both of us?” Mike asked.
“Oh, yes,” Savich said. “Both of you.”
—
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have frequently been asked how I could reconcile family life with the scientific career. Well, it has not been easy.
MARIE CURIE
Marie Curie was an intensely private and brilliant woman, winner of two Nobel Prizes, in 1902 and 1911 (in Physics and Chemistry), who discovered both radium and polonium and developed the theory of radioactivity. Her husband and collaborator, Pierre, an extraordinary physicist himself, helped to make sure she got the credit she deserved for her discoveries. She gave birth to a future Nobel Prize winner as well.
Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1867, studied in Paris, barely surviving on very little money, met a professor at the Sorbonne who was a confirmed bachelor, and together they dazzled the world. She died of aplastic anemia, brought on by her exposure to radiation in 1934.
Curie also worked on the front lines in World War I to help bring the benefit of X-rays to the wounded. She was one of the first modern “open-source” scientists, who didn’t trademark her discoveries because she believed knowledge should be shared. And to top it off: she was the first woman professor at the Sorbonne.
A derivative of one of Curie’s discoveries, polonium-210, is famously used for political assassinations. It is a sure and painful death. And this is where truth and fiction diverge. Curie never created any sort of weaponized polonium, but for the sake of the story, she does. When she realizes the enormity of its destructive power, she stops work immediately and hides it away where no one will ever find it. Nor was she a member of the Highest Order, since, alas, the Order did not exist.
The actual Marie Curie was far more impressive. She was an incredible scientist, an incredible human being.
Marie Curie is, of all celebrated beings, the only one whom fame has not corrupted.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Catherine Coulter, The Lost Key
(Series: A Brit in the FBI # 2)
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