Now he ran his fingers through his thick mane of black hair, moving on to his most serious mode. Mike was about to try to bluff her out of some information. "I've got a homicide to solve. The lieutenant told me those guys were a real threat," he said, flashing Mercer a glance. "Now I'm wasting precious time trying to catch up with what they already know."

Lori caught his sense of urgency. She wanted to be helpful. "Are-are we talking about the same people, do you think?"

"They were here to talk to your boss about Farouk, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Let's make sure we're on the same wavelength. Which coins from his collection were you focusing on?" Mike asked, flipping through his notepad as though looking for specific names to match against things she said.

"I gave them a bunch of information-some silver pieces from the Civil War period, some gold ingots from San Francisco, circa 1849. The only kudos I got from my boss was for the research I came up with on the Double Eagle."

Mike slapped the pad against his knee. "Damn if I don't owe you for this one, Lori. I think we've already got all we need about his Civil War items. It's the other two we're after as well. Ever solve a murder before?"

"No, no, I haven't." She was grave as a stone now.

"Most satisfying thing you can ever be involved in. Give us what you got on the ingots and the big bird. I've always wanted a partner like you."

"Sure," Lori Alvino said. She spent the next ten minutes explaining the provenance and descriptions of some of the objects Farouk had purchased that had come out of the Gold Rush. Although handsome and somewhat unusual, they were far too plentiful-and probably too large-to have been part of McQueen Ransome's stash.

"Did you ever hear of Max Mehl?" Alvino asked.

The three of us shook our heads.

"He was a dealer. From Texas, I think. He's the one who first made contact with King Farouk about this fabulous twenty-dollar gold piece that he wanted to sell."

We listened carefully as she started to tell the story. "Mehl knew about the king's appetite for the rare and beautiful," she went on. "He not only convinced Farouk of the uniqueness of the coin, but also guaranteed that he could get it out of the country because of its special designation."

"How did he manage that?" I asked.

"Somehow, Mehl made a call to Treasury the very same day that Farouk expressed interest in the coin. The director of the Mint herself carried the Double Eagle to the Castle."

"Was that typical?" Mercer asked.

"Are you kidding? There was nothing routine about this bird's flight."

The more she talked about it, the more convinced I was that we were going in the right direction.

"The same day," Alvino said, "the curator examined the piece, declared it of special value dating back to before the presidential order of a decade earlier. To tell you the truth, he was under such pressure that my boss thinks he didn't even know what he was signing."

"But he agreed to request the licensing that made the coin valid?" I asked.

"Through ignorance, probably. No sign of a bribe, but that hasn't stopped some folks from believing there was one. Either way, he asked for the license-or the monetization-that turned the twenty-dollar piece into a small fortune."

"From the secretary of the treasury himself?"

"Exactly. Then the king's representatives took possession of the coin, packed it securely in the diplomatic pouch, and delivered it personally to Cairo, to Farouk's pleasure palace."

"What was the timing on all this?"

"That's what's so ironic. The coins were minted in 1933, as you know, and a bunch of them stolen a few years thereafter. Thousands more were melted down because we went off the gold standard."

"Sure."

"The royal legation picked Farouk's Double Eagle up from the Mint on March eleventh, 1944," Alvino said, looking down at her notes. "Exactly one week later is when the Secret Service found out about the plans that the Stark brothers had to auction another of the supposedly nonexistent treasures. They were furious."

"Did our government ever try to get the coin back from Farouk?"

"Yes, Detective. My predecessors knew that the license had been obtained from Morgenthau in error. They tried diplomatic measures to get it back," Alvino said. "But think of the date. We were in the middle of the Second World War. Egypt was a pivotal piece of the map, controlling the Suez Canal and passage to the Indian Ocean. Nobody wanted to upset the applecart for a purloined Double Eagle."

How trivial a single piece of stolen gold, valued then at twenty dollars, would have seemed to diplomats in the middle of a raging war.

"And after the war ended?" Mercer asked.

She fingered papers on her desk. "I can show you the letter that the man who had my job drafted then, asking the king for the return of the Double Eagle. Unfortunately, protocol required that he send the document up to the State Department, to get approval to correspond with a foreign government. The powers-that-be at State denied his request to do that."

"Why so?"

"'Politically inadvisable' is the language they used. The Arab-Israeli war in 1948 was the next international hot spot, and Farouk was widely unpopular-at home and abroad-by then. And he was way too distracted to be interested in the return of the Eagle."

"You think anybody could have predicted its future worth in those days?"

She laughed. "Maybe to the tune of a few thousand dollars. Seven million was an astronomical figure back then. Nobody would have believed it possible."

"Seven million's still pretty far over the top, as far as I'm concerned," Mike said. "So the fat boy gets deposed in 1952. He's exiled to…?"

"Rome," Alvino answered. "He loved la dolce vita. As a wild young man, he used to be called the Night Crawler."

"Yeah," Mike said, "so we've heard."

"Old habits die hard. He still spent his nights club hopping-the Hunt Club, the Piccolo Slam, the Boîte Pigalle, the Via Veneto. Flipped over to Monaco for Grace Kelly's wedding to his royal buddy, Prince Rainier. Ever the playboy."

Mike said. "So when he fled from Egypt, does anybody know whether that was with or without the bird?"

"Good question," Alvino answered. "And I'm not sure that anyone really does know the answer. The Egyptian revolutionaries-led by General Nasser-made Farouk leave most of his toys behind. But it's clear that in the months before his expulsion he got out enough money, enough jewels to sell, and some of his smaller treasures to allow him to live like a king, even in exile, for the rest of his life."

"The man without a country. But maybe with a Double Eagle," Mike said, thinking about the chronology. "So, he got the coin in 1944, left Egypt in 1952-and the coin finally surfaced when?"

"Not for almost fifty years, Mike. People assumed it had been left behind in Cairo when Sotheby's included it for sale in an auction catalog of Farouk's treasures in 1955. As soon as the Secret Service agents attached to the Mint saw that listing, they directed the American consul in Cairo to have the government remove the Double Eagle from the auction and return it to the U.S."

"So it never went on the block?"

"Correct. But we didn't get it back then either," Alvino said. "Nasser's aides claimed it was all a big mistake. That Farouk had taken it with him. That no one in Egypt had seen it in years. It disappeared completely-no explanation, no clue, no trace."

"The one the Stark brothers sold at auction in 2002-Farouk's seven-million-dollar Eagle-when did that get back into this country?" Mike asked.

"Not until 1996, fifty years after it was delivered to the king in Egypt."

"Who brought it in?" I asked, curious about its circuitous route home.

"There was a prominent coin dealer from England who flew in with it and arranged what he thought was going to be a private meeting with an American counterpart. Breakfast at the Waldorf-Astoria."