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The Wilson Deception (Fraser and Cook Mystery, Band 2) - Hardcover

Stewart, David O.

 
9780758290694: The Wilson Deception (Fraser and Cook Mystery, Band 2)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0758290691 ISBN 13: 9780758290694
Verlag: Kensington Publishing, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Against the backdrop of the Paris Peace Conference that would remake Europe in the wake of World War I, David O. Stewart reunites Dr. Jamie Fraser and Speed Cook, protagonists of the acclaimed The Lincoln Deception, in an intriguing presidential mystery…

After four years of horror The Great War has ended, and President Woodrow Wilson’s arrival in Paris in December 1918 unites the city in ecstatic celebration. Major Jamie Fraser, an army physician who has spent ten months tending American soldiers, is among the crowd that throngs the Place de la Concorde for Wilson’s visit. As an expert on the Spanish influenza, Fraser is also called in to advise the president’s own doctor on how best to avoid the deadly disease. Despite his robust appearance, Wilson is more frail than the public realizes. And at this pivotal moment in history, with the Allied victors gathering to forge a peace treaty, the president’s health could decide the fate of nations.

While Fraser tries to determine the truth about Wilson’s maladies, he encounters a man he has not seen for twenty years. Speed Cook—ex-professional ball player and advocate for Negro rights—is desperate to save his son Joshua, an army sergeant wrongly accused of desertion. Pledging to help Cook, Fraser approaches Allen Dulles, a charming American spy who is also Wilson’s close aide. Soon Cook and Fraser’s personal quest will dovetail with the dramatic events unfolding throughout Paris, as French premier Georges Clemenceau narrowly survives an assassination attempt and peace negotiations begin to unravel. Rivalries and hidden agendas abound. At stake is not only Joshua Cook’s freedom, but the fragile treaty that may be the only way to stop Europe from plunging into another brutal war.

With a cast of vividly drawn characters that includes T.E. Lawrence, David Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill, David O. Stewart’s fast-paced novel is a riveting and expertly researched blend of history and suspense—illuminating, deftly plotted, and thoroughly satisfying.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David O. Stewart is the author of several works of history, most recently Madison's Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America, which have been awarded the Washington Writing Award and the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize. He lives in Maryland and his website is at www.davidostewart.com.

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Friday, December 13, 1918
 
Major Jamie Fraser could barely breathe as the packed Metro train lurched out of the station for Les Sablons. A hard object— an umbrella handle?—threatened to perforate his left kidney. He squirmed to ease the pressure. The crowd on its way to greet President Wilson’s arrival in Paris was too buoyant for Fraser to complain about a mere kidney. He had another one. The air in the car sagged with the smells of sour tobacco, recent soups, and layers of unlaundered clothes.
 
It wasn’t even five weeks since the armistice ended the war to end all wars, the one that President Wilson promised would make the world safe for democracy. The slogans hadn’t entirely lost their power over Fraser. They were why he signed up to be an army doctor at his advanced age. Or part of why. Over the last ten months in Paris, working fourteen and sixteen hours a day, his sense of mission had shriveled. In its place were the mangled and dying soldiers beyond the reach of his medical skills, which made little dent in the insults inflicted by high explosives, shrapnel, bullets, and poison gas.
 
He helped the men he could, avoided those he couldn’t. At mealtimes, he picked at bad food. Late at night he used bourbon to dull his senses—the sights and smells that assaulted him in every ward and examination room—accepting a hazy doze in lieu of actual sleep, grateful when no agonizing dreams startled him awake. The tide of blood and pus and putrefaction swept in from the stinking trenches in northern France to the cavernous American hospital in Neuilly. There it washed away most of Wilson’s slogans.
 
When the armistice stanched the flood of new casualties, Fraser’s mind began, tentatively, to recall why he came to France. As it cast about for those reasons, it found the slogans. Today he was on his way to celebrate the war’s end with the heaving mass of Parisians. Together, they would cry out fervent hopes for a new world.
 
Climbing the steps from the Concorde Station, Fraser squinted into a gray sky. On his rare ventures out of the hospital, Paris weather seemed to hover within a narrow range. On some days, sharp chills rose from pavement wet with recent drizzle. On other days, the air felt raw with rain about to start. If a bold scrap of sunbeam burst through the clouds, it soon faded like last night’s dream. For him, the City of Lights became the City of Frowns. Distant German guns boomed day and night, occasionally raining shells onto the city, which sometimes cowered, sometimes raged, and sometimes just accepted destruction as part of its life.
 
Hundreds of those hated German cannons were standing cheek-by-jowl across the cobbles of the Place de la Concorde. The guns, finally silenced by the armistice, were prized prisoners of four years of slaughter over scraps of muddy ground. Fraser stood still on the plaza and looked around. He wanted to notice everything, to remember it for the letter he owed to his wife Eliza and daughter Violet.
 
The crowd strolled in every direction, some in groups or pairs, some alone, but all together in their hearts. The dim weather dampened no spirits. Bitter memories were banished for the day. Paris was choosing to be gay. Flags of every nation in the victorious alliance fluttered from lampposts and buildings. Boys sprouted on tree branches like overgrown fruit, their coats and caps giving them unpredictable shapes. Discarded newspapers and crumpled cigarette packs cushioned the plaza’s uneven stones, which more than a century before ran with the blood of a king and queen who lost their heads to the heavy blade of Dr. Guillotine.
 
A sturdy middle-aged woman with apple cheeks stopped before him. She looked into his face. Her smile was sad. She took a step and embraced him through their overcoats, then pulled back and looked down. A tear stood on her cheek.
 
He gripped her shoulders and leaned down. “Peace,” he said, more urgently than he intended.
 
She pulled a wadded handkerchief from her sleeve and snorted into it. When she walked away, he noticed the small tricolor flag on a stick that trailed from her other hand. He guessed that someone she lost must have been tall and fair like him. Drab civilian clothes looked shabby next to the immaculate uniforms of the soldiers who swarmed the plaza. French blue jackets and scarlet trousers mingled with American olive. The khaki of Britain and Australia receded from the eye when a Sikh platoon marched by with gleaming ivory turbans and extravagant whiskers. A Greek officer in blinding white and a pleated skirt nodded to a soldier sporting a fez and a jacket of red and green embroidery. The soldiers strutted like peacocks, men who had somehow survived the firestorm that killed millions in shin-high mud.
 
An unshaven man swung by on crutches, his rhythm steady. Fraser had grown used to empty trouser legs, armless sleeves, faces rearranged by bullet or blast. An overage gendarme waved a baton in Fraser’s direction. He wanted the crowd to climb out of the street back onto the curb. Wilson’s procession must be getting close.
 
Fraser shrugged helplessly. Too many bodies pressed behind him. The gendarme shrugged back, then walked on. Rising on his toes to peer over the crowd toward the Champs-Élysées, Fraser noticed a woman behind him with each arm over a small child. He gestured for them to move in front of him for a better view. The children slid efficiently into place. The mother nodded thanks as he took a half step back.
 
Cannon erupted, a steady pounding of the great guns that Fraser never wanted to hear again. The crowd had no such feeling. Their cheers began to the right of him and surged across the plaza. Outstretched hands waved small flags. The people around him picked up the cry of “Vive Weel-SONE.”
 
With only a few military vehicles in the vanguard, the procession slowly made its way toward Fraser. Without a thought, his arms shot up and his voice joined the thundering, wordless shout. They were shouting victory. They were shouting survival. For months, his smiles had been only sympathetic or sardonic.
 
He broke into a boy’s carefree grin. His grinding fatigue lifted.
 
The president stood easily in an open car, one arm hailing the crowd with his glossy top hat. He acknowledged the cheers with a broad smile, teeth glistening like rows of fresh headstones.
 
Turning from side to side, he and the crowd were two poles of a giant magneto. Energy surged from one to the other and back. Wilson loomed larger than Fraser expected, squareshouldered, made larger by this welcome worthy of an emperor returned from conquest.
 
The car drew even with Fraser. Wilson’s eyeglasses reflected the silver sky as he pivoted Fraser’s way. An ocean of sound burst around them, engulfing everyone within its reach. Nothing could restrain it. It was hope. Fraser shouted louder. He strained forward, reaching to the tall, graceful man.
 
Wilson was a master of the ultimate weapon, intoxicating words. He used them to promise peace. In his glorious Fourteen Points speech, he laid down rules for the postwar world. Secret diplomacy, he insisted, must end. Individual citizens and communities must determine their own futures. Arms races must end. People must be free to trade with each other, not limited by artificial constraints. Most important for him, all nations must join in a single organization that would guarantee peace and independence to great and small states alike.
 
Some reacted skeptically to this storm of American idealism. Georges Clemenceau, premier of France,...

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Verlag
Kensington Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0758290691
ISBN 13 
9780758290694
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
266
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Dietmar Rusche
15110751138
rusche.dietmar@gmx.de

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