MARK BEAULIEU HAD JUST stepped out of the shower when his portable telephone rang. He wrapped a towel around his slender waist and picked up the receiver.

“Mark,” the heavily accented voice said, “I have wonderful news!

When can we meet?”

“Name the place, my good friend,” said Beaulieu.

“There’s to be a memorial service for the West Coast victims— the National Cathedral at seven o’clock this evening. I’ll see you there.”

As Mark hung up the phone, he said softly, “I wonder what news Tauriq Haddad has that could be so important?” Tauriq and Mark Beaulieu had deliberately avoided contact with each other for the past ten years. So, why now?

Mark Beaulieu happened to be one of Washington’s most fascinating young men. He was a descendant of an aristocratic French family that had sent two of its promising sons to America shortly before the French Revolution. They had embraced this new nation as their own, married American wives, and entered into business. They began exporting American agricultural products to Europe on a small scale and importing, in turn, the European silks, satins, furniture, and machinery that the newly independent nation craved. With their profits, they commissioned the construction of one ocean vessel, then another, and another. In time, they started a bank to finance their trading and shipping enterprises.

Successive generations of Beaulieus carried forward the dreams of their first American ancestors. Beaulieu Brothers became a power in American finance. After the Civil War, the new breed of American capitalists turned to the Beaulieu family to float public stock offerings in Europe and America. Their funds paid for the construction of American railroads, steel mills, public utilities, and refineries.

Beaulieu Brothers floated the stock of vast enterprises for a fee. And along with their fee, they were careful to reserve for themselves a share of the equity of each enterprise they financed.

By the beginning of World War I, the Beaulieu family had prospered to such a degree that it was ranked alongside the Rockefellers, the Mellons, and the DuPonts as one of the wealthiest families in America.

Mark Beaulieu, as one of dozens of Beaulieu cousins, was the beneficiary of generously endowed trusts. But he had no desire whatsoever to enter the family business. Had he wished, he could have lived out his life in luxury without working a single day. Like so many children of great privilege, Mark Beaulieu realized he had not earned the luxury that he enjoyed. And that knowledge created in him a sense of guilt. Then, over time, there followed a loathing for the possessions that had brought him only guilt and anguish. From that point, his mind made a completely illogical transition. He began to loath the free-enterprise system that spawned his wealth, as well as capitalism, the United States, Christianity, and the whole of Western civilization in general.