There was a fly in the molasses when it came to this blighted French mission. Adams suspected it had been there for quite some time: there was a spy—perhaps even a double agent—working all this while in Passy, right under the nose of Benjamin Franklin. As God himself knew, that residence, Le Valentinois, was fraught with dire possibilities. Not only Chaumont, its arms-dealer owner, was suspect. But also Franklin’s own twenty-two-year-old grandson who lived there, Temple Franklin, a youth whose father William (Ben’s bastard son) was himself a Royalist exiled from America.

In John Adams’s view, however—of the elitist aristocrats, Royalist sympathizers and nouveau riche the doctor always sucked into his orb in that retreat at Passy—the most dangerous of all was Mme Helvetius. And for very good reason.

The Sieure Helvetius, her late husband, had made his fortune by royal sinecure, hadn’t he? He was one of the “Farmers General,” those who’d been given exclusive rights, monopolies, one might say, over all sale and purchase of goods produced or imported by France. The same people who still held sway, today, over American trade with France and her dominions.

As for La Helvetius, she’d even established a secret society to help her circle of vipers maintain control—a club whose members had the audacity to call themselves liberals, Freemasons!—when half its founders came from the nobility of France!

As Adams patted the flanks of his steaming horse and prepared to make toward Passy to attend his morning meeting, he smiled at a private thought: He imagined his wife, a preacher’s daughter, meeting La Helvetius for the first time.

It might happen today, mightn’t it? After all, today was a Tuesday.

10:00 a.m.
Passy, France

Benjamin Franklin plucked his knight from the chessboard and set it down beside his opponent’s rook. He tapped his finger on the table for attention.

“If you take that knight with your castle, my friend, it’s mate in three,” he announced to Thomas Jefferson, who’d glanced across the board in surprise. “But if you don’t take my knight,” Franklin added with a wry grin, “then I’m afraid it will still be mate in five.”

“My dear Jefferson,” said John Adams, standing at the wall of windows overlooking the vast, manicured gardens of Le Valentinois, “that’s the third game you’ve lost in a row. If your skills at negotiating treaties—for which Congress sent us to France, after all—are no better than your skills at chess, we may as well pack up our portmanteaus and go home.”

“Nonsense,” said Franklin, putting the chess pieces back in order on the board. “Jefferson hasn’t had the practice I’ve had. When I play chess, I brook no distractions. Why, I’ve played a full evening, whilst Mme Brillon, my erstwhile amour, sat in a state of deshabille, soaking in her bath!”

Franklin laughed uproariously, then he saw Jefferson rubbing his unpowdered head of thick hair with both hands.

“Too much mental stimulation for one morning, I’m afraid, and not enough accomplishment,” Jefferson said, adding apologetically, “I seem to feel one of my migraines coming on.”