“And what do you study?” she asked once the server was gone.
“Well, a couple years back I received a federal grant to study the concept of particle acceleration and replication.”
Erica ran her hand over her head in the universal sign for “fly-by” and laughed. “No idea what that means,” she said.
Jeff held up his hand and nodded. The free flow of the conversation was calming any nerves he’d previously had. Though, with her dramatic gesture a moment before, he had an inkling that she’d done her research on him, as well, and might’ve been playing her own little game. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Are you a Star Trek fan?”
She nodded. Jeff noticed Shipley nodding, as well. Emeka sat back and sipped his drink; he’d only heard Jeff’s spiel a dozen or so times.
“Well, in Next Generation, there’s a device called a ‘replicator.’”
“Oh yeah,” Shipley said. “I know it. It’s the device that makes whatever food you want it to.”
“Yep, that’s the one,” Jeff continued. “My experiments are to determine if that concept is actually possible.”
Erica leaned forward onto the table. “Is it?”
“I believe so. By speeding up the sub-atomic particles of an item to the speed of light, you should be able to actually change them into something else through slight variations in the process. And by slight, I mean microscopic.”
Erica settled on her elbows, appearing fascinated. “Have you gotten it to work?”
“I have, actually.”
“What did you change into what?”
Jeff took a moment to give the same scoop he’d given to the government reps a few days before, about bricks and hamburgers, and his little victories along the way. It was the easiest way to explain.
“And this is something the federal government thinks is worth investing in?” It was a challenge question, but Erica had delivered it in a friendly tone. Jeff was still trying to read her, while at the same time trying not to be distracted by her charm and energy.
“Apparently so.”
“And what brings a scientist from North Jersey to Arizona to dig a national treasure out of an old barn?”
Here we go, Jeff thought. “Staring through a microscope for weeks on end can drive a person mad. Emeka’s family has a ranch on beautiful property that makes for an inexpensive vacation destination. Away from it all.”
Erica looked over at Emeka as the waitress returned with their drinks. She took their orders and Jeff finally decided to use the resulting lull in the conversation to stand and take off his jacket. Since they were getting down to business, he felt it an acceptable enough concession to the heat.
“So your family farm was where the robbers in the Wilton heist landed? Isn’t that amazing? You know after the heist they were never heard from again? Which is strange because most of the criminals during that time wanted people to know exactly who they were to inspire fear and build their legacy. Not these guys – they were in and out. Took his gold and ran. Where’s the ranch?” Erica asked Emeka abruptly, finishing off her trail of questions, but even the quick turn-around didn’t make him falter, Jeff was pleased to see.
“Outside Flagstaff.”
“You know of any history of it?”
Emeka shook his head. “Not really. My great-grandfather bought the land from a man named Miller in the 1930s. That’s all we really know.” That was all actually true, in case she wanted to look it up. From the beginning, Dexter though that the ranch Emeka would someday inherit was the perfect accessory for their story.
“I’m sorry – this is going to sound like a very forward question, but you have to understand I’m a historian. How did you end up with a name like Emeka Henderson? That’s not exactly a normal combination of names, especially with your ancestry in Arizona.”
“My father met and married a woman from Nigeria while in the Peace Corps.”
“Aaah,” Erica said, still looking at Emeka. She shook her head slowly. “You know, meeting you in person is absolutely fascinating. Especially having seen your picture in the Post yesterday.”
“Why’s that?”
“Are you familiar with the Wilton diary?”
They both shook their heads, despite the fact that they were, indeed, well familiar with the Wilton diary.
Erica produced a small book from her coat pocket. “This is just a copy – the real one is kept at the Gold Rush Museum in California.” She flipped open to a bookmarked page and extended it across the table toward them. “I’m surprised that given your recent find and the research you did, you’re not familiar with this book.”
Jeff took the book from her and held it open for Emeka and him to see. “Our research was really limited to finding Wilton’s emblem on the internet and making the link to the robbery. Amateurish, at best. We didn’t know there was a diary.”
“Read the page,” Erica said, motioning with her chin.
They did.
“Isn’t it amazing,” she continued, “that Wilton would write that he was ambushed by a man with a large scar on his cheek, and here, 150 years later, the person who finds the gold that was stolen has the same distinguishing feature?”
Jeff silently swore – he’d neglected to say something to Emeka about that damn mask – but collected himself and laughed. “Wait – you’re not suggesting there’s a connection?”
They remained entranced in a standoff stare for a moment before she laughed. “Of course not. How ridiculous would that be? Just one of those crazy quirks of history, I guess. Like Kennedy-Lincoln.” She shrugged.
“Kennedy-Lincoln?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve heard that one. Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre; Kennedy was shot while riding in a Lincoln, made by Ford? Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who told him not to go to the theatre; Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who told him not to go to Dallas?” She paused, observing their reactions. “No? Don’t know those?”
“Is that all true?” Emeka asked.
“Well, you can’t refute the first one. But there’s no evidence to support the secretary thing. It’s an urban legend. There’s a whole list of the coincidences. Or conspiracy theories, depending on how crazy you are.” She didn’t dilute her stab at conspiracy theorists.
Jeff handed the diary across the table. “Where can I get one of those?”
“Have that one,” Erica said, not taking it. “I’ve got several, and I can always get more from the Museum.”
“Well, thank you,” Jeff said, laying the book on the table next to his place setting.
The server returned with their sandwiches and each took a break for a moment to start eating. After a moment, Erica spoke again, politely dabbing her mouth with her napkin before talking. Jeff couldn’t help thinking that the gesture was so delicately made as to itself seem from another time. “I’m very excited to see the gold bricks. Tell me the story of how you found them.”
This part was rehearsed, so Emeka piped up. “Grandpa had this old barn in the back of the property – hadn’t been used in probably thirty years, back when it was a working cattle farm. Like all those old barns you see when you’re driving around the country, it had fallen into disrepair and was really unsafe. It was far enough away from the house that it offered some seclusion, so Grandpa was worried that kids would go up there to smoke pot and get hurt.” He laughed naturally. “No, not me. Anyway, while we were in town, he asked us if we could help take it down. It didn’t take much. Couple whacks with a sledgehammer and the whole thing went toppling. As we’re cleaning up the mess, we find a trap door in the floor. Inside was just a big manmade hole about three feet deep, and laying inside it was a burlap satchel. There was just about enough room for me to slide in next to it. Honestly, I was more worried about a rattlesnake inside it than gold bricks, but when I felt that it was rock hard, I opened it. Jeff was shining the light in on it and it glistened. It was really something.” Jeff was impressed – if the comment about the scar had had any impact
on Emeka, there was no evidence of it.
“What a find,” she said.
“That’s incredible,” Shipley said. “That certainly doesn’t happen every day. How do you suppose the gold got there?”
“No clue,” Emeka said, shaking his head. “And someone told me yesterday that there were actually more bricks that were stolen in 1849. We found 42.”
“Yes, there were 60,” Erica said. “According to the diary, at least. We don’t have any way of knowing if that was the truth, but there’s really no reason to suspect otherwise.”
Jeff and Emeka knew, of course, that Wilton was a liar. Not about that, though. There really were 60 gold bars. The other 18 had been kept aside for plausibility and future consideration.
“Well, I suppose it’s more than possible,” Erica said. “Arizona was certainly a reasonable place for someone who’d stolen some gold to camp out. The U.S. had just purchased most of Arizona from Mexico, so it was fairly safe – with the exception, of course, of your usual bandits and what-not. But why steal the gold if you’re only going to bury it? That’s what doesn’t make sense. Clearly they weren’t in it for the fame since they didn’t tell anyone what they’d done. So, spend the money. You’d think.”
“Maybe they died,” Shipley said.
“Was it easy or convenient to get rid of stolen bricks of gold at that time?” Jeff asked. Rather astutely, he thought.
“I would think so, even with those emblems, though I guess Wilton’s marks might explain why they would want to hide them for some time, waiting out any news,” Erica said. “But, truthfully, anything at all of value was usually moveable.”
They ate in silence for a moment.
“Well, there’s your next mystery to solve,” Jeff said. They all laughed, but he realized they hadn’t yet mentioned her show in the conversation.
She smiled. A smile that appealed to him on many levels. “I take it you’ve seen my show. Or at least Googled me.”
Jeff smiled and put his hands up. “I’ll admit – once we knew we were having lunch with you I looked you up. Ran through a couple You Tube videos.”
“Not a regular History Channel watcher?”
He tapped the Wilton diary copy, still on the table next to him. “If I was, I might’ve had some clue this existed.”
They all laughed, then Erica said, “That’s alright, I checked on both of you, too. Though I still needed you to explain to me in-person what replication is.”
“Glad I could be of help. Hopefully someday you’ll be able to read about it and say ‘I knew him when...’“
They finished their meals with small talk, mostly about Erica’s red-eye flight the night before after she’d gotten the call from the Smithsonian. Then they started toward the auction house so Erica could see the treasure. As they walked across a busy Rockefeller Plaza, Jeff subtly pulled Emeka back several steps behind Erica and Shipley.
“I told you to keep that damned mask on,” he said under his breath without looking at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Emeka said without emotion. “The notion that since I have a scar on my face there’s something suspicious going on is borderline insanity.”
“Well, she thought enough of it to bring it up. There are enough holes in our story. We need to be as buttoned-up as possible.”
After a few steps, Emeka said, “I’ll tell you, I should’ve killed that driver when I had the chance. The scar thing wouldn’t even be an issue.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You heard what she said. She’s a direct descendant of that guy. The only reason she even exists is because we took the gold and he didn’t get killed in an ambush the next day.”
Jeff stopped walking. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah, bro.” Emeka turned to face him. “I cut that driver’s throat and we’re having lunch for three today.”
Despite the thousands of camera-toting tourists walking past him, the waiting taxi cabs and the sidewalk panhandlers, Jeff felt completely alone among the city’s skyscrapers. Their actions had actually created people in an alternate reality – people that hadn’t existed in the reality in which they’d started.
“Wow,” Jeff said. “Could you imagine telling her that?”
“I’d start preparing for it,” Emeka said. “That seems to be the direction we’re heading according to you,” Emeka chuckled, slapping Jeff on the shoulder and walking forward to join in step with their pretty new-history historian.
CHAPTER NINE
As they walked across Rockefeller Plaza to Christie’s, Erica made small talk with Shipley – or, rather, he made small talk with her. She really wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. Her mind was on the little game that had just ensued, and now she was more curious than ever to see their stash of gold. In fact, she was walking at a pretty quick pace to get there, and Dr. Jacobs and Emeka had fallen back several steps. Though it was probably just to talk without them hearing.
She’d thrown out the coincidence about the scar on Emeka’s chin mainly to see their reactions. It didn’t mean anything, of course, but she did feel as though they were hiding something. What it was she couldn’t begin to fathom – her first inclination was that they were indeed students of history and somehow cast gold into ingots with Wilton’s seal, knowing it would be worth more on auction than gold by itself. With the currently high price of gold, though, it was hard to be sure. But there was something in their story that they weren’t telling.
Of course, she didn’t need Jeff’s slip-up at the end to know that he knew something about her. The guy was a scientist who was used to working with details as small as an atom. He wasn’t going to go into a meeting like this, where there could be lots of cash on the table, as loosely as he was making it seem. He was sweating the entire lunch, too, though that could’ve just been the heat. Either way, she didn’t trust all this talking behind their backs. Though she’d probably have been doing the same thing had she been in their positions.
They crossed 49th at the intersection and made their way to the entrance of the famous auction house, with Jeff still lagging about ten feet behind and Emeka double-stepping to get back into their conversation. She used Shipley’s holding the main door open for them as a way to get Jeff to catch up. Shipley led them through the lobby and past a crowd of tourists ogling the auction house’s greatest treasures underneath the shadow of the gallery’s famous Sol LeWitt mural, and then up a grand staircase to a corridor with various viewing rooms. He unlocked a door by both key and combination to lead them into a small, dark room. As he turned on the light, exposing the burlap bag that Emeka had mentioned and which was now on a display table in the middle of the room, he explained that, until the Wilton gold officially became an auction item, no one but him would have access to the room.
“Once you’ve agreed to hold the auction with us,” Shipley said, “we will announce it, then do a seven-day viewing for the public before the auction takes place.” His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out to see who was after him.
Erica wanted nothing more than to rip that burlap bag off of the gold to have a look, but she stayed calm.
“Ahh, Kevin Pierce is downstairs,” he said, looking at Erica. “Give me a moment. I’ll show him up.”
He left the three of them alone with the gold.
“Who’s Kevin Pierce?” Jeff asked.
“He’s the Executive Director of the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian,” she said, inching toward the gold. She looked at Emeka. “May I?”
Emeka nodded and motioned with his hand toward the pile. Erica moved in to the table and gently pulled back the top corners of the burlap, which were folded in fours over the gold. When she saw her first glint of gold, her heart leapt. Her whole life, she’d been waiting for this moment, almost certain it would never come. She pulled back the rest of the material, which fell around the bricks.
“Well, first things first,” she said. “That’s Wilton’s emblem.” She picked up
one of the ingots and inspected it, knowing that she probably should’ve asked first, but she couldn’t help herself. It looked like it had been minted yesterday, not 150 years before. “It’s so crisp and clean.”
“That’s what we thought when we found it,” Jeff said. “How it could not be more worn after 150 years in the ground is beyond us. I just can’t stop looking at it.”
Neither could Erica, who held the brick in front of her face and inspected it from all angles. “That’s the beauty of gold, I guess. It maintains its shine, certainly. For that, I guess maybe it was worth risking your life and moving your family across the country to find it.” She set the piece down and ran her hand over the whole pile. “Why did you come to Christie’s with it?”
“Honestly, we didn’t know what else to do,” Emeka said. “We thought that’s what people did when they found treasure. But now that your friend from the Smithsonian is here, maybe we should’ve gone a different direction.”
She was still transfixed on the shimmering gold. Any doubts she’d had on the flight or at lunch had been quelled. “Well, if there was a way for the Gold Rush Museum to get even one of these bricks, I would be eternally grateful.”
The door opened and her good friend Kevin Pierce entered, followed by Shipley. Though they communicated regularly, Erica hadn’t seen Kevin in some time – at least a couple of years. He looked pretty much the same, though he had a thin, gray beard that matched his suit and his new glasses, with those thick frames that were getting to be more popular. Made him come across as a little less academic and a little more metro. She always thought he was good-looking for an older guy.
They hugged and exchanged pleasantries before Kevin was introduced to Emeka and Jeff. Like her, he couldn’t wait to get his hands on the gold bricks, and after abbreviated biographies were exchanged, he picked up one of the pieces and eyed it the same way Erica had.
“Incredible,” he said. “You said there are 42 bricks here?”
“That’s what we counted,” Emeka said. “Feel free to count them again.”
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