by Nick Thacker
He tried as much as possible to steer her thinking away from such a fantasy, as he wasn’t sure how he’d manage if she forced him to live in such a place. There were apartments just like that across the street from them now, above a corner dry cleaners the yogurt shop was facing.
“Even if they’re fine shooting innocent bystanders, we’ll be better protected in that group, and they might have a hard time finding us.” Joshua was already moving, running out the open door. Ben, Reggie, and Derrick hustled to keep up.
When Ben hit the street, he squinted, waiting for the line of rounds he knew would be flying toward his back. But none came, and he picked up speed and made it through the maze of cars and onto the opposite corner, right where the group of young men and women were standing. The group was about college-aged, an even mix of men and women, and they all seemed as stunned as Ben felt. But, to their credit, they didn’t move.
“Stay below them,” Joshua said, his voice commanding but calm. “Don’t poke your head up at all, we don’t need them seeing us and firing into us.”
“Shouldn’t we not be using people as human shields?” Derrick asked.
Two of the boys closest to Ben shot him a glance, backing away a bit.
“We’re not,” Joshua said. “We’re just hiding. Whenever we get a chance, we’re ducking into this — now!” Joshua yelled the order right as he started off, darting out of the group of people and into the corner shop. Ben tried to move quickly, but he was the slowest of the men and made it into the store a full two seconds after the rest of them.
He whirled around, finding the group, then turned and looked out the front window, toward the yogurt shop. He could see their attackers, five men altogether, walking slowly up the street and toward the front of the yogurt shop.
“You think anyone heard the gunshots?” Reggie asked.
“If they had, this intersection would be a madhouse right now,” Derrick said. “Discharging a weapon in an urban area is the fastest way to absolute chaos and rioting, so I think we’d know if anyone heard the shots.”
“And there’s one less bad guy now,” Reggie said. “Thanks to Ben.”
“Sorry about that,” Ben said. “I… it was just…”
Reggie placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Nothing to apologize for, man, I was just trying to get your attention.”
Ben nodded, and they turned to look at their surroundings. They were standing in the dry cleaning shop. A counter stretched the entire length of the tiny space, and a single wiry chair sat in the corner next to an overly ambitious fake plant. There was hardly any room to maneuver around the other men standing inside, and most disheartening of all, there was only one entrance.
“We’re stuck in here,” Ben said. “If they decide to look in the buildings nearby, they’ll see us immediately.”
“There’s probably an exit in the back, just like in the yogurt shop,” Reggie said. “These places are tiny, but they usually have a back-alley entrance for loading and unloading equipment.”
“Well let’s see if we can find it,” Derrick said. “I don’t like being stuck in here any longer than we absolutely have to.”
The four men moved to the section of counter that lifted up and allowed for access to the back of the store, and Joshua led them through. A woman walked into the back-counter area and stopped, a startled look on her face.
“I — I’m sorry,” she stammered. “Can I help you?”
“We’re just passing through, ma’am,” Joshua said. “Sorry to be an inconvenience.”
“But you can’t just —”
“FBI, ma’am,” Derrick said, whipping out a wallet and shield identification.
Her eyes widened even further, but she stepped to the side. “It’s — it’s to the left, all the way back. The exit, I mean.”
Derrick nodded, and they hustled through rows of long, curving racks of clothing, some covered in plastic and other rows waiting their turn to be cleaned. The cramped space created a sort of maze, and the door at the exit of the building was hardly a straight shot. They ducked and twisted around the clothing racks until Joshua found the illuminated exit sign and pushed the door open.
Ben found himself in another alleyway, but this time they were alone. They checked both directions, finding no one but casual tourists and businessmen and women walking up and down the city streets to their left.
“Looks like we’re in the clear, for now,” Joshua said.
“We’re probably heading right back into it, soon as we figure out where to go,” Reggie said.
“I can help with that,” Derrick said. “I’ve been able to make a little headway into the first part of the journal.”
“Yeah?” Ben asked. “Where is this little excursion taking us first?”
Derrick looked around at each of them in turn. “I hope you boys like to fly.”
Chapter FORTY-EIGHT
BEN WATCHED AS DERRICK REACHED for the suitcase he’d brought with. He retrieved another gun safe, one nearly identical to one of the smaller ones Reggie had given Ben and Julie earlier that year. Thumbprint-detecting, large enough to hold a weapon and a few magazines, and hardy enough to take a beating.
But there wasn’t a handgun inside the safe; instead, Derrick unlocked the case and pulled out a small, worn leather journal. It looked like a Moleskin journal, palm-sized, with a tiny ribbon hanging from the bottom.
The journal was brown, and the cover cracked and faded. The ribbon was torn, the dangling part nearly completely worn off, and Derrick handled the piece as gently as possible. The first pages of the journal still held their rectangular shape, but the fraying edges of some of the remainder of the pages had torn and crumpled back, creating small peaks and valleys on the long edge of the closed journal. He brought it back over and placed it on the same chair the iPad had been on during their call with Mr. E.
“That thing looks like it’s held up well after 200 years,” Reggie remarked.
“And not to mention the beating it took during the expedition,” Derrick said. “It’s been wrapped in butcher paper and cellophane, tightly enough to keep the air out, then stored in a case under more plastic and paper.”
“Since Lewis finished it?”
“Since he finished it and tried to give it to Thomas Jefferson,” Derrick replied. “Jefferson, remember, hired Lewis — who then requested Clark as his equal for the expedition — to find and map a passage to the Pacific, and through the newly acquired territory.”
“…that was purchased with Spanish gold,” Ben said.
“Purportedly, if you believe Daris.”
“And you don’t believe her.”
Derrick shook his head. “I don’t. I can’t. It’s just too…”
“Far-fetched?” Reggie asked.
“Well, no. Not necessarily. I mean, the Spanish Treasure Fleet of 1715 did sink — thanks to a hurricane off the coast of Florida — and there have been reports of gold and silver washing up onshore ever since. And the Louisiana Purchase took place with Napolean and Jefferson, with some debatably suspicious considerations, and finally —” he paused for effect — “our nation has had a long history of backstabbing and conspiracy, as well as needing to continue building the purse to fund its imperialistic tendencies.”
Ben listened, nodding along. He wasn’t sure how much of this he believed — history was more Reggie’s bent — but it all sounded reasonable. He couldn’t remember how many times something he’d learned in school as absolute, concrete fact had been overturned by later evidence, new discovery, or a simple rewrite of known history from someone besides the victor.
He thought of grade school and learning about the color of the sky, remembering that his teachers had not only taught, but truly believed, that it was blue because it reflected the ocean’s color on the surface of the globe.
A strange thing, then, when his family had traveled through the Great Plains region of the country and the sky was still blue, like the ocean, yet there was a noticeable lack o
f ocean nearby and an abundance of green, rolling cornfields and yellow plains.
It had been a decade later when he’d learned the truth. Something about diffuse-something-or-other, and the length of light waves that reached the earth and his eye. He couldn’t remember the details — another common feature of US public education — but he knew three things: one, the sky was blue; two, it didn’t matter much why, and three, his teachers weren’t the end-all authorities on everything they taught.
It also meant that knowledge was different than wisdom. He thought of the old adage, ‘knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.’
Tomatoes and fruit salads aside, Ben knew knowledge changed as, well, knowledge changed. The facts he’d grown up with weren’t ‘facts,’ per se, but ‘things that we believe now, barring further evidence to the contrary.’ He appreciated the scientific community’s embrace of the idea that a ‘theory’ was not called a theory because it was a guess, but the opposite: a theory was considered the best explanation a group could come up with, and it hadn’t yet been disproven. They were intelligent, yet willing to admit that life was ever-changing, and knew information and new ways of looking at old information was always on the horizon.
He tried to maintain this outlook on life, yet his stubbornness often got the best of him. He was a simple man, willing to accept new things but not actively seeking them out. He liked what he liked, and that was that. Not much of a quote, but Julie liked to remind him of those exact words when she cooked something new or dragged him to a new restaurant he’d never been to.
Now, listening to Roger Derrick explain his point of view on the history of early America, he had to admit it sounded far-fetched, yet plausible. But why was it far-fetched? Was it just that he’d grown up in a world that specifically believed something else? Had it been engrained in him at a young age to believe that the United States was the ‘good guy,’ entering every situation as the faultless police officer, offering truth and reason to the rest of the world?
He wanted to know the answer.
He wanted to find Julie, but there was a nagging inside his mind as well, something not based on emotion but on reason. He wanted to know, likely only because the question had been raised.
Reggie, too, seemed intrigued. His friend was leaning forward, the beginning of a grin on his face, as he listened to Derrick speak.
“So Jefferson could have needed something else — something over and above what Congress was willing to offer — to entice Napolean to sell. Something that could be used against the Spanish later, or something that could be used for the Spanish. He didn’t care, as Spain was hardly the threat the British were in that territory, but he knew that what he had was valuable.”
“Sounds like you do believe this theory,” Joshua said. If any of them were unmoved by Derrick’s monologue, it was Joshua. Ever the die-hard, he rarely allowed emotion to get in the way of the job. His job, now, was to stop Daris and find Julie. Ben appreciated that, but he also knew that the more they understood of Derrick’s and Daris’ beliefs, the better chance they had to get ahead of them.
“No,” Derrick said. “I don’t. I’m merely pointing out how it could be plausible. It’s not a far-fetched theory, like aliens built Stonehenge, or anything like that. It’s based in historic fact, and there would have been strong motives for it.”
“So what are you saying, then?” Joshua asked.
“I’m saying that it’s not too far-fetched. It’s just too… convenient. For all these pieces to simply fall into place that way — for Jefferson to have his hands on the Spanish treasure, Lewis to be willing to jump into a dangerous, life-threatening expedition, and the young nation in need of a ‘secret’ purse. It just seems too convenient for it to be true.”
“And yet Jefferson did come out the victor, and he did send Lewis to the Pacific and back, and the nation was able to afford whatever it was they wanted, up until they were simply able to print more money whenever they needed it.”
Derrick nodded. “Right. Still…”
“Look, we’re with you, man. We’ve already told you that. Maybe what we find is nothing. Maybe we find a miraculous treasure and we all get rich. The point is, we’re in it until the end now, until we find Julie.”
Ben agreed. “Until we find Julie.”
Derrick looked at him.
“I’m in,” Ben said. “But when we get Julie, we’re out.”
Reggie looked at him. “I thought we agreed —”
“We did,” Ben said. “And I stand by that agreement, that we look for Daris’ treasure, or somehow disprove that it exists, and then we find Julie. But if we find Julie first, I’m taking her home. We’re done then. Got it?”
Reggie sighed, then looked at Derrick.
“It’s okay,” Derrick said. “I get it.” He turned to Ben. “I appreciate that, Harvey. Thank you. I’ll take whatever help I can get. And I truly believe that if we are able to beat Daris and her team to their destination, we’ll find Julie shortly after. She was taken because of me and my search, and I am in your debt for that.”
Ben nodded, solemnly. He had made the mistake of buying into Derrick’s story, of starting to feel excited about it all. The mystery, the history, the treasure calling out to them.
He shook that feeling away. Julie was out there, scared and alone, and probably being —
That, too, was a painful thought. He clenched his fists and reminded himself of what he would do to the men — and woman — who had taken her.
They will pay, he thought. They will pay with their lives.
He didn’t know how, or when, but he would find them.
Chapter FORTY-NINE
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WERE going to make me fly here on a commercial airliner,” Reggie said, stretching out his legs. “I thought you guys had expense accounts.”
Derrick smiled. “We do, they just don’t cover our expenses. Thanks for this, by the way.”
The group of four men were in a chartered jet, flying cross-country with a heading that would bring them to Portland International Airport in seven and a half hours. Joshua had called Mr. E and explained their situation, that they had been shot at and were now on the run from more of the Ravenshadow men, and that they needed — quickly — to get to Oregon.
Within an hour they had reached the private charter section of the Philadelphia airport and were rising to their cruising altitude.
While the accommodations were far better than a commercial jet or a tiny pond hopper, Ben was feeling stress and anxiety more than he had in the past year. Julie was gone, presumably still in Philadelphia, and he had wanted to stay back with her. Mr. E and the other men had talked him out of it, as he wouldn’t be able to find her — or retrieve her — on his own, anyway. And, they had argued, he was an integral part of the team.
He agreed that staying behind would only cause him more grief and strife, and it would give the group one less head to use for problem-solving. He’d reluctantly boarded the jet, sat down and strapped in, and white-knuckled the armrests during takeoff.
Now that they had leveled out at their cruising altitude, he turned on his phone’s screen and poked around to the brief the others had read. He had meant to give it a skim, but the concise, simple explanations quickly pulled him in. He read, the others busy with a discussion about how best to acquire weapons when they landed. The current talk was inquiring about an FBI safe house in Oregon, having Derrick borrow the amount of handguns and ammunition they’d need without raising too many red flags at the same time.
Mr. E had arranged for a vehicle for them, and they planned on driving south to the safe house immediately after landing, which wasn’t terribly far off the route to their next location: Fort Clatsop, the western camp of the Lewis and Clark expedition, now a national historic monument near Astoria, Oregon.
They were seated in their chairs, across the aisle from Ben, but Derrick’s chair an aisle up had been swiveled around so he
was facing Reggie and Joshua. Between them they had set up a small folding end table that Joshua had found in a storage closet near the back of the plane, and on top of this Roger Derrick had placed the item he’d removed from his briefcase. Ben stood and walked over to the other aisle, trying to get a better view of the tiny booklet Derrick had placed on the table.
Derrick then retrieved a set of tweezers from a bag he’d taken from his pocket, and a set of cheater glasses that now hung off the end of his nose. Ben had pegged the man at somewhere between 40 and 45 years old, old enough to justify the barely graying head of hair he wore, yet young enough that a pair of glasses seemed unnecessary.
But when Derrick open the cover of the journal Ben immediately understood why the glasses were needed. The handwritten text was scrawled, haphazardly and at an angle diagonally, on the first page.
Meriwether Lewis, Captain.
Derrick, thankfully, read aloud the line scrawled below the monogram. “The diary describing and recording the events and sights of the Expedition, intended for T. Jefferson.”
“This was meant only for Jefferson?” Reggie asked. “Was that the case with the other journals?”
“No,” Derrick said. “The rest in the journal collection all begin with his name alone, then simply jump into the details, but it’s assumed they were always meant to be ‘public records,’ of sorts. Meant for the rest of the world to read and study. He draws pictures, writes essays on birds and wildlife, and describes in minute detail the plants and scenes they came across on their expedition.”
“That sounds like a pretty impressive body of work,” Joshua said. “We read about some of that in the brief.”
Ben nodded, now able to agree with Joshua’s statement. He had been impressed when he’d seen how much writing the Lewis and Clark expedition team had done during their cross-country trek and back.