Sibley's Secret

by Frank Perry

The desk woman told me so.”

  He smiled slightly, taking in her beauty with a direct gaze, “Ah, yeah. I’m from Boston.”

  She sat down again looking more curious than interested in him, “Why does an American want to spend time in a musty dark archive room in Moscow?”

  “It’s what I do. I teach Russian history.”

  “Most Americans still think of us as enemies from the cold war -- heartless communists!”

  “Well, that’s not me.” He was being defensive, but sensed that she was just testing him.

  She continued, “Why do you teach Russian history? Don’t you have enough American history to interest you?” She was still looking at him without expression.

  “Yeah, well, my family is from Russia and I guess I’ve always wanted to know more about where I come from.”

  She responded more sociably, “You speak very good Russian.”

  “When I was young, growing up in Philadelphia, my grandparents lived with us for a short time. They didn’t speak any English when they came to America during the first war and insisted on learning English, but they also insisted that I should know their native language. Later, I studied it in school and did some of my graduate studies at the Saint Petersburg State University. It was total immersion or fail.”

  She actually smiled slightly, “I went two years at NYU.”

  He felt a connection. “Really, what did you study?”

  “I received a master’s degree in Information Technology. I am a freelance researcher now.”

  “Here in Moscow?”

  “Of course. This is my home.”

  He wanted to keep the discussion going, “So, what are you researching?”

  “The same as you, the missing Kolchak gold.”

  He didn’t understand the coincidence. “So, why are you interested?”

  “I am not. I am paid by my client to do this.”

  “So ... what’s your client’s interest?” Evan was suspicious of coincidences.

  “I cannot disclose anything about my client’s interest, even if I knew what it was, which I do not. I could ask you the same thing.” She wasn’t smiling any more, but still seemed interested.

  “It just sort of intrigued me after I started digging deeper into events around the civil war.”

  She didn’t know if he was being completely truthful. “Well, here in Russia, there has been no end of publicity about the so-called Kolchak gold ever since the Bair Tsyrenov expedition became public knowledge.”

  He finally offered. “I’ll tell you what. I’m not a treasure hunter. I’ll share everything I learn here about Kolchak if you do the same.”

  She glanced away from him toward the reader saying, “We will see.”

  Not wanting to lose the connection, he thrust out his hand, “I’m Evan, Evan Evanoff.”

  She looked back curtly, shaking his hand with an unusually strong grip, “Karina Chuikov.”

  Treasure

  By late 1918, the civil war between the country’s White Army and the Bolshevik Reds was going poorly for the loyalists. Half the country’s gold reserve was located in the vaults southeast of Moscow at Kazan, the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan. As the Red threat grew, the White Army moved the wealth further east in late October to the State Bank’s Omsk branch, located in southwestern Siberia. There is no surviving record of how much was actually transferred. Ironically, Admiral Kolchak was pronounced Supreme Ruler of Russia at the same time and the gold in Omsk became known as “Kolchak’s gold.” The gold, in various forms, weighed over ten thousand pounds. Along with the gold, there were rumored to be large quantities of currencies from more than a dozen countries.

  As their Generals proved inept and the rebels continued defeating the Whites in the field, Kolchak and his ministers and advisors became desperate, fearing total collapse. Wholesale company desertions and mutinies plagued the army. Kolchak begged General Graves to provide U.S. military support, but was refused. By the end of the year, Kolchak commandeered operational control of the Trans-Siberia train and attempted passage east toward the coast. The U.S. Army was in Siberia to protect the rail line in the event that stockpiles in Vladivostok were needed in France during the world war.

  It took days for the White security forces to load Kolchak’s supplies aboard the train, while the U.S. soldiers looked on. Popular legend places the country’s reserve wealth on that train with Kolchak in unmarked or deceptively-marked heavy wooden crates. From that point, the trail grows colder than a Siberian winter. No documents have been discovered regarding the actual shipment of the treasure, except for the broad assumption that it was on the train when Kolchak was removed by the Czechoslovak Legion shortly after departing Omsk. It is known with some certainty that the treasure was never found by the Soviets.

  When Kolchak was killed, it is commonly understood that Kolchak had taken the wealth from the banks to avoid its being captured, but he didn’t disclose its location, even under torture. He was shot prematurely without revealing anything about the gold, which is believed to be hidden or inadvertently lost in storage and is still undiscovered somewhere today. The Russian Government never found it and began funding recovery projects after the collapse of the Soviet Union beginning in 1991, hoping to locate it on Russian soil. If the Soviets had tried to find it, no record exists. Treasure hunters began popping up as soon as the government’s recent state-sponsored diving expeditions were publicized.

  Investment

  Gregori Jelavich was angry. He was making millions of rubles each year supplying illegal demands of the new Russian middle class. He knew how to get through the bureaucratic red tape, who to bribe, who to threaten. When competitors tried to move in on his suppliers or distributors, they were quickly and quietly eliminated. He was financially well-to-do but spread thin trying to diversify into more legitimate businesses like real estate and automobile imports. At forty-three, he was well-known as a philanthropist in Moscow and he sponsored a non-profit medical clinic for older people unable to secure state-controlled medical and dental care because of their age. He had friends at the highest levels in the police and intelligence agencies; at least he paid them well to be friendly. He was also the primary investor in the latest scheme to find Kolchak’s gold.

  Gregori wasn’t anyone’s fool. People had tried to take business away from him over the years and had died violently. Most people knew that he was not to be crossed. Actually, most people tried to avoid ever treading near the man. When Nikolai Yazov first contacted him about the get-rich-quick scheme to find Kolchak’s gold under Lake Baikal, Gregori almost told him to fuck off ... almost. He wasn’t fooled easily and Yazov was willing to put his life on the line, or Ivan Khakimov’s life, to validate his conviction in the project. Yazov had been very convincing. So much so, that when Jelavich kidded about killing him if the expedition didn’t pay off handsomely, Yazov never blinked and said, “I would not expect anything else.” Now, looking back, as they were still empty-handed and had run through his money, the investor wasn’t sure that following through on the threat wasn’t the right thing after all. He felt that he had been the victim of a scam, and he wasn’t going to let it go unpunished.

  In the meantime, Kolchak’s gold had become real to him. He’d first learned of it from Yazov, but now he was becoming an expert in his own right. He had personally invested fifty million rubles in the Baikal project. Some of his acquaintances had also invested large sums when he’d asked them, but this was going to be his treasure. When it was found, he would see that everyone got back ten times their investment, but he would keep most of it. It was his and nobody else would have in – nobody. He was obsessed.

  Intestate

  It was annoying listening to the old lawyer describe Michigan inheritance law. Kiki’s only experience with lawyers involved courtroom exchanges where she had appeared as a police witness. She didn’t like them nor trust them. When they “went-on-the-clock,�
� they loved to engage in small talk and let the ticker run. The rumpled old man sitting at the desk across from her and Chad had a large red nose and patchy short white hair. She’d located him on the internet at the hotel when looking for an estate practice. This guy looked like he’d spent most of his career with inmates at the prison. That kind of law practice could drive anyone to the bottle. She suspected that he was a severe alcoholic.

  She was growing impatient, “Mr. Fiske, can we talk about my father’s estate?”

  Chad didn’t flinch; he was accustomed to his mother’s no-nonsense approach to life. Fiske just smiled meekly, “Why of course, Ms. Joyce.” He opened his top desk drawer and took out a legal notepad. She figured he’d already cost over fifty dollars talking about the weather and expressing his condolences about her father, whom he didn’t know. “Now, let’s begin by giving me his full name, address, and legal description of any assets you know about.”

  “His name is, was, Marlin Deboe. I don’t know if he had a middle name. He never used it if he did. His farm is located at ...” She went on to answer with as much information as she knew.

  “Was he married?”

  “I don’t know. My mother left us before I was old enough to remember. I guess I never asked about a divorce and he never said anything.”

  J. Whitten Fiske, esq. sat straighter, mentally computing the extra