Curious Minds

by Janet Evanovich

  “I haven’t yet mastered up,” Emerson said.

  Their descent was long and jerky and very fast. They were rocked back on their feet as the car came to an abrupt stop.

  “I suspect you’re not going to be able to shoot your way out of this,” Emerson said to Riley. “You might want to drop the gun just in case we’re met by a platoon of nervous guards.”

  Riley dropped the gun, the gate opened, and a half dozen Cammo Dudes moved forward with their XM29 rifles trained on Emerson and Riley. Riley looked beyond the guards and saw that Günter was trussed up on a hand truck like a trophy waiting to be stuffed. Riley couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or dead.

  Riley and Emerson were pulled out of the elevator and the elevator was sent back up. A couple minutes later the elevator returned and Rollo stepped out. He had a hole in his suit jacket and looked like he was in pain.

  “I’m going to have a nasty bruise, thanks to you,” he said to Riley. “You’re an excellent shot, but you need to aim higher if you want to kill someone wearing a Kevlar vest.”

  —

  Emerson and Riley were escorted down a dimly lit hallway. Günter was rolled along behind them. Rollo limped behind Günter. No one spoke. The procession stopped in front of a door. A Cammo Dude unlocked it and motioned Emerson and Riley inside. The door was closed and locked behind them, and Riley heard the hand truck continue on down the hall.

  They were in a storage room that was lined with crates with stenciled labels reading GROOM LAKE and NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE. Xandy was sitting hunched in a corner with her arms wrapped around her knees.

  “Sorry we dragged you into this,” Riley said to Xandy.

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Xandy said. “Damn aliens.”

  “I assume the Cammo Dudes brought you here?”

  “They didn’t let me go, like they always have before. They brought me here and questioned me about Mr. Mysterioso.”

  “I hope you told them what you know,” Emerson said.

  “Well, I spent the first couple of hours pretending I didn’t speak English. Then that creepy Rollo guy came in and showed me his knife. After that, I told him everything. I even made up some stuff. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. I hope what you told him was interesting.”

  “He seemed to think so.” She leaned forward and whispered, “You know what I think? I think that Rollo dude is an alien, that’s what I think. Those big bug eyes. That weird smile. And he’s all beat-up like he crash-landed.”

  In a manner of speaking, Riley thought. Rollo face-planted on the highway.

  “Did they probe you yet?” Xandy asked Riley. “They always get around to probing you. That’s what the other abductees tell me, anyway.”

  “I wasn’t abducted.”

  “Denial is the first stage,” Xandy said. “How did you get here if you weren’t abducted? Did you walk through the front door?”

  “You’re right,” Riley said. “I was abducted.”

  Emerson sat down against the wall and leaned back on a crate labeled NEVADA TEST AND TRAINING RANGE, closing his eyes.

  “Are you actually going to sleep?” Riley asked.

  “What else is there to do?” Emerson said. “Might as well be rested and refreshed for what’s coming up.”

  “For torture? I’d rather be a little blurry-eyed for torture.”

  Xandy leaned forward and nodded toward Emerson. “He’s an alien too, right?” she whispered.

  “Definitely,” Riley said.

  The door opened and Rollo stepped in. “They want to talk to you,” he said to Emerson. “Come with me.”

  Riley thought he sounded like a little boy whose Christmas had been postponed.

  Emerson got to his feet and turned to Riley. “After you, Riley.”

  Rollo shook his head. “No. Not her. Just you.”

  “I’m afraid I must insist,” Emerson said. “Miss Moon is my executive assistant.”

  “They don’t want to see her. Just you.”

  “I don’t care what they want. I don’t even know who they are. I go with Miss Moon, or I don’t go at all.”

  Rollo turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him.

  “See if it’s locked,” Riley said to Emerson.

  Emerson tried the door, the door opened, and a guard pointed his gun at Emerson. Emerson closed the door. “Not locked,” he said.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be making Rollo angry,” Riley said.

  “It passes the time,” Emerson said. “But I really shouldn’t get such pleasure from it. I’ll have to take a long look at that.”

  “Yeah, you can do that while he’s torturing you with his medical instruments.”

  “It will, as I say, pass the time.”

  “Why is it so important that I go with you?” she asked Emerson.

  “It’s not. But it’s very important that you don’t stay here.”

  “Uh-oh,” Xandy said. “What’s going to happen here?”

  “Rollo is going to have time on his hands,” Emerson said.

  Xandy went pale. “He’s going to probe me, isn’t he? I don’t suppose I could be your other executive assistant? Or your assistant’s assistant? Really, I could help around the house. Look after your pets?”

  “You don’t want to do that, trust me,” Riley said.

  “Don’t worry,” Emerson said to Xandy. “Rollo doesn’t have any history with you. You should be fine.”

  “ ‘Should’ doesn’t cut it,” Xandy said. “Besides, who’s to say I don’t have a history with him? I’ve had a lot of past lives. I’ve done some crazy doo-doo.”

  The door opened and Rollo gestured to Emerson. “Miss Moon can come with you.”

  Emerson stepped out into the hall and Riley trudged after him in awe of his stamina. He was unsmiling and serious but completely focused. She could practically hear his mind crackle with energy. She, on the other hand, was struggling to stay alert. They walked to the end of the hallway and were shown into a conference room. The table was typical high-polish boardroom. The chairs were black leather, rolling on wheels. The walls were lined with flat-screens. The flat-screens had video links showing live shots of Area 51. Some of the screens rotated with interior views of the gold vault.

  Günter had been pushed up to the table. He was still strapped to the hand truck but it looked like he’d had medical attention. His head drooped but his eyes were open and fully dilated. Some drool escaped from the side of his mouth. He had a soft cast and brace on his leg.

  “They’re on their way,” Rollo said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  Emerson walked to the head of the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. There was a console of controls in a panel on the table in front of him. He flicked a couple switches and the images on the giant screens went black.

  “Do you think you should be messing with that?” Riley asked.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “They might get angry.”

  “I think they’re already angry.”

  “The Grunwalds?”

  “Yes,” Emerson said. “The Grunwalds.”

  Günter made an effort to raise his head. “Am I dead yet?” he whispered.

  “No,” Riley said. “I think you’re just drugged.”

  “That’s good to hear. Because I feel confused. On the positive side, my leg’s not hurting. And I can smell colors.”

  There was the sound of men marching down the hall, and Werner Grunwald strode into the room. He was followed by William McCabe in his dark custom-tailored suit and Hans Grunwald in his uniform. Manny Grunwald entered last, pushing a sick older man in an oxygen-equipped wheelchair. The man was dressed in a white knit shirt and navy V-neck sweater. His white hair was neatly combed. His slippers were fleece-lined. He was sucking hard on his oxygen, his skin was the color of wet concrete, and one eye was closed, but the other eye was focused on Emerson like a laser beam.

  Emerson smiled at the old ma
n. “I thought you were dead. Interesting to see you’ve still got one foot out of the grave, Bertie.”

  “Bertie?” Riley asked.

  “Let me introduce the elder Grunwald,” Emerson said to Riley. “This is Werner’s, Manny’s, Günter’s, and Hans’s father. Recently risen from the grave. In my house he was known as Bertie.”

  At the mention of his father, Günter struggled to open his eyes and see through his haze of narcotics. He turned to Emerson and whispered hoarsely. “I see dead people. They walk around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.”

  “Isn’t that what that little kid said to Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense?” Riley said to Emerson.

  Bertrand gave his son a disgusted look. “Günter, you incredible nincompoop. I’m not dead.”

  Günter was undeterred. “That’s exactly what a dead person would say.”

  Werner moved to take his place at the head of the table and pulled up short when he realized Emerson had already claimed it. He stood for a couple beats with his eyes narrowed and his lips pressed tight together while everyone else shuffled around finding a seat.

  “Sit down, Werner,” Bertie said on a gruff rush of expelled oxygen. “Anywhere.”

  “Can we offer you something to drink?” Manny asked Riley and Emerson.

  “Water,” Emerson said.

  “Water for me as well,” Riley said.

  “And you, Günter,” Manny asked. “What would you like?”

  “Gin. With a side of rainbows.”

  “We’ll make it ice water,” Manny said, pleasantly, and nodded to an aide in a gray suit standing by the door.

  “Get on with it,” Bertie said.

  Riley raised her hand. “Question,” she said. “When you put the men in this room together, you run one of the biggest banks in the world, you run the Federal Reserve, you run the NSA, and you’re about to have a voice on the Supreme Court. You’re already running the country. What more do you need?”

  “We need to own it,” Werner said. “Soon we’ll have everything in place and we’ll set McCabe to printing massive amounts of currency, devaluing the U.S. dollar. Then we shut off the money spigot from Blane-Grunwald and the other mega-banks will follow. It will be a complete collapse of the dollar and probably every other major global currency. Our gold will be worth a hundred times what it’s worth today.”

  “In fact, if you have your way, your gold coins will be the only surviving currency in the world.” Emerson looked to Riley. “You have to admire the elegance of it. They’re not just out to steal the world’s gold. That would make them simple thieves. They want to simultaneously destroy all other forms of wealth. Essentially, they make themselves even richer by making everyone else poorer.”

  Bertrand sucked another breath of oxygen. “Sometimes you have to burn the field down so new crops will grow.”

  “Impressively ambitious,” Emerson said. “What do you want from us?”

  Hans pressed an icon on his iPad and one of the flat-screens flickered to life. The opening page of the Mysterioso website came up, the smoky letters drifting into view and looking eerier in wide-screen high definition.

  The image went to static for a moment then was replaced by a video feed. Looking like it was made on a laptop computer, the image was all fish-eyed and high contrast, but it was clearly Emerson in the turret room. There were stacks of money on the table next to him, and he addressed the camera.

  “Hello, this is not Mr. Mysterioso, but…okay, this is Mr. Mysterioso. And I need your help. As I’m sure you’re aware, I have stumbled onto something of a hornets’ nest. I’m going to go underground for a bit. Underground. If you don’t hear from me by the twenty-eighth of September, remember this. Two. Eighteen. Thirty-five. One. One. Zero-zero.”

  There was a sound of knocking on the door behind him and Riley could hear Aunt Myra’s voice, calling out sweetly, “Emmie, are you there?”

  Emerson reached out toward the screen and the image went black.

  Hans leaned forward and spoke with military authority. “We only have one question for you, Mr. Knight. What does ‘two, eighteen, thirty-five, one, one, zero-zero’ mean?”

  “I think your father can explain that,” Emerson said, gazing at the old man in the wheelchair. “Can’t you, Bertie?”

  Bertie sucked in oxygen and glared at Emerson with his single seeing eye. “You have your father’s guts, young Emerson,” he said. “Too bad you don’t have his sense.”

  Riley didn’t attend church, but her mom was a good Christian woman who’d worked hard at instilling Christian values in her children. Kick that to the curb after today, Riley thought. She’d just tried to kill a man and now she was thinking very un-Christian thoughts about the elder Grunwald. She was thinking he was in a state of decay and that he had the putrid gaze of a zombie. It brought to mind a Bible quote her grandmother favored. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.

  “February eighteenth, 1935, was the date of one of the most infamous series of decisions ever returned by a U.S. Supreme Court,” Bertie said. “Norman v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. United States v. Bankers Trust. Nortz v. United States. Perry v. United States. This was during the dictatorship of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He illegally packed the Supreme Courts with Communists.”

  Werner pressed his lips together and gave his head a small shake. Hans looked like he wanted to bang his head on the table. Manny did an eye roll. And McCabe looked like a heart attack waiting to happen.

  “He did!” Bertie said. “He closed every bank in the country. Illegally.”

  Riley raised her hand again. “We were in the middle of the Great Depression.”

  “A minor economic correction,” Bertie said, wheezing and gasping for air. “Hoover had the right idea. The market will regulate itself. But Roosevelt had other plans. He issued an executive order requiring the surrender of all gold coins, gold bullion, and gold certificates by citizens of these United States to the government by May 1, 1933, in exchange for their value in U.S. dollars.” Bertie furiously sucked oxygen. “Congress, his lapdogs, also passed a resolution canceling all gold clauses in public and private contracts.”

  The aide arrived with water for everyone, took in the climate of the room, quickly deposited the water, and left.

  “People tried to fight it,” Bertie said. “Their cases went to Roosevelt’s Supreme Court, where all four were decided in favor of the government’s position. Gold couldn’t be owned by the people anymore. The government had stolen it all for itself.”

  “President Ford signed a bill in 1974 legalizing the private ownership of gold coins, bars, and certificates,” Emerson said.

  “Yes. I saw to that,” Bertie said. “But he didn’t repeal the gold clause resolution! That clause still stands as an affront to every citizen and a threat to every private fortune.”

  “Until Manny takes his seat on the Supreme Court and overturns it,” Emerson said.

  Werner nodded in affirmation.

  “So,” Emerson said, “to follow Grunwald reasoning, you are not stealing the gold. You are returning it to private hands. Where it belongs.”

  “Precisely,” Werner said.

  “It must have taken years to amass all that bullion,” Emerson said.

  Werner again answered for the family. “We were cautious.”

  “And this has been going on since the turn of the century,” Emerson said. “January 1, 2000. One, one, zero-zero.”

  “Very good,” Bertie said. “It seemed an appropriate time to begin the new order.”

  “And your sons are following in your footsteps?”

  “All but one,” Bertie said.

  “Why did you fake your death?” Riley asked.

  “There was going to be a congressional investigation. Some talk of unlawful activity. I decided it would be better to die. The outpouring of affection from powerful people would drown out the inquiry.�
�

  Bertie was laboring to breathe, his chest expanding and collapsing with each word. Everyone at the table was pitched forward as if that would help the man speak.

  “So your dream is almost a reality,” Emerson said. “You’ll soon be firmly in control of all the world’s wealth and, hopefully, be positioned to install yourselves as the leaders of the new order.”

  The Grunwalds exchanged glances.

  “That’s overstating it a bit, but yes,” Werner said, “that’s our plan in a nutshell. Very good. Now what we need you to do is to post another video on your website. An update. To let your viewers know you’re all right. And to explain those numbers away in an innocent fashion.”

  “I see,” Emerson said. “And why should I do that?”

  “If you don’t cooperate I’ll have to turn you over to Rollo and allow him to flay the skin from your bones.”

  “And if I do cooperate?” Emerson asked.

  “I’ll have him kill you quickly.”

  Riley reached for her water, realized her hand was shaking, and quickly withdrew it and put it in her lap.

  Emerson shook his head. “I’m sorry, that isn’t enough of a carrot. I know I’m going to die. Everyone’s going to die. A few hours, more or less, makes little difference. You have to offer me more than that.”

  Hans looked up the table at Emerson. “I don’t think you understand the situation here. We hold all the cards.”

  “On the contrary. To continue your analogy, I think you have a very bad hand. I hold all the aces. You want me to make a recording. Ergo, I make the recording or I don’t. It’s all up to me.”

  “You’re our prisoner.”

  “I’m no more a prisoner here than I am anywhere else. Whether I feel free or not is entirely up to me. You can beat me. Torture me. It won’t make me any more likely to do that recording. And it will make the video rather suspect, don’t you think, if I appear black and blue, with my lips swollen and my nails ripped out?”

  Hans leaned forward. “And what will be more likely to make you do the video willingly, Emerson?”

  “That’s simple,” Emerson said. “Gold.”