“Love to.” It was like she had been waiting for him to ask. “In 1764, Benjamin Franklin went to England. It was his third trip there and the intention was to gain colony status for the province of Pennsylvania. They wanted to be treated like a part of the United Kingdom rather than being subjected to the whims of the Penn family.”
“1764? That’s before the American Revolution, right?” Dylan was focused on the ground at his feet and his voice was soft and listless.
“Yes, but he wasn’t there on behalf of all the colonies, just Pennsylvania. He was a prosperous businessman and had many friends in England. The goal was to secure not just the benefits of being a crown colony, but the rights as well. I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘no taxation without representation,’ which was one of the major rights they wanted to secure.” Abbey’s voice was growing with excitement.
“Fine, but he was there for Pennsylvania and not everyone else. Did that change in 1776 when the revolution broke out?” Dylan wasn’t as excited, but he was growing curious, especially having grown up in Pennsylvania.
“The American Revolution did not just sort of happen in 1776. Tensions between England and the American colonies were growing for a long time. In fact, in 1767 when the colonies really started making noise, France reached out to Franklin, who was in England at the time, hoping to widen the divide between England and the Americas.” She turned to walk back to the apartment.
Dylan didn’t budge as he searched his brain for tidbits of knowledge. “Okay, so Franklin is in England being a politician and the people in the colonies are causing trouble. France hates England, I remember that from high school history, and they are egging on both sides. Let them fight and France can come clean up afterwards. Is the lease some kind of peace treaty?”
“Definitely not a peace treaty. King George really didn’t want a war, and neither did the wealthy American businessmen who were getting together to discuss the best way to deal with the Indians and the French. But it wasn’t just money, it was natural resources. The king needed access to American timber to supply his navy. The British navy was crucial to maintaining the Empire, which spanned the globe at that time. Both sides were negotiating, some times creatively, to avoid war,” Abbey explained. She was making the history come to life.
“Okay, so Franklin is in England and he’s a real smart guy,” Dylan said. “He wants to do almost anything to avoid war, but still let the Americans keep a bigger part of their paycheck. We’re still talking about a country, not a five-hundred-square-foot apartment in Boston. How does this lease come up?” Dylan stopped and breathed deeply, like he was struggling to keep from vomiting.
“Right. Franklin is in London for years trying to talk this thing through. In fact, he once wrote that his friends in England were sick and tired of hearing him talk about the colonies and a peaceful resolution to their situation. He was in England so long that the people who knew of him in the colonies thought he was a British sympathizer. But he was so smart. You wouldn’t even believe it. Ben Franklin was using the press and various balls and society events, the social media of the time, to sway public opinion. He debated, presented, and negotiated anywhere and any time.” She turned and took and short step back toward the road.
“And he just says, ‘let us borrow North America for a while and then we’ll give it back’?” Dylan was growing skeptical.
“No. He wanted a seat in Parliament so the colonies could have a say in the size of the taxes levied against them. But Parliament was made up of only noblemen at the time and they would not let that happen. Some believe that they even levied new taxes, including the Tea Act, just to show Franklin that America would never have a say. That’s bogus of course; they levied the taxes to raise money for the wars they were fighting all over the planet. By 1774, it was clear that the British government wasn’t going to concede and that the American Colonies weren’t going to give up. Ben Franklin started preparing to go home to Philadelphia.” Abbey had a far-off look in her eye.
“Was this a big deal at the time? I mean, was everyone talking about what the colonies would do? Or was it a big deal to the people involved but not to regular people?” Dylan was starting to enjoy the story.
“That’s kind of hard to say,” Abbey said with a shrug. “Not everyone knew about what was going on in the colonies, and even fewer people had a hint of the arguments in favor or against either side. It’s hard to find anything to compare it to today. England was the largest and most powerful country in the world. They had dealt with uprisings and malcontent before and it always worked out. In general, there was no reason for them to think this time would be different.” She nodded slightly.
Dylan jumped to a conclusion: “Which means a lease deal could have been struck and only a few people would know about it. Not like someone was going to tweet the news or leak it on Facebook. If only a few people know about it, the document can get lost or misplaced and disappear.”
“Or get stolen or destroyed with no one wanting to take the blame and covering it up.” Abbey smiled as if revealing the big mystery.
“But was this lease Franklin’s idea? Surely if it was a government thing there would have been duplicates or copies for record keeping.” Dylan tried to sort and mentally store clues that may be of value in their search.
“On one of Franklin’s last days in London in 1775, William Pitt, a prominent statesmen and friend of Franklin, came by Craven St., where Franklin was staying. The family that owned the house is the most-often cited source of proof that the document existed. Anyway, Pitt and Franklin were friendly and they talked at length about many things, including farming. Pitt was of the impression that America was nothing more than farmland and that cultured, educated people would soon leave the Americas in favor of European society.” Abbey may drive a tractor most days, but she was a font of rich historical information.
“If they could get Franklin to give up on America, they believed they could get the other intelligent business people, the ones giving them all the problems, to give up as well. Problem solved.” Dylan was still the jock doing well just keeping up with the discourse.
“That may have been Pitt’s endgame, but remember, I said Franklin was smart. Leasing farmland in England had been going on for hundreds of years. Farmers would pay the nobles to use the land and grow crops. Payment varied from a portion of the crops to a direct cash payment. The leases were often written for ninety-nine years or more so that the same family could run a farm for generations. The families made improvements like they owned the land; they built houses, mills, fences, and roads. The landowners didn’t care because they didn’t really want the land for anything; the power came from owning it.” Abbey sat back as if she had just delivered a knockout blow.
“Wow. Franklin asked if the colonies could lease the land, fix it up, and be free to do whatever they wanted,” Dylan said. But he felt like the idea was not totally original. “Didn’t the British do something like that with Hong Kong?”
“YES! Exactly!” Abbey was clearly excited that Dylan could see what she saw. “But that was more than one hundred years after the American Lease. There is plenty of debate about where the British got the idea to lease Hong Kong for ninety-nine years; naturally American Lease believers think it came from an agreement worked out between Pitt and Franklin in March 1775.”
“But at the end of the Hong Kong lease, didn’t the city go back to China?” Dylan wasn’t a detail guy when it came to the news, but he remembered generalities of slightly weird stories, like this one.
“Yup,” Abbey said, raising her eyebrows.
Chapter 30
Their conversation and walk had taken them through Monson center and back to Dylan’s apartment. The last fifteen minutes of the walk were silent while Dylan thought about what he had just learned. In the driveway he stopped and looked off to the patch of dirt where Montana was buried.
“Holy shit,” Dylan finally said.
“Indeed. If this document is found, it could ch
ange the world. England would have rights to at least the East Coast of the United States. They would likely let us keep it, for a price.” Abbey’s face suddenly went blank.
“But it would have expired like a hundred and fifty years ago.” Dylan couldn’t believe this unknown document could be so significant. “Wouldn’t we get to keep it from squatter’s rights or something? If they didn’t make a claim when it expired, it’s not fair for them to make a claim now.”
Abbey dropped the next bombshell: “Someone, no one knows who, claimed that the term of the lease was two hundred and fifty years from the date of consummation. We’re looking at sometime in the spring for the lease to come due.”
Dylan whistled and rose from the couch. He walked to the kitchen, careful to step over and around the items still strewn about the floor. He opened the fridge and retrieved two cans of raspberry seltzer. When the door closed, Dylan just stood facing the fridge, lost in thought.
Slowly, he walked back to the living room and handed a can to Abbey. He walked to the far wall and looked out the window and then turned back to the room. Sitting wasn’t an option; movement helped him think.
“Does that mean those were British agents that killed the cop and my dog?” Dylan asked with a puzzled look.
“Not necessarily. The king liked to grant land to family and his trusted inner circle. There is speculation that if the lease were truly written and approved by the king, it would have been transferable. Whoever held the lease would be the legal owner of the land.” Abbey’s face was ashen with the implications.
“So Russia or Saudi Arabia could find the lease and own New York and Washington, D. C.?” Dylan didn’t think that sounded right.
“Well, there are a lot of ifs, but basically yes. Actually a country finding the lease would probably be better than an individual or a crime syndicate. Imagine if Al-Qaeda got their hands on the lease? Or a drug cartel? There would be a protracted legal battle; in the end we would probably win, but there would be a cost. Can you imagine paying a royalty of hundreds of millions of dollars a year to a bunch of drug runners?” Abbey shook her head in disgust.
Dylan didn’t like anything that seemed so implausible. “So if we find it, then what? We give it back to the United States government for free? The FBI or someone must be looking for it, if any of this is possible.”
“Ever heard of the Secret Service?” She gave a knowing smile.
“The guys that protect the president? Aren’t they technically a division of the Treasury or something?” Dylan didn’t see an obvious connection.
“They were founded in 1865 with the primary responsibility of fighting counterfeiting. But their roots go back further. During the Civil War, the Confederacy put a great deal of their covert operations resources into finding the Lease. There were several European countries ready to recognize the Confederacy, but they needed them to produce something concrete and lasting. Can you imagine if they had a document that gave them rights to the North? Some people believe that there was at least one attempt to create a counterfeit Lease, which makes the Secret Service even more important.” Abbey’s eyes moved about the room while she talked and thought.
“But to counterfeit it, they would have to see an original, right? That would mean that the federal government already had the original. Why not make it public then?” Dylan was starting to see why the story was both hard to believe and plausible at the same time.
“You ever hide something so well you forgot where you put it?” she asked, cockeyed.
“Seriously?” Dylan had been pushed past the point of belief. “A document giving the holder rights to the East Coast of the United States was simply misplaced? This is starting to sound a lot like a campfire story that ends with ‘boo’ or ‘gotcha.’”
“Well, if you understood what traveling and health conditions were like in the 1860s, you might not be so incredulous. The prospect of getting in a car and driving to Washington, D. C. right now is unpleasant. Can you imagine taking a stage coach or going on horseback, exposed to the elements? It would have been miserable and taken days. The traveler could easily have gotten ill and not recovered.” She seemed annoyed by his inability to think of the period.
“But why Monson? I think the sign says it was abandoned in, like, 1770, a hundred years before the Civil War,” Dylan insisted. He was having fun thinking critically about hiding an historic document.
“Even in the 1860s, New Hampshire was the middle of nowhere. Also, ‘abandoned’ may not be the best word. They forfeited their charter and several towns absorbed parts of Monson. It’s not like the homes and people completely disappeared. If you cleared four acres of New Hampshire forest by hand, I doubt you would ever move away from it.” Abbey nodded, confident in her local history knowledge.
Dylan was not going to give in. “Yeah, but a hundred years after it was cleared, the guy working it has no memory of what it took. He just knows there are a ton of rocks and his growing season is like six weeks long. It’s a stupid place to hide the American Lease.”
“I agree. Can you imagine being in the minority of a group that only has a few members? My thesis was that the American Lease was brought to Monson during the Revolutionary War. It was far more likely to be inhabited by the people who had cleared the land, which made them industrious, hard-working Americans.” Abbey frowned.
Dylan replayed her words carefully. She was the Ph.D. candidate that had started her thesis on the American Lease and never finished it. That meant, in addition to her stunning good looks, she was smart, really smart. Why hadn’t she finished the thesis, if she was that smart?
“But your timeline doesn’t work. And there has to be a logic jump that is just implausible.” Dylan finished his seltzer and crushed the can.
“No. My timeline is perfect and the logic is sound. Evidence and facts just aren’t available. At least, not to me.” She looked at the floor, defeated.
“Then lay out your timing and logic for me,” Dylan insisted. “If I’m going to look for this thing, I want to know whatever you have.” He hadn’t realized he was going to actually search for the document until just now.
Abbey looked at him as if gauging his trustworthiness.
“Sounds an awful lot like someone who wants to get the Lease for themselves. What did you do before you came here?” she asked.
“Bounced around, mostly.” Dylan pursed his lips. “I had some drug issues a while ago, but I’ve been clean for almost seven years. I just try and keep my head down and make it through one day at a time,” he said.
“So a drifter druggie wants me to trust him with my ideas on where to find one of the most important and valuable documents in history?” She looked at him skeptically. “How do I know you’re not with them?” she asked.
“Unbelievable. In case you forgot, you came to me. In fact, I’m still not sure I should be looking for the Lease. I’ll probably just call the cops and tell them about the threat and what that guy did to Montana. Then I’ll move and be done with this whole mess.” Dylan shook his head in disgust.
Abbey stood and wrinkled her face. “That’s what you would like me to think. It just so happens that the first time you ever came into my dad’s farm stand was right after a cop was killed in relation to someone searching for the Lease? That’s practically like waving a giant flag telling me to talk to you. How could I have been so stupid?!”
“Then maybe we should agree that I don’t give a crap about the Lease. All I care about is finding the asshole that killed my dog,” Dylan said, trying to extend an olive branch to resolve a conflict he didn’t understand.
“If we find the Lease, I get to say what happens with it. And we do it, even if you disagree,” she insisted.
“Absolutely. And when I deal with the scumbag, you can’t be anywhere close to me.” Dylan was glad that she was not going to let this suspicion continue.
“Seeing how you don’t have a computer, let’s go to my place and look through these documents.” She smiled at hi
m and opened the door to her truck.
Chapter 31
Being with Abbey felt good. Dylan hadn’t felt this way with a girl, or anyone for that matter, in a long time. He watched as she drove through town and admired her calm exterior; he knew she was excited.
Once, at a stop sign, he caught her staring at him. Plenty of girls had pursued him when he was the big man on campus, but this was the first time he had been checked out in a while. It felt good, but did not erase the pain of losing Montana.
The driveway to Abbey’s house was one of the nondescript dirt paths that randomly appeared along the paved roads. From the street, there was no way to tell if it led to an orchard, a pumpkin patch, or just an empty cleared lot. As they came out of the trees, Dylan saw a smallish farmhouse sitting up on a grassy knoll.
From the outside it looked like the house probably hadn’t changed in over a hundred years. When they were closer, he could see an air-conditioning compressor and a generator tucked neatly into a back corner. Certainly some updating had occurred. The grass was well-kept and the shrubs were trimmed but not sculpted. Pay attention to details, but get the job done—a hallmark of the New England farmer, and the woman who lived here.
“How long has your family owned this?” Dylan asked as Abbey put the truck in park.
“It’s been a while. One-hundred-and-seven years in March actually. The house itself is two-hundred-and-thirty years old; the footprint was expand a little about two hundred years ago, but hasn’t changed since,” Abbey explained and probably could have given significantly more detail.
“It’s beautiful. This space is perfect. Feels like they could film a movie here.” Dylan smiled.
“I’ve lived here my whole life, except when I was away at school.” Abbey paused. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember how much history this building has seen. As a kid, it was just another boring old house. Now I can practically hear it breathe.”
American Lease (A Dylan Cold Novel Book 1) Page 14