“It’s nice because it still smells like a crime scene. All right, Ruth,” Dix continued patiently, “you refused to tell me anything until we were here. This has to qualify. Do you think you can tell me what we’re doing here?”
“We’re here for some treasure hunting, Dix. We’re here for my Confederate gold. I keep thinking about my treasure map. It said the gold was beneath the niche. When I saw the deep crevice and realized parts of this cave are cut well below us, I started to wonder whether they meant that literally. The soldiers may have found a lower crevice or cavern and buried the gold there.”
“Why go to that much trouble?”
She walked to the deep niche, went down on her knees, pulled out her pick, and began tapping the earth. She said over her shoulder, “They didn’t want anyone to find the gold, even if they found the cave. That’s why they left the map incomplete.”
He stood behind her, watching, saying nothing.
They both heard it—not the sound of rock but the dull sound of wood. She looked up at him, her smile lighting up the dim chamber. “Is this great, or what?”
She began digging with her pick, and Dix dropped to his knees and began pulling away the loosened earth. Within moments, they felt rotten wood planks, and soon they uncovered a depressed floor some three feet square.
Once Dix had pulled up the last plank, Ruth lay on her stomach and angled her chest down into the hole, Dix’s Maglite shining down. “I wondered how they could do this, but now I understand. It’s a natural passage they boarded up, like a hole into a low-ceilinged basement in a house. The drop is only about five feet. I wondered how they could get the gold bars down there so easily, and this is how.” She jumped to her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Let’s go down there, partner.”
Once Dix and Ruth stood in the middle of the chamber, they panned their flashlights around the small space. “Look,” Ruth said. “That narrow passageway probably leads back to the underground river and that cliff at the cave entrance.”
“The cave floor must slope up very fast,” Dix said. “It dead-ends here in this chamber. Look how the floor keeps going up. At the back wall, I’ll bet it’s only about three feet tall.”
“All that’s surely nice,” Ruth said, “but where’s my gold?”
Dix said, “I guess there’s no reason to think the Rebel soldiers would leave the gold out in plain view, not after they went to all the trouble of lugging it down here and covering that hole in the ceiling.”
A few minutes later, at a height of about four feet, Dix’s fingers pressed against something rough in a crevice in the west wall. He pounded his fist against it and heard the echo of wood. “There’s something here, Ruth,” he called as he felt excitement fill him.
They quickly uncovered more wood planks. Dix looked at Ruth, raised an eyebrow. Ruth nodded to him and smashed her pick through the rotted wood. It splintered inward.
Dix leaned over her shoulder, shining his Maglite into the blackness.
“Oh my.” Ruth crawled into a space too small to stand in, laid the Maglite on the floor. She knelt in front of a low pile of what looked like bricks covered in dust. She ran her sleeve roughly over it. They stared at six rows of gold bars, four deep, lined up perfectly by those soldiers long ago. Sitting next to the bars was a very old leather satchel.
Ruth touched the gold bars, but her eyes went to the satchel. Gently, she pulled it out, carefully unfastened it. Inside was a small leather-bound notebook. “It’s not a diary, there aren’t any pages. There are a dozen or so letters here.” She ran her fingertips over the folded sheets. She unfolded one near the top of the pile. “It’s a woman’s handwriting. Her name is Missy and she’s writing to her husband.” She looked up at him. “He’s got to be one of the soldiers who stole the gold.”
Soon they both sat cross-legged on the cave floor, the stacked gold bars unnoticed behind them, looking through the packet of letters. “They’re all to Lieutenant Charles Breacken. Wait a moment, not this one.” She picked up the last letter in the pile. “It’s from him. He never got to send it. I wonder why he left it here?”
She read:It was brutally hot today and still all we have to wear is wool. There’s a battle coming, everyone knows it’s coming, but no one wants to talk about it. I don’t know when I’ll see you again, Missy, but perhaps next month. I’m glad your parents are there to help you on the farm. Is your father still drinking too much?
We are protecting something of value we managed to steal from the Confederates, who were taking it to General Lee in Richmond. They are searching for us. We are determined they shall not have it. Elias stumbled across a cave for shelter, and I am writing this letter to you by candlelight deep inside the cave. If we prevail, my darling Missy, we will have done a great service for the Union. When next we meet, I may be Captain Charles Breacken.
I’ve got to go now. Elias just came in, said the Rebels are getting closer. I’m needed. Kiss our daughter.
Your loving husband,
Charles
Ruth said in a whisper, “He was a Union soldier, an officer.”
“And he never got home to his wife and daughter,” Dix said. “He died.”
“All of them died, but they didn’t give up the gold,” Ruth said. “I wonder how the map ended up in an old book in that attic in Manassas? Why did Charles leave his satchel here? It obviously meant a lot to him.”
“Maybe,” Dix said, “he was killed right here, outside, near Lone Tree Hill.”
He pulled her against him. “Well done, Ruth. You did it. Mr. Weaver’s going to be a very happy man. You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
She kissed him in reply.
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING
THE WHITE HOUSE
TUESDAY MORNING
THE DIRECTOR OF National Intelligence jiggled the ice in his glass, a sure sign he was pleased about something. “With respect to item six, Mr. President, the FBI domestic wireless telecommunications operation has been decommissioned with no disruption of emergency nine-one-one service. The single FBI agent injured by gunfire will fully recover.”
The president sat back in his leather chair and steepled his fingers. “And operational security remains intact? We can expect no blowback on any possible civil liberties questions?”
“That is correct, Mr. President. And we believe the swift conclusion has indeed given the message we discussed.”
“John, I’d like you to write a letter under your own signature commending Special Agent Dillon Savich for his briefing and the successful execution of his plan.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” the director said. “Now to item seven, the request for new countermeasures on the Afghan border.”
EPILOGUE
THAT SUMMER
RUTH WARNECKI KNOCKED on the front door of a small tract house in a subdivision of Midlothian, Virginia. Linda Massey answered the door with two boys, both under the age of four, clinging to her jeans, and a baby nestled in the crook of her arm. She gave Ruth a harried smile. “I hope you’re not selling encyclopedias,” she said. “This crew is still a little young and no one else has the time.”
“No, I’m not selling anything,” Ruth said. “I do have a story to tell you about your family that goes back to the Civil War. I think it might interest you.”
Linda Massey, the closest surviving descendant of Lieutenant Charles Breacken of the Union Army, was five hundred thousand dollars richer.
Ruth left an hour later, feeling so fine she clicked up her heels. She waved to Dix, who was leaning against his Range Rover, waiting for her. She gave him a huge grin and a thumbs-up.
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