GOLDEN REICH

by Mark Donahue

  “I’ve heard the rumors of this group, but I know what you say is more lies. More thievery, more…”

  Without further comment, Becker lunged for Rolle’s throat, but Rolle deftly stepped to his right, grabbed Becker’s left wrist, and twisted it behind his back. At the same time he slammed Becker’s face into the right rear window of the Lincoln. As Becker crumpled to the ground stunned by the impact of his face on the thick glass, Rolle kneeled and placed his left knee into Becker’s back and whispered in his ear, “Do you think I was fooled by your transparent plan? Your arrogance and the arrogance of the trash like you, think you can rob Germany of her only hope for survival, so you can live like kings.”

  Trying to regain his composure and dignity, Becker summoned his sincerest voice and said. “Colonel, you’ve been under incredible pressure for several months. I apologize for my comments. Let’s go inside and revisit your plan for how to distribute the gold after its arrival.”

  Not loosening his grip, Rolle pushed Becker flat to the dirt and kept his knee in the small of his back. “How many are involved in your cabal, General?”

  “What cabal?” We are men, good men, trying to preserve the Führer’s legacy. Why have you turned against us?” Becker gasped, finding it difficult to breathe.

  “I’ve not turned against you, General; I’ve never been with you. I saw through your sham since the day you presented your preposterous plan to me months ago. Do you think me such a fool that I would be taken in by such nonsense?”

  “Colonel, you are insane! You have everything wrong! This gold is to build a Fourth Reich, right here in America. The Führer believes this country will one day realize his greatness, and the genius of his vision and its citizens will…”

  Interrupting Becker’s impromptu and desperate speech, Rolle said, “Your idiotic lies bore me, General, but you are correct about one thing. This gold will save Germany, but you will not be there to see her resurrection.”

  As he spoke, Rolle removed a switchblade from his pocket, flipped it open, and then calmly and deliberately embedded it into Becker’s right temple. Seemingly surprised by the insertion of steel into brain matter, Becker provided no resistance, no outcry of pain, or convulsive movement. He died quietly with his eyes open in a look of curious shock.

  Lifting the body, Rolle opened the front passenger door of the Lincoln and slid Becker onto the front seat, trying to position it as it had appeared minutes earlier when Becker was sleeping, with the wound side down.

  In the distance Rolle could see the major still walking up the gravel road toward one of the posts his men guarded.

  When the major was no longer in sight, Rolle walked back toward the offices inside the cavern. He could smell the still acrid fumes from the vehicles that had burned down to their frames the night before. He entered the glass-strewn offices and made his way to where he had last met Lester. Rolle was going use the rear exit that led into the cavern to see if Lester could be found. He needn’t have bothered.

  Sitting in the near darkness of the office closest to the cavern, Lester had his feet propped up on the desk and appeared half asleep when Rolle entered the room. Squinting and trying to make his way to the back door, Rolle would have bumped into him if Lester had not said, “Whoa there, mister, don’t knock me over.”

  Startled by the sound, Rolle at first began to back out of the office until Lester turned on one of the few lights that was still working, “Turn that light out or we will be seen.” Rolle whispered.

  Lester hit the switch and the room returned to near total darkness as Rolle came in and shut the door. “It appears you had a very eventful evening,” Rolle said.

  “Well, I wasn’t exactly bored, but I am a little sore and hungry. Got anything to eat?” Looking at Lester, Rolle found it difficult to believe that this, tall, skinny, dirty, middle-aged man had eliminated at least a dozen well-trained and heavily armed German guards in one evening.

  “Yes, there is some fruit, cheese, and bread in the next door office; I will get it for you.”

  Returning with the food and a canteen of water, Rolle watched as Lester languidly peeled and ate two bananas. He then broke off some bread and cheese and made a sandwich, then washed all of it down with a long drink of water, much of which ran down his chin and made a five inch water mark on his dirty blue work shirt. Taking some water in his hands, he splashed his face and said, “Damn, I feel like a new man.”

  “There are still six guards left,” Rolle said, as Lester stretched out in his chair apparently not all that concerned about the guards or Rolle’s plans that were still in jeopardy. “I said there are still six...”

  “I heard ya’ the first time, mister.” Staring at Rolle, Lester slowly stood up and walked toward him. Meeting his gaze, Rolle felt the Luger still wedged in his belt and wondered if he would have to use it against this man whose bearing and presence was completely different from the scruffy hobo of forty-eight hours earlier. The dirty clothes were the same, but not the man wearing them.

  “Mister, I killed a bunch of men last night and while they sure needed killin’, nobody would be dead today, includin’ my friends, if you hadn’t lied to us ’bout what was goin’ on out here. I want some answers, and if I don’t get them right now I’m gonna put a hole in the back of your head the size of a grapefruit.” As he spoke, Lester lifted a .45 automatic he had taken from one of the dead guards. “Mister, I ain’t kiddin’. You talk now or you’ll be dead in ten seconds.”

  Rolle decided to tell Lester the truth. Within minutes he laid out every detail of the plan up to and including how he killed Becker.

  Lowering the .45, Lester walked back to his chair, sat down, and picked up the remaining apple on the table and took a large, noisy bite. “First of all, I don’t need all that gold for me, but I know some folks who sure could use some help. Why don’t we make a deal?”

  “What kind of deal do you have in mind?”

  Chapter 34

  Scottsdale, Arizona—2014

  Back in their motel, Tom and Jon discussed their conversation with Ben and realized that they had approached their treasure hunt like the city rubes they were. “Remember that old movie The Out-of-Towners with Jack Lemmon and what’s her name?” Tom asked

  “Sandy Dennis.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Well, that’s us. We’re the out-of-towners who don’t have a clue about what the hell we’re doing.”

  “Which one of us is Sandy Dennis?” Jon naturally asked.

  “You are, you Ivy League slut. Hey, I’m serious.”

  “Look, you spent months researching the history of this area, all those legends, even the geography, what else could we have done?”

  “Reading books will only get us so far; we need someone like Ben to help us get to the next level.” Tom said.

  “You heard him. He’s not interested in looking for gold.”

  “I know what he said, but maybe if we could convince him to just spend more time with us, he could fill in some of the gaps in what we don’t know.”

  Gazing out of the hotel window and seeing nothing but Arizona desert stretching to the horizon, Jon was quiet for several minutes before saying, “For over seven years I’ve been thinking about all the things I’d do when I got out, and I can assure you that looking for some lost gold mine in this inferno was not in my top ten. But this is like a jigsaw puzzle or a novel when you’ve read the ending first. We know there’s gold there. But we don’t know how much, where it is, how it got there, or if anybody else knows what we know, or if they know more than we do. All I do know is, I want to find out more. Even if we find out there’s no gold. It would be great to find a pot of gold and retire under a palm tree on some Caribbean Island, but I know that’s probably bullshit. It’s just that I’ve never had this kind of adventure before and want to see it through to the end.”

  “That’s how I see it too,” Tom
said.

  “How about three months? Let’s give this boondoggle ninety days and if we don’t find any answers, or gold, we leave for the East Coast and the real world. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Tom agreed.

  After a restless night, Jon and Tom headed back to Elsa’s at first light and had scrambled eggs with ranchero sauce and smoked ham for breakfast by 7:30. Not seeing Ben, they dawdled in their booth till nearly 10, having several cups of coffee, and watching an eclectic group of road warriors amble through the local legendary eatery. Leather-clad motorcyclists, families, men in business suits, and various forms of cowboys and Indians created an interesting two-hour sideshow.

  Not pressuring them to vacate their booth, Vicky, their waitress, kept bringing back fresh coffee and amiably chatted with Jon and Tom. Fiftyish and plump, Vicki did not let the fact she was missing several teeth on her upper left side keep her from laughing and telling some raunchy jokes. After several stops with her coffee pot, Jon finally asked her if she knew a man named Ben.

  “Ben Jackson or Ben Smith?”

  “Ben Smith.”

  “Yeah, I know old Ben. He’s been round here even longer than me. I was a sweet young thing with all my teeth when I came here twenty years ago, and old Ben was here then.” Laughing at her own self-portrait, she then asked Jon why he was looking for Ben.

  “We’re interested in this area, particularly those old mines and thought maybe Ben could help us in getting some answers for some of our historical research.”

  “Sounds more like you’re lookin’ for gold to me,” laughed Vicki. “Ben must have showed you that piece of gold of his he found up in the hills years ago. He shows that damn piece to pert near everyone who gets even near this place. I don’t even think that damn thing is real, but it sure gets Ben lots of attention.”

  Suddenly deflated by Vicki’s comments about Ben and the ease by which she saw through their ruse, Tom and Jon did not see an old friend staring at them from a booth thirty feet to their right.

  Glaring under a dirty felt cowboy hat and behind a scruffy beard, Jim the Asshole, and former prison guard, was trying to get his whiskey-soaked brain to remember where he had seen the two urban cowboys before. Jim was sitting with three other hygienically challenged men, all of whom were trying to eat off an all-night bender with eggs, grits, and several gallons of coffee, with little success.

  “I know those two assholes over there,” Jim said to his buddies, oblivious to the irony.

  “Where from?” one of his associates grunted.

  “Not sure. All I know is I didn’t like em’ before, and I sure don’t like em’ now.”

  “Yeah, they look like assholes alright,” said a second informed friend, as irony reached epic proportions.

  His mind now working like a rusty razor blade, Jim said, “I’ll tell you what… I think those assholes work at the bank that foreclosed on my house.”

  “You mean the one in the trailer park?” The fourth associate asked, mesmerized by the mystery involving the two strangers who talked and laughed with Vicki.

  “Yeah, I said it was my house, didn’t I?” Jim responded with some irritation, as he continued to stare at Jon and Tom.

  “Those assholes sure do look like bankers,” the one with even fewer teeth than Vicki said.

  “You know it ain’t right that a man works his whole life to build a home with a satellite dish that picks up the NFL package and have some asshole bankers come and take it all away.”

  “How many payments did you miss ’fore they stole your house?” Jim’s sympathetic toothless friend asked.

  “I don’t remember exactly. They said I never made no payments, but I’m pretty sure I did and the goddamn post office lost them.”

  Still glaring at Jon and Tom, Jim the Asshole and former guard finally decided to confront his home-takers. With his friends in tow, he walked to Tom and Jon’s booth. “What are you two assholes doin’ in here? Lookin’ to take another man’s home and satellite dish?” Looking up from their coffee, Jon and Tom did not at first recognize Jim the Asshole, nor his three rather large and half-drunk companions who now made up a large, fleshy mural surrounding their booth.

  “Pardon me?” Jon asked.

  “You heard me, you little asshole, what the hell you doin’ here?” As he spoke, he reached down, picked up Tom’s half-filled coffee cup, and drained it into Jon’s lap.

  “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” Jon yelled, as he tried to stand up in the booth to escape the hot coffee.

  With the three men behind him laughing and providing the encouragement he needed, Jim the Asshole reached for Jon’s cup with the intent of pouring his coffee into Tom’s lap. Inches from the cup, his wrist was intercepted by Tom’s enormous left hand and held in a grip that forced a grunt of pain from Jim’s lips.

  “You better let go of my wrist, boy, or my friends here are gonna start bustin’ you up.”

  Increasing the pressure of his grip, Tom looked at Jim and calmly and sincerely said, “If they start anything, I’ll snap your arm like a chicken bone. It’ll be a compound fracture. There’s going to be a lot of blood, and if you really piss me off, I’ll keep twisting this skinny arm of yours till I rip it off. Then I’m going to stand up and beat the hell out of each of your friends with what’s left of your skinny arm and put them all into intensive care. All this is going to happen just because you think we’re somebody we aren’t. Do you clearly understand me?”

  As he spoke, Tom again increased the pressure on Jim’s wrist. The vise-like grip caused Jim to moan in pain. Tom took the cup from Jim’s hand, placed it on the table, and slid out of the booth feeling at a definite disadvantage in a sitting position with four men surrounding him.

  Still gripping Jim’s wrist, Tom reached his full six foot eight height and the three men behind Jim began to rethink their position and whether they really wanted to risk getting hospitalized over a trailer and a satellite dish, even if it could bring in all the NFL games.

  “Hey Jim, this ole boy here says he ain’t who you think he is. You sure they’s the ones who took your house?” asked the largest of the group.

  Becoming more sober by the second, Jim squinted through the tears rising in his eyes and said, “No, I ain’t sure, but I know them from somewheres.”

  Keeping Jim’s wrist in the grip of his huge hand, Tom pushed Jim toward the front door of Elsa’s. As he did, the other diners had for the moment put down their forks and watched in silence. Opening the door, Tom pushed Jim down the three steps, and the former guard landed on his ass ten feet away. When he turned back toward the inside of Elsa’s, Tom faced the three remaining men and for a split second thought that the short fat one, who was well over 250 pounds, might try something. Locating a spot on the fat man’s face, Tom was ready to unleash a right hook that would have broken the man’s jaw in several places as a similar punch had done to a mugger that Tom ran into on a Manhattan street several years before. But the fat one, seeing the sincerity in Tom’s eyes, dropped his own gaze and, with the other two, headed for the door.

  Vicki, the waitress, followed them outside with their check in hand and cussed at the men for trying to walk out on their bill. With all four reaching in their pockets, they finally came up with enough to satisfy Vicki, including a 20% tip.

  Back in their booth after Tom had taken a bow to the applause he received from the other diners for his performance, Jon asked, “Do you know who that was?”

  “Yeah. That was Jim the Asshole. Recognized him when I stood up.”

  “Quite a job, big guy, I was hoping the other three would have started something. Were you really going to break his arm?”

  “Like a twig. He had a gun in his right pocket.”

  Suddenly pale, Jon asked, “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I guess you boys can handle yourselves after all. Min
d if I join you?”

  Looking up, Tom and Jon saw a smiling Ben Smith.

  Chapter 35

  Jasper Mine—1943

  Sitting in the near darkness of the small office of the Jasper mine, Rolle and Lester came to an agreement. Rolle had realized earlier that he had greatly underestimated Lester on many levels. Yet, he realized that it was part of Lester’s personality that he wanted to be underestimated. It gave him a competitive edge in dealing with people. With the men from the streets of Phoenix, he became their leader because they thought he was smarter than they were, but not a lot smarter. Had they perceived he was far different from them either intellectually or any other way, they would not have felt he was one of them. He would have been viewed with distrust, an outsider.

  Lester realized the role he needed to play and took a low-key approach with his leadership position. In many cases, he let others make decisions and only if he thought they were patently foolish would he offer alternatives. That’s why the men on the street respected him. While he tried to avoid reverting to violence in his violent world, Lester would never back down from a challenge or from defending those who needed it.

  On more than one occasion, Lester had used his military training in hand-to-hand combat to beat senseless someone who deserved it. Once he even killed a man who had long been suspected of several beatings and mutilation murders of homeless men in and around Phoenix. When the six foot five, 275-pound man threatened to cut up one of Lester’s friends, “like the others,” for not giving him the last of his military pension money, Lester disarmed the man in seconds and put the knife between his third and fourth ribs. The man’s body was never discovered nor missed. Coincidently, a string of slashing murders on the streets of Phoenix suddenly stopped, the cases never solved.

  On the surface, there appeared to be a great number of differences between Lester and Rolle, yet the men were remarkably similar in many ways. Both tall and slender, they shared aquiline features and receding hairlines. While Rolle had far greater formal education, he recognized Lester’s intelligence and ability to lead, traits he felt he also possessed. Both men were also reserved in nature, and while Lester liked country music, and Rolle, Beethoven, they both appreciated art and were avid readers. The biggest differences between the two men could not be seen.