by M. J. O'Shea
You’re a moron.
Apparently the apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it came to blowing things out of proportion. Alo rolled his eyes at his own dramatics and sat down at his desk with the packet of letters. He pulled the old ribbon gingerly and separated the first letter from the rest. He opened it and started scanning the letter. It was written in German, which wasn’t the best of Alo’s four languages, but he was easily good enough at it to read a common letter. He scanned through that one, then picked up the second.
Hours later he was more than intrigued. He hadn’t been able to figure anything out, obviously. If it had been that easy, someone else would’ve done it years ago—probably his grandfather himself. But Alo had to admit they’d been right. There was something off about his great- grandfather’s letters. Something that could’ve been explained by fear, by stress, or by the fact that he really was putting some sort of code into them. Alo pulled the first one out again.
By the end, he was puzzled but convinced there was something there. It wasn’t just the stilted words of a man who was in a good, but most likely precarious and dangerous, position and afraid for his life. It was odd.
He tried again didn’t get anywhere. Alo decided to put the letters away for the night. He could work on it later, when he was more awake and had a huge library at his disposal that may be of no use, but would surely be better than what little he had at home. There wasn’t anything he could do about the letters from his bedroom.
He locked them back up and grabbed his sweats to take to the shower. There was time for letters, Hermann Goering, and Nazi treasure in the morning. Despite his determination to put the whole thing out of his head, Alo didn’t fall asleep until nearly dawn.
“Dr. Perry, can I ask you a question?”
Alo hadn’t gotten over his intimidation with the good professor in the weeks since the term started. Not even with Perry’s continuous attempts to make him feel more at ease. Maybe by the time his program was done and he had a doctorate himself, his advisor wouldn’t seem like a statue and would almost be a friend. Maybe.
“What’s up?” Dr. Perry smiled. He leaned back in his desk chair and ran his hand through unfairly perfectly styled hair. Alo’s hair never looked like that. He never looked like Dr. Perry period. At least he likes me.
“I got some letters from my grandfather, and I’ve been looking into them for the last few weeks, and I think I might actually have something that—” Alo caught himself before he continued babbling.
That wasn’t confusing or anything.
“What do you mean?” Perry leaned closer, and Alo took the seat across from him at his desk.
“I know this has nothing to do with my concentration, but these sorts of things don’t come along often.” Or ever. “The letters were from my great-grandfather in Europe to my great-grandmother, who he’d sent to safety in the States right before it was too late. He was Jewish.” Alo had just stated the obvious since Dr. Perry had to know Alo was Jewish himself. “He never made it out of Europe, but he sent her letters for a couple of years before he died.”
Perry’s face softened. “You’d like to do a family study? That’s wonderful. I always encourage my history students to apply their own history to world events. It won’t officially fit into your coursework, but if you have the time, I’d love to see something like that from you. It would be fantastic, and I think we can work it around somehow so it counts for something.”
“Not quite.” Alo took a deep breath. This is when a nice family project that could maybe be tailored to fit his program turned into him looking absolutely crazy.
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t just reading my great-grandfather’s letters and applying them to the times in which they were written. There’s really something more.” Alo didn’t know what he was trying to do—get permission from a man he respected to do something crazy? He wasn’t sure.
“You’ve said that already, that there’s something there. Please. Explain.” Dr. Perry leaned forward even farther. Alo understood. He’d probably be trying to figure out what the weird student was talking about too, if he was Perry.
“Well, see, my great-grandfather was a bit of a talker. He was good at getting things that he wanted by talking his way into them. It helped him land a spot as a personal servant to a high-ranking German officer instead of being shuffled off into the concentration camps, where he would’ve surely ended up if it weren’t for his... particular talent.”
“How fascinating. Who did your great-grandfather work for?”
“Hermann Goering, actually. I guess you could say he was a higher-up....”
Dr. Perry’s eyes widened. “Um, yes. I’ve heard of him. I believe everyone’s heard of him.”
Alo wasn’t surprised. The guy was famous—even his Wikipedia page was a mile long. Alo felt a little dumb for not knowing much about him beyond the general information but World War II just hadn’t ever been his interest, ironically. The last time he’d even studied the era at all was probably freshman year.
“I haven’t done a lot of research on him yet, but he had vast property, including a hunting lodge near Brandenburg, which was where my great-grandfather began working first.”
“That’s an incredible story. How did your great-grandfather end up passing away, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Nobody is certain. They just stopped hearing from him, and it was the war. He was Jewish. Records were lost.” Alo shrugged.
He didn’t mean to be blasé about it, but nobody really talked about those times. His grandfather barely remembered them. Alo only had a few vague stories and a stack of letters. Other than that, the man was a stranger.
“My great- grandmother tried to look for him, but from what my grandfather says, after a few years of nothing but dead ends, she assumed he must’ve died, and tried to put it behind her.”
“I’d love it if you did some research into your great-grandfather. Maybe find out what became of him.” Alo did have quite a lot of resources his great-grandmother hadn’t had. “It would be a fantastic addition to fill out your portfolio.”
“That’s not the whole thing,” Alo said. He pulled one of the letters out from his messenger bag. “His letters, the ones he wrote to the States, they were odd.”
“What do you mean by odd?”
Alo knew that his advisor had to be getting frustrated with his slow-ass story, but he just didn’t know how to say it without losing his advisor’s respect.
“There are parts of the letters, well, parts where it seemed like they were written in code. Capital letters where they don’t belong, sometimes in the middle of words, numbers, odd details.”
“Why would he have done that?”
“That’s the rest of the story. People in my family believe that he might have managed to get certain things from Goering’s lake house. Stolen things. He was Goering’s personal servant by the end of the war, traveled with him all over. My grandfather thinks that my great- grandfather might have hidden these things. In different places. He thinks the letters tell us where they’re hidden.”
“Things. By things, do you mean... Nazi treasure?” Perry looked like he was trying not to laugh. Or roll his eyes.
Alo might as well have said Atlantis. Maybe mention the Templars while he was at it. Or the Illuminati. His theory was on that level of not likely. But the thing was, as impossible as it sounded, Alo thought he might be right.
“I suppose you could call it treasure. Goering was famous for having stored vast quantities of items at his lake house. Gold, art, antiquities, more than anyone could ever account for.”
“Alo, this is the stuff of adventure films, not real academics.”
“But the stories of Goering’s holdings are real—to a lot of people. There’ve been teams who dove into the lake looking for gold, reports of barrels of treasure being dumped there as soon as the Russians started to get too close to Berlin. This man did exist and he did have huge stores of items
stolen from all over.”
“How could your great-grandfather have gotten ahold of any of them? That’s impossible.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it happened.” Alo was getting frustrated himself. He wasn’t a moron. He’d spent the last two weeks telling himself how crazy his story was, and he’d checked his reasoning over and over.
“Listen, I know how this sounds. If it was anyone else, I’d be sneering myself. But look what happens with this letter.” Alo opened the one he’d brought as a reference. It made him nervous to even have that much out in the open. “See, my great-grandfather said he was in Paris at the top, right?” Alo pointed at the date and the city notation. “Now look at the way he capitalized things. It’s completely unorthodox. Capital letters rarely mark the beginning of a sentence; they’re never proper nouns.”
Perry looked over the letter. Alo knew he’d be able to speak and read German just as well as any of his protégés and certainly better than most of Alo’s family.
“So here are the letters Ira capitalized, if we’re looking at this in the framework of Paris, you can rearrange them easily.” Alo pointed at the c and the h. “I noticed these two letters first. Then the rest of this word.”
“Chevalier,” Perry muttered.
“Yes. And if that’s the first word, there aren’t many possibilities left for the rest of the letters. It would have to be Chevalier de la Barre. Nothing else in Paris fits.”
“Okay, so what about the rest of it?”
Alo knew his theory was about to get... laughable. Or at least more laughable than it already was. “Well, there are only two digits in this letter other than the date. Three and five. Fifty-three Rue du Chevalier de la Barre looks like some sort of warehouse. But if you put the numbers in the order they were written....”
“Let’s see what’s at number thirty-five.”
Alo cringed. He knew exactly what Dr. Perry would find. One quick Google search led them to what was quite possibly the most public place imaginable. Sacré-Coeur cathedral. Alo knew exactly when Perry got to the answer. “Alo. You knew where this would end up.”
“Of course. I have Google too.”
“And you want me to believe your great-grandfather hid priceless stolen treasure”—he looked like he had to choke over the word—“in one of the most famous monuments in the city? In any city.”
Alo should’ve been able to guess that would be Perry’s reaction. Like he’d just said, it would’ve been his reaction too. But for some reason, it irritated him that his great-grandfather was being discredited. That something he thought was pretty damn obvious was being discredited.
“I think it’s worth doing some research and looking into it, sir. There are more anomalies in the letter. I’m guessing they lead to a location in the cathedral.”
Perry sighed. “I see. Listen, Alo, I can’t sanction this project. You know I can’t. It’s... it’s a treasure hunt. Do this on your own time, of course, if you’re interested. But I highly suggest you don’t make it into anything formal.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Alo took the long way home that night, walked around his neighborhood a few times, and tried to clear his head. He had the letters, he had research materials at hand, and he wanted to know the truth.
The answer seemed obvious. A prickling feeling at the back of his neck told him maybe the answer wasn’t as obvious as he thought. Alo sped up his steps in the last few blocks to his house. He decided he’d feel better when he was inside with the door locked.
Chapter Two
Bogota
Three months later....
Jack Hunter didn’t like Colombia. It wasn’t the country’s fault, he supposed, but the weather had gone from hot to wet and back to hot again, and it didn’t seem to matter where he was, there was always some rabid herd of bugs following him. Not to mention he’d found jack shit the entire time he was there. Less than jack shit, because they’d spent a lot of money searching for absolutely nothing. That little fun fact probably colored his view of the Southern Hemisphere far more than any sticky weather.
“Jack. Are we ready to pack it in?” his newest assistant, Kendra, asked.
She was perky and ponytailed and waiting for him at the mouth of the cave of fucking nothing where they were supposed to find a burial site. If Jack wasn’t a gentleman who hated the idea of laying a hand on a woman, he would’ve strangled her and her bouncy hair hours ago.
The cave seemed to mock him. The empty goddamn cave was where all the research he, Kendra, and the brainiac fact-checkers at the network had told them there should be a burial site. There should have been, but unless a few snake carcasses constituted an archaeological find, he was royally screwed. And not to be a cliché, but it sure as hell wasn’t the good kind of screwed.
Kendra tapped the toe of her utility boot on a mossy rock. Her ponytail bounced along with it, still somehow annoyingly shiny and clean in the middle of the fucking sweaty jungle where the rest of them were melting.
Jack wanted to tackle her to the ground and shake her until her efficient little tablet full of whatever the hell she was always looking at smashed all over the ground. He figured with as much shit as he was in at the network, it was probably best for him to remain calm.
“Yes. There isn’t anything here. Pack it in.”
He gestured to their cameraman slash producer, Brad, to start putting the cameras away. There wasn’t a damn thing for Brad to film anyway. Or produce. Or whatever he did other than stand around and make Jack feel even more incompetent than he already did.
Jack wiped his face and smeared a streak of makeup away from it, which made everything that much better. He was in the jungle in some dumbass Indiana Jones costume with his hair—that he was contractually not allowed to cut—in a low ponytail, and he was wearing makeup. At least the hair and makeup team had stayed back in Bogota for the day after they’d been prepped, rather than trekking all the way up to nowhere.
Jack was screwed.
Screwed.
He wondered how many times he’d have to say it to himself before it really sank in. Even more, he wondered how this had gotten to be his life.
“Hey, Jack. We’re going to have to pick up the pace,” Brad muttered. “Looks like a storm’s about to hit.”
Of course it was. His day couldn’t get any better.
“Hello?” Jack pulled his phone away from his face and looked at the caller ID.
It was Marshall, from the network. Jack never got good news lately when Marshall called. He’d just dragged himself back into his hotel room, wet and tired and vaguely nauseated from the long, bumpy ride out of the hills. The last thing he felt like dealing with was a network suit who was going to scold him like some misbehaving kid.
“This is Marshall.”
Yes. Thanks for clearing that up. “What’s up, Marshall?” Jack cringed.
“I’m afraid I have some not-so-good news.”
Way to cushion the blow. “What is it?”
Jack all of a sudden just wanted to hear it. He wanted to get the damn thing over with and move along. The adventure network had been hinting for months, phrases like “viewer decline,” and “refresh the lineup.” Things that had nothing to do with a thirty-six-year-old TV host who’d been doing the same thing for nearly ten years.
“The network executives have gotten increasingly concerned by Treasure Quest’s ratings. They’ve been sliding all season.”
Of course they had. Jack knew that. He’d had some bad luck with locations, a few busts. None of it had turned out the way he’d hoped.
“I’ve been working on some great new ideas, to bring in viewers. Charge the whole thing right up again.”
“Jack....”
Marshall sounded almost sorry. Like he didn’t want to hear what was the equivalent of begging. Screw begging, Jack wanted a shot of whiskey and a sledgehammer to take out everyone who’d left him hanging. Even Brad—his supposedly genius on-site producer—hadn’t come up with a g
ood idea in months. He’d left Jack to scout for the next show with Kendra, who was mostly there to be seen in tight shorts... just like him. Scouting wasn’t supposed to be his job. He was the pretty one, not the brains.
“Listen, Marshall. I have something, okay. This one’s good. I’ll be happy to sit down with you and discuss it in a nice office when we get back to New York.”
“You really do have a lead that’ll pan out? You’re not blowing smoke up my ass?” Marshall asked.
He sounded skeptical. Jack didn’t blame him. The last few episodes had been... iffy at best. Mostly drummed up drama with little or no payout. Jack knew the network wanted payout. They wanted the damn money shot.
“I really do.” Not lying at all. Nope, zero lies here.
“No more of this Capone’s vault shit?” Marshall sounded skeptical. And constipated. Jack couldn’t hate him any more.
“Yeah. No more of that.” Jack winced when he thought of the empty site they’d come across earlier that day.
There wasn’t a damn thing he could’ve done about it. Bad research, looting, whatever it was, the culmination was another empty episode. And he didn’t have anything to give Marshall. Of course he didn’t have anything. He had to come up with something by the time they landed in New York or he was out of a job. Probably was anyway but it would be better to go out with his head held high.
He needed an idea.
Marshall made an aborted snorting noise into the phone. Stress breathing, Jack assumed. “Okay. I’ll set a meeting with you for when you get back. Tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll be back by tomorrow night.”
“Then I’m going to want to see you, Brad, and Kendra in my office Monday morning, and I want you to have something that’ll convince the board of directors, because I’m telling you right now, Jack, they’re talking pretty seriously about canceling you. You’ve been on too long; nothing’s happening to bring new viewers in. We need fresh, or we need to put something else in your time slot.”
