Story of the Century

by Tom Norton

  The site in question has been thoroughly inspected twice in the last six months by inspectors without an issue.

  We are considering our options, I recommend you consider yours.

  Rick said, “What does that mean?”

  “They don’t trust us. Hell, I wouldn’t either. Even if we didn’t have the evidence we could cause them a lot of trouble with just accusations.”

  “Well, we have to tell them something.”

  “I’m working on it. They might have a follow-up in the Times tomorrow.”

  Hendrick said, “What would that be?”

  John said, “The sensible thing to do is get us involved in the deal so if anything happens to them, we have as much to lose as they do.”

  “Like how?”

  “Video or witnesses of us doing something illegal that will get our asses in prison. Hell, I don’t know; let’s see what they have to say next.”

  Rick said, “How in the hell could they be inspected twice and the inspectors not see that they were drilling or mining?”

  John replied, “How about this. They drilled a one meter or larger hole through the concrete floor of the building and have an attached cover of some kind that they can close. They have no rock lying around and the place is swept clean. You wouldn’t even know there was a hole there.”

  Hendrick added, “And their political buddies tell them when they are going to be inspected.”

  “Makes sense to me and meanwhile they just keep repairing a derrick in there continuously.”

  “The Times, Reuben sandwiches and beer, you got it. And don’t come back without beer. Take some of these movies back, too.”

  Rick replied, “I don’t know if I can remember all of that.”

  “Well you didn’t remember it last Tuesday and I distinctly smelled perfume on the sandwich sack.”

  An hour later John complained, “Where is that guy? Must have got hung up with that gal down at the shop.”

  Two hours later Hendrick said, “I’m going looking for him.”

  John said, “He has the van, you’ll be walking and it’s at least a kilometer.”

  “He’ll pick me up if he is on the way back.”

  Sometime later the Van could be heard outside and a worried John thought, “It’s about time.”

  Hendrick hurried through the door and said, “He’s gone, I think they have him. The van was at the sandwich shop, but they said he was never in the shop.”

  John said, “Oh, shit. I should have gone.”

  “What will they do to him?”

  “I’m thinking right now, nothing. They’ll interrogate him to make sure we have what we say we have.”

  “Then what?”

  “Not piss us off to where we go public, that’s for sure.”

  Hendrick replied, “They know where we are, why didn’t they come for all of us.”

  “They don’t want all of us, they are afraid of the supposed mechanism we have where everything will come to light if we come up missing.”

  “We might as well get out of this damned apartment and get our cell phones. Masters and Miller will probably be calling us.”

  John’s cell phone rang and it was Rick on the other end.

  “Are you ok?”

  Rick replied, “So far.”

  “Where are you?”

  After a long pause, Rick said, “I don’t know, but it was a long jet flight to get here. I was blindfolded.”

  “Who has you?”

  “I don’t know and I couldn’t tell you if I did.”

  “You’ve got company, huh?”

  Rick replied, “Yes. I was supposed to call you and let you know I was alright. You will be contacted on your cell later. That’s about it.”

  “Ok Rick, hang in there, we’ll work this out.”

  “I hope; goodbye.”

  John said to Hendrick, “Well, shit.”

  Hendrick replied, “What are we going to do?”

  John replied, “Can you think of a scenario that works out well for us?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t either.”

  The two sat on the couch drinking a beer and Hendrick said, “What about the priest?”

  “What about him, he’s out of this deal?”

  “He isn’t as long as he has those rocks with gold in them in his garage.”

  John replied, “I see your point. I’ll go down to the convenience store and call him right now on their landline.”

  “Father, this is a friend.”

  “Yes I recognize your voice.”

  “Well father, things aren’t going to well here and I wanted to talk to you about the rocks you have in your garage with the gold in them.”

  “They have gold in them?”

  “You said they had gold in them.”

  “I most certainly did not.”

  There was a pause as John thought and he said, “You asked if I knew what was in them and I said, yes.”

  “That’s what you said, but I didn’t say I saw gold in them.”

  “Well what the hell is in the rocks?”

  “There are little pieces of glass in some of them.”

  “Glass?”

  “It looks like glass. Some little slivers and some like little melted beads.”

  “Where the drill cut the rock?”

  “Yes and all through them, but only in two of the rocks. The two that have two colors.”

  “Ok Father, tell me about the two colors.”

  The priest said, “Well, one’s black and the other is dark brown. On some of the rocks the brown is lighter.”

  “Yes Father, that’s what Rick told us. Where is this glass you said you saw?”

  “Where the two colored rocks come together and down in the brown rocks.”

  “Father, I really want you to bury these rocks somewhere so you don’t get caught with them.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Could be Father and none of this is your doing.”

  The priest said, “I would like to think I helped you some.”

  John said, “You did Father, immensely. If you feel threatened, call me from a public telephone.”

  “I will, and thanks for the heads up, and don’t worry about the rocks.”

  “Okay Father, goodbye.”

  John went to Lin Lou’s place to meet Hendrick and he asked about the priest, “How did that go?”

  “You won’t believe it. He said he didn’t see any gold in the rock, he was talking about glass where black rock was on brown rock.”

  Hendrick replied, “Molten lava on sand.”

  “Yeah, he didn’t have a clue what he was looking at. But anyway he is going to bury them.”

  “Well, we won’t have him on our conscience. I am worried to death about Rick though. Can’t we just bail out of this thing all together?”

  John said, “You have heard of the man who knew too much, well that’s us. Masters and Miller is in over their head and so are we. We’ll just have to wait until they contact us again.

  Another day passed and in the afternoon John’s cell phone rang and he answered, “Yes?”

  “It’s Rick. I’m ok; a guy wants to talk to you.”

  “Put him on.”

  After a short pause a very English man’s voice said, “John, I presume?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  “Well John, we have a quandary here. Our operation is going quite smoothly as planned. I admit that we inadvertently interrupted your scam operation and you have some animosity about that, which compelled you to seek your revenge in the form of English pounds. You seem to be a very intelligent individual that is capable of devising a fail-safe method to protect yourself from us, but I will cut to the chase. We will retain your friend Rick as our guest for the duration of our project. If there is any action on your part to interfere with us or the operation, please remember the deep hole at that site isn’t the only deep hole in the ground we have and your friend will be at the bottom of it. We are a
large business that is simply hampered by regulations in other counties that change like the wind. Our operation in another country would be perfectly acceptable. As for your friend, we have contractors who take care of that kind of thing. Do we have an understanding?”

  John replied, “Oh, I understand alright, but I don’t think his mother will understand him disappearing.”

  “Oh, she already does. He is employed by a company in New Zealand and a portion of his pay is sent to his mother, for her and to save for him.”

  “Well, how about my pay? Oh, you and your friend will also receive checks from Masters and Miller in payment for your services for working on the project in that country you traveled to on false passports. In fact you have already cashed several of those checks. Do you understand the implications?”

  “Perfectly, let me speak to Rick.”

  “Here he is.”

  “Rick, what do you think?”

  “I think you talked me into that damned Neanderthal scam and now you got me screwed up in this deal. Screw you,” and the phone went dead.

  John said to Hendrick, “You heard all that?”

  “We’re screwed alright. I could set back and take their money without a problem, but I can’t live with Rick being a prisoner.”

  “We’ll have to work on that. The good news is that Rick has fed them a line of bullshit. They still think Sam was a gone bad scam and they don’t know anything about the priest.”

  Hendrick asked, “What do we do now?”

  “I’m completely out of suggestions.”

  The next week was a train wreck in that Rick’s mother called and said she thought something was fishy because Rick would never have gone to New Zealand without telling her goodbye. She was thinking about calling the police.

  John simmered her down with some made up story, but she wasn’t completely buying it.

  Next, Johns phone rang and it was the priest, “John, there is gold in that rock. I had to bust it up to be able to carry it and there are little streaks of gold in it.”

  “In the brown rock?”

  “Yes, in the brown rock.”

  John replied, “Well we thought there would be Father.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought.”

  “You buried them?”

  “Yes, and more glass beads where the brown is next to the black.”

  John said, “Oh yeah, the melted glass balls.”

  The priest said, “No, they’re definitely glass beads, some of them have holes through them. Of course most were melted I guess, so you can’t see the holes.”

  John sat at the table looking at Hendrick, paused and said, “Holes in them?”

  “Yes, and like the others I told you about last week, some are red, some green, some blue, all different colors. I even think I found what was a pearl with a hole through it, but its black now, the heat I guess.”

  Hendrick and John stared at each other for an undetermined amount of time and the priest said, “Are you there, John?”

  “Oh yeah Father, I’m here alright.”

  The priest said, “I told you I was excited.”

  “Yes, you most certainly did Father. The only people that know about this are you, me, Hendrik, Rick and God, and let’s keep it that way. I have to go now Father, I’ll be in touch.”

  John hung up and he and Hendrick said “Holy shit,” simultaneously.

  Hendrick said, “Let me say it. You know what this means?”

  In an already mind bending week, the coup-de-gras was a phone call with a recognizable voice yelling, “Ok, you son of a bitch you’ve done it. I just got word from my contacts in several governments that Interpol is starting an investigation into why you were in Iceland on faked and forged passports, fake cell phone numbers and spending so much time in the vicinity of sites 22 and 23. Do you realize what this means? Every government leader in Europe and elsewhere is going to have a lot of explaining to do about us, and they can’t. I am personal friends with these leaders and have financed their political successes. If Masters and Miller get caught in this thing, heads are going to roll all over Europe. You are so brilliant that you got us into this damned mess, you had better get us out of it, and I think that’s impossible.”

  John screamed into the phone, “Ok, loudmouth, shut up. How long do I have?”

  A screaming reply came from the speaker, “Two weeks top until it’s too late to do anything.”

  Still screaming, John replied, “Call me in three days,” and he hung up.

  Hendrick said, “That went well. What now?”

  “Get me a beer.”

  At eight a.m. the two were on a flight to London after John had explained he was going all in again. Arriving in London, they took a cab to The London Times building. In their best clothes, John asked to see the most important man at the Times and of course he got a runaround. He told the receptionist that this was truly a matter of life and death, and to get this letter to who-ever while they wait. The receptionist made two calls, the first obviously to security when two security guards positioned themselves at the entrance to the building. The second call was lengthy and while still on the phone she handed the letter to a well-dressed man that came out of the elevator. He returned to the elevator and the receptionist hung up the phone and told John and Hendrick to take a seat in the lobby.

  Ten minutes later the man who had taken the letter came out of the elevator and motioned for John and Hendrick.

  They entered the elevator and exited on the fifteenth floor and followed the well-dressed man to an office door that he held open for them. Inside was a secretary at a desk and she rose and opened a big wood door behind her and the two entered to see a huge desk cluttered with piles of newspapers. Behind the newspapers sat a gray haired man who told them to have a seat. The two sat in the leather chairs facing who was William Withers, according to the name plate on his desk.

  The white haired man said, “Call me Bill, who’s John and who’s Hendrick?”

  Hendrick said, “I’m Hendrick and John here will do the talking.”

  Bill said, “This is an interesting note. I understand you have the most sensational story that has ever been published. More sensational than 9/11, the moon landing, or the Kennedy assassination?”

  John replied, “Right up there with them, sir.”

  “It’s Bill. Would you like to enlighten me on what this story concerns?”

  “How are you on keeping personal secrets Bill?”

  Bill replied, “I have kept secrets that are front page news all my life. Is it really that important?”

  “If I told you that at the same time you broke the story, the New York Times would also?”

  “That would heighten my interest, and I could live with that.”

  Jon asked, “This will never leave this room if you don’t want to be involved?”

  “It won’t. Well, give me a break, what is it?”

  John said, “One other thing.”

  “Ok, ok, what?”

  “Could you get me a private five minute meeting with everyone on this list? And this has to be done in three days.”

  Bill looked at the list and broke out laughing, “You have to be kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not kidding and I guarantee you everyone on the list will thank you for it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. These people are all involved in something together, but I can’t get to them all in three days and three days is critical.”

  Bill replied, “An asteroid?”

  “On the contrary, something much more pleasant.”

  “I’ll tell you what. You tell me what it is, in complete confidence, and I will decide.”

  John said, “We have discovered Atlantis.”

  “Atlantis, you are shitting me?”

  “No, we have absolute proof on video and physical evidence.”

  Bill replied, “If that is true, it would certainly get on the front page of the times, but not earth shaking.”


  John said, “It is not only the Atlantis discovery, the discovery came about due to the discovery of a complete skeleton of a Neanderthal living at the same time, which was twenty five thousand years ago.”

  Bill said, “If proven and documented, that would be front page center. But I’m afraid authenticating this story would take months.”

  John replied, “If everyone on this list called you in the next two days and told you to print the story, would you do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then make the appointments. Make the first one Brian Smith of parliament here in London and wait for his call. He will just say, Print it. Then Dejeau in Paris and so on. I will just continue on until you stop me. If you decide to print the story, I will deliver the story to you in no more than a week.”

  Bill looked at his watch and said, “Be at the parliament building in fifteen minutes and say William Withers sent you. We’ll see what you have.”

  “Ok, but bear in mind, these people are sworn to secrecy and they will not discuss the matter with you.”

  “I’ll be right here at this phone.”

  “We will need air transport to the other locations and a small staff you can trust to keep quiet.”

  Bill said, “Well, why not, in for a penny in for a pound.”

  Thirty minutes later Bill’s phone rang and he said, “Bill Withers.”

  The voice on the other end said, “Bill, this is Brian Smith. Print it.”

  The Time’s private jet traveled to France and Germany and worked its way to three other countries and Bill received calls that simply identified the caller and they said, “Print it.”

  Bill Withers was bewildered how something this widespread in the political world could have taken place and him not hearing a whisper about it. Yes, Atlantis and Neanderthals was maybe one of the biggest stories of the century, but there must be a story behind it as fascinating. Sworn to secrecy about this was about to drive Bill insane, but he had put in the works the means of it being on the front page of the Times and on the streets within hours of receiving the story.

  How and why would all of these political figures be involved in this thing, it just didn’t make any sense. He would have loved to have called the New York Times and found out what they knew, but they probably didn’t know any more than he did.