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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Dead Simple
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F
rom the Archives, Blaine and Liz went straight to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, specifically the annex building across Fourteenth Street from the sprawling complex commonly known as the “Money Factory,” where all paper currency in the country is printed. Since they didn’t have an appointment, the receptionist was adamant in refusing to send them upstairs in search of someone who could help them identify the origins of a specific rare coin. All such requests, they were told, needed to be filed in writing, with a tracing included in lieu of the coin itself. A response, or certificate of authenticity, could be expected within three to four weeks.
“Maybe I can help,” a collegiate-looking young man, who must have overheard their conversation on his way out of the building, said from behind them. “My name’s Evan Reed. I’m an intern in the Records Department.”
“Congratulations, Evan,” said Liz.
“I’m also writing my graduate thesis on rare coins.”
“How are you on the Civil War era?” Blaine asked him, while the receptionist shook her head in dismay.
“Depends on the minting. What have you got?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” Blaine said, and produced one of the gold pieces he’d found under the lake.
Evan’s eyes widened. He took the coin and handled it gently, checking one side and then the other. “Where’d you get this?”
“The bottom of my piggy bank.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” Evan asked both of them, clearly not amused.
“If it is,” Liz told him, “it’s on us.”
“It’s just that …”
“What?” Blaine prodded.
“Let’s go upstairs to my office,” said Evan, steering them toward the elevator.
“You’ll have to sign in first,” the receptionist snapped before they could leave, and shoved the registry across the counter toward Blaine and Liz.
 
T
he office to which Evan referred was more like a lab, shared by a number of interns, the others of whom had left for the day. He inspected the coin under a binocular microscope, rummaged through some books, and then scanned some files on a computer.
“Just as I thought,” he said finally.
“What?” Blaine asked him.
“Simply stated, this coin doesn’t exist.”
“You saying it’s a forgery?”
“No, I’m almost certain it’s real, but there’s no record I can find of a coin like this ever being minted.” Evan adjusted a large magnifying glass set on a swivel, so Blaine and Liz could get a better look at the coin. “At first glance, or to the novice, this is an ordinary ten-dollar gold piece. On the head side here we have the goddess Liberty.” He flipped the coin over in his fingers. “And on the tail we have the eagle.”
“Sounds familiar,” Blaine said.
“Only on the surface. Notice anything missing on the tail?”
“No.”
“How about ‘United States of America’ in a rim here?” And he traced the empty space with his finger. “It’s on every coin ever minted by the Treasury, which means whoever made the mold on this one must have screwed up.”
“Is that possible?”
“A mistake that big? Not if the coins ever got out of here, no.”
“Is there any way to find out for sure?” Liz asked him.
Evan thought briefly. “Maybe.”
 
O
nly elevators reserved for staff use could reach The Tombs. The three of them emerged on a dimly lit basement hallway. Evan led the way down it to a solid wood door he opened with a key.
“Coins aren’t minted in Washington anymore,” he explained, ushering
Blaine and Liz in ahead of him. “But all records have been consolidated here for years. Not that anybody cares. Most of them aren’t even important enough to be transferred onto a database or microfilm.”
The Tombs was actually a series of rooms, each cavernous and lined with shelves. The wooden desks and chairs placed amidst the shelves were all heavy and dull. The books stacked carefully around them looked like massive ledgers with broken and tattered bindings. The rooms smelled of paper, antiseptic, and stale, untouched air.
“The date of the issue is 1862, according to what’s imprinted on the coin, and the lack of an identifying letter means that they were minted here in the capital,” Evan explained. “Is there any way you can narrow it down further?”
“Try December,” Liz said, recalling that William Henry Stratton had taken delivery of the keg chests and wagons on January 11.
Evan located the proper logbook for the Washington Mint on the shelf and lugged it over to the heavy wooden table. He began turning the pages rapidly, scanning the precise inventory of which coins were minted when and in what quantity. He stopped suddenly and flipped back to a page he had already checked, obviously perplexed.
“I guess the records weren’t as complete as I thought,” he announced. “There must be a page missing.”
He spun the book around for Blaine and Liz to look at.
“See?” Evan resumed. “The bottom of this page ends on December 15. But the next page picks up with December 27.”
“Maybe they closed for Christmas,” Liz suggested.
“Let’s find out,” said Evan.
He moved to a different section of the storage shelves and brought another book back with him.
“These are the inventory logs listing shipments both incoming and outgoing. Let’s see what it has to say … .”
He worked the tattered pages carefully, afraid of tearing or crinkling them. He seemed to find something that interested him, studying a number of entries before speaking again.
“Major gold shipments from San Francisco were logged in on December 14, 17, and 21.”
“I guess they stayed open, after all,” noted Liz.
“How much gold?” Blaine wondered.
“Roughly, I’d say enough to mint as many as a quarter million of your mysterious gold pieces.”
“Enough to fill about four keg chests,” Blaine calculated. “What would their value be today?”
“Impossible to calculate,” Evan explained, “because you can’t factor in collector’s value. We’re talking about a huge minting of coins in perfect
condition, never placed in circulation. But without an actual history to lend authentication, you’re looking at a substantially deflated price if you intend to sell.”
“And if such a history existed?”
“Wow. Then we could be talking in the range of twenty thousand dollars per coin.”
“That’s five hundred million dollars!” Liz noted disbelievingly.
“That’s right,” said Evan.
“So what was Stratton doing with them?” Liz wondered out loud. “Where was he going?”
Evan came slowly out of his chair. “Stratton?
William Henry Stratton?”
Blaine and Liz looked at each other. “You mean you’ve
heard
of him?” Blaine asked.
“You mean you
haven’t
? Stratton’s Folly doesn’t mean anything to you?”
Together, they shook their heads.
“How much do the two of you know about the Civil War?”
“The North won,” Blaine quipped.
“Not for the first two years,” Evan responded. “The fact is we were getting our butts kicked right up until mid-1863, to the point where Lincoln was under a lot of pressure from Northern industrialists to cut his losses and accede.”
“Where does Stratton’s Folly come in?” Liz asked.
“After northern losses at Vicksburg and Fredericksburg, with the South moving on Washington, Lincoln ordered the North’s gold reserves moved from the capital. Legend has it that he sent the gold in a heavily armed convoy by train to Mexico for safekeeping until after the war.”
“Under the command of Colonel William Henry Stratton,” Liz surmised. “What happened?”
 
T
he snow had been falling for hours, a white blanket growing beneath the convoy as it trudged through the valley.
“Hold up,” Colonel William Henry Stratton called to his men when he saw the rider approaching along a narrow trail that cut between the hill-sides.
“We’re running behind, Colonel.”
Annoyed, Stratton turned on his horse and glared at the civilian who had ridden up alongside him from the rear of the convoy. “I’m aware of that, Mr. Tyler.”
“You should also be aware that we have a schedule to keep. Our cargo must reach the rendezvous site on time. Am I making myself clear?”
Stratton gazed over Tyler’s shoulder at the twelve heavy-load wagons containing that cargo. The wagons were being pulled by oxen, huge, lumbering beasts that exuded raw power as their hooves pounded the frozen ground. The weather had been deteriorating fast ever since they set out
nearly six hours before. Stratton’s two dozen troops looked chilled to the bone, his only consolation being that Tyler’s small detachment of civilians looked far worse.
“Quite, sir,” the colonel replied.
“Well,” demanded Tyler when Stratton made no move, “what are you waiting for?”
“To find out what’s ahead of us,” Stratton said. “You wouldn’t want to lose your cargo to an ambush, Mr. Tyler, now would you?”
Tyler frowned, as the scout Stratton had sent on ahead of the regiment drew even. Stratton had ridden with Billy Red Bear from the beginning of the Civil War and intended never to stray far from his side for its duration, having come to see the Indian as the one person who could guide him through hell.
Red Bear ignored the civilian and saluted.
“As you were, Sergeant,” said Stratton.
Red Bear’s leathery face was creased with concern. “No one ahead of us or to the sides, sir.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
“The storm, Colonel.” Red Bear seemed to be sniffing the air, his eyes rising to the smoke-colored sky. “It’s turning into a big one.”
“Recommendation?”
“We should find shelter, sir. Fast.”
Tyler drew his horse up closer, forging his way between the two soldiers. “The hell we will! I’m in charge of this mission, Colonel, and I order you to continue on the route as planned. Is that clear?”
Stratton nodded and reached almost imperceptibly beneath his greatcoat. “Very clear, Mr. Tyler.”
The colonel raised his pistol and, without any hesitation at all, shot Tyler in the face. Taking that as their signal, Stratton’s troops turned their guns on the members of Tyler’s civilian detachment and opened fire as well.
The shooting seemed to go on for a very long time, when it was actually over very fast. Stratton blamed the illusion on the echoes of gunfire lingering shrilly in the wind. Even after those sounds had subsided, clouds of gray gunsmoke continued to sift through the air, visible amidst the falling snow.
Colonel Stratton climbed down off his horse and crouched over Tyler’s body. He reached into the civilian’s coat pocket and extracted a leather pouch, which he quickly stuffed into his Union-blue greatcoat.
“Better find us that shelter, Sergeant,” he said to Red Bear as he remounted his horse, the snow becoming a blinding white barrier before them. “Better find it fast.”
 
“
S
o the gold shipment never made it to Mexico,” Blaine said, when Evan had finished.
The young man nodded. “And that’s where the legend really takes off. Stratton had to be an extremely loyal and reliable officer to be entrusted with such a mission. But the temptation posed by the gold must have been too much for him; neither he, his men, nor the gold was ever seen again.”
“Gold packed in twelve heavy-load wagons built by someone named Culbertson,” Blaine said, putting the pieces together. “How much exactly are we talking about?”
“The Northern reserves would have been enough to fill all twelve of those wagons,” said Evan. “Be worth about seven hundred fifty million dollars in today’s market.”
Blaine looked at Liz. “Over a billion when our mysterious coins are added in. Think that would be enough to get Rentz out of the hole?”
“What does the legend say happened to the gold?” Liz asked Evan.
“That something went wrong after Stratton stole it. Maybe he was ambushed or betrayed by his men. Maybe Indians wiped out the brigade as it headed west. The only evidence ever found were the bodies of a civilian detachment that was riding along with the convoy.”
Blaine slid one of the strange coins across the table. “And where do you think this fits into the story?”
Evan took the coin in his hand. “It doesn’t. Why would Lincoln order a special secret minting of such an unusual coin just to be hidden until the war was over? And why would Stratton be transporting them? It doesn’t make any sense.” Evan paused and looked the coin over again. “Whether they stole the gold or not, though, it’s like Stratton and his regiment just fell off the face of the earth.”

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