CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Contributing Founder
Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved
Schifini, Mitsumi, and Holt
PRESS RELEASE-for immediate release:
Dr. Anthony H. McGinnis, contributing/founding partner
Born in Glasgow, Scotland (1925- ), and educated in Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh (1950), Dr. McGinnis is one of the firm’s original business partners. His investment in the partnership and his expertise as a successful international marketer and businessman has, as proven, created one of Eastern Canada’s most respected insolvency and estate litigation firms. His association, the McGinnis Group, holds many properties throughout metropolitan cities in Canada, Scotland, the Antilles and United States.
An avid philanthropist and art collector, Dr. McGinnis’s support has enriched society and communities all around the world—from his non-profit medical aid organization, White Rose, to his European magazine publication Welt des Architekten. Dr. McGinnis and his father, the late Albert McGinnis (1899-1968), made their family’s fortune throughout the late 1940’s in the international real-estate industry. Now retired, he travels to his summer home in Glasgow and spends the remainder of the year enjoying his rare and well-known book collection along with his wife, Gwyneth, in Mahone Bay, Colchester County.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lost & Found
Copyright 2004, all Rights Reserved
Alexis was baffled and irritated by the blindfolds that the men insisted on placing on her and Davies but was outright infuriated by the plastic restraints that shackled her hands behind her that followed as the powerboat they were forced onto approached Oak Island.
It was the middle of the night. They were guided, from the powerboat, onto the island’s docking bay, into an open-top vehicle (which felt like a Jeep to Davies), and carted away, uphill. Alexis demanded she be un-cuffed. Her citizenship protestations were met with silence as the men, obviously a security detail, manhandled the duo about. The two were patted down; one of the henchmen took Davies belt off and inspected its buckle to no avail. They took off the raincoat Alexis was wearing and checked its inseam thoroughly. Next, the two were asked to wait in a room. They were lead into a well-lit room and seated onto a couch. They promised the restraints the blindfolds would come off momentarily, took their identification cards and left the room.
“What the hell is happening here,” she screamed, “Davies? Are you there?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I’m here. Just take it easy. They’re buying our story. You’re getting too upset and it may get them suspicious.
“I don’t give a crap!”, Alexis snapped, “We’re blindfolded Davies. This is ridiculous.”
“We’re also caught trespassing on private property by men with guns who obviously don’t want us to see where we are. Just follow my lead and…”
“Your lead’s what got us into this mess to begin with!”
“Look, I’m doing this for you!”
“Oh, ‘doing this for me’? You smell a story and you know it.”
Finally, the aggravated Davies called out “Can we not argue?”
About twenty minutes passed. The two had sat in silence for a prolonged period when, suddenly, they were startled by the sound of the room’s door being opened. Davies estimated about five men had entered.
“Mr. Laverne,” spoke the voice of the group’s leader, “You will be escorted out to the main gate of the compound where the local police will take you into custody for theft and trespassing. Men…” he signaled. Two of the larger of the group took Davies by the arms and started him toward the door.
“What about her?” demanded Davies to no reply. His demand was repeated several times as the men subdued him and carried him off.
“Don’t worry, Alexis,” he yelled from outside the cabin they were being kept, “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Alexis, still blind and now terrified of her predicament knew she was in a bad way.
“What about me? What’s going to happen to me?” she asked innocently.
“Ms. Walls,” the voice replied, then paused for a while.
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid we’re going to need to hold you a little while longer.”
The men picked her up and escorted her out of the cabin. She was walking along a rocky terrain. They’d kept her raincoat. Alexis was freezing in the harsh night air of the cold Nova Scotian coast. She was lead into a sedan of some sort and driven off.
“Will you please take off these blindfolds?” she asked. She could hear the men scuffling about for a few seconds. She heard one close a window and another a door.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Walls,” came a different voice, “We’re under strict orders to prevent any trespassers from viewing anything on the Island. You’re going to have to wait for a while until we’re back on the mainland.” “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“You’re being taken to another holding location for your interview. Please be assured that you’re in on danger.”
Alexis couldn’t handle it any longer. She broke down in tears. What was she going to do? No one, except for Davies, knew of her whereabouts. She was cuffed and blindfolded on a remote island in a foreign country. Why was she acting so illogically? Her refusal to accept the loss of her husband had lead her into a crater of trouble and danger. It was then, for the first time, that Alexis swore to herself that, if she escaped the predicament she’d found herself in, she would give up this search for Sean and seek counseling so that she can move on with her life—once and for all.
She focused her senses. She determined that her best course of action was to be cooperative and play out the “honeymooners” story until she could reach the authorities.
The car traveled slowly along the gravely road and stopped at two checkpoints before making it onto the main highway. Alexis felt the smooth road and knew they were off the Island.
“Okay, will you please take these blindfolds off?” There was no response from the men. “You’re going to keep me like this aren’t’ you? This is ridiculous.”
The car pulled off the highway some five minutes down the road. One of the men got out of the car and didn’t return for nearly ten minutes. Alexis could hear crickets chirping outside. When he returned, Alexis was guided out of the car and into a room. The scent in the room reminded her of a motel setting.
As she entered, she tripped over something and nearly fell flat on her face but was caught by one of her ushers.
“You’re going to have to wait here for a while,” announced one of the men, “We’ll leave someone outside the door until the Inspector arrives. Please be patient.” Everyone left the room.
Alexis sat on the bed in the middle of the confined space. Who was this Inspector? Why wasn’t she sent out to the Police like Davies?
Nearly forty minutes later, the door reopened. This time, only one set of footsteps entered. The sound of the boots that strolled along the wooden flooring made its way to the rear of the room and opened another door.
“Hello?” called out Alexis.
The boots entered, what Alexis assumed to be, the bathroom.
“This is kidnapping, you know,” Alexis continued calmly, “I can have you people arrested.”
After several minutes, the sound of the boots reentered the main room and slowly made its way towards her. Alexis felt her breath getting deeper.
“Please don’t hit me!” she begged as the intruder’s hands lightly untied her blindfold and removed it. The interior illumination of the cabin momentarily blinded Alexis. The image of the room and the man, who had just returned her sense to her, standing in front of her, slowly faded into her vision field. It was a male dressed in a gray suit with a loosened tie; the man she’d seen in the photo Davies had left in his basement—the bald man with the long beard. It was Sean.
Alexis was astonished. She looked deep into the man’s eyes to confirm her bend. She was right. Her husband, unrecognizable, sat on the bed next to her.
“Hello Alexis,” he said. She gasped at the sound of his voice: She was not hallucinating—this was not a ghost. It was the man she’d fallen in love with six years ago. It was the man she’d promised to love and hold until death departed them. It was Sean, her husband.
Confused and elated at the same time, she felt the anger swelling up within her, as well as tears she was fighting to hold back.
“I knew you’d find me,” he said with a composed and ecstatic voice, “How’ve you been?”
Alexis was still in shock. Sean proceeded to remove the plastic restraints from her hands. Relieved, she started rubbing her wrists. Then, with great ferocity, she slapped his face.
“I know I deserved that,” he said after slowly recovering from the blow.
The woman was overcome by emotion. She was facing her husband again. He was alive. She wasn’t insane. She was vindicated. But she would find what happened to her partner four years ago at later time; all she wanted now was his embrace and comfort. The rejoined couple, in a state of wild ardor, consummated their reunion and love with the passion of an eager ocean wave collapsing onto its inevitable spouse—the shore.
_________________________________
Sean owed his wife an explanation and assured her of one. At first, he was very careful with his words. Alexis had whirled into a minor frenzy of feelings. He professed his regret and repentance for leaving her like he had but claimed to have no choice.
So there wouldn’t be any slip ups, Sean reverently insisted that she call him Kelly. While Alexis was quite collected and remained calm during this amazing moment in her life, she was anxious to lend some reason to the anguish she’d been put through for so long.
He explained that after his plane had taken off from LAX to England, he’d met a man, sitting next to him on the airplane, named James Maxwell. Maxwell was a banker, working out of Chicago, returning from a technology convention he’d attended in Los Angeles; a very nice and pleasant man with three kids, a Volvo, etc… They got to know one another and, through the course of their idle chitchat, Sean told him about his situation.
Maxwell, at first, thought he was being humored about being in the banking business but changed when Sean presented the forged check “Hawke” had written him. He held the check up to the live above his seat and flatly claimed that the check had been manufactured in Nova Scotia.
The banker explained that, since 1995, check producers/distributors had been inserting a watermark beneath the endorsement line with an inscription that validated the check as official. The inscription read R.C.B.N.S.: which to Mr. Maxwell meant Royal Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia.
During the layover in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Sean and James parted ways. Sean, then, immediately changed his destination to Halifax.
“I meant to call you,” he continued, “I really did. It just seemed like what I was getting myself into was not something I should get those I loved involved with. I was delusional. I know. I felt like something bigger than I could possible imagine was unfolding and I was the ‘hero’ caught in it all.
“And, plus, it was a way for me to get away from our marriage. We both knew something wasn’t right. I…I don’t know…I guess I just panicked.”
“That’s normal, Sean. You know it. We could’ve worked things…”
“Alexis, if I could take it back, if I could go back in time and change one thing… it would be that decision. I’ve lived with it for four years now. The circumstances were really…you’ve got to just listen to me,” said Sean with emphasis, “The intent was to call you when I had a better grasp on what was going on. But the more I found out about all of this, the further I got from contacting you. You don’t know the half of it sweetie.”
Sean continued: He had gotten a job working as a bartender in Halifax and met a man named “Minnie” who specialized in attaining fake identities for people who wanted to “get lost”. He became Kelly Williamson, son of a sea merchant who died at sea. With a social services number, he was able to enroll in about six months of law school at night, where he updated himself with Canadian legal nuances, and got his authorization to litigate by year’s end—all the while, attempting to track down Hawke.
He did so, with the aid of his newly found friend, Minnie. He discovers that his real name is Anthony Hawke McGinnis, though the middle name is nearly always dropped. After learning of his true identity and background, Sean, now Kelly, finds that McGinnis was a silent partner in a local law firm that was generating a substantial estate law division by way of a land custody/ownership trial. Having had severed his ties with his wife and his family and changed his legal identity, Sean changed, went deep undercover and, bravely, began work at McGinnis’s law firm.
He immediately shocked the senior partners with his performance and was assigned to a sensitive case—the McGinnis vs. Oak Island Association case that was an attempt at, literally, transferring complete ownership of every lot of the obscure island to Anthony McGinnis’s institute. Sean knew that the genealogic claim wouldn’t be enough in a Canadian court and, so, he devised a carefully compiled cased that broke the chain of records of ownership within the county offices. The firm’s lawyers were also able to demonstrate “gross misuse of natural resources” on the part of the island owners, a small conglomerate of men who had incorporated under the name Oak Island Association. The amount of drilling had left the island, and its culturally significant history, like a disaster sight filled with holes, shafts, and trenches.
McGinnis’s claim was that, through the use of technology and concentrated funding, a major archaeological site could be established to a)restore the island’s integrity and b)tap a natural cement mine into the island. What the public and court was not aware of was that McGinnis’s plan something quite different: He wanted to continue the search for the secret of the money pit all by himself and once and for all. His retrieval project would further ravish the geologic landscape of the area and possibly cause irreparable damage to the natural resources of the very balanced eco-system in that area.
The court ruled in favor of McGinnis’s claim and awarded him sole ownership, for $175,000 paid to the County office as “assessment & administrative” fees. All of the historians and treasure hunters who’d been working on the Oak Island mystery were banned from the site and it was protected and under guard by a small security army paid for by the McGinnis Institute. Millions of dollars of investment monies were lost by those associated with the diggers and researchers when McGinnis took over the land.
“So he’s after the treasure then, right?” asked Alexis.
“Sort of,” said the worried Sean, “you do believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said softly, “Of course.”
Sean stared into the eyes of the woman he’d long for so. She was, in fact, everything he’d come to realize that she was—a warm, kind, brilliant and deep woman with an ancient soul. His fear that she’d leave him and expose everything he’d worked for had now subsided.
_____________________________________
The sun was now rising. The two had lain down on the bed in the typical motel room after their heated and overwhelming reunion and the fantastic tale of what had happened was initially received and, to a degree, processed by Alexis. Neither of them could sleep. Alexis was still questioning the reality of the latest developments
Sean had explained to Alexis that McGinnis had taken him in as a primary mover for the retrieval project and let him into his inner circle of confidantes and partners without ever recognizing him as the man he’d conned three years ago. It was a chance that Sean had taken that paid off.
“I don’t want to tell you what he may have done if he recognized me,” said Sean with a concerned look.
It was true that McGinnis was genuinely interested in the cache of the money pit and would continue the hunt for whatever was down there but his cronies were only in it for money he’d promised them upon completion of the retrieval project. They were, literally, henchmen.
Sean knew everything about the history of the search. He’d familiarized himself with it in his newly assigned role as Executive Chief of Operations for the project. She found out that, through carbon dating done at the time, the wood of the platforms that were discovered in the original pit dated to the 14th century. The flagstone that was discovered was dated to the 17th century.
“Which means,” exclaimed the excited Alexis (now awake), “that someone else, other then the original depositor, must’ve found the spot at some point.”
“Kidd! Captain Kidd! Uncle Kiddy. That’s the connection,” he responded with a rouse, “Kidd was probably there to retrieve the dang treasure but couldn’t keep it a secret from his crew. Get a load of this: McGinnis, through some of his museum friends in Europe, determined that Kidd must have killed most of his crew to stop them from revealing to the Admiralty what he was really doing in Nova Scotia and how to actually retrieve the treasure.”
“That’s more than fifty men…” realized Alexis, gripped with every word her “reincarnated” husband was uttering.
“This is what McGinnis’s theory is and I have no reason to doubt it:” Sean told Alexis, “Kidd tried to retrieve the secret but couldn’t without the aid of the very men he slaughtered. He probably sailed back to England, a wanted man then, hoping that he could take care of piracy charge and, then, return to the site and get the treasure. He had many powerful friends in New York and in England that, he thought, would easily get him out of his legal mess—not realizing that it was his friends that had betrayed him in the first place. He was tried and convicted. Condemned to die, he wrote two letters, one to his wife and the other to a man only referred to as F.B…”
“Francis Bacon!” inserted Alexis, excitedly.
“That’s right. Good for you,” responded the impressed man, “Boy, you’re really up on this.”
Sean told Alexis that McGinnis believed those letters revealed the location of the treasure and how to actually retrieve it. But the letters are somehow codified. The one to Bacon, who was apparently the Godfather of Sarah Oort (Kidd’s murdered wife), is written as some sort of testament and the one to his wife was a final love proclamation. This was derived from the journals of two of Sarah Oort’s “society” friends. Apparently, the letter read by Oort at a Lady’s gathering was referred to in the journals as “more than just a lover’s tribute”.
“Somehow, Kidd must’ve gotten those letters off before he was hanged,’ continued Sean, who had taken on a stoic maturity that Alexis had noted throughout the night and now, into the morning.
McGinnis spent a large part of his life tracking the “F.B.” letter down and finally discovered that it was destroyed. So, he set out to find the one written to Kidd’s wife and tracks it down to a distant relative—a newlywed student and son of a State Senator living in California.
“That’s what those papers were,” whispered Alexis.
“There’s more,” Sean continued: He told her that there was a little known secret that only a select few who had worked on the island all of their life knew about. It was a bit of information that dated back to 1850 and kept the seekers assured of the knowledge that the pit was man-made and, due to it’s protective nature, must be a reservoir for something of great wealth or importance. Gleaned from letters written by some of the early diggers, McGinnis had discovered that when the original shafts were first mysteriously flooded, they were flooded with salt water. The level of the water rose and fell with the ocean tide in the shafts and the original pit. As the soil of Oak Island wasn’t of a character as to suggest a natural seepage, or channel, and as water had been encountered in digging the original pit in 1803 but not in the two adjacent shafts in 1804 and 1850, and since the general character of the soil seemed to be similar in all three pits, the searchers were forced to the conclusion that the flow of water came to the money pit through an artificial channel having its inlet somewhere on the shore and controlled by gates to permit access to the treasure. It was argued that, had the water entered through a natural channel, it would have interfered with the digging of the original pit and filled it up. The operation was obviously carried out with great care and much thoroughness.
Acting on the theory, a search was made along the shore of the Island for the supposed inlet. Attention was first directed to the beach at Smith’s Cove, about 520 feet to the east of the original pit, because it seemed to have obvious natural advantages for the inlet of a tunnel. It was noticed that the larger stones had been removed from the beach for a considerable space and that as the tide ebbed large rivulets gushed along the beach as from many bubbling springs. The operations records, that McGinnis had purchased from a local who had come by it also through inheritance, stated that the cove “gulched forth water like a sponge being squeezed”. A few minutes of shoveling proved beyond doubt that their theories were correct, for on removing the beach sand and gravel to a depth of about three feet, they found a layer, about two inches thick, of a brown, fibrous plant (coconut fiber) exactly like that previously found in the pit, and below it a layer of four or five inches of decayed eel-grass or kelp, and still farther down a compact mass of beach rocks, free from sand and gravel! Tons of this tropical fiber were removed and piled in stacks like haycocks along the shore.
Though it had evidently lain below the surface of the beach for very many years, the fiber was in remarkable state of preservation. The further discovery was also made that this peculiar condition extended for 145 feet along the shore and from low to high-water mark—a beach turned into a giant man-made sponge!
Alexis could not believe what she was being told. By this time, however, she was willing to believe anything.
To investigate the strange man-made beach, it was considered necessary to build a cofferdam to hold back the tide and enclose a portion of Smith’s Cove. When completed, further excavations were made, when it was found that the clay that had formed the original beach had been removed and replaced by the beach rocks they’d discovered.
The most amazing and telling discovery was that of five well-constructed box drains formed of flat rocks, with the sides of the drains about eight inches apart and covered with flat stones. The drains stretched out like the sticks of a fan or the fingers of a hand, converging to a common point, the center of the funnel intake at high-water mark. With the exception of these flat stones, which had been used to construct the five drains, the other stones had evidently been thrown in promiscuously.
In investigating the drains, they found that they connected with one of larger dimensions. The stones were prepared with a hammer and mechanically laid in such a way that the drain could not collapse. There were a number of tiers of stones strengthening the higher part of the drain, on the top of was also found a coating of the same sort of coconut fiber as already noticed all over the beach. Over that came a layer of blue sand, never before seen on the Island, and over the sand was spread the gravel indigenous to the coast.
“Last year,” Sean continued, “we discovered a tunnel, or water course between Smith’s Cove and the pit with the intention of cutting off the water source.”
“I mean, we’re talking about some ingenious workings here,” added Alexis, “The magnitude of the construction alone confirms that there’s something down there.”
“Yeah but see,” said Sean as he cautiously looked out the motel window and gave out some sort of hand signal, “I think there’s more going on. I think that there’s got to be another way to retrieve whatever’s down there. The secret is in those letters.” Sean saw how the weather outside had turned miserable. A storm was definitely brewing.
Alexis skipped a beat within the conversation. The danger of the scenario had now fully encompassed her.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said with a reserved hysteria, “He’ll catch on to you if my I.D. gets back to him. He’ll trace me to you!”
“I know,” said Sean. The door opened and one of the burly guards entered. “Ready Mr. Williamson”.
“Wait outside for us,” commanded Sean.
“I can’t back off now,” he told her in a hushed tone, “I’ve spent too much on this. I know what I’m doing. You’re the one who has to get out of here.”
“Wait,” remembered Alexis, “What did they do with Davies?”
Sean paused and looked away from her.
“He’ll be fine in a few days,” replied Sean, “Derringer’s people are the serious type.”
Alexis danger meter piqued: “Kelly, we’ve got to get out of here. This has gotten way out of control. Come back home with me and leave this all behind. Let the authorities handle it.”
“And what are we going to tell them?” asked Sean, “Some cock and bull story about a treasure? The people around here will recognize me. Alexis, I’ve broken the law. I’m in on this now. I helped cover up geology reports; I’ve embellished report findings. He can take me down with just a few words. Besides, everything that’s going on on that Island is completely legal. No Alexis, he snatched this out from under me and I’m going to snatch it back.”
“Well then I’m going to help you,” said Alexis firmly.
“Oh no you’re…” “Stop!” commanded Alexis as she took her husband by the shoulders, “The postcard, at LAX…that was you, right?”
“Yes”
“So are you going to stand there and tell me that you really didn’t want me involved? That you didn’t want me to find you?” she shouted.
The two stared deep into each other. “Can you imagine the pain I’ve lived with for four years…FOUR YEARS, Sean, and what I had to endure to keep you alive in my heart? And now you’re telling me to just turn around? We’re a team, honey. That’s what a marriage is—it’s having the strength to work with someone else and staying true and devoted to that union. Now I know you’re worried for my safety and I know you’ve come too far to stop now. But so have I. I’m not going back without you.”
He leaned into her and kissed her soft red lips.
“I messed up, Alex,” he said with a quiet desperation, “I really messed up. Can you forgive me?”
The two, eyes now swollen with tears, gazed into one another’s eyes and smiled. They were together again. Their smiles quickly turned into a joyous laughter that was hushed a few moments later by their impassioned kiss.
“Alright,” smiled the newborn, “This is what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to get that letter and decipher it. That’s the key.”
“Great. Where does he keep it and how do we get it?” asked the enticed woman.
“He keeps it under the driver’s seat in his personal Jeep.”
“Are you kidding me?” asked Alexis.
“No,” he answered, “Only a few of us even know about the docs and he figures no one would look there—even if they knew what to look for. I dropped him off once, by his Jeep, and, after pulling away, noticed he took some papers out of his attaché case and placed them under his driver’s seat.”
Alexis threw him a flabbergasted look.
“I think,” Sean continued, now firmly, “I think he keeps the documents in a folder, zipped up beneath the seat of his Cherokee with a little cheapo lock on it.”
“Where’s the Jeep?” she asked.
“Back on the island.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chapters
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, 23, 24, 25, Epilogue
Contributing Founder
Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved
Schifini, Mitsumi, and Holt
PRESS RELEASE-for immediate release:
Dr. Anthony H. McGinnis, contributing/founding partner
Born in Glasgow, Scotland (1925- ), and educated in Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh (1950), Dr. McGinnis is one of the firm’s original business partners. His investment in the partnership and his expertise as a successful international marketer and businessman has, as proven, created one of Eastern Canada’s most respected insolvency and estate litigation firms. His association, the McGinnis Group, holds many properties throughout metropolitan cities in Canada, Scotland, the Antilles and United States.
An avid philanthropist and art collector, Dr. McGinnis’s support has enriched society and communities all around the world—from his non-profit medical aid organization, White Rose, to his European magazine publication Welt des Architekten. Dr. McGinnis and his father, the late Albert McGinnis (1899-1968), made their family’s fortune throughout the late 1940’s in the international real-estate industry. Now retired, he travels to his summer home in Glasgow and spends the remainder of the year enjoying his rare and well-known book collection along with his wife, Gwyneth, in Mahone Bay, Colchester County.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Lost & Found
Copyright 2004, all Rights Reserved
Alexis was baffled and irritated by the blindfolds that the men insisted on placing on her and Davies but was outright infuriated by the plastic restraints that shackled her hands behind her that followed as the powerboat they were forced onto approached Oak Island.
It was the middle of the night. They were guided, from the powerboat, onto the island’s docking bay, into an open-top vehicle (which felt like a Jeep to Davies), and carted away, uphill. Alexis demanded she be un-cuffed. Her citizenship protestations were met with silence as the men, obviously a security detail, manhandled the duo about. The two were patted down; one of the henchmen took Davies belt off and inspected its buckle to no avail. They took off the raincoat Alexis was wearing and checked its inseam thoroughly. Next, the two were asked to wait in a room. They were lead into a well-lit room and seated onto a couch. They promised the restraints the blindfolds would come off momentarily, took their identification cards and left the room.
“What the hell is happening here,” she screamed, “Davies? Are you there?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I’m here. Just take it easy. They’re buying our story. You’re getting too upset and it may get them suspicious.
“I don’t give a crap!”, Alexis snapped, “We’re blindfolded Davies. This is ridiculous.”
“We’re also caught trespassing on private property by men with guns who obviously don’t want us to see where we are. Just follow my lead and…”
“Your lead’s what got us into this mess to begin with!”
“Look, I’m doing this for you!”
“Oh, ‘doing this for me’? You smell a story and you know it.”
Finally, the aggravated Davies called out “Can we not argue?”
About twenty minutes passed. The two had sat in silence for a prolonged period when, suddenly, they were startled by the sound of the room’s door being opened. Davies estimated about five men had entered.
“Mr. Laverne,” spoke the voice of the group’s leader, “You will be escorted out to the main gate of the compound where the local police will take you into custody for theft and trespassing. Men…” he signaled. Two of the larger of the group took Davies by the arms and started him toward the door.
“What about her?” demanded Davies to no reply. His demand was repeated several times as the men subdued him and carried him off.
“Don’t worry, Alexis,” he yelled from outside the cabin they were being kept, “Everything’s going to be fine.”
Alexis, still blind and now terrified of her predicament knew she was in a bad way.
“What about me? What’s going to happen to me?” she asked innocently.
“Ms. Walls,” the voice replied, then paused for a while.
“Yes?”
“I’m afraid we’re going to need to hold you a little while longer.”
The men picked her up and escorted her out of the cabin. She was walking along a rocky terrain. They’d kept her raincoat. Alexis was freezing in the harsh night air of the cold Nova Scotian coast. She was lead into a sedan of some sort and driven off.
“Will you please take off these blindfolds?” she asked. She could hear the men scuffling about for a few seconds. She heard one close a window and another a door.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Walls,” came a different voice, “We’re under strict orders to prevent any trespassers from viewing anything on the Island. You’re going to have to wait for a while until we’re back on the mainland.” “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“You’re being taken to another holding location for your interview. Please be assured that you’re in on danger.”
Alexis couldn’t handle it any longer. She broke down in tears. What was she going to do? No one, except for Davies, knew of her whereabouts. She was cuffed and blindfolded on a remote island in a foreign country. Why was she acting so illogically? Her refusal to accept the loss of her husband had lead her into a crater of trouble and danger. It was then, for the first time, that Alexis swore to herself that, if she escaped the predicament she’d found herself in, she would give up this search for Sean and seek counseling so that she can move on with her life—once and for all.
She focused her senses. She determined that her best course of action was to be cooperative and play out the “honeymooners” story until she could reach the authorities.
The car traveled slowly along the gravely road and stopped at two checkpoints before making it onto the main highway. Alexis felt the smooth road and knew they were off the Island.
“Okay, will you please take these blindfolds off?” There was no response from the men. “You’re going to keep me like this aren’t’ you? This is ridiculous.”
The car pulled off the highway some five minutes down the road. One of the men got out of the car and didn’t return for nearly ten minutes. Alexis could hear crickets chirping outside. When he returned, Alexis was guided out of the car and into a room. The scent in the room reminded her of a motel setting.
As she entered, she tripped over something and nearly fell flat on her face but was caught by one of her ushers.
“You’re going to have to wait here for a while,” announced one of the men, “We’ll leave someone outside the door until the Inspector arrives. Please be patient.” Everyone left the room.
Alexis sat on the bed in the middle of the confined space. Who was this Inspector? Why wasn’t she sent out to the Police like Davies?
Nearly forty minutes later, the door reopened. This time, only one set of footsteps entered. The sound of the boots that strolled along the wooden flooring made its way to the rear of the room and opened another door.
“Hello?” called out Alexis.
The boots entered, what Alexis assumed to be, the bathroom.
“This is kidnapping, you know,” Alexis continued calmly, “I can have you people arrested.”
After several minutes, the sound of the boots reentered the main room and slowly made its way towards her. Alexis felt her breath getting deeper.
“Please don’t hit me!” she begged as the intruder’s hands lightly untied her blindfold and removed it. The interior illumination of the cabin momentarily blinded Alexis. The image of the room and the man, who had just returned her sense to her, standing in front of her, slowly faded into her vision field. It was a male dressed in a gray suit with a loosened tie; the man she’d seen in the photo Davies had left in his basement—the bald man with the long beard. It was Sean.
Alexis was astonished. She looked deep into the man’s eyes to confirm her bend. She was right. Her husband, unrecognizable, sat on the bed next to her.
“Hello Alexis,” he said. She gasped at the sound of his voice: She was not hallucinating—this was not a ghost. It was the man she’d fallen in love with six years ago. It was the man she’d promised to love and hold until death departed them. It was Sean, her husband.
Confused and elated at the same time, she felt the anger swelling up within her, as well as tears she was fighting to hold back.
“I knew you’d find me,” he said with a composed and ecstatic voice, “How’ve you been?”
Alexis was still in shock. Sean proceeded to remove the plastic restraints from her hands. Relieved, she started rubbing her wrists. Then, with great ferocity, she slapped his face.
“I know I deserved that,” he said after slowly recovering from the blow.
The woman was overcome by emotion. She was facing her husband again. He was alive. She wasn’t insane. She was vindicated. But she would find what happened to her partner four years ago at later time; all she wanted now was his embrace and comfort. The rejoined couple, in a state of wild ardor, consummated their reunion and love with the passion of an eager ocean wave collapsing onto its inevitable spouse—the shore.
_________________________________
Sean owed his wife an explanation and assured her of one. At first, he was very careful with his words. Alexis had whirled into a minor frenzy of feelings. He professed his regret and repentance for leaving her like he had but claimed to have no choice.
So there wouldn’t be any slip ups, Sean reverently insisted that she call him Kelly. While Alexis was quite collected and remained calm during this amazing moment in her life, she was anxious to lend some reason to the anguish she’d been put through for so long.
He explained that after his plane had taken off from LAX to England, he’d met a man, sitting next to him on the airplane, named James Maxwell. Maxwell was a banker, working out of Chicago, returning from a technology convention he’d attended in Los Angeles; a very nice and pleasant man with three kids, a Volvo, etc… They got to know one another and, through the course of their idle chitchat, Sean told him about his situation.
Maxwell, at first, thought he was being humored about being in the banking business but changed when Sean presented the forged check “Hawke” had written him. He held the check up to the live above his seat and flatly claimed that the check had been manufactured in Nova Scotia.
The banker explained that, since 1995, check producers/distributors had been inserting a watermark beneath the endorsement line with an inscription that validated the check as official. The inscription read R.C.B.N.S.: which to Mr. Maxwell meant Royal Canadian Bank of Nova Scotia.
During the layover in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Sean and James parted ways. Sean, then, immediately changed his destination to Halifax.
“I meant to call you,” he continued, “I really did. It just seemed like what I was getting myself into was not something I should get those I loved involved with. I was delusional. I know. I felt like something bigger than I could possible imagine was unfolding and I was the ‘hero’ caught in it all.
“And, plus, it was a way for me to get away from our marriage. We both knew something wasn’t right. I…I don’t know…I guess I just panicked.”
“That’s normal, Sean. You know it. We could’ve worked things…”
“Alexis, if I could take it back, if I could go back in time and change one thing… it would be that decision. I’ve lived with it for four years now. The circumstances were really…you’ve got to just listen to me,” said Sean with emphasis, “The intent was to call you when I had a better grasp on what was going on. But the more I found out about all of this, the further I got from contacting you. You don’t know the half of it sweetie.”
Sean continued: He had gotten a job working as a bartender in Halifax and met a man named “Minnie” who specialized in attaining fake identities for people who wanted to “get lost”. He became Kelly Williamson, son of a sea merchant who died at sea. With a social services number, he was able to enroll in about six months of law school at night, where he updated himself with Canadian legal nuances, and got his authorization to litigate by year’s end—all the while, attempting to track down Hawke.
He did so, with the aid of his newly found friend, Minnie. He discovers that his real name is Anthony Hawke McGinnis, though the middle name is nearly always dropped. After learning of his true identity and background, Sean, now Kelly, finds that McGinnis was a silent partner in a local law firm that was generating a substantial estate law division by way of a land custody/ownership trial. Having had severed his ties with his wife and his family and changed his legal identity, Sean changed, went deep undercover and, bravely, began work at McGinnis’s law firm.
He immediately shocked the senior partners with his performance and was assigned to a sensitive case—the McGinnis vs. Oak Island Association case that was an attempt at, literally, transferring complete ownership of every lot of the obscure island to Anthony McGinnis’s institute. Sean knew that the genealogic claim wouldn’t be enough in a Canadian court and, so, he devised a carefully compiled cased that broke the chain of records of ownership within the county offices. The firm’s lawyers were also able to demonstrate “gross misuse of natural resources” on the part of the island owners, a small conglomerate of men who had incorporated under the name Oak Island Association. The amount of drilling had left the island, and its culturally significant history, like a disaster sight filled with holes, shafts, and trenches.
McGinnis’s claim was that, through the use of technology and concentrated funding, a major archaeological site could be established to a)restore the island’s integrity and b)tap a natural cement mine into the island. What the public and court was not aware of was that McGinnis’s plan something quite different: He wanted to continue the search for the secret of the money pit all by himself and once and for all. His retrieval project would further ravish the geologic landscape of the area and possibly cause irreparable damage to the natural resources of the very balanced eco-system in that area.
The court ruled in favor of McGinnis’s claim and awarded him sole ownership, for $175,000 paid to the County office as “assessment & administrative” fees. All of the historians and treasure hunters who’d been working on the Oak Island mystery were banned from the site and it was protected and under guard by a small security army paid for by the McGinnis Institute. Millions of dollars of investment monies were lost by those associated with the diggers and researchers when McGinnis took over the land.
“So he’s after the treasure then, right?” asked Alexis.
“Sort of,” said the worried Sean, “you do believe me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said softly, “Of course.”
Sean stared into the eyes of the woman he’d long for so. She was, in fact, everything he’d come to realize that she was—a warm, kind, brilliant and deep woman with an ancient soul. His fear that she’d leave him and expose everything he’d worked for had now subsided.
_____________________________________
The sun was now rising. The two had lain down on the bed in the typical motel room after their heated and overwhelming reunion and the fantastic tale of what had happened was initially received and, to a degree, processed by Alexis. Neither of them could sleep. Alexis was still questioning the reality of the latest developments
Sean had explained to Alexis that McGinnis had taken him in as a primary mover for the retrieval project and let him into his inner circle of confidantes and partners without ever recognizing him as the man he’d conned three years ago. It was a chance that Sean had taken that paid off.
“I don’t want to tell you what he may have done if he recognized me,” said Sean with a concerned look.
It was true that McGinnis was genuinely interested in the cache of the money pit and would continue the hunt for whatever was down there but his cronies were only in it for money he’d promised them upon completion of the retrieval project. They were, literally, henchmen.
Sean knew everything about the history of the search. He’d familiarized himself with it in his newly assigned role as Executive Chief of Operations for the project. She found out that, through carbon dating done at the time, the wood of the platforms that were discovered in the original pit dated to the 14th century. The flagstone that was discovered was dated to the 17th century.
“Which means,” exclaimed the excited Alexis (now awake), “that someone else, other then the original depositor, must’ve found the spot at some point.”
“Kidd! Captain Kidd! Uncle Kiddy. That’s the connection,” he responded with a rouse, “Kidd was probably there to retrieve the dang treasure but couldn’t keep it a secret from his crew. Get a load of this: McGinnis, through some of his museum friends in Europe, determined that Kidd must have killed most of his crew to stop them from revealing to the Admiralty what he was really doing in Nova Scotia and how to actually retrieve the treasure.”
“That’s more than fifty men…” realized Alexis, gripped with every word her “reincarnated” husband was uttering.
“This is what McGinnis’s theory is and I have no reason to doubt it:” Sean told Alexis, “Kidd tried to retrieve the secret but couldn’t without the aid of the very men he slaughtered. He probably sailed back to England, a wanted man then, hoping that he could take care of piracy charge and, then, return to the site and get the treasure. He had many powerful friends in New York and in England that, he thought, would easily get him out of his legal mess—not realizing that it was his friends that had betrayed him in the first place. He was tried and convicted. Condemned to die, he wrote two letters, one to his wife and the other to a man only referred to as F.B…”
“Francis Bacon!” inserted Alexis, excitedly.
“That’s right. Good for you,” responded the impressed man, “Boy, you’re really up on this.”
Sean told Alexis that McGinnis believed those letters revealed the location of the treasure and how to actually retrieve it. But the letters are somehow codified. The one to Bacon, who was apparently the Godfather of Sarah Oort (Kidd’s murdered wife), is written as some sort of testament and the one to his wife was a final love proclamation. This was derived from the journals of two of Sarah Oort’s “society” friends. Apparently, the letter read by Oort at a Lady’s gathering was referred to in the journals as “more than just a lover’s tribute”.
“Somehow, Kidd must’ve gotten those letters off before he was hanged,’ continued Sean, who had taken on a stoic maturity that Alexis had noted throughout the night and now, into the morning.
McGinnis spent a large part of his life tracking the “F.B.” letter down and finally discovered that it was destroyed. So, he set out to find the one written to Kidd’s wife and tracks it down to a distant relative—a newlywed student and son of a State Senator living in California.
“That’s what those papers were,” whispered Alexis.
“There’s more,” Sean continued: He told her that there was a little known secret that only a select few who had worked on the island all of their life knew about. It was a bit of information that dated back to 1850 and kept the seekers assured of the knowledge that the pit was man-made and, due to it’s protective nature, must be a reservoir for something of great wealth or importance. Gleaned from letters written by some of the early diggers, McGinnis had discovered that when the original shafts were first mysteriously flooded, they were flooded with salt water. The level of the water rose and fell with the ocean tide in the shafts and the original pit. As the soil of Oak Island wasn’t of a character as to suggest a natural seepage, or channel, and as water had been encountered in digging the original pit in 1803 but not in the two adjacent shafts in 1804 and 1850, and since the general character of the soil seemed to be similar in all three pits, the searchers were forced to the conclusion that the flow of water came to the money pit through an artificial channel having its inlet somewhere on the shore and controlled by gates to permit access to the treasure. It was argued that, had the water entered through a natural channel, it would have interfered with the digging of the original pit and filled it up. The operation was obviously carried out with great care and much thoroughness.
Acting on the theory, a search was made along the shore of the Island for the supposed inlet. Attention was first directed to the beach at Smith’s Cove, about 520 feet to the east of the original pit, because it seemed to have obvious natural advantages for the inlet of a tunnel. It was noticed that the larger stones had been removed from the beach for a considerable space and that as the tide ebbed large rivulets gushed along the beach as from many bubbling springs. The operations records, that McGinnis had purchased from a local who had come by it also through inheritance, stated that the cove “gulched forth water like a sponge being squeezed”. A few minutes of shoveling proved beyond doubt that their theories were correct, for on removing the beach sand and gravel to a depth of about three feet, they found a layer, about two inches thick, of a brown, fibrous plant (coconut fiber) exactly like that previously found in the pit, and below it a layer of four or five inches of decayed eel-grass or kelp, and still farther down a compact mass of beach rocks, free from sand and gravel! Tons of this tropical fiber were removed and piled in stacks like haycocks along the shore.
Though it had evidently lain below the surface of the beach for very many years, the fiber was in remarkable state of preservation. The further discovery was also made that this peculiar condition extended for 145 feet along the shore and from low to high-water mark—a beach turned into a giant man-made sponge!
Alexis could not believe what she was being told. By this time, however, she was willing to believe anything.
To investigate the strange man-made beach, it was considered necessary to build a cofferdam to hold back the tide and enclose a portion of Smith’s Cove. When completed, further excavations were made, when it was found that the clay that had formed the original beach had been removed and replaced by the beach rocks they’d discovered.
The most amazing and telling discovery was that of five well-constructed box drains formed of flat rocks, with the sides of the drains about eight inches apart and covered with flat stones. The drains stretched out like the sticks of a fan or the fingers of a hand, converging to a common point, the center of the funnel intake at high-water mark. With the exception of these flat stones, which had been used to construct the five drains, the other stones had evidently been thrown in promiscuously.
In investigating the drains, they found that they connected with one of larger dimensions. The stones were prepared with a hammer and mechanically laid in such a way that the drain could not collapse. There were a number of tiers of stones strengthening the higher part of the drain, on the top of was also found a coating of the same sort of coconut fiber as already noticed all over the beach. Over that came a layer of blue sand, never before seen on the Island, and over the sand was spread the gravel indigenous to the coast.
“Last year,” Sean continued, “we discovered a tunnel, or water course between Smith’s Cove and the pit with the intention of cutting off the water source.”
“I mean, we’re talking about some ingenious workings here,” added Alexis, “The magnitude of the construction alone confirms that there’s something down there.”
“Yeah but see,” said Sean as he cautiously looked out the motel window and gave out some sort of hand signal, “I think there’s more going on. I think that there’s got to be another way to retrieve whatever’s down there. The secret is in those letters.” Sean saw how the weather outside had turned miserable. A storm was definitely brewing.
Alexis skipped a beat within the conversation. The danger of the scenario had now fully encompassed her.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said with a reserved hysteria, “He’ll catch on to you if my I.D. gets back to him. He’ll trace me to you!”
“I know,” said Sean. The door opened and one of the burly guards entered. “Ready Mr. Williamson”.
“Wait outside for us,” commanded Sean.
“I can’t back off now,” he told her in a hushed tone, “I’ve spent too much on this. I know what I’m doing. You’re the one who has to get out of here.”
“Wait,” remembered Alexis, “What did they do with Davies?”
Sean paused and looked away from her.
“He’ll be fine in a few days,” replied Sean, “Derringer’s people are the serious type.”
Alexis danger meter piqued: “Kelly, we’ve got to get out of here. This has gotten way out of control. Come back home with me and leave this all behind. Let the authorities handle it.”
“And what are we going to tell them?” asked Sean, “Some cock and bull story about a treasure? The people around here will recognize me. Alexis, I’ve broken the law. I’m in on this now. I helped cover up geology reports; I’ve embellished report findings. He can take me down with just a few words. Besides, everything that’s going on on that Island is completely legal. No Alexis, he snatched this out from under me and I’m going to snatch it back.”
“Well then I’m going to help you,” said Alexis firmly.
“Oh no you’re…” “Stop!” commanded Alexis as she took her husband by the shoulders, “The postcard, at LAX…that was you, right?”
“Yes”
“So are you going to stand there and tell me that you really didn’t want me involved? That you didn’t want me to find you?” she shouted.
The two stared deep into each other. “Can you imagine the pain I’ve lived with for four years…FOUR YEARS, Sean, and what I had to endure to keep you alive in my heart? And now you’re telling me to just turn around? We’re a team, honey. That’s what a marriage is—it’s having the strength to work with someone else and staying true and devoted to that union. Now I know you’re worried for my safety and I know you’ve come too far to stop now. But so have I. I’m not going back without you.”
He leaned into her and kissed her soft red lips.
“I messed up, Alex,” he said with a quiet desperation, “I really messed up. Can you forgive me?”
The two, eyes now swollen with tears, gazed into one another’s eyes and smiled. They were together again. Their smiles quickly turned into a joyous laughter that was hushed a few moments later by their impassioned kiss.
“Alright,” smiled the newborn, “This is what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to get that letter and decipher it. That’s the key.”
“Great. Where does he keep it and how do we get it?” asked the enticed woman.
“He keeps it under the driver’s seat in his personal Jeep.”
“Are you kidding me?” asked Alexis.
“No,” he answered, “Only a few of us even know about the docs and he figures no one would look there—even if they knew what to look for. I dropped him off once, by his Jeep, and, after pulling away, noticed he took some papers out of his attaché case and placed them under his driver’s seat.”
Alexis threw him a flabbergasted look.
“I think,” Sean continued, now firmly, “I think he keeps the documents in a folder, zipped up beneath the seat of his Cherokee with a little cheapo lock on it.”
“Where’s the Jeep?” she asked.
“Back on the island.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Chapters
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, 23, 24, 25, Epilogue
posted by Emil Ahangarzadeh | 2:47 PM
|
0 comments
