The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 6-10 - Catherine Coulter [667]
“Why go to that much trouble?”
She walked to the deep niche, went down on her knees, pulled out her pick, and began tapping the earth. She said over her shoulder, “They didn’t want anyone to find the gold, even if they found the cave. That’s why they left the map incomplete.”
He stood behind her, watching, saying nothing.
They both heard it—not the sound of rock but the dull sound of wood. She looked up at him, her smile lighting up the dim chamber. “Is this great, or what?”
She began digging with her pick, and Dix dropped to his knees and began pulling away the loosened earth. Within moments, they felt rotten wood planks, and soon they uncovered a depressed floor some three feet square.
Once Dix had pulled up the last plank, Ruth lay on her stomach and angled her chest down into the hole, Dix’s Maglite shining down. “I wondered how they could do this, but now I understand. It’s a natural passage they boarded up, like a hole into a low-ceilinged basement in a house. The drop is only about five feet. I wondered how they could get the gold bars down there so easily, and this is how.” She jumped to her feet and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Let’s go down there, partner.”
Once Dix and Ruth stood in the middle of the chamber, they panned their flashlights around the small space. “Look,” Ruth said. “That narrow passageway probably leads back to the underground river and that cliff at the cave entrance.”
“The cave floor must slope up very fast,” Dix said. “It dead-ends here in this chamber. Look how the floor keeps going up. At the back wall, I’ll bet it’s only about three feet tall.”
“All that’s surely nice,” Ruth said, “but where’s my gold?”
Dix said, “I guess there’s no reason to think the Rebel soldiers would leave the gold out in plain view, not after they went to all the trouble of lugging it down here and covering that hole in the ceiling.”
A few minutes later, at a height of about four feet, Dix’s fingers pressed against something rough in a crevice in the west wall. He pounded his fist against it and heard the echo of wood. “There’s something here, Ruth,” he called as he felt excitement fill him.
They quickly uncovered more wood planks. Dix looked at Ruth, raised an eyebrow. Ruth nodded to him and smashed her pick through the rotted wood. It splintered inward.
Dix leaned over her shoulder, shining his Maglite into the blackness.
“Oh my.” Ruth crawled into a space too small to stand in, laid the Maglite on the floor. She knelt in front of a low pile of what looked like bricks covered in dust. She ran her sleeve roughly over it. They stared at six rows of gold bars, four deep, lined up perfectly by those soldiers long ago. Sitting next to the bars was a very old leather satchel.
Ruth touched the gold bars, but her eyes went to the satchel. Gently, she pulled it out, carefully unfastened it. Inside was a small leather-bound notebook. “It’s not a diary, there aren’t any pages. There are a dozen or so letters here.” She ran her fingertips over the folded sheets. She unfolded one near the top of the pile. “It’s a woman’s handwriting. Her name is Missy and she’s writing to her husband.” She looked up at him. “He’s got to be one of the soldiers who stole the gold.”
Soon they both sat cross-legged on the cave floor, the stacked gold bars unnoticed behind them, looking through the packet of letters. “They’re all to Lieutenant Charles Breacken. Wait a moment, not this one.” She picked up the last letter in the pile. “It’s from him. He never got to send it. I wonder why he left it here?”
She read:
It was brutally hot today and still all we have to wear is wool. There’s a battle coming, everyone knows it’s coming, but no one wants to talk about it. I don’t know when I’ll see you again, Missy, but perhaps next month. I’m glad your parents are there to help you on the farm. Is your father still drinking too much?
We are protecting something of value we managed to steal from