She didn’t sound crazy. I decided provisionally to treat her as a serious client who had come for help with a case one might reasonably pursue. Whether that would be the final verdict was another matter, but I would give her the benefit of the doubt for now. I smiled.
‘Well, sure. Perhaps they would offer us a small state to go away. How about Rhode Island?’
She laughed. ‘Sure, why not?’
‘All right, Sam. But let’s get serious, shall we? Tell me why the government owes you 672 billion dollars.’
She nodded. ‘Not me, Kiah, my family.’
‘OK. Your family.’
‘How’s your history?’ she asked. ‘Do you remember the story of the War of Independence?’
‘I took some history classes in college,’ I replied. ‘I guess I remember the basic outline, but –’
‘Does the name Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, ring a bell?’
‘Sure. Wasn’t that where George Washington took the army during the winter, that cold winter when they almost froze to death?’
‘You got it. It was the winter of 1777–1778. They’d just got their asses kicked by the Brits in two battles. They were almost out of food, clothing, weapons – all the basic supplies. They didn’t have much money, and very few people thought they had much chance of winning, so they didn’t exactly have a great credit rating. The Brits had the real money. They could buy whatever supplies they needed. And if that wasn’t enough, as you say, it was a very cold winter. Washington’s army was freezing to death, in addition to starving to death. But somehow, by the spring they had turned things around. When they left Valley Forge they were fully supplied. They started winning, and before long they had the Brits on the run.’
I remembered that much. ‘OK.’
‘Money and supplies had started to arrive, just in time, round about February. I’m sure it came from lots of different places. They were desperate, and they were taking help from anyone who would give it. The French kept promising to help, and they did eventually, but by that time the army was already back on its feet. The question is: who bailed them out during the winter? According to our family tradition, an ancestor of mine called Jacob van Eyck was one of their biggest benefactors. They say he contributed gold and supplies to the tune of 450,000 dollars.’
I raised my eyebrows. Suddenly I was catching just a faint glimmer of where this story was going.
‘450,000 in today’s money?’
‘No, 450,000 dollars value at the time, in 1778.’
I sat back in my chair.
‘But Sam, that was a fortune. If that’s true, Jacob must have been –’
‘As rich as Croesus, yes. He was. He was a merchant and a landowner, and if not the richest, he was one of the richest men in Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact, he owned the land around Valley Forge, on the west bank of the Schuylkill, right next to Washington’s encampment.’
‘But how did he make that kind of money?’
She smiled. ‘Good question. There are lots of family stories about that. The polite version is that he made his money by importing wine and other goodies from Europe. But that’s what they all said at the time, wasn’t it, if they didn’t want to talk about… well, you know…?’
‘You’re talking about the slave trade?’
‘I have no evidence of anything like that. But it wouldn’t surprise me. It was the easiest way to make that kind of serious money then, wasn’t it? And Jacob had definitely made some serious money.’
‘But he must have been something of an idealist as well,’ I pointed out, ‘to give so much.’
She smiled again. ‘Yes. I’m sure he was. But independence wasn’t just an ideal to men like Jacob. It had its commercial side. Don’t forget the Boston Tea Party, Kiah. For all the talk of liberty, independence also had a lot to do with not paying taxes to the King.’
‘True,’ I agreed.
‘There’s another thing, too. Jacob and George Washington were close friends and they were both high-ranking Freemasons. I’m not sure how much that had to do with it. It wasn’t a simple picture. Maybe none of that mattered very much. Jacob may have just figured that if Washington lost to the Brits he was screwed as well, so he might as well take his chances with Washington.’
She shrugged.
‘Anyway, that’s the family tradition. But his contribution wasn’t a gift, Kiah. It was a loan. The Continental Congress had authorised loans to be raised for the war effort, so anyone making a loan expected to be repaid after the war.’
‘And you’re assuming that Jacob went through the proper channels?’
‘I can’t see him putting up so much money without intending to get back as much of it as he could. Can you? He was a businessman above all, and he must have known that lending so much could wipe him out – as indeed it did.’
I thought for a moment or two. ‘I’ve never heard about these loans before. How did they work? How did you get your money back?’
‘The Congress set up loan offices, which issued certificates to anyone who made a loan. The loans were repayable after the war with interest at six per cent compound per year.’
‘Six per cent compound? But that’s…’
‘That was the deal. After the war, you would present your loan certificate to the loan office, and they would pay you in cash.’
I shook my head. Suddenly, $672 billion was beginning to make a bit more sense. Compound interest at six per cent over 250 years wasn’t the kind of thing you could even estimate in your head, let alone calculate. An internet compound interest calculator would work it out in a second or two, and I must admit I felt my fingers twitching to reach for my keyboard. But Sam had been there before me, and I kept my curiosity in check. Even if she wasn’t exactly right, it would obviously be a lot of money – a whole lot of money.
‘And let me guess. The family tradition is that Jacob was never repaid?’
‘Not one cent, principal or interest. The government probably didn’t have the money – literally: they didn’t have enough gold to repay that kind of debt. The country was pretty much bankrupt after the war; the currency was next to worthless, and they couldn’t just go out and borrow. They paid people who had loaned smaller amounts, but with the amount Jacob was owed, it would probably have been impossible. Unfortunately for Jacob, it ruined him. He died in poverty.’
‘I take it you don’t have Jacob’s loan certificate tucked away in your briefcase?’ I asked. ‘If you did, I’m guessing somebody would have done something about this before now.’
She hesitated.
‘No one seems to know where the loan certificate is. I guess we will have to find it.’
‘Assuming there ever was one,’ I said, ‘and assuming it is still in existence.’
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t think we’re looking for just one certificate. There must have been any number of deliveries to the army over a period of time, to the quartermaster or whoever, either of money or supplies of different kinds, mustn’t there? It stands to reason. And if so, there would have been invoices for each delivery. There wouldn’t have been one single certificate for a grand total. There would have been a whole file of loan certificates. Don’t you think?’
‘What I think,’ I replied, ‘is that I’m swimming in the dark. I don’t know anything like enough about loan certificates, or about Jacob, or about what happened at Valley Forge. I would need to know a lot more than I do before I can give you any real advice about this.’
‘But you will take the case, Kiah, won’t you?’
It was said almost pleadingly. That was another thing you soon learned as a young lawyer with your own office. Clients don’t always give as much thought as they should to why they want a particular lawyer, and whether the lawyer they want is the best person to handle a case. Lawyers aren’t much help in that situation. No lawyer wants to turn away work. But sometimes the red flags are just too obvious to ignore, and there were red flags all over this one. I was a lawyer in solo practice with no back-up. I had no staff except for Arlene, and no money to fund lengthy, complex litigation; and I was being asked to make the government cough up a sum that would do more economic damage to the Treasury than the War of Independence. The government was not going to allow that to happen without instructing the Department of Justice to put up a certain amount of resistance, and the Department of Justice was not short of either funds or staff.
‘I do have quite a few documents with me,’ Sam was saying. ‘It’s stuff my branch of the family has collected over the years. My father was very interested in the loans. He would go to family reunions and collect whatever people would give him; press clippings, historical articles, and so on, and it does give you quite a good account of things. There were even a few times when the family tried to do something about it, by approaching their congressmen, and so on. Nothing ever came of it. But no one has ever sued the government. My father believed that was the only option left to us. Now, he’s gone, and I…’
She stopped, but she didn’t have to say any more. I understood the call of a dead parent all too well. So that’s why she was here. It was for her father. My heart went out to her. She wasn’t crazy: optimistic, perhaps; unrealistic, perhaps; but not crazy. But that didn’t mean I could just jump into this with her. In fact, if she hadn’t told me about her father, I would probably have said no right there and then. But she had told me about her father. She had no way of knowing, but she had pressed exactly the right button. I couldn’t just turn her away —not like that, not so summarily. I needed time: time to reflect on the story she had told me, and time to reflect on my options. I was thinking that the best option might be to choose a law firm to refer her to – perhaps the firm of Don Quixote and Associates, whose knight-errant partners had the resources and the inclination to tilt at windmills, because that did seem to be the best description of what Sam was asking me to do. In any case, given time, I could reflect on the best way to help her.
‘Would it be possible for you to leave those documents with me for a day or so?’ I asked. ‘I really don’t feel I can advise you properly without knowing much more than I know now. They will be quite safe. Would that be OK?’
‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘I’ll just leave the briefcase with you.’
‘Here’s my card,’ I said. ‘Call me tomorrow afternoon. I’m not saying I’ll have a final answer for you then, but I’ll do my best.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
She stood and made her way to the door. As she was leaving, a thought came to me. I called her back.
‘Sam, what did you mean when you said it wasn’t only about the money, and you could settle for less?’
She turned and looked me directly in the eye.
‘Kiah, if our family tradition is true, Jacob van Eyck played a large part in making sure that the War of Independence didn’t end in failure. He is an American hero who has never been recognised. The government will erect a statue to Jacob van Eyck in Philadelphia, and the President of the United States will unveil it.’