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Gil was back in Greenfield, struggling to steer his ground-penetrating radar machine along Graves Brook. There were a lot of trees and brush along the brook near its source at Highland Pond. So far, he’d found an old wooden tennis racket and a hockey skate. He was glad that his bug repellent was working and that he was wearing knee-high rubber boots. He heard a car drive up and stop behind him. The car door opened and shut.
“Hey Gil,” said Karen.
“Hello, Detective.”
“Are you and Lili up for dinner tonight?”
Gil took a deep breath and climbed out onto the road. “I asked you to come out here because there’s something I have to tell you. Lili’s been kidnapped.” Gil explained everything that had happened to Lili. He struggled to keep from crying. “I’m here to try and keep from going nuts.”
Karen gave Gil a hug. “Oh my God, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just told you. I wanted to tell you in person. We have to keep this quiet to prevent it from becoming a worse nightmare in the international arena. And anyway, there’s nothing you and I can do about it right now.”
“Unbelievable. Now I’m going to go nuts. Do you need any help right now?”
“No, I’m okay. It’s just a pain getting through this brush, but I’ll manage. I’ll cut through the brush, if I have to. Anything new with the mole people?”
“There is, as a matter of fact. Special Agent Davis called yesterday and told me that Katrina Ryu remembered something. She told the US Marshals that while she was working on the tunnels, Evan Melsty asked her to look at some plans for an underground network of tunnels and rooms that his father was working on. He asked for any ideas she might have to improve his design. He told her that it was going to be built in this area. He paid her three thousand dollars for her input. Katrina didn’t remember the town’s name. We still haven’t figured out who this Evan guy is.”
“You know, Evan Melsty sounds like a made-up name, maybe an anagram. You know, where the letters are mixed up to form different words.”
“Huh. I’ll go work on that idea.” Karen went over to her car and used the back of a piece of scrap paper. She talked to herself while she scribbled. After a few minutes, she ran back over to Gil and said, “I think I’ve got it! Steve Manly.”
“Let me see.” Gil looked at all the rearrangements she’d tried and said, “Maybe, but it doesn’t look quite right to me. I think the name Manly would normally have an e before the y. You could also try Lyman. Steve Lyman, how about that?”
“I like that. I know that there are Lymans around here. I’ll work more on this anagram theory. I gotta go. Please keep me up to date on Lili.”
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GIL CONTINUED TO SCAN the bank of the brook with his radar unit. He was searching for smaller brooks that flowed from the adjacent hillside and had turtle stones under the water. It looked like this brook, and the pond from which it flowed, were fed by springwater flowing off the mountain. There was a dirt road between the hillside and the brook that must have changed the flow pattern from what it had been in the seventeenth century.
As he continued to search, Gil encountered what looked like intermittent areas of underground water flow. They were only about a foot or two wide and didn’t seem to flow in continual streams. He looked up toward the dirt road and saw that the streams were flowing out of small culverts, only about a foot in diameter. He steered his robot across the mouth of one of the streams, and several rocks appeared on his video screen. He steered the robot toward the next stream and, just before it got there, his screen showed a strange pattern, about three feet underground. It looked like bubble-wrap.
Gil took his shovel, stepped into the deeper brook, and dug into the bank. It was awkward, and he couldn’t see a thing as the hole filled with muddy water. At about three feet in depth, he encountered a rocky layer. He dug out a piece of the rock and rinsed it off. The rock was stained, but there were definitely rounded green minerals embedded in dull brown rock. Prehnite! He dug deeper to uncover more of the rocky layer, but water was flowing over it. He tried to clean the rocky layer with his hands, but couldn’t see anything. They might have felt like little turtles.
Gil washed his muddy hands off in the brook, and attempted to dry them on his wet and muddy pants. He took out his phone and looked up the powder horn’s inscription. It said the sack was buried twenty paces up. With his shovel, he walked across the road and up the hill until he’d counted twenty paces. There was no stream there, but he stuck the shovel into the ground to mark the location. He went back to get his robot and his water bottle. There were a lot of small trees on the hillside, but there was enough room to maneuver his robot.
Gil steered his radar machine in a search pattern and found what looked like flowing water underground. He searched a few yards up and down the hill but didn’t see anything interesting. When he searched farther down the hill, he saw what looked like a rock ledge. The ledge caused the stream’s flow to shift sharply to the left. So, the stream he had found was probably the one that fed the next culvert down the road. The stream he was after might be a few yards farther to the right.
Gil guided the robot to the right along the ledge and found another underground stream. He steered the robot uphill, along the stream, and he saw something unusual on his radar display. Gil cleared layers of decaying leaves out of the way and dug down through the soil. When he was down a couple of feet, the bottom of the hole filled up with muddy water. He kept digging, but the mud on his shovel oozed back into the water before he could move it out. It was a losing battle.
He left his shovel by the hole, but packed up his robot and put it in his car. He drove to the nearest big-box hardware store and bought a battery-powered water pump and some batteries. When he got back, he placed the pump in the water and turned it on. It wasn’t strong enough to pump the hole dry, but it lowered the water level sufficiently to enable digging. Gil dug down another two feet and his shovel clunked against something hard.
He used his bare hands to search through the mud and he pulled something up. He rinsed it off and saw that it was a small gold statuette. He was so excited, he couldn’t catch his breath. He set it to the side and searched some more. He found another gold statuette. He went to his car and got his wand-style metal detector. He probed around the bottom of the hole, but didn’t find anything else. According to the powder horn, there should be some jewelry. Gil went back to the car and got his bigger, more powerful metal detector. He searched inside the hole and in the surrounding area, but he didn’t find anything else.
Gil looked at his clothes and confirmed that he was a complete muddy mess. By this time, he was shaking both because of chill and anxiety. He was excited that he’d found the gold statuettes, but Lili’s life was in grave danger, and there was nothing he could do. He slumped to the ground and cried.
When he regained his composure, he wiped off his hands as best he could and took out his phone to call Karen. Before he could dial, his phone rang. “Gil, this is Special Agent Elsayed. We have Lili. She’s okay. She’s good.”
Gil’s heart was racing. “Where is she?”
“She’s at the American Embassy in Chisinau, Moldova. She’s safe.”
“Moldova? Is she hurt?”
“She’s not physically hurt, not at all. But, she’s obviously been through a major ordeal. Our doctor gave her a sedative and she’s sleeping.”
“What should I do?”
“Tomorrow, we plan to fly her to our London office for a debrief. Then we’ll fly her home.”
“Can I meet her in London? I have an idea about the people who are after her and Martha.”
“Where are you now, Gil? I’d like to hear your theory, but not over the phone.”
“I’m in Greenfield, Mass.”
“Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll meet you there at about four o’clock.”