He indicated the canvas sacks. “That’s a little over half a million there, for a month’s work and travel time. That isn’t rich. That’s seed money; what we need to fit out the next expedition and hire the help. Then there’s no limit to what we could do. Centuries from now, there could be statues of us here, and generations learning our names in school—a new world waiting for us, the way it did for our ancestors.”
“We’ll be like the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, then?” O’Brien said, and chuckled at the scowls of the three Virginians. “In a manner of speaking, Captain.”
Salvatore’s voice kindled. “Yeah! We’re the only people here on… on… what in hell, the Other Side…
“I’m going to call it New Virginia,” Rolfe cut in. “The Commonwealth of New Virginia.”
“Right, Cap’n, we’re the only ones in New Virginia who aren’t bare-assed Injuns walking around with bones through their noses and gourds on their ciollas. To hell with just getting rich. This place is our oyster. And we get filthy stinking rich,” Colletta said.
Rolfe nodded. So did his cousins, which didn’t surprise him; he’d known both the Fitzmorton boys since they were in short pants, and the families had been related since about the time the first John Rolfe discovered Virginia was a good place to grow tobacco. Both were newly married with children on the way, and the family rumor mill said Rob’s war bride was an impoverished Italian aristocrat with expensive tastes, at that.
Their father was a not-very-successful country lawyer; Rolfe’s had been career army, until TB retired him to a miserly pension and a hopeless battle to support a son and two daughters on that and the remnant of the ancestral acres. Which were just about enough for a big kitchen garden, a cow and a tumble-down house two centuries old and three quarters boarded-up, with a few cannonballs from McClellan’s gunboats still embedded in the brickwork. They were all men whose families had spent the last three-quarters of a century going downhill in a world less and less suited to their sort. The great days of the First Families of Virginia had been nostalgic memory before the War For Southron Independence, and since Appomattox they’d mostly been too poor to paint and too proud to whitewash, as the saying went, living on a thin gruel of memory spiced with glory.
This other-side California had a number of advantages over the James River swamps in Chief Powhatan’s time, besides the climate. It really did have gold, and he could look up the exact location on a map before digging. The climate was better and the Indians less formidable, too. His hand caressed the Garand resting across his knees.
“Yeah, Cap’n, this place is our oyster if we can keep doggo about it,” Salvatore went on. “Uncle Sam gets his sticky hands on that Gate, they’ll stamp it Ultra Top Burn Before Reading Secret, and we’ll get a pat on the fanny if we’re lucky. Only ones who’ll make anything off it are the ones who can already afford a congressman or three of their own.”
O’Brien looked around at the darkling wilderness, full of mysterious night sounds and the distant chanting of the Indians; he wasn’t a hunter or country-bred, like the three Virginians, and unlike Colletta he hadn’t adapted well.
“My family got off the boat in South Boston and stayed right there,” he said. “That was in the first famine. I can’t see myself being the bold pioneer, Captain. I’m a city boy. I like pavement under my feet and a good bar on the corner, and working with machinery, not cows.”
“The pioneers didn’t have a big city right at their backs. Just a hop, skip and a jump away, whenever they needed something, with gold by the ton to pay for it,” Rolfe said, jerking his chin back over his shoulder.
They’d rigged up a shelter of poles and tarpaulins to hide the silvery surface of the Gate on this side; it was hideously conspicuous at night, a beacon across the countryside. The Indians were terrified of it, and of the men and strange beasts who’d come out of it. Rolfe snorted at the memory of what it had been like smuggling horses into his basement without attracting attention, not to mention building the ramp without anyone suspecting. And getting his cousin-once-removed, Louisa—she was Aunt Antonia’s husband’s brother’s daughter—to house-sit for him, with no questions asked. Her bribe had come with a ring, which was fair. She was a good kid, no Ava Gardner but pretty enough. Smart, too, and she’d hung around him since they were both toddlers. His mother had been dropping hints about grandchildren since the day he got out of the hospital, and anyway, he’d never planned on being the last Rolfe.
“With the Gate, we can bring in anything—anyone—we want,” he said. “We’ll have to buy the house in Oakland; buy up the block and the neighborhood, come to that, get it rezoned. Start a company; trading to the Philippines, say, or Siam, and investing in some old mines there, to cover the gold—you can buy fake customs stamps cheap in Manila, or anything else for that matter. And… as I said, we need organization. That means someone has to provide the leadership. I think I’m the best man for the job. Anyone disagree?”
His cousins shook their heads.
So did O’Brien, grinning broadly and exaggerating the brogue a little: “You got me through Leyte and Okinawa alive, Captain,” he said. “I’ll keep backing you the now. You’re still the Old Man.” He shook his head in wonderment: “Mother O’Brien’s little boy a lord! Mary and Patrick, you know, I like the sound of it!” Softly: “She’ll be off her knees and washing no more floors on Beacon Hill the way she did to feed the six of us before the war, and that’s the truth.”
Colletta turned up his hands with a smile of melting sincerity that made Rolfe suspicious….
But Salvo’s trustworthy enough. You just have to watch him, and remember he’s always figuring an angle.
That could be valuable; Colletta had been the best scrounger and fixer in Company B, plus he could charm a snake out of its skin when he decided to, plus he had a way with languages. And… most men had to get worked up to kill; O’Brien, for instance, who was a wild man once his blood was running hot, but squeamish otherwise. The little wop was a stone killer; dispassionately skillful, like a farmer’s wife picking a chicken and wringing its neck. That could be very useful.
“OK, Cap’n, you’re the padrone, no argument,” the small, dark man said, with a massively expressive shrug. “There’s enough here for everyone to be a boss—but we need a boss of bosses, yeah. Capo di tutti capo,” he went on, smiling at something that passed the other men by. “Yeah, or we’ll lose it all to the thieves and politicians and police and the rest of them minchioni. We need a boss, and we need to keep our mouths shut.”
“Right,” Rolfe said easily. “The first thing is to turn that gold into money and put it somewhere safe; Tangier, maybe, or Switzerland. Then we can start buying up the land… we should incorporate, too….”
Unexpectedly, O’Brien spoke up: “We need to get Sol Pearlmutter in on this, Captain.”
Rolfe raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t think you liked him, Andy,” he said.