“Hello, Mister Reid,” called out Mitchell.
“Oh, yes…sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” said a voice from inside the speeder.
A second later, the side door opened and a small man in his eighties, wearing a grease-stained set of outdoor coveralls, climbed out. Mitchell made the introductions.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” said Reid, as he looked admiringly at his speeder.
“It sure is,” said Mitchell. “How old is it?”
“She’s from the 1950s. I found her languishing away in a neighbor’s barn. I’ve been restoring her for the past few winters now,” Reid said proudly.
“Does it run?” asked Jen.
“Like the wind,” said Reid with a twinkle in his eye. “Now, why don’t you come inside and let me make you both a hot cup of coffee, and you can tell me why you young folks decided to fly all the way to Alaska in the dead of winter just to talk to me.”
Reid led Mitchell and Jen inside his rustic cabin, threw the kettle on while he got out of his dirty coveralls, and washed up.
An old German shepherd, seeing new visitors in the house, trotted over from the living room and guardedly sniffed Mitchell’s outstretched hand. Once satisfied that he posed no threat, the dog nudged Mitchell’s hand, and he obligingly scratched behind her ears.
“Sandy, he’s a guest,” said Reid to his dog. Hearing her name, the German shepherd dropped her head and slinked off into the kitchen to lie down on a worn red woolen blanket, her head resting between her paws.
The cabin interior’s first floor was one large room with dozens of photographs from multiple generations adorning the walls. Jen marveled at the thousands of books piled high in bookcases all over the floor and spread out along the walls. Reid probably had as many books as a small library. A set of highly polished wooden stairs led up to the second floor where the bedrooms were located.
Reid poured them both a hot cup of coffee and then asked them to join him at an old wooden table in the middle of his small kitchen.
Jen thanked him for his hospitality and then got right down to the purpose of their visit. Together they told Reid what had happened in the Philippines and at the auction house, hoping that the old man could shed some light on why people may have wanted to kidnap her, and if he thought that the Goliath had any bearing on what was going on.
Reid sat there drinking his coffee and when they were finished talking, he shuffled over to a nearby bookcase by the stairs and rummaged around for a while before returning with several binders of notes that he had amassed over the years while researching the disappearance of the Goliath.
Jen’s eyes lit up wide at the sight of the binder. Being an historian, she saw the binders as mini-gold mines of information. Perhaps the answer lay hidden somewhere in the man’s voluminous notes.
Reid sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his thinning white hair. “Here is all the original source material that I have on my uncle’s fascination with the loss of the Royal Airship Goliath over Africa in 1931,” explained Reid as he spread the notes about on the table. “It kind of turned into a bit of a family obsession, you might say,” Reid explained as he looked down at the hundreds of pages and photos covering the table.
“Wow, you could say that,” said Jen as she looked over the worn and yellowed pieces of paper, her mind soaking in everything she could about the Goliath.
“Sir, do you know why they didn’t ever find the Goliath? And what is so damned important about her?” asked Mitchell.
“Well, Mister Mitchell, those are both good questions,” said Reid as he took a sip of his coffee and then continued. “First things first, my uncle was certain that the man behind the Goliath, Lord Seaford, had actually grossly mismanaged his company’s funds and was heavily in debt to his creditors. He even wrote that he believed that Seaford was going bankrupt when the Goliath disappeared. Rather conveniently, his widow received millions from the insurance Seaford took out on his airship before it left England. However, with creditors demanding to be paid, his company folded shortly afterwards,” explained Reid.
“And the search?” asked Mitchell.
Reid smiled and then said, “For weeks, the French authorities scoured the desert, but found nothing. Over the years, several privately-funded expeditions have only managed to find some very small pieces of wreckage in the desert outside of a tiny village called Ouadane, in Mauritania, but no one to date has ever found the Goliath herself. I’ve always felt that if she is still out there, she’ll be found near the region known as the Eye of the Sahara, a truly massive naturally-formed rock feature that can be seen from space,” explained Reid. “I never went to Mauritania myself, couldn’t afford to, not on my salary, but my uncle did once, decades ago. The locals told him that a massive sandstorm lasting for days tore through that region about the same time that the Goliath disappeared.”
“So it could still be out there then, buried under tons of sand?” said Mitchell.
“Yes, Mister Mitchell, exactly. I, like my uncle, truly do believe that she’s waiting to be discovered someday.”
Mitchell absentmindedly rubbed the couple of days’ growth on his chin. “Well, that’s something, then. But why would someone still care after all these years?”
“That part’s easy,” said Reid, looking straight into Mitchell’s blue-gray eyes. “Greed, Mister Mitchell, simple greed. The Goliath was carrying a fortune in her cargo hold when she disappeared.”
“How so?” asked Jen, looking up from a photograph of the lost airship. “Aside from the jewels and personal belongings carried by the passengers on the flight, I’ve never come across any reference to anything that would lead me to believe that there was a fortune to be found in her remains.”
Reid rummaged around on his table, grabbed a piece of paper, and then laid it out in front of Mitchell. “The flight manifest listed at least a dozen British and French millionaires as passengers. Their jewels alone would be worth tens of millions on today’s market, but that pales in comparison to what was loaded onto the Goliath during its brief stopover in Paris,” said Reid with a smile as he reached over and topped up their cups.
“I take it you have an idea what that fortune might be?” said Jen.
“Oh, I know exactly what it is,” Reid replied, smiling over at Jen.
Both Jen and Mitchell sat there staring at Reid, waiting for him to speak.
“Have you ever heard the strange but true tale of how the Romanov crown jewels were loaned to Ireland by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution?” asked Reid.
“No,” said Jen and Mitchell in unison.
“Well then, let me tell you,” said Reid. “For a sum of twenty-five thousand US dollars, the crown jewels were loaned to the Irish government, but they were never placed on display. Instead, they were hidden away in the home of the mother of the Irish envoy to the United States. However, trouble soon brewed in Ireland and civil war broke out. During the Battle of Dublin, the jewels were repeatedly moved around to ensure that they didn’t fall into the wrong hands. It was during one of these moves that the jewels were smuggled out of the country and replaced with flawless replicas.”
“So, you’re telling me that the ones on display in Moscow are fakes?” said Jen disbelievingly.
“Yes, that’s precisely what I’m telling you,” replied Reid bluntly. “In fact, the Russians themselves know it and have spent decades and billions of rubles looking for them all over the world.”