Sam greeted the driver. “Where are you headed?”
“Chicago,” the man replied, without looking at him.
“You’ll be taking I-94 through the Great Lakes?”
“Sure will. Why, you looking for a ride?”
“Yeah. Three of us are heading to Minnesota.”
The driver turned to greet him, his blue eyes taking him in with a glance. “What are you, backpackers?”
Sam had learned long ago that the truth often worked better than the best fiction. “No. Honest people, in a world of trouble, looking for a favor.”
The driver’s eyes swept past him, across to Tom, and Virginia. His gaze rested with male interest on Virginia, then flicked back to remain on Tom. Sam guessed what he was thinking: a big guy like Tom could be trouble to deal with. Then again, Virginia was stunning, and it was hard to imagine a girl like her would be hanging out with a couple of troublemakers.
“Okay, why not. Come along. I won’t be making any more stops until the morning.”
“Great, that suits us.”
The stranger offered his hand. “My name’s Eddie Freitas.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
They drove through the night and arrived at Minnestra, Minnesota in the early hours of the next morning. From there, they walked several blocks off the main road, to the house that Senator Arthur Perry had once called home.
Sam stared at the mansion in the moonlight.
The place made the Senator’s lakeside log cottage appear small. The house formed a large U-shape, towering three stories. According to Elise, it was heavily protected by a state of the art, back to base security system. Fortunately, Elise had topped her class at cyber encryption and hacking when she worked for the CIA.
Not only was Sam now equipped with the digital diagrams for the residence, but also the code to the keypad that unlocked its doors and neutralized the alarm. Behind the house was what appeared to be an oversized barn. Of course, looks can easily be deceptive, and in this case, the barn was made of specialized materials utilized for their high strength and density. Inside, the barn was home to a collection of twenty or more classic cars, with an approximate current value exceeding fifty million dollars.
With Elise’s prep, it took just ten minutes to enter the main house and retrieve the digital key to the barn.
There were slate stairs up into a terraced garden area, complete with gazebo and water feature behind the house. At the top of the stairs a quartz pebble path wove through to the north toward a thick manicured hedge, which at ten feet high, provided a boundary at the rear of the yard area.
As they stepped through a gateway in the hedge, they could see two large khaki barns with a sprawling blacktop driveway giving access to both. The one on the left had sliding doors across the breadth of the front, like an aircraft hangar. The barn on the right had a double-width rolling door like a garage. There was a pedestrian door on the side, which was locked.
Sam inserted the security key into the slot beside the blast-resistant door, as though he were checking into a hotel room for the night. The heavy door was on automatic hydraulic arms.
The keypad light flashed green.
Surprisingly noiseless, the doors slid open.
The three of them all took a sharp intake of breath as they stepped inside the barn. Automatic lights blazed on with a buzz as the trio entered the spacious garage. Temperature and humidity controlled, the air was cool and dry, like a hospital.
Splayed in front of them sat two rows of vintage sports cars, astride a concourse of polished concrete which was painted yellow. Each car shone brilliantly and was a prime example of its pedigree. One side was all European sports cars. A 1979 Porsche 935, A red Ferrari 250 GT California Spider, An Aston Martin DB3S from 1956 in classic silver, and a 1955 D-Type Jaguar.
The opposing row was all American vintage muscle. At the front, a 1967 Mercury Cougar GT-S, a 1968 Shelby Mustang GT500-KR, a 454 cubic inch V8 1970 Chevy Chevelle SS, a black 1934 12-cylinder Packard coupe, a Pontiac GTO Tri-Power and in the back, opposite the Packard sat the Burgundy 1927 Ford Model A Tudor with a modified flathead V8.
“I think we found it,” Sam whispered, approaching the old American beauty and running his finger down the smooth arch of the passenger-side wheel arch.
The Ford shone as though brand new. Color keyed red wheels with white-walled tires adorned her below the running boards, and the huge silver grille at the front gleamed in the barn’s halogen lights overhead. Large bore exhaust pipes jutted rudely from the back of the running boards on both sides the only visual clue giving away the modifications made to the car.
The suspension in the Tudor had been up-rated in the tail end to stop her lying low on the road when loaded up with hooch, and the trunk and floor were modified to take extra cargo. The front seats sat up an extra six inches from the floor belying a secret compartment under the passenger cabin. Under the hood were modified truck carburetors, and extractor manifolds feeding into the large bore exhausts tailpipes. The tires were pristine. They looked as if they had been checked for air recently. Long-range fuel tanks were installed.
The tank meter read full.
Which was all very compelling, when you thought about it. Tom slanted a sly glance at Sam. Virginia grinned. They were all thinking about it.
In its day this Tudor could out-run any car she went up against. Sam opened the front door, turned the switch on the electric starter. Instantly, the proud and powerful elderly matriarch roared to life, blurting out a puff of blue smoke. She burbled away at a soft idle as though it was only yesterday she had been sprinting across the frozen lake in front of a convoy of rum runners. Nodding at the sound of a perfectly tuned engine, he let her warm up.
Sam climbed into the back seat. Rubber covered stainless steel where the rear passenger’s feet would have gone. At a glance, everything appeared as Henry Ford would have initially manufactured it. It was only when Sam opened the door, and squeezed into the large saloon-style, leather rear seats, that he observed the ruse.
His knees bent all the way back to his chest. Unless the car was designed to sit children in the back, the floorpan was much too high, meaning there was next to no legroom. In fact, if Jack Holman’s description was right, the false floorpan sat nearly six inches higher than the real one.
Sam felt his heart race as he examined the intricate metallic latches that held the floorpan together. There were no bolts or screws. Instead the entire thing had been manufactured to fit seamlessly. According to the original specs for the modified Ford Tudor, the spacing was filled with lead to keep the vehicle’s center of gravity down low.
Sam unlatched the four locks.
The false floorpan slid effortlessly backward, revealing a series of metal sheets.
“I don’t get it.” Sam asked, “What did we miss?”
“Nothing,” Virginia replied with a head shake that made one blonde lock drift in front of her face. “perhaps there’s something buried beneath that.”
Sam removed the first sheet of lead, followed by another one. Underneath the third layer was a shallow rectangular mahogany box. He tried to remove the chest, but it wouldn’t budge. Either too heavy or fixed to the floorpan with bolts.
He unclipped a latch on its side and the entire top opened upward.
All three of them gasped — inside were the coins of the Confederate treasure.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Sam’s heart skipped a beat. There were more gold coins than he had ever seen or even imagined. He felt like a kid who’d arrived at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, and after falling through the rapids had been whisked away to a world filled with treasure. His eyes swept over more than a thousand gold coins. Lying at the center of the treasure, a single unsealed note was fixed to a bed of blue velvet, like a dragon guarding its hoard.