Cradle Of Solitude. Alex Archer

her head. “I haven’t got a clue, but I promise you this—we’re going to find out!” she said excitedly.

      She got up from the examination table and headed over to where she’d set up her laptop computer on a nearby desk. Firing up the web browser, she went to Google and typed Captain William Parker, Confederate Navy into the search bar.

      The search produced more than a million hits.

      The first one on the list was a short biography from the Naval Historical Center created by the U.S. Department of the Navy. She read parts of it aloud to Bernard, who was using a magnifying glass to examine the letter in more detail.

      “Born in New York in 1826…graduated from the Naval Academy and served aboard the Yorktown off the coast of Africa…promoted to lieutenant in 1855.”

      She jumped ahead a few lines, focusing in on his wartime service.

      “Abandoned the North for the South in 1861 by joining the Confederate Navy. Commanded the gunboat Beaufort during the battle of Roanoke Island in 1862 and also saw action at Hampton Roads and Drewry’s Bluff that same year. In October of 1863 he was promoted to captain and took command of the Confederate Naval Academy, situated aboard the steamboat Patrick Henry in Richmond.”

      So far, nothing really unusual, Annja thought. As commander of the Naval Academy, Parker might have had some interaction with the members of the president’s cabinet. But there was nothing that indicated he would have moved in the same social or political circles as the president himself.

      Annja kept reading.

      “After the war he served as captain of a Pacific mail steamship, was president of Maryland Agricultural College for a time, and even took a post as minister to Korea. He died in Washington in 1896.

      “He’s best known for his role in guarding the Confederate treasury during the evacuation of Richmond following Lee’s defeat at Chancellorsville and rumors still persist about his involvement in the disappearance of the treasure.”

      “What do you mean disappearance?” Bernard asked.

      Annja was already typing Lost Confederate Treasure into Google. This time there were about three hundred thousand hits and she quickly skimmed through several articles to get a sense of the story.

      “Apparently Captain Parker was given the difficult job of getting what was left of the Confederate treasury out of Richmond ahead of the invading Union troops. Like President Davis and his cabinet, the treasury made it out of the city aboard one of the last few trains headed for Danville. Once in Danville, the treasure was loaded onto a wagon train, which then set out under Parker’s command, headed for the old U.S. Mint in Charleston. Apparently it never made it. The treasury, all seven hundred thousand dollars of it, disappeared en route.”

      Bernard frowned. “Treasure or no treasure, it would seem we’re no further along than we were before finding the letter because there’s no way that man—” he pointed over at the skeleton “—can be Captain Parker if what you’re saying is correct.”

      Annja agreed. The letter must have been stolen or given to someone else, an aide perhaps, in order to prevent Parker from falling into just the kind of situation that had killed their subject.

      Unless…

      She stared at the floor, thinking it through.

      When she didn’t say anything for a few minutes, Bernard gently shook her arm.

      “What is it?” he asked.

      She shrugged. “It’s nothing, really—a hunch, just a long shot….”

      But Bernard knew that look and wouldn’t let her off without an explanation. “Out with it. What are you thinking?”

      “All right. This is totally off the wall, I know,” she said, “but what if you’re wrong? What if that really is Captain Parker?”

      Her colleague’s frown grew deeper. “But how is that possible? Given what you just read to me, I’d say he had a rather public face after the war.”

      That was true, but something about the idea nagged at her and she wasn’t ready yet to let it go.

      “I don’t know,” she told him. “Maybe he was charged with carrying out some kind of secret negotiation for the president and someone else took his place. Decoys were often used. When the war ended, and Parker didn’t come back, the impostor had to keep impersonating him to keep the secret from getting out.”

      Bernard laughed at the idea even as he walked back to his station, and after a moment, Annja couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

      It sounded crazy, even to her. After all, the simplest explanation to any problem was often the correct one, to paraphrase the principle behind Occam’s Razor. In this case, it was far simpler to believe the letter was either a forgery or, if it was authentic, that it had been stolen from Parker at some point near the end of the war.

      And yet…

      It would be a much more interesting story if my theory was right, she thought.

      Crazy or not, there was one thing she could do to begin getting at the truth, at least.

      Pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, she hit the speed dial and waited for the phone to be answered thirty-six hundred miles away in New York City.

      “Doug Morrell’s office.”

      “Hi, Doug, it’s Annja.”

      Doug Morrell was her producer on Chasing History’s Monsters. He was younger than Annja, more than a bit self-involved and had little to no actual knowledge of historical events prior to the previous decade, but had somehow managed to land his current position regardless of that fact. It probably had to do with his uncanny knack for capitalizing on historical issues and turning them into the kind of television fodder fans of the show ate like candy.

      He could be highly annoying, but he had also covered her back on more than one occasion. In an odd way, Annja counted him as one of her friends.

      “Who do we know at the Smithsonian?” she asked him.

      “What’s this we stuff? Apparently you don’t know anyone. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be calling me.”

      Annja had a lot of contacts at the Smithsonian but she’d called on so many people for favors over the years, and knew she’d probably need more in the future, so she wanted to use the show’s contacts if at all possible. Besides, this discovery was of historical significance and had nothing to do with the unusual adventures she was constantly being drawn into. “I meant we as in we the show, not as in you and me,” she told Doug.

      “Of course you did. But since you, meaning you, yourself and, well, just you don’t know anyone at the Smithsonian and, miracle upon miracles, I do, this would seem to be an ideal time for me to extract some payment for all the phenomenal episodes I’ve been forced to squelch thanks to your lack of interest and participation.”

      He can’t be serious, she thought.

      She needed him to focus, and that meant she had to nip this in the bud right away.

      “Trust me, Doug,” she said, “no one would have bought the amphibious chupacabra episode. Those injuries were from jellyfish stings, plain and simple.”

      “That’s funny. I seem to remember your area of expertise was Renaissance history, not marine wildlife. Or at least it was, last time I checked.”

      “It doesn’t take an expert to know that was a stupid idea, Doug.”

      “Right. Next you’ll be telling me that you don’t like the ghost shark idea, either.”

      She didn’t have to respond to that one; her silence said it all.

      “Oh,” Doug replied, indignant. “So that’s how it’s going to be, is it?”

      Apparently he’d woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.