Dark Days (20 page)

“You see?” Alex said to Natalie. “You're welcome.”

“We'll look into it,” she said begrudgingly, “but let's keep on with the tour for now.”

Our next stop was Federal Hall. When the United States began, New York was the capital and Federal Hall was where George Washington took the oath of office as the first president. We were walking down Nassau Street toward the building when I pointed something out to the others.

“This street is where my anonymous letters supposedly came from,” I said.

“What do you mean?” asked Grayson.

“Both envelopes had a return address on Nassau Street.”

“Did you try to find it?” asked Grayson.

“No, that never occurred to me,” I said, giving him the stink eye. “Of course I did. But it's phony. It doesn't make any sense.”

I handed him the envelope and he read it aloud. “356852 Nassau Street.”

“See what I mean? It's way too high a number to be an actual address,” I explained. “The longest addresses on Nassau are only three digits.”

“Maybe it's the number of an office in one of these buildings,” Natalie said. “If we can find the office, we can find the answer.”

“Nope,” Liberty said, interrupting. “It's not an address and it's not an office.”

I stopped and gave him a look too. “How do you know that?”

“Because it's my name,” he said with a cheesy smile.

Now I was even more confused.

“It was one of the first things I memorized when I learned the Omega code,” he said. “3, 5, 68, 52 is lithium, boron, erbium, tellurium. Li, B, Er, Te, that spells Liberte. It's the French spelling, but still the best way to spell my name in the code.”

I couldn't believe I hadn't figured that out. “How did I miss that?” I said, taking the envelope and looking down at it. “It's as plain as day.”

“No it's not,” said Alex. “The numbers aren't split, so you don't know if they're one digit or two. And it's not part of any other coded material. I wouldn't have thought it was code if I saw it.”

“But if it is code, that's huge,” said Natalie. “That means ‘liberty' is part of the clue.”

“It could be the Statue of Liberty,” suggested Grayson. “Does Nassau Street run all the way?”

“Yes,” said Alex. “But you have to take a submarine for the part that goes under New York Harbor.”

Grayson rolled his eyes. “I meant does it run all the way to Battery Park, where we were looking at the statue earlier this morning. Maybe if you stand there on the street and look at the statue it all lines up and makes sense.”

“No,” I said. “Nassau only goes to Wall Street. There's no way you could see the statue from there.”

“It could be the Sons of Liberty,” Alex said. “You said they used to meet at the Fraunces Tavern. That gets back to that whole reserve a place in history thing.”

“That's good,” Liberty said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“Let me see the note again,” Natalie said, a hint of excitement in her voice.

I handed it to her and she held it up so that the sunlight shined through the paper. She looked at it for a second and smiled.

“There's a comma,” she said, her excitement building. “It's faint but it's definitely there.”

“A comma? That's why you made the big smiley face?” Alex said. “Because there's a comma?”

“Don't you see, Alex,” she replied, playing up the moment. “A comma changes everything.”

“I think it's safe to say that none of us see that,” he answered. “How does a comma change everything?”

“Because without a comma in the sentence ‘Reserve a place in history,' ‘reserve' is a verb,” she said. “That's what we've been trying to figure out. How you can make a reservation. But if there is a comma, as in ‘Reserve, comma, a place in history,' then ‘reserve' is a noun, an actual place in history.”

And that's when I realized where we were standing.

“You are a total genius!” I said.

She flashed a grin. “I know, but don't get discouraged. I had to develop the skills.”

“Okay,” Alex said. “For us mere mortals, do you want to explain?”

“Look where we are,” I said. “It's the Federal Reserve.”

Sure enough, we were standing right next to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“This is the Reserve! It's a place in history.” I continued, thrilled that we'd finally figured it out.

“And check out the address,” added Natalie. “We are at the intersection of Nassau Street and . . .”

We all looked up at the street sign and smiled.

It was Liberty.

“This must be where Marek is getting his money,” I said as we stood looking up at the massive Federal Reserve Bank. “Remember what Milton said, the money is the key to everything.”

“I don't know,” said Grayson. “It's not that kind of bank. The Federal Reserve isn't for people to use. It's for giant banks and the governments of countries to use. Marek's not a country. He can't just go in and open an account or take out a loan.”

“Yes, but that's not all it is,” said Alex. “The Federal Reserve is also home to the world's largest . . .”

He stopped midsentence and left us hanging.

“. . . never mind.”

“Never mind?! The world's largest what?” asked Natalie.

“Four really smart people and me,” he said, referring to her joke from earlier. “I'd hate to embarrass you all by solving the big mystery. I'll just go lift weights and eat cheeseburgers until you geniuses figure it out.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” she said with exaggerated emphasis. “I was joking and I'm sorry.
Five
really smart people.”

“How about four really smart people and one Albert Einstein level supergenius?”

She gave him a look. “You're pushing it.”

“Okay, five really smart people will do. As I was saying, the Federal Reserve isn't just a bank. It's also home to the world's largest gold deposit.” The mention of gold caught our attention and Alex took a dramatic pause before he continued. “Almost a quarter of the world's gold is in the basement of that building.”

“That's a lot,” Natalie said, laughing. “That's a whole lot.”

“Yeah, but I'm pretty sure they keep it locked up tight,” said Liberty. “How would he even get in to see it, much less have access to it?”

“That's the best part,” said Alex. “They give tours. I saw a documentary about it on television. “

“I think we should take that tour,” Natalie said as she started walking toward the entrance. “By the way, supergeniuses don't sit around watching TV.”

“It was a documentary,” Alex corrected as we all followed her. “Supergeniuses watch documentaries.”

Considering what's inside, it's no surprise that we had to go through some major security hurdles just to get into the building. It took about twenty minutes to make it through the first wave of armed guards, metal detectors, and bag searches. At one point I think they took our pictures and ran them through facial recognition software, but I couldn't tell for sure because it was all kind of top secret-y and they weren't exactly talkative.

Finally, we made it to the end of the line. There was a woman at the counter in a crisp blue uniform with her hair pulled back tight in a bun. She wasn't what you'd call friendly.

“Tickets?”

That's all she said. Unfortunately, we didn't know what she was talking about. Natalie was in front, so she took the lead. “How much are they?”

“They're free.”

“Great,” she said. “We'll take five.”

“No,” the woman corrected. “You must already have them. Tickets are ordered online at least one month in advance.”

“Well,” Natalie said, trying to charm her a little. “Since we're here and have already gone through the security line . . . and since they're free . . . is there any way we can get them now?”

“No.”

Alex started to try a follow-up but it was obvious Ms. Single Syllable wasn't going to change her mind. Luckily, her supervisor was a little nicer. He was older, his hair and moustache on the silver side of gray, and his smile was welcoming.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked as he walked up behind her.

“No tickets,” she explained curtly.

He looked at us for a moment, and I used my best pleading eyes. We all did.

“Wait a second, I think they're part of that school group from Texas,” he said as he winked at Natalie. “Isn't that right? Aren't you from Texas?”

“Yee haw,” said Natalie with a drawl. “We sure are.”

Before the woman could protest, the supervisor told her that he'd watch the counter for fifteen minutes so she could take a break. That took care of her, and once she was gone, he turned to us and asked, “You're not going to make me regret this, are you?”

“No, sir,” we said in unison.

He smiled and handed each one of us a ticket and directed us to join a group of sixth-graders who were wearing matching purple
MANSFIELD TAKES MANHATTAN
T-shirts.

“Yee haw?” I said to Natalie as we walked over.

She shrugged and laughed. “It was the best I could think of.”

We had to wait about ten minutes for the tour to begin, so we bonded with the school group. And by “bonded,” I mean all their girls looked dreamily at Alex while Natalie and I helped their teachers with directions to their next stop. Finally, a tour guide came out and led us toward the vault.

“Welcome to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's gold vault,” he said, his Brooklyn accent making it sound like there was a
w
in the middle of “vault.” “It holds more than half a million gold bars, weighing approximately 6,700 tons.”

It took Grayson less than thirty seconds to say, “That's over $380 billion. Billion with a
b
.”

The guard stopped and smiled. “Very good math. $382 billion to be exact.”

I don't know which impressed me more: the money or Grayson's math skills.

“All of the gold in the vault belongs to foreign countries,” he continued. “Much of it came here around World War II, when European governments wanted to make sure that their money was secure.”

As he talked, he led us through a series of massive steel doors, past many more armed guards, and finally to a long hallway where the gold is held. It's kept in blue cages with numbers and multiple padlocks on the doors. He talked about the meticulous way in which each bar is tracked, measured, weighed, and reweighed.

“Now I have a question for you,” the man said as he looked out at us. “We are eighty feet below ground and there is one important thing that makes this gold vault possible. Does anyone know what it is?”

He looked first at all the kids in the school group, but they just shook their heads. Then he looked at us. We were equally stumped until Natalie came up with the answer.

“Manhattan schist?”

He smiled. “What a smart group this is. Good with math, good with geology. Manhattan schist is exactly right. If it weren't for New York's superstrong bedrock, this vault could not exist, because the weight of the gold would cause it to sink deeper into the ground.”

We all exchanged looks at the mention of Manhattan schist. Everything was tantalizingly close to coming together. As for the tour, it was interesting and the gold was impressive, but it seemed like the Federal Reserve might be a dead end. For the life of us, we couldn't figure out how Marek could get so much as a single bar out of the vault. There were too many safety measures. And even if he could steal some, any missing gold would be noticed within forty-eight hours.

“It's impossible,” Natalie said as we walked around the museum exhibit at the end of the tour. The exhibit had archival pictures, old scales, and equipment used for measuring the gold. There was even a mountain of shredded cash. (Shredding old bills is one of the things the bank is in charge of doing.) “With the gates and the vaults and the many people with big guns, I don't see how he could get any of it.”

“It's not like he can come in at night, either,” Grayson said, motioning to a display about the massive vault door. “The only way into that vault is through a ninety-ton steel door that is locked air-tight every night. In fact, it's shut so tightly that one time a paper clip got in the door and shut the entire system down. There's no getting through it.”

“Then why do I still think that it's exactly what he's doing?” I asked.

“Because it's Marek,” said Natalie. “And he always seems to figure out how to pull off the impossible.”

“Check it out,” Alex called to us.

We walked over to where he and Liberty were looking at a display featuring a timeline of the building's construction.

“This is the vault being built in the early 1920s,” he said, pointing at a large brown-tinted photo of the construction crew hard at work. “They're eighty feet underground, blasting their way through the Manhattan schist.”

“Okay,” said Natalie. “Why is that important?”

“Look at the man in charge.” Alex pointed to a man in a hardhat. We recognized him instantly.

“Marek Blackwell,” said Grayson.

“It makes sense,” said Liberty. “Marek worked underground for almost a century. He worked on a lot of the big projects.”

“And he wasn't alone,” said Grayson, pointing to another face.

I expected to see that it was another of the Unlucky 13. But it wasn't. Still, it was a face that we all recognized.

“Is that the guard?” asked Alex. “The one who let us in without the tickets?”

We looked closely, and one by one came to the conclusion that it was in fact the guard. His hair and moustache were darker, but there was no denying who it was.