Now, I sat back in my chair, mind swirling with this new information.
As I was digesting what I had just heard, Lawrence’s cell phone rang, and he stepped away from the table to take the call.
After a couple of minutes, he came back to the table and said, “Well, that was interesting.”
“What?” I asked.
“That was Dave calling from the courthouse. The hearing is on recess, and he wanted to let me know about a new development. It seems the representative for Spain and the Florida rep have gone to war. Spain now wants everything and doesn’t want to share anything. He says Florida has no claim on the ship or its cargo.”
“Where does that leave us?” I asked.
“Right now, we’re just watching those two duke it out. That’s why the judge called for a recess. Things were getting pretty heated, and a shouting match erupted.”
“That’s very interesting,” I said, “the two supposed allies are at each other’s throats,” I said.
“Seems that way,” Lawrence replied.
“I wonder if we can use that to our advantage,” I said.
“How so?” Lawrence asked.
“I don’t know; I’ll have to think about it some, and so should you, Counselor,” I mulled.
“Well, here’s another bit of good news. While you’ve been gone, the price of gold has gone from thirteen hundred dollars an ounce to two thousand dollars an ounce,” Nils added.
“The market got that volatile in the last month?” Doc asked.
“Yep, a lot of crazy stuff going on,” Nils replied.
“Holy crap, Tony, what does that do to our ‘reported’ four hundred million in treasure?” I asked.
Tony pulled out his tablet, punched at it for a bit, and looked up, smiling.
“Well, according to my rough calculations, and, mind you, these are rough, based only on what we’ve reported we have found, not the real number, our four hundred million has just turned into six hundred fifteen million-plus.”
We all sat there, eyes wide and mouths agape.
Doc finally pushed away from the table and said, “I need a drink. It must be noon somewhere.”
At that, we all broke out laughing.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The court was in recess for three weeks. Dave was making a quick trip back to Atlanta to take care of some business at his law firm. I had been racking my brain as to how we could leverage this conflict between Florida and Spain in our favor, to no avail. The home team, Gus, captain of our recovery vessel the Falcon, Nils, our retired rocket scientist partner, Lawrence our legal eagle partner, and Tony, our computer genius, were all trying to wrap their collective heads around our revelation that we had met up with, and become friends with, an alien being and discovered the library!
No problem… right.
A week later…
I had fallen asleep on my couch when I jerked upright as a thought like a bolt of lightning flashed through my head. I sat there, desperately working hard to remember the details as I scribbled notes of what I guess was a dream on the pad of paper on the coffee table. Then, I spent fifteen minutes frozen in place. When I felt I had solidified the idea in my head, I jumped to my feet and grabbed the phone, not looking at the digital clock, which read 3:00 a.m.
“Lawrence, did I wake you?” I asked, not thinking.
“Hell, yeah, you woke me. It’s 3:00 a.m., Colt. What’s going on?”
“I think I’ve got the answer to our legal problem,” I said breathlessly.
“At three in the morning?” Lawrence bemoaned.
“Yeah, sorry about that, but it just came to me. Meet me at the Lair at 8:00 a.m.”
“Right, okay, I’ll see you at 8:00; now, go back to sleep,” and the line went dead.
There was no sleeping for the next hour as I committed more details to paper, finally getting back to sleep only to be rattled awake by my alarm.
I was at the Lair when Lawrence rolled in at 8:05. I had the coffee on and was pacing in the conference room.
“Sit down,” I said as I slid a cup of coffee his way. “I think you’re going to dig it.”
Two weeks later, our “new” discovery of the queen’s jewels, with photos, was on the front page of most of the newspapers in the country. Well, at least one chest was. I had wanted a big splash, so we made like Mac, our chief diver, had just made the find the week before in the captain’s cabin—one chest of beautiful jewelry, diamonds, gold, and emeralds, silver, and pearls fit for a queen. The way we displayed it, golden necklaces draped everywhere, strings of pearls, rings, broaches, and small gold bars, would have been a great addition to any pirate movie.
It sat in the lobby of Lair 2, the building I had acquired for our offices when we started our “legit” salvage operation of the galleon. The acrylic tank that we had made for it filled with saltwater displayed the chest beautifully. The saltwater helped preserve the integrity of the box or literal treasure chest housing the dowry. Custom LED lighting enhanced the beauty of its contents and made it easy to photograph. When you walked in the front doors of Lair 2, it was the first thing you saw, sitting there, flanked by the armed security guards.
The phone started ringing off the hook; media outlets everywhere wanted part of the story. “Was this really part of the queen’s dowry that was being sent to King Philip V?” We fed the media enough facts, and they ran with it. “The historical significance of this find is huge,” “This is the only portion of the dowry that has ever been found.” And so it went for two days, and then the international media picked it up, and TV crews from all over the world descended on us, interviewing Gus as salvage vessel captain and Mac as the diver who found the chest. All of which was true. Of course, I had prepped them well.
Now,
