June 10, 2019
THE CAVE OF FORGOTTEN SHADOWS
(Based on True Events)
As a ten-year-old army brat living in southern Germany in 1970’s Lucky stumbles across an overgrown entrance to a cave while wandering through a forest with three friends. The entrance is hardly visible, and as they investigate, they find it blocked with a substantial cement wall. The boy carries this memory for a lifetime. Now in his sixties, he connects with childhood friends and together return to find the cave undisturbed after fifty-five years. They secretly dig their way in and encounter another cement wall with a German swastika plaque. With excruciating effort, they break through the three feet of reinforced cement. Behind the wall they find twenty decaying wooden crates filled with jewels and gold bars. War loot. The challenge they face is what to do with it.
PART ONE: MEMORIES UNEARTHED
CHAPTER 1
Ludwig “Lucky” Hoffman stared at the photograph in his trembling hands. The yellowed edges and faded colors couldn’t diminish the memory it captured: four grinning boys, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, standing before the gates of Zweibrucken Air Base, summer of 1973.
At sixty-five, Lucky’s hair had thinned and grayed, his once-lanky frame thickened around the middle. His ex-wife often joked that the only thing unchanged about him was his stubborn nature. Perhaps she was right.
The email that had arrived three days ago still glowed on his computer screen. A reply from Bobby his childhood best friend:
Found the others. Markus is in Berlin. Rusty in London. They’re in. When do we leave?
Lucky traced his finger over the forest in the background of the photo. Somewhere in those dense woods lay the secret that had haunted his dreams for five decades. The cave. The wall. What lay beyond it.
“You’re truly doing this?” His daughter Elise leaned against the doorframe of his study, arms crossed. At thirty-five, she had her mother’s practical nature and his own relentless curiosity—a combination that had propelled her to a successful career as an investigative journalist.
“I have to,” Lucky replied, setting down the photograph. “Before I’m too old to make the journey.”
“A treasure hunt based on a child’s memory? Dad, you were ten years old.”
“Some memories don’t fade, Elise.” He tapped his temple. “This one’s been waiting for me.”
~
~
The reunion at Frankfurt Main Airport was a collision of past and present. Bobby—now Robert—had become a geology professor with a specialty in cave formations. Markus Fischer had shed his rebellious youth to become a structural engineer. Rusty Wells had followed his military father’s footsteps, retiring as a colonel from Seal Team special forces.
They were strangers wearing familiar faces, bound by boyhood adventures and the promise of one final expedition. “You realize we’re a bunch of old men chasing a child’s fantasy,” Markus said over beers at their hotel. His German accent had faded from decades interfacing with international business firms.
“Maybe,” Lucky conceded. “But I’ve done my research. After the war, the Allies recovered billions in Nazi gold and treasures from hidden caches. But intelligence reports suggested dozens of minor repositories were never found.”
Rusty leaned forward. “My father mentioned rumors. Officers who served in the occupation talked about missing train shipments. Art and gold that vanished in the final days. He also talked about the men who were responsible for hiding loot. Many died during the las days of the war when allied forces overran the last hold outs and others must have died without revealing their secrets.”
Bobby unfolded a 1:24000 scale topographic map on the table. “I’ve correlated Lucky’s descriptions with forestry records. There’s a section here—” he pointed to a densely contoured area “—that matches. Remote enough, yet accessible by secondary roads from an old Luftwaffe base outside Zwei.”
“Tomorrow,” Lucky said, raising his glass. “We find out if I’ve been chasing ghosts.”