Rosa Jardine’s brown eyes narrowed as she looked across to the barefoot old man in the brown robe, sitting across from her in the driver’s seat of the Datsun 280Z. Theo and his white Husky, Arfie, leaned forward between the front seats to follow the conversation between the two adults.

Rosa said to the old man, “So you say you’re Kenji Nobu. I don’t know you from Adam. I also don’t know who ‘Princess Argentum’ is either.” She looked skeptically out the windshield to the corrugated metal shack flanked by tanks and surrounded by a wire fence. “I don’t even know where we are exactly.”

Theo pushed forward the map he was holding, saying “We’re right here, Mom! Right here where Leanna marked on the map! See?” Rosa glanced at the map, seeing Leanna’s marks in red pen, and noted where Theo was pointing to Leanna’s drawing of a five petal rose in the middle of the Joshua Tree Park, off the highway they had left a few hours ago. Under the rose in Leanna’s hurried writing was the text, “Castillo de Hojalata.” Rosa looked again at the ramshackle shack in the bright mid-day sun, nestled in with boulders, wild cactus and bushes of the desert valley floor. A few hundred feet away was a jagged hill of jumbled boulders and rocks, rising from the desert floor and silhouetted against the distant mountain ranges.

Rosa looked back at the map and said, “I still don’t know where we are, but I trust you, Theo. If you say this is where we are supposed to go, then that’s where we are.”

Kenji Nobu stroked his short beard after looking carefully at the map, and then asked Rosa again, “You haven’t said who you are yet. How did you get a hold of this map?”

Rosa turned to Kenji and exhaled softly, a cross between a sigh and grunt. “I’m Rosa Jardine. This is my son, Theo, and his dog, Arfie. My friend, Leanna O’Regan, brought us here and gave Theo this map… but, wait a sec. She always referred to this car of hers as ‘Princess’?”

“Yes, of course, the silver foreign car described in the PAB broadcasts! There’s our ‘Princess Argentum’! Your friend’s name is Leanna O’Regan, you say?” Kenji replied excitedly. “We don’t use actual names in the radio show, just pseudonyms. Your name’s Rosa Jardine, you say? I wonder if that’s the ‘rose garden’ the radio show kept referring to…” Kenji looked at Rosa, deep in thought, “I always thought ‘rose garden’ referred to something else. I hate all this secrecy and sneaking around. Damn the President and his Proud Americans Brigade!”

Rosa shrank back a bit from the agitated old man, making Kenji relax his posture again. “Come, you must be hungry and thirsty. I’ll explain more in my Castillo de Hojalata,” Kenji said as he got out of the silver sports car. Theo and Arfie jumped out from behind Kenji’s seat, and Rosa got out reluctantly from the passenger’s side. She put the car’s keys in the pocket of her yellow hoodie, which she took off and tied the arms around her waist. Kenji retrieved his sheathed sword and his square wooden sandals from the back of the car, putting them on. He opened the gate to the wire fence and let Rosa, Theo and Arfie through, closing it behind them.

Kenji led them up to the shack, and opened the unlocked paint-flecked wooden door, walking in ahead of them and holding the door open for Rosa. Rosa turned to Arfie, and said, “Stay!” Arfie obliged and sat on the wooden pallets used as a porch in front of the shack, scanning the desert around them, on guard. Rosa turned to go into the shack, and saw that Theo was already inside, sitting at a worn out table in the middle of dirt-floor kitchen.

Kenji had turned on the radio, and was pouring some water from a canteen into some dusty, smeared drinking glasses. He set the glasses on the table along with an opened package of fig newtons, and took a swig from the canteen, pulling a rickety chair out for Rosa. Rosa sat down and picked up the glass sniffing at it. Before she could say anything to Theo, he had already drank his glass of water. Rosa sipped at her glass and grimaced a bit. Theo helped himself to the fig newtons, but Rosa declined when offered.

The radio was playing the PAB broadcast they had heard earlier playing from the pick-up truck of her would-be captors, and Rosa shivered a bit, recognizing herself in the description of the wanted “Hispanic woman” with the “white dog” in the “foreign silver car”. “That’s me they’re looking for, isn’t it?” she asked Kenji.

“Yes, and this PAB broadcast was what led me to look for you, since Preacher Bob was describing something similar in the CIM transmission. Here, maybe his radio show is playing again.” Kenji turned the knob on his radio, playing fragments of other stations until he came upon a faint, scratchy one of a man talking loudly in the unmistakeable tone of a preacher. “Oh good, they’re playing Preacher Bob’s message again,” Kenji said as he left the radio to sit down to the table and drink from his canteen again.

“The Day of Judgement is upon us, friends!” Preacher Bob intoned righteously from the radio, 
“The darkness rides towards us fast;
The Apocalyptic Horsemen gallop near,
To try and scatter flocks of sheep in their way!”

Kenji nodded, and then pointed his finger in the air as Preacher Bob continued his bombastic sermon:

“I had a dream last night I want to share,
It showed me visions clearly of End Times soon, 
And we must be ready to take our places! 
It showed me golden treasures carried swift
In a silver carriage drawn by a shining horse. 
A child and his mother rode in the carriage bright, 
I saw them heading off into the desert night. 
I say, this is a sign, my brothers and sisters! 
The Promised Land is found! Retrieve the plans! 
They’re found contained in a silver clue
With a fragrant rose garden, blooming new!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***