I was standing outside the shack in the middle of the woods, near the pebbled shore of the still glacial lake, scanning the low hanging clouds concealing the tall rocky mountains above them, the air quiet and cool. Daniel standing nearby picked up a flat rock near the water’s edge and flung it at a shallow angle so that it skipped across the lakes surface. It went surprisingly far in the lake before it lost too much moment and then sank into the depths with a loud “bloop!” He picked up another stone and tried again, but it only skittered a short distance before flipping and splashing down close to the shore.

It dawned on me that the canoe was missing, which made me wonder how we were going to return to the cabin and find out if Sarah was able to make the necessary jumps and leaps to get the story out. It was quite a hike back, going through dense, rocky forest. “Daniel, where do we go from here? I see the canoe’s gone,” I asked, trying my hand and skipping a rock across the lake. It didn’t skip once and sank immediately.

“I pushed the canoe out into the water before I left to bury the video tape. I have no idea where it is.”

“I mean, this is a peaceful spot to hang out for awhile but we have jobs to return to,” I asked, disappointed by how strained my voice sounded. I normally take my lead from Daniel on everything, but I wanted to make sure the echoes I started were rippling outward, the information of Valdoria’s deceit spreading in peaks and valleys in every direction.

“Well, let’s have a snack, and let’s talk a bit first about what Valdoria is up to, Justine’s role in all this and what I hope to gain for Louise,” Daniel said, scanning the sky and listening for any hint of unexpected company. We headed back into the shack and I found some granola bars to share between us and a couple of Cokes. I was more hungry and thirsty than I realized and downed the sweet meal and beverage in a few bites and gulp. Daniel was nibbling on his bar and sipping on the soft drink, never in a hurry.

“Let’s talk about Valdoria first, and how the coded message from Justine’s Instant Letters tie into the old coins that JD Ruff tried to pass on to me to buy favour for my plans to build a free Louise independent of Canada. I saw that the gold coins he was offering me were from a time when Valdoria used gold-plated wooden disks with lead inserts to create wealth it didn’t have. The coins were slightly thicker than the pure gold ones, since lead is less dense than gold, and the engraved wood gave the rigid structure needed to plate the gold onto. The weight and diameter of the coins were identical to the 100% gold ones, but about twice as thick with 1/5000 of the amount of gold.” Daniel went silent and put down his meagre breakfast. He looked up at the shack’s ceiling in the same odd way he did in the cabin, as if he could see something materializing above him.

“So that’s what was meant by Justine’s coded message! Gold = 5000 X 2 X pi X the coin’s radius, or the circumference of a circle. The wood and lead keep the circumference of the coin the same, and it only gets thicker the more Valdoria debased it!” I marvelled at the simplicity of it. If vast amounts of these coins were going to be produced when you had very little gold to go around, you could pretend the value was the same.”

Daniel nodded and added, “So you can see why Valdoria was so interested in wood mills and mines; they needed the lead left behind in the mines and process the timber to produce the wooden blanks for gold-plating. I didn’t understand it at first and thought it odd that they wanted to secretly lease back shuttered mills and mines. Once they were done minting their debased coins, the government of Louise would be left with these unproductive assets.”

The Valdorian scheme was all coming together now, and leading me to blurt out my conclusion: “So JD Ruff was facilitating the Treasury you hoped to build for Louise with gold that was actually worth only a fraction of its face value!”

“Yes, and I almost fell for it until I noticed the old debased coins from 40 years ago. This also tells me that Valdoria actually has very little gold again or had no intention to give me the real thing.” Daniel stopped looking into the space above him and stared directly at me, his eyes blazing and his voice low, “The independence of Louise would have been stolen from us!”

“How much do you think the Prime Minister knows about all this? Justine makes it point of pride to always be one step ahead of the provinces,” I asked, pointing at the Bookface magazine opened to her Halloween party page. “What of the magic shoes?”

“I think she was well aware of it, and was planning to embarrass me into giving up on Louise independence from Canada. She was going to break the story herself at the right moment, announcing to the world that I had bought a bag of fake magic beans, and she would ride in on her broom or glass bubble or whatever was picture-perfect for her Instant Letters to bring the point home to her followers.” Daniel’s face was red now, and I wasn’t sure if it was from rage or humiliation. “What better way to step all over me than to give me the shoes to do it to myself.”

Daniel fell silent, and I didn’t know what more to say. I was starting to dread the hike back to the cabin, suspecting this was the plan, but we were going to have to get started soon if we wanted to take advantage of the daylight. As if reading my mind, Daniel started gathering what little we brought with us, leaving the Bookface magazines and Instant Letters where they were, muttering, “She left this mess, she can clean it up!”

We closed up the shack behind us and started the trek back to the cabin through the dense forest, avoiding the shore. The ground was uneven and rocky, and it was impossible to walk through the tall pines in a straight line. I questioned the wisdom of pushing the canoe out into the lake, since there was clearly no one coming to find us. I was about to ask Daniel for his reasoning when we could hear the low thumping of helicopter blades in the distance.

“Keep low!” Daniel whispered, and I could see why we deliberately chose to wear plain, dark clothing. The sound of the approaching helicopter got increasingly louder until it almost sounded like it was making a beeline for our position. “This way! Behind this large boulder! Make sure it is always between us and the aircraft!”

I realized what Daniel was getting at. If the occupants of the helicopter had infrared detection equipment, they didn’t need to see in the light, just the glow of our warm bodies in the cool forest, but it couldn’t see through the massive boulder deposited on the mountainside by ancient glaciers. We ducked behind the moss-covered rock, careful to make sure that we were always on the other side of it. We crouched down low, moving around it and unable to see the helicopter, judging it’s position from the sound of the whump-whump from its blades. It sounded like it was landing on the lake near the shack that we had left only a few minutes ago, and we both peered around the edge of the boulder to see the unmistakeable bulk of JD Ruff struggling to disembark from the aircraft, getting his too-new cowboy boots all wet in the lake’s icy water. We could hear him from our hiding place swearing profusely and bellowing for Daniel at the top of his voice as he headed up to the shack we had just left behind.

Daniel smiled at me and said, “Al, I think we can assume that Ms. Chen has connected the dots and published the story that Valdioria is attempting to take over Louise with gold coins that are almost worthless!”

I watched JD circle the shack for the third time, his movements growing more erratic with each pass. He wasn’t searching—he was pacing. That’s when it clicked.

“Daniel,” I said quietly, “look at his search pattern. He’s not methodical. He’s panicked.”

Daniel studied JD through the gap in the fir branches. “He keeps checking his watch.”

“More than that. See how he keeps looking south? He’s expecting backup, but they’re not coming when he thought they would.” I paused, turning the thought over in my mind. “He’s not hunting us. He’s stalling.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”

“I think we should let him see us.”

“That’s not a plan. That’s a surrender.”

“He’s desperate, Daniel. Desperate people listen—and they talk. If he sees us, he’ll tell us what he’s really doing here. And I don’t think it’s to kidnap us.”

I didn’t wait for him to stop me. I stepped out from behind the boulder, hands visible, moving slowly, deliberately.

“JD!”

He spun around, his face cycling through anger, confusion, and something that looked almost like relief. “Where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Daniel emerged behind me, his posture controlled but his eyes sharp. “We exposed your counterfeiting operation. Seems straightforward enough.”

JD laughed—a bitter, hollow sound. “You think this is about fake coins?” He gestured toward the helicopter. “Valdoria’s pulling out. Complete withdrawal. Every investment, every partnership, every job they created—gone by midnight.”

I felt the pieces shift in my mind. “They’re using the scandal as cover for something bigger.”

“Economic scorched earth,” JD confirmed. “They’re liquidating everything and blaming it on the ‘instability’ your little expose created. One hundred and twenty thousand jobs directly and who knows how many more indirect jobs, gone. Your little independence movement dies with them.”

Daniel’s face went pale. “That’s impossible. The contracts—”

“Have withdrawal clauses for ‘political instability.'” JD’s voice dropped. “Congratulations. You just handed them the perfect excuse.”

His radio crackled. He answered tersely, then looked back at us. “I’ve got twenty four hours to bring you in, or they activate the withdrawal protocol. That’s not a threat—that’s a deadline.”

I looked at the helicopter. The pilot sat with his helmet off, arms crossed, looking less like a soldier and more like a man who regretted his morning coffee.

“Take a closer look at your pilot,” I said quietly to Daniel. “He’s not Valdorian.”

Daniel followed my gaze. “Contractor?”

“Probably. And he doesn’t look like he signed up for a manhunt.”

I started walking toward the helicopter. Daniel’s hand shot out to stop me, but I shook my head. “The story already broke. The echo is out there. But if I can reach the capital before midnight—if I can talk to someone who can freeze those withdrawal clauses—I might be able to save more than just the story.”

“This is a risk, Al.”

“I know. But you taught me that sometimes the right move isn’t the safe move.”

The pilot watched me approach. He didn’t reach for a weapon.

“You’re not Valdorian,” I said, answering the question I hadn’t asked.

“Figured that out, did you?”

The pilot looked away, disinterested in our conversation. I was about to ask him how much JD was paying him for this excursion, but I stopped myself, suspecting that this pilot was not taking counter-offers. The Valdorians who hired him could ruin him and the company he worked for as easily as JD was threatening to ruin the Louisan economy by pulling out all its investments. They were known to flip over the chess board if they thought there wasn’t a winning strategy. The Valdorians were terrible chess-players from this perspective: a game with rigid and well-defined rules was not a game they were interested in playing, so if they were losing a queen to a pawn, you were sure to expect the game to end before it could be played out to the end.

I nodded at the pilot and headed back to the heated conversation between JD and Daniel, which was entering a new phase of hysterics on the Valdorian representative’s part.

“How can I get it through your donkey head that you have no choice but to accept the offer given to you?” the florid man was almost screaming at the impassive but clearly rattled Daniel. He was clapping his hands like a chimpanzee, accentuating every word.

Daniel answered calmly, “And how do you expect for me to hold onto my ‘donkey head’ as you put it, if the people of Louise find out their new treasury is filled with what is essentially paste jewelry?”

“NOT. MY. PROBLEM!!!” Ruff shouted so loudly and shaking so violently that his cowboy fell off and fell into a muddy puddle. “NOW LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!”

I took the opportunity to interject while JD was bending over to retrieve his muddy hat, his bald head exposed as the flap of cottony hair pulled over it flapped in the gentle breeze. “Excuse me, but I have a proposition.”

JD stood up, unsuccessfully trying to brush off the mud on his hat and put it on his head before re-arranging his hair, so that the long flap of hair was pushed down over his forehead and almost into his eyes. “WHAT?!”

Daniel gave me a sharp look of annoyance, already displeased that I had revealed our hiding place and that we were now forced to confront the highly agitated Valdorian.

“I need to get back to the cabin to retrieve some prescription medication I forgot to pack,” I said, frantically trying to figure out how this was going to work, to convince him to get the pilot to return with me back to the cabin.

“I really don’t care,” was the immediate response from JD, who was starting to head back to the helicopter.

“I think you do, sir. I know what the Valdorians have done to you to keep you in line,” I said looking at his protruding belly.

JD’s beet-red face drained of all blood and turned white, almost gasping as he asked, “What do you know about that?”

“I know that you have been infected with the selectively bred microscopic organism that under the right conditions will emerge from it’s spores and perforate your intestines,” I said quietly, ignoring Daniel’s shocked expression.

“You have a cure?” the suddenly subdued JD asked in a hushed tone.

I looked at Daniel, who seemed completely unconvinced by what I was about to say. I answered with as much confidence as I could muster, “I have the regimen of drugs back at the cabin needed to flush out the spores, and…” giving Daniel a moment to let it sink in, “Daniel will hand over the recordings of your meeting yesterday.”

Daniel, let out a heavy sigh and rolled his eyes, but JD ignored him and pressed me further, “If what you say is true, then go ahead and I’ll have the pilot take you back to the cabin. I’ll stay here with my buddy Daniel, here. You! Pilot! Bring this guy back to the cabin! Give him ten minutes to get what he needs and then come back whether he’s sitting in the passenger seat or not!”

Daniel looked at me and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Al. The film and wax cyclinder are where I developed them.”

I sloshed through the freezing glacier lake water and boarded the single passenger seat next to the pilot in the helicopter and just saluted Daniel, hoping that I was going to be able to find something in the cabin bathroom’s medicine cabinet that could be taken for anti-parasite pills and recover the film and wax cylinder recordings, if they were Daniel had left them. I also hoped I had enough time in those ten minutes to make a quick phone call to Murphy or Sarah Chen to verify the story broke of the debased Valdorian coins and the plot to cheat Louise out of its independence. I gambled and won on figuring out how the Valdorians were keeping JD Ruff on a leash to do their bidding, but the rest was up to me to fulfill the promises I had made. I was also hoping that Daniel could make the most of his time alone with JD, now that he was clued into the parasitic infection. He was going to have to play along with me from this point forward.

*** 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. ***