November 1, 2011

From “Bilbao Toms” by Enrique G. Ramirez

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Toms had been a trade-union organizer in Luton when the war broke out, and he chartered the first ship to Spain he could find once news reached him: a tramp steamer from Southampton to Bilbao. On arrival, he found that the advancing Nationalists had cut Bilbao and the Basque Country off from the rest of the Spanish Republic. Denied the ability to join up with the International Brigades, Toms fought and organized as best he could.

As a trained surveyor and architect, Toms was given a position building the Iron Ring–fortifications intended to protect Bilbao from Nationalist assault until Republican troops could break through and link up with the isolated Basque Country. He did this with gusto, developing the laborers under his leadership into an effective and politically active unit known as “los topos de Tomás”–Toms’ Moles.

The local Republican commanders eventually became unsure of Iron Ring architect Alejandro Goicoechea’s loyalty. They therefore contacted Toms and had his men construct a bunker separate from the rest of the fortifications, into which the precious metal holdings of the local Bank of Spain and other valuables were placed to protect them from bombardment.

When, as feared, Goicoechea defected to the Nationalists with the complete blueprints of the fortifications, Toms and his men sealed their vault with explosives. None of them survived the retreat from Bilbao or disastrous Battle of Santander.

The bunker? It remains sealed until today, its exact location a mystery taken to Toms’ grave.

Or is it?

 

October 4, 2011

From “Tesuipp’s Delirium” by Rodney Archer Cullenston

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“The first was Mr. Tesuipp, in 1880. He emerged from the desert near Alice Springs, laden with gold dust and claimed that he’d found a rich vein. He was delirious, though, and the notes and maps found on his body were rambling and indecipherable. The authorities were able to confirm that he’d headed north from Melbourne intent on mining alluvial gold in the Arltunga, but little else.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that bloody story before.”

“And what about Roy Blakeslee, who was prospecting the same general area two decades later and wandered into a telegraph station, delirious and dying, with nearly twenty kilos of gold-laced quartz on his body? Or Sarah Chalmsford-Ennis, who disappeared on a hiking trip in ’87 and somehow came out of the desert with a hunk of lapis lazuli? They couldn’t get an intelligible word out of her before she slipped into a coma and they pulled the plug. There are half a dozen more stories we could link to it.”

“You’re saying they all found the same motherlode?”

“I’m saying it’s possible.”

“And I’m saying it killed them to a one. Maybe that ought to be taken as a sign.”

 

June 25, 2010

From “Cries of Ice in the Desert” by Julius C. Santos

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Local lore had it that the man buried under the blank tombstone in the oldest section of the city cemetery had wandered into the town square over a hundred years ago, clutching a nugget of gold in one hand. His skin cold to the touch, the man had muttered “ice, ice,” before succumbing to death by frostbite.

The fact that New Mexico only saw large amounts of ice on rare occasions, and that the man had supposedly died in July, precluded any serious acceptance of the story. Yet still it circulated among the bored and ne’er-do-well during the height of summer, with many wondering what riches might be found in deciphering the crazed wanderer’s calling of ice.

One man in particular had hit the town library and historical society in search of proof–Carlos’ father, during a stretch of unemployment in the late 1960’s. There had been plentiful newspaper accounts, many embellished, and a careful survey of the cemetery confirmed that someone or something was indeed buried there. But eyewitness testimony had been hard to come by, and the only clue as to the disposition of the gold supposedly clutched in the dying man’s hand come in the form of a sudden building spree around 1881.

But, for Carlos, that was more than enough.