Chapter 12: Searching for Jack’s Secrets

I still had another puzzle that Uncle Jack (how I still thought of him) to solve. He implied that there was a trove of information located in his house that I should find and use if I had to.

All around the house were objects that could have been the key to finding his hideaway for the information. I looked diligently for it. I started in the office and then the bedroom, assuming that he would want it to be in one of those places where it would be close to him, but where he could open and close it in private.

I finally found it in the library.

There was a set of shelves that rather than holding books, had glass doors and precious minerals, everything from quartz laced with gold to more exotic rarities, on stands on the shelves. There was one odd object that seemed out of place — a glass globe, engraved with a map of the world with small gems inset in the locations of major Trust operations.

I thought that was curious, so I reached in to pick it up to look at it more closely. When I tried to lift it, it tilted forward, but instead of it coming out, I heard a click and the entire section shelf popped out a couple of inches. From there I could swing the entire section out, revealing a hidden room. And there at the end of the room was a safe built into the wall.

Great! Now I had to figure out how to get into the safe, and I didn’t have the combination.

I sat there thinking for some time, until, frustrated, I gave up and went into the office (my office now, ) and opened my computer to check my emails.

And there it was. No, not the combination, but when I opened the room, I had triggered an email from somewhere that Jack had set up, that would let me figure out the combination.

It was a strange group of numbers intended to be obscure to anyone but me.

The number of the class taught by Dr. Colebrenner (Geo 202), my Mother’s favorite holiday (Valentines day, 14), Jack’s last four digits of his Social (1088), and how many dogs I’d had growing up (1, a beagle named ‘Pepsi’). Ergo: 20, 21,41,08,81. I went back and opened the hidden room, opened the entry, and entered the 10 digit code into the pad, and voila! The door to the safe opened.

Inside there was a note from Jack. Again I followed his suggestions. The first thing I did was to reprogram the combo on the lock to a 10-digit code of my own, just in case that someone had 1.) Intercepted the email, and 2.) had the inside information (or could get it) to develop the code that Jack had set.

The safe was a large one — almost a room by itself — and was filled with interesting and valuable things. But what Jack had that he felt was the most valuable was a file cabinet full of information on people; more specifically, their secrets and weaknesses.

For example, Uncle Jack (would I ever be able to get over thinking of him that way?) had the evidence and names that would prove that Herr Schmidt’s bank had intentionally kept monies from Jewish families that had been deposited there prior to the Holocaust! When the surviving members had tried to recover the deposited funds, the bank had resisted and both the Swiss and Lichtenstein courts had upheld their right to do so, since the survivors didn’t have all of the account numbers and records that had been destroyed in the war.

Indeed, the current Herr Schmidt was not involved at the time when the claims were made, but if Uncle Jack had presented the information that he had uncovered, Schmidt’s bank would have had to turn over a huge portion of their assets. Understand that Uncle Jack had not discovered some of the information until long after the courts had been hearing the lawsuits, and by the time he had absolute proof in hand, even the survivors had died, or disappeared.

The good lawyer, Herr Weber’s father, was a former Nazi official, high enough up to have been imprisoned for life, or even executed. And Herr Weber had smuggled him into Lichtenstein and hidden him in a remote chalet in the mountains until he died. Again, I think Uncle Jack understood the obligation of a son to protect his father, but it was immoral and illegal for him to do it.