The PowWow

I sent Curtis the background material before we left the office — scanned documents, the Riel Foundation's public filings, the Harwick grant records Voss had provided, and everything from Jeremiah's folder that had a number attached to it. The email took four minutes to compose and another two to attach the related documents because of the substantial size. Even then, I had to break everything up into separate emails because of the sending size restriction. Curtis was going to experience the flood of Noah, but with digital paper, rather than water.

Curtis replied in forty seconds: Come over.

I drove, and Jacob rode quietly next to me. We were both lost in our own thoughts, Jacob’s thinking probably also quiet prayers.

Curtis had told us to just come in, but Jacob shook his head negatively when we arrived. We knocked. His voice came through the door: "It's open."

He was already deep in it when we walked in. Three monitors displaying all sorts of graphs, documents and threads, the central display split between two financial databases and something that looked like a corporate registry interface I didn't recognize. The apartment was exactly as it always was — immaculate, possibly cleaned roughly every twenty minutes or so.

Curtis didn't look up. "Sit somewhere that isn't near the equipment."

Jacob sat. I didn't.

Curtis had the easy material before we had arrived. Licensing, registration, transaction history going back through the publicly accessible records — the kind of financial archeology that required skill and speed, both of which Curtis had in quantities that made me glad he was on our side. He walked through it with the efficiency of a man who understood that the summary was what we needed and the methodology was his business.

"The only thing easy," he said, "was picking up S. Riel Holdings." He pointed at the left monitor. "Except this time it's listed as a subsidiary. Parent entity: the Riel Foundation."

I leaned over his shoulder. "Can you trace the Foundation back? Specific sources. Origin of capital."

Curtis looked at me. The look of a man being asked to do the thing he was already planning to do and would prefer to do without commentary. "Sit down, Levi."

I sat next to him. I watched him type for a while and considered asking him for a running commentary for what he was doing, but that seemed like over stepping. I sat a bit, then stood again. Somewhere along the way I realized I was pacing.

Curtis spun around in his chair and pointed at the floor. "The carpet."

"I'm not doing anything to your carpet."

"Your pacing does something to the pile. I've documented it."

Jacob's hand came down on my shoulder — gentle, certain, the weight of a landmark. I stopped.

"Be joyful in hope," Jacob said, "patient in affliction, faithful in prayer." He looked at me with the calm of a man who had all the time the Lord had given him and intended to use it accordingly. "Curtis will find what he finds. By the Lord's grace."

Curtis glanced at Jacob. Then back at his screen. Something in his posture settled slightly — the almost-imperceptible adjustment of a man who had been addressed by a principle he respected and was filing it somewhere useful.

I sat down and stayed there.

An hour and twenty minutes later, Curtis leaned back.

I had spent the time reviewing Jeremiah's notes, which were thorough and unhelpful in that the information was the same and the pieces didn’t fit. Jacob had been still the whole time. Completely, constitutionally still, taking a large chunk of space out of the apartment as unobtrusively as a man his size could.

"Alright," Curtis said.

We came to him.

He walked us through it with the methodical clarity of a man who had organized his findings before presenting them, which was Curtis's way and one of the reasons I kept coming back.

The Riel Foundation had funded three things connected to the Voss tablets: the Harwick expedition itself, the London academic journal that had published the translation and given it its first credentialed platform, and the symposium at which Voss's interpretation had received its first major institutional hearing. All three funded through S. Riel Holdings. All three timed with the precision of a campaign rather than the randomness of grant funding.

"That's the recent layer," Curtis said. He moved to the right monitor. "Going back further is where it gets—" he paused, selecting the word carefully "—structurally unusual."

The chain extended. Holdings giving way to parent entities, parent entities to registrations in jurisdictions I didn't recognize, those registrations to older filings in archives that Curtis had accessed through methods I elected not to ask about. Each layer older. Each layer quieter.

He stopped at a name on the screen.

Suri-El Asset Management.

"Registered somewhere," Curtis said, "that stopped issuing corporate registrations in 1947." He let that sit. "This is the company that predates the company that predates the company." He pulled up another window. "That allocated funds toward revisionary Biblical scholarship in the 1800s."

The room was quiet except for the hum of the equipment.

Curtis turned his chair toward me. Slowly. With the deliberate rotation of a man composing himself before speaking.

"I want to be clear," he said, "that I am a person of above-average intelligence who has maintained professional composure across numerous engagements with your cases, four being exceptionally interesting." He looked at the screen. Then back at me. "I am currently staring at a corporate registration trail established before the Second World War that allocated funds for an archaeological dig in the 2020s." A pause. "Levi. What is this?"

I looked at the screen. At the name. At the chain running backward through decades and jurisdictions and layers of financial architecture toward something that had apparently been doing this for a very long time.

"I think it's the same thing it's always been," I said. "I think this is something that's been behind most of what we've worked on."

Curtis looked at me for a long moment. Then at Jacob. Jacob said nothing, which in this context was its own complete sentence.

Curtis turned back to his screen. He did not ask a follow-up question. Curtis knew when the follow-up question was not going to produce a comfortable answer, and he had the self-preservation instinct to leave it there.

We were at the door when he spoke again.

"Is Rachel on this one?"

"She's running the financial thread from the department's side," I said. "You can probably expect a consulting call."

The grin arrived — full, genuine, the grin of a man who had just received good news about his professional calendar. "Excellent," he said.

I pulled the door shut behind us.

Outside, the night air was cool and the street was quiet and the name Suri-El Asset Management was sitting in my head with the patient weight of something that had been there for a very long time and had no particular urgency about being noticed.

It had been waiting.

It would have to wait a little longer.