A Statue for Jacob E-Book

Peter Murphy

• Herausgeber: Oldcastle Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty' - Alexander Hamilton Kiah Harmon, a young Virginia lawyer, is just emerging from the most traumatic time of her life when actress Sam van Eyck walks into her office, unannounced, with the case of a lifetime. She asks Kiah to recover a 200-year-old debt from the US Government - a debt that goes right back to the time of Alexander Hamilton. The selfless generosity of Sam's ancestor, Jacob van Eyck, in making a massive loan of gold and supplies at Valley Forge, during the freezing winter of 1777-1778, may well have saved George Washington's army, and the War of Independence, from disaster. But it reduced Jacob to ruin. Despite the government's promises, the debt was never repaid, and this hero of the American Revolution died in poverty, unknown and unrecognised. Two hundred years later, Sam and Kiah embark on a quest to change that. But first, they will have to find the evidence, and overcome a stubborn Government determined to frustrate their every move. Will Sam and Kiah succeed in finally getting Jacob the statue he deserves?

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR PETER MURPHY

‘Racy legal thrillers lift the lid on sex and racial prejudice at the bar’ – Guardian

‘Murphy paints a trenchant picture of establishment cover-up, and cannily subverts the clichés of the legal genre in his all-too-topical narrative’ – Financial Times

‘Peter Murphy’s novel is an excellent read from start to finish and highly recommended’ – Historical Novel Review

‘An intelligent amalgam of spy story and legal drama’ –Times

‘A gripping, enjoyable and informative read’ – Promoting Crime Fiction

‘The ability of an author to create living characters is always dependent on his knowledge of what they would do and say in any given circumstances – a talent that Peter Murphy possesses in abundance’ – Crime Review UK

‘Murphy’s clever legal thriller revels in the chicanery of the English law courts of the period’ – Independent

‘The forensic process is examined in a light touch, good-humoured style, which will evoke a constant stream of smiles, and chuckles from nonlawyers and lawyers alike’ – Lord Judge, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

‘A gripping page-turner. A compelling and disturbing tale of English law courts, lawyers, and their clients, told with the authenticity that only an insider like Murphy can deliver. The best read I’ve come across in a long time’ – David Ambrose

‘If anyone’s looking for the next big courtroom drama… look no further. Murphy is your man’ – ICLR

In honour of Thelma Weasenforth Lunaas and her attorney, Jo Beth Kloecker of the Texas Bar, who on behalf of the de Haven family took on the might of the United States Department of Justice in an attempt to secure the long-overdue recognition of Jacob de Haven.

This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton

‘Eso no,’ respondió el ventero, ‘que no seré yo tan loco que me haga caballero andante: que bien veo que ahora no se usa lo que se usaba en aquel tiempo, cuando se dice que andaban por el mundo estos famosos caballeros.’

‘Certainly not,’ the innkeeper replied. ‘I myself shall never be mad enough to become a knight-errant: because I well understand that nowadays it’s not the thing to do; it’s not as it was in those days, when, so people say, those famous knights went about throughout the world.’

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quijote

Primera Parte, Capítulo XXXII, Part One, Chapter XXXII

1

Kiah Harmon

‘Kiah,’ Arya asked me once, ‘didn’t your mother ever tell you what your name means in our language?’

I’d been seeing Arya regularly since the Week from Hell. I guess you could call our meetings counselling sessions, though Arya would never have called what she did counselling, and I wouldn’t have cared what you called it, as long as I could sit back in that enormous soft leather armchair in her living room, inhale the ever-present aroma of her Neroli incense, and let her soft, hypnotic voice wash over me until the pain began to recede a little.

I have memories of that voice from as far back as I have memories of anything in my life, because Arya was my parents’ closest friend and we were in and out of each other’s houses all the time from my earliest years, and I had the sense, even as a small child, that my parents thought of Arya as a source of wisdom and hung on her every word. I remember wondering, when I became old enough to formulate such questions, what Arya actually did, whether she ever claimed a specific profession or vocation. She was older than my parents, and lived alone, having been widowed much earlier in her life. But when I asked my parents about it, they never answered directly, almost as if they were afraid that defining her, putting her in a box, giving her a label such as mystic, healer, counsellor, soothsayer, or astrologer, might somehow diminish her. I accepted this, and never felt the need to ask her myself. If she ever made use of any chart or instrument of divination, it was done out of my sight. For me, Arya was the voice, and it was Arya I needed after the Week.

I’d begun to drop in to see her after school and at weekends, without my parents, from the age of eleven or twelve. I don’t remember whether she suggested it, or whether it was my idea, or whether it just happened; but it continued as and when we both had the time, throughout my schooldays, and later when I did my undergraduate degree at Georgetown University, and then went on to the law school. Neither can I remember in detail everything we talked about together. But I do remember that she showed endless patience in listening without interruption to whatever I wanted to say; I remember that never once did she judge me; and I remember that she always seemed to have some word, some idea, for me that brought order to some area of my life that had become chaotic and was about to spiral out of control. I can’t say exactly, in fact I’m not sure I can even estimate how much influence she has had on my life, but she has been a constant wise presence, and I don’t think there is any part of the woman I am that doesn’t owe something to her.

Arya was the first person I told about my ambition to become a lawyer. My family, immigrants to the United States from India, had been doctors as far back as anyone could remember, until I defied the tradition. They had settled in Arlington, Virginia, and adopted the American surname ‘Harmon’ in place of their Indian surname of ‘Hariya’, believing that this would ease their integration into American society. That was two generations before me, and by the time I made my appearance as my parents’ only child, there was nothing, except our obvious Indian physical attributes and a few small images of the Hindu deities in our house, to mark us out as in any way different from any other American family. My decidedly non-religious, non-traditional lifestyle didn’t bother my parents. My departure from the doctor tradition, on the other hand, bothered them a lot. My undergraduate grades would have been good enough to get me into several leading medical schools. But Arya’s comforting and encouraging words, both to me and to my parents, poured oil on the troubled waters. She also supported me after I had graduated from law school and been admitted to the Virginia Bar, when I opted for the freedom of my own office in Arlington, rather than a life of indentured servitude with one of the large national law firms that offered to take me on as an associate.

I’d been in practice for about five years when the Week from Hell hit me. I’d built up a respectable client list in the DC and Virginia Indian communities, and I was just beginning to attract some significant commercial litigation from the wider community. I was thinking about expansion. Then the Week struck.

On the Tuesday, my parents died together in their car on the Custis Memorial Parkway, when the driver of the speeding truck ahead of them misjudged a bend at the junction with Lee Highway at East Falls Church. The truck turned over and burst into flames, giving my father no time to react. On the Thursday, Jordan, my live-in boyfriend of three years, told me that he was leaving me to move in with his secretary, who, in contrast to me, was not the kind of selfish bitch who insisted on putting her career ambitions ahead of settling down to start a family with him. He had chosen that day to break this news to me, he explained, because with my parents dying it was going to be a time of change for me in any case, and so there was no point in delaying matters. Might as well get it all over with at once.

I closed the office for three months while, with Arya’s help, I gradually crawled, inch by inch, out of the seemingly endless dark tunnel I had come to inhabit in my mind; until I clawed and scratched and dug my way through deep layers of primeval mud back to the surface; until I began to see daylight and the trees and the moon again; until I remembered how to breathe freely. It was at some point during this darkest period of my life that she asked me whether my mother had told me what my name meant in our language. She had, I’m sure, but it had become buried in the deepest recesses of my memory.

‘It means “new beginning”,’ Arya reminded me. ‘It’s your time for a new beginning now.’

I remember shaking my head. When you live in the kind of tunnel I lived in then, you can’t accept that there is any good news, much less a new beginning. Such a thing doesn’t exist, and even if it did, there is no oxygen to sustain it. To believe it then was impossible. So I filed it away for possible future reference. But I knew that Arya attached no importance to whether you believed something she said right away. She never said anything unless she knew it to be true, and if it was true, it would manifest itself at the right time, and then you would know it was true, and she would never say ‘I told you so.’

2

‘Do you handle debt collection cases?’ she asked.

She hadn’t made an appointment. She just walked off the street into my office. If she had come before the Week, when the office had a real bustle about it, she would have had to come back when I had time to see her. But this was about eight months after I reopened, and although I had some work, the bustle was missing. When I closed the office, I’d had to hand over my cases to other lawyers, and many clients had not returned.

She was two or three inches taller than me, a little over six feet, her hair and eyes dark brown. She was smartly, professionally dressed in a light grey suit with a white neck scarf, and grey heels, not too high, her make-up classy and restrained. She was pulling a large, flexible brown leather briefcase on wheels. Today, I would recognise her on sight as a van Eyck. It’s the nose. There’s no mistaking it. The van Eyck nose is high at the top, with a pronounced bony drop to the lower part, which descends slightly off-centre, to the right, as an observer sees it. I have seen that nose countless times since, on the faces of family members, and in their portraits, and in the photographs in their homes and on the faded pages of old newspapers. I would recognise it anywhere. But at the time, it barely registered. I was too busy taking in her clothes, and wishing guiltily that I had paid more attention to mine.

Before the Week I would have been dressed very much as she was, dressed as a lawyer in a dark suit and starched white shirt. Every law professor and mentor I ever had insisted that success as a woman practicing law depended on it – and by the way, did I understand that the harshest critics of my sartorial standards would be, not men, but other women? But since the reopening, none of that seemed to matter to me. I did apply some basic make-up, and my clothes were well cared for, but they were clothes I felt comfortable in – coloured blouses and beige slacks, and there was still enough of India in me to prefer bare feet indoors, as we always had at home and at Arya’s house. The shoes I’d abandoned near the door of my office were casual with almost no heel, not the court shoes I hated but had once felt obliged to wear. As I stood to walk around my desk to greet her, I realised that they were out of reach. If she noticed, she didn’t seem to mind. She smiled.

‘I am Samantha van Eyck, the actress,’ she said. ‘Please call me Sam. Everyone does.’

We shook hands.

‘I’m Kiah Harmon.’

‘Kiah. That’s a pretty name.’

‘Thank you. It’s Indian.’

I waved her into a chair. She sat down and wheeled the briefcase into place beside her chair.

‘So, you’re an actress?’ Arlene had shown Sam in without giving me any clue about what she wanted. Apparently, Arlene had decided not to give me the option of turning Sam away without even knowing why she needed help, or putting her off to another day, which had become my post-Week default setting when faced with a new client.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sure I should recognise your name, but I haven’t been out much lately. I can’t remember when I last went to the theatre.’

It had been about eighteen months before, with Jordan.

She laughed. ‘There’s no reason at all why you should know my name. I’m a repertory actress. I’ve worked in the DC area, and out as far as Georgia and North Carolina, for the last five years since I graduated college, and that’s about it so far. Multiple nominee for best actress in a role nobody notices very much. A steady diet of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, and one movie.’

‘Oh? Is it one I would have seen?’

‘I hope not.’

We laughed together.

‘In case you were wondering,’ she said, ‘I got your name from my cousin, Shelley Kinch. You handled a case for her, about two years ago, and she recommended you very highly.’

That was another effect the Week had. I had almost no memory for cases I had done before. Even my clients’ names seemed unfamiliar. Mercifully, this one rang a distant bell.

‘She worked for a private school in Bethesda teaching modern languages,’ Sam added.

It came back to me. Thank god (even though I don’t believe in him, or her, or them).

‘Sure, I remember. They discriminated against her; they wanted to pay her far less than the men doing the same job. They settled out of court.’

‘That’s it. The money you got her helped her start her own school. She’s doing great now, and she says you were so caring; you supported her emotionally as well as being her lawyer. You made a real difference for her.’

Did I? I was glad to hear that. Every boost to my confidence, however small, was welcome then, but the reference to emotional support surprised me. Had I been capable of that once? I wasn’t sure it was still in my repertoire now.

‘So, Sam, what can I do for you?’

Which was when she asked: ‘Do you handle debt collection cases?’

I said I did.

3

‘Assuming, obviously, that the amount involved is large enough to be worth your while, and mine,’ I added immediately.

As a young lawyer with your own office, you soon discover that there are any number of aggrieved people out there whose landlords have screwed them out of $300, by refusing to return part of their deposit or failing to pay for some repair to the common part of the building, and who think that retaining a lawyer and resorting to litigation would be an effective method of seeking redress. You get used to giving them more practical suggestions.

‘There won’t be any problem about that,’ Sam assured me.

‘OK. How much are we talking about?’

She reached down into the briefcase and took out a yellow pad, which, I could see, had some scribbled calculations on the top page. She took a moment or two to stare at it.

‘Before I go into that,’ she said, ‘in fairness I think I should warn you that it’s not your average collection case. It’s going to take a lot of time, and a lot of work. And as far as your fees are concerned…’

‘I assume it will be a contingency fee,’ I said. ‘That means I take a percentage if and when we recover the debt. If we don’t recover, you don’t owe me anything. I have a standard form of agreement. All lawyers do. I’ll take you through it and explain how it works before I ask you to sign up. That’s fine with me, as long as I know how much we’re looking at.’

She nodded, and looked down at the yellow pad again.

‘It’s difficult to say precisely, and even if I could, the information would be out of date five minutes from now, not to mention hopelessly out of date some time in the future when we actually recover the debt. So let me put it like this: taking an apparently random period of 250 years since the debt accrued – which isn’t really random, as I will explain – the debt would be a little more than 672 billion dollars.’

She looked up from the yellow pad.

‘When I say “a little more than”,’ she added, ‘I mean 672 billion plus several hundred thousand.’

Another thing you soon discover as a young lawyer with your own office is that there are a significant number of crazy people out there who have seriously deranged ideas about how others have wronged them; about the vast sums of money they think they are entitled to by way of damages; and about the availability of punitive measures – such as incarceration or serious violence – they should be allowed to visit on the perpetrators. But you can usually see them coming a mile away, and they almost never get as far as my office. Arlene gets rid of them without any help from me. When she arrived, Sam didn’t strike me as playing in that league at all, and she must have made the same impression on Arlene. I found myself surprised, and a little disturbed, that she had got past both of us without raising any red flags. But seemingly, we had missed a live one, and I now had to figure out what to do about it. I settled on calling Arlene and asking her to have building security on standby, just in case. We had a code for such situations: I would ask her for the file in the Dangerfield case. But before I could make the call, Sam laughed again.

‘Yes, I do know that’s a lot of money,’ she said. ‘May I explain?’

I looked at her again. She didn’t look crazy, and she wasn’t acting crazy. I couldn’t see an axe or a .357 Magnum sticking out of her briefcase. Apart from her saying that she wanted to recover a debt of a little more than $672 billion, there was no overt sign of craziness at all. Perhaps I could let it run a bit longer. I took my hand off the receiver, but kept it close.

‘I think that would be a good idea, Sam,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me who you want to sue?’

‘The United States government,’ she replied.

‘The government?’ I asked. ‘You want to sue the government for 672 billion dollars?’

‘Yes. Is that a problem? You are allowed to sue the government, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, but –’

‘We’re not out to collect every last dime – even if that would be possible, which I’m sure it’s not. It’s not just about the money. We can settle for less.’

4

She didn’t sound crazy. I decided provisionally to treat her as a serious client who had come for help with a case one might reasonably pursue. Whether that would be the final verdict was another matter, but I would give her the benefit of the doubt for now. I smiled.

‘Well, sure. Perhaps they would offer us a small state to go away. How about Rhode Island?’

She laughed. ‘Sure, why not?’

‘All right, Sam. But let’s get serious, shall we? Tell me why the government owes you 672 billion dollars.’

She nodded. ‘Not me, Kiah, my family.’

‘OK. Your family.’

‘How’s your history?’ she asked. ‘Do you remember the story of the War of Independence?’

‘I took some history classes in college,’ I replied. ‘I guess I remember the basic outline, but –’

‘Does the name Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, ring a bell?’

‘Sure. Wasn’t that where George Washington took the army during the winter, that cold winter when they almost froze to death?’

‘You got it. It was the winter of 1777–1778. They’d just got their asses kicked by the Brits in two battles. They were almost out of food, clothing, weapons – all the basic supplies. They didn’t have much money, and very few people thought they had much chance of winning, so they didn’t exactly have a great credit rating. The Brits had the real money. They could buy whatever supplies they needed. And if that wasn’t enough, as you say, it was a very cold winter. Washington’s army was freezing to death, in addition to starving to death. But somehow, by the spring they had turned things around. When they left Valley Forge they were fully supplied. They started winning, and before long they had the Brits on the run.’

I remembered that much. ‘OK.’

‘Money and supplies had started to arrive, just in time, round about February. I’m sure it came from lots of different places. They were desperate, and they were taking help from anyone who would give it. The French kept promising to help, and they did eventually, but by that time the army was already back on its feet. The question is: who bailed them out during the winter? According to our family tradition, an ancestor of mine called Jacob van Eyck was one of their biggest benefactors. They say he contributed gold and supplies to the tune of 450,000 dollars.’

I raised my eyebrows. Suddenly I was catching just a faint glimmer of where this story was going.

‘450,000 in today’s money?’

‘No, 450,000 dollars value at the time, in 1778.’

I sat back in my chair.

‘But Sam, that was a fortune. If that’s true, Jacob must have been –’

‘As rich as Croesus, yes. He was. He was a merchant and a landowner, and if not the richest, he was one of the richest men in Pennsylvania. As a matter of fact, he owned the land around Valley Forge, on the west bank of the Schuylkill, right next to Washington’s encampment.’

‘But how did he make that kind of money?’

She smiled. ‘Good question. There are lots of family stories about that. The polite version is that he made his money by importing wine and other goodies from Europe. But that’s what they all said at the time, wasn’t it, if they didn’t want to talk about… well, you know…?’

‘You’re talking about the slave trade?’

‘I have no evidence of anything like that. But it wouldn’t surprise me. It was the easiest way to make that kind of serious money then, wasn’t it? And Jacob had definitely made some serious money.’

‘But he must have been something of an idealist as well,’ I pointed out, ‘to give so much.’

She smiled again. ‘Yes. I’m sure he was. But independence wasn’t just an ideal to men like Jacob. It had its commercial side. Don’t forget the Boston Tea Party, Kiah. For all the talk of liberty, independence also had a lot to do with not paying taxes to the King.’

‘True,’ I agreed.

‘There’s another thing, too. Jacob and George Washington were close friends and they were both high-ranking Freemasons. I’m not sure how much that had to do with it. It wasn’t a simple picture. Maybe none of that mattered very much. Jacob may have just figured that if Washington lost to the Brits he was screwed as well, so he might as well take his chances with Washington.’

She shrugged.

‘Anyway, that’s the family tradition. But his contribution wasn’t a gift, Kiah. It was a loan. The Continental Congress had authorised loans to be raised for the war effort, so anyone making a loan expected to be repaid after the war.’

‘And you’re assuming that Jacob went through the proper channels?’

‘I can’t see him putting up so much money without intending to get back as much of it as he could. Can you? He was a businessman above all, and he must have known that lending so much could wipe him out – as indeed it did.’

I thought for a moment or two. ‘I’ve never heard about these loans before. How did they work? How did you get your money back?’

‘The Congress set up loan offices, which issued certificates to anyone who made a loan. The loans were repayable after the war with interest at six per cent compound per year.’

‘Six per cent compound? But that’s…’

‘That was the deal. After the war, you would present your loan certificate to the loan office, and they would pay you in cash.’

I shook my head. Suddenly, $672 billion was beginning to make a bit more sense. Compound interest at six per cent over 250 years wasn’t the kind of thing you could even estimate in your head, let alone calculate. An internet compound interest calculator would work it out in a second or two, and I must admit I felt my fingers twitching to reach for my keyboard. But Sam had been there before me, and I kept my curiosity in check. Even if she wasn’t exactly right, it would obviously be a lot of money – a whole lot of money.

‘And let me guess. The family tradition is that Jacob was never repaid?’

‘Not one cent, principal or interest. The government probably didn’t have the money – literally: they didn’t have enough gold to repay that kind of debt. The country was pretty much bankrupt after the war; the currency was next to worthless, and they couldn’t just go out and borrow. They paid people who had loaned smaller amounts, but with the amount Jacob was owed, it would probably have been impossible. Unfortunately for Jacob, it ruined him. He died in poverty.’

‘I take it you don’t have Jacob’s loan certificate tucked away in your briefcase?’ I asked. ‘If you did, I’m guessing somebody would have done something about this before now.’

She hesitated.

‘No one seems to know where the loan certificate is. I guess we will have to find it.’

‘Assuming there ever was one,’ I said, ‘and assuming it is still in existence.’

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t think we’re looking for just one certificate. There must have been any number of deliveries to the army over a period of time, to the quartermaster or whoever, either of money or supplies of different kinds, mustn’t there? It stands to reason. And if so, there would have been invoices for each delivery. There wouldn’t have been one single certificate for a grand total. There would have been a whole file of loan certificates. Don’t you think?’

‘What I think,’ I replied, ‘is that I’m swimming in the dark. I don’t know anything like enough about loan certificates, or about Jacob, or about what happened at Valley Forge. I would need to know a lot more than I do before I can give you any real advice about this.’

‘But you will take the case, Kiah, won’t you?’

It was said almost pleadingly. That was another thing you soon learned as a young lawyer with your own office. Clients don’t always give as much thought as they should to why they want a particular lawyer, and whether the lawyer they want is the best person to handle a case. Lawyers aren’t much help in that situation. No lawyer wants to turn away work. But sometimes the red flags are just too obvious to ignore, and there were red flags all over this one. I was a lawyer in solo practice with no back-up. I had no staff except for Arlene, and no money to fund lengthy, complex litigation; and I was being asked to make the government cough up a sum that would do more economic damage to the Treasury than the War of Independence. The government was not going to allow that to happen without instructing the Department of Justice to put up a certain amount of resistance, and the Department of Justice was not short of either funds or staff.

‘I do have quite a few documents with me,’ Sam was saying. ‘It’s stuff my branch of the family has collected over the years. My father was very interested in the loans. He would go to family reunions and collect whatever people would give him; press clippings, historical articles, and so on, and it does give you quite a good account of things. There were even a few times when the family tried to do something about it, by approaching their congressmen, and so on. Nothing ever came of it. But no one has ever sued the government. My father believed that was the only option left to us. Now, he’s gone, and I…’

She stopped, but she didn’t have to say any more. I understood the call of a dead parent all too well. So that’s why she was here. It was for her father. My heart went out to her. She wasn’t crazy: optimistic, perhaps; unrealistic, perhaps; but not crazy. But that didn’t mean I could just jump into this with her. In fact, if she hadn’t told me about her father, I would probably have said no right there and then. But she had told me about her father. She had no way of knowing, but she had pressed exactly the right button. I couldn’t just turn her away —not like that, not so summarily. I needed time: time to reflect on the story she had told me, and time to reflect on my options. I was thinking that the best option might be to choose a law firm to refer her to – perhaps the firm of Don Quixote and Associates, whose knight-errant partners had the resources and the inclination to tilt at windmills, because that did seem to be the best description of what Sam was asking me to do. In any case, given time, I could reflect on the best way to help her.

‘Would it be possible for you to leave those documents with me for a day or so?’ I asked. ‘I really don’t feel I can advise you properly without knowing much more than I know now. They will be quite safe. Would that be OK?’

‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘I’ll just leave the briefcase with you.’

‘Here’s my card,’ I said. ‘Call me tomorrow afternoon. I’m not saying I’ll have a final answer for you then, but I’ll do my best.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

She stood and made her way to the door. As she was leaving, a thought came to me. I called her back.

‘Sam, what did you mean when you said it wasn’t only about the money, and you could settle for less?’

She turned and looked me directly in the eye.

‘Kiah, if our family tradition is true, Jacob van Eyck played a large part in making sure that the War of Independence didn’t end in failure. He is an American hero who has never been recognised. The government will erect a statue to Jacob van Eyck in Philadelphia, and the President of the United States will unveil it.’

5

After she had gone, I wheeled the briefcase to my conference table and started to take out the documents she had brought. There were a lot of them. It was just as well the briefcase was on wheels; she couldn’t have carried it very far. The documents were neatly organised in folders of various colours secured with rubber bands. She had written titles in matching coloured inks on the front covers. I arranged the folders into a number of piles, grabbed a pen and a yellow pad, and pulled myself up a chair. They were on my table now, and much as I tried to resist the feeling, it felt as though I had taken possession of them.

There were several large blue files containing newspaper cuttings and magazine articles. Some of them went back a long way. I didn’t go through them all, but there were several from the 1950s, and one or two were even older. The headlines suggested that, from time to time, family members had raised the question of the loan with their congressmen in different parts of the country. I didn’t try to read through everything, so what I am about to say might be a bit unfair. But while the politicians had made a few general comments about what a wonderful thing patriotism is, and what a good guy Jacob must have been, I couldn’t see anything to suggest that any of them had done anything tangible to help the family. Disappointing, but not too hard to understand, I thought. The repayment amount would have been a bit smaller back then, but it would still have been an eye-watering number, and any representative who suggested on the record that the government should repay it would have every reason to fear that it would come back to haunt him if he ever ran for higher office, or even if he stood for re-election. It occurred to me that if I took the case, I might have a similar problem with some judges.

There were numerous slim grey files containing photographs, many of them apparently taken during family reunions. They were of no immediate interest. I would have to go over them with Sam to find out who these people were, and whether we needed to deal with them. Like any group of people, no doubt the van Eyck family had its movers and shakers, some who acted as if they were more important than others, and some who actually were more influential than others. It would be important to know who was who, and what they were likely to think of Sam’s plan to sue the government.

Then there were various red and green files entitled ‘Research’. One of the green files also had the letters ‘LDS’ on the cover. I smiled. Good for Sam. I knew exactly what I was going to find before I even opened it. Kate Banahan, my wills and trusts professor at Georgetown Law, had clued the whole class in to this. There was, she insisted, no finer way to trace the ancestry of anyone in America, as you sometimes have to in a contested will case. Of course, today you can go to your computer and find any number of online sites for tracing your ancestry, but the LDS Church was in the business long before there was any such concept as online.

They go back to the days when records were made using quill pens and ink, and it might take you days, or weeks, to travel to where a record was kept. They started the Family History Library in 1894, and over the years they built up a huge collection of genealogical records from all over the world – registers of births, marriages, and deaths culled from churches and offices and the pages of family bibles and anywhere else they could be found —with the aim of enabling anyone interested in doing so to put together their own family tree. They have their own religious reasons for doing this, of course, which I’m sure make perfect sense to them, but the good news for the rest of us is that they have been open to sharing this vast treasure trove of information with anyone who needs or wants it. Originally, the only way of doing research was to go to the LDS library in Salt Lake City yourself and track down the documents you needed using the traditional card index system. But gradually the library began to travel via local family history centres, and increased its use of microfilm and microfiche, and now, of course, you can go online. The LDS collection remains the biggest and the best.

Sam had started with the first thing I would need to be sure of: that she herself was in fact a descendant of Jacob van Eyck. That wouldn’t have taken her long – it doesn’t take the LDS site long to go back 200 years – and she had printed out all the paperwork. There was no doubt about it. He was her ancestor. And then she had moved on. She had wanted to find out what else the site could tell her about her family. She had printed out a thick stack of records. But I didn’t try to look through them in detail because I was distracted by a handwritten note she had paper-clipped on top of them. The note was short and stark. I didn’t know whether she understood the significance of what she had discovered, but with my legal training it hit me full in the face.

Jacob van Eyck died intestate and without any surviving spouse or children. His three children died in infancy and, therefore, predeceased him. His wife and his parents also predeceased him. But he was survived by his seven brothers, all of whom had children.

She had circled the number seven twice, which suggested that, even without legal training, she thought this might be important. She was right, I was sure of it. I was assuming that the law in Pennsylvania when Jacob died in 1812 would be the same as it is in Virginia today. That may sound like a big assumption, but the law of Pennsylvania and the law of Virginia both grew from the roots of the English law, and the law of succession moves slowly. It doesn’t get a lot of public attention. No political careers are made by promoting reform of the law of wills or intestacy. So the law of succession evolves mainly by way of judicial interpretation and meanders through time, like a tranquil river feeling its way gently through a flat, peaceful landscape. Unlike some other areas of the law, the law of succession can remain essentially unchanged for centuries.

I would have to call in to the Georgetown Law Library to verify it, but I had no real doubt about what I would find. Jacob had left no will. In the absence of a surviving spouse or child, each of Jacob’s seven (circled twice) brothers would have been entitled to inherit from him in equal shares under the law of intestate succession. As would, in succession, his brothers’ children, and those children’s children, and so on for more than two hundred years. All their descendants alive today would be potential plaintiffs in the action Sam wanted to bring against the government, and there would have to be thousands of them. This would have to be a class action, and if we ever called a meeting of the class we would have to rent somewhere like Yankee Stadium.

I suppose all that should have been obvious to me as soon as she explained the case to me. She couldn’t be the only surviving descendant of Jacob van Eyck. But somehow, my mind had not wandered to the question of how many living members the family tree might have. If all of them were equally entitled to a share of anything we recovered, they would all be entitled to a say in how the case was conducted, and on what terms, if any, it could be settled. I had just unfurled another huge red flag. How long I remained in my reverie before Arlene interrupted me, I’m not sure.

‘Hun, y’all need anything? ’Cause I’m outta here. I’m fixin’ to take Bubba to get doctored.’ Arlene is from Lubbock, Texas.

She is a single mother. Bubba is her ten-year-old son, and apparently it is already written in the stars that he is destined to play wide receiver for Texas Tech. She moved from Lubbock about two years ago, after Larry, her then husband and Bubba’s father, finally revealed to her from the bottom of his whisky glass that he had gambled away the last dollar they had between them, and that the matrimonial home was about to be repossessed to repay his debts. In addition, he added almost as an afterthought, he had lost his job. He had coached high school football, teaching ninth and tenth grade biblical studies as his contribution to the children’s academic development. But now, school board and parents alike had concluded that the example he set to the young of the town was no longer satisfactory.

Somehow, via a complicated family connection, Arlene ended up in Arlington, and one day she ended up in my office begging for a job, as if her life depended on it, which in a sense it probably did. She had no prior experience of running a law office, and the references she brought from her local library and her vet’s office, where she had worked previously, were no more than formally complimentary about her organisational skills. But there was something about her. I took a chance. I gave her the job, and I have never taken a better decision in the practice of law. Within two weeks, she had the office humming like a well-oiled machine. We never missed a date for a court hearing or to file a pleading; our paperwork was impeccable; the clients received their bills promptly and they paid them promptly.

There’s something else, too. She joined me about two months before the Week. When the Week hit and I closed the office, I paid her what I could afford to tide her over, which wasn’t enough, and released her, feeling sure I would never see her again. She owed me nothing. But on the morning I reopened she was there, waiting for me at the door at eight o’clock, and she has been with me every day since. And for that I will love her forever.

‘No, thanks, Arlene, I’m good. Go. Is Bubba OK?’

‘Oh, sure, hun. He’ll be fine. He pulled something in his leg going up for a high pass in training last week. I just wanna be sure he ain’t fixin’ to do any real damage if he trains this week. His coach says it’s just a little strain, nothing ice won’t fix, but you know me and coaches. I never can quite trust them any more.’

I laughed. ‘I know. Get out of here. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

She looked down at the mass of paper on my table.

‘What did Lily Langtry want? Are you gonna take it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘It’s a debt collection.’

‘A debt collection? That must be one helluva debt.’

‘It is. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.’

‘Will you tell me before you decide?’

‘You know I will.’

‘Well, all right, then. Don’t stay here all night, y’all.’

That was the night the dreams started. To this day, I cannot begin to describe the vivid impression the dreams made on me, or explain the detailed recall I had of them when I awoke. They even surpass the horrifying reality of my nightmares after the Week, and they remain with me today.

6

It is night time, very dark. I can’t see the moon or stars. It is bitterly and mercilessly cold, with thick snow on the ground and a vicious, cutting wind from the north. I am standing at the foot of a steep hill. The area is heavily wooded. At the top of the hill is a large house. Lights are burning inside. Below me, on the lower ground, is a military encampment. There are rows of tents stretching in every direction. There are some fires burning, and some lanterns. I hear the muted voices of the soldiers, occasionally the voice of a woman, the neighing of a horse, the barking of a dog.

A man is walking slowly up the hill towards the house. He is tall and thin, and wears a long grey great coat, black boots, and a short three-cornered hat of the kind favoured by officers. He seems troubled. I sense this not from his face, which I cannot see in the shadows as he walks away from me, but from his posture and gait, which are uncertain and slow. I follow him up the hill. He approaches the house and pauses before the door. He waits for some time, as if he has not yet decided whether or not he wishes to enter. When he is ready, he knocks, boldly, three times. A servant opens the door to admit him.

We pass into a large living room. The ceiling is low. Because the man is so tall, he must take care not to come too close to the corner beams with his head. The wood that forms the beams looks thick and solid, and shines pleasantly in the warm glow of the log fire in the fireplace on the far side of the room. The room is simply furnished, but everything – the chairs, the tables, the carefully arranged bookcases – looks tasteful, expensive.

A man is standing in front of the fireplace with his back to the fire, holding a pewter tankard. There is something about his demeanor which marks him out as the master of the house. The servant escorts the visitor to the fireplace. He has taken the visitor’s hat and great coat, and now I can see that the visitor is wearing a rough-hewn brown jacket and breeches, which feels odd to me, because I am sure that he is a man of breeding.

‘God save you, General Washington,’ the master of the house says, taking the visitor’s hand. There is something about the handshake. I can’t quite pin it down. ‘This is no night for any of God’s servants to be abroad. You must take a cup of mulled wine.’

‘God save you, Jacob, and all within your house, likewise. Do not trouble yourself, I beg you.’

‘There is no question of trouble.’

He turns to the servant. ‘Ezra, a cup of mulled wine for the General.’

Ezra ladles the wine from the pot where it is warming by the fire into a tankard, hands it to the General, bows, and leaves the two of them alone. Their manner is now more urgent.

‘Are the supplies safely arrived?’ Jacob asks.

‘Aye, they passed safely through the enemy lines, God be praised. Thank you, my friend.’

‘I am glad of it.’

‘The men have food to eat and clothing and boots to keep them warm, and that could not be said when we first came to this place.’

Jacob shakes his head.

‘When you first came to this place? When you first came to this place, a more pitiable sight could not be imagined. It was not to be wondered at that you had suffered defeats in the field. A man cannot fight if he cannot eat, and if he has no boots to march in or weapon to engage the enemy.’

The General takes Jacob’s hand.

‘Jacob, my friend, I have no words of thanks for your generosity which I have not spoken before. You have saved us from starvation and provided us with the means to fight. As soon as this snow melts I will make preparations, and once the weather turns mild we will move against the enemy. We will not let them drive us before them again, I promise you. We are strong, we know our terrain, and in the spring and summer we will prevail.’

‘I rejoice to hear it, General, and I pray daily to God for your victory.’

The General releases the hand.

‘Jacob, there is another matter to speak of. I know that you have used up your fortune to save us.’

Jacob smiles, nodding. ‘Aye. That I have.’

‘You have given everything, and I must ensure that provision is made for you.’

‘It is true that I have given everything, General, but if I may speak freely…?’

‘Certainly.’

‘How could I have done otherwise? These are no times for withholding. Our case is urgent. If we do not give everything now, we are surely lost. If God favours our cause and gives us the victory, He will recompense me. If not… well, if not, I daresay we shall all hang as traitors and I would as soon die a poor traitor as a rich one.’

They laugh together.

‘Well said, indeed, Jacob. Nonetheless, while God will undoubtedly recompense you, our country owes you a debt on this earth, and I would not leave this place to fight before I have done all in my power to ensure that you are restored in your fortune as quickly as may be.’

‘The Congress has made such provision as can be made to restore the fortunes of those who have given, General. I have certificates from them to acknowledge the debt, and the terms are favorable enough. I am content.’

The General shakes his head.

‘It is not enough, Jacob. Who can say what our fortunes will be once we have our freedom? It may be that we shall have freedom but little else besides, the war having taken everything from us.’

‘In such a case, what is to be done?’ Jacob asks.

‘If I may speak plainly also,’ the General replies, ‘in such a case there is much to be done. But to do it, you must see clearly in what position you will find yourself. You must expect that the Congress will take such steps as they can to avoid or delay payment to their creditors.’

‘General –’

‘You must expect it, I say.’

Jacob seems visibly taken aback.

‘I cannot believe they would act so dishonourably. They must feel gratitude towards those who have given, those who made the victory possible. They must –’

‘It will not be for want of gratitude, Jacob. They are not dishonourable men. It will be out of necessity. The debt will exceed their assets, and even such assets as they have must be expended in large part for the welfare of the people and the safety of the country. So they will send their agents to the loan offices in every state to attend to the business, as they must. But when men come with their certificates to be paid, they will take possession of them. If the amount be small, I doubt not that it will be paid. But if it be so large that it cannot be paid, they may take the certificate without making payment, promising to do so on a future day. They cannot do otherwise.’

Jacob begins to speak, but stops abruptly.

‘Jacob, I wish to counsel you, if you will allow?’

‘By all means, General.’

‘When you bring your certificates to the loan office, do not bring them all at one time. And when you bring them, bring with you also a letter addressed to the highest officer of state in our Treasury. This letter must state that I have invested such influence as I have in ensuring that you are to be repaid. I have staked my credit on it. I am your surety. On his receipt of this letter, every officer of state will take note, and I shall importune every officer of our government on your behalf. Insist on retaining your certificates until I or another officer of state shall have answered the letter, and instructed the loan office to pay you. Do you understand?’

‘I understand, General.’

‘Your fortune may depend on it.’

‘I understand.’

I wake up suddenly. I am freezing. I feel as though I have just walked down the hill from the house wearing nothing except the two-sizes-too-big sweatshirt I sleep in. At five o’clock, I am sitting in my kitchen wearing two sweaters and thick white socks, drinking piping hot soup, with the heater turned up to level six, and still I am freezing.

7

A class action is a special kind of lawsuit, which is brought when a large number of plaintiffs have the same cause of action against the same defendant, for example an insurance company or an industry such as asbestos or tobacco. The plaintiffs are all suing for the same thing, but they may live anywhere in the country, and it obviously wouldn’t work for all of them to sue individually. For one thing, there would be no end to the litigation. It would take forever to dispose of all the claims. For another, there might be inconsistent judgments in different courts, some for the plaintiffs, some for the defendant, which would give rise to huge legal headaches and trigger a fresh round of litigation. To avoid all this, the cases are consolidated in one particular court, which means that the plaintiffs sue as a group, and negotiate and settle as a group.

Sensible as this is, it does pose some problems. The plaintiffs must appoint a lead plaintiff to pursue the litigation on behalf of everyone. Whoever sues first is in pole position to become lead plaintiff, but it doesn’t always work out that way. The attorneys representing the lead plaintiff are going to be the ones making most of the money, because they are doing most of the work and taking most of the financial risks, so there can be some competition for the position. If the lead plaintiff’s attorney is someone like me, or a small firm, they may actually welcome a bigger firm with more people and resources riding to the rescue, and they may have no problem giving up the lead and slip-streaming behind a firm that can match the defendant for muscle power. But not everyone feels that way, and there can be some ugly battles between law firms trying to take over the lead position, battles the court may have to resolve. And while that goes on, the defendant can sit back happily and watch while resources are squandered on in-fighting instead of pursuing the case. And even after that, the legacy of bad blood between the law firms may hamper efforts to negotiate and settle the case; and if the case goes to trial, there may be some big egos arguing about who should be lead trial counsel.

To my amazement, I find myself playing through these scenarios in my head and getting territorial about a case I haven’t even accepted, imagining arguments to persuade the judge that I should continue as lead counsel and march the members of the van Eyck class on to a famous victory. The only realistic part of my fantasy is that Sam and I would be the first to sue. Not much doubt about that.

Getting the case up and running would be simple enough, and, for me, would be like having home field advantage. For cases like this, contractual claims against the federal government, you sue in the United States Claims Court, a court in Washington DC established by Congress specifically to deal with such disputes. I am very familiar with litigation in the Claims Court. I’ve had a good number of cases there on behalf of plaintiffs, and I have a good professional relationship with the judges. There isn’t as much competition for that kind of work as there might be.

You would be amazed – or perhaps you wouldn’t – at the number of law firms in and around DC that are squeamish about suing the federal government. So many of them either are, or would love to be connected politically, and are desperate to attract work from the movers and shakers in the capital. They think that if they get caught playing for the away team, it may hurt their prospects of greater intimacy with Washington’s political élite somewhere down the road. I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that. I have no interest in the political élite, and I have no problem with screwing money out of the federal government in a good cause. It doesn’t bother me even one bit. I like the Claims Court. You can only sue in the Claims Court if your claim is for more than $10,000. That’s one problem we won’t have. So why not?

Arlene was about to tell me why not. We were sitting side by side at my conference table, and I had just outlined for her the case Sam had brought to us, and she was not looking too impressed.

‘Lord have mercy, hun,’ she began. ‘Now, I know that you have been through some tough times. Believe me I do know that, and I understand that, hun. I surely do. But… have y’all lost y’all’s ever-lovin’ mind?’

Odd as it may sound, this was not said at all unkindly.

‘I haven’t said I want to take the case,’ I pointed out.

‘I mean, have you thought this through at all? I mean, do you see an army of secretaries and paralegals anywhere in this office? ’Cause I sure don’t. It’s you and me, darlin’. That’s it. And do you know how much money it would take to get this show on the road? Do you see a spare million or two in y’all’s bank accounts? ’Cause I sure don’t.’

‘I haven’t said –’

‘Sorry, hun, but this dog won’t hunt.’

I took a deep breath.

‘I haven’t said I want to take the case.’

‘You haven’t said you don’t want to.’

‘I haven’t talked to Sam since she left the paperwork with me. I asked her to call me today.’

She nodded. ‘Well, all right then. But may I take it that when she calls, you will refer her on to someone else?’

‘Like who?’ I asked.

It was something I had been asking myself ever since I had bought myself the time to think it over. I couldn’t just throw her out on the street without making some effort to make sure that she ended up with a lawyer who would do justice to her case. Well, in theory I could, but in my own mind I was well past that point with Sam now. Whether or not I had any strict professional duty, I had taken on the burden of making sure she was OK. That didn’t mean I had to take the case myself, but it did mean that I had to find the right lawyer or firm for her.

With most cases that came into the office, that wouldn’t have been a problem. I had a network of lawyers I could refer cases to, and accept cases from, when needed. But with this case, none of the names I was coming up with seemed right. Even Don Quixote and Associates would think twice about this one. This wasn’t just tilting at windmills; it was tilting at a whole wind farm – a class action-size wind farm. You could spend a lot of money on this case, and the chances of ever making a single cent would still be in the range of negligible to zero. Even if Jacob had been provided with loan certificates, even if those certificates still existed – and those were huge ifs – you would have to find them. Without them, you would have no chance at all. But where would you even start looking? I felt pretty sure that any law firm big enough to handle this case would laugh in my face for even suggesting it. Actually, I wouldn’t mind that. I just didn’t want them laughing in Sam’s face.

Alternatively, I could, I suppose, just tell her that the whole idea of suing the government for whatever happened the best part of 250 years ago was crazy, and that she needed to forget about it and get on with her life doing Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. But I knew I wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that she wouldn’t take my advice even if I did.