Sibley's Secret

Sibley’s Secret

By

Frank Perry, author

Hampton Falls, New Hampshire

Books.by.frank@gmail.com

Synopsis

Sibley holds a dark secret that destroyed her family long ago. She’d lost her precious baby to an evil husband who forbad her any contact, ever. She’d cried every day since then for almost forty years. Now, it’s time to reveal the truth. Would her daughter reject her? Would she even believe Sibley was her mother? Would Sibley finally have her daughter back or lose her forever? She could go to prison for something she had not done. The emotional risks are almost unbearable as the truth unfolds, layer by layer.

Copyright © 2018 by Frank Perry

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email to: books.by.frank@gmail.com.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who saw me through this book; to all those who provided support, talked things over, read, critiqued, offered comments, and assisted in the editing, proofreading and design. I would like to thank Beverly Heinle for patiently proofing, editing and suggesting improvements that have been invaluable. Above all I want to thank my wife, Janet, who supported me throughout this and edited the first drafts.

I also would like to thank Rick Cesario for laboring through the earliest draft, and making invaluable suggestions. Special thanks to my son, Brendan Perry who developed the cover art.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, world organizations, government agencies, regulations, 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. The author professes no medical training related to the subject matter.

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Other books by Frank:

Recall to Arms

The Cobra Identity

Reign of Terror

Letters From the Grave

Kingfish

Sibley’s Secret

The Dolos Conspiracy

The Girl on the Cliff

Michigan

It was over ninety degrees in the hot July sunshine with humidity to match as Carmen Joyce exited the small commuter jet on the tarmac at Jackson County Airport. She’d forgotten how oppressive July could be in Michigan. Fortunately, the late morning sky was clear, with only the beginning of summer storm clouds on the horizon. She hadn’t been back to her home state in six years, after resigning from Detroit’s police department. Then, with a delinquent thirteen-year-old son on the verge of serious gang behavior, she had packed up and moved to New England. It had been an impulsive move, but many factors in her life converged, leading to the decision: a broken marriage, a troubled son, no family support and a career filled with biases against women. She had had no friends on the east coast and no idea what she would do next: she just expected to have a better life away from Detroit with a chance to raise Chad into healthy adulthood. She was a risk-taker and didn’t fret much about the future. After arriving in Boston, driving a twenty-year-old Oldsmobile with over 150,000 miles, no job, and less than three thousand dollars in her checking account, employment was crucial. But she wasn’t going to work in a big city again, even if Boston was safer than Detroit.

Chad stumbled down the skinny ladder behind her, struggling to carry his sport bag and his mother’s roll-aboard suitcase. He had insisted on carrying everything aboard rather than checking luggage, so now he was paying the price. She smiled to herself, waiting at the bottom. He’d turned completely around after the move east and grown to be the strong-willed, smart, good-natured young man she’d seen veiled behind a false tough exterior some years before. In Detroit, she’d seen too many young men, depressed, without work, constantly in trouble on the streets, coursing toward prison. She’d determined that Chad wasn’t going to be one of them.

Carmen was known as Kiki to her family when growing up. She didn’t know the origin of the nickname, other than that her father and mother never could agree on anything when she was born, so they named her Carmen (her mother’s choice) after several days of disagreement, but her father always called her Kiki. Her nickname followed her into the police academy after junior college even though she thought it projected the wrong image. She wanted to be tough, just like the male rookies, but, once they discovered her pet name, it stuck. She had proved, however, that she could hold her own in any situation, just like the men, and was occasionally embarrassed when someone called her Kiki instead of Officer Joyce on duty.

Growing up in rural Michigan, close to Jackson, she hadn’t had many role models. Her father and all of his acquaintances were farmers. Her mother had left them when Kiki was an infant. The Michigan State Prison nearby was the most visible alternative reference, and police work seemed ideal compared to working in the dirt day after day, praying for the weather to cooperate and never seeing a fresh coat of paint on the house or a new car. As a kid, they’d only had an old pickup to drive and she’d envied the shiny police cruisers she’d seen when driving to Ann Arbor.

The University town was another planet to her. Even though it was only a few miles from the farm, her family didn’t fit in the environment. She didn’t actually understand it, but the collegial atmosphere there was like a foreign society, a society she could ever enter. In fact, it was a miracle that she’d gone to the local community college, but it was a requirement before she could take the police exam. She’d done exceptionally well, but academics were only a means to an end, and that end was achieved when she was accepted into the Detroit police academy. She knew it was probably the result of pressure to add more women to the city police. She wasn’t studious and didn’t do particularly well on the entrance exam, but few women had applied, so she got in. Detroit crime rates didn’t inspire most young women to seek a job in law enforcement.

She was a standout success in her rooky year. Partly, it resulted from an incident where she was forced to use her weapon. Many officers never draw their guns except for target practice. However, she’d had to pull her gun to protect her partner. She hadn’t fired, but became a hero for engaging the criminal, scaring him into submission. Yet, she didn’t feel any more qualified for praise than other first-year officers. She was physically equal to many men. She had a woman’s figure at five eight, one hundred thirty pounds, which was only slightly smaller than the average man on the street and many of the gang bangers were smaller than she. She worked hard in the gym and martial arts training to keep up with the men. In the end, she was more dedicated to her profession than most of her male counterparts. She’d never thought of another career.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle for her was the way men saw her as a sex symbol, rather than another officer. She had a natural beauty that couldn’t be hidden under a uniform. Her heredity had blessed her with beautiful skin and a fair complexion. She couldn’t remember her mother or ever saw any pictures, so she wasn’t able to make a comparison. Her father had been parched in the sun all his life, so no one would know that Kiki’s clear complexion, heart-shaped face, and silky hair wasn’t an anomaly. She had characteristics of both her parents. Her father’s eyes were brown and his hair had been prematurely gray. He always said Kiki’s blue eyes and auburn hair came from her mother.

Before her rookie year ended, she married Chad’s father. It was never a good marriage and probably resulted from the pressure she felt to end hovering from other male officers. Chad was born before her twenty-second birthday. Her husband lost interest immediately. He hadn’t lost it in other women, just in being Chad’s father; raising a baby wasn’t part of his plan. Fortunately, he had been transferred to a distant precinct when they were married, so they didn’t have to associate on the job after the divorce. He never showed any interest in Chad, which probably influenced Chad’s early choice of friends. She was so grateful when he changed completely after moving east.

Chad was almost nineteen now and a freshman at the University of New Hampshire. He was studying engineering and on the dean’s list. He was tall, handsome and thin, like his father, and had grown to appreciate the sacrifices and risks his mother had taken for his benefit. He loved her, but wasn’t overt about it. He was still a free spirit but stayed within legal limits. He had his mother’s coloring, but was otherwise an image of his father, whom he hadn’t seen, nor had wanted to see, since he was five.

Kiki smiled as they walked together toward the terminal, even though she dreaded being back in the state.

Baikal

Ivan Khakimov skillfully maneuvered the miniature submarine almost twelve hundred feet below the surface of Lake Baikal. His heart pounded hard from anticipation; it seemed to resonate inside the slender steel tube. Outside, the world was total darkness without the powerful external searchlights illuminating the silt-covered bottom.

This was the location recorded by previous dives where a branch of the Trans-Siberian Railroad was rumored to have fallen through the ice during the harsh winter of 1920. Nobody today knows if the story is true, but legend says that the railroad tracks were laid across meter-thick ice during the October Revolution to expedite materials to the White Army as it suffered repeated defeats from the Reds. Prior dives had reported some evidence of metal structures in this location, elevating confidence that the rumors were true. If so, this expedition, financed privately with millions of rubles from a private consortium, could realize treasure that would give the sponsors a return thousands of times greater than their investments. It would be the largest treasure ever discovered. Ivan had seen some evidence that the legend could be true. The bottom was littered with steel girders. He had to navigate carefully, using the small electric motors, to avoid tangling his umbilical cord as he carefully examined the mounds of silt, looking for rail cars or cargo containers.

In 1920, after Tsar Nicholas II had abdicated his throne and was subsequently murdered, Admiral Alexander Kolchak was appointed by the Siberian Regional Government to lead the huge regional White Army in opposition to the rebellious Bolsheviks as the Reds gained control. He was, in essence, the chief military opponent against Lenin and the rest of his henchmen. When the Tsar and his entire family were butchered in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, Admiral Kolchak found himself controlling a large part of the country’s gold reserves, about 1600 tons according to some sources, although no known records could be found. As a loyalist, Kolchak saw it as his duty to protect the treasure, although his motives have been questioned over the years, given the immense wealth within his grasp.

Most records were destroyed during and after the Russian civil war. After the Bolsheviks took control, the Soviet Government chose to rewrite history and scarcely accounted for the gold remaining in their various vaults, but over 480 tons were known to be missing based on pre-war records. There could be no certainty that the records were complete, of course, but it was highly likely that this state wealth was stolen during the bloody war. Almost all administrators and records were eliminated, leaving it entirely to speculation.

Admiral Kolchak, as Supreme Leader at the end, would have had the most opportunity to control it. Most of the speculations involve the Trans-Siberian Railroad and Lake Baikal. The gold is rumored to have either been lost falling through the ice in an over-loaded train or when it was being transported by a massive White Army caravan that perished in the minus sixty degree winter freeze, sinking into the lake during the spring thaw. There were other stories too, but these two were the most commonly cited.

Khakimov was a small, thin man, ideal for the sub’s claustrophobic interior. As an engineer, he had helped design the deep submersible vessel he now piloted in the frigid black depths. He could, in theory, escape if the cables to the surface became entangled with debris under water, but it required severing the lines with an untested mechanism, then blowing water ballast from the exterior tanks using his compressed air reserves. The procedure could only be done once and depended on an unobstructed path to the surface. The effects of rapid depressurization had not been calculated.

He didn’t worry about it, lying on his belly, peering through the thick viewing port. The submarine didn’t have its manipulation arm installed for this dive; instead, Ivan used its thruster motors to blow silt away from anything that looked interesting. He navigated forward slowly, while the mother ship above attempted to follow, leaving a murky path behind the sub. He spoke into the voice-activated microphone, Nikolai, are you seeing the bottom?

After a brief delay, Yes, Ivan. I can see more than you with the camera, but do you see any train tracks or wheels?

I do not know. It is so dirty down here. I have seen much bent metal, but it looks more like bridge works than rail. As cold as it is, I expect the rail cars to be preserved, but nothing shaped like that is here.

Ivan rolled to his right side and stretched momentarily, fighting the effects of the cold steel surrounding him. He was too old for this. It was dark inside the sub, which made it easier to forget that he was basically inside a steel coffin on life support. Nikolai?

After another brief delay, What, Ivan?

I think I am feeling the effects of the compressed air now, my throat is dry and my head aches terribly.

You have been on the bottom for almost three hours. You must expect some physiological effects.

I can stay a bit longer.

Ivan was in his late fifties. He had spent his career as a mechanical engineer, designing pressure chambers for the Navy, but had only been intermittently employed for years when Nikolai approached him about this project. They’d been friends since university days and were a good complement to each other. Ivan was conservative and analytical. Nikolai studied philosophy and was always dreaming up new schemes. When he brought this one to Ivan, it was a time when the engineer was depressed, without work, and no matter how absurd the idea of treasure hunting seemed, it gave him a chance to be working for a couple years, and he was paid for designing the equipment.

Now, with frustration growing minute-by-minute, the severity of their situation was overwhelming his logical mind. He might as well stay on the bottom at the end of the next dive. In the beginning when they, as a team, developed the plan to raise money for the expedition, they had to stretch the facts with the sponsors to suit their objectives. The Government had abandoned any support after prior expeditions failed, and there were no more exploration societies or treasure-seeking financiers interested. These earlier expeditions had became widely publicized around the world, fueling frenzy amongst treasure hunters. But the prior expeditions had yielded nothing. So, for financing they had turned to some people Nikolai seemed to know. They were fringe characters, new Russian opportunists who scared Ivan. These were not traditional businessmen. Fear of retribution for failure now weighed heavily on his mind. His headache became more intense.

Kolchak

Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was born in 1874 and died February 7, 1920. He was a pre-revolutionary hero in Russia, honored both as an explorer and naval commander who rose to the highest level in the Imperial Russian Navy. He fought nobly in both the Russo-Japanese War, where the Russian fleet was obliterated, and in the First World War. During the Russian civil war that followed, he established a provisional government in Siberia, ultimately assuming the title of Supreme Ruler and Commander-in-Chief of All Russian Land and Sea Forces, even though he had no battle experience on land.

His father had been a Major General in the Russian Marines. Being from a military family, Kolchak graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1894, and had pursued a naval career. Early in his career, he also became an Arctic explorer, completing two expeditions to previously unexplored regions, and earning the highest award of the Russian Geographical Society.

Kolchak married Sophia Omirova prior to the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. He was highly decorated for his service during the war. He was wounded after taking command of a shore battery during the Siege of Port Arthur and was taken prisoner by the Japanese, but he was released after a few months, suffering the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. After the war, he received the Golden Sword of St. George with the inscription For Bravery. In 1910 he joined the Naval General Staff, and in 1912 he was assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet.

During the First World War, Kolchak led several dangerous operations, laying mines at strategic German ports. He was promoted to Vice-Admiral in August 1916 and commanded the Black Sea Fleet leading operations against the Ottoman Empire.

After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Kolchak was removed from command of the fleet, then invited to meet with the Provisional Government, where he described deplorable and demoralized conditions in the Russian armed forces. He suggested reinstating capital punishment to correct such deficiencies, highlighting a character flaw that would eventually contribute to his end.

Kolchak remained completely loyal to the Provisional Government, as he had been to the Tsar. When the Great October Socialist Revolution began, and Russia withdrew its forces from the Eastern Front in WWI, Kolchak had offered to enlist in the British Army to continue fighting the Germans, but they decided that he could better serve the free world by fighting Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, hopefully to bring Russia back into the war on the Allied side after defeating the Red Army. Kolchak was then appointed by the Provisional Government as a minister in the Siberian Regional Government. The Whites had hoped this would strengthen ties to the British military mission in Siberia headed by General Alfred Knox, but, in November 1918, the interim Siberian government was overthrown in a British sponsored coup d'etat. Kolchak survived and was appointed the head of government in Siberia and titled Supreme Ruler. He promoted himself to full admiral and declared his intention to fight Bolshevism. This was a very confused time in Russia with allegiances shifting often.

The populous Marxist leaders in Siberia denounced Kolchak, calling for him to be killed, and they allied with Lenin’s Red Army. Kolchak countered with persecution of revolutionaries and declared immediate capital punishment for assassination attempts on the Supreme Ruler or for attempting to overthrow his government.

Hoping to rekindle popular support through capitalism and freedom, Kolchak returned the factories to private owners and dispersed the trade unions. He attempted to restore private land ownership; however, there was brutal repression committed by his regime and thousands were murdered. He is reported to have authorized wholesale extermination of villages that did not support him.

Resistance grew in the areas under Kolchak's government, and the Red Army actually gained strength in Siberia as peasants united in rebellion against his dictums. The Red Army started gaining control of the region. In some cases the White forces under his command had some successes fighting the Reds, but Kolchak was not an experienced land tactician. The British, under Knox, helped somewhat, by supplying arms and munitions. The American Expeditionary Force (AEF), also in the region, did not support either the Whites or the Reds, remaining neutral.

By April 1919, the Bolsheviks made defeating Kolchak a priority and the Red Army increased manpower directed specifically against him. As resistance became increasingly futile, Kolchak appealed to U.S. General William Graves for help to evacuate him and his subordinates from Siberia to Vladivostok on the east coast, possibly hoping to escape to America or Japan. Graves commanded the AEF Pathfinders, responsible with other neutral forces for protecting the vital Trans-Siberian railroad. The railroad was Kolchak’s only avenue of escape.

The Farm

Chad stood on the weathered front porch with its faded blue bead-board ceiling and fir decking worn bare from years of neglect, looking at the dirt drive meandering out to the four-lane county road. He stood back into the shade. He hadn’t bothered to close the front door after glancing inside. Every door and window was open to let air circulate. Kiki was somewhere inside when he wiped a towel across his forehead, Mom, I don’t see how grandpa managed this place on his own.

The farm grounds were overgrown with weeds. The peach and apple trees growing behind the house over the ridge were showing distress with poison ivy vines overtaking them. Chad could only see the front ten acres or so, but there was over a hundred more acres behind the ancient house and barn.

She called out loudly from inside, Yeah, it must have been hard on him toward the end. He was living on his Ford pension, and, I guess, the farm was just let go after I moved to Detroit. It wasn’t this bad six years ago, but it doesn’t look like anything was taken care of for a long time. Chad heard something drop on the floor as she started sorting through things. The plan was to spend a few days making funeral arrangements after the medical examiner released her father’s body, then gather up any valuables and papers to take back to New Hampshire. The farm would be auctioned off to pay the bills. They hadn’t decided if they would rent a U-Haul to drive or just ship boxes and fly home. It all depended on what they found. He shouted over his shoulder, I’m gonna walk around. Kiki didn’t respond, which meant she hadn’t objected either. She was standing in the middle of the living room, shaking her head at the deplorable conditions her father had lived in toward the end. It was fortunate in a way that he had died while walking up the drive, apparently to get the mail; otherwise, his body might have been undiscovered for days or even weeks. They didn’t talk much, and he had no other family. Communications had started declining as soon as she went to the police academy. He didn’t understand her feelings about farm life then and never really did later, even after she’d explained it hundreds of times.

Her father bought the farm when she was a baby. He worked at a Ford plant for over thirty years and kept the farm as a hobby, but it was a huge job in itself, so he leased the orchard to another farmer until the plant closed, forcing him to retire. He wouldn’t have ever left the farm. Early retirement had suited him, and the farm often paid a profit on top of his fixed income, so Kiki remembered living okay, by small farm standards, but she hated the isolation and constant chores. They mostly ate what the farm produced. They could shop at the local general store and farm supply co-op, and went to Ann Arbor on rare occasions to get other things. She could never think fondly of that time in her life. She knew other farm girls who all left, and none ever wanted to return.

She had started a different life as a police officer, and now moved to New Hampshire, to a village called Tranquility. They had advertised online for a police officer with experience. Tranquility just sounded right and hadn’t disappointed her. It was a two-officer town when she took the job. The other one was called Chief, even though he had less experience in major law enforcement. He’d grown up there and had several city