793. Chapter 793

After Wrapped Up in Death

Episode 2.19

By

UCSbdad

Disclaimer: Who can reverse the curse of my not owning Castle? Rating: K Time: See above.

Richard Castle rolled over and found that his lovely wife, archeologist Kate "Idaho" Beckett Castle had slipped out of their bed. Since their honeymoon had been interrupted by events in Hong Kong, he wanted the rest of their honeymoon to be flawless.

He rose from their bed and walked to his wife. She was standing on the balcony of the penthouse of the Manila Hotel, looking out onto Manila Bay. He put his arms around her and hugged her. "Good morning, Mrs. Castle."

"Say it again."

"Say what again?"

"What you called me."

"Why, good morning to the remarkable, beautiful and brilliant archeologist who I am wildly lucky enough to call my wife."

Kate giggled. "I liked that one a little better. What are we doing today?"

"After breakfast downstairs, I thought we'd take a boat ride around Manila Bay. There's a boat that goes all around the bay. It has all the comforts of home, including ice cold San Miguel beer."

She laughed. "Considering that we're archeologists and our home has been a series of archeological digs where we live in tents, that sounds more comfortable than home."

He kissed her neck, then turned her around and kissed her passionately. When they broke the kiss, he stroked her hair. "I'm going to build us a home, then. Where would you like to live? The US? Manila? Hong Kong? Shanghai? Actually, I'm rich enough to buy us homes in all of those places."

She slapped his chest. "We're on our honeymoon. We can think about homes later. Much later." She spun away from him. "I'm first in the bathroom."

"I could join you."

"Not if we want to get downstairs in time for breakfast." She replied.

They had just ordered their breakfast when they were joined unexpectedly by a red headed woman. "Hello, Rick." She said happily.

"Uh, hello, Meredith." He said with much less enthusiasm. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm a reporter with the Manila Ledger now, and I'm looking for a story."

Rick made a show of looking around. "No stories here, I'm afraid. It's been nice seeing you again."

Meredith didn't take the hint. "Come on, Rick. You're here in Manila? That means you're up to your old tricks."

Rick took a deep breath before he said something he might regret later. "This is my wife, Kate. I am definitely not up to my old tricks, as you call them. We're here on our honeymoon."

Meredith laughed. "Not those kind of tricks, silly. Are you telling me you're not here looking for Arroyo's gold?"

"What's Arroyo's gold?" Kate asked. Rick had hoped that he could get rid of Meredith, but Kate had now given the woman an opening.

"In the early 1890s the Filipinos were fighting the Spanish for their independence. According to reliable rumors, the Germans wanted to help the Filipinos, figuring that once the Spanish were kicked out, they could come in and make the Philippines their colony. Supposedly, a revolutionary named Arroyo went to Shanghai where German agents gave him gold to finance the rebellion."

"How much gold?" Kate asked.

"Rumor says anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand dollars' worth to several millions. No one really knows."

"What happened?"

"Arroyo landed on a deserted stretch of beach in northern Luzon, but the Spanish caught up with him quickly. Most of the Filipino soldiers with him were killed and he was wounded. He was found two weeks later, dead, in Manila. The woman with him said he'd buried everything across the bay on the Bataan Peninsula. The Spaniards tortured her, but she insisted Arroyo had gone off into the jungle by himself and was gone for five or six hours. And she had no idea where they were in Bataan when he left her."

Castle shrugged. "So that's thirty plus years ago. Why would anyone care now? You could dig up Bataan for thirty years and not cover a tenth of it."

Meredith smiled. "You're telling me you have no idea?"

"Didn't I just say something like that?"

"A young fisherman found three gold German coins on the beach just three weeks ago dated from the early 1890s. They looked like they'd been washed down to the sea by the rains. Everyone in Manila is just buzzing about it." She smiled and looked at Rick through lowered lashes. "Can I get a quote from you, Mr. Castle?"

"Certainly. Rick Castle is not buzzing about any gold coins. Now if you'll excuse us, I think our breakfast is coming."

Once breakfast was done, Rick and Kate did go on a trip around Manila Bay. Rick couldn't help but notice how much time Kate spent looking at the jungle covered Bataan Peninsula. "Why do you keep looking over there?" He finally asked.

"Because my career is based on finding things. Lost cities, ancient civilizations, German gold….."

"Really?" He said, with a bit of a whine in his voice. "Well, we're not going."

Two days later the boat dropped them near the stream where the fisherman had found the coins. By this time the fortune hunters had thoroughly gone over the beach and had worked their way deeper into the jungle. Rick and Kate headed inland. For the first part of the way, they were able to follow trails hacked out of the jungle by others. But sooner or later they'd catch up to the people who'd cut the trail and would be angrily chased away.

After three more days, they had found exactly nothing. Castle sat on a rock and drank a little of their steadily diminishing water supply. "Kate, he could have buried the gold anyplace. We could search all over Bataan and dig down five feet for the whole peninsula and maybe he buried it six feet down. Can't we just go back to the hotel and relax?"

Kate sighed. "Could we just stay out here one more day?"

Castle looked at the water and food they had left. "Another day of warm water, canned food and mosquitoes?"

"Another night of going to bed with me under the stars?" Kate said sexily.

"How could I say no to that?"

They spent the next day looking for some signs that the earth had been disturbed as they cut their way through the jungle. Finally, near noon, they stopped in a small clearing for lunch.

"Can we head back now?" Rick asked. Then he screamed.

"What is it?" Kate cried, rushing to him.

"A big bug of some kind bit my ankle." Rick saw something scuttling away from him and threw a rock at it. The rock hit a pile of rocks and the rocks started tumbling down, bringing more rocks down. Rick grabbed Kate and pulled her away from the rock slide. When the rocks stopped falling, they saw the entrance to a cave.

"Do you think that's it?" He asked.

"There's only one way to find out." Kate raced for the cave entrance.

The cave wasn't deep and as soon as Rick turned on his flashlight, they saw something.

"It's an old trunk." Kate said excitedly. She rushed over and knelt before the trunk. "There's a luggage tag on it. The name is… A. Arroyo. It's his trunk. It's ours."

"No, it's mine." Said a familiar female voice.

They turned around to find Meredith holding a revolver on them.

"You've always been good and lucky, Rick. But this time I'm the one who's lucky. Now I'll want the two of you to haul the trunk out of here for me. With all that gold, it's going to be very heavy. Get to it."

Rick took one end and Kate took the other. On the count of three, they lifted. The trunk came up very easily.

"Hey, that's awfully light to be gold. Way too light." Rick knelt by the trunk and opened it, then laughed."Here you go, Meredith. What do you think you can get for Arroyo's underwear?" He tossed a couple of pairs of underpants onto the cave floor. "Or, maybe his socks will sell well." The socks followed the underwear to the cave floor. Kate joined in throwing Arroyo's clothing onto the cave floor and laughing.

"No!" Screamed Meredith. "It can't be just his damned clothes. Where's the gold?" She pushed the two out of the way and bent over the trunk. When she did so, Kate slammed the trunk lid on her head and Rick grabbed her gun.

Two days later, at the Manila Hotel, Mr. and Mrs. Castle held a news conference to display the treasure that Arroyo had brought to the Philippines.

"So this is the treasure the Germans gave Mr. Arroyo?" Asked the new reporter for the Manila Ledger.

Castle nodded. "I have no idea how much a half a million in gold weighs, but I'll bet it's way too heavy to transport easily from the coast of Luzon to the interior where the rebels were. So, the Germans, or Arroyo, had a better idea. They went to the Shanghai stock market and bought bearer bonds. The whole stack of bonds doesn't weigh much over a pound. But they bought the wrong kind. They bought Imperial Russian bonds. Back in 1892, or whenever, they were probably valuable. But in 1917 the Communists overthrew the Russian monarchy and decided they weren't going to honor a bunch of bonds issued by a Russian capitalist government to a bunch of foreign and domestic capitalists. The bonds are now just worthless paper." Castle smiled. "Well, not quite worthless. I got an offer of twenty dollars from a guy who thought they looked impressive. He wanted to use them as wallpaper for his bathroom."

The reporters laughed, and the press conference broke up.

Once back in their room, Kate examined the bonds. "So we didn't even make twenty dollars from the bonds?"

"The guy will be over tomorrow. Tonight I want to see what it's like to make love to my wife on a bed covered in a half a million dollars' worth of bonds."