Presidential Commission

A National Treasure Fan Fiction

By

JeanTre16

Benjamin Franklin Gates sat alone in his father's house fingering the opened cell phone in his hand. On its viewer was a snapshot of page 47 of the President's Book of Secrets. His gaze and his thoughts, however, wandered distantly. The roots of his family's treasure hunting obsession went further back that he had imagined. What he held in his hand was proof of it and it was certainly life-altering.

Every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt had been stumped by this one. Actually, the original entry had been made by George Washington himself of a heist gone bad in the Pacific Islands. But off to the side of a few well preserved notes was a black and white photograph with the distinguishable etchings of GW on a rock face. The catch was that the picture was taken in the murky waters of Pearl Harbor during the aftermath of December 7, 1941. If what the president's book suggested was true, the photo was a clue to the earlier entry's mystery.

Slam. The sound of the front door shook Ben from his reverie. He looked up to see his friend, Riley Poole, with one hand trying to regain control of pizza cheese stringing from his chin, and his other hand balancing a pizza box on the verge of disaster.

Ben clicked his phone shut and slid it into his pocket. Reflexively, he reached out to rescue their dinner. Grabbing the box, he lowered it to his lap, flipped the lid open and frowned in disappointment. Deciding on a slice anyway, he removed it from the box and shoved the opened carton next to a laptop on the cluttered coffee table.

"So, you're giving up a curator's dinner with Abigail for a night out with the boys," Riley teased with his mouth full of food. Aiming his body for an armchair, he landed comfortably and kicked his feet up on the aforementioned table with his pizza hovering in his hand.

"A night in," Ben corrected.

"In," Riley echoed. "But still … "

"A curator's dinner beats having this stuff with you any day," Ben answered, studying his unappetizing dinner. Suddenly having second thoughts about his decision to dine with Riley, his face scrunched and he tossed the piece back into the open box.

"Come on, you hate those events," his friend chided, still savoring his food.

"Yeah, I know, but not as much as I dislike eating lukewarm cardboard." He folded his hands and looked downward, reassessing his decision not to tell his parents about this secret. But recalling his mother's insistence that they not be bothered on their second honeymoon with anything less than someone's death, he pushed the reconsideration out of his thoughts. Abigail and Riley would have to be enough.

"All right, smart man, then why did you ask me to come over?" Poole asked, finishing off the remains of his crust. "Ben Gates does not do anything out of randomness," he prodded.

"You're right, I did ask you to come here for a reason," Ben agreed.

"Aha, I knew it." Riley grinned, wiping his hands off in his shirt.

"I asked you here for this." Gates removed the phone from his pocket.

Riley stopped chewing, dumbfounded. "You wanted to give me your cell phone?"

Ben's eyes grew wide, giving his friend an incredulous look.

"All right, then you don't want to give me your phone. Then whadya have there?"

"If you'll just stop and listen, I'll tell you," Ben responded, annoyed, beginning to wonder if he could still bring his parents into this, rationalizing that a distant relative had died over the matter.

"I'm listening. I'm listening," Riley chimed.

Ben hesitated a moment, and then interfaced his cell phone with the laptop on the table. "What do you think of this?" he asked as the first picture appeared on the screen.

Riley craned his neck to get a better view. "GW," he made out the engraved lettering in the photo. He shook his head, unable to come up with a plausible explanation. "Um, it looks like graffiti … " he guessed, but looked at Ben and noted his unimpressed expression, " … but it wouldn't be, would it?"

"No, it wouldn't be," Gates said, turning the screen back toward himself to look at the photo for the umpteenth time that day. He ran his fingers fondly over the screen as though he shared a connection with it and continued, "Remember when I sent you and Abigail ahead of me at the Library of Congress?"

"Yeah, and by the way, that was so completely noble of you to be concerned with Abigail's and my safety over yours. I've meant to thank you for that."

"You're welcome," Ben replied, momentarily distracted by Riley's flattery. Quickly regaining his senses, he shook his head. "But that's not the reason I sent you ahead. I – "

"It isn't?" Poole interrupted, disappointed.

"No," Ben confirmed, still trying to get to his explanation.

But Riley kept him from it by exploding with a distracted train of thought, "You didn't!"

Gate's brow knit at the sudden shift. "Didn't what?"

"You looked!" he pressed.

"Looked?"

"You looked at the book," Riley explained.

"I did not look," Ben drew each word out in defense.

"You did. I knew you would. You just couldn't have that many secrets at your fingertips and leave them alone." Riley paused, cocking his head in curiosity. "So how did it happen? How did Kennedy die?"

"Kennedy? Die?" Ben asked incredulously. "Do you really think I'd breach the trust of the president like that?"

"Yes," Riley answered flatly.

Shifting about uncomfortably, Ben defended, "Yeah, well, I didn't look. I still have no idea how Kennedy was assassinated. So there."

Riley Poole assessed his friend from the corners of his eyes, not sure if he believed him or not. "All right, let's say I believe you. Then what were you looking at? You did look at something, did you not?"

"I did, but it was only what the president gave me permission to look at," Ben answered defensively. "Something a bit more of a mystery than Kennedy's death," he revealed, clicking the laptop keys to show another photo that revealed the entire contents of page 47.

"More of a mystery? How is that possible?" Riley mumbled as he sought to understand what he was looking at on the screen. After an interlude of trying to make sense of what he saw, he pulled back and shrugged. "Sandwich Islands and the unreturned boat of Captain Cook? G.W. Gates dispatched to recover."

"G.W. Gates," Ben pointed enthusiastically at the name.

"Gates? Is that another distant relative of yours?" Riley asked.

"Abigail and I spent all morning in the archives looking through obscure birth records. And apparently, it was … only the president's namesake disappeared shortly after Washington took office and was never heard from again."

"And you're saying those are his initials," Riley speculated the connection.

"What else can they be? Franklin D. Roosevelt thought so or he wouldn't have placed that photograph with Washington's entry."

"Ok, say that this 'GW' was engraved by one George Washington Gates – your distant relative – and this marker wound up at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. What does that mean?"

"I thought you'd ask, so I did a little research in Hawaiiana." He grabbed a large tome from the cluttered coffee table and opened it on his lap.

"Hawaiiana?"

"The study of ancient Hawaiian history," Ben explained, leafing through the pages to the desired spot.

"I knew that," Riley defended.

Finding the page, Ben took a deep breath and read energetically, "In 1779, a boat belonging to Captain Cook was hijacked by a lesser Hawaiian Chief and held at some undetermined location in the Sandwich Isles … "

"The treasure," Riley interjected.

Ben held his finger up in a wait-a-minute fashion and continued reading, "Cook then took captive another Chief in hopes of recovering the cargo. But what he didn't know was that one moku, or faction, had no love for the other and that his actions insulted the natives. They fought back and Cook was killed." Gates closed the book. "That much we know from history books. But look here – " Ben shoved the volume back to the table and leaned over to point to the photo of page 47 on the computer screen " – what the public didn't know was the enormity of that heist."

"Enormity?" Poole leaned forward. "I'm listening."

"Recorded here is a brief entry by George Washington in 1780, which states that the missing boat's cargo contained the wealth of kings and that its recovery could turn the tides of nations."

"Wealth?" Riley echoed the one word that stood out to him.

Ben frowned but kept talking, "I did a little research and there was no publicized wealth of kings that went missing around this period. That means this cargo was something only a privileged few would know about."

"Dead end." Riley's brow rose and he slapped his hands to his knees in defeat.

"No, not a dead end," Ben informed. "This is something we have to take out of the scope of public information."

"Ah, the President's Book of Secrets," Riley said.

"Not exactly. There were other secret societies privy to specialized information. George Washington was a member of one such specialized group, sworn to protect the secrets passed down to them."

"The Free Masons," Riley said.

"The Free Masons," Ben confirmed impressed with his friend's knowledge. "How in the world did you know that?"

Riley Poole reveled in his moment of glory. "I watch TV. The Discovery Channel had a special on the other night," he bragged.

Ben balked at Riley's flaunt, and then continued, "Anyhow, Washington could have known about this wealth of kings out there, and if so, he may have been aware of its movement. Concerned with the news of the cargo's loss, it would make sense that he would dispatch someone to attempt its recovery."

"But the treasure was never found," Riley surmised.

"No. Not until 1941," Ben added. "Notice this photo, obviously placed here at a later date. By the looks of the handwriting, it was written by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It's dated December 14, 1941, just seven days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. My guess is that during the salvaging of the harbor, they ran across a clue that only the President of the United States would be aware of its significance, because he had this book."

Riley's wheels were turning. "So you're saying that you think the president wants you to go after it … to complete your distant relative's presidential commission or something like that?"

Ben smiled. "Life-altering, isn't it?"

Riley looked off reflectively, and asked, "So does this mean we're going to Hawaii?" He smiled.

Ben stood up. "This means, my friend, that we are headed for the only place locally that shares the Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum's database and the Naval maps of Pearl Harbor."

"Oh," Riley said, at a loss, "where's that?"

"Back to the Library of Congress," Ben replied, already grabbing his jacket and heading for the door.

"Well, I would have preferred Hawaii," a disappointed Riley threw in under his breath, not that he expected his friend to hear him, since he was already halfway outside. "Hey, wait for me," he called, finally making haste to don his winter wear before joining Ben. The cold air infiltrated from the opened door and made him shudder.

Ben stopped in the doorway to face his friend reflectively. "Just think. I had a distant relative whom the President of the United States entrusted with a secret of this magnitude. And here I am today, standing in the confidence of another president … "

Riley shivered, with his arms clutched around himself. "Yeah, chilling isn't it. I hope we fare better than G.W. Gates," he said, not sharing the depth of Ben's reverie. "Now let's go before I freeze."