Chapter 3 - The Unsealing of the Iron Ledger
The floorboard groaned as Ruth threw her entire weight against the wooden lever.
The rusted iron nails gave way with a sharp, echoing crack.
Beneath the joists, resting inside a watertight lead-lined ammunition box from the Second World War, lay Ambrose Penhale’s master survey chest.
Ruth lifted the heavy box onto a wooden salt barrel, snapping open the tarnished brass latches.
Inside lay three items:
A hand-bound leather ledger containing two hundred pages of hand-inked nautical coordinates, original riparian rights charters, and certified state deeds stamped with the gold seal of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
A secondary micro-cassette tape labeled: STERLING HARBOR CONVERSION // RECORDED EVIDENCE // NOVEMBER 12, 2019.
A solid silver chronometer pocket watch with the initials A.P. engraved on the casing.
Ruth picked up the watch, feeling the cold silver warm against her scarred thumb.
August Voss managed to sit upright against the salt bags, pushed up by the two mastiffs who now guarded his flanks with bared teeth and low, rumbling growls.
He looked at the open ledger with an expression of cold, predatory satisfaction.
"Paragraph Four of the master charter," Voss said, his baritone steady and lethal now. "Read it aloud, Ruth."
Ruth unrolled the central parchment beneath the pale amber beam of her penlight:
THE PENHALE-VOSS SOVEREIGN RIPARIAN TRUST (1924)
TERMS: ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE DEEPWATER ACCESS BERTHS, MARITIME TRANSIT TERMINALS, AND WATERFRONT REAL ESTATE OF IRONWOOD BAY ARE DEEDED IN PERPETUITY TO THE BLOODLINE HEIRS OF AMBROSE PENHALE AND AUGUST VOSS.
CLAUSE 12: ANY ATTEMPTED COMMERCIAL TRANSFER BY A THIRD PARTY WITHOUT DUAL BIOMETRIC AUTHORIZATION CONSTITUTES AN IMMEDIATE, UNCONDITIONAL FORFEITURE OF ALL MUNICIPAL OPERATING LICENSES.
"Julian Sterling doesn't own this harbor," Ruth breathed, looking up from the paper. "He has been collecting rents on stolen water for seven years."
"Julian has been collecting eighty million dollars in stolen revenue," Voss corrected, throwing the canvas tarps aside and rising slowly to his feet.
His frame was towering, broad, and terrifying in the gloom of the shed. He reached down, unbuttoning his vest to reveal an encrypted satellite phone sealed in a waterproof neoprene pouch strapped across his chest.
He dialed a single number.
"Arthur," Voss spoke into the receiver.
May you like
"August?" Arthur Ross’s voice snapped through the speaker, breathless with shock. "The harbor authority just reported your body found on Pier Six. Julian Sterling has already filed an emergency petition for testamentary receivership with the Portland probate court."
"Julian filed a petition for a ghost, Arthur," Voss replied, his gray eyes fixing onto Ruth with unyielding, sovereign respect. "Cancel the funeral. Assemble our private security convoy at the Breakwater Club. Bring Lead Special Agent Sarah Lin from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And tell the gatehouse that the true owner of Ironwood Bay is coming to breakfast."
