Ancient Echoes

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Washington D. C.

Li Jianjun used the long flight from Beijing to San Francisco and then to Washington D. C. to hack into George Washington University’s computer system. Once in, he located Lionel Rempart’s email, and from it sent a message instructing the anthropology department's office manager to allow “student John Lee” access to Rempart's office and his Idaho files.

By the time the plane touched down at Reagan National, Jianjun also managed to request a replacement GWU student body card, and to have it waiting for him when he reached the school.

A student covered the desk for the anthropology department’s administrative office. After Jianjun showed his student body card and explained about Rempart’s email, the student unlocked Rempart’s office door and let Jianjun enter. She then stood in the doorway to watch.

Michael had told him to find out all he could about Lionel’s interest in Idaho. So far, everything was working as he’d hoped it would.

Behind Rempart’s desk, he found a box marked as meeting acid-free, lignin-free, chemically purified ANSI standards for paper preservation. Curious, he sank into the desk chair and opened it. The student heaved a sigh and shut the door behind her as she left the office.

Documents from New Gideon, a tiny Mormon settlement that existed for one year in Central Idaho filled the box. Jianjun dug through it, finding mostly notes about the weather, crops, grains, births, deaths, and lots and lots about God, until he pulled out a couple of diaries that presented a fascinating picture of how the small settlement came to exist.

Followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, established in 1830 by Joseph Smith, were led by Brigham Young to the territory of Utah in 1846 after years of persecution, which included Joseph Smith's murder. They believed their sacred duty was to spread the word from The Book of Mormon.

In May 1855, twenty-seven missionaries headed north of their settlement around the Great Salt Lake to establish the Salmon River Indian Mission. The group averaged thirty-two years in age and came from ten states and two foreign countries. Most were married, and some were polygamists.

Their leader, a New Yorker named Thomas S. Smith, had no knowledge of the people they sought to redeem, but his ordination as president of the mission gave him absolute authority over all actions taken by the group.

The Bannocks gave the missionaries a friendly greeting, and escorted them to a crossroads and gathering place for many tribes, ones not always friendly toward each other, on the east fork of the Salmon River. There, the Saints, as the Mormons called themselves, established Fort Lemhi, named after a Nephite king in The Book of Mormon.

Jianjun paused long enough to ponder why a group who wanted to be known as Saints would build a place to spread the word of God and called it a “fort.” Even after all these years, the ways of Americans were still strange to him. Very strange. Peculiar even. He continued his reading.

Two years later, Brigham Young visited the fort. What he saw convinced him that the valley would suit the Saints. He decided to send more brethren to “have what land they could cultivate.” No one mentioned, however, purchasing the land from the Indians who considered it theirs.

As the first step in this expansion, after more Saints arrived at Fort Lemhi, a group of seven missionaries were sent many miles northwest to establish the community of New Gideon. They were quite alone in the remote outpost, but the tiny Tukudeka tribe made gestures of friendship by giving them some exceedingly strange gifts and warning them to stay away from certain areas.

Unfortunately for the Saints, the rapid colonization of their land outraged the Bannocks and several other tribes. Thomas Smith's complete lack of understanding of how to deal with them aggravated an already bad situation. In February 1858, the Bannocks and Shoshone attacked Fort Lemhi. They killed two missionaries, wounded five, and took all their horses and cattle. The survivors immediately fled back to Salt Lake City.

The diaries stopped there. Jianjun imagined as soon as the residents of New Gideon heard what happened, they also abandoned everything and returned to Utah. Many years later, according to Rempart’s notes, gold prospectors stumbled upon the colony’s remains. Its few surviving materials were eventually sent to the Smithsonian museum for preservation.

So far, Jianjun had found not one word about alchemy.

He looked around the office. It contained nothing about the weird science, but he did find a folder marked “Idaho.” Inside he found a paper with “Smith Inst” and a couple of numbers. He made a note of the numbers.

He also found copies of letters written by a woman named Susannah Revere to President Thomas Jefferson asking what had happened to her fiancé, a young writer named Francis Masterson. Masterson had told Susannah he would be away for one to two years on a secret mission for the President. That was in 1804. He never returned. Susannah sent her first letter to Jefferson on December 20, 1806, and the last on May 12, 1824. She never married and never gave up hounding Jefferson for some explanation of Francis’s disappearance.

Jianjun couldn’t help but wonder if her fiancé simply changed his mind about marrying her. Susannah came across as a terrible shrew. He also wondered why Lionel Rempart cared.

The door to the office burst open. A severe looking middle aged woman entered. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded.

Jianjun stood and gave a respectful bow of the head. “Professor Rempart sent an e-mail explaining—”

“Professor Rempart has been missing for three days!”

“Missing?”

Her lips tightened. “Don’t pretend you don’t know. Who sent that email?”

“I don’t know. Really. I mean, I received one from Dr. Rempart telling me to come here and find”—with relief, he clutched the letters in front of him and waved them at her—“the Susannah Revere letters. He said he would let the office know. So, here I am.”

“Leave them!” she ordered. “Someone must be playing a trick on you. I know you students don’t pay much attention to anything that isn’t on f*******: or Twitter, but I would have thought you’d have heard about your professor! Come with me. We’ll let the campus police sort this out.”

Jianjun politely stepped into the hall as the office manager demanded. As soon as she turned to lock the door, he bolted from the building.