Me? I took the name Preston and settled in the sticks, doing odd jobs. I never made it back down to Fordlandia.

Chapter 27

That was it, at least for us. The rest of the book went into his life in Vermont, his failed attempts at writing, and his regret that he never got to bring home the gold. Other than that, no further mention was made of Fordlandia, the heist, or the eggs.

"What do you think?" I asked. We had somehow ended up curled in each other's arms … and legs. Kind of like a giant pretzel. Extracting ourselves from that position was going to be interesting.

"Terrible novel. He had no imagination. He was only able to write about what he had experienced. He could have made up a story of going down to find the treasure. Gun battles. Intrigue. Anything. There was none of that."

"Other than that," she continued, "I think the location of the treasure died with John. Unless someone discovered it by accident, I think it is still there."

"Are you suggesting that it's time to go to Brazil?"

"I do."

"So what about the eggs?" I asked. "Any thoughts?"

"No, but I can try to find out. I need to go online."

I looked at her, then down at our entangled limbs.

"Really?"

"Uh, I'll look it up on my phone."

She ended up at the computer. We were both beginning to cramp up. Untangling ourselves seemed prudent.

Sabrina typed in "Russians" and "Eggs" and almost immediately we knew what we were looking for.

"Oh my God, of course. Faberge Eggs." She said it in a quiet voice, almost one of reverence. "It has to be. I can't believe I didn't make that connection before."

I didn't say anything. For a different reason than Sabrina's awe, though. It didn't really mean anything to me. I mean, sure, I had heard of Faberge Eggs. Just some ornate eggs, right? Yawn. Well, I guess it was a little more than that. As she read about them out loud to me and showed me the pictures, I gained a little more respect for them. Actually, I gained a lot of respect for them. This Faberge guy was a master craftsman. They weren't just ornate, they were truly treasures. Most of them were now in museums or private collections.

It was when Sabrina came across a reference to some "lost" eggs, that we perked up. It seems that Faberge had created a collection of fifty or so "Imperial Eggs" for the Russian Royal Family. When the Romanovs fell in 1918, the House of Faberge was ransacked and the fifty Imperial eggs were taken by the Bolsheviks. But of the fifty, eight mysteriously disappeared and were never found.

"Want to bet some of those eight found their way to Fordlandia?" Sabrina asked.

"I can see why Tony was so excited," I answered. "Even back then they were pretty valuable. Eighty-five years later, they are priceless." Then I added, "Yeah, I think it's time to go to Brazil.