Black Balloon

Chapter 29

Albert Schmid was sitting on his couch one evening drinking a glass of red wine when the telephone rang. He had been lost in contemplation trying to decide whether he should spend his new windfall on an Aston Martin DB5 or a Ferrari 250 GT. It was another cold wet night in Frankfurt, one of many that Spring, and the windows of Albert's loft apartment were being pelted with a gentle pitter patter of raindrops. The soothing storm had subdued him into a state of supreme relaxation, and so when the phone unexpectedly rang he lurched forward startled, so abruptly shaken from his reverie, he nearly spilled his wine.

One-week earlier, Albert had made partner at his law firm, the quickest rise to such a position in the firm's 75-year history, less than six years between graduating law school and achieving said honor. He was on cloud nine that night, his head full of wine and big dreams, and so he answered the phone with as a cheerful a greeting as a German attorney is capable of making. In response came the slurred voice of his elderly partner and mentor, Ernst Baumann. Baumann was a portly and serious fellow who after 5 p.m. was seldom seen without a cigar between his lips and a glass of Scotch in his hand. He could have been a character model for one of those old turn-of-the-century political cartoons, posing as the crooked railroad tycoon with oversized coattails and a top hat.

Baumann, who almost never called outside of business hours, had an unusual request. He asked his protégé if they could meet at the office that evening. Not wanting to disappoint, Schmid agreed and drove downtown. When he arrived, he found the elder man sitting in his office sipping a Balvenie single malt, both his feet resting on his desk calendar. Baumann told Schmid to sit, that he had something important to tell him. He explained that as a partner Schmid was now entitled to certain information that was not shared with the other lawyers, certainly not with the paralegals and secretaries. From behind his desk, the elder man retrieved a grey lockbox and removed from it a few sheets of yellow paper. He then proceeded to describe one of the firm's oldest and strangest cases. Baumann was the only remaining attorney who had been employed 22 years ago when the unorthodox request was originally made, the only living person contemporary with its origins. Although he had not been privy to this secret information until becoming a partner himself in 1961, he was subsequently tasked with the stewardship of the case. He carried this responsibility for the next twenty years, until tonight when he was finally able to unload the burden. He was doing his duty to pass along the information to his successor, exactly as it had been passed along to him by the late Fritz Bertelsmann, and exactly how one day Schmid may be passing it along himself.

The story went like this: In July 1958, a client, Professor Lukas Schneider, approached Bertelsmann with an odd request. No, odd is the wrong word: an INSANE request. Schneider was willing to pay a large sum of money to make this happen, far more than would be typical for an attorney's services, but there was a catch: the money would be held in trust until the deed was completed some 53 years later. Bertelsmann, naturally, found this peculiar, but Schneider was a longtime trusted friend and a valued client so he agreed to take the case and he would take it seriously, even though neither he nor Schneider would be around to see its completion. Bertelsmann created a succession plan to ensure the information would be transmitted intact across the ensuing decades, and so it was.

Professor Schneider, a thorough and meticulous man, had written his instructions very carefully which were as follows: a hippie commune will one day be located in the deserts of California a few miles east of the Salton Sea. Although Schneider was unable to describe precise coordinates, or any markers at all really, streets, landmarks, and so forth, he was quite adamant that the place would be easy enough to find when it was necessary to do so. He included a rudimentary description of what it would look like and provided a narrow time frame: June 30th, 2011 between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. He described a property on the outskirts known as The Ranch at the End of the World, and an opening in the rear fence behind a metal shipping crate. He didn't explain how he knew this or why it mattered. The person tasked with the delivery (whomever that might be 5 decades hence) was to hide in the shadows beyond the fence and wait. Sometime during this three-hour window, a young man would step away from the commune to relieve himself. When this happened, the courier was to approach the man, identify him as Miles Lee Vandergriff, and deliver the following message: