[ This is what he'd come here to talk about, isn't it. The end was a disaster with a capital D for Drake, the middle had been a tangled maze of back and forth and dead ends and new approaches and a hell of a lot of jaw grinding, but the start... Rafe chews the inside of his cheek, eyes locked onto the glass he keeps setting round and round on the table. The start hadn't been all bad. He takes a deep breath. ]
Fresh out of college, I hear about this guy making the rounds, sniffing for money to back an expedition. Everybody on the scene brushed it off, said it wasn't worth the time — a total scam, you know? But I went ahead. Figured it couldn't hurt anything just to hear him out. And he tells me about Henry Avery.
[ It's impossible to hold back the excitement, the match struck and tossed on a pile of coals that haven't stopped burning for fifteen years. He can't help the way it builds with every word, hands coming to life as he gestures, articulating his point. ]
Avery wasn't in the business more than a couple years total but what he managed in those couple years was... [ A breath of a laugh that underscores the massive understatement to come. ] Substantial. And the biggest score he made off with was the Gunsway haul. Stray Mughal ships on pilgrimage to Arabia, loaded down with millions in treasure, and he makes off with everything. [ Not at all nicely, but he doesn't need to share that. Either Gene's enough a student of history to fill in the blanks of piracy or... Well. Rafe isn't about to detail the depravity Avery was capable of. ] The whole of the Western world turns out everything they've got to find him, the most wanted man alive, and—
[ Rafe snaps his fingers. ]
Vanished. Three hundred years later and nobody ever found him or a penny of the plunder he took with him.
[ A conspiracy nut's wet dream. A treasure hunter's ticket to punch. And Rafe, needing neither antipsychotics or money, found a cause. ]
But this guy— He says he's got a lead. All he needs is enough scratch and pull to get a foot in the door and from there... Fortune and glory, there for the taking.
no subject
[ This is what he'd come here to talk about, isn't it. The end was a disaster with a capital D for Drake, the middle had been a tangled maze of back and forth and dead ends and new approaches and a hell of a lot of jaw grinding, but the start... Rafe chews the inside of his cheek, eyes locked onto the glass he keeps setting round and round on the table. The start hadn't been all bad. He takes a deep breath. ]
Fresh out of college, I hear about this guy making the rounds, sniffing for money to back an expedition. Everybody on the scene brushed it off, said it wasn't worth the time — a total scam, you know? But I went ahead. Figured it couldn't hurt anything just to hear him out. And he tells me about Henry Avery.
[ It's impossible to hold back the excitement, the match struck and tossed on a pile of coals that haven't stopped burning for fifteen years. He can't help the way it builds with every word, hands coming to life as he gestures, articulating his point. ]
Avery wasn't in the business more than a couple years total but what he managed in those couple years was... [ A breath of a laugh that underscores the massive understatement to come. ] Substantial. And the biggest score he made off with was the Gunsway haul. Stray Mughal ships on pilgrimage to Arabia, loaded down with millions in treasure, and he makes off with everything. [ Not at all nicely, but he doesn't need to share that. Either Gene's enough a student of history to fill in the blanks of piracy or... Well. Rafe isn't about to detail the depravity Avery was capable of. ] The whole of the Western world turns out everything they've got to find him, the most wanted man alive, and—
[ Rafe snaps his fingers. ]
Vanished. Three hundred years later and nobody ever found him or a penny of the plunder he took with him.
[ A conspiracy nut's wet dream. A treasure hunter's ticket to punch. And Rafe, needing neither antipsychotics or money, found a cause. ]
But this guy— He says he's got a lead. All he needs is enough scratch and pull to get a foot in the door and from there... Fortune and glory, there for the taking.