Secrets & Lies by Andrew Cunningham

Author:Andrew Cunningham [Cunningham, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

We arrived in Fort Lauderdale around dinner time and took a drive to the beach, where we found a nice open-air restaurant that had fresh fish.

Sabrina had spent the flight on her laptop reading up on the Fountain of Youth.

“Did you know that nowhere in Ponce de Leon’s writings was the Fountain of Youth ever mentioned?” she asked after we had ordered. “And they always make it sound like he was an old man,” she continued. “He was only in his thirties when he took his first trip to Florida. And he didn’t discover Florida like everyone seems to think. There were crude maps of Florida long before he ever set foot. In fact,” she said, “it seems that just about everything attributed to him is wrong.”

“And how about the fountain?” I asked.

“It’s a legend that has been around for many centuries, long before Ponce. The Greek historian Herodotus even mentioned it in his writings. Different accounts have it all over the place, from Honduras to Mexico, to the island of Bimini in the Bahamas. The closest thing they’ve found to a ‘fountain of youth’ is a series of interconnected tunnels in Bimini that pump out fresh water into a place in a mangrove swamp called ‘The Healing Hole.’ When the tide goes out, fresh water from the tunnels flows in, combining fresh water with the salt water of the mangrove swamp. When they analyzed the water, it was found to have high levels of magnesium, which is good for longevity. For that reason, Bimini has often been a big part of the legend. Everyone always associates it with Florida, but there’s no foundation for that at all.”

That was the thing about Sabrina. No matter where we went, she studied up on the place, or in this case, the subject at hand.

“And?” I asked.

“And nothing,” she answered. “There is nothing to indicate that the Fountain of Youth exists.”

“So what set Hamilton on this path?” asked Mo. “There had to be something. Was it simply the samples and the test results?”

I noticed that Mo never referred to Hamilton as her grandfather. From what I had heard, I wouldn’t either if I were her.

“Probably,” said Jack. “With his obsession about youth, I would bet that Kirkpatrick had read a lot of the history of the Fountain of Youth. Maybe he hoped it was real. Being a cutthroat businessman, I’m sure he had spies and contacts all over the place, looking for certain things, or subjects, or even keywords that would send up a flag. The future and privatization of the water supply in the world has been a hot topic for years. I’m sure he had a contact in the lab that tested the water who recognized the significance of the sample immediately. That person probably passed on the tip to him.”

I also noticed that Jack never referred to Kirkpatrick by his first name. Maybe it would have been more familiar than he wanted.

“So, where does all this leave us?” I asked.

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