Wisdom Lies

“Wisdom Lies… the Devil knows,” the old man choked out these last words in his dying breath.

“What!” Mark demanded. “What does that mean?”

But the old man was gone.

“Reggie… Reggie…” Mark tried to shake more out of the dead man. “Reginald… What does that mean? What does the Devil know?”

So, this is it? Mark thought to himself as he stood over the body of a man he met just 10 minutes ago. Years of research and three thousand miles had come down to this, the demented gibberish of a dying, old man.

At 47 years old, Mark Hartzog had spent the majority of his adult life looking for lost Jewish treasure. The son of Levi Hartzog, a non-practicing, Jewish immigrant, and Rachel Miner-Hartzog, a devote protestant, Mark started his career as a treasure hunter, historian and anthropologist at the City College of New York. Levi passed away when Mark was young and Mark’s career path was a way to pay tribute to his father’s memory.

For more than 17 years, Mark searched for anything related to Reginald Marquis, even under extreme ridicule from his peers and rivals for chasing what was commonly considered a fairy tale. Only George Tabor, Mark’s college buddy from Columbia and treasure hunting partner, believed there was any merit to the stories that Marquis was connected to the mystery of one of the world’s most famous missing treasures. However, even George suspected Mark’s recent adventure was a wild goose chase, but they needed funding for an expedition, and they had nothing.

Marquis’ trail had gone cold nearly three years earlier when Mark traced Reginald’s last known location to Seattle in the late 90s. From there it was as if the recluse disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. He never expected to find him still alive – as he was just two minutes ago – hiding in a nursing home in western Alaska. It was an article, five months old, in the town’s local newspaper that finally triggered alarms linked to Mark’s search criteria. It was a feel good, human interest piece about the birthday party of the borough’s oldest living resident.

Ronnie Marcus of Bay View, who sometimes calls himself Reginald, is 103 years old today and the oldest living resident of Kenai Peninsula Borough.

Ronnie – or Reginald – is a local celebrity of sorts, famous for his stories of Nazis controlled France and how he and a friend stole away a great treasure from the Nazis and escaped to America by stowing away on a cargo ship.

There was no doubt in Mark’s mind, this was Reginald Marquis, or Fox Bane, a self-pinned alias. Reginald claimed the moniker by allegedly making off with a substantial amount of Rommel’s Gold; gold Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, is reported to have stolen from Jewish peoples in Tunisia. The long-accepted story by Mark’s contemporaries is that the ship, laden with Rommel’s Gold, was deliberately sunk off the cost of Corsica. However, if there is truth to the fantastical claims made by Reginald Marquis that he stole from Rommel, then the gold did make it to mainland France. Still, nobody can know what happened to the rest of it after it made landfall, but at least they won’t be looking for it in the Mediterranean anymore.

Mark wished he found the newspaper story from last September a few weeks sooner. If he had spent more time with the ailing Marquis in advance stages of dementia, perhaps he could have gleaned more from him than an indecipherable riddle in the final moments of his life. He cursed his luck at being so close only to have the trail literally go cold again right in front of his eyes.

Mark stood up and walked to the window of the private room that looked out over a fenced-in common garden. He hadn’t notified the nursing staff yet that Mr. Marcus had passed away during his visit. They all knew it was imminent, and the staff was happy that someone came to be with him in the end, but Mark wished he had more time. He glanced at the dresser stacked with personal effects and a grainy black and white photo of a much younger Reginald standing arm in arm with another man on a high precipice overlooking what appeared to be an Appalachian valley. Next to the photo, was a tall, hard leather-bound King James Bible showing the wear of many years.

Mark remembered the words of his granny when he was only 10 years old. “When you are at a crossroads child, open The Book to find the way God chooses for you.”

Though he shed any remnants of religion years ago, at this moment, he couldn’t help but grab several inches of the thick, coarse pages and see what the Good Book revealed to him. He opened to Job and his eyes fell on one verse 11:8. “It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?”

“‘Deeper than Hell?’” Mark mumbled to himself. “Hell…The Devil… what can I know? ‘the Devil knows…’ Yeah, that helped!”

Mark slammed the Bible shut in disgust and was surprised by a hollow sound. He picked up the heavy book and shook it. There was something in it and not connected to the binding.

He sat the book back down and opened deeply. To his amazement, where the glossary and maps of the Biblical world should have been, Mark found a badly worn, black leather journal hidden in a cut out.

“Well bless me,” Mark said with a chuckle. “That still works.”

He tucked the picture frame and the journal into his satchel and paused to say “God Speed” to Marquis as he left the room. He stopped at the nurse’s station to tell them Mr. Marcus had passed. The head nurse expressed her condolences and Mark communicated his gratitude, for the wrong reasons, but he did it nevertheless. Then he exited the nursing home on his way back to the small private airport he flew into only hours before.

Sitting in Anchorage awaiting a flight back to Philadelphia, Mark perused Reginald’s journal looking for clues but the book was mostly a French and English account of his travels west after breaking with his friend and fellow outlaw, Andre Sagesse. Mark knew Sagesse from his research, but the man had passed away in relative obscurity in a small town in Tennessee in the early 80s. He suspected that was Sagesse with Marquis in the photograph he took from the dead man’s room.

The journal housed several news clippings that Marquis collected over the years – Kennedy’s assassination, the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin wall, but one piqued Mark’s interest. It was Sagesse’s obituary in the Rogersville Review from 1983.

The fabled storyteller and often eccentric Andre Sagesse passed away at his home on Highland Dr. on Tuesday.

Sagesse immigrated to the United States from France in 1942 during Nazi occupation. His stories of war-torn France were known locally by his many friends and fans as “The Wisdom of Andy...”

“Holy Shit!” Mark exclaimed loud enough to draw the ire of a mother sitting near-by with her young child. “Sorry,” he said looking at her with an apologetic smile.

“That’s it!” He continued with less volume. “Sagesse is wisdom in French. ‘Wisdom lies?’ Sagesse is buried in Rogersville, Tennessee! ‘Wisdom lies’ in Rogersville!”

With his plane boarding, Mark stashed the items back into his bag, pulled out his phone and started making his new travel plans.

Days later, Mark continued his research, reading death records at the Hawkins County Library in Rogersville, Tennessee, when he was hit with disappointment yet again.

“Damn it!” he exclaimed, this time aware that he was being loud, but fortunately the library was nearly empty so no one else noticed. “Sagesse wasn’t buried anywhere, he was freakin’ cremated.”

Mark ran his finger along the report and read aloud, “Sagesse’s ashes were turned over to friend, Reginald Marquis… Well of course they were.”

Not knowing what else to do, Mark pulled out Sagesse’s long obituary and continued to read.

Sagesse is best known for his annual performances during Heritage Days; however, he was also known to perform frequently at the VFW and Mason Lodge where he held an honorary membership to both.

In an interview with the Review last year, Sagesse alleged that he and his fellow immigrant, Reginald Marquis first settled in Rogersville in the mid-1940s in search of gold.

“We surely looked pretty foolish,” Sagesse told the Review, “two Frenchies and their mules wondering the hills of Hawkins County.”

When asked about his claims to have stolen a large treasure from the Nazis before escaping France, he said that was just another good story.

“Why would we be foolishly looking for gold in the shale hills of East Tennessee if we already had gold,” he told the Review.

The rest of the article told of how Hawkins County had reminded Sagesse of his beloved Savoie Region in France. He stayed, met a woman and was married while his friend Marquis was stricken with wanderlust. Tragically, Sagesse’s wife died giving birth to a stillborn child and Sagesse never remarried.

Mark pushed the scattered books and articles away from him in disgust, threw his glasses on the table, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes. He hadn’t slept much all week. Three days ago he was in a remote part of western Alaska chasing the best lead he had in nearly two decades, and twice since then his hopes were dashed.

As he sat back in the hard library chair wondering about his options, and facing the end of his long search, his gaze landed on an old photo hanging on the library wall. The black and white photo was of a man sitting on the edge of a jagged precipice, legs dangling over the side high up in the air. He recognized that precipice. He reached for the Marquis photo in his bag and rushed to the photo on the wall to compare them. It was the same jagged rock.

Mark read the caption on the matting of the picture on the wall – A man sits on Devils Nose, Hawkins County, Tennessee, Circa 1949

Frantically, he pulled the Marquis picture out of its frame and looked at the back of the photo. In a faded pencil, Mark could just make out the words – Andre Sagesse and Reginald Marquis on Devils Nose, Oct, 1946.

“‘Wisdom Lies!’” He said to himself. “Sagesse called Rommel’s Gold just a story and claimed that he and Marquis were traveling the shale hills of East Tennessee looking for gold… He was lying! They weren’t looking for gold, they were stashing it! And Marquis didn’t say the Devil knows, he said ‘the Devil’s Nose.’”

While still comparing the two photographs, Mark pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Call George,” he whispered into the phone.

“I found it,” he said when George answered. “I found Rommel’s Gold!”

In the weeks to come, investors started getting on board thanks to the new information gleaned from Mark’s research. Together, Mark and George began building a team, filing permits, leasing land, and purchasing equipment. No longer the subject of ridicule, many of Mark’s contemporaries were now lining up to be on that team, the team that reopened the search for the lost treasure of Rommel’s Gold.

On his way back to Hawkins County, Tennessee to start the dig, Mark opened Marquis journal to the day the French expatriate learned of his dear friend’s passing. Marquis had written a kitschy poem on the page that when Mark read it, he couldn’t help but smile.

Wisdom lies, truth hidden from foes

It’s covered up, atop Devils Nose