THE HIDDEN ROOM

Over a century ago, an expansionist power coveting regional primacy decided to annex a small country. A notorious coup soon toppled the beleaguered royal family. The hastily-formed replacement government granted the aspiring power the right to establish a naval base, and thereby amplify its regional influence. Those events profoundly altered the region’s geopolitical affairs and history, for good and for bad. 

Rumours have long swirled that the small country’s major landowners collaborated with the expansionist power to plan the monarchy’s overthrow. Unsurprisingly, the coup substantially benefitted the commercial interests of those landowning families.

A few years ago, in that county’s capital city, a home once owned by an alleged coup-plotter underwent restoration. The manager of the removal and renovation firm hired for that job recently related the following information to Mr Egan:  Some of the manager’s laborers working in the attic announced they had uncovered a hidden room. He alone went inside. 

There, he found rolls of old documents secreted away in an unfinished interior wall. While reading the pages, he realised they concerned the famous coup against the former monarchy. For understandable reasons, he re-rolled the documents, and returned them to their original locations. He then personally supervised his crew while they replaced the structural supports, affixed new sheet-rock to the frames, and re-painted the attic.

Mr Egan and his group will contact the current homeowners, and propose to ‘re-discover’ those documents.  Anything found in the secret room is the sole property of the homeowners, who might possibly donate same to their national museum. 

Superb basis for a documentary film, and an episode in the AR series.