Author and adventure enthusiast, Byron Preiss in 1982 compiled a book of treasure of sorts – The Secret. In this book are twelve augmented poems and pictures, each directing the reader to sites where he had buried twelve keys in twelve different casks in twelve different locations around the United States of America. The keys could be later exchanged for a gemstone, and of course, bragging rights. However, this treasure hunt is not as easy as it sounds. The poems are very as ambiguous as they are poetic, and one would have to match a picture to a particular poem to even begin searching for clues.
So far, only two of these treasures had been found with twenty whole years between each find. The first key was found only a year after the search was declared by three teenagers. The second find was twenty years after, and since then, there has been complete silence, until Josh gets a call that an experienced treasure hunter, Coy Lathrop may have deciphered all the clues that may lead to the third key.
Josh heads to South Carolina where he meets with Lathrop, who has deciphered all the clues to finding the third key. He walks Josh through the sixth poem and one of the pictures which he matched together with it. The pictures and poems as is customary depict a particular immigration group – this one depicted the Africans. With a tribal mask and a lion, Lathrop is convinced that the Africans are the subject of this puzzle.
He walks Josh through other clues, which bring them to a statue on the park. However, this particular statue was just planted there – the statue being referred to, was removed years ago. Josh investigates where the statue was stashed and both men search and eventually find it. This leads them to more and more clues which they crack and begin digging on the set site that Coy thinks the key is buried. After a few minutes of digging, they come up with nothing. Both men are disappointed, but Josh congratulates Lathrop for a job well done, nevertheless, and the latter goes back to his drawing board. Josh then hears of another nerve wracking event that was shaking the secret treasure hunting community to its foundations.
In a conversation between Josh and the first finder of the key, Josh learns that a particular Frenchman has flown to San Francisco, walked into a park escorted by a park ranger, and having exclusive rights to dig that site, he dug and found the third cask, but walked away with it. He never opened it, or showed it to the world, or even claim the gemstone; he simply walked away. Josh heads to San-Francisco to meet with the park ranger who showed him some pictures. While Josh observed some differences between this cask and the other two that had been previously found, he called the original designer to confirm if truly this was the third cask. Apparently, it was a fake and the cask was still out there.
Finally, Josh gets a call from a couple in San Francisco; they believe that they may have found the clues and were confident in their theory to find this key. They even claim they have found the secret of the secret – a rather interesting theory they purported, which states that all the keys may be found easily if you follow a simple strategy. According to Dustin and Diedra White, one has to be at the park, at the exact time it was buried and the shadow would lead you to the exact burial spot of the key, essentially “going back in time.” They reach the park but the monument which was supposed to cast the shadow was missing. Without it, they will not be able to follow the shadow. To help them, Josh heads to the City College of San Francisco where the monument – a totem was moved to. With the help of cutting edge technology, he is able to get a virtual representation of the totem and heads back to the couple. The shadow is cast and the search begins. After hours of searching, they come up on nothing.
Emotions are high, with disappointment in the atmosphere. Nevertheless, they are undeterred, and Josh joins in the search. Eventually, they come up with something; they begin digging and find nothing useful. Their math may have been a little off, but they are certain they were on to something, and still the third key is still somewhere out there, waiting to be found. The question is where? For the individuals who deciphered the clues, why were they not lucky enough? Is the shadow strategy founded by Dustin and Diedra white true? Perhaps their calculations were a little off. Either way, there are ten boxes hidden underground still waiting to be found.
