Seven American Nights Forgery

Roy C. Lackey · 11 May 2008, 06:43 · from 2008-May.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 01:43:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Seven American Nights Forgery
Message-ID: <002d01c8b332$595d90e0$4cce4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

As the first two sentences of the story make absolutely clear, the private
investigator hired by Nadan's family had already unearthed sufficient
evidence to lead him to believe that Nadan had left D.C. to travel northward
to the region of the Bay of Delaware *before* the notebook had even been
"discovered" in said region. In other words, no matter what happened to
Nadan after the concluding events related in the notebook, whether forged or
not, the notebook had no bearing on the investigator's previous sleuthing.
The discovery of the notebook only served to lend a certain amount of
credence to his previously communicated conjecture that Nadan had left D.C.
for points north.

If Nadan killed Ardis and, as you suggest, he was being intensely monitored
by the U.S. government, they would have known of the killing and had a
perfectly legitimate excuse to arrest him openly for murder. There is no
indication that any such thing happened, and if it had, there would have
been no need to fabricate a diary in order to insinuate that he left the
city voluntarily to adventure in the interior of the country, much less
plant that diary so far away from D.C. If the government killed Ardis and
attempted to frame Nadan for the murder, as you contend, the result is the
same.

Further, with Ardis dead and without the information contained in the
notebook, how was the investigator able to conclude that Nadan had left the
city and traveled northward?

Nadan had no real desire to go adventuring or treasure hunting, but he felt
too defiled to go home. It is possible that he made some sort of plans to
travel northward on his own initiative, or he may have been blackmailed by
Bobby. Either way -- or by some other way altogether -- a trail of evidence
was left that allowed the investigator to conclude that Nadan left the city
*alive*, and the evidence had nothing to do with the notebook.

As for the American government pulling "some kind of stunt" on Easter Sunday
that would have significant international repercussions, it must have been a
big dud. The note that the investigator sent to the family back in Iran
along with the notebook was obviously written in the autumn, a good six
months after Nadan's stay in D.C. There is no indication that anything of
import happened in the world since Easter.

*If* any or all of the notebook was forged, the most obvious suspect is the
person who stood to benefit from it the most -- the investigator. So long as
he could keep up the family's hope that Nadan was alive, he could keep
milking them for money. And he almost certainly spoke Farsi.

-Roy

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