“Good. Let me tell you about your leg and ankle. The leg was reset after we got you here. Thanks to the work of your friend, everything was in good shape. No complications. If he hadn’t set it when he did, it would have been a different story. On the other hand, your ankle was a mess. Bones were crushed. We cleaned it out and put in pins. You’ll be able to walk on it. Eventually. You’ll not run any marathons, but you’ll get around. Most of the time you’ll need a cane. The ankle will need support. It will likely give you pain once in a while as well. That’s enough for today. You’re still on a morphine drip. We’ll cut it back a little at a time. Any questions?”
“How long until I can dig again?” Henry asked.
“Not for a while. However, we should have you on crutches in few days and you can leave then. You will have some discomfort, but you should be able to fly home. Boston, right?”
“Yes,” Henry answered. “What about the dig, Chad?”
“We’ll talk tomorrow, Doc.”
“Did you call Julie?”
“I will, Henry.”
“Thanks, Chad. Thanks…… Chad. Thanks…….” Henry faded into sleep.
Chapter 6
The next morning at the dig, Chad waited for the authorities. This excavation felt special.
Henry found the site working with a local Hopi, Jonathan Ahote. Chad did the local research, a technique that Henry taught him. Prior to any excavation they would gather all the local records, written or oral. They listened to the stories and the rumors and myths that usually accompanied the sites.
Chad learned that these caves were held as a place of mystical, religious, and out of body experiences. The mountain area outside of Sedona was riddled with caves. For centuries, Native Americans used these caves. They were often linked with the cliff dwellings that dotted the southwest, from Colorado to Arizona.
Their dig site was located behind one of the cliff dwellings. The first cave, Grotto 1, was reached through a tall, wide six-foot long entrance. The cave was large enough for a family to live in. Over the centuries several generations and various tribes occupied it and left their wall paintings. Grotto 1 was irregularly shaped, nearly twenty-five feet deep and thirty feet across. The ceiling was thirty-five feet high.
The dwellings were abandoned and re-occupied several times, but the last inhabitants left around 1400 CE. Unfortunately, after that, before there was controlled access and protection for the site, hikers, bikers, and various others showed little respect for the historical value of the first grotto. The ceiling was blackened by years of smoky fires. The wall paintings were faded, written over, and one whole wall was spray-painted with graffiti art.
Listening to the legends, Chad and Henry suspected a second grotto. Last summer, with the permission of the State Department, and an approving nod from the Native tribes in the area, Chad conducted soundings in Grotto 1 and discovered an empty space behind one large boulder.
He worked the crevasses surrounding what he suspected was a cork boulder inserted into another passageway. Two months of slow work proved him right. They removed a tapered boulder that almost perfectly fit a four-foot wide and three-foot tall connecting tunnel that snaked some forty-five feet to a second grotto.
The walls of the tunnel were extraordinarily smooth. Geologists who looked at it shook their heads. It had been formed by centuries, if not millenniums, of constant water flow that slowly enlarged a small volcanic tube formed tens of thousands of years ago. Either that or it was man-made by tools that don’t yet exist.
Chad aired out the tunnel for several days, pumping fresh air in to replace centuries of stale and depleted air, before he crawled through the tunnel, tethered by an air supply. He suspected that the stories of shamans’ out of body experiences were due to a lack of oxygen in the second grotto.
His thin six-foot frame easily fit. Chad was always in good shape. Though academically a genius, he found a challenge, and solitude, in cross-country competition in high school. He continued running in college, entering several marathons. His morning jogs of ten miles were a habit.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of several groups. He stood aside as the various factions discussed and argued. They represented the Indian tribes, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, FEMA, OSHA, the State Highway Patrol, the Sheriff of Yavapai County, the Reservation Police, the U.S. Forest Service, and finally the United States Geological Survey. The USGS, Chad learned, is the department that tracks earthquakes.
After all was said and done, and there would be more to be said, Chad was certain, the Forest Service who managed the site taped it off and closed it down. The Native American tribe representatives still claimed rights to it as a sacred site of their culture. The federal government, through some agency, but it was not clear which one, would perform the geological inspections to determine the stability of the two grottos.
-----
The length of the discussions at the site made Chad late. He felt he should have been here when Henry woke this morning. Hurrying through the doors to the third floor hall, he stopped dead in his tracks outside of Henry’s room. He recognized her voice. It still gave him goose bumps and tongue-tied him like it did the first time he met her – six years ago. Julie Clark, now Julie Stuart – Henry’s daughter.
He willed himself into control. No school-boy stammering this time. He walked in. “Julie, I’m surprised you are here.”
“Chad,” she exclaimed. “It’s good to see you. Thanks for calling me last night.”
Willpower was no match for her blue eyes. Chad had never been able to name their color – and he had tried. Something like azure, some part sapphire, even a little like cornflower blue. But blue they were. Surrounded by royal-like features of high cheekbones, thin lips, and a warm smile, the face was in turn framed by golden hair with just a hint of red. Chad was smitten once again.
“Hi, uh. I didn’t… You… Here..” His mouth was not engaged with his brain. She did that to him. She did it when he was seventeen, and she was twenty. She still did it now, six years later.
“You look good.” Damn, he did not plan to say that.
“Oh, Chad, that is sweet.”
Chad decided saying nothing was best.
Julie spoke again, “Jake’s outside. I was just leaving. We need to check in and get some rest. You and Dad need to talk, I know. I’ll be back later, Dad. Chad, walk me out?”
In the hall, Julie stopped. Turning to Chad, she hugged him close and whispered, “Chad, you saved his life. Thank you.”
She released him and hurried down the hall. Chad returned to Doc’s room, flustered and speechless.
“So what’s the story on the excavation?” Doc asked.
Chad filled Henry in on the morning’s tug of war. When he finished, Henry wasn’t even dejected.
“All in all, not so bad for us, Chad. It will take six months to clear the site for work. Another three months to clean it out and get ready. By next June we’ll be back.”
“I like your outlook on this, Henry. I’ve been thinking about the dig and what the earthquake did and how many earthquakes there have been over the centuries. I checked it out yesterday. This area averages two a year. The paintings and etchings date over a thousand years ago. That’s two thousand earthquakes, Doc. If we keep looking an inch at a time, we’ll be long dead before we get to the depth of a thousand years. We need to take some biopsies. A foot at a time.”
“You may be right, Chad. I’ll think on it. Julie asked me to go with her to Georgia. She can take care of me there. It will be better for me than Boston.”
“I can help you in Boston,” Chad protested.
“You won’t even be there. You’re going to Peru this fall. But we’ll be back here next summer.”
Chad was silent. He had been thinking about this. Caves and digging. He’d been doing full time digs for four years. He’d wondered if he should try something else. Maybe teaching. He thought about going back to BC for his doctorate.
He shared his thoughts with Henry.
Chad Archer and Henry Clark didn’t know it, but the Sedona earthquake just changed their lives forever.
Chapter 7
On another day, in another cavern, one-third of the way around the world, halfway up the western slope of Mount Carmel, Sergeant Benjamin Heron cautiously crept forward. The Israeli Defense Forces evacuated this area of the National Park yesterday.
Mount Carmel, revered in the Old Testament as a holy place is just thirty-eight miles from Lebanon, fifty miles from Syria, and another fifty miles from Jordan. Close to Israel’s sworn enemies. When it is your country against the world, all rumors, all scraps of information, all threats are treated as real. Intelligence learned that weapons had been stored in the caves. The Directorate of Military Intelligence did not share everything it knew with Heron’s battalion commander. He, in turn, did not share all that he knew with Heron’s company commander. However, its captain did share everything he knew with Heron’s platoon leader, Lieutenant Abrams. Finally, Abrams issued two instructions Sergeant Heron - look for hidden weapons and watch out for booby traps.
Sergeant Heron chose to leave one man at the cave entrance, just outside, protected, but in communication by radio. A bomb squad waited fifty meters away shielded by mounds and rocks. Heron slowly worked his way through the cave, looking for new dug earth, clusters of rocks, and of course trip wires and pressure plates.
Time crept slowly by for the sergeant. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Forty minutes. At the fifty-fifth minute the radios crackled.
“Heron,” the sergeant identified himself. “Loose dirt. It’s fresh. I need to dig.”
Following protocol, the sergeant dug into the hard cave floor. At first he used a hand-trenching tool around the loose dirt, which surrounded what looked like a clay pot sticking out just above the surface. He carefully looked for wires.
Working slowly, Heron dug away more of the dirt around the pot. The ground on each side became hard. Heron concluded some animal, or perhaps some human, had started to dig and gave up. From his backpack Heron took a battery powered chisel.
The radio crackled again. “Heron. No explosives. No weapons. Will dig out a clay pot.”
The ground was hard but in five minutes Heron was holding a sixty-centimeter long cylindrical clay vessel with a tight stopper at one end. Heron didn’t know anything about antiquities. He would not know this vessel was buried over two thousand five hundred years ago. As a precaution he asked the bomb squad to x-ray it. They saw rolls of paper inside. Word was passed to his lieutenant, then to his captain, and finally to his major, who happened to dabble in antiquities. The major ordered it to be sent to him. Normally that would take a day. However, the company was sent to the Golan Heights the next day and the clay pot sat in a box marked to the major’s attention for a year.
-----
A year later, just as Chad Archer was receiving his doctorate, the major received the box. He recognized the sealed lid and knew what was needed to open the vessel. He removed the papers, which he recognized as scrolls. It was not written in Hebrew. However, the major knew a little Greek. He began to read, becoming more excited. Then the importance of the find dawned on him. “Oh, shit,” was a close translation of his expression, first in Hebrew, then Greek, then English.
Part 2
Doc’s Quest
Present Day
Chapter 8
“Professor, isn’t this a question of faith versus science?”
Dr. Chad Archer looked at the large clock mounted on the back wall of the old Braxton College lecture hall. He wondered how many times a professor looked at the clock, wishing for more time or wishing it to move more quickly. He loved this hall with the raised teaching platform in front, the five whiteboards behind him, and the theater style seats rising away from him. Chad estimated it held nearly two hundred. His class of thirty could be lost in here. Luckily they were good students and he was a good teacher. They filled the front center seats.
Archer focused on the clock again. Five minutes left. He smiled, that boyish smile in a boyish face, under an unruly crop of red hair. His jeans, a rumpled shirt, and an occasional one or two day old whisker growth made him look more like his twenty year old students than a twenty-seven year old teacher. The Administration wasn’t fond of his style, or lack of, but his classes always had a waiting list.
“Nice try, Mr. Olson,” Chad scolded. “Oh, don’t look so innocent,” he added seeing the look of shock on his student’s face. “All of you know my passion for the discussion and argument of science, faith, and instinct as it relates to forensic history. You thought you would get me started and time would run out before I could give you your last assignment for the semester.”
He paused while they groaned.
“Here is the assignment.” More groans. “The first is to think about Mr. Olson’s question of faith and apply the question to the Ark of the Covenant. Does it and did it ever exist? How would you determine that? What puzzle pieces do you need to turn faith into science? Prove it exists now, or did exist once, or never existed. Where does faith enter into your thinking? Does it help? Does it get in the way? What is the difference between instinct and faith? Think about it. Narrow your thinking to no more than three and no less than one page. You get points for leaving out the fluff and rambling. Ten percent of your grade.”
He bowed at the applause. They liked short assignments.
“One last thing. We have one week of classes. The following week is your final. There will be three discussion questions. I will break you into groups. You won’t know the questions ahead of time. We’ll see your approach to using the principles of forensic history. It’s twenty-five percent of your grade. Your term paper that you have been working on is another twenty-five percent.”
Chad paused for drama.
“Oh yeah. To give you adequate time for this. No classes next week. Now get out of here.”
His last sentence was drowned out by thirty students, sounding more like two hundred, as they hurried away.
The hall emptied except for on person. Chad had noticed a man enter half way through his lecture, taking a seat near the last row. He looked older than the students. The sport coat and tie could mean a teacher or an administrator. However, the body language, the relaxed amused look, and Chad’s instinct said he was something else.
Chad gathered his notes, disconnected the laptop from the projector connection, and stuffed it all into his backpack. Slipping on his jacket, still necessary in mid May in Massachusetts, he noticed that the man had stood and was walking toward the front of the hall. Chad met him half way up the aisle and waited the next move. Would the man keep his height advantage on the steps? Was there a need to be bully or be the alpha? Chad dabbled in these psychological confrontations.
The man moved to the side, standing even with Chad on the same step and asked, “I’m looking for Dr. Archer. Is that you?”
“It is. But I prefer Chad, or Archer. I don’t think my doctor title is quite as deserved as those of the medical profession that had to work so much harder, longer, and learn so much more.”
“Not professor?”
“That’s for my students. I don’t think you came to join my class. Police? FBI?” Chad asked.
“Boston PD. I enjoyed the lecture. Perhaps I should take your class. It might help in my line of work. Detective Jimmy MacDonald.” He held out his hand.
Chad noted it was a firm grip, but not a testosterone challenge. He knew his was the same. If it came to a contest of grip strength, he expected he would win. Three years ago, during the winter months, when running outside was curtailed, a friend introduced him to rock climbing. Chad loved it. Exercise. Strength building. Arms. Hands. Legs. Last summer he found time away from the dig in California to do some beginner climbs in Yosemite.
“What can I do for you, Detective?”
“Was that a lucky guess?”
“What?”
“Police. FBI.”
&n
bsp; “Not a guess.”
“Instinct?” Mac quizzed.
“No. Well, perhaps a little.”
“Certainly not science,” the detective said, stepping back and looking at himself. “Is my badge showing? My gun? Flat feet? Dumb face?”
Chad liked this man, self-deprecating. Confident. Sure of himself.
“Your clothes. Your eyes. The way you look at everything. Confidence. Authority. All of that created an image. You can call it instinct. Educated instinct.”
“Is that what forensic history is?”
Chad laughed. “No. There is more science involved in forensic history.”
The policeman just looked at Chad, waiting for more.
“You’re serious? You really want to know what forensic history is?”
“I do. It’s why I am here. You see this morning my lieutenant calls me into his office. He tells me that maybe I should call on you. Ask for your help. I have this murder. The lieutenant says that last week he was in an international conference of law enforcement. Lots of people were there. From all over the world. Interpol was there. He’s chatting with an agent and tells the agent he works Boston homicide. The agent says lucky him. How so, the LT asks. Well, says the Interpol agent, you have that great detective living there in Boston. LT asks, who? The agent says Chad Archer. How about that, professor? I’m thirty-five, been a homicide detective for ten years in this town. I hadn’t heard of you. I looked you up. Nothing about being a great detective. Do I have the wrong Chad Archer?”
Chad’s green eyes darken when he’s angered. He knew this and countered with a smile. If nothing else, he would offer conflicting signals to this trained observer.
“I’d say the Interpol agent was wrong on all three things. I don’t live in Boston. I live in Walnut Hill, six miles from Boston. I’m not a detective, let alone a great one. I did some work a few times for Interpol.”
Moffat's Secret Page 2