by Hep Aldridge
“Well, old friend, it looks like you were right,” I said, “Now, we take a few minutes to celebrate and then work on what the hell to do next!”
He looked at me, smiled raised his glass, and tossed his drink down in one swallow and said, “Hell, yeah!”
It was five a.m. when we wound down and headed to the dorm for some much-needed sleep. Fitz said he would rouse us no later than 10 a.m. and breakfast would be served in the dorms, cafeteria till 11, so no sleepy heads! By 9:45 the next morning, we were in the cafeteria all trying to speak at once.
Nobody was sure if they had slept or not, but everyone was, “Bright eyed and bushy tailed,” as my grandpa used to say, that morning and ready to get back to work.
Over breakfast, Joe had said, “Boy, I know somebody who’s going to be pissed!”
“Who?” I asked.
“Lawrence,” he said. “I sure hope that Napa Valley wine was good, and the company was better because it will take a lot to top this!”
Shit, in all the excitement, I had forgotten about that. “When is he due back?” I asked.
Joe said, “In three days.”
“You better get on the phone and tell him to drop everything and get his ass back here, NOW! And for God’s sake, don’t tell him why over the phone!”
“Roger that,” Joe said as we were walking back to the lab area. A few minutes later, I heard Joe arguing with someone on his cell and thought with a chuckle, “Yeah, he’s gonna be pissed!”
We passed the conference room and its guards and were let into the lab by what I guessed were the dayshift security. Johnson and Stevens were inside, still busy doing their science thing. I’m not sure if they even left last night and were obviously very excited about something.
As we entered, Stevens spoke up first and said, “Colonel, glad you’re here; you will not believe what we found.”
“Jesus Christ,” Fitz said. “I’ve heard that phrase more in the last 48 hours than I have in my entire life; now what?” Stevens didn’t know whether to take that as a rebuke or just an exclamation by his boss who had been continuously overwhelmed in the last two days. “Go ahead, Stevens; don’t mind me,” Fitz said.
With a sigh of relief, he continued, “Sir, you know the hole we drilled in the box yesterday?”
“Yes,” Fitz replied.
“Well, Sir it’s, gone!”
“What?” Fitz exclaimed. “What the hell do you mean gone?”
“Yes, Sir, it’s gone; look for yourself,” he said as he handed Fitz the top of the box. We observed where we had disturbed the tar or pitch with the drilling device on the outside, but once we got through it, the surface beneath was smooth as if we had never disturbed it.
As we studied it, he said, “What the hell kind of wood is this thing made of?”
“That’s another interesting thing,” Johnson chimed in. “When we discovered this, we ran the test on the particles of the box we caught when we drilled the hole… It’s not wood, Sir, but some kind of polymer-based material as far as we can tell.”
“Well, what kind of polymer?” Fitz growled. It was obvious these two scientists were not used to NOT having answers to their boss’s questions.
“We’re not sure, Sir. Big Mo couldn’t give us any answers.”
“Jesus, just when I thought the weirdness might be winding down,” Fitz said. “Okay, drill another hole and monitor it; I want to know what happens!”
“Yes, Sir,” they both responded.
“Where are we with the other items, the cube and cloth stuff?” Fitz asked. Both scientists looked at each other rather sheepishly and mumbled, “Nowhere Sir, we have nothing new to report.” That’s not what Fitz or any of us wanted to hear.
I said, “Now that we have the information that Doc gave us from the journal last night, let’s check out the cube again." We walked over to the table where it sat and examined it closely.
I said, half-jokingly, “Anybody see an on or off switch?” with a chuckle. My attempt at humor was not well received. “Are we guessing that this is the device that the friar saw being used?”
“Maybe,” Doc said.
“But if this is the same type of device that the friar saw in operation in the jungle, there has to be a way to activate it,” I said. We continued to examine the cube from every angle and all sides. Nothing…! I spoke to Johnson and Stevens and asked if they had run a test that would identify any power or magnetic signature this thing might have. They said yes to both questions and came up with nothing much; some of their instruments gave them some inconsistent, wacky readings, but nothing concrete. Okay, back to square one. What if this wasn’t what the friar had seen being used? Maybe it was just an ornate artifact he included for the king’s pleasure. I turned to Doc and said, “Wouldn’t you think the journal and what was included in the box would have some kind of relationship to one another?"
“I would think so… if you’re trying to impress a king and you had made some amazing discoveries, you wouldn’t want to be sending him trinkets. If you could call all this cool stuff trinkets,” Doc said.
Joe added, “Yeah, if you’re trying to impress him, that would be like sending the king a transistor radio and not including the batteries. Unless of course he had no idea what this stuff did either.”
“Didn’t the friar say the natives were doing something to the box on the stone before they moved it?” I asked.
Doc said, “Yeah, but he couldn’t see what they did from as far away as he was."
"So, let’s take a closer look at the top; we may have missed something,” I said. As we scrutinized the surface of the cube, there was nothing that looked like a switch or activation device.
While we were looking at it, Doc said, “You notice anything strange about these hieroglyphs, Colt?"
I said, “Maybe but I’m not sure what it is."
“Both seem to resemble proto-Egyptian and Maya hieroglyphs. From what little we know about this era, we estimate it pre-dates what we normally observe in carvings and wall paintings by up to three to four thousand years."
“No shit,” I said. “I thought there was something kind of different about them but had no idea that’s what it was.”
“Yep," he said, "I would guess these texts, as unbelievable as it may seem to be somewhere in the five to seven thousand BCE range."
I let out a low whistle. "I thought the Maya said their calendar and civilization started about 3,600 BC.”
“They did,” Doc said. “But we now believe the Maya may have copied their writing, calendar, and math systems from the Olmec, who could pre-date the Maya by thousands of years."
Everyone had been listening to our conversation with interest, and Dimitri said, “So, this is not regular Egyptian writing or Maya?”
Doc said, “No, this is much older than what we’re used to seeing."
Joe said, “So, that means that this cube could be nine thousand years old?"
“Possibly, possibly more, or else someone was very well versed in these ancient languages and carved them on here,” Doc replied, “and I don’t have a clue why someone would do that. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe they were carved by hand anyway. This looks more like machine engraving."
I looked more closely at the top and said, “You’re right, Doc, it’s all too perfect to be hand carved. Can you read the text?” I asked.
"Not really," Doc said, "I can pick out a couple of things, but trying to understand what they say or mean will take time and research, and that includes this early version of cuneiform if that’s what it is."
Fitz said, “Okay this keeps getting stranger and stranger."
Doc looked at him, grinning, and said, “Told you I would wrap the needle around the peg of the Weird-meter!" Stumped by what we knew or rather didn’t know about the cube, I shifted my attention, for the time being, to the one thing we hadn’t discussed, the carved ingots that were in the bottom of the box. The techs had removed them and had them sitting on another table in the
lab.
I walked over to it and said, “Doc, what do you make of these”? As he walked over, I asked Stevens if they had any info on them and he shook his head.
“No, Sir, not really, we think it may be a similar material as the cube, but they showed up on our scan, so we have no way of confirming it since neither of them gives us any readings on Big Mo. We’re only basing that guess on outward appearance, but we know they’re damn hard. When we got our sample for Big Mo, we tested for hardness and got numbers on the Rockwell and Brinell scale that were amazing.”
I picked up one ingot and looked at it closely. It wasn’t heavy like the gold we were used to handling, but it wasn’t light. The carvings didn’t look like carvings either as I examined them more closely; they appeared to be precision engravings. I Compared it to the cube and saw the same precise cuts. Nice, sharp, clean lines, exactly like an engraving. When I pointed this out to Doc, he said he agreed and, if that were the case, since the engravings varied from ingot to ingot, they might provide specific information about something on each one. Hmm, he could be right.
“But, if so, what were they telling us?” I said. “Tony, can you take a look at that binary code on the cube and these engravings on the ingots and cube and see if you can come up with anything?”
“Sure, he said. “I'll need a terminal that can access my server.”
I said, “Fitz?"
"No problem; use the one in the conference table. I’ll get you access to our system, and you can use the encrypted link we set up with your machine.”
Tony headed for the conference room, saying, “That would be perfect. I’ll already have the images in the system and can get right on it." Fitz touched his ear and gave orders for access for Tony to someone on the other end of his personal Com link.
He turned and said, “Done.”
I nodded and turned my attention back to the tables in the lab thinking, okay, now we are approaching this problem from multiple fronts. I just hope we can start making some real progress and come up with some answers.
Chapter Eighteen
I turned to Fitz and asked, “Do you have another room we can use for a Pow Wow? I’ve got some things on my mind I need to hash out with everyone, and I don’t want to disturb Tony in the conference room."
"Sure,” Fitz said "We’ll use the observation lab next door. It’s got a small conference table set up. Plus, we will still have access to our computers and communications from there.”
“Great,” I said as we headed for the door. Once we had settled into the new space, I said “Okay, scientific-test-wise we have no answers on our discoveries; let’s approach it from another direction. Let’s apply some deductive reasoning to this whole thing and see if that gets us anywhere.”
Dimitri added “So, we go from Mr. Spock to Sherlock Holmes.”
“More or less, yes,” I said. “Open discussion float any idea no matter how off the wall it may seem. We’re dealing with some strange shit here, and we need to find answers and soon.”
Fitz had taken his usual seat at the head of the table and chewed on one of his unlit Cuban cigars and nodded. “Okay, so what do we know?”
“Well,” I said, “we have a crate from a 1715 shipwreck.” As I spoke, I realized my words appeared on a screen built into the wall and Fitz was tapping on the table-top.
He smiled and said, “Go ahead; there will be a recording and text displayed on the screen as you speak.” Ah, modern technology at your fingertips, he has all the toys, I thought.
“The crate contains objects that we haven’t been able to identify, placed there by a Jesuit Friar. The crate was destined for King Phillip of Spain,” I said. “The friar says he found or was given these things by the tribesmen he was living with in the Andes Mountains around 1709.”
Doc added, “Right, somewhere on the eastern side in Ecuador.”
I added, “They were being sent to the King of Spain under special guard and transport.”
Dimitri jumped in, “And we’ve got a journal describing the adventures of this Jesuit Friar who lived with the indigenous people of that time for several years.”
“Right, so we are dealing with three points in time; the time the friar lived with the natives, the sending of the package to Havana, and the sinking of the ship and loss of the package in 1715."
"What about the skeleton holding onto the package?" Joe said.
Yeah, I had all but forgotten about him. I turned to Doc, who reached into his pocket and pulled out the large signet ring I had taken off the skeleton.
“I haven’t forgotten," he said as he held it up, “but with all the excitement of recent discoveries, I shoved it to the back burner. I’ll get some of my people in Spain on it and see if they can bird-dog this for us."
“Good,” I said, “and get back into that journal. We need every scrap of information we can get our hands on.” He nodded in agreement. “Okay,” I said, “the stuff in the box, the metal cube, the journal, the jewels, the ingots, and the silvery invisibility cloth: place of origin?"
Joe said, “I would say the rough emeralds came from South America, the diamonds, rubies, and sapphires could be from there as well, I guess, but less likely, and they didn’t have such precise faceting capabilities, did they? And the journal is self-explanatory."
“Okay, for now, that’s good." I replied.
“The gold we found came from the Mexico City mint,” Dimitri said.
“Right, so we have a time frame, mystery crate, place of origin, destination, main characters, the friar, local tribesmen, Anutu, Theos, and our mystery skeleton.”
“The next big pieces of the mystery are the contents of the crate, which is hard evidence, and the contents of the journal; is it truth or fiction?”
Doc spoke, “I think what we have in the lab corroborates much of what the friar said in his journal and a friar lying to a king is not likely in this situation.”
“All right,” I said, and as I looked around the room, everyone nodded their assent. “Then what about the city of the gods that was being re-built and the mysterious underground holy place; were they truth or fiction?” I asked.
Nils said, “I think we have to be open to the possibility that what we are dealing with is something not of this world: possible advanced technology being used by ancient cultures. Plus, we need to find out who this Anutu and Theos were.”
Dimitri said, “I think the only way we will get answers to those questions is to get to the source, put boots on the ground in Ecuador.”
Joe said, “I was wondering if someone would make that suggestion, Dimitri,” and laughed.
“I think you’re right; we need to continue to chase down the facts until we have irrefutable evidence and answers. I mean rock solid stuff that no scientist can deny,” I said.
Fitz and Doc both said, “Agreed.”
“Yeah, the last thing we need is to look like a bunch of loonies on the front page of every newspaper in the world,” Dimitri added. “It would be like that Roswell thing all over again."
Nils laughed and said, "Don’t scoff, buddy, that Roswell thing may turn out to be real after all!"
“Okay, so what’s our next move?” I asked.
“Well, I think we need to get our ducks in a row here first; you know with Risky Business. It would be a shame to drop the ball on the galleon search now since we know it’s real and we're close,” Nils said. “What’s the plan for continuing the search?"
I thought for a few minutes and then said, “I think our best course of action will be to turn the galleon search over to you and Lawrence with Gus and his crew. Since we are going to look for the galleon, we need to finish the incorporation process. File for leases off the cape or whatever we need and establish ourselves as a legitimate underwater recovery company. That also means anything we find from here on out will be monitored by the powers that be.”
Dimitri raised his hand with a grin; I said, “Yes?”
He said, “Anything we find?”
> I thought for a minute and then replied, “Well, most anything, at least enough to keep us looking legit!"
“Okay,” he said, “I like that better.” Everyone laughed… that damn pirate mentality, I thought.
“We've got to establish Gus, the Falcon and its crew either as part of Risky Business or as a subcontractor and let them take over the on-site galleon search, to protect them and keep us legit. We’ll leave the details of completing that whole process up to Lawrence. He can work that out. I want you guys in charge of overseeing that endeavor and staying on top of those details. I'm sure some of us will be out-of-pocket down the road.”
Fitz spoke up, “I suggest we bring O’Reilly in on this and I will assign Wilson to handle the financial stuff. He’s the best I’ve got and can move money around in ways it would take any federal agency decades to pick up a trail. Wilson is one of my top accountant types; he also keeps me up on the global money market situation and investment opportunities.”
I have to admit; this was sounding better than it had at first. “Okay,” I said, “but with this in place, if I need money right away, how long will it take to negotiate this system before I can get it?”
Fitz just laughed, “Colt, you get a request to us and one hour later, you will have a line of credit or cash in hand anywhere in the world, up to a couple of million dollars, guaranteed!" Fitz continued, “O’Reilly is a great analyst, besides being a top field operative and pilot. She did down and dirty field work in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and some other places you don’t need to know about. She worked for the CIA until she got severely injured on an Op and had to spend time stateside recuperating. That’s when her abilities as an analyst got noticed. She lost some good friends on that Op and never got the chance for payback. It’s hung with her ever since. I don’t think she’s ever gotten over it, but she is totally dependable. Just remember… she does have a short fuse if you know what I mean. You don’t want to piss this lady off!”