The Lost Book of Wonders

by Chad Brecher

  Her three-month stay at Ramstein Air Force Base in the burn unit only served to reinforce her dislike of hospitals. She knew that she was one of the lucky ones. She got to leave with a scar between her ribs where the chest tube was shoved in, a reddish patch along her hip where the skin donor site was, and her hands delicately wrapped in gauze to protect the pink skin grafts. But she got to leave on her own two feet and with her faculties intact, which was more than she could say for many of the other poor patients.

  “You O.K.?” Alex asked.

  Ellie continued to look through the oversized window at the Hudson River below, and New Jersey beyond it. She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt before swinging around with an overcompensating smile and a nod. Alex was not fooled and looked at her with concern. As he was about to speak, he was suddenly interrupted by a bear hug from behind by a young man in khaki pants and a blue scrub top.

  The man deposited Alex’s feet back on solid ground and shook his hand.

  “Alex. Alex Stone. It’s been a long time,” exclaimed the man.

  “Ellie, I want to introduce you to Josh Weinstein. We went to college together,” Alex explained.

  Josh delicately shook Ellie’s hand with a giant grin. “Hello.”

  Ellie studied Josh. He looked like the prototypical fraternity brother who probably found it “cool” to be premed and ultimately satisfied his parents’ expectations by becoming a physician.

  “I’m pre-call, so let’s get a move on. This should be interesting. I’ve heard of it being done to look at mummies. I saw some documentary on it on cable a couple of weeks ago,” Josh said before turning around.

  Ellie and Alex followed him down a long corridor. Josh turned his head around as he walked like a tour guide. “Alex Stone…man! I was wondering what the hell happened to you after college.” He looked at Ellie and poked Alex in the sternum. “This guy was the smartest kid I ever met. We used to call him ‘Professor.’” He glanced back at Alex and smiled. “Everyone thought it was such a waste for you do the archeology thing. I mean, I liked the Indiana Jones movies, too — except maybe for that second one…that was pretty bad now that I think of it…especially when that Indian dude rams his hand through that guy’s chest and pulls out his heart and it’s still beating. But you must make shit money in archeology.”

  They arrived at a door. Josh pushed it open and held it for them to enter. As Alex and Ellie filed in, Josh inquired what Ellie did.

  “I’m afraid that, like Alex, I’m wasting my life away in archeology,” Ellie replied with a good-natured grin.

  “Shoot. I should just stop talking. My girlfriend says I talk way too much and all I do is end up putting my foot in my mouth.”

  They were in a small control room with multiple computer screens. Through a large window was a white donut-shaped apparatus with a long, thin table suspended in the hole. A petite blond sat behind the console with a look of boredom.

  “This is Debbie.” The woman gave a half-hearted wave. Josh turned to them. “I may be a radiology resident, but I could probably fly a 747 better than I could figure out how to work this machine. They teach us to read the images, not make them.”

  “What is it?” Ellie questioned as the woman made selections on the touch-screen with her long painted fingernails.

  “It’s a CAT scan — Computed Axial Tomography. I’m sure you’ve heard of x-rays. Well, think of this as a fancy x-ray. See that donut over there? All along the inside of the donut are detectors. Radiation is shot through the patient — or whatever is on the table for that matter — as it moves through the donut. The detectors pick up the information and make a picture with cross-sectional images like slices of a loaf of bread. This one is a sixty-four-slice detector. It’s pretty quick.”

  The technician looked up at a clock on the wall. “Josh, we really need to move this thing along. I have a patient coming any second. As it is, we could get busted for this.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Josh responded. “The mysterious box, please,” he asked and extended his hands.

  Alex withdrew the box from his bag and handed it to Josh, who examined it like a tourist looking over some curio. “Interesting. What is it?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Alex responded and followed Josh into the adjacent room where the CAT scanner sat. He watched as Josh placed the box on the table and, with a touch of a button, advanced it into the core of the donut.

  Having returned back to the control room, Josh asked the technician to scan the item. Ellie and Alex watched as Debbie pushed several buttons. Beyond the window, the table swept through the donut and the machine buzzed. Josh leaned into the console and examined the images. He sighed.

  “What is it?” Ellie asked with concern.

  “I’m afraid that this is not going to be too helpful to you guys,” Josh answered. He clicked a button and brought up an image on the screen. They stared at a white rectangle. “This is a scout. It’s basically a two-dimensional x-ray. Things that are this white on x-ray are made out of metal. When you get the third dimension with a CAT scan it will look like this…” Another click of the button showed images of what appeared to a white rectangle with white beams shooting out of it like a star. “It’s what we call in the radiology world, ‘streak artifact.’ It’s caused by ‘beam hardening.’ To the layman, the x-rays do not penetrate the metal.”

  “Metal? It’s made of wood.” Ellie responded.

  “It must be filled with metal or have an inner lining of metal for it to look like this,” Josh countered.

  “Is there anything else we can use to see into this box?” Alex asked as Josh lifted the box off the table.

  “Not here. An MRI at best wouldn’t help out. At worst, it might heat up or stick to the magnet. That’s all the tricks I have up my sleeve.” He looked down at the box and shrugged. “Why don’t you just go to the hardware store and saw it open?”

  Alex and Ellie looked horrified by the suggestion. “We can’t just destroy it! It is a historic artifact!” Ellie cried out.

  Josh held up his hands defensively. “Sorry. Just trying to help out.” He could see the disappointment in his visitor’s eyes. He patted Alex on the back. “Hey, if anyone can figure this thing out it’s you. All those late nights in the library while I was partying must have been worth something.” He gave a mischievous grin.

  Alex was not amused and extended his hand, palm up, towards Josh. The radiology resident returned the box. He gave Alex a firm pat on the back.

  “Gotta get back to work. Good luck.”

  “Thanks for trying,” Alex muttered. He looked at Ellie with disappointment. “I guess we need to think of something else.”

  “First, I think we both could use a drink.”

  8

  Somewhere in the back of the small, dark bar, Alex could hear the thump of a bass and the blare of a saxophone. A waitress dressed in black wordlessly arrived and roughly placed a bottle of beer on the wooden table in front of Alex. He watched the condensation drip down the label of the microbrew as the waitress slid a cocktail to Ellie and left.

  “I think dirty martinis have become my new favorite drink,” Ellie announced as she twirled the olive speared by a toothpick between her thumb and index finger. “I’ve been doing my fair share of drinking since…” Ellie’s voice drifted off. She smiled at Alex and glanced down at the table. “Let’s just say that I’ve been doing my fair share of drinking of late.”

  Alex hesitated, uncertain if Ellie’s comment was an invitation to pry into the sordid details. He tried to study her face but the flickering light of the candle positioned in the center of the table only provided intermittent, shadowy glimpses. Although he had only recently met Ellie, Alex could not help but feel that some kind of protective layer had unwittingly peeled away from her back in his office. Exposed was a raw passion for uncovering the mysteries of the past. He recognized a kinship in such quixotic pursuits. Alex lifted the bottle by its neck and tried to act
nonchalant as he brought it to his lips.

  “It seems like you’ve been through a lot,” Alex said.

  “That’s an understatement,” Ellie tersely replied. She brought the glass up to her mouth, flicked the olive to the side with her ring finger, and took an extended drink.

  Although Alex tried to be discrete, his eyes were drawn to the pink glow of the skin on her palm as she held aloft the glass. Cognizant of Alex’s interest, Ellie self-consciously deposited the glass back down and placed her hands palm-down on the tabletop.

  Alex gritted his teeth with embarrassment. He was immediately upset with himself for being so callous in his invasion of her personal space. All he could muster was a stuttering “I’m sorry…I…”

  Ellie looked down at the top of her hands and thought of how best to respond. She peeked across the table at Alex who was nervously swigging from the bottle of beer. Ellie turned over her hands like she was visiting a fortune-teller. The skin graft on her palms glistened in the candlelight.

  “It’s OK. Really, it’s OK,” she said as much to convince herself of this fact as to comfort Alex. “They’re skin grafts, if you couldn’t figure it out. The doctors at Ramstein are quite adept at putting people back together. There were a lot of soldiers a lot worse off than me. I’m the lucky one. I guess I had it coming. It’s what you get for plunging your hands into a raging fire in order to retrieve a wooden box. Now that is out in the open, you might have a better understanding about my misgivings about our mysterious box.”

  Alex watched as Ellie turned her head in the direction of the jazz band. He took it as a sign that any further discussion on the subject was off limits. There’s more to this story, Alex surmised. What exactly happened in Iraq? It’s wrong to force the issue, Alex decided.

  “Where do we go from here?” Alex asked, his voice nearly drowned out by an impromptu saxophone solo.

  “Do you think that it could really be a possession of Marco Polo, THE Marco Polo?” Ellie wondered.

  Alex shrugged. “Wouldn’t it be amazing?”

  Ellie appeared to be deep in thought. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite ready to give up on deciphering this box. If you think that there may be a connection to Polo, then I could make a phone call to someone who would be intrigued by the prospect. He’s practically an uncle. I could see what he thinks.”

  “Who did you have in mind?” Alex asked, his interest piqued.

  “His name is Bernardo Gozzi.”

  “You know Bernardo Gozzi? His book on Marco Polo’s travels is a classic.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him for a while. I guess he’s a part of a past I thought I had moved on from.”

  “Will he help?”

  Ellie brought the martini glass to her lips and finished the contents. Her face emerged from the shadows.

  “He’ll help.”

  9

  Cape Town, South Africa

  Solomon Haasbroek groaned as he sat bare-chested on the edge of the bed. An excruciating pain radiated through his skull, like a leather belt tightening against his temple, until the roots of his hair tingled. He squinted and blindly reached over to the bedside table until his fingers found a pair of sunglasses. He slid them on with relief and forced himself to a standing position. Bright white light streamed in through the glass doors leading to a small plunge pool.

  Solomon stretched and loosened up some phlegm with several coughs. He tightened the strings on his pajama bottoms, reached into a bowl of biltong, and withdrew a handful of the dried beef strips. He popped them in his mouth and removed a beer from the refrigerator. South African breakfast of champions, he thought, and passed through the opened sliding doors and onto the patio. The robotic pool cleaner explored the bottom of the plunge pool, dragging a long hose behind it that produced ripples across the surface. He leaned up against the railing, slid the pistol between his pants and the small of his back, and stared down at Camps Bay. The ocean looked particularly rough today and undoubtedly freezing, as usual.

  He could see a group of black boys walking across the beach lugging large wooden statues from the Ivory Coast that they hoped to unload on tourists.

  This place has gone to the dogs, man.

  He had served his time for God and country in the SADF, the South Africa Defense Force. He had fought in the brutal cross-border campaigns in Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique. He had seen and done horrible things that would give nightmares to even the worst of killers. This was all before – as he put it – Nelson Mandela trotted out of prison like Jesus reborn and gave the country to the kaffirs once and for all. But every setback ultimately breeds opportunity, and he had skills for this new age. He had done quite well for himself serving as a mercenary, or as the Americans like to sugar-coat it, a “contractor.” He, after all, had done well enough to purchase a swanky flat overlooking the Cape Town beaches and beneath the shadow of Table Mountain. But the truth was that it was more than just money that attracted him to his job, it was the freedom of being nationless, extralegal, and independent.

  The cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He brought it up to his ear.

  “Howzit?” he answered.

  The voice on the other end was deep and had an accent. He tried to place it — Italian? Portuguese? He had not heard the voice since just after his ill-fated mission to Iraq. His client had paid well, despite the fact that the box could not be located. The mysterious patron had explained that despite his failure, he would be kept on retainer in case any new leads arose.

  Iraq, Solomon snorted to himself. Iraq is a zoo. A complete freakin’ disaster. His lips curled at the corners. At least I added some madness to the mix before departing.

  “Mr. Haasbroek, I hope you are well.”

  “I’m alright.”

  “I have another job for you if you are interested…” The man’s voice trailed off.

  Solomon pulled the pistol from his pants and held it by his side. “I’m listening.”

  “I need you to go to Venice. I will send you all the details when you are on your way.”

  “No hint of what the job will entail?” Solomon asked.

  “Your discretion and the special skill set you have developed over the years. You will need to arrange a team. Will this be a problem?”

  “It can be arranged for the right price.”

  “Money is not a problem.”

  “Good. When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  10

  Venice, Italy

  The telephone call had interrupted an otherwise monotonous day. Dr. Bernardo Gozzi laid down his wire-rimmed glasses upon his desk and rubbed at his eyes with the balls of his hands. The three years since he had assumed the directorship of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana were a blur. Plucked out of the world of academia, Dr. Gozzi was gradually being transformed into what he despised most — a bureaucrat.

  There were the endless meetings on cataloguing and re-cataloguing the thousands and thousands of maps and manuscripts that comprised the library’s enormous collection. Then there was the massive project of creating a greater European research database to compliment the new political and economic realities of the continent. And if that was not enough, there was the battle against the Anobidi — the dreaded woodworm.

  Oh the woodworm! Dr. Gozzi moaned to himself. Who would have thought that he would have become such an expert on the mating patterns of the tiny insect? The woodworm threatened to turn many of the most fragile and irreplaceable works within the library into piles of sawdust. To combat this beetle infestation, Dr. Gozzi had elicited the help of several high-tech companies. The vulnerable volumes were digitized and then hermetically sealed in special bags. The ambient oxygen was progressively driven from the bag until the concentration was below that in which an aerobic organism like the woodworm could survive. This had succeeded in limiting the damage and saving the library, but at a steep financial cost. It was a cost the library would have to recoup with a successful exhibit and with generosity fr
om both the public and private sectors. Dr. Gozzi painfully recognized that this meant fundraising, and a lot of it.

  Dr. Gozzi placed the glasses back on the bridge of his nose and wound the wires around his ears. He peered at the computer screen. A long list of emails ran down the screen. He had only recently and reluctantly learned to “surf” the internet and send electronic mail. He missed the days of academia when it was just him and a pile of moldy, leather bound books — volumes that you could put your fingers on and smell the musty scent of. He devoured books with an insatiable appetite like…like a bookworm. Dr. Gozzi smiled and stretched.

  The phone call had come at the end of a meeting on acquiring two rare maps of Venice from a private collector. His secretary had silently slipped into the room and whispered in his ear that there was an urgent phone call from Pietro Zeno. Dr. Gozzi watched as the lawyer and collector politely nodded farewell and slipped out of his office. Is the library sinking? Dr. Gozzi wondered with alarm.

  Dr. Gozzi pressed the blinking hold button and brought the receiver to his ear. “Pronto?”