The Milestone Protocol

by Ernest Dempsey

  Magnus was a powerful voice in not just the archaeology and anthropology circles, but on the global platform he’d built.

  Some suggested he might run for political office, but Tommy didn’t believe that. The man seemed immune to the temptation of power through political ladder-climbing. There were some within his circles that tried to coerce him into running for the highest office in Sweden, but Magnus blew it off as a ridiculous endeavor.

  “Prime ministers and presidents can only do so much,” he’d said. “The real power lies within the private sector, where ordinary people can make a real difference every day with their time and money. World leaders are held back by bureaucracy. I, however, answer only to my ethics, my moral compass, and the science of studying the past.”

  Tommy had loved reading that, and he knew it wasn’t bluster. He’d known Magnus for twenty years and had been something of a prodigy for the Swede. Tommy first did an internship under the man, learning all he could about the world of archaeology in real settings—as opposed to the classroom, where a sterile environment could only lend itself to a limited understanding of how things worked.

  Six months under the guidance of Dr. Sorenson had proved invaluable, and it was Magnus who’d suggested Tommy start the International Archaeological Agency as a way to secure and transport valuable ancient artifacts. He’d even offered to fund the venture fully, but with the assumed passing of Tommy’s parents, he’d inherited enough to begin on his own. He declined Dr. Sorenson’s money, a fact that Magnus still appreciated to this day. It was easy to see he was proud of Tommy for his independent nature. Men like him were often asked for money, usually in the seven-figure range. On any given day, no less than four colleges called to request funding for a new wing for this or a new building for that. Tommy asked for nothing except knowledge, and Magnus had given that in spades.

  “And so, it is with great pleasure and pride that I present to you today’s speaker,” Magnus said.

  Tommy turned his phone on do-not-disturb mode and slid it into his pocket. He pressed down the black slacks and stood, straightening his jacket in the process. His white button-up shirt left the top two buttons undone, as he knew that wearing a tie for this occasion might seem a bit stiff to the younger crowd.

  “My good friend Tommy Schultz of the International Archaeological Agency.”

  Applause once more filled the enormous room. Tommy bound up the steps, gently gripping the rail for balance until he reached the top. He took a deep breath, put on a smile, and stepped out through the opening in the curtains.

  Magnus stood behind a white, modern-design podium. The Swede grinned broadly at his former understudy and stepped back. Magnus looked like the billionaire he was, with blond hair cut in the latest fashion and a neatly trimmed reddish beard that framed his tanned face. He was strong, with broad shoulders and a chest that seemed it might rip through his black button-up shirt at any moment.

  Dr. Sorenson motioned to the podium and stepped back farther, allowing Tommy to take the stage and command of the room.

  “Thank you, Dr. Sorenson,” Tommy said as the applause died down. Magnus stepped back out of view, disappearing through the curtain.

  “Archaeology is a funny thing,” Tommy said. “You can spend months and years out in the field digging through the dirt with brushes and spades, barely making a dent in anything. More days are spent in archaeology not finding something than actually making a discovery…by a ridiculous factor. Those of you in the audience who’ve worked with Dr. Sorenson know that firsthand.”

  A wave of laughter rolled through the crowd.

  An image from King Tutankhamun’s tomb appeared on a wide screen behind Tommy. The picture displayed the vast treasure horde that was discovered there.

  “But, every now and then, we find something remarkable,” Tommy said. The image changed to one depicting the Dead Sea Scrolls spread out on a table. The picture blurred into another that featured the clay jars that contained the scrolls in Qumran. Another image followed, this time showing off the dig site at Göbekli Tepe.

  Tommy paused a second and looked back at the screen as it continued to change, each slide showing pictures of important discoveries in the field of archaeology.

  He returned his gaze to the audience, panning over them to make each person feel as if he were speaking just to them on a personal level.

  “History is important,” he went on. “We all know that, yet we see people pushing it aside all over the world. In some places, mostly in larger cities, we have witnessed the destruction of history.”

  The image on the screen changed again. A picture of the tomb of Jonah appeared, then replaced by one of rubble where the mosque containing the tomb had once stood—the result of a terrorist attack. Another image displayed rioters taking down statues in various American, Canadian, and European cities. Other monuments showed the effects of vandalism by paint or hammer or chisel. Ancient ruins were marred by burn marks or graffiti. One picture displayed a proud group of protestors in masks standing over a toppled column that dated back to the fourth century BC.

  The room was already silent, but with each subsequent image of the destruction, it grew more reverent. The place felt somber, church-like. Tommy knew that the story within the pictures had made an impact.

  “This kind of thing must cease,” Tommy said, “lest all of our hard work go in vain. People have politicized things of the past, things that have already happened and cannot be changed. They have used history’s sins or mistakes as a rallying point for anarchy and destruction, and in the process have caused us to lose a part of ourselves, who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.”

  Tommy strode across the stage, again meeting dozens of eyes as he looked out over the crowd. He was strong, and just a touch under six feet tall, an imposing brick house of a figure.

  “One of my favorite quotes comes from Life of Reason by George Santayana. It says that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. How can we remember the past if we are so zealously destroying it? While not all of the past is pretty, it’s important we keep those mistakes in our memories.”

  New images of the Holocaust appeared on the screen behind him. He didn’t need to look back. Tommy could see the reactions on the faces before him. A terribly sad image bloomed onto the screen. It showed children, mothers and fathers, grandparents, all skin and bone, piled into mass graves just outside the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. The picture gave way to a video from the old archives.

  “These people are German citizens from the city of Weimar. They claimed that they didn’t know what was going on in the forest just a few miles from their homes. Despite the occasional ash snow or the random trains that came and went, these people went on living their lives—perhaps in ignorance, perhaps by selective ignorance.”

  The video showed citizens in their dresses and suits helping to bury the dead while Allied soldiers oversaw the process.

  “When the Allies busted through the gates of Buchenwald and discovered the atrocities there, they were sickened, but what bothered them just as much were the claims of the people of Weimar that they had no idea what was going on. As punishment for their ignorance—chosen or otherwise—the Allies forced the people of the town to dig the mass graves, a lesson that was intended to make certain such things never went unremembered. And that we should all be keenly aware of what is going on in our world, especially right outside our front door.”

  Tommy returned to the podium and took a drink from a glass of water before resuming. The video on the screen stopped and turned to black. Then a new image appeared, drone footage of one of the jungles of the Amazon rain forest. “We must not forget the past, no matter how vile, how offensive it might be to some. It must be honored or revered or feared or loathed, but never forgotten.” Tommy’s voice reached a climax. “And we must continue to strive to uncover more, to learn the history of places we’ve already forgotten.”

  He narrowed his eyes and scan
ned the audience again, holding them in rapt attention.

  “The Amazon,” Tommy said with a glance over his shoulder at the sprawling, dense forests. The drone footage transitioned, and the Amazon River appeared, snaking its way through the landscape as far as the eye could see. “What lies beneath all those trees? What is hiding under the foliage of this ancient and mysterious place? We have now discovered the remains of people in the Amazon who have a genetic sequence that matches people in Australasia, DNA that only those people have. They were on the other side of the world, tens of thousands of years ago. History classes would have you believe that people weren’t capable of long-distance seafaring until the Greeks or Romans or Vikings. One must wonder why. Who were these ancient peoples dwelling in the Western Hemisphere? What did they eat? What kind of homes did they live in? What were their religious practices? And”—the screen changed to an image of a miniature golden sculpture that looked eerily similar to a spacecraft—“what was their technology like?”

  The screen morphed into spectacular images of the Sahara Desert. “What lies under the sands of the Sahara? Some years ago, my team discovered an ancient pyramid out in the middle of this vast desert. What was it doing there? Who put it there? And how many more ancient sites might exist beneath the desert sands? We now know that ten thousand years ago or more, the Sahara was a much different place, with an ecosystem that was nothing like the one we see today. Who might have lived there? What did they build?”

  A Caribbean beach appeared on the screen. Then the image zoomed out, moved, then zoomed back in, plunging into the ocean as if in real time. Bubble effects gurgled on the edges of the screen to the delight of the crowd. Then the picture cleared, and the audience was shown two scuba divers hovering over enormous stone slabs set into the sea floor. Tommy flicked his eyes over the crowd. “How many of you have heard of the Bimini Road?” He only paused a second, allowing a few people to raise their hands despite the insinuation of a rhetorical question. “Some would have you believe it’s a natural formation. In fact, most of the historical and scientific mainstream still contend that these massive stones were somehow hewn, formed, and laid in that pattern by nature, that pure chance organized these megaliths in this way.”

  A few giggles ran through the crowd, along with some gasps.

  “Insane, isn’t it? Yet that’s what we’re being told, and worse, what we’re expected to believe. ‘Because science,’” Tommy used air quotes. The audience laughed again, harder this time. “Because the ‘experts’ said so.” The second use of air quotes renewed the crowd’s amusement to a near roar.

  Tommy waited for the laughter to die down again and offered a smile, shaking his head as if breaking character and losing sight of his speech in exchange for a moment of humor. “It’s crazy,” he snorted, looking down at the floor. He raised his head and looked back through the curtain to his left. His friend Magnus watched with every bit of rapt attention as the audience. The man gave an approving nod to go along with the beaming smile on his face.

  “We must not forget the past,” Tommy said, still looking at his friend. Then he tore his gaze away and returned it to the crowd. “We must remember. We must push to learn more about it, to find the things we’ve already forgotten. Who built the site at Göbekli Tepe? Who lived there nearly thirteen thousand years ago? How does their story jibe, or conflict, with that of the Bible or the Sumerian texts, the Vedas or the Koran or anything else we think we have figured out? Are all of those things based on something earlier? Or is it new information we need to compile and assimilate into the rest of our history? And just as importantly, how many more Göbekli Tepes or Bimini Roads or Stonehenges are out there to be discovered, just sitting under the dirt, waiting for someone to dig? Someone with a spade and a brush. Someone like you.”

  Tommy paced a few steps, letting his words sink deeply into every heart in the crowd. He spun on his heels to face them once more. When he looked out, he saw determined, fierce gazes from people who had been moved by his speech.

  “What will we find if we try to challenge the status quo? Will we find a cure for most of our modern diseases? Will we figure out how to age better and live longer? What kinds of ancient technology will we discover if we begin proactively searching, scouring the world for information we’ve lost?”

  Tommy took another drink at the podium then stepped away as images of hungry children, sick people in hospital beds, and spaceships flying into the heavens appeared, taking up chunks of the screen. Doctors and nurses appeared next, followed by pictures of people working at computers, and then finally, a dig site teeming with archaeologists and anthropologists.

  “I challenge you to challenge the experts. I challenge you to challenge what we have been taught all along, to challenge the mainstream of history and science, to defy the authority of the establishment that would keep us in the dark and from the light of our past. I challenge you”—he stopped and swept the audience with his brown eyes one last time—“to challenge Dr. Sorenson. And to challenge me. Challenge what we think we know so we stop forgetting and perhaps discover something we lost long ago. Thank you for having me here. It’s been an honor to speak to you today.”

  The crowd roared with applause. People rose to their feet, inspired by the message. Tommy smiled back at them, nodding and waving for several seconds before he turned and walked offstage.

  He met Dr. Sorenson’s approving stare, though Tommy noted something mischievous about it. “What?” Tommy asked, stopping short of the man.

  “Challenge Dr. Sorenson?” Magnus mused. Then he raised a suspicious eyebrow. “We can’t have anyone challenging me now, Tommy.”

  Tommy cracked a smile first. “Liked that one, huh?”

  Magnus laughed abruptly and nearly doubled over. “I did,” the blond man nodded. He slapped Tommy on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s have a drink and discuss how you just inspired all those people in there to run roughshod over our work.”

  “Sounds good, my friend. But you know we have to stick around for a few hours to chat with my adoring fans…I mean your adoring fans,” Tommy corrected. “You know, the picture and autograph thing. I’m sure you’re used to it.”

  Magnus blew it off with his right hand. “Please. The only thing these people want from me is a museum and some workshops every once in a while.”

  “You may be right about that, but we should still go pose for pictures.”

  The two men shared a laugh as they meandered around the back of the stage to the front, where dozens of people waited eagerly to meet them.

  They spent the next hour answering questions, some individually and some as a pair. They took pictures with members of the audience, shared their thoughts on certain techniques or technologies helping archaeology, and even hinted at some of the things they thought would come in the future that would accelerate the study of ancient societies and bring about a new age of discovery.

  A young black woman lingered near the back of the line and seemed to be waiting for everyone else to have their turn. She even allowed a few people to cut in front of her, clearly wanting to be the last in the room with the two men.

  Tommy noticed her twenty minutes before she stepped up to meet him. Her dark brown hair dangled in curls around her light brown face. Her athletic figure wasn’t hidden by the tight, black business dress. The skirt fluttered around her legs just above the knees, revealing only a few inches of skin above tall, matching leather boots with two silver buckles keeping straps in place. Something in her brown eyes gleamed, and Tommy wasn’t sure if it was curiosity or outrage. He was certain he’d said nothing wrong during his talk, though it was difficult to know given the social climate.

  When she stepped up to meet him, he greeted her with a warm, welcoming smile. “Hello,” Tommy said. “What’s your name?”

  “Tabitha Strong,” she said in an English accent; southern England, he guessed. “I loved your talk.”

  “Thank you very much,” Tommy said. “Do you have a question
for me?”

  “Yes.” Her intense gaze sucked him in. “I’m curious if you know anything about the archaeology team that was attacked in Russia yesterday.” Her tone wasn’t accusatory, but it wasn’t innocent either.

  “I’m sorry?” Tommy passed a sidelong, confused glance at his colleague.

  Magnus’ expression changed from welcoming to concerned.

  “Agent Tabitha Strong, MI6,” she said, holding up an ID. She only allowed the men to examine it for two seconds before putting it away. “There was a team of archaeologists in Russia, near Volgograd,” Tabitha said. “They were working on something related to finding the lost cities of Sarai.”

  Tommy again questioned Magnus with a look, but the man shrugged and turned his head twice. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tommy said, bringing his eyes to meet hers again. “I’m aware of the history surrounding the mysterious cities of the Khans, but I didn’t know someone was conducting a dig there. Was it someone I know?”

  “Yes,” Tabitha said. “Actually, it was.”

  Tommy waited patiently for a few seconds, sensing she was holding back for some reason. “Well, who was it?”

  “I guess you could say he’s an acquaintance.” She let the foreshadowing words linger for a second. “Kevin Clark was in charge of the dig.”

  10

  Stockholm

  “Kevin?” Tommy managed.

  “Dr. Clark was attacked?” Magnus asked. The worry in his tone matched the expression in his eyes. “What do you mean, attacked?”

  Tabitha shook her head. “There was a fire east of Volgograd, out near the river. Some tourists traveling through the area happened to see the smoke. They went to the camp and found it destroyed. They also found the bodies, or what was left of them. Everyone was dead. They called the local authorities. It looks like a terrorist hit, so we got involved.” She scanned the room, as if concerned someone might be listening, and then continued.