by SJ Hailey
He closed his oak door, the intercom buzzed and he was informed by his secretary of an anticipated call. The hide chair creaked as he sat and relaxed. His private line came on, a metallic voice greeted him.
‘Good Afternoon, do you have any results to report?’
There was no need for details or names, and even on his encrypted line his caller would not risk exposure. The American Echelon system intercepted most forms of communication, collected enough data in three minutes to fill the Library of Congress if it was all printed out. The General and his contact did not want their information added to it, and so their lack of specifics reduced being picked up by data mining of key words.
‘We have obtained one artefact, the second is in the North, the third so I have been informed is in the South, yet to be confirmed on site.’
‘Has their purpose been determined?’
‘As yet no, I am awaiting further information.’
‘That is not as I hoped, what about our friend in Africa, does he suspect?’
‘No he still believes his contact is attempting to acquire a solar power source, and funds cannot be affiliated to us.’
‘Excellent, so progressing as expected, I want that device, whatever it is, if your initial findings are correct, it would threaten our assets should it be available to others.’
‘Agreed it will be controlled by an ally.’
‘I will call you in twenty four hours for an update.’
The line went dead. The General was content that all his subterfuge was effective, even his metallic master had no inclination of his true intentions. The device would be controlled by him, which would elevate him from servant to master. He collected his sidearm, changed into the linen suit conveniently deposited in his office by his efficient secretary. Mastasson took his private elevator to the hanger below. His latest acquisition a MD520 helicopter was waiting. Its jet black and silver livery and the distinctive passenger compartment made it appear like a giant dragonfly. With no tail rotor due to the unique NOTAR system, the lightweight all-purpose helicopter was a dream to fly. His three-man personal protection team waited for him, entering the sleek craft on his approach. Within minutes he was hovering inside the hanger. He gently guided the helicopter out at just over two feet from the ground, showing off and climbing from the cloud of dust into the fresh Pacific sky. Heading northeast to Panama City, then after a short refuel at Rio Hato Airport he could go deep into the forest and Canopy Tower to meet his African contact.
TWELVE
The group decided to return to work immediately after the daybreak feast, concerned that they would all fall asleep. Jacob checked his email, and got all the crime scene photos sent by Paul, showing the remains of the thief and the sword embedded in the oak tree. He compared the shots with that of his artefact and there was no similarity except for the markings. The crystal he had was five sided. A deep blue crystal with metal shoulders protecting all the edges, it led to a collection of triangles at the point. Topping this pyramid of silver was a loop. It all appeared to be fashioned from one piece of solid metal, extremely strong, yet delicate in appearance.
The tests they had performed could not identify the metal, not silver, tin; nickel none of the metals you would expect to be fashioned during the fifteenth century. He left the metallurgist to ponder the mystery, and Lorraine to deal with the scriptures. Jacob was still waiting for the official translator to arrive from Washington, but he knew Lorraine would catalogue and prepare all the information ready for his imminent arrival.
The other artefact that was stolen from the museum was spinning on screen, a three dimensional representation to show all its features to the most beneficial effect. He likened it to a cylinder with a handle inside, a bar going across the middle; a lip around the edge concealed something else. It was jet black, with a matt finish, not shiny as you would expect from worked stone. The stone had flecks of blue within it that shone in direct sunlight. The rest of the surface appeared to absorb any light. At the front, or possibly the back, no one was sure, five crystals were embedded. Each five sided, like the artefact they had found in the junk, but only the centre one was blue. The four surrounding it at ninety degree angles to each other were jet black, the only colour was a blue dot in the centre of each tip.
Analysis presumed that the blue crystal ran inside the black outer shell and connected within. The cylinder itself encasing all was covered in inlays of blue crystal, some kind of glyph not seen before. It was based on circles, the inner circle containing different symbols to the outer one, and no pattern could be discerned. This larger artefact had no loop for a necklace and no silver metal except the handle on the inside. It had no scratches or damage, despite being found in a collapsed temple on the coast of Peru, a former Inca city. Laurent suspected, and for once Jacob agreed, that the artefact may have been removed from another culture during the wars that raged during the early part of the fifteenth century.
The two brothers that ruled the Inca Empire quarrelled, one remaining in Cuzco to the South and his brother in Quito to the north, now Modern Ecuador. Many items have been found out of context, having been taken by the warring factions, or the invading Spanish, who entered the area within years of the Inca civil war. The human interaction displaced many vital artefacts over the centuries.
Jacob suspected that the two artefacts may be unrelated, but his gut told him otherwise. He was mining through the numerous other emails, stacking up in his inbox due to three days of neglect. He applied filters, some to get rid of junk mail, others for people who just bothered him about trivial operational details they should have the brains to deal with themselves. Then one stood out, a name he recognised, and his heart swelled, Katherine Shotbolt.
Katherine was his adopted daughter, well not exactly that, but he gave her that title as it was the easiest explanation. The truth as with all children was more complex.
The children’s parents had died in a car accident in South America, the details were unknown. In their will they named Jacob and Anita as legal guardians, and they were honoured to help. Their son Archer was sixteen and off attempting to be cool and mature. Their other son had recently been killed in action, so young blood in the ranch house was most welcome. Over the following years, Jacob had learned to treat Katherine like the daughter he wanted, and her brother as the rascal he was.
Archer appeared to tolerate them, well Katherine was a good friend and influence, but then he joined the Army and saw her during leave, before she left for college.
Any message from Katherine was always welcome. He opened her mail and read about her recent discovery; that had been claimed by Laurent initially. His temper flared at this, then read on. He opened the attached pictures; and the images from MARVIN appeared on screen, accompanied by short burst of video, edited from his expedition. Jacob would have been stunned into silence, instead he stopped sipping his coffee and yelled for Lorraine, after a three second pause, she had not arrived. Jacob stood up, and bellowed for her again, and she ran in expecting him to be dying or something.
‘What! Are you okay?’
‘Look, look at the screen.’
Lorraine moved behind him to get a decent view, and was similarly struck dumb. ‘Where is that?’
‘Ecuador, found following a tsunami and forest fire, revealing a buried wreck.’
‘And is it fully excavated?’
‘No, no, this is robot footage, sent in to check if it is worth digging, save time and unnecessary effort.’
‘But that appears to be the same box design as ours, different symbol on the front, but still.’
‘I need that translator, find out what this symbol is.’
‘How did you get this?’
‘A friend of mine Katherine is down there working with Laurent, she sent it to me, see?’
With that Jacob returned to the original email, and another video clip called ‘Message from Katherine’ was attached. Jacob selected it, and Katherine’s beaming face appeared, her glowing
smile framed by her neatly cut auburn hair. Two other people hovered excitedly behind her.
‘Hi Jacob, just a quick message, hope you are well, this is what we have found.’ Pointing to her colleagues who were also smiling. ‘It appears to be a sealed box, we have not been able to get into that area yet, maybe tomorrow, and no one dares to start without Christophe’s blessing. Oh he is up river about thirty miles, looking at my other discovery, see the next email. Anyway bye for now, speak soon. Love you.’
Lorraine was taken aback; she did not expect a pretty Texan girl to address Jacob so. Jacob was blushing, and attempted to explain, ‘Okay that may seem a little strange.’
Lorraine did not reply, just tilting her head at Jacob. He continued.
‘When Katherine’s parents were killed in a road accident, her father, my best friend, named my wife and I as legal guardians. I brought her up. The daughter I, we never had, sort of.’
‘Oh well that explains it, Dad.’
Jacob shot Lorraine a look, not aggressive, but more that he asked for that. She broke a smile immediately after he returned her stare and burst out laughing.
‘I have to get to that wreck site, Laurent is off treasure hunting again, so I better go and sort him out.’
Within an hour, he had left standing orders on the investigation of the artefacts recovered from the wreck. Eli had received notification from Paul that a flight down to Ecuador, flying from Montreal, changing at Miami in the next two hours. Jean offered to fly him to Montreal.
Jacob turned and shouted across the hanger at Lorraine, ‘When that bloody translator gets his arse here from Washington, get him to do some work!’
Lorraine did not reply, she pointed behind Jacob, who grimaced almost instinctively. As he turned there was a young Chinese man behind him.
‘Hello Mr Mathias.’ An outstretched hand greeting him, Jacob shook his hand.
‘Jacob Mathias, and you are?’
‘Bloody Translator, good to meet you.’
‘Sorry about that, long couple of days.’
‘Not a problem, Paul told me the Chinese calligraphy may be from the Zheng Hu fleets?’
‘Possibly, I thought you would know better than us.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Ecuador, another Chinese ship possibly, why?’
‘Well if you have scanned all the evidence here, I can take the electronic versions and work on them on the plane with you.’
‘Can you now? And why would I want you to do that?’
‘Mr Mathias, you will only want my arse down to South America, so I thought I would save increasing your blood pressure.’
Jacob laughed out loud, slapping the young man on the back.
‘You are absolutely right. Come with me, let’s get you all you need. What was your name again?’
‘Andy Huang sir, pleasure to meet you at last.’
‘You are very welcome Andy. I was about to fly out, but seeing as you are here, come and discover some lost history with me.’
Jacob led the young man to the lab, introducing most people, which was pointless as they would be leaving shortly. However Jacob always liked to be polite, he moved to the back of the lab, and the large screen set up there. He got Lorraine to bring up the images they had scanned from the box, and the artefacts and parchment contained within.
Andy dived straight in, ‘The symbol on the front of the box is archer, the symbol on the top of the parchment is the five elements in order, metal or gold, wood, water, fire and earth. Then it goes on to mention a temple or place containing the five elements, no reference to where, no place names, just a blue light?’
‘Can you tell they‘re origin, or their destination?’
Andy quickly scanned through the images, and then stopped on the images of the small wax balls.
‘These La Wan, what’s inside them?’
‘Lorraine, have you got those images?’
‘No Jacob, with all the issues with the box, we forgot the La Wan?’
‘Andy what’s the significance of these?’
‘They contain messages, usually confidential or specific to one recipient. A message would be written on a silk ribbon, encased in the wax ball, it would be swallowed when cool, carried safely in the stomach of the courier.’
‘And then what? He would just....’
‘He would recover it and the intended recipient of the message would crack open the wax ball and read the message.’
Lorraine and Jacob winced, ‘these are the size of golf balls, imagine trying to,’ She gulped slightly at the thought of attempting to swallow one. ‘Brave men, that’s all I can say.’
Andy was led over to the centre of the room, the wax balls sitting on a stand, remote from the other artefacts. Lorraine donned the compulsory gloves, and began to gently open the wax balls, each one giving a subdued crack as it revealed its silken cargo. She placed each immaculately preserved rolled silk ribbon next to the appropriate shell, and then moved back allowing Andy access. Andy had put on gloves, and gently unrolled the delicate silk messages, Lorraine recording on a camera mounted above.
‘This is part of a message to the Admiral, it states that they have left, a coastal village, possibly South American and are heading north. You understand they called the landmasses by different names, but I do not wish to confuse matters further. The second gives details on their destination, and refers to a map number. The third is a goodbye from the captain.’
At this point Andy stopped, ‘there was no order to the messages, but it would appear they travelled north and then something happened. Was there a scroll in a bamboo tube, a wax seal on the end?’ Lorraine found the scroll he referred to, and he read it out aloud.
‘The ship has become trapped in ice, we cannot get free. I am concerned that the hull cannot take the pounding, but there is no shelter from the ice. It continues, that they became frozen in the sea ice, and to save the ship, used the wind and spare timber to get on top of the ice, completely out of the water.’
‘That is no mean feat, ship that size, although it would explain why the hull was not crushed, snowfall would bury it, rather than sea ice.’
‘The scroll tells of how the food rations ran out, they could not catch any fish through the ice. The men began to burn anything to keep warm, and wait for the ice to melt, it never did. The last entry is a goodbye to his family and crew, and a message to the Admiral in one of the wax balls he swallowed.’
Jacob looked at the collection of small cracked wax balls, ‘One of these was in the stomach of the Captain?’
‘This one I think, it tells the Admiral that they must return the artefacts to the place they were found.’
Jacob turned to look at the brilliant crystal artefact, the silver and vivid blue glinting in the artificial light.
‘So this is from South America, being taken to where, Greenland?’
‘The Chinese are known to have been there.’
An explosion interrupted the conversation, the shockwave rocked the porta-cabin. Jacob ran to see what had happened. Outside in a separate area, a team had a small sealed cabin with a bank of analytical tools, to assess the composition of the crushed metal and crystal object. They came out of the smoking room, coughing and blackened with soot, but none appeared seriously hurt, just a little deaf.
‘What happened?’
The lead lab tech shouted back, Jacob did not stop him, more concerned at the information than the volume with which it was delivered.
‘We were using laser light to check the absorption properties of the crystal, and we got strange results.’
‘How strange?’
‘It kept absorbing the light, not refracting it or reflecting it back.’
‘Did it explode?’
‘No, that was our machine, for a second I thought I saw light come out of the crystal.’
Jacob went to check the camera feeds on the hard drive outside the room, even though the cameras were now fried, the recordings were safe.
Just before the explosion, the crystal sent a beam of energy out back into the laser analyser, which had caused the explosion. He went back to the lab and opening the door fully to allow the smoke to clear, he looked for the metal and crystal object. Still in place on the workbench was the metal, no charring or damage apparent, the other equipment around it scorched and burnt. He did not attempt to pick up the object, leaving it for the team to deal with.
He exited the lab and spoke to Lorraine, ‘There is something different about this crystal, and I would presume that this artefact is constructed in a similar way.’
‘If we carefully analyse its properties, but with reduced levels of power and shield it more effectively.’
‘Agreed, just use caution, imagine if they had performed the same test on this object, that crystal is only about two centimetres across and was able to destroy the lab.’
‘I suppose it is similar to overloading a capacitor, the energy stored suddenly released in one massive surge.’
‘That would explain the delay between the light energy entering the crystal, and the discharge some minutes later.’
An expression of determination came across Jacob’s face, he moved forward, carefully re-wrapping the artefact in its original protective silk and bamboo, and placing it firmly in an airtight bag.
‘Lorraine, call Paul Stone, tell him I need paperwork to take this to Ecuador.’
‘Ecuador, why?’
‘Because I suspect that is where this amulet originated from, and that Laurent has found a ship containing another one.’ Jacob strode confidently from the lab, Andy scuttling along behind him. Jean called over from near the hangar entrance, ‘One more thing, KEVIN!’
