“Mr. Thorne, we have preliminary metallurgy results on that bracelet you dropped off.” Cam had paid extra for expedited turnaround. He pictured a young woman in glasses and a lab-coat, her hair pulled back in a bun. But maybe that was just from watching too much television.
Cam swallowed. “Okay, shoot.”
“Well, first of all it’s not copper like you thought. It’s yellow brass.”
“What does that tell you?”
“By itself, not much. But what is informative is the zinc content in the bracelet. It’s at twenty-seven percent. For modern objects, the zinc content is usually much higher. And in ancient times it was lower. It has to do with the cementation process, and the price of the various metals. I can explain in more detail if you’d like—”
“No, that’s okay. So can you date the bracelet?”
“We find brass artifacts with this concentration of zinc occurring twice in the historical timeline: First, in the Mediterranean area in the first and second centuries AD.”
Cam’s throat tightened. Holy shit. “And the second?”
“In the nineteenth century this mixture was common here in the U.S. for industrial uses—things like brass plumbing fixtures and chandelier ornaments. I’ve never seen it used for jewelry, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“Wait, so the bracelet could be either first century Mediterranean or nineteenth century American?”
“Yes,” she concluded.
Cam mulled it over. The science had narrowed things down from two possibilities to … two possibilities. Either the bracelet was an authentic ancient Jewish artifact brought to America two thousand years ago or it was one of thousands of cheap trinkets found buried in Native American graves during the pioneering era.
But there was one piece of data Cam possessed that the metallurgist didn’t: Polished wood found in the burial mound with the bracelet had been carbon-dated to the second century AD. In and of itself, the wood didn’t prove anything—the body could simply have been buried with old wooden artifacts or tools or wood scraps. But together with the bracelet, and of course the inscribed tablet itself, the evidence had become almost irrefutable. As if preparing for a closing argument, Cam summarized the bullet-points in his head:
The script carved on the stone was an ancient form of Hebrew, prevalent in the early centuries after Christ;
The geological testing showed the carving was at least many centuries old at the time the artifact was removed from the ground in the late 1800s;
The carbon-dating showed that the wood found in the burial mound was almost two thousand years old;
Cherokee oral history spoke of ancient explorers arriving from across the Atlantic;
Now, metallurgy testing confirmed the Mediterranean area circa AD 100-200 as one of two possible origins of the bracelet.
Cam pictured himself in front of a jury, arguing the case. It was becoming almost impossible to reach any conclusion other than the burial mound objects being almost two thousand years old.
He stared at the phone in his hand and shook his head. Somehow ancient Jews had made it to Tennessee. And nobody knew.
Evgenia barely had time to throw on a pair of jeans and some dry socks, never mind shower. It would have been a great night to sit in front of the TV and watch the Capitals game, but duty called. Maybe the game would be on in the bar. Or maybe this Stefan Antonopoulos would be as handsome as his picture and she wouldn’t care about the game.
She and Rachel had met last night at the Hawk & Dove for a dry run. The girl was nervous and frightened. The last thing Evgenia needed was for her to freak out when they met with Antonopoulos. But by the end of the evening Evgenia had convinced her things would be fine. “We’re not even sure he’s really a crook. And even if he is, it’s not like he’s violent or anything. But we’ve had a couple of reports, so we need to look into it. And this way your mother is protected in case the artifact really is valuable.”
Evgenia arrived at ten past seven, watched in satisfaction in the bar mirror as a number of heads turned as she passed. It was nice to feel attractive, though she knew her look was singularly non-traditional, a combination of her mother’s wide nose and high cheekbones and her father’s thin Slavic face. Every once in a while people told her she looked like a taller version of Lisa Bonet, the daughter on the old Cosby Show sitcom. She was fine with the comparison, as the actress had a futuristic, multi-racial look that Evgenia imagined would be the norm centuries from now. In that future, she often wondered, would society still insist on using ill-fitting labels to describe people like her? She was not African-American or Black or Eurasian—none of these fit her. She was, simply, multi-racial.
She found Rachel in a booth upstairs on the mezzanine level. The place used to pride itself on being a dive bar, but recent renovations had purged it of most of its soul. Which was fine for tonight—they didn’t need some drunk spilling a pitcher on them. Evgenia’s first inclination had been to meet at the Irish Times pub near Union Station—she had fallen in love with the place the first time she saw the welcome sign: Give me your thirsty, your famished, your befuddled masses. But it was too centrally located and one of her Agency coworkers might inadvertently blow her cover. The Hawk & Dove, on the other hand, was on the back side of Capital Hill where only Congressional staff members hung out, plus the mezzanine afforded them extra privacy.
She slid into the booth next to Rachel and turned to face her. “Hi again,” Rachel said. Big brown eyes, dark curly hair, a nose that looked like it used to be longer but for a surgeon’s knife. Not bad looking. Based on their conversation last night, a theater major from George Washington University who now worked in advertising.
“You doing okay?”
Rachel exhaled. “Yes.”
“Just use your theater training. You’re playing a part.”
“But there are no lines. That’s what’s making me nervous.”
“But the part you’re playing is yourself. You’re just here to give him the artifact. He’ll take the lead, I promise.” She smiled confidently at Rachel. “You have the rock?”
Rachel patted a black leather saddle bag on the seat next to her. “Right here.” She wrestled a rectangular, light gray stone from the bag. It was bigger than Evgenia thought it would be, the size of a gift box in which you’d find a fancy bottle of champagne.
“What does that thing weigh?” Evgenia asked, accepting the rock.
Rachel shifted her shoulder. “Too much. Maybe thirty pounds.”
Evgenia stood, leaned the artifact upright against the cushioned booth and snapped a few pictures with her smart phone. Four rows of writing dominated the front face of the stone, with a spiral design carved below the bottom row. Evgenia didn’t recognize the first three rows of script but the fourth row looked like Hebrew.
Vermont Rune Stone
Rachel talked as Evgenia examined the rock. “My mother found it on vacation in Vermont when she was a kid. She forgot she even had it until my Bubbie was cleaning out her attic.”
“How did you hear about Professor Antonopoulos?”
“My Bubbie saw him on a TV documentary and called my mother.”
Evgenia handed the stone back. “Okay, put it away for now. Just play it cool; like I said, let him take the lead. I’m pretty sure he’ll want to take the rock with him.” She grinned. “Wouldn’t be much of a thief if he let you keep the goods.”
Rachel smiled nervously. She said, “I also brought my mom’s diary entry from when she found it. Is that okay?”
“Perfect. Those kinds of details just make the story seem more real.”
Rachel frowned. “It is real.”
“I know. The artifact is real, but this set-up is not. So the more we can get him to focus on the artifact instead of us, the better.”
“Okay, here he comes.”
Rachel took a deep breath and gave a shy wave; Antonopoulos nodded, shook the moisture off his jacket and strolled over. He smiled at Rachel and shook her hand, then
did the same as Rachel introduced him to Evgenia. “I think I’ve been here before,” he said as he slid into the booth opposite them. “But it’s changed.” He smiled again. Kind but not flirtatious. “I miss the smell of old beer.”
Evgenia studied him. Just as handsome as his picture, and he moved the way her father and his teammates did, coiled and powerful but with an athletic grace. Plus he liked dive bars. But not as tall as she expected, maybe only five-foot eight.
She sighed. She needed a vacation, a beach someplace where she could look at men and dance a bit. Washington was a tough place to be a single woman—many of the single men were gay, and most of the straight ones were dweebs or scared off by her height. And, of course, she hated the weather. Maybe this well-paying job wasn’t such a great deal after all….
“Evgenia says they just renovated,” Rachel responded. “Anyway, thanks for coming all the way into the city.”
“And thanks for coming down from Baltimore. I’d go a lot further than that to see this rock of yours.” He shrugged. “Plus I needed a break. I’m up in Bethesda for a conference. A bunch of rock nerds together for three days. I really need a drink.”
He motioned to a waitress, the wedding ring on his left hand catching the light from an overhead fixture. Rachel ordered a glass of wine, Evgenia and Antonopoulos a Sam Adams. He smiled at Evgenia. “If they’re down to the last bottle, I call dibs.”
“Doubtful. There’s lots of Bostonians down here. I’m sure they have a few cases.”
“Actually,” he said, “I read that Sam Adams is brewed in Cincinnati, not Boston.”
She smiled. There. The smartest guy in the room.
He took out a small reporter’s pad and pen. “Rachel, do you mind if I take some notes?”
She shrugged. “Fine with me.”
“So can you tell me again when and where your mother found this? Any detail you can provide will be helpful.”
“Well, I guess I can start with this.” She slid a piece of copy paper across the table. “This is a copy of my mom’s diary from the day she found the rock. She was thirteen. It was 1978.” Antonopoulos studied the paper while Rachel talked. “Basically, it just says she was with her family on vacation in Vermont. They were playing in the woods. She saw this rock, with writing on it, sticking out of the dirt.”
“Do you know where in Vermont?”
“We had a beach house up on Lake Memphremagog, near the Canadian border.”
Antonopoulos looked up. “Interesting. There are some fascinating artifacts found in that area. Many researchers believe the Templars had a settlement there in the 1400s.”
“That’s what my Bubbie said when she called my mom. She saw you on TV. She said the Templars carved this stone.”
“This could be a really important find. Really important.” He smiled and rested his eyes onto Rachel’s. “So how many drinks do I have to buy you before I get to see the stone?”
Evgenia watched the interaction. Even this last comment wasn’t said flirtatiously. At some point Antonopoulos must have learned it was dangerous to be as handsome as he was and also be on a campus full of young women. What he didn’t realize was that treating women in an asexual manner possessed him with the one quality women found irresistible—it made him seem impossibly hard to get.
Rachel flustered. “Oh, sorry.” Using both hands, she hoisted the rock across the table. “Here it is.”
Antonopoulos pushed his beer aside to study the stone. Using a closed pen, he pointed at the carvings. “These are runic letters, from Scandinavia. Just like English, the characters change over time—these look to be medieval to me.”
“So what does it say?” Rachel asked.
He frowned. “I don’t know; I’ll need some help translating it.” He moved the pen. “And this, as I think you know, is Hebrew. And the spiral at the bottom is also very interesting—it’s an ancient Goddess symbol.” He sat back. “This is the first artifact I’ve ever seen that has Hebrew, runic and a Goddess symbol all together.” He shifted forward again and peered at the stone, a bit of sweat on his upper lip. “This combination points strongly to the Knights Templar—as religious monks, they were versant in Hebrew; many of them also spoke runic; and we believe they were secretly Goddess worshipers, which explains the spiral.”
Antonopoulos pulled a jeweler’s glass from his jacket pocket and began to examine the artifact more closely.
Evgenia studied him studying the stone for a few seconds and said, “I like a man who carries his own magnifying glass,” She was curious to see if he’d respond to her any more amorously than he had to Rachel.
He didn’t look up. “Actually, this a loupe. It has multiple lenses, unlike a magnifying glass.”
Again, more interested in the rock than in flirting with her. In fact, Evgenia was probably a distant fourth—behind the artifact, his loupe and his beer.
He looked up at Rachel and set his jaw. “Rachel, is there any chance I can keep this for a few days?” he asked, one hand still on the stone.
Evgenia caught her eye. Don’t be too easy.
“Well, I don’t know…”
“Rachel, this could be very important. This could change history. But I need to study it under a microscope.” He again rested his eyes on Rachel’s. This time he added a shy smile and reached out to touch her hand. So he did know how to flirt. “I promise I’ll take good care of it.”
Normally Amanda attended all of Astarte’s soccer games, but she begged off tonight and let Cam bring her. Cam had relayed Randall’s warning about Astarte creating a point of vulnerability for Cameron that the CIA might try to exploit. But bugger that. It was important Astarte and Cam spend time alone together, just the two of them. Thankfully Astarte liked sports, so that gave Cam and her something to share—Cam was a devoted parent, but he was not big on makeovers and manicures.
Cam hesitated at the door. “You sure you’re okay alone?”
Amanda took a deep breath. They could not very well stop living their lives. “The police are patrolling regularly. And I have Venus.”
She locked the doors, put on the outside lights, made sure her phone was charged and by her side, and took the opportunity to do more giants research. The subject fascinated her. Plus it took her mind off of being home alone.
She had recently read that a race of pygmies, showing a genetic divergence from all other human populations going back 60,000 years, lived in the rain forests of central Africa. So why couldn’t a race of giants have existed at one time also?
Tonight she planned on approaching the research from a different angle—from the mouth. Using the online site of the Journal of the American Dental Association, she did a search using the word ‘hyperdontia,’ the medical term for extra teeth. The articles were dry and thick with medical terminology, but eventually she found an article from the 1970s written by a dentist who removed a full second set of teeth from a young man attending Harvard Divinity School. Two aspects of this case made it remarkable: First, it involved a full set of teeth, whereas most cases of hyperdontia involved only a few teeth. And second, the dentist noted in the medical history section that the patient’s height was six foot, ten inches tall.
Was this second set of teeth caused by some recessive gene that randomly appeared every so many generations? If so, could it be because of interbreeding in the past with one of the ancient giants? Or perhaps she was just being loony….
Venus barked at the door, announcing Cam and Astarte’s return. “How was the game?”
“Great,” Astarte said.
“Did you win?”
Astarte furrowed her brow. “I’m not sure. Dad-Cam, did we win?”
Cam smiled. “Depends how you keep score. Astarte won if you’re counting smiles. The other team won if you’re counting goals, six to four.” Amanda had been a competitive gymnast as a child—it was a cutthroat world where nobody counted smiles. But Cam had convinced her youth sports should be about fun and learning life skills, not just winning. “A
s long as she is trying hard and getting exercise and being a good teammate, who cares who wins?” he said. “There’ll be plenty of time to keep score as she gets older.”
Astarte stuck out a purple tongue. “We got popsicles after the game. I had grape.”
“I can see that.” She kissed Astarte on the cheek. “Go take your shower and put on pajamas. I’ll make you a snack.”
She also kissed Cam, lingering for a few seconds. “You taste like lemon. Did you have a popsicle too?”
He smiled. “I worked hard. We did the wave in the bleachers.”
They sat at the kitchen table; she told Cam about the divinity student with the extra set of teeth. “Interesting,” he said. “Six-ten is not really gigantic, but it’s getting there.”
“If there had been interbreeding, say, two thousand years ago, the height would have decreased as the giant genes became diluted.”
“Makes sense. Why do you use the two thousand year old date?”
“That’s sort of a middle date for when the giants would have lived,” she said. “Most of the skeletons were found in burial mounds. Some of the mounds are older than that, some younger. But around two thousand years ago was the peak.” That was later than the latest Biblical reference to giants by a millennium, not a huge amount of time in evolutionary terms.
“Two thousand years ago is around the date of the Bat Creek burial mound.”
She nodded. “I know Emmert didn’t find giant bones in that particular mound, but he did find giant skeletons in other burial mounds in the area.”
“Meaning?”
She shrugged. “I’m not certain. I suppose, meaning that the giants coexisted with other civilizations in North America.”
“And if so, they may have interbred. Which would explain your divinity school student with the double rows of teeth.”
Amanda stood suddenly. Cam’s observation triggered something. “Be back straightaway.” She rushed to retrieve her laptop and opened to the dental journal article as she returned. Her eyes raced across the page, her heart rate increasing. “Here it is.”
The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series) Page 13
