The Nabatean Secret

by J C Ryan

  Carter was almost salivating with the desire to excavate some treasures of his own discovery as Paloma described the remains of a one hundred fifty-thousand-year-old hominid, or tools and bones from ten thousand years ago.

  Matera had already been a significant settlement in the Bronze Age and had been continuously occupied ever since. She described one dig from early in the previous century that had uncovered layers from early Christians, Saracens, the Byzantine Empire, Greeks, Romans, and even ceramics from three thousand years before. Layers of civilizations on top of each other like a lasagna.

  Carter sat forward, so fascinated by Paloma’s narrative he forgot to translate for the others who were listening. “Did your family ever live in the Sassi, Paloma?”

  She glanced at Piero beside her and took a deep breath. “We don’t like to talk of those times,” she said. “But I will tell you.

  “When I was a little girl, maybe ten years old, my family was evicted from our grotta. It was in 1959. The conditions then…, they were not as you see them now. Everyone was poor, and the caves had little in the way of modern conveniences.

  “The government cleaned out the Sassi and moved everyone out.”

  Mackenzie leaned forward and rested her hand on Paloma’s arm. “I’m sorry remembering makes you sad.”

  After Carter translated, Paloma said, “Not sad. Ashamed. Conditions were so primitive! We lived like savages. Our animals, even a pig! They all lived in the cave with us.”

  Carter tried to comfort her. “Some Americans keep pet pigs. I wouldn’t be ashamed if I were you.”

  “Many of us are,” she admitted.

  Piero broke in with a flood of Italian Carter couldn’t even follow, and Paloma answered. Piero took the next turn, and then several more as Paloma paid close attention to their surroundings.

  While her attention was otherwise occupied, Carter contented himself with watching the old city as they passed by ancient buildings still in use. He wondered if either of his and Mackie’s children would find an interest in archaeology one day. Liam was almost old enough to be taken on his first dig.

  Another flurry of Italian questions and responses from the front seat culminated in the van coming to a stop at the edge of a belvedere, where Paloma said they’d have to go down a flight of stairs carved into the limestone to see the dolphin. Carter translated and then opened the van door and gallantly helped his wife out. The others piled out as well, following Paloma down the uneven steps. Piero stayed close to her, his arm outstretched to catch her should she stumble. But she skipped down the steps like a young girl and beamed as she pointed out the dolphin.

  Mackenzie played her part like a pro, exclaiming over the “sweet” petroglyph, asking the others to take her picture, and distracting Paloma while Kyle took a GPS reading. After fifteen minutes or so, she had Carter ask Paloma how many more she knew of.

  “Quattro.”

  Even the non-Italian speakers understood. Four more.

  Carter caught Mackenzie’s eye and raised an eyebrow. She responded with a broad smile. They didn’t have to say anything to know they were both thinking the same thing. Five dolphins on each of the petroglyphs they’d seen in Petra, Petras, and now in the Sassi.

  This was the first of five single dolphins. Could there be a connection? Carter had learned from Sean and Dylan to distrust coincidences. But this could very well be a happy one.

  Paloma watched the group, and how they interacted around the petroglyph, with interest. The redhaired lady, her new friend, was most excited. She and her husband took many pictures and spoke in whispers. Wherever they walked, three of the others walked close by and usually scattered around them, but close.

  Others had come right on her heels, before the married couple, looking from side to side and forward as if they expected a threat. One had an instrument of some kind that he held up briefly to the petroglyph while Mackenzie was talking to her, and two more never approached the ‘glyph but looked back frequently along the way they’d come.

  Paloma asked Piero, “Who are all these people? Why are they acting this way? Are some of your clients uninterested in the site?”

  “The lady and her husband, Carter, are very rich. They always travel with bodyguards. Understandably, the incident yesterday shook them up—they’re just extra-vigilant.”

  “They’re nice people. I like them.” She smiled.

  When they were finished examining the first carving, she led them to the next, and then the third, with a stop on the way for espresso and arancini.

  Piero told the amused Paloma that his guests had fallen in love with the delicacy on the first day of their visit and now demanded it every few hours. “It is fortunate that your tour includes much descending and climbing, or my clients may return to America much fatter than before.”

  Paloma giggled and took the arm he offered as she led the way to the next dolphin.

  After the third dolphin, on their way to the fourth, she suggested they explore a rupestrian church near an interesting modern artifact.

  The church, she explained, was a delight of Byzantine frescoes painted directly on the rock walls of the underground chapel. It was worth seeing, and the fourth dolphin was nearby. As she led the way, the group was astonished to see an enormous railroad bridge that connected to nothing at all towering above it.

  Paloma explained the bridge was part of a failed attempt to link Matera to the main national railway lines.

  “More amazing,” she said, “was that this church was completely forgotten during the Second World War and when the government removed the population from the Sassi in the 1950s and 1960s, except for rumors.

  “As you can see, it is not very noticeable from the road. Monks lived here twelve hundred years ago and did not want to be disturbed. It has only more recently been rediscovered and restored. I think you will enjoy the artwork.”

  Indeed, they did. Images of the Holy Family and St. Peter were warm and inviting. St. Peter had a beard and mustache, like a Levantine patriarch.

  Mary was depicted less as a saint and more as a mother, her baby in her arms.

  A naked and curvy Eve held out a fruit to an equally naked Adam, but it wasn’t the usual apple. Instead, it was a wonderfully suggestive fig.

  Paloma told them this fresco was the reason for the site’s name—The Crypt of Original Sin.

  A riot of flowers connected one painting to the next in style.

  Mackenzie looked around for signs prohibiting the taking of pictures but didn’t find any, and she took plenty of photos before Paloma led them outside and down a steep path to a small cave in the cliff.

  It was in deplorable condition. The ancient engravings had been defaced by modern graffiti. Despite the vandalism, somehow the dolphin was still intact.

  The group went through their usual photos and GPS readings ritual here, but there was not much else to see. After climbing back to the level of the Crypt of Original Sin, everyone agreed it was time for lunch and persuaded Paloma to let them eat before she showed them the fifth and last dolphin.

  After dining on more Southern Italian delicacies, they finished the tour with the fifth dolphin.

  It had been a tiring but stimulating day when they dropped Paloma off at her home around four p.m. Before leaving Paloma, Mackenzie extended an invitation for her and her husband to join them for dinner at their hotel later that night.

  At first, Paloma protested that it was too expensive and she couldn’t accept such a lavish gift on top of what they’d paid her. Though she and her husband had been inside the hotel, they had never been able to afford the luxury of having a meal there.

  “Then you must certainly dine with us. Our treat, of course. You have been more than kind to show us your marvelous dolphins and that church of Original Sin. Please say you’ll come!”

  Mackenzie could be very persuasive. Eventually Paloma accepted the invitation with a blush.

  “My husband will think we won the lottery!” she added. “Thank you.�
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  Chapter 70 - The dolphin pentagon of Matera

  Though the rest of the town was just coming back to life, after the siesta, Carter, Mackenzie, and their team were ready for hot showers after wandering through the dusty and warm streets and hillsides all day.

  They had about four hours to kill before dinner, so after freshening up, they all met again in the Devereux suite to determine if they’d learned anything.

  It didn’t take long to determine there was indeed a connection between the single dolphins they’d seen that day and the pentagons. All Carter had to do was plot the locations on a map of the city. The array looked very familiar, and connecting the dots with lines confirmed it. The single dolphins made a pentagon, too. But what was the significance?

  “Does that mean we have five places to dig?” Dylan asked.

  Carter was looking from photo to photo, not only the singles, but also the three dolphin pentagons they’d seen in three different parts of the world. Something was trying to catch his attention, but he couldn’t quite get it. And then he did.

  On a sheet of paper, he drew two pentagons. In the first, he sketched the original three dolphin pentagons, with the dolphins swimming nose to tail in a clockwise direction. In the second, he put arrows in, representing the direction of the dolphins as they were depicted in the petroglyphs they’d seen earlier in the day. Starting at the bottom, he drew a clockwise arrow for dolphin number one, and continued until he reached dolphin number four. That arrow had to go counter-clockwise.

  “Swimming upstream,” he muttered. He put in the fifth dolphin, and then began to grin. “It’s the only one that doesn’t follow the pattern,” he said, looking at the drawing instead of the people in the room.

  It caught Mackenzie’s attention, and then Dylan’s, who was talking to Piero about something. They all drifted over to the table where Carter was working.

  “What are the chances that is a coincidence? Meaning nothing?” Carter asked, pointing to the widdershins arrow, representing the dolphin petroglyph in the cave at The Crypt of Original Sin.

  “No chance in hell,” Dylan breathed.

  Mackenzie nodded. “I’d have said very little, but I like Dylan’s answer better.”

  “We’ve got to go back there. Preferably late at night. What we might have to do wouldn’t be smart during the day,” Carter said with satisfaction.

  “Have to be really careful,” Dylan added. “If we were seen today…”

  “That would mean we’re still being followed,” Piero finished.

  They spent the rest of the early evening planning the expedition and gathering supplies before they met with Paloma Festa and her husband in the hotel restaurant.

  The rest of the team took shifts, half eating at tables scattered near Carter and Mackenzie, and the other half keeping discreet watch from elsewhere in the hotel—taking turns so that everyone could enjoy the elaborate four-course meal.

  Carter and Mackenzie managed to contain their excitement while they entertained the Festas. Or rather, the Festas entertained them with more stories about Matera, the Basilicata region, and the changes they’d seen in the last forty or fifty years.

  Mackenzie promised to stay in touch with Paloma by email before the Festas left with many thanks and smiles.

  They were gone by ten thirty.

  Chapter 71 - The Crypt of Original Sin

  After that, it was a matter of an hour or so before Dylan deemed the night quiet enough for their expedition. They made their way to the Crypt of Original Sin, and then took great care on the path down to the cave where the fourth dolphin was found.

  Inside that cave, most of the party hung back, providing light when asked, but otherwise staying out of Carter’s way as he studied the dolphin, peered closely at the other carvings, and finally dropped to his knees to examine the floor.

  When he found it, he marveled at how easily he might have missed it if not for the handheld, ground-penetrating radar Kyle retrieved from the plane late that afternoon, and his extra-powerful tactical flashlight.

  The GPR unit was originally designed for locating voids under concrete, along with metal objects and cables. It was capable of detecting targets up to twenty inches in depth and displaying them on a built-in digital screen.

  In a wall and near the floor, he found a hairline crack. Following it produced an outline on the display about two feet square. The GPR showed the stone to be less than twenty inches thick with a void behind it. It could have been a tunnel, but the GPR wasn’t powerful enough to say how far back it went. The only thing it proved was there was a stone inside the area outlined by the crack with an empty space behind it.

  However, the seam was too narrow for a tool or even a thin knife blade to penetrate the crack.

  “There must be some way to get it out,” Dylan said, frustrated.

  “Look for a lever,” Carter answered, already running his fingers over the surface of the rock wall around the crack.”

  “You mean like Indiana Jones? That kind of a trigger? What if it brings the walls down on us?” Dylan responded nervously.

  “You watch too many movies,” Carter mumbled. “But yes, something like that. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  Mackenzie was examining a section of the wall that had an unusually dense batch of graffiti on it. “Carter, look over here. This part of the rock doesn’t look right.”

  Carter joined her and moved the beam of his flashlight to the section she indicated. “Roman concrete,” he said. “It’s like Paloma was telling us today. The modern has overlaid the ancient everywhere in the city.”

  “If you could call Roman cement modern,” Mackenzie contributed. On their recent vacation, Carter had explained to her how the material allowed the two thousand-year-old buildings of the country to stand into the present day.

  “What’s Roman cement?” Dylan asked.

  “Special recipe,” Carter said absently. He was examining the extent of the addition to the wall. “Made with volcanic sand. Bonds with the limestone in a way that prevents cracks from spreading.” He looked up. “I think this is here to hide something even older.”

  “Kyle, do we have anything that will penetrate that?” he asked. “Nothing drastic. I want to see what’s behind it. A small hole will do.”

  “I’ve got a drill and a cement bit,” Kyle said. “I thought the bit might work on rock, too.”

  “Let’s try it.” Carter thought the stronger mixture might foil the cement drill, but it turned out Kyle had brought one with a diamond tip, and it made short work of the two inches of Roman cement that plugged the hole.

  Dylan supplied the device to look inside, a tiny camera on a USB cable he’d had modified to use a mini-USB connection with his cell phone. Mackenzie and Carter watched the view from the phone’s camera lens as Dylan threaded the cable through the small hole.

  When the camera approached the end of the tube, and just before it would have flopped over, Carter spotted a lever behind the concrete plug. “Stop!” he shouted. Dylan froze.

  “The trigger’s in there, I’m sure of it,” Carter said.

  They worked feverishly to figure out how to pull the lever without completely destroying the covering and finally managed with an ingenious lasso on the end of a wire they cannibalized from the USB cable.

  “That was $10 on eBay,” grumbled Dylan. “Plus the modifications.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one,” Carter said, laughing. “Hell, I’ll buy you a dozen. Give it a pull.”

  Amazingly, when the lever was pulled, it did remind everyone of an Indiana Jones movie. With a groan, the stone plugging the tunnel receded into the rock wall and disappeared.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Dylan.

  “Stay here. I’m going in to see what’s back there.” Carter was speaking to the entire group, and some of them were grateful to be left behind. All but Kyle were trained to ignore claustrophobic feelings, but that didn’t mean they liked crawling through small tunnels, especially o
ne that had been engineered at the dawn of history.

  Mackenzie refused to be left behind, though. “I’m going, too.”

  “Honey—” he started.

  Dylan interrupted. “Me, too. Let Mackenzie come. If it doesn’t cave in on you or me, it surely won’t on her, either.”

  “Good point,” Carter said. He didn’t have claustrophobia under most circumstances. An archaeologist couldn’t afford to, but he’d never had the problem in the first place. And Dylan was twice Mackenzie’s size. “All right. Me first, then Dylan, then Mackenzie. You can come if you want to. Chances are if it leads to a dead end, we’ll all have to back out. The tunnel isn’t big enough to turn around in.”

  Carter got on hands and knees, then slithered on his belly, “swimming” through the passage with relative ease. The rock below was padded with a good amount of sand, which allowed him to pull himself through with hands pressing sideways and backward on the rock walls and pushing with his toes. He could hear the others behind him but couldn’t turn far enough to see them.

  He’d crawled perhaps five times his body length when the end of the passage opened into a chamber, and he could stand.

  He scrambled out of the tunnel and stood, sending the beam of his flashlight above and around him to discover a cave about the same size as the one they’d come from. Dylan and Mackenzie crawled out, too, and stood waiting for Carter to decide what to do.

  His flashlight crossed what looked like an empty space, or perhaps a deep shadow.

  “Carter, what’s that?” Mackenzie said, pointing.

  On closer inspection, Carter discovered a passage, which wound around behind a rock and kept going. For another hour, the trio followed openings from one underground room to another, sometimes crawling or squeezing through tight spots.

  When they came to the dead-end, it was a shock.

  Before them stood another stone door. This one was large enough to admit the three of them walking abreast, but it was firmly closed. Encouraged by the success of the last search for a trigger, they fanned out and found this one in short order. It hadn’t been disguised, but it was massive. It operated with surprising ease. Dylan pulled it with little effort, and the massive stone in front of them slowly slid sideways.