Story of the Century

by Tom Norton

  Before completion of the trailer, Rick was contacted on the satellite phone and was told the University was going to send a trailer to replace the damaged one. On the phone it was discussed that it looked like the site was not going to produce any results, but the University would fund the project as a training lesson for the university students.

  Three days later, Rick pulled the old trailer into the garage late at night and he and John hooked up the new trailer and were back out into the quiet of the night on their way to Poland.

  Another three days and they had made the trip and Rick had cleared the trailer with his Polish

  contact who examined the trailer. It seems his concern was more about marijuana than anything else, college kids being what they are. John played the part of trailer installer and that went well because the Pole knew absolutely nothing about trailers.

  With the help of the students, almost all of the furnishings were removed from the trailer as it would then be the artifact recovery laboratory.

  John gathered all of the students into one of the trailers and explained to them that what they were about to do would be considered illegal by the Polish government and all of them could be incarcerated. If they didn’t consider their part in this historic event worth the risk, they could opt out right then.

  Most of the students were of the opinion that if they were caught, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. With no hesitation, they all agreed to stay and abide by strict rules as to their behavior. John told the students that he would be leaving after a few days so as not to arouse suspicion, but either he or Hendrick would find a way to get back on site. Everything would be meticulously video recorded and documented so it was not absolutely necessary for he and Hendrick to be on site.

  With everything then in order, the excavation began under the overhead laser scanner and video cameras and bright lights.

  Removing the dirt from the canvas and then the canvas itself, burial dirt was remove the best it could be at one centimeter at a time.

  At one centimeter a bone was detected and after another centimeter another finger bone was removed from the excavation. It was cleaned, photographed and documented in the computer in conjunction with the laser and video data. The specimen was then bagged, numbered and stored in a large lock box in the laboratory trailer.

  This was the procedure for all of the retrieved specimens from that point on and after several had accumulated, students made casts of the specimens and then molded reproductions of them. It became obvious that the Neanderthal had been buried on his or her back with the hands on the chest, the hands being the first specimens to be retrieved.

  Days turned into weeks and weeks into months as the very slow process continued and rib bones were retrieved and all of other skeletal remains excluding the skull, because there was a problem with recovering it.

  John and Hendrick were receiving coded verbal communication from Rick at the site and the skull problem could not be gone into over the phone other than to say there was a problem on the top of some fictitious piece of equipment.

  The two managed to get to Poland on what they declared to be a holiday and under the cover of darkness drove the primitive road to the site.

  The next morning, John and Hendrick joined Rick at a table in one of the trailers and over a cup of coffee, John said, “Ok Rick, where are we?”

  ‘We have the complete skeleton out excluding the skull, and all of the specimens are in good condition.”

  “And the castings?”

  “Complete except for the skull.”

  “Ok, what about the skull problem?”

  “The cranium has been crushed into a jumble of fragments. Being hollow it had no support and I suspect hundreds of earthquakes collapsed it. It is going to be one hell of a jig saw puzzle putting it back together and quite time consuming documenting each fragment as it is removed. Knowing we may be limited by time, I didn’t want to slow the removal of the rest of the skeleton.”

  Hendrick replied, “Good thinking. What about the jaw and facial bones?”

  “The lower jaw is in good shape and can be removed easily, but the facial bone removal will disturb the cranium pieces. We will have to remove the cranium pieces first.”

  John said, “We have all day for you to show us around, so let’s get with it.”

  “Yes sir, follow me.”

  John and Hendrick were shown the Neanderthal skull and the problem with the cranium being in hundreds of small pieces. They were shown the recovered skeletal remains and their duplicate castings. Rick told the two that a duplicate set of laser, video data had been made and was on a small backup drive that the two could take with them back to Berlin.

  In the middle of the night John and Hendrick drove back to Suwalki, Poland and by daylight were in their hotel room with a plane leaving that afternoon for Berlin.

  Two weeks later, Hendrick received a satellite phone call From Rick and for the sake of satellite phone problem, said they had excavated a few rock chips and maybe some old ash. Rick then asked “How is my mother doing, I have a bad feeling about that?”

  Hendrick was taken back by this and after some thought replied, “She is in a bad way this time, do you think you should come home and see her?”

  “I think so and don’t let my brother steal her jewelry.”

  “Where does she keep it?”

  “Under her pillow.”

  “Ok, I’ll work on that, come on home.”

  “Yes sir, I’m driving the truck and I’ll call you from Frankfort; I’ll be staying the night there.”

  Hendrick slid his chair back and thought to himself, “What the hell is he talking about? His mother’s not ill and he doesn’t have a brother.”

  After a quick call and in ten minutes, John was at the lab saying, “Ok what’s the deal?”

  Hendricks repeated the telephone conversation verbatim from his notepad and they sat looking at each other.

  John said, “What the hell is he trying to tell us?”

  Hendrick replied, “The mother thing; he wants to come back here.”

  “Yes, and what’s this brother stealing the jewelry. What’s that mean?”

  “Well there’s jewelry or something very valuable that he is afraid someone will steal.”

  John said, “One of the students, the Poles?”

  Hendrick replied, “Hell I don’t know. Those students could have stolen some of the artifacts long before now. Why would the Poles steal them? If they know they are there, they would just take them? And he’s driving the truck, why doesn’t he fly?”

  “Where does she keep it? Under her pillow! What the hell does that mean?”

  The two sat quietly looking at the notepad for some time while pondering the quiz and John looked up to see Hendrick looking at him with a puzzled look.

  John said, “I know what you’re thinking and it’s stupid, but I was thinking the same thing.”

  Hendrick said, “Well you go first.”

  “If I must. Being totally wrong and impossible, Rick told you that they found something of value or jewelry under the skull of the Neanderthal. He is bringing it here by truck because whatever it is would be detected in airport screening. Does that cover it?”

  “Well you told me what he didn’t mean, because that’s impossible.”

  “I know it, I said wrong didn’t I? Let’s go back through this note and come up with something that isn’t impossible.”

  An hour later, Hendrick said, “Now that you put your stupid theory in my head, I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Our theory!”

  “Ok, our theory. Now why isn’t it possible, you may know something I don’t?”

  “Neanderthals didn’t have jewelry and they sure as hell didn’t have metallic jewelry.”

  Hendrick replied, “No argument from me. At that site’s time period, they were doing good to have a sharp stick”

  John said, “Now that we both admit we are stumped, we will just wait for Rick’s call
from Frankfort. Day after tomorrow, right?”

  “That’s what he said, from Frankfurt and it’ll take him two days to get there for sure.”

  Two days later, Hendrick and John sat in the lab for hours waiting for the Frankfurt call that happened sometime before midnight.

  Hendrick spoke into the telephone, “Yes Rick, what the hell is going on? You’re on speaker phone.”

  Rick replied, “We found something below the skull, maybe fifteen centimeters below and it may discredit all of our work at the site.”

  “What is a something?”

  “It’s a round object like a very large coin or piece of jewelry wore around the neck. It has corrosion or something all over it except in a few spots and it appears to be gold or some other shiny yellow metal.”

  “How big?”

  “Over five centimeters.”

  John said to the speaker phone, “Well I smell a rat here.”

  Rick replied, “That’s what I have been thinking.”

  “When will you get here?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Ok, we’ll talk then, get some sleep,” and John hung up the phone.

  Hendrick said to John, “What in the hell do you think it is and how did it get there?”

  “I’m not even going to think about it until Rick gets here; it would just be wasted energy. I’ll be back after noon tomorrow.”

  At two in the afternoon the next day, Rick showed up at the lab looking like he had been living in the wilderness for months and in fact he had been.

  Hendrick asked, “In the briefcase?”

  “Yes,” replied Rick.

  “Over to the examination table, we’re ready for it.”

  Rick and the two professors went to the examination table, all put on neoprene gloves and turned on the audio video equipment.

  Rick opened his briefcase, unrolled a bundle of cotton and carefully laid an object on the table. Looking at the object that resemble a crusted over Olympic medal, there were two small areas in the crust where the gold color could be seen.

  Hendrick picked up the object and laid it in a sterile dish and with a small plastic tool rubbed the corroded looking material covering the object. The covering material was not hard and could be removed with small scraping motions across it.

  “John, bring me some test tubes for this material.”

  This removal would take some time and quite boring to just watch. This being the case and all now being hungry, they decided they would continue after they had eaten and discussed the matter.

  TV dinners were heated and as the three sat eating, John said to Hendrick, “What do you think so far?”

  “I think what we are going to find is a perfectly round metallic object of non-corrosive metal, in all likelihood gold and its weight alone testifies to that.”

  “A coin?”

  “I know of no gold coin that large ever being minted. Rick may be right; it may be some sort of jewelry.”

  “How in the hell did it get there?”

  “Well obviously someone put it there.”

  Rick interrupted, “You gentlemen go ahead, I have to visit my mother and clean up. Anything I can help with, just call me at mom’s place.”

  John replied, “Ok Rick and good work.”

  After Rick left, John said to Hendrick, “No matter whether a coin or jewelry, a bunch of Neanderthals didn’t put that thing in the grave. I wonder about the students at the site, could one of them be in cahoots with someone to discredit our discovery?”

  “Rick didn’t mention that possibility, so I am thinking he doesn’t think so and it was well below the body. Maybe there is something on the object, a picture, date or something.”

  “Well we might as well find out before we go crazy over this.”

  The two worked for hours on the object and used no water or solutions on it so as not to contaminate the material removed from it. Eventually they had uncovered a small area about a centimeter in size and John said, “It’s gold alright. I don’t see any markings.”

  The work continued by the hour with the soft plastic tool that would not scratch the gold. The small cleaned area expanded until the two professors were looking at a round gold disk that apparently had four equally space holes near its outer edge.

  Hendrick said, “Nothing; not an identifying mark of any kind.”

  John replied, “It resembles a name tag with no name on it. If it wasn’t gold, I would say it was off of some of the equipment at the site. Rick may be right. This might be a segment from a large necklace of some type or maybe hung around the neck on the chest.”

  “A Neanderthal?”

  “Forgive me.”

  Hendrick said, “I have had it for the night. Let’s pick up where we left off in the morning.”

  “Suits me, I want to call Rick in the morning.”

  At nine a.m., John was back with Hendrick at the lab and on the speaker phone with Rick. Without going into detail on the open airways, Hendrick asked Rick to come to the lab and look at the experiment results and have a sit down.

  At ten they were all at the examination table with Rick examining the gold disk. He said, “The holes indicate it was attached to something else, maybe a necklace. It sure wasn’t beat up, there’s not a scratch on it.”

  John replied, “That doesn’t sound like your average Neanderthal to me.”

  Rick said, “It has to be something we somehow put in the grave or someone else did. What equipment do we have that would have a gold disk?”

  “None, I checked.”

  Rick replied, “Then someone else put it in there. What would be more newsworthy than a mysterious gold disk found in the grave of a Neanderthal and below the Neanderthal? Like maybe we brought the skeleton with us or it’s fake?”

  “What’s the point in that? The Poles would love a Neanderthal found in Poland.”

  Hendrick said, “It wasn’t the Poles. It would have to be someone doing this just to discredit John and I or the University.”

  John replied, “That would be my guess, there is competition to get the best archeology students.”

  Rick asked, “Do you two or the University have any kind of a deal with a news organization for rights to a story. The National Inquirer could make a fortune on another good conspiracy theory.”

  “Nope, nothing. How about coffee before we start on the other side?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  At the table, John asked Rick, “Are you sure there are no more of these in the excavation?”

  “Well the last thing a guy needs at a Neanderthal excavation is a metal detector, but Scott made one for us, he’s a whiz at electronics. We went all over the bottom of the hole and found nothing and then the floor of the cave and found a few metal pull tabs off of cans.”

  John said to Rick, “It is with absolute certainty that the disk was put in the grave after you removed the skeleton or you would have noticed the skull bones disturbed. Then it would have had to have been pushed under the skull.”

  “Absolutely,” said Rick.

  “Can we assume it was one of the students?”

  “To me, that chance is so remote that I have to believe that someone from outside the site entered the cave and put it there. The cave floor is trampled with tracks, so tracks wouldn’t have alerted us.”

  Hendrick said, “Ok, we have other problems. You said you had your first snowfall last week?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well we have to get our people out of there, that primitive road may not be passable with a significant snow. Beyond that, the Polish government would wonder what is so important at the site we have to stay the winter. We just have to turn over the skeletal remains to the Poles. How are you coming with the skull fragments?”

  “They have all been recovered and documented and all we have left to do is make casting duplicates. But that will take weeks. Some of the students are reassembling the skull with the duplicate casting fragments now.”

  Hen
drick said, “I’ll call the Poles and tell them we will be out of there with all of our equipment in three weeks and we’ll clean up the site and they can come inspect it. We’ll turn over all of the artifacts we found at that time.”

  John said, “Well let’s get back to that disk, it might have Made in China on the other side.”

  The three meticulously removed the material from the other side of the disk and like the first side; there were no markings or any blemishes on it. It, in fact, was quite beautiful lying on the examination table and it was noticed that the disk would wobble if layed on one side.

  John said, “It’s not perfectly flat and that might tell us something, but I can’t imagine what.”

  Hendrick replied, “The only distinguishing thing about the disk are the four small holes that still have that crust material in them. Now we can see that they are not equally spaced and there might be a reason for that.”

  They checked the disk material with an electronic x-ray device that confirmed that the disk was truly gold and about ninety percent gold with other combined metals, which is always the case with gold.

  There was no more to be done at the lab and it was decided that Rick should head back to the site and do what he could to find out who had put the disk in the grave. Meanwhile, John and Hendrick would research the gold disk and try to find a match for it on the internet. It appeared to be some kind of jewelry item and if not, there must be some device out there that had such a gold disk. Whatever the case, the skeletal remains had to be turned over to the Poles in three weeks and in all likelihood with no mention of the gold disk. The disk would not be considered an archeological artifact, so there was no reason to give it to the Poles.