Authors: Robert Storey
Sarah and Trish were scanning a new section of land some time later when a shout went up a hundred metres away. Sarah looked at Trish, who appeared as surprised as she must have done. They dropped their tools and half-ran half-leapt over the rough terrain to where Jason and Carl had excavated a deep trench. Lights blazed down as a generator chugged away in the background. A small digger sat motionless off to one side of the hole. They were lucky to have been able to hire one on such short notice, and Sarah hoped it was worth the money as she crouched down and peered into the pit, Trish alongside her. Jason danced a jig and whooped in joy while Carl, hunkered down against a wall of sediment, teased something from its vertical face, brushing round it with care. She caught a glimpse of what looked like bone.
‘What is it? What have you found, you fool?!’ Trish said to the exuberant Jason.
‘It’s only bloody amazing, it’s bloody beautiful is what it is!’ He came over and gave Trish a big hug and a kiss.
‘Argg, get off you big oaf!’
Sarah wasn’t listening to them; she was transfixed by what Carl was extracting from the crumbling layers. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he moved it clear and held it up to the light for everyone to see. Trish gasped. Jason was ranting loudly and Sarah just stared in disbelief. Carl held aloft a skull. Not an animal skull, but a human one, and it was big … very big.
Cradling the object like a mother with a newborn child, Carl brought the skull over and passed it to Sarah, who gingerly, almost reverently, placed it on the ground so Trish and Jason could look without fear of it dropping and, heaven forbid, breaking apart. On closer inspection it wasn’t Homo sapiens, not just because of its size, but due to the massive ridges on the frontal bone, large nasal cavity, wide zygomatic bone and subtle elliptical orbits. This was not from an abnormally large human and nor was it a deformation, or not any that she knew of. Coupled with its location and her previous finds, there was only one conclusion, this was Homo gigantis. This was the holy grail of her quest. Proof beyond doubt!
A hand touched her shoulder, it was Trish. ‘Sarah, are you okay?’
‘I—’ She glanced at her friend. ‘Yes, more than okay.’
‘Only you’re crying,’ Jason said.
‘Am I?’ She wiped her face with the back of a grubby hand; looking at it she noticed wet streaks cutting through the dirt. She went back to looking at the skull, turning it over with the gentleness of a lover. With the greatest care she prised off some hard earth to reveal very human-looking teeth; very large teeth, but very human nonetheless.
Carl went to retrieve a secure container from the utility vehicle and on his return Sarah placed the skull inside, making sure it was well protected by surrounding materials inside the box. They all looked at Sarah in expectation, wondering what she wanted them to do next.
‘I think an all-nighter is in order,’ she said, staying calm. However, the sparkle in her eyes betrayed her excitement.
‘I suddenly don’t feel tired any more,’ said Jason.
Trish grinned. ‘Me neither.’
They turned to Carl, who just gave a solemn nod in agreement.
‘Let’s get to it then, people,’ Sarah said, clapping her hands together to gee them up.
By first light they had unearthed nearly a full skeleton, approximately eight and a half feet long, and that wasn’t all; after a few hours working in the trench, Sarah had gone back to the scan site that she had been surveying prior to the skull being found. She’d noticed a very strange reading; the imager’s OLED display appeared to indicate that there was solid metal below the ground.
Knowing the others still had their work cut out with the skeleton, Sarah desperately wanted to make a personal find of her own. She felt the anticipation growing within her as the hours passed, digging down ever deeper. A loud metallic clank accompanied by a vibration through the pick handle told her she’d hit whatever lurked buried below. Cursing her stupidity, she switched to a trowel. She prayed she hadn’t damaged whatever lay down there; she was getting tired, making mistakes. She was still annoyed at herself for letting the skull be taken out of the ground prior to in situ photos and other data being taken and catalogued.
Get a grip, Morgan
, she berated herself.
Taking a long draught of gasoline-strength coffee from her flask, she continued more warily.
More time came and went and sunlight blazed forth, announcing a new day, as she finally hauled out a strange oval metal casket. She caressed its smooth, unmarked surface. The pick had not made a scratch; it looked polished and shone as if it had been made only the day before. Brushing off the remaining dirt and dust, she pulled it a little further out of the deep hole she’d dug. It was heavy, perhaps thirty kilos. She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath; she let it out with a whooshing noise. She wasn’t sure what was more amazing, the skeleton or this.
The skeleton
, she decided,
still the skeleton
.
But this – what is it? Is it related to the skeleton or is it Islamic buried treasure? It doesn’t look like any Islamic artefact I’ve ever seen
.
It wasn’t, as Sarah had first thought, solid, as a fine gap encircled it. She ran her fingers along the line and around its whole circumference. Picking up the shovel, she noticed its flat straight blade and then looked at the casket.
Well, the pick had no effect and it hit it hard
,
she reasoned,
so prising it apart with this should be fine
. She braced the casket by putting it back in the hole, but tilted it upwards to expose the join. Placing the edge of the shovel along the line she took a deep breath and brought her foot down with half-force – nothing. No movement at all. She tried again with full force – still nothing. Frustrated, she threw down the shovel and went to the pickup for a set of fine-edged bolster chisels, a club hammer and a pry bar. As she neared the main site, she noticed Jason at the side of the utility vehicle where the skull and other bones were being stored, looking furtive.
‘You all right, Jas?’ Sarah said, as she approached.
He spun round, looking a little worried that she was there. ‘Yeah, I’m fine, just putting some bones in for storage.’
She noticed he slipped something into his pocket as he turned round and made his way back to the trench. She watched him walk away, wondering what he was up to. Too wired and in the zone to give it any more thought, she collected the tools she wanted and went back to the casket. After a while she had all the chisels inserted evenly around the gap. Going to each one in turn, she knocked them in a little further every time around until the top popped up by half an inch.
With her heart racing again, saliva built up in her mouth in anticipation; she swallowed and calmed herself. Most of the chisels had dropped onto the dirt, so she pulled the last couple out and lifted the lid upwards. Since the winds had died down overnight it was very still out on the edge of the Turkish plain, and an odd metallic smell lingered in the air as she moved the lid away and looked inside. Sunken into a circular hole, the size of a dinner plate, a large handle protruded. She gripped it with both hands and pulled hard; it came out in one smooth motion with a satisfying sucking pop. Sarah stumbled back before regaining her balance, then put the insert to one side and looked into the now unobstructed opening.
A number of objects nestled inside; all were quite strange and nothing like anything she had seen before, apart from something that looked like a larger version of her pendant. Reaching in, she drew it out. Measuring two and a half inches in diameter, it felt cold to the touch, as if it had been stored in a fridge. It was also slightly different to her artefact, not only in size, but in design. Whereas hers was quite simple, pentagonal with a single circle in the middle, this was ornate in comparison. Multiple symbols had been embossed onto its surface in what appeared to be some kind of text, although it didn’t look like any script she’d ever seen. They weren’t pictograms so it was either made before the earliest major civilisations or later. Considering where it was and what they had just found, she was betting it was pre-Babylonian by a long shot; perhaps even pre-human.
She noted that, unlike hers, this one had a metal clip at one end which she easily popped open using a couple of fingers. She looked inside to see it contained a roll of parchment. With her fingertips, she managed to coax it out. About to unfurl it, she paused. Was that an approaching vehicle she could hear? Slipping the paper-like material back into the large pendant, for it too had a hoop at one end, Sarah moved around from behind the craggy outcrop of rock where she’d been working to see that it wasn’t one vehicle, but five. Two black military looking short wheel-based lorries and three large desert-coloured SUVs roared up around the dig site, one peeling off towards Sarah, who rushed back to the canister-like box she’d just dug up. Yanking out items she stuffed them into her pockets; chucked a few under some rocks, and then they were on her. Two armed men jumped out of the SUV and grabbed her from behind, dragging her backwards as she tried to escape. She kicked, struggled and shouted at them before being slammed up against the side of the vehicle for her troubles. With rough efficiency, they then stripped her down to her underwear and removed all the artefacts she‘d concealed in her clothing.
She started to shiver as the two men swept the area. ‘Is that everything?’ one of them asked her after they had gathered together most of the items she’d hidden. Sarah glared at him with baleful eyes and didn’t answer.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the second man, ‘we’ll pick this site clean when the others get here.’
‘What others?’ Sarah said. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
The men ignored her. One of them picked up her clothes and shoved them into her midriff. After she had dressed they marched her over to the others. Trish looked terrified and Jason bled from a gash to his head. There was no sign of Carl.
Amongst the desert camo-clad soldiers, who now seemed to be everywhere, a tall, imperious man strode around issuing orders. He wore a pinstripe suit and looked extremely out of place, almost comically so, and yet the men obeyed him without question as he directed them this way and that. Then, appearing from behind one of the trucks, Carl came into view.
‘You fucking bastard piece of shit!’ Jason shouted, rushing at him.
Carl sidestepped the attack and stuck out a leg, and Jason hit the ground hard. They grappled for a moment in the dust, but Jason was soon overcome. Now on top, with Jason face down, Carl knelt on Jason’s back and twisted his arms behind him until he cried out in pain.
‘Stop it!’ Trish pleaded, in tears. ‘You’re hurting him!’
At that moment the suited man approached. He surveyed the scene with a critical eye, looking at Jason, Trish and then finally Sarah. ‘Get rid of them,’ he said to Carl in a strong and unmistakable Italian accent.
Carl hauled Jason up, dragged him over to a nearby vehicle and thrust him into the back seat. Trish and Sarah were forced forwards and Carl unceremoniously pushed them in to join their friend. As Carl walked, off one of his colleagues noticed Sarah’s pendant.
‘Sir, what about that?’ he said pointing at the dangling pentagon.
Carl paused to glance at the metal disc hanging around Sarah’s neck. He looked her in the eye. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said, moving away, ‘just some cheap trinket.’
Satisfied with his superior’s judgement the man slammed the door shut on the three archaeologists with an ominous finality.
♦
‘Sarah, what’s going on?’ Trish said. ‘Who are these people?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sarah looked out of the window at the men as they went through their gear, throwing boxes of precious bones to the ground as if they were worthless pieces of junk. ‘Although I’m beginning to get an idea.’ She turned to look at her friends. ‘Did they take everything you had?’
Trish nodded.
‘I tried to stop Carl taking the skull,’ Jason said, ‘but got this for my troubles.’ He pointed at his battered face.
The front doors of the SUV opened and they fell silent; Carl got into the driver’s seat and another man climbed into the passenger side. The suit and his mercenaries stayed behind while Carl drove them back towards base camp. As they bumped along the uneven road, no one spoke, each immersed in their own thoughts. Reaching the site Carl jumped out and ducked into the main tent. After a minute he was back and they were driving again, this time on the road towards the nearest town. Miles before they got there he slammed on the brakes and the vehicle skidded to a stop. Turning round he chucked each of their passports at them and some cash at Sarah.
‘Do yourselves a favour and don’t speak of this to anyone,’ he said, his eyes steely cold. ‘Now get out.’
The three did as they were told and as the SUV turned round and headed back towards the camp, Trish yelled some obscenities after them.
Dejected, Jason looked around at the barren wilderness that surrounded them. ‘Now what?’
‘Now,’ Sarah said, her face grim, ‘we walk.’
Chapter Five
Richard Goodwin waited in his office. He looked out at the lush, green, Brazilian rainforest, which stretched to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a wondrous sight; it was also an illusion, albeit a real-time one. Cameras around the world were trained on various landscapes that you could select, much like the allocation of a backdrop on a user interface. Once a vista was chosen, you couldn’t change it again for at least six months as, according to scientific research, for the brain to train the subconscious into believing it was real it had to remain constant for that minimum duration; altering the scene every day to different locations negated the effect. He still knew it was fake, but it was soothingly familiar nonetheless.
Goodwin watched as a group of howler monkeys he’d grown to know worked their way through nearby treetops, adults foraging for leaves and berries and juveniles playing and learning to survive. Exotic birds preened and sang as the sun rose high in the crystal clear sky above.