“This thing isn’t supposed to be in the San Juans,” I said, recalling my vain search for evidence that the beast had once inhabited the region’s prehistoric past.
“Funny,” the old man said, his voice thick with contempt. “That bunch of academics at the Museum of Natural History told me the same thing.” Nodding to the skeleton, he gargled out a chuckle. “Guess somebody forgot to tell old Manfred he wasn’t supposed to be here.” He fished a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his shorts, plucked out a wad, and stuffed it into his cheek. He leaned against a table and folded his arms. “Since I’m making introductions, Barnes is the name—R. Wesley Barnes.” The old man made no move to offer the customary handshake. Instead, he lifted a tin can from the table and spat into it. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I own the place.”
I stared at R. Wesley Barnes for as long as it took to elevate the old man from janitor to estate owner. “It’s a pleasure,” I said finally, handing him the shotgun. “I think.”
Barnes, grinning, leaned the gun in a corner and raised the tin can high enough to indicate the mammoth. “You’re looking at ten years of digging and another five fitting the pieces together. Reassembling a creature like that isn’t as easy as a man might think.”
Contemplating the task raised no images of easy in my mind. “I take it you’re a paleontologist?”
“Nope.”
“Then how do you know it’s right? Did it come with a set of instructions?”
“It’s right,” Barnes said, annoyed by the suggestion. “I learned a long time ago that a man can teach himself just about anything he sets his mind to. I know the bones in that creature better than I know the back of my own hand, probably better than that bunch of half-wits that say it isn’t supposed to be here in the first place.”
“Have you told anyone?” I unshouldered my backpack and fished out a palm-sized digital Nikon. “You’ve got a first here, a chance to rewrite a few textbooks.” I started to snap a shot.
“I don’t think taking pictures is a good idea,” Barnes said. “Fact is, I didn’t find it on my land.”
“Was I close?”
A slight grin emerged on Wes Barnes’s face. “Not bad for a yuppie that don’t know how to read a damn map.”
“So, I was on public land.”
Barnes hoisted himself to a seat on the edge of the table. “Don’t want to mess with the lawsuits. Damn lawyers. I don’t trust any of ’em no further than a hog can throw a horseshoe.” Red heat rose through a web of tiny veins in his cheeks. “But there’s no use blowing the old ticker over it. Fact is, I got me a bigger fish to fry.” He scratched at the stubble on the side of his neck and studied me through a green-eyed glare. It was a long few seconds before he asked, “Adams, you a trustworthy man?”
I huffed out a laugh. “Didn’t shoot you, did I?” I returned the Nikon to my pack, wondering why he’d asked the question.
“Nope. Guess you didn’t.” Barnes hesitated another moment, then scooted off the edge of the table, and stepped from the solarium. He returned with a file folder in one hand and a three-foot roll of yellowed paper in the other.
The yellowed paper that Barnes unfurled over the table was a map of the Mediterranean region. He secured the map’s edges with a couple of empty flowerpots, and he used a long fingernail to tap a tiny, inked-in dot north of Crete’s eastern shore. “This little island’s called Sarnafi. Not even on the map. Got me a house on the west side.” He gave me another wary exam before handing me the file folder. “Here, have a look.”
I opened the folder and found two items. The first item, a glossy eight-by-ten, black-and-white photograph, appeared to be that of an ancient document, riddled with holes, bearing some type of writing. The second item was a sheet of paper containing a paragraph of typed text. The sentences of the text were broken with brackets and periods, indicators normally intended to show missing words.
“What would you say if I told you that you were looking at a section of a parchment scroll produced by the hand of an Atlantean prophet?”
“Atlantean?” I asked, looking up abruptly. “You mean the Atlantis kind of Atlantean?”
Barnes didn’t answer or even flinch. In fact, the old man’s face was serious enough to send every one of my red flags straight up their poles. I closed the folder, stepped to the mammoth, and thumped one of the ribs with a middle knuckle. It made a deep, vibrating sound.
“Next thing you’re gonna tell me is you took old Manfred down single-handed—with a letter opener.”
“I should have figured you for the skeptic,” Barnes said. “Can’t say I blame you. Hell, every other year some yahoo comes up with a new theory on Atlantis.”
“You’re carrying the baton this year?”
Barnes spat impatiently into the can. “If you don’t want to hear about it, I’d just as soon save my breath.”
There was enough sincerity in the old man’s indignant glare to convince me that I should at least hear him out. “All right, Barnes. I’m listening.”
The indignation eased as the old man reclaimed his seat on the table next to the map. “In 1942, I was a Navy Communications Operator aboard the aircraft carrierU.S.S. Wasp. We were on assignment delivering Spitfires to Malta for the British when we got word that the Greek underground had ferried an American intelligence agent—codenamed Seagull—to an island in the Aegean. Seagull needed to be picked up. I volunteered as radioman for the mission. Our plane was a TBD-1A Devastator, an underpowered, experimental torpedo bomber that the Navy had retrofitted with pontoons and a bracket to winch it on and off the carrier. Once Seagull was safely on the plane, I was supposed to radio back a message: The bird is in his nest.
“We flew in under the cover of dark. Things were going fine until a German gunboat came around the beach and splashed a light over our plane. All hell broke loose. The Greeks tried to hold off the Germans long enough for us to get into the air. The Devastator had three seats: pilot up front, radioman in the middle, gunner in the rear. Seagull was scrambling into the rear gunner’s seat when he took a bullet to the back. Just before he died, he slipped me a packet of undeveloped film from a Minox.”
“The camera favored by spies,” I said, recalling the predecessor to my palm-sized digital. I’d learned of the Minox while doing research for my fourth novel, The Bolivian Exile. “Got a film cartridge the size of a button.”
“You got it,” Barnes confirmed. “There were a dozen of these cartridges, but the one that had the picture of the scroll was separate from the rest. Seagull begged me not to hand it over to my superiors, said when the time is right, the world needed to see. The message of this scroll, he insisted, had the power to change everything. Then, with his last few breaths, he muttered something about a volcano and a cave with a plastered hole in the wall. Of course I figured he was delirious. I didn’t have the foggiest notion of what he was talking about—least not until I had one of my buddies develop that film. When I saw that photograph, I started putting things together. Seagull must have found this scroll, but circumstances didn’t allow him to take it. He photographed it, hid it in the nook of a cave wall, and then plastered the hole. Probably intended to go back for it after the war.”
“And you’re thinking Seagull’s volcano is Santorini?”
“We think Santorini is the volcano he was talking about, but we don’t think the scroll is there.”
“Why not?”
“Seagull’s island was smaller. Even in the dark, I would have been able to see Santorini’s horseshoe shape. We didn’t go to Santorini that night. I can tell you that for sure.”
“But, Barnes, you were the radioman. You would’ve had the coordinates of your pickup point.”
“Normally, yes. In our case, only the pilot was privy to that information. Unfortunately, Dan Bradshaw was killed on his next mission. And since I could have been court-martialed for treason for keeping that little film cartridge, well, I wasn’t anxious to ask too many questions of the men in charge.
“Anyway, Santorini was sporadically active when Seagull was in the region. He could have easily seen the plume from Sarnafi. What’s more, we’ve uncovered some ruins there: the remains of a Pialigarian temple and a pier. But the clincher for me was the cave. When my partner told me he’d found one, I bought the island.”
Barnes’s unyielding eyes and elaborate surroundings were the only things keeping my skeptical tendencies in check. I glanced at the photograph. “The Minox cartridge holds about fifty shots. Why is there only one?”
“Film cartridge got nicked by a bullet. I was lucky to get one picture out of it. Damn shame, too. We think the entire scroll might have been on that roll.”
Plausible, I thought, pulling the sheet of paper with the paragraph from the folder. “Translation?”
“We think it’s close,” Barnes said. “The scroll was written in a script known as Linear A, first discovered on clay tablets at the Minoan ruins of Knossos, in central Crete. I’d made a few contacts in the archaeological community to help me with a translation, but no one recognized the script. In the mid-fifties, I ran into an archaeologist named Alexios Mikos. Mikos introduced me to a couple of his colleagues that deciphered a later, similar script known as Linear B. The translation you got there represents their best guess.”
I read the fragmented translation.
[…] my beloved […] [I have] been away from you […] think. These many years […] to a most remarkable [… …] name, and […] wonderful revelation which he has named, The Three Measures of Wisdom. In a strange twist that […] [… …] directed by the hand of the Great Mother, I believe [… … .] recovered the knowledge that made our ancestors a great and prosperous people. […] intends to […] to a life of [… …] to reconcile myself with the priests so that I may satisfy this deep [… …] return to you. Should [… … …] prevent me from fulfilling this dream, I send [… …] contains the knowledge, I am certain, that was lost to our ancestors in the [… …]. I have written […] the language of our ancestors, knowing that [… … .] will understand them. If I am unable to return, [… …] this document with an authority whose mind has not been corrupted by the false teachings of the priests [… …] perpetuating the great lie. Instruct our advocate to [… … . .] that I have written, that they may bring our people out of this dark night of ignorance. …
The paragraph was proof of nothing. “And you were skeptical of my letter of introduction?” I said, adding my best sarcastic smile.
There were no apologies in Barnes’s shrug. “So, what do you make of the message?”
I scanned the document again. “Looks like some guy’s been away awhile. Learned about this Three Measures of Wisdom from somebody. Thinks some goddess led him to it. Seems to think it’s the wisdom that made his ancestors great. Must have been fighting with his priests. Looks like the guy intended to come back to save his people.” I looked up at Barnes. “Atlantis is going to rise again, right?”
“Look at the facts, Adams. The script is early Minoan. Santorini is the modern name for the volcanic island of Thera—center of ancient Minoan civilization. Thera, classified as a supervolcano, erupted in 1628 BC, a cataclysm that made Mount Saint Helens look like the pop of a firecracker. The blast destroyed everything in the vicinity. Excavations at Akrotiri, on the southern shore of the island, show an advanced enough society to make a lot of archaeologists suspect that Thera was the likely basis for Plato’s story.”
I frowned, but it wasn’t the Minoan/Atlantean connection that caused it. I’d seen enough of the PBS documentaries to know the plausibility of the theory. Of all the endless speculation on Atlantis, Thera as the probable location of the lost continent was, to me, the most compelling. No UFOs. No energy vortexes. Nobody jetting around in nuclear backpacks. Advanced for the times, the Minoans were an art-loving, extremely prosperous, seafaring community who enjoyed the amenities of hot and cold running water and flushing toilets. The strangest thing about those people was their love for the sport of bull jumping. But even that, I figured, wasn’t unlike the freestyle bullfighters that had emerged within the American rodeo. Cowboy protectors they were called, evolving from rodeo clown to competitive sportsmen in their own right.
What bothered me was Barnes’s timeline. I glanced again at the period-riddled paragraph. “You said this thing wasn’t translated until the fifties?”
“That’s right.”
“Then if Seagull found it in the early forties, why would he have told you that it was something the world needed to see? How could he have known that?”
There was something bordering on admiration in Barnes’s smile when he said, “A man with a sharp mind. I like this about you. After the war, I did a little research on Seagull. His name was Lawrence Bernard Stevenson, a brilliant old boy with a Ph.D. in philosophy. In addition to being the most respected asset in America’s pre-CIA intelligence community, Dr. Stevenson had a deep interest in archaeology. What’s more, he was a renowned expert in prehistoric forms of writing. Leading scholars of the day consulted him frequently for his paleographic expertise. As far as the general world of academia was concerned, Linear A had never been deciphered. But you take a man with a mind like Stevenson’s, and, well, I’m guessing he knew things your average academic didn’t.”
“No mammoths in the San Juans?”
“Exactly. Whatever Seagull knew, he figured it was important enough to pass it on with his dying words. That’s got to be worth something.”
Barnes had developed a pretty neat and logical package. But there was still one thing that made no sense. “You’ve got a lot of pieces to a very intriguing puzzle, and it looks like some might even fit. But there’s one piece, an odd one, that I haven’t quite figured out.”
“What’s that?”
“Me. Why are you telling me all of this?”
Grinning, the old man pushed himself off the table. “I was wondering when you were gonna get around to asking. Grab your purse, Adams. Got something else I want to show you.”
I followed Wes Barnes down the hallway to a large, oak-paneled office that had the sweet-musty smell of a library. With the exception of a window that arched to just below the twelve-foot ceiling, three of the walls were lined with books nestled in oak shelving. The fourth wall was home to a copier, a fax machine, and a smattering of other office equipment. At the center of the room sat an executive desk. The only items on the desk were a brass lamp and a laptop computer. A ticker tape feed crawled across the screen of the laptop.
I planted both hands on either side of the computer and studied the colorful display of bar graphs, charts, and floating symbols. “So this is how you pay your rent?” I said, partly joking but mostly envious.
Barnes grinned proudly. “Adams, you’ve been talking to an orphan boy from a poor southern town who barely made it through the eighth grade. Had to figure out some way to put a roof over my head. It’s a simple matter of learning how to play the game. It’s like the song says, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. You take a man that knows what he’s doing, hamburgers and microchips can produce a pretty damn good life. These days I leave most of the holding and folding to my firm in Atlanta.” He nodded to the laptop. “I drop in once in a while, check out the action. I see something interesting, I buy it. Just kind of tinker around, really. I don’t need the money or the stress. Besides, I got me a more interesting way to spend my time.” Barnes stepped to one of the bookshelves and passed a hand over a row of books. “Tell me what you see here, Adams.”
I stepped over, scanned the line of books, and stopped when I came to the spine of one I recognized—mine. Then, I saw another, and another, and I kept going until I realized that all ten of my novels were nestled on that shelf. “I’ll be damned. Someone actually does buy those things.”
Barnes removed Rendezvous with an Angel and leafed to my picture on the back page.
“You knew it was me?” I asked.
“From the instant you lifted your hat.” A yellow-toothed grin came over the old man’s face. “Adams, you may find this to be a rather unbelievable matter of coincidence, but I’ve been looking for a writer of your caliber, someone who can reach an audience, help me tell this story.”
The odd piece to the puzzle suddenly fit. “You’re looking for a ghostwriter?” I said. I couldn’t keep the contempt out of my voice. “I do the work, you get the glory, that it?”
Of course Barnes wouldn’t understand why I wasn’t smiling. Youthful ambition, a few too many beers on the golf course, and a chronically hyper entrepreneur named Steve Faust—he got rich in offshore investing—enticed me into the murky bog of one such project. Faust, assuming the world wanted to read every boring detail of his miserable, self-indulgent life, hired me to perform the deed. In my entire career, I had never done so many rewrites or come so close to committing murder.
“Can’t help you, Barnes,” I said, tossing the file folder on the desk. “Been there, done that.”
“So, you think I’m looking for glory, do ya? Well, I don’t need or want any of your damn glory. I don’t even want my name on the damn book—outside or in. I’m looking at this thing as a possible opportunity to give something back to the world. The Pialigarians are our only link to the lost culture of the Minoans. But they’re a poor people. Their kids grow up and leave the island. There’s nothing to keep them there. If they’re going to survive, the young people need a reason to stay; they need jobs. But not just any kind of jobs. They need an industry that’ll preserve their heritage. I’ve talked to a lot of people about it, and the only way this is going to happen is through tourism. Adams, if we lose the Pialigarians, we lose a rare link to our ancient past. We need a guy like you to tell their story, to get the world emotionally invested in who these people are. This scroll is going to pique their attention. It’ll be the catalyst that’s going to help make this happen.”
“Yeah? And what if you find this scroll and there’s nothing to it? What if it doesn’t grab the world by the throat?”
“It’d be your job to make sure that it does.”
“I see. Spin a tale, hype it up, build it and they will come. If I was good at doing that, I’d probably make a hell of a lot more money selling used cars.”
Barnes fixed his piercing eyes on mine. “I don’t think you’re going to have to hype anything, Adams. Seagull believed the message of the scroll had the power to change everything. I’m betting on it. I think there’s one hell of a good chance that we’re on the verge of uncovering the blueprint for a new world order.”
New world order? Give me a break. I suppressed a smile, pulled my wallet, and fished out the business card of my agent. “Call Claudia Epstein,” I said, holding the card out to Barnes. “New York. You can even tell her I sent you. I’m sure she’s got a young writer or two that would love to help you usher in your new world order.”
Barnes didn’t take the card or return the smile. “A doddering old fart with too much money. That what you’re thinking, Adams?”
The definition was close enough. “You’ve got to admit, Barnes, it all sounds pretty bizarre.”
“You have talent, and you’re looking for a story. Why else would you be out chasing a damn mammoth that isn’t supposed to exist? A guy crazy enough to do that ought to at least be open-minded enough to listen to the deal I’m willing to offer.”
Hooking up with a delusional old geezer bent on saving a dying people (not to mention the entire world) sounded like a bad preface to an even worse story. I wanted to advance my career, not nuke it. Barnes was talking fodder better suited to feed the checkout counter tabloids. I could just see it: Aliens from Atlantis Reveal New World Order.
Still, my hope of crafting a story of an adventure that I alone could tell had been thwarted by the fact that the old man had beat me to the discovery of the mammoth. Yeah, I could still tell the story, but it wouldn’t be mine. The fact was, I had as little now as when I first set out on my quest. Would I have less by giving the old man another five minutes to waste?
“All right, Barnes, I’m listening. Just don’t get your hopes up.”
“Good,” he said, and clasping a wrist behind his back, he began a circular, contemplative stroll, his eyes drifting upward as if it were from the airy heights of the room that he would draw the elements of his proposal. “First of all, I take care of all your expenses: travel, food, the works. For lodging, I put you up at my place on Sarnafi. It’s got a view, it’s private, and it’s close enough to the site to keep you on top of things—perfect place to write a book.” Barnes turned to me. “Sound good so far?”
I slid Epstein’s card back into my wallet and struck a look intended to convey a specific message: Good would begin with a dollar sign followed by a respectable number of digits—preferably five.
Barnes continued. “If we find the scroll, and if we go to publication, the book goes out under your name. In exchange for your trouble, and your talent as a writer, I will advance you the sum total of one hundred thousand dollars. If we don’t find the scroll within a year, you keep the advance and the bragging rights to one hell of a vacation in the Aegean.” Barnes turned the full, piercing force of his green eyes directly on me. “So, Adams, does it really matter if I’m a doddering old fart with too damn much money?”
I stood dumb and silent, wondering how high the sudden wave of shock had lifted my eyebrows.
J Douglas Bottorff 