He was still carrying the strange piece of orange metal when he came into the small worksite office, and sat down, placing it on the table as he would a paperweight — and said nothing.
“Well Hank, what did Mr. Brandt have to say?” Jeroen asked.
Hank cracked his knuckles together. “He says it’s the remains of the India Star, an old brass lined ship of war, dumped here years ago to stop the never-ending erosion to the beach.”
Jeroen laughed at the explanation.
“That’s bullshit and you know it as well as I do. That looked like a city to me.”
Hank met his eyes, and forcefully replied, “Yeah, well maybe it was one of ‘their’ old cities, before we came. Now it’s ours, so why shouldn’t we build on top of it? It looks pretty solid to me.”
“I don’t care if it was one of ‘their’ cities.” Jeroen lit a pipe. “Heck, some of that red metal stuff must be worth something?”
“Yeah, well maybe Mr. Brandt isn’t too keen on slowing down his project while we all go archeological on his building site. Besides, so what if it is? All the better for building on. Anything that solid must make for a good foundation.”
“So, then, what are we going to do with it?”
“The owner says backfill with rocks and soil, lay the foundations, and prepare for stage two of the building.”
“And that’s what you’re planning on doing?”
“Like I said, it’ll make good foundations.”
Jeroen stood up to leave and then said, “Hank…”
“Leave it alone Jeroen. I said it’s time to go back to work. I want this place buried by the end of the week.”
That night, Hank drank whiskey quietly in his own tent. Ordinarily he’d have been happy to have one with his men, but he needed the time to think this one through. Something in the back of his mind kept reminding him of the damn copper-colored ingot. He’d never seen anything glow like that. It was almost a type of orange gold.
Besides, it didn’t make sense how the owner responded. Mr. Brandt was an extremely wealthy man, but that was no reason not to become wealthier. He’d bought the water lots fair and square. If there was an ancient golden city below, he could have easily claimed ownership.
So, why had he been so quick and adamant to bury the lot of it? What didn’t he want the rest of the world to see?
It was too much for him, and in the end, Hank knew he needed to have a more satisfactory answer. Returning to his work tent where he’d left the orange ingot as a good paperweight, Hank grabbed the strange metal, put it in his pocket and walked towards the steel forge, where men were working through the night to create the steel required for the new outpost.
As the leading engineer, Hank was known by everyone who greeted him cordially, though surprised to see him there in the night. At the back of the room he examined the ingot. It was definitely made from the same strange glowing metal used in the artifact that Albert Olsen had discovered.
He shook his head, still wondering at the young man’s sudden disappearance. It wasn’t like someone had killed him for it — after all, Olsen had already entrusted the artifact with himself before he disappeared. Perhaps, he had never intended on returning to Frejia, and this was the best apology he could find? First weighing it, he discovered that it was precisely 250 ounces. He then placed it inside the crucible and started the furnace. And watched as the strange metal smelted until it glowed with fire and liquefied.
Zinc and lead were the first to go, being weak metals.
He then poured off the liquid while the stronger metals, being gold, silver and copper, remained in a solid form.
With a gloved hand he picked up the blacksmith’s pincers and gripped the small clump of shiny metal so that he could examined it. Not much had changed in its weight. He weighed it to be sure. 240 ounces.
He became excited by the prospect of 240 ounces of gold, silver and copper. But the question remained: in what proportions were they?
Hank then took a small bottle of Glaubers Salt, a recently discovered strong acid that would dissolve silver and copper, but leave gold untarnished, and poured it into the crucible.
Again, the gold remained solid, while the other two elements turned into a weak sludge.
He carefully removed the sludge and heated the gold once more to remove any additional impurities, and then examined the glowing remaining metal. It certainly looked like pure gold. He might not have all of it, but it was close.
Gripping it with the Blacksmith’s pincers, he dipped it in water, watching it hiss.
Impatiently, he then picked it up.
It felt heavy in his hand and his heart raced as he placed it back on the scales. Holding his breath, he added lead weights to the opposite end of the scale, until the two metals were balanced.
He totaled the tiny weights and nearly screamed.
175 ounces!
He did the arithmetic in his head.
Holy shit! That’s nearly 70 % gold!
And there’s a buried city below his construction site covered in the stuff. Buried for eternity.
He returned to his master’s locked ship.
A sudden sense of urgency led him to quickly open his safe and examine the artifact that Albert Olsen had asked him to deliver. At the time he’d dismissed the markings as being unlikely similarities, but now he was certain that they were one and the same as those his old college friend had spoken about.
The instant he saw it he knew they were.
So, he was telling the truth all those years ago.
Robert Mitchel had discovered an ancient tribe in Africa that knew the way to the Golden City!
Hank stared at the gold in front of him.
He was going to be rich beyond his dreams. All he had to do was work out how he was going to steal it without Felix Brandt’s entire fortress caving in on him. In the delusion of happiness, which the allure of gold often provided, Hank didn’t even stop to consider why Felix was so determined to bury it all.
He was going to be rich.
Hank recalled the conversation with his old friend, Robert Mitchel, all those years ago. And then prayed that the second part of the man’s story never came true.
Chapter One
Dr. Billie Swan turned left onto Amselstraat and then right onto Weeperstraat taking the shortest route out of the old city, over the maze of canals and dikes. She drove a Renault Twingo, the four door version of the tiny European car. Hired for the week, she’d expected it to take at least that long to find the answer to her question.
Instead, she’d found it on her third day.
In her rear view mirror she saw a yellow Vespa. It had been following her since leaving the Stadsarchief Amsterdam — the National Archives Center. It could have been taking the same route as her. It was the fastest way out of the city.
But had she seen it yesterday?
Europe was rife with such mopeds, and she could be easily forgiven for mistaking a different one, which followed her now, as one and the same.
Her nerves had been on edge since she’d returned from Atlantis.
Billie hadn’t even worked out the entire truth. If her predictions were even close to the mark, then the world was in trouble. And based on the calculations of time, she didn’t have long to work out a solution. Maybe as little as five weeks.