‘What! Are you okay?’
‘Look, look at the screen.’
Lorraine moved behind him to get a decent view, and was similarly struck dumb. ‘Where is that?’
‘Ecuador, found following a tsunami and forest fire, revealing a buried wreck.’
‘And is it fully excavated?’
‘No, no, this is robot footage, sent in to check if it is worth digging, save time and unnecessary effort.’
‘But that appears to be the same box design as ours, different symbol on the front, but still.’
‘I need that translator, find out what this symbol is.’
‘How did you get this?’
‘A friend of mine Katherine is down there working with Laurent, she sent it to me, see?’
With that Jacob returned to the original email, and another video clip called ‘Message from Katherine’ was attached. Jacob selected it, and Katherine’s beaming face appeared, her glowing smile framed by her neatly cut auburn hair. Two other people hovered excitedly behind her.
‘Hi Jacob, just a quick message, hope you are well, this is what we have found.’ Pointing to her colleagues who were also smiling. ‘It appears to be a sealed box, we have not been able to get into that area yet, maybe tomorrow, and no one dares to start without Christophe’s blessing. Oh he is up river about thirty miles, looking at my other discovery, see the next email. Anyway bye for now, speak soon. Love you.’
Lorraine was taken aback; she did not expect a pretty Texan girl to address Jacob so. Jacob was blushing, and attempted to explain, ‘Okay that may seem a little strange.’
Lorraine did not reply, just tilting her head at Jacob. He continued.
‘When Katherine’s parents were killed in a road accident, her father, my best friend, named my wife and I as legal guardians. I brought her up. The daughter I, we never had, sort of.’
‘Oh well that explains it, Dad.’
Jacob shot Lorraine a look, not aggressive, but more that he asked for that. She broke a smile immediately after he returned her stare and burst out laughing.
‘I have to get to that wreck site, Laurent is off treasure hunting again, so I better go and sort him out.’
Within an hour, he had left standing orders on the investigation of the artefacts recovered from the wreck. Eli had received notification from Paul that a flight down to Ecuador, flying from Montreal, changing at Miami in the next two hours. Jean offered to fly him to Montreal.
Jacob turned and shouted across the hanger at Lorraine, ‘When that bloody translator gets his arse here from Washington, get him to do some work!’
Lorraine did not reply, she pointed behind Jacob, who grimaced almost instinctively. As he turned there was a young Chinese man behind him.
‘Hello Mr Mathias.’ An outstretched hand greeting him, Jacob shook his hand.
‘Jacob Mathias, and you are?’
‘Bloody Translator, good to meet you.’
‘Sorry about that, long couple of days.’
‘Not a problem, Paul told me the Chinese calligraphy may be from the Zheng Hu fleets?’
‘Possibly, I thought you would know better than us.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Ecuador, another Chinese ship possibly, why?’
‘Well if you have scanned all the evidence here, I can take the electronic versions and work on them on the plane with you.’
‘Can you now? And why would I want you to do that?’
‘Mr Mathias, you will only want my arse down to South America, so I thought I would save increasing your blood pressure.’
Jacob laughed out loud, slapping the young man on the back.
‘You are absolutely right. Come with me, let’s get you all you need. What was your name again?’
‘Andy Huang sir, pleasure to meet you at last.’
‘You are very welcome Andy. I was about to fly out, but seeing as you are here, come and discover some lost history with me.’
Jacob led the young man to the lab, introducing most people, which was pointless as they would be leaving shortly. However Jacob always liked to be polite, he moved to the back of the lab, and the large screen set up there. He got Lorraine to bring up the images they had scanned from the box, and the artefacts and parchment contained within.
Andy dived straight in, ‘The symbol on the front of the box is archer, the symbol on the top of the parchment is the five elements in order, metal or gold, wood, water, fire and earth. Then it goes on to mention a temple or place containing the five elements, no reference to where, no place names, just a blue light?’
‘Can you tell they‘re origin, or their destination?’
Andy quickly scanned through the images, and then stopped on the images of the small wax balls.
‘These La Wan, what’s inside them?’
‘Lorraine, have you got those images?’
‘No Jacob, with all the issues with the box, we forgot the La Wan?’
‘Andy what’s the significance of these?’
‘They contain messages, usually confidential or specific to one recipient. A message would be written on a silk ribbon, encased in the wax ball, it would be swallowed when cool, carried safely in the stomach of the courier.’
‘And then what? He would just….’
‘He would recover it and the intended recipient of the message would crack open the wax ball and read the message.’
Lorraine and Jacob winced, ‘these are the size of golf balls, imagine trying to,’ She gulped slightly at the thought of attempting to swallow one. ‘Brave men, that’s all I can say.’
Andy was led over to the centre of the room, the wax balls sitting on a stand, remote from the other artefacts. Lorraine donned the compulsory gloves, and began to gently open the wax balls, each one giving a subdued crack as it revealed its silken cargo. She placed each immaculately preserved rolled silk ribbon next to the appropriate shell, and then moved back allowing Andy access. Andy had put on gloves, and gently unrolled the delicate silk messages, Lorraine recording on a camera mounted above.
‘This is part of a message to the Admiral, it states that they have left, a coastal village, possibly South American and are heading north. You understand they called the landmasses by different names, but I do not wish to confuse matters further. The second gives details on their destination, and refers to a map number. The third is a goodbye from the captain.’
At this point Andy stopped, ‘there was no order to the messages, but it would appear they travelled north and then something happened. Was there a scroll in a bamboo tube, a wax seal on the end?’ Lorraine found the scroll he referred to, and he read it out aloud.
‘The ship has become trapped in ice, we cannot get free. I am concerned that the hull cannot take the pounding, but there is no shelter from the ice. It continues, that they became frozen in the sea ice, and to save the ship, used the wind and spare timber to get on top of the ice, completely out of the water.’
‘That is no mean feat, ship that size, although it would explain why the hull was not crushed, snowfall would bury it, rather than sea ice.’
‘The scroll tells of how the food rations ran out, they could not catch any fish through the ice. The men began to burn anything to keep warm, and wait for the ice to melt, it never did. The last entry is a goodbye to his family and crew, and a message to the Admiral in one of the wax balls he swallowed.’
Jacob looked at the collection of small cracked wax balls, ‘One of these was in the stomach of the Captain?’