Bruce had dozed off for most of the flight from London to New York, despite the small, tepid cup of what he decided was probably decaf coffee. Though the seat next to him was unoccupied, the aisle seat had been assigned to an old woman who, at the moment, seemed completely immersed in the large-print novel propped on her tray table. Awake now, Bruce focused his thoughts back onto the pressing uncertainty of the events playing out at the dig site in Alaska.
He hunched down a little to look out the window at the expansive view of the North American continent. The entire land mass was once completely submerged beneath the oceans that were once again slowly eroding it’s eastern and western shores. Millions of years ago – and possibly again, millions of years in the future – a combination of tectonic forces and glacial activity created its rifts and mountains as well as the Great Lakes that he could just barely make out about 35,000 feet below him. He was familiar with the Great Lakes region from various assignments, most recently an article for The Atlantic about the temporary reopening of a tunnel that was built into the bedrock behind Niagara Falls in the early 1900’s when the hydroelectric plants were first constructed. Since the combined volume of freshwater contained in the lakes was second only to that of Lake Baikal in Russia, the region was getting a lot of attention from conservationists.
He finished his coffee and handed his cup to the stewardess as she passed his row. Before taking off from Heathrow, he had texted Doug to tell him that he’d gotten his message, careful to leave out the specific details about meeting him in California instead of Anchorage. When he didn’t receive a response he hoped that it was because Doug was also being cautious or that he was busy working with local and state authorities to resolve the dispute at Anchor Point so that he could quickly put his team back to work.
With the nine-hour time difference, Bruce figured that the confrontation at the dig site had happened about 17 hours ago. The student he spoke with said they hadn’t seen Doug all day. Bruce reasoned that his friend had likely found an office to hole up in while playing phone tag with both local and federal politicians over the approvals that they’d granted for the dig. Or, it could mean that he would be at the airport in Anchorage to meet Bruce’s flight as they’d originally planned.
He wished that Doug had forwarded images of the slate to him so he could better understand why the find was considered so significant from an academic perspective. Why was this artifact so different from other findings? Other paintings on cave walls or relics unearthed and carbon dated to be thousands of years old? It wasn’t exactly an unprecedented turn of events to have their authority challenged by other international scholars. Bruce, himself, was familiar with that level of competitiveness. Through the years, his own ambitious nature had driven him to place his highest-quality work in front of the most influential publisher and onto the most visible magazine or web page.
If the Russians had intercepted the call between Doug and Dr. Petrova, they might simply be on a fact-finding mission in the spirit of academic competitiveness; if there was a new discovery with historical implications, they would want their scholars to be the ones to research it and publish their findings before anyone else had the chance. But showing up at the dig site with armed soldiers?
The seat belt sign blinked on and the plane began to slowly descend. Bruce watched the quilt-like patches of color slowly fill in with the sharp details of hi-rise buildings, roofs of homes with fenced in yards, solid green woodlands and parks, and eventually the distant runways of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. His next layover was only about ninety minutes, just enough time to check for a text or email from Doug and to decide whether he should try to contact him again or to just focus on changing his flight arrangements once he landed at Anchorage International.
As Bruce exited the jet way, he powered up his phone and slung his carry-on over his shoulder. The crowd sifted around him, making their way toward the baggage claim area, while he stood and searched the scrolling flight numbers on the overhead board. His connection from here to Anchorage was on schedule, but Concourse H was on the other side of the airport so he had to hurry. He found arrows pointing to a hallway on the right and he turned to stride in that direction.
“Bruce.” Suddenly, he heard his name, low and urgent. He looked back in surprise to see Doug walking toward him. At first glance his friend appeared to be as fit and healthy as usual, but when he got closer Bruce noticed that the baseball cap he was wearing didn’t quite conceal a thin streak of blood that had seeped through a bandage near his eyebrow. There were dark maroon droplets on his shirt collar.
Bruce quickly realized that if Doug was here to meet his layover, he must have driven away from Anchor Point, without even stopping at his hotel to change his clothes, and then straight to the airport in Anchorage to book an outgoing flight to Chicago. Something must’ve happened that made him unable to wait until Sacramento – or even Anchorage – to meet with Bruce.
“Doug. Good to see you.” The men embraced for a moment and then Doug grabbed Bruce’s arm and led him toward a table in the food court. Even when the two of them hadn’t seen each other in a few years, it never took them long to feel reacquainted. Their friendship had always been a close mix of shared personal interests and a similar dedication to their careers. Although their drive to succeed was something they had in common, they each pursued their interests with different levels of energy; Bruce was calm, purposeful and more contemplative while Doug had always been quick-thinking and singularly focused – almost to the point of distraction. Now, though, Doug was clearly agitated. Bruce had never seen him like this. He considered the possibility that Doug was being followed and that he had either sensed it or that whoever might be close behind had purposely shown themselves in order to agitate him. Doug was an academic with a quiet nature. He wasn’t used to this.
“Bruce. Good to see you, man. If you could just listen for a minute. I need your help with something.” Doug glanced over his shoulder and then around at the surrounding tables. If he couldn’t manage to calm himself down, he was going to draw attention to them both.
Bruce leaned in and kept his voice down, trying to think of a way to tell his friend that he was already informed and was there to help, “No problem, Doug. Listen. I’ve been following the story online. One of your students said that you’d instructed him to call and he told me all about the guys showing up at the site. He said one of them was real unfriendly and that you took off to try and get things sorted out.”
“Yeah, I got your text. Things got out of control fast and we’re still trying to work out what is happening. Just as I was driving away from the dig site, the Alaska State Troopers were on their way in. The students are just treading water until we know what’s going on. Sure did hit the internet pretty fast,” Doug adjusted his cap. He took a breath and slowed down. “Long story short, a director from the National Library of Australia claims that they have rights to the artifacts that were found at Anchor Point and that they should be involved in the project at administrative levels. We disagree with their reasoning, though. Problem is, a Dr. Campbell from the NLA contacted the Russian embassy in New York, probably to bolster the threat level, and they’re saying that we had the obligation to collaborate with them from the start. Now they’re taking action to try and shut us down until we do.”
Bruce glanced carefully around at the adjacent tables and then further out at the mall. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just the usual crowd of exasperated parents, young people zoned in on their phones, introspective business men just wanting to get where they were going. He didn’t notice anyone watching them, but he knew that the pros could blend into a crowd when they wanted to. “Is any of that credible? Why are the Australians in possession of these documents to begin with if Cook was British? And they’ve had months to respond. Sounds like they’re stepping in now only because you actually found something.”
“Yeah, that’s obviously part of it. See, on Cook’s first two expeditions, he made detailed maps of the coast of Australia and New Zealand, so the British Museum agreed to sell some of the pages of those journals to the Australian university sometime in the 1950’s. They own the first Cook journal in its entirety. That one dates back to 1770 and contains references to how the HMS Endeavor somehow made landfall on the Great Barrier Reef delaying the expedition for almost two months while repairs to the ship were made in what was subsequently named Cooktown. But during Cook’s third voyage they sailed past Australia on their way to the Pacific Northwest. Only stopped at New Zealand for supplies. Pages of a journal from that voyage are the ones in dispute. And, yea, another thing we’re looking into is the time factor. The fossilized mammoth and other skeletons are indisputably from a prehistoric era and aren’t connected to the Cook expedition in any way. Even if we were in agreement with Dr. Campbell’s claims – which we’re not – then good luck with that. We didn’t find anything underground related to the reason for the dig in the first place.”
“Why the guns, then?”
Doug paused for a moment before responding, almost as if he were debating whether or not he should say anything further. Tentatively, he continued, “Well, because of this,” He reached into his pocket and retrieved a sheet of paper that looked as if it had been hastily folded. After smoothing the creases and re-reading what was on it, Doug slid the page across the table. Bruce saw that it was a UPS receipt with an alpha-numeric tracking code that identified a package sent from the store here in the airport to the Smithsonian’s Museum of National History in Washington DC.
“We hadn’t had a chance yet to release information about the slate artifact to the media. The procedure with any archaeological find is to first study it and identify what was found and only report publicly on findings when it’s correct historical context is known for sure.”
“Ok.” Bruce nodded. He stayed quiet so that Doug would continue explaining.
“The only outside contact about it was the call to Dr. Petrova in St. Petersburg. Now, Dr. Martin Campbell from the museum in Australia coincidentally arrives at the dig site with another guy that he introduced as a colleague of his. Serebrof or Serebrov I think his name was? Anyway, his name and his accent sounded Russian to me and when we overheard the two armed men talking to each other they were definitely speaking Russian. I mean, this group shows up at Anchor Point within two days of my call to Dr. Petrova? I’m thinking that the timing actually isn’t a coincidence at all. We think that their bullshit about ownership of the manuscript copy was just an excuse to gain access to the site. And possibly to create a diversion so they could steal some of the artifacts.”
Bruce was thinking that his friend had caught on pretty fast after all. He remembered that the student that called to relay Doug’s message had said that after Doug had been hit in the head, he walked into one of the tents to get a towel. “This looks like a global tracking code for a package. Did you remove something from the site yourself?”
“Uh, yea, I did. And in doing so violated a US federal law punishable by jail time and a 20K fine. Not to mention the breach of professional ethics,” Doug said, “And now I’ve involved you.”
“The slate?” Bruce asked.
“And a molar from the woman’s mandible. I tucked the slate into my waistband and the molar in a towel that I used to stop my head from bleeding. There was enough chaos that no one noticed anything at the time. I’m not sure, though, if the students were able to keep the men from going into the tent where they were working on the skeletal remains of the woman.”
“Then you packaged up the artifacts and sent them to a colleague at the Smithsonian?” Bruce said, fol-lowing Doug’s logic.
“I considered that, but no, not exactly. At the UPS store here in the airport I had them box up a text-book that was in my briefcase. You know, just on the off-chance that I was being watched or followed. I didn’t see anyone but then I’m probably not really aware of what’s possible these days, what with CCTV everywhere. I’m hoping it was a diversion or a way to buy some time until I could find a way to get the artifacts to my department at the university.” Doug sat back in his chair, relieved. “I’m sorry, but I need to involve you in this.”
“What do you mean? You have them here?”
“Yeah. Right here in my coat. Could you take them back to the UK with you? To my guys at UCL?” Doug handed Bruce his phone. On it was a picture of him wearing a dark blue tie, posing with an older man at what looked like a social event on campus. A trusted colleague in his department.
“Again, if there was any other way. The responsibility for this is all on me. You’re just dropping off a package for me and you have no idea what’s in it. Meantime? I need to get back to the site. Make sure the students are ok.”
“No problem, Doug, of course. It’s safe with me.” Bruce had missed the flight to Anchorage but it didn’t matter now. A change of plans. He would instead book a flight home to the UK and then locate Doug’s colleague at the university.
“I knew it would be. I owe you.” The men stood up and hugged again, to all appearances saying good-bye to each other. Then they separated. Bruce headed to the ticket counter while Doug stayed at the table and quickly downed a cup of tea. There were no direct flights from Chicago to London until the following day, so Bruce bought a ticket for one that afternoon with a three-hour layover in Toronto. He’d be in the U.K. at 7:45 the next morning and would go straight to the university.
Doug waited for Bruce to walk past the food court toward the men’s room. He calmly stood up, threw his cup into the bin, and followed behind him. There was a middle-aged guy with his young son, both washing their hands, so Bruce went into one of the stalls while Doug checked his text messages. When the room was empty, Doug produced a flat, square bundle wrapped in layers of clean paper towel. Wordlessly, he gave it to Bruce, shook his hand and then hurried away to book his own flight back to the chaos at Anchor Point.
Bruce went into the stall again and latched the door. He carefully unfolded the paper. After placing the molar in his vest pocket, he turned his attention to the perfectly square sheet of blue-gray slate. The carvings on both sides were clearly etched, just a few millimeters deep, probably made by some other very sharp piece of stone. From his carry-on, he took out his camera, attached the lens, and put in a blank SD card. Holding the slate up to catch the light, he photographed each side several times, then did the same with the molar.
After removing the memory card and placing it in his sock, he re-wrapped the package and tucked it into his waistband. He zipped his carry-on closed and went back to the food court to have some lunch and to cautiously watch the crowd while he waited for his flight home to London.