Anna silently took roll to make sure everyone had arrived for the morning briefing. As usual, Rock was missing. Ever since he decided to stay, he’d hung around and offered her ideas but would never adhered to these meetings, or to anything anyone asked of him. He wasn’t on the payroll though. He stubbornly refused any money and just as he wanted all along, he was on the island at nobody’s beck and call but his own.
She checked her watch. “We’ve been at this for well over a month,” she started, looking out over the room. “And our progress is moving extremely well. The shafts being expanded and reinforced at the money pit, borehole x-10 and our new sites Delega one, two and three are already more stable and deeper than what we thought they would be at this point.”
The new sites were areas of interest driven by the results of the GPR scans. These were places that looked to have remnants of human activity at deep intervals and metallic substances worth investigating. They were located not far from the money pit at intervals of ten, twenty-two and thirty six yards, along a straight line leading towards the supposed site of one of the more famous landmarks, Oak Island’s stone triangle.
The man-made equilateral triangle was discovered around 1900 on a survey mission and rested 230 feet south of the money pit. It was composed of half buried boulders and measured almost ten feet per side. It had a bisecting line that pointed due North, whereas the arrow end pointed directly to the money pit itself. There was also a rounded edge that connected two of the points to show which end formed the triangle base. The piece itself was the focal point of many interpretations on how and where to find the legendary treasure. The triangle was also included in many other crazy theories including one involving a Mayan temple site on Oak Island and another linking the site to similar formations on Mars. But there was no concrete evidence other than drawings and documents to support its actual orientation. The individual stones had been looted by past treasure hunters and hardly anything remained of the original formation.
Anna took a sip of water and continued her brief overview. “The dams, though we believe to be a non-issue are over 60% completed. Our surveys will proceed as planned and we have added three more places of interest and we will move forward in excavating these if the previous five are found to hold nothing. In the coming days, we’ll send down the first of many video probes into borehole x-10, with much higher resolution and quality of light than the previous video was capable of. Dennis,” she called out to her GPR contractor. He sat in the front studying a beat-up red notebook. He quickly closed it at hearing his name. “Anything else to add?”
Dennis Rehr stood up from his seat and moved with grace of a bulldog. He wore his usual attire, blue jeans ripped at the knees, an old white t-shirt, a reds baseball cap and a full dark beard. As head of surveying the land and in use of the GPR, he always had new information to provide.
He grunted and cleared his throat. “We’ve been able to penetrate deeper into the money pit using the gpr but its very wet down there as we all know, we’re also using some sonar at this point. We’ve discovered in the shaft itself that there are natural layers of clay, packed tightly together as well as natural limestone layers. There’s some brick and cement and pieces of other metals including iron, brass and stuff we can’t be sure about. After the limestone is an open area, probably a cavern, and then we encounter even more natural rock at the bottom. In our scans we’ve found enough information to conclude that someone dug that deep at some point. Not everything down there is natural.” That statement received a murmur from the group. Dennis appeared not to notice. “We’ve located most of the anhydrite zones and where the water will push through the fastest. It should be fairly simple to take care of these places, pump out the existing water and have somewhat dry conditions at all locations.” He lumbered back to his seat and sat down.
“Everything down there is probably a result of the previous miners dropping stuff into the mine on accident or on purpose. Nothing is as certain as you make it out to be, ” Haden Green said playing the part of the pessimist. “It could just be one of the many natural sinkholes around here that happened to take this stuff down with it. At least we’re getting paid if nothing else.”
Dennis answered him calmly. “Actually the cavern would be a perfect place to put something. It would remain safe from any elements and protected even from the water flowing around it, a natural tomb.”
“But how would the original makers be able to get into the cavern, there is no possibility using their technology to do such a thing. The water would have overwhelmed them as it did with everyone else after them. They never would have made it that far.”
“Good point,” Katie Feeran, a professor of geology at the University of Madison, interjected from her seat near the back of the room. Anna had brought her in only a few days ago. She was a homely looking woman in her mid-thirties. She had close-cropped dirty blond hair and thick glasses. “But it may have been plausible. See, the way the water is coming in is from built up pressure, pushing it through the tiny, and I mean tiny fissures in the anhydrite. When this was first dug, the ground itself kept the pressure stabilized but as it was taken away the water was able to push through. But only very slowly, much slower than it gushes in today.”
“And why is that,” Haden asked.
“Because the small fissures in the anhydrite hold water, if its there. But, when water is forced through them, like anything water is forced through, when it remains constant, it will eat away the walls and the fissures will grow in size letting that much more water through. So every time this place was bailed or pumped, the water kept trying to equalize the pressure and kept enlarging the anhydrite caverns. I’m guessing the original amount of seepage would have been minimal and a few people with buckets and the ability to create tunnels and wells could have handled it. But after all these years of digging, the water is more like a fire hose than a trickle. That appears to be the real trap.”
Haden turned away without saying a word. Anna was suddenly very happy about bringing Katie aboard though she was already privy to that particular fact about the anhydrite. “Dennis,” Anna said. “Tell them about the cavern.”
Dennis looked annoyed but stood up once again. “Well, the original designers would have had no way to know about the limestone and as a result when they hit it, they would have stopped completely or gone another route. But what we found is that there is actually an easy path around the limestone that leads directly into the cavern, from the bottom.”
Anna jumped in, “once we freeze the anhydrite, we’ll drill through the natural limestone from above and be into the cavern. Ok, everyone back to where you belong, we’ll do this again on Friday to see where we are.”
The room emptied quickly and Anna found herself alone with Nate. He had been sitting in the corner taking notes. “What happens next Friday?”
“Friday we talk about Thursday,” she said. “And on Thursday, we’re putting down the first pipes to freeze the anhydrite in the money pit. Also on Thursday we’re sending our first video feed down into borehole x-10. The drilling should be completed by then.”
“You’re way ahead of the timeline.”
“I know,” she replied grinning. “It’s amazing what you can do with the right equipment and resources.”
“And incentive,” Nate chimed in.
“And incentive,” she repeated not forgetting the quarter million dollar bonus for completing her task by the fall. “Have you made any more progress on locating some of the original artifacts brought up by the previous treasure hunters?”
“Not really. Some of the previous owners have a few of the items but they’re not talking to me. We have pictures on the net of some of the trinkets found, including the fragment of parchment stuck on one of the previous expeditions drill heads, but that can only be used for speculative purposes, nothing of value to us. As for the things such as the coded stone, it’s gone from the worl
d. Nobody has any information on it.”
The coded stone was something she had hoped could be tracked down. It was brought up from the pit at the 90-foot level, chiseled with symbols and thought be have originated in Egypt. It was recorded and then translated by a language professor in the mid 19th century. When the code was broken, it supposedly read, ‘forty feet below two million pounds are buried.’
Anna grimaced as harsh laughter came from the doorway. Rock strolled in looking dapper. He wore khaki pants, a blue polo shirt and new white tennis shoes. He was even neatly shaven, which was a rare sight. “I looked at the code on that supposed stone,” he chided, “it’s the biggest pile of crap I’ve ever seen. That code could have been broken by an eight year old in an hour. Nobody with sophistication enough to build out this place would include a simplistic code such as that.”
“So you don’t think it ever existed,” she said.
“Oh it existed,” he said, “just made by some fool with no education trying to raise money for himself so he could pretend to dig once a week instead of working a real job. That’s what most of this is,” he said. “Just a way for people to grab some rich people or corporation’s money so they can hang out on this island, do a little something to make it look plausible and then not work. It’s the ultimate scheme, like multi-level marketing. Hey give me money to dig up this treasure that’s not even here, and I’ll give you just enough results to keep the money coming. I mean Roosevelt even got duped.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Anna said. “You should be here for some of the reports. There’s brick and cement down there, as well as hundreds of metals of all types and a hollow cavern of limestone. That doesn’t intrigue you in the least.”
“Oh it intrigues me. This whole place does. But, I don’t believe for a single moment, the items found in the historical logs, the dating techniques of others or the codes found by anybody previous to you. The accounts of all the people that came before are embellished. There are some honest accounts to be sure, but which ones, we won’t be able to tell so they are all useless. The idea of the pit defeats its own purpose and that’s why I call it a complete waste of time. Completely.”
“You’re a wet blanket,” Nate shook his head.
“I’m a realist.” He left the room whistling.
“He’s onto something,” Anna said once he was gone.
“How do you know?”
“His tone is condescending as though he’s above us. He’s short, and very firm with his statements. This means he finally is starting to form a theory on this place and for us, that’s good and bad.”
“But you’ve told me he’s not always right.”
“Nope, he’s wrong a lot, but then again he’s also right a good portion of the time, so you can’t discount him. He’ll come back when he’s ready, but he’ll be even more of an ass before that happens.”
“That’s the bad, huh.” Anna nodded.
The next few days passed by uneventfully. She’d seen little of Nate, nothing of Sayla and Rock would appear and disappear like a ghost, popping up with some smartass comment and then leaving.
Thursday rolled around and Anna was waiting outside borehole x-10 as the camera gear was being loaded into the small tube to be pushed all the way down to the cavern below. She stood in front of a monitor bouncing on her toes. Strangely, Seth Delega was absent.
She stared at the unresponsive screen flickering between black and grey when suddenly it lit up to form blurry shapes. She stared at the murky image. The camera pushed forward, panning in each direction shining into the depths of the cavern. Nothing appeared at first, just bits of dirt and rock floating around. But then something started to take shape.
“Stop,” she said to the operator. “Go back.” The camera panned to the left, “there, stop.” Anna squinted. “Can you boost the light?”
We have another snake going down now, we’ll have another light in there in a moment,” the operator replied. The second light flickered and the cavern lit up considerably more.
Anna didn’t have to squint anymore. There were shaped support beams spanning the chasm, arranged in uniformed distance. They were crumbled in some areas but most of them still stood in place.
“Look at that,” Katie said from behind her.
“Those are support beams,” Jen added, leaning in closer.
“Support beams aren’t a significant find,” Haden said. “But it’s interesting they’re there.”
“It proves someone was down there, at some point,” Anna said. “And what would they be doing down there?” She walked back to where the operator stood at a remote console. She pointed to his screen. “Can we zoom in over here?” She wanted to look at the corner, near the bottom.
“Sure,” he turned a small knob and the image moved forward. The filthy water didn’t help in trying to figure out what was natural and what was place by men. Clouds of dirt continued to spiral around the camera.
She had thought with the advances in video, she’d get a much better picture than what they had before. But with the sediment clouds and the inability to get rid of all the shadows, the only real advantage was better color.
After another two hours of waiting, two more lights and moving the camera around to various places, they were no closer to finding anything but the support beams. There were three formations that looked to be heavy trunks or chests, another few items looked like human remains but there was nothing they could positively identify. It all rested on speculation of shapes.
When they finished without seeing anything more, Anna wanted to scream. She walked back to her office, her head held low and eyes cast towards the ground. When she swung open the door, Rock was sitting in her chair.
“What do you want,” she said, not in the mood for his shit.
“How’d the video go,” he asked.
“Good and bad. We know for sure there has been human activity down there at some point in the past. So that’s great, it isn’t all natural phenomenon that many have claimed. But all we saw was structure, nothing relating to any sort of items, or in your case, treasure.”
“Why do you look so down? That’s incredible. Structure is more than what I thought you’d find. Think about the why. Why go down that far? What could they possibly want to do down there. Two things come to mind. Hide something or bury someone. I am surprised you’re not completely enthused.”
“I am, I guess I was just hoping for more.”
“Well, you can hope in one hand and crap in the other and…”
“And see which one fills up first, I know.” She cut him off. He laughed as she finished his line.
“I think it’s a good start.”
“But not where you’d be.”
“No.”
“Wanna enlighten me,” she asked.
“Not yet hon. You know the way I do things.”
“Yeah, I know you. You only ask opinions after you’ve made a decision. Now could you remove your butt from my chair?”
Rock got up. “Most certainly. And I might come on by tomorrow, conference room right?”
Anna nodded her head as Rock left the office. She was starting to become annoyed with him. “No wonder I left him,” she mumbled to herself. She sighed and opened up her computer to begin typing her reports for tomorrow’s meeting.
Chapter 9
Nova Scotia, May 2012