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Rolampont, France
Present Day
Three months earlier
E manuel Fillon stood at the edge of the construction site, carefully watching as the excavator worked at digging out the foundation for the future home of the town’s most significant industrial development to date. It had been controversial, with tree-huggers literally hugging trees they had chained themselves to, trees that looked no different than the thousand others he saw each day on his drive here.
These fools are going too far.
What was the point of saving the planet if nobody had any jobs? But then that seemed to rarely be the concern of these types. They had no jobs. He saw the same faces here, day in and day out. If they were gainfully employed, contributing to society, then they would have had to miss at least five days a week of chanting their ridiculous slogans.
It made him sick. He was all for saving the planet, but not at the cost of destroying Western civilization. It wasn’t Western civilization that was the problem, it was China, Russia, India, the developing world. The plastics in the ocean? Almost 99% of it came from Asia and Africa. If these people wanted to save the world, they should go to Asia and help implement waste management programs, rather than leaving them dumping everything into the rivers to be carried away and out of sight. Want to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions? Go to China and tell them to cancel their plans for 500 more coal-fired power plants in the next ten years.
But stop the building of an industrial zone that would create jobs, jobs in a heavily environmentally regulated country, jobs that would pay some of the highest taxes in the world, some of which would help fund programs that cleaned up the environment?
It was idiocy.
And thankfully, the courts had seen it the same way, the issued injunction enforced immediately.
Now they were digging, and digging fast. The moment the protesters had been cleared, he had moved in with equipment to remove the trees in a matter of hours, ensuring there was nothing left for anyone to chain themselves to, should the lawbreakers return.
And now it was fenced off with a massive hole being dug that, once completed, should mark the end of any more possible delays.
Only one thing could delay them now, something that too often happened in France.
“Emanuel!”
He sighed, closing his eyes.
What now?
The excavator operator waved as he climbed out of the cab, stepping down into the dirt then to the front of his vehicle. He beckoned him. “You need to see this.”
Fillon frowned then stepped from the stable ground and slid down the side of the embankment and into the pit, curious others following suit. He stumbled his way toward the freshly dug hole and cursed at the stone structure just revealed, fresh claw marks from the excavator visible, blemishes that could have them in serious trouble if whatever was buried here was of significance.
“What do you think it is?”
He shrugged at the operator. “No clue, but the law says we stop.” He waved a hand in front of his throat. “Shut it down!” Engines all around were cut, the entire operation at a halt, all over what might be nothing, or everything, to those who cared about the past.
He wasn’t one of them.
He believed in the future. Of progress. Europe was filled with the past, and it was ridiculous that they were constantly forced to stop work whenever something might be found. It was almost impossible not to find something. About the only thing he believed merited halting of work was an unexploded bomb.
That, he would respectfully shut down a site for.
He fished out his phone and dialed the City, and an hour later, a bookish looking man with an audacious Belgian mustache showed up with a tablet computer in hand. He climbed down a ladder set up earlier in preparation for his arrival, then approached with a broad smile.
“Hello! I’m Professor Yves Marchand, from the University of Paris. I happened to be in the area, so they sent me rather than the usual fellow. Saves you a few hours, I suppose.” He grinned. “Unless you’ve actually stumbled upon something.”
Fillon shook the man’s hand, finding it as limp as he’d expect from an academic like this. “I’m the foreman, Emanuel Fillon.” He pointed at the scraped stone “something” they had discovered. “This is it.”
Marchand stepped over to the hole and peered inside. “Well, you definitely have something here. Manmade, and judging from the depth, likely middle ages.” He smiled at Fillon. “Don’t worry yet. Could be nothing of importance. We can’t be stopping everything from moving forward just because somebody found a fifteenth-century outhouse.” He roared at his own joke and Fillon forced a smile, indicating with his fingers behind his back that the others should join in.
It was a bad call, the laughter so obviously forced, the little professor noticed. “Sorry, they can’t all be gems.” He handed Fillon his tablet then scrambled down into the hole. He held out a hand. “Can someone give me a shovel?”
Fillon indicated for one of his men to fetch one, and moments later Marchand was digging around the stone, revealing what appeared to be a large slab, discolored in several spots. “What is it?”
“Gentlemen, I think you have found an old forge.”
Fillon glanced at him. “A forge? As in a blacksmith’s shop?”
“Yes. Blacksmith. Ironmonger. Somebody who worked with metal.”
Fillon tensed. “Is that important?”
“Yes.” Marchand extended a hand and Fillon hauled him out of the hole then handed him his tablet. “To him. To you and me, not so much. If we were to find an entire community under here, then perhaps, but this discovery in itself is nothing.” He circled the hole, taking video then photos of the discovery, then stepped back. “Go ahead and remove those stones. As gently as possible. If this turns out to be something more, we’ll need to be able to put them back as we found them.”
Fillon turned to the operator, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. “You heard the man.”
The operator climbed back in the excavator and the engine roared to life, a burst of diesel exhaust spoiling the air. The bucket lowered into the hole and curled inward, the teeth hooking under the far edge of the stone slab, lifting the corner.
And snapping it in two.
The far edge hopped overtop the near edge, slipping forward, the teeth losing their hold, releasing the broken piece, the resulting thud likely heard for miles.
“Stop!” cried Marchand, tossing his tablet at Fillon as he leaped into the hole, the cloud of dust still settling, whatever the professor had seen still not visible from Fillon’s vantage point. “Give me a hand!”
Fillon bent over and picked up the tablet, the professor’s athletic prowess as expected, then handed it to one of his men before climbing into the hole to join the best Paris had to offer. “What is it?”
“There’s something under the slab. Look.”
Fillon took a knee beside the professor, squinting at the sight. It was another piece of stone, though much smaller, perhaps two-feet by three-feet. But Marchand’s bare hands, digging furiously around it, had already revealed other stones, laid vertically, clearly suggesting this was a box of some sort. “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know, but it must be of some significance.”
Fillon’s heart sank. “What makes you think that?”
Marchand stopped, pointing at the cracked stone. “This was on top of it.”
“So what? That just means whatever this is was already there when our blacksmith set up his forge.”
Marchand shook his head. “No, it was directly on top of it. Perhaps a few centimeters of dirt between the two. That means they are both from the same time period.”
“Again, so what?”
“It means that most likely this forge was intentionally built overtop this.”
Fillon sighed. “To hide something that is inside it?”
“Exactly!” He pointed to the piece of stone covering the carefully crafted hideaway. The two of them lifted off the top and placed it to the side. The entire crew now ringed the hole they were in, and everyone murmured in excitement at what was revealed.
Something wrapped in animal skins.
“My tablet!”
It was handed down to Marchand and he took more video and photos. He passed it to Fillon. “Now, I must be very careful here. We don’t know what this is protecting. It could be very fragile after all these years.” He bent over and gently tugged at a corner of the animal hide, gingerly pulling it aside. He repeated the process twice more, something inside, what, Fillon had no idea, slowly being revealed. Marchand lifted the final corner out of the way, and gasped.
“Oh, my Lord!”