“Sounds like there’s more to this site than this cave,” Parsons said.
“Where did they find the amphorae?” Juan asked.
“They were stowed on a ship, a Roman bireme called the Salacia that ran aground. The archaeologists were in the process of excavating it from the mud.”
“That’s incredible,” Sylvia said. “A Roman vessel came to Australia eighteen hundred years before the first European settlers. This would have been the discovery of a lifetime for any archaeologist.”
“I bet we fin
d out that Lu Yang had something to do with this expedition,” Juan said. “Maybe he even funded it. And when his lead archaeologist reported back what he’d discovered, Lu sent a hit team to cover it up.”
“The big question is, where’s the ship?” Julia said. “If there are two more amphorae on board with nuts inside, we might be able to use them to make the antidote.”
“Even if they’re two thousand years old?” Sylvia asked.
“It depends how well the ceramic and beeswax preserved them. I’ve read about butter thousands of years old found in barrels recovered from Irish peat bogs that is still edible. Maybe we’ll get lucky. At the very least, we can identify the exact type of nut it is and secure a fresh supply.”
“There’s a lot of mentions of the bireme,” Eric said. “I’m looking to see if they have a map to its location.”
“I know new ships, not old ones,” Parsons said. “What’s a bireme?”
“It’s a Roman single-masted galley with two rows of oars on either side for propulsion to supplement the wind,” Juan said. “They were used both as warships and to transport cargo.”
“Here it is,” Eric said triumphantly. “The one they found is thirty meters in length. About a hundred feet long. They’ve even included a helpful layout of the ship.”
Eric turned the tablet around so everyone could see it. A drawing showed a diagram of the bireme with notations for each of the sections. One outlined a weapons room. Another showed where tools were stored.
In the middle of the ship, there was an area marked “Ceramics.”
“That has to be where all the amphorae are,” Juan said. “It sounds like there might be hundreds of them. Does it give any more detail about where the two we’re looking for are?”
Eric took the tablet back and after a few moments of typing, shook his head.
“We’ll just have to search through them until we find the ones that have the nut label.”
“Does it give the location of the wreck?”
“There is a GPS coordinate.” Eric sent it back to Murph on the Oregon.
“Got it,” Murph replied. “It’s two hundred yards from your current position, right along the riverbank.”
Before they left, Julia finished photographing the archaeologists’ teeth while Sylvia made a thorough video recording of the wall etchings. They headed back out of the cave and down toward the river, guided by Murph.
They walked along the bank, making sure to keep well back from the rain-swollen water’s edge.
“All right,” Murph said. “Stop there. You should be able to see it.”
They looked around, but there was no evidence of an archaeological dig.
“Could it have gotten overgrown with plants in just a year?” Sylvia said, examining the shrubbery beside them.
Parsons shook his head. “This isn’t a jungle where vines could cover ruins in a week. If they dug it up, we’d still see it.”
“Unless Lu’s men blew it up as well,” Eric said.
“Then there’d be a crater here,” Juan said. “Murph, are you sure this is the spot?”
“Wait a minute,” Murph said. “If these numbers are correct, you’re still about forty yards away.”