Chapter 1
I first learned about the 2000 year old camera on a grey autumn day in Brussels; the sort of day where you are not sure whether it is raining or the humidity is at 110 percent. Two of us sat in an equally drab meeting room in a nondescript building, on Avenue des Nerviens, with a view of the Triumphal Arch at Parc du Cinquantenaire. Debra Brodowski had called the meeting. She was my boss, a stick-thin genius with a chaotic mass of red hair haphazardly tied up out of her face, though not with complete success. A strand or two inevitably broke free and danced around in front of her face as she talked. On day in question, she was wearing a tweed skirt that reached just below her knees and a grey, Cashmere jersey that fit as only a €500 top does: elegantly as all hell. I have also been accused of looking undernourished, though I have a healthy appetite. At the time, my dark brown hair had grown rather long and was tied in a lose ponytail behind my head. I was wearing my favourite, unfashionable work suit: a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a red woollen jumper and a tweed jacket. I looked more like a professor than the investigative agent that I was.
We sat at one end of an oval meeting table that could seat 20 people. Just in front of us was a large flat screen monitor displaying a picture of something metallic pressed into the mud and a couple of half buried glass discs.
“What does that look like to you, Simon?” Debra asked me.
I studied the image. “The remains of a camera – a Hasselblad, I think – embedded in the mud.”
“I see you know something about cameras.”
“Something. I am a bit of an amateur photographer, so I know about Hasselblads by reputation, though I've never used one. They are hard core professional gear and can cost as much as a decent car. So, they are well out of my league.”
“How old does this one look?”
“That's difficult and I am less than an expert. Judging from the decay, it looks like it must be at least a hundred years old. Yet, that shape of the camera looks like a relatively current digital one which couldn't be more than a few years old.”
I grew increasingly discomforted as I looked at the image. “But that doesn't make sense,” I continued. “Hasselblad's are bullet proof. I remember the Americans used Hasselblads on their first journeys to the moon, back before their second civil war. I can't see how one could decay so much in just a few years. Where was it found? In an acid bath?”
Debra clicked a key on her laptop and the picture of the camera remains dissolved into a map of the greater Rome area. She looked at it for a second, then pointed to Ostia Antica, between Rome and the coast. “A group of archaeology students from Sapienza University of Rome are excavating an old merchant's house on the outskirts of Ostia Antica. Are you familiar with the place?”
“Yes, I visited it a few years ago while on holiday in Rome. It's the ruins of an old port city. Very pretty. Contemplative, I found.”
“Mmm. Yes, that's the place.” She looked at her notes. “It was found in what was probably a store room, along with the usual pottery, glassware, iron utensils and that kind of thing.”
“Could a tourist have left it there?”
“It seems unlikely. The house was only discovered a few months ago and excavation began in the late summer. Even if an errant tourist discovered the ruins and somehow left behind a €20,000 camera, it should not have decayed so much.”
“True. How old is the house?”
“They believe it was built around 150 BC and was in use for at least a couple of hundred years. The city itself fell into decay from the sixth until the ninth century. But the style of pottery found suggests the house had fallen into disuse long before then.”
“So...” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “This object would seem to be at least 1200 years old or it has been artificially aged and placed there perhaps as a hoax.”
“Fuck me,” I mumbled.
“That would be highly inappropriate,” she said with a straight face and a sparkle in her eye.
Got feedback? Share it with me at bookfeedback@ungodly.com
