While professor Simons carefully laid out a series of upside down photographs on his desk-as if he were assembling a jig-saw puzzle, Nicasio asked, rather dry-mouthed, if he should begin going over his new evidence and further research. The professor was still quiet and self-absorbed in the contents of his own papers and notes. He seemed preoccupied especially with what seemed to be a few simple diagrams. After several painfully speechless moments, the professor nodded for Nicasio to begin—assumedly with his prepared presentation.

As Nicasio began explaining the geological formation of certain transient sand bars at a place known as Campbell Cove in the vicinity of Drake's Bay, he held up several aerial photos and Google Earth indications of the coastal vicinity. He took out a sheath of paperwork supporting the oceanographic and cyclic patterns of the submarine sand formations created by currents recently discovered to be in 30-33 year cycles. The professor looked up periodically from his own paperwork and acknowledged them in an obligatory manner. Nicasio continued, but could sense something was wrong-the professor was not focused, he just did not appear to be intently listening.

Suddenly Dr. Simons interrupted him. He told Nicasio how he had always admired him as a graduate student for his dedication and abilities as a researcher. Nicasio was surprised and became extremely nervous at this tone and the unexpected non sequitur of his words and actions. He was quickly becoming unnerved by the inexplicable atmosphere and the unexpected aloofness of his advisor. He began to visualize some terrible setback to his doctorial project. Automatically and dispassionately, he thanked the professor for his trust in him, and awaited his next comment with dread. The professor lowered his voice practically to a whisper.

"Nicasio, how would you like to be involved in possibly one of the most sensational finds on the North American continent? It's a very recent discovery, and I must admit I am intrigue by it."

Nicasio remained perplexed. This was certainly not the way their meeting was supposed to progress. He could only think of the countless hours he had devoted to his research, and how it was not even being listened to properly by the professor.

"I'm suggesting to you some new work on a project that makes the Drake's Bay landing site controversy pall in comparison. You see, young man, I'm referring to a find so remarkable that, if it is truly authentic-and some preliminary work tells me it is-it will turn out to be an unprecedented Western link to the Classical world, physically as well as . . . mythologically."

Nicasio tried to remain focused. "Um . . . What, sir? What exactly are you suggesting?"

"This recent find I am sharing with you quite possibly could be one of the most spectacular historical connections ever made to the Americas. I am telling you confidentially, Nicasio . . . this could be of epic proportions!"

Nicasio had never seen any such hint of animation on the professor's face before. His eyes were wide as he spoke and his demeanor was that of an impressionable undergraduate student-under the spell of some mind-expanding concept. Nicasio felt suddenly dizzy and a little nauseated by the unexpected nature of the meeting-the strange direction it seemed to be turning. He realized he had not eaten well over the past several days and the sudden hint of his advisor's erratic behavior, or perhaps the man's heretofore disguised senility, was seriously beginning to impinge on his own future outlook.

The professor remained silent for several moments. Nicasio broke the uncomfortable lull with a nervous whisper, accompanied by a breaking in his voice. "I'm . . . I'm not really sure I follow what you're suggesting, Dr. Simons. . ."

"Of course you're not, my boy," the professor said, in a slightly more rational and reassuring manner. "I was not exactly sure either of what had been dropped into my lap down in Big Sur just forty-eight hours ago."

Nicasio had now some indication of what the drawings and photos the professor had in his hands possibly related to.

"But having just arrived back from the site, I'm genuinely impressed. Especially with the a priori look of this. You'll have agree, it's truly extraordinary."

Nicasio stared into the professor's more animated face. His once sincere eyes were now passionately alive. Something had impacted him in a way Nicasio could not imagine.

"You see, what I am about to share with you in detail must be held at the highest level of confidentiality. Will you comply with that, young man?" Nicasio just silently nodded. The professor unfolded more of a bundle of drawings and photographs onto the desk he had been holding tightly in his hands.

"Alright then. Excellent. I would not be showing you any of this if I didn't trust you, my boy. That trust is absolutely imperative for both of us now . . . academically."

Nicasio looked behind him at the closed door. The queasy feeling in his stomach had returned now with a vengeance. He declined any further comment while he just watched his mentor now preoccupied with an entirely different agenda than what their appointment had dictated.

The professor laid out the first diagram on his cluttered desk, and with it a large photograph for Nicasio to see. They were what appeared to be a photo and a schematic of a burial chamber. The photograph was taken from the interior of a stone architectural space. Looking at the concentric rows of blocks perfectly cut and converging at the top, he surmised its design to be 'old world,' Mediterranean or Near-Eastern.  

A closer look at the configuration placed it in his mind as the rare "beehive" burial chambers characteristic of ancient Greek funerary architecture, sometime before the Classical Age. Mycenaean perhaps. The diagram adjacent to the photo showed an elevation of the structure with measurements and compass points scribbled onto it quickly. A curious white box or table sat central within the structure, midway from the corbel arched doorway and the interior walls. Those walls were impressively parabolic in shape and made from carefully hewn stones.

"Where was this found?" Nicasio asked calmly, his interest now piqued.

The professor simply produced more drawings and photos from his weather-beaten briefcase. They were enlargements of the central box found within the structure. From these documents Nicasio recognized the central object to be a marble sarcophagus, adorned with what appeared to be figures on horseback. It seemed to be Greek in feeling and design. He identified the artwork, through the professor's more detailed photos, as Amazon motifs-carved women in diaphanous chitins holding weapons and riding at full gallop. He continued to remained silent, mesmerized as much by the professor's previously unseen demeanor than by anything he was being shown.

"Big Sur, Nicasio. This chamber is positioned on a remote cliff wall some twenty-five miles south of Monterey. It's an uncanny find in an uncanny location."

Nicasio began looking closely over the evidence-the drawings, measurements and photos, with the discerning eye of the young historian he was on the threshold of becoming.

"So . . . how can this be anything close to authentic, professor? I mean it's obviously archaic and Old World in design."

His aged mentor smiled.

"I thought it to be a hoax at first, as well. Or some very latter-day reproduction . . . what else?"

"Exactly."

"Until I found this." The professor took out of his breast coat pocket a small, plastic zip-lock bag and removed something wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. He displayed the rust-colored object held between his fingers and handed it across the desk.

Nicasio took the metal object, half the size of a credit card and approximating the shape of a round-shouldered number eight into his hand. He rotated the discolored brass artifact in his hand several times. The object was certainly familiar to him.

"Well, it's a buckle," Nicasio said. "Spanish. Military in design. Looks like a doublet or amour buckle. Possibly sixteenth or seventeenth century."

"Go on. . ."

"Yeah. Well, I've seen a few of those in about the same condition of deterioration from excavations around the earliest presidios of the missions. San Diego and Carmel, as I recall, though they were quite common during the Age of Exploration for Spain about a hundred years before. It looks to be cast brass. Other than that, pretty nondescript. But pretty interesting if associated with these." Nicasio laid the object onto the photos.

"Precisely."

"And this buckle was where, you say, professor?

"In Situ. Inside the tomb. It was an aggregate of the sediment collected and screened on the floor."

"Holy Shit! . . . Are you kidding? I mean . . . excuse me sir."

"Quite alright. And . . . No, Nicasio. I'm not kidding. It was inside the marble tomb."

"Sir, this funerary structure, as you show it here, is . . . well, Greek in design. Probably, and I'm not sure here, but . . . sixteenth to twelfth century BCE. Sort of Mycenaean . . . right?"

"Yes. At least a facsimile of the style. Its general design is Late Bronze Age. But a Mycenaean-style burial structure for certain."

"Jesus!"

"It's very reminiscent, though smaller, of those constructed in the thirteenth century BCE at certain ancient citadels of Greece and on some of the islands where Mycenaean kings were interred. No other period or place has burial chambers quite like that. Though the Greeks from that period may have copied the general concept from the Egyptians originally or their own ancestors the Minoans on Crete"

"But this is crazy, sir."

"Yes, and totally anachronistic to anything found in the New World. Even in the entire Western hemisphere. Nothing like it here appears anywhere else outside Hellenistic architectural influences. And those are only found on the other side of the planet. From our perspective of history, Nicasio, you and I are a bit out of our element to totally understand this."

"Even so, professor, it has to be a hoax then."

"I myself am baffled. Yet it seems to be a very close representation of a subterranean Greek tholos-a circular burial chamber, this much is true. But precisely why in situ of this California coastline anomaly . . . did I find that?"

The professor pointed to the Spanish pre-colonial military doublet buckle, resting enigmatically on the photos.

Nicasio nodded. "And besides, the Big Sur Coastline is hardly a significant place of settlement for any sisxteenth century New World, European archaeology . . ."

"Or even after. And that's what makes it all the more compelling."

"Yeah . . . you might say even sort of surreal, actually. I mean the design of the burial structure not only comes from another place on the Earth, but from some three thousand years ago in the past. It would have been ancient even to the 16th or 17th century Spanish who left that armor buckle on the floor of the tomb."

"Unless they had something to do with building it. . ."

Nicasio was silent.

"Well. Surreal or not, my boy, this whole discovery down there is in dire need of immediate investigation."

"OK, I agree. So what are you suggesting?"

"Well, my initial reaction is that it's some bastardized replication of an ancient Greek tholos, if not intended as some outright hoax. But yet, there it sits, looking as authentic as hell, and carved out of exquisite green marble."

"I take it nobody was sleeping in the sarcophagus when you went inside?"

"It was empty."

"So where exactly is this thing?"

"Its location is just up a canyon, due east of Bixby Bridge. Off Highway 1."

"Yeah. That is remote."

"But look, Nicasio. No one is to even know that until some more systematic research is conducted . . . by us."

"Us?"

Nicasio was not sure what the professor's last comment was implying.

"Sir, who made the original find on this?"

"It was uncovered in a marijuana bust up that canyon just two days ago. I was brought in by the DEA. I even got a free helicopter ride down there to see it."

"Sweet."

The professor was smiling now, seemingly amused by the novelty of it all. Nicasio was not smiling. He only looked more perplexed and worrisome as his research project once more flashed before his eyes.

"The site is totally under wraps now, my boy. . . officially. And so is the story I'm telling you about it. But I fear it won't be for long."

"So if that sarcophagus was empty. . ."

"Exactly. The drug authorities claim the pot suspects had little or no interest in the structure. It was simply found near their illegal operations."

"So when do you suppose. . ."

"I believe from circumstantial evidence that the tomb was broken into sometime much later than the Spanish amour buckle . . . maybe or decades ago. Certainly sometime earlier than the pot growers inherited the site. They must have investigated it and found it immaterial to their needs. It seemed to have nothing to do with their marijuana field, exactly chosen for its remoteness."

"Why are you so sure?"

"I confirmed this by looking at the shards of fractured marble near the broken doorway. There's some obvious erosion and decomposition of those fragments. And particularly on the damaged sarcophagus lid inside the structure when it was opened years ago. It's definitely not fresh breakage, but certainly not ancient either."

"You think the tomb was completely intact before that time?"

"Very possibly. It's quite a functional-looking sarcophagus, Nicasio. Also solidly marble. Carved from a single, enormous piece of stone. It would be extremely expensive to have that made today. And the decorative carvings are bas-relief. Some really fine work, really. The tomb's date of entry is one of the questions I intend to answer eventually."

"I would be more interested in when it was placed there on the bluff. And by whom."

"Well that's of course the question. All in good time, my boy."

"So what are the marijuana growers saying about all this? Nothing I suppose."

"Not much, as you can imagine. Their crop of pot was planted nearby it, but it had nothing to do with their work apparently. We're talking about some very distinct periods of time here. Whether the pot growers discovered and exposed the tholos when they were digging the irrigation lines or even knew of its existence even before, is not yet clear."

"I see. They probably just didn't care about it."

"According to the police chief in charge of the investigations, the growers said they pretty much ignored it. They just kept the older, original camouflaged cover over it. Just as they say they found it."

"Interesting."

"Possibly had no interest or simply didn't comprehend its importance. These farmers are usually low-level employees who just pick an area for a season and move on when the pot crop is harvested."

"Do you believe that? That they didn't know anything about it?"

"The suspects are all illegal Mexican nationals and they're not saying much else. But that's a criminal thing now. In my opinion, and in the opinion of the narcotics officers, the tholos doesn't seem to be related to the men who worked down there in any way. The crop just brought civilization's attention to it. How long it had been sitting there on that cliff is anybody's guess. And now my responsibility."

Nicasio raised his eyebrows.

"What you've shared with me here is pretty crazy, but incredibly interesting, professor."

"Coming from the site just yesterday I can tell you the location is also inspiring. It's a breath-taking view from up there on that bluff."

"Yeah. That whole coastline is amazing, as I remember."

"Exactly. And the view of the sea from the tomb's western entry point seems intended. It wouldn't be a bad choice for anybody's eternal resting place. But very difficult access up the cliff from the sea. Maybe chosen for that reason as well. To be a permanently hidden monument for someone."

"And someone pretty seriously revered, it seems."

"Yes. And who could that have been, if the 16th century armor buckle gives us any time frame here?"

"My god, professor, there were not even any Spanish colonial settlements down there until much after the Carmel Mission activity some forty miles to the north and almost two-hundred years after that buckle was in use."

"Exactly. And that puts only a few Spanish explorers as suspects as to who put the tholos in place on that cliff, if it turns out not to be a recent hoax."

"So who do you guess the tomb was intended for, professor?"

"We really can't know any of that or even speculate much else at this point. Not until more work is done. My challenge is to get to the bottom of this historically through what ever evidence emerges through more excavation."

"Definitely."

"They may get more out of the pot suspects later, but I'm not counting on that. The department chief said he would let me know of any developments as the prosecution gets underway."

"Or maybe, we'll just never know, sir. I mean if nothing else comes to light."

"The fact is, no matter how quiet this find is kept, and I have asked the authorities to keep it that way, somebody out there, over the past decades or perhaps even earlier got to that burial site first and removed the remains of whomever or whatever was entombed there, Nicasio. The ball is now in our court, my boy, to find out the 'who, when and why' of this thing."

Nicasio carefully and pensively lifted the brass buckle off the table and handed it back to the professor with a certain amount of trepidation.

"Our court, sir?" He was now wondering if it was even worth asking about the original purpose of their meeting-his graduate thesis approval.

"So what does this all mean now, professor? And exactly how does it involve me?"

The professor paused and looked deeply into Nicasio's eyes.

"I was immediately called into this as a consultant, Nicasio. The DEA and sheriff's departments assured me they wouldn't go to the press with any of this discovery until they know just what they've got down there. I need your help with the further investigations of it."

Nicasio was astounded by the professor's blatant request. And also a bit disturbed. He was thinking of all his work put on hold-a possible major delay in his PhD certification. This revelation and its repercussions began to bother him greatly, though he tried to remain calm.

"So, what have you told the authorities so far about the find?"

"Just to wait. I've only been down to it once. Yesterday. To take these preliminary measurements and photos." Dr. Simons tapped the pictures in front of him with the back of his fingers. "But even with the authorities and expertise offered here at Cal cooperating fully, I fear it's only a matter of time before the whole find will be leaked to the media."

"Yes. That could be a disaster."

"Right. At least for now it's classified as a 'crime scene' with the Sheriff's Department, and protected at the highest level."

Nicasio raised his eyebrows again, but went on worrying about his doctorial thesis.

"You see, Nicasio, the authorities have given me, and our UC exclusive access to the historical end of the investigation. But time is definitely an issue here. If this discovery turns out to be what it professes to be, it will eventually be a joint research project with our Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology Department, the Classical Studies Department and possibly involve other scholars from more specific areas."

"Yes. I'm sure that."

"There's historically never been such a marriage of these disciplines to California Studies before. It's potentially phenomenal. All new territory for research. And we'll be in the thick of it just as soon as news of this is opened up for further extensive work."

"I can totally see that happening, professor. Like a bomb going off."

"Indeed."

"But . . . Dr. Simons, with all respect to you and your being chosen to look into this. . . I still don't see what that all has to do with . . . me."

The professor smiled.

"For now, at least, the preliminary fact finding on this thing has been is in my hands. And soon yours as well, young man. That is if you accept to be my research assistant. I am asking that officially of you this morning. At this meeting."

Nicasio was stunned. He was speechless as the professor continued.

"I am requesting that you temporarily cease with your thesis work on the Drake landing site and assist me in the study of this find. You see it's tremendously urgent. If it turns out to be a hoax, I will grant you what ever extension you need on your paper."

"And if it turns out to be something as phenomenal as it looks now a priori?"

" Well then we're both entered into the history books with the find itself."

"Yes. Maybe. But . . ."

"Young man, if this is not a hoax. . . your name, along with mine, and the institution of Cal will be published in every historical journal in the world. It will be deserving of an entirely new chapter in the history of California and the West. Do you see the potential to you personally and your academic future here?"

Nicasio swallowed with difficulty and blinked his eyes once. "Yes. I do see the potential of that."

"If there is some legitimate connection of Old World architecture to the Age of Exploration by the Spanish. . . it could very well be the archaeological find of the century, Nicasio. Cal's history department would be synonymous with the names of the academics that researched, exposed and published this find. And that could include you."

The young researcher was silent.

* * *