‘At the time of the death of Christ few would have heard of him or known of the new religion.’

  ‘There’s a crucifix scene on the wall…’

  ‘Yes, but all Jews knew of that Roman practice to punish people. It may not be the Christ crucifixion, hence the lack of crosses in here.’

  ‘None found?’ I asked.

  ‘Two small wooden crucifix, orthodox style.’

  ‘The circular water areas on the way in?’

  ‘A Jewish practise. As was the food preparation here.’

  ‘And the Roman armour?’ I pressed.

  ‘Perhaps a Roman soldier that fell in love with a Jewish girl and abandoned his old allegiances. It did happen.’

  ‘So is it accurate to call these people First Century Christians?’

  ‘At the moment we would have to call them Jews.’

  ‘Then let the Israelis take the lead, and Israelis can visit this place. First stop on the diaspora.’

  ‘Literally, yes,’ he agreed.

  ‘If you follow the stream in Mandoch Valley, would it bring you here?’

  ‘Yes, it joins another stream, above the first huge caverns we found.’

  ‘So maybe their ships are under the sand on Mandoch Beach?’

  ‘No, those ships would have been stripped down and used by local people, even as fire wood; a wreck on the sand would not last long. And the ships in those days were not very big.’

  ‘Modern day local people were searching for the source of the Mandoch Valley spring water?’ I posed.

  ‘They have not found it, and gave up, the source appears to be deep underground, and the rocks on the island are soft, a good water table here but well below the surface.’

  ‘And they looked for similar springs?’

  ‘They did, none found to have the same minerals. Mandoch Valley spring water is unique, a gift from God.’

  I nodded at that. ‘Nothing controversial in the stone tablets?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Move them to the museum here, they stay here, but … it sounds like the Israelis may want to sniff around.’

  ‘They have shown little interest in such sites before, sites outside of Israel. To find this Rabbi here today was … unusual.’

  I glanced across at that Rabbi, but shaking his hand had not revealed any ulterior motive for him being here. ‘And the ossuary?’

  ‘Twenty-six, which is not enough, so it is possible that the people here were mixed, Jews and others, the Jews keeping to the practice.’

  ‘Names on the ossuary?’

  ‘Yes, and we have a family tree now.’

  A French TV crew wanted an interview, so we shot it with the backdrop of the cavern, and I explained what we knew about the cavern. And I made sure to mention that there was no treasure found here.

  A BBC crew arrived, stunned at what they found, so I repeated my words to them, again with a fantastic backdrop.

  An hour later and a climber rushed down to me, he had found something up stream, so I grabbed Donno, Bonza, Bill and Ted, and we set off out the cave, walking north.

  After half an hour of easy going, the ground easy to walk on and the river easy to follow, we stopped as the climber pointed across the river.

  I studied the land opposite. ‘Those are terraces. Someone has moved the rocks and made walls, to keep the dirt inside, maybe for some irrigation as well.’

  I asked the climber, and he was sure that no local farmers ever lived up here. He led us down towards the river, three other climbers found next to the river, and they had a rope across the river, which at this point was narrow but fast.

  Buckled up, and I pulled myself across on a type of sling, grabbed by the climbers on the far said, all of the gang soon across, and we started up a goat trail that seemed too wide for goats.

  Up at the terraces, Donno had a look, and he was sure that they were ancient, thousands of years old.

  Bonza asked, ‘The people in the cavern never came up here and found this?’

  ‘And what if they did?’ I posed. ‘They probably had no seeds for crops and the irrigation here has gone.’

  Donno cut in, ‘I cannot see where the water would have come from, but there appear to be channels. We are ten metres above the river.’

  Walking further up the riverbank, we found a good trail, but no signs of modern human life; no litter, no Coke cans.

  Over a ridge we halted, and I pointed. ‘That mound is man-made.’

  Donno closed in on it, and he started to move rocks from the top, soon peering inside. ‘It’s an ancient burial mound, and others like it have been found here. They are mostly fifteen thousand years old.’

  ‘So there were people living here,’ Bonza noted.

  Donno faced him. ‘Back then it was wetter, and cooler, and crops would survive the summer heat here. Back then … the Sahara was green grassland with rivers.’

  ‘We want to find Broderic caves, not ancient caves,’ I complained.

  Donno told me, ‘It is unlikely that anyone has set foot up here in ten thousand years.’

  Walking on and following the ancient path, we had a view down to the river, the banks examined for caves.

  ‘There!’ Bonza shouted ten minutes later, and we followed his finger to a cave entrance on this side of the river.

  Approaching it, the path led straight to it, and outside of it sat stone areas that had been smoothed down.

  ‘For threshing crops,’ Donno suggested.

  He ducked inside, torch on, and I followed. The cave opened out and grew in height, we had no need to duck, and we found yellow and blue hand paintings straight away.

  We also found a goat skull and a set of goat bones, then a set of human bones, ancient human bones.

  The cave seemed to be big enough to host several families, and as we progressed deeper we found carved stone benches and sleeping alcoves of sorts.

  Donno noted, ‘This was in use for centuries.’

  ‘Why did they not find the caverns below us?’ I posed.

  ‘They probably did, and lived in them, just that they preceded the Jewish arrivals by … eight thousand years or so.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Bonza asked, pointing. ‘It ain’t gold.’

  We closed on a seam of shiny metal in the wall. Donno whacked it with a small chisel, broke a bit off and weighed it in his hand, then examined it under his torch light.

  ‘It may be platinum.’

  ‘Worth anything?’ Bonza asked.

  ‘More than gold, it is used in batteries and radios and mobile phones. As well as jewellery.’ He pointed at the seam. ‘That could be worth a few million Euro.’

  ‘I can have it dug out, share it with the Prefect,’ I suggested.

  Pressing on further into the cave it split in two, so we split up and followed separate branches. My branch soon came to a dead end, alcoves with shelves noted.

  ‘They look like the others in the main caverns,’ Bonza noted.

  ‘Yes, the Swiss Family Robinson found them and used them, they never carved them.’

  ‘Ready-made board and lodgings,’ Bonza quipped.

  ‘They were lucky to find it, yes,’ I agreed.

  Backtracking, we entered the other branch, a shout heard from ahead so we walked quickly, and we found Donno knelt examining another seam of the silver metal ore.

  Donno finally stood and faced me in the gloomy light. ‘The seam goes through the mountain, so it could be worth a great deal.’

  ‘Look!’ came in a loud hiss from Bonza, and when I followed his finger we found the same symbol. ‘They were here.’

  ‘Who was here … is the question. Who made that symbol? And when was it carved? Did the Swiss Family Robinson carve it, or it came later, or was it already here?’

  Donno complained, ‘I have never seen such a symbol for ancient races. It is a marker, a more modern marker, perhaps this man Leopold.’

  ‘Can you date them?’ I asked.

  ‘Not very easily, just a guess based on weathering or on style. And ancient races did not mark their caves as such, that was down to more modern thinking.’

  The cave grew wider here so we pushed on, soon finding an area of cave lit by cracks in the rocks above us. We found small alcoves, and this time the alcoves all had skulls as well as femur bones.

  Donno noted, ‘I have not seen this in Europe before, but we have little to go on when it comes to Ice Age peoples here in Europe, poor traces of them left to study.’

  The cave ahead was now blocked, so we took digital images with flash and backtracked out of the cave.

  Outside, we noted the location before we reversed course, and we were again hoisted across the raging river, the shitty brown water raging river, no signs of anyone in a canoe having fun up here.

  Across the river, and we walked quickly back down to the large caverns, finding a police officer that had a sat phone. He called the Prefect, and the phone was handed over.

  I began, ‘We found platinum up here.’

  ‘That is supposed to be worth a great deal!’

  ‘Yes, so get a team together and we can dig it out together and sell it, but it may be government land anyhow. It’s a mile north of the large caverns and across the river, in an ancient cave with hand paintings again.’

  ‘You can dig it out,’ he suggested.

  ‘And pay for all the expensive equipment we’d need, eh?’

  ‘It’s your land, we sold it to you.’

  ‘I’ll use the profits to build nursing homes, you crafty old goat you.’

  ‘Who me?’ he teased.

  I cut the call. ‘Boys, it looks like we’re in the mining business, there’s platinum in them there hills.’

  Down below, in the vast caverns, I found the Rasmussens and explained the find of platinum, and that we would mine it – and ignore the significance of the ancient cave it sat in. But first we would need an access road.

  Back down at the dam site, the Rasmussens and my gang with me, Donno and his team to remain, we boarded the waiting jeeps and set off for the minibuses, soon switching to the minibuses and heading off back to the hotel.

  At the hotel, I checked my watch and called Ross Daniels. ‘You awake?’

  ‘Been up a while, yeah.’

  ‘We found platinum, a seam of it, and the Prefect says that it’s my land, and my cost to make a road up there and mine it.’

  ‘That’s a bit rude of him.’

  ‘Contact him, get the road up there fixed double-quick, then extended it all the way north up to that planned spur road. Then get me a local mining company.’

  ‘There are not many, some copper found. I can find a mainland expert and send him, and his team.’

  ‘Do that quickly, and we need to protect the site, the platinum could be hacked out and stolen I reckon.’

  ‘Selling it would be impossible, it’s not gold, don’t worry.’

  ‘Get a team started on that road straight away please.’

  ‘The rocks are not tough, so you drive a steam roller over them and make a flat area, and use the jack hammer, drop sand and then make a concrete road. Crude but effective.’

  ‘So get some crude men for me.’

  He laughed. ‘A few of those in the construction gangs, yes.’

  ‘And if this seam is large?’

  ‘Platinum is worth more than gold, so we’d make some money. Corsica had ancient mines for various things, thousand years ago, but back then I don’t think they understood platinum, just gold and silver, tin, iron.’

  ‘So Broderic may have mined some tin?’ I posed.

  ‘He may well have done, but on a small scale, men with pickaxes.’

  ‘Get the men quickly, and we need to protect the site before the Seven Dwarfs realise the value of platinum and pinch it.’

  David Hutton called next. ‘We have a large file now of British claimants, and they overlap … in that it seems to have been the same predatory priests moving from one city to the next.’

  ‘If you’re reasonably sure about a priest, and he’s a Catholic, then call the man on behalf of Cardinal Roskov … and tell him that he’s fired and will soon be charged by the police.’

  ‘That might push up the suicide rate…’

  ‘I’m not seeing a downside.’

  ‘The suicides in Ireland now top fifty.’

  ‘Fifty? Priests?’

  ‘Four nuns, two former prosecutors, and a few people that worked at those orphanages, plus a few people that were never on anyone’s radar.’

  ‘They must have figured we’d uncover them. Get me that list of names, by email, British priests; I can have them all fired through the Vatican. But talk to the bishop of whichever diocese they’re currently in and tell him that I want them fired - or else.’

  ‘I’ll get on that tomorrow. They’ve been digging in Ireland, and the total stands at thirty-six kids found so far, four adults.’

  ‘Could the nuns have legally buried a kid that died of a simple disease?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it has to be registered, body back to the next of kin as well. Oh, we drew up the papers and loaned that Irish gas company the money, Phoenix. They hope to hire two hundred men within months, and it made the TV news over there.

  ‘They’ll also hire and train gas fitters, a hundred of them to cover Northern Ireland, installing gas cookers and certifying them once a year.’

  ‘Good, some progress.’

  ‘Two years down the road and they think they could employ five hundred people, but the bulk of our money will go on pipes and capital equipment, long term things.’

  Walking down to the beach with Bill and Ted, we marvelled at the large white pebbles now on the beach and in the water, and it did indeed look like the Seychelles.

  I counted thirty, so the local company had dumped its unsold stock on us for sure.

  Seeing a middle-aged couple, I asked what they thought of the pebbles.

  ‘Nice, yes, we go to Seychelles when young, this is like that.’

  That evening we remained in the hotel, a recommended guest chef to cook as our resident chef had some time off, and we sat down to eat with the guests, which included a Swedish couple, a Danish couple, and a famous German actor – famous in Germany that was.

  After satisfying Frieda slowly, I satisfied Rita slowly – and quietly, and we finally cuddled, my favourite pastime these days.

  I finally drifted off to sleep after checking the grey shadows in the room. None were moving.

  I suddenly became aware that I was now sat in the school assembly hall, that hall packed with kids, Bonza near me and joking around with his brother, but for some reason Bonza was modern-day Bonza, and twice the height of the other pupils.

  ‘Quiet down,’ the headmaster called. ‘We have a special guest visiting us today, Miss Penthouse, 1989.’

  My heart stopped and my eyes widened.

  Then there she was, walking up on stage naked, the boobs swaying, the boys all gasping, the teachers failing to react.

  ‘Hello children, my name is Miss Penthouse, 1989, and I came here today to see Ricky Roskov. Ricky, please stand.’

  All eyes were now on me as I stood, and I only then noticed my parents stood off to one side and shooting me daggers. My mother folded her arms as she stared at me, and I would be in trouble when I got home later.

  ‘Ricky, can you come up on the stage, and I’ll demonstrate for the school a good blowjob and finish.’

  I shot up in bed, breathing hard, and I scanned the grey shadows. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I hissed. ‘What was my mum mad at me for, I never invited that women to the school?’

  I slumped back, thinking about why I was feeling guilty about something.

  The training programme

  In the morning, I took Rolf with me, and the ladies in his life would go shopping again. In the minibuses, we men drove north around the city and to Scorfo Valley to meet Billy Squires.

  Billy had already been informed about the new trainees, and huts were ready and available for them.

  Inside the management room, which was now very cluttered, I met the French site manager. ‘I want an area set aside for training men, and instructors found, but use our own men a few days a week, use the older men.

  ‘I want new men trained in using the diggers, the cranes, and then concrete work, as well as apartment finishing, some carpentry, a good grounding in all they’ll need.

  ‘If you find local men that want to do it, or teenagers from school, then take them on, half wages, and train them well.’

  The manager told me, accented, ‘There is place here for training boys, so after the boys finish there they can come here for more training. And we can find some local men that want the work.’

  ‘If you have sixty trainees … good, three month courses and send them off, keep training more men. And if you have local men good with machines … train them on cranes and diggers.’

  ‘There is a few old men who ask for such work, I can bring them and train them, yes. And Kudulov tell me of five hundred men from Marseille…’

  ‘Yes, contract men, they’ll build nursing homes, and when ready they’ll start on the nursing homes for rich people.’

  He gave a big Gallic shrug. ‘They will not sit on hands, we have ten years of work here. And these men spend money in the city in the winter.

  ‘My sister, she have old family hotel, closed, but she open for contract men. No license for hotel, no café, but she can rent out rooms and apartments, now with a hundred men inside.

  ‘And she have café with friend nearby, and the men eat well for a good price, and she sell them beer.’

  ‘A good entrepreneur, yes. Does she … provide girls for the men?’

  He gave a big shrug and tried to look innocent as Billy Squires laughed at him.

  Rolf noted, ‘The oldest profession in the world.’

  Outside, we spoke to some of the Irish men about what they needed, and what might speed things up, and they just needed more hours in the day.