The Sworski Codex: Eclipse Over Cusco

By Paul Norris

James Covax is a young accountant from a small town in Missouri. While life seems at first normal for Jim and his soon-to-be wife Mary, a mysterious string of events begin to affect their lives after they receive a strange wedding gift in the mail.

Then after the pair win the national lottery and miraculously save the life of the UN Secretary-General, a senior New York-based FBI agent Oliver Jefferson becomes suspicious about the young couple and begins to investigate.

One night Jim awakes to find Mary has been kidnapped. After he receives a massive ransom demand and then experiences a horrifying plane crash in the Amazonian jungle, Jim fights for his survival. He eventually enlists the help of an Australian archaeologist based in Cusco.

While Jim never gives up hope of being re-united with his young wife, he and Johnston discover they have both become trapped in a wicked cat-and-mouse game. It seems unlikely to Jim by this stage that he will ever see his wife alive again.

Likewise Oliver Jefferson unwittingly stumbles onto the path of a psychopathic Eastern-European billionaire grain trader, who aims to stop at nothing to implement his miss-guided plan to manage and control the world’s staple food supplies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483543192

Book preview

P.N.

1

A GOLDEN CIRCLE OF LIGHT

The curvaceous spirals of the Aurora Borealis lit up the night sky as a massive explosion ripped through an underground storage facility located in the northern part of Finland. Three floors below the tranquil snow-covered landscape, in an enormous high-security vault, a lone researcher on night watch perished in the flames.

Fixed underneath a huge mobile storage trolley was an elaborate time bomb. Upon detonation at midnight it had released a series of huge napalm fireballs, which raced across the entire sub-level Security Access Only storage area one thousand feet below sea level.

As the cascading, rainbow-like curtains of photons from the Northern Lights reflected on a frozen lake nearby, the heat from the subterranean conflagration was so intense it melted thousands of plastic cases containing all the seeds of the world’s grain and vegetable crops. Millions upon millions of varieties of agricultural seeds, nurtured by the planet’s most up-to-date research teams and plant geneticists, were burned to ashes in seconds.

An eardrum piercing emergency alarm blasted out across the whole complex. At the same time a small security team in the upstairs section had scrambled on Red Alert. An automatic sprinkler system had also activated - but the damage had already been done.

The World Seed Vault was a project that took decades of work to establish. It involved the building of an internationally accessible stockpile of seeds that would be available to any country facing the aftermath of devastating natural disasters, pandemics, asteroid impacts or nuclear war. Housing approximately three billion seeds in a subterranean repository designed to last five thousand years, the contents of the Valsbräad World Seed Vault had now been entirely destroyed.

At two am in Dresden, Germany a leather-gloved hand moved around the perimeter of a security alarm box. The index finger on one hand felt an opening and the other hand inserted a code key into a lock inside the aperture. The side panel popped open on the metal box and two alligator clips wired to a USB drive were fixed to wires inside the unit.

In a back room nearby a security guard was sitting at a desk with four flat-screen closed circuit television monitors in front of him. They displayed the output from four video cameras placed in each of the main wings of the Royal Saxon Library. To the security guard all seemed quiet and normal.

Up in the ceiling in the North Wing another pair of leather-gloved hands was busy. They traced a video camera cable to a terminus point. A digital switching unit was carefully placed near the camera’s output cable. Then a tiny camera was poked through an air vent, which gave a display on a small LCD screen of the security guard in the room below.

When the security guard left the room to visit the bathroom, the pair of hands removed the output cable from the video camera. They replaced it with the output cable from a small video amplifier-transmitter with a digital memory stick. The video monitor displaying the view of the South Wing flicked for a split second and then continued to display the view of an empty room.

With the alarm system disabled and the video camera monitor displaying a phoney view of a quiet room, the two shadowy figures slid along the opposite sides of the South Wing. They met alongside a doorway, which led them into a room with a large safe. Attaching a device with round dial over the lock, the digital readout on the face of the dial displayed a line of coded numbers. The digital display at first flashed and then began to show the numbers ‘00-00’ on its dial.

Click! Clunk! This tripped the digital time lock. One of the leather gloved hands then turned the large handle on the safety door and it opened. Both stepping into the large safe the two figures picked up a large black case around ten feet long by two feet deep. Within a minute they walked out of the safe room with the long case, locked the safety door behind them and reset the safe’s combination.

Applying the digital device to another security door around the corner they took the large flat case outside. A dark coloured van with its headlights switched off approached. Within thirty seconds the case was loaded into the van and it had disappeared into the night.

The security guard then emerged from the bathroom and walked over to a coffee machine in the foyer. While stifling a yawn he placed some coins into the slot and pressed the buttons for a cappuccino with two sugars.

Unbeknown to him the twelve-century-old Dresden Codex, which had been kept safely in the Royal Saxon Library for over two-hundred-and-fifty years, had just been stolen.

Sonny’s ears flicked up. As the sun rose over the small town of Hermaine, Missouri and the surrounding districts, he could hear Ol’ Seymour crowing at the top of his lungs. It was the start of another fine day in late spring. The horizon’s radiant jewel was the ambassador for an early summer.

But today for some reason Sonny, the faithful old farm dog, knew things were going to be different. The roosters, he detected, squawked unusually loud this morning.

Near the indistinct outline of a farm shed flew a tiny silver moth, as yet the only thing moving for miles around. It landed on a log lying next to a small pond. So still was the water it acted like a facial mirror for the lightening sky.

Then suddenly falling towards its surface was a pure circle of golden light. It was roughly the same diameter as the pond and was flying straight down from outer space. Upon impact the entire circumference of water was illuminated with a brilliant golden glow, which then slowly dissipated. But no one was there to witness this unusual phenomenon.

As the brilliant orb was emerging for another earth-day it also seemed so quiet and peaceful in our solar system. Our blue-green planet seemed such a contrast to its massive five billion-year-old fiery star, made mostly of hydrogen gas, approximately two hundred million miles away.

Then, just over the earth’s shoulder, the moon prepared itself for yet another monthly orbit. Like the counterweight on an old seventeenth century clock, the pock-faced satellite kept faithful to its unrelenting routine of moving smoothly around the earth, as part of the seamless, internal mechanics of the universe - just as it had done for the last few billion years.

Some have speculated in its younger days the moon had actually been a very large comet or maybe an asteroid. During this incarnation it was able to excitedly and unpredictably move around the solar system and deep space following an elliptical orbit. But some also say that after its accidental collision with our newly forming planet, the moon had become the earth’s satellite.

At that moment a couple of solar flares were shooting off the sun in a spectacular fashion sixty thousand miles into deepest space. But that was actually a fairly normal occurrence, really. Virtually not one of the earth’s six billion or so inhabitants seemed to take the slightest bit of notice. No one, that is, except a couple of young male student astronomers in Tromso, Norway. They were throwing a small after-party at the observatory and trying to impress their dates with digital printouts from a radio telescope.

Meanwhile at the centre of our solar system the bright star called the Sun gave off enough energy in one day to power the earth’s energy needs for a million years. It seemed hard to believe that someone had actually once estimated the sun was in fact as bright as four trillion light bulbs.

Back on the earth outside Hermaine, Missouri the first traces of light were bouncing off the cattle grazing in the west and then shot off to illuminate grapevines in the eastern district. The scene gradually unfolded as if a great artist was working on a giant sketch. Fuzzy silhouettes became more clearly defined shapes taking form on a blank canvas.

Then, like a veil being lifted from the face of a bride, the night swept back in spectacular silence. It allowed the daylight to flood through revealing the shapes of barns, wheat silos, farmhouses, tractors and trucks. Just as the guard changed from night to day the globe illuminating the town hall clock in the main street of Hermaine had switched itself off, as its light sensor had suddenly detected a waste of electricity.

Everyone in this small country town and its surrounding districts were accustomed to roosters normally crowing at dawn, especially at this time of year. And on this newly arriving day, for some reason, they were certainly giving their throats a particularly good work out.

Those who were affected were out-of-towners awoken too early by the cacophony. Too bad for them. It was just part of the daily routine of country life. Too bad also for the townsfolk, as no one on this day, except a clever brown canine, realised the warning from the roosters of Hermaine that something strange was about to happen.

Goo-Ga-Loo-Ga-Loo-oo! The repetitious call shattered the serene calm of the morning. Ol’ Seymour was an old, withered bird. On this particular morning he could actually be heard crowing nearly eight miles away. Daniel Smith, a local wheat and cattle farmer, heard Ol’ Seymour doing his stuff as he walked up the main driveway to empty his mailbox.

Woof! Sonny, Dan’s reliable farm hound, stood up from his comfortable spot in the hay shed. He then raised his dark brown body up and down in a mechanical fashion, like he was part of a hydraulic rig. His black nostrils flexed in and out as he sniffed the air and his tongue momentarily popped out of his mouth, licking the outside of his lower jaw.

Grrrrrr! Emitting a growl and then yawning, Sonny shook his head from side-to-side. He was hungry. A final wiggle of his body sent a wave of energy down his back and then out through his stumpy tail.

Dan collected the mail from his decrepit iron mailbox and walked back towards the farmhouse. Looking through ten envelopes containing bills and junk mail he then found a letter from his sister among the envelopes. He clutched upon it and started to open it while still walking, oblivious to any long-distance crowing by far-away roosters. By this stage Dan’s own chickens were starting to crow as well.

All of a sudden, Ol’ Seymour’s crowing stopped. Then very quickly after that ceased the crowing of every other rooster in the district. The silence was plainly noticeable. Ol’ Seymour had collapsed and died.

Dan stood still on the pathway that led past the barn and then he looked around. He began reading his sister’s handwritten letter in the increasing light of day. Ten years ago Dan’s younger sister, Louise, had married an Australian farmer. She now lived on a large property in the eastern side of the state of Queensland with her husband and two young sons.

After the usual family news about the kids at school, etcetera, Louise said they were quite concerned about an outbreak of wheat rust virus in their area. Apparently under instructions from state government authorities Down Under, contaminated crops infected by the virus were being destroyed.

She also mentioned a new species of locust was multiplying rapidly and now in plague proportions. What alarmed her was the chemicals they sprayed on these pests via aerial spraying was no longer effective at exterminating them. At the time of writing Louise said this had already happened on a property around seventy-five miles away from her farm. She said she would email him more details shortly.

Dan then moved to the front door of the farmhouse and ripped open a smaller blue envelope, which contained a birthday card for his forty-eighth birthday. Just then he heard the telephone ringing in the farmhouse. Sonny started barking as Dan went into the house and picked up the receiver.

It was Ted Sedrick the owner of a farm just north of the Smith’s property. Ted explained to Danny that Ol’ Seymour, one of his best roosters, was dead. Then Sedrick asked Dan if Sonny - notorious for his nocturnal wanderings and perhaps rightly or wrongly accused of devouring, or frightening to death, two of Sedrick’s other chickens in the past - was locked up.

‘Oh, yep, Sonny is definitely locked in, Ted,’ consoled Dan with genuine intent. ‘I give you my word I just heard him barking in the hay shed. I’m just gonna go let him out now it’s sun-up. Yeah, well, it was probably that fox, Ted. And after all, Ol' Seymour was an old bird. I’ll catch you soon, and we’ll talk about that. ‘Bye now,’ said Dan as he hung up the receiver. Still holding the letter from his sister he charged off to liberate Sonny from the barn.

The golden rays continued to flow through the surrounding hills and valleys linking valley to hill and hill to gully. It was as if someone in heaven had tipped over a huge wine bottle and the aroma of the finest chardonnay was slowly permeating the countryside.

Over in the main street of Hermaine all appeared to be still. There was no traffic whatsoever. Rooster crows could even be heard right up in the central shopping mall. It was a quaint, picturesque little town.

Certainly Ol’ Seymour’s final calls had made it up there. Not that anyone was there to notice, though. Despite the solitude of the morning, however, there had been some activity before sunrise as usual at the Hermaine Bakery.

Inside the small commercial kitchen even the loudest rooster crowing could not have reached the ears of the bakery staff as they crashed and thumped their way though the mixing of dough, the lifting of flour bags and the thumping of baking trays on benches.

In the fields around Hermaine lay the most abundant wheat crops in the country. Huge golden heads waiting to be gathered and transformed into the finest flour. Next came the process of transforming white flour to dough and then into the most delicious fresh bread.

Snoring away and sleeping soundly just a few minutes walk from the bakery was the son of the local accountant. The smells of baking bread reached his nostrils and he awoke. Wiping his sleepy eyes he sat up in his bed wondering why he was conscious. He looked over at the curtains and detected from the glow surrounding them it was morning. At that moment his alarm went off.

Brrrrzzzz! It was now 5.30 am. Jim had arranged to meet his finance for a leisurely brunch at the local diner at 9.30 am. But first he had a favour to do for one of the locals.

Over at Dan’s farm was an old biplane. Dan’s younger brother, Johan, had taught Jim to fly the old Canadian-built PT 24 De Havilland DH 82 when Jim was still a teenager. Jim wasn’t present at the time, but tragically Johan had been killed in a plane crash in England three years ago. Johan was doing some stunts while on holiday at a county air show. The wing of a biplane he was flying clipped the top of a large elm tree and the old craft nose-dived onto a large iron shed, killing him instantly.

After that tragedy Jim still helped Johan’s elder brother Dan maintain his old aircraft and occasionally did some seasonal crop-dusting. In earlier years Johan and Jim had been great buddies. Young Jim used to go visit Johan’s and Dan’s farm just about every afternoon after school. Johan was sort of like an older brother to Jim.

Johan had always kept the Tiger Moth in a farm shed where he restored and maintained it. As a young boy Jim was fascinated with the old aircraft. He used to help Johan pull apart the engine, rewire the controls and patch up the wings and fuselage. Jim would also sometimes go to local air shows with Johan. After a year or so Johan asked Jim’s parents if they’d let him teach young Jim how to fly, and encouraged him to get his pilot’s licence. Jim took to flying the old yellow-and-white double-winged biplane like a duck to water.

As the first light was now getting stronger, Jim could see it was a clear morning. After a quick shower he jumped on his 250cc motorbike and rode over to Dan’s farmhouse. Jim and Dan then opened up the huge double doors of the barn, which was really more like a small aircraft hangar.

Removing the wooden wheel chocks they tugged on the lead rope and the biplane easily rolled out onto a closely cropped grass airstrip. Jim then helped Dan load two fresh cylinders of insecticide into a metal-framed rack on each side of the aircraft and locked down a steel bar, which secured the chemical tanks to the fuselage.

‘Jimmy, I want to try a new formula insecticide I’ve just got hold of.’

‘What is it?’ asked Jim.

‘It’s called Entranol. They’ve been using it successfully in Australia the last few seasons on wheat crops. But my sister wrote me to say there is a concern that a new breed of locust Down Under that is resistant to it. Plus it has been said this new insecticide may be killing small mammals as well. That’s okay if they are vermin, but in Australia some marsupial rodents are protected species.’

‘It must be strong stuff, huh!’

‘Yeah. Stay well downwind of the spray, what ever you do!’

‘Phew! Blah! I just got a whiff of it!’ exclaimed Jim as he spat on the ground.

This time of year the locust threat was once again upon them. The insects were around fifty miles away. They were moving south, eating their way through the wheat crops and breeding rapidly. In the worst affected areas to the north, the locust infestations looked like irregular black burn marks in the virgin fields of gold from the air.

‘That’s plenty of Entranol for the north field,’ declared Dan. Jim nodded. All seemed ready. Jim put on his goggles and a wool-lined leather jacket and climbed up into the cockpit of the old German aircraft.

Tap, tap, tap! Jim rapped his forefinger on the oil and fuel gauges - a good luck ritual he learned from Johan. Once seated comfortably in the cockpit of the old biplane Jim ran his hands over the chemical hoses that led to two spray jets under the wings. He then checked the joystick by pulling on it to feel if there was tension and tapped his index finger on the spray tank level meter and speed and alternator dials. The latter being for good luck, not a diagnostic test. Meanwhile Dan stood in front of the plane with his hand on the propeller.

‘Ready?’

‘A-okay! Ignition!’ Jim replied loudly backed up with the traditional ‘thumbs-up’ signal. Dan pulled down on the propeller with both arms. As he followed through he ducked backwards out of the way as the old plane’s propeller began to spin and the engine chugged into action.

Whurrrrr! Once the revs were at the right level Jim eased the old biplane up to speed along the grass strip. The windsock on a pole next to the barn was flaccid. There was not one breath of wind.

‘Come on now, up you go you ancient bird!’ Jim shouted out loudly to encourage the De Havilland.

When it felt he had hit the right speed along the airstrip Jim pulled back the joystick and the old plane rose gracefully into the air. Dan raised his head and waved as the old PT 24 left the ground. Jim gave his ‘thumbs-up’ sign again and looked down to see Dan, who was now a tiny figure on the ground.

Making a left bank and heading west, Jim flew the old plane over the deserted rail yards. Then raising his altitude he flew over three large wheat silos. Finally he altered his course to the north and headed in the direction of Dan’s wheat crop. It was a beautiful morning and the bright disc of the sun had just risen above the horizon.

‘Wow!’ Jim yelled as he marvelled at the panoramic view across the countryside and felt the fresh air on his face. Every detail on the ground below seemed sharp and clear as if it was a movie filmed with the finest quality camera lens. To Jim the fresh air felt slightly intoxicating. As he was so exhilarated he decided that once he’d finished spraying Dan’s wheat crop he’d try a few stunts before he landed.

Noting that the air space ahead was clear of any other dangerous objects such as hot-air balloons, power lines etcetera, he banked a straight path and brought the old plane down low over the wheat fields. He then put his right hand over the switch ready to operate the spray jets.

Jim held the old plane steady and true at an altitude of just one hundred feet above the ground as he approached Dan’s wheat crop. Reaching under his seat for an old gas mask he then flicked the switch, which turned on the pressure pump that operated the spray jets.

After about an hour in the air, and having completing about ten flyovers, the spraying was done on the north side of Dan’s enormous property. The two tanks of Entranol were empty. Jim removed his gas mask to breathe the fresh air rushing through the cockpit. At an altitude of approximately fifteen hundred feet he smoothly rolled the old plane a few times over the south side. Then suddenly he felt the engine stutter.

Putt...Putt...Putt! The old craft lurched then dropped in altitude. Jim hurriedly placed his helmet back on his head, straightened his goggles and then pulled back on the joystick. He then adjusted the throttle and felt his pulse rising as the old bird began gliding downwards.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ he exclaimed. The Tiger Moth was now diving out of control towards the ground.

Watching the altimeter dial still indicating a rapidly declining altitude, Jim took a deep breath and pulled on the throttle.

‘Aaah! Come on you old bitch! Pull out of it!’ Just then he felt the engine respond.

Whurrrrr! Miraculously the old aircraft once again gained power and altitude. Jim heaved massive sigh. He then settled back in his pilot seat. But the entire craft shuddered as he brought it back down for a rather bumpy landing. Upon touching the groomed grass of the airstrip the craft bounced up again around twenty feet in the air and then fell heavily.

Crack! The left wheel strut attached to the main axle had cracked and the entire biplane listed to port. He watched in horror as the left wing dug into the ground and tore itself away from the craft.

Crunch! Jim then cut the engine. ‘Aaagh!’ he cried as steel wires holding the wing together snapped and slashed through the air with the terrifying sound of a swishing battle sword aimed at his neck. The impact forced his head against the side of the cockpit and his teeth ripped a tear in his top lip. At that moment a puff of black smoke emanated from the engine as it gave its final splutter and the entire machine came to a halt.

The old PT 24 lay in a tangled heap in front of the old barn. Jim took off his goggles and felt his face and neck covered in sweat. Blood was flowing from his mouth and he realised he had a laceration. Upon checking his instruments he was surprised to find the clear glass was shattered on all four gauges. Dan ran up to the side of the plane as Jim jumped out of the cockpit.

‘Jimmy, are you okay? What happened up there, buddy?’ exclaimed Dan in genuine concern.

‘Oh, I’m okay. Just a fat lip.’

‘I heard the engine hiccup and...!’

‘Hey look at this, will ya?’ Jim pointed to the damaged glass on the front of all the instrument panel guages. Dan looked at the four instrument dials. ‘Hmm. Hey, they were all okay prior to take off, huh?’

‘Must’ve happened on impact,’ Jim deduced.

‘Well, I heard the engine miss and I certainly watched you closely up there. Looked like you had made a real smooth landing to me. And then...That’s a bit weird. I’m so glad you’re okay,’ said Dan in a sympathetic tone.

Jim, still puzzled, shook his head.

‘Perhaps it’s just general wear-and-tear. We’ll have to strip down that engine before we take ‘er up again. You know, she sure is an old girl now.’

Jim patted the side of the fuselage. They then used a tractor to drag the damaged biplane back into the old barn.

2

THE VISITOR

Heading back home after his stressful flight, Jim thought how much he loved the small town life and all his buddies in Hermaine. He and Mary had agreed they had no intention of moving away.

Hermaine’s population was around fifteen thousand and this figure had dropped by around ten per cent over the last five years. This was due to the fact that many young people were moving away to work and study in larger capital cities or move overseas.

But growing up in a small town just fifty miles west of St Louis was just fine for James Covax. His father, Edward Covax, after years of struggling had established the largest firm of accountants in the district. So it was from an early age young Jim was being taught how to balance the books and also how to finance and manage an accounting business. His mum and dad agreed to Jim’s own request to study accountancy in St Louis once he finished school and that’s exactly what he did.

Now aged twenty-three, and as he had just completed his accounting degree Jim was qualified to help run the family firm. He also felt financially secure enough to ask his childhood sweetheart to marry him.

Jim was also a real sports nut. But being a little podgy and not ever really super fit he wasn’t ever a great player. However he was a keen fan of baseball and college football. He also loved watching sport and movies on TV.

Mary Klempt, his finance, worked as an assistant librarian in the Hermaine District Library. She was a quiet girl with short brunette hair and wore spectacles. Studious and smart, she was an efficient librarian, and played basketball in the local team on Saturdays and church tennis on Sundays.

Mary’s parents had bought a farm ten miles out on the western outskirts of town about thirty years ago. Her father, Hans Klempt, whose parents emigrated from Germany after the Second World War, had run cattle for the first ten years. In between Hans and his American wife Judy had raised three daughters.

As years went by Hans tried his hand at growing vegetables and even some special varieties of grain for the baking of German bread. It was his purchase of some property in the east backing on to his existing property, however, which was his winning investment. The area had been set up for growing grapes but the owner had been forced to sell off in a hurry.

Thanks to advice from the Covax’s accounting firm he was able to get a loan organised from the bank. Klempt’s Fine Red Wines were a huge success at first around the country and after that won awards and achieved large export sales internationally. People were coming to his vineyard from all over the world to sample his wines. This was also great for other businesses in the town.

Hans certainly proved he was a good organiser and manager. It was his hard work through the ebbs and flows of prosperity over the years had seem him come out on top financially. Mary and her sisters had a happy childhood growing up on the farm.

Mary had once thought of travelling to Paris to study French and maybe after that go to college in New York. But because she didn’t want to leave Jim behind she stayed in Hermaine. This tactic paid off just after Thanksgiving. One Sunday night after church tennis Jim proposed to her.

The wedding was planned over the winter and set for late April, just after Jim’s graduation. As both their jobs seemed to be stable in Hermaine, the two of them felt very happy to live in the town they’d both grown up in.

Most of their school friends had found it too quiet in Hermaine, however, and moved to St Louis. Then having moved to St Louis they soon grew restless there, too. After that they moved anywhere they could, even if it was an ill-conceived move, just so they could say they moved out of St Louis. After all just about everyone else they knew had done the same.

Jim’s father had always told him his version of the old adage: ‘Travel broadens the mind - but thins the wallet’. And for an accountant that was a fitting mindset. Having a ‘gap-year’ or and overseas trip seemed a waste of money to Jim who, deep down inside, felt he was not cut out for the wild single life. He preferred to settle down in his hometown and start a family instead.

For their honeymoon Jim and Mary had planned to drive around Canada on a six-week camping trip. They were looking forward to going away after spending the last few months renovating their new apartment. Also exciting for them was this trip was the first time either of them had been anywhere outside the state of Missouri.

While they referred to their house as an apartment, it wasn’t an apartment in the normal sense. It was really just a big house around the corner from the main street of Hermaine, which had been divided in two. Jim’s father had bought the property a few years ago and renovated it, then rented out each section. Occupying one of the half-house allotments seemed like the perfect solution for Jim and Mary after they announced they intended to marry.

Some of their wedding gifts had arrived early via courier and were delivered to the apartment. Mary’s parents had given the pair a very generous gift voucher from the local electrical store for four thousand dollars two days before their wedding. They had excitedly gone out straight away to buy a microwave oven and a blender.

But Jim was particularly excited about buying a combined DVD player and digital video recorder unit, along with surround-sound amplifier system and a wide-screen television. The latter he couldn’t wait to get installed so he could view all his favourite sports shows on the new big screen.

Jim’s brother Tom had also sent them a wedding present of a battery-operated digital calendar with a big illuminated display. They’d not ever seen one of these before. Upstairs in the lounge room Jim fiddled with the buttons on the side of it to set the correct date. Once he had set it to the current day he put it on a side table opposite the TV and went back downstairs.

On the floor in the kitchen were several open cardboard boxes as the couple jumped to the task of sorting out where their new appliances should go.

‘There’s only one place for the microwave oven and that’s here in the kitchen next to the lava lamp,’ he declared.

‘Okay’ said Mary. ‘But if you put it there near the window you’ll have to swing the door and it’ll knock the flour canister off the bench’.

Jim agreed. As a matter of fact he thought Mary was always right about stuff around the home. Come to think of it she was right about just about everything else as well. He loved that. Sometimes it also got on his nerves as Mary was, as his sister had once told him, a ‘typical Virgo’.

Apparently in the lives of Virgos everything has to be in its correct place. They are by nature perfectionists. Still, he thought, a woman like that is great to be with. As a Gemini he was a bit less tidy and organised than her. Jim’s mother, however, was always sceptical whether his star sign ever had anything to do with his untidiness.

‘Okay, and the blender?’ asked Jim.

Mary threw her gaze across the kitchen.

‘Yeah, the blender can go under this little foldaway door. I calculate we’ll be using the blender on Sundays after tennis so we can keep it out of view but not so tucked away we can’t find it once a week. A priority of need ranked on a seasonal usage I’ve calculated it to be a four-and-half out of ten.’

When Jim heard this he thought maybe Mary was a little too fastidious sometimes.

‘And the digital video recorder, surround-sound and wide screen TV?’

‘Well...’

At that moment the doorbell rang. It was one of those novelty doorbells that played the first few bars of When the Saints Go Marching In.

Jim looked up, and for around a second the slit of his mouth was as straight as a pencil.

‘Hmm, we gotta figure out how to change that tune,’ he muttered quietly to himself. When Jim opened the front door an Ex-Press-It courier was standing there in front of him holding a small package.

‘Mr & Mrs J. Covax?’ asked the man, who was dressed neatly in a grey jacket with the company logo on the breast pocket.

‘Well, not officially until Saturday,’ Jim responded, ‘But yes, that’s us.’

‘Aah, getting hitched on the weekend are we? Best of wishes to you both, then.’

‘Aah? Don’t I need to sign something?’ Jim quizzed the man.

‘No. It’s just a small package. I’ve checked it off my list. We try to avoid unnecessary paperwork. Well, that’s it! Thank you and have a great wedding,’ said the man, who then left.

‘What is it?’ asked Mary.

‘Oh, a package from...’ Jim looked at the package and turned it upside down. ‘L.F. Smith. I don’t know them.’

Jim shook the package and shrugged his shoulders and then put it on the kitchen bench. Mary picked up the package and looked at the postmark.

‘Funny, I can’t make out the postmark, but written on the side here it says the sender is Walter’s Antiques and Curios in Salt Lake City’.

‘Maybe it’s a wedding present from one of my long lost relatives?’ Jim postulated.

Mary attempted to open the tightly wrapped package but broke one of her fingernails trying to lift the packing tape.

‘Ouch! Darn! Shoot! I broke off my nail!’ cursed Mary in a polite way as she waved her hand in the air.

As she went off to grab her nail file, Jim took over. ‘Never mind, I’ll open it,’ said Jim, now taking command.

He grabbed a knife from the top kitchen drawer and started to rip open the package. Just then the blade parted from the handle.

‘Oh, doggone it! Now the knife’s broken! That’s a new knife, too, I bought it two weeks ago’. Slightly riled, he grabbed a flat-headed screwdriver out of his tool kit nearby. ‘Okay, you sucker, open up now!’

Jim thrust the blunt end of the tool under the cardboard and, while it pierced the surface of the wrapping, the screwdriver also rammed into the end of the little finger on his left hand.

‘Aahh! Ooow! Shit!’ He squawked in both surprise and pain.

‘Oh, darling, are you okay?’ said Mary, very concerned.

‘Dammit! Now I’m bleeding,’ Jim agonised. A bandage was sought. After strapping up his wounded digit Mary continued opening the package.

Under the first layer of cardboard was some newspaper, which was wrapped around the object. As the newsprint was unwrapped it revealed another layer of purple tissue paper. Whatever it was it felt kind of solid. Mary came back into the kitchen.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Jim pulled the tissue paper away and they both stared for a moment at the thing he held in his non-bandaged hand.

‘Now...’ said Jim, holding it up to the light to get a clearer look.

‘What on earth?’

The unwrapped object was around ten inches high. It appeared to be a statuette made out of metal. Mary focused her gaze and then cleaned her spectacles in an instant with a vision cloth. She always seemed to have one of those handy.

‘Is it a person, or an animal?‘ She, too, puzzled over the object.

‘I don’t know. It’s kinda weird isn’t it? I think it’s a person with large ears, yeah...’ Jim was not really sure what to make of it. He’d never seen anything like it before. ‘Gee, it could have come from anywhere.’

The object looked like a small man or a boy. It was made out of gold or bronze and its eyes were shaped like two narrow almonds. Its head seemed quite large in relation to the rest of its body. It also had rather elongated earlobes.

‘It’s kinda ugly’, said Jim.

‘Yeah, I wonder who sent us this weird thing?’ exclaimed Mary.

For some reason Jim then put that object close up to his nose and sniffed, screwing up his face after he inhaled. Mary looked through the tissue paper and cardboard to find a very small envelope and held it aloft.

‘Hey, well now, look what I found.’ Mary opened up the small yellow envelope to find a card inside. ‘What’s it say?’ asked Jim.

‘It says: To James and Mary. Hoping this gift will