Mayra's car moved through the crowded city streets, but inside the vehicle, there was a strange, heavy silence. Jerome sat in the front seat, repeatedly glancing at Mayra in the side mirror, who said nothing and simply stared straight ahead. Sara sat in the back, her fingers nervously playing with the threads of her scarf.
Finally, Sara broke the silence. Her usual playful tone was gone. "Well... that went terribly."
"Not terribly, Sara. It was insulting," Mayra said, her voice firm. "They threw us out of our own site as if we were thieves."
Jerome took a deep breath. "Mayra, they were from the ministry. They have the authority. And given the kind of security they had, it is clear this is no ordinary find. 'National security'... they only use that phrase when they have something very big to hide."
Mayra suddenly turned the car into a narrow alley and stopped in front of her old office. It was a small, two room office that she rented with her own money—her personal space to work, far from the bureaucracy of the archaeological world.
"Let's go inside," she said, opening the door. "We still have something that they do not."
She placed the metal object, which she had been clenching tightly in her fist, on the table. The three of them leaned over it as if it were a diamond. Jerome took a small kit from his bag containing lenses, tweezers, and a few bottles of chemicals.
"First, let's clean it," he said. "Let's see what story is hidden beneath the mud."
After a few minutes of careful work, the object revealed its true form. It was a seal, made of an unknown alloy, with a color that was neither copper nor bronze. Its touch was cold and smooth. But the real mystery was the symbols engraved upon it.
"What... what is this?" Mayra asked, almost in a whisper.
Sara picked up a large magnifying lens and leaned over the seal. "This is incredible. I have spent my entire life studying ancient languages—Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Aramaic... but this... this is none of them."
"What do you mean? It must be some ancient language," Mayra insisted.
Sara shook her head. "No. This is different. The symbols feel familiar, yet their combination, their structure... it looks like a code. As if someone deliberately created it to be hidden."
Jerome typed on his laptop. "I am trying to analyze its metal composition. Cross referencing the image with our database. Maybe that will give us a clue."
Hours began to pass. Outside, the sun was setting, and the only light in the room came from the laptop screen and a single table lamp. Sara was flipping through dozens of books, and Jerome's fingers were flying across the keyboard. Mayra paced restlessly, her mind repeatedly drawn to the man who had been standing by the Land Cruiser. That calm smile... as if he were saying, 'The game has just begun.'
Suddenly Jerome almost shouted, "I found something!"
Mayra and Sara rushed to his side.
"The metal is a dead end," Jerome said. "It does not match any ancient or modern alloy in our records. But I found the symbol."
"Where?" Mayra asked.
"It was not easy. I started searching by breaking the symbol into parts. That five pointed star... it is not Sumerian. It is a very rare, almost forgotten symbol known as the 'Mariner's Star.' It was used by the earliest sailors of Mesopotamia, who dreamed of venturing beyond the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, out into the sea."
Sara looked up from her books. "Sailors? That is interesting, because one of these other symbols could mean 'water' or 'river.' I cannot be sure."
Mayra suddenly remembered something. She ran to her cabinet and pulled out an old, dusty file. It contained photocopies of nineteenth century British documents. "When I was studying in London, I spent a few weeks in the archives of the East India Company," she said, flipping rapidly through the pages. "Somewhere... I read about a convoy of five ships... Yes! Here it is!"
She placed a page on the table. It was a shipping manifest from eighteen fifty five. It clearly stated, "A special convoy of five ships, carrying the 'Treasure of Babylon,' has departed from Basra for London."
Sara said softly, "Five ships..." and then looked at the seal. "And this five pointed star."
Jerome leaned back in his chair. "Wait, the story gets even stranger. This convoy never reached London. Official records say they were attacked by pirates at the mouth of the Tigris river and all the ships sank. There were no survivors."
A deep silence fell over the room for a moment.
"So... the ship we found today..." Mayra left the sentence unfinished.
Sara completed it, "Could it be one of those five?"
Suddenly, a notification sounded from Jerome's laptop. He clicked on it. His face turned white.
"What is it?" Mayra asked.
"I put a tracker on the ministry's internal site," Jerome said in a nervous voice. "They have just classified that file as 'Top Secret.' It is now under the control of Iraq's intelligence agency. No one can access it now."
Before anyone could say anything, a message arrived on Mayra's phone. It was from an unknown number. The message contained only five words:
"The first step on the map."
Mayra looked at her friends in astonishment. It had to be the same man. He was watching them. He knew they had the seal.
Just then, Sara spoke loudly, "I found it! Oh my god, I found it!"
She pointed to a very old book, its pages yellowed with age. "It is a myth. A forgotten story. It says that when the gods gave 'celestial knowledge' to man, they divided it into five parts and chose five guardians to hide it."
With a trembling hand, Sara pointed to one of the words on the seal.
"I can read this one word," she said. "It is a very old form of the Akkadian language. It means... 'Guardian.'"
What lay before them now was not just a discovery, but a massive secret. Five sunken ships. A mysterious seal. A government hiding something. And a stranger, who was perhaps a friend, or perhaps an enemy. What had they set out to find? The wreckage of an old ship, or the key to a lost story? And who was this 'Guardian'? Was he helping them, or was he luring them into a deeper trap?