Later that day, it was Elise’s turn to fill in for the missing wine tasting room employee which gave Joe a
chance to download the pictures from his digital camera into his computer. Viewing the pictures, and
drawing from the experience of his college days, he had a rough idea that the book titles included Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, and Arabic Script. This was too much. He had difficulty believing that his great grandfather
could read all of these languages. Then came the pictures of the journal from the desk. The first page
was clearly in Latin, although Joe had no idea what it said. The following pages were in some script that
he had no idea about. It matched nothing in his experience. The bottles in the drawer made no sense.
At least the wine barrels implied that they were filled with wine. The door at the back of the
chamber was now an even bigger puzzle. Was it a closet? Maybe it leads to the back of the mine,
maybe another chamber?
Joe pulled out the wine bottle from today. The words Paracelsus Turbo Medius 1871 were fairly clear.
At least his great grandfather, if that was who had written this, had very neat handwriting.
Joe went online to check on the Latin words. Paracelsus had no match. Turbo meant “
to disturb, upset, throw into disorder, confuse, unsettle”; any one of these words. Medius meant
“middle, the middle of”. A further search of Paracelsus found articles about a 15th century
physician who believed that properly cared for wounds would heal themselves. None of this made sense.
Why this on a label for a bottle of wine? Joe thought about all of the little bottles. Maybe this
was not wine?
Joe knew that he would need help to get to the bottom of this. He was not sure who might be able to help
him. He sent each of the images to his inkjet printer. As the last sheet finished printing, he
gathered the pictures into an elbow folder. About the only one he could think of locally who might have
some idea about the writing would be Simone, who owned the Wine Witch store. This was about the time that
Elise came into the office.
“At least the wine tasting room help finally arrived; it has been one busy day. We sold 152 bottles
today.”
“Good help is hard to find. Did Patrick give a reason why he didn’t show up yesterday and
sive care. He was very sorry that he didn’t call us yesterday. His mom is taking it pretty hard.
I told him that it was ok and asked him what we could do to help. He told me how happy he was to work
for such an understanding employer. I am going to make a lasagna for his family.”
“Well I’m glad that you were able to finally get away from the tasting room. I have to go out
and check the grapes. My testing shows that we are only weeks from harvest.”
That evening, Joe was able to spend more time looking at the photos and searching on Latin words. He got
nowhere. As the evening drew to a close, he remembered the opened bottle of wine collected during the discovery
of the tunnel with the strange chamber. The name Zinfandel Rosarium Clarivoyance did not directly translate
into anything meaningful. He wished that he remembered his high school Latin. He poured himself another
glass. The taste was no better than two nights ago. After finishing the glass of wine, Joseph retired
to bed and once again dreamed.
This time, Joe dreamed of industrial settings. There were container trucks leaving the Port of Oakland,
unmistakable due to the backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Bridge and Yerba Buena Island. He saw tanker trucks
headed up State Highway 99, marked by the flowering oleander bushes in the median strip. He dreamt of backhoes
digging a foundation behind an old winery that seemed vaguely familiar. Once again he saw the hand with missing
finger joints, this time holding a semi-automatic pistol. From somewhere, the name “Fairchild Group”
came into the awareness of his dreams. A rather plain black sedan with tinted windows figured prominently in the
random images.