CRO-MAGNON (13 page)

“
Is it lit?”

“
Yeah. It’s catalytic.”

She regarded the compact device. “Is that all you brought?”

He nodded. “We can’t be flooding the cave with emissions.”

“
How long will it take to melt the ice?”

“
Ought to thaw the first panel by the time we return this afternoon.”

A thought struck Blaine. She glanced toward the three bodies. “Won’t the heat also thaw—”

“
Not if I focus it at one panel at a time, some distance away from the bodies.” He indicated the frozen floor, wall, and ceiling. “The permafrost will maintain the temperature near the bodies.”

He raised his wrist, put a gauge to his ear, and listened. Tapped the face, listened again.

“
Radon?” Blaine said.

He nodded. “More than we want to breathe.” He squatted by the fire pit, and Blaine saw him scoop something and tuck it into a pocket of his dry suit. “We should boogie.”

“
Fitrat warned us not to disturb anything,” Blaine said.

“
Yeah. And Salomon implied this would be a routine dive.”

She smiled. “This isn’t routine?”

“
Hardly,” he said, apparently missing the intended humor. She heard him sigh. “I need to tell you, I hesitated at those narrow points because the panic I experienced the last time I swam into Cosquer Cave started to come back.”

The words cut through Blaine’s thoughts. All she needed was to get stuck in a narrow underwater tunnel a hundred feet under a mountain with a helpless man.

“
Are you all right now?”

Calder stepped into his fins, folded the frame on his flashlight, and duck-walked into the water. “Probably. I think it was mostly fear of a strange place.”

“
Then you can stop worrying,” she said, trying to ease the moment. “Nothing strange down here.”

Chapter 6

Ian Calder surfaced alongside the johnboat and motioned for Zinchenko to lean on the opposite gunnel while he loaded his scuba gear. On the way up from the tunnel he had mulled how to answer the expected flood of questions from Fitrat and perhaps from the camp master.

But the stolid Russian said nothing while Calder clambered into the skiff and Blaine followed. Only after he had retrieved the anchor, moved to the stern, and started the outboard did he turn to speak.

“
Finish dive?”

“
For this morning, yes.”

“
Nyet
. Mean, need do more?”

Calder glanced at Blaine and back at the camp master. He was amazed at the man’s lack of curiosity. Of course, not everyone had a compulsion to learn about prehistoric life.

“
Why?” he said. “Are you going somewhere?”

He waved at the mountains. “Like get back to climbers.”

Blaine said, “I’m afraid you’re stuck with us a while longer, Mr. Zinchenko.”

“
We’ll be diving twice a day for several days,” Calder said. And how would he and Blaine justify that to Fitrat, he wondered, if they reported nothing but bones?

As boat cleaved the gray water, he swung around and surveyed the shoreline for signs that winter ice might be building. He spotted none, but did see the Tajik bureaucrat, with her ever-present cigarillo, and Salomon’s “facilitator” Teague waiting by the metal dock. The answer came to him. He’d simply tell the truth: that he needed time to uncover and assess the paintings.

When they reached the floating dock Zinchenko clambered out, tethered the johnboat to a stake, and walked toward his trailer, muttering something to Fitrat. As Calder and Blaine stepped ashore, the Tajik official moved to intercept them.

“
What did you find?” she said, blowing a cloud of noxious smoke in Calder’s face.

“
Bones,” Calder lied. “The remains of three individuals.” He glanced at Teague, standing beside Fitrat. The man showed no reaction, and Calder wondered just how much he knew, beyond the bodies being intact.

Fitrat puffed and blew. “Their condition?”

“
Poor.”

“
Did you find artifacts?”

Her squat build and pugnacious manner reminded Calder of a female pit bull. He didn’t want to contemplate what the dead-eyed Teague reminded him of.

“
We didn’t have time to look,” he said.

“
Didn’t have time?” The accented words sounded skeptical.

Calder’s intuition fell into line with Mathiessen’s instructions to maintain secrecy. He’d have to tell Teague, and later Salomon, about the well-preserved bodies. But he’d try to be circumspect with the Tajiks, at least until he and Blaine could assess the industrialist’s intentions. He glanced at Blaine for support.

“
We had trouble swimming in,” she said. “Two blockages.”

“
We spent a long time getting past them,” Calder said. “So we only had a couple of minutes in the cave.”

“
When are you going back?” Fitrat said.

“
This afternoon. As I told Mr. Zinchenko, we’ll need to make two dives per day for several days.”

“
Why would it take so long?” Fitrat dropped her spent smoke. “As director of antiquities, I demand to know what is in the cave. I will proceed from there.”

That’s what I’m afraid of.

“
I need to take detailed measurements of the remains and any artifacts we find,” Calder said. “Those data will help us to date the discovery until the next expedition can make radiological tests on the bones.”

She crushed the cigarillo butt under her boot but made no move to pick it up. “What if I authorize you to bring out samples?”

Uh-oh.
The last thing he wanted was to have his hand forced before he and Blaine could decide on a course of action.

“
Outside air would contaminate them,” he said, trying to look earnest. “And they might crumble if we move them. I must advise your government to leave the remains in situ until a full expedition can be mounted.”

Fitrat looked dubious. “That would delay the hydroelectric project. I doubt if Mr. Delyanov would approve.”

“
That’s for you people to resolve. I strongly advise against disturbing the remains at this time. Perhaps you could wait until the dam is completed.”

“
I will consider what you have said.” Fitrat’s sour face twisted. “But I am not a neo . . . neo . . .”

“
Neophyte,” Calder said, anxious to complete the conversation before the antiquities director turned obstinate.

“
I have observed a ‘dig,’ as you call it. I do not believe that measurements of the bones should take days.”

“
Plus recording and measuring any artifacts,” he said. “And we also need time to melt the ice over the paintings.”

“
Paintings?”

Calder turned to Blaine, since she was supposed to be the art expert.

“
The geologist’s diver was correct,” she said. “There are colored drawings on the walls. It will take days to defrost the ice without destroying them, and I’ll need to makes sketches in order to decipher the meanings.”

“
What ‘meanings’?”

“
I won’t know until I study them.”

Calder leaned forward. “You people confiscated our cameras, so Dr. Blaine will have to work on-site.” That wasn’t accurate, since they would have to work in place anyway to thaw the paintings, but he thought it sounded good.

Fitrat stood thinking, and he hoped she would not belabor the point.

Finally she said, “You will report to me after each dive.” She turned and walked toward Zinchenko’s trailer, leaving Teague behind.

He swung to face them, his unreadable eyes pinning Blaine and then Calder.

“
What did you find?”

“
Bodies,” Calder said.

“
Prehistoric?”

“
Yes.”

“
Was one a Neanderthal and one a Cro . . . Cro . . .”

“
Magnon.”

So, he does know,
Calder thought.

He hesitated. Teague obviously was not knowledgeable in paleoanthropology. That might make it easier to manipulate him. On the other hand, he would be reporting to Salomon, who would not believe that Calder would be unable to identify a Neanderthal. And lying to him would fly in the face of the diver’s report.

“
Well?” Teague said.

Calder nodded. “The adult male looked Neanderthal.”

“
With recoverable DNA?”

He knows more than we thought.
Calder looked at Blaine.

“
I didn’t have time to assess the condition of the remains,” she said.

“
Mr. Salomon wants DNA,” Teague said.

She turned up her hands. “I barely had time to glance at the body.”

“
How long will it take to get usable samples?”

“
Usable for what?”

“
Don’t try to snow me, Dr. Blaine.” The facilitator’s hoarse voice held a note of menace, Calder thought. “Maybe I don’t know exactly what DNA is, but I know Mr. Salomon told me to get him some from the Neanderthal.”

Blaine said, “I’ll need to take samples, study the condition of the cells, and test the DNA with my portable bio lab.”

“
How long will that take?”

“
I’ll need to do a series of tests before I can give a reliable answer. Meanwhile, Dr. Calder and I will be making two dives per day.”

“
Why not one all-day dive?”

He doesn’t know diving.
That was to their benefit, Calder thought.

Blaine said, “We’ll be breathing compressed air. With no way of decompressing, two short dives per day are all we can manage without getting the bends.”

“
Don’t try to gull me, Dr. Blaine. I got a job and I’ll do it. ” Teague stared at her in his blank way. “Even if I have to do you two.”

She raised her chin. “I have a job, too. And I need you to give me enough space.”

Teague looked at Calder. “And that goes for you too, Dr. Bones. I don’t like how glib you are.”

“
I’m a college professor,” Calder said. “I talk fancy for a living.”

“
Don’t mess with me,
Professor.
” Teague turned and marched toward Zinchenko’s trailer.

Calder looked at Blaine. “Fun guy.”

“
Don’t underestimate him. He may be untutored, but he didn’t get where he is by being stupid.”

“
I wonder if this whole project is safe enough to continue,” Calder said. “A hidden objective. Risky conditions. Dangerous people.”

“
I don’t like it either, Ian. But after what we just found, I’m not quitting.”

She looked up at him and he felt something pass between them.

“
How about you?” she said. “Are you a quitter?”

He sighed. “I guess not.” Uncomfortable with the subject of their security, he indicated the trailer that held their laptops and scientific equipment. “I don’t think we should discuss the find in there.”

“
Why not?”

“
After Salomon being less than straight with us, I’m afraid he might have ordered Teague to bug the place. The guy looks as if he might be skilled at that kind of stuff.”

She nodded and walked toward the work trailer. Calder followed, thinking that they’d gotten off to a rocky start because of their professional rivalry. This was the first time she’d called him Ian, even though they’d agreed to the informality yesterday. He hoped their relationship was beginning to mellow. It would make the rest of their mission more pleasant, he told himself.

But was that the only reason? Was he allowing personal considerations to sway his judgment? Considering Salomon’s lying-by-omission and the obviously unstable condition of the tunnel, he wondered if he was making the right decision—both for himself and for Caitlin—in agreeing to continue.

He hurried to catch her before she entered the trailer. “I want to show you something,” he said. “But I should probably wait till we get to Ayni’s cabin tonight.”

#

That afternoon, as Blaine emerged from the flooded tunnel into the trapped air of the cave, she spotted a rectangle of dazzling color on the left-hand wall. She couldn’t discern details, because Calder was in the way. Scrambling out of the water, she scuffed out of her fins and re-harnessed her air tank.

Calder gestured at the heater on its wire stand, and spoke around his mouthpiece. “Remember not to breathe any cave air.”

Blaine pulled a face, although she realized he couldn’t see her features behind her mask. “I’m not a five-year-old.”

She scrambled forward as Calder widened the focus on his flashlight and placed it facing the wall. Four black-bordered paintings were arranged in a quad, each picture about two feet square. Glancing sideways, she saw her dive partner gazing intently. She guessed the impact of the human bodies, prehistoric artifacts, and now cave paintings, had overridden whatever claustrophobia he might have experienced. Since there was nothing she could do about it anyway, she resolved not to worry.