Artifact Read online

  “Maybe this’ll give us something to go on.” George jacked up the camera tripod, bringing it level with the inscription.

  “This is the only stone inscription in Linear A,” Claire mused, watching him snap close-ups.

  “Looks kinda like a cover for a sarcophagus.” George was sweating and dust settled on his face, unnoticed. His jeans and work shirt had long since been paled by the fine grime.

  “Ummm. But with an amber decoration? And the Mycenaeans used rock-cut graves, but not sarcophagi. Even if they did, and we’ve missed them all until now—why stick the cover behind a wall?”

  George grinned. “Hiding it?”

  “From whom? The dead king?”

  “True enough. Squirrel it away, then mark up the wall outside? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “We’ve got to make measurements, tests. Particularly of that shiny stuff in the chisel strokes.”

  “Nothing special about the rock itself. Plain old black limestone.”

  Claire started clearing the area, making room for equipment. “Perhaps. There’s a ruined country house near Vaphio, only a few halfwalls of limestone still standing. Shepherds kept their sheep in a passageway there for a few thousand years, and the wool rubbing the stones made the limestone shine like marble. There were local stories that said it was the last wall of a grand marble palace. The Harvard team that worked the site spent a year figuring that one out.”

  “You figure we should do a metal analysis?”

  “Damn right. I want to know what’s in those grooves.”

  “Colonel Doctor Kontos isn’t going to give you much time to dot i’s and cross t’s,” he chided. “He’ll have that in a crate and off to Athens inside a week, easy. With his name stamped all over it.”

  Claire frowned. “Do you hear something?”

  “Huh? No. Look, no doubt about it, Kontos will take over the dig himself. He’s bucking to be General Director of Antiquities and Restoration.”

  “Kontos was a good scientist,” she pondered. “Okay, he has a weakness for strutting around in that uniform, but—”

  “The man’s a maniac!”

  “He’s just a patriot. These last few months he’s gotten carried away. And I can see his arguments, too. He’s simply sticking up for his country.”

  George drawled sarcastically, “Tom Paine in a toga, huh?”

  “I’m sure when I tell him about this find he’ll give us added time to figure this out.”

  George raised his eyebrows. “Hey, sounds like that jeep again.”

  She whirled. “Oh no! He can’t be back today.”

  “Here’s your chance to try sweet reason on the Colonel.”

  George’s sarcasm would set Kontos off. She had to keep the two of them apart.

  “Stay here, keep working.”

  “I wouldn’t miss this for—”

  “No! In fact, close the wooden door. Diplomacy isn’t your strong suit. I don’t want him up here.”

  George chuckled. “Think you can handle him?”

  “Of course,” she said uncertainly.

  CHAPTER

  Four

  She found Kontos ordering workmen about. They were loading crates onto a gray Nissan truck.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  “I am taking our equipment. Also the remaining artifacts.”

  “What? We have weeks—”

  “No. I spoke to others, we are agreeing—you are not allowed the full time.” He turned to her and smiled without humor. Then he pointedly turned and marched toward the pottery tent.

  Claire hurried to catch up. “How long?”

  “I have got for you two weeks.”

  “Two—”

  “Maximum.”

  Kontos slapped the tent flap aside and strode through into the heavy warmth. He found pottery already boxed by Claire and marked it for the men, quick swipes with a flow pen. He moved down the aisles with deliberate speed, still smiling, obviously enjoying making her tag along like a supplicant. Claire gritted her teeth.

  “You can’t do that!”

  “My government does it, not me.”

  “You’ll damage relations between us, you’ll—”

  “There are in this world other scholars. Other sources for your precious money.”

  “It’s not that! We’ve found—”

  “Soon maybe we will have aid from other quarters, to help the Grecian people to save their own history.” He savored the words as he worked, archly brisk and efficient.

  “Alexandros, there must be a way to work this out.”

  He paused, his pen in the air. “Oh? So you think?”

  “We need time. We found something—”

  “Begging will not change matters.”

  “There are important aspects—”

  “We Greeks will do it.”

  “Call Hampton. He’ll—”

  “Of no use. This is between you and me.”

  “Us?”

  He stepped toward her, his smile a fraction warmer. “We had a misunderstanding, perhaps.”

  Puzzled, she began, “If you mean that, I would hope that a scholar of your standing—”

  He reached out and seized her upper arm, stepping closer. “Matters are not too late, however.”

  His other hand came up and fondled her breast. It was so unexpected she froze for an instant, not quite believing this could happen this way, so abruptly. She gasped with shock, smelling the raw, sour musk of him as he pressed close, enveloping her.

  “You—no!”

  She twisted against him. His large hands held her arms pinned and he spoke directly into her face. “We had a misunderstanding. It can be changed.”

  “No!”

  “You are not giving a chance.”

  “No, not like this.”

  She wrenched away, slamming painfully against a table. Potsherds shattered on the ground.

  “How then?” he asked blankly.

  “Never!”

  He curled his lips. “I tried with you a second time. I should not have bothered.”

  “Goddamn right.” She wiped her brow of sweat, panting, feeling dirty and flushed.

  “We are not children, you and I.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  His jaw muscles bunched. “Very well. I understand. Even if you do not.” He squared his shoulders and looked around, his uniform drawn tight across his chest. “This site, you will clear it as before. Within one week from today.”

  “One week?”

  “That is official.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Understand?”

  “You bet.”

  “I expect well organized sample boxes.”

  “Sure.”

  “You give a complete catalog, copies of notes.”

  “You bet.”

  “All delivered into my hands.”

  “I’ll do as well as I can do.”

  He smiled sternly. “That may not be enough.”

  “It damned well will be,” she said defiantly.

  “We shall see.”

  George gaped in disbelief. “You said what?”

  “Okay, maybe I got angry.”

  “Maybe? ‘Diplomacy’s not your strong suit,’ you said.”

  “He insulted me! His hand—!”

  “He felt the need to supplement his command of English?”

  She bristled. “You’re all alike.”

  “Only in the dark. But look—he’s really going to hold us to this one week deadline?”

  She nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Good grief.”

  “If I hadn’t gotten so mad…”

  “Hey, look, don’t you go thinking that way. That oily creep comes on to you, uses his position—you did the right thing.”

  She smiled. “I loved the look on his face. He’s not used to his pets biting his hand.”

  Claire had watched Kontos’s jeep roar away, angrily expelling a roiling cone of tan dust, and ha
d then trotted up the hill to the tomb.

  George paced near the entrance, head down. “We’re not gonna get much done. Not nearly enough.”

  “If this were an ordinary dig, next year we could…” She stopped and studied the dessicated, windy sky. A murmur of distant surf came on a passing breeze. She said with new certainty, “There’s not going to be a next year.”

  George looked doubtful. “Hey, this was just an incident. And he’s only one guy.”

  “We can’t count on that.”

  George scuffed at a stone, hooked his hands into the hip pockets of his jeans. “It’ll take a big bite out of the week just to break camp.”

  “You’ll have the men back. Kontos didn’t stop for anything on his way out, except to harangue the camp man about that.”

  “So? That artifact in there, it’s going to take months—”

  “Not for a prelim survey. You can work around behind it, see if there’s anything else. Sift the soil back there, look for trace elements.”

  “So what? If Kontos seals off this site, won’t let us come back, he’ll have the good stuff. Lab workups, time to sniff around for other artifacts—”

  “Except for one thing. He doesn’t know it’s here.”

  George stared at her. “Huh? You didn’t tell him?”

  “I never got the chance. He was masterfully working the conversation around to where he could make his play, Mr. Macho taking charge. I couldn’t get a word in.”

  “Aha.”

  “Part of my diplomacy. I thought I could wheedle him around to giving us more time, once he knew we had something important.”

  “Huh. It might’ve worked.”

  “Yes.” She sighed. “But I didn’t get to try it.”

  “The camp man knows something. He’ll tell the laborers. It’ll get back to Kontos.”

  “Yes, but he only knows that we found something, not what.”

  “Good point. I can take him aside, tell him to keep it away from the men, say the Colonel Doctor doesn’t want word of this leaking out.”

  “No, just the opposite. Tell the camp man the Colonel wants work to go fast here, because we’re shutting down.”

  “Right. Everybody’ll assume Kontos knows about it.”

  “That might buy a few days….” Claire stared moodily off at the sharp ridgeline. “I hate to hand the whole damn thing over to him next week, though.”

  “Yeah, he’ll get the easy, important stuff for free from his lab lackeys.”

  “With Americans on the Most Despised list, nobody’s going to speak up for us in Athens. The mood he’s in—”

  “Right. He’ll publish it himself.”

  “Unless we do something.” Claire suddenly turned and strode down the stone corridor that led to the tomb.

  “Like what?”

  “Get some special gear. Do some quick work. Maybe bring some pressure to bear through BU.”

  George called after her, “How?”

  “I’m going back to Boston. I’ll take photos, my field log—and be back in two days.”

  “And leave me with all this to handle?” he asked with a sinking voice.

  “Yes. Let the laborers break camp. You—just keep digging.”

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER

  One

  John Bishop felt unnatural carrying an umbrella. Bostonians had told him this was the first solid, respectable rain storm of what would be a long season, so he had bought a hefty defense that ejected itself from his palm with alarming energy. The bulk of it seemed unnecessary for the light gray drizzle that filmed the air, giving the brick apartments of Commonwealth Avenue a surrealistic glaze. He turned right at Mass Ave and wrinkled his nose at the heavy odor of fries, cheeseburgers and day-old grease that drifted across the cracked pavement. Students clustered inside the string of fast eateries.

  He swerved his attention to the college women along Beacon Street bound for BU. They lugged heavy briefcases, as did he. It was a habit he had begun as an undergraduate at Rice University, unconsciously equating the physical effort with productive labor. A long-legged woman, her jeans tucked into high black boots, caught his attention.

  He had always liked tall women, their inherent regal sway. He was a shade shy of six feet, but had dated women fully four inches closer to heaven than himself. A friend had once prodded him with the accusation that this was not in fact a natural preference, but a strategy, based on the widely assumed Truth that tall women have few suitors, and thus are easier to handle. It was almost plausible, John realized, since he was rather ordinary-looking, with unremarkable brown hair and blue-gray eyes. Presumably his athletic ability, which had peaked in high school and steadily decayed, would have counted for something if he had devoted himself to more social games, instead of lone jogging and the occasional weekend neighborhood football scrimmage. But no, the friend’s indictment was off target; he simply liked them tall, as long as they didn’t slump down in a forlorn effort to appear shorter. It seemed obvious to him that no woman looked good trying to be something she wasn’t.

  The commuter rush on Storrow Drive rose in full cry, blatting its impatience to begin the day as he crossed over it on the Harvard Bridge—so named, he thought wryly, because it speared directly into the middle of MIT. The bridge was a low ugly thing, spanning the Charles with Spartan economy. A rowing team bowed and surged under it, carving a precise wake in the filmed water: John recalled reading in an introductory pamphlet that “persons falling accidentally into the Charles are well advised to update their tetanus shots.” The rowers’ wake dissolved in a sudden, gusty downpour. They gave up and veered for the MIT boathouse. John hunched, pulling the umbrella closer, and reflected that it had probably been a bad idea to sell his car when he left Berkeley. Passing cars sprayed him liberally for his disloyalty to their kind, as he jogged the rest of the way.

  The concrete-gray phalanx of MIT was stark, un-ivied and imposing. On the older buildings, black-trimmed windows drew the eye upward. The main building rewarded this vertical urge with a crowning, austere dome copied from an ancient Roman mode. Each slab cornice laconically proclaimed self-evident principles, unconsciously assuming that science was not a mere set of rules but the artful work of living men. The names Aristotle, Newton, Darwin were chiseled in large block letters and in lesser size, the Maxwells and Boyles and Lobachevskis who birthed the equations, found the elements or unraveled the riddles. A haughty advertisement; we produce the men, they produce the laws. (Though in fact no ’Tech graduate appeared in the list.) Nearby, stones mounted above great, fluted columns crowned the MASSACHVSETTS INSTITVTE OF TECHNOLOGY, giving the impression of a secular temple of high tech. In World War II anti-aircraft batteries, though in short supply at the war fronts, had been spared to ring the campus.

  Shaking his umbrella, he clumped into the heavy warmth of the Pratt Building. He particularly liked the insouciance of the students here. Near his office there was a religious flyer pinned to a bulletin board, the leading title solemnly proclaiming, THERE ARE THINGS MAN WAS NOT MEANT TO KNOW. Across the columns of type below was scrawled, Yeah? Name one! John liked that: put up or shut up. It was refreshing, after the politely attentive, boring students he had taught while earning his doctorate at Rice University.

  He left his raincoat to drip on an ancient wooden coatrack and opened his window slightly. He liked to work with the gusty spattering of rain for background, a random chorus testifying that ample, tumultuous life went on even as he burrowed into his equations.

  He looked up from some calculations when the quick rapping came at his door. “It’s open!” The woman strode in three steps, looked around, frowned at him.

  “Doctor Sprangle said I should see someone in the Metallurgy group. I’m Claire Anderson.”

  She stuck out a hand and John Bishop came around his desk to shake it. He accomplished this maneuver, nearly toppling an already full wastebasket, without taking his eyes from her face. Her appearance had struck him like a physical blow. Sh
e was not a beautiful woman, but the angular set of her face captivated him. Her chin’s severe sharpness was blunted at the last moment by a mitigating roundness, somewhat red from the chill, and the V of it drew his attention up, across the planes of her cheeks to their meeting with delicate high ridges, ramparts that defended the glittering blue eyes. And, yes, she was tall.

  She took in his office in a sweeping glance, lingering only over his cluttered desk; her ample lips crooked into a faintly derisive curve. “I’m from Archeology, over at BU.” Her handshake was firm and businesslike. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “No,” he lied.

  She turned, her red skirt swirling, and sat on the ample oak window ledge. “I’m trying to get some help, expert help. Watkins is the man in your group who usually handles the metallurgy problems that are out of the ordinary, I’m told.”

  “Yes?” John had found years before that a simple agreement carrying a questioning lilt invariably extracted more information, without admitting anything.

  “Well, I’ve got one. I need somebody to bring that equipment of Watkins’ to Greece, help me use it, and take responsibility for getting it back to him when I’m done.”

  “Watkins is in—”

  “China, I know. On sabbatical.” She puffed energetically on her cigarette, generating half an inch of ash, and tapped a foot rapidly on the worn maple flooring. He wrinkled his nose at the smoke.

  “Ah…I may not be the best person to—”

  “Look, it’s a simple job. I just want somebody who understands metallurgy. You don’t have to know the archeological end, I can handle that.”

  “Still, I—”

  “MIT requires that a staff member go along with the gear, I know that, too. So I’m willing to pay all your expenses. Our National Endowment grant will cover it. Look, it’s a free trip to Greece! But you’ve got to go now.” She underlined this with another deep drag on her cigarette. She expelled a huge blue cloud and tapped the ash out his half-opened window.

  “Well, well.” John was filled with conflicting impulses, and covered this by offering her an ash tray.

  “No thanks,” she said, and smiled wryly. “This one isn’t filled yet.”