CRO-MAGNON (10 page)

Ayni pushed open the door and Blaine and Calder followed him inside, where he lit a kerosene lamp. The interior consisted of a cast iron stove, a crude bunk against one wall, two mismatched chairs, and a thrift-shop table. A homemade wood chessboard and hand-carved pieces covered the rough surface, and she saw that the ranger been working a tactical problem.

“
Dr. Blaine may take the bed,” he said. “I will use her mat.”

“
Nothing doing,” Blaine said. Gratefully, she shrugged out of her pack and stood it in a corner. “We outlawed male chauvinism decades ago.”

Ayni looked puzzled. “Show-vin . . .”

“
Treating women as less capable.”

“
Ah. I did not mean to insult. I am afraid that we Tajiks have not progressed so far.” He swept his hand at the plank floor. “As you wish.”

“
Will you be here for the next few days?” Calder said.

“
On and off, as you say. Tomorrow, I make a loop to the northwest. Depending on the condition of the trail, I may or may not return by nightfall.”

Calder said, “Is that your only weapon?”

Blaine, tracking his glance, saw a small rifle propped in a corner. It had a slim octagonal barrel and a flimsy-looking lever for a trigger guard.

“
Ha,”
Ayni said.

Calder squinted. “Stevens twenty-two isn’t it? The old falling-block model?”

The ranger nodded. “It belonged to my father.”

“
I had one of those as a kid. We sometimes use the new Savage version to practice the biathlon.”

“
Biathlon?”

“
Skiing and shooting.”

Ayni looked puzzled. “What is the purpose?”

“
It’s a sport.”

“
Ah.” The ranger looked as if he still did not understand.

Blaine reflected that the locals were probably stretched flat just trying to survive, with no energy left for sport. Calder reached for the varmint rifle, glancing at Ayni. At the ranger’s nod, he hefted it. In the soft glow of the lamp, the rifle’s action gleamed with oil. Blaine could see nicks in the angular barrel where streaks of corrosion had been ground away.

Calder set the weapon down. “Kind of small-caliber for around here, isn’t it?”

Ayni shrugged. “My rounds include steep trails, high passes, fields of ice. Sometimes I get stranded, have to make my way through drifts, dig a cave in the snow. A heavy firearm would be a—what you say . . .”

“
Handicap. What about wild animals?”

“
We have roe deer, martens, lynxes, porcupines. Wild boar, but they are not . . . aggressive. Goats, sheep. In the evergreen forest you might meet a bear. But as a conservation officer I can tell you that if you leave them alone, they will do the same.”

“
So, why do you need a gun?”

“
Besides the snow leopard, which is now rare, there is one dangerous animal.”

“
Man,” Calder said.

“
Ha.”

Blaine, feeling left out said, “But a twenty-two?”

“
I am a—what you say—marksman,” he said, and she understood that he was not boasting.

Calder gestured at the table. “I see you play chess.”

“
Ha.”

“
I play one evening a week.” Blaine saw him shoot a glance at the conservation officer. “Been playing long?”

“
My ancestors, the Persians, knew the game fifteen hundred years ago. I myself have only been playing thirty years.”

“
Oh-ho.” Calder stepped toward the table. “Then you must be good.”

Ayni smiled. “We Tajik players have the highest average FIDE rating in the world, twenty-two ninety-four the last I knew.” He glanced at Blaine. “Do you play also?”

Huh, Blaine thought. He wasn’t a chauvinist, as most Tajik men were said to be.

“
Something tells me I’m not in you guys’ league,” she said. She rummaged in her pack and withdrew a sheaf of pages photocopied from the NOAA Diving Manual. “Besides, I need to work out a dive schedule.”

“
I was going to do that,” Calder said.

“
Guess again.” She took out a hand calculator. “If I’m going to swim under an unstable mountain, I’m at least going to make sure I don’t get the bends.”

“
You can play the winner if you wish,” Ayni said. “For now, perhaps you could sit on the bed to do your work.”

“
We call that a bunk,” Calder said.

“
Ah.” The handsome Tajik’s mustache twitched. “And we call chess
shatranj.
”

#

Calder hunkered in brilliant sunshine on the thwart of Zinchenko’s aluminum johnboat as the camp master steered the skiff across the still waters of Lake Achik. Despite the frigid air flowing down the snow-covered mountain and over the lake, he felt overheated inside his used neoprene-and-nylon dry suit, the stained wool underwear that had come with it, and his own thermal underwear. He glanced at the two scuba tanks propped in the bow, each topped by a regulator with air hoses leading to a mouthpiece, a pressure gauge, a buoyancy compensator, and an emergency air source.

He turned to Blaine but didn’t look directly at her. His brain still retained an image of her stripping to bra and panties before donning her diving outfit. Her body was at once slim and voluptuous, a combination that seemed echoed by her mind. He suspected she was a bit out of his league, professionally. And, no doubt, personally. He had never been successful with women, perhaps because he was a bit too stiff, and he sensed that that was true here. Not that there was any point to such notions, he thought ruefully. Anyway, the serious part of the expedition was under way, and if they were to have any chance of succeeding he needed to get back on track.

“
I was glad to see that Salomon provided us with the latest gear,” he said ruefully.

“
Zinchenko said the diver left your stuff. I think he got mine in some bazaar or something.”

“
I checked the regulators while you were vetting the dive schedule,” he said. “They look okay.”

Blaine bent from the waist to strap on her rubber-handled dive knife, blond hair draping her neck and shoulder. “Considering Salomon’s failure to warn us about the tunnel partially collapsing, which he must have known from the diver’s report, I don’t think our safety is his number one concern.”

She probably made several times the money he did, Calder thought. Also, though Salomon and Mathiessen had cobbled them together for this project, they were still professional adversaries. She’d made it more than clear back in Burlington that she did not hold “stone-and-bone” people in high regard.

He shook his head. She was correct about the safety issue. No one knew better than he that this was a dangerous undertaking. He’d seen too many mishaps in underwater archaeology, and he needed to clear his mind of foolish thoughts.

He indicated the backup breathing device. “At least if a regulator seizes we can go to the octopus, though not for long.”

“
Right now I’m more worried about getting through the tunnel.”

Calder thought about the claustrophobia he’d experienced four years ago in the underwater passage leading to Cosquer Cave. He hadn’t told anyone, because it might have affected his career. He imagined himself getting stuck in one of the narrow places the diver had cited. Was it fair not to warn his dive partner?

“
I have a confession,” he said.

She looked up warily. “Did Mathiessen tell you something I don’t know?”

“
No, it’s me. I get nervous in confined spaces.”

She eyed him narrowly. “You’re claustrophobic?”

“
I wouldn’t actually use the
c
-word.”

“
And you dived on Cosquer?”

“
Go figure.”

She hesitated and then shrugged. “If you did it before, you can do it again.”

“
I intend to,” he said. “Just wanted you to know.”

“
Thanks a bunch. I feel better now.”

To change the subject, he said, “Regarding our time in the cave, you’re sure we can only spend twenty-five minutes on each dive, and no more than two dives per day?”

She nodded. “Separated by at least eight hours. At ninety-five feet, that’s the best we can do without decompressing. And for that, we’d have to send for extra tanks, or hookah gear and a more portable compressor. And I don’t like the idea.”

“
I agree. Depending on a compressor, out here miles past the beginning of no place, would be asking for trouble.”

“
And extra tanks, without a team to tend them, would be cumbersome, since we’d need a whole set.”

Calder glanced at the two single tanks. “Are you sure you don’t want double tanks for insurance? Only take a day to fly them.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want a double rig bumping against a narrow tunnel that could be unstable from the get-go. It would help if we could breathe the air inside the cave.”

“
Like Mathiessen said, there’s liable to be radon gas. Also, if we have to use a heater to melt the frost over the drawings, it’ll create a CO-2 buildup. And maybe a bit of monoxide.”

The boat slowed as Zinchenko angled toward a small red flag stuck into the ice that rimmed the lake. Calder and Blaine began to don compensator vests, fins, masks, snorkels, and weight belts. Calder clipped a waterproof flashlight with a wire stand to his belt and slung a mesh bag around his waist, containing his tool kit and a BlackCat catalytic heater. Blaine secured her own light and her “art kit,” which held tools for excising genetic samples from tissue and bone.

As they neared the shore, Zinchenko cut the throttle and tossed a three-bladed anchor overboard. They drifted to a halt.

Calder looked across ten yards of water at the icy shoreline.

“
This is it? No raft?”

“
Nyet
.” The thick-bodied Russian pointed to the steep mountainside. “Ground goes down same angle. Diver say tunnel has other flag.”

The moment was at hand. Calder wondered what they would actually find in the cave. Recent bodies? Centuries-old remains? Ancient relics? He found it difficult to believe they would encounter a tableau from prehistoric times. If so, it would rank among the archaeological finds of the century. If not, he could go back to chasing tenure at the university. The thought brought a slight pang, which he tried in vain to pin down.

Frustration? Distaste? A yearning for something unspecified?

He felt he should make a statement to mark the moment. He searched his mind. The boat rocked, and he turned to see Blaine somersault backward off the outer gunnel. She hit the water and disappeared, the tips of her fins waving like lobster antennae before sliding beneath the surface.

#

So much for ceremony, Calder thought. He looked at the Russian sitting stolidly in the stern, his matted beard seeming to fit this wild land.

“
We’ll be back in three-quarters of an hour, allowing for a decompression stop,” he said.

“
Ya
wait.”

Calder checked his depth gauge, twisted the bevel on his diver’s watch to mark 25 minutes, and switched on his headlamp. He balanced on the gunnel, clamped his palm over his mask, and allowed his body to fall backward. Frigid lake water closed with a shock and his overheated feeling vanished. He peered down, the beam from his headlamp reflecting off myriad algae and protozoa, and discerned a dark blob descending into the murky depths. Straightening his legs, he located the anchor line and drove downward with his fins.

The plunging rocks of the mountainside appeared through the darkening water, the fault appearing as an irregular black line. Down and down he went, his ears adjusting to the pressure in stages, and spotted Blaine hanging beside a metal flag. He checked his watch and read the luminous figures on his depth gauge.

Ninety-five feet.

Beyond Blaine he could make out a black crevice in the irregular rock surface. He finned down to her, unclipped his hand-held flashlight, and switched it on. The earthquake fault, magnified by water, gaped about eight feet high and five wide.

He hovered outside the opening, searching his mind for signs of the near-panic that had engulfed him in the tunnel leading to Cosquer Cave. His pulse pounded but he felt no shortness of breath. He checked his watch and felt surprised that only a minute had passed. He could sense Blaine hovering impatiently, and reminded himself he’d insisted on going first into the tunnel, citing his greater experience. With a rattling breath of cold, dry air and a flick of his fins, he glided into the dark entrance.

The sides of the fault looked jagged, as if a lightning bolt from some mythic monster had blasted through. He finned forward and slightly upward, the flashlight beam reflecting off rough walls and dissipating in a haze of silt and plankton. He could hear the hollow rush of his regulator. By habit he kept his breathing slow, though he knew that Blaine’s schedule would have them back on the surface well before their air ran out.

That is, if nothing unforeseen happens.

Blaine’s light overtook him, the glow emphasizing the unevenness of the rock walls. The way continued slightly upward, the walls closing within inches of his body, then widening to as much as eight feet, only to nip in again. He scanned the sides for loose rock but saw none. The floor was relatively flat, the height of the tunnel varying from four to seven feet. In the light of his headlamp, he could see angular rocks and waterworn gravel cemented into a lumpy breccia. He tucked his chin and glanced back at Blaine’s dark shape silhouetted beyond the tips of his fins.