CRO-MAGNON (8 page)

Outside, the air felt thinner and drier than it had in Dushanbe. As soon as their bags and the hard-used duffel containing the dry suits were unloaded, Teague whisked them into a dilapidated minibus and they rumbled past a row of tall poplars and around the edge of the field.

Calder glanced at Blaine. She looked pale. She could use a break, he thought, before boarding the helicopter for the final flight to the mountain lake.

He leaned forward. “This place is sort of at the end of the world.”

Teague didn’t bother to turn. “So?”

His husky voice had an unpleasant burr, Calder thought, as if peanut butter had stuck to the roof of his mouth. He wondered exactly what the man’s duties might be, regarding him and Blaine.

“
I’d like to look around,” he said. He glanced at Blaine, remembering her earlier request to sightsee. “Maybe we could stay overnight, fly to the lake tomorrow.”

Teague still didn’t turn. “Mr. Salomon is not paying us to waste time.”

Calder glanced past Blaine at Fitrat, who was hunched over one of her cigarillos, the heavy smoke snaking back along the ceiling. He looked back at Teague.

“
I hear they opened a branch of the University of Central Asia here, brought in scientists to study mountain ecologies.”

“
So?”

“
We might find some useful info.”

“
Negative.”

Negative,
again. Calder wondered if the man was ex-military. He certainly didn’t act like a corporation rep. The bus rattled past a prefab shack and stopped near a beat-up looking helicopter of indeterminate make.

Blaine groaned. “Look where somebody painted over a red star,” she said. “Don’t they have anything new in this country?”

Fitrat stood and moved forward, Teague behind her. Calder thought the woman looked disgruntled. He hoped she wouldn’t hinder the mission. He turned to Blaine.

“
Modern equipment is probably the least of their worries.” He followed her forward. “After years of civil war, I bet they can barely feed themselves.”

The aging pilot looked as if he had come with the helicopter. He squinted at them and touched his greasy visor.

“
Achik,
da
?”

Teague nodded. The pilot swung the luggage aboard and chivvied the four passengers up the worn metal steps. Calder saw that the helicopter was primarily a cargo carrier, two pairs of hard plastic seats having been bolted to the perforated floor among rusting pallets.

“
With all Salomon’s money, you couldn’t afford decent transport?” he said to Teague.

The facilitator scowled. “Short notice.”

Calder glanced at Fitrat. She looked glum but not worried. Having had enough of the woman’s ropy cigarillos, he hoped smoking was prohibited.

Despite the helicopter’s shabby appearance, it lifted smoothly. The pilot flew along the Pamir highway beside the Gunt, then veered south into an intersecting valley and followed a narrow gravel road. On either side, snow-covered mountains soared toward a thin blue sky.

After a few minutes, they passed over a village of stone buildings piled atop each other and huddled against a mountainside. Small earthen pens held goats, and rock walls separated what Calder supposed were subsistence gardens during the summer. He made out a small orchard of what might be mulberry trees.

He consulted his map. “Rosht-Kala,” he said to Blaine. “The only
qishlaq
we’ll see.”

She nodded. “This corner of the Pamir is supposed to be nearly uninhabited.”

If she still felt nervous, he thought, she covered it. Below, lay steep slopes sparsely covered by stunted oaks and dotted with desolate clearings. They flew above a dirt track until it petered into a high meadow against a band of cedars, the spreading branches dark green against the dazzling snow.

Higher, the trees segued into scraggly stands of birch and then what Calder guessed was creeping juniper. They flew between snow-covered slopes and finally skimmed a glacier resembling a swollen worm of blue ice. The engine strained to cross a high pass, and he could see ranks of snowy ridges and rocky peaks stretching to the horizon with no sign of civilization.

The helicopter descended into a canyon to the south, no wider than a stone’s throw, and flew through a buffeting wind above a twisting glacier, then followed a rushing stream, the whup-whup of the blades beating against the steep walls. They flew over a log hut. The canyon angled left and widened, and Calder could see a gunmetal lake, about two miles long east to west and a half-mile wide. On three sides, snowy mountainsides rose toward barren peaks. On the east, a natural berm overhung another canyon, the ice-impacted rocks and dirt standing about twenty feet above the water.

“
This place is out of sight,” Blaine said. “Be a good setting for one of those middle-of-nowhere SUV commercials.”

They flew closer to the lake. Across the water, Calder could see a patch of level ground near a canyon. Two small structures hugged the narrow shoreline, the bleak monotony broken only by scattered pingos that had punched through the snow and by a tiny metal dock fronting the camp.

“
I can see why the government commissioned a hydroelectric survey,” Blaine said. “A constant supply of meltwater to feed the stream, if the dam is stable.”

Calder reckoned that the two structures had been flown in. One looked to be a small mobile home, the other a construction trailer.

The pilot gestured at the frigid-looking lake. “Achik.”

“‘
Ahchoo’ would be more like it,” Blaine said, causing Calder to shiver.

The pilot circled over the lake and approached the canyon from the west. As he flared for a landing, wind buffeted the small craft, and Calder saw that Blaine’s knuckles were white again. He peered at the ruffled gunmetal water, then at the looming glacier flowing between precipitous mountains.

If the dam is stable
. How about the whole damn setup, including the underwater tunnel? And what about Blaine, herself? Could he depend on her in a crisis?

Or, perhaps more to the point, could she depend on him?

Chapter 4

“
Put scubba equipment in trailer on left,” Fedor Zinchenko said.” He turned and stomped toward construction trailer.

In his full beard, fur greatcoat, and felt boots, Blaine thought he looked like a leftover from the Bolshevik revolution. He spoke with a Russian accent heavier than Delyanov’s, and she noticed that he pronounced scuba with a short
u.
Perhaps not a good sign. Mathiessen had assured her and Calder that a dive master would be on site to assist them. If Zinchenko was familiar with scuba diving, she thought, he should at least know how to pronounce the international word.

Beside her, his breath steaming in the glacial air, Calder said, “How much scuba experience do you have, Mr. Zinchenko?”

“
Run camps for mountain climbers, not scubba divers,” the big Russian said, ignoring Calder’s stress on
scuba.

Oh, well, Blaine thought, one could hardly expect to find a qualified dive master in the midst of the Pamir. She and Calder would just have to make do.

Zinchenko stepped aside, and Blaine mounted the wood steps and opened the hollow trailer door. The space consisted of a single room with a dangerous-looking gasoline heater mounted on a wall and a toilet and makeshift shower behind a curtain across the rear. On either side sat a battered wood desk and folding chair. Beyond, a sheet of crumbling particle board lay across a pair of sawhorses. On the scuffed linoleum floor sat a gas generator and a portable air compressor, left by the contract diver. To one side were two scuffed backpacker’s pads, inflatable pillows, and polyester sleeping bags that looked matted.

Blaine set her expandable suitcase in the near corner, and Calder deposited his canvas carryall in the other. Blaine looked at Zinchenko, who had followed them into the trailer, then at Fitrat, who stood outside the door smoking.

“
How sweet,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”

“
Did not,” the camp master said. He set down the dry-suit duffel he had been carrying and waved a gloved hand at the sparse furnishings. “Left by geologist and diver.”

The hulking Russian gestured toward the other trailer, visible through a frost-rimed window, then at Fitrat and Teague walking toward it. “In my trailer, one room for those two, small one for Teague. Space only for
ya
in—how you say—live-room.”

That set the pecking order, Blaine thought. “Who fills the air tanks?”

Zinchenko pointed to himself.
“Ya.”

“
Do you immerse them in a tub of water?”

He looked puzzled. “Water?”

“
Never mind. In the future, please do. Or else, submerge the tanks in the lake while they are being filled. Can you do that?”

Zinchenko shrugged. “
Da.”
He shot the two scientists a glance from under his thick brows. “Is problem with diving.”

“
Besides filling a 3000-p.s.i. tank in the open air?” Calder said. “What is it?”

“
Geologist told diver to plant small charge at mouth of tunnel to check stab . . . stabil . . .”

“
The stability of the mountain,” Calder said. “At probably its weakest point.”

“
Da
.” The camp master wriggled his hands. “Make small quake.”

Uh-oh.
Blaine waited.

“
After, diver check tunnel.” The camp master knotted his sausage-like fingers and glanced at the two scientists. “Is . . . how you say . . .”

Blaine exchanged a look with Calder. “Blocked?”

Zinchenko shook his head. “
Nyet
. Is . . .”

“
Narrowed?” Calder said.

The big man nodded. Blaine and Calder exchanged a glance.

“
How badly?” she said.

He shrugged. “Diver say two places. Swim through first one. Second one worse, afraid try.”

Calder glanced at Blaine.

“
Probably the two slippages Mathiessen warned us about,” she said.

“
Salomon’s your boss. He must have briefed you.”

“
This is the first I’ve heard of it,” she said.

“
A blockage that a professional diver wouldn’t try.” Calder stared at Blaine. “Does Salomon make a habit of sandbagging his employees?”

Blaine bent to open her suitcase. “As we’ve already discussed, Mr. Salomon is results-oriented. He doesn’t let anything stand in his way.”

“
If the tunnel turns out to be blocked, he won’t have a choice.” Calder gazed through the front window at the snowy mountainside across the lake. “I wonder what else he hasn’t told us.”

Blaine rummaged in the luggage, pushed aside a leather case, plunged her hands into a pile of clothes, and looked up in aggravation.

“
What?” Calder said, as the door opened to a blast of cold air.

“
My camera. It’s not here.”

“
Was confiscated,” Gulnaz Fitrat said from the doorway. Teague stood behind her, both of them divested of suitcases.

Blaine looked at her dumbly. “Confiscated?”

“
Delyanov say no photographs.” She waved her cigarillo, a tendril of acrid smoke puckering Blaine’s nostrils. “Cameras will be returned when you leave.”

Calder said, “They took mine, too?”

“
Yes.”

Blaine checked the rest of her luggage and found it intact. Probably the Tajiks were afraid she and Calder would smuggle out photos and grab the limelight. It must be obvious that a find like this had the potential to catapult a minor bureaucrat to anthropological prominence. She felt glad she’d had her staff disguise the genetic sampling kit as art supplies. She wished she’d thought to do likewise with the camera.

She laid her hand on Calder’s arm, to remind him not to give away the scope of their mission. She noticed that for a desk jockey, he was sinewy. He nodded, but did not look pleased.

“
I’ll need my camera to record remains, artifacts, and cave conditions,” he said.

If Fitrat noticed the unspoken exchange of a moment ago, she made no mention. “Written report only,” she said.

She held out her hand. “And you will now give me your cell phones.”

#

Written report only.
Calder reckoned the Tajik government wanted him and Blaine to take a quick look and make a minimal report, so they could float a loan from the World Bank and carry on with the hydroelectric project and its accompanying
bhat.
And apparently, Salomon was also chasing some kind of profit. No one except himself and Blaine seemed interested in the purely scientific aspects of the discovery, and even the two of them seemed to view it from different professional perspectives.

All the world is queer save thee and me,
he thought
. And even thou art a little queer.
Could he trust her if the chips were down?