CRO-MAGNON (9 page)

He stepped to the trailer door and gazed past Fitrat and Teague at the bleak mountain lake, wondering if he should scrap the mission now before somebody got killed. Sensing motion, he turned and saw an erect man approaching from the west, his gait economical but efficient. Clean-shaven except for a black mustache, and fair-skinned, he looked in his late thirties.

He came on toward the group, his manner almost military, and Calder saw that he was taller than most Tajiks he had seen in the city and was strikingly handsome. When the newcomer started to slip between Teague and Fitrat to mount the steps, Calder saw the “facilitator” shift his shoulders to block him. The newcomer squeezed through anyway, ignoring Teague’s frown.

He slipped off his mittens and extended his hand. “
Assalomu aleikum.
I am Murzo Ayni.”

Calder noticed that his speech was accented differently than the others. He felt steely fingers.

“
Ian Calder. We’re here to—”

“
Ha,
I know.” Ayni gave Calder’s hand a Continental pump-and-release. “I am a forest ranger and game warden for the Zorkul Zapodevnik.”

“
Zapo . . .”

“
Federal nature reserve, not-long-ago established. Should you need a guide, I will be happy to assist.”

Calder glanced at the frigid-looking lake, the snowy hillside, the barren peaks thrusting beyond the rock berm.
Guide to where?
He stepped aside as Blaine approached.

Ayni inclined his head rather than offering to shake hands. “Murzo Ayni.”

“
Caitlin Blaine,” she said, matching his rather formal nod.

“
Salom.
You would be the specialist in the art of the ancient ones.”

“
That’s right,” Blaine lied for the second time. Calder was gratified to watch her fall smoothly into the role.

“
I am at your service,” Ayni said.

What kind of service? Calder wondered. Rangers probably worked for the ministry of nature conservation, so Ayni must report at least indirectly to Evgenii Delyanov. He wondered whether the man was there to help them or to monitor their activities.
Government agents, including our forest rangers, keep watch on the militants
, Delyanov had said.

Zinchenko stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Through the window Calder could see him and Fitrat walking along a snowy trail toward the larger trailer, their shoulders nearly touching, Teague following with a choppy stride.

Calder eyed the newcomer, noting that his aquiline features looked Iranian rather than Central Asian. He knew that the people in this area spoke an antiquated version of Farsi called Wakhi, which might account for the man’s distinctive accent.

A local, then, unlike Zinchenko or Fitrat.

Three Tajiks, he thought—a bureaucrat, a professional outfitter, and a law officer, each with a different responsibility. And a mission for himself and Blaine, partially concealed from the Tajiks, that embodied a veiled objective and unacknowledged dangers. Not a promising picture. He wondered again if he should scrap the endeavor as being too risky.

But the remains in the cave had to be considered. Suppose Salomon was correct, and they actually were prehistoric? And suppose one was Neanderthal, be it ever so unlikely; another, anatomically modern human; and the third, hybrid. Could he, as a paleoanthropologist, pass that up? And could Blaine, as a geneticist, be expected to ignore a find that bore on her theory, of human origins? He watched as Ayni glanced around the spartan interior of the trailer before turning to him and Blaine.

“
The geologist, and later her diver, preferred to sleep here. However, I have a—I believe you would say ‘hut’—two kilometers northwest of the lake in a protected valley. It is warmer than this place, although you would still sleep on the floor.”

Calder recalled the log cabin the helicopter had flown over on its approach to the lake. “You’re offering to put us up?” he said.

The Tajik looked puzzled. “Put you up?”

“
Allow us to sleep in your hut,” Blaine said.

Ayni smiled.
“Ha.”

“
Thank you.” Calder lifted his chin at Blaine and received a nod. “We accept.”

He glanced again at the bleak lake and frozen mountains. Anything, he thought, to get away from a place that would probably turn into a windswept wasteland as soon as the sun went down. Of course, such conditions awaited them in the morning anyway, plus a lengthy dunking in freezing water. A shiver ran up his spine, turning into a small burst of warmth as he remembered that tomorrow he and Blaine might begin an unprecedented journey into mankind’s remote past.

#

Darkness was falling as Murzo Ayni led the two scientists around the west end of the mountain lake. A trail of packed snow led between bare granite walls up the narrow canyon the helicopter had traversed. Blaine, wearing her backpack-style smaller suitcase with rolled sleeping mat and bag while Ayni carried the regular suitcase, trudged single file behind the ranger and ahead of Calder. Together with Fitrat and Teague, the three had eaten a freeze-dried but satisfying supper in Zinchenko’s cramped trailer. Although Blaine knew that the shared meal was intended to cement the participants’ diverse relationships, for her it had served to emphasize their differences. It reminded her of da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, which showed daylight outside the window and numerous other inconsistencies. Something was out of kilter; she just hoped it wouldn’t throw the expedition off course, because there was no way she was going to miss out on this opportunity to study diverse prehistoric genes.

On the plus side, she was glad that Ayni had offered to accommodate her and Calder, although she wondered how long she would have to hump her luggage over precipitous terrain at better than twelve thousand feet. The path was so narrow that she had to place one insulated boot ahead of the other.

Gathering a lungful of oxygen-poor air, she turned and spoke to Calder: “I gather there are only two bedrooms in Zinchenko’s trailer.”

“
So?” She could tell by the explosive grunt that, Olympic athlete or not, he was also short of breath.

“
Teague has appropriated one of them. He must have displaced Fitrat.”

“
Your point being?”

“
She’ll have to bunk in with Zinchenko unless she sleeps on that sprung couch, which looks too short even for her, or on the floor. Maybe we should have offered the work trailer.”

“
As director of antiquities, she must do field work. And Zinchenko is a professional camp master. They probably know each other.”

“
That well?” She glanced back in time to see Calder shrug.

“
She didn’t seem shy. If she’s dissatisfied, I’m sure she’ll say so. And if she wants the work trailer, she’ll probably just take it.”

That sounded right, Blaine thought. Anyway, it was none of their business.

She was glad to see the grade slacken as they moved into a small side canyon, its steep sides dotted with small cedars. She began to breathe more easily.

Laszlo Salomon’s failure to issue a warning about the unstable underwater tunnel disturbed her more than she had let on. The industrialist’s determination and ruthlessness were legendary throughout his companies. She wondered just how much her own and Calder’s lives counted, against the discovery of the cave and its contents. And also against Salomon’s ultimate purpose, whatever that might be. She’d heard rumors of people who had crossed the man and lost more than their jobs.

And what about the Tajiks? Walking behind the tall figure of Ayni, she wondered again about the ranger’s connection, if any, to her and Calder’s mission.

“
Mr. Ayni?”

“
Address me as Murzo, please.” He spoke in the easy manner of one accustomed to thin air and steep terrain.

“
If you’ll call me Caitlin. And Dr. Calder, Ian.” She glanced behind her. “Right?”

“
Absolutely,” Calder said. “And that should go for you and me, too.”

Blaine had the impression that the conditions didn’t bother him quite as much as they did her. She noted he had used the situation to put them on a first-name basis in a way that she couldn’t refuse. Not that she would have, anyway. She had sensed in the airliner that he was attracted to her but that he also felt conflicted over their professional differences.

She shrugged. She intended to continue avoiding personal relationships and stick to science, which bitter experience had shown was safer.

Hunching the pack higher, she took a few deep breaths so as not to appear winded in front of the two outdoor types. “Just what is your job Murzo?”

“
I patrol the Zapodevnik.”

“
What does that entail?”

“
Mainly, I guard against poaching of trees and protected game, and in summer rare butterflies in the Panj valley.”

“
So you work for the ministry of nature conservation.” Meaning Evgenii Delyanov.

“
I used to. But the Zapodevnik is administered by the Tajikistan forest management association, which is funded by a”—he seemed to grope for a word—“group of NGOs, as they say in your language.”

“
NGOs?” Calder said.

“
Non-governmental organizations.”

“
So, this forest association is not part of the Tajik government?”

Ayni waggled his hand. “It is, and is not.”

So he doesn’t work for the nature ministry.
Blaine felt relieved.

She said, “And may I ask who funds the consortium of NGOs?”

Ayni hesitated again. “This is not generally known, but it is funded principally by the United Nations.”

Blaine felt confused. “The UN?”

“
Through their NGO fund, established in 1997 when civil government in Tajikistan began to break down under pressure from insurgents.”

“
Who actually provides the money,” Calder said. “And what is their specific interest?”

“
I do not know. I report monthly on activity within the Gorno-Badakhshan region or more often if there is reason.”

“
To whom?”

The ranger shrugged. “An NGO in Khorugh.”

Blaine decided she really didn’t need to know where the money came from. At least the forest ranger, if that’s what he really was, didn’t seem to be directly under Delyanov’s thumb.

To change the subject, she said, “You speak English well.”

“
We learned as children before the guerrillas forced the school to close. And I talk to climbers usually in English.”

“
Do you get much unrest here, Murzo?” Calder said.

“
Unrest?”

“
Guerrilla warfare.”

“
Not at present. However, the fighting could resume.”

“
Do rangers just enforce game laws, or do you deal with other lawbreakers as well?”

Blaine felt that her temporary colleague was being too forward, but she herself also wanted a better sense of how Ayni related to their mission. She believed she had a preliminary handle on the motivations of Fitrat and Zinchenko. She had tagged the director of antiquities as a bureaucrat who wanted to protect her turf, and the camp master as a commercial civilian temporarily assigned to the geologic survey but otherwise uninvolved. But Ayni seemed to have no explicit connection to the archaeological mission.

“
My duties include everything that affects this area,” Ayni said. “What you would probably call the south . . . south and west . . .”

“
Southwestern Pamir?”

“
Ha.
But I call it home.”

The grade steepened again, stunted cedars giving way to birch and creeping juniper. The tall Tajik did not slacken pace, and Blaine struggled to keep up. Behind, she heard Calder breathing hard.

She gave up trying not to sound breathless. “Do you get . . . to see your family . . . often?”

“
I have no wife or children.”

Something in his tone warned her not to continue. She cast around for some way to end her inquiry on an innocuous note. They rounded a shoulder of rock, and she felt doubly relieved to see their destination.

Ayni had described his dwelling accurately during his invitation. The place was indeed a hut, though “log cabin” might also apply. Not much more than four yards square, with tiny windows and a pitched roof, it had a do-it-yourself look.

Ayni halted in front of the irregular boards of the door. “As I believe you Westerners say, ‘Be it ever so meek.
’
”

For some reason, his misworded attempt at a quip eased Blaine’s reservations.

“
Humble,” she heard Calder say. “Be it ever so humble.”

“
Don’t be schoolteacherish.” She glanced back. “You were that way with Mathiessen, too.”

Calder’s smile looked rueful, as if he was aware of his shortcoming. “It’s not enough that you have to live out here, Murzo,” he said. “They also make you build your own quarters?”

“
I prefer my own place,” the ranger said rather shortly, and again Blaine felt they were treading on forbidden ground.