On the Fifth Day (37 page)

thing was odd. Maybe Matsuhashi really didn't know. 276

A. J. Hartley

And maybe he just wants to learn whatever you have found
out before he slits your throat.

"I already told my friend what I found out," he lied.

"No, you did not," said Matsuhashi. "I timed my entrance carefully."

"She knows enough to ask some very embarrassing ques

tions," said Thomas.

"About what?" He was getting irritable now, thinking Thomas was just playing games.

Thomas nodded toward the files on the desk.

"Results from the radiocarbon tests," he said.

"So?" said Matsuhashi. "We do such tests all the time."

"On European bones?" said Thomas. He was taking a chance now. His throat felt tight, his mouth dry.

"Those tests have not yet been performed," said Mat

suhashi. "The bones from the tomb are being prepared for test

ing. It takes time."

"I don't mean those tests, the ones he'll tell the press about. I mean the ones he has already done."

"What are you talking about?"

"See for yourself," said Thomas. "Performed, and the re

sults delivered ten days before the Kofun burial 'find.' "

Matsuhashi stared at him. He took the documents off the desk slowly, one eye on Thomas, and pored over them. His face clouded, then froze. When he looked up again his whole body seemed jittery, flickering with nervous energy. He looked frantic, panicked, and when he spoke, it was defiant.

"These could be any sets of results. If you are suggesting some kind of fraud . . ."

"They aren't just any results, though, are they?" said Thomas. "They concern two crates of old bones imported--

stolen in fact--from Italy, as was the silver cross. Watanabe brought the bones, but he didn't want to plant any that weren't old enough. The C-14 scan would reveal that too easily, and most of the bones in the Fontanelle were Renaissance and later. He had to sift through for the oldest fragments, ship 277

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

them here, and then run the tests so he knew which bones were old enough to plant in a Kofun grave. It would be a sen

sational find! European bones a thousand years earlier than any discovered before? It would make his career."

Matsuhashi wasn't saying anything, wasn't looking at him. He was staring at the sheets of paper, his eyes wild.

"Only the bones that are dated around a thousand years be

fore present would be old enough," said Thomas. "Those are the ones he planted in the Kofun tomb."

Matsuhashi didn't look up. He was checking and recheck

ing the numbers, flicking through the graphic readout, search

ing for a flaw.

"The other data," said Thomas, nodding at the pages with the formula and results in millimeters, "is a system for deter

mining the racial origin of bones based on measurement. Yes?"

The other man nodded so fractionally that Thomas almost missed it.

"So Watanabe chose the bones that were old enough to fit the Kofun period," said Thomas, "then had their craniofacial features measured to be sure that they would be proven cate

gorically European before he buried them."

"It is not possible," said Matsuhashi, still not looking up.

"He is a great man. And this could not be done."

"Let me speak to my friend," said Thomas. "I think my wife is in danger."

But the other man didn't seem to hear him, and his grip on the knife did not slacken.

The car sped up.

"You live out here?" said Kumi, peering out the window to a grove of bamboo thick and tall as telegraph poles.

"Yes," said Watanabe simply.

She didn't believe it. Things had been going so well till the phone call, but since then she had felt him slide into him

self. He didn't look at her, spoke only in monosyllables when 278

A. J. Hartley

she asked him something directly, and made no attempts at seduction.

Got to get out of the car . . .

CHAPTER 78

"If the site had been disturbed prior to the dig," said Mat

suhashi, ignoring the way Thomas's eyes moved between the knife and the phone, "the team would be able to tell. The earth would not be properly compacted. It would look like filler."

"Maybe they did and decided to say nothing," said Thomas.

"I'm going to speak to my friend on the cell phone now, okay?"

"NO," said Matsuhashi. "You don't know what you are talking about."

He began to shout in Japanese, raging, so that suddenly he was transformed and terrifying. His face locked into a wide

mouthed grimace. It took a second for Thomas to realize that he was crying.

"He is a great man," he whispered in English.

"Maybe so," said Thomas.

"Not maybe!" shouted Matsuhashi, and he looked young, his blustering anger quite empty.

"Okay," said Thomas, calming him. "But in this case, at least, he has not been honest."

He waited to see what defiance this would produce, but the young man looked merely surly and said nothing, though the tears ran down his cheeks. It was quite dark now and the Venet

ian blind glowed with a soft opalescence from the streetlamps outside. Thomas looked at the phone on the desk. He wondered where Jim was. Where Kumi was.

"Give me the knife," he said, "and let me talk to my friend."

279

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

Matsuhashi looked at the knife as if wondering how he came to be holding it. Carefully he set it on the desk.

"So," Thomas continued gently. "How did he get into the burial chamber without anyone realizing?"

There was a long silence, disturbed only by the student's trembling sobs.

"Maybe the
tanuki,
" said Matsuhashi at last, sinking heav

ily onto the desk. He wiped his eyes and took a long uneven breath, suddenly quite calm so that Thomas felt the worst was past. But it still might be too late.

"What?" he asked, and there was a note of desperation in his own voice now.

"The site was penetrated by
tanuki
--a kind of animal. They opened a passage into the burial site. Entrance through there would perhaps go unnoticed . . ."

"Please let me call my friend," he said. "I need to make sure my wife is okay."

Matsuhashi turned to him and looked closely into his face. For a moment nothing happened.

"I will call," he said.

The car climbed out of the basin where Kofu sat, leaving the lights of the town behind them. Kumi and Watanabe had fallen silent, neither one bothering to maintain the charade, just driving, lost in their own thoughts as the tiny, terraced rice fields fell away and the land became rugged. When they pulled over, it was on the edge of what might have been a farm, the walls tumbled down, the concrete drainage ditches overgrown and singing with crickets. The moon hung low and full over the black pines.

"Here," he said, getting out, taking the keys. She had no choice but to get out onto the deserted road. It could hardly be more dangerous than being inside the car . . . The ringing of Watanabe's phone was startling in the op

pressive silence, and he answered it with something like relief. 280

A. J. Hartley

"It's not her," said Matsuhashi. "I checked the picture. It looks a little like her, but it's not her."

"You are sure?" said Watanabe.

"Yes. Is she okay?"

"She . . . yes. You're sure?"

"She's a journalist with a Tokyo weekly looking for a scoop. She has probably called in once already."

"A journalist?"

"Yes," said Matsuhashi. "Don't do anything you wouldn't like to read about on Sunday."

Watanabe hung up and took a long look at the woman who was standing by his car gazing at the moon, pretending not to be terrified.

"Thank you," said Thomas.

Matsuhashi looked utterly blank, drained of all emotion.

"What will you do now?" asked Thomas.

Matsuhashi shrugged. "There is nothing to do," he said.

"In Japan we do not cross our teachers. We are . . ." he fought for the word, "apprentices. We don't 'bite the hand that feeds us.' "

He grinned sadly at the phrase.

"No," said Thomas. "I guess not. But there are things I still need to know. About my brother."

"I cannot help you."

"I know. I must speak to Watanabe-
sensei
myself."

It was the first time he had given the archaeologist his title, but he did it out of respect for his student, not for the man himself.

"He will tell you nothing," said Matsuhashi. "He is a good liar."

He grinned that sad, pained grin again.

"And you?" said Thomas. "You won't tell him that you know about the fraud? Even though it means that everything in the papers, everything in the academic journals, everything that will be taught in schools is wrong?"

281

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

Matsuhashi slumped further, his head down toward his belly, a picture of defeat and despair.

"I cannot stand against him," he whispered. "I have not the strength."

Whether he meant political or moral, Thomas couldn't say.

"Did you know my brother?" he asked.

"I did not travel to Italy," said Matsuhashi, frowning at the change in tack. "I saw him here but I did not know his busi

ness. He met with the
sensei
. . ." he caught himself, "with Watanabe-
san.
At first they seemed glad to see each other, but I think they argued, quietly."

"About what?"

"I don't know. They just changed. Became cold to each other."

"He was here two days?"

"Yes," said Matsuhashi, calmer now that the subject was less controversial. "He worked in the lab most of the time, had dinner with Watanabe-
san.
We were deciding which mounds to excavate and were using satellite images of locations all over Japan. He was very interested in the technology. Then they argued, and I took him to the station."

"Did he seem very angry or upset when he left?"

"No," said the student, frowning again as if this had seemed odd to him. "He seemed cheerful, even excited."

"Did you know a man called Satoh, or maybe Tanaka? A man who knew Ed in Italy?"

"No."

"He will do this again, you know," said Thomas, redirect

ing abruptly. "Watanabe, I mean. If you let him get away with it this time, he'll do it again. There are going to be a lot of questions about this find. Someone will poke holes in his ideas and he'll invent more evidence to cover his tracks. You could spend half your career manufacturing the same lie for him. Would you rather be a real archaeologist or a fake celebrity?"

The question hung in the air like smoke, and as the time passed and the student said nothing, Thomas thought it had 282

A. J. Hartley

dissipated. But then Matsuhashi began to move very gradu

ally, straightening up, his back losing its arch one vertebra at a time. His eyes were shiny with more than tears, and they had a brittle light to them that seemed both determined and a little mad.

CHAPTER 79

It was midnight. Kumi had called Jim to say that Watanabe had left her on the side of a mountain road ten miles from the city edge. She was unharmed, but furious as only humiliation could make her. At the moment, for reasons Jim couldn't quite grasp, she seemed to blame Thomas.

Jim took the rental car and went looking for her, apprehen

sively studying road signs whose characters he couldn't read. Coming around a tight bend, he saw her. He braked hard and the tires skidded fractionally as the car came to a halt, so that Kumi, barefoot, her high heels dangling forgotten from one weary hand, flinched out of the way. She braced herself for whatever freak might be propositioning her this time, and her steely gaze softened not one iota when she realized it was Jim.

"Where the hell is Thomas?" she demanded.

"He's at the lab with Matsuhashi," said Jim.

"Yukking it up over beer and poker?"

"Hardly," said Jim, quietly.

"Just bonding with the guy who handed me over to what

ever that creep wanted."

Jim nearly pointed out that Matsuhashi had, in fact, also gotten her out of the situation, and that she had insisted on meeting Watanabe against Thomas's wishes, but it wasn't his place. More to the point, he guessed that this was only the leading edge of an argument that went back years, rooted in the landscape of their relationship like Joshua trees. 283

O n t h e F i f t h D a y

* * *

"Ready?" said Thomas.

By way of answer, Matsuhashi pushed the buttons on his phone and waited for Watanabe to pick up. As soon as the con

versation started, he turned away from Thomas, unwilling to show his face even in the darkness of the site. Thomas's Japanese wasn't good enough to understand the technical nuance of the argument that followed, but Matsuhashi had planned his speech in advance and Thomas had the gist.

"There's a problem with the bones from the find," said Matsuhashi.

"What kind of problem?" said Watanabe. He sounded slurred with sleep or drink, probably both.

"The team has been preparing the samples for radiocarbon dating," said Matsuhashi, "and studying everything that came off the bones in the process."

"So?"

"There's pollen."

"You woke me after screwing up my evening to tell me there's pollen?" said Watanabe. "Of course there'll be pollen. So what?"

"It's the wrong pollen. It's
olea.
Olive."

Watanabe was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was odd. "There are olives in Japan," he said.

"Yes, but they are a new cultivar. The olive did not come to Japan till the Bunkyu period in the 1860s."

"What are you saying?"

"The find is contaminated," said Matsuhashi. "The bones were not buried there. They were interred somewhere else, somewhere olives grow. They were moved later. The bones may be European, but the burial is not."

There was a long silence.

"Tell no one," said Watanabe. "Seal the remains until I get there. Don't let anyone see them or your results. Then go home. Got it?"