The Dig (6 page)

“Of course, of course. Just step right on and slide that little gate closed. Safety first on our site here… that’s the thing, safety at all times.”

The driver remained behind Dr. Rheese as he lowered them into the pit. He appeared to be looking over Rheese’s shoulder to see how the lift was controlled. No trust. What was he going to do—leave them down there to starve with nothing but a cask of amontillado?

Rheese made his best effort to appear unconcerned as the men examined the dead elephant. He watched from the corner of his eye as the Modi bloke appeared to be estimating the angle of the shotgun blast. The professor wondered if the creature had begun to smell just yet. How long had it lain there? Certainly no more than eight hours. It couldn’t be in too bad a shape—other than the broken neck, mashed-up face, and brains blown to aspic. Rheese withheld a chuckle as he paced and puffed at a cheap cigar.

As the lift surfaced again ten minutes later, Modi started right in. “So you say the animal was shot after it had already fallen?”

“That is correct, sir. And my foreman, Enzi, can tell you all about it upon his return.”

“And where is this Enzi fellow now?”

“Well, I’m not exactly sure about that. It’s likely he is traveling back from our base camp with some men to—”

“To assist with removal of the evidence? If this creature was shot after it fell, tell me, sir, how was it shot from below? The blast appears to travel in an upward angle through the base of the trunk. A shot such as this would come from a man standing in front of an upright elephant.”

A vehicle could be heard rattling up the dirt road, and soon the Jeep appeared with Enzi behind the wheel. With him sat four others.

Impeccable timing, Enzi.
“Ah, here now, gentlemen. This is my foreman, Enzi. He’ll be able to answer all your applicable questions.”

Enzi parked the Jeep, and all the men jumped out, anxious to see the enormous carcass. Enzi, wearing a solemn expression, walked straight to Rheese and the investigators. “You from the Ministry, yes? I call as soon as I reach telephone this morning.”

Odumbe raised a thick eyebrow. “
You
placed the call this morning?”

“Oh, yes, sah. Enzi Wata—I am the site foreman.” He reached out his hand. After the handshakes, Modi and Odumbe walked Enzi to their SUV and began to question him out of Rheese’s earshot.

Rheese walked to the other four men standing at the ledge and attempted to instruct them to clear the loose mud away from the new slope created by the toppling elephant. At first they stood there looking doubtfully at him while he mimed and pointed, but then one of them appeared to grasp his meaning and then explained in Swahili what the
mkundu
had said. They all rushed off to comply, grabbing shovels along the way. Rheese turned back toward the SUV and saw the two government men and Enzi chuckling among themselves while the driver poked around outside the equipment trailer. A few friendly good-byes later, Enzi came strolling over to Rheese with a smile.

“All taken care of, Professor. They send cleanup people soon.”

“What exactly did you tell them?” Rheese asked with an unconvincing smile as he watched the departing SUV over Enzi’s shoulder.

“I tell them what happen. How it crash through trees, fall into excavation, and I shoot with shotgun.”

“And they were pleased with that, eh?”

“Pleased, sah? I think not so pleased, but Mister Modi write down notes and they say cleanup people coming soon.”

“Right. Good, good, Enzi. So, the laughing at the end there—what was that about?”

“Laughing, Professor?” Enzi’s face morphed to frank innocence.

“Never mind. So I told these men to secure that slope, to be sure nothing more falls down on top of the creature.” He glanced back at the elephant. “They say anything about clearing the debris for their cleanup gang?”

“No, sah, they say we not touch animal or the mess around. They clean up everything.”

Rheese began to walk back to his trailer and then remembered. “Blast it!” he shouted as he stomped the drying mud.

Enzi turned and asked the problem.

“When those men are done over there, I need them to empty my septic tank. But they are
not
to throw away
anything
.”

He received a blank stare in return.

“I accidentally dropped a bloody key in the loo!”

Enzi nodded, understanding.

Behind Dr. Rheese’s trailer, the two lowest-ranking men, who had drawn the septic tank duty, had placed the end of the hose into a garbage bag and zip-tied the top of the bag around the hose. They had agreed this was the safest way to proceed without “losing anything.” Unfortunately, the first trash bag had burst, and the rest of their work had to take place amid a large puddle of lumpy blue liquid.

When the tank was empty, the men stood behind Enzi, who asked on their behalf if they might enter the trailer to search for the key from the inside hatch.

After a glance at their soiled boots and pant legs, Rheese said, “You must be bloody daft. Show me the hatch—I’ll check it myself.”

Enzi lifted the small panel beside the base of the toilet and moved aside for Dr. Rheese to slip in, gloves and flashlight at the ready. He tried to hold his breath but caught a nasty snort before he could turn his head. He sucked in another breath, through the mouth this time, and tucked his head and the light into the small opening.

And there the bugger was!

It was just within reach, beside the drain plug. Key in hand, he stood up in triumph, then held it under the faucet, washing it well with hand soap.

“Please drop these in the outside bin, if you don’t mind,” he said.

Enzi accepted the latex gloves and let the trailer door swing shut behind him.

D
R.
J
ON
M
EIER HUNG UP HIS
desk phone after leaving the fourth message for Matthew Turner in as many days. The man was clearly ignoring him. Peter Sharma, meanwhile, had not been as patient with his calls, which now averaged five a day. Dr. Meier considered telling him it was a lost cause. Turner was a millionaire now and too selfish to consider the big picture around the Kenya discovery. If opening the doors to an entirely unknown past weren’t inspiration enough, what did anyone have to offer him?

He knew the exact moment when he had blown any chance of getting Matthew onboard, and now chastised himself for the slip. It was the first voice mail he had left him after their initial conversation. Meier hadn’t realized he had thus far omitted the part about actually traveling to the forests of Kenya. It occurred to him later that day that his cheerful close of “Kenya awaits!” may not have been the best idea.

Meier’s computer speakers emitted the familiar tone, and he switched back to his in-box. Pete was asking what it would take to have “the expert” on-site in Kenya in two days. Meier typed his honest assessment: “Another $10 million.” He deleted that and searched his office for an idea.
Another ten…

“That’s it!” He said aloud. He just needed to get Turner another ten million dollars!

He dialed the extension.

“Yes, Doctor Meier?” George answered.

“I need you in my office in five minutes, and bring Hank Felch with you.”

“All right, but, um… Hank is setting up the exhibition for this afternoon’s—”

“Four minutes, fifty seconds, George.”

Hank Felch cursed to himself as he tried to wipe the dust off the old animatronic Stegosaurus. Whoever had painted it last had left the original texturizer layer instead of resurfacing the whole thing. Laziness, pure and simple. Now, as he tried to clean it, little bits fell off, leaving obvious unpainted speckles.
Great!
he thought. People would be strolling through here in just a few hours, and they had a dino who appeared to have suffered horrible acne in its adolescence. Not to mention the scale was completely off. Probably someone’s bright idea to save space for the installation.

Hank had worked at the museum for seven years and longed to return to “real work,” though he did little enough to advance himself toward the goal. As he shined the plastic eyeball, he recalled the days of being lauded “for extraordinary contributions to the study of impact events” and, before that, receiving the Principal’s Award for Outstanding Field Recovery for identifying an apparently unrelated pile of bone fragments as being an entire
Brachyceratops
scapula.

“Hey, Hank,” George’s voice called out with its usual waver of reluctance.

Hank did not turn to answer. “Don’t ask me anything, Georgie. If I don’t finish fixing this mess in the next coupla hours, Meier’s gonna bowl with my head.”

“Um… actually, Doctor Meier wants to see you. Sorry, I tried to tell him.”

“Perfect!” Hank shouted, and threw down his rag.

Three minutes later, Hank and George Miller sat before Dr. Meier’s desk. Hank cleaned his glasses on his shirt and brushed some plaster fragments out of his curly brown beard, oblivious of the pieces in his chaotic mop of hair.

“Gentlemen… ,” Dr. Meier began. “We need to come up with ten million dollars.”

George looked over at Hank, his large, watery eyes tinged with desperation. Hank didn’t flinch. He simply replaced his round glasses and waited for more information. Meier began flipping a gold doubloon over his fingers, clinking it on his ring with each roll.

“Hank, do you remember Matthew Turner? Used to come around from time to time as an intern…”

“Yeah, I think I met him,” Hank said. “I heard he’s a gazillionaire now
.
Some sort of treasure hunt near Georgia that paid off.”

Dr. Meier smiled and held up the gold coin.

“You are correct, Hank. And as a matter of fact,
this
is the very coin that he traced to that spot in the Atlantic. This Spanish doubloon, which I have kept on my desk for the past couple of decades… well, it found its way into young Turner’s possession for a brief time. Four months later, a photo of Matthew appears on the cover of the
Times,
standing on the deck of a fishing boat with a chest of gold and silver that had been lost for hundreds of years.”

Hank nodded. That was about the extent of what he knew, though he hadn’t known that the director’s doubloon had anything to do with it.

“Obviously Matthew has a singular gift for tracing items to their source. And you, Hank, among my staff, know the most about other lost treasure out there in the world, do you not?”

“I do,” Hank replied, tickling his fingertips with his beard. “Now, separating legend from genuine shipwrecks and the like, well, there’re a lot of people out there doing that these days—actual companies, in fact.”

George suddenly realized exactly where Meier was going. “I think I can narrow it down for you, Hank,” he said. “What ‘lost treasure’ is out there that there’s a well-known sample of? Like Doctor Meier’s gold coin, for instance?”

“Ah, right… Well, I’d have to look through the database for an accurate number, but I’d say it’s in the hundreds just for the NYMM. But all this stuff has been tracked numerous times without success. I seriously doubt that…”

As Hank droned on, Dr. Meier and George shared a look.

“Hundreds?”

Dr. Meier knew that Matthew was ignoring his calls. He decided to have Tuni call him from her cell phone to increase the odds of his answering. It worked.

“This is Matt,” he answered after two rings.

“Hello, Mr. Turner, this is Tuni St. James.”

Where did he know that name from?
Interesting accent.

“What can I do for you, Tuni?”

The ambient noise told her he was driving. She sat in the leather chair in the corner of the office, with Dr. Meier, George, and Hank hovering over her. Their script, with explicit notes, sat on her lap as she twirled her long hair with a lazy finger.

“I have a proposal for you. I understand you have a talent for tracing lost gold.”

Matt let off the gas a little and held the phone tight to his ear. “Okay…”

“My employers have access to a piece of silver that washed up on a beach a long time ago.” She paused but heard only the soft hum of the moving car. “It’s from a well-documented vessel that sank with chests of silver destined for the Confederate army in 1864. Would you be interested in recovering it?”

“Tuni, is Doctor Meier standing near you?”

She looked up at the director and mouthed, “He knows.”

Meier shrugged. If Matthew wasn’t hooked at this point, there was nothing else they could do. He nodded for her to continue.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, he’s standing over me right now, wearing a green and charcoalpatterned sweater vest.”

“Please put him on the phone,” Matt said evenly.

She handed Meier the phone.

“Matthew?”

“Why are you playing games, Doctor?”

“Well, my friend, I realized that I needed a bit more of an incentive for you to help out with this very important situation. It just so happens that the doubloon to which you helped yourself is not unique in its potential. The silver coin Tuni spoke of is very real, sitting in the safe in my office, and would very likely lead you to an estimated twenty-seven million dollars’ worth of its brothers at the bottom of the Atlantic.”