The Five-Day Dig (15 page)

“Groundwater is what’s holding that back,” Winnie said. “One of our colleagues at Growden worked at
Herculaneum
and is familiar with the problem. Besides, she says the Villa has been tunneled so thoroughly she’s convinced all the scrolls have been found.”

Dunk smiled. “If so, that makes our site all the more important – just what ‘The Dig’ needs, too, if we want to secure another season on the air.”

Chaz studied him thoughtfully. “Do you really think
Giampiero
is here to snatch any scrolls we might find?”

“I can’t rule it out. That’s why I’ve asked our crew to be on alert. I hope you will be, too – in a discreet manner, of course.”

Winnie and Chaz glanced at each other. She turned to Dunk. “If you plan to mention it to Dr. Farber, you should know that discretion probably isn’t his forte. He tends to say whatever he thinks.”

He looked amused. “Indeed? Then I suppose the rest of us will have to be the watchdogs. Anyway, I’ll let you get to bed. See you bright and early.”

They said goodnight, and Dunk went into his room.

Chaz and Winnie continued on to their doors, located opposite each other.

Pausing with his hand on the doorknob, he grinned at her. “So, after that, are you afraid of sabotage?”

She snorted. “Only from the usual source.”

“You mean Dr. Farber?”

Realizing she had shared too much of her frustration already, she thought it better not to be explicit. She smiled at him. “Don’t put words in my mouth. See you in the morning.”

“OK. Goodnight.”

Once in the privacy of her room, she couldn’t shrug off her concerns so easily. While getting ready for bed, she stewed over Farber’s stunt. Again, she consoled herself that she wasn’t assigned to the same trench he was. Only then did she remember she
had
been assigned to work with Chaz.

She frowned. Was it too much to hope that the area designated for Trench 2 would be expansive?

N
OVE

S
ILLY NIGHTMARES ABOUT
Farber and being on TV plagued Winnie all night and woke her up before the alarm went off. She treated herself to a long shower and, thinking about the camera, took extra care with her hair and make-up. For good measure, she stashed a powder compact and lip gloss in a pocket of her cargo pants.

A step out onto the balcony revealed the morning air felt chilly, but a clear sky bode well for the day. She put on a light jacket, intending to walk to the site of the dig – making sure to keep to the paths, of course.

When she got downstairs, however, Dunk offered her a ride with him and Amara. After they pulled out of the driveway onto the dirt road that went through the vineyards, he glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “Don’t look so frightened, Winnie. What last-minute qualms can we dispel for you?”

She forced a smile. “I’m a little nervous that I’ll draw a blank when you give me my first text to translate. Latin inscriptions are riddled with abbreviations, and that can make them tricky. I’ve been brushing up on common ones used in
Pompeii
, and I hope that will help.”

He smiled back at her in the mirror. “I have complete confidence in you, but in the event that you stumble badly, we can always edit or do a second take.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not saying that some of your scenes are staged?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘staged.’ That’s too strong a term. But once in a while, the camera might miss a big moment, or someone will flub an important point. Then we’ll do it over.”

“I see.” Knowing that she could redo a line calmed her, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to resort to it. It would feel like cheating.

To reach the site, they drove through the open gates of a temporary fence that had gone up since her last visit. Inside, a parking area had been cleared of brush and already held two panel trucks, a bus and several cars. Up the hill, closer to the temple, she could see a caterer’s tent.

“Wow, the place is hopping,” she said.

Amara grinned back at her between the seats. “You should have seen the locations during our heyday.”

Under the tent, a continental breakfast buffet and a dining area had been set up to save time for the cast and crew members. At least a dozen people already sat at portable tables. Many of them appeared to be teenagers and wore matching orange ‘Five-Day Dig’ T-shirts.

“Who are all these people?” she asked.

“Mostly B team,” Amara said. “Besides our show regulars, we have local students here to clean and categorize finds. They’re the ones in orange. Some of them will work on surveying and documenting locations, as well. With Dom’s help, we’ve hired some laborers, too, for the heavier moving.”

“Ha.” With so many people involved, it didn’t seem likely she and Chaz would have much influence on how professionally the work was conducted. It was one reason to be glad that her boss was onboard. If the project damaged Growden’s reputation, she wouldn’t be the only person responsible.

Scanning the eating area, she didn’t see Farber, but she spotted Chaz sitting with a well-muscled black guy wearing a knit beanie and a striped shirt. A professional video camera lay on the seat next to him. She grabbed an orange-glazed croissant, a yogurt and a cup of cappuccino and walked over to their table.

“This is Hank, the lead cameraman.” Chaz told her. “He’s from Philly, too.”

“But I’ve been working on ‘The Dig’ for five years,” Hank said, “so I spend a lot of my time in the
U.K.
”

She set down her drink and shook his hand. “I’d love to spend a year or two living abroad. How do you like it?”

“It’s good, except I hardly ever get to see a Phillies’ game.” His gaze swept down her body as she took a seat. “I like your necklace.”

“Oh, thank you. It’s a museum replica of an ancient Egyptian piece.” She lifted the cat-shaped pendant to give him a better look. “This is Bastet, a solar goddess originally depicted as a lioness but later a domestic cat.”

He leaned closer. “Cool.”

Chaz cleared his throat. “I’m more of a cricket man myself, but the Phils’ prospects look good this season.”

Hank asked if he had heard how the team did in the previous night’s game, and Chaz filled him in. After a few minutes of making predictions about the rest of the season, the three of them speculated about the ruins on the site. Then they got up and walked to the area designated for excavation.

As Winnie and Chaz approached the ancient wall that abutted the spot where they would be digging, she saw a mini mechanical digger sink its blades into the topsoil marked out for their trench.

Shocked, she ran the rest of the way, waving her arms to stop the operator, a burly man with a hard hat and a thick, dark mustache. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”

He stopped the machinery but scowled at her, shouting something in Italian too rapid for her to understand.

To her embarrassment, Dunk rushed over with Hank following him and filming. Enza trailed the cameraman.

“What’s wrong, Dr. Price?” Dunk asked.

Great. First thing, and I’m already in the spotlight
, she thought. But the issue was too important for her to back down. She turned a brave face toward him. “I’m worried about artifacts near the surface suffering damage from this digger. This area is too archaeologically rich to use machinery for excavation. We have to do it by hand.”

Beyond his shoulder, she could see Chaz, Farber and Jack approaching, all looking curious.

Dunk smiled at her. “The top few inches of soil are too recent for us to waste our time on them. Our
concern is with
the ancient Roman layer.”

“I know we’re here primarily to study the Roman era, but we can’t ignore the possibility of finding artifacts from World War II or medieval times.”

Jack stepped up to the side of the trench. “We won’t neglect more recent finds, Winnie, I assure you. I understand your uneasiness, but we have a team of archaeology students coming to sift the spoil piles by hand. If there are trinkets from the last few centuries in the top layers, they won’t be lost.”

Details about the positioning of the items would be lost, though, and items could get broken by the digger. Conscious of the camera on her, she hated to make a big scene. She looked to her boss for backup. “What’s your view about this, Will?”

He moved closer and studied the ground, rubbing his chin. “Being American and therefore from a land with relatively short human occupation, those of us from Growden are used to concentrating on the top layers in a dig. But given the long history of this area and our time constraints, I think that skimming off the top layer and sifting it for finds is the most efficient way to handle the excavation.”

She could hardly believe her ears. Her own colleague was more interested in sensational finds than in good archaeology.

“Excellent,” Dunk said. “Then we’ll cut through the rigmarole, as the Italians say.” He gave Enza a conspiratorial smile.

The young woman shook her head. “We do not say this.
Rigmarole
is not an Italian word.”

Before Winnie could consider her next argument, Jack whistled at the operator of the digger and motioned for him to continue. She watched, cringing, as the blade sunk in, tore off a three-foot-wide strip of soil, about nine feet long, and dumped it on a tarp to the side. Nothing human-made stood out in the pile of lapilli and dirt, but she felt sure the sifters would come up with finds.

Jack and Dunk directed the vehicle to another area, and the camera and Farber followed them.

Chaz stepped up beside her. “Let’s get to work. The more that we do properly, the less there is left for them to muck up.”

She nodded. If nothing else, she could control the quality of her own work. She just wished she could have been more persuasive about the digger. A more confident person might have won the battle. Was she really a marshmallow, like Farber said?

Drowning those thoughts in her work, she found the soft, sandy volcanic soil in the trench surprisingly easy to lift. Over the next few hours, she and Chaz cleared a layer a foot deep – much more than she’d expected to get done. The most difficult part of the job proved to be the repetitive stooping and bending.

As the early-June sun rose in the sky, she grew hot and tired. Standing up to stretch her legs, she surveyed the segment of wall they had exposed. In the last half-hour, the point of some kind of architectural cap had taken shape near the ground.
Interesting.

Chaz brushed crumbs of soil off a newly unearthed section of bricks. “Have you heard from your brother since we spoke about him?”

“No. He’s been silent for over a week now. I tried texting him again last night but didn’t get a response.” She shrugged. “This is his usual MO when he’s gone to the dark side, but it’s still alarming.”

He squinted up at her. “How concerned are you?”

“Pretty concerned. I’m trying not to be, but I’ll be glad when we get home next week.”