Actually, Rudy had told him so – warned him that keeping Goldman out of the loop about the clay-and-ash dating was a bad move. And Packard knew his friend was right. But it was done. And if Packard hadn’t stumbled on the cache of bones, if they’d simply closed down the dig as Goldman ordered, it all would’ve gone away, at worst an aberrant reading.
Within minutes of V.J. Toland’s agreeing to close down the trail that morning, Packard loaded his Cherokee with the specimens Meg had finished sorting and, leaving her behind with the others to complete their work, raced across the mountains, back to Borrego Junction. Directly to the Bone Lab deep in the bowels of Krassner Hall on the campus of the University of Southwestern Colorado.
About halfway, Packard phoned Felix and calmly alerted him, without going into detail, that the find might be significant. Goldman’s initial reaction was displeasure with Packard for continuing to dig after being ordered to close down. Predictable, but Packard’s fatigue got in the way of his ignoring it. “Dammit, Felix, just meet me at the lab at four-thirty, okay?” That would allow Rudy and himself time to run some preliminary tests. He punched in the lab number.
It rang once. “Bone lab. Sanchez---”
“Rudy, it’s me. Look, what I’m about to say, you’ve gotta keep your best poker-face. I don’t want the ladies to know.”
“Ohhh – gee. Um. Certainly, Mr. Williams...”
Packard grinned. Rudy’s words were calm enough, but his voice rose at least an octave. Packard told him to send the two elderly women home without telling them – or anyone else – why. The women were members of the local Archaeological Society, volunteers who put in long hours at the cluttered worktables that filled the cramped, low-ceilinged space, patiently measuring and comparing newly acquired bone samples to the thousands of reference specimens in the surrounding cabinets, and then cataloguing them.
As Rudy helped him unload the Jeep, some of Packard’s apprehension, if not his preoccupation, was offset by the younger man’s contagious high. They quickly arrayed the paper sacks and plastic bags across the tables that Rudy had earlier cleared of their customary impenetrable jumble of microscopes, magnifiers, balance-scales and masses of yellowish brown bone-fragments.
Before Packard had removed his jacket, Rudy was fully into his clean-suit, eagerly preparing the first sample. And into one of his characteristic, anxiety-driven monologues. “I mean whatcha got going for you is these specimens probably weren’t under a lot of intense heat youknow from high pressure or like that. Those kinda conditions – they can youknow cause a gradual loss of light-emitting properties. And then, like you say, they weren’t in contact with soils or much moisture...”
Packard was usually amused by Rudy’s compulsive yakking, but at that moment he’d pretty much zoned out. It was as if he was outside of himself, dispassionately observing the scene, almost clinically curious about Rudy’s actions and his own emotions.
Or more accurately, his lack of them.
Despite the very real possibility of proving a major discovery, for reasons Packard still could not fathom he kept thinking about the small bag he’d placed at one side. The one he’d labeled “???” It contained the skeleton’s left pinkie-tip, big toe, several hairs and, in a separate little plastic envelope, several tiny pieces of metal that George Quinn had accommodatingly shaved off the bullet.
Strange. Save for the few cotton fibers, no sign of clothing. No clue about how or when the man had fallen into that sandstone shaft, or why. Had it been sealed before? Probably, judging from the good condition of the older remains. So – who or what had opened it? And how had that large rock been moved...?
He dialed back in on Rudy’s chatter: “...probably aren’t fully mineralized. Which means negligible impurities which means – hey, we might even extract some DNA...” With a sterilized knife he carefully scraped a tiny quantity of powdered bone onto a slide, inserted it in the small oven. “Well, babe – here we go...”
He hit the switch on the side of the chamber, jogged his computer-mouse, clicked an icon – and a rectangular chart appeared on the monitor, numbers along the left side and across the bottom. Thermoluminescence, the technique of dating that Rudy was employing, had come into its own during the past few decades, proving particularly reliable on substances older than one hundred thousand years.
A knock on the lab door caused Packard to look questioningly at Rudy – Goldman wasn’t supposed to show up yet.
“Probably Sandy Ross. I had her running some recalibrations.” He crossed to the door, unbolted it, opened it a crack.
A pretty blonde undergraduate handed him a printout. “They all seem to be well within tolerances.” Sandy spotted Packard, noted the bandage on his forehead, smiled. “Hi, Dr. Packard. I’m glad you weren’t badly hurt.”
Packard smiled back. “Thanks. Me too.”
Rudy watched her walk down the corridor before closing and re-bolting the door.
Packard’s eyes were on the monitor. “So what’re we looking at - ballpark?”
Rudy returned to the computer. “D’you believe that tush?”
“Ballpark, Rudy.”
Rudy grinned. He glanced at the temperature gauge. It had climbed to nearly six hundred degrees. He cut the power. The LED went black.
On the monitor the jittery staccato line stopped. Packard flashed on its similarity to Hitler’s handwriting.
Rudy squinted at the pattern, clicked the mouse on “PRINT,” then: “Again. It’s up there with the goods from last week. Give or take, we’re talkin’ right around a hundred thou.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Rudy faced him. “You got that right, pal, but there it is.” The results, depending on which school of thought one embraced, were from 55,000 to nearly 90,000 years older than any previously dated human habitation in the Americas. “Man, this is serious shit.”
Packard glanced at his watch as the phone rang. “Let’s try another one before he gets here.”
Rudy nodded, hit the speakerphone button. “Bone Lab. Sanchez...”
“Yo, Rudy. The boss around?” Meg Brady twisted the cap off a beer, cell phone shoulder-clamped to her ear. She was slumped in the motor-home’s little dining nook. An equally fatigued Scott Herren sat across from her, breaking out the Scrabble board. Jeff Fischer explored the fridge, his massive, linebacker-bulk filling the narrow galley aisle.
As always, Packard was buoyed by the sound of her voice, her positive energy. “Hi. How’s it going?” He handed Rudy another specimen-bag.
“Super, but I’m hoping things’ll pick up. We’ve been sorting the bejesus out of this stuff – god, it’s about a zillion pieces – but typically they still all seem to be male, and it looks like your cranium-count comes to fifteen hominids, plus your mystery-man. You getting any numbers?”
“Some. Not conclusive.”
“C’mon, boss, give. Like the clay...?”
Packard hesitated, then: “Yeah. That area.”
Rudy jumped in, grinning. “Area my ass, Meggins. The same square inch.”
“Hot damn! Packard, you are about to be mondo famous.” Scott and Jeff chorused cheers.
Packard appreciated their enthusiasm, wished he could share it. “Not to mention in a lot of trouble.”
“Hello? Aren’t you the guy that taught me nothing’s for free?”
“Meg, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you guys tomorrow. And tell ‘em thanks.” Packard rang off, picked up the hardcopy of the previous test results.
Rudy was preparing the next bone-fragment. “Fifteen, huh? That is pretty fuckin’ hot.”
Packard didn’t answer. He was all too familiar with the spread. It was the heart of a debate that had raged for decades in archaeological and anthropological circles; the timing of the earliest human migration into the Western Hemisphere, thought to be from Asia via the land-bridge known as Berengia.
For more than half of the twentieth century, based mostly on the dating of stone projectile points and tools foun
d in the 1920’s at Clovis, New Mexico, prevailing thought placed the earliest, more-or-less inarguable human activity in the Western Hemisphere at 11,500 years. Similar artifacts – large, beautifully crafted, bifacially flaked tools with fluted bases – were soon identified elsewhere in the western hemisphere, some as far south as Patagonia. Thus was established The Clovis Standard.
Which was put into question several decades later by the discovery of a rock shelter at Meadowcroft, Pennsylvania, that many scientists believed went back 19,000 years.
Then, in the 1970’s, excavations along the Old Crow River in the Canadian Yukon revealed fractured, flaked bones of mammoths, indicating human butchering and toolmaking 24,000 years ago.
These more recent finds were of course rigorously questioned, heatedly disputed and in many cases devalued or discredited by the more conservative factions of the archaeological community, which continued to cling to the Clovis Standard, or, if they were slightly more daring, that of Meadowcroft. Dr. Felix Goldman had in fact staked his reputation on his pronouncement that Meadowcroft was the absolute earliest human habitation. His subsequent book on the subject went on to become the standard text in many schools – and Goldman – to many – became one of the final authorities.
But in the late 1980’s, excavations at sites in South America began producing results dramatically more at odds with traditional thinking. At Monte Verde in Chile, deposits yielding possible human material were dated at 33,000 years. And other experts declared that humans as far back as 45,000 years ago occupied rock shelters found at Pedra Furada in Brazil. Which created a furor that hadn’t yet subsided – in some cases turning friends into corrosive adversaries.
Was Clovis the benchmark, or was it Pedra Furada?
Packard remembered vividly his excitement when, as an undergraduate, Dr. Goldman thrust him into the debate, taking his young acolyte along to visit the South American sites. Where the older man categorically – and very publicly – declared them to be no older than Clovis. Packard’s refusal to answer questions from the press or from scholars, deferring instead to Goldman, had been proper protocol. It was also self-preservation. The truth was that Packard did not agree with Goldman. Emphatically. His own observations convinced him that Pedra Furada was at least as old as its discoverers had claimed. But he had kept these views to himself, till he became involved with Goldman’s daughter, Leslie, eventually sharing them with her. Which resulted in the first of their serious problems, and for Packard a glimpse of her dark side. She was angered not by his disbelief in her father’s position on the subject, but rather, she felt Packard lacked spine for not openly opposing her father; to Packard’s surprise, she seemed to want him to knock the man down.
Not that Packard entirely trusted his own position, his attitude toward Goldman. At first his excuses to himself were immaturity and inexperience. But as time went on he knew it was more complicated than that. His own father had disappointed him, insisting on being the boy’s “buddy,” rather than the hero figure young Matt wanted, a man he could look up to. Several years of psychoanalysis had clarified the dynamic for Packard; when his father said he wanted to have the same kind of relationship with Matt as he had had with his own father, he omitted a key detail, one which the man never understood. “The same” meant Packard’s dad wanted to repeat his role of son – to Matt as he had with Matt’s grandfather.
Achieving an understanding of this not uncommon phenomenon, however, failed to immediately cure Packard of his ongoing, unconscious search for a father-figure. And its concomitant, successive disappointments. So that when Felix Goldman took him on as his protege, the young student felt he had found the exemplar he needed. At least till the trip to Pedra Furada, when Packard became aware of some of his own strengths – and Felix’s vulnerabilities.
It wasn’t that Packard had idealistically endowed Goldman with qualities the man didn’t possess – oh, a few, maybe – nor did he ignore Felix’s obvious warts. But Packard was truly reluctant to do anything that might chip the man’s pedestal, much less topple him from it.
Leslie refused to let Packard forget that someday it would come to that. And Rudy Sanchez, while less willing to play the scold, fundamentally agreed with her, occasionally nailing his friend for what he took to be fear of challenging Goldman.
Packard knew they were both at least partly right. He also knew that Goldman had initially become aware of his skepticism back when they were still in South America – where he read it as disloyalty. And never quite forgot it. Packard had no doubt it was the reason he hadn’t been granted tenure, but he’d shied from confronting Felix about that, too. Instead, Packard’s interests – especially of late – had taken other directions. And not solely because of his relationships with Felix and Leslie.
Felix Goldman arrived at the lab at exactly 4:30. Packard and Rudy presented him with the preliminary test results from the new specimens, which he scanned without comment, and then Packard confessed that he’d withheld the previous week’s ash-and-clay dating figures. Already in a defensive/aggressive mode, Felix’s reaction was as chilly as Packard and Rudy had anticipated. And by the time he witnessed another round of thermoluminescence readings, and exited the lab, he was all the way to furious, every one of his wheels in motion.
Packard thumbed his stubble. Well, screw it. The whole thing made him weary – especially the certainty that like it or not he was about to find himself at the center of a new controversy – of his own making – a fight he simply wasn’t up for. “Listen, how soon are we going to see some data on the other one?”
Rudy looked at him for an uncomprehending second, then: “Number sixteen.”
Packard nodded.
“Jesus, I mean here you are with maybe the find of the---”
“Rudy.”
“Okayokay. I’ll get into it tonight. As soon as I finish the stuff for Felix.”
“You got anything for me to read?”
“Next week.”
Packard heard the annoyance, nodded, exited the lab. He’d given up doing heavy guilt-numbers on Rudy months ago; there was no profit in it for either of them. His friend had long since acknowledged that he would run his doctoral-thesis-in-progress past Packard – when he decided he deserved success.
Everybody’s got something...
Packard felt oddly relieved as he exited from Krassner Hall into the darkness, headed for the parking structure. Back there in the lab he’d finally begun to understand the pull, his involuntary absorption with this more recently dead man. Partly it was the contrast to his usual work, wherein at best one could only make educated-but-frustratingly-vague guesses about the ancients and their stories, how they lived and died. And more often than not one archaeologist’s theoretical surmise, no matter how scholarly, how carefully bolstered with data and artifacts, became the next one’s target for skepticism or worse, flat-out contempt and/or derision. Based on what? Truth, sometimes. Ego and professional jealousy, a lot.
Here on the other hand was a case – he found it interesting that the word ‘case’ came to mind – where the actual truth might be achievable. A mystery that – because it was more recent showed the tantalizing promise of being far more solvable in absolute terms – details, dates, identity, cause of death – than the ancient ones ever were.
It made him realize how badly he’d been wanting the satisfaction of closure – certain, finite closure – and how disappointingly rare it was in his field of study.
All the more reason to hope his recent efforts to restructure his life himself would gel.
* * * * * *
The man emerged from the red brick row-house. He carried a small satchel. Roughly middle-aged, his face was slightly lined, but lacking smile-wrinkles. Nondescript. A face without vanity. That of a man who lived inside his mind. The drizzle had turned to rain, rush-hour headlamps and taillights oozing their fluid reflections onto the pavement. A mile south, above the rooftops, the upper half of the Capitol dome glowed against the starless sky. He r
aised the collar of his dark raincoat, began walking. He was almost at the corner when the black stretch limousine pulled alongside, slowed to his pace. The opaque rear window lowered. “I’m headed your way.”
The speaker was invisible, but the man knew the voice, had spent more time with its owner than he would have preferred. Others would have found it familiar from C-span, Sunday morning talk-shows, press briefings and miscellaneous public pronouncements.
The man’s hesitation was almost undetectable. He stopped. So did the car. The door opened. He stepped inside, pulled the door shut, sat beside the passenger. The limo had swung into N Street before the passenger spoke.
“You think it’s anything?”
The man watched the droplets gather weight and dribble down the side-window. He turned to his host, took in the once-classic profile. The varied sculpting of passing headlights accentuated its age, the corruption. “It needs to be looked at.”
“This time – I don’t know...”
“Locating him is one thing, but---”
“But – hardly a small one, I would think.” The voice revealed a touch of something besides the usual self-righteousness. Barely suppressed excitement.
Within the last fifteen minutes both men, as well as another selected few in and out of the Beltway, had received the identical terse e-mail message:
Intercept. 20:07, EST. Pay phone in Moab. Traced. Confirmed. To a New Orleans drop-number. Quote: ‘Subject found. Muleshoe Canyon. Assets not recovered.’ End quote.
The man had requested travel arrangements, was told that his transportation was standing by in Hangar 14 at National Airport, appropriate files were being delivered to the aircraft.
The older man resumed, his angst more apparent: “You are taking backup.”
“No.”
“For godsake, this could – it could easily get away from us.”
The Sixteenth Man Page 5